However, much of the wedding actually can be planned via social media and the web, especially if you take a more DIY approach and assemble bits and pieces of the event on your own. I’m taking that approach to the planning of my own wedding and have been relying on social media and web-based tools to help. In this post, I’m open sourcing my wedding planning work-flow and sharing all the tricks I’ve learned so far. Feel free to share other ideas in the comments.

Planning

The first thing my fiancé and I did when beginning to plan our wedding was pick out a color scheme. Once we had our colors picked out, it became a lot easier to start planning everything else pertaining to the design of our wedding, from the bridesmaid dresses to the decorations to the invitations. Check out COLOURlovers and Adobe’s Kuler for active communities of designers that create and share color palettes. If you are color challenged, these sites will help you identify colors that go well together, and if you’d rather create your own scheme, they offer tools to easily create color swatches.

Once we had our colors figured out, the next thing we used the web to help us out with was creating our save-the-date cards and invitations. We looked into traditional, wedding-focused print shops, but we decided that they were both too expensive and not personal enough — we wanted something designed just for us, not picked from a catalog. I am lucky enough to have a close friend who happens to be a great graphic designer and she volunteered to create my save-the-date cards and invitations, but prior to her generous offer, I was planning to use a crowd sourced design site like 99designs or crowdSPRING to get my wedding collateral created.

Before I actually send out my save-the-date cards, I need to get my wedding web site made (the cards have the web site URL printed on them). The web site will have information about hotels and air travel for guests, about local attractions and wedding-related activities, and about the all-important wedding registry (more on that in a moment). I also plan for the web site to also serve as a central repository for the distribution of post-wedding media.

There are plenty of services online that offer web sites catered specifically to weddings, but since I have design-savvy friends and a moderate amount of technical knowledge, I’m planning to go the DIY route. I’m in the process of putting together a page built on WordPress. I’m self-hosting, but there’s no reason why WordPress.com couldn’t work as well (or any other hosted blog solution).

WordPress is actually a great tool to power the back-end of a wedding web site. It lets you keep people automatically updated via blog posts (and RSS), lets you easily add static pages, is infinitely customizable, and there are already a slew of wedding specific themes available for free on the web. WordPress also has iPhone and BlackBerry apps, so you can update your page on the go. In addition to a web site, I am considering setting up a private Twitter stream and Facebook Event page for guests, creating multiple channels for people to stay updated.

Of course the main reason for a wedding web site is to tell people what sort of presents to get you. Right? Right. We considered going the traditional route and registering at stores like Crate & Barrel or Bed, Bath & Beyond — and we probably will register at one of those to accommodate for older or less tech-savvy guests — but no store really completely matched our taste or the small, but eclectic list of things we’d like to get as gifts. That’s why our wedding web site will most likely point to a Universal Wishlist from Amazon, which allows users to create a custom registry combining items for any store on the web, or one from MyRegistry.com, which lets couples create a registry from hundreds of different stores, and request cash gifts (i.e., for a honeymoon or single, big-ticket item).

That’s the virtual stuff covered, but what about the tangible items? What about the things that really matter, like what the wedding party is going to wear? I have one word for you: Etsy. Etsy is probably the world’s largest marketplace of handmade goods, and in it you can find almost anything you need for your wedding. It has been an invaluable resource for us while planning our wedding, and we like being able to support small business at the same time.

Etsy has a weddings category, but branch out and search the rest of the site for the type of items you need. We’ve been able to find everything from bridesmaid dresses, to neckties for the groomsmen, to wedding bands.

It should be clear by now: planning a wedding is a mammoth undertaking (and ours is relatively small at just over 100 guests). Keeping track of all the details can be difficult, but two tools are potentially invaluable for staying organized as the list of items you need to keep straight for the wedding grows larger. One of those resources is Backpack. Though initially designed for business use, Backpack is a single-page, wiki-style organizer that can be amazingly useful for keeping track of who is doing what, what is left to do, and what has already been accomplished. Because Backpack pages can be shared, you can also use the app to get your wedding party involved — dole out tasks to bridesmaids, groomsmen, and relatives and keep track of everyone’s progress.

