What makes your blog (or Facebook page for those who don’t blog) unique, and therefore something someone else might want to read, learn from, or connect with on a personal level?
I’m always looking for ways to make my blog more “authentic” more “unique” for lack of a better phrase. If you blog for any length of time at all you will start to develop your own style and patterns, but you also start to put up barriers to your own writing without even knowing it. Those barriers for me end up being mechanical and personal.
Barriers To Writing, Blogging, or Social Networking
Mechanically, it has to look perfect, be grammatically correct, have a photo sized properly, with a searchable title, tags, and links. This just comes from blogging for almost 10 years, I do this almost without thinking, but it takes time, and it limits what I end up posting. If I just posted whatever I wanted without worrying about the mechanical functionality of the site I would probably post twice as much. Maybe that is a good thing after all.
Personally, I struggle with how much I say or don’t say with each post. It’s strange because Deborah who is far less personal in real life is sometimes more personal on her own blog and its vice-versa for me. I split up my own blog into basically four sections, one of those sections, called the Journal Category where I try to put my ongoing story or walk. Sometimes this works sometimes it doesn’t.
You are What’s Unique About Your Story
All that to say what makes blog articles or even posts to Facebook and Twitter unique is you, your story. It’s like no other. There is only one you and your experiences are different from everyone else. When I write an article about a new piece of technology or a review about a book I read, someone has inevitably already done that. It’s unique in my own way because my experience with that computer or book is different from someone else, but there is something different about posts from the heart about important issues that go on in their life. I love that. It’s authentic, it’s genuine, and it’s somewhat less filtered than anything I write.
I hope those bloggers below take this as a compliment and not a cut down but I have a very short, small list of blogs on my rss feed reader in a group that that I call my “a-list” (which purposely doesn’t include anyone I work with). These bloggers write straight from their hearts to the page. No fancy photos much of the time, no special SEO keywords for titles or content, traffic or stats to them seem basically unimportant, and for the most part design and platform are secondary concerns (although I will say the guys for some reason are far more concerned about design than the woman). I haven’t asked any of them this of course, it’s just a guess.
Somehow they have each individually captured my attention with the genuine manner in which they talk about their life. Funny most of them are woman. Seems that most men don’t want to talk about their personal life too much. The majority of my rss feeds are from the guys, but when it comes to being genuine and personal, the ladies do a far better job than we do.
So each time they do a blog post, I get to learn from them how to be a better blogger and writer, and hopefully how to better connect with other people. A great example of this is a post today that looks at the struggles of deep we get involved in the social networking of today instead of getting involved in people face to face. It’s a great look at why we blog, post on Facebook, and everything else that goes with being alive today, but it’s real.
So I say thanks to them here for helping me to continue to develop my blog and writing in a way that is real, genuine, and hopefully in a way that will connect with other people in a real way. I hope you might take a few minutes to scan through their blogs as well. The list below is their main blog address and their latest post.
- Deborah Fillmer - Week Thirteen – Hurry Up and Wait
- Andrea Collette – To twit or not to twit
- Amy Fisher – While we wait…
- Sailing Bo – Perfection is overrated and how you shouldn’t be afraid to live an interesting life on purpose. (that’s a really long title Bo, haha, but I like it)
- Biscuet – Ray’s House
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If you haven’t had time to get into Twitter yet you might want to jump over there and do a Twitter crash course before you read this post, but for others who are already knee deep in Twitter, how effectively are you using this great service? There are so many aspects to Twitter that can be utilized that the deeper I go in Twitter the more I find.
One thing I started really using lately is the “favorites” feature on Twitter. If you haven’t given this much thought, the favorites feature is a great way to start to bookmark those really great posts you see and don’t want to forget. Once you start to mark tweets as favorites (or star them) you need some good way to get back to the information at some point. I was marking the posts on Twitter I didn’t want to forget but never went back to look at them. So, this is how you can take the Twitter favorites and pull the RSS feed from Twitter into your favorite RSS feed reader.
First thing you want to do is start marking your favorite tweets. You can do this in TweetDeck or in the basic browser application by clicking on the star icon when you mouse over a tweet. Then, follow these steps below to start pulling your Twitter favorites feed (if you want the short version just read step 1 and that should do it).
1. Create the Twitter Favorite Feed in RSS Reader
This doesn’t seem to be published on any Twitter help pages or anywhere else, but you can grab your favorites feed (or anyone else’s for that matter) by using the address: http://twitter.com/favorites/[insert_your_ID_here].rss , so to pull an rss feed of my twitter favorites, you would place the url http://twitter.com/favorites/scottfillmer.rss. Just drop this url in your feed reader and it works just like any other feed.
