Amanda Kendle

Let’s blug: Putting the “u” in blogging at Media140′s DigitalMe conference

amanda — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:12:34 +0000

The Media140 DigitalMe day took place last Friday and I spoke in the afternoon – and I have to admit that before I showed up I was a little nervous about speaking at the Northbridge Piazza. I don’t know why it felt any different from a lecture theatre or conference hall but being outdoors with a giant screen above my head seemed to change things! Of course, once I arrived and discovered 99% of the audience were sitting on beanbags, I relaxed. The only bad thing was that as a presenter, I had to stand on stage rather than sit in a beanbag. They should look at that for next time round

Anyway, I wanted to reiterate some of the main points I made in the presentation – all about putting voice into your blog. The title, to be accurate, was “Let’s blug: Putting the “u” into blogging”; I wanted to talk about how it’s not just enough to have a cool design and post regularly, but that also the way you write is still a really vital part of blogging. I’m a “words girl” at heart, and the words of a blog are important to me, and I want them to be important to other bloggers, too.

My minimalist slides below will give you an overview of what I spoke about … more details underneath.

Amanda kendle digital_me_lets_blug (1)

Basically, the most important point that I hoped people would take away from seeing the examples I gave was that bloggers who people really take notice of and keep going back to are the ones that have figured out their blog’s voice – they’ve managed to inject their personality into their blog in such a way that readers feel they have a trusted relationship with the blogger, they want to keep reading them and they want to tell their friends about them. When I explain it as putting “you” into your blog, I certainly don’t mean that you need to divulge personal or private details, but that you need to write in such a way that readers feel they know you, and they can recognise your writing style, too.

The examples I gave came from varied niches, and I also mentioned during the talk that the public-outdoor-venue G-rated nature of the conference meant I’d had to exclude a number of my favourite blogs! This is not to say that I’m usually a reader of Adult-Only blogs, but G-rating is a pretty big restriction. Some of the blogs that lay on my cutting room floor because of that are on this list – the first five are the ones I featured in my talk:

Edenland – particular Eden’s posts on her World Vision sponsored visit to Niger, Africa – lots of honesty (a good way to have “you” in your blog, but not the only way)
Life in a Pink Fibro – from multi-talented freelance writer Allison Tait, and I must admit to calling her the Seinfeld of blogging because some posts are kind of about nothing but I am utterly compelled to read them – that’s voice!
Why Evolution is True – recommended by a male friend when I realised the target demographic of all the blogs I’d chosen was women – but I agree thoroughly with his recommendation.
Aussie on the Road – one of many travel blogs that sound like someone’s just having a chat with you – a good way to develop a voice.
Styling You an award-winning blog in Australia and actually makes me want to read about fashion despite having no interest in the topic – that’s voice, too!
Parenting, with Crappy Pictures (I wonder if Amber realised that using “crappy” would mean people would have to exclude her from G-rated days?) – one of the “voiciest” blogs I know!
Jeff Goins, Writer – Jeff writes a lot about blogging and even includes some great posts on voice now and again.
Free-Range Kids – I’ve seen a few videos of Lenore speaking and she writes exactly like she talks – and gets her (important) point across.

Hmm. I’m sure there are a stack more great blogs that I eliminated from my presentation for various reasons, but they fail to emerge for me right now, so I’ll come back and add to this list later. In the meantime, I summed up the day with a list of “secret rules” to get some voice into your blog, and I think they’re worth repeating:

Blog for yourself – not trying to impress, and don’t expect everybody to like you – thinking it’s a popularity contest will severely limit your ability to have a natural voice
Write what you’d like to read – if I read over my post the next day and actually enjoy it and want to keep reading, I figure I’m doing OK
Blog like you talk – without the ums and aahs – but if you are stuck writing too formally then try to imagine you are just on the phone telling a friend all about the topic, then write it down like that
Break grammar rules (but know them first) – a good rule of thumb for many kinds of writing but works especially well for blogs
Read your posts out loud – this will help you catch posts that sound too stilted or formal
Don’t be too slang, and don’t be too formal – don’t write like it’s a text message, but it’s not a business report either
Be honest, be daring, be a little afraid – if you’re anxious when you hit publish you’re probably on a winner
Have your own style (format, word choice) – make an effort to be consistent with how you write so that it sounds like “you”
Write from the heart, no matter what topic – you can be passionate about dishwashers if you want to be!

