Browsing Category: "Blogging"
I like blogging challenges. They encourage thought, get you up off your arse and get you writing. As June and July have been exceedingly busy months for me in both a personal and professional manner in the offline world, I’m setting myself a simple blogging challenge for the month of August.
As today marks the first of the month, I’m issuing myself with a ‘post a day’ challenge and you’re welcome to join me if you want. In fact, if you want to join in, send me your blog URL and I’ll add a link to your ‘post a day’ post when making my own.
It becomes more of a challenge for myself as I’m just about to hit the road (with my new mobile broadband connection in tow) for four days over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Locally we’ve got an arts festival and music festival starting next weekend. I’ve a gig this weekend, next weekend (9th), the following weekend (16th) and then start into a week long theatre production before possibly wrapping with yet another music festival on the final weekend in August.
I freelance and work six days a week while keeping more of my blogs in check.
And I’ve just started a really interesting freelance project in the tourism sector. So finding the time to make those posts per day and provide you with a good thought stream is going to be interesting. But there’s the fun in the challenge.
Join in with me if you like, take up the challenge, leave me a comment with your name and URL and let’s get going! (BTW, I’m using the tag ‘postaday’ to mark my posts, why not add it to yours).
Popularity: 11% [?]
I’ve been working with a non-profit organisation recently who have ventured into the world of blogging. They’re set up on Wordpress, the staff are gradually showing each other a few tips and tricks that they’ve learned but when I went through their blog and reviewed some of their posts I thought “Hey, where’s all the tags?”
Where older Wordpress users might have made use of plugins like ‘Ultimate Tag Warrior’ for tagging their posts, Wordpress has a built in tag feature on the post pages since version 2.3.
From Wordpress 2.5 upwards, you simply enter your tags or keywords (separate the tags with commas) into the ‘Tags’ area beneath your ‘Post’ area and press the ‘Add’ button.
Don’t underestimate the power of adding tags to your post!
What are tags you ask? You can look at tags as labels or keywords to help identify your post within your blog. Tags help people searching your blog find what they’re looking for with greater ease. The use of tags on your blog posts also help your blog visibility on sites such as Technorati.
As the Technorati folk themselves say
Tags are labels that people use to make it easier to find blog posts, photos and videos that are related.
As with everyone I work with on a blogging level, if you’re adding tags to your post to help connect posts on your blog, why not register yourself for free on Technorati. It takes just a few minutes, doesn’t cost you anything and you might find you’ve got a new source for traffic for your blog rather quickly.
Popularity: 12% [?]
After waiting a while for a beta account (to no joy), I was happy to discover at the weekend that QIK.com has been opened to the public (and has had a bit of a facelift since v1 of the site).
My first attempt at a QIK video from my N95
I’ve been following a number of bloggers via QIK over the last couple of months and have to say that I’m extremely impressed with what’s been delivered. At the core of things, QIK installs as an application on your mobile phone (I’m using the Nokia N95 8GB) and allows you to stream video direct from your handset.
For this it is recommended that you have either
- an unlimited data plan with your mobile provider
- or a WiFi internet access point
given the large nature of streaming video content.
Further to that, you can also tie in with online networks like Blogger, Twitter, Pownce, YouTube, Seesmic and others to cross-post your QIK videos, with Twitter being used to alert your followers that you’re currently streaming and invite them into the conversation.
QIK also supports comments on archived videos as well as live chat on streaming videos, so the longer you stream, the higher the chances of getting into a conversation or being able to to-and-fro on points of your video. They’ve also just been nominated as one of the best mobile application companies at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2008 awards. It also turns out you can run QIK from your iPhone.
At present I’m testing the service on a home/office WiFi node though an unlimited data plan would certainly make things more flexible for me as a potential long-term user. I’m also exploring options on using mobile video streaming to enhance the work I do with bands, gigs and the theatre. Let’s see how that goes.
Sign up for free and give it a try yourself at QIK.com or keep an eye on my profile here.
Popularity: 29% [?]
The title for the post comes from the track ‘In Every Sunflower
My reason for choosing is simple, but has nothing to do with books.
The fact is, my blogs have more draft posts than posts. In recent weeks, I’ve found myself starved for time here and there so I start a blog post, save it as a draft, but forget to come back to it or decide to hold off publishing the post until it is just right.
It is handy in a way, I can get so far into a post and save off as a draft (a feature which if rumours are to be believed, will be seriously enhanced in the release of version 2.6 of Wordpress thanks to the addition of post revisions as well as drafts), returning to complete the post at my leisure.
If an idea for a post springs into my head and I don’t happen to have my notepad and pen nearby (vital tools for a blogger or designer), I’ll fire open Wordpress, add a title to a new post, get all my ideas down in some kind of point form, then save to a draft.
Of course, it’s the coming back to publish the posts that is the problem. I had commented on a post earlier in the week (thanks Candy) how procrastination can be a nightmare when it comes to blogging and working online and I’ve got a full post coming out of draft form soon enough for that too. At times I feel the draft feature increases the opportunity for posts to be put “on the long finger” or gives rise to a new level of procrastination in writing.
On the flip side, it’s great to be able to log into your blog and see a massive array of posts and ideas building up, just waiting to bubble to the surface.
