One of the first thing I quickly realized when I started my first business was this: I do NOT want to chase business.

I’m not that old by the way, that was 12 years ago. The landscape was completely different even though it wasn’t that long ago. I think I shared this with you before, I got started by doing some small print ads on local magazines and ended up producing my own TV spots and running them on national networks. I had to learn everything from writing to casting, producing and even doing my own media buys and running all kinds of reports.

I did all that just to avoid chasing business. The end result was about 600 incoming daily calls.

I did learn how to generate a lead through Inbound Marketing. But there was something I figured out besides making the phone ring 600 times in a day. The quality of the lead generated through inbound is much much higher than outbound, where you are pretty much trying to convince a person about something they did not ask for.

The concept of Inbound Marketing remains the same, only today, we have the social web providing a leveled field and a potential for exposure that was never put on the table before for small businesses. See, just now I was shamelessly bragging about how I was able to generate that volume of calls, what I didn’t mention is the investment that took. Let’s just say that when I think about it today I feel sick.

Let’s not make a mistake here, while it offers incredible opportunities, marketing in the social web is not free. Having a presence online is one thing but turning actual leads and sales is something else. I have no statistics about this but my feeling is that more and more small businesses have been actually getting to that point in the last 2 or 3 years.

This infographic shows a few interesting facts about how small business is adopting inbound marketing strategies more aggressively than brands. I specially like the breakdown of where marketing budgets are being allocated, small businesses are clearly investing more on social media, SEO, blogs and email than on paid search, direct mail and telemarketing. Also, notice how the closing rate (leads to sales) is clearly higher on inbound initiatives like SEO and direct traffic.

Over to you

What is your online inbound strategy? What kind of results are you getting from this strategy compared to outbound initiatives? How are you measuring the results of your blogging, SEO or social media efforts?

I’d love to hear from you. Enjoy the infographic!

This infographic is courtesy of gplus.

This is a guest post by Mitt Ray from Social Marketing Writing.

Social media and blogs are usually the basic requirements of every content marketing strategy. Having a good blog with a lot of good content and being able to share them on social media platforms with lots of followers and fans can be a really good start. But the marketing material you should never forget to use in your content marketing strategy; is a white paper.

White papers differ from blogs and other form of content as they have a tiny bit of direct marketing messages in them. Most of the white paper is generally content, but a small fraction of a white paper consists of direct marketing material. A blog can be very powerful and educative, but it would normally take you some time before you start generating leads (on average it takes about 6 months for a blog to generate leads) from it.

This is why white papers are used in content marketing to shorten the gestation period of lead generation. White papers can speedup lead generation through their educative and persuasive nature and cut short the vast amounts of time blogs take.

How can Businesses Use White Papers in their content marketing strategy

1. To Generate leads

As mentioned above it could take you really long to generate leads only through your blog. A white paper on the other hand can help you generate leads very quickly. A white paper through its educative nature followed by its persuasive nature can educate your readers, earn their trust and convince them to buy your product or use your service. This way you can have direct marketing messages in your white papers and avoid using them on your blog.

2. Increase Newsletters Sign Ups

Newsletters are one of the most important tools every content marketing strategy should possess. When you start a business blog it’s important not to clutter it up with ads that distract your clients. You need to avoid any sort of direct marketing messages and keep your blog advert free. This is one of the main reasons why you need newsletters. You can send your direct messages through newsletters.

Newsletters also help you keep in touch with your readers. Through newsletter you can send out your latest updates which could be latest posts, news, offers, etc. However, it can be hard to get people sign up to your newsletters, but sign ups can be increased by using white papers.

You can let your readers know that they can receive a copy of your educative white paper only after they sign up to your newsletter. This should increase your newsletter sign ups. You can now send out your newsletters to your readers, build relationships, increase blog traffic and generate leads.  An example of a company that uses white papers for getting many newsletter sign ups is Hubspot. If you visit their Marketing Resources page you will find many white papers on various subjects.

3. Increase Facebook Likes

A facebook page should always be part of your content marketing strategy. A facebook page with many “likes” can help you generate both quality traffic and new leads. Getting those “likes” can seem like a huge task. But you can easily increase the number of “Likes” your facebook page has with a white paper. The first thing you will need to do is add a fan gate to your fan page. A fan gate is when you have a second landing page for your facebook page. Only fans who like your page will be directed to this page.

On your first landing page you could have a message which asks your readers to like your page. You also need to let them know that they can get access to your white paper only after they like your page. After they like your page they will be directed to your second (fan only) landing page. This is where you place the link to your white paper or the sign up for your white paper. This technique will not only help you get many facebook “Likes,” but will also help you get many readers for your newsletter.

4. Rejuvenate Old Blog Posts

In your white papers you can insert links to your old blog posts. These blog posts can help explain complicated terms or provide more information about a particular topic. These links in the white paper will help increase the traffic your old posts receive.

