Blog Posts, Comments, Business, Rankings…
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Oct 29, 2011
I found this quite intriguing, enough for me to decide to write on the topic. I got inspiration for this post from not one, but two blog posts. The first one was from Marcus Sheridan on a post titled 10,862 Comments Later, I Realize Blog Comments are NOT a Business Model. This post led me to the second post by John Falchetto, titledThe Right Traffic And What The 4hour Workweek Post Taught Me About Blogging.
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John started with the premise that out of all the blog posts he’d been writing, he was getting lots of comments but none of it turned into business. At the same time, he felt that people reading some of his posts were missing some of the points he was trying to make, and of course that took away from the effectiveness of them, in his mind, and thus the possibility of getting the kind of traffic he was hoping for.
Marcus took this a bit further, and added a conversation he got to have with John. First, he owned up to how many comments his blog has gotten in a very short period of time; puts me to shame. Second, he owned up to the fact that he hasn’t sold a single product geared to his main business from this blog, even with all those comments. Third, after his conversation with John, he started to wonder if maybe there were things he could do with his blog that John was starting to do, that being to make sure to write a post a day, sometimes more than one, and increase the prominence of the blog, at the possible exclusion of comments, to potentially generate more income. Of course I’ve kind of simplified the thoughts of both posts, so it’d be a good idea to go read each one of them.
I commented on Marcus’ post, but not on John’s, mainly because John asked a question I wasn’t sure I could answer in a short comment: ‘Which lessons has your blog taught you?‘.
Good question, eh? Well, let’s take a look at it if I may, based on not only the question, but their two posts and the title of this post as well. Numbers please!
1. I used to have a pretty tight blogging schedule for this blog; I still do, but not necessarily by design. I had a yearly goal of 300 posts a year, plain and simple. That meant 25 posts a month on average, and I was able to do it. At some point, though, I decided that it shouldn’t only be about the numbers of posts; I wanted more comments.
So I slowed down the number of posts somewhat, and I started getting more comments. I still don’t come close to the number Marcus or many other people get, but it did increase.
Yet, do you know when the biggest period of growth this blog ever had was? That week last November when I had two blog posts a day, the first one being a regular post and the evening one advertising one of my products. The overall traffic for this blog shot up drastically, even if comments dropped significantly. Both my Alexa rank and Google Analytics said my numbers increased. And do you know when I had the most traffic to my business site? The week after when I did the same thing on my business blog that I did on this blog. Very few comments but a drastic rise in visits.
This does seem to prove one thing; the more posts one has, the more traffic one gets. I know someone is going to say “I don’t write that many posts and look at my numbers.” I’ll just point to my latest business blog as an example; I added it to my SEO site in August and without many comments traffic has risen 65% in less than 90 days; wow!
2. With traffic comes higher rankings… of sorts. My Alexa ranking for my SEO site has gone from 2.78 million the day I started the blog on that site to 483,000 and change on Thursday. That’s not bad for less than 90 days, and that’s just with a post every 3 days. And without all that many comments; it does say something for having more activity. It doesn’t address where the blog would be if I were posting daily, but for now the traffic stats are undeniable.
3. Well, we do have to come down to business, don’t we? Comments don’t equal business; both Marcus and John are correct on that. We all still want comments, but John’s now increasing the number of posts regardless of the number of comments, and Marcus is thinking about it.
Me… I’m not sure. Well, I am sure, but I’m not sure what I can do about it. I’ve always said I didn’t expect this blog to make me a lot of money, but I did hope that it, in combination with other things I was doing, would at least generate more business interest than it has. However, my SEO blog has yet to generate any business interest either, but I figure it’s still kind of early.
I might be able to get a boost after a live presentation I’m a part of next week at a conference called the BizBuzz Social Media Conference here in the Syracuse area, where I’m talking about business blogging; at least it’s part of the overall strategy. But a stat I will report based on a little case study is that out of 36 keyword phrases I came up with before starting the blog I’ve increased in the number I’m found by from 13 to 23, and the rankings are higher as well for all but 2 of them. So, the potential for business there has increased, even if it hasn’t happened yet.
Anyway, those are the lessons blogging has taught me regarding these things. Now, I have my own questions. Do you believe writing more blog posts would help your blog improve its rankings? Do you believe you’d be capable of increasing the number of blog posts you write, even if it were just as an experiment? And finally, what do you want from your blog, or blogs?
Man, I love when people make me think! 
