Back Up Your Writing : A Repeated Learning Experience

This morning's reminder is to back up what you write, submit and post- at least if it's something you might want to see again.

My example today comes from a much earlier post, where I talked about travel writing on a website and community called Ruba. It was a pretty neat idea, a social interface that allowed people to join and share travel photo's and tips, creating their own guides to favorite places in various cities. I remembered posting a lot of cool stuff there when I came across the post I mentioned it in here,and went back to that site to have another look. Instead of finding my profile, I found a note from the creators of that site that they've moved on to bigger and better things.

The site was so well put together that I thought it would be around for a while. Whoops! Oh, well. It's not like I don't remember all the places I wrote about, or couldn't put my own similar guides together without the use of a site like that- in fact, some of my articles on Associated Content are travel guides about fun things to do in some of the cool places I like.

But it does remind me to keep copies of everything I submit anywhere that could in some fashion be useful later. It's why I have a 'hidden' blog, where I keep copies of submitted articles, so I can go back and use the information in them for further research. It is also one more way to prove authorship, a time stamped record.

Adding Slide Shows to Your AC Content

People like pictures, and often articles with pictures or slide shows on a theme get more hits than text based articles alone. If you are using Associated Content as a platform to share your writing, you can add slide shows made up of your own photography.

Here are some examples of slide shows I've put together. :-) :

Traveling by Bus
Civil War Reenactment
Greenfield Village Train Ride
Henry Ford Museum Exhibits

It can be useful to create slide shows related to things you write about, because you can inter-link them all. For instance, I've been writing a few articles about things to do in Seattle. If I were to go out to places I've referenced in some of those articles and snap pictures, it could make the presentation more dynamic through the use of photography. You don't have to be anything like an expert photographer to make this work, all you really need is a digital camera and a laptop. :-)

Travel Writing on Ruba

One project I did recently involved talking about a lot of the places I've enjoyed visiting on a travel oriented website called Ruba. This was pretty fun, and others who travel might really enjoy it. It's a social network set up in a way that you can add places you enjoy and share the details with others. You can see my profile with guides for New Orleans, Seattle, Detroit, Toledo, Oxford, and Toronto here if you'd like :-) :

http://www.ruba.com/user/NicoletteFox