From the category archives:

Blogging

How to Backup Your WordPress Blog

by Bob Hazlett on October 24, 2009

1. Download the WordPress Database Backup Plugin
2. Install and activate (tools > backup)
3. Select how you’d like the backup delivered and its frequency. You can download to your computer, email it to yourself or back it up to a server. Backups can be delivered hourly, daily or weekly.

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Merlin Mann of 43 Folders and John Gruber from Daring Fireball got together for a talk at SXSW last month to chat about turbocharging your blog and essentially, capitalizing on your passions.  It’s a very entertaining 60 minutes and I’d encourage everyone who is struggling to find their voice or wants to take their blog to the next level to listen in. The insight they give could be applied to many different industries and topics.  Here are some of the highlights.

  • Obsession x Voice = High Quality and Meaning
  • Whatever your topic, figure out how to be better at it than 80% of the rest of the world. Pick your obsession and focus on it. Think about that person you wish to write for.
  • Give away more stuff than you think is sensible, and make it easy to get to.
  • It is okay to have a strong voice about something.
  • Don’t become too obsessed with the things you want to make money on.

Listen to the full podcast episode here

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Buddy Blogger Profile – Daniel Pritchett

by Bob Hazlett on March 31, 2009

Tell us about yourself

I’m a business intelligence developer for a Fortune 100 manufacturer here in Memphis, TN.  At work I build web reporting solutions that highlight meaningful trends within the millions of actions taken by our manufacturing, delivery, and sales units on a daily basis.  At home I like to take walks to the neighborhood park with my wife, our daughter, and our dog. Lately we watch a good bit of network TV on Hulu.

What’s your blog all about?daniel_pritchett

Sharing at Work is about helping people get things done in a contemporary office environment.  Since I work in IT many posts are about applications that I’m testing for use at my office.  I also post on more people-oriented topics like “how to get the rest of your office interested in your new social media project”.  That part’s usually tougher than finding some serviceable tools.

How do you see the workplace changing over the next 10 years? What technologies will lead this change?

I think we’re going to collectively move away from private one to one communications like email and start communicating in public as much as possible with services similar to Twitter and Facebook.  We’ll still need email-type services for private messages, but doing our knowledge work in the light of day winds up benefiting more people in the long run.

What was your last great idea?

My current big idea – I’m still working on it – is taking my grassroots effort to promote internal social networking away from the IT organization and trying to locate “collaboration champions” in other departments.  Training, communication, and diversity are some obvious departments to speak with, and they might be better positioned to promote the “sharing at work” cause.

What is the one thing that you constantly think about?

“How can I convince the business world to stop using e-mail as the center of our office productivity workflow?” I know that sounds a bit odd, but that’s what I’m thinking of 9 times out of 10 when working on the blog.  E-mail has been the default in business for a decade or two now.  I won’t say we need to get rid of e-mail entirely, but it’s used in many cases where we’d be far better served with tweets, wikis, or phone calls.

What are you reading right now?

I’m currently reading Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb.  It’s a bit of a sci-fi/fantasy thing that I got in a free promotion on the Amazon Kindle store.  It’s not the best book I’ve ever read, but the novelty of reading a book on my iPod has supplemented its entertainment value enough to keep me going for a few hundred pages.

My favorite blogs are Heather Armstrong’s Dooce (parenting, family life, and the business of running a blog about them), Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist (career advice with a lot of Ms. Trunk’s personal life thrown in), and Scott Jennings’s Broken Toys (MMOGs, virtual economies, virtual worlds, game design).  I probably read a hundred other blogs but these three are the ones I come back to the most often.  Other favorites are Louis Gray’s early adopter tech blog (where I have occasionally submitted an article of my own) and Gates of Memphis, a local blog focused on the city.

What do you think is your best blog post?

I tend to like most of my posts, and if I don’t I’ll revise them.  Here’s one from last week that bottled some workplace-related energy I was feeling and connects it with several pet ideas on internal social networking: Setting up an internal Facebook might just solve your company’s communications and engagement problems.

Where else can people find you online?

Friendfeed is my #1 online destination.  Find me as user Daniel J. Pritchett / dpritchett.

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Social Media Calendar Template

by Bob Hazlett March 29, 2009

If you collaborate with others on developing and executing a social media strategy, it may be important that you keep some sort of calendar or record so that everyone is focused and headed in the same direction.  That was the main reason I created this social media calendar template last year.  I know it’s an [...]

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Buddy Blogger Profile – Buck Rogers

by Bob Hazlett February 11, 2009

What’s your blog all about?
My blog is about being a father, husband, and all around dude. I talk about anything that pops up on my radar from funny stories about my kid, pop culture, and events in Memphis. 
Where can people find you online?
Blogging at Buck’s Blog, Rules For My Daughter, Supernatural Blog [...]

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Get More Out of Twitter

by Bob Hazlett May 13, 2008

Micro-blogging service Twitter is all the rage these days. It allows you to stay up to date with friends and family no matter where you are or what you may be doing. It’s fun and it’s engaging, but in my humble opinion, the application lacks certain features. Where Twitter lacks, the open market has filled [...]

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What is a Blog and How Can It Help Your Small Business?

by Bob Hazlett July 31, 2007

Many businesses both small and large are adding blogs to their website to better communicate with their target market and build traffic to their site. According to Technorati, a blog search engine, their are over 71 million blogs world wide and approximately 175k are launched daily. Blogs are no longer a fad – they are [...]

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