chrisg.com

One aspect of my presentation over the weekend that I have been giving some thought to is the value of fewer, more in depth articles versus many shorter posts.

Traditionally people would look to the top blogs like BoingBoing and think to be successful in blogging you need to post many times a day. Recently though on the blogs I work on I have seen more benefit from scheduling planned, deep and promoted content.

I wonder if services such as Twitter are taking the ground that the rapid fire posting blogs used to hold. Could it be that blogs will more be for the content that can’t be delivered in a few lines?

This is all from the blogger perspective though, what of the reader? As a reader, which do you prefer? Please vote in the poll and say why in the comments?

(The poll will probably not work in most email or feed readers so you will need to click through to participate)

If you are blogging for a purpose it is not enough just to attract attention, we need things to happen as a consequence. That means at least providing the right content to the right people.

As I have said many times before, while many people are looking for “traffic”, you can often be more successful with a smaller audience.

One of the challenges we face when launching a new blog is what our theme or subject should be. What will attract a good audience for what we have to offer?

The simple answer is to follow the diagram at the top of this page

1. Find out what readers want to know
2. Narrow it down to what you can credibly provide
3. Provide it
4. ??
5. Profit

It can be that simple, but to be truly successful, and to really stand out from the crowd, and actually achieve the goals you set out, you need to do more.

What is that missing element? Engagement.

What is Engagement?

I was going to say “not in the marriage sense” but actually that’s not a bad way of looking at it. You want your audience to stay with you in a relationship for the long haul, not be casual here today gone tomorrow flings!

Most blogs, in fact most websites, have that hit-and-bounce-away effect. We need to create an environment where people want to stay around.

Attract attention, employ occupy (person, powers, thought). Emotional involvement or commitment
– Oxford Illustrated Dictionary.

the act of sharing in the activities of a group; “the teacher tried to increase his students’ engagement in class activities”
– Princeton.edu

Engagement is simply the elements of your blog that cause readers to be more involved:

1. Motivation - Rather than talk to “interest”, can you answer a real need?
2. Attraction - While traffic isn’t the only answer of course it is part of the mix
3. Incentive - What do the visitors expect to receive in return for giving you that attention?
4. Encouragement - How well do you get your readers involved?
5. Interaction - Is the blog a two-way discussion or a one person soap box?
6. Value - Are you providing real and original value?
7. Community - Do people feel a part of something?
8. Loyalty - Is there a willingness to return repeatedly or even bring friends?
9. Connection - How much of a connection do people feel with you?
10. Experience - Most important, is frequenting your blog a positive and rewarding experience?

If you can answer all of those ten points positively and confidently you are onto a winner. Otherwise you need to work on developing your blog into a better culture. Blog culture begins with you and it requires you to be

• Present
• Involved
• Interested
• Open

It’s about putting yourself into your blog and not seeing it purely as a cash delivery device but as a way to interact with your audience and provide them with what you promise. It’s about valuing and respecting your reader.

When you succeed in creating a valuable, interactive, welcoming resource that meets your readers real needs that is when you create an engaged and loyal community.

Over the weekend I had discussions on Twitter with someone who is against the democratizing of the web. This person believes it brings the overall quality down and the media should be left to “professionals” (although this was never defined).

This discussion, combined with last weeks Cluetrain thinking, brought about a thought that I tested on my fellow Twitternauts. I didn’t want to ask directly and tip people off on what I was thinking, so slyly I asked the following question:

If you could only follow one Twitter user, who would it be and why?

My ulterior motive was to see how readily people could come up with a single Twitterer. I was also expecting those who could select a single Twitter user to follow would choose the person with the most variety of Tweets, but I was also hoping for people to choose “connectors” who re-tweet.

Why? I had a theory that, like blogs and society in general, the Twitter community is more than the sum of its parts.

I wasn’t disappointed. Only a few people could name a single Twitter user that they could be happy to follow. Other than family members and close friends it was Problogger followed by DoshDosh who came out tops.

