So, any thoughts on day 9 through 11?
#9 Forums:
My take is that it is a good idea. And I don’t have the time. I found it particularly helpful in today’s (day 11)post that he shared his time management priorities, although vaguely. I too think that I’m going to have to put more time into the networking, learning, and assisting side of my blog to really make it useful to myself and others. Which leads me to:
#10: Set up Alerts (personal, and key words)
THIS is something I can do. Honestly? I haven’t quite figured out ‘digg‘ and ‘delicious’ et al. I’ve signed up, looked around, and felt completely LOST. So I went straight away to the google instructions that he posted for Day 10. I actually just googled “google alerts“, went to the first page, and thank heavens, the alerts are super easy to set up. And now, I wait. I set up daily emails, and I’m actually looking forward to see what pops up. I have NO idea what blogs link to my Mommy blog, other than trackbacks. I think that after this 1.5 years of blogging, I’ve determined some of the big groups in my niche, but I definitely have a ton to learn. I wonder if there are huge groups that I’m completely missing? 
#11: Mind Mapping
I’ve read about this years ago. I had assumed that I was more of a linear thinker, but I really like how Darren has described this. Here’s my attempt:
I had a lot of fun with this, and did another of my blogs too, the Mom blog was a bit harder to do, I suppose because I was in a tutorial-writing mindset from doing this one. This one and my gluten-free blog really lend themselves to this brainstorming, and this has given me ooodles of post ideas. But I’m with Darren on this one, a lot of these ideas will be pared down, scrapped, or refined. All in all, I think this activity was awesome!
How about you? Do you want to link up to your mind-mapping so I can see what it looks like for different people, different blogs?
Google Alerts are a great way to build content for your blog, as Darren says. But you have to work at building the right search terms. There are a couple of tricks to keep in mind. You should test all your alert searches in Google Search before making them alerts. That will help you see exactly the type of results you can expect. You should also learn a little about the Google search syntax. For example, you can get more targeted results for multi-word names of people and products, if you put them in quotes. If you find that you are getting too many unrelated results, you can block them by adding words with a minus sign in front to your search term. I’ve written up a free Google Alerts tutorial that you might find useful:
http://www.alertrank.com/google-alerts-tutorial.html
Adam,
Thank you for that! Most of what you outline above is common to all search engines, local and online, but if I get too many results or not specific enough, I’ll definitely head over to your place! Thanks
One of the ones I like best is Zoe at Essential Zoe here: http://www.essentialprose.com/write-create/mind-mapping-your-blog-or-project and here:
http://www.essentialprose.com/read-connect/blogging-contexts.
I do mind-mapping in a notebook but I also recently bought an app for my iPhone from iBlueSky which I really love!
Thanks for posting those Andi, The first link I liked a lot – and I could glean some ideas from it. the second link? Oh my goodness – too much info!! That’s not to say it doesn’t look like a work of art, but if i wanted my mind mapping to look nice like that, I think I would edit myself too much. I like just writing down everything! And scribbling stuff – as is evident in my post! lol
Did you do one?
Here’s another good one: http://budurl.com/6cfq
I did do one – I am going on a two week vacation and I mindmapped posts that I might do – I will scan it and show you in a bit.
I put mine here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33891180@N02/3449998753/ it is in color, but the scanner here at work turns it to black and white. Now on to look at the link Adam left!
That’s awesome Andi! I like how you have it spread into categories/ topics that you write about. And the names are possible guest writers? That looks like a solid plan – how long did that take you?
It only took 10 minutes and I got double the ideas I did when I tried it the traditional way – going to blog about that later as my daily assignment post.
There is a free download called “mind node” that allows you to do your mind mapping on your computer screen. I love it. And I’m more of a pencil-and-paper kind of gal.
I have been out of town this weekend and was just looking over the 31 dbbb. I agree about the forum thing, I don’t have the time, and I dislike the formats of most of the forums I have ever visited. I did try to find one, but….yeah.
I did set up a google alert, so we shall see how that works for me.
Now, off to work on mind mapping…isn’t that something Vulcans do????
Ha! I missed this one – yes, Vulcans definitely do something mind-related.
Okay, here is mine, and I did actually come up with some good things, I think….
http://www.thefrazzledmama.com/wp-content/blogimages/mind%20map.jpg