Overcoming the Barriers to Guest Blogging

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Guest posting on other blogs can attract more traffic than almost any other technique. Yet very few bloggers actively seek out guest blogging opportunities. Very few bloggers shoot an email to other blogs and send them a guest blog post pitch.

This post aims to break all your barriers to guest blogging. So that you too can start creating your own guest blogging opportunities.

Objection 1: The ____ blog is so popular. I doubt if the author has time to even read my emails. I’m sure he won’t allow me to write for his blog.

I’ll let you in on a secret: most bloggers will allow you guest posting on their blog if you approach them with a unique story or angle. It doesn’t matter how popular they are. Its true that your chances of getting published on their blogs shoots up high if you’ve spent time in building a relationship with the author first though.

The Trick to Getting Your Guest Posts Accepted on Over 90% of the Blogs You Approach

Approach blogs that have already published guest posts by other authors before and your chances of being accepted to write for them will increase tremendously. Because these are the bloggers that already know the benefits of allowing others to write for them (variety for their blog readers, more free time for them), you won’t have to spend time to try and convince them a lot.

The 3 Rules I Follow is:

• Only contact blogs that you like
• First make an effort to build a relationship with the author
• If you don’t have a relationship with the author, only approach blogs that have already published other guest posts before

Objection 2: I just don’t have time to write guest posts for other blogs.

If you don’t have time to write for others, here is the solution for you:

Co-Blogging!

Approach other bloggers and ask them if they would be interested in co-blogging - where you write one guest post for them, and they write one guest post for you.

Objection 3: I want to save the best posts for my blog - so that I attract all the traffic from social media sites and search engines.

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” - Harry S. Truman

Its very short sighted to save the best posts for your blog. Because if you write mediocre guest posts for other blogs, they may not publish it. And even if they do, their readers won’t like it - and won’t come visit your blog. Which is the main purpose of guest blogging.

Only if you blow the readers’ minds away with your guest post will they come and visit your blog. And subscribe to its RSS feed and keep on coming back to it.

Always “Put your best foot forward first.”

Action Summary:

• Start approaching other blogs with guest blogging requests - at least once a week. Make it a part of your strategy.
• Asking other bloggers to co-blog with you is a fantastic idea too - which makes sure you don’t have to write more than you are used to.

Blog Publishing Frequency and Strategy

Instead of publishing one new post every week day on this blog, I’ve shifted gears a bit.A  I’ll only be publishing 3-4 new posts every week.

I won’t be reducing the number of posts I write.A  I’ll just not be publishing them on this blog.A  Instead, I’ll be trying to find other blogs where I can guest post.A  This way, more people will be reading what I write.A  And more people will visit this blog.

From time to time, I’ll also be asking others to write guest posts for this blog.A  So hopefully, the amount of useful content you read on this blog won’t reduce.

Action Summary:

You will do good adapting your publishing strategy too.A  Don’t post everything you write on your blog.A  Instead find other blogs to guest post at.

3 Ways of Differentiating Your Blog

Chelm Justice for Blogging

Eons ago, there was a small town named Chelm somewhere in Europe. To bring order in the city, the people had elected an impartial judge. One day, filled with rage, the town cobbler killed one of his customers.

The cobbler was bought up in front of the judge who sentenced him to die by hanging. This was really bad news for the town. One townsman gained some courage to stand up and speak: “If Your Honor pleases, you have sentenced to death the town cobbler! He’s the only one we’ve got. If you hang him who will mend our shoes?”

a_?Who! Who?a_? cried all the other townsmen in Chelm together.

The judge thought for a while, nodded in agreement and reconsidered his verdict. a_?Good people of Chelm,a_? he said, a_?What you say is true. Since we have only one cobbler it would be a great wrong against the community to let him die. As there are two roofers in the town, let one of them be hanged instead!a_?

