My top 5 blogging mistakes - and how I plan to rectify them
June 5, 2007This is not a personal finance related post today, but I thought it might be of interest to you anyway since it’ll hopefully have a positive impact on the quality of this blog.
Joshua @ TimeForBlogging has compiled an extensive list of beginner’s mistakes (77!) and I have to admit I’m guilty as charged for some of them.
1. Not including a clear way to contact them
I have been playing with a contact form page for quite some time, but it keeps messing up my stylesheets or just simply looks horrible and doesn’t integrate well into the site.
I really want people to be able to get in touch, ask questions, make suggestions etc., but I also want it to look neat and fit in. I’m open for any recommendations on Wordpress plug-ins and the like! In the meantime, you can simply leave a comment and I will certainly get back to you.
2. Not including a basic “About the Author” page
Again, I was planning to do this at some point, but haven’t quite had the time to do s0 yet. Lame excuse? Maybe. But I’m working on it. Honest.
3. Not using their blog’s trackback capabilities
Well, I think I am doing this. But then I’m still not too sure about what this really is… is there a difference between a simple URL and a trackback URL?
As far as this blog’s settings go, trackback should be enabled. Do I need to do anything beyond that? Any enlightening comments welcome and appreciated!
4. Under-publicizing their best posts
Simply by looking at the site’s statistics I can tell that there are some posts that attracted more readers over time than others. But I haven’t yet aggregated them all in one place. A top 5 list would surely fit in … somewhere.
Where do you think I should put them? In the sidebar? Or maybe onto the “About the Author” page? Any thoughts?
5. Not including a link to their blogs in their email and forum signatures
I have only been writing this blog for 2 months, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure how good and useful this would turn out. Further, I’ve only taken an active interest in personal finance for a short time so wanted to accumulate enough knowledge before officially associating the blog with my personal life.
On the other hand, I am quite pleased with how this is going and if I can even convince Ad to look after his money, it might be time to shout out: “Yes, this is my blog”.
So here is my blog “to-do” list for this month:
- sort out the contact form
- create “About Me” page
- learn about trackback URLs
- figure out how and where to include a list of the Simple Pound’s best posts
- get myself a proper email signature
Trackbacks URLs are simply a way of providing links between
|[P]| | June 5, 2007 | 4:49 pmTrackbacks URLs are simply a way of providing links between blogs that reference one another. This means if another blog links to a post here, it ought to ping the WordPress installation adding a brief excerpt as a comment on the relevant post (N.B. It only applies when linking to a specific post, not the whole site).
Similarly when you link to another post, WordPress does the same thing leaving a short extract from your post in the other blog’s comments. This drives traffic between blogs and lets authors know who else is referring to them, which is why it’s considered good.
This is all under the “Discussion” section of the “Options” tab in WordPress and is currently all switched on, so I can confirm you have met your goal of making full use of trackbacks!
I was gonna say... :-) I checked that it works
Kirsten | June 5, 2007 | 7:37 pmI was gonna say…
I checked that it works by looking at the comments on Joshua’s site… One task accomplished, yes! 