What is the name of your Blog?World Class Poetry Blog
What is your name?
Allen Taylor
Where are you from? (include country, state and/or city)
USA
What is your current age or age range?
41
Please describe your blog
World Class Poetry Blog provides daily commentary on poets, poetry, and poetics.
Describe the main purpose of your blogging, what are you trying to accomplish?
Spark creativity and encourage poets to pursue publication. My blog is designed to provide thoughtful commentary on poetics and help poets improve their craft.
What blogging platform do you do and why?
WordPress. It is designed for ease of use and SEO.
What do you blog the most about?
Poetry and poetics.
What kind of blogs make you angry?
Boring blogs all about the person writing them (as if anyone other than the blog's mother actually cares).
Give five of your best blogging tips.
Learn SEO. Write in a personal tone. Be insightful and encourage dialog. Piss people off; controversy gets people to read. Make it easy for people to comment on your blog.
What are some things you would NEVER blog about?
I don't know. I reserve the right to blog about anything.
Did you start blogging for the purpose of making money and if so, are you making enough money?
No. I started blogging because it's a good marketing tool. I saw the potential in marketing my poetry website and since I've started blogging I've managed to drive more traffic to my website. That has correlated to more income.
How long have you been blogging?
Two years. I first started blogging as a ghostwriter. I manage over 40 blogs for commercial clients and use the same blogging strategies for my poetry blogs that I use for my clients.
About how many hours per day do you spend blogging?
I spend 1-2 hours on my poetry blog.
Do you track RSS feeds and if so, how many do you usually track daily?
Hundreds.
Do you use Digg, and why or why not?
Yes. It's a good marketing tool. I'm not exclusive to Digg.
Do you use Stumbleupon, and why or why not?
Yes. StumbleUpon is my second largest source of traffic.
What promotional techniques work best for you and why?
Social bookmarking, article marketing, and blogging. Pure SEO/organic search is where is get most of my traffic.
If you could post a blog on any blog in the world, which one would it be and why?
Problogger.net. It's the most popular blog in the world.
What mistakes have you made that you could warn others about?
I probably haven't made my biggest mistakes yet. Some of the mistakes I see other people make include not posting daily, writing boring stuff nobody cares about, and not promoting their blog enough. I do all of those. I probably don't promote the blog enough, though. I only have so many hours in a day.
What are your top five blogging site picks and why?
I'm not sure I understand this question. If you're asking for my top 5 favorite bloggers I'd have to say Michael Martine, Ron Silliman, John Chow, Marketing Pilgrim, and The Kenyon Review. Silliman is the most popular and longest running poetry blogger writing right now. The Kenyon Review has the best literary journal blog that I've seen - always interesting. I like Michael Martine's insights into blogging and Marketing Pilgrim has several good writers. John Chow has an interesting blog as well and writes about personal stuff as well as how to make money.
If this question is about which sites like Blogspot, WordPress.com, and other blog hosts then I don't like any of them. I have my own domain name and I'd suggest that to any blogger as well.
Have you met anyone offline as a result of your blog?
No.
What is the best thing about blogging?
I control the medium and the message. I am a publisher, which is a lifelong goal of mine. Too many people see blogging as an end in itself. To me, it's a means to an end to which I'll never arrive.
What is the url of your blog?
World Class Poetry Blog
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