Blog Better by Slowing Down

This guest post is by Timo Kiander of Productivesuperdad.com.

Are you afraid that you’ll never reach blogging success? Are you working your backside off on top of your day job to produce articles, ebooks, videos, and podcasts, and learn everything about Pinterest (or any other social network for that matter)?

Do you feel you are running on a blogging treadmill like a hamster but never giving yourself time to rest and recover?

If this is you, then welcome to the club! I have been there, done that, and I can relate. It’s not a very pleasant feeling to experience. However, things don’t have to be that way: there is a solution for this situation.

Let’s face it: working harder and longer hours on your blog doesn’t necessarily make you more productive.

In the short term it might do that, but in the long run you are going to burn out. You are going to lose the fun of blogging too—even on the topic you’re passionate about.

On top of all that, you also put your relationships with your closest ones to danger. When too much of your blogging time is prioritized over the family time, you are soon in a situation where you have to make a decision: you can choose either your blog or your family.

It’s a lot easier to blame someone else than to take responsibility for your own actions, but in this scenario there are really two responsible parties: them and you.

No matter which blogging hero (or productivity hero) you listen to, they keep telling you that more is better. Create more. Engage more. Be everywhere!

They say, “You cannot build a successful blog without working like crazy, taking massive action, and producing solid, shareable content on a frequent basis. And if you can do it all on a daily basis, that’s even better!”

So, you look up to your blogging hero and think, “Well … s/he must be right. I’ve got to get my act together and work more, do more, engage more. Otherwise, I’ll never see the blogging success that I want or the six-figure income that I’m dreaming about.”

You believe the stories they tell you. It’s virtual peer pressure at its worst—and you take the bait.

I have been blogging since 2010 and I have consistently produced material for my blog twice per week. That includes written content and videos, and at some points I was even doing podcasts.

In addition, I have guest posted on big blogs and produced couple of ebooks as well—all while having a day job, a family (my wife and a son), and some time-consuming hobbies (I’m a triathlete and a marathoner).

Lately, I have felt like that hamster on a treadmill—I keep running and running but I never have a chance to relax or recover. Nor have I had time to study, do more research, or truly connect with other bloggers.

That’s why I decided to slow down my blogging pace. I’m not leaving blogosphere. I’m just cutting down the speed a bit. By doing this I aim to grow my blog even bigger than it is now.

In practice, slowing down means posting every other week instead of on a weekly basis. This change gives me more room to breathe, and allows me to do more reading and testing, and to create more new material.

For instance, for a couple of months I have wanted to build my own time management system, but I had to postpone the project because of lack of time. Or what about learning photo reading? That’s yet another project that I had to postpone. Interviews, tests, experiments, case studies … I guess you already know by now why I have never started with these projects, though they’re all on my list.

Some people are scared of this change and think that slowing down is like regressing—that if you slow down, you won’t be on everyone’s minds and lips anymore.

Well, maybe. But look around. There are many big bloggers who don’t follow a daily blog post pattern, and they’re still doing well! Derek Halpern and Glenn Allsop and Jon Morrow come to mind (and by the way, check out this video to learn why Derek is posting so infrequently).

In my opinion, slowing down is not regression. Actually, it is the best thing that has happened to me for a long time.

Slowing down may sound easy, but in reality it’s not. One scary word keeps most of the bloggers working the same way they always have: fear.

They fear that if they change their routines and habits, they are not going to reach blogging success. They are also afraid of missing something crucial if they don’t follow to the letter what the gurus are teaching (advice that so many other bloggers are following).

But if they’re brave enough and decided to get through that glass wall known as fear, a new world would emerge for them. Are you one of these brave ones? If you are, here are five steps to follow that should make the transition much easier:

Acknowledge your current situation. You are stressed or burned out by blogging, thus you want to spend more time with your loved ones. Things cannot continue this way any longer.Listen to external signals very carefully: Are you working too much and taking the common time off from your family? Are you working like a madman, but without any remarkable results? These clues should give you indication that you should slow down your blogging.Make a decision to test the blogging slowdown. Shift to blogging once per week instead of every day, for example, and see what advantages and disadvantages it has for you.Hire some professional help if possible. In fact, my decision to slow down was greatly affected by my blogging coach. Although at first his suggestion of slowing down sounded foreign, I have learned to appreciate it and I feel grateful for this advice! That’s really the power of having an external person looking at you: they have the ability to give powerful, objective advice for your benefit.Connect with other bloggers and ask them to write guest posts for your blog. That way, you get content almost without any effort, and you can free up your time even more. And don’t forget interviews either. They are great a way to generate valuable content with less effort.

Don’t get me wrong: it is fine to learn from gurus, but be sure to adjust their lessons to your unique situation! You are the only one to say if you are capable of producing epic content every day, or only once a week.

Over to you now: have you slowed down your blogging pace because of increased stress, weaker relationships with your close ones, or just plain burning out—even when blogging about something you are passionate about? Leave your comments and share your experiences below. Let’s support each other to slow down!

Timo Kiander, a.k.a. Productive Superdad, teaches WAHD superdad productivity for work at home dads. If you want to get more productive in your own life, grab 222 of his best Tips for Becoming a Productivity Superstar.

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Video Starting Points: Make and Share Your First Video

This guest post is by Neil Davidson of My Web Presenters.

In November of 2011 David Hsieh, VP of Marketing at Cisco famously stuck his neck out by proclaiming that 90% of internet traffic will be viewing video in three years’ time.

