How much time do you spend nurturing the business connections you’ve made?

Chances are, you’re not spending enough.

As a freelance copywriter, I’ve learned that my business connections are some of the most valuable assets I have. My network is at least as important as my copywriting skills.

Daymond John, creator of FUBU clothing and one of the “Sharks” on the TV show Shark Tank says this: “I’ve learned, like with anything else, business is only as good as your connections and your resources.”

The inventors and entrepreneurs who appear on Shark Tank know this, which is why they’ll sometimes accept less favorable terms to get connected with the one Shark they believe will be most beneficial to the success of their product or company.

In the video clip below, Dave, the owner of Clean Bottle, gets two strong offers, one from Robert Herjavec and one from Mark Cuban.

Robert offers $60,000 for 5%, which is what Dave originally asked for. Mark offers $60,000 for 8%.

Based on the numbers alone, Robert’s offer is much more attractive. It is the offer I would have accepted. But ultimately, Dave accepted Mark’s offer because Mark is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Dave placed a high value on Mark’s network of connections in the sports world.

Remember: Business is not a solo enterprise. Many people contribute to the success of a business, not least of which are the people you know.

So nurture your network and treat it like the valuable asset it is.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. One of the ways I nurture my network is by staying in touch via mail.

This is why I use Send Out Cards. It makes staying in touch easy and affordable. I’ve been using it for 3+ years for both personal and business contacts.

I strongly encourage all service providers to use Send Out Cards to nurture and develop their business contacts. Click here to learn more about Send Out Cards.Similar Posts:

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When I asked for you to vote on your favorite blog header graphic, I got a number of insightful comments and questions. If you voted or replied, thank you.

I also got a couple comments from readers who questioned why I was removing the red subscribe button from the header graphic. For example:

why are you taking out the email updates portion

And another one:

I wouldn’t be on your list if it weren’t for that red subscribe button ;-)

These are valid questions and concerns. Why remove something that’s working?

Why I’m Ditching the Email Subscribe Button

I’m getting rid of the button for a few reasons:

1. It competes with the Hello Bar I use on the site. I split-test various calls to action in the Hello Bar, one of which is to subscribe to email updates.

2. The entire header graphic — not just the red button — was linked to the opt-in page. I found this a little confusing. Header graphics, if they are linked, usually link to the home page. So removal of the button and the link eliminates confusion.

3. I’m planning to implement other avenues for new site visitors to opt-in to my email list. I’ll be rolling out these design tweaks over the next few weeks.

Keep Your Blog Fresh

It’s important to keep your blog fresh.

Obviously, publishing new content is part of that. But making changes to your site’s design is another important aspect that most bloggers overlook.

Over time, regular blog readers develop “ad blindness.” They fail to see the ads, links, and calls-to-action that surround your content.

Small design changes can make them reexamine your site and see things they may not have seen before.

Technology Is Changing Fast

What’s more, technology is always marching forward. I find this is especially true in the field of social media plugins. I think I’ve gone through at least 8 different plugins designed to enhance social media sharing.

• ShareThis
• Sexy Bookmarks
• Sociable (Pro Version)
• Topsy ReTweet Button
• Active Share by OrangeSoda
• SERPd button by Chris Burns
• Google Plus Widget by WebpageFX
• Google +1 Button by Jacob Gillespie

And I’m currently using Slick Social Share Buttons by Lee Chestnutt.

Some of the plugins didn’t quite work like I wanted them to. Some worked great, but failed to generate the response I was hoping for. And so forth.

The point is, you should always be testing to see what design elements work the best.

And to do that, you’ve got to try a number of different things, measure response/reaction, and keep making those gradual improvements every single week, month, and year.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. The winner of the blog header contest was Design #2, which is now at the top of this blog. It got 67% more votes than Design #1.Similar Posts:

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It’s now been 4 years since I started the blog you’re reading right now. During that time, I’ve written more than 400 articles and received more than 5,000 comments. I’m not crushing any records, but I’m pleased with the results.

Obviously, I’ve discovered quite a few lessons about blogging during that time. With that in mind, here are 7 tips for maintaining and growing your blog:

• Write new posts on a regular basis, especially when you’re starting out. Now that I’ve got a large base of articles, I can skip a week or two without much consequence. But it’s important to publish at least weekly (preferably three times a week) during your first year or two of blogging.

