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blogging

Oh, The Places You’ll Go By Blogging

by Loknath Das April 5, 2024

written by Loknath Das

blogger blogging keyboard computer typing

I’m a small-town trial lawyer by trade.

Over 17 years, I made it to county courthouses in cities the likes of Viroqua, Prairie du Chien, Sparta, Black River Falls, Whitehall, and Mauston, Wisconsin. Occasionally I made it to courts in Madison, Minneapolis, and Chicago, Illinois.

I don’t believe I was ever invited to speak to a legal industry group. And only once was I asked to pen an article for publication.

Not in my wildest dreams could I have envisioned being invited to speak in Europe to an international audience of lawyers, technology executives, and in-house counsel.

Two weeks ago, that’s where I was. In Amsterdam at the Lexpo legal innovation and technology conference presenting on the power of blogging and social media.

Out of the blue last fall, I received a call asking if I could speak and what my fee and expenses would be. Amazing. “Could you come to Amsterdam, some place you’ve never been? We’ll pay your way and put you up. You really should bring your wife as you’re already being paid to come to Europe.”

Hey, maybe Rob Ameerun, Lexpo’s founder and organizer, didn’t say exactly that, but it sounded just like that to me. It was certainly something that was going to make me a star at home — we hadn’t been to Europe since we backpacked and hitchhiked across the Continent on $10 a day 35 years ago.

The reason I was in Europe was simple. I blog.

Rob and the person who recommended me to Rob knew of me and my passion for blogging and social media, the subject of my talk, because of my blog publication, Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

Wilder to me still was that, as a result of blogging and social media, people from any number of countries at the conference knew who I was. Invites to speak in London and Lithuania followed.

I’m not alone when it comes to American blogging lawyers being invited to Europe this spring.

Veteran law bloggers Jordan Furlong and Ron Friedman joined me as speakers at Lexpo.

Staci Riordan, longtime fashion law blogger and chair of Nixon Peabody’s fashion practice, is featured today in the International Trademark Association (INTA) Daily News for her presentation in Barcelona yesterday on advocating for a brand on social media, as a social media influencer yourself.

Staci was not alone in Barcelona. From longtime China law blogger, Dan Harris, over the weekend.

If you are going to be in Barcelona during INTA 2017, please let us know via an email to [email protected] and we will do our utmost to have one of our lawyers meet up with you there. Four of our lawyers will be there throughout the conference, including two of our lawyers from our Barcelona office, Nadja Vietz and Joaquin Cabrera. In addition to our home-grown talent, Mike Atkins (world famous for his Seattle Trademark Lawyer Blog) and Alison Malsbury (who spoke at INTA last year on cannabis trademarks) will also be attending.

All of the U.S. lawyers Dan mentioned got to Barcelona as a result of blogging. Heck, in addition to a successful international practice, Dan’s firm has built perhaps the leading cannabis practice in the country on the back of the Canna Law Blog.

Crazier yet, Dan’s letting about 10,000 conference attendees from 140 countries know to look up him and his colleagues while in Barcelona — via one of the most widely read international legal publications, his firm’s China Law Blog.

Then this morning I see the dean of law blogging with his LawSites blog, Bob Ambrogi, share on Facebook a picture of his home for the next week — a Danube River cruiseboat leaving from Munich.

Bob’s known internationally for his expertise on the Internet and legal technology, in large part because of his blogging. As a result he’s going to be teaching at a bar association conference cruising the Danube.

I don’t share these stories to impress you, but to impress upon you the opportunity that blogging presents you as a lawyer.

Of course you need to have some expertise; blogging is not “fake it till you make it.” But blogging puts you on the map, builds a name for you, and makes you an attractive speaker for conference organizers to invite. Stars attract an audience.

Know that the lawyers here have built their names with a blog. They’re not writing articles published in a section of a law firm website claiming to be a blog.

