Authentic content

First of all, most advertisers want something authentic. The wonderful thing about using blogs as an advertising platform is that the content created is often genuine. Don’t just write a post for advertisers, write a post that your readers would like to see. Keep it real. By keeping it real, you will create a stronger influence amongst your readers and this is what advertisers are looking for.

Branded pictures

Use as many branded images as you can in your posts. For example, your child eating a Kraft cheese stick or photographs of you with your Westfield shopping bags. Advertisers love to see their products / services used by people, and your branded pictures could help them remember you when they are planning their next campaign.

Extra Value

Advertisers love getting things for free. If you had a genuinely good experience with a certain product or brand, create extra social media content or even blog content from time to time. By showing advertisers how big a fan you are of their product(s), they would would be more likely to want to work with you again in the future.

Traffic

At the end of the day, advertisers want to reach out to as many people as possible so they can influence as many people as they can. Therefore your traffic is important when it comes to working with advertisers. As your traffic increases, so will your likelihood of working with more advertisers.

Create a conversation with your readers around the brand

This is arguably the most important component of a campaign. This is a key take-home message! The Holy Grail for an advertiser is the way you create a positive discussion with your readers around a brand. This can be usually seen in the form of comments. For example, if you’ve reviewed a product, a great way to encourage a conversation is to ask questions at the end of the post about what your readers think of the product and if they are now interested in buying it. Usually, Nuffnang provides suggested questions for your sponsored campaigns but we are always open to blogger creativity and feedback so long as it is discussed with us first.

In today’s new marketing world, bloggers are becoming a more critical element of advertising strategy. If you can start ticking the boxes above, you will put yourself in a better position to get more work from the country’s biggest brands.

But after all the tingling excitement from setting up your blog dissipates, you soon meet one of the most difficult challenges of blogging: how to constantly create good content. Many first-time bloggers will opt for a day of rest so they don’t have to blog 24/7 or will even take a short hiatus to refocus and refresh. But how many Wordless Wednesday posts does it take before it becomes a Wordless Everyday? How many days does it take for a temporary hiatus to become a permanent one?

Don’t let content creation stop you from keeping up with the blogosphere! Here are my best five tips for coming up with fresh content for your blog.

1) Mix up your blogging style and angle 

Let’s say you’re a food blogger and you mainly write about home-cooked recipes. While it’s good that you target a niche audience (ie. one who is on the lookout for home-cooked recipes), there is no harm in spicing up your writing angle and style. Why not broaden your blog’s scope by recreating a favourite celebrity-inspired dish or improvising an old traditional dessert recipe? You never know how much you (or your readers) might enjoy a little change!

2) Figure out the purpose of your blog 

Do you know what your readers are looking for when they read your blog? Just like how you go to a chinese restaurant for soup noodles and dim sum, you want to be able to know what your blog is offering to your audience. Take it from This Chick’s Got Style who said:

“Before you begin, take some time to define what readers should take away from your post. You might want to write down the key message of your article in one sentence and work from that concept. It’s not the easiest task, but it’s definitely worth doing because if you don’t even know what people should learn or gain from your story, they surely won’t!”

3) Plan in advance 

There will be days when you will have a belly full of fire and inspiration, and there will be other days when you can’t help but stare back at a blank “Add New Post” screen. So on the days you do find yourself full of different blogpost ideas, write them down! If you have the time, write the posts out and save them as drafts so you’ll always have a backup on the slow days. If you’d like to take content planning a step further, create your own content calendar! The Organised Housewife created the 2013 Blog Planner to help all of us disorganised bloggers become better ;) Thanks Kat!

4) Draw inspiration from your peers

Our Community Manager, Valissa once said, “Blogging is not a competitive sport” and she is right! The blogosphere is a communal and supportive society – don’t be afraid of contacting other bloggers for help and ideas. Do you have a favourite blogger you’d love to feature on your blog? Can someone else offer your readers some expertise that you might not possess? One of my favourite examples was when Sesame Ellis was featured on Childhood101′s Our Family Home series.

