So today Google finally opened up and launched Launched Knol (it’s been coming for a while) a place where people can publish ‘authoritative articles about specific topics’. It’s like Wikipedia in that articles can be edited by others - but changes need to be approved by the authors of the articles. Articles can be monetized in a revenue share arrangement where Google and the authors share income derived from articles.

My Three initial reactions to Knol

Google Competing with it’s Partners

My mind goes back to sitting in the offices of Google in Sydney where in a presentation by a Google staff member (a fairly highly ranked one) I heard him say that Google was not in the content business and didn’t ever want to compete with their publishers sites. He said that they were in the business of organizing the world’s information and not creating it. There was a murmur in the room at the time and a few raised eyebrows because we’d been hearing about these kinds of new products emerging from Google where they not only organize information but host it on their own properties. It’s a fine line - increasingly so with Knol.

Back in 2006 Google CEO Eric Schmidt was famously quoted as saying that Google was not a media company - “But that doesn’t make us a media company. We don’t do our own content. We get you to someone else’s content faster.”

Hmmm.

There’s a lot of talk going around the blogosphere today about how Knol is a Wikipedia killer - but I wonder whether it could ‘kill’ (or perhaps maim would be more appropriate) a few smaller publishers before they really hurt Wikipedia.

Update: for more thoughts on this see Journalistopia.

I can only imagine how highly Knol articles are going to rank in Google’s search results in a year or two. Wikipedia makes it difficult enough for a publisher to grab the number 1 ranking for many terms in Google simply because of it’s size and the number of links pointing at it - have we just seen the launch of a product that will mean #1 and #2 positions are generally taken?

Spam Haven?

I can almost hear the blackhat community running over to Knol to see how it can be manipulated. I’m sure Google have safe guards in place - but where there’s a will there’s a way.

Pro-Knolers

I’ve come across a number of people lately who have gone full time (or close to it) using Squidoo to publish articles and monetize them. They’ve build up profiles and search rankings for their Squidoo pages to the point that they’re able to generate significant incomes via advertising and affiliate revenue. I suspect we’ll see the same with Knol.

It’s going to be an interesting one to watch!

What do you think about Knol? Is it something that could help or hurt your blogging?

Share This

Over the weekend, on a whim, I started the ProBlogger Social Media Love-In as a way of linking you as readers of this blog together via social media. In that post I invited you to submit your social media profiles in comments and then to start be-friending one another.

The response was swift and overwhelming with around 700 people participating.

Reports started tricking in of people getting a lot of new friends and making all kinds of useful connections. The ProBlogger community spun out to all kinds of places as people began to connect and start working together on sites like Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, Myspace, Pownce, StumbleUpon, Digg and more.

As I began to watch what was happening I began to ask myself how I could make the long and scattered list of profiles more helpful. Some readers were content to surf down the comments list and start adding friends - but could the information be presented better?

I got in touch with Lara and asked her if she wanted a couple of days work to organize the lists. She agreed and today we’re rolling out a group of Twitter users (the most popular profile link left).

Lara has created a page of 538 Twitter profiles here.

Yes - that’s 538 ProBlogger readers who want to connect, work together and learn from one another.

As I was scanning down the list today it struck me that almost everyone on this list has a blog and as a result the collective influence that we have as a group is quite amazing. If on average we connect with 100 people a week each we’re influencing 53,800 people each week. I suspect the number is far greater than that because there’s some pretty significant bloggers on the list.

As I’ve mentioned on the twitter list page - over 500 people is a lot to follow on Twitter so you might not end up following them all - but do try to add as many as you can and see which ones connect with you most to stick with.

In the coming days Lara will compile more of these lists (one for each type of social media and one more miscellaneous list) so if you’re not a twitter user hopefully there will be a great list for you in the days ahead.

Missed Out On Submitting Your Profiles?

If you missed out on the 24 hour window where we allowed people to submit profiles don’t worry. The beauty of this project is that by befriending others who did you’re still going to make some great connections. We might open this up again at some point in the future but in the mean time I’d start with the lists that we’re publishing this week.

Share This

Image by *nathan

However - while it’s crucial to sustaining successful blogs for the long haul - it’s got very little to do with blogging itself.

It’s got nothing to do with writing good content, nothing to do with building readers to your blog, nothing to do with SEO, ad optimization, social media or anything like that.

It has nothing to do with any of that and everything to do with a very personal part of you.

Let me explore it with a question:

Where do you get your personal worth from?

OK - some of you have your cursors hovering over the ‘back’ button in your browser - “this is not going to help me make my blog better” you might be thinking…. but humor me for a moment or two because what I’m exploring here is the reason that I see many bloggers give up blogging.

Let me flesh out the question with a couple more:

• What makes you feel worthwhile - or not worthwhile?
• When do you feel like who you are and what you do matters (and doesn’t matter)?

Here’s the thing. When I talk to people about when they feel ‘worthwhile’ or when they feel that they ‘matter’ they generally answer with one of two things.

‘When I achieve something’ or ‘when someone tells me that I am good’.

If you want to put it as an equation:

Personal Worth = What You Achieve + What Others Think of You

ie - we feel like we’re worth something when we do good things and others praise us and we feel worthless when we fail and when others tell us we’re no good.

This is an equation that most of us live by. In fact it’s an equation that we’re bombarded with day in day out through our lives. We see those who achieve and who are praised glorified on TV and are taught from a young age to aspire to be like them. We’re also taught to avoid failure and the ridicule of others at all costs.

The equation of personal worth coming from our achievements and what others think of us is something most of us fall back on automatically in most areas of our lives. Education, Relationships, Socially, Career - and for us as bloggers it is how most of us automatically measure ourselves as bloggers.

Unpacking The Equation for Bloggers

Who are the successful bloggers?

Those who are linked to, those who get loads of great comments, those who get so many subscribers that they can’t fit all the numbers on their RSS feed buttons, those who are praised by others, those who make it to the top of all kinds of ranking lists and who win awards. As a result most of us strive for these types of things and when we have success in these areas we feel warm and fuzzy inside and somehow more worthwhile as a blogger - as a person.

