blogging

by Gunnar Engblom July 14, 2009 8

Birdbloggers Tweet-club #001

First Birdbloggers Tweet Club

Hey, we’ve done it. This is a follow-up on my post on July 8 announcing the tweet club.

There are 14 birdbloggers tweetclub posts this 1st week. Starting with a late start. I won’t go into why this was not published Monday, as promised as that would fill on other blog post. Let me just summarize that we are dealing with high season birding tours in Peru and that my wife is almost due to have a baby any day now. My obligations are elsewhere, as you probably can appreciate. I did however, send off the first batch of tweets last night as some of you may have seen. So the ball is rolling. Be sure to read this long post to the end, because we shall take this idea to Facebook as well.

Birdbloggers Tweet Club rules

Commit to retweet at least 10 of the tweets below.
If you can, pls retweet up to 3 times over the week on different days and times.
Read the blogs you retweet. Remember, that the blogs you retweet are your personal recommendations.
Consider re-writing the tweets in a personal way, if my interpretation is not in your liking or if you want a personal touch in your re-tweet.
You may just retweet a seed tweeted by someone else if you prefer.
You may or may not include the @reply of the web-owner in the tweet. It is not technically a retweet of course just copying the below and you are not re-tweeting an original message to Twitter, so you may well take credit for your first seed yourself. This also gives more space for your followers to retweet and maintain your credit.
I have decided not to include a hashtag for the tweetclub. You can use hashtags such as #ecomonday, #birdsaturday, #birding etc in the tweet to give it more exposure.

Concerns and tips

Dawn Fine raised an interesting point. How can we do this without becoming spammers on Twitter? I think it is only an issue for those followers you may have that follow less than 50 people and 14 of those followers are the same birdbloggers here. In most cases many tweets will be lost in the Twitter stream. You reader may not see the tweet the first time it is sent. Many “retweets” make sure everyone that could be interested in reading the post will get exposed to it. What is more, your post will be seen by a lot of people that are not following you presently, and this is the main benefit when birding blogs go viral. In any case, we should be aware of the potential risk of coming off as spammers and raise a flag if you notice it becoming a problem.

The main recommendation though is that you are honest to yourself. You shouldn’t retweet something that you have not read. Retweeting is like recommending, so therefore the posts you are re-tweeting are seen as your personal recommendations.

Don’t retweet the exact message here below if you are not in agreement with the article or if you don’t like it.

This could also teach us to write more interesting blogposts. If you want readers to your blog, you have to understand that you are not writing for your personal joy only, but for your reader. This will make a shift in what you write about. Soon you find yourself writing posts of stuff that you think will interest a lot of people. Those posts will have a natural place here on the tweet club. If you find after this exercise that your post gets less click than the others, this may well be a hint to you. Don’t take it personal, but let it be an inspiration to write more interesting posts to your readers.

Twitter is also about reciprocals. Retweeting somebody’s blogpost is a much better way of saying thank you for a Retweet, than just publicly say thanks.

How to read 14 blogposts in 15 minutes.

Another point Dawn raises is how on earth shall anyone have time to read all these posts. We are all very busy. Most browsers today allow you to open multiple tabs. Click on your browser program to get a totally new window and open this blog post there. Then click on one bit.ly link one after the other while holding the ctrl key pressed. It should be no problem open 10 to 15 tabs at one go. Then spend up to 1 minute on each post. This should be enough to see if you like the post or not.
What bloggers should try to remember to get retweeted is:

a good photo to start with that catches the eye. The old saying “a photo is worth a 1000 words” applies in blogging.
a very catchy title
good headlines for the sub-sections in the blog.

Does retweeting work?

These were the posts that had most clicks of those that I retweeted in the last I and the Bird #104, which appeared in two parts. The first part described the idea of using twitter as a means to spread the word about the blog carnival and the individual posts that were presented in a tweetable fashion similar to what we are doing here. The second part also included a photo from each blog and some statistics from the first twitter session. I retweeted all posts twice. The most popular posts got these many hits because they were retweeted by many others. This is what we want to achieve also with the tweet club. Here are the results as of today from the I and the bird post.

Have you ever seen 50000 Purple Martins falll from the sky? Check out the video on this site. https://bit.ly/GdMEN
Tweeted first at 06.00 July 8: 102 clicks.
I bet you never seen a Yellow-breasted Grosbeak. It’s not in the book, yet here is a photo. https://bit.ly/3MbcA4
Tweeted first at 21.20 July 8: 94 clicks.
Here is the punkiest of all chicks. I don’t know if this is cute or ugly. What do you think? https://bit.ly/U7QGJ
Tweeted first at 09.00 July 8: 91 clicks.
Barred Eagle-owl takes a monkey in Singapore. Impressive! https://bit.ly/hTzF4
Tweeted first at 18.50 July 7: 82 clicks.
The puffin is the Toucan of the Northern seas with that colorful beak. Check these smashing photos. https://bit.ly/wYwbq
Tweeted first at 08.00 July 8: 70 clicks.

