Dave Grohl: Another celebrity disses Twitter
Outspoken Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has laid into Twitter, or — more accurately — the people who use it, suggesting that they are wasting their time.
“F**k Twitter! That’s the biggest waste of time. If people got their head out of their ass, they might f**king get out and accomplish something.”
Presumably, he’s hurling his insult at the stereotypical couch potato Twitter user who simply tweets about what they’ve just had for lunch, rather than the myriad of interesting people (both celebrities and not) who update their Twitter accounts with interesting and insightful words.
Funny how Grohl chose to waste his time slating a service he doesn’t like. Many people who don’t use Twitter just get on with their lives without making a big fuss in order to garner some publicity.
A Blogging Case Study: Covering a Big Event in My Niche
A couple days I tried an experiment in which I covered a big event in my niche.
My blog is in the gaming niche. More specifically, I write about Magic The Gathering (MTG), a popular trading card game. MTG recently had their World Championship Tournament. This tournament happens once a year and take four days to complete. It is the most prestigious event on the calendar with over a quarter million dollars in the prize pool. This year the winner received a $45,000 check.
I knew that many players would be following the tournament online so I did my best to cover it myself. My hope was to get a lot of traffic by ranking for the relevant keywords that would come up as the tournament progressed.
I was pretty happy with the results 
The graph above shows my visitors from the last 30 days. As you can see, my traffic had basically plateaued in the first 25 days. But during the tournament, my traffic grew sharply and the two days after the tournament I had my first ever days with over 1,000 visitors.
In the rest of this post, I’ll share what I did specifically. Hopefully, you can apply them on your own blog and get traffic spikes too.
Improve Your Speed
Speed is important because most of the topics from a big event are time-sensitive. The interest for the topics is high during the event but after the event finishes, people will quickly move on to the next big thing.
I found this out the hard way earlier this year. I was doing some work for the sports section of a site. The Super Bowl had just finished so I started working on an editorial piece about the game. I finished the piece five days later and sent it to sports blogs to see if they would link to it. I got a couple of links but some of the blogs said the Super Bowl was already old news so didn’t link. They said if I had published a couple days earlier, I would’ve gotten a link.
Once you find out some noteworthy news from the event, publish a post about it as soon as possible. Otherwise, the news will get old and you’ll miss out on the traffic from the initial buzz.
For the Worlds tournament, I published my posts within 12 hours of the news being released.
Work Long and Hard
You may have heard that writing more posts results in getting more traffic. That is usually true and the traffic is magnified when you write a lot of posts about a big event.
Typically, I only write 1-3 posts per week but during the tournament, I wrote 7 posts. Those 7 posts totaled about 7,000 words. This was a big change since I usually only write 750 – 1500 words a week. Needless to say, I sacrificed some sleep to keep up with the tournament and write all those words.
Therefore, if you want to get a lot of traffic from big events, make sure you have enough time to cover various issues and news. And be willing to work hard during that time period since you’ll have an increased workload.
Add Value
I don’t think it’s not enough to get people to visit your site. If all you do is cover the event, they may not have incentive to become a repeat visitor. There are going to be other blogs that cover the event too so you need a way to differentiate yourself from them. You need to give your new visitors a reason to come back to your blog. You can increase your chance of turning them to repeat visitors by adding value in your coverage. Instead of just rehashing the news, figure out a way to add something extra.
I tried to add value in a couple of ways.
During the tournament, the hosts interviewed players on video and asked them about their strategies. The videos did not include notes, so I took notes of the videos and added them to my blog. My hope is that people will bookmark my posts for reference since text is generally a better reference source than video.
Also, since I’m a winning player and I keep up with the tournament scene, I made sure to give my thoughts on the various strategies being used in the tournament. Instead of just reporting the strategies, I evaluated them. My hope is that people will come back to my site to see what I have to say about new strategies that get developed in the future.
Use Relevant Keywords
If you want to get a lot of traffic from the search engines, you need to discern the keywords people will be searching with. Then, include those keywords in the titles of your posts. I think most bloggers get too “cute” with their titles or don’t pay enough attention to keywords and post titles.
