MamaBlogga

We interrupt our previously scheduled Making Mother’s day merry post for a public service announcement.

Today is RSS Awareness Day (and no, I didn’t make that up: see RSSDay.org). Tired of visiting all your favorite blogs only to discover that they don’t have any updates? Maybe it’s time to look at converting to RSS.

RSS, which is usually said to stand for “Really Simple Syndication,” is an easy way to have updates from your favorite blogs sent to you—either to your email or to an RSS reader.

If this sounds appealing to you, check out my post on What’s RSS? to learn more. Already using RSS in a reader and your blog? The post also has tips for getting more out of your blog’s RSS feed!

If RSS still sounds rather mysterious, you might want to review the video in the What’s RSS post for an easy-to-understand explanation of how it all works!

My readers’ most popular feed readers are Google Reader, which is what I use (you can also use the iGoogle personalized homepage under this one) and Bloglines. To receive updates from MamaBlogga in your RSS reader or email inbox, click on the image or text links to the right!

Back to your regularly scheduled blogging, already in progress.

Three weeks ago, I gave a couple tips on making photo posts—and then I turned the mic over to you for your input on making photo posts GREAT. Here’s some of the collective wisdom of MamaBlogga readers!:

from the original post, seconded by readers in the comments:

Resize your pictures before uploading them
Figure out how wide your post column is and in a photo editor, resize the image to fit. It looks a lot better than making your browser resize them. And if you make your pictures too wide (post them exactly as they come off your camera, for example), they can break your blog or your readers’ feed readers. We’re probably not going to scroll side-to-side to see pictures of your kids. Sorry.

(Exceptions: if you upload photos to Flickr or Photobucket and they make some good looking, smaller versions, or if you use Blogger. They resize them to look good pretty consistently.)

Reader MamaBugs concurred:

Resizing is vastly important! So is arranging the photos neatly so they don’t seem like they just thrown in the post.

Use pictures in “regular” posts
This is a principle I know (but usually don’t apply) from my professional blogging (i.e. not MamaBlogga), and yet I hadn’t really thought about applying it in the “momblogosphere.” Several readers pointed out the advantages to this method:
Christy:

My favorite posts are those with photos. I have over 150 blogs in my reader and if there are no photos, I often will just skim the text to see if it catches my eye.

Deb, Mom of 3 girls:

I like seeing posts with pictures - I definitely prefer those to ones with just one long paragraph of text. For my own posts, I usually try to either add in funny captions or stick to one topic or event in each post to help with the onslaught of photos…

And warillever gives some great examples:

. . . I can recommend one mommy blog that uses pictures extremely well — Notes from the Trenches. Chris makes liberal use of pictures both as an accent to her textual posts and as the meat of other posts. Even her photo posts, however, include humorous captions that capture the essence of the action.

Look at her Easter (I Hope You Dance) or American Idol (Geeks Gone Wild) for evidence.

Incorporate pictures into your posts
This dovetails with both of the above points and comments. Don’t just throw some pictures into your posts and hope they’ll fit; resize them so that they’ll fit where you want them and arrange them nicely.

Typical conventions for using images in posts are “smaller” pictures (ones that don’t take up most of your horizontal post space) aligned to the right or left with relevant text wrapping around them and larger images breaking up the text, usually centered, and sometimes with captions underneath them.

And, of course, key in incorporating your images with your posts is making them relevant to one another. Some topics (like our kids ) would seem incomplete without some sort of photo reference. This doesn’t mean you have to write a post describing exactly what’s going on in the photo; you can use your imagination (and humorous captions) to make even a tenuous connection.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been making an effort to do better with this; see my post from last week Crazy talk for an example of all these conventions.

If I may say so, I’m particularly proud of that post because it gave me an opportunity to incorporate cute pictures and talk about some of the cute things Hayden’s been doing lately. I’m reluctant to post about both of these topics sometimes because I don’t know if most of my readers are really interested in Hayden’s little (mis)adventures. However, I thought (and I hope you agreed!) that the format of the post, and the pictures, helped to make the post more enjoyable all ’round.

Any more photo post advice?

Note that I still have two coupons for free professional photo montages—see the giveaway post for details, and leave a comment there to enter.

More tips from Works-for-me Wednesday

Sigh. Every so often, I gather up a bunch of pictures of Hayden and post them. Let’s face it: this can be like being caught in an elevator with an overeager parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or other relative, armed with the seven hundred most recent pictures of their beloved child. Mom bloggers do this probably more than most other bloggers.

Maybe the best photo posts are “real” posts with photos that go with them. I always feel like no one will be that interested in my pictures, unless they’re really funny.

So today I’m going to your collaboration in creating a “blogging tutorial.” As a reader, what do you think makes a photo post good? What makes it less like the caught-in-the-elevator scenario I imagined above? As a blogger, what makes them easier for you to do?

Here are some of my thoughts, please add yours!

