I’d like to start using one blog for all of my posts.

I’d like the videos and pictures from http://ryangraves.org to go to the same blog that I write more thoughtful posts, like yesterdays on Job titles and recruiting. I see no reason to split them up. Because I have friends at Posterous and it seems, after great review, to be the simplest platform, I’d like to use it to drive the blog. But I want to keep it on a custom domain & I want to keep this theme, it’s simple, relatively new and I still like it a lot. So here’s the details…

Specs wanted:

• one blog for all content types
• custom domain (probably ryangraves.org)
• driven by Posterous
• must have this theme

Problem is, I’m not sure how to keep this theme on Posterous. I’m not sure which domain I should make the main. And I’m not sure if the aggregation of blog is a good idea from an audience/community perspective. I write/post to engage people in things I find interesting. If that dies because of some change, it wasn’t worth making.

Can you guys provide any thoughts or feedback on these Q’s?

1. What is the easiest part about blogging?
The easiest part about blogging is that it’s fun. I enjoy taking the time to reflect on a subject and funnel my thoughts into something that I believe will help or be constructive for someone else (the reader). In my 3+ yrs blogging I’ve gotten much better at diagramming an idea and communicating that idea to others.

2. What is the most challenging?
Staying focused can be very difficult. When you start a blog you have choices to make: Who’s my target? What are my goals/metrics? Why am I doing this? Keeping the answers to those questions in mind is critical to writing a good blog. I write posts for the GEHC IT blog that will expose the employees to something that they’ve not been previously exposed to or to give them helpful hints/tips on specific IT things. In short, you have to give them a reason to come back.

3. What are your goals/initiatives as far as professional blogging?
This is difficult to say. First, I’m not at all a professional blogger. Second, I think this term “professional blogger” can confuse some folks. Professional bloggers are blogging for a living, for profit, I blog to stay fresh, improve my writing, and generally increase my voice to the world. It’s still debatable whether or not I have any thing worthwhile to say :)

This blog post is not meant to be insightful or meant to share an opinion on any particular topics. It’s sole intent is to ask you your opinion. I have a question.

Is the casual style of writing that comes along with blogging a good thing or a bad thing for society?

Some times I still have my parents read over my writing and usually their reaction is that it’s too informal. I write like I speak and often times that means grammatical errors, slang terms, and off the cuff remarks. What’s the big deal? Well, recently there was a phenomenal blog post on the Fake Steve Jobs blog about ‘why mainstream media is dying’.Whoever the fake Steve Jobs is, he wrote…

And to all those people who go around wringing their hands and saying what are we going to do when the “real newspapers” all die and we have to get our news from Gawker and HuffPo and TechCrunch? Friends, I think we’re going to be just fine.

Part of it is the form of the media itself. If you’re a reporter at the Times, you get one story, and a fixed number of inches, and you’re smothered by layers of editors. At TechCrunch it’s one guy who can get his teeth into something and there’s no limit on how many articles he can do.

I love this. He points out that the agility of the informal publishing platform of a blog is what will allow so many people to eventually make the “standard” journalism world irrelevant. But back to the question, is this casual style bad for the overall reporting of news and how society consumes it?

I think not. I think that a less formal style of writing will eventually be the way that most of us consume the news. Obviously good writing will rise to the top, and that’s why I encourage current newspaper journalists to team up, leave their paper, and start a top notch blog with higher quality writing and coverage. But the print is going to die, it’s just a matter of time, and it would sure scare me to work in a known dying industry. But if that journalist is really good, they readers will come.

Penelope Trunk wrote a great post last month on why the internet has created a generation of great writers. Her last argument, which I really like…

Finally, for those of you who think students don’t know how to write in full sentences, you are the people who probably don’t understand how to use text as a persuasive medium.

In summary, I think that the style of writing that is most affective is changing. It’s more casual but like most successful things these days, it’s more personal, it’s more comfortable, and it’s more fun. Looks like I did end up sharing an opinion. But, like I stated at the start, what I want to know is what do you think? Is this style of writing that I employ and that so many others are beginning to use good or bad for readers?

image via flickr

Today marks 2 years of blogging. I started out on ActionsTalk.com, then I was on RyanAGraves.com, now I’m on the URL THE DREAM IN ACTION.com. I thoroughly enjoy the process and have learned a lot in the process. This site gets about 3,000 unique readers a month which, in my eyes, with all the changes to the site, is no small accomplishment. I hope that over the next year we can hit 10k per month. Here’s why…

I write about my dreams, and how to make yours a reality. Why, and where do I get off trying to teach other people how to do it? My hope is that as I answer these questions you’ll see my answers as reasons to subscribe to the RSS or come back to the site on a regular basis. I hope that the experiences I have, that turn into blog posts, help you get closer to your dreams… through action of course.

This Is Not A 4 Hour Work Week

First, it needs to be said that this isn’t a get rich quick blog. It’s not a ‘how to blog for a living’ site or a ‘use the internet to scam people and make a quick buck’ site. I’m not going to try and teach you how to live a 4 hour work week, others do that better than I, so why rebuild the wheel. This site is the all about making your dreams realities on a daily basis. It’s about how to make your life better one step at a time so that you not only achieve your goals in life, but that you enjoy the process.

Full Time Job

I’m an entrepreneur. By that I mean I have revenue streams outside of my day job, but let me be clear, I do have a day job. I do not work on my startup full time and I’ve not reached the point that my entrepreneurial ventures are large enough to sustain my life (YET). However, I definitely believe you can live with an entrepreneurial spirit without being a CEO or a founder of a startup. I’ve written about being a corporate entrepreneur and I know from first hand experience that now, when our economy is at one of it’s shakiest moments, is when large corporation need entrepreneurial innovation the most. Put the dream in action and enjoy what you do by changing your workplace and your life for the better.

After Hours

Over the next year I will draw thoughts and solutions from a few different ventures. I’ll be heavily involved in growing NVRnude.com. I unfortunately can’t go into to much detail about what we’re going to deliver with NVRnude.com but what I can say is that the social web and the transactional web are going to come face to face, and we’re going to lead that charge. You can follow more on the NVRnude Blog.

As you know SocialDreamium LLC has been formally shut down and I will no longer be blogging there. However, I will be drawing upon many lessons learned from that experience. I really like the idea of embracing your failures as energy and lessons. We’ll learn from that together.

As far as The Renliv Group and Actions Talk go, they will continue. The Renliv Group is the funnel that I’ve used for any consulting/advisory work that I’ve done over the last 6-9 months and that will stay available but slow down significantly. If you’re a startup founder and would like to chat or are interested in talking more I’m always up for it, just shoot me an email.

Travel

I’m just coming of a very business travel season. After being in Stockholm, Sweden then Boulder Junction, WI then San Diego I was ready to settle down for a bit, make sure my bills were paid and get back to work. Aside from another trip out to San Diego in August, I’ll be head down on projects until September when myself and about 15 buddies are headed to Boulder, CO for a camping trip/ my bachelor party. Should be a great time to get friends from college and friends from home all together. Then, for my honeymoon in November, Molly and I are headed to Costa Rica for 2 weeks. Now that I’m really looking forward to!

Try and Try Again

If you’ve never heard of Morten Lund you should take some time to learn about him. He’s a European entrepreneur who’s attitude towards the process of starting a business, making and losing a lot of money, and what’s important in life is a great one to follow. He’s uneducated, sometimes a bit distasteful, and more passionate that anyone else I’ve seen. It’s refreshing.

If you have a bit, watch this video (13 minutes), and get an idea for who he is.

Morten’s attitude towards trying and trying again is exactly what I want to bring to my career and in the shorter term, this blog. I’ve tried a few different things to grow this blog and I’ll continue to try whatever I think will work. I changed the blog URL to THE DREAM IN ACTION.com because I thought that the idea of enjoying life day by day and bringing dreams to fruition is an idea that ANYONE can support and continue to learn about. I still share tidbits on RyanGraves.org/anized by the way.

I appreciate your support in this iterative process of growing a community and a blog that adds value to your web surfing.

Why I’m encouraged.

There are a few things why I’m very encouraged to take on another year of blogging and life.

