Stay The Course, And Don’t Give Up

Build A Better Blog Day 20

Todays tip is for those new bloggers and those who are feeling like their blog isn't going any where. My recommendation to you is stay the course. There are millions of eyes reading blogs these days but there are 10 times that many who aren't. Eventually, your reader base will grow.

Many people today are writing one or more blogs. Although writing more than one blog can tedious and time consuming, it has its advantages.

1. If you a feeling overwhelmed cut back on the number of blog posts you write.


2. Reduce the number of blogs you maintain. Use the process described in Seth Godin's book The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick).


3. Ask your readers to help. Give one or more the opportunity to write for you, and then go on vacation.


4. Narrow your blogs focus which may make writing posts easier


5. Start commenting on more blogs. Read more blogs. If it's writers block this can help.

The over all point here is not to give up, especially if you've invested a large amount of time and effort into building your blog. But be careful not to let the quality of your writing slip. Don't get sloppy or write pointless posts. Try and keep your goals high.

ProBlogger's day twenty post: Run a Reader Survey

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Keep Your Blog Posts Unique

Build A Better Blog Day 19

Today's tip is this; write about what interests you and not what everyone else is writing about. One thing that disappoints me about some blogs are the regurgitated content they use from another site. I want to read original content. Find your niche then give us your spin. Make a list of the things you write about or interest you and store it with your blog posting schedule. Review it often to remind yourself what you want to write about.

Breaking a news headline or an getting an inside scoop might not be something that happens on your blog, and that's OK. Writing an opposing or agreeing opinion on a news story or other blog post is great. I read hundreds of RSS feeds and news sites which keep me informed about current events, market trends or breaking news. Some times I get a great blog idea and I write it up. This is a great way to keep your content fresh. Don't cheat or steal other content. Don't use parsing tools that scrape content from other sites and call it your own.

Having fresh content may require more time and research than a shoot from the hip post. What I mean by that is take some time to make sure what you are writing makes sense, is truthful and will be appealing. Make sure you pay attention to your language standards on spelling and grammar. I'm so glad I have a spell checker because I'm a terrible speller. Poor grammar and spelling will turn some readers off, and we don't want to give anyone a reason to not come back.

Taking some time to decide what your blog focus is will help in keeping your content unique and fresh. Write your posts, save them and re-read them. You might find areas you want to change or add. I read the web site by Grammar Girl often. She covers the English language pretty well and I've learned some things from her. I recommend reading her site. Don't forget to apply The 10% Solution.

ProBlogger's day nineteen post: Respond to Comments on Your Blog

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Prevent Blogging Disaster, Back It Up

Build A Better Blog Day 18

Today's tip is probably one of the most important I'll write about. You may spend hundreds of hours creating the perfect blog site, only to wake up one morning to find it all gone. I've seen it happen, and its happened to me. The feeling is gut wrenching. But it is avoidable with a little work ahead of time.

Here is how I create a disaster recovery system.

1. I have every post sent to me via email so I have all the content. If for some reason I lose my database at least I have all the blog posts and can re enter them.
2. I have an automated database backup scheduled with my hosting provider. Once the database is backed up its emailed to me and stored on a different FTP server. This took a little work but can be accomplished.
3. At least once a week I back up all the blog files. This includes themes, plug-ins and images. I make a lot of code tweaks so I want to make sure I have everything backed up.
4. Once a week I zip up all the blog files and database archives and store it on my Amazon S3 space. This is a pay service but its so cheap. The advantage here is my files are off site and be recovered from just about anywhere. There are several free services like Mozy and Xdrive you can use too.

A few weeks ago a site I was maintaining was some how reverted to files created months earlier. I'm not sure if the web hosting company restored a backup on top of all my files, but the result was months worth of work was lost. And the ironic thing was I didn't have a back up. I know, I was slapping myself in the face. No one else had too. I thought every thing was lost, then I remembered a web site called archive.org which lets you search a domain for snapshots of the site in the past. This saved me. Archive.org had one day of files with all my modifications and content so I was able to get a good majority of what I needed.

If you use a hosted service like Blogger or Wordpress.com or LiveJournal, these services probably have your files backed up, but I wouldn't count on it. You can still create a backup plan for these sites as well. Make sure all of your posts are coming to you via email or RSS and make sure you are backing up static page content after you create it. Then package it all up and save it on a different server, not your local computer.

How or what is your process for backing up?

Problogger day eighteen post: Create a Sneeze Page and Propel Readers Deep Within Your Blog

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Photowalking Salt Lake City v2

Yesterdays Photowalk on the west side of Salt Lake City was exciting and fun. This was my first Photowalk and I wasn't really sure what to expect. I felt a little intimidated with my starter Nikon D40, but after I'd had a chance to meet everyone and we got moving I forgot about the gear and just started taking pictures.

I hadn't been to this area of Salt Lake City in quiet a while. This is an area completely under construction, mixed with transients, a train station, a bus station and of all things Art Galleries. The architecture was great. Ann picked a really good location.

I took a lot of photos, 151 to be exact. Most of them were dupes trying to get better angles or lighting. Some had nothing to do with the theme of the Photowalk. And mostly I was just taking pictures of things that caught my eye. I'm still learning and so its important to try all kinds of things to see how they turn out.

Some of the pictures I took were too dark, or blurry, but some came out much better than I had hoped. You can see all of my photos here and the groups photos here. I can't wait for the next one.

The group photo above was shot by Harley Pebley. He gave me permission to use it. I'm the guy in the red shirt.

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The Writers 10% Rule

A few weeks ago I met a really great Writer named Ken Rand. Ken has been a writer for a very long time. He's written everything from newspaper articles to short stories to novels. One of the really cools things about Ken's writing is he covers a broad range of genres. If you want to learn from a writer who has done it all, Ken is your man.

While I was at Mountain Con III I bought a book from Ken called The 10% Solution. One of the panels Ken was on he talked about how you can self edit your writing using several passes to cut out all the fluff, or as he called it, the 10% reduction. Every time you read through your manuscript find areas that can be compressed using smaller or fewer words or removing entire paragraphs. When you're done you will have a more concise story and something more pleasing for Editors to read.

You can apply this same solution to writing blog posts. I try to reduce what I write by 10%. Some times its just not possible to reduce what you've written but I would at least try.

Side note here. Ken didn't ask me or pay me to say anything about this book. I have truly gotten a lot out of it and just wanted to share it with all of you.

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