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This post is a definitive “how to” guide of direct response blogging.

It’s funny to me that no one I’ve seen who is well known as a “pro blogger” has written about blogging in the way I’m going to discuss here.

The Biggest Blogging Problem

Basically I think many people who have a blog struggle to make it work because they are not making their blog process “sequential”. They have too many actions available to the blog user, they offer the wrong action at the wrong time, and they “spend” their equity (which is their blog readers attention and willingness to take an action) on things that have a very minimal return.

In the past I have heavily criticized social media buttons, offering paid reviews (though I think buying them is a good idea), and “fancy” blogs that have a lot of bells and whistles. Clearly my blog is very simple and straight forward. And that is for a very good reason.

Before I get to that reason though, you should know I learned a lot about blogging from reading Eli’s Blue Hat SEO Blog.

You can see that I’ve borrowed a lot of my own blog’s “look and feel” from that site.

You should also realize that Eli is a great marketer - not just a great SEO. His blog is laid out the way it is for a very good reason. Do you think someone with Eli’s skills could not have a “fancier” blog with more “stuff”? Of course he could!

But he doesn’t because he is implementing a much more effective “direct response” blog - which is designed around how humans take actions when they: discover, like, want, and finally BUY something.

So before I go on I want to lay out the different (and specific) actions you can get your blog readers to take - these actions can be spent on what I call “currencies”.

Blogging “Currencies” - What You Need To Know About Them

Because you can spend actions on different things - not just “cash” - but other actions which can bring more traffic, more links, wider reach, higher authority, and so on.

In fact, until you have spent a lot of your blog readers actions on “currencies” OTHER then making cash, I think it’s a bad idea to attempt to make money from them.

This is because you want to reach a readership “critical mass” BEFORE you start monetizing. With a critical mass you will be able to monetize much more aggressively, with significantly higher conversion rates. This is because the more people who read and participate on your blog - the more “social proof” you have.

Social Proof is a type of blog currency you must be building at all times - though it is especially important to build your blog social proof as your NUMBER 1 priority when you first start your blog.

Social Proof does several great things simultaneously for your blog (and your future marketing):

1. It builds links. The more people who know about you, the more they will write about you (and hence link to you).
2. It creates topical conversations that are more relevant to large amounts of readers. The more readers you have the higher the likelihood that they will talk about what they are interested in - once you know their biggest area’s of interest you can become even more relevant then you already are. It’s an ongoing process that can never have too many readers involved.
3. It significantly increases the amount of weight your readers will give what you say. If after each post you have many comments thanking you for your great advice, then the more likely a first time reader is to perceive you as someone worth listening to.
4. It significantly increases the amount of bullshit your readers will put up with. If your social proof is big enough, and enough people see everything you say as GREAT then you can sell HARD to them - and they will forgive you for it even though they don’t like it. Selling hard without a large following is akin to being an arrogant jerk to the only beautiful woman in the room - you’ll only annoy her - as opposed to being an arrogant jerk in a room full of beautiful women - and you’re the only man. Feel the difference?
5. Social Proof is self building and self reinforcing. It’s a system that feeds back into itself if you nurture it, encourage it, and strategically grow it.

It’s important to realize that Social Proof doesn’t occur quickly, or easily.

Even with recommendations from people who already have large amounts of social proof in your market place - the market place will still be fairly skeptical of you and whatever you say.

Think about your assessment of me and my blog up to this point.

If you have decided that I’m knowledgeable and trustworthy at this point, ask yourself why that is. Is it because you heard from someone else that I was worth listening to? Or was it because you read one, two, three, or more of my posts and because they made internal sense to you, you decided I knew my subject matter rather well?

So, after telling you about all the great things Social Proof does I feel it prudent to also bring up Social Proof’s limitations, and make an important distinction.

Because Social Proof is not what it seems - indeed - there are two types of social proof. And they both do different things.

