I did want to back up just a bit and make a comment about the challenge to make friends on social networking sites. I had not really done that before. So I started with Digg and I now have about 125 friends and 14 followers. I used to get 2-3 Diggs on my posts but lately I have been getting a half dozen or more. Baby steps…but still something.

So on to new challenges….

Day 22. Ask someone to guest-post on your own blog. If you’re friendly with another blogger, invite them to write on your own blog. If your blog is more popular than theirs you’ll have a better chance of being accepted. A guest-poster can inject a bit of freshness into your blog and, most importantly, allow you to focus on tasks other than content creation for a day.

I have put out a call for guest bloggers or even regular bloggers and I am even offering to pay them. I got lots of requests for info but no bites and no submitted posts. I am not sure what I am doing wrong there. When I have more time I will have to think about how to fix that. Right now though I am not exceedingly interested…although I am swimming in product reviews and could use some help.

Day 23. Do some SEO on your blog.SEO can be tricky, but if you know a little bit about it, set aside a day to revise and tweak your blog’s SEO. Alternately, you can take the time to learn how to optimize your blog for search engines.

I would say my blog is optimized. It has tags, descriptions, applicable post slugs, keyword rich page titles. I heavily research long tail keyword phrases and my I usually end up ranking in the top 5 (usually top 2) for almost anything I aim for. I have been pretty successful in that area.

Day 24. Buy a $5 StumbleUpon advertising campaign for your best post.$5 buys roughly 300 visitors. If some of those StumbleUpon visitors end up adding more votes to your article, the result could be a traffic snowball much larger than the one you paid for! Before you start, you can read this post at ProBlogger on advertising with StumbleUpon.

I had never heard of this before…but what the heck. Let’s try it out. I created a campaign using one of my biggest money making pages and I spent $5.00 to have it Stumbled. I will let you know how it goes and what I think.

Day 17. Think up 20 post ideas you can use. Once you know what you’ve got to write, starting becomes a lot easier. Set aside a day to brainstorm 20 post ideas you could definitely see yourself using on your blog.

I have a running list of post ideas, and keyword phrases that I collect for all my web sites and blogs. When I am running low on inspiration I just wade through that list and find something to write about. I also have an Outlook file called “Blog Ideas” where I save emails with products tips, leads, and ideas. This is a real time saver.

 Day 18. Thank your readers. Set aside a day to say thank you to your readers — even if it’s just a short sentence at the bottom of your latest post. Of course, if you can be innovative in the way you say thanks to your readers, it’s a lot more likely to leave an impression.

This is a good idea. I have never done and I guess I should eh? I have a post set to go out tomorrow with a thank you!

Day 19. Update your blogging software to its latest version. Out of date blogging software can be vulnerable to bugs and attacks from hackers. Just make sure to back up your previous install (and that you know what you’re doing). You might need to spend some time researching the transition before you actually begin the process.

 I do this regularly. Most of my blogs have a one click update feature which is a lifesaver. Although my NatureMoms blog is heavily hand coded so I always trust my designer to do those upgrades. Right now I am waiting until the new version of WordPress comes out and I test it with a few other blogs but then I will update.

Day 20. Create strong, alpha-neumeric passwords for all your accounts. If any of your blogging related passwords are single, Dictionary words or letters only, it would be quite easy for a determined hacker to break into one of your accounts. Set aside this day to strengthen your passwords by using combinations of letters, numbers and punctuation that exceed 8 characters in length. Make sure to keep your new passwords written down somewhere in a safe place (and write them down carefully).

I have a system for my passwords. They are alpha-numeric and I can remember each and every one for my dozen or so blogs because they have personal significance and blog significance. I used to just store the original passwords that came with the blog but that got old having to look them up all the time.

Day 21. Sit down and analyze your stats for the last month. Statistics can tell you a lot about what worked and what didn’t. Analyzing stats over an extended period can reveal visitor trends, popular posts and which of the promotional activities you undertook were worth doing.

Yes! Analyzing traffic is what tells me what is working really well on my blog. I can see what type of posts get the most searches and traffic and duplicate those “type” of posts. I attract hundreds of people each day looking for BPA free products. Did I set out to be the BPA free queen? No. I wrote a post about the issue and got lots of hits from search engines…so I decided to do reviews of BPA free products and got tons more hits…..rinse and repeat. Analyzing traffic is just as good as doing surveys in my mind…they really give you insight into what your visitors want.

Day 15. Write a 10-page report or mini eBook. A few hours work will result in a free report you can distribute to feed subscribers only, give out to your readers and encourage them to share, or otherwise leverage to bring more traffic back to your blog. If it’s really useful, it might even go viral.

