chrisg.com

Causality and correlation. Ah, the scientist’s friend. Mixed up so many times, the cause of so many arguments, the rock on which we stub our intellectual toes.

What is this concept and why should bloggers care?

Causality is the relationship between cause and effect. That is, for a given effect, you could find the cause.

Correlation is the degree to which two events are related. That is, two things exist together but one does not necessarily cause the other.

All too often people mix up the two. They think because they were holding a rabbits foot when they won a bet, that the rabbits foot is somehow lucky. Take this tongue in cheek quote from Freakonomics also:

Chicago’s beloved Mayor Daley is trying to think of ways to increase the likelihood that the Bears win the game. He’s noticed that whenever the Bears win, people in Chicago are happy. Which sparks a great idea: decree that all Bears fans have to be happy on Super Bowl Sunday. It has always been true in the past that winning games and being happy go together, so by demanding the Bears’ fans are happy, it will cause the Bears to win the Super Bowl.

Be Careful What You Copy

Blogging is still new, so bloggers are still constantly learning what works and what doesn’t. This goes for all of us.

We look for clues around us, and especially the people who have gone before, people we admire, or people who have had obvious and visible success. Then we cherry pick ideas to see if they will work for us.

• Seth closed off comments and is successful, I will do that
• I hear many blogs are personal and written like diaries, my topic is serious, therefore I shouldn’t blog
• So-and-so is popular and snarky, so I should do that
• TechCrunch posts multiple times a day and is popular, I should do that
• Some internet marketers have not been able to sell using their blogs, therefore blogs don’t work for attracting sales
• A particular blog is ugly and super successful, my blog should be ugly too
• The blogs I have seen are rushed and poorly researched, therefore all blogs are like that

Unfortunately it is not always easy to see why or how someone achieved success or failure. Even more unfortunate, just because something works for one blog, doesn’t mean it will necessarily work for your blog and your audience.

As with most things, be very careful about dealing in absolutes. Don’t take things at face value, investigate. Most of all, see what works for YOU.

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?

It’s common now to think of writing a blog as an education for your readers, but I find the blogger also learns a great deal in two significant ways.

1. Reader feedback and discussions - The most obvious ways a blog helps you learn and understand your topic better is when you put ideas out and your readers correct, engage, develop or expand on them. I’m fortunate to have readers with a great deal of expertise and experience to share, I am sure you have clever folks reading you too. It’s also amazing how ideas can improve the more enthusiastic brains they travel through.
2. Putting your articles together -  It’s funny how much a teacher can learn through the act of teaching. The same is true for writers. In putting your articles together, the research, keeping up to date with your subject area, thinking about and connecting ideas, and then forumulating a good way to communicate, it’s like immersion learning.

This is something first mentioned to me by Liz, but I only recently realized the real impact this blog has had on me. It has to be a good thing when you learn as much as your readers do, everyone wins

How has your blog educated you?

Naming your blog is an important aspect of blog branding, or blog success for that matter. It seems very important to my visitors too. Ever since my original “What’s In a Name?” post, people have been asking for advice on how to select the best name for their blog.

As I said in the first post,

When choosing a domain name there are some factors to consider:

• How original and unique is it?
• How descriptive is it?
• What image does it convey?
• Would you remember it after seeing it once?
• Could you spell it after hearing it once?

All these factors add up to a catchy blog name, but thinking up a catchy blog name is only getting more difficult as the best .com domains get more and more scarce.

Tips for Creating the Best Blog Names

When I chose my domain name I went for “me”, brevity and spelling. So many people get my surname wrong (even good friends of mine), keeping ‘Garrett’ (two r’s, ‘e’, two t’s) out of it seemed a good idea at the time. This site is about branding me, and by extension my business. I also registered my company name (which was one of the last remaining four letter .coms!), and of course Authority Blogger which is used for my forum, newsletter and the online blogging course and service selling coaching product I am developing.

In my last post on blog naming I said:

A good name is

1. Readable
2. Pronounceable
3. Spellable
4. Memorable
5. Concise
6. Unique

In addition a good blog name evokes or describes what it represents, but how much it describes directly or over time with exposure is up to you and your advertising budget.

chrisg.com represents me, Authority Blogger a product. One is very much in the short and descriptive, the other is somewhat descriptive, but more into the brand zone.

The way I often select brandable names is to not go so far into invented names that you need massive buzz or huge budget for people to know what it is.

Think Flickr, Zooomr and Plurk. Authority Blogger, CopyBlogger, ProBlogger, FreelanceSwitch don’t need quite as much imagination.

Developing a Descriptive and Brandable Blog Name

My simple technique for a descriptive but brandable domain is to combine target audience with benefits.

