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Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
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As you may have noticed, I have breathed new life into this blog. This blog is mainly about Atheism, Science, Religious Comedy, and a number of other topics that interest me. In that order, but if you have anything that you would like me to discuss then feel free to speak up. :)
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Saturday, May 10, 2014
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
A list of 40 harmful effects of Christianity
A list of 40 harmful effects of Christianity:
1. The discouragement of rational, critical thought.
2. Vilification of homosexuality, resulting in discrimination, parents disowning their children, murder, and suicide.
3. Women treated like second-class citizens based on religious teachings.
4. Children growing up to hate and fear science and scientists, because science disproves their parents' religion - leading to appalling scientific illiteracy.
5. Tens of thousands tortured and killed as witches (a practice which still continues today).
6. People aren't making the most of this life because of their belief in an afterlife.
7. People dying because they believe their faith makes them immune to snake venom, or other lethal aspects of reality.
8. People dying - and letting their children die - because their religion forbids accepting medical help.
9. People choked, starved, poisoned, or beaten to death during exorcisms.
10. Genital mutilation of babies endorsed by religious texts.
11. Psychological and physiological conditions blamed on demons, preventing believers from seeking medical care for themselves and their children.
12. People disowning family members for leaving their religion.
13. Friendships and romances severed or never started over religious differences.
14. "Abstinence-only" sex education, resulting in five times the amount sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies - often leading to ill-fated "emergency" marriages.
15. Women having septic abortions—or being forced to have unwanted children they resent—because religious organizations have gotten laws passed making abortion illegal or inaccessible.
16. Censorship (often destructive) of speech, art, books, music, films, poetry, songs and, if possible, thought.
17. The demonization of other religions, e.g. Christianity demonizing Pagans ("They're devil-worshipers!")
18. Children spending the period of their lives when the brain is most receptive to learning new information reading, rereading, and even memorizing religious texts.
19. People who believe the world is about to end neglect their education, are not financially responsible, and in extreme cases take part in mass suicides.
20. Long-term environmental issues ignored because of beliefs that the rapture/apocalypse or something will happen soon, so they don't matter.
21. Wives told they will be tortured forever if they leave their abusive husbands (and vice versa).
22. Holy wars - followers of different faiths (or even the same faith) killing each other in the name of their (benevolent, loving and merciful) gods.
23. The destruction of great works of art considered to be pornographic/blasphemous, and the persecution of the artists.
24. Slavery condoned by religious texts.
25. Children traumatized by vivid stories of eternal burning and torture to ensure that they'll be too frightened to even question religion.
26. Terminal patients in constant agony who would end their lives if they didn't believe it would result in eternal torture.
27. School boards having to spend time and money and resources on the fight to have evolution taught in the schools.
28. Persecution of "heretics"/scientists, like Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake) and Galileo Galilei.
29. Blue laws forcing other businesses to stay closed or limit sales, while churches can generate more revenue.
30. Mayors, senators, and presidents voted into office not because they're right for the job, but because of their religious beliefs.
31. Abuse of power, authority and trust by religious leaders (for financial gain or sexual abuse of followers and even children).
32. People accepting visual and auditory hallucinations unquestioningly as divine, sometimes with fatal results.
33. Discrimination against atheists, such as laws stating they may not hold public office or testify in court, or in half a dozen countries around the world, laws requiring their execution
34. Missionaries destroying/converting smaller, "heathen" religions and cultures.
35. Hardship compounded by the guilt required to reconcile the idea of a fair god with reality ("why is God punishing me? What have I done wrong? Don't I have enough faith?").
36. Human achievements—from skillful surgery to to emergency landings—attributed to gods instead of to the people actually responsible.
37. Mother Teresa, prolonging the agony of terminal patients and denying them pain relief, so she can offer their suffering as a gift to her god.
38. Tens of billions annually in the US alone spent to build, maintain, and staff houses of worship.
39. Grief and horror caused by the belief that dead friends and family members are tortured as punishment for disbelief.
40. Natural disasters and other tragedies used to claim God is displeased and present demands to avoid similar events (it's like terrorism, but without having to plan or do anything).
Thanks to "copycatgod" on Reddit for this list.
What do you think of this? What are some other ways
Christianity has harmed people and societies?
1. The discouragement of rational, critical thought.
2. Vilification of homosexuality, resulting in discrimination, parents disowning their children, murder, and suicide.
3. Women treated like second-class citizens based on religious teachings.
4. Children growing up to hate and fear science and scientists, because science disproves their parents' religion - leading to appalling scientific illiteracy.
5. Tens of thousands tortured and killed as witches (a practice which still continues today).
6. People aren't making the most of this life because of their belief in an afterlife.
7. People dying because they believe their faith makes them immune to snake venom, or other lethal aspects of reality.
8. People dying - and letting their children die - because their religion forbids accepting medical help.
9. People choked, starved, poisoned, or beaten to death during exorcisms.
10. Genital mutilation of babies endorsed by religious texts.
11. Psychological and physiological conditions blamed on demons, preventing believers from seeking medical care for themselves and their children.
12. People disowning family members for leaving their religion.
13. Friendships and romances severed or never started over religious differences.
14. "Abstinence-only" sex education, resulting in five times the amount sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies - often leading to ill-fated "emergency" marriages.
15. Women having septic abortions—or being forced to have unwanted children they resent—because religious organizations have gotten laws passed making abortion illegal or inaccessible.
16. Censorship (often destructive) of speech, art, books, music, films, poetry, songs and, if possible, thought.
17. The demonization of other religions, e.g. Christianity demonizing Pagans ("They're devil-worshipers!")
18. Children spending the period of their lives when the brain is most receptive to learning new information reading, rereading, and even memorizing religious texts.
19. People who believe the world is about to end neglect their education, are not financially responsible, and in extreme cases take part in mass suicides.
20. Long-term environmental issues ignored because of beliefs that the rapture/apocalypse or something will happen soon, so they don't matter.
21. Wives told they will be tortured forever if they leave their abusive husbands (and vice versa).
22. Holy wars - followers of different faiths (or even the same faith) killing each other in the name of their (benevolent, loving and merciful) gods.
23. The destruction of great works of art considered to be pornographic/blasphemous, and the persecution of the artists.
24. Slavery condoned by religious texts.
25. Children traumatized by vivid stories of eternal burning and torture to ensure that they'll be too frightened to even question religion.
26. Terminal patients in constant agony who would end their lives if they didn't believe it would result in eternal torture.
27. School boards having to spend time and money and resources on the fight to have evolution taught in the schools.
28. Persecution of "heretics"/scientists, like Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake) and Galileo Galilei.
29. Blue laws forcing other businesses to stay closed or limit sales, while churches can generate more revenue.
30. Mayors, senators, and presidents voted into office not because they're right for the job, but because of their religious beliefs.
31. Abuse of power, authority and trust by religious leaders (for financial gain or sexual abuse of followers and even children).
