Blogging with Beth

John O'Donohue Poem

I regularly listen to a radio show called "Speaking of Faith" on NPR, and last year I discovered that the show is also available as a podcast.  Now I carry it around with my in my iPod!  A few months ago, at a time when I really, really needed it, I had the good luck to be listening to a very special episode of SOF that featured host Krista Tippett's interview with the late John O'Donohue, who was an extraordinary Irish author and poet.  During that show, they included a recording of Mr. O'Donohue reading his poem, Beannacht, which is still one of my all-time favorite poems.  Would love to hear this included in a wedding ceremony someday. 

Click here to listen to Mr. O'Donohue reading this poem and see a slideshow of Irish scenes (video created by SOF producers).

You can listen to the interview in its entirety, which is called "The Inner Landscape of Beauty", here. 

Read the Speaking of Faith blog here.

Why Wordpress is Great

Bethany Siegler of UniqueThink Marketing just published the slides from her recent presentation on Wordpress, which outlines the main reasons why Wordpress is a great tool for building blogs as well as regular websites.  I'm a big fan of Wordpress, and have been doing more and more site development using their terrific, user-friendly content management platform.  Check out her presentation here:

Its Wordpress Presentation - Updated June 2009

View more OpenOffice presentations from Bethany Siegler.

Blogging for Translators

Corinne McKay took my "Promoting Your Book Using Social Media" class last year, and it convinced her to start a blog to promote her book, How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator.  She subsequently launched a terrific blog called Thoughts on Translation. 

She writes timely, relevant content for translators and other freelancers, and publishes approximately twice a week.  Her posts also spark terrific conversations, which you can read in the comment section of each post.  This article on Diversifying your Income Stream received 17 comments:

"Happily, most successful translators are good candidates for branching out beyond translation. If you’re running a successful freelance business, chances are that in addition to being fluent in at least two languages, you’re a good or excellent writer in your target language and you’re reasonably tech-savvy. All of these are good starting points for a sideline venture."

Corinne also says that starting her blog is the best thing she's done for her business, and for promoting her book. She has now started a new podcast for translators called Speaking of Translation. 

Great work, Corinne!

Why "Bad News" from the NY Times May Actually Be Good News in Disguise

The New York Times recently published an article on abandoned blogs called "Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest".  In a nutshell, it says that many bloggers don't stick with blogging.  The article says:

"According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled."

So overall, that's not such great news.  Most blogs get abandoned because the blogger tires of writing, he/she feels like they want to go back to living a life out of the public spotlight, or because the blogger gets frustrated that she's not getting enough traffic. 

But the golden nugget of good news it that if you DO stay with blogging, and pay regular attention to your blog, you're doing better than 95% of the blogs out there.  That's pretty astounding!  If you make a post more often than every 120 days - FOUR MONTHS - you will keep gaining traffic, grow your audience, and you'll be well on your way to becoming a successful blogger. 

In the meantime, you can increase your odds of getting heard by concentrating on your content, promoting your posts in appropriate ways, and participating in the public conversation by regularly commenting on other people's blogs. 

In the world of blogging, it's the classic tale of the tortoise and the hare.  Just keep going, slow and steady!

Great Little Video on Making a Podcast

If you're a podcaster or you'd like to create one, I definitely recommend taking a gander at this clever little video by essayist, humorist and podcaster Sharon Glassman and filmmaker Cori Chavez.  I hope these gals do a bunch of these videos, because podcasting can be a terrific marketing technique and there's a lot of topics they can cover to help people get started!

This video is also a good example of how to do a great, memorable little video. It was a purpose, it imparts great advice and instruction, it's funny, and it's very likely to get passed on from person to person. Thanks, Sharon and Cori!

Turning Your Blog Into a Book

Authors and would-be authors, take note - it is absolutely possible to turn your blog into a b0ok and get publishers to buy it.

I work with a lot of authors in my coaching business, and one of the biggest questions I get asked is "Am I going to get in trouble with a potential publisher if a lot of the material in my book has already been published on my blog?"  I used to a give a tentative "no" answer, with some caveats and disclaimers.  Then it moved to a slightly-less-tentative "no".  I told people that smart publishers are figuring out that authors who have developed big fan bases by blogging turn out to be GREAT authors - and their books really sell. 

Now I tell my authors to blog away with no hesitation whatsover, and that blogging can help them build exactly the kind of big reader base that many publishers are looking for these days.  I can cite many, many examples of books that have recently published that are comprised almost entirely of re-mixed and re-edited material that had already being published on a blog. 

Cases in point:

Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...And How You Can Too by Shauna James Ahern (who blogs at Gluten-Free Girl)

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott (who blogs at Web Ink Now)

Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions by Christian Lander (who  blogs at Stuff White People Like)

All three of those books are made up of previously-published blog material, and they are all terrific reads.  And for those of you concerned about the size of your possible advance - take note that Christian Lander actually received a $300,000+ book deal for his book, which is one of the largest deals ever for a previously unpublished author.

