Someone I know teaches us to understand, choose, do, learn - so here we go. I am now at the end of my 31 Days to Build a Better Blog personal challenge from Problogger. I listed the tasks for the first 15 days here; this is the second half of that project. Once again, in the spirit of designing in public, here are all the tasks from the challenge and how I did on them. (Numbers correspond to days but you didn't have to do it that fast if you didn't want to).
16. Solve a Problem - 7 Ways to Identify Reader Problems
This was a great task. I feel like my blog is really entirely about solving problems, really, or exploring solutions, so I didn't write anything more specific for this task, but I did look back at my posts from this "problem solving" point of view. Most importantly, Darren talks about how you use the search feature of your blog to figure out what people are looking for. I specifically looked at my search stats - Lijit specifically provides a section for "searches that produced zero results" - that's very important for thinking about things you should be writing about. Great tip that I will use forever!
17. Watch a First Time Reader Use Your Blog
This was a really interesting one. Since I don't work somewhere with people who have never seen my blog, I did it slightly differently than described, and sent a request out on Twitter for anyone who had never read my blog to have a look at it and give me a critique. 
I got some awesome responses, from total strangers (who are no longer, I might add) and took their advice to heart by doing a bunch of things like cleaning up my sidebar, for example. I have more to do but this was a really useful exercise.
18. Create a Sneeze Page for Your Blog
A "sneeze page" is a page that links to old posts. Check! I also use a PostRank widget which shows top rated posts by readers - it totally works, it changes all the time, unlike if I just had my own list up there.
19. Write an Opinion Post
Umm, yeah, I do this a lot. Check!
20. Leave Comments on Other Blogs
This seems like a no-brainer but I very consciously spend time doing this. Every time I go through my blog reader, I basically skim everything, but "star" posts I want to read more carefully. Some I'll post about, some I'll just comment on, some I'll share in Google Reader, some I'll tweet. But whatever level of engagement I have with these particular blog posts, I try and make this part of my blogging routine. My comments are tracked here on Backtype.
21. Breathe Life Into an Old Post
By coincidence I just did this by expanding and rewriting my Twitter for orgs post so that I could guest post it on Twitip. I am sure I have many other posts that could be updated, but I think given the fact that social media changes so fast, it makes more sense and takes less time to just be on top of things and write new posts on the same themes. I also like to see the progression in not only my own thinking but the way the association blogosphere has grown into itself and graduated past the wonder years, has got more sophisticated in our thinking as a group.
22. Pay Special Attention to a Reader
Ooh lucky me - just did this one with my recent New Blogs of Note post.
23. Call Your Readers to ACTION
This one I am pretty good at, in different ways. In this post I reminded people to sign up for our School of SocialFish workshops before they fill up, and in this one I asked people to help Lindy with association-industry burning questions she could bring to the Smart Brief Advisory Board on your behalf. These are only two examples, I bet I could come up with a whole ton more. I try and ask people to participate a lot. Often it just takes an ask. (Read that link - it's a great article about calls to action and why they work for getting blog comments and lots of other things).
24.How to Use a Magazine to Improve Your Blog
Wow, this one is packed with great ideas. I have not had time to do this yet, am shelving it for later. You basically need to go look at a magazine, perhaps one on the topic of your blog, and see if you can be inspired by how it's designed, laid out, story ideas, sidebars, all kinds of stuff. I have a copy of Wired I haven't read (not a magazine I have read in a very long time too, so it would be fresh) - plus my latest copy of Associations Now. Maybe I'll do this exercise with both of them and have a think about it... perhaps fodder for a new post later...? To be continued.
25. Ask a Question: 10 Reasons Why Questions Work & 12 Tips on How to Ask Them
I actually don't do this often enough, and I now have started a little list in draft of things I might want to ask people. But I did ask my Yapstars to tell me their story over on Yapstar.org, and that has turned out to be really really awesome.
26. Improve Another Blog
This is really about doing your part in the blogosphere, but specifically with regards to one individual blog. I want to do more of this too, but in this case I did reach out to Jamie Notter and Eric Lanke regarding their new Hourglass blog on Generations which I really like a lot. I just offered to help on the back end, setting up their RSS flares and stuff like that. Of course part of the fun of blogging is experimenting with all that yourself, but since I'm in the business and all... :)
27. Hunt for Dead Links
This post suggests some tools for finding dead links: Link Sleuth, Dead Links, or this Wordpress Borken Link Checker. Sadly this is too techy for me, I tried them but have no idea what to do with it.
28. Write a "Review" Post
I haven't done a review in a long time. I didn't have time before I wanted to post this, so this remains in my "to-do" list, but I'd like to think about maybe doing a review of the crowdsourced issue of Associations Now. I've also read some really interesting books lately - Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, in the middle of the fantastic What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis, about to read World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott. If you have other suggestions of things I should think about reviewing, let me know.
29. Develop a Plan to Boost Your Blog’s Profile and Readership Online
Because my blog is about social media, the things in this post are things I think about every single day. I really encourage other bloggers to read this one in particular, though, as there is some really important stuff in here about listening and building a social media presence from the blogger's point of view (as opposed to organizationally) - regardless of your blog's focus. Check out the really useful additional links at the end of the post too.
30. 17 Statistics to Monitor on Your Blog
I use Google Analytics and Lijit for this, and Lijit in particular sends me weekly stats so I don't forget to check them out. Postrank also tells me my most popular posts.
31. Plan the Next Steps for Your Blog
This post contains some useful ideas for ongoing planning regarding your blogging schedule. Like I said in relation to this earlier task about setting up an editorial calendar, this kind of pre-planning is not my thing because I have so much I want to post about all the time, but for some bloggers this is really helpful. Also very useful for thinking about an organization's blog.
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