Recently in Blogging Category

Finding Ways To Save Time

By The Princess on January 27, 2010 9:45 AM in Blogging | Comments (3)

Upon reflection, I've realized that I would have more time to do exciting things like laundry if I would tighten up my blog posts. For example, here are alternate versions of my last two posts that would have freed up precious minutes - nay, hours - for me to pursue domestic chores.

"I have enough time on my hands that I spend some of it worrying I might watch the wrong 293 movies next."

"I'm a 35 year old woman developing an interest in the X-Men comics so strong that I have even started reading blogs about comics. Kill me now!"

Perhaps to give up blogging altogether and go back to Twitter.

Ain't No Party Like A BlogHer Party

By The Princess on December 15, 2009 9:40 PM in Blogging | Comments (5)

I'm not exactly sure where December has gone, but I think the sick two year old and the car's muffler basically falling off may be somehow involved. It seems like just yesterday I was at the Austin BlogHer holiday party at Central Market... which I haven't told you about at all! Yikes!

The whole thing started when the BlogHer mothership told us they were having holiday meetups in SF and NYC, and didn't we want to play along at home? Of course! Especially once I knew that the Dallas BlogHers were doing it too.

But truth be told, I was a little (a lot) nervous about pulling this event together, because the holiday season is so dang busy and it was predicted to be wicked cold that night. But my partner in crime Tied Up With A Black Velvet Band kept me from hyperventilating too badly. By 7:30, the party was in full swing, with the following fabulous blogs represented:

It's amazing, every time i turn around these days I'm finding more Austin blogging women! Some of them found out about it through the Austin-Area group on BlogHer.com, some through the grapevine, and there are quite a few blogs on this list that I didn't even know about until the bloggers walked in the door.

Pizza, wine, name tags made out of gift-wrap labels, and a whole lot of talk about blogging (and how to smuggle booze onto cruise ships) made for a perfect evening.

The best part? We collected 74 food items for the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Unfortunately, my desire to get an actual weight for this massive haul was thwarted by my son breaking our scale, the Central Market produce scales only going up to 6 pounds, serious reality check from the smart part of my brain on driving the whole lot up to my vet to weigh on their scale, and the staff at the food bank being in a staff meeting on the day I dropped off the donation.

SO, an extremely scientific estimation process has been used:

Most items = cans weighing about 15 ounces

At least 12 items = bags of rice or beans weighing 2 pounds

About 10 items = boxes or cans weighing 1 pound or slightly less

(15 average ounces * 52 items) + (12 ounces average * 22 items) = 87 pounds

87 pounds of food! For reference, that far overfills one copier paper box and three grocery bags, and by overfill I am referring to both weight and volume. When you stack it all up, it looks like this:

food donation

Unfortunately, it's impossible to plan a party where everyone's schedules permit attendance, but the great thing about planning a party like this is you also get to say hey to other folks by email or whatnot, like I did with this is life in austin, MizFit, Fragrant Liar, Marla'z Austin Journey, Elizabeth Knox Photography, The Bean, Stepmother's Milk, I Stare at People, Hey Elise, Fête & Feast, and the About.com Austin Guide.

I know, right? MORE AUSTIN WOMEN WHO BLOG. It's like we're a city full of people who like computers or something.

If you're still reading this post, it's probably because you are a fabulous Austin blogger, tweeter, or blog-reader yourself. Please feel free to leave a comment letting us know about you, especially if you're interested in hearing about the next BlogHer get-together in our fair city. After we've had time to recover from the holidays, that is. We will also post the info in the Austin-Area group on BlogHer.com so check that out as well.

Austin Area BlogHer Holiday Party!

By The Princess on November 19, 2009 9:51 PM in Blogging | Comments (4)

This is for the locals! Or anyone who wants to come to town!

BlogHer is holding holiday parties in NYC and SF on December 3rd, and Dallas is having one a couple of days later, so I didn't want Austin to be left out.

Central Market Cafe North, 7-9pm. More details here. Bloggers, tweeters, and blog readers are welcome.

