5 Easy Steps to Get 10,000 Followers

alt="5 Easy Steps to Get 10,000 Followers" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/addthisPlugin-500x435_c.jpg" />

As a long time blogger, I know that it can be a challenge for new bloggers to grow their blogs.  If you are running a blog and trying to figure out how to drive your social media traffic, here is a step-by-step guide on how to get started:

Step One:  Define your niche.

Try to refine your niche to be tightly defined.  Larger niches are ok, but it will be hard to compete if your topic is fashion or sports.  Find that unique angle that will make you stand out, even if it’s your voice.

Next, research the best keywords that describe your niche.  Armed with this list, you can start building your social media presence.  If your niche is more spread out, that’s fine – you’ll be casting a wider net, but you’ll also be thinking of the best subcategories for your niche as well.  These words will likely form the basis of your search optimization efforts, but for our purposes, this research will help you target your social media audience.  That means, rather than paring down the list to best words possible, grow the list to anything that can cover your topic.

Step Two:  Select the social media venues that best fits you.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-848 border" alt="Social Media Demographics" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0423-1.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0423-1.jpg 615w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0423-1-274x300.jpg 274w" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" />

Right now, there are a number of great social media sites you should be engaging on, but not every one of them is the best fit for your blog.  Here is a run down of the most popular social media sites as of now, but keep in mind new ones are cropping up every day:

1. Pinterest.  This is actually one of the fastest growing and, href="http://www.copyblogger.com/pinterest-2013/#more-33129">according to social media analytics firm Simply Measured, it is driving more traffic to websites than Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ or YouTube.  This is one exception to my rule: you need to be on Pinterest.
2. Facebook.  The network that inspired a movie is still useful for joining groups around a centered niche topic.  If you can find one that fits your location or niche, they are well worth the time and effort.  Many of these group’s members help each other by participating on each other’s blogs and following each other on social media, and the best ones will provide tips, resources, advice, and opportunities for bloggers.  Since it’s so easy to get distracted on Facebook, you may want to schedule a limited amount of time per day to engage on Twitter strictly for marketing.
3. Twitter.  At 140 characters, or 117 if you include a link, the conversation on Twitter is succinct – and it moves rapidly.  If you can keep up and enjoy chatting with strangers, Twitter may be for you.
4. Google+.  Many people prefer Facebook to this one, but never underestimate G+’s influence on SEO.  A few months back, I plussed a post about gluten-free living and afterward, and I was search result #4 on Google for “gluten free” for a number of months.
5. LinkedIn:  This network, once predominantly for professionals and job seekers, is now becoming more popular with bloggers.  It’s worth your while to connect there, as everyone from former employers to current friends can quickly and easily endorse you for skills you’d like to promote as well as connect you to the movers and shakers in your niche.
6. Tumblr: This microblogging platform allows you to share data quickly and easily with others.  Great for rapidly spreading a meme about current events.
7. Instagram: This app organizes and promotes images you snap with your phone or iPad and shares them across your networks easily.  A must-have for on-the-go bloggers.

href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/tweetdeck.jpg">class="alignright size-full wp-image-773 border" alt="tweetdeck" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/tweetdeck.jpg" width="300" height="238" />In choosing an outlet, it’s worthwhile to spend time learning href="http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-user-demographics_b38095">who uses which platform.  Once you’ve selected which social media outlets you want to target, decide how much time you want to dedicate to promoting yourself on each one and when.  href="http://mashable.com/2012/05/09/best-time-to-post-on-facebook/">According to Mashable, each social media outlet has its own set of “best times” to share.

Finally, find apps  and plugins that will help you optimize your social media experience.  TweetDeck helps you organize your hashtags and tweets, and HootSuite will keep all your social media outlets organized, allowing you to do things like schedule updates.

Step Three: Build your audience.

Now you’ll need those keywords to start building followers.  Start following everyone who has those keywords in their name.  Google them, and follow the sites that come up.  Next, think of brands and products that speak to your niche and follow them online.  You may also want to sign up for their newsletters, as well as attend online events, such as Twitter parties or webinars, that they host. (Note: I’d avoid a Twitter party with a high dollar value prize.  This makes it difficult to engage with anyone, since there will be hundreds of people attending to try to win.)

Finally, check for hashtags with your keywords.  You’ll need to follow them regularly on Twitter (this is where TweetDeck comes in handy), and you can check them on Pinterest.

Step Four:  Promote yourself.

