Welcome to my new design

Some of you may notice my site looks a little different this morning. Over the weekend I tweaked the color scheme and some of the graphics. Let me know what you think!

How to title a blog post

Problogger had great article last week on how to title a blog post. Sure it’s a boring, mundane part of your site, not nearly as sexy as those moving images and flashy drop-down menus. But the title of a post could be the most important factor your are ignoring. Not only do post titles effect whether or not someone stays long enough to read the whole article. Post titles are key elements for Search Engines.

Problogger gives us the following eight tips:

1. Communicate a  Benefit
2. Create Controversy or Debate
3. Ask a Question
4. Personalize Titles
5. Use Keywords
6. Use Power Words
7. Big Claims and Promises
8. Humor Titles

Read his explanation for each.

Quick and easy Wordpress magazine format

I am working with Texas Watchdog to set up a magazine style site. I have to give some props to Gabfire Design for putting together a very easy to use Magazine Style Wordpress Theme. It has been very easy to customize and turns out to be about the best free option available. In addition to starting with Gabfire’s very functional design, I installed Mark Jaquith’s very handy Multiple Authors plugin. This plugin allows you to associate more than one author with a post, which is absolutely essential for a magazine site! The Texas Watchdog site is still a work in progress, but take a look.

Will your project follow the “Hype Cycle?”

TechCrunch published this really interesting graph yesterday that comes from Gartner. The graph details the life of a new technology. The initial excitement and buzz, the inevitable disappointment, then the slow build.

Does a similar cycle apply to new web projects? Perhaps we have to give the phases different names, but in a broad sense the trajectory applies, both internally and externally.

From an internal perspective, it’s very easy to get caught in your own hype about a new web site. This new blog is going to be the one that puts you on the map. This new wiki is going to revolutionize the way we do business. We all have visions of that instalanch (define: instant avalanch) making our site a household name on the first day.

But when it doesn’t come, we get discouraged, our interested drops, and sometimes we even abandon the project. But sticking with it pays dividends. Slowly, over time the site starts achieving some modest successes. After six months or even a year, perhaps the project begins to take on a life of its own.

The peak, the crash, the long-slog; this is the emotional rollercoaster we experience in web development.The key is keeping yourself grounded and understanding what you want. If you are just chasing the instalanch, then maybe you should give up on a project after three months. But if you believe in your concept and you are committed, you will see slow progress. And if your product is good and you are patient, you will be successful.

The curve applies from an external perspective as well. Often groups will do a great media launch for a site, get an initial burst of traffic, but then see their stats plummet back to earth because they had no plan for long term promotion. No matter how big your initial buzz is, you must have a long-term plan for driving traffic through search-engines, email marketing, and organic links. Without it, the traffic for a site simply can’t be sustained.

Problogger: 10 tips for a great blog post

Problogger offers these ten things you should consider before writing a blog post:

1. Choosing a Topic - take a little extra time defining your topic and the post will flow better and you’ll develop something that matters to readers.
2. Your Post’s Title - perhaps the most crucial part of actually getting readers to start reading your post when they see it in an RSS reader or search engine results page.
3. The Opening Line - first impressions matter. Once you’ve got someone past your post’s title your opening line draws them deeper into your post.
4. Your ‘point/s’ - a post needs to have a point. If it’s just an intriguing title and opening you’ll get people to read - but if the post doesn’t ‘matter’ to them it’ll never get traction.
5. Call to Action - driving readers to do something cements a post in their mind and helps them to apply it and helps you to make a deeper connection with them.
6. Adding Depth - before publishing your post - ask yourself how you could add depth to it and make it even more useful and memorable to readers?
7. Quality Control and Polishing - small mistakes can be barriers to engagement for some readers. Spending time fixing errors and making a post ‘look’ good can take it to the next level.
8. Timing of Publishing Your Post - timing can be everything - strategic timing of posts can ensure the right people see it at the right time.
9. Promotion - having hit publish - don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic ‘nudges’ can increase the exposure it gets exponentially.
10. Conversation - often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to dialogue can be very fruitful.

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