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Interesting distinction between blogging and writing articles. Kevin O'Keefe's blog on January 16, 2014 Blogging is done to engage others in a conversation by recognizing the post is one in a series on a topic. Writing an article is to get your point of view out there. Excerpt: I have always viewed blogging as all together different than writing an article. Blogging is a conversation where by listening to relevant discussion you engage those in the conversation. Social media consultant, Jayne Navvare (@jaynenavvare), made the point as well as anyone in her post today. If you want to post "articles" to the web using a blog platform, fine, but do not confuse that with blogging. Articles are static. Blogging is dynamic. Bloggers do more than just write posts. They socialize. Articles are one way. I write it. I distribute it. You read it. Think magazines, newspapers, and newsletters. Circulation and eyeballs are measures of success. Blogs engage. Blogs mix it up with readers and other bloggers. Relationships and word of mouth reputation are measures of success.

"A comment on Joho's (Dave Weinberger) blog post--a memoir of blogging--bySuw Charman-Anderson, January 9, 2014. Excerpt: " I wonder too if my lack of blog writing is related to a lack of blog reading. My RSS reader became so clogged that I feared it, wouldn't open it, and ultimately, abandoned it. And then Twitter and now Zite arrived to provide me with random rewards for clicking and swiping, showing me stuff that I had no idea I wanted to read. Instead of following the writings of a small cadre of smart, lovely people whom I am proud to call my friends, I read random crap off the internet that some algorithm thinks I might be interested in, or that is recommended by the people I follow on Twitter. That may or may not be a good thing. We were all aware of the problems of homophily, and the random clickage does help combat that. But the problem with not following people's blogs closely is that there's no conversation anymore. My blogs used to host great conversations, and I would happily engage in fascinating discussions on other people's sites. You can't do that so easily with Twitter, and Facebook. Indeed, most of my interactions on Facebook, which are scarce as I loathe it, end up being pointless arguments with friends-of-friends who turn out to be idiots. I'd love to see a resurgence in blogging. I think, personally, I need to delete Zite from my ipad and find a good RSS reader so I can follow the blogs of those people that I really care about. Not the worthy blogs I ought to read, but the works of people who matter to me. And then I need to get back to commenting, like this, because there's nothing more encouraging than finding out that people care about what you write, that people appreciate it. And David, I really do appreciate your writing - you're as inspiring and fascinating now as you were back in 2001! "

Blog post by Lisa Lane early this month (November 2012 explaining to another online instructor how she built a system for aggregating students' blog posts that may be relevant to WLStudio series and "sharing" activities? She uses FeedWordPress. Excerpt: "Participants set up their own blog wherever. Then I need to get the feeds from those blogs into the Pedagogy First! aggregated blog, using FeedWordPress. I use the Add Link widget (yes, I know it's old) so participants can add their own, and have provided more extensive instructions for them about blogs and feeds. In particular, we want people who post on many subjects to not only use the "potcert" tags for their posts, but use the feed for that tag only. This is so only their class-related posts show up on the class blog. The back end of this process is a little more complicated. When participants enter their information in Add Link, it goes directly into the Blogroll. The Blogroll is what feeds into FeedWordPress as a default. I customize the titles of feeds and the names of participants to use their real names for everything. I change the titles of feeds by going into FWP's Syndication area and using Feeds & Updates. Using the drop down menu to bring up a particular blog, I change the title and click manual control so it doesn't revert back the next time the feed updates. When I do this, it seems to update automatically in the Links area. Then I go to Users and make sure their names are their full names by editing them individually."

"Are you looking for the latest blogging tactics? Do you want to know what the blogging pros are doing today? Keeping up with the latest social media changes is not always easy, and your blogging tactics may need to be refreshed. We asked 39 blogging pros to share the best blogging tips and tactics worth doing today. Here's what they have to say."

This blog post is great, Lyn. We are starting to adopt some of these practices...would like us to review them all and see which ones we should start sooner rather than later.

"Phew! Talk about pressure. Writing a blog post about how to write a perfect blog post is the most meta of burdens. It's a bit different than writing about perfect tweets or ideal Facebook posts. There's nowhere to hide when you're blogging about perfect blogging. So I hope you'll still trust the advice here even if you don't find this post itself to be flawless. I'm sure we'd all love for each of our blog posts to be absolute perfection-however it is that you measure perfection-so I researched all the necessary info to get us started on the path to perfection. I'll cover headlines and length and visuals and so much more below. How close are you to creating the perfect post already?"

blog post in 2005 about how difficult it was to keep up with all the blogs! "I don't want to lie any more. I don't want to feel guilty any more. So let me tell you flat out: There are too many blogs I like and too many people I like to making "keeping up" a reasonable expectation, any more than you should expect me to keep up with Pokemon characters or I should expect you to keep up with Bollywood movies. I'm not going to feel guilty any longer about my failure. I will read your blog on occasion, either because I've been thinking of you or because something reminded me of you. Maybe it'll be because you sent me an email pointing to a post you think I'll enjoy. Go ahead! I'd love to hear from you."

"I learned this the hard way with KISSmetrics. When we first started our blog, we were quickly able to get it to over 100,000 visitors a month, but we weren't generating any extra sales from that traffic. In fact, we weren't generating any sales at all. Because of blogging costs, I had no choice but to figure out how to make it a profitable channel. I did the same for a handful of other corporate blogs and learned a few tricks that can help any blog convert visitors into customers. Here are 9 ways you can get your first online sale from your corporate blog:"

Copyblogger post by Henneke Duistermaat, July 2014. "Follow these steps: Over the next five days, block 30 minutes for reviewing your blog. On day one, create a profile of your favorite fan. On day two, write down your blog purpose and discover why your fans come to your blog. On day three, think about your favorite fan and write down at least 30 blog topics that he'd love to read. On day four, review your blog promotion strategy. How can you reach more people in the time available to you? Which activities can you cut? How can you experiment? On day five, consider your email strategy. How can you build a closer relationship with the fans on your list?"

