According to Bounce Exchange, 70% of visitors that leave your website will never return, with this staggering figure in mind bloggers and marketers need to be maximising their efforts to ensure that as many of these visitors come back to the site otherwise it is a waste of resources. As Mark Schaefer said in his Content Shock piece, you are paying people to read your content, whether you wrote the content on your site yourself or paid someone else to do it, your time and money was used for someone to read that content and if you don’t manage to convert them into a repeat visitor or customer then you are making a loss.

So what are some of the ways that we can get these people to return? Forms are probably the best method, however how you use these forms and present them to your readers is very important in capturing their information.

What Makes A Good Form?

Using a form to get visitor details may seem simple to setup but getting the right balance along with the tone of the copy is crucial as you will often have just a few seconds of the visitors attention when they view the form. There are some rules of thumb to follow when creating a website form, Formulate came up with what they call the four C’s of a good form which are:

• Clear – the person filling in the form should be able to do so quickly and with minimal effort and no confusion

• Concise – Longer does not mean better but also questions and text in a form should not be too short

• Clever – Directing the user to the next field to complete is the simplest way of using a ‘clever’ form

• Cooperative – Do not frustrate the user, make sure the form is bug-free and stable, confirm before submission to avoid errors

Keep your forms simple depending on what you are using them for. Hubspot analysed over 40,000 forms and found that the less fields there were to fill in the more likely a user is to complete it.

When was the last time you actively looked for a subscribing option on a website? Many users will be more than happy to come back to your site, remember if they are on a page on your site it is more than likely that they came there looking for something so make sure your form is visible to them and don’t be afraid of using a pop-up form.

Keep the layout of the page in mind when creating your form as well as the natural way that people read content on the web. A study in 2006 by Nielsen Norman Group shows that people read web pages from left to right, in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.

What Does Not Make  Good Form?

There are also some guidelines that need to be followed

Spamming the visitor – if they don’t wish to sign-up then don’t bother them again or for a period of time. Many tools such as SumoMe have options to not show the form to that same visitor for another 30 days.

Use a sidebar form – Some people will disagree with me here but honestly I don’t think this is the way to go especially if your site is new and doesn’t have much traffic. You need to be pushing harder for those sign-ups and conversions and many website visitors these days have come so accustomed to seeing ads banners in the sidebar that they just tune it out. Check out this case study by VideoFruit.com when they ditched their sidebar.

Make the form overly complex – If the form is for making a purchase then you will obviously need to obtain a lot of information from the user, for anything else though the less fields to fill in the better. There are still many websites asking for ZIP & postal codes, country of residence and telephone numbers and will often not let the form to be completed until those fields have been filled in.

Not keeping mobile in mind – With mobile traffic being on par with desktop traffic for many sites these days you need to have a form that works on smaller screens too, if your site consists of mainly mobile traffic then you may want to keep your form as simple as possible too with just a name and email field, forms are not easy to fill in with just a thumb!

Creating Your Own Forms

If you are using WordPress then there is a basic contact form that comes with the installation, if you are looking to setup a basic contact page then this may suffice but WordPress do not recommend this for collecting secure details for payments. There are also other free forms such as Contact Form 7 but beginners may find the interface not very intuitive. There are premium options available such as 123ContactForm.com which offer pre-built form templates as well as a real-time form editor where no code skills are required.

It’s a leadership requirement to build personal brand. It’s an indication of what you can offer: contribution and performance. A personal brand builds skills and character. A blogger’s success depends on this personal brand.

Take the name of any famous blog. Chances are, its recall factor is higher in terms of knowing the blogger behind the blog. There is Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income, Jitendra Vaswani from Bloggers Ideas, Darren Rowse from Pro Blogger and our very own Zac Johnson.

Now, when you recall the name, the mind brings forth a certain impression, created either via your personal interaction with the person or through professional growth you saw around the web. It’s the reputation built through personal and professional commitments, contribution to the blogging ecosystem and the general goodwill created with the followers.

It’s tough to build personal brand; takes years of commitment and leadership skills. As Emily from Corporate Catwalker says, “authenticity and personality is the key”.

If you want to build personal brand, I hope these commandments will be of use.

5 Commandments to Build Personal Brand

Here they are:

#1 Be good and do what you say you’ll do.