1. Make sure your social media is available on every blog post.  Look for social media plugins easily integrate with your website, like Sociable or Shareaholic.  In addition, download a plugin that will allow visitors to pin your blog images to Pinterest.  href="http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2012/02/22/25-social-media-plugins-wordpress/">Check out Smashing Magazines’ list of 25 plugin resources for WordPress.
2. For Pinterest, make sure your images are pin-worthy.  Use a graphics program such aslike PicMonkey to create border, use an eye-catching font for the title, and put your blog name on your photo for additional exposure.  While you can and should pin your own content, get out there and pin others, and comment on pins of people you don’t follow.  (You can use hashtags here.)  Read “href="http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/pinterest-pictures-for-your-business/">5 Ways to Create Highly Shareable Pinterest Pictures for Your Business” at Social Media Examiner for even more great tips.
3. Network like crazy.  Blogger conferences and conferences in your niche help are usually worth every penny for the contacts you’ll be meeting as well as great learning provided.  I’ve landed some great paying gigs at BlogHer conferences.  You should also attend events hosted by brands or look for local blogger groups or groups that are in your niche, to help you connect and find out what other events – such as invitation only functions – you can attend to network.   Also, there are plenty of networks that seek out blogger content.  One of my groups, the SITS Girls, regularly seeks out posts published on external blogs and draws huge audiences.
4. href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/featured-articles/building-a-tribe-around-your-art-one-lovely-person-at-a-time/">Find your tribe.  One of your best bets is to connect with a group of bloggers that have something in common.  For example, I work with a Facebook group of moms involved in social media in Philly.  Since we have all  of those things in common, it’s easy to find bloggers interested in my particular niche who are willing to comment and share, and I’ve had lots of private event invitations.
5. Put a hyperlink to your site and a brief descriptive tag line in your email signature.
6. Go to great blogs that are in your niche and start commenting regularly.  You want to engage in discussion, so don’t just go and write a brief, “great post!”  Pay attention to the content and sentiment of the blog post and share your opinion (agree or disagree), your experiences with the topic, and questions for the poster.  If you can, add your blog link.

Step Five: Create great content.

Now that you are on your way to building your audience, start writing valuable posts that will draw discussion.  That means not only writing about great topics but crafting enticing headlines.  (Check out Jerry’s title="How to write killer headlines" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/headlines-writing-guides/">headline writing guides and href="http://headlinehacks.com/" target="_blank">Headline Hacks for great tips.)  Write about trending topics in today’s news.  Curate content from other websites, drawing lists of (“Top 25 Plugins”).  Be controversial, if you have a thick skin.  Make a how-to post with detailed images or share how you solved a particularly tricky problem that you couldn’t find Googling.  Give away something great, like a free report on brands your audience uses.  Post deals or reviews your audience will appreciate.  You can set up days of the week you’d like to post a certain topic (i.e., Friday is for book reviews) and keep up-to-date by scheduling regular postings using a plugin like href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/editorial-calendar/">Editorial Calendar.

Make sure you live where your audience lives, whether that’s on Facebook groups, user forums, conferences, websites, news outlets – anywhere you can hear their comments and question and see the information that is driving them towards dialogue, and create your content around that.  Write to those questions.

Your dedication to your topic and keeping your audience informed about it should be your top goals, and working hard at these 5 steps will drive help drive traffic and build your audience.

Mixer photo created by href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/techcocktail/">TechCocktail.

Page 21 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Simple Steps to Get Ahead of Your Competition Using Social Media Marketing

alt="Simple Steps to Get Ahead of Your Competition Using Social Media Marketing" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/social-media-marketing-500x486_c.jpg" />

dir="ltr">The significance of online communities and social media for businesses can only grow and develop with time. Currently, online communities serve many purposes, from social media marketing to online reputation management. The only problem with the entire notion of social media marketing is the difficulty to measure the tangible ROI.

dir="ltr">However, this difficulty should not be an impediment for companies to use the potential of social media to the fullest, simply because the value that the online communities provide is not measured only in direct income from social media marketing, but in the direct communication with the costumers, which allows the companies to work on the flaws of their campaigns way before it all blows up in their faces.

Where to begin building?

You are definitely in href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/featured-articles/building-a-tribe-around-your-art-one-lovely-person-at-a-time/">need of a strong online community which will support your brand and share your values.

But where on Earth do you begin?

The answer is quite simple – start where your audience is. Now, finding your audience can be tricky. With so many social networks, forums and blogs, it is difficult to differentiate between what is truly important and what is a pure waste of time.

Before you begin, you will need to ask yourself, or your client, several questions which sound easy enough, but can prove to be a bit tricky once you dive into them. Taking one step at a time is the best solution for everything that seems hard. Rinse and repeat. The questions you need to get answered can be formulated in the following way:

• What is it that separates your business from the sea of similar enterprises?
• What is unique in your offer?
• Why is your business significant to your clients or customers?
• What is it that will make your business stand out?
• What type of relationship do your customers/clients expect from you?
• Who are your partners?
• Who are your competitors?
• Who do you respect in the industry?

dir="ltr">Finding answers to these questions will help you get a clearer picture of the online presence you need and of the type of community you want to build.

dir="ltr">The next thing you need to do is to find out what your typical customer/client is like, e.g. create a customer persona.

