Tag: blogging series

How To: Use Your Blog to Change the World [infographic]

Did you ever wish it was easier to navigate your responses to news and happenings on the interwebs? How should you blog when your passions get ignited, so you don’t look like an ass later? It’s a navigation issue.

OR

Did you ever wish you could teach someone how to avoid doing and saying things they might regret? (Or things you end up regretting for them.)

Now you can!

Okay, plenty of people don’t take good advice. Me included. Alanise Morrisette and I are not alone. Maybe you try to help your readers navigate, and they just don’t give a care. In hopes that they will, I made a graphic to help.

It’s like a flowchart that hopes to be considered an Infrographic, because infographics are where the coolness is.

Everything seems simpler with a visual, right?

TAH-DAH! The flowchart for navigating how we post on our blogs that you’ve been waiting for…or didn’t know you needed.

You like? Then, Take it. Use it. Spread it. Whatevs. It’s free. Enjoy.

courtesy of lisadelay.com

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Smart Authors Balance Honesty and Transparency [Guest post by Warwick Fuller]

I met our next contributor in seminary. If you don’t know Warwick personally, it’s hard to describe him. Just reading his work one could get the false impression that he is just mildly eccentric, even understated. Don’t be fooled.

Warwick leaks out and away from every typical category. First of all, Warwick takes great pleasure in being unusual. He’s involved and conscientious. He makes frenzied gestures when he’s excited, his laugh is thoroughly concussive, and he devours books at vertiginous speed. He’s intense, yet surprises you with his sensitivity. He’s intelligent, but that doesn’t ever seem to help him for long. He’s both a marvel and a conundrum. I like him and I’ve learned a lot from him. Probably when it was least expected, and often where blood, or tears, or sweat has something to do with it. I’ve appreciated Warwick in the same way I grew to like dark lager. (In this curious photo, an unseen doctor checks Warwick for a mutant sty that developed after reading too many spiderman comics. Or, I made that last part up.)

Smart Authors Balance Honesty and Transparency
-by Warwick Fuller

We’ve just moved for the 4th time in the past year. I just opened a box that was labeled desk stuff and found an old journal.   How I approach my journal is different from my blog.  My blog is mostly about my observations and the events going on in my life that are affecting me and the world around me.  Because of my faith, these observations are thru a certain lens.  I don’t think I’m bashful about that lens, but I am choosy about what I share in regards to that lens.  I’m choosy about what I share about my family.  I do know some of my readers.  I don’t know all of them.

In blogging there are certain ideals, and those that post them well are the people that have a high traffic volume.  Two of those ideals are honesty and transparency.  In being honest, we can see the writer’s flaws, and the true humanity that is behind the words and stories.  In being transparent, the writer becomes relatable.  These are trust issues.  A good author wants you to trust their work; wants you to understand and relate.

Being a smart author in such a personal medium is to know when to draw the line when it comes to transparency.  For me there are a couple of rules that I have employed in my head to help.

  1.  Never paint your spouse/child/significant other in such a shade that they are degraded in the eyes of others.  I never want others to regret what I write about them, especially my immediate family.  It’s unfair; they never get to defend themselves on my page.  The stories I do share about them that I question I always run by my wife first.  If she feels uncomfortable then its off the table.
  2. Never put your family in danger.  Honestly, there are crazy people out there.  My nana says more than there were when she was a kid.  The post that draws the most attention to my blog is a picture of the Marvel Comic Family Tree (nerd alert), and I’m not sure who is being drawn in because of it.   I am very careful in revealing certain details about where we are and what my kids are up to.  I’m honest, just not naïve.
  3. It’s ok to make yourself the butt of a joke, but be redeemable.  Some reputations have been killed by what an author writes about himself on the interwebs.  Some comedians make a life out of self-humiliation.  I think that may be fine for others, but I want to be trusted by those who ask for my advice.  Because of the line of work I am in, others count on my opinion and advice.  I do not want that ruined by a misplaced, though true, story.
  4. When in doubt, find a community to run your idea by first.  I have a wife who is understanding and is intelligent.  She also likes me, which helps when I tell her I want to put something on my blog.  She’s god at asking the right questions that help me not just know what to put up but how and why.  If you do not have a soundboard, then find one.  Or at least, write down your post and revisit a week later, before you post it.  This is just a good habit, anyway.
  5. Be aware that the truth you find in your observations may not be what others saw.  It’s the old joke about the blind men and the elephant.  If you are writing about an event that took place, it’s not a bad idea to make sure you saw exactly what you saw.  Ask others that were a part of it for their own observations.  It makes a story round, and they can provide details you missed.
  6. Don’t make yourself un-hirable.    I have no idea what the future holds for me and my family.  I do not want anything I’ve put up on my blog to put in jeopardy whatever God is leading us to next.  Neither should you.  A good reputation, to be trusted, is a desirable goal. I’ve heard better than silver and gold.  Weigh your words and see if what you read is how you want people to see you.

