Blog Professional

As I indicated in a comment in a post  I read today over at Kian’s blog,  I had to make my own sound in the echosphere. Yeah, I called an "echosphere" for a reason because Kian is experiencing something I have also experienced and continue to deal with like the feeling of having my eyes pried open with toothpicks and forced to watch I Love Lucy 24/7. I can only read Scoble’s take on a topic, or Winer’s thoughts about this and that, and what Doc told me today, so many times before I start to think about jumping out my office window.  In this case only 3 feet off the ground but nonetheless, totally whacked.

**Please note that I am completely  hypocritical in that statement 1. because I am envious of their traffic readership, and 2. the reason they are so easy to link to is because all I have to do is Google there last names, or in Doc’s case the word "Doc" and I get a first page search response.  This is a result of the echo chamber I complain of and using blogs to my preached point about SEO.**

With that said, let me explain the blogging echo chamber dilemma.  Blogs are real time.  As fast as something can be typed and the publish button pushed, words can be transmitted to readers all over the world.  When you have people that are gurus as I have mentioned above, everyone is excited to report what exciting thing they read today over at this popular blog.  If they are excited to report it, and you are also excited, and both of you blog it and make me click to go read it, you can see where you get caught up in that echo chamber or the "blogging fissure" (my phrase).

Now throw into that recipe a dash of RSS.  Many of these gurus and leaders in their respective industries, all like to get their message read and have many vehicles to publish within.  I’m going to single out specifically a site I have had this problem with, not necessarily to pick a fight but because they may actually read this and take it as feedback. WebProNews is the vehicle of which I speak.  I have nearly every single author or columnist they have in their stable in my feed reader.  Meaning I can read what Scoble (I’m not picking on you Robert it’s just your name’s easy to type and to remember) said in my feeds in the morning with coffee.  I really don’t need to read that same article in the afternoon published word for word on WPN.  I’m afraid it does not end there.  For whatever reason, Bloglines (my main feed reader) picks up this feed again and again, publishing the same feed again, with possibly a new feed thrown in once they have cut and pasted an article from another WPN author. This can go on throughout the day, causing a dozen "unread" feeds.  I’m sorry, it still does not end there.  Now throw in that bowl and fold, the fact that I have search feeds with search strings I follow related to the industry, and for clients, and for metrics.  Due to having these feeds, a search tag may be related to "Business Blogging", which means that every article that is tagged business blogging ends up sent to me as "new content".  In reality it was that same Scoble article I read in the morning.  We professional bloggers that like to stay on the lunatic fringe of blog consulting, blog marketing and blog advertising (oh man this is a keyword feast!) have now read 20 articles written by 50 different authors, sent to us 5 times, and thrown on our windshield again by our own need for information.  You can see how the echo chamber is suddenly a recipe of disaster.

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A classic example of a service we provide as professional bloggers.  A very influential blogger is asking for recommendations for a new office chair.  As I read through the post and the comments I began to wonder whether someone at Herman Miller or any of its competitors was reading the same thing.  Do they know what is going on and the conversation that is taking place?  I ran off to the Herman Miller site to see what I could find.  The first thing that was obvious, is they did not have a blog.  Okay perhaps I am somewhat biased in that respect, but nonetheless, they should have one. 

They have a media page with some contacts, but what about their company news?  Okay, they seem to have a form I have to spend time to fill out and then they have all of this information about me I was not wanting to give.  A nice RSS feed for their press releases would be a dynamite addition without of course having a blog to discuss news. I searched their site hoping to find a blog mention.  Actually, they offered to allow me to speak to a human which I add in the plus column.

Technorati produced over 5,000 posts about the "Aeron Chair", and "Herman Miller" produced a whopping 10K+ in results.  This is just scratching the surface of what I could gather given the proper time and motivation.  I’ll keep an eye on Darren’s post to see if perhaps a Herman Miller employee or a PR representative might make comment.  Perhaps a competitor will show up to provide their input.  In any respect, this is a good case study for businesses thinking about what might be happening in the blogosphere.  It just so happens we do offer this Collaborative Intelligence™ to our clients.  If you happen to find this and are from Herman Miller, kudos to you.  If not, perhaps we need to talk to you about your Collaborative Intelligence™ campaign.

Tags: professional blogger, problogger.net, Darren Rowse, Blog Marketing, RSS, Herman Miller, office chairs, Technorati, PR, Collaborative Intelligence

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I am one of those that every year during this time laments the last 12 weeks of NFL Football and looks back on what could have been or what might have been in my fantasy football league. Apparently, I am not the only one that is joining in this ritual.

