Come, fellow bloggers! Let us yell loudly at each other

Okay, finally got this to a point where I'm not completely embarrassed to open it up for viewing.

Still needs more content, but I've got a framework in place at http://momgamer.weebly.com/. If you have any feedback, I'd be glad to hear it.

Added your blog to the first post, momgamer.

I have been posting some PAX based stuff, but last night's entry has me feeling a bit proud, actually (that is, until I go back a week later, reread it and think "What the Hell have I done?"). I reviewed Resident Evil: Revelations, and am quite pleased.

In favor of thinking of topics for others to write about, here are two things for fellow video game bloggers to consider:

Braid Creator on Games as sh*tty Action Movies

Mega Man Creator Shakes Fist at Japanese Game Industry

I'll probably tackle the latter in due time, myself.

Got a question for the room.

I've got my new platform stable enough that I can concentrate on content for a while, and now the question comes up. I have several years worth of previous blog material sitting here (I pulled it off my old blog sites into raw text and I can do whatever I want with it). I'm wondering if I should even bother to put it back up and reference it, or should I just let it go and start fresh?

Some of it is fairly time-bound, so I wouldn't want to just repeat it, but there is quite a bit of general stuff that wouldn't be bad.

I'm thinking maybe I should just go through it and use those "timeless" entries as backlog to help me build my habit of posting at least once a day up again.

What do you think?

I myself have nothing against using older blog material if you have it. Sometimes revisiting an old piece is nice, especially if your writing or even viewpoint has improved.

I say go for it.

I'd go with "revisiting" old content, with any additional thoughts that come to mind.

So here's a bit of discussion (hopefully): blogging styles.

Monday I had written up a Kid Icarus: Uprising review, but I wasn't too happy with it. Felt scattered, without a real thesis, and disorganized. It was very much a product of just writing off the top of my head.

I've told myself to be fine with this more often, that in order to get in the habit of blogging more I should stop trying so hard and just write something and post it. But I didn't. I scrapped it and rewrote it from the beginning, instead recollecting some of my thoughts and organizing them better. Writing with more of a plan involved. As a result, I'm a lot happier with it.

Now, I was a Journalism minor, so I'm familiar enough with the need to do multiple drafts, the editing process, and so on (even though I managed to get A's on the first draft of all my papers up until my...third year in College I think). I know the best thing to do is multiple drafts. But a blog is usually less formal than that.

So my question to you guys is, do you typically write something and put it up immediately? Or do you write something, come back to it later for touch-ups, or potentially even scrap it and start from the beginning again?

Uh... all of the above?

Sometimes I do just write a bit and post it. But I have written long-form things with all the drafts and bells and whistles.

Most of my writing is drafted with Notepad on whatever computer I'm at.

I keep stuff in an old share-ware tabbed notebook software called Keynote. I have it organized by destination/project, and then each one under that has various pages and folders. The biggest one by far is just labeled "Ideas" and that's where random stuff goes to wait until genius gets to burning or whatever. There's stuff that's floated around in there for literally years before seeing the light of day somewhere.

Also: Wordsmythe, here is a link to my RSS feed. It had me for a loop as I use Chrome primarily, and only recently have I discovered that Chrome doesn't style an RSS feed for you. So now I got to look into alternatives in case there are Chrome users that don't know what to do with such a link as that. So until I have that figured out I will not provide a link to my RSS on my website.

I just find a way to get the words out there. I can fix them later.

ccesarano wrote:

Also: Wordsmythe, here is a link to my RSS feed.

Added!

Not quite a blog, but I could still use input. My brother and my friend attempted to make our first episode of a new podcast, Downloathable Content, and it ran into some recording issues (that issue being that we didn't get ANYTHING we talked about in the first hour of the podcast). Still, it made for a better practice run, giving me a chance to learn how to use Audacity, see just how much work goes into cutting out coughs, ums, silence and background noise, as well as all around silence.

The real issue is that, sharing one microphone, the podcast is simply too damn quiet.

In any case, the topic was the ending of Mass Effect 3, hopefully saying something interesting. There's vague spoilers of the end of Shadow of the Colossus and FF13-2, though, so be warned.

