Today's task in the 31DBBB challenge is all about paying special attention to a reader and do your best to make them a little famous. The impact that this kind of exercise can have upon your readers is quite amazing - particularly if you do it regularly over the long haul! Once you've done it - share what you did and what impact it had below.
[Edit by Lara: Link is corrected, thanks to Gordie and scarymommy for pointing it out!]
ProBlogger, DPS & TwiTip
The link seems to be broken. It said the page you are looking for is not here.
Website: www.GordieRogers.com Twitter: @Gordie_Rogers
Here it is, until they fix it...
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/04/27/pay-special-attention-to-a-reader/
scarymommy.com An honest look at motherhood: The good, the bad and the scary.
Yey! My blog pal Squiggle Mom tells me I made her feel famous with a post I published yesterday.
‘Follow or foe? Deciding who to follow or unfollow on Twitter.’ http://cli.gs/N2hE6P
Catherine (SM) unfollowed her first person on Twitter on Saturday night and it fit right into a post I was writing. She was filled with unfollowers remorse.
I can relax for the day. My work is done :)
I think this is one of the best tips in the series as it does wonders for building a community around your blog AND building relationships between you and individual readers / other individual bloggers.
Each week for the past couple of months, I've written a post that highlights a new blogger in my niche. I usually post on a Friday, and don't post again over the weekend - this means that they stay at the top of the homepage, and benefit from plenty of exposure. As well as being interesting for regular readers, it gives newer bloggers, who often find it hard to get attention, a bit of a boost.
I've also experimented in the past with interviewing other bloggers. Again this generated huge amounts of interest (not to mention controversy at times - one interview generated more than 300 comments). I'm not sure why I stopped (stupidity probably), but one of my priorities is to start the interview series up again.
Great ideas! Other than linking a few fellow bloggers in a couple of posts, I must admit I have never done this... the interview idea is great too. I may just have to "borrow" that idea Siberian! ;)
Just pointing out that if your blog is so new (like mine) that you can not identify a regular reader. Then it is possible to identify a reader / commenter on another blog and praise him/her as well as promoting the other blog.
I managed it by accident, so don’t give up this task if you are a low reader, low comments newbie blog.
Remember this is not supposed to be a one off strategy
@Siberian,
What a great idea to put it up on a Friday and leave for a couple of days! Thanks, tip for the editorial calendar.
Karenne
I made an EFL (teaching English) lesson plan on using Susan Boyle in the classroom but as this is more the speciality (turning youtube videos into lessons) I recommended one of my blogging colleagues who's also a reader of my blog.
Do hope it makes him (more) famous! http://kalinago.blogspot.com/2009/04/susan-boyle-efl-video-lesson.html
The third post on my blog already was a use of this idea:
Afraid of the deep end was inspired by the comment someone made on one of my two earlier blogposts. I really must that him again, he pointed me in the right direction.
A new post inspired by comments I'm getting is longover due however. Will get going on one right away.
Mind the beginner A blog on beginning, it sounds so simple but it’s quite complex
kitandcaboodle
Member
I really have enjoyed this assignment. Anytime I can focus on someone other than myself, I find that I learn something new. As an artist, it is beneficial to get inspiration from other artists. Hopefully by introducing my readers to eachother as artists, I can spread the inspiration around and we can all benefit from other's work and passion for art.
Here is my post: This Artist's Journey.
I'm afraid I've fallen behind a little as I'm travelling but I have already implemented this strategy, by approaching other people in my industry who have TV related businesses and done an interview with them. They've were delighted to be asked, their businesses were of direct interest to my target audience and now I've got some good karma saved up (and the potential to develop JV/affiliate partnerships down the line).
I wanted to share a slightly different post - How to Get Your Idea on TV as a Truly Independent Producer - which profiled an ex-colleague who had just launched his first independent project.
He is part of my target demographic (so it's good for me if he spreads the word about my blog) and his story was relevant to both professional TV producers and those just starting out as indie producers, so it was a story which had broad appeal for my readers. I have a 'featured post' section on my front page where I put key articles once a week, and are therefore visible for seven days (other posts get rotated off the front page after only a day or so in the spotlight), so my interviewees get maximum exposure.
I've found that I can normally link to other posts too so they will draw my readers into my archives. Once I'd posted this article, I realised I had extra interview material that I'd not been able to use in the original post, so I posted a second article and got two for the price of one (plus more inter-post links) - Alom Shaha's Top Tips for TV Development Success
I used to have a monthly "Top Commentator" contest. With a counter in the sidebar, the person with most comments at the end of the month earned a blog review or 9if not a blogger) a space in the blog to talk about something (related to te main subject of the blog, of course)
Good side: encourage comments and pariticpation and the chance of the poeple to be noticed
Bad side: You exponentially increment the chances of people adding non-sense comments.
I've put Tumblemoose in the spotlight today - what fun!
I love this idea and have been doing it with a Caption Contest on my blog every Wednesday. (It's a caption for a cell phone pic of the week and there have been some truly hilarious captions posted by readers.)
The only downside I've encountered is wanting to recognize everybody who posted a comment so they keep coming back and posting in the contest each week. It's tough to pick just one winner sometimes.
Larrie: mastermind of the Sciolist
I love this idea, and have actually been having a click and comment meme-where you post your link from your blog every monday. I try to respond to every comment on my blog and check out my commenters blogs too-I think that encourages the community that I see beginning to form at my blog. This week I have my link meme up today along with an interview with one of my readers about her blog (something I love to do-so if you have a related blog let me know!!) Check out Toddler Craft for todays post about a great mommy, scrapbooking blog-and come post your link!
