Since some time before Christmas, I have really been contemplating whether or not I Home with Heather was something that I was going to continue with. This is not a decision that I have come to easily as you can see from some of my previous posts: Perspective, Happy New Year, and Getting My Groove Back. I’ve tried, but I can’t seem to get my groove back…

Home with Heather is just not where my heart is right now, and I am not the kind of person to do something half-way. And so with that in mind, I have made the decision to stop writing for Home with Heather, for the time being. I will leave it up for you, and may even pop in with a post from time to time.

This decision has made me sad, relieved, and excited at my new ventures. I would love to keep in touch with you through my MySpace page at http://myspace.com/wahmbuddy or you can visit my other site at Our Kids Are Special.

It has been a wonderful experience to create and update Home with Heather. I have learned a lot of valuable things, met many great people, and have hopefully been able to share some of that experience with you through my posting.

Expect the Best,

Whats on my Mind?

My recent post on “Why Dont You Leave a Comment“, was to help show readers how to leave comments on blogs.

In conversations I had with my 3D friends, they felt uncomfortable leaving comments because they didn’t know how, and because they thought nobody wanted to hear what they had to say anyway.

There was quite a mixed reaction to the post by way of comments with readers explaining why they do or do not leave comments. It’s an interesting read. One of the comments left by “Mini” was asking for more information:

I dont leave comments cuz I feel it is unfamiliar territory - I am not blog wise - so if you are trying to educate since you explained how to comment, please educate me also as to RSS, Shin, Plug and Zoom - or are those areas only for the blogger-knowledgeable folks ?? You see, if I am confused about all the terms, commenting does not come easy.. thanks for the education

That’s really a two part question. The first is dealing with RSS, and the second is dealing with the social site buttons being displayed on a blog.

In this post, let’s talk about the buttons that are displayed on the posts. There are so many different buttons that any blogger can choose to display on a post, some cater to Internet Marketing, and Blogging while others cater to different “niche” topics.

The purpose of displaying the buttons is for the blogger to get your “vote” on the article. The more votes an article receives, the higher it advances in that particular social site, and the more publicity it gets.

The buttons are on display for all readers to use, though admittedly they are mostly only used by other bloggers who know what they are for. Some networking sites require that you become a member before you can use the buttons, others allow any reader to click them.

The 3 buttons that Mini asked about are on my posts.

This button to a social networking site called PlugIM. “PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community. Submit content, share articles, comment on projects and promote your favorites to the front page”. With Plug IM, you do not need an account to promote an article that you like. All you have to do is click the plug button, and the counter will increase.

Sphinn.com is a newer social site that is all about Internet Marketing News. “It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others” In order to use this button, you must have an account with Sphinn.

Blogging Zoom is a newer social site dedicated to bloggers, and at present is my favorite of the three. “We are here to give every blogger, popular or not, a chance to showcase their content and talents. BZ was created by bloggers for bloggers, and we are dedicated to providing people with the tools and knowledge they need to increase their blogs’ popularity”. With Blogging Zoom, you do need to set up a profile in order to be able to zoom articles, but you dont need a blog to be part of the community. You can join just as a way of finding great info, and then start zooming it.

There are hundreds of social networking sites like these and many of them have buttons that will displayed on a blog. The submission process should be relatively the same for all of them. The questions of course would be whether or not you have to be a member of the site in order to click on a button and vote for that article. The way to find out would be to try. It certainly won’t hurt anything, and you may find a community that provides great information that you want to be a part of.

Look for upcoming posts to where I will be showcasing certain social sites. I also will spend more time on RSS and how it can be used to save you time, and keep you up to date on your favorite blogs.

BTW - If you like an article on Home with Heather, go ahead and click on the buttons. It would be greatly appreciated.

Expect the Best,

Blogging, blogging zoom, bz, comments, plugim, reader questions, Social Networking, social sites, sphinn, su

This question is directed to readers of blogs everywhere (not just mine), and it is inspired by a conversation I’ve been having with some of my 3D friends as of late.

I’ve noticed that very few comments are left by readers that do not have a website of blog to link back too. And it’s got me curious, so I started asking my friends that don’t have blogs or websites but still go online for fun. The answer I’m getting is that they are not sure how, and the whole process is a bit intimidating to them.

I started checking around on other blogs. I looked at blogs in the Internet Marketing niche, money making niche, but I also looked in others areas like cars blogs, home schooling blogs, mom blogs, weight loss blogs, pet blogs and the list could go on. I even looked at some of the really high traffic blogs.

Keep Reading… »

blog comment, blog readers, Blogging, community, how to leave a comment, leaving a comment

With all the ups and downs on Home with Heather over the last several months, I’ve been really wondering what is the best use of the hours I have available to devote to blogging.  A few days ago, I wrote about Daily Posts. Are you Wasting Your time?  It’s a question that has really peaked my curiosity.

I’ve decided to do a bit of testing in February, and then share my results at the end of the month.

