1. Decorate your blog with widgets. See: Lemonade, Widgetbox, Mashable’s top 50
2. Invite a guest blogger to bring a new perspective.
3. Officially become a geek with a Blog badge: Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr
4. Protect your work with a Creative Commons license.
5. Get a job board for your blog.
6. Make a custom radio station for your blog.
7. Know thy reader. Set up analytics.
8. Transform your blog into a book.
9. Make money by turning your blog into products.
10. Write a blog mantra.
11. Speak with your readers live by adding a chat room to your blog.
12. Use powerful images.
13. Captivate your readers with embedded presentations.
14. Turn random photos into sexy slideshows. See: slide, rockyou, ilovephotos
15. Put your point on the map. See: Google, Yahoo, Placeblogger
16. Share data persuasively with charts. Free from Emarketer, or build your own.
17. Embed video in your posts. Youtube, Blip.TV, Videojug
18. Invite reads to take quizzes, polls and surveys.
19. Write lists. Top 10. Top 50. Top 100. People love lists.
20. Add a timeline.
21. Help your readers see their future, or give them a laugh with a horoscope.
22. Develop How To content. Want to know how to do that?
23. Write reviews on your blog. Product reviews. Movie reviews. Web Site reviews.
24. Conduct interviews with experts. Bloggers. Peers. People on the streets or on Facebook.
25. Create a weekly theme for your blog. For example, “this week’s theme is things that make me laugh.”
26. Write a trend watching post.
27. Share an epiphany.
28. Write an advertising critique. See: Media values and Stanford.
29. Develop a fake newstory.
30. Profile a company or compare and contrast two companies.
31. Share case studies. Use Marketing Sherpa as an example.
32. Conduct a before and after.
33. Turn your blog entry into a letter. Dear Apple, or Dear Jet Blue, Dear John, or Dear Bloggers, etc.
34. Share a powerful quote from a famous person or everyday quotes.
35. Post your notes.
36. Run a contest–and give away a T-shirt.
37. Use creative problem solving exercises to generate ideas.
38. Harness your creativity. Limit your time to write a post, or your word count.
39. Evoke archetypes and memes to help analyze trends and craft stories.
40. Write your blog posts on every day things.
41. Share your idea in a creative form. Turn your blog post into a poem, obituary, love letter, cartoon, menu, flyer, vintage advertisement.
42. Find your voice and write in it. Kurt Vonnegut will show you how.

Add a tip for getting your blog in shape in 2008. I will feature several few suggestions to make this list even more useful.

Photos from Flickr used under Creative Common’s License. Citation: MC, Veganstraightedge, Pintong, Purpleslog, Termie, Fish2000, Gwen

Lego space men

Originally uploaded by Gaetan Lee

“At the height of the space race in the 1960s, NASA scientists were perplexed by a problem their astronauts faced in the recording of data and experiences while in orbit. The problem was that they were unable to write anything down, because they could not get a pen to work at zero gravity. To crack this difficult nut, NASA embarked on an expensive research and development program. Some time and a million dollars later…, they proudly presented their “astronaut pen,” which immediately went into service….

Meanwhile, the Soviet space agency had solved its own pens-not-working-at-zero-gravity problem. They used pencils.”

Truth, Lies & Advertising: The Art of Account Planning by Jon Steel

Photo link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee/267611809/

Constraint produces creativity. Try picking an target word count for one your blog entries. Time yourself writing. Pick the 20 words you always say, and keep yourself from saying them on your blog. If you want to see more value from what you produce, focus on less. If you want to see this done well, check out my business partner’s: www.justtellmehowtomanage.com. Let me know how this works for you.

Monday:

• 12:15 p,  “‘Mexico: How to Avoid Being Kidnapped, Jailed or Killed While Reporting.” (DRCLAS) Rafael Fernández de Castro, Harvard University. CGIS S-250, 1730 Cambridge St., 12:15 p.m. Free and open to the public.
• 7 pm. Mobile Monday Boston is having a holidays meeting on Monday December; ard Pub in Cambridge, between MIT and Central Square.

Tuesday:

• 5:15 pm. Tue., Dec. 11 – “Mapping Sacrifice on Bodies and Spaces in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity.” (Women’s Studies in Religion Program/CSWR) Joan Branham, Providence College. CSWR Common Room, 5:15 p.m. Reception to follow. Free and open to the public. (617) 495-5705, esutton@hds.harvard.edu.
• 7pm. Cambridge Semantic Web Interest Group Meetup

Wednesday

• 12 pm. Wed., Dec. 12 – “Black Narrative and Poetry in Latin America.” (Du Bois Institute) Glenda Carpio, Harvard University. Thompson Room, Barker Center, noon. Feel free to bring a lunch. (617) 495-8508.

Thursday

• 7pm. Berkman Blog Group. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/bloggroup/

Friday
4 pm. Fri., Dec. 14 – “The Post Office in Japanese Politics and Society: What Will Change with Privatization.” (Reischauer Institute) Patricia MacLachlan, University of Texas. CGIS S-250, 1730 Cambridge St., 4 p.m. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~rijs.