Understand your strength and how those strengths or skills are going to help the world. Every popular blogger started with the aim to solve a problem – they are a voice for the world. What is your aim? Stick to commitments.

Think of someone who fulfilled a commitment. What did the gesture make you feel? You will consider the person genuine, dependable and reliable and in all likelihood, you wouldn’t stop from giving that person a recommendation, right?

Become this person.

As a blogger, focus on the content 80% of the time.

#2 Tell stories.

We all relate to stories better than anything else. The form of the story – text, video, images – doesn’t matter. What we understand is the story and our relatability towards it.

For example, I remember Pat Flynn as the person who was struggling to make online passive income and finally does it through hard work and dedication – this is my perception of him and I relate with his story. Similarly, I remember John Chow who was there at ‘the right time’ when the Internet was growing and became one of the world’s top bloggers.

All successful people tell a story. Take Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba. Fired from every job ever and stressed with the lack of opportunities, a sudden resolution and commitment led him to start Alibaba and we all know his status in the entrepreneurship ecosystem today.

Aspire to be big. Be relatable. Tell “authentic” stories.

#3 Have uniform online presence.

Securing the domain with your name is important across all channels. Neil has NeilPatel.com, Zac has ZacJohnson.com and you can also view mine ChitraparnaSinha.com. It’s necessary to use the same name identity on all channels such as websites, domain, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, email communication, Skype and any other means.

Your online image should be “uniform” – same name, domain and image.

#4 Do not appeal everyone.

You can’t.

What I specifically mean is you can’t appeal to every kind of people. If you want to be in the HR field, concentrate on the same. Don’t talk about “making money online”. It not only comes across as stupid but also dilutes your effort to build personal brand.

There is no point in trying to be the jack of all trades and certainly, you will be the master of none.

Only exception is when skills overlap. For example, being a content writer, content marketing is also a specialised vertical and talking about social media is a by-product of working in the Content field. There is a notion of association.

Don’t go into the multi-skill segment. Take one specific skill / niche and try to become an authority on that one.

#5 Create and build influential relationships.

Blogging has changed since I started in 2011. The blogging world was simpler and you could build relationships simply. Connecting with influencers is a struggle these days. Network a lot.

If you’re just starting out with networking, use tools like Brand Mentions to find out about industry influencers, what they are doing and connect with them. I am using Brand Mentions for the last 2-3 months and it has changed the way I function online in terms of mentions monitoring and to follow chosen people. You can search for any person / brand and see their online presence.

Since brand building and influence outreach follows a symbiotic relationship, you can also use the tool to measure your brand presence. For example, I created a search parameter with my name and the tool sends me instant emails whenever my name is mentioned anywhere on the web. It’s better than Google Alerts.

In conclusion

Your personal brand is a currency that won’t fluctuate until you make the wrong moves! Be very focused and have mind clarity in your path to build personal brand.

For everyone doing business online, Search Engine Optimization, everywhere referred to as SEO is common. It’s all about positioning your site or blog to get more traffic from search engines.

We are generally told to approach SEO from two perspectives:

On-Page!

This is everything you as the content creator need to do to align your content with what search engines want. It starts with keyword research and ends with optimizing your content for the target keywords.

Your web page is split into different areas and the keywords targeted have to be present in each of these areas. SEO experts will tell you to have one or two primary keywords and a couple of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) phrases.

The idea is this:

The longer your content, the more your LSI keywords and the better your chances of getting ranked for as many keywords as possible.

But which are the different areas of your webpage to focus on as content developer?

 Your page title

 Page URL

 Page keyword

 Page description

 Article introduction

 Image alt on articles

 HTML tags like <h1> to <h6>

 Article body

 Article conclusion

 Linking out to authority website

Now, for On-Page SEO, these are the different sections of your page to focus on while optimizing your article.

Your primary and LSI keywords used on your page properly will help search engines understand the topic you are writing about.

Note that while the description section isn’t very influential in ranking, it helps your Click Through Rate (CRT) on SERPS.

If your page description does not rightly describe your content, chances of having searchers click your entry are very slim and poor CTR can cause Google to shift your entry downward.

Off-Page!

Off-page is the tough area of SEO. Though it’s happening off your pages, it heavily depends on your pages.

