Every once in a while, Lifehack tackles writing tips and tricks. Recently, two great articles caught my eye.

Just Keep Writing! motivates you to just keep writing, inspired with quotes from famous writers on what they believed kept them writing. If you feel the writing spirit waning with your blog, these are some great motivational tips.

If you are already feeling blogger’s block, then it might be time for some of the tips in Break Through Writer’s Block. While I rarely suffer blogger’s block or writer’s block - I always find something to write about - I do get bored with my writing. If I’m bored, I’m sure you are. Boredom leads to procrastination, which eventually slows down my production as I can’t find the motivation to keep coming up with witty and intelligent things to say every day.

This article is a great resource with tips to keep you on the blogging path and kick your ass if you start blog-foot dragging.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

A while ago I ran across the Yahoo Pipes Social Media Fire Hose, a script written with Yahoo Pipes by Joseph Kingsley. If you want to track yourself, your blog, your brand, or any keyword or phrase across the web, especially by social media sites, this is the tool for you.

The Yahoo Pipes Social Media Fire Hose searches across Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, Digg, various search engines, and even includes blog comments. It creates a custom feed you can then add to your feed reader.

Originally created for public relations, advertising, and marketing tracking across the online social networks and media, this is a great way to find out what others are saying about you and your blog, your brand, or anything. I’ve been using it to track information on WordPress such as WordPress Tips, WordPress Plugins, and WordPress Themes, as well as my name, blog name, and URL and feedback from various blogs I work for and with.

To use the Social Media Fire Hose:

1. Go to Yahoo Pipes Social Media Fire Hose.
2. In the first form, enter the keyword, title, blog name, your name, or whatever you want to search for.
3. In the second form, enter the “fragment” you wish to have ignored, such as your blog’s URL. This removes your blog posts from the search results to avoid redundancy. You want to know what others are saying, not yourself.
4. Click Run Pipe.
5. With the resulting page, choose the method you would like to track the feed, by feed reader, email, or otherwise, and add it to your feed reader of choice.

In your feed reader or email, you can now track information across a wide spectrum of social media services and sources. You can even incorporate the feed into your blog to track all mentions of your blog or name around the web.

Why Should You Track Yourself and Your Blog?

It’s important to know what others are saying about you and your blog, isn’t it? If you want to be an active participate in the online social community, it helps to know how your online reputation and visibility is working. Got a media campaign going? A contest? Want to know how viral your blog content or campaign is? Then you need to track what is being said around the online social water cooler.

It also helps to be more responsive to potential or current clients. If someone is wondering how to get in contact with you and they twitter it, you can jump right up and get in contact with them. If someone references you as a resource, you can say thank you. If someone is saying unkind things, you can choose to respond or not, but at least you are aware of the noise.

It’s a challenge to monitor references to you and your blog via blog comments. The Social Media Fire Hose tracks comments so you can respond to them when someone mentions you or your blog in blog comments. That’s quick interaction and community building.

If you have a product or service, it is essential that you track the feedback from all over the web so you can respond and react or work harder to provide the answers the people need.

If you write about a particular subject or topic, the Social Media Fire Hose is a great way of tracking all mentions of the subject, helping you get the inside scoop or jump on an interesting article or post on the subject.

Combined with the Google Reader Preview Enhanced Greasemonkey Script (GPE) for FireFox and GreaseMonkey, which I covered recently in Power Blogging Tips: Comment on Blogs From Within Google Feed Reader, you can respond directly from your feed reader to the posts within the Social Media Fire Hose.

Well, you can respond to all except the Twitter posts. To respond to Twitter tweets, you will need to copy the Twitter user name and “at” them via your Twitter program. Or open their tweet in your browser and respond directly from there. Twitter doesn’t offer an easy response method through their feeds or tweet pages that I’ve found.

If you need to monitor the social around you, your blog, and your products and services, this is an ideal way to do so.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Last week I experimented with LoudTwitter, a tool used to post your Twitter tweets to your blog. I wasn’t sure it would work with a WordPress.com blog, but it does. However, with the number of complaints from readers, it was not welcome on this blog.

