Matthew Lang

I’ve been trying to write my views on a couple of topics over the last few days but I haven’t managed to get further than a couple of paragraphs. My main concern with them has been the negativity around these topics, and I don’t want to add to the existing negativity.

Given I’ve tried to write about these topics on a number of occasions and haven’t found the right tone, is it better just to leave commenting on them and hope they blow over or something good comes from them? It’s a naive view to take, maybe even ignorant, but it’s what I think I should do.

I might try to look for another couple of things to write about over the weekend and see if that helps.

To try to get back into regular blogging again, I have decided to take up this invitation to Small Web July.

Here are my guidelines for the month:

• Write at least one blog post a day - This can be anything from quoting another post, sharing some thoughts or anything else really. The one thing I want to do, though, is to move beyond just sharing the bare minimum. Far too many of my posts are short enough not to need titles on Micro.blog, and I want to start moving away from short posts to longer posts.
• Engage a bit more on Micro.blog - I noticed that my volume of replies to people and from people is relatively low. I used to reply to posts a lot in the past, but for some reason, I find myself rarely engaging with other people on Micro.blog.
• Spend more time reading - My reading habit is returning, but not as quickly as I would like. Some fiction books I’ve recently bought are not grabbing my attention. On a whim, I picked up Andy Weir’s book, Hail Mary, for my Kobo. I loved reading The Martian, so I’m sure this will be something I will enjoy reading.

That’s it for the month. I could have added more things to do, but with schools off here in Scotland, I tend to find that between now and mid-August is a time for setting aside any primary goals and just enjoying the boys being about the house and sitting in the back garden when possible.

I noticed that Annie Mueller is participating as well.

Is anyone else taking part?

Joel Gascoigne on the resurgence of blogging. Did it ever leave?

It feels like blogging and personal websites are back. And tinkering and sharing experiments, too.

I suspect this never actually went away, but I think in the absence of a social network based on open standards, it became less interconnected.

It’s wonderful to have a broader gathering place again.

— Joel Gascoigne

Like Joel says, I am glad to see blogs and personal websites gaining more exposure again and, more importantly, that we’re gathering in places to share our blogs as well. We’re reconnecting with other bloggers once again. We have more places to meet, not just the one.

These days, BlueSky, Micro.blog, and Mastodon are my regular hangout places. They are open meeting places in that they either employ open standards or create open standards to improve social media decentralisation. They have chronological timelines, don’t do ads, and all support RSS feeds.

I’m more than happy to share on these platforms, and I hope that others will continue to as well.

I’m going to start blogging again.

Not the titleless posts I have been posting for the last couple of years, but the longer posts that need a title. The posts need to be split up into sections. The posts that have a call-to-action. The posts might just be rambling for the sake of it. The posts that venture an opinion. The posts that tell you something you already know. The posts that tell you something you don’t know. The posts that I will deem not worthy of publishing, but I do it anyway.

It’s not a ground-breaking start, but it’s a start.

Words I wish I had read when I started this whole online thing.

And, that’s exactly what a blog should be — a reflection of your interest and attention over time. A reflection of who you are right now and where you’ve been. Blogs are living things that should grow at the same rate we do.

— This blog is 20 years old today by Patrick Rhone

I’ve chopped and changed domains and blogs so many times over the last 15 or so years that I wouldn’t be able to lay claim over any period of significant blogging.

It’s only now that I’m starting to make a bit of sense of where everything should be. Yip, I wish I had words like this when I started blogging.

Anyway, happy anniversary, Patrick!

There is a lot of online chat about why losing Twitter might be okay.

I’ve read a few threads on Reddit, Micro.blog and Twitter itself that we would be better off without Twitter. It’s a convincing argument.

Twitter has become different from its early days of tweeting by text with 140 characters. The platform has grown into a platform for the world. It broadcasts news updates, provides coverage of sporting events and scores, updates on critical political events, and acts as a marketing platform for thousands of organisations and millions of people.

In the last few years, though, Twitter has become something else. A battleground. A place where discussions can often fall into threads of trading insults at each other. A place where people, governments and organisations can pedal lies with minimal accountability. A place where people can hide behind their avatars and threaten others without being held accountable. Twitter has tried to deal with these negative experiences over the years with content moderation and enforcing the platform’s rules, but it still happens.

I might be painting Twitter as a terrible place, but there are positives to Twitter. Although I’m not a frequent tweeter, the content from the people I follow on Twitter is of value.

I’m under no doubt that many others are happy with their Twitter experience. They follow the accounts they want to, scroll through their timelines and share and interact with others on the platform as they want to. If the world is better off without Twitter, will these people be better off without it too?

Regular bloggers and those who know their way about the web will largely agree that the world is better off without Twitter. They can continue writing and posting from the platforms they enjoy using. What about the people who genuinely want the ease of Twitter and what it brings to them?

If Twitter were to disappear, I’m sure I would find alternative means of following others through different platforms and means. What about those who are not so Internet savvy? They might need help finding an alternative means of following others, which leads me to think that we’re not better off without Twitter. Well, not at the moment. The web is still an excellent platform, and this could change.

I’m going to try and kick-start the blogging process once again. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have tried to do this over the last few years. This time though, I’m trying something different.

Instead of trying to aim for longer pieces on a daily basis, I’m going to initially just keep it short. Around the 100 words mark.

So, expect some short ramblings over the next few weeks. Some thoughts, views, ideas and anything that I think is worth putting on the blog. I’m hoping this will lead to a steady stream of posts over the next weeks and hopefully a more active blog.

Anil Dash writes about the recent resurgence of the web. There are definitely many reasons why this is happening. Still, a key one for me is the growth of tools that make building websites easier for everyone.

While the core technology of the web is decades old, the tools that help make it and run have been quietly evolving into something extraordinary in the last few years, too. There’s a flourishing of powerful new frameworks that make it simpler than ever to build flexible, responsive, useful sites. New hosting platforms let those sites be deployed and delivered faster and more reliably than ever. And you can build one of these sites in literally under a minute, then collaborate with people anywhere in the world to iterate on making the site better.

— A Web Renaissance by Anil Dash

I might be pre-empting the return of the glory days of the web when blogs and RSS feeds were everywhere. As good as that would be, I don’t think we’ll ever return to those days. I do hope though, that we are seeing a return to the web as an open platform for people to build and share content.

This blog has been quiet of late. I haven’t felt the need to share much of anything over the last year. In fact, in the previous few years, I’ve bounced back and forward on the want to keep running this blog. The motivation to blog has waned, but it’s something that I still want to do. It’s a strange feeling to have.

One of the things that I enjoy about blogging is the passing on of information. In the past, I would often share links to stories and posts that I have found through my daily read of the websites that I follow. It’s an excellent way of passing on the good stuff on the internet. The old fashioned way. Without the vanity metrics of likes and followers. Without the need for algorithms to find you the right content.

I should do this more often. I should share more links to the things that I find interesting on the internet. Not because I want more followers or readers, but for the intention of passing something else on that I found fascinating as an individual. As a reader of my blog, you might like it; you might not like it. However, there’s one thing that I can guarantee you. Each of the links I share on my blog is a post or a story that I found interesting and recommend as a human and not as an algorithm.

Maybe that’s something that we could do with more of on the web.

I hate to play down the benefits of blogging, but I think the author here has a point. There used to be so many blogging platforms. Google even had a filter on their search engine for blogs. Now though, it feels like there are fewer blogs out there.

But they would be the one thing I’d bring back to the internet if I could bring one thing back. They’re the thing I miss the most and the most often. They were the most valuable thing on here, besides freer availability of news, free although low quality video content on YouTube, and I guess some kinds of social media. But blogs are something you can sit down and read and get really into to the point you forget where you even are, and think about how you want to try those things maybe in your life, or just enjoy their writing, and you can read deeper into them into past blog posts, and tune back in later and see what they’ve posted since the last things you read about them.

— If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

I think this is a bit ironic me pointing this out. I’ve definitely not been blogging as much as I have in the past. I’ve been struggling with blogging frequently again for the last two years, but the want to publish just isn’t there as much as it has been in the past.

I’ve been trying to find a way to reboot my writing habit for a couple of years now. The trouble is, most things I have written are on too wide a range of topics. When you’re covering a wide range of topics, it feels like you’re jumping from one subject to the next. I need to narrow these topics down.

Paul Graham’s latest essay on how to write usefully got me thinking about this again.

If you narrow the topic sufficiently, you can probably find something you’re an expert on. Write about that to start with. If you only have ten readers who care, that’s fine. You’re helping them, and you’re writing. Later you can expand the breadth of topics you write about.

— How to Write Usefully

I need to focus on one or two topics and start from there.

Over the holidays I mentioned that I was writing a blog post that I would publish this week. Well, after a delay thanks to the flu, I finally hit the publish button on my return to using my main domain. My first post, about my focus for 2020, is a return to building up some long form content that I want to reside on that domain.

Is this the end of my time on Micro.blog?

