Second Annual Diabetes Blog Week!!!

So last year I had an idea.  I wondered if anyone would be interested in joining Diabetes Blog Week and blogging about a set topic each day.  The response was overwhelming and the whole week turned out more awesome than I ever could have imagined!!  Many asked if this would become an annual thing - and at that time I couldn’t even start to think that far ahead.  Once everything settled down, however, I knew I wanted to do it all again!  And now, the time is here!!

For those of you who weren’t a part of this event last year, the idea is that bloggers sign up to post about a set topic each day for a week.  This way, readers can jump around the D-Blog Community and get a plethora of different perspective on a single topic.  This year will be very similar to last year.  I’ve posted the seven blog topics for next week here - just in case you want to start drafting your posts in advance.  Use these topics as a starting point for your post each day and see where it takes you.  Write as much or as little as you like.  There are no right or wrong answers - just read over the topic and start blogging!  I've also included two wild card topics to choose from.  If one day’s topic doesn’t inspire you, feel free to post about one of the wild card topics instead!

As you can see from the banner above and the button to the right, Diabetes Blog Week will run from Monday, May 9th to Sunday, May 15.  It is open to anyone who blogs about diabetes - be it Type 1, Type 2, LADA, or gestational, and it’s also for parents, spouses and caregivers to someone else with diabetes.  If you blog about diabetes in any capacity, please join us!  If you don’t have a blog but have thought about starting one, now is the perfect time.  There are free blogging sites you can use (such as Blogger or Wordpress).  Also, members of sites such as TuDiabetes or Diabetes Daily have a blog built right into their profile!

Of course, the idea for Diabetes Blog Week is that everyone who signs up to participate will post on all seven days.  Although that is the goal, I understand that life sometimes gets in the way, so if you end up falling short of seven posts that’s okay.  D-Blog Week is meant to be fun and stress free, so the blogging police aren’t going to hunt you down and take away your bloggers license! 

Once again, the key to making Diabetes Blog Week a success is YOU!!  Leave a comment on this post and let me know you're in!  Or send me an email at DBlogWeek@bittersweetdiabetes.com with your name and blog address.  (Also let me know via comments or emails if you have any questions.)  I will compile a master list of participants so you can easily see who is joining in.  I will also be adding daily Link Lists to the Diabetes Blog Week topics page.  (If you aren’t sure what a link list is, you can check out the one for D-Feast Fridays for a great example.)  Be sure to add your blog posts to the corresponding list each day so we’ll have all posts linked in one central location - this makes it easy for people to hop around and read all of the posts.  Please feel free to grab the banner or button (or both!!) and post about it on your blog if you’d like to help me spread the word.  If you want to tweet about it to your fellow D-OCers, you can use the hashtag #DBlogWeek!!  Together I bet we can make this year’s Diabetes Blog Week an even bigger success than last year was!

***Edited to add:  To make things easier, here are the HTML codes for the button and the banner, if you'd like to add them to your blog!!  Simply copy the entire code from the box and paste it into your blogs HTML editor.

Banner Code

<a href="http://www.bittersweetdiabetes.com/2011/05/second-annual-diabetes-blog-week.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5109/5679528179_298cfe3776_o.gif" width="600" height="160" alt="DBlogWeek2011Banner" style="border: none;" /></a>

Button Code

<a href="http://www.bittersweetdiabetes.com/2011/05/second-annual-diabetes-blog-week.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5184/5679528197_90e73daaff_o.gif" width="152" height="187" alt="DBlogWeek2011Button" style="border: none;" /></a>