Blogging tips Archives - Totally Content - Business PLR

January 18, 2017 by Helen 2 Comments

Here’s blog post made from a Totally PLR done-for-you article…

(Updated: 25 Feb 2019)

Many people are quite wary of using done-for-you articles on their blogs, and I can understand why. In an ideal world we’d all write our posts and courses ourselves, every time. But if you’re running a small business you have to make every minute count. Blogging is time-consuming so it makes total sense to look at ways of speeding the process up, so read on and I’ll show you an example of how to use PLR on blogs.

There is a time and a place for done-for-you/PLR content (here’s my post describing exactly when you shouldn’t use it). And if I’m posting articles on my blogs I certainly edit them first to add my own ideas and stories. But you may be surprised at how much online content isn’t written by who you’d expect. 🙂

To give you an example of one of my done-for-you articles edited and posted on someone else’s blog, here’s a post by Debbie O’Connor. She took my done-for-you article on ‘Six ways to create content with free tools’ and made it her own:

Six free ways to add sparkle to your blog posts

You can download the article to use yourself – plus four more on content marketing – here. It’s free.

Debbie says “So I just changed a few words, added in a little bit extra and added some images (and in this case some demonstrations of the tools you were taking about). Took me less than half an hour for what will be a very useful blog post for me.”

If Debbie was writing a very personal, opinion-based post then done-for-you content wouldn’t have been appropriate. But for a ‘how to’, tips or tutorial – style post then it’s perfectly fine to use my post as a starting point then add your own ideas, images and even videos. It’s very much like using a stock photo, cropping it and adding your own text to make a social media image.

If you’re worried about the SEO implications of having duplicate content then, yes, this is something to be aware of but it’s not as big a deal as most people think. I’ve written about this here.

Hope that helps you overcome those niggling worries about using PLR on your blog!

April 20, 2016 by Helen 10 Comments

My 30 day blogging challenge: Was it worth it?

It’s my day 30 of Sark eMedia’s 30 Day Blogging Challenge and I made it! Yes, I posted here on the Totally PLR blog every day for 30 days. Woo hoo!

It’s been a lot of work, but has it been worth it? Let me explain…but first, my goal:

My goal for this blogging challenge was…

I did some research on where people go to buy PLR and I came up with three main ways:

They Google it, e.g. ‘[subject] PLR’
The Warrior Forum
On a recommendation from a trusted person (probably on a mailing list with an affiliate link)

I’ve already done number 3, I know it works and I’m doing it again. I’m working up to number 2, but I’d not really done anything about number 1.

Blogging and content marketing in general is a marathon, not a sprint. So I wasn’t expecting huge results in 30 days. But I felt I could give this blog a nice kick-start in that time, and the accountability I would get from having a group of bloggers around me would really help.

This goes beyond just SEO, though. Because if you Google ‘[subject] PLR’ you get tons of pages and you have no idea of the quality of the product you’re looking at. Some don’t even allow you to download a sample for free. So I wanted the posts on this blog to be more than just SEO fodder and to get across that I care about quality and my clients, too.

So what happened?

Search Engine Optimization

In SEO terms I’ve slowly crept up page 2 for several relevant key phrases over the 30 days. Given that PLR is very competitive (and PLR stores are often very good at SEO), that’s not bad at all. And this blog has got a trickle of search engine traffic for the first time, too. There’s definitely more progress to be made because some of the pages in the search results above mine are two years old (that matters for WordPress tutorials) and I even saw one site above mine that no longer exists.

I’ve been blogging since 2009 and I must admit I’ve lost my blogging mojo the last few years. But this 30 day challenge has got me back into good habits, especially using the Yoast SEO plugin to optimize my posts consistently.

Content marketing

I’ve tried to post a variety of posts, from ones about what PLR is and what you can do with it, to tutorials that demonstrate what I do (as well as teaching readers something useful) to posts that are about me and how I work. This was partly to experiment with what people respond to and which days they respond best, and also to just get some good content on my blog. Now I have a bank of useful posts I can share them in future. For example, yesterday someone in Facebook group said they were overwhelmed by the thought of setting up an autoresponder and I was able to show her this post to give her some ideas.