Another great application for those planning a wedding is the WeddingWire iPhone application. WeddingWire’s app has a built-in vendor search, but more importantly, it has to-do lists and a budget calculator. One thing I learned very quickly while planning my wedding is that everything costs money, and often times deposits are due at specific dates (for the food, for the venue, for the flowers, for the transportation, etc.). The WeddingWire app can help you keep track of who needs to get paid, when, and how much.

The Big Day

All that planning is really the hard part — or so I’m told — but there’s still a lot to do on the wedding day itself. My brother, who was married five years ago and also took a do-it-yourself approach, was actually up at 3 AM the night before the wedding assembling programs — I don’t want that to happen to me next summer! So I’m trying to keep everything organized, and one way I’m doing that is by using services like RememberTheMilk, which offers to-do list apps for the iPhone, Android, and other mobile devices so I (and my bride-to-be) can keep the wedding day task list close at hand and make sure everything gets done.

Because I’m a social media nerd, I’ve considered integrating Twitter into my wedding reception. We’ll certainly have a traditional paper guestbook that people can sign and we can keep as a memento, but in an effort to go geeky, I may attempt to use Twitter to create a real-time guestbook that anyone at the wedding can contribute to and see. The plan is to create a special Twitter hashtag just for the wedding (#catonewedding, for example) and ask people to tweet their thoughts, well-wishes, toasts, or maybe even song requests during the reception. Then, behind the dance floor, we would project the real-time stream of tweets from wedding attendees using Twitterfall, a laptop, and a projector.

Another option in the same vein is the Brightkite Wall, which ties updates to location, supports SMS (for those with older phones), and can insert camera phone images into the stream. I’ve been to events utilizing the Brightkite Wall, and it really is a lot of fun.

Of course, while not every wedding needs tweets (though they can’t hurt!), every wedding does need music and photos. On the music front, we’re planning to use a laptop and iTunes playlists rather than a band or DJ. It’s low budget, but works well and allows us to create separate playlists for different parts of the evening (i.e., soft, background music for dinner, upbeat dance tunes for after the meal, and ‘Closing Time’ by Eagle Eye Cherry when we want everyone to leave). At any time during the reception, it will be easy for someone from the wedding party to man the laptop to take requests.

One thing we won’t be able to do due to a lack of wifi, is utilize the Apple Remote iPhone app that can hook into iTunes DJ and allow anyone at your party to browse your iTunes library from their phone and make requests or alter the playlist. That would have been an awesome way to get wedding guests involved in the music decisions and out on the dance floor, but the lack of wifi at the old farmhouse we’re renting for our wedding won’t make it possible.

Another thing a wedding needs is pictures. We’ll be having some of ours taken the old fashioned way — by a wedding photographer — but given that everyone has a camera phone in their pocket these days, we’re anticipating that a lot of our guests will be snapping photos. We plan to invite everyone to share the photos with us via special, private albums on Facebook and Flickr, and we may even assemble our favorites into a book using Blurb for any close relatives that might want one (like grandparents who may not even own a computer, let alone know how to view a private wedding photo group on Flickr).

The Honeymoon

Just as important as the wedding? The honeymoon. And social media and web tools can be just as helpful (or perhaps even more helpful) in planning your honeymoon. For ours, we’re hoping to travel around Europe for a couple of weeks, and though our plans are still in their infancy, one site that I know will be a huge help to us is YourTour.

One thing that has always frustrated me about most travel booking sites on the web is that booking a multi-leg trip that requires travel between and accommodations in more than one city is a major hassle. The recently-launched YouTour, which right now works only for France, allows visitors to easily plan out multi-leg trips, including transportation, hotels, and activities in both circular or linear itinerary patterns. Support for more countries is reportedly coming in the future, but even just in planning the French leg of our European honeymoon, YourTour should prove extremely helpful.

