Here are the week’s blog marketing highlights for those who like their advice concise!
1. Tickled with my new Thesis theme and design. Hey – what do you think about the new look anyway?
2. Friday Traffic Report Radio is coming today. Tune in every week at 2 Eastern to listen to myself and Jim Stroud talk about new social media sites and other tools and resources we discover. Catch past episodes chock full of cool tips.
3. Can you attract as many visitors with honey as you can with fear?
4. Big fat blog contest just started. Link and win a $1200 membership to the new BlogSuccess training center!
A Link for Your Thoughts
Got something I should know about? Give me the scoop on social media news, sites, or blog marketing tools and resources via my contact page! I’ll give a link to you for anything I publish as a result of your tips!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Jack.
I like your old theme better. Then again, maybe I was just more familiar with it. What made you decide to change it up? Do you feel this one is visually better?
Better yet….are you tracking your visitors behavior before & after the theme change?
Jason Andersons last blog post..Free SEO Software And How To Use It
I’ll admit the change is not easy to get used to. I stared at the thing harder than anyone for the time I had the old theme up. What I like now is everything feels clean.
What I don’t like is it seems visitor behavior has changed a bit in regards to commenting! Its too early to tell definitively, but comments are down.
Google traffic is up. That, too, is too early to say definitively what the cause is, but I did get this theme for the SEO benefits over all. I can say that on the backend, the code is hyper clean and way better for SEO than the old theme.
I think it’s just a settling in period. People have to get used to the new navigation, etc. after they figure out if they are even in the right place or not, lol.
Avoid being disturbed Jack, or thinking you might have made a mistake changing the blog becasue you haven’t.
But I would avoid ever changing it again. The slightly rough appearance of the previous blog was part of your branding. “Personality” if you like. That has disappeared completely – like entirely removing an old familar pathway to a family home, plus replacing the porch and the front door as well with all its old memories and quirks.
Right now this blog looks stone cold unfamilar. But familiarity will build and return Jack for one good reason — your personality is behind it. And so it will be as popular as before after a while.
I guess that is the cost of upgrading.
My own blog is about to appear, so I’m being very careful about the issues you mention such as making it good for SEO, but setting it up right from scratch so that I don’t have to change the look and feel.
Hope this is useful / reassuring.
Jonathan
Jonathans last blog post..JonathanGunson: Heh. Call me sentimental, but I love this #validation: http://tinyurl.com/5rzhnp
Yeah, you get into that feeling that everyone else is as tired of the look as you are. It can be dangerous. I do feel like people don’t know what to do or if I sold the blog or something, lol.
It will pass. Someday someone will get mad at me if I change something about this design too – but they are safe for at least a year.