The 2009 Blog Initiative

Hi everybody,

This is my first blog of 2009, and it’s a very boring one I’m afraid, as I’m just here to tell you about some changes and improvements for my blog that I have put in place and will continue to put in place over the next month or so.

Both J and myself have set a target upon me for 2009 to improve my blog, with the main focuses being on:-
1) Improving traffic to the blog, and more importantly, improving immediate traffic to the blog. So basically getting more people to read it within the first few weeks of it being posted.
2) Improving feedback from the blog, as this has been a bit sparse for the most part this past year.
3) And finally, improving blog interactivity, which goes hand in hand with point 2 to some degree.

It’s been a bit more complicated than I initially hoped, as I had a series of plans to counter these issues, but due to html embedding issues on my blog-sites, I’ve had to create a mini web-site of my own purely to host these new features at. This isn’t an additional blog-site, my blog won’t be posted here, it is just supporting my current blog-sites, but I have put in a decent “About Me” section, and I may include an FAQ section, and other things may pop up here in the future just to help you get to know me better and feel a bit more involved. The site can be viewed here:-
http://blogslut.bravehost.com/

So just to cover what I am doing for the above points:-

Point 1 – Improving Blog Traffic
I have set up a mailing list that everybody is welcome to join, and every time I post a blog, I will send an e-mail out via this mailing list to say that I’ve posted a new blog. This way, you’ll know straight away as I presume you check your e-mails more often than you check my blog-sites! Then you can come along and check out my latest blog straight away. This avoids you logging on every few days just to see if I’ve posted, when I haven’t, or you not logging on for a month and then to come back to find 5 new blogs you have to catch up on. Hopefully it’s just a fairly simple thing that will just improve it for all of you regular readers out there. So join my mailing list by clicking on this link and typing in your e-mail address:-
http://blogslut.bravehost.com/blog.html

Point 2 – Improving feedback
I understand that a lot of people don’t want to leave feedback for everybody to see on the blog, and also that it’s a bit of a pain to note down my e-mail address, then log into your e-mail in order to send me a private e-mail. So one thing I’m trying to do here is put an “e-mail form” on my blog, so you can just type your message and send it directly and privately to my e-mail address in a much simpler manner. I’m having trouble getting the html code to work to actually embed this form into my blog-sites, so I’m just going to have to put a link at the bottom of each blog I post that links you to my mini-site, and you can just read my blog, click on the link to my mini-site, type your message, and we’re away. I hope this will make it easier for you to contact me for whatever reason, as I love to hear your thoughts and comments, and I also love just generally chatting to like-minded people. To see this form and to e-mail me this way, go to this link:-
http://blogslut.bravehost.com/emailme.html

Point 3 – Improving interactivity
This one is a bit of a work in progress, but I’m working on numerous things for this. One click polls is one thing I’m doing (or planning on doing), simple poll questions to get quick opinion from a larger number of people without any effort whatsoever. This might be just to gage opinion on how good a certain blog topic is, whether you want to see more of something in particular, and it may even evolve into you helping me select an outfit or help setting me a fun task. I’m not sure how this one is going to pan out yet, but it offers some good fun opportunities. There isn’t one posted as I type this, but when a poll is up and running, it will be posted here:-
http://blogslut.bravehost.com/blogpoll.html
There will be other things happening for the interactivity issue as well, maybe a guestbook on my mini-site, or a message board where readers can exchange thoughts, opinions and questions with other readers as well as myself. We’ll see where these thoughts lead, and just see what you want to see, as I do this all for you after all!

That’s about it for this blog, going forwards the aim is for me to blog 2-3 times every month, and I do have a few blog topic ideas in my head that I’ll be working on for the next few weeks, so stay tuned, and sign up to my mailing list so you can be the first to read them!!

All necessary links to polls, e-mail forms or whatever else will be posted as and when required in future blogs, so there’s no need to remember them all now!! And hopefully you'll find these new features a positive benefit to my blog.

Take care everybody, and I hope your 2009 has started off good for you all!

Til next time, lot’s of love and sluttiness,

Your faithful interactive blog servant, Blogslut xx (lol)