• What age group they belong to?
• What is their gender?
• What is their social/educational background?
• Is any occupation typically associated with your clients?
• What do they need?
• What do they expect from you?

dir="ltr">Once you answer all these questions, it is time to start digging.

Setting up the Community Pillars

dir="ltr">Choosing the networks where you will start your communities is often tricky business, first of all because your business is often associated with several customer personas which are typically scattered across different networks and are members of more than one network. Basically, if your business is not associated with some highly specific demographic group, you should go for the most popular networks which are suited to the type of content you are planning to provide.

dir="ltr">My personal favorites are Google Plus and Pinterest, as highly visually stimulating networks, with Google Plus enabling me to include loads of different stuff, including text.

dir="ltr">However, going for Facebook and Twitter is absolutely fine if you think they are better suited for your needs. Whichever networks you choose, there are resources you can use to make your search easier and less time-consuming. style="line-height: 1.5em;">For example:

href="www.followerwonk.com">Followerwonk.com

dir="ltr">Followerwonk is a really useful tool you can use for many things, including a certain degree of analytics. More about the Followerwonk options can be found on the website itself, and we will deal in more detail with the section which enables you to locate the potential members of your Twitter community.

dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/followerwonk.jpg">class="aligncenter wp-image-919" alt="followerwonk" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/followerwonk.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/followerwonk.jpg 958w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/followerwonk-300x189.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/followerwonk-750x473.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 958px) 100vw, 958px" />

dir="ltr">In the Search Twitter bios tab, you will find a field in which you are supposed to type in a search criterion. Mine was “writers”. The next step was to expand my options, and I typed in California in the extended search options. You can also include the number of followers, the number of people the person is following or the number of tweets as criteria. Once you choose all that, you get a list that you can then dissect according to what you need.

href="www.findpeopleonplus.com">Findpeopleonplus.com

dir="ltr">This is a tool for finding people on Google Plus, through the community itself provides plethora of useful resources, shares circles, etc. and all you need to do is follow several prominent members of the community. For the beginning of your community building efforts, you can use this website to find people relevant for your business, as well as several providers of great resources on Google Plus.

dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/findpeopleonplus.jpg">class="aligncenter wp-image-920" alt="findpeopleonplus" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/findpeopleonplus.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/findpeopleonplus.jpg 895w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/findpeopleonplus-300x205.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/findpeopleonplus-750x514.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 895px) 100vw, 895px" />

dir="ltr">This website works in a similar way as Followerwonk, but the options are different, of course. On Findpeopleonplus, you have more options which are already provided, so it is a bit easier to browse, and you can still type in any search criterion you want. These tools are something you can really have fun with, while making different cross sections.

Pinterest boards

dir="ltr">Pinterest boards are what you need to get started on Pinterest. They are thematically organized and usually thematically named, and you can follow a single board. So, first you create boards related to your business and then you start pinning and following other boards.

dir="ltr">You need to develop a strategy, but you do not need any additional web directories of Pinterest members, you just use the names of the boards to find those who pins things similar to yours and who would be interested in your business.

Community is Growing, Now What?

dir="ltr">Now you need to take a deep breath and start sorting out and filtering. Some things you simply need to do manually, and it would be great if you could use an Excel sheet to collect information, but you can start building a community right away if you so wish and deem desirable. The most important thing to keep in mind is that it is not only the quantity that matters, but the quality as well. You need to find the right balance.

dir="ltr">Things that you would want to consider are some of the following:

• Frequency of activity
• Volume of activity
• Quality
• Relevance
• Following and followers numbers and ratio

dir="ltr">Bottom line, you should aim for a healthy mix of small and big things, guys who will follow you back and notice the content you are posting, but also those who have a lot of followers and who are influential in your industry, because once they notice that you are interacting with their content and providing value they might become a valuable asset.

Relationship Marketing 101

dir="ltr">Relationship marketing is different from content marketing in the respect that in relationship marketing interacting with people, being positive, helpful and responsive builds your community and rewards your marketing efforts with a good word-of-mouth, whereas with content marketing it is all about the content you share and the way you share it.

dir="ltr">Your online community created using relationship marketing will be a great asset for your reputation management, among other things, and it will provide you with feedback of utmost value.

Benefits of Loyal Online Community

dir="ltr">Your online community can be of great help if your company starts being bullied by another company or you start having problems with spam reviews aimed at weakening your business position. There are certain things you need to keep in mind and proper ways to behave in such situations, but remaining calm and respectful and keeping your community posted, as well as calmly explaining your position can restore the trust potentially damaged by the competition’s negative campaign against you.

dir="ltr">It is way easier to manage the situation if you have a large online community with which you have built a firm relationship based on trust.

