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A lot of bloggers and marketers will tell you that the single most important tool for growing an audience is a mailing list. With a mailing list, you reach people without relying on Facebook, you can avoid a scenario where your account gets deleted on a whim and you can communicate in a manner that is very personal and very engaging with your audience.

The question though is how you get someone to give you their email address when they know you’re likely to use it for marketing purposes. Here are 8 tips that can help a great deal.

1 Drop it Into Conversation

A lot of sites make the mistake of adding a mailing list sign-up form to their sidebar and then kind of ‘hoping it will get noticed’. This isn’t exactly great marketing and for the most part, people are going to overlook it.

There’s nothing wrong with actually mentioning your mailing list from time to time in other words – and that doesn’t have to be in an overtly marketing-centric manner. For instance, there’s nothing wrong with occasionally saying ‘as I mentioned in the last email’ for example.

2 Make it Exclusive and Exciting

Humans are social animals and we are highly influenced by other people and what we think they’re doing. If you make your mailing list sound exciting, exclusive and like ‘the place to be’, then you’ll find that it becomes much more enticing for potential new signees.

You can even try giving your subs a cool group name, or giving them privileged access to a VIP section of your site or forum. Leverage that FOMO! (Fear Of Missing Out)

3 Use an Incentive

What’s the BEST way to bring people to a mailing list?

The answer that is very often put forward is to use an incentive. This usually means offering a free ebook, a free newsletter or some other kind of freebie in exchange for the person’s address. By doing this, you can thereby encourage people who might be ‘on the fence’ to sign up.

But think twice before you go this route…

The problem with an incentive is that in some ways, it undermines the inherent value of being on your mailing list. You want people to sign up to your mailing list because they love your brand so much and because they’re eager to hear from you in future. Being on your mailing list should make them feel like VIPs and it should even be sought after.

But if you’re offering an incentive to get them to sign up, then you are calling into question whether this is really the case. Suddenly, you’re very transparently trying to ‘buy’ their address off of them. And that’s unlikely to swell them with confidence.

4 Remember to Target

Another issue is that an incentive can actually encourage people to sign up who wouldn’t have done otherwise.

That’s a great thing right? Wrong! Because the only reason you want a follower is so that they become a customer or a fan. It is 100% more desirable to have a small list of people who love your brand than a massive list of people who consider you a pest.

In other words, targeting your audience is even more important than building a big list. So, make sure that you aren’t building indiscriminately and make the list and newsletter sound great for the right people.

5 Be Incredible

Tip five is to be incredible. Have an amazing blog or social media account that people are excited to follow and that people want more of. Think about the sites that you would genuinely want to get an email from. They’re the ones that offer the best content right? The most engaging and interesting ones. That’s how you need to be!

At the same time, your aim is to build authority and trust. People are very protective over their private details and rightly so. You need to earn that trust so that they know you’re not going to take advantage of it by sending them lots of junk and self-promotion.

6 Make the Mailing List Sound Awesome

One kind of incentive that is universally a good idea, is to make the list itself the incentive. In other words, you make your mailing list sound so exciting and awesome that people will want it just as much as they would want an ebook.

You can do this by providing lots of awesome free tips in your newsletters. You can also do it by including graphics and videos, by giving away intermittent freebies and by running competitions. Money-off deals and special offers can also work well. In fact, this is one of the very best strategies because now people are signing up knowing that you’re going to advertise to them and actually seeing this as a positive thing!

All of these serve the same role as a traditional ebook or report as an incentive, but the difference is that now the readers need to keep checking their inboxes in order to make the most of it.

7 Make the Mailing List BE Awesome

Getting people to sign up to your mailing list is one thing. Getting them not to unsubscribe is another. And getting them to actually engage (the entire point) is another still. So, make sure that you are continually delivering on whatever you promised in your pitch; whether that means delivering amazing information, or whether it means really crafting a beautiful newsletter that people will want to read.

This will not only keep your readers glued to your messages, but it might even lead to them sharing that content around by forwarding it on to friends etc. This is something that can help you to grow organically.

8 Use a Light Box

And finally, for our last trick, something nice and simple. Light boxes are ‘pop-overs’ that appear on top of a webpage after you’ve been reading a while. They can be annoying sure, but they statistically drive conversions on email list sign ups… so definitely consider one!

