I have some notes to share with you as well as a video today. I also use the words “whilst” and “y’all”, just for fun. Hope you dig it! If you have any questions, please hit me up in the contact form. It’s my pleasure to help however I can :-)

Here are a few principles to consider:

1. Consistency
2. Calls to action
3. Relevancy and Contribution
4. Fun (yay!)

Here is a brief outline of each:

Consistency

This is a situation where a lot of us drop the ball. I say “us”, because I’m included 100%. What I’ve found is that best results come from consistency. I work with small business owners. If you’re reading this, you’re most likely a Realtor, a chiropractor, an attorney or other small business owner or professional. As such, we don’t have unlimited time to write a blog. It needs to be efficient, and it needs to produce a result.

One thing that may stress you out is the time commitment of blogging. Don’t sweat it. It doesn’t have to be this huge project that takes all day. An hour or two per week is plenty to get results over time. Share some ideas once per week. Every Wednesday for example. No need to overthink it or turn it into a big project. If you do that, you’ll never do it.

Instead, do something that fits into your schedule. Do it consistently, and before long you’ll notice that people come to expect and look forward to your posts. This is a key element to getting results. Consistent publishing leads to consistent lead gen.

Calls to Action

When clients ask me to critique their site, they’re often looking to get more leads coming in. When I swing out to the site, I find that they’re not asking people to sign up for their email list. There are very few calls to action, and they’re not very compelling at that. This isn’t a very good combo.

If you want more inquiries or people signing up for your email list, you’re gonna have to ask. I’ve had a lot of clients express an expectation for visitors to hunt down their contact page out of appreciation for the awesome content and ideas they share on their blog. Some will. Most won’t.

Here is a video with some notes on how I place calls to action on my site (if you’re reading this in a feed reader, you may need to click here to see the video):

Relevancy and Contribution

A couple of the frustrations I come across whilst talking with you are lack of leads and low quality leads. In other words, you’re not getting the response rate you want from your blog, and the leads you do get are not responsive or uninterested in what you do professionally. Relevancy and a focus on contribution really go a long way to help here.

By relevancy, I mean your content (both your calls to action and your blog posts) need to speak directly to the most pressing needs of your readers. A small business blog is a different animal than most others. You’re looking to produce a pretty specific result. This is marketing.

I see a LOT of small business blogs miss a lot of opportunities in this area. They spend a lot of time writing for search engines for example. Everything is really optimized and keyword rich. But the content isn’t solving any pressing problem. Your readers could care less how search optimized your site is. SEO is fine, but the one and only thing it will do is bring you visitors. You can have all the visitors in the world, but it means nothing if your blog doesn’t convert. This is why I write for people, not search engines. I know a lot of y’all disagree with me on this point, but I’d rather get less traffic and 40% conversion rates any day of the week, as opposed to a high number of visitors and very little engagement.

What’s funny is that when you write for people instead of search engines, people like your site better. They visit it often and tell their friends. Traffic is never the issue. Relevancy and contribution are what really matters. Follow these steps:

1. Identify your ideal prospect
2. Learn their biggest frustrations
3. Use your blog to solve their problems
4. Use your blog as a means of “giving back”. Share ideas and solutions with your readers. Give away too much. Give em stuff you could actually be charging for.

If you combine these steps with effective calls to action, it’s a pretty unbeatable combination!

Fun (once again…Yay!)

One of the biggest missed opportunities in the whole small business blogging world is lack of fun. Have some dang fun! Your blog doesn’t have to be perfect. Write short posts, long posts, video, pictures, podcasts…whatever the heck you want. Whatever is simple and fun for you. Yes, you may need to learn a thing or two, but simply pick up some tactics as you go and employ them. Obsessing over whether you’re doing it “right” or not (I come across this mentality all the time) is only going to keep you from taking action.

People know when it’s forced. People know when you’re doing something just because you think you’re supposed to be doing it, not because you really want to. And that’s not fun for anyone. Something funny…people think when you share ideas with them, but they ACT when they’re emotionally engaged. You can have the most badass, super-optimized rock star blog in the world, with half a million visitors every day, but if you’re not having fun and helping people solve their problems, it’s unlikely you’ll see impressive lead generation.

