Toluu : Blogging Basics 101

Blog Blazers by Stephane Grenier ($16.95)

I received Blog Blazers in December and was asked to write a review and share my thoughts with you. (Full disclosure: If you click on the link to buy Blog Blazers from Amazon.com, I will receive a few pennies from the sale.)

Blog Blazers is a compilation of interviews with 40 bloggers. My initial thought was that

Blogging Basics 101 Will Return January 5, 2009December 24 2008

holidaybreak I am officially on holiday. I am taking a break to spend time with visiting family. In the coming weeks, I won’t be idle; I have many post ideas I want to write and screencasts to record. When I return on January 5, 2009 I will have new content and advice for you! In the mean time, I wish you happy holidays and truly joyous new year.

I’m Speaking at Blissdom ‘09!December 22 2008

I am presenting on a panel with Shannon from Rocks In My Dryer at Blissdom ‘09. I would love it if you would come too! Here is a synopsis of what Shannon and I will be discussing:

Shannon Lowe and Melanie Nelson will give beginning bloggers some solid advice on building a strong foundation for your blog: choosing a platform, establishing a voice and identity, participating in the community, and much more. We’ll talk about some of the common pitfalls beginners make, and how you can avoid them. We’ll leave plenty of time for questions–and there are NO stupid questions here!

What is Blissdom? Well, here’s a little bit from their web site:

BlissDom is YOUR conference. It was developed for bloggers by bloggers.

We are bringing those bloggers you always wanted to meet and mingle with, right to you, to answer all your burning questions about writing, social media, marketing, and–yes–even book deals.

We’ve developed sessions for two levels of bloggers - Apprentice and Maven - so each

Advice: Writing Well and Increasing Traffic to Your BlogDecember 22 2008

I recently found some notes I took from an interview Darren Rowse (Problogger) did this summer with The Blog Squad and thought I’d share them with you. He has some basic, but unbelievably useful tips. The following are my notes and thoughts from his interview in August.

Writing Good Content

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times in a thousand different ways: People want good content. Content is King. Write well.

The reason you hear that advice over and over is because it’s true. But how do you write well? Be useful and cater to your audience.

Usefulness. This will mean different things to different people and will be different within different niches. Usefulness could be information, community, advice, entertainment, etc.
Cater to your audience. What is it they are looking for when they come to your blog? Give it to them.

In addition, I cannot stress enough how important it is to try to be grammatically correct. We all make mistakes, but editing your writing will help you appear more polished. The more pol