ChaseSagum.com » Blogging

7 Visual Tips for Creating a Great Blog Post

Chase — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 20:13:59 +0000

There is much discussed on the web for how to “write” a better blog post. But often times its the visual elements of an article that make a blog post great. I’m sure you have seen examples of these visual elements throughout the Blogosphere, particularly with more popular tech blogs such as SEOMoz, Smashing Magazine, and Mashable just to name a few.

I have 10 specific tips for you to help you increase the visual appeal of your blog posts. Combine that with your stellar writing/blogging skills and you will be crashing your server with traffic in no time. Let’s take a look at these 10 elements:

1. Graphs

Showing off data that helps support the points you are making in your blog posts is one of the great ways to add some cool visual elements and increase the appeal of your posts. SEOmoz has some great examples of how to use charts and graphs within your posts.

2. Video

This one is a little more common amongst bloggers. Embedding video from YouTube, Vimeo etc. within your blog posts related to your content. Obviously creating your own video is better than embedding someone else’s video.

3. Photos and Screenshots

Photos are very common in blog articles. But high quality photos are not nearly as common. Take the time to either purchase stock photography, take your own photos, or get permission to use photos that will increase the visual appeal of your blog article.

Also, depending on the topic of your blog articles taking and using screenshots can be a powerful way of getting your point across to readers.

4. Infographics

Similar to video, it’s better to create your own Infographics than to use others. But either way these infographics do a great job of communicating tons of information in one condensed, great looking area within your blog post. These add a ton of viral ability to your blog posts and help drive much more traffic to them.

5. Diagrams

Another graphical way to express a point in your article. SEOmoz yet again is a great example of how to do this. Using diagrams have always been a form of teaching with visual elements. You don’t see this that often in blogging, but look for this to be a growing trend in blogging.

6. Illustrations

This may take some help from a graphic designer (unless you have illustration skills yourself) to create some graphic illustrations. But as you can see from this example from SEOMoz that it can be a very creative and fun way to communicate your message(s).

7. Great Headlines

Nobody explains better how to improve and perfect your headlines and sub-headlines than Brian Clark @ Copyblogger. The CSS style of your H1, H2 tags etc. play an important role in this. But even more importantly is the skill and precision behind the headlines that you write. Write things that are appealing to your potential readers but don’t over hype what you have.

I would love to see any examples that you have where you have utilized one or more of these visual elements in your blog posts. Use this as a time to share some of your work a.k.a leave some links! Cheers!

5 Things I’ve Learned About Blogging Over the Years

Chase — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:36:49 +0000

I’ve been blogging for more than 5 years now and along the way I have learned many great and powerful lessons about blogging and publishing web content. There are 5 specific things I have learned that I would like to share with you, in hopes that you don’t make the same mistakes I have.

1. The Content Better Be Damn Good!

Its not good enough to just throw up average blog posts on your blog. Each one needs your best effort, even if it takes you longer to put it together. Go the extra mile with your blog posts. Your readers will appreciate your effort and reward you for it by sharing it with their friends. Each one of your blog posts should have 5 attributes:

1. Unique – different from everything else out there
2. Engaging – has the ability to suck people in
3. Convert - can convert readers into specific actions/goals
4. “Bookmarkable” – so good people want to bookmark it and share it with their friends
5. Solves a problem - reach out and help somebody

Notice I didn’t say a post had to be X amount of words long. It could be 500 words or it could be 5,000 words. Doesn’t matter. As long as it has these attributes.

2. Forget About SEO

If each one of your blog posts has these 5 attributes, you don’t need to worry about SEO. Make sure your WordPress blog has the essential plugins in place for SEO, then let your AMAZING content do the rest. Want links? Forget link trading or link baiting. Just write great content and let your content do the link building for you.

That little extra time you would normally spend on “optimizing” your blog posts for search engines, use on perfecting your content. This will pay off tremendously in the long and short run. Your great content will easily automate the tasks for you having to accomplish these things:

3. Blog About Your Passion

Is there money in blogging about celebrity gossip? Sure. But are you passionate about that subject? If not don’t blog about it. It’s that simple.