If you’re inclined to think you don’t really want to blog..that the truth is you really ARE doing it just because you think you’re supposed to, then that’s cool. There’s no rule you need to write a blog. It’s just a really effective and leveraged way to share ideas with people.

It really does work. This is my livelihood. It works. But just like any tool, you get out what you put in. Just because you have an office doesn’t mean people are gonna visit. Just because you have a phone doesn’t mean people are gonna call. These are simply the tools of our trade. A blog is a publishing tool. Your prospects are on the web, looking for content. This is your opportunity to get in front of them, be cool to them and get a conversation started.

If you are having fun with your blog, contributing relevant content that solves people’s problems and offering compelling calls to action as I outline in the video above, it’s nearly impossible for you to not start seeing high quality leads come in every day from your site.

It can take a minute to get the pieces put together. That’s true. It’s true that marketing and the internet has changed quite a bit over the last few years. Shoot me an email if you have questions. I’m happy to help!

That was a call to action. Get it? No seriously, send me an email! There’s a contact form right here :-)

If content is not king, what is?

The success of your website isn’t entirely about “creating good content”. Let’s be clear. Content is a necessity. It needs to be:

1. Relevant (something your readers need or want to hear about)
2. Valuable (helps solve a pressing problem)
3. Unique (can’t find the exact same thing a million other places)

But let’s be honest. There are a lot of websites out there that possess the holy grail of “great content”. Yet they still have failed to reach their audience. They have failed to engage anyone on a high level. They have failed to generate a significant number of subscribers. They have failed to earn sufficient revenue.

When this happens, the next step is closing up shop. No one can write “great content” forever without any reciprocation. It’s time to move on and try something new.

If you have good content and ideas to share on your blog, but you’ve failed to get the results you’d like so far, there’s a reason for it. That reason might be your blog itself.

If Content isn’t King, What is?

Let’s get it straight. Content isn’t king. You are king. Content is simply your messenger. Content is just one element of your empire. And it’s an important one. Really important. But it doesn’t get the job done by itself. There’s another element I wanted to mention today, and that’s design.

There’s an idea that great ideas will find their own way. An idea with merit and value will surely be welcomed with open arms by it’s ideal audience. If you put out something of extraordinary value, surely people will buy in. Right?

In other words…if you build it, they will come. Isn’t that the way it works?

Well, you know the answer to that don’t you? But just to make sure I’ll let the cat out of the bag. The answer is no. They usually don’t come. People don’t usually see real value even if you try to beat them over the head with it. It’s not how people work.

We’re too busy. We’re too distracted. Our bullshit meter is on high alert 24/7, so even when we hear something great, it takes a real feat to truly get our attention.

What’s the solution?

The role of design

Just like content, design isn’t the end all and be all of marketing success. But just like content, it is an essential part of the equation.

Whether it makes sense or not, whether we’re liable to admit it or not, we respond to packaging. We judge books by their cover. We really, really do. We know instinctively that it may not be fair, but it’s an effective way to filter out some of the noise in our lives. If it doesn’t look awesome, it’s probably not.

Bottom line: value does NOT speak for itself. It’s in dire need of some awesome packaging. *Especially* if it’s a truly awesome product. All the more reason to spend the time and money to really package it well!

When it comes to your website or blog, your design is your packaging. Spend some time on it. Make it yours. Test colors and layouts and ideas. Your design is JUST as important as your content. This doesn’t mean it needs to be over the top. It doesn’t need to be gaudy or even expensive. It just needs to work.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, people respond to aesthetics. It’s just how it is. I’ve noticed a few things in my own business, and I apply these to client projects all the time:

• The placement of an opt-in form can make a huge difference in how well it converts. Take an identical opt-in form and put it in a different place on the same page, and watch a completely different result take place.
• Changing the color of a headline can change out well an entire page converts. Whether you’re going for clicks, subscribers or whatever, people respond differently to different colors.
• Typography matters. Font types and especially font sizes can dramatically affect how long someone stays on your site.

These are just a few examples. Even on very simple-looking sites, a lot of thought and experience goes into an effective design.

