I always get a lot of great stuff from Robby’s sessions, and the title of this one jumped out at me instantly. I don’t struggle a lot with agony, but I do have a lot of blogs. Finding more productive ways to keep up on them can only be helpful.

Why Blogging is Agonizing

Time
Money—many blogs are now free
Out of ideas—google “blog ideas”
No traffic/apathy
Self-promotion is hard
Not Techie—You don’t have to be anymore, but if you need help, ask.

How to Get Past the Agony

Steal

“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” (Look at other blogs to find ideas for yours.)
Appearance & Layout
Structure & Patterns
Balance & Post Types
Schedule & Sequence

Examples: Advance Indiana, Coffee Sage, Happiness Project

It’s easier to write blogs if you have to make less decisions.

Coffee Sage uses the words coffee or Starbucks in every title.

Happiness Project has a set schedule—every, single Wednesday is Tip Day. She already knows she has to share a tip every Wednesday. Quote Blogs: shares a quote about happiness & a picture of the person who said it as an entire post.

Cheat

Best time to blog: far in advance. You’ll have less stress if you blog in advance because you aren’t worried about deadlines.

How to cheat at blogging.

Switching tasks kills your flow.
3 Blogging Plans:
“I have to blog now” plan: Panic->Research->Write->Edit->Publish.
“The kids sare asleep plan: Coffee->Research->Write->Edit->Schedule.
“Radical Productivity Plan: Research>Research->Research->Research->Write->Write->Write->Write->Schedule->Relax

Be Lazy

Automate as much as possible:
Use the scheduler—most blog posts will still be relevant later. Post them automatically while you are away. (Checkout Future Posts WP plugin)
Take Advantage of “Press This”
Have a Blogging Checklist—use the blogging checklist plugin to keep it right where you need it.
Use replacement hotkeys

Quickly Inserting Photos:

Skip the download, reupload process by using copy image location, insert and add the link to the file name path. It will still upload the photo to your site from the link. Testing:

Speaker: Robby Slaughter, @RobbySlaughter

This is a live blog—an unedited version of my notes. It is not meant as an exact transcript but I try to capture the highlights along the way (and, you know, add commentary). I’ll fix spelling errors & grammar later, when I get a chance to go back. Be gentle, until then.

There are a lot of great sessions to choose from in this hour. I had to go with Erik—I always pick up awesome, actionable tips from him. Today’s session is on promoting your blog through search & social media. My current #1 referral source is Stumble Upon, followed closely by Google. I’d love to figure out why that’s happening & how to get even more traction out of it.

1. Keywords
   Title: keywords should be in the first 4 words.
   Anchor Text: only keywords, not a full sentence
   Spiders don’t read punctuation so your keywords can span more than one sentence.
2. Backlinks
   Even more important than keywords because there is more emphasis on who is linking to your keywords.
3. Microsites
   Buy a domain with your keyword in it and a single page that points to your main site.
4. Photos & Video
   YouTube holds a lot of weight in Google’s algorithm. Rather than hosting photos on your own site, use Flickr or Picasa for more social media juice. It can actually make your site load faster because the browser will load pictures & your page simultaneously from the 2 different sources.
5. Social Sharing—Stumble Upon, Digg, Share This
   Stumble Upon—the toolbar can be the most fun time waster out there.
6. Ask for Retweets
   Use sparingly but when you have a post you think someone else would be interested in sharing with their readers, ask for a retweet.
7. Guest Blog
   This one is huge for me—I get quite a bit of traffic & strong backlinks when I guest blog. I get a lot of traffic from allowing others to guest blog because they promote it through their own networks. I love the My Blog Guest forum, though I’ve been inactive all summer. Ann was nice enough to DM me just the other day to ask how I was doing & I’ll be getting more involved again when the girls go back to school.
8. Leave Comments
   Spend a few minutes leaving 3 comments per day—at the end of the month, you’ll have 90 backlinks & 90 people who know you valued their blogs. Don’t leave generic comments. Leave thoughtful comments that address the post specifically. Use Google’s Blog Search to find blogs relevant to your topic.You’ll be building relationships, but it can have backlink relevance (even if the links are nofollow—Google ignores for pagerank purposes but will still notice the link).
9. Ask for comments
   Use a call to action in your posts—specifically ask for comments!
10. Automate
    Don’t automate generic tweets—Twitter is conversation & community. Do automate some of your work. Use plugins or Tweetdeck to send your blog posts to Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Ning, etc. Schedule blog posts to go out at 8am (this is the 2nd time I have heard this—Shannon Steffen said the same thing at WordCamp). Ping.fm talks to most social media networks and can provide backlinks if you automate link sharing.
11. Write Well
    If you want visitors to return, write well and check grammar & spelling.

    Speaker: Erik Deckers, @edeckers

    This is a live blog—an unedited version of my notes. It is not meant as an exact transcript but I try to capture the highlights along the way (and, you know, add commentary). I’ll fix spelling errors & grammar later, when I get a chance to go back. Be gentle, until then.

So, the Slaughter Development class on email was incredibly helpful. Then, summer happened. And, my life started to unravel.

Michael Reynolds (who, btw, is a fellow Ball State/Botswin alumni) has adapted Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero program and just busted me for having over 1000 messages. I’m attending this session with almost 900 unread messages in my inbox. Wish me luck.

Email is just a medium—it’s a communication tool that you should be controlling. Concert each email to an action, then process to zero. He assures me he’ll be teaching that today. The question is if I can learn it.

Working in Contexts

Writing, Process, Running Errands, On the Phone, In Meetings

Multi-tasking is a myth. (Side note: Only men say this. They’ve clearly never talked on the phone, nursed a baby and cooked dinner at exactly the same time.)

Stop treating email like instant messaging. Keep your email closed until you are acting on it. (Okay, so I got this one out of Robby’s session earlier this year. I guess I got a D, not a total fail.)

How to Act on Email

Delete (or archive)

Will you ever Really do anything about it?
If not, delete it—don’t feel bad about being realistic. Any modern email system can handle a large archive of email, if you need a safety net. (Use search to recover archived email.)

Delegate

Is it more efficient for someone else to deal with it? (CC yourself and place a copy in “Waiting For” folder)

Respond

Can you respond in less than 2 minutes? Then, respond & delete or archive.

Defer

Will this take longer than 2 minutes to deal with?
1. Place it in an “Action Required” folder to address later.
2. Add it to your to-do list, then delete or archive.

Do

Can you act on this message in 2 minutes or less (outside of email)? Then, do it & delete or archive the message.

Turn off email on your phone so you only get new messages when you have time set aside to deal with it. (Done! Another win from Robby Slaughter!)
Keep your email program in offline mode while working with folders—you are in control without new messages interrupting your process.

Migration to Inbox Zero

1. Create your 3 folders & organize all your other folders into them.
2. Delete other folders.
3. Set aside a block of time to process the Inbox.