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One of the sneaky things about blogging is the treadmill of content you have to produce. You may think you know a lot about your niche, but when you have to produce 1, 2, or 5 pieces of content every week you may soon find the well running dry fast.
There are plenty of tips out there to solve this. You can use tools to find out what other people in your niche are writing about. You can go to Quora and browse question topics. You can go back and update an old blog post. But where do really creative and new ideas come from?
I’d like to offer a suggestion on how to force creativity out of your brain. It’s called Parkinson’s Law. The formulation is “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” This originally referred to bureaucracies and their tendency to expand over time in the book that formulated the idea, but we’re going to leverage it a different way.
If you give yourself five hours to write a blog post, most likely you will not focus hard for the entire five hours. Instead you will find other tasks to fill the time and spread out the work over the time span. Even if you do focus the whole time the focus will be half-hearted.
However, if you limit your deadline to something short, most people can get a lot of work done very quickly. College students know this all too well, rushing to get their papers done before deadline. But you don’t have to set up your time so that you’re writing things at the last minute. Instead, give yourself two hours or even one hour to write the best article you can in a focused burst.
The key to making this trick work is to drop the task as soon as the time is up. Do not go back to it and tinker. Save that for another day or for a few hours afterward. You have to make your brain think that you only have so much time to finish an article before its due. If you really want to be brave, go ahead and push it to the deadline!
Not only will you be able to get your work done faster, but forcing your brain to work faster can have a very curious effect on creativity. If you know the deadline is coming up and there’s no way around it, you can discover new ideas and connections far faster than you thought you could.
So, instead of letting your work drag out over a long time, force yourself to complete tasks in a very short amount of time instead. You’ll find that you’ll be able to get far more done than you thought and you may stumble upon the next big idea.
This is a guest post by the guys from Adficient, an SEO and PPC management agency. Check them out.
After I heard this, I had a private chat on Facebook with Marcus about this……he said:
Behind the analysis is our massive 7 year historical Research Cloud
I aggregated all domains that used to have at least one ranking in the past on keywords with at least a search volume of 10.
Then I checked how many of these domains still have at least one ranking
Only 11% are left!
(from checking the top 30 results).
I also asked him,
What do you think % would be if you took just “expensive” commercial phrases and checked ?
and he replied
If you take commercial queries probably the number if domains disappeared is higher
So yea, 89 % of websites that ranked 7 years ago in the top 30 no longer rank for anything in the top 30 today. I totally believe this (and love that it’s backed up with Marcus’s analysis from SearchMetrics historical research data)!
I believe that those 89% of websites were sites that were doing “artificial things” (ie, crappy link building) to get those old rankings, and today they are penalized and fried by Google.
More thoughts on things like analyzing backlinks knowing that 89% of sites from 7 years ago are penalized today…
Internally, at Ninjas, we have some tools that analyze backlinks for projects like doing a disavow analysis, or for services like finding common competitor backlinks that we might want to try to get for our clients as well….and in these link analysis’, we look at Majestic domain backlinks to websites, and we cross reference this with how these sites rank in Google using tools like Spyfu and/or SEMRush…specifically looking at the history of the sites performance for keywords in Google…for example, you can have a backlink from SomeWebsite.com which has backlinks to it from 1000 other sites….but if SomeWebsite doesn’t rank for ANYTHING of ANY Value, then chances are, the site has been penalized in Google. Looking at charts from SEMRush or SPYFU for these sites often show that sites like SomeWebsite.com, at one time, ranked for lots of phrases worth lots of money….and then the site got fried by Google, and now it doesn’t rank in the top 10 for any phrase worth any $.
In any link profile which I analyze, about 2/3 of the links are from sites that are fried in Google (sites that don’t rank for anything worth any value in Google. Google has fried a lot of sites…a lot…actually, 89% to quote Marcus and his data….
Here’s also an area where if you’re focused on Moz, Majestic, ahrefs or other sites “Domain Value” you’re being fooled…this is because they’ll show those sites as high value (lots of backlinks), when in actuality, the site is worthless because it’s been banned in Google for ranking for anything of any value. (For example, it may show a moz domain authority of 50….but if the site is penalized in Google, it should be a domain authority of Zero).
