I’ve had many friends and acquaintances who have been disappointed with the results of their blogging.  They generally stop posting after they see the number of readers who don’t come to their blog.

This post from Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, outlines 10 mistakes that are real easy to make when you have a blog and they are particularly easy to make when you are starting.  And they are not hard to correct.

Just a sidenote, Hyatt uses social media effectively to network with others around the world.  I read his blog.  I’m part of his Twitter group. He’s a real person who’s not afraid to be transparent.  He’s also very accessible.  He’s worth getting to know and it’s pretty easy to do.

I will write more about the 10 mistakes that he lists.

In the meantime, his post is worth a click and his content about the 10 mistakes is worth a read.  My experience affirms everything he lists.

Just got this tip from a tweet by Problogger’s Darren Rowse about 45 ideas for blog posts by Adam Singer of Future Buzz. I like his third idea:  List the 101 essential people, sites, or posts in your niche.  I’m going to look more closely at the others.

The ideas might be helpful particularly for my friends who are new to blogging and even for veteran bloggers.

For those who miss the days when newspapers actually had news, Steve Rubel sees some positive signs of their return, but not in their historical dead tree variety.

Rubel is a veteran tracker of new media trends and he says in this post there are plenty of examples of newspapers reinventing themselves.

He points to Pete Abraham of the Journal News in Westchester County, New York, who covers the New York Yankees who are in spring training right now.  He writes for the dead tree edition, but what’s exciting is his blog and its many posts during the day, iPhone pictures shared as they are taken, podcasts from spring training and comments from readers.

Think about how local papers can use this for all sorts of beats.  Statehouse, city hall, you name it.  It could be news as it happens on multi-platforms.

I maybe feel a little more hopeful about our local paper–the Lansing (MI) as I get ready to get it from the front porch.

How can a blog be useful to a preaching pastor?

Pastor Noel Heikkinnen of Riverview Church in the Lansing (MI) area is using his blog to start a sermon series this weekend on prayer.  He posted a series of questions for his flock on their prayer lives and their attitude about prayer.

Check out the response.  It speaks for itself.  Blogs can be a real useful tool for pastors.  This is a good example.  However, I’m sure it took Pastor Noel some time to build up his blog readership.  I think I’ll watch his sermon . . . online, of course.

Pastor’s are really busy people.  They are loaded with responsibilities and they have the chore of having a to-do list that leaves them little breathing space.  So where does blogging fall in a platter full of things to do?

I’ve seen plenty of pastors start blogs, get excited about blogging and then discover that writing posts is just one more activity to consume an already busy day.

Are there any helpful tips?

Yes there is.  I point to David Porter, a layman from the Scottsdale Bible Church in Arizona, who has a well-defined mission statement for his blog.  He knows why he has a blog and he knows why he develops and writes posts everyday.  He knows it’s a tool to communicate and he wants to be effective in using this tool.  So, he has a plan.

I invite pastors and everyone else with a blog or thinking about blogging to read his blog’s mission state.

My friend, David Porter of Boomer in the Pew, pointed me to this new pastor blogger, Kevin DeYoung of University Reformed Church in East Lansing, MI just down the road.

I read his two posts and I wanted more.  Check his writing voice in his first post about why he’s blogging and then one about drinking coffee at McDonald versus Starbucks.  I’m anxious to read more.  Welcome Pastor DeYoung to the mid-Michigan blogosphere.

You’re going right to my Google Reader.

Here in my part of the country most business people have barely heard of Twitter and fewer understand it.

That’s why this post from Blog of Mr. Tweet is interesting and potentially valuable for an adventuresome business owner willing to try something new.  It’s about a coffeeshop in Houston, Texas that started using Twitter to accept take-out orders and then followed up with a gathering for its Twitter followers.

This is worth reading if you’re trying to weave a group of people together with your enterprise and its mission.

I’m part of a growing Twitter group and I stumbled over the answer to sharing links with a long URL that bumped up on the 140 character limit.  When this happened, I had room for two or three short words of explanation in my tweet.

When I posted this question yesterday, I received an immediate answer.  I was pointed to the web app, www.tinyurl.com.

You insert the long URL and it immediately shortens it to a more manageable size.

Here’s an example:

The URL for my post yesterday where I posed this question looked like this– http://bloggingwithwes.com/2009/01/27/twitter-users-how-do-i-get-rid-of-my-ugly-url-for-a-tweet/

When I inserted in www.tinyurl.com, it came out looking like this- http://tinyurl.com/d9m5kv

It’s a major difference and it allows me to share my link in Twitter and to give a short explanation.

I’ve gotten a ton of helpful and interesting links from my Twitter group and I would like to return the favor, but I’ve had a challenge that I’m sure is not unique.

How do you get rid of a butt-ugly url that’s to long for Twitter and a few explaining words?An example is from the new blog by my friend Lauren Hager named Lauren Hager listens and shares. In my personal blog Daily Grit, I wrote a post about my friend’s efforts and provided some context explaining why readers might be interested visiting. This is the full url and below is how it looks:

http://westhorp.typepad.com/dailygrit/2009/01/can-lauren-hagers-blog-become-a-listening-post-for-his-part-of-michigan.html

My question:  Is there a way to shorten the url to make it shareable on Twitter so I have room enough for a few explaining words.  Even with the tinyurl, there are still too many words.

To do this am I limited to short post titles?

There are a handful of personal blogs that I read pretty faithfully.  They give a birds-eye view of an individual, a family and the situations they deal with.

Some are a daily script of their everyday life and others have been given special circumstances to deal with like this young mom, Morgan, whose son was born with Downs Syndrome.  The blog, Learning From Bear, is a transparent account of dealing with issues relating to their son and sharing what they learn.

Their story is a positive testimony from a committed and focused couple.

Do you have any favorite personal blogs that you can share along with the reasons that you like them?