Definitely not. Micro.blog is a wonderful blogging platform that I will keep on using. This blog on Micro.blog will be my social feed to the net. It’s the one place that I will post to daily. Short posts, photos and links will continue to pour out from here.

So what’s the point of the new site?

For a while I’ve been trying to find a way of supporting short and long content. I’ve tried mixing these two lengths of posts over the years and it’s never sat well with me each time I have tried it.

Now that Micro.blog is my daily social feed, I can now focus on pushing longer posts through my main site again.

A thank you note from fellow blogger, Nicholas Bate.

I forget how I came across Nicholas Bate’s blog. I discovered him, and a few other great blogs, while I was a heavy user of Google Reader.

Today, I’m still a daily reader of his blog and a select number of other blogs that I find are essential to my daily reading.

I’ve been a bit quiet this year in terms of blogging, but it’s starting to pick up again. Without the daily posts from Nicholas, Michael, Kurt and Curtis, I’m sure I would have packed in blogging years ago. So, thank you guys for your time.

It’s these fine blogs and many more that keep me writing and ultimately posting to the Internet. Long may it continue.

Adam Keys has some words on the challenges of blogging.

The hardest part is showing up, every day, writing. The hardest part is writing! The second hardest thing is hitting the publish button on a regular basis, not necessarily every day.

— Blogging, like writing, is challenging

I find the act of writing pretty straight-forward to do. Crack open a notebook or a text editor and after a few stumbling blocks I’ll get going.

The big challenge for me is hitting that publish button.

You might not have noticed, but my blogging activity has picked up since the start of the month. I’m using November to build up a wee habit of blogging daily. Every day, I’ll post a short post and a longer post. It’s working well so far.

Ghost 3.0 now includes memberships and subscriptions.

As of today, Ghost is the first totally independent product out there with publishing<>subscriptions deeply integrated at the core, allowing anyone to build a recurring revenue subscription business.

— Announcing Ghost 3.0

I used Ghost for a while for my blog. Eventually the cost was something that I couldn’t justify and so I switched. However, with Ghost’s new memberships and subscriptions, they’re definitely going to attract the attention of many content publishers.

This wasn’t intentional, it just kind of happened.

With a week off work, I’ve been doing other things rather than sitting in front of a screen. The boys and I have been enjoying a few days of golf. Drew has been going to a golf camp for the younger kids in the morning, and Ethan and I have been hitting the course this week. By the time afternoon rolls around, me and Drew are happy to leave Ethan at the club and head home for an afternoon of chilling.

The results have been a quieter than usual blog. It’s not been a bad thing though, because yet again I’ve been toying with the value of my blog and whether it’s worth continuing with. It seems that every few months I question this and inevitably continue posting. This time the decision is still the same. I’m sticking with the blog.

Regular posting should resume shortly.

I think I’m getting to that stage now where I am all in with Micro.blog.

I’ve been bouncing between platforms over the last few years. Posterous, Square, Jekyll and Ghost. I’ve had issues with them all. Some have a lack of or bad native clients to post from. Others suffer from bad integration with social media platforms. And finally some have hosting issues or just too high hosting costs.

Then Micro.blog came along and made things easier. It’s easy to create an account there, it’s easy to run a blog, it’s easy to share posts with Twitter and Facebook. It’s easy.

The one thing that really sets Micro.blog apart from the restof the blogging solutions I have tried though is the ability to have both a blogging platform and a social media platform rolled into one. I can write short social posts or longer titled posts, and in both cases, I can get replies back to those posts from fellow Micro.bloggers.

It’s taken a while for to get to this stage, but the reality is that I don’t want to maintain multiple blogs for myself. I want to simply write to my blog and Micro.blog allows me to do that.

I’m wondering if this is something that might interest the users of Micro.blog.

I want to ask a question to Micro.blog users, but I don’t want the question to appear on my blog. Much like my replies don’t appear on my hosted blog, I would like to ask a question to the community and for everyone to see it on their timeline. Just not on my blog.

I know there are Slack groups for this type of thing, but perhaps Micro.blog is just as great a place for this type of thing.

Does that make sense?

Micro.blog has been getting some great updates over the last couple of weeks and I’m looking forward to seeing more improvements to come. In using Micro.blog to migrate some content from another blog, I’ve been compiling a list of features I would like to see added.

Optional cross-posting to social media

One thing that puts me off post to Micro.blog more frequently is that I have my account linked to Twitter so that it syndicates my posts to Twitter. Lately though I’ve felt that I don’t want everything to be published to Twitter, but at the same time I don’t want to turn off the cross-posting to Twitter as every dollar helps keep Micro.blog going.

In the interests of being able to comfortably post more often though, I’ve disabled cross-posting to my Twitter account. If I want something to show on Twitter, I’ll post it there myself.

All this though leads to one thing I would love to see in Micro.blog and that’s the ability to opt-out (or in) to cross-posting with each post that I write. This is perhaps the biggest feature request of the three as it involves changes on the web client and the two native clients.

Posts searching

A couple of weeks I decided to import over 1700 posts from my Ghost blog to Micro.blog. The import went fine and after seeing the posts on my blog I was quite happy for everything to sit there. The only problem though is that the archive is difficult to navigate with such a large volume of posts. Most people might not have this amount of posts, but it would be nice to have a search feature on the posts page in the web client to allow people to find specific posts that they want to update.

Post length separation

Micro.blog allows two types of posts. Short posts that are 280 characters or less and longer posts that can have an optional title.

It would be great if these types of posts could be separated in the generated micro-blog site with class names in the CSS for each type of post. These same class names could be used in the custom CSS section of Micro.blog to to override the styling of posts depending on their length.

You don’t ask, you don’t get

Maybe these things are already being considered and maybe they’re not. I know Manton is always chiming in on his timeline and is very active on Micro.blog’s Slack channels as well. So this is me asking. So how about it @manton?

I’m considering a few changes in the way I blog.

Micro.blog for personal stuff, quotes, snippets, links and the like.

Ghost for longer posts on working, ideas, products and writing.

It should be noted that Micro.blog was the trigger for this whole thing. A streamlined way of publishing small or large updates and then syndicating them through to other social networks and blogs. Damn it’s good at that.

I’ve started to think that my Ghost blog should be more of a professional site than anything else. I think that’s what it’s lacking. Longer posts that I’ve taken the time to write.

Curtis McHale’s blog is a great example of a professional site used for such a purpose.

My blogging habits have changed. From posts that are a mix of personal and work on the one blog, to using two blogs for a mix of both. Now I’m seeing that one blog is more for personal stuff and the other is for things I’m working on and working towards. The work stuff, the professional stuff. The boundaries aren’t clear on this at the moment though, but I think they should be.

@patrickrhone has a similar setup. A professional site and a personal micro-blog.

I’m 90% sold on the idea. The thought of moving more content around isn’t appealing though. It would be worth it in the end though. Right?

With a rising interest in newsletters, I started one last year. I tried to publish one long-form post a month as well as a collection of links at the end.

I intended to keep this newsletter going through the year, but after a few months, I decided that a newsletter of this kind wouldn’t be of any additional value that my blog couldn’t already provide.

Now I’m also blogging on a daily basis, so there’s no need for such a newsletter, and most likely I’ll never publish a newsletter of this kind again.

The newsletter experiment did not succeed in the way I thought it would, but although I closed the newsletter down, I learned something valuable from the newsletter.

Newsletters themselves are great, but the real value of a newsletter is the niche the newsletter caters to. This niche could be an interest, a topic, a market or anything like that.

This year I’m starting a small side project to build a newsletter aimed at a specific type of organisation who are looking to make more effective use of their digital presence and other tools to help those organisations.

I’m sending out a few invites to sign up for some local organisations that meet this criterion. I’ll then run the newsletter for a few months, collecting feedback on the first few editions. If the feedback is positive, I’ll keep going. If it’s terrible, I’ll adjust the content to either suit the feedback or close the newsletter down.

I’ve already got a landing page up and running and I just need to dig into how to send a welcome email to each new sign up. Once done, I’ll be ready to accept sign-ups as they come. I’m not going to market this though until I decide that it has any lasting value as a product.

There are a few added benefits from this experiment.

I get some hands-on experience with running a newsletter using MailChimp. TinyLetter was an ideal service for my previous newsletter, but for this newsletter, I need a few more features like more options for formatting emails and their content.

I can spend a bit of time researching and writing content for the newsletter. I’m budgeting a fixed number of hours a month for this, and in that time I need to have the material ready to send and handle any replies or feedback. A test of time management and improving my writing.

The final benefit is that this is a testbed to a more significant opportunity. I’m using the newsletter to gauge the interest in a range of services that could help a particular market. This newsletter will be the on-ramp to that range of products and services and will determine if there’s any value in them.

I think I’ve found a niche market with this newsletter but only time will tell. I do believe that this will have a better chance of success than my previous attempt at a newsletter, but the only indication of this is whether organisations that sign up for this and find it useful.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any updates on my blogging habits and where you can find me. Now is as good a time as any to update these.

