7 Strategic Blog Improvement Questions for 2009

Easton Ellsworth — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:25:48 +0000

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:

Blog content improvement
Blog design improvement
Blog community improvement
Blog traffic improvement
Blog RSS feed / Atom feed / email subscribers improvement
Blog search engine optimization (SEO) improvement
Blog social media optimization (SMO) improvement
Blog monetization improvement
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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Vision as the Core of Blog Improvement: 3 Clarifying Metaphors

Easton Ellsworth — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:56:53 +0000

Many people have asked me to help them make their blog more successful.

One of the most common questions I ask in reply is this: “What’s your overall vision for your blog? Where do you want it to take its target audience in the next 12-24 months?”

Once they answer that question, they’re ready to hear what I have to say about how to improve their blog and get the results they want. Here’s why the blog improvement process ultimately hangs from the feet of vision.

1. Vision is Light

I’m being abstract here, yes. But think of vision (or strategy) as light. The clearer your vision of what your blog can become and why you have it in the first place, the brighter the light shining on your blog and the easier it is to spot the areas in most dire need for improvement. The murkier your long-term goals, the darker your blog improvement blueprints and the harder it is to figure out the nuts and bolts of what you ought to do with it.

Take blog monetization/ROI, for instance. Sometimes the underlying long-term growth strategy for a blog is for it to generate ever-larger reams of money. On the other hand, maybe the blogger’s vision is to simply build a tight-knit community of friends who love the same niche subject. Can you see how the blog improvement process diverges depending on the nature of the path the blogger imagines traveling?

2. Vision is the Center; Processes are the Spokes

Picture a bicycle wheel. Your blog is that wheel. Your growth/ROI strategy for the blog (or one aspect of it) is the hub in the middle. All the spindly spokes sticking out from the center are the individual growth processes and methods and tactics you will use to make your blog worthwhile for you and those to whom you address it.

So if you’re looking to beautify your blog design, that’s the center of its own wheel. Make sure you get a razor-sharp picture of what constitutes that center. Maybe it’s that you want a better design in order to tip prospective customers over the edge and convert them into faithful followers. Maybe it’s that you really just want to attract more honeybees to the computer screen (in which case I recommend bright colors).

Once you decide where you want to end up, it becomes so much simpler to determine how to get there.

3. Vision is the Power to Point The Leaper

I love the mantra, “Leap and the net will appear.” Christine Kane was the first to teach it to me.

Imagine yourself on a platform suspended in space. Around you in every direction are invisible cargo nets hanging hammock-like in the black. I guarantee that if you truly leap, I’ll make sure you land in one of them.

You just have to decide which direction to jump in first.

So What?

So if you want someone like me to help you make your blog better, you need to think about your vision for the blog before anything else. Before you set a budget. Before you decide on a color scheme. Before you choose which flavor-of-the-month social media website you want to dominate.

And of course I’m willing to help you clarify that core.

Because with the core correctly placed, all else flows naturally.

photo by iboy_daniel