A Prompt a Day
Ping-O-Matic is all about getting your latest content out into the world and driving more traffic to your blog. Sometimes, though, we need inspiration to write.
Our friends at The Daily Post published a free ebook of daily prompts: a gentle nudge to encourage a regular blogging habit. It’s available in four languages: English, French, Spanish, and Indonesian:
Download the version you need — it’s free!
Tips on Growth From a Book Blogger
Over on The Daily Post, we’ve published interviews with writers on growth and readership. Robert Bruce, the blogger behind the popular book site, 101 Books, shared bits of advice on building a loyal readership and successful niche blog. Here are snippets from his Q&A:
You’ve got over 26,000 followers and counting. What’s your secret?
There’s really no secret. It’s just steady, consistent posting over a long period of time. 101 Books is more than three years old now, and I’ve had more than 700 posts. When you post that often, people are bound to find you. Then, the key is to just write content that relates to them. Most people don’t care about what you had for breakfast, but if you can help them learn something new, then they’ll keep coming back.
What types of posts perform better?
The funny thing about my blog is that, even though it’s centered on the “101 Books” project, these book reviews don’t perform as well as the quirkier stuff. One of the most popular posts I’ve had was a post about my two-year-old son judging books by their covers. I put a couple of classic book covers in front of him and asked him what he thought they were about. His answers were hilarious. That post took about 15 minutes to put together, but because it was unique and fresh, it became a hit.
Obviously, list-style posts do well, and I probably tend to overuse them because of that. (I’m not BuzzFeed.) Also, for whatever reason, people gravitate to more negative-sounding titles, like “7 Words That Should Die A Horrible Death.”
There are many blogs about books on the web. Why do you think yours has been so successful?
I think people can easily get behind the idea of someone pursuing a crazy goal and the ups and downs that come with that.
There’s a lot of great book blogs out there, and a lot of bloggers who write incredibly detailed book reviews. My blog is a little different because I review books in small chunks; I take a small passage from a book and write about it. Or I write about some cool, unusual fact from the author’s background. So I think it stands out a bit in the book blogging world.
Plus, I think people can easily get behind the idea of someone pursuing a crazy goal and the ups and downs that come with that. It’s like a literary version of the Julie and Julia book (and movie). Not that I’m near as creative and successful as she was, but you get the point.
Do you have tips for someone who wants to focus their blog on books?
Sometimes you’ve just got to push the publish button because an almost-perfect blog post is better than no post at all.
Be honest. Don’t feel like you have to like a book or dislike a book because of what the critics say. On my blog, I’m very vocal of my dislike for Mrs. Dalloway, but it’s my honest opinion.
If you want to write a book blog with an academic voice, that’s great. But you’ll probably realize that not many people will read it. I try to write about literature in an approachable way, and that style involves forgetting what my English literature professor taught me.
I think it’s also important to forget about being perfect. Sometimes you’ve just got to push the publish button because an almost-perfect blog post is better than no post at all. Don’t pass over the great in search of the perfect.
Grow Your Traffic, Build Your Blog: A Free Ebook
Are you looking for advice on how to grow your audience and attract new readers? Do you want to capitalize on your social networks and build a strategic online presence? Are you interested in honing your personal brand?
For those of you interested in blog and website growth, the folks at The Daily Post published a free ebook: Grow Your Traffic, Build Your Blog.
While the ebook is targeted to people with blogs and websites hosted on WordPress.com, it’s packed with lots of general information on growth and traffic — and is a great resource for people writing and publishing on any kind of site.
You can download it from the ebook page in pdf, mobi, and epub formats.
Bits of Advice on Growth and Readership
In the past, we’ve shared quick optimization tips, sharing plugins, and other tools to help drive traffic to your site. Over on The Daily Post, we’ve published interviews with popular bloggers on growing your site and building your readership.
Here are snippets from a great Q&A with author Cristian Mihai.
What’s your secret to building such a large following?
The secret is to do something you’re passionate about, something you care deeply about. Because if you do so, odds are that someone else will relate to what you’re doing. If every post you write means something to you, it’ll undoubtedly mean something to other people, too.
Another key aspect is consistency. It’s not all about quantity — posting every day, for instance — but also about quality. Readers should know what to expect every time they get notified that you posted something new on your blog.
Blogging is not a numbers game. Yes, as you become more popular it’s easy to lose track of things; it becomes more and more difficult to realize that those numbers are actually people. Every like, comment, and follow is an action performed by another human being.
Statistics only offer you a cold perspective of what’s going on with your blog, but what matters more is the level of interaction that you manage with fellow bloggers. Also, if you think too much about followers and such, you’re going to try too hard. And you’re going to fail.
