BlogWritingCourse

Most of the articles online today are about blogging “BIG.”  Writing for the masses.  Building traffic.  Networking with other bloggers.  But sometimes, bigger isn’t better.

Sometimes you just want an easy way to let your family and friends keep up with what  is going on in your lives.  And blogging is the perfect vehicle for that.  Sometimes you simply don’t need a complicated website with all the bells and whistles.  You just need a place to share the highlights of your life with your family.

Writing a family blog has a lot of advantages…

• It is a place to keep all your memories in one place.  No more traveling to one place for photos, another place for videos, and yetanother place for journaling your experiences.  A blog lets you do ALL that – - in one simple posting.
• It is an easy way for your loved ones to keep up with what is going on with you.  Long gone are the days of sending a yearly “newsletter” with your holiday card each year.  People who care about you want to hear from you more often than at births, deaths, and weddings.  They want to feel like they are part of your lives.  A family blog provides just that.
• It serves as a multimedia family album.  Trying to remember when Joey lost his first tooth?  Or the name of Kaitlyn’s first friend in preschool?  By blogging those memories, they are permanently weaved into the world wide web – - ready for instant access anytime you need them.

The great news is that you don’t have to be a professional blogger to start a  family blog.  Just by familiarizing yourself with the basics of blogging, like the information you can learn in our free blogging pre-course.  Some blog hosts are even designed particularly for family blogs, with easy tools for adding text, pictures, and video. 

If you have been dreaming of an easy way to archive your precious family memories, then blogging may be just what you have been dreaming about!

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,

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. 

I have been following one of our recent Blog Writing Course graduates very closely since we kicked her out of the nest and asked her to fly on her own.  For one thing, we have a lot in common, so it was easy to add her new blog to my ever-lengthening blogroll.  But also, I was interested to see how she did with the information and experience she got during the 8-week training.

I’m thrilled to say she is doing superbly – - often far out-doing myself in terms of weekly posts!  So I asked her if she would consent to an interview so that I could present to our readers what a real-life graduate of the Blog Writing Course might be like.

Today, I present to you: Sarah, author of the blog: Homeschool On The Edge of Nowhere.

(My questions are in bold print)

Sarah, I’ve been following your blog closely since your graduation from the blog writing course, and it looks like you are doing great!  Tell us a little bit about what your blog is about, and the types of things you write about.

Homeschool on the Edge of Nowhere is about the things we accidentally learn while we are enjoying real life adventure. I include funny and true stories about rural life, frugality, gardening, "school", baking and making, discipline; basically if it happens in our lives it’s fair game for the blog.

What got you interested in blogging?

It started as an outlet for myself as a stay-at-homeschooler mom. I needed something that would somehow be both exclusive from and inclusive to my daily roles as mom, teacher, master organizer, and disciplinarian. Blogging fit the bill very well.

Now that you have been blogging for a couple months, how about looking back for a minute.  Would you say that the Blog Writing Course adequately prepared you for the world of blog writing?

Yes.
Oh, you wanted more than that?
The Blog Writing Course helped most with blog creation and start up. I was able to jump off and write from an informed position and a solidly built structure. Brainstorming practice during the course helped immensely with finding something to write about after the course was finished. I’ve felt ready to deal with potential problems (haven’t had any!) as well as being able to come up with subject material on the fly.

What was your favorite part of the course?

I really enjoyed the camaraderie of participating in a course with other folks interested in blogging. It was great to get their constructive feedback before my blog was even online. I also really enjoyed the breakdown of lessons; they were easy enough to complete and built steadily on one another toward the "finished" blog.

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?

I’ve actually had both experiences and while it’s possible to create your own blog from scratch and enjoy it,  I liked this much better. I now understand terminology I didn’t before, I know about more resources and tools (and how to find them!) for blogging than I did previously. I think the course is especially helpful if you want to eventually make money from your blog. It’s also been easier to keep my blog somewhat more anonymously written than before. I understand more about the blogging community and how to respond appropriately to others in the community, as well. There’s a whole set of manners and rules of conduct that I didn’t fully understand before!

