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Scott Walker over at The English Teacher has been building up a little collection of comics he has drawn during staff development sessions (and a few others). I like his work, and enjoy reading his blog even when it has words and no pictures. I am featuring one of his comics a week here on So You Want To Teach? once a week (every Sunday sounds like a good plan) until I run out of them, or until he complains and asks me to stop sending people to his blog.

I highly encourage you to go spend some time exploring his blog in the mean time! Leave him some encouraging comments also!

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Have you signed up to join the Blog Revolution Project?

As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to the final day of our focus on writing. Today’s article will focus on keeping your blog focused.

One of the main reasons I unsubscribe from a blog is that the content changes from day to day, and things aren’t what I expected they would be. This comes when the blogger doesn’t have a specified topic of concentration.

Another advantage to focusing your blog is that you will convert more of the search engine referrals into regular readers. One of the coolest features of WordPress.com and WordPress.org software is the “Related Posts” type plugins or features that can be added. These add links at the end of the post to allow readers to read other material you’ve written on similar subjects. As we remove off-topic posts from our archives, it helps to refine the focus of the blog.

Set your target
If you use categories and tags, a good plan is to limit the number of categories to somewhere between 15-20. The less categories, the better, actually. I like to limit each article I write to one single category, and possibly add some additional tags. Tags help to better define the subjects. Something I did that really helped my writing and helped to refocus my blog was to go in and delete some of the old posts that were off-topic. I didn’t delete too many, but it really did help to clean up my blog and helped me in determining how I write.

For instance, I can pick a subject such as organization. I know that is one of the favorite topics when I write about organization. So I figure out a new way to approach some of the material I have written before.

But what if I say the same thing I’ve said before?
We have to keep in mind that a blog is not a book. People don’t all start on page 1 and keep reading. People pick up where you currently are. With that in mind, I have to remember that most of my subscribers now have no clue that I was featured in Zen Habits back in October. Many readers don’t know that I have set up SYWTT Forums and will begin really diving into them much more this summer. They don’t know that I reviewed last school year. They don’t know that the band director I work with had a stroke in December, or that I made the ebook The Instant De-Stress Handbook available.

All this is to say that if I write about Classroom Management a few times, it won’t be the worst thing that I ever did. See?

1. February 14, 2007 Classroom Management: The Key To Your Success
2. February 24, 2007 A Customer Service Oriented Classroom Experience
3. June 7, 2007 How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
4. June 21, 2007 Arguing Is Normal, isn’t It?
5. July 10, 2007 Habit 2: Classroom Procedures
6. July 27, 2007 4 Similarities Between Strep Throat And Classroom Management
7. September 9, 2007 Are You Still Out Of Control In Your Classroom?
8. September 12, 2007 5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior
9. October 20, 2007 5 Ways To Win When Children Test Your Limits
10. December 8, 2007 You Better Smile Before Christmas!
11. January 3, 2008 Old School Classroom Management
12. March 16, 2008 The Deep-Seated Problems With Public Education

TODAY’S MISSION
Find some of the off-topic posts on your blog and delete them.

If you’re scared to do that, then just refine the focus of your blog. This will be in conjunction with your writing voice. You’ll also find that as you focus your blog, you will produce much better content as you familiarize yourself with your subject matter and turn yourself into a sort of “expert” on the topic.

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Have you signed up to join the Blog Revolution Project?

As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to day three of our focus on writing. Today will look at one of the best ways to keep readers coming back each day. It also happens to be one of the best ways to bring in traffic much further down the road. We’ll focus on the art of the series.

Just as we looked at how writing lists can be very popular on Monday, another great way to encourage traffic to return is to write lists, but extend them over a period of a few days or even a few weeks. Essentially writing lists of articles, or a series. Some of the pivotal points in this blog’s history have revolved around series.

The cool thing about a series is that they are generally keyword rich (if you name your series well) and they should include links to other articles in the series. Links to more of your writing will tend to encourage readers to dig a little bit deeper and see what else you have to say.

