Build a Better Blog

Aug

Well we’ve reached day 31 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and you should find yourself with many tools to use on your blog. Some will fit better than others, some will be used more often. All are important parts of a good blogging arsenal.

One of the things I talked a lot about in my Ten Habits of Successful Blogging series was the need for a PLAN. And this is what the challenge today is about.

Get out your calendar. Makes a list of the blog related things you want/need to accomplish in the next month. And now start plugging stuff in.

If you have an hour every night after the kids go to bed to dedicate to working on your blog then you will look at your list and start planning what to do in that daily hour time frame.

Maybe the first day of the month will be a brainstorm session to create two or three dozen blog post ideas. Two days per week will be publishing blog posts. That leaves two day per week to promote your blog via Twitter, facebook, forum posts, and comments. And another day per week (excepting the first week) for site maintenance, guest posting or statistics analysis.

Or maybe your blog has a theme so you’ll be planning your Monday Marvels, Tuesday Tips, Wordless Wednesday, etc.

Or maybe you have private clients that you’ll need to schedule in research and writing time. Administrative tasks like pitching new clients, invoicing, etc.

Whatever your unique situation is, you need to include those tasks on the list for you to schedule in the time. I’ll be honest you guys. I hate schedules. I hate writing down when to work on what on the calendar. Mostly because I tend to fail within three weeks enough to just drop the system entirely.

But then the chaos is too stressful and I plan stuff out again and things are much better for a couple weeks again. Sad, but true. With four children and a husband who works odd days, that’s the simple truth of my life.

What I have found is that having a flexible, but outlined schedule tends to work the best for me. I can’t plan things down to the second because, well – dirty diapers happen. But I can plan a day-by-day plan that tends to be followed more or less. Email day (catching up on the emails that need to be addressed and weren’t taken care of right away), administrative day, writing days (I get two, sometimes three), etc. And I’m always sure to include a catch-up day that is for any extra projects or last-minute things that come up.

But that’s what works for me. The challenge for you is to discover your OWN plan and that will be uniquely yours because you are uniquely you in a unique blogging situation. But I’d love to hear about it!

Aug

Tracking Analytics and Reader Stats on Your Blog – Day 30

By AngEngland | Build a Better Blog

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OK so you’ve been working through 31 Days to Build a Better Blog for 30 days now. How do you know whether of these improvement steps have been successful? How do you know who is reading your blog? How do you know which blog posts are the most popular? How do you know which blog posts need to be re-written or freshened up?

Your blog statistics.

You want to know your overall stats (ie number of visitors and page views), your most popular posts, what questions people are typing in to find your blog (often great future blog posts), referrals (what sites are sending readers directly to your site), your bounce rate (the percentage of people who visit a page on your site and then leave again immediately), exit page stats, and much more.

Some bloggers can get almost addicted to stats and get sucked into every little jump and wiggle. Other bloggers literally hate statistics and analytics and will never check their stats. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. Personally I have become too lax about checking my stats because of the new baby, but as we’re settling into a routine with his eating and sleep habits I will be checking back in more frequently.

Before Adam was born I checked page views once a week minimum to see if there were posts getting an unusual amount of traffic suddenly, to see where that traffic was coming from, etc. I also check more in-depth at the end of each month, comparing this month’s numbers to last month’s numbers. This gives me a chance to notice where I have much higher bounce rate, or very low time-on-site and schedule a time the following month to brush up on those posts.

Beginning Bloggers – Remember that not all blogs have hundreds of thousands, or even hundreds of readers each month starting out. In the book, Darren mentions that two years ago he analized the top 100 blogs on Technocrati and found they had been up for an average of three years! Success with blogging takes lots of content, exposure, incoming links and all of that takes TIMES.

Set percentage based goals for yourself. For example you might adapt some of these ideas:

I want to average three comments per post this month.
I want to raise my page views by 10% this month over last month.
I want to decrease my bounce rate by 5%.
I want to gain five new subscribers to my blog this month.

Whatever your goals are you can use stats to find out if your outreach is successful or not. Don’t be afraid of delving into analytics a little bit, but be prepared to act on what you find.

Aug

Develop an Online Profile Strategy to Increase Exposure and Readership – Day 29

By AngEngland | Build a Better Blog

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Day 29 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is all about utilizing your time wisely and effectively. Now is the time to begin to think intentionally about your time and energy online, and how these actions can promote your overall profile online. This is probably one of the best things for me when I do it consistently, and one of the hardest areas for me to remain faithful in.

The challenge today is to look at various ways to use your time online to promote yourself and your blog, apart from the time actually spent on your blog. The difficulty is that it can become so easy to “piddle around” as my mom used to say. To flutter from one thing to another to another to another and before you know it, you’ve spent an hour online and not really accomplished anything.

