All posts by Mitch Mitchell

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

Changing How I Accept Comments On This Blog

31 Comments

Just over a month ago I wrote a post where I questioned the types of links I was seeing on this blog. I’m not the first one to wonder about this type of thing but with the types of things going on with Google, Panda, Penguin and whatever else they come up with, I’ve started looking at them more.

DMU Comment Study (with)
Chris Martino via Compfight

I’ve also noticed that most people aren’t paying attention to the comment policy, the very short one that’s right above the box you write comments in. What happens is people are putting in keywords in the name area, which I’ve asked you not to do, and your comments are going directly into the spam filter. Then I’m having to go in and pull them out of the comments seem like they’re pretty good. After that I then go in and remove the keywords from the name, then approve the comments.

Frankly, that’s getting tiresome and I shouldn’t have to do that because, well, I did ask. So I’m making some changes to how I’m going to accept comments from this point on, and it’s going to involve a couple other things as well.

First, if your comment goes into the spam filter because there are keyword names in it, I’m leaving it there. Almost everyone who comments often knows this because I’ve mentioned it directly to them. Also, I’d set up my spam filter to automatically send all comments that have the @ symbol in the name field to spam. So, those comments will never show up; sorry. I will alter the program a bit though because I know a few folks who comment often really want to use that 3rd word, something else that automatically sends comments to spam. I don’t feel like pulling y’all out of there all the time either so I’ll make that change; thank me later Brian. lol

Second, I’m not accepting anymore comments where the email address goes to “info“. Do you know that almost no one who uses that has ever responded to a single comment I’ve written then directly, asking a question? That proves to me that it’s not you writing for you but for someone else, and you’re not seeing it and they don’t really care about this blog or about engagement. It’s always been my intention that we have engagement on this blog and since I know it’s not coming, that this is just a weigh station to drop a comment and move on, those are gone.

Third, the same goes for certain links. I don’t mind business links and I certainly don’t mind blogs. But I’ve seen more affiliate looking links popping up, folks trying to add specific pages to go to and such, and I know those are killing this blog. If the link is questionable I’m removing it. To date I’ve been removing links because I’ve noticed some folks leaving comments from different businesses, and I talked about that previously. Thing is, if I know it’s your website or blog I don’t have a problem with it; my buddy Sire has 7 or 8 blogs and he’ll switch up the links from time to time. I do it as well. But my picture comes with all of them, as does his; most of the folks dropping these things don’t have an image and thus it’s questionable.

Fourth, and this is the last one, if the name in the email is different than your name or your business name, I’m removing those comments as well. If you use a male first name & it’s a female name in the email, or vice versa, those are easy. I might miss a John and Jack and that’s okay because I know those two names can be used interchangeably. But I won’t miss a Bob and Steve; way too distinctive. If people are paying you to write for them the least they can do is give you a proper name and email; if not, I don’t need it here because I know for sure you’re not ever going to see what I’ve written back to you.

I know Adrienne’s going to be proud of me for taking these steps, that’s for sure. I appreciate when people comment here but I’d like to know that people are doing it because they care and want to exchange ideas, not as a pathway to a linking strategy. Yeah, I know it happens, but at least be more clandestine about it.

That’s all I’ve got; I suppose the commenting will drop some, but I’ll know who cares and who doesn’t from this point on.
 

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Blogging

Do You Need A Pretty Blog To Be Successful?

24 Comments

How many of you eat tuna fish? I know a few are going to say they don’t, but did you know that tuna is ranked as the most favored fish in the United States, with more than twice as many people eating it than salmon, which is #2? I was stunned by both of these because when I go to restaurants, most of the time they serve either haddock or cod. But these don’t seem to translate well to eating at home, which is why tuna and salmon rank so high.

my tuna mix

You know one of the strange things about tuna? It’s not a pretty food. Look at this picture of some tuna I made up the way I like it. When I posted this picture on Instagram some months ago and had it also going to Facebook, it was universally hated for its appearance. Yet, I know that all tuna looks pretty much like this after it’s been mixed with people’s favorite ingredients; have you ever seen Subway’s tuna?