In a recent article I read at Marketing Vox:

Sixteen million adults are expected to compete in fantasy football leagues this year, up from fourteen million in 2005, CNET reports. Fantasy football’s growing popularity is a boon to host sites, such as CBS Sportsline, Yahoo, and ESPN.com. ESPN says its traffic for September was up over 17 percent from September 2005 totals, and executives credit the site’s fantasy football leagues as being the prime driver of the increase.

Websites that host popular leagues benefit not only from a surge in traffic but also from the time that each user spends online. Fantasy football players tend to pour over statistics online, looking for any advantage they can gain over the competition. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) estimates that each player spends three hours a week researching players. Those are the kind of stats that sites like to show off to advertisers.

I was curious after reading the article as to how many Fantasy Football Blogs are out there and what professional bloggers are doing to capture some of this audience. I performed a cursory search. I then visited each blog on the first page of results. Some appear to do it for the pure joy of talking football. Some of the other sites appear to understand the power of traffic and earnings.

I only know of one network that has put out the word for a professional blogger, but it seems to me that if you wanted to earn some decent money via blogs and fantasy football, it might make sense to add a Fantasy Football Blog to your stable of blogs making advertising dollars.

Tags: Fantasy Football, Blog Revenue, Blog Earnings, Marketing Vox, ESPN, CBS Sportsline, Yahoo, professional bloggers

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To plan a vacation many things are needed like booking hotels room, and a to-do list should be made, cheap airline deals must be bought. In fact, planning an adventurous cheap travel vacation is a very tough job. That is why many people get help from a travel guide. They help you in selecting the best vacation packages. If you really don’t know which is the best package then you can read about different flight tickets on blogs and select the one which suits your requirements. If you don’t want to get the help of travel guide and want to find the best cheap cruises then website articles and bloggers posts can really be of great help.

It was about time.

WordpressTutorials.com version 1.0 was formatted as a direct marketing long salesletter.

WordpressTutorials.com version 2.0 is intended to attract a mainstream business audience, the internet marketing audience and the media.

Launched Tuesday November 14th, it presents a clean, 'less-is-more', Mac-ish feel to the layout, creative and tone. I've always been inspired by Apple creative, so this is my rendition of that style for Wordpress Tutorials (WPT).

This was a project long overdue, which started in September, but was in my mind many months before. I've been working with Wayne Kelly, a professional radio DJ, and realized that in order to be 'friendly' to media types and the mainstream audience, I needed to present WPT as a professional quality product and website, congruent with the quality of the videos backstage.

In addition, blogs and blogging is 'old hat' to the Internet Marketing (IM) sector, but outside of this IM 'bubble', there are many sectors and audiences who are still not familiar with blogs, blogging, their purpose and the power of blogging to build customer relationships, increase sales and maximize profits.

With this in mind, WPT 2.0 seeks to be more education-focused, and is mindful of the different needs and situations that new visitors have.

I welcome you to browse and read the new pages at WordpressTutorials.com. I welcome your feedback and comments on this new facelift and extreme makeover.

As I sipped my morning coffee and ran quickly through my morning ritual of reading RSS feeds, email and my mandatory blog reading, I ran across a post by Mike Manuel of WebProNews. It was early yet so I made sure to again read the article to make sure I had reads the content correctly. After determining that I had not imagined that I read something I hadn’t, I decided that I needed to respond diligently to the remarks made and to debate Mike’s wisdom. Mike’s post is sweet and to the point which is what I like in blog posts when I have a thousand articles to skim in a day.

Small business owners, a tip:

Some blowhard bloggers will have you believe that blogging is the best way to buddy up with the search engines and boost your business on the web.

Please-don’t-buy-it.

The ratio of time invested to return in awareness and sales just doesn’t net out in your favor, at least not for most owners.

Instead, invest your energy and effort in local search services and recommendation engines. These will have an immediate and measurable return for your business online. To do this, simply encourage your customers to share their experiences with your business with local search engines like Yahoo! Local or Google Local.

Customer comments, ratings, reviews, and recommendations are increasingly the first results people see when they do location-based searches. They’re also, arguably, the most influential…

[Disclosure: Yahoo! is a client of mine]

Thanks for the brevity Mike and my counterpoint will be as equally brief.

Obviously if Mike has Yahoo as a client, he is an expert in his field and probably has a lot of experience and know how, and I would in no way question his ability to advise people like Yahoo. My advice is to ignore Mike’s article and disregard its discussion of small businesses staying regional. I want to make sure that Mike is credited with adding that blogging does not net a “return on awareness” for most owners. I’m not sure which “owners” mike refers to but I disagree with his reasoning, but agree that a very small percentage of businesses would not see a benefit of blogging if they were spending a large portion of their advertising budget to garner attention.

