12 simple & practical ways you can improve your blogs from user’s point of view

Old lady asked: Do I really need a blog?
Wrong question, wrong time, wrong crowd .. After all its @Kolkata bloggers meet ’09 and almost all are bloggers. This is certainly an odd question.
8th Aug, 2009 - www.SEOforClients.com/blog

Webreps attendees statistics
79% of the webreps attendees are bloggers (that’s great)
Caution Note: Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. So take suggestions at your own risk.

Remember Bikini and some stats
We visited many blogs of our attendees and found:
Some good quality blog posts (Not sure of how many are copied and self generated)
Inconsistency
Max Personal blogs (mixed topic thohoga hi na, its about me)
Topic specific (but its mixed up)

Change of topic for this presentation
Old lady: How can I use blogs effectively? &
Are blogs alone enough?

Today’s topic
12simple & practical ways you can improve Kolkata based blogs from user’s point of view

What were blogs?
Single entity maintained (Individual or group-with-similar-goal)
Reverse-chronological order
Commentary or news item
Journal (A periodical dedicated to a particular subject)

What are blogs for most of us?
Easy way of having a website. Easy to start with, easy to maintain (post. del.edit.pics.videos.more@com)
Easy interactions and community management. (Everybody is having one)
MONEY – I heard people make a lot of money with blogs, even $3000 per day 
Its free,
even ads free

What are blogs for most of us
“The word blog is irrelevant, what’s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.” - Seth Godin

Assumptions
My first love - “No, I will not change the template of this blog, neither will I host it somewhere else. *********is my first blog and I will keep its typical blog-like look intact, forever.” – One among us .
But I do want to marry her and take the relationship to next level (Traffic, more comments, users and so on)
And then kids (YES$$$$$$$$$$$)
Happy life (I want to take my web activities seriously & full time)

1) Define what you want to achieve
Personal (It’s all yours)
reusability of your work
Reputation building/career (I worked with Linux based servers, I know marketing too)
(Highlight more of you like your pics, your profile, CV, connect with FB, Orkut, Twitter & everything else)

1 cont…) Beyond personal borders
Traffic
$ale$
Users (Community)
Ranking
Personal branding
Mix of above
Everything- “Be careful, don’t make a universal solvent that you can’t store and don’t make a blog that has everything but useful for none.”

1 cont …) It’s ok, you can redefine Ps
Defining is not fixing forever, You can redefine any P at any point in it. The purpose, platform
Purpose: From person you can shift to topic based, money based and so on.
Platform: You can shift to your domain, leave blogspot & use wordpress, integrate with your site (and so on)
You don’t need to do it perfectly the first time, you just need to start. So go ahead start

2) Define a mission statement
Mission statement is not punch line
Define a clear mission statement & make it visible
You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in ONE SENTENCE....what it does....it's illegal. Isn’t it true for blogs and websites?

2 cont … ) Good bloggers do, we should do even more
Top 6 out of 8 blogs from technorati have mission statement – they are already a brand, we must do it even more ..

3) Value of a blog post – Highlight blogger
Our old formula (Value of a blog post) = Value of the blogger * Time spent on compiling the info * Presentation skills
If you can highlight the blogger, do that. After all blog is a lot about blogger (or the group)

4) Redefine a new home for your blog
The usual homepage is not the best homepage for your blog that is used as website.(Home is where I can see all the navigation paths)

4 cont …) Some have already done it
This is how you can achieve it:
Have a small intro text on the top with a link to a page that can define the starting page of your blog.
Easiest starting page is the archive page (there are plugins available). I said easiest not the best. Best will be a page like the homepage of a website highlighted next to home in the menu.

A small intro about blogger and then link to “about blogger” page. Highlight categories (and let each category be the next level navigation), Top blog posts, other highlights

4 cont …) Home > Archive > ………

5) Let’s redefine breadcrumbs & categories
People land on a random page.
They want to see related pages (may be all)
Home > Archives > Category > Post
Tags: Home > Archives > Tags

5 cont … ) Redefining category
This category pages may become very important page for referral.

6) Have a forum installed
This is great for topic based blogs esp traveling, locality-based & others
Different communication model: Blog, forum, wiki, IM, websites - its own pros and cons.
It empowers users
Use bbpress with wordpress, simple.
Maintenance Time is the only factor, akismet helps.

6 cont … ) Promote “Ask a question”

6 cont …) Even you can have UGC blog
User generate content (in form of blog)

7) Book vs pages – Have wiki
Books are more referred and helpful in long term.
Books are made of pages.
You have pages, you can get more pages from web.
Use a wiki to convert it to a book.
Edit blogs again & again to act like a wiki

7 cont …) Book vs pages – Have wiki
- 145 comments (a lot may be trackbacks or backlinks) &

930 diggs & more …
This is a wiki page for matt cutts. You can create it for any topic, be it code injection, malwares, seo …. so on … just the right links, some descriptions.

8) No options left – Facebook, twitter ..
Facebook is 4th largest country, 250 million users
Integrate to and fro .. From blog to facebook, facebook to blog, twitter – blog, facebook – twitter
Youtube – facebook
& everything else
Orkut == highschool
Facebook == post graduation 

8 cont… ) Facebook

5,000,000,000 mins spent on facebook every day.
1,000,000,000 – content like links shared per week on FB.
2/3 of the global internet population visits social networks.
4th most popular online activity, ahead of personal mail.
3x increase on time spent
10% of total time spent on internet
3,000,000 – avg tweets per day.

9) YouTube is damn viral
We have seen more videos than ever before.
13 hours – the amount of video uploaded to youtube every minute
412.3 years – to view every video
100,000,000 – number of videos viewed every day.

10) 2 custom search engines
One for the blog
One for all the best websites that are related to your topics, compiled by you. It takes time so it is valuable. I used my own search engine more often that other.
http://www.SEOforClients.com/se/ ( I have the best available resource on web marketing and SEO. I keep adding good ones.

10 cont … ) 2 custom search engines

11 & 12) my Best 2 are the last 2
Don’t follow, lead: GREAT opportunity for Indian blog market, Kolkata blog market (A lot more non-techy people are using web)
Fish blog (Different type of fishes and different recipes)
Various reviews, recommendations
Time is short, people value time: You spend time and save others time. I wanted to buy a fridge, “It took me 1 week to decide & check, I wish I could document it”.

Thanks