The actual figure is already 51% of traffic, and it’s climbing fast. For bloggers like you and I, this has consequences. You can either bite the bullet and get started with video, or you can hide under the sheets and hope the storm passes.

For this post, I am going to assume that you are firmly in the “get on the train” camp.

At first sight it may seem that moving into video content production from textually based content is very difficult, as it requires a very different skillset. Also you may need to speak out loud or, worst of all, show your face on camera!

However, getting into video production and marketing is actually a natural progression for a blogger. Here are some ideas on how you can get started.

Hands up if you’ve got a smartphone. Many smartphones now have high-quality video cameras built in—some even have HD video. These can be highly effective for taking advantage of unusual situations…

Imagine that you’re at a blogging event and you find yourself standing next to Darren Rowse. You strike up a conversation that gets interesting. Suppose you were to pull out your smartphone, ask him a few questions on video, and post it to your blog. If the “interview” went well, chances are that Darren would be happy to tweet and share that content for you.

Suddenly you would be catapulted out of nowhere into the limelight—all through a chance five-minute meeting. A traditional interview would take a lot longer to capture, as well as to prepare and write up, and the chances are that busy people, like Darren, may well have to refuse an interview request. Compare these two approaches:

“Oh, wait a moment, I am really enjoying this conversation and I know the readers of my blog would love it too, do you mind if I just video you answering that question again?”“That’s really interesting, do you mind if I just go and grab a pen and paper and note down the conversation that we are having?”

Another very accessible form of video is screencasting. Essentially, this technique makes a video of your computer screen and films the actions you’re taking on it. This is very similar to the concept of a screen grab for obtaining a static image of your screen.

Screencasting videos are fantastic for making “how to” videos. They allow you to visually and verbally take your viewers through a process to show them how something is done. Here are some ideas from Camtasia, the makers of video software, on how their technology can be used. In this video, they explain how the tool can be used practically:

Camtasia costs $99 for lifetime usage so it certainly won’t break the bank! Perhaps the second most popular screen casting tool on the market is ScreenFlow, which this costs the same as Camtasia and has pretty much the same features. The best thing to do with these products is to download them (both offer free trials) and practice using them to make videos.

One tip that will help you get up to speed more quickly is to write down a list of the steps that you will follow in your video and have it on the desk in front of you whilst you are making the video. With a written blog post it is natural to pause and think, and to go off researching something mid article, but with video, the research must be done beforehand. You need to film to a plan.

Be strict. If you’re not happy with your video, delete it and start again. It gets easier and easier—you will be very surprised by how quickly you speed up and improve your abilities. Before you know it, you will actually be enjoying it, wahey!

There are two places on the net where your video really needs to be:

on your blog (or website)on YouTube.

Initially, you should publish the video to Youtube. If you use Screenflow to make a screencast video then you can publish straight from the platform to your YouTube channel. From Camtasia, you can go straight to Vimeo.

The reason that it is important to publish to Youtube is not just because it is so much larger than the other platforms and is so closely tied with both Google search and Google+, but also because it easily enables your video to be openly used by other bloggers through the video embed code shown here:

Once your video’s on YouTube, anyone who has a website can grab your embed code and plonk your video on their website. This gives you additional exposure via their audience and also gives you a link back to your YouTube video. A side note here is that the number of embeds of a video is factored into the ranking algorithm of videos on Youtube and Google.

When you’re posting your new video to YouTube, there are a number of tweaks that you can make to enhance its visibility both on YouTube itself, and within search engines. Here is a detailed overview of basic video SEO for YouTube.

Once the video is up on YouTube, you can then grab the embed code and put it onto your blog simply by pasting the code into the HTML of a blog post. Don’t forget to write a short textual piece around the video to explain the content of the video and encourage visitors to actually watch it. This little blurb will also enable search engines to understand the context of the video file, since they can’t read video files themselves.

This is where your experience in marketing textual blog posts really comes into play. Great content is essentially great content, and the people you want to reach, whether you’re creating video or textual content, will not change.

There are however, a couple of new tools that will help you market your video effectively.

Oneload (a.k.a. Tubemogul) is an online video distribution tool. The tool allows you to upload a video once and publish it to over 20 video platforms in one go.

Prior to your first use of Oneload, you’ll need to identify all of the video platforms that you want to submit your video to, and go and create accounts with each of them. You can then link them all to your Oneload account for easy distribution.

Realistically, you’re looking at around a day’s work to set up 20 accounts on video platforms and to enter your profile information, but once it’s done, it’s done.

Finally I will just go over some tools that you’re probably more familiar with, and highlight how they can be used to market your video content.

Hootsuite: This social media management tool allows you to manage your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn communications all in one place. You can therefore submit your video to your Facebook page, plus your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts through this tool.Shareaholic and Addthis: These two tools allow you to bookmark content to multiple social networks and social bookmarking sites with ease. They are also perhaps two of the most popular social sharing button plug-ins for WordPress. Install either one as a browser plugin (they work on all major browsers), then select the social bookmarking sites that you are interested in, and you have a one-click way to share your video posts on these platforms.

A word of caution here: don’t expect instant results. You need to build up a presence and some relationships with others in your niche who are active on these sites so that you content gets a kick-start once you submit it.

A wide variety of techniques are available to market your videos solely within YouTube, both to build up a following there and to push these people back to your site. That will have to be saved for another day though, as it’s a huge topic. If you’re interested, though, look into the topic of video annotations with links to other videos.

