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Does the Blog Skinny widget do to more harm than good?

February 27, 2008 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

Blogs are hot… there’s no doubt about it. I’m such a fan of blogs, that I’m actually a “blog pusher and dealer.” They are a GREAT communication tool for independent service professionals who need to build trust with potential clients.

However, in response to the popularity of blogs, several services have emerged which claim to offering help driving to your blog. Some of these resources, like Technorati, MyBlog Log, Blog Catalog are legitimate blog traffic building tools. Others like Blog Rush are of questionable value, but I don’t think it HARMS your blog to include their widget…. unlike a service I stumbled upon the other day.

It’s called “Blog Skinny”and I decided to test the service with one of my “experimental” blogs.

Step 1: Fill in the form and submit your blog to the database.

I fill in the required information. No red flags yet… so I use a REAL email address that I actually check because some tools, like Blog Catalog, have social networking type features, participation in which helps to improve the tool’s effectiveness at driving blog traffic.

Step 2: Authenticate your blog by displaying not one but 2 widgets. Once the widgets are displaying on your blog, you then hit the “submit” button to authenticate.

TWO WIDGETS?!?! I mean, the rest is standard operating procedure, but requiring 2 widgets is asing a lot. (The fact that they offer another 8-10 “optional” widgets should have sent up a red flag, but it didn’t alarm me enough to stop.)

I don’t have a problem with the display preview that they show for each button. The first one is shown as displaying a tiny button and the second is a larger button. I notice as I copy the code that these the kind of URLs that would warrant a quick in person visit before approving a trackback or comment…. that red flag is starting to wave faster and closer in front of me.

Yet, I blaze on and add the code to the test blog. I click “view site” and am HORRIFIED by what I see. I’m not seeing the discreet image displayed in the display but rather a “word at home” text link in place of the discreet first button. Following the link confirms my worst fears: that Blog Skinny widget is going to link my blog with one that apparently lives in a “bad” neighborhood!

WHOA!!! A quick delete of the text widget and I take pleasure in the admonition from Blog Skinny that failure to complete the process will mean my information will be deleted from the database. I’m hating the fact that I used a real email address with them at this point and will have to wait and see if I’ve opened up a pandora’s box of email there.

I frequently tell my clients, “I’m covered with the scars from my experimentation so you don’t have to get burned.” While I initially hoped that I dropped the match before it burned my flesh… using my real email has already resulted in spam emails coming in to me pristine and well protected account.

Dot Com domain names still rule….

February 25, 2008 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

When it comes to domain names… dot com is still king, as the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers – AMPTP recently discovered.

Ed Lee gives the heads up in his blog post The Importance of buying the right domain names | Don’t let your brand get hijacked online

In essence, the AMPTP owned the rights to amptp.org but not amptp.com. With time on their hands, a couple of striking writers put the dot com version of the domain name to good use and launched a parody site.

The important lesson here for any business owner is the importance of picking up ALL the versions of your domain name, especially if you’re building your business on a dot net or dot org domain name. Leave the dot com version of your site “out there” and you could find yourself in a similar situation.

Brian Gardner’s one smart cookie….

February 21, 2008 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

I met Brian just before the Colts went to the Superbowl. Brian’s not only a talented Word Press blog theme developer, he’s also a Colts fan who happens to live in the heart of Chicago Bear (the Colt’s Super Bowl XLI opponent) country. Are all great minds Colts fans, or is it just an amazing coincidence?

Anyhow, Brian has since quit his day job and struck out on his own and he’s hit the ground running!!! Last week, he launched an affiliate program where he pays commissions on sales of his premium Word Press themes. Yesterday, Brian has announced his own version of March Madness…. offering fabulous prizes to his top affiliates in the month of March.

The promotion works on two levels:

a) It’s a great way to promote affiliate sign ups.

Sales is a numbers game. In affiliate programs, 20% of your affiliate will generate 80% of your sales. The more affiliates you have, the more sales they will generate. It’s just that simple.

b) It’s link bait.

Not only must you sign up as an affiliate to join the contest, but you must also link back as well!

GREAT JOB Brian on crafting a compelling contest to promote your new affiliate program.

Why blogging in the dark can be a good thing….

February 11, 2008 by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd

The email was short and sweet….

” Kathy! It’s me again. I am wondering if you can tell how much activity my blog gets. I looked at the stats sheet, but couldn’t tell. Am I writing about the right kind of stuff?”

My reply:

This is a COMMON problem.

It’s been my experience that you can’t judge which posts are the most “powerful” by the comments because often, the only people who leave comments are other bloggers who want to leave a breadcrumb trail from your blog to their blog.

