I’m getting a lot of questions from members via private e-mail asking how they can win this 1000 USD guest blogging contest.

More importantly what they have to do in order to achieve high ratings in all their activities.

Start Date

September 20 2010

End Date

October 31 2010 (date extended)

Quality of the articles

Your written content will be judged and have a lot to do with your chances of winning. Making sure your articles it top quality and good content should be very important to you.

Social Networking

A large percentage of judging will be based on your ability to social network and market your articles. This includes sphinn, blog engage, digg, twitter and whatever else you want to promote with.

The point of this is to judge you on your marketing and social networking activities. This will be a large percentage of the overall judging process. getting friends to like, dig, tweet etc will help you rank in a higher position then your competitors.

Comments and Discussions

Having the ability to engage your readers is a must. The total amount of comments you have on your article will have a large impact on the judging. We want to see what your readers are saying and would like to see you creating conversations with them.

Number of articles submitted

Obviously submitting more then one article will help you win. I will take the highest scored article and use that as your official submission for the contest.

Tweet and retweet

It’s very important to market your articles. I don’t know how much I can stress this. Finding people to comment and engage your article could be the difference form winning of losing. Make sure to tweet and re tweet your article. This is big money here so don’t waste anytime. Adding an @bbrian017 in your tweets will help me follow your progress and your friends retweets.

How to get started

• Register for an account here and fill out your bio info

• Contact me admin (@) blogengage dot com letting me know your username

• I will review your account and upgrade it so you can write for the blog

• Write your post, save it and it will be reviewed and published with 24 hours

• Images have to be linked by url in your article or sent to me, I will manually add then to your post

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

A blog with no reader base is nothing more than a diary. The key to a successful blog is building a reader base and nurturing it into an active reader base.

That means cultivating relationships with your readers. You are sharing a bit of yourself with them in each post. Unless you’re a narcissist, that won’t be very satisfying, and I can almost guarantee it won’t be enough to sustain your blog. You need to get them to share back.

There are many techniques to engage your readers and convert them to contributors. All the most worthwhile techniques are based upon establishing a connection, cemented with trust. You need to give the passive reader a reason to want to engage, by making him comfortable with sharing his point of view.

A blog with no reader base is nothing more than a diary. The key to a successful blog is building a reader base and nurturing it into an active reader base.

Here are 8 tips I have found very helpful as basic building blocks for building and maintaining such a relationship.

8 Critical Tips on Building an Active Reader Base

1. A good start is to provide interesting, entertaining or informative posts. I think this is probably the most important aspect of successful blogging; however, it’s by no means a path to success, by itself.

2. Next, pick a writing style, and stick with it. Don’t be stiff and formal, as very few readers will enjoy reading that. Write like you talk! (I have a thick Texas accent, so it’s not uncommon for me to write in Texan. I reckon ya’ll know where I’m comin’ from with that, right?)

3. You can’t post and forget. If you publish a really great post,hopefully it will generate enough interest to garner comments from some of your blog’s readers. What do you suppose will happen to those readers to whom you don’t respond? What would YOU do if you felt like your comments weren’t appreciated enough to even warrant a response? It’s a safe bet that most of them will look elsewhere. I’m sure that your blog being only one in 126 million isn’t entirely lost on them. They’ll go find another blog, where they feel like their participation is valued. So monitor your blog, and respond to all comments, preferably quickly. The same day is best, a couple of hours are better, when possible. If you work outside the home, but can only blog in the evenings, make that known on your blog. And then, when you get home and have eaten dinner, DO it.

4. There are a number of ways to connect with commenters. First, use their name. “Thanks for weighing in on this, Bill. I can’t agree 100%, but I think you make a valid point about…” connects MUCH better than, “I disagree with (some/much/most) of what you say.”

5. Respect them! They’ve taken the time to not only read your post, but to also respond to it. At the very least, THEY believe they have something worth saying. There are many ways to disagree respectfully, without belittling someone’s opinion or lack of knowledge in a particular area. If you sting them, they won’t return. And others will also read your biting response, and will probably be less likely to comment because of it. Readers are hard to acquire… don’t chase even one away!

6. Engage them! Invite them to participate.

7. Thank them. Don’t be syrupy, but it’s always a good idea to let a commenter know that you appreciate their input, even if you disagree with it. Without them, all you have is a diary. Remember that, and let them know that you realize the distinction.