These lawyers and I struck to connect and engage on the Internet with an independent publication, our blogs, and the use of ancillary social media, including Twitter and Facebook. We built a brand for a blog publication and ourselves.

Sure, prominent lawyers who do not blog will be invited to speak at conferences around the world just as they always have. But small town kids like me wouldn’t get there without blogging.
[“Source-ndtv”]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Blogging

Blogging for Seniors: Resident Consultant Finds Technology Not Just for the Young

by Loknath Das April 5, 2024

written by Loknath Das

Senior Blogger

Though technology may be dominated by younger generations, Cindy Mund knows the internet and social media have power with senior citizens.

Mund, a resident consultant for Stillwaters Estates, has found a large following in a blog she writes for the senior living community in Centralia. When she started the blog seven years ago, she had a list of about 75 subscribers. Today, that list is about 150 to 200 of the estimated 300 total Stillwaters residents. What’s more, she said she often hears from people who are considering moving to Stillwaters that they have read her blog.

“I’ll have people who come in and say, ‘You’re the one who writes the blog?’” Mund said. “So, we have people who go to the website and they read it.”

According to the National Council on Aging, 10,000 Americans turn 65 daily, and the most recent United States of Aging Survey noted that seniors are actually one of the fastest growing segments of social media consumers. Just 10 years ago, only about 2 to 3 percent of older Americans used social media of any type. Today the Pew Research Center estimates about 34 percent of seniors use some sort of social media platform.

While Mund has found a great number of seniors will read her blog, she is actually a minority when it comes to actual bloggers. Because of the sometimes-transient nature of blogs, it is hard to know exactly how many active blogs exist today, but it is estimated there are hundreds of millions of them. Bloggers who are older than 50 make up less than 10 percent of the blogs available today. A little more than half of blogs are written by people ages 21-35 with those younger than 20 making up about 20 percent and those 36-50 another 20 percent.

Mund actually began blogging in the late 1990s. She said she used the technology for her career at the Department of Social and Health Services and also kept a personal blog so she and her husband could share their travels with friends and family.

“The movie ‘Julie and Julia’ always intrigued me,” Mund said. “I read a lot of pages online. I read a lot of books about it. All of the things led me to what I’m doing now.”

Mund began working for Stillwaters seven years ago as a resident consultant. Her job entails working with residents of the community of apartments, houses and assisted living for those age 50 and older. Mund is also a Realtor and works with prospective residents to help them look at homes and lots for sale in the community. She said the Stillwaters blog began through a discussion about how to market Stillwaters.

“It’s a neighborhood where we have homes for sale and we’re also building new homes so I thought of it as a way to talk about life at Stillwaters and what it is like,” Mund said.

Though she already was comfortable with technology, Mund said before she could begin the blog, she had to first brush up on the software and technology. She said she started simply with the easiest resource possible: Google.

“The internet is a great place to start,” Mund said. “You can type in ‘how to write a blog’ and you get all kinds of advice.”

She said she found a lot of free resources, first through Timberland Regional Library and also through tutorials provided with WordPress, which is the online content management system she uses for the blog.

“I don’t think it’s all very hard to do you just need to pay attention to directions,” Mund said. “You don’t have to know coding to do this.”

No matter the subject matter, Mund said a blog can be a great way for seniors to connect with friends and family and stay active. She said her first piece of advice for would-be bloggers is to keep blog entries simple, quick and short. She said she shoots for entries to include an eye-catching photo along with just a few short paragraphs.

“Keep it focused on what your goal is,” Mund said.

Second, Mund said she feels it is important for bloggers to plan ahead and maintain their content. She said she hears often of people who start blogs and write a few entries but then leave long gaps between posts. Regular blog posts mean readers will keep checking in with you, whereas old, stale content could drive them away. Mund said she probably only spends about one to two hours each week on her blog, which includes brainstorming topics to talk about and walking the Stillwaters neighborhood in search of photos.

