I recently experienced a surge of traffic to my site as a result of an assignment I worked on with Chris Brogan, social media king and Mr. all around nice guy. Back in March he gave me the challenge of compiling a list of his best blog posts dating back to July 2007 (anyone familiar with the blog knows what I was working with – a lot of content and even more challenging, a lot of *quality* content). To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement because at the time, I couldn’t possibly fathom how I would determine which posts were worthy of a “Best of Brogan” page. There was just so much good stuff there.
That said, I spent a considerable amount of time reading and re-reading his archives and compiled a list using a very non-formulaic system. I asked myself if a post was useful to me as social media newbie, contained thoughtful comments from readers, was more than just a paragraph blurb or embedded video, and contained something unique to Chris as a blogger/thinker/writer. What I took away from the experience was invaluable.
Here’s my problem today: People are coming to my site and there’s no blog! I’m being publicly acknowledged as someone who knows arguably the #1 social media blog on the web front to back, yet I don’t do what I spent hours studying.
Truth be told, I blog a lot and manage about 10 online properties, but I’ve really neglected my personal stuff on here. I can’t possibly describe the level of anxiety I have right now because my blog is in this shape, but what can I do? I either put up a splash page with a tacky “Under Construction” or “Coming Soon” notice, or I just do what I should be doing – write, write, write.
(Note: My site wasn’t always this way, but thanks to a botched WordPress 2.5 upgrade and a backed up copy of my blog on a 500GB Seagate external harddrive that no longer mounts (umm, someone wanna tell Robert Scoble to be my new bff?), it is what it is.
I’m on a mission to give myself blog CPR and I’m going to do that by writing everyday for the next forty days straight. I did it last spring and I’ll do it again. It’s a challenge that any blogger should do if they want to really get themselves back on track.
After publishing this post, I’m one down, 39 to go…