So keep in mind that even most backlinks you may have to your site aren’t worth a damn because they’re from sites that have been fried in Google. Seven years ago someone may have had 1000 links….and today only 11% of those links may count because 89% of those sites are penalized, and thus links from them are probably useless as well….the question in analyzing backlinks really becomes, “What backlinks to you have of Value”?
I should notes that there are exceptions…. lets say you have a backlink from a boy scout chapter websites, or Bob’s Rock Hobby Website….they might not rank for commercial phrases, but that’s ok….the ones you have to look out for are the sites who once ranked for a bunch of phrases, but now they do not….part of that 89%.
Does everyone realize that the majority of websites are worthless today?
Do you ever feel that all the work that you put into maintaining an interesting and useful social media stream is not getting the results it deserves?
I do!
I spend hours every week working on our social accounts. Finding great links to share, thinking about the wording of the updates, selecting or creating great images to go with them and then scheduling them.
The problem is that minutes after the tweet go out or an hour or so after the Facebook update goes out they cease to be useful and all that work stops paying off.
Today I want to show you a tool that I’ve been using this year that extends the pay off and makes the work you put into your social media much more worthwhile!
Meet my friend…. Edgar
This time last year after creating a video on how I approached social media I had a number of ProBlogger readers suggest that I check out Edgar – a tool that is great for managing social media updates.
The fact that I heard the recommendation several times within a couple of days made me curious, so early this year I decided to sign up and give it a go.
I was immediately struck by how powerful the tool was.
How Edgar Works
I’ve created a video below that walks you through exactly how I use Edgar – here it is.
For those of you who prefer to read…. in short here’s how Edgar works:
Note: Laura Roeder the founder of Edgar has a special offer for you below that you’ll want to check out if considering Edgar.
You set up two things before Edgar goes to work (and starts saving you a lot of time!):
Firstly – Edgar allows you to create a library of social media updates for Twitter, Facebook (pages, profiles and groups) and LinkedIn.
You save each update as a certain ‘category’ of content.
For example you might have categories for ‘evergreen blog posts’, ‘quotes’, ‘promotions’ etc. This takes no longer than scheduling a normal social media update.
Here’s a screenshot of some of the newly added updates that I’ve put into the ‘ProBlogger Evergreen Blog Posts’ category for my ProBlogger Twitter Account.
Secondly – You then set up a schedule for when you want updates to go out from each category and choose which social accounts they should go out to.
For example you might choose to have your ‘evergreen blog posts’ to go out on your Twitter account at 9am and 9pm every day and for them to go on your Facebook page at noon every weekday. Then your ‘quotes’ might go out on Twitter at 3pm and 3am and your ‘promotions’ might go on Twitter every Wednesday at 7pm.
Here’s a screenshot of part of the schedule of tweets for the ProBlogger twitter account:
You can set up as few or as many slots in your schedule as you like.
Then… Edgar goes to work and uses the updates you have put into your library to create a queue of updates that he’ll then start posting at the times and on the accounts you’ve set up in your schedule. The queue never runs out – it keeps repeating for as long as you leave it set up.
Here’s the next few updates that are scheduled in the queue for the ProBlogger Twitter account.
Once updates go out, Edgar gives you analytics on how they perform in terms of how many likes, comments and shares they got – so you can see what updates work and what you might want to improve or remove from your library.
How I Use Edgar
Edgar works on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
I’ve chosen to use it mostly on my Twitter accounts at ProBlogger and Digital Photography School and it has completely changed the way that those accounts operate and the results have been fantastic.
Before Edgar both of those Twitter accounts were pretty embarrassing.
I used them largely to:
have automated tweets go out every time a blog post or a job on the Job Board went live (the tweets had no images and were simply a blog title and a link)
the occasional personal tweet (when I remembered to put one out)
promotional tweets every time we launched anything
Both tweet streams had very little in the way of visual content and didn’t have much personality to them. I knew I could so much better and that the result was that we were not getting the traffic or engagement with readers on those accounts that we could potentially have received.
When I came across Edgar I decided that Twitter would be my first testing ground for the tool and began to create my library of tweets an to construct my schedule.
At first I only had a schedule with a handful of slots in it and my library only had 20 or so updates in it (mainly evergreen blog posts). I didn’t want my followers seeing the same tweets all day every day so I started slow.
Gradually over the last 10 months I’ve added more and more content to my library which has enabled me to add more slots to the schedule.
