Archive for October, 2007

Posted by mobile phone:
Jim Long is a guy I would love to follow around and experience life as he sees it. His job as an NBC cameraman gives him a unique opportunity to experience life as it happens. Jim chooses to share some of his experiences with his friends on Twitter. I’m lucky to be one of those friends.

The other day Jim flew with President Bush to San Diego and he gave us a behind the scenes look at how it was going. But one tweet caught my eye and I’m not sure anyone really caught it. Her is what he said right after landing back in Washington:

newmediajim: as our plane taxis we pass an honor guard placing a coffin in a hearse here on base

Jim has seen this many times but the general public doesn’t. Brave soldiers are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether you agree with our current military actions or not, our fellow Americans are giving their lives. Lets not forget them please.

Thanks Jim for remembering the things that are still important.

Build A Better Blog Day 23

An easy and inexpensive way to get your readers involved in your blog is to hold a contest. This doesn’t have to be elaborate or time consuming, in fact, the readers need to do all the work. Here is an example of what you could write in your contest blog post:

This months contest is a reader self portrait, with a twist. Write a blog post about a picture you take or was taken of you, standing next to your favorite car. Come back to this post and write a comment with a link back to your post. I’ll pick the post with the coolest post/image and and I’ll write one more blog post announcing the winner. So you will get two links back to your blog. The winner will then choose next months winner and so on. Good luck.

Of course this is only an example. You will want to think it through and write out what you want to happen in your contest. Make sure you give ample time for as many readers to participate as possible, thats the whole point of the contest.

Over time you may give prizes, heck Darren Rowse gave away over $60,000 in prizes for his blogs birthday celebration. I wouldn’t expect you to do this but it’s just an example of what you can do. You might start an internet scavenger hunt, picture taking contest or writing contest. The possibilities are endless. Initially the idea is to build connections with your readers and their blogs. Everyone likes free publicity, become the PR or Marketing tool for your readers.

The last thing I want to mention are Blog Carnivals. The idea behind a blog carnival is several blogs that have similar focus each write about a specific topic and then supply the links to each of the blog posts written. The next week its a different blog hosting the theme and the links. It rotates through a group of people. This gives everyone a chance to get some link love. Check out the Blog Carnival website and get involved.

B log contests can be fun for everyone, just make sure you plan well enough ahead of time that everyone understands what they are getting out of it. Build up the contest. Blog about it several days or weeks before the event. Comment on other blogs about it. Use Social Networks like Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook or MySpace to promote the contest. There are plenty of avenues, you just need to make some effort.

ProBlogger’s day twenty three post: Go on a Dead Link Hunt

Hey everyone, tonight there is a Geek/Blogger dinner in Sandy, Utah. Get all the details here. Have fun without me.

Time and Place
Date: Thursday, October 25, 2007
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Hometown Buffet
Street: 10390 S State St
City/Town: Sandy City, UT

Gcal link
Facebook link

Build A Better Blog Day 22

You’ve heard the old adage don’t judge a book by it’s cover? Well, your blog has a cover, and its your blog posts. By now you should have a well functioning RSS feed that is syndicated with several blog directory services. When someone has a number of feeds in a reader, they scan for interesting headlines, just like a news paper. Think of the last time you were looking for something interesting to read, did you stop on a catchy headline? If course you did. Its human nature. We are all curious.

A blogs title is a very important part of the overall post. The content must be powerful and engaging, but you have to get someone interested in what you have to say before they will ever read it. I suggest you read some RSS feeds or post directories to get an idea how other bloggers are titling their posts. Visit other blogs, see what bloggers are using for titles. You might find some titles have little or nothing to do with the content you read. This is on purpose. I don’t suggest you do this because it may turn some of your readers off like a bait and switch.

Take some time to come up with the blogs title. Some times I change mine 3 or4 times before settling on a title. Most of the time I write the post, edit, re-read and then come up with a title. I start out with an idea but that’s not the title. Depending on your blogs focus you may try powerful title with calls to action. Or you may have a creative blog that stirs emotion. You also want to use good key words which will help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). These are key words search engines like Google will pick up on and rank your blog higher on its result pages.

Let’s try a few out:

• Today I went to the library vs. Picked up the Steven King book Bag of Bones at the Library today

The second title contained several key words that the search engines will pick up on plus if I’m a Steven King fan, I might want to read what you have to say.

• Back from vacation vs. View the pictures of my vacation to Machu Picchu

The second title tells me there are pictures, which everyone wants to see, and maybe someone is getting ready to go to South America and wants to get your take on the area.

The point is to give us a taste of what you want us to read. Tell a small quick story. Use words that carry larger meanings or paint a picture. You may try using words that describe a smell or a feeling. You will get better with time. Writing great blog post titles is an art. Practice makes perfect.

ProBlogger’s day twenty two post: Catch New Readers Up on the Basics of your Blog

Build A Better Blog Day 21

Today’s tip is to use your blogs stats to help you decide whats popular with your readers, and write more about that. It’s a proven fact people will use a search engine to find your blog more than any other way. Your blog stats can tell you exactly what words they are using to find you and what blog posts they are landing on.

Over a year ago I wrote a blog post on removing sharpie ink from a white board. Its a very common problem in offices everywhere. I had inherited a white board that had a considerable amount of permanent ink drawn all over the surface making it difficult to see any new writing. I grabbed my keyboard and typed in “remove sharpie ink from white board”. Straight forward question and I knew Google would show me the site I needed. And sure enough it did. At the time, the number one site had an article that told me exactly what to do.

Once I had followed all the instructions and cleaned the board, I just had to share this with others. So I blogged about it here. And to this day, the words “sharpie” “remove” and “white board” drive more users to my site than any other. I am shocked because its the only time I’ve ever written about the subject and I consider it to be way off topic for my blog. So what can you do to take advantage of this phenomenon?

Right after I noticed the increased traffic to my blog I installed a Wordpress plug-in called Short Stats. This very simple blog statistics program showed me a lot about who was visiting my site, what they were looking for and looking at. A few months later I installed Google Analytics which gave me an even better view into what was happening with my site.

Some of the things I noticed was traffic for words like T-Mobile, MDA, Mobile, Windows, and posts with images. Many of my posts mention these key words and I try and link to some other blog post or web site to improve the link tree and help Google index my blog better. But most importantly I started writing more about the topics people visited my blog to read. They aren’t the only things I write about, but I try and stay with the general theme.

Here are some key points:

1. Install some type of statistics or analysis software for your blog. If you host your own you can use your web hosts built in stats or try using a plug-in like Short Stats.
2. Check you stats often. I’m anal about it and check several times a day. I’ll see a spike in traffic and want to know why and decide if I can capitalize on the spike.
3. Change what you are blogging about if you notice a trend. I’m not saying you should only blog about whats most popular but I would try and keep your posts along those same lines. You may find out you want to go straight up with a niche and move your other posts to a personal blog site. Many people do this.
4. Make sure you have a good search system on your blog. Whether you use the built in search or something like Google Search, it’s extremely important to provide some type of search mechanism. I always make sure my search box is above the fold and on every page.
5. Try different topics. If you’re not getting the traffic you want look at changing what you blog about. And make sure your blog is syndicated using RSS.

There are plenty of free stat services like StatCounter and Free Stats. These require you add some type of code to your pages. If you aren’t well versed in PHP or HTML this may be a little more than you bargained for. The simplest stats program comes from your web hosting provider and can usually be accessed from an Administrator panel.

Tell me what stat software you use, what you have found interesting and what you have done with the information.

ProBlogger’s day twenty one post: Make a Reader Famous