written by Darren Rowse

31 daysto builda better

blogsecond edition

eXtra WeeK

EXTRA WEEK 31 DAys To builD A bETTER blogsecond Edition

Publication date November 2011

Published by: Darren Rowse www.problogger.net

Producer: Jasmin Tragas

Graphic Design: Naomi Creek naomi@naomicreek.com

Version 1.0 ©Copyright 2011 Darren Rowse

NOTICE OF RIGHTS All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

NOTICE OF LIABILITY The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information herein. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied.

Neither the authors and ProBlogger, nor its dealers or distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused either directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book, or by the software or hardware products described herein.

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ContentsCredits and Copyright ________________________________________________ 2

Extra Week __________________________________________________________ 4

task 1Define what you want people to say about your blog ___________________ 5

task 2Find out what people say about your blog _____________________________ 8

task 3interlink your old blog posts _________________________________________12

task 4Make sure your posts are easy to find _______________________________16

task 5get to know content sEo ____________________________________________20

task 6Review your calls to action __________________________________________23

task 7breathe life into an old post _________________________________________27

27 must read tips and tutorials for bloggers _______________________30

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Welcome to an extra week of blogging tasks, and congratulations on deciding to take the 31DBBB challenge even further!

In this pack, I’ve included the tasks I replaced in the 31DBBB ebook when I updated it. I’ve also included a handful of bonus tasks that I believe it’s crucial you address if your blog is to enjoy lasting success.

Together, they represent an extra seven days of essential blog-building advice.

These are often seen as the less-glamorous aspects of blogging. That said, they’re also among the most helpful in terms of putting your blog on the map with your current readers as well as new ones.

They’re not just tasks—they’re solid habits to get into as you build a better blog. I hope you’ll find them beneficial.

Darren Rowse

Extra week

tasK 1 Define what you

want people to say about your blog

today’s teacHing

“A brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”—Jeff bezos, Amazon founder

This quote is pulled out a lot by bloggers, but more than just a nice idea, it’s a really valuable basis from which to think about the brands we’re trying to build around our blogs.

Your blog’s brand is the lasting impression that people have of your blog. It’s the things people go away from your blog thinking—and, more importantly, talking about with others.

As a blogger considering your brand, it’s important to ask yourself:

What do you want people to say about your blog?

That’s the question we’re pondering today.

today’s tasK

This is a quick exercise, but one that will give you a lot more clarity about what you’re building.

Grab a sheet of paper, open a text document or mindmap, or go to a whiteboard.

At the top write:

“What do I want people to say about my blog?”

Now, spend 10 to 15 minutes brainstorming answers to this question.

As you work on your answers, think broadly about your blog. What do you want people to say about:

• yourcontent

• thestyleyouwritein

• yourvoice

• thecommunityandinteractiononyourblog

• yourapproachability

• andsoon.

Perhaps another way to ask the question is:

“What words do I want people to use to describe my blog?”

How does it feel?Also pay attention to the feelings and emotions you want people to have while they’re on your blog—these are a big aspect of branding.

Do you want people to feel:

• asenseofbelonging

• contentandhappy

• intellectuallystimulated

• thatthey’renotalone

• informed

• …orsomethingelse?

Spend a few more minutes jotting down an answer to this question.

Task 1 – Define what you want people to say about your blog

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Your blog’s brand is the lasting impression

that people have of your blog.

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Task 1 – Define what you want people to say about your blog

interact

Tell us what you gleaned from this exercise—and see what insights others gained—by updating your social network status using the hashtag #31DbbbDefineyourbrand.

FurtHer reading

I’ve been talking for a long time about how you can Present a consistent brand in your blogging.

For a few ideas on the ways in which you can implement the insights that come out of your brand brainstorming, see 10 Ways to Find readers for your blog by leveraging other online Presences.

And to see how brand insights can impact your blog’s design, have a look at How i redesigned my blog.

today’s notes

When I recently did this exercise for myself, it gave me a lot of clarity about the types of brands I’m attempting to build.

When you’re in the thick of blogging on a regular basis, it can be very easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. This exercise is a bit of a progress check—something that helps to keep your communications on track not just on your blog, but on other media and channels, too.

The simple act of getting these perceptions down on paper (or your whiteboard) helps to cement them in your mind.

Then, when it comes to making decisions about the different elements of your blog—from which affiliate products to promote, to who to interview for your next blog posts—you can make choices that are consistent with your brand.

