UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
Agony Aunt
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To blog or not to blog?
Katy wrote: "Patti (baconater) wrote: "You kidding Desley? You could do a great blog about your rescues!"I second this!"
Thanks guys - I'm just not very good at making things sound interesting. Every article I've done has been re-written and sounds better tweaked by someone else!
Your posts in the critter thread are great, Desley. Just stick them in a blog as well.
Thanks Patti, will give that some thought.
Drum roll ... we have a wordpress blog! Okay, so it's pretty ropey at the moment. Only one blog post. Lots of blank spaces where something is going to go ... eventually. No picture.But it's there. A landing stage and a blog. I only had to tear out two clumps of hair to do it.
I have met Patti's challenge. Sort of.
Will wrote: "I only had to tear out two clumps of hair to do it."What, both of them?
Peanut butter raisin cookie for Will!Yay!
Now copy the URL in here so we can have a look!
Desley (Cat fosterer) wrote: "Thanks Patti, will give that some thought."Good!
I reckon it's gravity. It pulls on your body all your life and gradually everything heads south. For me, that seems to mean that the hair that used to be on my head is re-emerging through my nose and the backs of my shoulders and en-route clogging up what used to be called my brain.
Stop wittering and give us the link! Sheesh
Will wrote: "If I must. It's pretty basic so far...http://willonce.wordpress.com/about/b..."
Great start, great first post.
Oh good you've done the follow thing. I'm stalking you now.
Many thanks to everyone for the help (and my first two stalkers). From nothing to a working blog is less than 24 hours. A lot easier than I expected.Now the hard work begins of learning how to use the widgets and whatnots ...
Will, the link that I sent deals with Widgets and everything (:
Thanks - I've been working my way through the help files and the videos. I'll get to the bit on widgets soon.
Nice looking page Will. I am sure with a few posts under your belt you will feel more confident with it and have it exactly as you want it :D
A question, if I may ...Now that I have got into this blogging lark (three blogs posted - woo!), where should I be going to tell people about it?
I feel I shouldn't go back to this thread to say I've written a new blog, cos this ought to be a general "Agony Aunt" thread.
There's a forum for blogs and a forum for meet the author. Should I use the blog forum or the author forum or both?
I'm posting the same blogs to my goodreads Author profile blog and my wordpress blog. Is that a sensible thing to do? Should I just use wordpress and leave the author one alone?
I'd be grateful for any other tips on how to get a blog more well known.
It's a strange and exciting new world for a newbie.
I've got my Wordpress blog linked to my Goodreads profile, simply because the option is there.A good way to drive traffic to your blog is to visit other blogs. If you go to the Wordpress.com homepage and search for something that interests you, you'll find God knows how many blogs to visit.
Mention your new blog posts in your author thread. You can also start a blog roll thread, if you like.Or use the Prawns for Patti thread.
Thanks! Author's thread, blog roll thread, link wordpress to GR profile, check.
Right, now just keep posting and watch those viewer numbers flood... pour... trickle... seep in.
I have to say that it's dashed exciting. Okay, so it's only single digit visitors per day, but today's single digit visitors are already higher than yesterday's single digit visitors.And it's barely lunchtime.
I haven't had as much fun watching numbers change since the voting for the Eurovision song contest in 1981 when Buck's Fizz were making their mind up.
Eh-up! I was one of today's (but I have several digits!) A good read!
Eh up! Is that a northern accent I detect?
It is, lad. I hail from Manchester and live in East Yorkshire.
God's Own Country! In that case this might amuse...
I moved to London and the South East in 1985 but my folks have always stayed in the Midlands or North. My son John is a true southerner - he says barth and carstle.
When John he was tiny my father - Derbyshire born and bred - was coming to visit. So I spent quite a while teaching my son how to say one phrase in a northern dialect - "ee, but Ah'll go t'foot of ah stairs".
We practised and practised until he was word-perfect, all the time giggling wildly about how the words sounded.
When my father arrived, John was so excited that he had forgotten what we had practised. He furrowed his little brow, stuck his tongue out ... and eventually remembered it.
In his tiny pip-squeak voice he yelled in an impeccable Surrey accent: "Ooo, I will go and sit on the naughty step."
I have a book review blog, which Ive not updated for a while, as until recently not read much.But my craft blog is updated most days, and I really enjoy writing that one
Whenyou explain the blog ring to him, copy me would you? I have a blog, but don't really know if it has any value when I could just as easily sit in a dark room talking to myself.
ScottI never did get the hang of the blog ring, but I did start my own thread on the blogging subforum. Every time I post a new blog I update that thread, and it shows up in folks' unread lists.
I suppose the idea of the blog ring is to visit the blogs of other people on this site - interact with each other, leave links from their blogs to yours, that sort of thing.
As a fr'instance, if you'd like to give me a link to your blog I'll go and take a look at it.
You might also want to head down to my blog thread in a couple of minutes cos I'm posting a link to today's blog,
My blog is mostly interviews - some with authoers, but also readers, reviewers, cover designers, editors and audiobook narrators. I thought it might be interesting to cover multiple aspects of book production.There are articles too, I've just run a couple on Thunderclap, and earlier in the year about how pervasive fantasyis in our culture. I'm planning to do some more of those. I ran a debate about free books on Mythic Scribes as well. If anyone has any views on this and wants to guest post then feel free to PM me.
I follow a few fantasy and history blogs too.
Has it helped sales? I have no idea but it has helped meet new people.
I don't know where the time comes from to be able to blog as well as tweet, email, ring people up, update the web site, update facebook..................
I thought blogs were passe. readers exhausted. many first generation bloggers giving up. just too many now. i know i don't follow any. but i'm a hobbit.
I was on a training course the other day about social media for business. The tutor put up a slide showing the most commonly used media tools:Facebook 94%
Twitter 83%
LinkedIn 71%
Youtube 57%
Blogging 55%
Google+ 54%
Pinterest 47%
Instagram 28%
Naturally we need to take this information with a pinch of salt. It came from Social media examiner, so will be biased towards people who use social media.
The handouts from the course didn't explain what the percentages were for, so I am guessing that this is a survey of people who use social media. I don't think that 94% of the world's population uses facebook!
But it still shows that there is a healthy audience for blogging. There are some trends - some kids are leaving facebook for the likes of instagram and snapchat - but blogging still has a healthy share of the market.
It's not a shortcut to fame and fortune, but rumours of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
I think the important things about blogs is that they're a bit like books. You have to promote yours because there's millions of them out there so you probably need Facebook, twitter and other social networks to make your blog work
Ach, it's one gigantic gannet colony, all pecking n squawking.
*squawk*
Ah, I see. So I write a blog to promote my books...I then have to tweet to promote my blog...
Presumably then I need to Facebook to promote my tweeting?
There's an old lady and a fly somewhere in this story.
Incidentally, that reminds me of a true story. At least, I think it is true. Once upon a time, the UK Education Department decided to build a wonderful new headquarters called Sanctuary House in Great Smith Street. The centrepiece of this building is a marvellous atrium filled with exotic plants which stretches from the ground floor to the roof.
Shortly after the civil servants had moved in, they started to complain about little red mites that appeared all over their desks and papers. Annoying little biting critters - the mites that is, not the civil servants.
A little game hunter was called in. That's like a big game hunter, only smaller. He deduced that the mites were coming from the tropical plants in the atrium. He recommended a biological response as the most environmentally friendly. They should ask for a special licence to import the spiders which preyed on these mites.
You can guess what's coming, can't you? After a short while, the civil servants started to complain that they were being overrun by spiders...
I don't know how the story finished. Maybe they have worked their way up to a tiger roaming the corridors of power.
Was this around the time of Bowie and the Spiders From Mars?
There is definitely something of the Red Might about the boy from Beckenham .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpvWZO...
Did the story have an ending, is it on the Web? (I know but someone had to say it!)
Probably boinged it right out there ...........somewhere.....
Interesting thread, Will. I'll follow your blog next time I'm working on mine. So, having met the challenge of creating your blog, your next challenge is to manage to enjoy it! I think it's important to post what you want to on it and that way you won't lose interest. Re-blogging is a good way of interacting with blogs so, e.g., if your focus is on posting short stories, you could find some other blogs that do the same and re-blog some of their posts.
I'd not want to alienate anyone by not mentioning theirs.