Spot On !
October 9, 2008 by Deb
Filed under A Dot Mom Blogs™
Part 4 in the series Dot Mom Blogs™
Today’s guest post is from “Bunnie” from Bunnie Blog and Goodbye Georgia. She blogs on Blogger and Word Press platforms. Today she talks about Blogger.
I started blogging in early 2007 at Bunnie Blog, which is on a Wordpress platform. I felt comfortable with it, mostly because I know a fair bit about web design, HTML and CSS. This year I wanted to start a new blog, but didn’t want to spend as much time setting it up and maintaining it as I do my main blog, therefore I chose Blogger for Goodbye Georgia.
A couple of months after my first Blogger experience, a friend of mine asked me to help her get a blog going. I knew she had no web experience, so I pointed her towards Blogger. I sent her an email with the web address and about three lines of instructions. She called me back within an hour to have me look at her fabulous, brand new blog. This is a perfect example of why Blogger is so awesome. There are so many people out there with something to say and share with the world, Blogger enables an entire sector of the population, with little web experience, to be seen and heard.
Blogger is the perfect (by the way, FREE!) solution for anyone with little to no web design experience or for someone who wants a quick and easy blogging platform. There is no need to download and install any software. You do not need to know how to FTP files to a server, in fact you don’t even need to maintain server space with a hosting company. The set up is quick and customizing the blog is very easy. Keep in mind that you will not have complete control over the blogs design, as you would if you used Wordpress, but that is kind of the point. I had Goodbye Georgia fully up and running in about a half an hour.
Now, don’t get me wrong, Blogspot comes with 16 basic templates, ready for you to use right out of the gate. However, if you do a Google search for Blogger templates, you are bound to find something that will perfectly suit you and your needs. Another quick Google search for Blogger Add-ons or Widgets returns a great varitey of links for further customizing of your blog.
One of the bigger advantages of using Blogger is the fact it is a product of Google, therefore the Google web crawlers like Blogger sites, which will afford you more traffic, stemming from Google searches. The only disadvantaged I have found is very minor. Your URL will be www.yourblog.blogspot.com. I personally prefer shorter URLs, because I want the web address to be short and easy for my readers to remember. This may have been more of a problem in the early days of blogging, but now .blogspot addresses are so common, it probably only makes a minor difference.
As an FYI, Blogger is also known as Blogspot and can be reached at www.blogger.com or www.blogspot.com, the names are interchangable.
Getting a blog started is much easier than you think it is, so get out there and share what you’ve got!
Bunnie is a, mother of two and wife of 17 years. Professionally she is an IT professional with a crush on the corporate culture of Zappos.She proudly served our country for 6 years as a member of the Airforce and currently is contemplating leaving Georgia for the bright lights of Vegas.
What blogging platform do you use? What advantages does it offer you versus another platform? Share your thoughts in the comment section.
Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You
July 17, 2008 by Deb
Filed under Perspicacity
Just a few more words on comments and blogging in general. And a warning about that blogthrax* commenter. (Otherwise known as a troll, impostor or worse). This all comes on the heels of a post over at Barking Mad and some flaming email and comments that Auds wrote about earlier this week.
Blogs and comments are great. (How’s that for an insightful thesis?) They allow us to socialize with 
others both inside our niche and in various other genres. If we’re in business, they allow us to maybe even promote our wares or do some online PR.
Back in January, a Pew Internet and American Life project study showed that over half of Internet users have never searched for themselves online. Now they are obviously not all blog owners, but I bet that statistic would still be pretty startling. If you’re curious, take a hike over to Google and do a search for yourself. Even if your blog is strictly for your personal pleasure, having a good reputation is imperative to your blogging success, and to ignore yours could be disastrous. There are a variety of steps you can take to keep a healthy rep. Let’s look at a few.
Your Own Online Presence
What better place to start working on building a positive reputation for yourself than your own site. I’m not going to get into the principles of design, (I’m clearly no expert in that area) but suffice it to say, have a well-designed site. This includes characteristics like usability and accessibility. (Note* save the music widgets and flash slide shows for My Space, please !)
