25 Things You Can Learn From Wendy Piersall

1. Turn your blog into a blog network.

Wendy wrote about this as being one of the main improvements she made  on her blog.

The “one” thing I did to improve my blog was a huge undertaking :: I shifted the focus of myone-woman-show blog to a blog networkand created a magazine-style site. Though it was a huge risk, only three months later, the rewards have far exceeded my expectations, and I couldn’t be more proud of the site, our authors, and the content we are producing for the home business and internet marketing community.

You don't have to turn your blog into a blog network. If you are looking to expand though, you could look at bringing on other writers and an editor. This can be a way to appeal to a wider readership.

2. Understand your audience.

Wendy discussed this further in an interview on Problogger

I took a step back from our site being a site for parents in business - which was not easy for me personally, because I’m very proud of the work we have done to help working parents. But in order to really serve our readers, I realized that we needed to position ourselves as a resource for people who use the internet and technology to create flexible work for themselves - both parents and non parents.

This is a really vital hint, especially when it comes to changes on your site. Understanding your audience let you know what direction you need to go in, and how you can tailor your blog towards your readers.

3. Relationships come first.

Wendy expanded on this in an article on Entrepreneur.com

The number one rule of truly successful sales is that the sale doesn't come first -- building a relationship does. And there aren't a lot of "tricks" that work to build solid working relationships between real human beings.

This tip has been repeated by bloggers and marketers at varying levels of successful. Every one has echoed that relationships come first.

4.Building a community takes a while

Wendy wrote about this in a post detailing the amount of time that it takes to build a business via word of mouth.

Building a business via word of mouth takes a LOT of time -- you'll need to dive in and really be a contributing member to the online communities that are relevant to your niche. Most communities aren't very tolerant of blatant advertising or self-promotion. You'll have to really add value, get to know other individuals, and be willing to put a lot of time into it.

Ironically, even though I built my own site this way, if I could go back and do it again differently, I would have definitely found a way to put $10-$15K into a marketing budget for advertising and a professional publicist. Just because you CAN build a site on the cheap with word of mouth, doesn't mean it's the best way to do so. My business would be a lot farther along now if I had put more effort into finding the right capital to cover promotional costs.

At the same time, word of mouth marketing has a wonderful side effect -- free market research. As people spread the word about your company, they will be quite honest about what they like and don't like. It would make sense to at least wait 6 months or so until you put any money towards marketing until you have a site that you know people will really love, based on the feedback they will freely give you along the way.

I have interviewed many people who are in the beginning stages of building a community. They agree that it takes a while and can be incredibly frustrating, but it also gives a lot of benefits as a result.

5. Listen to your community.

Wendy discussed this in an interview she did on Blog Herald.

I think the most important thing I did was listen to my community – both via their comments and by analyzing my web stats. I knew what people wanted to read, so everything I did to grow the site revolved around what the community asked for. I also pushed myself to speak at as many conferences as possible, and in 2007 I spoke at 4. That made a world of difference in gaining visibility for both myself and for my authors. Lastly, I hate to give you the boring answer of “everything else that people do to promote blogs”, but these things really do work: guest posting, networking, commenting, linking generously – you can’t run a blog and not do these things. It’s important to be a part of the community you serve.

One of those benefits, from the hint listed above, is that you can get free market research by listening to your community. They can let you know what they want and let you know how you can improve your blog. This can be an awesome way to move to the next level.

6. Be passionate

Wendy identified this trait in a post on Startup Or Bust

All you need to be successful in business is a passion for what you do and an unending willingness to learn and grow - as long as you keep at it, keep asking for help, and keep educating yourself, you can make it (a healthy dose of patience, faith, and a willingness to go outside of your comfort zone will move things along faster, too!).

One of the recurring themes of this series is that building an online business takes a lot of hard work. Being passionate makes it all so much easier. Being passionate about your project gives you the desire to pursue when others would give up.

7. Diversify your income

Wendy wrote about this further in a post about marketing on the cheap.

After nearly a decade of being a mompreneur, I've found that one of the most important things you can do for the health of your income is to diversify how you earn your money. There might be a learning curve as you branch out, but too many times I've had all of my eggs in one basket and ended up getting burned. If you are a crafter, sell your leftover craft supplies on eBay. If you are a freelancer, write an eBook. If you are a blogger, learn affiliate marketing. Whatever you do, don't rely on one source of income.

There are many bloggers who have struggled after an income stream suddenly dried up. This could be due to many things like a change in trends, legislation or search engine rankings. Diversifying your income means that your overall income isn't too badly affected.

8. Look for speaking opportunities

Wendy gave this advice in a post detailing why professional conferences are a must.

If I had to credit just one thing with getting great exposure for my company, it would be my relentless pursuit of speaking opportunities. For bigger conferences, I will even speak for free just for the opportunity to showcase my expertise in front of a crowd. Nothing establishes you as an expert faster than speaking about what you know well. And if you’re afraid of public speaking, find a local Toastmasters group to join. It really is quite fun once you get over your nerves!

