CT Biz Blogs

While attendng a women’s lecture luncheon yesterday, I mentioned “weblogs” to a few people in the pre-lecture chatting time. At functions where I think there are less internet-savvy folks, I use “blogs” and “weblogs” interchangeably. I usually get “What are weblogs/blogs?” and I go into my elevator speech about blogs. It’s scary how much I can blather about them if given half a chance, although I try to start with just a quick sentence or two.

Well yesterday I got the usual “What are weblogs?” But in both cases, the person went on to ask, “Is that like a blog?”

Woo-hoo!

Twice people said that they’d heard about blogs, although both weren’t 100% sure of what they were. One woman had looked at a few, and read the blog of a sales coach who had recently added a blog to her site.

The other, a woman maybe in her late 20’s, early 30’s started telling me about this band she was following, and how a blog sounded sort of like what the band had.

I asked if the site was on MySpace.

She said she knew about MySpace, but the band’s site wasn’t there, and that the conversation on the site was called a “vine.”

I’ve never heard of that term before. I’m going to email her and ask her for more information. The lecture was starting so I didn’t have a change to continue the conversation.

I’m encouraged that the term is slowly filtering through to more people (Realtors and mortgage lenders, in this case). And it reminds me that people care less about what things are called and more about what they can do for them — help them communicate with a band and fellow fans, or read articles by a sales coach.

Yesterday, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7.0. I haven’t tried it yet, but the buzz has begun.

One thing I find exciting is that it has a built-in RSS reader, at last. Granted, it’s limited, but as a first step, that’s great news. More non-tech Windows users have IE as their browser than have Firefox, so I’m hoping that this will mean a surge in the number of people subscribing to blogs.

For a great intro demo, check out Rob Safuto’s Awakened Voice Learning Center: Managing RSS with IE7. (QuickTime needed).

This is a very nice and helpful demo, especially for people unfamiliar with feeds.

One feature that looks nice, and is not (as far as I know) supported with Firefox’s Live Bookmarks yet, is that with IE7, you can tell the difference between read and unread posts. This is key for managing subscriptions.

In related IE7 news, Lorelle VanFossen is writing a nice series on “Getting Your Blog Ready for Internet Explorer 7.” This is a more techy view, talking about CSS, among other things, but if you’re a geek or geek-wannabe like me, this is for you!

After almost a week of uproar in the blogosphere, CEO Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel posted brief entries on their blogs about the fiasco with the Wal-Marting Across America blog a few days ago.

Answering other bloggers such as Duncan Riley, who posted an open letter asking for some response, Rubel said in his post:

I am sorry I could not speak about this sooner. I had no personal role in this project. There is a process in place that I had to let proceed through its course. This is why it took some time.

Edelman’s own post seemed sincere, if short. He acknowledged that the company had made a mistake, and worse, not adhered to the WOMMA (Word Of Mouth Marketing Association) code of ethics that his company had a hand in creating.

I want to acknowledge our error in failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset. This is 100% our responsibility and our error; not the client’s.

Robert Scoble, well-known tech blogger, says that’s good enough for him. I’m not so sure. But I don’t know if any more explanation or information will be forthcoming anyway, so I suppose that’s that.

Still, I wonder what’s the best thing to do — give a little more insight into how this happened, or just offer your apology and move on? I’d love to know more about how the whole train-wreck happened — how the decisions were made; what was the thought process behind the whole thing. I’m not the only one left wondering.

It’s only been a week, but it seems much longer, somehow. Especially when there was complete silence on the subject from such a prolific blogger as Steve Rubel.

But, for Edelman the company, there’s a client involved here, and one thing I know is that for consultants, the client gets all the credit and the consultant gets all the blame. That’s just how the game is played. So outsiders will probably never know the full story.

Richard Edelman’s apology was well-crafted — he briefly explained the problem, accepted the blame, and stated his support of the WOMMA code of ethics.

One thing I found fascinating about all this is how well trackbacks worked to help stitch together pieces of the conversation. Following the trail from both Rubel and Edelman’s blog, I found a wealth of sound insight. For PR folks, it’s well worth taking the time to read the blogosphere’s take. For example, I completely agree with Ian Delaney, who astutely writes …

…it seems that the irony of social media champions being caught undermining their big play is far, far more interesting than a company with a bad reputation continuing to do bad things. Ultimately, I think a lot of people will react like me, so good call by Edelman for putting his hands up.

And after all, as he goes on to say, “no one died, broke the law, or got pregnant.”

‘Nuff said?

Related Post: Wal-Mart’s Blogging Fiasco

Also check out a TechMeme snapshot

Technorati : Edelman, Wal-Mart

Here’s the story of what not to do when you blog. What a mess! This has resulted in dragging quite a few people and companies through the mud — Wal-Mart (ok, lots of mud there already), the blogger and photographer involved, Edelman, and even the Washington Post.

I won’t reiterate the whole sad saga here (Business Week has a good article about the Wal-Mart blog debacle) but here’s the gist of it:

The “blog” Wal-Marting Across America appeared, chronicling the travels of Laura and Jim, as they took an RV across the country. They stayed in Wal-Mart parking lots overnight (RVs can park for free there) and interviewed Wal-Mart employees across the land. The stories were all upbeat and pro-Wal-Mart. No one knew who these bloggers were and comments weren’t allowed, so Business Week and bloggers started investigating, and it all came out. Laura’s brother works for Edelman, Jim is a professional photographer for the Washington Post. They apparently are a couple, and actually on a vacation, which they managed to have Wal-Mart pay for.

And the repercussions go on and on. The Washington Post has a policy of not allowing outside work, so Jim’s in trouble. Edelman’s involvement was hidden, so they’ve got a black eye. No one’s looking good in this. Except maybe Business Week.

Some people are claiming that this was a setup from the start, and don’t believe Laura’s claim (told in the last post) that:

I started thinking about all the other amazing things there are to see in this vast country of ours. And then I started thinking about how Wal-Mart - one in every town, practically - lets you park overnight for free. The idea just sort of came together. We would take vacation from our full-time jobs and drive across the country in a rented RV, from city to city, spending the night in a different Wal-Mart parking lot every night.

Actually, the blog idea wasn’t bad. But here’s what they didn’t do:

(more…)

Looking at statistics can be fun, especially about a month after you’ve started blogging. “Someone’s reading my blog — Wahoo!”

But what does it all mean? That’s a whole other question.

I’ve written briefly about two things you need to remember when you look at your blog stats:

• spammers leaving comments (or trying to leave comments) are counted as visitors
• people who won’t accept cookies are being counted as new visitors

There are a lot of ways you can get misinformation from stats, and a lot of ways you can misinterpret your stats.

Stats can tell you some things, when you learn how to interpret them. But today I want to talk about a larger issue:

If you’re a small business, blogging for other reasons besides making money on blog ads, the one thing you really want to know, you won’t be able to learn from your stats!

What’s that, you ask?

How is my blog helping my business?

(more…)

In a panel at BlogHer 06, Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, offered to send people at the conference a free copy of her book, On Becoming Fearless, if they emailed her. So I did. I just got it yesterday, so I can’t review it yet.

The offer’s still up at her virtual book tour but it might be over by now. (You can also read a free excerpt from the book.)

But if it’s too late, don’t worry - Kelly Leonard, of Hachette Book Group USA, gave me copies to give away!

I’d like to try a contest for the remaining four copies I have. Here’s the deal: there are many fears about blogging - some real, some imagined. But we blog anyway.

I want to hear from other bloggers about one fear that they had about blogging and why they didn’t let it stop them. To have a chance to win a free book (I’ll even pay postage myself) leave a comment on this post about a blogging fear, and why that didn’t stop you.

The four comments that I think are the best will win a copy of the book.

You don’t have to leave your real name, if you don’t want to, but do leave a real email address (that doesn’t get published and will be kept confidential) so that I can notify you if you win.

The contest will run until midnight, Sunday, August 27th. Eligibility will be determined by the time stamp on the blog comment. This blog is running on US Eastern Daylight Time (same time zone as New York City). That’s currently Greenwich Mean Time - 4 hours. Here’s a link to the World Time Clock’s current time in NYC, if you’re interested.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=179

So what do you think? What is one of your fears about blogging? And why did you decide to blog anyway?

As a bonus, here’s one of mine: that no one will enter the contest! It’ll just look so pathetic. But I did it anyway because I want to see what happens. So step up, say your piece, and maybe win one of our fabulous prizes.

Technorati: virtual book tours blogher06

A lot of bloggers are concerned about stats. When I first looked at my stats, I was amazed at how much information it looked like there was about the numbers of people who accessed this blog and clicked around. (Well, first I was depressed at the low numbers, but then I was amazed at the amount of items that supposedly can be tracked.)

But note that I said “access” and not “read,” because that’s another thing entirely. As blogging sage Dave Winer has noted,

It would be interesting to do a study to see if people can tell you what a blog post said some short interval after reading it. Something like the SAT, for blog readers. I bet the numbers would be astonishingly small.

I think that’s especially true of the hard-core blog readers, those who scan over 100 blogs a day — and that’s a large number of people, in the blogosphere. (Mea culpa!)

As Dave points out, stat numbers don’t equal readers. But it’s also true that stat numbers don’t even equal the real number of people looking at your site. The problem with stats is that you have to do some thinking to really understand them. The numbers, by themselves, don’t mean much.

(more…)

How time flies, as they say. CTBizBlogs is one year old today, August 13th.

When I started, I’d already been blogging sporadically in other blogs, hosted by Blogger, for over a year. But I was ready for more control and more options. So I plunked down some money, bought a few domains, got a web hosting provider and started posting.

I picked WordPress for 2 reasons — it was free, and my hosting provider, Dreamhost, offered a one-click installation.

Since then I’ve learned a lot about WordPress, web hosting, and blog writing.

When I started, I was full of pent-up posts, so it was pretty easy to pick any topic on blogging and just start typing. Sometimes that resulted in a good post, sometimes not.

Also when I started, my day job was in the doldrums, and I had not much outlet for my creative energy. Be careful what you wish for there — now I have more ideas and projects than time. That’s why I’m still using the older version of the Journalized template.

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned over the last year:

(more…)

If you’re trying to make money from the ads on your site, then you do need traffic, and lots of it.

But if you’ve got a small business, sometimes blogging a lot can be too much of a good thing.

Via Debbie Weil’s WordBiz Report, here’s a great article from Eric Kintz’s Marketing Excellence blog on why you don’t have to spend all your spare time writing posts for your blog. It’s well worth reading.

The short synopsis is that, as a small business, total traffic is not as important as reaching your target audience.

You can do that by such things as: commenting on other blogs or forums that your clients or prospective clients visit and by putting your blog’s web address on your regular site, on your email signature line, on your outgoing voice mail message, handouts, brochures, and just about any place where your target audience is likely to see it.

You still need to post, of course. You just don’t need to obsess over it.

Whew, thanks Eric for taking some of the pressure off.

When you have a blog, one thing you need to decide on is how you want the blog to look.

I decided that 11 months ago for CTBizBlogs, but for about the last 3 of those months, I’ve been trying to decide on a new look. Feedback on this has been mixed. For the old theme, it’s almost as if you can put your self on the geeky to normal spectrum based on your reaction to it.

Loved it = techy
Accepted it = techy tendencies
Confused by it = non-techy

For the record, here’s what it looked like:

The main reaction from non-techy types was that it was busy, and not clear where the focus was.

(more…)

This is a continuation of the thread I started with yesterday’s post: The risks of blogging.

One concern that people have about blogging is that, with your words out there on the internet, and forever enshrined in Google’s memory banks, what you say can come back to haunt you.

Here’s my take on that:

First, that works both ways. If you make a mistake, it may be a public one, especially if you don’t follow up wisely when it’s pointed out. Then people will come out of the woodwork to watch you self-destruct. But you also have a public record of all the smart things you said. You are building a portfolio, a relationship, a body of work, in a sense. In my opinion, the people who really have to worry about this problem are those who don’t have anything to say, have something to hide, or are just more of the “same old, same old.”

Maybe you see that something you wrote is being twisted and used against you, that’s when having a blog is a great strategy. If someone takes a quote out of context, or takes a cheap shot at you, you can write about it. You can point to the post and show how your opponent is giving out false information. One reason that Mark Cuban started his BlogMaverick personal weblog is because he was tired of having his words filtered through reporters or misquoted, or of having 2 hours of interview cut to 500 words. (Source: I Want Media: One Question, as quoted in Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright (great book!).

Blogging is a great way to give your side of any misunderstandings.

There’s no way you can control what negative things people may say about you, whether you’re blogging or not. As any professional writer can tell you, people will take your words and run them through their internal filters. Even in the best of circumstances, what comes out is different from what you wrote. The only way to avoid that is to not do anything, not strive for anything, not be anything.

What you can control is how you react to those issues. And blogging is one more tool to use to counter negatives, when done in the right way. (more…)

When I talk to people about blogging, it seems like they almost always want to talk mostly about the negative aspects. The positive aspects have to be explained to them, but the negatives are obvious.

For example, when I mention that blogging allows readers to leave comments, the first thing people ask is “But can’t people leave nasty comments?” or “What can I do when people complain?”

Or else people are concerned that their on line words will be used against them, somehow — honest thoughts will be taken out of context, and used to demonstrate a weakness.

These are legitimate concerns. I just wish people didn’t leap to the negative quite so quickly, however.

But I guess that’s because most of the internet (except regular, static websites) is still uncharted territory for most people. Forums, listservs, newsgroups, on line seminars, Skype — what are those? And what they have heard of, such as chat rooms for instance, seem to be all about lurking creeps and perverts, according to mainstream media.

There are some negative consequences of blogging; it’s no good denying it. I happen to think that in most cases the benefits outweigh the problems, but it’s much harder to get people to see that. Whatever the reason, most people seem to equate being on line with being attacked.

If everyone who thought of opening a store decided not to because of the possibility of being robbed, we’d be in a lot of trouble. Where would I get my coffee? Yes, robbery is possible. It’s a risk.

Well, in project management there’s a little thing called “risk management.” That’s where you take a systematic look at the possible risks, assess the probability of occurrence, decide the importance of the consequences, and devise possible ways to mitigate the risks.

I’ve written some things over the past nine months about the benefits of blogging. This week, I’m going to take a look at some of the risks of blogging, try to separate the real from the imagined, and look at possible risk mitigation strategies.

What do you think are the risks of blogging?

Related posts:

• Why should I have a weblog?
• A blog can be your website, too
• 4 types of businesses that could use blogs
• What’s blogging good for, anyway?
• What if you were blogging?

The short answer: yes and no.

The longer answer:

It depends. It depends on what you blog, how you blog, and what other people blog about you.

This post is inspired by an article in the Boston Globe, “Blogs ‘essential’ to a good career.“

The article makes some good points about the positive side of blogging. Blogging can indeed be good for your career, if you do it right.

While the article focuses mainly on the impact of blogging for a career, I think point #5 is especially important for small businesses:

5. Blogging makes self-employment easier.

You can’t make it on your own unless you’re good at selling yourself. One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways of marketing yourself is with a blog. When someone searches for your product or service, make sure your blog comes up first.

Curt Rosengren, a career coach, periodically Googles ‘’career passion” — words he thinks are most important to his business — just to make sure his blog comes up high on the list. He estimates that his blog generates at least half of his coaching business.

A bunch of bloggers have weighed in with their opinions on the article.

(more…)

When I was growing up, we had a house with 2 great fireplaces. They were designed with special vents that returned more heat to the room, rather than losing it all up the flue.

Because my dad worked as a builder, we always had a lot of odd pieces of wood — bits of 2×4s that were left over from a construction site. He used those in the fire, as well as the wood from our land.

Now, I like a nice fire. I like to sit and watch the dancing flames, and see how the embers glow. But my father’s fires were not like that — they were mini-infernos. The fireplace got so hot it was impossible to sit near it, and what you mostly saw was a solid wall of flames.

But to get a fire like that, my dad didn’t have time to watch it — it seemed like all he had time to do was keep feeding the fire. The minute a piece of wood was added — WHOMP — the fire consumed it and it wanted more. Next piece — WHOMP — again — WHOMP.

What does this have to do with blogging, you may be wondering?

Well, that’s what I think of blogging for traffic only. It’s like how my father had to work to keep the fire going full-blast.

It was exciting to see my stat numbers skyrocket when I was linked to by Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion. That lead to a chain reaction of other bloggers linking to me, and my traffic increased.

Suddenly, my perspective started to shift. “They’re watching,” I started thinking. “They’re waiting. What am I going to write about next?” I felt like I had to keep feeding post after post to my blog, without enjoying the process.

Luckily, I realized quickly that my blog is not about getting a lot of traffic. I’ll never be an “A-list” blogger and that’s fine by me.

That’s why I’ve been busy thinking about blogging goals, strategy, and tactics. It’s an ongoing evolution, which is why blogging is so great — it’s much easier to evolve a blog than a static website.

I’ll share my thoughts here, and I hope you’ll add yours. But I probably won’t be posting daily. That’s fine by me and I hope it’s fine by you, too.

Audible.com is a company that has online audio versions of books that can be downloaded to an MP3 player. I’ve been a subscriber to Audible.com since early 2001 (5 year anniversary in a week). At the time I joined, I was commuting an hour each way, and listening to books really made the time go by (and made me a little more knowledgeable, I hope).

Last December I got a letter and a free set of earbuds from Audible. The letter was from the president, Don Katz, telling me that, while they appreciated my business and my loyalty, the fact was that Audible was losing money on all its early-adopter listeners. I get two books a month for a very low price. He said that Audible would continue to honor the legacy account, but asked me to upgrade to a new account which would be only one book plus an audio magazine subscription.

My thought at the time was “Yeah, right. How can you lose money when there’s no inventory but some bits and bytes, and bandwidth for downloads?”

(more…)

Ok, I’ve been yammering here for 7 months now about blogging for small businesses. Today I want to direct your attention to another small business blogger out there — one who’s blogging as he builds his online business, months before he’s ready to open.

Mark Nash is building an online store, and blogging about it as he goes along. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the work he’s putting into his e-commerce site, and his latest post, Why Should a Small Business Blog, gives some of his reasons for why he’s blogging. Here’s a brief glimpse of a few of them

1. Creating pre-grand-opening awareness.

For a small online retail business with only a modest outlay for online advertising, then, the challenge is to create advance awareness without spending a ton of cash.

Marketing is certainly one big reason for blogging. I like this twist; I hadn’t thought of it.

4. Getting good advice.

As I continue describing my activities in the time leading up to the launch of the business, I am inviting criticism and discussion. Some of it will be good advice, some of it not so good, but all of it will be worth giving some consideration to.

People are curious, and they love a good story, especially one that’s unfolding before their eyes. This guy is a savvy blogger. (Although he’s using Google’s Blogger platform! He’s got a few reasons for doing so, but really, Mark, Blogger is so limited. If you want free and simple, Wordpress.com has better tools.) My bet is that people will come to his blog and won’t be able to resist participating, via the comments.

I know plenty of people will be coming via the link from Darren Rowse, of Problogger. That’s how I got there.

Check it out!

I have nothing against ads. I don’t like to see a lot of them, and I really don’t like ad-encrusted blogs. But the bills need to get paid, and people need to get compensated for their work. That’s fine.

But I get upset over deceptive ads. It bothers me to see long-standing conventions of web page usability perverted to trick users into clicking.

One of the most blatent examples of this is the type of ad that looks like a message from your computer, complete with OK button. But most people are savvy enough nowadays to not fall for that.

However, Google encourages people to use another type of deceptive ad — the link ads that look like navigation pages. This is not “doing no evil,” Google. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. (more…)

For my final post in the 20 blog types marathon, I’d like to talk about blog etiquette and call for blog civility.

I firmly believe that weblogs represent a new opportunity for everyone — blog software has lowered the barrier for publishing on the web. It’s now so much easier than ever to add your voice to the distributed conversation.

But I’d like to remind everyone that once you publish your blog, you can’t take back what you’ve said. Cruel words, written in haste or anger, will be available for everyone to see. Even if you take back a post, chances are good that Google has cached it, or someone has seen it in their RSS feed reader and saved it before you could take it back.

It’s ok to be goofy, to make a mistakes, even to be boring from time to time. You can recover from that, should you care to (I’m all in favor of more goofiness). But cruelty lives on, even after apologies are made.

This goes for comments as well. I’ve been lucky so far, and I haven’t been slammed yet. But I’ve certainly read plenty of rude and uncalled-for comments in other blogs. As a blogger, you’ll need to learn not to take it personally and not to respond (or to respond instead to the ideas, not to the manner in which they were expressed). And as a commenter, if you’re angry or upset, write your words in a text editor like Notepad first, walk away, and then read them before you copy and submit.

That way, you’ll have added something worthwhile to the conversation.

Upate: This just in– here’s another blogger who’s got the right idea.

One of the big issues in blogging these days has to do with content theft. Content theft happens when someone takes a post from your blog and publishes it on his or her blog, in its entirety.

This happens because, with RSS (web feeds), it’s easy to import posts into a blog and publish them — there are actual software products out there which will automate the process. Low-life bloggers steal content so that they can use it on their blogs in place of any original content. They’re using it as filler between the ads, essentially — something to make the blog look good. These RSS bandits sometimes link back to the original blog and keep the attribution, and sometimes don’t.

Here are the views of two bloggers who have had their content stolen:

(more…)

Dan C. Hamilton, of Columbus, Ohio, is a realtor who just started blogging. He’s hoping that blogging will make a difference when you choose a realtor in his area.

[B]logs are going to be a critical asset to successful Realtors of the future. A blog allows readers like you to get inside my head. It is also a forum for me to provide you with tips or notices that may be important to selling or buying your home. If you’re researching which Realtor you would like to sell your house or find you the house of your dreams, you want someone you can trust and someone you think you’ll get along with. Blogging, while it doesn’t tell you exactly who I am, gives you a little more insight the type of person I am. It shows of my personality a little. You see how my mind works and you see my sense of humor. It builds a small trust between us.

Is he right? Only time will tell — it’s early days yet for Dan.

But out of curiosity, I did a little research, trying to find some numbers, just to see if blogging does actually help build business. (more…)

One of the most popular blogging applications, TypePad, from Six Apart, has been having problems since sometime Thursday night. It’s just about over, now. This affected some of my favorite blogs, such as Seth’s Blog, Micro Persuasion, and Signs Never Sleep.

At first, the blogs weren’t available at all — people were seeing a “down for maintenance” page instead. Then they were up, but with posts only up to December 10th. I found this out as I was reading posts in my feed reader. I wanted to look at comments, so I clicked on the title of the post, which should have brought me to the actual blog post. Instead I got a “page not found” message.

I didn’t think to go to TypePad’s blog, but instead sent an email to Steve Rubel, owner of Micro Persuasion. He sent back a quick note. Thanks, Steve, for taking time out to email me.

There are varied reactions in the blogosphere over this outage. (more…)

I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with ads on blogs. In fact, I toyed with the idea myself. But since one of my aims is to use this blog to communicate with clients, I decided not to go that route.

Back in the days when Google first bought Blogger (only about a year or two ago, but that’s forever in internet time), ads were mandatory — they were on the very top of the blog, above the name. That was ok, because the blog was free, after all. They’ve since changed that policy, because they are heavily promoting AdSense.

Now we find that AOL is putting ads on their member’s blogs. That’s just plain wrong. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

There are three things about ads that bug me: ad-encrusted blogs, ads in RSS feeds, and sneaky ads.

(more…)

Maybe you’re thinking about getting into blogging, but you’re not sure. How can you tell if blogging your busuiness is for you?

Or maybe you think it’s a fad, and if you wait long enough, it’ll go away?

Well, even if it were a fad, it’s one that is very beneficial to small businesses. so what’s wrong with that? Done right, it can help you connect with customers, share your expertise, and build your business. It’s cheaper than a radio ad, and lasts longer.

So here, for my contrasting two options post (#9 of 20, if you’re counting), I give you: To blog, or not to blog.

To blog:

1. You can afford to spend some time each day or so (anywhere from 1/2 hour - 2 hours, depending on your ambition and energy) or you can get someone to help (employee, family member, client).
2. You are passionate about some aspect of your business and want to share the details of how you do what you do.
3. You are free to do what you want, in terms of a web presence.
4. You have a unique product and need some unique marketing.
5. You are willing to hear negative comments, to be proactive about problems.
6. You are comfortable with computers or willing to learn.

(more…)

For my case study post (for the 20 blog types marathon) I want to take a look at Andrew Ewalt’s Law Blog. One reason is that he’s a CT lawyer from near my old stomping grounds (he’s in Manchester and Storrs; I lived in that area for many years). For another, he’s a good subject for my experiment — he’s headed in the right direction with his blog, but it could use a few tweaks. For a third, I’m in the process of redesigning this blog, and thinking objectively about someone else’s blog is easier than thinking objectively about my own. This will get my brain going in the right direction. So, I have a few thoughts on Andrew’s blog that I’d like to share. Do with them what you will, Andrew.

I’ll be writing about three parts of Andrew’s blog:

1. The URL
2. The Header
3. The Posts

(more…)

For a while now, I’ve wanted to find out more about the Lincoln Sign Co blog, Signs Never Sleep, so I chose J.D. Iles for my interview post of the 20 blog types. I’ve never met the man, but I sent him an email, asking if he would mind answering a few questions about his blog.

He replied that he gets requests like that all the time, and doesn’t have time to do a full interview (between the signs and the blogging he’s a busy guy) but he pointed me to a series of posts he did in January and February of this year, on blogging and the SNS blog, and said he could answer a question or two in addition to that.

That’s fair enough, I think. So I decided to do a slightly different kind of “interview” and use the power of the blogosphere to pull from those posts. I don’t think I pulled anything out of context, but I recommend that you go read the entire posts for the full story. (more…)

In an earlier article I wrote about blogs with multiple authors. There’s one type of multiple-author blog I missed – the customer evangelist blogs at Vespa. This project is headed by Steve Rubel, a VP at CooperKatz & Company, who writes Micro Persuasion, an influential blog about public relations and new media.

Vespa has four people blogging on two officially sanctioned blogs, which are linked to right from the corporate website. These people were approved by Vespa, and given guidelines to follow, but their posts are not screened in any way. (Visit Micro Persuasion link above for the PDF of the blogging guidelines). They are also not getting paid, according to the Vespa blogging FAQ page.

These writers already have their own blogs, and they are already Vespa owners. They are “Customer Evangelists,” (more…)

In the October 23rd issue of Northeast Magazine, a supplement of the Hartford Courant, Joel Lang wrote “Decoding the Blogosphere: Navigating Connecticut’s Expanding World Of Web Logs” (link is to online article).

It’s not an awful article; it does serve as an introduction, of sorts, to blogging. But, as is almost guaranteed in most mainstream media coverage of blogs, it concentrates on the personal journal variety. Apparently, Joel Lang discovered Connecticut Weblogs, talked to the folks behind that effort, and sampled some of the blogs listed on their site, focusing on the more off-beat ones. To be fair, I must say that most of the blogs listed on Connecticut Weblogs are the personal ones, and they are a very quirky lot. (more…)

Achenblog, Joel Achenbach’s blog (he’s a journalist for the Washington Post), is fascinating for two reasons. First, it’s usually an amusing read, and second, the comments to the posts show how invested his readers have become in following his writing. For example, look at the comments to his latest post (at this writing) satirizing To Do lists (links to comments, scroll up to read the post).

When readers leave comments on most blogs, the comments are usually about that particular post — people weighing in with additional information, questions, corrections, opinions. But the comments on some posts here read almost like they’re from discussion forums, with regular readers referring to comments made by other readers in past posts.

The conversation weaves in and out of the posts and comments, and swirls around the various personalities who now know each other, online at least.

I found this via Business Week’s Blogspotting blog.

Teen bloggers: A new Pew Internet & American Life Project study was released, which talks about the online activity of teens. In the summary, they state:

Teens are often much more enthusiastic authors and readers of blogs than their adult counterparts. Teen bloggers, led by older girls, are a major part of this tech-savvy cohort. Teen bloggers are more fervent internet users than non-bloggers and have more experience with almost every online activity in the survey.

Why would this be important to you? Well, if you have a business where this group is your clientele (clothes, shoes, or books, to name a few) or if you want to increase your appeal to this group — you should be blogging!

(Thanks to Jim Turner’s One By One blog for the “heads up.”)

When you first begin blogging, you’re pretty much talking to yourself. It takes time and effort for readers to appear. When you talk to yourself, it’s easy to forget that the people you want to talk to have a different context; you tend to make assumptions about what people already know, and what they might want to know.

For example, I started this blog for small businesses getting into blogging — to help newcomers understand why and how a blog could help them, and to serve as a resource. I’m focusing on my home state of Connecticut because I think there’s a great need for blogs in this state. CTBizBlogs can help in many ways, including networking with other blogging businesses.

I began by writing a couple of weeks’ worth of posts and going to some business networking meetings, giving out cards with the blog’s web address (URL).

At one of those meetings someone told me, “I looked at your site…but I still don’t understand. What is a blog?”

Wake-up call! That was exactly what I needed to hear. There was a “hole” in my blog, to use a phrase from this useful article, Blog Review Checklist, from what is fast becoming one of my “must read” blogs, Successful Blog. (Plus, they also use WordPress as their blogging platform, which I use and love.)

You get a hole in your blog when you don’t write for your audience. And this checklist is a great way to review your blog, see if you have any holes, and get ideas on how to fix them.

I’ve started taking steps to better help folks who are completely new to the blogging phenomenon, such as creating a page called “Blogging Basics.”

But I know there’s more I can do, and I’ll start with this checklist and see what happens. Let me know what you think!

After posting my article on Monday on keeping track of blogs with webfeeds, I listened, during my commute, to a podcast from Amy Gahran, a writer and “infoprovocateur.” Her blog, Contentious, is one of the blogs that got me interested in blogging and RSS.

She recently gave a talk to the Public Relations Society of America about The Future of Technology: What PR Pros Need to Know. It sounds daunting, but her talk was a very down-to-earth, ungeeky, and informative look at blogs, RSS, and podcasts. It’s an excellent overview, and a great introduction for any newcomers to the blogging world, not just PR folks. I highly recommend it.

You can get the details on how to listen, and links to her handouts at her site.

Amy is also the one who came up with the term “webfeeds,” as a more informative, less in-need-of-translation term than RSS.

Bonus: If you’re a writer, Contentious is an excellent example of how to use a blog to build your business.

While I did write briefly about how to subscribe to a blog, I didn’t really touch on why you should be reading blogs.

You should be reading blogs for several business reasons: to see what others in your field are saying; to see how other businesses are using blogs; and to keep tabs on what is being said about you, your company, and your products.

In the Cluetrain Manifesto, the authors state that “markets are conversations.” And blogging is one way to start a conversation with your clients and customers, present and prospective. But if you’re new to blogs, you may not realize that there’s a conversation going on already. (more…)

I’ve been focusing lately on more technical issues, such as domain names and ways to subscribe to blogs you want to read.

These are important because when you blog, you need to work on two main fronts: content and technical.

And you have to evaluate each of these for usability, usefulness, and marketing issues. A blog not only gets your ideas out there, but, done correctly, it also gets your ideas (and you) noticed.

The content is the fun part for most people — it’s where you get a soap box on which to stand, hold forth, and awe the wandering crowd with your wisdom.

The technical aspects are also fun for geeks like me. Yes, I think computers are fun, and the internet is even more fun. (more…)

There are so many blogs and more appearing every day. How do you keep up with the ones you want to read?

You can have bookmarks in your browser, but then you have to remember to check them from time to time. Sometimes there’s a new post, sometimes several, sometimes none. Not very efficient.

You can get an “aggregator” of some sort — a program or service (like Bloglines, which I use) that will keep track of the blogs to which you subscribe, and keep them organized for you. (See my Bloglines subscriptions in the right sidebar — the “Blogs I read” link in Bookmarks.) But you do have to remember to use it and to make time in your day for opening the aggregator to read the posts. (more…)

If you’ve decided to try blogging with Blogger, Google’s free blog hosting service, the day may come when you want to move up, say from Blogger to WordPress. (WordPress has a utility that will move your Blogger pages to your WordPress blog.)

For example, maybe you started your blog on Blogger, just to dip your toe in the water. But now you want more features that Blogger has to offer, and you’re willing to spend a little money to do that. You might realize one day that you really want categories, which Blogger doesn’t have. Categories help readers find posts by grouping them according to some topic name, and they also help search engines decide what your blog is about.

There’s a problem with moving your blog to a new platform, because, just like moving your home, your address will change. (more…)

The great thing about blogs is that they don’t have to spring, full-blown, from your head. They evolve and grow as you get into the swing of it — learn the ins and outs of your blogging platform, learn how to make time in your day for writing, learn to dance in public.

You’ll make a mistake or two; that’s inevitable. Things will be less t