This isn’t so much a blogging tip as it is a life tip – pay someone a compliment today.

Doesn’t receiving an unsolicted compliment really brighten up your day?  Why not spread some of the joy around?   

Is there a blogger whose work you read and enjoy regularly?  Compliment them in the comments or though email.  If you’ve been following a blog for a while and admire the writer(s), tell them!  You might make a new friend in the process, or even if nothing comes of it, compliments cost nothing.

At a loss for something to blog about today?  You could take this idea even further and write a post complimenting someone in your niche, whether they are a blogger or not (of course, if they do have a blog or website, be sure to give them a link – so they get the SEO benefit of an incoming link and they might notice your blog through their stats).

After all, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

I was very, very impressed by this guest post on Problogger from Gala of iCiNG about the 9 Lessons she’s learned from blogging.  Yes, she’s a niche blogger -her blog deals with fashion and style, which are common topics in the blogosphere but she definitely adds her own unique spin to everything. She points out an incredibly important aspect of blogging that I’d be willing to bet all successful bloggers know.

And I quote:

Blogging isn’t about shouting the loudest or being really important, it’s about connecting & engaging in a dialogue with other people. If you’re not actually interested in interacting with anyone else or hearing other people’s opinions, you might as well be keeping a diary for yourself. Like it or lump it, having a blog is like being in retail. If people don’t like you, they will go (& spend their money) elsewhere.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times – successful bloggers manage to connect and communicate with their readers, and that’s what makes them so popular.  On the most basic level, they create value for their readers, and that’s why readers keep coming back.

Yes, listening and responding to your readers takes some time, but remember that they are like customers – keeping readers interested is essential to your success.  If you put in the hours creating compelling content, whether it’s a how-to or a round-up of useful resources, it will eventually pay off.  Of course, you need to promote it with SEO and link-building, but you had better concentrate on creating something quality to market first.

One excellent way to create value is to teach your readers something.  If you’re a business blogger, chances are there’s at least one area where you possess some expertise, so share your knowledge with your visitors.  By helping others you can help yourself.  An example from the sports world – hockey great Wayne Gretzky recorded more than twice as many assists as goals (1963 career assists vs. 894 goals), and he still holds almost every possible scoring record.  It’s clear that he helped his teammates succeed, and now he’s considered one of the greatest hockey players of all time.

Focus on what you can give to your readers – “ask not what your readers can do for you, ask what you can do for your readers“.  Yes, I took some serious liberties with John F. Kennedy’s classic phrase, but it’s important for bloggers to remember that they must contribute to community in order to reap its rewards.

Almost all bloggers are going to encounter critics at some point, especially bloggers who are passionate about their topics and committed to sharing their ideas with the world. Passion and conviction can polarize people, and it takes courage to publish your thoughts, especially if your topics are in any way controversial.

Criticism is a Fact of Blogging Life

A thick skin is vital to participating in blogosphere, because you are opening yourself up to criticism in the form of comments and emails, and even if you don’t enable comments or provide a way for your readers to contact you, that won’t necessarily stop them from talking about you – but isn’t that why you started a blog?  To make people aware of you and your company?  However, it’s important to differentiate between constructive criticism and flames (criticism for the sake of being derogatory or insulting, essentially taking cheap shots in order to pick a fight).

Examine Your Critics

Basically, you have to understand the source – know when to take someone’s opinion seriously and when to dismiss it as a mere feedback.  For instance, you’d take the opinion of an expert in your field much more seriously than someone completely unfamiliar with it, so take a look at who is doing the criticizing.  Also, pay attention to the numbers – are many of your readers disagreeing with you on a particular point or is there is a lone dissenter? Remember that you can’t please everyone all the time, and if you try to do that, there’s a good chance that you’ll end up with a bland, entirely forgettable blog.

Be Open to Change

No matter how much expertise you have, it’s always important to be open to new ideas and concepts.  In fact, that’s one of the many reasons blogging can help you achieve your business goals – it’s a continual learning process that forces you to keep up with the latest news and trends in your field, and exposes your ideas to many more people than any other method.   Blogging is a form of media, after all.  By publishing your thoughts, you’re inviting others to join the discussion, and they may have some amazing knowledge to share.

Promotion and marketing are usually the main motivations that business bloggers have for starting their blogs.  Yes, they may want to join the conversation in the blogosphere in order to learn more about their niche and interact with other smart people, but in the end, their goal is promote their brand – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

However, many business blogs focus on how wonderful the company is, or how awesome their products are – and while that may be true, a company may provide top-notch services and their products may indeed change users’ lives, these bloggers are neglecting to realize that they are not taking full advantage of their presence in the online community.