I suppose I’m one of the “blowhards” Mike refers to and I suppose it stands to reason that I am a proponent of small businesses blogging, one because that is how I feed my kids, but also because I strongly believe in blogs as a tool to stay ahead of your competition. I don’t see where blogging might help the local dog grooming shop in your town, as their client’s would probably not travel outside the local area to have Rex of FiFi groomed. Understood. Where I disagree is the local travel agent that relies heavily on Mom and Pop Downtown to stop by and book their cruise for that retirement celebration. Yeah this agent services her local clients, but this agent can also benefit from providing travel services to people all over the country. If I’m in Cleveland and the agent is in the small town of Estes Park, Colorado and I want to travel to see an Elk, I might not book that with the local agent in my suburb of Parma, Ohio, but I might get online with my computer and Google travel to Estes Park. As a result of the power of blogs and their ability to produce stellar organic results, my small local travel agency found a new client. The return on awareness? I’m not sure at that moment I really care Mike, but the cost of blogging was paid for when I captured the attention of that potential customer and made a sale. I wasn’t just a local vendor but I was now a national agency. Limiting the vision of small business also limits its ability to compete as a small business on the large business scale.

Mike Manuel also blogs at Marketing Guerilla.

Tags: Mike Manuel, WebProNews, Google Local, Yahoo Local, small business blogging, SEO, SEM

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When I was a young child I was diagnosed with ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder.  The doctors and specialists wanted to put me on Ritalin, but my mother stood firm, no child of hers would be taking drugs.  She would manage my disorder and make me a overcome the problem.  She allowed me to be enrolled in a special class of others with the same problem and by the end of the school year I think we had clearly trained our second grade teacher in the ways of ADD.  She could not hold her attention to her classroom duties long enough between recess sessions.  I guess I should someday apologize to that poor woman.  My point is not to discuss the issues of ADD or to discuss how to overcome the disorder.  I know after 30+ years I still….oh look something shiny…where was I?  Oh yes, keeping your reader’s attention.

When I recently attended the Blog Business Summit, John Furrier of Podtech mentioned a quip about the length of podcasts:

"You should do ‘Stair Master podcasts’ as a rule"

What I hope he meant rather than exercise while listening to podcasts, is to keep it short and to the point.  You only have so much time to get your message across then your audience begins to drift and they begin to want to move on to the next shiny thing.  The same goes for posting an article or item on your blogs.  If I want to read War and Peace, I will make sure to run to the nearest bookstore, but then again the last time I did that I had to stop and look at the swimsuit calendars…see what happens?  When you are blogging and posting items stay within these simple rules:

Keep it simple: Nobody likes to have to work, that’s why they don’t call it play.

Keep it short:  If you go on too long, you may lose that reader and a lost reader might be a reader never to return.

Make it informative:  People don’t want to have wasted their time reading something only to get to the end to find out you have not allowed them to learn something or to get informed.

Make it fun:  We all receive those funny emails we forward. Perhaps your post will be forwarded if you make your reader smile.

Make it controversial:  I don’t often go this route because I hate to get into flame wars with people because it takes to much time.  When people get into a heated discussion their attention is captured.

Send them away with your blog in mind:  Link them to another post they might enjoy as they feed their attention, or merely create something shiny or distracting that…

Did you guys know that Reese Witherspoon and Britney Spears are about to be on the singles list?

Tags: ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder, Blog Business Summit, BBS06, John Furrier, Podtech, Reese Witherspoon, Britney Spears

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Not that we couldn’t tell how important social networks were by the amount of money being shelled out for these types of networks, but as far as their popularity, it looks like they are garnering all the attention.  According to the online competitive intelligence service called Hitwise, 1 in 20 of all web visits in the month of September were to social networks.  It is indicated and reported by Marketing Vox that this is nearly more than double the share of traffic at this time last year.

How important is it for companies to realize that the future of business lies in the bosom of the Internet?

Some 2.4 percent of September visits to websites in the Shopping & Classifieds category came directly from MySpace, an increase of 83 percent from March 2006. Sites in other industry categories receiving increased traffic from MySpace in that period were Telecommunications, Banks and Financial Institutions, and Travel.