Tips on creating successful white papers

If you want to take advantage of the above strategies, you need to make sure you create well researched and well written white papers.
The tips below will help you create powerful white papers.

1. Find out your audience’s problems

A white paper provides solutions to problems. You need to make sure you provide solutions to the problems faced by your readers. First, find out what your audience’s biggest problem is and then give the solution to this problem. If you can help them solve their problems in the white papers and display your expertise, they will definitely contact you for more help and will eventually hire your services or buy your product, as they will now feel that you understand them.

2. Give away Secrets

Many people make the mistake of holding back and not giving away their secrets. They think that giving away their secrets might be problematic, as they are scared that their competitors might steal them. But I have found that giving away secrets is better than giving away very little information in your white paper. Giving away a few secrets in your white paper will make it unique.

When you hold back on your secrets and write a white paper, your white paper will be similar to almost every other white paper on your subject. When you give a few secrets no one else knows, it will make your white paper unique and help it stand out from the crowd.

I am not asking you to give away all your secrets. Just give away a few which would not drastically affect your business when revealed.

3. Keep Your White papers Short

Always keep your white papers to a minimum of 3 pages and a maximum of 14 pages. If your white paper gets too long you could divide it into a series of white papers and make it easy for your readers to choose a specific white paper from a series and read it individually. A short white paper which is about 14 pages long will be easier to read than a long 20 to 50 page white paper and white papers are normally read by decision makers of a company who have very little time on their hands. They will always prefer reading a short white paper to a long white paper.

The few tips above will help you create powerful white papers which can be used effectively in your content marketing strategy.

How do you use white papers in your content marketing strategy? Are there any other white paper writing tips you would like to share with us?

Mitt Ray is the Director of imittcopy where he provides white paper writing and marketing services. He is an expert white paper writer. He blogs about white papers on “The White Paper Blog.” He is the author of the book White Paper Marketing. He is also the CEO of Social Marketing Writing.

Image Credit: J Klein

According to the Content Marketing Institute, Content is one of the fastest growing segments in Marketing and an increasing number of marketers are relying more and more on their strategies to achieve success online.

Is this a surprise to you? Because if it is, you have probably been living under a rock for the last couple of years.

With the amount of content that goes left and right in front of you, on your screen, there are content creators, curators, users that share and consume on a minute to minute basis. Now, that doesn’t mean all that content is successful in reaching its goals or has even been put out there with a business goal.

In my case here at SocialMouths for example, I basically rely a good 90% on pure content marketing. Basically, I connect with people that arrive to my blog because they followed a tweet or a share with an interesting headline, liked what they found, some of them became regulars and some of them I even end up having a relationship that in time turned into a client agreement.

You can understand that I am interested in everything regarding Content. Today, the cool team at BlueGlass Interactive sent me their new Infographic called “The Content Marketing Explosion”. It includes lots of data and I recommend you bookmark it and take some time to chew on it. I will leave you alone now so you can enjoy it, before that I’ll just point to these two facts I want you to remember:

• 90% of marketers are doing some form of Content Marketing, even if they don’t know it (Have you been doing some content marketing without realizing it?)
• 60% of B2B marketers plan on increasing their efforts this year
• 26% of budgets are allocated to content (obviously is much higher in small business)

Have fun going through it and express your thoughts about how your doing or planning your content marketing.

Infographic courtesy of BlueGlass Interactive.

This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com

Mediocrity is often the result of taking the road of least resistance. You agree?…

I’m sure you do. Building successful blogs, strong brands and huge audiences is no walk in the park. This process slaps you in the face with resistance ever step of the way.

But it gets worse. Even though you’ve decided to take on this monster of a task; even though you’ve decided to take the road less traveled by building your internet empire, you may still be getting mediocre results. But why? – Are other successful bloggers smarter than you? That’s highly unlikely…

So, what keeps other successful bloggers from building “just another wordpress blog?” What makes their blogs better? I’ve been thinking about this for months now and I’ve compiled a list of 6 things successful blogs have.

My hopes with this post is to share with you the changes I’ve made and how you can use them, too. Let’s get started.

Solve Problems and Meet Needs

The questions I’ve been getting via email, Facebook and Twitter I’ve tried to address on my blog in one form or another. When I was getting questions about post frequency, I created a video. When my audience asked about creating products, I recorded a podcast episode. And when I started getting questions about podcasting, I created a product (Podcasting For Bloggers) to fill that need and answer those questions.

The lesson here is to create the content that your audience wants. Francisco knew that some of you were interested in keeping your blogs safe, Facebook landing pages and getting twitter followers, that’s why he wrote those articles. If you do that, we promise you’ll be fine.