8. Post regularly, whether it’s daily or weekly, or somewhere in between. Readers will generally only allow themselves to be disappointed two or three times, before they’ll “forget” to check your blog for new material.

In Summary

Pick a blog topic that you’re passionate about. Passion will show in your writing and is contagious.

Decide upon a style for your blog. Will it be instructional, anecdotal, informational? Serious, humorous? Friendly, impersonal?

Respond, and quickly, to your commenters. Always!

Connect with them. Use their name. If they’re regulars, remember little things about them, that let them know you’re connected.

Show them, and their opinions, respect, even if you disagree.

Engage them. Ask their opinion. Invite questions.

Thank them for their contributions. Each. and. every. time.

Post regularly. Pick a comfortable interval and stick with it, whether it’s daily, weekly or something in between.

Blogging is Fun

Reading or writing blogs is a fun exercise because it opens us up both to new people and new ideas.  When we blog it feels good because we are getting the opportunity to rant or rave about topics that are dear to us and in the process we make friends who share the same interests.

Blogging is for Business

Blogging helps to establish a web presence for your business.  It is a great way to attract links to your business or to have your business’s content shared with others.  Due to these factors building a blog is perhaps the easiest and most cost effective means of establishing a web presence for your business.

Blogging is for Learning

As you labor to build your blog you will inevitably find yourself searching for new information or resources.  Through this process you actually cultivate an intense level of learning on whatever it is that your blog about.  Overtime, regularly blogging on the same topic can make you an authority.

Blogging is for Teaching

What’s the fun of learning all of this new information if you can’t share it with your friends?  There is no value in being an information hoarder.  In fact, it is actually quite the opposite-all of the value is in the sharing.  An interesting side of effect of sharing is that those who share often get rewarded.  So it is the case with your blog-share your lessons and you will be rewarded.

Blogging is for Conversation

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that the whole purpose of blogging is interaction.  Somewhere nestled within this topic lie three concepts- 1) engagement 2) relationships and 3) community.   Over time your blog will engender engagement, as the engagement is repeated it leads to relationships and the aggregate of these relationships represents your community.  These three things is perhaps the greatest reward that blogging can offer.

Blogging is for Entrenchment

The most successful bloggers have embraced the idea that you can’t please everyone.  That’s why the well-known bloggers never shy away from taking a stand.  Instead, they pick a single topic and defend it-tooth and nail.  By its very nature taking sides on a topic tends to attract curious onlookers.  The audience members who identify with the bloggers position usually tend to become staunch followers of the blogger.  Don’t stay on the fence and you can aspire towards the same.

Blogging is Addictive

Once you begin blogging you may find it difficult to stop.  That’s because the more content you feed your blog, the more your blog gives you and the more you receive the more you want…And so the cycle continues.  But also since blogs are essentially content management systems, they live or die on the back of new content and regular content.  The moment your blog ceases to receive new content it begins heading towards a slow death.  No one wants that.  Keep your blog alive.

Because while others Were, Blogging Is…

This weekend I will be running for the cure with CIBC. Please help me as I try to make a difference and make a world free of Breast Cancer.

To date I’ve managed to raise 305.00 dollars. Needless to say I’m very thankful for the contribution my family and friends have given me.

I’m still looking for more sponsors. This is an amazing cause and I need all of your help. Please take a minute, visit my donations page and sponsor my run for the cure.

The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure is Canada’s largest single day, volunteer-led fundraising event dedicated to raising funds for breast cancer research, and education and awareness programs.

Each year, thousands of Canadians of all ages and from all walks of life unite to participate in the Run. Their reasons for participating vary, but they all have the same goal; to create a future without breast cancer.

Support Me Click Here

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

What Should I Blog About?

Essentially, everything is fair game for blogging. Even the traditional taboos such as religion and politics have an extensive blog presence on the internet.

One person might decide to blog about animals. Another about only dogs. Along comes another with an affinity for Schnauzers, soon topped by one dealing with Miniature Schnauzers.  Can Miniature Schnauzer Puppies be far behind? (Eclectic point of interest: I have a miniature schnauzer, and they ROCK!)

You see my point, I’m sure. You can blog about virtually any topic you can think of. And odds are, if you can think of it, someone else is already blogging about it. The best bet is always to blog about a subject you are knowledgeable and passionate about.

