Yesterday, Darren Rowse released his latest eBook. After receiving about the third email telling me to buy it with no further info than what the sales page has to offer, I decided to take one for the team. I was 100% sure it was a really good resource, but I wanted to see for myself. Here is your Blog Wise review.

Blog Wise is focused around a couple of our biggest complaints as bloggers – Time and Productivity. This is a collection of interviews with nine of the most well-known bloggers around right now. In those interviews they share how they have made their blogs the successes they are today by doing more with less.

Things I Loved:

These are great interviews with *real* people. They are talking about their personal connections with their blogs, what causes them the most stress, their biggest fears as bloggers, juggling online businesses, social media, relationships, kids, travel. Those are things every blogger can relate to.

At the end of each interview there are takeaways, such as the blogger’s favorite tools, tips and key talking points from the interview.

There are interviews where I found myself shaking my head in agreement thinking, “I do that.” There are sections where light bulbs went off, “That’s genius!” There were some things I thought, “That just wouldn’t work for me.” And, that’s okay. As some of the interviewees mention, you have to find your own road. No one but you knows where you want to go. Inevitably, you are responsible for finding the way there.

There is a bonus included with Blog Wise named Problem Solver. This is another 23 pages of actionable tips and advice for breaking through common blog busters; motivation, inspiration, focus, time, writer’s block and more.

Things to Know:

There is “team” talk in some parts of this book. Many of us aren’t to the point of having a team of paid blog helpers. However, these mentions aren’t the primary focus of the book. There are far more personal experiences and recommendations than simply outsourcing.

Most of these bloggers state in their interviews that they have worked harder on their blogs than they ever have on anything else. Look at these names. Do you think their blogs started out as they are today?

1. Darren Rowse: owner of Digital Photography School and ProBlogger
2. Amy Porterfield: author, prolific on Social media, contributor to numerous blogs, speaker, Mom and much more.
3. Brian Clark: Founder of CopyBlogger Media which includes CopyBlogger the blog, StudioPress Themes, Premise, Scribe and more.
4. Abby Larson: Founder of Style Me Pretty – a network of 12 sites
5. Matt Kepnes: Founder of Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site
6. Heather Armstrong: Founder of Dooce, author of numerous books
7. Jeff Goins: blogging at Goins Writer, writing a book, husband and…. he works a full-time job
8. Gretchen Rubin: Founder of the Happiness Project blog, author of 4 books, wife and mother of 2 daughters.
9. Leo Babauta: Founder of Zen Habits and numerous other projects, author, minimalist and father of 6 kids.

Why is this in the “Things to Know” section? Because this eBook is not a magic pill that you are going to buy and your blog will instantly transform into everything you have ever imagined. Blogging is hard work. If you aren’t willing to put in the work, this eBook is not for you.

Blog Wise is a resource for finding the inspiration and motivation to get, or keep, you going. The eBook ends with nine productivity steps, but the bulk is not a step-by-step action plan like 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. It is an opportunity to take a peek into many successful bloggers’ daily lives and pull out those methods that will work for you.

Big Takeaways for Me

Be conscious of how you are spending your time and how it makes you feel.

Busyness and productivity are two entirely different things.

Sometimes things are going to go all wrong. It happens. Sit down and work through it.

I think many of us find excuses for being unproductive. “Life is chaotic. I have so many more responsibilities working from home. Not one day goes as planned around here…so subpar is just going to have to be good enough.” Excuses build bridges to nowhere.

Blog Wise is currently 25% off for a limited time. You can purchase and download it right now for only $14.99. Get it. Read it. Come back here and tell me the number one thing or blogger you could relate to.

If you have been chomping at the bit for an all-in-one social sharing WordPress plugin that includes Pinterest, the latest Shareaholic update has it. One of the recent releases gave the illusion of offering Pinterest, but it certainly wasn’t the pretty “P” we have all come to recognize. Many of us couldn’t get that little green thing to show up anyway, so it really didn’t matter. But, it is finally here. Shareaholic with Pinterest.

This update has not come through my WordPress dashboard and I don’t see the plugin available in the plugin directory at this time. You will need to head over to the Shareaholic support forum thread and download the latest version from the URL given by the Shareaholic Agent. Delete the old version. Upload the latest update. Head over to your Shareaholic settings to choose your preferred sharing methods.

