Posted on 02 February 2012.
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Posted on 02 February 2012.
This guest post is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.
Everyone has them, except possibly R.L. Stine. Im referring to those days when youre lacking either the inspiration or the energy to write something fresh and/or inventive.
If you can somehow get those days to occur on a regular schedule, say weekly, theres a solution. Outsourcing.
Im not talking about running guest posts, nor contributions from freelance or staff writers. I mean leveraging the work of dozens of other bloggers in your genre, for your mutual benefit.
Host a blog carnival: a roundup of timely posts from other bloggers, concentrating on a particular area of interest. Your colleagues write the posts, then you assemble, fold, collate, and link to them for presentation to your regular audience.
My blog, Control Your Cash, hosts the weekly Carnival of Wealth. As you can probably deduce, the carnival is germane to my blogs focus on personal finance. The Carnival of Wealth goes live at around 2pm GMT every Monday and features bloggers from, at last count, four continents.
Every week I receive dozens of submissions, which means that my biggest challenge is getting each weeks edition of the carnival down to a workable size. The carnival posts frequently receive the most comments and trackbacks of any posts on my site. In other words, hosting a carnival means something for everyone. In descending order of importance, thats:
Id love to take credit for creating my carnival from scratch, but the truth is that I picked it up secondhand. Its the brainchild of Shailesh Kumar at Value Stock Guide, who started the carnival a year and a half after he began blogging about personal finance. During that period, while he got to know similar bloggers, his own blog found its voicea fusion of personal finance and lifestyle, vaguely similar to what I do at Control Your Cash.
As a submitter to other carnivals, Shailesh had trouble finding ones whose area of interest overlapped his own. His posts were too personal finance for the lifestyle carnivals, too lifestyle for the personal finance carnivals. So he created his own, an amalgam of the two. As Shailesh puts it, There was no one carnival that addressed this super-genre.
Leveraging the goodwill and/or notoriety that come with commenting on other sites, the Carnival of Wealths founder received 20-odd submissions for each of the first few editions. Most of those were via invitation, rather than from bloggers who read the announcement of the carnival and then decided to submit.
As a carnival builds, a combination of momentum and prodding helps it grow. It requires haranguing your submitters to tweet about the carnival, and to share it on social networks, which theyll probably be happy to do anyway. Simple courtesy dictates that anyone who submits to a carnival should offer a reciprocal link, but even the promise of a unilateral link is enough to attract other bloggers and help a carnival grow.
(If youre wondering, I had originally offered to host the Carnival of Wealth once a month. And did so. Then, after a few months, I got the opportunity to take it over permanently and jumped at the chance.)
The mechanics of hosting a carnival are straightforward. To keep the submitters happy, Ive made it easy for them to submit their posts. My carnival has a dedicated page at BlogCarnival.com, with rules for submitting and a firm deadline. Each submitter includes a summary of her post, and if it fits (many of them dont come close), I run it.
BlogCarnival.com sends me the submissions as theyre received, which I then hold onto and leave unopened until Im ready to begin assembling. One thing Ive learned is that its inefficient to deal with each submission as it arrives, and then add it to the carnival if it passes muster. Better to let the submissions collect until the deadline, then address them en masse in one concentrated writing session.
Hosting other peoples work in a carnival doesnt have to mean surrendering the tone that distinguishes your blog. Far from it. I make it a point to showcase every edition of the Carnival of Wealth in the same style that my site is infamous for.
The best part of hosting a carnival is that it guarantees me a slew of readers who wouldnt normally visit my site. Fans of the submitters who make the cut will leave comments on Control Your Cash, and hopefully bookmark it.
The Carnival of Wealth is anomalous in that the same blog hosts it every week. Most carnivals rotate among a series of bloggers, each of whom gets penciled into the schedule months in advance, whereas I seldom incorporate guest hosts. (In fact, I only do so when the Carnival of Wealth conflicts with my spot in the rotation for someone elses carnival.)
Id rather have people visit my site. And Id rather have my readers know they can find the Carnival of Wealth as a regularly scheduled feature on Control Your Cash, as opposed to anywhere else. Plus the carnival roundups are just plain fun to write, and doing so gives me the opportunity to read some brilliant posts that Id never have discovered otherwise.
Hosting a carnival can be a lot of work in the initial stages. But its work with a huge capacity for leverage. When you host a carnival, it fosters relationships with like-minded bloggers and readers. Done correctly, it cant help but make your blog grow.
Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) orhere(Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
How to Create and Host a Blog Carnival
Posted in Blog to EarnComments Off
Posted on 02 February 2012.
This guest post is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.
Everyone has them, except possibly R.L. Stine. Im referring to those days when youre lacking either the inspiration or the energy to write something fresh and/or inventive.
