Archive for June, 2009:

Web: Freihofer’s Run for Women blog

Leading up to the 2009 Freihofer’s Run for Women 5k, we integrated a blog into the race’s Web site and have since been writing, posting, and spreading the world to help build excitement for the 2010 race. One challenge was to duplicate the Web site that the race’s PR firm, Rueckert Advertising, designed, so that the switch between the Web site and the blog would appear seamless. We took a WordPress theme called Elements of SEO, gutted it, and then added elements from the Web site so that the look and feel were essentially the same between the two sites.

The blog was set up as a sub domain of the main site, so it helps with search engine rankings. In fact, the blog comes up page 1 in Google when you use several search terms related to running.

One downside is that owing to the extreme customization we did with the theme design, there are a couple glitches when you view the blog in Internet Explorer 7. The blog looks fine in IE 8 as well as all other browsers (Safari, Firefox, etc.), so this is something we’re keeping an eye on with future releases.

A Blog’s Winning Combo

Having helped a few people launch blogs and online marketing campaigns recently, I’ve become more and more convinced that for anyone to achieve success in the blogging world — beyond simply launching a site — they need to have a strong personality, a good way with words, be honest and have a commitment to driving their blog forward. That’s really the only way to get people coming back to your site.

I’ve heard so much how the only way to blogging success is to drive people to your site though affiliate programs, SEO techniques and more. This might be useful, depending on your objectives, but without good content and value, no one’s going to want to return and keep reading.

The blogs that I’ve read in the past — and continue to read — are blogs that are managed by people who seem to be comfortable with their opinions, their values and their interests, and who don’t mind sharing them. Looking closely, I’ve found they tend to exhibit these traits:

• Humor – they make you laugh and have a great sense of wit.
• Intelligence- they’re well-read and knowledgeable about what’s going on in the world, but they don’t need you to know that. Rather, they enjoy educating for the sake of educating.
• Self-Deprecation – the bloggers I like the most are the ones who don’t feel the need to grand-stand — or at least if they do, don’t have a problem referencing their own flaws. This is big in the credibility department.
• An Objective – They’re trying to accomplish something in their lives — though it may not be immediately apparent, even to them.
• Genuineness - They’re genuine in their feelings. That doesn’t mean they hang everything out there, but they have a sense of awareness of who’s reading and how they may be affected by what’s being written.

Oh, and one more thing, they don’t feel they have to blog. They do it because they enjoy it.

In many ways, the only reason I read any blog these days is to learn something that’s right up my alley. If it’s an athlete’s blog, for example, I’ll want to know the outcome of his or her race or how the training is going. If it’s a blog with someone’s random thoughts, I may just like their perspective and how they write. Ultimately, it’s about what I can learn from them and how I can apply it to my life.

Do you have any other thoughts about what makes a winning blog?