Category: blogging

Blogging vs Other Social Media

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn, social media, Twitter44 Comments

It’s a fight to the death!

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Well, okay, not quite that, but bear with me for a bit longer.

The other week I gave a short talk to my writing group on reasons a writer should be on social media and, more importantly, why they needed a blog. I’m not going to go into this in any detail now, but I promised I’d summarise what I said in bullet points, and then thought it might be worth putting up here to see if anyone felt like adding anything to it.

So…

Why?

  • As a writer, you need to have a social media presence to sell books, to get known. Even if you are a published author.
  • On a social media platform, you are aiming to get shares for your posts. The more shares, the more people will see them.
  • It’s all about engaging with customers, fans and critics.
  • There are a huge number of platforms, but just a few examples that I have experience of:
  • Facebook is the biggest, and the most active, with a high rate of engagement. Having an Author Page is a good way to engage through backstories, questions, surveys and daily updates (yours or your work), ‘Behind the scenes’ articles.
  • Linkedin has many users, but a low rate of engagement. A business page can be useful.
  • Twitter is short and succinct. A sort of ‘Marketing Lite’. Posts appear fleetingly and then are essentially gone, though, unless they generate lots of likes and retweets.
  • Goodreads is like ‘background’ media – people need to seek you out to find you.
  • But the number one way to be found is through blog posts.
  • Like all good social media, blogs encourage visitors to return. Unlike ordinary websites, they are updated regularly and the reader can be alerted to each new post.
  • There are many other reasons to blog, viz:
  1. Teaches you to write more professionally – you have an audience
  2. Discipline
  3. Practice
  4. Feedback from people outside your usual circle
  5. Networking with others
  6. You can upload links to other social media
  7. There is space to write more in-depth than on other social media
  8. To review work for other writers
  9. To explore ideas and get feedback on these
  • A blog is simply a website with posts being regularly replaced, although the old ones are still on the website to read.
  • There are many blogging platforms, but I use WordPress.
  • One advantage of WP is the ease by which readers can see you have a new post.
  • Whichever platform you choose, it should have clear instructions and / or tutorials to help you set up.
  • It should also allow you to block spammers, remove adverts (by upgrading), monetise your site, and change the layout. In other words, have as much control as possible over its appearance.
  • It can be really helpful if the platform provides diagnostics on data such as page views, visitors, likes, comments, and links to and from your site. This helps you plan and refine how you run it.

How?

  • Purchase your own address! It is not very expensive, but it makes your blog more personal, more professional, and the address more memorable. And the host cannot arbitrarily close it down, which might happen with a free site.
  • Start by going and looking at other blogs, to find what you like and might work for you. then use your Site Builder Tool to create your site.
  • Once you begin writing your first post make sure you are using a clear font that stands out.
  • Keep the post around 500 words, certainly under 1000. When you have a decent following, you may get away with more, but new readers will be put off by longer ones. (As a guide, this post has 945 words).
  • Add a picture or two to help it stand out and look less daunting, but not too many. And not just dozens of selfies, unless you are an established celebrity. It’s a real turn off.
  • Make the post interesting! Put some good stuff in first, to get the readers’ attention. And don’t save all the good stuff until the end, as readers might not otherwise get there.
  • Use categories and tabs on each post to help new readers find them.

Issues

  • Don’t feel under pressure to post to a fixed schedule.
  • Don’t be afraid to change the subjects you post about – it’s all under your control and there are no rules on it. Let it develop organically.
  • Don’t be afraid to take a break if you need to. It’s very easy to get into a mindset where you think you need to do all these things to a rigid schedule.
  • Don’t obsess about the number of followers you have or likes / comments you get. Chasing them is counter-productive.
  • Find some blogs YOU like, and follow them, commenting when you have something to say. That way you will begin to get visits in return and then, hopefully, follows back. It is pointless following a blog that doesn’t interest you, just hoping to get a follow back. You want followers who will be interested in what you have to offer.
  • And on that subject, if a new follower has a site that doesn’t interest you, there is no obligation for you to follow them back.
  • And don’t feel obliged to comment on / like / or even read every post on blogs you follow.
  • Do remember that copyright law applies exactly the same on the internet as it does in the real world. If you copy a photo or article from the internet without permission and post it on your blog be prepared for possible legal unpleasantness. I always use my own, just to be safe. I think it looks better, too.