The problem with the equation:

The problem with rating our worth in this way (whether it be in our blogging or any aspect of our life) is that it’s something that is virtually impossible to live up to - whether our blog is ’successful’ or not. Lets look at the two areas of the equation again:

Achievement - The issue is that all of us at some point or another fail. We have days where we make a mistake, where the luck doesn’t fall our way, where the actions of someone else means we can’t perform, where things outside of anyone’s control mean that it all comes crashing down. There are times in all of our lives when we can’t achieve. As bloggers many of us are familiar with the ‘failures’. If our personal worth is tied to what we do or don’t achieve then we’re going to be set for a roller-coaster of a ride.

The Opinion of Others - Again, as bloggers, most of us know that the opinions of others are always going to be mixed. Other bloggers, readers, writers from other types of media and others don’t really hold back on their opinion of bloggers and while what they see can at times be incredibly positive and uplifting - they can be equally devastating and hurtful. Also for many bloggers the opinions of others are simply absent. As a blogger starting out seeing the ‘comments (0)’ at the bottom of every post can be debilitating. Once again, if our personal worth is tied to the words of others about us then we’re setting ourselves up for a lot of highs and lows.

When I chat to bloggers that tell me that they are finished with blogging they almost always quietly tell me that they are quitting because of a reason that fits with one of the above areas. Feelings of failure, hurt at the critique of others, disappointment at their abilities, the fact that no-one ever responded or that they felt ignored…..

It’s a familiar story for me also.

When I started blogging on a more serious level 3-4 years ago I began to notice that I had real mood swings that seemed to be tied to how my blogs were going. I remember in the lead up to Christmas 2004 when traffic to my biggest blog at the time almost completely disappeared as a result of Google reshuffling it’s index. The week that followed that event took me to a very low place and very close to quitting my blogging (I even went out and go myself a ‘real job’. Correspondingly when the traffic returned 6-7 weeks later the ‘high’ that I was on was higher than I’d felt in a long time.

I realized around this time that I was on a roller coaster ride and that it wasn’t really healthy or sustainable for me - either as a blogger of as a human being.

True Personal Worth

The lesson that I continually come back to (and I need to learn and relearn it) is to remember that my worth is not determined by what I do or what others think of me. This isn’t a good place to measure my worth as a blogger or as a human being. Self worth comes from something much deeper that those things and while we’re constantly tempted to judge ourselves this way the reality is that my worth as human beings goes beyond my RSS counter, comment numbers, number of appearances on Digg, Technorati ranking, number of links from A-listers etc.

For me my personal worth comes from a much deeper place (something that is tied to my spirituality). I’m not sure where it comes from for you (and I’m not about to push my views on anybody) but I think it’s an important area to ponder because the alternative is to find yourself on the roller coaster of the achievement/opinons of others equation.

Are your feelings of worth tied to how your blog is going? Do you struggle with this one as much as I have? I’d love to hear how you’ve dealt with the issue.

Share This

Yaro is an expert at building an audience and using email newsletters to market to them. The video gives a lot of food for thought (it’s 32 minutes) and is worth setting some time aside to watch. It’s free for you to watch without having to opt into anything.

There is also a 2nd followup video that requires you to give your email address and a name - however you get a good feel for whether you want to do that with the first video and can opt out at any point. Yaro tells me that there are more videos and interviews with pro bloggers coming in the next week or so for those who opt in.

Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program Relaunch

All of this is a part of the relaunch of Yaro’s Blog Mastermind mentoring program which was previously so successful that he had to close the doors to new members. Yaro is opening the doors up again in the coming week or so and these videos are a part of that process. They’ll give you a really good taste of whether the mentoring program is something that you’ll want to participate in.

Yaro gave me a guest pass to participate in Blog Mastermind last time he ran it and it was a really worthwhile program.

What I like about everything that Yaro does it that he’s not into hype, he presents clearly and humbly and on the one occasion that I know of where someone I know didn’t find the course to meet their expectations he refunded their money.

I also love Blog Mastermind because it’s more relational than many blogging courses on the market.

To register your interest for the Blog Mastermind Coaching program leave your name and email on this page.

PS: Are you a Pre Blogger or Beginner Blogger?

Yaro also has a great series of 10 free videos on some of the basics of blogging at Become a Better Blogger. In them he talks you through key beginner questions around blog platforms, domain names, hosting, installing WordPress and more. It’s a great primer for those wanting to take the plunge into blogging or those wanting to take a step into more serious blogging.

Share This

The last 24 hours on ProBlogger have seen a lot of action around our social media love-in project that is currently running. Not only has there been a lot of action in the comments on that post but it’s driven up traffic and increased the numbers of emails that readers are sending.

Just now I scanned through today’s emails and here’s some of the comments (I’ll keep them anonymous as I’ve not asked permission to attribute them):

“Thanks for the Love-In - I’ve been approving new friends all day.’

‘I love that you’re using your blog to help promote us like this.’

‘Most bloggers, including me, dissuade readers from promoting themselves - this is a refreshing change!’

What strikes me today is that when you go out of your way to use your blog to not only build your own profile but that of those who read it that more often than not it is a powerful exercise.

This lesson has been doubly driven home to me over the last couple of days because on DPS over the weekend I invited readers to share their best ever photo with a link to their Flickr account, blog or other online photo sharing site. The responses have been overwhelming with over 230 images shared so far.

Once again the emails that have come from readers thanking me for giving them a little extra exposure to their work has been quite remarkable. I suspect in the simple act of dedicating a post to promoting readers I’ve created a little goodwill in the minds of 200 or so readers and in the process have made my blog a little stickier for them. I’ll be following the post up in the coming week with another post highlighting some of the images submitted to cement it even further.

So How Can You Make Your Readers Famous?

Perhaps it is a little easier to make readers famous on a blog about blogging or on a blog where many readers have an online presence in photo-sharing communities - however I think it’s something that can be done on most (if not all) blogs with a little thought and creativity.

