31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 31. Run a SWOT Analysis on Your Blog

Today is the last day in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project and as a result I want to make your last task a little reflective and forward looking.

Your task today is to run a SWOT Analysis on your blog.

A SWOT analysis is a strategic tool that has been used for many years in business (and many other fields) to look at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that that business might have or be facing.

Much has been written about SWOT analysis and how to carry it out (I’ll let you do some searches on Google for it if you’re not familiar with it) however let me write a brief description of how to apply it to a blog.

1. Define Your Mission and Goals

Before you carry out your SWOT it’s important that you know what your blog’s goals are (otherwise the exercise is a little pointless as you’ve got nothing to review your site based upon). As a result you’ll want to have done Day 28’s task - Define Your Blogs Mission Statement.

2. List Your Blog’s Strengths

What attributes does your blog have that will help you to achieve your blog’s goals? What does your blog have going for it? What are you good at as a blogger? What resources and assets do you have at your disposal? What do you do better than anyone else?

3. List Your Blog’s Weaknesses

What attributes does your blog that are holding you back from achieving it’s goals? What skills do you not have as a blogger? What is ‘broken’ on your blog or in your workflow? What could or should you improve about your blog? What should you probably avoid in your blogging? What is distracting you from your goals?

4. List Your Blog’s Opportunities

What external things could/are helping you achieve your blog’s goals? What trends are their in your blog’s niche that you could explore on your blog? What tools and technologies could you use to improve your blog?

5. List Your Blog’s Threats

What external things could or area hindering you achieving your blog’s goals? What are other blogs in your niche doing that could be hindrance to your own blog’s growth?

note - Think of Strengths and Weaknesses as internal factors while Opportunities and Threats are external factors.

6. Analyze Your Reflections and Generate Strategies

Take some time out to work out what you can do with your findings. How can you utilize your Strengths? How can you bring your Weaknesses to an end? How can you make the most of your Opportunities? how can you fend off the Threats?

As my old Marketing lecturer used to say - ‘doing the analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats is only half the job. Working out how to turn Weaknesses into Strengths and Threats into Opportunities is the key part of a SWOT analysis’.

7. Plan to Do Something and Do It

Translate your findings into an Action Plan and begin to implement it.

Doing a SWOT analysis is something that I do periodically on my individual blogs and on my overarching business also. Have you ever done one on your blog? What tips would you give to others wanting to do one?

If you want to do more strategic analysis and planning on your blogs you might also like to check out my series of posts - Strategic Blogging.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 30. Explore a Social Media Site

Today’s task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project (this is the 2nd last day) is to explore a social media site (whether it be a networking site or a bookmarking one) that you might not have seen or explored previously. I’m not going to tell you which one to choose to explore (because you’ll all have had different experiences of different ones) but will leave that choice up to you (I’ve got a suggested list below of some you might like to choose from).

Social media sites are increasingly popular types of sites and are full of wonderful potential for bloggers wanting to improve their blogs.

Why Should Bloggers Take Notice of Social Media Sites?

Traffic - The most obvious attraction to many of these social sites is the massive number of people that many of these sites have and the potential for them to drive deluges of traffic in your blog’s direction.

However, while I’ve written numerous times on getting and leveraging traffic from social media sites (I’ll include some links at the end of this post) I have increasingly begun to see numerous other benefits of being an active participant in these spaces.

Let me briefly explore a few:

Branding - I wrote a post a month ago on Building Your Personal Brand One ‘Straw’ at a Time which highlighted the power of being involved in a variety of different activities online. In that post I shared an email from a reader telling me how he’d stumbled across me in six different ways before subscribing to my blog - two of these instances were social sites (Facebook and Digg). I’m amazed how many people have told me similar things having come across some of my different pages on social sites.

Reinforcing Relationships - A lot has been written about the nature of ‘friends’ in sites like MySpace where you can rack up thousands of ‘friends’ in a day or two yet ‘know’ none of them. While ‘friendships’ and relationships in these types of sites is usually of a different kind to what happens in ‘real life’ (although there are exceptions) I’ve still found that the interactions that I have on social media sites can reinforce the relationships that I have with readers on my blog. There are a number of readers that I interact with regularly on sites like StumbleUpon and LinkedIn that have led to closer interactions on my blog also.

Learning - I learn a lot about building successful blogs when I participate in social media sites. Spend half an hour stumbling through sites on StumbleUpon and you will learn a lot about how to design sites that immediately capture attention in just second or two (which is all you really have to make an impression on SU), analyze the popular posts at a site like delicious and you’ll see the importance of good headlines (and pick up some tips on how to write them), take some time to go surfing on MySpace and Bebo and you’ll see and learn about all kinds of subcultures that you might not have known much about previously, explore a site like Twitter and you’ll learn the power of conensing a message down into just a handful of words….

How to Use Social Media Sites?

I’m sure that many of you will share other things that a blogger will benefit from as a result of social media sites - but lets take a few moments to share a few tips on HOW to interact on social media sites. The following tips will be fairly general as each site is different - but there are a few principles that remain the same:

Don’t Spam - the temptation with many of these sites is to rush in and plaster links back to your blog all over these sites. However this could lead to you damaging your blog more than it’ll benefit from it. There is a time and place to submit your own blog to many of these sites - however do it as a genuine participant rather than just someone in it for self promotion.

Be an Active Observer - each social bookmarking and networking site that you’ll discover will have it’s own rhythms, language and etiquette. The culture at one site will be quite different to another - so it’s important to take your time in getting to know it and to spend time familiarizing yourself with it. Watch how it operates, analyze what type of people use it, get a feel for how people interact with one another and the content, see what people respond to and make note of how other people are using the site in productive ways. Out of these observations you’ll be in a much better position to see opportunities to participate in fruitful ways.

Be a Genuine and Generous Participant - once you’ve got a feel for the site create a profile and begin to participate. Building on my tip ‘don’t spam’ - I’d encourage you to spend as much time as possible using the site in a completely non self serving way. If it’s a bookmarking site - bookmark other sites (ones you have a genuine interest in), if it’s a networking site - interact with people in a real and friendly manner. While you should find ways to build your own profile, brand and authority - these things generally come in time as you naturally participate rather than by always pushing the boundaries and manipulating the system.

Look for Tour Guides - every social media site has it’s key and central participants who can help you to understand and know how to use these sites most effectively. Look for these ‘tour guides’, watch how they operate, emulate them, befriend them, help them achieve their goals and in time build a relationship with them. In doing so you’ll learn a lot, begin to understand the language and culture of the site and will grow in your own influence in it.

If you have more tips on how to use these sites best - feel free to give tips below.

Social Media Sites to Explore:

There are hundreds and hundreds of these types of sites popping up and I can’t possibly mention them all. Let me suggest a few (with links to my own profile where I use them more actively so we can become ‘friends’):

• StumbleUpon - mine
• MySpace - mine
• Facebook - mine
• LinkedIn - mine
• MyBlogLog - mine
• Bebo
• Delicious
• Digg
• Furl
• Reddit
• Netscape
• Spurl
• Blue Dot
• Ma.gnolia
• Flickr
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Sphinn
• Newsvine

Of course there are literally hundreds of others - many now appearing on specific smaller niches. Feel free to suggest the ones that you’re experimenting with in comments below.

