Features

As recommended on another blog, I started running some Features here on DBCII, as a way of getting myself adding content consistently, and to give you something worth following when you come here! I came up with some initial Features ideas, and after a month, shared some of the stats and thoughts from running Features. I found that in general, Features work! However, original content outside of Features is good, and doing meaningful Features seems powerful as well. I have been trying to move to some new Features, but am still keeping the old ones in the wings – so they will mix together over time!

Here’s a link and description for each of them:

• Meme Monday: I love memes, and thought I would try my hand at making some. The benefit was twofold: fun memes, and practice making them. I hope to work them more generally into other blog posts! These posts were generally short and sweet, with the meme doing most of the talking.
• Muse Monday: This is the Feature I am trying to replace Meme Monday with. The goal is for me to do some short writing for these posts, in keeping with the blog’s purpose. I plan on using writing prompts (thus the name, right?) and also plan on trying to keep all the posts in one setting – a cruise ship. I am calling this project more generally Sailing to Nowhere. Currently on hold.
• Wordless Wednesday: This is a Feature I’ve seen a lot of other bloggers run as well. I suppose the idea is: a picture is worth a thousand words. I fight the urge to write anything, even in the title or caption, but if you look hard you can find some hints as to what the picture is… This has been good practice in photo editing, setting up “like” options on WordPress, and is a great way to share pictures! As this feature hit its second year, I have upgraded by adding a subtitle, and occasional caption. Also I am starting to feature sketches and things I have drawn, beyond just photography.
• Flash Fiction Friday and Six Word Saturday: I played around some with the Twitter phenomenon, #SixWordStory. I played around with the limits and elements of telling a story in six words. And I found that I would really rather have a bit more than that to work with! I still may try my hand at the occasional six word story, but my goal is to do more flash fiction – within the confines still of a Tweet! 140 characters is still very short, but it’s longer than six words (generally) so that’s something. I plan on running one or the other of these Features every week.
• #WeekendCoffeeShare: These posts tend to start “If we were having coffee…” and are a social and personal post type. The idea is to catch up with your readers, and to go around “having coffee” with others. I’m working on the latter part. Stop on by on Saturdays for coffee!
• The Sunday Re-Blog: I am not sure what I think of this Feature anymore, though it was also my first Feature, I suppose. The idea was simple: re-blog something on Sunday. At first I was re-blogging my own posts, and was actually cutting and pasting the post content in. I’ve found it better to use the WordPress “re-blog” button – but this means I have to post this real-time, and then race over to it and add categories and tags and such. When I think of a post worth sharing, I do so. I also have kept re-blogging a variety of posts on other days, so you can also find these as a Re-Blog.

If you want to see other thematic groupings of content, there’s always checking tags like Assignments, from when this blog started as a class on blogging. And there’s also the A-to-Z Challenge from April!