Your Audience + Benefit = Targeted and Attractive Name

So Authority Blogger shows bloggers how to grow their authority. RemarkableParents teaches parents how to be remarkable parents. OK, some great names are all benefits, but if you think about it they also select an audience, because the audience who wants those benefits is specific, such as ZenHabits.

Avoid the Generic

While it might be tempting to use generic words such as “World”, “Place”, “Thoughts”, “Central”, and they can get you out of a naming-hole, try to aim for specific and unique words that will hold firm in the brain of your audience. You will find it much easier to gain traction by communicating a unique and specific benefit to a targeted audience rather than something wide and loose such as “widget world”.

About Using Keywords + ‘Blog’ in the Name

Some names are all target audience, SEO keywords, or very plainly descriptive, for example my DSLRBlog is a blog about DSLR cameras and photography. Actually I now think “blog” might be as bad or worse than the generic names I list above and the combination of keyword+blog, though initially seeming a good idea for search traffic, is probably holding the site back. You see, I believe nobody searches for “DSLR Blog” apart from people who are looking for my blog. So while keywords do have an SEO benefit, I wonder if branding combined with killer content has as much or more benefit longer term.

Lately I’m actually steering away from “blog” in the name because I come across more and more people who are put off or confused by the word. Also I see those domains not aging or expanding as well. It could well be in a few years we don’t call it blogging, or you might want to develop your blog into a member site.

Have Fun With Your Name

If your blog is not going to be mega serious then have fun with it. Fun, humor, are incredibly effective for both getting noticed and being memorable. A perfect example in my mind is MenWithPens, it’s both evocative of their service and fun. Another is RottenTomatoes.

One thing to avoid though with humor or fun is inside jokes as they have a tendency to exclude rather than attract.

Summary

When inventing names for your blog, think about

• Who your blog is for
• What the reader benefit will be
• The personality you want to evoke
• Where and how you want to use the name
• Possible future directions
• How you can position against the established names

Got any more tips or examples of brilliant blog names? Please share in the comments …

Obama and Hilary have been a dominant force in the news since they started campaigning. This is saying something, as I am not even American. Their long battle has taught me a couple of related lessons that I wanted to share with you.

Attacks and Negativity Damage All

While attacks are one way to get attention, and also serve to position yourself relative to your competitor, in the end the damage is not localized and you end up soiling your own reputation.

Think about it, what do we say about someone who campaigns this way?

“They stooped to a new low”

“She is fighting dirty”

“Smearing the other candidate”

“Sowing the seeds of discord and dissent”

Is this the kind of thing candidates want to be associated with?

What has this to do with writing?

• How many blogs do you see that go on the attack, as a content strategy or as a means of self promotion?
• When you see someone ragging on someone or something popular to make a point, how do you feel?
• Do you see community leaders saying “you are with us or against us”? (eg. why shouldn’t an Apple fan respect Bill Gates? Why is it not OK for an open source advocate to recommend a piece of proprietary software if it’s the best for the job?)
• The whole “we don’t like these people, we are better than them, because”, does that work with you or make you think the worst of the writer?

Sometimes we do have to criticize to make a serious point, but that does not mean we should label the person. Always, if you must criticize, try to criticize behavior.

Positivity and Solutions are Persuasive

When I see two people argue like Obama and Hilary, I look for the person who is offering ideas and solutions, and I do the same in my reading and learning.

It’s impossible to make a good decision long term based on fear-mongering and negative attacks. Hate and bashing only serves to remove choices, not help make the right one. Positivity and inventive solutions provide you something to get behind, something motivating and enabling.

Ideas Bind, Attacks Divide

When you write you can say what you don’t like or you can offer ideas for a better way. I try to do the latter, though of course being only human it doesn’t always come through like that. My idea of something better today is to try to spin a criticism into an offer of positive advice and see how different the reaction and results can be.

Summary

The main point is, what do you want to achieve with your piece of writing? If you want to make someone or a whole group feel bad, then go on the attack. If on the other hand you want to help, provide answers, then you are far better giving real advice and ideas. Offer something constructive, it is best all round.

What do you think? Have I mis-read the situation, have I just alienated half my readers? Am I being unfair? Do you agree with me about my point of being positive and offering solutions? Please share your thoughts in the comments …

What are visitors arriving at your site for?

It’s a question worth asking because if you don’t know, how can you provide it?

Search stats will tell you, as will some of the visitors if you ask.

In general your readers have followed a scent, a trail that will lead them to their goal. What is their goal likely to be?