Feed Me! (2)

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, posts, Re-posting33 Comments

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There are millions and millions of bloggers out there.

That must mean there are a huge number of talented people beavering away writing posts that would really interest me, but who I have never heard of. And looking through the list of those I do follow, I can see that a large proportion of them have not posted for six months or a year or more. I hope that’s nothing to do with me…

But that must mean it’s time to track down some more to follow.

So if you have a particular favourite or two you would like to suggest I go and take a gander at, please leave a link in the comments box.

In particular, I like to read posts on India and Nepal, creative writing, and environmental issues, but my interests are by no means limited to these. I also follow quite a few others who post about the most diverse things.

I tried this exercise a year and a half ago, and the result was half a dozen splendid new (to me) bloggers to follow.

So, let’s do it again!

My contribution, then, are the following two bloggers:

Delhi-based artist Prenita Dutt blogs as Indian Saffron here and really deserves a much wider audience for her beautiful paintings.

Ellen Hawley is an American living in Cornwall, England, who blogs about the eccentricities, madness and just plain weirdness of much of British life. Full of dry humour and always very readable, her blog can be found here.

*Sigh*

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, comment52 Comments

My apologies, folks.

Sorry if I seem to be a little distant at the moment.

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I seem to be going through another of those phases where I find it difficult to write anything meaningful. Even commenting on other blogs feels like a chore and all I really want to do is chuck a bag over my shoulder, get away from the town, and wander off into the distance.

So don’t take it personally!

Grrr.

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, butterflies, oman, tigers, Uncategorized21 Comments

Grrr? Well, the reason I’ve been absent this last week or so is a trapped nerve in my neck that has been stupidly painful and stopped me doing most things I want to do. It’s on the mend now, but the last thing I’ve wanted to do up until now is work at a keyboard.

And Grrr! it’s a tiger.

Not a very good photograph, admittedly. It was taken over thirty years ago when I worked in Oman, and is of the butterfly known there as the Plain Tiger. What I remember in particular about it is the way it flies, or glides to be more exact. Unlike many butterflies that fly with continual, rapid wingbeats, the Tiger flaps a couple of times and then glides gracefully, as in the photograph. It is most impressive, and very lovely – especially where there is very little else in the way of insect life.

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It’s one of those butterflies that is very widespread, although it does not migrate. I’ve seen it in India, and apparently it is met with in South East Asia and Australasia, too.

I’ve got butterflies on my brain at the moment, as the weather has turned really lovely here and I’m suddenly seeing lots of them, even in the garden.

So on that note, I’m off to sit in the garden in the sun again for a while with a cup of tea and a book, resting my poorly neck and whimpering pathetically to myself.

Sad, isn’t it?

Oi, That’s My Content!

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, copyright infringement, creative, intellectual property, legal issues, photographs, theft23 Comments

Again, a disclaimer. I am not a legal expert, and you may feel it necessary to use authoritative sources to check the information I am presenting here.

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In my last post I talked about the potential issues around using someone else’s art on the cover of your book.

Equally, you can fall foul of copyright law very easily when blogging. Or Twittering or Instagramming or anything else like that. I am truly astonished by the number of bloggers who appear to be unaware that copying a photograph off the internet and putting it on their blog leaves them open to legal action. And putting a note under the photograph reading ‘copied from x or y’ merely makes it easier for people to notice. There are many sites where you can download free images to use this way, but taking them from others is asking for trouble.

If it comes to the attention of the copyright owner, the least of your problems could be a ‘Cease and desist’ email from a lawyer, warning you to remove the image immediately. It is also possible that a fine is demanded, with the threat of legal action. Don’t ignore this or treat it lightly. It means Trouble.

This is one reason I don’t re-blog posts as often as I might. If I re-blog one with a dodgy image, I am also leaving myself open to legal action.

But what if it comes to your attention that your work has been taken this way? Let’s say someone steals your pictures and content, and puts them up on their site without permission or accreditation. I don’t mean a re-blog, which is a different thing altogether (as long as you follow the rules!) but Intellectual Property Theft, which is what I’ve been talking about all along.

What can you do about this?

Firstly, you might prefer just to grin and bear it, annoying though it is. After all, it’s just a blog post and is it worth the fuss? Although if it was a site making money from your work, that might be another thing altogether.

Obviously, you might want to take legal action, in which case you will check carefully what it might cost you and the chances of success. There are many reasons it could be a costly and difficult process.

