Lorelle Van Fossen over at the BlogHerald asks, "What Fuels Your Blog"?

There are a few things which keep me blogging. The first is, having my say. I use my blog as a soapbox as well as a conversation starter. Blogs give everyone a unique voice and despite the noise that is generated on an hourly basis in the blogosphere, it's great to have a place to openly share thoughts and ideas.

The second thing that fuels me are the comments. I love receiving comments which add on to something I started. I love getting involved in conversations centered around a particular post because I never know where I'll end up when the conversation ends. It's like a continuation of education.

The third thing that fuels me is community. I am big into community and I love the community atmosphere. I have this drive within me to either create a passionate community or be a leader within an existing community. Communities are places where I can get along with most other people, agree to disagree, and call a home away from home. Communities are special places which are painstakingly hard to create which is why I place so much value into them in the first place.

So, those are three things which fuel my blog/blogging. Why not share with us what fuels your blogging?

Out of all of the blogs I read concerning tips for blogging, I've found at least one tip that is consistent among all of the others, and that is 'abiding by a post schedule'. The tip usually goes a little something like this:

Create a posting schedule and abide by it so your readers get a sense of consistency and they are not left wondering what's next.

In this day in age, is a posting schedule really necessary? Sure, a posting schedule would let readers know when to expect something to be posted on the blog. But, with the advent of RSS, readers can be notified when you update your blog with new content, which means they will see it, whenever you decide to publish it. Unlike most other bloggers, I only seem to be able to blog and publish in the same session, rather than writing posts for future dates. I might have one post today, three tomorrow, none the next day and one the day after. But with RSS, people will always be up to date without having to constantly visit the website to look for new content.

I do have an argument in mind that one could use in relation to a posting schedule, but I'll see if one of you bring it up first in the comments. So, with that being said, how many of you have actually created a posting schedule and then followed it to a T?

As a follow up, what would that posting schedule be? For example, do you publish a post once a day, once a week or once a month?

Automattic’s Akismet has been long known as the king of spam detection. It has been ported to multiple content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, MovableType, phpBB, Joomla, b2evolution, Geeklog, and many more. It is, hands down, one of the most popular solutions to handle all this spam, but now there is something else ready to take on the likes of Akismet. It, perhaps, might even be more effective than Akismet.

Defensio, a comment spam detection system which claims 99.77% accuracy, is really striving to become serious competition to Akismet. Not only that, but the development team aims to pick up where Akismet has left off.

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It has only been within this current year when I realized a serious difference in the way I was generating traffic for my blogs. I realized that it is no longer any use to me to simply link to great articles. It is an epic waste of time.

I am no longer concerning myself with posting frequency on my own blogs; instead, I will be focusing on creating only quality content. It doesn't matter if it requires one day or one week, I will only publish original and quality content.

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Whenever I tell someone who isn't as internet savvy as I am that I make money blogging, they always ask me what a blog is. When I stop to think about it, defining the term "blog" has been rather difficult for me and has always resulted in debating with myself what the differences are between a website and a blog. I end up telling this person that a blog is a personal website which is updated frequently, which in most cases it is. But how would that explain sites such as Engadget, ReadWriteWeb or TechCrunch. These are not personal websites, they are online businesses.

Let's take a trip to Google and make use of the define:blog query and see what happens:

• A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. ... www.sussexlearningnetwork.org.uk/glossary/B

• Online journal. The term BLOG comes from web log. www.emerge-solutions.com/learning_glossary.html

• A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links. www.cpseo.com/glossary.html

• A Blog style within Mambo is the listing of records in a summary form. Example: It could be by link only, or showing just the introductory text with a link to the complete text. Often the "News" page is written in Blog style. fman.by.ru/mambo/help/mambo.glossary.html

• Web LOG is a journal kept on the internet. This journal is often updated daily and contains all information that the person maintaining the BLOG (Blogger) wishes to share with the world. ... www.aprompt.co.uk/support/glossary.asp

These were just the first five results with each one being a little bit different. What is a blog to you? Do you find yourself arguing the differences between a blog and a website? Are they not one in the same? Furthermore, what can be constituted as a blog rather than a website?

Live blogging is the new thing for bloggers to do. It isn't particularly useful unless you are actually blogging a live event, but if you are, it is an excellent way to generate some buzz around your blog. It is also an excellent way to draw new readers to your blog, and this is especially true if the event is very popular within your niche. The point is, live blogging is a really interesting concept if done correctly.