I read an article on Copyblogger today and gives some great tips on web design, and I recommend checking that out as well.

Careful now...there are a lot of metrics out there to distract you. PageRank and other silliness can cost you hundreds of hours. Let's be careful about how we spend out time!!

Beautiful. I have to share an article I just read with you today, because search engine optimization (SEO) remains a high concern for many of you. How do I know? Because I talk with you by email ;) I recently asked all my subscribers what they’d like to hear about, and SEO is a big one.

Let’s be clear…SEO is one of the most misunderstood topics out there. A lot of small business owners are spending way too much time on this, instead of running their actual business. So my goal today is to give you a bit of insight into what matters when it comes to SEO…and what really doesn’t matter at all :-)

What do you REALLY want?

Here’s the thing: even though “improving SEO” and “getting more traffic” are some of the most common requests I get when it comes to optimizing someone’s website or blog, after a short conversation I almost ALWAYS find out that you don’t really care about SEO or driving traffic at all. What you really want is more leads, more sales, better conversions, etc.

But isn’t SEO an essential component to running an awesome, profitable small business website? Yes, it’s part of the equation, and there are a few simple things you can do to really drive home results when it comes to SEO. But it’s not nearly as complicated as many of us make it out to be! Good news, right?

Why PageRank doesn’t matter

I just read a great article on why pagerank doesn’t matter. This article, from the official Google Webmaster blog, really drives the point home. For years now, everyone has been focusing on PageRank. The idea is that the higher your PageRank, the higher your search rankings.

According to SEOQuake, this blog has a PageRank of 4, which I suppose is respectable for a blog which has only been up for about a year or so. But do you know when I found out I had a PR 4? Just now, when I decided to write an article on PageRank. I suppose this makes me a bad webmaster ;)

Why should we not worry about PageRank? Well, firstly because Google itself describes PageRank this way:

Why bother with a number that’s at best three steps removed from your actual goal, when you could instead directly measure what you want to achieve? Finding metrics that are directly related to your business goals allows you to spend your time furthering those goals.

This is exactly what Dangerous Tactics is about, folks! It’s about nailing down a strategy which produces a direct result for you. Your website can and absolutely SHOULD be a meaningful part of your marketing strategy. And as such, it should have a measurable and predictable impact on your bottom line.

But to make this happen, we need to stop focusing on numbers that don’t mean anything. We need to stop worrying about making Google happy and start focusing on making our customers happy. They’re the ones who pay the bills, not Google.

What DOES matter?

So if trying to improve your PageRank and working endlessly to improve your SEO isn’t the thing, what is? Conversion. Conversion is the key to getting the results you want from your website. I often ask new clients “If your website isn’t making any money, what effect will doubling or tripling your traffic have? Zero times two is zero. Zero times three…still zero.”

Bottom line, first and foremost you need a website that converts. And this is what we do here. You can:

1. Install Google Analytics – It’s free and easy to use. It shows you exactly where you’re traffic is coming from, what content on your site is performing the best, and it’s a great place to get ideas on how to improve. For example, the fact that my confirmation page is one of the top ten most visited pages on my website tells me that a high percentage of visitors are signing up to talk with me via email, which is exactly the focus of this website. Is YOUR website meeting it’s goals? This is the basis of conversion. Set a goal and track your progress. Google Analytics is a great entry level tool for doing this.
2. Use Aweber – I’ve recommended Aweber in the past, and it remains a tool I use to this day. There are a million ways to send email, so why use Aweber? Because they let you track things, follow up with clients, customers and prospects in a very personal and highly effective manner. They tell you exactly how well your email forms are converting, how well your emails are converting, and they make changing and optimizing things a piece of cake.

The Future

K, ready? The internet simply is NOT the same place it was 5 years ago. It’s just not. It’s not even the same place it was 2 years ago. This is a good thing. Gaming the search engines, getting massive loads of traffic and making sales to .05% of your subscriber base was how it worked. Not anymore.

Today it’s about conversion. Most web pages are doing well to get 1-2% conversions, while I focus on creating pages that get 20-40% conversions, minimum. As a small business owner you do not need a lot of traffic. You DO need a high conversion website. This is exactly how to make a great living from even a small amount of traffic.

