Dancing About Architecture

Creating a network for female bloggers

I have just returned home from a meetup of female bloggers in Sydney.  It was a group of just five of us, but the passion these women displayed not only for their chosen niche but bloggering as a whole was incredible.  This got me thinking, which is probably a dangerous thing to do when on a massive sugar high from devouring way too much chocolate.  I have seen places for female bloggers before but they are just either on a blog or a forum or an email group and they never seem to move much out of that sphere.  Would a network that encompassed all of these things plus social networking actually work?  I think it would be great to get together a group of women who can not only discuss blogging but work together to promote each other’s blogs through tools like StumbleUpon as well and perhaps use Twitter or Plurk to network as well.

Initially I thought of just restricting it to Australian female bloggers as down here we tend to miss out on other American centric women blogging networks.  Then again, I hate so much missing out on really cool stuff that I would hate to do it to others.

So, what do you all think?  Would something like that work?  Or would it be really cool for a month or so and then die out because nobody can be bothered to participate?

This idea is really in an embryonic stage so all suggestions, criticisms and ideas are more than welcome.

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Using social networking tools to promote your blog

Most people when they start a blog simply set up their blog, write some posts and then wonder why no one is visiting or commenting.  They forget that one of the most important ingredients for running a successful blog is marketing.  Marketing, however, doesn’t mean spending money on advertising as there are many free methods you can use to promote your blog.  This article will be examining how to effectively use social networking tools to promote your blog.

Blogging can be quite a solitary process and it is very easy to become egotistical especially if you have tasted some success in the early days of your blogging journey.  In the blogging world though, people who engage with peers, create conversations and promote the work of others can easily gain credibility and traffic on their blogs.  On the other hand, those who just focus on their own blogs and use social networking tools purely for self promotion will quickly lose respect. Therefore using social networking tools to promote your blog needs to be done with care as once you lose respect and credibility, it is very hard to regain them.

The two social networking tools I am going to focus on are Twitter and StumbleUpon.  There are many other tools out there but these are the two I use most frequently and therefore feel somewhat qualified to talk about.

Twitter - either you love it or you hate it.  However, many bloggers do not know how to use it effectively to not only promote their own blogs but to build up connections with other bloggers. Using Twitterfeed to broadcast your latest blog posts is a great way to let those who are following you that you have written a new post, however, if that is all you use Twitter for then you are going to quickly lose followers and credibility. No one wants to read your twitter feed if all it is, is an RSS feed.  To use Twitter effectively, you must stop focusing solely on yourself and start connecting with others.  Tweet about articles you have read and enjoy and ask questions of your followers and use their knowledge to write future posts. There is nothing a fellow blogger likes more than to see themselves referenced in someone else’s blog.  Yes, all bloggers do contain a healthy dose of ego. Also use Twitter to follow bloggers that you admire and watch to see how they use it. See what they do that works and what doesn’t work. Learn from their mistakes and replicate their successes. Most bloggers who use Twitter will have their details on their blog and if not, it never hurts to ask them.No one is going to get upset at you because you want to hear more about them.

StumbleUpon is a social networking tool that really teaches you the value of giving. If you just use it to “stumble” or “like”  only your own posts then you won’t get much traffic from it.  However, if you use it to “stumble” or “like” other blogger’s posts then you will quickly gain the reputation as a Power Stumbler.  Power Stumblers can generate an amazing amount of traffic for the blogs that they stumble.  I can hear you all thinking, “well, what is in it for me?”.  This where connections really count.  Form a group of like-minded individuals and stumble each others posts. You give them the gift of great traffic and they in turn do the same for you.   It is a true win-win situation.  Of course, if you don’t like the post, don’t stumble it, you don’t want to get the reputation of stumbling any old crap.   If you are new to the blogging world and don’t really know anyone, still get out there and stumble.  If the blogger also uses StumbleUpon they can see exactly who has stumbled their post and will most likely go and check out your own blog and if they like what they see, they will stumble one of your posts. Well I know I do that so I am going to assume that other bloggers do as well.

Creating great content is useless if no one is going to read it.  You need to get out there and promote yourself and your work.  The best way to do that is by connecting with other bloggers especially those who blog in your own niche.  Social networking is an easy way to get yourself known, but you need to take care with the image you are portraying.  Just as in real life, bloggers feel favourably towards those who do things for them or take the time to get to know them.  Get out there and start connecting with your fellow bloggers, the rewards are greater than just an increase in your traffic.

Do you use social networking to promote your blog?  What tools do you use and what successes/failures have you had?  What do you find works best for you and what has been a waste of time?

Tags: advertising, blogging, promotion, social networking, stumbleupon, twitter

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Creating a ripple for charity

Want to donate money to charity just by clicking on an ad or using a search engine?  Ripple is a website that allows you to do just that.  Four Australian friends have gotten together and have developed a site where all the money raised by advertising is given directly to charity.  When you use the search engine, the search engine sponsor pays money to Ripple, a 100% of which is passed onto charities such as Oxfam, Water Aid, The Oaktree Foundation and The Grameen Foundation.

If have a look at my sidebar, you will notice a new graphic that asks you to click to provide a community access to clean drinking water for 6 days. With 6 out of 10 diseases in developing nations caused by contaminated water, a supply of clean water is invaluable to helping a community stay healthy and able to support themselves.  When you click on the graphic you will be taken to the Ripple website and shown an ad, all the money the advertiser pays Ripple goes directly to Water Aid, an international non government organisation dedicated exclusively to the provision of safe domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education to the world’s poorest people. All it takes is a minute of your time to help change someone else’s life.

If you have your own blog, please consider putting a Ripple button in your sidebar to help increase the money raised for charity.

