If you want to tweet in only ten minutes, you can do so successfully and I’ve outlined ways to do that in my Tweets In 10 blog posts. It is possible, but sometimes it’s not practical, to limit your Twitter effort to a small ten minute window. For example, maybe you want to limit the amount of time you’re on Twitter but still want to speak to your audience throughout the day. Or, maybe you want to spend ten minutes on Twitter but don’t want to look like you’re ONLY spending ten minutes on Twitter. Or maybe you want to spend ten minutes on Twitter but you have an appointment the next day during the time that you would normally tweet. Or maybe you want to roll out a great new promotion at a very specific time. For these reasons, or for many other reasons, the ability to schedule your tweets is very helpful.

So, scheduling prewritten tweets for later publication is a good idea. It’s very convenient, it extends your engagement beyond the time when you’re sitting in front of your computer, and can still save you time (by batching all of your tweeting at once even if you’re scheduling it for publication later).

There are tools you can use to write tweets and schedule them for later but the tool I use and recommend for this is HootSuite. However, it’s not the only one out there. If scheduling tweets is important to you now (or you think it might be important to you in the future) make sure that whatever application you use gives you the ability to schedule tweets.

Scheduled tweet best practices

• If you’re going to schedule retweets, keep them scheduled for the same day. There’s no rule that says you have to but it’s a weak use of retweeting if you retweet something a day or week later.
• Don’t use scheduling as the ONLY way you use Twitter. Either use Twitter with in-the-moment tweets and scheduled tweets, or use Twitter only with in-the-moment tweets. If the only way you are using Twitter is to schedule tweets, you are missing out on the value of Twitter. Unlike a blog, which is a medium that can handle content that is all scheduled, Twitter is a real time medium of engagement so scheduling won’t always be an effective use of your time.
• Schedule tweets that are informative or motivational. For example, schedule a tweet containing a famous quote that you find inspiring or schedule a tweet that says you like kittens. Don’t schedule tweets where you are engaging other people. For example, don’t schedule a tweet that says “Hi @IAC_Heather, how are you?” because when I respond and you turn out to be watching a movie and you don’t get my response, that’s not cool.
• The farther out you tweet, the more timeless your tweet needs to be. Some tweetable stuff is eternally timeless (such as those inspiring quotes I mentioned earlier) but if you schedule a tweet about something not timeless, and the news turns against it prior to the tweet publication, you’ll end up looking foolish. A good example might be a tweet about your favorite stock. If you like XYZ stock and you get really productive and schedule a tweet about it for next week, that might seem great until the CEO is arrested at the end of this week for embezzlement! Then next week’s tweet is no longer relevant and you’ll waste time going in to look for it to edit it. So, scheduled tweets should be the kind of thing that won’t be impacted by news.
• If you need to outsource some of your marketing, and you want to outsource some of your Twitter engagement, scheduled tweets are a good thing to outsource. That way, you can be a prolific tweeter while giving some of the non-engagement stuff to someone else and keeping the high-value person-to-person engagement for yourself.

Bonus Tip:  A Good Balance
I personally like to make sure I have a good mix of scheduled tweets versus live tweets versus auto tweets.

Things I auto tweet: Everytime I post a blog, using a WordPress PlugIn; Everytime an article of mine gets published on Ezine Articles, using their Twitter feature.

Things I schedule tweets for: I retweet my auto-tweets for about 12 hours after the initial tweet. This is the same tweet as the initial adding (RT) to it at the end. This assures my followers on opposite schedules each have a chance of reading my blogs. My product marketing tweets are scheduled as well, I do not market a specific product more than once a week, so for example, my Twitter Kit that you have purchased I will schedule one tweet a week promoting this. My #followfriday tweets can be scheduled and tweeted each Friday for my favorite tweeters.

Live Tweets: My day to day interaction with my follower base.

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – Let’s Hear You Hoot!
2. Tweets in 10 – Tweet this! Plug-ins for Your Browser‏
3. Tweets in 10 – Twitterpress: Combining Twitter and WordPress10

Okay, I realize that not all of you are WordPress users so this might not be as relevant for everyone. But many of you are so it was worth writing one newsletter dedicated just to WordPress users.

The reason for putting Twitter plug-ins into your WordPress site is the same reason you’d put some of last week’s tools into your blog or website: It saves time on your tweets and helps to strengthen those connections between your Twitter followers and your website visitors (encouraging connections of Twitter to also become regular blog readers, for example).

There are lots of WordPress plug-ins that use Twitter in some way. I’m going to show you the couple that I use but there might be others that work better for you.
The easiest way to get plug-ins is simply to sign in to WordPress and then to go to the Plug-ins menu from your dashboard. In this menu there’s an “Add New” link and when you click it you will see a cloud of plug-in tags. Buried within that cloud is “Twitter”. So click the “Twitter” tag and you’ll get the list of plug-ins related to Twitter. Scroll through this list (it is constantly updated so it might be worth checking it out regularly to see what kinds of apps people are developing).

WordTwit

I like the app called WordTwit. WordTwit is a powerful but simple way to turn your blog posts into tweets. With this app installed and operating, whenever you blog and click “publish”, your blog will turn into a tweet which includes the blog’s title and a link back to your blog.

What I like about this app is that you can adjust the settings in a number of different ways: You have shortcode choices that include bil.ly, ow.ly, and even shortcode based on your own domain name!

WordTwit also offers statistics so you can see what your most popular Tweets were, and there are codes that you can add for further analytics beyond the simple “most popular” number.

In addition, you can set it to only tweet certain tags (or to tweet everything BUT certain tags). For example, one colleague I know who uses his blog as his primary website, has his WordTwit set up so that only informational content is sent to Twitter but his portfolio and self promotional content (such as testimonials) aren’t tweeted.

This plug-in is about pushing content out to Twitter. But what about generating content on your site from Twitter?

