blogging — A Familiar Path

Sunday links

April 3, 2011 by Melissa Filed Under: blogging, daily life

I rarely take the time to blog on Sundays because we get up and run to church then we come home and have potluck dinner with my family then, if i’m lucky, i sneak in a nap before evening services. But today I’m home with a still sick Tess.

Today I’m going to share some links from my reading this week.

Blogging – Making Friends and Money. My friends Suzanne has written a series for new bloggers. If you just started blogging or want to start a blog and have questions. This series is for you. This is the last post, but she links to the others at the end.

Mer-ish. A local friend has started a blog. I don’t know of many people in this small area where I live who blog, so it’s neat when someone starts.

Bad Taste: Coke Products Withdrawn in St. Louis. You know my adoration for a cold can of Coke over ice every day. Well, yesterday on our way to yard sales, I opened my can, poured it over ice then was met with a shockingly horrible taste. It tasted like chemicals or what I presume poison would taste like. AWFUL! I googled it when I got home and this is what I found. But it’s only one can in my 24 pack because I’ve already had the others and they are fine. So weird and disturbing. Almost turned me off Coke forever!

Hey ya’ll thanks for linking up on my Saturday Morning Confessions post. I might add a linky next week. Is anyone interested?

{I started this post this morning while I was home alone with Tess. Turns out when you have to hold your kid the whole time you don’t get to do much typing. Finally finished at 4:17 this afternoon.}

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Winners and problems

March 10, 2011 by Melissa Filed Under: blogging, daily life

Winner of the Funky Polkadot Giraffe $20 store credit: Maury

Winner of the Ruffled Skirt: Wendy-Jannelle

The problem is, I can’t write on my facebook fan page and I was going to do some giveaways today over there. It’s so sad because I had high hopes of making it to 500 fans today (Ruthanne is snorting about this because I’m at 457 and she is doubtful that 50 people are going to randomly like me today.) Look, it could happen. (Ruthanne is here today with me and we are having so much fun eating homemade thin mints, chatting and being mean to each other).

Ruthanne has also informed me that there are real people behind facebook so I”m going to try to email one of them about the problem so those 50 people can hurry up and like me.

Instead of facebook, I am going to use Ruthanne’s guest post as my facebook page. Leave me a comment on that post (not this one). You can tell me what’s on your birthday list. I got an iphone. iLOVE it!

~~Go comment and I’ll pick one or three of you to win a $10 Amazon gift card.~~ winners have been selected.

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Twitter: What do I say?

March 5, 2011 by Melissa Filed Under: blogging

Is your opinion of what’s being said on Twitter like my husband’s opinion of Facebook?

“Everyone’s just talking about what they ate.”

Twitter can be intimidating when you first begin. No one is following you. You are following only about three people and you have no idea what to say. One way to find “your people” is to look at who other people are following. Find someone you like to talk to and check out their list. You might just find other people you know.

A note about following: I have a folder in my email where all my new Twitter follower notifications end up. I often fail to check these. What about you? And then when I do there are 50 new followers and I get overwhelmed and just delete all the emails. One way to make sure I know you are following me, or anyone else knows you are following them is to reply to them or send them a tweet.

To tweet to someone you use @ and then their username. But if you’re using Tweetdeck like we talked about in the first Twitter post, you can just hover over the person’s profile picture and use the controls that appear which will automatically add the @ and the username. Convenient, that Tweetdeck.

Ok, so now what to tweet. I have three simple steps to get you started. Fifteen minutes a day is all it takes. Set a timer. Go.

1. Share.

Twitter is all about sharing the love. Your friend just posted a link to her blog post. Retweet it. (Again, hover over the profile picture and the controls will appear). Or retweet someone’s really awesome tweet. Or retweet a business’s promotional tweet. You could also post a link to a great post you just read that day. I just installed a plugin that is supposed to supply an automated tweet to my current post. It’s in the upper right hand corner at the top of the post.

2. Reply.

Is someone asking for help and you know the answer? Reply. Someone wants to know your favorite recipe for cheese dip? Reply and include that link to the post you wrote about it. Or just jump in on a conversation about American Idol. That seems to be a hot topic sometimes and I never know a thing about it.

3. Promote.

Now that you’ve shared and replied, it’s time to toot your own horn. It’s ok to share your recent blog post, announce a new promotional item or talk about what’s going on in your life. Ask a question, make a comment, tell us what you just ate. It’s all fine.

Now you’re ready to go. Fifteen minutes a day. I dare you.