In order to really promote your brand, you have to take the focus of you, your abilities, and your products.  You have to make the reader the hero.  Tell your readers what you can do for them, use your blog to provide value by sharing your knowledge, and show them how you, your company, and/or your products can improve their lives.

Testimonials from happy customers can help accomplish this goal, as long as they give a concrete reason why you’re great – be sure each testimonial offers specific examples instead of generic praise.   For instance, if you’re a real estate agent, you would want to feature a testimonial about you found your client their dream home in an ideal neighborhood and helped them negotiate an excellent price, not a testimonial stating “X is a wonderful, hard-working agent.”  If you are going to use testimonials, have your customers tell the blogosphere how you changed their lives.

But while testimonials alone can make your blog good, teaching and helping your readers improve their situations can make it great.  From self-help bloggers like Steve Pavlina (“Personal Development for Smart People) to career bloggers like Deborah Ng (Deborah Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs), bloggers have used their sites to promote their expertise and brands by helping others.   They’ve made their readers their heroes, and because they truly want to see them succeed, they’ve achieved success themselves.

Making your reader the hero can also lead to a boost in terms of word-of-mouth marketing.  After all, if you help someone solve a problem, they are that much more likely to tell their friends and family about your blog and your business, because people tend to share content that they consider useful and valuable.

In conclusion, remembering that it’s not all about you can have a positive effect on your blog and your business. After all, if it weren’t for your clients, customers, and readers, you wouldn’t even have a business – so make sure they get to be the hero by focusing your blog on their wants and needs.

It’s the blogging version of the old “if a tree falls in the forest but there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” If a blogger posts but no one reads it, does it really count? Whatever your opinion is on the tree thing, if you’re a blogger, you want readers, preferably as many as possible.  And you want them to stick around.

One thing that’s important to do is respond to your readers. If they take the time to read your blog and comment on a post or email you, reply to them! Answer their questions or otherwise encourage their participation.  It helps create a rapport between your and readership as well just making you look like a nice guy/girl.  After all, no one likes to comment in a vacuum, and as I’ve said many times, blogging is a conversation.

Of course, not every comment is going to be positive.  I’m not talking about the ones that are obvious flames or attempts to incite an argument (hey, some people just like to fight and they use the anonymity of the net to do it*), but the ones that provide constructive criticism or an alternative viewpoint.  It might be tough, but responding to those in a thoughtful manner can actually make you look better.  Plus, engaging in a discussion about your blog’s topic and your opinions can be a learning experience, so consider criticism and dissenting opinions as an opportunity to present yourself in a positive light.

Think of your readers as customers or clients when it comes to responding to their comments – you’d definitely be sure to reply to any questions or concerns your actual clients have, right?  Treat your readers as the same kind of valuable asset.

*You don’t necessarily have to approve these – just make sure that comment moderation is enabled.  If you feel you must publish every comment that’s not spam, kill ‘em with kindness in your reply.  And remember, in blogging as in business, you can’t please everyone all the time.

I’ve suggested before that when you’re creating your About page and your first few introductory posts, you should interview yourself.  But that’s easier said than done, and personally I always find it easier to write about things other myself.  However, your blog is about you and building your brand, so creating a detailed profile is vital.

As a result of my blogging experience (seriously, there are thousands of posts and hundreds of thousands of words that I’ve written on the web), I’ve had lots of experience interview and writing profiles of individuals from all walks of life.  Therefore, I’ve compiled a list of questions that I use as prompts when I interview someone.

Of course, my actual questions change depending on the characteristics of the person I’m profiling, but here’s the basic template (this is geared towards business owners and/or people who are using their blogs to market something).   Feel free to take this as a survey, and answer it on your own blog (skip any questions you don’t like or add your own).

1. Who are you, what do you do, and where do you live (the basic data -this one is a softball question)?  How about family (married, single, kids, pets)?

2. What is your background (education, career, awards, achievements, etc.)? Basically, why should readers be listening to you and reading your blog?  This is an especially important question for authority bloggers – people who blog to promote their expertise on a particular topic – to answer.

3. How did you get to where you are today? Tell your readers about the journey.  What forces shaped you?  Have you always been involved in the industry that you’re part of today?  What interesting twists and turns has your life taken?

4. Where do you hope to be in the future?  You don’t necessarily need to post a five year plan or anything that detailed, but talk about your aspirations.  Where do you see yourself in the future?

5. What are you passionate about?  What inspires you and why?  If you’re in a creative field, what is your muse?  What gets you out of bed in the morning and what makes you happier than anything else?

