Author Archives: Admin

How to Become an Authority Blogger

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Ryan Imel has put up a post on Copyblogger that I wholeheartedly agree with called “How to Become an Authority Blogger”. In it, Ryan talks about how talking with authority is half the battle.

Here is a snippet:

Speak with authority. One of my favorite uncles retired from a high level management position to start his own business offering leadership training to companies and organizations. His main reason for going down this path? He started speaking with authority and people just ate it up. He’ll be the first to admit that he’s not saying anything particularly earth shattering. But he’s the one saying it, and sometimes that’s all that makes the difference between the authority and the audience.

Many of the great voices online are only known because they think of themselves in that way, and I suggest if you want to be an expert in your niche, you should start writing as an expert.

Originally posted on August 17, 2007 @ 4:10 am

Word of Mouth

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Getting an idea, product or blog noticed can be quite difficult, and things like Digg, Del.icio.us, and others might help you get some attention, but one of the sources I have found to be the best way to launch something is good old fashioned word of mouth.

I keep a pretty extensive friends list on my various e-mail accounts, and instant messaging clients. I also try to keep a few lists of people that I think will like what I am working on, or cover a similar niche.

How you can say things, and the methods you can use to contact various people depend on how developed your relationship is, but from my experience, people respond better to personal messages, than mass e-mailing or putting together a professional sounding press release. Don’t get me wrong, a press release works great if you have little to no relationship with someone you want to inform, but don’t expect a response from those people, no matter how great your release is in your mind.

Conversation

The first people I talk to are family and friends. These are people I see here and there who might know someone that would be interested in the product, service or blog I am working on. I try not to make it the focus of a conversation, but I do bring it up for as long as possible near the end of the conversation. People seem to remember the last few things talked about much better than the first things talked about. I guess we all have pretty spotty memories.

Instant Messaging

For my second round, I like to tell people via an instant message client. I don’t pressure them into going right that second to check out what I am releasing, but instead I only explain the concept and ask them for feedback. People love to give their opinion on things, even if it is something they know nothing about, and they will be more likely to really look at what you have put out if you ask for their feedback.

E-mail

After I have done that with as many people as possible, I move onto e-mailing various people. I write about three different e-mails, each with their own level of formality and tone. I want to make sure I am sending e-mails that have a business tone to people I don’t know well, and e-mails that are friendlier to my friends. I then try to personalize each e-mail with a sentence or two. This takes a fair bit of time, but much less than writing a custom e-mail for every person, but will most likely garner a much better response than mass e-mailing them all.

Blog

The fourth and final step is writing about it on my blog. This is really the least personal step of the whole process as I am just broadcasting. Any feedback I get, I try to respond to, and create a dialog, anything to spread the word of what I am doing farther and faster. This step usually brings back the least feedback, but sometimes the most traffic to whatever I am doing. This step also requires that your blog be a platform for your projects. If you skip this step, try to make sure someone else blogs about what you are doing. A broadcast like this can really help spread your idea, product or blog.

Originally posted on July 23, 2007 @ 1:33 am

Web Communications Manager Job Posting

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Over on the Problogger.net Job Board, I found a posting which I thought was interesting. Columbia Business School is looking for a Web Communications Manager, and in their posting, they bring up managing blogs.

If I was ever to stop being a full time blogger for a living, this is exactly the type of job I would be looking for.

Here are some of the details:

Columbia Business School seeks a Web Communications Manager. Reporting to the Director of Communications, the position increases Columbia Business School’s visibility by writing, producing and packaging relevant and engaging content for Columbia Business School’s web site on a daily basis. Generates, investigates and brings to life stories related to School initiatives, faculty research, and student and alumni activities as well as timely business news and trends. Writes, edits and proofreads in accordance with accepted rules of style and syntax. Collaborates with members of the administration and faculty as well as people both inside and outside the University. Manages projects with attention to detail, accuracy, quality and consistency. Supervises the Assistant Web Editor.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
Bachelor’s degree and/or its equivalent required. Minimum 3-5 years related experience required. Must be a proactive, efficient and accomplished interviewer and writer with an excellent sense of tone. Knowledge of and facility with HTML/CSS, image editing, and Adobe Photoshop software critical. Knowledge of and experience with online community moderation and messaging. Ability to analyze web metrics and relate it to content strategy.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
5 years related experience preferred. Blog development and management experience preferred. Knowledge of Blog software and the current technical ecology of a blogger (e.g. del.ici.ous, RSS, etc) preferred.

