I have been taking part in a blog improvement type network collaboration group with some fellow children’s pastors for a couple months now. We have been going through the 31 days to a better blog by using Pro Blogger’s book. It has been good for me in a few ways. It has shown me what good things I have been doing on purpose and by accident and it also has given me some ideas to try out as well. Some of the ideas have been hits for me and some not.

Well, in this particular week my blog made blogger of the week and went under the microscope. I was able to read some good comments, feedback on my blog and thought why not ask you as well? So here is your opportunity to pour into this site and leave some constructive comments (remember, all comments have to be approved anyway so why not leave something good or even bad but said in a way it will be beneficial and be able to be approved).

- Let me know how you like the look?
- Tell me about the ease or the confusion of navigating around the site?
- The kind of topics?
- The material covered on each topic?
- The general length of each post?
- Do I give you information? Solve problems for you? Cause problems? Stir your thoughts?
- When you are done how do you leave, with feeling you want more or the feeling that you are glad you are leaving?
- Is it easy to subscribe to? RSS feed?

Any other thoughts?

Here for the Blogger Challenge that I was part of, and since starting, I have fallen behind in, day #6 is about learning from some experienced bloggers some tips and tutorials. I am only going to list a few but there was a ton to read through. Here we go…

1. Seth Godin did a blog post on how to get blog traffic to your blog.

2. Rand Fishkin talks about 21 tips to earn link and tweets to your blog post.

3. Skellie from Skelliewag writes about the 25 Paths to an Insanely Popular Blog

4. Chris Garrett write How to Grow Your Google Authority

I think just after these 4 and no more it provides enough information for your head to explode.

What other articles have you read that were of great help in a subject manner?

Task 5 of our 31 days weeks to Build a Better Blog is to email a reader who’s left a comment on your blog.

Darren writes:
Two Ways to Take this Further and Make a Bigger Impression

1. If the person has left a link to their own blog in their comment, leave a comment on their blog. Again, this is another technique I used in my early days of blogging and it was certainly paramount in building readership.
2. Respond to the comment ON your blog. Sending the email is great for making an impression on the individual person, but leaving a comment in your own comment section shows other readers that you’ll engage in conversation. It also helps build comment numbers, which can build social proof and show your blog is active.

So there it is, that is Task #5. If you are following this weekly blogging challenge feel free to write how emailing someone goes for you. Do you see when you leave a comment on others blogs that they tend to come to yours and leave a comment? This is one that hasn’t really helped me much but I would love to hear how it may help you.

Here we are with task #4 in our 31 days weeks of our time together.

In the workbook, Darren writes:

“The purpose of this task is, rather than promote yourself on the blog, spend time watching, listening, and observing how the blog operates. The goal is to enable what you learn help shape your own blogging strategy. There is a lot a blogger can learn by spending time on other blogs, particularly those that are doing well. You can pick up all manner of ideas, strategies and tips—things that they do well that you might like to emulate, as well as elements that they’re missing that could help you to differentiate yourself.”

So take some time and learn from others. What blogs do you enjoy reading and why?

I am participating in the Ministry Blogger Challenge where some children’s pastors like myself who blog are going through a book by ProBlogger and with each chapter we are given an assignment. The assignment I am working on now project #3 is “promote a post” which I am choosing a post that a great long time friend of mine named Karl Bastian had posted to his blog at Kidologist.com. Check out the original post or more of his stuff at the Kidologist!

Please read the next three sentence slowly and thoughtfully:

Relationships can’t be measured.

Relationships can’t be quantified.

Relationships can’t be R.O.I.ed

I’m getting really weary of reading articles like this one that talk about the value of Twitter in terms of whether people click on them or “ReTweet” them as though they are a waste of time otherwise. So what if only 29% of tweets are “acted” upon and of those only 6% are “retweeted” or if 71% of tweets have a “shelf life” of one hour and get no “reaction?” They were never intended to be works of literature to last the ages. They were intended to be flashes of data sent out to those who might be watching and might be following who might find it interesting.

I’m on Twitter because I value relationship with people not geographically close to me. It provides a stream of humor, links, photos and information of a nature Facebook simply can’t.

Society has gotten obsessed with “making money” on Twitter. As one who DOES make money on Twitter – I still do not primarily see it as a money maker, nor is that WHY I am on Twitter. The money I make via Twitter is merely as a side benefit because of the increased presence my company has because of Twitter.

I know it works because as soon we launch a new Twitter account, sales will increase. Case in point, this week I launched the ToyBoxTales twitter account – but it proved all the “experts” wrong, as the account had NO click throughs and NO retweets (other than the few I did myself with other accounts) and yet sales spiked as soon as that account launched.

To read the rest of Karl’s post, click on over to his site.

Here is assignment 2 that comes from our children’s pastor’s blogging group which has taken up the task of following the 31 days to a better blog with the adaption that we are making instead of 31 days it is 31 weeks. Today’s task which is one I am actually making up seeing that I got started late is to write a list post.

Darren Rowse explains in his work book that we have all picked up and with a discount because of us doing this together about the power of using list in your blog writing:
“Using lists has always been a popular and effective technique among bloggers wanting to write content that spreads from one person to the next. Just look at pages like the front page of Digg, TweetMeme and Delicious and you’ll see that much of the hottest content on the web at any given time is written in this style.”

So here is a list of the most popular post that people click on from this blog site.

1. Bad habits may be more present than you think.

2. Are you buzzing your volunteers?

3. Century Turns book review.

4. This one is technically not a blog post but it does come in as one of the more popular clicked on pages. It is my Children’s Ministry Vision. Seeing this makes me think it is probably good if I was to go back in there and proof that page a little more. I need to update, thanks for helping in the motivation with this.

5. Top 100 Children’s Ministry blogs. If you will look at number 55 you will see this blog in that spot. This was encouraging to me due to I had not put much time into the blog and tanked there. Now that I am purposefully working on the blog, what can happen next time Tony puts the list together.

There they are, the top 5 clicked on post. What are your favorites within this blog? What are your top 5 from your own site?

I have joined a group of co-bloggers who are going through this book titled: 31 days to build a better blog. To read more about it you can click on over here if you too want to join me and others for this time.

This is Day 1′s assignment which is to build an elevator pitch. What is an elevator pitch you may ask? According to Wikipedia it is:

An elevator pitch or elevator speech is an overview of a product, service, person, group or organization, or project and is often a part of a fundraising, marketing communications, brand, or public relations program.

An elevator pitch may be presented in oral, written, and video formats.

You can see my current version of it in the header of my site which is by the way the picture I used for this blog post. What are your thoughts about my elevator pitch? Does is seem quick but also descriptive over what I do in this blog?