So Who Blogs?

Anyone can erect their own virtual soapbox, and share their opinions with the world’s netizens. Preach, rant, instruct, brag… all are equally valid motivations for setting up a blog.

Companies do it increasingly more often these days, too. Blogging about their products and services, or simply the technology behind them, is a very productive technique for establishing or promoting a brand.

Celebrities, such as actors, musicians and politicians have blogs. Activists and comedians have blogs. Even infants and peoples’ pets have blogs.

Last, but certainly not least, blog monetization has become commonplace. Many people blog with no more motivation than attracting people to click on their ads, thereby building a residual income.

Perhaps the more fitting question would be, Who DOESN’T Blog?

What Do All Blogs Have in Common?

Thinking of all the possible variations in styles, appearances, themes and goals, one might easily say, Nothing. However, there is one common element that all successful blogs share… readers. Without readers, any blog will die. Even the most narcissistic blogger will tire of talking to nobody but himself.

Comments from readers, and the responses back to them, are the lifeblood of a successful blog. Interaction stimulates thought, helps identify and refine new ideas and validates (even when the readers disagree) the author’s efforts.

If you don’t have a reader base, you had better start building one immediately, or resign yourself to obscurity and eventual failure. If you do have a respectable reader base, you need to nurture it, grow it and write to it regularly. Failure to do so will be your downfall.

How Will I Know if my Blog is Successful?

Setting aside monetized blogs, there is a simple manner of determining whether or not your blog is successful – reader participation.

Let’s say you get an average of 100 visits a day, 25 of which are unique visitors (meaning new visitors). At the same time you get an average of 10 comments a day, 6 of which are from your regular readers/commenters.

Would you consider that successful? As a snapshot view, it’s not bad. However, it’s not what some might call a roaring success. Personally, I would call it sustainable. 75 return visitors per day, and 25 new ones, isn’t to be looked down upon. I’ve had worse months than that, I assure you. On the other hand, there are blogs out there that get 3-5,000 hits a day, 80% of which are unique. It’s really a matter of scale, and the nature of the blog.

It depends a great deal on what type of blog you have. If it’s purely informational, you’re not likely to see much reader interaction, whereas if it’s anecdotal or humorous, you may receive more comments. If you run a very aggressive spam suppression plug-in, and don’t review the rejected comments carefully, you may be discarding decent comments without cause. On the other hand, little or no protection will bring a lot of garbage comments like, “Great post!” or “Thanks so much!” Both these scenarios will skew the numbers

Only YOU, as the blogger, after weighing your motivation for blogging, the effort you put into it, the reader interaction you get back from it and your overall sense of satisfaction, can say if your blog is a success or not. The numbers mean little, without careful analysis on a case-by-case basis.

More to the point: is your blog fulfilling your expectations? If so, then I’d call that a success.

I’ve read many articles about content is king, seo is king or marketing is the real king. But what ever it was, I think it depends on the current level and situation of the blog or the blogger.

Through this post, I will try to tackle this intriguing issues about who is the real king between Marketing VS Content VS SEO.

Content Is King! How?

This is what many blogging gurus taught to newbie bloggers. But the question is, can a complete newbie blogger could create a viral content on his blog? Mostly are not. Unless, if he is a journalist of have an experience in writing.

Writing good quality content to your blog won’t gather traffic, especially for those bloggers who haven’t known on their field (niche) yet. As you mostly can see, most gurus would only acknowledged those average bloggers if those average bloggers already got tons of readers or followers on their blog.

Who will read and follow your post if you only keep on writing on your blog because you are very inspired on writing about your topics?

My Words.

The phrase Content is King was a quote from one of the books that was written by one of the riches people of the world – Bill Gates. On that era, the web still not a phenomenon and lacks of many great information to learn from. Because of that, content made it to be the king on the internet.

Marketing is King! How?

I’ve known many bloggers who is still complaining why they got no traffic to their blog posts where they already did their best on writing good content on their blog.

Well, writing good content on your blog alone won’t drive traffic to blog because no one knows that you have created a blog that you share great information on it.

As what you can see today, most average and B-list bloggers does a lot of various Marketing techniques to make them stand out from the crowded blogosphere.

What they did was build a network of friends and does exchanging of marketing favors like exchanging of bookmarking routine and sharing using social media like facebook and twitter.

My words.