The Economy - We all know it sucks but I really think that this will take some of the competition out of the startup market because right now people just want a pay check. This means that the people who aren’t willing to spend 6pm-1am on their startup will stop doing “entrepreneurship”…maybe they should have been there in the first place? This is a crazy environment where the strong will suffer and the weak will parish but the hard working will always see good times again.

The Gen-Y Attitude – The entitlement thing isn’t what I’m talking about, although I’m sure that does exist, whatever. What I’m talking about is the get things done, always learn the new tool, gotta get ahead, attitude. Not all my friends feel the pressure that I feel to “do something big” but many of them do and I think that’s awesome.

Why are you excited? What do you think of this blog this year? How can I provide more value?

Updated Image: I snapped this gem in a public square in Sodermalm, Stockholm. I honestly thought it was Bruno for a minute, then realized it was just a cheap, but hilarious, imitation. It’s all about ‘exposure’.

The Hidden Secret of Successful Blogging

As you probably know, building a real following or reader base on your blog is all about authority and authenticity. These words are thrown around left and right by people writing how-to-blog posts. The kicker is that nobody seems to be addressing the real reason people’s blog grow.

Tim Ferriss recently posted a video of a talk he gave to the Wordcamp Conference that is based around the WordPress blogging platform. His talk was about how to write a killer blog without killing yourself. His talk was packed with extremely valuable tips to writing a better blog. An underlying theme Tim spoke to is that you don’t have to follow all of the “conventional rules” of blogging. Optimal post length, post topic, and post frequency has been debated since the beginning of blogging, but I would argue (and so would Tim) that these things don’t really matter in the process of growing your blogs following.

Put all the tips that you’ve ever read from Problogger, John Chow, or Tim Ferriss aside and let me break down the one thing that everyone avoids telling you that will absolutely lead to a successful blog. I’m not sure why this fact and (or secret) is so rarely discussed but it is proven over and over across the web.

How To Take Advantage of the Secret

STEP 1: DO SOMETHING

The secret is in action. In order to build a good blog you have to do (and accomplish) things in real life. You have to get out of your desk chair (theoretically speaking) and take intentional action towards a goal. You can write about kitchen knives, entrepreneurship, world travel, or sushi restaurants but you’re not going to be able to draw anyone’s interest without actually engaging in your topic.

Experience is the word that sums up the notion of this secret best. You must have experiences in order to successfully build a blog otherwise readers will quickly see through the fact that you’re not actually doing anything. Whatever your interests are, or whatever your blog is focusing on, you need to take action on that topic.

STEP 2: LEARN FROM IT

The next critical step is to learn from your experiences. This usually means you’ll have to make mistakes, which is fine, mistakes are awesome! But you have to realize where and why the mistake was made so that you may gain insight into your activity for your next run. Then apply your lesson, see if what you thought you learned was correct. Analytically test your assumptions. Make sure that when you complete action X you can answer these 3 questions.

1. I was successful/unsuccessful because of…?
2. I would be more successful/unsuccessful if I did…?
3. The cost of being successful/unsuccessful was/was not worth the reward because…?

Remember if you’re not truly learning anything from your experiences it’s foolish to attempt to teach someone else. Not only will you be little help to them you’ll expose the fact that you haven’t taken the time to learn from your own experiences. This will obviously harm your own credibility.

STEP 3: COMMUNICATE IT

If you read the first 2 steps and realized that you’re not actually doing anything interesting in your life then stop here and reread the first two steps of this post. I’m not here to tell you that you can’t just blog your thoughts on other peoples posts, but I am here to tell you that this strategy likely won’t get you a large following. Doing things offline and sharing the results of those action is the only way to grow a large blog following. Once you are actually doing things offline you may return to your computer and start to share your experiences. Now, it’s all about your ability to clearly and actionably communicate what you’ve accomplished in the real world.