Everything I just talked about can be categorized as EXTERNAL social proof - social proof that is seen by others, as others are reacting to you and your blog (or business). That still leaves the next (and possibly more important) type of social proof.

IMPLICIT social proof.

This social proof is evident through a persons behavior - not through how other people react to the behavior - but purely the behavior as it is in a vacuum.

It is your perception of a persons behavior when you have no other gauge of what people think about that person available to you.

People like to call this “Confidence”, but confidence is a misnomer. It’s really social proof. But social proof expressed as an action taken by a person.

Let me illustrate this for you: when a man meets a group of women it would be advantageous for him to have a gorgeous woman on his arm (obviously) so that all the woman can see what type of women choose to be with him. However, if he then meets those women, and his BEHAVIOR does not fit congruently into the preconceived notions those women have about the type of man capable of getting a woman like that… then guess what?

The women will smell a rat.

“That must be his sister” they’ll say. Or maybe his hooker.

Either way, they won’t believe he is the type of man who could get a woman like that because after the initial EXTERNAL social proof, his IMPLICIT social proof (his behavior, communication skills) did not meet their EXPECTATIONS that would go along with what they’ve seen up till this point.

Make sense?

In the same way, your blog readers will not accept you as an expert (or authority) just on the “say so” of somebody else. Even if that person is an expert.

They also, will smell a rat.

This is where the power of being authentic comes into play.

Authenticity is a dangerous word because it’s not conventional authenticity in the context that I’m talking about here.

Because I’m definitely not suggesting you just “be yourself” - on your blog, in your marketing, or anywhere else for that matter.

You must CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE how to interact with your marketing at all times until you have internalized the principles into behavior that works without you having to think about it.

When I say “Be Authentic” I mean tell your unique story within the rules of Cialdini’s Principles.

For example:

• If you’re in the Poker Market and you don’t know much about poker, then tell a story like “Can I Make $10k Playing Free Roles In The Next Six Months?” - and report honestly about your losses and your lessons. Swear when you lose. Complain a little. Be HUMAN. Be as outrageous when you win as you would be with family members (don’t put that shit on, but be as out there as you would be around people you trust). That way, when people link to your blog and say how great it is, they will be met with something that fulfills their expectations.
• DON”T pretend to be an expert and rehash a whole bunch of advice that most of your readers have probably heard before. (Btw if you don’t understand the market, you don’t know what they do and don’t know - so everything you say will be incongruent with a REAL expert who would easily be able to pace their experiences)

The Setup I’ve Been Getting At

In reality telling a story is HARDER then putting bells and whistles on - it’s more involved, takes more skill, is less tangible, and is often invisible.

If you miss the mark with your story line - no one will know. You will simply be ignored.

However if you miss with a Bells and Whistles blog - you will still be ignored - but will be able to console yourself that at least you have a cool looking blog. The problem is that the cool looking blog SUPPRESSES the story you want to tell in the first place because it PREVENTS you from spending your attention/action currency economically and in the correct places.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that direct response “story” blogging is more powerful then “fancy” blogging at this point. So I’ll come back to the Currencies.

How To Maximize Blog Reader Action Economies

Remember if you’re getting your story right, you’re building equity in your readers.

They will become more willing to do things for you - the Cialdini principle of reciprocity comes into play.

The question is, what do you spend it on?

The first thing I would say is: try not to spend it on more then one thing at a time.

Direct response marketers have learned through bitter experience that a person faced with more then one choice is likely to do NOTHING AT ALL.

People like simple “Yes or No” internal questions. So if you’re leading them to complicated internal questions about what they should do next, they probably won’t doing anything, and WON’T subscribe to your feed, click and read another post, and so on.

However if the question process they ask themselves on your blog is “Does this headline make me curious?” - “Yes” - Click - “Does this next related post make me curious?” - “Yes” - Click… and after each story and post they have the option to Subscribe to RSS Feed - then you are much more likely to get them asking themselves an internal question about an action they can take on YOUR BLOG instead of about whether or not they feel like making a decision.

