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Why We're Like a Million Monkeys on Treadmills

2007-07-17T01:41:03Z

Lately I have been thinking a lot about channels. Every day it seems there's a hot new Web 2.0 site that captures our attention.

In 2003 it was Friendster and Linked In.

Then in 2004, thanks in part to the election, blogging began to get really big.

The year 2005 brought us photocasting (Flickr) podcasting (iTunes) and vodcasting via YouTube. By the way note the headlines "Internet craze" headlines listed here circa 2005.

In 2006 we saw a big revival in social networks with MySpace (a client) as well as the virtual world boom.

This year it's all about micro - Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce plus little web apps everywhere, on widget platforms, Facebook, the iPhone.

All of this leads me to the photo above. The Web 2.0 construction boom is bigger now than it ever was. Techcrunch, Scobleizer and Mashable leave me all breathless. It's like watching the cranes of Dubai rise. We're a million monkeys running on treadmills, chasing the latest banana. Myself included! The breathing apparatus in the photo above reminds me of my Google Reader stream!

Surely, channels are where the action is at. However, it's important to remember they are just that - and they change. Circa 1998, perhaps when many of you were 10, The Globe.com, GeoCities and Tripod were all the rage. They faded from our horizon over time. The same thing will happen to many of today's hot sites. In fact, I advise marketers not to invest too much time in creating "a Facebook strategy" as much as they don't have "an NBC strategy" or "a New York Times strategy." Instead, I encourage them to people watch, learn and then plan based on their audience and the big picture.

The most interesting action is in sociology. In other words, how does technology change our culture and how we interact with media, the web and each other - and to what end? This was a major realization for me a few months back and you have probably noticed it in my writing, which is less channel focused. These days, I am far more interested in what people do with technology rather than on what the latest new "shiny object" is. My friend Brian Reich calls this "Shiny Object Syndrome." That's why I am writing longer pieces once per day rather than many short posts.

For an example, consider this new study by the Shorenstein Center (PDF) that tracks how teens interact with news. Most of them do not make it part of their day. Surely new channels brought about the change but it's the shift itself rather than the technology that's most important and interesting here.

So my advice is definitely play with new sites. Channels are good and so is curiousity. But the bigger story in the long run is how these sites change business and our society.

(PS: For more on the monkey, read this related piece!)

It Takes More Than A Village

2007-07-17T05:05:05Z

As anyone publishing a web site knows, you have a front row seat when it comes to observing a multitude of visitor behaviors. Yet, when it comes to advertising, we continue to profile site visitors in such an unsophisticated manner. Our profiles tend to group visitors into a single community or two, based on demographics, interests or subject areas.

We haven't yet begun taking advantage of ethnographic insights, where visitor behaviors are understood both independently and as part of communities. When we do, the impact to advertising will be significant -- following behaviors as they are being expressed.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Tips for Building Online Communities

2007-05-21T14:07:15Z

Matthew Haughey from Fortuitous has posted some good tips for building online communities. He does this out of his experience with mega-community site - MetaFilter. The main points were as follows (bold is their points - the rest is some of my reflections as it applies to blogging - some fits better than others):

Take emotion out of decisions - I love his suggestion about the usefulness of having people to bounce ideas off when one’s emotions get a little out of control. It’s a useful thing to do when responding to crazed troll comments.
Talk like a human, not a robot - With blogging I think bloggers do need to create their own voice and style - however in my experience the more you inject your own personality into a blog the better it tends to go over with readers. The remark ‘Be the best member of your site’ is sound advice.
Give people something they can be proud of - This one gives me a little food for thought - giving readers/commenters a space to be creative with. Interesting.
Bring users in during community decisions - it’s amazing how readers of a blog will feel ownership over it and how making radical changes can have a real impact upon them. Changes on a blog need to be managed - involving your readers and giving them an opportunity to give feedback is a smart thing to do.
Moderation is a full-time job - Yep, so can be running a blog! If only there were more hours in the day.
Metrics spread the work out - I’m not quite sure if this applies to blogging strongly, however I find that the blog reader community has a great way of moderating itself.
Guidelines not rules - I like this one. Rules can get you into real trouble. My own approach is to try to create a culture in a place that you want readers to embody. I find that readers generally take their lead from the blogger - the tone that you blog in is generally picked up by others and if it’s not you’ll find that your regular readers will often step in to situations and police them for you.

Matthew’s post is well worth a read - even though it’s written more about forum style communities than blogging ones.

Lessons on Blogging

2007-05-22T22:34:56Z

If there’s one post you’re going to read today about how to take a new blog to the next level then I’d recommend it be:

27 Lessons Learned on the Way to 3000 Visits a Day and 2200 RSS Subscribers by John Wesley from Pick the Brain (found via Alister).

27 lessons might sound like a little too many - but they’re all short and all really worthwhile. Here are 4 from John’s list that stood out (with a few of my own comments).