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
10 Things People Do Wrong Concerning Blogs
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 25, 2011
Often when I write one of these types of posts it seems like I’m picking on one particular group of some kind. Today this is a little bit different. I’m picking on a group, but the group isn’t as specified except for one thing; it concerns blogs. And it’s what I see “people”, and when you see what I’ve written you’ll understand why I went that route, doing, well, wrong, or badly, or whatever; just not good. lol Here we go.
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1. If you’re not trying to live what you write about then you’re wasting your time blogging. Now, that sounds harsh, but I’ll tell you what I mean. Right now, if you look to the right of this post you’ll see a post I wrote on my business blog about “trust leadership”. In that post I highlight 9 blogs I visited on Sunday. I found it interesting that all of those blogs talked about leadership in some fashion, some of them talked about building trust, yet 8 of them moderate comments, one of them adding captcha to the mix. To me you reap what you sow, and if you’re telling people up front that you don’t trust them, then why should they trust your content?
2. Your blog platform is, well, lousy. Of course this is just my belief, and for once I’m not talking about different commenting systems. Lately I see a proliferation of blogs on places such as Typepad, Tumblr, and other sites like these. I don’t count these as regular blogging platforms, although I know the Typepad people will say it is. Any platform that begins by pretty much telling me if I don’t sign into it you’re not going to honor things from outside such as Gravatar, and that you’re not going to send me messages if I comment unless I sign in (I’m not talking about a different comment system, but in this case it’s a part of the site) then it’s a lousy platform. As for Tumblr, it seems to be set up for instant messaging thoughts; in other words, you’re thinking “kill my landlord, kill my landlord” and thus you say it. Or you saw an image of puppies being cut up and you thought it was neat so you posted it. And the comments you get back are “neat”, “wow”, “cruel”… If that’s basically what’s being promoted it’s a lousy platform.
3. You leave lousy comments. Okay, this one I’ve touched upon before, but in this instance I’m not talking about people having to write great comments, and I’m not talking about spam. I’m talking about people who leave comments that never address what the topic is about. Sure, some of them might mean well, but if it doesn’t advance the conversation then what’s the point? Of course there are times when one can be funny with a one liner that actually pertains to the content, and if you’ve built up that type of equity with the blog writer then it’s fine. And if I put up one of my Muppet posts I really don’t expect anything other than “I love/hate the Muppets”; course, if you hate the Muppets you’re a cruel person. 
4. You don’t at least try to do a good job of writing your blog posts on a regular basis. I think I’ve written only one post in all these years that I should have checked over before I put it out, and that was when I used my Dragon software without going back to read everything. None of us are perfect, thank goodness, but most of us are pretty good. If we invite people into our space the very least we can do is have a nice place for them to sit.
5. Don’t leave “please contact me” comments on blog posts. The only time one can validate that is if the person who owns the blog hasn’t given you any contact information anywhere else, and if you as a blogger hasn’t put an email address somewhere on your blog so people can contact you, do it now. I have this type of thing happen to me all the time when people want to write guest posts or contact me for some other reason, but I have an About page on every blog that has at least an email address that you can reach me at.
6. If you read any of the “page” information that people have let instructions on make sure you read it if you have any questions. Of course most people will say they don’t have questions, but sometimes they do. If someone has written a comment policy it probably means you should read it if you’re thinking about leaving a fake name or one of those keyword names to see if the person whose blog it is likes that sort of thing. If not, you may find your comment gone or that you’ve irked the blog writer.
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7. Let me expound on the “information” part of pages. I have a high number of people that want to either write guest posts for me or buy advertising on my finance blog. I created a page where I tell people which email address to write me at AND to use my name; if my name isn’t in the email it tells me you didn’t read what I had to say. It’s very simple to follow, and any time I get an email without my name on it I just delete it without reading it. Could I be missing something? Yes, but if you don’t stand by your standards then why have any?
8. By the way, if you’ve written any “pages” that you hope people will see, at least make sure they’re understandable so you don’t confuse people. There shouldn’t be any question as to how you want people to act in your space if you’ve taken the time to put something together.
9. Be nice. So far I’ve popped on some things I don’t like. Just asking, but in saying what I’ve said, have I been anything but nice? I always figure there’s a way to get a gripe across and still be nice. One doesn’t have to be too forward. One doesn’t have to use bad language. One doesn’t have to name call. Yeah, there are things that irritate me, but anyone you meet will tell you I’m a nice guy and, in my own way, a straight shooter. When I work directly with people in more of a coaching or training role, I give them options of things to do and my belief on the consequences of those actions rather than just tell them what to do. If someone asks me an opinion and I know they’re going to disagree (yeah, I often already know that) I’ll rarely be forward and tell them that, unless it’s the only way to get them to leave me alone (here I’m talking about things like religion; don’t go there with me). I want to be treated nice and courteous, and Dr. Phil says you teach people how to treat you by your actions. Yes, I watch Dr. Phil. lol
10. Guest posting; give your best and then try to give something different. I just wrote a guest post for someone I know locally. She said I could write on anything. I took a look through her blog to see the types of things she wrote about, then I wrote this post titled Why I Call Out “Isms”. One of her passions is the rights of others, and I tend to agree with her on this. In my mind one doesn’t “mail in” a guest post. You give it your all, try to turn it into something you might not always do for yourself, and go that extra route. I hope you check it out to see what I mean. It’s a topic I might write about here every once in awhile, but it’s not the type of post I’d write here; at least I don’t think it is.
