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Tell Your Readers To Vote.

Unless your crowd is a bunch of social media hounds, putting those little social media icons at the bottom of your posts doesn’t achieve much of anything (accept maybe some PageRank leakage).

Want to run successful social media campaigns that involve your readers? Then tell them to vote. Again and again and again. You should even have a “Voting FAQ” that explains how your readers can get involved. Spell it out. Give them a cause to fight for. Make it simple. And soon you just might have a social media army.

In fact, the same goes for almost any action that you want your readers to perform. You’re looking for subscribers? Then don’t just put up a little orange icon. Give your readers instructions such as “Subscribe to this blog” – maybe even have an entire page dedicated to explaining exactly what subscribing is. You’ll get more subscriptions when you give instructions.

The same goes for affiliate sales. Tell them over and over and over how good hosting company X is, and some of them will listen to your advice.

The same goes for donations. Ask them to buy you a beer, or your favorite Starbucks drink… in every post … and you’ll get some.

But if you’re like me, you’ll probably just slap up some icons, but a banner in the sidebar, and pray to the God of Automation.

Unfortunately for me, the God of Automation doesn’t answer very many prayers these days.

Promote your Blog (Network) using a Toolbar

Admittedly, the “download our free toolbar to keep up with the latest news” gimmick got old and tiring very quickly. No one in their right mind wants screen space taken up by needless floating toolbars, and most Internet users find switching between toolbars a hassle.

However, the toolbars that ARE successful have gone a long way in promoting those websites, and as such this approach has the potential to work wonders for popular blogs in non-technical niches as well.

A browser add-on such as a toolbar must make carrying out important tasks (related to a niche) a LOT easier, plus it should be simple and intuitive to use (no mystery icons), easy to modify and all-in-all, a genuine improvement to a person’s life. You should build something that’s worth sharing and gets people to talk about you.

For example, if you had a blog on weight loss, you could release a toolbar that allows the user to access weight loss tips, healthy recipes, get medical advice, run calculations right in the toolbar, search the site archives for information, etc etc – essentially, have access to everything they need from the toolbar itself.

There are plenty of ideas for different niches (incidentally, if someone reading this is good at programming and wants work, PM me) but the key idea behind this is to leverage the popularity of your blog and it’s existing audience and make it work for you.

What are the benefits?

One, it helps build brand loyalty with your current audience. By bringing your site (via the toolbar) in their browser, your readers will have the option to interact with you / your site all the time they have their browser open, not merely when they are actually on your site. Apart from increasing access and exposure, loyal readers become more loyal, and thus it’s less likely that they will get up and go elsewhere.

Two, it enables your audience to make personal recommendations. Loyal readers are more likely to talk to their friends and family about your website. In addition, access to your website via the toolbar makes referrals more likely – if your toolbar is truly the work of the devil and the best possible tool in that niche, people will talk, a lot, and your blog will get a lot of word of mouth attention.

Yes, these aren’t ‘tangible’ profits, although you could easily make money by a) licensing the toolbar to other brands, b) by increasing traffic towards your site (and thus revenues), c) promoting affiliate products via the toolbar, etc.

Depending on your niche, you could figure out a dozen different ways to monetize a toolbar if your aim is to get it to make more money. My aim would be promotion, not monetization.

Mind you that these two benefits mentioned above are valid for making a mobile-friendly version of your website, especially if you have live information that needs to be accessed regularly.

So how do Blog Networks benefit from this?

Simple – just like we talked yesterday about the ‘hub’ being the aggregator and gateway to other blogs in a network, the toolbar is the ‘lens’. It gives immediate access to all parts of the blog network, so even if you have a reader from a specialised niche blog downloading and using the toolbar, he would have access to the articles, tools and resources of the whole network.

Depending on which niche you’re in, it can be anything from a handy resource tool to an absolute necessity for your users.

Ideal Contenders

A few blogs / blog networks off the top of my head who would benefit from such an approach:

1) Darren Rowse (don’t know if he’s already done this, so sorry if I’m repeating it).
2) A decent SEO toolbar (the ones we have currently, I’m not too keen on them).
3) A WordPress developer toolbar.
4) Paul Tan, for his car blog.
5) Someone I know who is planning plenty of sites on dogs.
6) SplashPressMedia, assuming that something intelligent and genuinely useful can be built.
7) Steve Pavlina.

