An Open Letter to All the Bloggers Cluttering the Web with Forgettable Content

Have you ever gotten an email from a reader who said your writing changed their life?
How about other bloggers? Are they still talking about a particular post years after you published it?

Or is it the opposite?
Visitors just seem to come and go, never commenting, never linking, never sharing, just quickly scanning your posts and then moving on, forgetting about you forever.
If that’s the boat you’re in, I certainly sympathize, but brace yourself, because what I’m about to say will be painful:
You’re not trying hard enough.
Yes, I know those are impossibly high standards. Yes, I know it takes everyone time to learn their craft. Yes, I know there are only a few dozen bloggers in the world who can answer yes to both of those questions.
But if you’ve been blogging for a year or two, and you still can’t answer yes to either of them, then Houston, we have a problem.
Fortunately, it’s a problem we can fix. Let’s start by going back to where it all started.

Visions of Awesomeness

Remember when you were little and your teacher asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Your hand shot up and you answered excitedly, I want to be an astronaut and fly a rocket to the moon! Or I want to be a ballerina and dance The Nutcracker! Or a want to be a fireman and save lives!
You imagined a really grand vision for yourself didn’t you?
You were the great explorer. The famous artist. The hero.
You wanted to be awesome, right?
So that one day you could strike that superhero pose up there on that mountaintop, red cape billowing in the breeze. Basking in the glow of heavenly golden light as the gods shower their praise down upon you for saving the world from mediocrity.
But then something happened…(cue ominous music)

The Curse Of Competence

When you first dreamed of becoming a writer, I’m betting you weren’t longing to become a highly competent copywriter for some big corporation where your work could remain totally anonymous for all time, now did you?
But somewhere along the way you “grew up,” traded in your childish dreams of awesomeness and settled for something…well, a little more realistic: a job that still utilized your “skillset” and allowed you to live close to the dream.
It was just someone else’s dream you were now supporting.
But you did establish yourself a solid reputation.
Competent. Reliable… Forgettable.

The Power Of Unrealistic Expectations

Fortunately for the rest of humanity, there have always been those throughout history who were a little less “realistic” about their own potential. Through every example of their remarkable work they held up a mirror and showed us what we are truly capable of.
See if you can answer the following:
Mark Twain’s classic book, The Adventures of Huckleberry ___________
Created the most famous amusement park in the world around a cast of animated characters we have known and loved for years: ______________
Sculpted The Statue Of David_________________
Is it possible you could have taken more than a half second to answer any of the above? Highly unlikely, right?
They created art that has touched the hearts and souls of countless millions and continues to resonate across the generations.
Art that represents the zenith of our human potential.
Art that is timeless.

Now Let’s Talk About Your Blog

I know, it seems almost scandalous to utter that word in the same breath as Michaelangelo, right?
‘But wait a minute,’ you say.
‘You’re comparing a blog to serious art? Like a fine piece of music or a classic painting or fine literature? Seriously? That’s not even fair.’
‘I just wanted to rant about my overealous devotion to ham radio operators. Isn’t that where this whole blogging thing began? As a way to express myself online? Who said anything about art?’
Exactly!
Want to know why no one cares about your blog?
Ummm, it’s about those ham radio operators. (cue crickets)
Want to be remembered?
Create awesome art.
Of course, there’s one little problem:

That Four Letter “F” Word That’s F^*#ing Up Your Art

Here it comes. The four letter word…(cue the scary music again)
Fear.
More specifically, the fear of rejection.
You either conquer this beast or it will paralyze you.
You think you’ve felt the sting of rejection?
Try this on for size.
Stephen King has sold over 350 million copies of his bone chilling horror stories. But he wasn’t exactly an overnight success.
He began submitting articles to magazines at a very young age to try to make money for his family. And he would post every rejection letter on the wall with a nail. He didn’t actually get published until he was 20.
He writes:
“By the time I was fourteen … the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing.”
Then he wrote Carrie and the rest is history.
Walt Disney was rejected for funding the building of Disneyland more than 500 times! Imagine striking out that many times and still believing in the dream so fiercely that you step up to the plate one more time and knock it out of the park?
Jimi Hendrix toured the country playing gig after gig where no one got his act. They thought he was a freak.
Even after he was introduced to major industry executives who could have made his career right then and there, they still rejected him saying they didn’t like his music and his act was too far out.
Jimi Hendrix had to move all the way across the ocean to London before he finally found his audience.
Think you can hang out like that in total obscurity and keep on keeping on. Carry that weight?
Ah, I see some hands going up out there in the audience. You say you choose to be awesome? You can hang? Excellent. Jon salutes your choice.
Now you have to do the work.

The Rennaissance Will Not Be Televised

You’re smart. You’re savvy (Hey, you’re reading BBT right?). You’ve spent countless hours researching your niche. Learning from the masters in your field by reading their blogs and books. Maybe taking their online courses. Figuring out how you will carve out your own unique niche.
Gold star for doing your homework.
But guess what?
If you want to become someone who creates timeless art you’re going to have to actually get off your ass and start doing something.

Less Squawking, More Painting

At some point you have to conclude your research. Stop reading other people’s work and start considering your own voice. Your art.
That means you have to stop squawking like a parrot, regurgitating and retweeting someone else’s content over and over again under the guise that these are your original thoughts.
Because that other person? The originator of that content? She’s getting all the real recognition.

Authenticity: The Secret Sauce Of Timeless Art

There is no recipe for creating timeless art. Many elements have to come together. But you can say that most timeless art has certain things in common. One of the key elements is authenticity.
Think about those artists from that list above. Their work is instantly recognizable when you see it or hear it or read it. It’s totally authentic.
If you’re ever going to even have a shot at timelessness, you’re going to have to produce an authentic thought of your own.
But what exactly does that mean, authentic?
And where can I find it?
In my studio, there’s a framed poster on my desk that fuels my imagination and speaks directly to this question. It’s from acclaimed filmmaker, Jim Jarmusch.
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
Listen closely to Jimi Hendrix. You can hear the influences. Buddy Guy, Elmore James, Little Richard, and many more. But no one sounds like Jimi Hendrix. There is only one.

And…ACTION!

Now, you’re going to have to actually do this thing.
That means stare down that blank sheet of paper (OK, your computer screen), take a deep breath and start writing your own very crazy idea that doesn’t sound like any of those other guys.
It will probably suck at first. How will you make it better?
Read this post by Brian Clark.
Is there a message here? Yes, here it is:
YOU HAVE TO WRITE A SHITLOAD IF YOU EVER WANT TO GET GOOD AT IT! YOU HAVE TO DO THE WORK! AND THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS TO GREATNESS!

Wave Your Freak Flag High

The weirder it starts to look (the more it resembles nothing else out there), the more your lizard brain screams that you have to shut this insane idea down now or you’re going to die from exposure to deadly predators.
That’s when you have to dig in deep and keep going, riddled with fear and panic that this idea could absolutely fail.
That’s right. This might not work out for you.
And guess what? It’s OK if it doesn’t. You’ll do it again. Only better the next time.
But only if you…

Ship Or Get Off The Pot.

If you ever want a shot at worldwide recognition you have to begin by putting your work out there where people can find it and interact with it.
And you’re not going to have anyone else to blame for this. You own it. Unbelievable as it may sound, your work could actually succeed too. It might just resonate with an audience.
There’s only one way to find out.
(Yes, that means you actually have to hit the Publish button.)
Do You Want To Change The World?
Think about those artists mentioned above for a minute.
They seem somehow different from you and me, don’t they? Their vision was a bit more grand. You don’t get the impression they spent much time waxing poetic about ham radio operators, do you?
Each of them changed the world in their own unique way.
So maybe the real question to ask here is how about you?
There are maybe a tiny handful of creators out there today who are even bold enough to attempt to elevate blogging to the standard of high art. Here is a short list. You’ll probably have your own favorites (feel free to list them in the comments).

Seth Godin: aka His Sethness

If blogging had a Mount Olympus then Seth Godin would likely play Zeus. Anyone whose name elicits a “Duh?” response for seemingly stating the obvious here, deserves their place on the throne. So let’s move on and talk about some of the demi-gods who are changing the new world.

Hugh MacLeod: The Gary Larson Of The Blogosphere

Hugh MacLeod started out creating brilliant cartoons with witty captions on the back of business cards. He now creates inspirational art for businesses and sells his works online as prints and T-shirts.
Back in 2004, he offered a free download called How To Be Creative, a conglomeration of posts from his blog, Gaping Void. That post ultimately became a bestselling book, Ignore Everybody. It got downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, which showed us a couple of key insights.
1. There were a whole lot of people in the world very interested in how to assert their creativity.
2. Blogging as an artform had the power to influence a global audience.

Jon Morrow: or How To Blog Like Waldo

Jon Morrow is another one of those rare writers who approaches blogging like Emerson approached writing essays. In other words, everything he publishes is written as though it will be viewed through the lens of history.
His insanely popular post, On Dying, Mothers and Fighting For Your Ideas was a blogging tour de force. It’s an article you could have read in The New Yorker or Vanity Fair. It was that well written and pointed to the possibilities of blogging as an artform to be reckoned with.

Leo Babauta: The Yoda Of The Digital Universe

Leo Babauta at Zen Habits has over a million readers. Here’s why: He offers down to earth, straight ahead advice on how to live more simply in a complicated world.
Leo’s writing, like his website, is stark, clean and powerful art. It reminds you of Picasso’s line drawings.

Sonia Simone: The Grand Matriarch Of Online Marketing

Copyblogger’s Sonia Simone has an uncanny ability to see the entire online marketing playing field and spin it into clever stories that inspire and educate all the various tribes at the same time.
She taught us a valuable lesson in a post called Is Your Tribe Holding You Down? That two tribes (the Cool Kids and the IMers) can have totally opposing views on the same subject (online marketing). Yet each has valuable secrets the other could benefit from. It was a bit like West Side Story for online marketing.
From this post, she formed the Third Tribe, an awesome community that melds together the greatest ideas from each of those tribes.

Brian Clark: The Bill Gates Of Content Marketing

Copyblogger founder, Brian Clark disguises a highly successful software company as an insanely helpful blog to copywriters and content marketers. He also wrote a really important little post himself.
His very short and seriously awesome infographic, 10 Steps To Becoming A Better Writer should be required by law to be posted on the walls of every single person who ever chose to call themselves a writer.
In short, it’s the secret to becoming a great writer. If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to give away the secret. Click on the link. Then print it.
These are but a few people who are changing the new world today. Who have turned blogging into an artform. Maybe it’s too soon to call their work timeless. Blogging isn’t old enough yet. But we can always recognize awesome art.
And where there’s great art there is commerce.

You Can’t Touch This!

Did you ever wonder why the super rich buy priceless artwork? Why that hedge fund manager who always dreamed of playing music keeps that broken Jimi Hendrix guitar and other memorabilia in a sealed glass case?
It’s not the investment.
Oh sure, their net worth will increase. But the truth is that what they really want is to get a little closer to the dream they could never achieve. To touch the hand of the creator themselves.
Because the real power lies with the artist.
Always remember that.

The Difference Between Timeless And Anonymous

Want to know what really separates those iconic figures from you?
No, it isn’t some God given talent they were born with that you’ll never possess. It’s not the benefit of a privileged family connection that started them off with some advantage you’ll never have.
It’s having the tenacity and perseverance to wake up day after day, year after year sometimes (more often than most would care to admit), staring into the vacuum of uncertainty and rejection.
And then sitting down again to do the hard work of honing your craft to mastery because you believe in yourself and your art fiercely enough to keep pushing forward when there’s no one cheering you on.

The Myth Of Awesomeness

Even after you’ve finally committed yourself to get up there and swing for the fences with your art, the truth is you’re going to strike out a lot. You’ll certainly score some runs. The occasional double. And a lot of foul balls.
The truth is you may only achieve awesomeness once or twice in your whole life if you’re lucky. But if it’s the real genie, that’s all you’ll ever need to do.
That’s the grand slam.
J.K. Rowling could tell you a thing or two about being awesome only once. When she gave birth to Harry Potter.
That’s what we’re after here, right?

Choose Awesomeness. The World Needs You.

People don’t set out to become timeless artists. You have no say in that matter anyway. History alone will decide that.
But you can choose awesomeness.
You can choose to blow people’s minds. You can choose to show us the limitless possibility of our human potential, reflected in your awesome work.
And as strange as it may sound, your crazy idea may be the one story the world has been waiting a lifetime to hear.
And if it feels a bit lonely out there in obscurity right now, know that you’re in good company. Every great artist the world has ever known has stood there before you.
Go ahead. Hit that Publish button and stand proud.
The sun is shining and the wind feels right.
Seems like a great day to fly that red cape!

How to post during the Holidays

5 Ways to Be Productive during the Holidays

 

1. Plan your posts. If you don’t have it already, grab a free copy of Headline Hacks and plan your post headlines. It has 52 templates, one for every week of the year. Write one headline for each template, and do one post a week, and you have the entire year planned out in advance.
2. Create an incentive to join your email list. Been struggling to find the time to write a free e-book or create a video series that entices visitors to join your email list? Well, now’s your chance. Work on it for thirty minutes every day from now until the end of the year, and you will begin 2014 with a bang.
3. Create a new product. Already have a great incentive to join your email list? Well then, create a new product to sell. Survey your audience about their biggest problems, create an outline for a product that solves those problems, and send it to them to see what they think. If they like it, create it. All before January 1.
4. Research your peers. Once a year, it’s a good idea to thoroughly check out the other blogs in your space and see how they’re doing. Use tools like Open Site Explorer, Social Crawlytics, and SEMrush to get real data on what’s working and what’s not.
5. Take care of technical tasks. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your hosting or cleaning out your WordPress plug-ins or any other technical tasks, now’s the time to do it. If you break something, a smaller number of people notice than during any other time of the year.

Top words what famous bloggers use

Let’s do a little experiment.

Just for a moment, stop reading this post, turn on the television, and go to a major news channel. Watch it for five minutes, listening for the words below.
Chances are, you’ll hear dozens of them. Here’s why:
Fear is without a doubt the most powerful emotion for grabbing and keeping an audience’s attention. To make sure you don’t change the channel, news networks load up with fear words, making you worry you might miss something important.
It’s effective. Granted, you can overdo it, but in my opinion, most writers don’t use these types of words nearly enough. They really do connect with people.
Here’s a bunch to get you started:

Agony

Apocalypse

Armageddon

Assault

Backlash

Beating

Beware

Blinded

Blood

Bloodbath

Bloodcurdling

Bloody

Bomb

Buffoon

Bumbling

Cadaver

Catastrophe

Caution

Collapse

Corpse

Crazy

Cripple

Crisis

Danger

Deadly

Death

Destroy

Devastating

Disastrous

Drowning

Dumb

Embarrass

Fail

Feeble

Fired

Fool

Fooled

Frantic

Frightening

Gambling

Gullible

Hack

Hazardous

Hoax

Holocaust

Horrific

Hurricane

Insidious

Invasion

IRS

Jail

Jeopardy

Lawsuit

Looming

Lunatic

Lurking

Meltdown

Mired

Mistake

Murder

Nightmare

Painful

Pale

Panic

Peril

Piranha

Pitfall

Plague

Played

Plummet

Plunge

Poison

Pummel

Poor

Prison

Pus

Reckoning

Refugee

Revenge

Risky

Scary

Scream

Searing

Shatter

Shellacking

Silly

Slaughter

Slave

Smash

Strangle

Stupid

Suck

Tailspin

Tank

Targeted

Teetering

Terror

Terrorist

Toxic

Trap

Vaporize

Victim

Volatile

Vulnerable

Warning

Worry

Wounded

Give Your Readers a Pep Talk

Let’s face it.
When they’re reading, most people aren’t exactly bouncing off the walls with energy and enthusiasm. They’re probably bored, maybe a little depressed, and almost definitely tired. And they’re looking for something, anything, that’ll wake them up and make them feel better.
The good news?
Your writing can do that for them. Use these power words to give them a pep talk and get them charged up again:

Amazing

Audacity

Backbone

Belief

Blissful

Bravery

Breathtaking

Cheer

Conquer

Courage

Daring

Defiance

Delight

Devoted

Excited

Eye-opening

Faith

Fearless

Fulfill

Grateful

Grit

Guts

Happy

Heart

Hero

Hope

Jaw-dropping

Jubilant

Magic

Mind-blowing

Miracle

Pluck

Sensational

Spectacular

Spine

Spirit

Staggering

Stunning

Surprising

Triumph

Uplifting

Valor

Victory

Wonderful

Wondrous

Take a Page from Cosmopolitan (or Playboy)

Like it or not, lust is one of the core human emotions.
Just look at the men’s and women’s magazines in the checkout aisle, and you’ll see what I mean. Nearly every headline on the cover is either blatantly or indirectly about sex.
And it works, not just for men’s and women’s magazines, but for anything. As a writer, you can use words that inspire lust to make almost anything intriguing.
For example: take a look at these two posts I wrote for Copyblogger:
Sex, Lies, and the Art of Commanding Attention
Copyblogger Editor Admits to Sleeping with Readers and Recommends You Do the Same
Both posts use the power of lust to teach people about headlines, of all things. Proof positive that it can be used for anything.
Here’s a lascivious list to get you started:

Brazen

Crave

Depraved

Dirty

Exposed

Forbidden

Hypnotic

Lascivious

Lick

Lonely

Lust

Naked

Naughty

Provocative

Scandalous

Sensual

Sex

Shameless

Sinful

Sleazy

Sleeping

Spank

Steamy

Sweaty

Tantalizing

Tawdry

Thrilling

Uncensored

Wanton

Whip

Start a Riot

As writers, sometimes our job is to anger people.
Not for the fun of it, mind you, but because someone is doing something wrong, and the community needs to take action to correct it. The problem is, with wrongdoing, most people are pretty apathetic – they’ll wait until the situation becomes entirely intolerable to do anything, and by then, it’s often too late.
So, we have to fan the flames. By using the below power words, you can connect with people’s anger, and slowly but surely, you can work them into a frenzy. Just be careful who you target. Lawyers can eat you alive if you pick on the wrong person.

