All posts by Mitch Mitchell

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

Fussing About Guest Posters Again

20 Comments

Yes, another minor rant about guest posters, and this time I was so moved that I had to do a video. Therefore, I’m not going to write a long piece, but I am going to say a few things before the video because, after all, just having a video doesn’t help with SEO all that much now does it? 🙂

Annoyed Isaac, Julia - Cocoro
Alpha via Compfight

Here’s the overall deal, if I may. Unless someone specifically asks you to write a guest post for them, whenever you do so it means that if someone publishes your post they’re doing you a favor, not the other way around. Yeah, I know that some people think the owner of the blog is getting something out of it, mainly free content so that they don’t have to write all the posts themselves, but so what.

If you come into my house to paint the walls and you’re going to get something out of it on the back end (maybe not money like a painter but guest posters are getting something), it means you don’t have to clean up when you’re done? You’re going to leave your drop cloths, dirty paint brush, stupid paint tray and tape all over my walls?

In that case, you were called and asked to do something, the rules change some when that happens. But if you called me and asked to paint one of my walls because you wanted to highlight your work, and I agree, does that mean that because you feel you’ve enhanced my space that nothing else counts? When you leave you leave a mess and you never come back?

That’s the basic premise behind what’s in the video, as I address an issue that came up yesterday with someone who wasn’t pleased that I yanked his links from his post when he didn’t fulfill the qualifications of my guest posting policy on my finance blog. People, if you’re looking to promote yourself in someone else’s space, whether it costs you or not, and it leads you to request the right to submit a guest post, follow the rules of the site, plain and simple. And before anyone who’s not familiar with this blog asks, no, I do not accept guest posts from anyone I don’t already know; let’s hope that at least was read. lol

And now, on with the fussing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxUkoTMZqx0


 

Blogging

Post #1,400; Are You Catching Up?

36 Comments

Yup, I’ve finally hit post #1,400, and this is it. I wrote post #1,300 on June 1st of last year, which means it’s taken me 8 1/2 months to write these last 100. That’s the longest it’s ever taken me to write 100 posts, but it was on purpose as I said I was going to slow down some.

IMAG0115

Slowing down doesn’t mean I didn’t stick to my core themes though. Out of those 100 posts I wrote 36 of them on blogging and 16 on social media, while everything else was a nice mix of lots of things. That shows pretty good balance in staying true to the mission of this blog, which is to share whatever I want to share but mainly commenting on things that have to do with being online, mainly blogging.

I’m doing two things differently this time around; always shaking things up. I’m going to post my favorite 5 posts out of the past 100, then I’m going to post my favorite posts from my first year of blogging on this bad boy, for which the period is 12/7/2007 – 12/7/2008, where I wrote 309 posts; I wonder how many of you have written that many posts for the life of your blog. 🙂

I used to have a very rigorous writing schedule for this blog; I also only had 2 blogs back then. Because it was a new thing for me, not really niched, it was both easy and hard to write, and I wrote lots of junk; I can admit that. But I also wrote some stuff that’s evergreen, and I want to share those articles. Comments are turned off though; I now only allow comments for 2 years on my posts, to keep down extraneous spam. But I share them anyway because I know a couple of them offer information that someone might like to know. First, this period’s favorite 3:

Dream It And It Will Come – my most popular post ever, tells the story of a friend of mine who figured out how to follow his dream of visiting 42 states in 2 months and meeting people in person that he’d met online over the years, which included me

I Found A Dream; Now The Goals – my second most popular post ever, following up on the first one by talking about my own dream and goal for the year

10 Blog Tips In 2 Minutes – I wanted to prove that short didn’t mean insufficient, and also to prove I could write short posts lol

11 Lessons Learned From 11 Years In Business – at this point it’s 11 1/2 years, but I highlighted a milestone of mine with some valuable business advice

12 Things For 12/12/12 – I don’t rant often, but this was a combination of a rant and some general thoughts of mine that got way more visits than comments, but that’s okay because to some it could have seemed controversial

That’s not so bad for the last 100 posts is it? Now, my top 10 of my first year of blogging; I hope to keep writing stuff like this as time goes on, because if I say so myself some of it was ahead of its time, and it wasn’t all about blogging lol:

Credit Card Solutions – This is my strangest post because I actually rewrote the post 18 months because a lot of what I originally had on it disappeared. Still, if you want to learn how to handle your credit card creditors, this is for you

Publish Your Own Book – Many people are telling you how to do it now, but back in 2008 I was one of the first, talking about how I published mine

Blogging Step Four – What And How To Write – This was the last installment on my first series on blogging, and I linked back to the previous posts.

Be Responsible For Your Own Life – one of my earliest motivational posts, but certainly not the last

Blog Action Day – Poverty – my first foray into social issues, joining with other bloggers around the world to discuss a subject I personally didn’t live, but lived around people who were living it daily.