It’s simply getting links to your pages, and if your pages have to naturally get those backlinks, then those pages have to be attractive enough.

But bloggers and publishers don’t wait any longer for readers to link back to their articles. This is because content marketing has become so competitive and difficult.

So what they do is go out there and fetch those links for themselves through:

 Blog commenting

 Guest posting

 Forum posting

 Creating profiles on Web 2.0 properties

 Risking and buy links on sites like Fiver

 Etc

The little known Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the foundation of SEO. No matter how much effort you put into On-page and Off-page, if the technical aspect is not properly setup, you won’t see matching results. Technical SEO focuses on how well search spiders can crawl your site and index your content.

The core of technical SEO is site speed and a lot of factors affect this:

Sever response time

This is a key factor when it comes to your site speed. The web hosting industry today is crowded but we have to make sure we get the best option that’s optimized for speed.

Recently, I lost over half my traffic because of poor speed. My blog speed stood at over 8 seconds which is too bad. Moving to Traffic Planet Hosting cuts down my speed to less than 2 second, which is great.

Theme coding and plugins

Your theme can be the reason behind your sluggish blog. Most of the templates out there are poorly coded, making a lot of css and js file includes and database calls. This adds up the time your server takes to respond to a browser request.

Plugins are a necessary evil. While they help us achieve different goals, most of these go a long way to weigh heavily on our blogs. You have to keep the number of plugins you have to as low as possible

Images and Graphics

We cannot dissociate images from content marketing. For some readers, blog posts or articles without pictures can really mean something is missing.

But poorly optimized images can hurt your SEO. We have them built into our themes, plugins and the content we published.

Now, as a blog owner or content creator, you may have full control over the images and pictures you add to your content. You can optimize them, add the width and height properties, etc. For the most part however, you have little influence on the icons, bullets, background graphics, etc shipped with the themes. And these help to slow down your blog.

If you’ve been blogging, creating and publishing content without paying adequate attention to technical SEO, I think my article here has thrown some light on what you should do.

Disclosure: In full disclosure, it is safe to assume that the site owner is benefiting financially or otherwise from everything you click on, read, or look at while on my website. This is not to say that is the case with all content, as all publications on the site are original and written to provide value and references to our audience.

With over a billion active sites on the internet today and only ten sites ranking on the first page of Google, how are you ever supposed to compete? The secret is SEO. However, knowing the concept of SEO is simply not enough. Site owners and marketers of all sizes need to actually know how to understand, implement and track all aspects of SEO for their sites.

The internet gives businesses of all shapes and sizes the ability to compete for consumers far and wide, but where does the little guy fall into this space. More often than not, they get lost in the mix because they can’t compete with established sites, search rankings or the massive advertising budgets that may come along with it. Businesses throughout the world compete online and this can make becoming an online success more difficult than finding success in the local market. By familiarizing yourself with search engine marketing and learning the appropriate techniques, you too will be able to improve your company’s stature within your respective industry, while also increasing your revenue.

The Basics of SEO

Although search engine marketing can be very intricate and complex, the basics are fairly simplistic. The associated techniques are designed to make a website more reputable in the eyes of the biggest search engines, such as Bing and Google. As your website begins to gain traction and earns respect from these search engines, it’ll be moved up their search results. If you play your card rights, you can climb to the first page of Google and reap the benefits. By getting your website to the first page, you’ll ultimately be able to improve your traffic flow, visibility, and revenue.

Crucial Factors to Ranking in Google

Although search engine marketing might sound simple at this point, there are many complexities involved. Most search engines rank websites based on a handful of different factors. Some of these factors can be found directly on your website, but others are more difficult to control. On-page search engine optimization can be easy to configure, whereas link building can be immensely difficult. In order to climb through the rankings and reach the first page, you’ll need to excel in both areas. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done and you’ll face relentless competition along the way. Analyze each section of your site, while making improvements along the way. What may seem like a never ending battle, simply needs to be broken down to daily wins.

Off-Site Techniques to Rank Higher

Successfully marketing through the search engines is difficult, since many factors are out of your grasp. This is especially true, when it comes to compiling a good backlink catalog. Convincing other websites to link back to your site can be difficult. In order to excel, you’ll need to attract attention and gain links from websites deemed reputable and high quality by Google and other search engines. This is where search engine marketing services will be able to help. Instead of spending endless hours trying to figure out the best methods of outreach and creating shareable content, SEO professionals have plenty of experience in acquiring highly sought after backlinks and they’ll know exactly how to acquire them for your site.

