Today your task in the 31 Day Project is a fairly simple one – it’s to Email one (or more if you have time) one of your ‘old timer’ readers.

Do you have readers that have been reading your blog since the ‘early days’ of your blogging? You know the ones, they’ve been commenting and contributing away to the point where they’ve almost become part of a the scenery on your blog.

These readers play a big part in making your blog what it is. Their comments are actually content that is being added to your blog, their involvement brings a sense of community and makes it a more vibrant place and their input adds to the knowledge base of your blog.

It’s not just new readers that you should be emailing a welcome email – but old ones too.

Shooting these readers a quick email thanking them for sticking with you and for adding value to your blog is something that I’m sure would create a great impression and build the loyalty even further.

PS: don’t have any ‘old timer’ readers because your blog is too new? Pick one of the other tasks from the last 5 days (they are listed at the bottom of this post) to repeat today.

Today your task in the 31 Day Project here at ProBlogger (this is Day 5) is to Conduct an About Page Audit.

One of the key pages on a blog is the about page. This page is often used by new readers to a blog to gather information about you and your blog and based upon what they find on this page they could be making a decision as to whether they’ll subscribe to your blog or not.

As a result, your About Page is a key conversion page on your blog and it therefore needs to be reworked regularly.

As a result it’s essential that you provide up to date, useful and well written information on this page.

Include compelling reasons for people to keep tracking with your blog and provide them with the means to do so within the content (RSS, newsletter etc).

Take some time today to do an audit of your About Page. What does it communicate? How could you improve it?

I’m going to take some time out this week in the lead up to my blog’s redesign launch to rework mine – so join me and share what you learn in comments below.

I’ve written a previous post on some of the aspects to include in an About Me Page which might help you as you do it.

Today’s task in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project is to dig back into your archives and do some interlinking of posts.

As you add more and more content to your blog there will be more and more opportunity to link your posts together so that readers can view more pages of your blog. It’s also won’t hurt the search engine ranking of those posts that you interlink as internal links count in SEO (not as much as an incoming link from an external site – but it still helps).

I find that I naturally add links from new posts to older ones as I write the newer posts – however the other way around (links in old posts to new ones) takes a little intentionality.

When I do this (I generally set aside a few hours every six months for it) I generally do it in one of two ways:

1. Add a ‘read more on this topic at…’ link at the bottom of your post and then list other related posts (of course many of you will use a ‘related posts’ plugin to do this for you)
2. Add links inside the post itself. I find that these work pretty well at getting people to visit other pages on your blog as they are a little more natural

As I say – the plugins are great (and I use them on all of my blogs) but when I’ve tracked clicks on my pages I find that in content links get actual clicks at a much higher rate than the ‘related posts’ at the end of articles.

So take a few minutes today to go back to some of your earlier work and identify other posts in your archives that you might have written since that you could link to.

Your task today in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project is to find and become a member of a web forum in your niche.

Why Forums?

I find forums to be a very worthwhile type of website to join and participate in for a number of reasons:

• Relationships – good forums can be incredible communities with a lot of good personal interaction between members. Some of the people that I have worked with more closely over the years are people I have met in forums.
• Profile/Branding – participate in a forum well and you can build your own profile and brand. I’ll never forget the power that ‘Google Guy’ (Matt Cutts) used to have on webmaster forums. He, as a Google employee, used to have incredible influence (and still does today under his own real identity).
• Learning/Post Ideas – one of the best parts about participating in a forum is that as you use them you’ll find yourself with a lot of new knowledge and potential post ideas. Forums are full of threads from beginners in topics asking questions. Grab these questions and answer them on your blog. You can also get scoops on stories from forums if you monitor them well.
• Readership – I’ve put this last because for me it’s not the reason I use forums the most – however I do know some bloggers who generate a lot of traffic from forums. A well read forum can have tens (and hundreds) of thousands of readers – a well placed link back to your blog can have serious impact.

There are plenty of forums out there on most topics. Go on a forum hunt today and when you find one that has a similar topic to your blog sign up and become an active member. To find them it’s usually as simple as searching Google for ‘your topic forum’ (try a few of your main keywords).

So what do you do when you find and have joined a forum?

I guess it depends partly upon the forum and how it operates – but here are a few starting points:

• be a good member and let your reputation grow – it’s the same as with blogging – as you add value to the forum over time with helpful posts, people will want to know more about you and will either PM you or check out your profile page (make sure your link is on it)
• spend time getting to know the forum’s culture – every forum is different – they will not only have different topics, they’ll have different rules, etiquette etc. Before rushing in and promoting your blog, get a feel for the forum. Watch how people post, see what topics are most popular, identify key members.
• make strategic friends - every forum will have members that are more connected and powerful than other members. While I’m not suggesting you make friends just to manipulate them I think it can be smart to be in contact with key players. I learned this a few years back when I joined a forum and found that linking to my own blog had little or no effect – however when one of the forum moderators linked to it, it sent significant traffic. People take notice of these members – they can be useful to know.
• where appropriate, suggest links to things you’ve written as an answer to questions – If they are on topic, helpful and relevant they will usually be allowed (this varies from forum to forum)
• link to your blog in your signature and profile page prominently (although don’t go over the top and make it too spammy)
• Private Message people where appropriate – eg when they are asking questions – the personal touch goes a long way
• break news and link - if news breaks in your niche and you post about it on your blog before anyone in the forum writes about it then this is often a good way of driving traffic. Similarly rumor posts can do quite well in some forums

The level that you can actively promote your blog will vary a lot from forum to forum so you’ve got to get to know the culture of the forum before doing too much. For me it’s more of a long term reputation building exercise than a quick term traffic builder.

I’m by no means the most prolific forum user – but I have found them to be a very useful place to participate in. If you’re using forums, feel free to share your tips as comments.

Today is Day 2 in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge and today your task is to Do a First Time Reader Audit on your blog.

Get a friend or family member who has never read your blog before and sit them down at a computer.

Load your blog up and let your friend surf it.

Don’t talk to them as they do – but watch carefully how they use your blog.

• How do they navigate?
• Where do they click?
• What do they pause to read?
• What do they skip over?

Once they’ve surfed your blog ask them some questions about the experience.

• What were their first impressions?
• What did they first think your blog was about when they arrived at it?
• Did they find it easy to read/navigate/understand?
• What did they ‘feel’ when they first arrived at your blog?
• What suggestions do they have on how you could improve your blog?
• What questions do they have having surfed your blog?
• What words would they use to describe the design?
• What are the main things that they remember about your blog 10 minutes later?

It’s amazing to see what you’ll learn by watching someone use your blog.

Once you’ve done your First Time Reader Audit come back to this post and let us know what you learned.

“Your blog will only ever be as good as it’s weakest component.”

Warning: Tangent Ahead

Imagine you’ve been given a task of hauling water from one place to another (over a long distance) – but that all you’ve been given to do the job is a rusty old bucket which has multiple holes in it. There are holes both low and high on the bucket which make transporting water a real challenge.

You’re given materials to patch some but not all of the holes in the bucket. Which one’s would you fix?

There are a number of ways of approaching this problem – you could attempt to patch the biggest holes first, you could patch those which are most prominent on the bucket etc…

But perhaps the smartest thing to do would be to make the priority of your repair work those holes which are lowest on the bucket.

The reasoning for this approach is that over time your bucket will only be able to hold as much water as the lowest hole on the bucket. Common sense really and a principle I want to suggest bloggers think about on their blogs.

Your blog will only ever be as good as its weakest component allows it to be.

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