Creative Destinations

Dateline: April 2, 2007 

I supposed the point of having a blog in the first place is exhale some of the stuff that keeps our synapse firing on all something ..illion nerves and hoping that someone will stop by and actually read what we’ve posted. So… yesterday I had my fifteen minutes of fame. The “Digital Lite” was featured as the blog of the minute on wordpress which did not send droves of people to my site. All this goes to show that not everything in blogger land is predictable. That said; people do come or at least click on the link which registers as a visit.  So thank you for stopping by from the far flung corners of the Globe.

Just for fun! Here’s a take on the old tree falling in the forest line.

If a blogger makes a post and nobody reads it, is he still wrong?

The Bloggers Homework Checklist

• 1. You will make mistakes.
• 2. You will visit and revisit the advice to bloggers many times.
• 3. If you are really looking to gain readership and or make money which means you really do need readership; you will work hard.
• 4. Spend more time planning your blogging strategy.
• 5. Be fair, be credible and write with passion.
• 6. Get your own domain name and the best blog design you can afford. There are lots of free stuff out there to help you along.
• 7. Vary your stimulus and look outside to other fields that are tangent to your area of interest. Listen to podcasts and keep a journal of thoughts and ideas.

These are some of the things I’ve learned in my foray into blogging; not that I am an expert mind you.

Blogging, as it is called is a bit like playing the guitar; easy to pick up a few chords for those campfire songs but requires a lot more work to become accomplished. You can be blogging in minutes by using one of the free tools such as WordPress™ or Blogger™ but to be heard requires work, persistance and something besides “I’ve heard that too”. We will share the journey and discover again what we’ve known all along.

The Blogger Chronicles Episode #1

The Blogger Chronicles #1 – I suppose there are many reasons for getting into blogging. Mine are varied and center around utilizing the knowledge I have amassed over the last thirty years and in some way suppliment my income. Thus far I have experimented with various blogging platforms; the one you are reading is hosted by WordPress™ I have used Blogger and WordPress and some others, all have there strengths and weakness. I have decided to let folks peek over my shoulder as I make this foray into the world of blogging in the hopes that others can benefit from actually seeing the process. It should be said that I have been online now since 1995 and a daily computer user for a bit longer than that. I use a Mac, although I have used PC’s and Unix Workstations as well.

If you do a search in Google on the word blog you will get 2 billion 500 million results as of this writing, enough to make one dizzy. There a hundreds if not thousands of sites that will help you with the blogging process and thus far I have found a few that I like and think will be of some help. I will be passing on what I learn with links to the tips I’ve found.
I decided not to make this a separate blog so that you can see first hand the kinds of things I am dealing with; you will find these posts under the category “My Development As A Blogger”.

Why Sometimes, Low Blog Traffic is a GOOD Thing!

More from the Blogger Chronicles!

I have been at this “blogging thing” for about six days now; which doesn’t count my previous false starts. My first observation as I survey the blogging landscape is this [ read the title of this post ]. When you start out there is a lot to learn about the blogosphere and how things work online. There are essentially two problems you have to solve. One is the overall design, presentation and writing of the things you are passionate about blogging. The second is the way blogs are tracked read and made available to the public. Guy Kawasaki’s blog post today was a short interview with David Sifry, the founder and CEO of Technorati. If you don’t know what Technorati is, you will if you blog. You can read the interview here. One major revelation is that they are currently tracking about forty seven million blogs. So you can quickly see that there is a whole lot for people to sift through. The good news is that there are probably a much smaller number of people blogging about your topic.

Even though you want to attract attention to your blog; at the first while you are learning and designing and dealing with all of the technical details of software and linking things back and forth you probably don’t want a thousand hits a day on your site. While you’re learning it’s probably fine if just the web search bots are the only ones reading your posts.

Another interesting series can found on the Pro Blogger site. The question of what would you do differently if you could start your blogging over again. The question is asked of some high profile bloggers and their comments are well worth reading. Look for the 1 question interview.