Successful Blog

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Responding to Your Mistakes

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Every blog is a work in progress–a public one. Every legitimate blogger I know is human. Humans make mistakes. I’m better at making mistakes than a lot of humans. Making mistakes in public is never fun, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world either.

What do you do when you make a mistake–a very public one? Big or little, public or private, mistakes have a way of stealing our balance, here are some ways of recovering that balance and moving on.

  • Realize that you aren’t a mistake just because you made one.
  • If it’s fixable, fix it. Otherwise it will nag you. It will always be there.
  • Step back, be dispassionate, and decide if you need to do more. How important is it? Is anyone else affected by your mistake? Learn to recognize what’s a little thing that no one cares about.
  • If it’s something that involves others, acknowledge it. Find the opportunity in the error and get things moving forward again.
  • Know that most people are generous, if you’re upfront with them.

Here’s an object lesson:

Yesterday I posted two articles that had errors in them. I had the wrong glasses on, and my proofreader friend didn’t get the chance to look at them. I am sorry that I let those get to you that way. They are fixed now.

I wrote an apology to Yaro, letting him know his blog has the “r” back in its name. He was most gracious in his reply. I think we’re going to be friends.

I take some comfort in the fact that the nature of this blog made this event something worth posting about.

–ME “Liz” Strauss, who is now cleaning her glasses every hour.

Blogger Forums as Promotion

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Blogger forums are a great place for networking. It’s amazing what we can learn just by showing up and participating. Enthusiastic learners and generous teachers are attractive human beings. We draw others to us, and every good-natured, authentic interaction is one step to relationship building. Nothing out does the fast-pace give-and-take of a blog forum for teaching-learning, story-swapping, and bloggy brainstorming.

There are some great benefits to becoming a member of a blog forum in my niche.

  • Forums offer a chance to gain visibility, form relationships, and establish a reputation for what I know. Serious blogger forums are like mini-seminars. They’re a great place to ask and answer questions. The very act of participating lets people know that I’m out there and willing to help. People who like what I say might stop by my blog for more, and I’ll have a place I can go to when I run into a bind that is over my head.
  • Talking about my blog is a natural part of the conversation. What would be shameless self-promotion in other venues is using examples in the context of my forum. Pointing a forum friend to an article on my blog that meets their need is something they say thank you for.
  • Leaving a signature link when you enter a thread can be common practice. I realize that I’m joining a group that has it’s own protocols. I look at how others sign their names before I make my signature. If the forum is a good match, I try to have posts in five or six threads. For the first day or two in Forum Land, I do as the forumers do. (In editorial we call that 2.3rds of a pun–p-u).
  • Some forums ask me to introduce myself and my blog. I take those opportunities very seriously and pull together three important points–the purpose of my blog, a little of my strategy, and what I think readers come to see. I chose those three because I want the forum to know me as a multi-faceted thinker who takes blogging seriously.
  • Search engines see forums as a hotbed of content. When the bots come they find plenty of tag-relevant words being used, my link in that mix gets indexed too.

Some forums may be part of an association, directory, a webring, club, or alliance. These groups offer the advantages of a forum and additional opportunities to network with people about your blog. They might even offer opportunities in which you plan blog promotion events together.

Whenever I start out in a new forum, I keep in mind that I’m building new relationships and a new reputation. I take care not to bring out my complete sense of humor too soon or too often, because I want to be taken seriously, and I want the people I meet to know I take them seriously as well.

Don’t join just any forum look around and be choosy. Find one that will be a mutually-beneficial experience for you and its members. Also read Hart’s comment after Blog Promotion Basics [for Everyone]â€? to find out how he learned that the wrong forum is worse than being in none.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

1.3 Audience Synchroncity

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Interview with Indie
His Blog: The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy
URL: indeterminacy.blogspot.com
His audience: persons from all walks of life who like to read quality fiction–bloggers, high school and college students, people in the creative arts, and people who work with language in their jobs–his blogroll reflects his audience
Thing to note when you visit: the interactivity; the connection between Indie and his readers; the quality of the content; the special features and unique ideas

1.3 Audience Synchronicity

1.3 Audience

Indie has two English-language blogs and a Polish-language blog. Click the screen shot to see his satellite blog–Indeterminacies of Synchronicity. It’s this second blog that provides the venue for the feature that engages his audience in writing their own flash fiction stories each week. Each story posted there is rewarded with a link. The Polish-language blog offers translations of selected stories for a smaller segment of his audience.

Indie’s respect for his readers shows whenever he talks to or about them.

Indie, who is your audience?

I’ve been greatly surprised by the type of people reading my blog. In a nutshell I think of them as the blogging elite. I’ve received feedback from artists, musicians, authors, editors, stand-up comics, company CEO’s, psychotherapists, lawyers, professors and other high level professionals, many of them authors of intelligent blogs themselves. This is, for me, another sign of success. Not too long ago I noticed I had some referrals from an online university class in which the professor asked the students to analyze a flash fiction story of their choosing. He had included my URL as an example of flash fiction, a genre which I incidentally knew nothing about until long into the existence of my blog.

All this attention has been especially gratifying, but also intimidating. I hope I am able to keep up whatever it is that caught their interest.