Anyway, the presentation went well and generated a bit of talk on Twitter, and some of that’s below:

If you’ve got any examples of your own of blogs with great voice then I’d love to hear about them, so please leave the URLs in the comments below.

How can I unfriend my Facebook friend? Yes, people always ask!

amanda — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 01:30:22 +0000

“How can I unfriend my Facebook friend?”

If I had a dollar for every time somebody asked this question at one of my social media talks or course, I would be quite a lot richer. I must say, it makes me giggle that people who are just learning how to use Facebook are already so keen to know how they can “unfriend” someone they allowed to be friends with them in the first place – but I know that in the flurry of seeing familiar old faces it’s easy to “friend” people who you later don’t really want to have so much contact with.

So, the simple answer is: go to your friend’s profile page by clicking on their name or searching for them. Under their cover photo, on the right, next to “Message”, you’ll see a drop-down arrow – click on it and you’ll get this box:

And then just click on “Unfriend”, and they’re gone!

“Will this person know that I have unfriended them?”

This is the second most popular question at my courses, always following close on the heels of the first. See, we’re all still wanting to be polite about this, and that’s fair enough!

Fortunately, the answer is – probably not. They don’t receive any notification that you have unfriended them. However, if they think of you (perhaps when they think they haven’t seen your updates for a while) they can go to your profile page, and they will then see that you’re not friends. That means if you’re considering “unfriending” someone who you know well or who has only a handful of friends so a missing one will be quite obvious, then you might need to reconsider. I save “unfriending” for people I don’t know, or who I’ve forgotten! – for example, former ESL students who I don’t have any contact with anymore (and they’ve probably forgotten me too), or primary school friends who I haven’t seen in twenty or (gulp) thirty years!

There is another solution.

“Can I reduce what I see from certain friends?”
And finally, a lovely gentleman who came to one of my library talks on social media, Ron, emailed me recently to ask how he could “tone down” the amount of updates he sees from a friend who was flooding his news feed. You know those friends – either they update sixteen times a day, or they post every internet link they’ve visited, or worst of all, they’re playing some of those annoying Facebook games and have their every move posted for us to read. It’s an excellent question.

So, when you are looking at your news feed and you see a post from a friend you’d rather see less from, hover your mouse over the post until you see another drop-down arrow in the top right area of the post (you can see it below – it doesn’t appear until you hover over the post). Click on it, and you get the following options.

Choose from “All updates”, “Most updates” or “Only important updates” and you should see either more or less updates from that particular person. Similarly, if you don’t want to see updates from Facebook games, hover over an update in your news feed, click the drop-down arrow and you’ll have options for not seeing posts from various games.

The best part about this solution is your friends have absolutely no way of knowing that they’ve been “toned down”, unless they steal your password and log in as you!

PS, to my friend Anita, shown in the example above: no way am I unsubscribing from you! You’re just the example that popped up in my news feed We are definitely “All updates” kind of friends!

Looking better online: Optimising your online presence course

amanda — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 01:41:19 +0000

My “Optimising Your Online Presence” workshop was inspired by an unfortunate googling incident – as I described in my post on googling yourself – but the workshop itself turned into a very fortunate incident indeed! It was the coming together of a great variety of professionals in Perth – authors, a language teacher, several artists, small business owners of various sorts and even a cheese maker. I told the group before we started the day that I had at least six thousand things I wanted to tell them, but that I’d tried to keep it down to just the most important one thousand of them – I’m not sure I succeeded, but it was a whole lot of fun trying.

Before the course, I did some good old “practice what I preach” and googled all the names on my class role. They were all a bit surprised when I told them I’d been checking up on them – but that’s the modern world and I was a bit shocked that nobody had googled me when they enrolled in the course. What if I turned out to be a chocolate-loving, crazy nerd? (Oh, I am. Well, it seems nobody minded too much.)

Each of the participants was at a different stage of their “online development” – some had well-established websites and Facebook pages while others were just starting out, with some still in the early days of start-up of their business itself (how wise of them to come on this kind of course already, I thought). For those with established sites, I made them sit through a website audit – watching a new user look around their site (they were often surprised to see where people clicked).