It would be fantastic to hear some tips from others who have experience with video blogging, as the starting points I’ve covered here really are just the tip of the iceberg. Let us hear your advice in the comments.

Neil Davidson is the Founder of My Web Presenters, who are a leading Online Video Production specialist. They create and market compelling and emotive video that helps businesses to grow. You can keep up with their video marketing blog here.

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14 Proven Ways to Simplify Your Blogging and Get More Done

This guest post is by Nick Thacker of Livehacked.com.

We’ve all had that feeling of impending doom: “My readers are expecting me to post tomorrow, but I haven’t even answered my emails, check my Analytics stats, or responded to the Twitter shout-outs. There’s just no way I can get it all done…”

Or something like that.

If you’ve ever felt like the pressures of maintaining a blog—not to mention the rest of your business—are becoming too much, it could be time to simplify what you’re doing.

Here are 14 proven methods for getting more blogging done in less time. And what’s best: these methods will allow you to write better posts than you ever thought possible, while exerting less overall effort.

Write things down: Not just blog posts, either. Keep a journal close at hand, and try to just write down your thoughts as they come to you. I’ve been trying this at work and at home—I have a Moleskine notebook that I keep nearby, and I’ll write down ideas, thoughts, and action items throughout my day. The result? I’m able to think clearly and concisely when it’s time to write a 2,000-word blog post, or send a newsletter to my subscribers. Writing things down (physically, on paper) keeps you from having to remember everything, too. If it’s on paper, it doesn’t need to be in your head.Set a schedule: Keep a strict schedule if you can, using whatever tools help you stay on task and focused. Don’t let minor distractions keep you from working, and if at all possible, write it down. Writing down your schedule helps, again, to keep it out of your head so you don’t have to spend energy memorizing it. It also lets you visually see your time—allowing you to know where you are throughout your day and week. Make sure to give yourself personal time first, and stick to it. Schedule your own downtime, and don’t spend it checking email, talking on the phone, or browsing through your competitors’ blogs. Use it to hang out with friends or family, or just stop and think for 15-20 minutes. It’s liberating.Use systems: Blogging, done well, is a business. There are routine—sometimes mundane—tasks, and there are those that invigorate us and make us want to spend all our energy on them. At every point, try to create and leverage systems in your blogging. I wrote this post a long time ago, but it’s still relevant to systemizing our blogging processes.“Front-load” your time: “Front-load” your time in the week, and every day. Plan the larger, more thought-intensive or labor-intensive tasks for earlier in the week, and first thing in the morning. Tackle the harder stuff first, and as the week moves toward the weekend, you’ll feel much more productive, energized, and motivated knowing that you’ve already taken care of the big stuff.Keep a “headline bucket:” I have an Evernote notebook called Blog Post Ideas that’s simply an ongoing, unorganized list of possible blog post topics. Since I have Evernote on my phone, I can add a blog post idea to it anywhere I am, no matter what. Keeping a “bucket” of ideas prevents you from needing to scramble for ideas when you’re ready to write. Plus, I often find that the best ideas somehow “drift” to the top of my bucket—meaning I can work on them in my head for awhile before I need them. When it’s time to write, the words are already there—it’s just a matter of writing them down fast enough!Switch your blog with your newsletter: If you have a newsletter that has different content than your blog (and I believe you should, or what’s the point?), consider using an old newsletter article on your blog, and a blog post lost in the archives for your newsletter. Don’t just republish as-is, though—make the newsletter article seem more “bloggy” (or in whatever style your blog is written), and vice versa. This tactic is one I use regularly—it helps me keep my messaging focused and on-target, and it certainly helps strengthen my readership on both fronts.Steal an idea: Good artists borrow, but the best artists steal. Obviously you can’t blatantly rip-off someone else’s hard work. Don’t steal word-for-word, but take a popular idea you like, read everything you can about it, and then write a post about it, in your own words. Even though it might seem like you’re ripping someone off, there’s a good chance that you’ve subconsciously put your own stylistic spin on it. When I’m pressed for time, I’ll visit some of my favorite sites to see what headlines and topics are working well, and write my own ideas on the subject.Leverage your readership: I talk a lot about leverage on my own site and over at Lifehacks.org, and there’s a reason: the best creators out there don’t do every last thing themselves—they ask for help. Even though they’re the ones creating the content, art, or business, they will eventually need help vetting emails, maintaining their website, or keeping the books. Most of us already have a powerful tool at our disposal: our readers. Ask them for help. Maybe you can invite a young kid to help you go through your emails every other day, forwarding the “to respond” ones to you, and following through with the rest (if Darren had asked me to do this five years ago when I was getting started, I would have jumped at the opportunity!). Be careful to not insult them, though—don’t send the message that you expect something more from them—after all, they did sign up for your list, right?Ask for guest posts: Part of leveraging your readership can be asking for guest posting submissions. One of the things I hear a lot of bloggers ranting about is the lack of quality and depth of guest posts, and therefore they won’t consider “opening their blog to submissions.” This doesn’t make sense to me. Instead, ask for submissions and give clear guidelines as to what you expect from them. Then, if the submissions are terrible, just say “no thanks.” Worst-case scenario? You don’t have any publishable posts from guests. Best case? You have a bunch of posts you can use when you’re feeling behind or burnt-out.Reuse an old post: Don’t just recycle old content in lieu of writing new stuff—take an old post, make it relevant to today’s world if need be, and then add a few new ideas to it. Spend the time on it that you might spend writing a brand new post, and make it seem bigger and better than it was before. Give it a new headline, or write an updated intro or conclusion. Then, work in a great call to action that promotes a new product line or asks readers for input, and add a few new pictures to it.“Talk” your posts: This is a strategy I’ve been trying more often, as I’m currently writing my second fiction thriller novel. Dragon Naturally Speaking software has a cool app that lets you speak your words into the computer. Jon Morrow of BoostBlogTraffic.com does this, and he’s an awesome writer. Admittedly, it takes a little while to get set up and dictating properly, but once I got it into working order, I was able to write a few posts per night in one sitting. If this isn’t “leveraging our time and energy,” I don’t know what is!Make a random connection to find an idea: There are plenty of great posts on writing great headlines, and even more on finding ideas, but I wanted to include this little gem of wisdom that Danny Iny pointed out to me a while back: Take two unrelated things, and make them work together. For example, “What The Swamp Monster Can Teach You About Blogging” or “Why Juicyfruit Gum Is Like Car Maintenance.” I just made those up, and already I’m fighting my creative brain’s desire to come up with reasons why a random monster would be a great blogger. See how awesome that is?Forget about blogging: One of the things I noticed when I started to blog regularly was that I was thinking of everything in terms of, “ooh, what a great blog post idea!” At the movies? Why not post about how the protagonist would make a great headline-writer with all of those quirky one-liners? It can get overwhelming thinking like this, and it’s healthy and helpful to take a moment and forget about your blog. Try to meditate, or rest, or just “hang out,” and let the blog post ideas come to you, not the other way around.Take a break: Lastly, I wanted to mention the one thing that we all need to do, at least somewhat regularly: take a break. You don’t have to quit, or give up, or even take a vacation, but take a short break from your blog. It’s your job, right? Think of it this way: you’ll eventually need a break from anything that’s worth doing, at least to get your mind refocused and ready for the next steps. Plan this “break” into your week or month (or year, if you have to wait that long) and then make it worthwhile.

