Guest Posts

Woopra, Hemingway, and Web Content That Travels

This is a guest post from Rebecca Leaman.  She writes on nonprofit technology and web 2.0 topics for the Wild Apricot Blog, and doubles as 'Jen/domestika' at Domestik Goddess and on the Authority Blogger forum.

I’ve been test-driving Woopra this week, and re-reading the novels of Ernest Hemingway. Strange, how two such different activities can join to teach a key lesson in writing web content that travels — those blog posts that people go out of their way to share.

Woopra is a real-time site stats program with what I’d consider a needlessly complex interface for most bloggers’ purposes; and it’s dangerously addictive, so I probably won’t continue to use it for long. But there is a very cool feature: “tagged visitors.” After someone comments on your blog, his subsequent visits are tagged with his name, rather than Visitor #1897 or such.

It feels a bit voyeuristic, to identify individual visitors without so much as a Whois lookup. But it also makes it easy to distinguish between the actions of two very different types of visitors.

On the one blog I’ve got Woopra-enabled, visitors who found it through a search engine results page (SERP) showed a 94% bounce rate, <1% rate of return visits, and an average page view of 1.2 with less than 20 seconds on site. Granted, a one-week trial is hardly scientific — but it was the comparison with tagged visitors that really made a lightbulb come on for me: Tagged visitors to the blog, on average, checked in 3 times during the week, and averaged 3.2 minutes and 6.7 page views each time.

Those numbers aren’t a great surprise — after all, SERPs traffic tends to be people on a mission to solve a specific problem; maybe they find their answer on your blog, or they don’t, but either way they usually click on through. And that’s dandy, if your blogging goal is to get a high volume of traffic onto your site and off again by way of a high-CTR advertisement.

But what if you’re trying to build a community of loyal readers, to establish yourself and your site as a go-to expert resource on your niche topic, or to promote your own products, skills and professional services with your blog?

Search engine visitors are unlikely to stop their search long enough to truly engage with your writing. A focused seeker doesn’t have time (or motivation) to Digg your post, share it in Google Reader or on Facebook, StumbleUpon it, Mixx it, Sphinn it, or bookmark in del.icio.us, annotate it with Diigo, tweet it on Twitter or promote on Plurk, feed the RSS to countless other sites, or link back to it in a blog post… unless you can draw them in on that very first visit, and make a real connection.

That’s where Hemingway comes in.

The man’s been dead for almost 5 decades now, yet his books still sell across the world. Several were published after his death, in fact — including Islands in the Stream, the novel I stayed up late last night to finish, despite a very limited interest in hunting WWII submarines off the coast of Cuba. And then there were the films and television adaptations…

That, my friends, is content that travels.

Just google Hemingway: in those SERPs, you’ll see countless references to his rules for writing (as interpreted by CopyBlogger) and the famous 6-word short story :

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

Hemingway’s emphasis on tight, to-the-point prose fits right in with the much-repeated advice on how to blog, doesn’t it? You know the drill: 250-500 words per post, sprinkled with high-demand keywords, typographical emphasis (headings, bold, italics, etc.) on keywords, repeat as often as possible to keep search engines crawling your site in expectation of fresh content… and that advice still holds, for the most part.

But tight prose doesn’t have to mean a short post. The old 250-500 word count rule was based on the needs of search engines, not on human preferences. This may be Web 2.0 but we are only just starting to let go of the idea that posts must be bite-sized to travel. In fact, more often, the opposite is true.

Take a moment and delve into the popular social bookmark sites. Aside from the breaking news stories, what’s been saved and stumbled most often? Check your own site stats and see which of your posts rank high for referrals by a direct link or social media site. You may be surprised…

Start with a story worth telling, grab your reader in the first few lines, and keep it moving along. Yes, do keep in mind the keywords that will help searchers find your post in the first place (because the travelling has to start somewhere!) and please, yes, do break up a long page of solid text into small chunks that are easy on the eyes. It all helps to invite the visitor to pause and read.

In the end, however, content will only travel if it pays its own way — if the reader comes away feeling that he’s had good value for the time invested.

Hemingway knew that, just as thoroughly as he knew deep-sea fishing, hard drinking, and the torments of genius. And I’ll bet a cold mojito that your blog analytics will tell the same story.

Posted by rjleaman on June 19, 2008 19:00 | 0 comments | Permalink |

You cannot escape technical jargon

This is a guest post by Vincent Tan, a fellow technical person who writes about programming and mathematics at Polymath Programmer.

You've read Ben's beginner's guide to HTML. You've read his guide to FTP too. Maybe you've tried to wrap your head around the explanations. Perhaps you've even succeeded (I certainly hope so). Possibly you've tried to understand what you could, and just follow along.