Two things to think about when studying the content of the above links. You may notice that I seldom use the titles of the original blog post. When tweeting it is useful to use tricks to catch the attention in the tweetstream. Use big words and superlatives when appropriate. I have no idea if they were 50000 Purple Martins but they were a hell of a lot, and the number sounds appropriate to what I could see, even though they may have been 20000 or perhaps 70000. But it is obvious that the tweet title worked. Think about this when posting your next blogpost to twitter.
Secondly, what role do you think the photos played to get visitors to the post? Certainly post 3-5 ranked this high due to the photos provided.

Tweetclub tweets #001

Here are the 14 participants of this week.

RT @docforestal Many bird photos and a checklist of the birds seen at Moosehead Lake, Maine https://bit.ly/B0nvn
RT @gonolek This is great literate memoir blogpost from Birdman partly about birding on Scilly in late 70s. https://bit.ly/11OL6p
RT @birdingdude Sheer madness or daring run? A twitch, as the Brits would say. Mississippi Kite in NY https://bit.ly/ZT4Au
@DawnFine I can’t sleep at night. Flying squirrel and Whip-Poor-Will making too much noise. https://bit.ly/vIaxU
@journowl Endangered world’s heaviest parrot goes home https://bit.ly/kakapo (@journowl provided the link and it had 18 clicks prior to me posting the first tweet)
@soaringfalcon1: Great pics of Red-shouldered Hawk and a video to learn its call. https://bit.ly/3UTZ5k
@wrenaissance Slide show of the cutest Barn Swallow chicks begging for food. https://bit.ly/Qj855
@patbumstead It’s a new blog but will be a big one when it grows up! Canada’s National Bird. https://bit.ly/I7KOF
@HastyBrook Bloggers and Tweeters meets Birds and Beers in Minnesota!! https://bit.ly/jZaTy
@babw Impressive digiscoping results from https://bit.ly/Dkp5E from Oregon
@jeffgyr: Want some good Karma? Join Jeff saving Red Knot by flipping Horseshoe Crabs. https://bit.ly/ar1OJ
@VickieHart Great photoblog about Hummingbird banding. https://bit.ly/RfMpr
@Birdfreak Recommended books for birders – Birdfreak does a lot of birdbook reviews. Here is a summery. Check it out https://bit.ly/1gRgem
@kolibrix The mightiest of all Eagles. The Harpy Eagle. https://bit.ly/UjqOx This link had 88 hits prior to participating here.

I have added the Twitter handle here. I suggest you follow each, but please note that you don’t have to include the handle in the tweet you do, as I explained above. By following you can also check whether each fulfill the commitment! (Devilish, isn’t it?).

UPDATE: One great service to use for the re-tweets so it becomes less spammy. Spread them out in time with programmed tweets with Tweet Later. This is a great little app that is free of charge. You can schedule your tweets with this app. It is a great way to collect things you want to share for #ecomonday and #birdsaturday – and naturally a way to retweet birdbloggers tweet-club posts.

Why are all the links bit.ly?

Yes, I changed your links! Bit.ly gives a great tool to see how many clicks this exercise actually gives each and every blog. Just copy the bit.ly link and put it in your browser followed by a plus like this: https://bit.ly/1gRgem+ Cool, huh? This way we shall see which participants are getting most traffic.

Where to go from here? What about a Facebook blog-sharing club?

The other day, I came across Jeff Gordon’s blog about flipping horse shoe crabs, that he shared on his facebook wall. I had 12 people interacting directly on my wall, so that is immediately 12 people sent to Jeff’s blog and there were probably more as not all those that clicked on the link may have put a comment or “like this” for the link.
Facebook is more effective in getting regular readers to your blog, because they are your friends, but they would be constantly the same people visiting. If you want to reach beyond that maybe we can use the same Twitter club strategy on Facebook. Well almost the same…

…Facebook is more closed than Twitter, so it is necessary to be more restricted in what you post. There are many of your best Facebook friends that will be reading every line you send so you don’t want to spam them with send every blog their way. Best to pick your favorites. On Sunday, I am going to pick the five most popular of the above posts and put them on my Facebook wall during the following week. You may do the same or you could just pick a few of those that you like.

