Semantically driven

Blogging quest

Written on April 8, 2009 by Jen

Filed Under: Uncategorized

• Introduction
• How you can participate in ‘my Blogging quest’
  • Step 1 – write
  • Step 2 – add the code
• Incentives
• The participants

Introduction

When I started this blog five years ago I had no idea where it would take me. As I’ve said occasionally throughout this blog I started blogging because I like to write and I’d say that’s why I continue to blog.

My About page outlines who I am, why I called my blog Semantically driven, and what’s been happening in the last five years in my blogland but it leaves out other details that are otherwise scattered throughout this blog. Also I’m nosey. I want to find out what path your blogging quest has taken you on too and I can’t read everyone’s About page. Even if I could, peoples’ quest for blog isn’t always covered. I want the stories accessible from one spot – here!

We used to have a television show called Front Up here in Australia where a guy called Andrew Urban walked the streets and started talking to people to find out their story. The stories that people told were amazing. I believe that everyone has a story to tell and I’m sure that people’s personal stories are intertwined with their blogging experiences.

I propose that you write about your blogging quest or your blogging journey and, even better, choose someone else to write theirs or spread the word by Twittering or Stumbling this page.

Why the blogging quest? Firstly what is a quest? A quest is a journey undertaken by a protagonist towards a goal usually with adventures and adversity along the way. The protagonist learns from the adventure and adversity and benefits from what he or she learns along the way. (I feel like I’m back in uni writing an essay about The Hobbit.)  So we apply the archetypal quest to blogging in this instance.

Here’s how it works

Step 1 – write about your blogging quest

I think it will work one of two ways. You can either write in freeform about your blogging quest so far (and what you see or would like for the future), or you can answer the questions below – because sometimes it’s easier to start with some type of template.

Possible questions:

• When did you start blogging?
• Why?
• What did you expect in the beginning?
• Have your expectations been met or did something completely different happen?
• What’s blown you away about blogging?
• Have you encountered adversity and had adventures in your blogging quest?
• Why do you continue to blog?
• How do you see the future of blogging?

You might even want to include images.

Step 2 – add the Blogging quest image to your blog

Add the Blogging quest image to the post you write your story in. I have a couple to select from.

Select and copy the code underneath one of the images and paste into your blog post or sidebar.

<a href="http://semanticallydriven.com/"><img title="Blogging quest - brought to you by Semantically driven" src="http://semanticallydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/quest.gif" alt="Blogging quest - brought to you by Semantically driven" width="328&#8243; height=162" /></a>

<a href="http://semanticallydriven.com/"><img title="Blogging quest - brought to you by Semantically driven" src="http://semanticallydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/quest160.gif" alt="Blogging quest - brought to you by Semantically driven" width="160" height="80" /></a>

The images above have a link back to this blog so I know that you’ve participated and that way I’ll also know who to link back to from here so there’s a collection of links to people’s personal blogging quests. In the meantime you might want to read about my blogging journey.

Incentives

To kick-start this project I’m even offering incentives.

I’ve got some Envirosax shopping bags to give away – specifically these:

They fold away into practically nothing and are very practical. I use mine all the time. So to win one of these, just start writing about your blogging quest. For the first five people who do this, I’ll choose one person to win one of these bags. For each five people after that I’ll choose another winner.

And just for a bit of fun, here’s a movie about the quest.

The my Blogging quest participants

1. She became a butterfly
2. Writer Mom at Home
3. My Little Drummer Boys
4. Farmer’s wife
5. Jeanie in Paradise
6. The Bumbles Blog
7. Centralillinoisian
8. Picklebums
9. you?