Written on November 22nd, 2005 at 09:11 am by Darren Rowse
Battling Bloggers Block - Change your Blogging Environment
On the weekend I got ’speakers block’. I had to do two speaking gigs and a couple of times in my preparation ‘hit the wall’ when it came to creative ideas on how to make my presentations to the next level. Luckily I’ve been speaking in public for around 12 years and have developed a few techniques for breaking through such blockages - many of which are applicable to the dreaded ‘bloggers block’.
So I’ve decided to adapt what I do to break through the dry patches in my speaking to tackle the question of how to battle against bloggers block. I’ve come up with 20+ short tips which I’ll share over the coming week as a series. As I add them one by one on the main blog I’ll also add them to this central page so you can have one place for the complete series. Feel free to chip in in comments as we go with your own bloggers block busting tips.
1. Change your Blogging Environment
Put your Hands in the air and step away from the Computer!
On Saturday when I came to the end of my inspiration I got out of the house for a couple of hours and went for a long walk. I often find that when I change my environment that inspiration comes. I walked down to the main street near our place and sat in the sun for half an hour and ‘people watched’. Somewhere along the way the ideas began to flow.
Getting away from your computer and blog can definitely help but so can blogging from a new location. Some of the places I’ve blogged from in the last few months include:
- friends houses - I have a mate’s house who I occasionally spend the day at so that we can work in the same room - it’s nice to have the company - even though he’s not a blogger I find our conversations lead me to try new things on my blogs
- net cafes - I did this for a day recently when my broadband went down
- public libraries - I did this for a week 18 months back and it totally gave me a new perspective on blogging - once I got past the frustration of having to book a computer and blog in one hour blocks of time
- other rooms in the house - I have a bit of a daily rhythm now where I move rooms during the day to keep things fresh - bed, office, couch, kitchen table, back yard - wireless is my friend
- local cafes - I have one cafe that i regularly take my laptop to. They don’t have wifi but I just write there (offline) and upload later. I find it’s a great place to blog without the distractions of incoming email and IM.
Change up your blogging environment and you might just find that it gives you a fresh perspective on blogging that will unleash some blogging creativity.
Written on November 22nd, 2005 at 09:11 am by Darren Rowse
Promote your RSS feed with ‘Add to Google’ button
You can now add a Add to Google button to your blog that will promote your RSS feed to readers to help them add your feed to their Google homepage and/or Google Reader.
found via Steve
Written on November 21st, 2005 at 11:11 pm by Darren Rowse
WordPress.com Goes Live
Lots of WordPress News today - it seems that the free hosted blog platform, WordPress.com has gone live and is now available for all bloggers and not just those invited into the system.
Written on November 21st, 2005 at 09:11 pm by Darren Rowse
Wordpress 2.0 Beta
Ooooh! Wordpress 2.0 is in Beta!
Written on November 21st, 2005 at 10:11 am by Darren Rowse
13 Tips on Asking other Bloggers for Links
Robert writes a blog tip on how to ask him for a link in his post - A PR tip, don’t beg for links:
‘Never beg a blogger for links. Say, instead, “here’s something you might find interesting.”’
Here’s a few other tips when you’re emailing other bloggers with links. I’m speaking here both as someone who occasionally lets others know about posts I’ve written but also as someone who gets my fair share of emails:
- Check to see if they’ve already written about it - This is a pretty important one. If you’re letting them know of a breaking story that they have already posted about it’s not a good look - at least scan their front page before shooting them the email.
- Don’t be offended if they don’t reply or use your link - some bloggers (like Robert) get heaps of ‘check out this link’ emails every day. They can’t possibly link to every one or acknowledge everyone with a reply.
- Make sure your link is relevant and useful - Be selective in which posts you promote in this way. Only send relevant stories out to bloggers who have a specific interest in that particular niche.
- Be Selective in which posts you promote - as interesting as YOU might find every post that you write - consider that every post on a blog is not going to have wide appeal. Carefully select the cream of the crop to promote in this way or you might just develop a reputation for being a bit of a spammer. Perhaps there is something in the story of ‘the Boy who cried Wolf’ to be learned…..we could rewrite it as ‘The Blogger who Cried ‘Great Link!’
