Blog Exercises: Define Your Community

In this Blog Exercise, it is time to start building a community around your blog. If you have one, it’s time to re-evaluate it to ensure you keep it. We will start with defining your community. Your blog topic should give you a clear indication about demographics of your online community, but it might not […]

Blog Exercises: Patterns in the Stats

As we proceed through this year of blogging tips and exercises, we’ll talk more about statistics and web analytics to help you check in with yourself that you are on the right track. Today’s blog exercise is to familiarize yourself with tracking your site’s stats, learning the key numbers and data to watch. I introduced […]

Blog Exercises: I Don’t Have Any Comments

I hear this complaint frequently from new and long time bloggers. “I don’t have any comments. How can I get more comments?” First of all, let me explain something and I want you to read closely. You don’t want comments. Yes, that’s right. You do not want comments. At least not comments from anyone. If […]

Blog Exercises: When to Hit Publish

In this ongoing series, Blog Exercises, you’ve been exploring your site stats to determine where your audience is coming from and why. Now is the time to explore the when. When do the majority of your site visitors arrive on your site? Is there a pattern? When is the Best Time and Day to Post […]

Blog Exercises: Where is Your Audience?

In this ongoing series, Blog Exercises, you’ve been exploring your site stats to determine where your audience is coming from and why. Now is the time to explore the where. Using whichever as stats or web analytics program you wish as discussed in the post introducing you to blog stats and analytics, check out the […]

Blog Exercises: Statistics and Web Analytics

If you have been following these Blog Exercises for the past six months, your site should be rocking. I asked you early on to define what you do clearly as it helped to clarify your site purpose and goals and your reason for blogging. You were to define your specific audience, part of identifying like […]

Blog Exercise: When Was the Last Time You Got Personal

I walked into a friend’s home and found the fridge covered with refrigerator art from her seven year old. The traditional home often features such childhood artwork but this was extremely precious as the child has learning disabilities and drawing. The artwork was beautiful. I stood there transfixed at the crude scribbles, trying to find […]

Writing for the Web Course Starts June 3, 1013

I will be teaching “Writing for the Web” at Clark College Corporate and Continuing Education in Vancouver, Washington, Tuesdays and Thursdays, June 3 – July 8, 2013. The class will be at the West Coast Bank Building in downtown Vancouver, Washington, just a few minutes from downtown Portland, Oregon. Writing on the web is now […]

Blog Exercises: Trackback Check-Up

It’s time to check your trackbacks. In Blog Exercises: Trackbacks and Blog Exercises: Backlinks you learned about trackbacks, the automatic process of a site linking to yours and generating a comment-like notification to alert you of the link to your article, and helping your readers discover what others are saying about your article. In this […]