The Gurus Don’t Know It All – most of us can’t learn how to make money from these books, videos or podcasts that gurus sell us because they leave stuff out. I confronted a guru & asked him some questions, and 3 years later he’s still never answered them

Book Writing Series – Step One, The Concept – Once again, I was one of the earliest bloggers talking about the process of thinking about writing a book, and this was the first of my series on the subject

World Diabetes Day – My Story – social cause number two, this time sharing the story of how I learned I was diabetic; I hope you’re paying attention to your body’s potential signs

Is Social Media Hurting Your Online Business? – a pointed post that was based on how some people in business, offline and online, lost business and clients because of things they said during the presidential election of 2008, forgetting that just because you believe you have the right to say what you want to say doesn’t mean your potential customers will buy from you or stay with you afterwards, especially if you presented yourself as a jerk

A Point About Commenting On Blogs – goodness, it’s the topic that won’t go away, as I, and others, are still writing posts about blog commenting, or the lack thereof. Guess I’ll have to keep doing it until people get it right. 🙂

There you have it; 1,400 posts down, and hopefully I’ll get to 1,500 before Christmas; yeah, I think that’s a given. Who’s next?
 

Blogging

What Would Make You Really Love Your Blog?

29 Comments

This is a much different question than what you think it is. I was thinking about it last night as I was reviewing some information on goal setting and dreams and the like, and it hit me; what would really make me love my blogs.

Sugar Skulls, Paper Flowers; Chasing Light, The Golden Hour
Brandon Warren
via Compfight

Yes, for me it’s blogs obviously, since I have 5 of them. I write in this one the most, and I love that I can pretty much write about anything I want to, breaking down the norms of those who say that it takes a specific niche blog to actually generate traffic and get people to stop by on a consistent basis. Of course, it helps to write about something that people are looking for on the internet because it helps drive traffic, but the love of writing a blog and sharing thoughts… is that what I really love about my blog?

The question isn’t what you love about your blog, or about the process of blogging. The question is what would make you really love it. I can easily answer that one; if they made money.

Yes, money is the big deal for me, even if I don’t necessarily go out of my way to do it. As I’ve said before, I make money off only one blog, and it’s not outstanding money. My finance blog makes the most money out of all my blogs. I get that money from multiple sources; people paying me to write for them, people paying me to post an article they’ve written, and people paying me to advertise on it. The advertising part has dried up as companies have gotten scared because of Penguin and Panda and misunderstanding how proper linking and advertising works, but so be it.

Now, I wouldn’t even have to make the money directly, as I do on that blog. Whereas I love writing about the topic of leadership on my business blog, I would love if it generated speaking engagements or requests for training of some type. It has in the past, but not lately. I still love writing it, but if it only made money I’d really love it.

Thus, I put the same question out to you; what would it take to make you really, and I mean REALLY, love your blog? And for those of you who complain about long posts, this short one’s for you; don’t get used to it. lol
 

Blogging

5 Random Thoughts About Blogging After A Local Blogging Get Together

26 Comments

After all the lamentations I’ve made on this blog periodically about how hard it is to get local people to notice your websites or blogs I got invited, last minute, to a local blogging get together in downtown Syracuse. It was a lot of fun, and if you’re interested in my little writeup about the event check it out here on my Syracuse Wiki blog.

IMAG1883

It was a lot of fun and I had a good time. Matter of fact, we all had a good time, so much so that we stayed 30 minutes past when we had planned on leaving, and I was ready to go another hour. I hope some of you get to do such a thing one of these days, as it was as much fun as some of the tweetups I’ve gone to.

Being me, once I got home I decided to look at all of the blogs just to see what people do and how they blog. After doing that, and looking back on the event, and thinking about a question Brian Hawkins was pondering lately about how people perceive what blogs are, I came to some random thoughts about blogging, perception, and reality. I decided to keep it at 5, otherwise we could be here for days. Here are my thoughts; I’d love to hear your impressions about these later on.

1. There’s no one way to blog. Yeah, I already knew that one, but this brought it home. We all live in the same community, some for many years, some for a few. Some of us have shared experiences, as I knew a few of the people there. And yet, each of us has something different to say in many different ways. Our language is different in how we describe things, and how we share our passions are different as well. It’s truly fascinating.

2. Images really do enhance blogs drastically. It was only a couple of years ago that I started adding images to every post of mine and I thought it was just a nice touch. As I looked at many of the blogs from the local people I realized that there’s something about images, especially personal images or images highlighting something folks have done, that makes some posts special. One of these days I’m going to have to figure out how to get myself into more of my images, although the ladies are easily more photogenic than I am.

3. The question about what makes a blogger is hard to answer. All of the people who showed up saw themselves as bloggers. Yet, about 33% of them haven’t written a new blog post in 6 months or so. Does the act of owning a blog make you a blogger, or are you a blogger if you’re actually blogging on some kind of a consistent basis? I’m one of those folks who feels if there hasn’t been a post within at least 3 months you’re not a blogger, but who gives me the right to determine such things anyway?