For each post, I identified a couple related keywords on the topic and included them in the title. For example, the winning player had unique strategy which he learned from a friend, who was not in the tournament. His friend had an interesting name for the strategy. He called it “Naya Lightsaber”. I used that term in the title of one of my posts.
The winning strategy always gets a lot of attention and I was fortunate enough to get #1 spot on Google for naya lightsaber. My post on the topic is only three days old but it is already one of the top 10 most trafficked posts on my blog for the last 30 days with over 1,000 pageviews.
Need help covering the big events in your niche? Performancing offers blog management services so you don’t have to do all the work.
Wordpress.com proves why you’re always at the mercy of free blogging platforms
The news that Automattic has finally rolled out email subscriptions on WordPress.com goes to prove the point that, no matter how good a free blogging platform is, you’re always at its mercy when it comes to features.
That might sound obvious, but it’s something that’s easy for new bloggers to overlook.
While it’s wise to keep a blog simple, features such as allowing your readers to subscribe via email are near essential when it comes to marketing, because many visitors don’t know what RSS or care to learn how to use it.
If you host your own blog, it’s not a problem because you can either find a plugin to handle email subscriptions, or get Feedburner, Aweber or some other third-party service on board, because you have the ability to add custom code.
You might think I’m about to negate the arguments I raised in my “Who is Posterous good for?” post. In fact, Posterous — though socially well-connected — currently offers even less features than WordPress.com, though it’s arguably a lot easier to publish multimedia rich content to.
I think the free blogging platforms are very good for allowing new bloggers to cut their teeth, despite the issues surrounding starting a blog without a custom domain name and then having to migrate later if the blog becomes popular (all major free blogging platforms allow you to use your own domain name, but I doubt many newbies take advantage of that).
Seeing what I consider basic functionality only just added to WordPress.com proves that, if you want total control over your blog, you do need to self-host.
And, if you’re serious about building a business from blogging, but don’t have all the technical know-how just yet, it’s still worth getting help to host your own blog, because it will be infinitely more customisable further down the line when you decide to tailor it to exactly your own needs.
Hats off to Automattic for adding this feature to WordPress.com. Just remember that you can do so much more with your own version of WordPress.
Microblogging drives mobile Internet usage
If you’re in any doubt that adding geotagging to Twitter is a good idea, the latest survey from Novarra has found that microblogging services are driving the use of the mobile Internet.
In the past year, mobile usage of URL shortening services such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com — near-essential for sharing links on Twitter — has leapt by 1,068%, while page views of Twitter grew by 3,500% in the first half of 2009.
VP of marketing at Novarra, Randy Cavaiani, said that Twitter was a great viral tool for exposing consumers to new and interesting content.
These statistics are bound to be encouraging for those pushing uptake of the mobile Internet, and it’s not too surprising that Twitter is particularly popular given that interesting things generally happen when users are mobile.
Increased functionality, such as geotagging, more interesting third-party apps, and more mobile operators opening up Twitter via SMS, should propel Twitter usage even further.
Five Ways to Tweak a Wordpress Theme
Ah, free Wordpress themes. I’m convinced they’re one of the biggest reasons Wordpress is the most popular blogging platform today. From one-column minimalism to grid-based magazine layouts, photoblogging styles to made-for-Adsense themes, there are free Wordpress themes for every taste- just download, install and activate!
But to set your blog apart, you’ll want to tweak that theme- and when I say tweak, I mean make small changes here and there. To make these tweaks to your theme of choice, a tool like the Firebug extension for Firefox can be very handy- but, really, any text editor will do.