And there you go; I bet you thought I wouldn’t be able to come up with 10, did you? So, share your thoughts, as always; after all, if I didn’t want to hear them, I wouldn’t put them out there.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
Do You Want Accountability Or Activity?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Feb 11, 2011
You know, there are times when you know you’re right and you just want to be proven right, and when it’s eventually proven that you’re right you’re not really sure what to do with it. Well, I had that happen this week, and what I decided to do was write about it here.
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On my newest blog, I wrote a post titled I Hate Syracuse.com. Basically it was a minor rant against news sites that allow comments without attribution, which pretty much means people don’t have to stay on topic or add to the conversation, but can be downright piggish and mean. I hate that and I decided to write about it on that blog because this was my local newspaper and online site, although I did mention other news sites in the article as well.
This past Monday I had an opportunity to talk with a representative of the site about the comments section. He wasn’t necessarily happy that I’d written what I did and thought it was unfair. Time after time I said I hated the comments and why didn’t they just require people to use their real name. In my opinion, if people weren’t hiding behind fake names they’d behave better.
I knew all the time what the reason was, and after nearly 30 minutes he finally stated it; because they worried that not as many people would leave comments and the site would look empty. It was almost too easy, yet, as I said, I knew that was the real answer, and the reason why all the other news sites do it.
I was kind but insistent. I said that we run our blogs with the intention of making sure that discourse stayed civil, and that at a moment’s notice we would eliminate any response that didn’t fit our sense of decorum. I’ve always said that I don’t mind if people don’t agree with me, but if there’s bad language or threatening language that comment is gone, and fast. After all, I pay for this space, so in essence it’s my online home, and no one messes up my home. He didn’t quite see it the same way, although he did say that they did work hard to keep things at a reasonable level.
Whether that’s what I see or not isn’t necessarily the point. The point is that we all get to choose whether we’re going to hold ourselves and those we interact with in our space accountable for their actions or not. Many folks who write about how to drive comments on blogs say to write about a controversial subject. While that might work, often you might find yourself suddenly dealing with someone who not only disagrees with you, but goes overboard and forces you to decide whether to go with the flow and be happy for the activity or censor in some fashion because you want to keep the discussion going in a different manner.
With censorship you risk people deciding that maybe your blog or space isn’t as open as they’d like and they could possibly leave and never come back. That’s kind of possible, but I say “so what”. If you’re going to change your ethics because you’re worried about reactions, then are your ethics really worth having? Or are they ethics at all?
And really, is it censorship if you ask people to behave, and if they don’t you kill their message? I tend to think not. After all, for all the people who use a lot of bad language, I’ve found that when put into certain situations they all know how not to say certain stuff. I have friends who will curse up a storm, yet they know they can’t use that same language at work, so I ask them not to use it in front of me. If you can actually control a behavior here and there then you’ve shown you know better.
You know my point of view; how do you see this particular subject? Would you be happy with 200 comments a day if most of them were hateful or would you rather have fewer comments but know that your family could read them without worry, if they ever read your blog?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
Thanking Some Early Commenters
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Nov 3, 2010
I’m not quite there yet, but I’m closing in on 3 full years of writing this blog. Like most blogs, this one took awhile to start picking up any steam whatsoever. I got my first comment 3 days after I started this blog from a friend of mine, and another friend followed up a couple of days after that. I got my first comment from someone I didn’t know almost 2 weeks after I started writing this blog.
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Since those early days I’ve made a few changes. The first significant change was adding CommentLuv to this blog in May of 2008. That really signified the turning of the corner, and though I’m not going to say I was an overnight success, things did start improving some. The second significant change was having my posts go directly to Twitter, though I had started posting the links to articles I was writing in April 2008.