Today I have over 2400 updates in my library and Edgar posts hundreds of updates to different social media accounts for me each week.
I’m still careful to keep adding fresh content into Edgar every week to mix things up and do add extra content in each week manually (more timely tweets, community questions, polls etc) to mix things up – but I’m happy to say that I’m now proud of my Twitter accounts and the resulting extra traffic and engagement that the accounts have had makes the effort of setting Edgar up worthwhile.
An Investment Worth Considering
As I speak about in the video above Edgar does have a monthly fee (starting at $49 a month). When I first saw this it did make me think carefully about if I should sign up for it. That kind of monthly fee is not to be taken lightly. However as I thought about the amount of time Edgar could potentially save me and the increased traffic and engagement that it could drive, I realised it was an investment I needed to make.
In many ways I see Edgar as doing the work that I could have otherwise outsourced to a virtual assistant. But at $49 a month I suspect that Edgar is achieving more each month than I could expect to get from a person that I paid that much.
Edgar will not suit every budget and is probably more suited to some types of blogs than others. My blogs are largely full of evergreen content and so my social media accounts can likewise focus upon sharing that kind of content. If your blog is more news focused or needs to mainly be sharing timely content then it may not be as effective for you.
It’s also worth noting that while Edgar will in the long run save you significant time if you use it to the extent that I have – it does take some work to set up.
I’ve taken the approach to add in a 4-8 updates every day of the year so far. That’s about 10-20 minutes work per day for me to set it up. This has enabled me to get almost all of my evergreen content from my archives into Edgar.
Once I’m finished putting in that archived content I will be able to reduce my daily work in Edgar to less than 5 minutes a day (just adding in new fresh content). So it takes some work to set up – but has some serious long term benefits of doing so.
I would highly recommend Edgar. It is something I’ve been paying for all year and a tool I’ll continue to use going forward as a key part of my social media strategy.
A Cyber Monday Offer from Laura Roeder
Laura Roeder is the founder of Edgar and is someone that I’ve long admired both in her drive and ability to get Edgar developed, launched and used by so many – but also in her own use of social media.
Laura has developed a fantastic guide for effective social media marketing for entrepreneurs which I think makes a brilliant companion to Edgar. It’s called Social Brilliant and it’s all about how to carve out your niche and build a great business using social media.
For the next 5 days you can pick up Social Brilliant training course for $199 and you’ll also get 6 months of Edgar for free (normally $49 a month). That’s $294 worth of Edgar for free when you pick up Social Brilliant for the next 5 days only.
Disclaimer: I am not an affiliate for Edgar or Social Brilliant but Edgar is a sponsor of the ProBlogger Podcast. I want to be perfectly clear that I do have a sponsorship arrangement with Edgar for transparency’s sake but also want it to be clear that I’m a paid up user of Edgar and have been using it (and will continue to use it) every day since January of 2015.
At the same time, would you feel less stressed and more accomplished knowing you’ve written your articles for the week or even the month and all you have left to do is hit the publish button?
In this article, you’ll learn why you should batch your blog content to do just that.
Let’s take a look at how batching your content can help!
What Is Batching?
Rather than rush to create new content on certain days of the week, the art of batching involves writing everything on one day or in one sitting.
This way you don’t have to worry if you completed your post for the day in case things get too hectic.
Here are some ways that batching your content can help you.
5 Reasons to batch your blog content
1. It saves time
We’re all well-intentioned to write a blog or article. Except life can get in the way.
That hour you thought you had free became a meeting or last-minute project. When that happens, you scramble to get your corner written, and in turn, you put out a mediocre article or you just don’t write one at all.
By batching your blog content, it helps save you time because you plan out and write it ahead of time.
2. Reduces stress
When we don’t write our content ahead of time, it can add unwanted stress because it’s constantly on our mind or on our to-do list.
Couple that with the fact that we might be too busy, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Not only do you not grow your business, you also lose any momentum you’ve built up because you didn’t complete a task you set out to do.
By batching your content, you won’t have to worry if a post is done since you’ll be planning them out and writing them ahead of time.
3. Keeps you on schedule
At the beginning of every month, you should create your editorial calendar. This is what you plan to work on for the month. It includes projects and content you need to create.
Once you’ve come up with the ideas, it’s time to put them into action. Often times, we get part of the equation right – we do the planning but don’t execute the content.
