As bloggers, we must constantly reach out to our readers. We must employ a variety of methods to successfully do this, and we must understand our readership in order to apply these methods intelligently. The best bloggers seek out ways to tweak their methods of connecting with their audience. If you consider yourself an expert blogger, or even if you’re a new blogger and trying to get a start in the business, then you’ll be interested to read a little bit about Instructional Design and how it can be applied to blogging.
Basically, Instructional Design is the practice of creating and adjusting a teaching method in order to create the most efficient and effective learning experience for a student. Instructional Design relies on the concept that we learn through a combination of three things: our previous amount of knowledge, activity that reinforces the lesson, and how we feel or perceive the lesson itself. In order to build off of this foundation, teachers and instructors can follow a five step process, called the ADDIE process, that will help them create successful instruction matierals: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate.
I’ll spare you the specifics of this process—if you’re interested in more, check out this useful resource all about Instructional Design—in order to get to how this might be applied to your blogging. If you apply the ADDIE process to your blogging, it might look something like this:
Analyze
Analyze what sort of readers you’re interested in connecting to. What are their habits? Interests? What are you own strengths as a writer? What makes you an expert in your field? How can you link your expertise to a good blogging platform? What are you options as a blogger in your chosen niche? What have previous bloggers done successfully? The important part of this step is that you investigate all aspects of blogging: you, your audience, your blog, and how the three link together.
Design
Once you have settled on some answers, you should design a series of goals that derive from these answers. If you are an expert in your field, one goal could be to teach your readers one concept each month. Or, if you are a business person or entrepreneur, your goal could be to monetize your blogging to a certain extent each month. If you like meeting new people, your goal could be to create a group blog that leans heavily on a socializing aspects: connecting one blogger to another. In any case, how you design your goals will come from the sorts of answers and questions you think up in the first step.
Develop
Look at your list of goals. Now you have to develop a vehicle for making good on these goals. Different blogging applications will offer you certain widgets that you can tweak in order to make them helpful for achieving your goals. Likewise, you can create features on your blog that you can use to reach your goals. For example, if you want to educate people with your blog, one feature could be a weekly ‘Lessons Learned’ column. If you want to cover industry news, look into widgets that aggregate industry insider Tweets in real time in the sidebar. You’ll have to do a lot of research during this step, but it will all be worth it.
Implement
This is the big step! You buy the domain name, find a host, and go live with your new or updated blog. As you implement the blog, be sure to remain consistent and follow through on your plans. Update your blog routinely. Keep up with the features you have created. Make sure it isn’t glitchy or full of broken links. Basically, tend to the health of your blog, write your articles as you planned, and do you best to spread word through your various interactions in the blogging community.
Evaluate
Finally, you should take some time to evaluate your project at some critical points in time. A good place to stop and think is after a month of two. Monitor and respond to comments people have left or posts written in response to your own posts. Look at your traffic numbers and what content was most popular. Examine the keywords that bring people to your site. Also look at your top referrers; these are the other sites that you should consider building relationships with. The purpose of this evaluation stage is to see how your implementation of the blog is helping you reach your goals. Then you can make adjustments and repeat the process to correct for any odd trends.
This guest contribution was submitted by Lauren Bailey, who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 [at] gmail [dot] com.
Jeff’s note: I know this post is a little off topic for this blog, but I’m extremely interested in better ways to convey my experience in order to help others. You’ll be seeing new tools and methods used here to help you blast away your debt and never make the mistakes I’ve made in the past. In the end, a blog should provide value to you and helping you get out of debt is the greatest gift I can give you.
If you have run into a debt wall, are stuck only making minimum pays, or just need a little motivation. Get in touch with me and I will help you.
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Even though I’m not a blogger, the ADDIE process reminds me to take some time to think things through. A blog isn’t just about jotting down randoms thoughts and putting them into the World Wide Web. The focus should be helping readers and searching for what makes them tick. There is a perk for all your work, though. I imagine the benefit of this constant search for more information comes with a priceless gift we call knowledge.
Thanks for sharing, Jeff. And even more thanks to Lauren for a thoughtful article.
I’m very impressed by the devotion you seem to put into optimizing your readers’ experience. Even after a year of “running” (or “occasionally remembering that I had”) a blog, I’m still mostly trying to write for myself. I guess that’s the difference between a personal blog and an informative one that “reaches out” to its readers…
This entry is very insightful, and even more helpful. Thanks, Lauren and Jeff!
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