Saturday, November 10, 2007

The Buzz about Blogs & Books


I was just getting ready write a blog post about an entirely different subject when I came across “The latest from Blogger Buzz." I love Blogger Buzz because you can find out what other bloggers are doing that’s cool and exciting. Today, Blogger Buzz profiled Sasha Cagen, Writer, editor, quirkyalone-movement- leader, and world's leading to-do-list-ologist. According to her bio “Sasha is an entrepreneaur and author who who builds communities around passions and new ideas. She is most well known for coining the term 'quirkyalone,' a person who prefers singledom to dating for the sake of dating. "

And she’s also know for her To Do List Blog - a blog that publishes handwritten lists. Sasha became fascinated by lists because they are such a rare window into our everyday lives–and everything that’s on our minds.

From her blog came her latest book “To-do List from Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What our Lists Reveal About Us"which is a collection of 100 lists and the stories behind them.

And you can find this book in all major book stores.

Although I haven’t read it yet, To Do Lists is on the top of my LIST of books to read. For two reasons. One: I think it will be fun to see what is on other people’s lists and Two: It never ceases to amaze me how such a simple idea can become a book and others will read it.

And this got me thinking. Thinking about turning a blog into a book, so I did some research on the subject and here’s what I came up with. (Note: When I “Googled” turning your blog into a book more than 13 million results came up and of course, like most people, just read the first two pages! ).


There are articles about how to do it, there are companies that can turn your blog into a book , export the blog into a pdf for you, software that turns your blog into a book, consultants who tell you how to turn your blog into a book , blogs about turning your blog into a book and there are writers who have turned their books into blogs such as Business Blogging Secrets Revealed - was developed directly from two blogs AND “Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit When He Split” by Laurie Perry aka Crazy Aunt Purl not to mention all the writers, writing blogs in hopes that they too will one day have the contents of a book.

John Paul Micek from Blog i360 advises: “For those of you who are blogging passionately about a niche topic, consider doing it with the purpose of creating a book. When you develop the plan for a book and then combine that plan with a blog (or blogs) that have an organized category structure and a solid schedule for posting — creating a book quickly and painlessly can be easier than you ever imagined!

I totally agree with him and now all I have to do is figure out what ONE subject I want to write about!

Happy blogging,

Heidi

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Adding Pictures to Your Blog & Empowerment


“It is better to have failed in something, than succeeded in nothing.” Unknown




WOW! I recently discovered how to add a picture and imbed links in my blogger blog and I feel empowered!


Like a child who just learns to tie her shoes, I feel exhilarated at the very idea that I can add visual personalities to my blog posts! And I never knew how to embed the links until I started playing with my other blogs at wordpress. Because I had someone show me how to do it on wordpress, I started clicking on links in the admin panel and voila'! I found both tools and started using them.

And it was so simple that I asked myself why it took me so long?
One thing I don't do is beat myself up over taking a while to learn something. It is more important to me to celebrate those little successes than to worry about how long it took. Of course, that was not always the case. I am one of those people who wants to learn it yesterday and tend to have very little patience with myself and my own limitations.

How about you? What do you beat yourself up over? What do you do when you learn something new? If it is something technological, I practice it over and over until I feel really comfortable with the new technology. I'd love to hear from you...


Heidi


ps.


When you are in the admin panel in Blogger, there are little icons on the top of the text area. I clicked on the one next to the color chart and a box comes up for links. Further left there are picture icons. One is for adding images and one is for adding video. Videos are next on my list!

If you need a wordpress expert who can help you set up an customize a blog, check out Heidi Caswell's blog, Connect Simply. She is the technology brains behind my other blogs, WE Magazine for Women, Women's Media Summit and my soon-to-be launched Redhead Marketing Blog!