Summarized quote:

I’m having trouble with my Facebook account today, so if you see this message could you please click “like”? Teehee!

Translation:

I’m today’s version of a hit whore and I’m dying to see just how popular I really am. In reality, there’s nothing wrong with my Facebook account, or me. I just want to see who all’s out there and how many “likes” I can get!

Conclusion? You are lame.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend with new mothers and mothers of toddlers and young children. They read an article in a magazine or watch a live talk show, and suddenly they’re all, “Ooh, I want to start a blog!”, and then they do. Except that they don’t bother to really read about what goes into a blog. Instead, they set up some lame-ass name on Blogger, like MargieMotherofTwoBoys, because heaven forbid Margie just be Margie, grab as many processor-grinding widgets (powered by Javascript and Flash, of course) as they can find, and load up their blogs with hideous layouts and posts that are in major need of a spell checker.

Finding quality bloggers and quality blogs is a hard thing to do these days.

As a blogger who has been blogging for approximately half of my life, and has spent the last seven years doing a lot of SEO-oriented work, I can tell you that I routinely run into bloggers who are trying to keep all of the google juice goodness for themselves and not sharing it with others. What I mean is, there are bloggers who expect others to link to their blog and give “credit” by leaving those links as dofollow, which is the default.

For anyone who is wondering about dofollow and nofollow:
Dofollow: by default links on websites are dofollow, which means that search engine bots will pick up on them and give “credit” to those links — however, in the process, the site who is providing the link may lose a bit of their “link juice” – it’s all about give and take!

Nofollow: nofollow links are links that have rel=”nofollow” placed in their HTML source. This tells search engine bots to ignore the links, thereby not “seeing” them and giving credit to the linked sites. Bad!

Ideally, a blogger will maintain a good balance of inbound and outbound links, thereby doing away with the need to even consider nofollowing links. But some bloggers just don’t care, and they’re greedy. These are the bloggers I can’t stand, because they make all of us bloggers look bad. And from a work standpoint, it sucks to have to deal with bloggers like these, because some can be quite stubborn.

Just give the link juice, all right? If your blog doesn’t totally SUCK, you won’t have to worry about not getting enough link juice in return!

(Some random musings from me; things I’ve thought about while on my many blogging adventures)

• If you don’t know how to construct a link
• If you rely on pre-made themes and widgets for “your” design (reality check: if you’re using other people’s shit, it’s not yours.)
• You write nonsensical crap all of the time
• You have more guest/sponsored posts on your blog than your own
• You routinely abandon blogs

Maybe I’m just a little uppity, but lately my pet peeve has been bloggers who obviously don’t have a clue about the mechanics of blogging. They want to portray this image of popularity, they want to be snooty and unreachable and require you to use a contact form to get in touch with them, they expect showers of offers ranging from product reviews to blog sponsorships, yet…

• they don’t know how to construct a link
• they don’t know how to wrap text around an image
• they don’t understand anything about social media
• they don’t even know how to reset their password

If you want to write, pick up a journal. If you want to simply blog, get hosted at LiveJournal or WordPress. But if you want to blog, and blog successfully, then you need to know more than how to falsely market yourself as something you’re not.

*steps off of soapbox*

So many moms and moms-to-be start up blogs and suddenly think they’re the next big thing, all because they get a sponsored ad, a nice comment from a PR rep or a few baby gifts to review. This irritates me, for a number of reasons. First of all, just because you can blog doesn’t mean that you should, or that you’re good at it. Second of all, installing WordPress, setting up a username and password for yourself and plunking in a pre-made theme and a handful of plugins does not make you an “expert” blogger. But most importantly, owning and maintaining a blog does NOT make you a “blogging expert”, just as cooking dinner every night for my family does not make me a chef.

When I first started blogging back in 1998, I wasn’t much more than a kid myself — I was 14 at the time. In 2001, when I got serious enough about blogging to purchase a domain and setup a CMS (Greymatter was the CMS of choice back in those days), I was 17, and still very much into blogging about my life. When I got pregnant in 2004, I was questioned about my blog. Now that I was pregnant, would I stop blogging? My answer was no. It was no when my daughter was born, no when I got pregnant with my son, and no once again when my son was born.

Now that my kids are school age (preschool/kindergarten and kindergarten/first grade), I’m still blogging just as much as I did before. Why would I suddenly stop blogging just because I’m a parent? While I may change what I blog about, I certainly won’t be changing my decision to blog. I just have a personal rule of thumb: don’t write anything I wouldn’t want my kids’ teachers or the pastor at our church to read. Heh. But even then, I suppose my standards are pretty “low” when compared to some. But hey, even if they’re low, they’re still standards!

In early 2007, as a way to supplement our then one-income-household, I took up paid blogging, after talking to Amanda about it. At the time my daughter was two and a half and my son was just six months old. Now, four years later, paid blogging, along with SEO work, has become my fulltime job. I live and breathe SEO. As a result, I blog both for business and for pleasure. While it’s nice to get paid to do something that I love, doing something that I love for money has definitely taken some of the fun out of it.

Ten years ago the term “blog” was thrown around a lot on the internet and amongst enthusiastic bloggers such as myself, but out in the “real world”, aka the offline world, blogs were not yet the rage. Fast forward ten years, and it seems as though blogs have reached their peak and perhaps regressed a bit. Mainly, blogs are taking a backseat due to the overwhelming influence that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter provide. I think even MySpace has bit the dust. Most companies that I know of, both local, nationwide and online-only ones, rely on Facebook and Twitter for the creation and maintenance of online connections and relationships.

A prime example is Joe Browns. Joe Browns is on Facebook and Twitter, but they don’t have a blog presence. But then again, if you take a look at their products, a blog presence probably isn’t necessary. Joe Browns is a UK-based apparel site that carries apparel and accessories for both men and women. It’s times like these I wish I was more familiar with UK sizing, because I really like some of the clothing they carry. A personal favorite of mine is the pretty layer bodice dress. It’s gorgeous and perfect for summer — or spring, if paired with a shawl or shrug.

Gorgeous, no? And for everyday wear, I’m really digging the layered leggings. They’re practical for moms like me! Ultimately, I like a lot of the womens clothes

Dear Paid Blogging Company,

I have a bone to pick with you. Not so big of a bone that I will name you and link to you, but big enough that I’m calling you out here. Specifically, your paid blogging system is set up so that bloggers are compensated for the number of words they write and the number of links that are specified by the advertiser. This is a nice system and all that, except that advertisers can specify in the description of what they want that a blogger include more than the required number of/paid for links. To add insult to injury, if the blogger doesn’t comply with that request (which they really shouldn’t, seeing as how they’re not being PAID to), the advertiser is free to then reject the post and not pay the blogger.

And to that I say: what the fucking fuck?

And to you I say: what the fucking fuck? This is an issue you have been aware of for at least a year now. Why have you not fixed it? I don’t know who’s more at fault here: the sleazy advertisers, or the look-the-other-way company that allows them to continue to ooze sleaziness.

Sincerely,

A disgruntled blogger