What types of posts perform better?
It’s almost impossible to determine why some posts perform better than others. Sometimes it’s ironic, because you worked really hard on a certain piece — did a lot of research, tried to make it all come together in the most attractive way possible — and you just don’t get people to care enough to leave a comment. Other times, the exact opposite happens.
Popularity simply means how many people relate to what you’re doing. Engagement means how many people care enough — whether they agree or disagree — to actually respond. The goal is to figure out what it is that makes people follow your blog. What type of posts do they enjoy reading most? That’s when your stats may prove useful. If you analyze the posts that perform better, you’ll see they’re often similar in theme, structure, and so on. That’s what readers want most.
Quick Tips: Optimize Titles and Permalinks
Ping-O-Matic is all about getting your new posts out into the world, ensuring your readers see your latest stuff, and driving more traffic to your site.
What else can you do to make sure users find your content? Here are two quick tips and resources:
Optimize your page titles
Take the steps to optimize your site for SEO, starting with page titles. Our friends at Code Poet recommend Joost de Valk’s WordPress SEO resource, particularly a section on optimizing your titles for SEO.
Optimize your site’s permalinks
Our site’s permalinks should be clear and concise, yet reveal what our content is about. How long (or short) should they be? Our permalinks are like street addresses for our site’s pages — it’s important to get these right so people — and bots! — don’t get lost and can navigate our site structure. Our Code Poet pals also suggest this digwp.com resource on optimizing WordPress permalinks.
Beyond Ping-O-Matic: Share & Get Social with Plugins
If you use Ping-O-Matic, you’re interested in sharing your stuff with the rest of the world and driving as much traffic to your site as possible.
You’ve pinged search engines, but what else can you do? If you’re all about sharing and traffic building, here’s a list of plugins to consider:
Jetpack by WordPress.com: An uber-plugin to supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users. Highlights for those interested in sharing and traffic-building:
- Email subscriptions for your blog’s posts and your post’s comments.
- Social networking enabled comment system.
- Integration with and automatic posting to your favorite social networks including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.
- Your readers can easily share your posts via email or their favorite social networks. (Previously provided by the Sharedaddy plugin.)
WordPress SEO by Yoast: A plugin that helps you write better content and also takes care of all the technical optimization. The plugin assists with page analysis, meta and link elements, XML Sitemaps, RSS optmization, social integration, and more.
Google Analytics for WordPress: Track your site easily with lots of metadata: views per author and category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews, and much more.
Wysija Newsletters: Spread the word about your site with newsletters! Here, you can create newsletters, post notifications, and autoresponders; as well as manage your subscribers.
BuddyPress: With this plugin, users can create profiles, post messages, connect with others in groups, and more. You can build a community for a company, school, sports team, or other niche community.
Sociable: A plugin for ratings systems, as well as sharing to numerous sites, including Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and Inbound.org.
Add Link to Facebook: Got a great Facebook following? Take advantage of this by adding links to posts or pages that are published to your Facebook wall.
To explore more plugins for your site, browse the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.
Engage: Make Your Online Home a Place for Conversation
Ping-O-Matic is all about getting your latest content out into the world and driving more traffic to your blog. And if you have a blog, chances are you want to be part of a larger community. You don’t just want to create and share your stuff — you want to connect with people who share your interests and passions in a meaningful way.
Publishing a post is just one step in blogging — getting people to engage with you is another. How do you start a conversation?
Here are some tips:
- End with a prompt. At the end of a post, encourage comments by asking a specific question or two, which is a better way of generating feedback than more general “Leave a comment” or “What do you think?” prompts. Your blog isn’t just a monologue — you want to open up the discussion to others.
- Reply to comments. Your job doesn’t end when you hit publish. When readers leave comments, keep the conversation going with a thoughtful reply.
- But don’t reply to every comment. If you receive many comments and reply to each with a generic one-liner (“Thanks!”), your comment thread won’t be interesting. Feel free to reply to first-time visitors to welcome them to your site, but in general, reply only if you have something substantial to add to the existing conversation.
- Moderate with care. It’s best not to encourage or allow nasty and abusive comments. They intimidate new readers, derail conversations, and distract you from good blogging. It’s your online home — don’t be afraid to give polite warnings to visitors who aren’t appropriate.
- Post commenting guidelines. If you find yourself doing a lot of policing, one way to be transparent about the type of comments you will and will not permit is to post simple guidelines. This can help you attract the kind of commenters you want, and deter unwanted behavior.
