What are Your Blogging Plans for 2008?
Posted by Mariella
Time flies by fast. It wasn’t so long ago when we were discussing blogging for a vacation due to the impending Christmas season as well as deciding on what to give our blogger friends for the holidays. Now it’s almost the middle of January and before you know, it’s already Valentine’s. With that said, have you already decided on your blogging plans for 2008? Have you decided on what you want to achieve and then, how to achieve them? We must always have end goals for certain periods of time so we’ll have something to aim for. If you’re blogging casually, that’s a different matter altogether but blogging for business or profit, you have to always seek improvement. If you haven’t been able to decide on your plans for your blog as of yet, let me share with you MY plans for my blogs this new year.
1. Post More
Your number of visitors is only as many as the number of pages in your blog. The more you post each day, the more chances people will drop by. The more people come by, granted they’re not from paid traffic or haters who are on a smear campaign or anything similar, the more revenue you might incur. So far, I haven’t been posting as frequently as I should on my own blogs and hence, visitors haven’t grown for a while.
2. Write more “quality” posts.
While blogging frequently is the key to more page views, quality will ensure people will stay and read as well as come back for seconds. Quality means many different things for people. If you’re a blog geared towards writing, well-researched posts are preferred. However, for others, pics and videos could be considered quality posts. It all depends on the theme of your blog as well as your target audience.
3. Find out more about my audience.
Communicating more with my readers is another one of my plans. If I know what they want, I’d know what I’d write. It might also be best to perform occasional polls about different aspects of your audience such as age and gender, so as to gear your posts more towards them. You can also do the opposite if you’re looking to diversify your readership.
4. Look for a signature blog design.
If you haven’t noticed yet, successful blogs often have their own signature design. It’s also a branding technique. The moment your readers take a glimpse of the design, they’d know what to expect.
5. Study my niches more.
While I am quite knowledgeable about my niches, that doesn’t mean I know their every aspect. If I am to make in-depth analytical and well-researched posts, I need to be more than a tad well-versed about them.
6. Set a Target Visitor per day goal.
I’m setting an average visitor per day goal for the end of 2008. Why? This will compel me to do the first five plans. Knowing that I need to increase my readership will give me the encouragement I needed to post more and write better.
7. Enhance blog monetization.
In spite of the traffic I get, I’m earning peanuts from many of my blogs. This is due to the fact that I haven’t been able to properly monetize them. Hence, one of my goals this 2008 is to start earning at least USD$100 a month for my flagship blog.
8. Set an Alexa and PR goal.
Due to the nature of my niches, I very much doubt I’ll reach the Alexa 100. However, I want to strive so I could at least be in the upper hundred thousandth. I also plan to build backlinks for PageRank. While there have been many controversies about PageRank last year, it’s still a gauge for inter-linking as well as for measuring the amount of your blog when you plan to sell it.
9. Explore social bookmarking more.
While StumbleUpon has been a great help to me, I haven’t had the chance to fully utilize Digg, delicious and Propeller yet. One of my plans is to incorporate social bookmarking into my everyday schedule. StumbleUpon alone has brought thousands to my blogs, what more if I bookmark in other sites and frequently too, at that?
10. Have more fun.
It might sound a bit funny, but last year, I’ve been too serious with blogging, I got sick quite a bit. I believe that if I put fun back into blogging, I’d enjoy it a lot more and there’ll be less stress than 2007.
These are only to name a few of my blogging plans for this year. While it may seem like a handful, proper planning and right timing and execution are definitely the keys to accomplishing them. How about you — what are your blogging plans for 2008?
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