5) Be a wallflower

Next time you’re out and about, make it a point to be more observant: look what’s happening around you, take small notes about whatever catches your attention, and reflect on the little things. A little kid’s smile may spark you to write about your hopes for your children, a homeless man begging on the pavement may make you reflect on how blessed you are in life, a singer busking on a Friday night may remind you of how much you wanted to pursue your dreams of being a rockstar when you were a teenager. You’d be amazed at what you’ll be able to write about when you take the time to step back and observe what’s going on around you.

We have an exciting, new Product Talk opportunity for you.

Do you often feel insecure and self-conscious because of your skin?

Do you work hard and play hard, but still want to put your best face forward everyday?

We love Clearasil’s new Daily Clear Vitamins and Extracts range because it contains the extracts of our favourite foods, Avocado & Pomegranate – YUM :) Aside from smelling delicious, these products are able to gently and effectively cleanse the skin without over-drying!

Thanks to the wonderful people at Clearasil Australia, you now have the chance to trial one of twenty Clearasil Daily Clear Vitamins and Extracts Wash and Mask, valued at RRP $10.99!

Clearasil are also kindly supplying an additional 5 x Clearasil Vitamins and Extracts products for you to give away to your readers in your product talk post!

Check out their Facebook Page!

To review the above product:

• You have to be a part of Nuffnang and have a Nuffnang Ad Unit on your blog.

• Email your blog URL and mailing address with the subject line NN/Clearasil to producttalk@nuffnang.com.au by 17 Jun, Mon.

• We will contact the 20 most relevant bloggers that opt in and at the same time, send the product out for you to review!

• Once you have written up and published the review on your blog, please once again, email the URL to producttalk@nuffnang.com.au.

We spent the morning at the fabulous Olsen Hotel where they spoilt our tastebuds with a great lunch that catered for our diverse group. We also recently had a birthday in the group and they were so great in making the perfect Paleo & Nut-Free cake for our birthday girl.

Happy Birthday again, Nic! (:

We were then chauffeured to Blackburn for a very sweet surprise at Sissy’s Gourmet Delights — chocolate making!

After learning about different varities of chocolate, fair trade, and some of the secrets to the best chocolate in the world, it was time to try making our own! YUM!!

I MADE THIS!

We had truffles and chose our own ganache fillings. We played around with different flavours for our fillings as well: salted caramel, cappuccino, mango passionfruit, and caramel. I have new respect for chocolatiers making caramel fillings – it is super fiddly!

We couldn’t wait to taste our masterpieces. Delish!

Hi A-M and Katrina!

We had a fantastic afternoon! Thanks again, Red Balloon.

If you want to book your very own chocolate making experience, check it out here!

We have an exciting, new Product Talk opportunity for you.

Is your immune system taking a hit now that winter’s setting in?

Don’t worry, Vitality Brands has made getting your antioxidants easier, by creating delicious
AntiOx Snack Bars and Chocolate, which are high in natural antioxidants that can help boost your immunity!

Thanks to the wonderful people at Vitality Brands, you now have the chance to trial one of twenty AntiOx product packs.

Each pack contains:

3 x snack bars (in Acai, Goji, and Chia and Quinoa varieties)

2 x chocolate (in Acai and Goji varieties) 

Vitality Brands are also kindly supplying an additional two AntiOx prize packs valued at over $30 each for you to give away to your readers in your product talk post!

AntiOx: Super-charge yourself with antioxidant goodness!

Vitality Brands has made getting your antioxidants easier, by creating delicious AntiOx Snack Bars and Chocolate, which are high in natural antioxidants that can help boost your immunity and enhance your wellbeing!

AntiOx Snack Bars are made with super fruits, super grains, wholegrains and delicious forest fruits, and covered in rich, 70% cocoa dark chocolate (which is also sugar-free and sweetened naturally with stevia). Thanks to its high cocoa content, the chocolate provides an additional source of antioxidants.

