Written on June 13th, 2007 at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse

Should I Add Fake Comments to My Blog?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 130 comments

Preston asks - “I started a new blog about a month ago. I got about 40 topics written. But only 2 comments. I’m thinking of faking comments, making a few users and get a nice sample of comments on some of the blog posts I’ve made.

Is this not a good use of my extra time, and i should do something else related to my blog? or spending some time doing this, is a good idea.”

Thanks Preston. Let me share a few thoughts.

Congratulations on your new blog and the 40 posts that you’ve written. 40 posts in two months is a great effort and if you can keep up that level of posting you’ll have a great foundation of content for your blog.

Don’t be too discouraged by the lack of comments to this point. For a month old blog I don’t think it’s too bad an achievement to have 2 comments. While I know you’d want more I’d encourage you to stick with it and be patient. Many month old blogs would probably not even have 2!

Fake comments. Hmmm - I think this one will cause some debate and I’d love to hear how many enternetusers readers have written them in the starting of their blogs.

I’ll be honest and say that on my first blog I did do a few fake comments in the very very early days. I used them in the same way that you’re suggesting here - to get conversations going and to make the blog look a little more Active.

So I understand the temptation to use them - however I can say from my experience of them that they didn’t work very well for me and the conversations that I had on my blogs in the early days that had a more lasting impact were natural ones with real readers. Instead of going with fake comments I’d really recommend that you work on the content on your blog and writing in a way that is engaging (Read more on the topic of generating comments).

A Word of Warning - while I can see why people go with fake comments (my suspicion is that if bloggers were honest that a majority of them probably have done it) there is of course some danger in it if you’re caught. Blogging is built upon transparency and honesty. I’ve seen a handful of bloggers exposed for fake comments and it probably set their blogs back a little.

What else could you do with the time you might put into fake comments?

• write an extra post a week
• email another blogger in an attempt to get to know them
• email a friend or family member to ask their opinion of a post you’ve written
• leave a comment on someone else’s blog
• think of a question to ask your readers

I’d suspect that all of these things have the potential to generate comments on your blog and build a sustainable readership for it.

Have you left fake comments on your blog? Why or Why Not? Are there times when they are OK?

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Written on June 12th, 2007 at 05:06 am by Darren Rowse

Keep Yourself Organized with a Blog Binder

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 84 comments

This post on creating a Blog Binder to help you keep organized has been submitted by Julie Bonner from declutter it. I first heard Julie speak about her Blog Binder in passing in a b5media forum discussion and thought it might be something others might find helpful. I asked her if she’d write it up and here it is:

Ever since I started blogging, my mind is always going a mile a minute. I find myself constantly thinking about new article ideas, new monetization models or tips I had heard that I knew would add value to my blog.

Before I knew, it my desk was cluttered sky high with scribble notes and articles I had printed out. I also could not sleep! It was driving me crazy. My mind was so full of ideas that when I would lay down at night, the wheels would keep turning, I felt like I was on a hamster wheel.

It’s ironic that I let my desk and my mind get to this point because I used to help people get organized for a living. That means I’m supposed to be perfect right? Well, I have my weaknesses too, and getting my online businesses “organized” was turning into a real problem for me. I knew I needed a system and quick!

That’s when I came up with what I call My Blog Binder. It’s not a clever title, but hey, it works! Here’s a basic description of what I keep in it and how it helps keep me on track and focused.

My Work Schedule

At the beginning of my binder, I have my work schedule written out. Now for me, this schedule has no times on it, but only subjects. I dedicate each weekday to one subject. For example: Mondays I focus on SEO, Tuesdays I visit new blogs, Wednesdays I focus on building traffic, etc.

These subjects are all separate from the actual blogging. I try to blog everyday.

Staying Organized with More Than One Blog

Instead of having separate binders for each blog I have, I decided to condense them into one. It just makes it that much more simple and easy to use.

I have labeled dividers with the title of blog on it. Behind each divider I have several sheets of blank paper. On each piece of paper I have 1 title:

Article Ideas – This is where I write anything and everything that comes to my mind for an article idea. I am never short of ideas, and if I am having one of those days where I don’t know what to write, I go back to this page. This has helped me through many days of writer’s block.