You can use any of the plug-ins discussed in last week’s newsletter. Or you can use something like…

Lifestream

Lifestream is a little more advanced for users with coding experience. It creates an attractive way to display your tweets in posts, pages, or your blog’s sidebar. In the WordPress plug-ins page, search for “Lifestream” or check out the developer’s page here.

If you’re a WordPress user who wants something really easy and quick to use, refer to last week’s issue and embed one of those tools in your WordPress site.

CommentLuv

Another way to integrate Twitter into your website is with CommentLuv. CommentLuv adds a content-rich and social component to your blogs. Users who type in your comments can add their Twitter accounts.

WP Quote Tweets

One I haven’t used yet but I’ve been thinking about using is WP Quote Tweets. This turns specific tweets into quotes on your site. You can see an example from the developer here.

Bonus Tip:  Twitter and WordPress = BFF

I have only begun to touch the service of the million and one things you can do with Twitter and WordPress together. At the time of writing this newsletter WordPress has 552 plug ins that use Twitter in some fashion. Before deciding, check them out and see if one works better for you than another.

Image credit: http://www.chromaticsites.com/blog/wordpress-plugin-twitter-retweet/

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – Twitter Plug-ins for Your Mobile
2. Tweets in 10 – Spread the News, Spread the Love
3. Tweets in 10 – #Great #Idea #for #Twitter

Recently I sat down and was reviewing some of the past issues to make sure that the content was current and to see if there was anything I might consider revising. Blogging was one topic that I think I’d like to give you a few more ideas about.

In the previous blogging issue I suggested that one way you could blog in ten minutes was to take a relevant article from somewhere online, link to it in your post, summarize it in one paragraph, and then write your own opinion on it in the second paragraph.

It’s an effective way to blog relevant content easily and quickly, and I still use that method today. But, as I was reviewing my past Tips In Ten articles, I realized that there were other ways that I blog that can also produce interesting blog post content in just ten minutes. So I’m writing two more of those ways in this issue so you have a bit of variety to mix into your blogs.

Let’s call that previous method (from last year’s blogging issue) the “Ten Minute Blog Post Method #1. Now, I’ll now give you two more…

Ten Minute Blog Post Method #2: The “Tips” Post

This “tips” blog post is a really popular kind of post because lots of people read blogs (especially business blogs) for tips and ideas and guidance rather than just straight-up opinion. Here’s how to write it in ten minutes.

Step 1: Decide on the main skill or activity you want your reader to be able to do once they are finished with your blog. (Duration: 1 minute. Really, this shouldn’t take very long at all!)

Step 2: Write down the first sentences and the last sentences. They will be similar. Don’t worry, no one will hold that against you; that’s just good writing. (Duration: 1 minute).

Step 3: Write down as many tips, guides, ideas, ways, things, tactics, steps, etc., that pertain to the skill or activity you want to empower your readers to have or do. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive, because it never will be and no one ever expects it to be, but it should be insightful and drawn from your position as an expert. (Duration: 8 minutes).

So, here’s an example:

Let’s say the main skill I want to impart on my readers is to be more productive on the phone. (Okay, that took about 10 seconds to decide).

Then I write down my first and last sentences…

[First sentences] Productivity helps us to do more business in less time; but when we’re on the phone, we sometimes lose track of time. In this blog post, I want to give you some tips to be more productive on the phone.

[Last sentences] Use these tips when you’re talking on the phone and you’ll increase your productivity, which will have a direct impact on your business.

Easy. That took about 45 seconds.

Now let’s write the main part of the blog post (and, of course, we’ll squeeze it in right between the first set of sentences and the last set of sentences that you’ve just written). So I would write something like…

1.    Have a plan about one key takeaway you want the other person to have by the time your call is done.
2.    At the beginning of your call tell the other person how long you have to speak to them. (“I only want to take 3 minutes of your time”). Make sure you stick to that number.
3.    Take notes. You’ll be surprised at how helpful this can be later.
4.    Schedule your calls to increase the likelihood that you’ll reach the other person.
5.    Group your calls together.
6.    Be prepared to leave a message (and even practice it before you dial) so that you’re not caught off guard and end up leaving a cryptic or unhelpful message.

Done! Five and a half minutes. I have time to spare!

Hit post. You’ve just written a helpful blog and you’ve done it in less than ten minutes.

BONUS TIP: If you like writing these, why not sit down on a weekend, brainstorm a dozen of these blog posts, write them, and schedule them to be published over the next two or three months.

Ten Minute Blog Post Method #3: Opinion

While people like to read tips and guidance posts, like what I showed you above, one of the things that make blogs enjoyable (and more compelling than a newspaper) is the lack of balance: People want to read opinions. They want to see polarizing viewpoints. They’re drawn to it. And you’re going to give it to them in this ten minute blog post.

It starts in a similar way to the previous ten minute blog post writing method.

Step 1: Decide on the main viewpoint or opinion you have. (Duration: 1 minute. Again, this won’t take very long because they are already your opinions!)

Step 2: Write down the first sentences and the last sentences. Again, they will be similar and that’s okay. (Duration: 1 minute).

Step 3: Write one paragraph describing the dissenting view and one paragraph describing your opinion. You might want to add a source if you have time or if you need to back up your viewpoint. Remember, the purpose of your blog is not to lay out all the facts and debate it cleanly to sew up the argument. The rest of the web is for that. You’ve got commenters in your audience who will want to voice their opinion in your comments and on their blogs. You’ve got Twitter followers who might have an opinion, too. The purpose of your blog is to start the discussion and stake your claim in the argument. (Duration: 8 minutes).

So here’s an example.

Let’s say the main opinion I want to have is that a little procrastination is healthy. Having an opinion is easy for most of us so that took about 2 seconds of my time to come up with an opinion-topic. The stronger your opinions are and the less worried you are about criticism from others, the easier and more rewarding this kind of blog posting will be.

Now I want to write the first and last sentences. I might write something like this:

[First sentences] We try to fight procrastination at every turn and while we don’t want to procrastinate 24/7, I believe that a little procrastination is actually good for us.

