A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

blogger

Hello, blogging world

I don’t want to jinx myself, but I feel I need to give myself some accountability.

It’s been a couple of years since I was blogging on a true regular basis. I blame it on the year 2016, which is when I blogged at least one post every single day.

For those of you who blog for a living or at least make some sort of money off it, I applaud you. And it’s probably a wee bit easier blogging each day if you know you can get some coin from it.

For me, it’s been more of an outlet. I never had a true niche, other than being a personal blog. I write about geocaching and baseball and photography and life and … whatever else my head can come up with.

But in 2017 and 2018, the only two true months I was super active was January, for the 20 Days of Chill Challenge.

This year, especially, has been even worse. About all I do is the Photo Blogging Challenge. I couldn’t even push myself to get the Story Dice Challenge updated all the time.

It seemed blogging became more distant to me.

That being said, I missed it and still love it. So what can I do to get back into it? The first is finding things to blog about. With a few trips this year — over the course of the full year — I think I have a little writing mojo back. I’m working on posts continually and not posting them.

Whaaaat?

Yes, you read that right.

The funny part is, as of now, I am actually sticking to a blogging plan. Crazy, right?

I am posting this on November 5. I assure you that it was written well before this date. The reason? Nothing I usually write about is “breaking news,” so it’s not like things need to be up right away. Instead, I am trying to stockpile a bunch of posts and get myself three or four weeks ahead and hopefully just keep adding on. If I can do that, I think I’ll be able to get fully back into it.

But not every day.

My plan is to try and stick to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule as much as possible. Once a month on Sundays, I’ll be going back to the Story Cube Challenge. The Photo Blogging Challenge is here to stay, and will be on the 31st/1st of each month. And January’s 20 Days of Chill is a definite. There’s a chance a post takes up one of those days, and things might get shuffled around a little. If that’s the case, I might  just have a few extra posts.

Nothing is ever foolproof. There are always ups and downs of blogging. I know this from the years of doing it on different platforms. The reality is, though, I still enjoy doing it and I really enjoy reading and commenting on other blogs.

I’m going to start trying to do more of this. I miss reading blogs and the interaction. Heck, I haven’t even been that good about visiting other blogs with the challenges.

My hope is maybe to build things back up. We’ll see how it goes. But I’ve always been under the belief that you should blog for the enjoyment (if not doing it for money) and hope others will visit and comment. That is all bonus.

So here’s my next attempt.

I’m going to be blogging about the same things I always have, and maybe sprinkle in a few other things here and there.

I’m also going to make sure I read more in the blogging world. That becomes inspiration to keep going.

Life is a crazy road. It’s short in the overall scheme of things, so part of blogging for me has been to capture life as it unfolds.

I hope some of you will come along for the ride. And if you blog, hopefully I can steal a ride in your world as well.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” A ‘lil HooHaa on Facebook! You can also follow me on Twitter @softball29!

2,000!

Sometimes when you plot something out, you just plain ol’ forget.

Such as a recent (kind of) milestone that I totally missed. And with kind of, I mean in January.

Each year, I set a few goals in some posts on the blog. One of the posts is goals I’d like to hit with the blog itself. One last year was to publish my 2,000th post. I missed it by a little bit as I had some downtime last year and never readied the final part.

I was close, though.

So close that I knew it would happen in January at some point, especially with having the 20 Days of Chill going on.

Turns out I did hit that milestone.

It actually happened on one of the Chill challenge days – Dreaming. I’m pretty sure, had I been paying attention, I could have weaved that theme with the 2,000th post. Alas, it went by without a whisper.

Instead, I needed to be reminded about this.

It wasn’t until I read Linda’s post about hitting the 900 mark that it made me remember this milestone.

And so it is, without fanfare or anything. I reached 2,000 posts on my blog, one that dates back more than 10 years. I do this because I still enjoy it and I really do love writing about a plethora of different things. It’s a good place to be in and I hope to continue it for years to come.

Here’s to the next 1,000!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please Like HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Finding new blogging tricks… and always seeking tips

I don’t usually post back-to-back blogging posts, but I’ve been trying to work some of these things out in my head, so I figured I’d use this platform to work it out.

See, I’ve been pretty good about my blogging in 2016.

In fact, I haven’t missed a day yet. That says something as I’m usually going through a bit of a lag right now. Alas, by doing this, I’ve neglected reading other blogs. So I need to remedy that some.

One thing I’ve realized is I didn’t do a good job at staying ahead – which was my original plan. I was going to try and have posts ready two weeks in advance. That way, if I had a situation where I didn’t want to blog for a few days, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Instead, I’m left with a pile of ideas and still writing these things the night of and not having them spread out enough.

Though, to be fair, it’s allowed me to see that maybe publishing in the morning isn’t always the best. I have been spreading around my scheduling (for example, I’m scheduling this one for early afternoon – so it publishes while I’m at work and maybe others will be seeing it at different times etc.)

Another thing I’ve discovered is HootSuite. It’s a social media tool that allows you to schedule things to post on social media. Right now, I just signed up for the free version, so I only get three accounts to link up, but for now that’s fine. I like that I can sit down once a week or so and look through some older posts and schedule some tweets and posts to my blog Facebook page. I’m also going to look into using it to post things to the Facebook page to maybe try and get a little interaction. It’s nice in that regard, so we’ll see how it works.

If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, you know I do it because I have fun. I don’t have ads or make money (outside of an occasional sponsored post), so I don’t worry about hits/links/clicks and such as much as others might. Don’t get me wrong, I like to see people have been here and such and hopefully commenting some, but I don’t stress it as much.