Mixing Things up for Best Results

This is just the beginning of your social media campaign, which will have to include relevant and curated content at one point, and it will probably become a necessity to hire someone to help you. The best option would be to hire an agency, because there is also on-page and off-page SEO to be done, as well as different SEM campaigns to be carried out, and it is a lot of work for just one person.

However, if you feel confident enough you can make an in-house team, and you can venture into creating and carrying out your own strategy, and if you follow guidelines of experts, you have a fair chance at success.

Page 20 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

S.O.S. Dead Blog! How To Resurrect Your Blog In 10 Easy Steps

alt="S.O.S. Dead Blog! How To Resurrect Your Blog In 10 Easy Steps" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/1397711757_51c6c4dbc4-500x673_c.jpg" />

class="alignright" title="Lifeline" alt="Lifeline" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2651/4138914270_7100ccfa4b.jpg" width="300" height="268" />

Your abandoned blog is now it’s the hands of spammers, crackers and all sorts of ‘nice’ Internet folks. It’s tough to fight the urge to pull your hair off and scream at yourself for letting your hard work rot that miserable way. I know how it goes because I’ve been through all of this — it makes you hopeless and ready to throw in the towel.

But Is it really the end of it? Has time come to throw everything away and start fresh?

I’d say– NO. Recall href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology)" target="_blank">the story of the phoenix, a mythical bird that came back to life from its own ashes, more beautiful than it was ever before.

This is no time to get ready for a funeral. This is time to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

I’ll show you how in 10 easy steps that I’ve made myself to recover my long-forgotten blogs. :)

Step #1 – Clean Up The Messes

The first thing you do when you buy a second-market car is– to clean it up and repair all that needs to be repaired. At this point in time you should really focus on getting rid of all the spam, then update your CMS and lastly fix anything that may be broken – links, pages, plugins, images, etc.

I know some bloggers might tell you to update your CMS as a first thing, then update your plugins and only then clean up the spam. But I would advise against that: usually spam overloads your database and slows down the server, and upgrading and updating are such delicate tasks that you can’t afford the risk of file corruption, memory exhaustion and any kind of PHP error out there that screw up your already tough work.

Do the chores first— then you can upgrade your environment!

Step #2 – Check The Rankings

Check them all, but pay special attention to your position in the SERPs across multiple search engines. The world of web search likes fresh content and websites that receive constant traffic and mentions, so your blog might have retrograded in the SERPs since the date it was last active.

Use Alexa.com to see how much traffic is coming in. If you have analytics installed you can monitor the trends for a selected date range. You can do this with href="http://piwik.org/" target="_blank">Piwik, href="http://www.openwebanalytics.com/" target="_blank">OWA and Google Analytics. Other (free) tools that save you time and energies are href="http://www.woorank.com/" target="_blank">Woorank’s website analyzer (Lite), Bing’s Webmaster Tools and href="http://http://openseo.apphb.com/" target="_blank">Open Source SEO Tool at AppHarbor.

Why care about the rankings?

You have to make sure your blog still gets found by users. They might just be zap visits (bouncers), but they are still people who think your blog can be interesting enough to pay it at least a short visit.

Ranking assessment tells you a lot on the health of your abandoned blog and how much work you will need to bring it back to its old glory. Don’t skip this step.

Step #3 – Lay Out A Recovery Strategy

Not just for the rankings, but for the blog itself. Sorry for pointing that out, but I’ve seen bloggers focusing more on rankings than on the blog they run and that’s— well, not a healthy choice if you want your blog to shine again.

Here are three tips I used to recover my blogs:

1. Recover comments and get in touch – Find old comments and approve anything legit in your spam queue, then get in touch with the webmasters. They’ll see that you are alive and receptive and they will come back on visit. This is a chance to loyalize new readers!

2. Network with old readers – Bring back to their old interest in your blog. This might take some time and more contacts, but it’s surefire way to get your old readership back and earn more readers through word of mouth.

3. Email your contacts – Maybe in the past you have engaged in conversations with your readers or friends you made online through your blogs and the media associated with it. Go grab those addresses and shoot them an email asking how they’ve been and letting them know your blog is back to life! Some addresses may no longer work, some contacts may not reply at all, but you’re going to get some feedback anyway.

Douglas Karr’s has some pretty interesting and helpful tips to share on href="http://www.marketingtechblog.com/6-ways-to-resurrect-old-content/" target="_blank">his post at MarketingTechBlog.com, too.

Your recovery strategy shouldn’t be only about your content, though. Make some room for your blog’s design, old contacts and SEO results. More about these other factors in the next Steps.

Step #4 – New Design

Hire a web designer or make the template yourself, but make sure you get rid of the old theme, as it might have been associated to the abandonment of your blog. This is a natural psychological reaction to habit and it takes place when users repeatedly see the same design until it becomes one thing with your blog. A new design ‘wakes up’ your reader’s attention and helps them see more and better in your content, but you can help them connect better if you apply the principles of the href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/05/the-psychology-of-web-design/" target="_blank">psychology of web design and add focus and reading patterns to impacting colors and user surveys.

