Tag Archives: Blogging

Blogging

Do You Need A Pretty Blog To Be Successful?

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How many of you eat tuna fish? I know a few are going to say they don’t, but did you know that tuna is ranked as the most favored fish in the United States, with more than twice as many people eating it than salmon, which is #2? I was stunned by both of these because when I go to restaurants, most of the time they serve either haddock or cod. But these don’t seem to translate well to eating at home, which is why tuna and salmon rank so high.

my tuna mix

You know one of the strange things about tuna? It’s not a pretty food. Look at this picture of some tuna I made up the way I like it. When I posted this picture on Instagram some months ago and had it also going to Facebook, it was universally hated for its appearance. Yet, I know that all tuna looks pretty much like this after it’s been mixed with people’s favorite ingredients; have you ever seen Subway’s tuna?

Do I have a point? Of course! Lately there’s been a lot of discussion about what people’s blogs look like. I covered some of that on my previous post where I said if a website or blog works for you then go with it. I also said that it’s possible that people might not necessarily agree with you and that if they decide to stay away and you’re okay with it then fine, but if you want visitors you might decide to make some changes.

In my opinion, it’s not the look of blogs that drives people away as much as what a blog has to say. There are some very ugly and plain websites that draw thousands of visits a day. Why? Because someone found their content compelling enough to keep them coming and indirectly got them to share the content to help make them popular.

salmon teriyaki
Yeah, salmon…

This isn’t a slam on pretty websites or on fancy themes. They can be as pleasing and tempting as the dish on the left. It’s a postulation if you will that states content really matters a lot more than what one’s blog looks like. The idea of having a website look professional is a big one, but professional can be minimalistic as well as fancy-dancy with all sorts of things popping out and videos and music automatically playing and flash pages and… well, you get my drift. You don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for a blog theme unless you really want to.

That’s all I have; share your thoughts below.
 

Blogging

We’re All Right And We’re All Wrong About Blogging

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Yay, another post with a video! I know, it’s been 6 days since my last post here and that’s rare for me. I did that on purpose though because I had a couple of posts in a row that I thought were important enough to allow visitors to have their say about before I pushed on. If you’ve missed them please go back and check them out after this one.

Fields of Gold
Werner Kunz via Compfight

As I said in the video, today the sun is shining in central New York and that’s an anomaly for is at this time of year. Actually it popped out for maybe 20 minutes in the evening a couple of days ago but that’s too late to call it a sunny day. So I’m feeling good and thus decided that it was time to have a post on this topic, which is about blogging of course.

Over the past 5 years I’ve given a lot of advice on blogging. So have a lot of other people, some whom I’ve quoted here, some who I visit whenever I can. I’m part of the newsletters sent out by my Hot Blog Tips Hangout crew, and of course we do 3 videos every Sunday. The advice is pretty good I must say but if you’ve ever watched some of our videos, you’ll notice that every once in awhile we argue about something. It’s a short argument, nothing where we’re going to slap each other around (logistically it can’t happen anyway), but it proves a point.

That point is that all of us think we’re right and we are. At the same time none of us ever believes we’re wrong and we are. Kind of a dichotomy, eh? I’ll explain quickly, but not to take anything away from the video.

We all love blogging, but we all have something different we’re hoping to get out of it. When you think about it that’s true of all of you as well. It’s great getting some lessons from others, something that you feel you want to try out for yourself. But you also hear some advice that your mind says “I’m not doing that”. I know you do because I do.

So, if all of us look at the same information yet don’t do everything that everyone says, doesn’t that say that there’s someone out there who thinks we’re right and someone who thinks we’re wrong? By the way, I’m working on the concept that says it’s okay to be wrong sometimes because one, no one’s perfect, and two, even being wrong can produce great results. Think record players and penicillin.

With that said, here’s the video. Please, like the video, comment on the video, comment here on this blog post. Yeah, I know, most of you won’t watch the video or like it, even if you tell me you did, but I have to ask. 🙁


 

Blogging

Fussing About Guest Posters Again

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Yes, another minor rant about guest posters, and this time I was so moved that I had to do a video. Therefore, I’m not going to write a long piece, but I am going to say a few things before the video because, after all, just having a video doesn’t help with SEO all that much now does it? 🙂

Annoyed Isaac, Julia - Cocoro
Alpha via Compfight

Here’s the overall deal, if I may. Unless someone specifically asks you to write a guest post for them, whenever you do so it means that if someone publishes your post they’re doing you a favor, not the other way around. Yeah, I know that some people think the owner of the blog is getting something out of it, mainly free content so that they don’t have to write all the posts themselves, but so what.

