Shannon Lowe and Melanie Nelson will give beginning bloggers some solid advice on building a strong foundation for your blog:  choosing a platform, establishing a voice and identity, participating in the community, and much more.  We’ll talk about some of the common pitfalls beginners make, and how you can avoid them.  We’ll leave plenty of time for questions–and there are NO stupid questions here!

What is Blissdom? Well, here’s a little bit from their web site:

BlissDom is YOUR conference. It was developed for bloggers by bloggers.

We are bringing those bloggers you always wanted to meet and mingle with, right to you, to answer all your burning questions about writing, social media, marketing, and–yes–even book deals.

We’ve developed sessions for two levels of bloggers – Apprentice and Maven – so each attendee can decide which areas she personally wants to learn about or develop to grow as a blogger.

Blissdom ’09 will be held February 6-7 at the Hotel Preston in Nashville, TN.

You can follow Blissdom ’09 on Facebook and on Twitter. The hashtag on Twitter is #Blissdom09. A hashtag is a way to keep track of a group and its tweets. (You can learn more about using hashtags by reading Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with Hashtags.)

If you sign up for Blissdom ’09 before December 31, 2008 you can take advantage of early-bird pricing: $100 for the conference (that’s 50% off)!

I would love to meet you and discuss everything blogging. I’m even open to doing some one-on-one with you if attend! So what do you say? Can you come?

When I graduated high school, the note under my picture said I was going to take courses in Business Administration at OSU. I have no idea why because I never stepped foot in the Business building during my entire under-graduate career. In fact, when I did visit the Business building, I was pursuing my MA and teaching a technical writing course at OSU; that was the room they assigned me because there weren’t enough in the English building. The technical writing was interesting to me, though, and I was thrilled they’d actually give me a degree (or two) just for studying it.

It’s no exaggeration to tell you that, when people would say everyone has something they were born to do, I was confused. I believed that not everyone could be good at everything so there must be some people who were born to be mediocre. I thought I might be one of those people. I was good at things, but there was always someone better. I was OK with that–I still am.

As I grew older I often read or heard the mantra, "Do what you love and the money will come." Again, I felt I must be missing something or that I was one of the people who was destined to just like her job.

And then, I found blogging. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a job. I work from home, I meet new people (albeit sometimes virtually and not tangibly), I write, I research, I have my own schedule. I’m in charge of me. When I was in third grade, I could have never imagined this would be my job. When I was in third grade, the idea of a personal computer, let alone a job involving a personal computer, was as foreign as a rover on Mars.

Can you imagine what our children are going to be when they grow up? It amazes me every day. The careers they will have most likely haven’t even been invented yet. That is so cool.

One of the things they did this summer at BlogHer08 was to interview established and up-and-coming bloggers to share tips and advice for others. I was lucky enough to be one of the bloggers they interviewed. In the video interview below I share how I started blogging and how it has become my career. I also share a few tips on how you can make blogging your career. Let me know what you think!

(Cross-posted at Blogging Basics 101.)

Juggling Multiple Blogs to Build Your Blogging Career from 5 Minutes for Mom on Vimeo.

Question: Those of you who can’t get the links to work, do you have a FaceBook account? I’m wondering if that’s why some can access the links and others can’t. Anyone else having this problem?

Communal, people, not communicable. I took all the Penicillin.

And I don’t mean communal in a I’m-a-Crazy-Democrat-Liberal way either.

I mean I’m on FaceBook! Actually, I’ve been there for a few months, but I’m just getting around to inviting y’all to join me. (I’m totally addicted to Flair and Scramble.)

• Blogging Basics 101 on Facebook
• Bloggy Giveaways on Facebook (help confirm me as the author)
• Don’t Try This at Home on Facebook (help confirm me as the author)

Just one more step in my aspirations of world domination and minions.

Or, you know, building community. Whatever.

We’d love for you to call in to Behind the Blog during the interview if you have any questions for Stephanie. The phone number is (347) 826-7594. Or, you can join us in the chat room by opening a listener account at blogtalkradio.com. To do that, click on “Register” on the blue navigation bar and enter your information there. Once it’s created, you can join us by going to blogtalkradio.com/behindtheblog and you’ll then be able to chat with us live by clicking on the “chat now” button.

You can listen to archived shows by clicking on the Blog Talk Radio widget in my left sidebar. We’ve had some awesome guests who left us with fantastic advice and information.

A few bloggers have written that they discuss various bloggers with their families. In fact, their families know who they are talking about if, for example, they say, "Hey! Chilihead likes to eat potatoes with pork and beans on the top!" (which, by the way, yes I do, but we can discuss the finer points of that later. I maybe should have mentioned that in my six weird things because I think it would have traumatized many of you less than the spitting thing did! But I digress. Again.)

Anyway, after you have made that little proclamation whomever you are speaking to in your family immediately knows you’re talking about me. Again, it could be anyone, but I’m using me for example. Do you do that? Because I don’t. My husband doesn’t read my blog. He’s glad I do and doesn’t mind that I spend so much time on the computer reading your blogs, but he’s just not interested in that part. And, as I’ve said before, blogging is kind of my thing. Like golfing is his. I don’t particularly care about golf or really how he does when he plays. They are separate.

Now, along those lines, have you made "friends" with any bloggers? I mean, do you IM them or e-mail them outside of the comments on each other’s blogs? I’ve e-mailed with a few of you and it’s really been kind of neat getting to know you. I find this interesting because finding new friends (even virtual ones) was not one of the reasons I originally started to write my blog. It’s a welcome side effect, though.

So what do you think? Do you discuss your virtual community with your family and friends? Do they know who the players are? Have you made new friendships outside of the blog comments?

Which blog application do you use (typepad, blogger, blogsome, etc.) and why? If you were to make a case for using your application over another, what would the pros and cons be?

I used to use Blogger, but decided to change to Typepad when Blogger started having a few glitches. Sometimes my posts didn’t post, sometimes I couldn’t leave or receive comments, etc. In fact, even last night I tried to leave comments on a few sites, but I had the misfortune of trying to do so during "scheduled maintenance" (which was 7pm CST and 5pm PST! Who schedules maintenance during peak hours? Why not schedule it for 3 am?) Blogger was free, but the frustration was too much.

My friend Shannon moved to Typepad and loved it and convinced me to try it. I have to say, I really like it. Typepad is a pay service and has several levels based on your needs. It also allows you a 30 day trial to "try it before you buy it."

I like that Typepad allows me to

• use one of their templates or design my own
• publish now or in the future. I can write several posts and mark them to be published on specific dates.
• write in WYSIWYG or HTML
• preview what my posts will look like before I actually publish them.

So what are your thoughts? Feel free to post comments here or start a discussion at your own site. If you start one at your site, please let me know so I can check out what people are saying over there.

Update: Apparently Blogger is having issues today. People are having trouble with comments, can’t access their blogs, etc. I swear I did not arrange this just so we’d get some converts to Typepad! But, hey, if the blog fits…

• MelNel at aufdeckende Gespraeche wants to know who you blogroll and just can’t miss.
• Jeana at Days to Come wants to know how you make your privacy decisions (e.g., whether to use fake names, show pictures, etc.)
• Momrn2 at My Quiet Corner is also weighing in.

Feel free to leave comments here, there, or anywhere. I’m just so interested that we’ve got a little intra-blog discussion going on! I’ll be continuing this conversation with another question next week. I am going to try to have it be a regular weekly post.

As for this weekend, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to post because my dad is coming in from CO. I’ll try though!