You can communicate your actions in many different ways. Lists are popular because they are simple and they are easy to follow. A solid list explaining the right way to find a job in this economy, for example, can be used as a guide and is not open to much interpretation. Make sure that someone can clearly apply what they’ve learned from your post into their own practices so that they’re life improves. A great example of simply breaking down lessons into actionable steps is the blog ‘I Will Teach You To Be Rich‘ by Ramit Sethi. His ability to use easy, guide like, posts and easy to comprehend graphs not only helped him build his blog from nothing to over 200k readers, but also helped him sell a NY Times best selling personal finance book (by the same name). He uses experiments and test that he’s executed himself to teach you (and I) about the not so complicated complexities of personal finance.

Follow Ramit’s lead in communicating the basics…start with Step 1. From Ramit’s blog:

STEP 4: HELP OTHERS DO IT

This step may sound similar to Step 3 but it isn’t, this goes further. You can’t only write about what you learned, then live in the blog comments. Truly successful bloggers, with huge followings, don’t stop at the end of a post. They again take the help offline. If you write a blog about how newly engaged couple can register for wedding gifts better (then email me) then you should help newly engaged couples register in real life.

Not only will this real life interaction add significant credibility to your ability to be a value to the people you’re writing to/for, it will give you great new content. Do give-aways for free consulting that will drive readership. Your skills are now sought after and highly valued. You have an ability to use your experiences and really help other people. If there is one thing I’ve learned in giving a few talks about gaining credibility using the web, it’s the fact that people need help. There are so many different levels of peoples comprehension of any topic that there is no shortage of assistance and coaching to be given. Take it offline and help people out.

STEP 5: UNDERSTAND AND REPEAT THE PROCESS

Now that you know how to execute on your action, learn from what you’ve experienced, and clearly communicate your lessons learned in a way that truly adds value to other peoples lives, my recommendation is to go out and capitalize on this process. If your blogging is truly adding value to the reader, you will likely be able to take the contents of your blog post and turn them into a means of income generation (if you’re up for that). Ramit (in the example above) was able to capitalize by writing a book that has sold phenomenally well. Eric Ries of ‘Startup Lessons Learned‘ has gone on a speaking tour sharing methods and strategies of the “LEAN” startup. Take your skills offline not only to hone them but to capitalize on them!

Your blog following will now sky rocket, at least that’s the goal. Your posts will likely be less frequent (mine have been), but they will be significantly more valuable to your reader. The interaction you get in comments and emails and retweets, etc. will blow you away because people want to share valuable content to their Twitter followers and fellow bloggers. Your new, thought through, actionable posts will spread virally in ways you’ve never imaged before.

Best of luck and I look for to really learning from your next post. Please share a link in the comments below!

image via kthypryn

via mario.nolla

I’m now working on startup numero 3. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the process but I’ve not really enjoyed the process, yet. As in, I’ve not made it. I’ve yet to create anything that was sell-able, sustainable, or strong enough to go full time on. So, I decided to make a list for myself of the first 25 things that I should do before really diving into the next one. Each step or tip has a link to resources on making that step happen. Follow these steps (not necessarily in order) so that you don’t have to use tip #26.

Here’s what you’ll first need to do in order to really start on the right foot.

1. Get Your Head Right
2. Build The Right Foundation
3. Put Your Lipstick On and Pucker Up
4. Getting Attention
5. Oh Yea, You May Need Money

Get Your Head Right

There are so many great blogs out there with experienced advice on starting businesses that it’s foolish not to read them. Spend some time learning from the experience and mistakes of others.

“Smart men learn from their own mistakes, Genius’s learn from the mistakes of others.”  -Unknown

1. Start a Business with Passion – Loic Lemeur is one of the most passionate entrepreneurs I’ve watched. He talks about how to start with passion.
   
2. Read Getting Started - This book by 37 Signals is one of the best books for starting a technology business. How to develop with style, speed, adn efficiency using Agile. Learn from the great companies especially when the provide such a valuable & insightful resource.
3. Treat Competitors with respect – Again, Loic is experiences and has learned to benefit from competitors. Learn how to work competition to your advantage.
4. Learn from The Top 10 Startup Mistakes – Not knowing what mistakes you could potentially make is your first mistake. Know what to avoid when starting up.
5. Learn from Millionaires (if you want to be one) - Who better to learn from than the folks who’ve already made the cash.
6. Solve problems before they exist - Preventing problems is the most valuable action you can take. Learn how to solve before they start.
7. Get inspired from Mixergy interviews – Andrew Warner provides personal insight and detailed, challenging interviews of enterpreneurs who’ve gone through what you’re about to take on, and have succeeded. Also check out ActionsTalk.com for tacticle startup spotlights.