So, fellow bloggers, how close an eye are you keeping on your words?  What safeguards do you employ?  Can you ever be too honest and open?

Bio: Warwick Fuller is a blogger at www.warwickfuller.wordpress.com.  He names his pets after Anglican literary figures and wears bow ties. He is lead on his church’s Wednesday night Family Ministry, and is a USAR Chaplain.  He is married with three daughters and lives in Harrisburg, PA.  

Pride and Popularity [Guest Post from Lisa Bartelt]

Here’s another Lisa, and an up-and-coming famous blogger sharing her frustrations of blogging. I was in a bunch of seminary classes and in student forum (government) with her husband Phil. Every time he’d say, “Well, Lisa… said or did this or that…” it would alway take a full three seconds for me to figure out that he couldn’t be talking about me. One of the first times it happened, I just stared at him in what must have looked like total confusion. Thankfully, he pieced it together for me. It turns out we have more in common than just the same first name. Enjoy.

Pride & Popularity

-by Lisa Bartelt

“I don’t read your book reviews, just like everyone else.”

 

Okay, so I know wounds from a friend can be trusted, but this wound was from my husband.

 

Ouch.

 

And he was talking about my blog.

 

Double ouch.

 

If his statement hadn’t been painfully true, then maybe I would have done more than laugh it off. But he was right. People aren’t reading my book reviews. Shoot, even when I give books away, I’m not getting a lot of traffic. In fact, the last time I hosted a book giveaway, I wondered if I was going to have to beg someone to take it. (Praise the Lord, I found some willing contestants, and even a winner. Can I get a “hallelujah”?)

 

I’ll admit it: I want to be popular. As a blogger. And as a person. I want “reach” and “impact” and all kinds of other blogosphere words I don’t know anything about. I want to one day wake up and have magically appeared on WordPress.com’s front page as a “freshly pressed” blog on which hundreds (thousands?) of people have clicked, liked or commented.

 

I’m not asking too much, right?

 

The problem, for me, is that blogging is not my day job (heck, it’s not even my night job!) and I suspect it takes more effort than I give to really “make it” in the blogosphere. (Total rabbit trail: that word weirds me out because I was a journalist in Illinois when Rod Blagojevich was governor and we used the word “Blagosphere” to describe the world he lived in. Rabbit trail over.)

 

Popularity may not be a bad goal, but it isn’t the best goal for a blogger, especially a blogger whose aim is to glorify Jesus.

 

Do you ever wonder why God didn’t send Jesus to earth now? I mean, if He wanted Him to be popular, there’s no time like the Information Age. Jesus might have had millions of Twitter followers, a hip happenin’ blog and more Facebook friends than dollars in the Mega Millions lottery pot.

 

If popularity was the goal, then Jerusalem 2,000 years ago was the wrong choice.

 

God intended something deeper than popularity, which is fleeting. Just think back to high school, or if that’s too painful, think about celebrities today who are popular one week and practically black-listed the next.

 

No, popularity can’t be our goal. Not if we want more than 15 minutes of fame.

 

My 2-year-old son recently went through a phase where he wanted me to sing him to sleep. Bear in mind, I have a voice that, while it does not cause dogs to howl, will not win me a spot on American Idol. I obliged, and it has turned into a nightly routine with both kids.

 

While there are days I think I’d like to have the adoration of millions of fans and fame of the “Idol” kind, I find most satisfying my son’s request: “Please, you keep singing?”

 

Maybe it’s pleasure we should seek.

