2009 Blog Improvement Project - Week #5 Social Media Carnival

March is the Social Media Carnival for the 2009 Blog Improvement Project, and the first task is to write about how you use a social media tool to improve your blog.

I think this project will be very helpful. I have to admit that my experience with social media is very uneven. Some of the topics mentioned I have never really heard of or if I have heard of them, I certainly haven't understood them, except to see little buttons or links on various websites.

I know we have had a few bloggers posting their reports on Facebook or Twitter, but upon reflection, those are the only social media that I use regularly to give any true opinion on. I do use both and I do feel both have merit and are not the same in their uses or merits. I will try to give some insight on each one, perhaps in a two-part blog post. So let's start with Facebook.

I have already posted a bit on Facebook and basically Facebook is a virtual social experience. Once you sign up for an account, you begin to develop your space there by entering various information in your profile, uploading pictures (if you want), posting links and notes about things of interest to you, and the ability to play games and trade virtual gifts. It is probably even more complex than that, but let's keep it simple. I have said before that Facebook is what you make of it. You can keep your profile as public or private as you want. Mine is set fairly private with only people I actually "friend" having access to my profile and anything on it. Even though my profile is set that way, I also keep my contact information down to a minimum, just my blog address and my email address. If you are very security conscious, you can even remove yourself from being found by searching. I do think being that restrictive will seriously restrict the social media aspects.

I think the thing Facebook does best is to allow you to connect with others in an easy-to-use format. I did read Jack's instructions on ways to promote your blog via Facebook. You can find her post here on her Slightly Off-Center Blog. That is a great use for Facebook. It may be a way to provide more of a Brand or presence on the internet. However, I am still undecided on having my own page. I guess to me it seems a bit narcissistic to create a page for fans to seek me when it feels like few people even know my blog exists. This may be my own therapy issue, but for now I don't intend to pursue this at the moment.

The main ways my blog and my Facebook page interact is to provide (1) another place for people to find my blog; and (2) another way for readers to easily read my content. Number one is done simply by having my blog address listed in my profile. Number two is done by automatically importing my blog posts as they are published to my blog. This is done via the Notes application on Facebook itself.

If you want to be able to automatically import in your blog posts as you post them to your blog, here are some instructions:

(1) Head to the "My Notes" page once you have logged in to Facebook from the home page.

(2) Cllick on "Import a Blog" in the Notes Setting box.

(3) Enter the URL or RSS feed of your blog in the form provided. Be sure to select the box confirming your ownership rights and click the "Start Importing" link.

(4) Confirm that Facebook found the correct blog and choose to "Continue" or "Cancel" depending on the results.

(5) Facebook will now automatically add your new blog posts as notes on your profile.

You can also set the privacy level of your notes by doing the following:

(1) Log in to Facebook and go to the "My Privacy" page (see Resources below).

(2) Edit the settings for the "Friends, Notes, and Facebook Development Platform" section.

(3) In the Notes section, use the drop-down box to select the level of privacy you want your notes to have. The default setting is that everyone on Facebook can see your notes. Be sure to 'Save' your changes.

(4) Go to the "My Notes" page and "Edit Notes Privacy." Since you are importing your blog to Facebook, you will need to change the privacy levels of the notes if you don't want everyone to read them.

(5) Choose exactly who you want to comment on or subscribe to your blog. The default is that anyone who can see your blog can post comments. You may want to turn comments off entirely, so people head to your external blog to add their comments.

I do enjoy Facebook in general, but admit I haven't utilized it to truly maximize my blog promotion. I think that this may be due to the fact that I do like to use Facebook as a forum to connect with my friends rather than develop a business. Although then again, I see my blog as a tool for self expression rather than a business. In closing, I wanted to make sure I answered all of Kim's questions regarding Facebook and my blog. She asked the following:

How do you use this particular tool to improve your blog or relationship with other bloggers? I don't think I have used Facebook for this and that may be a mistake. I am not sure how easy it is to find bloggers you have never heard about directly on Facebook. However, it is a cool place to gather with a group of friends you already know.

How do you balance time between blogging and using social media? This is tough, but I think it is no different than balancing time between blogging and living. You allocate time to each and stay within your limits!

What are some specific things you wish you'd known before you started your chosen your new tool? For me, I wish I could have know how addictive Facebook is but even so I probably would still have jumped in.

2009 Blog Improvement Project - Week 4 Blog Basics

This week's topic in the Blog Improvement Project is Blog Basics. Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness wrote: "...when a new reader gets to your site, how easy is it for them to find out basic information about you and what your blog is about?" She suggested we explore updating our "About Me" page, contact information, picture, blogroll, archives, or RSS feed subscription.

