Ryan Imel over at Copyblogger has put up a post asking who would miss your blog if it disappeared? He then goes on to talk about how you can avoid being easily forgotten about or replaced.

He gives tips like targetting your audience, being unique, interacting with your readers, and creating content that can’t be duplicated.

Here is a snippet from the article:

You’re reading CopyBlogger because (hopefully) you recognize that your writing has a lot to do with your blogging. In fact, it’s really the most important part. Dumb Little Man, for example, has a pretty lame design and a silly navigational system. But the writing is quality, and the style is unique. The more unique you are, the greater the chance you’ll be missed if you disappear.

I love these types of articles because they remind the best bloggers why they are blogging. Many bloggers don’t take these points and remember them as they work on posts on their blog, thus being pushed into the noise of the millions of blogs being created every day. If you want to stand out from the crowd, memorize these points and make it part of your blogging routine to follow the mentioned tips.

Originally posted on January 25, 2010 @ 11:13 am

I was recently looking at stuff listed on Digg thanks to Popurls, and saw an article entitled, Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too, and it struck me as a really interesting idea. Zappos tries to weed out potential staff members that won’t understand and be part of the company culture, and I think that blog networks really need to work on some way of weeding out their own problem employees.

From the article:

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later.

Not everyone is committed to being an amazing blogger, and I understand more than most how hard it is to not only write content, but also promote it, and actively communicate with those in your niche, both on and off your blog, but as blog networks try to grow their business, they really need to make sure they have the right staff, or they will only be ruining their company in the long run.

Originally posted on May 21, 2008 @ 7:36 pm

WordPress can be amazing software, but it wouldn’t be that way if it wasn’t for a dedicated group of people working on every aspect of the software. Jeff Chandler has posted on Weblog Tools Collection a list of ways that people can contribute to the popular open source software and most require no programming knowledge whatsoever.

From the post:

Create A WordPress Centric Podcast

Maybe writing isn’t your thing, perhaps video isn’t either but you discover audio is no problem. As it stands, there are a limited number of WordPress centric podcast that exist on the net today. I’m talking about ones that come out with new episodes on a regular basis. One of the way you can share your knowledge of WordPress is through audio and right now would be a good time for you to launch that podcast.

There are some really great ideas here that don’t take up too much time, and yet help the software that you probably use. The more people that participate, the better the software could be.

Originally posted on May 20, 2008 @ 9:40 am