 

“For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” – Philippians 2:13 (NASB)

 

A couple of weeks ago, my family was on vacation, and I was practically off the grid for 10 days. My Klout score actually went up during that period. (A case of absence makes the heart grow fonder?) Maybe it’s not really about me, after all.

 

William Featherston wrote these words in what would become the hymn My Jesus I Love Thee: “and praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath.”

 

As writers, we can carry that sentiment – I will write as long as You lend me the words — into our work, whether thousands of people read our blogs or just our moms and grandmas. (Hi, Mom!)

Lisa Bartelt is an award-winning journalist turned stay-at-home mom of two and soon-to-be pastor’s wife whose work has appeared in The One Year Devotional of Joy and Laughter. She blogs about books, kids, and Jesus at http://lmbartelt.wordpress.com.

The Christian Blogger’s Alchemy


Ray’s pastoral sensibilities and daily high-quality blog content make him one of my favorites. I’m so glad that he’s our guest contributor today. Ray has some wise words for us, so pay attention. (And BTW Ray, I only use 3 names as my pen name. There are at least two other Lisa DeLays out there, and I owe them the gift of not being associated with my shenanigans!)

Hey, friends, don’t miss other upcoming contributors in this Series. Get the feed burner  email delivery, or the RSS linkup.

The Christian Blogger’s Alchemy
-by Ray Hollenbach

About two years ago a well-known Christian contemporary singer came out as a lesbian. In a moment of what I mistook for inspiration, I wrote 700 words and hit the POST button on my blog. Overnight I received 20-times the page views I normally received. I woke up two days later with the blogger’s equivalent of hangover and the guilt from a one-night stand. My blog is supposed to be about spiritual formation: what did my opinions about someone else’s sexuality have to do with becoming a student of Jesus?

I had discovered Christian blogger’s alchemy: take a red-hot topic, add the name of a famous person (two famous people if you can), and add a sprinkle of holy Jesus words. Mix in Twitter and Facebook, then lean back and check Google Analytics hourly. It was a drunken, orgasmic blogger’s rush. What I didn’t know was that each page view clicked away a little bit of my soul. The new flood of traffic was the mess of pottage for which Esau sold his birthright.

It’s easy. In the past month you needed only write about Trayvon Martin, Mark Driscoll, Westboro Baptist Church, Obamacare in order to achieve mega-blogger status. Just check whatever is trending on Twitter or the Huffington Post, add a few borderline risqué words, a bit of righteous indignation, and heartfelt spirituality. “Heartfelt” is optional.

Lisa Colon Delay, the girl with three names, has given us a gift by starting this series, Spiritual Guidance for Bloggers. Sadly, Richard Foster and Dallas Willard were busy, so you’re stuck with me today. Here is my guidance:

It’s really about you: When we think we are discussing one topic, we are actually discussing another–ourselves. Blogging caters to the powerful urge for self disclosure. That’s why I throw away half of what I write. I’m too ugly, too mean-spirited for general consumption. I need to filter me. If I’m going to be honest, I should drive it home a little deeper: you need to filter you, too.

We would rather examine anyone else’s heart other than our own: Does it strike you odd that we can read one news item about a high-profile Christian celebrity and immediately have the ability to discern the intentions of their heart? This one is a bully, that one is a megalomaniac, and that other one must be called into account at all costs. I would give up my mighty blogging empire to read just one post where a blogger says, “Pastor Moneybags is a jerk, but why am I so upset about it?” Have you ever sent an email to the person you blogged about? How about sending a draft of your post to Pastor Moneybags and ask for his response? Would you be willing to wait for an answer? Deep down, we want others to understand our good intentions–why are we so quick to impugn the heart-intentions of others?

Criticism is easy, praise is hard: Let’s face it: there are plenty of easy targets out there. It says nothing about our marksmanship to shoot at something as big as barn ten feet in front of us. When we read “Love covers a multitude of sins,” have we ever applied Peter’s words to the other guy? Especially the church. Talk about an easy target. The church is filled with hypocrites and idiots. The church is enough to drive God himself crazy. Yet Jesus is passionately in love with the church. Why do we have grace for pagan terrorists and godless child molesters but cannot tolerate the fact that the church is filled with people just like us?

I could go on (I mean really, really go on), but here are a few mini-rants:

Page views don’t mean squat: At last count LMFAO’s Sexy and I Know It had 225 million page views.