Here’s a list of suggested ways to highlight readers that I’ve published previously here (plus a couple of bonus ones):

• Promote a comment to a Post - sometimes readers make incredibly insightful and wise observations and tips in the comments of your blog. While they will be read by a handful of people in the comment thread - why not pull it out and use it as the basis for one of your post - highlighting the wisdom in it and the person who made the comment.
• Write a Post about their Blog - visit the blogs of those leaving comments on your blog and pick one that you resonate with to post about. Write an ‘unpaid review’ of the blog - highlighting the best posts and what you like about it.
• Send Your Readers to Comment on Someone Else’s Blog - write a post that links to someone else’s great blog post and instead of asking your readers what they think about it on your own blog ask them to head over and comment on it on the other person’s blog. Shutting down the comments in your own post and saying that you’ve left a comment on their blog already can help make this more effective.
• Give Readers an Opportunity to Promote Themselves - run a project or write a post that gives readers an opportunity to promote themselves in some way. Last week on the spur of the moment at DPS I wrote a post asking readers - do you have a photoblog?‘ As I wrote the post I thought I’d add a line inviting readers to share a link to their photoblogs. I didn’t think much of it until the next morning when I woke up to 250 comments on the post and a whole heap of emails thanking me for giving readers the opportunity to highlight their work.
• Reader of the Week - SingForHim once left a comment here at ProBlogger talking how how she runs a weekly post called Readers of the Week where she highlights some of her readers and how they’ve interacted with her blog.
• Run a Reader Poll and Highlight Answers in a followup post - have a post one weekend where you pose a question to your readers. Then in the week that follows do a followup post where you add some of your own thoughts on the question and pull out some of the best comments left by readers. Alternatively you could survey your twitter followers on a topic relevant to your blog and then highlight their responses as a blog post (example of this).
• Invite Guest Posts - often ‘guest posting’ is talked about solely as a way to get free content for your blog. While this is nice - one of the things I love about it most is that it puts the microphone in the hand of someone else and lets someone who would normally be constrained by the comments section have a little more power and influence on the direction of your community for a moment in time. This can have a real impact upon the person doing the post - but also upon your readership as they see someone like themselves featured on your blog.

How do you highlight and grow the profiles of readers?

Share This

It’s been almost 9 hours since the post went live and over 280 readers have participated and I’m getting emails and tweets from people saying that they have had more people follow/befriend them today than they’ve ever had before (update: Lara just told me that she started getting friend requests minutes after adding hers).

The Next Phase of the ProBlogger Social Media Love-In

In another 15 hours from now (24 hours after the post went live) I’m going to close the comments section on the previous post. It’s not that I don’t want this to continue - but it’s going to enable me (or rather my good friend Lara from Anubis Marketing) to make this ‘Love-In’ even more useful.

You see Lara is going to spend tomorrow compiling everyone’s submissions into lists of the different social media sites so that instead of everyone having to trawl through every comment looking for the social media services that they use you’ll be able to quickly add everyone from your services quickly from the one list.

We’ll start with Twitter (it seems to be the most popular) and make a page with just all your Twitter profiles and go from there through the other services.

This means that we’ll end up with a directory of social media accounts from ProBlogger readers.

Why the Love-In?

As I said in the launch post for this Social Media Love-In - my hope is that this will help the ProBlogger community to grow and make it’s network stronger and more useful. While you’re all blogging on a lot of different topics - you’re all bloggers and the potential for you to help one another grow your blogs is quite massive.

You won’t find everyone that you add from these lists helpful - but hopefully they’ll give you a head start in finding other bloggers like you who are interested in putting themselves out there to connect.

What comes from it is really up to you and how you choose to use the compilations of profiles that we collate over the coming days.

So Add Your Profiles

As I write this you have less than 15 hours to add your profiles to the launch post (not this post). The comments on that post will be closed at 5am tomorrow (Melbourne time) to enable Lara to get the lists together. Depending upon how this goes we may have a 2nd round of submissions - but there’s no guarantees so add your profiles to make sure you’re included.

Just make sure you use the words ’social media’ in your comment or we can’t guarantee it won’t get sucked into our spam filters.

Thanks to everyone for participating - it’s been a lot of fun already and I’m looking forward to seeing where this takes us.

Update: Okay, comments are closed on the other post. I’m working hard at compiling everything into lists, and we’ll update you soon on how that’s working out! Thanks everyone! - Lara

Share This

These changes largely revolve around new features that they’ve added to AdWords to let advertisers target websites differently (more control).

One of the big changes is the introduction of ‘Ad Planner’ (currently in an invite only beta test) which allows advertisers to search for sites with certain demographics and interests. Advertisers can now also target sites with a combination of both contextual targeting (having their ads appear on pages with certain keywords) as well as placement targeting (targeting specific sites and ad positions on them).

Really there are no changes in terms of features for us as publishers - but it will be interesting to see how these changes impact the bottom line. It should advantage bloggers targeting specific niches and lucrative demographics (what those demographics are we’re yet to see). It’s also incentive to develop blog posts that target popular keywords to advertisers. It could hurt sites with more mixed topics and demographics.

Here’s the email from AdSense.



As one of our AdSense partners, we’d like to keep you updated on changes and improvements to the Google ads ecosystem. We’re writing to let you know about some recent developments in how advertisers can find and target your sites, which are intended to bring more advertisers to the AdSense content network. We hope that this will result in increased revenue for publishers like you while also benefiting your users with even more relevant ads.

The Google AdSense Team

Share This

Update: This will close after 24 hours - read more about why here.

Today I want to try something a little different and want to invite you to share your social media profiles with us (please read the ‘rules’ below before participating).

• Are you active on social media sites?
• Do you want to find more friends and followers?
• Do you want to find other bloggers to follow and network with?

If so - you’re not alone and I want to give you an opportunity to do just that.

Today I want to do something that could get messy (I reserve the right to close this down if it does) - but could also be a lot of fun.

In comments below - leave links to any of your social media profiles that you want to promote. Once you’ve done so - start adding others on the list! This will only work if people make connections rather than just promote themselves.

I don’t know what will happen when we do this but I do know that we all have one thing in common here - we want to build better blogs and we all read ProBlogger. So why not build on this and see if we can work together on social media?

The ‘Rules’:

• You must include the word - ’social media’ in your comment. This is simply so that we can find any of your comments that get caught in our spam filter. If you don’t include it your comment may not appear.
• You can use html in the comment to make your links live (this will make people finding your profile pages easier)
• So that we keep some order to this - please limit your links to 10

My Links:

I’ll kick us off with some of my own.

• Twitter
• Plurk
• Digg
• Facebook
• StumbleUpon
• YouTube
• FriendFeed
• LinkedIn
• Delicious

Some are more active than others.

