What Is Blogging? Free Blogging Webinar Reveals Tools & Trade Secrets of the Profitable Blog

February 21, 2010 by Ronda Del Boccio, The Story Lady
Filed under Business Development, Classes, Workshops & Training, Free Training, personal narrative examples

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Sometimes new words come into such common usage that they make it into the dictionary. “blog” (which is both a noun and a verb) and “blogging” are 2 such words.

What Is Blogging?

In case you’ve wondered, the word “blog” is a mashup of web log. A blog is much more than a way to spill your guts or talk about what you ate for breakfast.

A blog is a type of website that you update frequently with articles called posts. These posts may be commentary, information, instruction, audios, videos and/or pictures. What you’re reading right now is a blog post. The act of blogging can also be called “to blog.” For example: “I’m going to blog about the books I read.”

So what is blogging? it is serving your audience on a regular basis with tools, information and strategies that will help them make their lives better.

Why Blog?

One of my friends who is a writer said to me, “After I start getting more of a following, I’ll start writing a blog.”

“You’ve got that backwards,” I told her. “You need to have a blog NOW.”

This person is an excellent writer but very resistant to showing herself online. I wanted to link to her on Facebook, but she wants to lie low. That’s really not a good idea for someone who wants to become known for her writing in an era when people want to know they can find you and get to know you.

Today, it’s just not enough to have a book and nothing else on the web. Imagine someone looks you up on Google and all they see is your book? Not good. Imagine someone wants to connect on Facebook and you’re there but you don’t want to be found? Not good either.

As a matter of fact, if you want to hide, don’t expect people to want to read your book or hire you to teach a workshop. You really do need to be transparent. And while that doesn’t mean you have to reveal everything about your life, it does mean that you want to appear to be everywhere so those who would be interested in what you do are practically tripping over you no matter where they go online.

Blogging is a fantastic way that this author friend of mine and YOU can build a following, get yourself known, and demonstrate that you have the answers people need.

There are tons of reasons why you might blog, but right now I’m focusing on blogging for your business or to get a message out. If you’re one or more of these, then YOU need a kick-butt blog too:

author
speaker
coach
mentor
expert
messenger
leader
consultant
professional

Back in the day, as they say, you could put up a “static” (unchanging) website and people would come to it to buy your stuff just because you had an ad or a pretty website.

Not so anymore. People want reviews, interaction, and real solutions.They want to see what others think about a product or person. They want to feel a bond. They want to know you.

Nice graphics used to be enough to capture people’s attention, but no more.

Being on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is mission critical – but it’s not enough.

Potential customers are not going to cowtow to your credentials or defer to your degree. Yes, they want a professional they can trust, but trust is not determined by having a coaching certification, a college degree or even a specific skill. No one cares about more information.

People need to know that you are the one who can keep them from tossing and turning in bed or eating anti-acids like they’re candy, because you have the solution!

That’s why a blog is at the heart of my business. When you have a question about telling a story or writing a book, either I’ve written about it on this very blog already or after you tell me your question, the answer will appear. And the products and services I offer are there because someone, perhaps even YOU has asked for it.

Blogging is the most powerful tool you can use to get known for the solutions you bring.

Even if you’re “just” a fiction author and your business isn’t about solving problems for people, you have expertise, knowledge and skills of interest to your ideal customers.Say you write historical fiction. You’re an expert in an era of history, and your readers love to read about that era, so when you blog about the way people in that time did something, you’re serving your readers with something they love.

There are a number of things a well-crafted blog will do for you better than anything else can.

Why people love blogs – and why search engines love them – is because there’s always a reason to come back. There’s always something interesting (assuming the blogger is providing fresh material.

You can subscribe
You can comment
You can spread the word using sites like Technorati, Facebook and Twitter
You can see the valuable resources that help you get more out of your life and business on every single page.
You can get recommendations that shortcut your trials and tribulations
You can come to know and trust the blogger

Is Just Having a Blog Enough?

One of the authors I know complained that he does a lot of the things I teach but doesn’t have the amount of book sales or notoriety he wants. The reasons are more than one, but it all goes back to the fact that people who are interested in what he writes about have no clue he’s out there. He hasn’t done the kind of market research and keyword research to figure out what words people use to describe their problems so that he can show them he has the solution.

He’s picking and choosing. He doesn’t do the research. He doesn’t get onto the social networks. He doesn’t use keywords people are actively searching. So although yes, he has a blog, he isn’t getting traffic (visitors)…because he’s not attracting the attention of his market with his material and the words he uses.

What can I say? the materials are there and you will get great results if you actually implement the whole system.

