Are you having difficulty generating content for your blog posts?

The two key components of a blog post are the content generation and the actual writing. If you don’t know how to express yourself clearly and share your ideas accurately in writing, then it’s going to be a real chore for you to attract visitors to keep coming to read your blog again. They just won’t be able to find any good reason to stay, because they are unable to understand the true objective of the blog clearly.

This article aims to become a useful guide for rookie bloggers in knowing how to generate content ideas for their blogs and eventually write about it.

There are 4 types of articles that you can write for any blog post:

1. Tips Articles

This are the type of articles that defines my specialty, and about 80% of all my blog posts fall under this type. What is a tip article anyway? This is the kind of article that provides answers to queries on any particular field of knowledge. As the name suggests, this type of article provides tips on how to solve specific problems. For example, “Tips on Successful Web Marketing” is a tips-based article that you can share in a business/commerce blog.
Aside from solving problems, a tips-based article can also be a presentation of a systematic procedure on how to do things. For example, one of my blogs featured an article entitled “9 Tips To Generate Laser Targeted Traffic”

2. Factual Articles

These are articles that revolve around facts and figures. It aims to improve the knowledge of its readers through the use of real hard evidence in the content. For example, “How To Solve The Global Warming Problem In The Next Decade”, can be a good factual article for a science/technology blog.
Factual articles should be written in a way that it includes reliable references to back up the facts within the content. In-line references from reliable sources can greatly boost the credibility of your articles.

3. Assessment Articles

Assessment articles are commonly written to review a product or service. Because of this, content of this kind of article should always be rich with information and is reader-friendly.
Although articles under this type are usually meant to promote products and services, you should not just write about its positive aspects. Informing your readers of its flaws would give your readers the option on whether to take advantage of it.  Additionally, doing these reviews would help increase your credibility to your readers.

In writing these types of articles, you may also need to pay attention to the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule that was implemented last December 1, 2009. It specifically states that you should disclose whether your review or your article is a paid by the owner of the products or services you are writing about.

4. Personal Feat Articles

The Internet is literally crammed with articles and contents that discusses almost any kind of topic that any one can think of.  Injecting a personal touch through your own experience can help you set your articles apart to bring yourself closer to your readers.  Additionally, anything personal increases the interest of readers.

It is always nice to hear a good personal story behind the tips you are giving, or hearing a success story that is well reinforced by hard facts. It brings a sense of personality to the article, making your readers aware that a human being writes this article.

If all fails and writing is not your cup of tea (which is perfectly normal by the way), the good news is that you still have following options are available:

1. Private Label Rights (PLR) articles

PLR articles are written by ghostwriters, with the intention of selling it to various websites and blog owners. This means that you technically own the article, even if you did not personally write it. Thus, articles of this kind may be edited, re-branded and claim it as your own without having to worry about copyrights or infringements.

2. Ghostwriters

On a stiff budget? Then you can hire students that have skills in writing to do the content filling work for you. If you can’t find one, then it’s highly recommended that you hire professional freelance writers from GetAFreelancer.com, Elance.com or ScriptLance.com.

admin Article Marketing, Web Content

When you brand yourself, you get to keep your position of knowledge in a certain chosen field, be able to open a new doors of opportunities, and potentially create an impression that’s carved on the minds of clients. By coming up with your very own brand, you will now have a way to assess and initiate action over people’s initial perception. When one doesn’t choose to brand themselves, eventually someone else would, leaving out the advantage right out of your hand.
A strong brand is comparable to a dedicated employee, as it directly influences target audience and even goes for overtime hours just to get to those people well outside the target audience. All successful brands have the capability to self-promote, stimulate a one-of-a-kind experience, lives for loyalty, and is greatly consistent in the rate or level of quality it does for others.

Brands can also be your gateway at a universal level, and here’s some of the reasons why:

Become a specialist in your own field

Surely not everyone knows who you are, and they probably could have cared less for what you do and how well you can do it. That is unless of course you make yourself known to people through self-recognition.
You don’t actually speak about yourself in this part. In fact, it is important that you leave out all the private details on this matter! What’s important is to tell what you can do for them, and the services and goods that you can offer to them.

