How to Start & Promote Your Blog: #VCBuzz Chat with Ivana Zuber @Bloggless

vcbuzz-ivanaIvana Zuber is one of ViralContentBuzz PRO users. She is a dream PRO user! She submits top-notch content, thanks people for sharing and obviously wants to succeed!

Here’s Ivana’s review of ViralContentBuzz and what she managed to achieve with it.

**To join us please sign in here -> Twchat.com/hashtag/vcbuzz

About Ivana Zuber

Ivana Zuber is a software developer, MSc student, blogger, and entrepreneur. She combined all these areas of her life and created a unique multi-niche blog BloggLess.

As a constant learner and a dedicated achiever, Ivana is continuously exploring new ideas, testing out new business opportunities, and sharing her experiences with her readers.

When she is not coding, reading, brainstorming, or writing, you can find her hanging around social media sites or cuddling with her 3 year old daughter.

Questions We are Going to Discuss

Q1 How did you start blogging and why?

3 years ago I ventured into the online business by pure accident (can’t even remember what drew me online). I started with affiliate marketing and website flipping. Although I was fairly successful with it, it just didn’t seem to be the right business for me for the long run. When I started writing for the UOL blog, I came up with the idea to start my own blog and combine my passions for technology, education, IM and writing. The rest is history ? As a non-native English writer I found blogging to be quite challenging, but I am having so much fun with it!

 

 

Q2 How do you keep your blog active? Tips on editorial calendars?

I have to admit I’m a workaholic and a computer addict :). I tried to slow down and smell the roses – it didn’t work ?

 

Every Friday I brainstorm topic ideas and come up with a list of 5-10 titles. On weekends I write 3-5 posts/drafts so I have spare posts and topic ideas at all times. I put those in my editorial calendar, with a special rubric for #MBG posts. As I publish posts and get comments, I see what works and what doesn’t and edit the topic list accordingly (usually adding more headlines based around the same topic, or deleting those I think won’t work).

My tips for a beginner would be:

  1. post consistently,
  2. put sharing buttons,
  3. engage in all social media platforms but pick one you prefer and spend most of your media time there (that’s what worked for me with G+).
  4. use #VCB – use it as much as you can!
  5. reshare and comment other people’s sharings – and they will reshare and comment yours,
  6. build quality connections,
  7. build your followers list
  8. be yourself!

Q3 What are key components of a good “sharable” article? How do increase content chances to go viral?

Well, from my humble experience, I would say

  • #1 is useful – if the post solves a particular problem or educates on an important subject – people will gladly share it
  • #2 entertaining –  if the post is entertaining – written in a clever and funny way, or discussing an amusing subject people will share it
  • #3 well-written –  typos can happen to anyone (as we just saw :), there’s no shame in that, but posting articles without proofreading them or publishing even a single badly written post can cost you your audience
  • #4 visually appealing – if the post is cluttered, filled with ‘hard-to-find’ information, without images, links, or colors – its chances to go viral are greatly reduced. So, I would say #1 choose a useful topic, or #2 write in an entertaining way (or both), #3 write a catchy (dramatic even) headline (thank you @Don_Sturgill for that tip), #4 make the post visually appealing, #5 try to end the post (and your SM sharings!) with a question – this tip alone got me a lot of motion.

Q4 Your comments are powered by Google Plus. When did you switch and why?

I switched soon after as I joined Google+. I feel in love with the platform :). I’m spending a lot of my time there, and expanding my circles. As soon as I posted my first post on G+ I got a massive response from people (massive in my terms :)) Since my blog’s commenting section was quite ‘lonely’, I decided to implement G+ comments – I’m so glad I did. I am aware this can be a limiting factor, but so far my targeted audience is based mostly on G+, so this is working perfectly for me.

 

Q5 When did you start using ViralContentBuzz? How did you find us?

I started using #VCB only a month ago (yeah, it surprises me as well :)). I believe it was mentioned on +MBG community so I went to take a look. I was amazed by the number of shares and increase in traffic I got from it on my first week. Obvious next step was to double my efforts on #VCB and get double shares :). That’s exactly what happened. I applied for the PRO account to get some SPARE ? credits and queue priority, and from there on started hanging 24/7.  I try to share posts min 2 times a day, and keep my budget above 200 credits at all times (in case I need a quick refill). As you can see from my VCB review since I started using it my traffic tripled! I believe that says it all

Q6 How do you combine ViralContentBuzz and MyBlogGuest?

It was hard for me at the beginning to get relevant guest post from #MBG. People tend to accept the offer with the highest blog power (which is understandable). However, I recently got a great advice from @SanaKnightly (thank you Sana!)- to include VCB promotions in my offers. That worked great! Since I started using #VCB my Alexa rank significantly improved. I’m about to hit the 150K Alexa and 65 Klout threshold (all thanks to #VCB and my hard work, and all in less than a month!).

 

When I make my #MBG offers now, I outline the pros of my blog, and offer to promote the article on #VCB (which I do anyway). People started responding to that, and I’m getting more offers accepted. In addition, I try to promote all my guest posts published on other blogs through #VCB. I am currently 100% focused on writing quality posts and growing my social networks. SEO, backlink building… is not on my priority list. If I made all this happen in such a short time without Google’s help. I can go on without it as well. It’s much more fun being creative than competitive :)!

 

 

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