Blogging is an enticing business model—it can lead to increased income, freedom, and happiness, but it can also lead to burnout and epic failure. Make sure you’re going about it in a smart way by putting some of these tactics in place.

You don’t have to live a minimalistic lifestyle, or employ hundreds of drone-like workers to create great systems and get the most out of leverage. Just practice some tactics that will allow you to “simplify” your blogging efforts a bit more. Try these 14 I’ve written about, and leave a comment with some more ideas!

Nick Thacker is a writer, author, and blogger who helps people build profitable blogs and write better. He blogs at LiveHacked.com and has recently finished a book on blogging for profit.

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5 Lessons Steve Jobs Could Teach You About Creating a Popular Blog

This guest post is by Greg Digneo of Sales Leads in 30 Days.

“What can I learn from the business life of Steve Jobs that will help me grow my blog?”

We’ve all asked ourselves the question. Because the public nature of blogging goes against his strict privacy policy, this isn’t an easy question to answer. But it’s one that I couldn’t get out of my head.

There has to be something to learn from a guy who revolutionized multiple industries and created two iconic companies. Look beyond his temperamental management style and the black turtlenecks, and analyze the way he built companies and gave presentations.  You will find several principles that you can apply to your own business.

Below are five lessons that Steve Jobs could teach us about creating popular a blog.

In Walter Isaacson’s book Steve Jobs, Pepsi CEO John Scully recounts Jobs’s pitch to come work for Apple.

Scully remarks: “Steve’s head dropped as he stared at his feet. After a weighty, uncomfortable pause, he issued a challenge that would haunt me for days. ‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?’”

Apple products aren’t created to make money in an industry. They are created to redefine the way the industry does business. The Apple II gave birth to the PC industry. The iPod and iTunes combination remade the music industry. And the iPhone redefined the way a phone is made.

Likewise, the most popular blogs in the world create a “dent” in their niche.

Ask yourself this: if someone were to read every article you’ve written, how would their life improve one year from now?

Once you answer that question, you will create a higher sense of purpose, and stand out from the countless blogs in your niche.

For instance, one of my favorite blogs is Pam Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation. There are millions of entrepreneurship, marketing, and career blogs on the web, but Pam packages her expertise to create the higher purpose of “helping frustrated employees in corporate jobs break out and start their own businesses.”

So, go ahead and be bold. Find your blog’s purpose. And put a dent in the universe.

Apple products are famous for being simple and intuitive to use. As Steve Job’s said in Walter Isaacson’s book: “The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.”

The iPhone has only one button on its face. The iPod has only a scroll wheel. You don’t need an instruction manual to operate either of these devices.

When Derek Halpern launched his blog Social Triggers, he took this advice to heart.  When you visit his blog, there are only two things you can do:

Read his content.Enter your email address and sign up for his newsletter.

And the results speak for themselves. In a little over one year, Derek has taken Social Triggers from brand new to over 12,000 subscribers.

Yet so many blogs do just the opposite. They have navigation bars with too many options. The design of the blog is often cluttered, leaving the reader feeling lost and overwhelmed.

Do you want the reader to download your ebook? Connect with you on social media? Subscribe to your RSS? Make your blog more intuitive and pick the one thing you want your readers to do.

As Carmine Gallo says in his book Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: “Jobs is one of the few business leaders who could confidently call a product ‘amazingly zippy.’”

