Dustin Stout

Blogging

Blogging tips, tactics and strategies that I’ve personally used either for myself or clients that have proven effective.

Evergreen Google Plus Productivity Social Media Images

  • How to Write Content That Isn’t Ignored

    Writing for anyone and everyone will often ensure that it resonates with nobody and no one.

    You probably struggle with this, just as I do, every time you sit down to write. It’s not fun— it may even be painful for you.

    Or maybe you’ve been ignoring it altogether. We tend to avoid things that bring us pain, don’t we?

    But it has to be done.

    What has to be done?

    Before writing a single word on a page, you need to first know who you’re writing to. No, not a demographic, not a target audience, not a niche audience, not even a niche audience segment.

    You need to know the exact person you’re writing for.

    The Challenge We Face

    One of the biggest challenges I’ve found when speaking with writers, bloggers, business owners and entrepreneurs is defining who it is they’re trying to reach. They tend to want to reach as many people as possible and can’t bring themselves to narrow down who it is they’re really after.

    This is a huge problem.

    Defining a target audience (or a target market) is one of the most important steps in building a strong brand. I usually won’t even take a branding job most of the time unless there is a strong sense of who the brand’s target audience is.

    If you want to reach people with your message, you have to know exactly who you’re talking to. If you don’t know exactly who you’re talking to, your message will come off as generic and detached.

    People don’t need more generic & detached content.
    Click to Tweet

    And what’s the result of creating generic and detached content? People stop listening. And then you’re sunk.

    As creative people, nothing is more deflating than putting something out there in the world and having nobody care.

    As I sit here, right now, typing this post, that fear sits in the back of my mind. You have it too, right?

    But here’s the truth— if you want people to care, you must create a story that resonates.

    A Story That Resonates

    When we’re speaking with people we know, we tend to craft our communication in a way that we know will speak to them directly. This makes our messages hit them in a more personal way.

    Think about how you talk in front of a crowd of people. The words you choose, the tone of your voice— probably not the same as when you talk to a close friend, right?

    michael scott making a speech

    I expect not.

    When speaking to a close friend, you can easily bring up situations, scenarios and past shared experiences to bring your stories to life in a way that they resonate with.

    This excerpt from an article by Chase Reeves says it brilliantly in a way only Chase Reeves could:

    “…when your friend is feeling $%*#!&, when someone you love needs something and you can help them with it, you’re thinking at the scale of a human.

    My theory is when we think at that scale, at the level of one human we care about, it pulls out better ideas. We see immediately how we can get involved and help out.”

    If you catch nothing else, catch this one thing Chase says:

    When we think at the level of one human we care about, it pulls out better ideas. @chase_reeves
    Click to Tweet

    By telling your stories in a way that hits people in a personal way, resonating with them on a real level, the stories become much more powerful.

    Do this often, and before long you’ll create a fellowship of readers— people who have connected to what you have to say and can’t get enough.

    That’s why whenever I sit down to write a blog post I stop and think about the one person I’m writing it for. This helps me form my concepts and language in a way that resonates with the reader and keeps them hooked.

    And there’s another lesson in this— a great way to generate ideas for blog posts is to use the questions people are asking you.

    Some Questions to Ask Yourself

    When you sit down to write for this one person, here are some questions you can use to help focus your message and make sure it resonates with your intended reader:

    • What problem am I solving for her?
    • How does she feel when she faces this problem?
    • Why does this problem exist for her?
    • What is keeping her from overcoming this challenge?
    • What does she need to hear that only I can tell her?
    • What will her end result be if she follows what I say?
    • Where is she at when she faces this challenge?

    Notice how I used a personal pronoun in all the questions above. It helps.

    Don’t make the questions you’re asking generic or the answers you come up with will be generic too.

    To Sum Up…

    inigo montoya let me sum up

    I think Kurt Vonnegut said it best when he said:

    “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

    Pin this Quote

    Don’t let your stories get pneumonia. Know who you’re writing for and write specifically for that one person.

    Stop writing for everyone, and start writing for someone.

  • How to Boost Your Email Opt-ins by 400% Instantly

    This one strategy boosted my email opt-in rate by 400% in a single day. Not bad, eh?

    Over the past few months, I’ve been experimenting with some email list building strategies to help increase my overall opt-in rate. I’m happy to say, both of these strategies have proven to be a huge success.

    Today, I just want to tell you about one of these strategies. Why just one?

    Because this one tactic is super powerful, and you won’t believe you’re not already using it.

    When I first implemented this my subscribe rate jumped 400% the next day.
    Click to Tweet

    That’s pretty incredible.

    And while I can’t promise you those same results, I can tell you that it can give you a significant boost both now and long term.

    Bonus reading: How to Grow Your Email List by the Thousands

    Your Evergreen Gold

    If you’ve been blogging for a while now hopefully you’ve generated some evergreen blog posts that are driving a consistent flow of traffic. If not, get on it right away.

    On this blog, I have a number of blog posts that consistently drive between 200-500 visits per day without me having to do a thing. That’s when you know you’ve struck evergreen gold.

    What I realized though was that I was leaving subscribers on the table by not optimizing these blog posts for email sign-ups. I nearly slapped myself because I had probably missed out on thousands of potential subscribers.

    Never again.

    I quickly created a list of my top blog posts that consistently drive traffic. Then I went in and optimized each post with its own specific call to action.

