I think it’s pretty funny that this blog post has the following caveat at the beginning of the post:

Before I write this, let me admit it’s almost 3am and I’m very drunk. It’s Halloween, I look like a zombie, and I’ve been talking about United all evening.

If you’re thinking about starting a blog (it’s no secret that I’d recommend you should) — head over to WebDesign.com and read 6 Ways Blogging Can Boost Your Career.

I just blogged about Sloane Berrent a few minutes ago, but I came across another post on her blog with extremely strong voice — so I wanted to highlight it as well. Excerpt from “My Daydream“:

In that moment, I looked down and instead of pavement, I saw dirt beneath our tires. Dirty, brown and uneven and we bounced along the road, the passenger car jumping and jolting at every bump. I reached out from the tricycle (they without doors anyway) and ran my hand along the ground scooping a handful. In my hands the dirt wasn’t brown anymore, instead each grain seemed to stand out more than the next in bright colors. Like small gemstones shining purples, blues, yellows and reds. Instead of the dirt being crude in my hands, it was like the very definition of what I know dirt to be disappeared from my head. I looked down and as if for the first time, it was something I could define for myself. It was smooth and soft, like freshly-washed cotton. It didn’t leave remnants on my fingertips as I brushed and swirled it softly into circles in my hand. It smelled like a fresh bouquet of flowers, the kind of wafting you get when first stepping into a blooming garden. It had weight to it, not a lot, but just enough not to let it fly out of my open palm as we drove along the Filipino countryside.

Seriously — read the whole post; you’ll be glad you did.

I first came across Sloane Berrent a month or two ago on Twitter as a result of her tweeting about Kiva. Anyway, I’ve added her blog, The Causemopolitan, to my Google reader and read it when I have time. I read Sloane’s Day in the Life of a Kiva Fellow post today and came away extremely impressed with the use of voice in her writing. Here’s an excerpt:

5:30PM – Wrap up field visits and travel back to Branch. I’m emotionally exhausted from the day. The women open up to me about their lives and their lives haven’t always been great. When I see tears welling in their eyes telling me how much microfinance and the opportunity to have a business means to them, what the women in their Center mean to them, how their lives are different, it’s enough to shake you to your core. Or if I’ve found out a women didn’t use her loan the way she was supposed to, I’m exhausted from pushing for the truth.

She hooked me with the way her voice, feelings, and personality came through in the post (not just this excerpt, but the whole thing). I tend to gravitate toward reading bloggers who are passionate and intelligent. It’s apparent Sloane is both, so her blog will now get some more love amidst the noise in my reader.

I’ve said this to many people before, but if there is no voice in a blog, why the heck should I bother to read it? I can read information anywhere; a great voice can — and does — distinguish you from the rest.

Update: I also read this post and this one tonight. Both with extremely strong voice.

For those who don’t follow my writing on Geek Estate Blog, the real estate technology blog that I manage as part of my day job at Zillow.com, I wrote a post the other night that is relevant to both my personal and business life that you may find interesting –Personal Business, Business Personality, and Social Media.

For those who have not blogged for a good cause, I’ll be the first to say you should (see here). For those like me who love both blogging and philanthropy, there’s not much better than blogging to help raise funds for a great cause — and I was alerted to the fact that I could do just that by writing a short blog post to help promote Wokai.org. I couldn’t resist, for three reasons:

1. It helps raise awareness for Wokai
2. Increases the chances that Wokai will win the $1,200 from “Blogging for a Cause“
3. I met Casey Wilson, the CEO and co-founder of Wokai, a few weeks ago for lunch and am convinced she is going to bring microfinance to China in a big way

For those unfamiliar with Wokai, here is some more info:

What is Wokai?

Wokai delivers an internet microfinance platform that allows individuals to provide Chinese microentrepreneurs with loan capital.  Our organization acts as an intermediary in this process, transferring funds from contributors abroad to microentrepreneurs in China through our field partners.

Who does Wokai support?

A typical Wokai microentrepeneur is a female rural inhabitant, living on less than $1/day.  Her microfinance loan, ranging from $150-$300 dollars, provides her with the capital to start a small business.  Her business varies by location, raising sheep in a rural grassland or operating a small fruit stand in a city center.

With her income, she accumulates savings, which allows her to allocate money towards long-term investments like education and health. By the end of her loan cycle, she has experienced increased financial independence, bolstered self-confidence, and a strengthened sense of community.

Learn more and contribute today at http://www.wokai.org.

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

Now, what are you waiting for? Blog for your favorite cause (or just blog about Wokai!) — only 5 days left in the competition!

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been blogging since 2006 (here is my 1st post)!! Anyway, I realized some of my favorite posts like this one have gotten lost in the sea of blog posts here so thought I needed to do something to make them more prominent. I just tweaked my sidebars a little bit and the top of my left sidebar is my new location for a list of my favorite blog posts. Here is the list I put together (for now):

• If This Doesn’t Hit You Like a Rock, I Don’t Know What Will
• Becoming Legendary – How Michael Jordan Did It
• Finding Your Passion
• Announcing myKRO.org – A New Blog Devoted to Microfinance
• Kiva.org – Loans that Change Lives (Using Web 2.0 Concepts)
• Life Away from the US
• Mountains Beyond Mountains
• If I Were the CEO of MyBlogLog…
• Personal Branding with a Blog
• Motivation vs Inspiration
• Web 2.0 – What’s the Next Wave?

