CT Biz Blogs

On my to-do list since March has been to write about the upcoming SOBCon , put on by Liz Strauss and Phil Gerbyshak

It’s going to be in Chicago, on May 11 - 12. I just realized that the block of rooms reserved for this will be released today, so you have to move fast if you want to be at the convention hotel.

Having met Liz and read her blogs for years, I know she is one blogger who really gets it about creating relationships. Here’s what’s on the agenda at SOBCon:

Together we will strategize, discuss, and learn how to

• respect that in business and blogging all things are based in connecting relationships
• treat our blogs like a business, or a business-like hobby
• define a vision for our blogs that inspires others to be part of it
• identify like-minded bloggers whose blogging goals match our own
• evaluate our work through the eyes of a first time reader
• use links, trackbacks, and comments to lead to increased participation, extended reach, and relationships that could develop into business ventures
• ensure that navigation, in presentation, and in all reader experiences, is intuitive, simple, and elegant
• know our brand values as readers define them and be able to articulate the unique and remarkable values we offer
• understand basic tools that are useful in adding video, podcasting, social media, and voice commenting
• reach out beyond the blogosphere to nonblogging readers to become a resources they rely on
• recognize the traits and characteristics of a successful and outstanding blog

Presenters with specialized experience, will get the conversation started, and together presenters and attendees will work interact to get you where you need to go - to take your blogging to the next level.

What’s not to like? I think the price is reasonable for two days of learning, networking, and sharing ideas.

I’d be there if I could, and I think anyone who can make it should go. Speaking as someone who comes to blogging because of fascination with its technical aspects, I could sure use the info being shared at the con. You can learn more about successful and outstanding blogging in two days in Chicago than what some bloggers are taking years to figure out, if they do at all.

Technorati : SOBCon07

Read the Time article
Get your own seal

Well, it’s about time!

Every person who’s ever had a blog or uploaded a video or left a comment can proudly claim this honor.

Now that Time recognizes us, will it be the “tipping point” that brings blogging and social media to the awareness of the masses?

If so, we’d better be prepared. That means it’s time for small businesses to check out blogging, del.icio.us, YouTube, and all the ways people are contributing to the distributed conversation online. It’s better to be slightly ahead of the curve than behind it.

I do find it ironic, however, that the Time articles are mostly about video. That’s what’s really grabbed people’s attention.

I have mixed feelings about video.

Yes, when it’s done well, it’s great. But for things like search engine optimization, not so great. All the content is locked up in a video file. Search engines can’t parse that yet, so it doesn’t help with keywords.

And bandwidth is still an issue for a lot of people.

My advice for small businesses who want to do audio or video podcasts is to put as much of the content as possible in show notes. That way you’ll reach the most people, and the search engines, too.

(And for an example of viral media, check out how clever Alister Cameron created this seal and got some links!)

It finally happened — the attempted spam comments to this blog outnumbered my actual readers yesterday. But instead of getting me depressed, it made me even more grateful to Dr. Dave and Spam Karma. Not much gets through with Spam Karma’s vigilance.

Of course, I upgraded my settings a while ago — now I feel like Zena, warrior princess:

My top two tips for keeping spam under control are:

1. Get help.
   Even Zena had a sidekick. If you’ve got WordPress, you have the option of adding some tough spam busters, such as Spam Karma, Bad Behavior and Akismet. There’s great information on the WordPress Codex site about combating comment spam. And here are links to a list of anti-spam plugins for Typepad users, and a comprehensive Six Apart article on comment spam.
2. Close off comments for older posts.
   I finally realized that 90% of the attempted spam was targeting one post from April on Judy’s Book. I have no idea why that one. So I’ve finally closed it off. None of the comment spam for that post has ever made it past Spam Karma, because one factor SK considers in determining if a comment is spam is the age of the post. But maybe now they’ll stop trying on that post, at least.
3. Bonus suggestion: tweak your settings.
   If spam is getting through your spam filters, check out what the default settings are, and experiment. Make them tougher, and see if that helps. Remember to closely monitor your caught spam for a while, to make sure you’re not being too tough and missing legitimate comments. It’s worth being a “total beeeatch” sometimes.