Want to see if it works? Here is a great infographic that you can Pin on how to use Pinterest to market your business. Take these ideas and modify them for your home business. One of the great things about this network is how creative businesses are becoming in order to adapt to this new marketing platform.

Pinterest Infographic, an Infographic by Linchpin SEO

How to do you use Pinterest?

Today’s post is going to go a little deeper into getting blog traffic. One great way to get new visitors to your site is by commenting on blogs in your niche. The likelihood of bringing those potential new readers back with you is increased by commenting on CommentLuv blogs.

If you are unfamiliar with CommentLuv, it is a WordPress plugin that promotes commenting. Readers that leave a comment will not only be able to leave their name and URL, the plugin will also pull in their latest post. A comment left on a CommentLuv blog will look like this:

There are many lists of these blogs floating around, but here is what I often find:

• The CommentLuv blogs listed are not in my niche.
• The sites have since been abandoned or aren’t up to my standards.

Many of these lists are focused solely on one purpose – building backlinks. They are created around PageRank and DoFollow status, not quality. We are far more interested in building relationships.

A great place to find blogs with CommentLuv installed is a site called DropMyLink.com. Search by a keyword relevant to your blog and Find CommentLuv Premium Blogs.

Once you hit Search, it will take you to the necessary Google search.

• Click More Search Tools in the sidebar. This will give you options for a timeframe.
• Click Past 24 hours or Past Week for the latest posts using these keywords.

These are fresh posts. They will be more apt to bring you traffic as the blogger’s visitors will likely still be visiting the post. For our purposes, it isn’t going to do us much good to comment on posts that are three years old. Those posts are likely no longer engaging many readers. We want them hot off the press while they are still being read and discussed.

Getting blog traffic often involves getting out there and bringing it back on your own. Don’t wait for people to come to you. Go find them. CommentLuv blogs can help us make that happen by featuring our latest post. Take advantage of that opportunity.

What is your favorite strategy for getting new blog traffic? 

I had a great time speaking at and attending the Social Online Conference over the weekend. There were so many positive and inspiring women and so little time. If you were an attendee, don’t forget to put those great tips and tools into action for your blog or business. Information is useless if you don’t use it.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to network with several new bloggers. Many of these great people are literally just that – new bloggers. How to increase blog traffic was a big concern. I want to spend a few days this week passing along some blogging tips to both the new and veteran bloggers. Hey. Even we forget the basics from time to time.

Increasing Blog Traffic by Taking Control

Refreshing your stats all day is not going to bring new readers to your blog. You need to get out there and make those connections. You can take control of your traffic in a number of ways:

• Commenting on Similar Blogs
• Guest Posting on Blogs in Your Niche
• Get Active on Social Networks and Relevant Forums

Build Trust to Increase Blog Traffic

Building trust with first-time visitors can increase blog traffic in a few ways. It will make these new readers feel comfortable enough to return in the future. It will also make them feel confident in sharing your content with their community.

Your tagline may be the first opportunity you have to connect with a new visitor and start building trust. This one sentence will let them know they are in the right place, and it may give them a little insight into the type of environment you foster on your blog.

The About Me page is often overlooked – sometimes not so unintentionally – but this is going to be one of the biggest opportunities you have to connect with potential readers and build trust. Visitors want to know who you are and why they should listen to you. If you are reluctant to share that information, they may feel you are intentionally keeping things under wraps. The absence of an About Me page may have the opposite effect. Rather than leaving that potential reader feeling neutral, they may feel you have something to hide.

Keep Those Readers Coming Back

Now that you went out there, brought those readers over to your blog, have them trusting your advice, make sure they return. Your readers may prefer to follow you in a number of ways:

• Social Networks
• RSS
• Email Newsletter

Don’t bury these links. The first place your new reader is likely to look for ways they can follow you will be above-the-fold. They will scroll back up and look in your sidebar or header for these opportunities. This is prime real estate. Advertisers know this as well. However, make sure you are promoting your blog or business above all others.

Now that these readers are following your blog and following you socially, you need to update regularly. Develop a content and marketing schedule to ensure you are updating both your blog and your social profiles on a consistent basis.

What is your favorite way to bring in new traffic?

Is your website traffic down recently? Did that happen around January 19? Your problem may be too many above-the-fold ads.

What Is Above-the-Fold?