Do I have a point? Of course! Lately there’s been a lot of discussion about what people’s blogs look like. I covered some of that on my previous post where I said if a website or blog works for you then go with it. I also said that it’s possible that people might not necessarily agree with you and that if they decide to stay away and you’re okay with it then fine, but if you want visitors you might decide to make some changes.

In my opinion, it’s not the look of blogs that drives people away as much as what a blog has to say. There are some very ugly and plain websites that draw thousands of visits a day. Why? Because someone found their content compelling enough to keep them coming and indirectly got them to share the content to help make them popular.

salmon teriyaki
Yeah, salmon…

This isn’t a slam on pretty websites or on fancy themes. They can be as pleasing and tempting as the dish on the left. It’s a postulation if you will that states content really matters a lot more than what one’s blog looks like. The idea of having a website look professional is a big one, but professional can be minimalistic as well as fancy-dancy with all sorts of things popping out and videos and music automatically playing and flash pages and… well, you get my drift. You don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for a blog theme unless you really want to.

That’s all I have; share your thoughts below.
 

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Blogging

We’re All Right And We’re All Wrong About Blogging

12 Comments

Yay, another post with a video! I know, it’s been 6 days since my last post here and that’s rare for me. I did that on purpose though because I had a couple of posts in a row that I thought were important enough to allow visitors to have their say about before I pushed on. If you’ve missed them please go back and check them out after this one.

Fields of Gold
Werner Kunz via Compfight

As I said in the video, today the sun is shining in central New York and that’s an anomaly for is at this time of year. Actually it popped out for maybe 20 minutes in the evening a couple of days ago but that’s too late to call it a sunny day. So I’m feeling good and thus decided that it was time to have a post on this topic, which is about blogging of course.

Over the past 5 years I’ve given a lot of advice on blogging. So have a lot of other people, some whom I’ve quoted here, some who I visit whenever I can. I’m part of the newsletters sent out by my Hot Blog Tips Hangout crew, and of course we do 3 videos every Sunday. The advice is pretty good I must say but if you’ve ever watched some of our videos, you’ll notice that every once in awhile we argue about something. It’s a short argument, nothing where we’re going to slap each other around (logistically it can’t happen anyway), but it proves a point.

That point is that all of us think we’re right and we are. At the same time none of us ever believes we’re wrong and we are. Kind of a dichotomy, eh? I’ll explain quickly, but not to take anything away from the video.

We all love blogging, but we all have something different we’re hoping to get out of it. When you think about it that’s true of all of you as well. It’s great getting some lessons from others, something that you feel you want to try out for yourself. But you also hear some advice that your mind says “I’m not doing that”. I know you do because I do.

So, if all of us look at the same information yet don’t do everything that everyone says, doesn’t that say that there’s someone out there who thinks we’re right and someone who thinks we’re wrong? By the way, I’m working on the concept that says it’s okay to be wrong sometimes because one, no one’s perfect, and two, even being wrong can produce great results. Think record players and penicillin.

With that said, here’s the video. Please, like the video, comment on the video, comment here on this blog post. Yeah, I know, most of you won’t watch the video or like it, even if you tell me you did, but I have to ask. 🙁


 

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Social Media

Is Social Media Giving You Everything You Need

42 Comments

My wife and I always seem to have the same discussion about me and one of my particular eating habits. She says that I don’t always have a filter for portion control. When I’m hungry or thirsty, my mind doesn’t quite see that maybe “this much” is all I need to get rid of either of those things. At least not all the time.

IMAG0173
um, chocolate milk!

Thus, sometimes my mind will say “I can eat that entire pizza” when logically I know I can’t. It’ll say “you need to heat up 20 chicken nuggets” when I know I can only eat 13. And yet, every once in awhile I hear her words jumping into my mind saying “that’s going to be too much, restrain yourself, which explains this picture of chocolate milk that I made in a 32oz cup, bypassing the 48oz cup I initially grabbed; yeah, that would have come close to taking the entire carton of milk. lol

I know what you’re wondering; what’s that got to do with the topic above. The thing about social media is that most of us can define it based on what we think it is and what we think it should do for us. Most of us believe it’s supposed to be everything we want it to be, no matter what the limitations or realities might be.

