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You Need a Game Plan ( Part Two)

January 20, 2011 in Blog Thoughts, Blog Tools by Diane

Are you scratching your head wondering how to create your game plan?

Sometimes I think having a game plan is pretty much like being a teenager asking “what do I want to do with my life” with so many choices and directions it can make a persons head swim!

It is the same for blogging

For those of you who have a blog and are focused on your niche or topic, congratulations and I encourage you to keep reading to get further ideas to help you with your game plan.

For those of you who are still saying… “I want to be a blogger” or”I kind of know what I want to write about” or “I have a blog but I dont’ know where to go with it” then read on

Being a blogger with a game plan means having the end result at the very beginning.

With that being said here are a few questions to ask yourself

1. Do you enjoy writing? Its not such a silly question as you might think. Not everyone is a writer, in fact some people hate writing with a passion and yet are very successful bloggers. For myself, I tend to write in two ways…one as a researcher/lecturer( writing facts and giving information) or I “visualise” in my mind that I am talking to somebody (you)just having a conversation about something. For others blogging means using images to convey their topic and then there are the people who vlog( creating video blogs) or audio blogs. there are many choices and you need to find out which would work for you.

2.I know you have heard this so many times..but – Do you have something that you are passionate about? Keeping the game plan in mind means knowing that you will be able to write about something for a long time – that it will hold YOUR interest, never mind your readers ( did I just say that? well it is true!)

3. Are you blogging to make money? Well… it was nice talking to you! Seriously here is a reality check for everyone..If you are starting a blog to make money, you are going to fail and worse your game plan will be in ruins before you even start! I am not saying that you cant create an income with a blog, but it takes a lot of time and the competition is going to be fierce! Get your priorities straight at the very beginning and that is content, consistent content and even more content with a lot of connecting to others via social networks, learning new skills and other methods to get yourself noticed.

ok enough of the lecture..onword with a good game plan

You have answered the question of why you are blogging and you have an idea of what you want to blog about, but you really cant see the forest for the trees in terms of where you want to go with your blog niche. What has helped me is brainstorming , either with others or writing things down, but there is another way that might be of use to you. create a Mind Map!

A great definition to explain a mind map can be found at Wikipedia

Basically “a mind map is a is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.”

I have to say that brainstorming using mind mapping tools are just very satisfying and visual. They can be used for so many ideas or projects. When you type in a search “mind mapping tools” You will get oodles of places to look at, but to give you a starting point I have picked three (3) services to get you started:

“Quickly build your own mind maps using our intuitive, award-winning interface – absolutely no learning required! Access them online whenever you like, export them to other formats, or import your own existing maps. All you need is a standard web browser, no plugins or additional software required.” ( Free and paid services)

“Mind42 is a free online mindmap collaboration tool. … Keep track of all your ideas,whether alone, with colleagues and friends or working together with the whole world. browser based online mind mappMind42.com is aing application”

“Wise Mapping is the web mind mapping tool that leverages the power of Mind Maps mixing new technologies like vectorial languages (SVG and VML) and the power of the whole Web 2.0 concept. No pluggin required.”

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Well thats it for today. Come back tomorrow and I will share with you how to keep your game plan going with blog set up, categories and other such methods. As always your thoughts and your view point is needed to help me with my game plan

Tags: blogging, blogs, brain storming, game plans, mind mapping, niches
1 Comment »

by Diane

You need a game plan!

January 19, 2011 in Blog Thoughts, Blog Tools by Diane

Part One

Another day has come and you are rearing to go! You know you have to write a blog post today and in the back of your mind you might have an idea, but first you need to check your email, then there are all the social communities that you need to check on, comments to make or questions to answer and …oh ya…you have to get the blog post done. Does it stop there? Nope! Now you have 30 tabs open on one browser, maybe another 10 on another one, all with your research, communities, of course your email and …. now people want to talk to you on Skype or gtalk and guess what? A whole day has gone by and still no blog post…oh well there is another day and besides you have all these things to read and real life events to take care of.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Guess what? You need a game plan!

The key to owning your own blog, owning your own business starts with the mindset – you are your own employee and you are on the clock.

The starting of your game plan is by getting yourself organized, creating a plan, finding and then actually using the tools that will help you function better and then get off the clock and get physically active to stretch those muscles that have been tightened from sitting at a computer of so many hours.

