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Writing Challenge

Blogging Events

No matter how long you’ve been blogging, there is always more to learn. As part of the Weekly Writing Challenges,…

No matter how long you’ve been blogging, there is always more to learn. As part of the Weekly Writing Challenges, we highlight a feature in the WordPress.com Dashboard and challenge you to incorporate it into your blog. We want to help you take full advantage of all the tools available on WordPress.com to make your blog the best it can be — and to make your friends jealous of your web wizardry.

To participate, tag your posts with DPchallenge or leave a link to your post in the comments. Please be sure your post has been specifically written in response to this challenge; obvious attempts to link-bait will be deleted. We’ll highlight some of our favorites on Freshly Pressed on Friday, and in our monthly newsletter.

Recently on The Daily Post we launched Blog Event Listings, giving you some excellent tips and tricks on how to organize your own events. Shortly after, we announced two beautiful Eventbrite themes and widgets for your WordPress.com site. 

Yet not every blog owner wants to host an event, nor may you feel ready to create your own blogging affair. Participating in events is a great way to flex your blogging muscles, and to build a community around your site. For this week’s featured-based challenge, try to find a blogging event through our Events Listings page and use one of these features to give some extra oomph to your entry:

  • Publicize your submission, making sure you edit your custom Publicize message to include any relevant hashtags or @mentions when your post is shared. In case you missed it, you can now automatically share your posts on Google+ as well.
  • If you’re going to be attending a few real world events and want to let your readers know where to find you, try creating your own custom calendar to use with the Upcoming Events Widget, which shows a list of happenings on a specific calendar feed. It’s a fun way to connect with others, while keeping track of your own social and writerly engagements.
  • Sometimes a contest or event takes place on other social networks, such as Facebook. If you participate in a Facebook-based event, try embedding a post from Facebook to get as much mileage as possible from your social networks to your blog.
  • Similarly, use the Media Explorer to search for and embed Tweets related to the event in which you’re participating. Many competitions will include a related hashtag — like #nablowrimo, or even #postaday — which lets you easily find fellow participants, and include yourself in the dialogue. With the Media Explorer, you can give a shout out to other participants who you particularly admire, or share a Twitter conversation with your blog followers.

Remember, don’t feel like you have to use every single one of these features to participate. Pick one, explore the world wide web of blogging events, and be sure to come back here to share your experiences — or questions! — with us.

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    1. To participate in the challenge, you’ll want to tag your posts with DPchallenge or leave a link here, in the comments. On Fridays, we will highlight some of our favorites on Freshly Pressed.

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  4. Great challenge, im not sure if ill be entering but I am surely going to be using the media explorer on my next post, had no idea we could use it for tweets. Cool. Thanks for the post!

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  8. Also new and in need of guidance, I have written a few articles in college and thought what the heck! I like to write and I am not bad, but I would like to get better. Considering, everyone is blogging these days; I thought this was a good place to start?

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  17. Of course , this is Francis Ntarugera . Though I am starting to get in to this new generation’s communication tools, but I have been in media industry for more 21 years officially. I can not say that this journey looks difficult , but it takes time to get in to it. The most important part of it , is to know that I have to get board before it gets over boarded.
    There is no doubt that blogging makes you connected with the people you did not know like you . Is there something challenging more interesting about writing? This is my main focus and I need to take off before it gets late .
    Cheers.
    Ntarugera Francis

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  18. I’ve discovered just recently my passion to writing.. and I am so excited and really feeling motivated now that I’ve started blogging… although i’m still a baby on this, would appreciate a lot of assistance… Thanks to all in advance! 🙂

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  20. I literally just submitted my first post EVER on here. I am coming into the blogging world blind, so…this would help me so much!

    Readers: come one, come all! Lemme know what you think!

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23 Responses While this challenge is closed to new entries, we encourage you to visit the Reader to find other avid bloggers.