The Biggest Obstacle

I hate toolbars. Apart from my ‘Bookmarks’ toolbar in Firefox, I rarely use anything else. I’m not keen on adding more clutter to the visual space and as a result I’d be OK with 1 more toolbar at the most, 2 if both were really good (you can toggle their visibility, of course, but I’m talking about toolbars showing at all times).

The biggest obstacle then is to build something genuinely useful – something that is so good and such a necessity that people won’t be happy without it.

But isn’t that the same challenge with building a good blog as well?

Being #1 in your Niche – One vs Many Blogs

How do you dominate a niche? Do you build 1 mega-resource website using categories / subdomains for your subniches, or you do you build a separate website for each niche?

Both approaches have their pros and cons.

A single big site benefits from economies of scale, is cost-effective, allows for a focused use of resources, requires less manpower to manage, can easily dominate search engine rankings in the long run, and can perhaps earn more revenue thanks to direct advertising deals.

On the other hand, if you have several small sites, it is easier to build a passionate user-base, it’s easier to be #1 in the sub-niche and there is no single point of failure where income, traffic or search engine rankings are concerned.

In comparison, both approaches offer strategic and financial advantages. Which one would you choose?

We had a discussion on this topic last week and we took one of two positions (I sided towards the ‘one big site’ method). However, what struck me this morning was that there was no reason for us to make an ‘either/or’ decision – we could just as easily combine the two approaches and build a crack network to dominate any niche.

The basic idea is to use a hub and satellites approach – the big, general-niche site being the hub and the specialised sub-niche sites being your satellites.

How does it work?

Nick wrote about this some time back, and I’m surprised to see how few blogs and blog networks have adopted this approach during that time. Here’s what he said:

  • Each sattellite blog posts exclusively within it’s very tight niche.
  • The Hub Blog reads all of the sattellite blogs, and rewrites the story to be a little more general, as opposed to simply copying it.
  • The uber blog credits the sattellite/specialist blog, providing readers with a way to connect from the content (which is arguably the best place for a link) to the specialist blog, and subscribe if that’s their passion.

The idea is to create many small, tightly focused blogs within a broader niche, that feed the uber blog – you sit an editor or 2 on each satellite, and have 2-4 people work on the uber blog – the uber blog would also cover more “industry news” type stories that may not relate to any particular model.

So enthusiast readers get specialized blogs, and general interest readers get the best of those stories (not all!) in the uber blog. Making the network much tighter, and more attractive a buy for advertisers.

The hub blog makes it easier to put a ‘face’ to the network, while the specialised blogs caters to specific groups of readers.

And before you think that it’s difficult to implement this using WordPress, I beg to differ. By simply using a decent RSS aggregator plugin (WP-O-Matic comes to mind, the new version is out, you know) you can automatically pull posts from all over your network into a single main blog where an editor or two can work on rewriting and posting the best articles. Need multiple themes? You can use something generic like the News theme or the ModernPaper theme and changing colours and headers for each satellite blog, you can save time and money on design and the launch process.

So, how many of you probloggers are using or plan to use the hub and satellites approach discussed above?

Revolutionary pMetrics WordPress Plugin Released

Those of you who are just looking for a great way to display blog stats in your WordPress Dashboard, read no further. Sign-up for pMetrics and then download the plugin.

But connoisseurs of innovative technology take note. Performancing is today releasing what we see as a major step forward in WordPress plugin technology. The innovation that we are introducing is at the level of fundamental architecture and can be generalized for numerous applications. We demo the technology in our 1.0 pMetrics plugin release.

Several months ago over at College Startup, I wrote a post over at College Startup entitled Open Source Priority #1: One Click Updates. The general idea behind the post was that we should move beyond the old-art of software updates (deleting, downloading, unzipping, re-uploading). The old-art is especially problematic when running dozens or hundreds of blogs.