Here’s the short version for those who just want the links.

• Blog posts (longer and less frequent)
• Micro posts (shorter and more frequent)
• Programming posts (longer and less frequent)

Here’s the extended version if you’re interested.

Main blog

This blog continues to run but will focus solely on long-form posts now. It will also remain my central site where people can find me and get in touch.

There have been many changes over the years on this blog. I started doing smaller micro-posts a while back, but lately, I felt that perhaps this blog was not the right place for these posts. More on where you can find the new home for these posts later.

This blog will now only feature daily posts that sit around the 500-word mark and will become more of a regular logging blog. Expect posts on the topics of bootstrapping products, productivity, writing and a few other minor topics. The goal isn’t to be a blog only on a single subject, but instead, focus on topics that I enjoy writing about and am interested in. A public journal might be the aptest description for the blog now.

Microblog

Last year I started using another blog for shorter posts. I mostly use it for links, quotes, thoughts and the like.

I’m using a new blogging platform for this called Micro.blog. It’s a micro-blogging platform that allows you to not only easily run your own blog, but also has timelines where you can follow other Micro-bloggers and converse with them using replies, much like Twitter does.

As painful as Twitter is with it’s muddled timelines, I do still find it of some value. Micro.blog allows me to syndicate my content to Twitter without the added pain of having to post the content myself or get sucked into continually checking my timeline.

Another great feature of Micro.blog is that it posts your whole post as a tweet if it fits within Twitter’s 280 character limit. Otherwise it will post a link to your blog post on Twitter. You get the best of both worlds.

I’ll continue to post to my micro-blog at least a few times a day over the course of 2018.

Programming blog

My programming blog is seeing some changes over the next few weeks. The focus is on more content and I’m gradually getting there.

The DigitalBothy blog was largely ignored last year, but I’ve got plans for groups of content over the next six months and I’ve got a few posts lined up already for January. With a bit of work I hope to keep a head of my scheduled posts on this by a couple of months to give myself some breathing space.

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So there you have it. A complete RSS update for all my digital homes on the Internet. Subscribe to whatever takes your fancy.

Tom Critchlow is re-discovering the glory days of blogging. The tags, the blogrolls and much more. The simpleness of it all.

There’s something about the humble hyperlink that gets subsumed by hyperfeeds. The archive. The curation of tags and categories. Blog series.

— A few notes on blogging and independent feeds by Tom Critchlow

This is why I’m doting on Micro.blog so much. It’s blogging and syndication made simple. And RSS is much easier to follow than any hyperfeed.

I love this manifesto for blogging. Lots of good points to use. Also, why wasn’t I already subscribed to Hugh’s blog?

All content must be on your own platform. You must own your own domain, and it must have a monopoly on your best work. Other people’s platforms like Facebook or Twitter can only link to the content, they mustn’t duplicate it. In other words, if people want to hear from you, first they have to come to YOUR house.

— The Dogme 17 Manifesto: a guide to better blogging by Hugh McLeod

Is attention no longer a viable form of currency?

We’re told every day as creators online that attention = prosperity. But no one’s attention online lasts long enough for that to be true anymore (if it ever was).

— The Value of Attention by CJ Chilvers

Social media might make you famous for five minutes, maybe even a few times over, but what about the times when people’s attention is elsewhere?

One again I’ve made Kurt’s list and he now he’s planning a surprise visit!

Family guy and freelance web developer, Matthew Lang publishes regularly from Paisley, Scotland on apps, life, and business.  Some day, I plan to meet him in person.  I just don’t plan on telling him when.  Want it to be a surprise.

— 25 Blogs Guaranteed to Make you Smarter

It would be great to meet up with Kurt. One of those few blogs I have followed for years.

Yesterday was the last edition of my newsletter.

I won’t go into all the reasons why I’ve stopped the newsletter but it really boils down to one thing that Patrick Rhone kindly reminded me of last night.

Saying no is saying yes to other things…

On other news I’ve embraced Micro.blog a bit more and have been posting frequently there. If I’m sharing any links or smaller posts they’ll be found on my micro-blog which you can subscribe to through RSS or even follow me on there as well.

What about here then? I’ll be reserving longer posts for here and they’re going to be coming over time.

Last week I linked to Manton Reece’s dedication to staying the course for Micro.blog and the potential of blog-focused technologies when it comes to going up against the likes of Facebook.

There’s simply too many places to publish to these days and unless you have it automated or other people doing it for you (chance would be a fine thing), it can become overwhelming trying to post everywhere.

Here’s a few places where I don’t publish and why.

LinkedIn

I’ve have a chequered past with LinkedIn in much the same way as I have had with Twitter. It’s one of those things that is necessary to have but not always an enjoyable experience.

LinkedIn is a social network for the work-place but in truth it’s more akin to a hunting ground for recruitment agencies keen to place anyone they deem to be suitable for one of their roles. Okay, that might be slightly biased by my experience of LinkedIn but it’s the experience that I have had and I’m sure many others have to.

I’m sure it’s a great place for building your career’s network but I’ve yet to see the value in LinkedIn as instead of an introduction in person, through a phone call or even by email.

Anyway, the reason that I don’t post to LinkedIn or promote my content there is because I don’t have the time to read what other people are posting there. So if I don’t have the time to read what others are posting then why would others read what I am posting?

My usual routine with LinkedIn is that I log in, check my messages, check the notifications and then log back out again. I don’t read my timeline, look for others to connect with or anything else that LinkedIn has to offer.

It’s just not the place where I want to publish to. I could but I’m of the opinion that there’s many more people who use LinkedIn in the same way as I do and therefore it’s not the ideal place to share content.

Google+

This one’s easy. I don’t have a Google account.

There’s another reason though. I can’t remember the last time that I clicked a link that took me to a Google+ account or post. In fact I couldn’t even tell you what Google+ looks like as an interface. Is it even still a Google product?

When a social network like this doesn’t even trigger a visual representation of what it looks like then it’s clear that it’s no longer worth publishing to.

Facebook

Want to hear a secret?

I had a Facebook account for a few months there. Shocking I know. Mr “I don’t have a Facebook account” finally succumbed. Well, for a few months anyway.

I used it so that Ethan could get news and updates from his club’s junior section through their Facebook group. Now though my account has been de-activated and Ethan has his own account and manages this for himself while adhering to a few house rules on using Facebook.

The reason that I don’t share on Facebook is that I see Facebook as a time sink that I don’t want to cater to. Yes I’ve had an for few months but it came with a few restrictions. I didn’t hand over my phone number, I used a different email address for it and I didn’t install it on my phone, I put it on an iPad where it doesn’t ask for your phone number.

Once the usual email address and phone number goes in then the floodgates open. Notifications for friend suggestions, friend requests and who knows what else. I can do without that kind of hassle.

Medium

I’ve added Medium to the list of places that I don’t share content to as it has become something similar to Facebook. While Facebook is the place for sharing updates with family and friends, Medium has become the place to share your writing.

I’ve toyed with publishing content to Medium a few times, but while I have my own web site that I write for, I don’t see the point in having a separate channel on another network for something that I already do on my own.

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What it boils down to though for me is time and energy. Where can I share content without spending too much time and energy sharing that content?

I share my thoughts and other junk here on the blog because I can control it and I also own the domain.

It’s also easy to manage the performance of what I post. I use Gauges to track traffic to the blog and it gives two metrics that are all I need. Page views and visitors.

Micro.blog and Twitter are two other places where I like to share content as it’s easy to share the content to them and I can automate the posting between the two.

It’s good to see the Ghost team steadily adding features to my favourite blogging platform. One such addition is the vast library of Unsplash images, which is now available from the Ghost editor.

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. A couple of weeks ago the first major update to the publishing platform Ghost was released.

I was on holiday at the time so I decided to leave upgrading until I got home. It’s been a few days now since I got back but this morning I decided to upgrade the two sites I have running on Ghost, this one and my DigitalBothy website. The upgrade process itself was straight-forward. Warnings were provided to indicate deprecated helpers in the themes for each site, but aside from that I didn’t have any trouble upgrading.

The new UI is a welcome change and includes a number of beneficial changes but perhaps the most important change is the editor itself. Gone is the side by side editing and preview panes (although you can still use this if you need to) and instead there’s a single pane for writing that is editable and displays your writing in a better format. Bigger, bold text for headings, links highlighted and many other improvements.

This is a welcome update to the publishing platform and I look forward to spending more time writing for my blog than I have done recently.

Dave Winer ponders on the possibility of an open source version of the popular blogging platform Medium.

What if Medium had been designed from the start to be the Mother Node of a network of clones. The basic software would be available for installing on your own server, but if you want, there’s a place you can put your document today, now, quickly, where everyone will be able to read it, now and for the foreseeable future.

— What if Medium were open source by Dave Winder

This is the kind of thing that I can get behind. I like Medium’s approach to easy publishing but I dislike the fact that everything is on their network.

It seems that a lot of the things I’m reading online point towards long-form blogging again.

Gregory Brown sums up the change nicely in way I didn’t think of.

