Starting a Blog: Using Playstore Apps

 

Video link: Starting a blog: Exploring Playstore Apps I like

More neat ways to explore using the Foursquare app:

• Plan a fundraiser.  Try scouting out venues and local businesses that would offer a corporate sponsorship that might honor the number of patrons that use the app to check in with their product as a prize or cash.  (Think like the scene in +The Internship )if we rally 100 visits in 90 minutes to your business would you be interested in helping out our fundraiser?

 

• Organize a group outing

 

• Practice interviewing skills as an intern

 

• Promote grand openings

 

• Using the list feature plan a thrift shopping, auction, or flea market trip 

Starting a Blog: Following Musicians, Authors and Media Personalities

Growing up, learning about a culture of struggle grown folks were managing and spoke of were made into motion pictures.
Boys in the Hood
Class Act
Miracle at Saint Anna
RedTails
Baby Boy
Rosewood
Mississippi Burning
A Time To Kill
Queen
Friday
stand up acts by Eddie Murphy and Richard Prior

Some of the music icons included

Mahailia Jackson
Muddy Waters
Ray Charles
BB King
Sam Cooke
James Brown
Al Green
Marvin Gaye

Social and personal responsibility rests upon an individual to appreciate aspects of black culture.
Tell me about black history from your perspective. Were all characters role models, perfect citizens and scholars? Didn't think so.  We turn to the people we trust of this generation to introduce us to the stories of Medgard Evers, Nikki Giovanni, Cornell West, Melisa Harris Perry, Tyler Perry and Tj Holmes.
http://www.johnsonpublishing.com/index.php/how-we-do-it/ Johnson Publishing is a company that produces Jet Magazine and Ebony.  Music and popular culture articles are shared by the Source magazine.


http://thesource.com/
  

Starting a Blog: Video Editing

Adding dimension to a video blog post has been simplified by YouTube. Ever find yourself speaking something that makes sense but can't write the thought out quickly enough? Here's what I did: Using the 'voice note recorder' feature on my laptop I was able to capture the essential point I was trying to make.  Next, using the 'record via webcam' option on YouTube I uploaded the voice note in video form.  Different techniques are available on the video editor page.  For example I could access this post and change it slightly by creating a 'photo slide show' instead.
Once the initial video had been uploaded, be sure to add content to the video description box.  It makes for simple to follow, engaging clip to share with your audience. 

Starting a Blog

#14to2014 #Moblog #MobileBlogging
Blog posts can be easily stored on your mobile device and accessed later for publishing to your personal blog. Using the feature that allows post to be emailed then published immediately or saved as a draft post helps someone like me keep track of what and when my posts are being shared and with who.

Starting a Blog: Using Prompts

Sometimes generating a logical post isn't always easy to do.  In this age of data being fed to us on every wave-length, we sometimes forget how important it is to create communication.  In other words, as information gets crammed in, something logical beyond a babble should come out. 

 

If you are purposely sitting down to blog and struggling to generate a post, try adding a subscription via email from the Plinky Writing Prompt site. 

 

The most recent prompts...well I'm currently too far away from an actual book to find the tenth word and google search it.  However, I am half listening to Tony Reali and Dave Kaplin talking about disappointing plays.

 

The last thing I was silently excited about involved applying my familiarity with video calling and the concept of a house warming.  Combining an occasion that usually requires a hand written invitation and RSVP, the details that make an 'event' special, with the chance to stay put and relaxed from the comfort of your own home.  Treating something that is always available as a special occasion was my recent experience with being excited.  Like a new brain child I get excited and wound up over. 

 

One luxury I should never or could never live without is the ability to make plans.  Making plans is taking an idea or dream or thought and allowing room for it to become tangible. 

 

 

Starting a Blog

Starting a Blog: Video Link 

 

This is an example of posting a blog in the form of video.  Same basic idea as writing down a post or snapping a picture.  Creating a recording with the video feature of your device allows your audience to see what you are talking about as well as hear.  It gives the reader a different perspective.  Despite the audio being difficult to hear and the picture slightly blurry, you were still able to listen and see me blogging instead of simply trying to read and follow along with what I've written. 



Starting a blog

So far with this series of posts we have discussed: choosing a theme for your blog, how to generate posts, choosing the right blogging platform for you, and contributing to established blogs. We haven't discussed much about photography or video publishing yet.




Vimeo

 +YouTube

Twitter

+Tout

+Instagram

+Flickr

+Picasa


It seems almost second nature to see these names doesn't it? If you want to learn more about how each of these platforms can be used for your blogging pleasure, follow the links. Along with the capability of your main blogging web page, adding photos and video is a common way to get an idea across.

Save time when adding video and pictures you've captured to your posts by using a SD card reader.  SD cards are like little disks.  They allow you to save photos and video from your mobile phone, camcorder or camera without needing to be logged into a particular site.  With a SD card reader you can upload the saved media files to a PC for editing and sharing on your own time.  The device is a USB plug and play reader. 

 

Starting a Blog

During a recent hangout session, I mentioned contributing to established blogs. Suppose you and your classmates are required to participate in an extracurricular activity or given an assignment to make a presentation. During the course of the assignment or activity you could take mental brakes and recollect all the highs, lows and everywhere in between  moments that brought you to accomplish the finished product.  Like a report within the report or activity.