Now it’s over to you. I hope this works!

Update: WOW - this IS getting crazy. Please be patient with me as I work through all the comments in the spam filter. We’re getting there! Do remember to add others that you find and also include the words ’social media’ in your comment so we can make sure everyone is added.

Update 2: Due to the popularity of this I’m going to close it after 24 hours and then compile all the information into some pages that will make befriending people easier. Read more about that here.

Update 3: If you guys could just post the URLs, that would be great. I’m essentially copying and pasting, and you cut my time by 50% if you post just the URL (ie. Don’t bother writing “Twitter” and linking it, just post your Twitter URL). It’ll automatically link it for you if you make sure you’ve included the “http” part right through to the end. If you’ve already posted, please don’t repost, but if you haven’t posted yet, I’d really appreciate this! :) - Lara

Update 4: Okay gang, there are nearly 700 comments! I’ve spent almost 5 hours this morning creating the Twitter page, and still have more to put up there. I’m not sure how we’re going to work out releasing them, maybe one network a day or something like that. Darren and I will work that out in a few hours when he wakes up, and I’m sure he’ll update you on that. Thanks to everyone who has commented and been patient with us getting you out of the spam folder! More updates coming soon. - Lara

Share This

My theory is that dates can either add to or take away from a post. Let me explore this a little further:

When you put a date on a post you signal to your reader when the post was written. This is useful to readers wanting to make a judgment on how relevant the post is for them at any point of time. It signals to them that a post is current or recent when the date signals that it was written within the last weeks and signals to them that a post could be dated when the date is years back.

The Problem of Dates on Posts

The problem is that when you have a post that is ‘timeless’ (ie it doesn’t really date because the tips you give or the principles that you talk about will always apply) a date can act as a distraction to your reader. They arrive at the post and see that it was written in 2006 and a little warning bell goes off in their mind that what they are reading is not ‘current’.

As I mentioned in last week’s post - I’ve had comments numerous time on ‘old’ posts saying things like “this is old” or “this is out of date” even when the post was anything but out of date.

When a reader has this reaction no matter what your post contains - it’ll seem ‘old’ to them and you lose reader engagement. This might only happen to a small percentage of your readers but over time this adds up.

On the flip side - when a reader arrives on a post that IS recent and sees the date showing this you can actually get a good reaction because they get a sense that what they are reading is the latest thinking that you’ve had.

So dates can be good and bad. They can make a post seem dated or cutting edge.

So What’s a Blogger to Do? Should You Have Dates on Posts?

The key question to ask when it comes to whether or not to include the date of authorship on a post is - ‘is it relevant to the post?’

The answer to this question has led me to take two different courses of action on my two blogs.

Here at ProBlogger I include a time stamp on each post.

I time stamp (date) posts here at ProBlogger for two reasons:

1. The industry is moving fast - when I started ProBlogger 3 years back blogging was very different to how it is today. The tools have changed, SEO principles have shifted, social media has become more important and bloggers are developing blogs in new ways. As a result some of the articles in my archives here at ProBlogger are less relevant and need to be put into the context of the time that they were written. While some principles have not changed more often than not I feel that dating posts can actually help readers determine what’s relevant for now.
2. I’m on a steep learning curve - when I started this blog I had been blogging full time for only a few months. While I’d accumulated some knowledge on the topic I look back and see that I was somewhat naive and very inexperienced. While I’m far from knowing everything on the topic I feel that I’ve come a long way and I hope that dates on posts help readers to make a call on where I was at when I wrote older posts.

At the Digital Photography School Blog I don’t time stamp posts (and never have)

My reason for removing time stamp dates from DPS posts is simple - in the vast majority of posts on the blog they have no relevance to the post itself.

DPS is not a news related blog and aims to provide camera owners tips on how to get out of Auto Mode. While cameras are changing the basic principles of photography are not (or are changing a lot more slowly). In short - the posts have more of a timeless and evergreen quality and dates would only serve to distract readers from the content itself.

If I write a post that needs to be anchored to a point of time I will usually add it to the title of the post.

Other Solutions for Dates on Your Blog

There are more than just the two options open to bloggers when it comes to adding or removing dates from posts. Here are a few that I’ve seen:

• Dates on Recent Posts But Not on Older Ones - I saw one blogger do this last year (I’m afraid I don’t remember who it was). They had hacked WordPress so that dates appeared on recent posts (within the last 3 months) but anything older than that did not have time stamps either on the post or comments. This meant that the blogger benefited from new posts looking new and took the potential distraction of old posts away from readers. I don’t know exactly how the blogger did it but presume they set up a rule that looked at the date of authorship and then determined whether the date would be displayed or not.
• Dates on Front Page but Not Single Posts - another solution that I’ve considered on DPS is to add dates only to front page posts and to have them removed from single pages. This shows visitors to your blog’s front page that you have recent content while hiding distracting dates from older posts.
• Subtle Dates - you can keep dates on posts without having them ’scream out at your readers’ that the post is old. For example dates at the bottom of posts, dates in more muted colors, dates in smaller font than headings etc all can give your readers the date without making a big point of it. In a sense this is what I’ve done to some degree on ProBlogger with a lighter color and smaller font with my dating of posts.

I’m sure there would also be a way to hack WP so that you could flick dates on and off in each post as you publish it. This is actually a mini feature that I’d love to see WP add.

What Do You Think?

• Do you have dates on your posts? Why or Why Not? (PS: I surveyed my twitter followers on this and found that 75% of them date their posts)
• Do you think blogs should always have dates on them?
• What other ways do you control how the dates on your bog appear?

Share This

“Dr. Kim’s Web site now attracts more than 4.4 million people and 40 million page views a month, according to Quantcast, making it one of the most popular technology Web sites.

It is enough to make Dr. Kim hang up his stethoscope. This month he stopped practicing medicine and started blogging full time….

A question Dr. Kim often fields from friends and associates is, “How does that make money?” He answered the question in an entry on his personal blog last month. It can all be “boiled down to one simple accomplishment: building traffic,” he wrote. “That’s it. If you have a site that attracts a lot of visitors, you will be able to make money. On the Internet, traffic equals power, which subsequently equals money.””