Further on Social Media Sites from our Archives

• How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog
• Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic than Digg
• Digg Traffic vs Referral Traffic - which is best?
• Using Digg to Improve Your Content
• Ten Tips for Becoming a Top Digg User
• How to Build a Digg Culture on Your Blog
• 7 Ways to Guarantee Getting to the Top of the Delicious Popular Page
• Using Social Bookmarking Sites to Find Out What Your Readers Like
• How to Surf Blog Traffic Tsunamis

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 29. Email a Blogger that Linked to You to Say Thanks

One of the lifelines that keeps a blog healthy and growing is the incoming link. When other blogs and websites link to you blog they inject your blog with ‘juice’ that brings it real life in three main ways:

• Google Juice - incoming links are gold when it comes to climbing the search engines rankings. Every link is like a vote in Google’s eyes - get enough votes from the right sites and your blog will see increases in search engine traffic over time.
• Reader Juice - incoming links from even small sites will generally mean that people click the link and visit your site. New potential readers!
• Branding Juice - sometimes the real benefit of an incoming link can be the general branding and reputation enhancing that it can do. A link can be like an endorsement for your blog and on larger sites it can have profound impact not only by what it does with traffic and SEO but the impression that the link creates in the reader’s mind.

There has been a lot written about how to get links to your blog of late - but one thing that can be just as important is how you cultivate the relationships with those linking to you.

One of the things that I’ve learned in the last year particularly is that when a blog or website links to you once there is every chance that they’ll do it again.

As a result it can be very worthwhile to get to know the person who does the writing on the site and to build a working relationship with them.

This generally starts with an email and/or a comment on the post where they link to you.

Today’s task is to send an email to a blogger or webmaster that linked up to you recently. For some of you there will be plenty to choose from, for others just starting out it could be difficult to find any.

Some places to look for who is linking to you:

• Technorati - type your URL in and hit search and you’ll find any blogs linking to you
• Google Blog Search - another good tool for real time link tracking
• Your Blog’s Metrics - any worthwhile stats package will give you a ‘referrals’ stat that shows incoming links. I use Google Analytics but you could also use Sitemeter, Mint, AW Stats or one of many other metrics tools.
• Search Engines - type in ‘link:http://www.yourblog.com’ at Yahoo or Google and you’ll find incoming links to your blog - note: this isn’t a quick or immediate method of finding recent links.

Once you’ve found another blog or site that’s linked to you - simply drop them an email of thanks. You can do a comment also - but I find an email is a little more personal and often leads into a conversation and perhaps relationship.

Keep the email brief and simple. Don’t pitch the blogger ideas - simply thank them and let them know that you appreciate both the link and their site (if you do). You may also want to make some sort of a comment or ask a simple question that relates to how they linked to you to show you’re engaging with them. If you intend to keep following their blog tell them (eg - let them know if you subscribe to their blog).

If the blogger responds in some way then let the conversation flow. You might find that it leads you to suggest another post that you’ve written, you might find that you can help them in some way or that you can work on something together - however don’t rush this. If nothing more happens than you saying thank you then you’ve lost nothing and made a little impression.

On the other hand you could well find yourself with a new friend and regular incoming links to your blog.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 28. What is Your Blog’s Mission Statement?

Today your task in the 31 Day Project is to articulate a ‘Mission Statement’ for your blog.

I won’t rehash all of my reasoning for having a Mission Statement and tips for writing one because I’ve previously written about Mission Statements as part of my previous series on Strategic Blogging (head back for a read as part of your task today).

However I will say that knowing why you’re blogging is really important because it will give you direction as well as a framework to review whether you’re being successful.

So what’s your blog’s Mission Statement? Why does your blog exist?

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 27. Find a Sponsor for Your Blog

Today’s task in the 31 Day Project will appeal more to those who are looking to make money from their blogs. If that’s not you - there are plenty of other daily tasks in previous days of the project that you might like to repeat. This task might also be easier for more established blogs than new ones - although it’s not impossible for a new blog to land a sponsor so give it a go!

Today your task is to go on a hunt for a sponsor for your blog.

You might not think that your blog is big enough to find sponsors (and you might be right) but even if you’re unsuccessful in finding one you will hopefully learn a thing or two about finding sponsors and might even start a relationship that could be fruitful at some point in the future.

Getting a sponsor for your blog (or selling an advertising spot directly without relying upon an ad network like AdSense) is a great thing for numerous reasons - not the least of which is that you cut out the middleman and don’t have to share the revenue with a company like Google!

It’s not always easy to land a sponsor - but it’s a skill that bloggers wanting to make money from their blogs should learn - even in the early days.

A few tips for finding a sponsor:

1. Before you go out and start asking companies to sponsor your blog read these two posts - Finding Advertisers for your Blog and 10 Ways to make your Blog more Attractive to Advertisers. A big part of finding an advertiser is to get your blog in order first and to be prepared for what they might ask you.

2. If you have a smaller blog and haven’t had a sponsor before don’t aim for the stars straight away. It might be worth starting out by approaching smaller retailers, websites or companies in your niche and see if they’d be interested in some sort of partnership rather than aiming for the very biggest ones right up front. I did this a couple of months after starting my first digital camera blog and emailed 10 online digital camera sites to see if they’d be interested in advertising. 3 of the 10 bought small ads on my site (I think it was for something around $15-$25 a month). It wasn’t a lot of cash (and I didn’t have a lot of traffic to send to them) but I learned so much and made a little money in the process.

3. Target Potential Advertiser Carefully - before you start approaching potential sponsors think carefully about your blog and the topic that you write about and about who might want to reach your readers. Brainstorm a list of companies and websites that might fit the bill.

4. Wondering who to approach? Why not check out who is advertising on other websites and blogs in your niche. Quite often they’ll also be open to running a similar campaign with you.

5. If a sponsor isn’t sure whether to go with you or not - give them a discounted or free trial. I’ve done this a number of times and found it beneficial on three levels:

• It gives the sponsor a taste of what your blog can offer
• It can help get your readers used to the idea of advertising on your blog
• I’ve found that having one advertiser (even if it’s a free one) can actually attract other advertisers (or at least make selling sponsorships easier)
• You’ll learn a lot by getting the ad up, finding out how it converts and at a discounted rate you’ll even earn a few dollars

6. Find an Angle and Sell it - don’t just email a potential sponsor asking if they want to advertise with you - sell yourself. If your blog has a loyal community of core readers then sell this, if you get a lot of search engine traffic for certain keywords that the advertiser would want to have, sell it to them on this, if you have an audience who is researching to make purchases - this is a key selling point and if you’ve never had an advertiser before on your blog - turn this into a selling point. You need to give a potential sponsor or advertiser a reason to align their brand with yours.

7. If you can’t attract anyone - run a campaign of your own. Pick a part of your blog that you want to drive traffic to (perhaps a post, or a category, or a subscribe page) and develop a button or banner ads to drive traffic to it. I’m doing this here at the moment in the 468 x 60 banner position here at ProBlogger at the moment (there’s a number of different campaigns running there including some internal ones). The beauty of this is that you can test your conversion rates on different positions. Run a heat map test and you’ll learn a lot.

8. If you do manage to sign up a sponsor give sponsors as much value as possible. Do everything you can to over deliver on the campaign. Announce the sponsorship on the blog with a post, mention it any other newsletters or lists that you have, position it high on the page, consider throwing in a bonus text link in another part of your blog etc. The more traffic you can deliver to your sponsor the more chance of getting them to renew.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 26. Link up to a Competitor

Earlier in the 31 Day Project that I’m running this month I suggested taking some time out to analyze your Blog’s Competition as an exercise to help you improve your own blogging.

In that post I wrote:

“I use the word ‘competition’ hesitantly because the thing about blogging is that those blogging on the same topics as you are potentially your biggest allies. Connect and work with your competition and everyone improves.”

I’ve previously written more on when competition is good in blogging - but today we’re going to put the theory to the test.

Today’s task in the 31 Day Project is to link to another blog in your niche - a ‘competitor’.

While linking to other blogs in your niche might seem a little bizarre to some I’ve seen it’s power many times in my own blogging and that of others. Outbound links Matter!

So here’s the task - find a way to link up to at least one other blog in your niche.

