Written on February 22nd, 2007 at 02:02 am by Darren Rowse

How to Add to Blogging Conversations… And Eliminate the Echo Chamber

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 48 comments

One of the criticism that is often leveled at the Blogosphere is that it is an echo chamber - that the same stories get blogged about in the same ways by blog after blog - without anything constructive or unique emerging.

While I think this is a somewhat cynical view, it doesn’t take long when digging around on sites like Technorati or Tech Meme to see that there is some element of truth to it.

Blogging as Conversation

One of the things I love about blogging is that it is (or can be) a conversational medium.

When blogging is at its best it creates threads of conversation - bloggers building upon the thoughts and ideas of other bloggers - where all engaging in the conversation learn something.

This conversational aspect of blogging is what hooked me on it in the first place.

The Lost Art of Conversation

Unfortunately I think the blogosphere (or some sections of it) might be losing the art of conversation.

We ‘talk’ a lot and do a lot of ‘reporting’ - but some days I wonder if we’re all just saying the same things to each other without anyone actually doing the hard work of adding value to to the conversation.

You see reporting news is one thing - but actually going to the next level with it and talking about what it means, how it impacts us and being constructive with it and making it useful I wonder if the echo chamber is increasingly a reality.

How to Add Value to Blog Conversations

I don’t want to be a part of a medium that simply ‘talks’ and ‘reports’. I want to be a part of a community that engages, grows and adds something of value to our world.

I want the blogosphere (myself included) to relearn the art of conversational blogging.

But how do we break the cycle of the echo chamber? How do we become more conversational with our blogging?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers with this and would be keen to hear your thoughts. However here are eleven ideas that come to mind when engaging with what you see other people writing:

1. what did they say well? - rather than just reporting what someone else has said - pick out something that they said especially well or that is the crux of the news.
2. what did they miss? - conversely, one way to add to a conversation is to find a gap in the conversation or a point that might have been missed. Blog from this angle and you add something of real value to readers.
3. answer questions - this one’s pretty obvious really - but if another blogger asks a question - why not answer it - it’s the perfect lead in to a post of your own that takes some of their ideas and extends them.
4. what are others saying? - who else is talking about this story? What are they saying? One useful type of post is the compilation post that pulls together lots of ideas on the one topic and attempts to make sense of them. Look for the patterns in what people are saying - look for the gaps in the collective arguments.
5. how does it apply to you? - take a news story and tell your readers how it applies to you personally. Hearing news as it impacts people can help others interpret what it might mean for them. Tell your story, share your experiences and bring it home on a personal level.
6. look forward - one interesting exercise to do when a story breaks is to ask yourself ‘where might this end up?’ Intstead of just reporting news - hypothesize and predict which might happen as a result of this news.
7. look backward - the past informs and shapes our present. Look back at similar stories or news and see how they played out. Can we learn something from these stories? How do they intersect with and inform our present?
8. extend ideas - I often get to the end of reading posts that others have written and want to add points. You can do this by leaving a comment - or by continuing the conversation on your own blog (with a link back). So turn the next ‘top 10′ article you read on someone else’s blog into a top 20 article on your own.
9. take the ‘opposite’ tack - I love doing this one with my own posts. For example why should you join a blog network and why shouldn’t you join a blog network. You can do the same sort of things with others posts - not just when you disagree with them, but to expand the topic out.
10. ask what if? - one of the best ways of coming up with creative and useful ideas is to take an existing idea and asking ‘what if…’ about it. Sometimes the what if questions will see out of ‘left field’ - but ‘left field’ is where geniuses often live!
11. play devil’s advocate - you might not disagree with what another blogger has written - but taking the opposing argument to see where it leads can be an illuminating journey. For example - I’ve asked readers a couple of times to answer the question ‘What’s wrong with blogging?‘ - the results were illuminating and I know that a number of new blog tools were written to overcome some of the submitted problems with blogging.

It’s About Time and Attitude

I want to finish with two thoughts, both of which come from the art of having real life conversations.