The Marketing Vox article quotes LeeAnn Prescott, director of research at Hitwise:

"The use of social networking, photo hosting, and online video websites represent a significant shift in online user behavior…"

If you haven’t been hit over the head by us online strategists, with an online marketing strategy to keep up with the consumer use of the web, it may be too late.  These social networks are snapping up all the early adopters and these people will influence the way the people that follow will use their time, money, and how they play and work.  It’s time to start your strategy for your company to hop on the wave.  It’s not too late, but why wait until you have to play catch up to the rest of your competition?

Tags: Hitwise, Marketing Vox, Social Networks, Web 2.0, Online Marketing, Business Blogging, Competitive Intelligence

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The funny thing about being new to the tech game after being involved in the legal field for over 20 years, is I have no idea what it felt like when the Internet bubble burst in the 90’s. I am sure it could not have been a very fun time for people and I pray that it never happens again especially to me. SFGate.com has posted the Top 10 Lies of Web 2.0 . I chuckled until my sides hurt then I realized after I had just been to the Blog Business Summit 2006, that I had actually heard a few of these statements. History does have a way of repeating itself.

The irony does not end there, because I was thinking about Blog Bubble or a bubble burst earlier when I read about Niiklas Zennström and Skypecasts coming soon. If you read between the lines of that CNet article you can see the idea that perhaps Skype was riding the wave and bailed a little early not wanting to get in another bubble burst when they reference their $60M price tag and YouTube’s $1.65B price tag.

6. The analysts are trustworthy now. Like the one who said MySpace will be worth $15 billion in a few years — or was that the one who said Amazon was worth $400 a share? Whoops, I’m mixing my bubbles.

Did they sale too early? I am not sure, but I can assure you that I would rather have the B than the M after the dollar signs. Of course, time will only tell, but Dan Fost’s words will echo in my mind as my head hits the pillow this evening.

Tags: SFGate.com, Blog Bubble, Web Bubble, Web 2.0, BBS, Blog Business Summit, Niiklas Zennstrom, Skype, Dan Fost, CNet

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Once your website is on the World Wide Web then the only thing that is effective internet marketing to promote the site. There are different advertising tips and tools to promote the web site and the most famous one is setting up your own affiliate program as well as PPC marketing, adsense marketing and blogs. Even though email marketing software automatically sends the emails to the end users, this technique is not very popular because people consider them as spam. Another most effective and inexpensive way to promote your web site on the internet is search engine submission. These all services that are provided by webhosting providers which have dedicated servers. The data recovery program is installed on that server which takes continuously backups on a backup device.

Due to the fact that I am a card carrying member of the Clan MacLeod, I found Hugh MacLeod quite by mistake a couple years ago. I like Hugh’s style because he tends to push the envelope when it comes to blog marketing. His use of business cards with messages always has me in stitches, but today it was about his take on Kathy Sierra’s post about being professional versus passionate First Hugh’s cartoon today caused my keyboard to be sprayed with a gulp of joe I had just tried to savor.

Kathy eloquently states:

We all have to decide what constitutes “professionalism” for our own business. And my standards might be much lower (or rather different) from yours. One of my favorite exchanges was between Hugh MacLeod and one of his commenters, some time back. Hugh, not known for self-censorship, was told, “Maybe you’d have more clients if you stopped using such inappropriate language.” His response: “If that’s what I’d have to do to win those clients, they aren’t the people I’d want to work with anyway.”

I tell all of my bloggers to use common sense and have an idea of the client they are representing. Many client’s as Kathy notes won’t allow even the most non-inflammatory comments on a blog and others are all about telling it like it is. There can be a fine line between the two, but that line is growing ever more gray as people like Hugh and Kathy get out their erasers.

I’ve had client’s tell me that the launch of their new blog is so cool it will light your hair on fire, or that it is totally awesome! I have yet to reach the milestone of a client telling me that the blog is “F**king cool!” I guess we set our new milestone for 2007.

Hold Fast Hugh!

Tags: Hugh MacLeod, Kathy Sierra, professionalism, pro blogging

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One of the toughest things about being a blogger, much less a professional blogger, is finding great topics and content for posts.  Personally I follow the fire-hose of RSS feeds (don’t ask how many, I don’t know anymore, but a lot) model.  This is where you subscribe to so many feeds that something is bound to catch your eye everyday (usually several somethings).  Still, especially when writing for a new client or niche area, it’s tough getting a really killer post together.  Patsi Krakoff has 17 great tips that can jump start your post writing and because the content of the post is just the tips, you’re just going to have to click over and read them over on her blog, don’t worry I don’t mind.

I’ll catch you again on my next post.

Hat tip: 17 Sources for Content Inspiration

Tags: blogging, professional blogging, post inspiration, content inspiration