6 Tips For Building a High Quality Blog Following
In 2010, New York City startup, Birchbox launched a blog about beauty products before it had any customers. The beauty sample delivery service – and its blog – exploded in popularity.
Today, to keep up with its readers’ appetite for content, Birchbox employs multiple editors and publishes half a dozen posts a day, along with an online magazine. According to compete.com, Birchbox.com traffic grew 6,500% in 2011, to over 110,000 monthly unique visitors at last count.
But raw traffic data doesn’t tell the whole story about the value of a publication. Birchbox’s blog drives customer acquisition and retention, which means its readers are loyal enough to become subscribers, followers and customers. At last count, the company had 44,000 Facebook Likes, 14,000 Twitter followers, and 9,400 Youtube subscribers. New blog subscribers – people who had willingly opted in to Birchbox content – pile on every month. (The company declined to release hard numbers on total blog subscribers).
Ironically, the hit-based nature of social media means many blog owners have difficulty cultivating long-term loyalty from their users. It’s easy to get excited when the occasional “viral” post brings in a spike of traffic. But often that traffic melts away as quickly as it arrived.
Brian Clark, CEO of CopyBlogger Media, says a building a quality blog following means “attracting the right people in order to accomplish your specific goals.” In other words, he says, “you’ve got to put quality ahead of quantity.”
So, how do upstart blogs like Birchbox’s build such voracious followings? Here are six tips to attracting readers who stick around longer than the click of a StumbleUpon button:
1. Turn Existing Customers Into Readers
Current customers can be an excellent source of quality readers for a new publication. Often, they already identify with the target demographic. And they’re already familiar with you.
Whether it’s getting a customer to subscribe to a newsletter, blog, or Twitter feed during a signup or checkout process, or requesting they subscribe in a follow-up email or call, happy customers are highly likely to become readers. Turning customers into readers gives you the opportunity to reach other potential customers – your readers’ friends – through social media.
Birchbox benefits from this virtuous cycle as new readers become customers, new customers become readers, and readers share with friends.
2. Skip The Misleading Traffic-Boosting Techniques
Pageview-racking slideshows and catchy-yet-misleading headlines are commonplace in the blogosphere; many publications use them to increase traffic (and therefore advertising revenue). Unfortunately, however, these techniques often don’t result in quality readership growth.
“Headlines should be descriptive and tell readers what to expect,” says Chris Spagnuolo, Founder and Publisher of guyism.com, an independent men’s lifestyle site with 3.5 million monthly unique visitors.
Slideshows skew page views-per visit stats, making it more difficult to accurately gauge traffic stickiness; misleading headlines may put your content in front of new, unsuspecting readers, but those readers are less likely to stay, and may even have negative reactions to being tricked.
“We’ve always believed that the best way to get good quality readers is to create good quality content,” says Ben Lerer, Co-Founder of men’s city guide Thrillist. Lerer says Thrillist’s experiments with slideshows or tricky headlines never yielded valuable reader growth.
3. Speak to a Very Specific Audience
Casting a wide net can be good for generating traffic, but with a glut of reading options on the web, passionate blog followers gravitate toward hyper-specific publications. That’s one of the reasons many niche media sites are growing while mainstream publications bleed readers.
Thrillist benefits from targeting a niche audience, Lerer says, rather than broad categories like “New Yorkers” or “men.” The publication focuses on 20- and 30-something, nightlife-loving urban males, and it speaks to them as peers. Knowing its readers completely allows Thrillist to connect with them more effectively.
Often this means targeting a niche in which you – the blogger – already belong. “We [are] really writing for ourselves,” Chen explains. “And we never talk down to our readers.”
4. Guest Post and Use Guest Bloggers
Allowing guest bloggers to post on your blog brings twofold benefits: more content for your blog, and new reader exposure for your site. Guest bloggers often point their own followers to posts they’ve written for other publications (and you should encourage them to do so). Ideally, those readers start to recognize your blog and eventually subscribe to you, too.
“Our uniques have increased every month, in large part because we’ve been … using more guest bloggers,” Chen explains.
