All posts by Mitch Mitchell

I'm an independent consultant in many fields, so I have a lot to share.
Black Web Friday

Black Web Friday – 03/02/12

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Yup, time for another episode of Black Web Friday, and I’m starting off today with an interesting history fact. On this day in 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points against the New York Knicks while playing for the Philadelphia Warriors, the only person in professional basketball history to score triple digits in one game, and my favorite basketball player of all time. Wilt was the man!

Black Web Friday

With no controversy going on that’s enough to cause a riot let’s get right into it today. I’m starting with one of my longest online friends, DeAnna Troupe of Learn Small Business. I met her on Ryze back in 2004 and she’s been a loyal commenter on this blog for many years. She’s done a lot of things concerning small business, affiliate marketing, and writing, and if you’re looking for the antithesis of some of my long posts visit DeAnna’s blog and you’ll find shorter posts that get to the point and then move on. Of course I’m working on her to write longer posts and to get rid of her captcha, but I’m like that. 😉

Kris Cain writes the blog Little Tech Girl, and it’s a wealth of information about technology, blogging, social media and every once in awhile some off-topic stuff; actually, a lot like this blog. It’s a Disqus blog so I’ve never commented on it, but I laughed when I read one of her recent posts, which was short but I felt it, on breaking one’s glasses, something I’ve done a few times in my life but also something I fret about often. There are some sales posts as well, including the glasses post, but come on, some of us should be allowed to try to make money right?

Terrance Gaines writes the blog Brotha Tech, which of course means he talks a lot about technology. Let me say this; he has the coolest header I’ve ever seen and I wish I could find someone to make something like this for me. One of the things I like is that he talks about Android phones and apps, since that’s what I have and haven’t quite been one of those people that searches apps on my own. Traditional blog commenting system with one of those captcha systems that’s at least easier to read, even if I still hate captcha. lol

Finally, let’s meet Arie Rich, whose blog KMP Blog (keep me posted) is about media, fashion, and pretty much what’s going on now. It was on her blog where I learned that the latest Muppet Movie will be coming out on DVD on March 20th, a movie I reviewed back in December. It’s definitely got a younger person’s spin on it, which helps make it fresh and entertaining, and there’s a wide range of topics she covers. It’s an Intense Debate blog, so I’ve never commented on it, but I like how it reads just the same.

There you are, 4 blogs this time around. I’m thinking that I might have to start seeing if I can find Twitter accounts on these sites and if so including them when I post the link on Twitter at least once so people can find themselves here; what do you think? Enjoy your weekend.
 

Blogging

Bad Comments/Spam The Same?

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A couple of weeks ago I had to do something I hadn’t thought about doing in a long while. I had to turn on the Akismet spam plugin once again after a major increase in the number of spam messages I was starting to get. I had hoped that the GASP Anti-Spambot plugin would have taken care of all of that, but it seems people have found their way around it.


I’m eating a cupcake;
don’t ask lol

Even with both programs running, spam is at an all time high for me. It’s not unexpected as the ranking of this blog moves higher, and I don’t think it’s gotten to the level where it’s driving me as crazy as it does some of my friends, who often go to extreme measures trying to kill it, even turning off comments sometimes, which I don’t like as you know.

Part of the problem, of course, are what are considered “bad comments”. On my 1,200th post back in January I mentioned a conversation I had with Adrienne Smith and her contention that some comments aren’t worth keeping on your blog and that she just gets rid of them so that she can respond to everyone else and show a 100% response rate on her blog. What we both believe is that there are a number of people paid to post comments and have links going back to other sites, and most of these people are paid so little that it’s all in the numbers for them, not the quality of the comment.

This begs the question as to whether bad comments and spam are the same thing. It can be a volatile question to respond to because the kneejerk response is “yes”. And yet, I haven’t quite gotten to that point yet where I consider the two as symbiotic 100% of the time.