And holy mackerel, we have a lot of women bloggers in this town (and nearby)! Here's my current list, which you may note has grown quite a bit since last time I posted it. When lists get too long I feel a biological imperative to start breaking them up, so it's in three categories kinda.

Other caveats: if I missed your blog, let me know and I'll add it. I'm trying to only list blogs if the blog itself SAYS the blogger is in Austin/Central Texas or the blogger tells me it's okay to list them. If I miscategorized anything, let me know and I'll fix it. Some of these blogs may be pair/group blogs with at least one woman blogging. Etc.

Food bloggers - I found most of these because there's a huge awesome list at Relish Austin:

Mama bloggers (but don't pigeonhole them, or they get cranky!):

Other Bloggers I Haven't Broken Out Into Categories Yet but feel free to make suggestions:

There's also an Austin Design/Craft blogroll at Average Jane Crafter (see her right sidebar) that I haven't even had time to look through yet!

Pseudonymous Bloggers: What's Up With That?

By The Princess on August 14, 2009 9:24 PM in Blogging | Comments (4)

Obviously this is a strange question coming from someone who signs her posts "The Princess," but please feel free to take a look at my dandy new About page if you're one of the last three people on the Internets who doesn't know my real name. I actually should be better about remembering to tell people that they CAN use my name in association with this blog, though I appreciate it when people are cautious.

What I mean by pseudonymous is a hypothetical blogger who calls herself a perfectly normal name on her blog, something like Emma. So you go along reading her blog, and you're thinking "I like this Emma person, she's neat."

Maybe that's not so odd. Maybe Jennifer has a desire for privacy.

But let's say Emma/Jennifer posts pictures of herself on her blog all the time. She writes about what town she lives in, where she shops, etc. If anyone who knew her came to her blog, they'd be like "Hey, it's Jennifer's blog!" So she's not doing an anonymous blogging thing per se.

What happens when you finally meet Jennifer? Let's say she goes to a blogger meet-up. You recognize her, and you're like "Oh hey, you're Emma." Then she says "Actually my name is Jennifer."

When people, including myself, use wacky pesudonyms on their blogs, the reader knows what's up. You're expecting to find out that Wild Empress of All Suburbia is named Pam. But when Emma turns out to be Jennifer, it's just seems like a bit more of an adjustment.

Thoughts?

My Top 8 Reasons Why I Am Not Commenting On Your Blog

By The Princess on August 7, 2009 5:24 PM in Blogging | Comments (7)

When bloggers don't get comments or don't get as many comments as they would enjoy having, they often think they're doing something wrong. I've been wondering lately, for blogs I enjoy but don't comment on, what my reasons are for that behavior. This is what I came up with.

If you have found yourself in the situation of wanting more comments, you might find it interesting to note how few of these reasons have anything to do with the blog itself, and how many of them are all about me.

  • I meant to, and I even bookmarked that post, but then I forgot, and when I found it again, it was two months later and that just seems silly.
  • I can't figure out a way to comment that doesn't sound like I'm just hijacking your blog to talk about myself.
  • I can't figure out anything else to say but "Good post!" and that's really boring.
  • I enjoy reading your blog, but I know NOTHING about the topic you're writing about compared to you, and I'm afraid to sound like an idiot.
  • I ran across one of your posts somehow, and it was cool, but I don't want to comment because I just can't read any more blogs on an ongoing basis, and I don't want you to think I'm reading your blog on an ongoing basis and then be disappointed when you later (somehow magically) find out otherwise.
  • Your post already has a ton of comments, so it seems redundant.
  • Your blog has very few comments, and everyone who comments seems to know you in real life, so I feel awkward, as if I might be intruding.
  • I don't want to create a login just to register on your blog. I already have Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress.com, TypePad, and probably some other logins, and I'm done making more.