There are of course many ways to do this. I regularly do it here at ProBlogger in my speedlinking posts (random recent links) and at DPS in a similar format called Digital Photography Tips from Around the Web - but there are other ways to go about it from linking to a post someone else has written, to writing a review of the blog in question etc.

So get linking up - and let us know how it goes in comments below!

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 25. Go Shopping and Improve Your Blog

Today’s task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project is to go Shopping!

OK - I can hear what you’re probably thinking:

“What? The ProBlogger has lost his mind - what does shopping have to do with blogging?”

Stick with me for a second and let me explain….

The reason I want to encourage you to go shopping is twofold:

A. It’ll get you away from your blog for a bit - I was chatting with another blogger yesterday and we both admitted to each other that we’d been in our PJ’s all day blogging (it was 4pm for me) and needed to get out more - sad but true.

B. It’ll give you a chance to do some observation exercises that could help your - this is the main reason for today’s task and is based upon an experience that I had today at a local shopping centre (or ‘mall’ as many of you non Aussies would call it).

The exercise:

1. Step away from the Computer (come on, you can do it)

2. Grab a notebook and pen (do you remember them? They are the things you used to use before your primary form of communication involved typing)

3. Head to your local shopping centre/mall/CBD shopping area (easier for some than others I realize - apologies to those in rural areas, this may or may not work in your local general store)

4. Once at the ‘mall’ take 30 minutes or so to go ‘wandering’ with no agenda (don’t do your groceries) except to ‘watch’ and ‘observe’ in some of the following ways:

• Who is there? Who are they with?
• What are they doing?
• What are they buying?
• How do they make their buying decisions?
• What are the retailers doing to get people’s attention and stand out?
• What messages are they using in their marketing?
• What colors are in at the moment?
• What other things are ‘hot’ or in fashion?
• What sales techniques are sales staff using?
• What are retail outlets doing well? What are they doing poorly?

5. As you watch, make some notes. Don’t attempt to find any ‘lessons’ or try to tie it back to your blog yet.

6. Once you’ve spent half an hour or so on ‘observation mode’ find a spot to sit down (a food court perhaps) with a coffee and go over the things that you’ve noticed and see if there’s any lessons there that you might be able to apply to your blogging?

This process might seem a little random and pointless - but it’s something that I’ve done on numerous occassions over the last few years and each time that I’ve done it I’ve come away with at least one new idea that I want to apply in my blogging.

Some of the ideas have come directly from things I’ve seen retailers doing in their marketing (for example, today I saw a store using an attention grabbing technique that I want to try to apply to one of my blogs to draw readers eyes) - while others are more lessons about ‘people’ and how they operate and once or twice I’ve even seen illustrations to use for posts or ideas for new blog topics.

If nothing else it’ll get you out of the house for a bit!

I’d love to hear your experiences of this exercise in comments below!

Update: Here’s what I learned on MY shopping expedition today.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 24. Do a Search Engine Optimization Audit

One of the biggest sources of traffic on the web is Google (and it’s fellow search engines). As a result it makes sense that a blogger interested in building traffic to their blog would take some time to learn how Search Engines Rank sites.

Today’s task in the 31 Day Project your task is to do an SEO Audit of your blog.

I’ve written everything I know on SEO previously in a post called Search Engine Optimization for Blogs so I wont rehash it all in this post and I’d highly recommend you head to that post for a refresher on the topic (or an introduction to it if you’ve not learned much about SEO before).

Invest in Your Knowledge of SEO

If you have a budget for your education and want to learn from a real expert in SEO I highly recommend checking out Aaron Wall’s SEO Book (aff). It costs $79 and is the best resource I’ve found on the topic with 328 pages of instruction (with free updates - and Aaron does update it) plus a nifty little bonus called 33 Days to Online Profits. It has a 100% Money Back Guarantee if you find that it’s not for you.

A few tips for your SEO Audit

It can be easy to get overwhelmed by Search Engine Optimization so if you’re new to it or need a place to start here are a few basics that you might want to work on today:

• Make the Titles of Your Posts the Title Tags of Your Post Pages (Aaron shares how to optimize your title tags for SEO in this post. Also check out Title Tags and SEO).
• Use Good Anchor Text for internal links - hunt back through your old posts for poor anchor text to replace.
• Pick a few posts to do some analysis of your use of Keywords as outlined in the SEO for Blogs post. You might like to rewrite some older posts to make the most of this knowledge.
• Use good keywords in images in your posts - if you are optimizing particular posts that contain images renaming them and using good Alt Tags with the keywords you’re chasing can give you a boost.
• Think about head tags in your posts - here’s a very quick tutorial on head tags.
• Pick some key posts that you want to grow the SEO ranking for. Link to them from your sidebar/menus.

A Last work on Balance in Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization can become something of an obsession (as can many aspects of blogging if you concentrate on them to the exclusion of other factors). For a little balance on the topic you might find my Confessions of a Linkaholic and Should You Write for Humans or Computers? helpful.

Further Reading on SEO

If you want to read more you might like to check out a recent post from Matt Cutts which is a summary of a talk he did on Whitehat SEO for bloggers (or watch the video of the talk below if you’ve got a spare hour - it is really great):

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 23. Go on a Dead Link Hunt

Today your task in the 31 Day Project is something that most bloggers who have been blogging for a while could probably benefit from doing - go on a dead link hunt.

Blogging is built on the ‘link’. One blog links to another blog who links to another who makes comment on another. This is a wonderful thing - but what happens when one of the blogs that you’re linking to is retired, is deleted, changes it’s link structure, moves etc? The link is a dead one (also known as Link Rot) and can cost your blog on two fronts:

Readability - clicking on a dead link can mean your readers can end up on error pages or being redirected to other irrelevant content to the one they were expected to get to. This can lead to reader frustration or giving the impression that your blog is old and/or out of touch.

SEO - I’m not sure of the technicalities of it or what the latest research shows but from what I can tell a dead link is not looked upon favorably by search engines and you run the risk of penalties.

So how do you detect dead links on your blog?

The most obvious ’solution’ is to surf every page on your blog and manually check all the links. This is something that might be achievable on a new blog - but on older blogs with hundreds or thousands of posts it’s just not feasible.

There are many link checking tools available but to be honest I’m yet to find one that I’m really happy with. I do hear that Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a good option for those using Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. I’ve also used the free version of Dead-Links.com (which only checks to a reasonably shallow depth) - but I’d be keen to hear from readers on their suggestions of other options.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 22. Catch New Readers Up On The Basics of Your Blog

Sometimes after you’ve been blogging on your blog for a while it’s easy to forget that not all of your readers have been reading your blog since you started. While you’re familiar with every aspect of your blog and how to use it - your more recent loyal readers may not.

One way to catch new readers up on what your blog is all about and how to use it most effectively is simply to write a post telling them.

So what should you tell them?

Really it’s up to you - but here are a few suggestions:

• Why Did You Start Your Blog? - the story of how, when and why you started the blog can help readers connect with and own your blog.
• How is it designed to be Used? - while more and more people understand what a blog is and how it operates - some readers may not - particularly non tech savvy audiences. Explain concepts like comments, categories and any features that you’ve installed that might take a little explanation.
• How Can Users Connect/Subscribe? - explain how to use RSS or subscribe via email. It’s amazing how many people don’t understand this - educate them.
• How Can Readers Get More Involved? - if you have forums or a reader community area for readers to get more involved highlight them.
• Where Should Readers Start? - point new readers to some starting points to read (use the Sneeze Page idea that we talked about a few days ago).

You don’t need to do all of the above in the one post - in fact picking just one or two might get your readers attention better and not overwhelm them.

What about Your Regular Readers?

