Promoting Your Work Proves Both Promising and Challenging

As I looked over the assignment for this week, it seemed easy. Get the word out about my blog. We've all experienced our Facebook friends "sharing" and "liking" a variety of articles and other digital media, so it is easy right? It is easy if someone else created the buttons, links, and networks. I really struggled with this assignment in comparison to others. This class is more my intro to creating digital media in the context of incorporating links, buttons, HTML, etc into my work. I was able to use some resources in addition to those mentioned in the text to begin promoting my blog, but it will take me time to get it all together.

About Me

The first order of business for me to tackle was the "about me" section of my blog. I had avoided it last week, as I often find it awkward to talk about myself in the sense that I don't always know what to write. You don't want to come off too arrogant or as though you are bragging, but you don't want your intro to be the same old "song and dance". "10 Rules for Writing a Compelling 'About Me' Page" provided me with some great insight:

1.) Know who you're talking to

2.) Don't just lead with the facts

3.) Share your values

4.) Show yourself

5.) Tell the story of your professional journey

6.) Tell people how you can help them

7.) Demonstrate how've provided solutions for others

8.) Give a sense of what it's like to work with you and show people they can trust you

9.) Add a contact link

10.) Don't make it all about you

I found this advice to be super helpful. I tried to apply as many of these thoughts as I could and I plan to incorporate even more of them as I continue to build my blog.

Other Promotional Activities

In addition to improving my "About Me" page , I added a chicklet for my Feedburner as well as posting the link to my log on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I added a Facebook badge to the sidebar of my blog as well. 

Writing Material

Today was a long, rather tiring day. I was struggling to come up with something to write about. Then I stumbled upon an article entited "Blogging your business: 10 blogs you can write right now". This got my brain going and I was able to start on another post.

This week provided me with a wealth of information on how to get more traffic on my blog and I am excited to continue to improve and apply this information on and to my blog.