32. People accepting visual and auditory hallucinations unquestioningly as divine, sometimes with fatal results.
33. Discrimination against atheists, such as laws stating they may not hold public office or testify in court, or in half a dozen countries around the world, laws requiring their execution
34. Missionaries destroying/converting smaller, "heathen" religions and cultures.
35. Hardship compounded by the guilt required to reconcile the idea of a fair god with reality ("why is God punishing me? What have I done wrong? Don't I have enough faith?").
36. Human achievements—from skillful surgery to to emergency landings—attributed to gods instead of to the people actually responsible.
37. Mother Teresa, prolonging the agony of terminal patients and denying them pain relief, so she can offer their suffering as a gift to her god.
38. Tens of billions annually in the US alone spent to build, maintain, and staff houses of worship.
39. Grief and horror caused by the belief that dead friends and family members are tortured as punishment for disbelief.
40. Natural disasters and other tragedies used to claim God is displeased and present demands to avoid similar events (it's like terrorism, but without having to plan or do anything).
Thanks to "copycatgod" on Reddit for this list.
What do you think of this? What are some other ways
Christianity has harmed people and societies?
The first Thursday of May has been designated by the United States Congress and approved by the President as the “National Day of Prayer.” If government only endorsed religion just one day a year and left us with a secular government the rest of the year that wouldn’t be so bad. Sadly that is not the case. Unfortunately, the “holiday” could be called the “Day When Government Unconstitutionally Endorses Christianity Even More Than They Usually Do.”
According to the National Day of Prayer website, their mission is to “mobilize prayer in America.” Interestingly enough, they don’t seem to stop when the day is over. The people who support this “holiday” treat every day as a National Day of Prayer.
The reality is that the first Thursday of May is just an excuse for religious elements in our government to openly ignore the principle of church/state separation. Even though many government officials have no problem violating church/state separation with regard to religious invocations at the beginning of legislative and judicial sessions, voting for religious language in our national motto and on our currency, recognizing religious holidays as national holidays, favored tax-exempt status for religious groups and churches, and allowing purely religious arguments to dictate many of our laws, they at least have the decency to play lip-service to the Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and state.
But on the National Day of Prayer, all that goes out the window. The President goes to a prayer breakfast where he elevates religion over non-religion in an official capacity, and legislatures around the nation actively endorse religious belief, alienating atheists and other secular-minded citizens.
I would almost give the National Day of Prayer a pass if the other 364 days a year religious believers weren't trying to use government to endorse their religious beliefs. As a result, this day just seems like it is an amplification of the already existing problem. It has become a day in which the lunatics are openly allowed to run the asylum.
The worst part is that we know prayer doesn't work, and in some cases prayer can even be dangerous. Instead of a day of prayer on steroids, we need 365 days of a secular government that does not endorse the use of prayer at all. What we really need is 365 days of reason.
Source: Staks Rosch Atheism Examiner
Stop Thanking God, and Thank Yourself!
Hello All
I am here to say that if you accomplish something great, or recover from some disease, or any number of difficult events in your life. Please stop thanking god. You did it all yourself. And you should be proud of yourself. Not God.
May I put it another way. Let's say that you are in a car with your best friend, and some drunk driver slams into you head on. You both go to the hospital, and you turn out okay, but your best friend was injured and is now paralysed from the neck down. Would you thank God? If you do then you are a egomaniac to think that you are better than your friend who will live a dismal life for the rest of his/her days.
Are you better than your friend? What have you done in your life that a God would save you over your friend. Let me say that if you "Thank God" that you were not harmed then you are committing the sin of Vanity. Never thank god for anything. Thank Yourself.
The Bible tells a different story. It almost seems as if the teachings of the bible want you to be a robot, or a mindless lump of flesh. For instance, I will give you one of the seven "Deadly" sins as examples.
Pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris (Greek), is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor." In Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In perhaps the best-known example, the story of Lucifer, pride (his desire to compete with God) was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents were forced to walk with stone slabs bearing down on their backs to induce feelings of humility.
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The Tower of Babel was viewed as a construct of pride for Dante
Heart Warming! Isn't it?
MOST atheistic song???
I was trying to find the MOST atheistic song out there and I kept coming back to this one. You tell me if you have a better, more fitting one.
I have also included a song that aptly describes my day to day feelings. If anyone can recognize then please comment or contact me some other way.
Thanks
American Atheist.
And here is how I feel everyday.
Everyone stay safe, and happy!
American Atheist!
I have also included a song that aptly describes my day to day feelings. If anyone can recognize then please comment or contact me some other way.
Thanks
American Atheist.
And here is how I feel everyday.
Everyone stay safe, and happy!
American Atheist!
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Ponca City church leader arrested on child pornography charges
Joel Bolay was arrested by the OSBI and Ponca City Police on
producing child pornography, distributing child pornography, and
lewd/indecent acts with a child under the age of 16.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation says a man they arrested Tuesday for producing and distributing child pornography is a volunteer leader at a local church.
David Bolay, 27, was arrested Tuesday at his home in the 3300 block of Kingston Road in Ponca City.
State officials say they received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on Friday that someone had distributed images of a naked prepubescent girl over the Internet. The OSBI and Ponca City Police began investigating to identify the child. Investigators worked through the weekend to identify the victim and the suspect.
On Monday, an arrest affidavit was issued for Bolay in Kay County. He was arrested and booked into the Kay County Jail on charges of producing child pornography, distributing child pornography, and lewd/indecent acts with a child under the age of 16.
The OSBI says Bolay was a volunteer youth leader at a church in Ponca City, but the victim is not a member of the church.
Godless Church Services for Atheists Go Global
Congregations
for atheists are springing up all over the planet. There’s already a
schism: celebrate life without a deity, or preach atheism. The
celebration is winning.
Plans
to set up almost 400 “atheist churches” on five continents are underway
after the extraordinary success of one small congregation that began
holding godless services just over a year ago.Word about the religion-free church spread like wildfire after the first Sunday Assembly was held in a deconsecrated church in Highbury, North London, in January 2013. By September, 100 congregations will be holding services from Singapore and South Africa to Sao Paulo and San Diego. A further 274 teams currently are working on plans to launch their own assemblies.
The church’s first General Assembly is being held this weekend with leaders from all over the world gathered in South London. In 150 years of the Anglican Church’s Lambeth Conference, it’s safe to say none has begun quite like this--with a raucous group karaoke rendition of “I’m So Excited,” but then Sunday Assembly is a very different kind of world religion. Their gatherings resemble traditional church services with singing, lessons and the chance to interact with members of the community. The only thing missing is God.
Sanderson Jones, the group’s leader and CEO, and a stand-up comedian by trade, says the young organization is replicating the traditional church structure as it expands. But he says the empire is also attempting to harness the organizational knowhow and social interaction of Grindr and the National Rifle Association.
“This is the first time we’re coming together like this,” he said. “We’ve had such a short time but I think we’re going to build something magnificent, something that’s going to last.”“We’re right on the buckle of the Bible Belt. … A lot of people tell me I’m going to Hell.”