(Of course, this is no reason to think you can break the law with impunity. You may well come up against a determined copyright owner)

Personally, I’m inclined to send a message to the infringer along the lines of: ‘I’ll put up a link to your blog from mine. The bad news is it will include key words such as ‘property theft’ and ‘(the infringer’s name)’ which will be found by search engines for as long as the page exists’ which might well deter them. After all, it is common knowledge that potential employers, for example, tend to have a good look on the internet for information on potential employees.

It might work, I suppose. Has anyone had this problem and had to deal with it?

Nice To Meet You!

On By Mick CanningIn A Good Place, Art, Author, blogging, books, Fiction, Making Friends with the Crocodile, The Assassin's Garden, travel, writing26 Comments

It’s been a difficult time. There’s been stuff. And we all know what stuff does, don’t we? Well? Don’t we? Yes, you at the back, boy! Tompkins Minor! Well, what does it do?

‘Gets in the way, Sir.’

Louder, boy!

‘GETS IN THE WAY, SIR!’

That’s right, Tompkins. It gets in the way.

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Stuff getting in the way.

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Stuff not getting in the way.

And with all this stuff flying around, stuff I’m finding it rather difficult to deal with, sometimes it’s as much as I can do just to leave a ‘like’ on a post. Even posting a comment seems too much like hard work, although I want to. So I press ‘like’ to simply show my appreciation of the post.

But I’m working on it. I haven’t gone away, I’m just a little snowed under with…stuff.

And because it’s a new year (oh yes, Happy New Year to you all. Have you broken all your resolutions, yet? I have.), I’m thinking it might be a good time to re-introduce myself to the blogging world. So, this is me:

I have published one novel, Making Friends With the Crocodile, which is set in rural Northern India and is about the way society treats women there (and, by extension, in most places still). This has had good reviews, and I’m especially pleased with the ones from Indian women, who obviously know a thing or two about the subject! It is available as e-book as well as Print On Demand paperback.

The first draft of my second novel, provisionally titled A Good Place, is completed and I shall begin to edit it at the end of February. This story is set in a fictitious hill station in Northern India populated by a mixture of the English who remained in India after Partition, a few English travellers, and, naturally, the indigenous Indians there. In the meantime I am also working on another novel, the first in a series of 3 or 4, provisionally titled The Assassins Garden and set in both Persia and India in the 1600’s. This one I like to think of as being a mixture of ‘The Arabian Nights’ and Neil Gaiman. It starts innocuously enough, but rapidly becomes darker. The later books will also have elements of Gothic fiction and Victorian Detective stories in them. Possibly rather ambitious, I admit, but I have already written quite a large proportion of several of them.

I also write short stories and occasional poetry. At least, I call it occasional, but I do seem to be writing more of it than I used to.

And then I paint. I try to sell some of these through my shop on Etsy, although in the past I used to exhibit regularly at exhibitions and in various galleries (and sold quite well!). Perhaps I should investigate that route again.

There are links to Etsy and to my books on the sidebar, if you wish to go and have a gander.

And, when I can, I travel. Preferably with my wife. India and Nepal are favourite destinations, but so too are places closer to home in the UK, especially long-distance walks.

But, that’s enough about me for the moment. Possibly a little more next time.

Deadlines and Breadlines

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, opinion, Pressures32 Comments

My loyal follower will have noticed that I have a tendency to drop off of the grid for a while from time to time.

I do that, yes. Sometimes I feel I don’t really have anything worth saying, and at other times I feel there is just too much (self-imposed) pressure on me to come up with a new blog post or to keep up with all those I follow.

Some people thrive on deadlines and work best that way. Others dread them, especially those who have regular confidence and anxiety issues.

Dreadlines, indeed.

I’m lucky in that I’ve never really had the kind of job where I have someone shouting at me constantly to produce plans or reports by this or that deadline, or else I’ll be sacked and out of work and the family will be thrown out of the house onto the streets and starve boo-hoo. Yet I set myself the task or writing a new blog post once a week or twice a week, or whenever I feel I should be doing that.

Preposterous, isn’t it?

I enjoy blogging, and enjoy following other blogs, but every now and again I wonder why on earth I don’t just go and spend the day walking in the countryside or cleaning the house or exercising the badger or something.

And that is why I’ve been rather quiet for a week or two.

