I can think of three possible actions by Civil Societies:

1. Judicial Review. Most activist would blame the Law for its interest in privatizing coastal areas. As such, they would be inclined to invalidate Law 27/2007. But what reasons can be used to submit the JR? Roughly speaking, I would say that any attempt to invalidate Law 27/2007 will have a very minimal chance of success. I do not see any provision under the Law which diametrically contradicts the Constitution. True, that the implementation of the Law may deprive certain members of the societies (such as the Adat Community) from their Constitutional rights, but in general, the black letters of Law 27 guarantees the preservation of existing traditional rights. Thus, if JR is to be opted, the most convincing hole would be to contradict the ill-defined HP-3 rights against “legal certainty” provision of the Constitution. I am not suggesting that this measure would be effective as property rights needs not to to be fully defined (a ‘complete’ property rights is impossible anyway), but there is a chance of success since “legal certainty” is weighed considerably by the Court. In any case, a move in reviewing Law 27 must not be aimed at winning the case completely (which result in the complete invalidation of the law) but simply in getting partial invalidation of harmful articles or, if not possible at all, in gaining the Court’s recommendation for safeguarding its implementing regulations.
2. Legislative Review. If one thinks that the Law is insufficient or defective invalidation may not be the option. The Court’s function is in ensuring that provisions of Laws are Consistent with the Constitution. So, if there are provisions of laws which is consistent with the Constitution but is nevertheless defective, the Court may choose to reject the petition to invalidate and recommends it for a legislative review. However, when a Law is recommended for a legislative review by the Court, it does not necessarily follows that the parliament will take the Court’s suggestion. There are so many Bills that the Parliament needs to enact in any given year and there are political (as well as administrative) costs for rediscussing an already-enacted bill.
3. Implementing Regulation and Its Reviews. Law 27 will require plenty of government regulations and regional regulations to be implemented. In terms of technicalities, this measure is the most technically feasible. It is easier to change implementing regulation than annuling a provision of a Law or modifying it through legislative measures. Option #1 involves proceedings at the Constitutional Court and option #2 involves deliberation by parliament members. Option #3 however, only involves the government. It is easier for the government to enact regulations which are friendly to the cause promoted to Civil Societies. But because Option #3 rests on the discretion of the government alone, there is always a chance of capture by business interests. A way of rejecting an enacted government regulation is by conducting an appeal to the Supreme Court. Note however that the appeal for Government Regulation (against a Law) in the Supreme Court would take a very long time, as the Supreme Court has a very high case-load.

Today’s task in the 31 Days to build a better blog project is a ‘writing’ oriented task and it is all about solving problems.

Your task is to write a post that solves a problem that your readers (or potential readers) have.

This is a task that most successful bloggers build into every single day of their blogging. Here’s their motivation:

If you’ve solving problems:

1. you’ll make an impression upon people
2. those people are more likely to return to your blog
3. those people are more likely to tell others about your blog

How to Identify Problems to Solve:

For some bloggers identifying a problem that their readers will have is easy – they have a lot of readers and have their finger on the pulse of their needs. However it isn’t that easy for many newer bloggers with smaller and less vocal readers.

7 Methods for Identifying Problems to Solve on Your Blog

1. Solve Your Own Problems

My favorite way to identify needs and problems of others is to take note of my own. In my experience, when I have a problem I’m not likely to be alone. So instead of just solving your problems for yourself and moving on – why not capture the solution and add it to your blog so that others can benefit from it.

I was recently asked by a Twitter follower how she should start her blog. She was a little apprehensive of getting going and not sure how to start out. My answer was to write about a problem that she’d had and how she solved it. I can’t think of a much better way to get a blog going – right from day 1 it signals to readers that you’re interested in solving problems.

A great exercise to do to identify your own previous problems is to sit down with a notepad and pen or a laptop and text document and simply brainstorm all of the things you’ve learnt, overcome, discovered or solved when it comes to the topic that you cover on your list. Also list questions that you remember asking others about or problems that you might have researched yourself privately.