After making that post, I realized that I should do something about it. Enter Sean Hickey from Headzoo. I explained my ideas to Sean and asked him to execute this new software architecture, using the pMetrics API in the hopes of killing two birds with one stone: 1) making a killer demo and 2) giving pMetrics users an expandable, auto-updating plugin

In a nutshell here’s what the pMetrics plugin offers:

1. Auto-updates (this option can be toggled on and off)
2. One-click installs for added functionality
3. One-click removals (deletes files off the server)
4. Blog stats in your WordPress dashboard
5. Latest searches display
6. pMetrics rank display
7. Auto-installation of pMetrics javascript code

Coming Soon

8. Auto-installation of affiliate banner in sidebar
9. Blog sales page with detailed pMetrics statistics
10. Feedburner integration

and much more…sky’s the limit.

Download the plugin now

Want to be a Better Blogger? Tell Funny Stories!

At Performancing and especially after working with Ryan I’ve become a fervent believer in being lazy AND in experimenting and finding new ways to give myself and my blogs an edge over the competition.

It’s not a contradiction – If you’re lazy, you’ll wait and pick out the techniques that give maximum benefits for the least amount of effort (on the other hand you can’t be good if you don’t practice hard, so you’ll always be in a situation where you have to work hard, which kind of sucks and again underlines the need to pick the stuff that really, REALLY works).

My goal today is to give you a surefire, money-in-the-bank method to be a better blogger. And since ‘better blogger’ is too vague, let’s pin it down to the holy trinity that bloggers crave:

  • ClarityYou have to get your point across, or you are wasting your time (worse, you’re wasting your readers’ time).
  • ImpactWhat you say must matter to your readers, otherwise you’re wasting….you get the story.
  • The Velvet CordIn direct marketing / sales writing circles (where I first heard this, and I know I’ve probably gotten the term wrong), the velvet cord is that thread, that plot line, that ties the whole sales pitch together. In story terms, it’s the unifying theme, the binding idea, the basic gist. In blogging terms, it’s the purpose of your blog (knowing “why you’re blogging” is very important).

If your writing doesn’t get your message across, if it doesn’t have an emotional impact on your readers and if it’s not in sync with what you aim to do with your blog, you’re wasting your time, etc etc.

How to get these three skills nailed down to the exact centimeter?

Tell Funny Stories.

When bloggers tell you that blogs are conversations, they’re not joking. What they’re probably not telling you though is that blogs are usually akin to a stage performance – where one person comes on stage and talks to the audience. Depending on how interesting / entertaining the speaker is, his audience will grow. Depending on how engaging he is, the feedback he gets will grow. Depending on how clear and powerful his stories are, his audience will learn from him and hopefully apply what they’ve learned to their own lives.

So why should you tell funny stories? I’m not asking you to be a standup comedian (which, by the way, if you can manage it, will make you a black belt blogger. Seriously.), not yet at least. But what I AM asking you to do is to improve your story telling skills – and to practice those skills on your social circle (if you don’t have friends and THAT’S the reason you’re blogging, you’re fucked). You could try telling stories on your blog, but it’s not as effective. You need to feel the response, the energy (or lack of it) in the room, read the body language of your audience).

Practice. Find a way to get your point across, fast and with just the right amount of details (too few and they won’t picture it, too many and they’ll have trouble imagining it). Learn how to say the things and use a tone of voice that evokes strong emotional responses from your audience (preferably non-violent). And throughout all this, remember that your job is to entertain – if you can’t do that then you’re failing yourself and your friends.

Sounds rough, especially that last bit, eh? If you think that’s rough, you should think about the pressure that blogging for the best blog in any niche brings to its bloggers. Long story short, if you want to be the best, you have to set the bar higher than anyone else and that means, for a start, that you have to deliver on what your blog promises every single time, in spades. And trust me, if you can handle (and deliver) under the pressure of being entertaining at all times, blogging (and great blogging), will become second nature to you.

I’ve read books on being a better writer (and I believe they helped for a while, too). I’ve read countless articles on being a better blogger. I get it, there are just 56,701 different things I have to integrate into my personality to reach that high level of blogging wisdom.

I don’t buy into that bullshit. There is ALWAYS a faster, smarter way to the top, and it almost always requires you to do something that 99.9% of the other population is unwilling to go through. Here, you have to learn how to be funny, all the time. Do that, and you’ll be a blogging celebrity / rock star, THE king of your niche and yes, you could easily pick up chicks through your blog too.

