PLUG IN - A metaphor for blogging (and life) that keeps on working!

So this week, I challenge you to figure out how you can better "plug in" to your target audiences - to your blog readers and to your potential blog readers.

In my world of children's literature, there's a monthly event called "The Carnival Of Children's Literature." The idea is that every month there's a different host, and many bloggers share their favorite blog post of the month - and the "carnival" is a giant of a post, with links to 30 or more wonderful posts from all across the world of children's literature.

I've watched this event for years, and finally, I signed up to host.

The June 2010 Carnival of Children's Literature takes place tomorrow, and I've literally invested two whole days of what would have been writing time to make this happen in a way that's artful and organized and hopefully very professional.

And tomorrow, hundreds of new readers will come to my blog to find out about all the wonderful things going on in the kidlitosphere, and while they're there, they might check out the things I've been talking about on my blog.

It will be a lot of traffic and, more importantly, community coming by to visit - for me and for everyone who sent in a link and a blurb to participate.

It's a wonderful opportunity, and I'm grateful to have the chance to be the Carnival Ring Leader for this month.

So here's YOUR challenge - where is there an opportunity in YOUR world to plug into what's going on with your community?

Think about it, and feel free to share your ideas in comments! (Oh, and check out the carnival at 12:01 AM Pacific Coast Time, June 25, 2010!)

Namaste,
Lee

How Can You "Contribute To The Conversation" When You're Overwhelmed? Finding Balance in Blog Commenting

Get it? Constant Comment?

So recently a consulting client shared with me their dilemma when it came to commenting on blogs. They felt that they wanted to truly add to the conversation, and not simply leave "Yes, I hear you" type comments.

The problem? Composing their in-depth comments, responding to the blog posts of others, felt overwhelming and extremely time consuming.

It is a common enough challenge that I thought I would share my strategy here with all of my readers:

I try to find a middle ground. Sometimes, when I read an awesome blog post, all I have time for is "Thanks for sharing this!"

Other times, for that same level of awesome, I can wish I had an hour to compose a full-on blog post of my own, responding to their post, to leave as a comment.

But most of the time, that hour already has too many claims on it - so I compromise. I try to find ONE point I can add to the conversation. ONE element of the blog post to which I can respond substantively - and having done that, I feel the job's done.

It's not ideal - but it's a practical strategy, and it works for me. You want to engage your blog readers in a conversation, and you want to be part of the conversation over on their blogs... But life is busy, and it's counter-productive to let blog commenting be an additional source of stress in your life.

Remember, this blogging thing is supposed to be fun. You're finding YOUR community, and sharing with people who are passionate about what you are passionate about. That kind of community-building is beyond cool.

So when you comment, Remember to keep it Zen.

Namaste,

Lee

Quality or Quantity? Your blog readers, facebook friends & twitter followers

Okay, I think I need to make a point here about the competitive and somewhat demoralizing "game" I find myself and others playing with our statistics.

Note:

You will always find someone whose blog is bringing in more readers than yours.

You will always stumble upon a facebook "friend" whose "friends" out-number yours by the thousands.

I have seen tweeps with hundreds of thousands of followers, which can temporarily make me feel like a twitter failure.

But you know what? It doesn't really matter what anyone else has going on.

Here's the secret: While it's nice to be able to throw out a nice round number of how many people visit your blog, if none of them come back, or stay to read what you've written... you may have traffic, but you're not really building a following.

I think it's much better to have 100 loyal involved readers than 10,000 people who click in and click out and really couldn't care less about what you do or blog about.

Traffic without quality is, well, just traffic.

But over time, a loyal quality following will build from something small... into your platform.

And that's something to aim for.

Just something to think about the next time you find yourself hyperventilating about your blog visitor / facebook friend / twitter follower numbers not being higher...

Namaste, and remember to keep it Zen,
Lee

Why Blog In The First Place?

So a friend of mine talked to me recently about wanting to start a blog. She had all these wide-ranging ideas for content, and I asked her:

What's your goal with blogging? What do you want the blog to do for you? Why do you want to start blogging?

And her answer surprised me.

She said she wasn't looking for new clients. Or even to build her audience. Or to establish her expertise. (All three are already well established.)

She explained that she thought a blog would be the perfect way for her to organize information for her existing clients in a way that streamlined her interactions with them...

One example being that she wouldn't have to answer the same question via email multiple times to different clients - she could simply write up a post that addressed that topic, and share the link to the blog post when asked the question in the future.

And I thought it was a really great use of this amazing new medium.

I hope she'll start blogging soon.

And our conversation inspired me to ask: Why are YOU blogging in the first place?

Is it to build an audience for what you do?

Is it to establish your expertise in your area?

Is it to make a difference in the world in some way?

Is it to provide a service?

Is it to organize information that you want to share?

Is it to have your voice heard?

I think these are all great reasons to blog - but each reason requires different approaches to HOW you blog.

Consider the reasons YOU blog, and please share them with us in comments!

Namaste, and remember to keep it Zen,

Lee

You Will Make Mistakes... And That's Okay. (It can even be a GOOD thing.)

You can't really erase things from your blog once they're posted.

So this week on my "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?" Blog I made a mistake.

I shared about a story that had been in the news that I felt sure my readers would care about - 2 men who were arrested for falling in love with each other and were sentenced last week to 14 years hard labor.

And then the very first comment I got told me that I'd missed something HUGE to the story. That I'd fallen into the same mistake many others had made - that it wasn't 2 men, it was a man and a transgendered person who had fallen in love. Suddenly, after reading a great news analysis on a blog, and really reading closely the NY Times reporting, I understood that rather than this being a story about homophobia in Malawi, Africa - it was a story about transphobia in Malawi and here in our culture, too. Our Western media being too quick to accept the "two men" line provided by the authorities who wouldn't acknowledge the self-identified female gender of the transgendered prisoner.

I felt terrible. First, I'd presented the story inaccurately - and while I hadn't meant to, I had still made a mistake.

Second, I wondered what I should do. Should I retract my post and re-write it completely? Could I delete it and my mistake? (Although all the people who get my blog posts syndicated would see the original.) Could I just add to my original post and explain?

What I decided to do was something I hadn't had to do since I started blogging: I published a second post as a correction. (I also explained my mistake in an new addendum to my original post.)

I was nervous at how people would react. I had made a mistake. Would my readers be mad at me? Would they feel let down? I've published over 750 blog posts and have never been in this situation before. Would they continue to trust me moving forward?


Here's one comment after I published the correction that was representative:

Lee, I love that you took in feedback from your readers and corrected your mistake so quickly. That puts you way ahead of the New York Times and many other news sources! There is a lot of trans-phobia even in the gay community and I'm so glad that your blog is combating that. Thank you for reporting this awful story and reporting it accurately.
Nora

It turned out my readers weren't angry at me for making a mistake. On the contrary, they were happy to see me learning from the experience, and grateful that I "got it."

So it turned out that my mistake actually improved my relationship with my readers!

My lesson from this:

Don't freak out about being perfect. You're human, like me. Mistakes will happen. When they do, be honest about it.

And hopefully your readers will be cheering you on, too!

Namaste, and remember to keep it Zen,

Lee

A Quick Blogging Tip - Schedule Blog Posts In Advance

Here's the automatic time and date the computer entered when I wrote this post:


...And Here's the NEW time and date for when I scheduled this post to publish.




One of the important things to consider is that while inspiration doesn't arrive in consistent bursts, it really helps a blog build a following if there is a consistent pattern of posting.

So, in general, it's better to have one post a week for four weeks than four posts one week and nothing for the next three weeks.

Life, though, can make keeping that kind of schedule a real challenge in the long run. And it is the consistency and quality of your blog posts will build your audience.

Enter a little technological trick:

Scheduling your blog posts to go up in advance.

I'm actually writing this post at 6:04AM Wednesday. It will go live tomorrow morning. But I have time now.

There have been times when I've scheduled posts a week in advance!

I blog here at The Zen of Blogging blog once a week, every Thursday.

And I blog over at I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read? Five days a week, Monday through Friday.

Scheduling lets me be consistent as a train schedule with my blog posts, yet flexible as an artist in the time I put into blogging.

In blogger (the host for my blogs) you click the little triangle "Post Options" under the composing window and adjust the "Post Date and Time" to whenever you want it to go live. Then, when you hit "Publish Post" it won't go live right away - it will wait and go live when you've scheduled it to.

Scheduling posts in advance is a great tool for any blogger, and can really take a lot of the stress out of blogging.

Namaste, and remember to keep it Zen,
Lee

Are You Conflicted About Conflict In Your Blog Posts?

So I've been working with the fabulous Rita Crayon Huang, my friend and co-coordinator of the SCBWI Westside Writers Schmooze, on preparing this week's discussion on conflict and villains in writing for children and teens.

And not coincidentally, I spoke with my kid about the fairy tales she's studying in school, and we talked about how a story isn't much of a story unless there's a problem to overcome.

If the main character wants an ice cream, and goes and gets an ice cream, and it's delicious - well, that's a lovely afternoon, but it's not much of a story.

So in stories, we have challenges, and adversity, and obstacles our characters have to overcome to reach (and sometimes fail in reaching) their goal.

I've been thinking about how (and if) that applies to blogging. Should we blog as if there's no conflict regarding our subjects? Is it best to be all black or all white when talking about something we're passionate about?

Or can we be open to the greater shades of gray - can we recognize that there are pluses and minuses to everything, and use our blogs to engage our readers in a conversation?

I'm going to argue for the conversation. Standing up and doing a stump speech has it's moments, but there are times when an issue is murky, and yet you can have passionate feelings about parts of it.

A great example is the post I did over at "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?" about the gay character Kurt in the hit TV show "Glee" playing at times into the stereotypes of a Gay Teen.



Even the title of the post, Why the Gay Teen on "Glee" Drives Me Nuts... And makes me want to sing at the same time showed my conflict, and yet - it is among the top 10 most commented upon posts ever on that blog. It engaged my readers in a dialog that they weren't finding anywhere else...

And because I was honest enough to share the complexities of how I saw it, I invited their participation.

As one commenter put it,

Can I just say that I love every single comment here? I've been dying for some real conversation about this show, but most people seem to come down as either totally hating it or totally loving it - I love that all of us here really like the show but understand it can have problematic elements :-D

And that kind of participation on your blog is exciting.

So don't be conflicted about including conflict in your posts.

After all, ice cream is more delicious if you've had to earn it.

Namaste, and Keep it Zen,
Lee

Articulate Your Theme: A Play-Along-At-Home Zen Exercise

So two weeks ago we talked about how your blog posts can dance and be noticed if there's a common thread, or theme, that links them all together.

A great exercise (and one I assign to all my consulting clients) is to articulate your overall theme.

If you're a writer, what's the driving reason you write?

Recently in a Twitter conversation, Kathleen Duey, the National Book Award finalist author of Skin Hunger, said about her writing:

"I want to wake kids up to their power."

I thought that was profound, and so well distilled.

So think about it. If your passion is cooking, or comics, or hiking... What's the bottom line of why you're blogging?

If you had to distill it down to one sentence, what would that be?

In my home blog, "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?" my theme is empowering GLBTQ teens and their allies. In this blog, The Zen Of Blogging, my theme is empowering bloggers. And in the books I write, there's the consistent theme of empowering kids and teens to be real and honest about who they are.

Empowerment is the theme that ties all my blogging and writing together. And I aim to express it in a fun, informative and entertaining way.

Now you don't necessarily have to state your theme explicitly in your work or even in your blog posts, but having that through-line with what you do and what you blog will create synergy and help you build a following.

So, I wanna know. What's your theme?

And once you've articulated it, consider how it can be the thread through all your blog posts. And hey, look at what threads can do when woven together:

This is a cloth made from the silk of 1 million wild spiders in Madagascar!

Namaste, and keep it Zen,

Lee