I highly recommend that you become familiar with how Google’s newly launched SideWiki[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjJOsx84MA[/youtube] works. It gives folks an incredible amount of power in terms of becoming a new army of “sidewikians” that will “sidegraffitize” the whole Web. Ok, maybe that’s a little too scary sounding.
It does however make it more interesting in terms of content on the Web, how Web 2.0 is continuously democratizing content on the Web and what will happen in the future.
For instance, if you’re a blogger who doesn’t allow comments on your blog, this will actually provide a workaround for folks to still be able to comment on your site. What the Friday??!!! Yep. Don’t be afraid, but check it out so you can stay aware of it.
Be brave you can catch this SideWiki tiger by the tail and use it for the greater good!!!
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYM256yuAqQ[/youtube]
Ok, I just stuck that video up there because it made me laugh. It also reveals a deeper question to ponder about product endorsements/reviews and how they can quickly turn to broken painful shells in one’s marketing plan. (Or at the bottom of one’s bathtub.)
Now, back to the topic of the day, blogroll-scrubbing. I recommend that you take time out about every three months and scrub your blogroll.
Does this entail real soap or painful walnut shells? Nope.
Here are five easy steps to take to do a good blogroll scrubbing.
1. Hit each blogroll link, and make sure the blogs are still lively (or even alive.)
2. Make certain they still have the content you want to refer your readers to.
3. If there are blogs that aren’t updated anymore then take them off your blog and let them rest in peace in the blog cemetery.
4. If you have blogs on your roll that no longer reflect your mission, your standards or your focus, then take those off as well.
5. For every two blog links you scrub, find one new one to take its place.
Keep your blog roll timely and always remember it’s a virtual library shelf for your blog visitors. You don’t want any resources or links up there that won’t be helpful to your community.
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If you think of your blog as an online magazine (which you should) then one of the best ways to beat bloggers’block is to create an editorial calendar for your blog posts. Organizing your blog topics and future posts in this manner will help inspire you to write more and kvetch less about having nothing to write about.
What follows are five tips for creating your blog editorial calendar:
1. Pick five to seven general topics in your frame of expertise that you know you can generate good content with.
2. Brainstorm on each topic for 20 minutes. Write down every single thing that comes to mind under each of those content headers.
3. Look at the newly created content under those headers and divide it by days of the week. Remember if you can blog at least three days a week it is invaluable to your blog’s visibility.
4. Take the content you have and see if you can break it up into Friday tips, or Monday takeaways. In other words, establish an editorial pattern for your blogging. If you want to always blog on Fridays about how to find inner creativity, then that would always be a Friday post and you can create tons of future content around that specific topic.
5. If there are areas of your content that seemed much harder to brainstorm on then you’ll know which ones you need to do more research for and find outside sources as well as your own insight to incorporate into the blog posts.
Bonus Tip: Spend 30 minutes a day three times a week on blogging and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your blog starts building long-term community.
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Fantastic insider’s look at how The New York Times uses the WordPress blogging platform to generate hundreds of posts daily.
If you truly want to understand why blogging is powerful, how it is not going away and why you should be blogging then read this article.
The article was penned by fantastic journalist Paul Boutin and features insight from Damon Darin, The New York Times Technology Editor.
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Here are my ten favorite things about writing a blog:
1. Instantaneous gratification after you’ve finished a post.
2. No writers’ block allowed or “blog block.” If you don’t have something to blog about – then take time out to thank or link to all those other peer blogs who inspire you.
3. Freedom from an editor or story slant – although note, this never means your blog should be sloppy and not congruent.
4. E-meeting tons of other bloggers who are supportive and active in the blogosphere
5. Reaching out to potential readers and establishing a rapport.
6. Interviewing other bloggers
7. Writing anything keeps you creative and focused. It’s too easy as a writer, to get lazy and not challenge yourself. Writing blogs keeps you challenged!
8. Hoping someone will comment on your blog. (Someone…anyone…Mom?)
9. Getting feedback that you’re on the right track and you’re helping folks view the world at a better vantage point.
10. Link Love – it’s fun and festive and you get to meet other link-minded folks!
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- Image via CrunchBase
We’re starting to see several different companies including Cision and some new entrepreneurial folks building their own blog contact lists and selling them so I wanted to give my take on these.
I think these lists can be valuable in terms of doing some of the leg work for you and finding good blogs in a certain pitch arena, but they absolutely should not be incorporated into a mass pitch PR list.
