Orphicpixel

Posted: 30 Jul 2012 10:40 AM PDT

Even if your blog's design is eye-catching and your widgets are working, the tough part about launching a blog in a world jam packed with competition is how to find and retain an audience. While some blogs grow after hitting a trend or touching a nerve with readers, the majority of blogs will grow incrementally over time.

The good news is that the path to growing an audience of blog readers isn't a mystery. While there are plenty of ways to grow a blog following, here are five ways to get started:

Target Your Content for a Specific Audience
Are you writing posts or creating videos that address the needs of a specific audience or share valuable information that they can't find anywhere else? You can't build an audience until you identify a specific group of readers and write posts directly for them.

Ray Gulick at evowebdev writes, "Understand your audience's needs, desires, and frustrations. Do NOT assume they are just like you: they aren't, although you may have some things in common. Do some research. Find bloggers who are already engaging your audience and read their posts and, just as important, read the comments."

While writing targeted, reader-centered content isn't necessarily hard to do, it takes effort and practice to do it well. In addition, while most bloggers want to write about the topics that interest them, the key to attracting an audience is finding the intersection of your passion and the needs of readers.

Create Visual and Audio Content

When you write up blog posts, you can reuse that content in visual and audio formats that will both expand your reach and save you content creating time in the future. For example, Michael Hyatt is a business and productivity blogger who has converted his most popular blog posts into a podcast series called "This is Your Life".

Beyond that, he also uses his blog content in his speeches, which he sometimes shares on YouTube. Other posts are reused in E-books or commercially published books.

Hector Cueves, guest posting over at Socialmouths, writes, "There are many benefits to starting a podcast to grow your blog, here are just a few:

It sets you apart from your competition
It gives you a direct line of communication with your audience
It creates networking opportunities with other bloggers
It increases your blog's reach"

When you create E-books based on your blog posts, you can share them socially at sites like Scribd and increase your reach. Other posts that can be turned into infographics are excellent for sharing on Facebook and Pinterest.

Engage Your Audience Where They Are
Want to find a new audience for your blog? Go to other blogs and spend some time there. Leave comments that are helpful or insightful, and you'll start to see readers from that blog begin to visit yours.

Brian Gardner suggests that this is a great way to build a stronger community, to gain more readers, and to introduce yourself to bloggers that you'll want to guest post for. The more you put yourself on the radar of top bloggers, the more likely they are to read your content and engage your blog. If they like what they see on your site, the more likely they'll be willing to let you guest post for them.

In fact, guest posting on top blogs may be one of the best ways to attract top quality readers in your niche, since a guest post is a great way to quickly build trust with new readers. You will only be able to guest post after you've engaged readers on other blogs and written solid content on your own site, but once your site is up and running, guest posting is a way to dramatically increase your traffic.

Meet Your Readers Where They Are
When you launch a blog, you are committing to marketing it. At the very least, you need to go out on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest in order to follow and friend like-minded people who will read your content.

Denise, from Build a Better Blog, asks, "Where does your ideal reader hang out? Facebook? Twitter? (I have no doubt that your ideal reader is on Twitter so don’t ignore this.) Forums? You need to know this in order to hang out with them and that’s the key. Be where your reader is."

You can't always create content and then sit back, waiting for your readers to come to you. Sometimes you need to put yourself out there and interact with readers where they are.

Create Irresistible Headlines

The best headlines will intrigue readers or create a sense of urgency to stick around your blog to learn more. According to Darren Rowse at ProBlogger, there are a variety of headline styles, such as a "How to" post, a title that invites debate over a controversial topic, or a post that asks a provocative question. Brian Clark of CopyBlogger goes a step further by providing a series of potential title options you can adapt to your own blog.

Jessica Malnik at socialfresh writes, "A headline is your chance to 'hook' people into reading your post. People will decide whether to visit or stay on your site within an average of 3 seconds. If the headline is vague, confusing, too long or just plain sucks, there is a good chance most people won't read your post."

Growing your blog audience involves thinking more about your audience, going out to where they are, and hooking them with quality content. They are out there, and if you follow these steps, your audience will begin to grow.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for a to do list app company, and who also consults for a psd to html developer conversion company.

