Top 10 tips for beginner bloggers

Starting a blog can seem overwhelming, but in truth, it's one of the simplest ways to join the online community. Follow these tips to ensure your blog is positioned for success! 
http://weblogs.about.com/od/bloggingtips/tp/TipsBeginnerBloggers.htm

25 blogging tips from newbies and veterans

Found a great article full of blogging tips! You gotta check it out!

http://goinswriter.com/blogging-tips/ 

12 Tactics To Take Your Blog To The Next Level

Here is another good article from The Huffington Post on taking your blog to the next level! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-wong/12-tactics-to-take-your-b_b_5433708.html

How to Keep Your Blog Fresh

I found this great article on the Huffington Post on how to keep your blog fresh. Important stuff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-hoenig/how-to-keep-your-blog-fresh_b_3936173.html

6 Blog Post SEO Tips to Get Your Content Ranking

While good content is key, SEO is an important factor to always consider when writing your blog. This link gives us some basic SEO tips to get started http://www.business2community.com/blogging/6-blog-post-seo-tips-get-content-ranking-0963109#!bvBddx

Blogging Tips List

Here is a site with a good rundown of some of the important tips and tricks you need to know to start blogging http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/blogging-tips/

WRITE WHAT YOU LOVE

This piece, found Here is a great short explanation of why you should write what you love.

"What is your blog about? Cooking? Parenting? Crafting? Government? Boogers? Whatever it is, make sure it's "you." Maintaining a blog is a lot of work, and if you don't love boogers enough to write about them several days a week -- until the end of time (or you quit) -- don't start. If you don't have the passion for your topic, you don't have much to offer your readers... and, they will soon be gone.

I personally LOVE coming up with ideas and giving advice. I always have. It may sound weird to some, but that is "me." When I get a phone call from a friend in need of ideas or advice, I get a rush. Really. That's how much I like it. People ask me all the time if I ever worry that I'll run out of things to write about, or ideas to share on the blog, and I can easily say "no." I feel confident that I can spew out ideas for the rest of forever, assuming I'm never bound by duck tape and gagged with a smelly sock. That may be a big assumption. Clearly, a blog about ideas would suit me well. And it has.

So, think about where your passion lies, and blog about it. One word of caution I have is to not get caught up in the linky party or giveaway trap in an effort to gain readers. I've seen several great blogs quickly go downhill because they became obsessed with hosting giveaways and linky parties. Their content suffers and I don't know about everyone else, but I take off in a flash. See ya. It's fun to host giveaways every once in a while. It's fun to host linky parties every once in a while. But unless you are a blog dedicated to those things, that is NOT why the majority of your readers are coming to you. They are coming for your content; to revel in your passion. Don't leave them hanging. What you want is readers who LOVE reading what you write about, not readers who sign up because they have to in order to enter the giveaways. That's not how you build an audience. I do giveaways now and then, as a treat to my readers, to build some excitement, and hey... to get some free stuff for myself. I may do a linky party someday; haven't yet. But, I want to keep it minimal. I know that's not why y'all are here."

39 Blogging Tips From the Pros

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/39-blogging-tips/

Turn Google Hangouts On Air Into Mini-Courses in a Blog

So what’s the main advantage? Well, this way people can structure their own learning experience. They can watch one video at a time instead of risking watching one or two hours of videos.

Google Hangouts On Air can be recorded as live, private events in YouTube as well. So even if you don’t want to have one publicly on Google+, you can still achieve the same result. It really is a great way to make your content work a lot harder on your behalf.

16 Tips for bloggers

http://blog.bufferapp.com/blogging-advice-for-beginners-from-16-experts

Building Audience Relationships

So you want to make more money from your blog.

You think that the only thing you need to be doing is to get traffic. Period.

Maybe getting traffic will increase your income, but it’s not the only way and most of the traffic is useless, if they’re not targeted for the right audience.

Getting traffic  is a lot of hard work, I’m with you on this point, that’s why you should get the most of every visitor you get.

Yes, you understood me right. You should build your email list.

Read more at http://www.bloggingtips.com/2014/07/29/insanely-simple-technique-build-relationship-audience/#PRxDr7i1Yiq5BrFK.99

How to Make Money through Blogging in 2014?

 If you have great skills for writing and have depth knowledge or interest in any particular niche, Blogging is the great way through which you can make money online. There are so many possibilities through which you can easily make money online. 

http://www.bloggingtips.com/2014/07/31/money-blogging-2014/

A Few Easy Ideas for Visual Blog Content

Okay, so everyone knows visual content is HOT. For example, Buzzfeed, Mashable, just to name a few.

Quick Facts:

• Instagram had more daily users in August 2012 than Twitter
• Pinterest drives more sales and revenue than Facebook for jewellery retailer Bottica.com (source) and Pinterest drives more traffic than Twitter for Sony (source)
• KISSmetrics built 41,142 backlinks from 3741 unique domains by publishing 47 infographics (source)

Adding an image to each blog post is easy. Blogging school questions: But what else can you do? How can you turn information about boring industries into visual content? How can you create fascinating infographics about dull products?

1. Create an infographic to share statistics about your industry or industry-related topics.
2. Comment on the history of your industry. Do you know the origins of the humble business card?
3. Share your vision on the future.
4. Comment on industry trends such as cars becoming bigger.
5. Show geographic, gender, or economic differences in the use of your product, service or cause.
6. Gather quotes from industry experts and make them look appealing. Take your inspiration from Lifehack.

Tips on Blogging Tip.#1

Blogging Tip.#1
Harness Valuable Ideas from your Audience.