The group’s rapid expansion has caught everyone by surprise. It is currently growing by 26 per cent each month but there is no end to Jones’ ambitions. “There are 1.1 billion non-religious people in the world,” he told The Daily Beast. “We want to have a godless congregation in every town, city and village that wants one.” In other words, as he told the gathering of leaders on the opening day of the conference: “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Jones is constantly exploring ways to create an equally efficient network with even bigger growth potential, but this weekend before he got down to all that, it was time to get down. The lyrics of the second track of Saturday’s musical opening, Pharrell Williams’ “Happy,” were projected on a big screen.
Clap along if you feel,
Like that’s what you wanna do.
They did. Two women from The Netherlands swayed from side-to-side; an enthusiastic chap from Newcastle, in the northeast of England, danced in front of his seat in the auditorium; and a broad-shouldered man with graying dreadlocks from Tennessee clapped in time with the music.
That man was Landry Butler, 46, a designer from Nashville, who became co-organizer of his local Sunday Assembly back in November. He was raised in a deeply Christian family, who often took him to three different church services every weekend. “I gave it up for Lent,” he said with a deep laugh. “We’re right on the buckle of the Bible Belt. More than 90 percent of people in Nashville are Christian and not everyone approves of what we’re doing. A lot of people tell me I’m going to Hell.”
“My mother didn’t want to talk about it until I appeared in the newspaper, and then she got interested,” said Butler. “She still says she’s praying for me, but that’s okay. We’re not trying to sell atheism - it’s not for me to get involved, no matter what stupid crap people believe.”
While Butler is setting up an atheist bulkhead in a deeply religious area, Jan Willem van der Straten is operating in a totally different environment. The 24-year-old is working to open the first Sunday Assembly in Amsterdam in September. He was brought up in a secular family, and his parents were stunned when he started taking an interest in religion. He still describes himself as a Christian.
“People used to say: ‘Ah, Willem, you can have a good beer with him, but he’s got this funny religion thing.’ For the first time this is a church that my friends might want to come to,” he said. “I don’t have the baggage of religion; I have the baggage of atheism.”
As the assemblies multiply and spread, the disparity between communities has thrown up a series of issues. One of the hot debates to be decided this weekend is whether to continue to use the word “godless.” For those in countries where religion has receded in recent generations it feels more natural to say Sunday Assembly is a "celebration of life." The American chapters argue that everyone would assume it was a religious group if you didn’t explicitly explain otherwise.
The continued prominence of Christian belief in the U.S. also affects the way atheism is seen. The church suffered its first schism earlier this year when New York organizers fell out with the founders over the strength of the anti-religious teaching. “They wanted to do a celebration of atheism not a celebration of life,” said van der Straten, who has been working at the London headquarters for the past three months.
The genius of Sunday Assembly is that it shares far more with an ordinary church service than it differs. There have been scores of atheist groups in the past, but few have attracted such warmth and affection.
“The thing that we’ve got is that we’re the only non-religious service that works. Rationality is part of it, but we also have the emotional connection,” Jones said. “We are speaking to the whole human.”
Sunday Assembly is already talking to an awful lot of humans. Jones wonders if they might manage to start 2015 congregations by 2015. “It might just be a little bit historical if it goes on like this. We could have a profound impact,” he said. “Throughout history there’s been these moments when an idea takes off: the Great Awakenings. We could suddenly create a great moment.”
American Atheist
Embrace of Atheism Put an Indonesian in Prison.
JAKARTA,
Indonesia — Growing up in a conservative Muslim household in rural West
Sumatra, Alexander Aan hid a dark secret beginning at age 9: He did not
believe in God. His feelings only hardened as he got older and he faked
his way through daily prayers, Islamic holidays and the fasting month
of Ramadan.
He
stopped praying in 2008, when he was 26, and he finally told his
parents and three younger siblings that he was an atheist — a rare
revelation in a country like Indonesia, the world’s most populous
Muslim-majority nation. They responded with disappointment and
expressions of hope that he would return to Islam.
But
Mr. Aan neither returned to Islam nor confined his secret to his
family, and he ended up in prison after running afoul of a 2008 law
restricting electronic communications. He had joined an atheist Facebook
group started by Indonesians living in the Netherlands, and in 2011 he
began posting commentaries outlining why he did not think God existed.
“When
I saw, with my own eyes, poor people, people on television caught up in
war, people who were hungry or ill, it made me uncomfortable,” Mr. Aan,
now 32, said in an interview. “What is the meaning of this? As a
Muslim, I had questioned God — what is the meaning of God?” He was
released on parole on Jan. 27 after serving more than 19 months on a
charge of inciting religious hatred.
Indonesia’s state ideology, Pancasila,
enshrines monotheism, and blasphemy is illegal. However, the
Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and speech, and the country
is 16 years into a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
But
Mr. Aan’s case is one of an increasing number of instances of
persecution connected to freedom of religion in Indonesia in recent
years. Although Indonesia has influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist
minorities, every year there have been hundreds of episodes, including
violent attacks, targeting religious minorities like Christians and
Shiite and Ahmadiyah Muslims, as well as dozens of arrests over
blasphemy against Islam. Numerous churches have been closed for lacking
proper permits.
According
to human rights organizations and various surveys, religious
intolerance is on the rise in Indonesia, at least partly because of the
growing influence of radical Islamic groups that use street protests and
acts of violence to support their aims. Some of these radical groups
demonstrated in Jakarta, the capital, before Mr. Aan’s trial in West
Sumatra in 2012.
“His
case very much ties in with that whole trend,” said Benedict Rogers,
the East Asia team leader for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human
rights organization founded in Britain. The group released a report
in February warning that religious intolerance in Indonesia was
spreading beyond traditionally conservative Muslim bases like West Java
Province.
“Of
course there would be religious people who would take offense about
someone publicly expressing this view” about atheism, Mr. Rogers said.
“But I think if it weren’t for this growing Islamism and extremism,
Alexander’s case probably wouldn’t have happened.”
Mr.
Aan’s troubles began in January 2012 when a mob in the Dharmasraya
district of West Sumatra showed up looking for him at a government
planning office where he worked as a data analyst.
“They wanted me to stop saying there is no God,” he said. “I told them that it was my right to express my beliefs.”
Police
officers were called to prevent any violence, and they instead escorted
Mr. Aan to the local police station, where he found himself being
interrogated and, within hours, charged with disseminating information
aimed at inciting religious hatred. The next day, he was charged with
blasphemy and inciting others to embrace atheism.
A
court in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra Province, threw out the
blasphemy and atheism charges, but it convicted Mr. Aan in June 2012 of
trying to incite religious hatred under the electronic information law
and sentenced him to two and a half years in prison.
“What I posted was for discussion, not to incite hatred,” he said in the interview.
Mr.
Aan’s case was among several controversial prosecutions over comments
made on the Internet in Indonesia, where Twitter and Facebook are
extremely popular.
A
homemaker was jailed and charged with defamation in 2009 after
complaining about what she said was an incorrect hospital diagnosis in a
private email that found its way online. In February, a Twitter user
was sentenced to a year’s probation for “libelous tweets” against a
former national lawmaker who had been convicted and sent to prison for
corruption.