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!

One great thing about most blogging software is that they automate the process of “pinging” — notifying search engines such as Google, IceRocket, and Technorati, that you’ve written a new post. This theoretically helps the search engines update you in their listings sooner, rather than days later. Here’s what Google says about their pinging service:

The Google Blog Search Pinging Service is a way to inform Google Blog Search of weblog updates. These updates are then published and shared with other search engines to allow them to discover the changes to your weblogs. In addition, Google Blog Search will add submitted weblogs to the list of blogs it needs to crawl and index.

For blog applications which allow you to set your pings, you simply add the code to your list of Update Services. In WordPress, that’s found in Options/Writing, at the bottom of the page, like so:

Way at the bottom of the page, you’ll see the Update Services listing. Just click in the box to create a new line, copy in the ping URL, and hit “Update Services.”

That’s the whole deal! Here’s the list of Services you should be pinging (these aren’t links, just copy and paste into your blogging application):

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

If your blogging application doesn’t have automatic pinging, you can still do it manually, at each service.

Technorati Ping
IceRocket Ping
Google Ping

Or you can get an offline blog writing application, such as Zoundry, which will ping services when you publish. It even works for Blogger blogs.

Technorati : ping Google Technorati IceRocket

Well, two of my favorite blogs were mentioned in USA Today. They have a nice article called Blogs put businesses on Web search map, with many quotes from Small Business Blog of the Day’s Brian Brown, and one of the blogs they feature is J.D. Iles’s Signs Never Sleep, the blog for the Lincoln Sign Company, in New Hampshire.

Sign-maker Joseph Iles, 37, has been blogging for two years at his Lincoln Sign Co. in Lincoln, N.H. And he’s already seen a payoff. Iles attributes $33,000 in sales last year, or about 10% of total revenue, to customers he found through his Signs Never Sleep blog.

“If you can send an e-mail, you can do a blog,” he says. “It’s simple.”

Congratulations, guys!

In the article, Brian gives examples of 4 business blogs, and the reasons why they’re good blogs, and why blogs are good for business.

And when you read the article, don’t forget to follow the links to see the blog examples, and to read the other articles. There’s a great link to a brief how-to on blogging, and a link to USA Today’s Small business blog, Small Business Connection blog, written by Jim Hopkins. It’s full of good posts, including this one on what Suzanne Hetts, co-owner of Animal Behavior Associates in Littleton, Colo is saying about her planned move into blogging.

In my research on podcasting, I stumbled upon this resource: GigaVox’s Podcast Academy. It’s a treasure-trove of audio from various conferences, all to do with Podcasting.

One podcast that looks great, but I haven’t listened to yet, is Doug Kaye’s - Podcast Concepts & Making Them Happen.

GigaVox also is releasing audio from the Corporate Podcast Summit, held in June, 2006. Over the coming weeks, they will be putting all the audio from that summit online. Right now they have two online:

• Podcasting 101

• Podcasting to Build a Marketing Message

I’ve listened to Damien Stolarz’s Podcasting 101 — it’s a whirl-wind tour through the buzzwords and basic concepts. If you’re really new to all this blogging and podcasting stuff I’d recommend listening to it while looking at the Podcasting 101 PDF that’s also available.

As I said, they’re going to be releasing the audio over the next few weeks, and you can subscribe to the RSS feed for that. If you’re in a hurry and you want it all now, you can plunk down US $24.99 and get it all now, via download. That’s what I did, although at the rate I’m listening, they’ll probably all be online for free by the time I’m finished.

It looks like there’s a lot of good content on the Podcast Academy site: how-to’s on recording phone conversations, advanced editing, and the like.

Check it out!

Technorati : podcasting

There’s still plenty of things happening at the BlogHer 2006 site. The audio recordings from the conference are starting to come online.

You can listen to the BlogHer Day One and Day Two Keynotes here.

And here’s the audio from Day Two, session one (three sessions).

Also, ListenShare, the folks who so ably took care of the audio for the conference have a blog with more BlogHer 06 audio interviews with several of the speakers.

And, of course, the BEST way to keep up with the audio is via the ‘06 Podcasts RSS feed.

