Scheduling blog posts is the most recommended winning practice for bloggers.  Pen and paper, whiteboard, and Google calendar are all popular tools used to track schedules.  Now there is something better.

Chris Garret demonstrates how to use the Editorial Calendar Wordpress plugin. Scheduling a post or rescheduling is as easy as drag and drop.

This post was started via a click on the editorial calendar. It would be easy enough to reschedule this post with just a click and drag on the calendar.

Clicking on the  + sign for today’s date triggered the new post method.  It opens a draft post and puts you in edit most.  The post is scheduled instead of immediate, with in this case about a 2 hour lead time.

This plugin will become my most used of 2010. How about giving it a go. Under Plugins, click on Add New. In the search box type ‘editorial calendar’. It will be the only plugin that shows up.

Cheers and Happy New Year,

Todd aka @tojosan

I’d love to give you some long drawn out explanation, especially one with lots of keywords and links to store bought goodness, but instead, you get a video. A video from Michael Martine, aka Remarkablogger.

The video demonstrates how to add a YouTube video to a Wordpress post. Note that this will only work with hosted Wordpress and not Wordpress.com sites.

Now all I need is one of you to go in halves with me on an iTouch.
Found on CrunchGear.

 Kurt Greenbaum at Virtual St. Louis has posted a thought piece on comment moderation. His take on that can be summed up by this quote.

“I’ve always considered that a small price to pay for the instant gratification a reader can get by seeing a comment immediately.”

That’s a bold choice in these days where spam bots can quickly overrun a blog.  However, modern blogging software and hosting systems have become much better at sorting out spam comments.

The Wordpress hosting service has captured hundreds of spam comments for my blogs. There have only been a handful of false positives where a true comment went to spam.

A bigger concern isn’t spam, but hateful or malicious comments.  In the case of Virtual St. Louis, a blog focused on a very opinionated community, it’s likely that the comments will get heated at times.  The question then becomes should the occasional over the top comment be allowed in order to reward the majority of commenters with seeing theirs right away.

Blogging tools offer various ways to moderate comments.  In the Wordpress.com tools, the blogger can require all comments to be moderated, only first time commenters to be moderated, or no moderation to take place.  Also, the number of links in a comment can be set to trigger its moderation.

So far those options have worked well here at The Broad Brush, and apparently well enough at Virtual St. Louis.  As spammers get more sophisticated and our tolerances change, will these tools be enough?  Will blogs like Virtual St. Louis be able to keep their open comment policy?

What measures have you taken towards spam prevention and comment moderation at your blog? Are they working? Will they stand the test of time?

Social media mavens talk about doing something useful with it, but we often here more talk about than actual making of media.  Or the media created is more navel gazing than content.  Live Readings aims to fight that tide.

The Live Readings blog is all about individual contributors from around the world contributing  by reading aloud poetry and prose.  An ever growing number of contributors have taken time to record themselves reading the favorite poems, sonnets, and short literary excerpts.

Voice readers of all stripes are welcome. Don’t be shy; be a contributor.  Anyone can join in the fun.

It’s easy but does require a small amount of effort:

1. Join Wordpress.com

2. Sign up or be invited to be a contributor on the Live Readings blog.

3. Join Utterz

4. Set up an Utterz connection so you can post there.

5. Record your reading on Utterz and Share It to the blog. Voila!

All of the Live Readings contributors are using that method.  You can ask questions in the comments here or over there.  Drop me an email if you’d like as well. tojosan — gmail.com.

So what has social media brought to you today?

So I’ve been getting good feedback, and in summary,  ”SELF HOST YOUR BLOG!”So there it is for you.  I’ve been using tojosan.com to point to my blogger.com blog, and that’s worked well.  However, lots of folks pushed for me to go to Wordpress.  Well, I took the plunge and went with a Wordpress.com hosted blog, this one of course.  I’ve got a couple of other blogs hosted, but this is going to be the one I focus on primarily. What I really need is great feedback on where to host.  I’m not technically challenged, so having a reliable host is more important than one with one step install. Will you follow me there? And to what host?  And do I have to get the most expensive?Many thanks in advance, and leave lots of advice or DM me on Twitter, @tojosan, or drop me a gmail.