Enjoy the Process

This is probably the hardest thing I’m going to suggest you do – detach yourself from results. In order to build a successful blog, with a loyal audience, you have to think about this as a long term project. The thing about long term projects is that they take awhile to get results, and people often give up and stop making progress.

But, if you try to enjoy it every step of the way, you might stick with it long enough to reap the benefits of business blogging.

Time is The Missing Piece of The Puzzle

You can buy every blogging course, and talk to every single pro blogger for an hour but they’ll never be able to give you the one thing that is essential to a blog’s success. – Time. It takes time to get noticed, it takes time to build a loyal following, and it takes time to start getting good search engine traffic.

The methods, ideas and strategies that we talk about can speed up your success but time will always be the missing piece of the puzzle. I noticed that the more patient I was, the faster I grew.

If it’s Not Personal – Make it Personal

First, my only focus was educating my readers. Then I added my experiences. Then I added personality, then humor and a bit of entertainment. The slight changes in my writing style took place when I started to get comfortable with myself and the things I was sharing.

This process of finding your voice might come natural to you, but for others it might take some time and practice. Work on making your blog a bit more personable, and your readers will find it easier to connect with you.

Never Be Satisfied

Too many people give up way too early. Often times it’s because the results aren’t coming fast enough, other times it’s because they’re satisfied with the results they are getting. The best part about building a blog is that with consistent effort comes consistent growth. The more you do and give, the more you get back in return.

The key is to continue to write, publish and promote content so that your blog passes the mediocre stage and lands on the popular stage.

Sometimes it’s who you know

I’ve learned that building relationships with other bloggers is not only a smart thing to do, but it’s also a critical part of your success. Just like in “real” life I’ll help out a friend much faser than I would help a complete stranger.

Thinking that you can do this on your own will slow you down. So, I suggest you swallow you pride, kick that ego to the side, and avoid mediocrity by collaborating with other bloggers.

On To You…

What are you doing to build a blog worth visiting over and over again? How does your site measure up to the popular blogs in your niche? Leave your comments below and let’s chat…

This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com, where he writes about lessons learned through blogging, taking fearless action and successfully building a blogging audience. He is also the host of the Business Blogging Podcast podcast. You can check out his latest project at PodcastingForBloggers.com – where he’ll teach you how to start a podcast of your own.

This is a guest post by Srini Rao from The Skool of Life

If you know anything about me you know that I have a tendency to look for people with interesting stories. I think social media fame is ridiculous and I could care less how many followers you have on twitter. I never even check how many followers I have on twitter. It’s no secret that I believe metrics and measurements limit your potential.

I believe there’s a tremendous power in reaching out to people because you have a genuine interest in them. The problem is we approach too many things with a “what am I going to gain from this mind set?” What I’ve realized that every single conversation you have with a person whether it be via tweets, emails, facebook comments or anything else creates new possibilities and opportunities in your life.

About a month back I started hanging out at a bar here in Tamarindo, Costa Rica that had a really interesting vibe unlike anything else I’d ever seen. It was a sense of community that no other place seemed to have. As I made some new friends and got to know the patrons I learned that many had made over 15 visits to Costa Rica and always stayed there at the hotel that was attached to the bar. The place was called Witch’s Rock Surf Camp and was owned by a guy named Joe Walsh. My natural tendency these days is to go and check out what people are up to online because I’m a blogger and I live and breathe content creation on a daily basis. It turned out the owner Joe Walsh had a blog called the The Joe Walsh Project. I figured if there was another blogger here in Tamarindo I should meet him because it would be somebody else I could talk about blogging with. It didn’t hurt that his passion for surfing was what brought him to Costa Rica in the first place. Needless to say we had a few things in common. We finally met up for drinks to talk about his blog and I shared a bunch of things I knew about blogging with him while we threw back a few beers.

A few weeks went by, and I went to NYC for my Blogworld speech. When I got back I ran into Joe at his bar and when we sat down to talk he asked me if I’d be interested in helping him with social media. It’s funny because I used to joke with friends that an ideal job would be to work on social media strategy for a surf travel company. But what’s interesting about this is that our conversations didn’t start with the intention of doing business together. They started because of an interest in his story and his blog. I also want to encourage you to become a fan on Facebook because I’m in the process of putting together an all expenses paid trip to surf camp in Costa Rica contest for two bloggers.

We live in a world today where relationships are more important than anytime in history. We’re also fortunate that amazing and interesting people are accessible to us like never before. Stop trying to work the room when it comes to social media and you’ll realize quickly that what social media has done is given us access to a global network of inspiring people. Embrace them, connect with them, take an interest in them and you’ll find that social media will do far more for you than just grow your business.