1. “Don’t write every post for the social sites. It isn’t genuine and people get tired of it.”- Write for your readers first. Create useful content that builds the momentum of your blog and takes your readers on a journey. From time to time you’ll find an idea will come to you while you’re in this process that will work on the social bookmarking sites - but your main priority needs to be building momentum with your readership.

2. “Don’t participate in every meme or trade links with everyone who asks.” - Preach it brother! If you participate in every meme that comes your way (or every time you’re tagged) then you could find your blog goes so far off topic that you lose readership (not to mention your own focus). Be selective in what you participate in and choose those that have relevancy in terms of topic and add value to your blog.

3. “If you aren’t sure a post is good, sit on it for a day. If you still aren’t convinced, delete it. A bad post is worse than no post.” - Oh this is good - it fits in with my mantra that everything you do on your blog either adds to or takes away from what you’re trying to achieve with your blog.

4. “Be prepared to completely run out of ideas after the first 3-4 months.” - Do your best to stick it out and refrain from posting anything that’s absolutely lame. The inspiration does come back.” - I think most experienced bloggers have been through this at least once or twice. It’s a real test but if you can come through it then you’ll find you learn a lot about yourself, blogging and your niche.

John writes another 23 tips that are well worth reading. Great post John.

For a few of my own Lessons from blogging check out 18 Lessons that I wrote after 3 years of blogging.

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What’s the Lowdown on Digg Bait?

2007-05-25T16:32:27Z

Muhammad Saleem wrote a post over at CopyBlogger this week by the title - ‘Is it OK to Write for Digg’ and makes some really good points on either side of the debate. Here are a few key quotes from his piece with a few of my own thoughts:

“for it to be classified as “Digg bait” it really has to appeal to the community and it has to incite a passionate response from the users, whether the response be good or bad.”

Love them or hate them - but Digg users are a passionate lot (or many of them are). There’s something about their youthful exuberance that can make them either love you or hate them in a way that can send a blogger to ‘cloud nine’ or to the depths of despair.

“But Digg tends to become like crack for many writers and after they get on Digg once, there is an intense desire to try to keep getting on Digg. It is here that writers often start disregarding their loyal readers, start pandering to Digg, and run into trouble.”

I think this (and the following comments that Muhammad makes) is key. I’ve seen numerous bloggers go to the Dark Digg Side - lured by the temptation of tens of thousands of visitors in short spaces of time and writing posts that really don’t fit with their topic or help their current readers in an attempt to make the front page. My approach is that the vast majority of your posts should be written with your current reader in mind. Look after them - provide a community for them - give them useful content. While doing this there will be opportunities to write content with a broader appeal - but even then you will need to keep it on topic and appealing to your readership.

“Writing for Digg is actually less about substance and more about how you present the content - in other words, copywriting.”

This doesn’t mean you can’t have a post with substance that is diggable - but it does mean you need to pay particular attention to the form that you write in, your title and even the layout of the post.

I think some of Muhammad’s other points about a core and peripheral audience are great - use social media sites like Digg to expand your horizons and grow your audience - but keep your core readers right in your focus.

As with any other aspect of a blog - become obsessed with Digg and you’ll get things out of balance (read more on holistic blogging).

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Social Bookmarking and Networking - How Involved Are You?

2007-05-29T14:46:22Z

Belle from Working Blogger wrote me an interesting question last week on social networking and bookmarking communities that I thought might make an interesting topic for discussion for the wider community. She writes:

“What on earth is a blogger to do about all the various social networking communities. I do love StumbleUpon because it’s just so easy to use, but things like MyBlogLog and FaceBook and MySpace and the gazillion and one new social networking communities that seem to spring up all over the place - how do you know which one to spend your energy on? And then there’s Netscape vs. Digg - sometimes it seems to me that keeping track of what’s going on among all the various communities is a full-time endeavour in and of itself.”

I would love to get the ProBlogger readerships perspective on this one - please leave your thoughts in comments below.

Do you use social bookmarking and networking sites?
If so, which ones?
Do you find that they actually help your blogging? If so - how?
How much time do you spend on these sorts of activities each week?
What does being involved in them effectively involve for you?

A few reflections from me:
My own feelings on social bookmarking and networking sites is mixed. I do get involved to some extent. Some of those that I have accounts with include (I’ve linked to my profile pages for each if you’re interested in connecting):

I also use Digg, Reddit, Delicious as bookmarking sites. I use these different services to different extents (as you’ll see from the links).

I know Technorati Favorites doesn’t really belong in this cluster of sites - but as I’ll explain later I think it can have some similar benefits.

Why do I get involved?
For me there are a variety of reasons to be involved. For starters I enjoy it - to some extent. Secondly I think it’s important to understand the Web 2.0 landscape and evolving social nature of the web for someone who is in my field.