Instead, I thought about how it might be nice to have a couple hundred blog posts rather than thousands of tweets. How it might be nice to build a few dozen deep relationships with people who read my stuff here, rather than hundreds of shallow relationships in 140 character bursts.

— Bye Twitter, Hello Blogging! by Gregory Brown

Deep relationships through blogging. I’ve already met a number of great people through my blog. It’s about time I started writing here again to keep those ties going.

It’s come to my attention that I am hardly the good faring blogging citizen I was a couple of years ago. This is going to change this week with a set of single topics. Today’s is what to look for in a blog.
When it comes to looking for other blogs to follow, it can be a bit hit and miss of subscribing to that blog is going to be worth it or not. There are a number of things that you can do though that can increase the success rate of the blogs that you subscribe to or regularly read.

A generalist or a specialist

Blogs tend to fall into one of two types when in comes to content. There’s the specialist who focuses on a single topic and there’s the generalist who post regularly but across a wide range of topics.

The specialists have the inside knowledge on the topic that I like to read about. I like reading blogs of this type as the topics often align with what is going to be of benefit to me.

Take the blog of Curtis McHale from British Columbia.

I have read this blog for a few years now and his blog has been a continual benefit to myself as I traverse the world of freelancing. Curtis McHale’s blog is about being a business owner and everything that it entails. This is his specialty but the his field of knowledge on this isn’t restricted to what happens during office hours, it also includes the other 18 or so hours of the day when he’s not working for clients. This includes balancing family life with running a business, the books you should read as a business owner and the tools and services that can help you as a business owner.

A generalists blogs focuses on a greater range of topics. I find that most blogs I follow of this kind are people’s own personal blogs. They post what interests them.

That’s definitely the case of the blog of Kurt Harden from Ohio.

Here you find a blog that covers not just one topic but links, quotes, and many pictures of what’s on the grill that evening. I like this type of scrapbook though and it’s worth having a few blogs like this to follow. The reason being is that while Kurt’s blog doesn’t focus on a particular topic, it does include content that is relevant and interesting. And that’s a good thing. I’ve never met Kurt, but I’ve read his blog for so long that I’ve come to understand what makes him tick.

Whether you’re looking for a generalist or a specialist is down to you. If you’re looking to learn about a particular topic then I suggest you look for specialist blogs. For anything else a generalist blog is just fine.

Consistent posting

A consistently published blog is a great blog. It doesn’t need to be daily. It doesn’t need to be a number posts a day or even a single post a day. As long as that person keeps a schedule going that doesn’t involve weeks without a post then it’s a blog worth reading.

The single exception to this rule is when the person behind the blog announces a period of time in which they’ll be unavailable. Patrick Rhone’s blog is essential reading for me, but in March of this year Patrick announced that he would be stepping back from his blog to focus on a project of his own.

We can’t always post regularly and there are times where we need to step back for a bit and they say so on their blog. This is the exception to posting consistently. It’s not because you’re being lazy, it’s because you have something more important to do and that’s a good thing. I know that when Patrick comes back he’ll have garnered enough new insights for his blog for another year at least.

An RSS feed

An RSS feed is the easiest way to follow a particular blog. Using an RSS reader like Feedbin or Minimal Reader you’ll be able to follow all the blogs you’re interested in. Some of you might be thinking that with a blog an RSS feed might be a given these days. Sadly that isn’t so. I’ve noticed a number of websites that have blogs on them but lack an RSS feed to subscribe too.

In this case I would skip over subscribing to a “blog” like this. They’ve made a decision to not include an RSS feed so that they have more traffic to their blog or they just have a bad CMS that lacks an RSS feed. Regardless of the content that the blog includes I would skip over blogs like this.

Looking for blogs to follow can be a bit of a hit and a miss but if you know the type of blog you want to follow, they’re a consistent blogger and they have an RSS feed to subscribe to then you should be onto a winner.

You can even follow this one if you’re not already doing so!

Added Annie Mueller to the list.

Who’s on your blogroll?

Medium announced it’s paid tier called Memberships. I’m not convinced though.

Sure it’s great that Medium are finally charging for their product, but there isn’t enough value here.

You can count me out.

CJ Chilvers looks at the importance of being small and why avoiding the need to grow can be a good thing.

I’ve written before about my love of small books, but these past few days I’ve re-discovered a love of small blogs, small newsletters, and small products in general. Small could mean brief. There’s bravery in brevity. Small could also mean minimal, a first step towards something larger.

— The Importance of Being Small by CJ Chilvers

The no-pressure kind. Manton Reece explains.

I love that blogs can scale from the trivial to the important. The microblog post about what you had for breakfast. The half-baked rant about something you’re passionate about. And sometimes, the rare essay that really hits the mark and makes people think.

— No-pressure blogging by Manton Reece

I’ve been struggling to blog more in the last couple of years. Partly that’s down to me trying to produce too high a level of content. I should just blog what comes to mind. It won’t all be great, but every now and again there will be a post that really stands outs.

We launched Ghost about 4 years ago with a $300,000 Kickstarter campaign. Today, it’s a sustainable healthy independent business with $750,000 annual revenue and a team of 10, and users including NASA, Square, Vevo, Sky News, Mozilla, Zappos and so many more.

— Ghost on Indie Hackers

Proud to be a Ghost user and looking forward to seeing what else the Ghost team can add to an already great blogging platform.

I’m bookmarking this as an essential. I’m surprised I haven’t read this post before by Merlin Mann, but then it was a long time ago.

Essential advice for bloggers.

Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?

— What Makes for a Good Blog by Merlin Mann

Hat tip to Patrick Rhone for this.

I’ve wrote in the past about the blogging platform Medium and how I have issue with such a high volume of people writing under one roof and how the lack of

Here’s what I wrote at the start of last year:

Access to the network is easy but I can’t help but wonder if in the future they’ll get it wrong and piss off a good chunk of their user base. I’d rather not take that chance.

— Anywhere but Medium

Well Medium did get it wrong. The ad model isn’t working for them. That and fifty of their staff have been dropped. What looks like a cost-cutting exercise is what they’re calling a change in their business model. What that business model will be is unclear at the moment.

One option Medium has is to charge users for the privilege of using Medium. If Medium wanted to charge me to use Medium then I would be all for it. I love products that look for money up front before you can use their product. How else are they going to survive as a business?

I like the idea behind Medium but the recent change in their business model (or even lack of one) has me wondering how long they’ll be around for. Not a nice thought, especially when it concerns a platform that many use to publish their thoughts and ideas. I’d rather not see it go under, but it needs to start adapting and fast.

Medium still isn’t for me though. I’m happy to blog away from my own little corner of the Internet.

I’m starting a newsletter this year.

Yes, I’m a bit late to the newsletter thing and yes this is probably another newsletter that you don’t need, but here me out before you make any decisions.

On the 19th of each month I’ll send you a long form piece of writing about my thoughts on a topic that will usually revolve around technology, productivity or products. If you like my blog then you can expect content along the same lines, just in a longer form. Each month, I’ll also include a link list of interesting titbits from the Internet that have caught my attention and I think are worth passing on.

Interested?

Sign up here then please!

First edition drops on the 19th of January and is entitled, “Back to basics”.

… to be included in a list of such fine and esteemed bloggers.

Many thanks Kurt.

Who’s on your blogroll?

I’ve been asking that question myself for the last few weeks. I’ve been searching for a way to kickstart my own blogging habits again. I often wondered if it was worth the hassle.

I did a quick search for any other people asking the same question. I found a couple of posts that had two great reasons for why people blog.

Kati Stage’s response on Medium is reminder that we’re not all on Facebook. Despite the popularity of Facebook, there are still people searching for content outside of Facebook.

I see blogging as a way to get more reach. Still today, there are plenty of people who don’t have Facebook. Hard to believe, I know. However, I was one of them just 3 years ago. April 2013 I created my very first Facebook account at the age of 32.

— Is Blogging Dead? Isn’t social media enough? by Kati Stage

Next is the response of Michelle Lyndon-Dykes posting on her site The Barefaced Chic:

We all started blogging for our own, specific reasons. Whether it be to make a living, for fun or simply because we have an absolute need to write. So write we do, and the written word never dies.

— Blogging is Dead, Long Live Blogging by Michelle Lyndon-Dykes

These two posts were a nice reminder of why I blog and it is mostly for two reasons.

I want to write.

I want to write and I want to write more often. Writing code is one thing, but being able to string a series of words into readable sentences is difficult. Saying that I do enjoy it. And enjoying it is half the battle.

I want to reach.

Working on my own means that I don’t have appraisals or a team manager monitoring my performance. It’s through these rituals that others advance their career.

If I want to advance my career I have to attract new clients. I know this blog isn’t tailored to web development but I do try to write about topics around my career. What I’m working on, how I’m doing it and what the results are. It’s not all gold and I struggle as much as the next person with it, but I still try to write about it all the same.

You see to reach new clients I have to bring them in with something. That’s what I hope to do with my writing.

