Blog Success - Your Blog's Focus

By Ted Demopoulos

In order to have a successful blog, it's important for your blog to have focus. You can't blog effectively on several unrelated topics in the same blog and expect to have many readers. It's unlikely that many potential readers will share your mix of passions -- a blog must focus on only one topic for maximum success.

Let me give you an example. I have a friend Jacque who is a born-again Christian and a passionate gambler. He lives for Jesus and he loves to gamble. He certainly doesn't have any problems with either. He can carry on a discussion without mentioning Jesus in every other sentence. He also doesn't have any problems with gambling. He is not out of control; he's just really into sports and likes to bet on sports. He spends far less than many other people do on their hobbies.

If he were to blog on religion and gambling, it probably wouldn't work very well. He couldn't build a really large readership. There are not a lot of people that are into both and also people involved in one may tend to not like the other. A similar issue is when someone blogs on their business, whatever it is they do that they are hopefully passionate about, and they blog on too many miscellaneous topics or perhaps too many personal details.

Now you certainly can go off topic sometimes.

Recently I adopted a little girl from Russia and you can bet I posted a picture on all my blogs and said, "Hey, I just adopted this wonderful little girl from Russia." However you are not going to read about my personal life every week. If I suddenly have a cold or a sinus infection, I am not going to blog about it, not in a business blog

If you already have a large following, you may be able to go off topic more often if you are still providing lots of content in your core focus.

For example, Bruce Schneier is a very popular blogger on security. He decided that every Friday he would blog about squid. Squid doesn't stand for anything technical in this case: just squid the animal, the creature swimming in the ocean. He didn't cut down on his normal posting. He still posted as much information on his normal topic, security, but he thought it was kind of interesting to blog on something entirely unrelated. He just posted something about squid every Friday. It didn't affect his popularity although there was a lot of talk and comments about it, but it didn't cut down on his readership.

Now Bruce may be a slightly special case, because he is such a popular blogger, but pretty much the same rules would apply regardless. He kept blogging just as much on his main topic as always and just inserted something kind of fun every Friday. It seems to workout fairly well for him.

In general you should stick to your topic. If you want to blog on all kinds of miscellaneous things, you can always start a personal blog in addition to your business blog.

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com By Ted Demopoulos, author of "Blogging for Business" and "What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting"

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Get Results From Forum Marketing With This Guide

By Goh Wei Liang

What Is Forum Marketing

As the name suggests, forum marketing is a way of gaining traffic from the forums by contributing to the content. There are so many forums available online covering any topics that you can think off. But to think of it, if you stumble across any topics that are not covered by any forums, do let me know (if you know what I mean).

Common Mistakes In Forum Marketing

1) Spamming

There are thousands of people who know that forums are a good channel to drive traffic and focus their attention on it. As a result, they spam the forums with zero value comments and posts. Forum marketing is about quality content rather than quantity count.

2) Not using eye-catching forum signature

Forum signature is an area where you can display text or links of your choice. This is the link you want the forum readers to click which will lead back to your blog. But often, I see casually written signature display on it which doesn't create any urge for the forum readers to click on it.

Achieve This Before Linking To Your Blog

As a rule of thumb, try getting up to 50 posts first before even recommending people to read your blog. Always give before thinking of receiving. Avoid being seen as a spammer by forum members as it will hurt your credibility in the long run. In most cases that I have seen, the easiest way to get banned by a forum is to start posting links to your website on your very first post and this is what I don't want it to happen to you.

Post 1 unique entry on your blog and put it as your forum signature. This increases the chances of forum members clicking on your link. Make the link description as compelling as possible.

Leveraging From Forums

My advice is to concentrate on 1-2 forums by posting regular comments as well as articles for better results. Find threads that you can add valuable comments on it and do it everyday. Build up your forum profile and you can easily leverage from it. Alternatively, you can start a new thread to share on your experiences of the topic and at the same time provide a lesson for the forum members to learn from your story.

Participate in forums that have active members and fresh threads are being created everyday to discuss on different questions. In this way, you are exposing your content and at the same time being more productive when you leave comments on the thread.

Tips To Improve Forum Marketing

1) Use compelling forum signature

There are simply too many signature links in a forum and how do you make yours attractive for the forum members to click on it? You can use my technique by creating a unique article and post it on your blog. Include the article link on your forum signature to drive traffic to your blog.

2) Use real name

You should be trying to get your name out to your topic market as much as possible and thus using your real name in the forum is a must. You notice that I am trying very hard to tell you to build up your credibility because we are living in a cruel world.

People only follow and believe what you say after you have carved a name for yourself. They will then be all out to get your attention because they hope to get some benefit out from you. I know everyone goes through the same process but shorten the time frame needed to build your credibility online.

3) Post only constructive comments and articles

Contribute only when you can add to the value. Do not post for the sake of increasing your post count in the forum. I need to stress on the importance of quality in forum marketing because there are simply tons of competition in it.

Wei Liang More blogging coaching guide and tips at http://abloggerblog.com

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