I define a new [to me] phrase.
Yesterday, I was one of four guest panelists on the WordCast podcast. The topic was blog productivity — tips and tricks for blogging more efficiently — and a phrase I’d never heard before came up in the discussion: power blogger.
Let me take a few steps back before I move forward. Although I’ve written extensively about blogging from the blogger point of view and I’ve also co-authored and authored various WordPress training materials (books and videos), I’m not someone who keeps up-to-date with the world of blogging. I don’t know the buzzwords or phrases, I don’t follow the hot trends. I just obtain the tools, use them the way they work for me, and try to publish new blog posts regularly. Along the way, I provide a sprinkling of advice for bloggers in my own blog posts.
So the phrase power blogger was brand new to me.
And meaningless.
When the question, “What advice can you give to people who want to become power bloggers?” came up, I felt a tingling of stage fright. Surely I’d sound like an idiot if I admitted I had no idea what the phrase meant.
Fortunately, another panelist spoke up. I listened carefully to glean meaning from his response. And what I learned was that he — and the others — considered the quantity of blog posts a major component of power blogging. By their definition — at least one post a day — I was a power blogger!
I sure don’t feel like one.
When it was my turn to speak, I proposed my own definition of power blogger. I don’t remember the exact words, but it went something like this:
The number of blog posts a blogger publishes should have nothing to do with whether he’s a power blogger. Instead, it should be the influence the blogger has over his readership and beyond. What’s important is whether a blog post makes a difference in the reader’s life. Does it teach? Make the reader think? Influence his decisions? If a blogger can consistently do any of that, he’s a power blogger.
I recall comparing Twitter — which is, after all, “microblogging” — to blogging. Someone can tweet dozens of times a day, but if there isn’t any value in what he’s tweeting, what good is it? There are plenty of bloggers out there simply rehashing the same material, over and over, without adding anything new to the mix. They might post five or ten times a day. But if it isn’t worth reading, how can you consider them power bloggers?
And I guess that’s the advice I want to share in this post: If you’re serious about blogging, don’t go for quantity. Go for quality.
Make a difference with what you post.
Yeah, I know. In the old days, calling a phone number outside your area code would likely cost you a few bucks for a few minutes. “Long distance” phone calls were pricey, often 25¢ or more per minute. Cost conscious folks had no interest in following up on a vendor or service by calling in. Thus, toll-free (originally “800” numbers in the U.S.) were born. By the 1990s, they’d run out of area code 800 phone numbers and added 866 and 877.
But then we got the horses and decided we wanted to be able to go camping with them. So I bought a 35-foot horse trailer with living quarters. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, the trailer has stalls for the horses in back — mine held three. It also had a sort of closet for storing saddles and other tack. The other half of its length was dedicated to living space for people. It had a queen sized bed, sofa, sink, two-burner stove, good-sized refrigerator, and full (although tiny) bathroom. All this stuff was crammed into a very small space. We added a screened-in room to expand our living space. This photo shows what it looked like parked on our Howard Mesa property with the screen room attached. I lived in this space every other week in the summer of 2004 when I flew at the Grand Canyon. Sadly, we rarely used the camper as it was designed — to take our horses camping with us.
In 2006, I sold the horse trailer and purchased a Starcraft Antiqua hybrid camper. To me, this was the best of both worlds: a hard-sided camper with the usual amenities (kitchen, bathroom, dining area, sitting area, bedroom) plus the outdoorsy feeling of tent camping. I bought this primarily because I thought we were going to go “on the road” with the helicopter in the summer of 2007. I’d do 
Floor plan. The layout of the RV is likely to determine what amenities it has. If you’ve never shopped for an RV — or haven’t done it lately — you will be amazed at what they can cram into a space. For example, the RV I selected is 36 feet long and 8 feet wide. Yet it has a private bedroom, private bathroom, kitchen, dining area, living area with sofa and recliners, and desk. In many cases, it does this with slide outs. You drive along, park, and push a button to expand your living space.