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How to Protect Your Blog

Posted: 30 Jul 2012 08:15 AM PDT

Whether you run an internationally known blogging portal or simply a small blog for a devoted circle of fellow fanboys, you must be aware of the potential of hacking. I'm not talking about your friendly neighborhood 'security researchers' in the white (or greyish-white) hats, I'm talking about the reckless cyberscum who just live to get access to a site, any site, YOUR site and turn it into an unrecognizable pile of malformed data. Probably with some nasty bits of NSFW content; simply because they can.

Thankfully, we're on your side, and we have ten easy ways to protect your blog from hackers. They're so easy that you probably already know them, so forgive us in advance for being patronizing. But if we can save just one blog from cyberscum, we've earned our right to hold our heads up high for at least one more day.

Old or Default Credentials. I can't even believe that I need to say this, but even at this late date there are people who haven't changed the default login. If you still have the "admin" and "password" combo, you're leaving your door wide open. Change your password at least every three months or even sooner if something changes (database upgrades, new ISP, new software versions, working with different people). By the way, these tips apply to your blog login, your FTP login, your hosting and webmail login, etc.
Weak and Personal Credentials. Don't use your name, company, birth date, address, words related to your blog topic, etc. There is enough personal info on the 'net for hackers to assemble a list of likely logins and passwords. Use a random mix of numbers, letters, and even symbols. There are strong password generators available that do the work for you. [http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/]
Encrypt your passwords. You've heard the phrase 'plain text passwords'? That refers to unencrypted credentials. Even with strong and freshly changed credentials, your vital login data passes through multiple authentication protocols and gateways on the way to the server. Each step is an extra opening for malicious scripts to intercept, so learn about how you can make SSL, HTTPS, and other encryption methods work for you.
Limit Logins. Remember seeing "reached max number of login attempts" messages all the time? There was a reason, and I wonder why it's so much more uncommon now. Installing a 'lock out' counter on your login stops the automatic 'dictionary' or 'brute force' attacks at 3,5,10 failed login attempts, or whatever number you set.
Trust no One. Are you the only person that can access your blog? If not, make sure that everyone else follows these practices as well, and be ready to lock out everyone but yourself at the first sign that something isn't right. Make sure that you're the only one with 'admin privileges'; if you had someone set up your blog for you, or come in to do design work or 'guest blogging,' this could be a major risk, especially if you lose track of them as the years go by.
Avoid the extras. Your blog gets more risky with every line of code. This means plugins, widgets, themes, and even unnecessary extra lines of HTML and CSS. One of the most vulnerable 'attack vectors' of a blog is through an inconspicuous line of code in a JavaScript plugin. Suspicious URLs should be a red flag; even non-programmers should be able to spot unexpected links to unfamiliar websites.
Forms and Comments. Of particular risk are any forms or text entry fields on your blog. The classic SQL injection attack still work wonders, even on major corporations with dedicated cybersecurity departments. Ensure that any third-party input is validated or filtered before it gets accepted, either manually or through a trusted commenting/social framework.
Update everything. Some extras are essential, of course, especially those that provide extra security. There's also version updates to the CMS and database itself. Very often, the whole point of these updates is to patch holes and fix bugs that allow recently discovered security vulnerabilities. So get those updates installed ASAP.
Backup Early, Backup Often. You may not be able to avoid getting hacked, but you can bounce back a lot more quickly if you have an up-to-date snapshot of the way things were. Don't count on the hosting or CMS to save anything for you, and don't get caught with nothing more recent than the backup you did back in 2009 when all you had were a few dozen pictures of Lolcats.
Don't Forget the Real World. You'd be surprised how well the low-tech approach works for hackers. You can have airtight cybersecurity, yet forget that people can look over your shoulder while you type, or pick up your laptop and run away with it while your back is turned. Avoid public computers (or if you must use them, at least know how to delete your cookies, history, and saved form fields afterwards), and keep access via smartphone apps as infrequent and private as possible.

Stephanie Cable is from Salt Lake City and writes for CableTV.com. When she isn’t watching TV, you’ll probably find her geeking out on the internet.

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luni, 30 iulie 2012

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