Written on May 7th, 2007 at 03:05 pm by David Shawver Stanton

Personal Branding and Blogging

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 15 comments

One blogger that I think has done a good job of positioning himself as an expert on social media is Neil Patel. I’ve previously linked to quite a bit of Neil’s blogging at Pronet Advertising but in the last few days he’s also started a new blog called QuickSprout - a blog on personal branding.

In his latest post Neil writes about using blogs (both starting your own and commenting on others) as a tool for branding yourself (something most of us as bloggers are familiar with to some extent). I’m looking forward to seeing more and more of Neil’s posts as personal branding is a topic is continues to grow.

My Personal Branding Tip

My own philosophy on personal branding is that it needs to be approached on two fronts - a big picture and a little picture one.

On a big picture front one needs to think about the larger ‘picture’ that you’re wanting to paint of yourself. You might do this by thinking about the words that you want associated with your name for example. So someone like Guy Kawasaki you might associate the word ‘entrepreneur’ or Michael Arrington it might be ‘Web 2.0′. Most bloggers attempting to build their personal brand think about this and generally do a reasonable job at it.

On a smaller picture/micro level I think bloggers need to consider that every action that they take has the ability to add to or subtract from their personal brand.

  • Every Blog Post
  • Every Comment
  • Every Instant Message
  • Every Email

Particularly the public actions (posting and commenting) can have a profound impact upon how you are perceived - particularly when viewed cumulatively over time.

Don’t just think about ‘what’ you write either - it’s about ‘how’ you do it also. Your style, tone, language as well as they way in which you interact with others all have an impact upon how people will perceive you and the words that they’ll associate with you.

It’s on this micro level that I see some bloggers break down and prove to be inconsistent in their branding by having a big picture branding that says one thing but a small picture branding that is quite different from their overall goal. These mixed messages can confuse and even aggravate readers.

This inconsistency can come in any number of ways - for example:

  • presenting as an expert but proving to have little knowledge of the topic at hand
  • presenting as a relational person but with an unwillingness to interact on a one on one level
  • presenting as a reasonable, diplomatic person but with a history of personal attack
  • presenting as an honest person but being found to consistently attempting to pull the wool over other people’s eyes
  • presenting as an aggressive blogger but in personal interactions being gentle, meek and mild

The list could go on (and you’re welcome to suggest others). The problem with such inconsistencies is that over time they become quite obvious (particularly in a medium like blogging) and they can eventually lead to the creation of anything but a positive personal brand.

So as useful as thinking about the big picture that you want to portray is - a more useful question to continually be asking is - ‘do my actions back up the brand that I’m attempting to portray?’

This is a question to be pondering in the daily grind of blogging, commenting and interacting with others.

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Written on May 6th, 2007 at 09:05 pm by David Shawver Stanton

Group Writing Project This Week! - Here’s the Prize

enternetusers Site News 32 comments

This is just a short note to give readers some advanced warning that this week is the week for the next enternetusers Group Writing Project.

Tomorrow I’ll announce the topic (it’s one that every blogger of any topic should find accessible) but in the lead up to it I’d like to announce the sponsor and prize of this next project.

I’m pleased to announce that Chitika (the ad network that I make around 30% (it does go up and down a little) of my income from) is coming to the Group Writing Project party and is offering one lucky (and random) participant….

$1001 cash

My request for sponsors brought in some generous offers for prizes but I decided to go with Chitikas for a few reasons:

1. They’re a relevant sponsor for enternetusers

2. I believe in them and have no hesitation in recommending them (see my previous review of Chitika and tips on how to use them).

3. Readers have previously fed back that ‘cash’ was the prize they competed hardest for

So stay tuned over the next 24 hours for a topic announcement - along with a new system for submitting the posts that you want to submit which hopefully will streamline the whole project a lot more (and let me run them more regularly).

Oh - and thanks Chitika!

PS: if you’ve never done a enternetusers Group Writing Project before you might like to check out this post introducing the last one to give you the idea of how they run.

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Written on May 6th, 2007 at 02:05 am by David Shawver Stanton

Speedlinking - 6 May 2007

Pro Blogging News 9 comments

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Written on May 5th, 2007 at 11:05 am by David Shawver Stanton

Technorati Gives Blogs an ‘Authority’ Ranking

Blogging Tools and Services 34 comments

Ben has noticed that Technorati have started giving blogs an ‘Authority Rank’. The Top 100 list used to be base upon incoming links but now is based upon ‘authority’ (although I don’t see much has changed in that list so far).

There’s nothing about how they’re coming up with authority rankings yet on their blog - it’ll be interesting to see if this is just a new new name for the old ‘incoming links’ description or if they’re making bigger changes.

PS: It also looks like they’ve changed the way that blog’s profile pages are displayed. I don’t remember how the old ones displayed but here’s enternetusers’s page. Now with screen shot of the blog, ‘blog reactions’ (what others are saying about the blog) etc.

I also note that they’ve started calling those favoriting a blog ‘fans’ which could indicate some more changes in the favoriting system are under way.

update: More on these changes are now on the Technorati blog

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Written on May 5th, 2007 at 10:05 am by David Shawver Stanton

Blog Advertising Methods Ranked

Advertising 16 comments

Chad Randall (b5’s Ad Sales Manager) caused a real stir here at enternetusers while I was traveling a few weeks back in his guest post about making a blog more attrActive to advertisers when he suggested bloggers remove AdSense from their blogs.

Chad wrote more on why he doesn’t like AdSense on his own blog after that post - and today wrote another useful post titled the 7 Levels of Revenue for Your Blog which ranks advertising methods for blogs.

