Written on March 31st, 2007 at 06:03 am by Darren Rowse

enternetusers Meetup NYC - Recap

enternetusers Site News 17 comments

Last night was the first ever enternetusers Readers Meet Up here in New York City.

V and I arrived just after 6.30pm and walked into a room which at first impression didn’t seem to be the right one - there were just way too many people there. I am not sure what I was expecting but the turn out was great. I’ve heard estimates of the attendance from anything from 60 to 100 people (perhaps Patrick from TLA would have a better idea after looking at the bar tab).

The night was pretty relaxed and consisted of networking, eating and drinking. I’m not quite sure if I got around to meeting everyone but did meet some great new friends and was quite amazed by the variety of topics that they are blogging about.

Pictures - in the links below from attendee’s recaps you’ll find some great pictures of the night - I’ve also just uploaded a few that V took on our compact camera. Next time (and hopefully there will be one - see below) I’ll get someone to use my DSLR to get some higher quality ones than what our little camera managed).

Prizes - unfortunately due to the noise in the room (and with there being other functions sharing the room) I didn’t get to thank everyone personally or do the prize draw - however I’ve got 50 or so business cards from attendees so will do the prize draw shortly and will mail the prizes out before leaving NYC.

For more coverage of the event from bloggers in attendance you might like to read some of the following posts (if you have one that I’ve not yet found please leave a comment with the link):

Lara Kulpa (she has some great pics)
Silence and Voice Jeffrey Keefer
1938 - Loren Feldman
deVCeed - Minic Rivera
Marios Alexandrou
Elaine Vigneault
shedwa
Marshall Sponder
Web Analytics Book
Philip Liu
Sellsius
Alex Shalman
Aaron Brazell
Ian
David

I’m sure there are more - if you’ve posted about the meet up or have some pictures of it - I’d love to see them!

Thanks again to Text Link Ads for their generous sponsorship of the evening! Patrick and Bill were the best hosts you could hope for and from what I can tell everyone had a great night.

Next Time? - as I mentioned to a few people at the meet up last night - I’m back in NYC for FOOA in June. I’m thinking that it might be good to have another meetup in a similar fashion - but also to spend a few hours in the afternoon running some workshops on blogging. While last night was productive on a networking level it’d be great to have some opportunity for some learning on a different level.

I’ve only got 2 months to pull that type of event together - but if people are interested and a few were to offer to help organize it (hint hint) I’m sure we could have a successful time together. Anyone interested?

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Written on March 31st, 2007 at 01:03 am by Darren Rowse

Blog Contests for Fun and Profit

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 26 comments

The following post was submitted by Mark Shead. Mark writes about personal productivity at Productivity501 where he’s experimenting with running a contests to help build a larger base of readers.

Contests are a common way to try to increase your traffic. With the correct strategy a contest can really put your blog on the map. Done incorrectly they can be difficult, lose money and lose credibility with your audience. This article looks at seven basic steps in creating contests that have a good return on investment for blog sites.

1. Decide how People will Enter.

This is the most important part. If you choose poorly, you will waste a lot of effort and a prize. If you choose wisely your site will benefit for years after the contest is done.

Entries need to help your blog grow in a way that aligns with the goals for your site. If you just ask people to email you, it probably isn’t going to help you grow your blog long term. You need to chose something that helps bring traffic back. Here are a few ideas for contests that benefit your site:

• Subscribe to RSS - This can be a little tricky because you can’t just randomly choose a name from the RSS subscribers. However you can tell people to watch the feed for a special message telling them how to claim the prize.
• Subscribe to an Email Newsletter - This is one of the easiest contests to implement because all you have to do is chose a random subscriber.
• Leave a Comment on the Contest Post - This is simple to run because you just have to select a random comment. It doesn’t have as much benefit as some of the other options because it doesn’t necessarily help your reader connect with the rest of your site.
• Leave a Thoughtful Comment Anywhere on the Blog - This may be a better option than just leaving a comment on the contest post. It requires the reader to help add content to your site. The more the reader interacts with your site the more likely they are to return.
• Review Your Blog on their Site - This requires more work for the person entering the contest, but it gives you the biggest benefit. Not only do you get a link, but you get some great feedback to help you tune your site. In addition the person writing the review is going to remember your site because it is now featured on their blog.
• Hunt Through Your Site to Find Something - For example, you could say that sometime in the next 30 days, you are going to put a secret codeword on your blog and the first person to send you the code word wins the prize. This is good for increasing your page views (assuming your prize is enough to encourage people to dig through your blog), but it might not have the best long term benefit.
• Content Projects - Asking people submit or post content on a particular topic and then rewarding the top submissions can be a great way to get new content as well as raising awareness of your blog. This can be as simple as asking them to add a tip to the comments or as substantial as asking for long essays to use as guest posts.