- Tweak your header
Usually the first place new visitors will look, and a good place to start. Some themes include “theme options” pages that show up when you’ve activated the theme, and others include banner photos or graphics that can easily be replaced with your own. If you’re using the default Wordpress theme Kubrick, the aptly named Kubrickr will automatically find photos on Flickr for you to customize your header with. To get more in-depth, I recommend reading through Wordpress’ official codex page on Designing Headers. - Play with your widgets
Most Wordpress theme designers “widgetize” their themes, and for good reason: widgets are probably the quickest way to personalize a Wordpress theme. Built-in widgets, available in every fresh installation of Wordpress, include widgets for displaying your Archives, Calendar, Recent Comments and so forth- and And if the theme you love isn’t widgetized, you can do it yourself. - Experiment with color
Even slight changes to the colors on your site can have a big impact. Online tools such as the Color Scheme Designer can keep you busy for hours, or you can check out pre-made color schemes at sites like colr.org and GenoPal. - Change your fonts
We used to have just two choices when it came to web fonts: serif or sans-serif. Today, we have methods like sIFR and FLIR, which replace your fonts using Flash, the newish Cufon, which doesn’t require Flash, and CSS3’s @font-face, which works by downloading the specified fonts. - Personalize your About page
This one, which requires no CSS tweaking at all, just might be the most important way of all. Tweaking your About page, the only page that comes pre-built with Wordpress, is where you can truly let your personality shine through. A photo of yourself is always good, but you should feel free to add anything here that shows the world- or your readers, at least- who you are. You can read more about tweaking your About page in a previous post of mine.
Of course, we’ve only barely scratched the surface of the ways you can tweak your Wordpress theme. For more ways, the Wordpress Codex is an excellent place to start, or look through our previous posts on Wordpress here.
Performancing Releases the Herald Theme for WordPress
Considered one of the premier sources of blogging news, commentary and information, The Blog Herald has gone through different iterations since its inception in 2003. Among the most successful designs was Brian Gardner’s grey-themed three-column layout released in 2007. Performancing is releasing this theme as our latest free WordPress theme as the Herald Theme.
Sporting a grey-dominant color scheme, with red and blue highlights, the Herald Theme looks clean and crisp, with a wide main content area, and two sidebars to the right. The middle sidebar us wide enough to contain an ad block of 125×125 pixel buttons or a 250×250 banner, and supports featured posts which will display only posts from a defined category or tag. Each sidebar block and footer column can be customized using widgets for easy drag-and-drop rearranging.
The Herald Theme is optimized for use with WordPress 2.8 and newer. Dropdown menus use jQuery.
Preview the Herald Theme
For a live preview of the theme, click here.
Download the Herald Theme
Twitter geotagging: Will you be using the new service?
Do you Twitter from your mobile device while on the go, or do you tend to use the service from the comfort of your home computer?
Twitter’s recent announcement that it has added geotagging capabilities to its API means that we will soon see a number of third-party Twitter applications taking advantage of that.
Geotagging is one of the latest crazes, it seems, with many devices now containing GPS devices and making the task very easy.
Yet, while taking photos and geotagging them some time later has few privacy concerns (assuming you’ve granted permission to share the photos on a service such as Flickr), tweeting from an identifiable location raises some possible concerns.
Whereas manual tweeting means you can be a little vague about your exact location (West London, for example), broadcasting your GPS location means it’s possible for people to track where you are.
In the ideal, friendly world, this is a fantastic feature because it allows you to find your friends and other interesting people.
Without being alarmist, a slightly more sinister world may require some care to be taken. After all, unless you’ve made your Twitter account private, you could be tracked by anyone, and the fact that geotagging happens with each tweet means you can’t even delay revealing your current location.
What do you think of geotagging for tweets? Will you be using the new feature?
Paul Scrivens to Take Over as Splashpress Media Publisher
Splashpress Media, the parent company of Performancing, has recently announced that Paul Scrivens will take the helm of the network as publisher.
Scrivs will be our captain and conductor, managing our assets, coordinating our efforts and hopefully expanding our reach. Along with this new leadership comes a bit of reorganization. Andy Merrett (a regular contributor here), who has been a community manager and channel editor to sites like Forever Geek, 9rules and Performancing, will take the creative lead as Editor of the network. Andy plans to continue outgoing editor Jayvee Fernandez’s thrusts to enhance the networks’ reach and status, and we are confident that Andy will use his creative vision well in ensuring that momentum is maintained.
This announcement also comes with news that the core Splashpress team is being revamped, with Andy Merrett–who is also a Performancing contributor and community manager–taking the top creative role as Editor. The core team aims to continue Splashpress Media’s thrusts in enhancing the reach and authority of its online properties.
