DMBMMLF: So Far & What’s to Come

This is part of a series called “Does My Blog Make Me Look Fat?” – a now 10-week series on how to improve your blog doing small, relatively simple things that don’t take up all your time.

Since I switched this to be a weekly thing, I’m going to take the opportunity, as the first in the 10 week series, to go over what has been posted so far and what’s coming up next.

If you stared out with me and tried to keep up, take this opportunity to go back over the first four days at your convenience. This week I’ll be updating and revising the last few posts so you will get some new and clearer information.

So, Week 1 is Look & Feel. This is essentially how all the parts of your site work together to emphasize your site’s mission.

So this week, with your site’s mission in mind, re-read that post.

If you don’t know what your site’s mission is, take about 10 minutes and write down everything you can think of about what you want to say with your site.

Take another 5 or 10 minutes and make what you wrote into a coherent site mission. Now you have a guideline for your site, and whenever you decide to change something or add new content, refer back to your mission.

It will guide you well.

Week 2 is Branding. Branding is just a fancy way of saying “personality,” or how are you different from anyone else.

Week 3 is Basic SEO, or making your site spider-friendly. I’ll flesh this one out a bit with more information about what Spiders or Crawlers are and what they tend to like.

Week 4 is Navigation. How easily people can find information on your site will help you keep them there.

I’ll add a blog post letting you know when the previous four weeks have been updated.

Now here’s what to come:

1. Posts: Categories – What are categories and how to use them.
2. Posts: Content – What you write is probably more important than any other point covered. If you focus on anything, let it be content first.
3. Posts: Schedule – A regular posting schedule helps set your readers’ expectations.
4. About Page – How well is your About Page portraying who you are?
5. Contacting You – How easy is it to contact you?
6. Social Media Integration – Getting your site visible to the right people will do wonders for your visitor count.