Growing You Blog Audience

Step One

Your task is to create an audience for your blog.  How will you do this?  The best way is to comment on other people's blogs.  Creating an audience for your work is HARD.  It took me a long time to build even my meager audience.

Using the first page of blogmeister you should search for other blogs.  This is not an easy process as that search engine does not recognize new blogs.  One way to do it is to click on Featured Articles.  Or you can search by state, country, or age group.

Perhaps start here -- Leave a comment on a 1st graders blog,or here.  Be sure to log in first if on blogmeister and leave SUPER nice and SUPER polite short entries for the kids.

When you leave a comment be sure it extends the conversation about the blog post.  Don't spam them ("Hey, check out my blog!" or "If you click this link you can read my new eBook!").  But be sure the information boxes are filled out correctly (first name, last initial: leave email blank; your blog address).

Now, when they return to your blog do you have interesting content?  Will you have something for them to read?

How will we measure/grade this?  Write a blog post RIGHT NOW where you list:

• How many countries have visited your blog.
• How many red dots do you have.
• How many comments from non-SHS people.

Then we measure the growth.  Good luck.

Step Two

Each of you should have a blog post measuring the reach of your blog.  Some of you began your campaign to grow your audience by commenting on blogs.  We will continue this now.

Click here to go to student blogs.

We discussed the difference between spam comments and valuable comments.  We discussed the proper way to format your comment (no email, first name last initial, blog address).  We discussed the value of responding to comments.  We recognized how hard it is to build an audience.

Building an audience is one of the most important skills we will work on.  Nearly every product, service, and idea is sold via the web now.  You MUST know how to get your work out there to survive and eat.  This blog is practice for that.

I'm also hoping to raise the level of work on your google profile.  For many of you your twitter feed is your #1 result on google.  For many of you this is NOT good.  Seriously.  And remember, swearing is bad.

Today you will do three things:
1. Write blog posts to increase the quality of your blog (see topics below).  You need posts that people will link to, email their friends, post on twitter.  We want people to be saying "Read this!".
2. Comment, comment, comment.  Using blogmeister or google you will find blogs to comment on.  You will leave comments everywhere.  You will make the comments interesting and they will extend the conversation.  
3. If you find an interesting blog post you will write about and link back to the original blog.  This is "polite blogging".  This is how traffic gets generated.

Suggested blog posts (remember to include links, a cool title, embed video/images if needed).  Choose one or all:
1. If you are a football player: Explain when you would punt the ball and when you "go for it" so anyone can understand it.
2. If you are a cheerleader: Is cheerleading becoming more dangerous?  Describe how cheerleading has changed over time.  Where is the line between OK and too dangerous?
3. If you are a musician:  How have headphones and iPods changed music?
4. If you are an artist/photographer: How has the internet changed how we view art?  Does the internet help or hurt art?
5. If you eat: What should we eat?  Should we be allowed to eat whatever we want?  What if we know what we eat is slowly killing us?
6. If you breath: Whats in the air that you breath?  Is it safe to breath?