You know when you get to a new site, you can tell within a few seconds if that site has a “soul”?

Yeah, me too.

And this blog, including several of my others, have no souls.

I may not be able to classify exactly what a mean, nor will I write an exhaustive blog post on the subject.  But I think we can all agree on several of the things a site MUST have in order to feel like it is a living, breathing organism.

But first, let me just say that I plan on breathing a soul into at least one of my other sites very soon (and NOT THIS ONE).  If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll see that my main site is starting to do “OK”.  So now I plan on doing the same thing with another one of my bland, boring sites.

In fact, I’ve been thinking of writing an ebook that explains everything I’ve done over 5 years to make that other site slightly successful.  Imagine if I:

  1. Write out that book,
  2. Follow each of the steps in building out another site
  3. Make that site successful in a fraction of the time
  4. Then sell that ebook

Now, I wonder how fast I can do this?  Sure, I can do it in less than 5 years, but I still only work on IM for maybe 2 hours a night.  I’d love to do it in 3 months, but my friend thinks I should shoot for 6.

Anyway, here’s a few ideas on how to breathe a soul into a site:

  • Have graphics at the top in the banner…maybe even one with a pic of myself
  • Blog daily and talk like a normal person
  • Add pics and videos
  • Build out some social networking followings, like a Facebook fanpage and put one of those boxes on the site
  • Send out a weekly ezine
  • Show up EVERYWHERE, on tons of related sites in that niche
  • Have a nice design? (this is another weak area for me)

Ah, who knows what else?  I’m sure you get the picture.