ABCs for Better Blogging: A Challenge

This is personal. It is a concept I developed lately to become a better blogger. I call it “My 5 ABCs for Better Blogging Challenge”, since I made this for myself. Why would I do such a thing, you ask? 

I do it because I re-visited some of my old blog posts from a few years ago and realized I had missed many opportunities to interact more meaningfully with visitors to my blog. There were many things I could have done differently that would have made me more engaging as a blogger.

Thinking about the missed many opportunities made me realize I could do a whole lot better as a blogger. So I decided to change the way I do things as I blog, blog, blog here on Blogger.

Following is my list of things to do and ways to interact to become a better blogger.   

Things to do to become a better blogger:

A – Always reply to comments on posts. Remember that people took their valuable time to visit your blog and to read your post, and even more of their time to leave a comment.

B – Be kind, Be courteous, Be supportive. If you (I) don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything. .. just click away.

C – Carefully craft your comments to the topic of a post. Don’t just throw out some meaningless gibberish, it’s insulting.

D – Do unto other Bloggers what you want done unto you. This is self explanatory, needs no further messing with.

E – Each time you visit a post, read it before commenting. It can make or break your credibility if your comment is unrelated to the topic.

That’s it, my personal challenge to myself to improve the quality of my Blogging experience and also the experience of those that I interact with. Do you have any ideas for better blogging? Add them in the comments section. This is a way we can help each other.


Image source

Good or Bad

Good-night. I'm off to bed to sleep to dream to refresh, but first I must re-visit an old-all-time-favorite I just stumbled upon - "Death Wish" starring Charles Bronson. The first time I saw this movie, I fell in love with it. I love it when the good guys win. I hate it when the bad guys win.

My favorite of all is the part where he beats the dickens out of the thugs with coins in the sock. When he starts whacking those fools with that sock of coins, I get crazy...like...yea, yea, yea, beat 'em, whack 'em...give it to them! I love it, love it, love it! That will teach the crooks to go around messing with good law-'biding citizens.

Anyway, you can see where I'm going here. I have to go watch Charles Bronson. Love me some Death Wish!

How Do You Respond To Comments?

When I first started blogging no one commented but eventually, the comments came. Sometimes I wanted to say more in response to their comments, other times I simply wanted to acknowledge the person and their response. This presented a dilemma.

Where should I post my response? Should I post it on my blog along with their comment? Should I go to their blog, comment on their current blog, then put my response to their comment on my blog over there? Con -- fusing is the best way to describe the feeling.

It didn't throw me into fits or cause me any wasted brainpower trying to make sense of it. I filed in in the back of my mind and forgot about whether one way was better than another for responding to comments.

I followed my simple plan of posting my response on my own blog along with their comments. Occasionally, I would thank the person for their comments on their blogs. I also wrote a blog post suggesting that we go back to review older posts in case someone posted a comment days or even months after our original blog post.

I recently found an interesting article with helpful suggestions on how to handle responses to comments.

Building A Better Blog For 2007: Respond To Comments

• Don’t delete negative comments unless they’re actually demeaning to the readership in general.
• Respond to both positive and negative comments.
• If the message was in the form of a comment, reply on the site and also make sure to send an email.

READ MORE at: The Simple Dollar.

Re-Visit Old Posts

I sat myself down an hour ago and stated firmly to me, "Self, you MUST post to the blog today. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You started this and you have to be consistent."

Me? I wanted to explain justify defend why I hadn't blogged on a regular basis lately. I wanted to go on and on about the research I've done, the helpful information I've located and, my plan for implementing what I've learned on my sites and blogs. I started the post complete with a nice neat bulleted list. Needless to say, I soon needed to go in search of missing information. That quick search brought me face-to-face with a 'crucial enlightenment'.

So here we are, me, myself, and I at odds - again. Rather than going on about who said what to whom and whom did which to what, I'll cut-to-the-chase. My crucial enlightenment is, regularly re-visit your old posts for new comments.

Sometimes new people read and comment long after the post has been published. I had intended to post this several months ago but got side-tracked and forgot.