Must-Do List – This is a list of to-do’s that I need to implement within the next few days. These are things that I do not want to forget about and remember weeks down the road.

For example, let’s say you are browsing through a blog and you notice an “Add This to Your Technorati Favorites” link. You then tell yourself, “I really need to add this to my blog!” So, instead of making a mental note that never seems to stick around, you write it on your Must-Do list. The next time you are working on your blog, you check your list and add that link.

Running-to Do List – This is a list of things you want to implement at some point, but it’s not necessarily time sensitive. For example: playing around with your blog’s colors or possibly looking for a new template.

Blogs to Visit – Within each of my niches, there are a number of blogs that I like to visit. Instead of trying to remember which ones they are, I write them down here and this is usually one of the first things I do in the morning. Be careful to keep this list short. You don’t want your browsing time to take away from your productive work. It is so easy to get sucked into blogland and see 3 hours of your day pass by.

Another option is to add these sites to your favorites folder on your computer. It’s all a matter of preference and what works best for you.

Are you still with me? Good.

Organizing the Great Articles I Read

Have you ever been on someone’s blog, read an amazing article and you said to yourself, “Wow, that was good!”? You then continue browsing, telling yourself you won’t forget that tip? Most of the time that tip has left your brain within 5 minutes and you are irritated that you can’t remember it.

What’s the solution? Print out the article and file it in your binder! I have an excellent selection of articles that I refer back to time and time again. After I print out the article, I hole punch it and put it behind the correct divider. Here are the sections I have:

• SEO
• Design
• Monetization
• Traffic

This has worked wonders for me and I have even referred back to these articles when helping other people with their blogging woes. When the sections start to get too thick, I will weed out the articles that are outdated.

Keep it Simple

If you decide to create a Blog Binder, I have a few words of advice:

• Don’t create too many categories. Keep the categories very general at first and as you use it more, you may find more specific subjects to add.
• Actually use the binder. You may be thinking, “Well, duh!”, but I have been in the organizing business long enough to know that we all have good intentions that slip through the cracks. I leave my binder at my desk at all times. It is usually open and ready for me to flip through or take notes on.
• Don’t become an insomniac because of your blogging. If you are like me and you find yourself laying in bed thinking of these wonderful, life-changing articles you want to write; get out of bed, open up your binder and write it down. Then proceed to get a restful night’s sleep.

Final Thoughts

These tips are obviously for those who still know what paper is. If you are not paper- oriented, but prefer to do everything on your laptop, you can take all this information and apply it electronically as well. Just be sure and keep your computer files well organized and easy to retrieve.

I hope this has helped you in some way on your path to becoming a more focused and productive blogger.

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Written on June 12th, 2007 at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse

What to do with 10 Hours on Your Blog?

Search Engine Optimization, Blog Promotion 30 comments

Ross asks - “What is more important, working on getting more traffic (digg, links from high traffic sites) or working on search engine optimisation? If you had 10 hours to spend on one or the other which would benefit you more?”

I think both strategies can be important for a blog - depending upon it’s life stage. They’re also really linked…

I’m a big believer in getting good SEO principles into play on a new blog from day one so in the very early days I’d work on some SEO above trying to leverage other site’s traffic. However most blog platforms come with fairly decent SEO these days and most of what I’d do on an SEO front after a few basic tweaks is while I’m writing a post (ie good titles, using keywords well etc.

In terms of leveraging traffic from other sites - a lot of this also happens for me in the writing process. Knowing the type of style and topic of posts that people like to link to is a big part of it. I don’t tend to Actively promote many of my posts to other sites these days but instead let my readers do a lot of it.

Not sure if I’ve really answered your question Ross. So I’ll say this:

If it was in the first week of a blog’s life I’d work on the SEO of the blog (things like getting title tags right, looking at how it interlinks internally etc). In fact I’d work on this stuff before the blog was launched - but it probably wouldn’t take 10 hours. Once this stuff is set up it’s not something I generally spend a lot of time on - my focus switches to content creation.

In the coming weeks (and months) I’d work hard on developing key content that is useful, unique and attrActive to other sites. I’d also promote some of that key content to other key blogs in the niche I was attempting to break into (keep in mind that in doing this you’re also really working on your SEO as incoming links play a big part in helping your Search Engine ranking). 10 hours a week doing this can really have a powerful impact!