Clients usually opt for people that they have previously heard of for their projects, and if you can’t leave an impression about your expertise in the field, you might as well just get out of the picture altogether.
Don’t you find it awkward if a client knows who you are, but then doesn’t know anything about your goods and services? There’s technically nothing that separates you from the color in the background, and you’ll get less noticed.
To break free from the shackles of mediocrity, you need to brand your services.

Become an irreplaceable part of the game

An asset that is unique and demands respect in a natural way is a very good investment, especially for the freelancers. With your very own brand, you yourself become the asset, and all the products that you are marketing can be your set of skills for that specific field. Technically a custom-made product that can only be identified as you.
Deciding to become an asset can potentially add value skills and experience, aside from the usual business improvement that it basically does. Assets tend to have the entire business revolve around them, making it impossible to do that kind of work without you.
You get the privilege to be recognized for who you are, and of course, be recognized for what you do.

Be something that would be remembered for that niche

Companies endlessly repeat TV and radio commercials. They don’t actually do it so that their potential customers would buy right away the moment they saw the product on any media. They do it so that you’ll remember to buy the product the next time you go to the department store where their products are sold. And as long as you choose their brand, it doesn’t really matter when you will actually buy the product.

This is exactly the same concept that is done when you brand yourself. If you can publicize yourself with the use of a brand well enough to potential clients, the next thing and the first thing that they’ll remember when their Internet browser starts is your brand. A catchy name for your freelance business can be a plus. For example, when it comes to the best web browsers with the most customizations possible, what do you think of? For me, it’s Firefox. The name and the image that it gives to the people easily are etched into your mind.

Dominate your own field or industry

The image of a brand highly depends on the services and products behind it. For an example, how would WordPress be without their special content management services? Possibly, second to none after a catchy name.
Consistency would be your best friend to determine how your brand would stand out. The image that you will use has to be simple, and clearly conveys the nature of your business at a glance. Colors to be used should be able to pique the interest of people, and apply your color theory to make it like no other brand in the world.

Trust and recognition forms bonds stronger than steel

A brand can be your ticket to engage easily with clients and can be your main avenue to build trust. Once trust develops, they won’t forget the services and products that you offer. Trust is closely related to recognition. So if a client trusts you, they won’t think twice to refer other people to you. Within a period of time, this evolves into a strong relationship that turns your clients into loyal customers.

Brands make it very easy to find you

If your brand is easy to remember, then it’s easy enough to find. If your brand has a good touch of uniqueness and is very successful in grabbing attention, then you have the higher odds of potential clients hearing more about you and personally seek for you.

Apple is a strong brand that gained new customers by shattering the norms and climbing to higher levels of innovation. Try to type “apple” in Google, and the first thing that would pop up is Apple.com, not the red crunchy fruit that defines the literal word. It is in itself a remarkable transformation. The Apple brand then became the staple in its very own industry, and would now be very easy to find. See to it that you also apply the same principles, prioritize quality for services, break a few norms, create one-of-a-kind representations, and your brand will literally spread out to the world.

So what are the ways that you know to establish a self-brand? Can you give good examples of self-branding? Share your ideas and opinions about this subject in the comments.

admin Web Marketing

Many search engine optimization companies sell packages for search engine optimization that deals with most of the needs of a website in terms of SEO. Some of the aspects involved are the use of filenames, alt tags, h1 tags, key phrase density, meta tag optimization, link analysis and many others. All of these aspects are equally important for a good search optimization strategy.

But search engines do not just work and sort out web pages, websites and links that point out to relevant content.  They also rank pages and links by how fresh the content is. So, even if you’re finished furnishing your website for maximum SEO, your rankings would eventually fall into a plateau. To get higher rankings and to keep getting it higher, your site should be able to provide relevant content that is new and on a regular basis. This of course depends upon the nature of your business, the competitive surroundings, and target key phrases. So putting up new content may vary from posting an article daily, to putting up reports monthly.

