Building a Better Blog for Your Readers

From Cheryl's Writing Crate

For me as a blogger, it's truly hard to believe that Kate and I have been blogging on our site, The Writer's Crate, for six months now!  As Kate shared in her blog earlier this week, once we hatched the idea to blog about our passion for writing, we brainstormed, plotted, laughed, and eventually got our plans in order to launch our joint effort--The Writer's Crate, last September.

The one thing I know for sure about blogging is that it is full of surprises!  Going into our venture, I was sure I would have a detailed plan for what I wanted to blog about well in advance.  Boy, was I wrong about that!  Because I'm the type of person who is very list and detail oriented, I surprised myself, most of all, when I realized about one month into our blog that I enjoyed and thrived on the last-minute thrill of coming up with an idea to blog about.

Having a partner such as Kate who is as passionate as I am about our blog and about writing and reading has been the icing on the blogging cake!  I am continually learning from her, and I always have a sounding board when I need to run ideas about anything--grammar, voice, subjects, or just plain old frustrations about writer's block.  In the end, it's all good--very good in fact, but I am finding that blogging is a therapeutic learning process, not simply another item on my "to do" list.

Now that we're well into six, steady months of blogging about all things writing, both Kate and I are both learning more every time we post about the ins and outs of blogging.  To Kate's credit, she has spent valuable time tracking numbers and finding ways to improve the flow of our blog. We both believe that as we continue our blogging journey, more readers will join us, and  before we know it, we will have a vibrant, expanding community of loyal readers who continually want to  raise the bar as high as possible when it comes to challenging their writer within.

I have just stumbled upon a new e-book that I plan on ordering later today, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, written by Pro Blogger Darren Rowse.  This book is designed to help revitalize your blog.  
What caught my attention is that it is a workbook style.  The workbook is divided into 31 easy-to-follow tasks that you can work through in your own time.

Each step in the workbook contains:

• A Task – something to DO that step.
• Teaching – each day you’ll be given in depth instruction on both the WHY and HOW of the task of the day.
• Further reading – so you can dive deeper on any task.
• 

This three pronged approach is designed so that you come away from the challenge having not only learned how to build a better blog but you’ll have actually achieved something with the knowledge.  

Even if I walk away with only one or two new ideas, I will feel that reading this e-book will be a success.  I will be sure to give a review in a future post about my thoughts!

If you blog, do you have any tools that you use regularly to improve your craft on a regular basis?