Action Summary:

• You have to differentiate your blog from other blogs. If you fail to do that, the public will never let your blog become famous. They will never fight for you. And when the time comes to remove clutter from their blog reading lists, you will be the first one to go. So focus on differentiating your blog.

Painless Differentiation

It doesn’t take a lot to differentiate your blog from the crowd. A little effort can take you a long way. Dennis Rodman differentiated himself from other basketball players by making just one simple change.

For years, Dennis Rodman was a first class basketball player putting up impressive rebounding numbers on the scorecard. But he didn’t receive much publicity and hardly any endorsement contracts. That all changed when he coloured his hair red. By being bold and different, he instantly stood out from the rest of his mates. And made a fortune for himself endorsing products.

Dennis Rodman: Before & After. Black boring hair hid him in the pack. Red exciting hair made him rich and famous!

3 Ways of Differentiating Your Blog

In an effort to prevent this post turning into a book, I’ll keep the bullet points brief. You should focus on just 3 things to differentiate your blog.

1. Blog Design

Your blog design creates your first impression amongst your readers. So if you are really serious about blogging, you shouldn’t go for a ready made theme that 100s of other bloggers are using. But instead, create or hire some one to create your own blog theme.

Step 1: Audit your competitor’s blog. See how their blog theme looks like.

Step 2: Then create a blog theme that looks different than theirs. You can come up with a unique theme by simply focusing on three main elements of your blog:

• Colours
• Layout
• Header/Logo

Eg: North X East blog on blogging has one of the best blog designs I’ve ever seen!

2. Content Chutzpah

Your blog content is divided in two parts. 1: Writing. 2: Supportive audio-visuals and images.

Differentiating your blog simply based on your writing is hard work. But you can do it by finding your own unique voice. Two tips to find your own voice is:

i. Exaggerate. You can only find your voice after you have experienced the extremes. Write a post with lots of adjectives. Write a post with lots of big words. Write a post with very unusual words in it. Try to write a poem. By experiencing these extremes, you will come to know what you are most comfortable with. And will create your own unique writing style. (Don’t publish your exaggerated posts if you don’t feel like it.)

ii. Read and emulate. I used to read the onion and then try to write an article in their style. I used to read Monday Morning Memo’s and immediately write my own blurb using their writing style. By emulating various masters, you’ll find your own voice.

Eg: Bloggrrl has a very unique voice of her own.

It is very hard to differentiate your blog simply based on your writing. But you can easily make use of snazzy audio-visual and images to differentiate your blog.

Eg: Gaping Void differentiated himself because of his cartoon cards

Eg: Kathy Sierra differentiated her blog by making cool use of pictures and graphs

3. Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Of Your Blog

What does your blog offer that no other blog offers?

Pizzas are made and sold since at least a few dozen decades. But Dominos could still sneak upon the market and take a huge pie out of it for themselves because they came up with a USP that no one else did. They offered something that no one else before them had offered: quick delivery.

How can you build up on your blog topic and offer something that no one else offers?

Eg: Chris Garrett has coined a new term “Authority Blogger” and created a USP for himself.

Make Your Blog Famous

In the comments section of this post, write down how you differentiate your blog. What do you do that makes you stand out? It could be based on the 3 differentiation points in the post above. Or it could be some other element that you focus on.

I’ll make a follow up post where I will feature your blog and how it differentiates itself!

The Bikini Concept of Writing

Question: How much should you reveal on your blog?

I remember it vividly. I had written my first ebook and was starting a newsletter. And was worried: how much should I reveal in the newsletter? Will people buy my ebook and consulting services if I give away too many of my secrets in the newsletter?

I asked that question to my friend and mentor Sean D’Souza over phone. And I still remember his answer:

“Give away the ideas. Sell the system.” - Sean D’Souza

And thats what I did. I left nothing back in my newsletter. I deconstructed my ebook into smaller sub-topics. And wrote a case study on one sub-topic in each newsletter issue. People could read the newsletter and apply the lessons right away. But if they wanted to learn the whole step-by-step system, they had to buy.

