31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Darren Gets on the Scale

Day 12. Supposed to make my editorial calendar for the week. Exhaustion setting in. But my magic markers still work.

And seriously, I think a picture's worth a thousand words. :)


RELATED POSTS
LL's Day 1: Bambi in the Database, Day 2: The Dalai Lama Effect, Day 3: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me, Day 4: Oprah, I Wanna Be Like You, Day 5: Email a Blog Reader, Day 6: Shakespeare and Company's Top 24 Blog Tips, Day 7: How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Link the Ways, Day 8: Entertaining Aliens, Day 9: Meet Me at the Mother Ship, Day 10: My Dog Ate Darren Rowse's Google Alerts, Day 11: Hey, Darren, It's My Turn
ProBlogger's Build an Editorial Calendar
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project

COMING TOMORROW
I Will Not be Swayed by Sales on Boxer Shorts, a companion to ProBlogger's Go to the Mall.


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

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Darren on the Scale, by L.L. Barkat.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me

It is Day 3, and I am combining a List Post with a Promote-a-Blog-Post post. Why not? I'm thinking this could have some kind of exponential effect, and I could get 5 billion visitors to this post.

Oh, you of little faith. It could happen.

Anyway, here goes...

5 Amazing Reasons That ProBlogger (that's you, Darren :) Should Link to This Post...

1. For Day 3, you (ProBlogger) suggest that we ask somebody else to link to our post. This is your formal invitation (because, by now, I have known you for 10 seconds or less, and in cybertime that is like a total eternity). So, Darren Rowse, please link to this post.

But if you prefer to link to Bambi in the Database or The Dalai Lama Effect, that's fine. Whatever you like. You're the guy who wrote the book on blogging (um, quite literally).


2. I'm trying my best to follow your instructions (well, okay, the Bambi post was a little non-compliant). Take note that I just linked to two of my archived posts, which is an instruction I read about in your 11 Ways to Promote a Blog Post.


3. For 31 Days I will be linking to you, sometimes more than once in a single post. Math isn't my strong point, but I'm thinking this puts it at 31+ times I will be linking to ProBlogger.


4. I'm the Managing Editor for a pretty cool site, where we will be open to having you write for us (with hardly any strings attached). Go ahead, accuse me of platform bribery now. I can take it. Especially if you link to this post (just slip me onto your editorial calendar).


5. If you link to my post, this will significantly increase my blog traffic (at least to this post), thus proving your point that it pays to ask other bloggers to link to one's posts. I figure this kind of proof is like FREE advertising for your book, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

And even if, by linking to this post, you send so much traffic that you break my blog for the day, I promise I'm no china shop: you break it, I won't make you pay.


Thanking you in advance for your generosity and good humor.

Sincerely,
L.L. Barkat
31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me

P.S. See my signature with the link to today's post underneath it? I learned that from your 11 Ways to Promote a Blog Post too.


RELATED POSTS
LL's Day 1: Bambi in the Database, Day 2: The Dalai Lama Effect
ProBlogger's Day 3: Promote a Blog Post
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project

COMING TOMORROW
Oprah, I Wanna Be Like You for Day 4: Analyze a Top Blog in Your Niche


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

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A Gazillion Flamingos photo by J Barkat. Used with permission.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog: The Dalai Lama Effect

In my last post (which was the first post... of the 31-Day series), Melissa told me that one way she got a lot of traffic to her blog was to mention the Dalai Lama and a current event (all in the same post, I believe).

This led her to the conclusion that name-dropping and current-event-dropping will increase your blog traffic. At least for a week or less.

So of course I absolutely knew that if I was going to do my homework and Write a List Post, I would have to take Melissa's scientific discovery into account.

Thus, my Super-Traffic-Building List Post:

The top-10 famous names and current events to increase your blog traffic, for a week or less...

1. ProBlogger. (He's the guy who wrote the 31 Day book, and it would be silly of me not to list him here at the top of the Top-10 List, because he gets like a gazillion page views a day, and I am quite confident that he'll see this name-dropping in his Google Alerts and reward me accordingly)

2. Shel Israel is the author of the first book I ever read about blogging. He was even the very first person to comment on my very first blog post, almost four years ago. So I owe him one. Besides, he is famous. At least in the Social Media world.

