Blogging

In a time where we have Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Facebook, and all kinds of services to socialize with, it is far too easy to forget about the value of a personal blog. For some of us, a personal blog might be a place to express ourselves in our free time, but for others, it is an excellent opportunity to create quite a following. However, many of us have neglected our personal blogs, some of us don’t update our personal blogs, and a few of us don’t even have personal blogs! Regardless, there are a few great reasons as to why you should have one and keep it updated.

It’s All About You!

If your personal blog is popular, that means people are interested in you, and that should be quite the confidence booster. Some people use their blog as a way to share things that happen in their life. Others use personal blogs as a place of useful information and ideas (like me at OnlyJames), and, further more, others use their personal blog as a “life aggregator” that contains all your activity from around the web.

Personal Experience

One of the greatest benefits of a personal blog is that it allows your followers to connect with you on a fairly personal level. Your blog is like your home. You welcome them into your home, you share information about yourself, and you generate relationships with bloggers. When these people leave your blog, perhaps they will mention you around the blogosphere, and that is obviously a good thing—a very good thing.

Credibility and Understanding

A personal blog serves yet another purpose: it provides you with a level of credibility. You put your name out there, you let people get involved with you on a personal level, and you generate a community around yourself. There is much power and respect held when thousands of people are subscribed to your personal blog. It has all the makings of success written all over it if you can optimize this traffic.

Maintaining Attention

A personal blog can also act as a hub for all of a person’s projects and works. It might serve as a place for a blogger to raise awareness for a special project that only a few people know about. Think of this as a jump-start for future projects. Combine all this with a strong presence on Twitter, and there is some amazing potential ready to explode.

You, On The Internet

Entertain this idea for a few moments: put yourself in the shoes of a professional race car driver. Let’s say you represent team ABC and drive car #01. Fans always purchase team ABC’s merchandise and are glad to buy your lunch-boxes. But let’s assume that next season you are moving over to team XYZ. Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that all those people were really fans of you instead of the car you drive and team you race for? Apply this very same concept to you and a blog you write for, and you now understand why marketing yourself is just as important.

Essentially, your personal blog is your own little chunk of the web that should be all about you. This is a place that you will, hopefully, keep for a long time, never sell, and show interest and appreciation to your followers. After all, every time a blogger writes an article, that blogger is, essentially, marketing himself or herself to the world.

If you have a personal blog, why not let us know where we can find out more about you?

The Blog World Expo is just a few weeks away (September 20-21) and is being held in the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. This expo is geared towards those who are producing their own media such as podcasters, video bloggers, bloggers, etc.

BlogWorld features the largest blogging conference in the world including more than 50 seminars, panel discussions and keynotes from iconic personalities on the leading-edge of online technology and internet-savvy business.

I know of a couple of Hive members who will also be attending the event. Those are:

David Peralty – Xfep

Deb – Freelance Writing Gigs (Deb will also be on a panel discussing the topic of integrating new media (images, video, podcasts, etc) into your blog.

Katy – Katy In Las Vegas

BlogWorldExpo looks like one hell of a good time. If anyone knows of any live video streams or audio streams which will be taken place from the event, be sure to link to them in the comments.

If you are a blogger, you have likely heard of a company called Technorati. The company really has had its conundrums within the past, but it still represents an important part of the blogosphere. It is a well-known site for bloggers. Well, they have been doing some in-depth studies with the blogosphere, and they are now looking for some extra help.

Technorati has been conducting blogospheric studies for over the past few years to help the public have a better understanding of how this gigantic bubble of information operates. They now are asking bloggers to take a survey, which will likely allow them to publish more information in their reports.

This was the email that I just received:

Bloggers,

Technorati has been tracking the Blogosphere for the past several years through our State of the Blogosphere study. This year we have decided to expand our study beyond the sheer size and characteristics of the blogosphere in order to hear more from you, the bloggers. How, when and why are you blogging? Is this a side business, full time job or something you do for fun? Our goal is to analyze the growth of the field as well as understand the people who make the space tick. Help us and join the study of the ongoing global conversation!

Click here to take the survey! http://v2.decipherinc.com/survey/mmc/mmc08001

We hope you will find this survey enjoyable. It should take just 15-20 minutes of your time, and your responses are entirely confidential. Be sure to check back on Technorati in late September for a summary of the results.

Thank you,

The Technorati Team

http://technorati.com/

Why not help out the folks over at Technorati. Spare a few minutes of your time and take the survey. We will have a better understanding of what we are all dealing with here.

I recently ran across this simple but effective web program: NowDoThis.com (found via Zen Habits). It’s increased my productivity by helping me stay focused on my to do list tasks.

To use this program, follow these steps:

Click “edit list”.

Enter your to do list with the most important activities on top.

Click “save”.

Your top to do list item will show up.

Start working on it. Once you’ve finished it, click “done” and then the next item will show up.

Once you finish the to do list, you’ll get the reward of seeing the “All done” screen 🙂

Why This Web App Works

The reason I like this web app is it only shows you one thing on your to do list. This helps you stay focused until you complete that task.

NowDoThis goes through your to do list in a certain order. This forces you to figure out which activities are the most important. You can also look at your activities in terms of return on investment, or ROI. (Read here and here for a discussion on ROI of different blogging activities.)

Part of my problem with to do lists is oftentimes I had a lot of things on my list. Glancing at the list would be intimidating. I would think “Wow, I have a lot of stuff to do. How will I finish it all?” But the important thing with productivity is just gettiing started. NowDoThis helps me get started without worrying about the other tasks on the list.

By the way, if you’re like me and you open a lot of tabs while browsing the web, I would keep NowDoThis in a separate window by itself without other tabs. This technique helps me stay focused. When I didn’t keep NowDoThis in a separate window, I would often forget about the task at hand. I would get distracted by all the tabs I had opened.

If you want to increase your productivity when you’re on the computer, give this program a try. Also, please leave a comment and let me know how it works out for you.

[Update: Jason Calacanis has issued a correction. See “Update 2” below.]

Jason Calacanis, co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. and owner of Mahalo.com, has just posted an interesting Twitter message on his account: “sad:Just found out AOL is asking Weblogs,Inc. bloggers to blog 4 free.If that is true it is very unfair http://tinyurl.com/freeblogging“. Weblogs, Inc. is one of the most prominent blogging networks throughout the blogosphere, and if this is true, it could be a sign of rough times ahead for blog networks.

I’m sure this story will be developing with time. This could have serious impacts on various blogging networks, their employees, and questioning how much bloggers are truly worth. I’ll update this article if any additional news is released.

[Update 1: I should add that our sister site BlogHerald reported that Weblogs, Inc. blogers are only paid around $4 per post around 3 years ago. That is already a fairly low rate, and I’m thinking that Jason Calacanis is right.]

[Update 2: Jason Calacanis has made a correction and has informed me that it is the bloggers themselves, not AOL or Weblogs, Inc., who are blogging for free to try and protect their blogs.]

[Update 3: TechCrunch has just posted some in-depth coverage of this story.]

Liz Strauss, author of the Successful-Blog and one time contributor to Performancing.com will be hosting the equivalent of an auto show this weekend but for blogs. This is a great event if you are looking to meet new people while promoting your blog. The event will be held this weekend, July 26th-27th.

As Liz points out,

It’s FREE PROMOTION and visibility for your blog and your brand. It would be silly to pass it up.

Be sure to check out the details (blog-to-show-showcase-your-blog-at-successful-blog) on how to enter your blog into the showcase.