I’ve read some bad comments with a lot of grammatical errors and thought that it might be spam, but the comment was touching upon the subject matter so I follow the CommentLuv link back to its source and see the same type of writing on the blog. Suddenly that’s not a bad comment, just someone with lousy writing skills.

Is a bad comment a one-liner? Well, that’s up for grabs because I’ve been told by some people that on some of my posts I really don’t leave much for anyone to say if they agree with me on the topic. Frankly I buy that argument only half the time because I’ve always been able to comment on a blog with more than a one liner and make sure the author knows I read the post. But not everyone can do that so how does one judge that? I do judge those posts, and I eliminate a lot of them, just so you know, but not all of them.

What makes a bad comment is almost the same thing as what makes spam. Ergo, some highlights:

* Repeating the title of the post in the comment

* Repeating specific phrases from the content without adding anything new to it

* Writing something so generic that it applies to everything and nothing at the same time

* Writing a lot of nonsense and then popping my name in somehow; that’s pretty sneaky

* Trying to slip a link in that has nothing to do with the topic but everything to do with linking back to your site; isn’t CommentLuv enough for you?

* Writing one comment that looks passable, immediately followed by another comment that’s from the same IP address on the same post; what could you be thinking?

I think that’s enough to think about. Here’s the big question up for debate; do you think bad comments and spam are the same thing? The secondary question is what do you do about it?
 

Books

How To Get On The News Without Committing Murder – Book Review

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My friend Beverly Mahone will not be showing up on any of my Black Web Friday posts. She doesn’t have to because I’ve written so many times about her and mentioned her so many times, including this interview with her that she’s like one of the family. If you don’t already know enough about her by reading this blog, then including her on one of the Friday posts won’t do any good.

How to Get on the News Without Committing Murder

How’s this instead then? Let’s talk about her latest book with the long title How to Get on the News Without Committing Murder, which I got to read an early copy of and which is, obviously, now released. This is a book that teaches you how to use your skills and age, if you happen to be of baby boomer age, in getting attention from the press, to the point at which they start calling you as the expert in whatever field you’re representing, and thus helping to increase your presence and your business. How cool would that be, having people calling you up to work with them because they saw you on TV, and it was free publicity to boot?

Bev does this and more in a relatively short book, less than 55 pages, and it’s a very easy and quick read, no fluff. My wife actually read the book, and she’s not a big reader, and she obviously likes Bev’s style because she read Bev’s last book Don’t Ask, which I wrote about here.

In this book she gives you 8 tips for how to get the media to notice you, then goes into detail with each tip. I’m not about to give up the entire book, but I’m going to mention 3 tips and hope that encourages you to at least take a look at what else there is. Here they are:

* Use Your Age And Experience As Advantages

* Build Media Relationships

* Learn How To Write A Dynamic Press Release

I have to tell you that while reading an advanced copy of this book, I decided that the second point I listed was one I needed to take advantage of. I happen to know a lot of local media people, but always thought it wouldn’t be right to try to leverage it into anything else because I didn’t meet them in other than social situations. After reading that section of her book I decided to contact a couple of them to tell them what I did and offer to be a differing point of view from an older perspective if they ever needed it.

Both of the people I contacted thanked me, said they’re always looking for new perspectives and said they really didn’t know that’s what I did, even though one of them had seen me at a live event where I gave a presentation, but unfortunately we were up against each other (I drew more people lol).

This is a great book to read and let me add this; guess who wrote the foreword for the book! 🙂 If that doesn’t get you juiced up enough to at least take a look at the book I don’t know what will. And if you want to see more testimonials and reviews about the book How to Get on the News Without Committing Murder, click on that link to her site.

Go buy this! 😉
 

Blogging

3 More Things To Know About In Your WordPress Admin Area

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For some of you I hear the question now: “Why only 3 more things?” Because if you’ve followed this blog for awhile, or not, you’ll remember that I had my first post in September 2010 on 5 Areas You Should Know More About In Your WordPress Admin Area, followed a month later with 5 More Things To Know About Your WordPress Admin Area and finally 4 Things You Can Do With Your WordPress Blog You Might Not Know Already. Frankly, I think I’ve shared more about the admin area than almost anyone else except WordPress.

