31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Now You're Profiling

Day 29: Profiling.

Truly, I thought a person could get in trouble for profiling. But apparently there are different brands. Today's recommended profiling activity is fully legal and socially acceptable, unless you go about it in an anti-social way.

The idea is to build your own profile through the power of association.

Okay.

Let's begin.

I will say a word or phrase, and you tell me the first thing that pops into your mind. This is the power of association.

Glynn Young

[your response]

Bradley J. Moore

[your response]

Gordon Atkinson

[your response]

Marcus Goodyear

[your response]

Ann Kroeker

[your response]

Sam Van Eman

[your response]

Laura Boggess

[your response]

Dan King

[your response]

Ann Voskamp

[your response]

Dena Dyer

[your response]

Claire Burge

[your response]

Cheryl Smith

[your response]

L.L. Barkat

[your response]

If your responses sounded something like...

...Midwestern snarky-businessman unafraid of Texan ex-preacher-Barbies who eat oatmeal (and sausages when they are naughty) while watching T.V. commercials and doing book talks directly after Twittering and snacking on fried shrimp before making bread while telling jokes about laundry and photographing lost socks, then forecasting the future of those socks' abilities to build a great website or clothe a snarky-yet-poignant writer's feet...

well, then, you are properly associated.

Because this means you know the people who work for HighCallingBlogs, where it could (literally) pay to build your profile— if not in dollars, then in cybercake. Either way, it's legal. And you're officially profiled.

RELATED POSTS
LL's Day 1: Bambi in the Database, Day 2: The Dalai Lama Effect, Day 3: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me, Day 4: Oprah, I Wanna Be Like You, Day 5: Email a Blog Reader, Day 6: Shakespeare and Company's Top 24 Blog Tips, Day 7: How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Link the Ways, Day 8: Entertaining Aliens, Day 9: Meet Me at the Mother Ship, Day 10: My Dog Ate Darren Rowse's Google Alerts, Day 11: Hey, Darren, It's My Turn, Day 12: Darren Gets on the Scale,, Day 13: I Will Not Be Swayed by Sales on Boxer Shorts, Day 14: Update a Key Page, Day 15: Honk if You Like, I Prefer Cake, Day 16: Buy a Velvet Couch, Day 17: Pretend Your Blog is a Barbie, Day 18: Gesundheit! Day 19: Maureen, Hope You Don't Mind, Day 20: Leave Comments on Other Blogs, Day 21: Foretelling the Future, Day 22: Pay Special Attention to a Reader, Day 23: He Told Me to Tell You, Day 24: Adding Shirtless Men to My Blog, Day 25: 10 Reasons to Ask Your Readers Questions, Day 26: Improve Another Blog, Day 27: Hunting for Links, or Chocolate, Day 28: I Wish to Report a Stolen Review
ProBlogger's Day 29: Plan to Build a Profile.
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project

COMING TOMORROW
How to Increase Your Blog Stats by Over 100%, a companion to ProBlogger's Day 30: Learn from Your Blog Statistics


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

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Barbie on Oats photo by L.L. Barkat.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Darren, How Sweet of You

Day 22, pay attention to a special reader. (Oops, that's not it. I'm supposed to pay special attention to a reader.)

Hey, how about I do both?

I will now pay special attention to a special reader.

He's been the quiet type here. In fact, he hasn't commented even once. This is because he is shy. I think. That, or he's afraid that if he comments, then my ENORMOUS blog audience will overrun his blog with requests for him to sign their blogs too.

So he has chosen to simply lurk. I completely understand. (Hi, Darren, I know you're here. This is my little wave in your direction, just between you and me.)

Anyway, the other reason he's here is that he knows it's not all about fanning his own fame. So he's been quietly planning to make ME famous, because he wants me to feel valuable. I thought about being fussy and turning him down, but this seemed ungrateful. Who am I to spurn a little link-love from a blogger who only makes six figures through blogging?

I'm not sure when he's planning to bestow his gift, but I'll be ready with a link in return when he does. (Don't be shy, Darren. I want to make you famous. But I promise not to embarrass you. I'll hide the link somewhere at the bottom of my sidebar where it will be safe and not cause you too much undue attention.)