The other reason is that I do find that there are some tangible and intangible benefits of being involved. Obviously there is a large amount of traffic that can be directed at your blog if you’re lucky and a little smart using some of the social bookmarking sites - but for me the other less tangible benefits are probably more important. Some of these include:

profile - I’m amazed how many people stumble upon me via these sites and contact me through them
relationships - Numerous opportunities have opened up for me via some of these sites (particularly LinkedIn). I’ve also found relationships strengthened with readers when I’ve posted my profile pages - it gives readers a sense a intimacy to be able to add you as a friend.
brand reinforcement - The more places that people come across you the stronger your brand becomes. The beauty of being involved in these different spaces is that people will come across you in their own interactions with them and that each time they do they’re reminded of you and your blog. For me this is the true value of sites/features like Technorati Favorites which makes your latest posts appear on the front page of Technorati when someone fav’s you.

The Cost of Being Active in Social Sites

There is of course a cost in being involved in so many social online communities and Belle has really touched on the main one in her question - they can take a lot of time to upkeep and stay active in.

Of course this depends upon how active you want to be in them. I find that in each case you can be be extremely active or very passive. For example I rarely do anything more than accept invitations to be friends on LinkedIn and MySpace - however on StumbleUpon I’ve been much more active of late (because it’s so much fun).

I guess you get out what you put in - but for me it’s about being involved at least to some level.

What are your thoughts? Are you involved in social networking/bookmarking?

Donations on Blogs - Do They Work?

2007-05-30T17:08:13Z

One of the most popular new attempts to make money from blogging of the last few weeks has been the Buy Me a Beer - PayPal Donation WordPress Plugin that has been popping up on many of the blogs I read (the first one I saw it on was Chris’s blog (where he’s inviting people to buy him a coffee) - but there have been many others).

This little plugin allows readers to make a paypal donation at the end of each post by letting them buy you something small. The author of the plugin writes:

“Past experience shows me that asking people to donate money by giving them a specific reason increases donations by 200%!”

It’s an interesting concept that seems to be working to some extent for those trying it. If you’re trying it I’d love to hear how well it’s working.

How will it work in the long term?

This is the question that the jury is still out on. I suspect that this type of income stream will work better in the short term than over the long haul of a blog because it has a certain novelty factor and because those who are going to use it are more likely to do it once early on but less likely to make repeat purchases.

Donations on Blogs - When Do they Work Best?

I get asked about donations on blogs on a semi-regular basis. It seems to be an idea that many bloggers think about at one time or another. So do they work?

From my own experience of asking for donations (in my very early days of blogging) and from chatting to others that have done it I’ve found that asking for donations can work for some bloggers if:

They have a loyal readership - the more loyal your readers are the bigger the chance that they will be willing to give you a donation (big or small). It makes sense really - if you get a lot of traffic from sites like Digg, Google or other sources that send you readers who have no real loyalty to you I doubt that donations will work that well - but if you have a high reader loyalty it might be worth trying.
They provide a Service - bloggers who provide their readers with high value content (something that enhances their lives) will have a higher chance of getting something back from their readers. Offer readers something that will help them every day over a long period of time and there’s every chance they won’t mind throwing you a few dollars every now and again. Offer your readers meaningless ‘jibber’ that they could get anywhere and you’ll have an uphill battle.
They have a large readership - there will only ever be a certain percentage of readers that will respond to a call for donations. As a result a larger readership will obviously result in a higher number of those taking you up on your invitation to donate.
They Don’t monetize in other ways - readers are more likely to respond to your invitation for donations if they don’t perceive you’re already making big money from your blog. If your sidebar and posts are already plastered with ads and affiliate programs and then you ask for a few dollars you could just push your readers a little too far and come across as greedy. I’ve seen a few bloggers come close to this line of late - it’s interesting to see their readers pushing back.

An Example of a Successful Donation Drive

One of the few bloggers that I’ve seen make significant amounts from asking for donations was Jason Kottke who raised enough to quit his job to blog full time (a couple of years back in 2005). He had a large loyal readership, provided useful content and didn’t run advertising on his blog. You can see a post about this on his site here.

One of the keys that I noticed with Jason was that he didn’t ask for donations every day on his blog. He held once a year fund raising drive that lasted for a week (I’m going from memory here). Then he didn’t bring it up for another year.

A word of Warning

I’ve seen a number of bloggers over the last couple of years become a little obsessed with the idea of making a good living from donations from readers. As a result of their obsession they actually ended up killing their blog as they annoyed their readers so much by their fund raising drives that people became disillusioned with them.

By all means give this type of income stream a go if you feel you have a loyal readership - however don’t push it in every post you write and force it upon readers or you could end up taking your blog backwards.

