Successful Blog

Surely You Have a Blogging Goal?

by

The Ultimate Guide to a Wildly Sticky, Successful and Outstanding Blog
A SERIES

Finding A Direction — Goals, Titles, and Taglines

Whether you blog for money, or you blog for fun, a successful blog works like a successful small business. Every post is product made for customers called readers. Quality counts. So do schedule and budget. Having a mission and goals, knowing the what and how, and using the right tools for the job make your chance of success far greater.

Surely You Have a Goal? No? Gotta Get One!

A blogging goal gives a blog a heart and a direction. It’s powerful exercise in getting your thoughts focused in on why you’re actually doing this. In essence, a blogging goal provides a measure of success that is there to work toward.

  1. Should you be blogging? 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers – Is a Blog Right for You?

  2. Wondering whether a blog is for you? Do you see yourself in this list of Top 10 Reasons to Start a Blog?

  3. Goals for New Bloggers is a straightforward outline of how approach setting up a blog on the path to success.

  4. We all have different reasons for why we invest time and sweat equity into blogging. Darren’s Blog Goals – Group Writing Project. Check out the complete list of submissions to read the goals of experienced and new bloggers who participated in the writing project.

  5. In the end, when it comes to Measuring Blog Success: It’s the Goals, Stupid! — No one else can decide the destination you’re seeking.

  6. Things changed dramatically the day I wrote My Blogging Goal. Every decision that I’ve made since has been to support what wrote in my blogging goal.

A Blog Title — Who Are You?

Names are the most important words that we know. They’re the first words we learn about ourselves. They’re how we begin to sort the universe. We say them soon after “hello” when we meet a new person. A blog name says something about the blog and about the person who named it.

Most importantly, outstanding blog titles are memorable and describe what the blog is about.

  1. If your goal is to write for yourself and few select friends, name your blog however you all might find meaningful. If your goal is to write for a large audience, name your blog using words THEY will understand and be drawn to find out more about. One way to draw them is to include Key Words in your blog title. Titles that Grab Readers are titles that simply say what the blog is about.

  2. Dorai answers the question How Do You Choose a Blog Title?

  3. For a look at the most popular keywords already being used, see How Do You Call Your Blog? Be careful on following advice in the post and comments. The information is interesting, but I don’t necessarily come to the same conclusions reading the data.

  4. Nick Wilson collected seven more articles on Killer Titles.

A Tagline — What’s Your Promise?

A fabulous tagline says what’s in it for me — the reader. It makes a promise that I can resist, a promise the blog never fails to deliver successfully.

5 Blog Taglines

Do you recognize these?
You’re only a stranger once. . . . Helping Bloggers Succeed . . .
. . . Copywriting tips for online marketing success . . .
Make money online blogging . . . create your blog free

They are: Successful Blog, Performancing, Copyblogger, Problogger, and Blogger taglines. Each one tells the promise of the blog they describe.

  1. Follow this step by step coaching session on to write a killer tagline.

  2. For more resources, you might review the 25 additional links to posts about taglines included in this piece.

A blog on its own is not really a business, but a wildly sticky, successful and outstanding blog has plenty in common with one. The more you know about your product, your readers, and what brings them together, the easier it will be to catch the attention of those who love what you do.

How are you serving the folks who read your blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Why Blog? . . . "Follow Your Calling" She Said

by

A Calling

When I was 7 years old, my teacher told me to listen for my calling. She said if I listened to my heart and my mind, I would find the future that was right.

Liz Strauss as a child

My teacher said “You’ll know because you’ll be making a difference in people’s lives.” I remember exactly where I sat when I let her words into my head. That’s when I started thinking about the possibilities.

I grew up with more curiosity than wisdom. I traveled with my feet on the ground, my head in the sky. I needed 23 lives to follow the callings I heard. . . . be a teacher, be speaker, be a writer. I wanted to build things and fix things, and of course, to be smart, wealthy, and rich. I wanted the life of a freelancer and the community of a company at the same time.

I tried them all — even tried a few more that came along.

Still that thought hung with me, You’ll be making a difference in people’s lives.

I ended up an educational publisher. For a while, I felt it might be my calling, but I wondered was I really making a difference or just making books? I worked freelance. I worked company jobs. I worked on projects of so many kinds. I not only loved publishing; I knew, for sure, that I’d never get bored.

Then I did.

I went off on my own again.

Was I Called?

A friend did call to ask me, if I would write a blog for a science education company. I thought I’d better find out what was involved before I answered. So I started a blog.

Early on I met the most excellent people — so many of them — and found IT changed MY life! Though I went down some windy roads, when I thought of giving up, one of those first friends, Jeremy, said, “Why don’t you join b5media instead?” Though the network was plenty busy with the work of being born, they didn’t blink before they took me in. Suddenly I was a freelancer in a thriving community.

Later that year, Darren set a challenge to write blog goals. I wasn’t going to participate, but I did. That’s when I found that my blog is my home. That’s when I realized how much I am like my dad.

If you read what I wrote, it says,

You see, my father didn’t work at the saloon. He lived it. He also earned enough to feed a family and send three kids to school. Somehow in doing that, he managed to make a difference in people’s lives by sharing what he knew and who he was.

My blogging goal is to do the same thing
with my blog that my father did with his saloon.

and that’s why I blog.

As for why I keep blogging, well it’s because every now and then I’ll get an email that says

Aside from business, people desire answers, they are hoping that someone believes that there [are] answers, and that just maybe, they can have hope too. — Steve

and it makes me think I might be making a difference.

“Follow your calling” she said.
Thank you for helping me know what my calling is.

Now will you tell me? Is it a calling, a hobby, a quest?
Please tell me. Why do you blog?

Liz's Signature
The question, “Why Do You Blog?” is final week’s challenge of the b5media Apprentice Challenge. Over 30 blogs on the b5 Business Channel started the quest, only four are left: Accounting Solver . . .Home Biz Notes . . . Greener Assets . . . Successful Blog.
The winner will be chosen from one of these four.

Will you join in deciding who becomes the b5media Apprentice? Every comment you leave on a final challenge post counts as a vote! The voting is open until January 7th. So c’mon tell me why you do you blog!