Importantly, focusing on conversion isn’t “the next big thing”. It’s old school. I would argue conversion is a business fundamental, and it always has been. It’s just that when the internet was a little younger, you could fall out of bed and get a thousand visitors a day. Now you have to fight for that. You have to earn people’s attention, and that’s the way it should be.

As a small business owner, you don’t need to worry about PageRank at all. You can learn everything you need to know about SEO  in a short amount of time. A single one-on-one consult with me will get you squared away in that department in fact. The point is SEO can be very simple if you let it be. Or you can slide down the rabbit hole, never to be seen or heard from again. If you have a business to run, I recommend the former. Focus on making sure your website is converting a high percentage of your visitors into leads and sales. This is a foundation you can count on.

If you have questions about putting any of the ideas in this article to work in your own business, fire me an email or subscribe. It would be a pleasure to talk with you :-)

If you want to get more leads coming in from your website, I have a new report you’ll want to read. It’s called “High Conversion: How to Get (a lot) More Leads from Your Website“. Pretty simple title; pretty clear focus on this one :-)

Basically, after reviewing many, many websites over the past few years, certain trends definitely pop up. Here’s one thing for sure…if your website isn’t consistently pulling in high quality leads for you, there’s an identifiable and correctable reason for it. This report shares the biggest mistakes I see small business owners make with their website, and I’m giving it away for free.

If I’m already consistently selling website critiques, why give a report like this away for free? Because let’s face it, there is ALWAYS a time and a place for individualized attention, and if you want a personalized critique, I’m still doing them. If you’re not ready to do a full service critique, or if you just want to make sure your website is on track, this report is for you.

Grab a copy of it here. If you have any questions, I’m at your service :-)

There’s a crucial difference between subscribership and engagement. I submit that what you’re seeking with your marketing is engagement, not subscribership. I know, this is deep stuff. Yet our focus is usually placed in the exact opposite direction. So I’ll say it again…

We keep wanting to reach MORE people. Why?

• It’s time-consuming.
• It’s expensive.
• It begins a new relationship…which is good, but a NEW relationship is also the most difficult to monetize.

The days of building huge websites that get tons of traffic and then simply monetizing with ads and affiliate links are over. This is old news, but most of us who market ourselves online haven’t changed our approach.

Small is awesome

Focus on who you have NOW. Do only 20 people subscribe to your blog? Don’t discredit yourself, and most importantly, don’t discredit THEM! TALK TO THEM! Get a response. Be awesome to them. Give them cool stuff like a free report that is actually WORTH something. Maybe give them a video or some chocolate. I don’t know. Be cool to them. You know how to be cool. You don’t need me to tell you how to be cool. You’re a reader of Dangerous Tactics, which means you’re already way smarter than most people! Your brand of cool is going to be different than mine, and that’s cool. What matters is that you connect, engage and convert. That’s what businesses are made of.

Getting more people is not the answer. Increasing engagement is the answer.

What happens when you’re awesome to 20 people? Lean in close, because I’m going to reveal a massively powerful SECRET to marketing right now…

When you’re awesome to 20 people, they tell other people how awesome you are! All of a sudden you have 40 subscribers. Not impressed? Maybe you should be awesome to those 40 people too. I know…40 people to be awesome to…that’s a lot of pressure. What are your alternatives?

• You COULD just go spend an insane amount of money on ads that don’t convert.
• You COULD triple the number of times you link out to your own stuff on Twitter and Facebook, alienating your friends and followers.
• You COULD buy a coop email list with 300,000 ill-gotten email addresses on it, and become a spammer.
• You COULD spend a thousand dollars per month (or more…probably more) for a SEO firm to help you get more traffic.

You could do any of these things if you want. Or, you could just be awesome to the people whose attention you already have. The cool thing is that when you do this, people talk and spread the word for you. It’s free, and it’s WAY more powerful and effective with regards to building your blog’s readership, your email list or whatever it is you’re building.

