Moving Forward After a Static October
It seems that this is your first time to my blog. Welcome! In this blog I will share my ideas on how you can make a living in a way that feels good to you, your family, your environment and everyone around you. If you want to know more about me and this blog, check out my about page. And if you want to stay updated on my new posts, subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for stopping by!
October was a good month for me because it proved that if I just keep adding valuable content to this blog, I am able to maintain a stable readership. But it was also a month of standing still and holding back. I didn’t take the extra steps required to find new readers, and because of that the blog didn’t grow.
That’s going to change now. This month will be a month of planting the seeds that will create growth. But first, let’s take a look back at October figures.
I have two images to describe October here at Jarkko Laine dot com:
A group of construction workers building a skyscraper. After ten or twenty floors they stop to admire their work. They still come to work every day, but instead of building more floors just sit on the roof looking at the beautiful view over the city. Relaxing.
Or if you are fond of church metaphors, think of a small congregation that has a great spirit and refreshing Sunday services, and just one minor problem: they have become too comfortable in their cozy little church and stopped looking for new souls to save.
It was a great month in the sense of feeling comfortable and spending time with you, the 200 or so readers that form this community. And a great month reading comments from the most active of you out there.
Here’s my high five to everyone of you who took the time to share their thoughts and comment on the posts again this month:
Top commentators, October 2007
These are all great folks, so if you don’t know them yet, make sure to check out their blogs!
And while you’re in the link checking mood, you should also visit the brand new web design inspiration site nice{stylesheet;}. My blog design is currently at rank 9, so if you like it, go give it a vote.
Moving forward
October was nice, but in November it’s time for me to take a step out from my safe little corner and start looking out for more readers.
I have started this process by doing a few optimizations to the blog itself. These changes should make it easier for a new visitor to see what the blog is about:
- I installed the “What Would Seth Godin Do?” WordPress plug-in that shows a welcome message to people who haven’t visited to site before. In that message I briefly explain the idea of this blog and guide the reader to my about page - or to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you have a blog, this is definitely a plug-in worth giving a shot.
- I put back the RSS subscription reminders at the end of each post that were lost when I switched to the new theme.
- And I finally updated my about page to make it clear that this is not a blog about creating software anymore.
These are all small changes, but together they make all the difference when someone is deciding whether he or she should start following my posts more closely or not.
A thing that should bring me more insight on how well the blog layout is working is that I started a CrazyEgg heat map test on the new front page. CrazyEgg is a really cool tool that monitors the visitors and creates a heat map that shows where they clicked on your page. That heat map can then be used to tell if the page is doing its job properly and guiding the visitors where you want them to go.
But tweaking this blog isn’t enough.
No matter how well I tune my blog to turn visitors into RSS subscribers it doesn’t matter if new people don’t first find their way here. That’s why I need to concentrate in creating viral spread for my posts: Buzz.
I probably won’t use all of the 37 viral post ideas from Skelliewag, but those give you an idea of on what I’m focusing this month: creating content that is interesting enough for people to talk about. Content that makes this blog more useful than ever.
I hope you are as excited about this as I am and that you’ll enjoy the ride that they call November. I wish you an insanely interesting new month full of inspiration, learning and adventure. Wish me luck!
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November 1st, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I’ve been under the same clouds Jarkko.
My RSS subscribers skyrocketed to 144 then dropped to the 120 range, and now are climbing back up again. It seems awfully static as of late and I’m going to start actively engaging new readers this month.
I wish you the best of luck!
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:19 am
Thanks for the link to NiceStylesheet Jarkko! :)
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:09 am
Ravi: Thanks, I wish you luck as well! It’s good to hear that your subscriber counts are climbing again. Let’s check our figures again in a month, and hopefully at that point we have both reached our new records.
Deron: The pleasure was all mine. Featuring my blog on the directory was a great link bait - I just had to post the link and show off for my position in the top 10. ;)
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Hehehe, now only if everyone else who is featured in the gallery will do a post about it, I’ll be good to go! :)
Hopefully you can stay in the top 10 and I feed some traffic your way. ;)