• Don’t shy away from controversy or unpopular opinions. If your blog is filled with boring “me-too” articles that merely parrot what everyone else has already said, then chances are you’ll never get much traffic or attract any kind of loyal readership.

• Encourage conversation. I’ve noticed that some of the most loyal readers are also some of the most regular commenters.

• Over time, you’ll notice a handful of articles will generate the majority of your site’s traffic. Use Google Analytics or another tracking service to determine your top 10 most-visited pages. Optimize those pages so that they drive some sort of action that’s beneficial to your business.

• Always look for ways to improve your blog. Figure out ways to generate more email opt-ins. Look at how you can improve your blog’s design, site navigation, category structures, and more.

• Clean up old articles, comments, and dead links. I’ve noticed that strange characters and comment duplication will sometimes sneak in during WordPress upgrades and transitions between themes and commenting systems. Make sure those strange characters and duplicate comments are deleted. Use the Broken Link Checker plugin to find and “unlink” dead links.

• Market your blog regularly and consistently. Build backlinks for your core keyword phrases. Use article marketing and guest posting for long-term traffic benefits.

These are just a few tips I use to maintain and grow my blog. You may find them useful, too.

If you have any tips of your own, feel free to add them below.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

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If you’d like to get more of your blog visitors to “Like” your Facebook page, then it’s important to add a Facebook “Like Box” to your blog’s sidebar.

Here’s how to do it, step by step:

1. First, you have to create a Facebook page. I’m assuming you already have one.

2. Go to the Like Box page on Facebook to design your custom Like Box.

3. Copy and paste your Facebook page URL into the first field.

4. Customize the width of your Like Box so it will fit in your sidebar. (Don’t worry too much about this. You can get it to fit with a little trial and error.)

5. Check or uncheck boxes to change the content of what appears in your Like Box. I’ve unchecked the “Show stream” box because I feel it’s unnecessary to display my most recent blog posts on my blog a second time.

6. Click the “Get Code” button. Copy the code.

7. Next, log-in to your WordPress control panel. Click on “Widgets” underneath the “Appearance” menu.

8. Click and drag a new Text Widget into your sidebar.

9. Paste the code (from Step 6) inside the text area of your new Widget and click Save. You’ll notice you do not need to enter a title because the Like Box already includes a title that says “Find Us on Facebook.”

10. Check your blog to see how the new Like Box looks. If it’s too wide, simply go back to the Facebook Like Box page, reduce the width, grab the updated code, paste it back into your text widget (overwriting the previous code), and hit save. After a couple tries, you should have the perfect size Like Box on your blog.

11. Last step! Get people to your blog and ask them to “like” your Facebook page. :-)

Although I’ve listed a lot of steps here, it’s actually a fairly simple process. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. By the way, since we’re already talking about it, I’d really appreciate it if you “liked” my Facebook page. Just look for the Like Box to the left and click the Like button. Thanks!Similar Posts:

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There are dozens of different ways to get free traffic to your site. One of them is to leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your own site.

This by itself is a decent strategy. The quicker you comment on a new blog post, the more likely it is you’ll get some traffic to your blog.

Why?

Because many successful bloggers email their list after they publish a new post. If you are the first one to comment on a new blog post… then you’ll get to “ride the wave” of subscribers who visit that post.

But while this strategy works, I’ve found an even better way to generate traffic from blog comments.

Blog Comments as a Source of Traffic

Lest you think that commenting on blogs is a waste of time, let me share with you a little story.

A couple years ago, as I was researching new ways to drive traffic to my blog, I stumbled upon a simple idea. The idea was to find “do-follow” blogs that passed PageRank through their comment links.

In theory, by leaving comments on blogs like this (and perhaps even using your primary keyword phrase as your “name”), you could actually increase your search engine rankings.

In my case, the theory proved true. Here’s what I did.

First, I found a do-follow blog that had a post related to one of my posts. I then left a comment linking to a post on my site. I used the title of the post in the “name” field. In my comment, I referenced my post and said, “Click my name to read the post.”

This not only helped me get (and stay) ranked for that search phrase for years, it also sent a lot of traffic to my blog.

Not just hundreds of visitors.

Thousands.

In fact, this one blog comment has sent more traffic to my blog in the last year than any single guest post or web site other than Google, StumbleUpon, and Twitter.

In other words, this blog ranks #4 in terms of how much traffic it sends to my site.

And it was all because of one measly comment on one measly post.