Abuse

Arrogant

Ass kicking

Backstabbing

Beat down

Bullshit

Bully

Coward

Crooked

Crush

Disgusting

Evil

Force-fed

Foul

Hate

Know it all

Lies

Loathsome

Loser

Lying

Maul

Money-grubbing

Nazi

No Good

Obnoxious

Payback

Pound

Preposterous

Punish

Revolting

Ruthless

Sick and Tired

Smug

Sniveling

Snob

Snooty

Snotty

Stuck up

Underhanded

Stomp on Their Greed Glands

The legendary copywriter Gary Halbert once said, “If you want people to buy something, stomp on their greed glands until they bleed.” Graphic, yes, but also true.
Skim through good sales copy, and you’ll find a lot of these power words. Many of them are so overused they’ve become cliché, but that doesn’t stop them from working.
The truth is, nearly every human being on the planet is interested in either making or saving money. Use these words to tap into those desires:

Bargain

Best

Billion

Bonanza

Cash

Cheap

Discount

Dollar

Double

Explode

Extra

Feast

Fortune

Free

Freebie

Frenzy

Frugal

Gift

Greatest

Inexpensive

Jackpot

Luxurious

Marked down

Massive

Money

Nest egg

Pay zero

Prize

Profit

Quadruple

Reduced

Rich

Savings

Six-figure

Skyrocket

Soaring

Surge

Treasure

Triple

Whopping

Make Them Feel Safe

Greed isn’t the only emotion you want buyers to feel. You also want to make them feel safe.
They need to trust both you and your product or service. They need to have confidence you’ll deliver. They need to believe they’ll get results.
Of course, building that kind of trust starts with having a quality brand and reputation, but the words you use to describe yourself and your product or service also matter. To help your customers feel safe, try to use as many of these power words as possible:

Anonymous

Authentic

Backed

Best-selling

Cancel Anytime

Certified

Endorsed

Guaranteed

Ironclad

Lifetime

Moneyback

No Obligation

No Questions Asked

No Risk

No Strings Attached

Official

Privacy

Protected

Proven

Recession-proof

Refund

Research

Results

Secure

Tested

Try before You Buy

Verify

Unconditional

Offer Them a Forbidden Fruit

Remember when you were a kid, and someone told you NOT to do something? From that point on, you could think about little else, right?
The truth is, we’re all fascinated by the mysterious and forbidden. It’s like it’s programmed into our very nature.
So why not tap into that programming?
Whenever you need to create curiosity, sprinkle these power words throughout your writing, and readers won’t be able to help being intrigued:

Backdoor

Banned

Behind the Scenes

Black Market

Blacklisted

Bootleg

Censored

Concealed

Confessions

Confidential

Controversial

Covert

Cover-up

Forbidden

Forgotten

Hidden

Illegal

Insider

Lost

Off-limits

Outlawed

Private

Secrets

Smuggled

Strange

Unauthorized

Withheld

Go Ahead and Tell Me. What Words Did I Miss?

Yes, this is an enormous list, but so many power words are available, nobody can possibly catch them all on the first pass. What are some other words that seem to have that extra little spark of emotion inside them?
Leave your answer in the comments, and as time goes by, I’ll come back periodically and update the list. Eventually, I hope to have over 1,000 words here, separated and organized by category, making this the definitive resource for power words on the web.
Thanks in advance for commenting and sharing the post with your friends!

How to write a Irresistible sub heading

You know you’re in a war, right?

Ok, so no actual guns or tanks are involved, but you are indeed in a bloody battle for the eyes and minds of your readers.
The blogosphere is a huge, congested, noisy space where everyone is jockeying for position and fighting to get noticed.
So to overcome this fact, you’ve done what you’ve been taught to do:

• You’ve come up with great ideas that readers will find useful
• You’ve created killer headlines that jump off the screen and demand attention
• You’ve spent hours writing and rewriting stellar content that delivers and reads beautifully

And yet readers still come to visit your blog and… (click) bounce just as quickly as they came.

Why It Doesn’t Matter How Great Your Content Is

Look, I know you work hard on your writing – and if you study and apply all the great writing advice that’s available out there, it’s a safe bet that you’re writing some powerful stuff. Granted.
And when you know you’re creating legitimately excellent work, you can easily fall into the rainbows-and-unicorns blogging fantasy. You know the one. It goes like this:

• Your readers see a killer headline you wrote on their social media streams and click through to the article.
• When they click through, they read every carefully crafted word from start to finish – devouring the intellectual feast you’ve laid out for them.
• Having fallen head over heels in love with your work, they subscribe, read everything you’ve ever written, and become evangelists for your brand – spreading the word of your excellence far and wide.

Oh, what a wonderful world it would be, right?
But the harsh reality of the situation is this:
They often don’t even finish reading the article that brought them to your blog in the first place.

The Reason Your Readers Don’t Stick Around

Readers have adapted to their environment. You know as well as I do that it’s not exactly uncommon to be lured in by a compelling headline, click through to the article and find weak content.
Because of that, readers have become expert scanners.
We’ve all learned to scan content and determine if it piques our interest in mere seconds. If it doesn’t grab us, we bounce – plain and simple.
According to The Nielsen Norman Group, the vast majority of your visitors will make a judgment within 10 to 20 seconds of opening your content whether they should stick around – or whether they should bounce.
That’s it. Just 10 to 20 seconds. There’s no waiting around for the grand finale in blogging, friends.
Think about it: In 10 to 20 seconds, a good post and a great post look fairly similar. It’s just not long enough to win hearts and minds and create that endless stream of traffic you’ve been dreaming of.

The Recommended Cure For Scanning (and Why It Doesn’t Work)

The best tool you have in your arsenal is something that far too many bloggers overlook.
The subhead.
That’s right – the often overlooked subhead is really a stealthy and lethal ninja writing weapon just sitting there quietly waiting to be put to good use.
Unfortunately, most writers don’t know how to use them properly.
Let’s do a quick refresher and deconstruct the word.
The name sub (under) head (headline) literally means a headline under the main headline.
And what do headlines do?
They hook, they entertain, they shock, and, above all, they create curiosity. They pull readers further into your epic content so they stay with you long enough to realize that it is, in fact, stellar writing.
What the headline does for the post, the subhead does for each individual subsection of copy.

3 Subhead Blunders That Make Readers Bounce

Too many writers just throw away their subheads. Let’s take a look at the three most common blunders that cause subheads to fall flat.
1. The Plain Label Subhead
A lot of bloggers use subheads merely as a label. Labels are used to identify, not to pique interest.
Plain Label Subheads are boring and they don’t stop readers from scanning. They make them yawn. Not exactly the response you’re looking for.
If, for example, you’re writing a subhead above text that’s about why headlines are important and your subhead is Why Headlines Are Important, you’re using it as a label. It’s lifeless, boring, and does nothing to keep your readers engaged with your writing.
Instead, something like The Simple Secret to Hooking Your Readers would be more on track. Then let the text that follows explain the importance of great headlines.
2. The Spoiler Subhead
Spoiler Subheads tell readers exactly what’s coming in the text that follows the subhead. Talk about playing right into the scanners’ hands! If you want to keep readers on your posts longer, don’t give them a free pass to skip paragraphs. Tease them with the subhead.
Keeping with our example of headlines, if you’ve written a block of text in which your point is that the number-one priority of a headline is to create curiosity, don’t precede it with a subhead that reads Use Headlines to Create Curiosity.
That’s a big old spoiler that gives away your upcoming point. And if they know the point you’re about to make, why should they read it?
A subhead that reads The One Thing Every Great Headline Has in Common would be a much better place to start. Then use the text below it to explain how curiosity is that one thing.
3. The Cryptic Subhead.
The other side of the subhead blunder coin is trying so hard to be creative and grab attention that you create something that is more confusing than compelling. These cryptic subheads can be a turnoff and lead to a bounce just as easily as the other two mistakes.
Your subhead should be a phrase that is crystal clear, but makes readers say, “I have to keep reading to see what this writer’s getting at.” If instead, it makes them say, “What the hell does that phrase mean?” – you’re flirting with being too cryptic.
Again, consider our example topic of headlines. If you’re making the point that a headline acts as a lure, enticing readers into the body of the post, you might make an analogy with fishing and using bait to hook your readers. But out of context, a subhead which reads Don’t Forget the Worm! won’t make a whole lot of sense.
Therefore, it confuses rather than compels and misses the mark completely. Readers don’t want to solve puzzles. They want to learn.
If, instead you used one that reads The Most Powerful Way to Get More Clicks, you’re in the ballpark. You’re making the same point, but the phrasing pulls readers further into your post instead of frustrating them to the point of clicking away.
You need to treat your subheads as another opportunity to stand out, to grab your readers’ attention, and keep them on your site long enough to transform them into fans.