Most recently, blogs like CNET have dedicated resources to cover the WorldWide Developer's Conference live. Other places like Engadget, Gizmodo, and Wired also participated by live blogging the conference.

There are several tools you can utilize to start live blogging today. That is what I will be discussing now.

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Violet Blue, a blogger known for her expertise in the realm of sex education discovered today that all of her posts with the exception of one had been deleted from BoingBoing, a big name blog. Violet has no idea why her posts were removed and neither does anyone else, considering BoingBoing has published controversial content before. Some are speculating that the deletion was caused by a software upgrade. So far, BoingBoing has not commented on the allegations.

Why do I bring this up? Because for those of us trying to make it to the top of the (mobosphere) as an author, an event like this can be crushing in terms of the future career of a blogger. Since BoingBoing is one of those top tier blogs, being removed from their system virtually takes away the opportunity to put them on a resume. Also, think of the nice Google juice and the expanded audience that disappears along with the content.

If what happened to Violet was a mistake, I really hope BoingBoing takes the proper actions of restoring her content. If it's not an accident, then I hope Violet receives a clear and concise reason as to why they decided to delete her off of the blog.

Now it's question time. Would you ever delete an author from your blog? For instance, Performancing has gone through a ton of authors over the years, with all of their content pretty much in tact. Does what happened to Violet over at BoingBoing worry you as a blog author, trying to make a living?

I don't know about you, but I've begun to notice a trend. Some of us who are familiar with the term "blog" and who consider ourselves to be internet savvy are starting to claim that the term "blog" is old fashioned. However, if we take a look around, mass media is still on the cusp of embracing this wonderful thing called blogs. Part of the problem (if you want to call it that) lies in the fact that the early adopter crowd who went crazy with blogs has now moved on to something else. Blogs appear stale as if they were no big deal to this crowd. Meanwhile, there is a large section of people who are just now jumping on board the blogging bandwagon and having a great time doing so. To them, this is brand new.

Are you noticing the same trend? Do you think blogging has reached its peak and is now on the other side of the bell curve?

You have a blog, good job, but that is only half the battle. You have much more work to do if you want to reach greatness. It is a long road to reach greatness. Ranging from the obvious to the complicated, this should serve as a basic checklist for your blog.

Security

Do you know those people who use a zip code, a phone number, a pet name, and any weird but common thing as their password? Well, they are probably the one's who should take this part very seriously. Your blog might be a hobby, it might be your bread and butter, and it might even be more than that, but if you let a hacker destroy everything, it just makes you seem like a fool.

Browser Compatibility

I use Firefox. Firefox is amazing. Firefox just works. Firefox is, well, Firefox, of course. However, not everyone uses Firefox. Some people use Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Camino, WebKit, Linx, and other available browsers. It wouldn't be wise to alienate a certain group of people just they use an alternative browser. Unfortunately, people still do this. Don't be one of them—always check for browser compatibility.

Use Protection

Because some people have no lives or work for people who have no lives, we have to deal with spam on a daily basis. So, of course, those same people with no lives would find ways to exploit the blogosphere as well. Thankfully, Akismet and Defensio are here to help. Install either of these plugins and live (somewhat) spam-free.

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Let's say you spent all this time writing an excellent post a few weeks ago, but now some new information has come out that makes this post seem old. It was a lot of work, and the post is still quality. Still, you don't know what to do about it. Should you create a new post with the new content or update an old post with the new content?

Update the Old

First off let me explain why anyone would bother updating a post. You would update an older post that brings in a lot of traffic so that it can still be thought of as useful by the users. You certainly can't argue an old post receiving more stumbles, can you? This is one of the primary reasons to keep older quality content up-to-date. However, frequent changes can change SEO rankings.

Make Anew

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It is a pretty simple question: how long should your typical blog post be? Well, the answer relies on several factors, but the question itself is almost irrelevant—but many still ask it.

Before going any further, you must look to your audience. So, to keep things simple, let's say there are two types of people reading blogs: the impatient and the intricate. The former wants to get in and get out as quickly as possible. The latter wants the content to be full and informative. It is essentially a coin-flip.

So, which is it—long or short? Ironically, I feel that this is the wrong question to ask entirely. It is not a question of length, but, instead, a question of detail. The detail you put into an article should determine the length. Some bloggers, unfortunately, do not understand this.

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"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted"—Italian Proverb

I've been a professional blogger for around two years now, and I got my big break at Mashable. I managed to make a name for myself within the short time I was there, but a lack of creative freedom to write about what I wanted lead me to not being as enthusiastic about my job as I once was. The money was great, but it wasn't worth the cost of having to write about what others wanted me to write about while my ideas were shot down left and right. I have to express myself freely in order to work well.

Was leaving a mistake? Absolutely not! It lead to other opportunities which I enjoy including this Performancing job which I love. I also started a blog for the first time in nearly a year, OnlyJames—my personal blog.

There are, unfortunately, mistakes which I have made that have taken their toll. Each one is an experience that I had to learn from if I expected to progress as a professional blogger.

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During the past couple of weeks, there have been a number of articles discussing the aspect of comment fragmentation. The problem being described is that, instead of commenting on the blog where the blog post resides, people are conversing on their favorite social platforms such as Twitter or FriendFeed. This has lead to an increasing problem which doesn't appear to be getting better any time soon.

In my own experience, I've always left a comment on the actual blog post rather than on a social web service. I have a Twitter account, but 140 characters is usually not enough for me when I leave a comment. However, how many times have to visited the actual blog post, only to go back to Reddit or Digg or some other service and discuss what you just read?

Third Party commenting services such as Disqus or IntenseDebate plan on implementing features which will pull comments made on specific services and place them back on the blog. But until that happens, there is going to be bits and pieces of the overall conversation here, there and everywhere.

When I presented this topic within the Performancing Hive Forums, I received a number of interesting responses. They ranged from, could care less about community building as they have developed their sites around search traffic acquisition to being happy that anyone would leave a comment on their blog at all. Someone also mentioned the fact that they appeared on the front page of Reddit. The article on Reddit received 180+ comments while the blog only received 53. Whats interesting is that, you have to actually click through a link on Reddit and visit the actual page. After doing so, people are going back to Reddit to leave their comment.

I think Steven Hodson of WinExtra.com hit the nail on the head when he proposed that comment fragmentation was not the bloggers fault. As bloggers, we can not control where the conversation takes place. Readers will decide when and where they will participate in the conversation.

I now propose a few questions to the Performancing audience. First, do you believe that conversation fragmentation is an issue? Secondly, are you happy with the fact that your articles are being discussed at all, wherever that might be?

Fake stories are gaining popularity because a nice chunk of bloggers tend to skip the tiny details and believe everything they read. Throw social networks like Digg into the mix, and you have trouble on the horizon. I am not one of those people, and I do scrutinize (maybe even too much) nearly every story I read on a daily basis. This is why I am asking that the blogging community take a step back and realize that this is only the beginning of a big problem. People are going to try to hurt the image of the blogosphere.

I, unfortunately, have lost some faith in the blogosphere over the past few months with regards to credibility. Bloggers are beginning to prove why journalists still have jobs. Scammers are beginning to realize that the blogosphere is the perfect opportunity to run their fake stories and lies to gain popularity and fame. It is likely that the same people that have provided us the need for spam inboxes will now give us the need for more scrutiny within the blogosphere.

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We regularly and subconsciously develop daily routines when it comes to work. It doesn't matter if you are working as a blogger, tech support member, singer, or astronaut because we humans tend to settle into a routine no matter what we are doing in life. This way, things become easier to manage, and it also allows you to be more productive and at ease with your work. Everyone has their own way of doing things.

Some people have their routines planned out to the very minute, but I try to avoid this because it rarely ever works out as planned for me. I don't know how unique my writing schedule is compared to others, but I do most of my creative writing after midnight and editorial writing in the afternoon. The midnight writing sessions can sometimes keep me up until 6 AM or later, and, as a result, this means I have a somewhat awkward sleeping schedule. But hey, no one should complain as long as the job gets done. Whenever I manage to drag myself out of bed, this is how I get my work done.

News Feeds

The first thing I do when I wake up is open up NetNewsWire. At this point in time, I am usually in awe as the unread count skyrockets to insurmountable levels.

Within less time it took me to stumble towards my laptop, I am presented with hours of work, and, sometimes, it can be quite the eye opener.

I always give a sincere effort to check out every item, and those that I find interesting will be opened in the background for a thorough read later on. While going through each story, those that look interesting, but not required to read at the moment, will be flagged (or a starred if using GReader) so that the story in question will not be lost.

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