Build The Right Foundation

Legal structure and accounting are not fun, the suck, but they are very important so take the time to setup the right foundation and structure to avoid future drama. Here are four steps with resources to setup the right foundation.

1. Choose between Inc. vs. LLC - Legal structure is important and you’ll need to decide what the goals of your company are. If you plan to one day go public LLC may not be your best option, however if you plan to privately own LLC may be much simpler to get launched.
   
2. Accounting Sucks but someone’s gotta do it - Accountings goal is your “score”, but it’s task is your records. Here’s the basics to accurate record keeping. Learn how to record these transactions that change the balance between your startups assets (code?), liabilities (debt?), and equity (your shares!).
3. Save money using Docstoc templates – Save tons on legal documents and templates using Docstoc’s resources, this doesn’t mean you won’t need a lawyer but rather will cut your legal fees.
4. Open a Business Bank Account &/or Accpet CC’s and Online Payments– A great first step to setting up the feeling of ownership is for each partner to put in their determined share (in cash) into a bank account. This will be the building block for determining allocation of shares and equity.

Put On Your Lipstick and Pucker Up

Having a polished web presence is NOW absolutely critical for your company. Whether you’re a web based startup or a offline consultancy it’s critical that your customers can find you easily and find out about you easily. Put on your make-up.

1. Set up a blog with WordPress.org – Get a SEO friendly blog up so that the Google Bugs can scan it and share it. Having a .html file up with one page just won’t cut it anymore. Hosting is cheap, WordPress is free, and your excuses are dying fast. Get on it!
   
2. Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design – The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.
3. Google Website Optimizer – A free tool that will help you maximize your conversions. The web is a metrics driven industry to know how people are interacting with your website.
4. Signal vs Noise is a blog with amazing design tips from amazing designers (37 Signals) - A design and usability blog by 37signals.
5. Find out who is clicking where - Use CrazyEgg, a simple tool that shows you how website visitors interact with your website. Knowledge is power!

Getting Attention

You can have a great product or service, but if no one sees it you will never make any money. Now this doesn’t mean you have to hire a marketing firm to help you out, but you could learn some basic things about Internet marketing.

1. Get on the blogs - Mike Arrington of TechCrunch wrote this post on how to get your company blogged.  Tim Ferriss used blogs to get his book to a NYTimes Best Seller, do the same thing! 
   
2. Yes you have to worry about SEO - Niel Patel wrote this article on how to optimize your blog to be found by search engines. With the right content 50% of your traffic may come from search engines so make sure to understand these basics.
3. Web businesses are Metrics based so use Analytics - An Hour A Day – Avinash Kaushik, a Google’s analytics guru, simplifies web analytics and what/why you need to understand your analytics.
4. MailChimp – Collecting email addresses to build your audience and leads is super valuable. MailChimp is the easiest system I’ve found. Sending mass emails can be difficult to impossible without using a 3rd party service so this is a inexpensive and valuable option. 

Oh Yea, You May Need Money

Without experience, raising capital is a pain in the ass. If you want to do it you’ll need to understand the minds of the folks your asking. Learn how to give the right kind of pitch, know the terms, and understand what they’re hoping to get from you so you don’t get screwed.

1. The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint – Save yourself the embarrassment and understand what type of pitch investors want to see before you give’m your ‘dog and pony show’.
   
2. Venture Hacks – I’ve learned so much about the VC industry from this site, it’s an incredible resource.
3. Building the budget and revenue model -Ross Kimbarovsky of crowdSPRING breaks down his tips for building a budget and rev model. Investors really won’t talk to you without it.
4. Understanding Angel Investing - Understand what an Angel Investor is looking to get out of the deal is important before dealing with one. If you can understand their goals and tailor the deal to those goals, you’re much more likely to raise funds.
5. How To Raise Angel Dollars - Learn how to raise money without giving everything away. At the end of the day you want to own your company not just work there so read how to raise Angel funding.