Technorati : 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…)

Blogs are great ways to let people get to know you a little bit. Usually it’s done indirectly, as your interests, skills, and knowledge are revealed in what you write about.

One way you can let people know about you is by interviewing yourself. By this I don’t mean the “I-have-12-children-and-live-in-Podunk” kind of stuff. Although that’s a good bit for the “about” page. (I’d certainly like to know, because anyone with 12 kids and still sane has miraculous management techniques!)

One approach to telling us about yourself is to try writing more stories, maybe about a time when you accomplished something or learned something. That isn’t really telling — it’s showing.

This is the basis of a technique that’s become popular in job interviews, called “Behavioral Interviewing.” In a job interview (which a blog is, in part) the interviewer might say something like “Tell me about a time when you had to tell someone bad news. What did you do and what happened?”

The stories are best if they stick to things that happened at a job, or something not too personal. And certainly not confessional — a small business blog shouldn’t be a tell-all diary. If other people in the story are recognizable by those who know you, it’s best to get their OK. You don’t want the kids at school teasing your son because of something his daddy said on a blog.

To get you started, here are a few sample behavioral interview questions from the Quintessential Careers website:

• Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.

• Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it.

• Tell me about a time you were able to successfully deal with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).

Katharine Hansen has some good interview answering tips on the Quintessential Careers site.

On your post, you don’t need to actually ask the question first, of course. You can start in with the answer. But you will need to have some introduction, some reason why you’re telling this story. It can be something as simple as a news item that reminds you of something that happened to you, or something that someone said, or even something as simple as, “You know, the life of a Waste Management Engineer isn’t all roses. Sometimes the compost heap can get piled pretty high. I remember a time when…” And you’re off.

See how easy it can be?

Technorati : blogging

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.

Ok, the template experimenting is over for now. I found a few previously undiscovered bugs in the template, so I reverted back to the old one. For the record, here’s what that template looked like:

Very plain, but it has several things I like, such as the ability to subscribe to a feed of comments on a per post basis, and the next/previous navigation links at the bottom of the page. You can see this theme, Barthelme, in greater detail on the ThemeViewer site.

The theme I’m leaning towards now is called Andy Blue. Here’s a screenshot of that:

It is a three-column theme, which I need. But for my purposes, it’ll need to be tweaked.

The thing I find amazing is that how relatively easy it is to tweak the WordPress themes. You don’t need to know PHP, you only need to know or learn how to recognize what PHP function is doing what.

And you learn that by looking at themes, and looking at the theme editor in the dashboard. Not a piece of cake, but not caster oil, either.

If you want to get some idea of the number of WordPress themes, the ThemeViewer site is a quick and easy visual way to do that.

Another excellent place to find themes is How to Blog’s list of 960+ WordPress themes. This woman has put a lot of work into collecting and updating her list of sites and it’s well worth checking out.

Technorati : WordPress

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…)

Blogging is still a new idea to most people. And small business blogs are rare. One of the best ways to explain the benefits of small business blogs is by example; we can point to blogs by those brave, ahead-of-the-curve folks who are creating a trail for the rest of us to follow.

When I first started this blog, way back in August, 2005, I wrote about a few small business blogs. But it sure takes a lot of time to find them, and now, my problems are over.

For the past month, I’ve been subscribed via RSS, to Pajama Market Small Business Blog of the Day. Brian Brown has made it his mission to explore the blogosphere looking for examples. Here’s his goal:

Five days a week (not always the week days, depending on my schedule), I write about a small business that is blogging. I do this as a resource for other businesses to turn to in order to get ideas for their own blog.

A few days ago, Brian wrote a post on one of my favorite blogs, The Soap Blog, (and kindly mentioned CTBizBlogs) so I knew it was past time to mention how I read and enjoy Pajama Market.

PR and Marketing folks looking for examples should check this blog out. Small businesses researching blogging or looking for ideas to implement on their blogs, should read it, too. And if you’ve got a small business blog and you’d like your blog to be considered for a post, read his guidelines for what qualifies for a post, and let him know about you.

Thanks for saving me hunks of time, Brian.