TIP: Make a record!once you’ve finished brainstorming, don’t just forget about it. Keep a record of the ideas you came up with—mark those pages in your notebook, take a photo of your whiteboard, type up whatever you jotted on that napkin.

since we’ll be looking at branding over the next few days, you’ll need to refer to this information again. you’ll also find it valuable for branding sanity checks in future.

tasK 2 Find out what people

say about your blog

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Task 2 – Find out what people say about your blog

• email trusted readers: If your blog is smaller and you’re not confident of getting many survey responses, perhaps another method would be to email a few trusted readers—those that you know read your blog. Even just a handful of responses from readers can give you valuable insights.

If you use this method, be sure to clarify what it is you want to know from your readers. While you may not ask questions in the structured way you would in a survey, make sure the readers you contact know what information you want from them.

• run a focus group: One blogger that I know recently held a small focus group with a group of local readers. She had them all meet at a cafe and shouted the group morning tea in return for their insights into how she could improve her blog.

This is a good way to get very candid, on-the-level feedback from readers. It also lets you get insights from facial expressions and tone of voice that you’ll never receive in an email or survey. And there’s an added bonus: the blogger found that the face-to-face interactions were not only great for getting feedback, but also for building relationships with a few readers.

today’s teacHing

Yesterday we did a little exercise to gain clarity around the branding of our blogs. The idea was to simply list what you want your readers to think, say, and feel about your blog.

Today I thought I’d share a follow-up exercise—another one that I use on my own blogs from time to time.

The idea of yesterday’s exercise was really to crystallize in your mind the type of brand you want to build, and that exercise can be powerful in framing how you move forward as a blogger.

However, the reality is that in many cases what you want your brand to be, and what it actually is, are quite different.

So what is the reality of your blog’s brand? How can you find out how people actually see your brand?

The simplest way to find out is to ask people—and that’s what we’re going to do today.

today’s tasK

There are a variety of ways to ask your readers how they see your blog’s brand. Let me suggest a few:

• start a survey: If your blog already has regular readers, a great way to get their insights is to set up a simple survey using a tool like surveyMonkey, and invite your readers to fill it out.

Design the survey so that you get an idea of how your readers see and feel about your brand now. Shape your questions so that you can get an idea of what it is about your brand that they love—and loathe. If you like, include questions about things like your logo, brand name and tagline, and other visual elements of the blog.

Surveys can be particularly good because they offer participants anonymity, and that can increase the likelihood of real and raw responses. Just be ready for some honest and sometimes confronting answers!

Surveys can be particularly good because they offer participants anonymity, and that can increase the

likelihood of real and raw responses.

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Task 2 – Find out what people say about your blog

today’s notes

To get the insights you want from readers, you’ll need to think carefully about the questions you’ll ask—whatever research method you choose.

This sciencebuddies article explains the different types of questions you might use in a survey, but the advice there may also help you think of some more open-ended questions that you might ask readers in a focus group, for example.

Personally, I find that a genuine approach works when I’m seeking information about user perceptions. So if you’re thinking, “How do readers see my logo? Do they like it? What does it tell them about my blog?” then those are probably pretty good questions to ask.

Rather than getting too academic in the way you frame a question, just ask what’s on your mind. Then perhaps have someone else read over your questions, so you can pick up any that are confusing or obscure before you ask them of real users.

TIP: Collate your research resultsWhether you watched your friend use your blog, or you received hundreds of survey responses, it’s important that you make sense of your research.

be sure to keep a record of the research itself in some way. you might use a video recorder for in-person research, or download the results of your survey in a spreadsheet.

Take a close look at it and try to draw some conclusions about what it tells you. Then store it safely, perhaps with the branding goals you came up with. Again, we’ll be using this information in the coming days.

• ask a friend: If your blog is really new, or you don’t know any of your readers, why not ask a real-life friend to test your blog for you? Ask them to sit down at your blog, read over it for 15 minutes, and then give you feedback on what they think about it.

Another thing you can do in this situation is to actually watch your friend surf over your blog—don’t interrupt them, just watch how they use it. What navigation links do they click? What problems do they have leaving comments?

This can be an illuminating experience. If you like, ask the person to tell you what they’re thinking as they move around your site. This might make them feel a bit weird—and since they’re your friend, you may not get a completely unbiased view of things—but it will probably reveal more than a few perceptions of your brand that you weren’t aware of.

How ever you do it, the key with this research is to try to get inside your readers’ heads, and learn about how they see your blog—particularly the lasting impressions it leaves them with.

If your blog is really new, or you don’t know any of your

readers, why not ask a real-life friend to

test your blog for you?

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Task 2 – Find out what people say about your blog

interact

What brand research method did you use? And what did you discover about how readers see your blog’s brand? Tell us on your blog or social media using the hashtag #31DbbbbrandResearch.

