Visionary Blogging » Planning http://visionaryblogging.com New Media Resources, Tools and Services Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:32:36 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 13 Ways for Bloggers to Sleep Better http://visionaryblogging.com/sleep-better/ http://visionaryblogging.com/sleep-better/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:35:57 +0000 Easton Ellsworth http://www.visionaryblogging.com/?p=1001 I went to bed at 4 AM last night, er, this morning. I'm still a bit bleary. Why? I was up late working on some things for blog consulting clients. It's not fun but that's what you gotta do sometimes to make sure your blogging efforts yield good fruit. Here are 13 ideas to help you sleep better (and, I hope, longer) at night knowing your blog is doing what it should.
  1. Keep your blog content churning out regularly. Miss a beat and you'll lose some winks. Get your posts published or scheduled for publication before you've been awake one hour. That way you can bask the rest of the day. I've lost more sleep from this one than I can shake a very large stick at.
  2. Set clear goals for your blog in at least the following areas: content, design, community, traffic, subscribers, search presence, social presence, conversion and value. Drill down farther if you like, but at least have long-term (say, 60-month and 12-month) goals and short-term (say, 30-day, 7-day or even daily) goals in these nine key areas. If you don't know where you want to go, the pointlessness will drive you nuts at night.

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    ]]> dog-sleeping

    I went to bed at 4 AM last night, er, this morning. I’m still a bit bleary.

    Why? I was up late working on some things for blog consulting clients.

    It’s not fun but that’s what you gotta do sometimes to make sure your blogging efforts yield good fruit.

    Here are 13 ideas to help you sleep better (and, I hope, longer) at night knowing your blog is doing what it should.

    1. Keep your blog content churning out regularly. Miss a beat and you’ll lose some winks. Get your posts published or scheduled for publication before you’ve been awake one hour. That way you can bask the rest of the day. I’ve lost more sleep from this one than I can shake a very large stick at.
    2. Set clear goals for your blog in at least the following areas: content, design, community, traffic, subscribers, search presence, social presence, conversion and value. Drill down farther if you like, but at least have long-term (say, 60-month and 12-month) goals and short-term (say, 30-day, 7-day or even daily) goals in these nine key areas. If you don’t know where you want to go, the pointlessness will drive you nuts at night.
    3. Review your goals regularly. Have them continually in your mind’s eye. A goal-oriented blogger is a well-sleeping blogger.
    4. When you tweak or upgrade anything, do a unit check. Otherwise you’ll toss and turn at night with that nagging feeling you forgot something.
    5. When you get ideas for blog posts or static pages, for goodness sakes, write them down. Jot them on an index card you keep in your pocket like me, or write them backwards on your forehead so you can see them in the mirror. Just scratch the muse’s itch whenever it comes around and you’ll find that your muse will let you rest better.
    6. Remind yourself that blog design is a journey, not a destination. It’s an ongoing quest, not a task with a checkbox. So it’s okay to close your eyes and drift away even though a <div> somewhere is creaking. No blog has a perfect look. If anything, that should excite you and become the stuff of glorious dreams about your blog’s cosmetic future.
    7. Engage with at least one person in your blog community every day. This could be as simple as emailing a quick, heartfelt thank you note to someone who has left a great comment at a blog post of yours. Or mixing your blog with Twitter or with Facebook in one of at least 75 ways to enhance the conversations around your blog that can blossom into trusting relationships. Just do something to interact, or you’ll sleep like Ebenezer Scrooge sans the Christmas cheer.
    8. Watch blog traffic trends more than you watch day-to-day flow. Watch both, sure, but use a telescope more than you use a magnifying glass with your blog’s traffic. That way you can sleep at night after a low traffic day or week, knowing the flow will ultimately continue to increase as long as you are doing things the right way and there are more human beings with the potential to learn about your blog.
    9. Don’t worry how many subscribers you have; focus instead on making them happy campers. When in doubt, resolve to have faith. 10 RSS or email subscribers may be better than 1,000 if the 10 are passionate and the 1,000 are meh. You’ll always sleep more deeply when you’ve approached blog subscribers as though they’re people like you than when you see them only as numbers.
    10. Optimize for good search engine rankings, but optimize for humans first and search second. Computers don’t make you lose sleep. People do.
    11. Spend a little less time promoting your blog on social media and a little more time creating great content at your blog. You’ll sleep like a blog – sorry, like a log – knowing that there’s something to talk about before you start talking about it.
    12. Decide exactly what to consider a successful conversion and don’t go to bed without tracking your blog’s conversion rate. Some blogs have several criteria for successful conversion – getting readers to subscribe, getting visitors to click through to the company website, getting people to buy a product or click an advertisement – but the principle of identifying and tracking conversion rates with the best available tools will always be in vogue. You’ll never have to count sheep at night if you’ve been carefully counting your blog’s conversions throughout the day.
    13. Don’t get superstitious about what constitutes value – or about anything else, for that matter. This post contains a list of 13 things – I’m not triskaidekaphobic – and I also think you shouldn’t worry excessively about or obsess over the question of your blog’s worth and value. Does it have meaning to you? To the people who visit it? Does it make a difference? You can and should pick some measurable metrics (like revenue, number of visits per month, backlinks, etc.) to help you decide how “worth it” your blog really is to you and/or your business or organization. Just don’t lose sleep over it.