This is what a visitor sees when they land on your site. No scrolling involved. They hit the page, and whatever they see at that very moment is above-the-fold. This likely includes your header, a navigation menu, but what about the actual content they came for? This is where Google has an issue. If your visitors have to scroll to get to your content, you may be penalized.

How Many Is Too Many?

You really didn’t think they would give you that much information, did you? As is always the case around here, we have to keep these algorithm changes cloaked in a bit of mystery. Matt Cutts has since said that the number of ads is not the issue. It does not matter if you have one massively enormous ad or 62. What matters is the amount of above-the-fold space that ad(s) is taking up. And who sees what is always a problem. Browser size varies from visitor to visitor.

If your website or blog traffic has dropped since January 19, you may already have a good indication that you have too many ads. Google does have a browser size tool that will let you see what the majority of your visitors see when they land on your site.

So You Have Too Many Ads, Now What?

The great thing about this little algorithm change is that it is a super quick fix for most webmasters (as long as prepaid, above-the-fold advertisers are not involved, of course). This is not a Panda-like change where years of behavior will need to be undone. Move your ads. As Google recrawls your site, your modifications will be taken into account. Google’s blog post states this may take several weeks depending on the size of your site and your current crawl rate.

Was your site penalized with this latest algorithm change? Have you proactively moved your top-of-the-page ads just in case?

A RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a XML-based format for web content. Most blog platforms have this built-in and begin creating a RSS feed with each new post. Website visitors can then subscribe to this feed to keep up-to-date on your latest news.

RSS feeds can be used in others ways as well. A webmaster can use the RSS feeds of others to provide up-to-the-minute news feeds for their readers. Many webmasters also use them to cross-promote personal properties in related niches.

A WordPress RSS widget is pre-installed on every self-hosted site on this platform. There is not much flexibility however.

If you are looking for customization, there is a better WordPress RSS plugin available. The Better RSS Widget is a free WordPress RSS feed plugin available in the WP directory. It provides the following features:

• Add title or post tags to the feed URL in the shortcode.
• Excerpt length can be set in both the widget and the shortcode.
• Page conditionals select whether or not to show on Home, Front, Single Post, Archive, Search, Category, Tag, and Date pages.
• Shortcode to allow embedding RSS feeds into posts and pages.
• Choose whether to cache the RSS feed and set the cache duration per feed, defaults to 3600 seconds (1 hour).
• Option to display the post time.
• Allows multiple widgets each with different settings.
• Adds the link target to both the RSS Title and all articles.
• Default settings screen allows you to decide what defaults will appear when adding a new widget.
• NoDoFollow or DoFollow option

Do you often find yourself staring at your computer screen trying to come up with new blog post ideas? I do. Far too often. Let me introduce you to our new friend, the long-tail keyword generator.

If you are a veteran blogger, you have likely seen Google Suggest recommended for finding long-tail keywords, digging down into your niche and brainstorming new topics. It’s a great tool. These suggestions are based on real searches after all. The problem is that you will be shown only a few suggestions at a time. Who has time for this?

Yes, there are a few tools out there that will search out keywords of three or more words. Many are a bit of an investment, and those that I have purchased are usually desktop software that are so clunky and slow that I can do it manually faster. And that still takes quite a bit of time.

Last week I came across Ubersuggest. This is Google Suggest on steroids. Even with entering a super broad term, Ubersuggest allows a user to drill down into a niche quickly. It will give the searcher a few popular searches to start with, but below it will start branching the original term out alphabetically.

Since I started with a one-word phrase, it isn’t finding many long-tail keywords yet. Long-tail generally refers to keywords of three or more words. But, Ubersuggest will let users dig further without having to start a new search. Each time you click on a keyword, this long-tail keyword generator will display new terms.

Sticking with the dog niche, dog health is a popular topic. Clicking “dog health” will branch the two-word phrase into three words. Clicking “dog health problems” will generate even longer tail keywords. Each click of “dog health problems” will generator another 10 keywords.

One drawback is that it doesn’t display search volume. However, clicking the “+” in front of the keywords you are interested in will add them to a list found towards the top of the page. From there, you can click Download which will allow you to cut and paste your selected keywords into Google Keyword Tool to get the search volume.

Ubersuggest is a great little tool for finding long-tail keywords and new blog post ideas. It is simple to use and it’s free.

Do you use a long-tail keyword generator?