Written on April 26th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:04 am by Darren Rowse
FeedBurner Ad Network Add Automated Advertiser Signup
FeedBurner have just announced a new automated feature for advertisers to sign up to their Ad Network. Instead of having to go through a manual process you can now do it in a much more streamlined fashion. The process is to:
- Select a channel that matches your target
- Create an ad
- Set a budget
- Create an account
- The ad is then approved by both FeedBurner and the Publishers
- The ad is run in the feeds of those publishers selected
This means that if you want to see your ads in enternetusers’s feed (and what advertiser wouldn’t!) you can do so by selecting to have your ads in the ‘Computing and Technology’ channel.
The only wish-list I have with FeedBurner’s Ad Network is that they have an automatic way for advertisers to target specific blogs. Hopefully this will be in a future roll out as some of the channels are fairly broad.
Written on April 26th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 08:04 am by Darren Rowse
BBC Continues to Explore New Media
The Guardian reports that the BBC is redeveloping their online presence to be much more new media focused:
‘The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com.’
Written on April 26th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse
Blog Credibility and Blog Design
This post is part of a series of posts on building blog credibility
I know that there is a variety of opinions on the value of blog design within enternetusers’s readership so this might generate some interesting discussion but in my opinion blog design does matter. It is not the only or even best way to establish credibility as a blogger but it can definitely help.
First impressions count and in a world where there are millions of people pitching themselves on virtually any topic you can think of you need to seriously consider how you’ll stand out from the crowd and present yourself in a way that will draw readers into your blog.
Experience, Expertise, Longevity (and every other principle that I’ll talk about in this series) are great at building credibility once a reader makes a decision to actually explore your blog but there are a few crucial seconds that happen before this decision is made and blog design can play a big part and communicate a lot.
Ask yourself:
- What does my blog communicate about me?
- Do the messages I’m trying to convey get lost in the clutter or are they just not there at all?
- Can people tell within a second or two what my blog is about at a first glance?
- Does my design fit with the message that I want to convey?
I am not saying that every blog needs a professional design or that we should all spend loads of money and/or time getting our blogs looking right (in fact some bloggers get terribly distracted from the core business of writing quality content by constantly ‘tweaking’ their design) - all I’m arguing is that whether you like it or not people are making judgments about you and your blog every day based on many levels simply based upon how it looks.
Written on April 25th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 04:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Rambling Blogging
Aaron Wall writes a good post titled Rambling too Much = Bad Blogging.
I agree that rambling isn’t good blogging practice, but I wouldn’t say that all long posts are. To me it comes down to weighing up the individual factors that a blogger and their blog face and finding your own ideal post length.
Aaron sums his post up with this good (and concise) statement:
“If you are going to be longwinded make sure it is so focused, topically relevant and interesting that it becomes the industry standard for that topic. Elsewise you are best off writing quick posts.”
Written on April 25th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:04 am by Darren Rowse
BlogExplosion sells for Six Figures
BlogExplosion have announced that they’ve been sold for in excess of $100,000. Congratulations to them and to Jeremy for brokering the sale.
Written on April 25th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 09:04 am by Darren Rowse
ANZAC
Just a quick note to let readers know that today’s a public holiday here in Australia - it’s ANZAC day (the day we remember lives given in Active service). We’ll be remembering it by going to the ANZAC day Australian Rules Football match at the ‘G’.
Written on April 25th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 09:04 am by Darren Rowse
Expertise builds Blog Credibility
This post is part of a series of posts on building blog credibility
Does the blogger actually know what they are talking about?
Some might argue that ‘expertise’ is a little close to ‘experience’ but I see it differently. As I wrote in the last post, I often write in the voice of a ‘fellow traveler’ sharing my experiences but another strategy for building credibility is to write in the voice of ‘the expert’.
I guess to use the analogy of traveling again the expert is the tour guide.
On my firs trip to Europe (mainly in Spain and Portugal but also through Morocco for a week) we had the most amazing guide for two weeks. The amount of knowledge that she had in her head about the countries that we were passing through was staggering. She could (and did) talk for hour after hour about some of the most interesting facts, stories, rumors and histories of places. She’d spent years studying the region and brought the trip alive in a way that fellow travelers could never have done alone.
When she spoke we listened because we knew she was about to tell us something that mattered.
A blogger who is not only experienced in their niche but who is able to speak about it with authority and expertise is another step closer to being seen as a credible blogger.