FurtHer reading

The Web Marketing Ninja shows how both brand and market research fit into the overall marketing picture in his post, online Marketing: the onion you should Peel.

For an example of a survey (just a little poll, but one that produced a lot of information) I ran, see How bloggers Make Money online Without blogging.

tasK 3 interlink your old

blog posts

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Task 3 – Interlink your old blog posts

2. seo: Search engines look at the links within a blog to find content to index but also to work out how to index and rank content. Links from other blogs to your blog are the ultimate way to start ranking highly in Google, but internal links also count.

3. increase page views: Inserting links into old posts increases the chances of a blog visitor viewing more than just one page of your blog. This has a couple of benefits. The first is that it can help you earn more from that visitor if you’re running CPM (cost per impression) advertising. The second reason is that by getting them to look at more pages of your blog, you’re creating a bigger impression on the visitor. I find that when someone views more than a single page on a blog, they’re more likely to remember it, subscribe to it, comment upon it, and become a regular and loyal reader of it.

While these three benefits all seem fairly small when you think about the advantages a single link might bring, if you start to build the interlinking of posts into your daily blogging experience, the cumulative impact on your blog will be significant.

today’s teacHing

Today I’m presenting you with a task that’s perhaps a little less involved than some of the others we’ve done so far. I wanted to give you a task that would help improve your blog but wouldn’t take too long to learn or implement. That said, this is a task that you could easily dedicate a lot of time to if you have time on your hands.

Your task today is to spend ten minutes interlinking previously written posts in your archives.

Why is interlinking posts powerful?There are three main reasons why I regularly dedicate time to go over old posts on my blog and find ways to update them with links to my newer blog posts.

1. usefulness to readers: My primary motivation for interlinking posts is to make my blog more useful by providing a better experience for my blog readers. If a reader comes to my blog and finds a post that not only answers their question, but also provides further reading and suggestions for exploring related topics, they’re more likely to go away satisfied. A satisfied reader is what I’m aiming for—they’re more likely to return (interlinking helps to make your blog sticky) and tell their own network about their experience.

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Task 3 – Interlink your old blog posts

TIP: Make interlinking posts a regular taskWhile i’m suggesting that you set aside some time today to interlink some of your old posts, i’d also highly recommend that you build this practice into your blogging on a regular basis. i spend 10 or 15 minutes a week hunting for opportunities to do this, but also find myself doing it in my daily blogging practice as i’m writing new posts.

As you write a new post, train yourself to be thinking about the content you’ve already written that relates to your new post. As you identify related content, start to interlink your posts (you can add links in your new post to old content and/or add links in your old posts to new content). if you force yourself to do this, you’ll find that it becomes a more natural part of your daily posting.

3. Further reading: Many blogs have a Further Reading section that appears at the bottom of each post. In most cases, this is a list of related posts that’s automatically generated by a plugin. While this list can sometimes provide readers with relevant results, I find that adding manually chosen links for further reading can produce a more cohesive reading experience. You can add these suggested links both at the end of the post and throughout the post itself.

Take some time now to start identifying old posts that relate to one another and add a few links between them.

TIP: Use relevant keywordsWhen you’re linking between posts, always try to ensure the link text contains keywords that are relevant to the article you’re linking to. This will maximize the sEo benefits of the link, and help your post rank higher for those words in the search engines.

today’s tasK

Spend the next 10 minutes interlinking posts on your blog. There are a variety of methods you can use; here are my favorites:

1. in-post links: I find that this is the most natural way to add links to an old post. All it involves is making a keyword (or words) in your post into a link that points to another post on the keyword’s topic.

2. updates: Sometimes, posts in your archives become dated and need revising. There are many ways to update an old post, but the simplest is to write a new post on the same topic, then leave a link in your earlier post to the new one.

For example, one popular post on ProBlogger is How to Market your blog in 2007. While the post still contains useful information on marketing a blog, it was obviously written some years ago. As a result, I’ve added a link at the top of this post to a page on How to Find readers for your blog, which points people to a variety of resources on that topic. There are many ways to update an old post, but the

simplest is to write a new post on the same topic, then leave a link in your earlier post to the new one.

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Task 3 – Interlink your old blog posts

eXaMPle

Benny Lewis of Fluentin3Months.com has a creative take on interlinking posts. His article the only way to speak a language combines opinion, resource, entertainment, which means it’s highly readable. Yet every single link in that post is to another post on Benny’s site, which makes it a virtual index of his content on the topic.

