Tag Archives: blog

A Blog’s Look at the Highs and Lows of 2008

December 31, 2008 – 6:00 pm

As is customary during this time of year, we all have a tendency to look back at what 2008 had in store for us and look ahead to 2009.  A lot happened in 2008 and I thought I would do what many bloggers are doing of course and post of few of my favorite blogs posts, top posts, searches, and tweets for 2008.  What was the highlight of your year?  I think we tend to remember the mosts recent and forget about what happened in January or February of this year but that’s what is great about a blog, all you have to do is go back and look at your archives.

What Was the Highlight of 2008?

For me personally, my highlight was probably joining the staff of Cornerstone Church as their IT person in December.  This was something I had been looking at, praying about, and preparing for, for many years, long before I ever moved to Auburn.  What made it even better to me was how outstanding the existing leadership staff (Rusty, Josh, Brian, and Jack) was when I came on board, and I can’t wait to move ahead in 2009 with the goals set forth by the church and the Church body as a whole.

I have only had time to just get my feet wet through the month of December but looking ahead there are great things in store for this small, but growing, church body, and hopefully I can contribute to its continued success in leading people to know and serve Jesus.

What Was the Lowlight of 2008?

Can you have a highlight or a best without a worst? I know many who believe this to be true, that you don’t have to have the existence of evil to good but that is for another post.  Probably the low point of 2008 for me and my immediate house was when we lost my mother-in-law Georgia to cancer.  It was not something I will ever forget, and is something I remembered in one form or another every day from April to this day.  I learned a lot, prayed a lot, and miss her as well.

Best of the Blog in 2008

These are some of the best according to me stats, but I am also picking the blog posts that I liked the best, which is not something stats will tell you.  It is interesting that stats will only tell you exact numbers, not feelings, so enter a feeling into the equation and it will change everything.

My Favorite Posts of 2008

Top Posts by View

Most Active

And as a bonus, the top searches.  This one is always weird to me.  If you pay attention to your searches (much deeper than this) you will see that people find your blog in some of the strangest ways, but yet the information is still relevant.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal | Also tagged 2008, goals, review, year | Comments (0)

5 Steps on How to Improve a Blog in 2009

December 31, 2008 – 9:45 am

picture-15I love stats.  Some people call you a stat whore or call stats evil, but there is a reason you can get a degree in statistics in college.  Stats are used everywhere.

Sports, financial, technology, everywhere data is kept and you can gain so much information by examining statistics beyond surface level.  It can show you where you need to improve, what works, what doesn’t, and how to reach more people.

There are many reasons to have a blog, but is one of them to reach more people?  If so, you should know something about how to reach those people your blog is targeting.  Statistics is one way to evaluate how to do that.  If you don’t care about reaching new readers than I guess none of that matters, but many bloggers want to reach out.

A quick few tips for reaching new readers in 2009 on your blog would be something you can gain from your statistics.  Your stats just tell you how you have done, not what to do.  So, my few tips for what they are worth would be:

1. Keywords - be descriptive in your posts and your titles, the Internet runs off keywords.  If you had to pick one or the other, blog titles would come first.  Google keys off title tags so choose a title that is descriptive (like a newspaper headline) that accurately describes your post.

Keywords are not bad, they are just describing your post more accurately for the search engines to find the post.  For example, instead of saying we are going to be watching new year’s eve shows tonight, say we will be watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2009.

2. Content - the phrase content is king is still true.  Want people to be interested in reading your blog, write original and thoughtful content.  Don’t repeat material found on other blogs and don’t re-post content from other places but instead, write about your thoughts on that topic and link to the original content.

3. Show Some Link Love - one of the best things you can do for a fellow blogger is link to the direct post.  Linking to their blog is great, linking directly to a post they have written is even better.  The reason behind this is by doing so, you give their specific post more relevance when being looked at by google and it creates a pingback to their blog.  Google operates their search algorithms by deciding what is more relevant that something else, and one of the ways it does this is by the buzz around a post or article, and lets face it, the higher you are on Google’s list, the more visitors you will have to your blog or website.

4. Consistency - post with some consistency.  You don’t have to post every day, but posting once, then a month later doing another post, then a week later doesn’t always work well with search engines.  The code on your blog should be consistent as well.  This pretty much taken care of by Wordpress or Typepad but the more frequently you change the focus on your blog or theme or coding the less relevant Google sees your blog.

5. Focus (remember your readers) - know your readers and pick a few key subjects and focus your blog on those topics.  For my personal blog, I focus on faith, photography, and personal topics and I try not to stray to far away from those topics (which are broad anyway).  Remember your readers.  You may think you are writing your blog for yourself, but you are really writing for your readers.  If you are writing for yourself and no one else, then there are several journal programs that will accomplish that purpose, but supposedly a blog is a “web log” about life, sharing ideas, information, and most of all communicating with others (i.e. your readers).