AntiOx Chocolate combines the antioxidant super power of sugar-free, 70% cocoa dark chocolate and superfruits, goji and acai. The result is an antioxidant hit that is equivalent to twelve cups of green tea! Plus the chocolate is sweetened naturally with plant-based stevia – eliminating excess calories.

To review the above products:

• You have to be a part of Nuffnang and have a Nuffnang Ad Unit on your blog.

• Email your blog URL and address with the subject line NN/AntiOx to producttalk@nuffnang.com.au by COB Monday 29 May.

• We will contact the 20 most relevant bloggers that opt in and at the same time, send the product out for you to review!

• Once you have written up and published the review on your blog, please once again, email the URL to producttalk@nuffnang.com.au.

Calling all bloggers who have friends in the UK!

We’ve finally arrived in the land of football, Harry Potter, the Queen, Wimbledon & afternoon tea! :p We at Nuffnang are so pleased to announce that we are yet again growing roots in another continent. This time in Europe!

Remember those old stories about Ming and Tim meeting at a Pussycat Dolls concert while they were studying in the UK? After conquering Southeast Asia & Australia, we’re finally going back to where it all began… LONDON!

So if you know any blogger friends in the UK, tell them to be part of the Nuffnang community! Share the opportunity with them to mingle with other bloggers, or even to score invites to awesome events!

OUT WITH THE OLD AND IN WITH THE NEW… TAGLINE!

Of course, growing our new community in the UK means that our old tagline would be geographically inaccurate, which just won’t do. Taking our next step towards world domination means changing for the better!

We present to you:

So as we celebrate Nuffnang UK, here’s a shout out to bloggers all over the world… we’re coming for you!

One Google Analytics metric that usually gets a lot of attention is the Bounce Rate. It’s a metric that has a fairly strong negative connotation around it. In fact it’s pretty common for Google Analytics users to say,

“The bounce rate is high, that can’t be good right?”

Wrong! Bounce rate isn’t a negative indicator it’s just a description of a specific behaviour. As stated by Google - Bounce rate is the percentage of visits that go to only one page before exiting a site.

“Only one page, that has to be bad!”

Well actually no, it’s not.  Many Google Analytics users waste time fretting about bounce rates instead of trying to understand the context of that number.

In this post I’m going to show you how to interpret Bounce Rates in various contexts within Google Analytics. Hopefully by the end of it you’ll have a deeper understanding of your site’s performance and stop judging success by that dreaded percentage.

Bounce Rate by Traffic Source

The first way to look at bounce rate is by traffic source, i.e where visitors are coming from (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc).

Before we do that though, let’s take a look at how most users look at bounce rate. Many people jump straight into the main overview page of Google Analytics and stare at their website’s bounce rate as the one source of truth.

The problem with this number is that it is an average. It doesn’t take into account the different segments of your website traffic.

A better way to do it would be to go to your All Traffic report in Google Analytics to analyse bounce rates across different sources of traffic.

Here you should see that every traffic source has it’s own bounce rate. Now we’re getting somewhere!

Google traffic seems to have a higher bounce rate which could be concerning but if you think about it most people arrive to your site via Google because they’ve been looking for answers to a specific question. They then find your blog, get their questions answered and move on. Your content isn’t bad, it’s just answered their questions.

Possible solutions? Maybe having more links to other pages on your site within blog posts or having a more obvious Related Posts section at the bottom of each post.

Another way to segment your visitors is looking at email traffic from your newsletters. This traffic is likely to have a higher bounce rate because they’re regular readers of your blog. They’ve read most of your content so when they get an email about new content, they read it and they’re done.

As a side note, if you don’t have email traffic showing your report you need to read this post on how to track email traffic in Google Analytics.

Bounce rate by content type

Another way to chop up your data and get a better look at bounce rates is by content type. Jump through to your Landing Pages report and start looking at bounce rates by different pages that people land on.  

In this report you can start finding out things like

- Do certain content topics have a lower bounce rate than others?
- Do certain blog lengths do better? Long posts can sometimes tire readers out
- Do different formats have lower bounce rates? Top 5 lists versus opinion posts.

