7 Blog Elements That Form First Impressions

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Do you know why Michelin uses a baby in their tire ads?

Solomon Asch is a psychologist who pioneered the study of impression formation. He conducted an experiment where a bunch of people were divided in 2 groups. Both the groups were asked one question.

Group A is asked:

John is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious and intelligent. In general, how emotional do you think John is? (Circle your answer.)

Not emotional ~ 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7 ~ 8 ~ 9 ~ Very emotional

Group B is asked:

Mike is intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn and envious. In general, how emotional do you think Mike is? (Circle your answer.)

Not emotional ~ 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7 ~ 8 ~ 9 ~ Very emotional

The Results

Folks in group A marked John as a very emotional person. Most rated him as 7 or 8.

Folks in group B marked Mike as a not so emotional person. Most rated him as 3 or 4.

The Twist (if you haven’t found out already)

John and Mike - both were described using the same 6 characteristics! The only difference is that the order of the characteristics was reversed. The first characteristic for John is envious and the last one is intelligent. Where as the first characteristic for Mike is intelligent and the last is envious.

Because envious is an emotionally loaded characteristic, most people marked John as being emotional. And because intelligent is not emotionally loaded, most people marked Mike as not being emotional.

The first characteristic made all the difference!

The Power of the First Impression

Lead with your best foot forward. Because the first impression has a lasting effect on your readers.

People will make a snap decision about your blog in less than 4 seconds!

So you have to make a powerful first impression. Here are 7 elements that you should pay attention to improve the first impression your blog makes.

7 Blog Elements That Form First Impressions

1. Make sure your blog has a sharp colour combination.

2. Make sure you use good readable fonts.

3. Un-clutter your blog. Remove all the frivolous elements that don’t assist your blog readers.

4. Make sure the first screen of your blog looks fabulous. Work on your logo and header so that they match the emotion you want from your readers.

5. Spend more time on your headlines. Your headline will put the readers in the right frame of mind.

6. Use good looking images in your blog post. Because good images quickly create a positive mind frame.

7. Start your blog post with a bang. Don’t hide your main point in the middle of the post. Start with it.

Is BlogRush Worth It?

What is BlogRush?

BlogRush is a traffic exchange program for blogs. How it works is: you place a code on your blog. The code shows links to 5 posts from other blogs on your page. In exchange, your post link is shown on other blogs that have installed the BlogRush widget code.

How Much Traffic Will BlogRush generate?

Disclosure: Very few of you know this. BlogClout was working on a service very similar to BlogRush.A  (Seriously. Check out the old BlogClout index page.A  Whats freaky is, I’d selected the same colour code as BlogRush has!)

But I put a hold to the idea because testing showed that a link would be clicked only once or twice for every 1000 impressions.A  So I’ve been spending time in improving the relevancy of the links exchanged.A  So that the links exchanged are relevant to the post on the page.

But while I was doing that, John Reese beat me to the punch and came up with BlogRush.

I’m no longer sure if I’ll release the BlogClout widget.A  Anyways, I doubt if BlogRush will generate a lot of traffic to your blog either.A  It should bring in about 1-2 people to your blog for every 1000 times the BlogRush widget is shown on your blog.

I’ll be testing the BlogRush widget on this blog for a couple of weeks and report back if it works better than that.

Verdict: The idea behind BlogRush is sound.A  You may want to test it out.A  But without relevancy, it won’t do well in the long turn.A  John Reese needs to add relevancy filters to his widget.A  And pull posts based on the title of the page where the widget is placed on.A  Only then will the click through rate go up.A  And only then will BlogRush members receive more traffic.

Three Prongs of Blog Marketing

What is the lowest number of prongs needed for balance?

“Two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. If one of them falls down, the other can help him up. . . . Two people can resist an attack that would defeat one person alone. A rope made of three cords is hard to break.” - Ecclesiastes 4:9

The biggest mistake a blogger can make is start a blog without a marketing strategy in place. Most blog owners have no clue about blog promotion. And so their traffic statistics are miserable… they make no money… and they quit.

You Need to Have a Marketing Strategy in Place Before You Start Blogging.

Let me repeat.

You Need to Have a Marketing Strategy in Place Before You Start Blogging.

Let me repeat again. Because this is very important.

You Need to Have a Marketing Strategy in Place Before You Start Blogging.

Blog Marketing Strategy

The best marketing strategies involve more than 3 tactics.A  If you do just one thing consistently to grow your blog traffic, you’ll do well.A  But you’ll almost never fail if you implement three marketing tactics together to promote your blog!

