1. Planning your online brand development
July 3, 2008
“The hardest thing is to know what you want, the rest is easy….”
The secret to building a successful online personal brand begins with knowing yourself, and that means knowing what you are about and what you want to achieve. When you have developed these principals into a clear vision, you will find that your brand will evolve around this identity and, because it has a clear focus, others will find it easy to latch on to, associate with and be encouraged to interact with it.
Some people, like musicians, film-makers and designers have a ready-made source of inspiration from which to develop their online identity. They probably already have MySpace and Facebook accounts, an audience and an image which they want to expand beyond the limitations of these environments which are outside of their direct control.
Others, with a focus on social commentary, creative writing or opinion-based journalism are looking to get themselves recognised, respected within their chosen fields and turn their hobby/interests into income-generating ventures.
Whichever angle you are approaching personal online branding from, we recommend that you take some time to consider the following questions and put together a written statement [first page of your Ideas Journal!] which encapsulates what you are trying to achieve:
Sphere: Related ContentIs Your Blog Full Of Gaping Comment Holes?
May 27, 2008
It’s been another day of blogging for you. You studiously posted your latest entry, hoping to hit the jackpot this time. You go to bed feeling great. After all, you accomplished something haven’t you. The next morning you get up only to find that your blog is eerily quiet.
No comments!
You grab your head, tear your hair out and shout “What the f#$@ just happened? Why are people not storming my blog. What is it I’m doing wrong?”
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Know your DNA to improve your personal brand online
May 1, 2008
Leverage Social And Media Secure Your Next Career Move
April 30, 2008
10 Essential Legal Points for Bloggers - Part 1
April 28, 2008
How to Grow Beyond Blogging
April 26, 2008
@itravin asks - “you’ve gone from blogging to b5 to become an author now, can you do a post on blogger growing beyond blogs”
You know it’s never really been my long term goal to write a book or even to start a blog network. In fact when I started blogging I didn’t even think it’d be more than a hobby! So I guess without going too deeply into the topic my advice would be to go into whatever you do with low expectations but with eyes wide open to the opportunities and possibilities that might present themselves to you.
b5media came about as an opportunity as a couple of other bloggers (Duncan and Jeremy at first) approached me to ask if I’d like to explore what working together might look like. None of us had any real idea on what would come out of the discussion but we all entered into it open to the possibilities.
The book was similar in that Chris and I started out to write an ebook together. This evolved into a ‘real’ book one day when a publisher at Wiley dropped me an email to see if I’d be interested in publishing something with them. It was out of the blue and unplanned but when I began to explore it it felt right.
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How Do I Make Money Fast Blogging?
April 26, 2008
@eMarv asked - “how can one make 25K in 2 months by blogging? :) I know, I know… “
I think you know the answer to that question from your last few words. But when it comes to blogging it’s not a get rich quick thing. I don’t know too many (any) bloggers who made $25k in their first two months. Having said that - I did meet a blogger this week who started a blog and 2-3 weeks later sold it for $3k - so I guess there are some ways to build them quick and sell them off (but this is probably an exception rather than the rule).
My philosophy of building money through blogging is that the secret is in trending up over the long haul.
If you’re after fast money head to the casino - but don’t hold your breath there either!
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Full or Partial RSS Feeds?
April 26, 2008
@SeanBannister asks - “on Problogger your RSS shows the entire post but on DPS it only shows a teaser”
Whether to post excerpts or full feeds is something I’ve grappled with on and off for years now. I used on only do excerpts here on ProBlogger too but in the end decided to switch. The main thing that held me back from switching to full feeds on ProBlogger was the issue of duplicate content. I see a new blog scraping my content every day or two so there must be many sites with the same content as ProBlogger out there. This is frustrating and while I try to track down those who do so without any acknowledgement of source I can’t possibly stop them all.
The good thing now is that ProBlogger has authority in the eyes of Google as it’s been around for a few years and I’m pretty confident that Google ranks us as the original source of all the duplicate pages. I’m a little less confident of this with DPS so have kept it as an excerpt feed. Having said this - I’ll probably switch DPS to full feeds at sometime soonish as it’s got a fair ranking in Google now.
Further Reading on Full vs Partial RSS feeds: Read more
How to Build Your Blog’s Readership
April 25, 2008
@jeremyjacks asks - How did you get to be a big blogger? And what should I do to get more site hits?” also - @JoshAnstey asks - “whats the best way to build blog exposure?”
I’m not sure I’m famous outside of a very small segment of the internet - but the growth I’ve had on my blogs has come over a long period of time and I would say that one of the ’secrets’ to growing a blog readership is to stick at it and work hard for a sustained period of time. I’ve been blogging 5 and a half years now and have worked a lot of hours in that time.
Outside of hard work (and a bit of luck) there are many techniques you can use to grow readership to a blog. I’ve summarised some of the many articles I’ve written on the topic here on my How to Find Readers for your Blog page. Also check out my 6 part series on How I’d Promote My Blog if I was Starting Out Again. I really believe that the topics covered in that of guest posting (on relevant blogs in your niche), networking, viral content, advertising and social media are a great place to start.
Also - get on Twitter (I know you’re on it Jeremy and Josh but others should) because it’s a pretty hot spot at the moment when it comes on online activity and I think the potential to drive a lot of traffic from there is still only just being realized. It’s a space that is still in it’s early days of development so get in early (even though it’s been a year or two since it launched) and position yourself for the future.
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Is it Worth Getting Local Domain Names for a Blog?
April 25, 2008
@PopularWealth asks - “I’d like to see geo-domain blogging addressed since you ask Darren. I think geo domains, and “local” sites are getting hot again”
I’m no expert on this topic but I do think that there is something to it well worth exploring from my own personal experience. My first domain was LivingRoom which is a .au (Australian) domain.
I blogged heavily on this domain for a number of years and it got a lot of incoming links in the early days of running it and as a result began to rise in it’s search engine authority. What I found was that despite blogging in some very competitive niches (including Digital Cameras) on that domain it got quite a lot of traffic to it from Google. The traffic didn’t come from the global Google but Google.com.au (the Aussie localized version). For a while there the traffic was quite massive (although less so these days as I’ve let the blogs slip to focus more on my main blogs).
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