I’ve also updated my What Is PLR? page based on the advice of people who didn’t understand what I’d written when I did it myself 🙂 and I’ve updated my about page.

Social media

I’ve been posting links to my post to Facebook and Twitter. I haven’t had a lot of traction on Facebook because I don’t have that many likes and the reach is so low these days. But I have a few solid blog posts that I think I’ll use a Facebook ad to promote in future. I have slowly been getting more Twitter favourites and shares over the 30 days, which is very nice. I’ll probably set up a plugin to automatically post links to my new content to Twitter and see if that helps keep this going.

The 30 Day Blogging Challenge has been invaluable for keeping me posting and I’ve met some new bloggers as well as some old friends there, too.

Did I use any PLR?

Yes, I did. And it sped up the content creation a lot. But I edited everything I used to make it my own, and I only used it when appropriate. There’s none in this post, for example.

In Summary

Yes, it was worth it! Thanks very much to Sarah and Kevin Arrow, and everyone else who was part of the challenge for all your support!

March 28, 2016 by Helen Leave a Comment

Do this before you start blogging for business

There’s no doubt that blogging for business can be a valuable contribution to your marketing activities. A business blog gives your targeted audience, customers, potential partners and even employees easy access to news and information about your business, products and services. You can share policy changes, product information, new releases, discount vouchers, behind the scenes insider information and more. You can add video, audio, and other custom elements to make your blog truly reflect your business’s brand.

Blogs can be very quick to start, in fact you can get up and running in a matter of minutes. WordPress is easy to learn, easy to customize and a great way to create a dynamic online presence without a lot of technical knowledge.

One of the biggest benefits of blogging is that Google and other search engines love blogs; the frequently updated content and the opportunities for your readers to link and share your content can lead to high search engine rankings. Regular updates to your blog will keep your website visitors returning more frequently and staying longer once they find your site.

Your blog can also help you build a relationship, or strengthen a relationship with your customers, prospects and website visitors through greater interactivity and two-way communication. Visitors to your blog will be able to quickly and easily share their comments and suggestions with you, which will help you better understand your customers and respond to their comments.

And if you don’t have enough time to write regularly, there are many ways you can speed this process up, such as using video or audio, using guest bloggers or ghostwriters, or buying PLR content.

With so many potential benefits to blogging for business it’s important to know exactly what you want your blog to do for your business. I’ve met people at small business networking events who, when they find out I have business blogs say, “Fantastic, I need to start a business blog, how do I do it?”

“Great! What do you want your blog to do for your business?” I reply.

“Er…I don’t know, it’s just everyone says I need one and everyone else seems to have one already!”

There are tons of experts out there telling you how important blogging is, but most seem to focus on how to write well, how to engage readers, how to get comments and how to make money. This is all part of the job of a blogger, but it’s far from the whole picture. The part of the picture that you rarely see is the strategic side of blogging.

Without a clear goal and a strategy to reach it, your blog will end up as a random selection of posts that aren’t working for your business. With millions of blogs now available on the web, you need to be very clear about who your blog is for, what they want from you and how you can best reach them. This also applies if you have a blog which isn’t gaining much traction, or one that’s run out of steam. Getting really clear on the aims of your blog could dramatically improve the results you get from it.

If you’re struggling to define the aim of your blog, look at the aim of your business as a whole. How could your blog help support that aim? For example, if you’re a web designer, your goal may be to make websites that not only look great, but that are reliable and meet your clients’ objectives. Your blog could help you by demonstrating your expertise or educating your clients to market their websites.

Depending on the goal, a web designer could post a number of different types of blog content, from ‘how to’ articles and tutorials, to case studies of clients he or she has worked with or examples of great web design. But different web designers will have different clients and therefor different goals for their blogs.

Then, you can break this down into a series of goals, such as gain 100 new mailing list subscribers each month or publish a new blog post twice a week. And finally you can begin creating content!

If you’re a web designer or blog about WordPress for beginners, don’t forget to grab my pack of free WordPress PLR articles here.