So to answer the original question, blogging isn’t dead. It’s still a force to be reckoned with. And I hope it stays that way for a long time.

I’m still on the fence about Medium. Despite having an account there and no stories posted I still get people following me.

Sure I get what Medium is trying to achieve by making blogging easy for everyone but I’m still on the fence about such a high volume of people using one platform.

Mark Lowenstein highlights a few of the benefits and drawbacks with Medium.

Medium offers very little in the way of guidance or tutorials to help one get discovered. There is nobody one can talk to, unless you’re an established brand or company who wants Medium to host your content. I’d bet many writers would be willing to pay a modest fee, or sign up for a premium membership with Medium, for some help building an audience/following and getting their content discovered.

Discoverability is a problem many people face on Medium but I don’t think this a problem with Medium directly.

When you start writing on Medium, you’re writing with (and against) thousands of other people. That’s a lot of competition, so why not blog elsewhere? It’s your decision.

Blogging on Facebook. A chance for the masses to have more of a say online or just another way to keep people in the walled garden of Zuckerberg?

I want to bring blogging to Facebook. I think it’s the only way we can get back on track, by giving the sources great tools to communicate with people who are thirsty for ideas and information. But we can’t do it without linking, styles, titles and links to rich media. We can’t boot up a culture of free thinking inside a silo without these basic features of the web. We need to be able to get our ideas into this space so they can engage with the people here and connect with ideas that live outside of Facebook.

— I still want to bring blogging to Facebook by Dave Winer

I might have been set against this in the past, but Dave’s arguments for blogging on Facebook make sense. It’s another way for people to connect.

When Ethan was at golf coaching before Christmas, he asked the professional how many balls he would need to hit to get his swing perfect or as close too. His reply straight to the point, “10,000”. Given the chance I have no doubt that Ethan would have started that night trying to rack up as many swings at the ball as he could.

If you practice something long enough you’ll eventually be good at it. Great? May be. Good? Most likely. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already got prior knowledge or your new to something. Spend enough time at it and you’ll get better.

The same goes for writing.

When I first started blogging I looked for something to write about that people would like to read but that’s a rookie mistake. If you want to find something to write about then write something that you will want to read as an individual. Write the web you want to read.

Yes, we’re borrowing slightly from Austin Kleon’s “Write the book you want to read”, but the goal in each case is the same.

I also don’t write straight into my blog anymore. I did this for a year, but there came a point where I was just going through the motions. I was filling up the space for the day and when I read back what I was writing, I didn’t like what I seen.

Instead I write far away from any digital interface that will allow me to easily publish. I write in notebooks, plain text files, and in some cases, even on an index card. Write anywhere that doesn’t have a big “Publish” button at the side of it. It will give you a chance to read, review and edit your writing.

I’m certainly not an expert on whether my writing has improved using a scale of measure but I would like to think that after this amount of time writing on this blog, I have improved my writing in some respects.

In a quest to get back on the blogging bandwagon, I thought I would take a look this week at the different benefits that blogging offers.

Ownership might not be the most obvious answer but for me it’s the most important reason why I blog. I’m not just talking about the blog itself, but the words and the content and how my writing acts as my soapbox in the world today.

Owning Your Words

The most important reason why I blog is because it allows me the opportunity to put something out there that’s mine. They are my words, my opinions, my stories, my views. It might not always be gold, but that’s okay. They are my words.

It can be a short post, an article, some long form writing or even a short story. It might be a quote a link or even just a word. Just a single word is enough to convey some message across about where you are.

Owning Your Space

Another reason why I blog is the fact that I want to own my words. Lately there’s a lot of chatter about the pros and cons of hosting your blog in Medium and whether it’s a good or a bad thing. I can see why people would choose Medium as a blogging platform. It’s a great entry into writing online.

However I do prefer having more control over my blog and where it gets published too. Medium is snowballing as more and more people make the switch from their own hosted blog to becoming part of the Medium network, but the problem with this is that it becomes difficult for anyone but people on Medium to see your and follow your blog.

The other great benefit of owning your words is that you can take your blog with you to other blogging platforms if you find that you have outgrown your blogging platform. I started blogging on Tumblr years ago. I then moved to Posterous (now Posthaven), then to Jekyll and now I’m using Ghost. Throughout this time I’ve been able to take my posts with me so that nothing gets left behind.

Own It

The ability to own your little corner of the Internet and carve a niche out for yourself is why many people blog, but being accessible means owning your words and the space you blog form. You don’t have to run a fully configured server with a custom Wordpress install on it. There’s plenty of great blogging platforms out there that allow the world to read what you have to say.

Write it, publish it, own it. It’s as easy as that.

Ghost’s plan to relocate their business to Singapore is a blow to innovative internet businesses in the UK.

Why locate your business in the UK if it’s going to suffer EU under a tax regulation that was designed to catch out the giant technology companies?

Nor do the numbers lie. According to the EU VAT Action campaign, HMRC has admitted that 78% of the VATMOSS returns being processed in the UK only bring in 1% of the total revenue they get from this scheme. HMRC have gone so far as to eject 3000 of those small digital businesses out of the MOSS system because their tax revenues are so tiny that they are essentially not worth processing. Yet the scariest number in this whole drama was the Campaign’s finding that only 1% of impacted businesses are even aware of the MOSS requirements. That 1% is fed up struggling under the burdens of a regulation designed to go after multinational corporations whose sweetheart tax deals were brokered by EU politicians in the first place.

— Digital platform Ghost leaves the EU thanks to #VATMOSS by WebDevLaw

Ghost made the right decision in relocating and I wish them all the best in their new digs.

You know what I miss? I miss blog rolls, where authors would list their favourite sites on their blogs.

— Relative Sanity (@relativesanity) January 3, 2016

I miss them as well, so I’ve added one. It’s a work in progress, so I’ve started off with my essential daily reading. Expect more updates over the next couple of months.

That’s it. The end of another year and the start of a new one.

Start as you mean to go one they say and I intend too. This blog has been lacking in activity of late but that will change.

I just also want to say thanks to Nicholas, Michael, Kurt, Curtis and Patrick. Without my fellow bloggers I wouldn’t have the readership that I have now.

Onwards and upwards for 2016!

Ever since Medium opened its doors to the world it has attracted fans and critics. People that use it rave about its simplicity. Critics of the publishing platform (including myself) have voiced their opinions on why Medium is not for them. Its magazine format, “one for all” style and lack of custom domains was why it didn’t make everyone a fan. After its release, my opinion of Medium was that it wasn’t my idea of a good publishing platform.

Over the last few months though, Medium has in fact become a good source of content for me. Falling just behind my curated list of RSS feeds and my Twitter stream, Medium’s daily newsletter offers a daily list of curated stories from its users. I don’t see Medium taking the top spot any time soon but being a source of good content makes it hard to ignore. These stories are then added to my reading list. The lucky ones get quoted on my blog. I’m not a big enough sample set to say this is a sign of Medium’s impact on the world, but I’m surely not the only person who thinks that the Medium platform is a good source of content?

So what made Medium the next big thing in blogging?

Traditionally blogs were the primary means of publishing content. You could go down two roads.

The first was by using a hosted service such as Tumblr, Wordpress or Blogger. Through a simple sign up process, anyone could have their own little space on the Internet.

The second is to host your own blog. Thankfully things have gotten a little easier over the years to do this but it can still be a challenge if you’re not confident with the tools and services needed to make it happen. It’s not rocket science but it’s still a hurdle that many are willing to walk away from in favour of something a little easier to manage.

Over the years the hosted services have grown and matured, some have closed down, others have started up in the quest to be the hot spot for publishing content for the masses. No service has captured this idea like Medium has. Its basic process of writing and publishing makes it simple to put your stories out there for the world to read. The minimal floating toolbar for changing styles, the lack of distracting settings and the ease with which you can add supporting content like images to your story makes Medium an attractive choice for those looking for a hosted service. And that’s why it has taken off in the way it has. Its simplicity has captured many and offered the path of least resistance to publishing a story.

The benefits of Medium are clear but what about the drawbacks? Sure its look and feel is the same for all of its users and the choice of adding your own custom domain isn’t available for all. It will come soon though. These drawbacks are minimal if I’m being honest. When I look at Medium now I see that I’m nit picking at the platform which has become the killer app for publishing.

Which brings me onto my last point. Even though I’m not a user of Medium for publishing content, should I be that critical of it when it does allow people to share their content more easily than most other platforms? No, I shouldn’t. Any product or service that allows people to connect and share their experiences in a easy to do fashion should never be dismissed. It’s just not for everyone, but for most it is the ideal tool to use.

I used to be critical of Medium but my view on their service has changed over the last couple of months. Medium isn’t for me but I would recommend it for others that weren’t comfortable with hosting their own blog. Sure it has its drawbacks but so does every other publishing tool on the Internet including my own preference of Jekyll and Heroku. The reason I’m sticking with it for the moment is that it works for me.

