How to Improve Your Blog by Watching What Other Bloggers Do
It's day 4 in our 31 days to build a better blog challenge and today is one of my favourites - in fact it's something I do very regularly in my own blogging.

It's all about spending time on another person's blog in your niche to observe what they do (and don't do) to see what you can learn (no magnifying glass required).



This exercise can be done in 10-15 minutes (although you can take longer if you wish).

Listen to this episode to find out how I do it.
In this Episode
Much of this episode is a series of questions for you to ask as you look at the blog that you've chosen to analyse.

You might like to get the blog's page loaded up and then run todays episode for a bit while I run through some questions and then pause the episode as you do the analysis.

Here are the areas to analyse that I run through:

Questions to ask about how the blog you observe handles content
Questions to ask about how the blog engages with their readers
Questions to ask about how the blog uses social media
Questions to ask about who the blog is designed
Questions to ask about how the blog monetizes/sustains themselves
Questions to ask about how they use email/newsletters
Questions to ask about how they are getting traffic to their blog
Other questions that might help you identify opportunities to work with this blog

I also share 2 words of warning with this exercise.
Further Reading
This podcast is based upon this post on the ProBlogger Blog where some of the questions I run through are included so you've got them written somewhere.

Mentioned in this episode were two tools for looking at the traffic of other blogs. They are Alexa and Compete. These don't give you exact stats and I don't find them 100% accurate as I analyse my own blogs but they can give you a bit of an idea of how a blog's traffic might be trending.

For Alexa just add the url of the site in the top right corner where it says 'Browse Top Sites or Enter a Site' and then click 'Find'.

For Compete just enter the URL in the front page but note that for full stats you need to pay these days so you won't get a heap of information.
How Did You Find Todays Exercise?
I would love to hear how you found todays challenge. Please share what you learned in comments below!
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I use their services and have worked with some great designers to create graphic design creatives for my blogs.
Pick up the 31DBBB eBook at 50% Off
Don't Forget You can also grab the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook with a 50% discount using the coupon code PODCAST50 during the checkout process here.

 

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