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samedi 12 novembre 2016

10 Ways to Generate Original Blog Content

alt="10 Ways to Generate Original Blog Content" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

Writer’s block is a tricky beast to tame: when it strikes, it’s all we can think about. Yet, the more we think about it, the more it sticks. Different writers have their own tips and techniques for overcoming writer’s block, and no matter how bad it feels, it does end at some point.

This post describes 10 ways of pushing through the idea-less fog, and coming out the other end with inspiration galore.
class="border" alt="Blogging Brainstorming" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/0514-3.jpg" width="750" />

1. Change your routine

A stale routine can lead to a stale mind, which, in turn, can lead to a case of writer’s block. Shake things up a bit by changing your workplace for one day. If you normally work at home using a laptop, try taking your notebook to a cafe instead. Even small shifts, like going for a walk at lunch-time instead of staying at your computer, can make a big difference in your thinking.

2. Ask for guest posts

If you’re stuck for content to write yourself, why not try getting href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/write-for-us/">someone else to write it for you?

If your blog has a large audience, you might find yourself inundated with requests from other people who would like to showcase their work on your website. Even if no one has ever suggested this, try creating an advert for the site saying you accept guest posts and see what comes in. You could even write a blog post about it! Remember that no matter how desperate you might feel about putting content on your website, you want to make sure any guest posts you publish are in line with your blog’s ethos and relevant to its audience.

3. Publish an interview

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6690" alt="broadcasting on radio" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/broadcasting-on-radio.jpg" width="750" height="600" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/broadcasting-on-radio.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/broadcasting-on-radio-300x240.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

If the number of forthcoming guest posts isn’t encouraging, try contacting a leading figure in your field for an interview.

This can be conducted in person, over the phone, or by email, and you can simply transcribe the content into a blog post yourself. Many people are happy to give interviews as it offers them extra exposure, however it might be worth contacting more than one person so that you have back-up posts waiting for use in the future.

For your references, here are some interviews we did here at WHSR – href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/interviews/web-host-interview-qa-with-siteground-ceo-tenko-nikolov/">Tenko Nikolov (SiteGround), href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/interviews/blogger-interview-5-questions-with-mauro-dandrea/">Mauro D’Andrea (Blog Growth), and href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/interviews/blogger-interview-devesh-sharma/">Devesh Sharma (WP Kube).

4. Reviews and case studies

Depending on your field of business, writing a review of a related product, book, event or service, can provide valuable content for readers.

When writing a review, start by thinking what questions you readers might have about the product, event or service. href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-reviews/">Keep the content focused on the product, not on yourself, and try and make your feedback as objective as possible.

5. Collecting others’ posts

Curating other notable blog posts is an easy way of creating new content on a regular basis. Running a weekly round-up of the best content you’ve read over the last seven days provides readers with an insight into what inspires you and your business, as long as the posts are relevant to your website. When writing about other websites’ content, provide a link to the post, and a summary of what it is about, as well as what you thought was interesting.

id="floatright">class="alignright" alt="Blogging Ideas" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/0514-4.jpg" width="260" height="185" />

6. Ask readers what they want to see

If you have a social media presence or an email list, turn writer’s block into an opportunity to find out what your readers want to hear about. Soliciting feedback can be challenging, but some of your readers might jump at the chance to tell you what they think. Their suggestions could provide material for future blog posts, and you could get valuable feedback and what topics they would like to read more about, as well as those they feel might not be so relevant.

7. Think of a problem readers have told you about or you have faced

Personal anecdotes make great blog posts, as people facing a certain problem or obstacles always want to hear that they’re not alone. Writing a more personal post might be challenge, as it can feel quite exposing. If you don’t feel comfortable writing about yourself, think of conversations you’ve had with friends about this certain issue, and keep the people involved anonymous. However you choose to present the issue, the most important thing is that you demonstrate to readers the outcome or solution you reached. Hearing how other people have overcome problems can provide more value for readers in similar situations than you might realize.

8. Write a list

List posts are not only a good way to generate new content, but they are also a very popular format among readers too. Creating a post about “10 Ways to do X” or “5 Best Y” helps you provide valuable, structured content that can make the post easier to write, and to read. This post is an example of a list post, and its sub-headings enable readers to scan the main points of the article without having to take the time to read the whole post.

More examples href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-design/30-latest-css3-tutorials-you-probably-have-not-read-before/">here, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-design/30-latest-css3-tutorials-you-probably-have-not-read-before/">here, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-tools/40-must-see-free-web-design-tools/">here, and href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-design/design-inspiration-30-unique-javascript-website/">here.