“I think it’s important to do it every single week,” Mund said

And when it comes to what exactly to write about, Mund said bloggers should always think about their intended audience. For example, Mund said her blog is meant to be both a way for Stillwaters residents to connect but also to share a slice of the community’s life with outsiders. Since her readers are likely ages 50 and older, Mund said she likes to talk about things that seniors would be interested in. For instance, downsizing is one subject Mund revisits often because it is an important and relevant to many seniors.

“Downsizing is emotionally hard, it’s physically hard and sometimes it’s just hard to know where to start,” she said.

[“Source-chronline”]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Blogging

Blogging at the time of dictatorship

by Loknath Das April 5, 2024

written by Loknath Das

Peter Zschunke/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.For decades before the revolution, the ruling regime in Tunisia dominated public space, monopolized the media, confiscated the voices of dissenters, and spent a lot of effort and money to produce a media narrative in its favor.

To do so the regime strived in blurring facts, silencing voices and misleading international public opinion by promoting the fabricated image of ‘The Tunisian Miracle’ at home and abroad. This image presented Tunisia as a state of law, rights and institutions, where people enjoyed welfare. In reality, however, unemployment was rampant and poverty was widespread and tyranny was stiffling people.

To face this policy of systematic blackout, a number of young Tunisians endeavored to break the silence by creating new media that would expose the policies of the oppressive state and highlight the gravity of human rights violations during the reign of General Ben Ali.

In this context, e-blogging appeared in Tunisia as a form of protest, making room for free writing and a space for expression separate from the totalitarian state.

Numerous pioneering blogs and other sites came into existence and provided a space where opposed opinions were shared. This broke the media embargo imposed on the people, bringing together human rights activists, trade unionists, partisan and independent individuals. These blogs and sites published daring articles and sarcastic cartoons with distinctive content.

Among the electronic platforms that exposed the regime with their increasing popularity and rich critical content are: the forum of the National Council for Liberties, TAKRIZ, Tunisia News, TUNeZINE, NAWAAT and others. These sites resisted despotism peacefully via the internet.

Sami Ben Gharbia, director of the Nawaat website, said during his testimony before the Truth and Dignity Commission (March 11, 2017) that “bloggers have taken a leading role in politicizing the Tunisian internet and building a counter propaganda against that of Ben Ali.”

They expressed a political awareness of a social reality in which there was injustice and violation of rights and freedoms while mastering the use of digital technology to break the monopoly of Ben Ali’s system of information.

In their struggle, they took the moral obligation to protect the personal data of their blog visitors. But it was through blogs that Ben Ali knew that people were aware of the corruption of his regime; he consequently took every opportunity to block this blogging phenomenon and abuse bloggers.

In order to tighten control over the Internet, a specialized information center (the Tunisian Internet Agency) was established to monitor the people surfing these networks and to trace their publications, e-mails and pages on social media.

The Agency blocked many sites it considered to be against the regime and created others to beautify the image of the oligarchy. The Foreign Communications Agency contributed to the financing of e-piracy projects and the recruitment of media defenders for the regime; it also provided the presidential palace with daily reports on the activities of opposition sites.

The surveillance agencies used an army of censors and informers along with sophisticated and cost-effective piracy programs such as Trojans, virus transmission technologies and sorting content to disrupt opposition blogs, delete their databases, and prevent users from accessing them.

Restrictive laws were enacted to restrict freedom of navigation, electronic publishing and prevent access to information. Along with these measures the regime tracked bloggers down, arrested and tortured them as it feared the power of ‘the word’ and its role in raising people’s awareness and enlightening them.

The long list of those bloggers include Zouhair Yahyaoui who was arrested and served a prison sentence because of TUNeZINE, a critical and sarcastic site. He died in 2005 after not fully recovering from his time in prison.

Mohamed Abbou was imprisoned for three years and six months for publishing articles on the Tunisia News website about human rights violations in the country.

Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui was dismissed because of a letter he addressed to Ben Ali in which he criticized the deterioration of the judiciary.