Understanding Reader Missions

There are several missions a reader will be on, and while the specifics will be as unique as the individual person, people are always looking for …

• Specific information
• A solution to a problem
• News and commentary about current events
• Ideas, concepts, tips, education
• Further details of the information they have found
• General information on the subject area
• More entertainment
• Just something interesting - “surprise me”

The person who lands on your homepage will be in a different mode than the person who lands three levels deep on a specific article.

Mission Accomplished?

Once they have arrived, you need to deliver what they were looking for. Knowing how this works will let you understand why

• You only get one page view per visitor
• Some comments get more clicks than the article itself sends
• Adsense works for some sites and not for others
• Brand banners get fewer clicks than Adwords and contextual ads
• “Click Here” can work to drive more link clicks than product names
• Some people spend only seconds on your site and never return
• While other subscribe and visit regularly
• While further others give you feedback that you are writing about “the wrong things”

You need to get into the mindset of each type of visitor to your site. Take your own browsing behavior as a guide. Here is my standard browse session:

• BBC News - I want to know what is happening in the world, and will look through the front page and entertainment for interesting headlines. Sometimes I get all I need to know from the headline, sometimes I will click through to the article, sometimes I will click through to the further information links.
• Blog Reading - Again, it is all about interesting headlines, but also it might be an image or a subhead that grabs my attention and pulls me in. Each blog will have a different reason to be in my reading list, some are friends I want to keep up to date with, others are topics I want to learn more about. For example, I subscribe to a couple of blogs just because they will let me know when there is a new piece of photography equipment available, but I won’t read every article as I have a loyalty to Canon cameras and not Nikon or Sony.
• Digg/Reddit/SU and BoingBoing - I will generally take a look at several sites just to take a break and see what is out there that is interesting. Although I am saying “surprise me”, I know from referral or past experience that these sites contain the sort of stuff I like to read about. A personal blog could contain the same sort of stuff but is going to have to work extra hard to convince me that they can do a better job, so would need to provide something unique and special.
• Forums - I visit forums to read and ask questions, or answer them. Most people are going to be in the former category more often than the latter, simply because human nature is such that we focus on our own needs or passively consume media most of the time, just as there are more listeners on radio than callers, and more readers than commenters on blogs.
• Searching - When I search I want the answer to the question I asked. It’s very rare I will search for anything general, it is almost always looking for something specific. That specific question though might get more detailed as I find answers and follow the scent. Think of researching a purchase, you might have a problem, then find products exist, then find reviews, then look for outlets, then find the best price. While you are making progress and the scent trail is there you will keep following it until mission achieved, even wading through swamps of spam to get there. If we lose the scent we change searching strategy.

I hardly ever visit directories. The way I discover more sites on a topic is to follow links, and usually it is through a specific article that has been linked rather than “go look at this blog it is great”.

Your own behavior might well be different, as might your audiences, so understanding how your niche works and the kind of reader missions they might be on is important to knowing if you are going to serve them or frustrate them.

Frustrating Browsers

Much that has been written about traffic is about getting the visitors to arrive. The problem is, by only focusing on attracting people and not serving them we can often create more problems than we solve.

Consider the searcher who thinks they have found the perfect “Britney Lohan” site only to see a bunch of advertising links. They might well click the links, but only because this site hasn’t got the information they want but the adsense headlines look promising. That site is going to only receive one visit per visitor but they don’t care as all they are about is driving more people in so more people leave via the clicks that pay them. The more people they disappoint the more money they make.

Think also about the blog that starts off promising to be “the number one walrus polishing resource” but has a front page full of politics and election stories.

Make Your Site Useful

The key to a happy, return visitor is to

1. Promise benefits in your titles and headlines and actually deliver on it.
2. Make your navigation suit the missions your readers are on.
3. On your homepage provide links for first time visitors who want to explore and long time visitors who read via the web and not RSS.
4. Individual articles should provide the content they promise, then provide links to more on the same subject.
5. Add clear signposts to all your best stuff, and your subscription options, while keeping your visitor on the scent of their hunt with series, related articles and category links

Track where your visitors come from and what they are after, and if you can actually talk to them. If you know why visitors arrive you will be in a better position to make them happy.

Reciprocation is where you feel inclined to do something for someone else because they did something for you. It’s about returning a favor, I help you, you help me.

A great deal of modern marketing is based on reciprocation. It’s a natural impulse and probably something that keeps society bound together.

The classic example is where a charity “gives” you something, anything from a sticker through to greetings cards, and you feel compelled to make a donation.

In the online sphere we give free information so people will feel inclined to sign up for a newsletter or RSS, as in the case of my free Creating Killer Flagship Content ebook.

