Archives for April 2006

Performancing.com has a tagline: Helping Bloggers Succeed…

I like that. It gets my mind running around what it means to ‘succeed’ as a blogger. Let’s start with these concepts and build from there:

succeed: attain success or reach a desired goal.
success: an event that accomplishes its intended purpose.

Having read those definitions, I begin winding my thoughts around what might be the goal, or intended purpose, of my blog.

A blog is a forum for communication. Some of the things I’ve learned about communication, if it is to be effective, are:

The blogger must anticipate, and then understand, his intended audience.

The blogger must write with a purpose in mind by asking himself a question: what is my goal, or desired outcome, for writing this post? To entertain? inform? persuade? inspire to action?

The value of feedback cannot be overemphasized: your readers comments will tell you whether you are accomplishing your desired goal or intended purpose; from there, you need only decide whether to adjust what/how you write in order to move closer to your blogging goals.

In other words, to ‘succeed’ with your blog is to anticipate and understand an audience whose feedback informs you whether your writing is accomplishing your intended purpose.

Perhaps a recent example will help drive this point home:

Before Performancing.com invited us, it’s members, to consider contributing articles for the Performancing homepage, I had been working on some tweaks to the Performancing Metrics script for my WordPress-based blog.

Although the original script worked just fine, I found a certain ambiguity in some of the stats and, being a software developer, I decided I’d try my hand at modifying the script to give an additional layer of detail, hoping to better understand my blog traffic.

Well, I tweaked that script to give me what I wanted. And I thought, hey, this might be a cool article idea to contribute to Performancing.com so… I wrote to Nick and asked him about it and he gave me the go ahead.

My script tweaks are done. Writing an article about them proved useful because I had to practice the success principles that I mentioned earlier in this post: audience, intention and sensitivity to feedback.

Who was the intended audience of my blog? It was bloggers, of course, but more specifically, bloggers who are using the Performancing Metrics script and who may appreicate an additional layer of specificity.

What did I want to accomplish by writing about the tweaks I made? I wanted to inform others that another layer of detail is available if they want it, and invite them to take action, that is, to show them how to modify their script if they wanted to experience this additional level of detail for themselves.

All that remains is to put the final polish on that article and publish it here (watch for it next week!), then to wait for the feedback from all of you and to evaluate whether I’ve succeeded.

Success breeding success… isn’t that a win-win idea we all can live with?

I was just reminded of a dilemma a friend was having. For years he has had a very successful email discussion list. This list has thousands of members, vibrant and intelligent discussion, and has been a major success. All apart from he makes no income from it. Sound familiar? While we were in San Diego Nick and I gave him some advice, perhaps it could be a handy idea for you also.

It should come as no surprise to you that Nick and I recommended he start blogging. I know it might seem like we think blogs are the solution to everything but actually don’t really believe that, it is just in this case it really would be a great solution.

We recommended he start a blog that would be the public face of his community. This blog would be used to report any news, could be a central repository for all the admin trivia, can store real world meeting details etc. On one community I help moderate we tried a wiki for a while but found with no one person responsible for it the wiki fell into disrepair. Our blog on the other hand was far more succesful and less prone to vandalism.

Blogs can be communities in their own right but are also effective as a
web front end to an existing non-web community. While the email
discussion will flow and mutate, most email discussion lists if they
have an archive at all will be very basically structured. In some cases
there might be a search, if you are lucky but most are just dated
archives. Good blogging software comes with a simple search but also allow you to organise your information in categories or maybe tags plus they naturally get indexed well by major search engines. No more emailing the list for an old piece of info, if you keep on top of it your good stuff could be right at your finger tips.

A really good use for a community front end blog is to highlight really great discussions. All it needs is a little commentary and a quote (with a link to the discussion if you have the facility). This serves to attract attention where it is deserved for the community itself but also for the wider internet population. While not SEO as such blogs tend to naturally perform well in search engines. These highlight posts would attract links, other blogs might give you a mention, sending more new members and traffic.

Lots of content will be hidden from the web or even dissapear because of lack of archives. With you pulling out content to display publicly, without opening up the whole archive to spammer spiders, you can publish all your killer content without causing spam and admin headaches.

All this content can of course display ads. Income potential is greatly enhanced without too much offence to your members, unlike sticking ads in the email signatures etc. Your discussion list is kept clean and non commercial and your blog advertising doesn’t need to be intrusive.

I think the best part of all is many communities from the outside show no visible signs of being alive. There is a signup form and some about us information but no way of guaging if this is the community for you. With an actively managed blog it will be obvious you have a vibrant community that is worth joining. You get some income to support your hosting costs and the community gets an injection of new blood – everyone wins!

Yesterday I blogged about Sloth, a deadly sin of blogging. To redress the balance today I thought I would investigate the positive, the virtues of a good blogger. We all want to be good bloggers right?

Apparently the traditional seven virtues are Chastity, Liberality, Abstinence,  Diligence, Patience, Kindness and Humility . Looking at Wikipedia (and possibly armed with a dictionary), these virtues for living translate really well for the specific business of blogging.

