jump to navigation

Blogging in February February 12, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : 31daychallenge , 1 comment so far

I’m hearing some complaints about the “February Blues” and bloggers block which made me wonder whether there’s any truth in the idea that this month is more difficult for bloggers get inspiration than the rest of the year. Blogging in February february

Well a blog is by definition time-orientated so it’s easy to go back and look at previous posts all from the month of February, over the years. I was quite surprised at the result of this excercise, which is summarised below :

February 2007 (33 posts)

Wow, more than one post per day last year in February, but what was it all about?

But maybe February 2007 just happened to be an eventful month, so how about previous years?

February 2006 (15)

Half the volume, but double the intensity?

February 2005 (10)

For February 2005 we have to go back to a seperate blog to which were imported archives from my ultralab blog “have envelope, will push” which was taken offline. Then for the month of February we find a series of posts:

February 2004 (1)

For February 2004 I can only find one post, so I’m not sure what happened there. It’s on an old blogger blog, and concerns Gordon Pask, the cybernetician who developed ideas about learning called “conversational theory”.

February 2003 (0)

In February 2003 I didn’t have a blog, well not one that would be recognised as such nowadays, and you might have found me discussing LOGO in uk.schools.education-it

So there we have a round up of posts from previous Februaries, a month renowned for winter blues, longing for springtime and having to put up with the second or third sesonal headcold. Atishoo.

Ten tips for bloggers taking part in forums February 5, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : 31daychallenge , 11comments

These ten top tips for bloggers who want to participate more in web forums might help to make life easier for all involved. Originally written in response to a question from Danielle, actually there are thirteen tips but who’s counting..

Choosing a forum to participate in

1) Search for forums that match your interests using criteria such as “your topic niche” +forum (phpBB or vB)

2) Browse threads with the most replies to see if they are lively, current and interesting. Look at one or two of the low response threads as well.

3) Notice if people are using signatures with links to their websites or blogs. If anybody is, that’s good because it’s what you want to do as well. Read the terms and conditions, but don’t be too put off if they sound a bit strict. Your intention is to become a valued contributor.

Registering with the forum

4) I think it’s best to use the same username identity for each forum you take part in. The password should be unique though. I’d suggest using a gmail.com email address so that you can properly filter any notifications and subscriptions coming from the forum. Receiving email “push” is key to continuing participation so tick any options to be automatically subscribed to threads you contribute to.

5) Edit your profile page to include your interests and website/blog. Don’t give an exact date of birth, that’s too much information except to show that you are over 13 years old or something like that. Edit your signature to include links to your blogs after your name and separator or “witty” quotation. If you can add your own RSS feed into your profile page (as with Ning groups) then do so.

6) Once registered and confirmed by email, make an initial, short introduction post. There may well be a designated thread for doing that. Now log out and make sure you can still read your own writing, with sig or link. The public view may look different to the logged in view. If the forum is going to insist that you contribute without being allowed to bring attention to your own blog in any way then move on to another before you get involved.

7) Bookmark or store the URL to your newly adopted forum with all the others so that you won’t miss it when you do the rounds from time to time.

Reading the forum.

8) The key to being able to keep up with multiple forums lies in being able to quickly find only those posts which are new and unread. If you have to scroll way down past all the old posts to find any new ones then this is wasting your time and effort. Some forums have a “Quick” menu, some have sort by date, some have “take me to my unread threads”. You want to spend your valuable time reading new conversations, not ploughing through old ones again.

9) If you see something which provokes or inspires a response from you, write your reply and post it immediately. There’s no need to read everything else first, this is an asynchronous discussion mode.

10) If somebody has replied to your post, and you should get notified if at all possible, then go back and respond immediately. Don’t go through the rest of your notifications first.

Writing to the forum

(Three more tips for bloggers taking part in forums, no less important than the previous ten)

11) Intersperse longer considered posts with short one liners. Start a new thread from time to time. Get to know which of the regular posters you can expect to have a good conversation with and engage with them more.

12) There’s a certain knack to getting your imagination into gear for communicating across distance and timezones. Responding to a person in a forum is then more naturally conversational than formal writing. Hear the silent voices in your head! Yes, including your own! Laugh out loud and splutter in appreciation or indignation when appropriate.

13) Have fun.

Critique of this blog February 4, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : 31daychallenge, distributed research, blogs and community, tools , 2comments

Ning Group

I went to the better blog Ning group which is kind of a community of practice for some bloggers, and asked for a critique of my blog, from the point of view of a new reader. It’s one of the tasks in Darren Rowse’s 31 day challenge. Then I hid under the duvet and waited to see what, if anything, might arise. Christine Martell responded with a screencast which is a great way to review any website.

Screencast

The screencast is hosted at screencast.com which means I can’t at present embed it here, so here’s an ordinary text link to go and listen to Christine as she explores this blog and remarks upon it, followed by my response below:

http://www.screencast.com/t/GrQpa0kXhC

Response

Many thanks for the screencast Christine, you gave me several things to think about and work on there. That was a great way to communicate about a blog’s functionality and hopefully took up a bit less of your time than typing up a critique. You also hit the nail exactly on the head straight away by exposing the central problem that I’m grappling with - the combination of several seemingly unrelated themes or niches into one blog. The only thing that ties them altogether is the common author, myself. So I have diverse target audiences, apart from the very small audience that may be interested in me, friends and family so to speak. So I’m always trying to isolate the categories and pages into slices that can be consumed on their own. What I discovered from Google Analytics is that certain individual posts can gain an audience of their own, coming from the search engines and then moving onwards. This is in fact how I’ve started to derive a small income from the blog, to recoup expenses, through some individual posts in the archive. But a series of individual disconnected posts does not a blog make. Which is why I set myself the goal of increasing RSS subscriptions and joined in the current 31daystoabetterblog group, to see if I can bring it all together a bit more. One thing I’m considering is to see if I can provide a selection of RSS feeds for the main categories. That’s better than having separate blogs, although I do have some of those as well!

Action points from the critique:

Is it time to consider changing themes? Probably not in the middle of all this other activity.

Thanks again Christine for giving great feedback.

Oh, and I’ve also wondered about the feeling of being ‘watched’ and spotlighted by mybloglog as we surf around each other’s blogs, not at all anonymously. I suppose we are assumed to have taken that on board when we join that service. I’ve tried three of these type of things and ditched the other two. I also upgraded mybloglog for the better stats, which I find very useful in combination with Google Analytics.

Now over to other readers:

What did you think of Christine’s screencast and my response? Can you help me understand better some of the issues raised, or maybe add your own points please? I promise not to turn it into a blog all about blogging, there are enough of those already.