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The sales & marketing is probably one of the most active department of your organization. This is a fact because the road to monetize your blog inevitably passes by traffic generation. No traffic means no money! This said, we could write an entire thesis on traffic generation, but this is not the goal of this post. I would rather say that the goal is more to shortly explain the importance of the sales & marketing department and determine the most significant activities related to it.

The sales and the marketing are generally in the same department because they have to work in synergy. Marketing is preparing the soil and sow the seeds while sales is taking care of it with sun and water, and finally harvest the fruits! Of course, the metaphor is quite simplistic, but I guess it gives a good idea of how their synergy is strategic. As a blogger, you’ll need to sow the seeds by promoting your sites in different way and using different services. Then you’ll need to close the sale and finally harvest the fruits!

If we pose the hypothesis that your product is your blog, you’ll need to sale your content. Hopefully, your content will be valuable and original. Then, the overall activity with your audience and the entire community will determine how much your blog worth. This means that the more your blog is perceived as an authority by your audience, the more your blog will be profitable. The perception has been discuss by Skellie in her posts The 5 Barriers to Success Series - Part 4: Perception is Everything. Among the aspects that influence the perception, there are 2 elements that could be qualified as objective: the subscriber count and the comments count. These elements are facts and unarguable. There is no interpretation possible; they are numbers. In terms of measurement, these elements are the best indicators. How is your sales & marketing performance?

I won’t go too far in this post, because it won’t serve the proper goal. So, let’s determine the main activities that will be under your sales & marketing responsibility.

1. Determine the targeted audience. This is an important activity because it gives an image of your audience. It will determine your overall strategy from your content to your marketing channels. Writing content for a vast audience won’t be efficient. If you narrow properly, you will increase you chances of success. Note that a great tool to help you to narrow is to use poll. If you choose your question strategically, you’ll get more information about you audience.

2. Determine and analyze the competition. You will need to know your competitors to create an efficient strategy. You will agree with me that knowing your competitors is very valuable. The idea behind this information is to create innovative and original strategy. The real questions are: how could I stand out from the crowd? What is my distinctive competence?

3. Create the brand. This activity includes both the cosmetic image with the logo design, the colors, the letters, the name, the tagline and the rational image like the reputation and the authority. Branding takes times; the rational image cannot be established instantly.

4. Create the promotional materials. For example, you will probably need some 125×125 banners to advertise on other blogs or to participate to the Entrecard service. The promotional material will influence the branding activities and the results. What kind of image do you want to project? Poor? Professional? Something in between? Of course this will be influence by the marketing budget.

5. Analyze your niche development. How is your niche? Well developed? Inexistent? This kind of information will definitively influence your marketing strategy. Take few minutes to read this article from Skellie. It will help you to understand the difference from a rich soil and no soil at all!

6. Find the best channels to reach the targeted audience. We already discussed about who is the targeted audience. This activity will determine where to concentrate your promotional activity. Among the well known channel we count the social media, the well established blogs in your niche, the alternative communities like forums and discussion groups.

7. Create marketing campaigns. The magic word here is campaigns. I focus on that term because there is an important concept behind it. A campaign could be seen as a specific promotional initiative that could be identify easily. Why is it so important? Because it gives the opportunity to measure the efficiency of your promotional activities. If you know that your AdSense campaign wasn’t efficient, you’ll probably take the decision to try something else. But at least you need to know how efficient it was!

8. Create the link building strategy. Link building is very important because it gives a measurement of your authority. For example, each link could be seen as a vote for your blog. However, you should be too anxious about that, because at the end, good content always get the attention it deserves. However, creating a strategy around link building shouldn’t be under estimate especially if your blog is recent.

9. Maintain a good relationship with your audience. Good relationships sometimes results in business partners, fans and even friends. I won’t say too much how important it is! Building relationships based on trust and respect is a must!

10. Keep your audience inform. Keeping your audience inform about your plans is giving them back the trust they gave you. It’s calling them partners instead of readers!

