Blog Exercises: Trust the Crowds

In an October issue of “Science News,” an article on the “Deep Network” monitoring of the sea floor, reported on how the general public may monitor the sea floor through the Neptune system of underwater microphones and web cams through LIDO (Listening to the Deep Ocean) (requires Flash). New discoveries have been made by citizens […]

Blog Exercises: Start Here Guides

Training for educators using online learning management systems for high schools and college recommend creating a “Start Here” page to guide the student through the process. If the process is complicated, this makes sense. The question I wanted to know from trainers is why don’t they provide training upon entrance to the school so each […]

Blog Exercises: Blog Your Mistakes

Some say that Dr. Brian Goldman helped to change the medical industry with his Ted Talk about how doctors make mistakes, taking a huge risk exposing one of the most known and rarely discussed topics: how doctors make mistakes and kill patients. When was the last time you heard somebody talk about failure after failure […]

Blog Exercises: Blog Your Hobby

The following blog exercise is inspired by Janet Williams of Janet’s Notebook and her post on “Unique British post boxes: share your hobby.” Who would have thought that an article on UK post boxes would bring post box enthusiasts and historians out of the woodwork to her blog? My interaction with Ruby brings me to […]

Blog Exercise: When Was the Last Time You Got Personal

I walked into a friend’s home and found the fridge covered with refrigerator art from her seven year old. The traditional home often features such childhood artwork but this was extremely precious as the child has learning disabilities and drawing. The artwork was beautiful. I stood there transfixed at the crude scribbles, trying to find […]

Blog Exercises: How to Link to Comments

Do you have brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful commenters? I do. I often find something someone’s left in a post comment worth writing a blog post about and quoting. In this Blog Exercise we’ll look at how to link to comments on your site and how to properly reference them and cite the original author in […]

Blog Exercises: How to Respond to a Trackback

In the first blog exercise on trackbacks I explained how trackbacks work and how to respond to trackbacks. It’s time to revisit the concept of how to respond to a trackback. In the exercise, I described the unique quality of trackbacks for tracking conversations across the web. You publish something, someone likes it and publishes […]

Blog Exercises: How Many Posts Can Your Audience Handle?

In “Blog Exercises: How Many Posts? the exercise asked you to consider how many posts you should publish within a specific time period on your site, such as by day, week, month, or year. The goal was to set self-deadlines and monitor how many posts you felt were appropriate to publish within that time period. […]

Blog Exercises: Where Are You?

After agreeing to take on a writing assignment regarding Oregon history, I happily settled down to do a little preliminary online research. Because some of the towns I needed to research were located in areas I was not completely familiar with, I was relying on their local websites to point me to what I needed […]

Blog Exercises: Trackback Check-Up

It’s time to check your trackbacks. In Blog Exercises: Trackbacks and Blog Exercises: Backlinks you learned about trackbacks, the automatic process of a site linking to yours and generating a comment-like notification to alert you of the link to your article, and helping your readers discover what others are saying about your article. In this […]

Blog Exercises: Define Your Target Audience

The phrase “target audience” is an advertising and marketing phrase designed to help you aim your content at a specific group of people. Do you know your target audience? As a crafter, you may offer a wide range of craft ideas and projects, so your audience might be all crafters and do-it-yourself folks. If you […]

Do Business Blogs Need Help Pages?

By Greg Balanko-Dickson I was wondering what might happen if a blog or website had a set of help pages? We expect help pages when using a software or web application. We see About pages and FAQ on blogs but how often do we see a set of “Help” pages on a business blog? Never? […]