This can be a much more interesting—and shareable, and bookmarkable—approach to creating interlinked posts than simply making up an index-style list post of links.

interact

Share your thoughts and ideas for interlinking on your blog and social media using the hashtag #31DbbbinterlinkPosts.

FurtHer reading

In his article improve domain authority for better blog ranking, R. Kumar provides some compelling evidence for the value of interlinking your posts.

Google. Once you‘ve made the list, go through each of those posts, searching for other posts on your blog that address topics similar to those of your popular posts. Then I’d recommend you try these ideas:

•Addlinksto your popular posts from these posts to help increase their search engine authority.

•Addlinksfrom these popular posts to other quality, relevant posts on your blog to help to drive traffic around your blog.

Once you’ve done this, why not promote a new post that contains some links to older content on social media? Keep an eye on your site stats to get a feel for how effectively your interlinking works to send traffic to that older content.

today’s tasK

Try to build this task into your daily posting schedule. It takes a little discipline to get into the rhythm of it, but as I’ve explained, it can provide some real benefits if you do.

For bloggers with large archives who can’t remember every post they’ve ever written, one way to help find your previous posts is to install a “related posts” plugin on your blog. This list will often present you with suggestions for older posts that might be relevant to link to within your post.

If you have a lot of content that you’ve never interlinked before, start with the most popular posts. Look at your blog’s metrics and make a list of the posts that receive the most traffic from

For bloggers with large archives who can’t remember every post they’ve ever written,

one way to help find your previous posts is to install a “related posts” plugin on your blog.

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tasK 4 Make sure your posts

are easy to find

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Task 4 – Make sure your posts are easy to find

today’s tasK

To really develop a solid structure into which to fit your content, you need to step away from the blog!

Instead of focusing on the posts you’ve produced, grab a piece of paper and pen—or create a new document on your computer. Note down the key words and phrases that people in your audience use when they’re talking about, thinking about, or searching for information in your niche.

Don’t get stuck on SEO-related keywords here. Your political blog’s most loyal readers might dearly love your weekly “State of the Nation” round-up posts. Maybe that’s a term they use on and off your site to talk about this particular content. If so, write it down along with the others you’ve listed.

today’s teacHing

No: Today’s task isn’t about search engine optimization! It’s about making your posts easy to find on your blog.

Many of you will be thinking, “That’s no big deal—they just come to my home page, and there are my recent posts. Job done!”

That’s fine for your most recent content, but what about your pillar content, the evergreen content you’ve developed, and those series and special features that you honed so carefully?

Once they slide off your home page, are they gone forever?

There are a number of ways you can draw attention to that past content—as well as your newer posts, including:

• informationarchitecture

• navigationlabels

• contentcategorization

• contenttags.

Many bloggers—particularly when they’re just starting out—take a fairly haphazard approach to these elements. But this undermines your blogging in the long run.

Every week, you’re spending valuable time creating great content. Make it findable and accessible, and you’ll get much greater value out of that content over time.

Many bloggers—particularly when they’re just starting out—take a fairly haphazard approach to these elements.

But this undermines your blogging in the long run.

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Task 4 – Make sure your posts are easy to find

So for example, at the end of this exercise you might end up with a main navigation that contains the items:

• Home

• How-tos

• Tools

• News

• Reviews

Your tags might contain some brand names (Apple), trend-related keywords (jailbreak), or product-related names (iPad). Or, you might go the other way, making the brand and product names the focus of your main navigation, and displaying the content types in a secondary navigation or tag cloud.

Now see how closely this basic navigation matches up with the system you’ve set up on your blog. Perhaps you’ll decide to make some changes, and see how they impact your page views over the coming weeks.

In any case, focus first on your content categories, as these will likely be reflected in your blog’s navigation. Identify the most logical way to group your content, given what you know about users’ interests and keyword preferences.

If it helps, think of your categories as the glue between your user’s desires and your blog’s solutions.

Once you’ve chosen your categories, it should be a pretty straightforward task to work them into navigation labels that will, together, form your main navigation.

Then, if you want to provide access to your posts in a secondary schema, create a list of tags using other pertinent words on your list. I’d advise against getting carried away with tags—stick to a few (maybe seven or so) that accurately reflect the key interests of your users, and your brand.

Next, make a list of the types of content you’ve published. You might have posts that describe products, services, or tools; posts that contain interviews or profiles; posts that provide step-by-step how-tos and guides; posts that impart advice, report news, or explain opinion.

Consider which of these content types is important for your readers. Readers may not come to your blog seeking your opinion posts—but they may value the detailed guides and insightful reviews you’ve put together. Give each content type you’ve listed a priority from the perspective of your readers.

The final step in this process has two parts:

1. determine content categories.