There are many other ways to run contests. A unique and creative approach is more likely to get noticed than something everyone has seen 100 times before. Just make sure that the contest will result in behavior that is good for your blog in the long term.

Make sure you stop and ask if you would enter the contest yourself. If it requires too much personal information or too much effort, many people will not enter. Before running the contest, it might be good to get a third party opinion by polling a few friends who are in your target market asking if they would enter the contest if they happened to find it on the web.

The ideal contest has some sense of urgency. You can achieve this by rewarding people who enter early. For example you could say that the first 25 people get 3 chances to win, the second 25 get 2 chances, and everyone else gets one. This helps encourage people to act now.

Be careful to structure your contest with the right amount of randomness and the right amount of effort based reward. If you have a contest for the best comment on your site, people won’t enter unless they think they are going to be the best. If they see another comment that they don’t feel they can top, they might just give up. On the other hand, if you just offer to give a prize away randomly you might not get thoughtful comments. A good option is to take the best 25 comments and randomly select from them. That way there is motivation to do a good job without making people feel like they aren’t good enough.

Take the time to learn from the contests others have done. If you find a past contest that is similar to what you are considering, email the person who sponsored it and ask how it went and if they have any advice. You can use Google Blog search to look for current contests to get ideas about what others are doing as well.

2. Choose a Captivating Prize.

Some prizes are cooler than what they cost you. For example, giving away an iPod Shuffle engraved with the name of your site ($79 USD) is probably worth more than giving away $79. Giving away a subscription to a related magazine is probably going to be seen as more valuable than the cash value of the subscription.

Giving away books related to your subject can be a great way to benefit readers and clear some space on your shelves. Don’t think you have to give away something new. Be creative and try to pick something that will attract the type of people who you want to enter your contest. Giving away tickets to a teen pop concert is probably not going to help you much on an antique silverware blog–unless you are somehow trying to market to that demographic.

If you can help it, don’t buy the prize until someone wins it. If you are going to give something away that you know you can get your hands on, don’t tie up your cash right away. If someone wins from a country where you can’t ship you may have to use an alternative or cash prize.

Try to come up with a benefit for everyone who enters. If you are targeting other bloggers and asking for a review of your site, consider giving everyone a link back from your page. This will send them some additional traffic and help them with their Page Rank. For someone who is trying to get traffic to their personal blog, this might be just what it takes to get them to go ahead and enter. You could also give away a free e-book or partner with a web-service to give away trial accounts.

3. Decide How Many Entries You Need.

If you are giving away a used book, it may not matter how many people enter. If you are giving away something big, you may want to specify how many entries are necessary before it triggers a winner. For example, lets say you are giving away a $700 NordicTrack ski machine on an exercise and health blog and your contest requires people to write a review. Think in terms of how many people need to enter for the contest to be worth while. If you decide that the reviews are worth $2 each, then you probably want to make sure you have at least 350 entries.

Make sure you can reasonably expect to get that many entries given what you know about your traffic and their demographics. If your blog gets 10 visitors per day, it is unlikely you’ll be able to get 1,000 entries in a month unless you get featured on another very high traffic site. If it seems unreasonable, consider a smaller prize as a starting point. Starting out with a few smaller test contests can help you gauge participation and help you learn what you need to know for a larger contest.

The first contest I ran was giving away a paperback book. The contest generated a total of 2 entries and one was my sister. This was fine and the winner (who wasn’t my sister) enjoyed their free book, but it taught me that prizes had to be aligned with the number of people entering.

