Last Updated on March 3, 2023
If you ran a blog like it’s a small business, what would change? How would the internal operations look? What happens? Self-publishing is driven by the pure need to communicate; today’s it’s to communicate with a commercial intent, mostly. Assuming it’s the money that you are after, what must be done? What are those things that a blogger should have done but mostly won’t? Here are at least 8 things bloggers don’t do, but they could:
Conduct real-life events, Webinars
Most bloggers get comfortable with putting up a professional image on the blog header, but just as many bloggers run blogs with pseudo names. Why would anyone trust you if they don’t know who you are? How long will they learn completely online? Why not throw up some live, on-location workshops? How about seminars in different locations in the world? What if you could demonstrate your expertise in person? Imagine how that boosts your credibility. That space behind the server is no place to hide. Go out and conduct events, seminars, and even webinars where you are seen and heard, in full view.
Call readers & Show up, in person
Sometimes, you do things just for the sake of meeting people, developing relationships, and getting to know others. When Cody McKibbenof thrillingheroics.com travels abroad, he meets fellow bloggers and entrepreneurs. You can do that and then do more. Why not call up (or email) your subscribers to find out where they are and offer to meet up, in person? Why not go out on multiple coffee dates? Of course, it’ll help if you go with an agenda. Perhaps create a little booklet – a special, printed version of a report and hand it over to them in person. Maybe you can give them an inexpensive gift just because they’ve been reading your blog for a while now.
Use a CRM
You aren’t running a business, so why use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software? Well, a blog is a business. Deploy a CRM of your choice to keep track of every possible contact, company or deal that you will or are likely to get into. It’s called forward thinking. You don’t want to run and maintain a blog for nothing. You’d ideally love to get advertising deals, ghost blogging contracts, book publishing deals, and much more. So, why not plan ahead? By the way, when you use a CRM, you’ll never lose track of your contacts. Try to do that with your excel spreadsheets. CRM helps you run your blog like a business. You’ll never lose sight of important contacts that come about from your own blog’s community. You never know what’s going to happen next, so why leave it to chance?
Write a book
Randy Gage maintains a powerful, inspiring blog. Do you know what adds to his credibility? His books. Jaynie Smith runs a small business-consulting firm, and her books add to her credibility too. Obviously, you are aware of Tim Ferris, his books, and his blog. If you notice, their blogs fuel their book sales, and their books, in turn, fuel visits to their blogs. It’s an eco-system, if you will. What stops you from writing your book? With self-publishing now being the trend, the “I-can’t-find-a-publisher” excuse just died of asphyxiation.
Show up on Interviews
You don’t have to be famous to get on Interviews. None of the folks John Bardos Interviews for his blog are “famous”; they are just traveling while updating their blogs. How does he manage? He reaches out, that’s what. But that’s him reaching out to others. How do you “show up” on others’ interviews? Ask them. Send out emails, approach people who Interview bloggers and entrepreneurs. Just the fact that you reached out on your own is worthy enough of an Interview, just in case you were thinking.
Run a Mini, niche directory on your blog
When Sara Sutton started Flexjobs in 2007, she just started a blog directory of sorts that featured legitimate telecommuting jobs on the Internet. Today, Problogger.net and Bloggingpro.com are not so famous because of their content (which is respectfully still awesome) but it’s because of their “jobs directory” hosted right on these blogs. There are more people looking for things to do than people who have nothing else but read. Take that cue. Start a mini blog directory right away. Lets’ assume you write on a particular aspect of U.S Law, why not start a directory for attorneys to list their services? Do you run a blog on dental information? The mini directory on your blog can feature dentists in your locality.
Start a content mill for Inbound Marketing
See what HubSpot does when it comes to Inbound Marketing? Apart from their blog, which is already very popular, they give out free eBooks each week to their subscribers. They create other forms of content such as presentations that go straight to SlideShare. They are very active on Twitter and they even have community discussions (complete with hashtags) on the topic of Inbound Marketing. Basically, they are busy helping their clients with content marketing while they are busy practicing what they preach. As a blogger, you already have the skill sets needed to become a content mill, by yourself.
Look to create other forms of content. You can curate content, repurpose content in various other forms, and get more leverage out of every word you produce. Are you going to grab any of these ideas for your own blog? If so, what appeals the most to you? What are you going to start with? Do you have any ideas that we missed? Please let us know.
Investing on Mobile Video
If a video isn’t playing on the computer, it’s playing off a mobile device. According to this post from Clickz, addition of video on mobile boosts engagement by at least 35% while spending 20 seconds more on a video ad than normal. About 30% of tablet apps host videos while the number comes down to 12% for smartphone apps. Brad McCarty of ReadWriteWeb writes that nearly 25% of all videos are viewed on a screen that isn’t TV. The average tablet owner watches 36 minutes of video every week and viewership via the phone increased by 35.7% by 2011.
According to DaCast, $16 billion is the expected revenue from mobile video subscription by 2014. Mobile video will generate 66% of mobile data traffic by 2015. Further, mobile video usage will rise at a phenomenal compounded annual growth rate of 28% over the next 5 years. Yet, many bloggers don’t take their blogs to the next level thinking that video is for the big brands. No, it isn’t. In fact, the whole intent of YouTube was to make sure the average, little John Doe can become a video publisher too – all you need is to invest in a camcorder and video editing software (assuming you want to create strictly professional video). Mobile video is where all the action would be. Are you going to be there?
Check out our previous articles:
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- Common Internet Business Terms You Need to Know
- Mobile Survey App for Better Client Interaction
- Techniques and Strategies to Increase Your Profits with LinkedIn
- How to Make Extra Money Using Craigslist
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