As you bring 2009 to a close, one sure fire way to drive your blog to the next level in 2010 is to set some goals and make a few blogging New Year’s Resolutions. Though all five of these might not be for you, have a read and consider them for your 2010 New Year’s Blogging resolutions.
#1 Blog More Consistently in 2010
There is no better thing you can do for your blog than to blog consistently. Consistent blogging helps to keep readers engaged and is healthy from a search engine perspective. Even if you can only afford the time to post weekly, be consistent by having a post every week as it will help you to meet your reader’s expectations. For more on this topic, read Liz Fulgham’s post entitled “Top 5 Was to Keep Your Blog Content Fresh“.
#2 Read The Blog Posts of Others More Than You Post To Your Own Blog
One of the keys to expanding your mind is reading and participating in the blogs of others. This practice helps to make you part of the conversation versus just talking from a pulpit on your own blog. Try reading blog posts (including comments) from blogs that are completely unrelated to yours. Expand your mind, create relationships, and consume more of the blogosphere than you create. If you are tired of reading, try a video based blog. For example, if you never attended a WordCamp, get a flavor for it on WordPress.TV. If you like interesting and fresh views in social media including book reviews, try Shama.TV which is run by an industry peer and acquaintance.
Unlike resolution idea #4 below, reading the blog posts of others should be a separate activity from reading other blogs as a part of your research. One is research for a particular post of yours and the other is simply mind expansion. Clear as mud?
#3 Expand Your Social Media Horizons
As new as it is, many of us have gotten comfortable with Twitter. Challenge yourself in 2010 to expand your social media horizons and build relationships in other platforms. A few to consider are StumbleUpon, Digg, and Linked In. For a more expansive list, the following post has 25 social media sites to consider.
Before you jump in, research the social media platform and apply best practices as you build up your profile. The wrong approach could foil your efforts from the start.
#4 Put More Research Into Your Blog Posts
One of the more time consuming aspects of blogging is research. Research does several good things for a post, however. The first is it allows you as a blogger to expand your mind and learn before you write. The second is that a researched post will likely link out to other blogger’s posts. This is healthy for both bloggers and is part of the socialization process. Last, a well research post is more likely to be a quality post. The day has come and gone when a blogger could get away with getting traction from a “half baked” post on the Internet. Challenge yourself to write posts in 2010 that have a better research foundation.
#5 Clean Up That Blog
Blogs can get messy! Even if you have a clean theme on the front end of your blog, chances are likely that you have a few extra folders full of junk sitting around on the back end. We recently had to fight a hacker on one of our blogs which forced us to get in there and clean everything up folder by folder. In reality, we should have done a better job of that in the first place. A couple of things to clean up should be:
- Eliminate non-performing advertising from your theme or posts.
- Peek at your tracking scripts and eliminate anything new you tried that you really aren’t using.
- Deactivate and delete plugins you really aren’t using or your readers don’t use.
- Delete draft posts that you simply aren’t going to finish.
- Delete old themes you no longer use any more.
- Backup your database and update your blogging software versions. (info on backing up Wordpress)
- Be consistent moving forward in terms of formats, sizes, fonts, media locations, etc.
One Last Thought for 2009
One thing we often forget about in our blogging adventures is how lucky we are to have the software platforms and infrastructure that exist today. If you have a self-hosted blog, go back through your plugins and other software that has helped you to make your blog a better blog and consider donating a few bucks to their creators. Reward those who should be rewarded. We will be going through this excersise in the coming weeks at Orangecast. A few of the criteria we use to determine who we donate to are: originality, dedication to quality, consistency in providing updates, and providing functionality that helps us increase viewership. We’ll make a separate post on exactly who those are.
Happy New Year!