For the rest, check out the original posting.

Originally posted on July 25, 2007 @ 2:42 am

Blogging Software

Before anyone asks, I just wanted to let everyone know that I am using WordPress to power eXtra For Every Person. The software is really customizable and easy to use. For me, it is the best software for blogging, and even most of my content management needs.

For those of you not interested in finding hosting for your own blog, Automattic, the company that manages WordPress, has a free WordPress blogging service at WordPress.com.

Keywords List

this

that

those

words

blog

news

web

internet

today

is

at

now

Originally posted on July 18, 2007 @ 1:24 am

Social Sites for Promoting Your Content

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Getting your content out into the world can be very difficult, but as the web community grows, everyone is looking for new ways to find the best content on the Internet. To deal with this need, many social sites have been developed that allow users to vote, bookmark, or randomly find the most interesting things posted online.

This article is going to highlight a few of those service based sites, as well as talk about the type of traffic you can expect.

Digg

Digg is still considered the premiere place right now to gain attention for your site. Getting on the front page of Digg will bring so much traffic, that many sites find themselves unable to keep up with the requests, thus succumbing to the Digg effect. If you are lucky, you can get a fair number of new RSS subscribers from Digg related visitors.

That leads me to the biggest issue that I have with Digg is that the traffic doesn’t convert well. Getting on the front page of Digg a few times will use up huge amounts of bandwidth, create a big influx of one time readers, and do very little else. Don’t expect your Google AdSense to be filling up with cash from Digg related visitors.

You can promote news/articles, podcasts, and videos on Digg, but the biggest traffic effect comes from being on the front page of the News section.

Reddit

Reddit is a much simpler looking site when compared to Digg. It has more or less the same basic premise though: voting up moves the story closer and closer to the front page. And just like on Digg, getting on the front page is where you can get most of your traffic.

Where Digg is very technology focused, Reddit seems to do well with more traditional news, including politics, world affairs and “funny news”.

The traffic here, just like Digg, are web savvy users, who know how to avoid advertisements, but they don’t come in the same numbers as with Digg. Also, from what I have seen, Reddit users seem to have a longer attention span, and are more likely to check out other articles on a site once they arrive.

Del.icio.us

Even with its strange domain name, Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking website. There are no votes here, only a system that counts how many people have added the same link. If enough people add your link to their Del.icio.us account, you will find it on the front page.

The Del.icio.us community is very diverse, but technology stories seem to make up its Hotlist more often than not.

The visitors from Del.icio.us are a lot like the ones from Reddit. They are more willing to stick around, though they are still very web savvy and most likely won’t click on any advertising you have.

Netscape

One of the newest “big” players to the social scene is Netscape, and from what I have seen, it is probably one of the most filtered and managed services, with Scouts and Anchors on shift to filter out garbage from the site.

The front page is littered with political stories and news. I have seen topics such as movies, music and science also hit the front page regularly. The users here range from the inexperienced to the very web savvy.

The traffic received from reaching the front page is much smaller than most of its competitors, but I believe that it is of a slightly higher quality, mostly due to the lack of knowledge that some of its users have. This means traffic from Netscape is more likely to click on advertisements than Digg or even Reddit, but just like Digg, they probably won’t stick around to see what you write next.

StumbleUpon

A very different system than all the rest, StumbleUpon is primarily for randomly bringing you to sites and stories you will like. You add StumbleUpon to your browser, and when you click on it, you stumble to the random site that the service chooses.

The service is growing at a viral rate, especially lately as reports have started appearing on sites about the massive amount of quality traffic that StumbleUpon is bringing to their sites.

I haven’t experienced this first hand as of yet, but it seems to be one of the communities worth joining. A word of warning though, one of my friends has spent hours aimlessly stumbling from site to site, saying that the service can be addictive, and a great way to procrastinate.

All The Rest

There are many other social news and bookmark sharing sites, some with a broad focus like most of the sites I have listed above, and some with specific niche focuses, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. My biggest tip would be to cast a wide net, and involve yourself with as many of these communities as you have time for. Over time you will learn which ones work best for you, and focus on those.

The best thing you can do for your site is networking, so give it the time and energy it deserves.

Originally posted on July 20, 2007 @ 9:52 pm