Jamie Flinchbaugh is not really new to the lean blogosphere as he’s been writing over on the Lean Blog and most recently on Evolving Excellence… but I am excited to see him finally start his own blog.

So, please be sure to stop by and check out what Jamie has to say… he brings a tremendous amount of wisdom to the lean world.

So I am trying Twitter out.

I’m still getting the hang of it… but I plan to use it in 2009 for short “micro-blogs” as well as for general conversation. I also hope to get feedback, ask questions, answer questions, and just get to know more people!

If you’d like to ‘follow’ me please visit: http://twitter.com/lssacademy and click ‘follow’.

You will need to set a Twitter account up which is super easy and free.  I hope to catch up with you soon!  

Here is a short video does a great job of explaining what Twitter is all about.

Our friend, Mark, over at the Lean Blog is battling some technical difficulties.  He is working hard to fix things. 

I have been asked by a few folks what the funny looking blue icon on my front page was all about. So, let’s take a break from lean and six sigma and talk about the wonders of RSS.

The Good Old Days

In the old days when we wanted to keep tabs on our favorite websites we had to bookmark or favorite them. The problem with this is it required you to manually go to each and every bookmark to see if something had been updated.

RSS changes this. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and will change the way you follow your favorite website or blog.

How it Works

When you add your favorite website or blog into your RSS reader, all you have to do is sit back and let it tell you when new content has been added to your favorite website or blog… simple as that!  New content will normally be in bold much like a new email is in your inbox.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to do is get a reader. Personally, I use Google’s Reader (it’s free) but there are many more out there besides Google’s. Yahoo, for example, allows you to add feeds to your Yahoo home page.

Next, it’s time to add your favorite sites into the reader. The easiest way to do this is to look for the orange feed icon on the website in question. Once you find it you just click it and choose the applicable reader you use.

Email Updates

Some folks prefer to keep track of things via email in which case you can also sign up for updates via email. Many websites and blogs, including LSS Academy, have an email subscription link right on the front page. You simply type your email address in and you’re done. To avoid any funny business you normally have to confirm your subscription.

Now, let’s practice

As we know, to learn something we must do something. So, if you are not using RSS today why don’t you give it a shot? You can practice a few ways:

1. Enter your email address (top right side of page) in order to receive updates from LSS Academy via your email. You can always unsubscribe later.
2. Sign up for a free reader and then click on the orange button (right above email section) to subscribe to LSS Academy that way.
3. Sign up for a free reader and follow this link to sign up (reduces the waste of excess mouse motion).

Be Careful

When I first started using RSS I subscribed to around 80 blogs and websites.  That was far too many for me.  As of today, I have 18 sites I follow via RSS.

One of my favorite “blogging” sites is Daily Blog Tips.  On it Daniel shares all kinds of good ideas for those of us who attempt to blog.  Recently Daniel held a contest where the participants had to simply use “3″ in the title of the article.  I thought this sounded like fun and quickly wrote up Three Easy Steps to Becoming More Effective. 

For me, the coolest part of this contest is I am 110% positive there have been people who may have never heard the words “lean manufacturing” in their lifetime had they not clicked to read my article.  That, to me, is priceless!

The participants get to decide who the winner of the contest is by casting their votes on their blog.  I have received some votes from people (one was even a photographer who thought my post about “flow” applied to his readers) which has been nice!

There were 115 participants and while I have not read each article word for word I have skimmed them all and narrowed my list of favorites down to these:

• 3 Reason Why Entrepreneurs Succeed!
• 3 Fatal Errors of Blogging
• 3 Signs that You are in the Wrong Company
• 3 Ways to Have a Luxurious Hawaii Vacation on the Cheap

So give these articles a read.  And to check out the other submissions click on over to Daily Blog Tips and read to your hearts content.

If you enjoyed this post please subscribe to this blog via RSS feed.

I have been blogging for around 6 months now.  It’s safe to say I am hooked.  With this said, after some hansei, I have formulated the top 5 blogging mistakes I have made thus far.  If you are thinking of blogging, or are very new to blogging, please take note and learn from my mistakes lest you make the same ones.

1. Going cheap and starting with a free Blogger account.  I now realize how superior a self hosted WordPress blog is to Blogger but was clueless when starting out.  If you are serious about blogging don’t go cheap.  Start off with a self hosted WordPress blog and move on with your life.
2. Snapping at a commenter.  While it only happened once I got a little “snippy” with a commenter who didn’t see eye to eye with me.  There is no rule stating “all must agree with Ron” written anywhere.  I was wrong and apologized for my mistake. 
3. Not commenting enough on other blogs.  Other bloggers are often the best readers you will have.  So, you should take the time to comment on their blogs.  And don’t just leave a short comment like “great post.”  Really participate.  Then, this blogger is far more likely to do the same.
4. Focusing too much on SEO.  Perhaps this is not that big of an issue but I find myself worrying too much about SEO when I would be better served focusing on content.
5. Monetization.  I have experimented with some monetization methods such as Adsense and Amazon links to help pay for hosting and the design work I had done.  But again, this can easily steal the focus away from the only thing that matters which is finding ways to add value to the readers of this blog.  And nothing turns me off more than a blog with tons of banners, links, and ContentLink spam (which I tried for one day and then killed… thanks for the advice Mark) all over the place.

I am sure there are others I am leaving out.  But if a new blogger were to stay focused on not repeating these 5 mistakes they will be off a solid blogging start.

If you are a blogger feel free to share any additional tips or lessons you have learned along the way.

If you enjoyed this post please subscribe to this blog via RSS feed. What’s RSS?

Update: Irony is a real SOB isn’t it.  As soon as I plug WP my recent comments and posts plugins go on the blink. We’ll get to the bottom of it soon.  Sorry for the glitch!