6. What are some current trends in your industry/niche/topic area?  How do you feel about them personally and where do you think your field is headed?

7. What makes you unique in your field?  In general?  How do you stand out from the crowd? (Again, this falls into the category of why your readers should be reading your blog).

8. Who are your heroes? Who do you look up to? Why are they awesome?

9. On the opposite note, do you have any key advice for newcomers to your field? What do you wish you had known when you started?

10. Do you have any favorite quotes that always ring true with you?  What are they?

11. What is a typical day in your life like?

12. What are your hobbies and what do you do when you’re not working? What kind of music do you like, what are your favorite movies/games/sports?

13. What are some of your favorite places, in your current hometown and in the world? Why are they your favorites?

14.  Name a few interesting facts or unique talents you have.  Is there anything truly off-the-wall or have you done something that few other people have?  Do you have any weird but wonderful accomplishments under your belt?  Share some interesting anecdotes.

15.  If your readers could only remember one thing about you, what would it be?  Can you sum up your brand – your uniqueness – in a sentence or two?

And last but not least, the one question that I always ask at the end of an interview:

16. Is there anything you wish I would have asked you that I missed?

New to the blogging world and wondering what it’s all about?

Here’s a hint: blogging is like writing a column.  Think of the web as a giant media organization, sort of like a community driven, open source version of the Associated Press that is constantly churning out new content.  Each individual reader composes their own local paper of their favorite sites and blogs that they read regularly (and bookmark or subscribe to).

So really, maintaining a blog is not entirely unlike having your own byline and column in your reader’s newspaper.  Like a columnist, you have a dedicated topic -your niche – that you give your own personal spin.  Bloggers and columnists both have personal brands that they promote, and they usually write in their own voices, in the first person.

You may reply, “but I want to use my blog to market something, not to write a personal column.” Yes, but the basic idea is still the same – your blog is simply an advertorial or advertising column instead of an editorial one.  You are still blogging to promote your brand, just in a more conversational, interactive sense.

But that’s about where the similarities end, because as everyone knows, the web is fundamentally different from other media – it’s dynamic, it’s constantly updated, and it’s much more democratic in the sense that anyone who can get a hold of a computer and an internet connection can participate in the conversation.

If the web is a conversation, traditional media is a collection of lectures.  You can listen and even take notes, but you can’t respond.  This what makes blogging such a powerful new form of marketing – it breaks down the walls and lets businesses speak directly to customers, experts directly to their audience in the form of authority blogs, and allows virtually everyone to promote their personal brand.

The level of reader participation is a big part of what makes blogging different from print publications – readers can comment, other bloggers can link to your posts, and you can instantly respond to questions.  Blogging is dynamic, print is static.  Like the rest of the web, it is also much more community based, as it is important to interact with and link to other bloggers in your niche – to participate in the discussion.

Inspiration is a tricky thing.  Sometimes you’re firing on all cylinders and you just have tons of great ideas that you can’t wait to share with the world, but other times you end up staring a blank screen wondering what in the world to write about today.  I know that I’ve definitely been there.

Since it has been established that No One Cares What You Had For Lunch (a book of ideas for blog posts that I’d definitely recommend, if only to kickstart your creative side once in a while), how do you pull a quality post out of your hat?  Starting today, on Mondays I’m going to post a list of creative tips to help you beat blogger’s block and write something awesome.  After all, even the best of us need a little creative spark from time to time.

1.  Write about a recent triumph, whether it was large or small.  For instance, did you land a great new client or any kind of award?  This can be anything from selling a beautiful piece of property if you’re a real estate agent to having something published if you’re a writer or photographer (be sure to link to the piece if possible).

2.  Share some handy tips. Did you figure any new time-saving tricks, productivity boosts, or life hacks that might help someone else out? Check out sites like Zen Habits and Pick the Brain for more ideas here.

3.  Interview someone – a colleague, a satisfied client, someone prominent in your field.  Hint: most bloggers like to be interviewed provided it doesn’t take tons of their time, so contact other bloggers in your niche, particularly ones who get more traffic, and ask if they’d like to be interviewed.  An added bonus: they’ll probably link to your interview at their own site, sending some traffic your way.

4.  Make a list. As evidenced by the many lists I’ve posted in this blog, I like lists.  Other people like lists too, because they are scannable and instantly let the reader know what they are getting into.  Lists can cover any topic; for instance, five ways to solve a particular problem or seven reasons why a certain item is a must-have.

5.  Link the news.  Have any good articles or blog posts been written about your niche lately?  The web is vast enough that there is probably something interesting out there, so find a few things and link to them.  Be sure to put the links in context with a short description through, otherwise your readers won’t know what they are clicking on (so they probably won’t).