He used these types of words to communicate complex products and features to the masses. For instance, when describing the buttons on the screen of the iMac, he said they “look so good you’ll want to lick them.” (Fortune magazine 4 January 2000). He could have described them as having the perfect dimensions, the perfect color, and the perfect gloss, but he knew that his primary audience wouldn’t care.

As bloggers, we often communicate highly complex ideas, and our job is to speak in a language that our audiences can understand. It can be easy to get caught in the echo chamber and forget that most readers who visit your blog have very little knowledge of your niche.

Here’s a simple way to ensure that you create content the majority of your readers will understand. After every post you write, ask yourself this: “Will my mom get it?” If your mom can’t understand it, then there is a good chance that you will alienate large segments of your audience.

So began Jobs’s famous Stanford Commencement address.

Steve Jobs was a masterful story teller. Every keynote he gave was a triumph of good over evil. The audience had a problem and Apple was going to save the day.

Before he introduced the iPhone, Jobs explained why current smartphone products were so bad, and how Apple would come to the rescue. For instance, the keys were permanently fixed into the plastic case of the phone. But that wouldn’t happen to the iPhone. The iPhone’s keys were built directly into the software, allowing each application to have the perfect user interface.

By telling stories, Jobs allowed his audience to become a part of the presentation. Bloggers can use this same tactic.

You can use case studies and customers to show how they have succeeded by using your products and implementing your ideas. And there is a simple formula you can use to create an engaging case study:

First, you describe in vivid detail your customer’s life before buying the product.Then you explain exactly how your customer implemented your product or idea.Finally, you show how much better your customer’s life is after you’ve saved the day.

In the 1960’s Jobs read the Whole Earth Catalog, which he described as the Google in paperback.  He said “It was idealistic and full of tools that you could use.”

On the back cover of the final issue from the mid 1970s, were the words “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” Jobs’ Stanford Commencement speech concluded with him urging the graduates to do the same.

Part of being a blogger is to have an insatiable curiosity. You scour the web and books for new theories, new ideas, and new innovations that pertain to your niche. Then you take these new concepts and apply them to what we already know.

And you know what? Sometimes it gets messy. Your mistakes are made in public for the entire world to see.

Those of us in the trenches know that we’re going to ruffle feathers. We know that there are times we’re going to be wrong. Often, we need to take one step back before we can move two steps forward. To build a popular blog, you must constantly indulge your curiosity and keep pushing forward.

Finally, I want to recall one of the stories from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs.

Steve Jobs had an argument with one of his engineers about the boot up time for the Macintosh operating system. To quickly resolve the argument, he asked the engineer, “If it could save a person’s life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?” The engineer responded that he probably could, and wound up reducing the boot time of the operating system by 28 seconds.

Now I turn the question to you: “If it could save a person’s life, would you find a way to implement these lessons and improve your blog?” I’m serious.

Your marketing blog can save a business and a livelihood. Your personal finance blog can save a family from going under. Your fitness blog can save a life (literally).

So what are you waiting for? Get started. Right now.

Greg Digneo teaches businesses how to get more traffic and increase online sales in 30 days.  Click here to download his free ebook How to Generate 100 Sales Leads in 30 Days.

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How to Use Data to Enrich Your Content

This guest post is by Conor Powers-Smith of Factbrowser.com.

Blog posts, whitepapers and other shareable content rely on supporting data—not because people just love a good color-coded pie chart (though they are pretty), but because numbers give stories shape. They add scale. They provide perspective. They quantify that something meaningful is happening.

Think about it: which statement would you rather share?

Teenagers are texting like crazy, more than ever.The average teen sends 60 texts per day, up from 50 in 2009 (Pew Research Center).

The second statement tells you that there’s a behavioral trend happening and that the trend has real implications for business, communications, and a number of other fields.

But you can’t just throw a bunch of stats into your content and expect instant gravitas. Finding and interpreting facts to support your argument takes thought, and they should add depth, not clutter, to your point. Here are the essentials you need to know to use data wisely and effectively.

Finding the right data to support your content can take a lot of time. The good news is that there are a couple of free tools that can streamline the process and make sure you’re well-supplied with fresh research:

Google Alerts: Set up an alert for keywords from your desired topic area plus words like “data” “study” or “report.” You’ll have to play around with the right keywords and phrases to get your alerts delivering exactly what you need, but it’s a good way to stay on top of new data as it rolls out.Factbrowser: Factbrowser, where I work, is a free research discovery engine that aggregates all of the latest research on business and technology, making it easier to find just the facts you need without having to wade through long reports. When you find a topic you’re interested in (like social media or mobile, for example), subscribe to the RSS feed for that topic to see highlights of the latest research.

There’s a reason Mark Twain’s “Lies, damn lies, and statistics” adage is so well known. It’s easy for facts to be misinterpreted, and tools like Twitter have only increased the speed at which facts travel. Often, this means stats travel without their original source or context.

