Hey there! Well, it’s been a while. Life got crazier than usual this summer and something had to give. My blog gave. Along with some other things.
This summer we moved from North Carolina back to our home state of Georgia. We’re thrilled to be home even though we left behind friends we love and nine years of life-changing life.
Hi everyone! This is way short notice, but it looks like a great way to jump start or re-jump start your blog! It’s the Blog Planning Bootcamp hosted by the wonderful ladies at How They Blog!
You can read all of the nitty-gritty details in this post, and here are few small ones to get you started!
It’s August 26-30.
It takes place at the How They Blog Facebook page.
You will have short assignments every day – about 15-20 minutes each – and a support group on the Facebook page to help you!
PLUS! Right now you can purchase the awesome Blog Planning Kit for 50% off! Just click here and use the coupon code BOOTCAMP!
Here’s a description of all you get in the Blog Planning Kit!
So what do you say bloggers? Will you join me?
*There are affiliate links used in this post.
Has the term “blog groupie” been invented yet? If not, I’m inventing it because I am one! There are a few bloggers who I am total groupie about. Not only do a read their posts, but I like to know where they went to school, how many children they have, what’s their favorite ice-cream flavor. It’s a little embarrassing, but it’s the truth. I get star-struck easily. And if I happen to meet them in real life (which I have on occasion), I even get nervous!
Image courtesy of CoolDesign / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Recently a blog post was shared in my Facebook feed by one of the bloggers who I would probably get nervous meeting. The comment accompanying it said something to the effect that “if you don’t already read [the shared blog], then you should, it’s a must-read.”
Then, a few days later, another blogger – this time not just a blogger but an author, a speaker, a really famous Christian blogger/writer person – shared a post from [the same blog] recommended by the previous blogger.
Then another big-time Christian blogger guest posted on [this same blog] that I had seen mentioned previously by the two other bloggers.
Now three Christian bloggers had recommended [this blog]. I was familiar with [this blog] that all three of these bloggers recommended. Something a few weeks previous came across my newsfeed from her blog, and I checked it out. Like some of them, this blogger isn’t really just a blogger. She’s an author, speaker. She’s even been on T.V. She’s a famous person.
But what I read really disturbed me. It’s not just that controversial social issues were being discussed. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it was the way Truth was being represented. And even more so that these three Christians bloggers, who I would get nervous meeting, recommended me read her blog.
As I looked around in her big-ish corner of the world-wide-web, Jesus was talked about . . . along with Buddha, the Koran, and other eastern religions. And meditation. And hell. And other things that were not the Truth of the Gospel.
It was like God pricked my heart right then. Watch your star-struckedness!
Just because someone writes about Jesus, doesn’t make her words Truth. (and that includes my words, too, my friends!)
Just because a big-blogger, writer, speaker, T.V. personality, recommends, guest posts, or says, “You have to check out this blog!”, doesn’t mean that it’s a recommendation I should trust.
I read lots and lots of stuff online. But am I holding what I read up to the Word of God to see how it stands against Truth? The Bible is very clear that false teachers and prophets abound all around us – possibly even in the Christian blogs we hang out in. With the internet we are susceptible to them more than ever.
But what about the young Christian, new in her faith and soaking up anything she can find about Jesus? Maybe she follows these three Christian bloggers who have just recommended, quoted, and guest posted for [this other blogger/writer]. Is she being led haphazardly by this recommendation?
1. Hold everything you read up to the Word of God. We will not agree on everything (Titus 3:9), but the Gospel shouldn’t be a place of discrepancy.
2. Be careful what you promote, endorse, and share. No, there’s no way to know everything about a person. I recommended Rob Bell’s DVDs to several people before he wrote Love Wins, so I’m just as guilty as the next person. But now I am mindful of it. That young Christian needs to know Truth, and if she’s looking up to you, then you’re the one who needs to point her to it.
I know you might be dying to know [the blogger/writer] I’m referring to in this post. I’m not sharing the name because the purpose is not to get an online Christian war started. It doesn’t matter who it is. The purpose of this post is to share with you a trend I’m seeing online in the Christians blogging world. A trend my heart’s been pricked by. It’s the ever so slight, innocent, bend towards a type of political correctness when it comes to the Gospel. I can try to be politically correct about many things but the Gospel of Jesus is not one of them.
And that includes myself.
“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.’ 1 Peter 5:8
What can you add to this conversation?
Just now I looked to see how my pages I “liked” on Facebook. I follow 396 pages. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that. That’s a lot of pages. Most of those pages are blog fan pages, and most of those blog fan pages are from the blogs of my friends.
I’m on Facebook a lot. Mainly because that is where the writing/blogging groups I’m in “meet” – they meet on Facebook. I actually read more blog posts from Facebook pages than I read from the blog site itself. Yes, I’m slightly addicted.
I love blogging and even more so writing. I love my blog friends. I love reading their posts. I love their ministries and businesses. They are really, really good at what they do, and they are doing a great job. They are providing for their families. They are raising up young moms through their instruction. They are helping marriages thrive.
But I’ve noticed a trend with bloggers – you may call them mommy bloggers because they mostly write on motherhood, homemaking, and marriage – and this is it: As a reader, I’m being dropped off at the ideal without being taken through the grace.
