From the category archives:

Blogging 101

Very soon after I started blogging, I started using a blog editor to power up my blogging (and prevent the “aiiigghhh I lost my connection and my post!!!!” which was very common at conferences, still is actually). In those days I was using Qumana for the most part, which makes sense since I was a part of the company and helping guide the growth of the app.
For its time, Qumana was a fantastic blogging app. It was almost perfect (I was always pushing for more and better refinement), but Qumana [...]

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Your ever wonder how people keep blogging for years? Decades? It isn’t because these people just never run out of things to say. Okay, maybe some of them don’t ever run out of things to say, but for the most part I think it’s the community they build around their blogs that keeps driving them. Community doesn’t equal traffic either. Community can be the loyal following of a few people who comment on most of your posts. Who inspire you and help refill the creativity well when it runs dry. Community [...]

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To really understand this post you need to understand a few things about me:

I pour over my webstats to learn more about who my readers are, what they read, and how they find me.
I love discussing the things I write about. That’s why I’ve written about them in the first place.
After blogging for about six years now, I’ve watched social media grow and evolve a lot, especially in how readers interact with writers.

Since I pour over my stats on a near-daily basis, especially when I see a traffic spike, I [...]

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If you’ve watched even one Superbowl, Superbowl pre-game show or halftime show, heck even any NFL game during the year, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about here. Football commentators, and the ones for the Superbowl especially, are almost like no other group of folks in the world, well except for bloggers.
Bloggers? What, pray tell, do bloggers have in common with retired football players sitting in suits talking about football? Well the way I see it, a lot.

They have passion
The most important thing about being a blogger or a commentator [...]

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Getting fired for blogging doesn’t get as much attention as it did in 2004-2005. Back then, the media was a buzz about people getting fired because they were blogging, when, in truth, very few people were actually fired for blogging. Oh yes, some people were fired for blogging, that much is true. I’m sure many of the cases had little to do with the blogging parts as it did with something else going on. However the “fired for blogging” thing did do one good thing, it forced companies to realize [...]

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When I’m helping people first start blogging, one of the first objections (fears, concerns) is that no one will be interested in what they have to say. In nearly six years of blogging I have yet to find someone start a blog that didn’t have some kind of audience.
Think about it this way, no matter what your topic, issue, hobby, whatever is there has got to be at least one other person (and most likely more) in the world who shares your feelings/experience/passion. The world is a huge place and [...]

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I’m going to tell you something that us “experts” don’t want you to know. Ready?
Blogging is dead.
Wha? Blogging is dead? Didn’t you just write a book on creating your own blog? Yeah I did, but let’s get this straight—blogging is writing and a blog is just a website that makes it really easy to do that. When I took on writing the book that would become Create Your Own Blog, I have to admit I was a little reluctant at first. Not because I didn’t think I could do it [...]

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It’s been almost six years since I started blogging. Not nearly as long as some of my friends, but long enough to have a few things that I know I’d do differently. With the book out and review coming in, like this review from the Vancouver Sun, I’ve had a little time to think about how and why I started blogging.
It’s not hype or urban legend, I did start my first blog on a whim. It was actually my second blog, I deleted the first one within days of creating [...]

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If you’ve being wondering how good Create Your Own Blog really is, now’s your chance to find out because I have a free sample chapter for you (the Introduction is also included, though I’m not sure I’d call that a bonus or not). Pearson has made Chapter 3, Writing and Creating a Conversation (1.5 MB, PDF) available for you to read and enjoy.
Chapter 3 is one of my favorite chapters in the book and I chose it because I think it is a great piece of work on its own. [...]

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Even though it’s been the holiday season, work on Using WordPress hasn’t slowed down only a wee bit. Several of the initial chapters are now in the loving hands of my editors and I’m proceeding full steam ahead. Since crowd sourcing works pretty darn well for getting feedback, commentary, and information, I’m looking for a bit of help with the next chapter in the book: WordPress Plugins.
Us WordPress.org/DIY install users know that there are thousands of WP plugins out there to try. Lots of plugins do the same thing and [...]

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Way, way back in 2005 I started live blogging at conferences. Blog Business Summit was the first a) blogging related conference I attended and b) the first conference I live blogged. From that point on I got to be pretty well known as a live blogger. It even got me into conferences and my travel expenses paid so I could live blog and cover a conference for companies. I think, in fact, I got pretty damn good at live blogging. I had my own style as well, a mix of [...]

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