Action Summary:

Go through the list of blog marketing tactics below and pick 3 tactics that you can implement immediately and simultaneously.

An Un-finished List of Blog Marketing Tactics

• Search engine optimization
• Guest blogging
• Earning “link love”
• Writing press releases
• Syndicating articles
• Creating goodies
• Submitting to carnivals
• Commenting on other blogs
• Networking
• Using stumbleupon.com
• Using other social bookmarking websites

Can you add more tactics to the list?

Passion: Do You Need It To Succeed?

Passion Personified: Crazy Soccer Fans

I’ve heard it a 1001 times. All the entrepreneurial “start-a-business” books talk about it.

• “Start your own business by identifying your passion in life.”
• “You’ll only succeed if you are passionate about your business and its purpose.”
• “Don’t start a business on a topic you are not passionate about, or you’ll never be happy. “

Recently, a reader commented:

• “It is not hard to get new ideas or inspiration if you really have passion at your niche.”

My view? I think people have it upside down.

Passion shouldn’t be the cause of your
business or blog. It should be the effect.

Let me explain.

People don’t get passionate about a sport or a team and then start watching it. No. They first start watching the sport and then they get passionate about it.

I remember going to my first American football game in USA a few years back. (You may know that I’m not an American citizen from my profile. What you may not know is that I’ve lived quite a few years in America.) I didn’t go to watch the game because I was passionate about it. Heck - I didn’t even know all the rules of the game. But you should have seen me cheering and shouting in the stadium. I was as excited in the crowd as everyone else. Because I went to see the game, I got passionate.

Passion Stems From Commitment.

Ask any writer.

If a writer waited for passion and inspiration to come before she starts writing, she’ll never finish her book.

But once she sits down and commits herself to write, passion and inspiration comes on its own.

If you wait for passion to show up before you act, you’ll never move far. If you are committed enough to your blog, passion will come automatically.

Action Summary:

Make a decision today. Commit yourself. Decide how many hours per week you’ll spend on your blog. Ask a few close friends to help you keep focused. Keep on telling your blog readers what plans you have for your blog before you are ready with them. Commit before you can unleash. And the unleashing becomes easier.

How To Find Inspiration to Write Everyday

Edward of TheBlogBeat asked me this question some days back:

Question: You stated you write an article every day, but how do you find the inspiration for writing an article everyday? Where do you find the time to research and writing without recovering what you’ve already covered?

Here is my answer:

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.” - Leonard Bernstein

My approach:

1. Research.

I always have a pen and paper ready whenever I’m reading a book. If I come across a good idea, I mark the page number down. I do the same online. Whenever I come across an article, I add it to my scrapbook (its a firefox plugin). Having 10-12 half baked ideas before you have to write is the first step. Once you have a good idea, then its just a matter of filling out the details.

Start Your Own Idea Swipe File TodayA 

2. No Distraction.

The great copy writer Eugene Schwartz used to do this. He had an egg timer that he always set it to 33.33. He would then clear his desk and remove everything except his type writer and the egg timer. For 33 minutes and 33 seconds, he couldn’t move from the chair. Its ok if he doesn’t write anything and simply stares at the blank white paper. But he can’t move.

After a few minutes of being bored out of his mind, ideas would come to him automatically.

Remove all your Distractions
and Simply Start Writing!

I have plugins installed on my browser that don’t allow me to access my email inbox and my RSS feed reader and other forums before noon everyday. By cutting out distraction in the early part of the day, I can write more. (Its another firefox plugin that I use - called LeechBlock. There are other similar options and softwares available too.)

Yes, I <3 FireFox

3. External Pressure.

Set deadlines. Nothing sparks your creativity better than constraints. As paradoxical as this sounds, trust me: limit your time frame and you’ll end up writing really really well. Set deadlines. Set external pressure. And you’ll not only get your work done, but you’ll do the work better.

For eg: for the newsletters that I publish, I have a fixed deadline. And I let the subscribers know about the deadline. So if they don’t receive the newsletter by the deadline, I’ll receive a few dozen emails and phone calls.A  For the guest posts that I publish, I let the publisher or the editor know when they can expect the article.A  Commitment gets the writing done.A  On time.

Commit to a Timeframe

Anyone can create external pressure for themselves. Simply ask 1-2 friends to call and shout at you if you fail to send them your article by a fixed time everyday. (These friends could also act as your friendly proof readers.)