Having done this you should end up with a good list of potential posts to write on your blog.

2. Look for Questions in Search Referrals

Once your blog has been going for a while there are ways to tap into your readership and discover the problems that they have. One of these that is particularly useful when readers don’t verbalize to you their needs and problems is to look at how and why they access your blog (and what they do when they arrive).

One way to do this is to look at the terms that people are typing into search engines to arrive on your site. Sometimes the most common keywords can illuminate a topic that people have a need or problem in.

For example on my Twitter Tips blog I have the WP stats plugin installed. While not as advanced as some stats packages it does show me the most commonly used keywords that people arrive on my site having typed into search engines. Here’s a screenshot of part of the list of keywords:

These are just 7 of many hundreds of terms that people have typed into Google to and there are a few potential problems that people obviously have. Some way to know how to make a background image for Twitter, others want to know about twitter badges, others are looking for suggestions on who to follow on Twitter while others are tossing up between Twitter and Facebook while others are looking for information on how to customize Twitter.

From those 7 search terms I’ve identified 5 problems that people have on Twitter!

The same information can be gleaned from most web statistics packages such as Google Analytics.

Another great tool for identifying such terms and honing in particularly on ‘questions’ that people are asking when they arrive on your site is 103bees. To use it you need to be able to add a little javascript code to your blog’s footer or header – but once you’ve done that it’ll show you what keywords people are typing into search engines but also particularly highlight the questions people are asking.

So here on ProBlogger people have arrived on this site in the last few minutes asking:

Again – there are some real life ‘needs’ and problems that people have.

Keep in mind that with both of the above techniques you’re relying on your site ranking well for certain keywords that you’ve already used. So the reason I have people arriving on my blog searching for ‘how to be lucky‘ is because I’ve already written about that exact topic (so I probably don’t need to write another post on that exact topic). However you will find in the mix that people ask questions that you’ve not written specifically about.

3. Analyze Internal Searches

Another related way to find information on what your current readers problems and needs are is to watch what they search for when they are on your blog. This will show you what those arriving on your blog are still searching for once they’ve arrived. This is great because it shows you questions that they’re asking that you’ve often not already written about.

There are a few tools that show you internal search keywords. One I’ve is:

Lijit – Lijit is a search box that you put on your sidebar or in your navigation area instead of your normal search box. In many ways it performs the same functions as far as your readers are concerned in that it allows them to search your blog – however it also gives publishers a large array of useful information on what those searches are for. For example Lijit shows me that people on ProBlogger have searched for:

Not only that – it also produces a list of searches that people have done on your blog that you have NO RESULTS for:

While that list includes some rather ‘odd’ results it also produces some very useful information at times also and gives a snapshot into what readers are looking for information about!

4. Ask Readers for Questions

Another method that can be well worthwhile is to directly ask readers for their questions or about the needs and challenges that they face.

This of course assumes that you have some readers (it might not be for those just starting out) and assumes that they are comfortable in giving you a response.

There are a variety of ways of doing this:

• Write a post asking for questions
• Email a handful of most recent comment leavers asking if they have anything they need help with
• Set up a contact form that acts as a ‘question box’
• Run a Survey for readers
• Set up a sidebar and/or in post poll that gives people a set of options to show you their most pressing needs (this allows some anonymity)

I’ve done each of these and all can be well worth your time to do.

5. Look for Problems on other Sites

This one can be particularly good for those just starting out who don’t have current readers to ask. It simply involves finding a forum, blog or social networking site that is relevant to your niche and surfing through threads of conversation looking for the type of questions that people ask.

You’ll probably want to concentrate on doing this in larger sites that get the amount of comments needed for this but once you spend some time on most good sized forums you’ll see a range of questions that are asked over and over again.

6. Use Social Media to Gather Questions

A place that I personally am getting more and more inspiration for posts is Twitter and other social networking sites.

