It’s been a while since I last shared some significant link love. And I like doing these posts – it reminds me how much fun the blogosphere is…
I’m looking forward to working at a church that cares about the small things – like fonts – next year (not that our current one doesn’t – it’s just I don’t work for it). Simone is writing a new series of Sunday School material on 1-2 Kings.
Jeff’s sermon on evangelism prompted some interesting application of his application. He also posted on the gender pay issue that cropped up in the comments of Benny’s last (or second last) post.
Ali noticed that conversation starter cards are springing up everywhere.
Kutz designed a cool shirt and perhaps started a sub-movement.
Ben created a word game.
Tim posted some good analysis of the World Cup bid (and other Football goings on) via YouTube – Play Fair,
NIKE: TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL (high quailty), Balanced view of the world cup
Stephy at Stuff Christian Culture likes covered the wardrobe choices of “relevant” preachers in the US. But before that she took on two of my favourites – prayer requests as gossip and oversharing via prayer request. What’s worse than oversharing via prayer request is oversharing via prayer request on Facebook.
Lee who has turned into a regular comment in these parts has a couple of blogs – I guiltily enjoy Lemon Harrangue Pie more than the serious one about being a Contemporary Calvinist. But both are good stuff and I commend them to you.
Dave Miers has a great list of books people should read in their first year out of highschool – at the very least you could put them on your holiness shelf.
Andrew managed to pick a fight with some atheists on Tumblr. Having first picked one on Twitter.
Stuss reviewed Australia. She didn’t like it. I haven’t seen it. I don’t plan to. It’s a bit like the Passion. I know all the good bits so a movie is only going to cheapen the experience.
Conference blogging was all the rage – Izaac shared some thoughts on NTE talks.
Over at Christian Reflections Mikey liveblogged the Geneva Push’s In the Chute conference. There were lots of posts. Here were 24 I enjoyed.
- The future of The Geneva Push – Al Stewart
- Future of The Geneva Push – Andrew Heard
- Three dangers for evangelicals and the Bible
- Paul Dale 12 things we can do to hamper growth
- Paul Dale on humility
- Al Stewart on doing less
- Dever on normal way to grow as a Christian
- Dever on evangelistic programs
- Dever on contextualisation
- Dever on social welfare
- Dever disses vision statements
- TB on the danger of minsitering to subcultures
- WP on buying a building in working class areas
- TB on being underground church
- WP on putting ‘community’ in the church name
- Cultural style of our church gatherings
- We’ve got Mentos mints in little bowls on our tabl…
- Where do I plant?
- Geneva opportunities
- Control versus Growth
- Andrew Heard on finances
- It’s important to extract principles
- A good thing about Andrew Heard’s ministry is
- Cross the pain barrier
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the good stuff around the blogosphere but it has, for now, exhausted me.
If you’ve got something you wrote or read that is worth sharing – put it in the comments for all to see.
Top five rules for blogging: #5 comment elsewhere
Blog readers don’t just fall from the sky… well that’s only partly true. A lot of readers come via Google. And they may as well fall from the sky.
To significantly boost your traffic you can do one of two things – you can write google friendly copy, or you can try to steal other people’s readers by getting involved in their blog community.
I don’t know how many readers I’ve pilfered from Ben and Simone – but I’d suggest the link love I score from them was a significant factor in my moving to more than 500 unique readers a week.
500 readers a week isn’t a significant number. I’m certainly not about to quit my job and become a full time blogger. But I’m comfortable with that. I think if I wanted to increase that figure dramatically I’d take one strategy – I’d comment on popular blogs. Particularly popular blogs that cover similar topics to mine.
Readership is only part of the picture. Blogging regularly can be tough. I think that’s why so many blogs falter. One of the things that makes it easier is the support of people who leave encouraging comments, and post links to stuff they like that you’ve written. You don’t get this sort of support unless you know the person in real life and as such want to see their blog continue, or you comment and share the link love elsewhere.
That’s my theory anyway.
November 16, 2009