To solve this dilemma, spend a day planning out what you need to create and the spend a day writing it all.
Not only will this lower your stress levels because it will be done, you’ll also be making progress and building momentum as you move from month-to-month.
4. Boosts your productivity
By writing all of your content ahead of time, it helps you build momentum.
The momentum can propel you forward and give you confidence to tackle other tasks you’ve been meaning to get to but haven’t because they seemed too challenging.
5. Free up time for other tasks
One of the single best reasons to batch your blog content is because it helps you get more done. And we’re not just talking writing more content.
By focusing your energy for one day, you can complete your blog posts for the entire month.
This would give you with even more time to work on other areas of your business. For example, maybe you needed to complete a website redeisn you started or put together more videos.
By batching your blog content, now you have more time and the confidence to help move you forward.
Your Turn
As you can see, batching your blog content can have tremendous benefits for your sanity and your business.
It can also help you build lasting habits that carryover into other aspects of your business.
While these are just some of the benefits to batching your blog content, can you think of any other reasons batching your blog content would help you?
If so, please share them with me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or in the comments below. I would love to hear them!
Christian Karasiewicz is the CEO and Founder of Social Chefs, a digital training site that teaches you how to create winning recipes for success in social media marketing and business. Follow him @ckroks.
I know. We’ve even talked about it too. And Dooce said she was over it. And then Mia Freedman jumped in. But there is no denying the landscape is changing. Ramsay gives us some stats that might get you thinking… and possibly Tumblr-ing…
Are you part of the 70% of content marketers who are now making double the amount of content you were a year ago? Or are you keen to get stuck into the nut and bolts of content marketing? Moz has just released a huge guide (nine chapters worth!) to get you moving. With added Carl the Content Cat, of which I am a fan.
That’s a number not to be sneezed at. The founder of analytics platform CB Insights gives us an insight into how he keeps on rolling in those potential-customer numbers.
I did not know they announced this in October, but I noticed the other day the count had disappeared here, and thought it was something wrong from our end. Twitter says it’s because the wanted to consolidate and simplify their platform… I’m not sure how I feel about this. My poor Tweet button looks empty and sad next to its other populated friends.
Of course there’s backlash, and with backlash comes a hashtag: #SaveOurShareCounts. If you’re annoyed, let ’em know!
Taking a great photo on your smartphone is not as simple as pointing and shooting – as we’ve all learned the hard way. Simple tips will help you look like a pro in no time.
All the Instagram secrets from Pitchfork’s manager of day to day social output across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, and Tumblr, their quarterly print publication, and music festivals, and email marketing – a huge job where she’s learned a lot.
So what are your thoughts? Upset with Twitter? Think blogging’s not dead? How many outbound links are you comfortable with?
Stacey Roberts is the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.net: a writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd balancing it all with being a stay-at-home mum. She writes about all this and more at Veggie Mama. Chat with her on Twitter @veggie_mama or be entertained on Facebook.
Do you ever feel like you don’t have enough time to fit everything in?
Like there’s an opportunity staring you in the face to start something new but to take it on would mean everything else you’re already doing would suffer?
You know the feeling – you’re
working away on your blog
creating content
updating your FB, Pinterest, Twitter accounts each day
responding to comments and emails
reading and commenting upon other blogs
creating the occasional eBook
updating your advertiser page
And then all of a sudden, the game changes. We’re meant to be across live streaming, have a podcast on the go, speak at events, guest post on relevant niche blogs, and be carrying out consistent brand work.
FOMO starts creeping in… you feel overwhelmed… and afraid to say “no” to any one opportunity because what if it’s the next big thing? Your next big break?
I get asked by readers all the time how to work out what to focus upon, and I also get asked all the time – ‘how do you fit it all in?’
In today’s episode of the ProBlogger podcast, I want to tell you the truth. How I manage to write, blog, podcast, tweet, live-stream, speak at events, and publish books. What my strategies are, how I’ve learned to resourcefully use my time, and what I choose to say “no” to, so I can say “yes” to something else.
If you’ve got any questions or feedback about how your spending your time, or how I juggle all the responsibilities of being an online entrepreneur, I’d love to hear it!
