Alphablogs » Blogging ideas

Ikiaqqivik means “Internet” and “Traveling through layers”

Carol Sill — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:36:57 +0000

I was so intrigued by the word for the internet that was created by the territory of Nunavut in Canada, that I posted about it here in my personal blog: Ikiaqqivik. I’m re-posting the quote from the Canadian Journal of Communications where this was mentioned. Soukup’s article, by the way, is terrific.

When the time came a few years ago to find an Inuktitut term for the word “Internet,” Nunavut’s former Official Languages Commissioner, Eva Aariak, chose ikiaqqivik, or “traveling through layers”. The word comes from the concept describing what a shaman does when asked to find out about living or deceased relatives or where animals have disappeared to: travel across time and space to find answers. According to the elders, shamans used to travel all over the world: to the bottom of the ocean, to the stratosphere, and even to the moon. In fact, the 1969 moon landing did not impress Inuit elders. They simply said, “We’ve already been there!” (Minogue, 2005, n.p.). The word is also an example of how Inuit are mapping traditional concepts, values, and metaphors to make sense of contemporary realities and technologies. – Katarina Soukup in The Canadian Journal of Communication

Monica Hamburg on Crowdsourcing

Carol Sill — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:49:29 +0000

It’s been a busy month, with all the activity of spring – new projects brewing and more to do than time to do it!

I recently interviewed Social Media Evangelist/Consultant and woman-about-town Monica Hamburg about one of her areas of expertise: Crowdsourcing. Check it out here in the YouTube version:

One thing this video doesn’t convey is Monica’s terrific sense of humour. You can find out more about that side of her through her blogsite(s). Contact Monica here.

Coming this Saturday: Bridging Media

Carol Sill — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:56:11 +0000

Looks like this will be one of those “mark your calendar” events in Vancouver.

Bridging Media: Addressing the Challenges - this Saturday, March 29, 2008, 9:45 am – 3pm

Aimed to provide a bridge between the two communities of film/television and interactive/social media, I think this event comes just at the right time. The expertise we have here in Vancouver is remarkable, and the panelists assembled for this event have a lot to share in the short time they have available, so it looks like the whole day will be power-packed.

The tools are here and easier to use than ever, and the panelists are articulate and experienced in the slippery ever-shifting world of web/mobile/social media. Its free, its informative and it can change what you think you might know about social media, and more. Plus there is a door prize: a free pass to nextMEDIA, just before the Banff Television Festival.

Want to know who’ll be there? Go to the registration site and take a peek.

And did I mention that lunch is sponsored? Yes it is a free lunch!

Brainchild of Megan Cole and Erica Hargreave, the event now has a terrific team putting this together, with good will and sharp skills: Cinci Csere, Monique Trottier and Monica Hamburg. I’m really glad to help out with this event and be in their company!

The Mind of a Blogger

Carol Sill — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:43:10 +0000

Here’s the latest installment in our ongoing video series. Isabella Mori talks about what goes on in the mind of a blogger, and I play a little with the camera as she speaks.

Reader appreciation project

isabella — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:50:49 +0000

Today you can find me over at Reader Appreciation Project, where I wrote a guest post on appreciating those readers who we sometimes forget – fellow bloggers.

Reader Appreciation Project is a great blog that concentrates exclusively on how to best appreciate and interact with our readers. Example posts treat topics such as

How do readers feel about monetization?
How far do you want to go with pleasing your readers?
Stepping outside your blogging niche.

Most posts are followed by a good comment conversation. If you’re wanting to build more and deeper community on your blog, Reader Appreciation Project is a great source of information.

Basic Blogging from Simpleology

Carol Sill — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:50:58 +0000

In my next couple of posts, I’ll be examining some online blog coaching and teaching systems. There are a lot of them out there. Isabella previously mentioned a link to this Simpleology blog course and now I’m exploring it for myself.

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

I’ve read that most of this is great stuff for the early blogger, and only a little of their content is a bit out of date – particularly the reference to paid links and article duplication. However, watch this space and I’ll have a report for you soon!

Meanwhile, you have to give credit to Mark Joyner, once again, for really leveraging the blog universe to draw people to his Simpleology site!

Win, win, win: $500, blogging, and the environment

isabella — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:38:51 +0000

People, I like blogging so much – what did I do before this medium came along?

