SEO Werkt!

All systems are ready to go. Your new blog looks great: the user interface is polished, the layout is perfect, all the widgets are working like they’re supposed to and you already have a snappy social media promotion campaign in the works.

Now, here comes the hardest part- writing content for public consumption.

Writing is a very thought-intensive activity. It takes time and a whole lot of effort just to put words down on paper (or the word processor). People would think that the process is a tedious superhuman feat- often procrastinating, leaving their blogs to languish forgotten without anything interesting written in them.

Blogging, for some, is not just an outlet for thoughts and ideas, but also, a source of livelihood. It can facilitate business deals, promote exclusive product deals, advertising services. Throw in product reviews, and referral programs and your blog’s money-making potential is almost unlimited.

So, how do you find time to write for your blog? Here are some tips which you can use:

1. Keep a notebook with you at all times.

Ideas and inspiration sometimes strike unexpected. A notebook is a handy contraption for catching that idea that has been floating around in your head when you were on your way to work this morning. If you are a bit on the techie side and want more variety, then you can check out a number of note-taking apps for mobile devices like EverNote or Catch Notes.

2. Write about what you know and what you love.

Or to be more precise, be passionate in your writing. It is hard to find words for something that you are not interested about. If you are new to blogging, it’s better to start off with topics that you are familiar with- these are the subjects that will get your writing juices going for the rest of your blogging career.

3. Turn writing into a routine.

This means defining a set schedule for your writing. People have different working times, so it’s best to figure out exactly what time of the day (or night) you are at your most prolific. Then you must maintain this writing schedule conscientiously by working at it on a regular basis. By the time you get used to it, you’ll start to feel guilty whenever you missed out on your writing. Guilt works as a motivating factor here.

4. Use productivity tools and software.

Aside from writer’s block, distractions are among the most troublesome issues that bloggers must face on a day-to-day basis. Thankfully, there are a lot of productivity systems to choose from that can help you get back to your writing. For example, the Pomodoro Technique is a productivity method that can guide writers to manage their time well and to focus on the task at hand by dividing work into 25-minute increments. Apps and software like the Focus Booster extension, on the other hand, block distracting and time-wasting websites.

Got more writing tips for newbie bloggers? Share them with us!

Kickstart Your Writing Gear – Tips For Newbie Bloggers is a post from: We Blog Better. © 2012. Share it freely, but please link back to this source.

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Dear Lifehacker, More »

App measurement and ad company Flurry is today releasing a new product which will allow developers to better identify and track various audience types using their apps, while also allowing advertisers to target those audience segments by interest. The product, called “Personas” (yes, like those long-ago Firefox themes), splits app users into over 20 different groups like “business travelers,” “parents,” and “fashion enthusiasts,” for example. By identifying these different groups, app publishers and advertisers alike can use the new feature to deliver better, more relevant ads to an app’s users or to better customize the app with a given group’s needs in mind.

The Personas feature identifies a total of 23 audience segments, which were generated using anonymized data from the over 200,000 apps on Flurry’s network, reaching over 600 million iOS and Android users. These newly identified audience groups include the following: Real Estate Follower, Business Professionals, Personal Finance Geeks, Business Travelers, Value Shoppers, Catalogue Shoppers, Entertainment Enthusiasts, Music Lovers, TV Lovers, Bookworms, News & Magazine Readers, Casual & Social Gamers, Hardcore Gamers, Social Influencer, Sports Fan, Health & Fitness Enthusiasts, Singles, Fashionistas, Parenting & Education, Photo & Video Enthusiasts, Home & Garden Pros, Food & Dining Lovers and Auto Enthusiasts.

In order to be categorized as one of these types of users, a person would have to spend more than 25 times the benchmark average across application clusters that demonstrate interest in that category. This info can be used in combination with the segmenting and targeting tools Flurry already had available, including the ability to target by age, gender, device, language, and geography.