For the record, I have also decided that commenting on other people's blogs (even if I can't read them all the time) is one of my biggest pick me ups, so I'm going to work on not letting these things get in the way. So if you're reading my blog, I want to head over to your blog - because we all have good posts, and I would love to read yours and at least say "Good post!" even if I can't think of anything more creative or substantial. Tell me where your blog is in the comments, okay?

Oh The People You'll Meet

By The Princess on July 30, 2009 3:29 PM in Blogging | Comments (6)

BlogHer 2009 was my fifth BlogHer, meaning that I have a 100% track record on attending. Even though I missed most of a day, I still managed to connect with about 50 of my fine co-attendees. That's the part I love about BlogHer, and why I always register even before I know what the sessions will be about. Here is a list of the folks whose cards made it home with me, or who my poor tired brain managed to make note of meeting in the hallway or at a party.

(If I missed anyone, I'm sorry, and please let me know so I can fix that oversight. You have no idea how my IQ was cut in half by Saturday's ER adventure.)

While this post may seem a bit meaningless to some (who cares who I met at an event you didn't go to?), it's my way of saying thank you to each of these folks. If people like you did not show up, there would be no BlogHer, and that would be truly sad.

If you missed BlogHer, or it just isn't for you, I still invite you to take a minute or two and see if any of the blog titles below grab you. There's a little something for everyone, click on through and see what you find...

The social, the political, the awesome:

I got to give them compliments they richly deserved, yay!:

Kept me entertained while my friends were trying to make out with a cardboard cutout of that guy from Twilight:

Mamas (but don't put them in a box dangit!):

Sites for people who have kids in their lives:

Good to see y'all again:

Cool resources:

And everything else under the sun, including:

Awesome Austin BlogHers

By The Princess on June 11, 2009 12:10 AM in Blogging | Comments (6)

I'll Be Geeking Out at BlogHer 2009

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to visit with a few amazing Austin BlogHers as part of the BlogHer pre-conference meetups that are being held across the country. (You should check whether there's one in your area coming up!)

We had a small group of four, which was great because the conversation had a chance to move beyond "Hi, what's your name and where do you blog?" We discussed motivations for blogging, how to balance it with the rest of your life, statistics packages, advertising on blogs, food blog photography, blogging platforms... and I'm pretty sure pedicures also came up somehow.

I tend to think of blogging as something connected to an annual conference which I attend once a year to bask in the presence of about 1,000 other people who all share a passion for the same hobby. It was nice to get a reminder that right here, in my own town, there are plenty of gals that share the same passion.

So I wanted to introduce you to some of the BlogHers I've found out about in Austin and hereabouts. I highly recommend checking out who's blogging in your hometown. Reading a blog by someone who lives nearby is a great way to enhance your appreciation for the place you call home. (And if you are in Austin, please feel free to join the Austin Area group on BlogHer.com and introduce yourself.)

UPDATED 11/09: new list is here.