Twitter is a great place for collecting questions from real people with real needs and problems. I mainly do this in two ways:

1. Asking for Questions – every now and again I simply tweet that I’m looking for a few questions to base posts on.
2. Watch lists – I have a few keywords that I particularly look to track and monitor the use of on Twitter (I do this through my Twitter Client TweetDeck). I’ve written more about setting up watch lists earlier in 31DBBB but many of the times I see keywords used I see questions being asked. I try to answer these questions on Twitter but also often use them as inspiration for longer blog posts.

7. Ask ‘real life’ Friends and Family

Lastly – don’t forget your real life friends, family and work colleagues. Many of the conversations you have in day to day conversation reveal the types of struggles and challenges that people face. While you’ll want to keep private conversations private they could be a great source of inspiration for posts.

I actually find that family gatherings with extended family are a great time for me to tap into what people think about the topics that I write about. For example at one family gathering a family member asked me if he was holding his digital camera right. He was almost a little embarrassed to ask it as it was such a basic thing but as I was answering I realized that other beginners in using cameras would have the same question – hence How to Hold a Digital Camera came into being.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Solve a Problem – 7 Ways to Identify Reader Problems [Day 16 - 31DBBB]

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Join me at Social Media Success Summit 2009

Posted: 20 Apr 2009 04:40 PM PDT

I wanted to take a few minutes today to let you know about an event that I’m excited to be participating in that is fast approaching.

The event is the Social Media Success Summit 2009.

The event is a live online event (although you have access to recordings if you can’t make the live components) and it is being organized by Michael A. Stelzner from White Paper Source. As the name suggests – this event is all about social media and discovering how to use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to grow your business.

Speakers are all experts in different aspects of social media and include:

• Gary Vaynerchuck (Wine Library TV)
• Mari Smith (Facebook Expert)
• Jason Alba (Linked In Expert)
• Ann Handley (chief content officer from MarketingProfs)
• Brian Clark (CopyBlogger)
• Chris Garrett (Co Author of ProBlogger the Book)
• Denise Wakeman (BlogSquad)
• Michael A. Stelzner (White Paper Guru)

The sessions start on May 26 and happen over a number of days to give you time to digest it all.

I’m doing a panel discussion on 3rd June with Brian Clark on ‘The Future of Social Media: What’s Going to be Hot and What’s Not).

The Social Media Success Summit 2009 is based around live calls where you get to interact with those presenting but also gives you access to recordings and transcripts of the calls if you want to review them later or can’t make the live calls.

There is currently a $200 early bird discount. I hope that this is something that will interest you and hope to see you in class!

Punchu asks:

Today I suggested to my manager that we should install the All in One SEO pack in our blog. He said fine, but then he told me something really weird. Few months back (before I joined this company) they did some improvements on the blog and it got better ranks for our targeted keywords than our website. The blog was almost getting 1st page results while the website dropped behind. So the CEO got really annoyed with this and now according to what I understand they are not trying to improve the blog anymore. Well my question is: Is this really a bad thing? I suggested to him that getting a good rank should be a good thing. I don’t understand this. Plus if we work on our blog again and get a good rank then how can the website benefit from it? Please let me know. I really need help. I am so confused.

Interesting question. Unfortunately, we are missing some important variables that would be necessary to elaborate a more complete answer. For example, it would be important to know if the blog is located in the same domain as the company website or not, and what exactly were the changes in the search rankings for both the blog pages and for the company website pages.

That being said, we can hypothesize some scenarios.

If the blog is in the same domain, especially if it is in a sub-directory (i.e. domain.com/blog), it would be difficult for the blog itself to outrank the main website for the main keywords. For example, if you have a company offering “red bubble gum,” it would be difficult for the blog of the company rank first for that keyword, because link juice and trust always flow to the homepage. If this is happening, it means that either the homepage is not well optimized for search engines, or the internal link structure is not an efficient one. Both of those issues can easily be solved by someone who understands SEO.

