A Pair of Two on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
The much esteemed ProBlogger is having a whole bunch of contests this month with some nice prizes but more importantly, the contests seem fun. One of them is to give some blogging hints, so here’s mine.
This blog is personal. It’s got my name, after all, and I’ve been keeping an online journal for over 10 years before blogs and before blogging had rules and techniques and SEO and all that stuff. Therefore, it’s probably a bit unfocused in the sense that it’s about stuff that I’m interested in and that covers a wide range of things from gadgets to politics to TV shows to my various creative projects.
Still - I like people reading what I’m writing and so I do things to try and make this blog better. About a month ago I made some changes and my hits have more than doubled. Why? Not exactly sure but here are my three best guesses and I think they’d apply to any blog.
1) I Added Images To Every Post
By using Creative Commons licensed pictures on every post, I’ve found a free and legal way to make my blog look a lot nicer. I use Flickr’s advanced search engine with a filter for CC licensed stuff but lately I’ve been using BeholdSearch to find some extraordinary images.
2) I Watch My Hits And I Write To Them
I used a service call StatsInsight which gives me real time updates on my visitor stats and where they re coming from. Sometimes, I’m suprised by a lot of hits on a subject. For instance, I wrote a post on the videogame Bioshock and how it’s based partially on the writings of novelist / philosopher Ayn Rand.
Once I saw the hits were coming, I made sure to research and write more on the subject. It was something I was already interested in so I don’t feel like I wasn’t being true to myself by chasing the crowd but the stats gave me good insight into what people cared about. I did other posts and almost did a few related posts on Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and I made sure I linked to those new posts in the original posts.
3) Pre-planning
I’m a big fan of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, especially the UK version. I was watching it a lot and I knew I wanted to blog about it. Then I found out there was going to be a US version and I knew I had to blog about it. I had a few weeks lead time and so I wrote a few posts on Life Lessons From Chef Gordon Ramsay that I was proud of - well researched, thought out, and true to my interests.
When the U.S. show started airing, the hits starting really coming in, too. The next bit of pre-planning I’m doing is writing about the episode of the U.S. show before they air. I get my research about the restaurant they will be covering done hours before the show airs on the east coast.
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