This is Day 1 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, a group project 50+ other bloggers are doing together in an effort to help each other become better bloggers. You can read more about it and still sign-up to participate here.
Welcome fellow 31 Days to Build a Better Blog bloggers!
And if you’re not officially signed up & participating in this group blog project, welcome to you too. Even though you won’t benefit as much as you would if you had signed up, bought the 31DBBB e-book, and fully committed to this project, everyone who reads & discusses any of the 31 posts in this series should be able to glean some insight to help them become a better blogger.
Day 1’s lesson and assignment is all about writing an “elevator pitch” for your blog. It’s a great place to start this series because it forces each of us to give our blog an identity.
What is an Elevator Pitch?
“An elevator pitch is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (for example, thirty seconds or 100–150 words).” —Wikipedia
Find Your Focus
One of the most common reasons blogs fail is due to lack of focus.
General speaking, people read blogs for one of 3 reasons: to learn, to be inspired, or to be entertained.
This may sound harsh, but if you blog “about life” or “whatever’s on your mind,” unless you’re a celebrity nobody outside your family and close friends is going to read it. The focus of your blog should not be on you, but on how you can help your readers.
Writing your elevator pitch forces you to answer some essential questions:
- Why are you blogging?
- Who are you blogging for?
- What are you blogging about?
My Elevator Pitches
I am not only facilitating this project, but I’m actually going to do all 31 days both for this blog, Christian Web Trends and for my personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org. So, here are my elevator pitches…
Christian Web Trends discusses news & trends in technology to help Christians communicate more effectively.
At LiveIntentionally.org we encourage, challenge, and discuss how to create the life we want for ourselves rather than allowing circumstances and other people to dictate who we are, how we feel, and what we do. We do this by discussing books, inspirational stories, and life lessons.
What do you think?
Discussion
Since this is the first post in this series, go ahead and take a moment to introduce yourself in a comment. Tell us
- your name
- the name of your blog
- the URL of your blog
- the elevator pitch for your blog
- any thoughts or questions about elevator pitches
The Extra Mile
A few other things you can do to take your blog, other bloggers, and this project even further.
- Reply & give other bloggers feedback on their elevator pitches
- Tweet, share, & bookmark this post. (You could win a $25 gift card!)
- Write about your elevator pitch and/or about elevator pitches on your blog.
- Ask & answer questions about blogging but unrelated to elevator pitches in the forums.
Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com
Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.
An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.
Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication.
288 Comments
Congrats on the job! And great looking blog!
Great Elevator pitch! I looked into using that theme as well but kept having issues with it. After playing with tons of freebies finally decided to buy one that would incorporate social media, ads and etc into it easily.
http://www.guardraildamageahead.com
well that stinks. Try this one maybe? http://justapen.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/calling-…
Thanks for the reminder. This morning's post was great and after reading it I really had to stop and think. My blog has been about the 4 important things in my life: following Christ, being a father, connecting others and running. Looking at these things, they are not very connected to one another, at least in terms of what someone would be looking for in a blog. Therefore I am trying to decide which to focus on the most. And while my faith is very important to me (I use to serve as a minister and currently work at a Christian drug rehab facility) I really feel passionate about writing about running. I signed up for this thinking that I would focus on my bloghttp://www.jdeddins.blogspot.com but now I am thinking of switch tohttp://www.trainingcrucible.com. Obviously, the second one does not have a tie in with the other blogs in this series, and I would hate to take away from the focus on the group. Any suggestions? Do you think thathttp://www.jdeddins.blogpsot.com works, or are there too many themes going on to get the message?
Hey JD, that's a great question. You're definitely going to get different opinions from different people on it. I think you have to consider how frequently you write about each of those 4 topics and then try to put yourself in the place of one of your readers. Let me throw out some numbers just for the sake of an example.
Let's say you average about 2 posts a week. 40% are about running, 30% are about following Christ, 20% are about being a father, and 10% are about connecting others (by the way, I'm not quite sure that last one means). If I'm a runner I'm going to get about 1 post a week about running. I'm thinking that's probably worth subscribing too. But if I'm father looking for posts about fatherhood, I'm only going to see about one post that interests me every 2 1/2 weeks. What's more, I'm going to have to check out 4 posts I don't really care about for every 1 I do. Chances are I'm not going to bother. With those numbers, it might not make sense to post regularly about being a father because your not going to connect with a lot of people solely on that topic. You would probably be better off nixing it and increasing the % of posts about running so you connect better with runners.
FWIW, I ran the Disney Marathon in 2008 and blogged about my training on LiveIntentionally.org Doing that brought in some runners for a while, but I think I lost some readers who weren't interested in running as a result.
Personally, I like your idea of doing a blog that focuses specifically on running. You may even be able to periodically write a post that ties a spiritual them in with your running and in that way minister to Christian runners or get a spiritual conversation going with some non-Christian runners.
Scott,
Thanks for your interest. We are only just over 2 months into it and we feel it has been succuessful. We have 185 Facebook fans, over 150 who have signed up for e-newsletters via the website, and almost 3,000 hits in the month of April. Our Video Teachings have been viewed 418 times. For just being 2 months into it, and not much marketing involved, we think we are doing okay.
Thanks!
Good morning all! I'm Nathalie from Québec, Canada.
Blog : Le monde de Nathalie
Blog URL :http://www.lemondedenathalie.ca .
I'm a Web consultant and have a business blog, but for this 31-days project, I choose to do it with my personnale blog Le monde de Nathalie. It is in french, mostly. If any of you understand french, or want some practice, you're welcome!
Elevator pitch : Mother of 2 children, gadgets lover and technologies fan blogging about life, cooking, day-to-day experiences & tips, and all her passions!
(Might need some remodeling…)
Nathalie, Thanks for sharing your Elevator Pitch. I love the "gadgets love, and technologies fan fan part of it. Your pitch is very cool!
Thanks for your replies!
Yes, anytime is good to learn french. 🙂 If you manage to understand my post (by translator for exemple) you may leave your comment in english. As you can see, I'm bilingual 🙂
Hi there. I am Coenraad Fick. I have been blogging for about a year now, but have not been able to reach the things I wanted to reach when I started out a year ago.
The focus of my blog, Unsafe Challenge,http://www.unsafechallenge.com has changed quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, and my elevator for where I am at now is:
"Do you also feel a lot like we are missing what Jesus tasked us with when He sent us out to become fishers of men?"
The longer version can be found on my blog…
Hi LL, really like your blog, my wife is big on the creativity and life stuff so I get to hear about it all the time. Do you think it would be helpful to think of your elevator pitch as "social media, life management, and other stuff through an attitude of creativity"? It just looks like you have a lot more creative than other on there (from my quick perusal). Just a thought 🙂
Hello!
I am Kathryn Siranosian, and I have worked as a ghost blogger for years. Now, I am starting my own blog as part of my business website athttp://www.CorporateWriter4Hire.com
My goal for this blog is to build a community of freelance writers, so that we –and the companies that hire us! –can better understand the challenges and rewards of corporate writing/ghostwriting.
Alright, I got my post up:http://trainingcrucible.blogspot.com/2010/05/what…