How does a blog move from good to better to best? By constant improvement. At regular intervals you must take a break from writing blog posts and give an objective assessment of your blog. Figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your blog, then figure out how you can increase the former and lessen the latter.
There are several different ways to look at your blog, and these are the most important ones:
The best blogs gives their readers useful and unique information. Often, this comes in the form of a top-of-class resource.
Quality resources vary across niches, but you know a quality resource when you see one. For example, take a look at Brian Clark’s 10 Step Copywriting Tutorial. It’s what everyone turns to when they want to master copywriting for the web.
Or, take Darren Rowse’s Blogging For Beginners. It’s the ultimate resource of new bloggers. When blogging firms hire new bloggers, they always send them over to Darren’s resource.
The goal of EatonWeb was to create an algorithm that would automatically filter the best blogs in any category to the top of that category . We figured that we could add value to the web as a directory that listed the best blogs first. Isn’t that what directories are for in the first place? To be reliable guides to the best of the web?
While we still have a ways to go before we’ve populated our directory to the point of satisfaction, there are a few categories where we feel that you can get a clear glimpse at the success of our algorithm and it’s automatic ranking of sites.
I just read a great post from Seth Godin (via Problogger). His post was about the power of recommendation.
He wrote about posting excerpts from his new book last month and also giving a recommendation for a book by author Garr Reynolds. He built a Squidoo page about that book with an affiliate link to Amazon.
Guess which book has gotten more sales? His book or Garr’s book?
Seth checked his stats and it shows that he’s sold more of Garr’s book than his own book.
What people say about you is much more important than what you say about yourself.
There’s a lot of talk about self-promotion but it’s a lot more beneficial and effective when other bloggers promote you.
When people talk about you and especially when they recommend you, you gain credibility, mindshare, and exposure.
So, how do you get other people to start talking about you?
With the new year only one day away, you may be thinking of resolutions to make concerning your blog. Here is one resolution that you should definitely make in 2008.
Produce multimedia content.
You may have to spend time and effort to learn how to produce a podcast or edit a video and upload it to YouTube. But this is a tactic that will pay many dividends for your blog. Here are 5 of the great benefits that come from integrating multimedia in your blog.
1. Reach More People
As bloggers, we probably think people read a lot because we read a lot. However, here are some surprising stats I found from the short ebook Teaching Sells.
Teaching Sells also makes the point that many people learn better through audio or video rather than text.
Think about how many visitors go to YouTube on a regular basis. According to Alexa, YouTube is the 4th most visited site in the whole internet. That’s a huge potential audience that’s worth promoting to. Other video sharing sites like Dailymotion and Revver also have huge audiences.
By producing video and audio, you’ll reach the huge number of people who use the internet primarily to consume video and audio - not text.