OK, unscientific, and I was aiming to find support for my argument rather than truly test it, but here are my conclusions:

• The more the merrier - it’s the crowd that makes it what it is, the more people who take part the richer the experience. While you might not want to follow hundreds of people, you still want a large pool to select from. If you follow well-connected Twitterers you benefit from their re-tweets also.
• It’s not the MSM - some people are craving the old “command and control” structures where we are told what is news, what we should believe, and who we should listen to. I think we are seeing even the best single source can’t possibly serve all your needs and there is room for more than just the select few.
• Fear of freedom - central news control is doomed, and that is spooking the old guard who crave this power and control. What good are these credentials and the blessing of officialdom when nobody listens? More and more you get the audience you deserve, not the audience you demand or feel entitled to.
• Goodbye Broadcast - you have to listen not just broadcast. We want two-way conversation and to have a voice. The most popular Twitterers, of course, interact, but increasingly the more mainstream media that embrace two-way conversation will be those who survive. Some people believe this is bringing everything down to a base level mediocrity, but I actually see it as moving control from the gatekeepers to the people who the media is created for.
• The editor role - Rather than doing away with editors, I see them being even more important but in a fresh way. Rather than being gatekeepers and controllers, they become filters and connectors. I am looking to the Chris Brogans, Scobles, Probloggers. Instead of being the official line, you follow who provides the mix that suits you, and rather than being told what to believe, they offer you the blend that allows you to work out your opinion for yourself.

Now, obviously, Twitter is all about peer-to-peer communication BUT we could, if we wanted to, purely follow the mainstream media sources. There are feeds for all the popular news channels like BBC, and such. Or we could only follow people with “credentials”. But we don’t. We like a mix. The same with the web, I view BBC news then surf right over to Digg, BoingBoing, and so on. The days of us uncritically and passively soaking up, say, Fox News are long gone, or at least going.

What do you think? Am I off-base? Does this work? Or am I wrong and this road really does lead to anarchy and lowest common denominator? Please share your thoughts in the comments (or mainstream media channel of your choice, heh)

Keeping abreast of news in your niche can be tough. I know the feeling of being left behind, when you think you need to be checking thousands of feeds 24 hours a day.

Fact is you do not need to have such a punishing regime.

I have been known to follow stupidly excessive amounts of RSS feeds, plus my Twitter following got well out of hand.

My feeds are now down to 300 and I am slowly trimming who I follow on Twitter. I’m down from 900 and some to hopefully approaching a manageable number below 700.

This might still seem like a lot to you, how do I manage to follow so many feeds?

Here are 21 tips for a more productive approach to keeping up with all the crucial developments in your niche. They will work for feeds or Twitter in most cases but I have aimed mainly at RSS:

21 Niche News and Feed Reading Productivity Tips

1. Split your readers - Use an online reader for the important and immediate stuff and read less pressing material offline in downtime like commute, air and rail travel
2. Let stuff slip - Know that you don’t need to catch everything. We can’t hope to know everything about everything, don’t knock yourself out trying.
3. Have multiple sources of news - If you stick to the point in number 2 you will miss stuff first time round but if you have multiple sources you will catch it on the echoes. Important stuff makes ripples, if it matters it will be repeated, probably a number of times.
4. Is it a fad? - What you don’t follow is as important as what you do. I have completely stopped reading anything about programming, I now hire programmers. Same with design. You don’t always have to be on bleeding edge, let others make early mistakes. Aren’t you glad you didn’t research everything about HD DVD now that BlueRay won?
5. Find the filters - Each niche will have a human filter. People like Scoble, Duncan Riley, and co are on the ball and can tell you what is important so you don’t have to read everything. Either follow their feed or follow on Twitter. It’s a good tip for wannabe Authorities - You can be an authority by filtering, explaining and simplifying. An Editor, DJ, Director can be as important as a creator.
6. Use topical folders - I only check my photography news once a week, tech news a couple of times a week, productivity every few weeks.
7. Use stars and flags - Most readers will provide you with a tool to pin a post to be read later. Find the good stuff but don’t read it right away. Mark to read later then read at your leisure.
8. Nuke it - Use mark all as read rather than leave unread items “just in case”.
9. Prioritize - Organize your feeds into priority: 1 = Crucial, 2 = Valuable, 3 = Non Essential … 4 = Just for Fun - Most days you might only manage to read (1), on slow days you can get to (3). You might read (4) on breaks.
10. Use google alerts
11. Audition Feeds - When you discover a new feed put it on probation. After a test period you can decide to keep or drop, don’t put it into proper rotation right away.
12. Routinely trim - Be brutal. Don’t feel guilty. Your time is too precious.
13. Use aggregation - Social voting, meme trackers and breaking news sites give you an at a glance update without wading through feeds. Think techcrunch, techmeme, gizmodo
14. Batch-read - It’s not effective to read stuff that will not have a massive impact every day. I can go weeks without reading Seth/Gapingvoid even though they are excellent. Thought-leaders are often not that essential, as compared to knowing the big news.
15. Skim - Headlines, subheads, bullets, quotes and graphics. Get an impression of if this article is worthwhile … hints for writers as well as readers here
16. Use “river of news” - You do not have to read feed by feed, switch to river of news/ all-items view to get an impression of a topic
17. Set aside a fixed amount of time - Give yourself 30 minutes and no more. Stick to the time limit and you will find you are more aggressive about not wasting it.
18. Set your criteria? News, important relationships/people, industry keywords … Not everything is niche-changing, ask yourself “do I need to read this NOW?”
19. Use software filters - Create a merged feed of just the important stuff using AideRSS
20. Use Twitter - Replace feeds with following people on Twitter. Lots of people post links to their Twitter feed. If they think it is important enough to Tweet then it is probably important enough to consider reading, but not always.
21. Only subscribe to full feeds - Controversial possibly but there are only a few partial feeds left in my reader. Partial feeds force you to click to see if the article is worthwhile, which could turn out to be a waste of precious time. Don’t bother.