[Last sentences] So, while the world speaks out against procrastination, and I agree for the most part, I’m not going to do anything about it until tomorrow… or the day after.

Easy! That took about a minute.

Now we write two paragraphs about the dissenting position and our own position. (I suggest writing your own position second since it’s usually going to be your stronger and more passionate paragraph). And again, these two paragraphs get sandwiched between the first set of sentences and the last set of sentences. So I might write something like this:

Ask most efficiency experts and productivity gurus about their opinion on procrastination and they will tell you that it needs to be eradicated from our lives. Their position is that procrastination is laziness and avoidance, and it’s only action that will lead to success.

I believe, however, that a little procrastination can sometimes be helpful. If we spend too much time in action, we wear out faster, we don’t leave ourselves any margin for creativity, and we lose focus. But, by procrastinating within reason, we can find the rest that will lead to creativity and we’ll be a little more motivated and focused when we get around to working.

And then I hit “post” and the blog is done. As you can see from this topic, it’s not a full argument but that’s okay. It’s not meant to be. You can spend much longer on full arguments, cultivating your viewpoint, handling objections, and writing what is essentially an essay. Sometimes it’s good to blog like that. But I also know that most of us can avoid blogging because it seems to take too much time, yet it doesn’t have to. A ten minute blog like the one above can just start the conversation (and you’ll have more material to talk about in a later blog when you want to expand on the opinion you started here).

There! You now have three ways to blog in ten minutes. Mix them up, add some variety to your blog, and blog prolifically. And it only takes ten minutes a day!

Related posts:

1. Blogging in 10 Minutes a Day
2. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible
3. Keyword Research in 10 Minutes a Day

But getting comments is only part of the story. Commenting on other people’s blogs is also an important part of the conversation. You can’t expect people to comment on your blogs if you’re not commenting on other people’s blogs. (That’s not to say that the people whose blogs you’re commenting on will specifically be the ones to comment on yours, but the whole idea of getting people to comment on your blogs requires people to be commenting! So you should contribute to that, too).

So in article issue of Tips In Ten I’m going to show you how to easily comment on other blogs in just ten minutes a day and build up some valuable marketing “currency” while you’re doing it.

Leaving comments on other blogs

Commenting tools

In the last issue I mentioned CommentLuv and Disqus as commenting tools for your own site. However, they are also useful for you when you comment on other people’s sites. With a CommentLuv account your picture will show up when you post elsewhere, and with a Disqus Profile you can manage your comments across several sites really easily. Consider at least one of these tools, maybe both, since they are common commenting systems.

Commenting often

You should consider commenting on a couple of blogs each day. This gets you actively out there reading what other people are writing and it helps to get your name out there. But if you don’t do it right, you could end up spending your time searching for blogs to comment on and you’ll blow that ten minute target easily. (Trust me, I speak from experience). While browsing the web is fun, it can also be time consuming. So here’s what I would suggest:

Find 5 blogs that you love to read that fit the following parameters:

• They need to be relevant to your subject matter
• You need to have something valuable to contribute
• It should be something read by your target market
• They post a blog at least once a week (or perhaps more frequently).

Once you’ve chosen 5, bookmark them in a folder named: “Commenting” and rename them as follows:

If you use an alphanumeric sorting bookmark system, like Delicious’ Firefox plug-in, you’ll want to name them something like 1 – Monday – [blogname]; 2 – Tuesday – [blogname], etc.

Also, you’ll want to bookmark another site like Alltop.com or Technorati, which are a source for many blogs.

Now here’s what you do:

On Monday, click to your Monday blog and read one of the posts that they’ve written since you were last there and comment on it. Then click to your multi-blog-source like Alltop or Technorati and pick a blog and read and comment. There, you’ve commented on two blogs and you’ve likely done it ten minutes; maybe less.

On Tuesday, do the same thing: Go to your Tuesday blog, read one of the blogs that they’ve written since you were last there and comment on it. Then click to your multi-blog-source and pick a blog and read and comment. Another ten minutes.

Do the same thing Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Heck, why not take ten minutes each day on the weekend and do it Saturday an Sunday, too)

Depending on how fast of a reader you are and how long the blog posts are, you might even be able to pick 2 blogs from your multi-blog-source and comment on them. But don’t push yourself. Start with 2 a day and go from there.

At the end of the week, you’ll have at least 10 and possibly up to 15 blogs you’ve commented on. Five of them will be your regular community and another 5 to 10 will be new communities. By the end of the year, you’ll have commented on between 520 and 780 blogs by just spending 10 minutes a day from Monday to Friday. If you comment on 2 a day every day of the year, you’ll have commented on 730 by the end of the year, and 1,095 if you comment on 3 a day. That’s some significant contribution to the blogosphere.

Those comments not only give you good backlinks but also can mean potential traffic to your site. The likelihood of getting traffic to your site based on your comments is enhanced by…

Insightful comments

Not enough people leave comments and of those that do, many don’t leave insightful enough comments!

I would encourage you not to rush through the commenting process. You can do it well in ten minutes but don’t try to do it in less time than that! My recommendation here isn’t for you to hit a dozen blogs in a week with “Great post, Bob” or “I enjoyed your blog, Mary”. That’s not helpful. As a blogger, I love hearing that stuff, sure, but I enjoy it far more when I hear something that is more insightful, constructive, and participatory. If you want to compliment them on how good their post was, that’s fine, but be sure to follow it up with something else. Interact with what the post was about. You can talk a bit about yourself and what you do, just be careful not to overly promote yourself. A good blog comment might look like this:

Something simple like that compliments the blogger, interacts with what they’ve just written about, and also helps to align you with them in some way or position you as someone who thinks along those lines, too.

It doesn’t have to take long but it should be more than just “thanks” or self-promotion. Add something to the conversation!