4. Actual Writing.

Over the years, I’ve developed my own formula for quick writing. Its based on a quote from one of my favourite writers - that I can share with you:

“The secrets of telling a story well are three:
1. How to end
2. Where to begin
3. What to leave out.”
- Roy H. Williams

I just follow the 3 steps most of the time:

i. write the end first.
ii. Then start at the beginning.
iii. And then edit the article well.

Action Summary:

• Create your own idea book.A  Once you have a few half baked ideas to write on, then its just a matter of filling in details.
• Get rid of all the distractions and simply start writing.
• Commit yourself to deadlines.A  Ask a few of your faithful readers to proof read your work for you, and let them know when you’ll be sending in the drafts.
• Come up with your own writing formula or template.A  It makes writing a lot quicker.

It would be awsome if you could share your writing tips with me too!

Increase Your Search Engine Traffic by 15-20% in 3 Minutes

There are two different versions of your domain name:

• http://yourdomain.com
• http://www.yourdomain.com

Both versions of your domain name lead to the same page on your website. But the search engines count them as two separate files. The search engines index URIs and not web pages. Which leads to various problems.

Search Engine Canonicalization Problems

1. Because the search engines see two different version of your websites, the number of pages with duplicate content on them double!

2. Because people link to any of the two versions randomly, both versions will have average amount of back links. The search engines will show one version of your website and hide the another. But it will take into account all the links that point to only the version of your domain that they show in the results!

Thus, your pagerank won’t be as high as it should be. And your pages won’t generate as much traffic from search engines as it otherwise would. So what should you do?

The Technical Solution

The solution to the problem is slightly technical. But it isn’t too hard and takes less than 3 minutes to implement.

What we want to do is redirect visitors as well as search engines from one version of the website to another.

Part 1: Determining Which Version To Use

So which version of your website should you redirect people to? The one with WWW or the one without? There are arguments that support both sides. In short:

WWW: Most browsers will add www automatically with keyword shortcuts of “CTRL+Enter.” WWW depicts a website and is helpful in offline promotions. Most people have a habit of using WWW.

No WWW: WWW is extraneous typing. Its not required. It just bloats the web. There is a whole movement for No-WWW.

You may want to make your decision on those reasons. But there is a better way. Base your decisions on the number of backlinks each version of your website has!

Go to WWW or Not and find out which version of your website has more backlinks. And start using that.

Part 2: Redirecting From One Version To Another

To redirect one version to another, we’ll use 301 permanent redirection. You’ll need to open and edit .htaccess file in your root folder. And then add 3 lines to that file.

Copy and paste the code from below in your .htaccess file - depending on which version you go with.

Code to redirect to www from non-www version:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blogclout\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.blogclout.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(replace blogclout.com with your domain)

Code to redirect to non-www version from www version:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^blogclout\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://blogclout.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(replace blogclout.com with your domain)

Thats it. With the changes in place, your website should increase its page rank and attract more visitors from the search engines.

Action Summary:

• Visit WWW or Not and determine which version of the domain name should you keep.
• Update your .htaccess file accordingly.
• You should see 15-20% more visitors coming in from the search engines within 2-3 weeks.

Case Study: Brand Identity Guru

Snapshot of BrandIdentityGuru.com

Fools learn from experience. Sages learn from history. Keeping that in mind, BlogClout presents the de-construction of BrandIdentityGuru.com (BIG)A  so that you can learn from the website and its Branding Blog.

Setup & Design

The first thing you see when you visit their website is the use of some cool technology.

1. The video of the woman who introduces you to the website is brilliant. Even though it starts without permission, the script is good and crisp. It guides you well. And it ends with a call to action. (If you want to create a video like that for your website or blog, visit Onsite Videos.)

2. The navigation of the internal pages is much better than the navigation of the front page. The front page flash confuses you a bit because it asks you to focus on 4-5 different elements all at once. Compared to that, their internal pages are very clean and efficient. Eg: their Search Engine Optimization Page.

3. The entire website makes excellent use of colours and icons and symbols.

Content

1. BIG has a good content strategy. They have an interactive game on their front page that involves audiences.

2. They also have a quiz on their front page. The idea of a quiz is brilliant. But the execution isn’t too good. Because their quiz has 12 questions - but the questions are such that most business owners won’t know the answers to them and will simply provide a guess.

3. They have a few funny easter eggs on their website. Which could lead to a viral buzz for them.

4. BIG also runs a branding blog. Where they write about successes and failures of other brands. A blog choke full of case studies is a good idea. If they balance it with how-to knowledge, they’ll do better.