What would you say is the most effective use of 10 hours as a blogger?

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Written on June 11th, 2007 at 11:06 am by Darren Rowse

enternetusers NY Meetup - A Recap

enternetusers Site News 16 comments

This time last night the enternetusers meetup was in full swing in an Upper West Side Bar here in New York.

The night was a great time of catching up with old friends, putting faces to names and meeting a few brand new people. The picture to the left is me with Shai Coggins (one of my partners at b5media - who I only met this week for the first time after being in business with her for over a year!) and Aaron Brazell (b5’s Tech Director).

Thanks to everyone who came along and made the night such a fun one. Thanks also to Chitika who were generous enough to buy everyone a drink or two and to Lara who helped in putting the night together for us.

I can’t link to everyone who attended but here are a few links to some pictures, posts and even a video of the night for those of you who couldn’t make it but wanted to be a part of the night by watching on:

• A few of my own pictures from the last few days
• Lara’s Flickr Shots
• John’s Flickr Shots
• Rich Minx Recap
• Elaine’s Recap Post
• Theron’s Photos
• Few Guys from Work Recap

Video via WebMetrics Guru

I’m sure there’s more floating around - if you have photos or a post feel free to link up below.

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Written on June 11th, 2007 at 07:06 am by Darren Rowse

The ProBlogging Workflow of a Working/Traveling Mother

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 11 comments

This post on blogging workflow has been submitted by Melissa Petri of Europe String.

Apart from maintaining 5 travel blogs under 3 different networks, I also: (1) work full-time; (2) am a mother of 2 very young boys; and (3) travel a lot for work.

Many have asked how I manage all that and still get some sleep.

The conflicting demands of my family, work and pro-blogging can only be answered if I manage my time well, set my priorities and use tools to aide me in my research and in blogging.

1. Time Management
I have to admit that problogging takes a backseat BUT I still meet my quota if I make use of my free time at night and/or on weekends.

I try to be strict with myself when I face the computer. My YM and Skype are on invisible mode to avoid distractions.

On the other hand, when the weather is beautiful or something interesting is going on, I take a break even if it’s time to blog. I have no plans of missing life. Besides, the beauty of travel blogging lies in the fact that almost everything I see or enjoy could become great blog fodder.

Whenever I am on business trips, I also use my downtime to blog rather than watch TV out of boredom.

2. Priorities
There was a time when I had way too much blogs to maintain, with an impossible number of posts to write per day. Rather than lose all of my blogs for failing to meet the required posting frequency, I decided to cut back. I ended a couple of blogs.

I think that we always will have options. We should just keep in mind what our goals are and decide base on that.

3. Tools
Blogging is a lot easier and faster with the use of several tools like:

• Bloglines - I usually blog about destinations, travel tips, budget options, hotels and airlines, among others. Along with these mini-features, I also need to blog about current travel events. Bloglines help me sift through news without wasting my time over an article which is of no use to me in blogging.
• Forums - I feel like an outsider listening in or butting in on other people’s conversations. Reading forums gives me an idea of how different people view a certain topic. And this helps me when I write my post about, say, a certain destination.
• Notepad - Would you believe that I write a lot of my entries on this very simple application? Sometimes, when I am offline, I get an idea or two and just need to write. I use.txt files for my N70 and laptop. This saves me the frustration of editing codes when I have to copy paste my entries onto MT or Wordpress.
• Backpackit - When I have bloggerís blog, I rely on Backpackit to remind me of the great idea I had when I was on a blogging roll.

A goal is all we need, imo, and this makes it possible for us to build a workflow around it that will suit our needs.

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Written on June 11th, 2007 at 02:06 am by Darren Rowse

What Matters Most to You as a Blogger?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 18 comments

Stephanie asks - “I’d like to know: As a blogger: What matters most to you?”

Wow - this could go in any number of directions including the philosophical!

