Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

You know your niche, right? If not, finding topics for your site might be on the difficult side. However, it really comes down to one thing: your knowledge of the topics or that single topic.

Some niche are wide and you can get away with writing a lot, but some are so narrow, it might make coming up with posts a little difficult.

The solution: keep on top of your niche community by researching. If it is reading competitors’ websites, rubbing elbows with both newbies and experts, then do it. Participate in discussions, do interviews, do what it takes to make sure you establish yourself and your blog as a strong authority in your part of your blogging community. Be active about your blogging and put to the table new ideas for people to try out. It is important that if you really want to be passionate and blog about certain topics, that your knowledge can back you up.

For example, I was asked by a reader on how to help with ideas on writing articles and getting traffic to their web hosting site. I answered that he should write about topics from the types of web hosting available to consumers, suggestions for design, deals out there for business owners looking for good services (including affiliate links to those services if possible), and much more. The fact of the matter is that I wanted him to know that he can write about anything that involves web hosting. He just has to do the work to research or bring what he already knows to the table.

It is not the first I have been asked to brainstorm some writing prompts. I have been doing that ever since my high school days when I was co-editor of the school newspaper. (Wow – a long time ago! lol )

If your niche is way too narrow, perhaps widening up the focus of your website might be necessary. This will allow you to keep your site alive and include other topics that you might enjoy.

What advice do you have for bloggers a bit stumped? What niche have you found it a bit difficult to write about extensively because it was a bit too narrow to cover?

I did my first show, Blondish.net on Blog Talk Radio – Advice for New Bloggers.

It was a bit awkward considering it is my first time and it was through my telephone. I had to make sure to turn my own sound down because I would have heard myself talking and that would have messed things up. In fact, it just about it. So, learning experience.

I also had a lot of “um” moments. I am laughing after having heard it. AND, I thought the introduction audio that Hooch (@thehooch36 on Twitter) kindly prepared for me was something that automatically started at the beginning, so there was a late intro audio into the program.

That is what happens with total n00bs to Blog Talk Radio. However, it was not as difficult. I think it was due to being a bit nervous since this is a new venture I am trying to start as a dynamic addition to my website.

Please let me know your thoughts, suggestions for future topics. Also, WPAddict.net will gets its own weekly 15 minute show too. It might be a Sunday or Wednesday event.

Here is the show:

So, you have one blog, but being the awesome and full of surprises person, you would like to branch out and start another blog. It is no surprise that you would considering you probably have content on your first blog that you have so much more to say, but want to have a site focused on just that topic. That is okay, but really – when is the right time to take on building another blog.

Blogging can become time consuming, especially if you are passionate about what you know and want to share with other people. Juggling two or more sites is truly a talent. It takes trying to make sure both sites succeed, especially if your ambition is to be the best in whatever niche communities you try to develop an authority within.

The best time is really when you have a plan down on how you want to run your new website. A lot of people do put a site up on the fly, but sometimes those same sites burn out as fast as they started.

Successful sites take a good plan for the foundation that will leave the website open later on for any content re-focus that is necessary and any plans for strategically marketing to wider audiences.

Of course, time is a huge factor. Your investment on how much time you can spend can really be huge. While you could accept guest posts, when you build a site and start engaging with people in conversation, they are hoping to read your material. However, with careful planning, your guest posts can be that extra zing your site needs every so often to carry it to the next level.

Research is a huge key as well. Before you open a new website, you need to know your niche.

• Who are the bloggers that are the authority in your niche?
• What kind of topics or opinions can you bring to the table that is unique and interesting?
• How and who can you promote your new website to?
• Do you have the time to not just blog, but also return comments and perhaps even reply to comments left on your own articles?

Throughout the years, I have seen a lot of websites open and close. I have opened and closed a few myself. However, some of the blogs I have seen closed, the major issues were lack of time, lack of interest, and lack of knowledge.

