Blog Struggles: When Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation Interferes With Your Blogging

Discussing the challenges associated with blogging, a participant in a program I presented recently told me about how she tends to obsess over punctuation. My friends tell me I need to read that book, Eat, Shoots, and Leaves about punctuation. I’m obsessed with commas and ellipses. I love using them. I like how they sound […]

Blog Exercises: Become Your Own Fan Blogger

Fan blogging is one of the most challenging types of blogging. Fan blogging is blogging about a celebrity, television show, movie, sports team, sports player, criminals, or other groupie subject. Today’s blog exercise examines the art of fan blogging and how to learn from fan blogging to create your own fan club around your blog. […]

Example of a Perfect Personal Blog

I’m working on a series of articles about personal blogging, but I wanted to share with you a perfect example of a personal blog. It’s by my cousin, Duke DesRochers. You may remember Duke from the story I did on him called, “Future Social Media Renaissance Man,” on Lorelle on WordPress or the one on […]

WordPress Plugins News: Coffee2Code Plugin Marathon, Plugin Podcast, Plugin Developer Center, Plugin Checklist

As most of you know, I’m extremely passionate about supporting and encouraging WordPress Plugin authors. I’ve written a love letter to WordPress Plugin authors, spent a month writing over 36 posts on nothing but WordPress Plugins, published extensive tips on how to install, configure, and use WordPress Plugins and another guide for finding Plugins, “Where […]

Introducing the Art of the Fan-Based Blog Article Series

I’m a Trekkie. For the uninformed, this means I’m nuts about Star Trek. To misquote Eddie Izzard (I’m a fan of his, too), I’m not a wacko, obsessed Trekkie. I’m an executive Trekkie. The high class, normal type of fan. This means that while I love reading Star Trek related blogs, websites and fan forums, […]

Blog Struggles: Finding Your Blog Focus

Last week, I covered the meaning of blog focus and the benefits and reasons to narrow your blog’s focus by your writing style or content. As part of this ongoing series on Blog Struggles, today I want to cover how to find your blog focus, and tomorrow, how to change your blog’s focus. Finding your […]

Observations on The Economics of the Blogosphere

By Greg Balanko-Dickson I came across an essay titled Economics of the Blogosphere, authored by David S. Evans who is co-author of the book Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World’s Most Dynamic Companies. The blogosphere is one of the biggest and most influential global industries created in the last decade. Technorati tracks almost 100 […]

The Successful and Outstanding Blogger Conference – Will You Be There?

The SOBCon07, the Successful and Outstanding Blogger Conference, will be May 11-12, 2007, in Chicago. If you want a closer relationship with your readers, and the increased traffic and benefits thereof, make a point of attending. SOBCon07 Successful and Outstanding Blogger Conference 2007 Theme: Developing Your Blog Relationships May 11-12, 2007 Chicago O’Hare Sofitel Hotel […]

Annual Zeitgeist Time: Top Search Result Keywords by Elimination

I love the year of the end reviews by search engines on the top keyword searches of the year. This year, Google Blog’s article, “How We Came Up With Year End Zeitgeist”, takes us inside the minds of Google and searchers and how their top search results rose to their top keywords search terms. …This […]

One Year Anniversary Review: Blogger’s Rights and the Risks of Blogging

The issues of protection for bloggers, bloggers rights, and copyright protection for web content is still an evolving issue. As more people find freedom of expression in blogging, other people seem to find more excuses to stop or control not just what they say but how they say it. There is even a guidebook for […]

How Not to Blog in a Blogathon Blog

I had a great time with the Blogathon this past weekend. While I didn’t participate as a Blogathoner, I hit a couple hundred of the blogs blogging in the Blogathon, and found some great bloggers blogging about fun and interesting topics. I also learned a lot. I highly recommend that you make it part of […]

Genealogy Blog: Starting With a Purpose and a Plan

A bit ago I announced I was starting a series of articles about building a new WordPress blog from scratch. Here it begins. I’ve been researching my family’s genealogy since I was a teenager, and recently a fantastic series of events resparked my enthusiasm. Over the past few months I’ve been doing even more research […]

Blogging With the Best of Digg on WordPress.com

In “WordPress.com Snobbery”, General Disarray brings up their opinion that most of the top blogs cited on Digg are WordPress.com blogs: It’s safe to assume that pages that make it to the Digg front page are sufficiently interesting and well-written to attract a lot of attention from a large, educated and tech-savvy audience. What kind […]

The 12 Biggest Problems With Your Blogs

Sedition.com’s “The 12 biggest problems with your blog” is a brilliant summary of the most commonly found problems, and distractions, on many blogs. Here are some highlights that had me dancing around the room so much, they bear some repeating: 12) The banner graphic. Regular visitors don’t need 18% of the page space taken up […]