But something's gnawing at your heart. Something insidious is eating away your sanity. Something is making you fling your hands up in despair. You just want to blog. Why is there so much technical jargon?  

It used to be consumed

The Internet started off as a network for scientists to communicate and share ideas. Then the big companies wanted in too, and corporate sites and e-commerce sites were built. Then people like you wanted to build your own sites, but the barrier to entry was too high. You needed to learn HTML, CSS, and other weird technical terms.

Basically you needed to be a technical person, a programmer or web designer. And so the initial personal sites were mostly by people with technical knowledge. You just contented yourself with consuming information.

Then the tides turned. Those technical people decided if they're the only ones building sites and contributing information, it's going to be boring (not to mention tedious). So they wrote software so people with less technical knowledge can join too. TypePad, WordPress, Injader and other content management systems and blogging software were created.

Next came the ability to share music and audio files on sites such as Last.fm or start your own podcast. You can also upload videos on YouTube and Vimeo. Text, images, audio and video. You can now create all of them, without knowing a lot about the actual innards of site creation.

You're not just a consumer of information anymore; you're a publisher too.  

That lingering fear

Yet an uneasy feeling caresses your heart, teasing you, taunting you. And when you least expect it, it strikes fear into your very being. Face it, you're just plain scared of the computer sometimes.

Out of mankind's inventions, the computer is one of the most versatile and useful ones, yet it's seemingly arcane. I mean, you push a button and off goes an email. Or a movie ticket is bought. You can even talk to someone on the other side of the globe with it.

And the only people who really understand, are the technical people. And you're not one of them. And that scares you.  

Yes, they really are smarter than you

They've got years of experience working with computers and related technologies. They've probably had years of academic study too. That makes technical people smart, in the sense that they can figure out solutions for blogging, web design and one of them nifty widget thingies.

You're smart too and you've got your own jargon. You a chef? Julienning. You a doctor? Myocardial infarction. You a stock analyst? Bull market.

The reason why you're hip-deep in technical jargon even though you just want to blog is, you are hip-deep in the technological world. Remember the Internet scientists? You don't feel much of the technical stuff because those very same technical people are working very hard to create the perception that blogging is easy.

So why are there still so much technical jargon? Because...  

Technology moves fast

New concepts get created. New gadgets get made. And the new technology needs to be named. Thus a new term is spawned, with much congratulations and back-patting amongst the techno people (yes, it's an embarrassing failing...). Poor you have to deal with the new jargon.

What can you do? Just ask. That's why there are people like Ben around. Sure, there are wicked, evil, rude and arrogant technical people. Just as there are impassive doctors or unfriendly waiters. You just have to know who to ask (here, click here).  

It's up to you...

Do you fear technology?
Are you scared of asking for technical help?
What's your niche? What are your jargon?

Posted by Vincent on June 14, 2008 19:00 | 4 comments | Permalink |

How often should you promote your blog?

This is a guest post from Rebecca Leaman.  She writes on nonprofit technology and web 2.0 topics for the Wild Apricot Blog, and doubles as 'Jen/domestika' at Domestik Goddess and on the Authority Blogger forum.

How often to promote your blog - what kind of time investment and effort you'll need to put into networking and promotion activities - depends on two main factors:

• What do you want to achieve with your blog?
• What promotion methods will you use?

Adsense Bloggers

Bloggers who seek ad clicks need a constant supply of traffic to their blogs. Regular readers do become "ad blind" over time, and stop noticing the ads, let alone clicking on them. This means that if advertising income is the main purpose of your blog, you will need to attract a steady stream of new visitors or that ad revenue will drop.  In that case, blog promotion needs to be an on-going and intensive effort. Think, a significant daily investment in networking and/or advertising.

Authority Bloggers

At the opposite end of the blogging spectrum are bloggers who seek to build a loyal core following of readers and subscribers. The main goal of such a blog is to support the blogger's other professional activities (web design, writing, public speaking, and consulting services, for example), online courses, books or e-books, or a host of other products and services.  For a blogger of this type, on-going promotion is still essential - it's a total myth that you can "build it and they will come," and high-value content, while a critical component to building readership, won't float a blog that no one knows about.

Best-of-Both-Worlds Bloggers

The majority of bloggers are somewhere in the middle - striving to build a steady base of readers and subscribers, yet depending (more or less) on advertising income, to meet expenses or simply to justify the considerable amount of time and effort it takes to build a successful blog. 

Does this sound like you?

For the Best-of-Both-Worlds Blogger, how often you should promote your blog will come down to the goals you set for your blog, and the blog promotion methods you choose to use.

