Archive for the 'Blogs' Category
A fresh look at food
As food issues tend to become more and more newsworthy, it’s nice to see independent bloggers take it upon themselves to spread their opinion and concerns.
LocalDelicious.com is a new blog which aims to get the scoop on local food in and around the Lower Mainland. As more and more people try to eat locally produced goods, this blog aims to provide tips and advice on where to find the best markets, products, events and books.
The Amuse Bouche Food Blog is Edible BC’s daily blog which looks at restaurants, wineries and various BC products. Whether you are a local, visitor, event planner or someone looking for info about BC’s culinary offerings, Edible BC’s blog is another great read.
More info about local food, recipes ideas and gardening can also be found by visiting the Edible Vancouver blog while the Earth To Table blog is a collaboration between chefs and farmers that promotes logical, sustainable, righteous, and above all, delicious food.
Not enough time to follow blogs… No worries, twitter is another great a way to get the lowdown on what’s going on in the food industry. You can follow three of these bloggers on twitter @LocalDelicious, @Edible Vancouver and @Earth_to_Table.
#1 ranked Interior Design Blog
A few years ago Micheal Mills and I created a website for interior designer Patricia Gray. The site was very simple, clean and elegant. Once launched, and without any influence on my part, Patricia discovered blogging. She set up an account with blogger, chose a template and within weeks had several blog posts and an increasing readership. Now ranked as the #1 Interior Design blog, Patricia’s blog is a great example of how you can increase awareness of your brand without spending tons of time and money.
Before taking the plunge and spending serious cash on a blog set up and design, I’ve often recommended to first try blogger, as it makes a great testing ground. If worst comes to worst and blogging isn’t for you, you will not have invested too much time and money and won’t have a blog with no entries.
On a side note, Patricia is now accepting corporate sponsors, so if you know anyone who would be interested in advertising on a successful Interior Design blog, please visit her site and contact Patricia.
My thoughts about Northern Voice 2009
This year’s Northern Voice was my fourth one and I truly enjoyed it. I’ve never been to Friday’s Moosecamp and missed it again this year, opting to catch up on a never-ending to-do list. I heard that Stewart Butterfield’s Keynote was very good. Luckily for me and all of you who couldn’t make it, the sessions were taped and the videos will be posted on the website once the organizing committee has had time to make their final touches.
The wonderful thing about Northern Voice is that it’s very informal. You won’t find any big wigs walking around with chips on their shoulder. Everyone is friendly and easy to talk to. While the subject of social media is not new to me and generally I’m hearing stuff that I already know, once in a while I find out about a few things that make me go “hmm, I didn’t know that”. For example, I didn’t know what a sock puppet was and even though I was told to check out Radio 3 on CBC years ago, I never did, and Steve Pratt reminded me why I should.
Attending conferences, takes a lot of time, costs money and can be exhausting, but I find the following benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
- I always leave each conference with new ideas and renewed energy.
- I love to see how great speakers behave in front of the audience. Brianna Tomkinson and David Eaves gave exceptional well articulated presentations.
- There’s always someone who makes me laugh and this year, Rob Cottingham’s keynote was hilarious yet insightful.
- I always meet new people who share the same interest.
- I don’t always, but often connect with old friends.
- I’m reminded of things that were on my to-do list and never got around to.
Seeing how people use social media in every day life to help a group of kids and hearing how traditional companies are daring to break the rules proved very inspiring and I hope to see more examples of these next year.
The folks behind Northern Voice have asked for feedback and all I can say is keep up the great work. Your conference is always exceptional and well worth making time for.
WordPress TV is a great place for tutorials and demo
Earlier this year the folks at Automattic launched www.WordPress.tv, which is a new website to learn about all things WordPress. I just had a quick look and it looks like the list of videos is quite extensive (Click the how-to link for the list of videos. Personally I’m not sure this tab is appropriately labeled, but hey, I found the list.) The site also has a WordCampTV section where you can watch videos, slides and listen to audio clips.
This site is definitely worth bookmarking and investigating further.
Registration for Northern Voice 2009 is now open
This year’s Northern Voice organizers have kicked the doors open for registration. This will be my third year attending and I highly recommend it to anyone wishing to learn more about blogging and social media. If you are at all interested in attending, I would encourage you to register soon, as past conferences have sold out in a matter of days.