Nice work Dr Kim - welcome to the growing number of full time Pro Bloggers!

Share This

“After years of being in an offline business I’ve recently decided to start an online business that will include a blog. However as I research the topic I notice something about bloggers and how they relate to one another that confuses me a little - they link to their ‘competitors’. I’ve always kept an eye on my competitors in the past so that I could gain an advantage over them but bloggers seem to be doing something that is counter-intuitive to me yet it seems to benefit them at the same time. I wonder if you could write something on this topic?” - question submitted by Gerald.

Thanks for the question Gerald - you’ve picked up on something about blogging that is actually very important and something that I’ve always enjoyed about the medium.

Rather that write a full post on the how and why of working with other bloggers today I’d like to simply point you to a series of posts that I wrote on the topic back in 2005. It all started with a post called - ‘Blogging in Formation - Lessons from a Goose‘. In it I share why Geese fly further in formation and how as bloggers we can achieve more with a similar approach. I then followed it up with a number of other posts on building blogging relationships.

I do think that being relational as a blogger is an important aspect of blogging successfully.

Have Things Changed? Are Bloggers Becoming More Selfish?

This is a question I’ve been asked a few times lately and one that I’ve been pondering quite a bit.

You see when I first started blogging (it’ll be six years ago later in the year) there was a real community spirit among bloggers and the idea of bloggers helping bloggers was something most people seemed to embrace.

The blogosphere is a different place now in many ways. For starters there are a lot more blogs. There is almost a bigger focus upon blogging as a business tool and the idea of making money online in general.

As a result I do think there’s probably been a shift (a smallish one) to some degree in the ways that bloggers look at and treat one another. For example I hear people talking about their ‘competition’ a lot more and see some bloggers link out to other blogs in their niches less. I also see bloggers developing relationships more out of strategy rather than just because they want to connect.

However if you scratch under the surface you do find many bloggers working together in mutually beneficial ways. Behind most successful blogs you find a network of relationships and stories of blogs getting their breaks out of such relationships.

I don’t think that relational blogging is dead at all, but perhaps it’s just a little harder to find? I suspect this is more the case in some niches than others as I do see some fantastic communities of bloggers in around some topics.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this

Is connecting with other bloggers important to you? Do you think blogging has become more or less relational?

Share This

What iPhone Applications are most useful for bloggers?

In addition to that - what iPhone apps would you like to see developed for bloggers?

PS: I’m yet to get an iPhone (although I have ordered one at last and it should be here 1 August) but one app I’d love would be one that interacts with Google Analytics or some other metrics program. I’d like something that would send me a message/email/sms which an ‘event’ happens on one of my blogs. Events could be spikes in traffic, server outages, spikes in comments on a post, rise in traffic from a social media source…. Knowing these things would help keep blogs up and running but also leverage unusual traffic trends. Just a pie in the sky wish.

Share This

Successful blogging takes epic diligence. As a blog grows and brings in new readers, we all want to maintain what we’ve already built. No easy task! This sort of strategy calls for an effective tactic. And that tactic, my friends, is flirting. Though we can call it anything, My Super Official Blog Maintenance & Growth Tactic is pretty lame, so I prefer the operation name Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge.

The premise here is simple: flirt.

To grow your blog and maintain that growth, wink at your loyal readers, nudge the new ones. It’s akin to keeping the romance alive with a steady love and coming on a bit stronger with a potential new flame (hint: send a glass of wine, not a Chupa Cabre). Blogging is just people, flirting is just attention, and no person anywhere dislikes attention. I’m not talking about asking your reader out on a date. I’m talking about rewarding them for engaging with your words - with you. The trick with blogging, of course, is that you’ve got to flirt with everyone at once, the old and the new, without being insincere. No one likes a player…but everyone loves a flirt.

Wink, Wink

1. Wink with a link to a previous relevant post

Link up with a brief explanation and a bit of a tease that will help loyal readers anticipate what you’re talking about before they’ve even finished the sentence. I admit, this is the tactic I use most because it’s the easiest (“you regular readers will remember that I blogged about this last month in such and such post. I just know you remember.”) And flirting with your older readers by showing you trust they’ve kept up their end of the repartee just proves to your new readers that they’re on to something good. No reader is going to invest herself in a blog long term (visit more than once) if she doesn’t feel she is in for some appreciation. She’s flirting with you, with your blog, for only a moment - show her you’re attentive down the road.

2. Wink with a reference to a reader in a post

Readers love seeing their name in hypertext (who doesn’t?). Mentioning and discussing a comment from Susan is great, but if you can use a tip from her, all the better. Your readers will begin working hard to find good information for you to post about, saving you work. And all you had to do was wink! Remember to say “Reader Susan”, not just “a reader” or “this chick”.

3. Reference a past poll

“Hey, guys, remember that awful design we all voted against? Today’s new product is even stranger.” If you haven’t started using micropolls yet, do it. (Here’s one at Treehugger, and here’s an example from my own site, EcoSalon). Both micropoll.com and polldaddy.com are free and easy to use. Polling is also a great way to get new readers involved when they’re too shy to de-lurk and leave a comment.

4. Link love again and again…and again.

Good bloggers do it more than once.

You’re winking with reckless abandon - good for you. You’re clearly into meaningful community as opposed to grabbing few quick pageviews before moving on to other projects (people). This brings me to ye olde linky link. Doing it more than once shows you’re not just in it for the one-time Google boost. Create a genuine relationship by linking to a generous blogger again in the future - and when you do, reference the post with the original link and, if pertinent, explain the history to your readers. (Loyal readers who have already seen a previous link will feel smarter from the familiarity - people are encouraged by repetition, not put off by it.) Don’t link ‘em and leave ‘em.

Nudge, Nudge

1. Ask Them to Subscribe

Oh, the new reader. You get hundreds - or, if you’re lucky, thousands - every day. How many return? How many think you’re worth it?

Asking for something from a new reader is one of the best ways to get them to come back. Whatever we invest it becomes more valuable. But the challenge is creating a request that is compelling. A lot of bloggers make the mistake of only ever asking for comments. I don’t think this is necessarily the best tactic. Many will be shy until they’ve been reading you for a while - the infamous “lurkers”. So get them to read you for a while. Don’t write a bland post and add a worthless comment call to action; focus on quality content and go ahead and ask them to subscribe. (On Wordpress? You might try out the nudge par excellence Seth Godin plugin). I am inclined to think many new readers are more likely to subscribe than they are to comment because they can maintain their anonymity until they’re a bit more comfortable. A subscription is ultimately far more valuable than a single comment, so ask them to subscribe. After all, a good flirt is bold but never fails to put the subject of affection at ease.