What's realistic in terms of goals will depend on the individual blog.  Some subject niches are overcrowded, while others are so narrow that the potential for growth is limited by the relatively small target audience - but it's likely to be most useful to think in terms of steady gains rather than leaps and windfalls, and to measure your progress in percentages rather than fixed numbers.

Some bloggers keep an eye on their site stats and do a promotional blast whenever they see their traffic begin to drop.  Others see promotion as an on-going activity - and I'm in that school of thought.

As for promotion methods, there's no shortage of possibilities. It seems that every day brings some new directory or social-networking site or link exchange widget; new blogs with which to network are springing up each minute; advertising opportunities are limited only by time and funds. 

3-step blog promotion strategy

I like to subdivide that overwhelming array of options into 3 different types of blog promotion.  There's a good bit of overlap, but I’ve found this a useful 3-step blog promotion strategy.

1. Advertising and listing: Kick start a new blog

In real life, think of roadside billboards, classified ads, and phone book listings.  In the blogosphere, we're talking about a specific online space where your blog link, name, tag line, Feedburner headline animation image, logo, and/or display ad is shown to prospective visitors.  Advertising is usually for a limited period of time, while a listing in a directory may be retained indefinitely.

Advertising requires very little time and effort, once you've done whatever extra keyword research might be required and got yourself a nice ad banner or button graphic.  Make an Adwords purchase, for example, or buy ad space on another site, sign up for a feed-exchange widget like BlogRush, or exchange blogroll links with another blogger - and that's it, your ad is out there.  No more action is required.

Conventional wisdom says (and everything I've seen tends to bear this out) that straight-up advertising like this will do the most good when a blog is first launched.  Do submit your newly launched blog to those reputable directories that readers in your niche are actually using, avoiding the blatant link farms that search engines tend to penalize - for a very small effort, it can give a good start on getting a new blog crawled by the search engines.  Better yet, submit your blog's dynamic sitemap to the search engines directly. Think about buying a few well-placed ads, if your budget and comfort level will allow.

Some blogs do better with advertising than others. Watch your site metrics and make an assessment of how your ads are performing: an occasional ad campaign may give a much-needed boost if traffic starts to drop off. For most of us, however, advertising and listing will be a one-shot effort.

2. Outreach and social networking: Grow your blog

Outreach promotion includes those methods where the level of success is in more-or-less direct proportion to the blogger's actions.  Consider the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and countless others, where success depends on the blogger's ability to make "Friends" - just posting a link or RSS feed is not going to cut it.

Signature links, displayed when you participate in a forum, for example, are actually just another form of advertising - a passive display that the viewer may or may not choose to follow up on - but active participation in the forum discussions will greatly increase its effectiveness.  Entrecard members, similarly, find the credit-based program works best for those who take advantage of the site’s forum and its recommendation and message features to interact with others.

The key to successful social networking is reaching out to make a human connection with other bloggers - person to person.  It takes a genuine effort, but the results are invariably worth it.

Blog commenting should be the main focus of promotion efforts for any blog in the active growing stages, without a doubt. And don't overlook the other side of commenting, too - respond to your readers' comments and keep the conversation going if you can. When it's your blog that the action is happening on, your visitors will have another reason to come back again!

How many blogs should you comment on, and how often?  I'd say, check out blogs within your niche whenever you have the time to spare - without taking time away from adding high-quality content to your own blog - and comment wherever you feel that you have something to contribute to the conversation.

Tip: Think of every blog comment as a "mini guest post" - a sample of what your blog has to offer.

3. Writing for others: Ramp up the outreach

This is the most labour-intensive of blog promotion methods, but it can pay off in taking your promotion efforts to a broader audience and a higher level of engagement.  Guest posts, interviews, and article syndication are obvious examples of writing that you might do for other blogs and websites in order to help promote your own blog.

If you enjoy participating in blog carnivals, group writing projects, and memes, those would come under this heading too. Yes, all involve writing posts on your own blog, but I'm rolling them in here because in most cases you're not only linking back to the originating blog but also writing on someone else's choice of topic.  Be sure that it's not pulling your blog too far off-topic!

I'd also include in this category some other small pieces of writing you might do on sites that aren't your own: StumbleUpon reviews, Entrecard recommendations, value-added comments on social-bookmarking sites like Digg and Mixx, good meaty forum posts, and so on. Each of these small pieces will go to build your "brand" as a blogger, and create a positive public profile.

And that's an important point.

Blog promotion is all about branding - and then delivering on the promise of that brand identity.  That’s why promotion is an on-going part of being a blogger, not a separate set of tasks to fit in on the side. In the final analysis, every action you take online will count toward your blog’s success - or against it.

