Blogger Expert?

Been doing the "contemplation" side of the business the last 4 or so days. I'm starting to see more clearly what I want and need to do, and how to integrate it. I've finished the SEO testing phase and am very satisfied with the results. The purchase funnel is complete and seems to be working much better than the old site architecture, which means I think the site is making more money. Too soon to tell though. I should have more data in a month or so.

I recognized that I needed to get better at how my blog looks and is promoted as right now it looks bad and no one is visiting it. I'm pretty new to the concept of "social networking" as one of the tenets of the "new" way. I have a commitment to and ignorance of things like site video, youtube, mobile device content, RSS feeds and pretty much all the things that I think will make up the next generation of the connected economy. Ah, the mix of new technology and an aged, addled brain!!! I love challenges.

Anyway, I recently received this book and spent some time last night looking into it. I'm from the "old school" and do better with printed material in front of me than flipping back and forth between a digital copy and where I' m doing the work. Pricey little bastard.

After you get over the "Georgia Peach, Fanatical Fruitier" references, it actually has some really good information. I bought it to figure out how to change the layout of templates (Chapter 2), understand widgets (Chapter 5) and integrate into exisiting web sites (Chapter 10). Looking it over when I got it, I noticed that those topics take up around 60 pages of the 330 total. Georgia references waste another 50 or so.

Fortunately, in my reading last night I discovered that most of the material is what I need to know about the things I don't understand in blog world. Its a starting point anyway. And its written pretty simply so my spotted MS cerebellum can figure it out.

The first thing it suggests is coming up with the focus of the blog. As I think about it, this blog is just a place for me to experiment and vent. I have no intention of becoming a Blogger expert. And since the venting will be focused on a whole bunch of subjects, there really isn't a focus. I'll be relating about the web business development, MS, our journey (soon) and other things that just piss me off. So I guess the blog is just an experiment.

That being said, I'm about to start fooling with the layout of the blog, so I thought it would be a good idea to take a picture to compare before and after layouts:

You can see that I need to get better at this.