I don’t think I could name one thing alone but here’s the first few things that popped into my head (I’m sure I could write a lot longer list if I were to give it extended thought):

• Useful Content - as a blogger wanting to both build a successful blog as a business but who also wants to build something of value to help people I spend a lot of time asking myself how I can provide something that is useful to readers. The longer that I blog the more I am convinced that building something useful online is a key to it’s success.
• Sustainable Model - as a blogger earning an income from my blogging I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in the money side of things. While money isn’t everything to me and V and I do strive for a relatively simple lifestyle - it’s important that what I build has a way of both sustaining us and building an income to a level where it can also help others.
• Stimulation - over the years I’ve built blogs on topic that I have limited or waning interest in. I don’t want to do this any more. I’m happy to help other bloggers with a passion for a topic build their blogs in the network I’m a part of (even if the topic isn’t of great interest to me) however life’s too short to be writing about something that doesn’t stimulate me.
• Conversation - by no means am I satisfied with the level of community that currently happens on my blogs but it’s important to me that it’s growing. I’m not satisfied because I know I could contribute to it a lot more and I often feel torn between the many roles that I have as a blogger these days (here at enternetusers alone I get 100 or so comments on an average day and to respond to them all could be a full time job in itself). My hope is to build blogs that don’t rely upon me as the only ‘expert’ but rather to build communities of expertise where the conversation is rich as a result of the knowledge that the community as a whole has.

Like I say - this is just the beginning of a longer list that I could spend a lot of time upon.

What matters to you most as a blogger?

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Written on June 10th, 2007 at 01:06 pm by Darren Rowse

New York Meetup

Pro Blogging News 9 comments

I’m just home from the enternetusers NY Readers meetup - what a fun night! Thanks everyone. I’ll post some photos and comments tomorrow after I recover.

If you’ve got pictures or blog posts about the meetup please tag them pbny07 so we can all share the fun.

By the Way - NYT has an article in the Sunday edition titled Can Blogs Become a Big Source of Jobs? enternetusers even got a quick mention (if only the journalist knew I was in town).

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Written on June 10th, 2007 at 01:06 am by Darren Rowse

Would I Consider Selling enternetusers?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 48 comments

Phil asked - “Would you ever consider selling enternetusers.net?”

I’ve been asked this quite a few times of late for some reason - increasingly by genuine buyers.

The answer is Yes…. and No.

At this point I’m not looking for a sale and am not even close to doing so because over the last couple of years this blog has built itself into a tool that is incredibly useful for building my own profile and for my own personal income earning capacity for the longer term.

While this blog doesn’t earn a great deal of money (although it’s continuing to increase in it’s earnings as I’m starting to sell more sponsorships) it sells me very well and for me to sell it would decrease the potential for me to sell myself as a consultant, writer, speaker, business partner etc

Having said that - if the offer were right I’d be crazy not to consider selling.

However for the offer to be ‘right’ it would have to be fairly significant. I’ve been offered medium six figures for it already and didn’t have to think too hard before saying no.

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Written on June 9th, 2007 at 10:06 pm by Darren Rowse

FOOA Recap

Pro Blogging News 9 comments

Lots of people have been emailing to ask how the Future of Online Advertising (FOOA) conference has gone here in New York over the last couple of days - so I thought an update was in order.

Overall I’ve found it to be a very worthwhile experience - both as a speaker and attendee.

While this is the first time the team at Carsons have run this event they managed to get 500 or so people to come along and pulled together a worthwhile event. I’m sure if one was to ask the team if they could improve that they’d list of a few things that they’d like to work on for next time - but despite a few minor glitches I thought it was well worth attending, that they put together an event that has been very successful and that will be a good springboard into future versions of the event.

A Personal Downside
My main regret from the last few days has been suffering from the flu. This dampened my first couple of days in NYC (I spent most of them in bed) and left me feeling pretty exhausted for the actual conference.

Networking
The highlight of the event for me has been the networking opportunities and the chance to meet many enternetusers readers. There are too many names to mention in a post like this but I would like to thank everyone for their encouragement, welcome and hospitality over the last couple of days. I’m looking forward to catching up with many of you again tonight at the enternetusers meetup.

My Presentation
I arrived in New York with a couple of days to recover from the trip and to put the finishing touches on my presentation - only to get sick. So to be honest I did get to my session today feeling a little daunted. Ryan (the organizer) asked me to focus half of my talk upon Advertisers and half on Publishers/Bloggers. Considering the sessions were 30 minutes long (and I needed to leave 5 minutes for questions) it was a challenge to work out what to focus upon.

