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Archive for December 25th, 2007

The 42 Essential Tips to Get Your Blog in Shape in ‘08

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  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

December 25th, 2007 written by Zach Braiker
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Zach Braiker

This blog analyzes where social media culture and business converge. Zach Braiker is the CEO of Refine & Focus a social media agency and an adjunct professor of social media at Emerson College.

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