There are so many things you can do with blogging. Here’s a terrific project by my friend David Alexander (yet another person I met through Stumbleupon). David has a blog, Planet Thoughts, about Global Warming, Peak Oil, Resource Depletion, and Sustainable Living. David is really committed to this, he doesn’t just talk about it, he’s also taking action. Here’s his project:

We all want to do what we can to reduce the global warming gases that get emitted, especially in our own areas of living and working, where we have the most direct influence. To add another dimension, it would be great to congratulate others who are doing something to help the environment.

For these reasons, we have created the Super-Cars Shout Out Competition™ (SCSOC). This contest allows you to place a simple, colorful flier on high mileage cars that you encounter, showing the vehicle owner that she or he has done something worthy by choosing a leading-edge (in fuel efficiency) vehicle.

… when you are outside look for vehicles that are on the list of high-efficiency vehicles, those that officially achieve at least 40 mpg US (16.74 kmpl) on the highway. Place a flier on the windshield, keeping it as straight as possible, then step back and take a clear photograph showing the flier, and enough of the car to determine the make and model.

Here are the instructions in point form:
1. Download and print one or more of our fliers (recycled paper preferred)
2. Find a 40+ mpg US (16.74 kmpl) car from our list (or make a request that one be added)
3. Place our flier under the windshield wiper
4. Use a digital camera or good cell phone to photograph
5. Upload the image or images to the PlanetThoughts.org Web site

(and 6: Wait to see whether you’ve won the contest. Yes, you can win up to $500 with this. Go here to look it up. The contest is up until June 2)

Anyone can participate, from anywhere: from Alaska to Argentina, from Tokyo to the Tuscany.

I have to confess that I’m not much of a picture taker at all but this is such an interesting and important project, I’ll commit do doing this at least once before June 2. And I bet my partner Carol, who is much more of an image person, will participate, too. After all, here in Vancouver we like to think of ourselves as environmentally conscious people. Time to walk our talk!

Talking of which, let’s drum up some more participants. I’m calling on some of my Vancouver connections: The King of Compost, Al the Bokashiman; Nancy Zimmerman, our super-enlightened money coach; Beyond Robson, one of our “all about Vancouver” blogs; our green writer Mr. Narvey and of course our transit camp hero, Paul Hillsdon. Oh, and even though he’s not in Vancouver, my buddy Kilroy, I know he likes taking pictures.

People already involved in this are Sustainablog, A New Green Earth and Pelf-ism is contagious.

(This post was included in the Green Living Carnival)

Lets Comic!

Carol Sill — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:46:28 +0000

In developing our mission statement for Alphablogs we kept mentioning fun. Well, comics are fun – so I put this one together to illustrate a coffee session on increasing blog traffic that we did in late November. We documented the meeting in a standard way in this previous post, which also includes more information and content. What do you think? Does the comic make you want to find out more?

Oodles and oodles of blogging goals

isabella — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 05:50:04 +0000

A few days ago, we posted our blogging goals. This was part of a group writing project on Daily Blog Tips.

I looked at about 8 or 10 of the 78 blogs that participated and categorized them to see what people are up to. The impression I get from these blogs is that blogging is still quite a bit about providing something for the readers (e.g. goals about content and design) or getting something from them (e.g. increased RSS readership, monetization) – not so much about back-and-forth interaction. For example, there was only one person who wanted to have increased comments.

Whatever you make of it – these goals here and the ones included in the list of links below provide some wonderful ideas to follow up on.

Content (17)

More basic tips on making wine and beer
A series on different beer styles along with recipes (for a beverage-related blog)
Make this site a better site with more tips on how I resolve my never-ending issues with programming languages, gaming obsession, online games, and other various distractions of the great web.
Post at least every other month about the benefits of RSS in easing your daily blog reading, including a link to my feed.
Interview more and more bloggers;
Interview blogging dads that skate (that’s for the skating dads blog)
Friday post for news articles, opinions and rants
Have a video series launched by January 31
Grow the Canada 9-5 series into an influential go-to for Canadian businesses bloggers. Post at least one video tutorial a month – I am planning on having how to’s for trick tips and building skate ramps etc.
More guest posting
Improving my personal skills – Let’s face it, I am merely a passable writer. If I’m ever going to get anywhere with blogging, I need to improve my game. To this end I have purchased several books on grammar, by far my weakest area, and hope to get through those early this coming year.
Add in more of my reviews
Link my work in Higher Education with this blog (for a university-related blog)
More regular writing;
Post at least once every other day – Once a day is going to be a bit of a stretch for me.
Writing content that people will actually want to save for later reference.
Write posts well in advance of publication

