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Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

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Good Blogging is a State of Mind

Darren Rowse had an interesting blog post recently about the lessons he has learned from his five-year-old son about blogging. His son, otherwise known a “X”, is really into art, and often thinks about his next project while doing other activities.

It is a concept that resonated with me because, in many respects, blogging is about the next post. By their very nature, blogs are fluid and dynamic creatures. A good blog (and bloggers) constantly keeps moving forward. As much as a particular post can be fantastic, it is not long before the next post must be produced.

For some people, the steady demands of blogging can be overwhelming, which is why many blogs die on the vine after a few weeks or months. The need to “feed the beast” is a fact of life. By not blogging on a regular basis, a blog can lack the consistency it needs to attract an audience.

So what are the things that can be done to keep the beast happy?

A key is coming up with a non-stop flow of ideas that can be turned into blog posts. As important is the recognition that ideas can come from anywhere. You can be talking to a friend or colleague. Ideas can come from a newspaper article, blog post or newsletter. They can emerge when you’re working out, taking a shower or listening to music.

Given this reality, it is important to “bookmark” these ideas as they materialize. Keep a piece of paper or small notebook in your pocket, or have a text document on your desktop to quickly write down ideas. By being disciplined, you will be surprised by how quickly a notebook or document can start to fill up with ideas.

Not all of these ideas are going to be amazing but there will be enough quality ideas to keep your blog vibrant and consistent. As important, you’ll discover that as you open yourself up to ideas and start capturing them, the ideas will start to flow.

To paraphrase Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” (see the video below), doing well with your blog means being in a “Blogging State of Mind”.

By Mark Evans - January 23rd, 2012 - 3 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Five Ways to Maintain Your Blogging Passion

Truth be told, blogging is probably the most challenging part of the social media ecosystem.

Writing a blog requires time, ideas, creative and writing skills. And there the effort required to consistently generate good content is considerable, particularly when the ideas aren’t flowing.

So how do you keep your blogging passion? What keeps the posts coming day after day, week in week out?

1. Be passionate. The easiest way to keep things humming along is being focused on a topic or topics that you’re passionate about. This makes it more fun than work, even though there is a lot of work involved. Have a focus also lets you allocate resources (mostly time) more efficiently than having a scattered approach.

2. Be consistent. Like exercise, blogging is easier when it’s part of the regular routine. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. If you stop working out or blogging on a regular basis, it can be difficult to get going again.

3. Variety if the spice of life. Blog posts that consistently take the same approach, style and length can feel like a product on an assembly line. On the other hand, writing different types of blog posts can be like cooking different meals each day. Sometimes, a post is a lengthy opinion piece, sometimes a post is a short comment on a news event or a post written by someone else, and sometimes a blog post is a video or a photo with a caption.

4. Read other blogs. It is important not to operate in a blogging silo in which all you’re doing is writing about your own thoughts or ideas. By reading other sources, it opens up the world to new ideas, perspectives, companies and people. Inevitably, it leads to some inspiration or even a nugget of an idea.

5. Get out and about. Talking to other people and hearing their ideas and thoughts is a a great way to spark new ideas for blog posts. In these situations, taking some quit notes can generate a flurry of potential blog posts.

More: Paul Jun has a blog post on Problogger talking about the benefits of taking a break from blogging to jump-start your blogging activity.

 

 

 

 

By Mark Evans - November 3rd, 2011 - 2 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Mommy Bloggers: Passionate, Engaged and Nice

I’ve heard lots of stories and read plenty of stories about mommy bloggers. There is no doubt that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of mommy bloggers. Just ask the folks at Motrin, who faced the wrath of the mommy blogger after launching a new advertising campaign that didn’t go as intended.

Although I was quite familiar with mommy bloggers, I had never actually met one until last week when I moderated an industry event that brought bloggers together from across Canada.

And you know what? They were as passionate, enthusiastic and engaged as I imagined but also nice, excited and happy to share their experiences.

What I found fascinating about the three mommy bloggers that I spent the day with was how their path to becoming a blogger just happened as opposed to them having a master plan to establish themselves as high-profile bloggers.

Even more impressive is how popular Kathryn Lavallee and Jody Arsenault have become in a relatively short period of time. Both have been blogging for less than two years but have built up a large following on their blogs and on Twitter.

Their embrace of blogging reflects who their are (mothers), their interest in helping other people, a dedication to the job and how blogging has become a business.