    For example, my most successful blog post ever is my Best Places to Find Free Images Online. It’s a blog post I update as regularly as I can when I feel I have found new resources that deserve to be on the list. So within the first few paragraphs on that post you’ll see I’ve added this:

    email opt-in example

    This is what I call a contextual call-to-action. It is a prompt for the reader to subscribe that is customized to the content they are currently reading.

    Create contextual calls-to-action in your blog posts to boost your email sign-ups dramatically.
    Click to Tweet

    Here are more of my own examples:

    If you go to those posts you will noticed within the first few paragraphs I’ve added a note to the effect of, “I intend on updating those pages when necessary.” Or alternatively, I identify some sort of bonus value that my email subscribers get from exclusive content similar to the content on the post.

    And then what did I do? I add an easy way for them to subscribe to my list right there in the post. They can opt-in, and continue reading without interruption.

    For the opt-in I use the Ninja Forms plugin— by far my favorite form plugin for WordPress. It uses the MailChimp add-on so these sign-ups are added straight to the proper list inside MailChimp.

    It’s not a pop-up that disrupts their reading and interrupts the user experience– it’s an enhancement, or rather an invitation to further enhance the value they will be getting from that blog post.

    Simple right?

    So why aren’t you doing it?

    What You Need to Do

    This is the exact process I went through to find my top blog post. Follow these steps to find yours.

    Set a long date range

    Go through your Google Analytics (or whatever analytics platform you use) and set a date range for the last 6 months.

    Google Analytics date range

    Find Your Highest Traffic Drivers

    Now you want to find which content has gotten the most traffic in that time span you’ve just set. You can do this by navigating to:

    Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages

    Once there, go to the Show rows selector and set it to show at least 50 rows. You might have some pages show up that are not what you’re looking for, so that’s why you’ll want to see more rows than necessary.

    Identify the Top Performers

    Identify your top 10 blog posts (I did top 20) by the highest number of sessions (or page views).

    Optimize for Sign-ups

    Now go make sure you have a contextual call-to-action and an email opt-in within the first 3 paragraphs of each of those top performing posts.

    Some questions you might ask yourself to spark ideas:

    • Is there more I can add to this that isn’t already covered?
    • Is there a “cheat sheet” I can create for this?
    • Will I be updating this in the future when new information is available?
    • Will I be writing more posts like this in the future that a reader would potentially be interested in?

    Find those evergreen enhancing opportunities and capitalize by making sure that the reader knows that this post isn’t the end of the road. Show them that if they want more, there is an easy way to get it– by signing up for your email list!

    One Last Thing

    Enhance people's experience Pin this quote

    Blogging, digital marketing, content marketing, and marketing in general is no longer about interrupting the experience but enhancing the experience.

    Find ways to enhance people’s experience on your blog through joining your email list.
    Click to Tweet

    Don’t just offer the same old “Subscribe and I’ll give you my ebook” tactic. Sure, it might work for a little while, but you’re cultivating a list of people with potentially shallow and short-lived motivation.

    Build with the intent of long-term value and you’ll cultivate long-term subscribers.

  • How to Get More Traffic Without More Writing (Think Evergreen)

    Do you have an Evergreen content strategy? Here’s why you should have one, and how to start.

    If you’ve been blogging for six months or six years, you should have an Evergreen Content Strategy. This type of blog content can drive traffic and conversions for years to come, allowing you to write less frequently but continue to grow your audience.

    For those of you who might not know what I’m talking about, here’s a brief explanation of what Evergreen content is:

    An Evergreen post is a blog post in which the content has long-term value that won’t diminish with time.

    The idea is that the content will retain its value and usefulness for years to come.

    Let me tell you how powerful this can be by using my own blog as a prime example:

    41% of my traffic over the last year came from only 5 blog posts.

    Just 5 blog posts brought in almost half of my web traffic over the last year.
    Click to Tweet

    Taking it a step further and factoring in all of my evergreen posts, they account for around 55% of the total traffic driven to dustinstout.com in the last 365 days. And they’re all well over a year old.

    I’ve recently updated a few of them so the publish dates have changed, but they were all created in 2014 or before.

    Great Evergreen blog posts allow you to write less and continue to grow your site traffic, subscribers, leads and conversions.

    What Makes an Evergreen Post?

    There are many different types of evergreen posts, which we’ll get to in a minute. But you need to understand that there are some common traits that you want to keep in mind in order to squeeze the most out of them.

    Make sure it’s sustainable

    A perfect piece of evergreen content contains timeless information or assets that can be updated as needed. Generally speaking, you want to create something that doesn’t require much maintenance.

    Sustainability means that a year or two (or three) from now someone can stumble across this post and still find value in it.

    That means anything that is time-sensitive is no good. Also, anything that is changing rapidly (more than once or twice per year) is probably not a good subject. You don’t want to have to be updating the information too frequently to where you’re sick of it.

    Think sustainability.

    Visual elements are crucial

    Visual Evergreen Content Quote
    Pin this quote

    One of the keys to creating content that is shareable is making sure you have great visuals. Visual content is shared more frequently, engaged with more and carries a longer shelf life than standard text content.

    With Google+ and Pinterest being primed visual platforms for long-term discoverability (more on this soon) it’s always good to create visuals that will grab eyeballs.

    visuals are most important optimization tactic
    Image via Hubspot

    Be sure you also optimize your images for highest potential SEO benefits. Many people skip this step, and that’s where you can really win out over the competition.

