What New Friends Have You Met and How Have You Made Life Easy for Them?

Filed Under Blog Review, Successful Blog | 42 Comments

Done these three things lately?

New links connect blogs. New relationships connect people.

New people can add dimension and depth to your thinking and your ideas.

What new friends have you met lately? How have you made getting to know your blog easy for them? Here are three things you might do to get the ball rolling.

Find a new blog in your niche to follow. New blogs are new people with new points of view. Join their discussion by leaving meaningful comments and trackbacks. Every discussion offers an opportunity to learn something new from.
Check your sidebar. Make sure your sidebar is friendly to new arrivals who want to take a tour. Showing your readers where to find things is advertising.
Organize your archives as your readers would want them, and make a Popular Posts page. Ask your readers how they use your archives. Try to use them yourself to see how they actually work. Take the time to put your most popular articles in one place where new readers can find them as soon as they arrive at your blog.

New friends who feel at home usually come back to visit again.

UPDATE: I am updating this post as part of my response to comments 11-13. Carma this is a post reference that I am linking back to your blog through a trackback. This should show up in your comments for the post called Make New Friends with Trackback.

This is the URl for that page http://karmasword.blogspot.com/2007/03/make-new-friends-with-trackback.html I got there by clicking the time 9:22A.M. (when you posted that post) under your blog. I copied the URL from my browser’s address bar to use it to make the link in my post here.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
For more on how to think like your readers see Customer Think on the Successful Series page.
Watch What You’re Doing.

Classic Revisited: The Blog Review Checklist

Filed Under Blog Review, Checklists, Successful Blog | 6 Comments

Look at Your Blog as Readers Do

In my first week at Successful-Blog, I wrote a Blog Review Checklist. It remains one of the most popular, most linked to, and most visited documents. As I work on the new design for this blog, I’m reminded that we all should be thinking about the points I defined way back then. . . . So I’ve dusted it off complete with the text that introduced it. ________

Look as Readers Do

When was the last time you looked at your blog the way your readers do? If you write only for yourself, you look at it that way every day. . . . You are your audience. You’re done.

The rest of us are looking for an audience a little bit larger than one.

Humans have unconscious tendencies. We do lots of the things we like to do and ignore the things we don’t. This makes for a blog that looks great from our point of view, but can leave gaping holes–holes that our readers see, holes they probably won’t tell us about.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s okay to leave things out, as long as we know that we’re doing it. Not every blog has to do everything. In fact, most really shouldn’t. But walking around with a hole in your blog could be embarassing, especially if you don’t know about it.

Blog Review Checklist

Here’s a checklist to make sure your blog’s (ahem) vital parts are covered.

Audience: What words would your readers use to describe your blog? What do they like best about your site?
Purpose: What is the purpose of your blog? Why does it exist? Is the purpose stated plainly where your readers can see it? How well does your blog meet that purpose?
Content: How well does the content support the purpose? Is the content readable, interesting, accurate, entertaining, and appropriate for your audience?
Design: How well does the look of the blog communicate the kind of blog it is? Is navigation easy and intutive? Do items flow naturally from the first to the next? Do the color palette, image, and type choices support the content or call attention away from it?
Posts: Do you post on a consistent schedule the information readers came to find? Do your posts reflect the unique purpose and style of your blog? Do they offer variety and interest within your blog’s purpose and theme?
Comments: Do you read and respond to comments to form a sense of community? Consider which posts get most comments and which get none. How does that effect the topics that you’re posting on?
Technical Issues: Have you checked lately to see whether and how fast your blog loads in other browsers? Have you overdone the use of plug-ins and gadgets, making the experience more confusing than fun?
Writing: Is your writing clear and respectful of your readers? Have you established a writing voice that lets readers know who you really are? Is the blog essentially free of errors in grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation?
Organization: Have you set up your categories to draw readers into your backlist? Do you feature “Golden Oldies” that new readers would have interest in? Do you name your Categories things that readers can understand?
Marketing: What are you doing to let readers know that you are here? Are you listed in the right directories? Do you read and comment on other blogs within your readership? Have you included feeds?

Sure it takes time to review your blog. It takes even more to make tweaks and changes. But you invest so much time blogging. Doesn’t it seem worth it?

A rule of good publishing says,

Spare the reader not yourself.

In the end, you won’t be sorry.

What will you be doing for your readers today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

PS Thank you for your patience with the sidebar issue. Fixing it is more complicated than it might seem.

6 Reasons Readers Don’t Click Your Ads and What to Do about It

Filed Under Blog Review, Successful Blog | 33 Comments

Busted!

Last night I did something that I found curious. Here’s what happened.

I was writing a piece and I needed to think. To get some space, I put the idea on hold, while I clicked over to check my stats. I’d hardly started, when a comment came in on Successful-Blog. I went back to talk about the Jolly Green wearing PayPerPost on his chest.

That done, I returned to my stats, but the window was partly covered.

By accident I clicked on an ad!

Oh no! Not that! Busted!

Someone Already Knew

The second the ad came up, I automatically looked away. NO! I’m not an ad clicker. No, no no! I needed out of there right away!

I looked around for a witness to my reckless clicking. No one here saw. Still I knew Some place, somewhere, in some stats, someone already had tracked me there.

Then I had an epiphany. Okay, I woke up.

SOB Business Cafe 09-08-06

Filed Under Blog Review, Business Life, Customer Think, Great Finds, Motivation/Inspiration, SOB Business, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Blog Blog has a new look, but the same great service since we met.

Simplenomics reminds that folks value what we value.

Business Blogwire is getting wired into a series on big, big business blogs.

Service Untitled takes us to the Ritz.

Workboxers has THE interview with Patrick Gavin, explaining everything, including how signing up for a Text Links Ad will help put my son though college.

Related ala carte selections include

The Hillbilly PhD has a great question and the answer’s not 42 OR 43.

It’s a Numeric Life isn’t telling tall tales here.

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like.
No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Prelaunch Blog Review Checklist

Filed Under Blog Review, Checklists, Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 6 Comments

I wrote a post this morning as part of a series at LizStrauss[dot]com. It may be of use to some readers here. It’s for folks who’ve not started blogging. Click the title to access it.

Should I submit this to be an official SOB? I’ll have to ask myself whether I participate enough in the dialogue . . .

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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You're only a stranger once.

Done these three things lately?

Look at Your Blog as Readers Do

Look as Readers Do

Blog Review Checklist

Busted!

Someone Already Knew

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