1. It takes time to Have a Conversation - having a conversation means not only having the ability to say something and expressing an opinion (something most bloggers are pretty good at) but also having the ability to listen to…. no HEAR the other. Hearing another person goes beyond to listening to their words - but hearing their intent and making sure you understand what they are saying. This takes time.

I suspect most of us as bloggers don’t really put enough time into our blogging. We want to get posts up quickly - we want to report the news and be first with it - but we rarely stop and hear what is going on behind the story and hear what others are saying about it.

As a result our posts often come out rush, light on, with mistakes, missing the point and full of false assumptions.

2. Conversations are not Competitions - the best conversations result in both parties coming away from them better people. They are about two people treating each other as equals - wanting to share what they know but learn and be impacted by the other.

True conversations are not about one proving that they are better or know more about something than the other.

Perhaps this is where some blogging interactions fall a part.

Bloggers have always had their egos - but one of the things I first loved about blogging was the way that there was a ‘vibe’ of generosity, giving, sharing and community. At times I still see this as a feature of the blogosphere - but on other occasions I see competitiveness rising it’s head.

We quite often talk as bloggers about ideas like ‘open source’, ‘collaboration’ and everyone having a voice - but when it comes to the crunch we often do what’s in our own best interests at the expense of others.

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Written on February 21st, 2007 at 02:02 pm by Darren Rowse

iReader Preview Tool

Blogging Tools and Services 15 comments

Richard has a nice preview of a tool that some of you will find useful - iReader.

This tool is a little like Snap (which I tried for less than 24 hours here on enternetusers - but took down after many complaints) but instead of showing you a tiny screen capture of where a link on a website leads - iReader lets you preview it’s content in text and as a little list (and don’t we love a good list).

Here’s what it did when I hovered over one of my recent posts (not the most intuitive of selections from the post - but it’d give readers a sense of what it was about):

The difference with iReader and Snap is that iReader is a browser extension - so it’s something that readers determine whether they’ll use - whereas Snap is something you as the website owner install.

As a blogger I can see the usefulness of this type of tool. I’m constantly surfing and to be able to get a quick sense of what a link might offer me could be useful. I wouldn’t use it 24/7 while surfing - but when in research mode it could be useful to have activated.

Performance wise - it runs a little too slow for my liking - in the time that it takes for the popup to appear i could click through and almost load the site - but as Richard says, iReader is in beta and can only improve.

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Written on February 21st, 2007 at 05:02 am by Darren Rowse

Speedlinking - 21 February 2007

Pro Blogging News 12 comments

There are lots of good posting being written in the blogging space at the moment - here’s 10 that caught my eye over the last couple of days.

• Philip Liu writes a piece with 17 factors that he’d consider when determining the value of a blog in his post How Much Are Blogs Worth And Indicia Of Value In Blogs For Sale
• Daily Blog Tips talks about the importance of having emergency posts ready to go for those busy days you might have that interrupt your posting schedule
• Lorelle asks Should Blogs Have Forums? Should Forums Have Blogs? - I think they can work well together - but start one at a time once you’ve got some traffic on one or the other before starting the next one.
• Duncan’s post at 901 on becoming a professional blogger was never harder than today saves me a post that I’d half written on the same topic responding to David’s post on the ease of ProBlogging. I was only saying to a fellow blogger yesterday that I wish I knew how lucky I had it a few years back when I started. While there are still opportunities for people to take blogging a long way - it’s a lot more crowded space than it once was!
• Creating Passionate Users has a good post with the real secret to a successful blog/book/business.
• Aaron posts a simple technique for using RSS to enhance your blog’s SEO and attract traffic from other relevant bloggers
• Solo Technology has released their second version of a plugin for adding related posts to your RSS feed - via John TP
• I stumbled upon a MyBlogLog like service called Whooiz today - it’s a People, podcast and Blog Discovery Service.
• Kumiko writes a post that made me smile (but also had some good principles in it) - 6 Lessons Britney Spears Can Teach You about Blogging
• Fried Beef’s Tech writes a post asking a useful question - How do You Measure Blog Influence?