LoudTwitter publishes your Twitter tweets in a blog post once a day on your blog using XML-RPC. It will work on self-hosted versions of WordPress and WordPress.com blogs. Just sign up your blog and fill in the information, click through the email verification, set the time you want it posted, and it will automatically post that day’s worth of Twitter tweets on your blog.

It’s important to bring your Twitter posts into some social media services, and your blog posts and other social media services into Twitter, but I’m not sure if Twitter really belongs in a blog post unless you are very active on Twitter and the content within your tweets is extremely valuable to your readers. Having spent a lot of time digging through Twitter over the past year, I’m still hunting for timeless content. It’s there, but it’s like sifting for diamonds among the dust.

Here’s why my experiment didn’t work with LoudTwitter on this blog.

1. Content Not Interesting or Valuable to Readers: While investment opportunities can be overheard at the right parties, if you are at the right party with the right people at the right time, most tweets have little value. A collection of tweets is just a one-sided conversation that may or may not be relevant to your blog’s focus and topic. No one cares much were you are, what you are eating, what television shows you are watching, or your views on politics unless they are friends, family, or obsessed with those particular things. These have nothing to do with your blog on car repair. Or jewelry making. Or building a business. Unless the Twitter content adds to and complements your blog content, it’s not interesting to the readers.
2. Lack of Category Control: LoudTwitter has no method currently to post the Twitter Tweets to a specific blog post category. It just dumps your Twitter stream direction into a blog post called “Twitter Tweets” in your default post category. This means that if “uncategorized” is your default post category, it is found there. If LoudTwitter had category control, then the content could be put into a category of its own on your blog. You could move that category off your front page and even out of your blog post feed. Those digging for those tidbits of information found within your tweets could still find it, and those wanting to monitor your tweets on your blog could do so. There are better ways to monitor your tweets away from your blog and no one wants to see them as full blown blog posts. Really?
3. No Control Over Post Titles: LoudTwitter publishes the post title as “Twitter Tweets”, though it does allow you to add content to the beginning and end of your blog post Twitter Tweet summaries. In your most recent post listing, the reader will see:
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets

   Not very helpful post titles. WordPress won’t allow duplicate post title names, so the permalink becomes twitter-tweets-2, twitter-tweets-3, and so on. Not very SEO friendly nor informative.

4. It’s a One-Sided Conversation: Not only are Twitter tweets probably not relevant to your blog’s content, it’s a one-sided conversation. Without the other side of the conversation, there is a huge loss of context. It’s like walking into a conversation just as someone says something that could be a foot-in-the-mouth comment if you don’t know what preceded it. It’s confusing and often useless information.
5. No Editing Capability on Twitter: I work very hard to ensure my blog posts are as clean and neat as any term paper with careful attention to grammar and spelling - even though some slip through. However, Twitterers tend to tweet while walking down the street, talking on the phone, and doing other distracting things like driving which causes a lot of errors. They also abbreviate terms and phrases that might make no sense to the uninitiated. Once a tweet is released on Twitter, you can’t easily take it back and edit it. To then have it re-published on your blog compounds your gaf.
6. No Tweets Today? Then What? Busy with recent speaking gigs and traveling, I’ve been offline more than on, so what happens when you aren’t twittering? What’s published on your blog? This Twitter Tweets is an example of what happens. I don’t quite understand why there are two tweets when I wasn’t on Twitter, but there it is. Literally nothing is posted. What good is a wasted empty post? It doesn’t serve your readers. A conditional option would be beneficial to restrict LoudTwitter (or its equivalent) to not publish if you have less than 2 tweets in a day.

Here is an example of the one-sided conversation from my recent experiment.