Put it in context
We’ve all heard it: a picture is worth a thousand words. In high school, I was reading a book about the Vietnam War and was struck by the commentary on a very famous Pulitzer Prize-winning photo. The text read something to the effect that photographs can’t stand alone. You need words to tell you what happened before and after, to put the photo into context. Because out of context, pictures (like words) don’t mean anything.

Your context doesn’t have to detail how everything happened to get to that point—though if the picture isn’t fairly obvious, some explanation of what’s going on (and what we’re supposed to see) could help. Otherwise, your context can be as short as a silly comment about the photo (but try to let us see why you’ve chosen that photo in particular).

Make it funny, cute, or both
We’re moms. We can appreciate cute pictures of cute kids. We can appreciate funny pictures of funny kids. Funny comments can help, too.

Make it unexpected
The pictures I can’t wait to post are the ones of Hayden doing surprising things: wearing his shirt around his waist, wearing Mr. Potato Head’s glasses, etc.

Make it not too long
I’m very guilty of this one: I wait so long to post pictures (because I figure no one’s interested) that I stuff 8 or 10 or more pictures into a photo post. As if forcing more pictures on you would make you happier to look at them all. I still envision most of my readers as the victims in my elevator, backed into a corner, nodding politely and mentally vowing to take the stairs for the rest of forever.

Resize your pictures before uploading them
Figure out how wide your post column is and in a photo editor, resize the image to fit. It looks a lot better than making your browser resize them. And if you make your pictures too wide (post them exactly as they come off your camera, for example), they can break your blog or your readers’ feed readers. We’re probably not going to scroll side-to-side to see pictures of your kids. Sorry.

(Exceptions: if you upload photos to Flickr or Photobucket and they make some good looking, smaller versions, or if you use Blogger. They resize them to look good pretty consistently.)

Maybe the best photo posts are still “real” posts with photos that go with them. What do you think? What makes you enjoy photo posts more? What tips do you have for making them easier to do?

I haven’t had to do this on here very often, but pretty regularly on my work blog, I have people comment who are . . . well . . . less than nice, we’ll say (or just wrong). While sometimes it’s pretty easy to handle comments I don’t really appreciate over there (often with more facts to back up my story), it’s a lot harder to do that in the realm of mom blogging.

If you’re posting about how cute your kids are or how you’re struggling with this behavior or how you’ve come to a self-discovery, it’s more than just annoying to have someone contradict you or treat you unkindly. It’s a bit of a personal affront—sometimes even an attack on your children or your parenting!

There are a few ways you can handle this. The best ways (the ways you would tell your children to handle this):

1. Ignore it. If you’re really lucky, your bloggy friends will even come to your defense. Just the other day, I saw a friend of mine share a personal story and someone called her out for being unchristlike. I was the first person there after that comment was left, and I vehemently (but hopefully respectfully) disagreed. Several subsequent commenters did the same.
2. Settle it privately. If your blogging platform allows, email the person directly. You could explain that, while you don’t particularly appreciate the way that they’ve phrased their concerns, you’d like to know if there’s something you could do better in your blogging (or parenting, if you’re really feeling generous) in the future.
3. Use concrete facts. If the person is disagreeing with a factual assertion (instead of just your opinion), you can provide more information on the facts you’re citing, such as their sources.
4. Point to your blog comment policy. If you’ve already written one, and this comment violates the guidelines you’ve set forth, inform the commenter privately (via email) or publicly (via the comments on that post). Take whatever action you say you will in your policy (deleting the comment, banning the commenter, etc.)

Possibly less productive:

5. Call them out. In the very next comment you make, point out that they’ve been unkind, that that kind of behavior would be unacceptable from your children, and it’s unacceptable on your blog.

Downright counterproductive:

6. Tit for tat. Reflect everything they’ve said back on them in your next comment or, worse yet, track down their blog and make a similar comment.

There are a few other solutions that I’m not sure what category to put them in:

7. Play the martyr. Face it, we’re moms: we can do this with the best of them. As we should all remember from being children, guilt trips and the martyr card don’t really solve anything though.
8. Delete it. If your comment policy says you’ll delete abusive comments, or negative comments, do it. If you don’t have a comment policy, the general bloggy community shuns deleting comments just because they disagree with you. However, on a personal blog—it’s your blog.
9. Block that commenter. Depending on the nature of the comment, it may take only one comment to warrant blocking them, especially if it’s in your comment policy. Even if it’s not, it’s your blog, your family and you. Protect them if you feel you need to.

What do you do when you receive a negative comment? What has worked for you? What hasn’t?

More WFMW.

Whether you’re struggling with spam comments, spammy commenter names or abusive comments, a comment policy is a useful tool to protect your blog. With a comment policy in place, you will probably still have to manually monitor and moderate your comments, but if anyone is ever offended by any comment-related decision you make, you can point to your comment policy as your “fall back.”