The other day I painted my toenails for the first time since my baby was born – seven months ago. Not ten minutes later I was on Facebook and the question popped up, “Do you use toxin-free nail polish to paint your nails?” It was followed by a question on a separate blog fan page – “Do you use a dishwasher or wash your dishes by hand?”
Quite possibly it’s my own insecurity, but when I see a post about toxins in fingernail polish or asking whether I use a dishwasher, I want to throw my hands in the air and scream, “I give up! I’ll never be good enough!”
I think of the single woman who’s raising her children on her own or the woman who wants to be a full-time homemaker but her husband doesn’t agree or the one who’s single and just wants to be married. How are they feeling? Do they feel like they can’t measure up in this seemingly perfect homemaker culture?
I also wonder if there’s a back-story. Actually, I know there’s a back-story. I’ve lived long enough now to know that everyone, and I mean everyone, has a back-story because we’re all just that fallen. So what is it? What’s the back-story? I’m exposed to the ideal, but where is the grace?
The grace-filled story is where the power of Jesus lives. The power that changes perception and gives us truth – that only through Him are we ever enough.
I want to read about the woman who can’t afford toxin-free nail polish and doesn’t have time to wash dishes by hand – along with how to do these things. That’s what I want.
We write about how Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are all making us crazy with comparison and this perfect picture and how we feel like we won’t ever measure up. But are we as bloggers contributing to the problem?
And I could be just as much to blame. I don’t know what people think when they see a Facebook update from my blog fan page. But I hope they don’t perfection because perfection isn’t here. Perfection is no where near this broken-soul of a woman who each day realizes more and more and more and more that she is completely nothing without the Cross. Each day my life depends more than the previous on Jesus’s grace.
Grace to get up out of the bed in the morning after being up with my baby a few times during the night. Grace for when my husband’s pants for work aren’t washed by the time he needs them – again. Grace for ordering take out three nights in a week. Grace for the professional baby pictures we spent tons of money on that still aren’t hanging on the wall. Grace for not reading to my baby for the fourth day in a row when I’m the reading teacher – I know better!
In my world, it’s nothing but grace. So I want more of the grace – the real, the messy, the mistakes, the out-of-control, the humanness – along with the picture-perfect.
If you are a blogger, you probably have figured out by now that the longer you blog you more you realize how much you really don’t know about blogging.
You might have started out like a lot of people – writing as a hobby to update grandparents who live far away with pictures and stories. Then you felt led to use your blog as a way to expand your influence through ministry or to earn an income.
That’s when the ball dropped. No longer was this little thing called blogging a hobby. The more you read about blog design and building platforms and monetization the more it felt like a job, and the more you realized that you might just need some training for this new blogging job.
Recently I found myself in this place – just needing some help. But help, as you know, doesn’t come cheap. However, it does come affordable. That is if you ask the right person to help you.
Christin offers blog critiques, writing critiques, social media critiques, and blog consultation services at extremely affordable prices.
If you are a beginner to intermediate blogger, I highly recommend the services at Joyful Living Media! Click over today and find out more! You will be so happy to see the affordability of Joyful Living Media without losing the quality service or the help you’re looking for!
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At the end of February I began the journey from moving from Blogger to WordPress. I say journey because that is exactly what it was – a journey. A journey that just ended at the end of March.
Now for those of you who are tech-savvy and knowledgeable in all things computer, count your blessings. That is one skill that I wish I had because it would make life a whole lot easier (and cheaper). But even though I have learned a lot over the past few years blogging, there are some things I am still not comfortable with and moving my whole blog to another platform without knowing what the heck I’m really doing in not one of them. It takes me a long time to figure out just the smallest online tasks, and even then I usually have a hiccup. The threat of losing everything was enough for me to hire someone without a second thought.
And so that’s what I did.
I hired a person who was recommended, has a beautiful website, seems very talented (and I’m sure she is), AND was half the price of what I expected to pay. Bingo! She landed the grand prize for the job.
Except that the job ended up being bigger than what she expected – I think. I am assuming she is better at designing than the really techy stuff. As days turned into weeks with glitch after glitch, finally communication stopped. Yes, stopped, and my blog was in an upheaval and not completed. It’s hard to get someone to respond to an email when that’s the only form of communication you have – no phone number, no address (not that I would really pay a visit), nothing. And so I was stuck.
Luckily, the wonderful, wonderful women at DIY Ministry – Lisa Boyd and Amy Bayliss – came to my rescue. I know that sounds dramatic, but that’s truly what it was – a rescue. Come to find out my blog was in more of a shambles that I had known. (Blogger even contacted me saying that they were deleting the blogspot URL because they found malicious code? or something?) It became a bit of a nightmare.
1. Don’t go with the most inexpensive business to do the migration.
2. Ask for references that you can contact.
3. Request daily emails or updates on how the migration is progressing, and when it is expected to be complete.
4. Get your advice and help from DIY Ministry.
Did you know that you can have Triple Braided delivered straight to your inbox? Just type in your email address below! And be sure to follow Triple Braided on Facebook and Twitter
