My goal is to reach below 80,000 by February 2009. At the rate I have watched my Alexa rank decrease (remember, lower is better), I figured that this type of goal was not only obtainable but I could easily do better.

Using the Sparky add-on for Firefox, when I visit my sites on a daily basis I watch to see how rank is improving or declining. This is vital information for me to know on all of my sites. Losing traffic and rank for me means I’m losing business. This isn’t good so I heavily monitor what’s happening with rank on all my sites.

Today, as I logged into my dashboard to see the comments left over night I noticed that my rank with Alexa has changed. More specifically today’s Alexa rank is 156,977.

Quick math tells you that in just 20 days, my Alexa rank has dropped by 9,709.

Logic says, what happened? We’ve got to repeat what happened on my blog in the last 20 days to reach the 100,000 goal by January.  And continuing the same steps, how can I drop to 90,000 or maybe even lower?

The best way for me to sum up what has happened in the last 20 days is to give you just one word:

Stumble

Yes, that’s right. StumbleUpon brought so many visitors in the last 5 days with two different blog posts. This is the only thing out of the ordinary for BlogSavvy.

To get specific, the post Race for Rank was stumbled several times which brought 617 visitors to my site directly from StumbleUpon.

If you’re keeping track, this means that in two days BlogSavvy had 968 visitors from StumbleUpon and that’s not counting residual traffic for either post on the same or different days.

The lesson learned is to write posts which will help you bring in traffic. You knew this, didn’t you? I mean, how many times exactly have we, as bloggers, heard Content is King. Aren’t you sick of it at this point?

However, the truth remains that while the saying sucks, it’s absolutely true. If your posts are on topics that people actually care about and you do the networking required to promote such posts, you’ll have traffic. Traffic is links, better Alexa rank, and in the long run, a better blog community.

A simple, simple post that explained I knew there was an update because I had pages on my blog, previously not ranked, showing PageRank.

Here’s the lesson of this post:

Pay attention to your ranks, know what they are if you want to make them better. Knowing where you’re at, what your ranking average is, and where you want to be will give you an idea of how to properly promote and network your blogs.

Next, make sure you have something that’s going to report real time statistics for your site. For example, I use and monitor daily my stats with the WordPress.com stats plugin. This has been vital to me.

I find it important to monitor my stats like this in real time because it lets me know where to spend time networking that day. It means if I’m getting heavy traffic from StumbleUpon, I need to head over to the site and spend time networking. It brings in more visitors. And the truth is, if you’re just getting a few visits from StumbleUpon, you can head over there and network to bring in more.

It doesn’t matter where your numbers are at, but on a day when you’re receiving a great deal of hits from one source, spend your time networking that day at that source.

In the end, I have proof now that having posts stumbled will indeed help me to lower my Alexa ranking.

Goals won’t be right for every blogger or every blog. Someone, for example, with a personal online diary probably won’t have many long terms goals but to continue to share their own life online. Can it be more? Of course, but that doesn’t mean it has to be.

When your blogging for a niche, just starting out, monetizing, and building authority creating goals are your stepping stones.

So, what are the three types of goals? They are present, future, and long-term.

Each set being a stepping stone to the next and ultimately success. But other than a stepping stone, each goal for present and future should work to reach the long-term goals.

Present

These goals are things that you can get done today, goals you can work to achieve with specific posts, pages, or contests on your blog.

• Comments per post
• Bookmarked posts
• Networking
• Entrecard
• Forum participation
• Guest Posts
• Post Frequency
• Contests
• Advertising

Each of your goals should help you work to reach your next set of goals within the next category.

Future

Larger than present goals, your future goals are reached through mastering your present goals. Each one of these goals will lead to your long-term goals and enable you to reach those. Again, remember these are stepping stones. Few bloggers can jump into the scene and leap to success.