Another site that I have on my radar for honeymoon planning is Stay.com, which lets users build free, customized guide books that highlight the specific places you’re planning to visit — from museums to restaurants. The site supports a handful of major cities right now, but has plans to expand. In many ways, Stay.com is similar to Offbeat Guides, a service that automagically creates travel guides based on your itinerary with information gleaned from around the web. In my testing, though, the results from Stay.com in the cities they support was generally more relevant to travelers. Though both sites could do with a bit of polish (and each is still under active development), the concept of personalized travel guides is a powerful one and as the technology gets better, services like Stay.com will become must-haves for globetrotters.

Of course, as mobile phones become more powerful, the need for paper guides will decrease. There are a number of iPhone travel tour applications already available, such as those for a select group of European locales from travel writer Rick Steves (iTunes link) that were featured in a recent iPhone commercial.

(Via Mashable!.)

When it comes to Social Media, a lot of individuals and companies are quite afraid. Fear of the unknown. Fear of lack of privacy. Fear of retribution and negative response. Fear of ex-girlfriends’ new boyfriends, or of strangers stalking your kids. I hope to quell some of those fears with some good old fashioned rationalization and logical determination of what Social Media can do for you.

Social Media for Personal Use

When it comes to personal use, there is a lot more to fear from Social Media on an individual level than on a corporation level. There is a level of comfort that some were able to adapt to quickly (they all work in PR) and some took a little while longer to come around. Some still haven’t come around, but have their little toes in the water and some flat out refuse to be involved at all. Most of the fear in the latter categories come from lack of knowledge about the Social Media networks and false assumptions about what kind of information you are required to share.

Let’s talk about that for a moment. What information, on a personal level, are you required to share? That’s actually a very simple answer, one that seems to elude many. None. You are required to share nothing. Plain and simple. I think this fear of being forced to provide personal data just because you signed up comes from cell phones. I’m serious. When cell phones became mainstream I remember people lamenting that now their friends & co-workers would be able to get hold of them wherever they were and an expectation was set that they would. That’s the way the behavior drove the technology. Few people, if any, mentioned to me that the solution to that is to just not pick up the phone.

It’s the same thing for Social Media. You are only required to share as much information as you feel you should share. This is a fear I myself had to conquer when moving my persona onto Facebook. But then I realized that I can put whatever I want up there. I don’t have to tell people my innermost secrets, I don’t have to put my correct birthday or favorite foods. That’s all optional. I don’t even have to use my real name. The fear here is lack of privacy. People are afraid they will give away too much information. Well, only if you give away too much information. Again, at a personal level you aren’t obligated to do anything at all, so it’s completely up to you as to how you want to represent yourself online.

When it came to more career oriented sites like Linkedin, the logic there was easier. What information would I be putting up on that site that wasn’t already up on Monster.com or Careerbuilder? My resume, after being spread around the internet like herpes backstage at a rock concert, was pretty much public record. With that thought in mind, creating my profile on Linkedin was a walk in the park.

The other thing that really scares people, especially when it comes to networking sites, is connecting with the past. A lot of people have skeletons in the closet that they just don’t want to let out. Or they don’t want to be faced with the decision whether to ‘friend’ an ex on Facebook or not. There is a lot of trepidation about what the expectation is when it comes to selecting your ‘friends’ online. A great rule of thumb when it comes to that is – would you stop and talk to this person in real life? Is this someone you’d recognize in a crowded room? Someone you’d sit with uninvited at a coffee shop if you knew them? I have acquaintances from high school that try to connect with me on Facebook, but I either A.) didn’t like them then and probably wouldn’t like them now or B.) have no freaking clue who they are. Why should I feel obligated to connect? Am I that self centered to think that if I don’t connect they are brooding over it? Chances are, I’m one of a hundred invites they sent out that day.