For more information on actually pulling RSS feeds from Twitter that are posted by Twitter (that would be the friends timeline, profile page, @replies page, and the home page, you can visit How do I find my Twitter rss feed? from Twitter support. You can also read an older post of my called Add Value to Your Blog, Offer an RSS Feed in Reverse if you really want to look at some different rss feed stuff.
If you question after reading this is what in the world is an RSS feed Brad Ruggles has compiled some of the popular how-to YouTube videos on what is an rss feed, twitter, and blogs. You can see that here.
2. Make Your RSS Feed Public (optional step)
You can now use it in any way you would use a normal rss feed. So do some cool things with it like make it a public feed or as a blogroll on your site. You can see the results below, those are live and updated as I mark items as favorites.
You can do this (if you use Google Reader) by going to the “manage feeds” link in your reader, then choosing the tag where you placed the rss feed to be public, then either choose to “add a clip to your site” or “add a blogroll to your site” and it will give you a piece of code to use where ever you like. The list below is my last 5 favorites (when they are placed in your RSS Reader they won’t clip after a certain number of characters like they do below).
3. Use What You Have Created
One reason to use the favorites options is to mark the genius in Twitter. There is a lot of information to be gained from Twitter, but it isn’t really from Twitter, it is from the people who post to Twitter. Many people take the time to post very useful information and actually create value in their 140 characters. You can find new websites, new ideas, new ways of doing things that you may not have ever thought about before seeing them on Twitter.
Update March 2011
Obviously much have changed in the way twitter functions over the last few years, but I think you will find this information still relavant and useful. Another great post on the subject can be found over at ProfHacker called Managing Twitter Feeds as well.
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What are your favorite faith based blogs you read? I have a few different categories in my mind of blogs I read. I have a total list, which includes some of my friends blogs and some of my favorite faith based blogs, and more I just flip through on a daily or weekly basis. I have a few blogs I read (this would be across all categories) that are really bad, but for some reason I have some fascination with what they will post next because the blog is so bad (poor design, format, sentence or grammar structure and so on). I call these train wreck blogs because I can’t help but read them for some reason.
I won’t mention any of my personal favorite train wreck blogs but there is one blog I have been reading quite a bit called TonyMorganLive.com which has a lot of fresh, well written content, plus his job listings are interestingg reading to me. I have to give my blogroll award to Brody Harper who has one of the best blogrolls on the side of his blog and he always has something interesting going on over there (see his latest Positive Post Tuesday-Outdoor Encounter). Below you will find my current faith based blogroll for today, Tuesday, September 2, 2008. This list below is static, but my list changes daily. For the most current and up to date list, see Faith Blogroll. Is your blog on this list? No? Well post it in the comments so we can all take a look and add it to our feed readers.
- …and protest
- 12 Steps Closer
- 97secondswithgod
- :: Cre8vE [creative] chaos ::
- =) Bnpositive’s Blog
- Anne’s Spot
- (A’s)Musings
- BEDOUINS INTERNATIONAL | Blog
- betterthanblank
- Between Two Worlds
- Big Skye’s Country
- Billy Chia
- biscuet.com
- Blogerton
- brian fox
- Brody Harper
- CatalystSpace | Catablog
- Cello Girl Talks
- Christian Music Fan
- Church Marketing Sucks
- churchrelevance.com
- Comments on your photostream and/or sets
- Consuming Worship
- Cornerstone Finance
- Creative Worship
- CULTURE TYPES.com
- daveferguson.org
- Desiring God Blog – No Comments
- Dialogue Church Blog
- djchuang.com
- Doxologist
- EdYoungBlog
- Eric Taylor
- Ethos-A Cultural Watercooler by Randy Elrod
- Faith, Love, and Rock and Roll as Told by The Brown…
- feed/http://www.givegrace.net/feed/
- First Impressions Team at Cornerstone
- Flickr CPF Blog
- fluidity
- From Wilmore, with Love
- gotroot.hsdemos.com
- History in the Making
- inWorship
- Jack Fisher
- Jesus Creed
- Just Another Minute
- Kem Meyer on Less Clutter & Noise
- Latest Jobs – Church Staffing
- Leading With A Limp
- LeadingSmart
- learning the rhythm
- Letters from Kamp Krusty
- LifeChurch.tv : swerve
- Lincoln Brewster Newsfeed
- Live to Worship
- Makarios
- Malachi’s Very Unscientific Hypothesis
- Mark Driscoll’s blog
- MercyMe
- MinistryCOM
- MMerge
- MoreThanDodgeball.com
- movement, movement
- natedavidscott.com|ifiweredebtfree.com
- Nelson Searcy – Renegade Pastor – Church Leader Insights…
- nikao | a collective
- Of First Importance
- Our Rising Sound
- Out of Ur
- Pastor Steven Furtick
- Paul D. Watson
- Perry Noble dot com
- Phil Wickham
- Ragamuffin Soul
- Read Scott
- readdB
- RELEVANT Magazine
- REVEAL Blog
- Rich Kirkpatrick’s Weblog
- Run’n Like A Vagabond
- Spence Smith – Connecting People To The World Of Travel,…
- Stephen R. Covey
- stevenbush.org
- Steve’s Devotions
- Stevo 28 and Growing
- Stuff Christians Like
- supersimbo……….
