It keeps getting better and better here at Digg, with blog reviews for blogs covering a wide variety of topics of interest and information.

Week In Review, July 27, 2009

• To start off the week, we went over to the Baby Blog Addict.  This blog will give you all the parenting and pregnancy advice and information you want, and help to feed that inner parenting blog-reading addiction.
• Having satisfied that urge, we moved on for more personal improvement and self-development, stopping in to visit with Erin Falconer and the team at Pick the Brain–a blog for better and bigger common-sense self-improvement.
• Whatever is on your mind and the minds of others at My Thinking Life is the topic of this open-ended blog.  Quality posts of unlimited interest are what you’ll find here.
• Finding better paths to effective education is the name of the game at Instructify, led by Bill Ferris.  It’s a blog where educators can get down to business, without any of the unwanted political distractions.
• There’s nothing like a sweet ending to round out your week, and this blog has it–in just the right balanced proportions, of course.  At Carrots N Cake, you can have your cake and enjoy a balance of good health and eating, too!

Although those are all the blog reviews we have for theis week, they are certainly not all of them!  Check out last week’s Recap Review for even more!

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

We’ve tapped into some very interesting and diverse blogs this week, some of which mark the first of their kind for blog reviews here at Do You Digg It.

Week In Review, July 20, 2009

• The first post of the week was a review for Steven Terjesen’s World War II History blog. Steve is preserving the facts of the past for future generations and history buffs alike.  It’s an important blog with an important purpose, and one of great interest as we follow along day by day with this date in WWII history.
• Not exactly a blog review, but if you’ve an interest in Steve’s WWII blog you will enjoy this story of a chance meeting with a WWII soldier between our own Sean Rasmussen’s and a veteran soldier.  Enjoy this story of an ANZAC Legend.
• Michael Sauers is showing everyone how the new information age is ushering in new importance and practices in the field of the library sciences.  Read about the new evolution of information access at the Travelin’ Librarian.
• Ringing the not-so-traditional school bell is Carol Richtsmeier of the Bellringers Blog.  Come learn about education in the trenches from a seasoned expert, and enjoy this woman’s love of life and positive spirit.
• Finally to wrap the week we have more in the field of education, a site developed expressly for the purpose of helping you make the most of your educational endeavors.  Get in sync with your future at Admission Sync.

We had more firsts and great blogs last week.  Check them out here at the July 13 Recap Review.

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

Good eats and treats, cats, dogs, the good life, and independent living round out the list of topics for Digg for the week.

Week In Review, July 4, 2009

• We went over to Sweden (first time for Digg!) to share Karin’s My Recipes blog.  Karin had been building her collection for years, and is now publishing them online for the first time ever.  Great times and great food!
• It all went to the dogs the next day when we visited with Julie at Doggy Logic.  All the dog info you could want, and more that you didn’t even know you needed!
• Jeffrey Weeks has life figured out.  Learn by his example at A Dash of Salty.
• Fair is fair, a feline affair.  Balancing out the cat-dog equation, we stopped in at the Cat Info Center for the cat lovers in the audience.
• Next we traveled the Road to Independence with independent investment advisor Mike Patton.

And of course, there were more great blogs from the week before, and you can see them all in last week’s Recap Review.

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

A few days ago we talked about our blogging pet peeves. I told you that one of my biggest was the lack of an ‘About’ page to learn more about the blog and the writer. A simple about page gives your readers a chance to quickly learn about you and your blog and decide if your blog fits the bill for what they are looking for. With bloggers and general readers on the web, you only have a few moments of their time to connect with them and convince them to frequent your blog, so you need to provide them with all the information they need by utilizing all of your blogging resources, and the About page is one of them.

However, not all blog platforms have an easy way to add an About page, and some people struggle to build one regardless (others just take it for granted). There are some easy ways for anyone to build a good About page or alternative that will work equally as well.

About Alternative Resources

For example, you can utilize the ‘profile’ page offered by many platforms and be sure to post a prominent link to it. Another option is to link out to a website or web page off the blogsite that offers your information. Blog directories, like Blogging Fusion or BlogCatalog, are excellent ways to get the word out about your blog off-site, and with a simple live link can quickly become your About page.

Think outside the box to deliver the goods that your bloggers are looking for. These simple alternatives can provide the resources they need, and also get you some good external linking as well.

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

Okay I’ve come up with another personal blog pet peeve, albeit one that I do understand as well.

How Can I Get In Touch With You?

You guessed it—my second blogging pet peeve is the lack of contact information. Some way, ANY way to get a message to you as the blogger for kudos, questions, comments, or queries.

