BlogWritingCourse

If you are a relative newbie to the world of blogging, you may or may not know much about Twitter.  I tend to find that a lot of Twitterers are bloggers.  I became kind of curious about the relationship between the two.  Here are some of my thoughts about the Twitter/blogging connection.

1. Bloggers are often told that Twitter is a good way to grow their blog readership.  First of all, you can easily feed your blog to Twitter, so that each time you blog, your new post is announced as a Tweet.  If discussion builds around either your post, or your tags, then you can quickly add a follower or two.  Also, your website or blog is prominently displayed in your Twitter profile, so that your followers can find out about it if they stop in. 
2. Twitter is kind of an in-between-blog-posts vehicle for some people.  Blogs are generally at least a couple of paragraphs long.  You have something to say, and you take a few minutes (or in my case, occasionally a whole darn hour) to compose your thoughts and put them down in your blog.  But what about when something comes to mind that you may not have time to write a whole post about, but you still want to share?  You tweet it.  140 little characters of burning info that just can’t wait until the next post?  You tweet it. 
3. Twitter is the ultimate networking tool.  Whether or not we quite accept it, blogging is about building networks.  But in most cases, network building for bloggers can take a long time.  Network building on Twitter, however, is much faster, and there are multiple ways to push it forward even more quickly: TwittGroups has a seemingly unending list of ways to network with people of similar interests, backgrounds, work affiliations, geographic locations, etc.  And building a network on Twitter is a highly effective way of getting new people to find out about your blog.

If you have a blog, or are thinking about starting a blog, you might want to give Twitter a chance.  It is an effective jump-start for building blog traffic, and networking with other like-minded bloggers.

Until next time,

One of the students I had the pleasure to teach in our most recent blog writing course was a dear lady across the pond who has a penchant for karate.  Sue was an enthusiastic student who quickly caught the blogging “bug” and has been consistently writing and growing her blog.  You can find her martial arts themed blog at Kick Ass SueC.

The following is a recent interview that I did with Sue to follow up with her and see what her experience with blogging has been like since the completion of the course.

First of all, tell us a little bit about your blog, and the types of things you write about.

I write a martial arts blog. This is very much a student’s perspective of learning a martial art as I am still working my way up the coloured belts towards black belt. However, I try to avoid it being merely a training log as this would be boring – even to other martial artists!  Some of my posts may focus on a particular technique I am learning or have difficulties with, or I may talk about some wider issues in martial arts such as problems with women’s self-defence courses or whether women should train with men. Occasionally I write articles about some aspect of Japanese culture or on some historical aspect of karate. I’m basically looking for meaning in what I am doing and trying to put my martial arts training into a wider historical or philosophical context. I hope that doesn’t make it sound too heavy and serious – I try to touch on some of these subjects with a bit of humility and humour.

What got you interested in blogging?

I originally got interested in blogging as a means to self-publishing my creative writing efforts, which is my other hobby. I write short stories and poems. However, having looked into how blogging works and the fact that successful blogs usually require you to post regularly (3-4 times a week) I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep it supplied with new and original material. I decided to test the waters out with a martial arts blog instead – not much different hey! I love writing my martial arts blog so much that I don’t now intend to start a creative writing one. However, I still like creative writing so as a compromise I have just recently added a new feature to my side bar called ‘Hooked on Haiku’, in which I am attempting to write a daily haiku poem (on a martial arts theme of course!)

Now that you have been blogging for a few months, how about looking back on the Blog Writing Course, and tell us how it did (or didn’t) prepare you for the world of blog writing?

I stumbled on the Blog Writing Course by accident. I had just set up my blog the week before and came across a post from an ex-BWC student who said the course was enrolling again. I enrolled immediately because I had realised that I was out of my depth a bit and needed some help to develop my blog. I wish now I’d started the course first – then I may have chosen a different name and URL for my blog! The course though has given me numerous tips and advice on how to improve the appearance of my blog, how to make the side bar an interesting adjunct, how to collect stats, how to publicise my blog and bring in traffic. I’ve learnt the importance of illustrating posts with pictures or videos and how to keep safe whilst blogging.

What was your favorite part of the course?

My favourite part of the course was communicating with the other course members – giving and receiving comments on each other’s assignments.  As bloggers we were all natural communicators and so we all tended to bend over backwards to be helpful to each other. We managed to develop the sense of community that we all hoped to experience through our own individual blogging experiences. So in that sense communicating with each other through the course was like a trial run for learning to communicate with our fellow bloggers in the blogosphere.