Will I switch to Medium? Maybe. I don’t know. Probably not, but I am curious about using it for a short term period to see what it can offer, I just haven’t found that particular reason to use it yet.

Every now and again the conventional way of doing things is challenged with something a little bit different. Medium done that when they started and they’re still here today, daring people to change how they publish. Many have changed and even people like Jason Fried are giving it a try. Is this the end of the Signals vs. Noise blog? Probably not but the fact that the owners and employees of Basecamp are giving it a try is a testament to what Medium offers.

A bloody good publishing platform for the masses.

I regularly go through the feeling of drowning in digital. I like being online and everything that comes with it, but when you’re working with software and development tools all day, the last thing I want to see at the end of my work day is a tablet, my phone or even my television.

This week I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking at my various digital outlets and wondering if they are in fact worth the effort to maintain. Here’s my list so far:

• My blog
• Twitter
• App.net

App.net is definitely going. I’ve no interest in keeping an account alive for the sake of having the name of the handle I would prefer. If someone else grabs it, fine. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

I have a love/hate thing going with Twitter. I love being able to have one presence on the social network scene. I’m not on Google+ or Facebook, so having an account on Twitter isn’t a bad thing. I hate what Twitter is though. It’s a distracting and destructive time consumer if it isn’t managed properly and lately it seems to be hoarding all my time. The worst part is I’m not tweeting that often to warrant spending the amount of time I do on it. There’s also the problem of activity. The people that I follow just aren’t as active as they used to be. Maybe that’s a good thing, but sometimes it feels like there’s nothing going on in the timeline. Am I missing the point of Twitter?

Finally, the blog. I had my finger over my mouse for a few seconds ready to trash the whole thing. Years of posts and stuff gone a in a few seconds. I didn’t though as you can see as it’s still here. I like my blog, I like the outlet it gives but lately it’s become a burden and it shouldn’t be. I’m faced with two choices for this. The first choice is I keep going with this blog and change my posting routine to be less intensive. One blog post a week is enough with a weekly link post to round up things. The second choice is to start a new blog elsewhere. I’ve got a couple of other domains at hand that I could start from. This site would stay up and running for the foreseeable future, but at some point it would be put out to pasture.

Decisions, decisions.

8 years and still going strong. Well done Kurt!

While I would love to commit to a steady stream of fresh and interesting content here, I’m just too busy. So if I’m not posting as much, it’s because I’m busy. And that’s a good thing, right?

I’m still not a fan of Medium for blogging, but that’s just my preference. It is a great place for reading though.

Returning to Twitter hasn’t cracked up to what I thought it would be like. Good to see instead that people are entertaining the idea of microblogging from their own sites. I recently started following Jason Rehmus and I’m on the look out for more people who are returning to microblogging. I might even try it myself.

It’s early days but I’m starting a new blog with a focus on web development. DigitalBothy will be the home for all the technical stuff that I don’t want to post here. Great to have an outlet for this. I’ll be writing there on a weekly basis.

… to SwissMiss. 10 years and still going strong!

I really should. My problem at the moment is that I have too many things on the go at once. Something will need to give.

If you’re struggling to blog, read this post by Curtis McHale. It will be a reality check for some. A reality check that is needed.

I know I needed it.

Curtis McHale talks about taking your blogging to the next level and hiring an editor.

Working with Diane I get something more though — I get someone to tell me when a post is just plain bad, and if it is, we take it back and re-write or scrap it altogether. She helps clarify my message so I’m communicating with my readers in the way I intend.

— Blogging and Quality Content by Curtis McHale

Once again, I’m honoured to be included in such great company.

Thanks Kurt.

Medium’s recent announcement that they will start allowing people to use their own domain names for their Medium blogs will be welcome to many, but is it enough to make me switch to using Medium for my blog?

Medium has attracted it’s fair share of critics over the last couple of years including myself. A blogging platform where all the content is listed under the one domain. A constraint maybe, but this might be overlooked by the fact that the actual content of the posts on Medium can stand up on their own when the quality of writing resonates with a particular audience.

Despite my gripes with Medium as a blogging platform, I have read and bookmarked a number of well written posts on Medium. I’ve no problem with the content that people produce, it’s more Medium’s one size fits all approach to listing all posts under one domain and wrapped in one look.

I have owned my own domain name for almost ten years now. Along with a design, while not exclusively unique to my blog but definitely more unique than Medium’s design, I can’t see how I could switch to using to Medium as a replacement for my blog. Being able to switch to your own domain is great, but that alone isn’t enough for me. Personalising your blog with a look that sets it apart from others is why I continue to enjoy using Octopress. I’m free to adapt and change my blog to whatever I see fit.

At the end of the day I can’t say that Medium is a bad choice of publishing platform. It’s not my idea of a good publishing platform but my needs and requirements are different from others. It is a good sign though that Medium is moving ahead with plans to allow users to host content on their own domains.

I’ve been keeping this site going for a few years now, and while my main form of sharing content is through the RSS feed for this site, I do also share content through Buffer. It’s ability to schedule posts for the networks I’m on is what made me sign up. I also use a separate domain for all my shortened links for each post and it starts to look a little more branded.

Why do we share our content in this way though? I can’t speak for the mass collective of netizens, but here’s why I share links through Buffer.

1. To Be Seen

People share their content in this way as a marketing tool, they want to be seen. And so do I. Being self-employed means that I need to keep my name out there.

While my recently published content doesn’t strongly tie in with my freelance career, I do like to think that what I publish is valuable to others and may lead to new clients and contacts.

2. To Suit The Reader

Not everyone uses RSS to subscribe to content. For many, social networks are their first point of call when it comes to finding new content. This is the main reason why I share my content in this way. RSS is often seen as a more techie solution for subscribing to content which is why some people prefer to get their news from their preferred social network.

3. To Pay It Forward

Some things are just too good to keep to yourself and that’s why I’m starting to share more links on Buffer. For the content that I find valuable and worth reading, I’m going to start sharing on Buffer. They might not make my blog in the form of a link post, but sharing these links in other places means that the original authors of the content get noticed.

That’s the main reasons why I share the content that I do. Largely it’s about having an active presence on the Internet and letting potential new clients and contacts know that, “I’m here!”.

This is a personal site though and unsuitable for the kind of content that would get me noticed by new clients. For that I need a separate site with more focused content on Rails, Ruby and other web development topics. This is in the pipeline and I’m hoping to have something up and running by the summer.

I’ve noticed a lull in my posting frequency here. Towards the end of last year, my posting frequency shrank to just one or two posts a week.

Despite attempts to re-ignite the spark, I haven’t been able to return back to that time when I was posting more frequently.

It’s only in the last couple of weeks that I have noticed the source of the problem. It lies in the fact that I define each post I am writing as a single task.

Writing Isn’t a Task

I’ve learned this the hard way. Since collecting all my writing ideas in Todoist, I’ve struggled with writing on a regular basis.

In Todoist I collected ideas as tasks and worked on them when I could. The writing process isn’t simple case of hitting a word count and being done. It is for the first draft of anything you write but self-publication involves a continual loop of writing, reading and reviewing. It only ends when we feel that what we have written is ready to be published.

Instead of using Todoist, I’m going back to using Trello to mange my content funnel for the blog. From a list of ideas, I’m hoping to be able to gradually move cards across my board until they’re ready for the blog. Writing is a process, not a task.

Writing Takes Time

Another hard lesson learned. In the past I would outline posts and write them on the day of publication. That might be okay if you have a couple of hours a day to review what you have written, but I don’t have that time. I’m lucky to get an hour a day set side for this. So I need to use this time in a better way.

Rather than writing one post a day, I’m going to start writing parts of different posts each day. I might work on one or two posts, review another post and ready another post for publishing, but in no way should I be writing, reviewing and publishing in the one day. If I want to get the most from my writing then I need to give ideas and drafts more time to incubate.

Whether you’re writing, reading, reviewing, editing or publishing, it’s all starts with a simple habit of getting those words down on the page.

I’m hoping that by the end of the month, I’ll be back to at least four posts a week. Let’s see what happens.

Write Carl’s question on an index card. Put it on your wall. Answer his question. Repeat daily.

I miss longer-form pieces. I miss the minds behind the writing. Anyone can share a link with a snarky comment. I want to read the words behind your thoughts. I want to read your why.

— Share by Carl T. Holscher

Every yeay I read that blogs are dead or declining in use.

Blogs obviously aren’t dead and I acknowledged that much right from the title. I (obviously) think there’s a lot of value in the blog format, even apart from its massive influence on online media in general, but as someone who’s been doing it since 1998 and still does it every day, it’s difficult to ignore the blog’s diminished place in our informational diet.

— RIP The Blog - 1997 to 2013 by Jason Kottke

Despite the declining use of blogs, I think they’re still a great format for publishing and I’ll continue to blog and read other blogs until they are truly dead.

If I’m being honest, I can’t exactly remember how I stumbled across Steven’s blog. It was a few years ago at least. Anyway, ever since I subscribed to Steven’s blog, it’s been a treasure of writing tips, practices and great books by Steven.

