Category: Internet Savvy

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Bloggiesta Challenge: Generating Ideas for Blog Posts

Belle Wong has a great Bloggiesta mini-challenge:  how to create a treasure trove of blog post ideas. Since she is in the middle of a 365 days of blogging challenge, I figure she has to be an expert at coming up with new blog post ideas. I am going to give her suggestions a try.

Bloggiesta-S15Some ideas:

  • Brainstorm on a blank piece of paper and keep track of the ideas with promise
  • React to blog posts and news articles from other sources/social media
  • Use a blog topic generator like this one at HubSpot

I tried the blog post generator first because it seemed intriguing. I found out that rather than a blog post idea generator, it is more of a title generator because you have to supply it with three topic nouns. It might be useful when I’m trying to spruce up a title, though.

Plugging in tree, books, and children’s yields:

Screen Shot 2015-03-26 at 6.34.57 PMOkay, that was good for a laugh.

Lately, I have been running a weekly list of ideas in columns for each of my blogs, which helps keep me focused. Generally, I put the upcoming. more-polished posts at the top and topic ideas I’m working on further down. I used some of the brainstorming suggestions and came up with the following (no stealing, ha, ha):

creativity-info

This is about 2 weeks of posts. In addition to reacting to news articles, I also thought about upcoming holidays and events that I might feature, such as National Library Week and Arbor Day.

In case you are interested, here are links to some of my other blogs:  Growing with Science, Science Books for Kids, and family recipes at Your Individual Taste.

How do you come up with ideas for blog posts?

Regular readers:  I’m always open to suggestions for topics from you!

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Spruce Up for Spring with Bloggiesta

Do you have a blog, particularly a book blog? Time to get organized and energized with Spring 2015 Bloggiesta, running from March 23 -29, 2015.

Bloggiesta-S15

What is Bloggiesta? It is a wonderful opportunity to ramp up your blog, get organized, take challenges, and best of all, meet awesome new bloggers! If you are a Twitter addict, there will be a series of Twitter chat parties to look forward to, as well.

If you’d also like to sign up to participate in this Bloggiesta event, be sure to make a to-do list/landing page and then add your link to the Bloggiesta sign-up page.

This week is a particularly hectic one for me, so I’m going to concentrate on the mini-challenges. They are a great way to learn about new things to keep your blog lively and up to date.

To Do List:

✅ 1. Read the Twitter Chat Tutorial ASAP. I’m never sure how to best use Twitter, so this will be useful, especially if I find time to attend one of the chats.

Ah, there are apps to make Twitter chats easier to follow. I’m definitely going to try one.

✅ 2. Check out Trello for organization. You can never be too organized when it comes to blogging.

I like the color labels (visual cues) and links to calendars. Just might take organization to a new level.

✅ 3. Improve your Disquis experience? Sounds like something good to do.

Just wish Disquis would let you link to more that one website or blog in the profile. Anyone know how to do this?

✅ 4. Joy has an intriguing challenge about making and participating in memes. All the memes I have participated in the past have fallen apart or have been transformed into blogs. Might be time to take a fresh new look at them.

Success! I have an idea for a meme I’m quite excited about. No details right now because I want to pass it by a potential co-sponsor.

✅ 5. Can’t wait to work on a treasure trove of blogging ideas. (Here’s my post about it).

Now if there was only a challenge about finding time to complete all those ideas!

6. Add more items to this list as the week progresses.

Visit my Bloggiesta Wisdom Pinterest board for easy access to Bloggiesta challenge links.

 

Spring Blogging Challenges(Last time I learned about Canva for making images.)

Are you going to join in? I’d love to hear what you have planned.

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Adding a Comment on a (Blogger) Blog

While participating in the Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge this weekend, I have been leaving quite a few comments on blogs. What an experience!

Because one of the Bloggiesta challenges was to create an infographic using Piktochart, I decided to show (in a less-than-serious way) what leaving a comment on a Blogger blog is like for a WordPress user.

Adding CommentThose are screenshots from an actual attempt to leave a comment using my WordPress profile.

To Blogger users:  including the Name/URL option makes it easier for non-Blogger users to comment.

Final solution:  I eventually revived my old Blogger profile, although I still lose comments the first time.

 

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While leaving comments was a challenge, Piktochart is the most fun I’ve had in ages. It is very easy to learn. I had made my first infographic in minutes.  I recommend it!

 

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It is Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge Time

It is Bloggiesta mini-challenge time again, running from Jan 17 – 19, 2015.

bloggiesta-miniw15

What is Bloggiesta? It is a wonderful opportunity to clean up your blog, get organized, take challenges, and best of all, meet awesome new bloggers! For example, I just found out about the Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge at Snowdrop Dreams (encompasses some 339 books!) I love Bloggiesta!

If you’d also like to sign up to participate in this Bloggiesta event, be sure to visit the Bloggiesta sign-up page.

Part of the process is to create a To Do List for the long weekend. Here is mine:

For each of my blogs I plan to:

✅ 1. Check stats to see which posts are popular right now (to help guide future planning).

✅ 2. Make a list of New Year’s Resolutions/goals for the upcoming year.

If you’ve never done this before, Books Speak Volumes has an excellent list of resolutions from 2014

3. Update my editorial calendars.

4. Write at least two new blog posts and schedule them.

✅ 5. Check all the links in sidebars and archives.

✅ 6. Make a list of updates needed to archives (too many to finish in one weekend)

✅ 7. Create a new Pinterest board for each blog or add new pins to established boards. (Is there a way to send new posts to a Pinterest board automatically? Should I consider doing this?)

✅ 8. Check the automatic feeds to all social networks. Look through Networked Blogs and Hootsuite for ways to update and energize automatic feeds.

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+

9. Add newest book reviews to Goodreads.

✅ 10. Do a suggested Bloggiesta mini-challenge.

11. ***Visit blogs that sign up for the challenge and leave a lot of comments! *** (Find out why having trouble leaving comments on Blogger blogs? – Note:  Just found out that leaving name/URL works best on Blogger, if available.)

Wow, I feel energized just creating this to do list. Can’t wait to dust the cobwebs off my blogs and get organized!
Friday: the mini-challenges were posted.  I just created a new Pinterest board for all the challenge links, called:  Bloggiesta Wisdom.

Are you going to join in? I’d love to hear what you have planned.

 

cleaning_tools(Public domain clip art from wpclipart)