# 11:46 Idiot Alert: I recorded video atbwe08 vertical not horizontal. ARGH! How do I flip or rotate digital video?
# 11:59 @vegasgeek yep!!! Lay down video - new style. Everyone lays down. So used to still, didn’t think about horz vs vert. SIGH.
# 11:59 @wiredprworks Will be posting how WordPress changed your life video and video of talk after weekend’swordcampportland. Going to ROCK!
# 12:20 @GlendaWH Hey, my new dear friend! lorelleonwordpress at gmail - Your video is ~3 minutes on how WordPress changed your life!
# 12:21 @vegasgeek LOL That’s the solution for sure. But I like the idea of 200 people laying down to watch much better. Fun atwordcampportland!
# 12:53 @bkajino Can’t wait forwordcampportland You know I’m also talking about Woopra??? Will have some goodies for those attending, I hope!
# 12:54 OMG Did you all see that I’m on the cover of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine?! Bunch of my articles in there. Wow! Didn’t know untilbwe08
# 13:11 @GlendaWH Can’t find your card - found Darrell’s so I emailed him with notes. CAn’t wait!!!
# 13:18 Ever have one of those days when you wonder why you blog? Back frombwe08 I shouldn’t but tired out. Need kick.
# 14:21 @WatershedStudio Blogger and Podcaster Rock Star? right? I was so stunned to see my name on the cover. I’m just little ol’ me.
# 14:22 @gregbd Right, but not separate. Your blog is yr online resume today. Social business model circles around it. Start blog first then social
# 14:45 Idiot Alert Off. FOUND IT! How to flip a vertical video back to horizontal. is.gd/31N1 Simple and easy! Whew.
# 14:56 Michael Moore giving away next movie tinyurl.com/5dkqm8 Slacker Uprising. Another example of how free giveaways make money?
# 16:13 @vegasgeek What dates are you thinking for WordCamp Vegas? WordCamp Denver scheduling for Jan and don’t want to overlap.
# 20:28 4 WordCamps this weekend: Portland, Toronto, Utah, Vancouver(BC) WordPresswordcamp weekend!
# 22:06 @MikePerry Thanks. It was a surprise to me atbwe08. Great timing. Blogger and Podcaster Magazine doing some interesting stuff lately.
# 22:07 YEAH! Raw fooder! Check out the raw food porn book “Raw” by Charlie Trotter. Too much trouble to cook but sexy pics.
# 22:08 @vegasgeek Denver wanted the same dates for their WordCamp. Will let them know and maybe they can change them. Thanks much!
# 22:14 @gregbd BuddyPress WordPress Theme on steroids is doing that as are others. Connecting the dots. We need more dot connectors to stop scatter.

Can you really follow it? Does it really add value to this blog?

Twitter is invaluable. With help from those following me, I was able to quickly find a method to flip videos I’d made at Blog World Expo from vertical to horizontal. I was also able to help WordPress and Woopra users find the help and information they needed. I was also easily able to promote my upcoming events and speaking gigs as well as other WordPress events.

It’s the value of my tweets and using LoudTwitter on my blog that I question. If you are hosting Twitter tweets with any service on your blog, is it really helpful? Do you have category and post title control? Does it really benefit your readers?

Site Search Tags: twitter, tweets, loudtwitter, twitter blog posts, social media, experiment, testing loudtwitter, tweets on your blog, blog tweets, publishing twitter tweets, publishing twitter, microblog, microblogging

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

In A Rubric for Social Media Expertise, Liz Strauss is exploring how we use social media for our blogs and our businesses, especially how we organize and structure social media to work for us.

As the living web begins to seamlessly integrate into our concrete cultures and as our lives become globally intertwined, businesses are beginning to investigate what this means. Though the idea of markets as conversations may have started with Cluetrain ten years ago, but it has only become business credible with the advent of what we’re calling Web 2.0 and social media.

In recent years, major enterprise, telcos, cablecoms, and mainstream media have found more reason than not to look at social web models as unsound. Meanwhile we’ve been exploring concepts such as influence, authority, transparency, permission marketing, and experimenting with social media tools and networks to understand how a customer-centered market actually works.

Part of her work in developing educational standards for writing social media training materials, Liz explains that we are walking down a totally new path of economics and marketing which is returning to the “culture of a village” and changing the whole marketplace. You can watch from the outside or jump in - either way, you have to understand that this is the same as business techniques of the past while being totally different. In her words, “Can you spell paradox?”

She takes it even further with a quiz in Have You Organized Your Social Media Thinking Lately?

As we are all questioning where social media is taking us, and how much we should invest in the various types and forms, it’s time to organize your thinking around social media.

