Sometimes you find that you’ve got too many ideas. Ever have that problem? I do this week, and I swear I’m going to do something about it. I’ve got blog post ideas going back several years covering things from social media to technology to life topics and so on. It’s time I liberate these post ideas. I’m giving them to you to take and run with, just in case you’ve run out of ideas and need some inspiration. What better way to end the week, right? Alrightly, here we go:
Social Networking & The Impact On Your Personal Brand
Moleskine Notebooks – Going Analog For The Fun of Writing
How To Balance Social Network Participation In The Workplace
101 Uses for Twitter
Why I Believe The “Smartphone” Isn’t So Smart
Your Blog IS Your Social Network
Online Communities – You Get Out Of Them Only What You Put Into Them
The New Social Economy
Social Media Is About Sociology Not Technology
Never Stop Experimenting To Grow Yourself Or Your Brand
If Words Mean Things
Old Media Using Social Media
Building A Better Branded Blog
Decline Of Technology In America?
Social Media And The IT Professional
Anonymity – Pros & Cons
Can You Connect Up To 6 people?
Linux: Ubuntu Or Fedora Or ?
The Most Powerful Social Media Tool: YOU
Decisions: iOS Or Android
Personal Branding And The IT Professional
10 Reasons For A Windows Hack To Love The iPhone
Disengage From The Collective That Is Your Corporate Mindset
“Who Am I?”
How Can I Help People?
Linux Software Installers – Why Do They Suck?
Essential Software For The Blogger
The New Intellectual
Is the Theme/Style Of Your Blog Important To Readers?
Social Realities Of A New Generation
What Do I Do?
What Can I Accomplish?
Powerful Writing…
Do I Realize How Lucky I Am?
Social Media In The Enterprise
Negativity In The Workplace
Don’t Talk, Just Do
Social Media Is An Evolutionary Step
Tear Down This Wall (Cubicles That Is)
What Is A “Social Entrepreneur”?
Enterprise/Corporate Culture Clashes
Good Enough
Social Media Shoehorn
Blogging Is A Commitment, Social Networks Are A Fling
Making It Happen
Why My Blogging “Rock Stars” Are From the Z-List
SharePoint Can Be An Internal Enterprise Social Media Tool
Labeling Things And Why It’s Ok
Why Paper Publications Will Never Go Away
A Culture Without Culture
To Meme Or Not
Step Away From The Ledge – It’s Going To Be Ok
Help People
Want To Be A High-Buck Consultant?
Positive Growth Through Negative Feedback
Virtualization: For Technology Only?
Build Your Own Brand Armies
Networking For Fun And Profit
Fostering New Communication In The Enterprise
What Social Media Has Taught A Techie Geek
Afraid To Succeed?
Stodgy Or Stale Brand? 10 Sure-Fire Ways To Freshen It Up
Social Media Does Not Equal Marketing Or PR
Fearing Free (Free Rage Fears?)
The Problem With Technically Excellent Solutions
Be Your Own Editor
Thinkers – The Ones To Watch
Getting Back To Where We Came From
Go Where Your Forefathers Couldn’t
Unsung Heros: Headhunters
The Line In The Sand & When You Step Over It
Landing Pages – Why Bother?
Put It On paper
Gen Y & Why They’re different
Engage HR For Change
Friend Counts Do Mean Something
Anatomy Of Twitter
Lack Of New Examples
The More You Share
The Android Dilemma
Is Your Day Job Your Only Gig?
When Self Promotion Goes Too Far
The Joys Of Building Community
Is Social Media Respected In Corporate Environments?
Lets Not Screw Around
Why The Old Tools Don’t Work
Why The Old Tools STILL Work
Corporate Obsolesce
The changing Face Of Social Media
What’s The Big Deal About 4G?
What’s Next For Social Media
The Dark Side Of Social Media, And Why It Sucks
You Will Live Online
Why Tablet-Haters Loose In The End
10 Billion Apps
Do What Comes Naturally
The Decline Of Social Media
Social Media Posers
Ongoing Standards Wars
Shortsightedness Of Newspaper Publishers
Well, there’s a handful of the post ideas I’ve got in my notes. That was just from one page of a OneNote notebook of post ideas! Sometimes, you just run out of time or simply never get back to the ideas you had when you thought of the topic. Whatever the case, I figure somebody might make use of one or two, or ten of these. Better to set them free than keep ’em in a dusty digital notebook right?
Part of what made the early and current social media crowd important to me, has been the willingness for folks to “give it awayâ€. By that I mean all the ideas, tools, and techniques that are used and talked about on the social web. This post itself is inspired by the very concept of sharing and giving ideas away as the title comes from Chris Brogan’s100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write. During one trip nearly a year ago, he gave away 100 topic ideas, offering them up for folks to expand on.
That is an example of what I mean. One guy has time on his hands and wants to share his ideas, knowing that he may not have time to write about some of the posts he’s thought of. There’s more though. The bulk of social media to date is based on giving away something. Whether it’s ideas, or stories, or comedy, or podcasts, or how-to’s, or videos, the interest in sharing in this new media venue is what makes it all so exciting. Sure, it’s going to change – you can already see that happening – but it’s the folks who’ve started it, and those that follow the same ethos that make it exciting.
As this medium evolves as a method to connect and interact with clients and customers, it will become more commercialized and controlled. At least, there will always be attempts to control it. We believe at this point that most attempts to control the social web will fail – we’ll have to wait and see if that turns out to be true.