2. Ask Them to Comment

Maybe you should ask for a comment after all. This works well if the content is really inspiring, or if your blog is in a niche where the posts are typically considered starting points for content creation (read: politics, blogging, eye candy of the living or inanimate sort). As for me, I’m shameless, so I ask for everything: RSS subscription, newsletter, comment, sharing, firstborn - you know, the usual. This is technically more of a hug than a nudge, so if that’s not your personality, don’t do it. ;)

3. Ask Them to Share It!

If a post is good and there’s a big, easy social media button to push, I push it. (I can’t help it!) This is something I haven’t tried out much with my own readers, but I’m curious to know how well it works for you. Do you prefer to carefully prepare one special post, and make a special request of your best readers to Digg or Stumble or Reddit, or do you throw it all out there at everyone and wait to see what sticks? In other words, do you lavish your skillz on special, or do you flirt with everyone? Whatever you do, do something. Flirtation does not favor the wallflower.

4. Poll

I won’t belabor this point as it’s been covered. But bear in mind that if people are reading your blog, they want to spill their opinions. And they like to see the fruits of their efforts. But new readers need a little extra nudge to overcome the initial shyness hurdle, and leaving a comment can be intimidating for some newbies. There’s nothing like a good, juicy, or polarizing survey to get them to test the waters (or, in keeping with our theme, to take a sip of what you’re sending).

Once a Flirt, Always a Flirt

Don’t be afraid to repeat, repeat, repeat. Then go do it again. Be generous with your winks (references), and those new reader nudges (calls to action) won’t seem so annoying (utterly shameless).

Though I’ve outlined some specific ways to “wink” and “nudge”, what this is really all about is pretty basic and intuitive: it’s simply about responding, acknowledging, and inviting. No one wants to be ignored, most enjoy helping, everyone likes to feel smart, and people love attention. You can’t become a BFF with everyone, nor can you answer every email, but a wink and nudge are no trouble at all. In the blogitat, it just helps to be a flirt. ;)

This is a guest post from Sara Ost. Her new blog is EcoSalon.

Share This

I’m going to continue the numbering from the last post and so kick of this new list at #22.

22. Monitor Your Stats

Alex - made the observation in his comment that a key to site stickiness is monitoring your blog’s stats to see when spikes of traffic are occurring.

This is right on the money. A spike in traffic coming in from another blog or social media site can come and go in hours and unless you’re aware it is happening you’re not able to optimize the post and capture some of the traffic. Some of the general principles of good design, invitations to subscribe will capture some of it but you’ll not be able to tailor the post.

While you can’t be awake 24/7 it can be worthwhile to check in to your blog’s metrics quickly throughout the day to see if there’s any unusual activity.

23. Use Video

A number of readers (like Claudine) suggested using video as a technique to keep people on your blog for longer (and thereby increase their engagement with your site. This is very true.

I find that since adding video posts to my blog’s front page here at ProBlogger the ‘time on site’ statistic for my blog has increased by about 10-20%. This is not a massive increase and it goes up higher on days that I post new videos but it is significants because it not only means people are on your site longer it means that they are exposed to your branding, voice, ideas, advertisers, links to other content and invitations to subscribe for longer (most of which increase the chance of them remembering your blog and coming back).

24. Membership

Raag commented that he offers his readers an option to become members of his site and gives them free downloads when they do.

Membership isn’t something that I’ve experimented on my blogs (although as mentioned in the previous post I do have a ‘forum’ which has membership) but it makes sense that membership would increase reader engagement - or at least it would for those who actually join.

The only danger that I see with ‘membership’ is that if you require it to make comments or use basic features of your blog (like voting in polls or contacting you for example) then it puts a barrier between people lurking and participating in your site. While it’s good when people make the leap to ‘join’ it could also isolate and put off some readers.

Having said this - I think an option for membership for those who want more could really help a lot.

25. WP Sticky

I have not tested this one but 1 HappyBlogger suggestss that the WP Sticky plugin can be used to make a post into an announcement that stays at the top of your page.

This post could be some kind of an invitation to subscribe, list of top posts, welcome etc.

I’ve not used this type of thing and probably would prefer to target specific users with announcements but it could be something to try.

26. Niche Blogging - Staying On Topic

Jayaprakash makes a good point in comments about ’specific content’ and reminded me that one of the benefits of building a blog focused upon a ‘niche’ topic is that it becomes a selling point for people to keep coming back for more.

When you have a blog that is unashamedly focused upon a particular topic you’ll attract people who share that same passion and interest in that topic.

As a result - staying on topic and promoting the fact that you’re focussed on a niche becomes important.

27. Create a Debate

One other technique that I should have included yesterday is that of ‘debates’.

I mentioned yesterday that interactive sites were ’sticky’ but to extend that idea - creating areas for users to debate controversial topics can also be very sticky sections of a blog.

When you pick a topic that people feel passionate about and then invite them to have their say you’ll find that readers not only have their say once - but will quite often come back again to read what others have to say and then respond to that.

While you should be a little careful about creating debates that get too heated and personal (you can create a culture on your blog where this can hurt your community) a well managed debate can go for weeks and create a real interest for readers on both sides.

28. Write a Reference Page

Lastly - in my last post I observed a recurring comment from readers that went like these:

• “I’ve bookmarked this and plan to go back through this content with a checklist.” - Adam
• “I will be referring to this often for reminders.” - Bsigirho
• “I think I’ll be returning to this post again and again.” - SystemsThinker

It struck me as I read these comments that one of the best ways to build a sticky BLOG is to build a sticky POST - or a ‘reference post’ that people will come back to again and again over time.

When you build a comprehensive post that summarizes a lot of tips in the one place and that makes an impression you’ll find readers keep coming back to it because it is useful to them over time.

