Hawaii Geek Week continues in Honolulu, Hawaii. Yesterday’s Web Weavers Workshop with Lorelle in Hawaii was a tremendous success. A couple dozen people learned how to blog beginning with what a blog is and ending with how blogging is already changing their lives by giving people a platform upon which to speak and share and learn.

Web Weavers Workshop for bloggers by Lorelle VanFossen

The participants ranged from total newbies trying to understand what this “blogging thing” is all about, to business owners and professionals familiar with website technology and development and eager to take it a few steps further into blogging and social media.

Each participant made a plan for their blog, signed up for a free WordPress.com blog, and started filling in the blanks and choosing a WordPress Theme.

Many arrived with the preconceived notion that blogging is hard and complicated, and left realizing that blogging is easy. It’s finding your passion to share with the world that is really the hardest part of the puzzle. A few had set ideas on what they wanted to blog about when they arrived, but through the step-by-step process of drilling down their idea into an actionable plan for their blogs, they realized that they didn’t have the content, nor the commitment, to blog their idea over the long term. A few changed paths midstream and left the day-long workshop inspired and ready to embrace their blog in a new direction.

The next in the natural evolution of a blog came today at the Social Media Club Workshop. read more

One way of starting a conversation on your blog is what I call the “Wander, Wonder, Ask” method.

A blogger wanders around looking for news and finds something of interest, often newsworthy. She wonders about it and realizes that her wondering has some validity. It’s worth talking about. So she posts it on her blog as “news” and “information” and shares her wondering points, then asks, basically, “What do you think?”

“Wander, Wonder, Ask” posts are ubiquitous. There are plenty even here on the Blog Herald. We all do it. I’ve done it. Sometimes it works, more often it doesn’t.

When it works, it’s a great way to get readers to wonder and answer back. It works even better when they are out wandering and your blog post pops into their heads. They wander, wonder, and start to ask themselves the key questions that may lead to a solution, and possibly back to your blog. read more

Discussing the current economy condition within the United States and the world, my husband and I talked about how blogging and social media can help so many impacted by today’s financial crunch. Imagine my delight while reading the September 16, 2008, issue of Women’s Day Magazine in a waiting room about the number four tip for their “Solutions Your Money” column: Start a blog:

There are millions of them on the Internet and they come in all shapes an sizes. You can write about nearly anything - from what it’s like to be a mom to politics. It’s free to set one up, and once you do, you can place ads, using an easy program like Google Adsense. Each time a visitor to your blog clicks on an ad, you earn money. And once you’ve earned #100 you’ll get a check in the mail for the money you’ve earned.

…You probably won’t replace your paycheck by blogging, at least not at first, but it’s a good way to make extra money.

The example they give is of a second-grade teacher who blogs about coupon savings tips and plans and makes $80 to $100 a month. While few do even that well, it is an additional way to bring in a few bucks to your life when the financial crunch is on, if you play nice and right.

So the number one way blogs can help you survive the current economy is to help bring in a little extra spending cash.

That’s not all a blog can do for you during this economic downtime. Have you thought about all the benefits a blog can bring while the economy dances in the wind? read more

On Lorelle on WordPress, I just published “The Real Benefits of Sponsoring a WordCamp” which highlighted one of the most talked about exhibitors at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas a few weeks ago: Bruce Christensen and Tom Vail of Cart-Away Concrete.

While most of the exhibitors at Blog World Expo were there to promote their products and services to the mass of bloggers in attendance, Tom and Bruce were there for a different reason. They were there to learn.

So many events and conferences bring together a lot of people with a marketing agenda. They want to sell products and services and make money. Tom and Bruce of Cart-Away Concrete showed up at this blogging conference with their portable cement mixer and said, “We don’t have anything for you to buy. We came here to learn.”

That’s right. They just came to learn from everyone who walked through the Las Vegas Convention Center Exhibition Hall over the course of the three day event. They aren’t bloggers, they aren’t web hosts, they aren’t marketers, or guys with cool blog gadgets. They are construction experts in equipment and concrete. How many bloggers have a huge commercial construction project underway and would need them? Hmmm?

No, they were there to learn. They could hire someone to teach them what to do and set up their blogs and social media services to promote their franchise and contractor business, but that’s not what they wanted. They wanted to learn from everyone in this new online social media business.

And they did. read more

A blogger just contacted me quite upset about the reaction to a blog post they’d written. They wanted my advice on what they should do.

