For some reason Flock decided to spit the dummy on me the other day. It just shut down then everytime I try to re-open it it just gives me a Flock has encountered a problem and needs to close we are sorry for the inconvenience message. Damn right it’s an inconvenience I love(d) my Flock. I’ve tried uninstalling and re-installing and it still keeps giving me that message (along with the restart or start new session thingie - and yes I’ve tried it both ways) I dunno what’s going on. But it’s annoying me.

To make things even more annoying - I’ve been using Firefox in it’s place (which I used to love until I switched) and while I’m not having any problems browsing - for the most part - I no longer have most of my recent bookmarks and…

For some reason my Google reader won’t work in Firefox anymore - the page opens fine, but it just keeps telling me it’s loading. It tells me I have new messages and how many I have etc but the actual message/post side of the screen won’t open. Grrrr. I do still have bloglines on here that I used to use but that only has a very small portion of the sites I subscribe to nowadays and I really want my google reader to start working again cause I don’t wanna have to go hunting down the sites so I can subscribe again via bloglines (the whole cause google reader won’t load I can’t just get to the blog via a link in my reader thing)

Man it sucks when things go wrong with your computer and you’re one of those people that gets set in their ways of doing things and doesn’t like change - unless it’s a planned change - being forced to go back to firefox and bloglines is a pain in the butt.

I remember that at the start of the year I was going to get some much done this year, while I never actually made a New Years Resolution myself, I do wonder how many others did, and of those that did how many actually carried through with it initially, and of that lot, how many are still keeping it almost a year later?

I know that all my blogging plans fell by the wayside, what with real life: kids, work and sport I didn’t seem to have any spare hours in the day throw in the fact that my son turned 16 yesterday so just recently I’ve had to share the computer with him so he could do the RAA online test practice thingie so he could get his licence - yes my little man is 16 *groan and pout* so yesterday was a pretty big day for him.

At this stage all I can hope is that time slows to a crawl for the next week (before the kids start school holidays, then it can speed up again) to give me a little time to try and catch up before the New Year.

I have a day off work today so I figured “Yay! I’ll get the chance to catch up on some stuff.” I really should know better.

First let me preface this by saying I don’t blog because it’s my way of earning money - yes I do get a bit here and there but it’s not the be all, end all of my blogging life, rather I blog when I have something to say or a bit of advice I want to share etc. I do have a few different blogs on a variety of different topics and each get’s their own piece of my time.

But back to whether it’s really worth it or not.

I’ve pretty much spent the first part of the morning cleaning out my spam - each blog had a tonne of it, and what’s worse most of it was identical: the comment was the same only the name had changed per individual blog and blog post, or each of my blogs had a joke added, with a link back to blogger.com etc; and while I’m here can anyone tell me why that is so: what’s the point of linking to http://www.blogger.com or http://www.google.com? I always thought the main reason people spammed was to try and get a link back to their sites.

Anyway I got that cleaned out and figured I’d go and check on another problem I’d noticed on one of my very first blogs a couple of weeks ago. This blog, being my first is hosted on a free hosting site, which while I can go and add posts and via the cpanel log into all the backend stuff I can’t actually ftp anything to it, like if I wanted to change themes etc. the ftp just won’t work for me anymore (and I’m way too lazy to try and upload one file at a time for a new theme etc)

So a couple of weeks ago I went to this blog and noticed it was gone, well not gone it just had 51 in the top left corner of the page, I figured the site was down as sometimes happens with the free hosting etc and I’d check again later. I finally remembered today and checked and the 51 was still there. I logged into the admin area of the blog no problems and played around a bit, went to view it and the 51 was still there, about this time I was starting to get really annoyed. I changed themes back to the default theme and the site popped up no problems, this of course let me know that the problem was with the theme I wanted to use. It’s about here I was really getting rather cross cause of the whole can’t ftp thing so I couldn’t just upload a new theme.

