The Torkona Award II - Your First Born Birth Story

THIS AWARD IS NOW CLOSED. CLICK THIS BLOGGERS AWARD LINK TO FIND THE LATEST INFO FOR THE NEXT AWARD.

I've got some exciting news.

The Torkona Award, is back!

The inaugural Torkona award went to Romina. Her gratitude was shown via her Martyr-hood blog.

When I bestoyed this honour on her as the first ever recipient, her followers numbered about 50 people.

As of this post, a month later, she now holds 528 followers.

Goes to show how awesome for your followship my little award can be (of course, her fantastic blogging has something to do with it).

But it's the first stepping stone towards great exposure! So I would love as many people as possible to have a go this time around again.

Here's how the 2nd Torkona award is going to work.


1. Tell us your story about your first born child

Anyone is eligible from any part of the globe.  So long as you are:

• a mum
• a dad
• an expecting mum
• an expecting dad

Even though you may have not given birth just yet, it would still be lovely to read your story so far.

I want to hear things such as how the pregnancy is or was, your fears, your excitement, your struggles, your joy.  Basically anything in the time frame of the pregnancy.

I can't wait to read them.


2. What is the prize?

The person I judge to have the best story receives a post on my blog dedicated to your story/blog.  Refer to my last Torkona Award to see an example.

As mentioned above, this can give you great exposure for your blog.  Ooh, you'll get a groovy .gif image trophy too!

Ten runners up will receive a link back to their blog as a thank you for having a crack at it.


3. How you are scored

This time, for each story, I give a total score of out 31 based on four different criteria.

• a possible ten points for creativity
• a possible ten points for how hilarious you are
• a possible ten points for a heart warming story
• one brownie point

"Ok, one brownie point huh? What's that? What's the catch?" I hear you say

No catch, you don't have to do it if you dont want to.

But, if you do want that extra point, what you need to do is copy and paste the code in the text box below into the HTML section of your post:



That's why :-)
6. What happened to point 4?

Aren't I just hilarious *sigh*

7. Final Requirement and Deadline

I will need to know that you have completed your post so I can judge it.

So, when you have finished, please leave a comment against this post of the URL to your story.

Alternatively, you can contact me of your link (and any questions) via tork.southaust@gmail.com

All entries must be in on or prior to the 1st of May, 2011

All that is left to say is, I encourage as many people as possible to give this a go.

I will love to hear everyone's stories, as well as I am certain your followers will as well.  Not only for them to reminisce, but for yourself as well.

Good luck.  And even if you don't win, I hope that it will at least bring back some happy memories! :-)

- tork

<a href="http://torkona.blogspot.com/2011/03/torkona-award-ii-your-first-born-birth.html"><img src="http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee492/torkona/tork0411.gif" /></a>

An image will appear on your post just like this below as a link back to this award.






Pretty cool huh?  It's all about exposure and I'd like to get as many stories as possible, so if you want that extra point and you aren't scared about some competition, you can consider it.

5. Why am I doing this?

If you already follow my blog, you may already know that my wife and I are expecting our first child any day now.  I can't wait to tell everyone our story.

So, I was thinking, 'wouldn't it be great to hear about others first born stories as well?' 

Everyone needs a laugh, so here we go..

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A Bear and a Rabbit are taking a shit in the woods.

The Bear turns to the rabbit and says "Excuse me, do you have problems with shit sticking to your fur?"

And the rabbit says "No"

So the bear wipes his ass with the rabbit.

---

I hope you had a laugh ;-)

I like that joke.  That's all I wanted to post. Have a great day!

- tork

Popped my award cherry!

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Well, it finally happened.  I managed to con someone to think that I can blog A.OK!  :-)

But seriously, I was awarded the Stylish Blogger Award by Mary at Living with Food Allergies and Celiac Disease. 

I was touched by Mary's kind words.  It is very appreciated that she took such time to pick me out of the many blogs that she follows.  She's a top bird and she has my greatest thanks.