Do you want a BIG list and a LOT of readers? Or do you want a RESPONSIVE list and LOYAL readers, who “get” what you do?

Bigger isn’t necessarily better, but it IS more expensive and wasteful

More and more people on your list who don’t respond…that’s what happens when you focus solely on “getting more subscribers” or “increasing traffic” instead of actually TALKING with the people you already have on the line.

I’ve seen sites with tens of thousands of subscribers close up shop. They called it quits after achieving what most bloggers can only dream of. Lack of engagement is why. Are you trying to become a rock star? OK then, if so…you’re reading the wrong blog right now. Are you trying to build a very profitable business using web marketing? If so, you’re on the RIGHT blog, and you DON’T need tons of traffic or a huge email list to make it happen!

There’s an important need for things like traffic generation, SEO and such. I’m not completely disregarding these things. They’re important. But most of us place way too much importance on it. Focus on the attention you already have. It’s worth a LOT more than you realize. Attention is not the goal; it’s merely the first step.

In new articles coming soon, we’ll discuss the 5 stages of marketing you need to use in order to have maximum impact with your small audience. Until then, don’t sweat the small stuff…be small, stay small. Lean and mean. Lose the need for an ego stroke…you don’t need thousands of people to come out to your site every day, and you don’t need a huge email list to make a great living do this.

Do you want 100,000 subscribers who don’t respond to your content? It may feel good to have the numbers, but it doesn’t mean ANYTHING if the engagement is not there. Here’s a litmus test you can use:

Is your small readership hyper-engaged and responding really well to what you’re doing? Do you only have 20 subscribers? If so, you should still be making sales. Not a lot of course, but something. If you’re making no sales with your small amount of traffic, why do you think getting MORE traffic will help? Zero times a bazillion…is still ZERO!

Place your focus on increasing engagement and really doing something that connects…something that is really MEANINGFUL to a small number of people. Who can you truly reach in a meaningful way? That is your true audience. That is your true list. Everyone else…all those people who don’t respond…are just fake subscribers. Maybe they’ll come around one day, but don’t hold your breath. You have better things to focus on in the meantime.

The most problematic page on your website

What’s the most problematic page on your website? It’s your 404 page. For those of you who don’t know what a 404 is, it’s the page that shows up if someone visits a page that’s no longer there. Or perhaps they typed in the url incorrectly, etc. In any case, your visitor is trying to visit a page that doesn’t exist. When that happens, they land automatically on your 404 error page.

Most of you haven’t even visited your 404 page to see what’s up. I encourage you to do so; it’s probably pretty ugly. It probably says something like “The page your trying to visit doesn’t exist. I am a cold, computer-generated page built for the purpose of alienating you, making you feel like a dope and causing you to leave my website quickly, never to return.” Something like that. That’s NOT how you want to roll, trust me.

Visit your 404 page today, and see how stupid it is. Make it better.

How to make your 404 page rock

If you’re an enlightened webmaster (there are lots of you out there), you have probably already customized your 404 page. Instead of the stock 404 page, you’ve made your page more inviting. You explain the page they’re trying to visit is not available, and instead why don’t you try visiting one of these other articles…and you provide some links to other articles on your site. You might even offer them a search field, so they can find the article they intended on visiting in the first place.

Not bad. You can do better though!

Whether you have a customized 404 page or not, I recommend turning your 404 page into a squeeze page. I did this last week, and it’s been bringing in new subscribers to my site every day. It’s not a lot, but it’s steady. I’ve had maybe 20 new opt-ins in the past week. Not bad if you ask me :-)

Doesn’t it make SENSE to take the ugliest page on your website and turn it into an asset which consistently brings new subscribers into the fold? Before I did it, I questioned whether there is some unspoken rule against this or something. I simply do not know why no one does this. It works great for me; I recommend giving it a shot on your own site.

The details

All I did was take my 404 page and put an optin on it. The verbiage I used was:

Get Everything
EVERYTHING is available to subscribers! Make sure to opt in here to get access to EVERYTHING on the site. Subscribing is:
1. Free
2. Awesome
3. High value

Then I created a plain opt-in box, and that’s it.