The keyword of the three day Blog World Expo event a couple weeks ago in Las Vegas was social. People were desperate to understand how to connect via the web with their customers and potential customers, and how to build the networks they so desperately need to build their business - yet they don’t understand how it works, why it works, and what will work specifically for them.

Are you questioning all that time you are spending on Twitter, fixing up your Facebook page, requesting LinkedIn connections, and trying to be all things to all social services and networks? Is it really working for you? Or are you spending a lot of time being social without the return on the time investment? Where should you really be putting your social energy?

When I was planning for my college options, I struggled with two challenging realizations. A higher education was important. I needed to take the basics and quickly move down my chosen educational path to secure my future career. Yet, I realized that all the knowledge in the world won’t help you when it is who you know not what you know that makes the difference. While I could get the basics of a great education at a community college or lessor known college, making connections with a sorority and my fellow students at a well-known, established (expensive) university were connections that would last a lifetime. Understanding that the relationships made during those crucial university years may benefit me more than the education itself helps move me in that direction.

The same applies in the online world. It’s the relationships formed through the social media that help you with your work and life, not just what you learn from the experience.

Maybe it’s time you started re-thinking about this new social world we live in to make wiser choices.

We’re becoming a global village. Who are your neighbors? Who have you been chatting across the virtual picket fence lately?

Site Search Tags: liz strauss, social media, social networking, social network, social, network, connections, business, business of blogging, blog business

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

• 21:14 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Tweets:
  21:21 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Twee.. tinyurl.com/4dabdm #

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• 21:21 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Tweets:
  12:26 Getting ready for my keynote at #word.. tinyurl.com/3pv5y8 #

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• 12:26 Getting ready for my keynote at #wordcampportland this weekend (Sat.) on how WordPress changes lives. #
• 21:20 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Tweets: This is an experiment to check out LoudTwitt.. tinyurl.com/4pl8fw #
• 21:20 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Tweets:
  08:14 Will be also speaking at #wordcamppor.. tinyurl.com/4op2jv #
• 21:20 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Tweets:
  09:06 #wordcampportland in two days. Keynot.. tinyurl.com/4e4vyj #

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• 09:06 #wordcampportland in two days. Keynote talk coming together. Great contributions from everyone on how WordPress changes lives. #
• 10:51 @jguske Always glad to help! #bwe08 still has me reelilng. I met so many fab people. Hope to work with all of them. #
• 10:52 @secretsushi Talk to Andy P about BuddyPress. He might be able to help. It’s beta and VERY different Theme. Exciting stuff. Feedback needed. #
• 13:15 @Genuine Actually - I was beyond thrilled. Great work. See coverage on Blog Herald - tinyurl.com/4xs6cn #
• 13:16 On Blog Herald "What Do Need to Know About Hiring a Professional Blogger and Being Hired" tinyurl.com/4xs6cn #
• 19:42 tinyurl.com/5dkqm8 Michael Moore next movie, Slacker Uprising free giveaway - get out the vote. Interesting social campaign. #

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• 08:14 Will be also speaking at #wordcampportland on Woopra - real time stats web analytics. Sept 27 Portland Oregon #
• 11:16 #wordcampportland keynote going to be AWESOME. Need sleep but working on a great talk. See you this weekend. #
• 16:31 On my way to #wordcampportland meet up to talk about this weekend’s activities. Going to meet all the volunteers and team in Portland. YEAH! #
• 16:31 @ahockley Sleep? What’s that? Aren’t there going to be #wordcampportland events on Sunday? Everyday is WordPress day for me! #
• 16:32 @mollermarketing Approvals should be announced soon. Coming in batches. A LOT signed up. Stay tuned. #
• 16:32 @gregbd BuddyPress is being used by a lot of people, though it still is in development. Go on, try it. Let us know how it works for you. #
• 16:33 @MelaniePerry Blogger & Podcaster Mag has been around over a year, tho making a lot of changes. It’s a fun mag with great stuff like me! #

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With all the negative campaigning and nasty spin by the media wrapped up in election campaigns and conventions, it surprised me to find a connection between a politician commenting on negative campaigns and my continued defense of bloggers attacking other bloggers and going negative. I thought it worth talking about in my ongoing series on Blog Struggles.