- The Journey Blog
- the normal christian blog
- The Prodigal Jon
- TheNorEaster
- Thinking Christian
- Third Day Pix
- This Guy Falls Down
- TonyMorganLive.com
- transitionpete
- Unspeakable Love
- Uploads from cornerstonebuzz
- Vertizontal
- Weekly Checkup
- WhyLifeChurch?
- Without Wax
- Worship Journey
- www.askanne.com
The list above is obviously in alphabetical order, but it is a list of blogs I frequent. There are so many that I have not come across yet, but to those above, thanks so much for putting so much effort into your blogs, I really enjoy reading them. Keep in mind, even if you never receive a single comment, there are people who read your blog, so write your posts with that in mind.
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Google finally made some improvements to their rss feed reader, Google Reader yesterday, but, now my feeds are all messed up. Most of the changes pertain to the iPhone and the interface it uses to show the rss reader functions.
Having an iPhone, I have been waiting for this for a long time, and the new interface is great. I can’t wait to use it when I am traveling next week. You can read the updates here at Brand new Google Reader for iPhone and also Google interface for the iPhone at Macworld and there is more than just the look and feel that has changed.
Changes to Web Version of Reader
I didn’t read to much about changes made to the web version of Google reader, but now, all my “read” items are not showing in my feeds. The only way to get these read items back, that I can tell, is to unsubscribe to each feed one at a time (and I have over 600 feeds) and then add it right back.
When you do this, it pulls in all the feeds from previous posts, plus all the rest you hadn’t seen in a while. If you keep scrolling down, it will keep downloading new feeds. Without doing this step though, once you read the current feed in a subscription, the window shows nothing at all.
I hope that Google fixes this soon, I reference different feeds all the time, and most are feeds I have already read. Anyone else having this problem with this update?
Cool New Feature
One thing they did add was a link in the upper right corner that says show details. This is great, you can click on this link and it will now show you the average number of posts per week for this feed, and also how many subscribers.
Of course, I checked out some of my own blogs and they all said 2 subscribers and 0.0 posts per week. Now I don’t have many subscribers, but I have more than two. I also have several blogs I update on a daily basis, so it is a cool feature, but not quite working yet, perhaps.
Has anyone else seen any other updates to Google Reader over the last few days?
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This is my normal weekend link love list from my starred items in my rss feed reader. There were way to many to list this week but a few stood out and I have them listed below. Thanks for a good week of reading to those below.
There were to many to dial it down to 10, so here are the top 15 for you.
Top 10 15 Stars of the Week, April 29 – May 5
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So, today seems to be deemed RSS Feed awareness day (or RSS Day) and I had been contacted several times about trying to do a quick post on rss (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. It seems that many people are unaware of the importance, or usefulness of an rss feed, so now is your chance to see what it is all about.
As far as a blog goes, it is probably the single most important feature of your blog, and as a reader, it saves time and effort. Each time a favorite blog of yours updates their content, it sends out a rss feed, which can be read through a free program like Google Reader.
Almost all blogs utilize an rss feed, and now you can generally pull a feed from just about anywhere. There are feeds for news sites, blogs, hobbies, just about anything with active content. This is probably the best video out there on RSS Feeds, so give it quick look, it can explain a feed better than I can. Don’t forget to sign up for my rss feeds, located at the top right corner of the menu at the top. As you look at the drop down, you will have a link to each blog I author, each with its own separate rss feed. In order to read the content of each post, you will need to subscribe to each blog individually.
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I am going to try to get back to doing this post once a week like I use to do, but for now, here is the latest version of this past weeks starred items from my Google Reader. A complete list is shown on the sidebar to the far right, but these are some posts from the previous week that caught my eye.
It is really amazing how many quality blogs there are now. I now have 686 feeds in my reader. Yes, not all are quite the premium material, but with so many good articles to choose from it is hard to narrow it down to 10, but, here they are.
Top 10 Stars of the week of April 21st
image by Jeff Bauche
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