Make Your Blog Worthwhile
Making your blog more scannable will help engage readers, but it only
helps longterm if the content is worth reading in the first place. When I
read a blog for the first time, I'm evaluating it primarily on the
basis of whether it seems smart—that's what will get me to
come back. What "smart" really means can vary, but there are some
general practices you can follow that will help your blog get (or stay)
that way.
Week 750
Three new projects kicked-off, three new agency partners, a trip to New England, and surprise creme brulee! All of this happened in our 750th week...
Fractured/Focused
In my last weeknotes, I mentioned that I had purchased an iPad. The iPad seems to be a polarizer of sorts—for many reasons, but one in particular that interests me most—in that it limits the extent to which you can multitask. You can play audio and browse the web at the same time, but you cannot play audio and watch a YouTube video at the same time. If you are signed in to Google chat and then, even just briefly, open another application, like iTunes, you will be signed out of your chat. The iPad will stop the browser's connection to the web. At first, I found this a bit frustrating. But I'm already seeing benefits to this limitation in certain contexts...
Week 749
This past week was a blur! Plenty of standard operational stuff happened, as usual, of course, but since I tend to think with strong visual accompaniment, I offer this weeknotes entry in pictures. Topics covered: the wonders of video chat technology, internet enthusiasts, ten-year anniversaries, and yes, the iPad...
Guiding Your Blog Out of the Wilderness
Have you started to get the feeling that you're a lone voice, crying out from the wilderness? You've been blogging for a few years now, but nothing seems to be coming from it. You've tried all kinds of ways of promoting your content, but nothing seems to work. Readers just aren't sticking around. The truth is that no promotion method is going to make your blog a success. Sure, the right luck with social media might get you a spike in traffic, but until your content truly captures the attention of readers, no single spike will turn in to lasting engagement...
Screencast: Using Keyword Data to Improve Your Site
This is the final installment of a three-part series about search keywords and how they
relate to your website. Today we will discuss how to use keyword data to make decisions that will improve your website.
Brian Chiou and Jillian Kuhn will be hosting these collaborative screencasts regularly, focusing on topics that are important to you and your website.
Week 747
Mark and I took a trip to New England, which of course took me off of my normal schedule such that I did not keep notes for the remainder of the week. This time, I'll have to rely upon my memory, which will probably result in a brief weeknotes entry as the trip was the highlight of an otherwise blurry five days. I've also thrown in some philosophizing...
Do your calls to action give visitors a logical plan B?
Chances
are, you know the exact questions potential clients get hung up on
before they're ready to commit to a sale. Sharing the information that
answers these questions at the right time becomes a standard step in
your sales processs
because an educated prospect is your best shot at a successful sale.
The same rules apply to the prospects viewing your website. By placing well chosen links to additional information to answer these questions, you give visitors the tools to answer these questions for themselves. These 'Plan B' paths for those not ready to take the leap and sign up/buy/register are called "Secondary Calls to Action (CTAs)."
Week 746
I'm sitting at my desk by the window, with the morning sun lighting the room, eating a bowl of that kind of much-too-healthy cereal and reflecting upon the past week. On the desk is a plant, grown just from rooting a small clipping, that has since completely filled the old peanut butter jar it began in. It grows in a fractal pattern, and since I don't know its proper name, I call it the fractal. Since it lives here on my desk, where I tend to leave the things I bring home from work and then retrieve the next morning on my way back, I greet and inspect it at least twice a day. It's growth pattern has become the image my mind retrieves when I think about how ideas progress—one matures and produces three, which then each produce three more, and so on. One becomes many...
Unfinished
In my last post about mad scientist bloggers, I was exploring the idea of a way to approach blog writing that is true to form for some people, and also true to the format of a blog. This one continues the idea a bit...