I don’t know anything about Jesse White, a lawyer and state representative from Pennsylvania, except that he has a blog on WordPress.com called “I’m from the Government. I’m here to help.” He covers politics and issues confronting his constitutes in a very personal, up front manner that appeals to me greatly. I wish more bloggers as well as politicians followed his style.

The fact that he takes time out from his busy schedule to personally write on his blog also impresses me. In a day and age where so many politicians, stars, and celebs hire people to blog for them, or use microblogs to speed up the process, his well-thought out posts continue to make sense and speak of a fairly open and “real” person.

In A Race to the Bottom?, he brought up the issue of negative campaigning and how to respond to them. This ties in so closely with my recent posts about permitting known trolls on your blog, how to handle the unexpected reaction to your blog post, and blog bullies. He said:

Opposition research is a natural part of any political campaign, which is only compounded by people constantly giving you the “inside scoop” on an opponent. There is pressure on all sides to let people know “the truth” about the person running against you, especially if that person has gone negative against you already. Sometimes you really do have little choice but to respond in kind and attack back, just to let the other person know that you aren’t going to be anyone’s punching bag.

Personally, I prefer the somewhat less exciting but ultimately rewarding campaign style of telling the people what you plan to do and how you plan to do it. Any good candidate knows that an election is ultimately about the voters, not the people whose names happen to be on the ballot.

I am faced with that dilemma as we speak; my opponent in the November election has chosen to launch a series of attacks against me. In addition to being factually inaccurate and just plain mean-spirited, these attacks give no reason whatsoever why you should vote for him instead of me.

It’s just a shame, because for every minute a candidate spends attacking his opponent, that’s one less minute that can be spent talking about legitimate differences on policy issues that actually affect the voters. Hopefully the voters will recognize and reject the trash-talk and allow our elections to be a race to the top of the heap, not the bottom.

It is indeed a shame when so many waste our time with attacks and rants that have little to do with solutions. Jeffro on Weblog Tools Collection asked people to stop blaming the WordPress team for problems WordPress has no control over, as have I. Place blame where blame is appropriate, and rant with solutions, not just accusations.

Too many bloggers are adding to the climate problems with their hot air. They attack businesses, politics, the weather, and each other without balance or fairness. Often without justification, just a need to “let off steam” with blow hard rambling. They add nothing but their negativity to the world of online publishing.

Ranting is fine, but I want some balance. Rant all you want, but then give me suggestions on how to improve things. How to make it right. I’m always looking for bloggers with solutions, with the answers, with a positive slant on the issue to challenge my thinking instead of just whining and bitching or blaming. Aren’t you?

Stop making it personal. Attack our blogs, rant over our words, debate our opinions, blast our ideas, but don’t attack us as people. Come on, rise above this, folks.

As Jesse White said, do you recognize the difference and reject the trash talk? I’m working hard to keep my blog on top - not the top of the popularity polls but the top of the moral and valuable heap. I work hard to keep my blog relevant and of value to all who pass by. I want to offer solutions to my whines.

I’m Still Here

I suffer the attacks of others who say mean and vicious things, but unlike some bloggers, even famous bloggers, I’m still here. I’m still blogging.

To quote Stephen Sondeim’s lyrics from Follies:

I’ve gotten through, “Hey lady! Aren’t you whoozis?
Wow, what a looker you were.”
Or better yet, “Sorry, I thought you were whoozis.
Whatever happened to her?”

Good times and bum times, I’ve seen them all,
And, my dear, I’m still here.
…I’ve run the gamut, A to Z.
Three cheers and dammit, c’est la vie.
I got through all of last year, and I’m here.
Lord knows, at least I was there, and I’m here.
Look who’s here. I’m still here.

Yep, fifteen years of blogging and I’m still here - and blogging.

Having lived for five long years in the Middle East during the worst of the Intifada, losing friends in terrorist attacks, and living in the midst of the conflict, I learned a valuable lesson that keeps me going as a blogger, speaker, and through my life that I’d like to share with Jesse White and the others disheartened by those who turn their blame games and negative attacks upon them.