(I wish I could remember how I first heard about this blog; it was probably through super-connector Liz, over at Successful Blog.)

Well, it was a lot of fun writing a post for and getting included in the Blogging Goals group writing project that ProBlogger Darren Rowse initiated.

Now I’d like to recommend reading them! OK, not all at once, since there are 130, but a few a day will give you a good idea of the width and depth of the blogging world.

One thing that continually surprises and delights me is how the blogosphere is evolving and growing. People like Darren are a big part of that — he’s great at coming up with new, exciting ideas and he’s very inclusive. He’s created a site people read regularly, comment on, and recommend to others. Can’t do better than that. Oh yeah — he makes a ton of money at it, too.

There’s a lot of good stuff in the posts listed in the blogging goals project; lively writing, frequently funny and full of insights — nothing especially lengthy or ponderous. These posts not only have some good ideas about goals, they also illustrate good blog writing.

If the idea of looking at a list of 130 links seems daunting, quite a few bloggers have written posts about their explorations and recommendations from the list. Check these out:

Liz at Successful Blog writes her thoughts on The Blogging Goals Project — the posts she liked and the reasons why projects like this are a good idea.

Pittsburgh Homes Daily lists My personal ‘best of’ Blogging Goals to date. I made #40, “Most surprising link.” I wonder which link it was?

Phil Newton shares his personal favorites from the group writing project. He’s right — I do have “…a lot of really useful information tucked away.” Thanks, Phil.

Jersey Girl, who is busy Surviving NJ, gives us Top 5 Chosen from ProBlogger.

Now I’ve written a post about posts about the Blogging Goals project. Maybe this is an example of the blog as echo chamber?

Darren Rowse, over at ProBlogger, has come up with a group writing project on blogging goals. I’m taking time out from my posts about blogging risks to write my own thoughts about blogging goals — it’s just too much fun to miss out on.

I’d like to address the small business owner who’s thinking about blogging as a way to connect with customers, share expertise, and build the business. So here are the goals for people thinking about blogging, or about to start blogging. If you’ve just started blogging, it’s not too late to retroactively think about how you did on these goals.

1. Do your research
2. Make your commitment
3. Make your plan
4. Go for it!

(more…)

In my last post, I wrote about Darren Rowse’s group blog writing project on habits of effective bloggers. This has grown into quite a list of interesting articles.

One blogger, who goes by the nom de blog of “The Retrospector,” actually compiled a list of blogging habits according to how many bloggers in the group blog writing project mentioned them. Great idea! And that blog design theme looks oddly familiar.

Here are a few habits from the list:

#	Habit	# and % of Submissions (out of 80)
1	Post often/regular schedule	44	55%
2	Build a community/comment/respond/know readers	38	48%
3	Read other blogs/research/newspapers/etc.	32	40%
4	Be original/creative, add value	28	35%
6	Enjoy it/do what’s fun/passionate	23	29%
9	Persistence/longevity/patience	18	23%
10	Carry a Notebook/store ideas & drafts for later	16	20%
11	Learn new things/adapt/change	16	20%
12	Link to others/give credit/trackbacks	16	20%

How many of these do you think are important and how many do you do?

Darren Rowse, of Problogger, is a genius at coming up with fresh ideas that expand and explore the world of blogging. Whatever your blogging goals, you should all be reading his blog.

I’ve just now started looking at his latest series, which started with his idea for a blog post on good blogging habits, and wound up a habits of highly effective bloggers group writing project.

Take some time this weekend (in Connecticut, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, anyway) and explore the posts Darren has listed.

I believe the best habit for beginners is to explore and read other blogs. Just as you can’t write good books unless you’ve read and analyzed other books, you also can’t be a good blogger unless you read and analyze other blogs.

You don’t need a spreadsheet or anything, you just need to read and think — what do you like, what don’t you like, what’s your first impression of the blog as a reader, how does the blogger handle comments, links, blogrolls, ads. It’s all grist for the mill, as they say.

And Darren’s group writing project is an excellent way to start learning.

Darren Rowse, on ProBlogger Blog Tips, has started an excellent series of articles on Maintaining Momentum in Blogging.