The first book I read of Steven’s was Do the Work. I also read a second book by Steven, Turning Pro. When I first read these books I didn’t appreciate their value, but over the last year, I’ve returned to them more and more found them to be extremely valuable. As for Steven’s other books, I have them on a list to read for next year.

Steven’s blog is essential for anyone who wants to write. Steven tells it like it is and doesn’t sugar coat any of the writing process. It’s a hard journey for those involved but he isn’t shy in saying that it is a rewarding journey with a great prize at the end for those that are willing to put in the work.

Another great blog to follow if writing is your thing.

I first discovered James Shelley through Patrick Rhone’s Twitter account just a couple of years ago. Having checked out James’ blog, I was intrigued. I subscribed and I have remained a faithful subscriber since.

James doesn’t blog very often, but when he does it’s worth waiting for. The quality of his writing is one of the best amongst my RSS subscriptions. In a world of fast paced, quick hit updates, it’s refreshing to see James put so much thought and effort into his writing.

James is also the author of the fantastic Caesura Letters, a daily email subscription that will feed your brain with fresh thoughts and ideas.

Thinker and writer. Two words but two words that describe James Shelley and his blog perfectly. If you cherish quality over quantity, then this is definitely the blog for you.

Patrick Rhone. Writer, curator, Mac fan, thinker, family man and blog hero. Did I miss anything? It’s hard to put Patrick into one box when his blog lets you know that he isn’t just good at one thing. He’s great at many things.

Patrick’s blog first came to my attention when I first started using Twitter. I was simply looking for other people to follow who were interesting. His recommendation came up and I have followed his blog ever since.

Patrick’s blog has a mixed bag of topics. Personal thoughts, productivity insights, technology usage and of course writing. The thing about Patrick is that despite his love of technology and its advantages, he still writes about tools like pens, notebooks and index cards and how he uses them. I see it as the perfect balance between man and machine. His blog is a reminder that there’s more to getting things done than just buying the next killer app.

Patrick’s blog has been daily reading for me for over five years and will continue to be so in the future.

When I first started considering the idea of freelancing a couple of years ago, I started to subscribe to a number of blogs of already established freelancers. It was during this time that I discovered Curtis McHale and his excellent blog.

Currently based in British Columbia, Canada, Curtis writes openly about the trials and tribulations of freelancing, writing and products he’s working on as well as family life and of course cycling. Just the right mix of categories I would say that almost mirror my interests.

His blog has become a valuable tool in my freelancing career. When I struggled at the start, Curtis provided some great advice for me during that first month and continues to do so today through his blog. I’ve even signed up for his new book on running a viable freelance business.

It’s great to have someone like Curtis there, writing about his freelance career. He’s proof that while freelancing is hard work, it’s also very rewarding work if done correctly. And that’s why I’ll continue to read his blog on a daily basis.

Every time I write a post for my blog, I ask myself this question:

What if the majority of my readers already know what I’m writing about in this post?

I’ve purposely held back on a number of ideas for blog posts in the past due to this. I get myself into the mindset that the idea for the blog post will be invaluable to the majority of my readers and therefore I dismiss the idea.

However loooking over my analytics for previous posts I have written that I have questioned but went ahead with, I have been surprised by the number of times the posts I thought would quickly disappear into the archives are still being read by more than a hanful of people every day. Even though I had the belief that the post would only be relevant for a limited time and to a limited number of people, these posts are still drawing in new readers every week.

So my advice to you is this. Even if you think your readers won’t find any value in your idea for a blog post, write that blog post anyway. Chances are that someone will find value in your blog post rather than no-one.

I first started following Kurt’s blog, Cultural Offering, on the recommendation of Nicholas Bate a few years ago. What I love about Kurt’s blog is that his is more of a journal than anything else. Political stories, current affairs, sports, family life and of course the occasional shots of what’s being cooked on the grill. A true slice of life on the American side of the pond.

You just need to take a look at the categories that Kurt has listed on his blog to see the diverse range of topics he blogs about. There’s everything here. And that’s the key thing I love about Kurt’s blog. Diversity. I like specialist blogs, I really do, but Kurt’s blog really stands out because he just posts what interests him.

Always a pleasure to read and always different. That’s Kurt Harden.

16 blogging tips from experts. Well worth the read.

Today marks the start of a three week holiday for myself from my daily posts. The last few months have been a challenge in trying to post something every weekday. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been great fun.

Don’t fret though, I’ll still be posting links, fixies and other goodies through the week if that takes your fancy. I may even post some holiday snaps of sunny Toronto.

Regular daily posts will resume on the 5th of August. See you on the other side.

Michael Wade is a management consultant currently based in Arizona and has been blogging since 2005. I found Michael’s blog, Execupundit, through Nicholas Bate’s blog and ever since I subscribed, I’ve been hooked on Michael’s views on management, the workplace and life.

I’m always envious of bloggers like Michael who continually turn out not only excellent posts, but posts that make you question yourself and your work. Michael’s posts take the form of random thoughts, quotes, links to other blogs, link posts and topical news.

Michael’s blog isn’t just for those in the levels of manangement though, it’s for everyone. Michael is one of my blogs for recommended daily reading.

Keeping up with posts on a daily basis is becoming a little more work than I anticipated. Previously I would try to write a couple of blogs every couple of days and then maybe a couple at the weekend.

In the last two months though this plan have suffered. Scheduling time in during the day is quite difficult with the the day starting early with a school run and then I need to hit client work as soon as I get back home. At the end of the day it is time to get the kids their dinner, have a play with them and then get them ready for bath and bed. By the time that’s done and everything is ready for the next day, it’s nearly 9pm and the thought of sitting at the computer is just not that appealing.

I need a plan of sorts. Simply picking off ideas for writing every couple of days is becoming difficult. I have enough ideas, I just need a plan to get them written.

Here’s what I’m thinking. I should schedule what I am going to publish in my calendar and then work towards writing the articles that are due to published in the coming week.

One benefit of this is that deciding what to write about is taken out of my hands at an early date. I’m planning on scheduling blog posts at least a month ahead. The second benefit is that I can start writing posts even if they are not due to be published for a week or two.

I’m tired of deciding what to write about not the actual writing itself. So I need to schedule ahead and take that decision out my hands at an early stage. Time will tell if this idea for a publishing calendar pays off or not.

I get asked this quite a lot. “Why do you do it?” people ask. Here’s just a few reasons why I blog.

I Have Ownership

My blog is my own. My little space of the internet. Okay, so I don’t own the hosting server that my blog runs on, but the text, images, links and videos are all carefully crafted or curated by myself to form a timeline of my thoughts, likes and dislikes. And I own that little timeline. I don’t need to ask permission from a third party to get that timeline back. It’s sitting on my MacBook Pro at home as a series of little Markdown files, that when passed through a program, form the lovely little timeline that is my blog.

A Network Tool

My blog isn’t just for me though, it’s for you. It’s for everyone if they’re interested. To reach a wider audience though, it helps if you have a network of other bloggers to rely on. This is something that I was late to realize when I started blogging. The power of a network. I wouldn’t say I was part of a formal network like Svbtl or Medium but I do have a circle of fellow bloggers who link to my blog frequently.

Every once in a while a fellow blogger in my network will like my post and link to it from their blog. In return I too will link to blogs of those in my network. There isn’t a “tit for tat” rule though. This is simply sharing content that we like and recommend. Over the last couple of years I’ve built up a nice network of fellow bloggers who not only have interesting blogs to read, but also find my own content interesting.

No Restriction

Take a look at any social networking tool and you’ll find restrictions that limit the content that you can publish. Post length, media type and reach are all restrictions that will prevent your post from reaching the world. No fear of that with a blog.

• Your content doesn’t need to be finely worded so that it adhere’s to the 140 character limit that’s imposed on you.
• Your content is easily accessible to the world. Nobody needs to sign up to read your content.
• Depending on your choice of blogging platform, your content is free to move anywhere you want it to. No requesting of data from a third party just so that you can move your blog to another host.

Writing Practice

For me though the main attraction to blogging is the practice of writing. I love writing and using my blog as a way to practice writing is time well invested in my eyes.

Sitting down to write a novel is a serious long-term commitment, but a blog allows you to work using a smaller commitments. You can write something about 500 words in length, then edit it until you’re happy with it and publish it for the world to see. My blog gives me this chance to practice my writing.

So that’s why I blog. What’s your reasons for blogging and what motivates you?

It’s hard say when I first started reading Nicholas’ blog and how I found it, but it’s been required daily reading for me for at least the last five years.

Over that time Nicholas has produced hundreds of blogs that centre around real life personal development and productivity. I say real life because there are thousands of blog posts and dozens of systems that claim to have the golden key to “getting things done”. Only Bate’s blog has a realistic view of productivity and it’s place in life. Nicholas’ posts range from lists and series to drawings and photos.