Blogs that Rank Well Send Lots of Traffic

If you were to use this same strategy to drive traffic to your site, you’d want to do the following:

1. Search Google for a keyword phrase you’ve already written about in a blog post or article.

2. Go through the first page of search results to see if any of the sites are blogs.

3. If one of the sites is a blog, and comments are open, then leave a comment contributing to the conversation.

4. Do not link to your site’s home page in the URL field. Rather, link directly to the post or article that’s related to the one you’re commenting on.

5. Rather than typing your name into the name field, use your primary keyword phrase, or even the title of your post or article.

6. Finally, mention your related blog post or article in your comment and instruct readers to click your name if they’d like to read more.

While it’s no guarantee that your comment will produce thousands of visitors (or that it will even be published), there is a good chance you will get a steady stream of visitors to your site for weeks, months, and possibly years.

-Ryan M. Healy

Listen to This Blog Post:

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A few months ago, I quietly changed my blog comment settings to automatically close comments after 30 days. After this worked so well, I decided to reduce the “comment window” to only 14 days.

Here’s why I decided to do this.

Reason #1 – I’ve had quite a lot of work to do this year, and I don’t always have time to reply to comments. This is especially true for comments that are added to old posts. Once a post is more than a month old, the discussion has moved elsewhere and a new comment can be a hassle to deal with.

Reason #2 – In spite of sophisticated spam filters like Akismet, every blog is still susceptible to comment spam. What’s more, the older the post, the more spam it’s likely to attract. So by automatically closing comments in 14 days, I’ve literally eliminated my blog comment spam problem altogether.

Reason #3 – A 14-day comment window encourages people to comment now instead of later. Furthermore, those who decide to comment before the window closes are rewarded with a link back to their blog or web site. People who come along later do not get that privilege.

I know a number of bloggers who’ve decide to turn off comments altogether. While I’ve considered it, I actually like to get comments and respond to them.

So, for me, a 14-day comment policy is the perfect compromise. It allows me to keep comments open, but also: prevents old discussions from being reopened; eliminates blog comment spam; and encourages readers to comment before the 14 days is up.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. As of November 2010, I’m experimenting with a 90-day comment policy because my readers told me they wanted more than 14 days to comment.Similar Posts:

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Last I checked, Apple had sold like a hundred gazillion iPods and iPhones.

Okay, just counting iPhones alone, they’ve sold more like 33.75 million as of fourth quarter 2009. [source]

Remember, that’s not counting any iPod Touch sales.

Plus, millions more Crackberries, PDAs, web-enabled cell phones, and handheld Internet devices have been sold all across the world.

I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that 70 million people worldwide can now surf the Internet on a handheld device. And even if it were “only” 34 million people, that’s a LOT of mobile web surfers!

Question: Have you ever wondered how many people are trying to read your blog using a handheld mobile device? And have you ever seen what your blog looks like on one?

I only recently got an iPhone in July 2009 — so I’m not casting stones here at all — and all of a sudden I realized why “the mobile web” is actually a really big deal.

One morning in particular brought this to the front of my mind. My friend was traveling and my brother had slept through his alarm clock, so all of a sudden I found myself at Panera alone… without a book. (The horror!)

But I did have my iPhone.

So I stopped in at a few of my favorite blogs.

Let me tell you: It was practically impossible to read some of them! The words wouldn’t resize, the borders wouldn’t flex, and I’d be stuck scrolling left to right and squinting to read the super-small font.

Not a pleasant experience.

Then I tried to read my blog. And it wasn’t much better!

The fact is, a blog that’s designed to be read on a computer cannot be easily read on a screen that’s perhaps one-tenth or even one-twentieth the size of a full computer screen.

That’s when I got curious about how to modify my blog for mobile readers.

Turns out, it’s way easier than I thought — if you have a WordPress blog.

All you have to do in WordPress is scroll down to “Plugins” from within the admin panel and click on “Add New.” Type “WordPress Mobile Pack” into the search box. Click “Install” next to the plugin to install it.

From there, customize as you wish.

It’s a beautiful thing. Because immediately you will have a site that is easily viewed and read by any mobile web user.

Problem solved! (Not to mention you can now grab the eyeballs of a few million web surfers who are stuck in department stores while their wives try on clothes.)

-Ryan M. Healy

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Over the holidays, this blog hit an important milestone: 1,000 approved comments and counting. It happened in just under one year from the time I started this blog on the new domain.

