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 … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

photo credit: jurvetson I have been blogging for over 10 years, longer depending on your definition. Perhaps my 1996 science fiction site was my first blog? Perhaps it was my online diary in 1998? Whichever definition you use, 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:   Read - The more you read the better writer you will … [Read more...]

When you create a blog there are three ways you can approach your subject matter. Which approach you choose will have a big impact on how fast you grow awareness and audience, plus will be decisive in how easy you find the actual writing. It is something worth thinking about but people rarely do until after their blog is launched. Write about whatever interests you - You will always have something to write about because you can just turn to your current fancy, but the blog will be … [Read more...]

Most people will know by now that I offer a free ebook on this blog. Fact is, I am not the only one offering free resources that are useful to bloggers. Here are some of the best. Develop mini-sites using WordPress with Caroline Middlebrook Aaron and Giovanna offer their SEO for Bloggers guide Remarkabloggers 12-step Business Blogging ebook Rich Schefren offers the Web2.0 Marketing "Attention Age" guide Brian Clark's free ebook shows you how to forget everything you know about … [Read more...]