Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

In ten days, Darrell and I are off to Las Vegas for our belated summer vacation and for BlogWorld ’08. I am so looking forward to seeing my dear (and somewhat goofy) friends Chris Brogan and Liz Strauss again, and many others! Plus, perhaps, learn a thing or two about blogging and social media. There is always something to learn in this field.

I’m also looking forward to a not so steep learning curve in navigating Vegas this time around. I’m the navigator in this duo, and I confess I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the dang airport – not a good sign for the rest of the trip! I didn’t know we had to take a tram to the main terminal area, and the signage sucked and staff was non-existent. Boy, I felt like a dweeb!

This time I know where the closest wheelchair washrooms are, after deplaning; I know the tram trick; I know where the wheelchair registration desk is at the hotel to avoid a line up. (Membership has its privileges!) And, I even know the crazy elevator route at Convention Center’s monorail station. (I’m sure some architect designed it that way merely to confused the disabled!)

This time to Vegas, I’ll look like I’ve been there before!

I am, however, feeling guilty for leaving my baby Faith home alone for that long. Hopefully Uncle Bob will be available for kitty-sitting. But, I have a feeling Faith will be up to her own mischief. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, I have a million things to do before we leave.

For the past several weeks, I have been playing with StumbleUpon – a great tool for discovering new-to-me website and blogs related to my interests. StumbleUpon is also for social networking and meeting people with similar tastes. Finally, if used correctly, StumbleUpon can also dramatically increase traffic to one’s own blog.

Getting Started with StumbleUpon

Getting started with StumbleUpon requires two simple steps:

1. Join StumbleUpon – you will be ask to set your username, other information and to select your interests (there are 501 to choose from!). Selecting your interests determines which pages StumbleUpon will show you. Pick a few for now until you get the hang of stumbling. You can always change them later.
2. Install the toolbar. (available for Internet Explorer and Firefox, a workaround exists for Opera and Safari)

Using StumbleUpon for Discovering Sites

With the toolbar installed, you can now begin stumbling by clicking on the Stumble! button. StumbleUpon will show you a page based on your interests.

Using the Stumble! button, I have recently discovered:

• Probably the Funniest Cat Video You’ll Ever See (no captioning, only audio is music)
• 10 Blogging Mistakes / Why Your Blog Struggles
• How to save money at your next conference
• 100 Web Tools for Learning with a Disability
• 10 Words to Avoid When Writing

Stumbling can be addictive yet quite educational!

When you come across a page you particularly like while stumbling, give it a thumb up!

If you particularly do not like a page, give a thumb down:

However, use the thumb down sparingly, for example, on:

• slow loading pages
• non existent or error laden pages
• ad-heavy pages
• voting pages from other social media
• pop-ups & pop-unders

If you do not have a strong opinion either way, it is best to move onto the next stumble. Save your thumbs up for the best content.

Using StumbleUpon for Networking

StumbleUpon is great for connecting with people with similar interests. To get started, feel free to add yours truly!

Submitting Pages to StumbleUpon

With StumbleUpon, you aren’t limited to thumbing up (or down) pages presented to you. You can also thumb up (or vote for) pages that you come across by other means, for example when reading your favourite blogs.

However, if you are the first to thumb up a page, you’ll be presented with a submission form:

To submit a page:

• Clean up the Title field – you want only the post/page title here
• Write a couple sentences about the page in the Review box.
• Select the most appropriate topic. There are 501 to choose from, including those from the dropdown menu.
• Add up to five tags, separated with a comma, either chosen from the topic list or keywords from the page. For example, tags appropriate for posts from this blog may include: activism, blogging, books, disabilities, health, humor (the American spelling, unfortunately), internet, technology, social-media, society, writing. Unlike with search engine optimization, the key here is to use broad terms for tags.
• Indicate whether content is adult content.
• Click on Submit This Site.

Caution: If you are the first to discover a page and you choose not to submit the form (say, if you are in a rush or if you aren’t sure what to write for a review), hitting your Back button or moving on to the next page can send that page into the StumbleUpon graveyard, which is not good! When presented with the Submission Form, please complete the brief review process.

To check whether a page has been reviewed, click the Comment button:

From there you can add a review if you wish.

One Final Tip

From your profile page, viewing My Favorites in the grid display provides thumbnails of pages you have stumbled. This is an easy way to see how many times you have stumbled pages from the same domain (e.g., www.doitmyselfblog.com). Over stumbling a domain can have a diminishing effect in terms of traffic, and can actually ban the domain and your account from StumbleUpon, which is a not what you want!

A good rule of thumb is one in twenty-five stumbles for the same domain or blog. Looking at this screen shot of my own stumbles, I did not do Disaboom any favours with these stumbles. This is another reason why learning how to use StumbleUpon correctly is so important. Doing the wrong thing, despite good intentions, can have disastrous consequences.

The occasion thumb up and review for yours truly, the Left Thumb Blogger, is very much appreciated! Too many will result in the opposite affect than you intended.

Additional Resources

I have found there is much more to using StumbleUpon than I realized. Here are a few resources to help you get started:

• StumbleUpon Guide
• StumbleUpon: Beyond The “Stumble” Button
• StumbleRush Course (I highly recommend this course. Note: the videos are not yet captioned.)

Happy stumbling!

This weekend, several Vancouver bloggers are spending 24-hours hunched over their computers or laptops and inhaling caffeine in support of a charity of their choice. They are posting every half hour on their blogs to raise money for their charity. That is 48 posts in 24 hours, folks!

Please give these bloggers a big round of applause:

• Colleen Vince – CKNW Orphan’s Fund
• Rebecca Bollwitt – Union Gospel Mission
• Raul Pacheco – BC Cancer Agency
• Shane Gibson – Manjari Sankurathri Memorial Foundation
• Karen Hamilton – David Suzuki Foundation
• Ayeza Garcia – Davao City High School
• isabella mori – Canadian Mental Health Association
• Danny Dang – BC SPCA Paws for a Cause
• Mehnaz Thawer – The Adoptive Families Association of BC
• Jenn Lowther/Nadia Nascimento – Lochmaddy.org
• Barbara Doduk – BC SPCA Paws for a Cause
• Chris Richardson – Lochmaddy Foundation
• Duane Storey – Union Gospel Mission

Show your support by visiting the blogs and leaving a few words of encouragement! Pledges are also greatly appreciated – complete the pledge form and, at the end of the weekend, you will receive an email asking you to follow through on your pledge and donate to the cause. Thanks kindly.

I’m going to start training now for Blogathon Vancouver 2009…

Blog on!

To reach my goal of becoming the first ever Six-Figure Left Thumb ProBlogger, I am realizing that will entail more than pumping out quality content on a consistent basis. It will entail significantly increasing blog traffic (plus countless other tasks). In the past couple of weeks, Do It Myself Blog has received two unexpected nods of approval that will hopefully translate into more traffic.

The first nod comes from Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop – an “online magazine rack” that aggregates the five most recent stories of the top 100 or so feeds of websites and blogs. My blog is now listed in the Disability Category – a great resource for the latest disability-related news, insights and opinions in the blogosphere. Thanks Guy for adding Do It Myself Blog to Alltop and for confirming my blog kicks ass!

The second nod came this morning in an email from Blogged.com, which, in part, reads, “We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style. After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.0 score (out of ten).” Wow, what a way to start my morning! Thanks.

Slowly but surely and with amazing support from the blogosphere, I know I’ll reach my goal.

Where the heck does the time go? 2008 is already half over! Canada Day is already here, marking the beginning of the second six months of the year.

I figure it is good time to review my goals for the year and see how I am doing.

My Contribution to the Blogosphere

My goal was to comment on ten blogs per week – five comments on blogs I had previously commented on to further strengthen those relationships, and five comments on new-to-me blogs to expand my network by forming new relationships.

Well, results are less than stellar. Some weeks Friday comes around and I realize I haven’t made any comments! By now, I should be approximately halfway to 520 (or 260) comments; yet, my total is only 89.

However, I am not including the comments I make on Disaboom blogs since they don’t link back to this blog. Besides, reading Yaro Starok’s Blog Profits Blueprint, I’ve learned that blog comments create traffic streams, not traffic rivers. Although, my intention was to contribute to the blogosphere, not to generate traffic – that’s a side benefit of leaving comments.

Am I beating myself up for not meeting my goal? Nope! Those weeks that I can do better, I will try. The world will not end if I don’t reach 520 comments by December 31st.

My Word for the Year

I chose FOCUS as my word for 2008. To me, FOCUS entails minimizing my technologically-induced ADHD, decluttering and simplifying my surroundings, multi-tasking only when appropriate – tasks requiring my full attention will receive it. The results have been mixed.

When my husband had an unexpected two-week hospital stay in March, nothing else mattered. I was focused on what was happening with him and getting him well and home again, as I should be.

My desk remains fairly clutter free. The rest of my office still needs decluttering – like I have had time!

After blogging at Disaboom for five months, I finally found my blogging groove there and have a direction for that blog. That made writing June’s posts much easier because I wasn’t scrounging for post topics. June is the first month I maxed out the number of paying posts I can write for that blog. Can I continue that through July and beyond?

Reading ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett reconfirmed, yet again, that blogging is my future and that I can make a decent income from it – if I focus and work off my bootie! I publicly declared my goal of attending SOBCon 09 – the business school for bloggers – to learn how to become a better and more effective blogger. My ultimate goal is to become the first ever Six-Figure Left Thumb ProBlogger!

Launching Accessibility 100 has provided my blog with some direction and focus.

But, I still suck at curbing my technologically-induced ADHD! I’m easily distracted by email, Twitter or whatever rather than focusing on the task at hand. There is definitely room for improvement. I’ll keep working to maser my high distractibility over the next six months.

My Bucket List

Wow, search engines love my bucket list! Currently, this is the top-ranking entry page on my blog. Go figure!

• Spend more time with my kitty purring in my ear. – I do whenever she decides to cuddle.
• Listen more to my husband’s beating heart. – We’ve talk quite a bit and I try to really listen to him. I also like listening to his heart beat; it’s such a comforting and reassuring sound.
• Write love letters to him. – None yet. Expressing what he means to me is difficult to put into words.
• Find a way to get to the north shore to watch the eagles soar. – I still need that magic carpet ride!
• Meet more of my invisible friends. – Yes! I’ve met Suzie Cheel in Australia and Todd Jordan from Missouri!
• Be in the ‘real’ world more. – Hmm, how should I measure “more”?
• Connect with more of my invisible friends in a real way, if I can’t meet them in person yet. – I’m working on it.
• Become more physically active. – In this heat? Are you kidding!
• Finish selling the first print run of my autobiography. – Autographed copies are still available!
• Continue searching for a cp-friendly bra. – Still searching! (I don’t believe I included this here.)
• See Anne Murray in concert, finally! (I’ve wanted to see her for years and she is finally coming to town on May 5th!) – She was fabulous!
• Get organized for when I do kick the bucket. – It’s a good thing I haven’t kicked the bucket yet!
• Make a positive difference or impact on people’s lives. – I hope I am. You, my readers, are in a better position to say whether I’m succeeding here or not.
• Reconnect with my penpal Paivi and my Brownie friend Karen. – Yes, I’ve managed to find email addresses for both and have contacted them!

That is my six-month progress report. Not bad, eh?

How are you doing with your 2008 goals? Are you still on track or do you need to refocus?