As some of you may know already, a few days ago I launched my Relationship Marketing Ebook where I go into explicit detail about how I’ve built incredible relationships online. I’ve shared just a few of the amazing things that have happened to me because of relationship marketing:

• How another Blogger Bought me a Brand new Suit for Blogworld
• The Free Place to Live in Costa Rica because of a relationship with a reader
• How Relationship Marketing Can Drive High Quality Traffic to Your Blog and Much More

Relationships are the most valuable asset you can build because they extend beyond the life of your blog.

Editor’s Note: I was very lucky to get a review copy of Srini’s new ebook Relationship Marketing a couple of weeks ago. I loved it, and the reason I did is because while this is not at all a technical book it still gives you the insights that you can implement in a more human way. Great job Srini!

[The link for the Relationship Marketing ebook is an affiliate link]

Photo Credit: Guilherme & dmitri_66

This is a guest post by Srini Rao – Srini blogs at The Skool Of Life and is the Co-Founder of BlogcastFM, one of today’s most recognized Blogging podcasts where he interviews some of the biggest names in the blogosphere. If he’s not surfing you can find him hanging out onTwitter and Facebook.

Last April was a crazy month for me. I was in Antigua Guatemala for a week, came back to Los Angeles for 3 days, flew to Santiago Chile for 10 days (that’s a 12-hour flight in case you didn’t know), came back to Los Angeles again for a week to finish rushing to Miami for a couple of days.

But that wasn’t all, I did all this in the middle of clients projects and, except for Guatemala, the rest of the traveling was strictly business (when I say business that includes drinks and cigars in the middle… I didn’t say I was complaining). On top of that, my blog has been experiencing some serious issues that required some special attention. Just so you get an idea, every time I publish a post, the entire site goes down, sometimes it will disconnect from the database or it will go completely blank.

Long story short, I decided to let it go even tough I’m kind of paranoid about my blog. I don’t post tons of content every week but the one thing I have is consistency, so stepping out of it will obviously have some impact. The second half of April SocialMouths had very little content published, had technical issues and very little promotion. I was also very inactive on Twitter for about a week. I expected to hit a dip but then try to get back to usual.

The Numbers

The impact this inconsistency had in the numbers:

Blog Traffic

• It dropped 6,000 pageviews comparing with the previous month (March)
• Pages per Visit dropped from 1.50 to 1.39
• And Bounce Rate went up 10% (This is the only digit you hope will go down…)

Community Growth

Outside my blog, I focus on 2 networks: Twitter and my Facebook Page. Growth is pretty steady even tough is 100% organic. Twitter grows at about 100 Followers per week and the Fb Page is also around the same figure.

During the month of April that solid growth dropped 75%.

Another number that has no importance other than some level of social proof is the AdAge ranking, I think I went down about 20 positions. Again, not important but it helps you visualize the kind of impact you have.

Will People Notice?

I was certain about taking a hit in traffic, it was obvious. The other thing I was sure about was that people will not notice. How important can your blog be for people to say “Hey, where is my weekly dose of SocialMouths?”

But people do notice when you’re not there. They do.

On one hand, it felt great to realize that people will notice you, that they are aware of you and your content. On the other hand, realize that you have to be more responsible towards your brand, your audience DO pay attention.

In this case people are more important, numbers are just numbers, they can represent social proof or some meaningless traffic but your audience, tribe, community or whatever you like to call it will sense that inconsistency.

Now, imagine if you disappear for a few weeks or a couple of months. People say frequency builds traction and that gets you more traffic, I’m not sure that works in every case. I have proven to get more traffic publishing less but one thing I can tell you is that your audience gets used to that frequency, whatever it is and when you break it, your brand has an impact on that people.

Put A Strategy Together

In this case I made the decision to observe what the impact was, I was aware. But you can plan your absence to at least keep publishing content. You could schedule everything in WordPress or you could invite guests/contributors to cover your butt during that time. The technology is in place and a little planning will put you on auto-pilot as much as possible.

Business As Usual

So what happens to SocialMouths? Well, there was a lot of testing, backing up, code reviewing and cleaning up. We now live on a dedicated server at Hostway that costs $100/month. There is a new design (hope you like), nothing too crazy but took the opportunity to spike things up a notch. And hopefully the technical issues are behind us, in fact…

Comparing loading times with @HectorCuevas a few weeks ago I got my ass kicked, his site was 2.2x faster than mine. But as I walked away in embarrassment I promised to come back. So last night after conducting 4 runs, I’m happy to report my site was 45% faster than his…

Hey Hector, chew on that baby!

There are still a couple of things being tweaked on the site so excuse the dust for now but there is a lot of cool stuff in the oven too. There is more content this week, one post from Martina Iring and some stuff from me.

Thank you all for the patience and I hope you keep enjoying SocialMouths!

You probably already read a thousand posts about how to promote your blog.