Recently, Sean D’Souza gave an even better answer to the same question: how much should you reveal to people for free?

“I found out the age-old concept of the bikini to apply. That by giving away 90% of the concept, and keeping 10%, the attraction factor was just as strong, if not twice as strong. And yes, what the bikini didna_Tt reveal, was the part the audience most wanted (naturally), and was the part they were willing to pay for.” - Sean D’Souza

via: Spider Secret

Action Summary:

• Don’t be hesitant in sharing your ideas with your blog readers. The more you share, the more they will buy.
• Do keep an ace up your sleeve for your best clients.
• The 90:10 ratio is a good number. Give away 90% of your secrets. Retain the best 10%.

Negative Writing Triples Your Traffic

Lets talk about the no.1 searched person of all time: Paris Hilton.

1. When Paris Hilton was sentenced to serve 45 days in prison, one of her fans started an online petition to Free Paris Hilton.

2. At the same time, an entrepreneur started a petition website of his own: Jail Paris Hilton.

3. The results? The Jail Paris Hilton petition got more than three times as many names as the Free Paris Hilton petition!

a_?Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rulesa_? - Douglas Adams

One sure fire way of attracting more traffic to your blog is by writing posts with a negative point of view. Open any newspaper and you’ll see that the top headline is almost always negative.

Negativity spreads. How can you use it to win people’s attention and get others to link back to you?

De-construction 1: At the time of writing this, the top 2 headlines on Digg.com are:

i. In case you weren’t really sure AT&T really is spying on you
ii. 6G iPod UI video: Apple’s new interface?…Apple Legal Department Involved!

De-construction 2: My title for the blog post where I review MyBlogLog is “Removing MyBlogLog Increases Adsense Earnings!” If you read the post, you’ll see that there are 3 bullet points both for and against MyBlogLog. But by using a negative title, more people linked to the post and commented on it.

De-construction 3: Read this blog post: The Three Little Blogs: A Cautionary Tale. It was linked by several bloggers within a short span of time. It was one of the hottest blog post of last week. Do you think that that post would have spread like wild fire without the negative slant and linking “big bad blog” to JohnChow.com?

Action Summary:

Try to give a negative angle to your writing whenever you can and more people will talk about your blog posts.

Jack Welch’s Strategy to Blog Reading (The Solution to Information Overload)

Jack Welch: What can he teach you about blog reading and writing?

1.

Jack Welch is the famous Ex-CEO of GE. Under his reign of 20 years, GE went from a $14 billion in 1981 to close to $400 billion! Because of this stellar performance, Jack Welch is known as the “best manager of the century”!

Because of Welch, many management ideas like “Six Sigma” became popular. But one of Welch’s most controversial ideas was the most important pillar in GE’s exponential growth. What was that idea?

Fire The Bottom 10% of Employees

Welch bought about a culture of tracking the performance of all GE employees. And every year, the employees who made the bottom 10% were let go. Very soon, GE was left with the smartest people working for them. After a few sessions of firings, even the bottom 10% of GE was better than the top 10% of other companies!

2.

“As you read, so will you write.”
- Roy H. Williams

Does it surprise you to know that each and every popular writer is an avid reader? From Stephen King to Isaac Asimov to Roy H. Williams - all of them were voracious readers. Read well and you will write well.

But today, most people are overwhelmed with the quantity of reading. People have 200 books in their wishlists. And 150 RSS feeds in their RSS readers.

How To Go From Quantity Reading to Quality Reading?

So what should you do to read less but read well? What can you do to not be overwhelmed by the number of things you have to read? Simple: use Jack Welch’s strategy!

Fire the Bottom 10% of Your RSS Feeds!

Get rid of the bottom 10% of your RSS feeds. Do this every month until you are left with less than 20 feeds! And every time you feel like adding a new RSS feed to your feed reader, make sure you delete one RSS feed before adding a new one.