The second contest I ran was for an iPod Shuffle, I specified that we needed to get 250 entries before we’d give it away. We had to extend the contest to meet the goal, but eventually we gave away the prize. Some people won’t like the idea of tying a contest to a certain number of entries, but for a small blog this may be the only way to offer attrActive prizes without going broke.

If you are putting up a serious amount of money (and for a small blog $50 may be pretty serious), you need to think in terms of your return on investment. If you don’t think you can offer an interesting prize on your own, consider teaming up with other bloggers to do a contest across several blogs with a bigger prize that you all chip in on.

If you don’t know what type of turn out to expect, you might consider a tiered prize structure based on the number of people who enter. Lets say you run a site about toenail clippers and you want to run a contest where people will blog a review (on their own site) of their favorite brand of clippers and link back to your page about the contest. You will randomly select a winner from the best 25% of the entries. Your prizes could be tied to the number of entries and look something like this:

• 25 Entries - Generic Toenail Clippers ($.97)
• 100 Entries - Luxury Toenail Clippers ($4.95)
• 1000 Entries - Gold Electroplated Toenail Clippers ($64.75)
• 5,000 Entries - Toenail Clippers used by John Howard ($400.00)
• 10,000 Entries - Gold Clippers with 1 Carat Diamond ($1,500)
• 100,000 Entries - Gold Clippers with 10 Carat Diamonds Used by Napoleon ($356,000)

This type of setup can help your site gain tremendous exposure, but you only have to pay for the expensive prize if you get a huge amount of entries. Just make sure you can actually obtain the prizes you have listed (Has the person who owns Napoleon’s toenail clippers agreed to sell them for $356,000?).

In 1996 Pepsi ran into trouble when they ran a television add jokingly offering a Harrier Fighter for 7,000,000 “Pepsi Points”. Someone figured out how to get 7 million Pepsi points and demanded their fighter jet. There was a lawsuit and eventually the court said that Pepsi didn’t have to give away a jet, but it was a nasty mess that you definitely don’t want to put your blog through. So be careful about making promises based on assumptions of a low turnout. If your contest really takes off it could go well beyond anything you could imagine.

4. When to Run a Contest.

The best time to run a contest is when you are getting the most traffic. Contests can help generate traffic, but you must have enough exposure to get things started. If your contest is very creative, you might get a lot of traffic just for being unique, but people have to discover your site before word can spread.

I would recommend having a contest ready to go and saved as a draft. That way you can run it if you ever get featured on Digg or another high profile site. If your contest is designed to convert one-time visitors into regular readers, this will help you retain some of the traffic. Also if you run a contest when you are getting 15,000 visitors in a single day, you are much more likely to get the necessary entries to make it worthwhile.

I had a post about academic lecture podcasts that was featured on Digg in November. I quickly put together a contest for people to subscribe to my feeds by email with a prize of an iPod Shuffle. I was a little late at getting the contest running, but I was able to eventually get 250 people signed up as part of that contest. Without the contest most of the visitors wouldn’t have come back, with the contest I was able to retain a higher percentage of them. After the contest was over, some unsubscribed, but a high percentage stayed on the list.

5. Write the Contest Post.

Make the post clear and fairly short. Spell out exactly what people have to do to enter and how the contest ends. For example, you might say that the contest ends in one month or when you get 100 entrants–which ever happens last. Give yourself a way out if no-one enters. For example, you can say that if they prize isn’t won in 2 months you reserve the right to modify the contest. This could be giving away a smaller prize, extending the time limit, making another way to enter, etc.

Make sure you specify what you’ll do if you can’t ship the prize to someone. Usually just offering to substitute a cash prize through PayPal is sufficient.

If you talk to a lawyer, they will probably give you 10 pages of legal stuff to put into the the contest post. I prefer to put something up that says “Hey we are doing this for fun and we reserve the right to change anything if we have to–but we really really want to give away this prize!” This gives you the ability to change things as you go, if you discover you’ve overlooked something important.

