Posted By Andy Aldrich on Mar 31, 2015 |
One Simple Way to Improve Your Blog
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If you’ve spent much time around Learn[ED]Leadership this past year, then you’re likely aware of the Learn[ED]Leadership Monthly (or so) Newsletter I publish. Between the newsletter popup, and the habitual “signup for my newsletter” closing sentence, you might start to get the feeling that I want you to sign up for our newsletter.
However, what you might not be aware of is that in addition to the Learn[ED]Leadership Monthly (or so) Newsletter, I also send out a Weekly (or so) Blogging Tips email. As you might have guessed it, this email list is for bloggers who want to be a part of community of bloggers to share ideas, get advice, and get more details on Learn[ED]Leadership. By it’s nature this is a smaller group, sense most of you don’t blog, and I don’t publicize this group very much.
As authors and poets know, writing can be a lonesome endeavor. Add the technical complexity of a blog and it can feel a little overwhelming. So this week I thought I’d post my latest Weekly (or so) blogging email to Learn[ED]Leadership, so if there are any of you who are interested in being a part of this group you can get a chance to check it out:
Hi,
This week I thought I’d take a minute to share some thoughts on a question I’ve been pondering for a while: What happens to my blog after it’s been published?
Now I’m sure that sounds like a silly question, because the answer is pretty simple: It gets posted to my blog for others to read. Of course, that’s not what I mean by that question, instead I’m referring to further off in the future. Better stated my question is what happens to my blog 2 weeks, 2 months, and even 2 years after it’s been published?
If you do any kind of writing, you know that it’s not uncommon to spend hours or even days on a single paragraph. Meticulously, combing over every word, with the hope that when it’s posted people will read it, be moved by it, and hopefully comment on it. Yet, I’ve found that shortly after a quick surge of views the blog fades into the dark, like a leaf drifting down deep into the darkness of the ocean.
So with this question in mind I took a closer look at my site, and particularly my homepage to see if there were somethings I could do to help readers access these “old” blogs. Here’s what I’ve found:
Problems:
- Although, my homepage shows the latest blogs, it’s hard to even access the old blogs. In fact, since most posts are listed chronologically, a person has to continue clicking the “view older posts” button at the bottom of the page to see older posts.
- There’s no organization by topic. Besides The Leadership Project, Learn[ED]Voices, Deep Thoughts, and Blog, there are no other categories that are easily accessible by theme or topic. Even “blog” is too vague, as I write on a whole variety of topics.
Now there are plenty of other problems I could list, but I’ll stick with these two for now. Luckily after thinking about it for awhile I’ve come up with a few improvements that I’m starting to implement.
Tags vs Categories
My site is organized using categories. Categories allows me to create a “virtual folder” that I can put various pieces of work in. For example I have a “blog” category that when selected, organizes all these posts as blogs. Another category I use is “featured” which when selected posts these pieces to the top of my website — I can do 4 at a time.
My site also allows me to organize things based on tags. Now for a long time I haven’t really paid too much attention to the tags I add to a post. In fact, after recently looking I noticed that I had over 250 different tags ranging from “leadership” to “cool stuff”. It occurred to my if I was to go back and be more thoughtful about these tags, I might be able to come up with 9 or 10 common topics that I discuss at Learn[ED]Leadership, and then organize these posts by tag.
So that’s what I’ve started to do. Of course, one of the most prominent tags I have is “leadership” and by searching my sitemap I found an already existing page that was organized by this tag here’s the link: http://learnedleadership.org/tag/leadership/. I’ve added this link to a submenu under the “blog” menu at the top of my main homepage, and will do the same with other common tags.
Although I don’t think this change will add to a huge surge in page views, it at least allows for readers to more easily access my already existing content, which has got to count for something.
Access by Questions
After starting to reexamine my blog organization by tag, I also thought it might be nice to reorganize based on common questions. For example: How can I improve as a young leader? As a young leader I’ve written about this topic a number of times. Therefore I plan to create a new page on my site, that index’s a handful of blogs based on common questions I’ve been exploring. Think of it like a table of contents…but with questions. What I’ll eventually do is add a link with some of these questions to the sidebar and when viewers click the link it will lead back to this “index” page.
So these are just a few ways that I hope to uncover some of the important ideas buried inside the depths of my blog. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Thanks again for subscribing to the Learn[ed]Leadership Blogger Newsletter. Starting soon I hope to take some big steps to grow this newsletter as well as the main
Lean[ed]Leadership monthly (or so) Newsletter. But I can’t do it by myself. I need your help to grow this community. As a blogger, you certainly know other bloggers who might benefit from this newsletter. Consider forwarding this email on so they can subscribe
here.
As always, if you’re a educator, leader, or entrepreneur visit Learn[ed]Leadership to learn more about how to share your latest blog at our
Share Your Ideas page, and feel free to write back with your questions and comments.
Thanks for reading and good luck blogging this week.
Happy Blogging!
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