Which means, I won’t be blogging here for a little while longer yet.

If you’re interested in following our trip, we’ll be blogging as a family on 3 Kids And A Caravan.  I’ll also be blogging on my personal blog Lightening Online.

Hopefully, I’ll see you on one of those blogs.  If not, I’ll catch up when we return.

Happy Blogging!

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An Absent Blogger

Until the comments slow down….

Or even stop….

Then what do you do?

My comments on my personal blog have been on the decline for some time now.

They’ve now reached the point where some posts have ZERO comments. 

People haven’t stopped reading.  At least, I don’t think they have.  My stats are showing that visitors are the same and at times, higher than before.  My feedreader stats are all over the place so who knows there.

In fact, my comments are much better here on this blog, even though the traffic is much less (thank you).

So, what I’ve noticed over the past couple of days is that I’m losing my desire to blog.  On my personal blog I mean.  That’s never happened to me before.  Not since I got into a blogging rhythm of 6-7 posts per week.  All of a sudden, the desire to write and to share just isn’t there.

It’s like I’ve come crashing down from the “comment high” and can’t seem to pick myself back up again.

I always thought I would blog regardless.  If no-one wanted to talk to me, oh well, I still enjoy writing.

Not so.

I feel like I’m not connecting and to be honest, I don’t know how to reconnect.

Perhaps I should be doing more “do follow” in the “non SEO” sense of the word.  You comment on my blog and I’ll comment on yours.  I do try to read the the blogs of my regular commenters.  But my comment policy has always been to comment if I have something to say.  Rather than to comment because they gave me a comment and around it goes.

I don’t know.

How do you handle comments?  Do you always return the “favour” or do you only comment if you have something useful to add?

How do you encourage people to leave a comment on your posts?

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The True Value of Blog Comments

I’m not a big fan of list posts.  Trust me to go against what is “popular”.

I don’t enjoy reading them because I find them impersonal.

I don’t like writing them because I find them impersonal.

Perhaps that’s why I’m a “personal” blogger over and above any other style of blogging.

I like to “brain dump” and just put all my thoughts down on the page.

I guess you could call me an “undisciplined blogger”.

Which does make me wonder whether I should even be writing for this particular niche?

Or is it better to have a blogger that “goes against the tide” and blogs about blogging in a way that is a little “different” to the rest of the “gang”?

I’m not sure.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on list posts.  Like them?  Hate them?  Find them easy to write or difficult?

Should I abandon blogging about the blogworld and stick to personal blogging?

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Do You Like List Posts?

Well, the 31 Days To a Better Blog Challenge is away and the first “assignment” is to write an elevator pitch for your blog.

Hmmm….

I’ve thought about elevator pitches before but always put it off because it’s “too hard”.

No more procrastination!!!!

Today is the day where I make a start, no matter how feable the attempts might end up being.

Attempt 1

Lightening’s Blogworld is the place I record stuff I’ve learnt so I don’t forget how to do it!

Attempt 2

Lightening’s Blogworld is aimed at non-technical bloggers like myself.  It’s a mixture of basic tutorials, blogging news and events, blog reviews and discussion on blogging issues.

Attempt 3

Lightening’s Blogworld is a record of my journey in the blogging world.

What Do You Think?

I’d love to hear some feedback on these.  Which do you like better?  Are they too short?  Any thoughts on how you would describe this blog?

I’d also love to hear your own elevator pitches for your blog.  Feel free to share in the comments section.

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Day 1 - The Elevator Pitch

Why Did I Start This Blog?

It seemed I had a bit I wanted to say about blogging from time to time and it didn’t really fit well with my personal blog. With all the talk of the importance of selecting and working within a specific niche, I thought it was perhaps better to splinter my blogging into a few separate blogs rather than blog several times a day on my personal blog.

I’m no expert when it comes to blogging and technical stuff. In fact, I knew NOTHING when I first started blogging. I’ve also used this blog as a place to keep a record of things I’ve learnt along the way. You do something once and then go to do it again a few months later and can’t remember how to do it. Well, that’s what happens to me anyway!

What Do I Want To Achieve With This Blog?

To be honest, I never set out to earn money blogging. It’s still not my principal motivation. At some point along the way though, I did decide I wouldn’t mind the pocket money that blogging can bring.

I do like the fact that I have this blog where I can experiment with different monetisation strategies without upsetting my regular blog readers.

As to what I want to achieve though, I’m really not sure. I have been reluctant in the past to set too many goals because I don’t really like the pressure of trying to achieve goals.

Instead, I’ve been aimlessly wandering which isn’t good for the blog either.

So, my first goal should probably be to set myself a goal or 2 for the blog.

My one monetisation goal for this blog would be to cover the costs of the domain and hosting. It’s not a lot but it would be nice for it to pay for itself. It has done that up until now but right at the moment isn’t really earning me anything (still waiting for Nuffnang to start showing ads - if they don’t hurry up, I’ll be ditching them before we begin).

S.W.O.T Analysis

Strengths

• Domain name now has a little bit of time behind it (is over 12 months old)
• I enjoy blogging (particularly sharing my opinions)
• I spend a reasonable amount of time (by choice) in the blogging world

Weaknesses

• No regular blogging schedule (anymore - I did have once upon a time)
• Blogging about blogging is a very saturated niche (with plenty more people a LOT more knowledgable than me blogging about it)
• No real goals or ambitions as such

Opportunities

• Plenty of scope for blog posts.
• Not sure what other opportunities?

Threats

• If it made more money, I could justify spending more time on this blog.  It’s a bit of a “which comes first the chicken of the egg” type problem.
• Hard niche to rank well in google for - strong competition
• Blogging seems to have gone a little quiet of late.

Well, there are a few of my thoughts for what they’re worth (not a lot I suspect).  It’ll be interesting to see what the next month brings.

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S.W.O.T Analysis

However, Darren has indicated some “pre challenge” tasks to be done so I’m going to work my way through those this week.

They are:

1.  Install a metrics program

Done although I’m sure I could do much more with Analytics than I am so far.  I really should learn to use it better.

2.  Invite a friend to join you

If you’re interested in joining in the challenge or have already joined, I’d love to hear from you so we can encourage one another.

3.  Run a SWOT analysis on your blog (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)

I’ll work on that in the next day or so and include it in my next post.

It’s kind of like “pre season” training isn’t it?

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Beginning the Problogger 31 Day Challenge

Darren Rowse from Problogger has decided to run his “31 Days To Build A Better Blog” Challenge again and this time I’ve decided to give it a go.

For THIS blog.

This poor blog often lacks attention, coming in at second fiddle to my personal blog, Lightening Online.

It’s not that I don’t love this blog dearly.  It’s just that there are only so many hours in the day.

So, for 1 tiny little month, starting April 1st, I’m going to focus on this blog as my first priority.

And see what happens.

Be warned, my posting frequency may increase. 

Anyone else want to join me?

You can sign up here.

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Probloggers “31 Days To Build a Better Blog” Challenge

I’ve been an intermittent Twitter user at best.  I started off with the greatest of intentions.  Then I got into Plurk which was fun for a while but really no match for Twitter.  Somewhere along the way, I dropped using both of them.

Recently, I’ve decided to give Twitter another go.  So many top bloggers and internet marketters make great use of Twitter and I really want to learn more about using it.

At the moment I am trialling TweetDeck for using Twitter.  My other computer has Twhirl installed but when I needed to add something to this computer, I decided to try an alternative for comparison.

So far, I have to say that I’m impressed.

TweetDeck gives me a much larger screen with 3 windows side by side.  As soon as I open it, I can see at a glance any direct messages or @lightening messages that have arrived in my absence.

So far, I’m finding TweetDeck a great resource for using Twitter.

Do you find Twitter a helpful application and what do you use to make your Twitter usage simpler?

P.S.  You can follow me on Twitter here:  http://twitter.com/lightening

(Please also either leave a comment or send me a message letting me know you’re a Blogworld reader so I can return your follow - I’m getting quite a lot of new follows at the moment and picking and choosing who I return follow).

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TweetDeck

I’ve been working on mine gradually (as time permits) and feel that I’m finally making headway.

My latest challenge has been a lack of software to resize my photographs.

I have Microsoft Office Picture Manager on my other laptop (installed by the person who originally sold us the computer) which works well.  However, I’ve been trying to avoid having to pay for anything so I went in search of possible solutions online.

While there are plenty of resizers which operate solely online, this posed something of a dilemma for me.  While we’re travelling, I want to be able to prewrite posts ready to publish at the click of a button.  I really don’t want to have to wait until we have internet connection to be able to resize my photographs ready for publishing (which you generally need to do if you’re using Wordpress software).

So, my searching lead me to QuickSize.

It was simple to download and so far I am finding it extremely FAST.

If you’re looking for a quick, simple way to resize images for blogging, facebook, emailing etc, I can highly recommend it.

Oh, and it’s FREE!  Yah for FREE! (although they do kindly request a donation if you are able to).

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Resizing Images: QuickSize

Don’t you love the way Spammers go out of their way to give compliments to the blog writer they’re spamming? I’m thinking reading spam comments could be the secret to building up my ailing self esteem.

Especially comments like this:

Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again - taking you feeds also, Thanks.

And:

This is great post,I’m surely bookmark this page and keep reading every post you made, thx!

Or This:

Wow, great post, I’ll Digg this, and share it to my friend, thx!

Perhaps this one:

Wow, great post, I’ll Digg this, and share it to my friend, thx!

One might even be mistaken for thinking these were genuine comments really.

Different names. Different email addresses. Mostly nice comments - wouldn’t you love to read stuff like this from REAL blog readers?

Problem with these?

All linked to the same site!!!

Different names and email addresses but linked to the same site.

Gotta love those stupid spammers don’t you?

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Spammers Boosting Your Ego