Look…it’s just easier to blog about something you are passionate about. Why? Because its something you are already thinking about and have been thinking about for years. You can pump out content at a faster rate with more quality because of your passion. And best of all your readers (and potential ones) can see through fake passion. They want to read the blogs of those who really care about the subject.

Want to make money with a website? Build an affiliate site. Don’t mix this “make money online” junk with your blog. Blogging is a different animal that won’t breed success for you unless you keep it unbiased and pure.

4. Work on Your Grammar and Punctuation

Most bloggers are not perfect in this area. But its still good practice to work on improving this area of your blogging. I’m probably the wrong person to preach this since my grammar and punctuation are horrible! But I’m working on it each week and that is the key. Don’t settle for being an average blogger.

Some readers appreciate grammar mistakes because of the blogging authenticity it creates in Independent Journalism. However, there are many readers out there who will simply not read your blog posts if you fail in this area. Sounds funny I know! But that’s just the way some people are.

I have found that the more I work on this area of my blogging the better I become at blogging overall. It helps me better portray the messages that I want to deliver as a blogger.

5. Blog As It Comes To You…Don’t Blog Just to Blog!

Almost every “blog expert” will recommend you blog with some level of consistency. X amount of times per week at X time of the day each day. While this consistency is great for your readers and your blog, it doesn’t always work that way.

There will be days, weeks, even months (rest assured) where you simply won’t have anything to write about. Use this as a time to read, research, and brainstorm. This is not the time to write a new blog post. Use the “Inspiration Factor” when it comes to your blog. Blog when you feel inspired to.

I recommend reading books about various subjects relating to your blog for new blog post ideas. If the ideas don’t come right away, keep reading. Wait for them to come then write them down. A blog post created just because you felt like you had to taints the purpose of your blog, and doesn’t provide any long term benefit.

Last But Not Least Its Okay To Fail!

After doing all of these things right guess what? Some posts just won’t stick! For some reason some blog posts no matter how good you think they are will not make sense to the rest of the world. As a result they will not turn viral on social media sites and Google will not rank it high for any long or short tail search terms.

But you know what? That’s okay! It’s okay to fail. Fail fast as they say. Because it’s those blog post gems that succeed that make blogging all worth it. Good luck blogging. I hope my experiences in blogging over the last 5 years help you out in some way. Cheers!

Google Analytics 101 – The Analytics Guide for Bloggers

Chase — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 06:03:32 +0000

Web Analytics is one of the most important elements of effective blogging. It’s so much more complicated than just looking at how many visits your blog has received today or this month. Google Analytics is the free web analytics platform offered by Google. With it you get instant access to hundreds of different kinds of metrics and information about the visitors to your blog(s). Information that if used correctly, can give you powerful insights .

With Google Analytics being free and available to anyone, we all have powerful data about our websites right at our fingertips at all times. But it’s how we look at and interpret this data that can make or break our online blogging campaigns. Throughout this year I will cover various topics to help you take full advantage of this amazing free analytics tool offered to us all by Google.

4 Things You Probably Didn’t Know GA Could Do

How to access information more easily and how to look at analytics data from a blogging perspective.

1. 8 Google Analytics Reports For Improving SEO

2. Google Analytics Tip: Understanding Your Blog’s Following

3. 5 Custom Google Analytics Reports for Blogs

4. 10 Google Analytics Dashboard Widget Reports for Bloggers

Coming soon = Tracking goals for Bloggers in Google Analytics

Google Analytics Is Simply The Best!

1. 6 Reasons I Prefer Google Analytics Over Omniture

Coming soon = Common misconceptions about Google Analytics - what paid services WANT you to believe.

There Is Much More Content Coming…

Expect to see many more articles being added to this list each week. This is part of an effort that I am making over the course of the rest of this year. If you have any suggestions and/or requests as to what you would like to learn more about with Google Analytics please leave it in the comment thread below. Cheers!

5 Reasons to Delete Outdated Blog Posts

Chase — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 20:05:16 +0000

Sometimes things just need to go in the garbage. Just like the spring cleaning you do around your house or apartment, your blog over time tends to build up more and more excess waste that it really doesn’t need.

Recently I spent some time going through my posts back in 2007 and started to delete some old junk. The “SEO Expert” in you probably thinks it’s crazy to even consider deleting old blog posts. But the blogger in you realizes that for whatever reason blog posts become out-dated and/or irrelevant. Let’s look at the 5 reasons why you may want to go back and delete old, junky blog posts.

