Guide To Blogging

Sometimes, it’s so difficult to finish a blog post of 150 to 200 words, with good content and satisfying overall quality. Personally, this problem comes from my being obsessive-compulsive in writing. It is when I am writing with so much eagerness and ideas, I suddenly stop and break my momentum. And no, it wasn’t because of some emergency but because I itched to edit what I’m writing. You see, I learned that writing and editing are two different things. When you write, you just write – just put your ideas down in words. Editing, on the other hand, is what you do AFTER writing. Never mind if you find a bunch of errors, what is important is that you’ve concretized those thoughts dying to get out of your head.

Procrastination is a common problem of all people, in particular, bloggers. Sometimes, we get lost in our research and end up surfing the net for things that are totally unrelated to what we’re supposed to write about. Other times, we just put off writing altogether. How do we beat procrastination?

This might be a little on the cliché side but discipline is key. Discipline yourself. Most of us whine that we can’t work unless it’s late and everyone’s asleep and we have the house to ourselves. Fine, point taken; we all have our working timetables and I, too, am guilty of such whining. But sometimes, it is best to actually get it over with first thing in the morning. You will realize how much more productive you can be when you start working early. After all, you just came from period of rest and your mind is pretty much fresh and more receptive to thinking.

I’m helping out my friends from the UA&P – IShareHappiness Blog Team.

Whenever you feel pessimistic, angry, troubled, frustrated, and depressed – what have you – you need someone to talk to. Someone who could help you be more optimistic and help make you feel that there is hope. Sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone you know. We know of a trustworthy and empathetic person who can help you readers out there.

IShareHappiness is there to help you. So come Visit the Site… And Share the Happiness.

IShareHappiness is having a contest and will be giving away an IPOD TOUCH…

WIN AN IPOD TOUCH FOR FREE

Sounds good to me…This is a very good idea that made want to join this contest and it so simple and so easy to join all you have to do is make post about the contest and just fire away…

Thanks to the QuickStop Project — BackPackers Crew for the heads up on the contest and for the post Win An IPOD TOUCH from IShareHappiness.. And now I’m very Excited about it, and I hoping I would win (yey!)

Here’s How You can join the Contest…(if I understand It Correctly)
Make a 100 word review about this contest, then make a link to the contest post and then to the ISHAREHAPPINESS home page. Which gives you 10 points… Yey, since I have this post already I have 10 points.

And if you would check my sidebar… IShareHappiness’ link is in there. (haha) Plus 5 points. I added the IShareHappiness to my Technorati Favorites… Also you can add them to your Technorati Favorites (which gives you 2 points)

And also try subscribing to their feeds.

Then next part… adding the links on multiply, friendster, myspace

SO share the happiness, and win an IPOD touch..Link away People…

For more details of the contest… Visit IShareHappines

Better Hurry this contest is until March 24, 2008 at 12:00am Manila Time (GMT +08:00 Hong Kong). The Winner of the iPOd TOUCH will be announced on March 25, 2008 at 6:00pm Manila Time (GMT +08:00 Hong Kong).

Also Thanks to the QuickStop Project — the BackPackers Crew “Smitten Kittens Iza and Janis”

Communicating Your Ideas Through Blogs

Blogging is both an endeavor of creativity and communication. Communication as we know it, can be defined in a very broad sense involves not only written (blogs) and oral speech (podcasts), but also music, the pictorial arts(photo-blogs), audio-video, and in fact all human behavior, and yes it can even be relating our point of view on a certain thing, an idea or our wants. That’s why blogs are so important and popular today because it gives people an outlet of their emotions and thoughts. Yes, we know that some are better at communicating to their ideas to others, while some are not, but that doesn’t mean that blogs are limited to those who can communicate better. Blogs are for everyone, it just takes practice and an idea to get the ball rolling

Blogs are for everyone, given a chance to excel in online communication and also offline or “real-world” communication it can be a better place in cyberspace, when everyone even the little blogs has a chance to speak their mind.
Some people blog their original works while others blog about their thoughts on everyday things. Indeed, blogging has also entertained the idea of artistry, seeing the continuing sophistication of site layouts and themes. Blogging, ultimately, puts together people of all groups, ages, interests, and locations by talking about hobbies, relationships, ideas, and businesses.

Blogging is often taken as informal writing. While this may be true, it does not mean that it is okay for a blogger to disregard writing rules. Blogging IS Writing… Creativity is the key… Creativity is the Cure… Blogging Creativity. This article, is a good marker to explain the purpose of this blog, my blog, the QuickStop Project, this is the repository of my ideas and emotions as personal blog. This blog is the mirror of who I am, well, not the real extent of who I am.

I was explaining that blogging is the same as communicating, since we are social beings blogging is not that hard putting our thought into written form, blogs are an “as-is” written form of our thoughts the way we speak with our friends, the way we converse with people… just write whatever it is on your mind. If there be any typos and grammatical errors well it’s part of life and our quest to better ourselves.

“it takes anyone to write a blog… but it takes a lot of skill and “weirdness” to write a BADASS blog…” — Jaren Cudilla

When starting a blog, ask yourself: what is my target audience?

Do you intend to write for teens? If so, start researching on what would make young people read your blog. Some just talk about mundane experiences like shopping for new clothes, or beating their friends at DOTA or Counterstrike. Other writers get by with articles mostly about relationships.

If you want to cater to yuppies, you may share a common ground by writing about work, plans in life, career growth, and relationships still.

On the other hand, if you’re targeting people from a specific field, then you have to keep your articles related to their line of work. If you’re eyeing sales managers or the like, then don’t even consider posting articles about chastity education. Your audience and your message are interrelated.

Pick on what would interest them most, and you might even have them coming back for more.

For some people, maintaining a blog also equals attracting readers. If you want to make a connection, then you better know how to entice your reading audience. The idea is to make them feel comfortable while reading your blog. This actually doesn’t have to be as neat as other biz blogs do. Think of newspaper articles. You wouldn’t read something that looks, or seems, so common to you already. The first thing that catches the people’s attention is the headline. Pick a title that you think would surely arouse their curiosity. The content, of course, has to be more interesting than the headline. You don’t want them to get disappointed in the middle of reading it and smirk at your blog, do you?

Immediately at the beginning of your article, give your readers an idea of what the content is about. Then as you write the succeeding paragraphs, expound on that gist. Avoid beating around the bush as this will just leave your readers scratching their heads in frustration. Be upfront in what you want to say. Most people easily get tired of reading such lengthy texts. If you can whip up concise but witty articles, then you’ve got their eyes glued to your blog.

Flock, one of the newest social network platforms is trying to make itself felt again with a try into linking with Twitter and FaceBook as they strive to make their site a sort of social mashup. Mashups are the latest in-thing in the world of social networking with email, geo-tagged pictures and videos all coming together for a more social web experience. The many startups that are trying to come up with new and more innovative ways to bring the net to more users as they shift from desktops to mobiles (as in Twitter’s case) that has been sweeping the globe at a very fast pace. Continue Reading »

There are actually several blogging platforms out on the market but a mere few make the cut as the best and most effective. they have withstood the time and are in use by millions of people all over the globe, Google’s Blogger and Wordpress, both are of course free and some of the most used of the other platforms on the net. They are somewhat stable if you maintain constant upgrades that would allow your blog to benefit form the latest versions that has addressed most security issues that plagued older ones. Continue Reading »

Twitter, one of the best startups that has brought blogging on the mobile scale has suffered another blow when a scam labeled as a “Best Video” link scammed users onto a malware downloading site that has affected thousands of users. As with previous incidents of re-direction to malicious sites, they were prompted by fake infection notices that told them to pay up and install some fake software. The re-direction also manifested with a PDF file that was loaded with exploits, rendering the computer system infected and vulnerable to further attack. Continue Reading »

Blogging has become one of the most prolific expressions of the social internet making it one of the most used platforms that even the biggest companies now value as a marketing tool for their products. From it’s humble beginnings as an online diary for the techie, they are now used by anybody from sales to marketing and even as money making agents with the advent of SEO, where the overall structure of the blog incorporates features that search engines love and present users when a search is done.
Continue Reading »