These two weeks have flown by, and it’s hard to believe that it’s already time to say goodbye to Essential Prose as the featured blog. I thought it would be nice hear from Zoë now that she’s just about finished with her two weeks. After that, you’ll find your teaser for the next featured blog at the end of the post.
Exit Interview With Zoë
Zoë saw her daily traffic rise from about 15 visitors per day up to 500 on the day that she was announced, many of those visitors then subscribing to her RSS feed. Even after that initial burst was absorbed into RSS, she continued to draw an average of 200 new visits a day.
As most of you have seen, she got a ton of great feedback and comments as well. To see what we can learn from her experience, I asked her to do another Q&A:
- Well, how was it? It was exhilarating. It was a challenge, a bit overwhelming at moments, but more than anything, it was completely stimulating and fun.
- What was the best part? Reading comments from so many people who were motivated, sharp, and witty.
- What was the worst part? The butterflies in my stomach after pressing “Publish” — almost every time.
- What was the most helpful feedback? Jamie Simmerman suggested that I consider breaking lengthy posts into series. For those of you following my “Focus Your Ideas” series, I bet you’re happy I took her advice and didn’t squeeze it all into one painfully lengthy post! She also advised me to focus on a tagline that can go in my header. Laurel Plum gave me really in-depth advice about other bloggers I could connect and share with — she was extremely generous with her help.
- What was the biggest surprise? The level of engagement. I knew hundreds of people would be reading, but I was so happily surprised to see how numerous and thoughtful the comments were! Oh, and people were great about suggesting tweaks and changes.
- What advice do you give the next blogger? Be ready to devote significant chunks of time to reading and responding to comments! Also, these blog club folks aren’t scary — they’re wonderfully encouraging and smart too.
- What did you learn? I learned to trust my voice more. The level of support you all gave during these past two weeks gave me much more confidence to allow my voice to drive my writing. Looking at everyone else’s blogs, I learned how limitless the possibilities are — how many exciting projects can be kicked off with a blog.
- Who did you get to know by being featured? Hm, do you mean *famous people*? Cause I connected with Michael Martine and I’d say he’s a pretty big name on the block : ).
- How do you think this will impact your blogging going forward? I realized that I really could cultivate a community with this blog. I feel more comfortable taking this whole blogging thing seriously, and devoting the time to keep developing, connecting, and writing.
I also asked Zoë to come up with three questions to ask herself:
- What was your biggest freak-out moment? Figuring out how to respond to “the great comments surge.” Do I comment back? E-mail? Twitter? Ahck!
- Any awkward moments? It was kinda weird explaining this project to my mom and my “real life” friends. “So, there’s this blog project experiment thing, and this blogger chose my blog to be the first spotlight. So yea, lots of people will be reading. I’m pretty excited, actually.” *Big grin* But they all ended up being really excited for me.
- What goal did you not follow through on? I was going to write a few posts at a time to stay ahead of the game, but it turns out I’m a very leisurely blogger. I take my time to let the words slide out, follow plenty of little tangents, veer to the left and take a new focus, then give the final push. Maybe it’s like a decidedly less painful version of childbirth.
Final Comments
“I’m endlessly grateful to Chuck and all of you bloggers and readers for trusting me with your time. Many of you really impressed me, so don’t be surprised if I knock on your Twitter door and ask you for a guest post or life advice or something : ). And because change is marvelous, onto the next victim!” -Zoë
Which Blog is Next?
I’m personally very excited about the blog I’ll be revealing this Monday. To give you a bit of a preview, here are a few tidbits about what to expect:
- This blog’s topic should be interesting to almost all of us.
- His blog is a completely different style compared to Zoë’s.
- I will probably stand to learn more than anyone.
- I am convinced this is one of the most under-appreciated blogs. This is despite the fact that he already has two-hundred subscribers. I think the content is that useful.
That’s all for now. Have a nice weekend!