Traffic & Monetization

1. Bulk of their traffic seems to be coming from search engines. BIG has a very high page rank.

2. BIG has a good monetization strategy. Attract people with their interactive content. Win and keep their interaction with interactive tools. Then follow up and sell high end consulting services. All the key pages have a “call to action” and asks people to contact BIG for further information on their services.

3. BIG would do well by implementing a newsletter. So that they can capture their visitors’ contact details and follow up to make the sales. Because their products and services are all high end ones, following up is essential.

All in all, its a well made website. And you can learn quite a bit from de-constructing it.

Disclosure: Although this is a paid post, my opinions haven’t been altered.

If you would like your website or blog to be reviewed on BlogClout, please contact me.

How To Get Genies To Give You What You Want

Will the WWW Genie grant your wishes?

A genie grants 2 wishes to a man.

He wishes for:

1. The best drink in the world and
2. The best woman in the world.

The genie does his magic and gives the man…

Aquafina and Mother Teresa!

Moral of the Story: Be Specific.

In various tests conducted by hundreds of copywriters, the results have been the same.A  Specific copy beats generalities.

“Kills 99.8% germs”
is better than
“Kills 100% germs!”

Details add depth to the claim.A  And make it more believable. A  And only when people believe you will they buy from you.A  So remember to be specific in your claims and copy.A  Provide lots of specific details.A  And you’ll do better than before.

Picture Credit: psd

The Human Pyramid - Teamwork Personified!

The Human Pyramid

I wake up today to the sound of drums playing loudly. A team of hooligans have entered my building complex. But not to cause any trouble. But instead to show a miracle and earn some money! Its Janmashtami - an Indian festival!

The army of Govindas are here because they see a pot tied to the 3rd floor of my building. Traditionally, the pot is supposed to have home made butter in it. But these days, its filled with coloured water. The army of Govindas quickly form a human pyramid to reach the pot. A small boy of 10 years old is at the top of the pyramid who breaks the pot!

Within 10 minutes its all over. But those 10 minutes are simply amazing. One single picture doesn’t do justice to it. You’ve got to see the formation of human pyramid to believe how well everything is organized.

Lessons Learned from the Human Pyramid

1. You’ve got to be drunk to do something so crazy!A  Almost all of these Govindas are drunk.

2. Teamwork.A  You can’t break the pot on your own.A  You need a team.A  And you need to trust that team to not drop you!

3. Foundation.A  Taking care of the downside is the most important part. To make sure that no one gets hurt fatally, its important to create a strong foundation: in this case, a huge group of people to surround the pyramid to act as a cushion if some one falls down.

4. Practice.A  The team of Govindas practice building the human pyramid for quite a few days before the actual event.A  You can see them practicing in open areas 1-2-3 weeks before Janmashtami.

Creating Your Own Pyramid - Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

You can’t succeed on your own.A  To reach your pot of gold - you need a group of mentors, advisors, friends to guide you.A  To hold you.A  To make sure that you don’t fall down too hard.

Instead of the “get-rich-quick” mentality, you’ve got to develop the “build-levels” mentality.A  You can reach the pot of gold no matter how high it is, if you help enough people, and have enough people to help you in return.

Disclosure: Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared and didn’t have a camera at hand. So I’ve searched for a picture on flickr to post it on this blog. Picture Credit: Rohan Dumbre

New NoFollow Plugin

Disclosure: Your website will be crawled by search engines if you comment more than 2 times on this blog!

1. If you haven’t read the old post already, make sure you read why Saying No to NoFollow is a good idea. And why should you allow the search engines to crawl the websites of the people who comment on your blog.

2. Removing NoFollow tag from your blog does invite more spammers though. Many comment spammers use a script that finds blogs that have removed the NoFollow tags. And then automatically post a spam comment on that blog - never to visit it again.

3. Here is a solution to discourage these comment spammers: remove the NoFollow tags only if the commenter places more than one comment on your blog. Web sites of drive-by commenters won’t be craweld. The plugin that does this for you is LinkLove WordPress plugin - that has been activated on this blog recently.

(You will have to read the readme file and change one of the settings manually to reduce the minimum number of comments a person has to post to get his websites crawled. The default is 10 - which is way too high. I recommend to change it to 2 or 3. Don’t worry, its very easy to change the default setting by using notepad.)

Credit: Tip via David Airey