1. The “Whoops Did I really Say That” Posts

As bloggers we’ve all said things that we regret. I used to notoriously call out people who I thought were abusing an Open Source license as a form of marketing. Years later my stance hasn’t changed. But my maturity has. Therefore I have found it necessary to go back and delete some of the more aggressive things I have said about people.

2. Shameless Plugs

You what I’m talking about here. Those old endorsement type blog posts that really didn’t give any benefit whatsoever to your reader, but simply gave you a chance to make more money! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing to be able to make money through your blog. But there are better ways to do it. Looking at my old blog posts I have found a dozen or so endorsements that I made that I no longer feel comfortable endorsing.

3. All That Old News

Sometimes news just gets so old it’s worth deleting off your blog. In early 2007 I wrote a blog post about a “new” social Real Estate site called Trulia. That was great at the time. But that’s so outdated and non-relevant to my blog that I have absolutely no need for it.

4. Links That No Longer Exist

The “SEO Expert” in you should scream with joy with this one. Broken links are a bad thing for SEO. But more importantly they are a waste of MySQL database space and helping nobody. If you wrote a review about a specific product/service, and that product/service is no longer in business than why keep the review on your blog?

5. Changed Opinions/ Disassociation

Sometimes your opinions just change. For example, I used to have strong opinions about the Sugar CRM open source community. But over time those opinions have changed. It’s not like reason #1 where It’s something I shouldn’t have said. It’s more that I just have a changed opinion about the subject.

Another example of this has to do with Disassociation with blog posts you have written in the past. Back in 2007 I used to write often about a web development company I worked for at that time. Now that I no longer work for that company, those posts I feel should no longer be associated with me.

Fact: a clean blog is better than a messy one!

Don’t delete the good stuff you have put together. But I challenge you to let everything else go. Hope you find this helpful.

5 Custom Google Analytics Reports for Blogs

Chase — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:12:47 +0000

Are you familiar with the Custom Reports feature in Google Analytics? If you are not here is a great introduction for you to help you understand the perks of it and what you can do with it inside of Google Analytics. If you are familiar with GA Custom Reports, you will know that you can leverage this tool to help better streamline your Analytics reports and further see the things you need to see to improve your sites performance.

There are several things you can use the Custom Reports feature for. This article from the Google Analytics Blog further dives into these uses. In this article I want to walk you through the 5 custom reports I use for this blog and others that I manage, to get data quickly and efficiency as it specifically applies to my blogging efforts. With each report explanation I have included 2-3 screen shots. The first screen shot shows you how I created the report using the GA Custom Reports interface. The 2nd and sometimes 3rd screenshots show you what the actual report looks like in Google Analytics.

1. Best Time to Blog Report

When is the best time for you to actually publish a blog post? There are so many theories and best practices being thrown around but the fact of the matter is that it’s different for every blog. This report shows you what time of the day your blog gets the most visits.

2. New Visitors % by Page Title Report

This report quickly gives you data on two specific things. What posts are generating the most new visitors and what posts are generating the most returning visitors. This data will provide a few important actions for you to take. If a blog post gets a high percentage of new visitors you can ask yourself, “what can I don on this blog post that will help me retain these visitors?” If a blog post gets a high percentage of returning visitors you can ask yourself, “what questions am I not answering that are forcing users to continue to come back to this blog post?”

3. Page Title –> Keyword Report

This report has more to do with convenience than anything. From this report you can quickly view the top visited Blog Posts on your blog and by clicking (drilldown) you can view the top keywords that generated traffic for that post.

4. Best time to Tweet Report

Just like with the best time to blog report mentioned earlier, there are many theories and so called best practices talked about on the web as to when you should “tweet” to generate the most buzz/traffic to your blog. Instead of relying on someone else’s opinion, rely on your own data. This report will help you with that as well as help you learn at what time’s of the day other traffic sources like Digg and Stumbleupon are pushing traffic your way.

