This guest post is by Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing. Our blog is less than a year old. We started Firepole Marketing less than a year ago, and we’ve done pretty well with it over that time. A lot of people know who we are, and what we do. I’ve even been dubbed the Freddy Krueger of Blogging.

It’s a paradox. The pundits encourage bloggers to find a niche, think differently, and say something unique and valuable. Then they give us standard formulae for producing content, as if your unique voice, approach, readership, and topic will be neatly addressed by a preselection of three or four formats. In editing the content at ProBlogger and FeelGooder, I receive posts in the same few styles over and over and over (and over). These are the most common. Personal story posts are characterized by an

With the launch this week of Seth Godin’s latest book, We Are All Weird, we wanted to share this interview we recently conducted with Seth on productivity and blogging.

Bloggers are always happy to link to a resource we think is good, or a product or service with which we’re affiliated. But there are other kinds of external links that too few bloggers use: Citing sources is a basic element of professional writing. As well as reflecting your professionalism, it: Above all, citing external sources of information boosts your credibility. By linking to a quality, reliable external source, you show that you proudly stand behind the information you give your readers. And

Post titling seems to be something of sacred territory for many bloggers. We feel that the title contains the essence of our post, and therefore, it’s the essence of ourselves—our personalities, our messages, our brands. On the other hand, we see a lot of post titles on the Web, and there appears to be endless variation available to us. Many factors play into a title: the post’s topic, the angle we’ve taken, SEO and keywords, and so on. Even if you’re a my-titles-are-my-brand type

This guest post is by Jonathan Dunsky of WorldofDiets.com. A lot of bloggers work alone. I started out the same way. I hardly talked about what I was doing and never got into details with the people closest to me. Today, however, I feel that this approach can limit the success of your blog and that you must reach out to those closest to you to help you build your blog to its fullest potential. Copyright Yuri Arcurs - Fotolia.com

You’ve probably heard of usability. Back in the day, when the web was wild(er) and free(r), usability proponents like Jakob Nielsen encouraged site owners to stop doing things like displaying yellow text on black backgrounds, shun the Blink and Marquee tags, and focus on helping users do what they wanted to do on websites. These days, usability is crucial to the success not just of blogs, but of online businesses—much of the information we read about reducing friction and improving sales pages, for

I know what you’re thinking. “Of course! I’m a lovely blogger! I’m always giving stuff away—advice in my posts, free chapters from my ebook, whitepapers, time, and a whole swag of fun fun fun on my Facebook page!” That’s great—and certainly generous—but what I’m talking about is something different. A generous blogger is one who shares such valuable information that readers immediately start searching for their contact details.

Do you use images in your blog posts? Most bloggers like to increase their posts’—and blogs’—impact with an image, and while I’m a die-hard textophile, I can see the point. An image is certainly more eye-catching than text. Couple the right image with the right heading, and you’re on fire.