If you come into my house to paint the walls and you’re going to get something out of it on the back end (maybe not money like a painter but guest posters are getting something), it means you don’t have to clean up when you’re done? You’re going to leave your drop cloths, dirty paint brush, stupid paint tray and tape all over my walls?

In that case, you were called and asked to do something, the rules change some when that happens. But if you called me and asked to paint one of my walls because you wanted to highlight your work, and I agree, does that mean that because you feel you’ve enhanced my space that nothing else counts? When you leave you leave a mess and you never come back?

That’s the basic premise behind what’s in the video, as I address an issue that came up yesterday with someone who wasn’t pleased that I yanked his links from his post when he didn’t fulfill the qualifications of my guest posting policy on my finance blog. People, if you’re looking to promote yourself in someone else’s space, whether it costs you or not, and it leads you to request the right to submit a guest post, follow the rules of the site, plain and simple. And before anyone who’s not familiar with this blog asks, no, I do not accept guest posts from anyone I don’t already know; let’s hope that at least was read. lol

And now, on with the fussing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxUkoTMZqx0


 

Blogging

Post #1,400; Are You Catching Up?

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Yup, I’ve finally hit post #1,400, and this is it. I wrote post #1,300 on June 1st of last year, which means it’s taken me 8 1/2 months to write these last 100. That’s the longest it’s ever taken me to write 100 posts, but it was on purpose as I said I was going to slow down some.

IMAG0115

Slowing down doesn’t mean I didn’t stick to my core themes though. Out of those 100 posts I wrote 36 of them on blogging and 16 on social media, while everything else was a nice mix of lots of things. That shows pretty good balance in staying true to the mission of this blog, which is to share whatever I want to share but mainly commenting on things that have to do with being online, mainly blogging.

I’m doing two things differently this time around; always shaking things up. I’m going to post my favorite 5 posts out of the past 100, then I’m going to post my favorite posts from my first year of blogging on this bad boy, for which the period is 12/7/2007 – 12/7/2008, where I wrote 309 posts; I wonder how many of you have written that many posts for the life of your blog. 🙂

I used to have a very rigorous writing schedule for this blog; I also only had 2 blogs back then. Because it was a new thing for me, not really niched, it was both easy and hard to write, and I wrote lots of junk; I can admit that. But I also wrote some stuff that’s evergreen, and I want to share those articles. Comments are turned off though; I now only allow comments for 2 years on my posts, to keep down extraneous spam. But I share them anyway because I know a couple of them offer information that someone might like to know. First, this period’s favorite 3:

Dream It And It Will Come – my most popular post ever, tells the story of a friend of mine who figured out how to follow his dream of visiting 42 states in 2 months and meeting people in person that he’d met online over the years, which included me

I Found A Dream; Now The Goals – my second most popular post ever, following up on the first one by talking about my own dream and goal for the year

10 Blog Tips In 2 Minutes – I wanted to prove that short didn’t mean insufficient, and also to prove I could write short posts lol

11 Lessons Learned From 11 Years In Business – at this point it’s 11 1/2 years, but I highlighted a milestone of mine with some valuable business advice

12 Things For 12/12/12 – I don’t rant often, but this was a combination of a rant and some general thoughts of mine that got way more visits than comments, but that’s okay because to some it could have seemed controversial

That’s not so bad for the last 100 posts is it? Now, my top 10 of my first year of blogging; I hope to keep writing stuff like this as time goes on, because if I say so myself some of it was ahead of its time, and it wasn’t all about blogging lol:

Credit Card Solutions – This is my strangest post because I actually rewrote the post 18 months because a lot of what I originally had on it disappeared. Still, if you want to learn how to handle your credit card creditors, this is for you

Publish Your Own Book – Many people are telling you how to do it now, but back in 2008 I was one of the first, talking about how I published mine

Blogging Step Four – What And How To Write – This was the last installment on my first series on blogging, and I linked back to the previous posts.

Be Responsible For Your Own Life – one of my earliest motivational posts, but certainly not the last

Blog Action Day – Poverty – my first foray into social issues, joining with other bloggers around the world to discuss a subject I personally didn’t live, but lived around people who were living it daily.