You also need to deliver fresh content to your site in a form that is readable by most major search engines. But this would usually require a dynamic, database-derived content management system.

A blog can be your best arsenal if you want to deliver such fresh content. The blog can simply sit on a server (can be your own) residing under a domain name. Being able to update a blog with detailed articles or commentary, letting the whole world listen to what you have to say, and being able to allow your listeners to actively comment about your content may result in the following advantages for your website:

- Improving the number of inbound links to your website

- Improving the frequency that major search engines will spider or crawl your site

- Improving interactivity with visitors and potential customers or clients.

- Improving search engine rankings

admin SEO, Web Content

RELATIONSHIPS is the main word that dictates content-based link building, particularly blogger and media relationships. Regardless of whether you’re writing publication guest posts for leading industry sites or doing massive group interviews or surveys, you still need to know each and every other blogger and/or media creators in your field of knowledge or industry.
Here are a few hints and key ideas that will help you querying search engine databases properly for authority sites and experts in your industry.

Remember to add your keyword to each query to target your specific niche.

Guest Post Publishers Queries

Content can be filled up in the form of a guest post from another blogger in your niche. If the blog or website owns a good part of your field and target readership, then it is must that you submit an article or two to them.
Queries for finding Guest Post opportunities:

inurl:category/guest
“guest blogger”
Guest blogging
Guest post
Guest article writer
“guest post”
“guest article”
“guest column”
inurl:contributors

Blogger and Twitter Lists Queries

If you need to fatten up your contact lists for future plans, then you have to start from the fruits of your colleagues. It’s a recurring situation in many verticals for bloggers and other publishers to create contact lists or even simply lists of each other in the same respective field. Blog rolls should be an excellent example of these blog lists.

blog list
top bloggers
blogroll
“blog roll”
twitter list
twitter users

List-Writing Link Baiter Queries

Do you have experience in writing link baits? Why have they aggregated into lists? The data will be provided here can show the topics or ideas that you should not or should not be recommended to write about. Additionally, it can also give lists for other lists that you might need.

“list of lists”
“top * ways”
“top * tips”
“top 10″
“top 100″
(Remember to always let the websites know that they’re on your own!)

Interview Writers (and Interviewees) Queries

Getting interviewed is great for web exposure, and subsequently also good for link building and lead generator. Furthermore, group interviews with respected experts can totally help generate those links and establish sturdy relationships with the top bloggers and thinkers in your respective field of knowledge.
Queries for finding sites conducting interviews, as well as people that generally accept interview offers from other people:

intitle:”q/a with”
intitle:”q&a with”
intitle:experts interview OR talk OR discuss OR answer
expert interview
intitle:interview

Places to add your website (link exchange, directory etc)

“add url”
“submit url”
“add link”
“submit link”

Summing it all up

Now that you have queries about bloggers and publishers in your field, you can start a targeted reseach right away. A thorough research, well-highlighted content, and constant Twitter updates can help a lot. Start with some “aggregation” content, then go on towards the individual and group interviews. Remember that you are reaching out, ever so slightly longer, whenever you publish new content – especially to the ones that you featured. Keeping it up at a normal pace can gradually ensure you a consistent place in the rankings and the targeted traffic that you may receive along with it.

admin Link Building, Web Content

Many experts agree that quality always plays a more dominant role on Twitter than the followers.  Although it is important to obtain a large Twitter following because of the different benefits it achieves such as branding and marketing, having targeted Twitter followers that are genuinely interested in the topics of your field of knowledge is at least equally helpful.

Patience is very crucial and important in the world of Twitter as it takes quite some time to build a list of Twitter followers.  Twitter is not just a virtual board for your activity lists. Twitter revolves around relevant content and relationships.  It is about your interaction with all its users regardless of their location.

Below are suggestions, which can help you maximize your Twitter following and add more people who will be greatly interested in what you can offer:

1. Create a profile that can spark the interest of potential followers.  Make your profile short but compelling as there is a limit of 160 characters.   First impressions last and this is your chance to take advantage of that.  Done successfully, they’ll probably look further into your tweets hoping to see something just as interesting as your bio. Include links to your site, so they can further check you.

