Yes, you read that right. Why you should NOT blog. Blogging is not for everyone. There are some good reasons I have seen suggested why you should not blog: You don't have the time to do it justice. Blogging would add nothing to your business or life. Writing is too difficult or unpleasant. Your company is struggling to keep up with ...

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I have come to a realisation recently that I wanted to check with you.

I’m starting to think Reddit has overtaken Digg.

It doesn’t look as nice, doesn’t have the big name, nor does it have the famous Kevin Rose, but as a user and as a Social Media type, Reddit seems to have edged out Digg, and I am not the only one who thinks so.

Why is Reddit better than Digg?

1. It Works – Breaking news really is breaking news on Reddit, not 2 day old news reheated. What is the point of this sort of system when every other site on the web has 4 variations of a story before Digg even acknowledges it?
2. Content Mix – There is more variety and fewer favored domains. Of course you still see the same old domains but not to the degree that happens over at Digg. Yeah XKCD can be funny, but you know, it gets a bit much when it seems every single frikkin post gets to the front page. If I wanted to subscribe I wouldn’t use Digg to do it! (Slight exaggeration but you know what I mean)
3. Democratic – It’s easier for ordinary users to get a front page story, which adds to the mix (see #2) but also means it is not as elitist as Digg in terms of submitters.
4. See Down Votes – Reddit is far more transparent, you can see when your story is not going to make it as you can see the users voting it down. Now this is annoying, especially when you don’t know why you are getting down votes, but not as annoying as being left in the dark.
5. Digg Conspiracy – On Digg getting lots of votes doesn’t always mean your story goes front page, leading to conspiracy theories at one end and disenchantment at the other. Neither good.

Digg used to be my favorite but lately, not so much.  Now Reddit has gone open source it should only get better as the community piles on with fixes and improvements. What is your response Mr Rose?

What do you think? Has Digg lost its way or has Reddit still some way to go? Please share in the comments …

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Last week I put a message on Twitter that prompted a couple of people to ask for more details:

On way to sunny Reading, fighting through traffic and rain to see a client, writing blog posts on the road and trying to not feel car sick

Yes, I was literally “blogging on the road” and it seems other people would like to do the same, so here is how I do it.

My setup is comprised:

• Macbook
• Nokia n95
• 3G mobile internet tariff

The Mac talks to the phone over bluetooth and uses the 3G connection for connectivity. In the UK data costs are pretty expensive so I have recently switched from o2 and now have 1gb of data and more calls than I need for much less. It pays to shop around. Even better, my n95 also has Skype loaded, which is completely free while I am in the UK due to a deal with my new phone plan provider, 3. Overseas I still pay through the nose, but luckily outside the British Isles most countries have heard of free wifi.

While I have a spare battery for my laptop when flying, I also have a british plug to car power socket adapter that allows me to plug in pretty much any device and get power on the move. Sometimes I even remember to take it along.

I have been blogging while on travels for a few years but my setup has changed a fair bit, as you can see from this old post at Performancing

My equipment has a much more Microsoft flavour. My humble Samsung V25 laptop runs XP Pro, plus I have a O2 XDA Exec Pocket PC (a rebadged HTC running Windows Mobile 2005 for Pocket PC). For voice I have Skype both on my laptop (I use a $9 Skype earpiece/microphone, nothing so posh as Nicks headset) and also on my Pocket PC. The PDA is actually a phone, but I only use it for data and Skype as I have a Sony Ericsson K750i for normal cellular voice calls.

The n95 is a great phone for bloggers, and with it even without the laptop I am pretty connected, just a shame it doesn’t have a full keyboard like my old PDA. When we were in Chicago for SOBCon, Twitter was the main way to stay in contact, so being able to get web access from anywhere (mobile or wifi) is a boon. Try the mobile interface or TinyTwitter. In addition, IM tools are becoming an essential part of work life, I have been trialling eBuddy for MSN, etc, but it doesn’t seem to like the ‘@’ in my AIM account screen name.

I am looking at the new 3G iPhone quite closely, although I expect I might have to stick with the n95 as it sounds like Apple will still not allow you to hook the iPhone up to a computer to act as a modem which is pretty important for my use.

While I haven’t got this mobile blogging thing down to a fine art like Lorelle, my setup does show it is possible to be pretty portable with your blogging.

Do you blog while on your travels?

