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Chris Garrett

Time for Team Blogging?

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Once a blog becomes successful, or at least starts getting busy, you soon realise there is more involved in professional blogging than just writing. I was thinking this morning about all the hats a pro blogger has to wear in the daily blogging routine. Here are some “blogging hats” that I came up with …

  • Entrepreneur – the ideas, the vision, motivation and drive
  • Salesperson – brings in the advertising, sponsorships, does the deals
  • Bookkeeper – keeps the numbers in check
  • Editor – controls the output, checks and amends for quality, final decision on topics
  • Researcher – investigates stories and information for articles, gathers facts
  • Writer – does the actual writing, possibly based on the researchers gathered materials
  • Designer – keeps the blog looking great, formats posts so they look their best
  • Organiser – admin, project management, to-do lists, calendars, diaries …
  • Tech Support – backups, fixes things when they go wrong, hosting, software upgrades, modules, ad serving …
  • Mentor – impartial wisdom and advice, been there got the t-shirt
  • Network manager – for when the enterprise grows from one blog to many, someone needs to run the farm
  • …

I think it would be fair to say that it is a rarity that one person encompasses all the qualities required to an excellent degree. I can get by in most areas but my designs will never win awards, I can sell but find it daunting and bookkeeping? Well maths has never been my strongest point …

In the “Beermat Entrepreneur”, Mike Southon and Chris West proposed that any business, as well as the Entrepreneur requires four “cornerstones”. These cornerstones have backgrounds in technical, delivery, finance and sales. If you see your blog(s) as a business (and you should if you want to be “pro”) then these roles do directly relate to hats a blogger needs to wear.

This says to me that as professional blogging matures there will be more and more team blogs. Blogs will become more akin to online magazines than online diaries. Note I say “team blogs” rather than “multi-author” blogs. While these blogs might well have multiple authors, the distinction I make is there will be essential team members who do not post.

Part of the success of Performancing, and Threadwatch before it, in my view is the element of editorial control.  Writers might come and go but providing the “vision” is consistent  the blog remains on form.  Then there is the business side.  While it might not be visible right now there is very much a business side. It is very important for any business to be well run in the “back office”.

Of course there will always be solo efforts, and they will probably still do very well some of them. I can only see blogging getting more complex, more business-like, and taking more ground from the mainstream media juggernauts.

Perhaps now is the time to put your team together?

Flickr as a Traffic Source

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If you find you are not well suited to linkbait tactics then you are going to need to use alternative tactics. Here is a viral approach that is working for me right now, it might be an option for you too.

As bloggers what do we want? Attention? Revenue? Either way that translates into visitors, post views and links. The links bring in the visitors and also the google-juice that brings in more visitors by way of search engines. Then there is the “other PR”, the traditional PR of just getting your name out there, hopefully in a favourable light. Which could be described as “branding” too.


Link bait often takes the form of generating a buzz, debate, interest that draws links and comments from other bloggers. The focus is on your blog, focus being an appropriate word as the attention is focussed on your blog post.

The technique I am using is more distributed and viral. Your success depends on curiosity, peoples natural inclination and habits, but also unfortunately good photography. That last one might at first make it appear to rule a lot of people out from using it but hear me out!

It all started when I was contacted by another photography blog about a 30 day challenge. Their idea was to take a photograph a day and post it to their blog. They were going to use technorati tags to follow participation. I thought it was a great idea, still with my photographer head on.

Once I got into blogging mode though I realised there was potential to get a bit of publicity to my blog too. I added the promise of a prize, which required a voting mechanic (I will write a Drupal module to work with Flickr RSS for that) and an additional rule that participants need to use a Flickr tag which funnily enough contains the name of my blog, DSLRBlog-PAD.

So how does this bring traffic?

Photographers love taking photographs, and they like to be challenged. This challenge is hard but fun. Some great photographs are coming out of the challenge. Due to the way Flickr works, great photographs get a lot of attention and are shared in Flickrs groups. Each time these pictures are viewed the Flickr user will read the description “Here is my attempt for day 5 of the picture a day challenge” and follow a link, or at the very least will see the tags and be curious about the strange tagging that is going on.

This is when the viral nature comes in. If it looks like fun they will want to join in. When they see there is a competition attached there will be an additional incentive. If they are using Flickr to the maximum they will have contacts who view their photo stream or submit to Flickr groups the cycle will continue.

