Blogging 201: Day 9-10

Yes, I am still trying to finish the Blogging 201 Challenge! I’ve been traveling in Korea and so busy. I don’t want to spend all my time inside on the computer when there are so many interesting things to see and do going on outside my hotel room!

So, I know I’m late but I’m still trying to complete the challenge. The one for Day 9 was “to create a page or section on your blog to display links to your online presence elsewhere, and make sure your other presences reflect the brand you’re developing on your blog.” 

I’ve been thinking about this challenge for the last couple of days. I don’t really think I want to make a special page for that. At least not right now. I already have links to my Facebook page, About.me page, Twitter feed, and Flickr pictures on my home page.

I am online in a few of other places like Pinterest, Tumblr, Oilpro, Linkedin, Gcaptain, and probably a few others I can’t remember right now. That might tell you one reason why I don’t really see the need to make a special page for them here right now. I really haven’t done much with some of these yet (plus I get a bit scattered sometimes). 😉

I’ve barely started with Pinterest. I only check into Tumblr- (islandgirl37- I can’t get a link to work)- every once in a blue moon, tho I do notice my posts here are automatically posted there (which is nice).

I rarely comment on Oilpro, tho I do like a lot of their content. A lot of it is outside my area of interest.

I love Gcaptain and I comment on there fairly often (as JP), tho not as much as I used to. They have a lot of really great back and forth conversations between real mariners (like me) on there in the forum section. Lately, I’ve been following the discussion on the Korean ferry disaster tho I haven’t been commenting.

I’m probably on Linkedin more than a lot of other places. There’s such a wide variety of groups on there. It’s too bad they limit you to only joining 50! I read and comment on a lot of different groups. I thought about linking my blog to it, but I’m still a little leery about doing that since it is really more for business. I’m trying to keep my posting there more professional. 😉

I think the main thing I can take away from the challenge for Day 9 is to go back and make sure I put a link to my blog into each of my profiles on these other sites. 🙂

OK, so I’ve got Day 9 pretty much in the bag. The assignment for Day 10 is to invest in your community by leaving five comments, adding (or updating) a blogroll, and introducing a comment policy.”

I’ve been leaving comments all along, I enjoy interacting with other people on the things they’re doing that interest me. I’ve never really been one to keep my opinions to myself. 😉

I already have a blogroll and it updates itself according to who I’m visiting (“more good stuff” in the sidebar). I also have a list on the bottom of my home page, but I haven’t really had time to update it recently so I’m sure it’s missing a lot. I was trying to include links that I’ve written about in posts. To have them all in one convenient place, but I got out of the habit of updating that list and so I know it’s going to take some work to catch up on.

I don’t have a formal comment policy (yet) and don’t really see the need to add one at this point. I do believe in free speech and hopefully won’t come up with any reasons to throw somebody out of here. 😉

I suppose eventually somebody might come up with something that pisses me off enough to get rid of them (online), but so far no one has come close. 🙂

So, I guess I’ll just wait and see on adding the ‘comment policy’. Hope ya’ll don’t take this as license to start giving me shit now! 😉

Zero to Hero Challenge- Day 10: the Wonderful (frustrating) World of Widgets

I’m trying to catch up on things around here, getting a little behind on the Zero to Hero Challenge, but here’s my take on the one for Day 10: Widgets.

I already had quite a few widgets on my blog. It’s taken me some time to figure out how to get them on here and how to get them to work like they’re supposed to. I still have a lot of work to do in that department.

So, I didn’t add 2 more widgets today. I found one that I had been wanting to add and it took me quite a while to figure out how to do it and then to add all the updates I wanted to. I actually got a little sick of it so I’m sure I missed a few places.

I found this one of cities where I’ve been on www.geckogo.com. I started playing around with it and signed up on the site and then got into all the other stuff on there. It just sucked me in. 😉

So, I finally got the widget finished and uploaded it onto my blog. I like it. 🙂

I think there must be tons of things to do with widgets on here. I’m still trying to figure out how to get some of them to work.

For instance, I’ve been trying to get one from Amazon to work for a couple of weeks now. It’s a blog and I think it’s pretty cool. It’s not trying to sell you anything, it’s just a neat scrolling list of comments on various books. It looks like my twitter feed.

I still can’t get it to show up here as anything but a plain link. It doesn’t even link to the book feed like I’d like, but to a half dozen different feeds. I’m still messing around with it but won’t put it up here until I can get it to work right. Anybody out there know how to do it?