Wrap Up

That’s 25 Steps, with resources to get going on your startup… also, here’s a bonus source if you don’t follow the above resources well enough. I’ve done it twice :) so don’t worry if you have to scrap it and start over, you’ll learn everytime then you can build your own list of must do’s.

1. Closing Down :( a startup - If things don’t go as planned, make sure you shut things down the right way.
   

Let me know if I missed anything critical or if you have steps and resources that should be shared!

I don’t promise to post a song a day or even a song a month. However, when inspired I may post 5 in a day. Give it a try and please let me know if you have any issues playing the music so that I can report them to Dan and help make the service better and better.

To start, I’ll share the music that has been on my mind. In 2007 I went to Lollapalooza and saw Matt & Kim. They were not a mainstage show but it was one of the best of the weekend. Check out the songs linked below…play them from Stream pad.

No More Long Years

Yea, Yeah

Verbs before nouns

This is my first post using WordPress 2.7. The newest version has gotten a lot of press recently because of the completely different backend layout. Many bloggers are complaining that they’ll have to learn a new workflow to blog posts and won’t be able to find things…to that I say “get over it” and “don’t be grandpa”. Grandpa’s don’t want to learn; they enjoy the status quo, and new generally scares them. Welcome to Gen Y, we learn, all the time, and if things AREN’T changing we’re getting uncomfortable.

My initial reactions to 2.7 are that there is now more in each screen. There has been a consolidation of buttons and menus, so it does take a bit of getting used to, but I think that the change will likely be for the better. There is a menu to the left now instead of a header menu. It contains drop down style navigation that will make things easier to get to with one click…a plus.

Overall I think the new change will be a good one. Hopefully the new WP backend improves my writing :)

Related articles by Zemanta

• WordPress 2.7 – So Much to Love!
• How Much Work is Being a Professional Blogger?
• WordPress News: WordPress 2.7 Released
• Do you think blogging is dying?
• 5 wish list items that would improve Zemanta service and their Windows Live Writer plugin

Today was awesome. I had a productive day at work, I started early (about 6:50am), got to work on some video editing which was fun, got news about a potential stint in Paris, and left a hair before 5 (always nice). Then when I came home I realized that it was an awesome “social media day”. That may sound a little “douchy” but I’ll tell you, it was awesome.

For a blogger, at least for me, its all about quality and quantity. I want tons of people to come to my site, and I want big names to come to my site. Often times big names can mean tons of people, if they share. Plus, they’re big names for a reason…they’re awesome! Two of my favorite blogs are…

• Fred Wilson AVC.com
• Gary Vaynerchuk garyvaynerchuk.com

… and both of those bloggers came to my site today!

Fred Wilson‘s blog is probably top of my must read list so having him read my stuff is quite an honor…he’s got a style that is second to none. He has over 150k readers of AVC.com and has grown that by simplifying the mysterious world of venture capital for the everyday entrepreneur and investor. He respects his readers and he understands community (he replies to almost every comment I make).

Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV is one of the largest personalities on the web. At the very least he’s the most energetic! He hosts a 20 min wine show 5 days a week and is the icon of personal branding. ActionsTalk will be having Gary V on next week so don’t miss it!

The list doesn’t stop there…

Blake Samic - co-founder of ActionsTalk and all around bro

Joe Budde – my college roommate from sophomore year that I haven’t talked to since (sorry Jbud1)

Dave Cohn – an ActionsTalk contributor and good friend who runs Spot.Us

Soren MacBeth – founder of StockTwits.com

Frank Gruber – founder of TECH Cocktail (I’m going Nov 6th in Chi) also SomewhatFrank

Gregory Ng – a social web brethren – check out Gregs new frozen food site FreezerBurns.com

So, in growing a blog its all about the community and the content. Celebrating the small victories like this one are important. They are what keep you writing and excited about you blog…so really those victories are what keep your blog awesome. Thanks to all the readers…without you I’d quit!