We love introducing you to some of our favorite BlogFrog users. Lately, we’ve been highlighting some of our Community Leaders, early BlogFrog adopters who help us make sure we are building blogging tools that reflect what bloggers really want and need.
I’m always amazed at the lives of some bloggers. Not only do they find time to blog, but the heroics and compassion happening behind the scenes in their daily lives just blows me away. Take Lucy and Ethel, bloggers “extraordinaire” who write to help spread awareness of spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA through their blog, The Suite Life of Lucy and Ethel. Here is their story in their own words:
If you’ve been hanging around the Suite for a while, you know that Lucy and Ethel met because of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a progressively wicked disease targeting the muscles used for head control, sitting, crawling, walking, sucking, swallowing, and breathing. Lucy and her husband, Ricky, er, Randy, faced SMA in its most destructive form when their third baby, Jeffrey, was diagnosed in July, 1997, with Type 1. The following month, Ethel posted on an SMA board that she and her husband, Fred, er, Glenn, were eager to set up a North Carolina chapter of Families of SMA on behalf of their son, Kevin, who has Type 2, a milder form.
Angel Intervention was in gear that night, too, as Lucy was the first to respond to Ethel’s inquiry for any interest in helping with the chapter. And that was all it took for them to realize there was a serious connection there. Well, a little serious and a lot good-for-the-soul connection. And it’s lasted over 12 years, a span that has witnessed death (Jeffrey and Lucy’s dad), a book (Lucy wrote the book, Ethel wrote the foreword), college football/graduation/grad school (Lucy’s son, Matthew), pending college graduation (Ethel’s Erin and Lucy’s Katie), far-away college (Ethel’s Brian), Erin’s engagement, and most recently - yesterday! - Kevin’s 16th birthday.
And much more.
Neither of them had internet sense until SMA was hurled their way; neither had seen a blog, either, until they decided they had way too much expertise not to share with the world. While they’re still figuring out in what areas that expertise may be, they know where it’s not. Technology. And still they forged ahead.
What we do have is a joint desire to help spread awareness about SMA. We can share what it’s like to lose a child and to live with a milder (though still wicked) form of the life-threatening disease. The one that is genetic. The one that leads the pack in genetic killers of children under two. The one in which 1 in 40 are carriers.
We also love sharing others’ blogs, particularly when special assignments are involved. We love to laugh and hope that there is a smile or two with most of our posts, anyway.
Each week, we like to feature our BlogFrog users and share their incredible stories. This week, we are honored to feature Holly, author of Caring for Carleigh. Holly’s journey has not been an easy one. Her daughter Carleigh was diagnosed with the fatal disorder, Anencephaly, while in the womb. We are so grateful she has been willing to open her heart and share her story so she can help other families like hers.
I started blogging January 5, 2009. My original intent was to have a central place to keep family and friends updated on my pregnancy with my daughter Carleigh instead of posting on several websites and sending out lots of emails. On December 15, 2008, we found out our daughter had a fatal prenatal condition called anencephaly. There was no chance our daughter would live as this condition is always fatal.
As I blogged our updates, I saw that I could use my blog to document my journey with my daughter and help other families in the process. Reading the journeys of families like mine really helped me so I wanted to do the same. Now I blog about my grief journey and I also post other things on this road I continue to travel. BlogFrog has helped me expand my daughter’s blog and reach out to more people, and for that I am thankful! Just one more way that I can help others.
Today we are starting a series where we pay tribute to our Community Leaders and introduce you to their blogs. BlogFrog Community Leaders (we also call them super-users) are a select group of bloggers that we work closely with help us improve the tools and make sure we are providing bloggers with lots of value. Community Leaders help us test features, share feedback, and are expert users of our tools. They keep us honest about what really works and we love them back in return!