“It’s
funny — we say we have freedom of expression, but it’s only up to a
certain point,” said Enda Nasution, an Indonesian blogger. “I think we
are absorbing all of these new norms, and with the Internet, we are
experimenting with what we can and can’t do. Atheism is a no-no, it
seems.”
Christian
groups and religious and human rights advocates say that rising
religious intolerance is also linked to the efforts to promote regional
autonomy in Indonesia in 1999 as part of the country’s transition to
democracy after three decades of highly centralized, authoritarian rule
under President Suharto.
More
than half of Indonesia’s 491 provincial districts have enacted various
bylaws inspired by Islamic law, or Shariah, in recent years.
“So
much power was given to local authorities, and in many cases — in
particular in regions where Muslim organizations dominated — there were
violations against religious freedom, and freedom, for example, for
someone to say they are an atheist,” said Theophilus Bela, secretary
general of the Indonesian Conference on Religions for Peace, a
nongovernmental organization focused on interfaith dialogue.
While
serving his prison sentence, Mr. Aan lay low, reading books and playing
chess, and he said that by the end of his time behind bars, he had gone
from being an outcast to having friends among his fellow inmates. Now,
he is preparing to apply to universities to pursue a master’s degree in
physics.
“My
case was a religious issue and a human rights issue, both because
Indonesia is a Muslim country and because it’s a developing country and
new democracy,” he said. “I was just searching for the truth, and
everything I felt, I expressed.”
These days, Mr. Aan said, he is still active on Facebook and Twitter, but he never mentions religion or his criminal case.
Young Atheist's Handbooks sent to secondary schools
Copies of Alom Shaha's 'Lessons for Living a Good Life Without God' donated by the British Humanist Association.
'Schools should be places where pupils are free to encounter the full
range of philosophies' … children at the Thomas Tallis secondary school.
Photograph: Garry Weaser for the Guardian.
After Michael Gove gave copies of the King James Bible to every
school in England, the British Humanist Association is this week sending
out copies of The Young Atheist's Handbook to secondary schools in England and Wales.
Subtitled Lessons for Living a Good Life Without God, the book is by science teacher Alom Shaha and tells of his upbringing in a Bangladeshi Muslim community in south-east London, "how he overcame his inner conflict surrounding his atheism, and the lessons he learnt in leading a good life, full of awe and wonder, based on humanist principles", said the Association.
The BHA raised more than £11,000 to send the book to schools through public donations from "thousands of people" at Justgiving, and hopes the initiative will give young people "access to resources that enable them to come to their own decisions about their values and beliefs".
A spokesperson for the BHA said it had received "loads of lovely responses", but that a couple of Catholic schools had said they would dispose of the book if the Association didn't provide a stamped addressed envelope to return it.
"Which we think is a shame, as we only sent the books to state schools and we think all such schools should want their young people to be exposed to a variety of views and to make their own minds up in a spirit of free inquiry," said Sara Passmore, the BHA's head of education.
The Association points out that the book was "well received" by RE Today – the magazine said that "this book will make you think and it's hard to give a greater compliment than that" – and says it "has been welcomed by RE teachers".
The scheme was suggested to the BHA by the science teacher Ian Horsewell, who got in touch with the Association after it helped launch the title. Horsewell has said that he was "amazed by the evocative prose in [Shaha's] book and the challenges he faced moving from nominal believer to outspoken freethinker".
"It made me realise how fortunate many of us are to be able to take for granted our own freedom to believe, or not, in the faith of our parents. It seemed to me that the very students who needed to read Alom's book would find it hard to buy for themselves, so instead I wondered if we could place a copy in every secondary school library," said Horsewell.
BHA chief executive Andrew Copson added that "in a large number of schools, pupils will have access to a number of religious perspectives on life's bigger questions, but not to what most non-religious people believe and how they find happiness and satisfaction in their daily lives".
"We believe schools should be places where pupils are free to encounter the full range of philosophies and world views available to them in modern Britain," said Copson.
But Trevor Cooling, professor of Christian education at Canterbury Christ Church University, told the Times Educational Supplement that "the humanists seem to be behaving a bit like a persecuted minority. Children should be exposed to many and varied ideas, but this book seems to be an overreaction."
"The evidence suggests that most children's understanding of science is already largely atheistic. The BHA itself says that most children have non-religious beliefs, so why do they feel it is so important to send out this book?" said Cooling. "The status of a handbook written by a science teacher from London cannot be compared with that of a sacred Christian text and it cannot in any way be said to be offering balance."
The Young Atheist's Handbook is published by Biteback Publishing. The BHA said the initiative was not a response to Gove's Bible mailout, which cost £370,000 in private money, rather that Horsewell had felt The Young Atheist's Handbook is "a book that all young people should have access to".
Subtitled Lessons for Living a Good Life Without God, the book is by science teacher Alom Shaha and tells of his upbringing in a Bangladeshi Muslim community in south-east London, "how he overcame his inner conflict surrounding his atheism, and the lessons he learnt in leading a good life, full of awe and wonder, based on humanist principles", said the Association.
The BHA raised more than £11,000 to send the book to schools through public donations from "thousands of people" at Justgiving, and hopes the initiative will give young people "access to resources that enable them to come to their own decisions about their values and beliefs".
A spokesperson for the BHA said it had received "loads of lovely responses", but that a couple of Catholic schools had said they would dispose of the book if the Association didn't provide a stamped addressed envelope to return it.
"Which we think is a shame, as we only sent the books to state schools and we think all such schools should want their young people to be exposed to a variety of views and to make their own minds up in a spirit of free inquiry," said Sara Passmore, the BHA's head of education.
The Association points out that the book was "well received" by RE Today – the magazine said that "this book will make you think and it's hard to give a greater compliment than that" – and says it "has been welcomed by RE teachers".
The scheme was suggested to the BHA by the science teacher Ian Horsewell, who got in touch with the Association after it helped launch the title. Horsewell has said that he was "amazed by the evocative prose in [Shaha's] book and the challenges he faced moving from nominal believer to outspoken freethinker".
"It made me realise how fortunate many of us are to be able to take for granted our own freedom to believe, or not, in the faith of our parents. It seemed to me that the very students who needed to read Alom's book would find it hard to buy for themselves, so instead I wondered if we could place a copy in every secondary school library," said Horsewell.
BHA chief executive Andrew Copson added that "in a large number of schools, pupils will have access to a number of religious perspectives on life's bigger questions, but not to what most non-religious people believe and how they find happiness and satisfaction in their daily lives".
"We believe schools should be places where pupils are free to encounter the full range of philosophies and world views available to them in modern Britain," said Copson.
But Trevor Cooling, professor of Christian education at Canterbury Christ Church University, told the Times Educational Supplement that "the humanists seem to be behaving a bit like a persecuted minority. Children should be exposed to many and varied ideas, but this book seems to be an overreaction."
