5 Ways Blogging is Like Running a Cafe
My husband and I went out for out Sunday afternoon coffee. Well, he had his flat white and I my hot chocolate as I don’t drink coffee. We went to our favourite little cafe which is a glass blowing studio and gallery as well that overlooks a marsh. It’s lovely and so we are really disappointed that it is closing down next week. The family that runs it is going overseas for a year, so I understand. But, I’ll miss going there.
Anyway, as we were driving home I thought about how blogging is like running a cafe. (Yes, blogging is taking over my life a little and is obviously never far from my mind!) I thought of these points to illustrate what I mean:
Customers won’t come back to your cafe if:
- you don’t provide food they like
- your cafe is messy and not appealing to look at
- your service is half-hearted and not friendly
- your coffee is not hot enough
- there are not enough options on your drinks or eats menu
Readers won’t come back to your blog if:
- you don’t provide content they like / are interested in
- your blog is cluttered and confusing to navigate
- your writing shows lack of effort to engage with your readers
- you aren’t writing about interesting things or
- you’re writing about the same thing all the time
Even if we already are aware of these things, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded from time to time and to have a good think about what we are writing about. On my other blog, technoLOTE, I’ve asked readers straight out what they want to get from the blog. I’ve got my own ideas about what I want to do with it, but I’m sure I’ll get some other ideas from my readers. Many heads are better than one.
I’m going to keep these cafe lessons in mind as I do more reflecting on my blogs and blogging. Have you got any tips to add to the list? Have you been somewhere or done something and learned lessons about blogging at the same time?
Other posts with blogging advice: Hey Good Lookin’ and Being Yourself for the Betterment of your Blog
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What a Power Session - it’s done!
I have just powered on this afternoon and the new look technoLOTE site is up! I wasn’t planning on having things done so quickly, but was so keen to finish, that I just kept going. Feels good to be done!
Please have a good look at technoLOTE and let me know what you think of it. Have a look around and let me know if it’s too hard to find things. I’d also love some feedback on the About page - which I rewrote as part of the 31 Day Challenge. There is also a page on how to subscribe that I love for someone to read and tell me if it’s all clear enough for someone who has never subscribed to a blog before.
Phew, I think it might be bedtime…
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Hey Good Lookin’ - advice on finding the right theme for my blog
Right, that’s it. It’s gotta go. A makeover is needed. I’d been thinking this almost every time I looked at my other blog, technoLOTE, for a few months. I thought it was a bit dull, and I was no longer liking the colour scheme. I was very unsure about the posts background being green, and the grey sidebar was giving me troubles whenever I tried to edit the code.
Time for something new for 2008! I asked Sue Waters to have a good look at my blog and tell me what she thought. After a few emails back and forth her main points of advice were:
- keep it simple and make sure that new readers can see exactly what you want them to see quickly and easily
- it is important to have a ‘Home’ page that directs readers to the front page of your blog, especially for people who are new to your site
- put your RSS and subscription information at the top of the sidebar where it is easy for readers to see
- make sure there is a Search function and place it at the top of the sidebar too
- remove all widgets that aren’t really necessary. It is very easy to collect too many widgets and they can clutter your sidebar and be a distraction.
- don’t have too many pages listed on the top menu
- a white background makes for clearer reading for most people
- read her post on tips for effective blogging
So started my quest for a new look. I was obsessed. I spent hours trawling through the Wordpress Themes Directory. I downloaded at least 40 different themes and got Nick (my husband and personal IT assistant) to upload them for me to whatever content directory they needed to go in. Then I played. I found a few I thought were ok, then asked the techoLOTE readers whether they preferred the original or testsite1. Generally, technoLOTE readers were split as to which one they thought was better - positives and negatives for each were mentioned. I really found there was a fairly even split between readers who liked the original vs the test site. Some general comments were:
- the green background on the original wasn’t great (although some thought it was better than white - what to do?!)
- the header on the original took up valuable ‘real estate’ - I had never heard this term used in conjunction with blogs before, but several people mentioned it.
- the white on the new site was easier to read - although some thought it was too glaringly white
- even thought the text on the new site was easier to read on the white, the site looked cluttered.
Ok, with this feedback in mind, I kept looking. This damn theme searching was getting in the way of everything else. I didn’t feel as though I could really go forward until I had it sorted. The more I looked at themes and other people’s sites the more I felt the need to change mine.
I drove my poor husband nuts by saying ‘What do you think of this?’ and turning my laptop around to show him. This was taking up so much of my attention that he thought I loved my laptop more than him. Oh, darling, it’s just a phase I’m going through! I got advice from some Twitter contacts, which I wrote about a couple of posts ago.
I then started emailing one of my very best friends, Michelle, who works in IT at LinkMe to get her advice. She came back with the goods, just like Sue did. Michelle made a lot of sense and her main points were:
- sidebar headings must be as clear as possible
- really think about what you want to have on your blog and how you want to organise it, then find a theme that suits that. Think about what pages you need - keep the topics broad - and what exactly will go on them.
