Last week, I, along with many other bloggers started the two week Blogging 201 course which focuses on Branding and Growth. Here’s a quick recap of the week that was:
Day 1 – Set Three Goals – The first day of the course was dedicated to setting three goals that we need to achieve to make our blog successful (the definition of success is different for everyone so goals are set differently too.) My blogging goals have been posted here.
Day 2 – Audit Your Brand – Having a look at the design of your blog from the header image to widgets and making sure it is consistent and conveys what you want it to convey. I had a look at my blog and the social media sites I was promoting my blog at and started to fix a few kinks that affected the look of my blog. I am not entirely done but getting there. Overall, I am quite happy with the way it is looking so far.
Day 3 – Getting Read All Over – This meant making your blog tablet and mobile friendly for people on the go. This was a learning experience for me because the header I had previously designed wasn’t exactly laptop, tablet or mobile-friendly. I received so many great suggestions on how to fix it but something wasn’t working. I realised the mistake I was making when one of the site engineers Alex suggested that I use the “Site Logo” feature in Customizing instead of the “Header” function. This worked perfectly and now my blog is friendly and kind to all devices. 🙂
Day 4 – Give ‘Em What They Want – I – This included conducting a simple stats analysis to find out what kind of posts, tags, topics are more popular and which days of the week or time of the day are we likely to receive more views. From the brief analysis I conducted, I found that when I post anything during midnight hours or thereafter, (I am from the timezone GMT +4), I am likely to get more views.
Day 5 – Driving Traffic To Your Archives – Making sure that your older content does not sink into a black hole and gets some lovin’. This includes strategically linking old but related content in your new posts, adding the Archives and Categories widgets, activating the Related Posts bar which shows related content at the end of each post et cetera.
I am really enjoying this course and have learnt so much already. Also I’ve met some wonderful bloggers through it. Looking forward to the second week. 🙂
You can email me at thistlesandwhistles@hotmail.com
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Thistles and Whistles 
I like how you’ve summed up the week. It’s good to keep a track and congratulate yourself on progress. I particularly like what you gained out of the stats analysis. A great deal of my own traffic is from the US, which possibly explains the midnight + traffic (if you’re in GMT or closer). I used to co-run a sim in Second Life and had to be careful about timing events to catch US traffic for a similar reason. I’d not thought about using the same logic in wordpress!! Thank you!
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Hi Safar, thanks so much! I felt like I was lagging behind on the last two days of the course and so I felt an overall recap was necessary to keep me up to speed. And yes, I agree! I’ve noted that my traffic is almost equally distributed between the US and the UK and so I think I should start scheduling posts with those hours in mind. Apart from that, I think I should also start noting what people like to read about, although that’s a bit difficult for me at this stage since I’ve just started being more active on this blog and it’s a bit new to me. Nevertheless, I feel more confident about using WordPress due to this amazing course, almost makes me wish I had joined Blogging 101 as well. 🙂
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I recommend it !
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I love this post. Very useful information and made me want to join this course! I might do so! 🙂
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Hi, thank you so much! Yes, it’s a great course! You should definitely join! Look forward to finding you in The Commons (that’s what they call the group thread where all the participants discuss the course and interact). 🙂
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No problem! I’ll look into it tonight 😀
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I have a question. In Day 1 – Set Three Goals – How did you link at the end of the sentence (here)? It is highlighted in blue. There were instructions in Blogging 101 but I do not recall how. Please help a fellow blogger. Thanks. Anne @annepm2015
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Hi Anne, Sure, I am happy to help.
1. When you write/edit a post, highlight the word that you would like to be linked (for eg. the word ‘here’).
2. Once you have highlighted the word, you will find that the “Insert/Edit Link’ button in the Formatting toolbar automatically becomes active. The button is placed to the Align Right button.
3. Click on it to enter the URL of a previous post/external webpage that you would like to link to.
4. Check the box ” Open link in a new window/tab”.
5. Finally click on Add Link.
Voila! The new post is now linked to an old post/page. 🙂
Hope my steps were clear. 🙂
Cheers,
Tx
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