I have heard of so many people really expand their career options just by looking for speaking opportunities. Not only does it help get the word out about your projects, it also shows that you are professional and can allow your content to reach an entirely different audience.

9. Hire the ones that want it the most

This was one of many tips Wendy gave about hiring writers on a tight budget.

I’ve turned down more writers than I have hired on. Having 50 people writing for me would be great, but what I don’t want is to have to replace 10 of them every 2 months. Do things like probationary periods to test the waters with writers. And I can absolutely guarantee you that if they drop the ball in the hiring process, they will drop the ball when they are working for you. Be ruthless in who you eliminate, and also be quick to hire the people that make it clear they want the job more than anyone

As someone who wants success more than most, I really agree with this statement. Those are are desperate have a really strong drive to contribute to your success. Do you have any tips on finding these tip of people? Share them in the comments.

10. Running a Blog Network is more business and less social

Wendy wrote honestly about the difficulties of running a blog network

While you can’t take the social aspect out of blogging, if you are running a network, you will find it extremely difficult to interact with readers on the intimate level you were able to do when it was just you and them. The time demands are just too great to enable you to engage in the conversation like you used to. This has always saddened me, and I do miss it tremendously. And if you rely on those tight social connections to grow your blog (which is completely appropriate for many blogs, BTW), you will find that this is not a scalable marketing tool for a network.

I was surprised to read this tip, but was glad to read it early one. It has made me reassess some of my long term blogging plans.

11. Be a Salesperson

Wendy identified this as one the ablities you must have if you ever want to get out of the rat race.

Never underestimate how important it is to be able to sell. It’s at the top of the list on purpose. Even if you never have to sell to clients (unlikely), you will have to sell your ideas to investors, sell your company vision to prospective employees, and sell consumers or customers on your brand. Selling is absolutely critical to your success, so if you have an aversion to it, you’d better get over that fast.

Selling can be hard - and Wendy is right that you have to get over it. Even if your not selling products, you may be trying to sell yourself or a concept. Learning how to sell means you can choose what tactics to use and to ignore.

12. Write your post as if it was a tweet.

Wendy asked if it was possible to write a valuable blog post in 5 minutes. This was one of the ideas she gave:

Twitterize your thoughts so that you have to come up with an influential thought/idea/statement in less than 140 characters.

It may be hard for this post to really go viral. I wouldn't recommend this technique, but it is an interest way to learn the art of saying less.

13. Each community has very different written and unwritten rules

Wendy expanded on this in her post about what she learned about social media by hanging out with the trolls.

For a community as large as StumbleUpon, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-communities. What we find interesting, appropriate and legitimate as marketers is not the same for those solely interested in hobbies. The problems happen on StumbleUpon when different communities clash and content from marketing spills over into other, not so relevant categories.

This is especially true on many social media platforms. I have read many information products on twitter that recommend that people break some of the unspoken rules. This means that a well meaning person can damage their brand. Do a lot of research about the rules. Hunt around for people in your niche or local community and seek their advice.

14. Remember that social media is not the best vehicle for selling products or services in the first place

Later in the post, she said that:

Nearly every marketing post about using social media as a marketing tool will also tell you the following: social media traffic doesn’t click on ads, they don’t buy things, and they will not promote your pitch page or e-commerce store for you. Some bloggers go so far as to not even charge their advertisers for the traffic that originates from Digg or StumbleUpon, because otherwise the advertisers would likely leave.

This is something that a lot of new bloggers should keep inmind. I see a lot of new bloggers advertising on social media sites. They often get turned off those sites when the community gets angry at them.

15. Add value in every post - well, almost every post.

Wendy discusses this in her post about the secrets to fast blogging success.

You wouldn’t care a bit about me if I didn’t offer you something to come and read this blog. I’m here to impart knowledge, to make sure that when you come, you come to get something of value. And my goal when you leave is to tempt you back with the promise of more things of value. I’ll admit to a bit of self-indulgence every now and then, but my goal in nearly every post is to give you more than I expect to receive from you.

I've queried a lot of bloggers about what they believe makes a blogger really successful. They have said that they make sure that every post - even the guest ones - are full of value. I agree and have seen this strategy really accelerate peoples careers.

16. Blog with a higher purpose in mind.

Later in the post, she said:

The big bloggers are blazing a trail for the rest of us - and thus, are making a huge impact on the internet as we know it. Even blogs with commercial content are adding value, by putting information out there in a format that invites a conversation vs. pure marketing hype. They are spreading information on how to start your own blog and make money at it, and are giving great advice on personal and business challenges. I really want to help parents who want to work at home, but even more so, I want to inspire people to pursue their dreams and follow their hearts, no matter if they do it in a home office or not. Can I do this via blogging? Absolutely. It has been acritical component to pursuing my own dreams. There are others out there who need this platform for the pursuit of theirs, and I am happy to be a stepping stone on the way.