Additional tips

• Sometimes the commenting software gives you the option to subscribe to replies. Because of how much I comment, I generally don’t subscribe to replies. That’s not to say I never do, but my comments are often like those I’ve written above and it’s not likely that someone will add additional comments after refuting my position. However, on a particularly controversial issue or if I’m participating in more of a multi-person discussion in a comment section of a blog, I will subscribe to replies. But if you’re posting a few hundred comments a year, you can fill your inbox pretty quickly with potential replies so I’d advise that you do it sparingly.

• When you’re selecting who you should pick as your 5 main blogs to comment on, consider a blog that is an active blogger and commenter. I am less motivated to post a comment on a blog that has lots of comments but nothing from the owner. I am far more motivated to post a comment on a blog that has slightly fewer comments and active, prompt replies by the blog owner. This tells me that the blog owner is interested in building up a community and not just putting out content and ignoring it after that.

• I like to comment on blogs that have anywhere from zero to 25 comments per post. Of course, if I have something to say, I’ll comment on the blog no matter how many comments there are, but if I’m going to be strategic about positioning myself, I find that I can give some good insight and not get lost in the onslaught of commenters if there are no more than 25 comments on a post. While lots of people are automatically attracted to the blogs with huge followers (and those bloggers obviously have good things to say and it’s okay to comment on those blogs), there are lots of hard-working bloggers who are coming up through the ranks who will likely be more communicative with their commenters. Think of it this way: You will probably make far more of a contribution and receive far higher benefit from commenting on a site that gets 10 comments – and being noticed – than you will by commenting on blogs that can get hundreds of comments. By findin g bloggers with zero to 25 comments per post, you are strategically getting your foot in the door of the successful bloggers of tomorrow rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the insanely popular bloggers of today.

• If you get to the end of a blog post and you think the writer covered it well and you’re not sure what to write, don’t despair! Comb through the comments and find something that a commenter has written and respond to that.

So, now you have the tools and ideas to help you manage comments on your own blog and in this issue you read about how to comment like a pro on other blogs! Get commenting, help to build communities. When you grow other people’s comments, you will grow your own business!

Related posts:

1. Comments and How They Can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Mintues) – Part 1
2. Building a Fanbase of Followers in 10 Minutes a Day
3. “What Should I Do?” – Blog Commenting

The early web was not actually that different: It was just an electronic form of newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and books… again, with very little interactivity.

But slowly that started to change. I think forums helped. So did the ability to vote up or down a particular article. Then blogs came along and people could comment on them. And later, social media helped to transform the concept of interactivity, making the web a true conversation.

In today’s article of Tips In Ten, I want to talk about comments – specifically receiving comments on your blog. In the next issue I want to talk about leaving comments on other people’s blogs. Both are important. I believe this is a huge opportunity and although many people do comment on blogs, many more don’t do it enough. I think we need more blog commenting. We need it because:

• It promotes interactivity, which is what makes today’s internet great
• It builds a community around people who comment regularly on a blog
• It helps to position you when you comment on other people’s blogs
• It provides some backlinks for your site.

Today’s Tips In Ten (Getting Comments) will take 10 minutes per day. And, the next article of Tips In Ten (Leaving Comments) will also take 10 minutes per day.

Getting comments on your blog

Obviously this assumes you have a blog (and if you don’t, then you may want to start one!)

Comments on your blog help to build up a community and create some interactivity. Although you should never write content just to get comments, you should encourage and embrace comments and use them to help you become even better.

A commenting system
Start by making sure that you have a good commenting system in your blog and that it is activated.  I’ve seen two systems that I really like, although there might be more out there.

The first one I like (and use on my own site) is CommentLuv. CommentLuv lets commenters leave a bit of information about themselves and CommentLuv adds their image and their last blog post to their comment. I like it because it’s easy to use and because it encourages other people to click around and find new and interesting blogs to read simply by reading through the comments on a blog.

The other one I like – and I know many people who use it – is Disqus. Disqus is a nice and clean commenting system and it is very feature rich (especially the premium version) including threaded discussions, multisite moderation, and semantic-editing to help keep non-family-friendly comments to a minimum.

Let me encourage you to choose one of these and use it, as it enhances the basic commenting system that your blog already has.

Encouraging comments
Once you have a commenting system in place the next thing you should do is encourage comments. You can write blogs and just let people comment as they feel inclined, and that’s okay. I do that a lot on my blog and many other bloggers do, too. But there are other things you can do to encourage comments.

For example, use your blog to talk about your position on an idea and encourage commenters to give you feedback or tell you their position. This makes it somewhat two-way in that you ask and they respond. You can do this simply by ending your blog with something like “I’d like to hear what you think” or similar.

Or, you can go a step further and try to create discussion. For example, you might discuss all sides of an idea and then encourage commenters to debate. You can get some really lively conversation from even just a few commenters, depending on what the topic is! If you don’t have a lot of active participants commenting your blog, you might want to wait until you do; otherwise the silence might get painful.

Another way to encourage comments is to participate yourself. When someone comments, be sure to reply. Thank them or disagree or ask another question. As your comments grow, you won’t be able to do this for every single comment but you should still continue and try to comment on several key comments. But while your blog is starting up and if it hasn’t gained a huge following of active commenters, you can easily reply to all of them.

Moderating comments
This is a controversial issue and I’ve heard compelling arguments on both sides of the spectrum: Some people say you should moderate your comments and others say you shouldn’t. Let me first say that I’m not talking about spam. It’s okay to moderate spam and no one would accuse you of bad comment moderation. I don’t even consider spam-elimination to be moderation. It’s just basic housekeeping! (By the way, if you’re running WordPress, add the plug-in Akismet which is a great must-have spam-fighting system that eliminates a lot of spam moderating work).

Instead, when I’m talking about moderation I’m talking about dealing with comments that are negative. We all love to get positive, insightful comments. But once in a while someone shows up on our site with an attitude or a chip on their shoulder or something against you and they have less-than-nice things to say.