Those are my tips. Please share yours!

Yesterday I drove down to the middle of the country to meet up with Doug Scott. He might not look like much ( ), and the name might not be familiar to you but he is a bit of a mover and/or shaker in the Affiliate and SEO worlds

Doug has just started blogging and trying out this social media stuff. If you are interested in how the big boys of the affiliate business really work then you would do well to subscribe. Believe me, some of the large cheques you see flashed around on the forums wouldn’t pay Doug’s payroll bill for the month. If there is a level above “Super Affiliate” then that is where you would place Doug.

I had a great time geeking out about all things social media and attempting to grill him on affiliate marketing. Along the way I promised to do him a quick critique, so here it is.

1. The blog is unfocused, this comes across visually, in the content, and also navigation. While it is obviously something of a personal blog, which could have its own ROI, I think Doug needs to decide who and what the blog is for. Who is your perfect reader? How can you delight them enough to bring friends?
2. Right now the blog is using an off the shelf design which is more suited to a ringtone affiliate. Lose the generic smiley faces header and build something unique.
3. Again the blog name and tagline do not offer much idea of what the blog is about. Within 15 seconds your blog has to tell the reader what is in it for them. If your reader answers “So what?” then you are not trying hard enough.
4. Build an About page. Who are you? What is the blog about? Why is that beneficial and important? Why should I care? Why should I listen to you?
5. There are a couple of redundant widgets in the side bar, I would lose the Links and month archives. Much better to link to people in context from posts rather than have a blog roll. Of course you might want to link to your own stuff, but it doesn’t need to be at the top.
6. Categories are for readers to navigate, not your own sense of organization. Seems to be an ever growing list of categories. Seven is more than enough, and you never really want to have an “other” category.
7. Where is your best content? Have a most popular list, a “beginners start here”, personal faves, or a recommended list. Of course I recommend you have some flagship content
8. I list my own name as author because I want to rank for my own name. If you are not bothered about that, and you are the only author, it’s probably not necessary to attribute your posts on the homepage. A box in the sidebar and in the RSS footer would suffice.
9. Using “More” tags on the homepage is a matter of preference, and some suggest can help with SEO, but you need to make the “Read More” very prominent. Also, make sure you also provide full feed in the RSS. Talking about feeds, move the subscription options to the top, allow subscription via email, and consider having feeds for just the juicy Aff stuff separate from the more personal/fun content?
10. My favorite headline so far is “Leading stupid people to click“. Inflammatory, compelling and great advice. It wouldn’t work on my blog but suits your tone of voice and brand perfectly. More like that, please.