Tags: charity, Grameen Foundation, Oaktree Foundation, Oxfam, Ripple, Water Aid

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The Value of Social Networking

When you mention social networking to the uninitiated they see it as just a way to waste time online, but when used effectively social networking tools are an amazing way to exchange ideas and concepts in real time with a large number of people.

Twitter has the reputation of being one of the most inane social networking tools out there. Twitter asks the question, “What are you doing?” and most users will tweet about exactly what they are doing - “I am eating lunch” , “I am cleaning the cat’s litter tray”,” I am going to the bathroom”.   However, a growing number of users are using Twitter as a way to distribute information to a large amount of people.  Bloggers are discovering that it is a great way to announce a new posts to hundreds of potential readers. Also many people are using it as a way of reporting on industry conferences.  Recent pubcamps in Sydney and Melbourne have been broadcasted in 140 character bytes to hundreds of people who could not attend by those who were in attendence, complete with their thoughts about the information being presented.   It was Stilgherrian’s reporting on the Poltech conference in Canberra yesterday that made me realise how much I love being on the receiving end of this kind of information.  Poltech was a conference focusing on politicians and Web 2.0.  If there is a group of people out there with no idea how to harass and use the power of the internet, it is Australian politicians.  Stilgherrian, with his trademark sarcasm, reported on the clash of culture between the politicians and technology.  Thanks to Twirl, an Adobe air application for Twitter, I was able to receive pop ups on my screen of tweets from this event whilst I worked away. Whilst being in attendance would have been so much better, I still felt involved in the event.  The one aspect that Twitter falls down on is being able to have conversations about the information you receive.  You can reply to the original poster, but unless the other people who reply are on your friend’s list, you can not really talk to those who are also responding to the OP. This is where the new social networking tool Plurk really comes into play.

Plurk not only allows you to make 140 character posts like Twitter does, but it allows you to reply to those posts in one central location rather than spread throughout the timeline.  You can easily reply to those who have already replied to the post, even if they are not on your friends list.  This makes the discussion of ideas amazingly easy.  Last night I posted on Plurk that I was watching the ABC show, “The Gruen Transfer”.  One of my friends informed me that Gavin Heaton was plurking a running commentary on the show.  I went and friended Gavin who was generous enough to friend me right back, so that his commentary appeared on my timeline.  Each segment of the show had its own post to which the rest of us replied with our thoughts and feelings on the segment or responded to other people’s replies.  It allowed us to discuss a single issue without chasing the thread of discussion through all the other noise on Plurk.  It made watching “The Gruen Transfer” a much richer experience.

Where Plurk excels in discussing experiences, Friend Feed excels in discussing online content and with the introduction of rooms on Friend Feed finding online content and discussions on topics you are interested in is so much easier.  Whilst you may blog about an issue on your blog, Friend Feed allows the discussion of that issue to take place off your blog.  Whilst bloggers may be concerned about the fragmentation of discussions, there are many tools that now take the comments from Friend Feed and display them in the blog’s comments section.  Friend Feed releases information and discussions about the information from happening in one central spot and makes it much more accessible to people who normally not go to those destinations.  It is an amazing way to discover new blogs and to make connections within the niches you are interested in.

Social networking has evolved from mindless chatter to a powerful way to disseminate information.  It is becoming increasingly common for news about major world events to appear on social networking sites before it is picked up by mainstream media.  If you have not gotten involved in social networking, what are you waiitng for?

Tags: friend feed, plurk, twitter, Web 2.0

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Here We Go Again…

My friends on Plurk will know I have been having problems with my mobility and have been in quite a bit of pain recently.  I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in May 2007, but my rheumatologist at the time Dr W was just pathetic.  He kept telling me that I was in pain because I was depressed and offered no advice on how to manage my condition.  I stopped going to him in July 2007 and tried to deal with the fibro on my own.

A couple of months ago, I was ready to try going back to a rheumatologist to help properly manage my condition and I was referred to Dr M.  Today was my first session with her.  She was amazingly thorough, asking me heaps of questions about my symptoms and did a complete physical including some neurological tests.

However, the outcome of those tests is that we are back at the beginning to try to work out what is wrong with me - the “It might be lupus” phase as I like to call it.  All autoimmune diseases are back on the table along with muscular disorders closely followed by neurological disorders and because all the letters from old rheumatologist say I am depressed, mood disorders as well.  I had blood and urine tests done this afternoon and I have to go and have a chest x-ray for some strange reason. I am really not sure what a chest x-ray is supposed to show.  Depending on the results of those tests, certain other tests will follow.

In the meantime though I am on a multitude of drugs.  Turns out that Dr W gave me the wrong instructions for taking my current medication which helps regulate my sleep cycle.  He told me to take it at bedtime, so I took it before brushing my teeth and heading to bed.  I am supposed to take it 2 - 3 hours BEFORE my bedtime, which explains why when I wake up in the mornings I feel absolutely exhausted as the drug is still coursing through my body and telling my body I am supposed to be asleep.  Also I got a lecture from Dr M about not experimenting with my dosage of medication.  When is the last time you heard a doctor asking you why you didn’t try taking more tablets?  It was a very surreal moment having her tell me off for not taking more drugs and also for not trying out other drugs to see if they worked.

So now we play the waiting game.  If my blood and urine tests come back with some interesting results I will be called in, but if they are normal I need to wait until October to see her again.  I have also been referred to a physiotherapist who uses Feldenkrais to help me with my mobility and general movement.  Has anyone had anything to do with Feldenkrais?  It sounds kinda wishy-washy to me, but the physio works at the pain management centre so maybe there is something to it after all.

Tags: Feldenkrais, fibromyalgia, rheumatology

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