    Narrow, beginner-level topic

    You want your topic to be laser-focused. By keeping your topic narrow you ensure that it meets a very specific need for your target audience.

    On top of that, you want to ensure your topic is targeted at the beginners. Why? Because those are the types of people searching for the types of posts you’ll be creating.

    Experts aren’t likely looking for your content if they’re already an expert in it (unless they’re looking for support for their own articles). There’s also a higher volume of beginners than there are experts at any given time.

    Aim to create content that is helpful at the entry-level.

    Give it some depth

    We’re not talking a quick 300-500 word article here. Your evergreen posts need to be meaty— I’m talking 1,500-2,000+ words.

    With Google favoring blog posts that are more than 2,000+ words and their recent Panda update penalizing “thin” content, this is just a good blogging strategy in general. But it’s all the more important for an evergreen piece.

    You want to have something that people can really dig their teeth into— something they couldn’t possibly retain in one sitting. This will increase it’s likelihood of being shared and bookmarked so they can return to it later.

    Types of Evergreen Posts

    There are many different types of posts that make great evergreen content. Some great examples would be:

    If you need more ideas, there is a fantastic list of Evergreen Content ideas from the Buffer team that I highly recommend. Or this piece on 17 little-known affiliate programs.

    Once the Post is Finished

    Once your epic post is finished there are a few things you’ll want to do. You don’t have to do all of these, but they’ll definitely help.

    Promote the snot out of it

    I’m sure you already know how to share your blog post on social media. That’s a given.

    But you’ll want to take it a step further and promote it like your life depended on it. If you’ve done your job— this is going to be a highly useful piece of content and odds are you know people who will benefit from it.

    Share your post directly with the people you think will appreciate it most. Tell them you were thinking of them when you created for it (if that’s true of course). Let them know you’d be honored if they read it and if they find it useful you’d love it if they shared it.

    Direct email is not dead people. Don’t be afraid to email your personal contacts if you know it’s something they’d find interesting or helpful.

    If you’ve done your job well, then it should get a decent amount of traction right away. It doesn’t have to be a viral hit but it should be getting above average shares, comments and traffic.

    Showcase it on your blog

    Do you have a spot on your blog where you highlight certain “best” or “most popular” posts? You should.

    popular posts section on dustinstout.com

    On this blog, I have a section on my homepage that shows my top 3 most popular blog posts. Additionally I have a second section titled “Free Social Media Resources” that is also a place for my evergreen posts.

    Your About page is also a great place to feature some of your best/favorite content.

    popular posts widget by Social Warfare

    Popular posts widgets are also a great way to showcase your best content. Since your evergreen content should be amongst the most popular, having a Popular posts plugin would be very helpful.

    (Popular posts is one of the many features of Social Warfare, FYI.)

    Reshare regularly

    repeating cinemagraph
    Image via François Beaurain

    Once the initial buzz for the article is over, be sure to continue adding it into your social share schedule regularly– at least twice a month.

    Remember that social media moves rapidly. Just because you shared something once doesn’t mean that everyone in your audience has seen it.

    Sharing your posts more than once and repeatedly over time is crucial.
    Click to Tweet

    If you have a content calendar, be sure you work your evergreen posts in regularly.

    Another idea I recently discovered is to create an evergreen queue in Buffer. Read point number 2 in Kevan’s post. This will allow you to keep ready-to-go social posts for streamlined recurring sharing.

    Repurpose the snot out of it

    One way you can keep the momentum coming, or add some more fuel to the fire is to repurpose your content in different formats.

    Hopefully, you’ve already included some visual elements as I previously stated— that’s crucial. But maybe you can take it a step further and create some alternative media formats to increase the content’s reach.

    Some great repurposing ideas could include:

    • Turn it into a Slide Share presentation
    • Make a YouTube video out of it
    • Do a Blab about it
    • Create a SoundCloud version
    • Republish it on Medium

    Always be sure that when you repurpose or republish your content outside of your blog you always create a call to action and link back to the original piece. That’s where you control the environment and that’s where you can continue to refine and update it.

    Link to it as much as you can

    You will want to continue to link to this post whenever appropriate in newer blog posts. You can even go back and find your older posts that keep getting traffic and add links to this post.

    The more you link to that evergreen content, the more authority you build for it in the eyes of search engines and the more opportunity you give people to discover it.

    Continue to link to your evergreen content to grow its authority & discoverability.
    Click to Tweet

    Keep Them Updated

    Every six months or so you’ll want to revisit and update the post to keep it as relevant or valuable as possible.

    The investment on these evergreen posts can be heavy at the beginning, but they can be well worth their weight in gold. Plus, updating them is usually easy since most of the work is done, and can help when you don’t have the time to create a brand new post.

    One Last Thing

    Once you’ve created these evergreen posts don’t make the same mistake I did and miss out thousands of potential email subscribers. In my follow-up post I share how I boosted my email opt-ins by 400% in a single day with one simple strategy.

    Have you created an evergreen post before? Want me to take a look and offer feedback?

  • Forget Your Follower Count and Focus on This

    I’ll just come right out and say it— follower counts are mostly worthless.

    Having a million followers doesn’t mean anything unless those followers are engaging with your content.