Here’s my stance on the issue: I do some light comment moderation and I encourage my clients to do the same. But only LIGHT moderation. If the comment gives negative feedback on your topic – for example, if they disagree (and even if they disagree strongly with relatively harsh words) – I’d leave it. It’s relevant, even if you don’t agree. This is a great comment to reply to and thank them for their insight and tell them why you disagree. It might start some healthy debate and it won’t drive away business simply because someone disagrees with you. (What will drive away business, though, is if you respond less-than-professionally!)

I do think that some moderation is okay if someone shows up on your blog and says something nasty about you or about another commenter or is off topic. If a comment falls into any of those three areas, I seriously consider deleting it. (I don’t always, but that’s the “flag” for me that prompts me to at least think about it). Yes, that’s not always an easy line to draw but you have to pick a line somewhere and I’ve been happy with it. I’m all for free speech but on a business blog I want to encourage relevant and constructive conversation and debate and I don’t want some commenters making personal attacks especially to other commenters.

Measuring
It’s nice to go onto your blog and see that you have a lot of comments. I still get excited even when I see just one comment on a post. However, I don’t want you to get hung up on the number of comments you have. Quantity is good but quality is better. If you go look at blogs that are commented on frequently, some of the comments are good but many lack substance. My opinion is, if we all sat around and complimented each other all day, we might feel great about ourselves but we’d never get anything done.

Instead, a conversation is started and ideas are debated and businesses are made better because of constructive dialogue. So, although I understand perfectly that 1 comment on a blog is good and 2 comments are better and 10 (or 100 or 1000) are glorious, that’s not the point. Instead, enjoy that you are building a community and participate in it. Focus less on numbers and instead grow the value of that community.

So, inviting and managing comments on your blog can and should only take 10 minutes a day.

Okay, your homework for this week is to open up your blog comments and get interacting, and plan blogs that will help to encourage your community to speak up.

Related posts:

1. Comments and How They can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Minutes) – Part 2
2. “What Should I Do?” – Blog Commenting
3. Building a Fanbase of Followers in 10 Minutes a Day

In this article, I want to give you some details on getting started with your first informational site. I’m going to talk about choosing a domain name and setting up the site. But in order for you to get the most out of this article, you’ll want to have done the steps I outlined in the previous article:

• Identify your sub-niches
• Find the intersection between what they are looking for and what you provide
• Plan your format (such as a blog).

If you haven’t done that yet, you’ll want to do it now. Even if you’re not 100% sure what target audience you want as a niche, it’s a helpful exercise to start. Then, when you will be ready in the future to work on this, much of the legwork will already be done.

Find a domain name

Once you’ve decided on those things, you can now think about your domain name. Domain names have gone through an interesting metamorphosis since their early usage in the internet’s earliest days. Today, businesses will often pick names for their corporate site that reflect the name of the organization. My site, HeatherVilla.com, is a good example of this. I do this because I want to brand my name so that when people think of me, they can type my name into their browser’s address bar and get to my site.

But informational sites are going to be really keyword friendly and highly targeted to your niche. People are rarely going to remember and type the name of the site into their browser. Instead, they are going to search for information on whatever your topic is and click on whatever comes up in the search engine results. If it’s really helpful, they will bookmark it and visit again. There is rarely a time when they will actually type in the domain name into the address bar.

Because of that, you can choose domain names that aren’t easily necessarily memorable or associated with your brand, but are instead chosen because they are search engine friendly. These domain names can be longer as long as they have the keywords you want in them. So, let’s build off of the example we started last week to show you what I mean: Let’s say that a sales coach is going to build an informational website for soon-to-be entrepreneurs. Instead of using a branded name that is borrowed from the name of the company, they may choose something that is far more keyword rich and search engine friendly. Off the top of my head (and I haven’t checked to see if this actually exists), that business might consider something like sales-coaching-selling-coach.com. This might be a long and annoying domain name for prospects to have to type in under normal circumstances but they will very rarely (if ever) type in that name. However, it can search reall y well for the keywords that are contained within the domain name.

To choose the best domain name, start by looking at the list you made from last week’s Tips In Ten in which you identified what content your target audience would be looking for. From that list, try to figure out what they would search to find that information. (Make a couple of test searches yourself to see).

Then, go to the Google Keyword Tool and type in some of those search terms. Google will give you an approximate number of people who search for that keyword every month. You should get a big list and you can pick several of the keywords or a combination that makes sense. The example of sales-coaching-selling-coach.com illustrates a few potential keywords – “sales coaching”, “selling coach” – that were squeezed together to create a long domain name that is keyword rich.

Choose a platform

Choosing a domain name is only part of the process. You also will want to find a platform to publish your content. You may want to choose:

• A regular site (which might be commonly created in html)
• A wiki
• A blog
• A Squidoo site (Note: You cannot get a custom top level domain name for Squidoo.)

I like a blog because they are easy to create and use and fresh content is always visible to your audience without them having to hunt around. As well, blogs are often automatically set up with RSS feeds and other widgets that can improve a user’s experience. Most importantly, I like blogs because they are a content management system: You can upload content and manage it from a central dashboard, allowing you to prewrite and schedule content or edit content without having to jump into the code to do it.

WordPress is my favorite platform - it’s the one I use most frequently – although Blogger is another favorite for website users. To create a WordPress blog for your informational site, buy some hosting and a domain from a web hosting company and download WordPress from www.wordpress.com. Upload it to your server and get started.

Yes, I realize that I’ve just described a fairly complicated process in one sweeping paragraph but everyone will have a different experience, depending on who they buy their web hosting from. For example, GoDaddy.com gives customers the ability to automatically upload WordPress to their host without having to go to WordPress.com. And if you use a platform other than WordPress, you may have to do completely different steps.

So, the bottom line is that you need to find a content management system (like a blog). Choosing and uploading your content management system can be time consuming and is obviously critical to your informational site’s success, but it is only one step in a much larger process.

Create a plan

Once you have chosen your CMS system, and you’ve got everything all working together (i.e. the domain name correctly takes a user to the website) then you need to put together a plan.

In my experience, people start these information sites with great dreams, but very little planning, and then they get frustrated and stop working on their site after a while. Next week, I’m going to show you what you need to do to create a plan for a successful informational site.

