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There is a comedy gold mine in writing about bad first date experiences. Think about the dreadful, lame, and horrific experiences you’ve had while looking for Mr or Miss Right. Where did the date go wrong? Was it the person? The place? Other outside influences?

Tell us about how you met, where you went, what special things were planned? Then tell us when in the evening you expected Lucy and Ethel to arrive to announce that there had been some misunderstanding. Did you look around hoping you were being Punk’d?

How did the date end? Was there a trip to the Emergency Room involved?

We want to hear your stories, so link them up and share the laughs!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Circumstances in your life can change quickly for the better or worse. An illness, a promotion, a fall-into-your-lap opportunity, or other unexpected event can put you in the position of making quick decisions.

Here’s your writing challenge:

If you suddenly had the means, would you move? Where? How quickly could you get your stuff together?

If circumstances were to change for the worse, do you have a backup plan? Where would you go? What is your plan?

Write a post sounding it out.

If you use this idea on your blog, won’t you link to this article and share it with us?

Popularity: 9% [?]

VizuAnswers.com has released a report detailing the results of a blog readership poll they recently performed. The information they gathered actually caught me by surprise.

Here are some highlights:

• 67.3% of respondents stated they found the blogs they read regularly through links from other blogs.
• Readers choose the blogs they read regularly based on both the quality of writing and topical focus equally.
• The quality of an author’s writing is more important than his reputation.
• Writing quality and reputation is shown to be twice as important as the design.
• 65% of respondents read blogs for ‘entertainment purposes.’ Only 12% report reading blogs for business reasons.
• Spanish speakers read more blogs, and their responses are nearly identical to English speakers.

You can download the full report here.

What should we learn from this report?

• Exchanging links with other bloggers is vitally important. Find writers you admire and comment on their blog, link them on your blogroll, you can even contact them asking for a link back to your site. Bloggers are generally happy to oblige, especially if you actively participate on their site. The worst that can happen is they will say no, right?
• Improve the quality of your writing. Use a spell-checker, edit and read your posts critically before you publish them. It takes a small effort to polish your posts.
• Make your posts entertaining. Show your personality. Readers are coming for your opinions and to hear your ‘voice.’ Deliver.
• Install translation software on your blog. Google Translator works well enough for non-English speakers to get the gist of your posts.

I’m surprised that more readers aren’t visiting sites for work purposes, since there are so many business-related sites out there. I also find it interesting that the author’s reputation isn’t nearly as important as the quality of their writing.

Did anything about the report surprise you?

Popularity: 14% [?]

Here’s your writing challenge:

The weather is awful. Snow and ice has left you homebound. Your family is safe at friend’s houses, and you are all alone. The cable is out, and your internet connection is down. Write a post about what you would do…

Do you start a fire and read a book? Take a long hot bath? Clean the garage? What music do you put on? Describe the perfect scenario and don’t forget to add marshmallows to the cocoa.

If you take on this writing challenge, won’t you link to this article to share it with others?

Popularity: 8% [?]

You know when you’re reading other blogs (you ARE reading other blogs, right?), it’s always a good idea to leave a comment. If you have nothing especially pertinent to say, a simple introduction of yourself is perfectly acceptable and appreciated. Here’s an example:

“I just wanted to leave a note to let you know I enjoyed finding your blog. I linked here from [source].”

It’s simple, and it lets people know you’re around. Don’t forget to leave your blog address on the comment form. Chances are the author and his visitors will be curious about you and will click over to see your site.

Just be sure you have something interesting for them to read when they get there.

Popularity: 8% [?]

The popularity of blogging and sites like Myspace have tempted, shall we say, “non-professional” designers to throw up pages without much thought.[1]

The number one reason people will immediately navigate away from your site is a bad design. If the reader can not see the text, find your navigation buttons, or are assaulted by your color choices they will never come back.

