While random people arriving here after a Google search don't know me from Adam, I have a few friends and family members who note that they stopped reading CultureFeast.com because I no longer contribute on any regular basis. They don't really care if what I write is relevant, so long as I write. As sweet as that is, I still don't want to write.

It's not that I don't have anything to say. Trust me, that won't happen anytime soon. Rather, it's more a combination of freakishly busy and paranoid that keeps me from weekly blogging.  Busy is not something I can change. But there are way around paranoid... namely, the super secret blog or two.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

If you were to have told me, about a year ago, that I would be using social media on a regular basis, I would have thought you were insane. To me, social media was nothing more than Facebook and MySpace, nothing more, nothing less. I thought that blogging was just for nerds and people with just too much time on their hands. However, after one of my PR courses (Strategies and Issues), I found myself slowly getting used to using, and understanding exactly what social media and blogging were. The course was very social media heavy; understanding the use of blogs and social media sites, how to effectively use social media today, and about half way through the course, each student had to create his and her own blog.

At first, I could not be bothered, and my friend Dara and I would just roll our eyes with sheer boredom. As she became less and less interested in the class, I became more fixated on blogging and the Internet. I was one of the very few students who updated their blogs more than once a week because I was genuinely interested in what I was writing about (Public Relations and Popular Culture).

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Christ Smith has just taken the stage. We will begin coverage immediately. Please refresh this page to see more coverage as it unfolds. 

Chris Smith specializes in local optimization. He contributes to SearchEngineLand.com and WebProNews.com. 

Optimizing Your Blog

Beef up your internal hierarchical linking structure

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Mark your calendars. If you are a WordPress junkie and you live anywhere near the Dallas/Fort Worth area, you better be in Frisco on March 29th and 30th for our very own WordCamp. "The largest gathering of WordPress bloggers, podcasters, designers, programmers, and aficionados that Big D has ever seen." 

Saturday will focus on general user topics. Sunday's focus will be mostly developer topics. Did I mention it's only $20 to attend?!?!? Coffee, snacks, and lunch will be provided both days. Register now and you'll get a WordCamp t-shirt as well.

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While a lot of people are MySpace savvy, many MySpacers still don't understand the difference between a MySpace blog and a professional, public blog. MySpace is typically the place for random half-thoughts and copies of email spam and pics from one's latest night on the town or baby photo shoot. It's a place to share stuff with friends, hence the tagline: "A place for friends." But MySpace doesn't challenge people to fully develop their thoughts or share information in sensible stages. In fact, I'd say that the majority of MySpace bloggers are lazy, only posting anything when they have an inspirational blip, which typically disappears mid-post. 

Brian Clark shared another valuable post on strategic content development from his Innovative Content series recently. This is stuff that every aspiring blogger should read and every established blogger should revisit. Because regardless of our background and experience, it's easy to get busy and lazy and let the content of your blogging suffer. And let's face it, everyone loses when your blogging suffers. 

Rather than plagiarize Brian's content, go read the post for yourself. When you are taking on a new blogging project, it's good to begin by asking yourselves the right kind of questions. It can be difficult to break out of the generic mental vomitting style of MySpace, but just asking yourself these questions and following these three steps will prepare you to write a more informed, adult sounding piece. 

Always make sure you have fun with blogging, but part of the fun lies in doing something well. Nobody would pay Kobe Bryant if his shots were all air balls.  

Popularity: 4% [?]