    It’s easy to hoard followers on social media. All you need to do is follow as many people as you’re allowed to and you’ll get people to follow you back. Heck, you can even jump on Fiverr and buy large amounts of followers for pretty much any social network if you want.

    But what’s the point?

    To have a big number on your profile page? To impress people with how “popular” you are?

    Well I’ll tell you what— the only thing more embarrassing than a social media profile with zero followers is a social media profile with a ton of followers and zero engagement. It means you’ve effectively attracted people who don’t care about what you have to say. Or worse, you’ve just attracted a bunch of robots.

    For bloggers, a similar vanity-driven metric is the page view. What does it matter if you’re getting a million page views if they’re not leading towards a tangible goal?

    Unless you’re selling advertising on your blog, I’ve got bad news for you— page views aren’t going to pay the bills. And even then, if those page views aren’t leading to ad clicks then you’re not going to be making much of a living.

    The one meaningful metric you need to be measuring is this: engagement.

    [clickToTweet tweet=”Forget follower count, what you need to be measuring is engagement. #SocialMedia #Marketing” quote=”Forget follower count, what you need to be measuring is engagement.”]

    What is engagement?

    Engagement is a piece of social media jargon that has been tossed around so much it’s almost nauseating. Unfortunately though it’s the best way to articulate the most meaningful part of what social media and digital marketing should be about.

    Here’s how I define engagement in a digital marketing context:

    engagement – interactions, exchanges and actions taken on your content.

    Now let’s break down what that looks like on social networks and on your blog.

    Social Media Engagement

    On social media networks such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and others, engagement is pretty easy to monitor.

    Some examples of social media engagement would be:

    • Comments / replies / mentions
    • +1s / Likes / Favorites
    • Shares / Reshares / Retweets
    • And the all-important click-through (when you share a link and someone actually clicks it)

    Smart social media marketers value these far more than follower count, because these are the types of actions that tell you whether or not your social media posts are being seen. Even more importantly— if they’re being seen and causing people to respond.

    Being that the goal of most businesses and brands on social media is to get people to know, love and buy from them (or continue buying from them), it only stands that interaction is the most valuable way of knowing if you’re attracting the right audience.

    While these metrics can also be a full of fluff, they are far more valuable than a simple follower count.

    [clickToTweet tweet=”Once you know what causes people to take action, you can create more of it. #SocialMedia #Marketing” quote=”Once you know what causes people to respond or take action, you can create more of it.”]

    To monitor these stats there are a number of tools you can use. Personally, I use Buffer’s analytics.

    buffer analytics

    Buffer offers all the social media engagement metrics you could possibly need for:

    • Google+
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • Pinterest

    For each of those networks you have all the metrics you should be tracking. But most importantly you want to look at the higher value engagements:

    • Shares / Reshares / Retweets: This means they’re spreading your content to their audiences, growing your reach further than yourself.
    • Comments: This means your content has cause them to stop in their tracks and say something directly to you. Take these opportunities to grow your relationships with them.
    • Clicks: People are actually compelled to click-through on the links you’re sharing, giving you the ability to take their engagement with your brand further.

    Those are the highest value actions that your followers can take on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. These are the actions you should be looking to get more of.

    Within Buffer you can discover which posts are driving these actions. Find out which ones are working the best and create more content like it.

    If you don’t have access to Buffer analytics though, here are some ways you can track these metrics.

    Native Social Analytics

    Most social networks will give you a pretty decent amount of analytics. Let’s break them down one by one:

    Facebook

    facebook insights

    Facebook offers a decent amount of metrics for pages (not profiles). In fact, they even have an entire section called Engagement. That section displays the amount of Likes, Comments and Shares in a given time period.

    It’s also good to look at the Post Reach section to see how many people are actually seeing your posts. You can then compare that to the number of Likes, Comments and Shares to see how well your content is actually doing.

    Aim to improve your engagement and your reach will follow.

    Twitter

    twitter analytics

    Have you explored how to use Twitter fully? If not, I highly recommend spending some time getting to know the platform–it can help you learn a lot about your target audience.

    If you go to your Twitter Analytics you can see a full set of tasty stats about your profile. There’s a lot of clutter on the main Twitter Analytics dashboard though, so the first thing you want to do is go to the Tweets tab.

    Skip everything you see in the primary column and look straight to the Engagements section. There you’ll find

    • Engagement rate
    • Link clicks
    • Retweets
    • Replies

    Your engagement rate is the one metric you want to look at improving. That is the average percentage of engagement you get per tweet.

    You can then scroll through the Top Tweets tab and find which of your tweets performed the best. Take note, and tweet more things like those.

    Google+

    Google+ insights

    For Google+ pages you are able to see a limited number of metrics to gauge how well your content is performing.

    From your My Business page click on the View Insights button. Then immediately click on the Engagement tab. You’ll see a nice graph of the actions taken on your posts over the last 30 days.

    Below that graph you will see a box that will allow you to scroll through your recent posts and the actions taken on them. Again, you’ll want to take note of what content was getting the greatest return.

    You can also take a quick look at the box below the Recent Posts box that lists Average actions by post type.

    google+ engagement by post type

    This will show you instantly what types of posts are getting the most engagement.

    For more comprehensive Google+ Analytics for both pages and profiles, you may want to check out Steady Demand Pro.