The Gurus Don’t Know It All – most of us can’t learn how to make money from these books, videos or podcasts that gurus sell us because they leave stuff out. I confronted a guru & asked him some questions, and 3 years later he’s still never answered them

Book Writing Series – Step One, The Concept – Once again, I was one of the earliest bloggers talking about the process of thinking about writing a book, and this was the first of my series on the subject

World Diabetes Day – My Story – social cause number two, this time sharing the story of how I learned I was diabetic; I hope you’re paying attention to your body’s potential signs

Is Social Media Hurting Your Online Business? – a pointed post that was based on how some people in business, offline and online, lost business and clients because of things they said during the presidential election of 2008, forgetting that just because you believe you have the right to say what you want to say doesn’t mean your potential customers will buy from you or stay with you afterwards, especially if you presented yourself as a jerk

A Point About Commenting On Blogs – goodness, it’s the topic that won’t go away, as I, and others, are still writing posts about blog commenting, or the lack thereof. Guess I’ll have to keep doing it until people get it right. 🙂

There you have it; 1,400 posts down, and hopefully I’ll get to 1,500 before Christmas; yeah, I think that’s a given. Who’s next?
 

Blogging

5 Random Thoughts About Blogging After A Local Blogging Get Together

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After all the lamentations I’ve made on this blog periodically about how hard it is to get local people to notice your websites or blogs I got invited, last minute, to a local blogging get together in downtown Syracuse. It was a lot of fun, and if you’re interested in my little writeup about the event check it out here on my Syracuse Wiki blog.

IMAG1883

It was a lot of fun and I had a good time. Matter of fact, we all had a good time, so much so that we stayed 30 minutes past when we had planned on leaving, and I was ready to go another hour. I hope some of you get to do such a thing one of these days, as it was as much fun as some of the tweetups I’ve gone to.

Being me, once I got home I decided to look at all of the blogs just to see what people do and how they blog. After doing that, and looking back on the event, and thinking about a question Brian Hawkins was pondering lately about how people perceive what blogs are, I came to some random thoughts about blogging, perception, and reality. I decided to keep it at 5, otherwise we could be here for days. Here are my thoughts; I’d love to hear your impressions about these later on.

1. There’s no one way to blog. Yeah, I already knew that one, but this brought it home. We all live in the same community, some for many years, some for a few. Some of us have shared experiences, as I knew a few of the people there. And yet, each of us has something different to say in many different ways. Our language is different in how we describe things, and how we share our passions are different as well. It’s truly fascinating.

2. Images really do enhance blogs drastically. It was only a couple of years ago that I started adding images to every post of mine and I thought it was just a nice touch. As I looked at many of the blogs from the local people I realized that there’s something about images, especially personal images or images highlighting something folks have done, that makes some posts special. One of these days I’m going to have to figure out how to get myself into more of my images, although the ladies are easily more photogenic than I am.

3. The question about what makes a blogger is hard to answer. All of the people who showed up saw themselves as bloggers. Yet, about 33% of them haven’t written a new blog post in 6 months or so. Does the act of owning a blog make you a blogger, or are you a blogger if you’re actually blogging on some kind of a consistent basis? I’m one of those folks who feels if there hasn’t been a post within at least 3 months you’re not a blogger, but who gives me the right to determine such things anyway?

4. All bloggers need to find ways to communicate better with each other when it comes to comments. Only one of the blogs that I commented on actually sent me something telling me someone had responded to a comment I left. That highlights something I come across on many other blogs, where people sometimes actually have responded to a comment, but their notification system is out of whack thus commenters never know that their missives were responded to. It’s something we all need to check from time to time by leaving a comment on our own blogs, after signing out of course, then responding to it and seeing if you get notification from yourself; uhhh, use a different email address for your original test comment of course. lol If you don’t get a response, you know you have to fix it somehow, probably with a plugin of some sort.

5. When all is said and done, it’s about community. Even folks without a lot of blog posts or comments on their blogs crave a community of some sort, people they can relate to in one way or another. The night of our event it was cold, with wind gusts up to 40 MPH. The lady who put it all together said she was worried only 3 or 4 people would show up because of that, yet a lot of people braved the weather, which was actually worse the next day.

Why should we write blogs? I often say there’s only 3 purposes in writing a blog; to entertain, to inform, or to educate. It turns out there’s a silent 4th purpose; to connect with others. No matter whether you’re writing about food or interior design or poems or short stories or blogging or running or whatever, you’re hoping someone stops by, reads your words, comments or subscribes to what you put out, and at some point maybe talking to that person outside of a blog and, if you’re lucky enough, meeting some of those people in person. I mean, how social can social media get!

Those are my random thoughts; what are yours?