How do you think the experience you are having now with your blog would have been different, if you had tried the process from scratch on your own?

Well to be honest I did start the process from scratch on my own but soon realised a bit of help and guidance would be useful! If I hadn’t then enrolled on the course I think my blog may be less well organised, probably less aesthetic and much harder for people to find. The information provided on the course is out there on the web if you look for it but you would have to make the time and effort to find it yourself. The advantage of this course is that everything you need to know is all in one place and includes links to all sorts of other useful websites that you can continue to use well after the course has finished.

What has your experience been so far with drawing traffic to your blog?  Have you put any of the traffic-building suggestions from the BWC to use?

I have a small core of people who visit my blog often and have put me in their blog roll and regularly leave me comments.  Some of them have registered on my site as ‘followers’ but not all of them. However I also know that I have a much larger group of people who visit less frequently but do return from time to time. I also know that hundreds of people have just read a specific post that they found via a search engine. I know that 75% of my readers have come back more than once and I know which town and country they have come from. How do I know? I have registered with statcounter who record this information for me to see. I have also registered with about 6 ‘blog register’ sites and I know people have found me through this route. I also installed a visitor map in my side bar which enables me to see at an instant where all my traffic comes from and I’ve had visitors from every continent (except Antarctica) which is amazing!

Has the blogging experience been positive so far?  Do you see yourself continuing to blog, at least into the near future?

The blogging experience has been very positive for me so far. As well as writing my blog I love reading other peoples blogs as well. I think it is fascinating to discuss topics with other like-minded people from around the world. I often leave people comments and love receiving comments from other people which I always follow up or leave a thank you. I have come to see my blog as part of my martial arts training, broadening my horizons but at the same time providing me with a tool with which to think and analyse my training efforts. So for me it is a way of looking both inwards at myself and reaching out to the wider martial arts community. I will definitely be continuing blogging in the near future.

A big thanks to Sue for participating in this interview!  If you would like to follow Sue, or any of our other blog writing graduates, check out our list of BWC Alumni on BlogWritingCourse.com.    And if you would like to find out more about our Blog Writing Course, click here to see how our eight-week course can help you get your new blog up and running. 

A recent marketing webinar I attended made a statement that caught me off guard.  It stated that the next biggest trend in marketing would be in the form of video.  For some people, (myself included) this is a terrifying statement.  Eventually that might mean that at some point, to promote myself or my work, I might actually have to be on camera.  Perish the thought! 

But for other people, the idea of sharing their opinions, thoughts, and advice on camera is a totally natural thing.  They don’t feel the least bit intimidated by that lens in front of their face, and are happy to have their fifteen minutes of fame. 

For those people, starting a video weblog might be the perfect choice.  A video weblog - - or VLOG - - is simply a way capture video either via webcam or camcorder and then syndicate or attach that video to a RSS or ATOM feed.  Just like a traditional weblog, these vlogs must have a theme, a title, and a host. 

But finding a host for a vlog, is a slightly different process.  Although traditional blogging hosts such as Wordpress and Blogger allow for embedded video, you will still need to find a separate host for the videos themselves.  The choice of host mostly boils down to what you want to include on your vlog.  Some hosts are strictly video-only, while others allow for more multimedia content such as text and graphics.

A video-only vlog can be as simple as opening up a new channel on YouTube.  By posting specific videos from your playlist to your profile page, and then adding a title and any comments you want to make about it, you can officially and easily start a vlog!  For more multimedia style videos, you will need access to a good video editor, such as Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, and you will need to consider the features of the hosting site such as:

• video storage space
• privacy and copyright policies
• monetization

Then once your video is created and hosted, you will want to make sure it gets some attention, so you will syndicate your content.  Sites such as Feedburner provide a service just for this purpose and will help you enable your feed for podcasting.

Once your video is recorded, edited, and posted, then all you need to do is promote it.  This process isn’t all that different from promoting a traditional weblog in that you will want to make sure to add searchable tags to each post, listing your vlog with appropriate directories, submitting your podcast to iTunes, add a signature with your vlog address to any outgoing emails, and visit and comment on other video weblogs. 

If you are not camera shy, and have access to a quality camcorder and video editing software, and have something you think needs sharing with the world, then starting a video weblog may be the right course of action for you!

Until next time,