Laurel Papworth talks Blogs on The Morning Show.

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One of our biggest Blog Chicks, Social Media expert Laurel Papworth today featured on ch7 The Morning Show talking about blogs.
The segment just so happened to show a few shots of the Blog Chicks site, along with a few others. And Laurel makes mention of our Top bloggers list as a way to find some great reads.

(youtube video, so you’d better click through from your RSS ;) )

Featured Blogger- Fiona Moore

4296128235_9a5e3b767bThis weeks featured blogger is Fiona Moore from Little Lioness

When did you start your blog?
I started blogging at livejournal (and at another journal site which I can’t seem to recall the name of!) in 2000, the moved to Greymatter then onto b2/wordpress on other people’s domains in 2001. I know my archives don’t show it (I have a habit of deleting old posts and starting new) but I started blogging at littlelioness.net in September 2002.

Why did you start blogging?
I was involved in a Yahoo group for adults into Neopets (oh, I know) and it’s what people were starting to do. I’d always liked to write letters and journals, but my ego liked the worldwide connections ;)

Describe your blog in 20 words or less
A mashup of photos, food, chatter about life. ADD at times.

What are your 5 must have tools for blogging?
Wordpress
Flickr
Akismet – best spam filter!
My netbook – a Samsung N120 That I technically bought for uni (shhh)
My Canon Ixus. I have a couple of versions, and am in love.

What do you find is the best way to help promote your blog?
Definitely commenting on other people’s blogs. It helps to build a sense of community, which helps in the popularity stakes .

What is your favourite part of being a blogger?
Connecting with people all over the place who may be just like me or completely different.

What would be the biggest thing you have learnt since starting your blog?
Sometimes it’s not worth reading blogs that continually piss you off. I guess it’s like life – defriend the toxic friends and  remove those who you just can’t integrate into your blogroll without tensing up. Oh and don’t feed the trolls ;)

If you could start again, what would you do differently?
Keep my archives. Yes, I know I probably don’t actually want to read my blog posts from 10 years ago, but it would be nice to have them locked away somewhere. Plus I remember some of the hits they got – like the post about THAT re dress that Bec Twigley wore to the Brownlows.

What has been your blog’s biggest achievement?
Um….  If any of you know, please tell me. I don’t think I’ve ‘achieved’ anything!

What advice would do you have for new chick bloggers?
Use wordpress! (mostly because the comment forms on blogger irritate me no end)

Do you (or do you plan to) make any income from your blog?
I have Google and Nuffnang ads, I haven’t had a Google payout for ages, but am due for one soon. It covers my hosting. Sorta. It’s okay.

What future goals do you have for your blog?
I think I would love to develop more of a theme to my blog. I think I’m finding one – I’ve been working through some food intolerances, so that might be it, along with my gym addiction ;) I would also like to be able to maintain it into the future, track my adventures. Oh and if I ever do pop out a kid not to go too MommyBlogger on y’all ;)

Who are your 5 favourite chick bloggers and why?
Two dairy-free blogs I love right now are
and Helen @ http://bittersweetblog.wordpress.com/ They’ve both given some GREAT dairy free and vegan recipes to help a girl along – especially over Christmas!
A recent addition to my blogroll is Lisa @ http://www.bakebikeblog.com – I love her balance of food and fitness!
Riayn @ http://rainbowofchaos.wordpress.com/ Always keeps me thinking. I love a gal who will stand up and question anything that needs to be questioned – such as topics close to my heart like vaccines and Autism, or the negative role that religion can play in society.
Nikita @ http://kitta.net/ has to get the longevity award for my blogroll. Brains and beauty will get me every time!

How to setup feedburner to tweet new posts

I have tried most wordpress twitter plugins. They seem to work great for awhile and then all of a sudden just stop. Very frustrating.

But if you use Feedburner for your RSS feed there is now a super easy and reliable way to have your new blog posts automatically sent to twitter.

One you have logged into your Feedburner account, go to the Publicise tab, and then select the Socialise option from the side menu.

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Then just fill in your details for which twitter account you want the posts published to. You will be redirected to twitter to authorise feedburner to publish to your account. Click activate at the bottom and you are done. Any new posts will go to twitter automatically, its usually quite quick within about 5mins of being published.

If you have some old services tweeting your posts and are unsure how to stop them. You can block their access to your account by going to the connections tab in your twitter settings. In here you can revoking access to the services which you do not wish to access your account.

Blogging Inspiration eBook

promoteSydney blogger Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim has today released an eBook to help all those bloggers who sometimes get stuck for ideas on what to blog about (let’s face it, we have all been there!)

Something To Blog About is an eBook of 40 ideas to help you with inspiration when you are suffering a bout of bloggers block.

The eBook is beautiful presented, with a lovely design and photographs in Fat Mum Slim style.

So if you are new to blogging, or often struggle for ideas for blogging topics, grab yourself a copy.

The eBook is $7.95 and 10% of all profits will go to The National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Visit Fat mum slim for more details and to purchase