While you can write the content, if you want people to read it, you have to tell people somehow.

What advice do you have for bloggers looking to branch out and start more than one blog?

Guest posts are great. You get fresh content and the guest writer gets a backlink. That is merely the tip of what guest blogging is all about. However, there is a point when guest posts might start hurting your blog.

If you are running a site and it is normally just you, and your followers have come to recognize your site to be branded as you, it might get a bit confusing if the percentage of guest posts become so high, your voice is no longer heard.

For example, I branded Blondish.net to be known as the site of Nile Flores. Of course, I occasionally have guest posts, but after the 500 posts I have done alone, not even 2 dozen posts (not included in the number of posts I have written) have been published. I am very picky on who is allowed to post because I want my site to encompass what I think is important in helping others with their websites.

It is important that if you intend on having a site that you have branded personally, to make sure your voice is the one that your readers have no doubt who the website belongs to. If you are publishing just to get content all the time, perhaps you need to think about your site’s focus and see about blogging on those topics, rather than relying on outsiders to fuel your blog. A lot of sites that allow very frequent guest posts on personal blogs are ones I noticed that the original site owner’s voice have been diluted drastically.

Although it is important to publish new posts and keep some sort of flow, it is important that the site owner takes the reigns and writes the larger percentage on their own personal site, rather than leaving it to others to chug out content.

If you are finding that you are having a lot of willing writers, perhaps creating a community blog might be helpful? However, remember… your own personal blog should ooze you more than anyone else.

If you are accepting guest writers, is the percentage of your blog posts far greater than the guest posts you publish? Are you branding your personal blog successfully even with accepting guest posts?

What is the most common thing in popular blogs like TechCrunch, LifeHacker or GigaOm? They all are multi-authored blogs.  A team of authors keep on adding content to these blogs. According to Technorati , majority of the top blogs post 5-10+ times a day. That clearly shows more is the amount of content added to your blog, more will be the love you get from search engines, higher will be the chances to get found in the search engines and higher will be your traffic levels.  Now since quantity of content also plays an important role in making the blog successful besides quality and a lot of blogs are transitioning from single user to multi-author , we’ve created a list of 11 effective WordPress plugins useful for multi-authored blogs.

Author Advertising Plugin – Almost all Multi-Authored blogs have a revenue sharing program for their contributors. And this plugin serves the purpose. Author advertising plugin allows blog admin to create a customized revenue sharing program for almost all kind of advertising options – Adsense , Amazon etc.  The plugin has lot of features including setting a share percentage for each author, having control on the positioning and content of author ads, creating different levels of revenue sharing based on author performance etc.

Edit Flow – Edit Flow is an interested Plugin with some very useful features that will make the overall editing process easy. The main features of the plugin are “custom Stauses”   and “Editorial Comments”. Edit Flow has a default set of custom Stauses like “Pitch” and “Waiting for feedback” (in addition to WordPress “Default”, “submit for reviews”) which authors can use while submitting their articles so that editors can sort them easily.

Blog Admin can also create new status messages using edit flow according to their editorial process. The other main feature “Editorial Comments” enables thread commenting feature on every post in WordPress Admin, where editors and authors can easily interact with each other about the content of post without using the traditional email route. User can also opt to receive email notifications for new editorial comments

Members – Members is another useful WordPress plugin for Multi-authored blogs that was created to transform WordPress in to more powerful CMS. The plugin works on the user and their role principle. Every user/author can only use those blog features that are allowed in the role given to him. The blog admin can create new roles and define the capabilities of each role with the help of this plugin. Some common capabilities you can add to new role are – activate plugins, publish posts, delete posts of others, edit posts etc.

Audit Trail –  Audit Trail as the name says is a monitoring plugin you can use to keep track of things happening to your blog in the multi-author environment. This Plugin keeps complete record of the users who logged in to the blog, what posts they edited/created, the pages they visited etc. Besides that, the plugin also records the content of posts that were modified by users so that you can easily restore to previous versions if required.

