Over the last week I’ve run a 1 Question Interview Series here at ProBlogger. There have been some great responses (links to the full series are listed at the bottom of this post) but it’s not over yet. Today I want to post the last two responses (actually there might be one more to come in I’m told).
Here’s the two last(ish) short responses from Leon and Xeni.
Xeni Jardin from BoingBoing:
“Finally stopped talking about doing a video project, and just did it. tv.boingboing.net. We’re having a lot of fun with it, and so far, our friends/community/audience/victims are too!”
Leon Ho from Lifehack.org:
“At lifehack we’ve ditched short introductory posts so that we could focus and write long articles. It has a positive impact to our referral traffic from search engines and social bookmarking sites.”
And now the complete list of responses from all bloggers participating in this series:
- How Longer Feature Posts Improved My Blog – Leo Babauta from Zen Habits
- Evolving from a Blog to a Community – Deborah from Freelance Writing Jobs
- Improve Your Blog by Showing Up – Seth Godin
- Going Full Time as a Blogger – David Hobby from Strobist
- Using Linkify to Make Linking to Others Easier – Matt Cutts
- Increase Your Direct Ad Sales Revenue with a Clear Advertising Page – Jeremy Schoemaker from Shoemoney
- Improve Your Blog with Networking – David Peralty from xfep.com
- How Smashing Magazine Grew Their Blog in 2007 – Vitaly Friedman from Smashing Magazine
- Improve Your Blog with a Custom Made Theme – John Chow
- How Adding New Bloggers to Your Blog Can Improve It – Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim
- More on Hiring People To Write For You – Collis Ta’eed from Freelance Switch
- Sometimes Less is More – Skellie from Skelliewag
- Moving from a Single Blog to a Blog Network – Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home
Some interesting themes in that lot. Non of the 15 bloggers knew what anyone else was writing yet there was a few recurring themes including:
- Less posts
- Longer ‘feature’ posts
- Hiring Bloggers
I hope you’ve found something helpful in this series. As I said in the first post I’d love to hear your own reflections on the question in comments below.
This has been a really great series and I’m glad you did it. I hope it will become a recurring series and happens every year.
I did something, too, that brought in a lot of new readers. I wrote a post on a specific topic — libraries — that I wanted people in the field to answer. So I went around and found professional librarians’ blogs and invited them over to my blog to answer the question and a lot of them did. I want to do more of this kind of thing. I write for baby boomers, so I may do posts on finance, specific medical conditions, etc., so I can have specialists chime in with their opinions. I think my readers really liked this.
How about the WORST thing you did for your blog the last year ?
Lex G – http://www.newmediatype.com – web entrepreneur’s blog ..
I think these one question interview series is great… really gives some interesting views on the minds of other great bloggers.
A very interesting series, very helpful especially for new bloggers out there!
Nhick
http://www.itrush.com
Besides actually starting it, I’d say what improved it the most was taking the time to study what makes an effective blog post and then writing them.
Added/ embedded YouTube Videos.
It not only increased return visits, but kept visitors on longer
The great thing about Social videos is the ability to embed as opposed to having visitors leave a site
:-D
Added/ embedded YouTube Videos.
It not only increased return visits, but kept visitors on longer
The great thing about Social videos is the ability to embed as opposed to having visitors leave a site
Contrary to what other bloggers said on one blog, the key was posting alot: http://www.economicshelp.org/blog
However, the blog with biggest increase in RSS readership (230 in 4 months) had an average of only 2 posts per week.
On another blog it was switching to wordpress
Darren,
you work a hell lot to give us these kinds of data otherwise which would have been impossible for us to get.
Thanks mate for your all the hard work.
Cheers.
I started one.
The one thing I did with my blog that improved it the most was simply moving to WordPress. Everything seemed to work seamlessly after that; the blog had gotten more comments than it had ever had, and it was much easier updating my blog. Before that, I had been using a mac website-creating software similar to iWeb, but it never really provided me with what WordPress does.
Sly from Slyvisions.com
I wonder whether writing longer posts less often is better only if you’re already established, or you should do it to start off with. There’s certainly an element of truth in the maxim that you’ll have better search engine traffic with more posts.
I’ve really enjoyed this interview series. It is interesting to see how one question can get so many different responses.
Beau Hooks
Wow Just one thing? This ia hard one. There were so many things I changed in 2007.
I guess the biggest thing was to get socially invloved more with social networks and connect with a bunch of my readers. THat really gave my blog a push.
I agree totally with plonkee.
I only have a limited amount of time to read blog posts and I can’t read everything. The established bloggers will get my attention first and I skim everything else.
If it’s a longer post, why not just break it up as a series with the first post submitted to social media?
I cut down on some blogs and focused on my main blog
I began clarifying my blog’s identity. Within the first month of working on this concept, my hits tripled and my subscribers doubled. I also started commenting on slews of other blogs that offered content in related areas as mine.
Next steps for http://www.readscott.com:
1. Guest bloggers
2. Custom design
3. Building a comment culture (I don’t know how to do this, really…any help?)
I could have sworn I add my 2 cents as well. Oh well, to repeat one thing I did was make good connections with other bloggers and as someone else said I also dropped one of the blogs I was writing and gave all my time to my main business blog.
Well seeing as I opened late in 2007, I would say the best thing was starting it and learning what to add to it.
Improved, seriously improved, the look of my websites. For instance the Amateur Traveler
before: http://web.archive.org/web/20070101160426/http://amateurtraveler.com/
after: http://AmateurTraveler.com
I finally started it. I had been thinking about it for a while, and I know I wished there was a website where I could go when I got my first apartment, started cooking for myself, etc. So the best thing I did in 07 was start the website. This has been a great series.
Best thing I did… had the ProBlogger Community review my blog :)
Thanks again!
In 2007 I started posting photographs daily to me blog with commentary rather than one or two a week.
Within three months this brought in ten times the number of visitors and helped my SEO a great deal.
The best thing I ever did was to schedule my blogging. I have a calender/planner that I schedule my everything concerning my bloggin on. I have it scheduled 2 months ahead. I don’t necessarily get my blogging done ahead of time. But I am on a schedule and since I treat it like a job, I am able to actually take every weekend off and pick it up right on track come monday. This scheduling has allowed me to go from 1 blog to 6 and start to plan other projects concerning my blogs.
Well, I joined in many communities but I guess the most helpful to me is Entrecard, in which a fellow Filipino made a local version of it where I am now one of the co-authors…
http://pinoyentrecards.blogspot.com/
I began my blog in Feb 2007 and it seemed like for 6-9 months everything I did was the best thing. Now as I come up on one year and look back, I see that focusing on leaving comments on like minded blogs and where I read articles I resonated with has brought me the most traffic.
I write mainly about self-development but about once a week I venture out into the political commentary realm offering my perspectives (sometimes mild ranting). I find that I pick up readers by commenting at political sites more easily then from self-development sites. This is a very charged time politically and probalby a good tide to ride.
Joseph
http://www.ExploreLifeBlog.com
http://www.peace-together.com
Loved the series of answers — and tips that they provided. Although I didn’t get to formally participate in your Q&A, I’d like to say that the one big thing I did was to simplify my URL by moving off wordpress.com and onto Joomla. Am using mojoblog — a WP-type blogging extension. New site affords a lot of options — ads, forums, news items beyond my blog — more value for readers. Anyone had experience with Joomla or mojoblog?
Scintillating idea, grit in ’07.
http://www.24hourapartments.com
http://www.roommatesville.com