- adding drop down menus to page titles if possible is not a bad idea
- reduce amounts of unused space
- Michelle has this to say about headings and text styling:
- Michelle -Not sure in the blog posts why there are all different sized headings. Perhaps this is because it’s a demo and not finished(?). Me - that was me experimenting. so, not a good idea then? Michelle - Different sized headings are used to indicate hierarchy. If you mixed them, you start losing the hierarchy. Plus, it can look messy. I would def advise to keep the headings at the same level and the body at a different level. Any emphasis can be done using bold. Where there is a call to action (therefore, you want people to act on something, use italic text). Try not to mix bold and italics because you want people to subconciously know what you mean just by the style of your text.
So, thankfully I have many wise people around me who are so willing to help! I found a possible theme for technoLOTE last night. After playing around with it this morning (and getting a bit of feedback from Sue and Michelle) and I am pretty happy with it. I finally feel as thought I am getting somewhere and that I can start putting my energy and attention into improving the content technoLOTE now. I’m still playing around with some little bits and pieces on this new theme (which takes all of the above points into consideration, even though it may not be perfect) and will let you know when I officially ‘launch’ it which will hopefully be in the next couple of days. Just depends on how much time my dear, dear neglected husband has to help me.
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Double the Blog, Double the Challenge
Ok, so I’m onto this 31 day challenge to better my blog. I’ve had a bit of an unorganised start due to visitors and being totally distracted by searching for a new theme for my blog. Nope, not this one, my technoLOTE blog - though don’t look there for a new theme yet.I’ve got one, and am working on tweaks and making sure everything works properly. I’ll let you know when I officially ‘launch’ it. I hope that will be sometime over the weekend but that will depend on when and how much I can get my husband to help me sort out a few things. You see, he is the real geek of the house, it’s not me at all!
Back to the challenge. I’ve got two blogs. This one, where I reflect about whatever I feel like (mainly my journey through educational technology stuff) and technoLOTE where I blog about integrating technology into the LOTE (Language Other Than English) classroom. This means I am doing the 31 day challenge twice. Hopefully I can manage that!
I have emailed new commenters on both blogs (Day 1). I haven’t done the First Time Reader Audit yet as I’m on holidays and at home on my own most the time so that will have to wait for a bit (Day 2). I’m already part of plenty of forums , I just have to be more active on them (Day 3). The forums I am a part of are:
for technoLOTE:
Classroom 2.0 - General forums and Digital Languages Group
Talkabout Primary MFL
EFL Classroom
The Global Education Collaborative
Voices of The World
I run the technoLOTE Google Group as well, which has been a fabulous way to keep in touch with teachers who have seen my site at conferences and want to know more. These teachers are generally really new to web 2.0 and all its goodness, and this is the group I am focusing technoLOTE on.for The Rise of Reflection:
Building a Better Blog - Blogging Newbies and Wordpress Users group
That’s quite a few! It’s one thing to be a member of them though and another to be an active participant. I’m not too bad, but there are improvements to be made.
I’m now working on interlinking archived posts at technoLOTE (Day 4). I don’t think I need to worry about that too much here on this blog yet as there aren’t that many posts, and I have already done it a few times. It will certainly be something I am wary of each time I write a new post from now on. My next task is to conduct an About Page audit and rewrite each one on each blog to make sure it says clearly who I am and what the blog is for. I’ll be asking for feedback on that!
Oh well, would you look at that. I’ve created myself a nice little ‘To Do’ list for the afternoon:
- start and add to some forum discussions
- interlink old posts with new ones
- rewrite my About pages
Sorry, can’t write anymore - things to do!
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Being Yourself for the Betterment of Your Blog
As part of my online identity crisis I have spent a bit of time lately (well, not over the past three days when the wiggly monster child was visiting) looking at my blogs, particularly technoLOTE and thinking about exactly what I want to use them for. I’ve also been in contact with Kate Olson who is a newbie blogger too. It’s great to have a partner in crime! I started chatting to Kate through Twitter and now we are going to work together on the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog challenge. I’ve been getting a lot of advice and help over the past week or so from Sue Waters. Her advice on being a more effective blogger has been great and she has been so supportive and willing to help. A huge thank you to Sue! I’ve also joined the Building a Better Blog ning network which I can already tell is an amazing resource of bloggers and blogging advice.
I’m really enjoying blogging and being part of the edublogging community. I love the potential blogging has in the classroom. Using blogs as a learning logs for students is one way I’m going to use it this year. Getting students to reflect on their learning (not just in my class) and them hopefully they will get comments and interaction from people all over the world who can help them out. That has been the most amazing thing for me. I ‘tweeted’ (sent a message in Twitter the other night asking for feedback on the blog theme I have at technoLOTE and then ended up in a gTalk conversation with @johnjohnston and later @kolson29 about blog themes and designs and both were more than willing to help. I was rapt about that and I hope I can bring some of the into my classroom for my students.
I’ve also been successful lately with getting more comments on my blog posts. I realised that, at techoLOTE anyway, I was probably writing a bit too formally, with too much instruction and not enough of myself. I wrote a couple of more personal posts and got some great comments back. I’ve learned that blogging is about putting yourself out there. There is no need to be an authority on things. People are more likely to comment, interact with and build conversation on and community around your blog if there is plenty of ‘you in it. So, that’s what I’m aiming more for now.
Anyway, Kate, Sarah and a few others have already started the 31 day challenge so I better get a wriggle on.
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