    I hope these tips help you find more success – and more and better sleep – as a blogger.

    What else can we do to get better sleep? What causes you to lose the most sleep over your blog?

    image by flattop341

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    ]]>     http://visionaryblogging.com/sleep-better/feed/ 7 How to Think About Twitter: A Quick Example http://visionaryblogging.com/twitter-example/ http://visionaryblogging.com/twitter-example/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:00:32 +0000 Easton Ellsworth http://www.visionaryblogging.com/?p=853 Heifer International with its Twitter account. Yesterday we came across this tweet (Twitter status update) by Ashton Kutcher, the world's number one Twitter user in terms of followers with just over two million. ashton-kutcher-twitter One of the things Heifer does on a daily basis is give goats and other animals to poor families around the world to help them achieve self-reliance. It also allows people to pay for those animals in someone's else honor - so, you could get a birthday gift of a cow or a goat or some bees, but they wouldn't actually go to you. They would go on your behalf to someone who really needed the gift. Ashton's tweet may not have been directed to Heifer. Nevertheless, it created an opportunity for Heifer and its fans to speak out in favor of animals as vicarious gifts.

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    ]]>     Visionary Blogging, as you may already know, is all about using blogs and social media with a careful sense of vision and focus.

    Twitter is a rapidly emerging tool that practically screams to be used haphazardly.

    Here’s a quick example of how to think about Twitter.

    I am currently helping Heifer International with its Twitter account. Yesterday we came across this tweet (Twitter status update) by Ashton Kutcher, the world’s number one Twitter user in terms of followers with just over two million.

    ashton-kutcher-twitter

    One of the things Heifer does on a daily basis is give goats and other animals to poor families around the world to help them achieve self-reliance. It also allows people to pay for those animals in someone’s else honor – so, you could get a birthday gift of a cow or a goat or some bees, but they wouldn’t actually go to you. They would go on your behalf to someone who really needed the gift.

    Ashton’s tweet may not have been directed to Heifer. Nevertheless, it created an opportunity for Heifer and its fans to speak out in favor of animals as vicarious gifts.

    So we considered our options:

    • Ignore @aplusk completely
    • Reply to him via some other medium (or offline)
    • Post a tweet to @aplusk as if talking only to him
    • Post a tweet to @aplusk as if talking to @Heifer followers and/or Twitterers in general

    We decided on the last option, because we thought it would be best if the public told our story for us in their own words.

    Next we needed to settle on the content of the tweet. Some options we considered:

    • Invite a powerful/popular voice to the conversation (first impression: @Oprah because she and @aplusk have exchanged tweets before and she is a Heifer supporter)
    • Share links to the Heifer website showing the awesomeness of giving gifts of animals in another’s honor
    • Share similar links on other websites
    • Directly disagree with @aplusk
    • Question @aplusk’s premise and invite @Heifer’s followers to respond

    What we came up with after a few minutes of brainstorming may not have been perfect, but I think it did the job well:

    twitter-example

    We replied to Ashton and appealed to Oprah Winfrey for backup, sharing three links to Oprah.com showing that she supports the concept of giving the gift of animals on someone’s behalf.

    Sure enough, several Twitterers soon replied @Heifer or @aplusk (or both) with excellent tweets about why they sided with us and not Ashton on that point.

    Whether @aplusk or @Oprah ever tweet back about it doesn’t matter so much. What mattered was that Heifer International showed it was listening to the conversations that are happening online about its way of doing things, and that it sincerely wants to help people make the world a better, easier place to live. That’s why we tweeted what we did when we did.

    I hope this quick example makes sense. Please let me know if there’s anything I can explain that would help you make decisions in your own Twitter use.

    Do you think our tweet was effective? How could it have been better? Got any similar examples that you’d like to share?

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    ]]>     http://visionaryblogging.com/twitter-example/feed/ 4     7 Strategic Blog Improvement Questions for 2009 http://visionaryblogging.com/blog-improvement-questions/ http://visionaryblogging.com/blog-improvement-questions/#comments Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:25:48 +0000 Easton Ellsworth http://www.visionaryblogging.com/?p=427 2008 is almost over. 2009 is about to begin. Have you considered your blog improvement plan for next year? Here are 7 strategy-related questions you should ask yourself.

    1. What will I accomplish with my blog in 2009?

    Set a few goals for the next 12 months. I recommend having at least one clear, measurable goal for your blog's overall performance, plus at least one goal each for the following areas:
    1. Blog content improvement
    2. Blog design improvement
    3. Blog community improvement
    4. Blog traffic improvement
    5. Blog RSS feed / Atom feed / email subscribers improvement
    6. Blog search engine optimization (SEO) improvement
    7. Blog social media optimization (SMO) improvement
    8. Blog monetization improvement
    9. Blog value / return on investment (ROI) improvement
    Which means you'll have at least 9 area-specific goals plus at least one overall blog goal for next year.

