As a part of our BloggersIdeas interview series, today we have experienced and powerful women blogger Harleena Singh . She pumps out a lot of great content, and I've admired that about her. She will be sharing her thoughts on blogging and how to use social media as powerful tool for blogging. Harleena Singh is very experienced with social media and content writing. She is well recognized women in blogging world. So let's get started with Harleena.
First of all thanks Harleena for accepting interview request for my blog. Please tell me about your amazing blogosphere journey. Who introduce you to blogging?
Thank you Jitendra for having me over. It's a pleasure to be here, at your blog. 🙂
Most of my friend's know that I was an English teacher before I started blogging. But since my kids were growing up, I decided to work from home and became a freelance writer. That was a few years back and there's been no looking back.
With success in freelance writing, it was at the end of 2010 that I decided to create my own blog, mainly to showcase my work, and started Aha!NOW. It was my father who suggested that I start writing, and so a blog was created. I guess everything that happens, happens for a reason! 🙂
Of course now I am starting off with my second blog, HarleenaSingh.com that would be exclusively about blogging and lots more - and would love to have you, and your readers over.
How to increase your conversion rate for an ecommerce website?
I believe that no matter what kind of a website you have, you can increase the rate of conversion if you provide solutions. Even on an ecommerce website, people come looking for a product or service that helps them resolve their problems and remove obstacles in their path to achieve happiness or success.
I guess if you develop trust for example through honest reviews, credibility through authentic and helpful content, resourcefulness by delivering latest information or products, and comfort by providing good user experience, you can expect more conversions.
How to increase engagement on facebook page?
I am no expert where Facebook is concerned, but am glad for the way things have worked out for me. I've been able to create good engagement on Facebook, but it could be better if I spend more time on it.
Speaking of my Facebook strategy, I prefer sharing quotes and inspirational words on a daily basis. It suits my blog as it's based on the self-development niche.
Other than that, I do believe in helping others, by way of sharing their posts on the social networks. Of course, that includes Facebook too.
There are a lot of other ways like asking questions, putting up a poll, and interacting with your followers, which increases engagement. But personally, I haven't started doing all of this as yet because of time constraints because I know if I start a discussion, I'd have to sit and reply to people, which would be very time consuming for me.
What's your favorite website. Analyze it for me?
Honestly speaking, I don't have any favorite blogs or sites. I never had a role model or bloggers to follow when I started my blogging journey, as everything was self-learned mainly, because I came from a writing background.
Since then, my routine is to visit all kinds of blogs and read whatever comes forth. I find that every blog is unique, and I like so many websites that mentioning one of them as my favorite would not do justice to the rest of them.
What blogs do you read. Tell me about an article you recently read that stuck?
I read all kinds of blogs. This is due to the very nature of my job, being a freelance writer and blogger. There are several blogs I visit and read, especially of those bloggers who are regular commenters at my blog, or those who are part of The ABC (Aha!NOW Blog Community).
I visit and comment on nearly 10-15 blogs or more at times on a daily basis, so becomes tough to remember which one struck a chord. I'd say they are all good in their own niches, not any particular one to mention.
You are considered as a commenting queen. How did you develop that art. Please tell us?It's no art, Jitendra, though I'm grateful to my blogging friends who've given me this tag, which sure makes me feel good. 🙂
I guess because writing comes easy to me, so does commenting, whether it's on my blog posts or anyone else's I visit. Initially, my blog never received very many comments (when I started blogging), but once I learnt that if you wish to receive comments, you also need to visit other blogs and comment on their blogs, I knew what had to be done.
Blog commenting is time consuming, but it's always worked well for me as it's got me a lot of blogging friend's from all over the World. I guess if you take time to fully read and understand the post, and spend an extra few minutes in writing a meaningful comment that adds value to the post, anyone can develop this art.
How did you see blogging progress in India.Which bloggers you admire and appreciate most?
Indian bloggers are doing SO well for themselves, and I appreciate each one of them for the hard work and efforts they put into their blogs.
I marvel at the young Indian bloggers, especially the ones who are still studying and have a full time job, because they are handling their tasks and blogs so well.
No particular blogger as such as each one has a different niche, but I do admire so many of them and the great heights they have reached over time.
If I have to take names, I'd include you, Atish, Harsh, Kulwant, Ankit, Jane, and upcoming bloggers like Swadhin, Rohan, Nirmala, and other Indian members of The ABC.