Once you get the post written, let it sit and come back and read it later to make sure you didn’t miss anything obvious. Better yet, let someone else read over it and see if they have any questions about it. Your response rate is going to be determined by this post, so keep it fun, easy to read, and to-the-point.

6. Communicate Communicate.

If possible send a personal email out to each person who enters your contest to thank them. This helps put a real person behind your site and helps you stand out from the hundreds of other blogs they visit. You can also take the opportunity to gently ask them to tell their friends about your contest. If the prize isn’t won until a certain number of entries have been reached, you can point out that the more people enter the sooner someone will win.

Occasionally add some info about the contest to your blog. Don’t lose focus on the topic of your blog, but you don’t want people to think you’ve forgotten about the contest. A simple post saying “We are halfway there!” can remind people about the contest and hopefully encourage them to spread the word.

7. Marketing your Contest.

Once your contest is live, you have to get the word out. If you started the contest to take advantage of a huge boost in traffic, this might not be a problem. If you are trying to drum up traffic from scratch you might have to do some work.

You should leverage your existing traffic to promote your contest. Putting a short header at the beginning of each post reminding people about the contest can help make sure no one misses it. You might also consider temporarily replacing some of your other ads with banners for your contest.

There are a number of contest sites on the internet. These can send you a bunch of traffic, but make sure that it is the type of traffic you want. Thousands of teenagers signing up for a contest on your blog about assisted living options may give you a spike on your traffic graph, but probably won’t help you in the long run.

Sending out a short note to your friends letting them know about the contest and asking them to refer their friends can be a valuable strategy. Advertising through AdWords might be successful in certain situations, but it has never worked well for me. If you are targeting college age student in a particular area, I have had moderate success with Facebook Flyers.

Think of the idea person for your contest and then think of where they hang out on the web. If you can get your contest featured there, you have the best chance of drawing them in.

In Summary

Contests can be a great way to help raise awareness of your blog, but you have to approach them with care and an eye on the end result. Usually you are limited more by your creativity than your budget, so if contests seem too expensive, you probably aren’t thinking along the right path. Good luck!

Read more of Mark’s work at Productivity501.

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Written on March 30th, 2007 at 04:03 am by Darren Rowse

How Many Blogs Should You Run?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 63 comments

Gabu_uy asks - What is in your opinion the best strategy, a few quality blogs, or a myriad of two nickels a day blogs?

This is a question that I think you’ll find people will argue both sides of and it is something that I’ve changed my views on backwards and forward over the last few years. Perhaps this one is best explored with a little of my own story and then a few random thoughts.

When I first started blogging with entrepreneurial aspirations I did so with one monetized blog - an extension of my first personal blog - Digital Photography Blog.

While I made a lot of stupid mistakes in the setting up of that blog and probably wouldn’t set it up to run as it currently does if I were starting over, it’s a blog that gave me a taste for the idea of making a living from blogging.

Multiple Blogs
I started experimenting with advertising on that blog with the hope of covering my hosting and ISP costs but quickly found that I could exceed that and perhaps even earn enough for a computer upgrade. I didn’t really have any aspirations for much more than that in the very early days - although I still remember laying in bed at the end of the day I first hit a daily total of $10 in AdSense earnings and excitedly having the realization that if one blog could earn $10 a day with AdSense that 10 blogs could earn $100 and 100 could earn $1000!

I made the decision on the spot to roll out new sites and continued to do so until I hit around the 25 mark.

It was at about this time that I realized that my strategy was somewhat flawed (for me) for a number of reasons:

• I couldn’t sustain the load - 25 blog is a killer to maintain, even if a lot of them are ‘newsy/link’ blogs.
• I couldn’t sustain my enthusiasm - while I had a mild interest in all of the topics I didn’t really have what it takes to summons the energy that it took to keep tabs on them all on a daily basis
• The traffic didn’t come - there are many reasons for this but ultimately I believe that the way to grow traffic to a blog is to have someone who has energy for the topic and the ability to write engaging and useful content - I couldn’t and the traffic didn’t come
• The money didn’t come - some of the blogs I started did earn more than $10 a day in the end - but the majority were lucky to make that much a month.
• The money came from elsewhere - while I developed all these extra blogs I was experimenting with other projects (like b5media) and putting time into blogs that I was more passionate about (like enternetusers and DPS). These were projects that I had energy for and that I put more and more time into developing. In contrast to the minutes that I put into my ‘mass blog strategy’ I put hours into these blogs and the payoff was that readers and money followed.