I know you don’t have time to flounder around. You’ve probably already done that. Maybe you have a blog and you feel it isn’t working well for you. There’s more to it than just writing.

There can be a number of reasons for poor results, and you have to look at your own activity to realize why. It may be a (lack of keywords, poorly researched market, lack of useful information, selling rather than serving, not blogging enough and so forth).

Look at this site with the eye of someone who wants to demonstrate that you’re serving your audience. You can bet that the titles I use and the keywords I use in each post are chosen purposefully based on research. And perhaps you’ve observed that when you read an article on this site, what you see off to the right changes depending on the nature of the post. Isn’t that cool? That’s because of a special tool that is only now coming onto the market.

At Last! Your Solution for a Profitable Blog!

Two of my dear Super Friends are hosting a webinar (and I’m making a guest appearance too) that will show you how to:

Rank Higher in the Search Engines
Turn Traffic into Qualified Leads
Engage Your Visitors More Fully
Turn Those Visitors Into Customers
Cause Them to Buy from YOU Over and Over

I’ll be there too, since this site is being showcased and I am SO EXCITED that Steve Holmes is finally releasing some of his super secret tools.

Together, we’ll share our combined strategies and tactics for quickly and easily building profitable websites built upon

WordPress’s cutting edge web 2.0 technology.

Some of the tools we’ve used to achieve our own success have never previously been released to the public, so be sure not to miss this chance to leap-frog your competition.

You’ll see and not only hear about these tools and techniques because it is in a webinar format.

See one of these fabulous tools in action!

Just click The Peace Seed and watch what happens.

Resource

Here’s the “scoop.”

********************************************************

How to blog for profit in 2010

Tuition: FR EE

Date: Monday, Feb. 22

Time: 7 PM ET

Format: Webinar (be at your computer to SEE

as well as hear)

(yes I’m an affiliate because these tools are part of MY success)

********************************************************

I’ll definitely be there, and I will be watching for YOU, Ronda.

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Tags: audio content reader, blogging, blogging templates, blogging webinar, Bonnie Tesh, Gina Gaudio Graves, Ronda Del Boccio, Steve Holmes, Technorati, The Story Lady, what is blogging

What’s the Story Lady Reading? Story of a Living Peace Symbol: Review of Three Cups of Tea

February 5, 2010 by Ronda Del Boccio, The Story Lady
Filed under Personal Development, Review, Storytelling, personal narrative examples

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My eclectic taste in books next brought me to one that some friends of mine read for their book club. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time It is a masterful example of direct emotional response storytelling.

: Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time

Mountain climbing devotee Greg Mortenson made an unsuccessful attempt to reach the summit of K2. He staggered down the mountain, and a wrong turn brought him to the people of a small and poor town. They nursed him back to health, though they mad little to spare, and he found his ultimate purpose in life.

He vowed that he would come back and build a school for their children, including the girls. Yet when he came back to his home in the USA, he found the task of fundraising daunting. Not knowing how to use a computer at first, he individually typed letters to influential people, hoping for donations.

It would only take $12,000 USD to build and supply a school. Yet the wealthy and influential did not flock to his aid. Would you like to guess who gave him the most in donations at first?

Watch this video…

Greg talked to children at the school where his mother worked. He told them about children in Korphe, Pakistan, who drew letters in the sand with sticks and only had a teacher some of the time. Plus, the girls had no way to be educated. They wanted to do something. Realizing everyone has a penny, they collected over 6,000 pennies.

Three Cups of Tea is a real life adventure in bringing education and peace to Pakistan and Afghanistan. You can read the original version of Three Cups of Tea, and there is also a young reader’s version.

This book excites me on many levels. For one, it is a brilliant collection of personal narrative example’s that walk you through Mortenson’s life-changing climb and his passionate dedication to building schools. One of the women I know who read this book thinks Mortenson was crazy to live in his car. I say his passion drove him to sacrifice what most people consider a normal life in order to make his dream a reality.

Imagine this. He cared so deeply about having enough money for a school in Pakistan that he lived in his car and used a storage space to keep a few items. That’s because he did not want the expense of rent to rob the children of their education. He used money sparingly in order to power his dream.

That’s an impassioned servant willing to give up so much, including what we in America would consider “the basics” such as a place to live, because that was the only way he felt he could get things started. Later, he garnered other resources, but at first, he was willing even to give up a place to live. Now he has a modest house and a family.

I truly admire his passionate devotion.

I really love the story about how he met his wife. The video below is his first daughter singing the song, “Three Cups of Tea.”

Education Changes Lives

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of education since reading this book. In America, education is pretty much a given, and even those who drop out still live in wealth by global standards. You can be a grade school dropout and still have an apartment, a cell phone, a TV, and so forth. I’ve always been a proponent of giving people all oaver the world an education, but I never realized the depth of the issue until reading this book.

