Successful Blog

12 Detailed Checklists to Spit Shine and Promote Your Blog

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In Case You Missed It

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Vovo over at Business Traffic Ideas threw this idea to me. He caught it from Patrick Schaber at The Lonely Marketer who spotted the idea originated by Matt McGee over at Small Business SEM.

The thought is that so new subscribers in recent months might like to know about posts from times gone by.

12 Detailed Checklists to Spit Shine and Promote Your Blog

Every human is drawn to what we like and away from what we don’t. The beauty of a well-written checklist is that it checks for what we might have forgetten. The best blog promotion is quality — content, design, and linking. Use this dozen checklists to give your blog a spit shine and show it off.

  1. Classic Revisited: The Blog Review Checklist

  2. Checklist for Linking to Quality Blogs

  3. Editing for Quality and a Content Editor’s Checklist

  4. Choosing for Our Readers: A 5-Point Pop Quiz

  5. Blogs Aren’t Books, But Revising Is Still Revising: 6 Gating Questions to Make Revising Easier

  6. 6+1: How-to Blogging — Stomp Out Swiss Cheese Knowledge

  7. Eye-Deas 3-Photo Content Checklist

  8. Editing for Quality and a Content Editor’s Checklist

  9. A Blogger’s Personal Narrative Checklist

  10. Checklist for Starting a Directory Listing

  11. Blog Design Checklist

Taking care of the details, any designer will tell you is the killer app in the most elegant and well-cared for presentations. Any great writer will agree with that opinion. Yes, one after number 7 is missiong. 🙂

Quality feels satisfying to generate and to use. Quality is a blog’s best promotion of all.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!!

Related
Strategy: 40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully!
20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy
Strategy: How to Get Maximum Benefit from Complex Link Lists

The 4 Keys to Reader Comments and Conversation

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The People Connection

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The living web is built on relationships that grow through conversation. A certain magic happens when blog comments turn into conversation. When a blogging conversation happens, ideas, thoughts, and information gets passed from person to person. In the process, we find a human connection.

The Four Keys to Reader Comments and Conversation

These won’t surprise or stun you. You already know them. They’re what we all do when we talk to any person we value.

  1. Come down from the podium. Talk to me like a person who can listen. Let me be as smart as you are, even when I don’t know what you do.

  2. Leave what you say a little unfinished. Then I can add a word in. When a talking person fills in every idea and detail before anyone else talks, that’s called a speech. The response becomes applause or that awful noise.

  3. Blog your experience. I’ll respond to what you tell me. I don’t have to agree with you for what you say to resonate.

  4. Hold up your end of the bargain. Respond to my comments as you would my conversation. It’s only polite.

They say “no blog is an island.” But a blog can be one, and blogging is not the same in isolation. The ideas, thoughts, and information that we share in blogging conversation make us stronger and expand us, as people, not just as bloggers.

Therein lies the magic — we meet and make each other better.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you make a plan to meet your goals, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
10 Essential Needs of a Thriving Community
Writing for That One Most Important Reader: That Curious, Clever, Intelligent Individual
7 Great Ways to Connect with Other Bloggers While You’re Out Reading Blogs

Great Find: Five Things I Learned from Blog Comics

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It’s More than Reading the Funnies

Doing research for another post, I came across this one.

Great Find: 5 Things I learned From These Hilarious Blog Comics by Siziopedia

Permalink: http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/06/24/5-things-i-learned-from-these-hilarious-blog-comics/#more-453

Target Audience: anyone who knows a blogs

Content: This article describes blogging made using blog comics as the talking points. The commentary is right on the experience of blogging. Click the comic below to read the article.

It’s short, sweet, and funny.

What more could you want for a Sunday afternoon?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Link Anchor Text: SEO and Relationships

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Reach Out with Respect

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When we code a link, anchor text is that part people click to get where the link goes. Well-written anchor text is one more way that people and spiders know why you made the link — the relevance between your post and where you are sending them. Link anchor text is another way to reach out with respect to bloggers who offer information we value.

Here’s an example of anchor text in link as code and as the reader sees.

This code:

<a href=“http://[URL goes here]”>Link Anchor Text</a >

would look like this to readers:

Link Anchor Text

Sometimes you’ll see the name of the blog or a post as anchor text. Sometimes you’ll words such as here or click here instead. The first is relevant and SEO friendly. It builds connections and relationships. The second does not. Who wants to be referred to as “click here”?

Relationships and SEO

Strong, descriptive anchor text is a sign that we know how spiders travel links and that we care about people read and write blogs.

Search engines pay attention to what you write in your anchor text. They notice all of the text around a link — key words and descriptions. Spiders use anchor text to determine relevance and authority as they follow links from post to post. Linking with keyword-rich anchor text forms strong links to posts both within your blog and with blogs you respect.

Think about relationships. Links connect blogs and connect the bloggers who write them. Great anchor text, descriptive of what the link is leading to, offers an opportunity to feature those relationships. Spiders read and match up relevant key words in the linking posts. Search engines highlight your anchor text when they index the reference. The blogger you link to sees your descriptive text as how you named his or her blog or blog post.

It only takes a few seconds — a few words inside a link . . . to make a difference in relevance and SEO, to let readers know where you suggest they go next, and to offer the blogger at the other end a few words of respect. That’s a great way to use links to reach out.

Go for the relationship at the same time that you’re following great SEO practices.

Anchor me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz’s help with your business, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related posts
How to Code Links for Sidebars and Posts
How to Code Accessible Links–Part 1
How to Code Accessible Links–Part 2
How to Code Accessible Links–Part 3

Great Find: Laws You Should Know

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Andrew’s Been Researching

Our friend and SOB, Andrew Flusche has recently published an article that brings to light legal basics about work.

Great Find: Lunch, Break, and Hour Laws You Should Know

Permalink:
http://www.legalandrew.com/2007/06/07/lunch-break-and-hour-laws-you-should-know/

Target Audience: All employees

Content: Besides stating the basics of what the law requires be offered for lunches, breaks, and hours worked. Andrew also links to the specifics for every states. Click the title to check this out.

Whether you are starting a business, running one, or working for one, knowing the law is important. If you also value this resource that Andrew has built do digg it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The First Submissions: Your Blogging Metaphors

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The Metaphor Project: What’s Your Blogging Metaphor?

When a nonblogger asks, “What is a blog?’ How do you answer? Have you tried using a metaphor? Would you mind sharing yours? A few bloggers have.

The first submissions are in. Like the blogs they come from, each metaphor is a unique representation of the writer. We see blogs almost everywhere. They are a County Fair. They’re underwater. They’re a line of koalas. Like life, blogging seems to lend itself to metaphorical explanation — maybe more easily than it does to a straightforward definition.

These are the first submissions to The “What’s Your Blogging Metaphor?” Group Writing Project. I’ve discovered some great new blog writers and fun ways to talk about blogs. Just look at the titles! Check them out and pass them along to your readers. The more ways we look at blogging the better we’ll be able to explain it when we need to.

Let’s find some more.

Because this project spread so quickly and not all links are making their way to me, if you’ve written a metaphor and you’re not on the list, please email me a link. If you’ve already done that before noon on May 31, please forgive me and send it again. (I had dental surgery yesterday . . .)

Be a Part of the Project

So, what’s your blogging metaphor? Join the project. There’s still time to be a part – I’ll keep adding to this list until June 5th at Midnight Chicago time (GMT-6hrs.) Here’s the original post for the background — the whats and the hows.

C’mon tell us. How would you explain blogging to someone who knew nothing about it? What’s your blogging metaphor?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.