Ways to Improve Your Blog {A Challenge}

Learning how to blog successfully is no easy task, especially when you are starting out.  You may be facing questions such as: How do you build an audience?  What is the secret to promoting your blog effectively?  How do you get more comments?

Luckily, you’re not alone.

If you want to improve your blog, but have been putting it in the “one day” basket or just don’t know where to start, then you’ll want to consider joining The SITS Girls as we work as a community of bloggers to improve our blogs during June and July.

The idea is simple.  We’ve brought together an entire community of women solely focused on supporting and learning from one another.  And we are accomplishing all of this using Problogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog eBook.

Some of you might be wondering what the ProBlogger 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (#SITS31DBBB) Challenge is.  In short, it is a program that  Darren Rowse of ProBlogger created in order to help bloggers improve their sites in about a month.  Each day, a new task is assigned that takes only between 10 and 30 minutes to complete.

The best part?  By the end of this challenge, you’ll have learned 31 aspects of blogging and put them into practice. The challenge is designed not only to fill your head with knowledge ABOUT blogging, but also give you some concrete things to actually DO something with the knowledge.

Just this last week, we focused on the following activities:

How To Join a Forum and Start Participating

Although commenting on blogs in the hopes that others will come by and visit you is one strategy, often times, it is not the most effective use of your time. Say you leave 30 comments on 30 different blogs. Is it likely that all 30 people will return the favor and visit you? Probably not.

A better way to spend your time is to join a forum and start participating. Posting regularly in a busy forum can often bring dozens of visitors back to your blog.

Joining a forum couldn’t be easier. If you have a particular niche, then definitely get active in a community focusing on your topic. You should also be sure that you’re using The SITS Girls discussion forum…especially during the Problogger challenge. Joining our community is a great way to connect with other bloggers and get the feedback on your blog that you’re looking for.

To read more about how to put this successful strategy into practice, read this post.

List Posts and Why They Work for Bloggers

Using lists to compose a post has always been a popular and effective technique to grab a reader’s attention and hold onto it. List posts are also notoriously easier to write, when compared to a long, essay-style post.

And while we all may be familiar with what a list post is and how to write one, there are a number of ways to make your next list post as effective as possible, such as choosing your numbers wisely, numbering your items, and choosing a post title that gets noticed.

To read more helpful tips on how to make your next list post a success, read this post.

So, are you convinced yet?

To read everything you need to know about the event, check out this post. It is chalk full of FAQs, a detailed program overview, and a link to a coupon code for Problogger’s eBook. {Shhh!}

The Problogger program is a fantastic way to meet new bloggers, expand your circle of friends, and learn a ton about social media in a short amount of time.

We hope to see you over at The SITS Girls website soon!

Francesca 1/3 of the SITS team and thrilled to be here!  She’s a mom to three children, ages 5, 3 and a just a few months old.  Since starting her personal blog, Francesca has received multiple awards, including recognition by Nielsen Online as one of the Top 50 Power Moms. Her interest in marketing prompted her to earn her MBA in the field and launch her own consulting company, Social Girl Media.  In 2010, Francesca joined Tiffany as a partner on both SITS and Bloggy Boot Camp.  Prior to joining the on-line world, Francesca studied Viticulture & Enology at UC Davis, worked at various wineries in both California and Italy, and was employed for many years at the biotech company, Genentech