There is an app on Facebook called NetworkedBlogs that many nature bloggers are signed up to, but very few actually use to share blogs of each other. The app is good for publishing your own blog to your wall so your friends see it and it does give a very easy share option. Be sure to use this share mechanism if anything interesting comes your way. The app is a little bit flawed I think, because when you look at your own page in the app, it would be good to actually right here get the latest feed from the blogs you follow, not only a list of the same blogs.

On Facebook are also the group of Birders who blog, tweet and chirp and the page Natureblognetwork. It is well worth to belong to both, but actual link sharing as of fetching links to put on your own wall is not part of the strategy.

In summery, it should work well to bring this experiment also to Facebook and it does not really compete with current blog promotion on Facebook, but rather would compliment well – as long as it is made in a moderate fashion.

Hosting the Tweet club in the future.

I like to host yet one or two more weeks to get the idea into form, but then turn over the hosting on a rotational manner such as I and the bird. Volunteers speak up! For

Twitter image by creative Commons lisence on Flickr. Photo credit: Adam Gutierrez

by Gunnar Engblom May 28, 2009 2

I and the bird #101

The best blog Carnival of them all

Simply the best – for anyone interested in birds. Your favorite collection of birding blogs is back with isssue number 101. And our favorite top of the charts Science blogger grrlScientist, who gets on average 9000 visits to her blog daily, is host. What more can you ask for. Jump right in!

To me it is an honor to be participating on this blog. Being on the first page of the number one Natureblogger is almost like making it to the first page of Digg!

Click like mad, and give the participating bloggers some traffic. It works great for the self-esteem and which in the end ensure more top blogs coming.

by Gunnar Engblom May 7, 2009 1

Blog Carnival: Carnival of the Blue 24

The blog carnival of the oceans

Finally, a blog carnival that brings some traffic to the participants. Carnival of the Blue is published once every month. I participated for the first time with my blog, being one of the many carnivals I submitted to recently. This issue is hosted by Monterey Bay Aquarium, which I suspect get quite a bit of traffic.
My posts have gotten many hits from this carnival. I have not even promoted it myself yet.

There are 25 quality postings in this issue. I am amazed to the quality and will come back and read more of them later. Check this one for example: Sharks are mean, but doplhins are cute, right?. Particularly, read the long interesting discussion afterwards. Now jump over to read all the other stuff on Carnival of the blue 24.

by Gunnar Engblom April 19, 2009 8

Gunnar’s little blog Carnival.

Luciana 2 years old - future nature blogger - studying the birds of Australia

My blog the other day was about blogging and how important it is to be connected to other bloggers. I introduced Google Reader for your desktop and a mobile RSS reader such as FreeRange to your Blackberry or smartphone. I suggest you check this post if what I just said had no meaning to you.
Another great way to connect to other bloggers is simply writing about them. Instead of writing a comment in their comment box, you write on your own blog an answer or a comment and this is directed to the comment box of that blog. This is called trackback and pingback. The difference between the two is subtle when it comes to the end result. Read more how it works on this WordPress link.

If you use wordpress, this is done automatically to other wordpress blogs (supposedly I should say, because there have been some problems reported lately related to WP 2.7. I will let you know how and if it works). To relate other blogs, you specify the blog address in the trackback box. For Blogger there is no trackback function, but you can activate linkback that simulates the service. For more advanced trackback, that you may also want to consider check Haloscan. A couple of years ago Haloscan was standard for trackback for Blogger blogs, but since there is little mention of Haloscan from recent years, my guess, without penetrating too much how this works on Blogger, is that the linkback service has improved and covers much what you need in this respect. Please comment, to let me know how it works. I did a small test in my post about Nature Blog Network blog the other day, and it seemed the pings worked fine with WordPress but only a link showed in those Blogger accounts that had activated linkback. I still have not found a blog that uses Haloscan, so I can’t give any opinion, but as far as I understand it should give a short quote.

Give a little Link-love to each other!

In a series of blogposts, I shall use this technique to comment other blogs and fish for readers to my own blog this way. I suggest you do the same. You probably heard of Blog Carnivals. Well, they work very much in this way. There is no reason why you can not, every once in a while host your own little carnival. While I am at it, I am adding every blog I write about to my Google Reader, and also put a link to my blog roll – and I hope you link back to me and add me to your readers as well.
I am not yet sure exactly what form this will take, but it is likely to be something like “news in my reader”. I am also considering setting up my own carnival for a young birders up to 22 years old that are blogging. More on that in another post. Let me know what you think about this idea?

Some new blogs in my blogroll.

I have read quite a few blogs the last weeks, some for the first time. I am surprise how many good blogs are out there that I had not heard of before. I know many of you would like to get more readers, so a mutual interchanging of mentioning other blogs and specific posts should work for everyone’s benefit.