While I think a lot of what Chad says is true my own position on AdSense isn’t quite as extreme. As someone who has some blogs that are highly read by Australian audiences - ad networks like AdSense and Chitika provide a very valuable opportunity to monetize a site as it can be difficult to find alternatives. I also find that my average CPM rate is considerably higher than the $1 Average that Chad talks about.

This type of thing does vary from blog to blog somewhat - how would you rank ad revenue types?

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Written on May 5th, 2007 at 01:05 am by David Shawver Stanton

Get $5 for Free Today from AuctionAds

Advertising 41 comments

Get $5 for testing AuctionAds - find out more below.

Us $5 Obverse

A couple of days ago I asked readers for their reviews of AuctionAds - a new income stream for bloggers that has been going for two months now.

Today the team behind AuctionAds contacted me to let me know that they want to offer enternetusers readers a special incentive to try them out on your blog.

They are going to put $5 into the account of every enternetusers reader who signs up today via this Special Offer Form. To qualify you just need to sign up and try Auction Ads out on your blog.

This is an exclusive deal (from what I’m told) - open only to enternetusers readers and while it might not seem like a large amount to give away - considering the readership of enternetusers they could be giving away some serious cash (if every RSS reader signs up they’ll be into six figures - gee I’d love to see that).

So if you’ve been meaning to try out AuctionAds on your blog what better opportunity than this? While AuctionAds work better on some blogs than others they are worth a try. The worst thing that can happen is that you walk away with a free five dollars!

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Written on May 4th, 2007 at 10:05 pm by David Shawver Stanton

Five Free Tickets to Future of Online Advertising - First Five Win!

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 23 comments

Are you interested in coming along to the Future of Online Advertising conference on 7-8 June in New York where I’ll be speaking (alongside some other amazing speakers).

I’ve got five free tickets to give to enternetusers Readers - but you’re going to have to be very very quick because it is a first in best dressed scenario and your time starts NOW!

The first five people to email the organizers saying that they are enternetusers Readers and want to attend FOOA will get the free passes (worth just under $1000).

Email them on - fooa@carsonsystems.com

Good luck and I’ll see you in NYC.

PS: don’t forget that we’re holding a ProBlogge/b5media day long workshop and meetup in New York the day after FOOA. We’re getting close to confirming the date and a venue. Stay tuned. Leave your comments on the previous post if you are interested in coming to that event.

PS: If you miss out on the tickets or can’t get to NY - don’t worry, I’ve got another little free giveaway of a cash nature for you in the next few hours - something everyone can get - stay tuned.

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Written on May 4th, 2007 at 06:05 am by David Shawver Stanton

Nikon D80 Picture This Campaign

Pro Blogging News 17 comments

Journalism Hope has a good interview with Tom Biro from the New Media Strategies Team at MWW (a PR company) on the latest campaign that Nikon are doing with 50 bloggers to promote their D80 DSLR.

The campaign is called ‘picture this’ and it involves Nikon loaning a D80 (and lens) to 50 bloggers for 6 or 12 months to test. At the end of that time bloggers can return the camera, ask for a further 6 months or buy it at an ‘editorial discount’.

They require transparency from bloggers writing about the camera and are having a Flickr group for participants to post their shots to.

Some of the bloggers participating are BL Ochman, The Viral Garden, Jason Clarke and Jaffe Juice among others.

We’re seeing more and more companies taking this approach and doing a better and better job of it on each occasion (ie with transparency, thought out conditions of participation etc).

My only question was along the lines of how they selected bloggers. I think they’ve got some great participants so far - however I’m yet to see one of the many great photography bloggers participating and would have thought that they’d have targeted some of those. I can see the sense in finding other types of bloggers - but to have brought a blog specifically on their topic into the mix would have seemed like a sensible move (NB: this is not a ‘pitch’ to participate - just me wondering out loud).

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Written on May 3rd, 2007 at 12:05 pm by David Shawver Stanton

Auction Ads - Reader Reviews

Advertising 60 comments

Auction-AdsI’ve just jumped off a skype call with a blogger who has been testing Auction Ads since they were announced back in March.

He wishes to remain anonymous as he’s wanting to protect his niche - however was very very excited as he’d just received a payment from them that was bigger than anything he’d previously earned from a blog.

I’m not allowed to share his niche - except to say that it’s in an area that there is a healthy second hand market for products in.

I’ve heard from other bloggers that if you have content that relates well to anything with such a market that it will do well as the ad system draws its inventory from ebay.

I’ve dabbled with Auction Ads (with some success) but suspect that it will do incredibly well for some topics but not so well with others.

I’m interested to hear your feedback after two months of experimenting with Auction Ads (as I know many of you have been).

How is it working for you? What have you found to work best in terms of design, positioning and topics? Write us a mini review and share your experiences (anonymously or with your name - your choice).

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Written on May 3rd, 2007 at 08:05 am by David Shawver Stanton

enternetusers Job Boards Gets a New RSS Feed - Subscribe Today

enternetusers Site News 6 comments

Do you follow the enternetusers blog Job Boards via RSS? If so - it’s time to change your feed address to a new one. We had a lot of problems with the old one so decided to start from scratch with it.

Jobboardheader-1The enternetusers Job Boards have continued to grow in terms of the numbers of jobs being advertised each week and I’m getting a lot of positive feedback both from advertisers who are filling jobs (and quite often letting their add run as ‘unfilled’ to fill other jobs) and bloggers who are reporting that they’re getting jobs.

Here are the most recent 10 jobs advertised:

As you can see there’s a lot of variety in the types of jobs being advertised with new ones being added every few days (sometimes a few a day). The best way to follow them as they are added is by subscribing to the feed.

To advertise for a blogger it’s just $50 for a 30 day advertisement - take out an ad with your PayPal account here.

Update - just had another advertiser mark his job filled with the comment “I have been overwhelmed with the number of responses - and the talent and caliber of those who responded.” - great times!

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