Blog Exercise #9 and #10

Join a forum and start participating. And set up alerts for your blog.

Do you think we will ever finish with the series, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog? We will. It will give me something to write about all winter.

This week I want to think about, so that means write about, Thanksgiving... things I am thankful for. And there's more I want to tell you that will have to wait... like my studio decision, Christmas gift lists, and announcing a new ministry.

Here, let's knock out two more creative ideas that support a fantastic blog.

#9 Join a forum.
Find out where your potential readers are already gathering online. When you know your blog niche and keep up with what is happening in your genre, your blog is automatically strengthened. Don't try to be all things to all people. It never works in any situation. To get a good overview of forums, read this article: How to Use Forums to Drive Hundreds of Thousands of Readers to Your Blog.

#10 Monitor what is happening in your niche.
This keeps your posts current, keeps you on the crest of any breaking news, gives you ideas for new posts and sometimes you hear what others are saying about you. Set up a variety of alerts or watchlists for your blog’s niche. A few services are: Technorati Watchlists, Twitter Alerts and Google Alerts.
Setting up alerts is fairly simple:
List keywords that are relevant to your blog.
Once you have the list, start typing them into the alert tool that you’re using to see the results.
If you’re unsure what alert tool to use, start with Google Alerts.