How can you test whether data is well-founded? Check these elements of the fact you’re reviewing:

Sample size: The very first thing you should do to determine whether a fact is well-founded is to look at the sample size represented in the study. The sample size that’s needed for the data to be reliable will vary based on the type of the study you’re looking at, but for most purposes you probably want to look for a sample size that’s over 400. In most cases, a sample size of more than 400 people will give a confidence level of about 95%.Source of the report: Government agencies and market research companies aren’t the only sources of data out there. Often, a specific company will make its own data available for public consumption. For example, email service providers often release studies about open-rate benchmarks and email trends. Understanding whether research is sponsored—and by whom—is key to interpreting its credibility. Just because a company is financially tied to the topic doesn’t mean the data isn’t good. In fact, it can be some of the most interesting data out there—especially if the source has a unique and proprietary way of generating the data in the report. But be wary of sponsored surveys that have a clear commercial agenda, though.Date: How recently was the study conducted? Sometimes a year can make a big difference. If the stat is outdated and no longer rings true, don’t use it.Gut check: Also known as the sniff test—if something seems off or exaggerated, research it. Make sure you have the context around it and see if you can find similar information to corroborate it.

On the web, citing a source is a little different from the citations of your AP history papers—but it’s just as critical.

Content on the web tends to be easily transferrable, and short-form, so it’s easy for a fact to lose its citation. Try to make sure you chase your fact back to the original source, not just a blog or article that mentions it.

I suggest you name the source of the information, either in-line or in parentheses after the fact, and link back to the original report. The Mobiledemystified blog did a nice job with this on a recent post, but for more detailed tips see Georgina’s post on using links to cite external sources of information you’ve used on your blog.

Additionally, if a report is located behind a form on a landing page, it’s a good practice to link to the form page rather than linking directly to the PDF report.

It doesn’t take much to stay up to date with the latest research on your topic area—just an ongoing curiosity and a couple of good research sites.

Whether you’re tweeting out your perspective on a new stat or threading a series of data points throughout your posts, good research will always make your content sticker and more consequential.

Do you use data in your posts? How do you find, check, and cite that information? Share your tips with us in the comments.

Conor Powers-Smith is a content manager at Factbrowser.com, a research discovery engine for the latest facts, stats, reports, surveys, and studies on business, marketing and technology. In addition to his work at Factbrowser (RSS), Conor works as a freelance journalist in Massachusetts.

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Use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to Call Your Readers to Action

This guest post is by Sean Davis of SDavisMedia.com.

Blogs do not produce income. Simply writing and publishing content does not increase your bank account balance.

The idea that money is a direct result of blogging is a myth that the best bloggers have dismissed, but most choose to treat it as a law of the blogosphere.

What a shame.

Many new bloggers will jump out of their online careers just as quickly as they jumped into them when they realize that it’s not enough to simply create content.

There is, however, another goal for creating content. It’s not until you understand this goal that you will know how to make money from your blog.

The goal of blogging is not to earn money. It’s to earn attention—the attention of those who will, in turn, provide the revenue you’re looking for.

“If you build it, they will come.” We can argue all day about whether this is true or not. No matter what, though, we should all agree that just because people come to your blog doesn’t mean that they will buy your product, sign up for your email list, click your advertisement links, or whatever it is you need them to do in order to produce income.

As a personal testimony, I created an infographic about four months ago that seemed to be pretty popular on the internet for a day or two. The blog I published it on was only about three months old, and the infographic brought me over 1,000 visitors in one day. For some, that’s nothing. For me, it was the attention I had been dreaming about.

Take a wild guess at how many email subscribers I earned from that infographic.

If you guessed zero, you’re wrong!

The answer is actually one. One lonely person out of over a thousand visitors signed up to my free newsletter, which, by the way, offered a free gift for those who signed up.

This is when I learned that blogs have the power to bring attention, however, it’s what you do with that attention that matters most.

If you’ve ever taken a college-level language course or a speech or communications class, chances are you’ve been introduced to the art of persuasion.

Simply put, in the business world, whether it be brick and mortar or internet marketing, you have to know how to persuade people to take action—especially when they are visiting your blog.

Almost a century ago, Alan Monroe of Purdue University introduced a persuasion method that takes the human mind through a natural cycle of establishing a need, developing a solution to satisfy that need, and then becoming enthusiastic about implementing that solution.

There are actually five steps to this sequence:

Attention: The first step is to gain the attention of the target audience. You can do this with a story, a thought provoking question, or anything that makes the audience stop what they’re doing with curiosity and focus.Need: This is where you explain to the target audience what their need is. This can be an obvious, well-known need, or a need that you create on the spot. Often, a need is established by giving an extreme example of some unfortunate event that should never happen again.Satisfaction: Now that your target audience understands the need, it’s time for you to fly in like Superman and save the day. Provide a solution to erase that need and prevent the aforementioned unfortunate event from ever happening again.Visualization: Tell your target audience exactly how your solution can be implemented and how it will solve the problem. Also, tell them how things will progress (that is, get worse) if your solution is ignored. This is where you would provide proof—preferably a previous instance in which your solution was implemented—that convinces your audience that your solution will work. Politicians do this a lot when referencing what other nations have (or have not) done, and why it is important that we make the same (or different) decisions.Action: Get the target audience involved. You’ve already explained to them what the need is, how to satisfy that need, and what things will be like for them once the need is satisfied. Now, you have to convince them that they play an important role in making that change happen. In other words, you introduce an action that they can take to implement your solution.

If you take a step back and thoroughly observe TV commercials, political campaigns, sales pages, etc., you will notice that the most persuasive ones follow this sequence. Why? Because it was developed to follow your own natural thought patterns.

It was developed on the basis of human nature.

What if you could use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence in every area of your blog?

From the content you produce, to your blog’s unique design, you can follow the steps in the sequence to lead your readers down a path that causes them to take action.

Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com enlightened me a few weeks ago on why he doesn’t write the typical “17 Things You Can Do To Blah Blah Blah” articles on his blog.

