Thanks to Mom Masterminds, my rocking sponsor, I’m here at Blissdom ‘09 and ready to share some tips from the first session of today.

This session was moderated by Tanis Miller with panelists Tsh Oxenreider, Amy Clark and Meredith Pelham

The topic?

“Content/Readership – Building your Readership and Providing Amazing Content”

These moms had awesome advice for women just starting out and those who want to get more readers. Some of my favorite nuggets:

• - Be sure to buy your domain name! Don’t host your blog on a .blogspot or .wordpress subdomain. Not only does hosting your blog on your own domain present a more professional image but also someone else may snatch up your name before you do.
• - Define success for yourself. Is success getting tons of comments? Mega traffic stats? Ad revenue? Ok, so you want everyone in the world on your blog but what for? What does success look like to you? Keep your goals clear in mind.
• - Who do you want to attract? Keep your target audience firmly in mind and write for them.
• - What kind of blogger are you? Some of the panelists had more informative/magazine type of blogs, but one was firmly a mom blogger who wrote (quite candidly!) about her life. She is more of a “memoir” blogger or a “diarist”. Different people are comfortable with different levels of transparency.
• - Be succinct. Respect your readers time – this was a common refrain. While I personally value “epic” posts from time to time because of their value as traffic bait with search engines, its also a great idea to post quick bites of info that your readers can quickly digest and get back to their lives.
• Another tip that would fall under this heading is to write a “Q&A” post in which the content is in the comments. Ask your readers a question and allow them to leave comments and be the experts for a change! This is great for establishing goodwill with your readers. (As an example, Alice Seba does this each Tuesday on her blog with Tough Question Tuesday.)
• - Edit! Some of the bloggers mentioned that they spend more time editing than writing. Distill your message down as much as you can and really cull out the fluff. Again – some of this depends on your style of blog, but generally most blog readers are busy and want the meat of the info to be quickly and easily digested.
• - Write evergreen content. If your reader is finding you through a search engine, some of your content may not make sense to them if everything is time sensitive. Timeless content is a great traffic generation tool.
• - Keep SEO in mind. This is where we Mom Masterminds members have a huge advantage since we all know SEO! Keep search engines in mind when you write for your blog. For example, name the graphics that you add to your blog keyword friendly names (another point not mentioned but certainly worthy is to add ALT tags to your images) since Google indexes these.
• - Use your time wisely. Some of the bloggers on the panel said they only blog certain days of the week, or only on weekends. They write lots of posts and schedule them to publish on their blogs so they can maximize the time they spend with their families. This is a great tip for us busy moms!
• - Republish! Republish some of your great content. For instance, create posts that list and link to all the posts you’ve done on a particular topic.
• - Get help creating content. Whether it’s inviting guest bloggers or hiring them, get some help with your blog. Figure out what and whom you want and create a page on your blog describing how guest bloggers or columnists can submit their work to you.
• - Keep your reader in mind when you write. Be helpful to your reader.
• - Blog for you, not for them. Stop worry about what they think and blog for the pleasure of it.

Ok, ok, I know those last two contradicted each other!

There really are no rules. It goes back to figuring out what kind of blogger you are. We’re all making this up as we go along!

Also, I’ll end on this point. One of the panelists said that she worked very hard getting readers and content to her blog for the first 18 months or so. I think this is quite common. With blogging or any other internet business, the hard work is on the front end.

So hang in there, and get busy writing and creating great content!

Sponsored by Mom Masterminds

We just arrived in Nashville a couple of hours ago for the BlissDOM conference. The ride up was a pleasant, lovely drive with great conversation thanks to Renee Ross of Cutie Booty Cakes.

Our roommates are Briana, Julie and Sarah.

And, I’ve already met Stephanie Precourt so I can go home now.

Just kidding!

I don’t know HOW this snuck up on me, but it did.

Just a couple of days ago I found out about Blissdom – a blogging conference for women – and now, thanks to Mom Masterminds, I’m going!

I’m excited. Totally excited.

This will be the first conference of its kind that I’ve ever attended. The idea of meeting some of my favorite and much admired bloggers pickles me tink.

Not to mention the opportunity to learn some awesome stuff about improving my blogging strills!

But I don’t want to be selfish and keep it all to myself.

That wouldn’t be very bloggy of me, would it?

So I want to know what YOU want to know.