Every blog about blogging has published one and, hell, I probably have written something about it too. And yet, how to put my blog on the map is one of the most frequent questions I get from clients and friends. I don’t blame you, blogging is one of the hottest marketing vehicles nowadays (I heard).

Commenting, guest posting, free gifts, you name it. If you ask me, all good advice. I’m not about to tell you not to do those things because I truly believe they help get some visibility back to your blog. Allow me a couple of minutes to make my point.

I’m writing this considering the following concept…

If you blog you are a publisher and you do need to put that content you create in front of an audience. Hopefully the right audience. The only way to do that is by promoting your blog. We have discussed the topic of self-promotion here and how you shouldn’t feel weird about it. Content is not king if nobody can find it.

What I Didn’t Do To Put SocialMouths On The Map (Or… A Little Confession)

Before I continue, I wanna say that I don’t think SocialMouths is the ultimate blog or even one of the most popular ones in the niche, I don’t even think it has reached its full potential for several reasons. As a matter of fact, I’m one of those guys that are always thinking the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But it does get 60k monthly pageviews, its email list gets about 10 new subscribers a day, Twitter followers are growing at about 100 per week and the Facebook Page grows at about the same rate. So will say that it is on the freakin’ map. =)

The following are some of the things I never did to promote the blog, some of them I still don’t do. After this I’ll tell you why, which is not relevant to my point…

Commenting on Other Blogs

I rarely, almost never comment on other blogs. I do have a list of must-read bloggers that I consume every week and I also take the time to discover new ones on a regular basis. I share a good amount of this content on Twitter and Facebook and sometimes I even say something to the author on Twitter but I almost never comment even if I love the post.

Guest Posting

I have never, not once, written a post for another blog. I have contributed with small pieces when they feature several bloggers and I have done a couple of interviews but never a guestpost of my own. Okay I have written a couple for my wife’s blog which is not at all related, but that’s it. I had a couple of offers in the past from well-known blogs but I had to declined.

The Social Media Elite

I don’t chase the so-called “social media elite” to see if an influencer retweets my crap or maybe I can establish a conversation with them. I don’t even read their blogs with the exception of CopyBlogger, which I happen to think kicks some serious ass and I have tons to learn from. An ocasional tweet from an influencer could give you a little spark in your traffic and that’s it.

I don’t think there is anything wrong if you wanna talk to the human being but I’m uncomfortable with the thought of “talking to the social media elite”.

Social Media Automation

I do not use any social media automation tools. I have used them to learn from them but it is not a practice of mine. I don’t use TwitterFeed to send my posts or other people’s posts, when you see me share a post from somebody else I’m actually there and I use Hootlet. I don’t even schedule tweets. I do tweet about my own posts 2 or 3 times in the day they go live but I do it manually.

A lot of people say scheduling tweets saves you time, no it doesn’t, you’re just allocating that time at another time.

SEO

I pay no attention to content optimization when I’m writing, if you see me doing a couple of things in a post I’m usually playing by ear, like making some important lines bold or writing a meta description behind the scenes.

I don’t do any keyword analysis before or after writing the post.

Free eBook

I really feel bad about this one but I’ve never written an eBook that I can give away for an email opt-in. As a matter of fact, and this is one of the biggest mistakes I made, I started building my email list a year after I launched the blog. This should be in place even before the launch. Even today, there is no shiny eBook at the top of my sidebar.

Video

I don’t do video because I’m troubled with my strong accent. Period. << Reminder: I should delete this line.

Pop-Ups

This is by choice, I have put it together for clients that ask for it and it’s funny but I don’t even mind when I go to my favorite blogs and I get a pop-up. I just don’t wanna have one at the moment even when other bloggers say they have increased their lists by 1,000%. Sorry!

I think you get the picture…

Why?

Glad you ask. Besides wanting to share those things with you, the reason is not the point of this post, actually, it’s pretty stupid and in most cases not valid. I don’t have enough time.

I’d love to guestpost or comment a lot and I know I will but the reality behind this blog is that I’m not a full-time blogger, I wanna get there but today I’m not. I have to run the behind-the-scenes of it which is providing services for my clients and I’m also a partner at a digital agency. Sometimes I barely have time to write a post and, on top of that, it takes me forever to write one…

Some of these things I didn’t do at the beginning out of ignorance and others are just choices I made. I’m not in any way suggesting that you do or don’t do any of these, in fact, some of them are really good advice and you should at least test them.

But like I said, that’s not the point.

But Francisco, What’s the Point?

The point is that you do not have to take all that advice you find online and make it yours, we all have different needs, different goals and different schedules. I always tell people to design a blogging strategy but, design your own. A realistic one.

Quick Story

I usually publish posts on Wednesday, I got this idea in my head that it’s the best day to do so but, last week I wasn’t ready. I had my post ready on Friday. So I decided to ask other bloggers on Twitter if they had other days or insights about the topic. To my surprise some of them said Tuesday, others said Thursday but most of them said they didn’t care. These are bloggers I respect, and they don’t care! They obviously have success posting whenever they want.