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Written on February 21st, 2007 at 01:02 am by Darren Rowse

How to Run a Blog Competition to Find New Readers and Make Your Blog Sticky

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 25 comments

One technique that an increasing number of bloggers have been using over the last year to create a buzz on their blogs is to use competitions.

In this post I’ll share 9 tips for running a successful competition on your blog - but first why would you want to run one?

Two benefits of Running Competitions on Your Blog

1. New Readers - competitions are potentially good for drawing new readers to your blog if you have a way to get the message out.
2. Reader Stickiness - those readers who are already regulars on your blog can become more loyal, more engaged and/or feel more ownership over your blog after a competition.

My own experience with competitions is that both can be achieved - if you design your competition properly. I’ve been running one over at DPS that attempts to get new members of my forum and to get readers submitting reviews (content) to the forums.

It’s been going OK - but I’ve learnt a few things in doing it that I’ll do differently next time.

Here are 9 tips that come to mind on running a good competition (looking forward to reading your suggestions too):

1. The need for traffic

Sometimes when launching a project that requires readers to DO something you need to have a critical mass of readers before launching. This includes competitions.

I’ve seen a number of competitions in the last 6 months that were launched with the hope of propelling brand new blogs into popularity but which failed to succeed because the competition had no traction because either no one knew it was on or the percentage of those that did were not motivated enough to participate.

This doesn’t mean you need to have an old blog with lots of traffic to have a good competition however. If this is you you’ll need to find someone else’s traffic to leverage to draw people in either by calling in favors from other bloggers, doing something to get attention (a big prize for example) or some other link-baiting type technique.

2. Identify Goals

Before you design your competition you need to work out why you’re having it. What is your aim? How will you measure the competition’s success? Potential goals for a competition might include:

• Increase RSS subscribers
• Increase Newsletter subscribers
• New members for blog/forums
• Increase feeling of community among current readers
• To reward loyal readers
• To create new content (use generated)

Once you have your goals you can then make better decisions around the competition format, prizes, promotion etc

3. Choosing Prizes

A number of thoughts come to mind when choosing prizes for a competition.

• relevant prizes - match the prizes that you offer to the readers (or potential readers) of your blog. If you have a blog about gaming which is read mainly by people in the US don’t offer a cooking lessons in Australia as a prize (ok, crazy example - but you get the point).
• worthwhile prizes - the better your prizes the more buzz you will potentially create.
• don’t over capitalize - which big prizes are great - don’t make them too big without knowing what sort of response you might get. I’ve seen a few competitions that have failed leave bloggers and their sponsors heavily out of pocket when you consider the small response they had.
• sponsors - one way to share the load with a competition is to have a sponsor/s for it. If you have a decent sized readership you might be able to find a sponsor simply by asking for one - otherwise you’ll need to hunt. The best place to find one is to find a company that closely relates to your blog’s topic. To get sponsors you need to be up front and transparent about what they’ll get out of it and how you’ll promote them.
• affiliate links - another way to help cover the cost for prizes if you have to pay for them is to buy them yourself is to choose prizes that you can promote using an affiliate program. So on the DPS competition that I’m currently running the prizes are books at Amazon. Last time I ran a similar competition I offset the cost of prizes quite a bit with those checking out and buying books.

4. Make Requirements Achievable for Participants

One of the lessons I’ve learned over the past few years is that people can be lazy and unless you have a good way of motivating them you need to make what you ask them to do to be in the running to win your competition achievable. If you do you’ll have a much higher ‘entry’ rate than if you ask too much of your readers.

I saw one competition on a blog a few years back that asked participants to write an 2000 word essay, provide a head shot of the author, link back to the site running the competition, join a newsletter list and all for the chance to win a $20 book.

If you want participants to do something to enter - choose one thing, make it simple, natural and easy and you’ll find the take up to be much better.

