Kick Start Your Blog – Advanced Activity 8 – Promote that Blog!

Over the last 30 days, we have built a blog- one that has a heart, brain, muscles, nerves, legs, bling and now it is ready to fly. Thanks Murcha for your last post in the teacher challenge.

Choose at least 5 terms from this wordle and explain how they relate to building blogging readership.

• Webinars  Online conversations in elluminate have been an inspiration to me and where I can meet other professional educators doing 'my thing'. Each webinar I have attended have given me something to learn about. Some are large, all day affairs, (symposium) others can be a short one hour webinar such as Jo Harts' Serendipity sessions.

• Tweetdeck on my laptop is fantastic because I have bben able to find the tweets I need by looking at the hashtags. Similarly I can write a post and send to some readership group where I know like-minded readers will appreciate it and either give me feedback or retweet mine. In this way, my blogging readership is 'out there' usually in the web2 or ESL audience. (#parrpakala)

• My PLN is getting so enormously huge I can't keep up and go for the bike rides I long for. It's addicitive, I learn heaps, it is a fantastic resource. If I get stuck at the computer and have a mental block, I go to twitter and I am set on a path again. All my twitter followers are in the same field as me so it is really good to find something relevant and perfect for my current needs. Blogging and the challenge is also another amazing learning curve..

• The blog challenges (2nd tchr challenge) are really useful to get me thinking about how I can be more creative and interesting on the blog. It gives me practical lessons on how to arrange and present using web2 tools/ features that create a striking presentation of learning materials. It is great reading where others are at in the challenge and how successful we all are in learning and making the blog a good read for others. It is also beneficial to students to see that the classroom learning does not have to be face to face and can incorporate the global world of teachers and students.

• Blogging directory offer a list of potential support and resource library to use. Many of these people become part of our PLN as they may be similar. These similarities may be about content and resources, web2 tool users that can offer a way to do something you hadn't thought of, and they may be geographically close to you.(or not-this may be an interesting point of discussion). So many young bloggers in the last challenge- connected to the class blogs would discuss their snow-related activites and we would be here in Australia talking about fires and floods. So it is really interesting what may come out of all these connections.

The Hearbeat of the Blog.

larryferlazzo - the-best-resources-for-chinese-new-year
Larry's blog is interesting because it provides us with a lot of information in an organised way. He has numerous lists and 'best ofs' with links in this post. So you know more or less what you are going to get if you click on a link.

On the other hand, these numerous links in a paragraph of text can often be off-putting, especially if you open many of them, you may often lose track of the initial reason you are there. Wikipedia is an example of this. Multi-tasking and losing your train of thought.

6 steps to an effective blog post

1. In an educational blog the trick is to be precise & to the point.
2. Have images to break the continuity or use a 'cool tool'.
3. Think about colour wisely, many young people like white on black, but not great on eyes over time.
4. Link wisely with specific information to your readers - why do they want to 'click here?'
5. Familiarity -be consistant with presentation and don't change themes/colours/fonts midstream. (Like I have just done to this blog)
6. Continuity - of style of writing and professionalism to your audience, a bit of humour is always a welcome tone.