Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Blog in 2011

I am delighted to welcome Tia Peterson as a guest with her Top 10 tips for improving your blog in the New Year.  Tia is the woman behind bizchicksblog.com an entertaining and informative blog about blogging, social media and internet marketing aimed at helping women (and men) in business launch successful blogs.  If you would like to find out more about Tia you can follow her on Twitter @bizchickblogs on Facebook and at her blog by clicking on the image.

Blogs have come a long way, and the best in blogging are turning these platforms into brilliant marketing tools, publishing giants, and personal soapboxes with thousands of fans.

If 2010 was a good year for your blog, think about what 2011 could mean if you made a handful of changes?

1. Get a partner

Pro Blogger Hopefuls Take Notice: Blog owners are publishers, and publishing takes a lot of effort. When you think about 2011 and where you you want to take your blog, you may want to grab a partner to help you in the decision-making. Choose someone who is a good writer but who is also business-savvy, good with people, and who has a slightly different skill set than you do so you can work together well.

2. Plan your themes for the year now

Break up the year into the four quarters starting in January, and then identify a particular theme for each quarter. Go beyond thinking in terms of holidays and seasons.

For example, for a self-improvement blog, the themes for the year could be:

• First Quarter: Preparing for Success
• Second Quarter: Making an Impact
• Third Quarter: Personal Responsibility
• Fourth Quarter: Attitude of Gratitude

Then, break up each of the four months in the quarter into a sub-theme.

3. Brand your blog

Most bloggers, including me, have a hard time with branding a blog, because it takes a while to really figure out where you want to go with it. BizChickBlogs has been around for about 10 months and I’m just now starting to really see where it could go. So, if you’ve been at it for a while now, take a look at 2011 and figure out what you want people to say about your blog in a conversation with others. What that “something” is, that is your desired branding. Find a way to reflect that in your design, description, topics, and even a slogan.

4. Set a decent marketing budget

Little investment yields little return. In 2011, go big and plan to invest some real money into your blog. There’s no reason not to. Every new year is an opportunity to dramatically improve your blog. Think about places and ways that you can advertise and market your blog, and draw many more site visitors per day, which will improve your blog’s attractiveness to advertisers.

5. Seek a new audience

When you think about who’s reading your blog, do you feel like it’s enough? I never do. Always find new opportunities to grow or even change your readership. For example, if you started out with one idea for your blog and ended up with another, your readership might not reflect the one that you originally envisioned. To get back on the path, think about what your desired readership is interested in, and plan for them instead of the one that currently exists.

6. Re-write your About page

If it’s been some time since you’ve described yourself and your blog, you should probably take another look at it and see if it still makes sense. You could also try calling it something else, or creating multiple versions of it and using those as landing pages for your different social media profiles.

While you’re at it, take a look at all of your structural pages and align them with your desired readership, advertising goals, branding, and overall vision.

7. Consider paid subscriptions

People will pay for what they believe has significant value. A lot of bloggers offer information free that people two blogs down are charging $150 for. And guess what? The people paying $150 for that same content feel that they’re getting the better deal. Packaging is everything. How can you package some or all of your content such as that your intended audience finds it valuable enough to pay for?

8. Take a class

Have you ever considered taking a blogging, writing, or marketing class? Or, you could take a class in online publishing. Don’t rely on the blogs in your Google reader to teach you everything you need to know about being a successful blogger. If you know you need to improve your blog be willing to listen and learn from the perspectives of people with different backgrounds and different styles of teaching.

9. Plan to teach a class

Again, your readership might be hanging out in a place you never considered. If your blog offers some sort of unique perspective or helpful information for a certain group of people, offer a course or two on a specific topic and bring some awareness to your blog that way.

10. Celebrate 2010

The year is coming to a close. There’s no better way to bring 2011 in with excitement, than to send 2010 out on a great note. Wrap up in December by highlighting your best posts of the year, new things to look forward to in 2011, and your best readers. Have fun with it!

Many thanks Tia, I will have few more New Year resolutions now!

What changes do you plan to make to your blog in the New Year?  Maybe you plan to start a blog or go off in a new direction, please do share your thoughts

* Image sources

All images - Flickr Mike Licht NotionsCapital.com – Blogging Set