One of the causes he mentions is busyness — when you start to have too much to do, it’s easy to let blogging drop to the bottom of the list.

That’s when having a plan comes in handy. A blog plan starts like any other plan, with your goals. It’s not good to say “blogging is popular today, so I need a blog.” You have to decide what you want from a blog, what a blog can do for you, and what you’re willing to do in order to achieve those goals.

If you want a blog, but you’re unable to work on it, then you’ll need to get someone to help you. If you get swamped with other tasks and you need to spend time away from your blog, you need to have a plan for that. If your plan is to not post, then you need to be OK with that.

And I actually think it is OK to not post — at least not post on a daily basis, if that fits your plan. However, if you don’t post for weeks at a time, that’s not good. Most people don’t use RSS and don’t subscribe to blogs via email. They just rely on their memory, links from other sites, or bookmarks, to visit a site. If nothing changes for weeks, chances are they won’t visit often, and will miss something when you do finally add a post.

Not all blogs are “pro” blogs, where the goal is to have an blog producing income from the ads. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those types of blogs — good pro bloggers know the way to success is to produce valuable content — Darren himself is an excellent example of that.) Some blogs are used more indirectly — to demonstrate expertise, to share knowledge, to connect with like-minded folks, to build relationships with clients or customers, or to make your business more “findable”. All those will help build business.

If you’re blogging to acquire readers who you hope will eventually convert to clients, or to people you wish to network with, then you need to keep up some momentum.

Check out Darren’s series for tips on that.

In my last post, I wrote about how to find the correct web address (URL) to use when you want to link to a post on another blog. I also wrote a bit about why linking out is important.

Jim Durbin, on the blog Recruiting.com, agrees with me and adds:

Linking is the bloggy equivalent of saying “Please” and “Thank You.” While there are no requirements to blog, learning to link properly is a good way to give, and get respect.

In this post I want touch upon how to link. I see many new bloggers who simply type in the URL of the blog. This does the job, it’s true, but there’s a much more elegant and helpful way to link. Instead of using just the web address, or worse, saying “click here,” it’s better to embed the link into the flow of the text, by making some of the words serve as the link. (For more on why using “click here” for a link is a bad idea, read my earlier post on building traffic by how you link.)

See, that last sentence was an example of using text to give your readers more context and information about a link. Not only does it help your readers, and cut down on useless words, it helps search engines also. Search engines assume that the words used in the link are what the linked to post is about. There’s only about 6 billion search results for “click here.” (Make that: six billion and one.) Much better for everyone if you add some meaning to the link.

But that’s only the first step. Besides adding context through the words you use to link (called the “anchor text”), you can also add even more information through the title tag. The text you see pop up when you hover your cursor over the link is what is called the “title” of the link.

On the blog Johntp.com, John has an excellent example in his article on common weblogging mistakes, in the section on not using link titles.

Once again, Successful Blog has details on how to code links and how to code accessible links, so I won’t repeat that info here, except to quote Cas:

An “accessible link” therefore, is simply a link that imparts as much information to as many users as possible. It enables the reader to preview the link, making an informed decision about whether to follow it or not, and helps to differentiate between links that may share link text but refer to different targets.

If you have Wordpress 2.0, links are a piece of cake. Here’s a short demo on how to create a link in Wordpress.

So don’t be afraid to spread the link love by creating useful, well-crafted links. It helps everyone and makes you look like a pro.

One of the things that differentiates a blog from a regular website is that blogs tend to have a lot of outbound links.

This is a good thing! Part of the whole purpose of blogs is to join in a “distributed” conversation; to share ideas and add thoughts to the ideas of others. The way that gets done is through linking.

Linking accomplishes two things. First, it points your reader to more information about your topic, or to the post that you’re writing about. Also, through pings and trackbacks it alerts linked-to bloggers to the fact that someone’s linking to them, so that they can check out what you’ve said.

Sometimes newer bloggers have trouble linking. This post is for them.

One thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes bloggers will talk about a blog post, but not link to the post specifically — instead they link to the blog address.