In summary, the sales & marketing department has a critical role for the success of your organization. The principle is simple: no traffic, no profitability! The sales & marketing has plenty of potential activity and this is a world in itself. Link building, social media, brand exposure are marketing concepts that should be evaluate in the marketing strategy. The actual consumer is looking for product review, product comparison, product rating and market communities to get valuable information from real users. He wants to be in the good position to take the best buying decision. Maybe you can take that into account in your marketing strategy.

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The importance of human resources has been demonstrated over the years. In fact, lots of well established organizations want to be an “employer of choice”. Just to illustrate that, take a look at the Fortune Top 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2008. If you take a look at these companies, you’ll see Google at the top of the list. According to Google, their strategy is simple: “we hire great people and encourage them to make their dreams a reality.” Google knows that human resources are critical! An organization’s culture is the reflection of its staff; and the culture may be determinant for the success of a company.

The human resources determine the organization knowledge, competences and culture which results on an organization identity. This is the main reason why companies like Google and Microsoft want to hire the best people; the human resources strategy MUST be in line with the overall organization strategy!

Considering your blog as an organization, the human resources won’t be less important. In fact, most of the blogs have unique owner that act as the writer, the marketer and the accountant. The human resources are limited to a single person, which put more pressure on that person. Big organizations are supported by many people that could count on each other which is not the case for the single blogger!

Let take a look at the human resources concerns:

1. Knowledge and Competences. Obviously, your knowledge and competences will influence want you write and your time consumption. In fact, if you are new with blogging, you’ll probably take more time to read other blogs and analyze how it works. You level of knowledge and competences will determine your starting point with your blog.

2. Relationships. Blogging is all about relationships! For me, building relationships is the top reason for blogging. Creating good relationship will make your knowledge, your competence and your visibility to grow. Everyone needs to be challenged! So don’t hesitate to contact me via my contact page. You can, also, join my community on MyBlogLog or StumbleUpon.

3. Entrepreneurship. For sure, your entrepreneurship will influence your mindset and your behavior. If you are a natural entrepreneur, it will be easier for you to reach people and do the good action on the best timing. Entrepreneurship is also something that could be developed across the different experiences you will live. So be patient and persevere!

4. Motivation and Passion. You motivation to reach your goals and you passion for blogging and relationships are golden keys for your success. Motivation and passion will influence your writing style and may be an element to engage your audience. Try to find you personal way to stay motivated and make your passion contagious!

5. Dreams. Everyone has dreams and they are generally one of the most powerful factors to keep you motivated. Visualize your dreams every day and make them visible everywhere around you: on your computer wallpaper, on your refrigerator, on your wall, on your car, etc. The closer you are on a daily basis, the more chances you have to realize them!

6. Stress Management. Whatever you do on your life, there is always a moment where you will feel more stress. In fact, stress is part of our life and is omnipresent in our actual society. There is lots of techniques to reduce your stress but this is not the goal of this post. I’ll redirect you on the Zen Habits Blog to get tips and tricks.

7. Work under pressure. If you have a family, a day job, night courses and a blog, you probably feel pressure from time to time. Is 24 hours per day enough? Of course, planning and doing are is the only way to move forward; this is a matter of productivity and efficiency. Working under pressure is something difficult when your personal values are concern.

8. The Environment. You environment may influence your productivity and how you feel in general. A relaxing environment will most likely stimulate your creativity than a noisy one. The most important is how you feel within your environment. Are you stimulated? Are you motivated? Are you comfortable? Try to do the best to feel as relax as possible when you are blogging!

9. Rewards and Bonus. Rewards and bonuses can take different form. Maybe it materializes into an unexpected amount of money, or maybe it could be as simple as your audience support. When you build strong relationship with your audience, I guess that it is the #1 reward (well, it would be for me). Relationship based on truth, trust and integrity worth a golden mine!

10. Money. Of course, money could also influence how you feel. Maybe you are motivated or excited about some great results you get with your marketing strategy. In that case, exploit this moment as much as possible. Use that exaltation moment to push yourself and your blog to a higher level. Be opportunistic!

As a blogger, I consider my blog as an extension of my thoughts, my knowledge and my opinions. My blog is the extension of my unique identity! I’m the only responsible for my success.