Search Engine Optimization Article at Wikipedia Doesn't Deserve Attention

2007-05-29T19:11:33Z

Posted by randfish

I received an email from Carsten Cumbrowski while jetsetting in China:

Jonathan Hochman (aka Jehochman) was spending a lot of time on cleaning up the article about SEO at Wikipedia. It is now in the review for becoming a featured article candidate.

You would probably agree that it would be a good thing, if SEO gets featured one day on the Wikipedia homepage to raise awareness among the normal people about the industry.

Carsten is hoping that some experts from the world of search marketing will help to join in the discussion about making the article on search engine optmization featured. I used to be conflicted about the SEO article at Wikipedia (link condom applied as I don't editorially vouch for that page) - in many ways it seems like helping to make it more accurate and higher quality is the right thing to do. After all, when most people search for SEO or Search Engine Optimization, that's the first thing they'll read. It's not a great introduction by any means. Bill's criticized it in the past and even put in some of his incredibly valuable time trying to improve it. Aaron Wall's lashed out against it, too. Now, it's my turn.

The article is not, at this point, terrible. However, like any content on Wikipedia it's subject to the "prevailing winds" of attitudes and publicity about SEO. This week, for example, it appears that it's no longer part of the Wikipedia series on spamming, but if a big media outlet decides to frame the discussion another way, we're all up a creek. This is just one of Wikipedia's many weaknesses.

Another big one that's highly evident in the discussion page is the bias towards traditional media as more knowledgeable, legitimate and trustworthy than blogs, industry resources or online-only media. Here's poor John fighting with a tragically uninformed Wikipedian on the subject:

Before you review featured article candidates, SandyGeorgia, I hope that you will at least read the articles. From your edit history I see that you probably spent less than five minutes looking at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Search engine optimization. I can't imagine how that would be enough time to give a thoughtful review. I don't treat other editors that way, and I don't expect other editors to treat my efforts with such disregard. This is the first time I've tried to elevate an article to featured status, and your review has made me feel both foolish and unwelcome

I'm sorry my comments made you feel foolish, but it doesn't take more than a few minutes to review sources and find blogs, Usenet and personal websites were used to source the article. It shouldn't be too hard to replace those with reliable sources if you know the territory well. Best regards, SandyGeorgia

I love what Jon said (BTW - The personal website she refers to is Matt Cutts' - as though the irony needed highlighting). He's dealing with the same problem the SEO community experiences in every unfriendly web community - ignorant, self-important blowhards favoring uninformed prejudice over logical investigation and honesty. Here's how it should work:

Read something about SEO on Wikipedia
Think to yourself - huh, I wonder if that's accurate
Investigate the author a bit - are they reliable, generally honest, trustworthy, experienced?
Investigate the subject matter - spend some time in the popular, well-regarded SEO blogs, forums and read some industry resources
Come back and re-read
If you still disagree, consider bringing it up in the discussion and be sure to mention that you're not an industry expert, cite your sources and be respectful
If you think you've got a real point, go ahead and make your edits

Here's how it actually works:

Read something about SEO on Wikipedia
Note that it doesn't match with your prejudiced, pre-conceived notions of SEO as spam
Make a bunch of edits and deletions
When pressed by industry experts, dismiss their sources as lacking credibility
When pressed further, find Wikipedia rules that work in your favor - since you can't argue from experience, use your powers of derision and dismissal combined with bureaucratic wordplay to frustrate and demoralize your opposition
Find other inexperienced people with similar biases towards SEO and recruit them to your cause

This isn't just how its done on Wikipedia, or with SEO. Those who are familiar with message boards in the political arena, or the operations at DMOZ, or attitudes at web forum communities will get an eery sense of Deja Vu. This is what I despise about these sites. I've never gone into a message board about venture capital and spouted off about how it's all a dirty scam run by idiots, yet when this happens to SEOs, there's inevitably a chorus of cheers from the peanut gallery.

To my mind, Wikipedia is undeserving of many of the rankings and visibility it achieves, though I certainly concede that there are many truly excellent resources on the site. The fundamental problem with Wikipedia is one of trust - the trust that might be applied to one page there cannot be applied to the whole, yet by Google's ranking algorithm, this is certainly the case. Google (and Yahoo! and MSN) treat Wikipedia as though it were a single publisher, spreading the trust, authority and link love across the entire site, even though each page is basically its own site (and should, thus, be judged individually). Granted, the editorial process at Wikipedia does provide some basic level of review, but it's not even as high as something like YOUmoz, where Rebecca reviews and approves, edits and denies entries. At least there, you know you're getting some consistency with the SEOmoz brand.

I have to respect what Jill Whalen said (in the comments) on this subject:

That awful SEO page has pretty much made me not trust a thing I read on Wikipedia.