Take Home Advice - not every blogger can pull the ‘expert’ thing off and I wouldn’t recommend trying unless you do feel you have some mastery over a topic. As I wrote in the previous post, don’t try to pull the wool over your readers eyes if you don’t know something or you might just find yourself exposed as a fraud (and bloggers love to expose a fraud).
IF you have some expertise in an area to share by all means share it. Don’t be shy about it, tell your readers what you know.
Especially effective are posts that not only tell people what you know but also that tell them how to apply it. It’s all very well to be taught a theory but to be taught how to apply it to your life is something that people will value and respect you for.
Lastly - experience and expertise need not be mutually exclusive things. Our tour guide had actually lived for many years in the regions through which we travelled. She not only told us about the region’s history from what she’d studied but from time to time told us about her life there. This blend of real life experience and expertise was a wonderful thing to be exposed to.
Written on April 25th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse
Experience builds Blog Credibility
This post is part of a series of posts on building blog credibility
Tangent Time - If you’ve ever done any traveling you’ll know that it’s often the advice of others that you bump into on the road that give you the best advice on what to see or what to do.
While tour guides know their stuff and bring expertise to your trip it’s the fellow traveler who has eaten at the restaurants, slept in the hotel beds, bargained for the souvenirs and who has seen the new culture from an outsider’s perspective (like you) - as a result of their experiences you learn where to go and what to see in a way a tour guide might never be able to share with you.
Fellow travelers who’ve experienced where you want to go make credible advisers.
Experience adds to blogger credibility
One of the factors that led to enternetusers growing faster than some of my other blogs in the last 18 months is that I think I’ve proven to be someone who has experience in the field of blogging for money.
I am definitely not the biggest earner of an income from blogging (I’ve discovered a few other very private bloggers in the last year who leave me for dead in earnings) but the fact that I earn a full time income from blogging (and am willing to talk about how) means others are willing to listen and take on board what I have to say.
This is the case in my other more successful blogs also. For example in my digital camera blogs I have some great interactions with readers particularly as a result of my email newsletter in which I will talk about my own experiences with cameras and will give tips on how to use them. In this blog I rarely write in the voice of the ‘expert’ but rather write as a normal guy (a fellow traveler) writing on a topic that he loves - sharing what I know as I discover it. The result is a growing group of loyal readers.
Take Home Advice
The crux of the lesson here is to simply talk about your experience in your blog. It’s not rocket science but it does work. When you are willing to share what you know as a fellow traveler it’s amazing to see how others will gather around you. You don’t need to do it in a boastful or arrogant way, but you will need to talk about it to some degree.
‘But what about if you’re not experienced in the area you’re writing about’ you ask? My response is twofold:
1. Get some experience - if you’re a blogger writing on a topic and want to build credibility in it you better be willing to get some experience in that topic. If you’re not your blog will always be somewhat empty. Get out there and live what you’re writing about.
2. Talk about the experiences you DO have - you don’t have to be an expert on a topic to write about it (although it does help to have expertise too which I’ll talk about in the next post). Even beginners sharing their experiences can be an interesting read and a credible source of information. The key if you are in this situation is to be honest about what you do and don’t know - credibility comes when your readers see your honesty and willingness to admit what you don’t yet know.
Tomorrow I’ll continue this series by talking about Expertise.
Written on April 24th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 01:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Two Styles of Blogging
Over at Kottke.org Jason (and his guest blogger Greg Knauss) reflected last week on the two types of bloggers (found via LexBlog):
- Referential - ‘uses the link (sometimes referred to as ‘link blogging’) as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere’
- Experiential - ‘inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion’
It’s a useful distinction to make - I’m sure there are other variations or ways of classifying bloggers but most blog posts fall into one of these two camps. I say ‘blog posts’ because in my experience many bloggers use a combination of these two techniques and I’d be a little hesitant to label these bloggers as one or the other.
My own blogging style covers the full spectrum.
Referential - I have some blogs which are almost completely referential, to the point that they are used by their readers as archives and hubs of information collected from around the web. These blogs are sometimes critiqued as bordering on spammish - it’s a criticism that I’ve listened to and grappled with but one that I’ve also balanced with comments from readers who say that those blogs are useful to them as they cut down the amount of time that they need to put into researching the topics.
Experiential - On the other hand I have blogs that are purely experiential. In fact I started one last week that is an experiment in how a blog will go with no referential posting at all. In fact I’ve taken it to an extreme and am breaking a lot of my own blogging rules (some would say it’s not even technically a blog because it doesn’t have comments and doesn’t have outbound links) to see what will happen. I’ll talk more about what I’m learning from it in a week or so.
