Today’s challenge involves promoting a post of our blog. What’s interesting about this task is that Darren points out that sometimes as blogger we fail to realize that promoting the whole blog, or the front page of our blog might be counterproductive, as possibly it is too vague. So he recommends selecting one or two posts a week to which you can give an extra push. In his post on the theoretical aspect of this lesson, Darren suggests a variety of ways in which we can promote our blog post. Here are a few that I think I can do:

• Putting your post on Twitter or Facebeook – I use both of these social networking tools, so this is something I can do.
• Promoting the post on Digg or Stumbleupon – I have registered accounts with both, so I can do this too.
• Comment on other people’s blogs – in this case I would not actually insert a link into the post, but I would get an automatic link by leaving the comment. And if the blog uses Commentluv (a Wordpress plugin that automatically displays the most recent post the commenter published, but which allows them to also choose a different post) then I can select the post in question for display. If people like the title, they will click on it.
• Using your Newsletter – I have a newsletter, so I can send out my newsletter with a plug of that post so people will click on the link.

This is about all I can handle. I mention in the title of this post that this task is especially challenging for me. I am not very good at self-promotion. I would rather just do my thing and wait for people to pick up on it on their own. This blog is slowly climbing the Google Page Rank ladder. I already have a Page Rank of 3 (for those who don’t know what this means, Google has a complicated system based on incoming links and pages loads and a bunch of other things, that it uses to rank websites. It takes some time usually to just get a Page Rank of 1. The highest is 10). But I find it hard to say: hey, look at me, I’m so great, my blog is so entertaining and interesting and informative, you have to read everything I write, and subscribe and get the newsletter and give me lots of money through different channels… But I have to get over that to a certain extent, because I am trying to build an internet business. Turtle^haus may not be “it.” I may end up building another blog entirely (I’ve been thinking of a cooking blog lately, because I’m on a diet and can’t eat anything. When I’m on a diet I get the urge to cook like crazy, so I can have at least the vicarious pleasure of seeing my family and friends enjoy the food I make. And I love food so much, just handling it… well, you understand why I’m fat, don’t you?)

Oh, my post of choice… let me select one. Hang on, I’ll be right back.

Okay, the post I am going to promote is the first segment of my 3-part interview with my friend Amanda Ackroyd, of Leeds, Yorkshire, England. Amanda and I went to boarding school together and have recently found each other again. We are as close today as we were then, in fact I would daresay that we are closer now. She is a writer and I very much want to help her publish her novel. So, here goes, the post I am promoting is: Author Interview: Amanda Ackroyd – part I.

(By the way, a suggestion that is frequently given by Darren and other blogging gurus is to occasionally link to your own posts inside newer posts so as to lead your readers back into your archives.)

I will report back in a bit. Off I go!

Okay, I’ve done three of the four tasks for both blogs (this one and Life+Web), and the Newsletter will have to wait until after the family Easter get-together, for which I’m leaving right now! Happy Easter everyone (or happy whatever you celebrate)

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2. Renewed Mission – Part 2 and day 1-31DBBB I define the second half of my mission for this...
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This is the first post of a series on bloggers who inspire me. It is also day 2 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge, and today’s task is to write a “list post.” As far as possible, I have decided to adapt the tasks of the Challenge to the posts I had already scheduled on my editorial calendar. Since there are so many things about my friend Mario Kluser that I admire and find inspiring, I think it will be very helpful to take the approach of a list post.
I have already spoken extensively of Mario in this blog. I interviewed him with reference to his two novels (and there are podcasts to go with his interviews), and I have linked to his blog on various occasions. I have never talked in depth about our friendship or about our professional relationship, nor have I really spoken much about his blog.
His blog is called Mario LIVE! and the tag line is “The People Blog.” No tag line has ever been more apt. For those who may not be familiar with our history, as it is a good story, here’s a little background. Mario and I met on Twitter in November of 2007. I was new to Twitter and Mario was one of my first two friends. Both he and the other friend, an Italian, went on to become “real life” friends, and visited me in New York in 2008. Both will be friends for life. What induced me to ask Mario to be my friend was his tone. I could sense kindness, warmth, friendliness and a sense of humor in his tweets (amazing what 140 little characters will reveal about a person), and I was right. He is a kindred spirit, and as they are hard to find, it’s a good idea to befriend one when you spot one.