Steal These Moves From The Subhead Honor Roll

Naming names and showing you examples of people who did it the wrong way would just be mean. Entertaining, perhaps, but mean.
So instead, I’m going to share with you three excellent examples of the right way to keep your readers on your blog longer by writing great subheads – and tell you what they did right.
Jon Morrow
Since we’re all here, we might as well pay homage. Jon is one of the all-time masters of headline writing. He has a unique talent for crafting headlines that make you say, “What? What the hell could that possibly be about?” His subheads are just as powerful.
Here’s a doozie:

Wow! That got your attention, right? For a split second when I first read that, I thought, “What could Jon Morrow possibly have against my mother?”
That subhead is kind of surprising, and it shows a unique personality too. It creates curiosity. After reading that, you’re compelled to keep reading to find out what he’s talking about – which turns out to be a great exercise to improve your writing.
If Jon had used his subhead as a label – merely to describe the content below it – it wouldn’t have pulled you in.
A subhead that reads Write A Letter to Your Mom Then Tear It Up falls flat.
If he had told readers what was coming with a subhead like Try This Writing Exercise, they probably wouldn’t bother to read the paragraphs that followed. They’d just keep scanning – or even worse… bounce.
Tommy Walker
In a guest post here on Boost Blog Traffic, Tommy shows us that subheads don’t have to be shocking or funny to grab your attention:

That’s a subhead that makes you feel an emotion with just a few words. It’s sobering and makes readers curious to learn the details about the conversation he’s referencing. It pulls you in.
If Tommy had gone with a label subhead like Building an Email List Is Important, it wouldn’t have worked. It’s not interesting and it doesn’t do anything to compel readers to keep going.
What if he had used one like A Friend Told Me To Build My Email List that gave away the content that follows the subhead? Would that have been any better? Nope. That would just be granting readers license to skip that excellent story about his conversation with Derek.
Danny Iny
In a post about his Business Ignition Bootcamp, Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing wrote this stunner that caught my eye:

I don’t know about you, but I was instantly pulled in by that subhead because I, like most people, have asked myself that same question many times. I could relate to it. I could even feel it.
The subhead is full of emotion. It makes you curious about what Danny’s talking about and you have to keep reading.
If Danny would have gone the lazy route and used his subhead as a label, it might have read It’s Important For Me to Help Others. A nice sentiment, but boring and devoid of emotion.
He could also have written something like I’m Launching A Program to Help Entrepreneurs. Outside of entrepreneurs who were looking for help, not many readers would have been pulled in by that either.

The Four Ingredients Of Killer Subheads

If you haven’t bounced and you’ve come this far, I figure I’ve hooked you, so I’m going to press my luck.
Did you see what I did in those three examples of stellar subheads? You may want to go back and look. Under each example, I’ve bolded several words. They’re the four key ingredients of compelling subheads.
If you don’t feel like going back up there, here they are:

• Curiosity
• Surprise
• Personality
• Emotion

Every good subhead should, at the very least, create curiosity for readers and compel them to continue reading. The truly great subheads usually have at least one or more of those other qualities too.

How Do Your Subheads Measure Up?

Go take a look at your most recent posts. Take some time to evaluate the subheads and honestly ask yourself if they would make a scanner stop and take notice.
Do you use subheads to break up long blocks of text? Are you creating curiosity and coaxing readers along by injecting surprise, personality, or emotion?
Or are many of your subheads just labels? Are they spoilers that give away what’s coming next? Even worse – are they so cryptic that they befuddle and confuse your readers?
Make sure you treat your subheads with as much TLC as you’ve become accustomed to giving your headlines and you’ll be on the right track.

5 Simple Steps to Supercharged Subheads

When you’re writing your next post, follow these five simple steps to craft subheads that hook your readers and keep their eyes on your post:

1. Write the post as you normally do. Don’t worry about changing anything up just yet.
2. When your draft is done, go back and look at your subheads in a different light. In your mind, isolate each subhead and the text that follows it. Think of that block of text as a short, all-inclusive post.
3. Ask yourself what the purpose of that singular block of text is. What point are you trying to get across?
4.  If that portion of text were a blog post unto itself, ask yourself what would its headline be?
5.  Make sure your subhead creates curiosity – and then try to work in surprise, personality, and emotion whenever possible.

Grab These Bonus Resources From My Subhead Stash

Since subheads are basically mini headlines, you can find great subhead resources hidden within the headline arena.
The following are my three favorite headline eBooks. I recommend that you download and read them all:

• Jon Morrow’s Headline Hacks
• Peter Sandeen’s 101 Headline Formulas
• Psychotactics.com’s Why Headlines Fail

While all of these eBooks were written about headlines, you can apply the principles to writing more compelling subheads as well.
Download these guides, save them to your computer, and use them as you would a resource book. I refer to them all the time.

Are You Ready To Declare War On The Scanners?

If you owned a Lamborghini, would you take that bad-boy out for a spin – or leave it in the garage under a tarp?
Then you can’t very well leave this ridiculously powerful tool under some old dusty tarp, can you?
Whatever your blogging endgame is, its success hinges on your content being found (and loved) by throngs of new readers.
You know all too well the work that goes into getting a new visitor to your blog. Think about all the time and all the effort you’ve devoted to writing great content. Think about all the time and effort necessary to promote your work and get readers to give it a chance.
Then ask yourself if that was really time well spent if the people who do give your content a chance only scan your content for 10 to 20 seconds before they bounce.
Now you can make them stick!
Now you have a simple but powerful solution in your arsenal. Killer subheads will hook those scanners again and again – keeping them on the page long enough to discover once and for all that you are a writer worth paying attention to.
Go revisit your most recent content. Take a hard look at your subheads and be brutally honest with yourself.
If you’ve been throwing them away, stop it.
This post has given you all the information you need to write compelling subheads that magnetically pull readers from section to section of your posts.
Put it to use and watch your bounce rate plummet.

Put your remarkable mark in a world of bloggger

Can I be painfully honest with you for a moment?

Not thank-God-he-told-me honesty, where somebody points out you have spinach on your teeth. No, I’m talking about the sucker-punch-straight-to-the-face brand of honesty.
It’s brutal. It’s ugly. It’s unexpected.
And I can almost guarantee you will NOT enjoy it.
In fact, I’ve been holding off telling you for years now, hoping somebody would do the dirty work for me. But no one has. So, out of respect to you, I want to tell you the truth.
So here it is.
You know how you’ve been struggling to get traffic? Tried everything, and it’s just not working right?
Well, it’s not because you haven’t found the right traffic strategy. It’s not because you need to change your domain name. It’s not because the Google gods have turned against you and cursed you to wallow in anonymity forever.
It’s because you’re dumb.
And if you ever want a chance in hell of anyone listening to you, you’d better smarten up.

Did I really just call you “dumb?”

Yes, I did. Sorry.
Granted, you might be part of the minority who’s getting a lot of traffic and making a ton of money and is really and truly brilliant. If that’s the case, consider yourself excused from this “Come to Jesus” meeting.
The rest of you though?
This is not a ruse where DUMB turns out to be a clever acronym for something far less offensive. The truth is, I’m calling you out, and I’m doing it out of love.
Because you see, everyone has been lying to you. Including me.
We teach you traffic strategies. We dole out writing tips. We give you a pep talk and make you believe maybe you can really become the next blogging superstar.
But honestly?
There’s one really big thing we’ve been leaving out. Here it is:

Popular bloggers are smarter than you are

And no, I’m not talking about IQ.
What I’m referring to is having a conversation with somebody and walking away thinking, “Holy crap, they’re amazing!” Maybe not a super genius, no, but captivating nonetheless.
Every popular blogger I’ve ever talked to for more than 15 minutes has had that effect on me. I always come away from the conversation with a perspective I didn’t have before.
You might say, “Well, they’re not necessarily smart. They’re just articulate,” but I don’t think that’s all it is. I think it’s a piece of a much larger set of characteristics.
Just a few examples:

• They know damn near everything about their topic. And if they don’t know it, it’s in their reading pile.
• They can take enormously complex ideas and compress them into simple language anyone can understand.
• At least some of what they say is truly original. You’ve never heard it anywhere before. Ever.
• Even if you have no interest whatsoever in their topic, they find a way to captivate you and make you interested. It’s spooky.
• You find yourself thinking about something they wrote or said weeks or even years into the future.

Yes, they are publishing great content, building relationships with the right people, and employing the right traffic strategies, but at the bottom of it all, you have a wicked smart person who deserves all the attention they’re getting. They are truly special people.
On the flipside, there’s everyone else who is some combination of ignorant, obtuse, unoriginal, boring, or forgettable. You read their work, and you come away thinking they’re kind of dumb.
So, it’s time to ask yourself the question…
Which group do you belong to?
Or even more importantly, which group do you want to belong to?

