Tag Archives: advice

Adding a Personal Touch to Your Blog

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Some advice from ProBlogger Darren Rowse.

If you read the ProBlogger Web site, you probably already know that Darren Rowse has written a series of articles under the heading “Adding a Personal Touch to Your Blog.” If you don’t frequent that site or subscribe to its feed and you’re truly interested in making your blog the best it can be, you really ought to head over there and pick up a few tips.

Although this series started in mid December, I didn’t think about blogging about it because it didn’t strike me as something worth sharing. Darren’s tips seemed like perfect common sense to me. After all, don’t all bloggers get personal in their blogs? I know do (perhaps I over-do) but apparently many others don’t. And perhaps that’s what’s holding a lot of bloggers back.

So I urge you to stop by Darren’s site and check out this series. In it, he explains how you can make your blog more “personal”:

…by personal I don’t necessarily mean that I’m going to be reflecting upon having a personal blog (as in the type where you talk about your cat, boyfriend, hobbies and last night’s dinner). What I’ll be focussing upon is how to make your entrepreneurial blog more personal…

If it works for Darren and others (including me, I think), it might work for you.

Getting Mentioned in Print

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Some tips from a brazen careerist.

From “How to get your blog (or yourself) mentioned in print” on Brazen Careerist:

One of the mantras of the online marketing world is that if you want to get something noticed, you need an offline and an online marketing plan. Because each type of marketing is more powerful when used with the other type.

Bloggers are generous with advice about how to get mentioned on blogs, but what about the other way around? How do individuals — bloggers and nonbloggers — get mentioned in print?

Blogger Penelope Trunk’s article offers some tips for getting mentioned in print, some of which are remarkably easy.

Question the Media!

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“Critical thinking” is the antidote for “truthiness” in our public life.

As the quality of our local newspaper here in Wickenburg declines to the point that it’s not worth spending the ten minutes it takes to read each week, I found “Skepticism: The antidote to ‘truthiness’ in American government and media” by Roy Peter Clark on Poytner Online a very interesting read. In preparing for an appearance on Oprah, he made a few notes, including this one:

4. Join with others in your community to analyze how you are being served or disserved by your local news media. As famed editor Gene Roberts said about one newspaper: “You can throw it up in the air and read it before it hits the ground.” What does your community need in the form of coverage that it is not getting? Who owns the news companies in your community? Are they in the news business to serve the public or to maximize their profits?

Or push the agendas of certain special interests?

Okay, so I added that last bit. But the point is, a newspaper should provide the news. All the news that matters to the public. Every side of every issue.

The current situation in Wickenburg’s local newspaper affects me directly: for the past three weeks, I’ve been mentioned in articles in the paper, but I have yet to be interviewed by a “reporter.” Tell me: how can a serious journalist write about a topic without speaking to the people who are making it newsworthy?

I’ll tell you how. When it isn’t in their best interest or the interest of their publication to objectively report all sides of an issue.

(A side note here: Lately, a large number of people in Wickenburg are outraged by the one-sidedness of the local newspaper. It’s gotten to the point that many people have cancelled their subscriptions. (Bravo! My husband and I did this well over a year ago and the only thing I miss is the regular supply of newsprint for the bottom of my parrot’s cage. I especially miss seeing his random bird droppings on photos of particular people here in town.) Some of them have even gone so far as to write letters to the publisher explaining why they are canceling. (I doubt that those letters will appear in the Letters to the Editor pages, which are the most popular pages in the paper.) Others have pledged to let their subscriptions lapse or simply stop picking it up on newsstands. Will this revolt by the people help? Probably not. If their finances begin to feel the pain of lost subscriptions, I’m sure one of the special interests they support will step up with a bailout. Quietly, of course. That’s how most Good Old Boy transactions are handled in this town.)

Mr. Clark adds this little bit of wisdom:

5. Look for role models of candor and accountability, people in public life who have proven to be reliable over time. Look for folks within a movement or political party who have the courage to speak, on occasion, against the interests of their own party.

Or against their government or town?

Frankly, Mr. Clark’s article has a lot of good advice — especially these days, when the media is spending more time manipulating public opinion than objectively reporting what’s important in the world around us. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Getting Regular Blog Readers

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What good is blogging if no one reads what you write?

The Zero Boss has written a good article about how you can attract and retain readers for a new blog. Lots of good advice.

Read it here: http://thezeroboss.com/2006/11/05/so-i-have-a-blognow-what-how-to-get-people-to-read-

what-you-write/

In the same vein, Connected Internet has a great article specifically for WordPress users that lists four “engagement” plugins — that is, plugins that engage the reader and encourage visitors to read more of what’s online. I’ll be adding at least one of these plugins to my site soon.

You can read it here: http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2006/11/04/1022/

RSS Summaries

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A reader chastises me.

The other day, while writing about the Reading Options in WordPress, I decided to experiment with this blog. I togged the settings so only summaries of my entries would be sent to people accessing with RSS readers.

Understand that I don’t use an RSS reader. I surf the old fashioned way, with a Web browser. I don’t surf that often and I don’t follow any one particular blog or site. So it’s never been an issue for me.

But for the book, I had to understand what this WordPress feature did. So I toggled it to the Summaries setting, downloaded a feed reader, and looked at the result. What I saw was a list of 10 or so posts in a window. I’d click a post title and the beginning of the post would appear in a window pane beneath the list. There was a link at the end indicating that there was more; clicking the link brought me to my Web site.

This seemed a logical way to release content via RSS. After all, didn’t I want visitors to come to the site where they could read not just the articles but the comments? And see all the pictures that came with the piece?

Dori of Wise Women didn’t think so. She commented on my “Stand Up for Your Principles” piece to stand up for her principles: that RSS feeds for blogs should include the entire content.

Whew! No problem. This morning, I remembered what I did to create the summaries (I did have to remember something I learned about 2 whole days ago!) and toggled the option back to its original settings. I just checked it with my feed reader and it’s working fine.

But this makes me curious. I’d like to know more from the folks who use an RSS feed reader to follow this blog. Here are a few questions; I’d appreciate it if you’d take the time to answer a few of them in the Comments for this post.

  • How often do you check the site? Regularly? (If so, I’m flattered to be on your list!)
  • Why do you prefer a news reader to a Web browser?
  • Does your news reader display formatted text and graphics?
  • Which reader do you use? On what computer platform?
  • Would you like to share any advice for people considering using a reader or for bloggers like me who aren’t fully aware of the benefits?

Although I’m a technical person and write about computer technology for a living, I made a decision long ago to concentrate on only those technologies that I use or write about. There’s just too much out there to learn it all — and still have a life that doesn’t revolve around a computer! As a result, my knowledge of computer technology is spotty, with expertise on certain topics balanced by sheer ignorance of others. (Ignorance is bliss, they say.)

Perhaps its time to give the RSS feed reader topic a bit more attention. What do you think?

PostScript: I just used my RSS reader to check out the other blogs that were included in it. It appears that none of them include the full text of the article. What’s going on here? Perhaps that’s why I discarded the idea of using a reader when I first tried it about two years ago? Because you had to go to the Web site anyway to read the article? It seems that, in many instances, the reader adds an extra step to following blogs. If you’re commenting on this piece, please comment on that, too.