9. Brainstorm

Brainstorming might sound obvious – after all, isn’t that what you do every time you think about what to write? Unless you’re writing down every idea for a potential post, no matter how outlandish, controversial or silly it seems, you’re not properly brainstorming, and, consequently, you could miss out on some valuable ideas. When we brainstorm, we set aside our internal censors for a few minutes, letting all our ideas pour out. Once we’ve exhausted our fountain of creative wisdom, then we can start eliminating the ideas that really are too offensive, silly or inappropriate, leaving us with a wealth of ideas for future posts.

10. Journalling

When we sit down to write a blog post, often we find that what comes to mind is anything but the subject at hand. We might think about other tasks we have to do that day, what we want for dinner, an argument we had earlier with our spouse/child/colleague, or last night’s episode of Mad Men. None of these things are necessarily going to help us write our blog post, yet it can be very hard to forget them, and try to focus on relevant topics. Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way”, describes a practice called ‘morning pages’, which can help free up creative blocks. Morning pages consists of sitting down to write three A4 stream-of-consciousness pages each morning before starting work. As the pages are stream-of-consciousness, you don’t censor anything – just like when brainstorming. The idea behind this practice is that it allows you to get most, if not all, of the thoughts swimming around your head onto paper, freeing up space in your mind for you to think more productive, work-focused thoughts.

Page 24 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

4 Ways To Generate Leads With A Premium LinkedIn Profile

alt="4 Ways To Generate Leads With A Premium LinkedIn Profile" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/featured-500x160_c.png" />

In this cold, hard, competitive online world, everyone is looking to generate leads.

And that’s understandable… your business sulks without leads… no sales, no revenue, no nothin’.

Before you even think about possibilities, there’s a lot to do. From identifying your targets, to brainstorming a pitch, to establishing a lead generation timeline based on your resources… hey, if you really want your lead to perform, you need a great game plan.

The reality is – whether you sell DIY tees or copywriting services – you have to generate leads first. How do you accomplish this vital component of boosting your bottom line?

LinkedIn, it turns out, is a happening lead generation tool. While young sellers flock to Facebook, LinkedIn is where you solve the quandary; where introducing a service can be href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/socialmedia-marketing/is-social-media-right-for-your-business/" target="_blank">a little more involved; and where you get recognized by real people.

As the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn provides a great platform for networking with the purpose of generating leads. With over 3.5 million companies and 260 million registered users residing on the network, turning a blind eye to this network is a wasted opportunity and a marketing fail.

I must say – LinkedIn was the only social network that felt unfamiliar and foreign to me for a really long time. However, after experimenting a lot (and I mean a lot!), it become less scary and a lot more exciting.

But as with all those dating websites (curse me, if I am wrong), you don’t get the full scoop until you subscribe for a membership. On LinkedIn, you have to be a Premium member to reap the most benefits when it comes to lead-generation.

Sure you can network, create new opportunities and be successful with a basic LinkedIn profile, but if you really want to leverage the depth of LinkedIn, upgrading to a Premium account is something you may consider.

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Welcome to LinkedIn Premium

Here’s a simple way to look at the Premium account. There are five premium memberships offered by LinkedIn:

Business professionals (business)
Recruiters (enterprise recruiters)
Job seekers (job seeker)
Sales professionals (sales)
Talent Finder (individual recruiters)

For lead-generation, the business & sales professional categories are a good fit. With each membership category there are a different upgrade levels, which let you access more of the features accessible in a LinkedIn Premium profile (the basic difference between upgrade levels is the quantity of features you’re able to access).

What you’re really getting when you sign up for a Premium account is access to a bunch of exclusive features. And the more you upgrade, the more access you get.

That’s just scratching the surface… here are the perks of being a Premium account holder on LinkedIn:

Advanced Search

A free account lets you conduct some basic searches, but a Premium profile takes it up a notch with detailed search queries. For example, you can perform a search that includes Fortune 500 executives interested in the service(s) you sell.

Premium account holders see a gold logo beside these additional search features indicating access. The number of features you can access depends on your membership level.

InMail

Free profiles are extremely limited when it comes to sending messages to people outside your connections. Usually, you need an introduction via a mutual contact, but that all changes with a Premium account where you can send a message to anyone using the InMail feature.

InMail are credits you receive being a premium member that can be applied towards sending messages. A response is guaranteed by LinkedIn, so if you don’t get a response in 7 days, LinkedIn returns your InMail credit. The quantity of InMail credits depends on your Premium account plan.

See Whos’ Viewed Your Profile

This feature displays a list of people who have recently visited your profile. Free members can only see last 5 people who have visited their profile; Premium members can see the full list of people from the past 3 months.