The truth about building a popular blog

It’s not only about what you publish. It’s also about who you are.
If you’re smart, it’s relatively easy. You publish an idea that’s both brilliant and useful, it blows people’s minds, everyone starts talking about it, and a bazillion people link to your blog. Influencers also line up to become your friend and help you out because… well… you’re cool.
But if you’re not smart?
It’s nearly impossible. You can do everything all the blogging authorities tell you to do, and you can do it absolutely correctly, and you’ll still fail. I guarantee it.
So, does that mean you’re doomed?
Not necessarily. Here’s why:
This isn’t about genetics. This isn’t about inborn talent. This isn’t about fate.
It’s about deciding who you want to be and then making yourself into that person.

How to make yourself smarter

I was not what you would call a “bright” kid.
I goofed off in class. I failed tests. I skated through with mediocre grades.
But sometime around the age of 13 or so, I got fed up with myself and decided to change things. There wasn’t any pivotal moment that I recall. I just started caring less about what my friends thought and started thinking about who I wanted to become.
And that person was smart.
So instead of spending 30 minutes on homework, I spent five hours. If the teacher assigned a 500 word essay, I wrote a 1,000 word essay. On the weekends, I stopped going to the arcade and hung out at the library, reading books totally of my own choosing for 8-10 hours straight.
Nobody told me to do it. I just did it. Because that’s who I wanted to be.
Within a year, I was getting straight A’s. By the time I was 16, I graduated high school with college credit, a full two years early. In college, professors regularly called me a prodigy.
But you know the funny thing?
I failed every intelligence test the schools gave me. Every single one. I don’t remember for sure what they said my IQ was, but it was something like 106.
Could they have been wrong? Maybe, but I prefer to think something different:
Each and every one of us decides who we are. No, you may not be ready to be a popular blogger now, but you can become ready.
You just have to decide you want it, and then take the necessary steps. For example:

1) Replace your friends

I told you this would be painful, right?
Well, here’s some more brutal honesty:
If you want to grow, you almost always have to replace your friends. No, you don’t have to insult them or drive them away, but simply stop spending as much time with them as you used to.
Why?
As Jim Rohn famously said, “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” There’s no scientific evidence I know of to support him, but pretty much any successful person will tell you it’s true.
When I first heard that as a teenager, I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to think I could help my friends and take them with me.
But I couldn’t. Not because I had to “take care of myself” or anything narcissistic like that, but because they simply didn’t want to come. They were happy with who they were, and they didn’t have any desire to grow.
So I left them behind. I’d be lying to you if I said it was easy, but I’ve never regretted it. If you want to grow, you have to become someone new, changing the way you think, how you talk, and yes, the people you hang out with.
Want to become a better writer?
Well, find a few writers a little better than you are, online, in real life, wherever, and become friends with them. Exchange work, give each other feedback, and also find ways to hang out and do absolutely nothing related to writing.
If you know them in real life, go to a movie, bowling, a coffee shop, whatever. Talk to them. If they’re online, IM them every day or two, share a YouTube video, rant about stupid politicians, or just ask about their day.
At first, talking to them might be painful. You’ll feel like an idiot. Eventually though, you’ll get smarter, just by hanging around with them. You won’t be able to help it.
That’s what good friends do: they help us grow.

2) Become a know-it-all

Ever seen the movie The Edge?
Anthony Hopkins plays a billionaire who seems to know… well… everything. No one can ask him a question he doesn’t know the answer to.
Well, popular bloggers are kind of like that.
No, they don’t know everything, but a quick conversation could easily go from the latest trends in social media to political intrigue in medieval England to how to replace the carburetor in your car. All in a few minutes.
And they’re not bullshitting. They really know a lot about all of those subjects (and many more).
Here’s why:
They’re learning. Constantly.
To use myself as an example…

• I listen to an interview with a brilliant person every morning during breakfast
• During lunch, I read part of a nonfiction book
• I watch 42 minutes of the smartest TV I can find during dinner (often on Netflix)
• After dinner, I read the day’s news and interesting blog posts
• Before going to bed, I read fiction for at least an hour
• While I’m in the car, I listen to books on tape, even if I’m going to the local pharmacy
• I spend a portion of every weekend watching recordings of conferences I couldn’t attend

And the crazy thing?
Amongst popular bloggers, I’m not abnormal. Yes, everyone has different routines, but each and every popular blogger I know spends at least three or four hours a day consuming new information.
It’s not just an idiosyncrasy. It’s required.
In today’s world, going to school, learning a few things, and then coasting through your life without reading another book is a death wish. You’ll be obsolete in a few years. Hell, if you’re a blogger, you’ll be obsolete in a few weeks.
The opposite is also true. If you spend more time learning than anyone else, before you know it, everyone thinks you’re a genius. Not only can you recite the work of other important people, but you connect the dots between totally unrelated subjects, creating new ideas nobody has even considered before.
It’s not because you were born with a high IQ. It’s because you know so damn much.
The point?
Spend at least three hours a day learning something new. I don’t care how or when you do it. Just make sure you do.

3) Do less

Here’s another powerful question:
How many hours per day do you spend thinking?
And no, I don’t necessarily mean sitting in a chair, lost in thought. You can include time when your body is on autopilot too, like when you’re driving to work, doing the dishes, taking a shower, etc.
For most people, it’s maybe two or three hours per day. Now, here’s the follow-up question that really brings things into perspective:
Of those hours, how many are spent thinking about your writing?
Uh oh. Now you’re in trouble, right?
Most people think about their family, their job, their upcoming vacation, but they don’t think about what they’re going to write until they open the word processor. Big mistake.
Recently, I found a slide deck from Brendan Schwartz, the CTO of Wistia, talking about how to build a great product, and in it, he gives some surprising advice:
For every hour you spend working, you need to spend 10 hours thinking. Or put more simply, 10x thinking, 1x doing.
And it applies to more than just building a product.
If I add up all the time I spend writing blog posts, it’s probably a similar ratio. If I spend five hours writing a post, which I often do, I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent 50 hours thinking about it before I start writing and in between drafts.
When readers see the finished product, they think, “Oh my God, you’re a genius,” but the truth is, the vast majority of the stuff I think is either worthless or downright stupid. You never hear any of that. All you hear is the 10% I decide to share with you.
Whether they realize it or not, most popular bloggers do the same thing with their best content. They might think about a post for months or even years before they feel ready to write it. Usually, those are also the posts that go viral and make them famous.
Now, you might be thinking, “Well, I’m not doing this full time. I have a job, kids, a social life. I’m just too busy.” And you’re right. You are too busy. That’s the problem.
If you want to become a popular blogger, you need time to think. Not just for a few minutes here and there, but for hours and hours on end.
That means doing less. As painful as it may be, you’re going to have to cut some things out of your life to give yourself time to do this right.
Maybe it’s reducing your time in front of the television. Maybe it’s scaling back your hours at work. Maybe it’s spending less time with your friends.
Regardless, you have to cut something. Otherwise, you’ll never have time to think, and you’ll be just another fool regurgitating what everyone else says.

The bottom line

Blogging isn’t only about SEO or social networking or the quality of your subheads.
It’s also about you.
More than likely, the person you are right now is not capable of being a popular blogger. Your environment, your habits, and your schedule are sucking all the promise right out of you.
If you want to succeed, you have to change. Surround yourself with smart people, bury yourself in books, and cut all the crap out of your life that’s distracting you.
You may not feel it happen, but it will change you. Drastically. You’ll still be you, but you’ll be a better version of you.
And you’ll see the results.
Where your posts used to get a halfhearted response from readers, you’ll start getting dozens of adoring comments. Where popular bloggers used to ignore you, you’ll find them linking to your posts without even asking. Where you used to only see small, incremental traffic gains, your traffic will explode, going from 100 visitors a day to 500 to 1,000, all within a matter of months.
Not because you’re using some new traffic technique. Not because you got to know some powerful influencer. Not because you got lucky.
It’ll happen because you’re worthy. Slowly and painfully, you’ll have transformed into someone worth listening to.
Are you ready to be that person?
Or are you going to be just another dumbass with a blog?
The choice is yours.

Top 20 Ways using you can put your blog on top

A troubling thought, isn’t it?
You’re slaving away at your blog, but you can’t help wondering if you have a shot in hell of getting anyone to read it.

What makes you any different from the millions of other bloggers hoping for attention?
You’re all doing the same stuff. Cranking out posts, messing around on Twitter and Facebook, leaving comments on popular blogs – you know, the usual.
But nobody gives a crap. Readers have seen it all before. You’re not offering anything new, so why should they hang around?
Good question. And the problem is, you don’t really have an answer.
Most of the time, you feel like you’re stumbling around in the dark. You can’t tell what’s working and what’s not. It feels like a big, never-ending guessing game.
Maybe you came here to find some answers. Maybe you’re hoping I’ll tell you what to do.
But I won’t.
Not because I don’t want to, but because sometimes you can’t understand what to do until you first understand what NOT to do. So, let’s start there.
Here’s a big, fat list of ways to be a mediocre blogger. How many are you guilty of?