Worried about what your regular long term readers might think of these types of posts? I was too when I first did them - so I decided to invite them to participate in the process to help new readers.

What I did was to ask long term readers to tell the story of how they found my blog and how they use it. In doing this I not only got them involved and distracted from the fact that I might be writing about something that they already know - but I got them participating and enthusiastically explaining to new readers how they love and use the blog.

I also found that a few long term readers told me that they learned something new about the blog that they’d overlooked for a long time.

Want an Example?

Last time I did this at DPS it was with this post - How to Connect with Digital Photography School. Feel free to share your own examples and experiences of this in comments below.

This post is part of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 21. Make a Reader Famous

Do you want to be famous? Do you want to be noticed? Do you want people to know who you are? Do you want to have more influence?

I did an informal survey of bloggers at a workshop and asked them why they blog. The majority of answers had something to do with one of the above questions. While many bloggers also have some desire to make a difference in the world or to help others - to do this they also generally have a goal of being noticed and read by more and more people.

Today’s task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project is to take a break from building your own fame and influence and to build the fame and influence of someone else - preferably one of your readers.

Pick a reader (and if you’re new and don’t have any yet - pick another blogger in your niche, preferably a less well known one) and make them famous in some way.

Here are a few ideas on how to do it:

• Promote a comment to a Post - sometimes readers make incredibly insightful and wise observations and tips in the comments of your blog. While they will be read by a handful of people in the comment thread - why not pull it out and use it as the basis for one of your post - highlighting the wisdom in it and the person who made the comment.
• Write a Post about their Blog - visit the blogs of those leaving comments on your blog and pick one that you resonate with to post about. Write an ‘unpaid review’ of the blog - highlighting the best posts and what you like about it.
• Send Your Readers to Comment on Someone Else’s Blog - write a post that links to someone else’s great blog post and instead of asking your readers what they think about it on your own blog ask them to head over and comment on it on the other person’s blog. Shutting down the comments in your own post and saying that you’ve left a comment on their blog already can help make this more effective.
• Give Readers an Opportunity to Promote Themselves - run a project or write a post that gives readers an opportunity to promote themselves in some way. Last week on the spur of the moment at DPS I wrote a post asking readers - do you have a photoblog?‘ As I wrote the post I thought I’d add a line inviting readers to share a link to their photoblogs. I didn’t think much of it until the next morning when I woke up to 250 comments on the post and a whole heap of emails thanking me for giving readers the opportunity to highlight their work.
• Reader of the Week - SingForHim recently left a comment here at ProBlogger talking how how she runs a weekly post called Readers of the Week where she highlights some of her readers and how they’ve interacted with her blog. Here’s one of her latest examples of this (you can see from the comments that readers appreciate it!).

OK - I can hear some of the comments on this post already.

“Isn’t the real reason that you want to make your readers famous so you become more famous?”

True - one of the side effects of highlighting the great things about another person is that it will often come back to you in some ways that benefit you too. Call it ‘karma’, call it ‘reaping what you sow’ or call it anything you like - it’s a principle that you’ll find to be true.

However try to get away from that more selfish motivation for a moment if you can. The blogosphere was built on principles of promoting others, conversation, celebrating diversity, open source knowledge etc. Some days I wonder if those things still exist - and to be honest somedays I wonder if I’ve played a part in making them endangered species. Lets recapture some of it by making others famous today on our blogs.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 20. Run a Reader Survey on Your Blog

Your task today in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project is to ask your readers how you can improve your blog.

At least once a year I like to write a post on my blogs inviting my readership to comment on a number of areas of my blog. These include:

• Content (topics covered, post length, types of posts, post frequency, depth of exploration of topics etc)
• Design (navigation, colors, fonts etc)
• Blog Features (RSS feed, blog tools etc)
• Community (how it could be enhanced)

While some blog readers will give you this feedback from time to time whether you ask for it or not - others like to wait to be asked and many wouldn’t even give it any consideration until they are asked.

Why Survey Your Readers?

There are two main reasons why this exercise is worth doing:

1. Blog Improvement - the most obvious benefit of asking readers to review your blog is that you find out what they like and don’t like about it so that you can make improvements
2. Reader Participation - asking this question draws readers out of their lurking state to make a comment or send an email. In doing this you actually create users who take a little more ownership of the site and who feel like they are being valued and listened to

How to Survey Your Readers

A few more tips that I’ve found helpful when running reader surveys

• Determine What You Want to Know First - I find that these reader surveys are more effective when I have some sense of what I want to find out first. While simply asking ‘how can I improve’ might get some good responses - having some ideas on possible future direction for your blog can be helpful in forming the questions that you ask readers. Use this process to test possibilities. For example in a recent reader survey at DPS (see link below) I asked if readers would be interested in buying a ‘best of… ‘ type ebook to test whether this might be something that I could develop down the track.
• Ask Specific Questions - all some of your readers will need from you to give good feedback is an invitation to do so. However other readers will need a little guidance and asking some specific questions will give them the framework to give you the type of feedback you want. So ask a mixture of general questions (like - ‘tell me what you think about my blog’ and very specific ones (like ‘do you like video post?’ or ‘would you like a forum?’).
• Set ‘Rules’ - you’ll notice in the two examples that I give below of the most recent times I’ve asked readers for feedback that I’ve set some ‘rules’ in place. The reason I do this is to attempt to get readers thinking positively and constructively about the feedback that they give. Comments like ‘this site is crap’ don’t really help you improve your blog - so encourage your readers to make suggestions and be constructive.
• Set Good Expectations - the other thing it is worth doing is giving readers a sense of what you’ll do with their feedback. If you intend to respond to each comment, tell readers that that is your intention. If you can’t respond to each suggestion then tell that. This will save you pain later when readers email to ask why you didn’t get back to them.
• Be Willing to Hear Critiques - don’t ask for feedback unless you are willing to hear it (and not just the glowing praise). The whole point of this exercise is to find things you can improve upon - as a result you’ll hopefully have some of your blog’s weaknesses identified. If you’re not in the headspace for this type of feedback simply don’t ask for it.

Examples of Reader Surveys

If you’d like to see how I do this - I recently gave readers opportunities to comment on my main two personal blogs at How Can I Make ProBlogger More Useful to You? and How Can We Improve Digital Photography School.

So put together a reader survey and post it on your blog. I tend to do it simply as a post and let the resonses come in via comments or email - but you might also want to use an actual survey tool (although I find the response rate to using these is lower). Once you’ve done it I’d love to hear about how you found the process.

What did you learn? What would you do differently next time? Did readers respond? What tips would you give others wanting to do reader surveys?

Another Example

For another example of how do this check out this recent post over at Copyblogger in which Brian asks readers to tell him what Copyblogger means to them. It’s a great question because not only does he learn a lot but readers are responding in ways that cement their readership as they’re telling each other what they like about the blog.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 19. Respond to Comments On Your Blog

One of the most basic skills that any blogger should spend time working on from the very early days is responding to comments on your blog - and that’s today’s task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project.

While this is one of the simplest acts that a blogger can do (I almost didn’t publish this because it’s so basic) it is something that can have a real impact upon your readers.

Despite this - it’s often one of the things that slips for many bloggers over time as a result of a growing blog and/or the busyness of life. I’m as guilty of this as anyone and have been attempting to put more time aside in the last couple of weeks to comment more on my blogs (it’s a daily struggle).

So block out a little time today to scan through the latest comments on your blog. Answer questions, respond to others ideas, leave a welcome message and continue conversations by asking questions of your own.

This acknowledgment goes a long way and is one of the best ways of developing a commenting culture on your blog.

PS: Here’s another quick tip that I found very useful in the early days of my own first blogs. Click the links of those who leave comments on your blog. When you do this you’ll find that some of those who leave comments on your blog who check their own blog’s referral statistics will notice your visit and come back to see if their comments have been responded to.

