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| How Many Blogs Do You Write On? How Many Posts Per Day? Posted: 26 Apr 2008 02:13 AM CDT
These days I only write actively on two blogs - ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. At one point I was writing each week on around 25 blogs - but a lot of them were pretty much just watching what other blogs wrote and attempting to aggregate that content. The blogs have little original thought on them and didn’t take off so I didn’t continue to put time into them. I do also work for b5media as the VP Training - but this is just a part time role as my two main blogs take up considerable time. In terms of posts per day - these days I try to publish one post per day on DPS. These posts are written largely by bloggers that I’ve hired. I was writing all of the content for this blog until a few months ago so now my role is more ‘editor’ although I do average 1-2 posts still a week. On ProBlogger my post frequency varies from day to day but I do have a minimum post target of 2 posts per day. I don’t mind if this drops to 1 post on weekend days but on weekdays stick to it religiously. On top of that I add other ‘newsy’ posts so probably average 3-4 posts a day on ProBlogger. OK - so that’s my answer - I’d love to hear how many blogs you write on and how many blog posts per day that you average writing? |
| How to Choose a Niche Topic for Your Blog Posted: 25 Apr 2008 09:22 PM CDT
There are many factors to consider when choosing a niche. I’ve written about many of them in this post - but for me a lot of it comes back to choosing something that you know about, that you feel you can say something useful and interesting on - ie what are YOU about?. After that I’d take a good hard look at tools like Google Trends where you can track the popularity of different search terms over time to see if they’ve been trending up or down. Ideally you want to find a popular niche that’s growing so that you can position yourself for the future growth. Other factors of course come into play including the number of other blogs and websites on a topic already (ie competition), whether the topic has monetization streams (if you’re doing it for money) etc - but you can read more aobut them in my post on choosing a niche for your blog. PS: another useful tool in choosing niches is SEOBook’s Keyword tool which can help you think about the popularity of different keywords. |
| ProBlogger Book - Shipping This Week Posted: 25 Apr 2008 08:06 PM CDT Just a quick note on the ProBlogger Book. Amazon have it listed now as coming into stock on 26 April (a week or so before they previously estimated) and have been emailing some of those who have pre-ordered it to say it’ll ship in the next few days. So if you want their 5% pre-order discount (on top of their normal discount) - it’s time to buy. Can’t wait to get my own copy - it’s going to be a strange feeling to actually have it in my hands after all this time! |
| When Self Promotion Tips into Spam Posted: 25 Apr 2008 07:10 PM CDT
I agree Jim. There are different kinds of spam - the main stuff we see is the auto-generated stuff that fills our inboxes and hits our comment filters but then there is a more subtle kind of spam - where bloggers overstep the mark on other people’s blogs by promoting themselves to a point where they put others off. I see this every day in the comments on my blogs where the comments left are five words long and only slightly on topic and then there’s a list of 2-3 links as a signature. The comments left are obviously a thinly veiled attempt at self promotion. The problem with this approach of self promotion is that you can do more harm for yourself than good. If you comments are allowed on your blog the reaction from others who see it can actually hurt your brand. I write about this in 10 Way s to Hurt Your Blog’s Brand by Commenting on Other Blogs. The key to growing your blog is to create value. Create useful and unique content on your own blog (don’t get caught up in the self promotion game in every 2nd post) and to do the same thing on other people’s blogs. The people’s blogs that I visit from comments on my blog (and others) are those who have something interesting and useful to say - not those who leave links on dull and spammy comments). OK - it’s over to you - what do you think? |
| How Do I Build Credibility and Presence Online? Posted: 25 Apr 2008 04:17 PM CDT
Let me compile a little list of comments on this questions:
What would you add to my 3 minute post? How do you strive to build credibility through your blog? |
| How to Build Community on Your Blog Posted: 25 Apr 2008 12:36 PM CDT
There are many things that you can do to build a sense of community on a blog. Here’s a short list of ideas that come to mind:
It’s over to you now - any tips for SmallFishMedia on how to add more of a sense of community to your blog? |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2008 09:19 AM CDT
There will probably be a little debate over this one in the comments on this post because every time I see someone write about design there are two opposing arguments. On the one side are some blogger who argue that design is secondary and not that important as that it’s content that is what draws people to a blog and keeps them there. This camp often argues that with a lot of people reading blogs these days through RSS that design is less important as people rarely see it. On the flip side we have the argument that design is very important because it creates a first impression in the mind of potential readers and that it’s around this first impression that many readers base their decision about whether they will subscribe. My own theory fits more with the second argument - although it’s not absolutely everything in my mind. There are some fairly standard (and even ugly) looking blogs (and many with default/free templates) going around that have big readership so it is possible to ‘make it’ without a custom design. Lastly - in terms of how hard a decision is it to change design. I personally find it a difficult process. While I appreciate good design I’m not a designer at heart so finding someone that I connect with to do it for me takes time, then deciding what direction to take can be a bit of a heart wrenching process, as can it be to convince your loyal readers that it’s the right thing to do when you launch the change. Further Reading:
So what do you think? Does Blog Design Matter? |
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