I did do much of this work this past week. I took a suggestion from Kim and added my email address to my blog. I learned how to use Feedburner to add a way to subscribe to my RSS feed via email. I explored ways to access my archives including a search box.

The only official suggestion I am still working on is a blogroll. I do like the idea, but I feel overwhelmed with locating all the blogs I read and putting them in one place. I think I will work on this project but it will take me a while to do so. I don't use any regular readers so I have no systematic way of finding them all easily. I do agree that just putting them on my blog in a blogroll might even help me visit my favorite blogs more regularly.

So that's my progress on Blog Basics and I promise to make continuous improvement my ongoing goal.

2009 Blog Improvement Project - Week 3 Blog Post Bingo

Week 3 of the 2009 Blog Improvement Project is a little something called Blog Post Bingo. Kim shared many references with descriptions of various types of blog posts. She then listed 10 types of blog posts and asked everyone to try to write as many of these different kinds of posts over the next two weeks. They even had a contest with prizes, which I missed since I only found the BIP this week. I thought about just skipping this week so I could move on to week 4, but on second thought, decided that to be fair, I should attempt the exercise anyway. I am going to amend the project a bit to include various blog posts I have already written as well as one I wrote primarily for this project week.

The 10 types of posts were:

A Link Post - share a series of links your readers might find interesting (I think my post on kid's television is a link post as I do provide links to associated info.) http://thementalmom.blogspot.com/2009/02/childrens-television-that-parents.html

A Short Post - less than 200 words
http://thementalmom.blogspot.com/2008/11/gratitude.html

A List Post - simple as it sounds, a list of some sort
http://thementalmom.blogspot.com/2008/11/suggestions-for-finding-that-elusive.html

An Opinion Post - take an event, news, or another blog post and share your opinion on it http://thementalmom.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-do-we-expect-reality-shows-to.html

A Poll or Question Post - post a poll or ask your readers a specific question for feedback (I have toyed with asking questions in a post, but no real polls. I will have to figure out how to do this over the next year.)

A How-To Post - You’re an expert in something; big or small, share how to do it (I think my recipe is a bit of a how to.)
http://thementalmom.blogspot.com/2009/02/great-weeknight-recipe-sausage-and.html

A Long Post - more than 700 words (I thought this one would be easy as I tend to write more than I need to at times, but guess I will need to work on this in the future.)

A Review Post - self-explanatory, I think :)
http://thementalmom.blogspot.com/2009/02/my-stroke-of-insight-brain-scientists.html

A Definition Post - show your expertise about a topic related to your blog (I am not sure I have put myself out as an expert in anything thus far on my blog. I tend to use this blog for self expression and shy away from aspects related to my career and any expertise. I know that is a cop out, but I can work on this type of post over the next year too.)

FREE SPACE - a type of post of your choice (that is not the same as one of the previous posts) (I am not sure what style this one is, perhaps self exploration of some type?)
http://thementalmom.blogspot.com/2008/11/easy-rider-or-how-to-face-your-fears.html

2009 Blog Improvement Project Week 2: Brainstorming and the Introduction of Well-Being Wednesdays

The second assignment for the 2009 Blog Improvement Project was about brainstorming, more specifically to brainstorm some ideas and then blog your ideas. We had several articles to read regarding brainstorming techniques and then the task of coming up with a new, regular feature for our blog.

For a while now, I have wanted a bit more structure for my blog. One reason I continue to blog is to exercise my creativity and spontaneity. I often live too much “in my head” and caught up with the future or the past. My blog is an exercise in enjoying life in the moment. I tend to blog about what is on my mind at the moment, life as I am living it, or things I am currently experiencing. However, I do believe that my blog is a reflection of my scattered consciousness and as such is quite disjointed and unpredictable. I also have little schedule to my blogging and you are not able to predict when I will have new content. I’d like to find some “happy medium” where I still exercise my creativity and spontaneity but add in a bit more structure.

I have noticed that I do like blogs where the author has a calendar of some sort that guides the style of posting on a weekly basis. After brainstorming on the types of topics I have blogged about in the past and on various ideas on topics of interest to me currently, I came up with a few editorial topics to explore. As my pilot project, I plan to introduce some structure into my future blog posts.

One major interest of mine is my own self-improvement project. The past few years I have been working on my own private happiness project. It is still a work in progress. However, I have been taking active steps toward my own well-being. A regular feature I would like to add to my blog to highlight this project is to institute every Wednesday be “Well-Being Wednesday.” Every Wednesday, I will work on blogging about my journey into the why’s and how’s of happiness.