Link to my blog post.

Link directly to the mp3

EDIT:

So there was a thread around here that inspired me to write about how making Avatar's villain (the movie, not the show) more three-dimensional would have made it a lot better. I can't remember which thread that was, so I'll just post the result here.

My game criticism blog, Infinite Lag, is updated far too infrequently.

ccesarano wrote:

making Avatar's villain (the movie, not the show) more three-dimensional would have made it a lot better.

I get it!

Hey, I blogged!!

Oh, I didn't know about this thread. My site is www.gamingculture.org

This is me tagging the thread too so I remember to go back to the OP and read some other goodjer blogs.

I'm writing about my life in Laos at the unoriginally named:
http://www.bruceinlaos.com

I am trying to get my WP blog to also publish to my FB page at the same time.

I don't know if it because I am tired or hat, but the instructions I am getting don't seem to actually match up with what the options are on the screen. I will try again tomorrow after sleeping, but does anyone have any suggestions or advice on how to go about doing it?

If I could push it out to G+ as well (different plugin or the same, doesn't matter to me, as long as it is easy to set up), that would be even more awesome.

Revived elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com to keep track of my MA work.

mudbunny wrote:

I am trying to get my WP blog to also publish to my FB page at the same time.

I don't know if it because I am tired or hat, but the instructions I am getting don't seem to actually match up with what the options are on the screen. I will try again tomorrow after sleeping, but does anyone have any suggestions or advice on how to go about doing it?

If I could push it out to G+ as well (different plugin or the same, doesn't matter to me, as long as it is easy to set up), that would be even more awesome.

Are you using a plugin?
This one apparent;y is quite good.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...
and will publish to facebook and twitter. No G+ on it yet. If he was teh smarts he'd get on that.
There are others and lots that just publish to FB.

groan wrote:
mudbunny wrote:

I am trying to get my WP blog to also publish to my FB page at the same time.

I don't know if it because I am tired or hat, but the instructions I am getting don't seem to actually match up with what the options are on the screen. I will try again tomorrow after sleeping, but does anyone have any suggestions or advice on how to go about doing it?

If I could push it out to G+ as well (different plugin or the same, doesn't matter to me, as long as it is easy to set up), that would be even more awesome.

Are you using a plugin?
This one apparent;y is quite good.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...
and will publish to facebook and twitter. No G+ on it yet. If he was teh smarts he'd get on that.
There are others and lots that just publish to FB.

I have been trying with the official FB app, but will dump it and try that one.

So, I wrote a couple of blog articles about my half-marathon.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Enjoy!!

I'm sorry I've neglected this thread, guys. It didn't seem to be sparking much in the way of discussion, and my intent was not to just use it to pimp stuff out.

Though I will momentarily note that I got front paged on Destructoid not too long ago. I mostly use their blog system for stuff that I want to ramble on about but doesn't have a fitting thread here and is too informal (at least at first) for my own blog.

But something that's been bugging me lately is how to go about gaining new readers, aside from the fact that I really need to update more regularly than I do (though irregular updates doesn't stop Brainy Gamer from having more readers). While my content isn't the best, I'd like to think it's entertaining.

So the question becomes: how do I share it? I basically just post my stuff on Facebook and Twitter, but that typically means my friends see it, maybe glance at it, and then it is never looked at again. I don't really use hashtags either.

A friend of mine said I should post it on Reddit, but I don't feel right posting my own article on Reddit, especially since a lot of what I'm writing about is old news by time it's up. Plus, who the Hell am I to be posting my own work?

So I'm curious if anyone has any ideas or advice for getting a blog out to more readers. Marketing has never been my strong suit (but, naturally, I'll be sure to voice my opinion as to how the game industry should go about it).

ccesarano wrote:

I'm sorry I've neglected this thread, guys. It didn't seem to be sparking much in the way of discussion, and my intent was not to just use it to pimp stuff out.

Though I will momentarily note that I got front paged on Destructoid not too long ago. I mostly use their blog system for stuff that I want to ramble on about but doesn't have a fitting thread here and is too informal (at least at first) for my own blog.