You might think this is a silly pet peeve, but there are many times and many reasons why a reader might want to contact you. Having a format for contact does not need to be complicated, either. And yes, we all know about the plagues that are SPAM, but there are ways around that, too.

Some Options For Blog Contact

The ideal is to have an email posted for contact for your blog; but we all know where that leads. Many bloggers have gone the route of the contact form page with a captcha code to weed out bots. However, I’ve often found that even when people have an email available for contact, it is not displayed prominently enough to actually be found. A link on a sidebar or a dedicated page makes life much easier for readers who want to find you. Don’t think that just because you mentioned an email address six months ago in a post that people can remember or still find that. If you are worried over SPAM cluttering your inbox, you could always establish an email address just for your blog on a free email like gmail or yahoo.

Contact can also be as simple as opening up your comments. That is the route we’ve chosen here at Digg It, not only because we love to invite conversation, but also because the SPAM filter we use automatically catches most of the junk and gives us a chance for moderation. Then when we log in there is your comment, right in front of us, and no one has to remember to check that spare email. I have found a number of excellent blogs, though, that close comments and still provide no contact information for readers.

Contact information is an easy thing to overlook, and it’s understandable that people fear more email to monitor and weed through the SPAM and junk. Without a way for your fans and readers to contact you though, you could be missing out on some really great commentary and opportunity.

What do you think? Agree with me? Disagree? Have a blogging pet peeve of your own? Comments are always open here at Digg—they’re an excellent way to contact us

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

Category: Do You Digg It

Today we’ll take just a short break from our blog reviews to chat a little on the topic of blogging. Please feel free to chime in any time…

About Blog Pet Peeves

I came across a funny thing the other day when I reviewed the Spunky Homeschool blog. If you visited there and read the ‘About’ page, you noticed that Karen Braun said she had the page because ‘LaShawn’ said she needed one. Further on you learn that somewhere along the line LaShawn made a post, much like this one I would assume, laying out the things about blogs and blogging that bug her—her blogging pet peeves.

I felt a connection with this anonymous LaShawn as soon as I read that, because that is probably my biggest pet peeve about blogs, too! I am always disappointed (and maybe a little annoyed on my grumpier days) when I am reviewing or researching a blog and there is no way for me to learn more about it and the writer.

What A Quick About Page Can Do

Now, it doesn’t take much to make me happy, and your ‘About’ page does not need to be long. Just a quick snippet letting readers know a little about the topic of your blog and perhaps your angle or perspective, and then a little about something about you will suffice. You do not even need to reveal your real name; there are good reasons to remain anonymous as a blogger. People look to this page just to find out if this is a blog that, in general, covers a topic of interest to them. It’s a summary of your time blogging and your posts that is a resource for new readers, and also for committed readers who want to know you and your blog a little bit better.

If you do not have an ‘About‘ page or a profile page, you should consider taking a moment to post one. I think as bloggers we take for granted that the topic and nature of our blog is obvious on any given day, but that’s really not the case. Besides that, we all have those days when we stray a bit from the norm and get a little off-topic, and you want to ensure that a busy visitor can easily find out what your blog is really about.

So there. I’ve aired my peeves, now tell me yours. What is your blogging pet peeve(s)?

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

Another eclectic week at Digg It gone by…

Week In Review, May 30, 2009

• First stop on this week’s tour?  New York, New York.  Wear your sensible shoes, we’re taking the Big Apple by foot with Teri Tynes at Walking Off The Big Apple.
• Perhaps Sheila has a New York postcard to share?  Capture the nomadic spirit and enjoy Sheila’s post card collection and tales from around the world at A Postcard A Day.
• On a more mysterious note, our next stop took us to SuppressedMinds.com, a place dedicated to getting the real stories out.
• With an open mind and dedication to personal success, you can get anywhere.  And Yielding Wealth has the tools to get you there.
• Need a laugh in the middle of the workweek?  This is your blog.  Who says Life in a Cubicle has to be dull?
• Finally, to close the week, we visited a blog of honor paying tribute to the American servicemen and women.  Good Soldiers is setting the example of gratitude toward some of the most selfless people on the planet.

That brings us to the close of this week’s blog reviews; don’t miss last week’s excellent blogs, which you can see here at the May 23 Recap Review.

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

Periodically I send out a request for blog submissions for blog reviews. This post is partially that, but I thought along with it I’d offer a little incentive and give you a reason to submit your blog for review.

Why Submit Your Blog For Review?