As another example, if you ever run a competition with a landing page for people to sign up, expect to see high bounce rates. People visit that landing page, register and move on. There is less chance of them browsing and looking around.

Once again understanding bounce rates in context makes a huge difference to knowing how well you’re tracking.

Bounce rate by visitor type

The last variable you want to look at for measuring bounce rates is visitor type. One I like to look at regularly is New vs Returning visitors. New visitors will tend to have a higher bounce rate because they don’t know much about you. The goal is to do as much as you can to increase engagement for new visitors.

How do you compare new vs returning visitor bounce rates. There are a few ways. You can jump to the New vs Returning Visitor report or you can use the advanced segment for New Visitors.

The other customer segment that’s really useful is looking at mobile traffic. If you don’t have a responsive mobile optimized site the chances are anyone who visits via a smartphone will bounce. Sites that have a high bounce rate for mobile visitors should look at making a mobile site or improving navigation for smartphone users.

The easiest way to look at mobile visitors is again use the advanced segment throughout your Google Analytics account.

Conclusion 

Hopefully you’ll never look at bounce rates the same again. The key is not to look at bounce rates as a negative stat but instead understand the number in context. Never look at bounce rate as an average for your entire site. Instead jump in, dive deep and understand bounce rates using one of the three segment types above.

Learn how to use Google Analytics on your blog with an exclusive presentation brought to you by Nuffnang, as Ivan explains the basics of Google Analytics for bloggers. One lucky webinar attendee will even WIN a personalised 1-hour Google Analytics training session from Tweaky.com, valued at $250! Register your interest now.

What is Acupuncture? 

Acupuncture is an effective and safe non-invasive treatment for many medical conditions and general health and well-being. It works by enhancing the body’s natural healing ability.

It is commonly used for a range of conditions, and gets good results in treating and managing:

• Pain (back pain, neck pain, arthritis, headaches, migraines and period pain)
• Mental health (depression, anxiety, insomnia)
• Digestive problems (constipation, IBS, indigestion, reflux)
• Women’s health (fertility, irregular or painful periods, menopausal symptoms)
• Addiction (quitting smoking, substance withdrawal, general recovery)
• Holistic health (fatigue, metabolic issues, autoimmune conditions)

Acupuncture treatment in Australia has a history of being very expensive and only accessible to people on medium to high incomes. Prickle’s uniqueness has changed this, bridging the gap for people who want to receive acupuncture and Chinese medicine but can’t afford the cost.

What is Prickle?

Prickle’s mission is to help vulnerable sections of the community by promoting better health through Chinese medicine.

Health problems often accompany and compound socio-economic ones, so Prickle Community Acupuncture is built on a social enterprise model that offers high quality acupuncture services for as low as $25 a treatment for concession patients, helping those who need it the most. Acupuncture works best over a course of 6-8 treatments, so the affordable fee enables people to receive their full treatment, instead of only seeking band-aid solutions.

We cover our costs by also offering high quality treatments to other sections of the community. A treatment for a middle-to-high income patient is $50. The fees charged are to cover costs of operation, as Prickle Community Acupuncture is a non-profit organisation.

Prickle operates within a community health care clinic located centrally in Richmond. Our experienced practitioners provide tailored treatments, using acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. All of our degree-qualified practitioners have extensive practical experience, and are passionate about Prickle’s social mission.

Thanks to Prickle, we are offering treatments to 6 x Melbourne bloggers to experience acupuncture for yourself!! All you have to do is TWEET @nuffnangau with what you need help with and HASHTAG #NNPrickle and we’ll hook you up! (: 

When you’ve got so many interesting articles to read on the Internet and no time to sort through them, have you ever wondered, “If only there was something that could help me decide what to read?”

We know that feeling. So, we created a special technology that will identify the most emotionally-charged line as the summary of an article. We found that the most emotive line is usually the most eye-catching!

It doesn’t matter if you’ve only got one minute or ten, all you have to do is browse through your feed and select the article with that one-liner that attracts your attention!

Like this one right here:

Or this one: