CT Biz Blogs

It’s always sad when a blog hasn’t been updated in a while. I wrote a joke post about lost and abandoned blogs, back when I was steaming through my 20 blog posts in 20 days challenge, but it’s actually a serious and common occurrence in the blogosphere.

Sometimes a blog is revived after long silence. Sometimes it just dies on the vine.

But just because a blog has been quiet for a while doesn’t mean it isn’t worth reviving — if your enthusiasm for spreading the word about your business, dream, hobby, or hobby-horse is worth reviving.

Blogging is all about passion for your ideas and about wanting to share your excitement with the world. If you can’t keep that feeling alive in yourself, you’ll never be able to get anyone else interested in what you have to offer.

So if the only reason you’re blogging is for the page rank, then you won’t have that passion.

But if you do, you won’t have to write a white paper, official report, anything formal or fancy, or even get out of your pajamas.

You don’t have to worry about using keywords, Technorati tags, or shamelessly linking to Robert Scoble for the temporary traffic boost.

Write about something that you feel strongly about — something touching, something thrilling, or something that makes you angry. (You have to take the high road on that last one and not just curse, or fan the flames.)

Write from your heart; show your passion, convictions, knowledge or willingness to learn.

That’s all it takes.

Trust me.

photo by spcoon

Meta tags are part of the HTML code on a web page. They allow web developers to include “metadata,” or information about the data on a page, right into the page itself. Readers won’t see the metadata, search engine crawlers will.

One type of metadata you can have is keywords. This essentially creates a list of keywords about the page, supposedly for the convenience of search engines. However, it’s been abused for a long time by spammers, and so is useless today.

Abuse of keywords happens when spammers just put in long lists of words, often repeating the same word over and over, in an effort to game the system. Search engines have figured this out.

Some web developers put keyword metadata in the code, anyway, on the principle that it can’t hurt, if done non-abusively. But from everything I’ve read, it’s not used by most search engines. However, if you are using a blog inside a company, there still may be a use for the keyword meta tag.

And, there is still some useful metadata, such as the meta tag “description.” From what I’ve seen, this isn’t abused, so it’s a good way of adding additional information about your site. for example, here’s a screen shot of the description I added to my site. You’ll need to know how to tweak the template, if you want to do this.

Search Engine Watch has an excellent article on meta tags, including examples.

There’s another article with an even more techy explanation of meta tags at Builder.com.

The short answer: Keywords are the most frequently used significant words on a web page. To a search engine, this is what the page is about.

The longer answer: When librarians come up with keywords, they are describing what the book, article, whatever, is about. That’s what keywords mean to them. Those actual words may or may not be in the text.

But on the web it’s slightly different. That’s because, while people can abstract from the text to come up with descriptive words, search engines can’t. They typically use automated programs (’bots) that crawl through your site to index the contents. Those bots can count very well, they just can’t think. (more…)

Just a touch of flu.

Darren Rowse, of Problogger, has started a series on beginning blogging. One of his latest articles is: 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You?

Keeping in mind that his perspective is that of the person who blogs for a living — someone who makes money directly from the ads on a blog — this article is well worth reading if you’re thinking about blogging about your small business. You can use it as a checklist, in order to decide for yourself if the question is relevant to your situation, or if you have a strategy for addressing the issue.

For example, if you answer no to “1. Do you enjoy writing?” it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or can’t have a blog for your small business. Aside from the whole issue of “ghostbloggers,” you can instead:

• do an audio blog or podcast
• use some voice-recognition software such as Naturally Speaking,
• write down your ideas without worrying about punctuation and spelling, and ask or hire someone to copyedit for you
• ask an employee who does enjoy writing to be the blogger.

It’s only if you plan on making your money entirely by legitimate blogging (as opposed to stealing others posts) that you really should enjoy tapping words out on the keyboard.

Well, I don’t have the heart to subject anyone to a long screed on trackbacks (as I threatened to do in my last post about an introduction to trackbacks), especially on a Monday morning when I’m running late.

But here’s a few more tid-bits.

This is what a trackback will look like in WordPress, using as an example a trackback from a post from Liz of Successful Blog.

In my blog, trackbacks are mixed in with the regular comments. In others, such as Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion, they are separated. (more…)

The short answer: trackbacks are like automatic comments.

The slightly longer answer: Most blogging applications have a way to send notices (pings) to any website URLs you reference in a blog post. If you write about a specific blog post you read, for example, you can “ping” that post, and your blogging software will leave, in a similar format to a comment, an excerpt of your post and the URL back to your post.

This is good because it helps keep track of the conversations about topics as they swirl around the blogosphere, and it notifies the blogger that you’ve written about his or her post. That will prompt at least one visit to your site, so the blogger can check you out.

You might see trackbacks sprinkled among regular comments (usually preceded by ellipses (…)) or you might see them in a special section after the post.

There’s more to it than that, and there are, as always, pluses and minuses to trackbacks, although the pluses outweigh the minuses in my book. And there are always slight complications.

But this is just the short and the slightly longer (but not as long as I could be once I get wound up) answer, and that’s enough for a start.

I’ll post the long answer on Monday.

I didn’t make it clear in yesterday’s post that Kim Fawcett (Your Voice blog) is the latest blogger that Valorie Luther, of Creative Concepts, and I are working with. It’s been interesting showing Kim, Anthony Gordon (Integrated Health Management blog), and Matthew Cossolotto (StandingO blog) the workings of Wordpress 2.0.

The best way to learn what folks new to blogging need, is to work with a few people who are willing to try new things. I’ve realized once more how much I take for granted at times and how much learning I had to do at the beginning that is part of how I blog naturally now. That said, the best way to learn is to start blogging. As I’ve said before, when you first start blogging, unless you’re Guy Kawasaki, famed venture capitalist, or Tim Berners-Lee, father of the web, chances are no one will be watching, outside of your friends and family.

Luckily, Wordpress 2.0 is easier for beginners than 1.5, which is what my blog still uses. And Wordpress.com, the hosted version, is easier still. Of course, there are always tradeoffs. Ease of use vs. control, and control vs. time.

For new users, I recommend looking for ease of use, unless you’re willing to spend extra time learning the techy stuff as well. But if you’re a natural geek or geek-ette for whom the techy stuff is the fun part, I say “go for it!”

Or you could <ahem> hire a natural geek-ette.

The great thing about blogging is that the immediate reward of seeing a nice post up there, all neatly laid out, is a real kick.

Your Voice is the blog of Kim Fawcett, who has declared her candidacy for state representative in Fairfield and Westport. She’s decided to use a blog as a way to help her reach out to people, and to hear what’s on their minds.

This Blog I hope will be about the issues. My plan is to run a grass roots campaign and talk to as many people as I can. I plan to use this Blog to share with you the issues that regular people in my community care about. If I am sucessful in reaching out to enough people my voice should over time truly become their voice in the process and that is my campaign slogan YOUR VOICE..FOR CHANGE!

Kim may be new to blogging, but she’s plunged right in. I think she’ll do well, because it fits right into her overall goal of meeting people and paying attention to what they have to say.

For all you blogging newcomers, or people interested in seeing how darn easy it is to use a blog, here’s a quick demo on how to create a link in Wordpress 2.0. You’ll need to have the Flash player.

If the demo doesn’t work, you can get the Flash player on “Macrodobe’s” site (or “Adobomedia”).

Updated 8/14/06 for Lorelle’s WordPress Tips Challenge

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