Via the dashboard I checked out all the individual pages of the theme and yep, you guessed it, some @#$# had decided to go in and add all this crap to the header of my blog. So now I’m left with trying to figure out what is supposed to be there after I delete the 100 plus links that have been added. Of course I didn’t have the theme saved on my computer anymore - not sure why that is ’cause I have others saved - but I found it again, downloaded it and then because it was an updated version to the one I have on my blog now I had to work out what had changed and what hadn’t etc and do some copying, pasting and a whole heap of deleting.

While this was all relatively easy to fix once I knew what the problem was - that’s not the point.

As someone who really only blogs occasionally and doesn’t check on a daily basis etc it’s a pain in the backside when you have to go to all this extra effort just so you can add a tiny post to your blog. What about those youngsters that want to blog for fun only to find some idiot has somehow added a heap of links to adult sites etc. Or those that only set up a blog because they have little to no idea how coding etc works and blogging makes it easy? Is it really worth the effort then?

There’s arguably no finer way to reach people on the web, than with a well written blog. Whether your objective is business promotion, search engine optimization or good old fashioned journal keeping, the blog is still where it’s at. That’s all very well if you’ve already got a captive audience through a personal website or business, but how do you find new readers, and most importantly; keep the old ones?

Firstly, you’ve got to embrace one principle which applies to all blogs, even if their main function is to act as search engine optimizers: Your blog content must be original and information rich. Search engines and normal readers’ alike share a desire for new information and experience. If we want our blogs to be widely read and popular we must please humans and computers in equal measure, so lots of rich new information in each blog is a great place to start!

If you are writing a personal blog, then don’t write about everyday experiences unless you are prepared to discuss your associated feelings in an unusually open manner. Think about what really drives great plots in TV shows: They are all about emotion! You don’t have to be cynical and calculating about your blog writing, but be aware that using the odd literary technique to generate suspense and emotion where you might feel it in your everyday life is a fantastic way to keep readers.

If you are writing for search engines, don’t forget the readers. Search engine bots are becoming increasingly advanced and are now capable of recognizing poorly written content. The penalty is that a poorly written blog with a similar number of keywords will fall well below a well written entry on search results. Keep things legible and don’t overdo those blogging keywords!

Finally: Keep it regular! There’s nothing readers and bots like more than a good regular dose of the thing they visit the site for. Regular updating will work over time to generate long term blog readers, and it’ll keep bots happy because they can figure out a schedule to visit your site and know that they will always find new content. Get out there and get blogging!

Larry McCullough has been marketing and writing on the internet for over 10 years. Owner of various websites.
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Those reading this that are in South Australia may well have seen those brief ads on tv in the evenings that really don’t show anything other than a person driving that suddenly becomes a bit dead/zombieish looking, with a bit of freaky background music that moves into a message about creepers being among us. Okay not the best or most detailed explanation but if you’ve seen it you’ll know what I’m talking about.

When I first saw one I had absolutely no idea what it was for, naturally my (and my soon to be 16 year old sons) first thought was for some new movie of tv show, so we discussed it a little. Occasionally we’d see another ad and continue to wonder what it was about ie we got to talking about it.

While we never came to any real conclusion it wasn’t until I was driving home with my son in the car yesterday, who just happened to once again remind me that he can get his licence a little later this year, (on a countryish road that is well known black spot when it comes to accidents) that we saw a huge arse sign that mentioned creeping over the speed limit. And the light bulb went off.

So we got to discussing those ads again and once we got past the whole “yeah well just as long as you’re careful when you’re driving thing” that I’m sure most parents talk about with their soon to be licenced children, we actually got into talking about the power of those ads.

My son mentioned about how they really give you no information at all - yet we’ve discussed them several times (as I’m pretty sure many other households have) whether that’s to try and figure out what it is they’re ‘promoting’ or the need to stay within the speed limit etc. so in that respect sometimes too little information can be just as good if not better than too much. I guess bottom line though is that those ads certainly worked for this house in regards to pointing out/reminding of the dangers of speeding etc