2. determine content tags.

I don’t use tags heavily on my blogs, but you might—especially if you display a tag cloud of specific topics on your blog.

Readers may not come to your blog seeking your opinion posts—but they may value the detailed guides and insightful reviews you’ve put together.

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Task 4 – Make sure your posts are easy to find

interact

Did you redevelop your blog’s menu, content categorization, or tag system after working through this task? Share your thoughts with us on your blog or social media using the hashtag #31DbbbFindablePosts.

FurtHer reading

For a more thorough explanation on organizing blog content for maximum findability, see Michael Martin’s post using categories and tags effectively on your blog.

Georgina Laidlaw explains how categories can play into your editorial scheduling in her article easy content scheduling for bloggers.

eXaMPle

The Copyblogger navigation is clear and unambiguous. It very strongly reflects the potential needs that the site’s users want fulfilled, and the questions they need answers to.

The site uses a global, functional navigation that includes Home, About, Software, Archives, and Contact links. It also contains a main navigation that’s focused on content topics:

• Copywriting

• ContentMarketing

• SEOCopywriting

• EmailMarketing

• KeywordResearch

• LandingPages

• InternetMarketing

That’s it: there are no tag clouds or subnavigation menus. There’s just these two, very functional navigation systems, which provide immediate access to content using the words users are familiar with.

today’s notes

Remember that your navigation is like a roadmap to your blog, and your brand. I’ve given a basic explanation of a typical navigation system here, but anything goes—depending on your blog.

On ProBlogger, I don’t display content tags, and my main navigation contains these categories:

• Home

• Blog

• Forum

• Workbooks

• Book

• Jobs

• MakeMoney

• Archives

At a glance, this navigation—coupled with the strong ProBlogger branding—gives readers an instant snapshot of what they can find on my blog.

tasK 5 get to know

content sEo

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Task 5 – Get to know content SEO

Which of these items do you use? Which are you unsure of? Spend some time reading the network’s Help documentation on those features you’re not using—simply making the most of this functionality is essential blogging SEO.

Now, within the post content area, select the Insert Link button. Does it contain a Title field as well as a ULR field? If so, you can add keywords to your links. If not, seomoz shows how to add a Title to your link’s HTML.

Now click on the image or media button in the content field. Images can also be tagged with keywords—if you’re not making use of image ALT text, descriptions, and captions, you should be. Also make sure the filenames of your images are named appropriately for the topic of your post; see this daily seo blog post for details.

It’s easy to make adding this content part of your regular blogging routine, so if you’re not doing it already, try it on your next few posts and see how quickly you get into the swing of it. Pretty soon, basic blog SEO can become almost effortless.

today’s teacHing

Whether you love it or loathe it, basic SEO really isn’t that difficult to implement on your site. The main blog networks provide a range of tools by default to help you optimise your content.

Today’s task is to get to know those features, and understand how you could use them to boost the search rank of your content.

today’s tasK

Each blogging network provides different SEO-related functionality, and if you’re using WordPress there are a number of plugins that you can add to enhance that functionality even further. But the information provided here is network-independent.

Open up a browser and navigate to your blog’s admin area. Hit the New Post link. If you haven’t used your network’s SEO functions before, find the Help page and open it in a new tab in case you need to do a search.

Now, look to see which of these capabilities is included in your blogging interface:

• Categories

• Tags

• Metatags

• Metakeywords

• Metadescriptions

• CustomURLs

If you haven’t used your network’s SEO

functions before, find the Help page and open it in a new tab in case you need to

do a search.

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Task 5 – Get to know content SEO

interact

Love SEO? Or hate it? Share your feelings about today’s task on your blog or social media, using the hashtag #31DbbbContentsEo.

FurtHer reading

For a detailed explanation of keyword research, see Moon Hussain’s post, How to use seo Wisely for long-term Profits.

SEO isn’t just about keywords and meta tags. Relevancy and reputation matter to the search engines, and John Hoff explains how in his article being relevant and reputable—google’s sweet spot.

SEO goes beyond your blog—David Cowling shows how to SEO your social media profiles and pages in Maximize social Media traffic to your blog.

today’s notes

Anyone who’s spent any time with SEO knows that there’s a lot to it, and once you get hooked, it can become something of an obsession.

Yet there’s a large portion of bloggers who aren’t that inspired by SEO, and I’m probably closer to this end of the spectrum than the other.

The fact is that SEO should really be regarded as an essential part of building your readership and profile. You don’t have to love it—but as today’s task shows, blog networks have made content SEO pretty easy.