My commitment to education is deeper because I understand on a deep soul level what it’s like in places like Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so many other parts of the world. When you don’t have an education there, you truly don’t have options. Think of how many people who join the Taliban or other terrorist organizations do so because they’re simply trying to have the ultra basics of food and a roof over their heads. It’s easy to think people make those choices out of political or religious loyalty, but so often, it’s simply because without an education, there are few options.

I cried more than once while reading this book. When I read about the young woman educated in one of the first schools Greg helped establish march into a meeting of men and demand that Greg live up to his promise to send her for medical training so she could help her people. I did a fist pump and shout for joy!

Powered by Peace

Did you ever stop to realize how much peace is linked to education? So often I’ve heard people complain that America will send money everywhere else for schools and medicine. Yet stop to think about it. Sure, children are our future, but it’s more than that cliche.

When you have the opportunity of education, you realize you have choices. Education turns boys and girls with little guidance into empowered young men and women who understand that they can choose their own destiny.

This book will help you know the people of Pakistan. When you know how people live and stop to ask them what is important to them, it is easier to bring about peaceful relations.

One thing that popped out for me as I read the book is the power of relationships. Several times, Greg had intended to build a school in a certain place, however, the wisdom of someone who knew the specific people involved urged him to leverage the relationships first. And this is so true everywhere.

Relationships are the key to building any dream. Greg started out as a lone wolf and spent so much time and energy trying to get things moving. But through the power of people who knew the situation and people who had the financial ability to provide funding, his dream got legs.

Three Cups of Tea is a powerful peace symbol. It is about spending enough time with people to get to know them and share their lives. By the time you have had 3 cups of tea, you have received not only gracious hospitality, but trust.

Please read this powerful book and bring a little more peace into the world in so doing.

order Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time

Stones into Schools: Mortenson climbs another mountain (thestar.com)
Greg Mortenson On Bill Moyers: A Better Path To Peace In Afghanistan (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
1 man’s voice, 1 man’s mission; 2nd shot to see ‘Three Cups of Tea’ co-author Mortenson (bendbulletin.com)
Amid devastation, oppression, compassionate effort expands (boston.com)
A Very Different and Positive Way of Bringing Peace to “Trouble Spots” (innovationtoronto.com)
Educating Girls – Our Responsibility in Afghanistan? (kingstonaauw.blogspot.com)
A cup a cha – A review of ‘Three Cups of Tea’, By Shaikh Muhammed Ali (liveactivecultures.net)

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Tags: Afghanistan, audio content reader, Book Review, Greg Mortenson, Korphe, peace, peace symbol, Ronda Del Boccio, Taliban, The Story Lady, Three Cups of Tea, Three Cups Of Tea - One Man's Mission To Fight Terrorism And Build Nations . . . One School At A Time

Ronda Del Boccio The Story Lady and Bonnie Tesh, co-authors of I’ll Push You Steer, on Television

January 27, 2010 by Ronda Del Boccio, The Story Lady
Filed under Storytelling, Videos, Writing, how to write a book, personal narrative examples

Rant – Misinformed, Misdirected, and Miserable: My Hotels.com Experience and Why I will Not Use Them Again

May 9, 2009 by Ronda Del Boccio, The Story Lady
Filed under Rant, Review, personal narrative examples

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In case you haven’t figured it out, this is a rant. This is also a personal narrative example concerning my recent travel experience.

Since I wanted to go to the Impact event a couple days early for some Florida fun, and since the hotel conference h hotel – the Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin Resort – was RIDICULOUSLY expensive, I needed to find an affordable solution for the first couple of nights. I truly HATE having to switch hotels. It is a chore for anyone, but more so when you have extra difficulties navigating and are traveling with a guide dog.

Now imagine this. I’m mostly blind. I’m traveling with a guide dog. I obviously don’t drive, and therefore I have some very specific needs and questions.

That being said, I called Hotels.com and first got a guy who said his name was Albert (yeah right), who barely spoke English.

Feeling less than confident in what I would get from him, I asked my specific questions, which were these:

Is there a hot tub, and is the hot tub working?
Is there a shuttle service to Discovery Cove? What times does it run?
Is there a shuttle to Sea World, and what times?
Is there a restaurant on property?

“Albert” put me in a hotel called the Imperial Swan Hotel & Suites, which was cheap. However after the call, I discovered that customers had given the hotel ratings of 1 out of 5 from guests. Gee thanks. Just what I need. I don’t require a luxury resort, but I don’t want a dirty dive either. Read more