Is Your Blog Bloated With Unnecessary Stuff?
If you observe the business world, you’ll often see companies releasing new products in a different sub-niche or niche. These products can be closely related to their existing products. For example, M&M’s stayed in the food niche when they entered the ice cream market. Other companies will enter a market that’s not related to their existing niche. For instance, Harley Davidson, the maker of powerful motorcycles, created their own brand of perfume in the 1990s.
The term for this strategy is called brand extension. Brand extension can work out well and increase the sales of a company but in many situations, the new products are failures and they dilute the company’s brand.
Harley Davidson bikers did not like the company’s perfume and they let the company know about it. Harley Davidson was forced to admit their mistake and they stopped producing the perfume.
A similar phenomenon called feature bloat or software bloat occurs in tech products. For example, a product manager for a cell phone being developed will keep adding features to the phone. He subscribes to the philosophy of “more is better”. But the final product ends up having way too many buttons and features that the average cell phone user is turned off since the phone is too complex and hard to use.
Why do I bring these things up in a blog about blogging? Well I think bloggers can fall into the same trap of adding new things that don’t really make their blog better. Instead, the new things dilute the blog’s brand and cause their readers to be confused and overwhelmed.
There are many ways a blog can get bloated with unnecessary stuff. Here are some of the common pitfalls.
Content
I realized recently the content on my gaming blog was getting bloated. I blog about strategy and news because most of the other blogs in my niche do the same. However, I found out I didn’t like writing about the news. Therefore, my strategy content was much better than my news content since I was motivated to write about strategy but not about news.
To keep the overall quality of my content high, I simply stopped covering the news. At first, I felt bad about doing this, but my comments and stats show that I made the right move. I’m getting more comments from people that enjoy talking about strategy and my repeat visitor traffic has increased.
Passion is a good guideline on what to write about. Also, it makes sense to create content based on your experience and knowledge.
For example, you start a productivity blog since productivity is one of your passions. More specifically, you know a lot about time management and getting organized. However, as you look at the other productivity blogs, many of them cover things like health and tech products. You think your blog should be more comprehensive so you decide to blog once a week about health and tech products.
But after a couple of weeks, you’re running out of stuff to say in those two areas. You realize you don’t have enough experience and knowledge to consistently create quality content in those topics.
The best move then is to stop writing about health and tech products. You may like you should keep going to keep up with the other blogs, but your readers will see your lack of knowledge and experience. Also, you can still expand your topic areas in the future after you’ve gained the necessary experience and knowledge.
Social Media
I’ve already talked about being active on too many social media sites. Feel free to read my post on the topic: Maximize Your Social Media Marketing by Focusing Only on a Few Sites.
Features
Unnecessary features can come in many forms. You could have a Twitter feed on your sidebar that hasn’t been updated in over a year. Or you can launch a forum on your blog without the necessary traffic.
A blog in my niche started off really well and had a the thriving community in the comment section. It would get around 6-8 comments per post including a handful of regular commenters. However, the blogger killed the community by adding a forum that replaced the comment section. The vast majority of the commenters did not register on the forum so now the blog rarely gets any responses.
How to Fight Bloat
The first thing to realize about bloat is that it will creep up on your blog. It’s just human nature to try new things. Consider your purchasing decisions. Have you ever bought something you didn’t need? A quick look at our closets or garages shows that bloat is a part of the human existence. We want new things in our lives and on our blogs.
New things can improve your blog, so obviously the solution is not to avoid new things. Instead, the solution is to consistently evaluate your blog to see if you have unnecessary stuff and then cut it out. Every month or every couple of weeks, evaluate your blog. Consider the new things you’ve tried out and ask yourself whether or not they are really helping your blog.
Over to You
Does your blog have bloat? Is there any fat you need to cut from your blog?
Performancing offers a blog reboot service to improve your blog. We’ll help you cut out the bloat and develop your brand.
British Press Complaints Commission slammed for its desire to regulate blogs
The last few days has seen an interesting standoff developing between the British press regulatory body, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), and the bloggers it may be seeking to regulate.