You can take this another step further by leaving a comment on their blog to further develop the relationship.

This is one of those little 1%er tips that may not send a deluge of traffic to your blog but that can have an impact on a reader by reader basis (you might also find a good blog or two in the process).

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 18. Create a Sneeze Page and Propel Readers Deep WIthin Your Blog

It’s Day 18 in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project and today your task is to develop a ‘Sneeze Page’ (or pages) for your blog.

One of the challenges that faces blogs that have been around for a while is that they end up with a wonderful collection of posts in their archives that are rarely read by readers.

Write 1 post a day for a year and you’ll have 365 posts in your archives - but if your blog is like the majority of blog it will only be the latest 10 or so posts that readers will see when they arrive on your blog.

The challenge therefore is to work out how to propel readers towards some of the best posts in your archives.

One solution is what I call a ‘Sneeze Page’.

A Sneeze Page is one that simply directs readers in multiple directions at once - back into your archives. Let me explain further by giving a few tips on how to write Sneeze Page and then examining how to strategically position them for maximum impact.

How to Write Sneeze Pages

Writing a Sneeze Page for your blog isn’t that difficult a concept really - in it’s most simple form it is simply a list of links looking back into your archives. However as I think back on how I’ve done it before there are a number of techniques that you might like to use.

1. Themed Sneeze Pages - these are posts or pages on your blog or site that revolve around a single theme. For example - on the front page of the newly designed ProBlogger you’ll now find a section called ‘Best of ProBlogger’ which has a tab in it titled ‘Darren’s Favs’. The five links in this section point to five new pages on ProBlogger which are in effect Themed Sneeze Pages (How to Make Money Blogging, How to Find Readers for Your Blog, How to Write Great Blog Content, Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers and Darren’s Recommendations).

These pages each break down the overarching topic or theme of the page into sub themes and then list off some of the key posts that I’ve written on the topic.

Interestingly - some of the posts that I link to are the central page for a series of posts (which are Sneeze pages in themselves - for example the page on writing content links to the 7 Days to Rediscovering your Blogging Groove series). As a result these pages have the potential to sneeze readers into hundreds of archived posts very quickly.

2. Time Related Sneeze Pages - a Sneeze page that is based around a defined period of time can be very effective. These ‘best of’ posts highlight your key posts from that period to either remind readers of previous posts that they might want to revisit or to highlight posts that they might have missed.

The period of time that you choose can really be anything from a year (here’s my best of 2006 at ProBlogger post) through to a month, week or even a weekend (ie a post that summarizes the posts from a weekend that those readers who don’t read your blog on a weekend might have missed).

3. Hot Comment Thread Sneeze Pages - I haven’t done this for a while but I used to occasionally compile a list of the posts in my archives that had comment threads on them that just wouldn’t die. This drove traffic back to engaging conversations, controversial debates and insightful discussions through my blog. It was actually a great traffic driver that worked quite effectively.

4. Series Sneeze Pages - as mentioned above - the introductory or summary post of a new series of posts can be an effective Sneeze Page. The best current example of this on ProBlogger is the central page for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project which will end up being a list of 31 posts from this blog as well as hundreds of reader submitted tips.

Go Beyond The ‘List’

One more quick tip on writing Sneeze Pages - don’t make them just a list of links. Readers will use them a lot more and follow your suggested links into your archives if you take al little time to introduce what the page is about and to describe what they’ll get when they arrive at the page. This little extra effort will mean your page is more useful and useable for readers.

Also resist the temptation just to drive traffic to your money making pages. While you can definitely include pages that contain affiliate links and well converting ads in your Sneeze pages it will be much better received by readers if the posts you highlight are truly your best and most useful work.

How to Strategically Position Your Sneeze Page

The key with Sneeze Pages is to position them in a way that will enable them to be seen and used by the maximum number of readers. On some occasions this will simply been posting them as normal posts on your blog (see discussion below on ‘posts vs pages’ and in other instances it will mean highlighting them throughout your blog in other key positions.

Obviously at ProBlogger I highlight a number of Sneeze Pages from my ‘Best of’ section (something that is working quite well) but in my previous design I had them positioned in my top navigation menus (again - this worked very well).

Another way to highlight these pages is to link to them in posts when you’re talking on an issue. You can do this either within the content itself as you write or at the end of posts as suggested further or related reading.

Posts or Pages?

Those of you who use a blogging platform like WordPress (or now MT 4.0) that have the ability to write pages (as opposed to posts) on your blog will have an interesting choice when it comes to how to present your Sneeze Pages.

I use both posts and pages depending upon their nature. For Sneeze pages that will be linked to prominently for a long time on my blog I tend to go with a page (as they don’t have dates on them that could ‘date’ the page. But for smaller recaps of time periods or hot threads I’ll publish them as posts that will appear on my actual blog.

An Example of a Blog which Sneezes Effectively

Before I send you off to create some pages let me highlight one blog that I see using this technique very effectively - Lifehacker.

Here are four recent examples:

• Around the Watercooler: Best Comment Thread Roundup - this is a regular feature on Lifehacker that drives readers back to the hottest comment threads over the last week.
• Summer Fun Roundup - this one fits more into the ‘themed sneezer page’. Lifehacker regularly does this type of thing - particularly around topics.
• Retro Roundup: One Year Ago on Lifehacker - another regular feature that looks back to the better posts a year ago.
• This week’s Best Posts - another time based sneezer page

Your Homework

It is time to head back to your blog and create a Sneeze post or page for your blog. Use any of the above methods (themed, dated, hot threads etc) or use one of your own. Head back to this thread afterwards to tell us how you did it (and feel free to link to it so we can see some more examples of what others are doing).

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 17. Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign For Your Blog

Today’s task in the 31 Day Project is aimed at driving new visitors to your blog by running a mini advertising campaign for your blog using StumbleUpon.

Note - This task will take a small budget (unless you get creative and find another website willing to give you some free advertising - which isn’t just a bad idea, perhaps you could do an ad swap with another blogger) but it need not be much. One of the methods below could drive at least 100 new visitors to your blog with just $5.

One of the things that I do from time to time is set myself a small budget for advertising my blog. I do it as a little bit of a challenge - to see what ad systems work best and more importantly to see what I can learn about branding and promotion. The bonus is that it also drives some new visitors to your blog.

Where can you advertise?

If you’re just starting out with advertising your blog I’d suggest experimenting with different types of advertising to see what works best for your blog - but today I want to suggest an easy and relatively cheap way to get started.

StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon is a growing social bookmarking service that is used by many people around the globe. It is a service that many bloggers target to drive organic traffic to their blog - but one that also offers a means to advertise a website upon it. StumbleUponAds allows you to submit a page on your blog to be shown to StumbleUpon users as they go Stumbling. The cost is 5 cents per impression so for as little as $5 you can have 100 SU users see your page.

The beauty of StumbleUpon is that it is relatively cheap, you don’t actually need to create an ad (just a page to send people to), that you can target your page to be shown to different categories as well as specific demographics (age, location and gender) and that you have the chance of your page being Stumbled up the rankings in SU naturally.

SU lets you set daily budgets and limits to how many impressions you want on any given campaign. The payment is via PayPal or Credit Card.

If you pick the right page to submit in this way and throw a few dollars at the campaign it is not uncommon for organic stumbling to happen and to end up with many more impressions than you paid for. The key is to pick a page that SU users will like and vote for (more on this below).

The StumbleUponAds interface gives you a report on how many people saw your site, how many voted your page up and how many voted it down. This enables you to test different pages that you want to advertise and to adapt those pages to see what different versions of it work best.