You know, we should run a ‘entertain me’ type of blog competition here on Performancing, where members submit entertaining stories and readers rate them. Except I don’t think that many people will jump to the chance of proving themselves to be entertaining, either because they’re scared of failing or because they’re not willing to try hard enough (it’s the same thing, actually). And the one person who dares to do it, is probably a better blogger than me. Figures…

Pros and Cons on using Blogger as a noob

It is possible that there has never been a better time to be alive when it comes to the proliferation of platforms out there that can be used to blog: WordPress, Movable Type, Typo, Livejournal, Myspace, tumblelogs like Tumblr and Content Management System platforms like Drupal and Joomla. Firmly nestled in amongst these platforms is the much maligned yet often adopted Blogger.

What I hope to provide here is a simple balanced argument as to the merits and otherwise of what is still one of the most popular ways to publish a blog – Google’s Blogger.

I am not going to attempt to answer the question: “With so much choice available, why do people still use Blogger?” As someone who maintains and contributes to several Blogger blogs, I do have my own opinion on that which I will save for another time. I am also not going to enter into a WordPress vs Blogger or any other [insert platform of choice] flame war. I simply do not have enough experience in the wide range of options to make an informed choice.

With the formalities out of the way, I present to you the pros and cons of using Blogger as newbie blog writer.

The Pros – why Blogger is good for newbies

  • It is simple to use with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface that allows anyone familiar with a word processor to navigate the Dashboard and get started. It is unintimidating and provides little to no barriers to entry.
  • It is part of the Google stable of products and integrates very smoothly with a number of complimentary free Google owned and/or branded products that are perfect for blogging such as Feedburner (to monitor statistics on readers of your news feed), Google Analytics (to monitor statistics on visitors to your blog) and Picasaweb for hosting pictures for your blog. Having said that, there is nothing at all stopping you from using these tools with non-Blogger sites.
  • Speaking of Picasaweb, using Blogger gives you access to up to 1GB of space to use just for pictures. There are other options such as Yahoo’s Flickr (which provides free unlimited storage with other usage restrictions or a paid Pro account), but Picasaweb (and Picasa on the desktop) works seamlessly with Blogger in a way even your Grandmother could work out. You also have the ability to upload your video direct to your blog and the video is hosted on Google’s servers.
  • Blogger provides free domain name hosting for all blogs. If you don’t have a name, it will hold your hand through the process of acquiring one. This is a very nice added feature.
  • The might of Google is squarely behind the development and maintenance of the product. One benefit that might not be high on the list of newbie bloggers (but probably should be) is that Blogger is hosted on Google’s own servers, making it almost impervious to Digg and Slashdot like effects where sudden high levels of traffic can bring other servers to their knees in seconds flat.

The Cons – why Blogger is bad for newbies

  • The low barrier to entry encourages mediocrity. This might sound harsh but it is true to some extent. I’m not advocating that everyone should return to hand coding their blog by candlelight, but I have found in my own experience and in talking to other bloggers that when you have to put some effort in to make a post, you are more likely to make a considered post rather than just rapping off some words to fill the space.
  • It is a locked platform and it can be difficult to move your content off Blogger if you decide in the future to move to another platform. The onus has shifted to other platforms to work out ways to import Blogger content rather Blogger providing an easy to export content (eg allow all posts to be exported in an XML file).
  • It lacks many “add on” features enjoyed by other platforms such as strong theme development communities, plug-ins and trackback capability. These are all things that other platforms such as WordPress take for granted. You may find the greatly reduced number of options a liberating constraint, but if you are like me and many others, you will find yourself hitting the limits sooner rather than later, which can be a very frustrating process.
  • The small numbers of the Google development team can never hope to compete with the many thousands of interested weekend hackers who work to further develop and extend the open source platforms like WordPress or Drupal (and soon, the latest version of Movable Type).

Conclusion – a zero sum game?

It’s not easy to declare that newbie bloggers should or shouldn’t use Blogger. While Blogger is frowned upon by “serious” bloggers, it does have some significant benefits in free hosting, 1GB of free storage for images, storage for video and industrial strength armour-plated servers that can survive most any traffic burst. Free domain name hosting also goes some way to counteracting the snide remarks and indignant sniffs whenever a blogspot.com domain name enters the picture.

On the other hand, Blogger has a limited feature set that will restrict the serious blogger as they begin to mature and adopt loftier aims (and if you’re reading this on Performancing, no doubt this includes you!).

