Today your task in the 31 Day challenge to Build a Better Blog is to do some learning from successful bloggers.
To do this I’ve asked nine bloggers that I know and respect to nominate a few posts from their own blogs archives that they believe would be most helpful for bloggers wanting to improve their blogs.
You might choose to read just a couple of the following links if you don’t have a lot of time up your sleeve today – but as someone who has just read through them all I suspect you’ll benefit most by reading as many of them as you can – there’s some great advice in this lot!
Here are the posts that the bloggers I asked nominated as their best tips for bloggers:
Seth Godin from Seths Blog
Rand Fiskin from SEOmoz
- 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
- Blogging in an Oversaturated Market is Usually a Poor Decision
- 21 Tips to earn links and tweets to your Blog Posts
Skellie from Skelliewag
- A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images
- How to Start or Start Over Building Your Personal Brand
- 25 Paths to an Insanely Popular Blog
Chris Garrett from ChrisG
- Grow your google authority
- Diggbait, Linkbait, Flagship Content and Authority
- The art of getting things wrong
Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs Journey
Jeremy Schoemaker from Shoemoney
Maki from Dosh Dosh
- 6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website
- Rethinking Blog Comments: Much More Than Just A Quick Way to Get Web Traffic
- You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief.
Liz Strauss from Successful Blog
- 10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments
- The Secret to Massive Digg/StumbleUpon Traffic Without Spamming
- 7 Great Ways to Connect with Other Bloggers While You’re Out Reading Blogs
Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips
Chris Brogan from ChrisBrogan.com
- 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level
- 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content
- 27 Secrets to Power your Community
Which of these posts did you resonate with most and find most useful? Share in the discussion here, or over at the forum thread dedicated to this Daily Task: Day 6 – Learn from Successful Bloggers.
Want More?This task is a sample of one of the tasks in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook – a downloadable resource designed to reinvigorate and revitalize blogs. Join over 14,000 other bloggers and Get your Copy Today. |
I can hardly believe how much rich information is in this one set of links! I’ve been combing through this stuff for days and feel like it’s quadrupled my understanding of quality, effective blogging. Just awesome stuff. I know I’ll be referring back to this list repeatedly for months, probably years.
– K. Walsh (www.emergingedtech.com)
Wow, such a wealth of info, I had to go through every page and a lot of links, but could not stop. Even watched 2 Yaro videos.
Thanks so much. This is a must for any newbee blogger like myself
Nice list. Definitely bookmarkable and I’ll need to look and read and implement the advice more during the summer when I have more time.
I know a lot of people don’t have time so I did a quick summary of the 27 articles in point form. All 27 articles are worth reading anyway as I did miss a lot of important points in my summary.
Summary
http://www.excitedbylife.com/better-blog-challenge/guide-to-blogging/
Biggest Things I Took Away
– Build a brand, you are building a brand with everything you do online (even comments on other peoples blogs).
– be consistent and focused on your brand and topic in all your posts
– have foundation,cornerstone articles/ebook/training course/how to etc. (your brand again!) around which everything is built
– use large creative commons images, they look better than paid for stock photos
– be the expert or be unique in your niche and give, give give.
Apart from Godin – superfluous.
One thing I notice is it’s very formulaic.
“10 ways to do this”
“209 ways to do that”
“47898 ways to get X to do Y”
Nothing stands out
Nothing is a purple cow….
Quite some homework you gave us this time Darren, but it surely is a list to go through. Very valuable, a keeper!
Great list of tips and tutorial to learn and really need time to read all.
What I’ve learned from this lesson is that I have the attention span of a gnat and with all these links, I’m overwhelmed and under impressed. It was too much. All too much.
The other thing I learned was that if you do finally get someone to your blog, you should NOT send them away. If they have to click the back button, especially if the LINKED page has links and then that page has links and then clicky clickied right into infinity, YOU HAVE LOST THEM.
Always, ALWAYS, open your links in a new window or tab. This means your links have a Target=_blank and is somewhere in your blog formatting page. This is very, Very, VERY useful. Well, it is useful if you want to keep your readers.
I am glad I read this one as some of these tips are new to me! Thanks.
My life is just one catastrophe after another. My website, blog, and email are all gone. Status says “locked.” I fear that means someone hacked my site (through my blog?!) and that caused my entire site as listed above to get shutdown. I’ve sent a panicked support ticket and a DM through Twitter (my web host’s owner is on Twitter). She’s very much on top of things so I an hopeful that this won’t last too long. Only, it’s 2 hours earlier there than here, (11 here, 9 there) IIRC, so she may not be at her machine yet. Or looking at panicked support screams.
*sigh*
Patricia
Again, a good collection of links. Hands down, my favorite from this list was none other than Skellie. She is on an entirely different level. :) haha, I enjoyed reading her posts most. All around, there’s plenty to digest and worth your time. I actually read some of these posts before.
Bravo, bravo!
-Mig
Thanks for the resources
This is great stuff Darren. Each day I’ve put at least one tip to work. For example, I just added the ShareThis widget to my blog. Thanks again for all the great info.
Ok guys I’m freaking out!!!!!!