I can certainly appreciate what Jonathan's doing to try and make the Wikipedia page better, and he's working the system from the inside, as a trusted member and editor at Wikipedia, which is itself not only honorable, but wise. However, I can't provide much more support other than to say "good luck." It's not a battle I'd wish to fight, and the Wikipedians are adversaries I'd elect to simply ignore. Better to have the page fall into inaccuracy and disrepute and let something else take its place than to risk the article achieving even more strength and publicity and then turning into the latest rubbish when a senior editor decides that their prejudices are more important than what the experts say.

I can't tell you how relieved I was when WIkipedia re-instituted nofollow. It's a great burden off my shoulders to know that we don't need to hypocritically create an account at Wikipedia, play by their rules and follow their biases in order to have the freedom to add & remove links. I appreciate the site for what it is, and I respect folks like Jon, who make a real effort there, but I can't condone it or endorse it - to my mind, any efforts made there simply serve to legitimize what is fundamentally illegitimate.

Of course, I'm very much looking forward to some disagreement in the comments :)

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How About Landing Pages For The Social Media Visitor?

2007-05-22T19:04:24Z

Marketers generally create landing pages for pay-per-click campaigns or other advertising campaigns. So, why not create them for social media sites? Granted, it may seem impossible because it is hard to change the layout of your blog or website just for visitors from like Digg, Netscape, and StumbleUpon. However, you can make it so that if a visitor came from a social site, they would see a different design.

Let's take Search Engine Land as an example to explore this possibility. Here are things from the current design that you might remove for any visitor coming from a social media site:

Click to continue reading...

Google Hot Trends, Yahoo Buzz Index: Tracking Tools For Traditional Marketing

2007-05-24T15:12:01Z

Search Engine Journal compares Google's recently introduced "Hot Trends" database with the Yahoo Buzz Index. (Barry Schwartz wrote extensively about Hot Trends previously.)

These tools, while fun and interesting, are also potentially important as business intelligence and data mining tools and increasingly useful to track the efficacy of offline marketing. Whatever their problems and challenges today, these tools will ultimately improve and become important to marketers as they coordinate "integrated" campaigns across traditional and Internet media.

Click to continue reading...

How To Leverage The New Facebook Platform

2007-05-30T20:25:15Z

The big news in social media last week was when Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Platform, which opens their API to allow third parties to build applications within Facebook.

This means that companies now have instant access to Facebook's twenty-four million members. And, even better, applications developed for the Facebook Platform can serve their own ads or conduct transactions with consumers as long as they don't interfere with the ads currently being served on Facebook.

Click to continue reading...

Google Mapping Announcements Revisited

2007-05-30T22:23:43Z

Yesterday I discovered Google's new "Street View" by chance, looking for directions, and blogged it, before it was officially announced and before I'd had a chance to talk to anyone at Google. At Where 2.0 yesterday I spoke to John Hanke, Google Maps GM, after the official announcement about Street View and some of the new functionality, which includes "Mapplets" and transit information.

Click to continue reading...

Tim Ferriss - Social Media and The Social Proof - Part 2

2007-05-23T09:31:44Z

Here's the second part to yesterday's interview with Tim Ferriss.

Your book was ranked at around #4 on Amazon for a while, and got even more publicity all over the web, all before it was even officially out. It seems almost blasphemous to talk about converting a blog into a book but then to recommend using offline media to promote it. You argue that online media is saturated and therefore difficult to get attention in, furthermore, you recommend using neglected media such as person-to-person, print, radio and so on (for advertising) rather than fighting people for attention online. Intuition would suggest that those media are neglected for a reason and that a natural progression took place to a more efficient mechanism for achieving the same end. The ultimate goal as you stated is to talk to people and get them to link back to you. Did you consider (or how do you feel about) social media as an audience-building or link-building strategy?

I don't think that online media in entirely saturated (though close), but I do think online contact via email is a poor vehicle for developing relationships with top bloggers, for example. I think that certain media are neglected for a reason -- many reasons -- but that doesn't mean that they're good reasons. Advertising isn't that different from fashion. Once a few cool kids are doing X, then everyone stampedes to do X. Ugg boots weren't cool when I wore them in grade-school, but as soon as Nicole Richie wears them -- BAM. Just because more people use PPC now than two years ago doesn't make it effective; it just makes it popular. PPC is too overpriced in most cases as a result of its raised demand.

I still believe that neglected media presents interesting options. Demand is low so prices drop, there are still significant audiences to be captured. As far as social media is concerned, if we're talking about sites like Digg, Netscape, Reddit, I think that they're very valuable tools for link and audience building. I used Sigg and Netscape exactly when i wanted to -- after the book launched at the end of the first week. I have this on my 4-week launch plan on a white-board in my office. Why does it work? It provides social proof. People want to experience things that others have already tested and shown as good. With social networks, you get social proof en masse. With targeted blogs, you get social proof from an authority figure.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by 'social proof'?