Many bloggers are now considering the use of video to increase their reach, inform their audience about an upcoming product launch, or just as a new way of leveraging one of the fastest growing mediums on the internet. In fact, according to reelseo.com, by 2019 80 per cent of the world’s internet traffic will be made up of video.
We work incredibly hard to build our reputations and would do anything to protect it because in the end, it makes up a large part of our business. One thing that I believe can be incredibly detrimental to that brand is terrible video production. However, more often than not now, we don’t have the time or patience to dedicate time to the technical aspects of video. In addition, for some of us, video is purely a marketing tool and we’re not aspiring to be the next JJ Abrams.
A lot of bloggers may already have a DSLR and I think it is safe to say that the majority of us have a smartphone. In fact, the smartphone you have can record incredible looking video without having to make any expensive purchases.
In this article, I want to touch on a few hacks that will help you dramatically increase the quality of your video, maintain your reputation and help you stand out from the rest.
Shaky Video
I get incredibly sea sick so it doesn’t help when I watch a video that makes me feel like I’m sailing through a cyclone. Shaky video is terrible and really screams “amateur”. Now I’m not saying that you need to go out and pick up the most expensive Manfrotto tripod but these couple of suggestions will increase your quality.
Use a stack of books to balance your camera or smartphone. Grace Helbig has over 2 million subscribers to her YouTube channel and in the documentary Please Subscribe, she proves that you don’t need expensive equipment. Grace simply sat in front of a window and rested her camera on a stack of books. This will immediately remove the shaking out of your video.
Grab a Selfie Stick or cheap tripod from eBay. You may be thinking: “a selfie stick? really?” – Well in fact, a selfie stick will decrease the amount of shake in your footage. This is because you have greater surface area to hold providing greater stability. Another option is to pick up a small tripod from eBay such as a gorillapod. My personal recommendation is a small tripod as it eliminates any contact with your camera.
Hollow Audio
Have you ever tried recording yourself with a DSLR and noticed that you sound like you’re talking into a tin can? The cameras aren’t built for amazing audio as well as image quality so using an external audio source will increase your quality tenfold. There is definitely not a lack of options when it comes to audio. Tools like the Zoom H4n or Rode Videomic Pro are industry standard for video marketers. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on this expensive equipment, here are three ways you could dramatically increase your audio quality.
The Rode Smartlav+ is a great lapel mic for smartphone users. This inexpensive tool will dramatically increase the quality of your audio and allow you to use your smartphone as an audio recorder. Extremely simple to use, accompanied by the Rode app, you’ll look and sound like a pro in no time.
Use your smartphone voice recorder app. If you’re using a DSLR, hiding your smartphone out of frame and recording via the audio recorder will see a dramatic improvement in comparison to camera audio. While it is not the best, it will suffice for the majority of bloggers looking to harness video.
Use a podcasting microphone. If you’ve made the investment of purchasing a podcasting microphone, you can set that to record your audio and sync in editing. A simple clap on when recording will provide a spike in both camera audio and recorded audio enough for your to sync it up.
Lighting
Another important aspect of filming is lighting. When I started making videos for YouTube, lights were one of the first things I purchased because I wanted to stand out and look the part. If purchasing lights is not in your budget, you can certainly take a leaf out of Grace Helbig’s book and sit in front of a window.
Much like with photography, we want to avoid overly saturated images. One hack that I have used in the past was to sticky tape baking paper over the window. This will diffuse the light enough to make the image less saturated.
Finally, avoid ‘yellow’ coloured down lights. If you’re using the downlights in your home, purchase a daylight bulb and position yourself approximately one to two metres away from the bulb. If you can, set your camera higher than your face and look up on a slight angle. This will help eliminate any harsh shadows on your face.
These are just three basic elements of what makes a good video from the production side. Of course as with anything we create, good content will always win however, implementing these three recommendations will help ensure that people don’t switch off in the first 10 seconds of your video.
Have you had much success with video? What has worked for you?
James is a 27-year-old dad of four girls who helps entrepreneurs build relationships and grow the strength, courage and confidence to build their brand with video.
Do you have a male brain or a female brain? The answer, according to science, is no.
If you didn’t expect this to be a yes-or-no question, you’re not alone. Male brains do seem to be built differently than female brains. An analysis of more than 100 studies found that the volume of a man’s brain...
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Google brings back starring for saving image search results to your photo collections. The post Google Image Search Lets You Save Images For Later With Stars appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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