When I started blogging, writing didn’t come naturally to me.
Not at all.
It took me forever to craft a single post and sometimes I’d be halfway through an article when I would decide to scrap the entire thing because I didn’t like where it was headed.
It was rough – but over time I’ve had a lot of practice and picked up a ton of tips that I’m happy to share with you today.
I’m no CopyBlogger, but these are the things that help me write more efficiently.
A couple of weeks ago I was at the mall with my good friend Chris Ducker from Virtual Business Lifestyle. We had just finished an awesome weekend in LA at Blog World Expo and we were headed down to my hometown of San Diego when we decided to stop at a mall in Irvine to grab a bite to eat and explore.
Chris lives in the Philippines and I wanted to give him a taste of the Orange County lifestyle here in southern California, something I became very familiar with when I worked in Irvine at my old architecture firm.
While strolling through the mall we randomly walked up to a mall-cart (those product displays that stand in the middle of the mall) that had some interesting looking merchandise.
I pointed at one of the electronic devices and asked the guy who was there, “So what does this thing do?”
Then, he did a little demonstration for us, which I’ll show you in the video below (and look out for the surprise at the end!):
And for those of you who can’t watch or listen to the audio, the transcript will be available right here very soon, although I recommend you watch and listen sometime because the demonstration has to do with an audio device. Click Here to Read More about Instant Results
Relationship management is the idea of organizing the interactions that you have with other people.
It’s a simple idea, but it’s not simply implemented – especially as your blog, business and brand begin to flourish.
When I first started blogging it was very easy for me to remember who contacted me, when, and for what reason – mostly because contact with other people was few and far between and getting an email from a reader was a huge deal.
Now, emails from readers are still important to me but they come in much larger quantities (sometimes 100s a day) and there is no way I can easily remember the history of interaction with every single person.
In today’s post, I’ll be comparing the number of people who subscribed to my email list on various locations on The Smart Passive Income Blog before and after I implemented a simple strategy recommended to me in Derek Halpern’s SPI conversion strategy video.
To summarize what Derek suggested, I was definitely not giving myself the best chance to obtain the most subscribers. I only had opt-in forms located in the sidebar and beneath each post, and that’s it.
He suggested that I add opt-in forms on some the pages of my site which are accessible from the navigation menu at the top. These are pages that people are most likely visiting, so it would be smart to put opt-in forms in front of the people who visit them. Click Here to Read More About the Conversion Strategy Results
It seems like that’s what everybody is talking about these days – but what about increasing engagement?
Is engagement even important enough to be something that we should increase?
To me, absolutely - and I’m sure that’s part of the reason why this blog has grown as fast as it has.
What is Engagement?
There are metrics to measure “engagement” like time spent on a page and bounce rate, but the kind of engagement I want to investigate goes beyond the numbers.
To me, engagement is all about involvement and participation.
When people participate in something they feel included. They feel like part of the team and that they’re contributing in one way, shape or form.
And here’s the kicker: that participation, involvement and contribution often lead to massive support and constant sharing of you and your brand.
That’s huge.
Why?
Because a recommendation from one of your friends for a product is far stronger than any recommendation the owner of that product could give you.
This is why social media is so important to businesses – friends sharing with friends exactly what’s hot and what’s not.
One of the “issues” with blogging is that when you pump out new content, old content gets pushed aside. Some of our best posts, posts that we’ve devoted hours to with information that is still relevant and useful, simply get lost in our archives.
Whether you’re just starting out now or you’re a seasoned veteran blogger, here are 10 ways to bring new life to some of your older posts.
1. Keep Search Engines in Mind As You Publish New Posts
As much as you should always be writing for your audience, it can be beneficial to also think about search engine optimization when publishing new posts.
By doing so, over time, your posts will have a better chance of picking up natural search engine traffic as it begins to rank higher in the search engines. You could even take this a step further and introduce a backlinking campaign for a specific keyword for any of your posts to see even better results.
So how do we optimize posts for search engine rankings without compromising the quality of the title and content within the post?
Pick a target keyword or keyphrase and include it somewhere in the title of your blog post. You’ll have to do some basic keyword research first, but always remember to keep the title interesting and enticing for your readers at the same time.
Make the URL of your posts search engine friendly. If you’re targeting a specific keyword or keyphrase in a post, changing the URL to just the keyword gives your post the highest keyword density possible, which helps. For example, if you wrote a post entitled 25 of the Best Golden Retriever Training Tips in the World, and your target keyword was “best golden retriever training tips”, I would structure the url as domainname.com/best-golden-retriever-training-tips.
Pictures should include the keyword in the title, alt tag, and filename. If you embed any pictures into your blog post, you can change the filename of the image to match the keyword before uploading, and make sure to make the title and alt tag of your image match the keyword as well.
Videos should include the keyword in the title, description and tags. Including a YouTube video in your post with a title, description and tags that match the keyword will help as well.
