Making It Up

as we go along

blogging

Moving on from Emma's Diary

by 6 Comments

For 18 months, from October 2011, I was an Emma’s Diary blogger.

I really enjoyed it. You might think that blogging here pretty much daily and trying to write tech stuff regularly at Tech Solved that I’d have enough writing to do, but it appears you’d be wrong. I loved having a space where the focus was on the pregnancy and then the one child. Here he’s one of many, but there he was my focus, and while some times in the run up to the actual post I wondered what I would write about, it turned out it was always easy to do.

But all good things must come to an end, and with one thing and another, I’m no longer writing there.

And I’m sad about it.

It was good to be part of a team blog. I loved the event we got to do, and have made good friends through it. I’m sure we’ll stay in touch, but it won’t be the same.

I am determined though, that I’m going to keep a special place here for Tigerboy. And more than that, I’m going to make a special place for each of the others. So maybe not every couple of weeks, but regularly each of the children will get a post focused on them. With four children, if I did one post a week, that would mean they’d each get twelve in the year – that would work, wouldn’t it? I’ll have to talk to the older ones about what it’s OK to blog about them – as they’ve got older, I’ve pulled back from their lives, which is part of why the blog is so marvellously eclectic these days.

But that’s OK, isn’t it? Eclectic is good. There’s no real reason to limit yourself to a particular niche, unless you’d like to make a living, or win awards.

Oh.

Oh well.

I guess I’ll have to make a living a different way. (Hint, we do blog stuff. Over at Colneis. We can do you a blog for business, or help you migrate off wordpress.com or do whatever it is blog like that you need. We’ve got a fair bit of experience of this stuff between us.)

And yes, it means the blog is changing focus yet again. You’re used to that now though, aren’t you?

fallen petal

Meta post – on social media, Google +1, share buttons and blogging.

by 15 Comments

Obviously I have enormous amounts of stuff to get ready for the weekend and weeks ahead, just as obviously I’m suddenly shattered and in pain from the run yesterday, and now coming down to earth with a bump after a lovely morning with my #MumsOnThree posse (great to meet you all!) and fantastic lunch courtesy of Three and their On the Go Mums campaign. So instead of even spending time making a list, I’ve done some page editing and then fiddled with my AddThis plugin, upgrading it and tweaking the options on show.

I’ve gone for the Google +1 button. I considered this carefully as I’ve heard rumours it can adversely affect technorati rankings. Given that my technorati ratings have suddenly dropped to 25% of their previous average, I don’t think I need to worry about that too much (what is *with* that??) and as I think the future of the search is increasingly going to be social, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I had a read around and a chat on twitter as well, as you do, and had this article on the button recommended to me too. I liked it so much that I activated my google profile to +1 it. Which leads me to wonder who is going to go through that – will it be bloggers? On some levels we are early adopters of a lot of this stuff, particularly in the social media arena, but in this case, you have to have a public profile that shows who you are and what you’ve liked. I opted out of having google customise my content and search results based on my recommendations, and I wonder if that will counterbalance the whole thing, and whether it will end up being a complete flop.

Only one way to find out though, and that’s by giving it a go. Would love to hear your thoughts in the usual place. Or places. And if you think the article is interesting, do feel free to share or +1 it 😀

How do you blog?

by 16 Comments

No, not what tech do you use? (Although that’s interesting in a building an amazon wishlist to replace this mortally wounded netbook sense 😉 )

Rather, I’m interested in how you organise yourself. Are you a spur of the moment blogger? Do you get hit by inspiration and rush over to your admin panel straight from twitter to share your thoughts? (Thanks to @caroljs of New Mummy for the inspiration for this one!) Or do you ask twitter for a list of topics a la @cosmicgirlie for Mocha Beanie Mummy? (And apparently she’d already done everything I’d thought of, so I’m intrigued to see what she’ll come up with this time!)

Or perhaps you’ve all your writing done and it’s scheduled for the next week? I suspect @LauraAWNTYM from Are We Nearly there yet may be one of these!

Of course, most of the blogs I read are home ed blogs recounting the happenings of the day. And there is a post in progress recounting one of our days you may or may not be pleased to hear 🙂 But that still leaves the question of why you started blogging – thinking particularly of our newest blogring members over at I rant, I rave and Schools out for now. (Please also take this as a hint to go and welcome them aboard 🙂 )

Oh, and on the topic of the blogring. I *am* going to do some maintenance. Please don’t take it personally if I deactivate your blog. As I’ve never got around to writing a page that shows me hibernated blogs, the only way I can keep track of them is by deactivating them. If I ever get a round tuit I’ll write that page and we’ll all be happier, but until then, that’s the way it is. And I do need to (start to) keep the blogring fresh, it *is* still a fab resource for home educators and a part of the community. I have been slack. I will try harder 🙂

Drifted off topic. Do you organise yourself? If so how? Be fascinated to know! Comments in the usual place, or I’ve opened trackbacks if you’d rather blog in your own home and link back 🙂