So today I have 3 more things I’ve discovered that you might not know about or haven’t paid any attention to. I have to make sure I’m not copying myself either; let’s see what happens.

1. Did you know that when you’re addressing comments if you hover over a person’s link under their name on the left side that WordPress will bring you an image of their website or blog? That’s pretty neat and it might help you decide if you want to keep the comment or not, deciding that a site might not be one you want to help promote via CommentLuv or through the link to the side if it’s just a website.

2. Did you know that, if you’re running CommentLuv, you can remove the “luv”, if you will, while keeping the comment? I don’t do this often but there are times when I look at the link and decide “no, this thing looks dangerous”, especially in combination with the first tip I just gave you. Of course if you’re like me most of the time you might have decided the comment isn’t worth keeping either in which case just delete it all, but this is another option if the comment seems legit.

3. Did you know that you can install plugins directly from your WordPress menu instead of downloading and then uploading them? All you do is go to Plugins over there and slide down to Add New. Once there, you can type in the entire name of the plugin you want, or if you’re unsure just type in a few words and do a search, and most probably lots of choices will come up with a ranking system from 1 to 5 stars. Much easier and saves time as well.

That’s it. What, you wanted more? Maybe next time! lol
 

Black Web Friday

Black Web Friday – 2/24/12

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Yup, it’s Black Web Friday again, and we have some good sites for you today. Before I begin, I want to address the fact that I used “we” instead of “I”, when all of you know what I’m the only one writing on this blog.

Black Web Friday

In 2010, I was at my consultant’s group meeting and brought up the subject of whether sole proprietorships could legitimate use the term “we” when talking about their businesses. We all discussed it and the general consensus around the room was that all of us have the opportunity from time to time to work with someone else and thus using the term “we” is a legitimate thing.

I like that and it applies to this topic mainly because I’m thinking I’ve probably said “we” in discussing these Friday posts at some other time, and the fact of the matter is that I see myself working with the sites I mention every week to help bring black social media to the forefront and bring others into knowing that they exist. It truly does become a “we” scenario, doesn’t it? By the way, as a sidebar, “we” were included as a Blog of the Month entry on LogAllot by Sonia Winland; thanks! 😉

With that said “we” move on. 🙂 I’m starting today with a guy who actually gets a lot of love, but probably deserves more. Wayne Sutton writes Social Wayne, and this month he’s actually running what he’s calling #29 Days of Diversity, where he’s naming people of color he believes are impacting social media. He tells you up front that not everyone he mentions will necessarily be black, which is cool, but of course I’m going a different way. Whenever you hear of black tech in America his name comes up often, and he was included in a CNN story on the subject last year, which was really neat to see. He has a Disqus comment system, just so you know.

Next on the list is a blog called Happy Black Woman, written by Rosetta Thurman, someone I featured last year, but didn’t really talk about. Her goal is to bring about positive aspects of black women to counter the belief that all black women are angry, something I addressed in a previous Black Web Friday post. She talks a lot about lifestyles and behavior, and has a traditional WordPress blog commenting system. I was really impressed with her post about compassion, something I’m not sure enough people think about, let alone talk about these days, and if you’re looking for entry into what makes her tick check it out.

The final blog I’m highlighting today is a Blogpost blog, but the content is so good I just have to share. It’s called NewBlackMan and it’s written by Anthony Neal. Basically he talks about black issues, and calls out anyone who writes things that are either negative about blacks or put black people in a bad light in some fashion. I thought a post he wrote basically telling a rapper named Too Short that he was sending the wrong message to kids about objectifying women was great and it showed that he had guts and courage to do so, reminding me about a post I wrote on the courage it sometimes takes if one is going to participate in social media.

The final Black Web Friday of Black History Month; have y’all been out there learning something you didn’t already know? Remember, black history isn’t only about slaves and Martin Luther King. Have a great weekend.