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Wrong StumbleUpon categories are quite common and need to be fixed. You might think this is a trivial issue, and in the scheme of things probably not a major priority, but if you have been mis-tagged by mistake you are missing out on traffic, but malicious mis-categorizations also happen (eg. marking as adult theme etc).

StumbleUpon Category Mistakes Happen Often

When someone discovers your post they set for everyone the category it will be found on. In most cases this is a good thing, you get a little traffic boost and you are happy. If they put your article in the wrong category though the wrong people see it, and that means either you don’t get a traffic boost or worse, get thumbed down.

Later reviews can add tags that allow your article to be seen by more people, but it is the discovered category that does the heavy lifting so it is important that is correct.

Putting a stumble in the wrong category is easily done, I have made mistakes myself. In most cases it’s just a slip up in the drop down list.  Putting it right is not so obvious, so after seeing my LinkedIn tips post mis categorized as “socialism” by mistake, I thought I would put these instructions together.

You can notify StumbleUpon, and they do have a team of volunteers who set these things right, but it can take a while and why bother them if you can sort it out yourself? It might be your only choice, especially if you suspect foul play, but it is worth making an attempt before going through official channels.

If You Mis-Categorize

Your mistake is easy to correct if you know how.

1. Find the page you stumbled
2. Click the speech bubble in your StumbleUpon toolbar
3. Scroll to bottom right of the SU page to find the drop down and change it

If Someone Else Discovered Your Post With Wrong Category

Fortunately for me, my mis-categorized post was by a helpful and kind person who I already had some contact with via Twitter, yay for me. I simply worked with him to get it changed and it is all resolved nicely.

You can see who “discovered” your post by clicking the speech bubble button on your SU toolbar and taking a look at the top of the page that appears. In this example “ecahoon” discovered my blog in “Weblogs”.

Clicking the persons name will take you to their StumbleUpon profile where you can send them a message and ask them to tweak the category. The ideal scenario will be they are online now and respond positively right away. That’s obviously not going to happen in all cases.

Sometimes the person just hasn’t logged in for a while. Many times people start using StumbleUpon then give up on it, and you might discover your mis-categorized post only after a random friend warns you or you do a Google search with the SU toolbar switched to add Stumble info. In that case, see if they have a website listed in their profile, you might be able to contact them through that.

Have You Been Mis-Categorized?

To see if you have been put in the wrong StumbleUpon category, do a search in Google using site:yourdomain.com and with search results switched on in the toolbar (tools, toolbar options, configuration).

You will see the category for each page that has been stumbled and see if they are appropriate.

Summary

As I say above, this doesn’t happen all the time and when it does it is usually a mistake.  Officially you should notify StumbleUpon to get one of their volunteers to fix the category, but from what I read this can take a while. Better to contact the reviewer, or at least attempt to, yourself.

The best way to avoid this happening in the first place, especially on very important articles, is to get a trusted contact with a good StumbleUpon account to discover it for you. Some would suggest this is “gaming” StumbleUpon and that you should allow people to randomly stumble if they like your stuff. I wouldn’t say this is gaming if you only ask on your best stuff and if the contact agrees because they like it, not just out of friendship.

If you have anything to add or any tips, please share in the comments …

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Chris Guillebeau is one of those people who absolutely lives his philosophy. His blog is about travel and “Nonconformity” and you can believe he follows his own advice 100%. Recently Chris and Reese Spykerman worked up a fresh design and asked me to provide some feedback, so here is their critique.

Note on Blog Critiques

If you don’t have the funds right now to buy one of my critiques, you can still win one by filling out the survey. Also you can pick up tips for your own blog right here. While reading any of my blog critiques, see if any of the advice could apply to you. I find that many bloggers could make the same improvements, and it is amazing the difference even small changes can make.

The Critique – Initial Impressions

The first thing I always do when looking at a blog for a critique is to note my initial impressions. This is useful because a visitor to a new blog is going to give you seconds before deciding to move on or look further. Consider a visitor arriving through stumbleupon, what is going to hold their attention before hitting the stumble button once more?

I find overall the blog looks very nice, clean, clear, professional while still friendly, if a little “shy”.