Since today is Wednesday, I brainstormed a bit and thought I might discuss one of my favorite quotes. "Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." -- Benjamin Disraeli. To me, this quote found in Disraeli’s novel Lothair, reminds me that you have to work at anything important or meaningful, including happiness. I also feel it points out that I may not always make the right choices, but failing to take a chance and try something, anything, is always better than doing nothing at all. I have mentioned several times to my patients that I can not guarantee the outcome of any change; however, it does seem reasonable to assume that doing nothing will usually yield nothing. If you are unhappy, doing nothing is more likely to keep you exactly where you are. Making a change, any change, does not guarantee happiness, but you have to be willing to try something different to be truly happy.

Now, I am no expert on happiness or its pursuit. I am merely a lowly student trying to find my way to enjoying life. What do you think? Do you agree with my interpretation of Mr. Disraeli’s statement? Do you have a favorite happiness quote to share? Please post a comment and let’s get it started!

The 2009 Blog Improvement Project and Week 1 Project (Setting Goals)

I have been feeling dissatisfied with my blog of late. I still feel this need to have a blog, but have felt that my blog is not living up to my aspirations in various ways. Yesterday which surfing the ‘net, I came across a button on this book blog while reading a book review. (If you must know, I am slowly making my way through One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell and I do have this sad addiction to searching for reviews and even spoilers of books I am currently reading, especially books I am finding tedious, in the hopes I will discover motivation to actually finish the book.) Okay, back to my original topic, the 2009 Blog Improvement Project, which was the button I noticed. I quickly clicked on the button and arrived at Sophisticated Dorkiness, an interesting blog by Kim. I began to read about her project and I was hooked. I had found a community of people who were focused on improving their blogs. Accountability and structure! I decided whether or not I could be accepted into this project, I needed to jump on board the improvement project.

The 2009 Blog Improvement Project is a year-long challenge that will consist of twice-monthly activities to improve your blog. Every first and third Monday of the month an activity will be posted at Sophisticated Dorkiness that will be related in some way to making your blog better. Now, I am already behind my counterparts. I have missed the first 2 months of the project. However, being the anal compulsive person that I am, I plan to work on catching up with the rest of the group project by project, ideally finding a way to catch up long before the end of the year.

From Kim for the Week 1 Project - Setting Goals. What do you want to accomplish with your blog in 2009? Set some goals for your blog. Think about where you would like to be a year from now, and try to set clear and specific objectives that you’ll be able to measure in some way once we get to the end of 2009. Even before you set goals, it’s important to reflect back on what you’ve actually accomplished. Problogger suggests 69 questions (of various topics) that you could use to consider the things that are going well with your blog and the things that might need improvement. Using some of these questions could help you decide what blog areas you should set goals in.

Already, after spending some time on this first task, I am thinking quit, run away!! This task hits on some difficult issues for me. I tried to answer Problogger's 69 questions (whom I love, by the way, due to his fabulous advice on blogging and twitter) and came up with a whole lot of nothing. My blog seems to exist in isolation. I suspect only a few of my close friends actually read it. I am never quite sure what my focus is and because of that my posting is erratic and disjointed. So rather than run away, let’s set some realistic goals for the next year:

(1) Find a focus or center for my blog. I think my original purpose was to have a creative outlet, to find my own inner creativity and pleasure again, after having kids and losing my focus. I love so many things; I don’t think my blog can be narrowly focused. However, I need to find someway to keep a focus so I, and others, can have some consistent content here.

(2) Find some structure for posting that fits my needs but also leads to more consistent posting. Again, finding a way to post a certain number of posts in a week with some schedule seems a good idea and I am toying with the idea of having some sort of weekly schedule, i.e., Wednesday book reviews or happiness project musings on a particular day of the week? To quantify, perhaps set some weekly structure in posting by end of month and post at least 3 times per week?

(3) Content, content, content. By this, I would like to have some plan for my content that is consistent with my eventual focus. I would like to have some content that is planned, but still leave room for rambled musings. I do think I am usually too good at planning, and not so good at spontaneity. The blog is part of my life goal of being more spontaneous and living “in the moment.”

(4) Find a way to network and find a sense of community. Since I can’t control who comes to my blog, I would like to make more of an effort to visit other blogs on a regular basis and comment more frequently. Okay, I stole this one from many of the other BIP participants! But it seems like a great idea. Perhaps to measure progress, my goal would be to leave a comment 5 times in a week?

(5) Learn more about blog design and applications. I don’t need the most technical or beautiful blog, but I would like to understand more how to make my blog more user-friendly for me and also for those visiting. I would also like to learn more about tracking who is visiting my blog.

Okay, I could come up with many more goals, but I think those are enough for now. If I do achieve progress on these goals I can always come with more. If anyone is out there, please leave me any comments with your observations or suggestions. I would appreciate it!!