How to Make StumbleUpon Advertising Work Best

The key to making a StumbleUpon advertising campaign work for your blog is to do two main things:

1. Make Your Content Appealing to SU users to get Organic Stumbles - While 5 cents per impression isn’t that expensive (it’s a lot cheaper than some other forms of advertising) it’s more expensive than natural traffic from SU. Your goal should be to start the campaign off with paid visitors and then let the natural voting up of content take over. To do this you need to create content that is appealing to SU users. A couple of days ago I published a guest post here at ProBlogger that talked about some of the principles that draw StumbleUpon users into a site. This would be a useful starting point for designing the page that you want to advertise.

2. Make Your Page Sticky - The other way to get extra value from a StumbleUpon advertising campaign is to get the visitors who come to your blog to come back again and become loyal readers. This is one of the biggest challenges that you’ll face with advertising using any means - but particularly on a service like StumbleUpon where users have their cursor hovering over the Stumble Button ready to surf on to the next site. Of course the best way to hook someone onto your blog is to create compelling content that they can’t live without - but also consider other ways of making them loyal readers by prominently offering subscription methods, driving people deeper into a blog. Most of what I cover in my latest video post on Stickifiying Your Blog applies here.

3. Test and Tweak - The key with StumbleUpon is not to throw big money at a campaign straight away. Get your landing page/post ready and then set a small budget (a few dollars) to see what results you get. Once this is spent - do some analysis of how many people voted the post up and down. If there were more downs than ups you might want to change something about the post (title, add a picture/video, change your opening paragraph etc). Then run another small campaign to see what impact the changes have. Do this until you have a page that is consistently getting voted up and then turn up your budget a little. Keep in mind that you might only need to get a relatively small number of up votes before SU will start sending you organic traffic so be ready to pause your campaign once this starts to happen or you could waste your money.

What NOT to do

While you might think that the front page of your blog is the best page to send traffic from an Advertising campaign to - I would highly recommend that you don’t. Instead - use a single post as the landing page for your campaign. Pick a post that relates closely to the category and demographic of StumbleUpon users that you are targeting and pick a post that you could see becoming viral (whether as a result of it being entertaining, useful, controversial etc).

Give it a Go

So set yourself a budget and give StumbleUpon advertising a go. It’s actually quite fun and if you keep your budget to a reasonable level it’s not that expensive to do. You’ll drive a little traffic and hopefully learn something about the way people interact with your content through the process.

Other places to Advertise Your Blog

There are many places that will sell you advertising space for your blog. Other blogs and sites in your niche can be a good place to start but so can ad networks. Two that I’ve had some success with are BlogAds and Google AdWords. Both are worth experimenting with - but both take the same sort of ‘tweak and test’ approach as outlined above.

Sign up for AdWords. - (aff)

Have you tried advertising your blog? Let use know what you’ve learned about it in comments below.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 16. Create a Heatmap of Where Readers Click on Your Blog

Have you ever wondered what readers of your blog do when they arrive at it? What do they look at? What links do they click on? What internal navigation do they use? What ads do they click? What positions on your blog do people gravitate towards?

Today your task in the 31 Day Project is to do some analysis of what people do when they’re on your blog by creating a heatmap.

This is a little similar to one of our earlier tasks (doing a first time reader audit) but this one is on a larger scale and using a clever tool that I find incredibly useful by the name of CrazyEgg.

Some of you will be familiar with CrazyEgg already as I’ve mentioned it numerous times previously at ProBlogger but I’ve never really given it a full review.

The basics of this tool are that it tracks where readers of your blog click when surfing on your blog. It creates a heatmap of the results.

All it takes is to embed a little javascript on the page that you want to track and CrazyEgg will do the rest. Here’s an example of a heatmap of a page from Digital Photography School that I ran a CrazyEgg test on recently (click for an enlargement):

This is just the section of the page above the fold (CrazyEgg tracks the full page) but it shows you quite clearly a number of hotspots on the page (particularly the top left hand navigation section and the picture).

The other useful tool that CrazyEgg offers is one that they call ‘Confetti’ (pictured below). This pinpoints the exact position on the page that people click and analyses them by a variety of ways. In the following screen shot the different colors signify different sources of traffic.

The red dots are where Digg users clicked, the yellow dots are tracking visitors from Google etc. Confetti also lets you track people according to their operating system, the keyword that they arrive on a page using, browser, window size and even how long they stay on the court before they click.

So why would you want this type of information?

Knowing where your readers click when arriving on your blog is GOLD! I can’t emphasize to you enough how much you’ll learn about your blog and reader by doing this type of analysis.

Here are just some of the ways you can use this information:

• Ad Positioning - CrazyEgg tracks clicks on ads like AdSense. You can track where on the ad they click, test ads in different positions and of different designs (run one test for a few days, then make a change and run another one).
• Design Testing - Once we finish a few more tweaks of the ProBlogger design I’ll be running CrazyEgg tests on the front page and single posts of this site and comparing the results to the previous design of ProBlogger. In doing so I can compare how different design elements, navigation etc are working to fine tune them.
• Content Development - I’ve learned a lot about writing and how to structure posts using CrazyEgg. Particularly interesting is how readers click different links in your posts. It’s also fascinating to see where people click on your blog where there are non live links (you can track these too)
• Reader Analysis - Being able to track how readers from different sources use your blog differently is very useful. For example what if you could find out what type of links or ads Digg users click as opposed to Google traffic? You could use this information to serve up different type of design to different users etc.

Really the list goes on and the more you use CrazyEgg on different parts of your blog will reveal all kinds of useful information.

Give it a go. CrazyEgg does have a free option (that allows you to track 6000 impressions per month on up to 4 pages). I personally use a paid plan which allows more impressions and pages but even the free plan will teach you a lot.

Once you’ve given it a go let us know in comments below what you learn. I’d be fascinated to know what you find and how you use the information.

Please note - that the link to CrazyEgg in this post isn’t an affiliate program but has a problogger code embedded in it because CrazyEgg is doing a special offer for ProBlogger readers to give them extra impressions for the ‘free trial version’ (6000 impressions instead of the normal 4000).

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 15. Stickify Your Blog

Click To Play

Today’s task in the 31 Day Project is to ’stickify your blog’.

This week’s video post is based upon a tip I mentioned in a recent podcast interview with Yaro and revolves around a technique that I’ve recently used to help convert one off and first time visitors to my blog into RSS subscribers.

It revolves around identifying key points where traffic is entering your blog and then optimizing those points for stickiness either by providing means for subscribing via RSS or email or by driving people deeper into your blog.

Posts mentioned in this video include:

• Guess My Top Referral Keyword Phrase Competition
• How to Write and About Me page

This video goes for 3 minutes and 15 seconds.

PS: this was recorded last week when I had a cold - sorry about my nasally voice :-)

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 14. Analyze Your Blog’s Competition

Today’s task in the 31 Days Blogging Project is to so some analysis of other blogs in your niche - your ‘competition’.

Note: I use the word ‘competition’ hesitantly because the thing about blogging is that those blogging on the same topics as you are potentially your biggest allies. Connect and work with your competition and everyone improves.

This is actually an exercise that I recently recommended to a friend in the process of setting up a blog as part of his process in refining a topic. Having thought about it since I’m becoming more convinced that it’s actually a good exercise for established bloggers to do from time to time also.

1. Make a list of 10 blogs in your Niche
2. Get the RSS feed of each of these blogs and commit yourself to reading them each week
3. Do some analysis by asking some of the following questions:

• What do they do well?
• What are the boundaries of the topics that they focus upon?
• What don’t they write about?
• How often do they post?
• How long are their posts?
• What level are they pitching their blog at? (beginners, intermediate, advanced)
• What questions are their readers asking in comments?
• What style or voice do they write in?
• What type of posts seem to get the most attention (comments, trackbacks, incoming links)?
• What is their design like? What do they do well and what do they do poorly?
• What are other blogs writing about them (use technorati to check this)?
• If they have an open or unlocked stats package what can you learn from their stats? What pages are popular? Where does their incoming traffic come from?