Related posts:

1. Success with Informational Sites – Part 4
2. Success with Informational Sites – Part 3
3. Success with Informational Sites – Part 1

So, over the next 4 articles, you’ll read about information sites (some people refer to these as Content sites) and I will guide you step by step through the process of setting them up and succeeding with them. But first, I need to make sure we’re all on the same page so let’s start by talking about what they are and why they are important.

Informational sites are exactly what their name implies: Sites that are rich in information. In many cases, they are presented in the form of a blog (and that is how I tend to use them) or they contain other ways to communicate information, such as articles, reports, wikis, links to other sites, etc.

What separates information sites from other sites is that they don’t sell anything. They are information only: Just informative content as far as the eye can see! However, just because they have lots of content but don’t sell, don’t write them off as money-losing, time wasters. On the contrary! Information sites can generate you a lot of money and I will show you how.

Think of information sites as resource centers for a niche market to visit in order to get the information they want about a specific topic. They need to be rich in the subject matter that your audience is looking for.

So, the next big question you’re wondering is…

Why would I want an informational site?

Good question! And, if you’re not sure about informational sites in general then you might be wondering why you’d want to pour your efforts into a separate site… after all, why not just make your own business’ site an informational site, right?

Informational sites have some advantages over building a resource base on your own site:

• Informational sites give the appearance of being an unbiased resource center. In general, I’m sure that the information you provide would be unbiased, regardless of whether it’s on your site or on an informational site, but the customer’s perception can often be mistaken. They’ll think “of course the business is saying that; they’re trying to get me to buy something.” Even if it’s not true, that’s consumer psychology: They tend to trust more the information that seems “separate” from the business. So an informational site creates a “one step removed” site that makes it easy for you to provide information without seeming biased.

• Informational sites help to position you. Which business would you trust more: A business that sells something and that’s it, or a business that sells something AND selflessly provides a learning center? Of course the learning center business tends to be positioned as an expert (and therefore more trustworthy and able to command higher rates). But for reasons given in the previous bullet point, that needs to take place on a different site.

• Informational sites give you a “laboratory” where you can express your ideas and try out different things. Because of the volume of material you post, you can create content and try out different ideas and see how they are accepted. If you develop a great new coaching technique and all of your informational site readers love it, then maybe you can think about marketing it on its own. Or if your readers hate it, then you know that you should cut it out of your processes and move on. This laboratory helps you create and disseminate and test thought-leadership.

• Informational sites that have regular content also help you to generate an audience who might not normally follow a business’ site or blog but who do crave information. So, you get a bigger share of an audience.

• Informational sites are also very search engine friendly – for a few reasons that we’ll be talking about in upcoming Tips In Ten issues – so they help people to find “you” even if your own business’ website doesn’t turn up that well in search results.

For these reasons, informational sites are highly valuable assets that every business should own. But I would add yet another reason that informational sites are so valuable (but let me first clarify that this reason should NOT be your primary reason for starting an informational site, though it can be an important secondary reason):

• nformational sites can provide valuable ad revenue from people who click through ads placed on your informational site.

How should I start?

Here’s the process that I use when I begin an informational site:

1.    Start by thinking about who your target audience is for your business. Remember that whatever you decide to do for an informational site, you want it to be related to your business somehow because you are attracting your target audience so you can hopefully serve them some day and because this site can help to position you as an expert. (Besides, why would you want to split your focus between the subject matter of your business and some other subject matter? It’s less productive that way). So start by listing your target audience and try to narrow the niche to very specific audiences. For example, you might be a sales coach for small businesses but you can probably narrow it down further than that to “would-be entrepreneurs”, “MLM entrepreneurs”, “recent start-ups”, and “small businesses that are about 1 year old”. There, you’ve got 4 niches that you might want to consider creating informational s ites for.

2.    Once you’ve thought about your target audience, now it’s time to think about what information they are looking for. You want to find the “intersection” between what you do and what they need. Once you find that “intersection”, you’ll need to focus all of your content there. So, let’s say that you choose to start with an informational site for would-be entrepreneurs. The “intersection” between your business and their needs might include information about sales basics, the importance of sales to various aspects of the business, the sales process, etc. I would list as many topics as I could think of, aiming to have 100 or more topics. You might actually end up with a couple of different ideas for sites for a single niche. Just pick one and work on it first.

3.    Plan the format that you want to use. We’ll talk more about this in an upcoming Tips In Ten, but in general you need to decide if you are going to create a blog, a Squidoo lens, a site that is full of articles (but with a different structure than a blog), a wiki (which only you update), etc. There are lots of options and in an upcoming Tips In Ten I’ll talk about why I prefer blogs.

Okay, put your pens down! You’ve done enough for today. Watch for the next article of Tips In Ten when we talk further about informational sites and the business-building opportunity they provide you.

Related posts:

1. Success with Informational Sites – Part 2
2. Success with Informational Sites – Part 3
3. Success with Informational Sites – Part 4

Although most of you already know what online article distribution is, I’ll give you a quick description here, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page: Article distribution is when you write an article and submit it to a site that posts the article online and makes it available for blog and ezine publishers to use. They might republish it on their website or in an email newsletter that they send to their subscribers.

In this Tips In Ten, I’m going to start talking about articles and article submission. This is the beginning of a series in which we need to cover several helpful sub-topics. So, by the end of the series, you’ll be able to create and submit articles like a superstar and it should only take you about ten minutes a day. (I’ll show you how). But we need to “lay some groundwork” and that’s what this Tips In Ten article is all about: “WHY article submissions?”

Reason #1: Positioning

In general, articles are about 300 words or more, but usually less than 1000 words; and often the average of 500 words is a good word count to aim for. In theory, they could be shorter than 300 words or longer than 1000 words but there’s the issue of practicality that needs to be considered: People may not read content that is longer than 1000 words and anything shorter than 300 might not allow you to cover the topic at hand.

