What are you offering your readers?

Do you offer them the information or personality that they’re looking for? If so, they’ve won a treat!

Do you offer them a promising title, and bland copy with no real content? Oops, they’ve been tricked and they may not return.

When you’re writing a blog, whether you’ve chosen to write on a niche topic or a general area, your readers are looking for something from you. Maybe you’ve got a unique voice that they’ve grown to enjoy, or you always seem to find great interesting tidbits. If you up and change that, or lose that zest, you may also lose your readers.

A treat is finding a blog with solid, consistent information. I like blogs like Dosh Dosh, which offers consistent information, solid writing, and information I can actually use.  Those are the kind of blogs that I not only read, but subscribe to and continually return.

You may trick someone with a great article once or twice, but if you aren’t consistent, you might as well just wave good-bye to them. They won’t be around too long.

Happy Halloween and Happy Blogging!

Deb

I think I was surfing through a blogroll list when I stumbled into this blog last week. This blog is an extension of a main site, a feature which I’m sure I’ve mentioned previously that I love. Adding a blog to an already existing site is a fantastic idea, it adds interactivity and gives your visitors insight into all the things you want them to know. It’s a friendly welcome, as if you are standing there to greet them with an outstretched hand and inviting them in for a cup of coffee.

Here you will find 7 wonderful women blogging together about faith, family, food, fun, and fashion. In no particular order. The goal of the blog is to inspire and empower women all across the blogosphere. I found the post titled “just keep swimming” to really be inspiring and true to a lot of things and a great reminder that perseverance is a powerful thing. I can almost hear myself singing “just keep blogging” in my own little Dory the fish voice inside my head.

The voices of these women come together greatly to create this fun boomer blog. And the blog design is fun too! I know I am a broken record here when I say this, the header is taking up valuable page real estate. As you can see in the screen shot above the header alone takes up half of the visible page, maybe even a little more than half. I do love the fixed width, that part is just right. and the header matches up to the content width, but it’s just too overpowering, we don’t get to the meat of the blog right away. And there’s plenty of juicy goodness on this blog to read, Flaunt it!

Just for the heck of it I scrolled down some and took this screen shot to show how much more content would be put in front of a viewer’s eyes just by changing the size of the header. With the amount of space I left at the top all the original elements could still be included, visualize with me for a moment. The image of the women and stars would be justified to the left of the “Boomer Babes Rock” and though it would be smaller it would still give off plenty of fun vibes that I see in this blog.

We see three post titles instead of just one, three smiling blogger faces instead of just one, and lots more good things!

Additionally I have to admit that I’ve added several of the books these wonderful authors have written to my wish list at Amazon.com. I can’t wait to check those out too. Particularly catching my eye was The Woman I Am Becoming … maybe because I am quickly approaching 30, that magical age where we question everything and anything in our lives.

Yes, I know I just posted, but I’m posting again to remind you to back up your files this weekend. Take some time and save backups of everything on your computer that is important.

I have for the second time fallen victim to a complete computer crash and lost a lot of files. After the last time I had taken to saving things on a thumb drive (a great idea, I highly recommend using these!) but I took my computer for granted and I wasn’t backing up everything, and I definitely wasn’t doing it frequently enough.

I lost all my stock images from istock, all the fonts I had downloaded and installed on my computer, a lot of photographs that I hadn’t uploaded online yet. I also lost some blog themes that I created recently and hadn’t uploaded online anywhere yet. *sigh* Along with a few works in progress of ebooks, and writings, and blog things.

So, go make a backup! Do it now, don’t delay. Especially if you’re in one of the areas with severe storms this weekend as much of the U.S. seems to be getting. My power blinked on and off, 2 second power outage, and all was lost. Why are you still here? Back up some files.

I am blog surfing while I have some downloads processing on the other computer. In my link hopping I ran into this blog, and found it quite enjoyable because it’s what a blog was originally meant to be about …. life and stuff.

Here, there is No paid blogging. No getting sidetracked with other stuff. A place where its not about the ratings. Or the Page Rank. Or the linkage or linky love.

Not that a blog even has to be about anything, it doesn’t. But a lot of times we all get so wrapped up in blogging for pay, and blogging for traffic, and all the other internet catches that lure us in. We forget that we are all just people and sometimes blogging can serve more of a purpose, become an outlet, and fill a need in our lives.

At Quiet Time with Carolyn you’ll find tidbits of every day family life. There are bits and pieces about what’s going with the family, books, and just everyday thoughts. Most recently there was a bit of pie baking going on at her house … and you might be surprised a little by who made the pies. And they were for a good cause so that’s even better!

The only thing on this blog I would suggest changing is the very large image because it pushes the content down almost below the fold. However, seeing that this blog is of a personal nature that isn’t as much of a concern, so it can stay or go. That’s the good thing about writing for yourself! Stuff like above the fold and below the fold, and content width, and all those silly details we tend to worry about don’t matter anymore.

I want to encourage you to stop and take a moment to consider your blogging. What does it mean to you? What purpose does it serve? Are fulfilling a need for others, or one for yourself? Is it successfully meeting that need? Are there any changes you want to make in what you’re currently doing? Or if you’re like me you might find yourself wanting to add a new category or a new subdomain to an already existing blog just to have a special space to write certain thoughts.

Where is your blog going? Do you even know?

Let’s be honest, sometimes we start blogging because we want to blog. We’re not sure what we’re going to do with it, but we know we want to start writing. One of the things you can look at is your growth. Are you moving forward, or have you remained stagnant?

Some simple questions to ask yourself is where do you want your blog to be a year from now? Do you want it to be a journal of your life’s events, do you want to gain recognition, grow traffic, or maybe you are looking to share information that you have. Either way, creating a path and thinking about how you’ll get to that point can help you decide what’s working and what isn’t.

If you have a blog on “making money”, have you defined your own goals? Ask yourself how often you’d like to post, and what you’d like to offer your readers. Do you want to have a series of ongoing topics, or do you want to have a beginning, middle and ending conclusion in each post. Do you want to work towards helping your readers achieve their monetary goals, or are you talking about your own? Just by taking a few moments and thinking about the path of your blog, you’ll have a better idea of what direction to go in.

If you find yourself floundering with no clear path, simply ask yourself if you would read your blog…if you were a stranger. Is it relevant, does it offer information people can use, does it offer personality? What is your blog saying about you?

Sometimes it only takes asking ourselves what we want in a path to find the answer. We often forget to ask ourselves that simplest of questions, “Where am I going with this?”