Aug 31

Written by:
2009/08/31 08:18 AM 

I had the privilege of interviewing Daniel Scocco of DalyBlogTips. Daniel Scocco has lived and studied in several places around the world, including Italy, Chile and Brazil. DailyBlogTips was nominated under the “Best Web Development Blog” category in the 2007 Weblog Awards, and currently it is ranked among the 1000 most popular blogs in the world with an authority of just over 700 (according to Technorati) and among the 100 most popular marketing blogs in the world (according to AdvertisingAge), as well as a rank of just over 8000 according to Alexa.

Here is the interview. He has some great insight and tips. I especially liked “Aim to make meaning, not money”.

1) Tell me about yourself. Do you have family, kids.
I am 25, so no family and kids for now. I have been working full time on the Internet since 2006, and it rocks. Over the years I believe we will see more and more people following the "online entrepreneur" route.

2) How long have you been blogging?
I built my first blog back in 2005.

3) What makes a good blog post?
A good blog post has three main characteristics. It is unique, valuable and engaging. It must be unique else readers won't need to visit your blog to read about it. It must be valuable else readers won't have a reason to read it. And it must be engaging else readers will read the stuff and move on to another site.

4) How do you write blog posts that are good for people AND search engines?
There isn't much different among these two purposes these days. Google is in the business of finding the information that people look for, so if your information is good for people, it will inevitably be good to Google as well.
When Google's algorithm was rustic, you could game it with tricks. The more sophisticated it gets, however, the tougher it is to game it, so you might as well just focus your content on people.
Following the basic SEO factors and search engine guidelines is obviously essential, but most publishing platforms comes with those by default these days.

5) Tell me about different types of blog posts?
There are infinite types of blog posts, and the only limitation that we have is our creativity. As a blogger it is important to experiment with as many of them as possibly, to identify what works for your audience and what does not. Examples include lists of resources, interviews, questions to the readers and so on.

6) How can a blog build a community?
First of all you need engaging content, as I mentioned in the first question. Secondly, you need to interact with your readers as closely as possible. This means answering to their comments, emails, inviting them to participate on the posts and so on.

7) What was the best blog post you ever wrote that generated the most traffic,
and why do you think it did.?
One of them was 28 Ways to Make Money with a Website (http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ways-to-make-money-online-with-website/). During its first week it got around 100,000 impressions if I remember well.
I guess it did well because it packed information that people could use and benefit from immediately.

8) What social media tools can be used to increase blog readership?
Social media is quite a vast term. It encompasses blogs, forums, social bookmarking sites, social networks and the like. As such, I guess you should try with all those tools and see which ones will work better for your niche.
Think about where your target reader is hanging around online, and go chase him.

9) Which blogs and bloggers do you follow, and why?
Some of the blogs I follow on my niche (because they know what they are talking about):
-http://www.problogger.net
-http://www.copyblogger.com
-http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
-http://www.quicksprout.com

10) What motivates you to blog every day?
I guess I got used to it...

11) Finally, what advice would you give young bloggers.
Aim to make meaning, not money (because the latter follows the former).

Thank you to Daniel for this interview. You should definitely visit his blog. He has some great tips. Here are a few of his posts.

• 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid
• 101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006
• 30 Traffic Generation Tips
• 28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website
• Top 25 Blogs About Blogging

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