Written on January 28th, 2005 at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse
A Professional Bloggers Workflow
Tris has a great post over at Qumana Blog about Qumana and professional blogging. Ok its a bit of a sales pitch for Qumana (which I’ve heard some great things about - just wish they’d release a Mac version) but its an interesting glimpse into the workflow of a Professional Blogger who is Actively writing on 10 or so blogs on a variety of topics.
I have an extremely similar workflow - I tend to use Ecto and Bloglines which I suspect works pretty similarly to the system Tris has up and running. I’d love to see a more integrated approach though in the future - imagine a tool like Ecto or Qumana that also tracked RSS! I know Bloglines has a blog feature but its pretty basic. I’m sure we’ll see developments in this direction one day.
After reading what Tris has to say you can come back here and read about my workflow in my A Day in the Life of a enternetusers.
Written on January 28th, 2005 at 02:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Staying Motivated with your Blogging - Work with Others
Susannah at Buzz Marketing has a great post on Staying Motivated with your blogging which is well worth the read. Regular posting is an essential part of blogging for profit - I know I can go a week or so without noticing too big a drop in earnings - but if you’re trying to build your readership and income regular and interesting posting is absolutely essential. Of course this takes discipline and motivation. Susannah has a good list to help you get motivated for the year of blogging ahead.
I do most of what she suggests in her list but another thing I’ve done a bit of lately is work with others on posts and projects.
I find that blogging can be a lonely process at times - for starters most of my friends think I’m crazy and give me the strangest look when I answer the ‘what do you do?’ question with ‘I’m a blogger’ - but I also find that blogging can be quite an isolating process - staring at your computer all day, researching, writing, reflecting etc. Whilst as an introvert I do enjoy time alone I also find that too much of it leaves me feeling rather lifeless and unmotivated.
Recently I’ve started initiating relationships with a number of others with the view to entering into some common partnerships. I find that when I do this it can be quite inspiring and energizing.
So find yourself a blogging partner - it might be another blogger, or it might just be one of those people that gives you one of ‘those’ looks when you mention the word ‘blogging’. You see someone who is new to the medium comes at it with a fresh approach, their own passions and interests and might just help you discover something new about blogging.
By the way - I’m seeking collaborators at the moment for blogging ideas and projects. I hope to have a bit more time this year to work with some of you - so if you have a project that you think might be mutually beneficial to us both let me know and we’ll see where our conversation leads us to.
Written on January 28th, 2005 at 01:01 am by Darren Rowse
Adam Curry to Launch Podcasting Network
Fortune reports that Adam Curry of MTV fame is planning to start up a podcasting network in the months ahead:
‘Later this winter Curry and partners plan to launch a podcasting network, offering an edited selection of the web’s best dispatches and tools for neophytes to create their own casts. Just as blogs have challenged mainstream media, Curry predicts that podcasts will take on radio and satellite. “With podcasting, people can tune out the world and listen to whatever they choose,” says Curry. “In a way we’re really looking at the dismantling of the monoculture,” he says. Guess it’s a good thing he’s not at MTV anymore.’
Read more at Technology - Podcasting: From MTV to MP3 - FORTUNE
Written on January 27th, 2005 at 10:01 pm by Darren Rowse
BlogTshirts.com - Now you can wear your favorite blogs.
I just stumbled on another way you can make a few dollars from your blog - this time directly from your readers - its by starting your own clothing label! Ok - maybe not your own label but you can have your own T-Shirts. Check out BlogTshirts.com which lets bloggers sell T-shirts without the hassle of having to make or send them and simply by letting others do all the hard work of inventory etc. I know there are other places you can do this online but this is one of the first I’ve see that is targeting bloggers! Its a service run by Dan Sherman.
‘Are you a blog reader? Show your fondness for the blogosphere by wearing your favorite blog on a t-shirt.
By wearing a blogTshirt, you not only show the world your awareness regarding the future of news delivery, but you also support your favorite bloggers. Each blog owner receives $10 per t-shirt purchased with their blog on it…..
Everybody wins. You get a cool t-shirt, bloggers earn money to support their nasty blogging habit and we here at blogTshirts.com can make enough money to retire to the Bahamas. (Don’t worry, we’ll keep blogging and making t-shirts.)’
So the question I have is this (and its not deep) what should the slogan be for enternetusers’s T-shirt?!? I’ll take nominations below. If I use your nomination I’ll buy you a free T-Shirt.
I’m not sure how many of you my wonderful readers are going to rush out and buy a enternetusers blog but I’m sure there are plenty of other blogs that this would work better with. At earning $10 per sale its worth a go if you have a lot of avid/obsessive fans reading your blog.