I’ll be blogging live and Tweeting live and taking lots of pictures (and hopefully borrowing a video camera from someone – Mom are you reading this? LOL! I didn’t get the video camera in the divorce agreement!) and tons of notes.

I’m an avid note taker, but instead of just typing and jotting down what is interesting to ME, I want to give my note taking some purpose and try to answer questions from YOU.

If you were going to be there, what would you ask, and of whom?

Take a look at the line up of speakers and sessions.

And let me know below what your top questions are. I’ll listen hard and do my absolute best to find the answers, ok?

And be checking back here and here on Friday and Saturday, February 6 and 7 for my answers.

Mom Masterminds is sponsoring me.

Anyone interested in sponsoring my wardrobe?

Absolutely.

Well that was easy. Moving on…

No seriously folks, there are many good reasons to use PLR (private label rights) content on your blog. I see this question come up from time to time on internet marketing forums and blogs and it still makes me scratch my head.

Why wouldn’t you use PLR on your blog just as you use it everywhere else?

I suppose the concern is that since it is ghostwritten, it won’t sound like “you”, and your blog readers will be able to tell that it’s PLR.

That would be absolutely true if you misused PLR, but you are too smart for that. I know that because you read my blog.

PLR is meant to be a framework, not the finished product. It’s the rough draft. You can absolutely use it on your blog – if you take the time to add your voice.

Publishing a blog takes a bit of a commitment. Your readers want to see good content from you or they will unsubscribe from your feed in a second. It’s not easy to crank out awesome posts all the time if you don’t have a little secret weapon.

To help you understand how PLR can help you fire up your blog and why to use it, download this free report:

Fire Up Your Blog with PLR

It explains 6 attractive benefits to using PLR content with your blogging, 12 creative ideas for using PLR and more.

And it won’t take you all day to read either. It’s a quick 3 page report with plenty of ideas you can use right away to inject some heat into your blogging efforts.

I looked through my stats for the year to see which posts were the most popular here.

Did you read these?

#1- Seems a lot of online business owners appreciated the 30 Days, 30 Articles challenge I hosted awhile back. Shall I do another one? Got any suggestions for another monthlong challenge?

#2 – Work at home Moms are NOT making the feminine mistake – never one to run from a little controversy, I had to share my thoughts on the dangers of economic dependence for women, and how work at home moms have the best of all worlds.

#3 – I Need Right Now Money – suggestions for what to do when you don’t have time to build a business and need fast income.

#4 – Quite a few of you came out to celebrate my appearance on MSNBC.

Kelly McCausey over at the Wahm 2.0 blog has put together a list of wahm blogs.

Would you vote for me?

You can even vote for more than one if you just can’t narrow it down.

The top ten winners get an awesome prize package.

Thanks so much!

Kelly asked a question the other night.

How often do you like to change the look of your blog?

My answer?

When I stop enjoying looking at my blog.

Pretty simple. I spend more time writing here than others do reading here, so if I don’t want to look at my blog anymore, I change it.

Didn’t Jen do a nice job for me?

I had the FreshNets team do a complete overhaul of my other blog a couple of months ago and have been so pleased ever since. I’ve been a blogging fool over there.

Of course, another reason is to make the blog meet my marketing purposes. The other blog is a magazine style, allowing me to add articles (like a “regular” website) and integrate the blog all on the same page.

Getting a new look makes me want to blog and gets me excited again.

What about you?

I get spam on the blog from two website owners over and over and over. You think they would get the point. I delete their spam repeatedly so you think they would just get a clue and learn some REAL marketing and stop.

But alas, they don’t.

This morning I got really fed up with one who is named Daniel. Yes, his real name. I hope by that posting the little email I sent to him earlier he might feel some shame (if he has a conscience at all that is).

Daniel,

Would you please stop spamming my blog with these useless comments?
They get deleted every.single.time.

In case you think you’re wasting the time of some faceless, nameless
“rich jerk” online, you’re not.

I’m a single Mom of 4 kids who is going through a divorce and earning
a living (all my myself I might add) with her online business. Every
time I have to go in and delete your spam is a moment I am not: earning
money or: playing with my kids.

Shame On You.

Of course, the email bounced. But in case you want to actually visit his site, go to social-marketer.org. Hey maybe he has a blog you can spam!

But wait, I forgot. You are an actual MARKETER with a CLUE who gets traffic by providing VALUE to your target market. What a concept!!!