If you're looking for something to blog about, have a look at the room around you. If you're sitting in a den or office, try to step outside yourself for a moment. What does this room say about you? My den has Babylon 5 (a sci-fi TV series) posters, a book shelf full of sci-fi and computer books, a rack full of sci-fi and comedy DVDs, and it's a mess. This tells you I'm no neat freak, but I am into science fiction and comedy. What might surprise people is that although I'm a technology geek, I have a complete collection of the Marx Brothers' old black and white movies. To me, they're some of the best comedies ever produced. What does your workspace say about the person you are? If someone you knew was in the room with you looking around, what might they see that surprises them?
October 2008 Archives
I've often been told that I'm a good writer. Personally, I think I'm probably slightly above average, but I'm no Hemingway. I found a great resource on improving your writing over at Copyblogger. Their "Copywriting 101" series provides a series of articles, each of which can be read in a few minutes, that should help you write better than you do now. If you're serious about blogging, I recommend checking it out.
We're probably all guilty of some grammar errors in our writing. For example, I prefer putting my punctuation marks outside of quotation marks unless they're part of the actual quote. I prefer "to boldly go" over "to go boldly" in the Star Trek theme. But as lax as my own writing may be with some rules, there are a few that really irritate me when I see them in print. If I start reading a blog and bump into more than a couple, I'm out of there.
The folks over at Copyblogger have compiled their "Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb" and it's a great start. If you make more than two of those mistakes in a paragraph, I'm going to have a hard time reading the rest of that paragraph. I'll tune out, and move on. So will many other readers.
Below are a few of my own "grammar nazi" rules to add to theirs:
The folks over at Copyblogger have compiled their "Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb" and it's a great start. If you make more than two of those mistakes in a paragraph, I'm going to have a hard time reading the rest of that paragraph. I'll tune out, and move on. So will many other readers.
Below are a few of my own "grammar nazi" rules to add to theirs:
When I see these mistakes in a blog entry, I have a hard time taking anything else the writer says seriously, and subconsciously estimate their IQ to be just above a turnip...
- No text-message abbreviations in your blog entries unless you're quoting a texting conversation. Don't use "ur" instead of "your", "2" instead of "to", "4" instead of "for", "rly" instead of "really", or a "z" where there should be an "s". It works for text messages because the idea is to keep them short. These conventions have no business in your blog unless your audience consists only of heavy text messagers.
- No "leet speak". That is, no "kewl", "dudez", and "miScaPitAliZed" words. Those are cool the first time you see them, maybe. After that, they're annoying.
- Know the difference between "loose" and "lose". If you don't win a game, you "lose", not "loose". If you haven't tightened up a screw, it's "loose".
- Know the difference between "then" and "than". For example, it's "I like this more THAN that" not "I like this more then that". It's not "this is more important then anything" but "this is more important than anything".
- "Could of", "would of", and "should of" are wrong. It sounds like those are the words someone is saying when they are speaking, "could've", "would've", or "should've". But those contractions are not good English, either. Instead, use "could have", "would have" and "should have".
Because my day job involves maintaining and troubleshooting computers, people who know me will ask for my advice about technical matters. They'll ask about video cards, laptops, cheap alternatives for expensive software, and a variety of other things related to computers. Chances are there's some area that your friends and co-workers view you as knowledgeable about. What kinds of questions do they ask you? These could be good topics to cover on your blog.
Chances are that for whatever subject you blog about, there's a magazine on newsstands. In fact, if it's something you care a lot about, you probably subscribe to related magazines, mailing lists, etc. Why not use those publications to help you find a topic for blogging?
Pick up the magazine and flip through it. If an ad or article catches your eye, stop and examine it in more detail. If it's an article, analyze what you've just read with an eye toward your blog. Did the author miss some key points that you can expand on? Is the article too superficial, and can you give a "meatier" treatment in your blog? Would people like a list of useful resources on that subject (a list you could research and post on your blog)?
Pick up the magazine and flip through it. If an ad or article catches your eye, stop and examine it in more detail. If it's an article, analyze what you've just read with an eye toward your blog. Did the author miss some key points that you can expand on? Is the article too superficial, and can you give a "meatier" treatment in your blog? Would people like a list of useful resources on that subject (a list you could research and post on your blog)?