5. Make Requirements Achievable for You

Don’t under estimate how much work a competition can be for you as the coordinator. When you get a lot of entries that require you to sift through them all, moderate them, judge them etc it can take a lot of time.

If there’s any way for you to automate processes or find others to help you with the logistics - think about this before you start.

6. Make Entering Valuable

To really get readers excited about entering the best competitions ask them to do something that they’d do whether there was a prize up for grabs or not. My ‘group writing projects’ (examples here and here) are an example of this in that participants get a few things out of participating whether they win or not (ie they get links from enternetusers to their blogs (and quite often from other blogs), they get to find new readers and they get a little motivation to write something that they might not have thought to write). In fact the first few times I ran these projects there were no prizes but people still participated. Adding prizes to an already valuable thing can clinch the deal.

7. Set a Reasonable Competition Length

Getting the length of a competition right is important. On one hand you don’t want it to drag on for too long (and make your readers sick of it) but on the other hand you want it to be long enough for readers to enter, for the word to spread about it and for sponsors to get their money’s worth.

8. Promote your competition

Unless you promote it - no one will know your competition is on.

Start your promotional efforts with your own readers via your blog and any newsletter list you might have. You might also find it useful to design a button that promotes it in your sidebar or below each post. Write about the competition a number of times over it’s course - without going overboard and making your regular readers sick of it.

Also consider how you could promote your competition to readers from elsewhere. This might include pitching other bloggers, mentioning it in forums, releasing a press release and even advertising it using systems like AdWords or BlogAds.

9. Consider adding a Viral Element

The best competitions let those participating spread the word in some way. This can be difficult to achieve but again the ‘group writing projects’ here at enternetusers have an element of this in that most participants include a link back to the competition in their entries - which lets their readers know what is going on.

I’ve run a few competitions over the last few years - but am still learning how they run best. Any other tips that readers have from the experience of running (or entering) blog competitions would be gratefully received.

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Written on February 20th, 2007 at 03:02 pm by Darren Rowse

MyBlogLog Release Anti-Spam Plan

Blogging Tools and Services 13 comments

Eric from MyBlogLog has written a post on their blog explaining some of the problems that they’ve been facing on the spam front over the last little while and outlining some of the things that they’ve done (and are going to do) about it. I won’t rehash it all here -but for the fill post head over to The MyBlogLog Blog: Weekend spamtacular — what the heck happened and how we’re fixing it.

I’m particularly happy about #3:

3) We will include the text of the comment and associated controls (delete,reply, etc) in the alert email. You won’t have to go to MyBlogLog to manage comments on your profile or community page any more.

That’s something I suggested (I’m sure others did too) and it’ll save me considerable time.

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Written on February 20th, 2007 at 08:02 am by Darren Rowse

Are.com and.net domains best?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 81 comments

Today I got a reader question that I thought might make an interesting discussion topic.

I am starting a new blog, and the hardest part so far has been naming it. The domain I like is only available in the.ca format. What is your opinion on using anything other than a.com or a.net? and do you think it will affect blog brand-ability?

I know there are different schools of thought on this question so it should make for an interesting discussion. I won’t sidetrack the discussion with my own opinion at this point but would like to open the floor for some reader comment. What do you think?

• Are.com and.net best?
• When is it OK to not go with them?
• What factors do you consider when picking a domain name?
• What’s more important - SEO or branding - for you?

update: With permission I can now say that this question came from Michael.

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Written on February 20th, 2007 at 03:02 am by Darren Rowse

MyBlogLog - Is it Adding Value?

Blogging Tools and Services 68 comments

enternetusers’s MyBlogLog community has continued to grow in number over the last couple of weeks since I added it to my sidebar however the last few days have given me numerous reasons to wonder if I continue with it.

Community Message Spam - I am increasingly spending time deleting spammy comments left on the community from members. While I’m not overly concerned by the ‘check out my community/site/blog’ comments (although leaving a comment like that’s not really incentive for anyone to check out your community/site/blog in my experience) over the last few days I’ve had an increasing amount of ‘harder edged’ spam on my community - particularly linking to porn and drug sites.