"The evidence suggests that most children's understanding of science is already largely atheistic. The BHA itself says that most children have non-religious beliefs, so why do they feel it is so important to send out this book?" said Cooling. "The status of a handbook written by a science teacher from London cannot be compared with that of a sacred Christian text and it cannot in any way be said to be offering balance."
The Young Atheist's Handbook is published by Biteback Publishing. The BHA said the initiative was not a response to Gove's Bible mailout, which cost £370,000 in private money, rather that Horsewell had felt The Young Atheist's Handbook is "a book that all young people should have access to".
Get 5,000 Visitors to Your Next Blog Post… (WITHOUT Google)
So, you’ve created an EPIC blog post, hit the publish button, and
then waited for the traffic to start pouring in to see your brilliant
creation.
Unfortunately, all you heard were crickets. Of course your mom visited the site and said it was AMAZING. She’s your #1 fan :)
But she’s also the ONLY fan…
Because you’re missing a critical piece of the blogging puzzle.
It doesn’t matter how great your content is. Without actively promoting your content, your blog is STILL going to be a ghost town.
* Content is not king if nobody can see it. *
So you’ve got to flip the formula on it’s head…
Spend 20% of your time creating epic content. And spend 80% of your
time promoting that content.
I can hear the whiners now…. “But Kim, it took me an entire day to
create that blog post. I don’t have time to now go out and spend hours promoting it.”
If that’s the case – you probably don’t have time to build a successful online business and this article probably isn’t for you.
But… if you want to get 5,000 visitors to your next blog post… (WITHOUT Google) – then grab some coffee and let’s get ROCKIN :)
One of my favorite Twitter Tribes is called JustRetweet.com.
JustRetweet is a social sharing community that works together
to promote each others content.
Kind of like a ‘you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours.’
But… the cool part is that they have a ton of content that you’ll be proud to share with your tribe.
Plus, they’ve also added support for Facebook likes and Google
Plus One votes.
The site works on a credit based system. As you share other people’s content within the community you earn ‘credits’ that allow you to get shares and retweets on your own content.
You can also buy credits – which are extremely affordable as well.
This is a super simple strategy for getting your first 20-30 retweets
and Facebook likes. Which will immediately kick off your first bit
of momentum.
Two other great Twitter Tribes you can join are Triberr.com and ViralContentBuzz.com.
Additional Resources:
17 Twitter Marketing Tips from the Pros
The Ultimate Twitter Guide
List Building with Social Media
How I Got 50,000+ Twitter Followers
16 Ways to Get People to Read and Retweet Your Content
And… it’s a great tool for driving hundreds of visitors to your
latest blog post. Regardless of how many followers you have.
That’s the beauty of this particular strategy. All you need to do is setup a good profile on Google Plus. You can then leverage existing audiences on Google Plus via Communities.
Communities are the ‘secret sauce’ inside Google Plus.
These are basically large groups of people based around common interests. They’re kind of like mini-forums.
Plus, it’s one of my favorite ways to find cool and interesting conversations on Google Plus.
You can search for related communities here:
https://plus.google.com/communities
Once you join some related groups – you’ll find out there are
actually a LOT of interesting conversations going on within Google Plus.
In fact, it’s becoming one of my favorite social networks. Plus, it’s a LOT less crowded.
And it should DEFINITELY be part of your content promotion checklist.
First, start engaging with 5-10 related communities. By this I mean
joining in on the conversation. Adding value. Voting up OTHER people’s content.
Like any social media platform – you need to provide VALUE first.
Engage first.
Then, whenever you have a really good blog post that you’d like to
share – simply post a link to your favorite 5-10 related communities.
Then sit back and watch the traffic roll in :)
Additional Resources:
The Ultimate Google+ Marketing Guide
Google+ Communities: What Marketers Need to Know
How to Market Your Content on Google Plus
3 Ways to Boost Your Traffic with Google Plus
We personally use our subscriber list to generate 2,000+ visitors
PER email.
Imagine the power of being able to send that much traffic simply
by pushing the ‘SEND’ button.
Your business should be BUILT on email. Building a community of
raving fans who look forward to your next email.
This is THE #1 asset in your business.
And it allows you to build instant momentum for EVERY blog post.
Additional Resources:
Pat Flynn’s Guide to Email Marketing (Part 1)
Pat Flynn’s Guide to Email Marketing (Part 2)
DropDeadCopy.com – The BEST podcast online about email marketing.
Here’s one of my secret sources… If you want to promote your content
quickly WITHOUT all the elbow grease, then Facebook Sponsored Stories
are going to be your new love affair :)
This is one of the best ways to ‘seed’ your content and start gaining virality.
Promote your content using Facebook Sponsored stories in the News Feed.
This has become one of my favorite ways to generate highly targeted traffic on demand.
You simply post a new story on your fan page. (a.k.a your latest blog post)
And then you setup an ad to promote that post.
Using Facebook you can laser-target your audience by choosing exactly which Fan pages you want to target. So you simply choose 3-5 highly related fan pages that your post will be promoted to.
This is the ‘audience’ that will see your post.
But there’s one small tweak you need to make to get the best results. This is the ‘secret sauce’…
What I do is I first create my ad in the traditional Facebook Ad Manager. Then from there I go into what’s called the ‘Power Editor’ and customize the audience so that my story is ONLY shown in the News Feed.
This will give you MANY more visitors for a MUCH lower price.
Facebook is quickly becoming one of the best places to build and grow your business.
Additional Resources:
My Go-To Girl for ALL things Facebook: Amy Porterfield
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my secret spots for a quick
injection of traffic. These are social communities (kind of like Digg in
the old days) where you can share your content and vote / comment on
other people’s content as well.
Here are my Top Picks:
BlogEngage.com
BizSugar.com
Blokube.com
Inbound.org
Kingged.com
DoSplash.com
Other Niche Social Networks where you can Share Your Content…
Care2.com
PFBuzz.com (Personal Finance)
Yakezie
Dogster
Catster
Gentlemint.com – Pinterest for men
But keep in mind the key to getting the most benefit out of any community is getting involved. (a.k.a not being a douche who just comes and drops your link.)
These are amazing communities with awesome people that you can meet. Plus, it’s great for sourcing content that you can share within your social media profiles as well.
Provide massive value to the community – and it will deliver massive value back :)
Additional Resources:
The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing
AllTop.com is perfect for ANY blogger because they have sections for almost every topic under the sun.
So whether you blog about pets or parenting – this is a great passive
traffic pipeline you can tap into.
And the cool thing is they’re always looking for new blogs to publish.
Simply find a relevant category and submit your blog at:
http://alltop.com/submission/
Or – if you have a site related to affiliate marketing, SEO, or blogging then you can get hundreds of new weekly visitors from sites like BloggerScope.com, Affposts.com, AffBuzz.com, and AffDaily.com.
Scoop.it is my one-stop shop for getting fresh new traffic to EVERY blog post.
Scoop.it is content curation at it’s best. With thousands of different topics and curators who collect their favorite content from around the web.
And the best part is – you can ‘suggest’ your latest blog post with just a few clicks.
