Archive for the ‘Blogging Styles’ Category

Pinterest Experiment: How To Drive Relevant Traffic to Your Blog

Pinterest is still the pretty and mysterious girl on the block that’s fascinating just about everyone online these days. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have become somewhat addicted to combing through the images you share, repining, liking and adding my own snippets to the mix. If you read here on a regular basis, you may have already seen this series with some tips on how page admins and community managers can use the Facebook Timeline for pages to tell their stories.  The post on designing Cover Photos was actually a part of an experiment I’ve been watching for about the past 30 days. Please be aware that I use the term ‘experiment’ loosely here. There’s no real concerted research method behind what I’ll detail in this post, nor control groups or any of the other stuff that good researchers (past client of mine) make a practice of doing. Perhaps it’s more of a deliberate observation that can be used as a conversation starter. At any rate, here we go… nateriggs.com Blog Post as the Hub For this simple experiment, I started by creating a post on how to design a good cover photo. I made sure to include all the critical elements of what makes How To-style posts worth bookmarking: Intelligent and well thought commentary on the Facebook’s changes and why I believe cover photos are an asset for brands using Facebook pages. Relevant factual information including details on cover photo specs, tips on Facebook’s terms and conditions for cover photos. Examples of people doing it well. In this case, it was a reference to Gatorade’s cover photo as well as ours at The Karcher Group (shameless self promotion, heh!). Ideas shared for free to help my readers get started in designing their own Facebook page cover photos. Pinterest Board as the Referral [...]

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Jump Start Blogging & 26 Completely Random Cables

The thing about grinding your blogging practice to a halt is that it’s incredibly difficult to start up again.  Cold engines and dormant batteries don’t necessarily want to turn over immediately when you twist the key. The result is being caught stranded, of course. Most midwesterners and northerners make a point to keep tools like jumper cables in the trunk for just such “stranded” occasions. Jump Start Blogging So what do you do? What happens when you find yourself stranded as a blogger and you need to get the engine turning once again.  What cables can folks like us use in jump starting? This post is as much for my own head as it is for yours. Can we be stranded together? It’s no joke — I’m absolutely guilty of being stranded for the last few months, stuck with keys to a cold, frozen engine on the very platform that helped me travel the interwebz at high speeds. In a BIG way, blogging helped me become who I am. Yet, I’ve really not been who I am recently, huh. Sorry. There’s a lot of reasons for my choices over the past few months, some intentional and others unintentional. I’m not going to go into right now, and in a sense, it doesn’t really matter anyway. What does absolutely matter, is the jump start. Here’s a first take at my list of potential jumper cables, for me and you to share.  If you have ideas that have worked for you, by all means, add them in the comments.  I could use your help right now… 26 Completely Random Cables for Bloggers Compilation posts make good cables. Curating the opinions of others around you can spark ideas and delight readers. Self analysis is a powerful jumper. Try going back through your old work after a long hiatus. Fresh eyes can [...]

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5 Simple Steps to Learning from Your Blogs Top 10 Traffic Referral Posts

Have you ever done a Top 10 Posts post on your blog? Don’t feel bad if you haven’t. I’ve never haven’t either … until now, that is. I see lots of bloggers do this, and aside from getting your more popular work out in front of your readers, I think there’s some good learning that comes from making it a point to do this once every few months. For one, it gives you (as the blogger) an idea of what other people are reading and getting the most value from in your content. You can drill down to what type of styles work for your audience, what information seems to resonate with them and what keywords are drawing the most traffic for you. It’s also a chance for you to go back and reflect on some of the ideas you’ve written to see if there’s new angles that you can take on covering topics that are already popular with your readers. There are much more sophisticated ways to approach looking at your top posts, but you don’t always need to drill that deep. As a simple exercise, here’s how I’m approaching it. You can use these 5 easy steps if you’d like to try this on your own blog, if you like. Go into Google analytics or any other program you use and click through to your Top Content tab. Choose the time period you wish to report on. As a quick gut check, I’m looking at July 1st through August 1st. Pay attention to things like the number of visits versus visitor time spent on post. Do you notice any differences or similarities? Does anything pop out to you as interesting? Build the list with links in your Top 10 post. Now dig back into your content too look at the differences between [...]

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