Don’t be afraid and be confident about who you are and what you do. Of course, you need to experiment and develop new assets and new habits. You will need to be passionate and motivated to persevere in your way.

Blogging is not an easy road, but it is something that will inevitably make you grow if you take the conscious decision to walk ahead and build wonderful relationships!

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If your main goal is to make your blog profitable, the financial concerns are probably the most important aspect. In fact, being profitable is making more money than what you spent. I’m sure this is not a secret for anyone. The challenge is more to set a realistic budget execute it and realize it! Of course, the budget takes into account several elements like development, exploitation and marketing costs. These are not the only ones, but they are, in my opinion, the most significant ones. For example, your hosting service is related to your exploitation, your design and artworks is related to the development and your PPC campaign would be part of the marketing costs.

The most common problem, however, is that reality and plans are quite different. Maybe you plan a certain amount into marketing campaign to realize an estimated number of visitors. This is the plan, but the reality may be different! Maybe you’ll be needed to inject more money to realize your traffic plan. We can continue with the conversion rate of your traffic. If you expect 5% and you only realize 1% than you will have to know why and how it will impact your cost structure. This is just to illustrate that being profitable on a piece of paper is quite easy. However, the reality is quite different. This is why it’s important to have a good flexibility and to be reactive. Even if you are running a small blog, keep track of your financial activity. This is the only way to quickly adjust your strategy.

Your financial activities would mainly turn around the following ones:

1. Set a yearly budget.
Setting your budget is critical. This will plan your total expenses and earnings for the year. There will be a section for marketing, sales, development, etc. Even if your budget is small I recommend doing one just to allow a good tracking.

2. Keep track of your earnings and your expenses.
Tracking your earnings and your expenses will allow you to adjust your blog activity to meet your goals. Of course, you don’t want to spend more than you earn which would lead to a negative profitability.

3. Define your financial policies.
Do you allow your clients to pay after they receive their products or services? Do you offer to pay in several payments? Do you offer a discount is they pay the entire bill now? What are your financial policies? You may define that as soon as possible.

4. Send friendly notes to ask for payment.
You may be required to send email to people to remind them to pay for a bill. If this is the case, be kind and polite. Maybe these persons just forget to do the payments.

5. Plan your expenses to pay on time.
Planning your payments may avoid some stress and will leave a good perception if they are done on time. You should avoid to have a negative cash flow (of course). The only way to do that is to plan and plan again!

6. Get back on your budget at the end of the year.
The end of the year if a great moment to get back to your overall strategy. This will include your budget. Do you spend more than expected? If so, where did you under evaluate? To you spend less than expected? If so, where did you over evaluate? This should be use to create the next budget.

In summary, I think it is critical to keep a good tracking of your expenses and your earnings. It could be obvious for a lot of you, but I know that many don’t do it! Some people won’t invest money and make the promotional campaign themselves using free services. No matter what is your strategy, keeping track of your finance is the only way to be reactive and meet your goals. For some people this may be boring activities (especially if you don’t like numbers), but if you think in term of earnings, than you’ll probably found more energy and motivation!

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I think that everybody will agree about the quality; quality is important everywhere in the organization. In fact, any serious organization will have indicators which are metrics to measure the quality. Obviously, the metrics differ from department to department depending of what we want to measure. Here is a short list of the quality level we may want to measure in traditional businesses:

1. The products itself.
2. The development procedures.
3. The commitments (shipping dates, etc.).
4. The customer care.

And it’s important to note that everybody agrees about the quality itself, but no one has the same definition of it because quality is subjective! In fact, 2 organizations that produce the same product will have a different level of quality. Why some organizations are doing low quality products? Because generally quality cost money and low quality means low cost and, believe it or not, there is a market for low cost products. As a customer we want the best products at the lowest cost and this means that we do the math: quality vs price. If the ratio is high, we buy. If the ratio is low, we leave it on the table and we pass to another level of quality (price). This is as simple as that!

At the end, quality will always be subjective and there will always be customers for different level of quality. However, I think that blogs are quite sensitive to quality. And, in that context, the quality is measured by the visitors - if they found the content at all - and the search engines. What we generally call high quality content will be viral content and will generate enough links to get the authority it deserves. In summary, it thinks that quality is much more severe in the digital world!