I hope you’ll test it for yourself and let me know what you think. If you need any help implementing it, I’m here to help you with that also. Isn’t web marketing fun? Rock on ;-)

In nearly every instance, a business fails due to an identifiable and correctable issue. Perhaps you didn’t have the capital necessary. Perhaps you didn’t have a competent management team. Perhaps your offer wasn’t in alignment with the target audience. My point is that almost every business failure can be tracked down to a cause. Fix the cause; prevent the failure.

The same goes for blogging.

Blogging is the same as business. For some of you, blogging IS your business. Are you going to fail? If you do, it’s not because blogging is risky. It’s not because most people simply fail, and that’s all there is to it. It’s definitely not because “blogging is dead”. I hate it when people say that :-)

The fact is that most business blogs fail for the same reasons most businesses fail. As the old saying goes: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Do you have a plan?

• Does your blog have a written plan?
• What goals do you want your blog to achieve?
• What specifically are you going to do to make those goals happen?
• Why do you think your plan will work?

Do you have answers to these questions? It’s not particularly time-consuming or laborious to answer them, but if you DON’T have these answers, the success of your blog is in the “crap shoot” category. If you’re blogging for fun, then you may be cool with this. If your blog is supposed to be a part of your marketing though, then you may want to step up your game a bit.

Can writing a plan really make that much of a difference? Yes it can!

I don’t know how many people tell me they want more traffic to their website. Let’s just say lots ;) Invariably I ask the obvious question “What are you doing currently to get traffic?” Too often, the answer is “Well, nothing really.” It’s difficult to know what to do if you don’t have a plan. When you don’t have a plan, it’s easy to get frustrated, because nothing really has any perspective.

I find out by working with clients that a lot of you aren’t very sure what you want to be getting out of your blog in the first place. Sit down for a minute and DECIDE what you want your blog to achieve. It’s really one of the coolest things about blogging. You get to pick! You can use a blog to build your email list, make offers, establish yourself as an authority in your niche, break into a new niche, etc. Focus in on one or two things that you really want to make happen with your blog. Then do some research or hire a consultant to sit down with you for a bit, and put together a PLAN to make it happen.

A well-written plan. It makes a huge difference. This one simple thing will put you in the top 2%.

With so many benefits, we tend to simply set up a blog and wait for the magic to happen. Then…nothing. How can such a powerful marketing tool just sit there and accomplish nothing?

Setting up a blog, plodding along and waiting for cool stuff to happen is not the approach I recommend, in case you hadn’t guessed! You need to have a plan, and the best time to have put a plan together for your blog is now. What do you want your blog to achieve?

For this particular blog (Dangerous Tactics), my main goal is to stay in touch with my subscribers. My secondary goal is to continue building my email list. As a result, you don’t see a lot of opt-in forms, banner ads or any overt attempts to monetize this site. My mission is to continue the conversation with my clients and readers, so this site is mostly all content, and there are a few links to sign-up forms. That’s it.

It’s surprising how many blogs are cluttered with all types of widgets and ads that aren’t even helping the blogger achieve their goals. This is why it’s so essential to decide what you want your blog to accomplish. When you don’t know what you want, you end up wandering aimlessly in the blogosphere. It’s a boring an intimidating place to be. I know; I’ve done it.

The fact is, succeeding with your blog is 100% impossible…it absolutely WILL NOT HAPPEN unless you have a clear goal and a clear plan to achieve it. With a clear goal and a clear plan in place…success becomes probable. That’s right. I didn’t say “possible”. I said “probable”.

So few people make a real plan for their blog…

One thing I see a lot of new bloggers do is spend WAY too much time on their blog. We want our blog to be awesome, so we spend all this time putting up new widgets and playing with the design, retweaking articles, etc. There’s nothing wrong with this of course…not inherently. But if your blog is taking up too much of your time, you’re not going to stick with it.

I don’t want you to quit, so if you’re new to blogging or struggling to get results, this post is for you…

Don’t burn out, yo…

Blogging is a long game. It takes a while to build an audience. Is it worth it? Oh my…yes, it’s worth it. But treat it as a marathon, not a sprint. It doesn’t mean you don’t run hard…but run for distance. Don’t burn out before you even get started. Most bloggers (and by most I mean almost ALL) quit before they even have a chance of making it. Don’t do this!