Chances are you’ve heard the terms “web 2.0″, user-generated content, and social media networks being thrown around before, and you probably have a decent idea of what they mean (if not, check out my dictionary of blog related terms).  However, you may not be sure how to use the social media networks for your business – to blogcast your brand, because the blog is the center of it all.

Think of your brand/business as a solar system – your blog is the sun, and the rest of the social media sites and applications as planets orbiting around it.  You may have profiles on the other networks, videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and use social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and digg, but it all revolves around your blog (be sure to put links to your blog in all your profiles, but you already knew that, right?).

There are two main forms of social media that can be quite useful for bloggers – networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, Linked In) and bookmarking sites (Stumble Upon, Reddit, and my personal favorite, del.icio.us).

The networking sites are kind of self-explanatory; they are not that far removed from your actual network of friends, associates, and colleagues, except that they are virtual and you can see everyone else’s networks too.  Besides the fact that it is simply convenient to have everyone’s profile info at your fingertips, these sites can also be useful when it comes to reconnecting with old colleagues and accquaintances, and for learning more about new friends.  While you don’t need to maintain a presence on every social networking site on the web (you wouldn’t have time to do anything else!), it’s helpful to be involved in one or two that are popular in your business’s niche, e.g. fashion types with Iqons and anything music or entertainment related with Myspace.

Bookmarking sites are useful for bloggers in the both the promotional sense (having your content listed on the sites brings in readers) and in the personal sense – you can bookmark and tag your favorite sites and articles and access those bookmarks from anywhere, and if you work from multiple computers your bookmarks will be synched.   I personally like to bookmark and tag any articles that would be good blog fodder, so bookmarking sites can help beat blogger’s block as well.  Social bookmarking sites are also excellent tools because they enable you to check out what others in your niche are reading and what they thought of it. Popular forums can function in a similar fashion (be sure to put a link to your blog in your signature line!)

Last but not least, there is Technorati, the blog index that has become so much more. Technorati lets you see who has linked to your blog and how recently, what other sites they have linked to, who they have favorited, and so on.  There’s also an authority ranking (how many sites have linked to a particular blog).   It’s a good way to keep track of which bloggers are saying what, and how other bloggers are reacting to it.

The key idea to remember is that the social networks are a community – you have to participate, learn the mores, and in some cases, follow the rules (for example, many forums have certain codes of conduct and behavior, so check out the regulations before you jump in and post).  Even if you’re a natural rebel, you have to learn the rules before you can break them.  Like any other community, virtual or not, you have to learn to listen as well as speak.

No one really likes to be on the receiving end of the hard sell – it’s awkward and annoying for everyone involved, really.  Fortunately, it is easy to avoid engaging in such off-putting activities, thanks to the many promotional tools and techniques out there on the net.

Blogging, is a particularly good way to set up a passive but constant soft sell.  Now, you might be thinking: “Of course you’re going to say that!  You write a blog about blogging!” Guilty as charged, but it doesn’t change the fact that blogging can indeed be a valuable marketing tool.  It lets potential customers find you on their own time and get to know you and your products or services at their leisure.

See, blogging is a two way street.  Instead of just broadcasting your message at a captive audience in the manner of most traditional advertising, you’re communicating with your readers instead of talking at your potential customers.  The blogosphere is a community, and for your blog to be as successful as possible, you have to participate, even if you’re blogging about your business.  Actually, especially if you are blogging about your business.

The key to using your blog as a marketing tool is not to think of it as such, at least in the traditional sense.  Besides telling your readers about your business and products, share other details about your life and link to other blogs, articles, and websites that you like.  By blogging about varied but related topics you can prevent your blog from being a one-note-wonder.  After all, would you want to read a blog that only consists of tons of remarkably similar posts harping on the same product? It’s the blogging version of the smarmy, pushy salesman who gets in your face and refuses to let you leave without making a purchase – but on the web, readers can escape the hard sell with just one click.*

Think of your blog as a mini-portal to your niche.  Let your readers start with your blog, check out your latest posts, and then continue on by clicking on your links (naturally, you should link to things that support your message and your brand).  Remember that blogging is a dialogue, it is dynamic, and it is interactive, so update often and answer comments and questions.  Also, remember that your readers are probably pretty savvy and they can tell when a blog is straight-up propaganda.  The best way to draw readers to your blog is to create interesting, useful, and compelling content, and do it regularly.   Of course, that is also the hardest way – but that’s what your blogging coach is here for.

*You may have already seen this, but the Cluetrain Manifesto is worth checking out – and getting on.