Now if we take few moments to list the main activities that will be subject to quality control, we will get the following:

1. The web design appearance (cosmetically).
This is part of the quality perception and it will be totally subjective. However, I would recommend to make some extra effort in that area since we never have 2 chances to make a good impression!

Resources:
http://www.problogdesign.com/
http://www.skelliewag.org/cream-of-the-crop-six-cutting-edge-minimalist-wordpress-themes-230.htm
http://www.problogger.net/archives/category/blog-design/

2. The usability of your blog (which include a bunch of things!).
The usability includes the structure of your blog, the links (is there broken links?), the position of the different elements, etc.

Resources:
http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2007/04/09/Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences/
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/04/10/usability-tips-for-bloggers/
http://www.skelliewag.org/

3. The clarity and readability of your blog.
If your visitors feel confused when they visit your blog, they will leave quickly and won’t come back.

Resources:
http://www.blogherald.com/2007/12/03/improving-your-blog-clarity/
http://www.skelliewag.org/

4. The posts (the content).
Content is King! Take few minutes before writing an article. Put your idea on a piece of paper and build your article structure. Take the time to challenge what you are about to write and ask you some questions about the 6 W (Who, What, Where, When, Which, Why).

Resources:
http://www.doshdosh.com/what-is-good-content/
http://www.skelliewag.org/the-webs-best-content-has-one-thing-in-common-207.htm
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/07/13/how-to-write-excellent-blog-content-what-we-wish-we-knew/

5. The audience care (answer emails and comments).
The blogger is nothing without its readers! Take the time to take care of your audience. Be careful and generous.

6. The commitments (whatever you may have committed to your audience).
This is a matter of integrity! YOU are what make your blog unique. If you don’t hold your promises, then you won’t build quality relationship. Blogging is all about relationship!

7. The comments (through comment moderation and spam filter).
Comments are part of your blog. Moderate your comment will let you control the quality of this element. Be sure, however, to be an effective moderator.

I really think that the blogosphere is much more severe in terms of quality. This is probably due to the big number of blogs and the fact that quality is, in part, measure with specialized algorithms (which are not subjective at all). But at the end, the severity against the blogs is a great thing. It is acting just like a natural selection to leave the stronger alive and the weaker to die. This put more pressure on bloggers to produce beautiful blogs and valuable contents.

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If we defined the Research and Development as the central intelligence, the production could be seen as the hands of your blog. In traditional business, the production department is recognized by the presence of assembly lines. The production department assembles and packs the products to be shipped to the costumers.

The Blog Production

If we translate it into blog activities, it leads us to every activity that creates products on a continuous basis for your visitors. What are those products? Contents, contents and contents! Content is king; it is the most powerful ingredient to get visitors and to convert them into loyal readers. We’ll talk about quality in a future post about quality control, but for the moment, let’s concentrate to the production of content. Here is a list of the most typical activities:

1. Writing content.
Writing content is a large topic. There are plenty of great articles that helps about how content should be structured, what type of articles helps you to build an authority perception, what are the common mistakes when writing content. Writing content must be based on your central intelligence and your development strategy.

Resources:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/category/writing-content/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-writing-useful-articles-that-readers-will-love/
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/10-tips-for-writing-bookmarkable-content/
http://www.doshdosh.com/what-is-good-content/

2. Manage your post schedule.
Do you have a constant and regular post schedule? What is your post frequency? This is an important decision to take. Maybe you plan to post on a daily basis, but be careful about the quality! If you can do quality on a daily basis, then I guess this is a good decision. However, try to find a frequency that will better match your needs.

Resources:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/03/06/post-frequency-how-many-blog-posts-are-too-many/
http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2006/06/w_why_blog_post_frequency_does.html
http://www.adesblog.com/2007/10/06/guide-on-blog-posting-frequency/

3. Manage the changes.
You probably already notice that things changes all the time. In your day job, your family, the world; things are changing all the time. As a blogger, this will not be different. Your production department is responsible of writing and posting contents. This is, I would say, the most important responsibility! Someday, you’ll be sick or you’ll take some vacation. As a blogger, you need to stick on your production constancy – even if you’re not available! So take some time to have some posts prepare in advance and if you have a well established blog, maybe you’ll need to identify someone else to help you to post or to answer your readers.