In any way, having a new design warns Internet users that your blog is living a new life and that you care about user experience.

Step #5 – Content Audit

Check your content and see if you can improve it. Don’t make the mistake of deleting everything and starting over: your old content is part of your blog’s history and there might still be readers that lookout for it. If you didn’t skip Step #2, you know which old posts are still href="http://moz.com/blog/how-search-volume-affects-brand-links" target="_blank">getting traffic, mentions and backlinks, so don’t remove them or you’ll end up with frustrated users that won’t come back and a lot of 404 errors.

Don’t remove your old content — update it! Add new links and resources if it helps ranking it better and attract new readers. There are a lot of techniques to bring your old posts back to golden age, from re-sharing them on Twitter and Facebook to linking them in your guest posts. Also, make sure you href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/wordpress-blog/how-to-backup-your-wordpress-blog-easily/">backup your blog regularly to avoid losing your content to server errors, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/the-pitfalls-of-hacking-and-spam-7-ways-to-protect-your-blog/">hackers and any kind of dangers.

Step #6 – New Content

It’s obvious that in order to revive your blog, you have to update it. Write new fresh content, engage with your readers as soon as they peep in, comment or subscribe to your newsletter. You can even href="http://www.seosmarty.com/how-to-re-package-your-best-content-for-more-exposure-and-links/" target="_blank">repackage your old posts as a PDF e-book or a presentation with a commentary of your newest tips on the topic.

Another strategy you can use is to accept guest posts every month. You will get more readers from the guest writer’s pool of visitors, while you get the writer more traffic from yours. Guest posts provide your readers with different viewpoints and expertise that will keep them engaged and coming back for more.

Show people and search engines that your blog is alive and kicking!

Step #7 – Social Media Activity

Create href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/wordpress-blog/30-free-social-media-plugins-for-your-wordpress-blog/">social media accounts for your blog and start promoting, but don’t stop to that. You know, social media users don’t like sales pitches and they might just ignore your efforts. Instead, focus your posts on their needs:

• Tell them you’re back to work and ask what new stuff they want to see in your blog.
• Add free tips with every promotional message you post — be it a couple of tips right there on Facebook or Twitter, a link to an external (helpful) resource in your niche and a few questions to trigger followers’ feedback and get them engaged.

Make your posts useful to people looking for an answer. On social media like on web search, users seek solutions to their specific needs. Make your blog that solution, whether it’s through your old (revised) content or your new posts. That will also increase your linkability rate, which brings us to the next Step.

class="aligncenter" title="Jump on the social media bandwagon" alt="Jump on the social media bandwagon" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3285/2945559128_53078d246b.jpg" width="750" height="628" />

Step #8 – Monitor Your Results

It might get rough at first, as the blog regains its popularity slowly over time, but href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/12-tips-to-improve-your-website-conversion-rate-instantly/">monitoring your traffic and conversions weekly is crucial to keep track of the ‘resurrection’ process and to assess your strategy.

Traffic and engagement cannot be recovered overnight. It takes time and work on your part to make it work. href="http://diythemes.com/thesis/how-to-increase-blog-conversion-rates/" target="_blank">Derek Halpern at DYThemes suggests you improve your blog conversion rate via opt-in forms, resource pages (or posts with useful article round-ups) and reduce “clutter”. Use a clean layout, keep your blog posts to-the-point and your blog earns plus points in reduced bounce rate and return visitors.

Sometimes improving your results takes the development of a new product or service or entertaining feature to attract new readers beside your old referrals. More about it in the next Step.

Step #9 – Make It Special!

Offer a freebie or a service free of charge. It will be an asset for your blog and will make it stand out. Differentiating yourself from the crowd is perhaps the hardest task for a blogger, but it can be done provided that you keep working at the best of your possibilities. Slowly, the efforts will pay off.

A few ideas

• Develop one topic you write about often into an e-book you can distribute for free on your blog.
• Setup a monthly contest and invite your readers to participate. You can get creative with prizes and you can take advantage of social media for word of mouth.
• Create an e-newsletter to provide your readers with extra valuable content and involve them in any interactions you think will engage and loyalize them.
• Create a free e-course via email or web-based with a forum where students can interact.

This content has the potential to go viral and get you hundreds of backlinks, too. Don’t underestimate the power of special treats– readers are known to love being spoiled. ;)

Step #10 – Keep It Alive

Don’t let it die again! Keep vigilant over your blog, set up your calendar to make some time for it during the week. If you use WordPress, you can even install href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/editorial-calendar/" target="_blank">Editorial Calendar or a similar plugin to write and schedule your posts so that you can cover the month homogeneously.