1. Tell stories

People love stories, but that doesn’t mean you should tell any. Here’s why: telling a boring story is worse than not telling any stories at all, and unless you’re trained in storytelling, yours are pretty much guaranteed to be boring.
If you doubt me, go to a bar and tell a story to someone in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. If everybody in the bar stops talking to listen to you, you’re a good storyteller. If they don’t, you suck.
And almost everybody sucks.

2. Be “true to yourself”

Let me guess. Tried-and-true marketing techniques just don’t feel right to you, so you’re scrapping it all in the name of authenticity?
Well, I’ll be damned. I must be psychic!
No, the truth is everyone feels that way in the beginning, and everyone has to do it anyway. To get good at something, first you have to follow proven techniques and screw it all up, and then you learn, and then you follow proven techniques and do it correctly, and then one day, when you’ve been doing it a long time and you’re a freaking master, you invent your own techniques. It’s the same process for learning to play the piano as promoting your work.
If it feels inauthentic, it’s not because there’s something wrong with the technique. It’s because you’re doing it wrong, and you need to keep practicing.

3. Build your Twitter / Facebook / Google+ / Pinterest / LinkedIn following first

Here’s your thinking: the reason you’re not getting any traffic is because first you need to build your following on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or <insert your social network here>. Once you start getting some traction, then you can promote your blog, and the traffic will start flowing free and easy.
Heh. Wrong.
Yes, social networking is important, but you know what’s even more important? Focus. By dividing your attention between so many different places, you’re pretty much guaranteeing you won’t do any of them well.
My advice: ignore social networks entirely in the beginning. Wait until you have 1,000 blog subscribers before you even think about building up a following somewhere else.
(And if you want to know how to get that first 1,000 without spending a nanosecond on Facebook or Twitter – here’s a clue.)

4. Write short posts

In my opinion, no beginning blogger should be publishing anything under 1,000 words. And really, 2,000 words should be your goal.
Why?
Three reasons:

1. Readers perceive long content to be more valuable. They’re more likely to bookmark it, share it, and link to it.
2. Most other bloggers are too lazy to write long content. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you’ll stand out.
3. There’s some good evidence Google prefers long form content. And giving Google what it wants is smart.

The bottom line: stop writing short posts. Or at least intersperse them with much longer content.

5. Give common sense advice

Do you believe in preaching good old-fashioned common sense?
If so, I worry about your chances, because common sense is boring. Readers have already heard it so many times they tune out the minute they even catch a whiff of conventional wisdom.
“But… but… common sense is what they need!” you say. My response: it doesn’t matter. If nobody is paying attention to you, you can spout all the truth in the world, and it won’t do anybody any good. So, stop writing posts that make people want to stop listening.

6. Insist on originality

The opposite of common sense is also dangerous.
Some writers also get so obsessed with being original that they become incapable of ever publishing anything. And when they do happen to stumble across an original idea, it’s so strange and foreign to the reader that they can’t even follow it.
The better approach: find ways to approach old topics from fresh angles. It’s a lot easier, and it’s a lot less risky.

7. Be polite

Do you hold back from asking influencers for links because you’re worried about bugging them? Or worse, do you hold back giving your readers the truth because you don’t want to offend them?
Well, newsflash: real bloggers fight for their ideas. There’s no need to be obnoxious, but you can’t go around squeaking out requests for help and dancing around hard truths.
You have to demand attention. You have to take stands. You have to be totally and utterly shameless.
The world already has enough cowards. So please, don’t be another one.

8. Write “when you can”

For a lot of people, finding time to write is like packing a suitcase.
You put in all the important things first, close it to see if everything fits, stuff in more things, check it again, and so on and so on until there’s no more room. Whatever doesn’t fit gets left behind.
In life, those “important things” that get scheduled first are your job and family. If you have any room left, you stuff in friends and relaxation and whatnot. And then, at the very end of the list, you have writing.
Because it’s the last to be scheduled, it almost always gets “left behind.” Not because you want to neglect it, but because your life is already full to bursting, and you just can’t find the space for it.
The solution: schedule it first, not last. Make it one of the “important things” you put in the suitcase first. Believing you’ll find time for it otherwise is just delusional.

9. Worry about SEO

Speaking of delusional…
Lots of people see blogging as a way to get search engine traffic. Find a keyword you want to rank for, publish a post around it, and a few months later, you’ll have all the traffic you can handle.
Right?
Wrong.
Getting search engine traffic isn’t about keywords. It’s not even about blog posts. It’s about creating something so amazing everyone talks about it and links to it.
So do that. You can worry about SEO later.

10. Start multiple blogs

In my opinion, it’s pretty much impossible to build a popular blog in less than 10 hours a week. If you want to grow quickly, tack on an additional 10.
Say you have two blogs. 2 X 20 = 40 hours a week of work to grow both of them quickly.
Are you willing to dedicate that kind of time? Do you even have that much extra time in your week?
If not, pick the blog that’s most important to you and jettison the rest.
Otherwise, you’re not blogging. You’re just dabbling.

11. Search for the perfect domain name

Blogs are like living things. They evolve. Even if you found the perfect domain name today, you would hate it a year from now, because the focus of your blog will change.
The better solution: pick a domain name that’s good enough and go with it. Sure, changing it later is a headache, but never having a blog because you’re such a damn perfectionist is an even bigger headache.
Pick it. Register it. Move on.

12. Show the world how clever you are

Got a clever domain name? A clever headline? A clever post?
You’re probably pretty tickled with yourself, right?
Well, I hate to break it to you, but cleverness almost always backfires. People won’t get it. Sure, they would understand if they spent a few minutes thinking about it, but they’re in a hurry, and there are a gazillion other blog posts to read that don’t require so much thought.
Instead, be clear. Don’t make people figure it out. They’ll reward you by coming back.

13. Try to be Seth Godin

Every once in a while, I’ll give a student some advice, and they’ll respond with, “But that’s not what Seth Godin does!”
*strangles student*
Think of it like this. Let’s say you like to play a little US football.
If I handed you a helmet right now and pushed you into the middle of a professional game, how do you think you would do?
I’ll tell you how you would do: you would get your ass handed to you. Those guys are genetic freaks who have prepared their entire lives to do battle with other genetic freaks. You’ll never be able to do what they do, no matter how hard you try. In fact, even trying could be deadly.
It’s the same thing with Seth. He’s the blogging equivalent of a 350-pound lineman who can run a mile in under 4 minutes. In other words, he’s so freakishly talented he can do things nobody else can.
So, stop trying to copy him. You don’t have his kind of talent, and if you did, you wouldn’t want to copy him anyway. The whole thing is just silly.

14. Wait until you’re in the right frame of mind

This one is so tempting.
You’re feeling tired or frustrated or <insert your negative emotions here>, and you think, “I’ll never be able to write like this. I’ll just stop and come back when I’m in a better frame of mind.”
The truth?
You’re procrastinating. You’re scared of how difficult it is to express your thoughts, and you’re using your emotions as an excuse to quit.
It’s understandable, but that’s not what good writers do. Good writers write.
It doesn’t matter if they are tired. It doesn’t matter if they are going through a divorce. It doesn’t matter if their kids are screaming. It doesn’t matter if they’re sick and dying in the hospital. It doesn’t matter if terrorists drop a nuclear bomb on their hometown.
They write. End of story.

15. Agonize over your WordPress theme

It’s the same issue as searching for the perfect domain. You’ll never find it, and even if you do, you’ll hate it later. So, pick something good enough and get on with your business.
You have 15 minutes. Go.

16. Wait until <insert freelancer here> can help you

Are you waiting for a graphic designer or programmer or copywriter or WordPress specialist to help you with something?
Well, stop. If you’re ever going to get anything done, you have to refuse to wait for anyone. Ever.
A lot of times, that means doing without. You might have to give up your fancy theme modifications or custom logo or WordPress plugin. Sure, they would be useful, but do you really need them?
No. You need to get off your lazy butt and stop procrastinating.

17. Use free (or cheap) hosting for your blog

Can you get by with it?
Sure.
Should you get by with it?
Not if you can help it. Here’s why:
At some point in the future, you’re going to have a problem with your blog. It’ll get hacked or slow down or just disappear mysteriously, and you won’t know what to do.
If you have a free or cheap host, you’ll be on your own, and you’ll waste days or even weeks trying to figure it out. At the end of it all, you’ll realize how foolish you were to skimp on hosting and move to a premium host like WP Engine who fixes stuff for you when it breaks.
Or you can be smart and just do it now. The choice is yours.

18. Build your RSS subscriber list

You didn’t get the memo? RSS is on life support, and it’ll die any day now.
Smart bloggers stopped depending on it a long time ago. Instead, we get our readers to subscribe via email.
So should you.