• Rank for older posts (PageRank or Technorati Authority)
• Residual traffic from bookmarked posts
• Power profiles on networking sites
• Name recognition
• Product recognition
• Backlinks

You’ll notice that future goals are typically lesser in quantity because the majority of your goals are present. These are just items you can work on now for long-term success. But each goal is no more important than the next. Each should be treated with equal importance.

Long-Term

These goals are the ones you’ll reach to get to your place of successful. You don’t have to become one of the biggest bloggers in the blogosphere to be successful. What is determined as successful should be set by you based on your goals and your particular interest in your level of reach.

• Steady income
• Monetization
• Power user on networking sites (more than one place)
• Brand recognition
• Authority
• Blog writers

Your long term goals will dictate to you where you’d like your blog to be. This set of goals will be best reached when your present and future goals are a way for you to reach long term.

Time Management

One of the best reasons, besides reaching your chosen level of success, for setting blogging goals is so that you can manage your time.

It’s not at all uncommon for a blogger to spend hours networking and accomplishing their goals. But have you ever evaluated what exactly it is that you’re doing online to keep you wrapped up for so long?

By sitting down to work on just your goals, you’ll keep your focus and manage your time for efficiently.

Staying Focused

Remind yourself daily what your goals are on all three levels. Write out your goals, print them and hang them next to your primary computer. By having something to visually see, you can ensure that you’re keeping your focus.

There are so many things for bloggers to do that sometimes it’s easy to lose focus of what is working to reach our goals. Make sure that you have your reminders to keep you on track, if only for the moment you’re working.

Final Thoughts

Have you thought about goals for your blog or where you’re looking to go with your blog? Or maybe goals aren’t right for you, have you figured out why?

Each day I sit down and proceed to accomplish my work in a specific order. While sometimes a little redundant and boring, I’m ensuring that I’m staying on track and handling my goals in the best way that I can. Do you have a similar routine that helps you stay efficient and on track?

Yes, there are those famous backlinks but ranking in the SERP (search engine results pages) is just as important. And here’s where that handy dandy search engine optimization comes in to get you working to get your site ranking.

After the last PageRank update, I have to admit that I’ve been looking at the ranking of the many various sites that I visit just to see where they rank.

Imagine a bit of my annoyance that a brand new site, less than 3 months old, starting at 0 and shooting up to PageRank 4 in just one single update. Higher than where others are after 2 years of blogging.

What are they doing different to achieve better PageRank?

And here’s where this post series starts.

Race to rank will be an ongoing series of posts explaining and exploring ideas of what I’m doing to achieve better rankings for my site across the board with various different sites, not just PageRank.

PageRank

To achieve better PageRank I’ll be working on gaining backlinks, connecting with other bloggers, and networking with those in my niche. To do this I’ll be finding blogs that are useful to me and the topics that I largely blog about.

Additionally, I’ll be working on improving what I’m doing for SEO to rank better in the SERPs.

PageRank Goal: Next update, index goes to 6.
Currently: Index page is at 5.

Technorati

With Technorati it seems that I need to rank better by having more “blog reactions” which is simply having a blogger link to you in a post.

To accomplish blog reactions I need to focus on “linkbait” articles and generate buzz that others want to talk about and others want to link to. This will help with both Technorati blog reactions and PageRank’s backlinks (providing they are followed links but I’m OK with either follow tag used).

Technorati Goal: Reach Authority 250 by February 2009.
Currently: Authority 70

Alexa

This may be the hardest thing for me to accomplish alone. Because Alexa’s rank is based on those who use the Alexa toolbar, it’ll be hard to measure how I can accomplish this.

However, because webmasters generally understand the importance of Alexa rank, most of them search using Alexa. Because of this, I may have a larger audience using Alexa than I actually know.

At one time, it had been believed that you couldn’t use Alexa with Firefox. But with the new addition of the sparky add-on, Firefox users can be counted in Alexa traffic. Installing this very add-on for my blog has already proved to be invaluable for my own rank.