Today we’d like to introduce you to Shannon, author of the blog TheMommyFiles. We asked Shannon to share a bit about herself in her own words:
First off, for those who are visiting or new here, my name is Shannon and I am a stay-at-home mom of 3 boys (all under the age of 6). I have been married for almost 10 years and live in Seattle, Washington. I love it here!! My husband and I used to take annual vacations here before having kids and we knew we wanted to live here. We recently moved from California and were sad to leave behind our family. However, we love what Washington brings us. Anyways, on to the questions. The first question is “Why did you start blogging?” My husband originally encouraged me to create a family blog (for the grandparents and us) with updates on and pictures of our kids and family adventures. I then started exploring other friend’s and family’s blogs and decided I wanted to have one for myself. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do it, so I went blog hopping. I stumbled on a few blogs with reviews and giveaways and entered some of the contests. I actually won a few! This was a change from usual life (I never win anything, not counting the writing contest in 4th grade)! I thought it was neat to be able to review products, so I contacted some bloggers and they helped me get started. Thus, The Mommy-Files was born! I love blogging! I have met so many great people through blogging, as well as companies and PR reps. There are your occasional bad seeds, but the majority of my contacts are great, thus making it a positive experience overall. I have also found blogging to be my social outlet. It’s where I can vent about my frustrations in motherhood, as well as talk about the blessings in life that I am thankful for. It is a place where I can present my honest opinion about products my family and I love or don’t love. Hopefully it’s a help to those who read it.
If I could give anyone a tip on blogging, it would be to share the comment love. I try to make it to other blogs and leave comments on their blog. Sometimes I don’t get a chance to do that but I always try to respond to comments left on non-giveaway posts! Thanks to the many bloggy friends I’ve made over the past 8 months! And thanks for helping me get to 1,000 + followers! A special thanks also goes out to those bloggers who have helped me and those companies who have worked with me to make The Mommy-Files possible! Thanks again and happy blogging!
Posted on September 2nd, 2009 by tara@theblogfrog.com
Hi All! We here at theBlogFrog just love to see all theBlogFrog communities popping up all over the blogosphere! We hope the Community Widget will help bring more traffic to your blog and help your readers engage and get to know each other. We want to see your community succeed and so this blog post is dedicated to giving you some amazing tips and ideas on how to jump start your community and get your readers to participate on a regular basis.
Ways to Jump Start your community
Put the widget where your readers can see it. This seems like “DUH” but sometimes the widget gets buried at the bottom of the blog and it is hard for readers to find it or remember it is there. The closer to the top, the better!
Make sure your widget shows “forum activity.” There are two options for what your widget displays. One is “Visits by Members” and the other is “Forum activity.” You can choose to display one or the other, or BOTH. We think both is best. If you have a widget that is only displaying “Visits by Members” just log into theblogfrog and reinstall the widget.
Customize your community. A lot of people use their blog header, but you can be as creative as you want to be. You can also add your own community rules, and a custom welcome message to draw your readers in. Before you can do this you must “verify” that you are the blog owner. So go to your community and click the “verify” link on the left.
Introduce your readers to your community in a blog post. Tell them exactly how to join your community and what they might benefit from joining. (Feel free to copy what is below if you’d like)
Example: I’ve just created my own blog community (insert your community title here) powered by TheBlogFrog. This community is a fun and easy way for readers to interact with each other, ask questions, and make new friends. Please feel free to start discussions when you have a question, advice to share, or fun stories related to……(insert subjects here—kids, cooking, fashion, home schooling, health, exercise, etc). To join my community and participate in discussions click “visit my community” on TheBlogFrog widget. This will direct you to my community. On the right hand side you will see “Community Members” and right below is a link to sign up. Signing up takes only seconds and then you will be able to participate in my community discussions. After you join my community your latest blog postsand tweets will also be displayed in the community.
Be sure to go explore TheBlogFrog tabs where you can find other exciting ways to find bloggers you may know, make new blogging friends, and join other blog communities.
Post a few discussions in your community to jump start things. Topics could be:
What things would you like to see me post about?
What questions do you have for me?
Introduce yourself to other readers
Ask a few blogging BFF’s to go and start a discussion in your community. You can assign them a topic, or you can let them choose their own. We find that having other people start discussions in your community helps your members overcome their “shyness” to participate. They’ve seen other readers do it, now they can do it too!
Pose questions in your blog post and then direct readers to the community to post their answers. Example: You write a blog post about a fun family tradition. Ask, “what traditions are important to your family?” click HERE to discuss.
If you have a tip or question about the communities, be sure to post it in our very own BlogFrog Community
We love it when one of our bloggers is decked out in BlogFrog apparel when they are out and about. Lori snapped this picture when she was on vacation in Florida. Doesn’t she look happy and relaxed? Lori is the author of two blogs, Lori’s Reflections and Laced With Grace. Thanks for the shout out, Lori!