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    ]]>     Pen Paper Ideas

    2008 is almost over. 2009 is about to begin.

    Have you considered your blog improvement plan for next year?

    Here are 7 strategy-related questions you should ask yourself.

    1. What will I accomplish with my blog in 2009?

    Set a few goals for the next 12 months. I recommend having at least one clear, measurable goal for your blog’s overall performance, plus at least one goal each for the following areas:

    1. Blog content improvement
    2. Blog design improvement
    3. Blog community improvement
    4. Blog traffic improvement
    5. Blog RSS feed / Atom feed / email subscribers improvement
    6. Blog search engine optimization (SEO) improvement
    7. Blog social media optimization (SMO) improvement
    8. Blog monetization improvement
    9. Blog value / return on investment (ROI) improvement

    Which means you’ll have at least 9 area-specific goals plus at least one overall blog goal for next year.

    Think big. Effort is more important than accomplishment.

    2. How will I make my blog more valuable in 2009?

    If you do nothing else, please answer this question.

    The value of your blog is the excuse for its existence.

    What does it generate in revenue, relationships and enjoyment for you and for your audience? How can you justify your involvement with it?

    In other words, what’s your blog’s return on investment (ROI)?

    And … how will you increase your ROI for your blog in ’09?

    3. How will I increase the authority of my blog in 2009?

    This is a classic Chris Garrett question.

    Authority is closely tied to what people think of your blog – particularly how much they trust it as an accurate, important source of information, discussion and/or entertainment.

    Evaluate your blog’s level of authority in its niche. Then imagine what it can become by the end of 2009.

    Finally, set one or more goals to increase your blog’s authority over the next year.

    4. How will I make my content more addictive in 2009?

    There are a zillion ways to phrase this question. We all know that the content of your blog is crucial to its success.

    But I chose the word addictive because attention spans are growing ever shorter. The blog visitors of 2009 will have a hundred times as many sources clamoring for their attention as the blog visitors of, say, 2005 (when I took my first blogging steps).

    So what are you going to do to hook people next year and keep them coming back to your blog? How are you gonna make ‘em need your blog like a drug?

    5. How will I make my blog design more charming in 2009?

    Your blog’s design may be much more important than you think. How will you alter it so as to charm the crowds of 2009?

    It’s no longer enough to slap up a basic template. In order to help your content stand out, your design needs to stand out. And in order for your design to stand out, it needs to be unique.

    It’s about the flourishes. Every baseball stadium has stands, an infield with dirt and four bases in a square, two foul poles and overpriced hot dogs.

    But let yours be the one with the ivy.

    6. How will I make my blog community funner in 2009?

    People usually join communities because of what they feel, not because of what they know. Your blog may offer lots of interesting information, but it also needs to give the visitor a reason to think that coming back again and again to participate in your conversations will be enjoyable.

    Where’s the fun in your blog? How does it tickle people? How will you make it seem boring to miss out on its articles, comments, announcements and events?

    7. How will I melt my blog more fluidly into my business’s big picture in 2009?

    Here’s the thing. You’ve got a website. You’ve got a blog. You’ve got a Twitter account. You’ve got Facebook. You’ve got MySpace. You’ve got YouTube. You’ve got FriendFeed. You’ve got a bunch of online threads wrapped up in a ball.

    You’ve probably also got offline stuff. Business cards. Conference itineraries. Office hours. Hands to shake. Backs to scratch. Maybe even mouths to feed. Another ball.

    And each ball, if you’re not careful, comes to resemble a mess of multicolored rubber bands, each wanting to break off and stretch you away from the center.

    The thing you’ve got to figure out for 2009 is how to melt all that stuff together. How to make it so that when you work on your blog, you’re helping the rest of your business, and vice versa.

    I wish you a wonderful 2009.

    Hire Easton Ellsworth for 2009

    Hire me as your blog improvement consultant for 2009. I’ll help you answer all the questions above for your business blog or professional blog. See my blogging resume and over 40 testimonials of my work.

    Coming Soon at Visionary Blogging

    My next article will talk about how to improve your blog community for 2009. Stay tuned.

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    ]]>     http://visionaryblogging.com/blog-improvement-questions/feed/ 14     Why Your Blog? http://visionaryblogging.com/why-your-blog/ http://visionaryblogging.com/why-your-blog/#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:06:22 +0000 Easton Ellsworth http://www.visionaryblogging.com/?p=215

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    ]]>     Why your blog? Why did you create it?

    Why your blog? Why is it special?

    Why your blog? Why did you choose the blog format?

    Can a new visitor tell me “why your blog” within 10 seconds?

    Can you?

    Why your blog?

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