For many bloggers, creativity can ebb and flow when it comes time to put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard. I have experienced this myself, where I can sit down one day and write 3 or 4 posts at once, and the next day I can’t think of a topic for anything. This is where I found a feature of the blog engine coming in handy – write a post ahead of time and set its live date for sometime in the future.

Depending on your blog, some of your posts may be very timely and topical, where others may be reference or opinion. As a result, writing these ahead of time, or whenever creativity strikes you, makes perfect sense. Prior to pressing the publish button in your blog engine of choice, you should change the post date and time to a point in the future. This comes in handy when you’re on vacation or away for a long weekend, yet you find you have readership at those times, so why not keep them happy?

Benefits readers as well as publishers

At first thought, post-dating a post may seem solely selfish to the author, but that is hardly the case. Not all of your readers may be in the same time zone as you, let alone same continent. By adjusting the time a post appears in your blog and RSS feed can benefit all readers. Using Web analytics you can find when the preferential time of day to have posts appear. For The Hot Iron, I typically have my posts appear at 4am Central US Time, which has it appearing in someone’s feed reader in the US first thing in the morning and late morning for someone in Europe.

Do you post-date blog entries? How has it worked for you? If you try it, let me know how it works for you. Or if you are adamantly against it, please share that as well.

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Blogging • Business • (0) Comments • Permalink

The Hot Iron is participating in NaBloPoMo, are you? What, you don’t know what NaBloPoMo is? No worries, as it stands for National Blog Posting Month. The idea is bloggers write a post every day for the entire month of November.

Easy, right? Well, maybe. As many bloggers have other projects or lives to balance with their blogging, it can be a challenge. I have decided to take on this challenge, namely as it fits well with a business goal I have for myself before the end of the year.

Where an idea like NaBloPoMo can be cliché, it can also be a motivator as well. Here’s to a month of wisdom, thoughts and ideas!

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Announcements • Blogging • (0) Comments • Permalink

It has been said, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” These days, this is said a lot. Myself I have thought about it quite a bit as well. However the more I think of the phrase, the more I take a different approach to it, as follows:

Desperate times call for creative, sensible measures.

Creative? Sensible? Mike, the economy sucks! Who are you to take such a soft approach to it?

Well, I am someone who needs to. After putting a lot of thought into it, the second “desperate” is usually driven by anger, fear or anything that gets your blood boiling. Go ahead, blurt out what you will do, then give it a rest. There is a high likelihood what you said in frustration makes sense, and there is a chance it doesn’t. As you think more of it, creative juices are now replacing the adrenaline that was previously flowing through your veins, and some great options and alternatives can come from it.

That’s my story and I am sticking with it. Until those ideas don’t work, then I get frustrated and start all over again.

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Business • Diversions • (1) Comments • Permalink

Keeping positive and focused is easier for some than others. For those like myself who need a little help with it, it is the little things that can do the trick when we the day isn’t going the way we want it. It can be a call from a friend, a sign or a phrase.

This is where books like That Was Zen, This Is Wow: 232 Ideas for Transforming Your Life from Ordinary to Extraordinary come in handy. I met one of the co-authors, Rob Engelman, several years ago through networking and when I heard about his book I had to get a copy and purchased one from him. In it, there are 232 quotes and ideas that will cause you to pause, reflect and hopefully get back on course. You can read the book from cover-to-cover when you need some strong motivation or randomly flip to a page to get some quick inspiration.

One thing this book inspired me to do was to write some thoughts of my own. Many people have quotes of their own to help them get through the day. That Was Zen, This Is Wow can be that pit-stop we need during a hectic day to refuel our minds and hit the road running again.

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Happy Halloween! Today is the day where people dress up and go door-to-door asking people for candy, else they play a trick on them. And some of these people are even children.

Halloween means different things to different people. Some people do Halloween big, like my friend Chris who lives in Salem, Massachusetts, the home of the historic Salem witch trials. Others like the camaderie of dressing up their kids and having them roam the neighborhoods and guess who the other kids are. Some don’t celebrate it at all, as it technically is the eve before All Saints Day, a religious day of obligation. And some find a happy medium and call it Orange and Black day.

For myself and my family, it has new meaning as we have an infant daughter. Last year we dressed her as a pumpkin, this year a bumble bee. We also took her the last 2 years to Bengston’s, a pumpkin farm in suburban Chicago. This is where I took the photo above of the face carved in a large pumpkin by someone who is a pumpkin artist. Who knew?

Only 2 more months left in the year. Boo!

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