2. Get interactive. Add yourself to different Twitter directories like wefollow.com or Twellow.com. Using these directories can help you find people with similar interests, then tag yourself so that others can also find you.

3. Invite friends and acquaintances to follow your tweets. This method is often overlooked but yet it is very easy to implement. People who are already familiar with you and what you can do would have the highest probability of following your tweets.

4. Provide a link to your Twitter account whenever possible.  Whenever you interact online, do not forget to include a link to your Twitter account, and links your other social media accounts as well. Oh, and don’t forget the link to your blog.

5. Make it a habit to re-tweet other relevant and entertaining contents in the hopes that they will eventually return the favor. For easier re-tweets, limit your characters to 125. Give funny, interesting and helpful information for possible re-tweeting. Doing so can help your name reach all the people on your follower list thus, potentially increasing the number of followers of your Twitter account.

6. Interact with the latest discussion and the hottest topics within your industry. Conversation is the keyword here and smartly engaging in these discussions can pique the interest of your existing followers thereby increasing the potential of having more Twitter followers who are interested in what you have to say.

7. Use a presentable photo for your Twitter profile. There’s a lot more credibility to an actual photo than a lifeless avatar, because people have the tendency to stick the personality to a real face (in a positive way). Connection is the keyword to remember here.

8. Combine both offline and online avenues for your strategy. You can put your Twitter ID on your business cards, or place them in fliers and brochures that you can use for your business. You can even put it on license plates and t-shirts, or simply bring it up in a casual conversation. Opportunity is always around the corner, even when you’re not online!

9. And finally: follow, follow, follow users who submit interesting tweets

Always remember that Twitter is a unique social medium that can utilize the power of relationships. Time is needed to build a relevant following, but numbers doesn’t always mean success. It can be a bonus to have a large amount of followers for marketing and branding purposes but targeted followers is far more valuable than just mere statistics. Interaction should be your top priority and getting to know a select few is for more beneficial than having a huge number of followers that couldn’t even care less about who you are and what you represent.

admin Twitter

Here are some thoughts about different topics that came up this week:

- Web 2.0 properties

Another email that came in this week was about web 2.0 properties and the power of them. Web 2.0 properties like hubpages, quizilla, blogger. The idea is to load them up with unique article content, each article linking to your main site or sales page in order for these sites to gain more search engine power.

From my own experience setting up these sites, I found that the amount of new, fresh content I had to post there and the amount of promotion I had to put in can not be compared in terms of effectiveness to submitting this content to already existing blogs in my niches as guest blogger.

- Blog commenting

I spent 10 minutes today writing a nice comment to a blog post, submitted it, got redirected to the blog post again with no comment or notification that my comment was successfully (or unsuccessfully) submitted. Its a frustrating experience. Usually I copy my work before submitting in case this happens, I just have to enforce my own rule more strictly

Do you have any experiences to share this week?

admin Misc Stuff

Do you like to blog? Are you an expert in your niche? If you are able to answer both questions with an euphoric “YES!”, then you can earn money writing sponsored articles related to your website content and publish them on your blog (“IF” you want to earn money with your blog that is of course, if you are fine and don’t want or need any money, I’ll wish you a nice day at this point )

Many users are looking for valuable feedback from professionals about their websites, products and services and to create buzz online at the same time.
You can write an honest reviews for them and publish these reviews on your blog.

This does not only earn you a nice income, but also more visitors via social media and search engines, which award your blog with increased attention if you publish new, relevant content frequently.

Linknami.com provides a platform where these website owners and webmasters connect with expert bloggers, processes all handling and transactions until the articles is published on the blogger’s niche blog.

The complete process from searching for relevant bloggers, sending requests, approving requests to completing requests is completely easy, transparent and secure for both parties.

As expert blogger, you can set your own writing & publishing fee.
Once you receive a request, you can either approve or decline it.
After publishing the article on your website for a month, the pending funds are automatically released and appear on your balance.
You can withdraw your earned money at any time conveniently via paypal or check.