While it comes down to personal preference, the above is my contribution to helping newbie bloggers do something I didn’t do when I started – make an informed choice.

WTF NOOB originally uploaded to Flickr by gws. Used under a Creative Commons By Attribution Sharealike 2.0 licence.

How to Attract Readers Who Don’t Read Blogs

The other day I was driving with my friend Diane. As we drove to pick up a pizza for our kids, Diane, an editor for a major New York City newspaper said to me, “you know, I never read blogs. I read news and regular websites, but I don’t read blogs.”

A couple of weeks earlier, I co-hosted a retirement party for my mother. Most in attendance were over the age of 60. When asked by our guests what I’m doing for work these days, I responded that I’m a professional blogger. More than half of the people who asked had no clue what a blog was, and the rest of the people don’t believe they ever visited a blog.

Do only bloggers visit blogs?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the majority of people who visit blogs are other bloggers. Why is this? Is it because people who don’t blog don’t see us as a legitimate source? I have nothing against other bloggers dropping by, but I’m always interested in briging in more traffic. Eventually that’s going to have reach beyond the blogosphere. Now, if you’re only interested in other bloggers reading your blog, you probably have no use for the rest of this post. If you’d like to consider bringing in other types of web surfers, the non-bloggers, read on.

What do non bloggers read?

I know lots of non-bloggers and most of them spend at least an hour or two online. So what are they doing? Well, some play games or troll for porn, while others read news or gossip. They look for jobs, electronics, cars or homes and research information for school. Most of their sources are found using search engines, others come from links at forums or news sites.

How do you bring the non bloggers to your blog?

Good question. If these people are all hanging out at CNN.com or Realtor.com, why are they going to visit your measly little blog and how will they find it anyway?

SEO – If you want to bring in the non- bloggers you have to be at the top of the search engines. Optimize your content and get it on the first page.

Comment – Many online news sources allow you to comment at the bottom of each article. Register and do so.

Issue a press release – Seriously. Is your pet blog offering a contest? Did you recently win an award? Did one of your posts receive 1500 Diggs? Issue a press release. Not only will this show up on the search engines, but there’s a good chance it will be read and picked up, by all the major news outlets. If they like what you have to say, they may link to you.

Visit forums within your niche – Dazzle then with your brilliance and they’re sure to follow.

Write for the local newspaper or magazine – Offer your services as a guest columnist or write an Op-Ed piece. Make sure you leave a short bio at the bottom with a link to your blog.

Attend seminars, conferences and lectures – Afterwards give out your business card. Better yet, offer your own lectures.

They do read blogs, they just don’t know it

In short, if you want to bring in the non bloggers, you have to hang out where they hang out. Find out where that is and don’t be shy. Personally, I’m of the opinion that some of the above referenced people do read blogs they just don’t know it. However, telling the difference between a blog and a website is a whole other post.

A Tale of Two blogs: You get what you put into it

I recently decided to invest some of the advertising revenue from my blogs to create two new blogs. One, owned by me but written by a legal expert, is about DWI/DUI laws and news. The other, maintained by Yours Truly, is about Celebrity Role Models.

The First Blog: DWI Penalty
The The Second Blog: Celebrity Role Model

The Celebrity Role Model blog began a week ago. As a celebrity blogger I’ve noticed all of the most popular posts center around stars who forget to wear underwear or do idiotic things like crashing into palm trees or trying to kill themselves. I wondered why we always reward bad behavior and ignore the people who do good stuff – or at least don’t screw up daily. I decided to start a blog centered on the people who use their power for good instead of evil, something I wouldn’t mind my nieces reading.

For this the promotion was a heavier. Though I don’t put as much effort into it as I do my other celebrity blog, I did more than just the usual signature links by submitting certain posts to Lipstick, Smoochr or Digg and by linking to other blogs. The results are amazing. In less than a week I have over 300 visitors, 700 page views, BUT absolutely no revenue. I didn’t expect to earn anything right away, so I’m not upset over the lack of coin. Mind you there are less than a dozen posts there at the moment. I expected more traffic than the DWI blog, but not in the first week. I’m quite pleased with the results.

No Two Blogs are Alike

I find it an interesting contrast. One blog is slowly becoming a success, while the other is racing out of the gate. If there’s any proof to the theory that your blogs are what you put into it, this is it.