I feel magnanimous already. :)


RELATED POSTS
LL's Day 1: Bambi in the Database, Day 2: The Dalai Lama Effect, Day 3: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me, Day 4: Oprah, I Wanna Be Like You, Day 5: Email a Blog Reader, Day 6: Shakespeare and Company's Top 24 Blog Tips, Day 7: How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Link the Ways, Day 8: Entertaining Aliens, Day 9: Meet Me at the Mother Ship, Day 10: My Dog Ate Darren Rowse's Google Alerts, Day 11: Hey, Darren, It's My Turn, Day 12: Darren Gets on the Scale,, Day 13: I Will Not Be Swayed by Sales on Boxer Shorts, Day 14: Update a Key Page, Day 15: Honk if You Like, I Prefer Cake, Day 16: Buy a Velvet Couch, Day 17: Pretend Your Blog is a Barbie, Day 18: Gesundheit! Day 19: Maureen, Hope You Don't Mind, Day 20: Leave Comments on Other Blogs, Day 21: Foretelling the Future
ProBlogger's Day 22: Pay Special Attention to a Reader
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

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Godiva Chocolates photo by L.L. Barkat.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Honk if You Like, I Prefer Cake

Day 15, and I'm supposed to go goose hunting. Did you know (I learned this from you-know-who) that geese can travel 78% further together than alone?

The Blogger Who Maureen Thinks I Should No Longer Mention outlines a few goose hunting reasons, but honestly (ask Cassandra), I think the same thing can be achieved by eating cake.

My favorite kind is a passion-fruit-and-pear-mousse beauty made by our local French bakery. My second favorite is its chocolate mousse buddy that always comes with a little pink rose on top (sorry Sam, is that being anti-testosterone? :)

Anyhow, here are the reasons why team-cake-eating will make you a better blogger. (Honk if you like, I prefer cake.)

Aerodynamics — If you sit next to somebody who eats cake really fast, this will create an optimal air flow, thus allowing you to eat even more cake, which boosts your endorphins so you can be Happy SuperBlogger. Chocolate cake also provides plenty of anti-oxidants, making you a healthy blogger who will have plenty of energy to go the Mall.

Rotating leader — You can take turns serving up the cake. Today it can be Stuart, the next day it can be Laura, and then Dan. The important thing here is, these people need to be able to wield a knife with some alacrity. And they should know how to cut big pieces. None of those grudging little slivers allowed when we're trying to take over the blogosphere through the power of cake!

Dropping out — I know it seems unfathomable, but sometimes you're not going to be able to eat even one more bite of passion fruit cake. There comes a time when you'll need to take a snooze, so you can wake up refreshed and ready... to eat more cake :).

Power of the honk — Why do geese honk? To encourage each other to keep on flying. Why do we eat cake together? Because it tastes good. And besides, people will think you're weird if you honk at them to encourage them to keep blogging.

Not sure where to find really cool cake eaters? I've got just the little bakery in mind...


RELATED POSTS
LL's Day 1: Bambi in the Database, Day 2: The Dalai Lama Effect, Day 3: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me, Day 4: Oprah, I Wanna Be Like You, Day 5: Email a Blog Reader, Day 6: Shakespeare and Company's Top 24 Blog Tips, Day 7: How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Link the Ways, Day 8: Entertaining Aliens, Day 9: Meet Me at the Mother Ship, Day 10: My Dog Ate Darren Rowse's Google Alerts, Day 11: Hey, Darren, It's My Turn, Day 12: Darren Gets on the Scale,, Day 13: I Will Not Be Swayed by Sales on Boxer Shorts, Day 14: Update a Key Page
ProBlogger's Build an Editorial Calendar
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project

COMING MONDAY
Buy a Velvet Couch, a companion to ProBlogger's Day 16: Solve a Problem.