What I decided to focus upon was two questions that I get asked a lot by enternetusers readers:

1. From Bloggers - ‘How do I find Advertisers to directly sponsor my blog?’
2. From Advertisers - ‘How do I engage Bloggers?’

I get both of these questions regularly - to the point that sometimes I feel a little like a ‘dating consultant’ or ‘matchmaker’. The result is that the title of my presentation ended up being:

‘Bloggers and Advertisers: Dating Tips from the enternetusers’

I gave a couple of lists of tips - one for bloggers and one for Advertisers on how to ‘court’ or ‘pickup’ the other. I’ll post the presentation later so you can see my points.

I guess you’d need to ask those in attendance what they thought of it (I’m sure there will be some blog posts about it floating around - one I’ve found already is here) however I felt it went over reasonably well. I wasn’t really able to go too deep into the topic in within the time constraints - but hope that something I shared was helpful. My only regret was that my presentation was the second last one (on a warm Friday afternoon) and many had understandably gone home already - that’s the luck of the draw though.

What others are saying about FOOA
There are quite a few people who were blogging and photographing the event that you might like to read if you want to see what others thought and what other presentations there were.

• CenterNetworks - numerous posts on the different presentations here, here and here
• AJ Vaynerhuk - heaps of posts (too many to identify one by one but here’s AJ’s FOOA category)
• Pause - summary of Day 1
• The Digital Perm
• Manage to Change
• Paid Content and again
• Successful Blog
• Serge the Concierge
• Just Make Money Online
• Rajiv Doshi
• Marker Blog
• Fleeing The Social Scene and again and again and
• Jeff Louella and again
• Friolous Motion (and again)
• Behind the Buzz (loads of posts - check the FOOA tag)
• Lots of Flickr sets here, here, here, here, here and here

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Written on June 9th, 2007 at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse

How to Build Your Personal Brand Through Your Blog

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 28 comments

Bob (no url provided) asks - “I want to know how blogging can be used in personal branding. I want to be considered an expert in a topic, how best can writing a blog get me there? I do not care about adsense or CJ.com, I want to know how to use a blog to get consulting and freelance work in my field.”

Glad to hear you’re wanting to use your blog in this way Bob, you’re not alone as more and more people are doing it too.

Really what you’re saying here is that you want to use your blog to ’sell yourself’ instead of to sell a product or ad space.

Here are a few things to work hard at:

• build trust - increasingly marketers are finding that people want to know and be in some sort of trusting relationship with those that they buy products or services from. This is particularly true for a personal service like consulting. Be open about your agenda and about what you do and don’t know. Talk both about your successes and failures. If all you do is use a blog for ’spin’ you’ll present as too good to be true.
• be personal - building on the last point - one way to make a deeper connection with potential clients is to show something of who you are. This doesn’t mean blogging about your personal life, but show you’re human injecting humor, a photo or two of yourself and showing your personality.
• use story - I find readers respond very well to story on blogs. Stories of my own experience, stories of other clients (shared with permission as case studies) etc. Using relevant stories can help build credibility in your niche.
• establish expertise - people won’t give you the ‘expert’ label without you earning it. Show what you know (without being arrogant), show how you apply it (it’s one thing to know a lot - but can you translate your knowledge into something constructive and useful) and be a thought leader in your niche (ie break some new ground and show people that you’re capable of original thought).
• be generous - some consultants use their blogs to talk very abstractly about their field of expertise but don’t actually give their readers much in the way of practical and applicable content. My approach is to give away quite a bit of information and to be quite generous with what you share. If you help someone for free I find that the next time they need something they’ll quite often be willing to pay for it. You might not want to give everything away for free but free reports, ideas and tips should feature pretty heavily on these types of blogs.
• establish relationships in your niche - while building relationships on your own blog with potential clients can be very effective - when another blogger recommends you it can be even more powerful. Get to know other bloggers in your niche and you’ll find they will add to your credibility with their links and mentions on their blogs.
• be consistent - while there’s no problem with changing, growing and developing in your ideas over time you do need to present some consistent messages over time. If you’re constantly chopping and changing what you’re on about and focusing on you’ll find that readers find it hard to connect with you and build a ‘relationship’ over time. Remember that every time you post you have the opportunity to add to or take from your reputation and brand (I’ve written more about being consistent in your messages here).

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