When you start thinking like your own employee ..you will find that your focus will be much different!

oh and for those people who just cant help themselves and need to have 20, 30 or more tabs opened and lose themselves to all the information, the games on the net here is a tool that might be of real time use for you_

StayFocused

( don’t you love that word?)

Here is part of the description from the Chrome Web Store

“[As seen on LifeHacker, ReadWriteWeb, MakeUseOf, and more!]

You sit down at the computer, and you swear you’ll be productive. Next thing you know, it’s twelve hours later. You’ve checked your email, updated your Facebook status, browsed the trending topics on Twitter, read your RSS feeds, looked up your favorite band on Wikipedia, vanity googled yourself, cyber-stalked your ex, looked at all your high-school crushes’ Facebook photos, watered your plants on Farmville, and lost a week’s pay playing online poker.

What you haven’t done is WORK.

StayFocusd is a productivity extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend browsing time-wasting websites. Once your allotted time for the day has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.”

From all the comments that I read…this is a tool that you will love to hate! It really does work, but a word of warning, because there is no warning message when the time is about to expire, make sure you bookmark or save your work or you may find you have lost everything.

Let me know your thoughts about this chrome extension or anything else for that matter.
Back to work for me!

(Tomorrow I will share some resources you can use to help you with your game plan.)

Tags: blog post, chrome web store, game plan, getting yourself organized, Google chrome, social communities, stay focused
2 Comments »

by Diane

Plagiarism Revisited

January 18, 2011 in Blog Education, Blog tips by Diane

Back in 2008, I wrote a blog post on Plagiarism – More than Meets the Eye where I explained what plagiarism is and giving some ideas on how plagiarism could occur.

Well today I came across a fantastic article on Blogging Tips by Jonathon Bailey from Plagiarism Today where he talked about 5 ways to get sued as a blogger that is worth talking about.

Where at one time blogging was a straightforward way of expresssing ones thoughts and ideas and for many a way to create an income online…now it is something to look at as with any enterprise…as a professional even if you are just writing as a hobby.

The one point that I feel needs to be mentioned is the issue of images and that was something I had not mentioned in my orginial post…boy can you get into big time trouble! Please and I repeat… DO NOT use GOOGLE as a STOCK IMAGE SEARCH!

As Mr. Dailey pointed out”“Since copyright is affixed to most works upon creation, the vast majority of works on the Web are copyrighted. So using Google Image Search as a stock photo source is a very bad idea, especially considering that the stock photo industry has been on a massive litigation and legal threat campaign.”

I truly hope you will take the time to read this great article. It is simply written and well worth reading all the comments you will find.

To Your Success

Tags: being suied, Google, jonathon bailey, plagiarism, plagiarism today, stock images
1 Comment »

by Diane

Better banner management on your Blog

January 6, 2011 in Blog Education, Blog Tools by Diane

One of the challenges in monetizing your blog is in the management of advertising.
To do this manually is a task if you have just a couple of banners to display, but as that number increases.. so too does the complexity. Remembering things like duration, rotation, tracking results… it really doesn’t take long to become too much to handle alone.
Our friend Pawan Agrawal at MaxBlogPress.com has provided an excellent solution to the management of banner advertising with his Max Banner Ads WordPress Plugin, a tool that makes the task of ad banner managing much easier to deal with.
If you’re seeking a banner management tool.. I recommend Max Banner Ads.

Tags: Banner Management, Blog Advertising, MaxBlog Press
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by Diane

Creating Thumbnail Images

November 20, 2010 in Blog Tools by Diane

Uploading images can be a challenge for a new blogger at the best of times, but when you are trying to create thumbnails then it can be a chore.

According to Wikedia:
“Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image-organizing programs normally use thumbnails, as do most modern operating systems or desktop environments.”

While creating the page Advertising Resources, I became very frustrated with trying to fit all the images on one page, to the point that I was ready to give up.

A friend of mine was very sympathetic and suggested that I use a program to help reduce the images to thumbnails. When I asked what can I use and more importantly will it be easy to use as I admit to being technically challenged he suggested that I use a program called Easy Thumbnails.

While I could use many adjectives the only one that comes to mind is WOW!

Easy Thumbnails is a freeware progam that you have to download, it has no ads or spyware and it has many hidden features for the novice as well as the professional blogger.

It can enlarge images, adjust color, rename files and quickly show a file of images as a web page and there are tricks that one can do with Easy Thumbnails, that I hope that you will want to try.