Likewise, guest posting your own content on relevant blogs in your niche can help you attract new audiences.
“We’ve built a number of valuable partnerships with brands and other publishers who have helped us educate other guys about Thrillist,” Lerer says. “But,” he adds, “we know these guys wouldn’t stick around if the quality of what we produced on a daily basis wasn’t top notch.”
5. Encourage Loyalty Through Consistency
Giving readers something to expect helps them work your blog into their daily or weekly routine. As your audience grows, you should increase your content frequency; however, from the beginning, publishing on a consistent schedule will help build loyalty.
“We try to post between 6-10 times a day … to keep people coming back,” Chen says.
Consistency also has to do with presenting readers with a unified voice or consistent approaches. Clark says fostering a quality audience means, “taking an editorial stand for what you believe in, rather than watering things down to avoid offending anyone. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to try to be controversial. In this day and age, simply taking a position and standing behind it will bring people who agree, and people who don’t.”
Clark continues, “Don’t be afraid of those who don’t [agree with you]. They galvanize your supporters who do agree, which turns them into fans instead of luke-warm traffic.”
6. Be Timely And Relevant
Blog to connect with what’s currently on your readers’ minds. This way, you’ll not be interrupting them; instead, you’ll enhance their routines.
“Be relevant, interesting, and digestible,” Chen says. “By giving people stories that are easy to click and share … you’ll instantly increase your reach.”
It’s all about social relevance, Spagnuolo says. “Think, ‘Will one of my friends from high school think this is worth sharing on Facebook?’ If the answer is yes, that’s a good start.”
Shares, followers, bounce rates, and conversions can indicate whether a blog’s readership is engaged or simply transient. Any blog that’s tuned in to its audience can increase the above and grow loyal readers.
Resource: Mashable.com
Categories: Tips, Updates Tags: Ben Lerer, blog, blogs, Brian Clark, CEO, Chris Spagnuolo, Facebook Likes, Guest Post, lifestyle, nature, New York, New York City, New Yorkers, people, publishing, site, Specific Audience, writing
4 Ways to Detect the Presence of Malware on Your PC and How to Get Rid Of Them
Protecting the system against malware is a very important exercise that must be done with great care. If this is not done by the user of the system, the system is exposed to great dangers and it will later come back to affect you because once the system becomes infected with virus, there is no way for you to enjoy the system. Another major thing to know about this so called malware is the way to detect if they are already on your system. If you do not know how to do this, it is very harmful and dangerous to the health of the PC. For the fact that there is malware on your system, they will surely exhibit some character that will make the user of the system know that they are already on the system and some of this common character is listed and explained below.
Nature of Attack
When I make use of the word “nature of attack”, what is meant is the way by which this malware affect the files that are on the system. Some other factor may be responsible for what the system is currently going through apart from the presence of malware but one thing that really signifies the presence of virus to that of the other factor is the current occurrence of that particular incident. If for example, your system is hanging, this might be as a result of low RAM size, no more space on the hard drive or even trying to open too many files at a time. Once this is rectify, the problem stops immediately and never shows up again. But in the case of malware, even if the hanging stop after sometimes, be rest assured that very soon (as long as the malware has not been removed), the hanging is going to resume again and if this is seen, know the presence of malware is detected on your system.
Unusual Change in file size
This malware have the capacity to alter the size of the files on the system and how is this possible. Once they inhibit a particular file, they will then replace that file content with their own content which may either be bigger in size or smaller in size to the original file that is taken over. This usually happens to files that are used regular and even if you open that file, what you will get from it will be different from what you are expecting. If this situation is noticed, quickly scan your system so as to remove the virus.
Slow Speed
Like I said I the later heading, virus are also responsible for slow system speed. How, malware that are on the system always look to attack very important Operating system files which always keep the system running on a smooth ground. Once this file is successfully attacked, the system that is to run smoothly will begin to develop slow speed which can be every annoying sometime. If all other measure to increase the speed or stop the slow speed of the system is applied and the situation keeps repeating itself, know fully well that you them (malware) on your system and immediately look to get rid of them.
