BlogWritingCourse

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I consider myself a relatively non-judgmental person.  I try to look at issues from both sides.  I try to evaluate a person’s motives, as well as their actions.  I understand that people have good days and bad days.

But when it comes to blogs, I’m a complete snob.  As are most people.

We give a blog about 15 seconds - - TOPS! - - to impress us, and then we move on.  Why?  Because there are several million other blogs to choose from.  So what does that tell us?  That first impressions matter - - A LOT.

For that reason, it is of the highest importance when creating a blog to focus on the overall visual imprint your blog is going to have on a visitor.

• Are the color schemes inviting?
• Is the template you are using unique?
• Does the header clearly express what the blog is about?
• Is the title catchy and interesting?
• Have you made the blog easy to navigate and find the most important information?
• Are your sidebars easy on the eye, or cluttered with excess?
• Are there enough graphics to keep visual people engaged?

These are all terrific questions to ask yourself when you are in the process of building a new blog.  If the answer to even ONE of these questions is negative, you may have just lost a potential reader.

It would be ideal if everyone in the blogosphere was willing to look past the “externals” of your blog in order to see the truth of what you have to say, but we’re usually far too fickle and too pressed for time to be that understanding.  So, give some serious thought to what your readers’ first impressions of your blog should be, and take the time and effort to make sure they stick around long enough to find out just what it is you have to say.

If you’d like to find out more about blog design, and how to create the right “look” for your new blog, consider signing up for our next session of Blogging 101 - - a comprehensive eight week, instructor-led course for new bloggers!

Until next time,

If you haven’t registered for our next Blogging 101 course, now is the time, because we are starting up the next 8-week series on January 11.  If you have been on the waiting list, we appreciate your patience - - I know it will be worth your wait!

Blogging 101 is an instructor-led course that will guide you through all the basics of creating and establishing a new blog.  Subjects covered in the Blogging 101 curriculum include:

• What Makes A Good Blog
• Developing Your Blog Identity
• Creating Your Blog
• “About Me” Pages
• Getting Started Writing
• Building Quality Content
• Hooking Your Readers
• Blogging Etiquette and Safety
• Promoting Your Blog

With Blogging 101, you will even have a built-in audience for your first posts - - your fellow classmates!  You will have fun learning with them and from them, and getting honest feedback and comments on your blog content.  Plus, your instructor, experienced blogger and writer, Topsy Techie will hold your hand as you go step by step through the process of creating and starting your new blog.  The Blogging 101 course is more than just a class - - it is a community of people who want to see you succeed in the world of blogging.

This is going to be a terrific course, so register today and don’t miss out on your chance to start a New Blog for the New Year!!

  Wow.  We are almost done??!! 

That’s right.  This session of the Blogging 101 course will be over tomorrow, just in time for me to jump into holiday busyness.  ((sigh))  But it has been fun looking back over the new blogs and seeing how far they have come!

In Week Seven, we explored the possibilities of earning money from our blogs.  Since we now have lured some readers to our blog, we discussed how we could turn those clicks into CASH, and how our blog could finally “give back” after all we have put into it!

Week Eight, our final week of the course, has been somewhat of a retrospective.  We took a look at how far our blogs have come since the first days of the course where we were just settling on our themes.  And we are also looking forward - - checking out some of the cool blogging tools and trends that we might want to take advantage of to make our blogging endeavors even more exciting.

With this session of Blogging 101 almost kaput, it is time to be thinking about the NEXT round, which hopefully will begin in early January, if we get enough sign-ups by then.  If you’d like to get in on our next session, be sure to register now, or at least put your name on the waiting list.

I can’t wait to see what the next eight weeks of Blogging 101 has up its sleeve!!!

Week six of the Blogging 101 course is all about building community.  Starting with the simplest of things - - like commenting on blogs that are similar to yours and getting noticed - - to more involved techniques, such as starting up a Twitter account, we looked at many different ways to make your blog feel more like someone’s front porch than just a rest stop along the journey.

It is important that readers see your blog as a “hub” that they can go to for support, encouragement, advice, etc.  This is one of the biggest ways to draw traffic and keep it! 

Of course, with the Blogging 101 course, you have a built-in community from the get-go.  Your fellow classmates visit your blog and give both positive feedback and constructive criticism that will help you make your blog the best it can possibly be. 

We’ve had a few more students add their blog addresses this week, so here is an updated list of course blogs…drop by and leave a comment if you can!

• Lifting My Eyes to the Hills
• Faith and a Full House
• Blog of a Free-Form Scholar
• Never Just a Housewife
• Pansy Colored Glasses
• Seeing Through the Illusion
• Moment by Moment
• Black Belt Breakfast of Champions
• Stay at Home / Work at Home

The last two weeks have been a blur!  Many of our students have been incredibly busy in their personal lives, so many of them have been playing “catch-up” with their course assignments.  That’s the great thing about a course like this one, though…it is flexible enough to bend and flow with even the busiest of schedules!

The most exciting thing has been seeing the blogs start to fill with content.  The course “winner” for most prolific writer definitely goes to the blogger of Lifting My Eyes to the Hills, who took on a daily meme right from the get-go!  That’s a way to shoot right out of the starting gates!

But other blogs have started to fill with content as well, and the bloggers have been looking at ways to get inspired, to fight writer’s block, and how to add a little “pizzazz” to their posts to keep things interesting. 

Week Five has been focused on the “little things” that can be added to your blog to give it that extra “something.”  And they are also dutifully attempting to visit each of their classmates’ new blogs in order to leave comments of encouragement and constructive criticism.

If you’d like to check out the different approaches of some of our blogging students, take a minute to visit these blogs:

• Pansy Colored Glasses
• Never Just a Housewife
• Blog of a Free-Form Scholar
• Faith and a Full House
• Moment by Moment

Next week our Blogging 101 students will start building community around their blogs.  This is probably the single most important component of traffic-building, and we will be looking at several different ways to create that sense of community.

