hello my name is angela smith and our show today is featuring the finalists in professional ned the networking source website two thousand and thirteen blog contest professional net is a members only website platform with like minded individuals who share their events photos videos and of course blogs some of us are coming from behind our computers and meeting for the very first time blogging refers to community with an audience and speaking a message the word blog in cell derives from having a website or web blog that contains a writer or in this case a group of writers own experiences observations and opinions often having images videos and sound we have five finalists today and only one winner the criteria for the blog contest are consistency style informative intention and following up now let's meet  our guest we have mon tail current hello we have latifa at do love hello we have code is hampton the second to go and we brian k he'll oh and welcome to the show so let's get started on blogging and hopefully you learned some things today we have some well i'm going to call blog experts because part of this contest is from these bob finalist and for first time bloggers they often struggle with future of their blogging so my first question to the panel is what is the main purpose of literacy curran's financial literacy and so many of us we have not been taught in how to invest so let's with my blog was about my background is finance more than thirty years in stocks bonds mortgages and so on i thought that i could do the subject or satisfy that subject and get people to understanding it that it's not so difficult if you know what you're doing  my intent was to help them get there you know montel i also found that giving out information is really important today people used to hold information so close to their chest this is different today and that is where blocking comes in  is so important because with me blogging allowed me to get my ideas correct and be able to remember them better because in writing anything down you remember what you' absolutely absolutely and i'm going to ask you the same question what is the purpose of your blog actually to communicate with the women i like to communicate personal development and business development for emerging entrepreneurs emerging women entrepreneurs so that's the purpose just sharing heartfelt information that will help them in both areas whether it's their life or their business and one thing about you the tif tif i did both written and video tell me about why you did video you know that started out we were we had one idea but i actually blossomed into something else and so that series really was a heart to heart for women  assisting them in getting through the hard places and so you know it was just something that came from the heart from ok good now this i know some of us have come from behind our computers but i did i do and been known you for probably a year now because we started at a different platform which was the life experience and now we're a professional net and what is the purpose of your blog because you have a style unlike others so tell us about that well later but definitely want to go back over that brian franking he'll now you are a consistent rugger blogger you write a lot and you give out information and you call it free information so tell us what your purpose of blog i usually learn and remember things by acronyms so i created an acronym just for yourself blog means building learning opportunities just automatically send them to a specific blog so whether the mental health for america men or doesn't matter what the topic if i just have them going because people like reading content and especially net is a members only website and again some of the first time and not only are we sharing information on that website but we're also talking about meeting outside of that computer because we're all over twenty five years old and so we know what it's like to be you know interactive and do it in a personal relationships unlike a lot of young people who they do the social networks and they don't ever meet unless they're in school so thank you again for being here today so i'm a start with you it's just something a blogging would that be something that you would do long term probably right now as part of  sometimes when you're communicating with a specific audience you might have like an editorial calender so for now yeah i believe it is going to be part of how i communicate with the women where you have so many different ways to communicate but i believe it will be a long term option for me and another thing is that course where members of professional net but we're also in other social media networks like linked in facebook  and some of the other popular sites and i say you use all of them you know course we don't want you to come to professional net and tell us what you have for breakfast that's not our purpose we want you to talk about something substantial that we can walk away and feel like we've gotten some something out of it you know some information so do you plan on blogging is there something long term for you oh yes  beginning a middle and a conclusion and here's what i think what do you think yeah bryan i probably don't need to ask you this question because i already know the answer like yeah and i thought how am i going to communicate because my pages are to myself right so if i just put it online i can date stamp it and go oh that's what i was thinking last week last year and ok so it's just a continuation in my mind blogging is not new social media is not new we've all been talking all of our life the internet just gave us a voice so i just extended what's already been happening yeah ok min all i would just like to say the reason i blog is the fact i'd like to give back to the community i find that my skills are souls that could make you money you know to find to be able to find that stock and then invest in it and then know when to get out of the stock and i've i've i've trained several people in that area which which means that when it when i'm no longer there they can make money on their own and addition to that i've got into mortgages and so many people have lost their homes because of short sales and foreclosures and bankruptcies but there are finance out there for those people and and my blocking will help those people find me so that i can help them yeah that's why i have been blogging to help others help themselves  take lightly i mean you're talking in my view i'm sure with everybody else's too you're talking to our audience and the written word is very powerful so what you say matters to some people and how it affects a person you know fifty three and the time when she was growing up and so what i was trying to do was to you know we know where we come from obviously we're always interested in who we are enough and sisters and i just wanted to make sure that people understood how those people lived in those days and what they had to do to get through those times so that we could be here to talk to you you know it's almost historical can learn something from someone else's and for the stories i love storytelling communicate from a as i from a hobby how should i be communicating what i've learned from one thousand nine hundred fifty eight till now because what i had to go through a lot of men around me went through the same thing so it's a hobby on that side from the professional side i like picking topics that people need or that they want so if i get an e mail or you send me something i'm going to find an article to me that was professional side yeah that's it ok can i ask you another question do you have an organization that you belong to call black man speak you talk about that sometimes in your blog detect just give us a brief background briefly i walked into a meeting of after american men and i hadn't remembered the feeling of feeling secure around men that were talking about issues it was like a young man saying that older men and i could other than church in school i couldn't remember feeling wow everyone though them to me i don't have to pretend to know everything so briefly i satin with them and for the last two and a half years have been with them trying to you know they have a certain skills that come from a part of the background the will come from but i had another skill set in the technical internet it was not a part of it so i just kind of blended in and now the more about that