In addition to Reinsurance Blogger, you can take a look at any established blog to see how to get more out of your content and your traffic.
When you check out other blogs (as a learning endeavor), don’t spend too much time on the content (except here, of course). You aren’t trying to learn how to right like TechCrunch or get a scoop like VentureBeat. You want to see how they are using their blogs to retain readers and maximize the value of their efforts. Take a look at the mechanics.
Start with layout. There’s no single right design answer, and some of the debates can reveal religious fervor. I, for example, despise tag clouds. I think they are ugly and can prevent bloggers from tagging thoroughly, which costs you search engine optimization (SEO) results. Yet, some people love them. Look around to see where top stories are featured, whether there’s an integration with Twitter or Facebook and how comments are handled.
Next, take a look at jumps (i.e., the “read more” links). How much content do they show on the front page? Again, practices vary, ranging from only a paragraph to up to 300 words. Some blogs run the entire story on the front page, but I think that’s just awful (it’s ugly and makes headline scanning virtually impossible – and it can cost you some market intelligence).
Finally, take a look at the links within the posts. Some will go to external sites, which you probably won’t do much on a corporate blog, but others will refer back to earlier stories or link to tag searches. This is a great way to invite readers further into your blog.
And, you’re bound to find more. Scan blogs inside and outside the industry – corporate and indy. Get a feel for how these organizations are tuning their blogs for best results. Take the best, and implement them on your own blog.
好文不寂寞........................................
ReplyDeleteGreat post on learning from others. It's true of so many things in life. Blogs too.
ReplyDeleteOn tag clouds. . . I've had a love/hate relationship with them since I started blogging. I had always heard that they improve SEO, and I think the initial impulse is to use them to give readers an "at a glance" view of what you're blogging about. But the problem, as you allude to, is that it discourages thorough tagging because you become afraid of your tag cloud growing to a ridiculous size.
And the bigger it gets, the less navigable it is for readers. It also becomes a huge distraction. And if your blog is very nichey and you don't have many tags, there's really no reason for a tag cloud to begin with.
I've also come to the realization that I myself never use tag clouds on other blogs to find information. I think people normally find stuff through search engines. I.e., they're not coming through the front door, your home page; rather, they're coming in a side door. So the tag cloud is not really doing much to hold readers on your site.
As such, I've recently decided to banish tag clouds from my blogs. I definitely favor a minimalist sidebar the more I blog. I want people focusing on content, and I want it to be highly readable.
Eddie