Mostly, I enjoy the idea that through all the years, through all the social and political change, through the technological changes, that we still value social interaction as much as our grandparents. It’s the satisfaction that through the years, the desire to share tips and things we’ve learned with folks doesn’t change. That people are quite happy to share and “give it awayâ€.
One of the toughest things for bloggers starting out is staying on topic. The free-form aspect of blogging, of having a public soapbox of sorts is the desire to start talking about just about anything that comes to mind. Actually, I’ll contradict myself here for a minute and say that doing just that is good for bloggers, and should be done before you pick a blogging genre to dive into. Heck, you can find my first three blogging attempts here, here & here.
Once you find a topic or genre you are passionate about, it’s really important to remain true to that area of interest. There is a wide range of things to write about in your genre, so you shouldn’t need to try to combine two disparate topics. Trying to write about bicycling and fudge making for example just wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
It’s also hard to find topic ideas that consistently cover new areas or explore more detail on a regular basis. That is the more difficult part of blogging. Finding the topics that don’t seem to be repeating previous ones or feeling that you’re writing to too low an interest level. It’s easy to second guess yourself and simply not write because of it. That seems to be a common affliction too many bloggers, even one’s that have been blogging for awhile. 😉
A tip to combat that problem is to simply sit down for an hour, even 30 minutes, and brainstorm on things you want to talk about related to you topic. Do it once a month and reduce it to a reasonable number to accomplish in 30 days for your schedule and genre. One of the tools that I’ve recently been introduced to is mind mapping. There are many online and software-based tools to accomplish this, but it can easily be done with pen & paper to great affect for the needs of most bloggers. Starting with a central topic or theme, you can quickly map out interconnected ideas and develop an outline of topics very quickly. Highly recommended.
Since there are many different perspectives on this, I’m interested in yours, what would you add to this?
I started thinking a bit after Robert Scoble’s (yeah I know I reference Robert a lot)Kyte video post about his blog of the future. While I may disagree with a few of his concepts, the whole concept of what a future blog may look like got my mind racing in new directions.
The problem that I think we have in many blogs, is the lack of white space which I know is not a new discussion point for many bloggers. The difficulty comes in the tools that we use in combination with most peoples skill in design. Helping the blogger (beginner and experienced) with some additional pre-packaged design elements that fit the majority of styles that a person may choose from would go a long way to improving this situation.
Configurable Text Boxes that can be placed in a post by the blogger. These boxes would act similar to placing a picture and allow the blogger to set it to the left/center/right and allow text to flow around it. It would have selectable edges (rounded/square), alpha blending borders and background, and allow for different fonts. Possibly accommodate different shapes for the box (circle, square, rectangle, octagon, triangle, etc…).
Standardized Font “Module” System similar in concept to TrueType or PostScript in the desktop publishing industry, standardized fonts that could easily be added to the blog.
Standardized XML framework to more easily create customized or customizable Widgets.
Integrate common technologies like Lightbox into the rendering engine of the blog software so there is less need for users to have to manually enhance their blogs with these add on’s, plug ins, or by having to edit code.
Use existing research on how people view/read blogs and apply those learning’s to the default layouts, templates and themes that come “in the box”.
Standardize an Ad Engine API that would allow bloggers to plug in standardized Ad modules from the major ad engines out there. Accommodate, in-line text ads, context-sensitive ads, text-link ads, banner ads, skyscraper ads, etc… Make it easy for the blogger to more cleanly integrate the ads from any vendor. This would also make it easy for ad vendors to integrate with any blog software.
A standardized tagging engine provided as open source. Get an open source library of standard tags that are either automatically attached to a post, recommended to the blogger, or that could be manually selected. We have too many people creating similar but different tags out there.
Easily customizable HTML tag styles on a panel in the blog management interface that allows the blogger to more easily customize the “a href”, “img src”, and “abbr title” HTML styles (formatting). Make it easy for bloggers to pick the border, background, text, color, and so on. Allow them to set their selections to override the installed theme’s CSS for these tags.
Well those are my suggestions to help build the blog of the future. I personally believe that the basic layout of a blog is well defined and has little room for improvement. The basic idea of a top banner and a single column of content arranged in reverse chronological order (newest at the top, oldest at the bottom) is hard to beat.
It’s in the themes, bling or “farkles”, badges, advertising, and add-on’s that we all add to our blogs that tend to detract from the readability. Fancy graphics and animations may be “cool” but the pictures and code take time to download – even in our increasingly highly-connected broadband world. Glossy, intricate interfaces are wonderful for local high-powered devices like PCs and phones. However, any time you need to pull the bulk of the site’s rendering media and content across a connection, it’s better to keep it simple and effective (i.e. elegant).
There is more, a lot more, that we all need to start tossing on the pile of ideas for the blog of the future. I’m an IT geek that always thinks about the technical part, but that’s a small portion of what makes a blog a blog.
What are your needs for your blog going into the future? What needs aren’t being addressed today? What are your ideas to make a better blog?
Update: Well, I guess I’m not the only one thinking about fonts on the web. This article over at A List Apart, covers this idea in more on CSS3. I also didn’t realize that CSS has been around for a decade! 😛
ICYMI: 357 members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat voted AGAINST our resolution to make public the sexual harassment and misconduct records of Congress.
357 Members voted to protect predators. 357 Members voted to protect themselves. 357 Members voted to take part in a
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