Jumpstart Your 2008 Blogging Journey
26 Dec 2007 Daniel Sutoyo 4 comments 15 views
While Quan was using his winter break to realize the danger of recycling information on blogs and writing up a new package of Matlab tutorials, I spent my vacation gathering resources for the relaunch of blinkdagger. During this search, I discovered a few tidbits that will help me embark my blogging journey in 2008. No, I won’t be asking you to write any mission statement or list New Year resolutions. I just want to share with you some of my practical ways to jumpstart my 2008 blogging.
Photo by Chris Seufert
Manage your feeds. Get rid of those subscriptions that you haven’t clicked on in the past month. It is not benefiting you in any way but only stressing you out as the number of unread items inches to +1000. Find a tagging system that works for you. Your RSS reader is one of your greatest resources to survive in the blogging world.
Start Stumbling. Before you shun away from yet another social media community, listen to my testimony. I was never a big fan of digg and the idea of learning what sites my friends are browsing did not sound groundbreaking either. However, I found StumbleUpon as a great resource to discover creative content and attractive sites. With a single click, I was exposed to what surfers have thought was an attention grabbing content. Start incorporating those “stumble-worthy” elements in your posts. You can also access my StumbleUpon profile and include me on your list.
Get a new perspective. What I really mean is, ask someone who has little knowledge about the niche of your blog. They often see things in an entirely different perspective. What do you ask? Anything you are curious about your blog (ie. posts, categories, design, comments, advertisement). This does not mean we do not value what seasoned bloggers have to offer, but just not take what they have to say as the absolute. Asking a fool brings freshness to your creative juice.
Set mini milestones. I won’t call these New Year resolutions because these milestones are meant to be done in much shorter time period. The idea is that completing easier and simpler tasks are stepping stones for your greater successes. I told myself I should comment on a few blogs religiously to network. One of which is skelliewag. Recently one of my comment was chosen for the week’s best. The affirmation in my insights has really propelled me to face bigger tasks with more confidence.
What are some of your ways to jumpstart your 2008 blogging? A new mission statement? Acquiring a new guest poster? A list of things to write about in advance? Share what you think works or doesn’t work!
I think writing guest posts would be a big boost for your blog. It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a bit, but have been preoccupied with other things to do so.
However, the biggest factor is writing quality content. For a while I wasn’t truly interested in my blog - and it showed in my blog posts. They were poor at best. But then I decided I should change that and began writing quality posts. My average daily visitors more than tripled and my RSS subscribers more than doubled.
Writing quality content is key.
Other ways to ‘jumpstart’ your blog is to give away stuff. Although I haven’t had much luck with my current contest, it does help. Sometimes more than others.
I could go on and on, but I’m gonna stop here.
I’m hungry and I want to continue coding on a free WP layout I’m designing…
Hey Brian, totally agree on your thoughts about guest posting. We haven’t committed ourselves to be regular guest posters yet mainly because we don’t think we can deliver quality content every time consistently. I’ll mark that as our next milestone!
I look forward in seeing your new give away WP theme.
Great advice — especially number 2. I found your blog through StumbleUpon!
This is very good advice. I have tons of feed that just give me guilt, and now I have permission to delete some of them. I’ve started sorting new feeds by the month I subscribe to them, so I can know which ones are getting stale.