In order to link to a post, you have to find the address (URL) for that post. The web address in the address field of your web browser is usually for the blog — such as www.ctbizblogs.com. Because blogs change as new posts are added, linking to the blog’s main address won’t help readers in a few days — the post you want to point readers to will be pushed down the page. And most blogs are set to only display a certain number of the latest posts, so after a few days, the post will fall off the main page entirely.

To make sure that the post can be found by your readers, each post has a unique address of it’s own — a permanent address, called a permalink. The permalink address looks something like this: http://www.ctbizblogs.com/2006/05/09/local-events-for-may/. Or it might have an even more peculiar looking URL, ending with id=32 or something. It may look odd, but that’s the address you need.

One way to get the address of the post itself is to check the title. If you roll your cursor over the title and right click, you can usually copy that address.

Also, many blogs have the link at the top or bottom of the post, usually with the word “link” or “permalink.” The link called link isn’t to be clicked on, it’s there to show you the address of the post. I’ll admit this confused the heck out of me when I first started reading blogs. I’d see the link and click on it, only to go nowhere! Writing this post made me remember my initial confusion, and I’ve just altered my permalink link to say “link for this post,” instead of just “link.” I hope that’s clearer.

Getting the link address is only one part of smart linking, however. The other part is getting it into your post in a way that helps you and the linkee.

I’ll write about that on Tuesday.

In the meantime, read what Miz Liz has to say about why you should link.

Related posts on CT Biz Blogs: How does linking to other blogs help me Part 1 and Part 2

In my continuing search for a good interface for writing blog posts, I have been testing Zoundry’s Blog Writer. It’s for folks with computers running Windows XP or 2000. There are things I love about this application, but up until now, there was always one drawback for me: no spell checker. Well, the Zoundry folks have been busy, and the latest release now has a spell checker. My dreams have come true; I think I found a blog writing app I can use and that has the features that are important to me.

As much as I love WordPress, the writing interface is not great, unless you know HTML or have time to learn a few things. I do and have, so that’s OK for me, but not for newer bloggers. And my version (still 1.5) has no spell checker. That’s essential, especially for techy-types. I’ve observed that when I’m in full-blown programming or tech-mode, my spelling becomes worse than usual. (more…)

“Anybody know how we get an RSS feed for this blog?”

That was a comment left on a post just a few hours ago. Don’t look for it, though. It’s been nuked because it was spam.

How did I know it was spam? It sounds good, doesn’t it? And it was left on a post about RSS.

Well, here are a few things that tipped me off:

1. Lack of a real name
   While that alone isn’t enough to indicate a spammer, it’s one clue. Especially when the name is the name of a popular medication that lots of people would like to get without a prescription. D’oh! But sometimes, as in this case, it’s not quite that obvious, so I wouldn’t nuke a comment based just on not having a real person’s name.
2. Links to a dubious looking web site (more…)

Liz Strauss, over at Successful Blog has put together a New Blogger Page which lists some of her posts of particular usefulness to new bloggers. (But guess what? It’s really a resource for all but the most experienced blogger. And even they can use a refresher course now and then.)

Blogging is not something you can learn in a day, but this page is a good starting point for exploring the wonderful world of blogging.

She’s got articles on blog basics such as commenting, a link to her blog checklist (this is one of the ones that’s especially applicable to every blogger), and some of her “great finds” such as a link to the Tlog Blogging Tip Series. This is a step-by-step list of blogging basics. I’m going over it now to see what I’ve been missing.

New bloggers, you need to check these out!

And as a bonus, here’s the link to a compilation of my basic blogging tips: Blogs - what, why, & how.

After reading my entries on RSS (listed at the end of this post), a friend decided to try Google reader, to subscribe to this blog. Yay!

But she asked me a great question that made me realize I wasn’t clear enough on at least one point: She asked if subscribing via Google Reader meant that she needed a Gmail account, or if she’d get the posts in her regular email account.

I think there might be two confusing points here. One might be my comments about how, with RSS, the posts “come to you.” To a lot of folks, that means email.

And to add to that confusion, Google does have an email service, and when I log onto the Reader, it asks me to enter my email and password.

Ok, Google, that’s confusing as heck to people new to RSS! (more…)

OK, I just created a quick little Flash demo showing how I added an RSS feed to Google reader. You’ll need the Flash plug in to view it. If you don’t have it, you can get it from Macromedia.