Hope to see you there.
WordPress 2.7 Coltrane
Named after Jazz Musician John Coltrane, WordPress 2.7 was released yesterday and promises breathtaking beauty and inspiration. I haven’t downloaded yet, but will do soon….
In the meantime check out the promotional video. It’s pretty sexy.
Spam vs. Ham
Akismet is probably one of the best WordPress plugins out there. Since my first installation of Akismet, 14,732 spam comments have been caught and eliminated. Today, Akismet 2.2 was launched and along with the usual bug fixes, came stats. The stats provide you with a graph showing how much spam was caugth per day and a yummy pie chart with spam vs. ham! Personally, I would have called it nifty pie chart, but whatever, this is so geeky; I love it!
Will your vote be environmentally friendly?
With just a few more weeks until Canadians go the polls the folks at Vote for Environment have been pushing hard to push their message to more than 1 MILLION Canadians. Of the 2 western countries that have decided to ignore Kyoto, Canada is one of them. If you’re concerned about the Conservative’s anti-environmental policy then this website is for you.
All 3 of the other parties (Liberals, NDP, Greens) have strong(er) environmental policies, but which to vote for?
The Vote For Environment website makes it easy for you to decide. Simply type in your postal and take a look at which of the 3 parties can beat the Conservatives in your riding. As long as these 3 parties get enough seats, they should be able to forward a greener agenda.
Be sure to check out their sponsor, De Smog Blog. Their new website dedicated to the election and the one across the border analyzes each candidate’s platform on climate change and assigns them with a rating.
This Canadian election may not be as exciting as the US one, but the outcome may affect the future of humankind more critically than any previous elections.
Adding Images to Your Blog
Making your blog attractive is paramount to pleasing your audience, attracting repeat visitors and in keeping their attention. One way to make your blog more user friendly is to add some eye candy to the site. By adding images to blog posts users have a fresh perspective – something new to look at each time they return.
Adding images is relatively easy. Simply go to one of the on-line galleries (those I use most often are outlined below) locate the right pic and upload it to your post.
istock photo
everystock photo
stock xchng
getty images
Flickr
Its common blog etiquette to mention the artist in your post and link back to them just as you would do for written work. Many of the sites that allow you to download free images also make it mandatory to contact the artist in advance to request their permission to use the image.
To add images from Wordpress, simply click on the “Add Image Button” (looks like a picture frame at the top left of the text box). You have two choices – which you pick will depend on the source of the image. If you have an image saved to disk then click “Choose files to Upload” locate, select and position the image. If you have located an image online then enter the details in the “From URL” form.
Et Voila, your picture is front and centre.
Which leads me to why there aren’t more images on my blog. My posts are often spontaneous and I don’t have time to find an image a week in advance – I simply don’t blog that far ahead. I also like images to have relevance and don’t always have time to do a spontaneous search for appropriate pictures. The one above is from my recent trip to Paris -its about as relevant as any of the free images I found online searching for “blog”. But I digress.
So why bother with images at all? Because they do give a certain newness to a site: when someone returns to the blog there’s something different to catch their eye. Images make blogs more attractive and they also provide a valuable opportunity to link back to your site (the more links you have the better in terms of search ranking). So it might be worth the effort. Note to self – add more images.
Overloaded with too much info?
I had lunch with Rob a few weeks ago and we both agreed that keeping up with content is becoming more and more difficult. I only have 54 subscriptions in my Google Reader, yet every day I have 50 or so posts to read and I could easily add another 50 subscriptions. I’m not even sure if the 54 that I am reading are the ones I should be reading and fear that I’m missing out on vast amounts of information and just can’t keep up.
This can be even more challenging if you are starting a web business and not sure if you grasp all of the terminology. How are you supposed to find out which headline will bring more traffic to your blog, or what will prompt your website visitor to buy your product? I could tell you to go and read such and such blogs, but sometimes there is just not enough time to read all of that stuff.
So what can you do instead? How about checking out Sean’s cartoons? With very simple illustration Sean’s blog is full of advice with accompanying cartoons that clearly explain complicated subjects. I’m not saying that by reading his blog your products will fly off the shelf, but you’ll probably learn a great deal and his cartoons are very clever.
Here is my favourite:
The lesson here: Your users don’t have that many eyeballs. Cut the crap from your site.