Elements of Good Comment Policy

A good comment policy outlines what kinds of comments and signatures you’ll allow on your blog. It also includes information on what you’ll do about comments (and people) that violate these policies. For example:

• Will you allow a commenter to put ‘keywords’ (words or phrases they want to rank in search engines for) in their ‘name’?
• Will you allow a commenter to drop a link to their blog at the end of their comments (a ‘link signature’)?
• Will you allow comments that are less than kind—to you or to others?
• Will you allow comments that are out-and-out mean or abusive—to you or to others?
• Will you block someone for violating these policies?
• Will you delete comments that violate these policies?
• Will you edit comments that violate these policies?
• Will you notify a commenter before/after acting on your policy?

Finally, you should probably reserve the right to edit, delete and otherwise exercise your editorial discretion over comments left on your blog. Also, state that you’re not responsible, legally or otherwise, for comments left on your blog.

Good Examples of Comment Policies

Some of my favorite comment policies:
Marketing Pilgrim
ProBlogger
eMoms at Home

All of these policies outline what kind of comments are welcome and what kind are not, as well as actions that will be taken against comments that do not meet the guidelines. Also for your reference, you can see the MamaBlogga Comment Policy.

Again, having a comment policy won’t prevent spam or mean comments on your blog, but if anyone ever asks you why their comment was deleted or edited, you can point to your policy as the reason.

Another of my blogging friends that has built a great community around her blog is Mommy Zabs. She’s even made lasting friends out of her commenters. Like, I don’t know, me. So here are her thoughts on building a community around your blog.

What do you consider a “community” built around a blog (yours or anyone else’s)?

Great question!

Communities look as different as neighborhoods in real life do. Your blog attracts community either by common interest, a desire to have some common interest, or because they gain something by visiting it.

For example. The Mommy Zabs community draws some because of the political ideals we share others because of the stage of motherhood we are in and how we execute it, and still others because of shared faith in Christ. While Mommy Zabs has a diverse community, it is one that has a bond. They like coming to my site for some reason!

Still as other neighborhoods in real life are different, some blogs center around a more specific goal. For Example, Pro Blog Design draws people that love to learn more about designing blogs..

Online communities come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. They are as diverse as the people in them.

What do I consider a community around a blog? The people that commune around it! Those who both spectate and join in.

What have you done to encourage visitors to your blog to comment on your blog? To come back to your blog?

I believe that if you desire people to comment on your blog and see your comment numbers going down (over a period of time, not just one post) you need to make sure you haven’t given off signals that you don’t want others’ input. The easiest way to remedy that is to invite opinions, comments. Let your readers know their slant on the topic adds something. I think at times people are shy to comment, the same way they may have been in school to raise their hand and answer a question. Make your blog and posts inviting and always leave the doors open on your post if having a relational blog is what you desire.

What have I done to get people back? I can say for sure; I don’t bat .300 on this. But I think that the people that do continue to come back time after time feel like they are welcome. I respond to as many emails and comments as I fell I can. Even if it is a simple “thank you” or “Yes, I agree completely!” I used to respond IN the comments. Sometimes I still get around to that, but at very least I email the commenter back.

I also use a plugin called comment relish on my mom blog. It automatically sends an email to first time commenter and let’s them know I appreciate them participating.

What have you done to foster a sense of community around your blog?

I believe that I have maintained a level of transparency… maybe more translucence I tell stories about my life, and some are funny, some are sad, some are raw, some are downright hard to tell. I share ups and downs. While I don’t think it would be wise to put absolutely everything out on the ‘net, I think for the most part I have found a healthy balance.

I also really enjoy the people that come to my blog. I have built many solid relationships from blogging. As busy as I get and as little as I may bet around to reading peoples blogs anymore, I never want to lose the relating. I will always do my best to keep the conversations going. To try to email those I haven’t heard from in awhile, and appreciate those who have come to mean a lot to me. I am blessed to have so many great people find my blog, decide to read, and some even decide to participate, and I cannot take that for granted!

What’s the best thing a newer (or more well established!) blogger can do to help encourage visitors to come back to their blog and comment?

Hm. That’s a good question. It would vary from blog to blog depending on the type of people the blog attracts. Some blogs actually are more news oriented and don’t require as much crowd participation but still see large stat numbers! But for the blogs that do want the comment threads, I suggest some basic things.

1. Pay attention to the types of post content that gets people talking, make sure to commit to that type of post regularly.
2. Write posts relevant to your readership.
3. Talk back, respond. No one likes to talk to someone who just stares back. That is what it can feel like when you put yourself out there on a blog comment and know one acknowledges you.
4. Post on a regular basis. This is important for 2 major reasons.
   • The more people see something the more it is on the front of their mind. If they are coming to read your blog daily because you post daily, it is less likely to creep toward the back of their mind.
   • Let’s face it, though feed readers are an excellent way to track the blogs you read, there are still those that don’t use it! If they click day after day and barely see a post, chances are they will stop coming.

Thanks so much, Mommy Zabs! These tips are all excellent, specific and pretty easy to follow. I agree that it’s important to look at what topics matter to your readers and to post regularly (and everything else you’ve said!).