Not only is Nicholas’ blog a great source of content for those who are on the path of personal development and improvement, but he also has a great catalogue of mini-books on topics that have featured in his blog. Personal favourites of mine are his Instant MBA and Be Bold 101 books. Not only are these books easy to digest and read but they’re quite small and therefore easy to carry about.

If you’re in the market for a life coach, don’t bother. Save yourself the hassle of someone prodding you to do the right thing and read Nicholas Bate’s blog every day for a better career and life.

Coming up with new blog post ideas can be difficult if you’re the kind of person who likes to post on a regular basis. I’m trying to write a blog post every weekday but I’ll admit there are days where I am just not getting any spark to write about something. Not wanting to have another miserable blogging month like May where I missed a number of days, I wanted to start writing my blog posts ahead of their scheduled date they will be published.

I needed to generate a slew of ideas for blog posts and I needed it fast. Enter the mighty mind map.

Right so let’s get something out the way first. My mind map might not look like a typical mind map, but space was limited in my notebook and rather than squeezing something unreadable in, I opted to list the final collection of blog posts in the bottom middle section of the mind map.

Let’s get started

Okay, so you want to mind map ideas for blog posts. Why not just get started then? Well, mind maps work well when you have related ideas. That’s the benefit of a mind map. It can let you generate related ideas and keep these ideas together.

Rather than simply adding blog post ideas to your mind map, take a minute to think about the categories on your blog. Can you generate more ideas for these categories? If not, then think about generating ideas for a series of related blog posts. A series has the benefit of having similar formats, with just the content being slightly different from one post to the next. It might sound like a cheat but keeping your posts short means that they’ll havea better chance of being read.

So on your mind map, draw an image in the center for the central topic of your mind map, if you’re not the artistic kind then simply the words “Blog Posts” will do.

Basic ordering ideas are the first level of branches that we add to our mind map. In our case each basic ordering idea branch is a blog post series or a category from our blog. Now for each basic ordering idea, simply add a branch for each related idea you can come up with for your blog.

My mind map has basic ordering ideas for the following series or categories:

1. Blogs you Must Read
2. Building a Blog Dashboard in Octopress
3. Review posts
4. Bike posts

Lastly I wanted a list of blog post ideas that were unrelated to any of the above series. With very little space left on my mind map, I decided to simply list the blog post ideas at the bottom. Mind map purists will be screaming at their screens at the moment, saying that this isn’t a true mind map. Does it matter? As long as it works for you.

I set myself a time limit of 10 minutes to do this and managed to generate 30 blog post ideas. Don’t worry if you can’t generate this number of blog post ideas. With practice you’ll be able to quickly generate more ideas with mind maps.

Take action

Now we have a list of ideas, what next? That’s down to you. Add them to your to do list, start outlining them or even mind map each blog post idea!

I have my own method. In order to reduce the element of resistance (I’m lazy), I’m going to create draft files for each of these ideas in my blog. That way I can get started on writing them straight away and as each one is completed I can schedule it in for a specific date.

Your mileage might vary with a mind map. Some people get them, others don’t. I’ve long been a fan of mind mapping so it is easier for me, however don’t give up on it before you have tried it!

To zoom in more on the detail. There’s millions of topics to write about if you look close enough.

Sure. Why not? Your blog is your digital footprint in the world and it is more easily found than physical business cards.

Don’t be.

Owen Williams covers the reasons why your opinion matters and you should write about it:

Yes, there are probably a few thousand other content creators out there airing their own opinions on whatever topic you’re talking about, but if your opinion is sound, quality and unique then a community will eventually gather around you.

— Too busy consuming to create by Owen Williams

Content is king. I hear this a lot when people refer to what drives the popularity of their blog. Which is okay when your blog is targeted as a specific audience, but does the same rule apply when your blog is personal?

Let me re-phrase that. Is your blog for you or your readers?

I’ve been very much of the mind that my blog has an audience. Not a specific audience but an audience all the same. My audience likes what I write. Since moving to Octopress though, I have been struggling about what to do with the content of my tumblelog. My heart says to include all the content here, but my head says no.

My tumblelog is a mixed bag of stuff including fixies, tech news and an assortment of links to my favourite posts on the blogs that I like to read. I like posting these things as it’s what I like, but I’d still like to continue with a daily essay style post.

One way to maintain two audiences but in the same blog is to provide another RSS feed for readers to subscribe to. One feed will default to only the daily posts that I write while another feed will provide the full assortment of posts to enjoy. This way I hope to blog for myself but also keep the interest of readers in mind by not polluting their feed with posts they don’t want to read.

If you continue to enjoy the daily posting routine of myself then stick with the current RSS feed. If you want something more varied then why not think about subscribing to the full assortment of stuff I’ll be posting? The new feed will be ready early next week and of course I’ll be posting the details here.

… once again. Proud and honoured to be featured in Kurt Harden’s annual 25 blogs guaranteed to make you smarter again.

A few years ago I ran a blog called MindMapSwitch. It ran for a couple of years before I had to give it up due to time constraints with work. It did have a small following of readers during its time, so even when I stopped writing for it, I decided to leave the website up for others to read.Last year though I was saddened to read that the service that MindMapSwitch was hosted on, Posterous, was shutting down for good. I knew then I had to move MindMapSwitch somewhere else but I wasn’t too sure where. As MindMapSwitch wasn’t on my priority list I decided to leave it for the moment.

Then last week, I received an email from Posterous that the service would shut down at the end in April and all accounts would be deleted. In order to keep the MindMapSwitch content I downloaded a backup of the content of the blog and deleted my account on Posterous until I decided what to do with the content.Today though I was pleased to receive an email from a university professor in Venezuela who has been using the MindMapSwitch content to teach the benefits of mind mapping to his students.

Unfortunately for him, I had deleted the blog, but I was more than happy to oblige him with a copy the backup I had. It’s in a friendly format that can be easily distributed to his students.When I first started writing on MindMapSwitch, I never thought for a second that my words would reach that far round the world. I knew that I would be able to build up a number of loyal readers who were interested in mind mapping, but never did I think that it would be used a teaching aid for others to help them in their studies. It just goes to show that your words can reach far.

My attempt to blog every weekday on my blog hit a snag today. I didn’t have anything scheduled for today. No worries though. I’ll simply start again from tomorrow and ensure that I always have a couple of articles in reserve for days where I just can’t think of anything to write about.

Not surprised at all that so many corporate blogs are very rarely updated.

I’ve seen too many company blogs that are simply half-ass attempts are trying to keep them up to date. More worrying though is the number of company websites that don’t even have a blog.

— 7 Reasons No One Reads Your Company Blog… by Successful Blog

via Cultural Offering

I’ve managed to write 3 posts over 3 days for my blog, but the writing well is running dry with ideas.Anybody want to see something on the blog that I haven’t written about before? Contact me.

… to be featured in Kurt Harden’s annual 25 blogs guaranteed to make you smarter.

… a Blog Readership. Hats off to Dan Shipper for a great post on blogging. Definitely today’s required reading.

… by Elliot Jay Stocks. Blog posts grouped together by year with a description for each year. Easy to find a post in the archive you’ve already read, but also good for finding interesting posts you haven’t read yet.

via Curtis McHale

I’m pretty chuffed with my blogging habits lately. I’ve covered different topics recently and I’m getting the odd comment here and there. I’m not too bothered about getting masses of people to subscribe to my blog, because that’s not what this about.

There’s 2 main reasons why I’m blogging.

1. It’s good practice for writing

I’m a massive book reader. I’ve been reading fantasy and sci-fi books since I was a kid. When I was in school I spent a fair bit of writing short stories. Then computers became mainstream and I got sucked into programming for the next 20 years.

A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to re-ignite my writing habits and so to give myself some practice, I started blogging about mind mapping. When I exhausted my knowledge of mind mapping, I turned to general blogging about anything and everything.

The whole point of this is that when you’re blogging, you’re writing. When you blog a lot, you write a lot and eventually, well hopefully, you’ll get better at it. I’m hoping that with all this blogging, I’ll become a better writer.

2. It’s out there for everyone to see

Writing for yourself is a great way to get ideas down on paper, but if you want the instant reviews and critique from people then where better than on a blog. Now your writing is out there for all the world to see and criticise.

Don’t be put down by negative feedback though, yes there will be people who criticise the small things, but in that feedback you’ll be able to filter for the negative positive criticisms. Negative, because someone may comment on your writing in a way that you don’t like but agree on, and positive if you can take the criticism and make your writing better.

What next then?

Get a blog and get writing. Simple as that. Dedicate 30 minutes a day to writing about something and publish it. Write about something you specialise in or you’re passionate about. That’s all it takes. Writing is such an over-looked skill these days, yet it plays an important part in many people’s day to day jobs. Everytime you write an email, you’re writing. Creating reports, specifications and documentation is all part of what I do as a developer. If I want to do my job well then it makes sense that I should spend some time writing.

Part of excelling in any career involves how you communicate using any form of medium, whether it’s written or verbal. If you’re a good writer then you can convey information in a clearer way that people can understand and people will notice this. Especially those people in the hiring and promotion positions.

So go on, get writing!