Lavallee and Arsenault live in small towns in Saskatchewan and Manitoba respectively so blogging is also a way for them to create a network outside their communities and, as important, establish new relationships and attract new opportunities.

As a blogger, it is encouraging to meet people who are just as passionate and into blogging and the various benefits that it offers.

 

 

 

By Mark Evans - October 31st, 2011 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Tumblr: Social Media’s Next Superstar?

Are you a Tumblr?

These days, the number of people using Tumblr is growing by leaps and bounds, attracting 13 million pageviews a month, compared with two billion at the beginning of the year. Tumblr attracts 72 million visitors a month, more than half of them from outside the U.S., according to Quantcast,

So who’s using Tumblr and why?

The Nielsen Co. suggests there are more women (53.5%) than men (46.5%) using Tumblr, and the dominant demographic group is people 18-to-34-years-old (44.4%), while the 35-to-49-year-old demographic ranks second at 25.2%.

Tumblr’s appeal likely lies in its simplicity and user-friendliness. As self-hosted service, it is easy to set up an account on Tumblr, do some minor customization, and then start posting text (aka blog posts), photos, videos, quotes or music.

Tumblr has many of the same features as WordPress.com and Blogger.com but it comes across as easier and hipper although no one could argue that Blogger was ever hip.

Another attractive thing about Tumblr is how easy it can be used as a mobile application. Personally, I used Tumblr’s iPhone app to post photographs as opposed to using a pure photo app such as Instagram.

While Tumblr has been experiencing tremendous growth, it will be interesting to see what unfolds now that it has raised $85-million in venture capital from a group of investors that inclues Greylock Partners, Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Richard Branson.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblr-raises-85-million-from-greylock-parters-and-ivp-2011-9#ixzz1ZuDMzqTL

Are you a Tumblr? If so, why do you use it, and what do you primarily use it to do?

By Mark Evans - October 5th, 2011 - 5 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Do Brands Really Get Bloggers Yet?

“Many brands don’t have a clue how to work with bloggers. And bloggers don’t know how to work with brands.”
- Donna Marie Antoniadis, co-founder and chief operating officer with ShesConnected.com, which organized a conference last week in Toronto that brought together 200 of “Canada’s most influential digital women” and many of the country’s biggest brands. (Source: The Toronto Star)

Antoniadis’ quote is interesting and surprising given blogging has been around for nearly 10 years, and most companies recognize the growing importance of bloggers within their communications and marketing programs.

At this point in the game, you would think that brands would have a solid grasp on how to deal with bloggers – much they have a good understanding of how to deal with reporters.

But there is some truth in Antoniadis’ contention. For many brands, the extent of their blogger relations is probably limited to top-tier or popular blogs, which tend to operate and look like traditional media. This makes these blog easy for brands to identify and target, particularly if there are high-profile bloggers that focus on particular topics or sectors.

The challenge for many brands is reaching bloggers beyond the top layer. Part of the problem is there can be thousands of blogs, and it can be difficult to determine how much traffic they attract and how consistently they create high-quality content. This can make it daunting or impossible for brands to discover the right bloggers without spending an inordinate amount of time and effort.

For bloggers who don’t have a lot of contact with brands, it can be difficult to capture their attention or even get brands aware they exist. Many bloggers have little, if no, experience with brands so likely don’t know how to approach brands or who to approach. It means bloggers operate in isolation as opposed to being part of the brand mix.

So what can be done to close the gap between brands and bloggers?

Perhaps one of the easiest way to fix the gap is getting brands to embrace bloggers or, at least, provide them with an opportunity to get themselves into the spotlight.

It might be something as simple as having a form on a Web site in which bloggers can provide information about themselves so brands can get enough information to determine whether a particular blogger should be included without outreach programs.

The form needs to be obvious and accessible given many bloggers have no experience in dealing with brands or media relations departments. The forms also need to simple to complete but provide brands with enough data and information to figure out who needs to be inside the digital tent.

This is just one approach but the bigger idea is figuring out how brands and bloggers can establish and build new relationships.

By Mark Evans - October 3rd, 2011 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Does Anyone Care About the Blogger Refresh?

For the interesting services that Google offers, one of the most mysterious is Blogger.

Since Google purchase Pyra Labs, which owned Blogger.com, it is almost like Google has happily ignored it. In the meantime, WordPress has emerged as the dominant blogging platform, while Tumblr has also become popular and Twitter is the dominant micro-blogging service.