I used a great, free demo creator called Wink, from Debugmode. It doesn’t have audio, but hey, it’s free!

I couldn’t resist — one more post about RSS. This is for people who have yet to dip a toe into the RSS stream.

Here are two very easy RSS readers to try.

First, here is an excellent introduction to RSS and a free desktop reader to try, from Emerson Process Management. This walks you through the process of downloading and installing a reader for your computer. A desktop application is a good idea for people who don’t have a DSL connection or dial-up access with unlimited time (and no one waiting to use the phone line) and thus aren’t online constantly.

Next is a very easy online reader from Google. It’s still in “beta,” which means there might be some bugs, meaning that it doesn’t seem to pick up all RSS feeds. But it’s an excellent way of starting out with one or two feeds.

For Google Reader, you need an account. If you have Gmail, you have that. If not, it’s very easy to set up.

Here’s a screenshot thumbnail of my feed subscriptions in the Google Reader. Click on the image to see a full-screen version. You might have to click on the full-screen version to enlarge the image completely.

Later today or this evening, I’ll post a quick “how-to” for Google Reader.

Go Feed yourself!

I’m finished with RSS (for now). Here are the posts I’ve written over the last week:

• RSS and you
• How to find and use an RSS reader
• Ways to find RSS feeds, part 1
• Ways to find RSS feeds, part 2: search engines
• Ways to find RSS feeds, part 3
• Links: Articles on RSS to read

That RSS series of posts was going to be an off-the-cuff few words, instigated by Steve Rubel’s post about how even the Kremlin now has RSS feeds. Once started, however, I found I couldn’t stop typing. Frankly, it startled me a little when I got some attention from the Greater Blogosphere.

Now that I’ve poured all this information out of my brain, my next plan is to put this into a more organized form, probably as a PDF for people to download. So I’d appreciate any feedback — what didn’t make sense, what you’d like to see clarified or expanded upon, what was omitted.

Again, it’s not going to be the be-all, one-stop-shopping place for all things RSS. That’s a target that’s that’s moving too fast. But I’m hoping that if I start with more basic information in the intro, it’ll prompt more people to check out RSS and recognize it for the great tool that it is.

And I also want to thank all the folks who found these posts (mostly through Micro Persuasion) and linked back to them. Some I found through the trackbacks, some by following links, some by my referrer stats, and some by — wait for it — RSS. Yes, I have an RSS feed from Technorati for mentions of CT Biz Blogs. That’s the first thing I did when I found out about Technorati. If you have a blog, you need to do that, too.

So thanks to:

• Micro Persuasion
• LexBlog
• Blog Smart Resources Blog
• The Language Artist
• The Agonist
• My Own Public World (who’s using the Sage RSS reader based on reading my post)

Here’s the third and final part of my post about ways to find RSS feeds. (Part 1: Blogs; Part 2: Search Engines.)

Newspapers and other Online news services:

Many online newspapers, such as the New York Times or the Hartford Courant, have RSS subscriptions to different topics. Typically these won’t have the entire article in the feed, but instead will deliver to you the headlines, sometimes with an short excerpt. This is usually enough to determine if that article is something you want to read. If it is, click on the link in the feed to go right to that article. Piece of cake!

Some magazines, such as Business Week, are also putting articles online, with feeds.

Aside from getting feeds from newspapers and magazines, you can search across new sources with services such as Topix.net. I use it to send me mentions of my home town and companies I’m interested in.

For example, you can go to Topix.net, and type in the name of a company, such as General Motors. You’d get a page that looks something like this:
(more…)

I’m planning on having the latest installment up by the end of the day (5:30 PM or so, EST).

In the meantime, here are some additional articles on RSS that I should have mentioned in previous posts:

• 23 real simple steps to making your Internet life much better
• RSS: The Web at Your Fingertips
• Ten RSS Hacks
• Save time with syndication
• Using RSS 101 - Screencast

I recommend them — I learned from all of them.

My blogging pal and excellent writer, Liz Strauss, has been on a roll over at Successful Blog! She’s been pouring out so much great advice, tips, tools, and food for thought, that I’ve been tempted to bookmark every post.