I have choses to group my blog roll to different categories.

Social Media.

As I mentioned in my last blog I am doing an e-course during 31 days held by Problogger Darren Rowse. Some great tips are shared. Pretty amazing, this guy got 1000 people signed up to the course. Best part it is free. 11 days have past and it has been extremely useful. One task is to write a blogpost linking to others. In fact I had already, planned to do a blog-roll prior to the asignment, but the course is so good, that the least I can do is to pay a mentioning in my blog. Darren also runs a very popular blog for digital photography.
John Haydon of corporatedollar.org was one of the first people I followed on Twitter. His specialty is social media marketing for small non-profit organizations. His page is full of great advice. Do you know what the the difference is between pages, groups and profiles on facebook and how to use each the right way? Check out his killer tips in the link given.

New aquintances of birding blogs

Nutty birder is a blog by two young brothers Eric and Rob Ripma who blog about birds, wildlife and nature photography. I particularly zoom in on their post on plover identification, that they presented a couple of weeks ago. Hand on the heart, can you ID the plovers in this quiz? If not they provide a key with the key features to look for.
Discovering Alpine birds by Dale Forbes in Austria is an extremely well made blog. He does excellent digiscoping and shares many birding tricks, such as how to clean your lenses in the field. No more dirty T-shirt for me!
Some birders have been generous in retweeting my blogposts that I have sent out on Twitter. This is much appreciated of course. How to pay back? Well, for starters I tend to check out their blogs and just yesterday I found Laura Kammermeier’s excellent blog called Birds, Words and websites. The title is well choosen, because Laura is a writer and web-consultant and an avid birder. In happenend to land on part 2 of her story about chase for Black-headed Gull at Niagra Falls. I love this story. She says that finding the Black-headed Gull among a couple of thousand Bonnies is like that famous needle in the haystack.
Rachel Jenkins of Rachelbirder has also been generous with retweeting. She blogs about the wonderfuil nature around the farm where she lives in eastern Kentucky and has some automatic cameras on the trails that catch photos of wild turkeys, deer, foxes and racoons. One of these days, there may be a Puma, as she has found tracks nearby. In her blog there are lots of photos of nature. THe last post has an immature Bald Eagle as the star of the show.
Jochen of Bell Tower birding is one of the funniest birding bloggers I recently aquinted. His posts are extremely witty. Look at this one: “How to avoid being arrested for Bad Bird Photography“.
Wildbird on the fly is Wildbird magazine’s blog. They are good on news related to birds and had fast a blog post on the shooting of Californian Condors at Big Sur recently.
A DC Birding Blog by John Beetham – aka Dendroica is one of my favorite blogs. John is generous with retweets on Twitter and also fast on giving advice to anyone stuck with a query. His knowledge and span of blog topics make this a blog I often come back to. I am interested in splits (who isn’t?) so the recent news on the New Crossbill aptly covered by Dendroica is picked to illustrate his blog.
Jeff Gordon’s blog. Jeff is a professional tour guide and his posts are always a good read with many great photos, be it from Ecuador or Panama or at home in Delaware. The posts are often very entertaining spiced with humour and frequently very educational. A recent such post is about hunting Easter eggs in tropical latitudes compared to temperate regions and what consquense the hunt has on clutch sizes and life strategies.
I mentioned the NBN interview with Beverly Robertson in my last post about Nature Blog Network blog. From her blog Behind the Bins I selected an old post called Mal de Mer that was recommended in the interview. How come a birdwatcher can enjoy and suffer at same time during a pelagic? All about sea sickness.
Monarch’s Nature Blog is one of the top 10 birding blogs on NBN. I like his American Woodcock video blog posted a few days ago. I salute his work with mentoring teenagers to become naturalists inviting several as guest bloggers on his blog.
If you are new to bird blogging and your blog will be bird photo oriented, you may consider have Surfbirds.com hosting it, just as Falkland Birder Alan Henry. I have selected his post on Chilean Swallow – a rare bird in the Falklands – as an example of his blog. More examples of Surfbird blogs you find in the right column of the list on the Surfbirds.com blog page.
John Trapp’s blog – Birds etcetera. has also been generous to link back to my site. I really like his blog, because he alwasy seems to be coming up with concepts noone else have though of. He has ordered bird blogs into geographacial regions in his sidebar. Nor th America has no less than 468 bloggers! Britain has 237, while South America – mine included – has a modest 16. The other day John posted another song and video about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker – The Moss Piglets. With a slightly more talented singer with more than one octave register – less David Byrne (Talking Heads) like – this swiinging song would be a true hit.
Another top 10 birding blog is BirdFreak run by Eddie Callaway and Jenniger Outcalt. This has all the qualities in the world to become BIG. They do a lot of work to try to get kids to start birdwatch and have written two good downloadable manuals. They also host a weekly event called Bird Photography Weekly and do great bird book reviews. I have chosen to illustrate the blog with a book review of the Swedish bird painter Lars Jonsson (A hero to me ever since I started birding). His new coffee table book is called Paintings from a near Horizon.
American Birding Associations new blog Peeps online is only about a year old, but it is becoming a good summeries of the best birds seen all over the country. Here is an example. A Cuban Black-Hawk of unknown provinence has been sighted and photographed in Georgia on April 10 which would a new ABA record if accepted.
Dawn has a bloggy blog, I often come back to. She lives with her husband Jeff in a motorhome after having sold the house 7 years ago and now lives a nomadic lifestyle travellign all over the US. The blog is one of the best out there with a very attractive design. I have chosen to illustrate her blog with a recent unsuccessful morel hunt, that instead gave an owl. Stalking the wild Morel. Who gives a Hoot?
10000birds. I keep on coming back to this great blog. Charlie is now in Panama. Here is an update from Canopy Tower.
Last but not least. I am about to start a new carnival for young birders up to 22 years old. Ali Iyoob in North Carolina is only 14, but already a blogger since a month back. His blog is called “Ali’s birding Journal – the life of an obsessed birder. Here is a teaser Photo Quiz.