What I mean by that is I feel it is a touch restrained. Everything feels polite and quiet, from the colors to the navigation. The fonts are small, even in the header. Never be afraid to spell things out, never over estimate the reader, make everything simple and plainly obvious. Your audience will no doubt be clever, but that doesn’t mean they have the patience to figure stuff out. So buttons with clever little pictures? Put captions with them that SAY “Travel”, etc. Right now the tooltips say the same thing by the way, which is confusing until you see the URL changes.

Rather than a closeup picture of Chris there is quite a long shot. Perhaps replace with a more intimate picture showing head and shoulders? Right now we feel at waving distance, let’s see what you actually look like so we can feel more connected to you?

Usability

Blog Usability Advice [Click to Zoom]

What do you look for when you see a site for the first time?

Where am I?
What is here?
Why should I care?

Any blog should quickly and simply answer these questions, using for example

1. The header – Does it tell you where you are and why you should bother?
2. Headlines – Do they stand out and interest you?
3. Navigation – Is there anything of further interest or should you move on?

In this case I think we get a good overall impression but until you work further down or dig into the content, it’s a little self-referential. I would suggest a small tweak to the tagline. Currently it says “Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work and Travel”. Perhaps alter that to something about the reader benefit, such as

“Learn Strategies for a More Unconventional Life, Work and Travel”

I’m sure with some thought you can improve on that, my point is purely to make it an active promise showing a reader benefit, not a passive content description or statement.

We also will look around the blog looking for cues of interest, read down the sidebar, skim the article after looking at the headline, and so on. There are certain conventions too, like having the subscription options top right, categories and more posts to the right, and about and contact in the top navigation.

Chris’ blog succeeds very well in several areas:

• Site Summary – In the sidebar there is a nice summary of what the site is about
• Buttons in Nav – While the header doesn’t speak “nonconformity” or “travel” to me, the buttons do represent the categories
• The content – Read the content, it is excellent, and is presented well with basics and most popular

Tips for Improvement

1. Make the header bolder and consider adding something visual that says “travel” etc. If you sent your header to 20 people who had never seen it before, could they tell you what the site is about? Yours is better than most, but consider taking it up a notch.
2. Add text to the button icons in the top navigation and fix the tooltips. Never be afraid to be obvious. Obvious works better than cute or clever every time.
3. Make headlines and the very top navigation text links bigger and more obvious, right now they are too easily missed. Imagine your reader has bad eyes and is in a rush.
4. Move the “What would Seth do” box (“If you are new here”) to above the content. Readers want to go headline/skim, intro, content. Do not break the reading flow. Also consider removing the line that splits the headline from the article content
5. Where you have subscribe by email, consider adding the actual form, you might see more signups
6. Make articles skimmable, a good tip when you use images is you can add a caption underneath your pictures that both describes the picture and draws the reader in like another subhead
7. Swap the globe picture in the “Summary” as a background image so doesn’t take up as much vertical space? Above the fold is still the most visible, even though now readers do scroll more than they did
8. Put a link to most popular content up with (more visible) top navigation as well as sidebar – don’t be shy about promoting your best stuff!
9. In the “about” sections try to find ways to make it answer the “so what?” question – what should the reader gain?
10. You don’t monetize, which is fair enough, but is there a way that grateful readers can help you in some way? Donations? Freelance work? A place to stay? Readers can and do give back if you provide the opportunity.

Get More Subscribers and Traffic

Before I mentioned that the email subscription box should be made into an actual form, but then I noticed as I browsed around the box disappeared on certain pages? Subscriptions should be visible on every page unless that would mean duplicating them in a distracting way (eg. on a dedicated subscribe page).

My last tip is about a prime piece of real estate that is not being used to the full …

Your Best Chance at a New Subscriber

Right after a reader has enjoyed your post is the best opportunity to get them to do something, send to friend, subscribe or vote in Social Media, but you can’t just “ask”, you have to make it as easy as possible.

So while you have the right idea, use Sociable or another plugin to put in social buttons, and links to your subscription options for RSS and email, and so on. It’s the law of reciprocation, get them while they still feel the warm glow of gratitude.

Summary

Don’t take my suggested improvements as a knock, this is a great blog and is now a fixture in my RSS reader. As I say in the introduction, it is clear Chris really lives this stuff and that shines through in the excellent content. Make sure you subscribe today so you too can learn to be more unconventional!

Have you got any tips for Chris? Do you agree/disagree with any of my advice or anything to add? Please share in the comments …

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