If this is something you would like to consider working on yourself, be sure to search through this blog for topics on guest blogging, infographic creation, social media outreach and how to create expert roundups within your niche.

Don’t Neglect Mobile and Responsive Viewing

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is focusing solely on desktop and laptop computers. Although a lot of internet users will be utilizing their home computers, a large segment of the population will access the internet through their mobile phones. Failing to accommodate to these individuals will only decrease your grasp and restrict your ability to grow your business. Never neglect mobile users, as this customer base is growing rapidly — and also make sure your site content is mobile responsive in the process. The only thing worse than not having a site at all, is having customers access it and not being able to place an order. This will just frustrate them and quickly head off to your competitors!

Know SEO and Know Your Site Rankings

At the end of the day, search engine marketing is a vital component of any business. Search engines make it possible to get your business out in the open and become visible to millions of consumers. Make sure you incorporate a solid search engine marketing game plan into your advertising scheme, so you can attract new customers and expand your revenue to new heights. To learn more about the best methods for making your site search engine friendly, be sure to review our quick SEO tips and recommendations.

Disclosure: In full disclosure, it is safe to assume that the site owner is benefiting financially or otherwise from everything you click on, read, or look at while on my website. This is not to say that is the case with all content, as all publications on the site are original and written to provide value and references to our audience.

No it’s not cheating, trust me. These handy tools will make your life easier and your content stronger.

Ever heard of mental block? For content marketers it’s that moment when you can’t even think of a topic let alone begin writing the content. Then there’s the frustration of submitting work and noticing a typo or worse still, word repetition.  Enter the content marketer’s toolbox – a set of go-to sites and resources that will put the good stuff back into your content.

Say goodbye to troublesome typos and neglected deadlines; these handy tools have got your back.

Content calendar

You need a content calendar. Simple. Planning your content weeks or even months before you write it allows you think carefully about what is most relevant to your audience. Before you know it, you’ll have the sweet satisfaction that your content is getting read and shared by the people who are most likely to get involved with your business. Plus, you know what you’re writing and who else is writing what and when, so you can meet every deadline without endlessly smashing away at the keyboard.

Hub Spot's Blog Topic Generator

Before you start filling out your content calendar with blogs and articles, have a go on HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator – a search engine that creates blog titles based on topics. You can put up to three words into the search and then let the generator do the hard work for you. If you type in ‘Content’ and ‘Blog’ and ‘Marketing’, for example, it comes up with the following results:

The worst advice you’ve ever heard about content

How to solve the biggest problems with blog

7 things about marketing your boss wants to know

Why we love content (and you should too)

15 blogs to follow about blog

They’re by no means perfect, but think of it more as an inspiration tool than one to give you the best converting title. It’s the tool to use when you’re wracking your brains for a title, and with five to go at, you’re bound to find one you can take as your starting point.

Asana

According to Asana, if you can use your email, you can use its app. It’s basically a ticket system where content can be assigned to team members. With your content calendar laid out in an online system everyone in the team can stay on track, and you can move tasks around so deadlines are never missed. People can comment on tasks and start conversations, and with loads of ideas in the mix, your content will flourish. The app can be used on PCs and laptops as well as tablets and phones, so it’s ideal for in the office and for home. Whether your team is in house, freelance or on the move between meetings, you are all on the same page, quite literally.

Trello

Similar to Asana, Trello helps you to organise your workflow so tasks are completed on time. It’s all about efficiency, so you can drag jobs to different lists – the checklist, the to-do list or the in-progress section. Tasks can be moved around the dashboard to show progress and when you’re working on a campaign it’s easy to see what needs to be completed first. You can create different boards for each project you’re working on so nothing gets neglected. Spend less time creating and updating spreadsheets, and more time doing what you do best – being a creative genius.