  • Destroying my apartment one recipe at a time is written by a woman who is trying to balance food blogging and a graduate degree program in astronomy. If you're into food or science or both, this is the blog for you. Even if you're not, you should check out her awesome URL.
  • Fragrant Liar is a lot of fun, and absolutely disproves any stereotypes you may have (conscious or otherwise) that blogs by women who just happen to have grandchildren are a) boring or b) all about their grandchildren.
  • The Everyday Foodie and Lisa is Cooking will both make you hungry, so have a healthy snack before visiting either one. If you're like me and you'll eat icing straight out of the container when hungry and too lazy to grocery shop.
  • a little messed up apparently caused someone to drop out of dental school recently.
  • Baby Makin(g) Machine is a pre-mommyblogger who's trying to learn everything she can about the whole mama thing.
  • The Spotted Ottoman is the personal blog of photographer Elizabeth Mitchell, who you should hire immediately if you need pictures of your kids.
  • It Dawned on Me is a heavy duty blog about politics and social issues.
  • When Heather Met Blog is written by a woman who loves queso, so she's all right by me.
  • If you haven't read any of the blogs on the Austin American Statesman's website, you should visit Mama Drama and then click on around.
  • MizFit is the place to go if you're looking to get healthy. Note to self: remember exercise?
  • Leah of vacant.cc is also a photographer, mostly specializing in weddings, and she just had a sweet, sweet baby girl.
  • Andria and Co. just posted some gorgeous photos from her wedding, which she claims was a gazillion years ago. I doubt they had cameras back then, or that the dinosaurs had such nice dresses.
  • Thoughts of a Princess combines a pink haired mother, a kid, and a feather boa collection. What's not to like?
  • Tied Up With A Black Velvet Band is the blog of a newly married 40 year old woman who just had a run-in with a bookkeeper slash car thief.
  • The tagline on Table for Nine says it all: "Four girls, three boys, two parents, one house, zero boredom." The next time I say "I didn't have time to get the laundry done, someone smack me on the back of the head.
  • Advocation.me is the personal blog of a lawyer who discusses politics, society, and whatever else she wants to.
  • Mothering Munchkins is a good place to get your fix of pictures of cute babies. Perfect for, well, all the time!
  • Texas Banter and Confetti Dreams are two blogs by twin sisters. If I could just get my sister to blog...
  • If you have kids, you probably know about Z Recommends and the ZRecs Guide to safer children's products, but the folks behind these invaluable resources for parents have also launched a family gardening blog called Gardenaut which I am really enjoying.
  • Stepmother's Milk by Izzy Rose is a great resource for any blended family.
  • LiveMom.com is "dedicated to building a better village" and I for one am glad that her village is Austin.

And of course Austin has a ton of other great female bloggers on everything from crafts (Average Jane Crafter) to business (EntrepreMusings) and the blogs that refuse to be contained in one category (green living slash parenting blog Mike and McGee).

So tell me, who did I miss? Or tell me who rocks your corner of the world...

How to Use Other People's Words and Pictures On Your Blog (Without Getting Burned or Being a Jerk)

By The Princess on May 9, 2009 9:21 AM in Blogging | Comments (8)

You are a good person, yes? You're kind to animals, you tip well, you say "please" and "thank you" as needed, you brush and floss, and you call your Aunt Edna every Sunday because she loves to hear from you.

This rightness of behavior and soundness of character means you are in a perfect position to react with outrage at the idea of an evil, soulless spammer ripping off your blog content to make a buck.

Or are you?

When you write something, or take a photograph, or draw a cartoon, that content is automatically yours under copyright law, whether or not you register it. You can't copyright the idea of a post about a kid having a meltdown in Target, but once you write down the story of your kid's blowup last week in the hardware aisle, your written work - the expression of the idea - is yours.

Copyright law means that the person who owns the copyright gets to decide how their stuff is used. You own your blog posts and your photos. You get to decide whether you want someone to copy them or not. For bloggers, that's good news. If someone comes along and copies your blog without your permission, it's not just bad manners, it's illegal, and there are ways to make them stop.

But what about the other side of the coin, when your use of other people's words or images without permission violates their copyright and can actually place your blog in danger?

If you've ever thought, said, or written any of the following things while working on a blog post, you may need to brush up on how copyright works:

  • I love this article so much, I'm going to post it to share with all of my readers.
  • I put a link to the source where I got the images, that makes it okay. It's not like I'm plagiarizing.
  • I posted it because I like it, that's a compliment.
  • Everyone else does it, so it must be fine.
  • I'm not making any money off my blog, so it doesn't hurt anyone for me to copy this.

Whether or not you give credit, compliment it, believe you're helping the person who created it, or make any money from it has no legal relevance when determining whether you're violating someone's copyright. The same applies to other people and their words and images. In other words, copying someone's work without their permission is a violation of their legal rights. Is it as bad as when spammers do it? No. But it's impolite, and it can get you in trouble.

But I would be flattered if someone copied my post!

Great! That's fine. No one is saying you have to get a lawyer and start suing people when they copy your posts, photographs, or other materials. In fact, you can even put a Creative Commons license or some other type of statement on your blog to specify exactly what types of copying you're okay with.

