Alan Smith

Our guest speaker on Tuesday was British writer Alan Smith. We were privilaged to have him as our guest because he has more of an international view on blogging. As a writer, Mr. Smith focused more on the rhetoric side of blogging. He is more of a critique of the grammar, spelling and other English based qualities. He was helpful to me as a blogger because one of the big blogging questions i had, finally been answered. Yes, grammar and sentence structure is a very important quality to a successful blog. Conforming to popular rhetoric and slang within a blog post is the quickest way to become viewed as cheap and immature.
As a writer, Alan was always trying to come up with new and improved writing styles in order to keep the attention of the viewer. He 110% sold his ideas to every publisher despite how negatively he viewed his writings. You have to sell the idea in order to even get thepublisher to consider reading it. Along with that, you actually have to have decent writing to get your work published. Another piece of advice Alan gave was that if you can't distiguish the apostrophe placement in your, you're, you might as well give it up!

Every Photographers Dream

Big news! 
I have been accepted to live in Orlando in a place where dreams truly do come true! 
Sound dreamy?  
Sound like a fairy tale? 

Well, the shoe certainly fits because in January I will be flying out to Disney World to study photography in Disney's college program! This oppurtunity has lingered in my dreams since 2009 and i'm finally getting the chance to experience the reality! This will drastically effect my blogging as I will begin to use my blog to post pictures, experiences, and thoughts during this adventure. It will help my family and friends keep up with my life from many miles away! I am beyond excited and my excitement will only grow as the steps towards my career unfold! Stay Tuned!

Rhea Blog Assignment

Upon hearing Rhea's speech, he mentioned one quality of a succesful blog that stuck out to me. He continuously stated how important the quantity rather than the quality is when trying to maintain a succesful blog. Constantly updating and consistentally  evolving the information is a sure fire way to get numerous hits. I have lots of work to do in regards to the amount of time i spend blogging yet, I find that the more I blog, the more interested in blogging I become. I hope to continue to grow and learn more about the art and business of blogging as to where i can use it as a more effective tool upon every post.

Kurt Hochenauer-Creator of Okie Funk

I had the privilege of hearing award winning blogger Dr. Kurt Hochenauer speak in class last Thursday and i was surprised to find how enthralled i was in what it takes to become a successful blogger today. Despite the fact that he has made most of his success back in 2008 and 2009, he still remains today as a strong willed, successful liberal blogger in an extremely right wing state. I don't want to say it was easier to break into the blogging scene when he first started in 2004, but there was certainly less competition. Back in 2004, there was around 2.5 million blogs. Now, however, there is upwards of 200 million blogs. That being said, Dr. Hochenauer did an excellent job converging his media to the changing scene. He switched blog platforms multiple times as he grew in popularity. That is a feat in itself, let alone the feat of remaining a valuable read as a liberal blogger in Oklahoma. Sure, he gets his fair share of criticism, as do most controversial writers out there. 

His status as a writer has also grown since he began writing. He has held multiple writing and editing jobs for various newspapers from the beginning of his blogging career. He has worked at the Oklahoman, the Tulsa Tribune, and the Kansas City Star. One of the most honorable things i found about Dr. Hochenauer is that he purposely does not accept revenue from his blogs success. The ads that would be a result from him accepting the money, he says, would clutter and cheapen his blog and disappoint his readers. My view on blogging has changed, in that, i don't necessarily need to compromise my beliefs and morals to please my readership. As long as i stick to my guns, proofread my work, and blog often, I'm pretty much guaranteed hits.

If you are interested in reading his work click the link below 

http://www.okiefunk.com/ 
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Blog Review Assignment

I decided to review the blog "[Tech Blog] Microsoft in the Hardware Biz" by Shane Kempton. 
This blog helped me realize many simple things to quickly raise the "wow" factor on my blog. Due to this blog being completely simple and more like an online article, I don't necessarily think it has a "wow" factor.  There are a few things, however, that make me more interested in reading it. 

To begin, it has line breaks in the text to start new paragraphs and to keep the reader's mind from overheating. Also, it keeps the text alive by adding pictures and links to go to different sites that explain the material. This is extremely useful in order to better explain the topic of your text especially if you, as the blogger, are having trouble explaining your point. 

The State of the Bloggersphere-What i Learned

Every year the president stands on a podium and gives a speech to Millions of people called "The State of the Union", simply named, due to the fact that he's discussing....well...the state of our union! All politics, lies, and half hearted devotions aside, Technorati releases similar data every year except they explain the State of the Bloggersphere. All the research they've attained after polling, scanning, and counting through all the bloggers and blogs is taken and they post these findings on Technorati's website.

Most researchers tend to post their results in hard to find places and the majority of the time they're hard to read. Seems to me, 90% of the time those results might as well be in Chinese because they're so hard to decipher. Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" is a very useful tool, in that, it's very easy to read, straight forward research that is relatively easy to find. Their graphs and tables representing their data seems to be the most effective way of distributing their findings. I learned many things while reading through the results. Some of the things i learned i had already inferred and some i hadn't. I was surprised to find that the majority of bloggers are actually male. Its not a stereotype to say that i thought women would be more into blogging, its just that, in my experience, girls seem to be the one's more interested in finding emotional outlets. ;) i.e blogging. As you can see, my thought wasn't completely outrageous. Girls dominate the social world aside from only one: blogging.