    Pinterest

    pinterest analytics

    I’ve really come to love the simplicity of Pinterest analytics. They give you just what you need, segmented in a way that’s highly effective.

    When you visit your Pinterest Analytics page click on the Your Pinterest Profile link. Then you’ll want to immediately click on the Repins tab. You’ll be able to see a list of your most repinned content and you’ll also be able to see how many clicks that content has also gotten.

    Periscope

    saving your periscope broadcast stats

    At the end of every broadcast you are given a handful of metrics. The only one I care about is retention. I spoke about this as one of my Periscope Pro Tips.

    Since you can’t currently see any other stats besides the four given at the end of a broadcast, the only engagement metric you need to focus on is the retention. This is the percentage of people who jumped into your broadcast and stayed until the end.

    If your retention is high, it means you’re effectively capturing and keeping your audience’s attention. If your retention is low, that means you’re not providing the value that your audience is looking for— or maybe you’re just broadcasting too long.

    Hearts are a secondary form of engagement that you can monitor is the number of hearts given in the broadcast. While this is also a shallow measure, it’s still a small gauge of whether or not the people in your broadcast are enjoying what you’re saying.

    YouTube

    youtube analytics

    It’s no doubt that when it comes to YouTube analytics— there’s more than enough to dig through. It’s actually kind of overwhelming, even for someone who’s used to looking at analytics and stats all the time.

    So again, it’s important to monitor the metrics that matter the most. What metrics matter the most on YouTube?

    I asked that question on Twitter and here’s the best response I got:

    Much like Periscope you want to monitor your retention more than anything else. To find this you’ll need to navigate to your Creator Studio > Analytics > Audience Retention.

    The most important numbers on this page will be Average Percentage Viewed. That is the average percentage of a video that your audience watches per view. When that number is low, it means people aren’t sticking around to watch your entire video.

    You also have an entire section devoted to Engagement reports under your YouTube Analytics. The most crucial to me are:

    • Subscribers
    • Comments
    • Shares

    Knowing if and why you’re growing in these three areas is crucial to the long-term success of your YouTube channel.

    Website Engagement

    Now that we’ve talked about the ways to measure engagement in social, it’s time to get into the most important place to measure engagement— your website.

    This is also a little more complicated because it will involve getting to know Google Analytics and diving deeper than your usual Overview dashboard. It’s important though because it’s a vital part of a growing website.

    It’s easy for bloggers to get caught up in vanity metrics such as page views or visits. But these numbers in and of themselves can be shallow measurements just like follower counts.

    The primary engagement metrics most website owners or bloggers should take into consideration are:

    • Comments
    • Social Shares
    • Email sign-ups

    Those are all good metrics to monitor, and they do represent valuable engagement. But that’s about where it stops for most.

    You should actually be monitoring one more metric that could be the one insight you need to take your content to the next level.

    What is that metric?

    It’s what Chase Reeves calls The Engagement Report. This is a Google Analytics report that you can run by following a 5-step process:

    1. Set a long date range
    2. Go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
    3. Click the Comparisons icon
    4. Choose Page views as the primary metric and Avg. time on Page as the secondary metric
    5. Take note of the green bars

    google analytics engagement

    The green bars will indicate the pages that people are spending the most time on. What does that mean? You’ve managed to keep their attention span engaged. It means they’re actually reading your content, not just scanning for a few seconds and then leaving.

    [clickToTweet tweet=”Using @GoogleAnalytics, find your most engaging content with these 5 steps. #Marketing” quote=”Using Google Analytics, find your most engaging content with these 5 steps.”]

    Conclusion

    The big idea that drives all of these engagement metrics can be summed up into one word: Attention.

    Are you getting people to actually pay attention to what you’re creating online? That’s the question you need to be asking above all and before all else.

    [clickToTweet tweet=”Are your #marketing efforts getting people to pay attention & take action? Measure these metrics:” quote=”Are your marketing efforts getting people to pay attention & take action?”]

    Focus on producing engagement and forget about how many followers you have. Monitor whether or not your engagement is going up and keep doing more things that foster that engagement.

    If you do this well, higher quality followers, higher quality shares and more sustainable success will follow.

    So what do you think? Did I leave any engagement metrics out? What would you add? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

  • What Is the Best Commenting System for My Blog?

    Blog commentary about blog comments. It doesn’t get more meta than this folks.

    What blog commenting system should you use? Should you use a third-party system at all? What are the pros and cons of blog commenting systems?

    These questions have been a hot topic of discussion for as long as I’ve been blogging. And it doesn’t help that the options are ever evolving in the realm of blog comments.

    tl;dr > If you run a self-hosted WordPress blog, I believe nothing is better than the native commenting system. Period.

    But I’ll also say that there are a few really great systems out there with benefits that native WordPress comments do not have. So let me break down the pros and cons as I’ve seen them.

    Third Party Commenting Systems

    Third party commenting systems are generally created to answer very specific needs. I’m going to try to break down these third-party systems into two categories:  General Commenting Systems and Social Commenting Systems.

    General Commenting Systems

    Just for the sake of simplicity (and lack of a better term) what I’m referring to as a general commenting system is a system that is not tied to a specific social network. These are the most popular non-social-network-specific commenting systems.

    Jetpack

    Jetpack WordPress Plugin Home Page

    The Jetpack plugin’s own commenting system which can add a number of useful functions to your WordPress comments. The primary benefit is that users can log in with their WordPress.com, Twitter or Facebook credentials.