Hope you liked this little carnival. If all start facilitating the backlink option on Blogger and check out the Haloscan software, let me know how it works for you and if you start getting more readers and subscribers this way. Please send me suggestions of blogs of birders up to 22 years old.

by Gunnar Engblom April 16, 2009 9

Nature Blog Network Blog

Natureblog Network

There is hardly a nature blogger who is not checking out their statistics on Nature Blog Network.
Yes, I adm¡t it! I am also following how my blog is doing compared to other birding blogs. This can be done selecting only birding blogs. I have reached 11 at the highest – and right now at a modest 21. Sometimes I am checking out the statistics so much that I forget to write blogposts!. Today is obviously not such a day.

The blog of the blogs!

What most bloggers perhaps don’t follow as closely is the excellent blog that Nature Blog Network provides. Their blog ought to be listed in the blogging statistics of the site, so there is no chance of missing it.

In a recent posting they summerize some Nature Blogs in South America and I am happy to see that my blog is mentioned and recommended. (Less happy that my name is misspelt – but that is alright – you should just see what they have done to my last name Engblom in this country! Spanish speaking people have a hard time to tackle more than two consonants in a row – and when they do they need to put a wovel before everything i.e Speak eSPANISH. Engblom has four consonants in a row and that is asking for trouble, Many times it comes out Em-blong! Poor Luciana Engblom 2 years old! Maybe I should change my name translating it to its Spanish meaning – Flor de la Pradera? Update: My name has been corrected now. Thanks Nate!).

More South America Nature Blogs

Ooops, I think I lost my thread there for a while and got distracted. Anyway, check out the above link for some suggestions. I should mention two other excellent birding blogs from Peru and a blog ifrom Brazil that I also follow closely that are not mentioned on the site.

Teach me birdwatching by Melissa Gold-Perez. Great read of someone from starters is becoming a birdwatcher in Peru. Check for instance her recent birding visit to Ventanilla.
Birds in Peru by Norwegian Tor Egil Høgsås. Check his photos on for example the lovely hummingbird Peruvian Sheertail.
Rick Simpson in Brazil who helped us out during our last SE Brazil trip has an excellent blog on his web-site. His recent blogpost has some info on splits. We got three of four, had not my group been so rushed we should have gotten the Red-eyed Thornbird also at Biritiba-Mirim.

Featured Bloggers

Nature Blog Network Blog also had the good taste to allow me as guest blogger recently in a post called “Facebook for birders“.

Nature blog Network Blog has done some excellent interviews of other bloggers in their Featured Blogs every Monday since November last year. This is a good source to learn about how more experienced bloggers go about their blogging. I just discovered this feature and have enjoyed the interviews with Julie Zickefoose and Beverly Robertson’s Behind the bins.

PS: I am experimenting with pings and trackbacks on this post, so a teaser-comment from this post shows in the comment sections to particular posts I am metioning above. Let me know if they don’t show.

Gunnar

by Gunnar Engblom April 7, 2009 3

More Birds for More Birders

Elevator pitch

In my last blog post I resented somewhat that someone had classified my blog on Nature Blog Network as only blogging about Social Media and not enough about birds in Peru. Today, I get a chance to explain what my blog is all about. As mentioned in my blogpost about blogging for birders, I mentioned that Darren Rowse from Problogger started a 31 day course to better blogging yesterday.