Why do you need to ask these questions?

Good question - I’m glad you asked!

My reasoning for doing this type of analysis is not to copy other blogs in your niche (although you might find some things that you want to emulate) - but it is quite the opposite.

In asking these types of questions you will often find gaps in the niche that others are not writing about that your blog might be able to fill. You’ll also have a good feel for what is working and not working for others, might have some possible ideas for connecting with other bloggers in your niche, could come up with some potential post topics etc

Let us know what you find in doing this analysis in comments below.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 13. Search for an Affiliate Program that fits your Blog

Today your task in the 31 Day Project is to carry out a search for an Affiliate Program that fits your blog.

Those of you not interested in monetizing your blog might want to go back to one of the previous 12 days in this project to repeat one of the earlier tasks (you can’t do these sorts of things enough) - but for those of you who are making money from your blog (or wanting to) through affiliate programs - this is an exercise worth doing from time to time.

New products and services are constantly being released in all manner of areas and it’s highly likely that in the topic that you write about there are some undiscovered affiliate programs that you might not have found yet.

It’s easy as a blogger to become a little complacent about finding new income streams for your blog - but this can be a trap. For starters you could be missing out on some new affiliate program that could be making you nice money - but secondly one of the problems with affiliate programs on blogs is that because many blogs have a loyal readership, readers do tend to become blind to affiliate programs that they’ve seen you promoting before.

The simplest way to find new affiliate programs is simply via Google (type in ‘your topic affiliate program’) but it can also be worth spending a little time digging around in some of the larger affiliate networks like Clickbank, Linkshare, Commission Junction or to even look in Google AdSense’s Referral program (where there are new options being added all the time).

Another way to find them is to check out other websites and blogs in your niche to see what affiliate programs they are promoting.

This is an exercise that I’d recommend you do every month or so as you’ll be surprised what programs pop up.

Let us know how you go in your hunt for new affiliate programs in comments below. How do you find them? Which ones convert best for you?

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 12. Introduce Yourself to Another Blogger

Today your task in the 31 Day Project is to Introduce Yourself to another blogger

Email or IM another blogger in your niche to introduce yourself and your blog. You don’t need to ask them to link to you or anything - the point isn’t to get any specific outcome other than to touch base and hopefully build a relationship.

I find that the most fruitful interactions that I’ve had with other bloggers don’t come as a result of me asking for something - but out of me giving something.

What can you give? This will of course vary from situation to situation but it could a tip, a suggestion, a question for them to post about, an offer to write a guest post, a thank you for a good post they’ve written or a word of encouragement to let them know that you appreciate them.

While nothing may come of such an email (don’t be offended if you don’t get a reply) you might be surprised at the results.

My only other tip is to keep your email brief and to the point. Many bloggers are inundated with email and to be confronted with a long rambling email of introduction might not create the impression that you’re after.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 11. Dig Into Your Blog’s Statistics

Today your task in the 31 Day Project is to dig into your blog’s metrics or statistics package.

Take some time out today to do a little analysis of your blog’s statistics. There is a wealth of information in them that can be incredibly useful.

Here’s a few metrics to dig into to start off with:

• Most Popular Posts - what posts are being read more than other posts? Knowing this is important for a couple of reasons. For starters it gives you a hint of what topics you could write more upon - but secondly it gives you some key pages on your site to optimize (ie think about how you can drive people from these posts deeper into your blog - I’ve got a video post on this for next week).
• Referral Stats - what sites are sending you the most traffic? If it’s another blog or site, perhaps you could develop a relationship with them to see this increase. If it’s Search Engines, how can you adapt the posts to see it rise even more using on page SEO techniques).
• What Questions are being asked? - what questions are readers typing into search engines to find your blog? These could make great future posts (learn more about how to do this here).
• What Keywords are sending traffic? - knowing the keywords that people search for to find your site is very useful. It helps you to know how to optimize your blog for SEO even better and can give hints on what content to write more of.
• What seasonal traffic is there? - are there any seasonal trends that you should be aware of and could use to capture more traffic? What caused the bumps in traffic and how can you prepare yourself better for next time those conditions might happen again (read more on seasonal traffic and how to capture it).
• What’s Your Bounce Rate? - metrics packages like Google Analytics provide you with a ‘bounce rate’ stat which measures how many people arrive at your site and then leave again without viewing any extra pages. I find this a key metric to watch and attempt to change. Set yourself some goals to get this rate down and the page views viewed per visitor up by making your blog sticky.

There are many other types of metrics that most statistics packages will provide you with. Feel free to share the metrics that you check most often and how you use them to improve your blog in comments below.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 10. Declutter your Sidebar

Today’s task in the 31 Day Project is to Declutter your sidebar

Blog clutter has a way of creeping up on almost all bloggers. I’ve let it creep up as much as the next blogger and a big task in getting a new design together has been working out what to remove, what to move and what to keep in my sidebar.

Take a critical look at your blog’s design today and work out what you can live without.

• What widgets, links, buttons or tools are just adding to the clutter of your blog and which are serving a purpose?
• What could you move into your footer or other key pages (sometimes things could be more suited to a contact or about page)
• What could you redesign or feature in a different way?

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 9. Run an Advertising Audit on Your Blog

Todays task in the 31 Day project is to do an Advertising Audit on Your Blog. I know that not everyone doing this project is making money through advertising - be there are enough tasks from other days in the project that you can always go back and redo one of the others.

It’s easy to set up advertising on your blog and to spend time optimizing it but then let it run the same way without ever giving it much more thought.

Take some time out to think strategically about the design and placement of your ads.

• What could you do differently?
• Would using a different size ad make them perform better?
• Would changing the colors have an impact?
• Could a different position increase CTR?

Pick one aspect of your blog’s ads to change and watch what happens to your ads performance once you have. I did this last week and increased the ad unit size of my AdSense ads on this blog from 300 x 250 to 336 x 280 and saw a jump in CTR without losing much in the way of readability. It’d been a year since I tweaked those ad sizes - just think about how much money I’ve lost in that time!

A few basic and fairly general principles to keep in mind as you run your eye over the advertising on your blog.

• Generally ads above ‘the fold’ do best (ie ads that can be seen without having to scroll)
• Ads close to content tend to do better than ads in sidebars (see the AdSense heatmap for hints)
• Ads above and below comments are other spots which can work quite well on a blog
• Blogs generally have fairly loyal readers so to rotate the colors, size and position of your ads can be effective at combatting ad blindness
• If you’re using ads like AdSense or Chitika try blending ads (ie making the colors similar or the same as colors on the rest of the blog)

I’ll finish by saying that every blog is different. The ads that perform best will vary a lot from blog to blog - the key is to test, track and then test and track some more!

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 8. Comment on a Blog that you’ve never Commented on Before

Today your task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project is as simple as they come. In fact it’s a tip that gets included in almost every post ever written on how to grow a blog’s traffic - comment on a blog that you’ve never commented on before.

Sometimes as bloggers it is easy to get in a rut both in your writing and in your reading of others blogs.

Go on a blog hunt today to see how many new blogs you can find in your niche. Add to the conversations on these blogs as you surf by adding useful comments and add to your feed reader with their RSS feeds so you can keep following them.

While this tip is another of those tips that we might classify as pretty basic and not that spectacular - many many successful blogs have been built on the back of it.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 7. Plan Your Next Week’s Posting Schedule

Your task today in the 31 Day Project is to plan out a posting schedule for the next week of your blog.

Are You a Planner or an Impulsive Blogger?