Recoveries are hard work, but keeping your blog healthy requires constant attention and dedication. The danger of leaving your blog behind at certain times may be high, procrastination may hit your board and writer’s block get in the way. Don’t let these issues put your blog in a grave again. If you set realistic goals instead of overdoing yourself and cannibalizing your time with too many tasks, you’ll find out that it’s doable and that you can actually keep your blog alive by scheduling weekly small, easy tasks.

I did it with my blogs. Now your turn. :)

Images credits: href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/55497864@N00/4138914270/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">brett jordan & href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/73532212@N00/2945559128/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Matt Hamm

Page 16 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

6 Steps to Begin Collaborative Marketing Ventures

alt="6 Steps to Begin Collaborative Marketing Ventures" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/shaking-hands-500x331_c.jpg" />

According to href="http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Digital-Account-One-Five-Ad-Dollars/1009592" target="_blank">eMarketer, in 2012, online advertising hit and surpassed the 0 billion mark. Online ads are expected to account for “one-quarter of all ad spending by 2016”. As most small business owners know, there is never enough money in the budget for advertising and advertising is expensive. Enter collaborative marketing ventures.

When companies come together with a common audience, or goal, or a common mission or interest, they can band together in any number of ways to create an influence and a presence that is greater than the sum of its parts. Internet exposure for the joint endeavor can create leverage that leads to higher Google rankings and stronger SEO for all of the companies involved. Businesses don’t even need a common audience to benefit from collaborative marketing, though it is particularly beneficial when they do. – David K. Williams, href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkwilliams/2013/06/18/collaborative-marketing-is-the-next-big-thing/" target="_blank">Forbes

What Is Collaborative Marketing?

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-8244" alt="Collaborative Marketing" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/brain_collaboration.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/brain_collaboration.jpg 580w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/brain_collaboration-300x150.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px" />

Collaborative marketing is quite simply teaming up with like-minded individuals and pooling financial and time resources to create more buzz and interest than you could likely generate on your own. Some collaborative marketing ventures are a one-time event and other ventures are like-minded companies teaming up for a long period of time.

Christian Flea over at href="http://www.successfuloffice.com/Why-You-Should-Be-Using-Collaboration-Marketing.htm" target="_blank">Successful Office also describes these collaborations as Strategic Alliances (SA). The concept of an SA works well for newer business owners in particular. Let’s say you just started an online company selling software that helps people organize their closets. You have checked out the competition and you know what they are selling their software for and why your software not only works better but is a better value. However, you have no idea how you will reach people to actually sell this software when your advertising budget is very limited.

In an SA, you would contact several website owners that have complimentary business that are not in competition with you. Let’s say you’ve networked locally and met a man who owns a website that sells specialty clothes hangers. You also have networked on social media and made connections with a woman who runs a housekeeping tips blog and a couple who offer seminars on getting rid of the clutter in your life.

Your next step is to contact these people and ask them if they would be willing to introduce your new software to their customers. You may even want to provide them with a letter to send out. In exchange, once your business is up and running and your newsletter is in full force, you will send out a similar letter for each of them telling your customers about their wonderful product or service.

This type of alliance works because the other company already has clients who trust it and your product compliments what they do, so the clients will be interested. It is very targeted, free advertising for your business.

My Early Experiments with Collaborative Ventures

Back in 1997, I branched out from my other writing and started a website geared for novelists called href="http://wordmuseum.com" target="_blank">Word Museum. The site was aimed at writers who weren’t New York Times bestsellers, so were on a budget, but still wanted to promote their novels. The concept of the site was to pool our financial resources and gain exposure for everyone involved in the site.

href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/5-ways-to-begin-collaborative-marketing-ventures/attachment/word-museum/" rel="attachment wp-att-8028">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8028" alt="word museum" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/word-museum.png" width="750" height="261" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/word-museum.png 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/word-museum-300x104.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

Over the years, I’ve branched out into collaborative marketing for other business ventures, but through each campaign or strategic alliance, I have learned new things about collaborations. Here are the main things I’ve learned in the last 17 years that may help you should you decide to try a marketing collaboration:

• Put the agreement in writing and be detailed. If the agreement for the collaboration is in writing, then there is no confusion about which roles each person will play in the project or what exactly any pooled resources will be used for.
• Make sure everyone gets an equal voice. If you are collaborating with more than one person to create a series of ads for an event, then make sure everyone gets equal space or exposure in the advertising.
• By the same token, make sure everyone puts in equal funds and/or time. For example, I created one collaboration for some local businesses that involved an online scavenger hunt. Because the other businesses did not have the technical savvy to put this event together, we agreed that they would put in funds for the ads but I would not since I would be devoting all the time to creating the project.
• Have a backup plan. Things will go wrong. Ads won’t go up on time. Someone will back out at the last minute or be unhappy with some portion of the campaign. Have a backup plan and know which ads you’ll cut if people back out and don’t pay their portion, etc.
• Create landing pages. Each business should have a landing page for the ad campaign so that you can track how successful different ads are. If you plan to repeat the collaborations in the future, you’ll want to tweak each campaign to get rid of ads that aren’t working and add new ones that might gain you more exposure as a group.
• Continue your individual promotions. Although group collaborations and strategic alliances are a great way to reach new customers and very cost effective, you also want to continue your other marketing efforts to reach customers as an individual business. Remember, that small things that don’t cost money can make a big difference, such as href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/using-wikipedia-to-increase-brand-recognition-and-legitimize-your-business/">getting involved on Wikipedia or href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/how-to-drive-massive-traffic-to-your-blog-via-guest-blogging/">guest blogging.

