Better Your Blog In a Week: #7
This marks the final installment of the improve your blog series. Improving your blog over one week is good, but it’s a long term thing. Doing these things is great, but continuing to do them is what matters.
#7: Read.
The most important thing you can do to help your blog grow besides daily waterings of content, tweaking, keeping a blogging point system and all the other things I’ve mentioned in the last 7 days is to read.
- It keeps your content fresh and interesting. On of the troubles about going away and leaving your site to autopost is the lack of connection to current events and life in general. If you don’t know about the things that are going on in your industry, you’ll seem boring to your #1 market.
- It keeps you sharp. Personally, your general knowledge and reading/writing skills will get better. How many times have you heard that?
- There are a ton of websites, (much like this one, but more focussed) that aim to improve your own website.
While this seven part series may be coming to an end, the idea of helping users improve their blogs never dies. I will continue to add to the “Improve Your Blog” category as the days go on, but normal posts will resume.
On an off topic note, tomorrow will see a little bit of a change in design. I mentioned doing this in part 6, yesterday, and I’ve been waiting for this series to end before making it live. It may have taken me all of 5 minutes, but the improvement is very noticeable.
By ‘read’, I don’t mean go out and buy a book. As a blogger, you’re pretty much obligated to stay up to date with news, especially that of which happening in your niche. RSS is a great way to get updates at your own convenience.
If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, reading “What exactly is RSS?” and watching the short video will clue you in.
Writing about things that a date can be attached tom like news, announcements or writing about things that are going to happen in the future add a certain air of existence to your blog. It kind of lets the readers know that you exist, and you’re right there with them, experiencing the same things they are.
Here’s a recap of the 7 day series on building and bettering your blog:
- Start a Blogging Point System
- Comment on Other Blogs Very Often
- Email an Unknown Blogger
- Blogging with a Tight Schedule
- Offer an Incentive to Your Readers
- Fix Your Template Up
- Read.
Tomorrow things return to normal, and maybe more of a design focus for a while. Maybe. Either way, you should subscribe to RSS and join the 100-115 people that have already made that life changing (for the better) decision.
Leave a comment
Mutiny Design
August 21st, 2007 at 5:28 PM
Pretty impresive to have 7 post in 7 days. I have only manage 3in over a month
It is a good point that you have to read around your industry to make sure you are up with the latest trends, but I think it is also important to inovate. There are a million and one blogs doing and saying the same thing. I think to stand out you need to be somewhat unique.
Chris Juneau
August 21st, 2007 at 8:32 PM
Reading is so important to the success of any blog. We must all stay educated in our niche for us to be able to churn out interesting articles. I almost feel like an information filter at times. LOL. I take it all in and regurgetate what I think my readers will be interested in and understand.
Getoninter.net Web Development
June 15th, 2008 at 3:32 PM
I agree with Mutiny Design you do have to keep up with the trends but being somewhat unique is quite hard to establish, if they are millions of ( Mee 2 ) people out there. Ive just started in this blogging lot. Everyday i am learning new things that make it that bit more interesting. I suppose being unique is one thing staying unique is the hard bit.
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