The blog would certainly rank higher for long tail keywords, though, because it would have a wide range of topic specific posts. Those should not represent a direct competition with the company website, though, and therefore should be considered as beneficial.

The real problem would be having the blog on a separate domain name. This would make the competition between the two parts more explicit, and it would also split the link portfolio and overall trust between the two domains, which is not ideal. If that is the case, I would consider moving the blog to an internal sub-directory.

The second aspect that we need to analyze is how the rankings were affected. The only situation where the rankings of the blog could be harmful to the company is if the company homepage was ranking in the first position for its main keyword, and then the blog outplaced it. Since there is a huge difference in the traffic that the first and second positions receive from search engines, such a shift could affect the number of organic visitors going to the company homepage. Those visitors would still visit the blog, but only a fraction of them would make a second click to the homepage.

On all other situations, the improved rankings of the blog would benefit the company. Suppose that the company homepage is ranking in the second page for one of its keywords. Then a new blog entry is published and it starts ranking in the 5th position of Google. This would mean that a blog post is outranking the company homepage for that keyword. But so what? The blog post would bring in organic traffic, and that traffic could still reach the homepage if the internal navigation is well planned.

Even if the company homepage was ranking in the 5th position and thus outplaced by the blog post the company would still be benefited. The organic traffic among the lower end results in the first page of results is very similar, so having a blog post ranked in the 5th position and the company homepage ranked in the 6th position is better than having just the company homepage ranked in the 5th position.

Unless the blog disrupted the first position of the company homepage for its main keyword, therefore, all other rankings should be welcomed.

Today your task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is to Find a Blog Buddy.

While I’m an introvert and get energy by spending time alone – I’ve found that it is when I work together with other bloggers that my blogs grow fastest. Let me start with an illustration that some of you will be familiar with to help show the power of working together.

A Lesson from Geese

Scientists have found that geese flying in formation in a flock can travel around 78% further in a session than geese flying solo. Working together on the task of flying is beneficial in a number of ways:

• Aerodynamic Formation - The V formation of geese is a way that maximizes the energy expended by those flying as part of it. The bird at the front of the flock breaks the air for those flying behind it and creates a slipstream for them to be dragged along in. The birds behind also help those in front as the upward motion of their wing also creates an upward draft that propels them forward. This push/pull relationship ensures all birds in the formation benefit from the work of others.
• Rotating Leadership – Even with the pushing effect of those behind it – the front bird uses the most energy and becomes tired more quickly than others. The geese know this and instinctively rotate leadership of the flock – allowing tired birds who have used a lot of energy for the sake of the flock to take a rest and be dragged a long for a while until it is their next turn up front.
• Dropping out of the Flock – as a result of sickness or injury a bird will occasionally begin to fall away from the flock – unable to keep up. Instead of allowing this bird to fly on alone – at least two others will always drop out of the flock with it. This ensures that the injured bird will be defended and cared for until it is ready to resume flying – and that it will fly on with the benefit of flying in formation.
• Power of the Honk – From the ground the V formation of the geese is a beautiful thing to watch – serenely gliding across the sky these birds look quite majestic and peaceful. However get up into the flock and you find its quite a noisy affair with the geese constantly honking at one another. There are numerous theories about this honking and it could be partly about letting each other know where they are so there is no midair collisions) but many believe that this honking is actually about creating an environment of success and mutual encouragement. It reminds me of when I used to play football at school and before the game would begin all the boys would gather in the locker room to whip themselves into a frenzy – shouting meaningless stuff about what they’d do to the opposition, slapping each other on the back (and bums) and basically creating an environment where we thought we could conquer the world.

As a result of some of these dynamics the geese can fly amazing distances without stopping for rest – so much further than if they tried to do it alone.

