SEO and Social Media – Is this a Winning Strategy?

Guest Post - Our host is Ian Mason, Ian looks at Social Medaia and SEO as a strategy for Bloggers.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

A recent article published in The Guardian raises some notable issues related to the changing face of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry and the increasing weight given to social media promotions with start-ups and businesses.

Is SEO Irrelevant?

Unexpected Blog Habits That Can Kill Your Traffic

Guest Post - Our host is Allan Watson, who points out some of the unseen mistakes you may be making that are affecting your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

As a blogger there is nothing more nerve-wracking than losing traffic except possibly not ever getting any in the first place, though it is possible that isn't actually worse. When you lose it, it means that you had it and then you did something wrong and usually we don't know what that is. It can kill your motivation, drain your muse, and make you wonder if maybe you should just give up.

The thing is, most of us have seen the articles and heard the common advice about gaining popularity and keeping your audience. If you haven't, or you need a recap, this post by Blogging Basics is a great one. You want to have personality, proofread, post consistently, use images, and make sure that what you are writing is something that your audience is going to want to read.

But what if you are covering all of the basics and you're still not getting traffic or you're losing it? Then something else is wrong and you might not know where to start looking. There are, however, some key elements to having a successful blog that you may be overlooking.

5 Creative Ways To Gather Customer Testimonials

Guest Post - Our host for this post is Shanna Mallon, Shanna is looking at how bloggers can gather great testimonials online.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

You don’t have to be a salesperson to know the power of a good referral. Who hasn’t tried, bought, or done something because someone they trusted said it was a good idea? That’s why, when you’re a new blog or business, nothing is quite as powerful for bringing in new clients as gathering customer testimonials. But how do you get them?

Here are five creative ideas that go beyond surveys or traditional requests.

Six Life Lessons Your Parents Taught You About Blogging

Guest Post - Our host is Gerrid Smith, who makes an interesting comparison between the lessons we learned as children and how we can use them as bloggers.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

It’s a very frustrating reality in life as we age when we realize that we are more like our parents than we think. The life lessons our parents taught us while growing up that we denied as truth seem to start flowing out of our mouths later in life to our own children, and we begin to take the advice as actual wisdom.

Some of these ideas and concepts can be applied to your blogs marketing approach as well! Let’s take a step back, look at our marketing techniques and make sure that we’re behaving the way our parents wanted us to:

5 Massive Ways To Market Your Blog Content Effectively

Guest Post - Our host is Yasir Khan, who looks at the steps you can take after clicking publish to promote your content.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Blog content are the power source of any blog in the blogosphere. If you take a look at the top blogs online, they aren’t topping the search engines for their main keywords just because they overly did SEO little too well, but it’s because they invested a huge amount of their time writing up and publishing epic posts whose value cannot be matched to any similar post out there.

Having said that, it’s imperative to have content that adds value on one’s blog, not only that, it’s also important to know how to market it in other for the search engines to know that the contents are of high value.

So how exactly do you market your blog content in other for it to go viral ? Which talisman is currently working at the moment?

Below are 5 sure ways which you can use to market your blog contents like a professional-

My Experiences And Tips From Setting Up A New Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Matthew Barby, Matt has some tips for setting up a new blog from content to SEO.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

I took a little time out recently to recharge my batteries and explore a bit of the world by venturing across to East Asia. During my time out there I thought it would be a great idea for me (and a few friends) to set up a travel blog that would share some of our travel experiences and offer a useful resource for fellow travellers.

Due to the fact that this project was purely focused around pleasure, I didn’t put too much work in at the start but I soon realised that there was a good potential to make a bit of cash that could supplement my travel costs. With this in mind I decided to use my background in SEO to bring in some good levels of traffic to the website. Six months on and my blog traffic is growing exponentially month-on-month – I decided that it would only be fair to share some of my strategies with the community so that they can also benefit from this.

The content Strategy

5 Creative Ways To Get To Know Your Blogging Audience In Real Life

Many of us think that we know who we are writing to, but do we really? The problem with identifying and understanding our blog audience is that we resort to dated techniques that don't help us understand who they really are. Sure, our audience might be made up of 25-35 year old females, but who is that, anyway? What keeps them up at night? What makes them happy? How can we, as bloggers, motive them to read and share what we have to say?

What Really Matters

For starters, you need to understand what matters to them. I have been an advocate for completing basic audience profiles. The goal of these profiles is to get a sense of how your audience thinks, rather than just who your audience is. In these profiles, you will identify a few key things:

• What is their name?
• What do they do?
• What keeps them up at night? (i.e. What are they worried about?)
• What motivates them to read your stuff?
• What do they need most from you? How can you help them?

The goal is to complete several profiles and then use them as you write new posts. As you write, you should be talking directly to one of your audience members. You should have them specifically in mind. When we write TO someone rather than simple FOR someone we can do a much better job of relating to them on a human level. But, sometimes even this exercise isn't enough.

Ride The Reddit Wave: How to Maximize Traffic To Your Blog From Reddit

What is Reddit? If you’ve seen the front page filled with hysterical gifs and shared life-exposed memes to your friends, then you’ve Reddit. Not only have you read it, but also maybe used it to generate buzz for your brand or product or even as simple as having the quote of the day at your office.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, you may be saying: I haven’t Reddit.

Well, similar to most social media sites, with Reddit you create a profile, join a community, and start sharing. However, unlike sites like Twitter and Facebook, where content and descriptive text is presented to you in real time news feed, Reddit is focused on presenting you with the highest rated content. This community is unique in that it is a self-monitoring social network, where your upvotes are translated into “karma”, the headline is the hook, and the content is the punch line. “Trolls” beware: there is a downvote as well. In this democracy style platform, you want to get as many upvotes as possible.

How do you use it?

6 Essential Tips For Bloggers To Increase Your Email CTR

When it comes to email marketing, there are two crucial numbers to keep track of - your open rate and your CTR or click-through rate. While your first task is to get people to actually open your email, your CTR is what really determines your results. It doesn't help you if people read your email only to delete it. If you want people to take action on your offers, you must find ways to increase your CTR.

Tip 1: Create Urgency or Scarcity

DIY or Die: Good Blogging Based on Punk Rock Ethics

Before the late 1970s, it was nearly impossible for independent musicians to tour and release albums without major label backing. Punk came along and changed all of that in a few different ways. Kids saw that they could, in fact, play music without looking like rock stars or playing like virtuosos. Punk bands also set up concrete DIY models for releasing their own records and setting up their own tours that anyone could follow. The major labels were cut out entirely, and it actually became a case of “you can do this if they put the work in.”

The Internet, in that way, is in those exciting golden years. The infrastructure has been set up and there are several credible models available for reference. There are a staggering amount of resources available to independent bloggers so they can, in fact, do it themselves. That might seem obvious, but it also becomes a valuable thinking point when you start to incorporate the ethics of DIY, independent music into blogging.