Just signup now at Linknami.com or login and set your writing and publishing fee in your “Publisher” section. Then wait until sponsored article requests start to roll in and make money from your blog.

admin Blog Marketing, Linknami

The audience’s keen observation and judgment will decide on the ultimate fate of a blog.

Bloggers now have the greatest freedom of being able to write and publish their thoughts for free. But aside from that, they have also discovered other great benefits that writing can do for them. The core of SEO is keyword rich content, and this is what search engines are looking for to land in their precious search engine page results (SERPs).

1. Keep your theme on a long-term basis

Most people treat blogs as an online diary, or a free journal where they can just write anything that they want. There isn’t really any problem in writing articles with little coherence, but if you want to go further and get the real readership, you have to cut the random writing crap.

Search engines do not just look for keywords, they see to it that the keywords is scattered throughout a page or mentioned several times in the page of a blog. If ever you want to keep on blogging for a long time, you might want to start with a topic of your specialty and never go away from it.

2. The theme should be based on a specific keyword

The entire theme should revolve around the chosen keyword of interest. This means that ideally your domain name includes this keyword. For example, if you blog is all about making candles, then you should at least include the word “candle” in the URL. Something like “www.CandleMakingEasy.com” will do, or anything as long as it can use the keyword that you chose to use as a theme. Incidentally, you can also use the same keyword to name your blog.

If your blog rests on a blogging site, then the blog can be designated a category where it can fit. This makes the search engine’s work easier in finding your blog.  The category must be properly given to be related to the keywords of search. In addition, providing content to your candle-making blog, for example  “How To Make Wax Candles At Home” or “Make Aroma Candles In 5 Easy Steps”, can likewise improve ranking on the SERPs.

3. Provide links for others, and you’ll eventually be linked back

This is one criteria that search engines use to rank pages.  Backlinking.  If have your own blog for a particular field of knowledge, be sure to go and read the blogs of other people related to that industry as well. Provide links in your posts for them, and direct your audience to more avenues of information.  Eventually, these sites where you point your readers would eventually link back to you.

4. Keep creating content regularly

Blog content is easy to create and search engines scan the internet for blog sites everyday. Keep creating content regularly, and search engines would automatically check up on you regularly as well. Having fresh content on your blog, would practically “force” search engines to look at your website first than the other websites that are not maintained and renewed as much. Search engines would eventually increase your rankings as you go about writing at a regular pace.

So, are you ready for a great SEO friendly blog? Start reaping the fruits of your earnest efforts, and throw away your low-quality adsense texts for some quality content that readers can surely catch on and you are on your way to long-term sustaining profits.

admin Blog Marketing, SEO, Web Traffic

From time to time I find myself sitting in front of a white piece of paper and feel blurred. So many ideas and information running through my head that I don’t know where to start. Call it a small creative blackout. When this happens, I have prepared a small list to remind me again of possible content ideas (in fact, I admit that those little reminder notes are all over my working desk).
Here are some ideas for fresh content whenever you are looking at a blank notepad:

- How To
Readers love how-to’s. I love how-to’s. How to do this, how to do that. Keep it simple and to the point. Use an ordered 1,2,3 list.

- Tutorial
Is a feature of your website or service not documented yet? Or can you give additional tips so that users can maximize the products and services on your website?

- News Commentary
Comment news in your industry, write a short article describing the news, what it means or could mean for your industry and your personal opinion.

- Website/Product/Service News
Have you recently released new website features, products or services?

- Website/Product/Service Review
Review someone else’s website, product or service. Be critical but keep it honest.

- Website/Product/Service Comparison
Compare your competitor products with your products and services. Underline the strong points of your products but also where you can or will improve in the future. Again, a good idea is to keep it honest.

- Research Report
Research something that will interest your readers. Are you selling dog food? Are there scientific reports about nutrition facts about different types of dog food? Describe this in a new article.