5. Landing Page Sources & Keywords Report

This is another Drilldown report created for convenience for bloggers. Landing pages are pages that visitors are first entering to get to your blog. There is a ton of conversion optimization testing that you can do on these pages to test their effectiveness. This report allows you to quickly view your top landing pages, each of their to traffic sources, and each of their top keywords if the source was a search engine.

Some Final Thoughts

The custom reports feature for Google Analytics is one of my favorite features. There are so many things you can do with this little tool and to imagine it’s free is crazy to think of. I hope you find these custom reports useful for you in your blogging efforts. If you have any ideas for custom reports please share them in the comment thread so we can all learn from them.

The 10% Better Content Rule

Chase — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:59:17 +0000

When creating new content for either a blog or an affiliate site of yours, there’s one specific rule that you should strive to live by. That rule is to make the content you create 10% better than anything else that’s currently out there about that subject. Whether or not it actually is better will of course be debatable. But as long as you create something that you can honestly believe is 10% better than you know you have done your best to put together the highest quality and most effective content possible. Let me explain this principle in a little more detail.

The 10% Better Rule is the Key To Online Content Success

So much of what is created online each day is junk. And if we are honest with ourselves we can admit to contributing to this “junk” with the weak content we have put together in the past. I am a huge victim of this. I can’t tell you how much time I have wasted (and the time of those who read my crap content) publishing weak, effortless, non-engaging, non-helpful content on the web.

Not only has this content wasted time for me and for others, but it also produced ZERO results financially and otherwise. The formula is simple. Put together crap content and you can expect crap results. Put together great content, and you can expect great results.

Think of each specific content on the web like as it’s own entity. Something that can constantly evolve over time into something greater. You have a part in that evolution process in improving various subject matters that you are or desire to be an expert in. The better the content for that subject matter becomes, the easier it is for someone new to learn about it!

Why Then Do We Publish “Crap” Content?

The reason probably varies depending on the person. For me it’s been an issue of time and scalability. There’s always a tendency to want to publish high volumes of content. Thinking in terms of “Quantity” not “Quality” leads us to putting together content quickly without much thought and effort.

The problem lies in the concept that if we publish more content, the effects of our content will be greater. This couldn’t be further from the truth. 1 strong article will outperform 1,000 weak articles in so many ways. Focus on the strength of that 1 article you are working on, and let your content do the rest.

Find, Research, Brainstorm, Write

These are the 4 steps I take when applying this 10% better rule. When wanting to write about a particular subject say “Top WordPress Forum Plugins” I search out other articles written on this specific subject and analyze them and pick out those things that make those articles both weak and strong. I then begin doing my research and gathering the information that is going to make my article better.

I will typically spend 20-30 minutes or so brainstorming other thoughts for my article. Then I will write and publish the article to the web. All the while envisioning my new article and how I am making it 10% better than the others I have come across.

I challenge you to try this 10% rule and apply it to your content publishing efforts and see the positive effects that come from it.

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Google Analytics Tip: Understanding Your Blog’s Following

Chase — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:57:11 +0000

Been using Google Analytics a lot lately and thought I would share with you a quick tip on some data I like to look at often for measuring progress on my blogs. As you are aware one of the most important standards we hold ourselves by as Bloggers is that “following” factor. How big is our following?

Traditionally this has been measured by the number of total RSS subscribers we have. While this can be a telling metric, it’s not the only measurement to look at when measuring your Blog’s true following. That’s where the Returning Visitors metric comes into play. It’s easy to analyze this data in Google Analytics. Let me break it down for you.

Segmenting All Visits vs. Returning Visitors

One of my favorite features inside Google Analytics is the quick and easy ability to create segments of your data on the fly. This is important when you want to see metrics based of certain types of data. For example it’s nice to be able to see all your Google Analytics data just from Organic Search Engine Traffic. This is just one example as there are many segments already built into your Google Analytics account.

Here’s what you do. Locate the Advanced Segments dropdown located near the upper right hand corner of your Google Analytics interface. All Visits should already be checkmarked, now add a checkmark to the Returning Visitors option then click the Apply button.

After letting Google Analtyics take a second to think, you are now presented with your main dashboard for Google Analytics only this time there is some new data. First you are given a graph that compares All Visits for a given time period vs. Returning Visitors for that same time period. Here’s what it looks like…

What is this data telling you?

