12 simple & practical ways you can improve your blogs from user’s point of view

Old lady asked: Do I really need a blog? Wrong question, wrong time, wrong crowd .. After all its @Kolkata bloggers meet ’09 and almost all are bloggers. This is certainly an odd question. 8th Aug, 2009 - www.SEOforClients.com/blog

Webreps attendees statistics 79% of the webreps attendees are bloggers (that’s great) Caution Note: Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. So take suggestions at your own risk.

Remember Bikini and some stats We visited many blogs of our attendees and found: Some good quality blog posts (Not sure of how many are copied and self generated) Inconsistency Max Personal blogs (mixed topic thohoga hi na, its about me) Topic specific (but its mixed up)

Change of topic for this presentation Old lady: How can I use blogs effectively? & Are blogs alone enough?

Today’s topic 12simple & practical ways you can improve Kolkata based blogs from user’s point of view

What were blogs? Single entity maintained (Individual or group-with-similar-goal) Reverse-chronological order Commentary or news item Journal (A periodical dedicated to a particular subject)

What are blogs for most of us? Easy way of having a website. Easy to start with, easy to maintain (post. del.edit.pics.videos.more@com) Easy interactions and community management. (Everybody is having one) MONEY – I heard people make a lot of money with blogs, even $3000 per day  Its free, even ads free

What are blogs for most of us “The word blog is irrelevant, what’s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.” - Seth Godin

Assumptions My first love - “No, I will not change the template of this blog, neither will I host it somewhere else. *********is my first blog and I will keep its typical blog-like look intact, forever.” – One among us . But I do want to marry her and take the relationship to next level (Traffic, more comments, users and so on) And then kids (YES$$$$$$$$$$$) Happy life (I want to take my web activities seriously & full time)

1) Define what you want to achieve Personal (It’s all yours) reusability of your work Reputation building/career (I worked with Linux based servers, I know marketing too) (Highlight more of you like your pics, your profile, CV, connect with FB, Orkut, Twitter & everything else)

1 cont…) Beyond personal borders Traffic $ale$ Users (Community) Ranking Personal branding Mix of above Everything- “Be careful, don’t make a universal solvent that you can’t store and don’t make a blog that has everything but useful for none.”

1 cont …) It’s ok, you can redefine Ps Defining is not fixing forever, You can redefine any P at any point in it. The purpose, platform Purpose: From person you can shift to topic based, money based and so on. Platform: You can shift to your domain, leave blogspot & use wordpress, integrate with your site (and so on) You don’t need to do it perfectly the first time, you just need to start. So go ahead start

2) Define a mission statement Mission statement is not punch line Define a clear mission statement & make it visible You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in ONE SENTENCE....what it does....it's illegal. Isn’t it true for blogs and websites?

2 cont … ) Good bloggers do, we should do even more Top 6 out of 8 blogs from technorati have mission statement – they are already a brand, we must do it even more ..

3) Value of a blog post – Highlight blogger Our old formula (Value of a blog post) = Value of the blogger * Time spent on compiling the info * Presentation skills If you can highlight the blogger, do that. After all blog is a lot about blogger (or the group)

4) Redefine a new home for your blog The usual homepage is not the best homepage for your blog that is used as website.(Home is where I can see all the navigation paths)

4 cont …) Some have already done it This is how you can achieve it: Have a small intro text on the top with a link to a page that can define the starting page of your blog. Easiest starting page is the archive page (there are plugins available). I said easiest not the best. Best will be a page like the homepage of a website highlighted next to home in the menu. ,[object Object],[object Object]

4 cont …) Home > Archive > ………

5) Let’s redefine breadcrumbs & categories People land on a random page. They want to see related pages (may be all) Home > Archives > Category > Post Tags: Home > Archives > Tags

5 cont … ) Redefining category This category pages may become very important page for referral.

6) Have a forum installed This is great for topic based blogs esp traveling, locality-based & others Different communication model: Blog, forum, wiki, IM, websites - its own pros and cons. It empowers users Use bbpress with wordpress, simple. Maintenance Time is the only factor, akismet helps.

6 cont … ) Promote “Ask a question”

6 cont …) Even you can have UGC blog User generate content (in form of blog)

7) Book vs pages – Have wiki Books are more referred and helpful in long term. Books are made of pages. You have pages, you can get more pages from web. Use a wiki to convert it to a book. Edit blogs again & again to act like a wiki

7 cont …) Book vs pages – Have wiki - 145 comments (a lot may be trackbacks or backlinks) & ,[object Object]

This is a wiki page for matt cutts. You can create it for any topic, be it code injection, malwares, seo …. so on … just the right links, some descriptions.,[object Object]

8 cont… ) Facebook ,[object Object]

1,000,000,000 – content like links shared per week on FB.

2/3 of the global internet population visits social networks.

4th most popular online activity, ahead of personal mail.

10% of total time spent on internet

3,000,000 – avg tweets per day.,[object Object]

10) 2 custom search engines One for the blog One for all the best websites that are related to your topics, compiled by you. It takes time so it is valuable. I used my own search engine more often that other. http://www.SEOforClients.com/se/ ( I have the best available resource on web marketing and SEO. I keep adding good ones.

12 simple & practical ways you can improve your blogs from user’s point of view

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12 simple & practical ways you can improve your blogs from user’s point of view