- Personalize it - In an age when you can notify thousands of people of something with the click of a mouse it’s amazing what using a person’s name can achieve. Show the blogger that you’ve taken the effort to send them and them alone an email by mentioning their blog, name etc and you up your chances of it being read and responded to. If you’re sending notifications to more than one person be especially careful that you don’t send an email out with someone else’s name on it!
- Remember that you might not be the only person giving them the tip - I quite often get the same story from multiple people (I guess when you get a reputation in a niche you are often the first place people will turn to when a relevant story breaks). While I like to credit sources of information - sometimes it is hard when you could link to 10 people or when you found it yourself first.
- Introduce yourself - Consider a brief introduction (and I mean brief - see below). Blogging is about relationship - people like to link to people they know, respect and have relationship with. A quick introduction of who you are and what your blog is can begin to build relationship. Of course if you are sure they know you already - you might want to skip this one - although if they are a big blogger don’t assume they know you because you’ve had contact with them before - it’s easy to forget. You might want to include a signature in your post with your details to help overcome this.
- Keep it brief - Most people are busy and don’t have time to wade through long emails with convoluted explanations or introductions. Attempt to keep it short and to the point.
- Keep it informative - An email that says ‘check out this link’ doesn’t give me any reason to check it out. But if you tell me the topic you might just peak my interest. Again - be brief - but give the main point in a few words of what the story is.
- Give something away - This might not be appropriate to every post you write. But one thing I often do when notifying someone of a post is to offer them free use of the picture that I have on my post. This is particularly relevant for when I’m notifying someone of a post I’ve written on one of my product blogs. Of course the picture has to be yours to give away (or copyright free) but if you help them make their post be as comprehensive as possible without them having to do a whole heap of work you might just get the result you’re after.
- Be Generous with your own links - While I don’t generally consider whether the person chasing a link has linked to me - I suppose in the back of one’s mind must be the memory of a past relationship with the person. If you’ve linked up to them previously you might have made an impression.
- Original content is best - If you’re asking for a link to your own story you’ll have a better chance of a link up if it is original content. If you’re just linking to someone else you’re less likely to get linked to. If it’s a story that you’re linking to make sure you add your own comments or take on the story - make it your own in a sense.
- Learn from your experiences - As you do this more and more you’ll learn a few things. Firstly you’ll learn who responds well to being notified and who doesn’t. Secondly you’ll learn about what types of links people respond to and what types they ignore. Learn from this and let your future practicing of it be impacted by it. If someone never responds or links up - maybe it’s worth not emailing them any more - you might just be annoying them. If they ask you to stop sending them links - respect their request. If you notice that a certain type of link gets lots of links - consider writing more of these and letting people know about them etc.
I’m sure there are other tips that readers here would give. Feel free to add your own tips on how to ask for links from other bloggers in comments below.
Written on November 20th, 2005 at 10:11 pm by Darren Rowse
Desktop Blogging Clients
Ian McKenzie has a post that examines a number of different Desktop Blogging Clients - he manages seven blogs with Blogger, WordPress, MovableType and Thingamablog and is looking for a client with the following features:
- The ability to post to multiple blog clients and handle multiple accounts.
- Another important feature is the ease of creating and editing posts. Does the software have wysiwyg editing, with the ability to easily tweak the underlying code? Or, is it only HTML editing?
- How easy is it to upload and link to or display files, particularly image files?
- Can I easily add an alt attribute when uploading and inserting image files?
- Can I easily add a title attribute when creating a link?
- Does the software allow me to easily add social tags, either Technorati or del.icio.us.
Ian takes a look at BlogJet, ecto (I use the Mac version of this), Qumana, wBloggar and Thingamablog. I’ll let you head over to check his results but would be interested to hear what desktop blogging clients you use - if any. Feel free to share what you use in comments below.
Written on November 20th, 2005 at 01:11 pm by Darren Rowse
OSM Name Games
It’s been interesting to watch the launch of OSM (Open Source Media), formally Pajamas Media, this past week. As with the launch of any new blogging network (of sorts) there is always a mix of critique, hype, spin and debate. One of the debates that I’m seeing more and more in the threads that I watch is that over the name - Open Source Media.
