What is the name of your Blog?Blackwood's Journal
What is your name?
Meriall Blackwood
Where are you from? (include country, state and/or city)
Westerly, Rhode Island, US
What is your current age or age range?
45
Please describe your blog
I write about formal poetry, epic poetry, speculative fiction, writing, and books. The epic poetry usually has speculative elements. Sometimes I write post series on technical subjects in writing -- writing rules and why to break them, Norse poetic forms, and poetic meters, for instance.
Describe the main purpose of your blogging, what are you trying to accomplish?
I write the blog to call attention to my site, which hosts epic fantasy poetry -- mine, and other poets, such as William Morris.
What blogging platform do you do and why?
WordPress. It's common, it's easy to install, and it's versatile.
What do you blog the most about?
Formal poetry and fiction writing.
What kind of blogs make you angry?
Some day I'll write a post about that.
Give five of your best blogging tips.
1. Make sure your font is large enough for easy reading. The default WordPress theme's fonts is a couple of point sizes too small for many readers. 2. Don't use a variegated background beneath the text, and make sure there's enough contrast between the text color and the background. 3. Post often. 4. If you've got a WordPress blog, you can leave your comments unmoderated if you install the Akismet plugin to deal with the spammers. Check the spam trap daily to make sure it hasn't caught a legitimate comment. 5. If you're writing in English, write in colloquial English with decent orthography.
What are some things you would NEVER blog about?
Politics. It's important, but I don't enjoy reading even political blogs I agree with.
Did you start blogging for the purpose of making money and if so, are you making enough money?
I didn't set out to make money. I started a long-term campaign to draw attention to the epic fantasy poem I've been working on, and hope to finish in 2010. You'd have to be wildly out of touch to expect to make money with poetry.
How long have you been blogging?
5 months.
About how many hours per day do you spend blogging?
It varies between 0 and perhaps 3. Sometimes I write technical posts; those are time-consuming.
Do you track RSS feeds and if so, how many do you usually track daily?
I don't. There are blogs I follow, but I usually go over to the site and read them when I feel like it.
Do you use Digg, and why or why not?
I haven't done anything with it so far. The links are nofollow, so it didn't make the top of my list for attracting attention. And it seems time-consuming.
Do you use Stumbleupon, and why or why not?
I signed up, but I seem to recall it would require me to use a toolbar, and I don't think it works with my preferred browser, Chrome. At least not the last time I looked.
What promotional techniques work best for you and why?
Twitter. I visit #chats related to my subject and collect followers, and then I tweet when I add a blog post, or when I upload new poetic works to my site.
If you could post a blog on any blog in the world, which one would it be and why?
I don't know. I don't know which blog attracts the most fantasy readers.
What mistakes have you made that you could warn others about?
Don't ever put a tiny completely transparent graphic anywhere on your Web page. I used one to hold an alt tag when was trying to organize the code on my pages to get all the important stuff into CSS, and Google flagged my site for breaking the guidelines, dropping my rank into the cellar for a couple of weeks. And watch out for using hidden texts. I did that because I have graphics rather than
titles, and I was trying to make the page look better if someone had graphics or CSS off.
What are your top five blogging site picks and why?
1. WordPress.org. Obvious. 2. Google's individual webmaster accounts tell you much that you need to know. By all means sign up. 3. http://www.wpdesigner.com/ has a great set of tutorials on how to make your own WordPress theme, which I found extremely helpful when I wanted to make my blog look like the rest of my site. 4. http://wilsonweb.com/ is about Web marketing. Not everything you learn there is applicable to a noncommercial site, but much is. 5. http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/06/installing-wordpress-locally-under.html explains how to install WordPress on your own system so you can create and test a new theme locally before you upload it.
Have you met anyone offline as a result of your blog?
No. I've met online friends offline, but the blog hasn't been the contact point.
What's the best way to promote a blog?
I don't know the best way. I try to learn something new, and collect a few new links, every week. By this time next year I'll be using techniques I don't know about now.
What is the url of your blog?
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