Doug is a no-nonsense, direct person. He is well known in his niche for creating a real and profitable business from the affiliate field. That makes him a credible authority. With that in mind I think the blog would be very successful as

The Zero-BS Guide to the Affiliate Business

What do you think? What would you suggest Doug does with his blog? Please share in the comments …

Never let it be said that I let a bandwagon past without at least jumping on for a short ride!

The latest shiny new thing on the block is FriendFeed. While many people are describing it as yet-another-social-network, in fact I would call it more of a friend aggregator.

Unlike MyBook and FaceSpace type services, with FriendFeed you add your various social media accounts, Twitter, Blog, Flickr and so on, and your friends can follow all your activity in one place. You follow others to do the same.

Yes, if you are following someone on Twitter and subscribe to their blog, you already get much of this content, but the nice thing is for anyone who up to now you just knew as a blog author, you get to see more of their world and personality. More three dimensional. For example you can see pictures of their latest trip, see what music they are listening to and what they just bookmarked.

Obviously not something you are going to want to spend your entire day on, but still worth a look.

You can follow me at my usual account name

Yesterday on the Blog Herald I wrote about how bloggers seem to be focusing on just the attention part of the blogging equation. What are the other parts we need to be aware of?

Attraction is just one step in a process. If you think of your blog as being a system then attention brings people in to the system but the rest of your system is where the actual magic happens.

Any blog requires:

• Attention - You could call it traffic, awareness, publicity, visitors
• Engagement - Where a lot of promotion effors fall down is the visitor arrives and is underwhelmed - you need engaged traffic not merely traffic
• Action - What do you want these visitors to do?
• Loyalty - One problem with a lot of traffic generation schemes is the visitors bounce off, you need them to want to come back
• Recommendation - The peak of success is when your loyal visitors love you so much they bring friends

Attention is just the first step, and attention can not be considered without the other elements of your strategy.

Before you even think about attention or promotion, you need to work out

1. What your goals are - Are you blogging for adsense clicks? do you want to sell product?
2. Who your target is - Who most matches your most likely prospect, what can you do to delight them?
3. Appropriate tactics - Not all tactics are going to bring in the appropriate people that will help achieve your goals.

Have you noticed how some blogs scale massively based on Digg and Social Media attention? FreelanceSwitch, DoshDosh, Digital-Photography-School, ZenHabits, all feature (or featured) heavily on Digg and grew very well. Other blogs do badly or barely make a blip even with multiple front page stories. This is because no matter how well the Digg attracts a torrent of visitors they are either mis-targeted (geeky male students arriving at a Mom blog for example) or are not engaged (misleading headlines, blog downtime, bad usability).

As with most endeavors, you have to pick your battles. Match the tactics to your audience and your goals and you will succeed not just attracting attention but also meeting your targets too.

Chris Cree asked an interesting question in the comments of yesterdays post about my Twitter competition.

I’m curious what criteria you use when deciding whom to follow in return. Would you share some insight into that at some point?

The thing is I am not sure I know the right way to decide who to follow, I just know what I do. What I do has changed since I first joined Twitter and I am sure will evolve.

Initially what I did was to follow Twitter users who’s blogs I read, and also to look at who those folks were following and see who was interesting. There were other ways but those I think were the main approaches.

Lately though I have found for some people the best approach is to see who the people you already like are talking to. If you “over hear” a good conversation then the people in that conversation are likely to be worth a follow.

I did try following everyone who followed me but I quickly found there gets to be a point where you can’t follow everyone, and there were one or two people who I unfollowed because I didn’t like their argumentative or abusive nature. I guess you get trolls and bullies everywhere.

As far as the usual niggles, lack of posting or over self promotion, I am probably more tolerant but those do factor. I won’t follow anyone who hasn’t Tweeted yet. At least get a full screen of Tweets before following me if you want me to follow you back.

In general if you say something interesting then I am more likely to follow but more and more I am going the conversation route.

As I say, I don’t have a perfect answer so let’s have a poll

My Technorati Authority seems to have been stuck for months. Luckily I might have a solution!

Now before I tell you the “secret”, I have to inform you that this will only work for an established blog. A brand new blog will have to focus on gaining new links.

With that caveat out of the way, what is this big trick?

It seems that Technorati misses a lot of the links pointed at your blog. This leads to a familiar frustration for many bloggers who feel that they are not getting the recognition they deserve.

