The 3 Most Important Question You Should Ask Yourself Before End-Up Like Jerry Yang

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My friend, balbrmouth from StumbleUpon point me to his post about Jerry Yang’s Yahoo Manifesto in which he announced 10% of the Yahoos would be sacked by year end. My respond to his post was simple, on general, the sole failure of any business, is the weakness of the management.  I did add some more point, for that, you have to read his post.

Well, Yahoo faith may affect any business eventually not just big corporation but also small business setup like you and me, unless you don’t treat you blog as a business.

What your blogging growth strategy?

Once you determine what your blogging purpose and situation, the next step is to determine your blogging strategy.  You should be able to answer:

1. Your blog style.  What your dominant style’s?  It’s good to have one, while using some other styles on occasion to add some flavor.
2. Your blog posting strategy.  The frequency of posting will determine how fast your blog’s will grow. A study by Technorati in their recent State Of The Blogsphere 2008, indicate Top 100  blogger post more than 10 times per day which indicate blog growth at the rate of more than 300 post per month.  While the frequency of posting may put in you at par with certain quarter of bloggers, what important the quality of posting and the relevant of the issues.  Problogger only post between 2 to 3 daily while Steve Pavlina only post 1 between 2 to 3 days.
3. Your blog subscription strategy. In most cases, plain and simple feedburner or email subscriptions.  The main question is how to attract people to subcribe to your blog.

The last two point will greatly enhance your reader base, potential reader base and your blog’s value.  The next point will determine your potential revenue

What your marketing strategy?

While most of marketing effort today done via social media, but that not end all fit all solution. It’s time to look into your blog’s marketing in term of:

1. Readers base, on-site and off-site.
2. Content, on-site and off-site.

Reader base – on-site and off-site.

My friend Tamal and Banjiki blog talk about self motivation, SBANow talk about web design and blog marketing, Skyxavier talk about making money from blogging and Vanessa82 talk about affiliate marketing – of which, they happen to have their own audience that form some of their own reader base.

But these are off-site reader base, because they’re my friend at SumbleUpon.  The beauty of off-site reader base, channel surfing.  Their friend landed at my blog as a result of channel surfing from their stumblers.

For on-site reader base, the marketing focus will be focus on maximizing value for your feedburner and newsletter subscribers.

Content – on-site and off-site

In most cases, you should be able to answer the following question:

1. How to engage your reader to your content? Your blog’s post is your product.  How do you sale it?  Measurement of success for any blog post is, how much comments and linked generated from this post?
2. How to write for off-site reader base or social media audience. What your marketing strategy? Side-wide, post by post or combine both?  If you using social media, what your strategy for StumbleUpon and Diggs, just to mention two of the popular social media sites.

What your business model?

Every business need a business model if they’re really serious about making money.  Skellie at Skelliewag, had wrote about 10 innovative blog business models. You need to choose your business carefully.  Choose one and gradually add after you already successfully build the first business model.

If you selected your business model properly you should be able to answer the following question:

• How much revenue generated from this post? With the up-coming Google Analytic combine with Adsense, you should be able to see how much revenue generated from your blog post.  Mybloglog already have this featured installed where you can see what you reader click from your blog post.
• What is the ROI per post or per blog? Either one of the marketing strategy, you will have to certain extent incurred some cost.  This cost could be in the form of advertising cost or man-hour cost to prepare for your blog post.

Should this question be ask much earlier at the very beginning of your blog business?

You should ask this question at every stage of your business, not during the presentation of your earning report, looking at your adsense report or at your analytic report. This will make you always prepare for possible problem and always ready with the best solutions.  This solutions should formulated after asking these three question.

When was the last time you ask yourself this 3 question?

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Tagged as: blogger, bloggers, growth strategy, how to attract people, jerry yang, manifesto, marketing strategy, small business setup, subscription strategy, yahoo, yahoos, year end