About this Blog

About this blog...

Here's a messy blog devoted to all things (procedural, substantive, provocative, whimsical, etc.) issuing from/whirling around my Writing for the World Wide Web ("Web Writing") and Writing for New Media ("WNM") classes. Consider it a resource, a touchstone, my talk aloud protocol and class log, a homiletic platform, a stone tossed high into the air, a gyration in multiple hula hoops, a whatever makes sense for you. [Jeff Schiff, Columbia College Chicago]

18 November 2010 Agenda

A Killer Blog Deserves its Own Home

Got a killer-blog-in-the-making? As we’ve discussed, having the “blogspot.com” domain name attached to your blog may not be optimal. First: it likely requires that your viewer input an annoying number of characters. Next: it reflects an amateurism, of sorts--like holding your big brother's hand while strolling down the digital boulevard.

Custom Domain
Best way to get beyond this fraidy cat reliance is to associate your blog with a custom domain name. Fortunately, that’s an easy and cheap do, especially if you use Google’s nearly automated process. 

Here’s how.

Step 1: Buy Your Domain (in this case, from Google, for $10)
a)  Access the Publishing tab (Dashboard | Settings | Publishing).
b)  Click on the Custom Domain link.
c)  Enter a domain name and type in the address box.
d)  Click on the Check Availability button.

• You may have to try a few before your hit paydirt.

  

e)  Click on the Continue to Registration button.
f)   Enter the required information in the domain registration box.
g)  Click on the I Accept button.
h)  Complete the payment process.

• Google will automatically take care of the migration and redirection process. It may take as long as 48 hours.

Step 2: Let People Know

a)  Post an explanatory note in your current blog, bearing the new URL.
b)  Send and resend alert emails over, say, a month.

• And, that's it. You'll end up with a seemingly custom and proprietary blog at an appropriate address of your choosing.

Followed my own instructions, and, Eureka, you can now view my class blog at my custom domain site: write4web.org. Enjoy. And, send me post suggestions.

Class Agenda: 10 November 2010

• Post your PowerPoint slide shows for free at SlideShare.
• User-Driven Writing WWB: Visiting Nebraska, with Comments 
• Reveal It

Agenda: Google Docs Version

Reveal It: Thoughts on New Post Alerts

At some point in your blogging careers, you may actually wish to attract a readership. While there are many ways to publicize your blog and gain a regular following, one of the best ways is to manually send a new post alert email to your followers.

How to Frame It?

Like much in the blogosphere, you’d do well to point hard and make it scanable. Readers want to get in and get out of your alert—in the same way they want easy doors and exists to and from your blog posts. So, show them using headings, a word or phrase presented in exaggerated font, a color callout, an icon, etc. Lead them. Tease them.

What to Include?

Your blog is comprised of terse and pointed posts; so, you are asking, “how much to share in your alerts?” I don’t want to bait and bore. Good thought. Therefore (drum roll): the longer your average blog post, the longer your alert can be. At some point, though, you run into alert bloat. Think “nibble,” rather than detailed summary.

How to Sound?

Consider your alerts a tonal extension of your blog. If your blog whines, whine. If your blog is clean-cut and oozes corporate speak, be clean and ooze more. Stay in character.

That includes how you address and how you close your email.

Samples

Here are a few actual alerts I recently received. Use the comment box to let me know which you prefer, and why?

New PWP posted

Posted a new PWP with info about training for and running a marathon.

Peace,
xxx

***

Halloween isn't over until...

Now! The Simpsons Halloween special, Treehouse of Horror, has aired and my final post on the Halloween films is up on REELapse. Enjoy! Comment! Be afraid! Be very afraid! And vote for which films you'd like to see discussed next. I am leaning toward Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I can be swayed. http://reelapse.blogspot.com/

I said good day!
-xxx

***

New Blog Post!!!

Hey guys,

Just letting you know that I just put up something new for my PWP. I'm spilling the details of my dining room this week. The personal story portion that I'll be posting later this week to do with the dining room should also be juicyyyyyyyyy!

I know those of you who have been reading and commenting on my blog have been a little bit confused about the direction I'm heading in. Hopefully it will prove to make more sense as arcane pigeonhole develops a little bit more but I blogged about what I'm doing in my class blog for those who are interested.

I also posted for my WWB on Nebraska for those of you who are interested, most likely just Jeff, but you can find that here.

Thanks everyone!

xxx

***

Yay! A new Harry Potter post!

Hello everyone!

There is a new post on my Harry Potter blog, It's Real For Us, that I would love for you all to check out! And BONUS: This week includes a Harry Potter related quiz you can take to figure out which Hogwarts house you would be sorted into! Eh, eh? Don't worry, you can thank me for the fun and excitement later.

Also, I have updated my WWB with our post about popular Nebraska attractions, which I know you all are just DYING to read, so feel free to check that out as well! (Or, you know, just Jeff...)

Hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing weekend! I know I did! It was my last weekend as an under-ager (I turn 21 on Saturday) so I embraced it by watching Disney movies and eating popcorn in bed all day! Yay!

See you all on Thursday,

xxx

http://chastainwwbfall10.blogspot.com/

http://itisrealforus.blogspot.com/

***

NEW PWP AND WWB

hope you all had a great weekend.

check out my post on Nebraska here.  gotta say, now i sort of want to visit Nebraska.

go peek at my newest PWP post here.

see y'all Thursday! (i was born in Dallas, give me a break.)

xxx

Agenda: 4 November 2010

(Re) engineering Paragraphs

Crack the Hood

Chances are--unless required to crack the hood of your blog posts and do some serious analysis--you couldn't declare with certainty what type of paragraphs you most often employ:

• Chronological (Narrative)
• Hierarchical (Most-to-least-important)
• Cause-Effect (This/then)
• Spatial (top-to-bottom, left-to-right description/commentary)
• Topic-Restriction-Illustration (General-to-specific)
• Enumeration (Counting up or down with numbers or bullets)

Narrative: King by Default 

Given that first-draft/last-draft is de rigueur in the blogosphere, most bloggers default to the narrative schema--whether or not it supports their rhetorical enterprise.

That's because most of us are narrative beings.

Ask 100 people to "tell" you about their home, and 90% will narrate a tour of the place, starting when they open the front door and ending when they've concluded the proceedings--as if they were guiding you by the minute through their place.

Narrative may be the perfect type of paragraph for a personal-narrative blog recounting stories, but it certainly is less valuable for--or runs counter to the project of, say--a blog cataloging a Chicago soundscape, or presenting novel details for a what-I-learned-today project.

Are You Asking Yourself the Right Question(s)

Which all brings me to the purpose of this post: are you just a prisoner to your deeply ingrained paragraph habits? Are you taking the easy (narrative) way out? Is every one of your paragraphs a rough duplicate? Or, are you getting deep under that hood and testing each paragraph against the big paragraph question:

• Is the organization appropriate to purpose and audience?

Need more on paragraphing? The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina has something to tell you.  And so does Trent Lorcher.