Blog Commenting
Commenting on blog posts that relate to your niche is a great way to get quality links back to your site. (This should not come as news to most bloggers)
Positive comments are always encouraged, but there are times when you might not agree with what is being said and may feel obliged to contribute your own 2 cents. In these cases, do NOT be rude. It will only make you look bad and reflect poorly on your own blog. Remember, there is a good chance what you write will stay out there in cyberspace for an eternity waiting to come up in a search for your blog or name.
Only leave thoughtful, constructive feedback no matter how tempted you may be to disparage someone or cuss someone out. Remember what Mamma said, “If you can’t say something nice…”. Mariella at The Pen Is Mightier wrote a great post on blog arguments and how to handle them. This is true for both your own blog and comments on others, but the one thing you have to be careful of is a commenter who is out to make you look bad.
Sometimes, it is your own fault, and sometimes, the commenter is just being out of line, but either way it can be damaging to your online reputation. It is often tempting to defend yourself in either scenario, which can end up turning into a “flame war” which is always annoying to other readers. This will also reflect poorly on your reputation. Its easy to get wrapped into the flame war scenario, but the best advice I can give you is to step away from the keyboard.
If you feel passionately about your stance and can keep responses in a professional light, you can also keep your reputation in this light, but when your resort to insults, that is when it gets ugly.
So What’s A Poor Blogger To Do ?
First and foremost, if you know you are wrong, admit it. Readers will appreciate your honesty and accept that you are human and make mistakes just like everybody else.
If you feel that you are not wrong, but others insist that you are, the best thing you can do is provide as many facts and details that support your view and leave it at that. Again, if you keep it professional, you will probably not hurt your online reputation. You may lose a battle of “flames”, but you can rest easy knowing that you are the better woman and know that others that see your comments will understand what you’re about.
In the end, you’re really representing yourself however you want to. No matter what anybody else says to you or about you, you have the power to defend yourself and represent your blog and/or business professionally.
On the other side of the fence, Yvonne Russell wrote a humorous article on how to get other bloggers to hate you. Avoid these like the plague.
Now repeat after me. I’ll have a cheeseburger, fries and a glass of chardonnay.
Elephants, Peanuts and Pedophiles
May 22, 2008 by Deb
Filed under Our Kids, Perspicacity
There’s a pink elephant in the room, and I need to tell you about it.
I already have my armor on. So go ahead and send hate mail. But after listening again to Kathy Lee Gifford (yes THAT Kathy Lee Gifford)on the subject of Mommy Blogging. I’m inclined to agree with her. In the good old days, I’d watch her and Regis and listen to seemingly hours of chatter about her two kids, Cody and Cassidy. Somehow, on first take, I thought her ridicule of mommy bloggers putting out all sorts of information about their kids (pictures and all) was a bit hypocritical. On second take, ummm not so much.
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While KLG obviously is about as in touch as my 100 year old grand mother, she does make a point about privacy. I did a little googling of my own on one of the children of one of the famous bloggers and OMG. I’m not mentioning any names here, well because there’s already enough out there on this child. Come on ladies. Yes, KLG tossed out info on her kids a decades ago that no one would have dared to mention, but brother AL Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet (its a joke ladies). Now, one can google a face, an address, a phone number, and even find the house by satellite and map directions to the location. A little too much trouble for the average person, I think. But peophiles do just that, genuine predators spend hours just looking for kids and as mommy bloggers, putting out all this info, you’re doing nothing but helping them. Think about it. Sports teams when my son was playing ball, about 15 years or more ago, wouldn’t even put the kids names on the uniforms, for fear of someone invading the family’s privacy and the all too real chance of a kid getting snatched.
Our number one duty as mothers is to protect our children. In some instances, I think enough information is being posted about our children to lead the whack jobs straight to the front door! And if that’s not enough to get you, think of the same whack job with your child’s cute little pictures right on his desktop! Call me old fashioned, call me out of touch…but I think my kids and my family are worth more to me than posting a cute little picture on the web, complete with details for all to see. Why in the name of the good Lord would a mother do that?