Erika Napoletano even told me that she gets an idea, writes the post right there and she publishes on the spot. Dude, this girl thinks of something and she starts throwing up beautiful words! I wish I had those mad skills.

Sorry. Got a little carried away… So what happened? Well, I went live on Friday and I didn’t get the response I usually get on Wednesday. From now on, I’ll do my best to post on WEDNESDAYS! That works for me.

I went to Google and turns out there are posts about when to publish, when to send an email campaign, when to tweet. That works for them but something completely different will work for you.

I know you’ve read hundreds of words on the topic of blog promotion in order to make that learning curve a little easier on yourself. Awesome. Now I want you to open your mind, forget all that and get ready to break all the rules. There is no one-size-fits-all here and there is no rule that says that if you don’t comment on other blogs you won’t make it.

There is one thing that got stuck with me a while back, it was @garyvee being bombarded with Twitter questions on a CNN interview, he answered “just follow your heart and you’ll be ok.”

Don’t think that if you don’t guest post or do video you won’t be able to put your blog on the map.

How About You?

Okay, I think I over shared here so… you go now and share what you don’t do to promote your own blog. Or, share your unique ideas on how to promote it.

I hope you all have a nice Wednesday, because this post is going out next Wednesday (you didn’t see that coming, did ‘ya?)

This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com

There are a lot of reasons why your blog might not be growing, but I don’t have enough time or space in this article to get into all of them.

What I am going to do is give you the one thing that changed it all for me. This idea, although simple in nature, is very powerful.

I don’t know where I first heard it, but I owe the success I’ve had with my blog to this one single sentence. OK. I’m done building anticipation; here it is. The best way to grow you blog is to leave it. Right about now you’re either having an “Aha” moment or you’re confused as hell.

Either way, let me explain why most people aren’t practicing this idea and how it helps you specifically.

You’re Programmed To Work On Your Blog

Yes. You are being programmed to keep your blog where it’s at right now. Most of what you see online about building a blog talks about on-page search engine optimization, writing better content, getting a nicer looking theme, and posting longer articles more frequently.

Here’s why doing this alone won’t grow your blog; everything I just mentioned happens ON your blog and no one sees it. I’m not implying that doing SEO, and writing better content aren’t important, but that advice alone gets you nowhere fast.

The best content is not going to get spread across the web if no one reads it. The nicest theme in the world is not gonna get compliments if no one sees it, and all your search engine optimization tricks is not going to start bringing in loads of free traffic if Google doesn’t see you as an authority yet.

Unfortunately, this is all we see online; with the exception of some really talented and experienced people that are putting out the right information. Francisco and I try our best to reverse this bad programming by giving people the advice they need to take their blogs to the next level.

They Won’t Find You Until You Find Them

You can’t grow your blog by tweaking your blog, the same way you can’t make new friends by staying home. If you want to grow your network of friends you have to get out there and mingle, right?. What’s the first place that popped into your head when you read that last line?

A lounge?

A bar?

your neighborhood starbucks?

maybe you thought about that supermarket around the corner from your place.

Whatever and wherever you were thinking about, I bet it wasn’t your house. New friends are made when you leave your home and socialize, and it works the same way online. The only thing that changes are the places you meet your potential audience.

Social media can take many different forms; blogs, video, podcasts, microblogging, forums and social bookmarketing are just a few of them. So how do you leverage these forms of social media to grow your blogging audience? Simple, spend more time on the most popular sites that represent these forms.

How To Reach An Entirely New Audience

You can leverage other people’s audience through guest blogging. You can get into video marketing on YouTube, and you can build a large following on Twitter that will follow you to your blog.

But the single greatest decision I’ve ever made to grow my blogging audience in the last 10 months of blogging was starting my business blogging podcast.

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 – and this is the most important of all.

iTunes has a thriving marketplace with over 100 million active users and growing. If you’ve been paying close attention to everything I’ve said in this article, you know why this is important. Getting your podcast in the iTunes marketplace allows you to get found by hundreds and even thousands of people.

These are people that you would’ve normally never reached if it wasn’t for your podcast. This entirely new audience is waiting for your advice. They’re waiting for your content and your value. The best (and smartest) thing you can do right now is to give it to them.

If the benefit of getting more traffic doesn’t excite you enough, maybe more subscribers and brand recognition will; and podcasting helps you do that, too.

On To You…

Are you leaving your blog or are you still in the tweaking phase? What forms of social media are you using right now? Have you considered adding a podcast to your blogging strategy? If so, I’m releasing Podcasting For Bloggers on March 1st that will teach you all about that.

See you in the comments section…

Disclaimer: some of the links included in this post are affiliate links.