First asignment was to write an elevator pitch for the blog.

What is an Elevator Pitch?

“An elevator pitch is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (for example, thirty seconds or 100-150 words).” – Wikipedia

Thus, I had to come up with something short that explained what my blog is all about and why all this stuff about social media in a blog that supposedly is about birds could actually make some sense.

When I started blogging on this site, I did not know that social media was going to be part of my blog theme, since I knew very little about it. However, it soon became clear to me that I needed to learn about social media to reach out with my blog and that birders in general had scant knowledge about the possibilities. A niche was born for me.

So here is my elaborated Elevator pitch for my blog. After 4 months of blogging I can finally tell you what my blog is all about.

More Birds for More Birders through the use of Social Media and Technology

More Birds – is the first business mantra of my bird tour company Kolibri Expeditions. (The other mantra is: Why see less? Why pay more? )
My blog is both to let the readers learn about More Birds as well as improving the birding experience and birding skills through technology and social media such as blogging, Facebook, Twitter, online-databases, forums and online picture sharing. Through social media and technology more birders can be reached, but it is also hoped that it will create more birders.

It covers aspects of:

Networking for birders
Digital photography
Conservation of threatened birds
How to become a birdwatcher and natureblogger
Birding with Kids
Listing
Rare birds and conservation
Birding tours

Keywords: More bird & More birders

Let me expand a little on these keywords.

More birds: What it comes down to, is that all of us birders want to see more birds, be that in species or large congregations or extended time in the field. The social media and the technology allows us to be connected with nature in an unprecedented way that was not possible only a few years ago. The possiblities are limitless ranging from finding birding trip partners, getting way descriptions to rare birds, share birdphotos or recordings, promote a birding locality or birding event, etc, etc.
More birders: Birders are well aware that numbers count. More birders, mean more people caring for habitat conservation. More birders mean that globally threatened species in remote areas get a higher value as birders want to see them, leading both to revenues for conservation as well as economic incentives to local communities who will be caretakers of a valuable patrimony rather than a threat to the same. By using social media and technology that the younger generation already master the numbers of young and older birdwatchers shall increase.

So it all ties together very well in the end. It is my master plan for my blog, which I hope at the end of the day will make some difference. Anyway, without making myself come off like as a self-inflated prick (I just did, didn’t I?), I feel I have a mission with this blog and something to tell which should interest you. And that was the purpose of today’s asignement. Now, if you enter NatureblogNetwork and make some nice comments about this approach, you will really make my day. (I’ll explode!)

by Gunnar Engblom April 4, 2009 0

I and the bird #97

I am participating again with a posting on I and the bird # 97. This time the host is extinct for a long time – that is – Great Auk or the Greatest Auk? – and very wittily has asked two other dead – Charles Darwin and Edgar Allen Poe – to help out to guide you through this issue’s participating birding blogs. Don’t miss it and the great blogs it links to.

by Gunnar Engblom March 30, 2009 5

Blog, blogs, blogging, blogger for birders

Blogging for and about nature

This article aims to beginner bloggers, but there are also some tips to more experienced nature bloggers who are still struggling with less than 50 page views per day. Finally, this blogpost coincides well in time to take part in Problogger’s 31 day e-course on blogging (more on that at the bottom).

In my previous post about how to get kids and adults interested in birds, I recommended they get a 10-24x zoom point and shoot camera first instead of binoculars. Blogging is the next step.
In a blog you can publically document what you have seen on your nature walk. It is a difference compared to sharing your photos on Facebook and having your own blog. The latter is public and therefore it can attract a larger number of readers. Potentially, this also means that the citizens are participating as watchmen for the sake of nature. The more nature-bloggers there are and the better organized they are, the larger influence they will have as a community, against violations of nature’s space in the modern world. It may sound a bit Utopian, but considering the networks that are currently building on today’s online applications, it should not be frowned upon. For example Facebook has 200 million users! Nature bloggers, it is time to emancipate yourself for the sake of nature in the future!

To start blogging

There are two main free services for bloggers. WordPress and Blogger (provided by google). WordPress is preferred by businesses because it has large numbers of great plugins such as SEO optimization tools and both free and pay-for themes. I am using WordPress myself for my blog, which is housed on the same URL as my business web-page. It should help getting better page rank eventually, and it also helps people finding my page through searches (even if they don’t necessarily come to the page to buy a tour). If you are a birder you may even put your blog on one of the popular birding pages such as surfbirds.com. It guarantees a lot of visibility to other birders and you may find many readers this way, especially if you post a lot of quality bird pictures, which the readers of Surfbird love.