I think that’s where I come to a word that Darren doesn’t use in the lesson – intentional. Having planned your online actions out ahead of time can be very effective because you will stay on task, eliminate distractions and work more efficiently.

Ways to promote your online profile are numerous and several are listed in today’s post such as Flickr, Lifehacker, Twitter, Forums, Blogs, and StumbleUpon. He also discusses using guest posts, blog coments on other sites and advertising.

There are a few favorite ways I have to promote my blog online that Darren did not mention. Satellite blog posts like hubpages, squidoo lenses and xomba can be effective for creating incoming links and drawing in new readers. Contributing to collaborative sites like Untrained Housewife, Type-A-Mom or Blissfully Domestic can be beneficial for lifting a series of posts on a topic across several sites and harnessing Google Power in a big way.

For example, when I wanted to promote and build up my series of articles about fragrant plants on Suite101, I wrote a fragrant plant themed hubpage linking to it, used my personal plants blog to link to it and shared the links via Facebook, twitter and stumbleupon. If I wanted to take it one step further, and I probably will eventually, I would write a couple gardening articles for Blissfully Domestic and Untrained Housewife and link back to the fragrance articles on Suite101 from within those posts. Now Google sees at least a half dozen incoming links to my fragrance plant articles and some of those links from full-length articles – that gives tremendous power to my search-engine rankings.

Another way to build up an online profile that Darren didn’t touch on would be twitter chats. Many topic areas now hold twitter chats with relevant hashtag marks. For example #blogchat, #gardenchat, #birthpros, etc. Almost every topic area has chats dedicated to it now and if they don’t…what a wonderful opportunity for you to step in and become “the founder of #cookbookchat”.

Challenge:

Assess the amount of time you are willing and able to dedicate to promoting your blog and online presence. Remember this will be above and beyond your actual writing, publishing and site design for your blog.
Schedule your allotted time according to what will benefit you the most – X amount on Twitter, X amount in extra postings each week (whether that’s Hubpages or guest posts on collaborative sites, etc), X amount commenting on forums/blogs, etc.

Do you think that this is a beneficial exercise? Even if you are typically a “fly-by-the-seat” type of personality, do you think having a social media and promotion strategy will be helpful? What types of things have you done in the past that have proven the most beneficial to you in building an online profile and increasing awareness of your work?

Aug

Writing Reviews on Your Blog – Day 28

By AngEngland | Build a Better Blog

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The challenge for Day 28 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog centers around crafting a great review post. While some blogs specialize in reviews and do little else, I prefer for review posts to be just part of a natural occurrence.

Part of me having strong opinions about things in my topic areas comes out in writing review posts. Reviews can give your readers an important head’s up about a useful book, great deal or new break-through. They can warn your readers about something that didn’t meet expectations. And they can help you establish yourself as someone who has valuable insight and opinions in your niche area.

How to write an effective review post –

Have an opinion – and share it
Be balanced – include pros and cons and need-to-knows
Don’t be afraid to come up with a rating system
Compare with other reviewed items
Tell who will benefit from the product
Use personal stories – connect with your readers
Give details – product stats, pricing, how to buy, etc

Above all don’t be afraid to use humor and talk about the product in your personal voice. At last year’s Type-A-Mom Blogging Conference I got a copy of the book 5 Ways to Blank Your Blog (Amazon link to the hilarious book) by Deb Rox and one of the posts she highlights in the book is an amazing review. This make-up review by @Fluidpudding is an example of a really great review post.

Challenge – Write a review post on your blog today. Having trouble thinking of something to review in your topic area? Think outside the box and explore what you like to have/own related to your niche. Maybe it’s as simple as reviewing a magazine, since most topic areas have dedicated publications that are niche-specific.

Aug

Eliminate or Fix Dead Links – Day 27

By AngEngland | Build a Better Blog

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In Day 27 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, Darren reminds us that “blogging is build on the link”. The interchange of links on a blog helps rank it more highly with search engines, provides resources to readers of the blog, and lifts the entire blogging community.

But what happens when a link becomes dead? Link rot happens – that’s all there is to it. But bloggers have to watch out because dead links can hurt your blog big-time.

Your readers are effected because it’s frustrating to them to click a link you told them to go to, and then find a dead or blank page. And your blog is effected because Google sees you linking to webpages that don’t exist and (while no one can say for sure how much) it seems to effect your rankings negatively.

There are many link checking tools available. Dead-Links.com is one, Link Valet is another. There is a WordPress plugin called Broken Link checker that I am testing out as well and it seems pretty effective.

When you find a dead link you can replace the link with another link that works, delete the link completely or even delete the entire post. I generally prefer not to do that, personally, because I don’t want to create dead incoming links into my own blog if someone had linked in to that post. Even just updating the post to say, hey this company has gone out of business or this webpage has moved, or here’s another alternative to this great dingle-hopper, etc. can be an effective way to handle this.