Now I do know people who make decent money by having many many websites that they develop and let earn their pennies a day but the majority of them are not bloggers. Instead they develop small sites with 10-20 pages that they drive traffic to using arbitrage techniques. Of course there are sploggers who maintain many spam blogs - but I don’t have time for or believe in that model at all.

I guess in a sense I’m also still in the ‘multiple blog’ business by starting a blog network - but there the strategy differs to what I tried above also in that we attempt to find passionate and knowledgeable people to maintain the blogs rather than stretching ourselves and having to cover multiple topics ourselves.

These days I only Actively maintain two blogs (plus I occasionally write on another one). I’ve retired quite a few of my old blogs and have found a blogger to maintain a couple of others.

If I were to start all over again today I’d do so by concentrating on building 1 blog at a time to a point where it hits the tipping point and can earn a decent income. I still would diversify with multiple sites - but would probably focus on making them all around the one vertical (ie related topics) rather than picking such a wide array of topics on unrelated niches.

How many blogs do you run? How many would be your limit? What factors would help you decide when you’ve reached your maximum?

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Written on March 29th, 2007 at 05:03 am by soccer jersey

5 Ways to Tap Hidden Money Making Opportunities With Your Blog

Blog Promotion 30 comments

This Guest Post was written by Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home.

Although Darren writes frequently on the ways to monetize a blog, it’s no secret that many of his tips work best on a product-focused site such as his Digital Photography Blog. This leaves many of us who write content-focused blogs scratching our heads sometimes, wondering how we can translate the monetary success of a product blog into our own content blogs.

The fact of the matter is, you can’t. Making money off of a non-product blog takes a completely different approach, and much of the earning potential of this kind of blog is created indirectly.

Darren goes into great detail on the indirect methods of making money from blogging in this rather timeless post. The points he covers include consulting, book deals, business partnerships and speaking opportunities among others.

These opportunities are open to pretty much any writer on the planet. But the way to really leverage them to your advantage takes good blogging skills as well as good old-fashioned business and people skills:

• The Ability to Sell - The most successful people in business are sales people - but I’m not talking about just selling products. Visionary leaders sell us on ideas, beliefs and indeed they sell us on ourselves, by influencing our thoughts and actions.
• Solid Networking Skills - Not many people get to the top alone. I’m fond of saying that groups of people function at the level of the ‘lowest common denominator’, meaning that many times we do the bare minimum that we can get away with. Make it a point to know successful people for the simple fact that it will force you to raise your own standards (the doors they can open aren’t bad, too!).
• The Law of Reciprocity - Add value. Give to get. Successful bloggers know they have something to offer, and ensure that their focus is on giving rather than getting. When you give a lot, the receiving part is a natural part of the cause-effect equation.
• Get Uncomfortable - Becoming well known is something that many people aspire to, but in actual practice, pushes us to the absolute limits of what we feel we are capable of. Andy Wibbels has said it far more succinctly than I could, “If I don’t feel like a fraud at least once a day then I am not reaching far enough.”
• Strong Branding - Developing your own unique voice is critical, because millions of blogs are a dime a dozen. No matter if your readers love you or love to hate you, it is most important that you develop yourself as a “brand” and build on that foundation congruently.
• Determination - Otherwise known as motivation, inspiration, etc. When it comes right down to it, finishing a big project can get downright boring at times. It’s easy to lose steam when results seem months or years away. Sometimes it takes a good old fashioned pep talk from a friend to stay on track until that book deal is within reach.

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Written on March 29th, 2007 at 01:03 am by Darren Rowse

5 ways to Increase your Blog Traffic

Blog Promotion 32 comments

This post has been submitted by Neil Patel. Neil is co-founder and CTO of ACS) and writes regularly on social media issues through the company’s blog, Pronet Advertising.