It doesn’t take long to get into the routine of supplying the necessary SEO details for the posts you publish. And do keep an eye on your organic search traffic over the coming weeks to see the impact of your work.

tasK 6 Review your

calls to action

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Task 6 – Review your calls to action

That’s a long list! Your blog might have more CTAs than this, but let’s stick with these ones for now.

As you start to look around your site, paying attention to your CTAs, ask yourself these questions—and make notes on your answers.

Are CTAs of each type consistently presented?

Is every clickable button presented the same way, or are some designs different? What about the buttons’ text—do you use the same CTA, like “Click here” consistently for generic buttons, or are some “Click me”, or “Okay”, or something else?

To reduce the amount of thinking users have to do, you might decide to standardize CTAs of a certain type—making all generic button text read “Okay”, for example, and making all buttons look the same. Of course, this generic CTA won’t apply in all cases. Sometimes you need Buy or Download or Contact buttons. But maybe each of those needs to be standardized, too?

today’s teacHing

We bloggers are always talking about techniques to boost readership, engage visitors, build loyalty, and monetize our blogs.

An important element in achieving each of those goals is the call to action, or CTA. A call to action is a word or phrase that prompts the reader to do something.

At least, that’s what it should do.

But many calls to action either fail at this task, or aren’t as successful as they could be.

We’ve all heard of ad blindness, but I wonder if there’s a bit of CTA blindness on the web too. How many calls to action do you think you’d see in a normal day online? 300? 3,000? To be effective, our calls to action really need to be extremely well honed, carefully presented, and—if they’re going to become more effective over time—consciously monitored.

How are your calls to action? Today, we’ll take a close look at them.

today’s tasK

Today’s task requires that we identify and then review our calls to action.

But what constitute calls to action on your blog? I think they include:

• clickablebuttons

• subscriptionboxes

• navigationlinks(e.g.NextPagelinks)

• socialmediabuttonsorsharinglinks

• RSSfeedlinks

• emailafriendlinks

• invitationsforreaderstocommentonposts

• yourcontactform.

A call to action is a word or phrase that prompts the reader to do something.

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Task 6 – Review your calls to action

are there gaps in your cta strategy?As you look around your blog, you may be able to identify CTA opportunities that you’re not yet making the most of. Even small, subtle changes can make a difference to the pulling power of your CTAs—you don’t need to go overboard to get better results.

Have a think about your page layouts, placement possibilities, and any CTAs you’ve declined to use until this point. What could you try out? Why not make a few tweaks to your CTA strategy and see what happens over the next week or ten days? You might be surprised by the results.

do the ctas reflect your branding?Really great CTAs cut through the noise surrounding readers, and speak to them directly. If your CTAs are going to really jump off the page, they may need to reflect your brand.

Anyone can produce a grey-box button with “Click here” written on it, or finish each blog post with the words “Please comment below”. But does that reflect your brand’s unique personality?

Take a look at your most generic CTAs and brainstorm some ways you can make them more closely express your brand values. Don’t go too far with this, though. There’s no point sacrificing usability for creativity, especially if your goal is to boost your CTA’s effectiveness. Finding the right mix of brand and function is key.

are the ctas well positioned?A CTA needs to be seen to be acted on. But, with the competing priorities of blog page design, you might find that some of your more important CTAs have been pushed below the fold on some pages. Perhaps when you look at the page, even CTAs that appear above the fold aren’t eye-catching.

Don’t get too focused on above-the-fold positioning, though. A CTA that invites readers to comment on your post will probably need to be positioned at the post’s conclusion if it’s to make logical sense, and spark immediate action.

A CTA that invites readers to comment on your post will probably need to be positioned at the post’s conclusion if it’s to make logical sense,

and spark immediate action.

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Task 6 – Review your calls to action

interact

Did your CTA review turn up something interesting? If you’ve made some changes to your CTAs, or you’re planning to, share your ideas with us on your blog or social media, using the hashtag #31DbbbCTAReview.

FurtHer reading

Regator’s Kimberly Turner analyzes calls to action in detail in her post blogosphere trends + effective calls to action.

One CTA isn’t just like any other, as Georgina Laidlaw explains in her post, 5 sales email Myths that are costing you Money.

Your CTA strategy doesn’t need to be restricted to your blog and email—consider social media too. Matt Robinson explains his use of CTAs in a Facebook Campaign to build blog readership in use a Facebook campaign to Find new Fans.

eXaMPle

Men With Pens provides “world-class web design and web copy to help you hit the bulls-eye of results”, and the CTAs used on this site make an interesting study.

They’ve tuned their “Contact” menu item itself into a CTA: it reads “Contact Us Today”.

