 |
| Bansky - Graffiti Creative Brilliance |
What makes a blog attractive? Is it funny, short, arty or just contain as much content as possible. What has THE.CONTENDER done and considered to create this blog (the plan is at the end of the post)?
Importantly what CGBEB (Contender Great Big Enormous Blunders) have been made so far. Will it \ does it meets the needs of the readership?
THE.CONTENDER has been a scientist all his life and worked primarily in large corporations. He had been turned into the proverbial robot happy in herds. THE.CONTENDER wanted to write a blog which is a personal pursuit.
The main problem was that THE.CONTENDER has been a corporate employee trained to give up individuality and not to peruse risks. THE.CONTENDER asked himself how in the hell does one write a blog? Never excelled in English whilst only having expertise at corporate memos and PowerPoint presentations...
How does THE.CONTENDER write something readable in a sphere where professional writers can knock me out for the count????
To start the blog I needed a subject and a theme. The content was to be on financial and life planning - putting goals into a plan and making sure they happen. For a theme - boxing and the choice of the website url "www.GetInTheRingWithMe.blogspot.com". Life is a fight so the duel of boxing to win seemed to be a good fit.
Secondly an alias name was required. MUFF was borne to convey the message "My Unconventional Freedom Fight" secondly the word MUFF is quite silly and can mean several different things and used in several ways. This did not work out and was subsequently dumped.
Next was to get started. I had just stopped work in Feb 2012 to look after the kids. A couple of months were required to get accustomed to looking after the little ones full time. Exhausting to start with and my wife was just getting back into work mode. So I got started on this blog in June July and turned it on in August.........Is anyone going to read it?
 |
| Flop on my hands after all that work - time to change? |
The first couple of months saw very modest traffic. This told me that there was a lot I was doing wrong (as usual) can THE.CONTENDER learn from his mistakes?
Please read on for the CGBEB (Contender Great Big Enormous Blunders) I have had to correct (so far):
- How to make the posts more personal and readable. I have made mistakes in life some may be funny or a good example of what not to do and some are downright embarrassing - I must include them.
- Fun fun fun - working for big business has made me too serious - can I shrug this off? Can I be Zac Efron and be 17 again?
- Back up opinions with relevant, but short and sweet facts and links. It is easy to state something but it really needs to be liked to a source.
- Know who is likely to read this blog and why they will read it. Wow a difficult one at best. Most information is browsable now (a shame) catchy headings, outlandish claims of shock horror. I want this blog to entertain at the same time as hopefully offering some practical solutions instead of just "fluff to get peoples attention.
- A blog is personal and is about that persons goals and dreams - do they relate to other people or are they for entertainment etc. the THE.CONTENDER tribe goal is to move to the French countryside so THE.CONTENDER should provide a running commentary on it!
- Don't forget your roots: THE.CONTENDER is British, this is a blog by a Brit that reads around quite a few US sites. It was not British enough from the outset. This should be a British take on life, it is what I know.
- I have traveled extensively but have no hope in hell on commenting on other cultures without getting it completely wrong or winding someone up. Opinions should be kept to national subjects THE.CONTENDER can back up with experience - Come on you dragons (Welsh Rugby Team)!
- I did not know (and probably still do not) how to set up a blog
- Structure posts
- Link setup
- Easy to find related articles
- Email accounts
- Automatic email of posts (feeds)
- Forum's
- The list can go on and on (I will post this blog plan when I have a good readership to prove if the site works.....)
- English grammar - short and sweet sentences - spellling corretly! Check check check - Some of my first posts have been revisited and corrected - not a good THE.CONTENDER .
- Read the post out loud and get a proof read - do not be afraid to drop it if the feedback is bad.
THE.CONTENDER will update and add to the learning's and screw ups over time.
