Gravytrain
Contributor
Okay, you've asked a lot of questions throughout here. My experience:
The only things you should be concentrating on:
1) Creating great content
2) Spreading the word that you're creating great content
#1 is rather easily accomplished and given how many posts you have on there, it doesn't seem like you're struggling with this. #2 is quite a bit more difficult and all comes down to how much work you want to put into it. There are the obvious avenues:
a) Get a Facebook fan page going and ensure that every blog post automatically gets on to the fan page. Free plugins accomplish this rather easily (https://developers.facebook.com/wordpress/). Once you have a solid FB fan page with a great design, you can start to buy ads that target your demographic and land on your fan page as opposed to trying to exit the user from FB to your blog. By the way, on Fiverr you can get a logo and a Facebook fan page banner for $5-$10 (http://fiverr.com/hi5_fiver/design-a-vectorized-logo-design-for-your-website-company is one we've used in the past)
b) Get a Twitter account going and ensure that that every blog post automatically gets posted to Twitter. Again - free WordPress plugins (WordPress › Tweetily - Tweet Your Posts Automatically! « WordPress Plugins). Once your Twitter feed has a few days worth of updates on it, you've followed a few hundred people and some have followed you back (social proof), then a REAL easy way to grow your blog is to answer questions. Head to http://search.twitter.com and search for users asking questions that you've answered with a blog post. Shoot them a quick tweet reply... "Hey @username, saw you asked about rental property ads. I give some great tips in this blog post: link". Now, you're leveraging your already-created content to add value to peoples' lives.
c) Find / research / scrape up a list of blogs in your niche and leave real, thoughtful blog comments on posts. Add them to some sort of feed reader so you can quickly go through a couple of times each day and comment on every fresh post, so your comments are near the top. Bonus points if some blog post you created is relevant and linkable inside of your comment. "Steve, I fully agree with your approach to rental property ads that you've written about here. I wrote a post about this a few weeks back (located here: link) and I covered many of the same points... blah blah etc." Your domain name makes it easy to create a brandable persona as "Techie Landlord" and you can even sign your comments as this.
There's three easy options to spread the word about your great content. Create the content first, then find ways to share it.
Stop. You don't "get" a following, you "earn" a following; in the type of blogging niche that you're working in, you do that by creating excellent shareable content that then gets shared. Don't worry about SEO, don't worry about keyword research. Search engines will never sign up for your list, or buy a product, or do anything other than scrape your webpage and offer you some traffic. So... why bother optimizing for them? Optimize for users! What you should worry about is writing blog posts that answer relevant questions that people are searching for - then you're just leveraging search engines as a traffic source. One tip for finding those: Yahoo! Answers. Here's an example Google query:
site:answers.yahoo.com/question/ intitle:"rent" intitle:"cash" -intitle:"check"
So what we've done here is told Google to limit our query to Yahoo! Answers, and to ensure that the words rent and cash are in the title, but check is not (since people use the word 'cash' differently with 'check'). Then, just start writing down ideas for blog post topics. Here's some I found on the first page:
My landlord wants us to pay the rent in cash, is this legal?
Is it illegal for landlord collect cash as rent?
Landlord asking for 1 months rent upfront in cash - should I be worried?
Can you pay rent in cash if you live in a complex?
Landlord Demanding Rent in Cash with No Lease: What Are Risks and My Options?
So here are five potential blog post topics that I literally copied and pasted unedited, and it took me 10 seconds to find them. You can do two things here:
a) do a bunch of these queries to get a massive editorial calendar going with blog post ideas so you never run out of content. Visitors needing answers will find you, they will stay and if you add value, they will share your post and/or sign up for your email list.
b) by answering questions on Yahoo Answers! you can link to your existing posts (blah blah. In my blog post here (link) I cover landlords asking for cash in detail. What you need to understand is... blah blah)
You earn a following by being an expert, as very few will follow an idiot. Give without expectation of return.
Don't bother wasting your time with this. I own a content development company and we produce hundreds of blog posts each month on behalf of our clients. Trying to "SEO" your own blog posts in the post-Penguin world is going to be very, very expensive and provide less results than focusing on producing 'more' and 'better' content, and helping those who need it. You don't need to know anything about squeeze pages for a long while yet... focus on getting your email marketing list to a few thousand individuals who are waiting with bated breath for your weekly newsletter. Once you're there, you can start thinking about hardcore marketing.
a) start a newsletter / email list and promote it everywhere. You should have a signup form at the end of every blog post (How to Add a Newsletter Signup Box After Your Posts will help you with this) and of course you have it at the top of your sidebar as well, which is great.
b) only send people to posts when it answers some question for them, or adds value to them. Otherwise, you look like a shill who is just trying to garner traffic. We like to use phrasing such as (I'll be brief as I've covered this in a past blog post (link), but here's a quick answer for you. blah blah blah. For more detail, check out the post I linked or email me with questions)
The bottom line: if you want to market, you need an audience. Pay attention here, this is critical:
Build the list, build the list, build the list. Always add value to the list in the form of your newsletters (80/20 rule: 80% valuable content, 20% "product suggestions / reviews / marketing").
Hope this helps, shoot me a PM if needed.
(p.s. I can't speak for anyone else but if I came across your website I would bounce immediately due to the poor design. In 2008 it was fine to use a default, boring template with tons of white space. In today's world, it's not okay. Head to http://themeforest.net and buy a theme for $30-$40. Ensure it is made recently and is mobile ready!)
Can you guys point me to good information about advertising my blog, using SEO, setting up a mailing list, affiliate linking or product advertising? Or should I concentrate on a bit at a time?
The only things you should be concentrating on:
1) Creating great content
2) Spreading the word that you're creating great content
#1 is rather easily accomplished and given how many posts you have on there, it doesn't seem like you're struggling with this. #2 is quite a bit more difficult and all comes down to how much work you want to put into it. There are the obvious avenues:
a) Get a Facebook fan page going and ensure that every blog post automatically gets on to the fan page. Free plugins accomplish this rather easily (https://developers.facebook.com/wordpress/). Once you have a solid FB fan page with a great design, you can start to buy ads that target your demographic and land on your fan page as opposed to trying to exit the user from FB to your blog. By the way, on Fiverr you can get a logo and a Facebook fan page banner for $5-$10 (http://fiverr.com/hi5_fiver/design-a-vectorized-logo-design-for-your-website-company is one we've used in the past)
b) Get a Twitter account going and ensure that that every blog post automatically gets posted to Twitter. Again - free WordPress plugins (WordPress › Tweetily - Tweet Your Posts Automatically! « WordPress Plugins). Once your Twitter feed has a few days worth of updates on it, you've followed a few hundred people and some have followed you back (social proof), then a REAL easy way to grow your blog is to answer questions. Head to http://search.twitter.com and search for users asking questions that you've answered with a blog post. Shoot them a quick tweet reply... "Hey @username, saw you asked about rental property ads. I give some great tips in this blog post: link". Now, you're leveraging your already-created content to add value to peoples' lives.
c) Find / research / scrape up a list of blogs in your niche and leave real, thoughtful blog comments on posts. Add them to some sort of feed reader so you can quickly go through a couple of times each day and comment on every fresh post, so your comments are near the top. Bonus points if some blog post you created is relevant and linkable inside of your comment. "Steve, I fully agree with your approach to rental property ads that you've written about here. I wrote a post about this a few weeks back (located here: link) and I covered many of the same points... blah blah etc." Your domain name makes it easy to create a brandable persona as "Techie Landlord" and you can even sign your comments as this.
There's three easy options to spread the word about your great content. Create the content first, then find ways to share it.
What I need to figure out is how to get a following. All the social media stuff and SEO/keyword research is hard for me to grasp. It seems really overwhelming.
Stop. You don't "get" a following, you "earn" a following; in the type of blogging niche that you're working in, you do that by creating excellent shareable content that then gets shared. Don't worry about SEO, don't worry about keyword research. Search engines will never sign up for your list, or buy a product, or do anything other than scrape your webpage and offer you some traffic. So... why bother optimizing for them? Optimize for users! What you should worry about is writing blog posts that answer relevant questions that people are searching for - then you're just leveraging search engines as a traffic source. One tip for finding those: Yahoo! Answers. Here's an example Google query:
site:answers.yahoo.com/question/ intitle:"rent" intitle:"cash" -intitle:"check"
So what we've done here is told Google to limit our query to Yahoo! Answers, and to ensure that the words rent and cash are in the title, but check is not (since people use the word 'cash' differently with 'check'). Then, just start writing down ideas for blog post topics. Here's some I found on the first page:
My landlord wants us to pay the rent in cash, is this legal?
Is it illegal for landlord collect cash as rent?
Landlord asking for 1 months rent upfront in cash - should I be worried?
Can you pay rent in cash if you live in a complex?
Landlord Demanding Rent in Cash with No Lease: What Are Risks and My Options?
So here are five potential blog post topics that I literally copied and pasted unedited, and it took me 10 seconds to find them. You can do two things here:
a) do a bunch of these queries to get a massive editorial calendar going with blog post ideas so you never run out of content. Visitors needing answers will find you, they will stay and if you add value, they will share your post and/or sign up for your email list.
b) by answering questions on Yahoo Answers! you can link to your existing posts (blah blah. In my blog post here (link) I cover landlords asking for cash in detail. What you need to understand is... blah blah)
You earn a following by being an expert, as very few will follow an idiot. Give without expectation of return.
I am looking for where to go to study SEO, social media and squeeze pages?
Don't bother wasting your time with this. I own a content development company and we produce hundreds of blog posts each month on behalf of our clients. Trying to "SEO" your own blog posts in the post-Penguin world is going to be very, very expensive and provide less results than focusing on producing 'more' and 'better' content, and helping those who need it. You don't need to know anything about squeeze pages for a long while yet... focus on getting your email marketing list to a few thousand individuals who are waiting with bated breath for your weekly newsletter. Once you're there, you can start thinking about hardcore marketing.
Should I start a newsletter for people who subscribe in addition to the blog- or is it enough just to send them the posts? So many questions..
a) start a newsletter / email list and promote it everywhere. You should have a signup form at the end of every blog post (How to Add a Newsletter Signup Box After Your Posts will help you with this) and of course you have it at the top of your sidebar as well, which is great.
b) only send people to posts when it answers some question for them, or adds value to them. Otherwise, you look like a shill who is just trying to garner traffic. We like to use phrasing such as (I'll be brief as I've covered this in a past blog post (link), but here's a quick answer for you. blah blah blah. For more detail, check out the post I linked or email me with questions)
The bottom line: if you want to market, you need an audience. Pay attention here, this is critical:
YOUR AUDIENCE IS YOUR EMAIL LIST - NOT YOUR BLOG READERS!
Build the list, build the list, build the list. Always add value to the list in the form of your newsletters (80/20 rule: 80% valuable content, 20% "product suggestions / reviews / marketing").
Hope this helps, shoot me a PM if needed.
(p.s. I can't speak for anyone else but if I came across your website I would bounce immediately due to the poor design. In 2008 it was fine to use a default, boring template with tons of white space. In today's world, it's not okay. Head to http://themeforest.net and buy a theme for $30-$40. Ensure it is made recently and is mobile ready!)