5 training tips for better blogging

September 27, 2007 | 3 Responses

Name your flaws

This is a very good way to become aware of the mistakes you’re making and train yourself to change them. I used to write some of the mistakes I was making into my posts to tell people I was making them. Then I realized it would be better to write them down telling people not to do those things. The outcome is great. You learn from your mistakes and you dish out some valuable advice to your readers.

Set daily goals

A lot of other blogs will tell you to do this. It just makes good sense. Theres is always a reason for you wanting to blog, so you have a goal that your blog is trying to accomplish. In order to get there you must set daily goals.

Set amounts of blogs to read and comment on per day, dedicate time to writing good content, respond to a certain number of emails, they are all pretty simple. But what you may not have considered is that you should also be applying these techniques to your outside life. You have to manage ALL of your time, which brings us to our next tip.

Apply some of that discipline to your other tasks

Get things organized. If your life isn’t on track, your blog wont be on track. In order to train yourself to be a better blogger you must also train yourself to take care of your other responsibilities. I’m not going to list them here, because they depend on your priorities. Showering regularly should be up there on the list, though . Building a better blog takes a long time, but organize your daily tasks well and they will begin to adapt to your blogging schedule.

Reward the commenter, not the writer

I have seen a few blogs with an entire sidebar widget dedicated to the authors of the blog. It is almost like a Top Commenter’s lis for the writers. The writer shouldn’t need any extra incentive for writing. Its the writer’s job to write.

Blogs that don’t allow people to post a URL wont get as many comments. Thats a fact. Its’ snaky, but many people wont take the time to think of a comment if they don’t see a backlink coming out of it.

And the number five training tip for a better blog is…. (I just wanted to feel like Dave Letterman)

Get off of your computer!

In order to have something decent to talk about you have to interact with people. Go out and experience and you’ll probably find new topics that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. There is also the chance that somebody else will inadvertantly give you an idea for a better spin on something you were already working on. Be it a crazy analogy or metaphor, a new trend or idea that you can compare your idea to, or even just a silly saying that you might want to use. Now go outside and see what I’m talking about.

The funny thing about blogging is its’ such hard work, requires discipline and focus, but you have to use one of the most distracting machines known to man to do it. If you really have to crack down there are some things you can do.

• Turn of MSN/AIM/Google Talk; Don’t go to busy or away or invisible. Just turn it the heck off.
• Turn off your feed readers. This stuff is an essential part of the blogging routine, but it can wait for now.
• Give yourself chores. I’m being serious. No TV or going out with friends till you finish your post, young man! That sort of thing.

How to get listed in DMOZ for bloggers

September 20, 2007 | 6 Responses

Or get into DMOZ for a blog.

So you want to get your blog URL listed in the DMOZ directory.

DMOZ is practically the web’s most trusted directory. It is a giant database of links accompanied by descriptions and organized into categories. To get a site listed in DMOZ is your passage into the realm of serious blogging.

There are general rules of thumb when submitting a website to DMOZ. Consistent page structure, consistent topics within the content, an acurate description, and submitting to the proper category.

These are the most important things for any site. But when it comes to blogs the guidelines aren’t quite as clear. There are certain DMOZ categories for listing Weblogs, but now you are getting narrowed down into more obscure topics. So the idea is to get your blog up to speed enough to be able to submit to higher, broader category ranges. Continue reading How to get listed in DMOZ for bloggers…

Thanks to our newest community members

September 20, 2007 | 0 Responses

I’d just like to thank our newest community members in the Needless Productions MyBlogLog community. Just a reminder that September is almost over and this month we are dedicating a post to every five new members of the community. We will also be running a special contest next month exclusively for members of our MyBlogLog community. So why not join before October gets here?

And The Newest Members Are

CrimCheck - www.ezbackgroundchecks.com http://www.employmentscreening.org

WickedWhammy - wickedwhammy.com

Josh Mullineaux - www.joshmullineaux.com www.treoexpress.com

DW Office-www.dwofficesolutions.com danawallert.com

Fred Plimley -www.fredplimley.com www.linkedinmalaysia.com

PressRiot almost ready for beta

September 18, 2007 | 1 Response

When I dropped the music format here, I promised a new site was coming. I even went as far as to register a domain and post the occasional link to this upcoming Canadian music review spot (see? I just did it again). Well that is about all the progress anyone has seen so I thought I would let you all in on how it is coming along.

The site will be in blog format, but divided by monthly issues. I’m either going to release each issue in bulk, or set them to be autoposted in weekly or daily intervals. I am almost ready to go live with a beta preview version of pressriot.ca, which means a scaled back version to gain some user input before the big release. The site will go live and people will be able to read and rate all the articles.

As far as the writing and content production, it is going pretty well. I have enough articles on my own and I’m waiting on some other submissions, I have just about enough to do the first issue.

The development stages are basically finished, save for once people actually get in and start to try it out. It was relatively simple to get a working model going being that I planned on using Wordpress as the core.

The inlying challenge was to get it up and running with enough distinction from section to section. I wanted to have the main blog page more category oriented  rather than just laying out all the freshest posts in reverse chronological order. Sounds like exactly the opposite of WordPress doesn’t it? Well it can be done.

Once again, its all in the theme. The theme essentially structures everything using the loop. You can call anything from just the post content of a single post, single category, anything really. I’ll get more into this when I talk about the awesome theme I discovered in a later post. When will it be? You’ll have to subscribe to the feed if you don’t want to miss it.

I’ve been testing the core of the site in a far away secret location, nobody will ever find in order to keep things under wraps. Nothing is currently hosted under the pressriot domain. Its all on a secret account hosted an a sea-barren shanty, floating in uncharted off the coast of Zürich. It is guarded by a one-eyed crow with a hooked beak. He will peck out the eyes of anyone who attempts to spoil the surprise.

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