So you’re now able to take a deeper look at those who search for you, view your credentials. This feature also includes a list of keywords that people have used to search when they came across your profile, and the Industry they came from, which could be a great way to fill the lead pipeline (more on that later).

Full Profile View

One of the best perks of being a premium member is that you are able to see full profiles of everyone in your network, including group members and 3rd-degree connections. This feature gives you href="http://premium.linkedin.com/playbook" target="_blank">35x more access to profiles than you’d have with a free account. The latter includes limited access to profile information of distant connections.

The greater quantity of profile information can help you understand the makeup of a lead and his/her interest regardless of whether you do or don’t have mutual contacts, making the Premium profile a valuable tool.

Search Alerts

You can save particular searches and receive alerts for them weekly or monthly. For example, if you want to reach someone who is interesting in content marketing services, you can set that search to alert you once every 7 days with new results.

Alerts are quick and non-invasive and ensure that you don’t waste your time with disconnected results. It’s a great way to follow and message new leads, without making manual search endeavors time and time again.

Generating leads with LinkedIn premium

So how might you use these features to generate new leads, specifically? Here’s a 4-step blueprint for using LinkedIn premium features more effectively to gain new leads:

1. Build a targeted list

For any industry, LinkedIn Premium presents the Advanced Search option that includes several fields such as company size, interested in, groups in common, when joined, seniority level, location, school, past company and keywords. These fields are valuable because they give you the ability to narrow down your leads.

For example, if you are selling content marketing services, you may want to target content marketing managers of Fortune 50 to Fortune 100 companies.

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For the purpose, you would type content marketers in the keyword field, choose Location Anywhere, check 2nd connections, group members and 3rd degree connections, select managers from seniority level, and Fortune 51-100 from the Fortune 1000 section.

From the search listings, you can make a list of leads you want to pitch to. Most profiles will display full information about an individual courtesy of your Premium membership.

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Specifically, Full Profile View will display information that will help you narrow down the list further, such as avoiding prospects who work at companies you’ve had bad experiences with.

2. Set alerts for new leads

Advanced Search under a Premium account allows you to save searches. This feature remembers your search and also sends you weekly or monthly notifications of any new members that became a part of the LinkedIn network for the keywords you searched before.

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These profiles can be scanned from the Saved Search Tab by clicking under New. Premium members can save up to 7 searches and view additional 500 profiles displayed in the search listings. You can include any suitable new leads in your list of potential leads.

3. Search for additional leads

Who’s Viewed Your Profile page is a great source of searching additional leads. This page includes all those people who have recently visited your profile in the last 90 days. From this list, you can find prospects to include in your potential lead list.

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There’s another feature in the Who’s Viewed Your Profile page that augments your effort to cast a wide lead net: Views by Industry. This is a section that will highlight the top industries consisting of individuals who have viewed your profile.

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If more people are coming to your profile from industries you are not selling to, this may indicate an untapped market that you should consider when searching for leads.

4. Reach out directly

Use InMail to directly send a message to your leads in your list and convert them into sales. InMail increases your chances of lead generation success as it has a href="https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140402115947-18431154-the-power-of-personalized-linkedin-messages" target="_blank">higher open rate compared to traditional emails. This improves your ability to reach prospects directly and generate sales for your products and services.

class="alignright wp-image-10553" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/6-750x330.jpg" alt="6" width="400" height="176" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/6-750x330.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/6-300x132.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/6.jpg 924w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" />

Although a 7-day response rate is guaranteed, you would want to follow href="http://www.jillkonrath.com/sales-blog/bid/101478/3-Tips-to-Get-The-Best-Response-From-LinkedIn-Inmail" target="_blank">pitching best practices for best results. Also, study a lead carefully before sending out a message… don’t scare away people by making it clear upfront that you’re selling… engage first, go for the kill later.

LinkedIn returns a credit if the response isn’t received in 7 days, so you can apply that credit to another lead. InMail credits accumulate month to month – if you have 10 inMail credits to begin with, but can only reach out to 5 leads in a particular month – the rest 5 will be added to the next month’s total InMail credits, so you’ll have 15 InMail messages to send the next month.

You’re in the hot seat

Does all of this work? Of course, but with focused efforts.

You’ll only benefit from these Premium features if you put time and effort into exploiting them.

So before you upgrade (putting the experimental nature of Michael Dell aside if you’re on a budget), ask yourself – have you been making good use of LinkedIn’s free features?

You can explore LinkedIn Premium from href="http://premium.linkedin.com/" target="_blank">this link.

Feel free to leave comments, ask questions, or suggest anything that knocks your head.

Page 12 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed