Category Archives: Community

Small Support Communities

Leave a reply

One of the major advantages of networking with other bloggers is the tips that they will hand out. Some of the best things I have ever done to my blogs and advertising has been thanks to a small blogging community that I have joined. We help each other out with content ideas, promotion, best ad placement, niche analysis, and many other things.

Finding these little exclusive clubs can sometimes be difficult, but when you do get a V.I.P. pass, the projects you work on will see a great boost.

One such community that I am involved with that is just getting started is EasySmith. EasySmith is being organized by David Krug. David has helped broker the sale of many sites, and built up many of his own. His expertise and connections will be of great help to anyone that applies. He has helped me out in many situations, and I continue to learn a lot from him.

Here are some details about EasySmith:

EasySmith is all about sharing. Ideas, dreams, visions, and goals. It’s a community of bloggers united to help one another achieve dreams. We achieve this by developing an open pattern of sharing. Whether that’s our daily bitching about how horrible and boring web development can be, or how we didn’t make enough money to cover rent this month. That’s what we are here for.

If you know of any other such small, focused support communities within the blogosphere, please let me know. I am always looking for new resources, and avenues, as well as new ways to help out other struggling bloggers.

Originally posted on February 8, 2010 @ 10:18 pm

Blog Action Day!

1 Reply

We ask all blog publishers to help bring awareness to the world today on the dire situation with climate change and the need for action!

Why Climate Change?

Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.

Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.

Suggested Posts

We encourage you to write about climate change in the context of how it relates to the topic of your blog. To help you start thinking, here are a few ideas about how you might connect climate change to things that you might already write about:

* A Technology or Business blog might write about emerging clean tech and how innovative companies might be able to help address the problem of climate change.

* A Health or Lifestyle blog might write about how climate change will affect our children’s health and daily living.

* A Nonprofit or Political blog might write about how climate change is deeply connected to many other issues – such as poverty and conflict.

* A Design blog might write about new trends in eco-friendly or sustainable design.

* A Travel blog might write about the places you want to see now before climate change makes them difficult to access or, well, under the sea.

Please join the 7,037 blogs in 135 countries and 11,211,921 readers in uniting over this urgent issue!

Originally posted on October 14, 2009 @ 1:11 pm

Kommein Launches: A New Community Manager Resource

Leave a reply

Deb Ng, of the well known Freelance Writing Jobs and I have launched a new blog called Kommein. It will be used for both of us to talk about community management and becoming and succeeding as a Community Manager.

We have already published a dozen posts on the topic ranging from the definition of a Community Manager to our own personal insights. We hope to extend this blog out over the next year into the number one resource for Community Managers, and community development and management in general.

I am very excited to be working with Deb on this project, and hope that you will all take a look and let me know what you think.

Originally posted on December 22, 2008 @ 4:56 pm

WordCamp Toronto’s Hash Tag Hilarity

6 Replies

Great story about WordCamp Toronto 2008. My cousin and I were sitting in our hotel room, and we couldn’t find any mention of what the WordCamp Toronto hash tag for the event was going to be, and so my cousin, Mark Wood, decided that it should be something like #wcto08. He put out a message on Twitter at 08:13 AM on October 4th, saying “WordCamp Toronto in an hour and a half. Hope to meet some cool people while I am there. #WCTO08”. I then, only a minute later, put out a quick Twitter saying, “WordCamp Toronto hash tag #WCTO08 😛 Deal with it. :)”.

After our messages, people started using the same tag for their Twitters, and other things, until we got to the event, and the organizers let us know that the hash tag should be #wct08. Despite this set back, I continued to push out as many tweets as possible under the one my cousin had created, and when Joseph Thornley took the stage, it only got more complicated as he announced that the hash tag for the event should be #wpto08. We then had three event tags on Twitter, for a single event. It was safe to say that many people were confused, and slightly annoyed.

Questions started circulating if people should just add two or all three tags to their Twitters so that they are easy to find. No one wanted their tweets to be ignored for the event, especially as it was a great bulletin board of communication.

Over time, thanks to my constant messaging on Twitter, and my work at converting others, the #wcto08 hash tag showed up on the trending list, as an event tag that was being used fairly often. The other tags not getting a mention at all, and so over the course of Saturday, messages went out with the #wcto08 tag at a rate of ten to every one message that included the “official” #wct08 tag.

The second day began with the same confusion, as it was stated at the start of the day that we should be using the #wct08 hash tag on Twitter, and ideally on all sites we post WordCamp Toronto content on. It then became apparent that, while we still had many supporters, the #wct08 hash tag might win the day. It quickly appeared on Twitter’s Trending list, and over the course of the day the two fought out for their spot.

Interestingly enough though, my cousin, a few others, and myself continued to use the tag that Mark had come up with, and we were the heavier Twitter users, so by the end of the second, and final day, I think we had created enough messages that the #wcto08 tag was pushed out at around a rate of three or four messages to every one that was tagged as #wct08.

I know this all seems silly, but the issue could have been fixed quite easily. Since the #wcto08 tag was trending higher, and faster, the organizers, instead of sticking to their guns, could have adapted and promoted the more popular tag, so that people didn’t feel the need to tag their messages with both hash tags for the event.

Next time though, I think the tag for the event will be chosen much earlier to avoid such confusion, but for histories sake, I want to say again that my cousin, Mark Wood, selected the Twitter hash tag that became more popular than the official one, at WordCamp Toronto 2008.

Originally posted on October 6, 2008 @ 5:04 pm

Uber Blogs Grow

2 Replies

Recently, I added a new feature to this site, a top list of the blogs about blogging called the Uber Blogs list, and I originally only added around thirty sites. The list, through other people adding their sites has been growing nicely, and is now nearing fifty blogs.

My first thought is how great it is to see the list grow, but also, it makes me wonder how many high quality blogs about blogging are out there? I guess we will see as more blogs continue to submit their sites to be ranked.

Also, for those that have feedback about the Uber Blogs list, please head on over to my contact page, and let me know what you think, or leave a comment on any of the posts about the list.

If you want to add your blog about blogging to the Uber Blog list, just head on over to the list, scroll to the bottom and fill out the form.

Please note: if you blog is not about blogging, writing online, blog management, blog networks, getting a blogging job, please don’t submit your site as it won’t be approved to be listed.

Related Blogs

Originally posted on September 9, 2008 @ 5:53 pm