The curious part about  Blogger is how Google did nothing with it to the point where it looked antiquated.

It begs the question why did Google has not be more aggressive with one of the world’s most popular blogging services? There might not be a good answer but you can’t help but think Blogger has failed to capitalize on its potential over the past eight years.

This makes for interesting discussion given Blogger just introduced a “fresh new look” with a design overhaul that came after Google did interviews to “identify how to make Blogger even easier and more enjoyable to use”.

The question is whether anyone cares. If you look at Blogger’s traffic, the number of unique visitors in the U.S. has tumbled by 50% over the past year to about six million/month (See the graph below).

The problem with Blogger is it’s not cutting-edge or cool. For anyone starting a blog, WordPress would be front and centre because it offers more flexibility by offering hosted and self-hosted options. As well, WordPress has an army of developers supporting the platform, which means you can do just about anything  imaginable. I’d also pick Tumblr way ahead of Blogger.

WordPress’ popularity and robustness as a content management systems has also seen it become increasingly embraced as a platform for Web sites, not just blogs. In comparison, Blogger, until recently, was pretty much the same as it was in 2003.

Blogger may be the latest property be impacted by a broad design refresh that Google is currently implementing but I doubt it will make much of a difference on how the service is perceived or used.

 

For more thoughts on Blogger’s decline, eConsultancy has a good read asking whether it’s a matter of too little, too late.

 

 

By Mark Evans - September 5th, 2011 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Social Media

Have Blogs Really Become Un-Trendy?

I’m a big fan of blogging. Since catching the bug in 2004, which seems like a long time ago, my love affair with blogs has never waxed or waned.

Along the way, I’ve started and written about 15 months blogs. Many of them have come and gone, although my personal blog has been humming along with at least five posts a week for the past seven years. As well, I’ve written the Sysomos blog since early-2009.

In my heart of hearts, I still believe blogs to be the most effective and powerful medium within the social media landscape because they provide a platform for insight, information and thought leadership. At a time when there is a growing amount of digital noise, blogs offer a way to stand out from the crowd. A good personal or corporate blog can achieve all kinds of positive benefits.

Despite my enthusiasm, there is no denying blogs are no longer the belle of the social ball. They’re hard work, and take a lot of time, effort, consistency and creativity. As a result, they stand in stark contrast to easier options such as Twitter, Facebook or, for that matter, Tumblr.

This reality hit me recently while reading a column in the Globe & Mail by Leah McLaren, who wrote that “These days, though, people think in kitten-video virals and 140-character limits, and thoughtful, well-written blogs are about as trendy as thoughtful, well-written books – which is to say, they’re still culturally relevant, but not very trendy at all.”

As a hard-core blogger, it is a tough thing to swallow but if one were to look at the glass as being half-full, there is an upside. Blogs may not be sexy but they are definitely solid citizens that have established strong foothold. They have become as much of the editorial landscape as newspapers and magazine. They may no longer be sexy but blogs are still around, they still matter, there’s a huge audience and, as important, there continues to be a steady flow of people starting and launching blogs.

Part of social media’s appeal and soft underbelly is people are fascinated with shiny and new baubles, which explains why it’s so easy for something to jump into the spotlight and then disappear. The fact blogs have stuck around even though they aren’t trendy is a testament to the medium and the value they deliver.

By Mark Evans - June 6th, 2011 - 3 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

How to Keep Your Blogging Enthusiasm

There are many benefits to blogging but, truth be told, it can be a lot of work. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, writing a blog post is something you can’t whip off in a minute or so. You need an idea, it has to be articulated in an engaging way, and well written.

Like anything that takes a lot of work, your enthusiasm can start to wane, particularly if you’re writing a blog on a regular basis. After awhile, the ideas may not be flowing as well or a case of writer’s block emerges.

So what are the things you can do to maintain your blog spirit? Here are a few tips:

1. Keen in mind that not every blog post has to be an opus offering in-depth perspective and insight. Blog posts come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Sometimes, they are long, thought-provoking pieces. But sometimes they’re short and poignant posts that deliver a punch in less than 250 words. Seth Godin has established a reputation as an expert bloggers, whose posts are only a few paragraphs long.

2. The collection of ideas is a continual process that can happen anywhere and any time. They key is being able to capture ideas when they pop up, which can happen in front of your computer, during dinner, at the gym, while having drinks with a friend, or while watching television. Having a notepad and a pen (or an iPhone) can be a good way to not let the good ideas escape.