Christina Richardson, a business marketing specialist, wrote on href="http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/marketing-strategy/the-spirit-of-sharing-why-it-pays-to-make-friends-with-other-businesses" target="_blank">Marketing Donut:

Brands are beginning to think more creatively when it comes to finding new customers. There are brands out there that already have a huge number of the people you may want to reach — not competing brands of course, but ones that you can collaborate with. The likelihood is if you want to talk to their customers, they’ll probably want to speak to yours too. Marketing collaboration helps you reach new customers — whether you have a marketing budget or not.

A Guide to Your First Collaboration

That first marketing experiment where you team up with other businesses can be a challenge. However, if you follow the steps below, it will be much easier to navigate your first attempt at co-marketing.

 Step 1 – Set a Goal

What do you want to accomplish from this collaboration? Is your goal to gain new customers? Sell more products? Collect names for your newsletter? Simply get your brand in front of people in a basic href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/how-to-use-the-rule-of-7-to-gain-new-customers/">Rule of 7 saturation campaign?

Step 2 – Choose a Theme

Before you invite others to join you, it is important to come up with a plan. Once you have a goal in mind, you’ll have a better understanding if you simply want to place ads on various websites or you want an online event, such as a blog tour. Having a plan in place makes it easier to present your proposal to a fellow business owner. Here are some ideas for marketing themes:

• Online chat event with prize giveaways. Each business owner presents a portion of the event and offers a prize. All pool funds to advertise the event as a whole on agreed upon sites/newsletters.
• Teleconference on a topic that relates to all the businesses. Current customers are invited and given the chance to invite one friend.
• Online scavenger hunt where the site visitors go to each of the sites involved, find a clue and enter to win a grand prize.
• Sending out letters for one another promoting the other businesses’ services.

Step 3 – Identify Co-Marketers

Your next step is to choose the best co-marketers to work with you on this project. You want businesses that are not competition but that relate to your business. For example, if you run a wedding planning business, you might team up with a florist, a bakery and a DJ. You would not team up with another wedding planner in your area.

Step 4 – Host a Meeting

Once you identify your co-marketers, host a meeting. If everyone is local, you can meet in person and designate one person to take notes, type them up and send them to everyone. However, if your group of collaborators is global, which is more and more often the case in this global economy, then you can use a service like href="http://www.freeconferencecalling.com" target="_blank">Free Conference Calling. Each person phones into the session at a set time and you can even record the meeting for future reference. Brainstorm, bounce around ideas, agree to terms. You could also meet in an online chat room and log the chat or chat via an e-mail loop or private message board. Whichever method you use, it is important that you have the ability to log the meeting so you can refer back to it later.

Step 5 – Write an Agreement

It is important to put everything in writing so there is no confusion later. The last thing you want to do is create animosity with other business owners who can help (or hurt) your business, especially with their own clients. Using the notes from the meeting, write up a plan and the terms. Be very specific and cover:

• Who is involved in the project
• How much time/money each business puts in
• The exact exposure each business receives
• The exact advertising/events the project will involve
• What the contingency plan is if something goes wrong
• When money is due
• When the project will be completed, even if it is an estimated date

While there are times you simply can’t avoid conflict, planning ahead and putting everything in writing minimizes the chances of a misunderstanding.

Step 6 – A Successful Alliance

Your final step is to enact the terms of the alliance as outlined above. However, you also need to keep notes, get feedback from the other participants about their landing page stats and meet a final time to decide how you might do things differently on the next collaboration.

As we’ve talked about in our articles about href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/seo/post-penguin-and-google-analysis/" target="_blank">Google’s algorithm changes, which are ongoing, the Internet is a beast that changes on a weekly basis. The marketing venture that worked yesterday may not work today. You must be prepared to think outside the box and change your collaborations as needed to fit today’s marketing models.

The Future of Marketing

Although marketing with others is important, in the future, of equal importance will be collaborating with the consumer instead of marketing “at” the consumer.

In the white paper “The Collaborative Marketing Future: How Co-Creation and Advocacy Will Drive Winning Companies”, href="http://corp.crowdtap.com/resources" target="_blank">Crowd Tap explains that services such as theirs allows companies to provide “consumers with a seat at the table with their favorite brands…Consumers will generate an endless supply of insight, ideas and content on the brands’ behalf. Perhaps even more importantly, these customers will serve as a core media channel for delivering a brand’s message to relevant audiences.”