Following are some articles I've accumulated on web design, usability, and web page layout.
10 Ways to Increase Blog Usability
This Performancing.com article talks about how to use your site's design to improve the usability of your blog.
BlogStyles
This site offers web designs for blogs. They seem to focus mostly on Movable Type and Blogger.
How to Obtain an ISSN for your Blog
An ISSN registers your blog as an official periodical, one that can appear in libraries and directories. This can boost your readership, legitimacy, and give your blog a boost.
Professional Grade Blog Design is Easy
This article talks about "branding" and designing your site.
Weblog Usability: Top Ten Design Mistakes
The top ten things you need to do in your blog to make it usable, popular, and well designed.
Webmonkey: The Web Developer's Resource
This site provides great articles about HTML, web design, cascading style sheets, and about anything else you'd want to know about web design and programming.
In 1958, the United States placed an embargo against goods coming into this country from Cuba. Americans are not only prevented from bringing Cuban goods into the country, we're also not permitted to use Cuban products when we're out of the country. The embargo was introduced after Castro took over Cuba and remains in effect to this day. What's your opinion on it? (I've already posted mine.) Should we still have that embargo today? Is it something whose time has passed?
If you're not familiar with the topic of "search engine optimization" you may want to give the following articles a read. It can help readers find your blog more easily in search results.
Even Blogs Need Keyword Research
Discusses what keywords can do to help improve blog usability and search engine ranking.
HighRankings.com SEO FAQ
Some frequently asked questions about search engine optimization and their answers.
How to Boost Your Rankings By Over 350 Positions
This SEOElite article discusses how adding a properly worded TITLE tag, combining keywords, adding H1 and H2 header tags, bolding, italicizing, underlining, ALT image tags, and more can boost your search engine position.
Search Engine Watch
This site is dedicated to the latest news, information, and tips about search engines and search engine optimization.
SEO Chat
This site provides news and information about search engine optimization and related topics.
My dad's mother was a great cook. She could make a meal for 30 people and it would taste as good as a meal made for 5. She passed away many years ago, and I really regret that I was never able to ask her for many of her recipes, because I'd love to be able to share some of that great food with my stepchildren and my wife.
My grandmother on my mom's side makes potato soup. It's delicious, and it doesn't taste like the stuff you get in cans or at a restaurant. I know that someday she will no longer be with us, and I didn't want that recipe to die with her. I had her walk through it with me, and wrote it down as I went so that it would never be lost. Since I thought others might be interested in trying it, I shared it on my web site. Is there a recipe in your family that you share, or wish you had? Why not share it with the rest of us?
My grandmother on my mom's side makes potato soup. It's delicious, and it doesn't taste like the stuff you get in cans or at a restaurant. I know that someday she will no longer be with us, and I didn't want that recipe to die with her. I had her walk through it with me, and wrote it down as I went so that it would never be lost. Since I thought others might be interested in trying it, I shared it on my web site. Is there a recipe in your family that you share, or wish you had? Why not share it with the rest of us?
If you're looking for a way to get your words to the web, you'll do well to consider a content management system. These allow you to focus on the words, and let software handle the formatting, comments, trackbacks, and so forth. Below are several popular content management systems for blogging:
There are many good content management tools out there. The key, I've found, is to try writing several posts in the ones that look "good" to you and evaluate them along several lines:
Blogger by Google
This is Google's free content management system for blogs.
BlogWare
Blogware is described as Blog Builder Software for Blogs and Blogging.
LiveJournal
LiveJournal is a journaling system suitable for blogging, networking with friends, and more.
Mambo Open Source
This open source content management system is provided by a number of Internet Service Providers and hosting services. This system is available free of charge, but you need some kind of hosting provider like godaddy.com to house the database and programs.
Movable Type
The Movable Type publishing platform is another very popular blogging content management system. As with Mambo, there is an open source (free) version of Movable Type that you can use on an existing host to run your blog. (I'm using it for this site.)
MySpace.com
One of the many blog hosts out there.
TypePad
A powerful, hosted weblogging service.
WordPress
Free blog tool and weblog platform - one of the more-popular ones.