1. “Chastity”  = (Sidestepping the sexual connotation) Courage and Acheivement through education and self improvement. This is a good start, bloggers need to bravely face public scrutiny and to constantly educate theirselves. If you are not always improving you might well be falling behind.
2. “Liberality” = Strength of will, Giving freely, Nobility of thought and deed. I guess strength of will could translate into knowing your own mind and sticking to your opinions. Giving freely? Well we often say link out and link often. Share the love. Nobility of thought and deed should really go without saying.
3. “Abstinence” = Restraint, Self-control. Mindfulness of others. When faced with spam and flames it is good to have restraint. Also the way you project your thoughts and opinions can have a significant affect on how you are perceived in the blogosphere.
4. “Diligence” = Industriousness, Work Ethic, Zealous. We talked about sloth last time, a good work ethic should prove rewarding.
5. “Patience” = Pretty self explainatory, includes Endurance and Moderation. Keep plugging away doing good work and the success should come.
6. “Kindness” = Humanity, Charity, Compassion, Friendship, Sympathy. We all need friends but especially bloggers. Networking is a key component of any bloggers strategy. It is far easier to network when people know of you as friendly, and blogger or not it is always good to try as best as you can to be approachable, humane and charitable.
7. “Humility” = Modesty, Respectful. In these boastful web2.0 PR spin times I guess some of us could find this tricky, heh.

I wish I could say I embody all these traits all the time but hey, it’s good to have something to work towards, eh?

Thing is, these good habits aren’t just effective for being “a good person”, they are also worthwhile for making your blogging successful. So you wouldn’t just be being “good”, you could also be being “great”.

This is my interpretation, what traits do you think are important for bloggers?

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All of us have bad habits, bloggers as much as anybody (maybe more, heh). When you are blogging for your own enjoyment, who cares? When you are blogging for cash bad habits are dangerously counter-productive. One “blogging sin” I can guarantee most of you will have experienced is laziness. Sloth, procrastination, apathy, indifference, “can’t be arsed” … call it what you will but whatever you name it, it’s a killer for creating a successful blog. If you are hoping to make an earning from blogging it is worth avoiding at all costs. Laziness is a handbrake on your road to professional blogging. How can we avoid this most tempting of blogging sins?

I say it’s the most tempting, how can I be sure? Well, just look at how many blogs get started then abandoned! The web is awash with good intentions, very few blogs get past their first year. Sad but true. It’s a shame but also mainly annoying for the readers, I would say it’s also a shame for the blogger.

Laziness is extremely annoying when you are a member of a blogging team. Personally I am far less likely to succumb when a part of a team than when working for myself as I have a strong fear of letting others down. I think though we will have all worked with people who are quite happy to let others take up their slack on a regular basis. Teams can break down when this happens. When working on your own the effects of laziness are only obvious really in your lack of progress and results. Perhaps only really apparent in hindsight.

Cowardice or fear can be a potent cause of lack of progress. Be careful of misdiagnosing laziness for being afraid and vice verse. It’s tricky sometimes to work out if you or someone else are avoiding something because it is unpleasant, boring or because of being afraid. I once got cross at a colleague because he would regularly find any excuse to avoid a client meeting, it worked out he had a real fear of face to face conversations with clients and just needed a little coaching. Fear in blogging though? What is there to be afraid of in blogging? Well, some people build up blogging into a popularity contest or fear public critique of their thoughts or opinions. One “flame” comment could be all it takes to stop posting all together.

Sometimes you could make an effort if you cared more. Apathy and irresponsibility go hand in hand. If you care about something it eliminates the possibility of being apathetic and you are bound to feel more of a need to produce. Another good reason to find a blog niche you enjoy and feel passionate about and if a team blog, people you like and don’t want to let down.

You might say, what harm does it do? If you are a bit crap at maintaining a blog who does it hurt? No one really gets hurt but overall the web becomes cluttered with half arsed dross and blogging gets a bad name. I have lost count of people who have said all blogs are rubbish based on their highly unscientific sampling. Perhaps if we encourage our fellow bloggers to keep up an effort this might not be so common.

When I had a traditional 9-5 job apathy, idleness, and time wasting used to creep up on me on a regular basis. For a while I would have periods of extreme productivity, followed by a  time where it took all my effort to do the slightest amount, and that small effort was painful. Other than just not being in the right job, I realised there are certain things that trigger each behaviour both positive and negative. You might recognise some of the energy draining causes in yourself:

• Distractions – there is always something more interesting to do. Reward yourself by getting the dull stuff done now so you can get to the more enjoyable tasks
• Hunger – make sure you feed yourself, I find I just can not concentrate unless I have eaten but be careful to not over do it as being bloated is just as bad!
• Dehydration – it’s right what they say, you need to regularly drink fluids, preferably not the ones that make you desperate for … comfort breaks
• Lack of oxygen – I always think and work better when I get time to get out in the fresh air
• Lack of interest – so important I don’t mind reiterating over and over, if you are starting a blog write about something you are interested in, it makes maintaining it long term so much easier
• Fatigue – get rest, people who are tired not only do less work, the work they produce is crap

Anyone can be forgiven for slipping on occasion, or even semi-regularly, but if it becomes the main pattern of your blogging you are in trouble. Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it’s not a very effective path to riches. It takes hard work, persistence and stamina, sorry to say. The real winners in blogging are those people who put their heart, mind and soul into it. If that sounds like too much like hard work it could be that blogging isn’t for you …

The good news is so few people realise this, for the few people who are willing to put in that extra bit of effort all the rewards are there ready for the taking. This could be all the motivation you need!

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