Here are six of the biggest design mistakes:

1. Atrocious color schemes. One only needs to spend about five seconds browsing Myspace to see examples of the worst possible color combinations and hard to read text. Here’s a tip, grey text on a black background is very hard to read. Actually, black backgrounds are almost always a bad idea, you will be tempted to compensate by using too-bright colors for the rest of your elements. Nothing’s worse than trying to read a page with bright yellow lettering on a black background. I highly recommend using this online color schemer when working on your design.
2. Large blocks of text. Not only are gigantic blocks of text boring, but they are hard to read. Learn to break up your text into paragraphs, use lists, and by all means add images and graphics to your posts.
3. Slow loading pages. High speed internet access has changed the way most American’s use the web, though the rest of the world still uses dial-up access. The average amount of time a user will wait for a site to load before getting disgusted and moving on is less than 20 seconds. There are many ways to improve your page load time that I will explore in later posts, but here are a few quick tips:
   • Resize your images to fit the page. Unless you are selling digital prints, there is no reason to use a 1028X764 pixel 300dpi image on your page. Even the most advanced monitors only show 100dpi.
   • Use CSS. Separating your content from your design vastly improves page load time. Style sheets only need to be loaded once across all your pages.
   • Remove unnecessary javascripts. Each one runs every time the page is loaded, and often holds up the page while they execute. Often, scripts like stat counters and weather bugs make hits to external servers that have to process the information before your site can continue loading. Now your page load time is dependent on the speed of some other server.
   • Overuse of embedded audio/video. If your blog is all about music, audio and video makes a lot of sense, and you can speed up the load time by limiting the number of posts that appear on your front page. If your blog doesn’t focus on music or other media, use video and audio sparingly.
4. Too many ‘widgets’ or unnecessary tools. When readers want to know the weather in Miami, they are going to visit weather.com, not your blog. On the rare occasions that someone may need to know what phase the moon is in, they can easily look outside or on an astronomy site. Most users have a calendar program on their computer so unless your blog is date driven, you don’t need one on your site. When you find a new ‘cool’ widget to put on your blog, ask yourself this important question: “Am I putting this here to improve my reader’s experience or to compensate for the lack of a good design?”
5. Lack of navigation. If a user can’t figure out how to get to your about page, find other posts, or move around, they won’t come back. Don’t hide your buttons or bury them in the footer.
6. Ads Ads Ads Ads Ads. A sprinkling of ads on your site is fine, and can even be an attribute if you use content-targeted advertising. However, no one wants to have to dig through flashing banners and obnoxious pop ups to find your content. Are you really making any money from those all those ads? Not likely. Ditch them and stick to something simple.
   [2]

What are some design mistakes you’ve seen in your web travels? Do you see any mistakes I’ve made on this site?

[1] Yes, the vomit reference is intentional.

[2] Yes, that is my referral link. No issues of non-disclosure here.

Popularity: 39% [?]

One of the tips you’re sure to see whenever you read a “how-to” article on blogging is “Use Keywords.” Keywords get your blog noticed by search engines. Keywords bring visitors to your site.

That’s a fantastic tip for business bloggers. If you’re trying to sell, let’s say digital cameras, you’ve got many ‘keywords’ you can use: photography, digital, cameras, electronics, and the list goes on and on.

What about personal blogs? What do we do about keywords?

1. Check your site search statistics. You are using some sort of statistic program, right? If you’re hosting your own domain, you should have a wealth of information available in your control panel. If you’re on a free service like Blogger, you can use services like Sitemeter or Statcounter for free (or for a little cash, you get more options). Examine what search terms are being used to bring people to your site. You can often use this list to guide you to write other posts about those search terms. For instance, on my personal site, I told a story years ago about having to sedate my cat with benadryl. I currently get at least one hundred hits per month looking up the search terms “cat and benadryl.”
2. Use a tag cloud. You don’t necessarily have to publish it on your blog, as some people find them annoying, but they are a good way to examine what topics and keywords you use consistently. There are many tag cloud solutions out there, including Technorati’s tag cloud generator, and a multitude of Wordpress plugins.
3. Pick a topic that you enjoy and write about it often. You can pick a generic topic like music and write about all things music related, or even better, you can write about a particular genre, or a specific band that you enjoy. If you like the Beatles, write one post a week about a different Beatles song, post some lyrics, talk about the first time you heard it, and what it makes you think of. Do this once a week in addition to your regular posts, and soon you’ll be a “go to” source for Beatles information.
4. Make up your own words. This one is my favorite. Sure, you can rant about a particular blond-haired big-mouthed political pundit that makes you insanely “angry.” Or, you could say, “That Ann Coulter makes me so disconflabulated that I can’t even speak.” Which is more interesting? And guess what, if you make up a word, you won’t be sharing search engine space with anyone else.

Have you found any other way to determine what keywords work best for your site?

Popularity: 13% [?]