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?

Traffic has been pretty good, actually. BWC suggested many different ways of building traffic, some of which I’ve used and have found to work for me and my blog type. One challenge I’m currently facing is getting readers to comment! While the traffic is pretty nice, it’s really the icing on the cake to see loads of comments too. Part of the challenge is to write in a way (and on a topic) that folks *want* to comment while not straying too far from what your core blog is about, another fine BWC lesson.

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

Blogging has been a fabulous thing for me. It’s allowed me to stretch my horizons and gain support as a homeschooler. I’ve "met" some pretty terrific people though blogging who come from all walks of life and learned neat things from them. I see myself blogging for as long as my fingertips hold out.

A big thanks to Sarah for taking the time to fill us in on what has been going on with her blog since her recent graduation.  I hope you will take the opportunity to head over to Homeschool On The Edge of Nowhere and check out her blog for yourself!

If you would be interested in signing up for the 8-week course that helped Sarah on the road to becoming a blogger, then sign up today to be included in the next Blog Writing Course! 

Until Next Time,

We are completing the 8th and final week of our most recent Blog Writing Course.  It has been such a fun process to see the new blogs go from just ideas to blog outlines to full-fledged weblogs with sidebar content, fun headers, a growing archive of posts, and even the occasional comment feedback! 

One of the most successful parts of the course is always the collaborative aspect of blog-building.  Through each step of the way, the course-mates are ready and willing to provide constructive criticism that prods the newbie bloggers on to building the best possible blog.  And once their blogs are in place, these fellow students then become each other’s instant blogroll, providing comments on new posts and encouragement on any changes or updates they may make.

At the end of the course, the students receive their certificate of completion, along with a chicklet they may proudly display on their new blog signifying that they have successfully completed the Blogging 101 blog writing course. 

The following are a sampling of the blogs that recently earned this distinction:

Homeschool on the Edge of Nowhere

Traveling Jones

KickAss Sue C

Mary’s Musings

Homeschooler Cafe

Natural Health Explained

Jewelers Fast Forward

Linda’s Long View

Go Teach It On The Mountain

Cool To Homeschool

K-12 Online Teachers

Decisions, Decisions

Choosing Our Global Destiny

If you would like to learn how to create your own blog in a supportive, collaborative atmosphere, Blogging 101 might be just the class for you!  Sign up today, and you too will be able to say you are a Blog Writing Course Alumnae!

Here at BWC, we have just successfully completed week two of the  Blogging 101 course.  This time around we have 18 students enrolled, and this is an eager and diverse bunch of learners!

Some of the students are absolute newbies to blogging.  This course is their first attempt to cast their line into the waters of the blogosphere, and they are doing swimmingly!  In two weeks time, many of them have decided on their theme, settled on a title and a tagline, and even have their new blog registered with a blogging host.

Others in the course have been around the block a time or two, and have already created and set up blogs on their own, but are looking to make improvements to the look and feel of their blog.  They also want to know more about how to build their readership and possibly even make money with their hobby.

The great thing about both groups is that they are willing to learn from one another.  The course members are quick to provide support, advice, and positive criticism to each of their classmates as they work through the process of creating or improving their blogs.  The collaborative aspects of the Blogging 101 course are what sets it apart.  No amount of blogging books or websites can substitute for the one on one interaction and feedback you receive in a course such as this one. 

If you have been considering starting up a new blog, or improving on one you already have, why not try out our free pre-course or go ahead and sign up for our next 8-week session of Blogging 101.  If you are going to blog, you might as well learn the fun way!

Stay tuned for more updates on our current session of Blogging 101 and other info on starting and maintaining a blog.

I’m not exactly a MySpace kinda gal, so the idea of using social networks to draw traffic to my blog has been something I “would get around to one day.”  But when that day never came,  I decided it was time to figure out how to come to terms with the whole social network phenomenon. 

