photo credit: Marcus Vegas

I just wanted to personally thank all of the people who subscribe to Cliqpreneur by either RSS or email. The number of subscribers broke through a plateau yesterday, and it’s directly due to all of you that are reading as the blog grows.

The best way to give you content you want to read is to ask. So…what topics would you like to read about? Helpful hints? Case studies? Book reviews?

Comment below or send me an email, and I’ll work your requests into upcoming posts.

Thanks again for your support

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Adding images to your blog posts captures your readers attention and adds visual interest. However, finding appropriate images has a been a bit of a chore until now.

The Photo Dropper plugin for WordPress finds blog images for you on Flickr and then inserts them into your post with appropriate attribution.

The installation instructions are standard for most WordPress plugins. If you get confused, the details are listed on the site. I did have some initial problems with the plugin returning the images, but the issue resolved itself after I logged out of WordPress and logged back in.

Before I installed Photo Dropper, I was manually searching Flickr for blog images. I would download them to my desktop then upload them to my site via FTP. Photo Dropper does all this work for you and saves a ton of time. The site does recommend you verify the license:

You should always check the specific CC license on the source page before posting since you’re ultimately responsible for adhering to the license.

Other than that, using this plugin is a snap.

I highly recommend this plugin if you use blog images in WordPress. You’ll save time and grab your readers attention to boot.

If you follow financial news, you may have read or heard headlines like “UBS upgraded Google today from a neutral to a buy.” There are lots of factors that go into valuing companies, but one tool is particularly useful for evaluating and growing blog traffic. That tool is called period over period analysis.

What is period over period analysis?

Period over period analysis is simply comparing a time period to the same time period in the past. To continue our Google example, the company reported $1.5 billion in profit in 2005 and $3.1 billion in profit in 2006. That ’s period over period improvement (big time!). You can also look at shorter time periods like quarters, months or weeks. For example, compare January 2007 to January 2008. Analysts really get excited when a company consistently shows period over period improvement. Period over period improvement for 27 months in a row indicates that management know how to run a profitable business.

Evaluate your blog using period over period improvement

Relative to a blog, you might look as RSS subscribers and compare January 2008 to January 2007. If your blog is really new, you might compare Wednesday of this week to Wednesday of last week. Has your readership grown? Did it decrease?

The key to using period over period analysis is to understand what was different between the two time periods. Here are a few things (metrics) you can evaluate to see what’s going on:

• Posting frequency - more vs. less
• Post length - short vs. long
• Social media activity
• Quality of your posts
• Time of day when your posts were published

I would recommend looking at any metric you feel is important to your blog traffic.

Take action to increase readership

Next, you should create an action plan based on the insights you gain from evaluating your blog period over period. For example, if your readership grew when you posted less frequently but the posts were longer, you should consider writing that way more often.

Did morning posts increase readership more than late night posts? Try scheduling your posts to publish in the morning (even if you finished them at 2 am the night before).

Did a particular post topic strike a chord with your readers? Try giving them more content on that subject.

Your goal should be to show consistent period over period improvement in your blog. By consistently targeting period over period growth, your blog will gain momentum and traffic. And best of all, your readers will be getting the quality content they crave.

Summary

• Use period over period analysis to evaluate your blog
• Choose time periods and metrics that help you understand your readers
• Create an action plan that tailors your content, style and post frequency to your readers
• Target period over period improvement to build momentum and grow readership.

In the end, it’s all about giving your readers what they want: quality content. Period over period analysis is one approach to identify what you do well on your blog and what could be improved.

What other methods do you use to understand your readers?

Image by epak

Yesterday’s post about outsourcing was directly related to the struggles I am having developing content for my new website. Today, I have a little twist on the same theme…how to overcome writer’s block.
My efforts to write the intro page for the new site were being met with massive writer’s block. Honestly, I can barely call it writer’s block since I’m barely a writer. Let’s just say I was getting nothing accomplished. Worse still, I’m feeling stressed because I won phone consultation time with Rosalind Gardner and I want her to review this site. What to do?

To overcome my writer’s block, I decided to change topics. I had a list of subjects I wanted to cover on the website, and each topic was easily a page by itself. Since I couldn’t get in a groove on the opening, I decided to try one of the detail topics.

Lo and behold, the words started flowing…and flowing…and flowing. I was amazed. I could have easily written 3 times that amount, but I had to stop somewhere. So what happened?

There were two key factors in the the burst of productivity: I picked a topic I was more comfortable with, and I was telling a story. I knew the storyline and the facts intimately, because the story was from personal experience.

Pretty easy, right?

If writer’s block has you stalled, try these simple things:

• Change topics - Even if you must write on the difficult topic, writing first about a subject your are more comfortable with can get the creative engines started
• Tell a personal story - Making a point by drawing on personal experience is easy because you lived the story, and it’s powerful because your experience lends credibility.

You’ll be amazed at the results.

Image by Justin Russell