Technobiography

The Abundant World of Blogging

October 2nd, 2008 | by ka edong |

 

I gave a blogging seminar entitled “The Abundant World of Blogging”. Together with Anton Diaz of Our Awesome Planet, we delivered the seminar for PSI (People Synergistically Involved) as part of its continuing education series.

We had more than 20 people in our audience. They had a wide spread of skills and knowledge level. Some were on the verge of starting their blog already. Yet others have not mastered the use of the mouse or keyboard – but knew first-hand that blogging can be very influential.

After Anton and I consulted our draft agenda with a test audience, we decided to go by a very simple format for the 3 hour seminar. It was a sharing of experiences from the point of view of two bloggers. Like a “He said; he said.” 

Seminar Agenda

•         Intros – Name, “I am passionate about _____.”

•         What is a Blog? – 1-slide simple definition

•         Why Blog? – Anton said, Edwin said

•         What to Blog? – Anton said, Edwin said

•         How to Blog? - Best Practices by Anton Diaz

•         Activity

•         Demo – Hands-on real-time setup of a live blog

•         Q&As

It was a very interactive seminar. We had a wide range of questions from the audience. Very good insights from Anton. It was great sharing what I have gone through in my 5 years of blogging. And I’m glad that our audience benefited from the seminar.

I too had my own learnings from the seminar.

• Understand your audience. Make sure to have an overview of your audience. By raise of hands, find out who among the audience: know what a blog is, read blogs, write blogs. I had this noted but missed doing the raise of hands during the seminar.
• Give what the audience needs. When we made our agenda draft, Anton and I wanted to introduce many principles of blogging, including some writing principles, some technical aspects of blogging etc. Thanks to our test audience, we realized that all they wanted to hear was the basics, our story and experience about starting out as a blogger, and some key first steps to guide the audience in creating a blog.
• Mon your Pas! It’s a great principle, but I can’t publish it here yet until I’ve verified that Anton has published it ahead. Anton introduced me to this principle. It captures the essence of entrepreneurship, not just mere making money through a blog.
• Branding. I learned from Anton the importance of being deliberate about branding yourself and your blog. You and your blog must be remarkable, recall-able, unique. (This is another article altogether).

 

After the blogging seminar, a seminar participant, Jones, emailed Anton and I asking if we could coach her on starting her blog. I agreed to coach Jones in her start-up phase in blogging.

I’m now a bonafide blogging speaker and coach.

What can I do for you, dear blogger?

 

ka edong

blogging speaker and coach