How to write a series
Before you go any further, please read these 10 Steps To Writing A Successful Series On Your Blog, This stuff is golden. Using Darren’s 10 steps, I’ll take Reader Appreciation Month series as an example:

1. Identify a topic
   I decided that I wanted to spend a month learning about my readers. So I came up with a list of questions, emailed them out to some people who had commented, and posted them on the blog. I did this about two weeks before I was set to begin the series, with the hope that I would get a handful of responses back soon enough to have a couple of weeks set up before the month began.
2. Write a list
   Because I was at the mercy of whoever decided to respond, I sort of played this one by ear. I didn’t know what all would come of it, but I knew it would be a fun challenge for me, especially if I didn’t get a lot of response. The 8 questions I asked were really the list for this series.
3. Set targets
   The target was to fill up one month of articles. I could go a little over or under, I wasn’t too picky. It ended up being four weeks. I did five interviews each weekday during the first three weeks, and ended it with some summaries.
   
4. Set up draft posts
   Every time I got a response in the email, I would write that person’s article and schedule it on the calendar. This made things much easier for me as I was running the whole series ahead of schedule and could really focus on writing interesting stuff for the weekends, or just relaxing and interacting with commenters.
5. Pick a title
   I went with Reader Appreciating Month, since it described what I was going pretty well. In retrospect, it was good, but it could have been better. Something like Teacher Appreciation Month at SYWTT might have done better as far as bringing in search results. I’ll remember that for next time.
6. Announce the series
   I made the announcement on October 14th. I have since gone back and edited the initial announcement and took off the questions. It basically announced the project, and invited readers to answer the questions.
7. Write an introduction to the series
   I picked a stock photo, wrote a little blurb, and put it at the beginning of each interview. With the Blog Revolution Project, I have done the same thing, except I made a cooler graphic.
   
8. Write a post per day
   Generally, I don’t write a whole bunch of posts in advance. I want to be sure that current comments and other things that I read can flavor my writing. I also like to use fresh links from other blogs (which puts the trackback toward the top of the comments). Writing the post in the evening before I go to bed helps me to do that. With the Reader Appreciation Month, I did actually write most of the articles well in advance, but that’s not typical for what I do.
9. Interlink your posts
   This is key. One of the coolest plugins I have found for WordPress is In Series. I just tell it that an article is in a series, and it adds a list of the other articles in the series, and it adds itself to the list in all of the other articles. If you don’t have WordPress, then you can manually enter the links. If the reader loves your article, but can’t find the others in the series, you let them down!
10. Finish your series well
    One of the coolest things about the Reader Appreciation Month was that I got to pick the brains of educators from around the world. I didn’t have a full month’s worth of interviews, but I decided to go with what I had. That gave me a chance to really summarize the series. What popped out from those interviews was awesome.
    • 50 Classroom Management Tips I Have Learned This Month
    • 47 Blogs That My Readers Are Reading
    • Top 5 Character Traits Of Great Teachers
    • 50 Reasons To Love Your Job As A Teacher

Here are some of the series that I have written:

• 25 Tips For Less Stress
• 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers
• Questions That Will Save Your Career
• Reader Appreciation Month
• The Blog Revolution Begins

TODAY’S MISSION
Come up with a series of posts and leave a comment or trackback here.

Extra Credit:Relate your series to the list you made for Day 1, and/or the keywords you decided to use for Day 2.

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Have you signed up to join the Blog Revolution Project?

Today is the official beginning of the Blog Revolution Project. The plan is to transform your blog entirely from something that simply holds some information to a valuable resource for others. Each day, I will write a brief article, end with a mission. Some missions will be things you can accomplish in a matter of minutes, while others will take a while.

Today’s topic is probably the most important, and ultimately should be the mission of your blog every single time you write something.