Alexa Goal: Reach below 80,000 by February 2009.
Currently: 166,686

There you have it.

Because I am completely sure that I have a lot more to learn about better rankings across the board, I’ll be researching and reading what others have to say on ranking better with all three of these sites.

What I come up with, learn about, and find working for me I’ll share and report my process.

If you have any tips, tricks, or tried and true knowledge of how to rank better with any of these sites: please share! Your input and advice is very welcome.

But with the idea of blogging, there comes one simple question that must be asked? “who are you blogging for?”

Without planning it, I am now really blogging for bloggers and adding my own personal spin on old ideas, talking about the hottest topics on the web, and yet still sharing a lot of myself if you’re reading between the lines.

So, what’s the point of this post?

Who are you blogging for and why do you want to blog for them?

Asking yourself this question you’ll gain focus to creating your blog posts, knowing why you want to blog for these people will drive you to a niche (even if you don’t want one), and teach you how to better find the information you need to create these blog posts.

In the long run, regardless of how you feel about niche blogging, everyone has a niche. It used to be that my niche was me. And now, I’ll leave myself undefined because while this post might be helpful to some, tomorrow’s post may not help the same group of people that this one does.

Here are some things to think about while creating your posts, regardless of who you are creating your posts for.

1. Understand your readers. What do they want to know, how can you include them in the conversation, and what do they want to walk away with after reading your post?

2. Believe in what you’re saying. If you love something, love it to the end. If you think Google is the greatest, believe it and follow through with it. Controversy will spark conversation.

3. Resources keep you informative even if people don’t want to fully invest in what you are saying. If you’re talking about a specific person or blogger, link to them, information about them, or a previous post you have done about the person.

4. Get a grip on deep linking. Because your posts are always on topic you have other information written somewhere that’ll help you with the next blog post. By deep linking within your blog you’ll keep your readers more engaged.

5. Consider “wrap up” posts at the end of each month highlighting the best of for that month. Maybe a reader missed something and you’re simply reinforcing previous information by wrapping up your month with a link to each of your great posts for that month.

6. Create news, even if you’re blogging about your own life. If you were going to sit down and blog about your personal life tell us stories like you would your Mom who you haven’t seen in some time. Give us the juicy details to get us wanting to know more.

7. Ask questions of your readers. By doing so you’re prompting them to leave a comment, add in their two cents, or create a blog post linking back to yours to answer the question(s) you have asked of your readers.

Everyone who blogs eventually discovers their voice and their reason to blog. It doesn’t matter what your reason is or how your voice is portrayed on your blog. It matters that what you’re doing is on topic, reaches at least one person, and gives information that is useful to have visitors come back, subscribe to feed, or mention you.

Blogging is fun, it doesn’t matter what niche you’re in. As long as you’re enjoying yourself you’re going to find that others are too!

But it holds a very special value and it’s one that should not be overlooked when you’re working to create the next best blog in the world (or not and just want your blog to be seen).

When you’re using a permalink structure that displays the name of your post in the URL, it’s post slug that’ll work best for you.

(And just for the record, the default permalink structure that WordPress uses is not best for SEO).

There are two permalink structures that I prefer:

http://blogsavvy.net/2007/12/22/sample-post/

You’ll see in this permalink structure, the URL for your blog post or page displays your URL, the year, the month, the date, and post name.

http://blogsavvy.net/2007/12/sample-post/

In this permalink structure your URL, year, month, and post name are displayed.

As a matter of personal opinion, for SEO purposes your blog post or page URL should always display the page/post title or a portion thereof. This can also be done but creating a custom permalink structure that works best for you.

And here is where post slug will help you.

If the name of your blog post, for example is: The Best Plugins for WordPress the URL output using the first permalink structure example will show the following URL for this post:

http://blogsavvy.net/2007/12/23/the-best-plugins-for-wordpress

Now, when Google crawls your site you’ll have the chance at being indexed when someone searches “the best plugins for wordpress” or “plugins for wordpress.”

