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Blogging is more than publishing content. Responding to comments and listening for additional reactions is essential to maximizing engagement with your audience.
Now that we've talked about the content you're going to create and put on your blog,
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let's talk about something else that I know you're all interested in.
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And that's making money with your blog.
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If you're going to get paid, you have to find business.
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And the first thing I want to tell you to do is to start listening.
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Listening is crucial to finding new business.
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Setting up searches in Google and Twitter that get notified to you via e-mail
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or through your RSS reader are critical.
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Set it upon those skills that you're looking for, the type of work you're looking for,
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competitors, companies—whatever is appropriate for your business—
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set up those searches so that you're paying attention
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and listening to them when they happen.
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And then, when you do hear something and when you see something that's appropriate,
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react, respond, answer the question.
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People love that.
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So another one of the rules in our book—content rules—
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is to share or solve and don't shill.
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By being a good neighbor online, people are going to come to you
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for business and for subscriptions.
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They're going to come to you on a regular basis to consume the content that you've created.
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Think about what people type into a search engine.
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They're typing a question. You can be that answer.
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As you're thinking about of content you're going to create,
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think about the questions that the people you want to hire you are going to be asking.
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Create content that answers those questions and that poses those questions even
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because that's going to show up really great in search engines.
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Earlier, we were talking about promoting yourself.
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And I was saying how that can be difficult for a lot of people.
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If you're being a good neighbor and you're creating content that helps others,
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it makes the promotion even easier.
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People love to share stuff that is helpful.
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And when you're helping somebody and you share that out there
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and promote it and say, "Hey, I wrote this top 10 list of ways to do something,"
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people will love that.
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It gets a lot of attention and shares over and over again.
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So share or solve. Don't shill. It will help you get new business. I promise.
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