How do your readers find out about you?

People have found me by accident, through links, random referrals, by word of mouth, using search engines and probably other ways I can’t imagine. I followed all the instructions for promoting one’s blog. I entered myself in all the directories and search engines, I use several traffic exchange programs, I comment at other blogs I find interesting (though these days I have hardly any time left for reading other blogs), I have a description and keywords list included in my blog template, which probably helps improve my search rank for various terms. Lately I’ve been presenting my blog at Blog Explosion’s blog battles. Also, many visitors seem to show up through image searches, which probably goes with the territory of having so many photo posts.

What do they like best about your site?

According to the feedback I receive, people like the idea of what I’m doing (pairing found photos with stories), even if they do not enjoy my writing. Others seem enthusiastic about the pace at which I post stories (five a week at the moment), as well as enjoying the stories. Others enjoy the interactivity or the fact that I try to answer all my comments. On weekends I post a photo without a story and invite my visitors to contribute their own story. I then post my take on the photo the Monday after. Those stories have all been collected at the companion blog indeterminacies.blogspot.com, including links to their respective authors. A few bloggers have been kind enough to write reviews about my project. I’ve linked to them on my front page, and would refer you to these for a feeling about what other people see in my blog.

Indie’s audience is made up of blogger readers from all walks of life. They could be the same people who read our blogs. It’s hard to miss Indie’s connection with his readers. I suspect that even with the great photos, stories, interactivity, and sense of community that the biggest attraction for readers is Indie.

What brings readers to your blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Building Readership: Community Participation

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Guest Writer: Hanni Ross

As recently discussed, community participation is a great way of building traffic to your weblog. Scrivs mentioned commenting on other weblogs as a way of getting your voice out there, and another post offers a great list of starting tips on building traffic. The key message from those two articles is community participation. The more you give to the community the more you can expect to get back. You might wonder where to start, well, that’s where we come in.

Say you’ve just written an article that you’re particularly proud of, how do you get it out there?

  • If you were inspired by another blog post then send a trackback/pingback (for a good explanation of trackback see here). This not only makes the original author aware of your post it also generates a link to your post on their site. Like-minded readers will therefore discover your post and who knows, they might feel the need to write a response or even to link to it from their own weblog.
  • Email the article to a few of your friends and cohorts. They might like it and also feel moved to write a response or to link to it. You have to be very careful on this one though, you can easily lose credit by appearing to “spam” your peers with your work.
  • Participate fully in any discussion that might happen in the
    comment section. Show your readers that you value their input and make your site a nice place to visit.

More generally, how can you gain community-wide recognition?

  • Say, for example, your weblog is primarily about cats. If you happen to frequent any cat forums on the web add your weblog’s URL into the signature. Similarly, if you are a member of any
    relevant mailing lists then it couldn’t hurt to add your URL to your signature.
  • Again participation in any resources on your weblog’s topic can only do you good. Get your name out there as someone who knows what they’re talking about. Think carefully before you write on any discussion boards or mailing lists – anything you write in a moment of madness might come back to haunt you…
  • If you do happen to write a column or just occasional articles for other websites then ensure to include your URL in your author bio. If you have built up a reputation elsewhere then there’s no reason why you can’t use it to show people that you’re channelling your efforts into a weblog too.
  • If you have expertise then share it. If you have a gardening background for example and therefore know more about caring for house plants than most then share your tips. Make yourself an indispensable resource.
  • Hunt around for any relevant directory sites and ensure that you’re included, that way people coming to your site are more likely to be those who will stick around as they are interested in your
    subject matter.

It’s important to communicate your energy, enthusiasm and ideas to others to make yourself known. Good luck!

We’re building up a catalog of tips here at Successful Blog, if you have any you’d like to share then don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments.

Successful Blog Is Launching New Features

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Successful bloggers are constantly trading nuances, techniques, and strategies for how they keep their blogs growing. We’re all looking for those tangible and intangible traits that successful blogs have in common. When we find one, it’s hard to keep quiet. We want to know if someone else knows more than we do about it. Those conversations happen all over the blogosphere. They are a natural, exciting, and fun part of blogging. I want our share of what people are saying. Why let everyone else have all of the fun?

Successful Blog is launching new features. We’re kicking the conversation up a notch. We’ll check out blogs to see what makes them tick. We’ll discuss new ideas and meet successful bloggers. We’ll look at unique blogs from across the world. Here’s some of what you can count on.

  • In-depth Interviews: Start thinking of questions. We’ll be interviewing bloggers and reviewing blogs in every genre–business blogs, writing blogs, photo blogs–you name it. Ideas that work in one genre often have application in others.
  • Screen Shots: I’m getting screen shots of great blogs so we can talk about design and layout ideas and visual strategies that work.
  • Targeted Postings and Checklists: We’ll analyze the characteristics of a great blog, such as audience, content, design, navigation, and marketing.
  • Bloggers Survival Kit: As we move through the weeks, we’ll collect things together to make a survial kit for every blogger.
  • Conversation: I’ll be constantly asking you to be part of the discussion. The more I know about you the more I can do to help you build that Successful Blog.

Are you thinking of features you want to see, leave a comment right now. Let’s start talking.

–ME “Liz” Strauss