Anyway, since the first comment I’ve received 11,587 total comments on this blog, and I appreciate all of them. But I wanted to give some love to my early commenters if possible, and that’s what this post is about. Some of those early folks are gone or never had blogs to begin with. Some never came back again, but that’s okay. We all need a bit of encouragement when we start, and I’m happy that these folks played with me. A name or two might pop up here and there that you’re familiar with; let’s see what we find. By the way, I was kind of inspired to do this post because of Tia Peterson, who writes Biz Chicks Blogs and wrote a post where she highlighted what she considered as the best comments her blog got that week.
My friend Sue is a life coach, and she was one of the early posters here and has started posting comments again recently. Her business is called Dreamscape International, and she’s pretty good, concentrating on relationships and the like. No, I’ve never had to use her for that. lol
Our friend Sire was one of the early commenters here as well. Back then he was commenting from a different blog that I refer to as his BS blog, but y’all know I have those staid American sensibilities, so I’m going to pop up his Wassup Blog instead. He’s still a regular contributor, and I appreciate it greatly.
A guy named Jonathan showed up when I had a post in a financial topic. His blog is called Master Your Card and it’s on finances, especially credit cards.
Another friend of mine, Kelvin, was an early commenter; he’s pretty much disappeared since then, but we still talk all the time on Twitter and get to breakfast here and there. He has many sites and things he’s doing, but when he commented he was promoting his Ringold.net site, so that’s the one I’m sharing with you. At some point I think he’ll end up setting it up as a portal site to direct you to all the other stuff he does; at least that’s what I’d do.
Heidi was a Ryze friend who was also one of my early Facebook and Twitter friends. Her blog is called Connect Simply, and she’s a business motivational coach.
Larry’s blog has really taken off, and I think we pretty much started near the same time. He calls it Online Social Networking and he talks about social media, business networking and of course the internet in general.
Dave was also a one time visitor, whose blog is called Dave ‘n Judy. Looks like he hasn’t written anything new in awhile since he wrote a book that he talked about, but he used to write on computers and things like that.
Josh is another one of my good friends, the one who was with me when I wrote my story about the key. His blog is his name, Josh Shear, and he pretty much writes about anything like me.
This guy Tim busted on me for talking about Joel Comm messing up. He kind of missed the point, but that’s okay because it was a comment. He doesn’t have a blog, but linked to his website on massage products.
And finally, this lady commented twice in those early days, and I haven’t seen her again since. Her blog is called Style Frizz and her name is kpriss; that’s it, and I did try to find a real name. It’s on fashion, and it’s actually pretty neat; I’m just not a fashion guy, but it’s for women anyway.
And there you go. I think those folks, some of whom are still around, for helping me bring this blog into some kind of prominence. One of these days, I might do the same for my business blog; I doubt it, though.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
4 Reasons To Have A Gravatar
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Oct 15, 2010
Two years ago I wrote on this blog about how to get a gravatar. Now I’m going to give you 4 reasons why you should have a gravatar. But before I do, quickly let me tell you what a gravatar is. A gravatar is that image that you see next to some people’s comments or posts. That’s it; nothing overly difficult. And now, the why’s:
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1. A gravatar lets people know who you are in some fashion. Whether you write posts on your own blog or post comments on other blogs, a gravatar will be associated with your email address, which is required for any blog you comment on, and of course when you set up your blog you probably set it up with a specific email address as well. The gravatar is set up with the email address, and thus people know it’s you. Yeah, at times it can be faked, but it’s rare.
2. You can use either a picture of yourself, your business logo, or anything else. Overall no one really cares, but of course there are reasons why you might want to select one thing or another. For instance, I use my image because I’m an independent consultant, and thus my face is kind of my brand as opposed to either logo I have on my two main business websites. Some people like to use logos for themselves instead, like Dennis, and I assume it’s because he’s trying to brand his internet businesses (that plus I keep assuming he’s funny looking; yeah, I’m ashamed of myself! lol). Others select something they like, such as animals or flowers or some other such thing, mainly because they’re not worried about doing anything in a business fashion online.
3. You can set up a different gravatar for every email you have if you’d like. I have 3 different blogs, so I have 3 different gravatars. If I advertised my businesses more often when I commented on blogs I’d probably have more gravatars. This could help folks decide if they want one gravatar for their business and one for their personal use.
4. You just seem more legitimate than you do without one. Remember what I was saying about URL’s? When people see your gravatar, and they’re used to you, they’re more comfortable with you and they know you’re legit and trustworthy. Having said that, Sire and I have learned that some scammers have learned how to scrape your identity, but it’s easy enough to know when you see something from someone you’re used to that just doesn’t look right. It definitely helps if you have a common name to separate you from someone else.
And there you are. You folks who don’t have one, think about getting one, whether you do a lot of online stuff or not. Ultimately it gives you a lot of credibility.
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I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy something! ;)