    Disqus

    Disqus commenting system home page

    Probably the most popular commenting system, Disqus has a lot of useful features. Real-time commenting, promoted content, centralized management via a central dashboard, and more.

    There’s also a number of great moderator tools that allow you to highlight certain comments, ‘Like’ comments, and follow users Disqus profiles (like mine).

    Livefyre

    Livefyre commenting system home page

    Out of all the commenting platforms, Livefyre is probably my favorite. The biggest sell is that users can comment using their Twitter or Facebook profiles. Users also have the option to post the comment to a social network as well as @mention people on either network when leaving the comment.

    Like Disqus, it also focuses on real-time conversation.

    One additional feature is the ability to see how many people are “listening” to the conversation. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but it’s one more piece of potential social proof.

    There are many other great features but these, to me, seem to be the biggest selling points.

    Intense Debate

    Intense Debate comments home page

    One of the commenting platforms I’ve been seeing less of is Intense Debate. It’s similar to Disqus but seems to have fewer capabilities. Generally, it feels a lot less polished than the previous two.

    Some great features it does have are:

    • Ability to reply by email for both moderators and commenters.
    • Reputation points & comment voting.
    • Blacklisting commenters.
    • RSS comments integration.

    Pound for pound, this is definitely not the best option but it’s certainly not the worst.

    Cons to General Commenting Systems

    Despite the unique benefits of each system I’ve found a handful of disadvantages or “cons”:

    • One more login/profile to remember and maintain. People have enough logins and digital profiles to maintain. These third-party systems, for the most part, add that layer of complexity whereas with WordPress native you just need your name, website (optional), email address and your comment. You decide right then and there what you want those to be and it will probably be auto-filled next time you visit the site.
    • Poor (or at lest disjointed) user experience. Most of these systems have little to no customization ability. This means that it’s very likely that the commenting system will look different from the rest of your website design.
    • One more plugin to keep updated. Anyone who’s been on self-hosted WordPress for a while knows that keeping all your plugins, themes and even WordPress itself updated can be kind of a pain. And not to mention, you never know if an update of one plugin is going to break another plugin.
    • Generally more headache. Added variables means added potential things that can go wrong.

    For me, none of these systems benefits have managed to outweigh the cons.

    Social Commenting Systems

    Google+ and Facebook commenting systems

    There are only two primary social networks that offer their own commenting systems: Facebook and Google+.

    No need to break both of them down individually, the idea is pretty straight forward. You replace commenting on your blog with one of these commenting systems and users comments are posted to that network.

    Users have the option of just leaving a comment without sharing but either way, all comments displayed underneath your blog post in a typical comment fashion.

    Cons to Social Commenting Systems

    In comparison to the General Commenting Systems, I’ve found even more disadvantages to using Social Commenting Systems:

    • By limiting to one specific network you immediately alienate people. For example, seeing Facebook comments on a blog will instantly give Google+ enthusiasts a bad taste in their mouth. Likewise, Google+ haters will see Google+ comments and probably write a false news article about how your site is a ghost town.
    • Similarly to the above, you cut off anyone who doesn’t have a profile on that specific network. For example, those who have ditched Facebook wouldn’t be able to comment on a blog that only has Facebook commenting. Same with those who don’t have a Google+ account if you use Google+ commenting.
    • Comments are owned by the social network, not you. Since it’s their system, they own the content created on that system. If the system disappears, guess what happens to the comments? You guessed it— straight up Houdini’d!
    • Commenters don’t get to link to their website or blog. One of the big blog commenting motivators is to gain a little exposure for your own website or blog. That’s why native commenting systems generally give you the ability to add your website link to your name in your comment.
    • API changes could cause conflicts and kill your commenting. Similar to when a network disappears, what happens when they change something in the API that conflicts with your website? Your entire website could be affected and it’s completely out of your control.
    • Usability and user experience (again). Because you don’t control the commenting system you can’t match it to your website and generally have little control over any design aspects. It will look exactly as the social network wants it to look without regard to your own site’s aesthetic. That may not be a problem for most, but when it comes to responsive websites and how these systems work on mobile devices these systems generally are really ugly and can ruin the responsive design.

    These are some serious cons to think through, and depending on the type of website or blog you’re running there could be many more cons then I’ve listed here.

    Hybrid Commenting Systems

    This post, though I’ve been writing it for a couple of years, was inspired by Danny Brown’s recent post, Introducing Hybrid Commenting, and the ensuing discussion on Google+. Danny has taken a new approach to his own commenting and decided on a hybrid model using two plugins: Inline Comments and Google+ comments.

    Inline Comments utilizes the native WordPress comments system but adds the ability for people to add their comments to the side of any paragraph, exactly like on Medium. Being that I’ve loved this feature on Medium, I investigated right away.

    I was a bit disappointed.

    Three deal-breaker issues I found with Inline Comments are:

    • Potential theme/plugin conflicts could lead to the page reloading when a comment is submitted. Now the plugin is supposed to submit the comment without a page reload, but as seen on Danny’s blog, this isn’t the case. If the reader was not done reading yet, this can be frustrating.
    • People comment before reading the full story. Using this type of comment system increases the chance that someone will comment on a paragraph not knowing that what they’re commenting on may be addressed later in the blog post. My comments to Danny on his blog post were a prime example.
    • The conversation becomes highly fragmented. Because people are commenting wherever they like within the piece, one would have to open up ever thread, one-by-one, to take part in the full conversation. This to me is the worst part— the conversation becomes more fragmented than ever.