1 person says it's good. So what? 5 people say it's good. Maybe. 689 people say it's good. I have to check it out, and I'll feel stupid if i'm the only one who doesn't like it. In blogs, it's more of a "if Mr./Ms. X likes it, it must be good" effect. It's social proof by magnitude of authority vs. magnitude of numbers. Most people don't like to make decisions. It's tiring to make decisions all the time, so we look for social indicators of what to choose and what to do. harnessing that is tricky, but it can be done.

I got tagged in a meme a few days back: 'why I blog'. And seeing as I have the privilege of talking to you, I would like to go in more detail as to why you started your blog. There are two things that I would like to specially focus on. First, what do you mean when you say your 'free blog ended up being the best PR tool'? And after than, you say that you used your blog to build a 'platform' or a fan base (audience). What steps did you take to make sure that the blog would gain traction and that the visitors would have a reason to stick around?

I post almost purely how-to articles that push things to extremes. The content really is king. I did no mass emailing about the blog, no "please link to me" emails, no registration, nothing like that. I depended on speaking at www.sxsw.com to get my first readers, who were also bloggers. All you need are a few people who are efficient with word-of-mouth (via twitter, email, blogging, social networks, etc.) to get the snowball started.

I always ask myself when I think of a blog topic: would I link to this if I were a blogger with a 100,000-person subscriber base on Feedburner? If the answer is "no", even as I drop that to, say, 2,000 subscribers, I drop the topic and repeat the process. Some critics of my "geek to freak: how I gained 34 lbs. of muscle in 4 weeks" post have asked why I waited two years to post all of my results. The answer is simple: I didn't have anything to promote then. I waited until I wanted a lot of attention and controversy, which was exactly one week after my first book launched nationwide.

How to do you build traffic? First, write extreme and uncommon material, focusing on how-to. Then, meet bloggers in person and convince them to read your blog, and offer to guest blog on blogs that have more traffic than yours. That's all I did. My blog now has several thousand Feedburner subscribers, and my 4-week anniversary just passed. The book certainly has helped, but most of it has come from what i just covered.

The world is full of people who settle for mediocrity in the name of being "realistic". I know, as I used to be one of them. It's a fate worse than death. I encourage people to be skeptical, but most assertions of something being "impossible" are exactly that: assertions. Surprisingly few things are impossible. Some people will never believe, and i'm not trying to convert them. It's impossible. It's like an atheist and a catholic having a debate -- forget about it.

I'm interested in catching the people who are on the fence and want to find an option other than 80-hour weeks and 4-hour aerobics sessions that chafe buttocks and make no one happy. Being overworked with chafed buttocks is no way to go through life :)

You said, "Blogging is underestimated by many, but it's overestimated by even more. It's not a panacea or a silver bullet. It is a tool you should pay a ton of attention to, but it's still just one tool." And just left it at that. I think that statement is more powerful than you let on, or than it was perceived to be. Could you elaborate on that?

Having a blog does nothing. Having a blog worth reading does a lot. Blogging is one communication vehicle, but it's not a fix-all. Every fortune 500 company out there is clamoring over themselves to start an "open conversation" with blogs because it's the "in" thing to do. Most of them couldn't cost justify it to save their lives. Blogs are not right for everyone, and creating good material takes a lot of effort and energy. Half-assed blogging will get you nowhere. That's partially why I only blog 1 or 2 times per week maximum; any more than that and the quality will suffer. I create 90% original content, as linking to a bunch of writing on other blogs isn't worth much in a world addicted to everything new.

Do you really need a blog, or do you need an audience? I have a blog because I enjoy getting my thoughts to the world, but it also gives me some limited credibility with other bloggers. Can you borrow someone else's audience instead of building your own? if so, that is a more efficient vehicle for disseminating your message - your big idea. Don't think of pitching; think of new big ideas and the traffic will go where you want it to. At the end of the day, that's what gets people talking, and getting people talking is what creates the wildfire effect we all want.

I had more than a dozen publishers turn me down, I had hundreds tell me creating a bestseller was impossible (one bookseller even sent me spreadsheets to prove it -- how thoughtful!). Now, here we are. The book hit the lists in the first week, not because I executed perfectly, but because I believed it could be done. Think big and don't listen to people who tell you it can't be done. Life's too short to think small.

**Note: This concludes the two-part interview with Tim Ferriss. I would love to hear feedback from all of you so please leave a comment.

The Difference Between Marketing, PR, Advertising, and Branding

2007-05-28T09:28:23Z

Ads of the World is an online archive of the best and most interesting advertisements from across the world. Today I came across an advertisement on their site that uses four simple pictures to explain to you the difference between marketing, pr, advertising, and branding.

The site is a great source of inspiration and is useful if you want to see what kinds of advertisements are successful in various different markets. Click here for the original images and related discussion. The source link was also submitted to Digg and deserves to get some attention.