Social media and other types of interaction (10)

Greater use of social networks
Three mentions of linking with other bloggers
Make a meaningful contribution through social media. We’d like to research and find ways to meaningfully enrich social media – not just for business purposes. We don’t want to be part of the machine that steals the social from social media.
Do at least one big group writing project
Get the “do follow” plugin working
Explore more interaction with readers – more comments but also more … what? Social media type interactions? Let’s see.
Average one email a day sent to me from a reader who enjoyed or learned from a post I wrote
More commenting

Statistics and Ranking (9)

50% increase of Daily Page Views
Google Pagerank: I would love to be a PR5 by this time next year.
Three mentions of increasing RSS readers, e.g. “I dream that by the end of 2008, my readers will be around 10,000 per day. No joke. I do dream of this figure every day.”
Increase in video use for posts
Increase my Alexa ranking
Own the “Blogging Dads That Skateboard” – I think I am the only one so that should be easy!
Treble readership (both subscribers and casual)

Design (6)

Learn how to customize a WP theme.
Greater integration with image and video sites
Improved navigation to find tips
Four mentions of changing/improving the theme/design

Monetization (7)

Get 4 reviews per month for $200 in the year 2008. That would mean another $800
Electronic affiliate payments only
Sell my sidebar button Ads here at $300 a piece, which will make me $1,800 monthly.
Make $600 monthly from my other ads,
Rounding up my monthly income for this blog to a nice figure of $3000 per month.
Look at at least 10 ways of blog monetization and implement at least three
Explore the possibility of monetizing the blog

Promotion (6)

Inform universities of this blog (for a university oriented blog)
Set aside time to communicate with academics, students, influential people.
Let Student Unions know about the blog too and engage with them to find out what students are looking for help/advice with.
Increased cross-promotion with my other sites
Look into including an RSS subscription button in each post
Create a badge for the Canada 9-5 series

Niche (2)

Finding my niche – For too long I have meandered hither and from with my content. The idea that I could write about whatever was on mind my day that was just too enticing, and I gave in to it far too many times. So the time to settle in to just a couple of subjects has probably come, but picking those categories will be the tough part. I think my biggest problem is that everything I am passionate about (movies, music, tech, etc) are already extremely well serviced markets.
Return to my original blogging niche: web trends and behaviours

Miscellaneous (4)

Become more respected
Finish my eBook and give it away free on this blog
Figure out how to lure more RSS subscribers, comments, readers and more blog reactions to be listed in Technorati
Put together a mission statement for the blog

Still want to read more about this? Here are the posts of all the people who participated in this project:

5 goals for 2008

isabella — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:56:46 +0000

One of our blogging friends here in Vancouver, InspirationBit, alerted us to a group writing project about blogging goals for 2008. What a great idea! So Carol and I sat down and came up with … tada! Five goals for 2008.

Look at at least 10 ways of blog monetization and implement at least three. One possible way would be e-books, another courses (we could leverage the fact that Carol has experience with running a continuous education department and Isabella has a Masters Degree in distance education). And of course we’ll also see how we can adapt what John Chow of “Make Money Online” fame and infamy has to say. One thing we’re really interested in is ethical monetization. (I know some think that learning from John Chow and ethical monetization are mutually exclusive – we’re happy to engage in a conversation about that)
Have an Alphablog video series launched by January 31
Put together a mission statement for the blog by January 15. Yes, that may mean that some of these goals may be revised – but that’s ok. At least we’ve made a start and pinned down some ideas.
Make a meaningful contribution through social media. We’d like to research and find ways to meaningfully enrich social media – not just for business purposes. We don’t want to be part of the machine that steals the social from social media. We want to be part of the new economy that’s emerging through the internet.
Grow Canada 9-5 into an influential go-to for Canadian businesses bloggers. First thing to do: create a badge for it for the next edition on January 18.

(Image by bloggerdeblog)