I spoke to a friend who is consumed by the fear. The media hasn’t helped, with stories of MySpace & Facebook predators and so on. That’s where his fear stems from – he’s afraid his family would be targeted. It may be a harsh conclusion, but you may as well never leave the house and never let your family out of the house as well. It’s a rough and tumble world out there, and even more so online. You have to have a particular constitution about you and be armed with the knowledge of what’s out there and what kind of programs you are working with. The fact that Linkedin pulled in his gmail account address book scared the crap out of him. You can’t be participating online with that glaring lack of knowledge about how the internet and it’s related applications work. Arm yourself with knowledge and the fear will subside.

Getting over these fears are tough. However, they are clearly worth the benefits. I have several thousand connections on Linkedin, people I don’t know in industries I’ve never heard of – but they are there. Ready and mostly willing to provide information and insight when needed. I’ve made advantageous connections on Facebook with people I’ve not seen in years, working for or running businesses that could benefit my life. I’ve connected with people outside my zip code – which is the most important part. I’ve gotten freelance jobs through connections, been involved in projects I never would have known about had I not been connected. With networks like Twitter, I’ve got a constant stream of what’s going on in the world and with subjects I’m interested in. Not to mention the quick availability to self promote via utilities like Digg. Those are the benefits.

In a future post I’ll discuss the overuse & abuse of these networks that only propagates the fear, but again – the fear is only what you make of it. If you don’t post the picture of you getting drunk with a bunch of underage kids at a frat party, then no-one will see that picture.

Social Media for Business Use

With business use, whether it be to self promote or promote your business, there are different fears but based on the same inherent base fears. Lack of knowledge is the big one, followed by general apathy and ignorance. Businesses don’t worry about the privacy issue as much as an individual would.

What they do worry about is the return on investment. Is Social Media worth the time and effort? Based on Social Media consulting being a whole sub-industry of public relations, I’d say many companies think it is worth the time and effort. Basically, companies need to ask themselves if they have the time and resources to commit to networking. If they don’t, then it’s a moot point and less of a fear of using Social Media than an apathetic response.

The bigger question for companies or individuals looking to self promote, is do their customers use it? For me, the answer was a hearty ‘yes.’ As a writer, joining Twitter was one of the best ways to promote my own work. Did I mention that you can follow me? See? Self promotion.

Businesses hire Social Media experts to guide them onto the internet and promote their service and/or product. This is especially useful if a good percentage of their customer base is deeply rooted in the social networks. More companies are adding a Twitter feed to their contact page, or their CEO suddenly has his own blog to rant on.

A fear here is feedback. A lot of companies are flat out terrified of negative feedback. Terrified. Like walking in the dark and likely be eaten by a Grue terrified. However, that suggests something exists that would cause negative feedback. A good key for any company using Social Media is honesty and clarity with customers and consumers. If you have something to hide and it’s revealed, there will be negative feedback. In any forum however, there will always be negative feedback. Have you ever read the op-ed section of the newspaper?

Businesses can benefit the most from Social Media, more than any personal usage outside of self-promotion. Because there is money to be made. How is there money to be made? It’s basic economics. Reach a larger audience, sell more product/service and make more money. There are companies that wouldn’t exist right now if not for Social Media. Independents based online are thriving because of the networking possibilities of Social Media. As are Social Media consulting firms. Self promotion is another great side benefit as well. Can you think of how you would self promote a blog post before Social Media? Email everyone? That limits you to people you know. Send them certified mail?

In conclusion, and to sum it all up nicely (especially the part about using common sense), a quote from Boston based branding & PR Executive Don Martelli:

The social media fear factor is real, but controllable. Rather than being scared of eating bugs and goat intestines, the fear factor — personally and professionally — is really embedded in one thing, engagement. People are nervous of connecting with past lives and sharing stuff that they care not to. Brands are nervous about the two way communication street that social channels pave, especially with those on the road that aren’t kind.

Whether from a personal or professional standpoint, the fear factor can be controlled by using common sense and being transparent in your communications. My advice is to leverage the reach of social media to become a trusted source of helpful content, which, in turn, will help companies and their brands build a following or stronger community.

(Via Geekdad.)