Our new class of bloggers has now completed their second week of the Blogging 101 course at BlogWritingCourse.com.  Not only have they begun to understand what blogging is, but now they have begun to personalize the experience by creating a theme, a title, and even a tagline for their new blogs!

Here is a list of the blogs that have been created so far…of  course they don’t all have content in them, but we will get there. Oh yes, we will get there…

• Tales of a Southern Fried Mind
• Knitty by Nature
• Never Just a Housewife
• Ajamel’s Blog
• Lifting My Eyes
• Pansy Colored Glasses
• Free Form Scholar
• Faith and a Full House

It is so exciting to see these blogs actually take shape and become part of the thread of the blogosphere!  I can’t wait to see the “before and after” versions of each of these blogs from this week to the end of the eighth week of the course.  It is always an amazing transformation!

We have completed our first week of the Blogging 101 blog writing course, and it is looking to be an exciting term!  This time around we have 18 students - - with a wide variety of blogging interests. 

Themes of this round of bloggers include:

• Things that matter
• Personal faith
• The characters in our life
• Books and writers
• Unschooling
• Homeschooling
• Knitting
• Labradoodles
• Single-motherhood
• Healthy living
• Managing a home
• Modern artists
• Musings on life
• …and more

That is one of the most exciting parts of this course for me…seeing, firsthand, some of  the diversity of ideas and styles that make up the blogosphere!  If you would like to keep up with what is happening with the course, be sure to subscribe to this blog.  Or if you already know that you would like to be part of the fun experience of creating your own blog, why not sign up for our next round of Blogging 101?

We’d love to help you turn your personal passions into a blog, as well!

I did NOT jump on the bandwagon of the Julie and Julia craze during the book stage of the process.  I was one of those pop culture Cinderellas who arrived VERY late to the ball and didn’t know anything about this story until I saw it on a movie trailer.  But WHAT a trailer!  I was immediately hooked and simply knew I HAD to see this movie when it came out.

I’m a movie theater snob, however, so I did not go see it at the multiplex, but rather waited until it was showing at my favorite fine arts theatre where you can order wine and dinner with your movie and enjoy every last delicious morsel in the most leisurely of ways.  What better way to watch Meryl Streep and Amy Adams create on-screen magic??

What is really interesting is that even though I had the general idea that this movie was about blogging, I in no way realized just exactly how blog-centric it was going to be! It was a delightful surprise - - especially because the story seemed to take place during the germinal stages of blogging when growing a blog audience was probably even more exciting than it is today.

But the best thing about the movie?

It reminded me that there is no subject too specific - - too specialized to blog about.  And that is great news because it means that ANYONE can start a blog. 

That’s right.  You have a rubber band collection?  Blog about it.  You dream of becoming an opera singer and you are tone deaf?  There’s a blog in that.  You are Jimmy Hoffa’s biggest fan?  Go for it!  You knit booties for kittens?  Hey, so maybe it’s not my thing, but I’m sure there are plenty of kitty-lovin knitters that are anxious to hear about your exploits.

Bloggers aren’t born, they are made.  From the diversity of the human spirit.  From the melting pot of ideas that swirl around our heads and are aching to get out.  Maybe you don’t need to blog through Julia’s entire cookbook, but I’d wager there is something on your mind. 

Today could be the day that YOU become a blogger.  Why not???

Until next time,

If you would like information on how to start your own blog, check out the free online blogging course at BlogWritingCourse.com.

I read the most interesting article today!  Over at WebProNews, Chris Crum writes that: Blogs Can Still Drive Big Traffic

Here is what Chris said:

You would almost think blogging was dead, the way headlines are dominated by Twitter, Facebook, and social media in general. I’ve always considered blogging to be a part of social media anyway, as the commenting factor lends to engagement between author and user. But blogging is so five years ago right? It’s all about microblogging and status updates now isn’t it?

If you think that’s the case, think again, because blogs can still drive big-time traffic to websites. An example of this has been illustrated by the launch of e-commerce site Alice.com. How much traffic are you getting from blogs? Let us know. If you are not familiar with Alice.com, it is a site where consumers can buy everyday household items like toothpaste, toilet paper, laundry detergent, diapers, etc., right from the manufacturers, rather than through middleman retailers. It launched in June, and by July it had doubled its traffic to 387,000 unique visitors, according to Compete. Alice.com Guess where the majority of that traffic came from. According to Compete, it came from word-of-mouth from blogs. In fact, its number one traffic source was Blogger.com. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. Not search. Although each of these no doubt played valuable roles as well., Blogger.com has been the biggest factor in driving traffic for this site, and from the looks of things, that traffic is showing no signs of slowing down.

So that got me thinking about the differences between Twitter/Facebook and blogs.  Twitter and Facebook, I think, are probably more useful for fluid content.  In other words:  promotionals, sales, site updates, new product additions and news.  Whereas blogs are perfect for highlighting static information.  Product details, explanations, human interest stories, behind-the-scenes info, letters from the president, and editorials.

That might possibly mean that Twitter/FB has more appeal to bargain-hunters and promotion-junkies, but that true potential, long-term customers might be more persuaded by the more substantial content of a blog post.  It also might be true that blogs have more weight for SEO purposes.  After all, tweets generally link BACK to blogs!

So if you are a business owner, and are trying to decide how to best integrate blogs, Twitter, and Facebook into your marketing scheme, remember to save your in-depth copy and strongest content for your blog, and then drive traffic to that copy via the microblogging avenues.

For more information on blogging, and how to start a blog, check out our course offerings at BlogWritingCourse.com.

Until next time…

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,