This is the second and final part of our two part series on Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick’s free report Roadmap to Become a Blogger. If you haven’t read part 1 yet, make sure to read Roadmap to Become a Blogger: The Free Report Review (Part 1) first before you read this post.
We’ve talked about the X-Factor in blogging, these strategies Yaro’s talked about that boost all areas of your blogging and traffic generation. Now we’ll be getting into how we can use the X-Factor to the maximum in order to really grab huge amounts of traffic to your blog and website.
X-Factor Strategy 1: Using Skype to Network
Skype is a free technology that let’s you connect to people around the world via text, audio, and video. You can download the free application at the Skype website. After you’ve downloaded the software, you’ll now be able to talk to anyone in the world absolutely free as long as they also have Skype installed in their computer. You also have the option of using SkypeOut which lets you call landlines and mobile phones for a relatively small fee. You can use Skype to shoot a quick instant message to a colleague, host a conference with multiple viewers and collaborators, and you can join chat rooms in order to connect with people in your desired area of focus.
X-Factor Strategy 2: Using the Group Function in Facebook
Create a free account in Facebook and then search for groups related to your area of interest. You can now interact with members of that Facebook group and discover what these groups of people are most interested in, giving you topics to blog about.
X-Factor Strategy 3: Using Google Reader to Subscribe to RSS Feeds
Once you’ve signed up for a free Google Reader account, click the Add Subscription button. You’ll see a popup with a search box labeled “Enter a search term to find feeds or paste a feed url.” In that box, type some general keywords related to your area of interest in order to find blogs that talk about that subject. Subscribe to those blogs and group these blogs into a folder (perhaps title this folder Research) using the Manage Subscriptions link. What you’re going to do with this folder is every day scan for any new blog posts in these blogs in order to get the general vibe of the hot topics in that field of interest and to get an insiders look of the industry. RSS feeds for blogs usually have the word feed in the URL, for example, the feed for this blog is MichaelEmilio.com/feed/.
X-Factor Strategy 4: Using Mahalo and Clusty Search Engines
Mahalo.com is a human based search engine giving you results filtered by other people looking for the same topics. This allows you to get an incredible range of related topics to the keywords you’re searching for. Clusty.com is a metasearch engine that combines search engine results from various search engines and categorizes the results to make them easier to research and read.
X-Factor Strategy 5: Using Seesmic to Get Feedback
Seesmic.com is a website that allows you to get instant feedback on whether your blog might generate interest or not, even before you actually create the blog. You’ll need a webcam and microphone for Seesmic and signup for the free account. Once there, make some friends and give your opinions on others’ videos. Ask for people opinion’s on your blog topics. You’ll immediately be getting fast video feedback from a worldwide audience.
X-Factor Strategy 6: Using Interviews with Experts in Your Niche
In Become a Blogger Roadmap, Yaro and Gideon recommend 3 pieces of software to conduct interviews with: Skype to call, Powergramo Skype Software to record the call and Audacity to edit the call. Once you’ve done the interview, use a service like Libsyn.com that hosts the podcast or if you have your own server then host them yourself. Podcasting is an excellent WordPress plugin for inserting podcasts in your blog posts.
X-Factor Strategy 7: Using BlogTalkRadio to Interview Experts
Instead of the above Skype/Powergramo/Audacity combo mentioned about, you can just use a service like BlogTalkRadio.com to assist you in interviewing people around the world and then publish it on your blog.
X-Factor Strategy 8: Using Video as a Tool
It’s simple to create video: get a computer with a webcam, microphone, video editing software and internet connection and you’re good to go. Once it’s done, upload the video to YouTube and embed the video whereever you’d like, including your own blog.
X-Factor Strategy 9: Using Twitter and 12seconds.tv
Twitter allows you to “tweet” 140 character microposts (Yaro calls Twitter micro-blogging in his Roadmap to Become a Blogger) that allow you to reach a separate audience from your blog readers. Take a look at my twitter account for an example of how I use twitter. One great way to set this up is by using a service that notifies twitter of recent posts on your blog and auto-tweets them. One great wordpress plugin for this is Twitter Tools by Alex King. Another nice twitter plugin for displaying your tweets in the sidebar is Twitter Widget Pro by Aaron D. Campbell – note that Twitter Tools allows tweets in sidebar, just with less options than Twitter Widget Pro. 12seconds.tv is sort of like twitter, only that instead of 140 characters max of text, you get 12 seconds max of video.
X-Factor Strategy 10: Using Tubemogul to Upload Your Videos
Another recommended strategy is to use a service like Tubemogul.com to upload your videos to all major video sharing websites with the click of one button. You make your video, use tubemogul to distribute your video and check your analytics for the new traffic. Heyspread.com is similar to Tubemogul, except that Heyspread is paid while Tubemogul is free and you may prefer the feature set of Heyspread. Another site like this is TrafficGeyser.com, considered top among video sharing sites by Yaro in his Become a Blogger Roadmap. It’s paid but there’s a 30 day trial to try it out.
X-Factor 11: Using Video Advertising to Make Money
Many of the top video sites have a profit sharing option, where they put ads in your videos in exchange for giving you a cut of the profits. Some of these sites using this business model include Youtube, Blip.tv, Metacafe.com, Revver.com. This could mean big bucks if your video goes “viral” and other people email your video to their friends and bloggers blog about your video.
X-Factor 12: Using Skype to Charge For Your Consulation
Skype now offers a service where you can charge someone by the minute for talking to you. You setup Skype Prime for this and the other person will pay you directly using PayPal. This is fantastic if you’re planning on offering consultation services – and yes this is free to set up.
X-Factor 13: Using Overlay.tv to Sell Affiliate Products
Tons of bloggers sell products using affiliate links and partnerships and make a living by doing so. One place to find items to promote on your blog is Clickbank, they sell tons of different digital products so you’re sure to find some that relate to your interests. Others include Commission Junction, ShareaSale, and LinkShare. However, you can take simple affiliate links a step further by using a service like Overlay.tv. You select a video of your choice from a video site like YouTube and then overlay your text and text links on top of the video. For example, if your blog is about laptops, you can grab a laptop video review from YouTube, overlay some affiliate links on that video, and then upload it to your blog. People click on your affiliate links, buy the laptop, and you get a percentage of the profits, your commission. Yaro makes a great point in his Roadmap to Become a Blogger when he says that by choosing very popular videos relating to the product you’re promoting means the videos are already market tested, you don’t have to do any work to test the video in terms of how it works to influence others to purchase the product. By overlaying your affiliate link on top of an informative video means you’re offering a non-threatening way for your blog readers to click your link and buy the product.
This concludes my overview and review of the Roadmap to Become a Blogger free report by Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick. Make sure to visit the Roadmap to Become a Blogger to download the free report and let me know what you think of the report and my review of the report in the comments below!
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Great article, very complete.
Hi, I am the Marketing Director at HeySpread.
That is true, Tubemogul is a great service.
But you should also have a look at HeySpread – http://heyspread.com. Far cheaper, with exclusive features such as YouClone (copy/paste your YouTube videos to any other platform automatically and in one shot), powerful and user-friendly interface, REST API for an easy and fast white label integration.