When it comes to other people's work, though, it's polite to allow them to decide how they feel about it. If they don't want someone copying their work, it doesn't make them a jerk, and the burden shouldn't be on them to patrol the internet and ask people to take copies down. Especially if you've added a copyright notice to your blog, or a statement asking people not to copy your material without your permission, it would probably behoove you to show the same courtesy to others.

But I would be happy to take it down if they asked me to!

Ah yes, the ol' "Asking forgiveness is easier than getting permission" thing. Nice. Remind me not to let you near my closet, otherwise my favorite purple sweater would probably show up with a hole in it and smelling like smoke. You're the only one who can decide what kind of person you want to be. If "I'll copy your stuff without permission until you show up to complain even though I've learned that it's wrong" sounds good to you, then you're not still reading this post anyway, are you?

But what about that "fair use" thing I've heard about?

Copyright does have a principle called fair use that allows limited use of someone else's work in some circumstances. If you're critiquing their work or making something new out of it, such as a parody, or you are doing news reporting, you may be able to defend your copying as fair use if you use the smallest part of their work you need to create your own work - such as a brief excerpt from a book while reviewing it or a brief excerpt from a newspaper article in order to discuss it.

Many, many uses of other people's words and images on blogs, however, is not even close to being fair use. If you're reprinting an entire recipe, poem, joke, essay, newspaper article, cartoon, scan from a magazine or book, or photograph just to share it with your readers or enhance your post and you do not have permission, that's rarely fair use. If you're using someone else's content just to make your blog more appealing, and visitors can enjoy that content in its entirety (or close enough) without leaving your blog, the chances of that being fair use are so small as to practically be nonexistent.

(If you want to know more, check out this primer on Fair Use from some clever people at Stanford.)

Who cares about whether it's legal or ethical? You said my blog was in danger, tell me more about that!

Let's be realistic. If it's an image of a product and you're gushing about that product, very few copyright holders are going to come after you. You're basically doing unpaid work for their marketing department.

If it's anything else, first the content owner has to find it. This is a lot more likely if the content owner in question is big enough to have an IT department and lawyers - such as newspapers, record companies, and movie studios. However, even small fry such as bloggers and independent musicians have plenty of tools available to monitor the web for copies of their work.

If the owner of the content you're using finds your copy and they're nice, they may contact you directly and ask you to take it down. If they're not nice, they may go straight to your blogging site or your hosting company and file a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

So let's say there's a song whose lyrics really speak to you. You copy them into a blog post to share with your readers so they can understand how you feel. Three weeks later, you get an email from your blogging site, or your hosting company, and they have deleted the post because the owner of the song lyrics filed a complaint. If you think it won't happen to you, email me and I'll put you in touch with a friend of mine who permanently lost two blog posts when a copyright owner filed a takedown notice against her blog.

Stick it to The Man! Power to the People! I won't let the corporations step on me, I'm copying all of their stuff!

Good luck with that.

But I want my blog to be awesome without stepping on anyone's toes! What should I do?

One of the best things about blogers is how they share. When they find something cool, lovely, funny, touching, or infuriating, they want the world to take a look. I've seen tons of people blogging about how they started at Blog A, then clicked on a link to go to Blog B, and ten hours later they had been all over the Internet and it was so cool. That's the awesome part about living in the post-photocopier era. If you want to share something, you can just send people over to look at it.

But if you find something great online and you reeeeallllyy want to copy it onto your blog, you can absolutely do that as long as one of the following conditions are met:

  • The work isn't under copyright anymore, or
  • The copyright owner said you could.

To figure out whether the copyright on a piece of content has expired, a.k.a. it's in the public domain, you can check out this handy chart on copyright expiration dates. I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a stick than look at that chart, actually, so I just keep in mind that anything really old - the Mahābhārata, for instance - is fair game.