Each of the books listed on the books for you page is accompanied by a “Learn More” button that leads to the book’s details. The button delivers what it promises. It also takes the same visual style as the other buttons on the site.

Finally, the Our Services page uses a combination of quirky and standard CTAs to capture as many users as possible.

The standardized button styles are applied to big, service-related buttons on the left of the page. Each button contains a CTA as a question: Need Web Design? Need Web Copy? and so on.

Beside each big button, we see a brief description which includes two links—one informational, and one standard “Click here” link—to more information.

So from this listing, there are three CTAs for each specific service page: a button, an informational text link, and a standard “Click here” link. All potential user types are covered!

today’s notes

I find this kind of task really helpful. By stepping back from my blog, and then focusing on a specific element like CTAs, I find the time I spend on the review much more valuable than the more common ad hoc, as-inspiration-strikes approach.

The other great thing that a CTA review does is help you to prioritize the actions that you want your readers to take.

By making those priorities consistent across your site, and shifting the priorities on certain key pages, you can do a lot to boost your conversion rates.

tasK 7 breathe life into

an old post

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Task 7 – Breathe life into an old post

The update might be anything from a couple of tweaks through to a complete overhaul. If the update is significant, write a new post on your blog linking back to the old one to let readers know that it’s updated. You might also want to think about promoting it on Twitter, to other key bloggers in your niche, and so on.

7 ways to update a post and give it new lifeBelow I’ve listed seven ways that you can update a post. These come from a series I wrote on crafting blog posts, and while it’s written from the perspective of crafting a new post, I think that most of it can easily be applied to updating old posts, too.

1. crafting your Post title: If there’s one element that lets down posts more than any other, it’s the post title. A title can mean the difference between a post being read or not. I’ve reworked the titles on a few old posts and seen them enjoy new leases on life as a result.

2. opening lines: Your post title’s goal is to entice people to read the opening line, but it needs to be a great opening line, otherwise people will stop reading right there.

3. call to action: What do you want people to do when they’ve finished reading your post?

today’s teacHing

let me be a little presumptuous and blunt:not every post in the archives of your blog is up to scratch.

I know this because it’s true of my own blogs. No matter how hard we work on our blogging, there are always aspects of previous posts that we can improve upon. There are also posts in most of our archives that have simply underperformed for some reason or other.

Yet your post archive is a valuable resource. You want it to be the best it can possibly be, and to make it that good, you’ll need to polish up those older, under-performing posts occasionally.

today’s tasK

Today your task is to update an older post on your blog.

This is a little different from the task which required you to update a key page on your blog. In that task, we looked at important pages on your blog. In this one, we’re looking for existing posts that, for one reason or another, aren’t up to scratch.

This might be because:

•yourushedtheinitialwritingofthepost

•yourpostlackeddepthinsomeway

•theinformationisnowdated

•you’vechangedyouropiniononthe post’s topic

•akeyelementofthepost(likethetitle,formatting, or opening lines) was poorly done

•youwerewronginyourpost—itcontainsfactual errors

•youknowmoreaboutthetopicnowthanyou did when you wrote the post.

Whatever the reason, your task is to updateat least one older post.

If there’s one element that lets down posts

more than any other, it’s the post title.

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Task 7 – Breathe life into an old post

interact

How’s your updated post looking? Let us see it—and have a look at those others have been working on—by using the hashtag #31DbbboldPostReview in a social media update.

FurtHer reading

updating old Posts on your blog is an exploration of the why and how to update old posts. It explores the question of when to update an old post and when to write a new post that updates an older one.

This is also a topic I touched on in the video post 5 tips for getting readers Viewing your old blog Posts.

today’s notes

A handful of people dislike this task: they feel that updating posts somehow compromises the nature of their blog and they want to preserve their old posts as a way of showing the journey that they’d been on as a blogger.

I respect that approach to blogging. While I think adding an update to an old post and clearly labelling it as an update differs from this way of thinking, there is an alternative. If you’d prefer to avoid updating old posts, how about writing a new post that extends or updates the ideas in a previous post?

To do this, simply choose a post in your archives that includes content you’d like to update or extend, then write a new post that links back to that post and provides the update. That way, the old post remains intact and your ideas are extended. You can link to your new post from the old one, too, so readers can see the progression (if your philosophy of blogging allows that, of course).

In many cases bloggers simply let posts end on a whimper, without giving readers a call to do anything. Posts with a call to action give readers a next step.

4. add depth: Many blog posts that I read would be much more successful if the blogger had spent just a few extra minutes giving examples, adding an illustration, suggesting further reading, sharing an opinion, and so on. this post explains13 ways to add depth to a post.

