I'm here at the very first Design Bloggers Conference and yesterday Scott Hanselman gave us a talk on the 32 Ways to Take your blog to the Next Level. Here are a few of them:
1. Moo.com, see all these quotes? Well they are from this great website where you can print business cards with different photos on the back, quotes, the options are endless, and completely affordable. Scott says he gets them printed for special events, etc.
2. Don't apologize for not blogging enough.
I found a blog once where almost every post started with "I'm so busy and important, so sorry I haven't had time to blog. . . " it really didn't make me want to come back.
3. Don't be mean.
Unless that's your job, nastiness has no place. Enough said.
4. Think before you blog.
You can't delete it, you can never take it down. Archive.org is where you can go and even see what your website looked like 5 years ago.
5. Make it easy to subscribe to your blog, for readers to contact you. . . after all the work you do, don't make reaching you hard to do.
6. Decide what should be 'above the fold' on your site.
Above the fold refers to placing the most important or most attention-grabbing content on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper. This means your header should not fill the entire page of your screen when you open your blog.
7. Blog interesting or don't blog at all.
The best tip is this one. He said if you can't find something interesting to write about a picture ask yourself if it's a post or a tweet.
There were lots more but many of them were very technical. I've said this before and I'll say it again, if you want to have a great blog, subscribe to Copyblogger. I don't know how he manages to have every post be useful and interesting, but that' pretty much how it is.
This morning Tobi Fairley is giving the Keynote presentation, stay tuned for a recap of the conference!
If you would like your home to fill you with happiness every time you walk in, contact me.
Related posts:
Maria's Guide to Starting a Design Blog