4. All bloggers need to find ways to communicate better with each other when it comes to comments. Only one of the blogs that I commented on actually sent me something telling me someone had responded to a comment I left. That highlights something I come across on many other blogs, where people sometimes actually have responded to a comment, but their notification system is out of whack thus commenters never know that their missives were responded to. It’s something we all need to check from time to time by leaving a comment on our own blogs, after signing out of course, then responding to it and seeing if you get notification from yourself; uhhh, use a different email address for your original test comment of course. lol If you don’t get a response, you know you have to fix it somehow, probably with a plugin of some sort.

5. When all is said and done, it’s about community. Even folks without a lot of blog posts or comments on their blogs crave a community of some sort, people they can relate to in one way or another. The night of our event it was cold, with wind gusts up to 40 MPH. The lady who put it all together said she was worried only 3 or 4 people would show up because of that, yet a lot of people braved the weather, which was actually worse the next day.

Why should we write blogs? I often say there’s only 3 purposes in writing a blog; to entertain, to inform, or to educate. It turns out there’s a silent 4th purpose; to connect with others. No matter whether you’re writing about food or interior design or poems or short stories or blogging or running or whatever, you’re hoping someone stops by, reads your words, comments or subscribes to what you put out, and at some point maybe talking to that person outside of a blog and, if you’re lucky enough, meeting some of those people in person. I mean, how social can social media get!

Those are my random thoughts; what are yours?
 

Blogging

Questioning Links In Comments

38 Comments

Just over a week ago I wrote a post where I asked about editing comments and whether anyone else does it. There was a lot of discussion, some pro, some con, but all handled with courtesy, and I thank everyone for that. A couple of comments centered about the thought about what makes a good or bad link that someone will use whenever they leave a comment and how people handled that, which I saw as a different issue at the time.

DMU Comment Study (with)
Chris Martino via Compfight

But it’s a good time to talk about it now. This is an appropriate discussion to have because we all know that our blogs are judged by search engines, most particularly Google, on the types of links we end up having because of those who comment on our blogs.

Those of us who have been blogging for a long time aren’t naive. We know that probably half the comments we get aren’t coming from blog owners, or anyone who has anything to do with the site links that appear next to the comment. We know that a lot of the comments we get are coming from people who could care less about our blog; they’re only looking for the backlink.

Over the last week I’ve been taking a look at some of the links from people who are either brand new or relatively new commenters on this blog. I’ve seen some interesting sites that have left me somewhat confused as to what to do about them. The comments haven’t been bad, but the links… questionable.

What am I seeing? Links going to sites that are going to sales pages, not businesses. Sites with blogs that are on topics that make you wonder “how the heck did that person come up with that as an idea?” Sites with blog posts that are over a year old. Sites to blogs that aren’t really blogs, but are presented as niche blogs that don’t even allow comments. Links to sites in another language, not blogs, where I can’t figure out what they’re about.

Part of this puts me in an interesting position. After all, this isn’t a niche blog per se, but it’s a blog that talks mainly about blogging and blogs. So, I’ve always dealt more with the arts of writing a blog and commenting on blogs than looking at links from those who comment. And yet, one can’t dispute the reality that my buddy Adrienne helped hammer through that bad links can take you down, and what Brian Hawkins said in our Google Hangout video that he’ll remove dodgy links or links he doesn’t fully trust in a heartbeat.

And of course we had that debate about editing comments, but I think we all have to view this one differently. Back in December I talked about my blog traffic and how it was falling drastically and how I hoped it would start to come back in the new year. Well, it’s recovering, but barely, and it may or may not be related to a lot of bad links. But since I can’t trust Broken Link Checker on this blog anymore I guess it’s just on me. Actually, maintaining our blogs to the best of our ability is on all of us, but I’m the one writing about it today.

So, I will be removing links here and there, even if I don’t remove the comment. If that bothers you I’m sorry. I’m going to be fair by looking at links, but I’m not going to entertain a discussion on why I removed your link; you probably already know why.

Here’s the deal, so we’re clear. If your site looks like a sales site instead of a real business site or a blog, it’s gone. I don’t care what niche the link is in if it’s a legitimate business.

If it’s a blog that looks kind of dodgy, it’s gone. If the blog doesn’t accept comments, it’s gone. Blogging is supposed to be about conversations; I’ve said that here often. So, blogs where comments are closed; gone.

If the email address given doesn’t have the same name as the person writing the comment, gone. If the email address doesn’t have a person’s name in it, gone. This part is because I’ve been getting a lot of email bounces lately and I’ve noticed that most are either from “info@” or names where it’s one sex but the email begins with another sex. I’m not going to deal with that part at all. On this one, it now means that if I’m going to have such a policy that I need to create an email address for my finance blog with my name on it to be consistent; can’t expect others to follow a policy I won’t follow for myself, although I almost never comment via that venue. But I do from time to time and don’t want to be a hypocrite.

There it is, out in the open. What’s going to happen is some aren’t going to read this, since they don’t read the comment policy anyway, and a very tiny few aren’t going to like it, or will be wondering what’s going on. That will just prove that people aren’t reading the articles; shame on you. Let’s see what happens; thanks Adrienne! 🙂