Fortunately, MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster aren’t the only games in town, and in fact have spawned a whole new generation of social networks.  Sometimes it feels like everyone is starting their own social network.  But the upside of that is that social networks are much more specialized now.

So, if you are writing a mom blog, for instance, you can join a mom blog social network (of which there are many!).  With these smaller networks it is easier to get to know folks better, and to find other people with similar interests who might be interested in following your blog, and visa versa.  The more specific the social network, the more likely you will be to find like-minded blog readers, and you are off and running…

Granted, just belonging to a social network doesn’t guarantee that you will automatically grow your blog readership.  But there are some things you can do to encourage fellow networkers to drop by your blog.

1. Form a relationship.  Take time to get to know specific people within the network.  Find a few people you feel a connection with, and show your interest in them by messaging them, commenting on any posts they make, and visiting their blogs, if they have one.  Social network friendships often lead to reciprocal blog buddies as well.
2. Get involved in discussion boards.  Becoming a familiar presence on the boards can go a long way toward getting people interested in knowing more about you, especially if you have interesting things to add to the discussion.  And don’t forget to add your blog address to your signature so that it shows up on each board post.
3. Talk about your blog on your profile page.  This is the place of first (and sometimes last) impressions in a social network, and people aren’t going to spend more than a minute on your profile page, so make sure that your blog gets good advertising here, and that you make it easy to link to.
4. Display your RSS feed on your profile page.  Most social networking sites have built in RSS widgets that will allow you to display blurbs from your most recent blog posts on your main page, so definitely take advantage of this feature.  One of your post titles or subjects might instantly capture a visitor to your page and then you have an instant blog visitor as well. 

For more great advice on starting a blog and building traffic, why not sign up for our free blogging course?  This online course will help you go from blogging newbie to confident blogger in no time flat.  So what are you waiting for??

BlogWritingCourse.com wants to help you get started in the big, wide open world of blogging.  We know it is daunting to chart new territory, so we would like to be your free guide.  The main things that keep people from blogging are:

Time Constraints – “I hardly have time to put on socks in the morning.  How can I possibly add blogging to my list of to-dos?”

Perfectionism – “What if I’m not good at blogging?”  “What if nobody reads my blog?”

Lack of Know-How – “Where in the world do I start?” 

As far as time goes, it is true that blogs don’t write themselves, but you might be surprised at the way blogging begins to blend in with your schedule.  I find that it takes the place of some of my aimless web surfing, and wasted channel surfing.  Instead, I am focusing my energies onto something I actually want to be doing – - sharing my thoughts. Blogging can be therapeutic, as well, and just might take the place of that useless “worry time” you have built into your daily schedule!

If you have read any blogs lately, you will also come to realize that no one is a perfect blogger.  Even the most successful bloggers with huge audiences have off days where almost no one visits their blog or leaves gushing comments.  And you can’t become a successful blogger without plenty of practice and plenty of mistakes.  So if fear of failure is keeping you from blogging, just go back and check the beginning posts of some your favorite blogs.  You will probably be surprised at how far they have come since their first blogging attempts.

With all the information on the world wide web about blogging, lack of know-how shouldn’t keep anyone from stepping into the ring.  There are blogs about blogging, articles galore, and step by step guides to getting started.  And thanks to BlogWritingCourse.com, there is even a free blog writing course that will guide you gently and easily into the blogosphere, and help you figure out exactly how to begin. 

Starting a blog is a worthwhile goal, and we’d like to help you achieve it, so why not sign up today?

One of the first questions new bloggers usually have is about which blogging platform they should use.  I went round and round with this one when I was first starting up my Topsy-Techie blog.  More about that later.  But if you have read any blogs at all, you begin to become familiar with the addresses where most of them reside…”blogspot.com” “wordpress.com”  or “typepad.com”.  These addresses correspond to the Blogger, WordPress, and Typepad platforms – - the big three.  There are many other smaller platforms as well, and you might have a specific reason to choose one of them, but for now, let’s focus on the threesome.