19. Publish great content – in the wrong place

Is great content important?
Sure.
Should you create as much of it as you can?
Absolutely.
But should you publish it on your own blog right now?
Probably not.
To explain why, imagine if Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to an empty room. It’s one of the greatest speeches in history, no doubt, but without an audience, without anyone to hear it and spread the word, it loses power.
Great content works the same way. Before you have an audience, publishing it on your own blog is kind of a waste of time.
You’re better off publishing it as a guest post instead. Borrow a blog that already has a huge audience and funnel those readers into your own list.
Then, once you have a small group of dedicated followers, really ramp up the content on your blog. Just not before.

20. Give up

After reading through all these mistakes, you might feel like, “Well, damn. I’m just a screw-up. I might as well quit.”
But you shouldn’t. Here’s why:
We’re all screw-ups.
In my first three years, I made every mistake on this list. Every single one.
Not only did all my blogs fail, but I was banned by Google, my first guest post was rejected by Copyblogger, and I got so carried away bragging about my interview with Seth Godin he had to ask me to stop. Looking back, it’s horrifying how many mistakes I made.
But I’m still here.
I learned from each failure. I got advice from smart people. I mastered the craft.
Listen to other popular bloggers, and you’ll hear the same story. Over and over and over again.
It’s not a coincidence. That’s how success happens. You live and learn.
If you’re guilty of some of these mistakes, it just means you’re still in the beginning stages of the journey. Take your licks, do your best to learn from them, and never, ever lose faith in yourself.
You really can do this.
There’s nothing wrong with you.
Just.
Keep.
Going.

63 Blogging Tools That Will Make You Insanely Productive

Let me guess.


You read the headline on this post and thought, “Cool!” Then a little voice in your head whispered something like, “Why do I need another post on all the cool tools I don’t have time to use?”
That is the key, isn’t it? Time. Having the time to set up, play with and truly put to work all the amazing tools that will rocket your blog into the heavens.
And having time to write. And time to follow other bloggers. And time to network on social media.
After your blog is set up, after that technical part is over, every new blogger is fundamentally the same. You’re full of excitement and plans. You have a bright, shiny new blog, bursting with potential and ideas.
And zero readers.
Time then becomes the key factor that separates new bloggers into three dramatically different kinds of bloggers. That’s why all the standard advice about the tools you need is confusing. Tools don’t make the blogger. Time does.
Because it’s how much time you can spend studying the top bloggers in your niche, improving your writing and cultivating relationships with readers and influencers that determines how fast your blog will grow. And how fast your blog grows determines the tools you need.
Tools are essential, but time is the magic elixir.
Again, bloggers span a wide spectrum, but fall into three distinct groups. Read the following descriptions, and then jump to each group’s tool section to discover what you need.

The Minimalist Blogger

You have ideas you want to share but you may not be too sure about this blogging thing. You’re willing to dip your toe in the water, because it seems like it could work, but the tech part is still a challenge. You don’t need the fancy tools.
Most of all, you don’t want to spend a lot of time on it yet, or you don’t have a lot of extra time in your life right now. Maybe you just want to write and follow others in your niche. Whether your topic is a passion, a hobby or related to what you do for a living, a blog is a side project that you can give no more than 10 hours per week, if that.

The Serious and Committed Blogger

You’ve gotten your feet wet in blogging,  and you’re committed to what you’re doing. You want to build a business from your blog, but your income and readership are not big enough for you to quit your job. You’re squeezing out as much time as you can, maybe 10 to 20 hours every week, and you need tools that won’t suck up much time but will deliver a big impact.

The Entrepreneur Blogger

You look at blogging differently than everyone else:
You’re not running a blog; you’re operating a business. Blogging is a promotion strategy, but it’s not an end in itself.
Because you’re doing this more or less full time, you have significantly more time to spend experimenting with tools that others can’t.
Because this is your business, you’re willing to invest money in it, so the higher price tags on the more sophisticated services don’t put you off – IF they make sense for growing the business and saving you time and effort that can be used better elsewhere.

The Blogger’s Tool List

We’re listing all tools we’re familiar with and use. Many of the links that follow are affiliate links, for which we’ll earn a small commission if you choose to buy (at no additional cost to you.) Expect additions and changes as we find better tools. We’ll also be adding sections on courses and books that will help you in your blogging business.
We’ve organized it into four sections to match where you’re at as a blogger.
Setting Up Your Blog: This is the tech list. If you’re thinking about starting a blog go here first to find out what you need.
The Minimalist Blogger: Tools to build a solid foundation but nothing fancy.
The Serious and Committed Blogger: Upgrades to many of the basic tools needed as you add products, build your subscriber base and earn money.
The Entrepreneur Blogger: Advanced tools for blogs earning from $10 thousand to $10 million.

Setting Up Your Blog

How to Buy a Domain Name

NameCheap is our favorite cheap domain registrar. There’s no good reason to pay more. We recommend you don’t purchase your domain name through your web hosting company either, because if you decide to switch web hosts later, which is likely, it can be more complicated.

How to Choose a Web Host

The standard advice to go with a large web hosting company for long-term stability is sound. Small web hosting companies still disappear without warning, a terrifying situation. You will also require different levels of bandwidth and service as your blog grows.
For minimalist to serious bloggers, we recommend HostGator, which offers several low-priced plans for new and small blogs. You can purchase shared hosting for as low as $3.96 per month with a three-year contract, a 20% discount is almost always available and the support is excellent.

Why You Must Start with WordPress

We’re adamant on this tool: only WordPress. Forget Blogger, Weebly and all the other free amateur platforms if you want people to take your blog seriously. WordPress has become the industry standard.
Most large web hosts already have WordPress available for installation from within your hosting account. But you can do it yourself by downloading it from http://wordpress.org/. It’s customizable to support a range of functions as your blog grows and you can set up a good-looking blog without knowing how to code.

How to Get a Great WordPress Design for Your Blog

WordPress provides the behind-the-scenes guts of your blog. A “theme” provides the template and design. You can pay a web designer or you can buy a customizable WordPress theme. A lot of graphic designers will get angry at us for saying this, but don’t spend money for graphic design at this point. As you will see in a minute, premium WordPress themes can be very attractive by themselves and have robust code, making them more than enough for your beginning needs.
While you can get your blog started on the built-in WordPress theme, your blog will immediately look more professional with a premium theme. We don’t recommend you use a free theme. The differences between free and premium themes are in the backend: While both may look good to visitors, free themes don’t come with a technical support desk and are almost always ignored by their developers when they move onto other projects, leaving you with an outdated theme that will become more vulnerable to hackers and more prone to break over time.
Premium themes are updated regularly to keep pace with WordPress upgrades and new trends. Plus, they maintain support desks that will help you with setup, problems, customization, upgrades and maintenance.
We use themes from ElegantThemes for several sites. It doesn’t take much effort to customize an Elegant theme. For $39 a year you have access to all 86 themes plus customer support. Developer pricing and a lifetime one-time fee are available.
StudioPress is the leader in premium WordPress themes. Built on the Genesis WordPress platform, StudioPress is used by many top social media bloggers. Although pricier than Elegant Themes, you can buy Genesis plus an individual theme or the entire theme package.

A Basic Set of WordPress Plugins

With plugins, more is not always better and in fact more can slow your site down or cause code conflicts. You only need a few basic plugins to add enhanced functionality for social media sharing, email capture, analytics and site performance.
Social sharing: Dozens of social sharing plugins are available for WordPress. We like the free Digg Digg plugin because it floats on the side of the screen and follows the reader up or down the page as they read, so it’s always visible.
Popups: We didn’t like the aggressive way popup boxes take the reader’s screen hostage, so we designed a better one – Unpop, a polite popup that slides up the screen, doesn’t annoy the reader and goes away when your reader tells it to. You can use it to get email subscribers, likes for your Facebook page and register readers for a webinar. Try it for 30 days free at GetUnpop.
Analytics: Be sure to get some form of tracking or analytics code on your blog from the start. Google Analytics is free and easy to install. Later as your traffic increases you may want to invest in a paid analytics program but for the short- and mid-term Google Analytics will provide enough data to make your head spin.
Site performance: We recommend installing WPSuperCache to maximize the speed at which your blog’s pages load for a visitor. Consider it fine-tuning for your blog’s engine; knowing the technical details at this point won’t make you a better blogger but your blog won’t annoy your visitors.
SEO: The degree of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) you need to implement generates intense debate among bloggers. For beginners, we say forget about it. Seriously. Other than creating the very basic metadata so your posts show up correctly in a Google search, your time is better spent writing great content and promoting it.
Many WordPress themes, like StudioPress, have SEO built in that makes the basic set up quick and painless. Don’t overthink this part.

Where to Find Images and Photos

Everyone has their favorite stock photo site, and ours is Bigstockphoto. The prices are inexpensive for small photos, which are the right size and resolution for blog post images. Searching for appropriate images to illustrate a blog post can become a huge time suck, so limit yourself to one or two stock sites.