There is a very simple reason to submit your blog for review—exposure. Actually, I am sure there are a lot more complex reasons to submit as well, but Sean is the Internet Marketing expert, so you might check out one of his blogs to learn the finer points of staking ground through blog reviews .

When you submit your blog for review, you give it additional placement potential. It will be seen by all of our readers here, and be more “searchable” from a search engine perspective, because it gives the opportunity to be listed on multiple sites with links back to you. We put a lot of effort into building that searchability, too, by tagging and linking and keywording your blog’s name and general topic. Not only that, but that traffic comes to you knowing what you deliver and with an outside recommendation. As you can see, we also offer features like the “Digg” button so that your site review and subsequent links have the potential to be found across social networking sites as well.

How Can You Submit?

Submitting is easy. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Just leave us a comment on any post, or right here, right now, with a link to your blog—and more than likely, we’ll be seeing you very soon!

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

The point of Earth Day is not just to fix it once and forget it; it is to draw consciousness to the struggles of the planet and to induce people to change and action.

Blogs are excellent resources for ongoing learning and lifestyle change.  Many of the “green” blogs that have been reviewed here on Digg It are perfect examples of that, and ideal resources for the average earth citizen looking for realistic ways to achieve cleaner, more sustainable living.  Today, I’ve gone back through our archives to pull out some of the best environmentally friendly blogs of the past.

Blasts From The Green Past

We’ve got quite a few excellent green and environmentally friendly blogs in the Environment category, but here are a few of my personal favorites:

• Tree Hugging Family was our first green review.  It is a blog run by a dynamic duo who is providing us daily with tips, tricks, and gadgets for better and cleaner living.
• Green Living Tips is Australian Michael Bloch’s contribution to bettering the planet.  Michael is a very well-respected writer in this area, and his site is absolutely packed with information and resources–including carbon-clean web hosting options!
• 365 Days of Trash started as Sustainable Dave’s journal of his experiment not to throw anything away for an entire year.  Dave succeeded quite admirably, and gained much fame in the process.  The original experiment has grown into so much more, not the least of which is his educational efforts and outreach.  His blog still goes strong to educate and support clean living initiatives.
• The BusinessGreen blog is dedicated to helping us take greener, cleaner living throughout all aspects of our life, not only at home but in the workplace, too.  This is a blog that helps to round out the process and create an entire core of action toward real change and environmentally friendly practices.

We have many more excellent environmentally-friendly blog reviews within this category.  Be sure to check them all out and subscribe to a few of your favorites so that you have the daily resources you need for daily better living and maintaining a cleaner, greener, lifestyle.

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012

Speaking of New Year’s goals and resolutions, why not share a little of our own success (or not) here?

How Is Your New Year’s Resolve?

I have to say that New Year’s resolutions have never really stuck with me.  So there is no judgment here if you don’t have stellar results to report.  We hope you do, because we’re really all about success around here, but we understand how these things happen, too.

Personally, I kind of gave up on the whole resolution-setting deal, and opted to follow Christine Kane‘s lead and choose a word for the year rather than to commit to a bunch of overwhelming goals that I couldn’t even remember, much less follow through on.  The word I chose was “prosperity” because I felt that it represented the kind of lifestyle I’d hope to achieve.  I don’t mean just financial prosperity, either, this includes prosperity in all aspects of my life; in business, but also in family and spirit and more.  To help me remember I purchased one of those inspirational word stones carved with the word “prosperity” in gold.  I consider it my touchstone and keep it on my desk to keep me motivated when I’d rather not be.

So far I think it’s working, although there is a long way to go.  Quite likely I won’t even accomplish it all this year, but that’s okay.  As long as I’m progressing I consider myself a success.

As for our Digg It creator, Sean Rasmussen, well, he’s always a master goal-setter.  I seem to recall his goals being to focus more on new aspects of his internet marketing business, and to devote more time to the most interesting and promising projects.  His joint ventures with Shaun Stenning attest to the success of this goal.  The two of them are all over Australia and beyond presenting winning internet marketing seminars and bringing up a whole league of successful internet marketers.  That sounds like an accomplished goal!

Never Too Late

No matter where you are with your New Year’s Resolutiuons (or maybe you never set one, either), just rememebr that goal-setting and success is not limited to that one time of year.  It’s always a great time to resolve to live better.  Don’t get hung up on the calendar, just take the initiative and enjoy the excitement of new goals and new opportunity!

Mary Ward
Do You Digg It!
Blog Review Team
Do You Digg It! © 2012