Whenever someone blogs with a higher purpose in mind, their passion shows through. This makes people really attracted to their work and they therefore want to be part of the community.

Having a higher purpose can also help you stay committed during the hard, tiring moments of blogging.

17. Master Frustration

Weny wrote about this in her post about the success ingredients needed for a home based business.

This is the one that brings a groan out of most people - and the most un-sexy and un-fun item on the list. Yet it is one of the most crucial to your success. Many small business entrepreneurs start their own company with the hope that it will alleviate some pain in their lives. It will, but it will also create new sources of pain. The key is to take every problem and think of it instead as a ‘challenge’, or as ‘an invitation to grow’.

This is a very relevant tip. There have been so many tips where I have been frustrated during my blog launch. I've had people problems, procrastination problems, tech problems and theme issues. There has been so much frustration. I'm still struggling to see it as a challenge, but a different mindset makes it a lot easier to deal with.

Two extra website promotion sources:

Wendy provided these two tips as one of 27 website promotion sources.

• Meetups -  Real-life networking is crucial to your long-term success)
• Yahoo Groups -  I’ve had long-term success building communities through email discussion groups - really highly recommended if you have the stomach to be a good moderator)

20. Use Stories to Create Intimacy & Trust

Wendy discussed this ina post aobut how to get personal on a business blog:

At this point, the internet is filled with how-to’s on creating templates or fixing your car. These readers come and they go. Loyal visitors return because of one of a handful of very big reasons :: they like YOU.

Creating relationships with your visitors is done in many ways, but one of the key ways is through your content, by sharing who you are as a person and letting your personality shine through. While keeping all the other tips in mind, get as personal as you possibly can on your blog - because readers don’t just want to read about news - they want to consider you a friend.

The personal stories are often one of the main reasons why subscribed to a site or followed someone on twitter. There are so many people in the blogosphere demanding your attention. The personal story may be the motivation someone needed to finally connect.

21. Growing to the Next Level Will Require a Different Skill Set

This was one the many lessons Wendy learned in 6 weeks of running a mini blog network.

What has grown this blog to the level that it is at today will not grow it to a million page views a month. I see that more clearly now than ever before. I can’t count on text link advertising at all anymore. Social Media won’t cut it. Advertisers want more quality traffic than that. And I’ve networked the hell out of the blogosphere - there’s only so many ways to grow a blog inside of a relatively finite community.

I taught myself everything I know in order to grow eMoms at Home - but even if I could teach myself international PR and had a big advertising budget, I would never have the time to do all that it would take to bring it to the next level.

This is a fascinating point, and something that I have also learnt in the weeks leading up to my blog launch. As you move up a level, your peers and clients expect a different level of service from you.

22. Go paperless

This was one of 10 tips Wendy gave to help prevent global warming.

Personally, I can’t stand using paper anymore - quite honestly, it either messes up my house, I lose it, or I have to file it (and you don’t even want to know how infrequently I do that!). Keeping electronic records not only makes things easier for you, but it is GREAT for our forests. Great paperless products include Adobe Acrobat for creating PDFs andeFax which sends and receives faxes via email.

I have struggled to go completely paperless, but have been very concious about replacing some methods of organization with online versions.

23. With hosting, Bandwidth and disk space are irrelevant

Wendy expanded on this in her post about how to survive the Digg effect

Most hosting companies offer about 300GB of disk space and 3000GB of bandwidth. Neither of them matter for a WordPress blog. You will have an extremely hard time coming up with 300GB of stuff to put on a server. And bandwidth is only relevant if you are running lots of video or audio files off of your own server. The only thing that matters under high traffic loads is the amount of memory available to your account.

I may need to upgrade my hosting plan soon, and really appreciated this post. It is one of the things you probably don't learn until its too late.

24. Don't give up

Wendy wrote about this in her post about growing her blogging profits while her traffic numbers went down.

There’s nothing more discouraging than your first year of trying to make money online. I think that’s why so many people give up - really, truly, it takes a long time to get the hang of driving traffic and revenue on the internet. I almost gave up several times. I am so flipping glad I stuck it out. I hope you will, too.

It can be very easy to give up in the early days. One of the themes that has been repeated in these case studies is that perserverance is the main reason they succeeded. Even if you have to give up a project, try not to give up on the overall dream.

25.  Don't stop commenting on other peoples sites.

Wendy identified this as one of the top 10 blogging mistakes she made in her first year.

Though it’s time consuming, I found out the hard way that you can’t stop contributing to the conversation elsewhere. It’s part of the blogging game - and critical to your success to comment on others’ blogs.

This isn't necessarily about commenting about blogs. Its about contributing to the conversation. If you can take the conversation elsewhere, do it. But make sure you continue to provide value and keep in touch.