There is SOOOOO much to learn and I feel a bit lost. I’ve been twittering, stumbling, and Digging yet in the last 3 days I’ve had 8 visits from twitter, none from stumble and Digg yet 700 from google. Google takes no effort (except for a good title) and the others are so time consuming.
Am I missing something here?
I am just not seeing the benefits of twitter, stumble and Digg. Am I doing something wrong or is google always going to win? Should I keep trying?
Amelia
Wow! Some amazing resources, here. Thanks for reaching out to your network to help us all improve our blogs.
What a great list of resources! I’ve printed them all out to read while waiting at the doctor’s office. These were all new to me except Skellie’s article on using Flickr. That one I’d already read three times, have bookmarked, and appreciated so much for helping me with photos for my site. Can’t wait to read the rest of the articles! :)
I’ve read a few of these, and will be reading more as time allows. I’ve already put a few tips into action, and one I modified. I agree that seeing a blog full of 0 comments makes me (as a reader) think they don’t get much traffic, but at the same time, I don’t want to completely disable comments.
So, I closed them for older posts, and am keeping them open on the last month’s or so, and that’s it. Time will tell if this has any effect.
http://mymeanbean.com/Blog
I liked the comment from Rand Fiskin about hosting the blog on your own website not another site, if you can
How to Get Traffic to Your Blog is the most hottest topic on my blog… never give a doubt.
thanx for this comprehensive list! I gonna read a few today and a few later :)
Thanks Darren for putting up this great list of post. I read all of them and they are fantastic. I specially liked the one on “How to Send a Personal Email”
Cheers
Krish
http://www.bloggertalkz.com
Thanks for creating this great list of references. I wish I had been smart enough to know how to find this stuff when I started blogging. Keep up the good work. Everyone needs traffic to their blog, and there is lots out there if you know where to look.
This may have been the best post so far in the 31 day chanllenge. Since I new to blogging I am sitll trying to get lots of content up on my blog. I am also working on my writing skills and found many of the links here to be helpful. Thanks again!
This is great stuff, Darren. Thank you!
I know I will find myself returning to this page time and again to review and absorb and experiment with these bloggers’ advice and best practices.
I was previously unfamiliar with Skellie of Skelliewag.org, and I’m grateful to have discovered her via this assignment. I like her insights and fresh perspectives on blogging, and I’m looking forward to following her over time.
What an excellent collection of links! I have bookmarked most of them for future and permanent reference.
The ones that are most relevant to me immediately:
Skellie’s “How to Start or Start Over Building Your Personal Brand” since I am currently working on a redesign to go along with a slightly changed focus, name and tagline that came about from the elevator pitch exercise on Day 1.
Liz Strauss’s “10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments” because it’s helping me work on making my posts and blog more inviting to commenting, and also helping me to not obsess about it because there are also reasons that people don’t comment that are completely outside my control.
It is just me or does Seth’s blog have a lot of contradictions in it? Is he trying to say that it depends on your blog? Am I being blond?
I follow Chris Brogan on twitter and find his advice spot on -love this bit from ’27 ways to bring blog to next leve’ –
7.If you are attempting to do real business via your blog, look for ways to convert readers into customers
Not sure HOW to do that but it is THE goal of my blog.
also he mentions – quit the “echo chamber” which is good advice. Experts don’t parrot they give new ideas.
Whitney
Twitter: wald12
thanks Kathi – I had missed Liz Strauss’s “10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments” blog post and so went back to read it. Though it made me feel a little better (all the reasons why there are no comments) – it made me think how I also don’t post to people’s blogs – I think I will have to get more involved in blog comments and see if it makes a difference. – also I need to make sure you don’t have to sign in to comment (I won’t bother to sign in why should I expect others to?)
Wd
twitter: wald12
this is one of the best lists ever!!! to be honest with you, i wanted to read it so thoroughly, that i’m totally behind with the rest of the posting, which i’m running to do now:) however, i’ll be going back and back and back to all the posts you recommended and your blog!!!!!!!
thanks for this great opportunity to participate in this challenge. i might be slow, but i want to make sure i’m doing it right!!!!!!
The Travel Expert(a) – Living and Traveling Central America
I am overwhelmed (in a good way) at the amount of information you’ve put together in one place.
I just finished reading each post, clicking on their links, taking and copious notes. Whew! I think I will go meditate now ; )
I am a tad behind on my 31DBBB, but I will get caught up, lol! Thanks for the links. A lot of good information was found on those pages.
This task has taken me FOREVER, basically becaue I’m implementing many of the helpful hints I’m reading!
Thanks Darren,
There are some cool tips on these blogs.
Wow that was quite a list. I printed off all the posts and carried them around with me for a couple of weeks, reading them when I got the chance. I particularly liked the Flickr Images guide from Skelliewag as I had not come across anything similar and it covered everything I needed to know. I’ve been adding Flickr images to each of my posts since.
So much good advice! I’m more than a little awestruck. I agree with many others… Darren, this is a great thing you’ve put together.
Making money via blogs is really an art, those people know it, make huge amounts easily while others make fool of themeselves.
Sometime I really feel curious, how much do these big names on blogosphere earn… dont mix my curosity with jealousy, but I really want to know and learn this art of making money.
This is a post I’m going to be coming back to a few times for reference as I keep working on my blog. thank you, sir