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When someone stumbles upon our blogs, our goal is to keep them there as long as possible which is quite often easier said than done. This is your chance to show them how witty, clever, smart, charming, and any other adjective here you are and really hook them in. So we know what our goal is, but how do we achieve it?

• Link to older posts - When you are writing, always keep your older posts in the back of your mind and look for opportunities to link to them. For example if I ever mention blog design, I should always link to the appropriate post on the topic…as I just did. Slick, aren’t I?.
• Show popular posts - Another strategy I have seen used is showing your most popular posts in your sidebar or in your footer. You can make the judgment call yourself on which to show or use a plugin like popularity contest which bases the most popular posts on the views, comments, etc.
• Show related posts - At the end of a post, you often see a list of a few “related posts” which are related to the topic being discussed. You can either choose these your self or use a plugin like WP 2.3 Related Posts Plugin which chooses them automatically.

These are just a few ways to expose more of your blog and refresh some of your older posts. I am curious to know what strategies everyone else uses so please share yours!

Happy New Year!

The new year is always a great reason to take stock of your blog. Look at what you’ve accomplished during the last year and set some goals for yourselves. Most bloggers resolutions will consist of one or more of the following:

• Increase subscribers
• Increase visitors
• Write more frequently
• Develop a writing schedule
• Monetize your blog

While there is nothing wrong with those, I have a few suggestions if you are trying to stand out from the crowd.

• Get a unqiue design - If you don’t have one already, getting a unique design is a huge step to setting yourself apart from your peers.
• Write unique content - I think so many of us got really burnt out seeing the same content time and time again. Think hard on your topic and really come up with some good, solid, and NEW content that will leave your readers wanting more!
• Give back to your readers and commenters more - Our readers and commenters are what makes our blogs grow and thrive. Find a way to give back to them for giving so much of their time to you!

What are some of your blogging resolutions for the new year?

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of our friends. I have uploaded a new theme for our members called TBE-BootDev. This theme is for more advanced/professional members, but I hope you will like it. As usual, this theme is only for our blog forum members. Membership is free though and you only need 25 posts to download some great WordPress Themes!

Once a week or so, I devote some time to finding new blogs that interest me. I really enjoy going blog hunting as it allows me to step out of my box and find something new. Back in the summer I came across a blog by Jarkko Laine which I really dug. Jarkko’s design is just awesome by itself, but he backs up the good looks with solid content as well.

One of my strategies in blog hunting is going to sites I read and check out who is in their blogroll as well as who they are linking to in their posts. Today I saw a link to a site called Shane and Peter and Jarkko mentioned that they had a great community over there as well as some great discussion in the comments. This, to me, is what blogging is all about. The conversation. I clicked on the link, started reading at the top (the most recent post), and made my first comment. At this point, things are looking promising and I am looking forward to reading the next post. After the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th (you get my drift), etc., post to include me commenting I subscribe to this blog. Jarkko was spot-on when he said the conversation happening in the comments was awesome. I love when my thoughts and beliefs are challenged and this blog will make you think.

why do I like it?

To me, this site epitomizes what a good blog should be. They write for their audience and they interact with the readers in the comments. Their focus is on entrepreneurship, personal growth and development, with some web/software development mixed in. To be honest, I think the majority of people would enjoy the concepts here no matter what industry you are in. I recommend you check it out and see what you think. I’m interested to know your thoughts and look forward to reading your comments there.

Have you ever gone blog hunting? I challenge you to do it once a week and see what you come up with!

With the holidays upon us, we are all getting busier and busier. The community is still growing and we are all still yapping away! Here are some of the more recent to highlights:

• How to get stumbled? - Ian from TVs Words Adverts asked how to get your blog and your articles stumbled! The consensus was to be active in the SU community and make it easy for people to stumble your articles! What have you done to help get stumbles?
• How to NOT depend on google for traffic - Fred Sandford from Sportaphile started a great discussion on other ways to get traffic your blog and not relying on google. What do you do to bring you extra traffic?
• Gaining more readers - New TBE member, MissChuck0526 has a MySpace blog and posed the question about gaining more readers. This is a challenge as her blog is very MySpaceish. What advice would YOU give MissChuck?

Our little community continues to grow each and every day. At the time of this writing we have 376 members and we are 4 months old now! There are some good things on the horizon here and I’m excited to be a part of it all!

If you haven’t joined yet, you should do so now! Registration is free!

I know our US friends are only a percentage of our readers but I would like to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving!

A lot of people know that I run the Random Bits Podcast over at Search-This.com. This podcast is aimed at web developers but this last episode is one that I think bloggers can also appreciate. My latest episode is with Matt Mullenweg who is the creator of popular blogging software WordPress. Let me know if you liked the episode.

Some more episodes that bloggers may enjoy are:

• Alex King - WordPress Guru
• Chris Garrett part 1 and part 2 - Blogger
• Peter Flaschner - TheBlogStudio.com Founder

Do you have any podcasts that you would recommend for bloggers?

One thing my husband has told me numerous times is, “For someone so smart, you can be really stupid sometimes,” and boy is he right. I’ve got a photographic memory and typically I can pick things up very quickly, but there are those times that some things just don’t sink in and I wonder if I will ever get it. When I hit these road blocks it is usually because I am unable to relate the information given to me to some kind of real-world experience and I really need that.

There are so many blogs giving information out there and everyone is trying to look like an expert in their industry, but is anyone really learning anything? Quit talking AT your audience and talk WITH them. Make it easy for people to understand your message by telling them a story. I recently read two blogs that did just this, and both posts struck a chord with me.

• Linda Jenkinson writes about freelance tips and she recently wrote a post about measuring your success in the freelance world. This post stood out to me because she found a way for me to relate to it. She starts out by first telling me a story about fishing. She then makes the transition and connection to her message.
• The Foo today posted an article about taking things one step at a time. He took a similar approach as Linda in that he told us a story and then he went on to relate the story to his message without missing a beat.

As children we are all told stories by our parents, and all of these stories have a message in them. If my mom simply said “Don’t lie”, I wouldn’t understand WHY I shouldn’t lie. So instead she told me the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and I began to understand the reasoning behind it all. Many of us still need that extra hand-holding and even for those that don’t, telling a story goes along way to allowing your readers to relate to the subject matter, and in result, with you.

How often do you use stories in your blog posts? I’d like to see your best one.

Everyone is trying to get into the “premium themes” game and apparently, WordPress.com is no different. They are thinking of having a theme marketplace to sell “premium” themes. These themes will need to be of a certain quality in order to make it in the marketplace, but it’s a way to let designers earn a little something from their themes. If it is sold for $50 and 20 people download it, that’s $500.

Sounds like a win/win scenario right? Not exactly. All themes will be free for any WordPress.org user but WordPress.com user’s, you have to pay. This doesn’t make that much sense to me for a couple of reasons.

1. A big reason people have their blog at WordPress.com is because they don’t want to pay for hosting. Why would they pay for a premium theme?
2. To me the people you would want to target are WordPress.org users. I know if I pay for a premium theme, i will want control to modify it, if even a little bit.

What do you think about this? Who really benefits from this? It will be interesting to see how this plays out and what percentage of the cut WordPress.com gets. The idea in general, is a good one, but I just don’t quite get the business model they may use.