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Best of Daily Blog Tips in 2011

Daniel Scocco — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:18:30 +0000

First of all I wish an awesome 2012 for all the DBT readers. I am sure you’ll all achieve your goals in this coming year (and I’ll make sure to keep publishing tips to help you with the online part of those goals!).

Below you’ll find the most popular posts we had in 2011. Make sure you haven’t missed any:

January

February

March

April

May

June

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August

September

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December

Original Post: Best of Daily Blog Tips in 2011

6 Simple Ways to Improve Your Writing

Ali Luke — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 03:01:18 +0000

If you’re taking your blogging seriously, you need to think of yourself as a writer, not just a blogger.

We’ve already taken a look at why great content matters so much. In this post, I’m going to give you some simple tips for improving your writing skills.

#1: Write Regularly

The more you write, the easier writing will become. You don’t have to write every day – but writing regularly (at least a couple of times a week) will really help you improve.

If you’re struggling to find time to create blog posts, schedule your writing sessions in advance. You could even head out to a cafe for a few hours (hey, it works for Darren Rowse…)

#2: Ask for Feedback

It’s a scary thing to do, but one of the best ways to improve is to ask for feedback on your posts. Buddy up with another blogger and ask them to tell you what’s working well and what isn’t. Make sure you return the favor when they need a hand.

If you belong to any private forums or membership sites, you could post a work-in-progress for other members to comment on.

#3: Read Thoughtfully

When you read a great blog post, don’t move straight on to the next. Stop and work out why the post was so good. You might even want to print it out so you can write in the margins.

Look at the structure – what subheadings were used? Look at the writing style – did the introduction have a compelling hook to draw you in? Find one thing that you could do in your own posts as a result of what you’ve discovered.

#4: Edit Your Writing

When you’ve finished a post, it’s tempting to hit “publish” straight away. But taking just a few minutes to edit will make a huge difference to your finished post.

If you can, leave your post alone for a day before you edit – that way, you’ll be able to spot mistakes more easily. Watch out for typos, but also pay attention to the bigger picture: you might need to spice up the introduction or swap a couple of paragraphs around in the middle.

#5: Read About Writing

There are hundreds of books and blogs about writing. Set aside some time each week for reading about writing – even if it’s just half an hour. Try to read something that you can put into practice straight away.

Some great places to start include Copyblogger’s Copywriting 101 page and the “Writing Content” archive on Daily Blog Tips.

#6: Take a Class

If you want to improve your writing fast, take a class. That might be at your local college or online. Ideally, the syllabus should cover the sort of writing that you want to do (web writing, blogging, copywriting or similar) – but you can still learn a lot from a creative writing class.

Most classes or online courses will give you a chance to get direct feedback from the tutor: this will let you pinpoint areas for improvement in your work.

What could you do today to take your writing further? And if you’ve got a suggestion to add to this list, share it with us in the comments!

Ali Luke is a freelance writer and coach, and the author of the Blogger’s Guides (covering freelance blogging, effective writing, and creating ebooks). She writes a weekly column about online content creation for DailyBlogTips.

Original Post: 6 Simple Ways to Improve Your Writing

Check Out My Programming Blog

Daniel Scocco — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:28:42 +0000

As some of you guys will remember last year I started learning how to program. I liked it so much that now I spend most of my days either coding or reading about code. I just don’t write about it here cause I know it’s not the focus of the blog (i.e., I don’t want to bore the non-programmers to death).

If you are interested in programming, though, check out a new blog I created called ProgrammingLogic.com. It’s basically an online notebook of interesting things I am learning along the way. My main focus there will be algorithms, computer science theory and programming puzzles/challenges.

For instance, I am solving the problems on ProjectEuler.net (highly recommended if you like maths and puzzles) and posting the solutions as I go along.

There’s also a bunch of uber-geek stuff like swapping variables with bitwise operators or understanding how computers store negative binary numbers.

If that is your kind of thing, check it out.

Original Post: Check Out My Programming Blog

How to Make Almost Every Article You Write Go Viral

Guest Author — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:20:42 +0000

This is a guest post by Bamidele Onibalusi. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Is there are sure-fire approach to making every article you write go viral online?

Maybe not, but you can do some things to significantly increase the chances of any blog post you write going viral.

I have been publishing articles on my blog constantly, and on other blogs in the form of guest posts, for years now, and in the process I’ve been able to observe my most successful articles and guest posts. After noticing a common theme among these articles, I decided to write another article based on the formula I discovered and it was also a big hit.

It is very important for you to realize that the definition of “viral” varies, and depends to a great extent on your audience. For example, at the time of my experiment, most of my blog posts average 200 – 300 views depending on a lot of factors, and the very lucky posts get around 500 views (all in a month of the post being published). However, the majority of my most successful posts get read by around 2,000 people in the first month they are published.

In other to ensure my approach isn’t just a fluke, I decided to try it by submitting a guest post to Problogger, and that post sent almost 2,000 visitors to my blog after it was published, thereby resulting in an approximately additional 600 subscribers (I will be linking to the post later in one of my examples). I will be sharing the approach with you below, and I’ll also be giving you a few more tips to increase the chances of your success.