On this era of high technology, writing good content alone won’t make you and your blog great to the eye of your fellow bloggers and new readers. Because before they trust you and your site, they will do some back-end research about you and your blog through gathering feedbacks.

But in order to gather that feedbacks (whether good or bad), you must market your site and tell other people that your blog is worth to read and then ask them to share their feedbacks.

Unlike in the era when content is still the king, ordinary people (internet surfers) will mostly believe what information from the internet could share, because on that time,  scammers are still babies crawling on their mat that needs time to grow up to find who would be their first victim.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is King! How?

Now, blogs are spreading all over the web like virus. And as what we can see these days, people tend to build blogs to be their online business that would generate a passive income for them. This is the truth!

Not all information are free and because of that, business-minded bloggers are competing each other to be on the top of search engine results, targeting on making money from the internet surfers who search for information that would help them solve the problem they bear.

My words.

Search Engine Optimization is mandatory to all bloggers especially to those who planned to monetized their blogs. But ranking to become on first page of search engine result pages, is not that easy.Though there are still many niches that have less competition which you have the chance to get on the top spot.

The Blogging Evolution.

Since the birth of the internet, information was rapidly spreading using websites then later to blogs and social media. And that because of the evolution on adopting the new technology we have.

Websites and blogs has grown up that made content as the king on its earlier stage. Then later, marketing became the king for more bloggers to gain reputation and credibility.

Today, niche blogging business is very popular to most new, average and A-list bloggers. Because of that, the combination of these 3 factors (Content + Marketing + SEO) became their main technique to convince their targeted readers to buy their products or information. And that what makes them successful online.

Unto You…

In your current level or situation, which is the real king for you? Share your thoughts in the comment below.

We all want to market and promote our blogs but truth be told it’s too time consuming. The Blog Engage RSS Syndication Subscription Service allows you to take advantage of our amazing blogging community by submitting your blogs content on a daily basis.

We have a total of four different memberships to join that will meet the needs of almost all of our members.

What’s Included with our service?

1. Automatic syndication of your blogs content
2. Automatic submission of all future blog articles
3. Automatically fills in the title, description and tags
4. Automatic hourly or daily updates searching for your blogs new content
5. Automatically submit one or multiple articles per RSS Feed Update
6. One free vote with all RSS Feed article submissions

SEO Benefits:

1. Automatically create do follow backlinks for every article you write.
2. Increase your SERP on all Search Engines.
3. Grow your reader base with our real community members.

I think one of the coolest features is you cannot tell the difference between a member that is part of the service or a member that manually submitting their content to the community.

Platinum Membership

Platinum Membership will allow you to have up tp three blogs and select up to five categories from each blog in which articles will be submitted to on blog engage. These are actual categories you have on your blog. We will also allow an unlimited amount of new articles to be submitted every hour your RSS feed is checked.

1. Add up to Three Seperate Blog url’s
2. RSS Feeds Checked Hourly
3. Unlimited New Articles Per Check
4. Five Categories to Update

Gold Membership

Gold Membership will allow you to select up to five categories from your blog in which articles will be submitted to on blog engage. These are actual categories you have on your blog. We will also allow an unlimited amount of new articles to be submitted every hour your RSS feed is checked.

1. RSS Feeds Checked Hourly
2. Unlimited New Articles Per Check
3. Five Categories to Update

Silver Membership

Silver Membership will allow you to select up to three categories from your blog in which articles will be submitted to on blog engage. These are actual categories you have on your blog. Three new articles are allowed every 3 hours the RSS feed is checked.

1. RSS Feeds Checked Every Three Hours
2. Three New Articles Accepted Per Check
3. Three Categories to Update

Bronze Membership

Bronze Membership will allow you to select one category from your blog in which articles will be submitted to on blog engage. With Bronze membership please make sure to select the most popular category on your blog for your one category choice. We will submit all your other blog content to our General Blogging Category. 3 new articles are accepted every 8 hours when the RSS feed is checked.

1. RSS Feeds Checked Every Eight Hours
2. Three New Articles Accepted Per Check
3. One Category to Update

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

One thing that sets apart good bloggers from just the average ones is the ability of the former to drive traffic on a consistent basis. Driving traffic these days is easy but what counts the most is on whether the traffic that you’re going to drive is going to convert or not.