It also happens a great deal in social media, and in fact works pretty well in those cases. I vote for you and maybe you will feel more inclined to vote for my next story. People re-tweet your message and you feel a lot warmer to them next time you see their name.

Lately I have seen a growing number of people using it in networking or to gain favors or a leg up. Emails saying “Is there anything I can help you with?”, contacts saying “I submitted your article to Reddit and StumbleUpon”, and so on.

The thing is, even when you suspect what is going on, you still feel indebted in a way. I wonder how much of this is acceptable and when it becomes, well, just wrong.

Where should the line be drawn. When do simple favors become manipulation or trickery? How can we maintain the favors while protecting ourselves from the frauds?

Please let me know what you think in the comments …

With any business you have two choices if you want to make a decent profit:

1. Sell lots of lower margin stuff to lots of people
2. Sell higher margin stuff to fewer people

Of course if you can sell lots of high value stuff to lots of people then you will do even better.

Value Versus Visitor Count

Websites and blogs have a similar choice but rather than being about sales think of it with value instead. You can provide a small amount of value to a huge audience or a deep and lasting value to a smaller audience. While some manage to provide a huge value to lots of people, in most cases, at least when starting out, you have the choice of wide or deep.

I do not go for the big traffic option but try to provide advice that will resonate with a subset of the overall “market”. Although I have more subscribers than some, I am actually choosy about how I grow my subscribers because I want a certain group of people that actually want to hear what I have to say. I leave certain subjects to other bloggers even though I know it would grow my readership.

Consider my free flagship content ebook. People do not search for that term, and it is not something that will ever get a Digg front page. In fact, it is something I think people should read if they want to know how to create valuable and compelling content, not something people are scrambling to read because there is an untapped desire.

Conversation Creates Deep Connections

Deeper connections start with how you approach your audience:

1. be very visible to the people who want/need you most,
2. where they want you to be,
3. in the way they want.

Concentrate your time to craft one or two very good posts a week rather than lots of fluff, and make yourself available to follow up with answers and conversation. Yes, I charge for consulting calls because if I didn’t I would be never doing anything else, but many people have found that I always try to answer quick questions in comments and emails. An authentic desire to help is paramount.

Interaction is key. It’s not just about broadcasting your expertise but making the conversation two-way. If you are truly interactive you will learn what people respond to and how, and they will get to know you better and trust you more. The more positive impact you have in your niche community the more referrals and word of mouth you will generate.

The main point is who do you want to attract and why. Traffic with no purpose is vanity, much better to gather readers and prospects you can truly serve in a substantial way.

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 …

It’s OK to not have all the answers. Let’s face it, everything changes so fast, it’s hard to keep up with absolutely everything. Sometimes though we have burning questions that Google can’t solve. What should we do?

Well, as bloggers, a great thing to do is to ask the question and publish the answers.

If you don’t know the answer, it could well be lots of people want to know too. Plus, if you can’t find the answer in Google then you just might have an idea that will bring you regular search traffic if you implement it right. It’s always a good thing to get your audience thinking and involved. Even if their response is “I don’t know, but good question!”

Sometimes there is no right or wrong answer, but opinions can create valuable discussions which are still attractive content, thought provoking, community building and good for entertainment and engagement. Just look at Liz’ Open Mike discussions.

The question does not always have to be asked on your blog either. It might be that you know a forum or discussion list with topical experts on board, or it might be that you need to cast your net wide and get the biggest possible response by asking in multiple places.

Here are five ways to get answers outside of comments that jump to mind:

1. Twitter - For my post about getting the most out of LinkedIn I asked for suggestions on Twitter. Twitter, after my blog, is my go-to place for getting quick answers as I know I will get a response. Of course you need a few followers first!
2. LinkedIn - I have only asked one question on LinkedIn and just got the one response, but it was a good one. Others have far more success. LinkedIn is chock full of business people, and is probably more appropriate for those kinds of issues, but also those people have lives outside of business so might be worth a try.
3. Yahoo! Answers - Same kind of deal as LinkedIn answers but wider in audience and more general purpose and more consumer oriented.
4. A survey/poll - Rather than just ask a question and get responses in comments, surveys and polls can be useful for narrowing the answers for quantitative results as I have done in my blogging survey (still a chance to win a book or blog critique!)
5. Email - If you know certain people will have the answers you need then email them. If you make it easy and quick to answer you might be surprised at the responses you get. I did this with my Cluetrain Social Media article and is something Jonathan Fields does routinely to great effect.

Make sure you always credit the people who provide answers. Also try to give people credit even if you disagree with what they say, show all sides.

Got any tips to share? Do you ask questions in your blogging? How? Or do you prefer blogs to be about answers? Please share in the comments …