She’s written some excellent posts on ideas for writing, which are must reading for beginning bloggers who have trouble putting words on the screen (as do we all, from time to time).

Check out this tool to help you organize your words.

She’s also got some great tips for making sure that your blog posts are search engine friendly. I didn’t see it until after I’d written a post about keywords, so I’m going back to add a link to that article there, too.

The important thing to realize is to not focus on search engine optimization (SEO) when you first write a post — you’re writing for people after all. They are the ones who you’ll be talking to, not Google, or Yahoo, or any of the other search engines.

That being said, once you’ve written a post, it makes sense to have it do as much work as possible for you — think of it as networking opportunities. Networking has gotten a bad rap, because a lot of people are networking spammers — their idea of networking is to shove business cards in your face, or shout “me, me, over here!” The good kind is the “connect-the-dots” kind, where you try to help others and show the ways you can contribute at the same time.

As Liz says:

Prorating the time that I spent gathering ideas, I’ve probably spent 60-90 minutes on this one post. Time is money, and I think of that time spent as an investment. Now is when I make sure that investment pays off. I’ve made a short Pre-Flight Publishing list that I run down, before I pass say, “Go.”

Blogging is work, but the work you do can pay off in many ways, over time. Don’t think of it as writing or marketing. Think of it as creating opportunities to help people get to know you, your ideas, and how you can help them.

On Friday, I mentioned that I’d found a new Connecticut small business blog (started in November, 2005), Hadley Spagna Photography.

I ended by saying that there were a few things that bugged me. This was a bit harsh; I didn’t mean to say I thought she was doing anything wrong, just that I believe there are some things she needs to think about doing better.

 One thing I noticed is that her main web site is in Flash. I don’t like a lot of Flash on web sites for several reasons, but the main one is: lack of opportunity to optimize your site for search engines.  Maybe this will change one day, but right now, search engine crawlers (spiders and ‘bots who go looking for text) can’t read what’s in Flash.

 That’s because a web page that has Flash is actually just a “wrapper,” a shell with a link to the Flash file itself, which is a special, proprietary Macromedia Shockwave Flash file. If your browser has the Flash plug-in, it can play the Flash file, but web crawlers can’t parse the text in a Flash file the way they do with regular web pages. Well, Google claims to be able to, to a limited extent. But for most search engines, the text in Hadley’s web site doesn’t exist. Yes, there are some keywords in the title of the page on her web site (up at the top), but basically, that’s it for keywords on her web site.

On the other hand, people can’t copy images, if they’re in Flash. This is a valid concern for photographers.

 My recommendation to people who want Flash, is to only have it in selected sections, such as the photo gallery.  There are non-Flash ways to get fancy effects, such as sliding text.

Here’s an article with more techy detail on Flash and its SEO limitations.

Of course, having a blog helps a lot with that search engine optimization (SEO) bit. One way to maximize your “findability” is to really work the blog, even more so when you have a web site that can’t help you much with SEO.

So for Hadley’s blog, I’d recommend something other than Blogger. Blogger is fine for experimenting, but to really get the most out of your blog, hosting your own is best, or using a blogging tool that has more features than Blogger, such as Wordpress.com or Typepad.

 One essential thing to implement in a more full-featured blog application is the use of categories or tags.  I’ll write more on what those are at a later date, but the important thing to know is that categories and/or tags will help readers by organizing the posts in a more contextual way, and will help bloggers by giving them more keywords which are repeated on each post (namely, the category titles).

If you want to use Blogger, there are some Blogger hacks to add categories. I haven’t tried them out myself, yet.  They’re not easy to implement for novices, though. You have to tweak the template a bit.

So, once again, blogging comes to the rescue!  Got a less than optimum web site? No problem! You just have to work that extra bit harder to maximize the search engine “juice” you can get from having a blog. 

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It’s a Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools).

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein

Canned text above courtesy of BlogJet. The rest is my own.

Attempts at viral marketing aside, it’s got some features that look good to me:

• spell checker (most important, but I want American spelling, please. “Organizing” is how we spell it.)
• post to draft — So