Tell a Story

I know this isn’t new to you, and you’ve probably heard it hundred times before, but believe me, it works! It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing a sales copy or whether you want to publish the next big post on your blog, telling stories can mean the difference between success and failure.

If you take a look at the internet you will notice that almost every niche is saturated with millions of blogs giving “practical” advice on how to achieve something, making people doubt the effectiveness of these tips. People read about new guest blogging tips every day, and they read about freelance writing from people who have never tried either of these things. The reality is that people are tired of reading the same thing over and over again, and as a result are confused about whether to take action or not. In a lot of cases, your readers will probably scan your articles and press the big “X” button in their browser after a few seconds. You can easily prevent this from happening by telling stories.

The difference between a normal blog post and a post written from the story approach is that the formal is just theory, while the latter is a practical example of what the author did. The former is just a “writing”, and the latter is an “experience”. In reality, people are tired of reading articles, they want to read experiences, and they want to be assured that what they want to do will produce results.

If you’re a blogger you will notice that most readers hardly read your content, because time is very valuable to them and they have to choose carefully what they spend their next five minutes on. Now, ask yourself, if people can’t spend five minutes reading my article, will they be happy to implement my tips?

By telling stories of your experience, you will help allay your readers’ fears by showing them you have implemented what you’re telling them, and they might even decide after they see the result of what you achieve on your blog.

How to Tell Stories that Work on Your Blog

To be sincere with you, there is no set approach to writing stories that work on your blog – what matters most is to tell your story in a way that your readers can understand.

For example, you can easily publish an article listing a few lessons you learnt from implementing a particular strategy (say the “strategy” is what you have always preached to your readers on your blog). You can share a personal and emotional story telling your readers how you went from being “nobody” to being “somebody”, and you can share a story about how you achieved a particular success.

EXAMPLES

Since I’m so positive about this approach, I think I should share some examples with you below. Below are 3 great examples below – two from my blog, and one from my guest post on Problogger.

1. My Journey from a Poor Fatherless Kid to a Successful Blogger

It was this post that made me realize the importance of telling stories, and even though it was only talking about me and my struggles, as well as giving people tips to overcome theirs, it ended up garnering a lot of attention within a short time.

2. 3 Tweaks that Helped Double My Blog Traffic Almost Overnight

This example is my guest post on Problogger, showing people a few tricks I’m using to grow my blog traffic and increase my readership. I don’t have any stats as to how many visitors the post got on Problogger, but considering the amount of visitors it sent I’ll say it was pretty successful. The post sent me over 2,000 visitors, and led to over 600 subscribers.

I’ve written a lot more articles following this approach, and they all have views in the thousands. The above are just a few examples I think will buttress my point.

Concerns about being too Personal

To be sincere, the first example above was the first really personal post I wrote on my blog, and I was forced to write it after being constantly “disturbed” by one of my readers to write something like that. I was afraid about people not reading the post, because I believe people are too busy to care about what’s going on in my life. I was surprised by the traffic I got the day the post went live, and also by the traffic to the post for the next few weeks after publishing it.

In fact, that post instantly became one of the most commented posts on my blog after it was published; with almost half the commenters saying it was “Inspiring”. Just so you know; there are thousands of people waiting to read your story out there, because it is the motivation they need to forge ahead – publish it, and they will happily refer their friends to it.

You Need to Realize this, Though

Like we were thought in school, 0 x 0 will always be 0, so don’t expect having huge success with your blog with little to no traffic.

If you’re getting around 100 or more visitors to your blog in a day then this approach should work well, but if you aren’t, you can start building it up. If you have enough traffic, this approach is guaranteed to work, if not, nothing is guaranteed to work.

There are a lot of ways to build traffic to your new blog, and you can read articles in the promotion category here for better ideas.

One tip I think you might want to try if you’re not that sure about your traffic is to look for a unique way to feature some of the top bloggers in your field without diluting the effect of your story. Once it is live, send them each an email telling them you featured them, and asking them to share it if they love it – if they do love it and share it, your post will get enough momentum to make it go viral.

If you’re looking for the latest tips on freelance writing, guest blogging, and writing articles that work, make sure you check out YoungPrePro.

Original Post: How to Make Almost Every Article You Write Go Viral

Cool Site To Measure Your Typing Speed

Daniel Scocco — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:56:39 +0000

Around two years ago I mentioned I was learning touch typing (i.e., typing with all your fingers). Well, looking back it was one of the best decisions I could have taken, as my productivity with a keyboard almost doubled.

My typing speed used to be 60 words per minute or so, and today it’s over 100 (last time I checked my average was 102 WPM). How do I know that? By using this website: 10-fast-fingers.com.

The site was recently revamped, and it has a lot of cool features now. If you login with your Twitter or Facebook account the site will track all your typing tests, presenting with with an average WPM count, the highest one, the lowest one, and you can also see your ranking in relation to all the other users who took a typing test in the previous 24 hours.

If you are slightly competitive you’ll find the site is a bit addictive, but I guess it’s a good addiction, as it will help you to type faster over time. There’s even a Top 10 board, but getting there these days is impossible (I swear some of these guys must be robots…).

Original Post: Cool Site To Measure Your Typing Speed