Pre-Publish Reminder – Pre-Publish reminder is the Plugin you need if you want your users to follow a specific set of instructions before they publish the post or submit it to you for review. Using Pre-publish you can create reminders or instructions and can format them in variety of ways. These reminders will appear on the “Add new post” of the blog. Each reminder will be accompanied with a checkbox, that author has to mark to ensure that he has followed that instruction. Checked reminders will stay checked even after submitting the post for review.

Co-Author Plus – Co-Author Plus plugin helps editor to assign multiple authors to a single post. All co-authors can edit the post associated to them and these posts appear on posts pages of all co-authors as well as on the blog feed. The plugin comes with a search-as-you-type feature which replaces the traditional author drop-down feature of WordPress.

Author Exposed – Advanced Author exposed is a simple WordPress plugin which gives complete information about authors when a reader clicks on the author name or his Gravatar. Upon clicking on the author’s item, a box containing author name, email address, bigger version of his Gravatar and a link to author’s post archives will be displayed.

Email Users –   Wordpress do not have an inbuilt feature to send email to other register users of the blog. Email Users plugin solve this problem. After installing this plugin, users can send an e-mail to single user or multiple users of the blog from the WordPress dashboard itself.

Extra User Details – Extra user details is a simple plugin that allows you to add more fields ( Like facebook , twitter profile links) to author’s user profile.

Dashboard Pending Review – This is a small plugin which creates a new widget in WordPress Dashboard that lists all posts which are pending for review so that you can give your immediate attention to them.

Admin Msg Board – Admin Msg Board add a small messaging system to the WordPress dashboard so that authors can communicate with each other without leaving the WordPress admin area. Messages can be up to 140 characters like Twitter and can be sent to single user or multiple users.

Do you manage a multi-author blog and know a more effective multi-authored plugin? Please let us know about it in comments below.

When you decided to start a website, you may have looked into what it took to put one together. It may have become intimidating and you did not know what to do. A lot of business owners face this. Not every person out there is naturally gifted with creativity, nor has the patience to learn HTML or any type of markup language.

Most business owners want to get on and have some control over their website, or be able to hire someone to do it at a fair cost without the fear of being screwed over from service or price. Some are so intimidated that they with design their own sites.

So, for those embarking on this method – Is designing your own site hurting it?

It depends.

Yes it does hurt to design your site on your own.

You know your content, but often the tools you might choose will not be the best ones out there. I know college students telling me they bought themes from their professors that when I took a look, it was just one hot mess I just about cried. It was shameful.

People are being screwed over even when they want to design their own website. They are not finding the correct tools, nor the best advice.

While things may seem so simple, ALWAYS research before stepping right into investing ANY time or money into building a website. Make sure before you build the site that you have a clear focus and a general outline of what you want for your website to begin with. As a web designer and developer, I often have clients who have no idea what they want. That is not a problem. I ask questions to hopefully give them an idea of what information they need to put together in order to help me give them the best product possible.

Doing it alone only makes you, the site owner have to question yourself:

• Who do you want to target with your website?
• Where do you want to promote your site at?
• What type of design (color, possible design elements, or the general framework) do you want for your website?
• What content do you want to put up (plan your pages)?
• How much do you want to invest in both time and money?

I keep meeting clients who want me to maintain their static websites because it takes too long for them to do it. And you know what – they could be managing it a lot faster with (content management systems) CMS like WordPress. Even with some of the premium themes out there for WordPress, it makes putting a site up that much faster and easier. Though I love being paid, I like to make sure my client has the means to have control over their website and this is a great way to do it.

No it does not hurt to design your site on your own.

Maybe you have done the research? Maybe you can dabble in code or wing it? However, you may be missing things like optimizing your site for local listings. Your competition may be ranking higher because they went that extra step.