We all have a story to tell. THE.CONTENDER hopes his life learning's will provide an informative interesting read that people can relate to and hopefully find of use.Blogging in my opinion is a great freedom of speech tool. An opportunity to provide alternative views and THE.CONTENDER even dare to say an education. THE.CONTENDER has definitely learnt amazing insights into life through several blogs that would never have been on the radar from school or day to day life and friends.
So if you want to start a blog yourself what are the main steps to do this? THE.CONTENDER has documented all the steps to create this BLOG in a simple project plan. It is a high level overview of all of the steps that have been made so far and how it will be run going forward. It may be a good starting resource.
We all have it in us to create a blog on whatever subject we life or just use it in private as a personal journal. Personally THE.CONTENDER is learning lots of new skills, clarifying what the Tribe is up to and hopefully making some new friend on the way. Why not get onto Google blog spot or Wordpress today - setup an account - write a post today. It may be the start of a great new adventure.
Why not have a go at writing a blog? - its easy, free and liberating ;)
The Contender
Click here for the Contender Blog Project Plan (Open Office Spreadsheet)
Welcome New Contender Readers! Take a look around. Start at the first article, browse the all posts. Please feel free to play with the FREE planning tools and checklists.
Keep in Touch: RSS Feed, or subscribe to posts by email:
A note on SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
ReplyDelete1. After several weeks the blog was finally listed on BING using the webmaster https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/home/mysites. BING is very slow to crawl a site and post the URL's
2. There are lots of really good social media sites such as stumbleupon, tecnorati, digg, reddit, blognation and paperblog all of these sites are helping greatly to get the word out about this site.
Site Design - what is right?
ReplyDeleteA lot of work has been carried out to make the site easier to navigate:
1. A full list of the posts has been added to its own page ALL POSTS provided in a table format.
2. Font sizes and borders have been tweaked to allow more visible text per line.
3. Linked within recommended posts at the end of each individual post has been successful in helping users to find related content.
4. Link lists for Financial Independence, Financial Planning and Personal Development have been added instead of being mixed together.
5. The idea of MUFF - My Unconventional Freedom Fight was to add a bit of fun to the site and have a boxing theme in the title. Muffins are yummy and ear muffs make a good logo. As the blog is more and more about PERL - Planning For Early Retirement and Life this may change the heading of the site however will it loose a bit of the fun....
All the best MUFF
Did I really write that?
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing to see the improvement in posts by having a clear structure. I have been developing a post template for the last few months so that the style of the posts is consistent.
Each post has a summary at the start, FI / Life ideas in each post and how those ideas can be turned into real actions. Each post should have a good close out, good headings, good titles etc. Quite challenging.....
So looking back on some of the first posts is quite an eye opener for me. I have updated several of the posts to add more structure and clarify some of the content.
Was this worthwhile? I am not sure. Perhaps I get some satisfaction in improving the old posts from 60% to 80% OK (I do like Plato's 80:20 rule ;o)
Back to it
MUFF
Blog Mistake #11?
ReplyDeleteA kind reader pointed out that the site name PERL (Plan for Early Retirement and Life) is dominated by a programming language. This poses a problem to find the site.
A second problem I have had with the site name is the MUFF tribe is not ready for retirement (just holidays, reading books type of retirement). Financial Independence is the better term for what if blog is about along with the pursuit of happiness. So Early Retirement and Life had to go from the title.
Fortunately I am happy with the theme of the site and the site url (getintheringwithme). From an search engine optimization perspective adding financial independence into the url is desirable but it stays as it is.
Hopefully the new name is a long term best fit for the content of the blog and people can find it.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Blog Mistake #12
ReplyDeleteOne of the challenges of blogging is how can people find this blog to see if there is anything interesting for them?
The latest mistake in this area was posting a few links (4) to the blog on Reddit along with other links of interest and being BANNED!
Did MUFF deserve it? After reading the rules YES HE DID! Too many references to the site for which MUFF is sorry.
Kudos to the Reddit site though their rules and the monitoring and passion make it the site that it is.
I do highly recommend their financial independence section as it is a wonderful resource you can find it at the following location http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence