Blogging

BlogWorldExpo may be over with however, the event has left us with plenty to talk about. One of those things is something called “Bloggers Insurance“. The Media Bloggers Association has announced that they have launched a comprehensive program that will provide bloggers access to the same sort of legal and financial resources that have been available to traditional media.

Bloggers under this plan would gain access to BlogInsure which is a liability insurance program for bloggers that provides coverage for all forms of defamation, invasion of privacy and copyright infringement or similar allegations arising out of blogging activities. A major part of this insurance program is an online Media Law course that has been developed by the MBA along with David Ardia of the Citizen Media Law Project.

There is great news for those of you interested in this course. According to the MBA press release, the course will be made available to all bloggers free of charge. Although the course plays a major role in the membership to the MBA, bloggers are not required to join the MBA solely to take the course.

After completing the exam, bloggers will be asked to take a course assessment; this exam is a prerequisite for individuals interested in joining the Media Bloggers Association so those wishing to join must opt to report their test scores to the MBA. It is also the basis for the significant discount on liability insurance available to bloggers through the BlogInsure program.

You can read the entire press release HERE which provides all of the information you’ll need regarding the insurance program.

Considering that everyday, bloggers are threatened with lawsuits or subpoenas, I think this move to provide a way for bloggers to be insured and have some sort of liability coverage is great. Traditional media has had access to these types of services for a number of years so it is refreshing to see bloggers beginning to receive the same treatment.

What are your thoughts on a blogging insurance program? Do you think such a program is really needed? Will you be joining the MBA to gain access to this program?

As for myself, I think I’ll go ahead and take the course to see what I can learn. Law is not my strong point.

When I open up my FeedReader, it is not that uncommon to come across over 1,000 items or more that need to be read. I don’t have the time to read all of those items which is why I either share the link in my link blog to come back to later and to share with others or, I’ll write a blurb about the post and publish it on a blog. At any rate, I figure that the list of blogs I am subscribed to that deals with blogging would make for a good resource of links for your own feedreader. Thus, here is the list of blogs about blogging that I am subscribed to.

Advertise Space – Blog Advertising – Although the blog hasn’t been updated since August, I found it to be a good read as it deals specifically with the blog advertising niche.

Alister Cameron – Blogologist – Alister Cameron does an excellent job discussing all aspects of blogging, especially marketing and optimizing blogs.

Blog Marketing Strategies by Social Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey – I think jack’s blog title speaks for itself.

Blog Perfume – Great site which features the cool Feed analysis tool. Also known for pointing out good WordPress resources.

Bloggers Blog: Blogging The Blogosphere– This site has a title which would be hard to say five times fast but it covers trends and news as it pertains to blogging. Just check out the categories listed on the left hand side of the site to get a gist.

BloggerTalks – Headed up by Thord Daniel Hedengren, this site features exclusive and usually detailed interviews with individuals who are becoming successful on the internet. People who have been interviewed on the site thus far include: Natali Del Conte, Ryan Caldwell, Duncan Riley and Sarah Perez.

Blogging (Google News Subscription) – This is simply my subscription to the keyword of blogging as it shows up in Google.

Blogging Basics 101 – For those of you who still enjoy using Blogging as your platform of choice, this blog is for you and it relates specifically to the Blogger crowd. With all of the attention aimed towards WordPress, these types of sites are getting harder to come by.

Blogging Tips – What can I say? Kevin Muldoon has a history of success and Blogging Tips is no exception. Every day of the week there are new tips, reviews, or conversation pieces published onto the site. Of course, some of that success can be attributed to the sites other contributors.

Blogosphere News (Published News Items) – Splashpress has their own Digg like social site that serves more as a central repository of what is going on within the Splashpress network than anything else. If I miss something on one of the other Splashpress owned sites, I usually catch it here.

BlogSecurity – BlogSecurity is an important subject and what better domain to have in order to discuss the topic? This blog is known for covering security vulnerabilities for WordPress as they are discovered.

BlogWell – Another blog which focuses on providing tips, ideas, and explanations that are easy to understand and written in plain English.

Business Blogs: How to Build a Better Blog – As the blog title says, this blog is all about the business of blogging and creating a better business blog.

BuzzMyBlog This blog is written by someone who is currently trying to become self employed through blogging. A feat that many would love to accomplish but few will ever reach. The blog discusses social media, blogging topics and a few personal things mixed in. Bonus points for having the same first name as me.

Chris Garret On New Media – Do I really need to describe who this man is? He has written for Performancing before and is a master of the trade.

Contest Blogger – One look at this blog and you’ll see that there are a ton of things to be won. Seems like every day introduces hundreds of new blogging contests. This is the grand daddy of all blogging contest blogs. Be sure to read their content to make sure you don’t screw yourself when participating in a contest.

Conversations – This blog is written by Mike Sansone who is as social as they come. He writes about all aspects of conversation and the role it plays in the blogosphere. His mantra is “Blogs are Conversation Stations“. Sounds good to me!

CopyBlogger – With over 40,000 RSS subscribers, Copyblogger continues to be one of the major resources for all bloggers. The site covers topics such as copywriting, traffic, social media, etc.

Daily Blog Tips – Another awesome resource site with tips, monetization techniques and overall, a nice community.

Dosh Dosh – Truly the definition of Quality versus Quantity. Dosh Dosh is a blog offering internet marketing and blogging tips, alongside social media strategies. Best consumed by bloggers, entrepreneurs, web publishers, marketers, freelancers and small business owners. Not updated often but it is updated consistently. Each post leaves people begging for more.

OnlineMarketingBlog – Online Marketing Blog provides daily insights, resources and information on a range of internet marketing strategies and tactics.

Quick Online Tips – Quick Online Tips is a popular blog regularly publishing Technology news, smart blogging tips, new media, web 2.0 services, useful computer software, advertising and how to make money online

Shoemoney – Skills To Pay The Bills – One of the webs top internet marketers. No explanation needed.

Skelliewag – Skelliewag.org is for current and future movers and shakers of the web: people who understand that content is King, Queen and the entire royal family.

Social Media Trader – Socialmediatrader.com offers a regular selection of in-depth articles, statistical analysis, simple to digest guides, and original and unique resources.

Techonofriends – Technofriends is a Technology Blog by an avid blogger and technology enthusiast.

The Blog Medic – Keep your blog healthy, alive and kicking with some simple tips from a corporate blogger. Although not updated often, the site contains useful information.

The Edublogger – A blog that helps educational bloggers with emerging technologies in education!

The Reader Appreciation Project – The Reader Appreciation Project is aimed at showing readers that they are one of the most important assets a blogger can have.

Write To Done – Write To Done is about, at its core: the craft and the art of writing.

For your convenience, I’ve included a link to an OPML file that you can place into your feed reader which will subscribe to all of the blogs mentioned in this post. If you know of any blogs which you find to be a valuable source of information as they pertain to blogging, be sure to share them in the comments.

(Blogging tips and discussions OPML File)

Photo taken by foxypar4 illustrating Coming And Going and has been filed under the Creative Commons license.

Ever stop to wonder how portable your blog is? I mean, you are using WordPress today but do you think you’ll be using WordPressa a year or two from now? What if you started on Drupal and then want to move to WordPress? This is the situation that Performancing is in and I find it rather archaic that many of these publishing systems or content management systems do little in the way of allowing users to export data. The closest I’ve been able to get with Drupal is by using what is called (Views) to create an RSS view for the past 2,500 posts. This doesn’t help me at all when there are thousands of posts from 2005-2008 published on the site. As I searched high and low on the Drupal module site looking for ways to export the content into at least an XML file, I came up empty handed. Considering XML has been around for awhile and it is 2008, I find it to be a joke that Drupal along with other publishing systems do not support the exporting of important content out of the box. Important content being tags, post meta data, post content and comments.

eXtended RSS:

Although not perfect, WordPress provides not only a myriad of different ways to import your content into their system, but it provides you with a way to export your data into an open format. This open format is called WXR or eXtended RSS. When you export your content from WordPress, this XML file will contain your categories, tags, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and most importantly, your content. This allows you to easily migrate your WordPress content from one WordPress installation into another or, moving between a self hosted WordPress installation into a WordPress.com account. Why can’t Drupal or other systems support this type of functionality? WXR from what I know is an open format because it is based off of XML. I realize that just about every content management system does their own thing, but how nice would it be if they all supported an open format like XML or eXtended RSS.

Based on my research of the various CMS’s that exist, the only one I have seen that supports eXtended RSS is WordPress. Just about every other system out their is portable if you count the fact that they support MySQL. However, in 2008, why must we continue to subject ourselves to hiring MySQL database gurus in order to migrate content from one system to another. Couple this with the fact that most of these systems are open source, why can’t these systems provide an easy way to import or export important data into them and let the end user decide which system they want to use instead of having people become locked into a specific system. Although some will argue that you are not locked in considering if the database that contains your content is MySQL based, you could hire a database guru to migrate your content. I just find that to be unacceptable.

Perhaps there is hope though. Browsing around the Habari Project wiki, I came across a page that contained information regarding potential projects for the Google Summer of Code. Thanksfully, Import/Export appeared to be one of the projects:

Many tools permit one to import from their prior tool, but very few provide any kind of export functionality. The Habari project believes strongly that your data is more important than the tool you use to publish it. To that end, the Habari project would like to initiate a cross-platform export format so that end users can move between publishing solutions with greater ease.

Now, if we could only get every other CMS Development team to acheieve this level of thought, end users would be much better off. No word yet on the progress of the project but I find it enlightening that the Habari team is at least acknowledging the need for such a system.

Conclusion:

I think in a perfect world, all of these open source projects such as Habari, WordPress.org, Drupal, etc, would get together and work with each other to make sure that each system could import the data that is exported from each other. Seems to me as if the XML file format provides an excellent open platform for this to be based on. I’m not sure if EGO has any thing to do with this not being a reality yet or if the perfect world is simply too complex for this to happen. Every system does things their own way which is why the initial format should be an open standard instead of something created in-house. What an aggrevating experience it is to see the Drupal forum have an entire section dedicated to migrating to Drupal but not have a forum dedicated to migrating from Drupal.

Your Thoughts:

Please share your thoughts and opinions on this subject within the comments. Let me know if you are sick of being burned by content management systems not providing an easy means of exporting your important content.

I’ve been doing this blogging thing for some time now and I’ve lost my ability to see things from a different perspective. RJ on the other hand has participated in blogging for only two weeks and has already published a post asking, is blogging a waste of time.

The post goes into what RJ is learning in class as it pertains to citizen journalism but he also shares his opinions on what blogging is actually doing as it pertains to America. This post has a political feel to it but I tend to disagree with his overall opinion of blogging.

I think RJ needs to step out of the political arena and check out some blogs that are anything but political. There are plenty of people out their who are behaving in a civilized manner and engaging in meaningful discussions.

Be sure to read the comments attached to his blog post as they contain some interesting responses.

Do you feel that blogging or for that matter, commenting is a waste of time?

Thanks to a study conducted by Envision Solutions who is a health care marketing communications consultant, it appears as though blogs about health are doing quite well. According to the study, just about half of all American adults have written a health related topic on a blog while 60% of those individuals write primarily on health related topics. The study also shows that an estimated thirteen million Americans posted at least one health related item to a blog between February and August of 2008.

While one-third of the respondents said they were blogging to educate others about a condition or malady, 21% of them said they blogged primarily for marketing purposes, such as a doctor who looked to increase business for his or her practice, or a health care consultant wishing to demonstrate expertise in a subject or health policy.

If you’re interested in seeing more numbers, Mediapost.com has an excellent post detailing the results from this study.

One thing about this study which I found to be rather interesting was that, only 15% of readers believed bloggers’ statements should be taken at face value. This was a decrease from 23% in 2006 which is a good sign meaning confidence is growing amongst health blog readers.

I’m not subscribed to any health related blogs in my feed reader but then again, I’m not dealing with a particular health issue, neither are my immediate relatives. But if I were, I would certainly be blogging about it while trying to inform others of the condition and treatments. Thanks to blogs and new media, we can read, see, and hear first hand experiences from those who are going through treatments or who are part of medical breakthroughs.

Are you subscribed to any health related blogs? Have you thought about starting one yourself? What do you think of this recent survey?

I’ve been monitoring MSN’s A-list for a while. And I think that all bloggers should consider using it as a compliment to Google Trends.

MSN’s A-list is basically a blog where MSN posts links to specific searches in their search engine. Big deal right? Well, the thing about A-list is that most of the links are for very popular, specific phrases. Many of these phrases are not one time events, but phrases that will be just as relevant next year as this year. So unlike Google Trends which mostly captures topics that fade with time, MSN’s A-List captures many topics that will recur on a cyclic basis.

Blogging Tip: Create posts that use the same phrases that MSN A-List uses for their links.

By doing this, you will be positioning your blog to gain search traffic in the future. Hopefully for a long time.

Let’s take a look at today’s A-list and how you can use it to create content on your blog.

I see the following searches linked:

Sarah Palin and vetting
Background checks
Research your house history
“Murder Houses”
Seller disclosure rules by state
Credit checks
Better Business Bureau
Neighborhood crime statistics
Local school information
Rotten neighborhoods
Federal gun background check requirements
Online encyclopedias

Now if I were a blogger, I’d take this list and work up a list of titles that incorporate these phrases:

Sarah Palin, Vetting and The Truth: Even if she was vetted, it’s the impression that counts
Background Checks 101: Which organizations are most likely to dig up dirt on your past?
Why You Should Research Your House History Before Purchasing
What exactly are “Murder Houses”?
How to find seller disclosure rules by state
Credit Checks Matter: What you need to know

etc.
etc.
etc.

(Note: I feel a bit silly placing a Copyright notice on this article because, as a professional writer I know that Copyright is in place from the minute I create a work and does not necessarily require the symbol. Copyright ownership rests with the creator of content. That’s part of the TofS of this site. Professionals respect Copyright, but thieves do not. Since Zurza stole one of my posts on this blog, I want to make it a little tedious for him/her or anyone inclined to steal others’ work to have to check every line to see if something needs to be removed before they scrape it and post it their sites. If nothing else, they might learn something about how to write so they can do it themselves without stealing words from others.)

HOW TO BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
by Joan Reeves©2008

You may think this title is nonsensical, but I see a lot of writers who don’t know how to start writing. They want to write. They really do, but somehow they just can’t seem to get started.

Those of you writing novels may be like the frustrated writer played by Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From The Train. He’s sitting in front of a typewriter and has typed: The night was…. After those three words, he’s stalled and stares blankly at the piece of paper.

He types hot. No, that’s not it. He types humid. No. That’s not right. He ends up with a wastebasket full of paper wads and a massive case of writer’s block. Later, when the mother in the movie rasps, The night was sultry, is it any wonder he agrees to kill her?

Perhaps you’re writing a novel or articles, blogs, whatever, and you too find yourself dithering about, unable to get started, unable to find an entrance into the subject matter.

This is what I call stalled brain, a condition that occurs because your brain isn’t warmed up and ready to race.

If you have a car parked in a garage and it’s 20 degrees outside, chances are you sit in the car with the motor idling after you’ve started it. You wait a few minutes, warming up the engine before you put it into gear and drive away.

When writing, if you’re having difficulty getting started or if you start and stall out immediately, maybe you didn’t warm up your brain sufficiently.

Try these brain-warming exercises to get the thoughts flowing and to turn off the internal critic or editor. These work whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, short or long. The only caveat: these exercises actually work better using pen and paper than the computer, but you can try them on the computer if you like.

Cluster

Write a word in the center of a page. Select a word that has something to do with the subject or theme about which you intend to write.

Draw a circle around the word then lines from the center like spokes on a wheel. At the end of each spoke, write the first word that pops into your head. Write as many words clustered around that center as you can.