In spite that WordPress has more businesses using it, the majority of the naturebloggers are using Blogger. Therefore, as a community Blogger works very well and is very easy to use. You can upload your photos direct to your blog from the free Google Photo editing program Picasa.

There are a lot of resources out there you can use to learn about blogging. I am not going to enter in detail about these here, but you may check out a previous blog of mine how to read books on social media for free on Amazon. com. You will probably not be able to read all the stuff in every book in Amazon reader without purchasing the book, but since the there are so many books on these topics, you shall be able to pick up all you need to know by this method. I have listed two books on blogging and two books about WordPress in the Amazon carousel widget at the bottom of that blogpost.

WordPress has a built in statistics in the dashboard, that gives you the basic information how many visitors each blog post gets, what page visitors were visiting when clicking to the link to your page, and what the daily score of page views is. In either case, Google Analytics is a very good resource to install on either blog, as it gives a more detailed analysis of visitor data.

Fill you blog with content that the readers want to read.

I admit I also started as many other people seeing the blog as a mere diary. Sort of: Dear diary, today I did this, and then that, and finally I went to bed. So, while certainly the blog is a place where people talk about what they are doing, there are limits to what the readers will find interesting. One resource you should check out straight away if you are new to blogging is Nature Blog Network. Check what the top bloggers write about. What style do they use, how do they use captions and finally look at the titles. A catchy title is very important to get readers. More on that later. As a rule, every post becomes more interesting if you provide a picture with your blog post.

How to get readers to your blog.

You need to spread the word around that your blog exists. This is where your social network comes in. If you are on for example Facebook or Twitter (again see my manuals for birders with the provided links), none of your friends will mind, if you tell them that you have posted a new blog. Now is time to use that catchy title of the blog. You will not get many friends clicking if you only say –New blog – and provide the link. If you find more than one catchy title, you may use the other ones to re-send a message on Facebook/Twitter about your blog. With the way the new Facebook works, it is probably best to first send a status update with your catchy title together with the link in the same field. Next time you update your status (several hours later) with something trivial, you may additionally send your link as an attachment in a wall posting. Use your secondary catchy title for this – as the primary title will already be as name of your blog-post attachment.

Befriend other bloggers

You need nevertheless to stretch out outside your own sphere in Facebook and Twitter to find more readers. The best way is to read what other bloggers on Nature Blog Network write about and chip in and comment on their blog post, and make sure your blog also get registered with Nature Blog Network. Also, refer to other blog posts that you have found interesting in your own posts. Most bloggers automatically monitor the net if their blogposts get mention elsewhere (monitor application available as plug-in to your blog). If you are consistent you will see that you will get visits to your blog from the same people you admire.

A word of warning regarding comments: Be careful so that your comments on other blogs does not become spam. You must take your time to treat every comment as a real comment to the blog not something automatic like “Awesome post, man!”. It is not very constructive – and it sounds like a typical spam phrase where your next word is Viagra!
Some self promotion you may get away sometimes, but not every time. Just the fact that your name is linked to your blog in the comment field invites the reader to check out your blog if you have something interesting to say. But if you say something stupid or just “read my blog” you will get many bad vibes and very few visitors. The owner of the blog, can erase any comment he/she does not like – and believe me they will.

Another way is to participate in blog carnivals. Blog carnivals are like a Blogger’s Digest recommending blogs under a specific subject. Nature Blog Network mentions several you can participate in.

Social media bookmarking, such as Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon, are other ways to get traffic to your site. Unfortunately, there are few birdwatchers that use these services. I am going to deal with these services in a future blog post. Meanwhile, play around with them and bookmark blog posts that you enjoy (including some of your best own posts – and naturally this article if you like it!)

On Facebook there is an application called NetworkedBlog, where you can register your blog, follow other blogs and ask others to read your blog among their friends. This application is great as long as you are logged on to Facebook, but it does not allow you to sort the blogs you follow in folders. For that you need a RSS feed-reader.

RSS reader such as Google Reader

The best RSS and most popular reader is Google Reader. As usual when it comes to Google the service is absolutely free. You need to sign up for a Google account, but chances are that you already have one if you use any of the other Google services such as Gmail, Picasa or Blogger. The reader makes it possible to handle a large number of blogs at the same time and sort them into folders. You add a page by clicking the RSS button found on the web-page you want to follow. Try clicking on this button to add my blog to your Google Reader.