Advantages of Working Together as Bloggers

In the same way – I’ve noticed that bloggers who work together often last longer and have more success in their building of their blogs. There are many benefits of finding another blogger (or a small group of bloggers) and committing to work together for the common good of your blogs.

Here are 10 benefits (taken from a great article in which each point is expanded upon in our archives The Power of Collaboration in Today’s Blogging World by Eric and Sean):

1. You can feedback on posts, prior to pressing publish.
2. You can have someone to vent to, who understands your situation.
3. You can work on projects together.
4. You can share link love.
5. You can share each others posts through social media and with other bloggers.
6. You can share communities.
7. You can help each other stay motivated as you share encouragement.
8. You can guest post for each other.
9. You can share each others talents.
10. You’ll have twice the blogging power at your disposal.

How to Find a Blogging Buddy

So how does one find a blogging buddy? Let me suggest two things:

1. First go and read this article which is written on the topic – How to Find a Blog Buddy (there’s no point me rehashing those 7 points here).
2. If you’ve not already joined the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Forums – head over there and start networking. There are 1300 or so bloggers already signed up and interacting and we’ve set up a special area specifically for Collaboration. Just keep in mind that this forum is for 31DBBB participants so if you join you need to be committed to the daily tasks and working together around them.

My dream with the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge is that participants not only come away from the 31 days having learned and done a few exercises – but that they come away feeling connected to other bloggers who have shared the experience and who are looking to work together.

Together we know and can achieve a lot more than any single one of us.

Parting Advice in Building Blog Buddy Relationships:

As you head off to start connecting with other bloggers let me leave you with a few words of advice:

1. Make it Mutually Beneficial - these types of relationships are best when both parties come out of the interaction better off. It’s a give and take thing so make sure both parties not contribute and benefit in tangible ways.

2. Attempt to Find someone Within or in a Similar Niche - this won’t be possible for everyone (there are a few people blogging with quite narrow and specialized focuses) however where you can – try to build relationships with people in similar niches to you. This will open up great opportunities for you on many levels. If you can’t find someone in your niche all is not lost. You can still learn a lot from one another when you have different topics.

3. Find other bloggers on your level - when I’ve suggested this in the past I noticed a lot of bloggers approaching just successful ‘A-list’ type bloggers. While there’s nothing wrong with building a relationship with a larger blogger – there’s also something really powerful about finding another blog at a similar stage to you. This means you’ll be both going through similar challenges at the same time and can worth through them together.

4. Make Each Others Blog Better – my parting advice is to commit to make each others blogs better. While most of us are committed to making our own blogs better (and should be) something quite powerful can happen when we take that attitude with another persons blog too.

“Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.” - Stephen Covey

PS: see the forum discussion of this task and teaching here.

Today your task is to update some of the key pages and posts on your blog.

What are the most important pages on your blog?

This is an interesting question to ponder for a few minutes…. in fact, why not do that before reading on.

What pages or posts on your blog do you see as most valuable?

I sat down and asked myself this question earlier in the week and identified 10 or so pages on my blogs that for one reason or another were more important than others.

The reason I did the exercise was because that day I’d had the realisation that while every page on my blog is important – there are pages on most blogs that are more powerful than others at helping you to achieve your goals as a blogger.

However it also struck me while thinking about it that some of these important pages need updates from time to time.

So today your task is to spend time identifying key posts and pages on your blog and to give them an update.

Let me explore a few of these pages and suggest some ways that they might need an update:

Let’s start with the most obvious page first….

Your front page

This a fairly obvious one – most blogs get more traffic to the front page of their blog than any other. Here at ProBlogger my front page gets a little under 20% of all traffic on the site.

It’s the page I usually promote on business cards, in my email signature, on profile pages of social media sites and the page that others mentioning my blog on their sites refer people to. It’s also a page that people landing on old posts on my blog often head to next to see what the site is about.