Knowing that the default output for this post will read as above, the post slug will give you the opportunity to change what the URL output is for any post.

So instead of having the-best-plugins-for-wordpress, perhaps you’d like plugins-for-wordpress or wordpress-plugins, all very keyword rich.

By typing in this post slug box “wordpress-plugins,” you’re changing the default permalink structure for this post.

So, why is this important?

I’m sure that you’ve heard over and over about organic search traffic and this simply means that someone went to Google (or any search engine), typed in a phrase and poof there you were! That is organic traffic.

You weren’t linked to, you weren’t found on a blogroll: a simple search term or phrase brought the visitor to your site.

To get your search keywords you can use meta tags, you can use headers, and you can use permalink structures (along with many, many other things).

So, knowing that search engines are looking at your titles and page URL’s, it’s important to remember structure and title names when you’re building your blog.

It’s just a thought

By the way, if you’re using the default permalink structure in WordPress:

http://www.blogsavvy.net/?p=123

This can be changed. And the truth is, if you change your permalink structure if someone visits an old URL, by default WordPress will redirect to the correct URL and still display your page.

The catch: if you have any pages (other than your index) that have PageRank, by changing your permalink structure you WILL lose that PageRank (because you’ve changed the URL of that page).

So remember, next post you write, that post slug is important and is the follow-up to how you title those posts. Keep in mind what you want that URL to read and you’ll get a better handle on how to title and use post slug.

If you found this article useful imagine what having me send it to your email would do? Sign up for my full RSS feed, HERE!

Chances are, you just said yes. And so did I when I read Daniel’s post on Daily Blog Tips about names. It sparked a thought in me that I’ve had a few times and am now sharing with you.

Previously I’ve mentioned personal branding and talked about how you would want someone to see you through your avatar or online branding.

A lot of people don’t consider branding when they’re blogging for fun.  Yet they still go about their branding and networking never once taking into consideration how others see them online.

For me, branding has always been something that I have thought about.  Something about having the business Dad that I do has pushed me into believing that branding is important.

When it comes to blogging, there are many different ways you can brand yourself to the public. The ones that I consider to be the biggest is what I will touch on with this post.

Site Registration

How many times have you been asked to define a user name at a website? Nearly too many times, right?

When I started blogging, BlogSavvy was my only blog. I never hesitated to enter my user name as BlogSavvy.  When the second blog came along I realized that I was starting to brand myself as one blog when I’d be promoting multiple blogs.  Something I should have thought about ahead of time and didn’t.

Currently and finally, my user name on all the new sites I’ve registered at is BlogSavvy. If you’re searching for me on a site one of these two names will get me if I’m there.

Obscure, obscene and strange names with networking sites don’t work well. Know that I will be turned off by your user name alone if it sounds like anything inappropriate.

And what if I’m looking for you online and cannot find you because your user name isn’t something that’s obvious?

Enabling your friends or fans to find you by specific names will keep you reachable and personable.

Domain Name

This may not be right for everyone but it very much applies to me. Always purchase the .net and .org domains, you don’t want someone coming along after you’ve spent considerable time and effort to develop a brand taking away market share from you because you didn’t buy them in the beginning.  A real Problem I deal with as dot com was already taken.

EMail Address

You know my name and you know my URL, chances are with a lot of people this is going to get you to my email address. It wouldn’t be hard to presume that I have an email address at BlogSavvy and even less harder to presume that I’d use my name as my email address.

Attempts to send me mail without my contact form will be received. The only reason I try to keep my email address out of public view is simply so that I am not spammed. I have enough of that already.

Keep it simple so that you’re reachable. While I love my friend Jared, but I can no longer tell you his email address. I’ve lost count at how many times he’s changed it.  So, when you must change your email address, simply forward the old address to the new one. You won’t miss any emails and you’ll still be reachable.