He said that he encourages the reader to focus on one action to take with each of his articles. As a result, his readers leave his blog with something they can actually implement instead of a list of options—something that’s been shown to be less effective at prompting action, by the way.

Considering Derek builds email lists like crazy, it’s safe to say that he understands human psychology and what makes people tick online.

Does he use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence? I don’t know. But imagine the results you could produce, article by article, if you focused each one of them on one specific action to take, as Derek does, and you used Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to do so.

Are the ideas flowing yet? I hope so.

Remember: blogs don’t earn money. Blogs earn attention. Once you have attention, which is nothing more than a visit to your blog, you have to know how to guide the visitor down a path that leads them to an action you’d like them to take.

Whatever your goals for your blog, you can start using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence right now. Simply break something you want your visitors to do down to one single action, and then follow the steps of the sequence.

Take a few moments to think about communications you encounter every day and how they follow this sequence. And imagine the possibilities for your blog if you can master this technique.

Sean Davis is an internet entrepreneur dedicated to constant growth and helping others. Check Sean out at SDavisMedia.com and follow him on Twitter @SDavisMedia.

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Get Obsessed with Your Message

This guest post is by Danielle LaPorte of DanielleLaPorte.com.

Blog = up? Posts = rolling? It’s time to get obsessed with your message.

A quick dictionary moment, to differentiate between your voice, your topics and your message.

Your voice is what makes your writing distinctive, compelling, unmistakably you. You’ll carry your voice from your blog, right into your book. Seamless, identifiable. Individual.Your topics are the categories or subjects you write about (Eco-luxe weddings on a shoestring budget! Savvy corporate management, with heart and soul! Thrifty vegan recipes!)Your message is your core teaching—the why behind your what. It’s the reason you write what your write. It drives your vocation. It’s the soapbox that you’re proud to stand on. If your blog had a “life purpose” or “calling”, this’d be it. (And it goes without saying, if you’re not obsessed with your message, nobody else will be, either.)

Your core message is the defining character of your brand, as a writer—and for maximum visibility, you’ll apply your message to specific subjects, reaching diverse and unexpected audiences, outside of your industry. Here’s an example:

Dr. Christiane Northrup’s message is about women’s wellness. Through her numerous books and products, she filters that message through topics such as nutrition, menopause, prenatal care, joy, parenting, and sexuality. So, Dr. Northrup can take her message to niche audiences that are focused on nutrition, menopause, prenatal care, joy, parenting, and sexuality. That’s a very big audience.

The message is the over-arching theme—and lots of people share Dr. Northrup’s message. However, not everyone has her voice, which makes her writing distinctive. People go to Dr. Northrup not just for her message, but for her unique way of delivering the goods.

Let’s say you write about grieving the death of a loved one and creating a new life—your essential message is about how to heal grief. You might think that your audience is narrow. But just ask yourself: where else does grief show up for people? It goes beyond the loss of a spouse. People experience grief when they lose a job, when a dream dies, when a family pet passes on, when their children grow up and leave the home, and so on.

You could be writing about your “process” of healing grief in a variety of outlets (magazines, newspapers, your blog, someone else’s blog), with audiences who are interested in career-change, creativity, pets, parenting… Same message. Different houses.

Perhaps your core message is that financial freedom rocks, and everyone should strive to achieve it. You’ve got theories and formulas, worksheets and how-to’s to help people make that happen.

Awe-some. Now, don’t stick to writing on the obvious financial management blogs. Go meet the people who need you and meet their needs when you get there. Get interviewed or contribute an article (or a series!) to a popular parenting blog: “5 Ways to Help Your Kids Become Money Savers.”

Does it matter that teaching kids to be money-aware is not your primary focus? Or that your next book is about making money on real estate? Nope. What matters is that you’re getting in front of grownups (book buyers, subscribers, event-hosters, humans in need), who care about financial freedom.

While your message and voice will ultimately define you, don’t get hung up on any one component of this—trying to get your “message” just perfect, or worrying about how your “voice” is different from someone else’s. The first six months that you’re writing a blog is all about finding your voice, and for some of us, it’ll take a bit longer.

Every movement has a story. Every nation has a story. Every community has a story. Every person has a story. You were born to tell yours.

There’s no such thing as wasted time when you’re working on your craft. Get the stories out of your inner world, give them time to breathe, and then see what’s true for you in the present time. If telling the story is between you and your God or only for your family, be proud you did it. You gave it voice. Then let it go. Something else will whisper in your ear, asking to be written.

Once you know what your message and voice is, it’s time to spread your wings and do something that the innovative and forward-thinking types will do: cross-pollinate their audiences.

Let’s continue with the example of a core message centered around financial freedom. Want to shake things up a bit, do things differently?

Write for a major style website. Yep—style. “Financial Freedom = Hot Fashion: How To Get Smart with Your Cash So You Can Have Everything You Want In Life … and In Your Closet.” Same tips, tailored spin. Greater exposure to a niche that’s full of people who need what you’ve got.

Take time to sit down and imagine all the different venues where your message could take part. Perhaps get really radical and make a top ten list of the places you think your message could never show up—and just to get creative, stretch a bit and imagine how, if you absolutely had to do it to pay rent next month, your message could work with that unlikely audience.

That’s how top bloggers think.

Cross-pollinate your audiences. Blend n’ stir. Watch it grow.