“Should you do anything?”

“Well, I thought I should respond, but I don’t know what to do!”

“Did you want a response to your blog post?”

“Sure, but not this response.”

“You wanted a response. You got one. What about that response aren’t you happy with?”

When we put our words out there on a blog, we want a response. That’s part of the whole justification for blogging. We want a response. We want reactions. We want feedback.

The problem is when your expectation about that feedback isn’t met. read more

I’m a fan of Groklaw, but like any long-running soap opera, I tune out for weeks - okay, months - at a time and then check back in. I love the copyright news and litigation insider bits, but sometimes, unlike an ongoing soap opera, I don’t know what is being talked about. I can’t catch up.

Lately, there have been a lot of coverage dealing with SCO, IBM, and Novell. Two of the three I know, but the fourth I don’t recognize. Even if I knew all three of the acronyms, I don’t know enough of the story to follow the current blog posts.

In the legal world of who did what to whom and why, I’m trying to catch up. Why?

That’s what I keep asking myself.

A blog is a chronological vehicle of expression as well as communication. The most recent post may be the latest in a long back story that can go back for days, weeks, months, even years. However, I just landed here. I need to get caught up fast!

Which begs the question:

Is it my responsibility, as the reader, to keep up with the story, or should the blogger play a role in helping bring me up to speed? read more

I’ve written a lot about how blog and comment trolls make blogging miserable, even to the point where we becoming over-sensitive and frustrated with blogging because of the amount of negativity and angst that comes with opening yourself up to the world of opinion through your blog.

I blog across many different blogs and participate in a wide variety of social media services and microblogs. Twitter and similar “follow” and “friend” networks are interesting as they help you get to know people beyond direct interaction. You get to watch how they behave and learn more about who they are as a person and a blogger through their interactions with others.

Recently, I had the unfortunate experience of watching someone go “off” on Twitter over a non-event. They lost their temper, said vicious things, even to the point of bigotry and prejudice. Very racial slurs. I was stunned to see such language on a public forum. I watched those directly involved handle his out-of-control and inappropriate rant professionally and skillfully, which earned my respect, and I made a point of noting the name and blog of this person, adding it to my list of those I do not wish to be involved with. Trouble like him nobody needs. read more

Pressure make diamonds, but does blogging under pressure make for a better blog and blog posts?

Joss Whedon, Creator and Executive Producer of the television series, Firefly, summed up the show in the season’s DVD extras in a way that reminded me of how many bloggers work under pressure to publish:

A lot of the pressure of being a show that might be canceled at any moment really helps you. It doesn’t help your digestion, it doesn’t help your marriage, but what it does help is your storytelling. Because you go back and say what is the most important thing I need to feel. What is the most primal story. What is the thing that is going to show how great this crew is, how funny they are, how brave, how disjointed - whatever it is you need. What do I need to get to the primal story?

A television and film under pressure of a time crunch and the threat of cancellation still has time to go back and “get it right” - clean out the clutter and time wasting words to really get to the point. Does a blogger have that kind of time?

There are a variety of pressures a blogger can be under. Time, timing, and word counts are the three key pressure factors I see most often at work. read more

In this ongoing series on WTF Blog Design Clutter, we’ve talked about blog clutter with too many “friend” pictures and badges and calendar archives, two of the many elements many use to clog up their blog’s sidebar. “Clutter” is a matter of perspective. If these added design elements really work for your blog, serve your blog’s purpose, and enhance the reader’s experience, leave them. In fact, put them at the top where they are the first thing people will see next to your post title and content beginnings. Promote them. If they are that important, let them stand out.

If they are not important, then they do become clutter.

One of the most popular blog clutters are the Most Recent Comments and Shout Boxes that many feel are important elements to a blog’s design.

The web is now social. People are experimenting with all types of methods to bring the social to their blogs and emphasize how social their blogs are - or at least appear to be. Among the most popular and easy to do are most recent comment widgets and chatting shout boxes. read more

In 2006, I wrote about copyright violations saying that it wasn’t a matter of if but when your content would be stolen. The same premise applies to blog bullies.

It’s not a matter of if a blogger will blog bad things about you but when.

It’s going to happen. It may have already happened. It’s happened to me plenty of times. So what do you do when someone makes fun of you, pokes at you, says hurtful or harmful things about you or your blog on their blog? read more