Strange Language
Sometime you discover that files that you regular open on daily basis just change from the usual language to an unknown language and you wonder what really is wrong, don’t bother disturbing yourself any further and the reason is because malware have found their into your system. This is possible because the malware after taking charge of that file will immediate replace the content with its own content which will have its own (funny) language and this will result into what you see whenever you try opening that file. This file maybe very important file but for the fact that a change in language has occurred to that file, it should be seriously noted that the only available solution is to get rid of the file. Even if you make use of anti-virus to can the system, the anti-virus will successfully delete that file even without your permission because in such occasion, the malware has become the boss of that file and nothing can be done to remove that malware from the file other than to delete the file and malware together.
Categories: PC TIPS, Tips, Updates Tags: change, exercise, funny, health, nature, PC, RAM, Slow Speed, Strange Language, Unusual Change, what is
BlackBerry PlayBook Price Slashed to $199 (Video)
RIM has slashed the price of the struggling BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to $199, the company announced on Monday. Although RIM says the deal will be for a limited time — perhaps to coincide with Black Friday — it’s not the first price cut for the device, which debuted at $499 but was cut to $299 in September following lackluster demand.
Categories: Tips Tags: Black Friday, RIM
Facebook Introduces Sponsored Stories to Ticker
If you’re annoyed by the Facebook news ticker already, just you wait. Facebook confirmed that it has introduced sponsored stories, or ads, to the ticker.
“Sponsored Stories now appear in Ticker on the home page,” a Facebook spokesperson told Techcirclez. “Sponsored Stories are an extension of News Feed, so we think it’s natural that they appear in Ticker.”
The ticker first appeared to mixed reviews when Facebook revamped News Feed in early September. It’s intended to be a repository for those quick, repetitive messages like “Jill Liked Flying Kites” or “Dave and Floyd are now friends,” leaving meatier status updates to the main feed.
At the same time, the different kinds of updates that could appear in the ticker expanded, with services like Spotify introducing the ability to automatically share what you’re listening to via the new feature.
The new approach, and the ticker specifically, received tepid reviews from Facebook users, and some reacted with outright anger. Among the more pointed criticisms: If the ticker updates weren’t important enough for the main feed, why have them at all?
It appears part of the answer may be for the ticker to serve Facebook’s growing advertising platform. After all, if users aren’t paying that much attention to it, they may be less inclined to complain about advertising occasionally appearing there. While there’s no way to opt-out of seeing the sponsored content, users will be able to click the “X” in the post to hide the updates, just like regular ticker items.
The inclusion of sponsored posts among regular ones will be familiar to any user of Twitter, Digg, and other networks. Sponsored content in various “feeds” is rapidly becoming the norm in social media, although most services clearly mark the content as such.
Categories: Facebook Updates, Social Media, Tips, Updates Tags: Facebook’s, home, news, News Feed, reviews, Sponsored Stories, via
Particles Travelling Faster Than Light? Not So Fast
After a September study suggested neutrinos can travel faster than light – a finding that would shake Einstein’s theory of special relativity to the core – a more recent study shows that the test’s results must have been wrong.
The scientists included in the OPERA experiment, conducted at the Gran Sasso laboratory near Rome, said some of the neutrinos beamed to them from the CERN research center in Switzerland traveled faster than the speed of light.
Now, a study called ICARUS at Gran Sasso indicates that the energy levels of the arriving neutrinos were too high. If the neutrinos were indeed traveling faster than light, they would have lost most of their energy, claims the ICARUS team.
“The difference between the speed of neutrinos and the speed of light cannot be as large as that seen by OPERA, and is certainly smaller than that by three orders of magnitude, and compatible with zero,” said CERN physicist Tomasso Dorigo, commenting on ICARUS’ results.
Full results of the ICARUS study can be found here.
Another recent experiment by CERN confirmed the findings of the original experiment in September, but it may have been prone to the same errors – if any existed – as the original experiment.
Independent experiments are being prepared in Italy, U.S. and Japan to try to replicate OPERA’s results.