Resources:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/12/15/how-to-develop-the-habit-of-writing-posts-in-advance/
http://www.johntp.com/2007/12/19/write-posts-in-advance/
http://superbloggingtips.com/2008/01/10-ways-to-be-a-successful-long-term-blogger/

In summary, the production activity – which is mainly about writing content and manage the changes – is one of the most important, if not the most important! Writing original and valuable content should be part of your highest priorities. Don’t forget that everything becomes better with the experience, so don’t be afraid to experiment; failure doesn’t exist, there is only unexpected outcome.

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In traditional organization, the R&D department is responsible for new product design and development. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it refers to “creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications”.

The “R”

The “R” stands for Research which is quite related to the definition above. Research is all about growing our knowledge to align our actual strategy with the roadmap we planned. In fact, the “R” has a vision for the future. It is a melting of creative mind and market reality. The “R” is a visionary!

In terms of blog activities, it includes every activity that allows you to stock more knowledge. Here is a list of typical activities:

1. Prepare and conduct an interview.
It is tremendous how much information we can get through an interview. In general, people are generous and will give you the chance to learn a lot. Note that the better your preparation is the higher your satisfaction will be!

Resources:
http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/interview/Interviews.htm

2. Find new topics and new idea.
Sometimes, we run out of idea. I guess this is the same for all bloggers; we have some moments where the inspiration is present and moments where it is missing.

Resources:
http://www.skelliewag.org/the-top-20-ways-to-come-up-with-amazing-ideas-157.htm
http://www.skelliewag.org/37-viral-post-ideas-you-can-use-today-103.htm
http://www.doshdosh.com/social-news-aggregators-source-for-content-ideas/

3. Search the web on a specific topic.
As soon as we found our topic, we often need to gather information, news, articles concerning this topic. Of course, searching the web is the best thing to do!

Resources:
http://www.google.com
http://technorati.com
http://www.yahoo.com

4. Read articles, news and reports.
This is the best way to keep yourself inform about what’s going on in your niche. Being inform on a daily is a must to develop your authority.

Resources:
Blog on your niche
http://news.google.com
http://news.yahoo.com
http://technorati.com/pop/news

5. Pack the information together to analyze and summarize it.
Gathering information is great, but if you want to be perceived as an authority, you will need to an artwork with it.

Resources:
http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-become-an-authority-in-your-niche

6. Plan training session to expand your competence.
Participating to a training session (it could also be a self-training) is a great way to learn. I would recommend to reserve a small amount of time each week to expand your blogging competence.

Resources:
http://www.skelliewag.org
http://www.problogger.net
http://www.dailyblogtips.com
http://www.caththeposts.com

7. Perceive new trends.
Try to detect trends is directly related to R&D. This is a difficult asset to develop, but if you get it you will be able to align your strategy on that information.

Resources:
http://www.trendwatching.com
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html
http://google.com/trends
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy/
http://buzz.yahoo.com/

The “D”

The “D” stands for Development. The development must be in line with your goals. For example, developing a small size blog is not strategically the same as developing a blog that will break the technorati top 100. Of course, breaking the technorati top 100 will require more time and more effort. You will probably need to do some experimentation and change how your blog is build and perceive by your visitors. If you want to reach that goal, you’ll need to be an authority in your niche. The “D” gives you the proper platform to be able to support your goal – whatever it is – and don’t forget that YOU are the developer.

In terms of blog activities, it includes all activity that allows you to change your blog perception to realize your goal and roadmap. Here is a list of typical activities:

1. Design and Redesign.
Designing your blog must be done to support your development strategy. The time and energy invested will not be the same for a corporate blog and a personal blog.

Resources:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/category/blog-design/

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
The SEO is a world on itself. There would be so much to say, but the most important here is that it could have a big impact on your development strategy. Note that SEO becomes to be negative when it has a negative impact of the quality of your content.

