Now It's Your Turn

Blogger Buddies
Top Row: Mallory Gayle Graham, Mike Franke and Forrest Baldwin
Bottom Row: Dan Smith, Randy Lewis Brown and You!!

I started a little blog improvement project in March.  Reaching out to my favorite bloggers and a social media guru, I asked how I can A) improve my blog and B) increase the number of folks who see it, read it or follow it.  There is always room for improvement and my goal is to do just that.  It’s an interesting project, interesting enough to share their insights before I ask you to share yours.

In no particular order, I’d like to introduce a few of the folks I talked to.  Hyperlinks to their blogs or websites are included.  If you like my writing, you’d probably like them too.

Mike Franke is a singer-songwriter, blog writer, teacher, engineering project manager, 3rd Street Coffeehouse Booking Agent and dreamer of big dreams.  I bounce ideas, viewpoints, new songs and bad jokes off of Mike all the time and consider him a brother.  He has 8 blogs published on topics from music to getting people with divergent viewpoints to listen to and understand each other.  His website (Understanding On Purpose) exists with that goal in mind, and includes a Blog as part of that. 

Mallory Gayle Graham is a singer-songwriter and half of the Folk-Americana duo “The Rough & Tumble”.  Her writing is uniquely personal.  I consider her a special voice in the blogosphere, especially for people who have not grown up in optimal circumstances or have lost their confidence. Her voice needs to be heard, shared and amplified. She provided me with great feedback about how her blog started as something of a self-therapy and a way to sort out her excess feelings and thoughts that weren't funneling directly into songwriting. Her blog is Quartz Before Pallets.

Randy Lewis Brown is a Texas based singer-songwriter and columnist on the Americana Highways website (a big deal in the Folk and Americana music community).  His songs and blog both reflect the sensibilities of the seasoned pro that he is.  Despite his musical and literary excellence, he is a modest and unpretentious soul. He posts mostly about being a performing songwriter and songwriting in general with more than a bit of wisdom and experience.   He gave me excellent advice on distribution and the element of luck.  His blog is Behind the Pine Curtain.

Dan Smith is an award-winning journalist and photographer (since 1964), father, grandfather, teacher, organizer. He is a former Virginia Business Journalist of the Year and a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. He has written eight books, two of them novels. He knows his stuff and didn’t cut me any slack.  He told me my posts are too long, need larger font and a lot of other very useful advice.  I’m working hard to implement them, but writing shorter posts is a high bar for me as I love words. I hope Dan continues to help me grow as a writer. His blog is “editrdan”.

Forrest Baldwin of Tribal Sounds Productions is a digital media promotion wizard and a monster singer-songwriter / musician.  Being a Millennial and a Mensa level technology geek, he knows a lot about things like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with keywords and artificial intelligence (AI).  This AI stuff is a bit scary.  It wouldn’t take long for AI to learn to write as badly as I do (maybe 5 minutes) and you’d never know the difference.  If you have a website or blog you want to energize and break the internet for your business, Forrest is a superb resource. He also says he has a blog in the works, so keep an eye out for that too.

OK, NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!  If you’ve read this far, you qualify to give me your input on how this blog can be improved.  Look at a few of my other posts as this one is really long and not representative of what I normally write.  But seriously, anything is fair game for comments - design and layout, content, ease of reading.  I’m seriously interested in serving my readers and upping my game.  Would you help me by giving me your feedback?  Put them in the comments below or email me at gramps1842@gmail.com.  I will be eternally grateful even if you tell me it sucks (just tell me why).

If you enjoy these little ruminations about life, please consider hitting the “Follow” button.  For every new “Follow” in April, I’ll donate $10 to the American Cancer Society.