Obviously, some users may fall into more than one of these categories – parents may be music lovers, e.g. The Personas aren’t mutually exclusive, though. So you can’t look at them and say, wow, 60% of my app’s users are business travelers and only 20% are into cars. It may very well be that all 20% of those auto enthusiasts are travelers, too! Instead, the figures are meant to used to learn more about the interests of the app’s users in general.

Personas are available to publishers on Flurry’s AppSpot who want to improve inventory quality, and to advertisers on Flurry’s AppCircle who want to run targeted campaigns.While ad targeting is a key reason to use something like this, the feature is available to developers on Flurry Analytics, too, as they may just want to create new features for their app’s users that are a better fit for their app’s core audience.

The latest Gmail Android app update brings several new features, but this is a must-have for 7-inch tablets. Google slightly reworked the UI and it now works better with 7-inch tablets. Previously, when in landscape mode, the app would occasionally abruptly cut off messages. That’s now fixed for 7-inch tablets running Android 4.0 or later. But sorry, kids, the app is still missing pinch-to-zoom within messages.

The new version also brings a new label API for 3rd-party developers, a feature likely related to homescreen widgets.

This update comes a few weeks after Google released the Nexus 7 to the retail market. Users quickly discovered that Gmail, one of the Nexus 7′s core apps, wasn’t as polished as shiny as it should have been. The updated version is now available from Google Play, which should apply the appropriate sheen to the app.

iOS: Aphex Xciter is just like your iPhone’s standard music app, but it processes the signal to add clarity and richness to your music (and other audio content). More »

A newly published study has concluded that YP.com advertisers see a meaningfully lower “cost per call” vs. those using Google AdWords. The study was commissioned by YP, formerly AT&T Interactive. The average cost-per-call for YP ads was $46 vs. $88 for AdWords. More specifically,…



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

There’s a staggering new statistic in Facebook’s 10-Q SEC document today: 102 million people accessed Facebook solely from mobile in June, a massive 23% increase over the 83 million mobile-only users in March. That means if it can’t make its mobile advertising generate a lot more money within the next year, revenue could plummet.

Another dead-serious new stat is that Facebook only grew 10% to 168 million in the US this last year, compared to the global average of 29%.

There were bright spots in today’s 10-Q, essentially a deeper version of Facebook’s earnings report. Facebook’s monthly users in Brazil grew 146% this year to 54 million and India is up 84% to 59 million. That shows that in key emergent markets, growth is still strong. Unfortunately users don’t monetize as well there.

In the US where Facebook commands high growth rates, it seems to be having trouble signing up and retaining the last 80 million or so US Internet users.

But most troubling is that more and more users are ditching Facebook on their computers where it can show up to seven ads per page. Instead they’re only logging on from their phones and tablets, where Facebook only started showing ads in February.

Even now, users only see the occasional Sponsored Story. Those social ads are demonstrating as high as 13 times the click through rate of Facebook’s desktop ads, and Sponsored Stories as a whole are bringing in $1 million in ad spend per day. Still, it can’t show nearly as many per session. Facebook CFO David Ebersman explained the company’s first earnings call that “We’re being very careful about the volume of sponsored stories in the news feed because it’s so core to the user experience.”

For years, Facebook tried to minimize the presence of ads on its site. But those were different times, when it was a private company with a desktop user base and plenty of room to stick ads in the sidebar. Now it must come to grips with the fact that its going to have to support itself with mobile ad revenue, and that means putting plenty of ads front and center.

“We need to create a new field of customer ethnography (or “corporate relationship management”) that will be the proactive study and gathering of data and insights on corporate culture by networked consumers. This will allow customers to better understand what motivates their companies and what behaviors influence their companies’ products and services, and will likely result in bringing new customer-influenced products and services to market.”

–

- Brian Gillespie, How Can Customers Better Target Their Companies?  via Continuum

Sprout Social, a social management and publishing tool suite, released Sprout Queue and ViralPost today, estimating that the new features will help brands increase engagement with social content by 30-40%.

