Findable Blogs — Search Engine Optimization for blogs

If you’re convinced that you need to create an ideal reader, you’ll be eager to dig into the details. Get a notebook and pen, or use your computer and open up a text editor. Let’s go!

Start with generalities:

• Who is your target audience for your product or service? Does it make sense for your ideal reader to be the same?
• Thinking about your business goals for your blog, who is the target audience that is most likely to help you reach those goals? For instance, if one of your big goals is three leads a week, then your ideal reader is someone who is your ideal customer, but has increased motivation to take action now. If a big goal is to increase credibility and become known as an expert, your ideal reader might be a person who’s considered an expert among his or her peers and has a lot of connections and influence.
• What is your reader’s main motivation to visit your blog? In the first example above, the “ideal customer” is motivated to find a solution to a problem that’s currently causing discomfort or pain. On the other hand, the “connected expert” (in the second example) is more likely looking for interesting information that he can pass on to his circle to enhance their opinion of him and cement his good reputation.

Once you have some general ideas about your ideal reader, start to narrow it down and discover a single person that would read your blog. You might be able to use an existing customer or colleague as your model. Feel free to start writing a bit of a narrative rather than just answering each question individually.

• Is your reader male or female? How old?
• Is your reader tech-savvy?
• Where does your reader currently get the information he/she needs? For instance, talking with people, books, magazines, websites, etc.
• Why will this reader care about your blog?
• What’s significant about where your reader works, lives, shops, and or/plays?
• How knowledgeable is your reader about your topic?
• Is your reader reading for personal enrichment or professional development?
• Is your reader’s need for your knowledge urgent or curiosity-driven?

Now get really specific, beyond things that have a direct relationship with your blog. These details will help you think of your ideal reader as a specific, individual person. You might find it helpful to clip a photo from a magazine to represent your ideal reader. Having someone to look at can be surprisingly helpful.

• What is your reader’s name?
• Is your reader married? Are there kids? How many? What ages?
• Ethnicity? Hair and eye color? Height and weight?
• Is your reader’s work fulfilling?
• How is your reader’s free time spent?
• How does your reader dress during the week? On the weekends?

You get the idea. Just write and write until you feel like there’s an actual person. You may come up with a composite of people you’ve met, you might find a complete stranger, or you might discover that your ideal reader is someone you already know. It doesn’t matter, as long as you find someone to write to.

ShareThis

If you liked this post, you will probably enjoy getting our convenient daily or monthly updates. Click here to find out more.

In blogging, like any other aspect of life, trying to please everyone usually results in pleasing no one. Not only will keeping your ideal reader in mind help you avoid straying too far from your goals, it also makes the actual process of writing easier.

Consider how much more quickly words flow when you’re writing an email to a friend versus creating a formal business presentation. When you have a specific recipient in mind, you have a much easier time communicating your ideas.

Picking just one “ideal reader” is easier said than done, though!

Ask any business who their target customer is and you’re likely to get a general category in response: small-to-medium-sized businesses; people who want to improve their health; growing companies who need accounting support but can’t afford an accounting employee. You’ll often encounter that truly optimistic soul who says, “Everyone needs my product!”

Along the same lines, if you ask most bloggers who their ideal reader is, you’ll hear more broad terms: people who want to lose weight; progressive liberals; frugal moms.

These categories are a start, but I prefer something I’ve found much more practical in the day-to-day work of blogging: think of one person—your ideal reader, not readers.

A local radio station does this. Their “ideal listener” is a made-up, but extremely detailed, woman named Jane. If you ask any of the station’s employees, they can tell you how old Jane is, how many kids she has, what her hobbies are, and just about anything else that matters to her.

This might seem a little overkill, but imagine how much easier it makes music or programming decisions. Instead of trying to decide if the nebulous “listeners” would like a change, the question is just about one person (a person who is intentionally representative of “the listeners”). It becomes much easier to have a core focus and escape distractions.

When you use this concept as a blogger, your benefits are similar. When you’re evaluating a potential blog post topic, you can ask yourself, “Why would Sam (or Jane, or Harriett) care about this?”

It’s way too easy to justify off-topic posts by reasoning that they’ll be useful to someone. If you have to feel confident that they will be valuable to Sam, the result will be a blog that is a much better resource for the actual people you want as readers.

Having a specific ideal reader in mind also will help you in the writing process. As you get to know your ideal reader, you will start to write directly to that person and anticipate his (or her) questions. You’ll be able to frame your suggestions and observations in a way that resonates, and everyone who reads your blog will benefit from the specificity.

You might think that focusing on one person would exclude others and cut your readership down. I’ve found, though, that people are pretty good at abstracting specific concepts to fit their situations; they also just ignore what doesn’t fit for them.

How many times have you seen a specific resource, like a book written “for dummies”, described as “not just for beginners”? Good information, presented well, will be useful for a broad range of readers, and they can usually tell pretty quickly.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you of the value of having a specific ideal reader. In my next post, I’ll tell you how to create one.

ShareThis

If you liked this post, you will probably enjoy getting our convenient daily or monthly updates. Click here to find out more.

We don’t mean to lie to you. It’s just that we think blogging is the best thing since sliced bread, and our enthusiasm tends to overwhelm our sense of reality from time to time. Here are some of the things we say, and the truth behind the exuberance.