Update it - there are a variety of ways that one can update the front page of their blog. These range from complete makeovers through to tweaks. The makeover/overhaul end of the spectrum is a little beyond the scope of this challenge so let me suggest a few smaller ideas:

1. First Impressions – what first impression does a new reader coming to your front page get? Do they know what your blog is about immediately? Does your blog’s title tags, header, tagline etc strongly communicate what your blog is about? Are their eyes drawn to any one important element or are things cluttered?

2. Sidebar - most blogs have a sidebar on every page – but it probably gets looked at more on your front page than any other. Over time sidebars tend to become cluttered with lots of buttons and links – perhaps it is time for a spring clean with the objective of only leaving useful and important information there.

3. Headers/Logo - one way that you can give your front page (and other pages on your blog) a refresh without doing a full redesign is to develop a new logo/header for your blog. This is not something to rush but perhaps today is a day to begin thinking about a new look and brand for your blog.

4. Think about Objectives and Call to Action – one question to ask when looking at your blog’s front page is ‘what are your objectives?’ What do you want people to do when they arrive on your blog for the first time (remember your front page is a logical place for new people to be visiting)? Do you want people to subscribe to an RSS feed or newsletter, click an ad, tell a friend, drive them to your best content, buy a product, hear your story…. what do you want them to do? Once you’ve identified your objective you can then position a call to action in a prime location on your blogs front page.

The front page of your blog is very important – but there are others. Let me suggest a few:

About Page

The about page of a blog may not get as much traffic as others – but it is one of the most important ones that you can spend time developing. The reason I believe this is that it can be a very influential page.

Think about who might read an about page. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that those reading your blog’s about page are going to be people in ‘investigation mode’. My suspicion is that those clicking on ‘about’ links are going to be:

• first time readers wanting to know whether this is a site for them
• potential partners/advertisers/collaborators/journalists/PR people/other bloggers etc wanting to know if they should invest time in building a relationship with you

It stands to reason that it’s a page you’ll probably want to have spend some time on recently to keep up to date, to think about how you call people to action etc.

Probably the biggest two mistakes that you can make when it comes to an about page are:

1. Not to have one
2. To leave it as the ‘default’ about page

Contact Page

During the last week I had an email from Becki (http://blog.beckitrue.com) who is doing the 31DBBB challenge. She wrote:

“I read all 700+ comments to the day 2 post and searched for people who have blogs in a similar niche as me. I was hoping to get a link on their site and to cooperate in some way, and am amazed that most have no method to directly contact the author.”

Becki was actively wanting to reach out to other bloggers in her niche with the hope of working with them in mutually beneficial ways to build their blogs. But due to the fact that many bloggers didn’t have any way to be contacted they missed out on a potentially fruitful relationship.

Do you have a means of being contacted on your blog? If so – is it up to date?

High Traffic Pages

Most blogs that have been around for a while have at least a handful of posts in their archives that generate a higher number of page views than other posts. This can be the result of search engine traffic, the result of another site linking to you, a social media site making a page popular etc.

This is an important page on your blog as it is a gateway where potential new loyal readers are entering.

The problem that many blogs have is that those entering your blog in these gateways often turn right back around and leave again.

Spend some time today identifying the most visited posts on your blog using a blog stats program (Google Analytics is one that I use and recommend – but even using a blog platform like WordPress’s native stats package should reveal what pages are getting visited most).

Once you’ve identified some key pages – make sure they are up to date and as helpful to readers as possible – but also think about how you can make that post more ’sticky’. You could do this by:

• adding some suggested further reading links at the end that point to other key posts on your blog
• adding an invitation to subscribe to your blog at the end (or even at the start of the post)

Other key pages

Many blogs have other key pages on them that often go for months and months (if not years and years) without an update. These include ‘advertise with us’ pages, ‘recommended reading’ pages, ’subscribe’ pages etc. Almost any page linked to from your navigation menu probably fits as these will be links people looking around your blog for the first time will probably be visiting.

Enough talk – go update some pages! Once you have – share with us how this exercise went in comments below.