Resources:
http://www.seobook.com
http://www.seomoz.org
http://www.seomoz.org/blog

3. The usability.
Your blog structure will impact the perception of your audience. If your blog isn’t well structured, your visitors may not be able to use it easily. If you take care of your audience, you’ll have more credit!

Resources:
http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2007/04/09/Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences/
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/04/10/usability-tips-for-bloggers/
http://www.skelliewag.org/

4. The clarity.
Something clear is great, no? Be sure that there is no confusion possible for your visitors. A confused visitor will leave your blog and the chances are that it won’t come back. Don’t miss your chance to do a well impression!

Resources:
http://www.blogherald.com/2007/12/03/improving-your-blog-clarity/
http://www.skelliewag.org/

In summary, the R&D part of your blog is responsible of all the information you gather to support your development strategy. We can see it like the central intelligence. As I state in the first article of this series, matching your blog with a traditional business structure is just a matter of semantic. I guess that the most important to keep in mind is the metaphor itself. Applying the R&D concept to a blog sounds to me like a metaphor that help us understand the impact of the information on our development strategy.

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I don’t know for you, but my mind continuously tends to partition things to make them more understandable. I guess this a normal behavior. My thoughts were running through the overall blog process. There are so many activities related to blog. Would it be a big challenge to partition the overall blog process? Of course, the answer is a big YES, but since I really like challenges I decided to do that exercise with all of you! I don’t pretend to do an exhausted analysis around that, but at least I guess I’ll be able to partition all the big activities into a series of 8 posts. I’ll ask you to help me all through this activity by submitting your comments. In order to do this partitioning, I’ll base the exercise on the traditional business structure.

The Traditional Business Structure

Traditionally a business is structured with different departments. Depending on the nature of the organization, some department may be omitted and some could be added. However, generally we can find the following departments:

1. Finance
2. R&D (Research and Development)
3. Sales and Marketing
4. Human Resource
5. Production
6. Quality Control

The Starting Point

Obviously, the traditional business model could be applied to blog; this is just a matter of semantic! However, as for any business with limited resource (human as well as financial), the partitioning into departments isn’t noticeable. The following demonstrate, at a very high level, how we can partition some blog activities. Note that some seems to be obvious and others more complicated!

1. Finance.
This department includes every activity related to money. It could be the earning as well as the bill you have to pay.
2. R&D (Research and development).
The R&D includes any type of activity related to information research, web design, innovation and creativity.
3. Sales and Marketing.
This department consists of any activity related to the promotion of your blog.
4. Human Resource.
The human resource (HR) is related to anyone who contributes to your blog. It also includes any kind of human concerns like motivation for example.
5. Production.
The production department consists of any activity related to the creation of the blog content.
6. Quality Control.
The quality control department is related to any activity that aims to continuously increase the quality of your blog. This includes the time you take to get the feedbacks of your audience.

This is a very high level demonstration of the blog partitioning. In fact, it gives a rough idea of the activity diversification associate with blogs. You may admit with me that a single blogger couldn’t be an expert on all these area. Some are expert with contents and other with promotion. Taking the time to do one step back could help us to properly identify our strengths and weaknesses. This could then help you to find distinctive competence.

The Puzzle, one piece at a time!

I’ll begin a series of 8 posts - including this one - in which you’ll read my thoughts about every blog partition. I wish you’ll be reading them and send me some comments and feedback. For some people, this could be seen as a useless exercise but I guess this could be helpful to better understand the overall blog process and have a big picture of how a blog works! If you think of it, this exercise could be a very good starting point to find creative idea for future discussion!

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Photo by Hyperfinch

The number of blog is constantly growing on the web. Every day, few thousand people start blogging with their own new blog. So why don’t you? I made a list of 10 legitimate reasons why you should start blogging today. I hope you’ll enjoy!

1. Share your idea and your passion.

A blog is an excellent media to share your idea, your opinion and your passion. It is a digital platform that helps you to reach people everywhere in the world. Blogging allows you to challenge idea and share your opinion.