The result is that I’m spending more and more time each day removing spam (something I have enough of with my email and blog comment spam).

I’ve suggested to MBL that they give community owners a higher level of moderation. Perhaps one way would be to not only send an email every time a comment is left with a link to the comment - but to include what the comment is as well as a link within the email to delete it (similarly to how WordPress does with comments).

Author Spam - Last night I received numerous invitations from other communities to join them as an author - despite the fact that I’ve never heard of the blogs (let alone the fact that I’ve not written on them). The communities in question listed hundreds of authors. Today a number of other bloggers posted that they’d been added as authors on blogs that they didn’t write on including ShoeMoney, John Chow, Danny Sullivan and Web Metrics Guru. Reading the comments on these blogs shows that many others were spammed this way also. (The Jason Calacanis community also looks like a victim of this as he seems to have been made an ‘author’ of an SEO community).

Reliability - I’ve had a few problems with deleting spammy comments this week. Sometimes it takes hitting ‘delete’ 3-4 times before they actually are deleted.

I guess I’m also still a little confused about what MyBlogLog offers bloggers (as I was last time I wrote about MyBlogLog). While there’s definitely potential there (they do seem to have a large number of enthusiastic users) I’m worried that in it’s current form their communities could actually hurt the reputation of the blogs that they form around.

I’ve already had complaints from a number of readers about the nature of some pictures appearing in the widgets and some of the content in comments left on the community pages. Unless there is added levels of moderation, tighter controls over authorship and some sort of features that adds to community around a blog I’m not sure it’s something I’ll continue much further with.

I’d love to see MyBlogLog go to the next level and become a useful tool to bloggers and blog readers - but adding any feature to a blog has the potential to add to and strengthen that blog’s brand and message - or take from it. When it takes from it there comes a time to take action.

update: The team at MyBlogLog have fixed the co-author spam problem. Well done MBL!

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Written on February 20th, 2007 at 01:02 am by Darren Rowse

10 Mistakes that Will KILL a Forum…. or Blog

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 33 comments

I love learning things from people in other arenas and applying them to blogging so today when I saw SEOrefugee has a post titled 10 Mistakes that Will KILL a Forum I immediately wondered whether the 10 mistakes might also apply to blogging. Lets see:

1. Excessive Ads

I’d completely agree. While different blogs can get away with different levels of advertising (and I’d argue affiliate programs) there comes a point where the number of ads on a site can turn readers away. I would also argue that ads that are aggressively positioned on a blog can turn readers away also. If when a reader arrives on your blog and no content at all is visible you might want to consider the possibility that readers will leave frustrated.

2. Cliques

I think that a cliquey blog can be just an uninviting a place as a cliquey forum and that it can happen on two levels. Firstly the blogger themselves can be very cliquey in only linking out to a certain few other privileged bloggers (something A-list bloggers - whatever they are - are often accused of). Secondly the comments sections of blogs can be a cliquey place also with those commenting using in jokes, jargon and/or being snarky to new readers. While some successful blogs get away with cliquey behavior (and a few actually seem to thrive on it) the average blog trying to find it’s feet can suffer a lot as a result of it.

3. Trolls

This one applies with blogs and it’s something that I’ve seen frustrate a number of bloggers to the point where they’ve actually thrown in the towel and have given up blogging. Likewise trolls can frustrate readers and cause a lot of flaming between a blog’s community to the point where they almost take over.

4. Fights

Once again this can apply on a blog on two levels (both fights between bloggers and fights in comments). While an occasional fight (or vigorous discussion) can actually add life to a blog (if it’s done in a constructive and non personal way) - taken too far they can completely destroy a blogger’s (and blog’s) reputation. I’ve seen a number of bloggers go too far and/or pick the wrong fight - only to find that they become known as the blogger who said or did something stupid.

