Category Archives: Blogging

Blogging

Do You Want Accountability Or Activity?

20 Comments

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.


by Michael Tracey

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

Blogging

Starting Your Blog Social Media Campaign Via Commenting

21 Comments

Last April I wrote a post to add to my Blogging Tips series titled How To Start Getting Visitors. It was a super basic tip on how to get some notice for one’s blog by contacting certain folks and letting them know you had a blog.

While that’s nice and all, one couldn’t quite call it a campaign towards increasing awareness. In essence, it was really like becoming an insurance salesperson and calling all your family members first, then all your friends, then your pseudo friends, and after that not knowing what to do with yourself.

I decided it was time to at least get more people going on this front. I do this because of two things. One, I had a meeting last week with a couple of ladies who wanted ideas on how they could create awareness of their new business through social media. I told them about blogging, based on what it is they do, and then told them the process they should go through to get going. Two, I made the same recommendation recently to someone who visits this blog, and though I’m not sure if he’s done the entire campaign I know that he was willing to listen and give it a try, so I have high hopes.

This is mainly for beginners, but it’s also for people who aren’t getting any real traffic to your site as well. This isn’t a talk about niche marketing; it’s a talk about working the process, meeting the blogging community, and getting known by others. And if you want some more starter information, check out my blogging tips.

Let me set the scenario for you; it’s possible you’ll have more or less time, but this is a great starter scenario. You’re someone who doesn’t have tons of time, but you want to get people to your blog. You write 3 posts a week, and often you have some time left over after you’re blogged, or some on days when you don’t blog. We’re going after the 30 minute process for you to undertake.

Your goal is to make comments on at least 5 blogs during that 30 minute time period. What you do is go to Google Blogs, which can actually be found by going to Google, clicking on “more”, then scrolling down a little bit. When the next page opens, you’ll see all sorts of blog posts on trending topics that look like news. But they’re all blogs, though some aren’t personal blogs. That’s really your goal, because you want the opportunity to stand out; that plus big time blogs like Huffington Post don’t have CommentLuv; this is a part of the strategy.

In the search box, put in a topic that you want to read on. It could be something in your niche, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Believe it or not that statement is controversial, because everyone else will tell you that you need to comment on blogs in your niche because you want targeted traffic. At this stage what you really need is traffic, and you also want the opportunity to not only show that you can talk to people and offer something good, but you still are hoping for the opportunity to stand out. So, you will be looking at blogs in your niche also, if that’s a part of your strategy, but that’s not what it’s all about. Networking; that’s what it’s all about.

For the first two weeks you need to be committed to commenting on at least 5 blogs a day. You can continue going to Google Blogs, but hopefully in your searches you have found a few blogs that you like well enough to return to. That’s important because something blog owners like are people who will come back more than once. You also want to look for a mix of blogs that have CommentLuv and those that don’t. You look for CommentLuv because it highlights previous blog posts of yours; you look for the others because you don’t want to look like one of those guys that “only” comments on CommentLuv blogs; it’s just a little smarmy.


by Petras Kudaras

In the next two weeks, you’re going to comment on blogs that you’ve found you like and now you’re going to make sure to look for blogs within your niche. The thought now is that you’ll have started establishing yourself with at least a couple of people, you’ll have left your links on their blogs, especially if they have CommentLuv, and now you’re going to go out on a campaign to see what others in your niche are saying and take the opportunity to make sure they know you’re around.

After four weeks, look at things this way. If you only had 3 days a week to do this process and only those 30 minutes, you’ve made at least 60 total connections, whether some of those folks received return visits or not. You’ve planted the seeds of knowledge that you’re out there. I would almost guarantee that you’ll have started seeing more visitors, especially if your titles have captured people’s imaginations and your content doesn’t stink.

Once you see the process starting to work, you’ll be hooked. I’ll throw this out there; how many of you who visit these days saw me as one of your initial commenters? How many of you picked up on that and decided you were going to start commenting on other blogs? How many of you found it contagious and uplifting when people finally started coming to your blog? You may not have followed it in the manner I’m recommending here, but you did this in some capacity, right?

Yes, blogging does take more work than just writing posts. But your rewards on the end could give you more than you can imagine; that sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Blogging

What Do You Want For Your Blog?

21 Comments

Last week I was reading a post on Mike’s Life blog titled Why Businesses Should Blog Outside The Box. It was written well, and it made an interesting point in saying that once he was able to convince a friend of his to find a way to convince people who didn’t know they needed him and his business that his friend’s business skyrocketed once he figured out how to reach that particular market.


Dream On
by Gisela Giardino

It was interesting to think about because I believe most of us really are searching for those people who we believe need us or want what we have to offer in some fashion, and we don’t really think as much about reaching out to those people who may not know they need us. Of course, that really would be thinking outside the box, and I’m unsure how we’d get it done.