To date, as I write this post January has shown the following on Home with Heather. Again, please keep in mind that this is my slowest blogging month in a long time but I do need some numbers to start with…

• Unique Visitors - 2603
• Number of Visits - 6203
• Page Views - 46288
• RSS Subscribers - 90
• Posts written - 11
• Tech Authority - 166

Keep Reading… »

Action Plan, blog traffic, Goals and Plans, managing your blogging day, time mangement

Totally off topic.

My mother phoned this morning. Seems she’s decided it’s time to start cleaning and purging out her basement. Keep in mind she has a 6 bedroom house and has lived in it for close to 30 years. There is A LOT of stuff to go through.

So she’s been finding ‘treasures’ all day. Some of the stuff I’m sure is not anything to keep, she just doesn’t have the heart to throw it out. But some stuff was good…

She found a box FULL of my school year books!!!!! I had her bring them over right away.

OMG - I thought I had lost those books 20 years ago, and I thought they were gone for good. When I first moved out, I moved many, many times inside of a year and I just thought it was a box that had been lost because I haven’t been able to find it in that long. In fact, I thought I had looked in mom’s basement years back. Guess I must not have looked in the right spot.

So instead of getting any kind of meaningful work done this afternoon, I’ve been going through all of these old yearbooks from the ’80’s.

I have to say…

What the hell were we thinking?!? What was with that HAIR and those glasses… they covered your whole, entire face!!!!

It’s one thing to see the 80’s hair in old movies. But seeing it on my friends, and me!!! Holy crap, it’s a good thing that was just a trend and that it stayed in the 80’s.

It was really fun to spend some time going through the books. Certainly something that I will treasure.

I’ve said before on this blog that “I didn’t do school much”. It was more fun to go to school, pick up my friends (I was the one with the car) and go for coffee, or to try and get in some sort of trouble for the day!!

After high school I didn’t keep in touch with most people from school. I had forgotten many of them. It was really cool to see the books, brought back many memories.  Some good… some not so good.

So that’s it for my break, better get back at it.  If you want a good laugh, go pull out your old yearbooks, grab a cup of coffee and have a look.

Expect the Best,

80s hair, highscool, memories, Taking a Break!

This is just a really quick post to say “Don’t Do This…”

I’m finding that I really quite like Blogging Zoom as a place to display my content. Also I’ve found many great articles there from other bloggers. One bad thing about Blogging Zoom is that I’m finding myself spending a fair bit of time on it. I think I’m gonna have to start setting the egg timer.

Of course, I haven’t had any content to submit up until the last few days. Being in a hurry, I didn’t follow “the rules” and could have got myself banned for it.

When you submit new content to BZ, it has bolded, in caps, with a red font (basically you can’t miss it) [ DO NOT COPY PASTE ] I thought, not a big deal. I’ll take the time next post… Turns out it was a big deal.

You can read the full post here, but basically what you’re doing when you copy and paste is really hurting yourself.

Every time you copy and paste your content in a submission let it be here at Blogging Zoom or any other social voting site you are giving yourself and Blogging Zoom a duplicate content filter penalty with Google.

I never really thought of it like that before. Needless to say, I’ve gone back and corrected the error. And all is good again.

In an upcoming post, I will be doing a review of all of the social networking sites that I have been using, and tell you what is working for me and what isn’t. In fact, after that post, I will be adding/removing networking buttons on my blog to reflect more accurately what I use.

Until then…

Expect the Best,

blog, blogging zoom, bz, copy and paste, Social Networking, zoom, zooming

I’ve been changing a few things around on the Home with Heather’s side bar the last few days. Change can sometimes be a good thing, keeps things fresh. The first thing that got the boot was the Blog Rush Widget.

I was one of the very first on the band wagon with the BlogRush Widget back in September of last year. It was really exciting at the time. John Reese had the whole blogosphere talking and adding it to their blogs. The promise was that it would bring traffic for the “little guy”. In October, it actually did bring me a small bit of traffic - about 2 % of my unique visitors were brought in through the widget. In November and December combined, it was about .6 of a percent. That’s it!!

Now, I’ll take traffic from any source that I can get it… BUT that widget was taking up a huge amount of my most valuable real estate on the sidebar for 12 clicks in December. That’s just not worth it.

I have found many other sources that bring me much better targeted traffic than the Blog Rush Widget. I even played by the rules, displayed the widget ‘about the fold’ on my sidebar so that it would always be seen.

I really respect John Reese and what he has to say. Generally it’s bang on. Why did the widget fail so miserably? Not sure. My original thought was that all the credits were being given to the blogs with more traffic. I don’t really think that is the case because of read of some of the bigger blogs taking the widget down as well. Blogs like Problogger, and Clicknewz.

Are you still using the Blog Rush Widget? If so, is it bringing you in traffic? If not, why do you think that it failed?

Now I guess I’m curious about what others are thinking, so leave me a comment won’t you?

Expect the Best,

blog real estate, Blog Rush, Blog Rush Mistakes, blogrush, free traffic, john reese, side bar, Social Networking, traffic, Web 2.0, widget