3. Don’t force it. Sometimes, blog posts take awhile to arrive in the world. If you’re sitting in front of your computer but nothing is happening, walk away. Get something to eat, read the newspaper, go for a walk or listen to music. Sooner or later, the inspiration will come.

4. Read other blogs to see what other people are writing about and thinking. Spend some time on Twitter or go through your RSS reader as a way to gain information, insight and ideas. Who knows, you may come across a blog post that you violently agree or disagree with, which could spark a blog post of your own.

5. Unless you are compelled to blog every day, take a break once in a while. The blogosphere will go on without you. In the meantime, you can recharge your batteries and creative juices.

6. Immerse yourself in other activities to completely break away from blogging and the Internet. It could be playing hockey (a personal favourite), cooking, bicycling, going to the theatre, or spending time with your family. Again, it’s the time away from blogging that makes your a better blogger.

So what are the ways that you stay enthusiastic and engaged about blogging?

By Mark Evans - May 10th, 2011 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Social Media

How Often Should You Blog?

Is a blog like eating? Does it have to happen every day for it to survive? Or is it like exercise – something that can happen several times a week? Or is blogging like grocery shopping – something that can be done once a week?

The answer is a blog can be all of the above depending on your goals, objectives, target audience and resources/energy.

While there isn’t a magic number, the most important consideration is consistency. Whether it’s seven posts a week or a single post a week, it’s important to make it happen on a steady basis week in, week out.

What this does is establish expectations for everyone involved.

For people writing a blog – personally or for a company – it makes life a lot easier to know how many posts are expected to happen a week. It also helps that a well-articulated editorial plan includes a focus on what kind of posts are going to happen.

For readers, editorial consistency means they know what to expect and when. If a company publishes one post/week, that can be something that totally works as long as the posts are good and provide value. If the posts occur every week, a blog can be successful.

On the other hand, sporadic and inconsistent blogging can be a death-knell because no one knows what to expect.

Regardless of the approach taken, consistency is everything. Well, not quite everything because a blog also needs to provide content that is engaging, entertaining or educational but it helps if everyone knows what’s coming down the pike.

For another take on how often posts should happen, check out Tutorial9 post.

By Mark Evans - September 27th, 2010 - 5 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

WordPress, Blogger and…..?

It was not that long ago that TypePad was one of the leading blogging platforms. Based in Silicon Valley, it was the tool used by many high-profile bloggers. Its founders, Mena and Ben Trott, were hailed as examples of the new wave of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs leading the charge forward.

These days, it is difficult to find people using TypePad, which has struggled to survive in recent years, although it does seem to have a modest foothold within the corporate market. The latest chapter in the company’s rocky history unfolded earlier this week when the company was acquired by VideoEgg.

A big part of TypePad’s fall from grace had to do with the rise of two high-profile rivals, WordPress and Blogger. While TypePoad offered a fee-based, hosted product, WordPress and Blogger, which was bought by Google in 2003, were free.

WordPress cemented its stature by offering a self-hosted version of its service, and rode the marketing power of wunderkind Matt Mullenweg, who created WordPress and started a company to support it, Automattic, in 2005.

And while Google did a great job of ignoring Blogger, which saw few improvements in the years after it was acquired, it still saw significant growth as part of the Google empire.

Meanwhile, TypePad struggled to remain viable in the face of intense competition, which saw its profile and market share within the blogging marketplace tumble.

With TypePad now out of the picture, there are really only two players left, WordPress and Blogger. The question is whether this means there’s a quasi-oligopoly or where there is an opportunity for new players to step into the fray.

For example, Tumblr has been gaining some major traction as a hybrid between a blog and a micro-blog. Tumblr is a free, hosted service backed by a group of investors that include Union Square Ventures, which also invested in Foursquare and Twitter. There’s also Posterous, which created a buzz last year but appears to have lost some of its momentum.

That said, there does not appear to be any serious rivals to WordPress or Blogger. Aside from perhaps Tumblr, there are no start-ups that have captured the imagination of bloggers. It’s an interesting landscape because as the market continues to grow, it should see more players try to get a piece of the action.

Maybe WordPress and Blogger are too dominant so new players are shying away from getting involved. Maybe the idea of competing against free services is also an obstacle. That said, there seems to be room for competition.

By Mark Evans - September 22nd, 2010 - 3 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

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