Written on January 27th, 2005 at 04:01 pm by Darren Rowse
The 2005 Business Blogging Awards - Voting Time
Looks like voting is open in the The 2005 Business Blogging Awards and I’m surprised to find enternetusers in the Best overall Blog category. i wasn’t sure what their definition of a ‘Business Blog’ was but perhaps I’m one after all. Anyway you can go here to vote and to surf through some excellent examples of business blogging a wide variety of topics. If you’re looking for the category we’re nominated in start scrolling and don’t stop til you stop. The best ‘overall’ blog is ‘underall’ the others….sorry - I couldn’t resist.
Update: Voting has been suspended due to some irregularities with the system - seems that votes were accumulating very quickly (ie one vote sometimes came up as multiple votes). Thanks for the 11,000 people who voted for me (joking). System should be back up again shortly.
Written on January 27th, 2005 at 04:01 pm by Darren Rowse
The Business Blogging Field Guide - Types of Business Bloggers
The Social Customer Manifesto has a great series going at the moment titled The Business Blogging Field Guide which goes beyond the usual ‘what is a business blog?’ question and describes six different types of business bloggers - giving examples of each:
The Tour Guide
The Recommender
The Maven
The Customer Advocate
The The Do-er
The CEO Blogger
Written on January 27th, 2005 at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
How Personal do you Get on your Business Blog?
There is an interesting dialogue going about how personal you should get on your business blog over at CorporateBlogging.Info and public (MIND). Hans wants to know more about Fredrik - Fredrik doesn’t want his blog to go there.
‘As Hans Henrik says, I try to keep this site focused on blogging and related communication discussions. I’m not doing it primarily to be read, even if that’s fun and stimulating. I’m doing it to learn. I work that way. If I read stuff I forget it. If I read stuff and write about it, I’m able to transform it from information to knowledge. And with a journalistic background no other writing than that in public really counts.
Writing more about my background, my family, views and opinions on other matters — that wouldn’t fill any purpose from that perspective. In my corporate blog (Swedish only) it’s somewhat different, because there I have other purposes.
That’s one part of the answer, the individual part of it. In more general terms I think - as a blog reader - that it’s not very interesting to get too much personal stuff. If I read a blog to, say, find news and discussions about web design I couldn’t care less who the blogger had dinner with the night before. I don’t want to know that.’
He also wonders if it might be a cultural thing that highlights the difference between how Europeans differ from Americans in their business blogs.
It could also be a personality thing I guess. I personally have some boundaries about what I will and won’t blog about on my different blogs - however would probably be a little more open to revealing a little about myself on most of my blogs. I am someone who is drawn to real people and not just information.
I like blogs that have a photo somewhere on them of the person and that give some indication of who they are, where they are, what they do with their time etc. I also like humor in blogs and enjoy a good story every now and again. I guess it is a personal choice - but I wonder what you think? How much do you reveal about yourself on your blog? Do you have boundaries about what you will and won’t post about?
Written on January 27th, 2005 at 03:01 pm by Darren Rowse
Visualization of Blogs
Anjo is doing some very interesting work on Visually representing blogs. The picture to the left (click to enlarge) is a partial visualization of Scobleizer over a year. Anjo describes what you’re looking at by writing:
• Size of a blob is determined by the number of words in the post. Bigger blob, more words (in fact: every pixel represents one word).
• Colour of the blob is determined by whether there are links to others (grey), links from others (green) or no links (red). All with respect to a community of KM bloggers determined by Lilia and Stephanie
It is an interesting first implementation of this visualization system - well worth checking out. Read the rest here. I’ll be interested to see what else emerges.
Written on January 26th, 2005 at 06:01 pm by Darren Rowse
RSS Advertising More Superior Than Email - RSS Spam to Follow?
Marketing Rampage with Blogs has an interesting post that argues RSS Advertising outperforms Email advertising.
‘Pheedo ran the campaign for 6 weeks and from their results, RSS feeds outperformed the best click through rate in email by over 26% as compared to the industry average of 8.7%.’
It is an article that both excites me (as someone just beginning to test the theory) but also scares me a little. You see email advertising became the bane of my existence for many years with the advent of Spammed Emails - I’m just wondering how long before we see the same vast quantity of Spam RSS feeds bouncing through our news aggregators.
I already regularly see what I consider to be RSS spam in my bloglines aggregator - junk posts that appear again and again day after day on the search terms that I follow. I wonder how much longer before this practice becomes so wide spread that I give up using the search for a keyword function of Bloglines.
Written on January 26th, 2005 at 09:01 am by Darren Rowse
NYT Online Advertisign is up 32%
ClickZ reports that Online Ad Revenues Up 32 Percent at New York Times Co. its not a blog - but I figure its representative of what is happening in the wider online community.
‘Advertising revenue for The New York Times’ online unit increased 32.2 percent for December 2004 compared with December 2003, driven by strong growth in display advertising and all classified advertising categories.
That robust online performance contrasts with the almost flat advertising revenue growth company-wide. Total advertising revenues across all of the Times’ media holdings increased 2.2 percent to $187.2 million in December. For the year, the Times reported total advertising revenues up 3.5 percent with $2.19 billion.’