I realize that this is part of the ‘like, know, and trust’ process that enables people to get to know each other, but sometimes it’s simply too much information..LOL. I’m Twittering primarily to market my business. Consequently, I try and limit my personal twitters to no more than 2 per day. My clients, who create Twitter accounts for marketing, as well, tell me, ‘I’m signed up. Now what in the world do I Twitter about? How do I market my business with this tool?’

Here are 10 strategies that I use regularly to market my business and my expertise via Twitter. Remember, you have only 140 characters for your tweet (Twitter post).

1. How you’re helping clients. Talk about specific ways that your business helps clients and use their Twitter ID if you have their permission, i.e. ‘Just finished @clientname brainstorm great Internet marketing plan for 2009″ or ‘Finally finished setting up Quickbooks for local hardware store — now they can invoice their clients’

2. What you’re doing in your business. This is a perfect time to tell others when you’re blogging, writing an article, creating your weekly ezine, recording your podcast, i.e. ‘Had great interview with Jane Smith today on speaking to grow your biz. Great ideas! Subscribe to podcast & listen here (URL here)’

3. Useful tool or resource you’ve found. I run across these all the time in my daily activities, and Twitter is a perfect place to share,. i.e. ‘Found great new Firefox plug-in to monitor & check multiple Gmail accounts at same time at (URL here)’ or ‘Read great blog post on workíng at home with kids under 5 at (URL here)’

4. Ask a question. Need some ideas or some quick brainstorming? Twitter is an ideal place to gather opinions, i.e. ‘Help! Desperately seeking new laser prínter. Recommendations?’ or ‘How do I find training organizations online?’

5. Conduct a survey. What do your Tweeps think about a particular issue? Ask them via Twitter, i.e. ‘Quick poll: Do you get more clients from Facebook or Twitter? Respond at (URL here)’

6. Report on live events. The latest Twitter trend seems to be tweeting what’s happening at conferences or workshops. In order for Twitter users to follow a particular event, it’s usually referred to by a name preceded by a # sign, as in #JVAlert, for example, to make it simpler for people who want to follow those posts. So, if you were at an event, you might tweet ‘#JVAlert John Smith speaking on affiliate programs. Just got great idea on training affiliate managers!’ Just don’t get so wrapped up in tweeting that you ignore the content delivered in the conference!

7. Product or service launch. If you’re about to launch a new product or introduce a new product, let your Twitter followers know, i.e. ‘Pre-launch pricing for new DVD set about how baby boomers can start an online biz. Get $100 early bird discount at (URL here)’

8. Responding to others with advice or answers. The way to build professional relationships on Twitter is to help your tweeps. So, if someone asks a question, comments about something to which you have a response or an idea, or you want to ask a followup question, this is the perfect place to do so.

By Donna Gunter (c) 2008

”

(Via KDI Media : Savannah, GA.)

However, these social networks are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other social networks, some more geographically based and some interest based. So how many are enough? Which ones should you make sure you’re using.

The open ocean of social networks is vast. CNET recently annouced that the ‘build-your-own-social networking site’ Ning, now boasts 22 million registered users and one million different social networks within the site. The social rating and networking site Digg continues to grow with close to 10 million unique visitors per month. And the social bookmarking site StumbleUpon has 7.5 million registered users.

These numbers don’t even account for the many smaller social networking sites that are popular in Europe and Asia and the niche sites that are interest-based — LinkedIn for the business crowd, fuzzster for petlovers, Model Mayhem for models and photographers,  TikiCentral for lovers of Polynesian Pop and so on. All these sites, though different in their approach, are social in nature. So which ones should you use? All of them? Just one of them?

Before answering these questions, it’s important first to ask what is your goal with social networking. Business? School? Marketing? Networking?

If you’re using social networking just to keep up with friends and family, then you’re best sticking with Facebook. Facebook now features 200 million users, which means there’s a much higher likelihood that your friends and family are going to be on Facebook, compared to other sites.

However, if you’re looking to connect with a specific demographic, then you should find out which social networking sites they use. This could mean attaching yourself to one of Facebook’s Fan pages or you may need to seek out a niche site as mentioned above. Ask yourself this question: Where do my people congregate online?