Have you ever checked your site for dead outgoing links? I haven’t checked this site in a very long time . I guess it’s overdue for the task! Let’s do this task together to better our blogs.

Aug

Why Improve Someone Else’s Blog – Day 26

By AngEngland | Build a Better Blog

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The advice in today’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge may seem a little crazy to some. What do you mean improve someone else’s blog? How is helping someone else have a better blog possible? Or smart?

Obviously you will naturally spend the most time and energy on your own blog – that’s normal. Like a parent who thinks of their own child more often. You expect it. However, there is something to be said for reaching out into your community and helping a neighbor child as well.

“Improving a blog” for a friend doesn’t have to take technical skills or prowess. It can be as simple as sending someone an email of encouragement. In fact, I recently experienced this myself when someone messaged me out of the blue on my birthday, the following message on my Facebook:

“I’m glad you were born and I’m glad that we “met”. Without you it would have taken me a lot longer to get where I am today—sitting in my living room being able to work from home doing what I love. Thank you for leaving a beautiful footprint on my life.

May God bless you abundantly this year!”

Wow! What a bright spot that was in my week. My whole month in fact! To know that my original goal for this blog – empowering others to be more financially flexible, and especially mothers with children, had been met in at least one life….priceless. Totally priceless. And the encouragement I needed to continue one when a series feels too long or you begin to wonder if anyone is listening.

Another way to help someone else succeed with their blog is write a high-quality guest post. To highlight that blog for your readers and write a review post, sending your readers to their site. To leave a very valuable comment on a recent post. To introduce them to someone else (I love passing along PR contacts or writing opportunities where the fit isn’t quite right for me!) who can benefit the other blogger.

Is there another blogger who has been a blessing to you? Have you told them? Have you done something to help promote them and their efforts to thank them? Go ahead and find time to do that today.

Aug

How to Ask Questions On Your Blog – Day 25

By AngEngland | Build a Better Blog

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In 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, Darren gives 10 reasons to ask questions on your blog. My favorite reason that stands out to me the most is #9 – that when readers answers a question if gives you a way to begin a dialogue or conversation with them. I love that!

He goes on to give a dozen ways to ask questions effectively on your blog. Some of the things he mentions were touched on in other lessons, for example in your opinion piece you can naturally write asking your readers for their opinion on the subject. Don’t be afraid to ask a controversial question if it needs to be asked to create a space for dialog on a tough subject.

Use the answers that people give you to follow up in future posts. He lists the example of asking what people’s favorite camera lenses were and then creating a summary post of popular DSLR lenses.

CHALLENGE – of course today’s challenge is to go back to your blog and simply ask your readers a question.

Aug

Improving Your Blog Design and Content with a Magazine – Day 24

By AngEngland | Build a Better Blog

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: Image via Wikipedia

A good magazine can be a great way to garner blog design ideas and other ways to improve your blog. Read through this post and then be prepared to STEP AWAY from the computer.

Take your notepad, pencil, sticky notes, and a couple favorite magazines (preferably in your topic area) and go away. Take as much time as you need to peruse carefully.

Look at the front cover. Design ideas, color scheme, layout, fonts, etc. Are you missing sub-topics in your niche? See any good post ideas? Great writing inspiration? How is the magazine making money? How are they engaging readers?

Darren gives several additional ideas, including the step-by-step process of how he usually does this analysis. Pick up your own copy of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and look at page 69 and 70.

Also be on the lookout for topics you might be able to contribute to the magazine. One of things I cover in my Making Money ebook (link to purchase in the sidebar) is how to create query letters, approach magazine editors and try to break into print magazines.

Your challenge today is to look through a magazine or two and to make notes as they come to you.

Aug

Give a Reader Some Personal Attention – Day 22

By AngEngland | Build a Better Blog

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Make a reader royalty - Image by Jeff Crump

In this chapter of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog we learn to make a reader famous. Choose a commenter to feature in a unique and special way and increase you reader interaction on your blog. I’m fairly good at commenting on my reader’s blogs on occasions, and especially with frequent commenters, engaging them in conversation on Twitter, etc.

But there are some fantastic tips in today’s challenge that I really would love to implement more of on my own blog. Promoting a comment into a blog post I have done from the very beginning when I got my first very negative comment. But why did I only use a negative comment to springboard post ideas? Why not pull some insightful POSITIVE comments into blog posts also? Look for more of this in the future.

Other ways to make a reader feel special include writing about their blog, telling people to go comment on one of their posts, feature a reader of the week or month, give your readers a chance to show off (like we’re doing in this series in fact), take a poll and bring in guest posters.

Guest posts are something I’ve done the in the past with great success. I think I’d like to do more interviews, features and comment promotions in the future. Your challenge is to somehow promote a reader on your blog – if not today, soon!

Have you done this in the past? Which methods have been successful for you? Which do you want to try in the future?