In that space, you have the opportunity to show yourself to be an expert on the subject at hand. By writing high quality, compelling content on a topic, you’ll show your audience that you know what you’re talking about and that you not only have a command of the problem but that you also provide a solution.

And, multiple articles contribute even more to your positioning. By writing an entire series of articles on your subject, you’ll demonstrate your deep expertise, which will help you to win the respect of your audience… and more business from them.

So, how can you position yourself effectively? Identify topics that your audience wants to read about, and then write about those topics.

Reason #2: Higher traffic to your website

Website owners are always on the search to find more channels to generate traffic to their site or blog. Articles give you another channel.

People might search for a topic and not find your website or blog, but they could find an article by you which has been disseminated around the web. Think of it like a bricks-and-mortar business. If you only have one location, you only make money off the people who actually walk in your door. However, if you have several kiosks around town, you’ll increase the likelihood that people can see your brand and buy from you.

When writing your articles, write content that is helpful and compelling. That will increase the likelihood that it will be distributed around the web, creating more ways for people to find you.

So, how can you generate more traffic to your website? Think about writing articles that will be popular to your audience.

Reason #3: Back links

Google transformed the internet with their idea that any link to your website is a vote for your website… and the more votes a website has, the higher it will be placed in search results. In this one “rule”, Google made “back links” (that is, getting links to point back to your website) an extremely important part of an entrepreneur’s marketing plan.

Articles give you back links. When you write an article and submit it to an article distribution site, you get a back link. And, when that article is picked up by bloggers and syndicated around the web, you’ll get many more back links as each posting of your article points back to your website.

So, how can you get more back links? Think about writing articles that will be widely distributed.

Reason #4: Search engine optimization

The fourth reason to write articles is to improve your search engine optimization. We’ll talk more about this in future articles of Tips In Ten, but one of the ways that articles gives you search engine optimization is through anchor text. Anchor text is the text that is turned into a link. Here’s an example: My link is http://hireheathervilla.com. If you click on it, you end up at my website. But, I can use an anchor text like “Productivity Coach” and link to the same domain, like this: Productivity Coach. Google will still credit me with a back link (see #3) but they’ll also note that the link to my website is describing the website as “Productivity Coach”.

Now, doing this once or twice is okay but when you write several articles and they are widely disseminated around the web, Google will notice that many of the links pointing to that one site all refer to the same thing; that’s good for improving search engine rankings.

So, how can you improve your search engine optimization? Use your articles to link back to your website (I’ll show you how).

Reason #5: Cost effective marketing

Google AdWords costs you money every time someone clicks on your ad. It’s effective and ROI can be easily measured. But it still costs money and, depending on the keywords you’re bidding on, it can cost a lot of money. Other types of advertising and marketing also cost money. If you send out newsletters, you might need to pay for your list management and distribution service. If you advertise, you probably need to pay for ad design and placement.

Articles, however, are quite affordable. If you write them yourself, they cost you nothing but time. If you hire a writer to write them for you, you can have them written quite affordably. And distributing articles costs little or no money, too. Some article distribution sites will charge nothing and others might charge a modest sum. We’ll talk more about what these sites charge in an upcoming issue.

So, how can you generate more cost effective marketing? Write articles; lots of articles!

Reason #6: Clearer thought processes

While the reasons I’ve listed above are good, immediate, business-building reasons to write articles, I think there is another reason as well, which might not be as obvious: Clearer thought processes. If you write articles, you’re forced to think through what you want to say. In a way, articles are like laboratories where you can get your ideas down and test them out. If you write a hundred articles with fifty on one topic and fifty on another, and you start getting call after call from new clients because of one of the topics (but nothing from the other), you’ve just done some easy market testing. And, I’m willing to bet that your thinking evolved between the time that you wrote the first article and the time that you wrote the fiftieth article!

I do this all the time. I sit down and write content even if the ideas aren’t fully formed yet. During the writing process, many of those ideas crystallize. And, over the course of several articles, many of those ideas transform into something better.

So, how can you focus your thinking and improve your expertise and offerings? Write articles.

The purpose of this article is to set you up so that as I talk more about articles, you’ll be better prepared to take advantage of this huge opportunity.

Related posts:

1. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 2
2. Bonus: Article Submissions in 10 Minutes
3. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 3

Sometimes that audience is made up of loyal visitors to your blog. They’ve bookmarked your blog and they visit everyday or read your RSS feed to see what you have to say. Sometimes that audience is made up of newsletter subscribers: They’ve left their email address in the hopes that you send them high value content on a regular basis.

There are plenty of tools and resources to help you create the infrastructure to communicate with that audience, whether through blogs or newsletters (or many other ways). In fact, in previous Tips In Ten articles, we’ve talked about those very things: I’ve shown you how to create regular blog content. And, I’ve shown you different autoresponder tools you can use to upload content and distribute it to your audience.

But the question is often asked: How do I get an audience?

You might have great information on your website. And you might have the audience-capturing and audience-communicating infrastructure already set up. But you need eyeballs! You need email addresses. You need people reading your content and thinking about you as the expert.

So how do you get that audience?

Well, as you can tell by the title of this issue, I think you need more than an audience. I think you need a fanbase. I’ve seen people generate an audience: I’m sure we’ve all received email and snail mail that seemed unsolicited and turned out that our email address or postal address were sold to someone. In other words, we were an audience but an unwilling one.

I think you need a fanbase: Where every audience member (whether they click to your blog or they read your content in an RSS feeder or they see your newsletter in their inbox) is a fan. Someone who has sought you out.

These fans are the most loyal of audiences because they appreciate what you have to say and they respond with purchases or referrals.

So, how can you create a fanbase in 10 minutes a day? It IS possible. And before I tell you, I want to reference someone who has a similar idea: Gary Vaynerchuk. If you’ve never heard of him, I’ll give you a short bio: Gary Vaynerchuk owned a wine store in New Jersey. He wanted to build his brand so he started creating video blogs showing his unconventional wine tasting. They are compelling, and if you ever get a chance to view one or two, you should. You can see them at http://tv.winelibrary.com.

