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Why I Blog (Hint: It Has Nothing to Do with Swag)
Last night I had the pleasure of attending Disney On Ice presents Disney-Pixar Toy Story 3 with my husband and kids. The tickets were comped and we enjoyed some VIP treatment in the form of dinner and a meet-and-greet with some of the characters. We watched the show with other bloggers/media from a private suite. As we walked down the memorabilia-lined hallway, I joked with my husband that he should remember moments like this when my paycheck isn’t as big as we would like. You can’t put a price tag on some experiences, right? I posted a picture of my kids waiting for the show to start on Facebook and…
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Social Media Vacation, New Year, New(ish) Attitude
Last week, we headed out as a family to Disney World. It was a big trip for us as we usually vacation locally (with the White Mountains and Maine nearby, why not?) and I was a bit stressed about work. As a freelancer, I don’t really get vacation time, especially since I have some steady gigs that require me to continue to post content. I scrambled for weeks to try to get ready and never really caught up. It didn’t help that Bug came down with a stomach bug 36 hours before we were scheduled to leave and the night before my last kid-free day to work. So we packed…
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This is the Perfect Post
As you may know, I blog on QuirkyFusion.com and, of course, on Family Computing @ About.com. It’s a lot of blogging for a mom with two little kids and a shortage of day care. But that’s not my biggest problem. My big roadblock to blogging is my vision of a perfect post. It has a beginning, middle and end. It says something intelligent, witty or profound. It makes people think and maybe even comment. It’s… perfect. Perfect posts take time to write. They take editing and spell-checking. They take brain power. They may even have an accompanying photo. I don’t have time for that. And I sometimes forget that it…
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Hello, People. I Work.
My kids now go to daycare two days a work, which leaves me with a blissfully quiet house and some time to get things done. Some of the time goes into coordinating the lives of my family… Bug and LadyBug have a seemingly neverending supply of appointments and paperwork and so on. And there are plenty of things that need to be fixed, maintained, etc. But really, the time at daycare is when I’m “at work.” In case you’re new here, I’m a writer. My primary gig is over at About.com where I write about Family Computing. I also write for a few other websites and am in the process…
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Social Media and Monetization
There has been some talk recently about the monetization of Twitter streams. Some of the Twitter divas would like to capitalize on their large pool of followers by selling ads on their Twitter streams. I’m disappointed. Why does everything have to monetized? We spend time with our kids without billing someone. We read books or watch TV or walk through the woods without getting paid. And, hey, we have lunch with our friends without trying to sell them things (at least most of us do). Why is it ok to force ads on people who have chosen to connect with you in an online space? Ads on blogs are one…
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Should I?
Thinking of doing NaBloPoMo this month. It’s going to be crazy, but it might be worth pushing it. I thought about doing it on two blogs, but there’s no way I can commit to that.
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Nancy Traversy Interview
Nancy Traversy, CEO and co-founder of Barefoot Books, was interviewed recently on the podcast, Just One More Book. The interview is interesting; I always find Nancy’s story of the Barefoot journey compelling and I have a lot of respect for her as a female entrepreneur and long-time WAHM (she and co-founder Tessa Strickland started the business from home). While, I was there, I also fell in love with their website/blog. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in children’s literature.
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Blogging in a Vacuum
I have admittedly neglected my blog in the past year and have neglected the blogging community, I suppose, along with it. So, now I feel like I’m blogging in a vacuum. I’m out of touch with what others are blogging about and there aren’t a lot of people paying attention to what I’m blogging about. This isn’t a crisis because I’m a journal-keeper, so I’m used to writing things that are never meant to be read by anyone else. That said, I strongly believe that blogging is all about community and a blog without a community might as well be written in a fancy-bound book and tucked under your mattress.…
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September Search Engine Fun
My site doesn’t have a ton of hits yet, but I usually get a few a week from search engine queries. I have been thoroughly amused by the many ways people find my site, and thought I’d start sharing the fun with you. So far, for the month of September: 8 different keyphrases Search Percent razberry teether 4 36.3 % mom does not want me to have a destination wedding 1 9 % who knows mommy more 1 9 % campbell s soup commercial chunkier 1 9 % dead gross things 1 9 % back-to-school cake 1 9 % goodie bouquet 1 9 % babycrazy 1 9 % I suspect…
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Blog it Forward Six Degrees Part II
My apologies for the delay! As a reminder, the idea behind BIFSD (for lack of a better name) is to stretch out beyond my inner circle and see what I find. I chose a blog from my blogroll and then chose a blog from their blogroll, and onwards until I found the 6th degree blog. Pretty simple. This was a bit more challenging than I thought, so I had to make a couple of rules (ack!): 1. Each blog must have some sort of blogroll, whether it’s a list of bloggers they read, or bloggers that read them. Basically, I have to be able to go somewhere interesting from the…