As the months have gone on, it’s become extremely difficult to keep updated with everyone’s blog that I read, by visiting each of them.

That’s where feed reading comes in handy.

What is a RSS feed?

To put it simply, it is the blogs content. By subscribing to each blogs feed, you can then keep track of them all at once. I use Google Reader, but there are many alternatives that act the same.

Why should I subscribe?

The main point is simple, ease. It’s easy to simply subscribe to a blog and then keep track of it on the same page all of the other blogs are. You can easily find out when its updated, and read all of the most recent entries within minutes. No need to wait for the site to load, guess when it is going to be updated, or wait for it to be delivered to your email.

The downside seems to be small. However, there is nothing small when it comes to traffic. Since Blog about your Blog has seen an increase of feed reader subscribers, we’ve seen a small decrease in regular traffic. That just means, those 40 people that used to visit the blog, now don’t really have to daily, unless to comment.

If traffic decreases, what is the benefit?

Most bloggers seem to like traffic, but more importantly, want their blog to be read. And when it’s read, they want it to be read by many. That’s always been my goal. I like knowing that 40(ish) people are going to read our content everyday. Not because they find it randomly, but because they want to. So by making your blog easy to add to feed reading, you are increasing the chance of that reader to come back and contribute.

Since the increase in subscribed readers, we have also experienced an increase in comments as well as participation in more bloggers.

How can feed reading be made easier?

If you haven’t installed the wordpress plugin for feedburner I suggest you do. Before the install, our feed count displayed under 10, now it displays 40. That is because not everyone was subscribed through feedburner. Now with the plugin, it directs all our feed readers through feedburner.

Not only does it better display the actual feedcount, but it also gives customized options to leave a comment, digg us, submit to reddit, and more.

If you are struggling to visit your favorite blogs everyday, check out their feed. If you don’t find one I suggest you simply ask. If not it is pretty easy to find out what their feed url is to subscribe to. If you haven’t made your feed available to your readers, you are already a step behind a lot of blogs.

If you’ve been blogging for a while I wonder if you even remember your first post?

Do you want to?

One of the blogs I write for uses the first post as the about us page (the text anyway). Whilst evaluating the blog for a redesign (time to clean out some of the cobwebs) I realised how far the blog has come in style and how many of the promised goals have been fulfilled. Fortunately the style has greatly improved! Some of the goals were realised whilst others were abandoned as the blog organically grew.

So my question to you gentle reader is this:

Is it better to jump into the blogging river by taking a flying leap or is it better to dip your toe in and plan to ease in nice and carefully?

I know which one sounds like more fun!

But fun doesn’t always mean right. If we continue to use my example then jumping in can be full of all sorts of danger. What if the water is too shallow or there are rocks or mutated fish that can suck the salt out of your blood like that thing on Star Trek?

What if someone reads your first post and decides they don’t like it? What happens if you say you’re going to post every day of the week but wind up only posting twice a week?? What if you change what you write about???

If it’s a personal blog my advice is simple. Take the fun path! Most readers are going to judge you by your last post anyway not one you did months ago.

When Star Trek Deep Space Nine came out its first season at times was dull, awkward and cringe worthy. I count DS9 as some of the best Star Trek ever filmed thanks to strong later seasons. Certainly don’t get me wrong there was lots of great stuff in that first season but there was more potential than anything else.

Just like your first post.

Jump in and write something! Tell everyone a bit about yourself, what you hope to do with the blog. But get blogging! Don’t let that hello sit there for a month. The best introduction to your blog will no doubt be your next post.

Lee

Quit Your Day Job
Crypt Hunter
Pop Culture Heroines

Next up – “Hi my business name goes here and this is my blog“

Rand8 is a new concept that takes user generated content such as blog posts, flickr images etc and publishes them in a monthly print magazine.

The magazine is created by users submitting and voting for stories in a digg like environment and at the end of each month, the top content is published. It would be pretty cool to have stories from my blogs published in a magazine.

This could be used as a powerful promotion tool. Not only will visitors find you through the “digg like” submission system but if any of your content is actually published you can expect a truck load of traffic.

The mag can be bought from Barnes and Noble and Amazon! The homepage of Rand8 can be found here and you can submit content here

My Blog Can Be Found at Go2Tap.com

Feve’s Blog is looking for a little more publicity, so buying a review from us is a great start.

The first thing I think when coming to this blog, it is still on blogspot *groan*. There are some successful blogs that stay on blogger, but getting your own domain is always a good idea.

The template is pretty simple, a regular blogger template. I would definitely invest in something custom, as well as a header. I don’t want a visitors first thought to be that it’s just another blogger blog. When I have a blog I am really trying to promote and progress, you want something that is your own. Therefore you personalize.

The theme obviously seems to be foreign, mostly chinese. I love the little bit of chinese on the page, like I mentioned, personalize. It’s good.
However if you are going to write about it, correct grammar is a must, especially in the title. Amreican & Chinese Culture, I’m not much for criticizing people for bad grammar or punctuation, but that’s pretty bad. I do like this article though, give it a look I’m a blogger, You’re a blogger,

“In short… be yourself, blog the net, and have fun.”