Another great example of using Digg to help set a new blog on fire

2007-05-22T14:27:06Z

Tim Ferriss is everwhere right now. He’s even got Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel fawning over him. Blogging nirvana!

Rubel’s article will put you in the picture on just how well Ferriss has marketed himself across the blogosphere. And good on him. I grabbed a pre-release copy from his publisher and read it on the plane to India a couple weeks back. It’s a great, easy read and I was quite impressed with his balance. It’s SO not a get-rich-quick book, in case you were worried. I do recommend it, if only as a challenge to your status quo.

Now, Tim is a writing some really tantalyzing posts on his blog at the moment… I’m sure they were prepared in advanced and queued up ready to go in time for the book launch, but that’s not the point. They’re juicy content.

But check this out… go look at all the submitted stories from his blog on Digg. Notice something?

Two stories have been promoted to the front page and one more is about to go there (this one). The other nine submitted stories have almost universally performed really poorly… all but one not even making it to double figures. Is this because their content sucked? Is this because they were submitted with bad titles and descriptions? “No” to all the above.

There is only one key reason those two promoted stories (almost three) were so much more successful on Digg: the submitter. The first story to get promoted was submitted by Karim Yergaliyev and the other two by Muhammad Saleem (of Pronet fame).

Both these guys are among the very top Diggers. When they submit a story hundreds (even thousands) of other Diggers see that story in one of a few highlighted ways and are then more likely to digg these stories than others. Never mind the details about how that works… the point is clear: your success on Digg starts with delectable content but the clincher is getting your post submitted by one of the top Diggers. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but I’m giving you the best scenario with the highest probability of success, ok!

Remember my story of a few weeks ago, about how all Kevin Rose’s submitted stories on Digg get promoted (ALL of them!)? Well, check out Muhammad’s success rate. I’ve not done the math on this precisely but it looks like about 25 to 30 per cent of all his submitted stories get promoted, on average.

Translated: if Muhammad Saleem submits your story it means a) you’ve written an impressive enough post to get the attention of a top Digger (well done!) and b) you have, say, a 25 per cent chance of a bucket-load of traffic from a promoted story on Digg!

(Karim’s stats are roughly the same: out of his last eight submitted stories, fully half of them were promoted to the front page!)

Now, you can leave it all to chance or you can think hard about how you can befriend some of the top Diggers. Muhammad Saleem, for example, is very approachable. Start by adding value in the comments of posts he writes on the Pronet blog, so he notices you. If you have good reason to do it, link back to a relevant post of your own in a comment you leave on his blog. Do what I did and send him a message or two via MyBlogLog. I didn’t send rubbish; for memory it was a suggestion to check out a post of mine that was on-topic with something he’d written somewhere.

The point is, get committed and creative and you’ll get noticed… in a good way! Just don’t hassle, for goodness sake

alister cameron, blog marketing, Digg, four hour work week, front page, Marketing, muhammad saleem, pronet, tim ferriss, timothy ferriss

Learn Viral Marketing From Warner Bros.

2007-05-20T09:00:15Z

Making a truly successful online viral marketing campaign is not an easy feat to accomplish. So when a golden opportunity to see a brilliant execution of a successful viral marketing campaign - and learn from it - presents itself, we're definitely taking it! Here's how Warner Bros. pulled it off.

First, the company made a website for The Dark Knight, and put nothing on the page but a graphic.

Because people have been anticipating the movie so much, just the fact that they had put a site up for it got people excited. But when you click the image on the site, you are redirected to another site , with the following graphic and that's all.

After that, yet another site pops up, also (mockingly) in support of Harvey Dent and apparently defaced by the Joker.

However, this time there's a catch. User's can interact with the site, and each user, by entering an email address and a verification code, can receive an email which gives the user (X,Y) coordinates that when entered into a link (also included in the email) will remove one pixel from the defaced poster to reveal an image.

But since participation is limited to one user and one pixel removal per email address, the average user will only be able to participate once. And since every ardent fan is desperate to see what lies beneath, it is in the best interest of every fan to spread the word as much as possible and to get the process going faster and faster so that we can all see what lies beneath. At this point the users undoubtedly take matters into their own hands, start spreading the word and try to get other users to participate and remove pixels.

As you can see, the campaign has successfully become viral and the Warner advertising machine rejoices. Not only have the various sites been submitted to socially driven communities, but there have been incoming links from a multitude of film sites and blogs alike. Within a matter of hours, we have the following reconstruction of the final image:

Spotting and Reporting a Digg 'Gamer'

2007-05-20T04:02:53Z

In theory, the way socially driven news and content sites like Digg, Netscape, Reddit and so on work is that the community decides what content is good and what content is bad, and then the content is either buried or promoted to the home-page of the site for mass consumption. But there are always those that try to manipulate these sites to their advantage.