The PCC is a self-regulatory body set up and funded by a number of major newspapers and magazines published in the UK. Simply put, its purpose is to investigate complaints made against member publications on a number of grounds including accuracy, privacy, intrusion, portrayal of children, discrimination, financial journalism and the confidentiality of sources. (Read Wikipedia’s PCC entry)
On Monday, a report in the Independent newspaper suggested that the PCC’s chairman, Baroness Buscombe, would like to regulate blogs in the same way as traditional media.
In an interview with Ian Burrell, she said that “Some of the bloggers are now creating their own ecosystems which are quite sophisticated”, suggesting that the public may assume that blogs are official news sources, with the blogosphere being “the new newspapers”.
It’s wrth noting that these are very early days, but nevertheless she does seem interested in having some kind of public consultation, which would involve members of mainstream press, bloggers and the general public.
As you might imagine, the mere sniff of bloggers being regulated by a body that is widely seen as biased, toothless and extremely slow to act, has not gone down well with many.
The Guardian has reported on blogger Sunny Hundal’s letter, which he is inviting other bloggers to undersign, that sets out why any official regulation is incompatible with standard blogging practice.
The full letter can be read here, but the gist is that the PCC needs to get its own house in order — with particular reference to the practices of a number of tabloid newspapers — before attempting to regulate bloggers.
To give but one recent example of bad practice, of the many that bloggers have documented in over the last few years, an article published by the Tabloid Watch blog in October, documented, in some considerable detail, the tortuous process that one of its readers had to go through in order to get the News of the World to retract a manifestly untrue and inflammatory statement by one of its regular columnists, Carole Malone.
What we find most striking about the process documented by Tabloid Watch is the extent to which the PCC actively sought to facilitate the News of the World’s efforts to avoid undertaking practices that we, as bloggers, take for granted as being standard practice in our corner of the internet: i.e. the prominent publication of an honest and open correction of a factual error on the original article in which the error, itself, was made.
Instead, as we invariably find to be standard practice amongst, particularly, tabloid newspapers; the correction and cursory apology when it was grudgingly issued after what Tabloid Watch described as ‘two months of wrangling’ – appeared in a location other than that of Malone’s column in the newspaper’s print edition and on its website on a page utterly divorced from the article to which it relates, which was removed its entirety, and in such a way that only someone searching specifically for the retraction would ever be likely to find it.
To all intents and purposes, the retraction might as well not have been issued, for all that it would be apparent to visitors to the News of World’s website that it had ever been made.
This is but one clear example of a practice that would be unacceptable amongst established bloggers and one of many that bloggers who specialise in monitoring the national press for accuracy have documented in recent years.
For a blogger to engage in such practices, which include ’stealth editing’ of articles, after publication, to avoid owning up to factual errors and removing and/or refusing to publish critical comments from readers, especially those that highlight and correct factual errors.
For an established blogger to adopt such practices would do incalculable damage to their public reputation; this being, after all, all that we have to trade on.
It’s not the first time an organisation has called for a blogging code of conduct, and it surely won’t be the last. What I find interesting, though, is the localised nature of these attempts and the apparent refusal to believe that self-regulation is possible.
We know that the blogosphere can be quite a volatile place, but the fact is that most well-known, high-profile bloggers (and a lot of out-of-the-limelight bloggers, too) do adhere to their own ethical standards, and indeed they often seem higher than those adopted by established media.
Any attempt at regulation of blogs on a country-by-country basis is going to be very difficult to enforce. Blogs, far more so than printed publications, are international, and as such are difficult to govern under any one national law.
Until such a time as governments collaborate and pass international laws that restrict what bloggers can write, any oversight from the likes of the PCC will be totally voluntary. Even then, what organisation in its right mind is going to monitor millions of blogs to ensure they meet some kind of self-imposed journalistic standards?
Bloggers generally know how to take care of their own affairs without the need for external pressures (except from their readers, of course, which is how it should be).
I’m all for open, honest, ethical blogging, but I do tend to believe the best of most bloggers and think they can sort their own standards out.
What do you think?