Refperential (or should that be exferential) - The majority of the blogs that I run are some somewhere on the spectrum between purely referential and experiential blogs. enternetusers is a prime example of this - my aim is to write something that is experiential every day (or every second day at the least) and at the same time I post ‘newsy’ type posts daily also which are largely referential. I’m sure that there are readers who would want more of one or the other but I find that the combination works.
Both styles of blogging have their own strengths and weaknesses. Referential blogging is a little less high maintenance (although if you don’t know where to find good stories it can be difficult) whereas in most cases Experiential blogging takes more time (unless you’re writing short original pieces). Experiential blogging can attract a lot of attention and incoming links (if done well) whereas unless you’re high on the food chain referential blogging doesn’t really bring in the links.
My advice to new bloggers trying to find their voice as a blogger is to consider a number of factors including:
• Personal Style - each of us have our own personalities and preferences when it comes to writing. While I would argue it’s important to stretch yourself from time to time it’s more important to find your style and work from that place. If you prefer one above the other then go with that predominantly.
• Topic - some topics lend themselves very well to referential blogging whilst others do not.
• Competition - take a look at what other blogs and websites in your niche are doing. If everyone is writing in a referential style there might be a gap there which you could attempt to fill.
• Audience - sometimes your blog’s audience will make it abundantly clear what type of posting they want. I have one blog where I constantly get requests for posts in the opposite style to what I write predominantly on that blog. As a result I’ve attempted to readdress the balance.
The key for bloggers is to experiment and find their own balance after considering these factors. Over time you might need to tweak your approach but as you find your own way you’ll then be able to develop a workflow and rhythm to suit it.
What style of blogging do you predominantly use?
Written on April 24th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Longevity in Blogging
This post is part of a series of posts on blog credibility
Tangent Time - I used to go out with a girl who lived in a small rural town a few hours outside of Melbourne (a long time ago). We spent a fair bit of time in this town but it soon became evident to me that I was seen by the residents of that place as an ‘outsider’. People were not rude to me but it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t considered a ‘local’ (even though I spent a lot of time there over three years).
I asked my girlfriend’s mum about this after a year or so and she told me that there was an unspoken rule in the town that you had to live there for 10 to 15 years before you’d become a ‘local’. In the mean time you had to prove yourself by living there and participating in the community.
Becoming a local (or being seen as a credible and accepted part of the town) was not something you could achieve over night.
Longevity in Blogging
While 10 to 15 years might be a little over the top there is a similar thing at play in the blogging community and longevity of blogging seems to be one factor (remember this is a series of many) that impacts the credibility a blogger can have within their niche.
Are you committed to blogging on your topic for the long haul?
Blogs get started every day (or every second according to Technorati) but a large proportion of them don’t last longer than a month or two. I suspect that this has led to blog readers becoming a little suspicious about whether bloggers are in it for the long haul.
I know that when I discover a blog that I’ve not seen before that is writing good content that I always look back into it’s archives to see how long they’ve been going. This isn’t because I believe new blogs have little to offer (they definitely do have a lot to offer), but because sustained quality blogging on a topic isn’t easy to do and to me it is one signal that the blogger is in it for the long haul and might be someone that I want to invest some time into reading.
I’m not sure that other blog readers dig into archives in this way but I do know that a lot of blog readers that I talk to get very frustrated with some bloggers who constantly chop and change from blog to blog, never sticking at a project.
Longevity and Search Engine Credibility
The other factor with long term blogging is that it builds credibility in the eyes of the search engines also. There’s a lot of theories about Google and it’s ‘Sandbox’ process but one thing that most experts agree on is that it takes time to gain ranking in Google (and the other SE’s) and that sites with a long history (and that are registered for a longer time into the future) are at an advantage. Once again this is not the only (or most important) factor, but it comes into play.
Take Home Advice For New Bloggers
This might be a little depressing for new bloggers who can’ t just summons up ‘longevity’ - but my take home advice for you if you’re a new bloggers is to hang in there with your blog over the long term. Successful blogs don’t just happen - make a commitment to your blog and it’s wider niche for and as the months and years progress you’ll increasingly become respected as a part of that blogging community.
Let me also reemphasize that new blogs do have a lot to offer and they can be very credible. All I’m really saying is that longevity can add to the credibility of a blogger. If you don’t have it you might need to work harder at some of the following factors.
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enternetusers Sponsors
Team Blogs
Blogs from b5media management and staff members.-
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