Danielle LaPorte is the author of the forthcoming book The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide for Creating Success on Your Own Terms (from Random House/Crown). An inspirational speaker, former think tank exec and business strategist, she is the creator of the online program The Spark Kit: A Digital Experience for Entrepreneurs and co-author of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan. Over a million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice on DanielleLaPorte.com, a site that has been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality.”

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On the Elusive “Next Level” of Blogging

We’ve all heard of it—the elusive “next level” that so many bloggers talk about online.

But what is the next level? How many levels are there? Is there an end point in leveling up?

These are all worthwhile questions—especially for more experienced bloggers who have spent a lot of time and energy in reaching the level they’re already at. For these bloggers, trying to reach the next level can involve a degree of risk, so the steps that get us toward the next level might be taken slowly and with care.

On the other hand, the web isn’t exactly undersupplied with “radical” ideas to get your blog to the next level, either. The idea here is one of leapfrogging your way to the next rung on the ladder—of taking a risk, and investing significant time (and sometimes money) in the hopes of a dramatically successful outcome.

In my experience, both approaches are valid—different techniques work at different times, after all. What might not be appropriate for you today might be the perfect solution to a problem you’re having growing your blog in a year’s time. After all, wherever you are as a blogger, there’s always a “next level.”

Over the next few days we’re going to be presenting a few ideas for getting to the next level from some of ProBlogger’s most popular guest bloggers. These ideas are varied—they cover content, conversions, and traffic—and while some are more subtle in their approach, others aim to help “blitz” your way to the next level—whatever that is for you.

It’s fair to say that these ideas could be of use to any blogger at any point in their journey, so I’m hopeful that they’ll be useful to you.

Before we kick off, I’m curious to know if you’ve ever had a blogging experience that’s taken you and your blog to the “next level.” What level were you at to begin with, and what was the technique that helped you break new ground? Please do share your experiences with us in the comments—we’d love to hear your stories and advice.

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Grab Your BWE Virtual Ticket for $100 Off—24 Hours Left

Wish you could get to Blog World Expo this year, but can’t make it to New York? Me too.

I’ll be in Queensland with the winners of my blogging competition, but I know there are plenty of bloggers from other countries, as well as within the States, who won’t be able to attend Blog World this year.

Fortunately, you and I don’t need to miss out on the information and fun of the Expo (and if the speaker list for this year is anything to go by, the conference is going to be really impressive).

We “remote” bloggers can still “attend” on a BWE virtual ticket. And if we register by May 15 (that’s roughly 24 hours from now!), the good folks at Blog World will give us a $100 discount on the tickets.

That’s a great deal—the full virtual ticket price is $397, so this is a discount of 25%.

The virtual ticket includes access to every recorded session (including audio and the slides presented by the speaker), as well as various bonuses that the BWE team adds exclusively for those with virtual tickets—click here for full details of what’s included.

Don’t miss this great discount—grab your Blog World Expo virtual ticket here.

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What Blog Products Are You Working On?

At the start of this month, I began releasing details of this year’s ProBlogger Training Day.

This is a big event for me and my team, and there’s a lot to organize. The Training Day won’t take place until October, but already we’ve spent months organizing speakers, booking venues, releasing earlybird tickets, and so on.

Around the same time I put out a call for alpha testers on the new ProBlogger Marketplace we’ve been working on.

Something that occurred to me as I was busily preparing these announcements was just how much work goes into the products and services we bloggers offer. While these kinds of tasks don’t need to be overwhelming, they do take time, and energy, and planning.

For those who are merely testing the waters with their audience, or want to get something out the door and into the market quickly, getting a new product up and running might be a relatively straightforward task.

But once you’ve been blogging for a while, and you get to know your niche and audience well, you’ll know that your products need to meet certain standards if they’re going to have any chance of success.

At that point—and beyond—every new product requires more work from you. You need to consolidate the constant research you’re doing as you engage with readers, make sure your product ideas fit with your overall blog strategy, plan or conceptualize the product itself, and maybe do a “proof of concept”—some kind of test-run that gives you some idea of the audience’s interest.

And that’s before you’ve even got into the process of building the product (or service offering) itself!

So there is a lot to do, and I think bloggers can put themselves at a disadvantage by believing that making blog products is simple. That can lead them to become overwhelmed, disillusioned, and disappointed before they’ve really given products a go.

That said, once you’ve got your head around what’s required of a project, completing it really is about grunt work: sitting down and getting it done. Not just putting in hours, but putting in effort. Working hard, but also working smart—and knowing when the time you’re dedicating to completing something won’t pay off.

I think one of the more overlooked aspects of being efficient as you create products (or in any aspect of efficient blogging) is keeping an eye on your strengths, and playing to them as much as possible.

Don’t outsource something just because you can get it done cheaply, for example. Outsource the things you don’t do well. Don’t choose to build a product just to keep up with the others in your niche, if some other approach to monetization would suit your unique talents better (there’s a reason why I don’t build blog software products!).

While we may overstretch sometimes, and that may lead to a failure or extra hurdles that need to be overcome, they’re problems that can be worked through. The important thing, really, is to make the effort.

We’re all making the effort—I know we are! And you know a lot of what I’m working on—the QLD blogging adventure, the ProBlogger Training Day, and the marketplace, among other things.

But what product or service ideas are you working on? And what challenges are you facing?

You don’t have to give the game away, but we’d love to hear of your efforts in the comments, so we can build up a picture of the hard work we bloggers are doing behind the scenes on our blogs.

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