2. Learn every day.

Blogging will bring you to develop a learning habit. If you write articles on a constant basis, you’ll realize that you need to learn more and more each day. In fact, you will learn whatever you do. You’ll learn from other bloggers, you’ll learn more on your niche, you’ll learn on other niche, you’ll learn more about yourself, you’ll learn about almost everything you do!

3. Develop your creativity.

Creativity is one of the greatest assets a blogger could have. Everyone has a different level of creativity but the potential is the same! Creativity is like a muscle, if you train it will become stronger and stronger. Blogging is the gym that will gives you the occasion and the training machine to develop your creativity. No matter who you are, no matter your school level, you have the same potential in term of creativity. So keep you mind open, setup your blog and start blogging!

4. Build relationship.

Blogging is all about relationship! Who is the blogger without its readers? Relationship and communication are the basement of a blog. If you build your mindset around those 2 concepts, you’ll be in a good position to be a successful blogger. Gathering people together, share idea, receiving feedback, discuss with your readers, helping people to be better persons; this is what blogging really is!

5. Achieve yourself.

Blogging is a project in itself. It will allow you to achieve yourself in many ways if you are willing to take the time and deploy the appropriate effort. You don’t need to dedicate your whole life; you just need to do it with passion, intensity and creativity! You will discover some part of you that you didn’t realize before. You’ll discover some of your strengths and some of your weakness.

6. Develop new passions.

Developing relationship open the opportunity to develop new passion! People are generally contagious about their passion, and if your mind is open, you’ll be affected on positive way! Keep you mind open to new niche and topics; this is a doorway to communications and creativity.

7. Build your own community.

The actual web space is build around what we call the Web 2.0. Without going into details, this means that the web is actually developing a front-end based on community and social media. Developing a blog is a great way to take part of the Web 2.0 wave. It is an opportunity to influence the way people are living as well as the way people behave in general. Do you want to be part of Web 2.0; build your own community!

8. Make some extra money.

Blogging gives the opportunity to make some extra money. Monetizing a blog is actually a common activity on the Internet. Many opportunities are available on the web today. In general, they are easy to implement and they offer a good earning potential. How much could you earn? Well, that’s up to you, but in general the more traffic, the more money potential.

9. Express yourself.

I recently read that blogging is, in itself, a great therapy! Have you ever heard about the benefits of writing? In fact, writing is considered as one of the most powerful way to express the emotions we live. Blogging is an activity that will let you free to express your emotion, your opinion or anything related to your self-expression.

10. Change your vision and your mindset.

Because you share your emotion, your idea, your passion with a world wide community, blogging could change your vision and your mindset. At least, it will open your vision and you mind to a wide variety of positions and opinions. It will express different lifestyle and different ideology. And since everyone in the world is unique, this is a great thing! Everyone should express themselves, so what are you waiting to start blogging today?

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Photo by Clearly Ambiguous

Everyone will agree: great and original content is one of the most (if not the most) determinant factor to get traffic on your blog/website. If blogging is something new in your life, you are probably wondering if your posts are great and original or not. Maybe you are wondering how to write great content; in fact, you need to be reassured about what you are writing! My advices would be the following:

1. Learn to walk before you run.

First of all, wanting to be the most successful blogger before having published your first article is totally human! This only expresses your desire and your will to be successful; and this is great! However, we all need to start from the beginning and learn the basics. Being an expert in something takes time. It takes time because we need to learn and we learn when we make mistakes; this is a law of nature. Take the time to make mistakes and learn from them. Take this as a positive experience!

2. Visit and read articles from well established blogs on your niche

Learning could be done by doing mistakes, but it could be done also by watching others doing what we want to do. Take the time to visit and read articles from well established blogs on your niche. Read. Read. Read. Observe. Observe. Observe. Take the time to analyze what is the subject of the post, how it is treated and organized. Be careful and don’t fall into the temptation to recreate the style of somebody else. As you notice, I didn’t write “Copy. Copy. Copy.” If you want to create great and original content you need to find your personal style.

3. Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.

What is your personal style? Do you really know what your style is if you didn’t write a single line on a blog? There is no way out: you will need to experiment another identity crisis! Unless you already are a magazine writer or a journalist, you will need to find your personal writing style. How could you do this: Write. Write. Write. Experiment. Experiment. Experiment. There is nothing like practicing to walk to learn to walk! Don’t be afraid to experiment something new.