Basically you can see the difference between your overall traffic and your returning visitors. These returning visitors metrics give you an idea of visitor loyalty or in other words because this is a blog we are talking about, your following! You can see from this particular data I am showing you that even though the total unique visitors is around 1,000 per day, my true following is somewhere around the 200 per day mark. Pretty interesting huh? Therefore I am going to assume that my blog’s following is somewhere around the 200 person mark and I am going to make some actionable plans toward increasing that to 250 or 300.

A Few Things You Should Know

First that the data you are comparing is Visits to Visitors. Meaning that the total number on top is All Unique Visits while the Returning Visitors number is reporting Visitors. This is what makes this report so good. You get a direct idea of your true following based on a Visitor level.

Second this is not the only way to measure your blog’s following. Another metric to take into account is your RSS subscriber list. Depending on the nature of your blog, you could have a majority of your followers subscribed via RSS or little to none at all. It all depends on the content and vertical market you are writing in.

Overall I find this to be a great way to get a pulse on the type of following I have. Remember that once you setup this Advanced Segment now you can go through and pull any type of Google Analytics report and it will continue to measure these two segments. So if you want to go to Traffic Sources >> Keywords you can see what keywords your returning visitors are using to re-enter your site. Pretty interesting. For more helpful information on how to take full advantage of the Google Analytics application I highly recommend RSS subscribing to the official Google Analytics Blog.

The State of the Internet 2009 Infograph

Chase — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:12:03 +0000

I love infographs. I love seeing statistics of how much the Web has grown over the years even more. It’s truly incredible to see the advances we have made on the web over the past year. The argument could be made that we have made as much progress this past year 2009 than any other year since the web has exsisted. Bold statement yes! But the facts back it up.

Recently Focus.com created a really cool infograph displaying statistics from 2009 regarding the growth of the web and also social media. Thanks to our friends at Thoughtpick.com we have this large infograph broken down into a few segments so we can discuss each one.

The Basic Statistics: Genger, Age, Income, & Education Level

Not any real big surprises here. Young people use the Internet more than old people. Richer people have more broadband access. And those with a College education level use the web the most.

Home Usage and Desktop vs. Laptop

Interesting to see how much Internet usage has gone up for Home users. Also interesting is the closer margin between Desktop and Laptop internet users. More home internet usage means more opportunity for entertainment and lesiure type websites and applications.

Internet Speed an Issue & Internet Penetration

I was shocked to see the United States Average Broadband Speed in comparison to other top countries. I always knew it was a problem after hearing it discussed from time to time, but I didn’t know there was that big of a discrepancy. The U.S better do something in order to stay relevant on the web. And do it soon!

Social Media and the Blogosphere

Some more interesting stuff here. Blogging apparently is for the middle-aged while the younger generations use strictly Social Media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Does this mean i’m turning old school? According to the statistics it does, and you could be too if you are a blogger like me.

How is The Mobile Web?

With all the new smart phones, iPhones, mobile applications and so forth, how fast is this new world of Internet that we are all using? Funny enough, it seems like Mobile Internet bandwidth could be exceeding home and office bandwidth in the next couple of years in the United States. And that’s not exatterating.

Expect 2010 in all honesty to be even better than 2009. Can’t wait to see what this new year brings us on the web. Hopefully we can all work hard to be a part of it!

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Getting Paid to Tweet!

Chase — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:15:17 +0000

I’m not what you would consider one of those “make money online gurus” by any means. But I do know a good online money making opportunity when I see one. For the past 4 years I have been active in the affiliate marketing and content marketing worlds by focusing on publishing high quality content on the web for subjects I am passionate about. Everything from Affiliate offers from CJ.com and Clickbank.com to good old Google Adsense. They have all worked well and have provided me with an extra income over the past few years that has helped.

But what about getting paid to Tweet? Can this really be done? I had to put it to the test to find out. So I setup two accounts. 1 at SponsoredTweets.com and the other at Be-A-Magpie.com. These were the two that came most recommended to me and I wanted to find out if I could really make money tweeting.