Putting together this series of unpublished posts, scheduled posts, or leaving posts in draft to be published later could open a door for you to become a guest blogger for your local or national newspaper, topic specific blog sites with paid contributors like the ones mentioned in this post along with others like +Writer's Digest or +Grist.  These publishers want to stay on the cutting edge of their business. By you showing your interest in them you just may find a powerful voice that you never knew you had. 

Use the Google Plus feature Circle share to your advantage for seeking out potential guest blogging opportunities.

Starting a Blog

Depending on the site you choose, take advantage of the utility pages on the platforms site. These pages are usually simple to follow and easy to search specific questions. Except for the Facebook notes feature, the following allow you to add Gadgets to your page linking other site profiles in the form of HTML  You can also include someone else as a contributor to your blog from most of these sites.

Wordpress  has a neat add on wiget that can be linked to your blog providing prompt based writing topics from Plinky.com. With a wordpress blog, you are able to choose the default page a post is filed under. 

Tumblr looks neat.  Popular with photographers it seems to me.

Facebook everyone's got a Facebook page.  Did you know you could blog on it?

Weebly offers a free and paid version of their service.

Blogger is my platform of choice.   

Game Informer lets you create a simple journal style blog.

Make the most of your mental real estate space. Take a look around the web at different blogs and make a note of what your experience is like. Do you get lost immediately? Aside from grammatical errors does the information come across as easy to follow? When a blog displays the view count of each post or other stat information, do you feel as if your visit is less meaningful? How important are timestamps and location information to you on a post? Has the blogger included this information? What about archived posts? How are those sorted? Is that important?

Don't ever forget that the Internet is a powerful tool. It can make a scholar seem dumb and simpletons seem brilliant. 

Starting a Blog

So far we have discussed how to decide the theme of a blog and how to keep a blog alive. Now, lets discuss a couple other things.

Compare the idea of your blog page to the similarity of a company with a website. It took me some time to understand this fully. I knew I wasn't a store selling merchandise or a municipal district sharing information about licensing or how to report a down tree. I was simply someone who saw an opportunity to document and share some of my everyday experiences. I don't refer to my blog as 'my webpage' although that's what it is. That is where some of the confusion happened while trying to gain more followers- we'll cover that in a later post.

So now that you know starting a blog is like having your own webpage. There are several free blogging platforms as well as paid ones. According to this review, several blogging platforms offer free mobile apps.  Are you still wondering, 'Why bother?' Here are some statistics about social media engagement by other bloggers.  Try not to get too hung up on the details. All you need to know is if the platform is compatible and available for your mobile device and if you are able to generate a post offline. You don't want to have to whip out your laptop and try to find somewhere with WIFI every time you're inspired to post to your blog.

Starting a Blog

Finding your blogging niche is critical to maintaining the vitality of your blog. Assume you've got past the first step of deciding the theme of your blog. Now we need to decide how you prefer to write. Are you tech savvy? Would you be more likely to keep hand-written drafts? Since we've already decided that you're an athletic movie-critic/photo-blogger, all you need to do is follow these steps in blogger to upload by attachment your mobile photos via email, choose whether you're posting immediately to your blog or if you want to add written notes later and voilà, a post is generated.

Now challenged yourself with generating a blog post per day or every couple days for the next several weeks. That's a great start. One day write about the movies you watched on the weekend or plan to see soon, the likeness of your professor or coach to the character on Office Space, whatever. The next day snap a picture of your books sprawled out over the desk, your friend parked in your driveway and the graded paper from class. Don't post/share/im it right away, instead hand write a few lines about how you're so glad the alarm went off on time so you didn't need to take the bus to practice. How you aced the first quiz in macro economics because you studied. Keep it simple, don't try to become a professional overnight.

Keep in mind this is still just a hobby. Use this to your advantage. Don't forget to allow yourself enough time for tweaking. All this means is once you've got a picture and written down a couple notes by hand putting the pieces together on your blog page will take about ten minutes to share a quality blog post.

Starting a Blog

Blogging has its setbacks just like any other hobby. When someone decides to take their hobby to the next level, some road maps for success should be researched.  Before diving head first into expectations of overnight success, simply decide what the theme of your blog will be.  Keep yourself on track.  Ask yourself some questions to get started.  Like these:

Do you write poetry? Are you bothered by the minimum wage discussion? Has anyone ever mentioned that you look like someone famous? Are you the go to person among your group of friends to solve a dilemma? Do you need to study some, allot, or not at all before taking a test to get an A? Is there something unique about your demographics or heritage? Are you a secret admirer? Are you looking foreword to a special occasion? Do people compliment you on what you wear? Do you play an instrument? What songs do you like listening to?  What food do people demand only you can bring to social gatherings?  Do you have a favorite radio station? Are you constantly taking photos? Do you spend time visiting particular sites on the Internet? Do you have a video game console? What kind of games do you like playing on it? Have you recently lost a loved one? Do you read magazine articles and/or book reviews regularly? Is your household geared toward following certain teams during basketball, football, soccer, baseball, hockey, etc. season? Are you an athlete, educator, or movie enthusiast?

Now that you've figured out for instance that- you like to snap photos during your daily commute to football practice -or- find yourself over reacting to the recommendations your friend gave you about a movie-Lets get ready to start a blog.

Take a moment to write down on paper some details about your existing social network profiles like passwords, screen names, email accounts and other log in information you might need to refer back to.  Having this info written down will save time later on.  

Now walk away.  Don't let your welcome wear off.  Treat your blog like a newly found treasure.  Wait.  Before you walk away jot down my page address and come back soon for the next installment of Starting a Blog!