Being the picky person I am, certain elements of the floor plan were very important to me. I wanted to be able to access the refrigerator and bathroom without having to expand all the slides. For example, suppose I’m cruising down the road in the middle of nowhere and need/want a cold drink. I can pull over, climb into the RV, and grab one out of the fridge. And even take a leak in a bathroom I know is clean. I also wanted what’s called a “side aisle bath” — a bathroom with all components in the same little room. Other floor plans actually put the bathroom sink in the bedroom. I didn’t want that. And finally, I wanted working space that wasn’t the same place I ate. That means I needed a desk or space for a desk. An RV with a good desk is hard to find and I was perfectly willing to pull out a recliner or even a sofa to put in my own desk. But the model I wound up with actually had a good, usable desk and even had drawers (see photo below). So as far as floor plan is concerned, what I bought is pretty darn close to “perfect” — for me.
Features and Amenities. Every RV manufacturer and design has its own set of features and amenities. For example, a toy hauler includes a garage-like space in the back. A family model RV might include a separate bedroom — and even an additional half bathroom! — with bunks for the kids. Many luxury RVs have surround sound entertainment systems with wide screen televisions that rise out of a panel or fill an entire wall space. Some units have electric fireplaces. You can find kitchens with two refrigerators and bathrooms with bathtubs. Dining can be in a booth or table and chairs. Sofas can become second beds. Bedrooms can have televisions, closets can be cedar-lined, cabinets can have washer/dryer hookups. The list goes on and on. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you walk into an RV with yet another feature you didn’t think you’d ever see in an RV.
For us, less was more — on the inside, anyway. All the RV dealers in the world can assure us that an electric fireplace is a good feature because it gives off heat using the campground’s electricity rather than onboard propane. I can remind them all that we do a lot of off-the-grid camping where there is no campground electricity. A fireplace was a feature we simply didn’t want — yet it appeared in more than half the RVs we looked at! I was extremely pleased, therefore, when we found the unit I’d buy and saw that instead of a fireplace (see photo of typical configuration), there was an empty cabinet.
On the outside, however, I wanted some of the newer modern features that were not available in the 2009 model I almost bought. At the top of the list was an electric awning — something I could roll out or back in with the push of a button. (If you’d manually rolled in an awning in your pajamas in the middle of the night when the wind kicked up as many times as I have, you’d understand why.) A remote control to deploy the slide outs was also useful when setting up the RV by myself, as I’m likely to do this summer. Ditto for electric stabilizer jacks and “landing gear.” And it seemed to make a lot more sense to have all hookups (except electricity) and sewer dump/flush controls in one place rather than scattered all over the side of the RV. These features were the primary reason I went with the 2010 model rather than the 2009 (which actually had more cabinet space in the kitchen).
Quality and Price. Quality and price really do go hand in hand. You get what you pay for. A low-end fifth wheel that you might be able to pick up for $25K is simply not going to be as sturdy or well-built as a top-of-the-line fifth wheel that’ll cost you nearly $100K.
In my case, I wanted good quality but knew I couldn’t afford — or, more accurately, were not willing to spend enough for — the best. So the very first part of my search was to determine which brands were below my quality needs or above my budget. This should be the first step in anyone’s search for an RV; you can waste a huge amount of time looking at units that simply won’t work for you because of insufficient quality or expensive price. I also cut from the mix any manufacturer what was in bankruptcy or had gone out of the business. 2008/09 killed a lot of them. That limited us to about ten different brands by three different manufacturers. Mountaineer is a mid-range Keystone product. Montana by Keystone is one step above it and I could have made that step if I found one I liked. Heartland’s Big Horn and Big Country were also in the running.
The Mountaineer I bought won on all three factors:
I started calling some of the RV dealers I’d met with over the past few months — I kept all their cards — to see if they had the same model available. One, in Quartzsite, said he had a 2010. I told him I’d consider driving out to take a look if we could agree to a price over the phone. I told him about the 2009 I were prepared to buy. He asked me to make an offer. I did. He came back with a slightly higher offer that was still below retail. We were there by 2 pm and I had all the papers signed by 4:30 PM.