Categories: Tips, Updates Tags: CERN, energy, Gran Sasso, ICARUS, Italy, Japan, Opera, Switzerland, Tomasso Dorigo
3 Mistakes Web Programmers Need to Stop Making
Sometimes as programmers, we forget that 99.9% of the population doesn’t care how a piece of text, a button, an image or a video ends up onscreen. I too have done mistakes while programming. Most people just care that it’s fast, easy to use and gives them the content they want. Otherwise, they get upset — and rightfully so.
Here are three common mistakes we programmers make, and what we can do to fix them.
1. Forgetting About Conventions
Ever since they started using the Internet, users have been trained how to interact with a website. Therefore, they often get frustrated when websites don’t meet their expectations. Here are some examples.
- They hover over an object they think is clickable, but become confused when they see an arrow instead of a hand pointer.
- They click on blue, underlined text, but find it’s not a link.
- They click on the logo in the top left, believing it will return them to the homepage, only to find it takes them nowhere.
Web design doesn’t always meet our expectations. However, developers and designers should always maintain certain rules to avoid user confusion. Here are three.
Clickable Elements Should Have the Pointer on Rollover
Everything clickable should switch to the hand pointer when a user hovers over it. You can accomplish this using simple CSS. The code would look like this
div:hover { cursor: pointer; }
Style Links Appropriately
Links should look different than regular text, and should be underlined within a page’s main content. If you really want to stick with convention, make them blue — research found users engage most with blue links.
Make Logos Clickable
The logo in the header of your website should be clickable, and should take the user to the homepage. This is pretty simple: Just wrap your logo in a tag.
<a href=%u201Dhttp://www.example.com%u201D>
<img src=%u201Dlogo.gif%u201D alt=%u201DExample Company%u201D title=%u201DExample Company Logo%u201D height=%u201D100%u201D width=%u201D100%u201D />
</a>
2. Creating Slowly-Loading Websites
Users hate slow websites. Studies have shown that 40% of users will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Here’s how to avoid common speed mistakes by new programmers.
Resize Images Outside the Browser
New programmers will sometimes use a very large image, let’s say 600 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall, but will set the height and width so the image shrinks to the desired size. They use the following code.
<img src=%u201Dbig-domo.jpg%u201D alt=%u201DDomo%u201D title=%u201DBig domo at the park%u201D height=%u201D200%u201D width=%u201D200%u201D />
There are two problems with this method: First, the full image still needs to load. Typically, bigger image files mean longer load times.
Second, shrinking an image using the height and width attributes can render a photo awkwardly, causing the browser to display a photo not nearly as clear as it would be were the image sized 200 x 200 pixels.
To fix these issues, resize and compress images in an editor like Photoshop or Gimp. Then code the image like we did above. Try to use a tool like Photoshop’s Save for Web & Devices to further shrink the file size.
Load JavaScript in the Footer
Many programmers unnecessarily load all the page’s JavaScript files in the head tag. This stalls the rest of the page load. In almost all cases, except for JavaScript critical to user interface navigation, it’s okay to load script in the footer. Then the rest of the page can load beforehand. Try this code.
Rest of the page%u2026
<script type=%u201Dtext/javascript%u201D src=%u201Djs/scripts.js%u201D></script>
</body>
</html>
Load CSS Externally
Sometimes new programmers load CSS on each individual page using inline styles or an internal stylesheet. For inline styles, code looks like this.
<p style=%u201Dmargin-top: 50px;%u201D>Hi Mom!</p>
And for an internal stylesheet, you’d most likely see this code in the head tag.
<style type=%u201Dtext/css%u201D>
p { margin-top: 50px; }
</style>
You should almost never use CSS in the page that holds your html. Store it externally using code like this.
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href=%u201Dcss/style.css" />
There are two advantages to loading CSS externally: First, the user’s computer will save the external stylesheet to be used on every page, instead of retrieving the same styles over and over. This greatly speeds up load time.
Second, using an external stylesheet is much easier to maintain. If you need to change the font size of your website’s paragraphs, you’re able change it in one place, without having to access each individual html file.