The downside to all these “the most exhaustive blogger list” offerings - is that they also portend a giant potential for not using them in the best possible fashion.
If you’re going to purchase these lists, it does not take away from the due diligence and respect you should always employ when reaching out to bloggers, journalists and online publications. Don’t use these lists to do massive same as usual PR spam and I highly encourage you to read each and every blog you’re going to reach out to.
Timesaving? Not really. Respectful to the online world and bloggers? Absolutely, which will serve you much better in the long run.
And if you can’t afford to buy these lists, not to worry. Simply take one hour a day and build your own lists. There’s no magic in any of this! Use sites like Alexa.com, Technorati, you can even use this cool free PageRanker tool for the Google page rankings.
Go ahead and put your own page in there while you’re at it! The higher the page rank on Google the better.
With one caveat! Don’t completely judge a blog by its number on any of these tools. Just because a blog might have thousands of readers, are those the readers who are going to buy your book, and champion it? It depends and that’s why you need to be respectful and do your research.
Despite what all these new “talking heads” on the Web tell you there are no magical shortcuts to building a “tribe” as Seth Godin so aptly calls it.
Also, please keep in mind that the Web itself is full of actionable insight that is free! It’s on all the technology publication sites and has been vetted and created by technology journalists ( I was one for ten years), so before you BUY into all this new information and think you have to PURCHASE things to understand how this all works, take some time and research just as you would if you were purchasing a new car or any other big product!
Don’t take the word of a NEW Web Guru. There’s nothing like good old fashioned research and legwork to find the best answers possible. Be a social media learner (like I am) not a social media expert follower.
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In honor of Al Franken, I had to use his Stuart Smalley phrase in the headline of this blog. The bigger question in the headline is actually a phrase I hear all too often when I’m working with clients on their blogs who say, “I have nothing to blog about. Nothing.”
When you’re blogging, your ideas for content should be limitless. Don’t give into bloggers’ block and stinkin thinkin that you don’t have anything important to say. Everyone has something to contribute in this amazing time of Web 2.0.
While you want to keep your blog topics consistent, congruent and captivating, you can do this easily by establishing a theme for your entire blog.
When I was a magazine editor we always had an overall theme to each issue of the publication, you can do the same thing with a blog.
First, build a real editorial calendar (An editorial calendar shows the major editorial features planned for forthcoming issues of a newspaper, magazine, and similar. …), I use an Excel spreadsheet.
In the spreadsheet put down all the themes/ideas that you want your blog to convey.
Once you have those built, then you can start using that spreadsheet as your editorial guide for the entire blog. Break it up into days of the week to drill down even more what you’ll post, when you’ll post and what sources you’ll be drawing from.
If you blog three times a week then it might be on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
So for example:
Mondays – post 3 tips
Wednesdays - post 3 links to valuable insights from other bloggers in your peer arena and add one of your own.
Fridays – How-to post on your vertical – These are posts that establish and build your thought leadership in your arena, so depending on what you’ re doing they might be, “How to drive book sales?”, “How to get more b2b leads?”, or even “How to go green in the office.”
If you don’t want your blog to join the blog cemetery, where it gradually dies on the blog vine for lack of content and updating, then employing an editorial calendar is a great tool to keep the content lively.
The other bonus you’ll have by using an editorial calendar is that you’ll be able to find and repurpose your blog content more easily. You’ll also find that you might just see visitor spikes on certain topics and this will give you a superb way to track what content your audience is most interested in as well.
Other ways to beat BLOGGERs BLOCK:
1. Stop whining and start typing.
2. Ask your community to occasionally guest post to your blog
3. Read other blogs and news websites to keep ideas flowing
4. Build Google alerts around key themes or ideas and then use those results to spark your writing.
5. Keep in mind that blog posts don’t need to be all the same length. If a 500 word blog post sounds daunting, then set a goal of 300 words per blog post. If you use tags and categories for each post you’ll still be getting Google search power for the post.
6. Use excerpts from other content – case studies, white papers, articles on your website.
Remember as Stuart Smalley noted, “I think this is the best blog I’ve ever done. And you know what? I deserve it! [ turns to his mirror ] Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!” (Ok, he didn’t say blog, but he would have made a great blogger!)
I think this is the best show I’ve ever done. And you know what? I deserve it! [ turns to his mirror ] Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!
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