The passage you should tape on your computer: Proverbs 10:19

Read Chapter Nine of C.S. Lewis’ Reflection on the Psalms: You can thank me later.

The Hollenbach Twitter commandment: RT others five times more than you promote your own blog.

Most Important: Read http://StudentsofJesus.com every day.

Bio:

Ray, a Chicagoan, writes about faith and culture. He currently lives in central Kentucky, which is filled with faith and culture. You can check out his work at studentsofjesus.com

Focus on the Raisin, Grasshopper [Guest Post from Jennifer Luitwieler]

Thanks for stopping by. All the articles in this series can be found by clicking the #4Bloggers tab above. Don’t miss new contribution by a host of talented people all of March and April…get the RSS feed or feedburner email delivery. (The icons are over yonder to the right.)

I’m so happy that Jennifer Luitwieler (a.k.a. JLu <JAY-loo>) is a part of this series. Enjoy her contribution, ’cause it has shiny, raisiny goodness!

Focus on the Raisin, Grasshopper

I can’t be the only blogger who busies her little, under-used brain with the large readership of other, far cooler, infinitely more talented blog-keepers out there. On any given day, I’m like a newborn baby, at the mercy of unsophisticated muscles, clicking link after distracting link. Every flash in my periphery forces a jerky turn of my head: Oooh! Shiny!

Just last week, I dragged another writer down my little rabbit hole, concerning myself with a third writer’s blog, a huge machine of success. I dashed off emails of indignation. I fretted about my voice and my readership. I was all in a huff about so-and-so; the volume of comments, the internet buzz about the writing, the name-dropping. My value, in my eyes, dropped lower and lower and lower.

Then, I remembered the raisin.

As young, dumb parents, we lived according the prophets as written in What To Expect Your Baby’s First Year. They promised that our delightful child prodigy would be able to focus on a raisin. Our child, genius that she was—and is— did not disappoint. She focused the heck out of that raisin. I mean that kid held the shriveled fruit in her bright, blue-eyed gaze with laser focus. She saw that raisin and she knew that raisin.

A newborn baby, sweet little mewling blob, cannot control her eyes or arms. She is at the mercy of her reflexes, guided by little more than hunger and comfort. But as she grows, she develops. Synapses fire, allowing her to do new things, like focus on a raisin. Make no mistake, it is hard to focus on a raisin, yo.

When I dragged my friend into my blogger drama, I lacked laser-raisin-ninja focus. Let’s face it: Raisins are kinda “meh” in the midst of so many LOLcats. Instead of concentrating on developing the readership we DO have, the voice we CAN use, we fiddle around with a sort of blogger’s performance continuum.

It starts with hits and includes such esoteric measurables as readership, click-throughs, and shares. We count subscribers with the fervor of a money lender. We click REFRESH like an addict until our fingers bleed, craving the warm buzz of recognition. The knowledge that we are being read (or not) can provide either an overblown sense of self importance or a slightly pleasurable self-loathing. We bow to the arbitrary curve of the almighty Googlestats bell.

Truth is, my faith life is not much different. I am easily distracted by things that don’t matter, drawn into endless (pointless) debates, fretting over my importance in the larger Kingdom. I begin my prayer time anticipating a relational communique; before too long, I’m thinking, “I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer.” Instead of proudly using the gifts He’s given me, I worry about how others are using theirs.

Fortunately, my Master has a ton of patience and a generous sense of humor. Besides, he put a developing brain in my thick skull, and a softening heart in my core. Paying attention to the raisin, the seemingly boring things like discipline, grace, and faith pays dividends in my faith, in my writing, and in my relationships. It’s not sexy. It’s not always fun, but the raisin is power, baby. The raisin is power. •

Jennifer Luitwieler wrangles The Dog, a cat and 3 perfect angels who adore her and find her to be the best homeschool teacher ever in the universe. When she is not filling their spongelike brains with limitless knowledge, she wrangles ideas into sentences with an imaginary golden lasso. (Of course it’s imaginary. No one has a real golden lasso.) She writes on crafts and sports in monthly columns. Her first book, “Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of the Poo,” was released in 2011. You can find her at http://jenniferluitwieler.com, on twitter @jenluit and Facebook.com/jenluitwieler