So, here’s a picture of a small boy and three sharks on a donkey in the desert as some sort of recompense for you.

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You’re welcome.

Back Again

On By Mick CanningIn A Good Place, Author, blogging, books, break, poetry, short stories, Work in progress, writing48 Comments

Well, I am back.

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I never seriously contemplated abandoning my blog, although I admit there were times I felt tempted. And although I regularly visited my Facebook account, I didn’t post anything to my author page and only really visited to stay in contact with some people.

My sharp-eyed viewer will notice a couple of new pages on this blog. There is now a page with links to all the short stories I have published, to make it easier to locate them should you wish to read or re-read them.

There is also a page of links to all the poems published on here – I had no idea there were so many!

You’re welcome.

There was a lot going on in my life and I needed a lot of space to just try and sort some of it out. Some of it is still on-going, but I think I’m in a position to come back and give a reasonable amount of time to blogging.

But, as well as doing life, I have been busy writing. Probably the main thing I have managed to do is take my stop-start novel set in a fictitious hill station in Northern India from around 35,000 words up to the point where it is an almost completed first draft of just over 70,000 words. And I have a working title for it: A Good Place.

I’ve half-written a few blog posts, although I had intended to prepare lots more. Oh well. For the moment I will go back to posting roughly twice a week and see how that goes.

And I’ve faffed around a bit with a short story. All in all, other than the novel, not a lot. But I am pleased with the novel so far. I sorted out the sub-plots and brought in a number of new characters. And it is finally at the point where I can allow myself to think ‘Yes, almost there!’

And I don’t think until now I’d really understood how absolutely driven it was possible to be when writing; how the Work In Progress can come to utterly dominate your waking life – incessantly thinking about it and tweaking and refining the plots and characters, almost to the exclusion of all else.

Clearly, I need to get it finished.

A (Temporary) Farewell

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, break, Work in progress, writing83 Comments

I have decided to absent myself from WordPress World for a while.

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I frequently need to take a large step back from the world and give myself some time and space to re-charge my batteries, and also to think deeply about the importance I attach to whatever is going on in my life at the moment.

Those things that cause stress tend to assume a greater importance than they probably deserve to, while the things I do for my own pleasure tend to make me feel unreasonably guilty about giving them the time that others might want.

While there is so much going on, and so little time, I seem able to devote less and less of it to either writing blogs or following others. I have noticed I am leaving far fewer comments, and tending to skim read far more than I used to.

Clearly, I need a break.

But while I am doing that, I mean to write a number of blog posts without feeling under pressure to finish them by some sort of deadline, so that when I reappear I might have something to post that is worth reading.

Hopefully, I will be able to make progress on my book, short stories and poems.

And the odd painting or two.

See you later.

1000 Up

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, followers, posts68 Comments

Apparently, I how have 1000 followers.

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

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But, really?

I suppose this should be reason to celebrate, or at least look pleased with myself, but let’s just stop a moment and examine the figures a little.

Out of those 1,000 followers, 150 of those are my Facebook friends.

Because that’s what WordPress does, it automatically adds them to your tally. No matter if they are all blog followers anyway, they add the lot. So lots have been counted twice.

So that takes out around 50.

And of the rest of my Facebook friends, a good half never, ever, visit my blog (fickle lot!).

So, another 50 gone. And we’re down to 900.

But out of those 900, there are a lot who have left the blogging scene completely. Without trawling through every one of them, it is fairly easy to take a random clutch of them (quite a large clutch, I must say) and go to see whether they are still active. It’s hardly a scientific method, but approximately one third have either disappeared completely, or haven’t posted for three months or more, leading me to suspect they’ve packed up.

So, down to about 600.

Of those 600, again looking at a few random clutches, after their initial contact and ‘follow’, I don’t think a good third ever came back again; they probably just hoped to get a follow back.

Down to about 400.

And out of those, about a third again don’t seem to have visited for at least a year.

So, I suspect the number of actual, active followers is close to 250, or a quarter of the ‘official’ figure.

But what does it matter, anyway? The point about posting is that someone should read what has been written, and then hopefully interact by commenting occasionally, or at least ‘liking’ now and again. It’s not compulsory, of course, but it would be odd if a regular visitor never did either. So as long as I get a decent number of regular readers who do interact with my posts, I’ll be a happy bunny.

On the other hand, if this post gets 1000 likes, I will eat my words.