Successful Blog

Fun Find: Design Personality Indicators

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FUN Find: Web Design and Development Personality Indicators by Molly of Molly.com
Type of Article: Psychological Analysis, based loosely on the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicators
Permalink: Web Design and Development Personality Indicators
Target Audience: Anyone who is a designer, works with designers, or plans to do either

Content: Molly, a self-professed geek, typed up this article on a ship in the Eastern Caribbean where she was teaching CSS on a Geek Cruise. (Now doesn’t that sounds like something we should be putting into our own business plans?) She loosely applied the Myers-Briggs personality type indicators to Web Designers and Developers to describe who you might find the next time you meet a designer to work on your blog. These are the six types Molly identifies.

  • OFAD–Old Fart Anti-Design Designer
  • OSVD–Old Skool Visual Designer
  • TTLM–Trying to Learn More Designer
  • SAVD–Standards-Aware Visual Designer
  • SASS–Standards-Aware Structural Semanticist Designer
  • SACE–Standards-Aware Cutting-Edge Designer

Molly describes each personality type in detail and places herself on the scale as well. It’s a fun read that rings true to this writer who’s spent some time with designers and their idiosyncracies.

Still, since I’m not in the market for a new design yet, I’m going to file the document–right after I check into that number for Geek cruises. I could use a vacation that’s a tax write off. I wonder how it would feel to be the only nerd on a shipload of geeks? I guess I’d have to bring my son along–he’s multi-lingual.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts

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Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts
Three or more blogs agree to write on the same topic in series each posting one after the next

You might think of a moveable post collaboration as similar to a moveable feast. You have the appetizer at one house, the salad at another, the main course at a third, and dessert at still another. This kind of collaboration requires a certain kind of topic and at least three bloggers to make sense. I’ve not done a moveable collaboration, but can’t see why it wouldn’t work well. Here’s the way a Moveable Collaboration might work.

Topic : 10 Ways to a Better Blog

  • Day 1, Blog 1: 10 Ways to Attract Readers
  • Day 2, Blog 2: 10 Ways to Promote Your Blog
  • Day 3, Blog 3: 10 Ways to Write Compelling Posts
  • Day 4, Blog 4: 10 Ways to Get Links
  • Day 5, Blog 5: 10 Ways to Improve Your Rankings

The series would include a schedule, and links that tie all posts to each other for readers, giving each blogger four relevant links. The caution here is that in order to strengthen the community and your blog, you need to be sure that you work with quality bloggers who provide quality, fresh content. The beauty is that you can limit the number of bloggers to the number of quality bloggers you know. No one said you can’t send readers around to every blog again.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 1: Image and Text
Collaboration Link 2: Topical
Collaboration Link 3: An Event
Collaboration Link 5: An Interview
Collaboration Link 5: Begs the Question
Collaboration Link 6: Media Events

Joel Auchenbach Is an SOB of the Very Best Kind

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Joel Achenbach from WashingtonPost.com


Today at WashingtonPost.com, Joel Auchenbach responded on his Auchenblog in to our discussion of Sabine’s article on his commenting community in our post Great Find: Commenting on CTBIZBlogs. Mr. Auchenbach began by saying:

The Boodle is the buzz of blogworld. At CTBizBlogs, Sabine writes about “the amazing community that’s sprung up in the comments” of the A-blog. (She heard about it from Stephen Baker in his Blogspotting column for Business Week; Baker took note of the large number of comments about the dog-pee item written by Tom Shroder.) She writes, “When readers leave comments on most blogs, the comments are usually about that particular post — people weighing in with additional information, questions, corrections, opinions. But the comments on some posts here read almost like they’re from discussion forums, with regular readers referring to comments made by other readers in past posts. The conversation weaves in and out of the posts and comments, and swirls around the various personalities who now know each other, online at least.” . . .

Thank you, Joel, for taking the conversation further and for caring about community as much as we do. Your Successful and Outstanding Blogger (SOB) button will be on it’s way to you via email immediately.

Joel Auchenbach’s Button

SOB Button

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 3: An Event

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Collaboration Link 4: An Event
One blog sponsors an event in which many blogs contribute

This kind of collaboration occurs in many forms around the Internet. Here are two of my favorites–one that occurs often and a second that is ongoing. This may seem similar to Darren’s Bloggy Crush Collaboration Idea, but the topics here are usually more centered within a certain niche and often chosen to establish participation within a young community or to suss out a large chunk of information on a business topic. Two exapmles jump to mind immediately.

1. A Carnival Carnivals are popular because each blogger can showcase hie or her own interests and strengths to the benefit of the group. Martin, a Successful and Outstanding Blogger, is part of a Marketing Carnival at the moment that has participant writing posts. One host collects seven and compiles them together into a link list as a group publication, pointing to the articles on each individual blog.

2. Let the Comments Be the Posts David at Glittering Muse thought a friend of his had a great idea when the friend pulled a well–written comment out into the light of day. So David started an ongoing readership appreciation event called Glittering Commentari. He has advertised and invited blogs all over the Internet to look through their comments to find particularly moving, insightful, or funny comments that can stand on their own and deserve credit for the great comments they are. You can find information on how to participate at Glittering Commentari.

These collaborations are just two more ways that bloggers have found to link their efforts, ideas, and quality content to make their blogs more relevant and their communities stronger. Learning from each other and sharing what we know . . . where have I heard that before?

Didn’t think I’d find another way to get comments into a post this week, did you? he he.

Wait until you see what’s next . . . 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 1: Image and Text
Collaboration Link 2: Topical
Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts
Collaboration Link 5: An Interview
Collaboration Link 5: Begs the Question
Collaboration Link 6: Media Events

Blogging Life Question 4: Blog Names

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For those who come looking for a short, thoughtful read, a blogging life discussion, or a way to gradually ease back into the week, I offer this Blogging Hypothetical Question.

Here you go. . . .

A friend is rethinking his brand-new blog, now that he knows a little bit about them.
He comes to you with two questions:

1. Is it a good thing or a bad thing to have “blog” in my name–such as Blogopedia? You’ve been around longer. Does that make it easier, harder, or just the same for the reader?

2. Suppose I choose a domain name now and want change my blog name later. I know people do it. I’ve seen it often enough. Does it cause any problems that you know about?
Is it okay if my domain name www.joescarideas.com doesn’t match with the new blog name Joe’s Rocket Lounge?

As a blog reader, not an SEO person, do these things make any difference to you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Got a Post that Belongs Here?

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Join the Conversation
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Every voice has something to add to the conversation–an insight, an experience, a unique point of view–something our readers see the rest of us have overlooked. Successful Blog is a community where every voice is welcome, every contribution is valued, and where there’s always a “glad you said that” waiting in the comment box.–MES

Would you like to start a conversation?
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Do you have a post . . .

  • that takes an idea further than we’ve taken it so far?
  • with fresh, relevant content we’d enjoy learning about?
  • that explores a new angle on an old subject?
  • about a tool that belongs in the Survival Kit?
  • about an experience that might help a new blogger?
  • on a trend, a plug-in, a tool, a blog, or anything that we should all check out?
  • about something you’ve found that’s just plain blogging fun?

    • OR

  • Do you have ideas about another way that we might collaborate?
  • Do you have a question that you want us to talk about in our Sunday night discussion?

Share what you know, and we all get better. For details on how, see the Want to Be a Contributor? page.

Remember, the 1849er said, “Fergit the gold in them there hills. There’re links in them there posts.” 🙂

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Be part of something bigger than one– Successful Blog–where blogging means Community.

–ME “Liz” Strauss