The best blogs gives their readers useful and unique information. Often, this comes in the form of a top-of-class resource.

Quality resources vary across niches, but you know a quality resource when you see one. For example, take a look at Brian Clark’s 10 Step Copywriting Tutorial. It’s what everyone turns to when they want to master copywriting for the web.

Or, take Darren Rowse’s Blogging For Beginners. It’s the ultimate resource of new bloggers. When blogging firms hire new bloggers, they always send them over to Darren’s resource.

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I just read a great post from Seth Godin (via Problogger).  His post was about the power of recommendation. 

He wrote about posting excerpts from his new book last month and also giving a recommendation for a book by author Garr Reynolds.  He built a Squidoo page about that book with an affiliate link to Amazon. 

Guess which book has gotten more sales?  His book or Garr’s book? 

Seth checked his stats and it shows that he’s sold more of Garr’s book than his own book.

What people say about you is much more important than what you say about yourself.

There’s a lot of talk about self-promotion but it’s a lot more beneficial and effective when other bloggers promote you.

When people talk about you and especially when they recommend you, you gain credibility, mindshare, and exposure.

So, how do you get other people to start talking about you?

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With the new year only one day away, you may be thinking of resolutions to make concerning your blog. Here is one resolution that you should definitely make in 2008.

Produce multimedia content.

You may have to spend time and effort to learn how to produce a podcast or edit a video and upload it to YouTube. But this is a tactic that will pay many dividends for your blog. Here are 5 of the great benefits that come from integrating multimedia in your blog.

1. Reach More People

As bloggers, we probably think people read a lot because we read a lot. However, here are some surprising stats I found from the short ebook Teaching Sells.

• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57% of new books are not read to completion.
• Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

Teaching Sells also makes the point that many people learn better through audio or video rather than text.

Think about how many visitors go to YouTube on a regular basis. According to Alexa, YouTube is the 4th most visited site in the whole internet. That’s a huge potential audience that’s worth promoting to. Other video sharing sites like Dailymotion and Revver also have huge audiences.

By producing video and audio, you’ll reach the huge number of people who use the internet primarily to consume video and audio - not text.

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A couple days ago, I wrote about the importance of being a passionate blogger. Passionate bloggers have advantages over non-passionate bloggers including attracting a higher quality and more supportive readership.

So, how do you become a more passionate blogger?

First of all, enjoy your niche. Blog about something you love. If you don’t like to travel, don’t start a travel blog. If you don’t like video games, don’t start a video game blog. If you don’t like American football, don’t start an NFL blog. Simple, right?

The key to being passionate is to figure out what excites you. Consider the niches you gravitate towards. What do you spend your money on? What occupies much of your time? What do you like to think about?

If you go to a rock concert every two weeks, you’re probably a good candidate to start a rock music blog. If you are subscribed to five car magazines and you read them cover to cover, you should start a car blog. If you’re a scientist and follow science blogs and do experiments for fun, you guessed it, you should start a science blog.

This begs the question. What if you’re in a niche you don’t really love? Should you stop blogging about it? Can you develop a passion for that niche? I think you can, but it’s risky. The most important thing you can do is research your niche more. Subscribe to quality blogs in the niche and read them regularly. Read magazines. Read books. Go to forums. Immerse yourself in the niche and you’ll find out quickly if you like your niche or not.

Let’s say you do have the passion and excitement. Here are two practical things you can do to show others your passion.

Increase your word count. Write posts that deliver a lot of value. Of course, it’s not just about having more words. But if you’re passionate about your niche, you should have many things to say. Also, don’t be afraid to publish less posts. What’s more important is the quality of the posts. I increased my traffic by posting less often and writing longer, more insightful posts.

Do things no one else is doing. By being unique, you demonstrate that you want to add value to your niche. Too many bloggers are copycats. They look like and sound like other blogs. You can be unique in many ways. Here are some of those ways:

• Write about an important topic that’s not being covered well
• Use pictures
• Have a unique blog design
• Use non-text media like video and sketchcasts
• Do a series of 5 or more blog posts that relate to one theme
• Write a comprehensive FAQ
• Give away free stuff
• Guest post a lot
• Network like crazy
• Submit a consistent stream of great content to a social media site like StumbleUpon

Further Reading

From Copyblogger:
Go Big or Go Home: Why Being Bold is Critical to Getting Noticed

From Blog Herald:
If You Want to Start Blogging, You Have to Get Up and Dance

One of the best ways to improve your blog is to develop more passion for your niche. Being passionate about your niche will help your blog in many areas. One of those areas is the quality of your readership. If you show a lot of enthusiasm for your niche, if you show a ton of love for your niche, you will attract readers that have that same enthusiasm and love. But if you’re not that passionate about your niche, then you will attract readers of the same mold.

Benefits of a Passionate Readership

Why do you want passionate readers?

They invest a lot in the niche. They spend more money, which makes them much more profitable readers. They spend more time, which leads to higher pageviews. Also, they are more likely to become repeat visitors (RSS subscribers).

They leave more comments. And their comments are more insightful than “normal” readers. Insightful comments = free, quality content.

They are more likely to join and interact with your blog community. They’re looking to find friends in their niche. (Passion draws like minded people together.) They want to help and support the other visitors.

They tell their friends - both offline and online - about your blog. If they have websites, they link to you. If they are social media users, they submit your content to social media sites. If they have friends, they tell them about your site.

A Practical Example

Let’s pretend you start a blog about Hawaii travel. If you’re not passionate about this niche, you’ll just attract people that travel to Hawaii once in a while. The hardcore Hawaii travel addicts will come by your site and leave quickly because they can tell your lack of passion.

But if you have a travel blog that goes all out and it is really passionate about Hawaii travel, you’ll attract the Hawaii travel addicts.

What would your blog look like? It would be an excellent, bookmark worthy resource for Hawaii travel. It would cover the best cities, the best nightspots, the best restaurants, the best beaches, the best hotels, etc. It would have content that the other Hawaii travel blogs wouldn’t have. Much of your time would be spent researching Hawaii. Not only that but you would go there 5 times a year. You would take pictures and videos of your trips and post them on your blog. You would talk about the enjoyable experiences of your Hawaii trips.

If you have this kind of blog, can you see why Hawaii travel addicts would flock to your blog? They would love your site, because you cater to their addiction.

What’s more is that you’ll still get the “normal” readers. You will attract those people that don’t go to Hawaii often. And some of those people will become Hawaii travel addicts