Actually, that’s not true at all; at least for me. I find myself always trying to convince people I meet to stop by my blogs. Most of them aren’t really interested in many of the things I talk about… at least that’s often my first thought. Then I start thinking that there are people who visit this blog because one never knows what the heck I might be talking about, and I invite people to stop by once I’ve had a chance to talk to them. I often find that I’m talking to someone that mentions something I’ve written about on this blog, and I’ll say to them “hey, I wrote about that; you should check out my blog.”

Of course, just because I get people here doesn’t mean I know what I want for this blog. It’s something I’ve been thinking about as we get towards the end of the year, and as I start the creep towards post #1,000. Some think I should talk more about myself; some think the path I’ve undertaken in the previous posts over all these years is sufficient. Frankly, I haven’t fully come to grips with what I want for this blog.

So I dream and think, and in sharing it maybe you’ll dream and share. I’m not about to lay out my goals for 2011 on this post; that’s later. But here are things I’m thinking about. Do I want to make money on this blog? Do I want to increase my overall influence through this blog? Do I want to keep increasing all my measurable numbers, as in more subscribers and a lower Alexa ranking? Do I want to talk more tech or talk more blogging and writing or share more stories or add more motivational stuff? Do I want to add more video (can’t just yet) or audio? Do I want to use this blog to get more business overall?

What do I want for this blog? I’ll be thinking about that over the next few days. What do you want for your blog? Have you thought about it, and if not, will you?
 

Blogging

Why I May Not Comment On Your Blog

57 Comments

It seems to me that there’s enough information online and people talking about this subject that other folks might start listening to it in some fashion. Alas, it’s not the case, so I’m here to be the guy to bring it up, popular or not. It’s probably going to come across as a harsh post, and that’s not its intention. Sometimes I just have to be real; this is one of those times.


Comments by Boltron

I comment on a lot of blogs; I visit a heck of a lot more. It still surprises me that so many people have set things up that discourage many of us from commenting on your blog. I mean, it’s not hard; it’s not rocket science. All that’s needed is a thought about where your blog is, how your blog is set up, and what you’re hoping to get out of your blog. Making it easy for people to comment on your blog, no matter what; is that too much to hope for?

Okay, some of that might not be fair, but then I haven’t gotten into any details yet. I guess that’s where I should start, so we can get a discussion going.

1. If you’re moderating comments, you’re getting on my nerve. Moderated comments tells me that you care more about spam than about thanking people for wanting to comment on your blog. If it worries you so much, then put up a disclaimer up front that you’re moderating comments and I won’t waste my time. But then, if you did that I, and maybe a lot of people people, won’t comment on your blog. That’s somewhat disingenuous, isn’t it? The other thing about writing a comment on a blog that moderates comments is that suddenly you’re getting bombarded with a bunch of comments all at once in email, and if the owner of the blog isn’t putting any names in, you have no idea which response is to you, if there’s one to you at all. I hate that, but it leads to point #2.

2. If you’re not responding to my comments, you’re getting on my nerve. I didn’t just stop by and write “good post” and move on. It might not have been the theory of relativity but I at least gave you a response that showed you I read what you had to say. Now, do I expect a response all the time? Actually yes I do, but if you miss one or two I won’t mind. But if you seem to exhibit a pattern of not responding to my comments, I probably will stop coming, and I don’t want any complaints about it, whether you visit me or not. Goodness, I’m as busy as the next person, and if I’m responding to almost every comment I deserve knowing that you appreciated my taking the time out to respond back to you.

3. Are you still using Disqus, or one of those other services? Haven’t you realized yet that you’re losing comments? Obviously you didn’t see Sire’s poll, which is still ongoing by the way. I mean, 45% of people said they wouldn’t leave a comment on one of these blogs; are you really getting enough comments that losing 45% of potential visitors is okay for you? And, by the way, if you read the post, you’ll see that some of the people who said they’d still leave a comment overwhelmingly said they didn’t like it, and didn’t do it on all blogs that run this service, but most of them. So, add at least another 25% to the mix and then ask why you don’t have lots of comments. By the way, you’re a dying breed; so many people lately have jumped on the CommentLuv bandwagon and found other ways to block spam and they’re starting to thrive. One guy told me his comments jumped threefold; how’s about that!

4. Are you verifying that people are receiving your responses back to them? This one’s dicey because of you folks running free blogs on WordPress.com. It doesn’t give you the ability to set things up so you can make sure people are seeing that you’ve responded to them, and that’s a shame. Since I’m someone who won’t subscribe or login to receive comments when I get that email (after all, I already checked the box on your blog that asked if I wanted to subscribe to comments), I’ll only revisit blogs of those of you I happen to like; you know who you are if you’ve seen my comments on your blog. If you’re answering a lot of people and rarely hear back from them, this could be an issue for you. But I’m not the guy who can tell you to spend your money on self hosting and a domain name; spend your money your way. However, I am the guy to tell you that it’s the way to go if you get serious about blogging.

