Introducing Features

I shared a post the other day that has really inspired me on figuring out my content here on DBCII. It’s perhaps unsurprising that the idea came from Gene’O, of The Writing Catalog, as he is someone who blogs similarly to how I do.

The idea presented, and one I see a lot in reading blogs, is features. Posts that you can just expect to see, daily, or weekly. As a creator, they help you know what content you’ll need to create, to keep your blog going. As a reader, they help you expect what you’ll see, let you know to come back for more later when you find something you like.

Gene’O lists a number of features on Sourcerer that they run, but I thought I would note a few of my other favorites. On Love Pirate’s Ship’s Log, there’s a quote of the day. I love them – generally a picture from a movie or TV episode, and then a few lines of quote. They just make me stop and smile as I skim through my WordPress reader. Another favorite is the Box Office Top 10 on We Minored in Film, which just fill me with joy each week as I read it.

I see other features, such as episode recaps and reviews of popular shows, or Wednesday New Comics (it’s nice that most all new comics come out on one day, for the purpose of blogging about it!). These are the sorts of features we might consider on Comparative Geeks, but at the same time, because others are doing it, we want to leave it to them. Because we do so little content, as it were – with just our 6 posts a week – features would eat up a lot of that.

Also, it would force us to keep up with shows or reading comics or whatever we chose – which is against what we’re doing with the blog. We are writing for the joy of it, for the thought and sharing, and forcing timelines like that on ourselves would not be great. The closest we get is our ongoing LitFlix – where we read the book/comics and then see the movie.

And we have other ongoing series, like Science Fiction Today, Character Studies, or Science Fiction and Religion, but we don’t follow a schedule on those… it’s more like we try to do at least one of those a month. We could try to make these a scheduled feature, but they’re more of just an ongoing series, and for a blog, those are good too.

So let me introduce the features I am planning on here! Read more of this post

Efficient Blogging: The Power of Features (The Sunday Re-Blog)

Doubling up today on Re-Blogs for reasons that will soon become apparent. This post has really inspired me, and I’ve been thinking about ways it applies. I think the answer is: it apples here on DBCII. Expect some features to come!

Sourcerer's avatarSourcerer

One thing six months of blogging has taught me is that, if your goal is to update a blog every day, you have to find ways to create posts that don’t take a lot of time. If you’re blogging to attract a readership (and not everyone is, but I am), you’re investing words and time in your blog and hoping for a return in reads and engagement. So when I talk about efficiency, I’m asking a question:

How can I produce a post that’s good — one people will actually like — and do it as quickly as possible?

Before I go any further, let me just say: I don’t believe it’s necessary to post every day to have a successful blog. It’s much more important to produce quality work, and to find ways of bringing it to the attention of goodwriter memepeople who are interested in whatever you’re blogging about…

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Yes, Hashtags Are Helping.  Or: Why Shonda Rhimes Doesn’t Know What She’s Talking About (The Sunday Re-Blog)

Fantastic look at how social media can be used, and how it should not be discounted by people just because they do not understand it.

Also, this is a great blogger whom I highly recommend, and I’m not just saying that because she took my comments and edited them into her original post. Yay writers!

Call to Action – Local Board Game Con! (Re-Blog)

Hi all!

I wanted to push this a little bit to get input. I’ve been asked to help with starting up a board gaming convention here in town, and was hoping for success or horror stories, advice and thoughts!

I’ll likely be blogging more about it as it gets closer, but for now, share your thoughts and stories at the post below:

Call to Action – Local Board Game Con!.

Vocal Duos in Music

Thought I would catch up on sharing my contributed posts. Here’s my second Music post over on Sourcerer! This one’s about music groups that have two singers, and especially ones with a male and female voice!

CompGeeksDavid's avatarSourcerer

Recently we went to see The Manhattan Transfer in concert. Not a band I had known, but we took the opportunity to go see some live music! It was a great concert, and they definitely still have their skills.

Early on in the concert, they introduced harmony, and how it works, demonstrating as they added one each to the combination. It made me think about harmony, and groups with multiple singers, and how maybe that was something that there used to be a lot more of – but for a while there wasn’t as much. And I feel like it’s coming back.

I really like bands that have multiple people singing, and am really enjoying some of the groups doing more of this. Not like the boy bands or girl bands, where maybe they each do some singing, just to highlight each of them and show them as a personality…

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