Google Calendar

You can’t go wrong with a good old Google Calendar. It’s the Filofax of the 21stcentury; the ultimate in organisation that once you’ve got you can’t live without. With all appointments, blog articles and tasks saved in an online calendar, you can access it anywhere and share it with your colleagues. Release your inner Monica from Friends and create a calendar for each campaign. #smugface

Hemingway

Once you’ve written your article, get Hemingway to give it a once over. Copy and paste your test into the app and it will highlight areas for improvement in five categories – complicated sentences, long sentences, complex words, adverbs and use of the passive voice. It then tells you what you need to do in order to streamline your copy and make it bolder. Before you know it, you’ll be the next Hemingway (sorry).

Grammarly

Avoid submitting typos and grammatical errors by putting your copy into Grammarly. It will tell you where you have gone wrong so you can correct it. Even the best writers make mistakes, and this site will help you get rid of them before it’s too late. It also picks up on duplicated content from over eight billion websites so you can make yours unique. Google will love you, and up and up your content will climb on the SEO ladder.

These tools are just a handful of all the apps and websites out there that are made for content marketers and bloggers. They are the ones I like the most and I know there are heaps around. Do you know of a tool that you think I would love? Leave a comment – and thanks, in advance.

So you have a blog and you have a few readers, but how interested are your readers in what you write? Are they inspired by it? Does it help them to solve problems in their work or personal lives? Do they tell family, friends or colleagues about it? And do they visit your blog because they were interested in a particular post and got hooked?

If your answer to these questions is ‘I don’t know’, you have work to do. There are millions of blogs out there, so if you’re serious about getting yours noticed, you need to invest time and energy in refining the type of content you post on it. But how do you create something that really connects with your audience? It starts with understanding what exactly that audience is.

Understanding your audience

The first thing you need to do to in order to create a successful blog is to understand your audience. That doesn’t just mean the people already reading your blog – it means the people you’d like to be reading your blog too.

A brand name selling diaper bags will be successful if it produces blog posts that appeal to new parents. A company selling bike helmets will be successful if it produces blog posts that connect with cyclists. Drawing in readers means nothing unless they are part of – or at least related to – your market. This applies every bit as much to blogs where you are looking to get a message across or share information as it does to those looking to sell a product or service.

How can you find out about your audience? Tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights provide valuable information on who is already reading your blog, which you can use to help you refine the keywords you include in your posts and identify subjects likely to most appeal to your target audience Adjust what you publish accordingly, and see what changes; this way you can continue to make adjustment that will bring your actual audience closer to your ideal audience.

Look at what other blogs are doing to attract people in your target market too, but don’t just copy it; your blog will need to have a voice of its own if it’s going to succeed.

Make it personal

The informality of blogs is a large part of their appeal. People don’t want an anonymous corporate voice or articles written in the third person when they visit your blog – they want you. This doesn’t mean the personality of your blog has to be identical to yours though; you can still be professional, and you can tailor the language you use to suit your target audience.

Remember that people respond best to someone they feel thinks in the same way that they do. Be warm and friendly, and take an interest in the responses you get – show your readers you care about them.

Provide value

Far too many people start blogging about popular subjects in the same way everyone else does. Doing this won’t give people a reason to visit your blog, as they’ll probably already have seen the same tone and ideas elsewhere. If you’re going to cover a popular subject, find a unique angle from which to approach it, one that nobody else has used.

What makes a blog valuable to people? This will vary a bit depending on your target audience. Some of it’s about ideas. Some of it’s about information. Can you inspire people? Can you help them see something in a new way, without being too challenging regarding their priorities and values? Can you teach them a new skill?

If you are selling kitchen furniture, for instance, you might find recipes that can be made and enjoyed using furniture like yours will be popular with your target audience because they find them fun, useful and relevant.

Create the right tone

Different audiences look for different things in what they read. Most people like humor, and it can help to create that all-important sense of a personal bond, but the type of humor you use for a blog aimed at high school athletes would obviously be quite different from what you’d use to connect with 50-something lawyers. Depending on the context, you may need to adopt a more serious or sympathetic tone, while blog posts offering advice need to sound authoritative without being overbearing.

Get people talking

While by this point you will have worked to make your target audience feel comfortable with you and your blog, you can’t agree with everyone all the time, and sometimes disagreement is just what you need to get people talking.

The trick is to work out just how far you can go in being provocative without upsetting people. If you’re stating your preference for a particular color scheme, you shouldn’t need to worry too much, but if you’re broaching ethical, moral or political issues, you should tread carefully.