A brilliant example of this for me is Brian Clark’s 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work which is a collection of 10 great templates for blog titles that I know many bloggers return to on a regular basis because it’s so useful to them on a daily basis. Create these kinds of evergreen posts that contain a lot of useful and applicable information and you’ll create a page that people just can’t stop visiting.

Share This

Not it’s not the start to a bad joke and yes the answer could be many things - but today I’m excited because one of my favorite blog designers, Chris Pearson has teamed up with one of my favorite bloggers, Brian Clark from CopyBlogger to put together a fantastic Premium WordPress theme called Thesis.

This theme is already getting some great reviews around the blogosphere (you can see some testimonials here) and it is no wonder - because it’s got some great things going for it including:

• SEO - WP is generally pretty well optimized to start with but Thesis takes it a step further and gives you every chance of ranking well in Google.
• Accessibility - this theme will be able to be accessed by those using all kinds of browsers, mobile browsing and those with special needs
• Customizable - you don’t want a design that looks exactly the same as everyone else’s - Chris has put together a theme that can have different backgrounds, has support for custom CSS and more. You can have rotating images to make your design even more unique. Alternatively you can use this multimedia box show six 125×125 ads, a video or even disable it. All this is done from within WP’s admin (see picture below) - very cool. Check out the ‘showcase‘ page on the Thesis site to see how others have been using the theme already.
• Feature Rich - it plays nicely with Google Analytics and Mint, manages your RSS feed for you, separates comments and trackbacks, gives you lots of control over whether to show dates and author bylines on posts and much more.
• Well Laid Out Design - Thesis is easy to get around and quite intuitive for those arriving on your site of all levels of web experience
• Simple to Use - Thesis is easy to use and while I’m sure Chris will continue to add features and ways to use the theme it’s quite intuitive to get up and running and looking the way you want it.
• Support - one thing that I love about Thesis is the support forum that Chris has built for those who invests in this theme. It’s already pretty active and covers a lot of the questions that you’d have as someone using it.
• Free Upgrades - Chris has already released an update to Thesis which gives an indication that he’s still

You’ll want to check out Thesis for yourself - a good place to start is on it’s About Page.

Thesis comes with two license options. The personal license is $87 and the developer’s license is $164. The main difference is that the dev license allows you unlimited use of the theme across as many sites as you like.

If I were starting out today with a new blog and didn’t have the budget to get a custom design or the ability to design my own - Thesis would be something I’d serious look at investing in. In fact if I were starting a blog network today it’d be an ideal investment to grab the dev license as it is a great way to have a variety of blogs that share a similar look yet are customizable.

PS: here’s a look at the fantastic options panel that gives you control over many aspects of this theme (click to enlarge).

Share This

Yesterday I wrote about a common problem that many bloggers face - spikes of traffic followed by flat-lines and promised a follow up post today on how to break this cycle by building ’sticky’ sites.

My point yesterday was to encourage readers not to see spikes in traffic as the ultimate goal but as a stepping stone to ongoing growth.

What is a ‘Sticky’ Site?

A sticky website is one where a first time reader arrives and finds it difficult to leave.

Not because the site owner captures them in a ‘RickRoll’ or a series of windows asking them if they REALLY want to leave - but because something about the site motivates them to explore it further - and more importantly to make a decision to (and takes some steps to ensure that they) return again to it.

21 Techniques to Make Your Site Sticky

The following 21 techniques are ways that you can make your blog or website more sticky. They come from my own experience of blogging over the last 5 years. As a result of basing this on personal experience I’m going to show you quite a few examples of what I’ve done (after all i know my own sites best). I’d love you to add your tips and show examples of what you’ve done in comments below to make it a more useful resource for readers.

1. Make Your Invitations to Subscribe to your blog Prominent

One of the most important things to do is to have a prominent call to action for readers coming to your blog to subscribe to it.

In fact I’d recommend having more than one invitation - one prominent one above the fold and prominent in your sidebar or navigation area and then a second one below your post. This means that people are triggered to subscribe whether they have just arrived on your blog or if they’ve just finished reading a post (a ‘pause point‘).

This is what I do on my blogs and my tracking shows that both get a fairly even number of people using the two options.

By the way - if you’re not already subscribed to ProBlogger’s RSS feed - here it is!

2. Educate Readers about Your Subscription Methods

One of the most read posts here on ProBlogger is my ‘what is RSS‘ post which I have below my Subscription link. It’s there simply to educate readers on what RSS is and in doing so sell them a way to connect with my blog. Interestingly enough - quite a few other bloggers around the web now link to the page to educate their readers too.

Similarly - I occasionally will write a post on my blogs that invites new readers to subscribe. Sometimes I think we mistakenly assume that all of our readers have been with us for a long time and all know how to use our site - however many of your newer readers might not know the full story.

Here’s one of these posts that I ran on DPS last year. The day after I did this my RSS subscribers jumped considerably. It was just a matter of educating my newer readers of the blog on how they could connect better with it. You’ll also note that at the end of the post I asked readers to let me know how they follow the blog. This was for two reasons:

• Firstly I wanted to involve older readers who already knew all the information in the post. It somehow seemed to make the post more relevant for them as it invited them to participate.

• Secondly it was about social proof and showing newer readers how others used the site. I think the comments section reflected some of this.

3. Good Blog Design

I’ve always believed that a good blog design is an important part of helping readers to decide whether they’re going to hang around and track with your site over the long haul.

Readers make judgements about your site within seconds of arriving at it - if they see something cluttered and confusing they’ll be less likely to want to return.

Good design highlights your content, helps people navigate your site well and creates a good impression - and first impressions matter!

Keep your design simple, familiar and obvious and you’ll be on the road to a sticky site.

PS: A common mistake that I see bloggers making is to crowd out their content with too many ads above the fold. If a reader arrives at your site and has to scroll to see the content you’ll increase the numbers of people who simply hit the ‘back’ button on their browser.

4. On Site Branding

Work hard at building a brand that is attractive and draws people in.

First time readers should know what your blog is about at a first glance. Use your blog’s title, it’s design, taglines, post titles, about pages, logo and navigational elements to communicate what your blog is about.

Also - do something to differentiate the brand of your blog. It could be a logo, image, color scheme, blog name….

5. Make Your Blog Personal

One thing that I’ve seen a number of bloggers do really well over the last year or two is brand themselves well on their blog. While it’s not essential to have a blog that is centered around your personal brand I find that when you do add a personal touch to your blog that it can connect with readers in a powerful way.

