How To Imporove Your Blog: Intro, Section 1 & Section 2

We got the very talented Easton Ellsworth to write this 5-section piece on how to imporove your blog.  We will be adding a couple of sections to our blog for the next 3 days.  So, check back for each new installment!  Here is the Introduction, Section 1, and Section 2.  Enjoy!

How to Improve Your Blog
a free guide by BlogCatalog

Welcome to our free guide on how to improve your blog. No matter how experienced you are as a blogger, this simple step-by-step guide will help you make your blog even better.

If you haven’t started your blog yet or just want to refresh yourself on the process of starting a blog, please see our free guide on How to Start a Blog.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this guide.

Section 1: 5 compelling reasons to improve your blog
Section 2: How to improve your blog in 5 simple steps
Section 3: 9 areas of your blog that you can improve
Section 4: 50 questions to help you evaluate and improve your blog
Section 5: Recommended resources and further reading

Section 1: 5 Compelling Reasons to Improve Your Blog

There are many reasons to consider improving your blog. Here are five of the most common ones:

1.   You want your blog’s visitors to enjoy your blog more.

2.   You want to attract more readers to your blog.

3.   You want to make money (or make more money) with your blog.

4.   You want to feel more satisfied with your blog.

5.   You want others to see your blog as more valuable.

In the end, all of the above reasons may actually just be means to an end.

For instance, maybe you want to attract more readers to your blog in order to get more people to join your organization and change the world somehow.

Or maybe you want others to see your blog as more valuable in order for you to be able to sell it to someone at a higher price.

Section 2: How to Improve Your Blog in 5 Simple Steps

The bad news: Improving your blog is not always easy.

The good news: The blog improvement process is usually simple in nature.

Here is a basic five-step method to help you improve your blog. It’s a pattern you can follow no matter what kind of changes you want to make to your blog.

You’ll notice that you can apply these steps to improving your home, your car, your bowling average or just about anything in your life.

That’s because improving a blog, like improving most things in life, is a challenge of the mind more than anything else.

Step 1: Figure out where you are.
Step 2: Decide where you want to go.
Step 3: Decide how to go there.
Step 4: Go there.
Step 5: Repeat steps 1-4.

Next, we’ll explore each of these blog improvement steps in more detail.

2.1: Figure out where you are.

Take a close look at the current state of your blog. What do you know about it? What seems to be working well? What seems to be a point of weakness?

Remember that you can always ask other people to evaluate your blog too. BlogCatalog has an entire discussion area dedicated to blogging help if you’d like to start there.

Try to measure and quantify everything you can about your blog and keep track of it on a regular basis. This can really make figuring out the state of your blog a lot easier.

For example, if you want to increase your blog traffic, the first thing you should do is find out exactly how many people are really visiting your blog – and who they are. There are many free or cheap blog traffic analysis tools – Google Analytics, Performancing Metrics, Site Meter and Statcounter, to name a few – that you can use to help you determine where people are coming from when they find your blog, how long they stay on your blog, and where they go when they leave.

2.2: Decide where you want to go.

Once you know where you are, you can set a clear goal to get somewhere else.

For example, if you want to improve your blog design and you know from all the research you’ve done that most people who visit your blog love the color scheme but hate the layout, then maybe your goal can be to switch to a different layout in the next 14 days. Once you make the change, you can ask your blog visitors again how they like the layout.

When deciding what to do and where to go to make your blog better, you may sometimes find it hard to determine whether something is really worth the time, sweat and/or money to improve. Here are five simple questions you can ask yourself to help you make these decisions:

1.   How important is it that I improve this aspect of my blog?

2.   How urgent is it?

3.   How easy will it be?

4.   How quick will it be?

5.   How inexpensive will it be?

For instance, let’s say you’re trying to decide which to improve first: your blog content or your blog design. After asking yourself the five questions above, you decide that you want to work on improving your content first because it will probably be easier and cheaper for you to do, but it will probably make the same difference (or perhaps a greater difference) than working on your design right now.

2.3: Decide how to go there.

This is sometimes the trickiest part of blog improvement. It may require a lot of thought to figure out how exactly to go about improving your blog. You may even decide that you need professional help to make your blog better. It’s not unusual to get frustrated at this point.

But don’t panic! You started your blog. You’re in charge of it. If something’s broken, you can fix it (or have someone else help you fix it). If you have a blog improvement goal, you can strive earnestly to accomplish it.

In Sections 3 and 4 below, we’ll share lots of tips to help you decide how to actually “go there” and improve your blog.

2.4: Go there.

Here’s where most bloggers fall off the wagon. They simply give up because this step can take a lot of work.

But go means go. Go means move. Go means work. There’s no other way to make your blog better than it was before, or to get better results with your blog.

So don’t let anything distract you. Don’t let anything stop you. Pause as needed to catch your breath and make sure you’re still on the right track, but don’t stop. Go go go.

Stuck? Exhausted? Don’t panic if you haven’t reached your blogging goals yet. The important thing is to try as hard as you can, day after day.

2.5: Repeat steps 1-4.

Never stop trying to improve your blog. This, coupled with sincere thought and hard work, is the real secret to achieving success in your blogging efforts.

You may find it helpful to perform a blog improvement routine on a regular basis. For example, every six months you could do a major overhaul, and once a month you could make a few minor tweaks. Find a rhythm that suits you.

Remember that each blog is unique, and so is each blogger. And the Web and people are always changing, so what may make blog improvement easy and worthwhile today may be pointless or impossible a year from now.

So, every time you decide to make another push to change something about your blog, you need to take into account the primary elements you encountered when you started your blog: its intended purpose, topic and audience. Everything you do to improve your blog should be in harmony with all of those primary elements.

Enough theory. Let’s talk stuff.
(Check back tomorrow for the next installment.)

Easton Ellsworth helps companies, organizations and individuals use blogs and social media intelligently. information on easton and his work can be found on his blog Visionary Blogging.