One would think that once these sites' communities grow large enough, there will be enough eyeballs on the sites at any given time to prevent the 'gaming' of the system. But because (at least at Digg and Reddit) there are (for the most part) no hired moderators that regularly regulate the content of the sites, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to artificially promote content. For example, have a look at the following story that I caught yesterday:

As you can see, the submitter of the story managed to get 59 Diggs in a little over an hour, and also got the story listed in the top 10 hottest in the upcoming queue. Now just by looking at that you might be inclined to think that the content is really hot, but look at who is voting for the story:

Without even clicking the outbound link for the submission, and just by looking at the submitter and the users voting on the content, you should be able to see that the story is being 'gamed'. The first thing any legitimate user does when joining a community is to create a profile and upload an avatar. None of these users have uploaded an avatar. Furthermore, if you look at any of the users' profiles, most of them have only recently created their account and haven't bothered to submit any content or vote on other people's content.

If, however, you don't spot any of these things, you should immediately be able to classify the outbound link as spam just by looking at the page. So if you see something similar going on at Digg, please take a moment to mark the submission as spam and report the user to abuse@digg.com. This will result in the story being removed from the site, and the submitter along with all his pushers (sockpuppet accounts) being removed from the site as well.

The lesson to be learned here is that you can try and game socially driven sites and you might even win a couple of times, but the only way to win in the long run is to create content that the community will enjoy.

Everyone Loves User Generated Content

2007-05-18T10:22:06Z

Interesting news from Jupiter Research that shows nearly half (49 percent) of online users have engaged with user-generated content (UGC) in the past month by actively creating or simply reading material posted by others. In a study titled “User-Generated Content: Strategies for Media Sites”, JupiterResearch reports that UGC is now a mainstream activity for millions of consumers.

According to the study, users under the age of 25 are especially active participants. Three-quarters of users 18 to 25 are reading or writing UGC, and few of them are passive participants.

“The relative youth of UGC users provides an opportunity for publishers to address consumers they have been unable to reach off-line,“ said Barry Parr, Analyst at JupiterResearch. “UGC is an important means of attracting younger users to the online sites of traditional media properties with whom they have no existing relationship.”
Although younger online users are clearly the leading consumers of UGC, it would be a mistake to think of UGC as limited to the young. According to the study, a third (34 percent) of those over age 55 are participating in UGC as well. Additionally, active users of UGC haven’t abandoned off-line media for online, but they are learning to balance the two.

UGC helps in the buying cycle, improves customer satisfaction and loyalty. If you cannot add UGC content to your web site, as a marketer you should be very aware of that all the User Generated Content is saying about your brand, company or service. UGC can be a great gateway to beginning a conversation with your target audience.

The Universal Search Nightmare

2007-05-18T04:34:45Z

So you are Google and you want to own all that is search. You realize from Microsoft’s failure that if you get too pushy in your attempt to take over an entire search industry people will revolt. You must find another way. Ah yes, if you build on cool ideas, develop or buy interesting things like video search and offer them for free, people will fall into place. This way when you introduce Universal Search and combine all of your technology the minions will already have been assimilated.

Will Google’s Universal Search Spell the End of Search Engine Marketing?

Will Universal Search Crush Mom and Pop?

I sell a product and am found in Google’s for a couple important phrases. I am in the top 5 for these phrases in Google’s organic search and without these positions would not sell enough products to make it worth it. Clutter this area with Wikipedia, PDF files, Video and “How To” information and I am out of business. Example: The other day a “how to” file appeared above my entire site (dedicated to this product) and I noticed an immediate drop in traffic. Add a combined “universal” pile of information and it will be game over for many small business owners that have been blessed with organic (yes vertical) Google search traffic for years. We all know what happens when there are too many choices of ice cream. This is just one example of how universal search will hurt, not help.

Google Shakes Up The SEO World With Universal Search

2007-05-17T23:32:34Z

Google just announced that they will be releasing a major update to their algorithm and to the format of how their results are displayed.

Their new results page is called “Universal Search” and it will combine results for Video, Images, News, and the rest of the Web.

This is a MAJOR change that will have a massive impact on the world of SEO.

It will also have a big impact on the traffic some were getting from search results.

For example, a site that used to rank #7 for a specific keyword phrase will probably now receive traffic as if it were ranked #12 or #13 — because the Video, Images, and News listings will push the web site listings farther down on the page.

We will now most likely see a lot of new SEO strategies that target Video, Images, and News.

I think Video-optimization will see the most activity since News will be too hard for marketers to game the system. Images will seem like the easiest target but I’m sure Google already has some tricks up their sleeve to keep people from gaming the system there as well.

I believe Video is where we will see the most activity — and it will probably be a combination of user ratings and other factors that determine which videos get displayed; not just a matter of video tags.

Here’s a great detailed write-up about these changes from Search Engine Land.

Here’s more on this important story from Search Newz. And here’s an article from CNN.com.