- Technical Report
A technical report is a document that describes the process, progress, or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or scientific research problem. It might also include recommendations and conclusions of the research. (ok, I copied this description shamelessly from WIKIPEDIA, they know (almost) everything)

- White Paper
A White paper is an authoritative report or guide that often addresses issues and how to solve them. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions. They are often used in politics and business, and technical subjects.

- Resources Articles
Resource articles, as suggested by reader Michael J Gagnon, are also helpful to your readers if they provide resources that are related to your website, products or services. For example if you have a website about “dog training”, you could share resources with your readers where they can find the best, latest, most useful dog toys for example. At this point, readers may leave your site to the recommended resource, however they will surely return back to your site for more if the resource you recommended turned out to be beneficial for them (i.e. you build up “trust”).

You can also find ready written content for your website on Linknami.com. This content is written by individual users and topic experts from all around the world. You can request to publish this content FREE on your blog or website with a simple click of the button.
Register your blogs now and wait for publishing requests to roll in or browse the article directory for unique articles to publish.

admin Linknami, Web Content

You have spent a lot of time and or money on SEO and would like to see results. But how do you know if your SEO campaign is doing ok or if it’s a total failure? Are you going into the right direction or are you facing another disappointment?

Search traffic optimization for your websites is just one of the means in reaching that goal. But before we become certain that we are doing everything correctly, we need keep monitoring our SEO campaigns carefully, and here are the 5 most important ways to track your SEO campaign progress:

1. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is widely considered as one of the most important measurements for evaluation of SEO plans and strategies.

It is known as the amount of site visitors who are seeking information from the website out of all the site visitors. This information can be anything, like something as simple as contact information to providing an important file for them to download. Payments are sometimes needed for such services, but regardless, it is still a significant step on your road to success. If you need a good source of information, Google Analytics can be your best friend. Do not worry about technicalities, because Google itself offers several bit by bit procedures on how to create goals for better analysis.

2. Website Traffic

Website traffic is another very important source of information for SEO campaign progress.

Your website probably has a high conversion rate, but only if a few people are actually coming back for more, you most likely won’t sell as much as you have thought. Some of the ways to obtain more traffic for your website is by submitting your website to search engines, making other sites link your website, and finally using relevant keyword phrases. If people become interested in your services, they’ll surely come back for more. They will also let their acquaintances know of your existence, creating a chain of referrals who may later on be your clients. To get more information about what we have discussed earlier, try Google Analytics.

3. Backlinks

Another good measurement to improve your SEO is by evaluating the number and the quality of links in your website.

Google has the habit of attaching more significance on these factors to know which sites will appear at the very summit of its Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Even if it is usually beneficial to link outward, or to link to other pages found on your site, the most benefits would always end on the links that are directed to your website. There are numerous ways to get a link running towards your direction, such as publishing a media or press release, reviewing and evaluating products on Amazon.com, or even making a webpage about your business in Wikipedia. You can also create informative and useful regular content for your audience and a blog would be the best medium for you to incorporate these. Linknami can provide you with free services that can help you track links from your site.

4. Search Engine Rankings

Observe and watch how your status goes up and down in the site ranks of Google and other major search engines to assess your site’s SEO progress.

If you are lucky or have made a very effective SEO strategy, your website should hopefully come in the first page of the results of specifically queried target keywords over a certain period of time. It is very challenging to do this though, considering that many people aren’t actually interested in exploring the website past the main page.

5. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate and the time spent on just one page of the website are two much related measurements that are worth observing.

For technical definitions, bounce rates is the ratio of the amount of visitors that just view a single page as opposed to the overall count of website visitors. Having a high bounce rate means that you aren’t actually able to build enough interest to sustain the number of visitors due to the content of your website. There is also a small chance that you are providing the much needed information if your site visitors are just skimming over the web pages.

Get clear and precise measurements from Google Analytics. If you are not satisfied with your current bounce rate, you may want to revisit your landing page headlines. Try to assess the web pages if they actually provide the information that you are attempting to target using keyword phrases. If you find visitors spending time on other pages, then it should be wise to concentrate on improving and revising the quality of the content of the less visited pages.

admin Link Building, SEO, Web Traffic