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

<a href="http://greeninventionscentral.blogspot.com"><img width="130" alt="31 Days to Better Blogging" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3613/4568523904_86defc4913_m.jpg" /></a>

Passion Fruit Cake photo, by L.L. Barkat.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog: Meet Me at the Mother Ship

It is Day 9 and if I had a ray gun, I might evaporate this... oh, never mind. Are you getting tired of posting every day? I sure am. :)

Now, while you're feeling this fatigue, is the best time for me to talk to you about joining forces with other people.

ProBlogger (and he is right, again), says that being part of a chatty group helps with:

1. Profile Building (your personal popularity, as measured by being recognized)

2. Driving Traffic (your personal popularity, as measured by stats)

3. Understanding Your Niche (your personal popularity, as compared to other people who you pretend you're not trying to out-blog)


I have recommended being part of a group for some of the same reasons, albeit without the popularity emphasis. But one of my favorite reasons for being part of an awesome group is that it takes the pressure off you to be funny or insightful all the time.

You can let Glynn be insightful, Katdish be funny, Marcus be poetical, and Billy be poignant (when he's not being funny). And, like sitting at the cool cafeteria table when you were in 6th grade, you can just be identified with these people, which is, in my opinion, very nice.

(Another symptom of 31 Day Fatigue Syndrome is the inability to speak in a vocabulary exceeding the 3rd grade. You will find yourself using words like "nice" and "fun," with increasing regularity.)

All righty, back to the Mother Ship— otherwise known as a great chat place, otherwise known as a really cool cafeteria table (in nicer ways than the 6th grade): you might like to join us, at HighCallingBlogs. :)

RELATED POSTS
LL's Day 1: Bambi in the Database, Day 2: The Dalai Lama Effect, Day 3: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me, Day 4: Oprah, I Wanna Be Like You, Day 5: Email a Blog Reader, Day 6: Shakespeare and Company's Top 24 Blog Tips, Day 7: How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Link the Ways, Day 8: Entertaining Aliens
ProBlogger's Join a Forum and Start Participating
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project

COMING TOMORROW
My Dog Ate Darren Rowse's Google Alerts, a companion to ProBlogger's Monitor What's Happening in Your Niche.


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

<a href="http://greeninventionscentral.blogspot.com"><img width="130" alt="31 Days to Better Blogging" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3613/4568523904_86defc4913_m.jpg" /></a>

31 Days to Build a Better Blog: How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Link the Ways

It is Day 7 and I'm showing signs of 31 Day Fatigue Syndrome (puffy eyelids, a propensity to answer questions with "yes, in 31 days," sneezing when I open my Blogger account— you know, stuff like that).

Anyway, today I'm supposed to link out to a least one other post. In blogland this is affectionately called "link love."

ProBlogger (and he is right) says that linking out helps us...

1. give something of value
2. build credibility
3. build relationships
4. become more popular with the Search Engines (as if we weren't already popular enough! :)

Some people link to get links in return. This is probably a better idea than emailing somebody or asking for a link. Besides, as Descartes once famously said, I link therefore I am...

(Sorry, that was too bad to pass up.)

Enough suspense. Here's my Tuesday Link Love, courtesy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Link the Ways

How do I love thee? Let me link the ways.
I love thee to the depth and bread and height
My blog can reach, when Googled out of sight
For the ends of Traffic and Ideal Place.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet sausage, by sun and Facebook light.
I love thee freely, as bloggers strive for Right;
I love thee purely as they turn from PhotoPlays.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In his great poetry, and with my Twitter Face.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears of all my life!— and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after fetch.


RELATED POSTS
LL's Day 1: Bambi in the Database, Day 2: The Dalai Lama Effect, Day 3: Darren Rowse, Please Link to Me, Day 4: Oprah, I Wanna Be Like You, Day 5: Email a Blog Reader, Day 6: Shakespeare & Company's Top 24 Blog Tips
ProBlogger's Day 7: Write a Link Post
Paul's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Project

COMING TOMORROW
Entertaining Aliens, a companion to ProBlogger's Interlink Your Old Blog Posts.


Would you like to follow Bambi's efforts at better blogging? Here's a button, if you like :)

<a href="http://greeninventionscentral.blogspot.com"><img width="130" alt="31 Days to Better Blogging" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3613/4568523904_86defc4913_m.jpg" /></a>

Piper's Twitter Tweet: What?!