Using a very similar method to what I’m about to describe here, he built up his reputation and now is a noted author, speaker, and a go-to authority on branding and on wine.

To build up a fanbase, here’s what you do:

First, find relevant sites. Relevant sites include blogs, forums, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter accounts that are somehow connected to your business or industry. So, for example, when I do this, I would look for blogs, forums, fan pages, or twitter users who were in the small business, entrepreneur, coach, and freelancer segments. When Gary Vaynerchuk does this, he looks for blogs, forums, and fan pages on wine.

Second, I would go there and leave comments, participate in discussion, follow, friend, tweet, talk, converse. I would say things that were relevant (and NOT self-promotional). For example, if I found a blog post that talked about productivity, I would comment with something like “that’s great. I’m going to implement that suggestion” or “you’re exactly right with your idea, I’ve been doing something similar for years” or “Thanks for the tip. I’d also recommend…”

Vaynerchuk says (in a video that I will link to shortly) that he would go to a Facebook fan page about merlot and comment with something like the name of his favorite merlot.

The idea here is not to blatantly self-promote but rather to engage the writer and his or her audience and participate with them. You can sign your name and leave your website address but don’t overload your comment with self-promoting content.

Third, I would repeat this process. I would do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the day after that. Ten minutes a day, each and every day. I would keep finding relevant sites and I would keep commenting and participating.

Here’s what will happen: Occasionally, someone will click on your link. They’ll read what you have to say. They’ll become a fan. Then someone else will do the same. And so on. Those occasional people will build up. Over time, you’ll pick up a following; a fanbase.

I love how Vaynerchuk says it in this video, so check it out for yourself: It takes 2 cents to GROW a wine show. (Note: I’m not sure why he’s filming this one from his bathroom, but the content is good even if the setting is weirdly irrelevant).

In one area where I don’t necessarily agree with Vaynerchuk is in the time this takes. He suggests hours. I think that’s a great idea but I don’t know many businesses where that kind of time is feasible to spend. Quite simply, we need to grow our business but we don’t have hours to spend doing what I’m about to describe. Unless you outsource some of it, you need to find the time to do it and I believe you can do it in ten minutes. Of course, if you have hours to accomplish what I and Vaynerchuk are suggesting, by all means spend the time. But if you only have ten minutes (as most of us do), then use those ten minutes wisely.

That’s it! That’s all you need to do. And it works. I can attest to its success and certainly the infamous Gary Vaynerchuk can as well. If you have hours to spend leaving your two cents on related sites around the web, then by all means do so. But if you are busy (as many of us are) and you only have ten minutes a day, start there. That should give you enough time to read and comment on 2 or 3 blogs or Facebook fan pages. And if you only do 2 a day from Monday to Friday, you’ll have commented on 10 by the end of the week and about 5,200 by the end of the year! That will have a big impact! If even 1% of those people become fans, that’s 52 more people by the end of the year.

A couple other things to note:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few other important elements: I believe you need two other things here in order for this to be successful:

• First, you need good content to drive people to. If you’re going to entice people to your site/blog/whatever, you need to deliver with good content. This might mean hiring a writer if you don’t have the time or skill to create the content yourself, or hiring an editor if you have the time to put something together but you don’t have the time to polish it.

• Second, you need to have the infrastructure set up to “lock in” your fanbase. This might mean regular posts on your blog. Or, it might mean that you have some RSS functionality. Or it might mean that you have a subscription newsletter. Whatever you do to engage your audience, you need to be able to deliver on that engagement consistently.

Ten minutes a day for a fanbase? It IS possible. Start today and build your fanbase!

Related posts:

1. Comments and How They can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Minutes) – Part 2
2. Building and Maintaining a Compelling Website in Just 10 Minutes a Day
3. The Power of a List: Part 1

So far I’ve been going in order, clockwise around the mindmap but I’m going to skip a couple of the branches because I want to deal with them later and I’m going to talk about teaching.

Three teaching resources are given – screencast tools Jing and Screentoaster and the webinar tool GoToMeeting. I’ve used Jing and GoToMeeting but I think there are other tools that are missing from here. Camtasia, for example, is one of my favorite screencast tools. I know there are others out there.

In this blog post I’m less interested in talking about the tools themselves than about what you can do with them. There are so many opportunities!

• Use screencasts to train your staff. This is useful both for onsite and for distributed/virtual staff. Show them what you are talking about when you need them to do something that they haven’t done before. They can watch the screencast on their own and review it again and again if there’s something they’ve missed.

• Use webinars to meet with your staff quarterly for an update on the business and to train them collectively in something. Where you might normally run a face-to-face meeting and use a Powerpoint, run a virtual meeting and use a webinar.

• Test a webinar system for client meetings and see if they are more fully engaged or get more out of your calls as a result.

• Do a whole bunch of screencasts as a digital download product that you can sell. This might not work for everyone but if you’re a coach or consultant (especially with a very technical or interface-specific service) then screencasts can help and they’ll make a good product.

• Use a screencast as a way to market your business: Create a screencast that starts with a picture (while you introduce yourself in the voiceover), show them your blog, show them how to sign up for your email, click to some client logos, talk about the programs or systems you use.

• If you’re looking for a new revenue-generating opportunity for your coaching business, consider a group roundtable conducted periodically through webinar. These might be 4 business owners and you talking about their situations. It’s like a conference call but a little more focused and some people don’t mind signing up for coaching with other businesses they don’t know because there is a networking element as well.

• Create a series of screencasts (or pre-recorded webinars if possible) and ask clients to view them prior to a coaching call. That way, you can get even deeper into your consultant sooner because some of the preliminary material was already covered.

The teaching element in your business is wide-open and there are so many exciting (and even profit-producing) opportunities for you to pursue. It’s worth taking some time to brainstorm and explore what teaching technology can help you.

Happy Blogging!

Related posts:

1. “What Should I Do?” – Livecasting
2. A powerful strategy for testimonials