Measuring the success of a blog can be quite ambiguous and it should be based on the long term and short-term goals of the individual or business.

Consider how you measure the success of your blog.

Is it by…

• the number of visitors?
• the number of comments?
• the Retweets?
• the links from other bloggers to your posts?

How you assign a value on any one of these items depends on WHY you are writing in the first place. Don’t assume that everyone should blog for the same reasons that you do or that they even care about tracking some of the above items.

The reason I am even mentioning this is because as a marketing professional, you are charged with guiding your clients towards making the good decision around how they market themselves and what pieces of the puzzle hey need in order to reach their goals.  That being said, I have found that all to often we impose our views or beliefs about what they should be doing and we forget to understand how their skill sets will affect the success of such choices.

Unless you are doing the writing for them, you need to take into consideration how they measure success. It could be that they will be satisfied if they just get one good comment or they manage to write one post that leads to a sale. This is where I get on my soapbox about reminding you that listening and truly understanding your clients and audience is critical to your own reputation.

If the main goal of your blog is to increase traffic to your site and ultimately attract new clients, then this post is for you.  This is going to be short and to the point.

Don’t be stingy

Stop worrying so much about giving away your knowledge. After all, it is your knowledge that will attract the right client. People don’t want a hard sell when they arrive at your website and aren’t going to engage in conversation on your blog if that is your approach. What visitors want is to know that you can empathize with their situation and can provide a solution to their problem. Whether you offer a service or product, it makes no difference. Just give them some food for thought in order to capture their attention.

Use your blog as a showcase

Now that you have a captive audience, capitalize on it! Use your blog to introduce new products, team members, show of your services and lead people to your portfolio. You have your five minutes of fame right there:)

Use your blog to strut your stuff, but do so in your own style. What I mean by this is that you need not keep up with the Jones’ in order to do a good job with your blog. I’ll be honest, I am not all that great with images and haven’t had time to figure out how to embed videos and such on my blog, but that’s o.k. with me. Why? because I am more concerned about the content quite frankly. As a content writer….I find that to be more important. Additionally, I think that if you can find your comfort zone when blogging, you will be more likely to do so regularly. Adding new challenges could lead you to avoiding the task.

That’s it. Just two things to consider when writing for your blog.

Simply log into your WordPress admin panel. Then go to ‘Your Profile‘ under ‘Users‘ and add a different blog you own. In the ‘Website‘ blank just put the URL of the other blog you want to promote.

Now, if your theme allows it, your  CommentLuv last post will be from the other blog. That’s it, simple cross promotion

I know this works from watching my stats. More visits are coming from my other blog’s post pages.

Daily Blog Tips If you search Google for the key phrase ‘blog tips‘ you will find Daily Blog Tips at the top of the list. That’s not just because Daniel Scocco is great at SEO or hired the right firm, it’s because he deserves to be at the top. Daily Blog Tips is exactly what he represents – Daily Blog Tips. Every day Daily Blog Tips offers top shelf, high quality content that will help your blogging endeavor.

Blogging Tips Blogging Tips is written by a group of very talented bloggers working together to provide valuable blogging tips and advice to readers and subscribers. Blogging Tips is more in line with my ultimate goal for HotBlogTips as far as multiple authors. I would love to have a group of bloggers sharing their experience with others right here on this site.

I recommend subscribing to and reading both blogs. When I think about it I guess one of the most appealing things about the two subscriptions, to me anyway, is they are a very quick and easy way of becoming a better blogger. It doesn’t take a lot of energy or time to digest the content and learn from it.

Both blogs are what HotBlogTips strives to become. If I am competing with Daily Blog Tips and Blogging Tips, and I am in a way, then I guess I’m lucky enough to admire the hell out of my competition. Ain’t the net great?

I know what you’re thinking… Yes, I like ProBlogger too

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not praising the low life spammers for a little creativity. I’m sure they stole it from someone. What I do want to do is offer a quick tip on double checking suspicious comments. It’s pretty simple and many of you may already do this but for those who don’t know… Simply run a Google search.

Most blog spammers use the same comments over and over using bots to do the damage. With so many un-moderated blogs out there it stands to reason some comment spam will get through.

Simply take a string of the suspected comment spam, put it in “quotes”, and run the search. If it’s spam you will more than likely find it in the search results.

Here’s an example of creative blog comment spam:

Hello, i guess this is as good of a place as any to post and let you know. I went to subscribe to your RSS feed, and when i clicked it i got an error that said “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING” followed by other gibberish that scrolled off the screen. I had to force the page to stop loading because it locked up my browser. Cheers.