This doesn’t mean you should sign up for 10 social networking sites! Social networking takes time and effort. Unless they have a dedicated Social Media Manager, most small businesses or individual ventures don’t have time to keep up with this many sites. You’ll be spread too thin and will never really become a member of any site.

Therefore, stick to a limited number of sites. Two to three social networking sites is a pretty safe number. This keeps you from being spread too thin — although you’ll still probably find yourself ‘playing favorites’ and devoting more of your time to one of them.

How many social networking accounts do you have? Is it more than 10? Should there be a standard number?

(Via Tutorial Blog.)

“What’s a hulu? In August 2007, this question ricocheted through the blogosphere to a chorus of derisive laughter. Fox and NBC were going to make the Internet safe for television! They were building a ‘YouTube killer’! And they were calling it Hulu! It was almost too perfect—an absurdist topper to the idea that two major broadcast networks could devise an Internet video service people would actually use. The name was even more delicious than the venture’s placeholder moniker, NewCo., which the online world had changed to Clown Co. And now Hulu? It means ’snoring’ in Chinese, one blogger declared. ”Cease’ and ‘desist’ in Swahili,’ Michael Arrington reported on TechCrunch. ‘Perhaps they should have just stuck with Clown Co.,’ he added.

Jason Kilar read these posts and winced. A 36-year-old ex-Amazon.com executive newly relocated to Los Angeles, Kilar had followed—even admired—many of these bloggers for years. Now he was Hulu’s CEO, and their ridicule wasn’t so funny.

What’s a Hulu? Kilar had gotten the same question from Jeff Zucker, chief of NBC Universal, and Peter Chernin, president of News Corporation, Fox’s corporate parent. In English it means nothing. In Mandarin, when pronounced another way, it means not snoring but ‘bottle gourd,’ which, in an old Chinese proverb, stands for a ‘holder of precious things.’ If you say so, they responded.

Even Kilar was starting to wonder whether he could make this thing work. Along with the new name, he had just announced that Hulu, which he had been running for only seven weeks, would launch in beta in two months—much later than expected but far too soon for a team that had barely gotten started. He was heading an operation of 20 people holed up in an office suite in West LA. To meet the deadline, he had turned the place into a bunker: Newspapers covered every window. People were sleeping on air mattresses on the floor. Half-eaten pizzas littered the empty cubicles. Fruit flies were the only visitors.

But Kilar would make it work. He and his crew would emerge from their dismal cave with the sleekest, easiest-to-use, most professional video site on the Internet. Not only would it deliver shows and movies from Fox and NBC Universal, it would take you to programs from every other major network and studio. Full-length episodes. Entire seasons. For free. Within months of that late-August announcement, Hulu would be among the top 10 US video sites in number of clips streamed. Om Malik, one…

(Via Wired News.)

(Via Lifehacker.)

What do I mean by ‘all kinds of data’? First, music. Ever seen a music video on YouTube that isn’t really a music video, but simply a song with some pictures slapped on it just to kill the boredom? There are plenty of services for sharing audio files out there, but kids are using YouTube because they’re used to it, because it’s simple, and because all their friends are using it. AP has an interesting article on this topic.

It doesn’t stop at music. You can find song lyrics (karaoke style) or even chords embedded in some videos; some users are sharing photos simply by stringing them into a video with music, etc. Video is definitely not the best vehicle for sharing all these types of data, but I see more and more users doing it; for them, it obviously works better than other available options.

Now, I’m not really sure if expanding focus to other types of data is the best course or even a good idea for YouTube. But I see untapped potential here; users are obviously already using these features – although they’re not quite there – so why not provide them? Of course, the folks at YouTube would have to be extra careful not to overly complicate the service and/or confuse their users. But if they pulled it off well, it might turn out to be a very smart move.

Please, feel free to voice your opinion in the comments: should YouTube add support for sharing other types of data, or should it stick to video only?

(Via Mashable!.)

More people are watching video online than ever, with the percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewing online video now topping 75%.