Bonus. Read other blogs and comment - ok, so there were actually 6 points, but I left the best for last.  To me, one of the most important things to do as a blogger is read other people’s blogs, and leave thought driven comments.  Blogging is a two way communication, not one way.  You should be ready to interact with your readers, and interact with other bloggers.  Blogs that only go one way become stale and cold.  Bloggers love comments.  If you want comments on your own blog, leave comments on other people’s blogs yourself.  Don’t spam your fellow bloggers.  Read, and if it was a thought provoking post, leave them a comment with your thoughts.

feed-reader

You can have the best content, the highest ranking, the best graphical design, and if you don’t allow comments, and never interact or comment yourself, your blog will be cold and corporate.  When I come across blogs that don’t allow comments that are in my feed reader, I title them in my reader with the extension “(blog title) - [no comments]” and they are usually the last blog I read, if at all.

The best example of how not to do it I have is from Desiring God.  John Piper has one of the very best blogs, period.  The content is incredible, the design is great, he has a ton of readers, and he doesn’t allow comments on his blog and (as far as I can tell) does not interract with his readers or responds to his email (at least not mine).  And because of this, I rarely read his blog, but it is one of the best on the Internet.

What are your plans for your blog for 2009?

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Media | Also tagged content, stats, tips | Comments (2)

How to Use Your Blog as a Historical Archive // Part 1

November 16, 2008 – 2:02 pm

Why do you have a blog?  Does your blog serve any useful purpose?  Some don’t, just thought I would ask.  If it doesn’t, perhaps it should.  If it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t, then why exactly does it exist in the first place?    Sometimes I go back and forth in my mind with my intended purpose and usefulness.  When you ask those questions, just go back and think about what you want to accomplish with your blog, or what direction you might take it from this point forward.

Your Blog is a Historical Archive of Your…. Something

My blog serves many purposes to me but I like to use my blog for my own personal historical archive, goal checker and to examine my own growth, or lack there of, over the course of a given time frame.  My blog actually goes back to March 2001, and encompasses just about everything that happened in my life, and my wife’s life in that time frame (scary huh).  This doesn’t always work so well if you only post to your blog once a month, but if you are using your blog actively, you can look back to a previous year and see where you were, what you were doing, and what your goals or purpose might have been at that point and see where you have come since then.

Of course, this works the same with photography as well.  Both are archival and historical tools.  I can look back at some of the photo I took a year ago and see what was important enough to shoot, where I was, and so on.  Same with my blog.  I went back to November 2007 and just flipped through some of the entries and they are totally different from my blog posts now, but they were where I was 12 months ago.

Looking Back at November 2007

Sometimes it is just a humorous way to look at your life.  Some of note to myself from November 2007… Home Invasion or a Plague of the Ladybugs Has Arrived, I remember well, we have thousands and thousands of lady bugs all over the place. I was also completely irritated with the trend of not replying to email, and my annoyance to not getting replies to my own emails (not much has changed), so I wrote Steps to Improve Customer Service by Answering Your Email, and one of my personal favorites from that month What Would You Do With an $86,400 Gift?.  I also started a blog called Damascus in November, which is now integrated into this blog, and I wrote a lot of boring entries.

I also wrote a lot more posts about how to improve your blog by using SEO effectively and posted almost no photos of my own work other than a few work related pics, and there is a good reason for that, I didn’t do much photography in November of 2007, apparently.  I have a few pics of Deb, and then this photo of my short stint with Blackberry before I dumped it for my iPhone.  Not sure what the significance is of the phone being between Auburn/Opelika and Montgomery but that was about it photographically speaking.

Scott Fillmer Blog

The photo does serve as a historical reference, for me.  It shows the date and time right on the phone.  It also reminds me how much I couldn’t stand that phone, but it is more than that, it does give me the ability to look back and see where I was in my life.

How to Use Your Blog for a Historical Archive

Everyone uses a blog in a different way… a few ways to use it for historical purposes…

  1. Post as frequently as you can.  Even if it ends up being just a few times a week.  The more data you have, the more accurate the information usually is, so the more frequent you post, the better idea you will have of what happened in that time period.  Just posting 3 times a week gives you 152 posts in a year!
  2. Write (or shoot photos) with detail.  The more detail the better.  Most things will be easily forgotten within a few weeks.  It is the small details of life we generally forget unless we write them down.
  3. Get personal.  I am bad at this one, but if you feel comfortable on your blog, get as personal as you can and forget that you are talking to potentially millions of readers.
  4. Use photos as much as possible.  Nothing sparks the memory like a photo (just ask any photographer, haha).  You will be able to remember so much more with a photo, so even if they are not your best, post them anyway.
  5. Link to other blogs, articles, people, friends or other interests.  Linking to other areas outside your blog really helps remind you of what was going on at the time.
  6. Backup your blog or journal.  If you are going to be able to look back at the information you need to have the information, so back up back up back up.  There are several wordpress widgets and other plugins that make this easy.
  7. If you don’t have a blog and don’t want one, write in a journal. If you don’t have a blog, get one if you want one.  They are EASY EASY EASY to setup and run now.  They are free, and you don’t have to know anything about computers to use one.  A blog is just a journal that others can read.  If you don’t want others to read your blog, just write in a journal program or make your blog private.  There are many times you will write things down if you know others will never read it, but you have to write it down some how.
  8. Look back.  You actually have to look back at the information to make it useful as an archive.  Look back often as often as you can, but look back at what you wrote.
  9. Post comments on other blogs.  Comments are archived by many different systems and you can look back at comments just like you can blog posts of your own.  Commenting on other blogs is beneficial in so many ways, but looking back it will tell you what you read and found interesting enough to comment on in the first place.
  10. Have fun.  If it isn’t somewhat fun then just forget it.  That should always be in there somewhere, to me.