4. Organize your idea.

Do great and original content are messy? Of course not! If you want your readers to consider your content as great and original, you must well organize your idea. Before writing a single line of text, be sure to sketch your idea on a piece of paper. For example, there should be a single idea per paragraph. You should; also use subsection if your article is long enough. You are the only one to know if it is appropriated. Don’t start writing until the idea are well organized on you mind and on a piece of paper!

5. Be confident.

If you want your content to be original, you will need to be confident! Original and unique content come from unique blogger with unique style and unique idea. You won’t be able to benchmark yourself with anybody except yourself! Be confident and ask your readers for feedback. Don’t wait for them silently; they will never come! Be proactive and ask them!

6. Be persistent.

The road to reach your writing goal won’t be paved and straight. You will live moments of excitement, moments of anxiety, moments of passion and maybe some moments of adversity. Who knows what you will live. Anyhow, the moment of truth is HERE and NOW! And in the name of all your dreams please be persistent, don’t stop walking! Maybe there will be moments you will walk slowly and this is ok, but never stops walking!

Photo by by josef.stuefer

The Internet has plenty of websites that allows you to search for a photo, but almost everyone contains photos with copyrights. Flickr is, without no doubt, the best place to find photos for your website or for your blog. It offers you a great interface to search and a wonderful way to help you with copyrights.

Flickr includes photo that are protected by the Creative Common License which is a great things for you and me. The Creative Common License could be divided in 6 groups in Flickr:

1. Attribution License
This license is the most flexible license. In fact, you can modify the photo by cropping it, writing on it, etc. You can use it on a non-commercial as well as a commercial space. The only restriction is to give credit to the photo’s owner. I highly recommend using photo protected by this particular license.

2. Attribution-NoDerivs License
This license is more restricted than the attribution license because you cannot modify the photo. You cannot crop it or write on it; you MUST use it as-is! As for the attribution license, you need to give credit to the photo’s owner.

3. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
This license is the same as the Attribution-NoDerivs license with the exception that you cannot use it in a commercial space. If your space as the potential to generate earning in any way, don’t take any chances and consider it as a commercial space.

4. Attribution-NonCommercial License
This license is similar to the attribution license with the exception that you cannot use it on a commercial space.

5. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
This license let you use the photo on a non-commercial space with credit to the owner, but it includes another requirement: Share Alike. The Share Alike requirement let you do some derivative work with the photo. However, if you do so and you expect to distribute this derivative work, you’ll be in the obligation to distribute it under the same license.

6. Attribution-ShareAlike License
This license let you use the photo on a commercial or a non-commercial space as far as you give credit and you follow the Share Alike requirement.

Step #1: Enter the search portal

In order to search photos with the most flexible license, you need to click here.

Step #2: Write your keywords

Obviously, you’ll need to enter the keywords that best represent what you are looking for. Tips: Note that if you need a photo with particular colors, you could include it in your search query.

As soon as you click the search button, you’ll get some great results.

Step #3: Get the “Most interesting” results

You just found great photo, but what about looking at the Most interesting photo? Flickr has a great feature that allows there search users to find those photos. Above each search results, Flickr include littles links to help you to reduce the scope of your search. They offer 3 possibilities: the “Most relevant” link, the “Most recent” link and the “Most interesting” link. Click on the “Most interesting” link and you’ll instantly see that the results quality is quite better! Isn’t it?

Step #4: Choose the most relevant size

As soon as you find the photo you want to get, click on it. This will bring you to the photo page. You’ll see comments about the photo and you’ll see a link above the photo that says “All sizes”. Click on that link and choose the most relevant size for you needs.

Step #5: Integrate the photo

You are surely proud or you finding and you are very excited to include it in your web page or your blog post! If you follow the link I provide in step #1, you will only need to include the name and the link of the photo owner. For example, the photo at the beginning of this post shows you what to do. This gives the credit to the photo’s owner.

Have fun with Flickr and let your space coming alive with wonderful photos!