You’ll see a link at the top of each Scoop.it pages that allows you to submit a suggested link. It takes all of 10 seconds to suggest your link.
If the creator of that page decides to share your link, it gets published and any followers of that page also get notified (instant backlink and high-quality traffic).
I recommend submitting your content to at least 20 Scoop.it pages for each new blog post you publish.
Additional Resources:
How To Curate Content and Build Authority With Scoop.it
Forums are hot spots of conversation where like-minded people get
together to talk about their shared passions.
Making it also one of the best hot spots for generating laser-targeted traffic.
Create some good content, post it on a popular forum in your market and you can start generating traffic within 5 minutes of posting.
There is simply no other strategy out there that works this quickly,
this effectively, and completely for free.
Forum marketing is an unsung hero that can drive thousands of visitors per month in ANY market.
When I first got started online, this was the main strategy I used to start building my subscriber list.
When my dad started his first website I recommended that he do the same.
But he took it to an entirely new level.
Generating 14,000+ visitors per month in a tiny, weird little niche…
‘Tennessee Walking Horses’
He found what I like to call his ‘Big Kahuna’. One big forum with rapidly passionate members who LOVED his videos.
This was his main traffic source when he first got started.
Of course I encouraged him to also build a subscriber list so now
he OWNS the traffic and can funnel it at will whenever he sends out
an email. Forum traffic is like a honeypot. But you want to collect
as much as that honey as possible and store it up for the winter.
(a.k.a getting them on your subscriber list :)
So go to Google – find the most active forums within YOUR market, and start engaging with the community. Provide over-the-top value and link to your squeeze page or blog in your signature file.
I think you’ll be surprised at what a ‘traffic powerhouse’ this can be.
Plus, what’s nice about forum traffic is that it’s generally VERY high converting. The traffic is laser-targeted and converts quickly into subscribers AND sales.
We’ve seen a 10% conversion rate into sales from our forum traffic. (tracked using Adtrackz Gold)
Average conversion rate for a sales letter is 2%. Forums got us 10% because this is some of the most targeted traffic you can get.
It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Old-School is still ROCKIN!
If you have a valuable piece of content that you want shared around
the blogosphere, the very best thing you can do is to contact 100-200
related bloggers.
You can find related bloggers using sites like:
Technorati.com
WeFollow.com
Twellow.com
FindPeopleOnPlus.com
CircleCount.com
AllTop.com
Topsy.com
FanPageList.com
Create a list of 100 influencers within your market.
You can do this within Excel or using a more sophisticated program
like BuzzStream or GroupHigh.
After you’ve built your list you’ll need to send a personalized
message to each blogger.
This works out even better if you’ve included a link to their website
in the article itself.
Here’s a sample email…
Subject Line: I Love Pat Flynn! (and your latest podcast :)
Hey Pat!
Just wanted to send you a quick note to let you know
how much I enjoyed your latest podcast with Neil Patel.
ROCKIN!
Shared it on Facebook and encouraged all of my readers
to listen in as well.
Also wanted to let you know I’ve included SmartPassiveIncome.com
in our latest blog post at:
http://mytrafficmentor.com/23-steps-to-100000-visitors/
Would love to know what you think.
Thanks so much for all that you do!
Cheers,
American Atheist
Unfortunately, all you heard were crickets. Of course your mom visited the site and said it was AMAZING. She’s your #1 fan :)
But she’s also the ONLY fan…
Because you’re missing a critical piece of the blogging puzzle.
It doesn’t matter how great your content is. Without actively promoting your content, your blog is STILL going to be a ghost town.
* Content is not king if nobody can see it. *
So you’ve got to flip the formula on it’s head…
Spend 20% of your time creating epic content. And spend 80% of your
time promoting that content.
I can hear the whiners now…. “But Kim, it took me an entire day to
create that blog post. I don’t have time to now go out and spend hours promoting it.”
If that’s the case – you probably don’t have time to build a successful online business and this article probably isn’t for you.
But… if you want to get 5,000 visitors to your next blog post… (WITHOUT Google) – then grab some coffee and let’s get ROCKIN :)
1. Twitter Tribes.
One of the first things I like to do after I publish my content is to ‘seed’ it inside a variety of Twitter Tribes.One of my favorite Twitter Tribes is called JustRetweet.com.
JustRetweet is a social sharing community that works together
to promote each others content.
Kind of like a ‘you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours.’
But… the cool part is that they have a ton of content that you’ll be proud to share with your tribe.
Plus, they’ve also added support for Facebook likes and Google
Plus One votes.
The site works on a credit based system. As you share other people’s content within the community you earn ‘credits’ that allow you to get shares and retweets on your own content.
You can also buy credits – which are extremely affordable as well.
This is a super simple strategy for getting your first 20-30 retweets
and Facebook likes. Which will immediately kick off your first bit
of momentum.
Two other great Twitter Tribes you can join are Triberr.com and ViralContentBuzz.com.
Additional Resources:
17 Twitter Marketing Tips from the Pros
The Ultimate Twitter Guide
List Building with Social Media
How I Got 50,000+ Twitter Followers
16 Ways to Get People to Read and Retweet Your Content
2. Google Plus Communities
Google Plus is here to stay. After many attempts at building a social network to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter – it looks like Google has finally hit upon a winner.And… it’s a great tool for driving hundreds of visitors to your
latest blog post. Regardless of how many followers you have.
That’s the beauty of this particular strategy. All you need to do is setup a good profile on Google Plus. You can then leverage existing audiences on Google Plus via Communities.
Communities are the ‘secret sauce’ inside Google Plus.
Plus, it’s one of my favorite ways to find cool and interesting conversations on Google Plus.
You can search for related communities here:
https://plus.google.com/communities
Once you join some related groups – you’ll find out there are
actually a LOT of interesting conversations going on within Google Plus.
In fact, it’s becoming one of my favorite social networks. Plus, it’s a LOT less crowded.
And it should DEFINITELY be part of your content promotion checklist.
First, start engaging with 5-10 related communities. By this I mean
joining in on the conversation. Adding value. Voting up OTHER people’s content.
Like any social media platform – you need to provide VALUE first.
Engage first.
Then, whenever you have a really good blog post that you’d like to
share – simply post a link to your favorite 5-10 related communities.
Then sit back and watch the traffic roll in :)
Additional Resources:
The Ultimate Google+ Marketing Guide
Google+ Communities: What Marketers Need to Know
How to Market Your Content on Google Plus
3 Ways to Boost Your Traffic with Google Plus
3. Email Trumps All.
Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus can be very powerful tools for promoting your content – but your biggest media channel will ALWAYS be your email subscriber list.We personally use our subscriber list to generate 2,000+ visitors
PER email.
Imagine the power of being able to send that much traffic simply
by pushing the ‘SEND’ button.
Your business should be BUILT on email. Building a community of
raving fans who look forward to your next email.
This is THE #1 asset in your business.
And it allows you to build instant momentum for EVERY blog post.