So, seems this award has a few (gulp!) requirements of it:

  1. Say thank you and link back to the blogger who passed on the crown.
check.

2. Share 7 stylish things about myself  (this is not as easy as it may sound)

1. Stylish! F**k a muffin.. I'm about as stylish as a poodle in pink (that counts as one).
2. I love my home Adelaide and South Australia (gratuitous plug).
3. I can burp the alphabet.
4. I understand why belly button lint exists and why it is often different colours
5. I ignore the spell check for words such as colours, centre, favourite and onya.
6. I never let the opportunity go by without trying to crack a joke.
7. I am strinkingly handsome

3. Award 7 other bloggers the Stylish Blogger Award.
Sorry, I have got my The Torkona Award that I'm overdue to run, so there is a conflict for me.  Plus, I can't pick seven, so hard.  Almost impossible, so I give up!  You're all stylish in your own way, so I'm copping out!! hehehehe. You'll just have to keep an eye out for when my award pops its head out again.

Again, thanks Mary, you're a champ.  Hopefully I can keep up the good work to entertain you all

But I was also wondering, has anyone else won a blog award?  What did you win it for? Love to know!

- tork

My major blog killer, how you can avoid it

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This is a follow on from Need blogging advice? I'll tell you what I've learnt.

Experts say "To have great traffic to your blog, you need great content".

Yeah, that is pretty much true.  The better your content is, the more people will subscribe or follow you.  But, you could write the world's most fantastic post on 'Why you should never say the name Beetlejuice three times' or 'Why Monkeys are just so damn cute', without the followers/subscribers, no one is going to know about it!


This is how I thought.  So, I would sit on social media outlets to try and get my links out there to create traffic.  Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon are great if you have enough friends/followers, otherwise reddit is a very handy source as well.  I would try to write posts that I thought were both hilarious and entertaining.  Look at my post about how I want a hoverboard. Gawd, how embarrassing.



I had fun writing that. I wrote it after an obsessive weekend with the Back to the Future movies.  Anyway, it basically went dead in the water, with hardly any pageviews and zero comments (as of writing this post at least). So, I wanted to try and increase my traffic via social media.


Every post of mine to this day is sprayed across the social media land, via twitter or facebook especially.  This is fine (and highly recommended), but the overall time I used to spend on these social media sites was eating into my creativity.  I had become ...a consumer...


I was a consumer, much like how a cow spends it's day chewing grass over and over, I would spend 1-2 hours chatting on twitter,  reading reddit funnies, stumbling random pages, sitting there watching my website stats for new traffic.  I was just that fat cow not ..producing.. the beautiful cream people would love.


But just like a cow, you can't produce your cream of the crop posts without a bit of help.  Someone has to help you to produce the goods.  Like I said previously in My biggest blogging mistake in my first 3 months.  By following and subscribing to bloggers with experience that have been through what I was experiencing, I learnt that producing quality content is the vital key.  I know social media is essential to spreading the word of your posts, but keeping a limit of no more than 20-30 minutes is the best advice I can give bloggers when using social sites.


To summarize:

• Produce, dont consume!
• Follow experienced bloggers
• Ooh, and take you time to review before publishing that post of yours.

Just don't forget, 20-30 minutes at the most on social sites.  After that, you can write your great posts until the cows come home! Then, watch the traffic flow in when word spreads that you have the best cream in town!


(No analogies or puns where hurt in the making of this post)


- tork

Songs to Inspire - Song 10

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Feeling unmotivated? Need inspiration? Need to be inspired?

Inspiration comes from within, you just sometimes need to be reminded - Torkona

Every Sunday I post a song to help you find your inspiration.

Savage Garden, The Animal Song.

To quote: "Animals and children tell the truth, they never lie"


yeah... I'd like to live like animals, careless and free.  Hope it inspires you to perhaps not worry, what ever it is that is worrying you.


Just, let it go.


Enjoy!

- tork

My biggest blogging mistake in my first 3 months

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This is a follow on from Need blogging advice? I'll tell you what I've learnt.

The biggest mistake I've made so far is thinking that I am the bees knees.  Thinking that I am top dog.  Having the nerve to think that I can just jump into this blogging game and maybe make a few dollars out of Google's Adsense program.

