Topic: Five Tips for Better Blogging as a Beginner
Cathy Rueter took time away from an active freelance writing and editing career to work as a reporter and newsletter editor for ten years. She’s returned to her passion of writing and pursuing a career as a Christian author, blogger, and Development Editor. She is currently the vice president of the DFW Chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers. Originally from the Greater Grand Rapids, MI area, she now lives in Dallas/Fort Worth with her family. After a few stumbles, her WordPress website – “Up in the Attic” with Cathy Rueter – is growing up thanks to the wonderful people at the Fort Worth Chapter of WordPress. Running her own website/blog, FB Writers page, guest blogging, editing, and writing keeps the words tumbling out of the attic. Open one of the boxes “Up in the Attic” and discover a variety of topics and treasures.
How did you get involved in WordPress?
A) I got involved with WP itself for my website after looking at several different website creation programs. Knowing I was newer to the DFW area, am not particularly computer savvy, and didn’t have a lot of contacts at that time, I needed something as intuitive and user friendly as possible. WP seemed to fit the bill. Between the online tutorials that I could find and the local FW WP Meetup group, I’ve been able to find most of the help I’ve needed. WP has been a good choice for me.
B) I needed to get out of the house (editing and writing are pretty solitary businesses). I went searching on Meetup to find some interesting things to do. At the same time, I was stuck on some things with my WP site. Not expecting much I attended a meeting of the WordPress Users FW. Even as a total novice and I didn’t understand a lot of their “computereze,” they never made me feel stupid. The group has always been welcoming and encouraging.
What do you do with WordPress?
I use WP to run my own blog/website “Up in the Attic with Cathy Rueter.” The attic is my head and there’s a lot of stuff up there. I’ve had some missteps and false starts with it but I continue to work on it and ask questions of the local group. The site is growing up, slowly but surely.
What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?
My experience with the WordPress community has been positive, both online and locally. Other than what I need for editing, writing, and office admin stuff, I’m a novice at all things computer and even more so with WordPress. The local group has been welcoming and answered my many questions.
Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?
I wanted to speak to people just like me…newbies. I wanted to give back a little to this community that has been so welcoming and helpful to me. And since you all REALLY don’t want me speaking about computer and coding related things….writing/blogging/editing is my thing.
Why did you decide to speak on blogging?
As a blogger, guest blogger, writer, and development editor, I work with words on a daily basis. I love to read well thought out blogs – whether their in my genre or not, whether they’re necessarily about something I’m interested in or not. Nothing makes me want to click off a site more than if it looks like the blogger just doesn’t care about their reader enough to make their content enjoyable to read.
What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?
Writing/blogging can be a lonely business. I’ve been there – still there some days. We all need to know how to make our blogs the best we can make them and we can’t do that in a vacuum. These five tips aren’t so much about how to blog as they are about how to make ourselves better bloggers and survive in this sometimes solitary industry. I hope that people will take heart that there are others out there like them and maybe begin to reach out more to the blogging community. I know they’ll at least take away some resources that they haven’t seen before.
Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 11-12. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!