Marla Beth Elliott of the Righteous Mothers wrote a song about a friend of mine, Py Bateman, a pioneer, author, and teacher in self-defense and sexual assault prevention education for women. After many years of teaching karate and self-defense, Py was attacked outside her home by a man with a knife. She fought off her attacker and survived and continued to teach about the lessons learned from her own experience as well as her expertise.

In the climax of the song, “Py”, from the album “All the Rage - And None Of The Calories“, the group sang the lessons that rang in my head over the years listening to explosions in my neighborhood and watching the horror of terrorism and war on television and outside of my window:

…cuz I’ve never met her,
But she keeps me going
Through fights that I thought can’t be won.

She taught me to stay with the fight.
You cannot leave the fight.
You just keep fighting on,
You just keep fighting on,
You just keep fighting on
’til it’s done.

And if she fought back so can I.
This is the stuff that legends are made of.
Roll over, Beowulf, make room for Py.

Notice that the song says “keep keeping on ’til it’s done” not won. It isn’t about winning. It’s about staying in the fight. It is about being stronger over the long term, no matter the outcome. The strong will survive but not always through brute force. It’s the inner strength that keeps us fighting on.

When things would get tough and we felt that we just couldn’t endure another nightmare attack, threat, or dark moment, I’d hear those words in my head and find myself singing that song.

When the next blog attack or nasty comment pops in unexpected into your bloggy life, hang in there and tell yourself:

Never give up or give in. Don’t let them win. Keep fighting on ’til it is done.

Blog Struggles Article Series

• Blog Struggles: The Search for Blog Content: We put so much energy into “finding” blog content that we often forget the best source for good blog content: from within us. I offer tips and techniques for pulling content from your head.
• Blog Struggles: Ideas and Drafts: We come up with such great ideas and then what? We jot them down, make lists, start post drafts, and they sit there staring at us, as we procrastinate over what to do with all these ideas and how to keep them in check. I offer tips on how to best keep track of your ideas and drafts.
• Blog Struggles: The Blog Focus: As part one in a sub-series of posts on Blog Struggles, I look at the issue of the blog focus, your blog’s ability to turn you from a blogger into an expert.
• Blog Struggles: Why Should Your Blog Have a Focus: Your blog doesn’t have to have a focus, but if it does, these are the reasons, and benefits, of why it should.
• Blog Struggles: Finding Your Blog Focus: Continues the Blog Focus theme and offers tips for finding your blog’s focus and direction.
• Blog Struggles: Changing Your Blog’s Focus: Once you find your blog focus, how do you change your blog? Or should you start a new blog? I cover the tips you need to know to redirect your blog.
• Blog Struggles: When Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation Interferes With Your Blogging looks at the issues around the impact of poor writing habits and skills and whether or not they impact the success and reading of your blog.
• In Blog Struggles: When Are Too Many Comments Too Many Comments?, I share a struggle I faced not long ago about an over-enthusiastic commenter who left a ton of comments on my blog within a few hours, making me very suspicious. We are often faced with suspicious comments, so what do we do? How should we handle them?
• Blog Struggles: Taking The Moral High Blogging Ground addresses the issue of deciding which ethical and moral road to take on your blog.
• Blog Struggles: Blogger’s Depression looks at the rarely discussed by normal aspect of blogging: depression. When the enthusiasm for the effort is lost and apathy sets in, and how to overcome it.
• Blog Struggles: It’s The Rituals That Help Us Focus: I share some of the rituals I use to get me “in the blogging mood” and ask you to share yours.
• Blog Struggles: When An Old Post is New Again takes a look at some of the struggles I’ve had when a past post suddenly gets picked up and sensationalized. I discuss the methods I use for keeping my old posts up to date, especially when fame comes knocking.
• Blog Struggles: Recovering From a Traffic Spike really touched a lot of people as they related to the addiction that traffic spikes bring, as well as the hassles.
• Blog Struggles: Surviving the When Blogging Goes Bad Blues look at how to keep on writing when life gets in the way.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.