A Booster Shot For Your Blog

December 5, 2008 By 38 Comments

“There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.”

~Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Eric and I have been talking.  The two of us have a lot in common, not just in age, life, and perspective, but within the common tide of our blogging experience. Blogopolis has been good to both of us so far, and each day we each receive emails plump from comparable questions:

How did you get all your subscribers?
How did you get that guest post at…?
How can I do it too?

There are no easy answers to these queries.  Eric and I read more than our share of content, contributing where appropriate.  We take the writing part of our blogging serious and deliver each of our posts as though they will be remembered forever rather than buried within a week.

You here the echo everywhere: content is king and social media necessary, content is king and social media necessary, content is king and social media necessary, content is king and social media necessary.

We all know it isn’t enough.

One thing, we agree, made an immediate difference: a professional look gleaming our blog from the beginning.  I started out on Blogspot, but only felt at home with Thesis. Though I do believe it was the quality of my writing that pushed me forward, I’m also sure there is a contingent of readers who glance first and read second.

Superficial, yes.  Reality, absolutely.

The information highway is not only congested with traffic, it is raving in repetition.  New sites surface daily.  A billion blogs will mean a billion voices.

How will yours stand out?

If your blog is your business, it is vital for your design to stand vivid amongst the masses.  Whether your blog is in birth or rebirth, a few tweaks will make a tremendous difference.  From sprucing up subscription icons to adding a custom logo, limits rest only in imagination.

With a unique look, you won’t squander subscribers by sending the message that you are only an echo.  User experience is critical, and it’s the little things such as accessibility and ease of use that are key.  A helping hand ensures users will navigate your site with ease.

Bland can happen within the pages of your theme whether it’s free or premium.  That doesn’t mean you have to let it find you.

A successful blogger should stand strong from the swarm.

The key is in customization.

Eric and I would like to help.  We have a large enterprise under development, this isn’t it.  This is a project we’ve teamed to do for a restricted period of time.  Eric has a decade of tech experience, and has run his own consulting firm for half that time.  I’m a writer with perfect pitch and a precise eye for detail.  Together, we will give your blog not only a premium glow, but an individual fingerprint as well.

Click here for more details, and we hope to hear from you.  Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you Monday.

Writer Dad

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Conversation That Pays Dividends

November 5, 2008 By 87 Comments

“Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.”

~Oliver Wendell Holmes

What makes my six year old daughter Mia so amazing to speak with is that she is, and always has been completely unafraid to ask questions.  I get the gift of gab from my mother, and passed it to my children.  Daisy and I have added plenty of food and water to this quickly flowering seed.

We both believe that it is important to speak with our children as though they understand, with unforgiving vocabulary, well ahead of any expectation of a reasonable response.  Eventually they will reciprocate, and those defining moments leading to that inevitable verbal eruption are each and every one majestic.

The fact that Mia is so undaunted when it comes to asking questions, means I’m able to lower my filter when I open my mouth.  I’m confident that if something flies over her head, there’s a near certainty that she’ll throw her arms to the sky and try to catch it.  Of course I keep the grown-up talk in the cupboard with a white, plastic child safety lock latched across the top, but I’ve never hedged on the vocabulary.  This strategy has paid in dividends far more handsome than any mutual fund I’ve ever contributed to.

Mia’s language was good when she was two, great when she was three, and amazing now at six.  I understand that comparing my daughter’s articulation to compound interest might seem a little off, but really it’s quite apt.  At first, contributions are high while the returns remain low.  Sooner or later, the interest earned starts to exceed the initial investment.

As is true with most successful ventures, we must start early to finish strong.

I am in awe of the connections that Mia is constantly making, and the verbal balls we are now bouncing back and forth.  Even more amazing is that she’s able to weave new experience into the countless little details that she has absorbed over the long years of her short life.  Mia will often reference things from her distant past, tying tidbits from long gone lessons to newly discovered details.

Knowing that Mia is storing everything inside that amazing little brain makes me far more mindful when it comes to our four year old Max.  Our first born is the child who teaches us to parent, the second is equalized by all the lessons we learned by paying attention.

With Max, I have learned that everything matters.

We only get one life, and in that life a single childhood made from a million moments, most of which fall neatly under our jurisdiction.  If there was one thing I could say to each and every parent, it is this:

Our children get it, and we should never do them, or ourselves, the disservice of underestimation.  There are no do overs.

Writer Dad

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Filed Under: Fatherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,