If the photographer is really good they will create a lot of traffic to their pictures and attract lots of Flickr contacts. A percentage of these will be drawn to your blog. Each photograph is like an advert for your challenge.

There is also a tendancy for online photographers to have their own blogs, going back to the original idea the participants had to post to their blog with a technorati tag. While the majority are linking to the original blog who started this challenge some are mentioning my prize. If you do this of course you will get all the link benefits!

So it all sounds good apart from the part about requiring good photography? The trick is you do not need to be a good photographer, you just need to get good photographers on board! You are running the competition or challenge, it is the photographers who spread the word and generate interest through their pictures.

We are just a week in and I am beginning to see the affects start to ripple in. Just one of my blog members had 379 views of one of his pictures so far, which brought him 20 new contacts. That’s one member and one picture, there is 20-some days left of the challenge. At the very least it is content for our blogs, thirty days worth of content.

Don’t get me wrong, my primary motivation for my blog and the challenge is a love of photography. The challenge itself was something I myself wanted to do. It’s an important factor that the thing has to be fun and appropriate or it will just not work.

If you are not into photography just think about this scheme and how you can apply it to your world and the niche your blog lives in. Is it possible to do something similar in online games, social networking sites (memes?) and video sharing sites like YouTube?

Have you got any ideas like this or done anything similar? Let us know in the comments …

Does Blogging Have a Future?

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Blogging is a relatively new thing. More and more people are joining in all the time but it is far from mainstream. In fact it isn’t yet even on the vast majority of web users radar. What should we do about that, and does it even matter?

It’s easy to forget how unimportant this blogging stuff is to the wider world. Sometimes we get so earnest about all the issues we care about as bloggers that we miss how trivial it might seem to the ordinary Joe on the street. Just now I was discussing blogs and blogging and we were talking about how few people outside of our online friends know what a blog is.


While you could point to your traffic and say “well thousands of people visit my blog so someone out there knows” in fact surveys, even surveys actually served from blogs, show that your ordinary Mr and Miss Joe Public just see blogs as websites, they make no distinction. They are “surfing the web”, it doesn’t make much difference to them if it is a website, a blog, a wiki, just as long as they get the information they want.

So what about the things we care about as bloggers? What about splogs, comment spam, copy theft, ethics ..

Outside of the blogging echo chamber they are just not issues. Beyond “good website” and “bad website” it seems the general web user does not make a distinction. And you know what? I am not sure they should care.

“Blogs” came from “Web Logs”, which were a kind of online diary. I am not sure when people started to make a distinction between “my website” and “my blog”.

What is a blog after all to the end user/reader?

  • A website
  • Descending date order index page
  • Conversational writing style
  • Sometimes mention “RSS” and other confusing jargon stuff
  • Can sometimes comment though not always sure how

Recently blogs seem to be leaking into the media a little more, newspapers and TV news mention them on occasion or have bloggers as part of discussion panels. Apparently blogs were mentioned on the new “Invasion” television series. These small occasions aside, it seems even after quite a few years blogs are not about to become bursting into common awareness. Perhaps we are going about it the wrong way?

The future of blogging is an important factor in the lives of people who want to be professional bloggers, our livelihoods might depend on getting this stuff right. Perhaps as pro bloggers we need to consciously educate our readers. Rather than expect our readers to know about this blogging stuff. Should we educate our readers or make it so easy there is nothing to learn. Should they be aware they are visiting a blog or is it not important? If this is the case, though what future is there in “blogging”?

Over to you, what do you think? Does blogging have a future, if so what is it? Will blogs just re-merge back into being just another type of website or will they further diverge into something unique and separate. Please give us your thoughts in the comments …

Beginning Pro Blogging – Advice for getting started

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Something has happened lately, I am not sure what has caused it. There is a change in people I talk to. I have been blogging for years but only recently people have started taking an interest and not only asking questions about my blogging but asking how they can start their own. As I have given the same advice to whoever has asked I will share it here in the hope you might either find it useful for yourself or someone you know, or maybe you can add your own advice in the comments.

