Fatherhood² | Henry's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

I’ve been “daddy blogging” for almost 10 months now, and am slowly finding my feet. I’ve got some lovely regular readers as well as some lovely guest posters – some of whom don’t get half as much praise as they deserve. So I wanted to go some way to correcting that here, by highlighting some of the great posts that people have contributed so far.

I also wanted to make an appeal for more guest posters – and I have a bit of an incentive for you, to make that more appealing! But before I get on to that, here are some of the lovely guest posters that have featured on the blog so far:
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As both a blogger and a social media… person, I regularly come in to contact with people hoping to form relationships with bloggers. I’ve even done it myself a few times – though I’m by no means an expert. But the concept of “blogger engagement” is a very interesting one to me, and – I must admit – one of the many reasons I got in to blogging.

As a new father, I’d be more than happy to get some free stuff occasionally – whether it’s products to review, or just freebies as promotional items. But how do you get in to that game in the first place? I’m still trying to figure it out – which is ironic, as part of my own job includes identifying relevant bloggers to “engage” with. So how do I join the two up? How do I tell brands and PR folk that I’m happy to consider their offers, and how do I as a marketeer find out whether bloggers I identify are going to be open to my “advances”?

Well, hopefully a solution might be on the horizon….
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I was recently asked to contribute to an eBook being produced in Australia for would-be Mummy Bloggers. As well as being very flattered (and just as keen), I thought it would be a good opportunity to pass on some of the tips and tricks I’ve learnt whilst blogging over the past few years – as well as some of the advice I give our clients.

As well as pimping my own chapter (“How to get traffic and measure it”), which I hope proves useful to first-time bloggers, some of the other contributors are WAY better than me, so it’s worth a read whatever level of blogger you consider yourself to be. I particularly like the “Ten Easy Blog Post Ideas” list on page 20, most of which I quite regularly use myself!
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Me and Robert - a pair of posers

I posted something along these lines on Twitter yesterday – though obviously confined to the 140 character limit Twitter imposes… which, let’s face it, I’m amazed I ever manage to actually adhere to! I ramble, you see. But I suspect I’m making that point quite well now…

Anyway, as I mentioned in the post below this one, I’m hoping (all being well) to ‘remodel’ my blog as a bit of a “Daddy Blog” – not solely a daddy blog I should point out, but that’ll probably be it’s primary focus. Before anyone points it out, I KNOW there are already HUNDREDS of other Daddy Blogs out there. But when should a bit of competition ever put anyone off?

Like most bloggers, I’ll be doing this for fairly obvious reasons – a bit of networking, a nice way to save my thoughts on various subjects, a tiny bit of vanity, and a lot of wanting to share hints and tips. What I’m also hoping to do, which probably differentiates this from a lot of other blogs, is to invite other dads to join in with guest posts and discussions.

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I recently did a small piece-to-camera (can you still call it that when I wasn’t actually looking at the camera? Hmm) for the IAB, as part of a series of videos they are doing with various Social Media council members. I chose to talk about blogging, and if you’d like to see what I said you can view the video on the IAB social media blog. Click the image below to see it.

For some reason, the microphone they attached to me looks like a small black Lego man has committed suicide inside my shirt – I think that adds to the (limited) appeal of the video though…! It possibly distracts attention away from my double chin too…

Welcome to my brand new blog… possibly!

I’ve been mulling over the idea of having my own blog for a few years now (how indecisive am I?!) and have finally decided to dip my toe in the water and see how it feels. It’s not a decision I’m taking lightly though. Just like the issue of our over-crowded global population, I’m firmly of the opinion that there are already far too many blogs in the world (200 million plus, last time I heard!) so starting yet another is something I feel a little guilty about. To take the analogy further, there are also also a lot of unloved blogs out there in the world – perhaps I should have considered adopting an unwanted one first? Does it even work like that?!

Either way, I thought I’d at the very least give personal blogging a go – I promise I’ll stop it and delete it if nobody is reading it, how about that? I say “personal blogging” because I’m actually a regular blogger as it is anyway. I blog on our work blog at Tamar, plus I occassionally guest-blog on sites like Media140 and Econsultancy. I also run several different web projects too (details of which I’m sure I’ll share if I keep this going!) and have a very busy job and family life, so this isn’t something I’m going to be able to devote a shed-load of time to. But I promise that I’ll try to only post stuff that other people might find interesting.

One of the reasons I finally took the plunge today was a realisation that, despite blogging in a number of different places, I don’t actually have anywhere (bar Twitter) where I can give my opinion on things non-work related. For instance, I recently had a crappy experience with the LastMinute.com customer “support” team, but short of tweeting about it there was nowhere I could vent. Just the other day on Twitter I asked Google’s Spaminator Matt Cutts how best to deal with an issue I’ve had with a Google Store order (see left). His response reaffirmed the issue that not having my own blog means I have nowhere to air issues like that – so I thought that the simplest way to deal with that was to start one!

But before taking the final step and installing WordPress as I have (and messing around with my first slew of plugins), I jotted down a few of the pro’s and con’s to me doing this, which was what eventually persuaded me. Here’s what I came up with – let me know if I missed any!

• To Blog – As I outlined above, I don’t have anywhere to post non-work related stuff, rants, vents, funnies or just random stuff.
• Not to Blog – Does anyone actually want to read that though?! Probably not for the majority, but the ability to have somewhere to rant about companies and have them actually have a chance of seeing it and taking notice is quite appealing.
• To Blog – I’ve got a reasonably-okay following on Twitter, so surely I can get a few people to read this, with the right incentives?
• Not to Blog – Let’s face it, most of them at Br!tney spam-bots anyway – can spam-bots even read?!
• To Blog – Back when I first started out with websites, I used the site henweb.co.uk as my “hub” – a good place to link to all the different stuff I was doing. I’ve not had that for a long time, and if nothing else it’ll make sure I don’t forget stuff I’m doing, which is something that happens far too often! :D
• Not to Blog – There are already 200 million blogs. Do I really need to make that 200,000,001? Have I even got time to update it or enough crap to say?
• To Blog – OF COURSE I HAVE! Anyone who knows me will attest that I’ve *always* got crap to say…! :D
• Not to Blog – Is blogging just an exercise in online vanity?
• To Blog – A few people have told me I’m an alright wordsmith in the past – including a few writers that I respect a lot. Even if nobody reads this, practise is always good isn’t it?

I’m sure there are other reasons that I’ve missed – why not let me know via the comments? If I’m being honest, I suspect my pro/con exercise was actually doing more to convince me than I’d hoped it would, but I think I’ve decided that I’m going to give this a go…

Henry

P.S. People are always telling me that I don’t do endings very well, so you might want to bear that in mind if you’re going to subscribe…!