Constructing a Classier Kingdom Geek

Over the past six months or so, I have been more active in the blogosphere than I ever could have imagined. That’s not to say I’ve blogged more often or have even commented more often elsewhere.

What it does mean, though, is that I have taken an active hand in dozens of other blogs: helping users get the functionality, design, and experience on their blogs.

And while I certainly consider that a rewarding experience, there was an unexpected side effect: I came to realize the shortcomings in my own blog at RickBeckman.org.

What was I doing to set myself apart from other Christian bloggers? What was I doing to take advantage of my nearly celebrity status in the Thesis community?

Well, the answer to both question is a resounding, Not much!

RickBeckman.org lacked harmony and any sort of clear organizational structure. While I stuck to a few major topics, they were topics with very different readership. Still, readers interested in my theological insights were treated by the site no differently than those looking for WordPress tips & tricks.

As a result, I was missing out on a lot of return traffic as it made finding content of interest that much more difficult.

Just how goofy was the structure? Well, perhaps my biggest mistake was using categories to keep track of which posts were optimized in which ways — I had categories like “Good Descriptions” and “Good Tags.”

Obviously, categories weren’t used in any way publicly, so what about tags? All of the posts I tagged manually, I tried to tag as topically and intelligently as possible to enable users to quickly find related content.

However, at some point in the past I ran an auto-tagger plugin. No, I don’t remember which one, so I can’t point fingers, but the results of it tagging all of the posts in my blog’s archive were disastrous. Consider these two tags it created: “Christ I’ve” and “Online Advertising Effective.”

Brilliant, eh?

In addition to brainstorming some improvements for structure & organization, I’ve also become persuaded that one’s primary site ought to be the hub of their online presence or brand. In other words, Kingdom Geek — RickBeckman.com — should be the destination for my brand — for all things related to me.

Rickbeckman.org never fit that bill.

To remedy that, I’ll be attempting to import content from elsewhere into this site — Twitter tweets, for example. Just check out the Tweets category to see what I mean — or look in the sidebar! Great, eh?

There’s still a lot of work to be done — I still have no idea about what sort of visual design I want to go with — but I’m happy with how things are looking so far.

Will the effort pay off? Here’s hoping!