Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

Motivational Speaker

Sharing My 3 Favourite Blogs for Your Reading Pleasure

Filed under: Blogging — by at 4:30 pm on Tuesday, November 15, 2011

After sharing my 7 lessons learned from traveling, I discovered another one I need to learn before my next conference: how to protect myself against wicked air-conditioning?

The Los Angeles Convention Centre could have saved a bundle on its hydro bill by turning down the air-conditioning. By the second day of BlogWorld Expo, many people were coughing and sniffing. My scratchy throat told me what was coming next.

Rather than Darrell and I spending our only “vacation” day this year exploring Hollywood, I spent the day in bed. Disappointed? Yes, definitely. Regret? No, I don’t think so. I was in no shape to go out. BlogWorld will be in LA for at least two years. We will try again next year; perhaps go down a day early and do Hollywood before the conference.

While I finish recovering from this nasty cold and subsequent allergic reaction to Vicks VapoRub (the first such reaction in my thirty-fifteen years), I like to share three of my favourite blogs, which you might also enjoy reading:

Happy reading!

Feel free to share your favourite blogs in the comment section below.

If you enjoyed this post, consider buying me a chai tea latte. Thanks kindly.

Random Posts

Feeding Christmas Dinner to Those Most in Need

Filed under: Blogging — by at 7:13 pm on Friday, December 17, 2010

In the last two years, you have generously fed 160 people in need a Christmas dinner by buying “The Best of The Left Thumb Blogger” ebook to support the Union Gospel Mission’s (UGM) Christmas Campaign.

I’d like to ask again for your help with feeding warm Christmas dinners to those who are truly in need, those who are struggling to find enough food to eat and a warm place to sleep.

This year, rather than compiling selected blog posts into an ebook and selling it for a fixed price with the proceeds going to the UGM, I’m offering a list of selected posts with a ChipIn Widget – enabling you to read the posts and make a donation, if any, comfortable for you. (Click the orange “ChipIn!” button to securely donate via PayPal.) Donations will be accepted until Tuesday,  December 21st midnight (pacific time).

Why these particular posts?

These ones chronicle a journey I have been on for the past few years: from “non-verbal” to speech impaired to well-traveled speaker, with the occasional insight along the way.

Happy reading and thank you.

Merry Christmas.

If you enjoyed this post, consider buying me a chai tea latte. Thanks kindly.

Related Posts

When a Topic Outgrows a Blog…Start a New Blog!

Filed under: Blog Accessibility,Blogging — by at 8:35 pm on Thursday, October 28, 2010

Early last year I declared my intention to combine two passions – my love for blogging as a way for communicating and sharing and my experience and expertise in the field of web accessibility – to assist bloggers in creating blogs accessible to everyone.

I did write several posts here on blog accessibility. However, I was continually torn between risking driving away my non-bloggy readers and not developing the topic in enough detail to build a following in that area. The topic desperately needed its own space.

The solution?

I did what almost any blogger in a similar situation would do…last month I launched Blog Accessibility where I can completely dive into the topic, explore it in depth and really serve those bloggers who want to make their blogs accessible to people with disabilities.

This week I began a post series entitled “The 7 Sins of Inaccessible Blogs” and I’ve relaunched Blog Accessibility Mastermind. If you’re curious how to make your blog accessible to people with disabilities who have $175 billion in discretionary spending power in the United States alone, please join me over at Blog Accessibility.

For those of you who have no interest in techy, bloggy stuff, have no fear! This blog isn’t going anywhere – I’ll still be blogging here too. If you have any burning questions I’ve yet to address on this blog, ask away…

If you enjoyed this post, consider buying me a chai tea latte. Thanks kindly.

Random Posts

What Do I Do When My Blog Flips Me the Bird?

Filed under: Blogging — by at 11:59 pm on Saturday, August 28, 2010

Religiously every Saturday (unless I’m out of town or have a more pressing obligation), I record my blog stats – a combination of stats from SiteMeter, Technorati, Alexa, Google Analytics, Post Rank and Aweber. I probably don’t then analyze them like I could, but I find recording them in Excel and comparing them to previous week’s unexplainably comforting.

Imagine my surprise today when they flipped me the bird!

A bar graph showing seven months of consistent blog traffic with spike in the middle month

What? After all of the love, time and effort I give you, you have the audacity to flip me the bird? What gives? What are you actually telling me?

I did some digging because, as a curious blogger always on the look out for good post ideas, that’s what’s I do, constantly. I found:

  • In February I published 11 posts
  • March: 9 posts
  • April: 8 posts
  • May: 5 posts
  • June: 5posts
  • July: 6 posts
  • August: 6 posts (so far)

Except for February and March, the time of the Olympics and the Paralympics when I allowed myself time to play and to blog about it, my monthly post numbers have been fairly consistent. Low, but consistent, hence I passed the first rule of blogging.

Looking deeper, the traffic spike in May was due to my post The iPad as an Affordable Communicator: Initial Review, which was written from the heart and was timely as May was when the iPad was released in other countries. To date, that post has resulted in 159 tweets, 11 trackbacks, and 32 comments – my most popular post ever! And, that bodes well for another project I have in the works.

However, unfortunately, that dramatic traffic spike did not have any long term benefits; at least, not yet. The number of email subscribers did not increase. The post didn’t even include an Amazon link for those moved to purchase an iPad in the moment – something for which I’ve kicked myself.

After May’s spike, the traffic dropped down to exactly it was pre-iPad post. Granted, some of that drop is likely due to readers out enjoying summer. Why read blogs when its gorgeous outside!

Digging even deeper, I revisited my goal to comment on 10 blogs per week and realized I failed terribly with 41 comments in that same 7-month period.

Yes, I have been crazily busy, I’ve been out of town twice, and other such reasons/excuses. But most every other blogger has a similar story. If I want more traffic, more comments, more of an engaged blog community, then I need to visit more blogs, contribute more comments and be more engaged in the blogosphere. That’s good blogging karma. Simply retweeting a link isn’t enough of a contribution, in my opinion.

(Why I would want more traffic, an engaged community is a good question and perhaps the topic of another post.)

Last night on Twitter, I discovered the free iPad app Flipboad – “a personalized, social magazine”. I’m curious to check out this, to see if it’ll be easier for getting all of the links and blogs, which I’d like to read, in one place. Then, commenting and contributing might become easier.

A fictional bar graph with two spikes resembling the 'Rock on' hand signHopefully, then, my blog will tell me, You rock!

What is your blog telling you?

Technorati Tags: ,,,

If you enjoyed this post, consider buying me a chai tea latte. Thanks kindly.

Related Posts

Welcoming Plain Talkers from Virginia

Filed under: Blogging — by at 10:00 am on Thursday, July 29, 2010

I’d like to welcome attendees of the Plain Talk Conference held today in Alexandria, Virginia.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences about “Living with Cerebral Palsy in the Web 2.0 Era”.

I’ve put together a short list of my favourite blog posts to offer as a starting point in exploring blogs:

And a few of the bloggers with disabilities or with loved ones with disabilities whom I follow include:

Finally, in case you’re wondering, here’s how I added talking captions to my PowerPoint presentation.

Thanks again for stopping by. Be sure to subscribe to my blog posts via email.

If you enjoyed this post, consider buying me a chai tea latte. Thanks kindly.

Random Posts

Next Page »