I bookmarked a good article from Performancing entitled 27 Tips For Building A Kick-Ass Blog a few days ago, but I’ve only just got around to reading it. It’s a very good post and as with many lists the quality of the tips starts to trail off a bit at the end, but there are still a lot of useful pointers in the list.
I find reading these type of posts useful, even if they do tend to get a bit repetitive after a while, because they remind me of many things I add to my ‘action list’ but never get around to putting into action.
For instance the first tip is to ‘Mine Your Search Engine Referrals’. Endlessly looking at your traffic stats can get a bit addictive, and I’m trying to limit myself to only looking twice a day. However, spending an hour every now and then can pay dividends. For instance I spotted the last time I did an in-depth analysis of my Mint stats that Dennis’ first two FIFA 08 posts were getting a lot of google traffic, even though the game was months away. I quickly asked Dennis to write more FIFA posts, and suggested that he also register a new site, www.fifa2008news.com, and to use the traffic from this site as a ‘feeder’
The strategy has paid significant dividends, and we are both very happy with the results. This site is now ranked #3 for ‘FIFA 2008‘ and highly ranked for many other FIFA related search words, and Dennis’ posts are now accounting for a significant proportion of my overall traffic. Dennis is doing even better with his new site and is ranked #1 for the same term and even higher for other terms. His site is already challenging this site for overall traffic in just a few months, and he’s also just been offered a role covering Video Games for a big blue-chip site – I’ll let him tell you about that.
I’ve set aside some time on Monday to crawl through my stats to see if I can spot any more opportunities. I’ve already spotted one, which I think will be significantly bigger than the FIFA opportunity, and I’ve asked Chris Kline to pick up the baton on this one as he’s the best qualified person in the team to produce the necessary post.
#5 ‘Outsource Your Blogging Chores’ is another tip I need to do more often. I have a managed dedicated server and that removes the need for me to keep an eye on server activity. I’ve also out-sourced the design of a new theme, although I did spend a few hours doing wireframes and looking for ideas.
The next tasks I’m looking to outsource is selling advertising & promotion. I know that this site could generate a lot more advertising if only I had the time to contact advertisers and to follow the sales process through. At the moment I’m only closing deals from direct approaches – I’m averaging about a dozen a month. If you know of someone who may be able to help, then please drop me a line.
The same goes with promotion. The editors on the team produce some great original posts that would get more inbound links if only I had the time to fire off emails to relevant sites. I used to do this a lot in my early blogging days, but I find it hard to find the time now. What I’d really like to find is someone who is willing to fire off these emails each week, to submit stories to networks when appropriate etc. If you’re interested then please drop me a line – it won’t require a lot of effort once you’ve built up a good address book.
Do you have any tips for building a good blog? What tasks have you outsourced?
