Archive for the ‘31 Days to Build a Better Blog’ Category

Can you tell this is my favorite thing to do?  I can’t resist!    Yesterday’s (today’s) post about day 15 – 17 is pretty much my opinion on blogging for other people, as opposed for yourself.  I imagine that expressing your opinion would be difficult for more reserved people?  Or perhaps for people concerned with accuracy?? 

Oh my goodness, this is a biggie.  If  you’re like me, you have a list about a mile long of all the things you’d like to do on your front page, let alone the comments, and about pages.  Not to mention the contact and subscribe buttons.  This blog, and my other two should probably be the shining examples of blog layout and function, as that is what I do, however.  Have you heard the tale of the shoemaker’s children?  Yeah.  In a nutshell, they’re the ones without shoes.  Which lights a fire under me every once in a while, a rare once in a while, to make some necessary updates.  Here’s the articles we’ve written(so far) with how-to’s:

• 10 Tips to Keep posts Organized
• How to Add pictures and Buttons
• How to Add Twitter
• Making it easy for readers to subscribe
• Finding and Using an Avatar

And on Wordpress.Org:

• Using Threaded Comments

Sooooo.  Have you done a page?  or Two?  Do you need help with any of them?  Ask away, I’ll answer them in the comments or in a future post!

Oh, these are MY kind of assignments! 

So, Day 14 of 31 DBBB at Problogger: Go to the mall and observe marketing trends, the ways the display, creativity, color are used.  Perhaps do some people watching too.

Okay, so I tried this.  I spent an hour at the mall, but my ADD wouldn’t let me observe what was going on… there are way too many sparkly and shiny things to drag me in.  Apparently I’m a sucker for marketing and sales techniques.    I sat down at the food court, and could only think of how I was going to avoid the Dairy Queen ice cream shop.  Uggg.

How did it work for you?

Some observations, (obtained through much psychotherapy):

• spring colors were everywhere: purple and green
• every store had different lighting according to the audience: children’s stores were bright and sun-light-ish.  Mens stores were darkish and indirect, incandescent lighting, teen stores were more florescent.
• Things looked as if they were refreshed, racks pulled closer to the door every day – I suppose the point is that it was kept fresh and clean, and relevant.
• print media outside of the store (signs and maps) drew people into the store
• personally I’m more comfortable entering a store when the staff are occupied, and not staring at me.

Any relevance to blogging?  What did you figure?