Additional Resources:
Pat Flynn’s Guide to Email Marketing (Part 1)
Pat Flynn’s Guide to Email Marketing (Part 2)
DropDeadCopy.com – The BEST podcast online about email marketing.
4. Facebook Sponsored Stories (In the News Feed).
This is one of the best ways to ‘seed’ your content and start gaining virality.
Promote your content using Facebook Sponsored stories in the News Feed.
This has become one of my favorite ways to generate highly targeted traffic on demand.
You simply post a new story on your fan page. (a.k.a your latest blog post)
And then you setup an ad to promote that post.
Using Facebook you can laser-target your audience by choosing exactly which Fan pages you want to target. So you simply choose 3-5 highly related fan pages that your post will be promoted to.
This is the ‘audience’ that will see your post.
But there’s one small tweak you need to make to get the best results. This is the ‘secret sauce’…
What I do is I first create my ad in the traditional Facebook Ad Manager. Then from there I go into what’s called the ‘Power Editor’ and customize the audience so that my story is ONLY shown in the News Feed.
This will give you MANY more visitors for a MUCH lower price.
Facebook is quickly becoming one of the best places to build and grow your business.
Additional Resources:
My Go-To Girl for ALL things Facebook: Amy Porterfield
5. Content Syndication.
Here are my Top Picks:
BlogEngage.com
BizSugar.com
Blokube.com
Inbound.org
Kingged.com
DoSplash.com
Other Niche Social Networks where you can Share Your Content…
Care2.com
PFBuzz.com (Personal Finance)
Yakezie
Dogster
Catster
Gentlemint.com – Pinterest for men
But keep in mind the key to getting the most benefit out of any community is getting involved. (a.k.a not being a douche who just comes and drops your link.)
These are amazing communities with awesome people that you can meet. Plus, it’s great for sourcing content that you can share within your social media profiles as well.
Provide massive value to the community – and it will deliver massive value back :)
Additional Resources:
The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing
6. Content Aggregators.
If you’re publishing great content on a weekly basis – you can get hundreds of extra visitors from sites like AllTop.com, Affposts.com, AffBuzz.com, and AffDaily.com. These are content aggregators that pull in the best content from around the web.AllTop.com is perfect for ANY blogger because they have sections for almost every topic under the sun.
So whether you blog about pets or parenting – this is a great passive
traffic pipeline you can tap into.
And the cool thing is they’re always looking for new blogs to publish.
Simply find a relevant category and submit your blog at:
http://alltop.com/submission/
Or – if you have a site related to affiliate marketing, SEO, or blogging then you can get hundreds of new weekly visitors from sites like BloggerScope.com, Affposts.com, AffBuzz.com, and AffDaily.com.
7. Scoop.it
Scoop.it is content curation at it’s best. With thousands of different topics and curators who collect their favorite content from around the web.
And the best part is – you can ‘suggest’ your latest blog post with just a few clicks.
You’ll see a link at the top of each Scoop.it pages that allows you to submit a suggested link. It takes all of 10 seconds to suggest your link.
If the creator of that page decides to share your link, it gets published and any followers of that page also get notified (instant backlink and high-quality traffic).
I recommend submitting your content to at least 20 Scoop.it pages for each new blog post you publish.
Additional Resources:
How To Curate Content and Build Authority With Scoop.it
8. Forum Marketing. The unsung hero.
There are currently millions of conversations taking place around the web about parenting, photography, fitness, pet care, personal finance, traveling, and every other topic under the sun.Forums are hot spots of conversation where like-minded people get
together to talk about their shared passions.
Making it also one of the best hot spots for generating laser-targeted traffic.
Create some good content, post it on a popular forum in your market and you can start generating traffic within 5 minutes of posting.
There is simply no other strategy out there that works this quickly,
this effectively, and completely for free.
Forum marketing is an unsung hero that can drive thousands of visitors per month in ANY market.
When I first got started online, this was the main strategy I used to start building my subscriber list.
When my dad started his first website I recommended that he do the same.
But he took it to an entirely new level.
Generating 14,000+ visitors per month in a tiny, weird little niche…
‘Tennessee Walking Horses’
He found what I like to call his ‘Big Kahuna’. One big forum with rapidly passionate members who LOVED his videos.
This was his main traffic source when he first got started.
Of course I encouraged him to also build a subscriber list so now
he OWNS the traffic and can funnel it at will whenever he sends out
an email. Forum traffic is like a honeypot. But you want to collect
as much as that honey as possible and store it up for the winter.
(a.k.a getting them on your subscriber list :)
So go to Google – find the most active forums within YOUR market, and start engaging with the community. Provide over-the-top value and link to your squeeze page or blog in your signature file.
I think you’ll be surprised at what a ‘traffic powerhouse’ this can be.
Plus, what’s nice about forum traffic is that it’s generally VERY high converting. The traffic is laser-targeted and converts quickly into subscribers AND sales.
We’ve seen a 10% conversion rate into sales from our forum traffic. (tracked using Adtrackz Gold)
Average conversion rate for a sales letter is 2%. Forums got us 10% because this is some of the most targeted traffic you can get.
It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Old-School is still ROCKIN!
9. Blogger Outreach.
I’ve saved the best for last :)If you have a valuable piece of content that you want shared around
the blogosphere, the very best thing you can do is to contact 100-200
related bloggers.
You can find related bloggers using sites like:
Technorati.com
WeFollow.com
Twellow.com
FindPeopleOnPlus.com
CircleCount.com
AllTop.com
Topsy.com
FanPageList.com
Create a list of 100 influencers within your market.
You can do this within Excel or using a more sophisticated program
like BuzzStream or GroupHigh.
After you’ve built your list you’ll need to send a personalized
message to each blogger.
This works out even better if you’ve included a link to their website
in the article itself.
Here’s a sample email…
Subject Line: I Love Pat Flynn! (and your latest podcast :)
Hey Pat!
Just wanted to send you a quick note to let you know
how much I enjoyed your latest podcast with Neil Patel.
ROCKIN!
Shared it on Facebook and encouraged all of my readers
to listen in as well.
Also wanted to let you know I’ve included SmartPassiveIncome.com
in our latest blog post at:
http://mytrafficmentor.com/23-steps-to-100000-visitors/
Would love to know what you think.
Thanks so much for all that you do!
Cheers,
American Atheist
21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with
significant traffic. Over the years, we've grown the Moz blog to nearly a
million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I
launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how
quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. There's an art to
increasing a blog's traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on
some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing
what we've observed.
NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007. This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers - independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.
If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue
and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the
chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers.
Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible
decision (particularly if that's where you passion or your target
audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog's work
to spread like wildfire across the web.
Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don't a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like DoubleClick's Ad Planner:
Once you've determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers
gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others
have written and don't jump in the conversation until you've got a good
feel for what's appropriate and what's not. I've
written a post here about rules for comment marketing,
and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you'll be rewarded
with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you'll get a
quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to
associate with.
Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.
SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-friendly platform like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:
Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:
Here's a screenshot from the analytics of my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist:
As you can see, there's all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by
looking at where visits originate, analyzing how they were earned and
trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high
traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be
effective. In this example, it's pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter
are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but
they don't stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general
average of 4 minutes!).
Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you're succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don't ignore it, or you'll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential.
When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.
Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:
Clicking the "similar" link on any given image will show you other
images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new
sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link,
nicely. Much of the time, you'll not only get your link, but make a
valuable contact or new friend, too!
Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the "match types" options I've highlighted below:
When you choose "exact match" AdWords will show you only the quantity
of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match,
they'll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a
pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which
can get pretty darn broad). "Phrase match" will give you only those
phrases that include the word or words in your search - still fairly
wide-ranging, but between "exact" and "broad."
When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer's Block."
Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization.
Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.
Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.
These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subreddits and their search function can help with that.
Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find
guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of
those you're connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that
might be a good fit.
Google's Blog Search function and Google Reader's Search are also solid tools for discovery.
If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:
Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly Google Reader/Blog Search) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.
Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you
point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking
to internal pages or using a name that's clearly made for
keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts
before they begin.
The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:
Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, I answer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are "nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value). There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.
In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).
If you're using Wordpress, there's
some easy plugins for this, too.
Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.
I'm a big advocate of
Lanyrd, an event directory service
that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts
will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally
useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are
worth attending (and who you can carpool with).
The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).
I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share
online. If I was really sharp, I'd do link tracking using a service like
Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I
suspect it's not high, but it's also not 0.
You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson's AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.
If you're seeking sources to find these "popular conversations," Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.
That's a screenshot of the
AdAge Power 150, a list that's
been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an
endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For
example, why is SEOmoz's Twitter score only a "13" when we have so many
more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher
scores? Who knows. But I know it's good for AdAge. :-)
Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.
Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!
Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.
If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.
I'd also strongly recommend leveraging Google's relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into Wordpress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google's trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author - a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.
OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use - if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.
There are other good tools for link research as well, including
Blekko, Majestic, Ahrefs and, I've heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.
Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.
The above image comes from
Everywhereist's analytics.
Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After
all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking
photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and
grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don't ask, it's a
running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog
began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got
some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go "hot" in the
social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big
press from Time's Best Blogs of 2011.
I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.
When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.
Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!
NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007. This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers - independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.
#1 - Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share
When strategizing about who you're writing for, consider that audience's ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord ( like this one), beautiful videos that tell a story (like this one) and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions (like this one) are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively).
#2 - Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers
Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determining where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI.Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don't a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like DoubleClick's Ad Planner:
#3 - Make Your Blog's Content SEO-Friendly
Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I've written before, " SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing." In 2011, Google received over 3 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing:Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.
SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-friendly platform like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:
- Blogger's Guide to SEO (from SEOBook)
- The Beginner's Guide to SEO (from Moz)
- Wordpress Blog SEO Tutorial (from Yoast)
- SEO for Travel Bloggers (but applicable to nearly any type of blog - from Moz)
#4 - Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections
Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Google+ has nearly 100 million. LinkedIn is over 130 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the "content distributors" description above, meaning they're likely to help spread the word about your blog.Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:
- If you haven't already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitter and a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
- Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent - use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there's a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
- Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services like FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this:
- Start sharing content - your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who've impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go "viral" and earn sharing from others.
- Interact with the community - use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing
#5 - Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results
At the very least, I'd recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits originate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over. If you want to get more advanced, check out this post on 18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing.Here's a screenshot from the analytics of my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist:
Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you're succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don't ignore it, or you'll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential.
#6 - Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)
If you're someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.
Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:
#7 - Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts
Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It's hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there's a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Tool.Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the "match types" options I've highlighted below:
When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer's Block."
Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization.
#8 - Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others
The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When you reference your own material in-context and in a way that's not manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category, post or page every time a phrase is used - this is almost certainly discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.
#9 - Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon
The major social networking sites aren't alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like Reddit (which now receives more than 2 billion! with a "B"! views each month), StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Care2 (for nonprofits and causes), GoodReads (books), Ravelry (knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list here).Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.
These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subreddits and their search function can help with that.
#10 - Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)
When you're first starting out, it can be tough to convince other bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don't have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships - find the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to return the favor.Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:
- Find sites that have a relevant audience - it sucks to pour your time into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren't interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments they leave and you'll earn a much higher return with each post.
- Don't be discouraged if you ask and get a "no" or a "no response." As your profile grows in your niche, you'll have more opportunities, requests and an easier time getting a "yes," so don't take early rejections too hard and watch out - in many marketing practices, persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their inbox).
- When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing all set to publish that's never been shared before and give them the ability to read it. These requests get far more "yes" replies than asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you'll contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title + snippet.
- Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that highlight the value of posting on your site - traffic data, social followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasive to a skeptical writer.
#11 - Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site
The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can't be overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is how it "feels" from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default templates or have horrifying, 1990's design will receive less trust, a lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower likelihood of being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates quality work will experience the reverse - and reap amazing benefits.If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:
- Dribbble - great for finding high quality professional designers
- Forrst - another excellent design profile community
- Behance - featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
- Sortfolio - an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
- 99 Designs - a controversial site that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for budget-conscious projects)
#12 - Interact on Other Blogs' Comments
As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger sit up and think "man, I wish that person commented here more often!" you can achieve great things for your own site's visibility through participation in the comments of other blogs.Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly Google Reader/Blog Search) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.
#13 - Participate in Q+A Sites
Every day, thousands of people ask questions on the web. Popular services like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, Quora, StackExchange, Formspring and more serve those hungry for information whose web searches couldn't track down the responses they needed.The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:
- The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
- The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for search queries, being featured on the site or getting social traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around the traffic of a question
- The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who's curious and drops by
Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, I answer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are "nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value). There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.
#14 - Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)
If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks "I should come back here and check this out again when they have more posts," chances are pretty high (I'd estimate 90%+) that you'll never see them again. That sucks! It shouldn't be the case, but we have busy lives and the Internet's filled with animated gifs of cats.In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).
Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.
#15 - Attend and Host Events
Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else.
The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).
#16 - Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog
As a blogger, you're likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you're not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opportunity in a conversation that's relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you've written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions - if I receive the same question many times, I'll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.
#17 - Survey Your Readers
Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there's a subject or discussion that's particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that's totally free, but not yet great in my view.#18 - Add Value to a Popular Conversation
Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few "big sites" where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process.You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson's AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.
If you're seeking sources to find these "popular conversations," Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.
#19 - Aggregate the Best of Your Niche
Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior - but, it's amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of "the best X" or "the top X" in their field, most everyone who's ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here's an example from the world of marketing itself:
Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.
Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!
#20 - Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog
Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.
If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.
I'd also strongly recommend leveraging Google's relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into Wordpress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google's trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author - a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.
#21 - Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab 'em!)
If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there's a decent chance that they'll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you'll need to use some tools.OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use - if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.
Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.
Bonus #22 - Be Consistent and Don't Give Up
If there's one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it's this:
I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.
When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.
Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!
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