How to Establish an Email List

Building your email list should be your primary focus as a blogger from the day you start. Relying on RSS or other email collection programs to maintain your list is foolish. You should aim to collect emails from Day One, or earlier.
We recommend you start with the free version of MailChimp. It has a clean, easy-to-use dashboard and you can not only create multiple lists but also create segments of lists as well. One key thing you can’t do with the free version is create a series of autoresponder emails that will be sent out automatically when a visitor signs up to your list.
You’ll need to upgrade to either a paid MailChimp account or another paid email marketing provider when your blog reaches the point where you’re offering a free email class that requires an autoresponder.

The Minimalist Blogger

Social Media Listening Tools

Feedly is a free replacement for Google Reader that you can use for tracking posts from the blogs you’re following in your niche. Set it up with folders by topic or by size or by influence, whatever works best for you.
The free version of Hootsuite is more than enough at this stage to monitor different social media networks in one place as you follow the top bloggers and cool kids in your niche.

Add Custom Email Sign Up Boxes

The free version of MailChimp will still be adequate at this point. As you begin guest posting, you might consider a premium plugin like Optin Skin to add custom email sign up boxes for the readers who visit your site.

The Serious and Committed Blogger

Upgrade Your Email Provider to Create a Free Email Course

You are probably ready to develop a simple email autoresponder course on your topic. For that, you’ll need to upgrade from the free MailChimp account to either a paid MailChimp account or one of those listed below. All of these email providers provide pretty much the same service and are competitively priced. Pick the one you like the best or find easiest to use during a free trial period.

• MailChimp, paid version
• Aweber
• ConstantContact
• GetResponse
• MadMimi

Develop an Audio Course as Your First Product

Now that you’ve whetted your subscribers’ appetites with your free email course, offer an audio course for your first paid product. It’s quick to produce, technically easier to manage and one of the best ways to gauge if you’re hitting the target without a lot of time invested in production. InstantTeleseminar is the most reliable provider we’ve found. It records automatically and customers can join your teleconference calls via phone, Skype or the Internet.

Add a Shopping Cart

You’re wise to keep it simple at this point, until you have multiple products or build an affiliate network. Your best choices are PayPal, eJunkie and Clickbank. Each provides a slightly different set of features, so compare them to find your best fit.

Add Landing Pages to Your Blog

Offering products or requiring registration for classes, teleconference calls or webinars requires separate landing pages to make the experience seamless for your customers. We recommend OptimizePress for building simple landing pages.

Schedule Social Media Sharing

You should know by now where your peeps hang out on social media, so use a free Buffer account to schedule links to useful and relevant content from other bloggers, quotes, tips and links to your guest posts and blog posts.

Tweak Your WordPress Theme

As you build a reader and subscriber base and tweak your blog angle, you may find your theme doesn’t have the look or features you need. Rather than paying big bucks to have someone design a brand new theme, which can create unwanted technical problems while you’re beginning to make money, search out freelance web designers on Odesk or 99Designs for customizing your current theme.
You can find a lot of talent on Odesk if you take the time to search carefully, using the competency scores and feedback from previous clients as gauges. 99Designs uses a contest model rather than a fee per hour model. You determine what you’re willing to pay and the design requirements. Designers who are interested respond with samples for you to choose from and you choose the winner.

Optimize Your Blog for SEO

You should have gained enough traffic, page views and links for Google to notice your blog consistently by now. We recommend the Yoast SEO plugin to optimize the content on your site.

Back Up Your Site

Don’t tempt fate. Install a backup plugin. We use BackWPup and back up to our server, but you can back up to a DropBox or Amazon S3 account automatically.

The Entrepreneur Blogger

Upgrade Your Webhosting

As your traffic grows you’ll want to upgrade your plan and may consider moving to your own server, which you can do with HostGator or web hosts dedicated to blogging and WordPress, such as WPEngine and Synthesis at Copyblogger Media. Both are expensive, but the peace of mind and higher-level customer support for a large site that hosts your business, community and products are worth it.

Upgrade Your Site Protection

As your blog gains traffic and becomes known, expect the hack attacks. It’s not pretty and can destroy overnight the goodwill you earned with your readers and subscribers. Sucuri cleaned up the nasties when BBT was hacked last year, and continues to keep them at bay. It’s expensive, but not as expensive as losing hundreds of subscribers it took months to win over.

Choose Email Marketing and Shopping Carts Based on Sales

Your growing traffic, subscriber and customer base demand closer attention and more integration. You have several choices.
Under $10,000 in sales
Expect to outgrow PayPal, eJunkie or Clickbank soon and begin researching other options.
Up to $30,000 in sales
Open a business bank account if you haven’t already. Most accountants and bookkeepers would probably advise you to do it earlier.
Over $30,000 in sales
Open a merchant account either through PowerPay or get a Stripe account, an alternative to a merchant account. You will need either one to have a credit card processor.
Up to $100,000 in sales
Keep your paid email marketing provider and add a shopping cart: We recommend UltraCart. It offers the complete range of shopping cart services, such as order pages and affiliate management, and integrates with all the leading email providers.
Over $100,000 in sales
Upgrade to an integrated email, shopping cart and customer relationship management (CRM) system such as Ontraport (formerly OAP). The difference with an integrated provider is automation – many of the email, list segmentation and billing functions can be automated and integrated with the contact profile. You can also track and group clients and contacts in different ways.

Landing Pages

LeadPages offers dozens of slick page designs for sales, event registration and other types of landing pages plus easy split testing. It’s easy to set up and customize.

Tweak Your Web and Graphic Design

Your blog-based business has finally reached a point where it could benefit from a custom design. Use Dribbble and Behance to find a really good designer.

Expand into Video and Audio Tools

We continually get questions about how Jon creates his videos. The short answer – he’s a geek. The longer answer includes PowerPoint. Seriously. Jon uses advanced PowerPoint animation techniques you can learn from Slideology. He does a screen recording of the presentation in PowerPoint, then imports it into Camtasia, where he records the slideshow with audio, and then renders it as an MP4. On a Mac, you can use the same animation with Keynote and ScreenFlow.
If you like the slides in our webinars, we get the templates from Graphic River.
If you don’t have that much geekiness, you can find a video producer on ODesk or Elance that knows advanced presentation techniques.

Consider Adding a Membership Site

After you’ve grown a substantial list, it may be time to open the doors to a private membership site to offer exclusive products and information. You need several elements to create that private community.
Wishlist Member is our choice for managing your membership. It integrates seamlessly with WordPress and the expanding list of plugins allow you to customize your members’ experience. It’s a bit more expensive than other options, but versatile.
Most membership sites offer a forum for members to interact. We use Simple:Press in the GuestBlogging Apprenticeship Program, which is a large and active forum. The plugin is still free but the excellent customer support is now fee-based.

Consider Offering Webinars

Up to $100,000 in sales
If you’re hosting small or infrequent webinars, try Meeting Burner or Any Meeting.
Over $100,000 in sales
Consider a subscription to GoToWebinar. The most expensive option, it’s the most reliable despite its occasional glitches.

Take a Look at In-depth Analytics

Up to $100,000 in sales
Tools like CrazyEgg or VisualWebsiteOptimizer make sense for tracking visitor behavior on your landing pages (but not your entire blog). Moz or Raven Tools are also helpful for tracking your traffic from search engines and social media.
Over $100,000 in sales
You have several ultra-sophisticated, pricey options for data-tracking and analysis: Look at Kissmetrics, MixPanel. You’ll probably need a developer to set up these tools and handle campaigns. At this stage, small tweaks in conversion can equal significant gains, so don’t get lost in analysis paralysis.

Advanced Social Media Tactics

Because your social media following has likely reached a critical mass that now grows organically, reaching out to individual influencers in your niche is a more profitable use of your time. A tool like BuzzStream efficiently helps you search and track your interactions with bloggers, journalists and other people you want to keep your eye on.

Advanced Email Marketing Tactics

Customer IO, which sends emails triggered by user behavior, can help you refine your customer marketing and engagement and increase conversions.

Scalable Affiliate Software

Depending on your particular product mix, you may need to compare affiliate services. IDevAffiliate is popular and robust affiliate tracking software that will scale as you grow.

We’re not finished yet…

This resource guide will evolve, as our business grows, as we require different tools and as new tools are introduced. We’ll add a tab at the top of the blog so you can find this guide easily when you come back, and we will keep you posted on the changes.

…and neither are you!

Wherever you’re at with your blog, you now have the all tools you need to take it to the next level. We’ve done the research and explored all the dead ends – so you don’t have to. Whether you have 10 hours, 20 hours, or 60+ hours a week to work on your blog, using the right tools will help you fully exploit the time you have.
So let’s “tool up” and get your blog ready for prime time.
If you have a question regarding a particular tool, post it in the comments below. We’ll do our best to help you.