Expectations

I’m sure some of this interest has been inspired by the growing “professional blogger” segment. You can fully understand the attraction of course, pro blogging is a great gig if you can work it. This is a good thing, the more the merrier I say. More professional bloggers means more interest from advertisers, more attention from mainstream media and a richer blogosphere for all of us. It’s all good. I do worry though if expectations of “riches” are way too high. Some people seem to anticipate the money being immediate, thinking they can pack their 9-5 jobs in and launch their new career straight away.

Another worry I have is around new bloggers expectations of how much work is involved. They imagine sitting in a warm home office, knocking out a couple of posts before watching day-time television with a hot mug of their favourite brew. I’m sure there are bloggers who have that kind of lifestyle, I am not one of them!

So what does blogging actually involve?

Anyone expecting to make wads of cash right off the bat needs to have a reality check. The people doing very well out of blogging either get paid to do it, have one super-powered A-list hyper trafficked famous blog or have had their blogs (note; multiple) for a couple of years. You need traffic, a well-stuffed archive of great content, well implemented monetization strategy and plenty of time to earn from blogging. These successes do not happen over night, sorry to say. Do not go and tell your boss what you think about them just yet, wait until your earnings from blogging are consistent and enough to live on first.

It’s important to remember that blogging is a particular type of writing. When people ask what I do for a living now I often avoid telling them but if they persist in asking, depending on the audience I sometimes tell them I am a writer. It’s the truth (partly) plus it explains why I am pasty faced, at home all the time, work in my underwear and keep strange hours.

Regardless of my personal habits the most important aspect of the writer element of being a blogger is you have to write. A lot. Every day. To an aspiring blogger that doesn’t seem too hard, they might have tons of ideas what to write about. Give it six months though. What initially was a flood of creativity might dry up to a trickle of mediocrity. How you work through this writers pain barrier is very important to knowing if you can make a long-term go of it.

How to start

Most of the people who have approached me were not actually at the point where they were even ready to begin. “What can I blog about?” is often one of their early questions.

The answer to both “what should I write about” and “can you do it for the long-haul” is to start blogging now. Go get a free wordpress.com and set up a personal blog. Blog about your life, your pets, your thoughts, stories, jokes, anything. The important thing is that you post to your blog every day, multiple times a day if you can manage it, for at least 30 days. The more you post, the more you write, the more often for as long as possible, the more realistic assessment of your own blogging ability you will have. 99% of the people I know socially who started blogs quit after a very short time. Oh they might post a “sorry I haven’t updated in a while” message every couple of months but effectively after the initial excitement has dimmed the whole game is over.

There are two elements to starting out blogging, the writing and the audience. You need to learn how to attract an audience through good writing on  interesting topics. It’s no good going to the time and expense of organising a professional blogging setup if you can’t face up to these basic skills.

What to write about

Everyone has a story to tell. Your own experience is your best source of blogging topics to begin with. Fill your personal blog with stories, tips and insights based on your own work and life. Branch out into commenting on things that interest you, things you hear, read in the news or see on television. There are a million ways you can go and this is why I recommend you do it from the safety of your “anything goes” personal blog. Once you have more of an idea of your style and what you find easiest to blog about, then you can move to choosing a niche for a professional blog.

The money question

Just because this is a personal blog does not mean you can’t make any money from it. Unfortunately you are limited when using hosted blogs as to how much you can change the default templates. On WordPress.com I don’t think you can change them at all. You might have to settle for entering advertising code into your posts or bite the bullet and get a proper blog at this point.

It is though a good idea to learn the ropes of various monetization strategies. You might only make enough for a starbucks a month but by experimenting, tweaking and implementing the basic ideas found in Andys Monetization Makeovers you will be empowered for when you start your real money blog(s).

Just do it

The main thing is to get started, get writing quickly while you have the enthusiasm and get your blog launched. Get a lot of practice, the more you practice the better you get and the more you learn. While you can learn a lot from reading Performancing and Problogger, there is no substitute for actually doing it and also by actually blogging you will discover what you need to read more about and questions you need answering. Remember you can ask any blogging related questions in our forum and the lovely and intelligent Performancing members will be only too pleased to answer!

Over to you

I hope this post has been useful and not diminished your enthusiasm too much, blogging is great it’s just not the easy ride many people think it will be!

Have you any advice for aspiring bloggers? Please add your tips and encouragement in the comments!

Blogging is not a zero-sum game!