Commenting

It’s OK with me for you to use keywords as your name when you’re commenting. In fact this drives me absolutely insane and every time it happens, I hesitate to actually allow your comment, to not modify your name or remove your URL.

It’s not personable, it’s not branding, it’s keyword spamming my blog and frankly I find it rude. So maybe a lot of people are going to disagree with this point, I’m OK with that.

There are 3 exceptions I tend to make with this:

1. You’ve left a hearty well thought out comment that tells me a lot more than “nice post.”
2. Once you’ve left your hearty comment, you’ve signed your comment with your real name.
3. Instead of your real name, you put your blog’s name and yet still signed your real name at the end of your comment.

Commenting should be personable, don’t make it a keyword farm. This is even more true when you run into a blogger, like me, that trys to respond to almost every comment. Do you really believe that I want to address or network with a keyword?

RSS

Chances are you haven’t thought about RSS with your branding, but this is usually my first thought when it comes to branding.  I read a ton of feeds with Bloglines.  I enjoy my feed reader but am often turned off by feeds that don’t include the author’s name with the post.

When I haven’t spent a lot of time with a blog, I need to be reminded of the author’s name, even when it’s not a mult-author blog.  With more than 100 blogs I read via feed, you cannot possibly believe that I would remember the first name of every single blogger I read. I can’t.

With WordPress, ensuring that your name is attached to your feed is as simple as defining an admin name other than admin.  Allow me to start to remember your name by having your name actually set in your post. When it comes time that I will converse with you, send you an email, or comment on your blog allow me to address you personally as you would me if you were responding to my comments.

Avatars

Be consistent is usually the key here. I say, make them appropriate. No one wants to look at something that is just plain rude or obscene. And you may think it doesn’t happen often but it does. A lot of us are sitting here networking with children, make it appropriate.

A lot of people will suggest that you find a picture of yourself and use it everywhere for ultimate branding. That’s probably true. However, I’m a fan of your logo being your Avatar, it make everyone see you logo, and for those marketing people out there, the more times someone sees your logo the more memorable it becomes.

The thing is, the images you choose to use are still you, they’re appropriate and non-offense. Most of all, their kid-safe. Make sure yours are too.

Conclusion

How do your brand yourself? It’s typically one of the least thought of aspects but I bet maybe you realize now that you’re already doing it. Are you branding your name in a way that will turn out to be affective for you?

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something - experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts - there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry - the Internet marketing industry - not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche - Internet marketing - and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things - email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it - making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) - your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion - your stories - and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of…well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

One of my favorite things about my own blog and a few others that I have found is that I feel like I’m part of an environment every time I visit. The posts feel personable and as though I’m having a conversation, commentators bring more personality to the posts, and a community has emerged rather than a place to just get information.

When I considered what it is I liked about other blogs, I wondered “how can someone create this environment?”

Here’s my personal Obsessive Compulsive Disorder approach to creating a warm and friendly environment for your blog.

1. Just Talk

Information and news posts are great. But they won’t create a warm fuzzy, friendly feel to a blog. So write as though you’re having a conversation with me, not as though you’re talking at me or at an entire community.

2. Clean Up

Your blog should be orderly, easy to navigate, provide options to subscribe to your RSS feed, and keep people shifting and moving from area to the next. If you have an ounce of organization in your bones, use it.

3. Optimize for Readers

Having banners randomly scattered around and navigation that is hidden is no way to keep someone on your site. In fact, for many people this is a turn off. Ensure that the advertising you choose to place on your site is in a great location but doesn’t take away from any reader experience.

4. Ask Questions

You never know what someone has to say unless you ask. Commentators often provide another point of view, create inspiration for more posts, and largely make up the community that will surround you’re blog. If you’re not inviting them to speak, how will they know that you care about what they have to say?

