Bloggers – Time for a Yoga Break

Time for a Yoga Break

Ease the tension in your neck and shoulders using simple self massage and yoga techniques presented in this video. No equipment is needed and you can do this while sitting in your chair. Go to a quiet room, or use headphones if you can, and pay close attention to your breath.

The story behind this yoga video.

Ntathu Allen is a yoga teacher, writer and blogger at YogaInspires. I first came in contact with Ntathu when she entered Kiesha Easley’s Surviving the Blog Contest, and meeting her reminded me of how much I miss practicing yoga. As I read one of Ntathu’s contest posts called Yoga for Bloggers – Simple Self Massage to Ease a Sore Neck and Stiff Shoulders I was moved to recite the piece for my podcast. Ntathu was so pleased with the podcast, that I decided to take things to the next level and create a YouTube video using some still shots and the video creation tool called Animoto. I hope you enjoy the video come back and watch it again whenever you want to relax. If you get a chance, please do me a favor and give it a thumbs up or leave a comment over on YouTube.
With all the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping on top of a hectic blogging schedule, it makes sense to take a few moments to relax and pamper yourself a little. Practicing yoga is a great way to soothe your spirit, but I’m sure you can think of others. What do you do when your neck starts to feel tight and sore or if  you just need to take a break - have you tried practicing yoga before?

How To Promote Your Content on YouTube
If you signed up for a YouTube account but you haven’t figured out what to do with it, here’s your answer – start promoting your content! I know, I know…you have a list of excuses for why you didn’t make a video yet, but I’m prepared to address each one of your fears so you can get started with promoting your blog, your website and even your ebooks on YouTube!
Excuses For Not Using YouTube
I don’t look good on camera
I don’t have a webcam (use my affiliate link to get the webcam I use)
I don’t know how to make a video
I don’t speak English clearly
My Response To Your Excuses
You don’t need to get in front of the camera (see #2)
You don’t need a webcam you can use free screen capture software like Screenr or Screencast-o-matic
You can watch my Screenr tutorial and all you need to do is push the record button
You can use a website like XtraNormal they say “if you can type you can make movies” and they do all the talking for you

Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel for more tips on video marketing!

Build Links with YouTube
Now that all your excuses are out of the way, let’s get started (if you have more excuses, leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list along with my response). Here’s a great example from one of my favorite YouTube superstars SoldierKnowsBest.

Mark (that’s his real name) has links to his affiliate products and his smart phone apps, not to mention over 66,000 views in just under one week! Let’s look at another example. Have you ever checked out DeStorm? He’s the man on YouTube!

DeStorm has links to his products and his Facebook page too and if you were impressed with 66,000 views in a week, what do you have to say about 195,000 views in a week? Notice that he also used a cool annotation feature in the top right hand side of the video to link to another YouTube video he wants you to watch. I like how he added some other call-outs for his social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
I’m not trying to convince you that you can become a YouTube star like DeStorm or SoldierKnowsBest, I just want to you see how you should use YouTube to promote your blog, your business and yes even your products by adding links to your descriptions. Don’t worry about dofollow or nofollow, just be sure to add links in your description. Don’t get carried away, but at least link to your blog, Twitter and Facebook.
UPDATE: I put all of my SEO Tips for YouTube into an episode on my podcast. You can listen to The Ultimate Video YouTube SEO Checklist here

How to Attract More Guest Bloggers on Your Blog

First of all, lets talk about why we need guest bloggers? As a blog owner, we need to produce high quality contents in the form of posts on daily basis to make sure our blog is moving in the right direction. Sometimes it becomes really difficult to generate targeted posts due to the busy lifestyle we all are living or we are short of blog post ideas. Guest blogging can fix this problem to a great extent. To solve the problem of publishing relevant contents on regular basis, you should incorporate a guest blogging system on your blog.

Guest Blogging is Beneficial for Both Owners and Guest Bloggers.

 

Guest Blogging is a Win-Win situation for both the blog owners and guest bloggers. As a blog owner, you are able to publish targeted and high quality content on your blog in the form of guest posts. While as a guest blogger, you are rewarded for your work in the form of quality backlinks, referral traffic and branding for your website. But now the question that arises is how to attract guest bloggers of our niche to write guest posts on our blog. If you are looking to get answers for this question or similar questions, I’m going to help you with this guest post:

1. Create Submit Guest Post Page

First thing you should do is create a page to inform your blog readers about guest blogging opportunities on your blog. You can name this page Submit Guest Post, or Write For Us, or Contribute Guest Post etc. In this page, you should mention the benefits of guest blogging and your guidelines for guest bloggers with contact details. Once you have created this page, you should add it in the header navigation section on your blog so that it grabs the attention of most of your blog readers.

2. Get in Touch with Other Guest Bloggers in Your Niche

Next thing you could do is begin making a list of blog owners in your niche and invite them for guest blogging on your blog. When you invite others bloggers, most of them will be interested in writing for your blog in case your blog has already got some popularity and they are aware about guest blogging concept. Apart from this, you should browse other blogs in your industry that accept guest posts. You should generate a list of guest bloggers who are contributing guest posts on those blogs and invite them for guest blogging on your blog.

3. Contact Blog Owners That Are Accepting Guest Posts

Ideally blog owners who are accepting guest posts on their blogs are familiar with doing guest posts themselves and would be interested in contributing a guest post on top blogs in their niche’s for better presence on the search engines front. Here is the ultimate list of 100 plus blogs accepting guest posts on their blogs. You should invite the blog owners of these blogs to write a guest post on your blog.

4. MyBlogGuest Community

MyBlogGuest is a guest blogging community website started by Ann Smarty, a well known blogger and social media activist. This blogging community has a discussion forum that one can use to invite guest bloggers to post on their blogs. So what you should do is create an account on this website and start a thread of your own to inform guest bloggers about the type of posts you want on your blog. Once you are signed in, you will see lots of similar active threads you can even reply in case you are not interested in creating a separate thread or you can use both the options.

5. Social Media Websites

I would recommend you start using Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and other popular social media websites to find guest bloggers for your blog. It would not be a difficult task in case you have huge follower base on these websites. You should make tweets about the same on Twitter and status updates on Facebook. I was able to bring in some popular guest bloggers to my blog through these websites when I tried this method in the past.

Do you have any other killer idea that can help us attract lots of guest bloggers on our blog, please share in the comments section below? You are invited to share your opinion in case you are not agreeing with any of the tips mentioned above for finding guest bloggers for our niche specific blogs.