14 Proven Ways to Simplify Your Blogging and Get More Done

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.

5 Reasons Why Your Blog Traffic Isn’t Increasing

Increasing your blog’s traffic isn’t as easy as just throwing content up on your site and hoping that people are going to read it, at least not for the majority of bloggers. There is actually quite a bit of behind the scenes work that goes into increasing your readership base. If you’ve been wondering why your traffic rates either are stagnant or have fallen flat, it could be that you’re committing one of these blogging sins:

10 B2B Tips – Promote your Blog

Establishing a blog is large effort for anyone. Corporate blogs are especially challenging given multiple contributors and groups participating. Whether you’re an individual starting a blog, a start-up, mid-size company or large corporation the steps to promote follow the same path. Promotions for blogging and how you treat the blog are woven together. I’ll outline overarching promotions tactics you can employ to promote your blog and gain wider visibility.

20 Great Productivity Tips for Bloggers

It doesn’t really matter why you started blogging – whether for business or personal reasons. What does matter is that your blogging is productive on whatever level you need it to be. While the initial set-up of your blog can be time consuming, the real work comes later, when you’re trying to consistently create great content while marketing your work. Here are 20 tips for maintaining a productive blogging career.

How to be massively more influential!

If you would like to be massively more influential, in a really meaningful way, this post is for you!

Influence

Here’s what we know about real influence: It’s powerful. Politicians seek the endorsement of influential celebrities, because it influences how the public vote. Brands pay sports stars to appear in commercials for their fragrances, because it influences people to feel good about (and buy) their product. Companies will often pay influential former political leaders to sit on their board of directors, in order to influence investors. People with real influence have huge commercial value.

5 Non Spammy Ways To Get a Blogger’s Attention

Everyone, from PR firms to individuals with a product to sell, pitches bloggers these days. Getting coverage or exposure for your business by way of a number of highly read blogs should be a foundational element of your PR approach.
So, I thought I would share of few of my thoughts on the most effective ways to get a blogger’s attention and stand out in a way that gives your pitch a far better chance of garnering coverage.
Sadly, it would much easier to write a post on what not to do, but I like to stay on the positive side here.
Whether your goal is to land a guest post, get a review of your product or just advance an idea you’ve got to put in the work to personalize your pitch and build relationships by demonstrating you’re a resource and not a pest.

Blog Better by Slowing Down

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.

Burnouts, broken relationships, and abandoned blogs

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.

Most Websites/Blogs Have A Natural Traffic Limit

Since I started building my first websites back in 2005 I probably owned at least twenty different ones, ranging from blogs like this one to niche websites and service-oriented sites. One pattern I noticed over these years is that most websites have a natural traffic limit.
By natural traffic limit I mean an amount of traffic (e.g., 30,000 monthly uniques, 200,000 monthly uniques or 3 million monthly uniques, depending on the site in question) that the website will attract once it’s fully developed and established. The graph below (sorry for my design skills!) illustrates the points:

As you can see, most websites start slow, then they go through a rapid growth phase, and then they reach the natural limit. Sure, they might still keep growing after reaching the limit, but that growth will be minimal in comparison to the previous growth period.

How to Design a Blog that Converts

Do you like it when readers check out your post and leave, never to return again? Of course not! As bloggers, we have goals, and we use our posts to try to achieve those goals. Did you know you can design a blog that converts? Your posts are only half the battle!

If you make money with advertising, your main goal might be to have readers subscribe to your RSS feed so they come back whenever you write a new post. If you have a product to sell, your main goal might be to get readers to purchase that product. If you sell affiliate products, your main goal might be to have readers subscribe to your email list so you can pitch to them. And no matter what, most bloggers have the goal of getting people to share their content via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other social platforms.

How To Get Your Guest Posts Accepted Into Any Blog

So maybe you are not so sure to guest-post a big blog, because you’re afraid of getting rejection. But the problem is, guest-posting a popular blog is always the key to gain audience!
Fear no more – with these tips, you should be able get your guest posts accepted into any blog!

To Log In or Not to Log In – That Is the Blog Question

Another Blog Puzzle

When it comes to blogging, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Bolingbrook dentist or the maker of steel rolled rings, you’ve probably wondered the same thing: What can I do to bring in more comments? Getting users to participate in a discussion on your blog is more than just a sign of success; it’s a sign of community—the very thing that drives return visits, increased traffic, customer loyalty and a continually expanding sense of your brand. So what can you do?

Guest Posting. Τι είναι, γιατί και πώς.

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Ένας βασικός λόγος για τον οποίο πολλές επιχειρήσεις επιλέγουν να δαπανήσουν πόρους (χρηματικούς, ανθρώπινους κλπ) στο blogging, είναι όπως έχουμε ξαναπεί, η δημιουργία και ανάπτυξη μίας online κοινότητας από ανθρώπους που τους ενδιαφέρουν τα προιόντα ή υπηρεσίες τους και που είναι εν δυνάμει πελάτες τους. Σε αυτή την ανάρτηση θα δούμε έναν αποτελεσματικό τρόπο που μας οδηγεί σε αυτόν ακριβώς τον στόχο. To guest posting!

Guest Posting, είναι η δημοσίευση μίας ανάρτησης σε ένα blog άλλου blogger, είτε μετά από δικό μας αίτημα, είτε μετά από δικό του. 

An essential guide for brands on Tumblr

Blogging platform Tumblr has exploded in the last year. According to the company, it boasts 20 billion posts and 50 million blogs. Those numbers continue to rise every day.

As Tumblr blogs such as “Texts from Hillary” and “Kim Jong Il Looking at Things” going viral and making national headlines, it’s likely that the platform’s popularity will continue to grow.

Some brands have already taken note and set up shop on Tumblr. Fashion companies, for example, have set the standard in how Tumblr should be used to support the lifestyle branding mentality. Media companies have also trickled there to share content with legions of followers.

Tech blogs - software companies more likely to have active blog

The debate rages on - is blogging in decline? Recent research shows that it isn't as easy to pin down as first thought with some sectors blogging more than others. 

Last month, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth released research findings that showed the number of corporate blogs is declining. Back in 2010, half of companies had a corporate blog.
In 2011 that figure declined significantly to just 37%. Among Fortune 500 companies, growth in blogging has leveled off with 23% continuing to blog in 2011, the same as in 2010, compared to 91% who use social media.



















But what's happening among tech companies? According to recent research by Percussion Software the news isn't any better. Just 20.5% of mid-market tech companies have a corporate blog. Of that percentage, over a quarter are "dormant" in that they have not been updated for the last 30 days.

Roundup Blog Posts Help Your Content Marketing

First off, what exactly is a “roundup” blog post? A roundup blog post is when you take a group of articles/white papers/blogs that you DIDN’T write and do a short little recap about each with links to the original source. Here on the Brick Blog, we publish two roundup blog posts each week—one is related to SEO news (and we just share the latest updates from the search engines) and the other is some of the best SEO blogs we’ve read recently.
So why write roundup blog posts? Here are a few reasons:

BlogWorld & New Media Expo NY

 NEW YORK

Conference: June 5-7 | Exhibits: June 6-7
Jacob Javits Convention Center | New York, NY

BlogWorld is a must-attend social media event, hosting thousands of attendees from 50+ countries, with more than 200 speakers. This will be our second year in New York and we’ve planned 3 days of cutting-edge conference sessions and eye-opening keynotes. It’s not just the conference content that BlogWorld attendees boast about, 2012 attendees will also find a thriving tradeshow and great evening networking mixers. This is the only industry-wide event bringing the global community of content creators and publishers together all under one roof.

Who attends this important event?

5 Common Blog Mistakes (and their 5 Quick Fixes)

One common complaint we get from our readers is they own a blog that they contribute to regularly but still haven’t seen the promised returns. If this sounds like you, read on.
An internet survey of just over 1,000 businesses with blogs found that the majority of them are committing the same blog marketing mistakes. The 5 most-common mistakes amongst those companies are easily fixable by making minor alterations in your content and marketing strategy.
Here are the 5 common mistakes that your company might be making with its blog content, along with 5 quick fixes:

7 Tips To Make Your Blog More Popular

Key to marketing your business is to take advantage of all the online wonders of technology. And yes, one of these wonders is blogging. Establishing a blog on your website is one of the fastest ways to make your product or service known.
If you already have a blog and you aren’t getting the results you need, it is time to review your content and ensure it is going to attract readers, and most of all, hold their interest. A definitive blog strategy will virtually assure your success. 

6 Tips to Improve Blogs Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO

On-page and off-page SEO are indispensable to search engine rankings. On-page SEO is what you do to customize a blog post with header tags, keywords and images. Off-page SEO is what you need to do outside the blog to help rank the blog higher. Here are some useful tips for off-page SEO.

(1) Do a lot of social bookmarking is platforms like StumbleUpon and Digg. The social bookmarking sites are crawled by search engines more often and they do have a very active user base. Bookmarking your blog on these sites will lead to traffic spikes often. Make sure that you don’t share the blog homepage all the time. Whenever there is a new blog post, bookmark them and every 2-3 days, revisit the pages and share again.

6 Questions Bloggers Should Ask Themselves When Choosing a Blogging Software

Before You Choose Your Blogging Software, Ask Yourself These Six Questions

Choosing a blogging software can be confusing because on the surface, the various blogging software products such as Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal and more are quite similar. Following are six questions to ask yourself before you select your blogging software to help you make the best choice to be a successful blogger.