Traffic, traffic, traffic! We all want more traffic but sometimes it can be hard to sift through all the things you can do and figure out the best way to increase your traffic. For starters, here are five proven things you can do that will increase your traffic.

1. Hit the GYM

A great source of traffic is search engines, so why not leverage them to their fullest before worrying about anything else. Getting your website placed high within search results is determined by three main things: code, links, and content. Because you are a blogger, content isn’t the biggest problem however the other two might be. By following these simple steps, you can increase your rankings and increase your search traffic.

2. Don’t be shy

There is always something hot in the blogosphere, just keep an eye out for what’s hot and make sure to join in on the conversation. This can boost traffic and links almost immediately. Sites like Techmeme feed off of what’s hot in the blogosphere and are a great place to put on your watchlist for the latest hot topics. One great example of this is the 5 rules of social media optimization. This article was taken by a handful of other bloggers and ended up becoming the 16 rules of social media optimization. This did not only create tons of links for the original article, but it also created tons of links for all the other bloggers who added to it.

3. Create some buzz

Social media sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and Netscape are all great sources of traffic. If you can get on the homepage of any of these sites you will get thousands of visitors within minutes and potentially thousands of new regular readers. These sites are mainly driven by votes so make sure your readers can vote for you by placing social bookmark buttons within your posts in order to have the best chance of success. Keep in mind that you’ll need to write content that is actually appealing enough to be voted to the top, not just anything will be successful here. We’ve seen a lot of how-to guides, resources, and lists become popular quickly so these might not be bad categories to play around with first. Just try to add value with your content and you’ll have the best chance.

4.Don’t be a link Nazi!

By linking to others within your blog posts and showing some link love, other people will likely link back to you. The more generous you are the more generous others will be to you. When linking out give it some time and don’t expect the majority of the sites to link back to you. And most importantly make sure to only link out when it will benefit your readers. Sooner or later this tactic will increase the number of sites linking to you which can ultimately help drive traffic.

5. Be a drama queen

By being constructively and tastefully confrontational you can get tons of traffic. Even if you don’t have a popular blog, calling out certain companies or individuals who are tracking their buzz will certainly get you a little traffic boost.

Most of these items almost deserve a post on their own to explain why they work and what they are really doing however sometimes it helps to keep things simple. The overarching theme here is really about being as proActive as possible and putting some work into getting out there more. If you put more energy behind getting your voice out there, your traffic will respond.

Read more from Neil Patel at Pronet Advertising.

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Written on March 27th, 2007 at 08:03 pm by Darren Rowse

New York enternetusers Meetup - There are Prizes!

enternetusers Site News 26 comments

We’ve arrived in New York after a few great days at the Underground Seminar in Washington DC where I was privileged enough to speak and had a great time meeting some wonderful internet marketers (I learned a lot - but will talk about that when I get home in April).

enternetusers Meetup in New York Update - We have Prizes

Just a reminder that the enternetusers reader’s meetup/party is still happening this Thursday evening (26th) in New York.

I can’t wait to meet the many bloggers who tell me that they’re coming and want to offer just a little more incentive to come - prizes!

• Three random attendees to the meetup will win a copy of Six Figure Blogging on CD.
• Three random attendees will receive another ‘mystery blogging resource’ that I’m not able to talk about yet on this blog - but will mention on the night.
• A few attendees will also walk away with some b5media schwaag (if I can get it down from Toronto in time).

To be eligible - just bring along a business card (yours) or a piece of paper with your name and email address on it. I won’t be spamming you with it - but would love to let you know of an upcoming announcement that I have plus a future New York meetup that I’m hoping to run later in the year.

Lastly - ‘V’ (my wife) will almost certainly be coming along - so those of you curious about what a enternetusers’s wife might be like can have your curiosity satisfied.

Don’t forget the details:

THURSDAY, March 29, 6:30pm to 9:30pm at:
Connolly’s Pub and Restaurant
121 West 45th St (between 6th and Broadway)
(212) 597-5126 phone

TLA is sponsoring the event - drinks and food will be available for you to enjoy.

Please pass the word along and bring blogging friends for a fun night.