However, these repressive measures did not successfully silence the voices of bloggers who continued to support the protest movement and transmit the image of the revolution to the world.

In the time of dictatorship, the blogger had a digital intellectual and e-activist role to fulfill. Devoting their lives, time and pen to defend the oppressed, and express the right of people to think, protest, write and publish.

In their writings these bloggers were recording the criminal acts of a police state, which the regime strived hard to hide, beautify or obscure.

Sami Ben Gharbia said he filed a complaint against the Tunisian Internet Agency (ITA), which is responsible for harming national memory over a period of ten years, because of its piracy of many opposition sites at home and abroad.

It is a crime punishable by law and contrary to Tunisia’s agreements in the field of informatics. It is certainly true that the issue of the harassment of the blogging movement has not been fully studied and scrutinized yet. It is not known which parties were responsible for tracking down bloggers and harassing them at the time of the oppressive regime.

Who issued the blocking orders? Which parties hacked the protest sites and how much public money did they receive to do so? What are the components of the Internet police? And how was the secret code decoded? Who followed the bloggers, located their geographical location and facilitated political police access to them?

All these questions remain unanswered.

All those concerned with the Internet in Tunisia and abroad are expecting the Truth and Dignity Commission, the Anti-corruption Authority, human rights activists and competent judicial bodies to answer these pending questions.

[“source-ndtv”]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Blogging

Food blogging turns serious business in Bengaluru

by Loknath Das April 5, 2024

written by Loknath Das

Food blogging turns serious business in Bengaluru

They weave magic with words and pictures with food as their core element. Every little detail matters to them and they will not compromise on quality; blogging about food is a serious business. BT spoke to a few food bloggers in the city and discussed the nitty-gritty of food blogging, what inspires them and what should be done in order to have a successful food blog.
Childhood, food, movies are their inspiration
For Ambica Selvam, blogger and food stylist, it was the movie Julie and Julia that set the trigger for food blogging. From an e-learning consultant to a food stylist, she found blogging to be a way to preserve her family tradition as well. “My mother was a fantastic cook and I wanted to document her recipes as well. I don’t cook for my blog. It is actually the other way round,” she adds.
Similarly, Monika Manchanda, an ex-IT professional turned food consultant, says that a break from work paved the way for her career in food. “A small break I decided to take stretched to years. I did a couple of baking and food courses. The more I did, the more I liked it and I decided to make a career in food,” she says.
Neha Mathur, a former dental surgeon turned recipe and food consultant, on the other hand, was drawn to the baking products that she saw in a super market that got her excited about baking, setting the tone for her blog.
Both content and visual appeal matter
While most of their photographs and writing may seem very appealing, blogging is a serious business and a full-time job, they stress. Monika says that there is more to blogging than just photography and recipe writing. “It is a constantly challenging field inspite of how
glamorous and fancy it looks from the outside. Like every other work we do, we have to keep ourselves constantly updated on the trends and latest happening in the field.”
Clicking pictures of food is not easy either. A lot goes behind to get the perfect shot that is drool-worthy. Ambica Selvam, blogger and food stylist, says one needs to understand the food they are clicking. “Certain foods have their own characteristics and to get the perfect shot I had to understand this. I always plan ahead in order to get the right picture or else the food loses its freshness,” she says.
Then, there is always the technical part — making sure that the blog is updated. “I had to figure out a lot when I started blogging. The technical part, setting up the blog itself was a challenge by itself, figuring out search engine optimization (SEO) and other things,”

says Neha Mathur, recipe and food consultant. “Managing the blog, keeping it secure, making sure it loads fast, no outage, drawing a consistent audience are just some of the challenges that I face of late,” says Nandita Iyer, nutrition expert and food blogger.
Eat healthy using local ingredients their mantra
While a lot of them do restaurant reviews and brand consultation, many of them also promote healthy eating. Nandita, through her blog promotes healthy eating. “My forte is nutrition centric content and recipes, mostly using local ingredients,” she says.
There are others who make full use of locally sourced ingredients and put up recipes according to seasons as well. “Currently I am running a series on summer fruits — melons, Indian berries and mangoes,” says Monika. “I make dishes regularly and put the recipes on the blog on a daily basis. Depending on the season I either make a lot of coolers (for summers) or soups (for winters),” says Neha.