I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking me about my switch to the Thesis theme for the SPI blog.
I’ll start from the beginning.
Even before I wrote my very first post for The Smart Passive Income Blog, it was really important to me that I sported a high-quality WordPress theme. The design of a blog, both on the front end (what people see), and the backend (what the search engines see), play a huge role in the success of a blog.
Since I bought the domain name, SPI has undergone 9 total design changes.
Yes – 9.
I blame my roots in the architecture industry, where hundreds of design changes on a single project is completely normal.
In chronological order:
2 free themes, which I immediately scrapped because they looked too plain.
2 premium themes, which were good – but I noticed a lot of other bloggers using the exact same themes and I wanted something more of my own.
2 completely different custom-designed themes. The 1st theme was from a brand new designer on Elance who had no feedback or reviews. Lesson learned. The 2nd design (also from Elance) was great and became the first version of the black/red/chartreuse SPI blog that you see today.
1 not-so-good re-design that transformed SPI into a 3-column theme. It was not well received and I reverted back to the previous 2-column design not so long after.
1 upgraded tweak which is what you see today.
And a couple of weeks ago, I completed my 9th design change – which didn’t change anything on the front end, but everything on the backend.
Disclaimer: Please note that the links for the Thesis Theme in this post are affiliate links and I do earn a commission through any purchases that you make. If you do make a purchase, I appreciate it greatly! If you wish, shoot me an email or let me know on the Facebook Page so I can thank you personally.
Are you giving your audience anything specific and regular to look forward to?
In other words, is there some type of post that you publish consistently over and over again that becomes a true unique element to your brand?
As many of you know, I religiously publish income reports each and every month here on SPI. Although I know a lot of people look forward to these because I share my income, the lessons I’ve learned, and the decisions I’m making with my online businesses, there’s so much more than that when it comes to the strategy of a recurring piece of content.
Whatever that recurring content may be, it gives your audience something concrete to look forward to, something that they already know about, they just don’t know what the outcome or result will be ‘this time’. Click Here to Read More About Recurring Posts
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In this session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, I’m honored to have back Corbett Barr from ThinkTraffic.net, who was our special guest in Session #8 – the most popular podcast I’ve had to date.
In Session #8, we discussed How to Get More Traffic, and today we expand on that topic, going deeper into the process and touching on several key points that are absolutely necessary for any blogger or online business owner to understand in order to build a long-term, sustainable brand online.
It’s not just about traffic generation either – it’s about how to keep those visitors on your site and how to get them to take action.
We cover all of this.
Just scan through the bullet points below to see exactly what Corbett and I talk about:
The fundamentals of traffic building that most people overlook.
The one question that you must be able to answer if you want to become successful online.
What the thriving audience framework is and how it can drive massive amounts of traffic to your site.
How one should really approach being different.
The must-follow rules for a content-based traffic strategy.
How I was able to sell a profitable 6-figure eBook when most of the content could already be found on my blog for free.
The technical aspects of epic content that you must include.
How to get inspired by other bloggers to write content that crushes!
What to do if you want to write epic content to drive traffic to your site, but you don’t already have an existing audience.
How to jumpstart your traffic building when you’re a newbie.
Why engagement is important and how to measure it.
What to do when it feels like you’re writing for nobody.
Why comments on blog posts are more important than you think.
What to do with the very first email you get from a reader.
The best practices to take when it comes to eventually wanting to sell a product on your site.
The key to building a long-term, sustainable online business.
Plus a lot more…
I’m positive that listening to this session will be time well-invested for your online business or blog.
Also, I’m very happy to recommend Corbett’s course that he’s reopening later this week – Traffic School, which had some amazing results during the first go-around for his students. He explains more about what his course is all about at the end of the podcast.
139 weeks ago, I bought the domain smartpassiveincome.com.
At that moment, I was unknown in the world of online business and blogging.
3 million pageviews, 25,000 subscribers, 50,000 Twitter followers, and almost 10,000 Facebook fans later, I’ve reached numbers I never even thought were possible, and here I am and it hasn’t even been 3 years.
I’m not trying to boast here, but I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved so far and am extremely thankful for all of you who have helped me get here.
I really do feel like I’m living the dream – my dream. Being able to work from home, be here with my beautiful wife and son, flexible schedule, saving more than I spend – I couldn’t ask for anything more, and I don’t want anything more.
But, as wonderful as all this sounds, becoming a successful blogger does come with its dark side. Click to continue…
No, I'm not a millionaire, but I am living off of passive income made online. I'm here to show you what I've learned...
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When I started blogging, writing didn’t come naturally to me.
139 weeks ago, I bought the domain smartpassiveincome.com.
No, I'm not a millionaire, but I am living off of passive income made online. I'm here to show 
Enter your name and email below to get Free Instant Access to the most comprehensive guide available on how to Publish, Market, and automate your own killer eBook.