If you can somehow get those days to occur on a regular schedule, say weekly, theres a solution. Outsourcing.
Im not talking about running guest posts, nor contributions from freelance or staff writers. I mean leveraging the work of dozens of other bloggers in your genre, for your mutual benefit.
Host a blog carnival: a roundup of timely posts from other bloggers, concentrating on a particular area of interest. Your colleagues write the posts, then you assemble, fold, collate, and link to them for presentation to your regular audience.
My blog, Control Your Cash, hosts the weekly Carnival of Wealth. As you can probably deduce, the carnival is germane to my blogs focus on personal finance. The Carnival of Wealth goes live at around 2pm GMT every Monday and features bloggers from, at last count, four continents.
Every week I receive dozens of submissions, which means that my biggest challenge is getting each weeks edition of the carnival down to a workable size. The carnival posts frequently receive the most comments and trackbacks of any posts on my site. In other words, hosting a carnival means something for everyone. In descending order of importance, thats:
Id love to take credit for creating my carnival from scratch, but the truth is that I picked it up secondhand. Its the brainchild of Shailesh Kumar at Value Stock Guide, who started the carnival a year and a half after he began blogging about personal finance. During that period, while he got to know similar bloggers, his own blog found its voicea fusion of personal finance and lifestyle, vaguely similar to what I do at Control Your Cash.
As a submitter to other carnivals, Shailesh had trouble finding ones whose area of interest overlapped his own. His posts were too personal finance for the lifestyle carnivals, too lifestyle for the personal finance carnivals. So he created his own, an amalgam of the two. As Shailesh puts it, There was no one carnival that addressed this super-genre.
Leveraging the goodwill and/or notoriety that come with commenting on other sites, the Carnival of Wealths founder received 20-odd submissions for each of the first few editions. Most of those were via invitation, rather than from bloggers who read the announcement of the carnival and then decided to submit.
As a carnival builds, a combination of momentum and prodding helps it grow. It requires haranguing your submitters to tweet about the carnival, and to share it on social networks, which theyll probably be happy to do anyway. Simple courtesy dictates that anyone who submits to a carnival should offer a reciprocal link, but even the promise of a unilateral link is enough to attract other bloggers and help a carnival grow.
(If youre wondering, I had originally offered to host the Carnival of Wealth once a month. And did so. Then, after a few months, I got the opportunity to take it over permanently and jumped at the chance.)
The mechanics of hosting a carnival are straightforward. To keep the submitters happy, Ive made it easy for them to submit their posts. My carnival has a dedicated page at BlogCarnival.com, with rules for submitting and a firm deadline. Each submitter includes a summary of her post, and if it fits (many of them dont come close), I run it.
BlogCarnival.com sends me the submissions as theyre received, which I then hold onto and leave unopened until Im ready to begin assembling. One thing Ive learned is that its inefficient to deal with each submission as it arrives, and then add it to the carnival if it passes muster. Better to let the submissions collect until the deadline, then address them en masse in one concentrated writing session.
Hosting other peoples work in a carnival doesnt have to mean surrendering the tone that distinguishes your blog. Far from it. I make it a point to showcase every edition of the Carnival of Wealth in the same style that my site is infamous for.
The best part of hosting a carnival is that it guarantees me a slew of readers who wouldnt normally visit my site. Fans of the submitters who make the cut will leave comments on Control Your Cash, and hopefully bookmark it.
The Carnival of Wealth is anomalous in that the same blog hosts it every week. Most carnivals rotate among a series of bloggers, each of whom gets penciled into the schedule months in advance, whereas I seldom incorporate guest hosts. (In fact, I only do so when the Carnival of Wealth conflicts with my spot in the rotation for someone elses carnival.)
Id rather have people visit my site. And Id rather have my readers know they can find the Carnival of Wealth as a regularly scheduled feature on Control Your Cash, as opposed to anywhere else. Plus the carnival roundups are just plain fun to write, and doing so gives me the opportunity to read some brilliant posts that Id never have discovered otherwise.
Hosting a carnival can be a lot of work in the initial stages. But its work with a huge capacity for leverage. When you host a carnival, it fosters relationships with like-minded bloggers and readers. Done correctly, it cant help but make your blog grow.
Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) orhere(Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
How to Create and Host a Blog Carnival
Posted in Blog to EarnComments Off
Posted on 01 February 2012.
This guest post is by Neil Patel of KISSmetrics.
If you want to create blog posts, white papers, and even ebooks that clearly communicate your idea and compel your readers to do whatever you ask, you need to use this little formula.
It deals with the four different learning abilities people have, but its also based in a rock-solid copywriting technique Ill tell you about in a minute.