5. Take Part

Popular bloggers are great to read and they have a fabulous community. But I’m tired of hearing that they don’t have 5 minutes to take part in their own comment community — even if they only respond to a couple of people or answer just a few more questions. Comments are significantly more personable than posts.

6. Monitor Stats

Oh the many posts that state we’re wasting time checking stats. I’m sure the bloggers that publish this information don’t have a clue until it’s took late that they got a nice spike of traffic that they didn’t optimize for. If you know people are coming from a specific place on any given day, welcome them to your blog with a new post!

7. Brainstorm

Almost 2 years ago, something strange happened. Every time I speak, have a conversation, or watch TV, I’m writing a blog post in my mind. Everything I do I can put into words of how it pertains to blogging. Never stop brainstorming and relating your life to your blog.

8. Take Notes

My most favorite accessory is my blogging journal. It goes everywhere I go. This enables me to keep my thoughts while on the move creating post titles and bullet points to touch on when I’m ready to sit down and write.

9. eMail

If you receive an email, reply to an email. You’ll keep readers coming back for more if you just take a minute to respond. Don’t slack, it’s important and worthwhile.

10. Make Yourself

Don’t count on others to link back to you, talk about you, or create your community. Seek out places to network and get involved to bring people in.

11. Give A LOT

Do more for others than you do for yourself. In the end, your blog and brand will reap the rewards.

12. Create Value

Before clicking publish, ask yourself a single question — “why will they care?” If you can answer the question, your post is valuable. Publish it!

13. Be Consistent

Easier said than done, I’m well aware. But creating consistency lets your readers know that you’ll always have something for them, you’ll always stand for or against a specific topic, and you have an interest in their needs. It’s not always easy, in fact it may be the hardest thing you do with blogging. But, DO IT!

14. Keep It Simple

The famous K.I.S.S. rule always applies — Keep It Simple, Stupid. Remember who your audience is and write for them. Trim the fat by rewording posts to make it less wordy.

15. Give Love

Few people choose to network with bloggers that don’t send out a little love in their posts. By this I mean links. So link to others — industry leaders, bloggers in your niche, and most importantly, your commentators.

Your Turn

What creates a warm environment for you while visiting another blog? Why do you come back and read more and how can bloggers improve their own blogging environment?

Is Content really King?

Every time I start to think about what I’m going to blog about next I make more and more realizations about my blogging. This has become especially more true since finding out how my blogging has helped others.

And here’s a big reality check for me… there are many blogs that are simply blogging for money, and thus have to resort to PerPerPost type of blogging, which is stupid. But if you have to do it, here’s some help.

Interim posts.

Yes, put something real between all of that crap your blogging about. I’ve mentioned before that I find the PayU2Blog, and PayPerPost assignments simply spam, I’m seeing it more and more, the requests are simply garbage. but hey you get $2 for writing about hair gel who can complain about that? right , what if you blog niche is bald men, really does’t make sense, but hey it’s your blog.

So to help those who have allowed their blogs to become over run with sponsored posts, here’s some places where I like to find good content to write about:

Mashable: Very interesting! Keep yourself up to date with what’s happening in social networking.

Bloggeries: Great forum, get registered and start talking. Dig through past articles to find good food for thought.

Your local news: What’s happening in your part of the world?

Your household: Remember the good ol’ days when you blogged about your life and people were interested? What are you doing other than sponsored posts?

Politics: Next month we’ll be voting for a new President here in the US (woohoo, party time!). What are your thoughts (or lack there of) on the campaigns? Do you care who’s President and are you even registered to vote?

Blogs: There are several blogs that give me food for thought to write my own opinions on topics they bring up. The bonus: trackbacks! Not only am I learning something, gaining new content for my own blog, but getting a link back.

Seriously, I’m not trying to be an income drainer, keep taking your sponsored posts. But for heaven’s sake, bring back the content too or it won’t be long before I’m hitting my “unsubscribe” button in my feed reader to ditch your spam.