Announcing the Fourth Writers' Platform-Building Campaign

Sign-ups have already started for Rachael Harrie's brainchild. This is a huge blogfest filled with fun and prizes. If you are a writer and are interested in legitimately connecting with others out there who share your interests, then I suggest you hop on board. Please visit her blog here and sign up. My own experience with it has been wonderful. This is what I think you get from an increased following:

1) You get support. This means that when you are down, the blogosphere can help you feel better. When your family doesn't understand why you write or when your friends are not interested at all in reading anything penned by you because they only want to talk about themselves...you will never be alone.

2) It's not what you know it's who you know. Yes...you connect with people from all kinds of backgrounds who know all kinds of people. When the time comes to market your book, they will spread the word for you. They will retweet your tweets. They will post pictures of your book on their sidebars. They can even do reviews, mark your book "to read" on Goodreads so that other people that don't blog, think "hmmm...there's a lot of interest in this book...I wonder if it is good."

3) They will keep you informed. You will see from reading their blogs what the hot thing is...where they heard that a certain agent is looking for a certain kind of manuscript...who is paying for what, etc.

4) Never do this campaign to pick-up customers. I think the percentage of people that could possibly buy your book because they followed you is really low...maybe less than 5%.

5) Networking is a two-way street. People will visit your blog once and then click follow. But if you don't follow back, they will never visit you again. Plus, you need to read their blog so that they will reciprocate. To expect someone to only read what you write is VERY arrogant. I don't want to burst your bubble...but nothing you write or say is more important than what anyone else has to write or say. You ARE NOT A CELEBRITY if you are reading my words. I hope that doesn't make you mad, but it is the truth. I'm not one either. Mediocrity is my middle name. So an ounce of humility will really give you the best tool to get the most out of this blogfest.

The list of campaigners closes on Wednesday, February 15th. Come and get connected. I hope to see everyone spreading the word and having fun.

Blogging Stuff + Get More Followers

You know the cool "Feed" button that we all have installed on our blogs that updates our feed so that it's available to be seen everywhere in the interwebs?  Well, the fact is that this feed doesn't always update.  I've been tracking it for a while trying to figure out what's going on and my first real clue came when I started following my own blog.  Basically, after I posted, my writing was not visible in Google Reader or in the dashboard feed sometimes for 14-hours or more after I published it.  That's kind of bad for a number of reasons.  But there's also a solution to this.

You can force Google to update your feed by refreshing it in your Google Reader.  But, you have to follow your own blog. That way you can click on it and then hit the refresh button.  I sometimes wonder...if this has been happening to me, how many other people are experiencing the same fail?  It could be a reason behind why I haven't made it to some blogs very often.  If I see the information is old, I don't click and move onto the next one.

Here's how you do it.

Step One:  Follow your own blog.

Step Two:  Go to the dashboard and launch Google Reader.  See picture below:

Step Three:  Once you are in Google Reader, select your blog and hit the "Refresh" button at the top.

Here's a link to an article that discusses this well-known issue with the blog feed so you guys know I'm not just making this up.

BLOGGING NEWS--OR HOW TO GET 100+ FOLLOWERS IN LESS THAN A WEEK:

Monday, August 22nd is Rachael Harrie's Platform-Building Campaign.  This is a great way to meet other bloggers and to build up your following so that you have more blogs to visit and more people to get to know.  I made nearly all of my blogger buddies in Rach's last campaign...most notably Rogue Mutt.  You'll get a huge spike in traffic while it lasts (that's always fun) probably pick up a hundred followers (if not more) who for the most part will visit your blog only that one time.  However, 10% of them will probably become frequent visitors and consequently, you'll pick up 10% more friends.  I'm going to participate again because it was decently fun the last time and really low-pressure, unlike some of the other blog fests like that A-Z challenge thing.  Here's a link to Rachael's blog.

A BLOG AWARD:

Theresa over at I Need To Write gave me the Blog On Fire Award.  It's my third time winning this one, however, I'm honored that she would think of me.  I'm just going to post this here and encourage you all to visit her wonderful blog and I won't be passing it on as I think that this thing has been passed around enough already :P

This really should be called the "Rode hard and put away wet" blog award seeing as it has been around so much, but it is still kinda hot. ;)

Have a great weekend. I hope to see a bunch of you on Rachael's blog on Monday getting ready to gain mega-followers!