Lets take a look.
There are basically four learning styles:
This analysis may seem a little too scientific for writing blog content, but its not. Its really relevant to another common formula known as AIDA, which says that each of us moves through four stages in the decision-making process: attention, interest, desire, and action.
As Ill show here, youll gain attention when you approach the beginning of a post with the innovative learner in mind. Youll stoke interest as you make the analytic learner happy. When you give the commonsense learner what she wants, youll build desire. And finally, as you create your call to action, youll get the dynamic learner involved, too.
Lets see what this approach to writing looks like.
Every good writer knows that its the headline that attracts attention, and explains why you should read the article. It gives a compelling reason, something the innovative learner demands.
Great headlines have four qualities. They are:
After youve grabbed the attention of readers with your headline, hook them by writing a great opening paragraph, which starts with a great first sentence. Here are some examples from Huffington Post:
Asking questions and using statistics and quotes are also great ways to attract the attention of the innovate learner in the first sentence. So does making a crazy statement that simply cant be true, but then promising to show your reader that it is.
Your next step in writing irresistible content is to build interest through the presentation of cold, hard factssomething the analytic learner needs. In other words, you provide proof of your claims.
Heres an example of proof gone wrong from the copywriter Robert Bly:
A motivational speaker just sent me a free review copy of his new book, published earlier this month.
A banner on the front cover proclaims the book is an international best-seller.
Yet when I check it online, the book is ranked #292,514 on Amazon.
Surely, if this just-published book were in fact an international bestseller, it would be at least in the top 100,000 on Amazon right now, no?
Does the author realize how silly, or at least unbelievable, his claim to bestsellerdom looks to the intelligent reader who bothers to check?
Or is his assumption that people today are so naive they will believe anything correct?
My experience, by the way, is the opposite: people are more skeptical than ever today, and their B.S. detectors have never been more accurate.
The moral of the story is if youre going to make a claim, back it up. Link to your sources, provide graphs and statistics. Most people are not going to believe what you say unless you have proof. So give it to them.
By the way, dont make a claim and then search for data to back it up. The analytic will see right through that. Instead, you should start with the data and then your insight or idea will develop from it.
For example, you can tell the author behind this Social Media Examiner article started with the data first, writing a very insightful article from his findings.
Further proof for the analytic learner is authority. You need to prove any claims you make and then you need to show why they should believe you.
One way I show that I have the authority to speak on the subject of writing popular blog posts is by mentioning my blog that was named among the Technorati Top 100. It shows that someone else with lots of credibility recognized me as an expert.
Youll see blogs with As Seen In sections with the logos of important companies and media sources, like the Wall Street Journal, underneath. This is an endorsement and its another way of showing you have authority.
Heres what WordStreams footer looks like:
If sources like Entrepreneur and CNN back you, then people feel they can trust you.
Testimonials from readers and clients are also a form of authority, so dont forget to include one or two when appropriate.
The next step in writing irresistible content is to develop desire for your claims. Youve attracted readers’ attention, built their interest … now you please the commonsense learner who wants to know how something works.
How do you do this?
Simple. Explain what it is that your offer will do for them. Maybe youll show them how to pick stocks, lose weight, or grow an organic garden.
But dont give away the farm. What do I mean by that? Here are some examples Ive seen where writers give away the farm:
Dont get me wrong: I appreciated the information. The problem is I didnt buy any of the products or act on any of the advice. Why should I? Everything I needed to know is right in there. No wonder their conversion rate stinks.
Dont over-educate. Tease the commonsense reader into action like this:
See how that works?
It tells the commonsense learner what something can do for them, but not how. It doesnt give away the specifics.
Sometimes you can let them peek behind the curtains, like giving them just one of the steps in a six-part process, but not so much that the commonsense learner has everything she needs. Leave something juicy off, dangle it in front of their faces, and promise you will give it to them when they act.
Now that youve attracted attention, built interest and developed desire, your audience, namely your dynamic learners, should be primed to pounce on your offer. So, tell them what to do.
There are five characteristics to a good call to action:
Once youve worked your way through the AIDA formula in your copy, youve naturally given each learning style what they want, and in the meantime, written some pretty compelling content a large audience cant resist.
Furthermore, the great thing about this approach is that you could break a topic up into four different posts for each learning style. Or you could do a longer post, including the above approach for all of them. Either way, youll create content that people find irresistible.
What other formulas do you use to create irresistible content?
Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Develop Irresistible Content with this 4-Point Formula
Posted in Blog to EarnComments Off
Posted on 01 February 2012.
This guest post is by Neil Patel of KISSmetrics.
If you want to create blog posts, white papers, and even ebooks that clearly communicate your idea and compel your readers to do whatever you ask, you need to use this little formula.