HootSuite will hopefully help me at least get a tad more interactive and getting my posts out there a little more than just once per day. As it is now, it goes to Twitter/Facebook when I have it publish and not at all after. So this will help.

It’s pretty incredible the items out there to use when blogging and such.

So to fellow bloggers – what other tools do you use when you are blogging and trying to maximize the amount of eyes that see your stuff? Comment below and hopefully others can use this as a place to find some good tips (me included!)

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Blogger soapbox: Make it easy to comment!

(Note: I originally did this post in 2014. I never published, but I need a post for today and this still seems relevant… so here it is!)

I need to get on my blogger soapbox.

For those who don’t blog, the community is pretty solid. I’m happy to say I’ve found several people I consider friends through the crazy world of blogging. It’s a community of interaction. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not so much.

But a key to a successful blog — depending on how you define success — is having people read and, hopefully, comment on your posts.

We all look at success in a different way. To me, it’s nice to know I have a group of people I enjoy reading and they, in turn, hopefully enjoy reading what I write. I comment on a bunch of blogs during the week and it’s always nice to see comments here. Sometimes I’ll go stretches where I just don’t get to other blogs and then when I do, I can catch up like I never missed a beat.

With that in mind, I can’t lie — sometimes it’s tough.

You see, when I go to a blog and I want to comment, I don’t want it to be hard. On my site, you fill out the form and comment. If it’s the first time you’ve commented, I have to approve it. That protects against spam. If it’s after that, it posts.

Just like that.

Recently, I’ve come to the point where I don’t want to comment on blogs as much. Why? Because people are making it so difficult. And it’s not even always the fault of the blogger — sometimes it’s the commenting system.

Case in point — Blogger, which is owned by Google.

This is a platform a lot of people use. It’s easy to use and navigate and offers a lot. Alas, the way it’s set up, it doesn’t allow things to always be easy.

In other words, you can’t just leave your name. You have to use one of the items set up. Now, this can be changed, but it often isn’t.

See, my blog is a self-hosted WordPress blog. I don’t want to comment with any profile other than my name/URL. Why? Because my profiles don’t link back to my blog. The idea of commenting, besides giving thoughts and such on the post, is that maybe some others will like your comment, click on the link and check out your blog.

One big happy community, you see.

But some of these systems make it so you have to be registered with them or comment without somebody knowing that you, I don’t know, actually have a blog. How does the owner even know, if it’s not set up to your account with that platform?

They don’t.

I guess all I’m saying is to those who blog, make sure you give people different options when commenting. You might get a few more comments that way (you might not, either, but it doesn’t hurt, right?) and you make it easy for people to comment.

Options are good. Especially when it comes to blogging!

OK, off the soap box. Thanks for reading!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Northeast Bloggers holiday swap: The results

I knew this Holiday Swap was going to go well when I read this note.

As a long-time blogger, I’ve watched as many other blogs do some interesting things. Whether it’s a meet-up, giveaway or some sort of swap, it’s always seemed kind of cool.

Truthfully, I’m often late to the party and miss these things. Other times, it just doesn’t fit.

See, a lot of these things are aimed toward female bloggers as, it seems anyway, they are the dominant sex in the blogging world — especially when it comes to personal blogs.

The swap came in the mail…

I’m an active member of the Northeast Bloggers Network, which has a few male bloggers but it pretty female dominated. That’s why I hesitated a bit when I saw the post about the holiday swap.

For those who aren’t bloggers, a swap like this is where a group of bloggers have some sort of theme (sometimes not at all) and do a gift box and send it to the other blogger. Think of it as a Secret Santa, where you know who the person it. The fun part of it is getting to know another blogger and having to think of different things to send.

Basically, you signed up by a certain date, were told who you were sending to (and who was sending to you — two different people) a few days later and you then had a couple of weeks to get to know your partners — whether it be e-mail, blog stalking or something else — and then send the package.  At the end, the bloggers could optionally choose to write about the box they received and link up with others. It seemed like a fun thing to do.

Before I get to that, however, I’d like to talk about the experience. I truly did enjoy this because it took me a little out of a comfort zone. I got to know somebody and got a bit creative with the box I sent. I was matched with somebody whose blog I had read before, so that was good. Still, I had to do some work to figure things out. It was challenging and fun. I hope MarlaJan (at Luck Fupus) enjoyed the results as much as I did doing it because it became a project of making sure I did things a little differently.

As for me…

I was matched with Kate at Another Clean Slate. I’m a regular reader of Kate’s blog, so it was fun to know the person who was sending to me was somebody I had actually gotten to know a little through blogging. A Boston-area blogger, Kate’s blog is one I always enjoy, so I figured the box wouldn’t be any different.

And … I wasn’t disappointed.

What I received was a thoughtful and fun package full of things that made me smile and items I’ll definitely use. Kate had sent me a few questions to answer and then she went from there. But the note at the top of the page made me smile because I realized she really had fun (hopefully) and understood what these types of swaps are all about. Thanks, Kate, for sending such a great box!

In the end, this was a fun thing to do and I hope to get involved with a few more swaps with other bloggers.

Allow me to share Kate’s wonderful items she sent along in this swap:

Yeah, pretty much awesome!

Anything Reese’s is fully fantastic.

During the holiday season it’s important to keep your beers cold!

I’m looking forward to trying this game out … looks fun!

Finally, an ornament … I’ll have fun hanging this next year!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!