But something that's been bugging me lately is how to go about gaining new readers, aside from the fact that I really need to update more regularly than I do (though irregular updates doesn't stop Brainy Gamer from having more readers). While my content isn't the best, I'd like to think it's entertaining.

So the question becomes: how do I share it? I basically just post my stuff on Facebook and Twitter, but that typically means my friends see it, maybe glance at it, and then it is never looked at again. I don't really use hashtags either.

A friend of mine said I should post it on Reddit, but I don't feel right posting my own article on Reddit, especially since a lot of what I'm writing about is old news by time it's up. Plus, who the Hell am I to be posting my own work?

So I'm curious if anyone has any ideas or advice for getting a blog out to more readers. Marketing has never been my strong suit (but, naturally, I'll be sure to voice my opinion as to how the game industry should go about it).

I'm a marketing dude, so I'd like to think I can help. Here are some suggestions, in no particular order:

(Although, I haven't exactly set the world on fire with my blog, so take everything I say with a healthy grain of salt.)

First: forget the rules. You know that whole "you need to blog regularly thing"? Forget about it. Post only when you have good stuff.

Second: Pacing. Break up your posts with images, headings. My first thought on looking at GamerTagged was...gorblimey, that's a lot of text!

Third: Master the SEO basics. Headings will help, but you need to have some basic tagging and keywording in your posts so they show up well in the Googleplex.

Fourth: Dude...only Stubleupon and Twitter? What if I wanted to share to Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest? Make it easy to share!

Fifth: What do you want the reader to do? Comment? Share it? There's no call to action. When I get to the bottom of the wall of text, what is the thing you want me to do?

Sixth: Stumble Upon, Google+, and Pinterest drive interested readers. Look into promoting on those as well. Every post should be submitted on StumbleUpon, and Pinterest, at the very least.

Seventh: Just who are you following on Facebook and Twitter? Only people you know, or people you want to know? You need a broader base than just friends if you want to pick up readers.

Eighth: LINKS. Don't just link to the other blogs in a blogroll...link under the post to other articles you know the reader would like. Use Zemanta if you want to take some of the work out of this. Backlinks increase the chances other bloggers will notice you, and link to your blog with a response.

Ninth: No one comments. So, if you want to stand out, go comment on someone else's blog.

Tenth: Consider adding a Tumblr Blog as a feeder into this blog. Lots of literate gamers there. Toss in some gaming graphics, reblog some other folks stuff, toss in a link back to your blog....profit?

That's all I got for 12AM and exhausted.

That all sounds very helpful as well. I may need to take some time to consider another redesign of my blog, as I was thinking about some of those ideas already.

Also: I think Facebook changed their API again. I had a like button on there that has since vanished.

I have seen a tremendous growth by posting to Google+ and implementing a consistent practice of tagging my posts.

Tremendous as in bordering on a 10 fold increase.

Hey now there,
I am looking for a desktop software solution that will allow me to backup websites, into zip, tar, or whatever format via FTP and download the file either to a cloud account or to my local machine.
Does such a beast exist?

Scheduling ability would be nice.
Free would be nice.

A buddy of mine is starting a gaming industry blog.
http://www.mousepoegamingrants.blogs...

For those that are interested, here is my blog post on my experience at the Spartan Race here in Ottawa 3 weeks ago.

http://www.mudbunny.ca/2013/07/spart...

Man, I have been seriously neglecting this thread.

I'll add any new blogs to the first post, and start sharing more of my own stuff. For example, I recently shared my thoughts on the movie Chronicle.

-

EDIT: And to add to that, my latest post, Geek and/or Nerd. Originally intended as a simple rebuttal to MovieBob's notion that geek is now mainstream, I am now encouraged to continue writing some thoughts down about geek culture and where it has come. One of the articles will be on the concert I went to, focusing on how niche music is now fulfilling a variety of musical genres with a lot of surprising talent. The other a look into the "fake nerd girls", where it possibly comes from, and why it's possible guys don't come under such scrutiny. It will all be guess work, though, as I'm no sociologist and don't know if there's any actual reliable studies to go with it.