There are lots of great WordPress plugins that can help you manage content and do a number of other things, and it is important that you know about the best ones if you want to make your website as profitable as possible.

 

• Akismet

 

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet Web service to determine whether or not they look like spam. Some of the features of this plugin include:

• Automatic checking of comments with spam filters
• Status history for each comment, so you will be able to see which specific comments were flagged or cleared by Akismet and which ones were spammed or unspammed by a moderator.
• Discard feature that completely blocks the worst spam, helping you to conserve disk space while increase the overall speed of your site.

This plug is one of the most popular for WP users because it is so effective and serves a very useful purpose as well as its variety of features.

 

• Google Analytics by Yoast

 

This WP plugin allows you to track your WordPress site easily using the latest tracking codes along with added data for search result pages. Some of the features of this plugin include:

• Easy and straightforward integration with Google Analytics API. Simply authenticate and select the website you want to track.
• Uses the universal or the asynchronous Google Analytics tracking code, known for its speed and reliability.
• Ability to enable demographics and interest reports.
• Tracking for outbound links and downloads.
• Configurable options for tracking outbound links as pageviews or events.
• Ability to track downloads as pageviews or events in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics by Yoast is considered to be one of the more popular plugins because it offers so many different features and is an invaluable resource when it comes to tracking anything from downloads to outbound pages. If you need a good plugin for tracking your blog, this is definitely one of the best ones you will find online; it is a comprehensive tool that has helped countless WP users to maximize their earning potential.

 

 

• Jetpack by WordPress

 

Jetpack is a very powerful resource that used to be available only on WordPress.com and includes traffic, customization, performance and content tools. Some of the features of this plugin include:

 

• Mobile theme: A lightweight and customizable theme that is designed specifically for mobile devices, including phones and tablets.

• Content Tools: Enables you to create and publish high quality content with Markdown, Spelling, VideoPress, Shortcode, Post by Email and Embeds. All of these features can be extremely helpful when it comes to generating quality content and getting it seen by as many different people as possible.

 

There are a number of reasons why Jetpack is such a popular WP plugin, including the fact that it has a very simple design that doesn’t put any unnecessary stress on the user’s server. You will also find that this plug has a social networking enabled comment system, allows you to post your blog from any email client, offers full integration with popular social networks and much more. When it comes to plugins that serve multiple purposes and help with creating and distributing content effectively, this is one of the best that exists right now.

 

• WordPress Importer

 

This WP plugin helps with importing comments, tags, custom fields, categories and more to a WordPress export file. Those who are looking to make the switch from WordPress.com to WordPress.org will find this plugin to be especially useful. Some of the different things that this plugin will allow you to export include:

• Comments
• Authors
• Posts, pages and other types of custom posts
• Categories, tags and terms from custom taxonomies

This is one of the more popular WP plugins you will find, mostly because of how simple its design is and how well it works.

 

• WordPress SEO by Yoast

 

When it comes to improving your WP site’s SEO performance, this plugin may be exactly what you need. WordPress SEO by Yoast enhances the user’s ability to optimize their website and increase revenue significantly. The Yoast team offer top notch support and it will make getting your website to rank higher much easier. Some of the features of this plugin include:

 

• Page Analytics: This plugin’s Page Analytics function checks a number of simple but important things that many people tend to forget about. It can check whether or not your posts are long enough, if you have filled out a meta description and if it contains your primary keyword as well as if you have used any subheadings in your post. Although it may seem like a small feature, it is a very useful one nonetheless.

• RSS Optimization: If you are being outranked by countless other pages and want to start getting the upper hand, the RSS Optimization feature of this plugin can definitely be of help. When you automatically add a link to your RSS feed linking back to the original article, you are directing the search engine where to look for the original. When you do this, the plugin increases the ranking of your website for the keywords you have selected.

• Social Integration: SEO is directly related to Social Media, and it helps to have a plugin with social integration like this one. This WP plugin can help you to distribute your content to a greater number of people with Facebook OpenGraph implementation as well as Google+ sharing tags.

• Multi-Site Compatibility: The WordPress SEO plugin has full multi-site compatibility. The XML Sitemaps work well in all different setups and you can go into the Network settings to copy the settings from one blog to another, or even make blogs default for the settings for a certain blog.