Where do you share your blog posts specially to get good traffic?
There is no special place or platform as such, nor do I use any paid options for promotions. I personally share them on my Facebook profile and both the fan pages, Google Plus profile and page, and of course Twitter (where Triberr helps a lot).
Other than these main platforms, there is LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, other bookmarking sites, and of course Pinterest, which works wonders for my blog as it brings me daily traffic.
Tell me about your bonding with foreign bloggers. How did you communicate with them. What all things you learn from them?
My association with foreign bloggers started from the very first few days when I started my blog, as they were the first visitors who read, liked, commented, and shared my posts.
Perhaps they liked what I wrote, thus became return visitors. Also, I always made sure to make my return visit to their blogs to comment and share their posts too. So, once this kind of a relationship develops, it keeps getting stronger by the day. Thus, now I have so many bloggers from different countries who are my good friends.
We communicate mainly through our blog visits, emails, and of course the various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.
Learning is mutual I'd say, as we all learn different things from each other. Though one thing commendable about them is their blogging consistency, and taking the weekend off - something we need to learn from them. 🙂
Who handles your blog database, are you aware of coding. When you want to make changes to your blog, what do you do? How did you test it?
My husband, Vinay, handles all technical aspects for both my blogs. No, I am a total novice where coding is concerned. But I never really bothered to even learn it because I know he's always there! Vinay's recently started his blog services too, so that is another change.
It's always good to keep making changes to your blog, especially when you want to grow as a blogger. When we have to make big changes, we do use a maintenance plugin at times, when our site traffic is the least. But where there are small chances, we do it on the fly.
Since we are hosted on SiteGround, we also have option of Staging, which is very helpful in testing the changes you want to make on your blog.
Has your blog ever been penalized by Google?
No, never, and I am grateful for that! I guess if you are honest with your content and your ways of developing back links, there is no reason to be penalized.
Suppose your blog get penalized by Google update, what will be your first step and what strategies you will use to recover from it?
Now, I'm not an expert on this subject, but I do know that low-quality links are bad for your blog and they can get it penalized by Google. So, the first step should be to analyze and clean the backlinks to your blogs. The other thing would be to get rid of spam comments and duplicate content.
You need to keep a good backlink profile and be careful in your link building activities, though I personally do nothing else except comment on authentic blogs and get backlinks through interviews like this. 🙂
Overall, make sure that you follow the Google guidelines in all aspects.
How do you manage time between blogging and your family?
That's not easy! I guess any woman blogger would say that, especially if she is juggling between her professional and personal life. 🙂
However, it's now been many years and I've got used to dividing my working hours into different slots, and taking up work on a priority basis.
For example, if there is a blog post that needs to be written, I'd do the research work, including looking for the images, quotes, and the rest, the night before. The next day, I just write during my productive hours, which is when my kid's are away.
Similarly, if I need to do the chores at home or cook, I make sure to close all work, and just concentrate during my unproductive hours, doing all of it. Evenings are family time, so I usually do my social media work that time.
To sum it up, I think we all have different lives, and have to try, test, and then decide what works best for us. Based on that, you can easily manage your blogging time and your family in such a way that neither of them suffers.
Handling a blog is big stress, how you manage stress while blogging?
Yes, blogging is not easy, and it takes a lot of time and effort before you start seeing the results.
I wouldn't really call it stress because as bloggers, a lot lies in our hands where managing our time is concerned. But yes, blogging can result in stress and cause serious health issues if we don't take care of the time we spend blogging.
Speaking about myself, I take frequent breaks while I work. During these breaks I usually do my household chores and cook, or else listen to music and podcasts. In fact, you can do anything that you like, as long as it takes you away from the Internet and makes you move around, after every 2 hours of sitting. Also, I don't skip my morning walks and meditation, which are huge stress relievers and they give me a boost to start my day.
Include link to your websites and social media profileWebsite- Freelancewriter.co
Blog - Aha-now.com
Blog - Harleenasingh.com
Facebook- http://www.facebook.com/harleenasingh.freelancewriter
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/harleenas
Google+- http://plus.google.com/+HarleenaSingh
Pinterest - http://www.pinterest.com/harleenasingh
Thanks so much for this wonderful opportunity, Jitendra 🙂
I hope you enjoy this interview with aspiring women blogger Harleena Singh. If you have any questions about this interview, please do ask in the comments below !
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