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A strange thing sometimes affects some bloggers when they start introducing money into their blogging. Their nature alters ever-so slightly. Other bloggers are eyed with suspicion. Otherwise respectful and friendly relationships become competitive. Similarly themed blog posts are viewed as “rip-offs”, new blog launches “copycat” or “bandwagonism”. Perhaps exaggerated and extreme, but do any of these symptoms seem familiar?


In the beginning of this blogging thing, bloggers were viewed as fellow adventurers. Everyone was in this together and we all have something to contribute. Very warm and fuzzy. Each person had their own motive and goals for their writing a blog, I suspect though most of it was just attention. There are parallels with the early web. It was all make it up as you go along stuff, and a large amount of wide-eyed “going to change the world optimism”. Unfortunately, just like the early web, there was also a big portion of “keep the money out” nonsense. I’m glad that has largely disappeared, heh.

The end of innocence

With the introduction of Google Adsense a viable monetization strategy appeared for many bloggers. These bloggers were probably not very affected by this income stream other than the natural affects of having more money. This income, and the whoops of joy  from the successful bloggers attracted more and more people from other fields to join in the game. As more people join the blogging phenomenon and bloggers go from seeing their income not just as icing on the cake but come to depend on it, I think this is where the cracks have appeared. It’s not “we’re all in this together”, it becomes “they are taking away my money!” “the blogosphere is full, don’t let any more in”.

You can see this when you launch a new blog in a mature niche. First you are eyed with suspicion, then the “they will never last, just wait and see” comments trickle out. After that depends on how you approach it, you either get welcomed or the hate starts flowing. Anyone who remembers when Performancing launched (just a few months ago) might recall the reaction we got, from a great welcome to some weirdness.

The thing that makes me laugh is blogging is not like many other fields. There are no winners and losers in blogging. For you to win I do not need to lose.

Blogging is not a zero-sum game!

I think part of this attitude comes because in other fields perhaps that is how it does work, for example many SEOs aim for the number one spot in Google for their “money term”. There might be another five search phrases that are desirable, and other search engines, but they want that one spot and hate the current site that holds that position. We say repeatedly to not worry about search engine rankings but also blogging is just not like that anyway. When problogger gets a boost in traffic our traffic does not go down and visa versa.

Another blog is not going to eat your lunch!

It’s just common sense, do you only read one blog? Probably not. When you are blogging I expect a lot of your inspiration comes from other blogs, right?

Every blog that enters your niche adds value to it, excluding the copy and paste blogger or scraper that every niche ends up attracting. Each additional blog grows the value of the niche for everyone. New bloggers should be welcomed and assisted because they grow the rewards cake for all bloggers in the niche.

Welcome bloggers one and all

Rather than see your fellow bloggers as competitors that need to be nuked out of existence, see them as potential partners where you can work together for mutual benefit. Network your niche. Link out generously, comment on their blogs, support their initiatives and memes. This is not wide-eyed altruism, trust me, your blog will grow because of it.

Have you ever been given the frosty treatment by other bloggers? How can we encourage participation and co-operation in blogging rather than competition?

Do Something Different – Mix it up

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Have you found your enthusiasm is waning? Are your traffic stats plateauing or even showing a downward trend? When you get comments are they from the usual suspects? Feel like you are living in an echo chamber with no new ideas or perspectives?

When blogging becomes routine it is very easy to get stuck in a rut. You read the same old blogs, talk to the same people, write the same  posts and stories about the same or similar topics. If you do what you have always done you will always get the same results. It’s time to mix it up a bit.

Decide to be different

In some cases it only takes the thought that you would like to make a change that causes the change. It’s a little bit quantum, heh. Just intending to do things differently could make all the difference.

There definitely is a comfort zone to blogging. In the early days of a new blog everything is new. Each post could feel like you are breaking new personal ground. After a while though things become familiar and that is when there is a danger of the familiar turning into the stale. Repeating themes can be a good thing, when you start sounding like a broken record it is time to take action.

New reading

First the easy stuff. Remember when you started your blog you went out and found the best sources of information? Do that again, find fresh new sources. Go to technorati, digg, del.icio.us, et al. New websites launch every day, if you have not been consciously looking they might have passed you by. In many niches it is so easy to only notice the a-listers when actually a lot of the original thinking is not in those echelons.