What’s this mean to you?

In a few years, your television will be more like your computer than a traditional television.

comScoretoday released July 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, reporting that Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during the month.

Other notable findings from July 2008 include:

• Americans spent a total of 558 million hours watching online video during the month.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
• 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer).
• 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (7.8 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.

Google Sites Maintains Dominant Position

Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with more than 5 billion videos viewed (representing a 44 percent share of the online video market), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 446 million videos (3.9 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 282 million (2.5 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 269 million (2.4 percent). Hulu ranked eighth with 119 million videos, representing 1 percent of all videos viewed.

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

More than 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 80 videos per viewer in July. Google Sites also attracted the most viewers (92.1 million), who watched an average of 55 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (54.9 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (37.6 million) and Microsoft Sites (32.6 million).

(Via Podcasting News.)

I had one of those days this last week. After what felt like a busy day of ‘work’ I realized I’d not actually produced a single blog post.

As I looked back over my day and the things that I’d done it struck me that there are a lot of tasks that bloggers do that are important – but that can at times become distracting from… well… writing posts… the core task of any blogger.

16 Important but Potentially Distracting Blogging Tasks

Following are 16 potentially distracting tasks for bloggers (note, I’m not saying that any of these are not important or worthwhile, just that they can actually become a distraction if we allow ourselves to become sidetracked by them):

1. Social Messaging - Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, Pownce…. (add your favorite micro blogging/social messaging service here). Each can suck up your time if you don’t get focused and put some boundaries around them.
2. Social Bookmarking – many bloggers become somewhat obsessed with writing posts for and then gathering votes on social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz, Reddit etc
3. Social Networking - building profiles and interacting upon Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace etc – all useful in building a brand and profile as a blogger, but potentially a distraction.
4. Blog Design – blog design is important at creating a first impression but when you find yourself tweaking it, reworking it, planning your next one more than actually writing content for your blog you might be in trouble.
5. SEO – like blog design there always seems to be something you could do a little better when it comes to optimizing a blog for search engines. It can be worth your time to do some of this, but one of the most effective ways of doing SEO is to write content that hits the spot with readers.
6. Reading other Blogs in Your Niche – yet another great use of time, but many bloggers spend so much time on other people’s blogs connecting, leaving comments and even writing about them that they fail to write anything unique on their own.
7. Reading about How to Blog – this might seem strange coming from a blogger who writes about blogging, but from time to time a blogger comes to me for advice on how to improve their blog who has done so much learning about blogging that my encouragement to them is simply to stop reading about it and start doing it.
8. Guest Posting - I am a big fan about using guest posting on other peoples blogs to expand your profile and grow your readership – however the best way to utilize guest posting is to have great content on your own blog for the new readers you engage with to see when they come visit.
9. Interacting with Readers - this is one that I hesitate to write about because I’m a firm believer in allocating time to spend one on one with readers – however as a blog grows it gets more and more difficult to do. There comes a time where most bloggers need to decide how to strike a balance on this front – boundaries and processes can really help.
10. Networking with other bloggers – another great way to build brand and traffic to your own blog is to connect with other bloggers in your niche – however there are millions of blogs ‘out there’ and it can be an endless task.
11. Monetization – finding and testing ad networks and affiliate programs can take a lot of time. Then optimizing them for your blog and tracking the results and extending your earning potential by finding private sponsorships and ad sales can really eat up even more of your time.
12. Starting New Blogs – diversification is an important and worthwhile part of the journey of many bloggers development, however I come across some bloggers who start too many blogs too quickly and don’t give their early ones time to get going and develop before they branch out.
13. Analyzing Stats – one of the biggest potential time suckers, that many bloggers become distracted with at different times, is analyzing your stats. Sure, you can learn a great deal from looking at who is coming to your blog, from where they come and what they do when they arrive – but at times, when you do it all day everyday, it can be a habit that takes you away from your blogging.
14. Projects/Competitions/Memes - many bloggers wanting to run a competition or project on their blog don’t realize just how much work it can be to manage (or how hard it can be to get them working). They can bring a lot of life to a blog, but they can also be suck you (and your readers) attention away from your core blogging.
15. Dealing with Trolls and Trouble makers – it is SO easy to get drawn into passionate (yet pointless) arguments with other bloggers and readers that can leave you emotionally drained and having wasted hours upon hours of your time. While at the time it seems to important to respond – many times it’s best just learn to hold it in.
16. Tracking down copyright violations - unfortunately in the medium we operate there are people who scrape the content of others, whack ads on it and call it their own. While it can be important to track down these copyright violations down – the statement ‘how long is a piece of string’ comes to mind and some bloggers spend so much time tracking splogs down, issuing DMCA legal notices and attempting to get the content removed that they have little time for much else.