I wanted to make a extra bit of dollars after my normal working hours to provide for my soon to be born firstborn. Living on one salary and providing for three is going to be tough!  But simply just typing out a bunch of posts that really have no depth to them, hoping they might get google hits or something like that, it just doesn't work.

You need to inspire your readers, teach your readers.

My first step towards a post should have been:

DON'T write a post just to try to gain traffic and cash

DO write a post that has warmth as well as teaches

I am no where near the experienced blogger, but I sure as hell know what does and doesn't work. I've wasted time thinking solely of traffic without learning first. What I can advise is follow experienced blogs, people that can help you along the way. Take your time with your posts and give a little love in what you do!  This is what I am trying to turn around with my own posts.

"If you build it, they will come".  Building a foundation on mud won't stick forever.  Building a foundation with quality and strong support holds much much better.  And it keeps the rain out :-)

So, read, listen and learn, my first bit of advice for new bloggers.

What is your biggest blogging mistake?


- tork

Need blog advice? I'll tell you what I've learnt

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I've been blogging for just over three months and I am proud to say I broke the blog barrier! WooHoo! Three months is the average length of time that people quit blogging at.  I've got to say, I've come close.

So I want to share with you what I've learnt.  There has been blog tricks that I've tried and failed, but there are others that have succeeded. This can give you ideas if you are a new blogger on the scene and traps for even the experienced blogger.

So, I will be compiling posts with things that I've learnt over these three months, so stay tuned.  One big thing I've learnt, especially since starting my Adelaide and South Australia blog, is that my current blog layout sucks, so I will be undertaking a massive overhaul. (ooh, exciting!)

But the reason why I am posting this, is in the meantime, I'd love for you to ask me any questions that you might have to help you.  You can leave a comment or email via tork.southaust@gmail.com.

Yikes, now I've got to start putting down some posts!  Lord, this may be an endless series of tips and tricks about blogging.  I just hope that I can help at least one person.


We shall see. Look forward to hearing from you!

- tork

Bing! You've got traffic

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Hey there.. so I'm kind of floggin' my bloggin' here, but for a specific reason.

See, I have this seperate blog of funny stuff.  Basically it was born as I didn't want to post joke after joke in my personal blog.  (fyi, bLErg is a sock puppet, hehehe, yeah I'm a bit weird).  So if it's a few funnies you're after, I highly recommend it :-)

Anyway, I posted a funny photo about Lady Gaga Egg Costume at Grammys.

Recently I've made a killing via the image search engine of bing.com.  My traffic spiked for a short time, but then it went down again.  Got about 120 hits in 5 hours, but thats about it.

Weird, I'm trying to start a discussion if other people have suddenly noticed the same thing.  Perhaps we can help each other out!

Have you been binged? Does image search traffic peeve you off like it does me?

I don't get it. Damn you Internet!!

- tork

Songs to Inspire - Song 9

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Feeling unmotivated? Need inspiration? Need to be inspired?

Inspiration comes from within, you just sometimes need to be reminded - Torkona

Every Sunday I post a song to help you find your inspiration.

One of my favourites songs, very poetic. I hope it inspires someone to perhaps sit down and write themselves a poem.  Or, paint something!

This song, is just so well written and spine tingling, love it.

If it does inspire you to write a poem, dont be scared to share it!

Enjoy!

Tork's secret entry to the Aussie Bloggers conference?

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Seems to be a certain Aussie Bloggers conference going around.

I jump from one blog to another and there it is, someone going to the bloggers conference.

I personally think this is a fantastic idea, but also frickin' scary hehehe.

I want to do a little experiment and see how far it gets me.

Yes I've only had this blog for three months, but I'd like to see how many eyes and ears I've reached in that time.  I know a lot of folks follow me that are going to this conference, so here's what I want to try and do.

Ask anyone there 'What do you think of Torkona? Isn't he a spunk?"

No, no, thats not quite right.. make it this:

Ask anyone 'Have you read Torkona's blog?'

Why? Because.. I want to go :-(


Reading it all over the blogsphere, it sounds like the place to be.  By getting a little chatter is, maybe, my way of being there.

Who knows, perhaps once I get more readers/followers and increase my word of mouth in the Mummy/Daddy blogger world, I may appear.