Sheetal P Mote, entrepreneur and food blogger, prepares dishes using locally sourced ingredients and encourages people to do the same. “I cook a lot of dishes using local ingredients. People ask me for recipes and my blog is all about locally grown food,” she adds.
Food blogging opens an array of career avenues
What began as a hobby for many has now turned into a full-fledged career. Food consultation, recipe development, food photography, brand association, social media engagements and food writing are just a few career options that comes with blogging.
“Food blogging opens up several career options in the industry. You can even work with restaurants and style and plate food for them,” says Ambica. Brand associations and sponsored content on the blog also is sometimes a product of blogging, say Monika. With so many bloggers in the city, these bloggers believe that there is space for everyone.

[“source-timesofindia”]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Blogging

Meet the man who made £1.5MILLION by blogging his way around every country on the planet

by Loknath Das April 5, 2024

written by Loknath Das

A globetrotting traveller has made over a million pounds from blogging all over the world.

Johnny Ward, 33, went from backpacker to big money media boss all the while ticking off every country on the planet thanks to advertising on his first blog.

The on-the-go millionaire says he has been living the dream since quitting his job and travelling to every country in the world, all while earning £1,500,000 from blogging.

Johnny Ward, 33, went from backpacker to big money media boss all the while ticking off every country on the planet thanks to advertising on his first blog. He’s pictured here in Kabul, Afghanistan

The on-the-go millionaire says he has been living the dream since quitting his job and travelling to every country in the world, all while earning £1,500,000 from blogging. He’s pictured here at Leptis Magna in Libya

Johnny was born in Galway, Ireland, but moved to County Down in Northern Ireland as a child where he grew up not being able to afford a family holiday. He’s pictured here in Yemen

Johnny originally dreamed of becoming a footballer – but knew at 13 that he’d never cut it. So he focussed on becoming a success in the business world instead. He’s pictured here in Afghanistan

Johnny said: ‘I had just quit my one and only real job in Sydney, Australia, in a blaze of glory to travel the world and be a blogger.

‘When an advertiser finally contacted me six months in, I thought it was my friends joking with me but thankfully the advertiser wasn’t scared off by my weird reply and we closed the deal.

‘My sleep pattern is all over the place from working and partying late to waking up at weird times for flights and business calls so I never really have a pattern.’

Johnny was born in Galway, Ireland, but moved to County Down in Northern Ireland as a child where he grew up not being able to afford a family holiday.

Johnny got the idea for his million-pound business when working full time in Sydney and with the money he made from that he booked a one-way ticket to Zimbabwe and started blogging more seriously

The first version of Johnny’s website was made by a man in the Philippines for £100. Johnny is pictured here in that country, in Palawan

Johnny’s travels have taken him to every corner of the globe, including unstable parts such as Somalia, pictured

Speaking about how he made his fortune, Johnny said: ‘I started my travel blog, started making around $7,000 per month from that site, so I started a few more blogs, and hired a couple of writers, before long I was making $50,000 per month’. Here he is at Darvaza Crater Gates of Hell in Turkmenistan

Without the bank of mum and dad to support a ‘gap yah’ Johnny offered his body to a medical trial to afford flights out East where he earned more by teaching English after graduation.

He said: ‘The medical trial was my only way to generate a decent amount of funds in a short period of time!

‘I had worked on American summer camps with disabled kids and disadvantaged kids each summer, which whetted my travel appetite.

‘This time university had finished so I had to do something drastic to allow me to start a new travel lifestyle.

‘I come from a poor, single parent home and we grew up on benefits so my mum couldn’t fund my “gap year”, therefore medical research and then teaching English in Thailand were my route to a new, adventurous lifestyle.’

Johnny got the idea for his million-pound business when working full time in Sydney and with the money he made from that he booked a one-way ticket to Zimbabwe and started blogging more seriously.

The Irishman claims advertising has allowed him to blog around the world and make £1.5million in the process thanks to the first website he paid a man in the Philippines £100 to make.

He said: ‘I started my travel blog, started making around $7,000 per month from that site, so I started a few more blogs, and hired a couple of writers, before long I was making $50,000 per month.

Johnny’s advice to aspiring bloggers is ‘to have a story to tell’

‘I invest my money, mostly in property, and I’m careful with my revenue.

‘I haven’t met the guy who set up my first website since he did it but we’re still friends on Facebook.

‘As soon as I started making money online from blogging I decided to visit every country in the world, and it’s been the most amazing journey imaginable.

‘Other than being a footballer, which at about age 13 I knew was clearly not going to happen, I wanted to be a businessman.

‘I’m still only a small part through my own personal journey, onwards and upwards I hope.

‘I’m really close to my mum and sister, so I talk to them a lot and now I have some money I see them a lot more, but those first five broke years of travel were tough in terms of that.

‘When I was 24 or 25 it was easier to get my friends to come and visit me, then hitting 30 they all had mortgages, engagements and kids so it became progressively more difficult for me to convince them to join me.’

Having travelled to every country in the world at least once, Johnny certainly has seen a few shocking sights, none more so than a murder right before his eyes.

He said: ‘Mauritania, West Africa, has a bad reputation but it was amazing, the people were so warm and welcoming not to mention the landscapes and stuff to do there, which was mind blowing.

‘The friendliest people I came across were probably in Algeria or Iran, maybe the Philippines too.

‘My most frightening experience was definitely watching a guy get shot twice right in front of me, 20 minutes after landing in Angola.’

JOHNNY WARD’S TOP TIPS FOR RUNNING A SUCCESSFUL TRAVEL BLOG… AND MAKING MONEY FROM IT

What top tips do you have for running a travel blog?

Be different. A four-month gap year in South East Asia and Australia will be an awesome experience, so much fun and you’ll meet friends for life but no one wants to read the same stories about Sydney, Bangkok and Singapore, they’ve heard it all before.

So why should people read your stuff? What’s your angle? How are you different? Every man and his dog has a blog now, but if you want it to gain traction you have to have a story to tell, and a gap year in Thailand won’t cut it.

What tips do you have for gaining followers?

You have to love social media, interacting with people. Some people love it, some don’t.

For me, it gives me energy to help inspire strangers to travel the world, it picks me up when I’m weary from the road. But if you find it a chore, then it’ll never fly. So be honest, be regular and be committed.

How do you make money from the blog and how much have you managed to get from blogging since it started?

When I first started my blog in 2010, I didn’t understand anything about SEO, online marketing, internet advertising etc but after six months or so in Africa a company contacted me and asked for a advert, they paid about £40 and it was a huge turning point in my life – I finally believed it was possible to work for myself, make money online and be truly free.

From there it increased month on month, until it was about £4,000 a month.

After partying a bit too hard in Thailand, it dawned on me that if I can monetize one website, why not three or five or 50! So then I expanded my portfolio of websites.

Then in the past few years I’ve made over $1m (I use $ because clients generally negotiate and pay in USD).

Do you have any tips for securing flight upgrades or discounted stays?

If your travel blog is popular, you honestly, honestly will never have to pay for another hotel again in your life – madness, but true.

Do you have any other source of income?

When things started going ok for me I contacted a wealth manager so I have a stock portfolio, and I try to invest in property too, but I’m clueless about it so it’s a big learning curve for me!

[“source-dailymail”]

April 5, 2024 0 comment