To be fair it is not Technorati’s fault if the people who link to you do not make their blogs known to the service. That’s where you can help them, you and Technorati at the same time.

When you get a new referrer that isn’t noted by Technorati, submit it so that it shows up.

How to Get the Technorati Rank You Deserve

1. Gather a list of blogs linking to you - you can use a tool or a Yahoo! link: search
2. Submit the list to Technorati - manually or using a service

Easy, eh?

To make it even easier, there is a tool over at Sebastian’s Pamphlets to make submitting to Technorati as simple as copy, paste and click!

I’m going to try it and hopefully I should see a small jump in my rank!

photo credit: jurvetson

I have been blogging for over 10 years, longer depending on your definition.

It seems while there are constant innovations in blogging, some things I learned from the start remain true today.

Here are 41 tips from my years of blogging that you can implement and benefit from right away:

1. Read - The more you read the better writer you will be. Being a blog reader helps you understand the mind of the blog reader. What they want, how they like information to be presented, what turns you off. Read good blogs and note your thoughts.
2. Take one step - Chunk it down. Don’t be overwhelmed, take one step at a time and keep going.
3. Be interesting - Readers want to find fresh, valuable, entertaining remarkable information. Make an effort to deliver more than just facts. Make it about them, not you.
4. Get your point across - Style, grammar, spelling all count for nothing if your audience doesn’t get your meaning. Make sure you are understood.
5. Deliver the goods - Being valuable is more important than following any rules
6. Be consistent - You are only as good as your last post
7. Prioritize quality over quantity - Fewer kick-ass articles are better than many so-so posts
8. Develop expertise - You might not be an expert now but you can be. Dive into your subject and hoover it up.
9. Hold on to passion - Keep the fires burning, don’t let your subject turn into a chore.
10. Communicate fascination - If you love your subject then let your readers know, share your enthusiasm, make it contagious
11. Write better - All of us can improve our writing but it takes effort and motivation
12. Grow your experience - Do new things, broaden your horizons, stretch yourself
13. Share your experience - When you learn something new, tell your readers about it
14. Explore and experiment - Keep trying new things, never stagnate
15. Be unique - If you are the same as everyone else, why would anyone visit your blog?
16. Look good - Appearances count, both in terms of your blog design and your posts. Make your content zing!
17. Make a great first impression - Do new visitors know what your blog is about in under 10 seconds? Can they navigate easily? Where is your best content?
18. Build momentum - Keep pushing every day, do not be content, it takes less effort to keep going than to stop and start over.
19. Optimize - Keep tweaking, continuously improve
20. Write with focus - Don’t squander your readers attention, give them what they came for
21. Build your reputation - Know what you stand for and deliver it consistently
22. Go for keywords - Find out what your readers are looking for and write about it
23. Write compelling headlines - Get attention, promise a benefit, provoke interest
24. Offer full feeds - Attention is more important than page views
25. Interview - Supplement your knowledge by interviewing experts
26. Break news - Be first to a story, let everyone know and see the links flood in
27. Run contests - Contests are fun and build awareness
28. Research, survey and poll - Research results are newsworthy and differentiate
29. Toot your horn - Celebrate successes, send out press releases
30. Monitor your stats - Stats tell you the health of your blog. Where is traffic coming from? Can you do more of what works? Is your blog growing or sliding? There are many free services.
31. Comment and answer comments - Nurture your audience, make them know they are valued. Comment on other blogs.
32. Link generously - If you want links then you have to first give them
33. Join forums - Break out of your bubble, meet people where they are
34. Give stuff away - You get what you give. Free downloads get rewarded with links and traffic.
35. Make friends - One of the pleasures of blogging and also a route to success
36. Guest blog - Write brilliant content for other bloggers and see your brand grow
37. Ask questions - Curiosity is a virtue
38. Twitter - Constantly communicate and get to know people. Anything too short for a blog post can be delivered in 140 characters
39. Stumble - Train yourself to discover, recognize and share brilliant content. What you can identify you can imagine, what you can imagine you can create.
40. Rebel - Break the rules, go against the flow, zig when others tell you to zag, do your own thing your own way
41. Enjoy - Keep doing what you do until it stops being fun. When it is no longer fun, bring the fun back.

Let’s not let this list end at 41, please share your tips in the comments!

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