Blogger

Blogger is a free blogging platform that has been around since 1999, and is currently owned by Google.  As with most of the big blogging platforms, blogs on Blogger can be hosted on the Blogger server or at individually owned domains.  If you are a big Google user, the Blogger platform might be a natural choice for you, because you can integrate your blog with your Google toolbar, easily add pictures with Picasa, or use Google’s Adsense program to earn money from your blog site.  If you aren’t a Google person, you might find Blogger slightly annoying in that you must create a Google ID in order to open a blog account.  On a personal note, I started out with Blogger, and got my whole page up and going when it suddenly disappeared into some deep dark Blogger Black Hole, never to reappear again.  I doubt this happens very often, or Blogger wouldn’t be such a popular platform, but it did happen to me, and I wasn’t exactly super happy about Blogger for quite some time.

WordPress 

WordPress is also a free blogging platform, built a few years after Blogger.  WordPress seems to be a continually updating software, with over four upgrades in the last couple of years.  Like Blogger, WordPress blogs can be hosted at WordPress.com or on your own domain.  WordPress’ focus is on being aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly, and easy to track statistically.  WordPress has a very informative stats page, that gives good insight into who is visiting your blog and where they came from. On the downside, blogs hosted at wordpress.com cannot be ad-supported, and any upgrades you want, such as the ability to tinker with your CSS code or customizing your theme, must be purchased as an upgrade.  After my own Blogger debacle, I landed on two feet at WordPress, and have been there ever since.  I can’t say that there aren’t things about WordPress that irk me, because the lack of customization can be very irksome, but overall I have been happy.

Typepad  

Typepad is the largest paid blogging service out there, but before you roll your eyes and move on, there are several reasons that people are willing to pay to blog there.  Typepad enthusiasts swear by its dependability – - it almost never goes down.  It has a lot of help files to keep you on track, and real live customer service agents to help you when you get off track.  You can easily display advertising on your blog, and integrate easily with 3rd party ecommerce sites like Amazon and Ebay.  Typepad has also received a recent boost by becoming integrated with the Apple iPhone.  I admit I don’t have personal experience at all with Typepad, so I can’t advise you one way or the other on this one, but if I compare the features, it seems to me that WordPress and Blogger have nearly as much to offer for free.

There are many other platform choices besides the trio listed above, and depending on your blog focus, and what you want to do with it, you might find that they are more applicable to your interests.  Other well known blogging platform names include: Moveable Type, TextPattern, Serendipity, LiveJournal, and Drupal. 

Whatever platform you decide on, we’d like to help you get started.  Blogwritingcourse.com is offering a free blogging course, that you can sign up for today.  You will familiarize yourself with what a blog is, and what it takes to start one, how to keep yourself safe in the blogosphere, and what all those weird blogging terms really mean.  So take the plunge!  Sign up today, and start blogging!

So the thought has crossed your mind a few times, but now you are ready to take the plunge.  To start your very own blog!  This is such an exciting possibility, but where in the world do you begin?  Of course you can throw caution to the wind, and sign up with a blog host, and figure things out as you go along.  But then all those words are going to start hitting you at rapid speed.  “Carnival.”  “Feed.”  “Permalink.”  “Pingback.”   And on, and on. 

You can hit the panic button OR you can backtrack and start back at the beginning.  And we’d like to help!  At blogwritingcourse.com we are offering a free blog writing course for brand new bloggers.  This course, called Get Ready to Blog covers everything from blog lingo to blog safety to blog promotion.  This is a fast and easy sweep through the world of blogging, and when you finish the course, besides having your very own “Ready to Blog” certificate, you will have the foundational knowledge you need to become a real live blog writer. 

If you are ready to blog, then we are ready to help you get started.  Sign up today!