5. Some of you know I don’t like Blogger/Blogspot blogs. I don’t like them because you have to create a login name to comment so that you’ll get responses back. I have one for my business name, and I’m still trying to figure out how that happened, but not for any of my other blogs or websites, including this one. Some blogs I want to comment on aren’t appropriate for my business account, and thus I’ll either skip it or comment using the email for this blog, but of course Blogger won’t let you put in an email, and thus you never know if you got a response or not. This fact impeded a lot of blogs I wanted to check out when we had that network meme a week or so back. On this one, same answer I gave to the previous point; I can’t tell you what to do, but if you’re serious about blogging, think about it.

That’s it; that’s my rant. I’ve actually ranted on all these things in the past, as you can see from some of the links, but I guess it’s been awhile. People forget, and thus I figured I’d bring it up again. If you don’t really care, then that’s fine; if you do, well, at least think about it.

Buffalo Bills Red-Navy Blue Pleather Varsity Team Tall Sizes Full Zip Jacket

Buffalo Bills Red-Navy Blue Pleather Varsity Team Tall Sizes Full Zip Jacket

Blogging

A Networking Meme

33 Comments

I’m giving up my normal Sunday Question once again to be a small, outside of something that I think could end up being kind of cool; or not, as my wife sometimes thinks my sense of cool is skewed.


Meme by Michael Boston

Back in late November, our friend Kissie wrote a post talking about having what she was calling a Community Networking Meme. She wanted to set something up that was kind of formal for bloggers to answer some questions about themselves, ask other people to participate as well, and visit the blogs of those people who were participating in the process and comment on those blogs.

I love the idea; but I’m not someone big on formality, as you know. Still, I wanted to play in my own way, so I’ve decided that I’m going to play with answering the 10 questions and inviting other people to write about the same thing on their blog, and if you’d like to link back to this blog and Kissie’s blog so we can come visit you to see what you’ve written. Or not; you can comment on what I write here and leave it at that, or you can answer your questions here, or you can just read and leave; that’s what freedom of expression is all about.

She did have one rule that I might end up breaking. She said that one should answer the questions with something that’s different than an answer you might have already given if you’ve addressed these questions in some fashion previously. Well, I have about 900 posts on this blog, and I have no idea what I’ve responded to before or how, so I’m not making any promises along those lines. That plus I’m writing this post two weeks in advance, so who knows where my mind will be by the time this is posted.

Okay, enough of that; let’s get to the questions, and please don’t forget to “like” this one and of course retweet!

1. If you could interview anyone on your blog (alive or dead) who would you choose and why?

Sure, let’s start off with the hardest question. I was going to cheat and list my top 5, but I’m going to play fair. But how does one do it? Do you pick a hero, someone important to history, or a family member who you’d love to glean information from? I decided to go with history and I’d pick Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of Independence, the 3rd president of the United States, the guy who really could have abolished slavery and didn’t, the guy who pushed through the Louisiana Purchase, and probably one of the smartest guys to ever be president of this country.

2. What do you feel is your strength as a blogger?

I have a vivid imagination, and the only thing that stops me from writing more is time.

3. Can you share a little bit about yourself that you have not already mentioned on your blog?

I’m trying to think of what I’ve never revealed about myself on this blog that I’d even think of sharing with someone else, and it’s a hard one. I guess I’ll just say that I have a very finite set of principles that I believe many people would equate with what they believed those who believed in any religious principle might want to live by, yet I don’t have a religion, don’t believe in an entity of that sort, and I’m hoping I can figure out a way through all the science books I also read to stay alive forever. I think that’s going to be a losing proposition, however.

4. If you were forced to change the name of your blog, what would you change it to? Why?

Silly as this sounds, I’d change the name of the blog to I’m Just Saying, since that’s actually the expression I use all the time. lol

5. What do you think is the most fulfilling part of being a blogger?

The people who stop by for a brief chat and meeting new people by visiting their blogs as well.

6. What would you do with your last day if you found you had only one more day to live?

I’m gonna get a fly girl, gonna get some spank and drive off in a def OJ for a quick stop at a Chinese restaurant, then to a chocolate shop where I’m only going to eat chocolate and chocolate covered stuff while listening to Jackson Five and Michael Jackson music and writing that final blog post until it’s time to go.

7. You’ve been doing medical research for decades and have finally found a cure. What was it that you found a cure for and why did you choose this particular ailment?

I chose cancer. Yes, there are a host of things out there that can get you, but cancer is the only one that can strike everyone no matter whether they’ve lived a healthy life or not. No one is really sure where some of the cancers come from nor how they get them, and my dad had lung cancer as well, so it’s the one that gets my initial attention.

8. What is your most guilty pleasure?

Are you kidding me? Chocolate, and I don’t feel guilty about it one bit! lol

9. Answer only one. What is your favorite book, movie or TV show?

Star Trek, all of them.

10. What do you think is the very best smell in the world? The one smell that can take you back to a time and place of a very vivid memory in your past?

Chocolate; hmmm, seems I said that already. 🙂

Winter Wonderland Imagekind
Winter Wonderland
by Ginette FineArt