Blog: CMS
This open source content management system bills itself as "the most complete, feature-packed, personal publishing system on the market. It includes state-of-the-art weblog, forum, wiki engine, news aggregator (atom / rss), and photo gallery".
Wikipedia's List of Content Management Systems
This is a rather comprehensive list of free and commercial content management systems.
There are many good content management tools out there. The key, I've found, is to try writing several posts in the ones that look "good" to you and evaluate them along several lines:
These and other questions are best answered by installing or signing up for a service you're looking at and spending time with it.
- Does the tool make it easy to link to other posts?
- Is it easy to upload images and include them in your posts?
- Can you easily format the text the way you want it, with indentation, alignment, bulleted lists, etc.?
- Does it handle trackbacks, so you can see who's talking about your blog?
- Does it offer an RSS feed, to make it easy for people to scan your blog on a regular basis to find articles of interest?
- Are you able to categorize your posts (if you want to) or tag them to help readers find posts on a similar subject matter?
- Can you customize the appearance of the blog to suit you?
- If you want readers to be able to comment on your posts, is that option available?
- Can the system provide Google Sitemaps to help get your posts indexed?
- Can it handle scheduled posts (if you want to be able to write your articles in advance and have them appear on a pre-determined day)?
My late grandfather was a fantastic guy. He worked hard his entire life to take care of the family. He had (and made) friends everywhere he went. He was sweet, charming, and generous to a fault. He stood up for what he believed in and encouraged the same in his family. My world isn't the same without him. He was, without question, a hero to me. Who's your hero? What about them makes them your hero?
An article over at Copyblogger.com covers "10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work" for blogging. Here are the top 5. See their article for the rest.
They claim articles with titles like these will generate hits and traffic. I can't say that I've tried any of these particular headlines, but I'm curious to give it a shot.
- "Who Else Wants..." as in "Who Else Wants a High Paying Job?" or "Who Else Wants to Know How to Buy an HDTV?"
- "The Secret of..." as in "The Secret of a Truly Great Podcast"
- "Here is a Method that is helping [blank] to [blank]" as in "Here is a method that is helping home owners to save hundreds of dollars"
- "Little Known Ways To..." as in "Little Known Ways to Reduce Your Car Insurance Premiums"
- "Get Rid of [blank] Once and For All" as in "Get rid of coffee stains once and for all"
They claim articles with titles like these will generate hits and traffic. I can't say that I've tried any of these particular headlines, but I'm curious to give it a shot.
I read an article on a site about blogging which suggested that writing "top 10" style lists was a great way to drive traffic to your site. I experimented with that for a while, including writing one article about the music and musicians I could personally do without ever hearing again. How about you? Are there musicians or celebrities you'd be happy to never see or hear again? Who are they? What don't you like about them?
In my early teen years, my family took advantage of an opportunity and moved from southern Ohio all the way to a residential village in Brazil. Up until that point, it had never occurred to me that two people looking at the exact same problem would imagine completely different solutions. I guess I led a sheltered life. I heard a story there that showed me just how much a person's experiences and thinking process affects the solutions they come up with.
One of the American families living in the village with us had a problem with the bathroom in their home. Whenever anyone in the house would take a shower, water would remain all the way around the outside edges of the shower stall. Thinking like an American, I thought the obvious solution to the problem was to chip up the concrete to lower the drain and re-tile the bottom of the shower wherever it had been torn up.
A Brazilian worker was hired to solve this problem. The lady of the house went out on some errands, leaving the worker to do his thing. When she returned, there was a puddle of water on her front porch. She didn't think much of it, since it was a tropical area and rain storms occurred occasionally. When she stepped in the door, however, she immediately knew something was wrong. The rug on her hardwood floor in the living room was soaked, and it squished when she walked on it.
It seems that the worker, thinking like someone who had little money, couldn't justify tearing up all that tile and concrete, etc., came up with a solution that seemed perfectly logical to him. He used a chisel and chiseled a little trench out of the shower stall, across the bathroom floor, down the hardwood floor in the hallway, across the living room, and out the front door. This was certainly NOT the solution the resident of that house was looking for, and was not acceptable for them, but if you look at things from the worker's point of view, it was the simplest, cheapest solution that got rid of the water standing in the shower stall.