It deals with the four different learning abilities people have, but its also based in a rock-solid copywriting technique Ill tell you about in a minute.
Lets take a look.
There are basically four learning styles:
This analysis may seem a little too scientific for writing blog content, but its not. Its really relevant to another common formula known as AIDA, which says that each of us moves through four stages in the decision-making process: attention, interest, desire, and action.
As Ill show here, youll gain attention when you approach the beginning of a post with the innovative learner in mind. Youll stoke interest as you make the analytic learner happy. When you give the commonsense learner what she wants, youll build desire. And finally, as you create your call to action, youll get the dynamic learner involved, too.
Lets see what this approach to writing looks like.
Every good writer knows that its the headline that attracts attention, and explains why you should read the article. It gives a compelling reason, something the innovative learner demands.
Great headlines have four qualities. They are:
After youve grabbed the attention of readers with your headline, hook them by writing a great opening paragraph, which starts with a great first sentence. Here are some examples from Huffington Post:
Asking questions and using statistics and quotes are also great ways to attract the attention of the innovate learner in the first sentence. So does making a crazy statement that simply cant be true, but then promising to show your reader that it is.
Your next step in writing irresistible content is to build interest through the presentation of cold, hard factssomething the analytic learner needs. In other words, you provide proof of your claims.
Heres an example of proof gone wrong from the copywriter Robert Bly:
A motivational speaker just sent me a free review copy of his new book, published earlier this month.
A banner on the front cover proclaims the book is an international best-seller.
Yet when I check it online, the book is ranked #292,514 on Amazon.
Surely, if this just-published book were in fact an international bestseller, it would be at least in the top 100,000 on Amazon right now, no?
Does the author realize how silly, or at least unbelievable, his claim to bestsellerdom looks to the intelligent reader who bothers to check?
Or is his assumption that people today are so naive they will believe anything correct?
My experience, by the way, is the opposite: people are more skeptical than ever today, and their B.S. detectors have never been more accurate.
The moral of the story is if youre going to make a claim, back it up. Link to your sources, provide graphs and statistics. Most people are not going to believe what you say unless you have proof. So give it to them.
By the way, dont make a claim and then search for data to back it up. The analytic will see right through that. Instead, you should start with the data and then your insight or idea will develop from it.
For example, you can tell the author behind this Social Media Examiner article started with the data first, writing a very insightful article from his findings.
Further proof for the analytic learner is authority. You need to prove any claims you make and then you need to show why they should believe you.
One way I show that I have the authority to speak on the subject of writing popular blog posts is by mentioning my blog that was named among the Technorati Top 100. It shows that someone else with lots of credibility recognized me as an expert.
Youll see blogs with As Seen In sections with the logos of important companies and media sources, like the Wall Street Journal, underneath. This is an endorsement and its another way of showing you have authority.
Heres what WordStreams footer looks like:
If sources like Entrepreneur and CNN back you, then people feel they can trust you.
Testimonials from readers and clients are also a form of authority, so dont forget to include one or two when appropriate.
The next step in writing irresistible content is to develop desire for your claims. Youve attracted readers’ attention, built their interest … now you please the commonsense learner who wants to know how something works.
How do you do this?
Simple. Explain what it is that your offer will do for them. Maybe youll show them how to pick stocks, lose weight, or grow an organic garden.
But dont give away the farm. What do I mean by that? Here are some examples Ive seen where writers give away the farm:
Dont get me wrong: I appreciated the information. The problem is I didnt buy any of the products or act on any of the advice. Why should I? Everything I needed to know is right in there. No wonder their conversion rate stinks.
Dont over-educate. Tease the commonsense reader into action like this:
See how that works?
It tells the commonsense learner what something can do for them, but not how. It doesnt give away the specifics.
Sometimes you can let them peek behind the curtains, like giving them just one of the steps in a six-part process, but not so much that the commonsense learner has everything she needs. Leave something juicy off, dangle it in front of their faces, and promise you will give it to them when they act.
Now that youve attracted attention, built interest and developed desire, your audience, namely your dynamic learners, should be primed to pounce on your offer. So, tell them what to do.
There are five characteristics to a good call to action:
Once youve worked your way through the AIDA formula in your copy, youve naturally given each learning style what they want, and in the meantime, written some pretty compelling content a large audience cant resist.
Furthermore, the great thing about this approach is that you could break a topic up into four different posts for each learning style. Or you could do a longer post, including the above approach for all of them. Either way, youll create content that people find irresistible.
What other formulas do you use to create irresistible content?
Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Develop Irresistible Content with this 4-Point Formula
Posted in Blog to EarnComments Off
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