Sprout, founded in 2010, offers users tools for social media monitoring and engagement, a “smart inbox” that combines social feeds, collaborative tools and analytics, among other features. CEO Justyn Howard tells me the company, which counts Nike, McDonald’s and Yahoo among its more high-profile clients, is known for its simple user interface and collaborative style.

Sprout Queue allows users to add content to a queue for automated future publication. Howard says the company original worked on Queue with ViralPost as an embedded feature, before realizing ViralPost would be better on its own.

ViralPost analyzes the users’ audience and gives the user the optimal times to deliver content based on “usage and engagement patterns, content velocity and other factors.” Similar to Queue, ViralPost automatically delivers content at the optimal time. Sprout Social says the models have improved engagement by 30% for the average user and up to 300% in some cases.

“We’re trying to solve the problem of when’s the right time to reach your audience,” Howard explains, saying Sprout Social is taking the guesswork out of reaching your target audience.

While many similar services offer free and premium versions, Sprout Social only offers a monthly subscription (although they do have a 30-day free trial).

Howard tells me they are working on an iPad app, which will be released in the coming months, and are building more tools to allow teams to collaborate on publishing.

What is the most important question any blogger should ask? Is it, “What design template should I use for my page?” How about, “How many times per week should I post?”

Don’t get me wrong, any question about blogging is a good question, but there is one in particular that should take top priority.

That is, “How can I keep the readers coming?”

Some would argue that it is page design or social media marketing that drives more readers to blogs. Truth is, these things do attract people to sites, but the question at hand is not about finding readers, it is about keeping them.

There are numerous ways to ensure that readers will continue to follow your blog (and even share your posts via social media), and this is what makes answering this question so difficult. So many different answers to this one simple, yet very pertinent, question can leave you feeling overwhelmed. However, there are a few tried and true tips that should work for all blog niches, whether it is about parenting, student life, travel, business, health or whatever.

1. Write for your readers: Give them what they want. This doesn’t mean you should make things up, only that you should stay aware of the reason why your readers came to the blog in the first place. Followers choose blogs because the initial post interested them; it spoke to them, maybe even mirrored their feelings or their life. Generally, you should find a theme and stick with it, and keep this theme in the back of your mind every time you sit down to write. Unless you have a compelling life story that needs to be shared, avoid writing in diary style (with the pronoun “I” in every sentence). Incorporate your readers into every post in some way.
2. Only share valuable information: Having said that, make sure that every post contains some useful information. It can be anything, so long as your readers can walk away from it just a little bit wiser.
3. Start a community dialogue: Give your followers the opportunity to discuss your posts through comments and guest posts, and don’t forget to respond to all comments and messages. If a follower has a good point or information to add, share this with everyone else in another post and attribute it.
4. Post with a consistent schedule: This can be easier said than done, because so many bloggers also have full-time jobs. However, you should try to pick certain days to share posts and stick to that schedule. By doing this, you are giving your readers an idea of when they should expect your next post. People like consistency, and they especially like schedules. Imagine trying to keep up with your favorite TV shows if they didn’t air at a set date and time.
5. Inform your readers of a hiatus: If you plan on taking a vacation from blogging, don’t forget to tell your readers. This is one of the most common reasons people stop following blogs; missteps in posting schedules or MIA bloggers. Even if you plan to only take two weeks off, let them know. And if you are supposed to post on, let’s say, Tuesday but can’t seem to come up with any content, look for a guest article to share or just simply tell your readers you have writer’s block and to sit tight until further notice.

5 Ways to Keep ‘Em Coming is a post from: We Blog Better. © 2012. Share it freely, but please link back to this source.

Would you like to subscribe to my feed or subscribe to my newsletter? Or perhaps follow me on Twitter.

I’m also available for blog startup, content writing and consultation services.

Visit my other blog, Highly Favored for Christian inspiration and church newsletter tips.

Become a Better Blogger