If you never get the reader past “Do I feel like thinking about making a decision?” then you lose an enormous action economy.

Give them LESS to do. And ask them to do it at the point they are MOST LIKELY to do it.

It sounds so obvious - but if that were the case I wouldn’t see so many blogs asking readers if the first thing they want to do is subscribe the blog RSS Feed.

By contrast here’s the process I use to get RSS subscriptions (and it’s worked rather well):

1. Write at least 10 high quality posts - you’ll probably need to write 50 posts to get 10 good ones.
2. Note which posts get the most links, most comments, most emails, and so on. Don’t go on stats alone - news type link bait-ish type posts will have great stats but may not be your best work - so use some intelligence as well.
3. Use the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin and DELETE the pre configured request for people to sign up for your RSS Feed. Instead list your 5 best posts of all time, and say that “these are the posts other readers recommend.”
4. Use the RSS Subscribe Remind plugin to ask the reader if they would like to subscribe to your feed at the BOTTOM of each post.

How To Categorize And Spend Your Currencies

Having a detailed plan of outcomes you want will help you execute this part of your plan - like the saying goes, “if you don’t know what your target is you’ll never end up hitting it.”

These are the types of non monetary equity (or currency) you can spend your blog reader actions on:

1. Links. Asking the reader to post about a post you’ve made. I do this all the time - I just don’t do it on my blog post itself. I email other people who own blogs and say “Hey, I love your blog and what you do and I’ve written a great post I think your readers would really like - I’d really appreciate it if you could mention my post on your blog, and in the future I’m happy to return the favor because I know you write quality stuff. If you’re not interested, no hard feelings I completely understand - thanks for taking the time to read my email and consider my offer. Cheers.”
2. Social Media Submits. Once again I go find top social media submitters and send them a very similar email to the one I send to other blog owners. Ask them for an action - they get to be an important news source if my post is good enough - and I get more readers. Everyone wins.
3. Bookmarks. From my experience (and observations) the only bookmarks I get in any worthwhile volume (and other big blogs that I’ve researched) are del.ico.us bookmarks. If you want to have a pretty social media button this is the only one I can really recommend. But because people who use del.ico.us often have the firefox plugin for it as well, it’s definitely NOT a must have.
4. Articles about your blog. I was astounded to discover that a guy who I have a TON of respect for (Wood Maxim - http://www.woodymaxim.com) had written an article about my blog and my mentality. I started looking into articles about other blogs and discovered that blog readers often write stories about blogs they really like. This type of social proof pre-sell on who you are and what you do is extremely powerful, as it grooms would-be-readers more effectively then anything YOU write ever could.
5. Resource Listings. The most successful single post I’ve made on this blog was the post about Blog Rush. And that’s because I emailed John Reese and asked him to use it however he wanted. He decided to link to it inside the Blog Rush members dashboard. By writing a post that was a great resource for a site like Blog Rush I positioned myself in a way that would attract a bunch more readers from a different source from the ones I already had - and gained a lot of traffic in the process - and a host of new subscribers and fans who email me stuff that makes my ego grow day by day.

A big SUPER COMMON mistake people make is trying to get their blog to AUTOMATICALLY achieve the things I’ve listed above - by giving their blog readers the OPTION to do this stuff on their own.

That approach just DOES NOT WORK!

YOU HAVE TO DO IT - and understand that your blog is a lot more like a passive fly trap then an active marketing strategy.

You are the active marketer - your blog is your passive “direct response” back up. That’s the reality even if you don’t want it to be.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

You May Also Like These Related Posts:

Irritated About Blog Monetization

Is This Misunderstood Thing Your Biggest Blogging Problem?

Cost Hence Commitment

Why You Should NEVER Offer Paid Reviews!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 12:37 am and is filed under Make Money Online Tip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.