Do you want to pay the idiot back for putting you through all that work? Once you verify it’s a spammer, edit the comment to reflect they’re a low life spammer and change their website link to http://lowlifespammer.com/ It’s alright, I own the site and give you permission to link your spammer to it

What creative spam comments have you found and what do you do about it?

Avatar sizes vary from site to site and many forums require you to provide your own on registration or allow you to use one of their graphics. Blogs can setup default images for those commenters that haven’t set one up. I recommend every blogger have their own avatar, preferably of their face, for branding purposes.

Creating your avatar is very simple. Create a free Avatar from your photo with Shrink Pictures (Thanks Sheryl). If you want to do it yourself and need a nice graphics program I recommend GIMP. GIMP is a fantastic image program and it’s free.

Setting up your avatar is simple matter too. I would start out with Gravatar. Gravatar is a very popular universal avatar hosting site that many blogs recognize including HotBlogTips.com. Do you have an Avatar?

A feed could not be found at http://domain.com
This means your site might not have an auto-discoverable feed.
See this article on ProBlogger about feed autodiscovery

Autodiscovery? I had no idea what autodiscovery was but it sounded pretty important. Thanks to the post on ProBlogger, Can I (auto)discover you?, within minutes I had CommentLuv working perfectly. I simply added this little snippet of HTML code in my header:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”Hot Blog Tips” href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/HotBlogTips” >

Even more importantly my blog is now setup so subscribers can read my RSS feeds on their aggregators and browsers including Internet Explorer 7. When autodiscovery for your rss feed is enabled, browsers and aggregators will automatically detect the RSS feed making it easier for others to subscribe to it.

I found this free online tool that will create the code for your blog in seconds: Create Auto Discovery Code

What sets blogs apart from traditional websites?
Blogs combine the traditional website with the popular style and functionality of forums usually setup in reverse-chronological order (newest posts first). Generally a blog will have one or more admins (administrators) who administer the blog and publish the blog’s posts (articles). Site visitors can add their own comments to those posts provided the comments feature is not turned off (disabled). Some blogs are similar to membership sites by requiring commenters to register in order to participate, not recommended for beginning blogs.

Why a blog over a regular website?
There are many reasons to consider a blog over a regular website:

• Several popular formats/platforms to choose from
• Hundreds of themes available, many of which are free
• More helpful plugins than you could ever use
• Search engines seem to prefer blog content
• The RSS feeds are similar to a built-in list building feature
• Interaction with site visitors via comments help the site grow strong and fast
• Blogs are very simple to create and maintain without a huge learning curve
• Themes can be easily changed and can instantly make a site look very professional

Blog Etiquette
Blogging etiquette seems like common sense but only if you have the right idea or frame of mind when it comes to blogging. Blogging is much more than an interactive website, it’s social networking at it’s best. Blogging is by far the fastest way to find new online friends that share the same interests. Blogging is a very rewarding and enjoyable activity but only when following some simple and practical rules or, Blog Etiquette if you will. Like making friends on the playground, blogging etiquette must be learned and put into practice. Here are some links from a few of my blogging friends to help you get started:

• Commenting Etiquette Is Important
• The Unwritten Rules of Commenting
• Commenting 101 Important Rules For 2009
• Blog Comment Tip: Respond to Comments or Risk Losing Subscribers
• A Point About Commenting On Blogs
• How To Handle Negative Comments On Your Blog
• The Blogging Process

More Required Reading For Bloggers:

• A – Z Blogging Guide for Beginners
• 7 Deadly Sins of Highly Ineffective New Bloggers
• 10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid
• Top 7 Mistakes Newbie Bloggers Make
• 12 Tips To Become A Dot Com Mogul In The Blogosphere
• 7 Common Mistakes When Beginning Blogging
• 5 Things To Consider When Publishing Your Blog Newsletter
• Blogging Tips for Beginners

Have you secured your Twitter name yet? Grab your name, blog and niche right away if it’s not too late. It’s free and you have nothing to loose other than a few minutes of time.

On this site I installed the WP Cumulus plugin because the word tag widget isn’t available in the theme we use. WP Cumulus adds a cool spinning effect.

I quickly surpassed 45 tags on my personal photo blog and wanted them all to display in my tag cloud on the sidebar. A quick Google search led me to WordPress Tag Limit by Money Making Websites. Ron Killian’s post refers to the Configurable Tag Cloud Plugin which was exactly what I needed. Minutes later I had every tag showing with a few extra tweaks available.