Blogger Interview # 12 : Adriana Ritt

1. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your blog?

My name is Adriana Ritt and I am from Romania. I am a 60+ young blogger, who started her blog on June, this year. I am teaching Public Relations and Organizational Communication at the University, so I live among young people and this keeps me young too, I guess. I have two grown up children: a son, who lives already for 14 years in Vancouver, Canada and a daughter, who lives with us. I love to travel, to read and to photograph, not necessarily in this order. I read history and fiction and I like science fiction movies very much.

2.  Are you a full time blogger? How did you get into blogging and why?

I am not a full time blogger as I still am full time teaching. I traveled extensively during last 20 years, that is after the Romanian revolution because we were not allowed before to travel, except to the former communist countries. Also, the first 10 years f this period, I have been involved in more international university projects, which enables me to travel in many European Countries. Having a lot of pictures and writing with great pleasure, I wanted to share my travel impressions with different people having the same interest and so I started to blog.

3.  If someone was interested in blogging, what would be a few things you would suggest?

 

First, I would say you must choose a theme and stick with it. The name of the blog should comply with the theme. To document what you say, choose your best photos. Keep in mind that blogging means sharing and this enables dialogue. If you are not a dialogue person, if you do not like to listen and you want only to talk, then don't go into blogging. People need information but they also like to comment and to put questions. Take yourself and them seriously!

4. How do you build a community around a blog and social media?

 

Of course there are many methods to do this. I will tell you only which are mine. I answer to all comments left on my posts. I visit other's blogs and leave comment there. It's a common sense action to return the visit to the person who took time to visit you. I also visit some bloggs from the blogroll of those who are in my blogroll.I put questions which wait for answers and so I buil dialogue. I visit bloggs resulted from searching machines and leave comments. I am still considering going on Facebook but I am not interested in Twitter.

5. What are your three favorite blogs to read? What makes those blogs special?

I cannot say which are my favourite blogs because I like those which are in my blogroll for a reason or other, and so I read them every day. Some of them are related with a future country, which I intend to visit and provide me valuable information about that country. In some cases I withdraw them from the blogroll after that. It depends on the style of the blogger and on the relationship I built with him/her during the time. I don't like to keep on my blogroll people who do not react to comments I left on their bloggs or who will not visit, in return, my blog. Then I simply consider they do not want that dialogue or are not interested in the content of my blog.

6. Which one plugin would you suggest all bloggers to have?

I am not very interested in plugin or gadgets and I am not a specialist in this kind of stuff. Nevertheless I put some statistics connected plugin on my blog. My daughter helps me with this :)