Use different search terms and decide to look for websites that deviate from your normal viewing habits also. This is not an exercise in more-the-merrier, you are trying to change the flavour not just improve or increase it. If you really struggle here is a radical idea; ditch your OPML and start from scratch. You might be surprised at how markedly different it turns out.

Go to the library or book store and browse the isles, and not just your favourites. You might be inspired by new topics or find a great brand new book for your existing ones with a new perspective.

Different blogs, different strokes

One of the good things about having multiple blogs is you are forced to be exposed to different themes, topics, social groups, etc. On my personal blog one of my favourite topics is all things related to Canada. Because of my “canadian connections” I also see news items that relate to my other blogging topics. For example I spotted a story about a photographer being stopped by police for photographing the Calgary LRT, this was a perfect story for my DSLR photography blog. These are things others in my niches are less likely to see, especially if they are only ever focussed on their particular niche for inspiration. Perhaps starting a new blog could freshen up your old one?

80/20

As Nick says, it doesn’t hurt to drift off-topic once in a while. When you do though, for best results make an effort to relate it somehow to your niche. Also make sure you tag your post very effectively. This will cast your net to not just a wider audience but a whole new audience where you ordinarily would not be on the radar. Try and think what different, but related, audiences would like to see. Put yourself in their shoes.

Change of viewpoint

It might be all it takes is to think with a different point of view. What would your niche look like in a different geography, or up-market or down-market. How would your topic be perceived by someone with less experience or more experience? Are there biases in your niche that could be explored from the other side of an argument? In some cases there might be dogma that can be investigated for their validity.

If all else fails you could consider bringing in fresh blood. Another brain and another voice might be just what your blog needs to keep fresh. New people have different ways of looking at things and their own ideas for what to write about and how things should be done. You don’t need to agree on everything, in fact it could be an advantage if you don’t.

You?

Those are my ideas for how you can keep your blog fresh, how do you keep your blog feeling original, fresh and new?

Focus or Fail

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A thread by Chris McLeod that I commented in got me thinking about focus. Raj has mentioned a couple of times about his zomblogs, and it seems part of the problem is an affiliction I am very familiar with;  an addiction to starting projects.

I love starting new projects. The invention part is my favourite bit. I’m aware enough of this part of my character that when it matters I know how to deal with it but if I left it unchecked I would start a new blog every day and never look at it again! What I see in my own work is if I focus my projects do well, if I do not focus they fail.


Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you should only have one blog. There are many advantages to having several blogs running in parallel

  • Spreading risk
  • Network effects
  • Variety keeps your interest
  • More income
  • Learnings from one used in rest
  • More opportunity to make contacts
  • Testing ideas
  • …

With so many advantages I would recommend anyone have at least a go at one more blog. The problem comes when you spread yourself too thin or try to do too many new things at once.

Each blog needs to have a lot of effort put in at the start to ensure it takes root. You need a good body of content so you have at least a small archive. People need to see more than a “hello world” post to decide if they want to stick around or not.

One you have a new blog up and running though you can reduce your time commitment to it down to posting a few times a day and tending your daily comment and spam crop. That is when you have the opportunity to start a new one.

How many blogs are too many? Only you can decide that. It’s based on how much time you have, how much energy you want to put in and how difficult the topics are to find and generate content.

The other problem of course is you really do need to start. I had a phase of buying domains and not doing anything with them, or I would get as far as building a “coming soon” homepage full of promises of how great the new blog will be if I could only get off my big fat arse and build it.

While you might have grand plans for your new blog the only solution to this problem, if it is one you are at risk of falling into, is to actually build something (anything) no matter how imperfect and get it started. Commit to updating it with content and improve as you go along. It is better to have a maintained blog with a default theme rather than a beautiful but contentless blog left to rot.

Some blogs deserve to wither, they are experiments that don’t pan out. That’s fine providing you really did put in the effort. Remember it is hard to judge when a blogs tipping point will be. It takes months before you know a blogs real potential in traffic and income.

For myself I resolve to either drop my domains or do something with them. After our crazy current schedule is more quiet and sane I will create a new blog and actually stick with it.

How about you? Do you find the “million domains and not doing anything with them” experience of Raj and I familiar? Or do you have only one blog and can’t understand anyone wanting more? Let us know ..