When I think about why I love blogging, the first reason that comes to mind is the relationships I’ve built with other bloggers. So I think now is a good time to spread our blog improvement a little bit and try to help each other out. Week 9 for the Blog Improvement Project is to Help Another Blog!
This activity is inspired by Day 26 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge at ProBlogger. For Day 26, Darren said,
Most bloggers naturally spend the vast majority of their time improving their own blogs – but there can be a lot of good things happen when you spend time on other people’s blogs making them better in one way or another.
I think it’s fairly obvious why it can be worth helping another blogger achieve their goals so won’t go into it too much except to say that there’s not many ways to make a better impression on another blogger than to help them achieve their goals for their blog.
Like Darren, I think it’s pretty clear why helping other bloggers is a good idea, which is why I want to try this for Week 9. This is also a mini trial-run to see how a more in-depth blogger help session might work for later in the BIP.
This weeks task is going to be to pair up with another blogger to help answer a specific question about how to improve their blog! Here’s what you need to do for this week’s task:
- If you want to participate, sign up your blog in the Mr. Linky directly below these two sentences, please visit this post to sign up in the comments. Mr. Linky has been very inconsistent, so I’ve made a different posts for sign ups. This will make you eligible to be part of the pairing offs.
- HERE’S THE MOST IMPORTANT PART! If you are an even number, it is your job to contact the odd numbered person above you (#2 will contact #1, #4 will contact #3, etc.). Head over to their blog and find an e-mail to contact your partner or leave a comment if you can’t find an e-mail.
- Over the next two weeks, each partner should get to ask, at minimum, one specific question about how to improve their blog, and their partner should do their best to give a good answer. Things like “Do you like my content?” or “How is my design?” are too broad. Try to be focused –“What is good/bad about my sidebar?” or “What do you think of my review format/ratings system?” might be good. If your pair wants to do more, feel free (that’s awesome!) but know that when you sign up you’re only obligated to answer the one question.
- Feel free to write a post about what you’re doing, leave a comment here to see how it goes, or just send me an e-mail with any questions. I’m not sure the best way to stay connected with this one, since the point is for you to connect specifically with someone else, so just do what makes sense to you.
I sure hope that makes sense. I based a lot of the instructions of Dewey’s Weekly Geek #16 post, so I think it should work since all the stuff she came up with seemed to go smoothly. She was an impressive blogger.
If there ends up being an odd number of people, I’ll take care of contacting the last person. If you sign up and within say, 2 days, haven’t heard anything, let me know and I’ll try to figure out what is up. Let’s work together and see how we can improve our blogs!
Good luck and happy blogging!
Comments on this entry are closed.
Sounds like a good idea; thanks for coming up with it!
Awesome idea! Really focused feedback can be very helpful.
More goodness.
By the way, the Mister Linky isn’t connecting when I bring up your blog post.
The Mister Linky isn’t working for me today either. I actually haven’t been able to get a Mister Linky to work any where. Maybe the whole site is down. I’ll come back to sign up.
I’ve made some improvements at Ali’s suggestion, and some self- criticism too. Do pop over and check. Tell me what you think.