BlogWritingCourse

One of the coolest aspects of blogging is the creativity it inspires. 

The shift toward Web 2.0 has made each person with computer access an active participant in this changing world.  We have things to say.  We have opinions and ideas on how things are, and how they ought to be.  And we have the ability to network with other people who share our same worldview.

This immediacy can be the perfect birthplace for incredible inspiration! 

For instance, a blogger who is passionate about local food may start a blog about his favorite farmer’s markets and tailgate markets.  Another local foodie may be blogging about the best restaurants in the region.  And yet another blogger is busy posting all the great family-owned businesses in the area.  These bloggers, who will probably quickly happen upon each others blogs, and begin networking, may soon come upon the idea of helping local farmers link up with local restaurants and markets in order to distribute the freshest foods at the most reasonable prices.  It is a win/win situation for everyone – - thanks to some forward-thinking bloggers!

Other examples of this type of positive blogging include the SochiReporter project.  Sochi, Russia is slated to host the Winter Olympics in 2014.  In preparation for this event,  a seminar was created for some of the top journalism and IT students from local universities.  The focus of the seminar was helping these young men and women, many of whom had never blogged before, to cover all different aspects of the preparation that goes into readying a city for the Olympic stage.  The students will be reporting on the changes in their city from their own unique perspectives.  It is likely to be a one-of-a-kind project with fascinating results!

Then you may have also heard the story of a missing teenager from Denver, who was reconnected with her family this past April thanks largely to the efforts of bloggers and twitterers.  Notifications of the Amber Alert connected with the teen went out far and wide across the World Wide Web to help locate the missing girl. 

These are all just examples of how blogging can draw people together for a common cause.  If you have been thinking of blogging as a solitary activity taking place in one room from one computer, and going out to the faceless abyss, it is time to reconsider!  Every person sitting behind that keyboard and screen is interwoven in a complicated and beguiling mesh of thoughts, ideas, and potential for positive change.

Wouldn’t you like to become part of something like that??

Until Next Time,

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,