For your blog to be attractive to potential readers, there are three things that matter in equal measure:
Attractive layout
Attractive content
Attractive writing
Of these three, the last one often gets the least attention. I can certainly understand that, after all most of us are happy to leave any and all rules on writing and grammar behind us once we’re done with school and college.
There’s a trend amongst bloggers and copy writers to ditch paragraphs and write each sentence on a new line. It may be a trend, but I’d like to make an argument against it. Continue Reading…
They don’t call it ‘Standard’ for nothing.
Standard Theme has become the standard for many writers, bloggers and web developers. Not only is it the perfect tool for online publishing, but it’s a coding work of art.
Blogging is all about serving.
Serving is a word that you often hear in Christian circles, but that’s still not very popular. Leading, now that’s a concept most of us can get behind. But serving, that’s a whole different ball game.
Yet if you want to grow you blog, it’s all about serving and not so much about leading.
There a million reasons people move on from Blogger to WordPress, but for certified Google-holics like me, staying with Blogger became a geeky way to proclaim independence (yes, I do see the irony here, but work with me).
I started using Blogger way back when, because it became an easy way to get my blog going for free. As I became more immersed in Google’s ecosystem, it just made more sense to stay with Blogger… except for the fact that for some reason, Android’s Blogger port seemed to be the red-headed step-nephew of the whole franchise.
This whole series is about focusing. It’s about focusing on what really matters in blogging and forgetting about all the fluff and useless stuff that distracts us from what we really want to do:
Building a great blog.
And I’m all for that. I’ve spent the last year and a half building a blog out of nothing to what it is now. Focus is the main reason I managed to accomplish what I have in that short time, so focus on building a great blog matters.
But there’s a greater picture, namely that of living a great life.
[This is part two in the Networking in Youth Ministry series--read part one!]
Networking face-to-face can take a lot of time. You have to arrange meetings, work around other people’s schedules, and find a location that fits everyone’s best interests. Online networking is much more simpler and slowly becoming a popular way for youth workers to connect.
It should be noted that there are a lot of great voices out there that are talking about great things that simply have not been tapped. We ask at the end of this to share some of your own websites you go to outside of social media. We really want to hear about them because they can be untapped potential. Would love to here what you have found.
There’s a decision that every serious blogger has to make when it comes to social media.
Social media like Google+, Facebook and Twitter are great for promoting your blog, for getting ideas for blog posts and for connecting with your targeted audience.
But they’re also the biggest time suck known to man and can completely dominate your life as a blogger. I’ve known and seen bloggers who spent more time on Twitter than they ever did on their blog … and it showed.
So you have to make a decision:
When I was in eighth grade, my language arts took us through a unit on poetry. (Guess what? I’m now working at my old junior high, with my language arts teacher!) I really enjoyed writing, and I kept writing long after the unit. I wrote poetry well on into college, where I also began to write essays. After I got married, I started blogging and loved it! Then, a year ago, I got an awesome chance to write for some Gandalf-loving geeks called ChurchMag. Short story shorter: I love writing and blogging!
Now that I’m a junior high teacher, I’m taking every chance I can to encourage my students to try writing. To that end, I’m using my extension class (an extra class at the end of the day where we teach students different academic skills) to teach my student writing through blogging.
Last month, we created a WordPress blog—powered by Standard Theme!—and got to work. I’ve given them pointers about what to use to write (Evernote), how to get inspired, (showed a clipped from Finding Forrester-”You’re the man now, dog!”), and the different types of posts (editorials, reviews, etc.). The results of this experiment has been mixed. Some student love it, while others love that their homework is to play video games and write a short review.
After a few weeks, I’ve begun to wonder about how blogging could help in youth ministry. How much more likely are our students to be engaged by what their peers share about living life for Christ than what we “dinosaurs” share?
I don’t know about about you, but I’m always looking for ways to increase student involvement in the actual ministry of the group. Blogging seems like a perfect way to do that, and here are a few different ways I might use students as bloggers.
Want too hear a joke? Have you heard the one about the blogger who hired a girl to slap him in the face if he gets distracted?
You haven’t?
“Digital nomad,” blogger, and entrepreneur, Maneesh Sethi is a very intelligent, very talented guy. However, even he struggles with maintaining productivity. After realizing that nearly 19 hours of potential work time were lost each week to distract, Maneesh decided to rectify this situation, and apparently, he was prepared to go to extreme limits to correct his productivity problem because he put an ad on Craigslist asking for a person willing to sit with him while he worked at an area cafe, slapping and/or yelling at him if he got off task. Eventually, he settled on a young lady named Kara, who helped him reach a productivity level of 98% during their few hours together.
You can see him getting slapped here.
While I think that the premise of this experiment is a bit extreme, even creepy, Maneesh’s final assessment is telling:
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