Hearing that story was something of an epiphany for me. Until then, I never realized how much our point of view and our experiences dictate the ideas we get to solve a problem. I doubt any American would have come up with the solution our Brazilian friend did. For that matter, most Brazilians wouldn't have solved the problem that way either. But when you look at the problem as it was expressed to the worker, he DID solve it, with as little expense as possible... it's just that his solution would have caused a lot of other problems, like water standing in the hallway, a mildewed rug in the living room, and guests coming in the front door with wet feet.
Just realizing that not everyone sees your problems the same way you do can make you a more effective communicator. Had the resident of the house explained to the man that the problem isn't that water is standing in the shower stall, but that it's not making its way into the drain in the center of the shower, she might have gotten a solution closer to what she was looking for. But, like I did before hearing that story, she assumed that someone else looking at her problem would intuit exactly what to do to solve it.
So, what epiphanies have happened in your life? Has something ever happened to you, or been told to you in a story that changed your way of thinking forever? Tell us about it on your blog.
One of the American families living in the village with us had a problem with the bathroom in their home. Whenever anyone in the house would take a shower, water would remain all the way around the outside edges of the shower stall. Thinking like an American, I thought the obvious solution to the problem was to chip up the concrete to lower the drain and re-tile the bottom of the shower wherever it had been torn up.
A Brazilian worker was hired to solve this problem. The lady of the house went out on some errands, leaving the worker to do his thing. When she returned, there was a puddle of water on her front porch. She didn't think much of it, since it was a tropical area and rain storms occurred occasionally. When she stepped in the door, however, she immediately knew something was wrong. The rug on her hardwood floor in the living room was soaked, and it squished when she walked on it.
It seems that the worker, thinking like someone who had little money, couldn't justify tearing up all that tile and concrete, etc., came up with a solution that seemed perfectly logical to him. He used a chisel and chiseled a little trench out of the shower stall, across the bathroom floor, down the hardwood floor in the hallway, across the living room, and out the front door. This was certainly NOT the solution the resident of that house was looking for, and was not acceptable for them, but if you look at things from the worker's point of view, it was the simplest, cheapest solution that got rid of the water standing in the shower stall.
Hearing that story was something of an epiphany for me. Until then, I never realized how much our point of view and our experiences dictate the ideas we get to solve a problem. I doubt any American would have come up with the solution our Brazilian friend did. For that matter, most Brazilians wouldn't have solved the problem that way either. But when you look at the problem as it was expressed to the worker, he DID solve it, with as little expense as possible... it's just that his solution would have caused a lot of other problems, like water standing in the hallway, a mildewed rug in the living room, and guests coming in the front door with wet feet.
Just realizing that not everyone sees your problems the same way you do can make you a more effective communicator. Had the resident of the house explained to the man that the problem isn't that water is standing in the shower stall, but that it's not making its way into the drain in the center of the shower, she might have gotten a solution closer to what she was looking for. But, like I did before hearing that story, she assumed that someone else looking at her problem would intuit exactly what to do to solve it.
So, what epiphanies have happened in your life? Has something ever happened to you, or been told to you in a story that changed your way of thinking forever? Tell us about it on your blog.
The folks over at Problogger.net have posted an article detailing three simple ways to increase your blog traffic. The reader's digest version appears below, but you should have a look at the full article to get helpful details.
I'm going to add some others to the above list because they've worked for me personally on my other blogs and sites:
- Use Technorati tags to tag your post and its key words.
- Leverage your other web sites to drive traffic to your blog by linking to relevant posts.
- Make use of trackback links to popular web sites.
Have any tips of your own to share? Post them in the comments or write about them on your own blog and link to it here!
- When you read popular web sites like Slashdot, like most bloggers do, if you have blog entries that contribute to the topic under discussion, post a reply to the article and link to your blog post. This will prompt some readers from the "high traffic" site to come check out yours.
- Leverage Wikipedia by linking to relevant articles on your blog. A while back, I wrote a web-based program to emulate an old-style cipher where "A=Z, B=Y, C=X,..." There was an article on Wikipedia that discussed this cipher, so I posted a link there going back to my blog. I echoed a list of my 10 most-recently-published articles underneath the form on that page. I got quite a lot of traffic from there. If you have examples or authoritative articles that might be of interest to Wikipedia readers, add a link from there to your site.
- Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques or tools. Personally, I found the "Internet Business Promoter" or "IBP" software very helpful for this. (They offer a free trial, and no, I don't get any kickbacks for recommending it.) It looks at your web page and that of your "competitors" (if you have any) and suggests how you can improve your search engine ranking. Implementing some very simple suggestions it offers can improve your ranking in search results, and thus your traffic. I
- Offer an RSS feed. Joomla, Mambo, and Movable Type (all systems I've used) can provide one or more RSS feeds from your content (other major blog packages do as well). The nice thing about RSS feeds is that they allow people to aggregate (bring together) the headlines of recent posts from lots of blogs onto a single page. For example, my Google homepage brings me RSS feeds from my favorite blogs and shopping sites. Each day, I can read those at a glance and see if any of the sites offer something of interest to me that day. If so, I'll normally click through and read the article.
- Participate in forums. If there are forums out that which discuss an area of your expertise, join them and participate in the discussions. If you're asked a particularly interesting question or are solicited for advice, provide the information being sought and offer more of the same on your blog.
- Reciprocal linking can help, if used carefully. If you write a blog on a topic similar to that of a friend (or another blogger who happens to be friendly to you), you might want to share links. A link on your site could drive traffic to theirs, and vice versa. It's a simple thing to do for both of you, and you could both benefit. However, if you Google the term "reciprocal linking" you'll find a lot bad advice that suggests any link into your site from anywhere is a good thing. That's not the case. For example, if your site's about horses, having reciprocal links from other horse-related sites is good. Having reciprocal links from sites about television shows (not about horses) or cooking sites may harm more than it helps. (Google tracks the links going into your site and has techniques for weighting their importance and worth.) Note that tips 1, 2, and 5 above are approximately the same thing, except that you're in more control of those links.
There are a lot of amazing people in my family tree. My uncle Ray worked his way up through the ranks of his company to a senior executive position. My dad, who didn't finish college, worked as an engineer and is now the top manager at a power plant in Pennsylvania. My sister has had her graphic artwork used on national television shows and seen at the White House. My late grandfather was incredible, too, for more reasons than I'll ever be able to share. My late mom's quilts are truly works of art.
And on the in-law side, there are some people who blow my mind as well. My niece Kelly graduated college, married a great guy, and has been dazzling people with her engineering skill. Her sister Tracy has done missionary work, gotten her Optometry doctorate, and settled into a private practice. My brother-in-law Robert is an important guy at HP. And I could go on.
Is there someone in your family tree who really amazes you? Are you impressed by their achievements, how they live their life, or something else? What have you learned from them?
And on the in-law side, there are some people who blow my mind as well. My niece Kelly graduated college, married a great guy, and has been dazzling people with her engineering skill. Her sister Tracy has done missionary work, gotten her Optometry doctorate, and settled into a private practice. My brother-in-law Robert is an important guy at HP. And I could go on.
Is there someone in your family tree who really amazes you? Are you impressed by their achievements, how they live their life, or something else? What have you learned from them?
Most blogs have a space set aside for writing an "about me" kind of page describing the blogger writing that site. Problogger.com has posted an article providing some very solid advice for what your "about me" page should say. To paraphrase it quickly, they suggest describing your areas of expertise, how you and your blog can help readers, and how they can contact you.
For me, there are certain "go to" web sites I use on a regular basis. Google is my go-to site for searching the web. I also make it a point to read the Dilbert and User Friendly comic strips each day. I like to check out the latest deal on Woot.com, Yugster, BitsDuJour, Giveawayoftheday.com, and Game.Giveawayoftheday.com. And I've got RSS feeds for several technology news sites on my iGoogle page, which is also my browser's home page. What are your "go to" web sites and why have they become so invaluable to you?
Google (and probably other search engines) measure the relevancy and popularity of a given web page (including blogs) by the number of other sites that link to that site and page. If you want to see your site move up in the search engine rankings, getting more links that point to your page will help. So how do you go about that? The folks at Performancing.com have some ideas.
