Ever wonder what it would be like to see Jack Handy in a Leave-it-to-Beaver episode directed by David Lynch?

A month ago when I started this blog, I encouraged my dad, who is retired and has too much time on his hands, to start writing one too. Dad loves to read and write (he has a Ph.D. in English literature) but most of all, he loves to tell funny stories, and to force other people to parrot back things he finds funny, ad nauseam. I have often retold my Dad’s humorisms to other people, and thought it would be a really cool idea to get him to write everything down in his own words. So I set him up a free wordpress.com account, showed him how to use Windows Live Writer, and let him go. Bigdaddytype2 is the remarkable result. 

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Today marks the end of our first month blogging! I have been so busy with work lately, including putting together 2 new corporate blogs for other clients, that I haven’t been able to post as much as I’d like, but it’s been a very interesting month of intense learning. During this month, I have installed 5 blogs from scratch, moved a blog 3 times to a different host, upgraded the blogs to the latest Wordpress 2.6, downloaded and experimented with dozens of themes, read thousands of articles and tips on blogging, and learned to customize themes by editing PHP. I’ve discovered the hard way that installing Wordpress on the root directory of your site breaks access to your WebDAV folders, required for comment-sharing on Acrobat. (Sorry, Music in Motion’s catalog department!) I have figured out where all the various components reside on Wordpress and how the structure works so it’s not quite as mysterious. Here are just some of the things I’ve learned about blogging and Wordpress so far:

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Twitter. It’s all over the news lately and has millions of subscribers. I signed up for an account when I first read about it last year, got confused, then bored, and never did even a single “tweet.”

Twitter is a “microblogging” tool that lets you post very short messages, or “tweets” (140 characters or less) about what you’re doing. You can let your friends know what you’re up to, or let anyone else “follow” you.  And you can post and receive messages via email, IM and cell phone.

But the problem is that most of these short posts are meaningless, time-wasting drivel, which would be fine with me if they weren’t also so crushingly boring. Who on earth wants to read their friend’s dullest moment-by-moment details, never mind the details of dozens of strangers they may be following?

I figured I am probably missing something, in the same way that for years I didn’t get the point of text messaging, and I still don’t get the point of Facebook, Plurk, Pownce and Myspace in the business world. Also, just because boring people write boring things on Twitter doesn’t mean it’s the medium’s fault. So I spent a bit of time googling and thinking about it.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

You can log onto your Wordpress admin screen in your browser to create a blog post, but by far the slickest and easiest way for a Windows user to create and edit their blog posts is with Microsoft’s free and amazingly awesome Windows Live Writer.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Think of an RSS feed as a well-trained dog fetching your morning newspaper.

Whenever you see this orange icon:  that means there is an RSS feed available. I’d Rather Be Writing offers this simple and useful definition:

RSS stands for really simple syndication. It’s a way to automatically pull the latest posts from blogs into a news reader, such as Google Reader (my favorite) or Bloglines. That way you don’t have to visit each site individually to see what’s new.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

One of my clients who sends out quarterly HTML newsletters to their customers recently asked me this question. They don’t have a blog yet. My response:

I wouldn’t worry about people not coming to your blog party. If you’ve got customers, then you’ve already got an audience for your blog.

In your next newsletter, let all your customers know about your new blog, and encourage them to visit your blog and subscribe to it via an RSS feed. That way, they will hear from you each time you post, rather than only once a quarter when they get your newsletter. You’ll always be fresh in their minds.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

In the past few weeks, we’ve visited several clients and talked to them about why they should make the plunge and start their own company blog, to support their existing website and regular marketing efforts. Here’s a summary of what I have told them:

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

After a couple of weeks of experimenting with layouts, poking into the innards of Wordpress, reading books and websites about the art of blogging, tweaking settings on our blackberries and generally stalling in every possible way, I guess it’s finally time to get down to business! It’s 10pm on a Sunday night, and I have to get up early to work… So here it is… our first blog post! Ta daaa!

Read the rest of this entry »

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!