Book Report: "Creative Blogging"

Title: Creative Blogging-Your First Steps to a Successful Blog Author: Heather Wright-Porto Publisher: Apressa Publication Date: 4/1/11 I found this book CSN online library in the Safari books section. I learned that Blogging has become extremely popular in the past few years. It has become an incredible form of expression for many people. I was always under the impression that blogging was for news casters, reporters and professionals. After reading Heather Wright-Porto's book on Blogging, I learned that people use blogs as hobbies, family projects, promoting their business or just for a venting outlet. Many people are using blogging like others use Facebook. Only with blogging the "blogger" establishes the precedence for the blog. They'll establish that initially with the blog title. Whether it's about sports, politics, their favorite hobby or their business. The name of the blog really determines what the blog theme will be and what course the blog will take. Having said that, the blog name requires careful consideration. If the blogger is blogging about their favorite sport that should be specified by the blog name. For example, a boxing blog should be titled blog.boxing.com or basketball should read blog.hoops.com and so on. If the theme changes then it's time to start a new blog with a new name. Anyone who is interested in communicating their thoughts and ideas to the world would enjoy this book. Heather really makes the book interesting by creating interaction with the reader. Now that I've taken an interest in blogging, I have found it extremely helpful. The author thoroughly explains every feature of the blog, what they represent and how to use them. Every aspect of the blog has a significant purpose and she explains each one in detail. For instance: the choice of colors are critical with blogs. Certain colors set certain tones. Depending upon the mood you want to set for your blog will determine the colors you use. If you want to have a formal theme then gray would be your color of choice. A playful or cheerful mood would call for colors like pink or yellow. If your're looking for more of a genuine, friendly, reliable mood, brown would be your color of choice. You might really like the color red but it can be a huge distraction so other than using it as an attention getter, use it sparingly. To imply power or authority, use black but blue is the most popular color. It is often used for corporate and business use and it relays wisdom, truth and tranquilty. The color is a significant factor with any blog so choose wisely. She describes that there are several popular blogging sites such as Wordpress, Typepad and Blogger. All three of these blog sites have extensive dashboards that provide the blogger with a very professional looking blog. Although each of them have their benefits, the most popular of these is Blogger. One of Blogger's best benefits is..."it's free". Blogger is an incredible site with a myriad of options and features. Not only is it easy to use and navigate but you can create posts with, text, images, audio, hyperlinks and more. The Template Designer gives you over a dozen templates to choose from allowing you to select a customized layout with a simple click of the mouse. Many bloggers find Blogger quite user friendly and with all of it's great features it's no wonder why it's the blog site of choice. Wordpress and Typepad are also a very popular blog sites. Since they have features such as Paypal inserts with Add cart and Buy Now buttons they are especially popular for businesses and online stores. Although niether of these sites are free like Blogger, both Wordpress and Typepad are reasonably priced starting as low as $8.95 per month. Images are critical as well. Many bloggers have opted to use photo sites such as Photobucket, Watermark and Picasa allowing them to resize crop and store photos. Videos are also a very enhancing feature of blogs. Embedding Youtube videos to the blog seems to be the most popular option of most bloggers. Not only is it a fairly simple process but the blogger is able to store his videos on Youtube. The key to any blog is to establish traffic. Building an audience and getting that audience to visit the blog and respond regularly determines the success of any blog. With that in mind it's not absolutely necessary to post everyday. You do want to make sure that when you do post that the posts are interesting, intriguing and leaving your audience craving for more. What you really want is audience participation in the form of comments. There are a variety of ways to draw readers to your blog. One of them is the use of keywords and meta tags. This causes your blog to come up when readers search for your topic on Bing or Google. When keywords or meta tags are used the search engine optimization (SEO) seeks out those words and brings your blog to the top of the list. Other successful methods of driving readers to your blog is adding Facebook and Twitter widgets to your blog and visa versa. Blogging is here to stay and more people are joining the blogging ranks everyday but what the author wants to communicate more than anything is to... "have fun blogging".

Hard Road Ahead

President Obama is still in the driver's seat of our nation but you have to wonder what it's going to take for him to pull us out of the ditch. I don't wanna sound too pessimistic but from a political standpoint, things don't look too pretty. If you think "pulling us out of a ditch sounds bad", compare that to "keeping us from going over the cliff". When you view the video below, I'm sure you'll agree, being President of the United States is not a very desirable position right now, regardless of what it pays.

Finally...It's Over!!!

I'm sure like many of you, we're all glad that the elections are finally over. No more mud slinging or having to hear how much better one candidate can diss the other. I suppose we can take a moment to discuss why we vote and look at what a tremendous privilege it is to be a part of a "Free Country". Many countries throughout the world don't allow their citizens freedom of expression, refusing to allow them to express their creativity regardless how gifted their citizens might be. We don't have to look any further than our illustrious city of Las Vegas to see the gift of expressive freedom at it's best. Countless brilliant Americans and even others throughout the world have created the most elaborate edifices in the world here without limitation. Literally hundreds of millions of people come to see the most magnificent structures in the world. I figured I'd focus on the beauty and splendor of the Bellagio, my favorite. I always enjoy watching the "dancing waters" out front and since Thanksgiving is approaching, they have setup their conservatory and lobby with a Thanksgiving theme. Enjoy the slideshow.