Learn more about good CSS practices at CSS Basics.
3. Not Accounting for Potential Backend Changes
Most programmers nowadays are using a content management system like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal to build their websites. This is great because it gives website owners the ability to make changes and updates.
The problem is that a lot of developers only program for a website’s content at launch time. For example, at launch a developer may only create CSS styles for website headings 1, 2 and 3. What if two months after the website’s launch, the communications director decides to set some text to heading 6, since that’s an option in WordPress’s format? That decision would revert to the default styles of the browser since the developer never styled for it initially. Here is how to avoid this situation.
Include Styles for All the Common Tags
To make sure that the design of your website remains consistent with any backend formatting, programmers should include styles to handle the following html tags.
- Body (
<body>) - Heading 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (
<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6>) - Link (
<a>) - Paragraph (
<p>) - Address (
<address>) - Preformatted (
<pre>) - Strong (
<strong>) - Unordered list (
<ul>) - Ordered list (
<ol>) - Quotes (
<blockquote>)
It’s best to check the WYSIWYG that your website owners are using to make sure you have all the appropriate tags covered.
Basic styling isn’t the only opportunity for your website to break down. Also make sure to prepare for large image uploads and for copy/paste from Word. Although items like these can seem trivial, educating your website owners about how to add content can make all the difference.
You’re Smart, But It’s Hard To Remember Everything
The mistakes listed here have nothing to do with a developer’s intelligence. Like most jobs, things fall through the cracks, especially when you’re just getting started.
Do you agree with the items listed above? Are there any others we should have included?
Categories: Tips, Web Development Tags: change, check, Company Logo, Creating Slowly Loading Websites, CSS, jobs, Make Logos Clickable, people, Style Links Appropriately, video, WYSIWYG
4 Tips for Optimizing Your Resume with Social Media
Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a slew of other social media platforms, job seekers are closer than ever to the decision-makers at their target companies.
While social media is wonderful as a stand-alone tool in any job seeker’s toolbox, you should know that it’s even better when combined with other “old-fashioned” standbys — such as your resume.
Follow these four tips to optimize your resume with social media.
1. Link to Social
Nowadays, 10.9% of resumes include a social media link, and the number continues to rise. The more transparent you make yourself to potential employers, the the more comfortable they’ll be hiring you.
Include your Facebook, Twitter and especially LinkedIn profile URLs along the top of your resume, next to your name, email and phone number. Make sure the links are handy so the employer can quickly learn more about you, without having to do a lot of digging.
2. Fact-Check Yourself
While sending your information out in a dozen different directions, it’s easy to overlook outdated information. Therefore, update constantly. An employer shouldn’t see one thing on your resume and something different on LinkedIn.
Keep a list of all the social media and career sites on which have professional accounts or information. Once a month, check to make sure everything is up-to-date and matches your current resume.
3. Don’t Just Copy/Paste
Your resume is full of content that also works great for your social media profiles. Feel free to use information from your resume for social network sections like “work experience,” “about me,” etc.
However, remember to share carefully selected content. Don’t just copy/paste your entire resume into your “about me” section. Not only will this flood your profile, but your resume’s formatting probably won’t travel well either.
Instead of copy/pasting, select a handful of solid phrases or anecdotes for your social profile. That way, you’ll guarantee that anyone reading your profile will get the most important information.
4. Use Keywords for SEO
Beyond your experience, skills and goals, remember that keywords are king. The unfortunate truth about today’s job search is that potential employers use Google and almighty Applicant Tracking Systems to peruse social media sites for the best candidates.
To stay on top of current industry jargon, study similar job listings for words that pop up frequently. Additionally, a variety of powerful SEO tools, which already exist for marketers, can easily be re-purposed to optimize your resume for search.
What do you think? What other tips should social media-savvy job seekers keep in mind when optimizing their resumes for social media? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Categories: Social Media, Tips Tags: Applicant Tracking Systems, check, Copy Paste, email, Fact Check Yourself, flood, INFOGRAPHIC, name, SEO, Social Media, tools, Use Keywords, video