Let me reiterate – there’s nothing wrong with any of these activities…. BUT….

In fact I at different times I’ve recommended and given tips on all of them on this blog! However – this post is about balance and priorities.

While these are all great activities the danger is in those times when they sidetrack us from other core aspects of our blogging.

In my own blogging I try to guard against becoming distracted by:

• Having goals (both long term but also daily goals)
• Being aware how I’m spending time (periodically throughout each day I stop and ask myself if I’m on track
• Setting time aside for the most important tasks (I put aside three mornings a week specifically for content creation – I block out this time and remove other distractions for these times.

What distracts you most from blogging? How do you keep yourself on track?

(Via ProBlogger Blog Tips.)

UPDATED: It’s no cheap exercise to implement a surveillance system to record what goes on at home or at one’s place of business. And as for the hardware, it can still be a pricey endeavor. As with most anything else, much depends on engineering and utility. But there’s a name that seeks to extend such artificial eyes into what it calls Web 2.0 video storage, and do so very inexpensively. GoToMyCamera, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates with the aid of Amazon’s S3 cloudware and enables remote access to video (’surveillance-as-a-service’) at a rate that many will financially regard to be very manageable.

Let’s get right into the numbers. According to GoToMyCamera, part of Eptascape Inc (no affiliation to Citrix, the maker of GoToMyPC), there exist three plans operating on a month-to-month contract. While sign-up costs $5 across the board, a Solo account, allowing for 1 camera, 1 user, and 100 MB of included storage space ($0.25 for extra 100 allotments), will cost just $5. Basic will run you $10 per month, enabling 4 cameras, 1 user, and 200 MB included. And despite what the website may describe, it is $0.50 for each additional 200MB of space.

Higher still is GoToMyCamera’s Business plan, costing $30/month for service with a 10-camera allowance, 10 users, 500 MB included cloud storage. For each additional 500MB, it is $1.50.

There’s a bit of a disparity in the extra storage allotments offered among the Solo, Basic, and Business plans. If storage should be proportional, 500MB would be $1.25 rather than the published $1.50. We’ve contacted the folks behind GoToMyCamera about this. We’ll let you know of their response.

Yet, even with these adjustments, the cost/service ratio is intriguing. Once you have one, two, four, ten network cameras (only Axis Network cameras supported at present), and connect them as required, material pushed to the Web is easily accessed. Vacation on the mind? Perhaps you’re just across town and want to maintain a connection. This is one way to do that – and keep lots of dollars in your pocket.

Update: Marco Graziano of GoToMyCamera wrote back to us about the matter over storage pricing. Here is his reply in full:

I have tried intentionally to keep only storage for additional fees over the monthly fee. It is true that there is an (intentional) small discrepancy between the $0.25/100MB for Solo subscribers and the $1.50/500MB for the Business subscribers. On the other hand, Business subscribers have up to 10 times the cameras of the Solo subscribers with increased bandwidth costs that is not a factor in the pricing. It is not easy to map what Amazon S3 charges us into a simple schema for end-users and this is an initial attempt. I would like to refrain from using number of ‘HTTP PUTS’ and bandwidth in the pricing schema for our subscribers. Somehow they need to be factored in. We will be able to refine the pricing once we have a better understanding of the common usage patterns in real situations.

(Via Mashable!.)