Problogger's 31 Days to a Better Blog (Part1)

The folloing "1"s cover Days 12 through 9 of the 31 Days for Building a Better Blog

1. Elevator Speech--this became my tagline for the blog and a short quip I could share with people who might be curious as to what I am doing all day and night perched atop my bed with my mini-lap

1. List--I created several list posts in fact: 3 Reasons to Start Enjoying Your Unemployable Hobo Lifestyle in Orlando, 17 Principles of Napoleon Hill etc and I'll post one for THIS blog tomorrow. :) Make sure to leave YOUR "list post" in the comments!

1. Promote--This is what I call seeding the internet. You know put it in my email signatue and leave it in the places where I post and comment. Specifically Darren is speaking to participation in forums. Some places like Warrior Forum allow registered participants to have a signature which is a great place to link to the blog. However, I have not been active on that forum so I will delay creating a signature for a week or so. However I am very active in the NING networks, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and YouTube. So I am linking to all of those plus I am registering at Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog. Apparently my account exists but I don''t know the email address associated with at MyBlogLog. It was cool to see though...I had a lot going on at one time...two years ago!!
   

1. Analyze a successful blog in your niche and analyze what they are doing. For this I took a look at the places that I read and comment (see sidebar) and selected the blog that I wished to emulate. Then vasically reviewed 4 blogs, not just 1, using Ddarren's guidlines. (See May 7-11 posts)
   

1. Focus on your current readers...well, I guess I am my current reader. lol. When a reader leaves a comment I am to send them an email and leave a comment on their blog if they have left their URL.

1. Learn from the following articles (blog postts)

Seth Godin from Seths Blog

• How to Get Traffic to Your Blog
• How to Send a Personal Email
• First, ten

Rand Fiskin from SEOmoz

• 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
• Blogging in an Oversaturated Market is Usually a Poor Decision
• 21 Tips to earn links and tweets to your Blog Posts

Skellie from Skelliewag

A Complete Guide to Find

• How to Start or Start Over Building Your Personal Brand
• 25 Paths to an Insanely Popular Blog

Chris Garrett from ChrisG

• Grow your google authority
• Diggbait, Linkbait, Flagship Content and Authority
• The art of getting things wrong

Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs Journey

• How To Write Great Blog Content - The Pillar Article
• Why Don’t Bloggers Understand Email Marketing?

Jeremy Schoemaker from Shoemoney

• My Top 10 Worst Ideas to Make Money
• Why You Should Embrace Negative Press

Maki from Dosh Dosh

• 6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website
• Rethinking Blog Comments: Much More Than Just A Quick Way to Get Web Traffic
• You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief.

Liz Strauss from Successful Blog

• 10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments
• The Secret to Massive Digg/StumbleUpon Traffic Without Spamming
• 7 Great Ways to Connect with Other Bloggers While You’re Out Reading Blogs

Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips

• 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid
• How to Find Advertisers for your Website

Chris Brogan from ChrisBrogan.com

• 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level
• 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content
• 27 Secrets to Power your Community

1. Link to at least one other blog in a post. This is often know as 'giving link love." Well THIS post is linking to TEN other blogs at least 3X each. So that's "link love on fire!

1. Interlink the posts on your blog wheverver appropriate. I have been doing this all along. It's a good reminder though to go back and look for opportunities to interlink.

1. Promote the blog by participating in forums that are likely to have people interestedi the theme of your blog. Warrior forums is fine but maybe I should look a bit more for a smaller forum as well.Build Your Blog With Forum Traffic - a post where Skellie suggests 4 strategies on this topic. How to Use Forums to Drive Hundreds of Thousands of Readers to Your Blog - a story from an anonymous reader who built a successful blog using this technique.

If you've been following me on Twitter maybe you can guess...What did i start doing on Wednesday, May 30th over at Twitter? Check back here in the morning to see if you guessed right. :)

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Twitter: http://twitter.com/NiaNia
Facebook: http://profile.to/niamaat
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FLATCY
MySpace: http://myspace.com/251802274
NING Forums: http://ning.com/niania
StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/1nia/
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