What is the name of your Blog?A Poet's View
What is your name?
Don MacIver
Where are you from? (include country, state and/or city)
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
What is your current age or age range?
49
My blog showcases my original poetry works and articles about writing poetry and writing poetry in general.
Describe the main purpose of your blogging, what are you trying to accomplish?
I offer my poetry and articles here to provide poetry enthusiasts with a resource for their reading enjoyment. I have also posted on this blog with the important objective of helping writing enthusiasts, regardless of their writing genre of interest, with some helpful tips and insight about writing and hopefully help novice writers, or more experienced writers for that matter, to avoid mistakes that I made early on with my writing which appeared to impose limitations on the interest I was generating for my writing.
What blogging platform do you do and why?
I apply traditional and more current-day methodology in my writing.
What do you blog the most about?
I focus a lot on what the writer needs to do to motivate themselves to write, how to draw upon an ongoing resource of writing themes and which themes are drawing the highest levels of interest amoung readers and fellow writers.
I also refer to those external influences that work to interfere with a writer's creative focus and ways the writer may counter those obstacles.
Finally, I provide resources that the writer can utilize, primarily on the Internet, to help them with their writing projects.
What kind of blogs make you angry?
Blogs that lack constructive information or stray from their intended purpose in order to simply rant or post inflammatory opinion are frustrating. If a writer wishes to post articles in blogs the content should be rich in actual informative news or detail, content that has been researched and has relevance to the topic of discussion.
When a blog serves no purpose other than personal venting and offers no material that can be absorbed, enjoyed or educational/informative to the reader the blog will not draw returning visitors.
I also get really angered by writers failing to proof their pieces before publishing them. If you look at blogs with huge popularity including unique visitors and repeated visits you will see that for the most part the blogs are professional in appearance and content, well-conceived and laid out, carefully edited for grammar and spelling and are rich in quality content that is informative and captivating to read.
Give five of your best blogging tips.
Be clear and concise with your article content. Avoid extremely lengthy posts as they tend to bore readers, especially where there is repetition. Keep paragraphs short and separated by single-line spacing. Don't use backgrounds that are dark or horribly busy - keep backgrounds simple that provide a good contract with the character fonts and avoid gimmicky animated (moving) backgrounds as they only serve to infuriate the reader with annoying distraction, a turn off that will cause the reader to leave the page or site. The readers focus on a literary blog site is the written content so keep visual content ie photos or videos to a minimum.
What are some things you would NEVER blog about?
Blogging about another individual or interest group in the negative may be risky business and if the content is not accurate there may be potential for litigation against the writer. Flaming or defamatory comments against a group or individual will leave the writer open to such legal actions.
Most blog sites prohibit content that violates their terms of service/use or any local or regional laws. Some of the most common restrictions include pornography, flaming, profanity.
Did you start blogging for the purpose of making money and if so, are you making enough money?
Although I do have eventual income objectives in mind my initial intent for blogging has been to generate interest in my writing and therefore develop a devoted and increasing readership. The first objective for a writer must be writing for the love of writers. When the writer perfects their writing to the point where it become professional in content and style the monetary rewards should eventually follow with the right promotional efforts.
How long have you been blogging?
I'm in my sixth year blogging.
About how many hours per day do you spend blogging?
I would average about one hour per day.
Do you track RSS feeds and if so, how many do you usually track daily?
Yes, I find RSS feeds a time-efficient way to stay in touch with news, the literary world and many more personal interests. I maintain about a dozen feeds at any given time.
Do you use Digg, and why or why not?
I may well include Digg in my news portfolio but for the time being I have subscribed to content specific RSS feeds.
What promotional techniques work best for you and why?
I have always maintained a website content specific to my promotional objectives. I have complimented my websites with blogs, either built-in or at an external blog service provider, to further enhance the reader's experience at my website and to aid my promotional endeavors.
I limit links posts to my site to as closely relevant to my website and writing content as possible in order to maximize my readers' benefit from my work and website.
I also post my website url's to as many relevant directories and search engines as possible. There is an abundant amount of resources on the internet through search engine queries to help the writer determine the best ways to promote their work.
Getting involved in online forums, message boards etc. is also a great way to gain valuable exposure for your work. Submitting articles to ezines is also a great way to further focus that exposure.
If you could post a blog on any blog in the world, which one would it be and why?
I've used a number of blog servers from those provided at my website host to sites that are blog exclusive. For some time now my focus has been on using Wordpress.com . I like the functionality, layout and large exposure potential on that highly popular site. There I can even have my blogs automatically exported to other blogs including the blog on my main website.
What mistakes have you made that you could warn others about?
One important decision as far as promotions is concerned, in particular creating a website, is whether or not to utilize a paid or free website host. Free sites are an great way to start promoting your work but once greater webspace and features are needed it's then time to upgrade to a paid package.
Technology is improving to the point where content can to a degree be imported/exported when a change of website or blog is desired. When I first started blogging and maintaining websites any retention of content couldn't be done so simply and efficiently.
Another key component of writing is to make sure content is rich in content quality, that it informs readers sufficiently to satisfy current day needs. Background or historic information is worthy to an extent but content must be valuable to the current-day reader.
What are your top five blogging site picks and why?
I can only allude to those blogs that I am currently using as they are the ones I have found the most value and exposure in, those being WordPress.com, Blogger.com and MySpace. I understand that Facebook is also gathering steam as a reckoning force in the social networking and blogging genre.
What are the greatest benefits I have experienced from blogging to date?
I would have to say that beyond the growing exposure to my writing, blogging has become a great vehicle for me to exercise and perfect my writing content and technique. With the comment feature on the blogs the feedback the a writer can receive can be invaluable as a barometer for how well you are doing with the content you post...after all, it is the reader's reaction to what they see that is the first priority and focus for the writer if they wish to accomplish notoriety and any commercial success.
What is the url of your blog?
A Poet's View
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