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Written on March 27th, 2007 at 01:03 am by Darren Rowse

What I’ve Learned about Blogging From Robert Scoble

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 19 comments

Today’s guest post is from Chris Garrett from chrisg.com.

In my last guest post here I listed some things we can learn from Darren’s blog. This time I am going to look at a blogger who many would like to emulate, if only for the fame, blog celebrity lifestyle and cool geek toys he gets access to. For todays post I am going to look at Robert Scoble. Now before I get slated for name-checking an “A-Listers A-Lister” let me explain why I find him interesting. Robert Scoble on the face of it does many inadvisable things, he …

• moved URL - a sure fire way of losing readers is to move domains
• lists his cell phone number - how many crank calls must he get?
• has a feed addiction - he reads way more feeds than any human being should consume (although I think I am catching up)
• publishes a link blog - we always say add value to be successful yet here is a famous blogger just posting links?
• is pro-Microsoft - enough on its own to get flamed in some areas
• name-drops - sometimes reading his posts is like looking at the cover of a celebrity magazine “so and so says” “I just met” “talking to” “over dinner with” …
• has a horrible design - design? What design? - his template is, well I wouldn’t say ugly … but … pretty basic. Surely he has access to a decent designer? I guess you can say it is clean. Could be worse.

So he is not perfect by any means. In fact as he said himself, he does many of the things that make people unsubscribe from your feed. He is doing something right though, he is an A-Lister after all. I don’t think anyone would dispute that. What can we learn from him?

• Active - be a hub and a connector. Robert seems to spend as much time having lunches with movers and shakers as he does blogging and speaking. Blogging is as much about relationships as it is writing. To succeed you have to have great content, of course, but it also helps to be well connected.
• Monitor the news - You might not want to handle the quantity of feeds that Robert does but keeping his finger on the pulse of the blogosphere certainly pays off dividends. He is always right there with the big stories.
• Scoop - As well as reporting on the news it also helps massively if you can create it or scoop it. While at Microsoft many people turned first to his blog for the latest scoops on what Microsoft was up to. Using his unparalleled access to top industry names he’s still on top of the news.
• Unique, interesting links - Link to great stuff that others haven’t noticed. One of the great things about Roberts link blog is that it doesn’t just replicate the popular Digg and del.icio.us stories - he has his own sources. If you are linking out to the same old stuff people won’t need your feed cluttering up their reader. Find fresh and exciting new stuff though and your readers will reward you.
• Nobody is perfect - Many bloggers try to project an image of perfection. Admit when you are wrong, there is no harm in it, in fact it could do you a world of good. I believe part of Roberts success in helping Microsoft repair their relationship with the public was Roberts willingness to admit when mistakes had been made, personally or by the company. This builds trust.
• Be transparent - Another trust building quality is a willingness to be transparent. If he could talk about something he would. Where a spin-doctor would have gone into overdrive his attitude was “What do you want to know, I will tell you what I can and what I don’t know I will find out”. You never felt he was hiding anything just to protect the company.
• Keep it real - You can tell Robert is human. He doesn’t tow the company line, speaks his mind, gets emotional and never resorts to weasel words. As the front man for Microsoft it would have been tempted to create just another PR mouthpiece but on many occasions he was as critical of the company as any other commentator. As an A-Lister he could throw his weight around and let it go to his head, a real turn-off. He writes with a human voice and that helps people warm to him. Some bloggers are so concerned with perfection their writing becomes robotic. Loosen up, write like you speak. Yes review and correct spellings and grammar but not to the extent where you choke all the warmth out of your writing.
• Little and often - Some days Scoble posts a lot. Darren has commented a couple of times about the dangers of misjudging posting frequency. Some readers are put off by too much content too fast. I believe why it works for Robert is, like Seth Godin, he posts little and often. Small bite sized 15-second posts work well.

I guess the main lessons to learn from Scobleizer are to network well, use those connections to stay on top of movements in your niche, and link to good stuff, first. For corporate bloggers especially, be as real and transparent as your company will allow and your customers and readers will appreciate it. Those lessons can be applied to any subject area. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from being the Scoble of your niche.

Read more from Chris Garret at his blog chrisg.com.