We spent quite a lot of time playing with Facebook, tweaking little bits like what I call the “ugly number” that Facebook pages have in their URL until you are able to replace it with a custom URL, as well as talking big picture stuff like how to create engaging content and get your “likers” involved with your page. I also managed to explain a few of the confusions of Twitter, though it remains to be seen if I converted too many to using it – I adore Twitter, but I think most people need to explore it several times before they see the fun and usefulness of it. We covered lots of other areas too: optimising your website, having a blog, and looking at other social media possibilities like Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Big thanks to all the people who came along – I hope you had as much fun as I did, although if you’re even half as exhausted as I am after our long busy day, I apologise! In the spirit of sharing and caring, here’s a list of some of the participants from today – hop over to their (sometimes new) Facebook pages and tell them I sent you!

Natasha Lester, author
The Cheese Maker (and I can personally vouch for how fabulous their courses are!)
Glennys Marsdon, author of Me Time and blogger at The Ponder Room
David Beard, Lifelong Fitness (he told me chocolate is good for you. I think he lied.)
The Decor Empress
Oakwood Inspirational, life coaching
Gabriela Dolfi, Spanish teacher
Jennifer Sulaj, artist
Arty Brellas from Tricia Stedman

A weekend of bloggers, new and old

amanda — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:56:27 +0000

It’s Sunday evening and it’s one of the first moments I’ve had to sit at my computer all weekend, despite the fact that it’s been a very blog-focused couple of days.

On Saturday I presented my Becoming a Blogger course for UWA Extension again, and spent eight hours helping fifteen locals set up and launch their new blogs – when they’ve got themselves properly up and running in a few weeks I’ll introduce them here. Look out for the one about the lorikeet, I think it’s my favourite!

And this afternoon I hosted a Nuffnang Blogger Meet-Up, a great chance to catch up with a bunch of bloggers who I’ve met through various means – many through my blogging courses, a couple of old friends who coincidentally became bloggers, others via freelance work and even a couple I’d only “virtually” met online, until today. And here they are!:

Nuffnang Blogger Meet-Up With Amanda

The overwhelming sentiment here was that it was fantastic to sit at a table with a group of people who didn’t give you quizzical looks when you talked about your blog. Plenty of interesting tips were shared and yes, we ate, drank and were merry, so plenty of fun was had too.

In case you’re keen on checking out some blogs from bloggers based in and around Perth, then this list of the bloggers who joined me for our meet-up today makes an excellent start. (It’s in alphabetical order because I didn’t want to look like I was favouring anyone – they’re all fantastic blogs by fantastic people!)

Thanks to all the lovely bloggers who attended and we will definitely have to do it again soon.

Amanda Kendle Consulting newsletters are in the world!

amanda — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:54:30 +0000

A few of you (who I trusted wouldn’t mind being added to my mailing list) will already have received the first edition of my newsletter last month. If that’s not you (or it might be you, but it disappeared into your spam so you never saw it), and you’re keen to know all the latest news from me on blogging, social media, courses I’m running, meet-ups I’m hosting and how much chocolate I’m eating, then you can subscribe below. Easy! And thanks.

Why googling yourself is smart, not vain

amanda — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:21:06 +0000

Last year I sat in a presentation being given by a social media expert, and I have to admit, my mind started to drift a little. I hadn’t heard of this man before, and I’m not going to be a big meanie and tell you his name, but the conference programme blurb did make him sound like a well-qualified expert and I was hoping to learn plenty during his presentation.

I tried to pay attention but after I’d realised I probably wouldn’t learn much from him, I became curious enough to google him on my smartphone. (I hoped it would just look like I was taking notes!)

Ouch. On the first page of search results, two of the top five links were to newspaper stories about him that weren’t entirely complimentary (and perhaps more worryingly were about different incidents). He didn’t have his own website, no blog or LinkedIn profile came up in the top results and other links went to obscure mentions he’d got on other sites.

For someone working in social media, he had not taken very much care of his online presence. Even me, a much smaller fish, well, I do a lot better. Go and google Amanda Kendle (or just click the link, I’ve done it for you) and unless I’ve committed some serious crime in between me writing this post and you reading it, you will see something like this:

The top few results send you to my main website (the one you’re reading this on). Then comes my travel blog, Not A Ballerina, one of my most important sites. My Facebook page and LinkedIn profile soon follow, and then some profile pages from companies and websites I work with are mixed in among these.