5. Quality control: Many posts (my own included) could be improved with a little extra proofreading. Also, pay attention to links that may have become dead or facts you present that are dated or inaccurate for current readers.

6. Polishing Posts: How your post looks has a massive impact upon how it’s treated by readers. A great-looking post can mean the difference between a post being read and going viral, and a post that sits unnoticed in your archives.

7. conversation: For many bloggers, once a post is published it goes off the radar. Yet readers may continue to interact with it and comment on it for days, weeks, months, and even years after. Following up on those comments could prove very worthwhile.

A great-looking post can mean the difference between a post being read and going viral,

and a post that sits unnoticed in your archives.

27 must-read tips and

tutorials for bloggers

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chris garrett from chrisg

•How to grow your google authority

•diggbait, linkbait, Flagship content and authority

•the art of getting things Wrong

yaro starak from entrepreneurs Journey

•How to Write great blog content –the Pillar article

•Why don’t bloggers understand email Marketing?

Jeremy schoemaker from shoeMoney

•My top 10 Worst ideas to Make Money

•Why you should embrace negative Press

Maki from dosh dosh

•6 Fool-Proof steps to Make More Money With your Website

•rethinking blog comments: Much More than Just a Quick Way to get Web traffic

•you’re not Just a Writer, you’re theeditor-in-chief

today’s teacHing

Blogs have been around for a while now, and there are some very experienced people working in this space. Fortunately, many of them are willing to share their experiences and advice to help others avoid reinventing the blogging wheel.

Why not take advantage of that?

today’s teacHing

Today’s task is to learn from successful bloggers.

To help you out, I’ve asked nine bloggers who I know and respect to nominate a few posts from their own blog archives that they believe would be helpful for bloggers wanting to improve their output.

You might choose to read just a couple of the following links if you lack the time today, but as someone who has just read through them all, I suspect you’ll benefit most by reading as many of them as you can. There’s some great advice in this lot!

seth godin from seth’s blog

•How to get traffic to your blog

•How to send a Personal email

•First, ten

rand Fishkin from seomoz

•21 tactics to increase blog traffic

•blogging in an oversaturated Market is usually a Poor decision

•21 tips to earn links and tweets toyour blog Posts

skellie from skelliewag

•a complete guide to Finding and using incredible Flickr images

•How to start or start over building your Personal brand

•25 Paths to an insanely Popular blog

27 Must-read tips and tutorials for bloggers

Blogs have been around for a while now, and there are some very experienced

people working in this space.

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27 Must-read tips and tutorials for bloggers

he talks about the gear he uses, which is of interest to me, and he’s a very down-to-earth and nice guy.

• copyblogger: I suspect a lot of ProBlogger readers will know and love CopyBlogger. I read it on a daily basis because it provides me with ideas and inspiration to try out new things on my own blogs.

It is high on quality and I almost always come away from the blog better off for the experience.

• Jasmine star Photography blog:I often point out Jasmine’s blog to business owners wanting a good example of how to use a blog to grow your offline business. Jasmine posts a great mix of personal stuff, showcase posts that show her client work, and “how to” tips.

I find the mix really interesting and engaging as a reader. I come away feeling like I know her a little on a personal level, that she’s knows what she’s doing (because her work is amazing), and that she’s helping me (because her tips are good).

interact

Which of these posts did you find most useful? Share in the discussion online using the hashtag #31DbbbMustReads.

today’s notes

Don’t just read the advice provided here: take a considered approach to getting something out of it. As you go, have a notepad and pen handy, and consider the following questions:

• Whichofthesepostsandauthorsresonated with you the most?

• Whatdidyoulearn?

• Jotdownsomeofthekeypointsthatyoucan apply to your blog.

eXaMPle

My reading habits have changed over the years, but here are three blogs that I read daily, and the reasons why:

• shoottokyo: Dave, the author behind this blog, reached out to me with some good advice about a camera a number of months ago. He didn’t email me to tell me to read his blog—he emailed me to help me solve a problem I had. In doing so, he made an impression.

I continue to read his blog today because it’s a daily collection of images that he takes. The images are of a good quality,

liz strauss from successful blog

•10 reasons readers don’t leave comments

•the secret to Massive digg/stumbleupon traffic Without spamming

•7 great Ways to connect with other bloggers While you’re out reading blogs

daniel scocco from daily blog tips

•43 Web design Mistakes you should avoid

•How to Find advertisers for your Website

chris brogan from chrisbrogan.com

•50 Ways to take your blog to thenext level

•40 Ways to deliver Killer blog content

•27 secrets to Power your community

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