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Written on March 26th, 2007 at 12:03 am by Aaron Wall

What Does it Mean to Optimize a Blog Post?

Blog Promotion 7 comments

This post has been submitted by Aaron Wall - the author of the comprehensive Search Engine Optimization e-book SEO Book. He blogs at seobook.com

With so many people writing online today, just appealing to the robots is a surefire way to never gain market-share. Keyword research is important for creating targeted content, but focusing on things like keyword density leads to dense sounding content. And nobody wants to read that!

Even if your content exactly matches a search query, Google is not going to trust it much unless other people trust it first, which leads to a chicken vs egg scenario.

Until you get subscribers, build market attention, and people regularly link at your writing, then it is important to put people well ahead of search engines. When writing your headlines make sure they are clear and compelling, but place human emotional response ahead of trying to match as many keyword phrases as possible.

If you are new don’t be afraid to ask for help with marketing. Write comments on popular blogs, participate in discussion forums, buy AdSense ads on related blogs, interview someone who is popular or blog about them. Eventually people will notice. We are all selfish. We are each the most relevant thing in our lives.

Read more of Aaron’s work at his SEO Book Blog.

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Written on March 25th, 2007 at 09:03 am by Darren Rowse

Top RSS Feeds - a Top 40 List

RSS 12 comments

I’ve had a few people ask me lately if there was some kind of list of blogs with the biggest RSS subscriber lists with Feedburner counters. Today Stan sent me a Top 40 list that he’d compiled on the topic.

I’m not really one to go into these type of lists on some levels as I think there are plenty of blogs out there that are doing great things that will never get on them - however what I think is most useful about them is that they highlight a list of blogs that we all could learn a thing or two from in terms of building an RSS subscriber list.

Keep in mind some of the observations disclaimers that Stan makes in his post. For example the list only includes those using feedburner etc. It’s not something to take as ‘the’ list but perhaps is a useful observational tool for some analysis for those wanting to grow in this area.

For more on using RSS feeds effectively - check out my series - how to make your RSS feeds POP!

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Written on March 25th, 2007 at 01:03 am by Darren Rowse

How to Get Backlinks

Search Engine Optimization 41 comments

GuruMonetizer asks - can you describe how did you get backlinks for enternetusers over the time?

Thanks for the question GuruMonetizer. There’s no real secret to this one - I simply went about my business of blogging in a way that I felt would provide the most useful information and community for those exploring my topic - making money online via blogging.

Some of the things I’ve not done (or at least not done for quite a few years) include:

• link exchanges
• buying links (I’ve run a couple of small AdWords and BlogAds campaigns but no text links)
• begging for blogroll links

I think if someone did some analysis on the type of links that are pointing at enternetusers that they’d find that the majority of them are the result of someone commenting upon, disagreeing with or recommending something that I’ve written.

What type of posts have brought in the most incoming links?

I’d be guessing here - but I think there’d be a few:

• Scoops - breaking big news is probably the best way to get incoming links because the majority of bloggers who report on the news will also include a link to you as it’s source. Some blogs have perfected the scoop post to the point that they’ve really launched themselves into the A-list as a result of them.
• How To Posts - I always find that these posts generate a lot of incoming links. Once you help one person work out how to do something - they often like to keep a record of it for themselves but also to pass it on.
• Opinion Pieces - arguing a point strongly is great for getting people to comment and link up to your posts as you generally find that two camps rise up as a result - firstly those who agree with you and want to write about why - and secondly those who disagree with you and want to state their case.
• Group Projects - while I don’t force participants to link back to my blog I do ask them to consider it. Even if only 50% do this can result in a hundred or more backlinks per project.
• Humor Posts - one of the frustrating things of having a serious blog is that quite often the heavier and serious posts (that you put hours and hours into writing) get ignored and it can be the lighter and humorous ones that you post off the cuff without thinking about them that get all the attention.

These are the type of posts that seem to generate links here on enternetusers. On other blogs that I own there are similarities but I’ve found that each blog seems to have it’s own type of post that works best.

Lastly - Keep in mind that links are not everything. While they definitely help, concentrate on producing great content and keeping a holistic perspective and you’ll find the links will come in time.

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