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It’s blog pro­duc­tiv­ity week here on Word­Cast, and to kick it off we’ve got a Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions episode like no other! Join Kym Huynh, Dave Moyer and a panel chock full of the best and bright­est blog­ging stars shar­ing their secrets to blog­ging more efficiently.

Pan­elists

• Keith Dsouza of Weblog Tools Col­lec­tion.
• John Hawkins of 9seeds.com.
• Maria Langer, free­lance writer, book author, total blog­ger rock star (and heli­copter pilot)!
• Anne Hel­mond of Blog Her­ald, Mas­ters of Media and the Next Web fame.

Tips For Research­ing and Man­ag­ing Poten­tial Post Topics

• Ever­note is a favorite of our pan­elists for tak­ing notes, man­ag­ing to do lists, sav­ing impor­tant blocks of text.
• Rea­d­it­later browser add on allows you to save sto­ries for later.
• Deli­cious allows you to book­mark story ideas on the web, Maria rec­om­mends the Posta­l­i­cious Word­Press Plu­gin.
• Text edi­tors can work just fine, too! John uses a sys­tem of todos.txt, posts.txt etc. with Ultra Edit.

Find­ing Stories

• Keith uses the Word­Press IRC chan­nel. In gen­eral, immerse your­self in the community.
• John sug­gests Twit­ter searches on your topic. (Dave loves his TweetDeck!)
• Maria also rec­om­mends Twit­ter, by fol­low­ing a select num­ber of peo­ple, but “really fol­low them”.
• Anne runs through her fee­dreader every morn­ing with her cof­fee. Dave depends on feeds as well.
• John likes to use a smartphone.

How do we Bal­ance Our Time as Bloggers?

• Maria says she can write quickly, so the amount of time actu­ally blog­ging is fairly lim­ited. She likes a post per day as a good rule, but if she doesn’t make it she doesn’t STRESS. Her life doesn’t stop.
• John “spends almost every wak­ing moment in front of a com­puter” but bal­ance is nice.
• Anne says “don’t be a per­fec­tion­ist”, “don’t be afraid to hit the pub­lish button”.
• Keith’s Feed Pauser Word­Press plu­gin keeps posts out of the feed for a cer­tain amount of time, so you have a win­dow to cor­rect any typos.

Power Blog­ger vs. Nor­mal Blogger

• John: A power blog­ger is once a day.
• Maria: As a writer first, the topic’s the tough part. Power is not how much they write but what their influ­ence is.

Blog­ging “Periph­er­als” – Side Projects Like Mail­ing Lists, Twit­ter etc.

• John is a Twit­ter freak, but does more read­ing than writing.
• Anne: All these are impor­tant extras. They don’t replace a blog, they’re supplemental.
• Maria: “I’m on Twit­ter more than I should be.”

Work­ing With Mul­ti­ple Bloggers

• Keith: Focus on com­mu­ni­ca­tion within the group. As a leader, you have the job of help­ing oth­ers write bet­ter content.

Desk­top soft­ware: Writ­ing Out­side Your Admin

• John is a big fan of desk­top soft­ware, sav­ing things out­side of your CMS so that you have a local copy to progress with.
• John uses Win­dows Live Writer and Ecto.
• Keith also loves Live Writer, but it can cause prob­lems with Word­Press plugins.
• Ecto on the Mac is dying and lots love to MarsEdit.
• Anne is very much mov­ing towards every­thing in the cloud, and local copies aren’t good for that but…
• Keith rec­om­mends using Drop­box to sync files across the Inter­net so you can access your posts everywhere.
• Our own Lorelle Van­Fos­sen loves blog­ging in NoteTab Pro.
• Write­Room for the Mac is loved by Anne and Dave.
• Anne men­tioned Omm Writer. Dave finds it weird.

HTML vs. Visual Editor

• Every­one LOVES HTML except Keith. He flips back and forth for dif­fer­ent uses.
• Anne men­tioned that her stu­dents use both.

Insider Secrets From Our Experts: Final Quick Tips

• Elim­i­nate dis­trac­tions. Any­thing get­ting in the way of your writ­ing needs to be eliminated.
• Maria likes to take notes on PAPER about her blog­ging duties. She also rec­om­mends to get posts out of the way, then go about your day. She likes to blog in the morn­ing because she’s fresh and it comes out best then.
• Keith reminds us to keep your expec­ta­tions con­sis­tent with your posts. If you have high expec­ta­tions for a post, you’ll get no results. If you have low expec­ta­tions, you’ll be sur­prised. Treat all posts the same. Also, make sure you have SOME tool to keep notes, write, etc. You need good tools to do good work. Find what works best for you.
• Anne tells you to be care­ful of draft posts. What hap­pens in drafts stays in drafts. Don’t spend too much time.
• Dave rec­om­mends using text sub­sti­tu­tion pro­grams like Tex­tEx­pander or Texter.
• Kym tells you to set a real­is­tic expec­ta­tion or goal, and set a reg­u­lar schedule.

We’d love to hear your feed­back about what we can change, fea­tures to add, and guests and top­ics for future episodes! Con­tact the show by email­ing wcconver­sa­tions [at] wordcastnet.com, or call (toll free) 1–888-525-BLOG (2564). You can also dis­cuss the show in the Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions forum.

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