    WordPress Native Commenting

    Quite simply, the reason I choose to have native WordPress native commenting on every single site that I own is for simplicity and control of the experience.

    I spend a lot of time crafting a beautiful reading experience for my readers. Presentation of every page and paragraph matters to me. I also care very much about how much mental energy a reader is using to interact with my blog.

    To me, adding any of the commenting systems above adds a layer of complexity to the commenting experience. Nothing is quite as simple as Name, Email, Comment. You don’t have to remember which email to use, which password, or where your comment is going to end up. You control every aspect of the experience and are not relying on anyone else.

    The Verdict: Do What’s Best for Your Audience

    At the end of the day nobody can tell you the right thing to do for your audience. You know your goals and you (should) know what your audience needs.

    If you’re catering to a mostly Google+ audience, Google+ commenting absolutely works best. Likewise for Facebook.

    If you don’t mind a user experience that is a bit disjointed from the rest of your site but want to give your readers the widest possible options when it comes to their comment— one of the other systems may be right.

    For me and my house, we use WordPress native.

    What about you?

    Did I miss any pros/cons that you think are important? Go ahead and leave a comment about my comments about blog comments below (WordPress native of course).

  • 5 Crucial Elements for Growing Your Readership

    Yesterday I had the privledge of being published on one of the largest professional blogging sites on the internet, Problogger. They reached out to their audience asking if anyone felt they had something to say about growing a readership. So I figured I had a couple things to say in that area.

    What I ended up writing were the things I’ve learned over the years of succeeding and epically failing. There’s been quite a few lessons on both ends of the spectrum and I’ve summed them all up into Five Crucial Elements to Growing Readership.

    (more…)

  • 4 Ways to Create Better Content for Your Blog

    Creating a blog is not difficult. Putting together a design or paying for someone to make it for you is a short-term problem. Marketing your articles on social media can seem like a chore but requires commitment. None of this is necessarily hard work.

    The hope is that you are constantly thinking about your blog. Creating content may be the most difficult part about the blogging process, so you need to figure out how to keep the funnel of great content flowing from your fingertips and onto your blog.

    What do you do when your creative writing begins to run dry?

    Sure, the first few weeks or couple of months might have been fairly easy, but that was the foundation for starting your blog. But what do you do when that initial content has already been written? The first posts are important, but you need to continue creating content. Not just any content; create better content.

    We have a few ideas to help you continue to create better content and refine it over time. Before that, what I do want to emphasize not settling for just posting content, but pushing for high quality content. This list is a starting point.

    4 Avenues To Keep Posting

    Be Reading More Than You Are Writing

    People always tell you to be reading the best of the best, but what I want to challenge you to do is read 5-10x more content than you are writing. In any given month, I could be writing 100-200 articles for a variety of websites. If I follow my rule (and I do), I’m taking in 500-1,000 articles a month as fuel for better writing. Make it your practice to always be adding to your RSS feed, Twitter list, or Google+ “must read” circle.

    Dialogue With Those You Respect In Your Field

    With the vitality of Google+ Hangouts, your excuses to not communicate with experts in your field are gone. Whether you are writing about photography, programming, or leadership, you can create a hangout of nine others that would love to talk with that person and have an amazing hour-long dialogue. Challenge them with questions, bring up great case studies, and then take that content back to your blog to share with your readers.

    Do Your Own Research and Surveys

    Take a tip from Dustin with his The Anatomy of a Perfect Google+ Post that looked into what Google+ could and could not do with +1s, reshares, and comments. There was no research out there on this, so he did his own research experiments and made himself the expert. Even if there is research out there, do your own surveys to back them up or take a twist on it to explore new ventures.

    Repurpose Your Old Content In New Mediums

    The content that you have already written is not old and gone. It can be repurposed to extend what you have already done, but by no means are we saying that you should go the easy way and simply repost your old stuff. Mix it up and change the medium. If you posted a written article, make a video blog post out of it. Another option may be to do some further research and put together a high-class infographic.

    Blogging may be the best place to have your voice stand out from the crowd, but without consistent content that wow’s the socks off of people, it’s not worth it. Take care of your readers and give them only the best.

    What techniques do you have to create the best content for your blog?

  • Blog Design Starts With A Solid Theme

    Killer blog design always begins with your foundation. It is essential that you get firmly planted in a theme foundation that is flexable, cutting edge, and built for the long term success.

    Assuming you’re using WordPress, I’m going to give you 8 core elements to look for when choosing your blogging theme. With so many options out there, you’ll want to know they key things to look for to make the right choice.

    On top of that, I’ll tell you why I believe I have found the ultimate blogging theme.

    This is part of the Blog Design Essentials series. Check out the rest of the posts in the series to get the most out of it.

    Content Focused

    The first thing you want to look for in a great blogging theme is that it is focused on the most important part of your blog– the content.

    When you read through the feature sets of any theme, you want to get a sense that they made your content the primary focus of their design. If the theme doesn’t focus on your content as the most important part of the equation, then you’re not going to see a long term gain for your investment.