This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas – Hector blogs at HectorJCuevas.com, where he writes about lessons learned through blogging, taking fearless action and successfully building a blogging audience. He is also the host of the weekly podcast Business Blogging Podcast. You can check out his latest project at PodcastingForBloggers.com – where he’s going to teach you how to start a podcast of your own.

This is a guest post by Jonathan Wondrusch from ByBloggers

I’ve known from the day I first hit “Publish” on a blog that I had a lot to learn, so I spend a lot of time looking up as a blogger. Besides sometimes being a pain in the neck, I end up asking questions such as: what separates the folks like of Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, Darren Rowse, and Chris Brogan from the rest of the mere mortals that aspire to achieve what they have?

What I’ve realized is that these supposed, “A-List Bloggers”, aren’t bloggers at all, they are really A-List business people. Sure, they run blogs. They write and produce incredible content constantly. That’s what we get to see on a day to day basis because we don’t get to peek behind the curtain of their operations.

If we had the opportunity to see what their operations really looked like, here’s what we would see:

• Smart, long-term strategies for products, content and community building.
• Coordinated efforts across all areas of the business and content creation, marketing, product development, networking and the rest.
• And chances are, you’d see a team of passionate people working together to turn their visions into reality through a business.

That’s a hell of a lot more going on than what I normally think of when I picture a blog in my mind. When we think of the A-Listers, we don’t often think of everything else that they are doing. Blogging is a single facet and an important one, no doubt ñ of the entire operation.

Get Paid to Do What You Love To Do

Before you sigh at the cliché of the thought of, “Get paid to do what you love” hear me out.

If you are serving an audience through your blog or social media, I’d put money on the fact that you do it day in and day out because you love it. The fact that you get to help people – to solve challenges by sharing your experience and know-how in the niche that you can’t stop thinking about – probably excites the hell out of you.

Why else would you consistently produce content about a topic that you weren’t passionate about?

Pause.

Let yourself Dream for a moment.

What if you could get paid to do that? Screw the “American Dream” ñ this is The Dream: supporting the life you want by doing the work you love, and maybe, from wherever you want to do it.

If you can find that in a job, you need to thank whatever lucky stars are in your life, because those opportunities are one in a million. The rest of us have to consciously create that dream for ourselves.

Making the Leap from Blog to Business

Every blogger that I have had the opportunity to connect with has an entrepreneurial drive. In some, it is less pronounced, and in others, it is bright and sizzling – but it is always there.

And we can use that drive to create whatever we dream our lives to be.

The entrepreneurial spirit is what inspires us to create something incredible, and then share it with an audience. The difference between a blog and a business is that a business leverages (yes, that does translate as “sells”) the best of those creations to enable you to serve your audience even more.

Bridging that gap is 100% mental. You have to realize that to sustain the work that you are passionate about doing and to bring more of that into your life, you need to build a business around your passion that serves others.a

Once you’ve cleared that hurdle, you can begin the process of launching products and offering services to build a business around. It doesn’t have to be business as usual though.

The Customer Love Factor

Three months ago, I stumbled upon a movement in it’s infancy: Customer Love. Inspired by a post by Naomi Dunford on IttyBiz, a few enthusiastic bloggers created a Challenge: spend 28 days loving and serving their customers, and then launch a product so that they can keep doing the work that they are inspired by.

The concept clicked with people.

Bloggers united and devoted themselves to delivering as much value to their potential customers as humanly possible in 28 days. Where business had previously been foreign and inhuman, the concept of focusing on loving your audience and your customers inspired people to take action that they had been holding off on for months (or years).

What could be better than doing what you love, surrounded by an astounding group of peers, serving people you cared about and at the end of it, getting paid to deliver value that people desired, so that you could keep doing it?

Customer Love was the spark that lit the fire and intensified the entrepreneurial drive within. It gave people the permission to really do what they loved doing and start to think about doing business in a way that was authentic and personally meaningful.

On Day 29 of the first challenge, the stage was set and only a few people launched.

Yet still passionate about serving their audiences, many of the participants came back for a second challenge ñ more interaction, more customer love, more personal growth and transformation.

Challenge #2, Day 29 rolled around, and again a surprisingly small number of the participants launched.

Hurdles & Missing Pieces

When I was invited to help co-lead the third Customer Love Challenge, I knew that there was so much potential in the concept of customer love.† Imagine ñ an ecosystem of artists and entrepreneurs that operate their businesses based on the principle of loving and serving their customers to the best of their abilities.

Call me a Utopian, but it’s hard not to make that leap when you see so many people excited about the movement.

And there’s another part to all of this: it works. There have been participants that did launch, and were able to make their mortgage payment. Other participants have completely shifted their online presence around the principle of customer love. One community at a time, it is changing lives.