For content not yet in the public domain, the copyright holder has the right to authorize copies, so you can always try asking. Many people will be flattered and say yes. Or in many cases, the copyright holder may have already authorized other people to use their work by adding a statement to their blog, web site, photo, or other work that says "yes, feel free to copy it!" Usually they also say something like "as long as you link back to me," which most of us would do anyway.

Can you give me some examples?

No problem.

On Flickr, for example, many photographers have chosen to make their images available for others to use by choosing a Creative Commons license that specifies exactly how their images may be used. Use Flickr's Advanced Search and check off "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content" to find photos that the copyright owners have said you can use. You can even further specify that you're searching for a photo to use in a for-profit project, or one you can mess with. The Creative Commons page on Flickr explains what the different license terms mean.

You'll also want to watch the licensing if you're using Flickr photos with a toy like a mosaic maker or album cover generator. If the photos you're using aren't yours, make sure the photographer has given permission for others to use them.

Another photo site I like is stock.xchng. They have some photos which you have to pay for, but tons of the photos are free to use as long as you link to the photographer and also leave a comment for the photographer with a link to where you used it. When you find a photo you want to use, check the terms to make sure it isn't one of the rare photos which has some other requirement, but I've rarely run across any that even exclude commercial use.

Plenty of web cartoons can also be used. xkcd, the popular geeky web comic, has a Creative Commons license. If you see a cartoon you like, check around on the page, you might find some information about the author's preferences on copying.

YouTube or other videos are another issue. You may have run across a blog post where someone included a video, but it wouldn't load. Sometimes there's a message like "this video has been removed." Chances are, what happened is that someone who didn't own the video put it up, and then the copyright owner showed up and asked the video service to take it down.

Honestly, YouTube videos are where my selfish heart starts to get tugged between what I know is legal, what I think is right, and what I think I can get away with. YouTube embedding code, unlike copying and pasting a photograph into your blog, can be disabled across the web by a copyright owner taking one action at the host site. They don't have to run around all over the web asking individuals to remove it. It's also not like YouTube is some big secret, so I'm assuming that if someone posted a video there in 2006 and the band objects, they'd have had it taken down by now. So I admit that I err on the side of what I know is copyright infringement. The copyright owner would have every right to come after me, and that's a chance I'm taking. To be completely safe and consistent, I would only embed videos that I can tell were uploaded with the copyright owner's permission, such as Jay Smooth's amazing How to Tell People They Sound Racist.

But it's just this thing I got it in an email or saw on someone else's blog, I don't know where it came from!

Use the power of Google. Three times out of four, you can find out where something came from in under 10 minutes. (Not that Home Depot stripper pole dancing thing, that's a mystery.) If you still can't determine the ownership, just link to it somewhere else if you really want to pass it along and say that you couldn't find out who originally wrote it. That way, the infringing material is not on your blog.That's the awesome part about living in the post-photocopier era. If you want to share something, you can just send people over to look at it.

Do you have any pet peeves I should know about?

I'm glad you asked. I can't stand it when people use the phrase "courtesy of" to credit an image they don't have permission to use. How is that photo "courtesy of" that user on Flickr, or the New York Times for that matter, if you just took it?

Is that it?

As tempting as it is to just copy something onto your blog without permission from the person who created it, it's not the right thing to do, and can even get you in trouble. Links are always okay, excerpts with a link back are probably fine, but for anything else - ask first! And I promise that people are coming to your blog for your voice, not a hodgepodge of other people's.

Futher Reading

Recipe Attribution by David Lebovitz at Food Blog Alliance. David's piece is a good summary of legal guidelines combined with a discussion of community norms and expectations among people who blog about food.

(If you're a blogger, even if you never blog about food, you should probably subscribe to Food Blog Alliance immediately. Many of its posts are top notch resources for any kind of blogger.)

Bloggers Beware: Debunking Nine Copyright Myths of the Online World by Kathy Bielh on LLRX.com. Kathy offers specific explanations of the "common sense" beliefs about how copyright works and contrasts them with the way the law actually works.

