Blogging Metaphor: Blogging is like Exercise
May 30, 2007
Liz Strauss has issued a Blogging Metaphor challenge on her blog. Essential Keystrokes has joined the call with a great analogy on her blog as has Word Sell.
These two blogs use blogging as food metaphors while mine talks to the other side of the coin… exercise.
Yesterday, during a conversation with a client, she commented, "You make it sound like work!"
My response was, "I’m assuming that if you had an innate love of blogging, you would already be doing it and I wouldn’t have had to work so hard and so long getting you to this point." (This client’s blog was launched 6 weeks ago and we were working on her very first post.)
There are people who exercise just for the love of moving their bodies. I am not one of these people. I exercise because I LOVE what it does for my mind and body.
When I bring up blogging with a client or potential client, the first objection I seem to get is "I don’t have time to blog." My response is "OF COURSE YOU DON’T! But do you have time to exercise?"
Blog Design: How Important Is It?
May 29, 2007
I have to admit, since I converted my web site to a blog, I’ve been feeling more than a bit sheepish about the first impression my blog makes.
See, I’m really, really, really BUSY creating pretty blogs for my clients.
BUSTED!!!
As I write that line of BS, I see what I must REALLY think of the design issue. That design is an also ran. I MUST if I’d allow my blog to appear looking like this.
Is your WEBSITE is a waste of time?
May 25, 2007
Great post about When Is Blogging A Waste Of Time? 10 Nasty Examples. The first two are more than enough to weed out about 60% of the blogs I see.
1. When you publish a blog post that provides little or no value to your target audience.
2. When your blog has no clear target audience.
Which got me to thining that these two rules also apply to "When is your WEBSITE a waste of time?" Because, in essences, blogs are just easy to manage web sites.
I confess. I am guilty of putting together more than a few web sites for clients that had no clear target audience. I tried to exorcise those demons by writing a book on the subject. Because if you want to break through the cacophony that is modern media, you’re going to HAVE to define WHO your target audience is and provide material that the audience finds valuable.
Of course, content is only the first step in the successful web presence. It’s truly the diamond in the box. Sure, the presentation of an engagement ring is much more spectacular if the ring is presented in a beautifully wrapped gift box… but if the box contains a ring from a gum ball machine…. well, the pretty wrapper is soon forgotten.
I’ve always told my clients, great web sites are like a three legged stool…. there’s the content leg… the design leg and the coding leg. Each is essential to keeping the three legged stool standing.
There are other essential elements to web site succes, but the all have their roots in tightly targeted content that is of signficant value to your target audience. Your NICHE MARKET, so to speak. Once you’ve got your niche carved out, then it’s easy to fill in the gaps.
Latest Google Offering: Google Trends
May 23, 2007
Creating great content begins with knowing what customers want and Google has just added another service to help YOU write the web content ACTUAL PEOPLE are want to see.
On Monday, Google released it’s newest offering, Google Trends which will help you see the hottest keyword searches on Google.
If you’ve got a blog, this is a MUST SEE site.
For example, by Wednesday (5.23.07) one of the hot keywords being search for was Google Trends! If you have a blog or web site that speaks to web developers or bloggers, it makes sense that you should be making a post about Google Trends.
I shouldn’t have to say it, but I will. If you have a blog or website that deals with web development, blogging on the number one keyword at Google Trends, "singer irene" may get you visitors, but visitors who aren’t interested in what you have to say just burn bandwidth. Better to blog or create a page around a subject that YOUR potential customers/clients will be using when they are searching for answers.
Note: If your customers/clients are AVID Second Life fans, then maybe you should be blogging about singer irene. Read more about it here.
Sharing the link love…
May 21, 2007
Hyperlinks are what make the web world go ’round. Google measures not only your inbound but also your outbound hyperlinks and "grades" your site on how many your site is included in on the web.
Over the past year, I’ve created lots of outbound links on my books’ blog Beyond Niche Marketing and unfortunately, many of the outbound links I made were not reciprocated. Keep in mind that these are links to OTHER blogs… so it’s not like these inbound links are a mystery to the blog owner.
There are a lot of reasons why people don’t share the link love. Some just don’t know how, while others are operating from a "scarcity" mentality. If you haven’t been sharing the link love, I’m going to tell you why you should begin doing so.
Link love is ESSENTIAL to garnering traffic for your blog. It’s not just Google that likes to see links to your blog. Technorati uses these incoming links to measure your blog’s "authority". The idea is that the more incoming links you have, the more "respect" your blog deserves.
One way to generate link love is to comment on other people’s blogs. You leave a comment and when other bloggers arrive, looking for their own link love, they find your blog and leave a comment to get some link love of their own. Of course, it’s up to YOU whether you approve those comments or not.
Some blogs are set up so that there is a "no follow" attribute on comments. That means, if you’re looking for link love, you’re going to have to comment on blogs who have installed a special plug in to disable this alarming feature.
There’s a movement worth noting in the blogging community known as The U comment I follow movement.
For an example of how linking helps traffic, let me walk you through how I found this movement:
I signed up for Google Alerts on the term Niche Marketing. Now, when Google sees a page dealing with "Niche Marketing" it sends me an alert and gives me the URLs. Not only do I find blog fodder using this service, I also find out when someone is talking about my book, Beyond the Niche.
Google alerted me to a post at Digg….5 Steps to Niche Marketing Success
Which led me to this post: Internet Marketing 2.0 My D List
Each of the blog’s referenced above are going to see an inbound link in their dashboard (if they’re using Word Press). Hopefully, they’ll show some link love back… but if I just take a moment to comment on the blog, I’ll be able to create my own link love as well!
As a result, my blog’s "authority" ranking will rise, as will theirs. Which means that when other Technorati users see that I’ve shown link love… they’ll be more likely to respond…. and so the story goes…..
If you use a Word Press blog, then you’re in an ideal situation to know when you’ve been shown link love, so you can respond in kind. Remember, when it comes to link love… the more you give, the more you get. So spread it around.
Want to generate link love from here to your blog? I’ve installed the Do Follow plug in…. so feel free to grab the love!