With that said, I peeked at your stats …[snip] I also saw that you’re getting lots of love from the Google bot.   That’s good.

However, aside from the dry information readily available in your log files, ….for right now, you’re blogging in the dark so to speak.   It’s true that your stats can tell you what page people entered on and how many left after reading that page. I can also see how many pages each “visitor” consumed “on average”.    Log file analysis doesn’t always tell the story. We know your average page view is 2.32 pages…. was that the result of each and every visitor visiting 2.32 pages or was it hundreds of single page views combined with three or four visitors consuming 10-20 blog posts on their visit? Because of the high traffic, analysis is difficult at best! It’s easier in this case to see 10 visitors with an average page view of 8 pages per viewer. Then we know SOMEONE is very interested in what you have to say!   It’s very common for high traffic blogs to have a low number page views because an interested reader who consumes 10-20 blog posts won’t drive up the average number of page views over thousands of visitors.

Then the question is…. did those visitors who consumed a single page on their visit… were they “regular” readers (who subscribed via RSS feed). An RSS feed subscriber may visit every time you post an entry… or they may only visit when you have an interesting headline that catches their eye. The blogs I subscribe to via RSS will only see me visiting a single page if I was just there the day before, reading the previous day’s entry.

In a word, you could drive yourself NUTSO worrying about this. Or, you can continue to blog from your heart. Write as if you were speaking directly to a potential client. What would she need to know about you before signing up for your services? How can you build TRUST with this stranger? The goal is to build up trust to the point where the reader will take a chance and contact you.

The more you post, the more trust opportunities you’ll have.   As you post, you’ll be revealing MUCH more than you should even focus on. For example, today’s post is EXCELLENT! It tells me a lot… I read this one and the one before it and if I didn’t know before, I do now that you’re a Christian.

Now, that may be a HUGE turn off to some people. That might be enough to “cross” your name off their list. But those people weren’t really even in the running to be your client. On the contrary. Once they had a conversation with you, they would have seen that and never contacted you again. This way, they learned it from your blog BEFORE they wasted your time by calling.

Again, you’ll drive yourself CRAZY trying to define the single post that was the “tipping point” and caused the potential client to fill in the contact form or pick up the phone. You can ask, but they probably weren’t aware of the process. Was it the last post they read or the first? Which straw broke the camel’s back?

I am aware when I reach that tipping point… but only because I’m ACUTELY aware of the process. I don’t ask “regular, normal, functional” people the question of “when did you decide to pick up the phone” because it’s not that they WON’T answer it, it’s that they can’t answer it.

On the one hand, you don’t want to “ruin” the intake process by grilling them on what made them decide to call. On the other hand, if you WERE to grill them, you need to be aware that psychologists estimate that 85% of the buying decision is made at an unconscious level. All your potential client could answer would be what the last post was that they read before they called or contacted you. The probably can’t tell you when they made the decision.

The moral to the story…. many of us are “blogging in the dark”. I remember one potential client contact a few months back. A woman called late on a Friday afternoon and she opened the conversation with me with an unforgettable phrase,

“I don’t know why, but for some reason… I think you might be able to help me.”

She’s normal… she’s functional… and she’s not obsessed with this stuff…. of course she can’t pin point WHY she called. However, her comments and questions clearly referenced a few blog posts I had made a few months earlier. Looking back, she hadn’t posted a question or a comment on the post…. no one did! It wasn’t a “powerful” post by anyone’s definition except hers!!!

On the other hand, my serious introspection of my bellybutton lint when it comes to making major sale decisions is BOUND to affect my decision making process as well. By trying to see past the veil… the one the hides the 85% of the buying decision making process from view… am I skewing the results?

As I try to measure, I find myself entering aCatch 22 world similar to that in Quantum Mechanics… “when a quantum system interacts with a measuring apparatus, their respective wavefunctions become entangled, so that the original quantum system ceases to exist as an independent entity.” In other words, by trying to MEASURE the quantum state one will actually ALTER the quantum state rendering the measurement useless.

In other words… tis far better to blog naked, in the dark. That way, when you think no one is reading… you can really speak your mind and blog from the heart.

Spend too much time “blogging” from your head makes blogging scary… difficult…. and not fun. When you’re blogging “from your head” you end up viewing posting to your blog in a similar vein to working up the courage to go streaking across the field of the Super Bowl during the first quarter. Turn off the television cameras and all the lights and it’s a MUCH easier proposition!

Instead… just post to your blog. The more you blog, the sooner you’ll find your “blog’s voice“.