Loving 31dbbb! Onna @ Toddlercraft -resource for crafts & parenting advice
i've been doing something like this for a while, it is my "sunday shout outs", but since it has been on sunday, it only runs for that one day so i think i'm going to use siberian's idea of posting the shout outs on friday instead, so they stay at the top longer--thanx, siberian, for mentioning that! i've been doing shout outs to three different bloggers, but i think i'll change that and focus just on one blogger instead.
now i'll have to figure out whether to call it "friday shout outs" or try to come up with something that has the same first-letter repeat to it (i forget what that is called--alliteration?). i'm open to suggestions on that one.
I don't yet have many visitors to the site I'm promoting for this challenge, so instead I wrote a post highlighting the extraordinary work of another "Mommy Blogger", Michelle from Scribbit, who recently released a free women's guide to blogging.
I hope this helps more visitors visit Scribbit to download the ebook and read more of Michelle's wonderful posts!
Like many of you guys, I'm still establishing a strong reader base. Since I moved my site from WP to its own domain and re-launched it, I've been building traffic back up. So, instead of featuring a "favorite reader," I'm interviewing a new reader. She and I were able to schedule the interview for this week, and if all goes well, I'll be able to post it on Thursday or Friday. I'm excited about the prospect of interviewing fellow artists and creatives and the kind of community that will help establish. When the post for the interview is up, I'll post a link over here.
Today, I participated in a fellow blogger and reader's weekly series, on my blog, with links back to her. As it happens, she is also my "blogging buddy" (cf. Day 15)! I see more collaboration in the future, hopefully.
I didn't exactly make a reader famous, although I was prompted to put up a notice on my blog regarding comments, after receiving some rather nasty anonymous ones:
http://buttontapper.com/2009/04/how-i-handle-anonymous-comments/
In this sense, I think I addressed a particular kind of reader and attempted to explain why I prefer people to leave comments with names and emails attached. What do you guys think about anonymous comments? Do you have any policies towards them?
Laura Roberts, Freelance Button Tapper
I decided to start on ongoing series called Women Bloggers Who.... Keep Me Laughing, Make Me Think, Should Be Cannonized...It's like a swiss army knife- one series, so many different uses. I featured two funny women bloggers who make me laugh with their snarkyness.
Because of my blog's subject matter (marriage and sex) I don't get as many comments as I'd like so it's hard to feature a reader. Recently, I was able to share a reader question discreetly that got nice comments, though. It a work in progress.
I love the idea of empowering other readers and bloggers.
I have created a "self-service" post where bloggers can put their blogs on a Google map. The idea is simple - You fill-in a form with details about your blog and general location in the world and you are added to a map that shows blogs worldwide.
I hope this count as empowering.
What do you think?
These ideas here are fabulous. I have so enjoyed reading them all. I so like this idea I implemented it immediately using Sarah Schoenfeld as my first post: http://www.visualartsjunction.com/?p=1301
Sarah was the first to introduce herself in my "Introduce Yourself" section: http://www.visualartsjunction.com/?p=1265
This whole concept goes along with my belief of what the spirit of internet community should be all about. This type of "servant service" is catching like wildfire. I want to be part of, and help along, THIS type of community. I guess I would call it a spirit of: "Give help unto others before they help unto you."
What a fabulous way to connect and promote each other, because when we help others, we can't help but be helped ourselves. Thankx so much, Darren Rowse, for spreading this around. It's not only good business sense, but a sound and respectful treatment of each other we can all implement.
Aggie Villanueva,
Dubbed by peers the Grandma Moses of the American Southwest
I've done this before and the impact is GREAT. I did it at christmas for ehow members party. I did it for a coffee blog. I've done it for fellow ehow members.
This last week I did one for a fellow tweeter and Even if the results are not amazing in numbers and in immediate reward, It is great to help others and The thanks given back is wonderful.
I need to be more consistent with this. I have not been able to do all the steps due to outside plressures but this email and assignment I had already done! :)
AWESOME ASSIGNMENT
I am kind of behind at this far but efectively we all should start giving back something to our readers. I almost never do this as a practice, it's really worth it and I promise to do that and ecourage to other to do so. Thanks for helping us to build a better blog!
Doing something nice for ourselves feels good. Doing something nice for others feels even better. Another great idea for building a better blog! :D
Two of my blogs are on women's issues. I try to help other women who need a little PR for their book by doing at least two more or less review posts for them then adding a guest post by them. It not only promotes their book but gets new readers who might stay a while. Some topics just seem to appeal to women. A recent post on http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/lynscircle/ "Fat Chicks are Crazy" pulled in comments on site as well as on facebook. The author was promoting a book on weight & self-esteem.
I've also used comments and contacted the author for a guest post. If they're fired up enough to write a comment, they usually have more to say. I try to get reader involvement on these blogs. My third blog is a travel blog and I just don't think this idea would fit as well.
Lyn Harris
http://wednesdayswoman.livejournal.com/
http://travelingnewzealand.blogspot.com/
I'm interviewing my "target" tonight, I think readers will be interested since she is one of our representatives at the World Skills 2009 in Calgary.
GReat Task. But I need your help guys
I have been asked to link to or write a post about another blog, because the reader read some of my posts and wanted some SEO love. This goes hand in hand with this task. But the problem is his blog is a sports blog, and mine is a tech blog. While I am clued up on both sports and tech, I am finding it hard to blend the two so that the theme of the post can benefit both.
Qny one here got some ideas they can through around.
Thanks
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