    SEO Friendly

    You want a theme that is SEO optimized so that search engines will love your site. Better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) means that people are more likely to discover your site through a search engine like Google. This will ensure that you blog will reap long term, continuous growth.

    Be careful though– there are a lot of themes out there that claim their theme is SEO optimized when it’s really not. If they don’t back up their claims with sufficient proof of optimization, then I would steer clear.

    Mobile Ready (a.k.a. Responsive)

    I will be writing about this later in the series, but in brief– a responsive theme is crucial. In today’s mobile world, you’re blog must be ready to cater to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. A theme that isn’t responsive or mobile-ready is not even a candidate.

    Responsive is a term that means the site will automatically adjust to the user’s browser size. For example, if you’re on my site right now on a computer screen, just pull the side of the browser in and see what happens. The site automatically resizes in real time to fit your browser.

    If you’re reading this on a mobile device right now, you’re already seeing that the site has formatted itself for your screen. You’re welcome. 🙂

    As fast as technology is advancing, there is no excuse for a theme to be un-responsive. Not responsive = deal breaker.

    Child Theme Ready

    If you don’t know what a child theme is, let me give you the short explaination:

    A child theme is a way of customizing your theme without the risk of screwing up the original theme files.

    You may not utilize this right away, but in the long run it’s good to have. When you do have the resources to hire a designer or developer, this will allow them more freedom and less risk when developing your blog further.

    This is also good for the up-and-coming designer/developer who wants to dabble in CSS, or maybe tweak some of their sites functions. It will allow you to experiment with things without worrying about breaking something.

    Simple And Elegant Out Of The Box

    You’ll want to look for something that looks good out of the box. Simplicity is key. The less clutter there is, the more people can focus, again, on your content.

    You shouldn’t have to ruffle through too many options to get your site up and looking good. Some themes are so “feature rich” that it will take you an hour of tinkering with settings, color toggles, and other adjustment functions just to get it running.

    Having too many options is definitely a bad thing. It wastes time, makes life more complicated (who needs that?), and in most cases will slow your site down making it less user and search engine friendly. It is also a sign that it doesn’t live up to the next thing to look for…

    Tight Integration With WordPress Core

    You want a theme that was well thought out enough to leave the core WordPress functions in tact. These could be things such as background color, header image, sidebar widgets, navigation menus, or post formats.

    Any function that bypasses WordPress’ native functions is potentially going to cause unneccesary clutter. And again, we don’t like clutter. We especially don’t like redundant clutter that slows down and bloats our site for search engines.

    Themes with comprehensive admin panels usually miss the mark here. In an attempt to make things “simpler” for the user, they actually handicap them because they never learn to use what WordPress already has in place.

    On top of that, if the user ever ditches the theme for a better one, they will not be able to find the WordPress functions because they’re used to everything being in their “all in one place” admin panel.

    In a nut shell, find a theme that lets WordPress do what it is already built to do.

    A Solid Support Forum

    Probably the most essential of all of these items is a solid support forum. A place where you can go to ask questions, get help, and engage in an active community of people using your same theme.

    This can be an absolute nightmare if you don’t have a proper support system to troubleshoot problems, or ask questions.

    Ongoing Updates

    You’ll want a theme that is constantly evolving as technology, WordPress, and the digital world is evolving. You don’t want a stagnant theme that isn’t constantly being improved and upgraded with the latest standards.

    The main reason for this is security. Having a theme that is out of date with current security standards is dangerous. You don’t want to wake up one day and find that your site has been hijacked or flagged by Google for malware.

    So What Is The Ultimate Theme?

    After searching through thousands of themes, experimenting and building more than a dozen different frameworks I am 100% confident I’ve found the ultimate blogging theme. If you’re a long-time reader here, you know what I’m going to say next:

    Genesis Theme by StudioPress [aff link].

    Not only does Genesis Theme meet all the essential criteria, it blows them away with flying colors. Here’s how it measures up:

    • Content focused – Putting your content as the primary visual focus is clearly StudioPress’ goal.
    • SEO friendly – Optimized and refined over the years to be an SEO powerhouse.
    • Responsive/Mobile ready – Seamlessly, beautifully, awesomely elegant, and highly functional using HTML 5 responsive frameworks.
    • Child theme ready – You bet’cha. StudioPress has created tons of child themes that are ready to plug and play.
    • Simple and elegant out of the box – Brilliantly.
    • Tightly integrated with WordPress core – You wont find any conflicts here.
    • Solid support forum – The best in the industry today. Period.
    • Ongoing Updates – Like a boss! These guys are on top of it!

    Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of StudioPress. It took me a while to recover from the heartbreak of saying goodbye to my previous favorite, Standard Theme, but I’ve found Studio Press to be more than a worthy replacement. They are a team of powerhouse bloggers, business owners, and digital entrepreneurs who are at the top of their game.

    I now recommend Genesis to all my clients who desire to build a significant online platform for themselves or their brand.

    Browse Studio Press Themes

    Conclusion

    I hope you will take all these factors into consideration when looking for a solid foundation to build your blog upon. If you can find a theme that fits all the criteria I’ve outlined above, you will surely be successful in the longrun.

    Are there any questions you have about what to look for in a theme? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

    Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links meaning if you make a purchase of the recommended product(s) from those links, I will get a small commission. I only recommend things I use myself, and would never profit from anything that I’m not 100% convinced it is worthy of your attention.