What do you think?

What kind of blogger are you?
How often do you promote your blog?
What do you think of the 3-step promotional strategy outlined above?

Posted by rjleaman on March 19, 2008 14:22 | 6 comments | Permalink |

How to use BlogCatalog to gain exposure

This is a guest post from Jason of Jason Boom dot com.

There's been a lot of hubbub recently about the new BlogCatalog interface. BlogCatalog incorporated many social media sites into the dashboard's Community section to help sites receive exposure. For those wondering what BlogCatalog does for your blog, I'll give a quick rundown.

• Personal Profile, including an avatar that displays on sites running the BlogCatalog reader widget
  
• Neighborhoods for each blog you submit
  
• Ability to add friends
• Ability to communicate quickly with your neighborhood
• News Feeds of social media activity
• Discussions
  

At its core, BlogCatalog is a directory of blogs. They expanded on the commonplace form to include many social media style features. You can add friends, join neighborhoods, read RSS feeds, and message contacts effortlessly. This adds to the appeal of BlogCatalog as opposed to standard directories.

Neighborhoods

A neighborhood for your blog represents your site's footprint inside the BlogCatalog community. When visitors find your site through the network, they can join your neighborhood. Inside your neighborhood page, they can read your recent posts, view other members, and post comment/reviews about your blog.

Those who join the neighborhood would rightfully be seen as fans of the site. While you can join a neighborhood, many users add bloggers as friends instead. A neighborhood filled with members appeals to users the same as high RSS subscriber numbers. I equate this to peer pressure. If five hundred others are doing it, then I should be too.

The benefit of the neighborhoods still eludes me. I know they showcase the sites you adulate, but for me it seems somewhat redundant. I'm already adding the site owner as a contact/friend, so why would I join their neighborhood? Adding bloggers as friends seems much more productive.

My Communities

A plethora of social media sites, including popular destinations like Digg, StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog, Reddit, Technorati, Facebook, and Sphinn can be tapped for more exposure. In your community section, you give your username information for these social media sites, and BlogCatalog imports all your activity into your profile. The next person to run across your BlogCatalog profile will see what you recently Dugg, Sphunn, and Twittered.

Your visitors view your most recent Diggs, Sphinns and other social media happenings in an RSS feed. This litany of current social media activity harnesses a valuable resource -- your friends' attention. By showing everyone what you just Stumbled, you're encouraging them to also Stumble those articles. If your friends take action and give the content a thumbs up, then your Stumble vote should become more influential in the community. This is just one subtle benefit of showing your social media activity.

News Feed Widget

The BlogCatalog team announced on Sunday evening, via email, that they have created a News Feed Widget. The widget can be placed anywhere on your site and it shows visitors your recent activity on all the aforementioned social media sites.

A visitor to your site can now connect to you on many different levels. They can read your content, and then follow your activity on all the various social media sites. This virtual trail can be good for some sites and not so good for others.

If nothing else, it forces us to always be aware of what we endorse. Are we a weight loss blog stumbling a site promoting unhealthy lifestyles? Do we align ourselves with Democrats on our blog then Digg a McCain lovefest article?

Of course, many users would not have these problems, but it is something to consider. Does the benefit outweigh the negatives? Can we grow our readership and our credibility as a source through these mediums?

Does BlogCatalog Bring Traffic?

To receive substantial traffic, you must be an active member of the BlogCatalog site. It's also a good strategy to join active neighborhoods in your niche, participate in discussions in those neighborhoods, and leave reviews for the blogs you enjoy. All this brings in traffic.

The broadcast feature is popular among bloggers. A broadcast enables you to release a message to all your friends. I've seen many of my BlogCatalog friends use this to encourage visits to their site, request diggs of a post, market a contest, and invite friends to new social media sites. I've also seen it become spam. Broadcasting stellar posts on your own site should lead to more quality visits. I usually ignore spam users and their content. There is a fine line between being annoying and being informative.

Conclusion

Overall I think BlogCatalog is worth the time and effort. We can grow our readership through active participation, and also find some new sites for our feed reader. The recent additions of social media surveillance may benefit some site owners, while others may enjoy the simple interaction of placing reviews for the blogs they read. The site has a lot of potential for expanding your reader base and for communicating with a wider audience.

What do you think?

How does BlogCatalog compare to other networking sites?
How active are you in the BlogCatalog community?
If you're not using BlogCatalog much at the moment, will this article encourage you to dig deeper into the site?

Posted by Jason Boom on March 10, 2008 16:51 | 9 comments | Permalink |