TOP 15 BLOGGING STRATEGY

 

1. Select The Righ Domain

Eva and Charlotte carefully chose a catchy, appropriate domain name. I love this: TeensGotCents – a lovely play on words that touches on the wisdom this teen is going to impart to all who peruse her site.

2. Selected a Clean Relevant Design

The site is rocking a cleanly designed Genesis theme with a simple, very relevant header with clever tagline. The color choice is spot on – who in the US, at least, doesn’t associate green with money?

Genesis captured my heart immediately and apparently I’m not alone: Matt Cutts recently announced his Genesis preference. Not only is it more affordable than most premium themes, it’s more intuitive to use and comes with access to tutorials. You don’t need rocket science level CSS knowledge to customize the thing. Even the pre-made themes can be turned into one-of-a-kind designs with just a few adjustments.

3. Clever Use of Categories

The site has well defined and cleverly branded categories – this is the sign of a really cohesive brand. The categories make navigation easy and an unexpected element of entertainment with their play on words. Who can resist categories such as CommonCents, ShoppingCents or BlogCents? This smart move will help this team move beyond just owning a site to owning a brand – a business that can grow and create some awesome opportunities.

4. Organized a Team

They organized a well-matched team of writers and created a fun, light-hearted about me page.

5. Became Active on Social Media

Social media icons are visible and easy to find. This makes it easy for readers to follow them on other channels and share their content.

6. Offered a Subscriber Incentive and a Giveaway

Eva and Charlotte have created an enticing ebook and are offering it for free to attract subscribers. They’ve set it up so that when someone subscribers, it arrives in their inbox automatically.

Recently, they offered a cool giveaway to readers who commented with answer to a specific question. This works well to increase reader engagement and could be organized to encourage social shares, subscribers or follows – whatever element you want to increase can be incentivized with a giveaway.

7. Vibrant Photographs

When you arrive on the site, the vibrant, professional grade photographs immediately pull the eyes in and directly to the articles. These are not just any photos, you can actually find Eva and her interviewees in these photos. This shows that she is actively working hard to bring unique content that can only come from her perspective. This builds the site’s credibility and influence. It won’t be long before Eva is considered an authority in her niche.

8. Intelligent use of relevant videos

Eva is also making use of relevant videos on the site. This keeps readers engaged on site longer and helps to increase the site’s popularity in the eyes of the search engines. It’s also a great way to offer a variety of content – not everyone likes to read, some people are more visual learners and prefer to watch videos.

9. Connected with Local Experts

In many of posts on the site, it’s evident that the writers aren’t shy about reaching out to local experts and people of interest who have global appeal and relevance. Eva scored an interview with the CFO of the state of Florida, Jeff Atwater to discuss his views on finances – and there are tons more great interviews! This blog has the potential to really blow up in their local area, while still providing high value to people in any city.

10. Frequent updates

Since this blog’s beginning in January, it has already built up a solid foundation of content. Each post is engaging, many are short and easy to read. People just don’t have the patience for reading super long posts. Long posts have their place – I wouldn’t say never write a long post, but if a post runs longer than 1400 words, it’s better to break things up into parts like what I’ve done with yesterday’s and today’s post – imagine if I had tried to present all of this information along with yesterday’s post. You probably wouldn’t have finished the post to get through all of the information I’m presenting today.

11. Responds to comments

I remember the days when I could respond to every comment that came in. I’m sorry that I can’t anymore, but no matter what, it’s still a great way to build your blogs community and increase the level of interaction on your blog. When readers know you will respond, they go out of their way to comment. So if you want more comments, respond to the ones you get and you’ll quickly double your comment count and give your readers even more reasons to hang out at your blog.

12. Provides a way for people to contact them

In addition to engaging commentators, they’ve provide a visible link to a contact form that readers can use to reach them. There’s a Facebook Like Box and other social media icons available for reaching them on other channels.

13. Adheres to ethical standards

This site has a Disclosure page that lets people know that there’s a potential that they will earn a commission for recommended products. You’ll also find a Privacy Policy page that details the type of information that might be collected by the owners or sites such as Google when you enter their site.

14. Shares real life experiences

All contributors write in a very honest and transparent way and you can trust that they’ve truly interacted with their interviewees and they actually did what they said they did. They share their real experiences as it relates to finances and other closely related topics. When they are ready to monetize, this will be the deal-sealer for them. People will know that they can trust their recommendations and will be eager to buy whatever this team recommends will solve their problems.

15. Offers Help and Valuable Info

This site is just flat out helpful. It’s apparent that the goal is to offer solutions to teens and adults who are looking to improve their finances.

I’m sure I’ve left something out, you’ll just have to stop by and check things out for yourself and see what other strategies they’ve got up their sleeves.