Thanks to the many of you who surfed my blog last night. I received so much positive feedback--you guys are awesome. Please remember this is currently VERY MUCH a work in progress--I had to learn a ton just put it out there, and there is still so much to learn. My goal is to update this at least 3 days/week. I will keep adding bells and whistles, too, and more on other communities. It just takes a lot of time so please have patience with my learning curve and keep checking in!
Here's what I learned: Many of you are brand new to the world of Blogs. While I highly recommend them, I must caution you--they are addicting. On one hand, everything I learned to set this up was learned on a Blog. On the other hand, I couldn't stop reading. There is a lot of good stuff out there. There are blogs about everything--motherhood, cars, vacation locations, even shoes. You can even set up a personal blog about your own family for distant relatives and/or close friends to read. Some blogs are free (Blogspot) and some you can subscribe to (expensively or nonexpensively--I use typepad).
Why would you want to subscribe to a blog? To get informationdelivered directly to you vs. you having to search it out. If you search through blogs, you can find a lot of information and commentary on the topic you are interested in. When you find one you like, you can subscribe. On mine, you can do this three different ways:
- by entering your email to have the latest blog delivered to you.
- by clicking on the "subscribe" text at the bottom of the right side bar.
- by clicking on the "Subscribe in a reader" orange square on the top right.
What is a reader? If you subscribe to a lot of blogs, like I do, you can set up a special reader like Google, Bloglines or My Yahoo (these are on my left sidebar) and then my blog (and the many others you choose) will automatically "feed" to those readers. I personally like this option--it's so much easier and then you have a separate place where all your blogs end up. To choose that option, just click on those icons to the left OR click on the orange square and enter your reader information. It's very easy to do and saves a lot time.
Blogs are a great way to gather information and discussion topics. When I had a client moving out of state, I simply went to blogs from that area and learned a lot about the Realtors there and the market conditions of the various communities they were interested in. It really helped them make a choice they are very happy with, and now we are all blog crazy!
Pick a topic and go blog hopping! You'll likely learn something and have a some fun too!