5. Heavy Handed Moderating

This one does vary a little from blog to blog. Some bloggers obviously moderate comments more heavily than others (for example blogs like Seth Godin’s doesn’t have comments, others like Lifehacker have comments for registered members only, others queue all comments for moderation and some are quite selective on what comments they allow to appear). Each approach can work but bloggers get into trouble mainly when they change the rules along the way. If you want to moderate comments heavily I personally believe it’s your right to do so although my own belief and style is that blogs tend to work best when the reading community are able to participate in the conversation unhindered.

6. Lack of Moderation

I’ve seen a few bloggers become almost laughing stocks because of the level of comment spam that they allowed to go up on their blogs. If you’re not going to put the time into moderating comments switch them off.

7. Don’t over post

Once again there is some room to move on this one. Some blogs do tend to get away with a lot of posts each day (some of the tech blogs for example post 20+ times a day) however every blog seems to have a posting frequency that seems to be optimal for it’s topic and readership. I’ve written more on post frequency previously (also at the cost of high quantities of posts, how often should a blogger post? and more on posting schedules).

8. Violating Privacy

This isn’t one that I’ve really seen any bloggers do - but if they did (perhaps with comment leavers email addresses?) I can see it would have a negative impact upon that blogger’s reputation.

9. Slow Site

The same thing is true to some extent (perhaps slightly less critical than with forums where users view multiple pages per session). A slow loading blog will often frustrate readers to the point that they’ll surf off to some other site before it fully loads).

10. Actually… there is no #10 - Oh wait! Over promising and under delivering

I totally agree. While I’ve had my fair share of falling short of goals online (it’s the way we learn) I see some bloggers who are repeat offenders in hype/spin and making undelivered promises and all this really achieves in my view is dilute their message and make me more and more wary of anything they claim or promise in future. While you might have grand goals for your blog - setting (and communicating) realistic achievable goals is important. No one will complain if you over achieve - but in the blogosphere people can be ruthless is you under perform.

I’ve written on this topic a few times in different ways. For example my post 10 steps to guarantee you’ll never make more than 0.14 cents per month with AdSense contains a few blog killers - but what mistakes would you add that you see bloggers making (or mistakes you’ve made) that could kill a blog?

PS: don’t forget that while mistakes might kill your blog - they can actually be learning experiences that help you improve it!

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Written on February 19th, 2007 at 08:02 pm by Darren Rowse

SOBCon 07 - 12 May

Pro Blogging News 9 comments

Two days ago I had a nice little surprise when I opened my inbox. I got a sneak peak at a blogging conference that is running for the first time later this year. Interestingly enough its being run by and featuring a group of bloggers that I know well and respect (although they’re all obviously good at keeping secrets).

The conference is SOBCon 07 and it is on in Chicago on 12 May (with a cocktail party the night before). The cost is $350 USD if you book before April 1.

The conference schedule and speaker list looks like a lot of fun - I just wish I were in the area in May.

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Written on February 19th, 2007 at 12:02 pm by Darren Rowse

Monetize Your Blog through Text Messages - TextMarks

Other Income Streams, Blogging Tools and Services 25 comments

An interesting new monetization strategy for bloggers is emerging today - letting readers subscribe to your blog via Text Messages.

TextMarks has launched this new service which allows bloggers to either charge $4.99 or $9.99 per month to their readers to get these instantaneous alerts.

It’s currently only available to US cell phone users on Cingular, Verizon, Sprint or Alltel.

I’m not sure it’d work for the majority of blogs as an income stream - but for those who break news that people must know - then it could be a worthwhile monetization stream to look into.

How much do bloggers make from TextMarks subscriptions? From reading the Terms of Use it seems that publishers only make 30% of the subscription (while I know they’d have costs and the carriers take their cut it seems a little low for my liking - as a content provider I’d be hoping to make as much out of it as the carriers themselves (who can make as much as 50% by the looks of things).

Some questions for readers:

• Would you pay for this type of service?
• What type of blogs/sites would you pay for this type of service on?
• Do you think your readers would pay for it?

Via TechCrunch

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