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Internet Marketing Coach
Blog Improvement Meme - My Weaknesses
September 26th, 2007 | 14 commentsI was recently tagged by Vlad at the Affiliate Marketing Blog to participate in Dane Morgan’s Blog Improvement Zone Meme.
I wanted to do this earlier but I’m an insomniac so I got 1 hour of sleep two nights ago then had to drive 4 hours to St. Louis for an appointment all day. Then I got back and was too tired to function, let alone write this post.
Anyway, I really like this meme, as we can always make improvements to our blog and it’s a good reminder of that.
The meme calls for us to write about the things we know we need to improve on our blog. Without further ado, here is what I know I need to improve on:
What I need to improve in my blogging:
1. I need to participate more in blog communities like MyBlogLog, Bumpzee, BlogCatalog etc. These are places where I can not only generate more traffic to my blog, but where I can grow my online network. I also need to participate more in communities that are not blog specific like StumbleUpon.
2. I need to get a little more technical and write more in-depth blog posts. I’ve been noticing many of my posts are like “I Think This is cool.” Well maybe not that bad 
but I tend to be a little too basic.
3. I’m still looking for a good solution to my heading problem. My h1, h2 and h3 tags are thrown around posts on all kinds of irrelevant keywords. I just need to find a good plugin or other solution.
4. Although I recently changed my theme, I’m not 100% happy with it. I’d like to change the entire theme once again and possibly use a two-column sidebar.
That’s it, everything else is perfect Not really, but those are a few off the top of my head that I thought of.
-rephrased- I’m tagging the following blogs for this meme because they seem to be doing well with one or more of the things I need to improve:
1. Dev Basu’s Daily Moolah Make Money Online Blog
3. Stephen Cronin’s Web Development Blog
4. Sarah’s Tech and Business Blog
5. Drew McLellan’s Marketing Blog
These are all excellent blogs and I recommend you give them a visit!
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27th September, 2007 at 12:59 am
Hey Josh,
Thanks for the tag! I’d love it if you could specifically tell me what I can improve upon. I know I haven’t been getting the time to post as many authority/pillar posts that I want to and am working on getting more out there.
Cheers —
Dev
27th September, 2007 at 1:13 am
Hi Josh,
I like your latest redesign. Adding the third column would be a plus.
Another thing you should consider adding is navigation at the top of the post that makes it easy to move to the next or previous post. Usually when I want to move to another post on your site, I hit the back button and return to my rss feed reader to get a summary of your latests posts and then navigate from there.
27th September, 2007 at 2:23 am
Dev,
No problem at all. I think I need to rephrase that. I meant that those blogs seem to be doing well with some of the things I need to improve on. I was tagging you for the meme hoping you will participate. (instructions are at Dane’s blog, which I linked to above) Of course I won’t be offended if you don’t, just a request
I just came across your blog today and I LOVE the theme and how you have everything set up. Actually I’ll probably use that theme as well and tweak it a little sometime in the future.
Brent,
Thanks for the compliment and suggestions. The 2 main reasons I don’t like this theme are 1. the single column sidebar and 2. the link color doesn’t make links stand out very well unless I bold them. Of course I could just change that with CSS etc. but I really like the theme Dev is using anyway so I may just go with that.
Great idea with the easy navigation. When I get that theme going I’ll make sure it is easier to navigate.
27th September, 2007 at 2:29 am
Hi Josh,
Glad to see you took up the meme. Participating in blogger communities is definitely a good idea. You can pick up a lot of good ideas, compare notes and develop some strategic partnerships with other bloggers who share a similar topic with your blog.
@ Dev,
Part of the idea behind the starting of this meme was the idea of encouraging people to share an introspective look at their own blog and identify some other blogs that are implementing good solutions the identified improvement areas. I never even thought of the idea of having people make suggestions for the people they are tagging. That’s one of the cool things with these memes is seeing how they morph as other people encounter them through a different view point. That would actually be a pretty cool meme too in it’s own right. Tag some people you would like to get advice or suggestions from and then they could give the advice and tag people they would like suggestions from. Cool!
28th September, 2007 at 3:38 am
I’ll definitely participate in this meme! I’m glad you like my blog design as well, as I’ve worked hard on giving it a unique look. — Dev
28th September, 2007 at 3:43 am
Great, this is actually the first meme I’ve participated in and I think it’s a great idea in general. Looking forward to your post!
29th September, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Thanks for the tag. The trick with h1, h2 .. h6 is a matter of essay writing. H1 is the title of the section (in our case the post or the blog) and h2 is the first item you address point on of five as it were. This is your first title or your section.
With an essay you write title, remit (the title in 50 to 80 words) and then intro point 1 point 2 point 3 … conclusion.
Each one of those (apart from the remit) would start with a nested title. Then each point would be (title-less intro) and three points (also with sub headings). A very complex point might have a sub point with sub points… (h4).
Go play with the wikipedia for a few days and you will see the headings in action making the table of contents. It’s good training for picking the H to use - formatting for these can be done at the style sheet level.
I hope that was not teaching grandma to suck eggs but when I started I would use bold and font tags for my headings (what a mess).
As for point two (the technicals) I find that my best posts are the result of comments I write where I realize that a little research and I have 500 to 700 words before I even need to get to the big words. I try to do this once a week. Sometimes though I get so into an idea that I have to write about it and I’m at 1500+ words or more and wondering if I should break it into parts. I never do though.
29th September, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Hey Matt,
No problem. Thanks for the reply.
Of course I know what h1, h2 etc. are
My problem is I haven’t figured out how to get them around relevant keywords in each post with WordPress. Right now I believe the h1 is going around the post time, which is correct but I think the h2 is going around comment names and it’s hard telling where the h3 is going. Oh well, hopefully the next theme I use will be better with headings.
30th September, 2007 at 8:49 am
[...] was double tagged by Maurice Snell from The Cayman Host Blog and Josh Spaulding from the Make Money Blog to participate in The Blog Improvement Zone Meme started by Dane [...]
30th September, 2007 at 10:31 am
Hi Josh,
Thanks for tagging me! I’ve gone ahead and written the post (the link is in the URI field).
As for your improvements, I’ve just moved from 2 column to 3 column and I highly recommend it! The question is, would you move to a sidebar on each side, or two on the right? I’ve gone for two on the right for now, but haven’t ruled out moving it to the left in future.
I should also particpate in the social communities more, but I left that out of my list. I’m a member of Bumpzee, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog but I rarely do anything on those sites.
Anyway, thanks again for including me. I’ll watch with interest what you decide to do with your theme.
30th September, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Blog makeover?…
I recently got tagged by Josh Spaulding for the Blog Improvement Meme. The timing is perfect because there are a few things I’ve been meaning to do for awhile. Hopefully by putting it into writing, I’ll actually carve out the time to get these done. …
3rd October, 2007 at 3:10 pm
This is probably the first meme I’ve truly loved. So many meme’s just seem to be about mutual link-age; this one lets us all learn how to find useful blogs.
The theme issue is pesky, isn’t it?
7th October, 2007 at 7:05 am
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20th October, 2007 at 2:25 pm
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