- Return the visit. Developing friendships with your readers is one of the best parts of blogging. If you have loyal commenters, make sure you visit and engage on their blogs, too. If they like what you post, chances are you’ll be into their stuff as well.
Ping-O-Matic: A Simple Way to Draw Traffic
With a WordPress blog, you have a variety of tools to not only create content, but to share it and get your newest, freshest stuff out to your audience quickly. Ping-O-Matic is a quick and simple way to let others know you’ve posted new content—and ultimately drive more traffic to your blog. For self-hosted WordPress blogs, this update service is a built-in feature; you can choose the update services you would like to “ping” by going to Settings > Writing in your dashboard.
Need a refresher or primer? As you fill in your blog details at Ping-O-Matic, you can opt to ping multiple ping servers at once, such as Weblogs.com, NewsGator, Blo.gs, and FeedBurner. When you ping these services, they automatically notify subscribers that new content is posted to your website or blog.
Essentially, Ping-O-Matic is a service that notifies the larger community—from search engines and blogging platforms to aggregators and social networks—of the newest, freshest content on the Internet. This, in turn, helps improve the speed at which search engines find and index your content.
That said, driving traffic to your blog isn’t simply about enabling this service and letting it do all the work for you. Remember that getting more traffic requires more effort—posting well-written, original content in particular.
To get you started, we want you to stir things up on your blog and write about a topic that’s up for debate. At The Daily Post, we post Mind the Gap prompts that ask readers what they think about controversial and divisive issues. So, we’re particularly interested in what you think about kids in adult-oriented places. Most of us can agree that it’s not a good idea to drag little Sally to a bar at 1AM, but what about a museum? A fancy restaurant?
Here are the essentials to consider when drafting this post:
- Read up on the existing discussion of this topic: Researching this topic (and any other subject you tackle) beforehand strengthens your own stance. And it also allows you to link to related posts that enhance your discussion, as well as engage with other bloggers who have weighed in on the topic. Both are good practices and additional ways to drive the right kind of traffic to your site.
- Pick a good, relevant title: Blog post titles are like newspaper headlines. They need to be short, snappy, and attention-grabbing. On social networks like Facebook and Twitter, your title is the primary (and may be the only) text that readers see before clicking to your post.
- Edit, proofread, and proofread some more: Take the time to develop your ideas. Readers are smart—they prefer to read posts that intrigue them, make them think and question, and rouse them up. If you pique their interest, they will comment on your post thoughtfully in return.
- Generate your own discussion: After presenting your thoughts on kids in adult-oriented places, ask questions or create your own poll at the end of your post to prompt your readers.
- Share your stuff on social networks: Use the sharing tools available to you to share this post across the Internet. Make it easy for others to spread the word.
You can apply the process above to other posts you write. Overall, it’s important to remember that original, relevant, and well-written content is key, and from there you can share it and use the tools and services available to you to draw traffic to your blog.
We look forward to providing more tips on this blog. Stay tuned!
Ping-o-matic has received a makeover!
Dear Ping-o-matic users, I’m Isaac from Automattic. It was a while since anyone wrote on this blog, and I thought I’d fill you in on what’s been going on lately.
I’ve just performed a redesign on the Ping-o-matic website. The new look was launched a few weeks ago, and is meant to increase the usability of the service and make it look a bit more modern and well fitted for the WordPress/Automattic family.
For newcomers, there’s now a welcome message on top of the front page which gives you a Ping-o-matic crash course. Below this, you’ll find the familiar pinging form where you supply your blog details and select the services you want to ping. The whole form has been redesigned to stand out more from the rest of the content on the page, making it easier to see how it all fits together. The vertical space for the services list has been compressed. This list took up a big chunk of the screen before, but has now been compressed to 4 columns which saves a lot of space. …And the action button is now bigger than ever, so you can’t possibly miss it!
As for the Stats page, it’s received a minor update. The graph has been modified to fit with the new color scheme of Ping-o-matic.
The spirit behind the redesign was to give Ping-o-matic a graphical profile on it’s own, with bold colors that makes the service memorable. I also wanted to make it better tied in to the WordPress/Automattic family’s graphical profile and user interface ideas. You’ll notice similar fonts, navigation solutions and a fancy looking footer, as well as a good deal of “under the hood” similarities. Among those are the uses of CSS3 rules like border-radius, which gives people browsing Ping-o-matic in modern browsers a richer (and rounder!) experience.
Bloglines Added
A few days ago we added Bloglines to our list of RPC ping receivers, worked out a few issues with them, and now they've announced their pinging service.
I'll be adding them to the web form soon. 🙂
Ping-O-Matic 