In Search of Blogging Ethics - Starting Points by Gena Haskett at BlogHer.com. I always enjoy Gena's writing, and here she offers some good food for thought.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Bloggers' FAQ on Intellectual Property feels strangely scattershot to me, but you may find it useful.

Every Blog Post Deserves A Good Title

By The Princess on March 4, 2009 9:01 AM in Blogging | Comments (8)

Let's pretend that you have a widget on your blog that shows five random post titles every time someone stops by. Now imagine that what your visitors see is this:

  • Updates
  • Random Bullets
  • Tagged
  • Bad Blogger
  • Stuff

Hmm. Can't say that I feel terribly motivated to read any of these.

Now imagine that what your visitors see is this:

WELL then. There goes at least another 20 minutes of my time when I really should be putting away laundry.

Your post titles help a reader decide whether or not to spend their precious time reading what you have to say. They make that decision when they first come to your blog and see that first post. They make that decision when they check their feed reader for new posts.

Your post titles also travel outside the context of your blog. If anyone with a blog on Blogger is following you and you're in their sidebar, your most recent post title shows up there. If you comment on a blog that uses CommentLuv, it pulls in your most recent post title. If someone submits one of your posts to a social networking site such as StumbleUpon, your post title may show up there depending on how how your blog is set up (and if it's not set up to show the post title in that blue bar up top of your browser, you need to fix that right quick).

If you participate in any other kind of program, service, or network that displays your posts on other blogs or websites, your post title is just about all that people have to go on when deciding whether to take that first step and come visit your online home.

Don't you want people to be interested and intrigued by your posts? Do you really want me to be putting away laundry when there is even one single post on your blog which I have not read?

If your post is worth writing, do it justice with a decent title. The title doesn't have to be funny, it doesn't have to be poetry, but at least give me a reason to click. And please note: if it's a post chock full of information about a specific topic I might be interested in, such as organic gardening or mutual funds or the X-Men movies - then unless the title is so wonderful that I'm going to click on it just to find out what it's about, for the love of Pete make sure I can tell the topic by reading the title so I don't miss it! Don't just call it "stuff" or "things" or "well, okay."

Turn "Thursday Thirteen" into "Thirteen Reasons Why Vegas is the Place to Party."

Turn "Random Bullets" into "Beseiged on all fronts, losing the battle."

Turn "Huh?" into "This stimulus package can't be for real."

Turn "Help" into "Need Advice on Kitchen Remodeling."

Turn "Menu Plan Monday" into "Menu Plan Monday: Thai Fried Rice, Ravioli, and Lots of Leftovers." (Not all on the same plate, hopefully.)

Turn "Herbert" into "Grandpa, I Miss You."

If you know anything about making your blog more findable by search engines, you know that post titles are a good place to use keywords. Don't run amok with that knowledge and cram every keyword you can think of into a super-long title. But if you're going to blog about Jessica Simpson the day after there's a big hullabaloo about her outfit, then by all means include her name in the title of your post instead of calling it "Hey girl, what are you doing?" (Although I would likely click through to read that, it's a good title. Who is the girl, and what IS she doing?)

If you have trouble with titles, here's my advice: write your title at the end. Write the entire post, and then pick the title. You don't always know when you start a post where it's going to end up. Putting a title on it up front may stick you with something that doesn't really fit - or you may have thought you had nothing to say, but it turns out you really do. There may be a phrase in the post you can pull out and use as the title.

Above all else, have confidence in your posts. Nothing says "who would bother to read this?" like a blah title. This is your blog. It's your writing, your photography, a reflection of you and your life. That's worth a lot.

And if you do have any good posts about organic gardening, mututal funds, or the X-Men movies, send 'em my way.

This is my favorite comment I've ever received on this blog.

By The Princess on November 28, 2008 7:31 AM in Blogging | Comments (2)

On the entry Review of Final Fantasy XII:

that was the gayest thing ive ever read, do you think your funny? How old are you ayways... fag

Yes, and 34, in that order. Thanks for stopping by!

Search

BlogHerAds