Fortunately, I’ve had a reasonably boring life insofar as misdemeanours or bad news stories go, so you can keep clicking through a lot of pages and still not find anything nasty about me, but you will find plenty of articles I’ve written and blog post comments I’ve made that are all not totally relevant to me as a business. So I’m glad I’ve made the effort to take care of my online presence so that the first page of results actually tells you something about me and should (hopefully) convince a prospective client that I do know something about what I say I do!

Anyway, all of this inspired me to develop a course on managing your online presence and it is running through UWA Extension in Perth in March – if you’re interested, click over to Optimising your online presence – A guide for consultants, sole traders and creative professionals and sign up. The course is designed to make sure you and your business are online in all the “right” places, so when people google you – because your prospective clients will google you – they see good stuff and want to work with you.

Warning: Blogging is addictive!

amanda — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:40:53 +0000

I have so much fun teaching my introductory and advanced blogging classes here in Perth, and interestingly the most common feedback I get even months after the classes is that blogging is addictive! My main reaction to that is – phew, I’m glad it’s not just me! – and I’m also glad to spread the joy to others. A little concerned about spreading an addiction, but it could be a worse one, I suppose.

Recently I interviewed some of my past students who these days run fantastic, successful blogs, and I thought I’d share some of their thoughts on blogging as well.

A Taste of Travel

Jenny from A Taste of Travel has worked in the travel industry for many years, but started blogging only recently to keep her family and friends up to date with her travels – until it became an addiction! In Jenny’s words:

Since I started blogging, there never seems to be a spare moment in the day! There’s always something to do for your blog – Writing, commenting, emailing, organizing, learning, using facebook and twitter or just thinking about the next post. But I love it! Does this mean I’m addicted?

Hmm … probably, Jenny, yes it does!

From Mum to Me

Shannon from the parenting blog From Mum to Me decided to start blogging as part of her career change into freelance writing.

I see blogging as the equivalent of attending the gym regularly for someone who wants to be a professional athlete. You limber up your mind and fingers, you get to practice and hone your craft, you meet like-minded people, you discover new ways of doing things, you receive feedback and ultimately, improve.

The Ponder Room

Glennys from The Ponder Room began blogging under a pseudonym but was eventually brave enough to “come out”, so to speak. She’s now been blogging for a year and has this to say:

Already blogging has: given me the discipline to write every week; helped legitimise my scratchy scribblings; opened doors that I would have been way too scared to knock on; introduced me to some amazing people around the world; led to a small international profile, some paid writing assignments, a second and third book; and extended the market for book sales. Most of all it has enabled me to give back to people who have inspired me, and helped me realise that sometimes the inane thoughts inside your head can make a difference if you dare to let them out.

Margaret River Correspondent

Cath from Margaret River Correspondent says she’s proud to call herself a blogger (me too, Cath, me too!). Blogging has been a great development for her:

A couple of years ago, I started blogging to get google ranking for another website. I would take myself off to a cafe in Fremantle with my little doggies for breakfast, polish off my eggs and enjoy my latte’s reading and researching for the blog. I just loved it. Even though I live alone, I started to feel connected to the wider world through writing. I discovered something I enjoyed, and stimulated my mind.

Suggestions for would-be bloggers

My suggestion would be to learn a bit about blogging before you started. Amanda’s course was great- I was so out of touch with social media that she even had to join me up to Facebook!! (Jenny, A Taste of Travel)

Be clear about your goals, set ground rules from your first post, invest in some strong coffee, good chocolate and don’t drink and blog. (Glennys, The Ponder Room)

If you are considering blogging, go running, skipping and hopping to it right away … I took Amanda Kendle’s UWA Extension class and gave myself more control over the finished product and had a fabulous time learning how. I really like the aspect that I can engage Amanda, outside of class, to help with the finer points if I want to go that way. (Cath, Margaret River Correspondent)

Don’t wait for it to be perfect before you get started, you will find your voice over the first few posts, even if it feels unnatural at first. Make sure you are really happy with your blog name before you get started: it should be catchy, easy to remember and descriptive (or at least pique the interest of potential readers). (Shannon, From Mum to Me)

Everyone wants to know about social networking

amanda — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 02:51:29 +0000

I’ve been so busy with social networking consulting and coaching lately, and it seems like it will never stop. Or will it? Surely one day everybody will know all about Facebook, at least, and it will be just another communication and marketing tool everybody uses without thinking about it, like the telephone, mail and email.