A lot of bloggers are starting to host competitions (us included) to try to spice things up on their blog. You can’t go wrong with giving things away *free*, especially money.

Nomar at King Nomar Dot Com is hosting a blog review competition, and the best review will get 25$. Just for your trouble, Nomar will also give you a backlink from his blog. Win or lose, everyone is a winner with a free link.

I am obsessed with stats, trying to set up Blog about your Blog to earn money, send traffic to our bloggers and essentially, be a better blog. Nomar is doing just that with his blog. Pretty impressive stats with a pretty simple blog. At the beginning of his competition he stated that his blog was 12,369 on technorati, 96,027 on Alexa and has a pagerank of 4.

He’s already seen success (assuming from his competition) by climbing almost 1,000 spots on technorati and 5,000 on alexa. Meaning more blogs are linking to him and he’s seeing more traffic from that.

Not only is his blog doing well, but his web directory is also growing. His featured links are cheap now as his directory grows, might want to consider getting a spot there cheap.

As I previously mentioned, King Nomar dot Com is simple, meaning his layout is clean and organized, simple. The theme is seemingly used a lot, but after installing a few plugins, he seemed to of made it his own.

Good luck to Nomar on his continued quest to climb the internet ranks, and his website directory (which this blog is a member of by the way). Don’t forget to check out his contest, you may get 25$ richer.

On online newspaper has just been launched for Brisbane (Queensland Australia) called Brisbane Times and the site will feature a number of blogs. Nothing unusual about that to be sure however it is the first opportunity for me as a new media professional to witness a group of mass media opinion blogs starting from scratch.

When setting up the blogs they have ensured that they have a head liner act, in this case it is the author John Birmingham whom I do love (and is a blogger – check out his personal blog here) in addition to several other blogs with various themes.

Amongst them there is a man’s perspective or I should probably better define it as a stereotyped ‘blokes’ blog. Another is a Sex and the City clone, both of these are tried and tested formulas and should pick up a following. It was another of the blogs that really caught my eye though and I must admit it’s through morbid curiosity that I have added it to my feed reader.

Viva Bris Vegas suffers (and to be fair I think they all suffer) from it’s own promises. This one promises that if it is fun that you like, this is the place. The blog is written by a gentleman named Conal Hanna and the site includes the “drinking, bar-hopping and clubbing” writers photograph. I’m sure Conal is a really nice guy and he probably does bar hop and go clubbing but that photo makes him look like an obvious ‘suit’.

If you are going to be writing about clubs, gigs and where to party in Brisbane I want to believe that you actually live it. The problem here is that I just don’t believe him. Not one word of it. It’s artificial.

None of these blogs feel real. It certainly isn’t the real life story of Sally as she makes her way through the dating scene. People aren’t following her tips on fashion as she sees it because the blog rings true and speaks from the heart of a single girl in the city.

We are being fed a plastic prepackaged product written by journalists designed to mimic an authentic blog. My advice to any news site that wants to launch a digestible natural product take a look at the existing talented bloggers already out there pounding the blog pavement.

Don’t try and grow a tomato in a lab when you can go and pick one from the vine!

I refuse to believe there isn’t a blogger out there writing about clubs and music in Brisbane already. In fact a less than exhaustive search of Google found the excellent brispop.com as one example (maybe Conal has contributed in the past as the site does have a lot of contributors).

So go and find a blogger who is living that life! Because the people out there in the Valley going to gigs and clubs aren’t going to buy your mass produced plastic posts!

This should be a lesson to the business community too, if you are going to enter the world of business blogging don’t just let someone in your PR department issue press releases and adverts as your blog. Go out and get someone who is experienced at writing blogs naturally or someone who is naturally an advocate or expert in your business.

If you can get both that’s great!!!

A final note I do wish the bloggers at Bris Times all the best they are doing their job and I hope their natural voices do come out!

Next up: Your first post – are first impressions that important (prob tomorrow or the next day)

I have often heard of mothers teaching their infants sign language so that the baby has more power to communicate before he/she is able to speak. I always thought it was a great idea and wanted to try it out with my own children. Of course when I had my baby real life got in the way and since it was a necessity I didn’t try it out. Then my sister had a deaf baby. He was born a couple weeks after my baby but we didn’t find out he was deaf for a couple months. Now that she knows he is deaf and can only hear 80% with hearing aids she is teaching him sign language so I have finally started to teach my daughter a few things. First of all, since I don’t know sign language I have had to learn a little in order to pass it on to my daughter. The greatest website  for this is the ASL (American Sign Language) website because you pick the word you want to learn and it shows you a mini movie of how to make the sign. I have also learned some signs from my sister. I have used some of these signs for many months with my daughter but it has just recently been that she has started signing them back to me. She is very good at signing the word more, coincidentally because she always wants more food. She also will sign the word milk. We are currently working on Please and Thank You and names of various foods we eat. She picked up milk really fast so I think she will catch on to these other signs fairly quickly. I just have to get in the habit of using the signs when we are saying those words. It has been really fun and it has made meal times a lot less stressful since she has been able to tell us when she wants more of something. I would recommend mom’s to try this out with their children that are not yet able to speak. It is a wonderful way to communicate with your child!