The fact is that some readers are more interested in connecting with a person than a collection of content.

Adding your photo, writing in a personal tone, using video/audio and including personal details and stories of how you engage with your topic can give your blog personality which will draw some of your readers into a relationship with you.

6. When you get a rush of traffic to one particular post….

When the spikes in traffic come along you need to be ready to act (and act fast - because they can be momentary).

• Add invitations to subscribe to your feed within your post. Something along the lines of ‘enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to….’ can work really well.
• It can also be worthwhile adding links at the end of your post to ‘further reading’ on posts that are getting lots of reader to them.
• Sometimes when you get a spike it can even be worth writing a ‘welcome’ post. For example if I get a mention in a mainstream media publication that sends significant traffic I’ll often do a post that welcomes people but also gives them a ‘tour’ of the site (example).
• Another clever move is to quickly write up a followup article to the one that is getting all the traffic. For example - if this post suddenly got a burst of traffic I could quickly write a post ‘10 more ways to make your blog sticky’ and then add a link to that post at the end of this one (update: actually I wrote one called 7 more ways to make your blog sticky). This shows readers that you’ve got more to say on your topic than just one post. Every extra page view is a step closer to them subscribing (if the pages they view are good quality).

These ‘hot posts’ are really important to optimize (learn how to optimize popular posts).

7. Get Interactives

Getting someone to DO something on your blog means that they’ve invested something into your blog and increases the likelihood that they’ll return.

Interactive blogs are often also sticky ones. Interaction could include

• Comments
• Competitions
• Polls
• Projects and Memes

As a result it’s worth spending some time Learning how to get readers to comment on your blog - and exploring other ways to make your blog more interactive. Get your readers involved as much as you can!

The other bonus for ‘giveaways’, ’special offers’ and ‘competitions’ is that when you do them regularly some readers will subscribe because they don’t want to miss out on future giveaways. The current competition might not interest them but they sure want to know when you do one in future.

8. Add a ’subscribe to comments’ feature to your blog

This draws those who comment back to continue the conversation and increases the chances of them becoming loyal readers.

You’ll find that only some readers will ever use this - but even if just a few do you’ve had a win.

I have this enabled here at ProBlogger (I don’t have it on by default - those leaving comments have to choose to subscribe because I don’t want to inundate them with comments) and at any given time there are several hundred people subscribed to comments on posts. I use this subscribe to comments plugin to run mine.

PS: just be aware that if you get a lot of unmoderated comment spam it can be a little embarrassing to have this feature - I learned the hard way.

9. Respond to Comments

This is a particularly effective way to draw readers back to your blog - particularly in the early days when you don’t have a lot of readers commenting to follow up.

There are two main ways you can do this:

• respond to comments with comments
• respond to comments with emails to the comment leaver

Showing those that comment on your blog that you’re interacting with them can make a real impression and will often draw them back time and time again.

10. Offer alternative ways to subscribe

Some readers will respond well to your prominent invitation to subscribe via RSS (see #1 above) but others will be more open to connecting in other ways.

I generally offer three subscription methods:

• RSS
• Daily email updates (RSS to Email)
• Weekly newsletter (summary of the blog from the last week plus some exclusive content)

More recently I’ve also been offering readers the ability to track with my blogs via Twitter and send my latest posts to my Twitter account via TweetBurner.

Why so many options? The answer is simply that each reader has their own systems in place to consume content and connect with websites - so offering a variety of methods increases the chances that you’ll be doing something that they are familiar with.

11. Promote social media connecting points

Similarly - some of your readers will respond very well to your invitations to connect on other social media sites.

For example I have some readers on DPS who are Facebook junkies. They refuse to subscribe via RSS or email but religiously read my blog by following my Facebook profile which pulls in my latest posts.

Another small group of readers here at ProBlogger follow this blog through Technorati’s favorites feature. While I prefer to read blogs using an rss reader like Google Reader - their rhythm of reading content revolves around Technorati. As a result I’m happy that I promoted my Technorati profile (you can favorite ProBlogger here).

While you might not see the sense in people following your blog in some of these social media sites others do and at the very least promoting them can potentially reinforce your brand.

12. Highlight Your Best Content

A great way to convince readers to become loyal is to get them reading more than one of your posts (especially if they are your best posts). You can do this by linking to other posts within your content but also suggesting further reading and ‘best of’ posts around your blog.

For example - here at ProBlogger on my front page the ‘best of ProBlogger’ section is one of the most clicked upon parts of my site. This small section of the site sends people deep within the blog to some of my best work - hopefully resulting in quite a few new loyal readers.

At DPS I have a small section on my sidebar called ‘Digital Photography Tips’ which is a list of ‘sneeze pages‘ (or compilation pages of my best posts in certain categories). Again - these are there simply to draw people deep into the site and get them viewing some of the best the site has to offer (and hopefully to convince them to subscribe).

13. Create Momentum With Your Content

When you give readers a sense that you’re creating more content that they’ll want to read you give them a reason to subscribe.

For example when a reader reads the first part of a series of posts on a topic that they find useful you can count on them wanting to read the rest.

I wrote about this in a post on creating a sense of anticipation on your blog.

14. Consider Removing Dates on Old Posts

This one could be a little controversial but I find that when old posts are not dated that it doesn’t create a ‘oh this is old’ type reaction in your readers.

I’ve seen this numerous times here on ProBlogger where posts written back in 2005 have attracted comments like ‘this is old’ or ‘out of date tips’ - even when the content has been of a ‘timeless’ or evergreen nature.

Personally I think that you should consider the type of blog you have before doing this. For me it works on DPS where I’ve never had dates on posts - but not here at ProBlogger where I have a topic that is more time specific (I’ll write more on this topic in coming days).

15. Give Incentive to Subscribe

Over the last few days I’ve had a small competition going on Digital Photography School where I’m giving 3 subscribers to my newsletter there a copy of a great photography book.

1500 new subscribers later (and counting that small incentive is one of the best $50 I’ve ever spent.

Give away a book, free ebook or report, download or some other incentive to those subscribing to your blog’s feed or newsletter and you could give some readers the little extra incentive to connect that they needed.