Day 16. Try adding a new income stream to your blog. If it wasn’t clear already, blog advertising programs can be unreliable. You might be on to a sweet thing with one form of advertising at the moment, but what if the service changes, or goes bust — taking your income with it? If you’re monetizing your blog it’s a good idea to have at least two strong income streams in place, so that if something goes wrong with one, you’ve still got backup.

I am working on the report right now. It will be more of an e-book and I am putting it together to meet a previous challenge to give away something free on my blog. It will require and opt-in and it will be full of affiliate links so hopefully it will be a source of income as well.

As for monetizing my blog I think I have that down too. My primary money makers for my NatureMoms blog are Amazon, Adsense, BlogherAds, and various affiliate programs. I also opened up my blog to private banner ads too and have some regular subscribers now. So I am not looking to add any new revenue streams…just keep tweaking and tuning the ones I already have in place.

So I need to do 5 days of challenges to keep up. They were pretty easy.

Day 10. Pitch a link to one of your blog posts to three other blogs in your niche.Take the most popular post on your blog and pass along the link to the bloggers behind three popular blogs in your niche. If they like it, they may link to it in their next link round-up.

Well….I don’t really do this anymore. I don’t need to. I get oodles of backlinks for my most popular posts already but if my blog were newer I would definitely do that.

Day 11. Add social media links to the bottom of your posts and to your feed.While most people will vote for your posts via the toolbar, social media links or icons can remind people to vote for your post if they liked it. It’s even more essential to add these buttons to your feed, because there’s no easy way for people to vote straight out of their feed reader. Using a FeedFlare to put an ‘Add a Comment’ link at the bottom of your feed items is also a good idea. FeedFlares are available under the ‘Publicize’ tab in your Feedburner control panel.

I have the “Share This” plugin on my blog so there are social media buttons on the actual blog posts but NOT in the feed. So I did need to take advantage of that missed opportunity. I added several FeedFlares and I added them to some other blogs too while I was at it.

Day 12. Participate in the comments on one of your own blog posts. Readers will feel as if you’re interested in what they have to say, you might learn something, and you’ll also increase the comment count on your post.

Do this already. 

Day 13. Work out an editorial calendar for your blog. It’s a lot harder to put off writing a post when you know exactly when your blog is due for an update. Working out an editorial calendar can help give your blog a sense of rhythm. It can also make you more productive through setting firm deadlines for new posts.

Generally I post Monday thru Friday for the Naturemoms blog. I take the weekends off. So I think it has a sense of rhythm already.

Day 14. Prune your feed subscriptions.I suspect some bloggers spend as much time reading feeds as they do writing posts. Pruning your feed collection can help you save quite a bit of time. If you find yourself regularly skipping feed items from a particular blog, or if you can’t think of one thing you’ve learned from reading a particular blog’s posts, it’s probably best if you unsubscribe.

LOL. I needed this bit of advice. My feed subscription list has gotten quite massive. So I spent some time today pruning and removing some of the blogs I read as an after thought really. Many of my subscriptions are actually recon work…I am scoping out my niche and some are blogger friends but TONS are political (liberalism, libertarianism, etc), personal interest (frugality, crafting), and faith or faith/politics. I read entirely too many blogs. I pruned…probably 100 blogs from my reader…sorry guys.

Mission accomplished….

Day 9. Offer a free service to your readers (without expecting anything in return). Whether it’s a logo redesign, free post ideas, a design review, social media votes or 15 minutes worth of free consulting, giving something valuable away for free without expecting anything in return will leave a lasting impression on your readers (and might attract a few links, too).

Hmmm…I don’t have anything free to giveaway other than my green cleaning guide and I removed that reference a few months ago. The above suggestions won’t work because the blog I am working on is not a business blog. I already offer free consulting in a round about way because I encourage everyone and anyone to email me via the blog and I answer about 10 personal emails a day…all from readers with questions or comments. So I freely give my time…

I have however been tossing around an ebook idea and I really dislike the thought of charging for it. So maybe I need to get cracking on that, get a professional cover designed for it, and offer it free to my readers. Okay…I see a goal coming. I need to get a valuable freebie on my blog asap.

This mission is still in progress.

Day 8. Craft a great resource-list. Resource lists are very popular with social media and can be quite easy to make, particularly if you already have the resources on hand. Pick a topic your target audience is keenly interested in and create a list of resources relating to that topic. You can use your own bookmarks if you have enough. If you’re short on links, a del.icio.us search for your topic will return hundreds if useful links people have saved using your chosen topic as a keyword.