3.

But What If I Miss the Newest Big Thing?

People fear that getting rid of information equals to them missing important news. But those fears are baseless. Because if something is really news worthy, more than one person will talk about it. And you will hear about it.

Your success doesn’t depend on being the first one to know the news. Instead, it depends on your ability to focus on the quality stuff only.

By restricting your RSS feeds, you not only gain time to do more important things, but you also create a quality filter: only useful things will cross your desk.

A-Pile vs B-Pile of Reading

If you are still hesitant, you can do this: create two accounts with your RSS feed reading website. Save only the best 20 feeds in one account: your A-Pile. And store all the other mediocre ones in the B-Pile. Spend time reading the A-Pile everyday. And spend time on the B-Pile only when you have time.

You’ll soon find that your B-Pile is close to worthless. After some time, you’ll spend less than 60 minutes a week going through your B-Pile - even if it has 150 feeds!

Action Summary:

• Reduce the number of RSS feeds you read everyday. A good manage-able number is to limit them to 20.
• Delete at least 10% of your RSS feeds today. And repeat the deletion every month until you are left with 20.
• Before adding a new RSS feed, delete an old feed! This way, you’ll only add a feed that is of top quality. And your overall quality of reading will improve tremendously!

Review: Made To Stick

Question: How to write crackling blog posts so that your readers will pass it on to their friends and link to it from their blogs?

Years ago, I had read “Psychology of Rumor.” It was written in textbook style: dry and boring to read. But the lessons were very interesting. The book analyzed rumours and came up with a few common factors that most rumours shared. It allowed anyone to reverse engineer their messages to make it as viral as rumours.

But not many people could get past the first 20 pages of the book - let alone finish reading it. zzzzzz… It was an extremely boring book written solely for researchers on redbull.

Yesterday, I finished reading “Made To Stick.” The purpose of this book is quite similar to “Psychology of Rumor.” Two brothers - Chip and Dan Heath - researched what makes ideas stickier. What makes some ideas famous? They came up with 6 common themes that super hit ideas share. These 6 themes allow anyone to reverse engineer their ideas and make them more sticky. More pass-able.

But unlike Psychology or Rumor, Made to Stick won’t put people to sleep. Infact, its one of the most un-boring books I’ve ever read. Its choke full with stories and anecdotes. Very well researched. And lays down the ideas in a supremely systematic manner.

Why Should Bloggers Read Made To Stick?

I would recommend each and every blogger to read Made To Stick. Why? Because the book gives you a checklist that you can use to make your blog posts stickier. Make your readers pass on your posts. Link to it. Bookmark it. Blog about it.

How to Make Your Blog Posts Sticky

The book lays down the SUCCESs formula for making your ideas sticky:

1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Stories

Here is a brief review of the chapters of the book - with blogging applications.

1. Simple. Make your blog posts simple. Just focus on one topic per blog post. And make sure that each of the sentence you write relates back to your core topic.

2. Unexpected. Start off with something very unexpected. Something that

b-r-e-a-k-s
people’s
reading
patterns.

Something that makes people pay attention to your blog post and read it. Some ideas: Post an unusual picture. Start off with an experiment. Involve people with a quiz. Start with a question that your blog post answers.

3. Concrete. Make it easy for people to visualize your ideas and posts. (The exact reason behind calling the PayPal donation plugin - Buy me a beer plugin instead of Donate money plugin.) Use analogies. Parallels. Metaphors. Pictures. Tangible ideas makes it easy for people to understand remember your blog posts.

4. Credible. Make your blog as well as all your posts credible. Give specific details and quote experts to make your post credible. Add testimonials and show the number of people who comment on your blog to make your blog seem credible. Improve your crediblity and people will believe in you - and agree with you more often.

5. Emotional. One of the hardest thing to do is to raise a reaction out of people. One easy trick to touch people’s hearts is writing for one single person. Use a lot of “You” in your blog posts. Use powerful words and phrases instead of weaker overused cliches.

6. Stories. Tell stories and anecdotes to make your point. People will forget theory. But they won’t forget stories that convey the same message as those theories. Stories are a powerful means to make people take action.

Book Score:
Ease of Reading: 9/10
Ideation: 8/10*
Practical Knowledge: 10/10
Worth the Price: 10/10
Overall Score: 9.5/10

* This book doesn’t provide a lot of new ideas.A  But it puts forth the old ideas in a novel and systematic fashion.A 

Usually, I tell people to borrow their books. But this is one book you shouldn’t borrow. But buy. Because you’ll be referring to it again and again. Its one book all writers and blog authors should have in their library.

You can buy the book Made To Stick from Amazon.com

If you have already read the book, do let me know how you liked it.

Listen To Your Core Audience

“Build small community and thousands will want to join.” - Confucius

Successful cult leaders know the secret to growth. Serve a core audience. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. It is ok if some people don’t like you. In fact, it is essential for a few people to hate you if you ever want to become super famous.

(Eg: Would Howard Stern ever become the king of radio if everyone had liked him?)

As your blog grows and you start having more conversations with all sorts of people, it’ll be very tempting to cater to everyone’s needs and wishes. But if you start listening to everyone, you will lose your edge. You’ll go from exciting to dull.

(picture inspired by Kathy Sierra)

How to resist the temptation?

The Secret of Successful Writers

Many successful writers have a secret. They write to an audience of one. They start by writing “Dear Mary” (where Mary is the name of the person they started writing for) and then continue their article or book.

This is a great technique. Because

1. It’ll help in not listening to everyone.

2. It’ll help you keep your writing crisp.

Action Summary:

• Start writing for an audience of one. Start every blog post with “Dear _____” and then edit it out.

Cool Tool: Writing without Distraction

I just came across this cool online tool that allows you to write without distraction. The tool is excellent and if you’re going to be persistent in writing one-post-a-day - it is essential that you remove all excuses and distractions from your schedule. The tool has no bells and whistles. Its just plain green text on black background.

Begin your day by writing a post.

• To get rid of your distractions, set the Writer tool as your home page.
• Let it be the first page you see when you open your browser in the morning.
• Click F11 so that the browser screen becomes full screen.
• Write.
• (Click F11 again to go back to the normal window.)

Link to the online “no-distraction” writing tool: Writer

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In Other News…

Btw, you may have noticed the “Buy Me A Beer” PayPal Donation buttons on this blog. If you have a blog that runs on wordpress, stay tuned. You’ll soon be able to download the plugin that adds those buttons to wordpress blogs automatically. Am just working on taking care of a few kinks right now and writing the documentation for the plugin.

Creating Killer Flagship Content by Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett is a prolific blogger who runs a cool blog for bloggers. His is one blog you should read. Its a good mix of blogging theory and practical ideas.

(Disclosure: I first met Chris in a paid membership forum that we both are part of. And always found his posts and answers on that forum well thought out.)

Anyways, yesterday, I finally got down to reading Chris’s free report “Killer Flagship Content.” Its a short 14 page report that Chris gives away to his blog subscribers. And its a good read. The main theme of his report is:

Why You Should Have a Good
Content Creation Strategy In Place

While most of the report was good stuff, there are two pages on it that are exceptional. And you should download his report for those 2 pages:

1. On page 9, Chris gives us 10 ideas for quick content creation.

2. On page 12, he gives us 10 ideas for promoting a blog’s content.

Both of these pages are gold and make a terrific checklist that you can use if you’re stuck.

Action Summary:

• Visit Chris’s blog and subscribe to his newsletter to receive his free report “Killer Flagship Content“
• Focus on creating flagship content for your blog
• Promote your flagship content