After a short while we began to correspond via email, and we soon discovered that we were in similar professional situations, both looking for work in our chosen fields and not finding it in the current economic climate, and both in the process of deciding to make our own fortunes so as not to have to live with the pain and suffering of depending on an employer. We would both rather depend on the world at large.

He was already experienced in internet marketing, with AdWords, AdSense, landing pages, squeeze pages, etc., but knew very little about blogging, having always been under the impression that it was for whiny teenagers who just wanted to put their “diaries” online, and things of that nature. I, on the other hand, had already had a very intense blogging experience and was in the process of launching what are my two current blogs, turtle^haus and Life+Web. I told him a little about what I thought blogging was and could be, and he was convinced. Thus, Mario LIVE! was born. Mario and I discovered that we have complementary skills in business and complementary work experiences, and decided to join forces on special projects. Now, in addition to our blogs, we are helping a few corporate clients increase their online visibility and bring more clients through the virtual doors of their companies.

So, without further ado, here are 6 of the many reasons why Mario of Mario LIVE! inspires me:

1. He is a DOER and not a TALKER. I told him I was launching a blog and he was still quite skeptical. Within two short weeks, his blog was up and running, with a dozen posts, active comments, and so on, while mine was still heavily in the “design” phase and only had two or three posts. He has now well surpassed 100 posts in 6 months, and has now started a lovely newsletter;
2. He is absolutely AUTHENTIC (an overused buzz word in the world of blogging) in a way that is difficult to find;
3. He is not afraid to EXPRESS HIS OPINION and has no concern for what others might think or whether they may disagree with him. Don’t misunderstand me, he is not defiant and “in-your-face.” Quite the contrary. He is willing to bare his soul and share his innermost thoughts and feelings with the world, and does not let fads, trends, political correctness or the media influence his voice;
4. He is GUILELESS, CANDID, and POSITIVE. This does not mean that he never has negative feelings or that he is immune from being a little depressed or overwhelmed at times, but he always bounces back, and has a SOLUTION-ORIENTED attitude. Rather than dwelling on what is going wrong, he very quickly focuses on HOW CAN WE FIX THE PROBLEM AND MOVE ON.
5. His sense of WONDER is still very much alive. This is perhaps his most unique characteristic and one I find very winning. In fact, I think it is what sets him apart from other bloggers and will ultimately make his success online. It is a CHILDLIKE (not to be confused with childish) quality that allows us, his readers, to see his eyes widen in the face of extraordinary events or personal actions, and our eyes widen with his.
6. He KNOWS WHO HE IS as a person and as a blogger.

As with most bloggers, Mario did not immediately know what his blog was going to be about, what his MISSION was. At first he had a ton of different categories. He still has several categories, but nowadays they are much more coherent and the parts meld nicely into a recognizable and very pleasing whole.

His blog is tagged as “the people blog” because Mario finds inspiration in the actions of others. And these others don’t have to be celebrities. Anyone is worthy of a blog post, even a conversation overheard at the bus stop can inspire a story. But what he has to say is always interesting. Human interest, I would say, is the main focus of his posts. His stories are always heartfelt and entertaining, and I am always sucked in right from the opening sentence.

An overview of the things that interest him:

• The human mind
• Hypnosis
• Depression and overcoming it
• Friendship
• Overcoming life’s obstacles
• Personal finances
• Curious, fun, amazing things he finds surfing the web
• Music
• Photography
• Videography
• Films – he writes regular film reviews
• Books – as a writer he also reads a lot, and writes book reviews
• Animals – he has a pet rabbit, some hamsters (or is it gerbils?) and a cat. His girlfriend has a dog. They are sometimes featured
• Twitter
• Social media
• Motivation
• Television shows (he wants to be a corpse on one of the CSI shows)
• Fulfilling his dreams – this is another reason I should have mentioned. He is not afraid of pursuing his dreams, and he puts them right out there in the universe. I have no doubt that he will achieve most if not all of them
• New York and Brooklyn (where I live, now a second home to him)
• People and their stories.

When I get discouraged or a little “blocked” with my blogging or our online ventures, he always knows what to say to encourage me and get me going again. We motivate and encourage each other, we are each other’s biggest fans. At the end of his visit with me in November, on the day he was leaving, he said, “From now on, if they ask me whether I have any siblings, I will say yes, two: a brother in Germany and a sister in New York.” That’s the kind of person he is.

