Well, it is a sad day as we have come to the end of New Bloggers Fortnight. However, in one way I am glad to have my little old blog back, now I can write as much drivel as I like when I like without feeling I am nicking someone's slot!
To finish this fortnight off properly I thought I would do a round-up of the posts and rec-cap what we have learnt this past couple of weeks.
- Try and establish an identity for your blog. Have you got one great image you can use? Do you want to have your blog professionally designed? Have you thought about making sure your handle (user ID/ screen name) is the same in every place - comments, Twitter, facebook, BMB, Blogger.ed, Technorati etc These things help to make you stand out from the crowd. Sometimes I chat to someone on BMB and then tweet them and visit their blog and have no idea they are the same person as they have a different picture/ avatar in every place. It confuses the hell out of me! For more tips revisit Metal Mummy's earlier post. I also have to point out the fabulous blog name chosen by Qwerty Mum and her strapline rocks too 'Have keyboard, not afraid to use it'.
- If you find that having read Metal Mummy's post that you want to enhance your blog you may find some of the tutorials gathered here last week are useful to you.
- Ghostwritermummy gave us the low down on finding your own original blogging voice. It is so important to be the best you can be and not to be a cheap imitation of someone else.
- Relationships are the key to blogging. It is a reciprocal thing, you can not just sit there and wait for the comments to come rolling in. Go out and find other blogs to follow and comment on, use twitter and make friends with other bloggers via great forums like BMB and Blogger.ed. SAHM Loving It gave us a great insight in relationship building from a Marketeers point of view, check it out again.
- Following on with the reciprocal love thing, Inside the Wendy House pointed out just how useful Meme's and Bloghop's can be to help gain new readers and to get your blog out there. There are some fabulous ones as Wendy's post highlights. Might as well have a plug of my own while I am here! Link up to Reasons to be Cheerful 1,2,3 every week on a Thursday night/ Friday or beyond...
- Mummy@Bodfortea then took this one step further and gave some advice on the giveaways that she has just run as a new blogger with only about 4 weeks experience under her belt. How fab is that? it took me months to be brave enough to dip my toe into that sort of thing. The key tips were to keep the entry requirements simple, promote your giveaway and to put a link to the relevant giveaway in your sidebar, so all visitors are pointed to it. I love that one and will be doing that next time myself!
- Before you launch into working with brands, reviewing products, being an ambassador or running giveaways have a good think about the bigger picture and the longer term. Do you really want this? Can you maintain it? Is it what your blog is about? If yes, then revisit this post written by me for some tips on where to start.
- Trish from Show and Tell reminded us in her post that it can be really stressful being a newbie blogger and that we should take it easy on ourselves and enjoy...
- Then lastly Alexander Residence gave us some really good food for thought. How do we blog about the big stuff? When someone is dying or has died is it our story to tell? Should we be blogging it? How do we make our decision?
Thanks to everyone who has supported New Bloggers Fortnight. I hope you have gained something useful and if you have ideas for posts or features that you would like to see here at MFTH... then just leave a comment.
Cheers, Mich x
