This week I started to apply the time management strategies I developed to help me get the job done on my affiliate marketing business.
Having such strategies to manage tasks, learning how to reserve time to work on them during the week and managing priorities are skills I consider a must have for any affiliate marketers beginning their journey.
Beginners that start affiliate marketing, unless they are retired, have often to deal with their day job as well, hence affecting and complicating the weekly scheduling of the tasks needed to run their business.
I found with the activities and experience I did this week and the previous one that managing time and priorities is not as straightforward as I thought initially. In fact there is also a great part of this that involve bad habits, procrastination, mindset, and discipline. So, in order to render the near perfect scheduling (perfection in this domain does not exist) one will have a great deal of work to do on himself as well.
Scheduling is not to simply put tasks on a calendar, or define priorities, but it’s also finding the discipline to get these done. It is also learning to become good at dealing with unpredictable events, organizing, “feeling the week”, hence developing a sense of opportunity. These are skills built on practice and it requires time to become efficient doing them.
There it is. In the above, I just wanted to come back on my experience at managing my time.
Now let’s give the place to the real subject of this blog post.
Blog-Hopping using comments
Blog-hopping is a strategy used by digital marketers/bloggers to increase their online presence and drive traffic to their blog. It involves visiting other blogs in the same niche and leaving thoughtful comments on their posts.
Inside my Beginner’s Advantage community, we do that each week starting on Saturday, the day where we release our blog posts. We call this “The Saturday Share”. This is indeed a good habit we should learn and prepare to do outside the community as well.
The advantages of blog-hopping for affiliate marketers are numerous.
By engaging with other bloggers in my niche, I can build relationships and establish myself as an authority in my field. This can lead to increased visibility and credibility for my blog, ultimately driving more traffic and potential customers to my site.
“Establishing an authority” for a beginner might sound a bit far fetched considering his level of expertise.
However, even a beginner can impose his authority.
In effect, I’m actually establishing the authority of someone who is a step ahead of those who want to get started but haven’t yet taken any action.
See? If I can do it as a beginner myself, then you have no reason to not subscribe to my newsletter, read this book and start your own journey.😉
To do blog-hopping the right way, it’s important to leave genuine, relevant comments that add value to the conversation. I have to avoid generic or spammy comments, as these can harm my reputation and deter other bloggers from engaging with me.
By actively participating in blog-hopping, my blog can benefit in several ways. Not only can it help me attract new readers and potential customers, but it can also improve my search engine rankings by increasing the number of back-links to my site.
Additionally, engaging with other bloggers can provide valuable networking opportunities and potential collaborations in the future.
The Blog-Hopping checklist
You created a blog and now you need people to come and read your posts? Then it’s time for a little blog-hopping session.
The following is a checklist I found in the blogging training material of Internet Profits.
It is my intention to start doing this and extend my blog-hopping activities to new heights.
Here it is for your information so you know the strategy I intend to implement after I publish a blog post.
The Blog-Hopping Checklist
- Choose a specific day of the week to designate as your “blogging day,” where you will regularly create and publish new content for your blog. It is recommended to dedicate at least 5 hours to this task, whether it is done all in one day or spread out over two days.
- Write and publish your post.
- Share your post across as many social media platforms as possible.
- (Additional element for when you’ve mastered the basics) Make a short video on YouTube/Facebook/Vimeo, etc. that gives a brief overview of what the viewer is going to discover in your blog post. Supply the link to the post and include a call-to-action for them to visit it.
- (Additional element for when you’ve mastered the basics) Share your post to social bookmarking sites, such as Triberr and BizSugar. This will likely involve a lot more work and time and it isn’t essential, but it can be hugely helpful to your efforts. When just getting started, it’s more important to master the rest of the steps in the process, but if and when you can add social bookmarking into the mix, it’s highly recommended.
- E-mail your list to tell them that your latest post is published.
I recommend to start the following steps on the day of publishing, or if not possible, then begin the following day and continue daily until it is time to publish your next blog post.
- Find current, relevant, active blogs in your niche that have an active comments section on their posts and on which the blog owner is active in replying. Some ways you can find these is through searching in search engines, thinking of people in your niche who might have a blog and seeking them out, through forums, groups, etc. and through looking in the comments section of blogs you have already found.
- Read through the post you are thinking about commenting on.
- If the post is good and you feel that you can add something valuable to say in the comments section, share this post across as many of your social media platforms as possible.
- (Additional element for when you’ve mastered the basics) Share the post to social bookmarking sites when appropriate to do so.
- Leave a comment of value in the comments section. Don’t just leave a “Great post!”, “Thanks for sharing!”, etc. style comment. The comment should reflect that you’ve read the post and should contain your thoughts, add further content to the discussion, etc.
- When people start visiting your blog, sharing your posts to social media and leaving comments, always reply to the comments left on your post. With social media, always ‘like’ the shared post on the other person’s profile and reply to it to thank them for sharing. It can also be worthwhile re-sharing the shared post. E.g. you’ve published your blog post. Someone shares it on Twitter. You go to the shared post on that person’s Twitter page, ‘like’ it, reply to it and share the shared post from their page.
- Rinse and repeat!
In conclusion, blog-hopping is a valuable strategy for affiliate marketers looking to increase their online presence and drive traffic to their blog. By engaging with other bloggers in my niche, my intentions are to build relationships, establish credibility, and ultimately grow my blog’s audience and revenue.
Hope you liked this post. Don’t forget you can comment below or ask me directly a question through email at the address I give on my contact page.
If the topics interest you, go and subscribe to my newsletter. I give two gifts that can help you start with affiliate marketing the right way.
See you next Saturday.
Martin
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