If you use Mozilla Firefox as I do, you also find the RSS button next to the Url web-address box. In Internet Explorer there is a button in the toolbar.
Again you should resort to Nature Blog Network to find the blogs you want to follow. With Google Reader it is possible to follow several hundred blogs if you like. You can always sort them into folders, of priority for your obligatory reading.
By monitoring a number of blogs this way, you can very smartly look where you want to make a comment on another blog and maybe even with a link directly to a specific topic you cover in one of your blogs – especially if it is relevant to the particular blog post. Just make a search for the key word(s) in your latest blog in all the blogs you follow and maybe you find something relevant to comment.

RSS reader for your mobile phone

Repeating what I stated above, you must read and comment other bloggers to get more readers. By all means tell your friends to subscribe to your feed, but unless they are bloggers themselves it is unlikely they will and less have an RSS reader they check regularly. The people just reading the RSS feed will not register in the page view count in the statistics from Google Analytics or the WP dashboard statistics. With Feedburner Google app you can get an idea how many people read your RSS feed. Blogger has a specific widget that shows your friends that follow you automatically, which is very cool since it also includes the miniature photo or avatar of your friend.

The main problem remains: Who has time to read so many blogs? Getting a mobile reader for your phone will help you. There is a mobile version for Google Reader. This way I can read a blog when in the supermarket cue or waiting at my turn in the bank and even jam down a few blogs right before bed time in bed. Problem is that the text is so small on my Blackberry, so I need to always carry my reading glasses – and the lay-out is not very user-friendly.

In my blog Twitter for Birders, part 2, I talked about a great RSS reader for Blackberry and Smartphones – Free Range in the context that RSS feeds of Twitter hash-tags can be used as a rare bird alert system. (Really, read the article if interested in this). Free Range has its own web-browser converting text and pictures in a very user friendly format and readable for Blackberry (which I use). You can download the feeds to read them later even without phone connection. You can also bookmark with deli.cio.us or send the link to an email address with just a click. Check this FreeRange Feeder page for two tutorials that explain all possibilities of this mobile RSS reader. For Iphone there is a similar reader (that I have not tried) called Net Use Wire from Newsgator. Please, let me know if it works well in your comments below.

Become a better blogger in 31 days with Problogger

One of the top Blog Gurus Darren Rowse of Problogger, that I hailed in my post on Google Books, is starting an email course of 31 days to become a better blogger. You can not get better advice than this. The email was to start on April 1, but has just been postponed to April 6 (as I write this), so there is still time to sign up. You sign up to 31 days to build a better blog here. Don’t miss it. Problogger’s web-site is full of useful tips for you, in spite of being for learning how to make money making blogs (which is higly unlikely for a nature blogger in the first place except for a handful dollars per month with Adsense of Google and Amazon Associate). Daren’s success probably stems from that he seems to be a completely altruistic person in all the tips he gives away. He will probably have something to sell at the end of the course, but of the over 5000 following his free e-course he will only need to monetize on a couple of corporate companies that need a lecture series and sell a couple of 100 books to make it worth while.

See you on the Problogger’s course then. I am sure I will learn a lot.

Blogger icon from Flickr by Emanuel Batalha under Creative Commons license.

by Gunnar Engblom March 29, 2009 0

Twitter Updates for 2009-03-29

Did an easy 8K with Luciana in her new Jeep Overland Jogging Stroller. 4K to a playground playing for an hour and back. My arms are sore! #
“My life was so boring until I’ve begun to twitter about it!” Changed the illustration of yesterday’s blog. https://bit.ly/2dGjNK #
RT @problogger: just checked and 31 Days to Build a Better Blog has 5127 signed up – still time to join at https://bit.ly/AEoy #31dbbb #
Should I sign up to My Space? Any advantages? Any birders there? #
Figuring out Google Reader. Will blog about my results! #

by Gunnar Engblom March 5, 2009 0

I and the Bird #95

Blog Carnival of Birding – I and the Bird

I only started blogging seriously two months ago. And it has been a fantastic experience. One of the best ways to get your birding blog exposed is to participate in a blogging Carnival. You should also promote your blog on social media. Try to use a catchy phrase when promoting instead of just saying “New blog on www.blog.com..
I have gotten to know some of the top name of bloggers this way. One of them is Connie Kogler -also known as Lefthanddbirder on Twitter – and she is hosting this issue of the bi-weekly birding blog carnival – “I and the bird” on her blog Birds O’ The Morning. Connie usually blogs about amazing Colorado, but this time she is on a exploring hunt as she recaptures the bloggers from all over the world. I have the honour to be participating with one story previously published on this page. It is a fine field of bloggers in this issue. Get your buts over there now for some good reading that takes you to India, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Guatemala, Mexico, Singapore, Trinidad&Tobago and of course a number of North American localities.
Where you have to go. I told you once! Birds O’ The Morning.

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