Add great content
If you want people to visit your blog, they will need to have a reason to visit. If you want people to return to your blog, they will need to have a reason to return! That reason is in the words and content of the blog itself.

Nobody wants to be bored - 5 tricks to trick out your writing
Especially in an internet-enable world, nobody wants to sit down and read something that doesn’t capture their attention. These five simple tricks suggested by Darren Rowse can totally transform your writing, without requiring you to actually write any better!

1. The power of titles
   Before people read your content, they will see the title. Either in the RSS Feed (what is RSS?) on another blog linking to you, or in a search engine. Spend an extra few seconds each time you write a blog post and make sure the title will jump off the screen. Or try your guts out attempting to do that! Read more about titles at Writing Better Blog Post Titles.
2. The viral nature of lists
   Some of my most popular articles have been lists. Lists are easy to scan, and they just have a power to them. People may disagree with a few items from the list, but overall they seem to agree with much of them. So they are easy and popular to pass along. Read 8 Reasons Why Lists Are Good For Getting Traffic to Your Blog.
3. The importance of being original
   Honestly, I don’t have a lot of original information on my blog. What I do is present it in an original way. I don’t know of another blog that is written by a band director about teaching. There are a handful of teaching blogs, and a smaller number of band director blogs. But what I do is sort of merge those two worlds. I have a very unique perspective, and I don’t really worry about offending people. Maybe one of the things that makes my blog so popular is because I am very real and introspective. Here are 13 Ways to Create Unique, Original Blog Content.
4. The value of well formatted content
   Be aware of how to format online content. It’s not the same as written content. Large blocks of text crammed together don’t work well for most readers. Read some outstanding pointers for formatting stuff online at How To Format Online Content For Maximum Legiiblity.
5. The impact of a good image
   When I started blogging, I didn’t “waste” my time by putting imaged in the posts. One day I was reading blogs in Google Reader and noticed that they all looked the same. But some stood out by having color. I liked that change from the blandness of the other blog posts. I became convinced that images can really make things come alive. I try to have some sort of visual stimulation in every blog article I write now. I use the free resource at http://sxc.hu. Amazing stuff! Also check out Where To Find Free Images and Visuals.

For a more thorough examination of these 5 tricks, please visit How To Write Excellent Blog Content. For that matter, check out all of the links he has on the How to Write Great Blog Content page. Outstanding stuff!

TODAY’S MISSION
Create a comprehensive list outlining some things that will help your readers be better in a specific area of your blogging niche.

If you already have a list post, link to this one. If you don’t, get to work! When I write lists, I try to limit them to 10 or less, unless I am going overboard, then I’ll get crazy. Check out my list articles:

• 3 Keys To Line Up A Killer Job While Still In School
• 4 Tip’s For Being Respected
• 4 Ways To Effectively Deal With Important People
• 4 Similarities Between Strep Throat And Classroom Management
• 5 Keys To Educating People
• 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers
• 5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior
• 5 Ways To Win When Children Test Your Limits
• Top 5 Character Traits Of Great Teachers
• 5 Blogging Surprises of 2007
• 5 Tips To Putting The Pieces of Your Life Back Together
• 6 Motivation Techniques
• Questions That Will Save Your Career
• The Honeymoon Is Over: What Killed My First Job And 7 Tips For Getting Your Next Job
• 8 Methods For Recruiting People Into Your Program
• 8 Steps To Building A Better Blog
• 8 Ways Blogging Makes Me A Better Teacher
• 9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick)
• 10 Tips To Stay Motivated And Love Teaching
• I Give Up! 10 Reasons Why I Am Quitting My Teaching Job
• 15 Tips To Stay Positive
• 25 Tips For Less Stress
• 25 WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have
• 47 Blogs That My Readers Are Reading
• 50 Reasons To Love Your Job As A Teacher
• 50 Classroom Management Tips I Have Learned This Month
• 65 Things You Should Do Right Now To Avoid Burnout

Can you tell I like lists?