This morning I studied French, read my Bible and perused a book about art. It's part of my ritual.

Later I will go on Twitter and see what my friends are chatting about. As a work-at-home writer, editor and mother, Twitter is like a nice trip to the coffee shop that would be hard for me to otherwise manage. I can go to this "coffee shop" between frying onions and stacking dishes, planning my next speaking assignment and writing an article.

Just because I go to Twitter doesn't mean I didn't study French, read my Bible and look at a book about art. It's not a replacement for those things; it's a separate and pleasurable part of my life.

I'd be willing to argue that the social connection of Twitter alone is valuable, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. On Twitter I've become part of a poetry group that writes poetry together for an hour straight every other week. (A handful of those poems even made it into my book InsideOut, and they are actually some of my favorite poems.) On Twitter, I've connected with readers in a way that I wouldn't if they simply read my books (which is one-way relationship, after all). I've made and solidified business connections all over the nation. I've even promoted charitable efforts like The $10 Challenge (which, it could be argued is itself a form of prayer-in-action).

And this is why John Piper's Twitter tweet strikes me as simplistic, reductionistic. Twitter is just a tool, a pastime, like any other. If a person doesn't want to pray, it's not like Twitter is the enemy. I know people who hike, garden, drink, watch TV, write books, speak at conferences, exercise, and do any number of other things that lead them into or away from prayer.

Do you want to pray? Tweet your prayers if you like. Or plan a daily morning ritual, the way I do to study French, read my Bible and look at books about art. Oh, and if you pray on Twitter, I think it would not be a bad idea to include a little @JohnPiper, in case he has time in his schedule to pray with you.

Or just have a nice hot cup of Twitter coffee. After all, Jesus himself liked a good party. He even provided the wine.


Tspoetry Twitter Screen photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Doubtful Usefulness of Twitter Lists

I'm always up for trying something new. So when the Twitter people offered a Beta chance to create lists, why I set right to it over at @llbarkat.

One day into the endeavor and I'm already doubting the usefulness of Twitter lists. For me anyhow. Oh, I see that marketers would find it very useful and journalists perhaps, for targeting and scanning and so forth. But my Social Media life is quite organic. I hang out with people I can put on lists (and I have already done it), but the truth is I like to see these people all in the same place...

...poets talking to businesspeople talking to Moms talking to authors talking to artists. You get the picture.

In fact, the birth of @tspoetry and Twitter parties happened as a result of a conversation between a teacher, an executive, a Social Media Director and an author (um, me!). I'm guessing that if I'd only been hanging out at a list (say, of "authors"), this might not have occurred. In fact, I'm 99% sure it wouldn't have.

So. Today I've got my lists. But I'm not promising to keep them around for tomorrow.


Alternate Perspective picture by Sara. Used with permission.

Real Pumpkin Relationships

Over at GoodWordEditing, there's a question about whether on-line relationships are real. Or something like that.

I don't know what to say this morning except... what could be more real than pumpkin pancakes at the breakfast table, compliments of an exchange I had last night, with a real person named Eric.

He told me he modified this recipe, but was hesitant to say exactly how. After trying it this morning and modifying it myself, I understood. Lots of modifying! Here's my version...

Pumpkin Pancakes

Mix dry ingredients first:

• 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

In separate bowl, mix wet ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients; stir until just blended. Cook on 375 degree griddle, until lightly browned.

Top with REAL maple syrup :) and REAL whipped cream. Yum. Happy Real Saturday.

(Shoot, now I have to go mow my Real Lawn.)


Pumpkin Pancakes picture, by L.L. Barkat.

-----

Addendum, from Eric, found in the Comment Box

Hesitant only because I just throw things in as I think they are needed and of course I don't write them down. (so yeah, sometimes the recipe changes). I also made a pumpkin spice maple syrup...

Pumpkin Spice Maple Syrup

1 c. maple syrup
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree, add your pie spices to your liking (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, etc).

Oh, I need to mow a lawn as well...but, well, it's a bit rainy outside...