My burning question became: how can I help more people take the steps to evolve from a blog into a thriving customer-love oriented entrepreneur?

What kept people from launching a product, even though they were so dedicated to loving their customers? It came down to a few extremely common factors:

• Fear of failure No one wants launch a product that flops or to fail publicly.
• Lack of know-how Many people don’t know where to start when creating a product.
• Fear of selling There are many prejudices and misconceptions regarding what online marketing and selling looks like.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew there was a way to genuinely help people.

The Customer Love Machine

I pitched an idea to LaVonne Ellis, my co-leader for the next Customer Love Challenge:

What if we can create a course for people that will teach them exactly how to create a product that their customers will love and that will allow them to take the first steps toward building an online business?

The idea stuck, and we began working in earnest. This week, to coincide with the beginning of the next Customer Love Challenge on February 1^st, LaVonne and I are launching The Customer Love Machine, a 29 day course that teaches everything you need to know to create and launch a product that your customers will love. It’s got:

• 29 Daily Emails filled with Product Creation guidance and tasks
• An exclusive membership forum where you can collaborate, get feedback, and network with other participants.
• Weekly Webinars where you get to ask questions, receive guidance and discuss the lessons of that week’s module.
• Weekly action worksheets that help you map out exactly what you need to do to move forward with your product creation and launch process
• Over 10 interviews with successful entrepreneurs that are living the lives they want, doing the work they love and loving their customers.
• And for a few more people (there are only 15 slots in the premium offering of the course, and they’re already selling pretty quick) one-on-one coaching with LaVonne and I to really kickstart the process.

And it comes with a pretty insane guarantee: it pays for itself. If you do the work, launch a product and the product doesn’t pay for the course, then we work with you one-on-one to improve your product, help you re-launch it, and if it still doesn’t pay for the course, then you get your money back. No risk, all reward.

LaVonne and I are passionate about this new business paradigm of building a business around loving your customers. We know that if you can build a business around doing what you love, you’re more than a few steps closer to living the life you want.

That process begins by having a product to launch, and we want to help you take that first step successfully.

Are you ready to take that first step? Then join the Customer Love Machine, and let us teach you the best way to do it.

What do you think?

What business would you build around loving your customers? If you haven’t already, what’s the hurdle that is keeping you from making the mental jump from blogger to entrepreneur?

* Disclaimer: Some of the links on this posts are affiliate links.

This is a guest post by Jonathan Wondrusch – Jonathan is the Head of Awesome at ByBloggers.net, author of Epic E-Book Creation and the brain and soul behind the ByBloggers Bootstrapper program. You can also find him hanging out on Twitter or Facebook.

Mike Stelzner and the Social Media Examiner team are at it again. Raising the bar yet one more time. 2010 was already super successful with two of the most recognized events of the year “Facebook Success Summit” and “Social Media Success Summit”, which were attended by more than 4,400 people.

But in 2011 SME is planning to start early with their new Blogging Success Summit opening on February 1st and running through the 22nd.

Look At All This Value

Here is some of the value delivered in the summit:

• Discover the best ways to market your business with a blog
• Find out how to build an engaging blog presence
• Discover innovative ways to generate quality leads and increase sales with your blog
• Learn how to drive traffic to your blog with Facebook and other social media platforms
• Discover how to grow a loyal blog readership
• See how successful businesses built their blogs
• Gain a leg up on your competitors

Interact live with blogging marketers from recognized businesses, including Ford, Sony, McDonald’s, Cisco, Southwest Airlines, and Procter & Gamble.

Give Me The Lineup

Obviously one of the reasons these events are so popular is the list of key individuals they bring in to present. The Blogging Success Summit is definitely not the exception, there is a list of 23 Blogging Pros, here are some of them:

• Brian Clark from CopyBlogger
• Darren Rowse from ProBlogger
• Mari Smith, author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Jay Baer, author of The Now Revolution and his blog Convince & Convert
• Chris Garret, co-author of the book ProBlogger
• Joe Pulizzi from Junta42
• Mike Stelzner from Social Media Examiner

And other like Denise Wakeman, Mike Volpe from HubSpot, David Siteman Garland, Richard Jalichandra and Scott Monty.

50% Discount to Act NOW!

Yep, right now and through mid January you can get in for only $297 (50% of the regular price). If you are considering attending the summit, this is the moment.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP TODAY!

You Want More?

You should also consider that

• No travel expenses – This is all happening in front of you. Yes, right there, your browser (This is why I love these events)
• Don’t Miss anything – One thing I hate about events is missing stuff. In this case you have access to all the material recorded.
• Free Gift – “Building Community with Facebook and Blogs” (valued at $59) is your when

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP TODAY!

Disclaimer: The links included in this post are affiliate links. If you sign up through them, I get a couple of bucks. Most likely to pay for caffeine or sushi. Thank you!