When people comment on your blog, try to respond in a way that will draw them into a discussion, and reference other commenters to get them talking to each other.

Keep asking questions

Every comment and piece of feedback you get can help with profiling your audience, as well as improving your blog. Use polls and surveys to persuade people to share their views, and create posts that raising questions rather than provide answers, inviting readers to share their thoughts.

Throughout this process, keep track of the number of views, comments and shares you get in order to see what type of posts engage readers most effectively. The more content you post and analyze, the more you can learn.

Building a successful blog takes time, and you shouldn’t expect things to happen overnight, but well-tailored content will give you a great chance of growing your audience. If you’re already taking the time to produce content, it’s worth making the extra effort to ensure that what you’re producing connects with your target audience. While it will take a little more energy, you’ll get a lot more out of your blog as a result.

There are many reasons different online businesses fail today. According toBloomberg, 8 out of 10 businesses will crash within the first 18 months. This is a mind-blowing 80% but why is it so?

While online and offline factors may be different, let’s examine some common reasons online business burn out so soon.

1 – Web Hosting

Every online business relies on web hosting. Without this service, you can’t be online. That’s why it’s a crucial phase selecting a web hosting for your online business.

Though the industry is so developed, with reliable and affordable web hosting services, we still have businesses crumbling because of poor hosting.

I started off my very first business on a free web hosting server with a lot of limitations. According to Brendan Wilde from Umbrellar Web hosting, domain names and web hosting services are quite affordable these days. So it’s unthinkable to fail because of poor choice of web hosting.

There are a huge number of reliable web hosting services out there but I won’t list them. You’ll have to do your research in order to make a choice.

2 – Poor targeting

We have been told that to succeed online, you need traffic. That’s true but it has a trap. It’s not just about the traffic. It’s about getting targeted traffic and these must be human visitors.

When I started one of my online businesses in 2011 (EasyRetweet.com to be more precised), I had a proposal from someone to buy traffic. Though that sounded weird, I gave it a try. Needless to say it was a pure waste of resources.

I had a spike in traffic stats but these were just random visitors, including bots. No sales, no profit.

We have different ways to drive traffic today. Social media for instance is a huge traffic source but at the same time, it can drive you crazy. You won’t just go about sharing your links on Facebook, Google or Tweeting expecting to make sales.

One great strategy I recommend is to create niche/geo targeted social media accounts. It’s possible to have many different Twitter accounts targeting different niches or geo locations. Don’t always rush for a huge number of followers. Focus on targeting and you will always get exciting results from such accounts.

3 – Lack of qualifications

The Internet is a place where one can read on just anything. You find both free and paid resources. While the free materials on the Internet are great, there are a lot of limitations.

Some folks have depended so heavily on free materials with the hope to build a business empire. You can read about just any topic and acquire some knowledge to lay a foundation for your business. But for a long term sustainable business success, you will have to get some more training and this comes with a price.

Many entrepreneurs abandon today because of frustration and confusion. Whereas, if they invested a little more in training, they would acquire the required skills to face challenges in their business. While I don’t condemn any free training materials, I recommend getting a coach or investing in some premium training programs.

4 – To many things at a time

I’m a strong believer in developing Multiple Sources of Income (MSI). But what I don’t recommend is doing many things simultaneously. This can quickly lead to failure.

Focus on one thing, develop it to stability before engaging on another opportunity. Avoid trying anything that’s said to be the “next gold”. Once you have a business you think can yield profit, focus on it and drive success before attempting another opportunity.

5 -Doing everything yourself

The first thing I must say here is “partnership works”

Many people fail in business today because they want to do everything themselves. According to John Chow, in one of his training products, one of the things he does that contribute to his success is outsourcing.

You must learn to build a team of experts around your projects. Don’t be a graphics designer who also does the database and code programing. You may think you have the skills to do everything but that’s lying to yourself.

6 – Lack of the right tools

There is absolutely no way you can succeed without having the right tools for your business. Many entrepreneurs depend on free tools that don’t allow them the flexibility to grow their business.

You must identify the tools you need to grow and maintain your business and invest in them. Get the expertise to use those tools for maximum use. Trying things out may lead to damages and losses.

7 – Time

People who want quick success end up to be very impatient. Some businesses require time to mature. Before getting into any business, you must be able to measure its time. If you want profit earlier than expected, chances are that you’ll rush into wrong conclusions and quit.