Page 16 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

5 Steps to Writing a Blog Post that Goes Viral

alt="5 Steps to Writing a Blog Post that Goes Viral" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/writing-copy-500x286_c.jpg" />

It’s the dream of every blogger to write a post that gets picked up by social media and goes around the Internet like a fast-moving fire. We see these viral topics all the time. It might be a video of a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79oC63H7HbI" target="_blank">baby laughing or an article about a href="http://blog.flickr.net/en/2014/03/21/mothers-storybook-photos-become-viral-sensation/" target="_blank">mom creating storybook photos. Trying to break the code and understand what will go viral and what won’t can seem like an insurmountable task. Fortunately, by studying what others have done and sticking to some tried and true techniques, you’ll have a good chance of tapping into what readers want to read and want to share with others.

Why Do Some Posts Go Viral?

class="alignright size-full wp-image-9084" alt="baby laughing" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/baby-laughs.png" width="300" height="224" />
There was an interesting article in the href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/the-six-things-that-make-stories-go-viral-will-amaze-and-maybe-infuriate-you.html" target="_blank">New Yorker in January. The author, Maria Konnikova, discusses the time she spent while she was a student at Stanford studying what topics were most read in the Wall Street Journal. While she couldn’t find a pattern as far as the topics, she did find some interesting connections in how the articles were presented to the reader and which ones seemed to go viral. Emotion was the number one thing she found that made a post resonate with readers (tugged at heartstrings, made her angry, etc.)

Even more interesting, though, was that if the article evoked EXTREME emotion, then the reader was more likely to share it. Anger over a scandal, for example, had as strong of an effect as something that made the reader laugh hysterically. She ties this into Aristotle’s theory about a person’s ethos, pathos and logos and how emotion makes us act.

In the article, she uses the example of the site Upworthy, which focuses on videos. The entire concept of the site has a positive underlying message and the headlines are all designed to evoke some type of emotion in the reader and because readers have shared those videos, the site now has over 87 million regular site visitors.

For example, some recent headlines include:

• Which Companies Buy Elections? A Scary State-By-State Map.
• A Pregnant Woman Learns Her Baby Has Down Syndrome. People Who Have It Answer Her One Big Question.
• Artificial-Intelligence Researcher Tricked Into Falling In Love With A Robot. Twice.

What do you think? Do those headlines make you want to find out more?

href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-copy-writing/5-steps-to-writing-a-blog-post-that-goes-viral/attachment/share-social-media/" rel="attachment wp-att-9086">class="size-medium wp-image-9086 alignright" alt="share social media" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/share-social-media-284x300.jpg" width="284" height="300" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/share-social-media-284x300.jpg 284w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/share-social-media.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 284px) 100vw, 284px" />

5 Quick Steps to Go Viral

5 – Make It Easy to Share

The first and easiest thing you can do to help your post go viral is to make it easy for your readers to share that post.

• Install a Plugin such as href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/1-click-retweetsharelike/" target="_blank">1-click Retweet/Share/Like andhref="http://wordpress.org/plugins/shareaholic/" target="_blank"> Shareaholic.
• Share the link on your own social media pages so that people can quickly share or retweet without having to go through too many steps. Ask them to share and retweet in the post.

4 – Know Your Topic

If you aren’t already writing in a niche, you should be. Knowing your topic and knowing it well is what makes for content that can’t be replicated elsewhere and that readers will feel is worthy of sharing. If you don’t have this knowledge, consider hiring someone who does to write for your blog.

Over at href="http://writetodone.com/3-secrets-to-writing-blog-posts-that-go-viral/" target="_blank">WritetoDone blog, Matt Hutchinson talks about the importance of writing to your niche. However, he takes his advice a step farther and also says that it is vital to stay up to date on industry trends and news in your niche. You can’t write trending topics if you don’t know what those trending topics are. He also recommends knowing the community you’re writing for. He says:

“Find out where your ideal readers hang out online. Visit the most popular blogs in your niche. Read everything that’s discussed in the comments, especially for the most popular topics.”

This is excellent advice, because these are the topics your readers want to know more about. Also, these are the people who are already engaged in online blogging. They are more likely to share your posts with others who might want to know the same information.

id="attachment_9088" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright">href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-copy-writing/5-steps-to-writing-a-blog-post-that-goes-viral/attachment/catchy-headlines/" rel="attachment wp-att-9088">class="size-full wp-image-9088" alt="catchy headline" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/catchy-headlines.jpg" width="300" height="449" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/catchy-headlines.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/catchy-headlines-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />class="wp-caption-text">Photo Credit: href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/11121568@N06/2119206528/">Alan Cleaver via href="http://compfight.com">Compfight href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">/>