Rustin and I are so excited to share the news about 5 Minutes For Mom’s new reader community! 5 Minutes For Mom is a Technorati Top 100 blog (an achievement not many blogs can boast) serving women and moms from all over the world. Since March of 2006, they have been working hard to provide a place where moms can share their stories, interact, and learn from other moms in a caring, supportive online community. We met Janice and Susan, the founders, at Blogher 09 and have been talking about community ever since.
Janice and Susan wanted to give their readers an interactive place to connect on their site. A place that not only allowed them to interact and discuss what was on their minds, but allowed them to share their own blog content as well. We were thrilled they chose BlogFrog to help them make that happen!
The 5 Minutes For Mom community launched today and here is just a sample of the cool features:
Instantly connect and interact with other 5MinutesForMom readers.
Start discussions that expose your blogs to thousands of new readers daily.
Subscribe to a discussion so you never miss someone’s reply to you.
Every time you reply to a discussion, your picture and blog URL shows up on the 5MinutesForMom homepage.
Your picture and blog accompanies every reply you add in the community.
Every time you publish a new post on your blog, it automatically shows up in the 5MinutesForMom community!
When you visit the 5MinutesForMom community, your tweets automatically show up for all visitors to see.
The more active you are in the community, the more visibility your own blog gets.
Go check it out! Congratulations to Janice and Susan for their incredible success!
One of our favorite things at Blogher09 was meeting some of our BlogFrog users in person. There are currently over 12,000 users in our network of bloggers and its always a thrill to get to know them IRL. One of those users we met was Toni, author of the awesome blog, Daily Dose of Toni (www.juststopcreaming.com). Toni blogs about the nuttiness of her life, offers Tuesdays Tidbits, does reviews and giveaways, and has a lively community of readers. Watch Rustin’s interview with one of our favorite BlogFrog members and hear her favorite tip for bloggers:
We were so excited to interview Clair from MummyDeals.org at Blogher09 in Chicago. Clair moved to Chicago from England and blogs about saving money and finding deals online. If there is a bargain out there, she will find it! She regularly includes frugal recipes that show you how to feed four people for under $5. She talked with Rustin Banks (BlogFrog creator and CEO) about why she wanted a community on her site was thrilled to learn how she could instantly set up a BlogFrog community right there at the conference. Watch our video interview and you’ll see why we she’s so great!
After attending the Blogher09 session, MommyBlogging: Have You Found Your MommyBlogging Tribe? , we tracked down Briar Sauro, author of the blog Unwellness, and a speaker on the panel. Briar blogs about some unique topics to say the least and she manages to blog about them all with humor, candidness, and honesty. It was truly a pleasure to meet her and hear her speak. Oh, and her bookshelves at home are ordered according to the Dewey Decimal system. Watch more in our short interview!
We all know them. They are THAT family. The family that lives out their embarrassing, childish, horrifying family moments in plain view of our perfect, mature, polite family. Yea, right. Meet Kristen, author of the hilarious blog We Are THAT Family. We found her at Blogher09 and she agreed to share more about her blog with our readers:
Holly is a marketing genius with a flair for startups. After working for 6 startups she co-founded TheBlogFrog to bring social networking to the blogosphere. She is a parent of teenagers, swimmer, runner and a firm believer that the universe is plotting to do you good. She writes a great blog on parenting and life called breadcrumz You can follow her on twitter @hollyk or email her at holly@theblogfrog.com
Rustin is a technologist, Dad, and Entrepreneur. He taught himself to program at age 13 and never stopped tinkering from there. After college he worked for an Aerospace company designing hardware for next generation satellites. It wasn't exactly rocket science. Now he co-founded TheBlogFrog and wears lots of Technical hats. Be sure to check out his blog at rustinbanks.com. You can follow him on twitter @rustinb or email him at rustin@theblogfrog.com.
Holly is a marketing genius with a flair for startups. After working for 6 startups she co-founded TheBlogFrog to bring social networking to the blogosphere. She is a parent of teenagers, swimmer, runner and a firm believer that the universe is plotting to do you good. She writes a great blog on parenting and life called 
Rustin is a technologist, Dad, and Entrepreneur. He taught himself to program at age 13 and never stopped tinkering from there. After college he worked for an Aerospace company designing hardware for next generation satellites. It wasn't exactly rocket science. Now he co-founded TheBlogFrog and wears lots of Technical hats. Be sure to check out his blog at