01 Mar 11 Why You Should Not Read Blogs, if You Want to Succeed?
I am certain you didn’t wake up today thinking of confronting such titles on a day when things are falling just in place for you, first time in many years. I know this introductory line sucks, and this is precisely why I wanted to write this blog post.
Why you shouldn’t read blogs?
The correct headline should be: why you should not read too many blogs. And the answer is because reading too many blogs takes time which else could have been devoted to taking action. Reading too many blogs would paralyze you. There are so many blogs out there, each one of them presenting different point of view, calls to different part of your mind. How can you respond to all?
How many should you read?
As many as you can in maximum two hours of time. I know I have been very liberal in allotting time to blog reading and I should have only asked for one hour. But we need to go slow when persuading people to change habit, or else our effort will not bear desirable result.
In the beginning, you should read and understand fully as many blogs as you can in 1-2 hours every day. Not a single minute extra should be wasted on this activity. But over time, you should reduce this time spent on blogging to 45-30 minutes.
What should you do in spare time then?
You should read books, industry journal, watch documentary, do research, or talk to people. In short, you should engage yourself in activities that give you more benefit. It is more about ROI on time invested. Some good blogs, like this one, do give you higher ROI on your time, but surfing through low-quality blogs take away from the overall benefit you get from reading a blog post.
Reading blog can be advantageous, and it often is, but indulging too much into it will reduce your productivity. So be judicious in your time allocation.
So what is the bottom line?
The bottom line is this: you must read various blogs, but your reading should not be limited to blog reading only. You should read from other sources as well. The varied your sources will be, the richer your experience will be.
Tags: 30 Minutes, Benefit, blog, blogging, Bottom Line, Different Point Of View, Documentary, Extra, Habit, Introductory Line, Limited, Low Quality, Maximum, Persuading People, Point Of View, Productivity, Roi, Spare Time, Talk To People, Time Allocation
29 Aug 10 Why Should You Write One Article in One Sitting
As we discussed in an earlier post, organizing or sponsoring a contest is a very effective way to pull visitors to your blog. We also discussed that contests could be divided into two broad categories — based on the nature of human involvement — Content-based contest and click-based contest.
We will take that discussion forward in this article, and we will talk here about 3 content-based contests that could help you skyrocket your blog’s readership.
2 content-heavy contests
Comment here contest
This is one of the best contests to host. The idea is quite simple. Ask your visitors to post a comment in the comment box to get a chance to win the prize. Also remind them that each comment will get one entry into a lucky draw, so they can enter more than one comment to get more than one entry. At this point, do not forget to tell them just one-line generic comments will either get filtered out by your spam filter, or will be weeded out by your staff. Remind them that the comment that will add to the discussion will only get accepted. Comment done just to get multiple entry and which does not take the discussion forward, even a bit, will automatically get disqualified.
Review me contest
This is another form of contest that you can run. Ask your readers to write a review for your website on their domain, in Facebook, or wherever they want, as long as it is written on the websites talking about topics like pornographic, abusive, racism, etc. make an e-mail ID, and ask them to send the URL to that mail ID. Promise the announcement of the result on your blog, and tell them that 3 best reviews will get the prize. To win the prize, it is important for them to include two links to your website in the review — one to the home page, and another to any other page. For deep lining, you can provide some options from your blog posts.
Guest post writing contest
The third form of content-heavy contest is guess post writing contest. Ask you readers to write guest posts for you. Announce that the best written guest post will get the prize, and the second and the third ranked guest post will also get prize. To motivate them to write a guest post, tell your visitors that each guest post will be published, and writer will get the byline for the guest post along with 2 links back to their website, Facebook page, twitter, etc.
Content-based contests are time consuming, so the prize should be good, otherwise people will not get motivated to spend time on your blog.
Tags: blog, Contests, Deep Lining, Domain, E Mail, Facebook, Human Involvement, Lucky Draw, Mail Id, Racism, Readership, Spam Filter, Writing Contest
23 Jul 10 Writing for Web – Where to Get Ideas From
This is a classic. Often web writers feel this pang, and interestingly enough, they do not know how to soothe this pain of having no topic to write on. Some people make their way around this problem of “having no idea” by calling it writer’s block.
Whatever we may call this, but the fact remains the same. You cannot write, as you have no idea. And because of that you keep on staring at the plain white sheet of your word processor. Fortunately, there is bright source of light at the end of proverbial tunnel. There are ways to get ideas for not just one but 100s of future posts. In this article, I will show you some of the idea sources that you can use to generate blog posts, months after months.
Forums
A forum is a place where people interact in a real time. A place where people ask questions, discuss about issues that bother them, and people, on the other side, try to solve the problem. You can pick a topic from here for your next blog post. This has two benefits: (1) You find the topic that people are willing to read about, and (2) through your blog post you may solve the problem, which will place you as an authority in your niche.
Answer websites
Websites like yahoo Answer, Answer bag, etc. are nice place to get ideas for your blog post. Dig through the topics, and sub topics until you find the issue you know something about. Craft a blog post and suggest the solution to the problem.
Blog comments
This is another place to find ideas for your posts. People write many things in comments, and at times they ask questions even. Some of the questions asked there are important enough to warrant a blog post. Pick a question and write a blog post on the same. To promote the blog post, you can piggyback on the original blog post. Just post a reply on the blog post and paste the link of your blog post in the body. Do not forget to attract attention of the original commenter.
The blog post ideas that you generate from the above sources are potent ones, as each of the blog post solve a problem that some readers in your niche are jostling with. And an insightful post on the ideas drawn from the above sources will also give you the status of authority in your niche.
Tags: blog, Bright Source, Find People, Interact, Many Things, Niche, Pang, Place Where People, Real Time, Reply, Source Of Light, Time A Place, Warrant, Web Writers, Word Processor, Writing Ideas, Yahoo
