Review: The Blogging Blueprint by Glen Allsopp @PluginId

Plugin ID is one of the most heavily trafficked personal development sites on the web and for several reasons:

• The content is excellent
• Glen offers tips on more than just personal development
• Glen Allsopp has an interesting story
• The list goes on and on….

The blogging blueprint after a first read will be a resource I recommend continually as The Skool of Life continues to grow.  It’s comprehensive, it’s simple, and anybody can put the tactics in the Blogging Blue Print to use. To add to it, he gave it away and asked for nothing in return, not even an email address. As another plus, he offered  a link back to one of his highly ranked, heavily trafficked web sites. Basically, he’s really started to understand that concept of give and you shall receive. Now, onto the review.

Part I: The first part of the blogging blueprint is basically the biography of Glen’s journey through the blogosphere.  If you’re really impatient and don’t care about that, he included a detailed table of contents. But, I don’t a think a legitimate review could ignore his journey. He starts out by telling us a story of how he followed his passion for music to building an online community for DJ’s around the world. What’s really awesome is that Glen was just a 17 year old kid, when he got into all of this. That just tells us that anybody who is willing to put in a little bit of time and effort can reap some serious benefits from a blog. He goes on to discuss how his entry into blogging got him his dream job and started to open up doors. I loved that because,  one of the fringe benefits that I realized my blog will bring me is tangible proof of things that are just bullet points on my resume that probably everybody and their mother has.  While I wouldn’t encourage anybody to drop out of college, Glen followed a calling which many people in life let blend into the myriad of events that occur in their lives.

Part II: In my mind the meat of what Glen offers in his blog blueprint is part II. A good part of it seems to echo many of the lessons I’ve been receiving on a weekly basis from Yaro Starak’s blog mastermind program. If you are not technically savvy it might be a bit overwhelming at first, but if you take it one step at a time you’ll find that’s all simple advice that’s easy to implement. He starts by talking about topics for blogs, reasons to blog, and the early parts of getting started if you have no idea where to start. The next part is something I would have benefited from tremendously if I hadn’t learned all the things I have in the last 5-6 weeks that the The Skool of Life has been up. He goes over the basics of wordpress, how to chose a theme, and the plugins that really make a difference( most important element in my mind).  He gives you several traffic tips, many of which  I would review multiple times and setup a daily task list to do if I was serious about getting my blog off the ground. These include:

• Plugin descriptions
• Search Engine Optimization Tips
• General traffic tips

Part III: This is one of the more complicated parts to understand, depending on how Internet savvy you are , but something tells me these are the gems that will send your traffic through the roof, so I am planning on reading this part again, making notes, and putting the ideas to work.

As far as free guides to blogging go, this is one of the best I’ve ever seen.  This is for several reasons:

1. Glen tells his story: This is great because it gives us a connection to a real person behind all of the things we read on PluginID. I’ve learned that authenticity really is essential to blogging.

2. Immediately Actionable Tips: I’ve come across so many resources online about how to do  things to increase traffic on your blog that seem to gloss over things like the importance of wordpress, the plugins for wordpress, blog post titles, and more.  Last summer I worked in social media strategy for a major brand, and I thought I knew alot when I got done. But, after the last month of coming across resources like this blueprint, I have expanded my knowledge leaps and bounds.

3. The backlink offer: If you are a beginning blogger, this is something you should definitely take advantage of.  I figure if somebody who’s got this much traffic is willing to backlink your site for a comprehensive review, the long term pay-off is totally worth it.

Glen, thanks for putting this together.  It sent my head off in a whole new spiral of blogging ideas, which I’ll be posting here over the next few months.

Tags: Glen Alssopp, Blog traffic Tips, increase blog traffic, personal development blogs, backlink, blogging tips