In honor of my step-daughter's birthday comes today's blog idea... Madison is 15 today, and I'm sure she'd happily tell you about all the things her mom does that just bring shame and humiliation to her. Maybe her mom asked her a question in front of her friends that made them giggle at her (like "Did you remember to pack clean undies?"). Maybe it was something she did or the way she did it. Thinking back over your lifetime, was there ever something that your parents did which really, really embarrassed you at the time? What was it? Why did it upset you so much? Can you look back on it now with a different perspective?
Yesterday, I suggested that you blog about some aspect of yourself that people just don't seem to "get" about you. Let's flip that around this time. Is there something out there that your friends and family seem to think is just fantastic that you don't quite "get" yourself? For me, that something would have to be the movie "Napoleon Dynamite". I found it excruciating to watch that movie. Maybe it's because I knew people who were that clueless and annoying in school. Maybe it's because there's some really big joke in it that I'm not getting. I don't know. My step-kids, my niece, and several other people I know absolutely loved it and thought it was hysterical. I thought it was 90 minutes I'll never get back. What's your "Napoleon Dynamite"?
The folks over at Performancing.com have published an article on how you can turn your blog into a business. If you'd like to make your blog not only fun, but profitable, you might want to check out what they have to say. Here's one of their suggestions:
For the rest, see their site.
4. Educate yourself about this business
A business is a business is a business. A lot of strategies in real world business can be applied online, but there are also specifics.
For instance, learning how to convert more prospects to customers through education and email autoresponder, placing ads strategically to increase value and result for the advertisers, and so on. Certainly you want the ads to be effective for them to keep running the ads.
For the rest, see their site.
At the company where I work, temps and contractors are often hired to fill in for people on leave, work on short-term projects, etc. Often, they wanted to get hired as a permanent employee. When one of the temps I knew wanted to get hired on with the company, she asked my advice. After advising her, I put an article up on my blog about it. If you had been in my situation, where you wanted to help a friend get hired permanently, how would you have advised them? If you're not interested in writing about that topic, is there an area where you have expertise that people often ask you about? Is there advice you're asked for frequently? If so, maybe you should offer that advice on your blog.
People who have known me for years just don't seem to "get" certain things about me. For example, back in high school my classmates thought I sat around at home studying all the time. They pictured me as the guy who went home and spent all his free time reading the textbooks, working on sample problems, etc. (Needless to say, I didn't date much as a result.) The reality was that I did the bare minimum amount of studying I needed to get a grade I was happy with, and that was it. Most nights that meant no studying at all. Some nights, it meant a few minutes to an hour. I played video games and spent time with my handful of close friends far more than I ever studied. It's hard to say how much better my high school years would have been if people had really "gotten" the fact that I didn't study any more (and in fact probably studied a lot LESS) than they did. How about you? Is there something about you that people just don't seem to "get" that you really wish they did? What is it? Why do you think they aren't catching on?
We see ads on television all the time for different products. For example, comedian Jerry Seinfeld was hired to draw attention to Microsoft and the Windows operating system (even though there was always a Mac on the set of Seinfeld). Sports stars promote shoes, energy drinks, and the like. What I'm curious to know is whether this advertising actually works. Have you ever bought something primarily on the basis of a celebrity endorsement? If so, what did you buy and what was it about that endorsement that made you consider the purchase?
A while back, I read an article for bloggers suggesting that one of the best ways to draw traffic into a site is to post "top 10 lists" for others to view and debate with you. So here's one with a little bit of a twist... Every so often, you see a movie that touches you deeply and makes you really think about something, or moves you to change your mind about something. If you could pick 10 movies that were required viewing for everyone you know, what movies would those be and why would you select those particular films?
I was listening to comedian Lewis Black the other day. In his new album "Anticipation" he makes the point that the anticipation of a new president or other elected official always seems to turn out better than the reality of that person's term in office. I'm paraphrasing here, but he goes on to suggest that if you really think things are a mess in our country right now, they're a mess because the Democrats and Republicans have allowed them to get to that point. If the Democrats and Republicans are therefore responsible for the current mess, how is electing another Democrat or Republican going to make things any better? I don't want to start a flame war between Democrats and Republicans, or some kind of a blame game. The point of this blog idea is for you to think about your personal values and beliefs and envision the political party that would be perfect for YOU. If it's the Democrats or Republicans, fine. If not, what would that party be like? What would it stand for? What kind of campaign promises would its candidates for office be making?