I’ve still been struggling to figure out why my blog appears to be penalized and I think I may have (finally) found something. Take a look at the page descriptions here. I don’t see the same content on the actual page after clicking through, so I wonder whether a hacker put some sort of cloaking script on my blog that shows Google something different than a person? How do I find this in my wordpress theme file and remove it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

For those looking to build a valuable personal brand for the long run, this post by Sarah Lacy is definitely worth reading.

Here are some further thoughts on personal branding I wrote back in 2007.

My buddy started a new blog about a month ago that I wanted to quickly highlight. The blog is BankVibe.com and it covers IRAs, CD Rates, High Yield Savings Accounts, and other information relating to banking. Here is my quick list of suggested improvements to the blog:

• Google analytics to see how many people are visiting the blog
• MyBlogLog link tracking to track what people are clicking on
• “Receive e-mail notification for comments on this post” plugin
• Related posts plugin
• Create permanent pages for all your target keywords and put links to them in your sidebar
• Write your own content for pages like this IRA page — then you don’t have to link to wikipedia for every term and bleed SEO juice.
• Get rid of the red in your navigation bar. It does not match the logo.

If you need links or further explanation to better explain these suggested additions, leave a comment. And congrats on landing a Bankaholic link so early in your blogging career — that means you’ve already made it on the radar of Johns Wu (who figured out how to get $15 million from Bankrate).

If not, I think the data in this Publishing 2.0 article a few months ago (which I just came across from this article) will show you it makes zero sense to not link out to others.

For anyone hoping to become rich from blogging, there’s an article at Win Extra worth reading. Here’s one interesting excerpt:

Anyone who is looking at blogging as being their primary income source needs to understand that all that reading – all that networking – is done in order to help make you an authority that other people will come to. As you become more well known opportunities to speak at conferences will start to pop up, opportunities to write books might surface or possibly you might have the chance to run your own conferences. The fact is that much of the serious money in the blogging world isn’t made from behind the keyboard. The knowledge and contacts you make from behind it are where you make your money.

The lesson? Blogging can indirectly lead to riches, but monetizing your actual blog content or impressions is not the likely money making scenario. Blogging is a fantastic networking tool, and the opportunities that arise from that network is where the (majority of the) value is.

Or there’s the slight possibility that you can do what bankaholic did and dominate expensive keywords in a lucrative niche and get bought for cash. But that’s a longshot.

I stumbled upon this list of 21 wordpress themes that I wanted to bookmark for myself with a blog post.

I’m with Brian on this one — “it depends.”

Though the actual article is making a case against blogging, I couldn’t help but link to it as a result of the gem of a comment left by Jay Thompson -

I can blog in my underwear while I drink beer and watch football.

Check out this article Brian Solis wrote a couple days ago at PR 2.0 (one of my favorite blogs that I follow) about the new site Alltop, which aggregates influential voices across the web. Brian lists the voices included, which are likely household names if you’re familiar with the tech blogosphere.

Fake Steve Jobs, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Jeremiah Owyang, Teresa Valdez Klein, Jason Calacanis, Michael Arrington, Charlene Li, Tara Hunt, Doc Searls, Fred Wilson, Chris Brogan, Tim O’Reilly, Jason Kottke, John Gruber, Ze Frank, Chris Anderson, Marc Andreessen, Chris Messina, James Hong, Shel Israel, Jonathan Schwartz, Mark Cuban, Tom Peters, Marc Canter, Brian Oberkirch, Paul Kedrosky, Evan Williams, David Armano, Walt Mossberg, David Weinberger, and Nick Denton.

But, if you check out the Alltop acknowledgments, you’ll notice one of our own from the RE.net is included.

Deirdre Breakenridge, David Curlee, Pete Dawson, Kristen Forbriger, Bill Green, Francine Hardaway, Cone Johnson, Tom Kirkendall, Andrew Korf, Lani Anglin-Rosales, Tiara S., Nick Taylor, Andy Valadez.

So, without further adieu, I have to extend a huge congrats to Lani (who writes at ReRevealed and Agent Genius) for making the list!!

Dustin said this today -

There were some great questions from the students in attendance, but the one theme that was most prevalent was questions about the value of an MBA to an “internet” company. I wish I could have been more encouraging for the Pepperdine students, but while an MBA will open a few doors that might be hard to open otherwise, blogging can also do that!

I totally 100% agree about blogging opening doors to all types of opportunities — particularly in the tech industry. Maybe that realization is the reason that, unlike many of my friends, I have no real desire to go to grad school.

It’s awesome to see young, ambitious college grads find great jobs. Andrew Cafourek just did exactly that — and he did it by using social media. His new position is for Outrider, a strategic marketing company based out of St. Louis. His job title is none other than a Social Media Specialist. Being a social media guy myself, I’ll admit I’m biased. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that Andrew took the iniative (see comment #1) to go after something he wanted — and succeeded. Congrats!

This is interesting — there is now an official “Blog Council” started by 12 corporations to discuss blogging in large corporations. The 12 founding members are AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.

What is the purpose of the blog council?

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.

Scoble and Dave Taylor (who both know a bit about corporate blogging) are both skeptical about the value-add here. I think I have to agree with their skepticism.