The event goes until Monday, and after that things will go back to normal on the blog. On Tuesday I will also try to post a recap of the event here with some pictures, so stay tuned.
On the mean while, if you are thirsty for some blogging tips, check our the article from Neil Patel titled 15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started My First Blog.
Here is how he started the article:
Over the last 3 years I created 2 blogs, my first (Pronet Advertising) is on marketing and my second (Quick Sprout) is on business. Although both of my blogs do well, I made my share of mistakes. I am not a big believer in regrets and I have learned a lot over the last 3 years, but if I started all over again, I would do things very differently.
Check it out!
15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started My First Blog
by Neil Patel
Over the last 3 years I created 2 blogs, my first (Pronet Advertising) is on marketing and my second (Quick Sprout) is on business. Although both of my blogs do well, I made my share of mistakes. I am not a big believer in regrets and I have learned a lot over the last 3 years, but if I started all over again, I would do things very differently.
- Don’t blog about news
Within your industry there are probably dozens of blogs that write about the news. So why do the same? I know blogging about the news can get you more traffic, but it doesn’t provide your readers with much value.
Pronet Advertising was accepted into Google news a few years ago, this meant that it could appear really high in the Google search results for almost any search term. Due to this, I would analyze Google trends and write on things that were hot. This was a great way to get tons of traffic, but my readers didn’t care to read blog posts that were news related.
- Pick a niche
My first blog was about marketing, the problem with that niche was that there were too many blogs that already discussed marketing. Sooner or later I realized this and started blogging about social media marketing instead of general marketing. After I did this, my blog became so popular that it got into the Technorati 100.
Now I don’t have a niche with Quick Sprout, but if I had, it would be more popular. Make sure you pick a niche with your blog.
- Pick a big niche
As I mentioned above, my first blog was about social media marketing. Quick Sprout also had a niche at one point and it was personal branding. Both of these niches were so small, that I got tired of blogging on them. With my first blog, I just stopped blogging on it. With Quick Sprout, I ended up changing the blog from being on personal branding to business.
You want to pick a niche, but it can’t be too small. If it is, you may run out of content ideas.
- Be passionate
I wasn’t too passionate about social media marketing, which is why I stopped blogging on Pronet Advertising. If you aren’t passionate about what you are writing on, your readers will be able to tell. Just look at the content on Pronet Advertising, you can tell by reading it that I didn’t care about the blog.
- Don’t burn yourself out
When I started blogging, I used to blog twice a day. I got burned out and felt that I was writing too much. Blogging shouldn’t seem like a chore, you should enjoy it. I now blog once a week on average and I love doing it. Don’t force yourself to blog to often or else you will get burned out.
- Make money
There is nothing wrong with making money. If you are spending a lot of time blogging, you should be rewarded from it. With Pronet Advertising, I made money from ads and consulting deals that came through the blog. With Quick Sprout, I am not making any money from it, which is fine because I don’t care for the money I could make from ads.
If you are in a position where you don’t need money, that’s great. If you aren’t, you better figure out a way to make money off of your blog.
- Don’t spend too much on a design
I spent around $5,000 getting Pronet Advertising designed. What I didn’t realize is that you don’t need to have a cool design to have a popular blog. If you look at some of the most popular blogs on the web, such as Boing Boing, there isn’t anything special when it comes to their design.
The main thing you should be concerned about when it comes to your blog’s design, is that it needs to be usable and simple.
- Have a unique design
With Quick Sprout, I am using a generic blog design. It looks great, but too many people are using it. This is making my blog blend in with thousands of other blogs. Because of this, I have two options:
1. Modify the theme and make it look different
2. Change the design
- Write detailed content
If you look at the blog posts that I wrote when I first started Quick Sprout, you will notice that they aren’t too detailed. Until the last month or two I continued to write sub standard blog posts and because of this Quick Sprout wasn’t growing. Once I started writing detailed blog posts, my traffic increased and you started to enjoy reading the blog.
- Respond to every commentor
The biggest mistake I made was taking commentors for granted. If I responded to every commentor since the first day I started blogging, I would have built tons of relationships. After I started to respond to every comment, I got to know a ton of people on a personal level, such as you. ;-)
- Build relationships with other bloggers
If you want your blog to be popular, you better get to know other bloggers. The easiest way to make your blog popular is to get other bloggers to blog about you and your blog. Sadly, I didn’t figure this out until a year into blogging.
After I figured this out I started building relationships with many of the top bloggers. When I launched Quick Sprout I told these bloggers and they naturally blogged on it. This lead the blog to have a 1000 RSS subscribers within the the first 24 hours of launch.
- Pick the right blogging platform
My first blog was on Movable Type and this one is on WordPress. I had tons of problems with Movable Type such as comment spam and worst of all it wasn’t easy for me to make changes. Due to this I had to spend a lot of money on Movable Type developers. Once I switched to WordPress I was able to do everything myself. This saved me a lot of money and time.
- Don’t write for Digg
Pronet Advertising did very well because it got on Digg a lot. Digg traffic caused the blog to grow like a wild fire, but it caused me to lose my core reader base. On the other hand Quick Sprout hasn’t got on Digg more than once and I have a very strong core user base. This is the main reason Quick Sprout has tons of reader interaction compared to other blogs.
- Tell your story
Open up to your readers by telling them your life story. I didn’t do this during my first few years of blogging, but now I have a very detailed about page. I wish I did this from day one because it creates a stronger bond between you and I.
If you don’t have a detailed about page, you should consider writing one. Don’t be shy, make sure you open up to your readers.
- It’s not about you
Who doesn’t want to write about their accomplishments? Bragging may sound cool, but people don’t like it when you brag. I did this a bit when I started Quick Sprout, but luckily Darren Rowse from Problogger set me straight and showed me why it isn’t wise to brag.
If you want to do well in the blogosphere, write with the intent of educating, not to brag.
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