Conversion can vary depending on the goals that you set as a blogger but the bottom line here is that every serious blogger must aim for consistent and returning traffic, not just a one time spike.

In this post, I would like to talk about different things that you can do in order to get that consistent stream of traffic. But before that, let me just cover first the facts about traffic and why you need to aim for consistency.

Why Consistent Traffic?

This question is kind of like vague. It’s obvious that everyone wants consistent traffic on a daily basis but what’s a consistent traffic in the first place and how does one achieve it? To simply put it, just look at the top bloggers in the industry. They can rest or take a vacation for a week but does that decrease their traffic? Partly yes, but just because of how big they are right now, it’s more likely that the decrease wouldn’t be that much.

Getting that Consistent Stream of Traffic

Now a little bit about me and my blog. When I started last 2008 with MelvinBlog, it grew really rapidly (and of course some others grew even faster!). Just 4 months after the blog has been launched, I started slacking and thought I already had it going.

Long story short, I stopped writing and growing the blog and obviously the result was I lost some readership. That’s basically prematurely thinking that the blog has already consistent traffic. Now that story was long over and I learned a lot from it. I made sure that mistake will not happen again.

So here are now the 5 ways that everyone of us should work on to achieve that consistency. The list starts now:

1. Establish yourself initially via commenting

In the past few months, I’ve written so many articles already about commenting. I’ve always said that the best way to get known initially is to do bulk commenting. And that’s because when you’re getting started there really isn’t that much option. You can’t immediately ask bloggers to accept your guest posts and you cannot get them to link out to you so the way to go is to introduce yourself and the best way is to comment.

I’ve written a comprehensive guide on blog commenting on Famousbloggers and if you’re just getting started, I highly highly suggest you to check out that post.

2. Write for People, but build for search

These days we already know that most search engines, Google in particular, started moving into this model of ranking sites that people are reading the most. But that doesn’t mean that we have to stop caring about the basic things that we have to optimize for our blogs. I’ll be frank with you, SEO for blogs especially with WordPress is damn easy. So why not spend some time setting up things that have to be set up like the All in one seo pack, robots.txt, canonicalization and so on. Those things don’t take more than a day to complete but its long term effect can quite be dramatic.

Another obvious benefit of this is that it can be really rewarding if done properly. Some sites that really do well from search engines almost no longer need to add new content to their site because the search traffic that it gets is already worth it.

3. Establish your social media presence

This is probably one of my biggest regrets in blogging. I dived heads first into social media thinking I can get tons of traffic just by submitting each and every of my posts. Obviously that’s wrong.

Like most things, social media is all about establishing and building your connections first before reaping the benefits. These days I really get good amount of traffic from social media and that’s because I’ve used it as I should and unlike before, I already have connections. Think about it, if you’re just into a new territory and you want people to do things for you, do you think they’re going to do you that favor?

4. Set  Guest Posting Goals per month

Well if we’re aiming for consistent traffic then why do we have to guest post every month? My simple answer is that simply because there are hundreds of new readers everyday. Why do you think guys like David Risley, Daniel Scocco, ViperChill do guest posts even though they’re getting over 1000 uniques a day? It’s because of they know that there’s just so much potential out there and also plenty of untapped traffic sources to get into.

That should be it for you. 5 guest posts per month shouldn’t be that hard. Make sure to set some goal in this and it could really give you a lot of return traffic.

5. Keep Funneling your readers

Assuming you have 30-50 visitors on a daily basis, what do you need to do then? Two things, first is try to work more on getting more traffic and second is funnel those existing readers to make the most out of them.

Funneling them could be as simple as letting sign up to your newsletter or subscribe to your rss and follow you on twitter. Or it could be as complex (and rewarding) as getting them to buy your stuff or join your membership program. All of these depend on what you initially planned and how you want to execute that plan through your strategies.

Conclusion

So that’s it. Just 5 things, but as you can see it involves a lot of hard work and dedication. That’s why I always tell people that blogging isn’t hard, but just needs a lot of hard work. The fact is that people will read this but nobody will do anything which is why only really few people get traffic and eventually make money from their blog.

I hope that in this article I’ve given up some good information on getting consistent traffic and how it can be done. Remember, its not about the quantity, its the quality that you get that counts the most. I’d rather have 50 people reading me and following me over and over again than 1000 people that I’m not even sure if they’re real person or bot, that would follow me for just one day and disappear the next day. What do you think?