When I first started blogging my posting style was incredibly impulsive. I would sit down at my computer with no idea what I was about to blog about on any given day and would just start writing.

While this style of blogging was fun and worked well in the early days - I found that it had some ‘costs’ associated with it:

• Sporadic Posting Frequency - some days when I sat down to write - nothing came. On these days I would quite often not post anything.
• Post Quality Varied - on days when I was on fire I could pump out a great quality post - while on other days when I was struggling I would often feel the pressure to post something - so would end up posting rubbishy posts.
• Productivity Decreased - posting this way meant that I was spending more time blogging for less results. It took me away from other activities that I wanted to spend time on.
• Lack of Momentum - from day to day posts were not really relating to each other. I found readers complaining that I was all over the place.

After blogging in this impulsive style for quite some time I realized that I needed to make a number of changes. One of these changes was to spend more time planning the coming week of blogging.

It actually happened quite by accident and through frustrating circumstances. Let me tell you a quick story:

How I became a Blogger that Planned

It all happened one morning when i sat down at my trusty ibook laptop (this is a few years back now) ready to blog. I opened the computer expecting to see the screen light up only to find myself with a flickering screen. I’d never seen anything like this before. The flickering continued for a few seconds and then made a little ‘pop’ sound before going black.

Hmmmm - not good.

The long and short of it was that my computer had died and when I took it in for repairs I was told that it would take 2 weeks to get the part needed to repair it and that they had no loan machines to keep me going in the mean time.

So what’s a blogger (who had recently gone full time) to do when he didn’t have a computer?

We were newly married and our credit cards were overloaded after our honeymoon so hiring a computer was out of the question - so I did the next best option - used my local libraries free net connections. I say libraries and not library because there was a limit of 45 minutes per day at my local library and so I spent 45 minutes in three different libraries each day during those two weeks.

My blogging time went from 8-10 hours a day to 2 hours and 15 minutes per day (less on the days that one of the libraries was closed).

On the first day that I did this I was so stressed. How could I possibly fit so much work into such a short period of time? I went home that night telling my wife that it just wasn’t possible and that my fledgling little business was over (I’m a bit of a drama queen). Here response was:

‘You need to blog smarter’.

I realized at that point that my blogging style was not smart or efficient and that I needed to develop a new system.

By the end of those two weeks I was pumping out more posts per week than I previously had - I was spending less time in front of the computer but increased output. The main reason that this happened was that I learned the power of planning my posts.

Each day before hitting the library circuit I sat down and mapped out what I would post that day. I’d brainstorm topics, titles and main points and then list them in order of priority for each blog. Then when I sat down at the computer to blog I was ready to go. The posts were half written because I had a topic, title and outline - blogging was almost like joining the dots.

My Current PrePosting WorkFlow

Since this time I’ve taken planning to a new level. I don’t sit down each day to do it - but generally do it on a weekly basis on Monday mornings (while most of the rest of the world are still having a weekend - one of the advantages of being in Australia). Here’s my process:

1. I start by brainstorming topics (generally on a text file which sits on my desktop)
2. With a list of topics I’ll then pick one to develop a little further (I open up a new text document for each post and save them to a ‘posts in progress’ folder on my desktop)
3. I start by tweaking the topic into a post title (this sometimes change later as I actually write).
4. Next I jot down a sentence that describes the post that I want to write - so that later when I come to write it I know what I meant by the title. This sentence often gets used as the first sentence of the actual post.
5. I then will quickly brainstorm a few of the main points that I want to make in the post. I don’t take a lot of time on this as I find that most of the main points will come during the writing process - however if I have a few obvious points already in mind I capture them now
6. I then quickly think back to previous posts that I might have written on similar topics. This is useful because it helps to develop your post but also is useful for interlinking posts
7. Then I select another of the posts developed in step #1 and then go through steps #2 - 6 again with each one in turn.
8. Once I’ve got enough post ideas developed for the week ahead I’ll then think about what order I want to post them in and map out a posting schedule for the week ahead.

I generally do this process on a blog by blog basis - so I’ll start with ProBlogger and try to come up with at least 7 posts for the week and then move onto Digital Photography School and then come up with 5 posts for the week (I only really post there on weekdays).

Of course my weekly blogging doesn’t always stick to what i plan on a Monday. I add to planned posts with news related posts and link posts that are inspired by what others are writing - but having the schedule is a great basis and takes a lot of the stress out of my week.

Since moving to this type of process I’ve found post frequency and quality is more consistent, productivity is up and I’m able to build more momentum on my blogs.

Your Homework Today is to Plan Your Next Week’s Blogging

So that’s my process - you don’t have to follow it exactly, feel free to adapt it to your own style and workflow but take it and spend a little time today mapping out the posts that you’ll write in the coming week on your blog.

Once you’ve done it - tell us in comments below how you found the process, how you adapted it and what other ideas you might have on being a productive blogger.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 6. Email an Old Timer Reader

Today your task in the 31 Day Project is a fairly simple one - it’s to Email one (or more if you have time) one of your ‘old timer’ readers.

Do you have readers that have been reading your blog since the ‘early days’ of your blogging? You know the ones, they’ve been commenting and contributing away to the point where they’ve almost become part of a the scenery on your blog.

These readers play a big part in making your blog what it is. Their comments are actually content that is being added to your blog, their involvement brings a sense of community and makes it a more vibrant place and their input adds to the knowledge base of your blog.

It’s not just new readers that you should be emailing a welcome email - but old ones too.

Shooting these readers a quick email thanking them for sticking with you and for adding value to your blog is something that I’m sure would create a great impression and build the loyalty even further.

PS: don’t have any ‘old timer’ readers because your blog is too new? Pick one of the other tasks from the last 5 days (they are listed at the bottom of this post) to repeat today.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 5. Conduct an About Page Audit

Today your task in the 31 Day Project here at ProBlogger (this is Day 5) is to Conduct an About Page Audit.

One of the key pages on a blog is the about page. This page is often used by new readers to a blog to gather information about you and your blog and based upon what they find on this page they could be making a decision as to whether they’ll subscribe to your blog or not.

As a result, your About Page is a key conversion page on your blog and it therefore needs to be reworked regularly.

As a result it’s essential that you provide up to date, useful and well written information on this page.

Include compelling reasons for people to keep tracking with your blog and provide them with the means to do so within the content (RSS, newsletter etc).

Take some time today to do an audit of your About Page. What does it communicate? How could you improve it?

I’m going to take some time out this week in the lead up to my blog’s redesign launch to rework mine - so join me and share what you learn in comments below.

I’ve written a previous post on some of the aspects to include in an About Me Page which might help you as you do it.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog - Day 4. Interlinking Posts

Today’s task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project is to dig back into your archives and do some interlinking of posts.

As you add more and more content to your blog there will be more and more opportunity to link your posts together so that readers can view more pages of your blog. It’s also won’t hurt the search engine ranking of those posts that you interlink as internal links count in SEO (not as much as an incoming link from an external site - but it still helps).

I find that I naturally add links from new posts to older ones as I write the newer posts - however the other way around (links in old posts to new ones) takes a little intentionality.

When I do this (I generally set aside a few hours every six months for it) I generally do it in one of two ways:

1. Add a ‘read more on this topic at…’ link at the bottom of your post and then list other related posts (of course many of you will use a ‘related posts’ plugin to do this for you)
2. Add links inside the post itself. I find that these work pretty well at getting people to visit other pages on your blog as they are a little more natural

As I say - the plugins are great (and I use them on all of my blogs) but when I’ve tracked clicks on my pages I find that in content links get actual clicks at a much higher rate than the ‘related posts’ at the end of articles.

So take a few minutes today to go back to some of your earlier work and identify other posts in your archives that you might have written since that you could link to.