1. “Blogging is a great way to make money.”

Yes and no. Some people do make good money directly from their blogs (selling advertising, mostly), but most bloggers make an absolute pittance in direct revenue. It takes a whole lot of work to make the advertising model profitable, and it’s very rarely worth doing based strictly on the ROI. On top of that, advertising on business blogs tends to send a message of desperation.

So why does anyone blog if there’s no money in it? Well, there is money in blogging, but most of it is less direct than advertising. The most financially successful bloggers I know are using a blog in conjunction with some other business model.

Many consultants are getting great results using a blog to attract new clients. Authors are increasing book sales by showing off what they know in a blog. Software companies are increasing their user-bases and reducing the cost of customer service by sharing relevant info on blogs. Salespeople are using blog articles to educate prospects and get them closer to a deal.

Beyond sales, lead generation and the like, blogging also helps professionals increase their own personal knowledge, communication skills, network of contacts, and findability online, all of which translate into better business across the board (online and off).

Bottom line, there is money to be made if you have the right model, but advertising by itself is very rarely the right model.

2. “A custom blog design is a great investment.”

Let’s face it; we’re designers. If we didn’t believe that good design was an excellent and important investment, then something would be wrong. We see (on a daily basis) the way thoughtful design helps our clients succeed online, so we’re inclined to recommend it.

However, not every client needs a custom blog design. If you’re just testing the waters, or you need to prove the concept before you get the budget, or you just want a design that’s attractive and readable and don’t care if other blogs have the same design, there are many good, search engine friendly, freely available designs available at no extra cost. When you’re ready to make a blog part of your central online strategy, that’s the time to look at a custom design. Until then, don’t let a passionate designer make you feel bad if you’re using a well-designed stock theme.

3. “You need to blog every day.”

In an ideal world, where everyone had all the time they wanted (both to read and write blogs), I’d agree. Then you’d have ample readers to read your musings, and plenty of time to write. In the real world, blogging daily is a huge burden and downright unattainable for many people. Besides which, it may not even be worth the effort.

Tim Ferriss, who’s something of a web celebrity right now and undoubtedly the most productive person I’ve met, found that posting every 4-6 days gave him the best ROI. He pays more attention to numbers like subscriber count and how many comments, and it’s obviously working well for him (his blog is among the top 1,000 despite the fact that Tim only got serious about blogging about eight months ago). You have to find what works for you (and your readers).

4. “We’re experts.”

Blogging has been around for about half a decade. It’s only begun to really take off in the last couple of years. On top of that, it’s changing so rapidly that keeping track of “all things blog-related” is far more than one person (or even a small company) can handle.

While the best people in the blogging industry are certainly experts in one or more narrow niche (like SEO for blogs ), you’re going to be hard pressed to find someone who knows everything about blogging. You’re better off looking for someone who knows everything about one area of blogging, and knows the people who are experts in other areas and can convince them to get involved as needed.

What are the “white lies” in your industry? Why not write about them on your own blog and help your customers sort out what they hear?

ShareThis

If you liked this post, you will probably enjoy getting our convenient daily or monthly updates. Click here to find out more.

I quietly launched a new blog (I’m a little out of control!) a couple of weeks ago that some of you may find helpful.  It’s called WordPress Quick Start, and it’s an informal video blog for people who want to set up and use WordPress but aren’t technical wizards.

The idea is to walk viewers through the process of essentially recreating our Speedy Start blog package.  Frankly, many people prefer that we take care of it, but if you’re a DIY type, or just want to know how it all works, or have tons of time and no money, the WordPress Quick Start videos videos are just what you need.

Right now there are only a few videos, but enough to help you sign up for hosting, install WordPress, and get started blogging.  Future videos will cover how to install plugins and themes.  I’m also interested in answering your questions, so if there’s something you’d like to see a video discuss, let me know through the comments (here or there).

ShareThis

If you liked this post, you will probably enjoy getting our convenient daily or monthly updates. Click here to find out more.

This is a guest post by Steven Snell. Mr. Snell designs websites and maintains a blog for Vandelay Website Design. You can read more of his writing and see his portfolio at www.vandelaydesign.com.

Social media websites such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Stumble Upon send thousands of visitors to blogs and websites everyday. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of articles about becoming a top user of these sites to build your traffic. While they are all tremendous sources of traffic, getting a significant number of visitors from these sites can take a lot of effort—especially with Digg, Netscape, and Reddit.

If you’ve avoided social media marketing because you don’t have hours every day to spend submitting articles and voting on those submitted by other users, you are missing out on countless potential visitors.

For the average user the main problem with the most popular social media sites is that it can be difficult to generate any kind of traffic to your site. Most of us are completely overlooking the opportunity to benefit from 2nd tier social media sites that send decent levels of traffic and can make it easier for the time-starved blogger to succeed.

Literally hundreds of lesser-known social media sites exist that present far less competition for the top spots. Yes, they will send less traffic than Digg, but if you choose the right ones to use you can see substantial results. Read More »

ShareThis

If you liked this post, you will probably enjoy getting our convenient daily or monthly updates. Click here to find out more.