Is Your Blog Chasing Away Readers?

It has been very busy around here the past several days. In fact, I have had a seriously hard time keeping up the past two weeks. First, there was the company. Company is fine and "I love them to death". I hate that phrase but, I couldn't resist using it here. Why in the world would anyone want to love someone "to death"? Crazy!

Then, I had to play catch-up after company left, visiting my blog friends, reading your posts and the accompanying comments and, letting everyone know what was going on with me. That took time but it is so much fun. Getting to my computer was all I could think about while sitting watching company gobble down a meal or watching a movie...things like that.

Today is the first time I have had a full day to myself to do as I please. Guess what I chose to do? Yep! BLOG. First I visited around to a few new sites to see how things are going outside my little corner of blogland, which lead me to the subject of today's post.

Some of the sites were beautiful, full of seemingly interesting information. Some had catchy post titles which immediately got my attention. However, one look discouraged me from reading further. The sites were ONE GIANT CONGLOMERATED PARAGRAPH, from the top of the page to the bottom. No breaks anywhere. That is hard on the eye. I gave up, couldn't go on.

Just the other day I found this really great article on the importance of paragraphs. This article puts into perspective some of the main points in favor of using paragraphs. Add that to my experience while blog-hopping and I dedided to share the following.

The Importance of Paragraphs

Hyper Link a Picture to Another Source

The other day while working on my post “Testimonials For My Book”, I realized I wanted to share my experience of hyper-linking Cheryl Tanner's picture to her website. First, I typed and saved the post as a draft. During my preview of the draft, I asked myself, “What more can I do to make the reader’s experience on my blog memorable?”

It occurred to me that providing more information about Cheryl would be interesting to some readers. That led me to try and link her picture to her website where readers could learn more about her.

What is a hyper link? To me and in everyday language, it is linking one thing to another thing. According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: A hyperlink is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of a (different) domain.

That sounds a bit like Greek to me. Greek-2-U-2? Well, I'll try to break it down.

How To Create a Hyper Link for A Picture
-First save your post with your picture included as a draft.
-Next, click on your picture (it should then be highlighted)
-Then click on the hyper link icon on your menu bar
-A dialog box will appear with the title: Hyperlink
-This dialog box contains two important fields (information you need to supply)
-First: the Hyperlink information box with http:// showing in it. There is a check mark to click if you are working with something other than a URL that uses http://.
-Leave that http:// alone; go to the next box labeled, URL
-In the URL box, type in the address of where you want the picture linked to.

In my case, I clicked on Cheryl’s picture. Then I typed (actually I copied and pasted) Cheryl’s Website address in the URL box and clicked OK. I then saved and published my post. Now, when I click on Cheryl’s picture the hyper link takes me to her website where I can read about her acting career.

Blog Tutorials

Well, the week has started off at a nice steady pace - no technical difficulties or other problems to frustrate. I've been able to check on all my blogs and sites to make sure links and images are working properly.

During the morning I re-visited a wonderful blog I found while searching for information to make my blog posts more meaningful to my readers. The information is probably nothing new for veteran bloggers but, for newbies like myself, I am including it here today.

The site has quite a lot of helpful and interesting pointers for new bloggers.

Learn more at BlogTutorials.

Happy blogging until next time.

Ctrl+C equals Copy - Ctrl+V equals Paste

Thanks Stephanie!!! It works!

Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

This is a test. I have nothing to post right now. Nothing to report. I am testing copy and paste functions and procedures and the like, writing this in my word processor to copy and paste to my google blog.
That’s it.

Now I’m going to keyboard function Ctrl + C (without spaces) to copy this information.
Once in my google blog – New Post page, I’ll use Ctrl + V (without spaces) to paste this information in the compose box.

Summary: Write your information using your word processor.
Highlight the information you want to copy to place elsewhere.
Ctrl+C = copy
Ctrl+V = paste

If you see this information here in my google blog, we’ll know it works. If not, you’ll see me “WHINE”

Until later