Want to grab a copy of the track? Click the link below to pick up the MP3 from Amazon. If you listen to the one track, you’ll want the whole album. Fantastic band and a fantastic album in the shape of ‘Music In Mouth’.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Switching off from the design work and letting the dust settle in the aftermath of Thursday’s blogging course, I’m taking off for the weekend and as reading I’m bringing with me a copy of Darren Rowse’ and Chris Garret’s (which I’ve mentioned before) new book, ‘Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income‘ which arrived in the post earlier this week. It was a relative bargain of a buy so you can’t really say no.
Provided I can find the time to read it, I’ll have some feedback on the book over the next week or two, see what all the hype is about.
In the last few months I’ve become more acquainted with the thought of taking time off for myself, away from work, away from clients, switching off the phone and getting out in the air. While I haven’t managed to sort out any kind of official holiday, taking a few days out this weekend should do me the world of good to recharge the batteries and tackle the extremely busy month of June that lies ahead.
Enjoy your weekend.
Popularity: 20% [?]
So this morning’s blog talk seemed to go reasonably well, or I would hope it went reasonably well anyway. I’ll have some feedback on the course later in the week when the dust has settled but it was great to get out and meet some new bloggers, particularly those involved in the arts.
As promised, I’ll be publishing the content of the presentation and emailing out additional notes to those fifteen or so who had attended this morning’s session.
Here’s looking forward to the arrival of new blogs and futher development of existing ones in the coming weeks and months. Best of luck to you on your blogging adventures.
Popularity: 16% [?]
The Blogging For Beginners course I’m giving kicks off in just under two hours time. With an audience primarily of artists and creative types, several of whom will be completely new to the world of blogging, I’m looking forward to the run of the morning.
We’ve got ourselves almost four hours to talk about blogs and blogging, how they can benefit your creative practice, how easily you can get yourself set up with a blog, how to promote your blog, connect with other bloggers and lots more.
I’ll report back with feedback over the coming days and hopefully with a list of new arts blogs for my feed reader. I’ll also be publishing the course material I’ve put together to continue the ‘Blogging For Beginners’ series of posts to date.
Popularity: 16% [?]
Something I’m often asked to explain to those interested in blogging or maintaining a blog is “what is RSS”?
If you’re using Internet Explorer or Firefox you will notice in the address bar of this blog that there is an orange RSS icon to the right of the address bar. On many a blog or news website you will find the universal orange-coloured RSS icon, indicating that there is a content feed that you can ’subscribe’ to. This feed provides a URL or address you can enter into your web browser, email browser, RSS reader or mobile phone to recieve the latest updates from that site without having to visit the site again.
See this video…
RSS itself stands for Really Simply Syndication, and it does exactly what it says on the tin.
And RSS feed contains certain information on a news post such as
- The title of the post
- A link to the original article
- The actual post content
- Publishing date
- Authors name
This information is gathered from the feed and presented in a readable formatin a feed reader or aggregator e.g. Google Reader.
Every time the original blog or news site updates, you can use your chosen feed reader to see those latest updates (this is usually automatic) without having to visit the site again. For you, subscribing to RSS feeds means that you could track 5, 10, 50, 100 blogs or news sites all from the one application (again, like Google Reader).
Popularity: 11% [?]
If there’s one thing that puts people off from maintaining a regular blog it’s doing it all from sitting in front of a computer.
Picture the scene.
You get home from work or town, you pull out the laptop, full of the best intentions to write a blog post. You’re not sure EXACTLY what you’re going to blog about but you know it will come to you. You log into your blog admin area, call up the create a post page and then… nothing.
You look to the left, look to the right. You put in a title, remove it again. You get the first few lines in, file the post away to drafts and never come back to it again.
Some people call it ‘bloggers block’. I just call it part of the process.
We all draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources. Some people get in the zone as soon as they sit in front of a computer. Others come up with terrific ideas for posts and blog entries when they’re out on the town, out amongst friends, just off a phone call in the office, driving from a to b. What you need to do is be able to take that inspiration and your new thoughts and get them to your blog.
Hence, the power of the pen.
I can’t travel anywhere without a notepad and a pen or two. Something small mind you, just enough to fit in your back pocket or coat pocket, or one that slides easily into your bag.
No matter where I am, even if it’s just a quick thought I’ve had - a one liner - or two to three pages of ideas that just start leaking out, the pen and paper are there to catch them.
Next time you sit down at the laptop to write a blog post you’ll just need to reach for your notebook and unlock a real world of ideas and thoughts.
Popularity: 10% [?]
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m running half day blogging course in my home town - the first time I’ve given any course of its kind - later this month.
A quick email to the organisers yesterday (as I’ve been relatively flat out for the past week) told me that there were twelve people signed up for the course which will make for a great session. It’s always good to meet new people, especially in the circle the course is aimed at (creative types and artists of all genres).
The blogging for beginners series of posts will continue in the run up to the course and I’ll be publishing my course material here on ProFreelanceBlogger.com as well come the end of the month so you’ll be able to pick up on what was discussed on the day.
If you’ve got any words of wisdom you would like to pass on to beginner bloggers, leave me a comment with your name and URL and I’ll be sure and pass them on.
Popularity: 10% [?]
