Effective Blogging Tips – 10 Steps for Effective Blogging in 2010

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2010 is going to be a great year! The economy is coming back to normal, advertising rates are increasing & the advertisers have more inventory, there are more publishers in several new niches & people are spending more time online & shopping online.

These are great indicators for an exciting year ahead. In this article on Effective Blogging, I decided to list down 10 Things we should do to make our blogs more effective in 2010. Also Read Blogging Tips – McKinsey Report on Post Recession Consumer Behavior for more insights.

1. Sell a Product or a Service – can you think of a product that you can sell from your website or blog? With more & more shoppers spending their money online, getting to sell a product would be a definite advantage in 2010.

If you do not have anything that you make, you could sign up with the top affiliate marketers & sell some of their products from your blog. Click here to see our recommendation of some of the best affiliate programs. This could start adding to your revenues & also help generate long term residual income.

2. Revamp Your Website & Blog – inspect your website (or blog) and see if it has all the features of the modern day websites. Is it easy to run, maintain & update? Is it Web 2 enabled? Is it helping in your SEO? Is it geared for connecting with users through Social Media sites? are some of the questions you should ask.

• Click Here to Read Affiliate Marketing Tips – Whats Wrong with Your Landing Page
• Focus on Website Templates – Why Themes & Templates are Important for Shopping Blogs

If you are running a traditional static website & you are afraid of changing everything, then you may want to add a companion blog to your site. This simple action solves most of your challenges as far as Web 2 features go.

If you are already running a profitable site, evaluate if there are any more enhancements you want to add that could improve your visitors’ experience.

3. Finalize that Social Media Strategy – no more experiments of what works & what doesnt. Twitter & Facebook works. Period. You should freeze the plan on how to best use Twitter & Facebook for your business. Here are some more articles:

• Social Bookmark Popularity – What Share Buttons Work for You
• Blogging for Money – 10 Ways to Use Twitter Effectively for Advertising & Making Money
• Effective Blogging – 5 Easy Ways You can Use FaceBook Twitter to Promote Your Blog

4. Plan Ahead of Time to Make the Best Use of All the Festive Seasons – holidays are the best time to generate huge revenues from your websites. This is also a time for great promotions, enrolling new customers & increasing customer loyalty. Read our Holiday marketing tips:

• Affiliate Blogging Tip – 12 Months to Grow Sales
• Top 10 Ways to Promote Small Business During Holiday Seasons

This does not happen overnight. This requires planning & larning from your past experience as to what sells well, in what holidays, for what group of customers. Numerous affiliates offer incentives in the form of discounts & free gifts during the holidays. When you plan ahead, you would be able to pass on these incentives to your customers, resulting in more sales.

5. Make Your Email Lists Effective – you must have grown your customer list. You may in fact have several of them, each with thousands of names & email address. It is time to weed out the inactive ones, or maybe start a fresh one too.

Email lists are not stagnant – people change email addresses, people mark emails as spam by mistake & many people just develop the habit of ignoring emails from certain places. You need to make sure that your subscriber list is crisp & not full of old inactive users.

Click Here to Read Autoresponders Mass Mailers Email Campaign Software for Effective Affiliate Marketing & use them effectively to refresh your lists.

6. Write Personal Messages once in a while to Customers – you must be sending daily, weekly or monthly newsletters to your customers. That is wonderful. But once in a while, represent yourself & write personal notes to your customers too.

Personal notes reassure the customers that they have “YOU” to depend on if they need any assistance. Personal notes make your business more human friendly & adds a human touch to the relationships.

7. Revise your Pricing Strategy – Prices are the one thing why buyers hesitate to procure while on the other side, its the one thing your business needs. Do you have a solid pricing strategy that you can carry forward? Especially in light with the post recession buying & spending trends?

There are 2 misconceptions or wrong assumptions among marketers:

• One of the wrong assumptions that marketers have is that they can command attention if they give things free
• Because you are giving things for a lower price, you do not need to think about support

More and more online shoppers are now leaning towards cheaper & better alternatives to branded products. Cheap is no longer associated with poor quality, less durability or even lack of support. The McKinsey Report I spoke about earlier shows the statistics clearly.

8. Transform Technology from a Cost Saver to a Business Driver – many small businesses look at technology as a way to save cost. You set up an auto email system so that you don’t have to send out postal mails any more. True, but not always right!

Web 2 & Web 3 technology opens up a huge opportunity to use technology to drive & grow more business than simply to save cost. Read these relevant articles:

• Online Presentations – How Online Presentations Save Time & Money & still Builds Customer Relations
• Increasing Reader Engagement – 15 Easy Ways to Bring & Keep Blog Visitors

9. Collaborate, Collaborate & Collaborate – success in 2010 will come to people who collaborate. Find all ways to collaborate with vendors, other partners, customers and look for opportunities to either save costs or drive more business through collaboration.

Collaboration could also be in the form of partnerships. Are there opportunities where you can offer your product or service to another & you can jointly present a better product or service to the business community?

10. Catch on Early to New Initiatives – businesses that can catch on early to new systems, products or services, will get to benefit more. Look out for new opportunities that can help your business.

Think about Twitter. Had you started with a twitter account a year & a half back, you could be making a lot of money with Twitter. If you had a blog up & running in 2001, by now, you would be making a hundred thousand dollars a year from sponsorships!

So what are the few things to look out for in 2010 to grow your earning & business?

Collaboration Tools, Mobile Tools & Apps, Mobile Advertising, Affiliate Tools, Advertising (Video Ads, Twitter Ads, Facebook Ads). Also keep an eye for new training tools (like Blog Mastermind) & those coming in from SMO experts like Dan Zarrella & Guy Kawasaki.

In conclusion, 2010 will be exciting for all bloggers & affiliate marketers & be sure to have all the tools & knowledge to be effective in the coming year.