Spending tons of time on your blog when you first start is like cleaning your house for a party…spending all day making sure everything looks perfect…and completely neglecting to tell anyone about the party. You’ve ended up cleaning your house for no one. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?

When you first start, you don’t have a strong readership for your blog. How do you get one? By handing out invitations. Tell people about the party, for god’s sake! I’ve been to some great parties at some really crappy apartments. I know you have too. It’s the people that make it great, not whether everything is perfectly in order or not.

Here’s the big secret about blogging

Here’s the big secret: great blogs come from great audiences. The community really is what it’s about. It’s what feeds you and guides you and motivates you. It’s all about your readers. You don’t create your audience. They come to you, and THEY are what make you great. They make you great way more than you make them great by gracing them with the presence of your awesome blog. Find your audience first…get the party started. The minutia of blogging takes care of itself from there.

Trust me, after you’ve been networking for a while and built an audience, your audience will tell you when they want to see some changes. You’ll get feedback left and right. You’ll get good at knowing when to listen and when to make changes to your blog. But until you have an audience and are getting that feedback, who are you making these tweaks and changes for? No one.

The boring (yet dang effective) truth about how to get started blogging…

Instead, post new content regularly, and then focus on getting the word out. Leave your design alone. Spend the majority of your time talking to people on other platforms. Leave your widgets alone. Leave your plugins alone. No matter what claims you read, I promise you from my very core…no plugin or widget is going to make your blog popular and successful. It’s just not going to happen!

People are the key. Talk to them. You know where:

• Commenting on other blogs
• Forums in your niche
• Community events
• Conferences

Get people on board with what you doing. If you’re new to blogging, your audience is simply scattered around out there at the moment. You need to reach out and meet them. The more you talk with them, the more they’ll come out to your blog. The more you talk with them, the more feedback you’ll get. The more you talk with them, the more you’ll learn about yourself, your business and how to run your blog better to create more value.

As counterintuitive as it may seem…no amount of tweaking is going to get you an audience. Tweaking ain’t gonna make your blog great. Your AUDIENCE is what’s going to make your blog great. Until you have an audience, you don’t have anything. Your audience is already out there, you just need to reach out and grab em.

His main question is “Can you take a look at my blog and tell me what to do?” I get asked this a lot.

Unfortunately it’s just not helpful for me to give you blanket, generic advice. I hate telling people that, but taking a look at your site and giving you some watered down advice is just not good business for either of us. The truth is your ideal plan of attack is completely, 100% dependent upon your goals. It’s also dependent upon where you are now and how long you want it to be before you start making serious things happen. These things HAVE to be addressed!

Since I do consulting with you guys here, I wanted to get that out and be very clear. I can’t give you goals. I also cannot provide you with drive or aspiration. That’s on you, baby :) Basically it works like this: if you don’t have goals, I can’t really help you achieve them. That makes sense, right?

How to make a great goal for your blog

BUT…if you’re willing to sit down and talk it out a bit, we can most definitely fine tune your approach to web marketing and make things happen for you. One of the biggest things small business owners struggle with is knowing what to pursue with their blogs. It’s kind of hard to set a goal for your blog when you’re not really sure how blogging works to begin with, right? So I want to give you a three step process. This is my advice for any new bloggers, without a doubt.

1. Get very clear on your target market - your audience is NOT everyone. Focus!
2. Once you know your audience, get clear on your goals - is your main goal engagement with your readers?  Affiliate income? Email list building? Client lead generation? Obviously, without a targeted goal you cannot have a targeted approach to achieving it! When you know what you want, step 3 becomes much simpler.
3. Put together a simple, easy to sustain plan for making it happen - this can involve tweaks to your site, changes to your approach for creating content, changes to your marketing or all of these.

Does it make sense that steps 1 and 2 are absolutely crucial? Does it make sense that without steps 1 and 2 in place, it’s pretty much impossible to do step 3? I can help you with any or all of these three steps, but these represent the path for getting exactly what you want out of your blog.