And in case there's still any doubt in your mind, notice that Heather Armstrong, author of the wildly popular blog Dooce, just announced that her new book (again, comprised almost entirely of edited material from her blog), It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita is available for pre-order.  It is currently #1 in Amazon's "Motherhood" category, #4 in "Family Relationships" and #221 overall - it's that's just in PRE-ORDER.

Authors, you can blog your heart out and then find a perfect publisher for your blog-book.  Stop hesitating now and start blogging!

Beautiful Snapshots from Santa Fe

A blogger recently registered for one of my teleseminars, and I followed a link in her email signature back to her beautiful blog, Bird's Eye View.  Elsa Kendall take breathtakingly crisp, clear photos of her life and home, like the one she posted on New Year's Day.  Keep reading and you'll find yourself wanting to visit her and her funny cat in Santa Fe.

She also makes pretty amazing jewelry, which she sells at her Etsy Shop.  

Check out Elsa and prepare to be wowed. 

How to Make Money with Your Blog

I've turned my recent teleseminar, "Making Money with Your Blog" into a downloadable product you can access any time you like!

This class is packed with information and options for monetizing your blog.  During this one-hour teleseminar, we discussed:

• Questions to ask yourself before monetizing your blog  
• Affiliate marketing
• Pay-per-click campaigns
• Pay-per-impression ad networks
• Selling your blog content
• Indirect ways of making money with your blog, including book deals
• Ways to get the most out of your money-making efforts, no matter which monetizing options you choose
• How driving traffic to your site can help your blog income grow

This immediately downloadable product includes an hour-long MP3 audio file, an accompanying PDF handout, and a web page of live links that go with the class (including numerous links to ad networks and affiliate programs to get you started with making money with your blog).    

Get all this via immediate download for only $19.95.

Buy now using your credit card or Paypal!

A Great Little Post on Social Networking

The folks over at Click to Client put up an excellent, succinct post recently about how Facebook, Linkedin and other social networking sites work - mainly, you get OUT of it what you put INTO it. I was nodding and smiling the whole way through the post, and I'm considering making it mandatory reading for any client that wants me to help them launch a social media campaign.  Check it out here. 

I Don't Want My Mother Reading This.

I get a lot of questions about what people should and shouldn't post on their blogs.  Here are three questions, all related:

•  I’d really like to have a place to spout off about some relatives that drive me bonkers.  Can I start another blog for this and never disclose that it exists?

• Can I safely assume that if I don’t give away its location, potential employers will never find my personal blog, in which I talk about my wild personal life?

• If I write a blog about how much I hate my job, do I need to worry about my employer finding it?

I heard a great rule of thumb a few years ago regarding these types of quandaries, and I follow that rule every single time I put up a new post or start another blog.  When you're writing anything on your blog, consider what would happen if the person you'd be most horrified about reading that post would read it.  The person in front of whom you'd feel embarrassed or humiliated.  Or the person whose feelings would be most hurt if they found out you were writing about them.  Or the person who could cause you the most legal problems.

Then decide if you can live with the consequences if that person DOES see it.  Because she eventually MIGHT see it - in some cases, it's likely she will.  If you can't live with the consequences, don't publish those lines of text that are leaping out of your hot little fingers onto the keyboard.

If your name is attached to it, you can safely assume that it will be found – and read – by the very people you’re writing about.  People manage to find EVERYTHING, and since search engines love blogs, your “secret” blog will rise to the surface quicker than you'd think.   And before anyone gets their undies in a bunch complaining that there’s no privacy on the Web, remember this – it’s the WORLD WIDE WEB.  When you publish a blog, you’re publishing a web page to the world.  That’s how it works, and you cannot expect to maintain any secrecy when you’re publishing publicly. 

That being said, here are some options if you still want to publish your thoughts -

1.  By using free, hosted services like Wordpress.com or Blogger (and blogging under an assumed name), you can take your best shot at blogging anonymously.  If you do this, you will need to set up an entire account under that new name.  You should also use the service’s domain name (i.e. MyAnonymousBlog.wordpress.com).   If you must use your own domain name, use a proxy service with your registrar so people can’t see the domain belongs to you.  I don’t recommend using paid blogging services like Typepad, because you’ve got to give the service your name for payment processing, and that’s one more way the blog can be traced back to you. 
- OR -
2.  Password protect your blog.  Most services will either let you password protect the whole blog and/or certain pages on the blog.  Give the login and password only to the people you want, thus assuring that you won’t get any eyes on the page that you don’t want.  This is what I’d recommend for most people, rather than writing under an assumed name and staying up at night wondering if your fake name will be traced back to you.

So my advice is - don't put it online without password protection (under your name, anyway) unless you're okay with it becoming public.  As for those rants and raves you really want to make, but you don’t want anyone you know to hear them?  Pick up a pen and put ‘em in a diary.  I’m a big fan of those. 

Okay, I’m climbing off my soapbox now.  Happy blogging!