Inbound marketing can be hugely rewarding for a business, and one of the best ways to achieve it is through a blog. According to Hubspot, companies that blog have 97 more inbound links than those that don’t.

But in order to reach that kind of numbers, you need to generate a blog that customers actually read. Don’t worry, though; if traffic is low on your page, there are things you can do to boost your total views.

You can start by changing up the style and content of your blog posts. Here’s a few ideas for how.

1. How-To Posts and Tutorials

How-tos are the most powerful and timeless of blog posts, assuming they’re well done. Most people go to the web in search of instruction from tutorials. Whether they’re wondering how to change their oil or how to decorate their living room, the love to find how-tos that show them the way. A great example of this can be seen in our how to create guest posts article.

But you have to make sure these kind of posts are of very high quality and offer unmistakably valuable information. Be aware that you’ll probably be competing with many already-published articles but most of them just skim the surface.

The ones that really sink deep into the topic or process will provide the most value to readers, so you want to make sure yours is one of them.

2. Then-and-Now Posts

Thanks to Facebook’s throwback posts, online consumers have become more interested in then-and-now posts. They revel in the contrast.

For instance, describing the look of furniture placement in the 70s compared to now is a great way to offer that contrast and display how far things have come in terms of interior design.

3. Lists and Rich-Text Articles

Lists and rich-text articles make it easy for page visitors to pick out information quickly without having to read the entire article. This type of blog piece typically offers a variety of actionable tips and advice, and it’s a form of blog post that never gets old and always performs well.

4. Cheat Sheets

People love tips and tricks that make their life a lot easier. As people prepare for Thanksgiving, for example, a cheat sheet can provide reminders of guests to invite or checklists of food to make. Go the extra mile and offer these cheat sheets in the form of a printable PDF.

5. Controversy

This is one you have to be careful with. Only post a controversial article if you feel you’re ready to handle the backlash that is likely to follow — and that’s if you’resuccessful.

It’s a great way to generate interaction, but you have to keep up with the engagement, and reply to posts in a timely and consistent manner, as well as try to keep things from getting too ugly.

Controversial posts don’t have to center on politics, though that’s what people think of most often. You could simply disagree with a popular opinion.

For example, web designers have all been going on about how responsive design is king. Writing a post about why it’s not so great will stir up a debate.

6. Infographic with Blog Post

Infographics come in handy for all sorts of reasons. They can help writers escape writer’s block, improve a presentation, add depth to research, and even assist people in deciding on what to eat for dinner.

Creating an infographic that goes with your niche and attaching it to a short blog post can add solid value for readers and boost your SEO.

7. Long Lists of Resources

Have you ever read a blog post entitled something like “50 Blogs You Should Be Reading Right Now”? Some people avoid these kinds of lists, but others find them incredibly useful if they’re just starting their research on a particular subject.

Some bloggers avoid doing this kind of article because it includes links that navigate away from their page, and that makes the author nervous, but really, that’s totally okay. Many readers will remember where the post originated and will back-page to your site. You can sneak your own links into the list of resources to maximize page views.

Here is a great resource for freelancers to illustrate an amazing example that has helped me.

8. Image-Contrived Posts

BuzzFeed is currently the most popular blog on the Internet. The majority of its posts are composed of images with clever captions.

People love images, particularly if they help to illustrate useful tips or offer entertainment. You can’t always achieve the effect on a personal or business blog, but if you can, it’s a great way to generate new followers.

I personally love Visme to create stunning graphics, infographics, etc.

9. Video Posts

Even more than still images and graphics, videos have the power to catch attention better than words alone. Most people who open a video online watch it in its entirety, which increases the amount of time they spend on your page.

You could do vlogs, the term for when someone talks about a certain topic directly to the camera, or they could be how-tos and tutorials. You could also simply do a video that entertains, if you’re up to it.

No matter how you approach the video blog post, you’re sure to increase the time people spend on your sign as long as you can maintain good quality.

10. Interviews

Talk to a satisfied customer, ask an industry guru to appear on your page, or walk around town and ask questions of people on the street at random. Such interviews can often be just entertaining or of potentially high value to viewers.

If you can promise to do further interviews in the future, this is a great way to retain a blog following.