Woot! Another one bites the dust. Some of most popular blog posts are actually resource lists although I never thought of them in those terms before. Not only do I get awesome comments on these posts but I get more backlinks too….TONS of backlinks. Oh and sales….let’s not forget those. My resource pages get daily sales.

They were a lot of work to put together but so worth it. Here are some examples of my resources pages:

Eco Friendly Birthday Party

Eco Friendly School Supplies

Technorati Tags: blogging, resource pages, sales

Day 7. Pitch a guest-post idea at the most popular blog in your niche. Guest-posting is a fantastic way to raise your profile and bring targeted traffic back to your blog. Navigate to the most popular blog in your niche and think of a post idea you think would work well there (but make sure it’s one they haven’t posted about before). Pitch your idea to the blogger and offer to write the full article if they’re interested. If not, you can always use the idea on another blog, or on your own blog.

This one I have done. Last year I guest blogged for 2 popular green blogs and 1 parenting blog. I intended to pitch a guest post to the big daddy of green blogs Treehugger.com but they featured my blog on their own…yehaw! This year my Naturemoms blog was featured on a new site called Green Mom Finds. I actually hesitate to guest blog for other people because I am so short on time but I do agree that it is an excellent way to gain new readers.

I will be on the lookout for more blogs to partner with this year…I have my eye on one already.

Day 6. Start making friends on a social media service like Digg or StumbleUpon. These services are a great place to network, because you’ll be establishing relationships with people who have the potential to send hundreds of visitors to your articles. If you vote up their content, you may be able to call in a favor later on by asking them to vote up posts you’ve written.

This one I do need to work on. I regularly submit my own posts to Stumbleupon and a few other social network sites but I haven’t really worked to gain “friends” there. I have been fortunate that some random people have started following me as friends though. I noticed recently that within a few days of posting about recycling household stuff for the garden that it was Stumbled and reviewed about 8 times. You really can’t underestimate the power of Stumbleupon. Last year one of web pages about using no shampoo on your hair got Stumbled by one gal who had lots of friends (who then reviewed and Stumbled) and my traffic skyrocketed up to an extra 4 to 5 hundred people a day. It stayed that way for a month and then petered out within 2 months. It was an awesome ride.

Mom Masterminds….one of the most awesome mentoring and networking groups ever…has a Blog Boost program where you can ask the other members to visit one of your blog posts and submit it to social networking sites for you. That is a big perk.

So my mission for this week is to start making “friends” on social networking sites…let’s call this mission a mission in progress.

Day 5. Highlight your most popular posts. Linking to your blog’s most popular posts in a prominent location is essential practice, because it gives new visitors a place to go. They don’t have time to search around for good content: the want to see the best you have to offer, straight away. Linking to popular posts can help ensure that the links and comments keep coming, even after the post is several months old.

Woot! This is another one I already have done…I guess I was a pretty darn good blogger already eh? When I had my blog re-designed about 3  or 4 months ago I asked the designer to widgetize the blog so that I could add new header categories with ease. One of the things I wanted the most was a “Greatest Hits” section. So you will find on my Naturemoms blog a header called Greatest Hits and under it are my most popular blog posts.

Why exactly is this important? Well, I chose those particular posts because they draw in the most traffic, the most searches, and the most money. And they are really kind of the best of the best as far as good and useful content goes. When new visitors come to my blog I want them to be able to look at that Greatest Hits list and see other blog posts that they are sure to love. The more they see and like the more likely they will become an RSS or email subscriber and regular reader.

Day 4. De-clutter your sidebar. Clutter likes a sidebar in the same way that monkeys like trees. If you have less in your sidebar, you can focus bigger chunks of attention on what’s really important (your feed link, categories and popular posts). Remove unnecessary widgets and put your blogroll and archives on their own dedicated page. It can also be a good idea to remove underperforming ads.

This task is one I really needed to do. You see I am one to clog up my sidebars with affiliate banners hoping to increase commissions but in general it doesn’t work out that well. I have one or two banners or widgets in my sidebar that actually perform well but for the most part my affiliate commissions come from the content…the actual blog posts. I have been testing and tracking this for a few months so I know what needs to go and what needs to stay.

Things I did to de-clutter my NatureMoms sidebar:

I removed the Feedblitz email sign-up as I now have an aweber signup and having both is redundant.

I removed the BlogRush Widget as the traffic generation was just too insignificant to warrant a presence.

I removed some buttons for different blog directories that I joined and left the ones that actually do generate weekly traffic.

I moved the Sitemeter buttons to the footer.

I also readjusted the placement of the existing ad banners but all remaining actively bring in money. There is no dead real estate.

I think it has better symmetry and it looks a bit cleaner. So mission accomplished.