Now i’m not the type of person who likes to boast/reveal what his specific income is online. I will also tell you that what I make online is also not that high. I have a day job for example. That should tell you enough. But my income from Google Adsense is not that bad. It’s nothing worth praising. But it’s also not that bad. And over the last 7 days I have made more money through SponsoredTweets.com and Be-A-Magpie.com than I have through Google Adsense on all of the blogs that I run including this one.

How is this happening? Let me break down a few things.

1. I’ve been Tweeting Actively for the past 5 months

I’ve had my Twitter account for almost 2 years. But I didn’t actively start tweeting until September of 2009. Since then I have made an effort weekly to update my profile with tweets, and communicate with other people that have similar interests as myself. It’s actually been pretty fun! I’ve learned a ton in the process as well as making some great relationships with people I would never had otherwise met.

2. I Built My Followers Up One At a Time

I don’t just have a couple hundred followers. At the time of writing this post I have about 1800 total followers. This is of course helpful because it entices advertisers to want to work with me. The more followers you have, the more advertisers are going to come knocking on your door paying you to Tweet. I’ve also tried my best to create a quality follow list, not just a list of a bunch of spammers.

3. I Refuse To Be Spammy

Advertisers like my Twitter profile because I refuse to spam. There are real people that I follow and real people that follow me in return. I involve myself in real conversations on Twitter, not fake spammy ones. So even though one Twitter account can have tens of thousands of followers, if you can build up just a couple thousand solid followers you will get more offers from Advertisers and thus make more money tweeting.

My Final Thoughts

Can you make thousands of dollars a month Tweeting? Maybe. I couldn’t tell you because I don’t make that much. Can you make hundreds? Yes! And there are many ways you can use those few hundred extra dollars towards your online business. That is why I recommend experimenting with SponsoredTweets.com and Be-A-Magpie.com and see if you can make a couple hundred extra $’s a month with them.

I’d be interested in hearing from you also any ideas you have on earning more money through these ad platforms. Maybe we can help each other?

5 New WordPress Plugins I Am Finding Helpful & You Might Too!

Chase — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 07:56:33 +0000

I’m always looking for new WordPress plug-ins to help improve the functionality and design of my blogs. Call me nerdy, but one of my favorite things to do is search through the endless WordPress Extend repository and look for and test new WordPress plug-ins. After doing this recently I wanted to bring to your attention 5 new plug-ins that I am testing and using. All 5 of these WordPress plug-ins look very promising and I think you will find that at least 1 of these will be very useful to you.

1. Omniture – Site Catalyst WordPress Plugin

The company I work for uses Omniture for all of it’s web analytics so you can see why something like this could be helpful to me. This plugin ties into your Omniture account to help you track certain Blog type data such as page views, comments etc. As this plugin grows and evolves it will eventually help you turn your enterprise blog into more of a ROI machine as you will be better able to track certain metrics through Omniture.

2. Sketch Bookmarks

One of my favorite blogs is SiteSketch101.com. The webmaster for SiteSketch101.com created this plugin where he uses his designed social bookmarks and created a plugin out of them. You are probably already familiar with the Sociable plugin or Share This plugin. This just gives you a more unique style with your bookmark icons to make your blog look a little sharper.

3. Fixed Social Buttons

This plugin for WordPress places social media icons in a fixed position in the top right hand corner of your blog. I’ve actually thought about doing this before but just didn’t want to put together the CSS to make it happen. Guess I’m lazy. But this plugin will do it automatically. What are the benefits of this? If you want your readers to connect with you on other social media outlets such as Facebook or Twitter, this can be a good stylish way of getting their attention and getting them to click on one of your profiles.

4. WP Footer Ad

Many high revenue blogs such as JohnChow.com use fixed ads at the footer of their blog in order to drive attention to the ads and get more purchases/clicks. This plugin helps you easily add a fixed horizontal banner ad at the bottom footer of your blog. This tactic works for some blogs and doesn’t work for others. Depending on your revenue goals with your blog, this could be one tactic worth testing to see what the results are.

5. WP Careers

Ever thought of turning WordPress into a job board of some kind? The developer of the WP Careers plugin has developed it in such a way that you can turn a WordPress install into a full on Job Board System. Applicants can post resumes and search job opportunities while employers can post career positions and search through applicants.

I hope you find these new WordPress Plugins helpful. All of these are pretty new to the WordPress repository as of me writing this blog post.