 

All of the above-mentioned WordPress plugins can be extremely useful, especially if you are struggling to get your website ranking and aren’t making nearly as much money from it as you could be. The right plugins can make all the difference, so you will want to look into some of these options.

Keyword research is a crucial part of any SEO or PPC campaign. This means choosing the keywords that you are about to spend money and time targeting, to ensure that they will provide the very best ‘bang for your buck’ and be worth all of that investment.

A keyword or a key phrase, is the search term that a user will input into Google or Bing when they are searching for something. The aim of an SEO (search engine optimization) campaign is to ensure that the website lands at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant and specific terms.

So as a blogger, your aim is to help more people find your content by getting your site to show up at the top of the results when they search for relevant answers to questions on Google.

Keyword Research for SEO

If you run a website that sells hats online, then of course an ideal example of a keyword or keyphrase you could target would be ‘buy hats online’. The problem with this strategy however, is that by most people’s reckoning it is too ambitious. That is to say that competition is high and that it could be hard to fend that competition off.

On the other hand though, a phrase like ‘where to find the best hats to buy online’ could be too niche and not have enough search ‘volume’ meaning that no one is really looking for it!

So how do you know which keywords to target? Here are some of the best tips that generally work:

• Use Google’s keyword tool – This keyword tool is significantly underpowered from what it once was and no longer offers the full range of data that it once did. Why? Because the tool is aimed at people considering paying for AdWords campaigns. Google realized that if it made it too easy for SEOs to find the most high-volume search terms with the least competition, then users would no longer need to pay for ads! This is a somewhat anti-competitive move, but it is what it is.
• Use Google Trends – That said, Google has another powerful tool available for free that is ideal for the savvy SEO or PPC marketer: that is Google Trends! Google Trends is a tool that shows currently trending search terms so you can see what’s currently ‘hot. This is very useful for marketers, seeing as the best keywords are often the ones that are currently popular – but with other creators haven’t jumped on yet!
• Use Bing’s keyword tool – Bing also has a keyword tool! It’s actually less neutered than Google’s too and while fewer people use Bing, it is generally safe to say that the results here will roughly translate to Google searches too and can as such be extrapolated.
• Use 3rd party tools – Some great ones are http://www.semrush.com and http://www.spyfu.com 
• Use some common sense – Ask yourself: what are people likely to search for that the competition might not have thought of yet? Do searches yourself and look for the gaps in the information. How can you fill the niche?

Keywords and More Considerations for PPC

Keyword research is not only crucial for SEO, but also for PPC advertising – or AdWords PPC to be more specific which shows ads on Google’s search pages along with chosen search terms. And this is something you need to consider in conjunction with other factors when you begin a PPC campaign.

PPC is a great way to market a website or a business and an even better way to bring yourself new customers and clients. By using PPC you can put your adverts right at the top of relevant searches/keywords, and drive huge amounts of traffic to your site. If you have an effective business model that reliably converts your traffic into paying customers, and if you have a scalable business that allows you to easily cope with increased demand, then using a good PPC campaign can be a simple and direct way to drive up your sales and make a lot of cash.

But don’t think for a minute that that makes it easy. While PPC can be easy money once you set it up, there are a lot of things you have to get right if it’s going to work for you. People do entire courses in PPC which should tell you that it’s a complex matter. Again, keyword research is key – along with several other considerations.

Using PPC as Keyword Research

Here’s an interesting idea: using PPC as keyword research.

For instance: pay to get an ad to the top of Google for a specific search term and then see how that performs. All the numbers in the world can only tell you so much, whereas actually being at the top of the SERP for a day can show you things like conversion rates for different terms.

Find what works for you and then invest more money into a bigger PPC campaign, or more time into a full SEO campaign!

Final Considerations: Nuance in Keyword Research

Finally, consider that keyword research won’t always mean just looking for a certain phrase and then repeating that over and over in your text.

These days, there is a little more nuance to successful use of keywords. That’s because Google has gotten smarter about the way it looks for keywords in your text. For instance, it is now able to understand synonyms and related terms. For instance, if you target the phrase ‘how to build stronger biceps’ then you might actually also be competing with the phrase ‘get bigger biceps’ because Google knows those mean the same thing.

So, just because there isn’t competition for your exact keyword, there might be competition still for similar phrases. Likewise, you should keep this in mind when inserting those keywords into your content by using ‘LSI’ – latent semantic indexing. Don’t just repeat the phrase itself, but also different variations of the phrase.