"Create blog posts that answer the most interesting questions from people you engage with on social media." Dave Larson, founder of @tweetsmarter

This can be a great way to gather ideas of what topics people would most like to read about, which will help your blog grow! read, Read, READ! The audience you want, always has something to say, remember that everyone has a voice.

Getting a little bit of help definitely doesn't hurt, learn about professional blogging from courses, experts, and seasoned bloggers themselves. Visit http://www.nyiad.edu/courses/professional-blogging to learn about blogging courses at NYIAD, New York Institute of Art and Design.

How to Write for Real People — and Get Found by Search Engines

Regardless of whether you are a novice or expert at search engine optimization (SEO), one thing they will always teach you in a blogging course is — you want your blog content to rank well in search engines like Google in order to get more traffic. Fortunately, you don't have to know much about SEO to get that traffic. Here's a simple guide to follow that will make your content both appealing to real people and search engines alike.

1. Write your blog post.

A lot of experts will tell you to start with the SEO — figure out your keywords, the number of times you will need to use them in the content to rank well, and so forth. If your goal is to make your content awesome for people first, not search engines, then you need to write your content for people first, not search engines.

If you know a lot about your niche, you probably know what people are interested in reading about. If you are new to the niche, you can find out by following the top blogs in the niche to see what topics they are writing about, and see which ones in particular get the most engagement through commenting and social sharing.

Why is engagement — social sharing in particular — so important? In the SEO world, one of the things that best helps your content rank well in search engines is getting links to your piece of content from other websites and blogs. Getting exposure for your content through social sharing will make it more likely that other website owners and bloggers will discover your content and link to it.

2. Find great keywords for your post.

Once you have completed your piece of content, then you will want to figure out some great keywords to use to optimize it for search. Google has their own tool — the Google Keyword Planner — that allows you to search for different keyword ideas to determine which ones have the best combination of high search volume and low competition.

To access this tool, you will need to have a Google account (if you have a login for YouTube, Gmail, or Google Analytics, then you have a Google account) that is signed up for Google AdWords. You will not have to pay for an ad to use the Google Keyword Planner tool — you just need to sign up for Google AdWords.

Once you have access to this tool, click on the "Search for new keyword and ad group ideas" option. In the first box, under "Your product or service," enter keyword phrases that you think will best fit the post. For example, if your post is about floral arrangements, you could enter a series of keyword ideas as the ones shown in the example below.

After you click on "Get Ideas," you will be taken to the keyword analysis section. Click on the "Keyword Ideas" tab to see the keyword phrases you entered along with their approximate search volume and competition.

Beneath this area, you'll also get some additional keyword suggestions.

What you're looking for at this stage is the perfect keyword phrase that your ideal reader would search in order to find your article. You want something that has a strong number of average monthly searches, but preferably not a high competition. In this case, if your article is about how to arrange flowers, then the keyword phrases "how to arrange flowers" is the best fit.

For the rest of this article head over to http://www.nyiad.edu/design-articles/archive/how-to-write-real-people-seo

Blogging Courses, What to Expect.

Do they really offer classes in blogging? They sure do! Colleges and universities alike are realizing the large market of bloggers, and are accommodating to the demand to know more about tapping into that market.
What you will learn in a blogging course?
How to create and design your blog
How to write the right kind of content for your readers
How to use social media to find and attract new readers
How to interact with other bloggers and develop your brand online
How to use your blog to make money through advertising, selling books and products, affiliate marketing, etc.

Tips For Creating Your First Blog Post

Here are a few tips on creating your first blog post. Credit to NYIAD for the inspiration. I was thinking it, too.

1. A Killer Post Title: The post title is the first thing people see and read in the post, so it has to be powerful enough to grab their attention.
Example:
The posts that have numbers in the title do best, such as
"10 Quick Tips To Grow Your Blog’s Subscribers",
"7 Great Tips to Help Promote Your Jewelry Business on Pinterest" or
"5 Ways To Make a Wedding Unique".
Posts that feature a checklist also tend to do well.
Build a "top ten" list post for another interesting angle.

2. Strategic Keywords: Your blog post and the post title need to contain keywords specific to that post’s overall message. If you strategically use keywords every time you publish, you have a new opportunity to have each post rank well in search engines!
Example:
Use Google Trends to find the hottest search trends.
Try Google Keyword Planner to help identify keywords you should be using and see traffic estimates based on those proposed keywords.

3. A Clear and Concise Point: Make sure your blog post is specific to one topic. It may contain many points and tips, but in general, one message should be conveyed in each blog post.

To read more on how to write your first blog post, read the full article at the New York Institute of Art and Design.

Blogging Tips for WordPress Users!

One word, syndication. I'm serious, whatever you write on your blog as an article should be syndicated to every social media platform on this god given earth.

Facebook Business Page – In your applications area, search for the “Social RSS” application and get it set up to publish your content to your Facebook page wall automatically.

LinkedIn Personal Profiles – Look for “Blog Link” or “WordPress” in the applications section on your profile page and set it up to auto-post your content to your LinkedIn profile. Don’t forget to tell all of your employees to do this too. If you have a lot of employees, the increase in your potential reach could be gigantic.

Plaxo – Although not as popular, Plaxo is another great business networking site that makes it really easy to “add a feed” and plug in your blog content automatically.

Bing Community Sites – If any of your fishing holes are built on the Ning platform, you can plug in your feed using the “Add RSS” widget included on your profile page.

Other Social Networking Sites – There are many other social sites that allow you to plug in your blog’s RSS feed. Scour your sites for this option.