Blog Challenge: Where Do You Consistently Find Inspiration?

In response to a post on Pennwriters Area 6 HQ on Inspiration and Dedication: Creative Resources, I wrote: …And yet, I find incredible inspiration in the little things, the things that inspired writers for thousands of years. A moment shared. A conversation overheard. A glance down a new street. A journey. A unroutine routine event. […]

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: Battling Self-Doubt

Self-doubt happens to everyone, even bloggers. You are blogging away, full of inspiration, motivation, and energy, then wham! Something happens in your personal or professional life or you get hit upside the head by some bloggy or social media incident and your confidence is sucked away. Self-doubt moves in, and it doesn’t move in pretty. […]

Blog Exercises: Pain Brings Wisdom

You know, the number one thing we want to avoid in life is pain. But at the same time, it’s the number one thing that forces us to grow as human beings. It deepens our ability to feel empathy, turns knowledge into wisdom. And there was enough pain in this situation that I think in […]

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 […]

Welcome to the New Blog Exercises

Your doctor tells you to exercise. You tell yourself you need some exercise. You play Sudoku and other mind games to flex the brain. We all need exercise, even bloggers. In the past, my Blog Challenges have been well received but its time to update them. I used to call them challenges, then prompts, but […]

Prove It: Kym Huynh Exposed

After reading Prove It: It’s Starts With Defining Who You Are as part of my Prove It Campaign, one of my best friends volunteered himself for a bio tearing and ripping as he is now involved in several startups that are gaining the attention of investors, which means everything he does online is now subject […]

Maria Langer: Celebrating Eight Years Blogging

We make jokes about Renaissance men, but I’d like to introduce you to a Renaissance woman in the truest sense of the reference. Maria Langer is a lot of things, in addition to a dear friend. Even before we were on a first name basis, she was a mentor and inspiration to me. In honor […]

The Most Powerful Life Changing Conference Event, SOBCon, Comes to the Pacific Northwest

I’ve been tortured the past few weeks on how to convince you that attending SOBConNW 2011 on September 16-18, 2011, will change your life. As usual, when it comes to my favorite annual conference, I find myself wordless. It’s that profound. If the SOBConNW Program and descriptions at the SOBCon site doesn’t convince you, maybe […]

WordPress 3.2 Released: Faster, Prettier, Powerful

WordPress 3.2 has been officially released, this time after a fairly short testing time period. To upgrade, use the built-in automatic upgrade. According to the announcement, this is the 15th major release of WordPress. Wow, that just doesn’t seem possible, and yet it also feels like too few. How far WordPress has come since 2003, […]

WordPress 3.1: Features, Tutorials, and Pure Joy

WordPress 3.1 is now out. YEAH!!! It’s named after one of our personal favorite jazz musicians, Django Reinhardt. My sneak preview of WordPress 3.1, one of the most eagerly and long awaited versions, barely did the new features justice. The WordCast team and I gathered up all of our research and dug deep into Trac […]

Blog Bashing: Beware Complacency

In “5 Ways to Rid Complacency From Your Blog” on Daily Blog Tips, Bob Bessette writes about how to mix things up in the new year on your blog: If you’ve owned a blog for a while there’s a good chance that complacency may have already set in. Dictionary.com defines complacency as “a feeling of […]

WordPress 3.1 Beta Unleashed on WordPress.com

WordPress.com has just released WordPress 3.1 Beta on more than 15 million blogs across the network. WordPress has used WordPress.com as their proving ground since the beginning, relying upon the feedback of the many bloggers from around the world, all using different types of computer hardware, browser types, operating systems, and blog setups to test […]

SOBCon 2010 Chicago: What Did You Learn?

In May of 2010, over 150 of the brightest minds in online business, web publishing, blogging, and social media gathered in Chicago for the 4th annual Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon). It was an amazing experience for all with three days of non-stop business strategies and techniques for online business. And they are doing […]

WordPress News on the Blog Herald

The past few weeks of the Blog Herald’s WordPress News reports that I do have been huge. Each one now takes many hours to produce, rounding up all the news from WordPress developers, Plugin and Theme developers, WordPress.com, WordPress fan podcasts and blogs, and the WordPress Community. WordPress 2.7 is the biggest WordPress version ever, […]