Blog Exercises: Increase Your Thank You Ratio

As a teacher, trainer, social media expert, and advice giver on many blogs, I don’t want to hear your excuses in response to my advice. “Well, if I only had the money…” Really? Since WordPress, the tools I recommend, and the advice I offer is free. What does money have to do with anything I […]

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 […]

Managing Multiple Authors: Managing Writers in a Multiple Author Blog

In this series on managing multiple bloggers in WordPress, I want to now focus on the content, specifically managing the editorial voice and purpose of a site with multiple bloggers. There is a huge caveat to this topic. Every blog is unique, as are all the voices within it. It is often that uniqueness that […]

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 […]

Blog Struggles: SOBCon, Idea Whelmed, and Tell It To the Telephone Pole

A few people were concerned when I started my first Blog Struggles Diary recommending that I not blog every day thus changing the whole tone of my site. This confused me as I thought this was what my site was about. I had to take some time to think about that…then life and work interfered, […]

Dreams Can Come True: Meeting Alan Dean Foster

I’m in Arizona after a very exciting and busy series of conferences, including the very successful WordCamp Netherlands, WordCamp Phoenix, and PodCamp Arizona, visiting family living near one of my favorite authors in the world, Alan Dean Foster. During WordCamp Phoenix and PodCampAZ, I shared with my audience that I was too excited to just […]

Time to Break WordPress This Summer

In Want to Break and Remake WordPress? on the Blog Herald, I summarized this year’s WordPress/Google Summer of Code, an exciting annual project that brings together the top WordPress Community experts with college students from around the world dedicated to making and breaking WordPress so we all benefit. When I read the cute announcement by […]

Liz Strauss at WordCamp Dallas Transcript: 60,317 Comments

The Reader Appreciation Project has a transcript of Liz Strauss at WordCamp Dallas, along with the video. Her presentation was about the blog conversation and social networking, her claim to fame. She cemented that fame with the number 60,317. That’s the number of comments on her blog. One of the points she made resounded with […]

Weekly Digest: Catching Up, Speaking San Francisco, Future Post Mixup, Talking to Blogger Talks, and More

Yikes, it’s been a rough few weeks. Along with some nasty business stuff, which is actually normal in my line of work, I was supposed to be on my first real, non-working vacation in 14 years, which turned into a workation. What should have been normal was much less fun than usual as my husband […]

Blog Struggles: The Search for Blog Content

The first topic I want to cover in this new series on Blog Struggles, discussing the trials and tribulations of blogging, is about the issue of finding content for your blog. Finding content. I have a problem right off the top with that phrase. Blog content can be found anywhere, but saying you have to […]

Blog Challenge: Who Is In Your Feed List?

Who are you counting on to give you the news you need for your blog? To help you find stories to write about and things to comment on? Who are your guides? Mentors? The blogs and sites stuffed into your feed reader that help you understand how this blogging thing works or how the industry […]

Are You Blogging Your Passion or Blogging to Blog?

Watching a recent episode of Battlestar Galactica called “Dirty Hands”, I was struck by the wonderful portrayal of a class society, one ruled by hierarchy and tradition rather than by freedom and passion. I have many friends raised within countries which still play by these rules, where you are and do what your father or […]

Rules on How to Email a Blogger

Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion brought up “The Underground Blogosphere”, the world of email communication that transpires daily between bloggers. Kent of Newsome.org took this a step farther and created 5 rules for emailing another blogger about your post, or bloggers emailing bloggers in general. TDavid of Make You Go Hmm added “How to Get […]

Get Rich Quick! Go Freelance! Successful Entrepreneur! NOT!

Want to make money with your blogs? Want to have the public racing to your blog to find out what you are going to say next? Want to live in a big home with lots of electronic toys and know that you don’t have to worry about your kid’s college bills? Want fame and popparatzi […]

Comments on Comments

I want to seriously talk to you about the responsibilities of hosting comments on your blog. It’s fun and it’s a great thrill to get a response to something you’ve written, but it also has responsibilities, both by you and the comment poster. We can’t control the comment poster, but we can control our response […]