I am proud to be his friend and adopted sister, and so very happy to have found him. Thanks, Mario!

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As you may remember, I recently wrote a post inspired by the great Darren Rowse. Something he said inspired me to refine and restate my mission, or rather, the mission of this blog. Said mission turned out to be the telling of stories in all their different facets and mediums: written or told stories, stories in pictures, on film, and the stories that our lived-in spaces tell about us.
I left it at that. It was a nice long post in which I waxed poetic on how stories are at the basis of everything in our lives and how much we all enjoy telling them and hearing them (or reading or watching them unfold on stage or on a screen). A few days went by and I realized, Dammit, I forgot to mention another really important part of my mission! So, drum roll please, seat yourselves so as not to be taken by surprise. Here is part 2 of my mission statement:

To bring the untold stories I find into the world, disseminate them, give them light and air, allow them to be enjoyed by any and everyone.
This includes unpublished novels, such as Scarborough Baby, by Amanda Ackroyd, which I am publishing serially on a weekly basis, short stories that may have won awards but never been published, poems that have been hidden in shoe boxes in the bottom of closets… you get the idea.
So my desire is not merely to tell stories that belong to me or that are already well known but I think merit another word or two. No, I long to help orphaned stories find the light of day. Or help people who are a little timid bring forth their stories.
There, that is the other half of the mission.

This brings me to today’s mission. The great Darren Rowse has launched a project (he has done it twice before, but it’s slightly different every time) called the 31-Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge.The title of the challenge is self-explanatory. The way it unfolds is that the participants receive a daily email for 31 days, linked to a blog post on Problogger, with instructions for the day. The registered participants may receive a few odd tidbits that the regular readers of the blog do not, but on the whole you may follow along by reading the blog every day almost as well.

So I registered for the challenge, and today is Day 1! Today’s task is to write an Elevator Pitch for our blog. This too is fairly self-explanatory. Imagine you get onto an elevator and you bump into someone whom you’ve been trying to reach but who never gets back to you, or someone you have never had the courage to approach (we’re talking about networking here). Well, this person is now your captive audience, but only for as long as it takes to ride the elevator up to whichever floor he is going to (if your floor comes first, you will of course skip your floor, get off with him, and then find a way to slink down the emergency stairs back to your original destination floor).

It’s a great idea to have this pitch ready, so that at a moment’s notice you can regale your audience with a 30-second spiel which enlightens them while also tantalizing them. They should get off the elevator feeling that they get the general idea, but also intrigued, thinking, I’m going to log onto my computer and check this blog out, it sounds interesting.

The main and best reason to have an elevator pitch is, of course, for yourself. It will help you become laser focused on your mission, so that everything you do is guided by the Primary Objective (I know, I watch too many TV shows). Over time, and not even too much time, this practice will give a shape and direction to your blog which will make it immediately identifiable to your readers. And this is good, because it begins to establish your BRAND.

Darren says all this and more in his post, but I want to add just one little thing. Another great reason to have an elevator pitch is to increase your ability to believe in yourself and what you’re doing. Blogging is only a little less lonely than writing books. There is some interaction with readers and other bloggers, but when you are writing in your own little room, you are all alone, and having the elevator pitch that you can repeat to yourself when doubt starts creeping in helpt tremendously. It makes you think, oh, yes, this is real. I am doing a real thing for a real reason. Lastly, but not leastly (hee hee), the elevator pitch, though brief and to the point, is not usually actually delivered in an elevator. So if you learn to deliver your pitch in 30 seconds (and you should really practice saying it out loud, because it is meant to be spoken, like epic Greek poems, and not read), without requiring a paper bag to gasp into at the end, then when the time comes to say it to someone you have just met at a conference or party, the pitch will be able to breathe, will come to life, and will make perfect sense to the person you are speaking to.

After all this, would you like to hear my elevator pitch for turtle^haus? Well, hang on to your hats, here it is:

Nice to meet you, my name is Ilaria and I write a blog called turtle^haus (that’s H-A-U-S). It’s all about stories. I focus on three mediums of expression: writing and speaking, architecture and design, and film and theater. If you like to hear, watch, read stories and look at people’s houses to understand something about their lives, then you should become a reader. I also help un- or little known storytellers find an audience.

I can deliver it comfortably, with pauses for expression, in 24 seconds. Please let me know in the comments what you think! See you tomorrow!

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