It is fine if you want to be in control, but there is always room for improvement, especially if you are wanting to succeed. Why not invest a little and reap more rewards? If you have a static website, you should be aware that WordPress is a content management system, and no longer just a blog platform. You can have an entire website built on WordPress. You can even forgo having a blog on it. Editing and adding pages is really as easy as typing an email up in your Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, or even Outlook.

The point is, regardless of how you get your site up and running, make sure you are doing it the right way and always willing to improve. Business owners with open minds are always open to things that will eventually mean making money.

Did you design your website yourself? Do you have recommendations on good resources for business owners who want to design their own websites the DIY method?

Sometimes blog inspiration might seem hard to come by. What can you do to prevent hitting that dry spell? Inspiration can come from many places, but it is how you harness it that counts. However, there are factors that can get in the way of getting your words to jump to your mind and onto your blog.

Well, you need to think about your blogging habits:

• When do you normally blog? In the evening? In the morning? Midday?
• Have you eaten properly?
• Are you having some type of exercise, even in small increments of time, like 10-20 minutes.
• Have you done your homework by reading around your niche and a little outside of it to keep on top of the news?
• Are you blogging way to frequently?
• Does blogging have to be done in a rush?
• Are you just painfully continuing to blog in a niche you no longer have enough material to provide for?

All of the above factors can affect your blog habits. You do need to blog when you are most creative because this is when you will at least have that extra oomph to get that article done. Also, never rush blogging. If you have an article you think you have to squeeze in before a certain time, you really do not. You are not putting a newspaper to bed for publishing on the next day. Your thoughts might be rushed and not come across as logical as it should.

Yes, your health can be a big factor! If you are ill or not eating properly, you could be running low on both energy and the brain power to even get through the day. Make sure you are eating well and incorporating a few exercises. Some bloggers may even freelance online, so that means those who are living the freelancing lifestyle need to take extra care. 10 or 20 minutes might make a difference. Remember in health class – exercise encourages your body to release endorphins. Endorphins make you happy and a bit more energetic.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK! You might not have a boss overlooking… wait – YOU ARE YOUR OWN BOSS! Make sure to keep yourself on target and do your research. Surf the sites you enjoy, read from people within and outside of your niche. You never know – someone might write an article that you may have a response well worth writing your own blog post.

The biggest thing of all in this is that if you are just doing this for the money and not because you are at least passionate about it – STOP! Most people who are passionate about certain topics are more than likely able to nit pick everything apart and find something new to write about. They are also more willing to do the research and stay on top of the game.

These are merely some things to think about when your blogging inspiration hits a dry spell. However, I know others have their own rituals – so what do you recommend?

An RSS Feed is one of the simplest ways to market your business online without having to invest any additional time or resources, once it is set up and running as part of your blogging strategy. The search engines love fresh content, when you have an RSS Feed you make it easy for them to find your new content and increase your chances of improving your page rank and in turn, traffic.

Here are a few straightforward tips you can implement to ensure your RSS Feed is an effective marketing tool for your business:

1. You should have an RSS Feed button prominently displayed on your website. It’s surprising to see how many website have RSS included yet they don’t ever promote it or make it easy for people to find.

2. Make sure your titles contain keywords related to your content that will attract the interest of your target market. This is a basic SEO principle you should already be following.

3. Consider your summary, the first few lines of text that describe your RSS Feed content. Your intention should be to attract readers to click through so they can read your entire article.

4. Most, if not all feed readers use alphabetical listing of feeds. So, if the title of your feed starts with the letter A, the probability that the content will be found increases.

5. News Flash! Not all your content will be useful or interesting to all your readers. You will win some and lose some, just don’t mislead them. The last thing you want to do is destroy the trust of your readers.

If you are already blogging or have a website and have not set up an RSS Feed chances are it’s already has RSS capabilities but you just didn’t know it. Just contact your web designer and get it happening. RSS Feeds are a great way of getting the most out of what you are already doing online.

How have you harnessed the power of your RSS Feed?