There is a debate over use of the term between the Pajama Media OSM and another one - a radio show. Check out the Radio OSM’s posts at Open Source Media: In Case You’re Confused, The Name Problem, Part II and The Name Problem Part III.
The PJ OSM responded with OSM - About our Name.
Plenty of others have waded into the debate of course (the PJ OSM have some pretty major league bloggers - so it’s a high profile project). You can look at some of the critiques of the name problem at Buzz Machine, Private Radio and Anit-Idiotarian Rottweiller.
So it seems things could be escalating into ‘fiasco land’. I have to say I was surprised by them not choosing a name that they could get a.com domain for. It is of course challenging to get one these days for something that makes sense but perhaps in hindsight it would have been better.
Hopefully they can sort it out and get back to promoting their business plan rather than getting sidetracked distracting aspects like this. In the mean time - it’s a lesson for all of us in choosing names wisely.
update: I think this post by Jeff Jarvis is spot on the money - it contains advice that I think OSM should take action on. Nice work Jeff.
Written on November 19th, 2005 at 11:11 am by Darren Rowse
Adsense goes live with Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up
Adsense has just gone live with a new feature to allow ALL Adsense publishers to add an ‘advertise on this site’ link to their Google ads.
This is a feature that they’ve been testing with a small number of publisher for a while but have just announced on their blog that is being released on a wider basis. They describe this feature as:
‘When you use Onsite Advertiser Sign-up, your ad units will display an ‘Advertise on this site’ link that takes advertisers to an informational landing page with details about your site and the Google AdWords advertising program. Advertisers who sign up through this page will be guided to create an ad targeted specifically to your site, and only your site. When more advertisers create and target ads to your site, you’ll benefit from the competition as it drives your potential earnings up.’
The process is simple and doesn’t require any additional code to be added to pages. You simply activate it through your ‘My Account’ tab once you sign in to Adsense. Then scroll down tot the ‘Onsite Advertiser Sign-up’ section and click the ‘edit’ button. You can then upload a logo and customize the landing page that potential advertisers will see.
One downside of this feature is that there is only one landing page per account. I have 20 blogs in my system so have a challenge ahead of me to customize the page in a way to make it relevant to potential advertisers from all sites. This is a challenge as they only allow you 384 characters in your description!
Another downer is that any new advertisers you refer to the system do not get credited to you as a referral to their referral system. They argue that you’ll benefit by having new advertisers - but the cynical side of me thinks that Google will benefit more as are likely to advertiser more broadly than on just one site.
Lastly on the negative side of the equation - there is no way to track who you refer or if any referrals actually do run ads on your site. Adsense say that you ‘may’ notice increases in revenue/CPM but really there is no way of tracking the impact directly which makes reviewing the benefits of this a lot harder.
So while this ‘may’ bring new advertisers to your site - it ‘may’ not. I’ve got mixed feelings about doing it.
Written on November 19th, 2005 at 09:11 am by Darren Rowse
Amazon Beta Tests Product Previews
Amazon have started beta testing a new feature with their affiliates that is something between Chitika’s eMiniMalls and Vibrant Media’s Intellitxt. It’s called Amazon Product Previews.
The feature allows publishers to add some javascript code to the bottom of their pages that makes any text links to Amazon products that appear on the page open up little windows when readers put their cursor over the link. Here’s what the window looks like. It has a product picture, title, price and an option to ‘buy now’ and add the product to your shopping basket.
The window disappears when you take the cursor away.
During the beta test only 50% of readers to sites testing the feature will see the ads - it’s some kind of controlled test.
To participate in the program you just need to be an Amazon affiliate as far as I can see - log into the associate’s page and you should be invited to join the beta test.
Written on November 19th, 2005 at 09:11 am by Darren Rowse
Botsense - Combatting Content Theft and Bandwidth Issues caused by Bots
Jim over at Revnews has a post talking about a new product, Botsense, that is currently in beta that is for stopping Rogue Web Bots From Eating Your Bandwidth & Stealing Your Content. It sounds like an interesting product that unfortunately will be needed more and more with the way things are going with content theft these days.
Has anyone used it? I’d be interested to hear your experiences.
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