There’s a lot to consider, so don’t make this your sole focus. But thinking logically about what terms might be available for you to grab, while still bringing lots of traffic, can help to give you a significant edge over the competition.

So, you want to start a blog?

Think you can just start writing? You think that’s really enough to ensure your blog is a success?

Well… in some cases it is… but to really maximize your chances of doing well, it can help to come up with a content plan. This will give you a rough structure and roadmap for the content that you’re going to bring to your blog over time. And having that outline will in turn help to ensure that you don’t run out of ideas, that you keep a steady stream of high quality content on your site, and that you leverage any and all opportunities to promote your site or work with others. Here’s how it’s going to work.

What Makes Good Content?

A good place to start is by identifying what makes good content and more important – what makes good content on your site.

Your site will have a brand and if you’ve approached this correctly, that brand should be aimed at a very specific target audience. You should know exactly who will be reading your site and what kinds of things they are interested in.

It’s not enough to simply know that your site is ‘about fitness’ – you need to know the ‘buyer persona’ so that you know how they approach fitness. How old is your average reader? Why are they interested in fitness? Is it because they want to dominate the competition or just because they want to be happy and healthy? The type of content you produce for each type of audience is going to vastly differ. You should have a tone, an approach and a style in mind – all of which will ensure that each post on your site helps to further cement your brand image.

Meanwhile, you need to think about what makes good content in general. And the answer is value: you need to somehow provide entertainment, information or inspiration with each and every blog post. And you need to provide advice and information relevant to the identified target audience.

The best tip is to think of each blog post as though it were a product: and in that way it should have a USP that sets it apart from every other blog post out there and that makes it easier for you to ‘market’ in your social media posts and through the title of the post itself.

Keeping the Ideas Coming

You will find there are days when the ideas come pouring and you are flooded with inspiration for new blog topics and subjects. You’ll be itching to write them all down!

But then will come the days when you feel completely at a loss for what to write and all those good ideas are forgotten – or just don’t seem quite so inspiring.

So, make sure you keep a list of blog topics and add to this list whenever a good idea comes to mind. That way, when you do sit down to do some blogging, you’ll have a wide range of different subjects that you can draw from in order to get productive.

If the ideas still struggle to come, here are some suggestions that can help:

• Combine different subjects in an interesting way – Fitness for martial artists, fitness and its effect on productivity, fitness as seen in the movies
• Make a ‘listicle’
• Draw from your personal experience
• Consider writing an interview
• Try to remember the last time you learned something that surprised or amazed you about the niche
• READ!

Ordering

The quality and consistency of your content isn’t the only thing that matters. What is actually also very important, is making sure that your content lands in a good order.

This is important because you want to ensure that you provide good variety on your blog post, without straying too far from the subject matter.

For instance, if you have a ‘lifestyle blog’ or a ‘self-development’ blog, then you may write about a few things that are tangentially related. For instance, you may write about fitness, you may write about meditation, you may write about diet, you may write about productivity tips.

Hopefully, your audience will be interested in all these things. But chances are that some topics will appeal more to some people than others. So, you want to cater to all those tastes, without showing preference for any one. If you have 10 posts in a row on meditation and nothing on fitness, then you may lose some visitors or be seen as a ‘meditation site’. Try to ensure that your ‘most recent posts’ always paints an accurate picture of the variety and sorts of things that you cover.

Timing

Consistency is the most important consideration for any blog. You need to make sure you regularly post new content and that your audience knows when they can expect it.

Of course, life is anything but consistent, and so you can’t guarantee that you will always be available to write. This is why having a backlog of good content is a good idea and then scheduling those posts to get published at smart intervals so there is a steady stream. This also means that you can write on the subjects that you are most interested in at the time (this always makes a huge impact on the overall quality – you shouldn’t really write if you aren’t ‘feeling it’).

By taking this approach, you can also carefully schedule content to coincide with important dates. For instance, if you have a post on sticking with goals, you might decide you want it to go live when the new year roles in. If you have a post reviewing a new smartphone, you might need it to go out on the day the embargo lifts.

If you ever land a guest post on another site, then you need to make sure that anyone who comes to your site from that guest post will then find content on your site that they will like.

All these considerations can make a big impact on the success of your content and your blog on the whole. So get planning!