Look at the cluster. What do all the words you wrote have in common? Are there some words that resonate with you? In what direction do the words lead your thoughts? Compose a sentence and write it down immediately.

In most cases, this sentence is a doorway, a lead-in, to what you want to write and will enable you to keep writing because the brain has been stimulated in that direction. The words will flow. Get the words down without stopping. Don’t give the internal editor a chance to intrude. Go back later and edit.

Lists

What are you wanting to write about? Make a list about it. Take your subject and list the first 10 thoughts that pop into your brain. Or list 10 things about some aspect of the subject that really interests you. If the subject is music, you might list 10 thoughts about it that might vary from the first song you learned as a kid to the concert you went to last night. Or maybe a list of groups you like, songs you like, songs about heartbreak, music in the movies, or scandals associated with music, etc.

Don’t try to legislate your thoughts, just let them flow and list them. Don’t even try to confine the list to a certain number. Just list, but the goal is to list as many things as possible because the more you write down, the greater the mental flow. Don’t try to prioritize the list either. The goal is to list as many things as possible as quickly as possible.

Describe something with words, and the description doesn’t have to relate to your subject at all. Perhaps you’ll write a paragraph describing your ideal reader, this is a mental creation of the person who finds what you write interesting to read. Is your ideal reader someone who looks like your mom or your spouse or your best friend or your high school English teacher?

The act of writing a description puts the brain to work in the process of putting words together to create an articulated vision. That’s what writing is all about. Write it for practice and it’s easy to just continue writing on your project.

Takeaway Truth

These brain-warming techniques work because they assign your brain the task of producing words and giving those words form. Without over-thinking it, you find yourself working with words instead of agonizing over how to craft the perfect sentence. From free-flowing thoughts come written words resulting in paragraphs, pages, and books.

When you aim for success, you must commit yourself to reach it. Success means different things to each individual, but, in general, we have a good idea of what success can lead to. If you want to reach success, you must realize that a big portion of getting there is being mentally prepared.

Having Confidence

After repeatedly reading biographies and watching television programs about successful people, one clearly obvious thing that all these people share is confidence.

Today, many people commonly misconstrue confidence as cockiness, and while for the most part these people could be right, it certainly can help to keep someone pushing for progress.

A person’s worst enemy can be themselves, and someone who doesn’t believe that they can succeed, in nearly every case, won’t. Others who constantly bring you down, tell you that something can’t be done, or are negative in general can easily ruin your success. I try to surround myself with those who motivate me to try harder, and it really does help—especially when you experience one of those days you wish you could take back.

Accepting Failure

Do know those people who say that will never fail? Well, to be successful, one must learn to accept failure, which can be extremely difficult for many. It is obvious as to why people should learn to do this: what happens when the plan, concept, design, event, or idea isn’t working out? Will that person continue to push on with that failing idea? Maybe give it a few more tries, but you would hope that this person would move on, right?

Some of the greatest minds in history knew when to set pride aside and move on to bigger and better things.

Take the time to evaluate your situation, and if there are better opportunities elsewhere, at the very least, take some time to consider the alternatives. The next best thing might actually be the solution to your problem(s).

Having Realistic Expectations

Realistic expectations can really help guide you to success. Having too high expectations can result in much disappointment and stress. On the contrary, having too little expectations can result in less motivation and progress. You must balance it out to push yourself but be satisfied with the results.

A Brutal Evaluation of Oneself

Finally, one of the best things any person can do to make progress in life is to be honest with yourself. Several people have said that the best thing they have done with their career is to be “brutally honest” while evaluating themselves, and it makes perfect sense. If you are 7’5”, you might not be the smartest person due to the countless times you’ve hit your head on solid objects that got in your way, but you might be an excellent candidate for a professional volleyball or basketball player! That would be playing to your strengths.

Someone who can acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses can build for their strengths and improve or avoid their weaknesses—this is very important, and it is a shame how people don’t do this.

Do you have more suggestions? I am sure you do! Post them in the comments section and help your fellow bloggers to reach success. Also, if you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to Performancing!