Business Blogging Confidential

Fighting Back Against Lists

Andy Wibbels — 2006-10-06T10:29:40-05:00

Matt Haughey (of Metafilter fame) on the tendency of online content to take the form of lists and how-to's for easy scanning and ingestion:

Seriously, the top of digg, delicious, reddit, and every other link aggregator seems to be clogged with Lists of Vital Things You Should Know. After seeing dozens of them fly by every single day, I'm starting to think it's just lazy headline writing that gets promoted up thanks to our nanosecond attention-span RSS readin' latte drinkin' ruby on rails codin' getting things done task managin' nerd culture. Cool it with the lists. Feel free to use real paragraphs and explain stuff. I have time.

Blogging Start Checklist

Andy Wibbels — 2006-09-18T09:38:55-05:00

Life Beyond Code has a great run-down of the first things to do upon commencing blogging:

Many of my close friends are entering the blogging world. I am so happy for them. I started blogging in Feb 2005 and I have learnt that we need to do a few basic things (for starters) and I have put together a starter checklist for new bloggers. I have used this list to help my friends and now I thought I will make this public. This list is by no means complete and all the items may not be relevant to everyone.

1. Register a domain name with your name and redirect to your blog.

Read the full list...

Blog Case Study: Online Jewerly Vendor

Andy Wibbels — 2006-08-15T12:10:12-05:00

My girlfriends at MarketingSherpa have a case study on Ice.com's blogs.

Good news:

Sparkle Like The Stars is currently getting between 10,000 and 15,000 unique monthly visitors, 31% of whom click through to the main Ice.com site. The conversion rate on clickthroughs is about 1%, which Gniwisch says is "higher than many affiliates but lower than search marketing which converts at 2%."

Difficulties:

Keeping the blogs updated using his own time and help from in-house staff was tough after the bloom wore off. One of his favorite independent bloggers agreed to take the job -- posting two-three times per week in exchange for a flat per-posting fee. This effort again had mixed results -- the blogger in question wasn't a professional freelancer (those folks cost much more) and wasn't as consistent as a professional writer might be.

Currently:

As of this date, two of the blogs have not been updated in almost a month and one of them has replaced original content with a feed of previously published posts from the other two blogs. It's late summer and not peak time for Ice.com, so we suspect the situation may change closer to the holiday season.

Other difficulties:

Gniwisch also noticed that it was a bit harder to get significant traffic and hotlinks to his blogs, without a paid ad campaign, than he had anticipated.

Full report from the faboo folks at MarketingSherpa.

Mixing Business and Personal Blogs

Andy Wibbels — 2006-07-17T09:12:12-05:00

J writes:

Do you ever find that something you wrote in your ranty personal blog has negative impact on your professional career?

This is a tough one and I'd have to say no - so far. The day my dad discovered my blog - ah, good times. I'd been personal-blogging for I think about 2 years and was single then and was of course living it up as any single guy would - granted not of any Paris 'Skank of the Bank' Hilton magnitude, but a bit more rambunctious than my upbringing.

I was also producing plays at the time in Chicago and my dad had Googled my name and Google took him to my personal blog instead of the site for the plays. He was a bit surprised that I was writing about such personal stuff. It was at that time that I also did some archive-scrubbing to remove specific mentions of my employers or co-workers. Most of the folk who have been fired for blogging were being a bit irresponsible in their postings and not considering that in a sea of information, a search engine makes nobody anonymous.

I think as my generation goes into politics there will be scandal after scandal as old personals ads, home-brew erotica and old blog posts surface to remind the uptight they were once a bit loosey-goosey.

My background is as a creative writer/playwright so I have a certain 'license' (licentiousness?) to be a bit nutty on my personal blog - and this spills into my business blog. I'm nuts about politics lately (reading my 6 years of blogging shows my transformation into being more political aware) and know that in a polarized, fundamentalist, rapture ready country like we have now, that might turn folks off. At the same time if someone is completely turned off by that and doesn't want to work with me - they probably aren't going to be any fun as a client anyway. If I wanted to work with assholes, I'd stay in the corporate world.

I link to my personal blog from my professional blog and vice versa. Some folks want the Full Andy Experience others wants Just Business, Please and I'm always suprirsed how I'll get comments from clients on my personal blog.

Also, part of my 'brand' is to be a bit snarky. I find the more edged I am, the more clients enjoy it, the more comments I get, the more emails I get, the more ezine subscribers I get (granted, everyone knows that underneath all the sarcasm is a deep heart and passion for this crazy technology/creativity stuff). Anything that breaks through "Here at Boringboring and Associates, we make widgets and create productized solutioning for blardeeblarblar zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz' wakes people up. Even a little warmth can reach through the screen and make a reader or prospect say: 'cool.'

So if your brand/company is pretty much BO-REEEN then I say blog under a pseudonym - or add a fake guest blogger to your blog to be your outlet, your Chomsky, your Coutler, your Anais Nin. But, if your 'brand' can handle it - try a little tenderness.

p.s. My dad is one of my most frequent commenters now and even gets my business ezine.

Top Lies About Blogging

Andy Wibbels — 2006-07-04T12:14:38-05:00

Few things excite bloggers more than talking about blogging. It's a trend I see a lot. Blogs about blogging. Seminars about giving seminars. Public speakers talking about public speaking. Podcasts about podcasting. Coaches coaching coaches. Newsletters about newsletters... anyway - the quickest way to hit a nerve with bloggers is to get a little iconoclastic. Ann over at Marketing Profs does just that with her post What's The Biggest Lie About Blogging.

A roster of folks chime in and here's a few of my favorites:

Sensei Seth: Oh for sure, it's this: That people care what you say. They don't. They care what they get.

BL: I've read a zillion times that if you have great stuff to say people will find you. But you're a needle in a haystack until you know how to promote. All the top bloggers are skilled and artful self-promoters.

Jeremy: You have to be an A-List blogger or there's no point.

And my additions:

It's hard to get started.
It's 'one more thing' to think about. (If you are any sort of professional keeping tabs on an industry should never run out of things to blog about.)
It replaces ezines. Tandem tandem tandem!
It has to be perfect out of the gate.
Blogs are new. (They are an extension and maturation of existing trends and technologies.)
Only the A-List matters.

5 Things to Blog About Right Now

Andy Wibbels — 2006-06-22T14:08:03-05:00

A big challenge for bloggers of all experience levels is what the hell to blog out. Here's some ideas:

1. The biggest fear around your business or industry. Vulnerability scares the hell out of anybody - but is one of the fastest ways to build rapport. My post about bookfat still gets me emails.

2. The top news story - filtered through your topic. If your an IT firm, talk about the challenges of deploying networks in disaster areas. If you are in marketing, talk about the marketing genius of Karl Rove.

3. The most popular book in your niche. No-brainer. Go to Amazon, find your category, read the top book in your category, blog your notes, make a mindmap, add an entry to Wikipedia, great a study guide, refute, rebutt, advance, expand, expound.

4. The big elephant in the room. Every industry has one. What isn't being talked about among your colleauges? What's the controversial topic? What is pissing people off?

5. A smart blog post from your colleague. Always feature other people on your blog, colleagues, clients, competitors...

BONUS: What you ate for lunch. Whenever I talk about blogging it always comes up, 'Who wants to read about what someone had for lunch?' That's beside the point. Blog about what you learned from your lunch outing that reflect on your industry or niche. Or have lunch with someone fun/smart/crazy.

But when in doubt write something - anything - you can always save it as Draft, unPublish it, revise it, ask for help, etc. Blogging is about completion, not perfection.