But for now, I will keep to my kind of anonymity.  Keep you guessing of Torkona :-)  Hell, none of you know what age I even am!  Hmm, what age do you think?

Anyhoo, I'm jealous, so for those that are attending the Aussie bloggers conference, enjoy.  For those that aren't, join me for a virtual pint of beer over on Twitter ;-)

- tork

My secret: It's time to tell the truth

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Well, I guess it is time to tell the truth.

Yes my followers, I have been cheating on you, with another blog.

Don't get me wrong, I still love you all and I hope that this doesn't come between us.  I have time for both of you!


Hahaha, enough of the analogy :-)

I mentioned fleetingly in a previous post I am addicted to twitter and have another twitter account @Adelaide_SA. Well, this is for my new blog, the Adelaide and South Australia blog.

The new blog is exactly about what the title suggests.  It hopefully will be a lot more structured and better presented than current Tork blog-ness :-)

I've decided I should try to help people further with something that I know a lot more about, which is the state that I live in.  Yes I've been posting on my personal blog about pregnancy via the dad (aka me), gaming stuff, blog help, but all these I am still very much a novice at.  I post these things to entertain, to help others learn and to share experiences.  My personal blog is about my journey of Tork.  But dont worry for those that care, I will still be here posting about why twitter sucks, why twitter rocks, what smells that will eventually emit into the air around my first born and more songs to just chill back to.

But I am also passionate about my city and state, which is why I want a separate blog. At the moment, I am seeking a bit of exposure, so tell your friends! :-)  oh wont you? Especially your Adelaide ones hehehe..

I hope you like it, tell me what you think!

- tork

Our baby might be small but THANK GOD it's not a whopper!

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 (photo from adelaidenow.com.au)

Woah, check this baby born 5 days ago in Victoria.  He's already a big boy!

Born weighing 5.75kg (thats 12.7 pounds), baby Jasper came into this world the size of a four month old.

Ooch! Now hopefully my wife will be much happier that we have an average/low sized baby!

Congratulations to the proud parents of Jasper. Read full article here. 

Quick update on our bubs: baby is doing great. Fluids have doubled, baby has had growth to be about average size (just below), was last shown in feet first position though.

But all this means we are looking good to not giving birth to a baby with under-developed lungs.

Ahh the stress newborns put on you :-)  Excitement is starting to set in!

Anyone have any stories of premature births they wish to share?

- tork

My life, the Amatuer Blogger

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I think I have done everything a blogger shouldn't do.

I always read twitter, I read facebook, I jump into reddit, I fart about on StumbleUpon.

I've posted drivel for the sake of posting.


I watch my blog stats and constantly hit refresh.

If I get a view then I see if they commented.

Ooh, and I've used the word "I" 10 times so far! :-)

If you are an experienced blogger (a year or longer) you are more than likely nodding your head saying "Yeah, I've done all of those when I was first starting out".


The problem is, yes, I admit it.  I.. am a consumer.


I'm addicted to social media and my blog stats. I pace around my keyboard just watching, hoping, that people like my blog and follow or subscribe to it.


Spending time on social media is starting to eat into my time of typing away a killer post that will bring me to my goal of a guzillion followers. 


I need to spend less time consuming and more time producing cracker content for my people! :-)


If I just try to limit my Twitter(s), Torkona3, funnybLErg and Adelaide_SA (*sigh*) and other social media to say 30 mins at night, I could become a better blogger.


The first step to overcome an addiction is to admit to it though, right? :-)

I think I'm slowly getting there with my latest blogspot Adelaide and South Australia blog. But I'm still slipping into bad habits.


Are you a social media addict? How do you fight the urge to consume?


- tork


 

Songs to Inspire - Song 8

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Feeling unmotivated? Need inspiration? Need to be inspired?

Inspiration comes from within, you just sometimes need to be reminded - Torkona

Every Sunday I post a song to help you find your inspiration.

Today I want to tell you that you're amazing, just the way you are.


I want to thank you for visiting my blog, and for that you are also amazing!


I hope you have a great day and it inspires you to tell someone else that they are amazing.


So, below is the play button.  Hit it!  And enjoy ;-)

- tork