Beth's Blog, June 4, 2012 Excellent ideas on leading a blog carnival to ensure that key blog posts and discussions are viewed by large #s of people. Think this is very relevant to Studio's work.

Blog by Kevin O'Keefe, "Real Lawyers Have Blogs," on the topic of the law, firm marketing, social media, and baseball, February 23, 2014. O'Keefe reviews a study by Gerry Moran on using social media to teach, not to sell. Other key points that O'Keefe makes: Build a large social network of people modeled after your customers and their influencers. 75% of B2B decision makers use social media to learn. (wonder where this stat comes from?) Pass on valuable information. Don't use your social media and networking channels to promote yourself. You want to be known for handing out knowledge and not brochures. Use social so that people will want to visit with you in person. 73% of customers are willing to engage with you on social media, so the opportunity is there. Use social media to teach, not sell. Selling is best done face-to-face. However, Social Media Today reports B2B buyers look at an average of over 10 digital resources before ever making a purchase. Since customers need to learn before they buy, use this opportunity on social media to connect. Teach and connect with today's technology. Connect and get on the radar of your customers and potential networks by retweeting, sharing, commenting and favoriting others' content. Develop Insights. Before you teach and connect with your customers, you need to listen to the customer and their customers. Social is an excellent listening tool. Be a publisher. In addition to curating and passing on the great content to your network, create your own assets on a blog. Organizations who blog get clients. Later Excerpt: Over the years LexBlog as been all about helping lawyers understand how to use the Internet in a real and effective fashion so as to grow their practices. By sharing information from third parties along our own insight via blogs and other social media we established a reputation as trusted advisors. Even when I reach out to meet with lawyers and law firms I have never met f

blog on not blogging 20.24.2016

Interesting blog post for removing ability to comment on blog posts at Copyblogger by Sonia Simone, 4/2014. Seems that conversation has shifted from blogs to other venues such as Google+ and Twitter ... Copyblogger wants to shift comments to author's blog sites. Final reason is to get out from under the spam which they estimate is about 95% of the comments posted. This "experiment" as they called it interests me because it seems to elevate the role of aggregation tool to scan the web for references to one's work on a regular basis. And it is in line with some of the cMOOC approach--to let the conversation occur anywhere, then capture and make sense of it afterwards.

"Running a blog is so much more rewarding when you know people are reading, enjoying and sharing your work. If you're managing a blog as part of your business, you probably want people to find and buy your products through your blog, as well. So increasing subscribers is an important task for bloggers. These are some fairly simple hacks that you can implement without too much fuss, which should boost your subscriber numbers. 1. Lower your bounce rate - here is how"

Excellent blog post on why we should blog--if you get discouraged read this blog post by Joshua Becker, Becomingminimalist

Great blog post by Corey Erldon on why blogging is good, Hubspot, November 6, 2013.

"Yet I can also appreciate that, with so much being written out there by so many in so many places, and so little time for reading it all, the opportunity to have one's blog be a place for important conversations has diminished. But I think blogs are still the premier means and place for documenting 'unedited' substantive original thought - new ideas, analysis, synthesis, models, and new perspectives. It's sad that much of this important thinking is now lost in the deluge of glib quotes and trivia and news of the moment, and not read because of our frantic pace of life and our endemic attention deficit disorder. But it will still be there when it's ready to be discovered. And as you say in the meantime it will continue to help us formulate and learn and articulate our knowledge and beliefs and ideas, and so equip us to be of more use to the world."

good tips for writing blogs including writing the blog in the time allowed by your unplugged computer working on its battery

I subscribe to Ramsey's Blog Tyrant blog and found this case study interesting. Although this is blog promotion, it seems as if it would be site promotion as well. Good info about Google Ads and Facebook ads and the return from them. Good information about the conversion of emails to subscribers and users, and the use of give aways. Most important - good content or no matter what you do people unsubscribe.

Some good lessons on marketing, content, conversions, launching or relaunching

Excellent blog on valuable July reads by Jane Hart led me to this blog post by Thomas Handcock and Warren Howlett, July 29, 2014, CEB Blogs, a very good discussion of building productive learning cultures. They recommend three steps: 1. Right size opportunities (which on the surface sounds fine but then they say that the "best organizations limit learning opportunities to those that are most relevant to employees and impactful for the organization but then rely on their (HR's) determination of learning needs (how do employees express their learning needs in this scenario? how does it support ownership and spontaneity beyond annual surveys? Of course they are talking about BIG corporations.) and "learning maturity" which sounds condescending to me) 2. Advance the organization's learning capability (most of this rings truer to me than #1 but it may be that my perception of what they say in #1 is slanted and hypersensitive). Here they talk about "teaching employees how to learn." "this lack of learning aptitude is primarily a capability issue, not a matter of employee motivation." 3. Foster shared ownership of the learning environment (which overcomes much of my objection to what they say in #1)

Blog post by Euan Semple, December 30, 2013, curated by Harold Jarche. Excerpt: "It's not about marketing, or SEO, or "going viral". It is not about internal "enterprise social" or external "social media" It is not even about the platforms or tools on which you choose to write. It is much simpler and much more powerful. It is about developing our awareness, our communication skills, and our collective intelligence. It is about thinking harder and writing better. Blogging is a means by which to rediscover your voice, to learn to share your thoughts with others, and by doing so to help us all get smarter faster. "