What do you think?  What do you use your blog for?

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal | Also tagged archival, history | Comments (3)

Administrative Note on My Blog

March 27, 2008 – 6:09 pm

Just to notate this date, all blog entries prior to this were moved over from a blog Deborah and I kept under a different title, but for the same purpose as this blog.  They are not daily posts, but still what we were doing in LA at the time.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal | Comments (0)

What is the New Damascus Blog

November 21, 2007 – 6:29 am

Thank you for visiting the new Damascus blog. This blog was created using what is called a domain hack. In simple terms, that means I put together a domain name that does spell a common name or word by using the entire domain address and a subdomain (the letters prior to the actual domain name itself, in this case the letter “D”).

To give you an idea of what the focus of this blog is intended to be, I have put together a type of mission statement on my about page and it is shown below. If you would like to know more about me, just follow the link.

Most of us go through life with a sense of purpose in being, I think. It can be displayed in many different forms of what we think our own purpose here in this world is to be, it can be with lived day to day with or without purpose and understanding, but eventually most of us come to a time when we are searching for those answers.

It is what we find when we are searching that is important. Just because you are already a Believer doesn’t mean you are going to know exactly what God’s purpose in your life is to finally be, that is up to God, but when we search for meaning in life, true contentment and happiness are ultimately found in the search, understanding, and commitment to our Lord.

We know this, yet as Believers in Christ we still ride a roller coaster of ups and downs where sometimes we are close to the Lord and sometimes far away. I often thought as a Christian if we weren’t always close to God all the time that there was something fundamentally wrong with our faith, or better yet, if our choices are different than those other Believers we know we aren’t true Christians. She drinks, he doesn’t, he has a tattoo, they baptist with to much water, they don’t use enough.

As Believers we still search for meaning to strengthen our faith, understand our doubts, fears, and even judgments of others. This doesn’t stop just because we accepted Christ as our Savior, they could become more pronounced. God made us all in His image, yet each one of us is different. Each of us has different ideas, beliefs even within our own faith, and direction we choose to take in our life.

This blog’s purpose is not to persuade anyone that one way of thinking is better than another but to learn more about God’s purpose for our lives. The one basic premise that we as Believers in Christ take is that He gave us the ultimate choice to make. Whether to choose Christ as our Savior or not. As a pastor once told me, everything else is just details.

Christ died for our sins, he rose again and is alive today, but it is up to us to accept that truth. Once we have accepted Christ of our own free will we are part of the body of Believers, everything else, although not unimportant, is just details.

I always look forward to interacting with my readers, so please be sure to leave a comment or follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/scottfillmer. I look forward to hearing from you.

By damascus | Posted in Media | Also tagged blogging, damascus, internet | Comments (0)

Using Worpress Next Random Blog Feature in Admin Page

October 23, 2007 – 7:09 pm

Wordpress Random BlogHow many features and options have you used on Worpress? There are a lot of options and features that Wordpress has put into the program and I try to go as deep into the code and options as I can, without really messing something up, to get to know the ins and outs of Wordpress. I came across one I sometimes forget is there, but it is great fun.

Have you ever used the Worpress next function? It is very similar to Blogger’s next blog feature where you click the button and it pulls from a random blog in their system. I actually didn’t know that Worpress had a similar feature, located at http://wordpress.com/next/, where it redirects to a random Wordpress blog, until I looked at my stats page one day.

Wordpress Random Blog

This feature is located in your blog admin pages, on the dashboard, then the stats page (be sure you are logged into your Wordpress account). There in the upper right corner you will find a link to the random blog. Once you click on the random blog it redirects to the url above with a tool bar where you can view the next random blog, view a random post from the blog you are viewing, and a few other options.

There are several different sites that do this kind of random find, StumbleUpon being one, and MyBlogLog is a good one too. MyBlogLog is not really a random blog finder but you can really chase a rabbit by using the recent readers widget so I consider it to be close to a random find. Be sure to join my community while you are looking over the MyBlogLog readers, then just follow the links in the readers widget and see where it takes you.

When you need some time just to relax, give it a try, you never know what you are going to find. The number of blogs that are completely off the topics we normally read are incredible and I find it interesting to see what others are interested in as well.

By islandzephyr | Posted in Business | Also tagged bloggers, wordpress | Comments (0)

Moving On to a Wordpress Blog and SQL Database

March 6, 2007 – 3:42 pm

In an effort to keep up with the cyber times, I have moved on to Wordpress and big time (for me) blogging. You can visit this and all my other blogs at: Island Zephyr

Click on the DK link for my blogs, or the Scott link for his. Be sure to leave an observation if you have one. Thanks for visiting, see you there…

By kim | Posted in Media | Also tagged theme | Comments (1)