It’s been a very interesting few months though, with consulting clients ranging from regular bloggers (people not so different from me), government agencies, small and large businesses and coming up this week, a library (with another library lined up for 2012). I certainly could never say that I’m getting bored with my work. Bring it on!

Advanced blogging course – handy links

amanda — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:54:22 +0000

Hi advanced blogging gang,

Here are some of the links we’re going to use (or I’m going to talk about) during our advanced blogging course. You can always come back to this post later to revisit and reread anything you find particularly useful.

What have you learned from blogging?

Allison Tait is an Australian magazine editor and journalist turned blogger – her blog is called Life in a Pink Fibro because, well, she lives in a pink fibro house. Her helpful post 12 things I’ve learned in my first year of blogging may sound familiar to you, or may give you some ideas on how you can develop your blog.

What to write

A great way to organise your ideas and plan your blog posts – which helps to ensure you have a steady flow of posts, not a drought and flood situation – is to set up an editorial calendar and revise it regularly (weekly, monthly). Darren Rowse wrote a helpful and straightforward post about this: Developing an Editorial Calendar for Your Blog. (There’ll probably be quite a few links to Darren Rowse’s Problogger site today – why send you somewhere else when I can direct you straight to the best in the business?)

And another one from ProBlogger – Setting Personal and Professional Boundaries for Your Blog.

How to write

What does a reader see first? Usually the title (and that might be all they see on a feed reader or social media link). So, your title should be good. Check The Five Worst Ways to Title a Blog Post and try to improve your post titles.

The topic of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is now huge (there are entire careers available in it) but the second half of Darren Rowse’s Search Engine Optimisation for Blogs post is probably what’s most useful to you.

Correct spelling and grammar is also important. A major US online shop (Zappos) fixed up the grammar and spelling mistakes in all their customer reviews and had a huge increase in sales. (It was done via crowdsourcing – another interesting online invention!)

Getting and keeping readers

Using the Link Within widget is free and so effective. My blog page views increased by a third after I installed it and my statistics showed that nearly all of this increase was from Link Within clicks.

We will talk about “best of” posts and creating hubs of your work, and the example I’ll use (sorry for tooting my own horn) is the Country Guides from Not A Ballerina.

Building a community around your blog

The most important way to do this (IMHO) is to interact with similar blogs. They are not the competition – they are your friends! There is plenty of room in the world for more blogs similar to yours! If you don’t know any or can’t find them easily then start searching through Google’s Blog Search and start commenting on those you like. Importantly – comment in a genuine way, not with a two word comment hoping they’ll click on your link and see your blog.

Promoting your blog

Link-ups and blog hops I’ll mention:

The other links I’ll show you are:

Not A Ballerina’s Facebook Page
My Twitter account @amandakendle
Doing guest posts like my guest post at Woman Seeks World
Not A Ballerina’s About page

Blog design

There are numerous ways to improve and “fiddle” with your blog’s design. Graphic stuff can be cheaper than you’d think – have a look at Fiverr to see what people will do for $5! There are also lots of Australian bloggers who’ll do blog design work for lower budgets – like Melissa at Suger Coat It or Chelsea at Aqua Poppy.

You can learn some more details about ideal font types and sizes, colours, images and so on from this post on 16 rules for blogs or this one with 26 design tips – they’re both full of really useful ideas for designing your blog effectively.

Goals

I’m a firm believer in needing written goals to ensure you make good progress at a task, and I post about them at least annually on my blog (more often on some). If you’re looking for goals for your blog there is a huge list at the Blogging Bookshelf – 101 Different Blogging Goals – something for everyone!

If you are interested in creating a profitable blog and/or making a product (like an ebook) to sell from your blog, these references might be useful:

Blogs from today’s participants:

Using blogs in the classroom

amanda — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 03:19:03 +0000

There are so many great ways to use blogs with students – here are some blog posts, slide shows and videos that will give you plenty of inspiration.

Top 10 Reasons to Use a Blog in the Classroom
(video – made by students)
33 Ways to Use Blogs in Your Classroom
(if you can’t find something great in a list of 33, you’re not reading carefully enough!)
Blogging: Bringing Schools into the New Century
(includes some interesting examples of whole-class blogs)