I had an email today from two different newbie bloggers who wanted me to pass their thanks onto contributors of the current Group Writing Project where bloggers of all levels of experience are sharing how they’d do things differently if they had to start their blogs again.
Here’s a quote from one of the email I had today:
‘I am loving your Group Writing Project, it’s exactly what I need right now as I’m just starting my blog. The timing is perfect and I feel like I have 50 experience bloggers steering me through my launch phase and helping me not to make the same mistakes others have made. I’m loving it and cannot wait to see tomorrow’s entries!’
Well here’s today’s submissions – hopefully they are just as helpful as the last 2 rounds (there’s 68 submissions now including the ones below).
- 3 Things I would Change as a Weblog Starter by Conn
- WordPress and Typepad and Blogger, oh my! by Kelly
- 12 Things I would do if I had to start my Blog again by JohnTP
- Don’t Let Your Boss See Your Posting Times by Todd
- Darren Rowse’s Group Blogging Project by Melissa
- If I had to Start a Blog Again by Laurie
- Poor Old Michael Finnigan, Begin Again by Thatedeguy
- How I Screwed Up My Blog by James
- Blog Reconstruction Dreams of Time by Paul
- One Small Step for Blogkind by Jersey Girl
- Kill Fifty Birds with One Stone by Curt
- Learning from Experience in Blogging by Brem
- Do Over by Chris
- Digg me Out of This Mess by Darnell
- If I had to Start My Blog Again by Angusman
- How Palm Discovery may have been if I started out today by May
- But Don’t Look Back in Anger by Jan
There’s still time to join this week’s project. Simply follow the instructions here – but make sure you get your submission before the deadline at the end of Thursday!
Reading through peoples submissions of how they would start their blogs again one recurring theme is that they shouldn’t have started with Blogger. As a recently new blogspot blogger I still haven’t found out why. Isn’t what write about more important than having your own domain or catergories? PostSecret seems to do alright.
I think the main reason people mentioned the Blogger thing is that as their sites got larger and they wanted to offer more things on their site, Blogger just didn’t allow it. You have nowhere near the control of your own domain/hosting if you’re using Blogger, and this can inhibit growth.
Alex, I have never personally used Blogger myself and I cannot answer for the users who have but I’m assuming that if they wanted a “professional” blog and a blog that would seem professional in the reader’s eyes (general reader) would be not having a subdomain on a hosted account — a question of credibility could come into play with some people etc. Would you read problogger if it was problogger.blogspot.com? Or would you ask why a “pro blogger” has to have his site managed etc. I guess another example (but one on the far end of the spectrum) is how much would you trust the crediblity of a business if their site had a geocities domain or myspace domain for that matter.
Switching gears and going to the subject of the reader submissions they’ve helped me greatly. I read through some of the first two batches and made some changes to my site and realized what I was and was not doing right. I’m actually featured in this batch which feels good and by being featured I also received another tip on “bettering” my site for user use as in my post I asked for users to comment on what they’d change with my blog.
Thinking somewhat selfishly for a moment, I have to say that the above entries came at a great time for me. Having just begun to get my site off the ground, I find these posts to be indispensible. Reason being is that they are describing what bloggers have done wrong in the past (or neglected to do) and would consider changing for the better in the future.
My particular dilemma right now entails:
1. How to acquire traffic. Link exchanging seems to be a very popular method however what I am unsure of is the time involved and also how effective it is in comparison to other promotion methods.
2. As stated in a few of the posts above; focusing your blog entries to be more specific and writing effective titles as well.
My two favorite plugins I found here are:
1. Ultimate Tag Warrier by Christine Davis
2. Feedburner Feed Replacement by Steve Smith
Darren, thanks for leading this group project! I’ve learned so much, and it’s nice to know I’m not alone in stumbling around from time to time. Alex, for me, the problem with Blogger not having categories is simply this–it’s hard for visitors to find articles of interest. All they have to go by on Blogger is a date range. I’m fearful that once I’ve accumulated 15-20+ months of posts, nobody will have the patience to comb through my archives. Is this a concern for anybody else?
I used Blogger but I gave up and shifted on WordPress because of the categories feature.