Since there are currently 1,048 comments and 115 published posts on this blog, that’s about 9.1 comments per blog post.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about writing a report on how to get more blog comments. Perhaps put in some of my strategies for growing readership and getting subscribers too.

What do you think: good or bad idea? Is this something you would pay for?

Feel free to be honest, by the way. If you’re not interested, just say so.

Thanks!

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. I wrote two new blog posts this weekend about business success. I’ll publish them this week, so watch for them.Similar Posts:

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Over the last few months, I’ve tweaked this blog a bit and added a few pages.

So I thought it would be good to let you know about them.

1. I removed the “no follow” tags from this blog.

I did this on Fred Black’s recommendation. You can read his post about removing “no follow” tags here: I’ve Removed the No Follow Tag from My Blog — You Should Too!

Basically, what this means is you now have a greater incentive to comment on my blog. Because PageRank will pass to your web site should you include a site when you submit a comment.

2. I’ve added an incentive for subscribing to my blog’s email list.

Earlier this month, I created what I call the “Conversion Booster Check List.” Whenever you write an ad or sales letter, simply use the check list to make sure you haven’t overlooked any obvious ways to boost response.

When you subscribe to my blog email list, you’ll get this check list free. (You’ll also get this check list free if you “Follow Me” on Twitter.)

3. I’ve created a page of Ad Copy Samples.

Every once in a while, a potential client will ask to see some of my copy samples.

In the past, I would dig up past projects, attach them individually to an email, and send them off. This was tedious, so I created the new page.

It doesn’t include entire ads or sales letters (it’s not a swipe file), although it does give you a good idea of my style. The page is located here: Ryan Healy’s Ad Copy Samples

4. I’ve created a “Ryan Recommends” page.

Since I’ve been involved in online marketing for 6+ years, I’ve encountered (and used) a lot of products.

So I’ve built a page that includes some of my favorite products. Some are free, some are paid. Some use my affiliate link, some don’t.

I’ve designed the page with an eye towards making it useful for you. That’s why I’ve written a short blurb about each tool to explain how/why I use it. If you’d like to see what I recommend, go here: Ryan Recommends

(I just added five new tools to my “recommends” page today.)

Enjoy!

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

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FeedBurner is the #1 service for tracking blog readers through RSS. If you have a FeedBurner account, you can log-in and track how many readers you have, and whether your readership is growing or shrinking.

You can even publish a widget on your blog that dynamically displays the number of blog readers you have. For instance, Michel Fortin’s FeedBurner widget says he has 22,838 readers today.

Once you’ve got a sufficient number of readers, displaying a FeedBurner widget becomes a good form of social proof, and could possibly encourage more people to subscribe to your blog. (“Hey, if he’s got 250 readers, it must be a good blog!”)

But FeedBurner’s numbers are not always a good indicator of the value of a blog. For instance, FeedBurner says my old Typepad blog has 169 readers today… even though I haven’t posted to that blog since early January!

And for this blog, FeedBurner only reports 13 readers today. (I know those numbers are low based on traffic statistics and my Aweber email subscribers, which FeedBurner doesn’t track.)

So if not the number of readers, how should you judge the success or value of your blog?

I suggest it’s not about how many readers you have; rather, it’s about how loyal and responsive your readers are.

On a secondary level, it’s also about how many people of influence you’re reaching.

When I write a blog post, my aim is to provide value, spark critical thinking, and encourage interaction. And if some readers decide to link to what I’ve written, so much the better.

I would much rather build loyalty with a few influential and connected readers than gain exposure to thousands of disconnected readers with little or no influence.

Said another way, exposure is meaningless, but loyalty is priceless.

The same principle is at work in advertising.

There are many headlines that will grab a reader’s attention. But a headline’s job is not only to get attention. It’s also to drive the reader into the advertisement.

So in the case of an ad, getting attention is meaningless, but getting a sale is worth something.

When I write a blog post, I’d rather attract 15 people who actually read and respond than 100 people who read the headline and leave.

And when I write an ad, I’d rather attract 5 people who actually read and buy than thousands who read the headline only.

I share all this because it is far too easy to become obsessed with meaningless numbers. To place importance on statistics that are of little import.

As you write articles for your blog, adopt a proper mindset. Don’t try to get the most readers or a bunch of transient traffic from Digg. Simply focus on developing a loyal and responsive readership. The rest will fall into place.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

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