I’ll own up to it; I’m one of those people. I have my own idea of what social media is supposed to be, and I want it to be that thing, and yet it’s not that thing. Let me explain.

I enjoy much of social media, but I find it lacking. I love Twitter, which you’ve heard me mention before. I’ve enjoyed Facebook, and I keep trying to make Google+ work for me the way I want it to work. LinkedIn, well, I can’t say I’ve ever gotten any business from my participation there, even though that’s what it’s supposed to help us with, connecting with those people who may be able to use our services.

What is it I want from social media? Truthfully, when all is said and done I want more engagement, and I want it more immediately. As an experiment, last night I decided to try an experiment. I announced around 8:30 that I was going to hold a Google Hangout at 9PM and that anyone who wanted to come was welcome, as I could take the first 8 people who asked to participate. I posted it on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

I wasn’t expecting much, and for the first 10 minutes that’s exactly what I got. No one came; not even a hint. So I decided to invite some people, and invited 8 of them. Two people popped in surprisingly, and two others acknowledged it on G+ but neither could come. The two who showed up were Michael Belk and Beverly Mahone. Shocking to me was that both of them showed up via their smartphones, both then tried to get on through their laptops and failed, and Michael came back to the phone, while I never could get Bev back on. I thank both of them, and Michael and I had a good conversation for awhile after he got back on.

I know some people would say that I should have put that message out way in advance but I had to try an experiment first. Here’s my take on it all. If there are a billion people on Facebook, 500 million on Google Plus, and 300 million or so on Twitter, and all of these sites have people on them 24/7, and 9PM Eastern time is only 6PM out west, I should be able to post something 30 minutes before its time and have some people show up. Of course, I don’t have that many people following me so let’s look at it this way. If I have almost 700 people following me on both Google Plus and Facebook and another 3,000+ on Twitter, that’s almost 4,500 people, and if that’s the case I should still be able to get at least 3 or 4 to show up, wouldn’t you think?

Yum… lol

That’s what I thought. As Michael and I were talking, he said that the problem with social media is that it’s not really social. On Google Plus most people seem to be interested more in promoting themselves than in talking to anyone. For the most part the same is true of Twitter. On Facebook, people love playing games and sharing images, and you might be able to get a conversation going that takes place over a number of hours, but for anything immediate you have to use that chat function, and most of us don’t like that.

Isn’t that thought provoking? Social media not really being social? Goodness, for most people it’s not even a great way to market, no matter what we try, and when I think about it, most of the people on Twitter are marketing more than communicating, and I have to share in that one, although I only post my links twice a day at most. I try engaging people when I share some of their links & quotes and occasionally talk to people, but not all that often, and that’s my favorite platform.

Is social media giving me everything I need? Not even close. But what about you? Are you getting everything you could possibly want out of it? I’m not talking marketing wise now, so don’t answer that question. And I’m not talking blogging either, since I consider that part of social media, though more indirectly. How do you view what you get out of social media now? Is it enough, or is there something else you wish you were getting?

Oh yeah; that other picture is of… well, you know what it’s a picture of. I ate all of that as well, in one day but not in one sitting. My wife is right; sometimes I just want too much. 🙂
 

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Motivation/Inspiration

How Do You Accept Criticism?

59 Comments

Something different than the norm; that’s what I’m all about. What I’ve done today is what I’m calling a two-fer. You’ll see there’s a video below. I not only recorded a second video, which I actually did first, but I also wrote another post on my business blog on the same topic; kind of. The topic over there was Does Your Criticism Help? On that post I gave some ways that people can offer criticism, or advice, to others that’s helpful and positive. On this post I’m going to offer ways to ask people for advice and how to accept criticism, even when it’s bad criticism.

Angel

 

What’s bad criticism? When there’s nothing positive offered or nothing helpful, it’s bad criticism. Sometimes people don’t know that the criticism they’re giving isn’t helpful, either because they just don’t know how to be helpful or you haven’t helped by telling them what you need. That’s what I’m here to help you with by offering 5 tips you didn’t ask for; hey, you came to the blog didn’t you? 😉
Continue reading How Do You Accept Criticism? →

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