3. Seth Godin's blog is also famous. I should read one of his books sometime. But this month I am too busy writing a post a day, to increase my blog traffic. One of Seth's recent posts got 352 retweets. I am guessing that no Google Alert in h*** will bring him here, where the average retweet on a post is... hey, stop laughing, THREE!

4. Brian Clark can tell you how to write a really great blog post. So, when you are done with my Top-10 Name-Dropping-List to Increase Your Blog Traffic, you should go read him and take his advice.

5. Glynn Young is a rising star. I met him about a year ago when he had about two followers, and now he has 75, which is very impressive (and I am not actually kidding about that). Glynn will someday rival Brian Clark. And I'm hoping he will remember me. (There is some chance that he might, since he is one of our cool writers at HighCallingBlogs.) I could say the same about another one of our writers, Maureen Doallas, who is also racking up followers faster than I can count.

6. Dan King is our Twitter and Facebook guy at HighCallingBlogs. He practically quadrupled our Facebook followers since he came on with us in January. At this rate, we'll be feeding him grapes and fanning him with ostrich-feather fans at our Fall Leaders Retreat, to thank him for his awesome social-media savvy.

7. Katdish, of Hey Look, A Chicken! (she is more infamous than famous, as you might guess with a name like that, but no Top-10 Name-Dropping List would be complete without her ;-)

8. Billy Coffey is about to be famous. I think that should count. Just wait until his book Snow Day releases this Fall. People will be flocking back to this post through the Google Machine all because of Billy.

9. Marcus Goodyear. He is also about to be famous, for a book called Barbies at Communion. And even if he doesn't achieve poetic fame, I have to include him in this list. He's my boss, okay? (Don't tell him I said that. :)

10. Shoot, I forgot to mention a current event. Super Saver Triumphs at Kentucky Derby. What can I say? My grammy always loved the horse races. This would be the current event of her choice, if she were here to advise.


RELATED POSTS
LL's How to Quadruple Your Blog Traffic in a Single Day, Day 1: Bambi in the Database and Julia Cameron Meets ProBlogger
ProBlogger's Day 2: Write a List Post
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project

COMING TOMORROW
31 DBB: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me for Day 3: Promote a Blog Post


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

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Dalai Lama photo by Sapru. Used with permission.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Bambi in the Database

I figure that Paul Steinbrueck probably laughed out loud when he saw my database entry.

I'm doing his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, and part of the deal is to blog every day for 31 days, doing exercises from a book called (not surprisingly) 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

The other part of the deal is to tell Paul your blog stats. I figure that's the part where he laughed out loud— not so much because low stats are a source of amusement, but because I also rated myself as an '8' in blogging expertise (on a scale of 1-10).

I figure Paul pictured me as a bit of a Bambi blogger— saying I know the ice, then showing him my leg-tangled stats that prove otherwise.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with giving somebody you just met a good laugh. Though, for the sake of pride, I followed up with an email to say that this-here blog is just a little side-blog, and could he stop convulsing now, because I could feel the vibrations all the way over here in New York, and it was making the neighborhood nervous, since, technically, we live on a fault line, and you can imagine the visions of destruction he was causing.

Paul graciously ignored that part of the email altogether, and welcomed me to the project.

I will say this... the skeptic in me knows that for 31 days my stats will go up, and then within a few months of side-bloggy neglect, the stats will go right back down to their laughable level.

But at least Paul will think I showed myself to be an '8' blogger. And that might just be worth the 31-day ride.


Cat Going Somewhere photo, by Sonia B, age 9. Used with permission.


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

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RELATED
ProBlogger's Day 1: Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog (as you can see, Bambi has already been non-compliant, choosing instead to write about database amusement)
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project and Day 1: The Elevator Pitch
LL's Julia Cameron Meets ProBlogger

COMING TOMORROW
31 Days to Build a Better Blog: The Dalai Lama Effect, for Day 2: Write a List Post