Blog

Mobile Gadgets – Blogging on the Move

As you know, Nick and I are currently in San Diego on Performancing business. It’s remarkable how well we can do all the things we need to do for the business even while travelling, it means we can be almost anywhere and still get the job done. If you would like to blog on the move you might be interested in how we do it. Also it gives us a chance to geek out about our gadgets!

Nicks Kit

Nick is using an IBM Thinkpad Laptop as his Gentoo Linux workhorse. While we have been here he has also snapped up a cool new Nokia 770 “Internet Tablet” that he has been lusting after for quite a while. This PDA-like device runs a version of Debian Linux and has Wifi and bluetooth capability. In addition to this he has a Plantronics DSP 500 Skype headset and a Motorola Razr phone for voice and to provide the Nokia tablet with GPRS connectivity via bluetooth (strange a Nokia product would not have cell features!).

Chris’ Gear

My equipment has a much more Microsoft flavour. My humble Samsung V25 laptop runs XP Pro, plus I have a O2 XDA Exec Pocket PC (a rebadged HTC running Windows Mobile 2005 for Pocket PC). For voice I have Skype both on my laptop (I use a $9 Skype earpiece/microphone, nothing so posh as Nicks headset) and also on my Pocket PC. The PDA is actually a phone, but I only use it for data and Skype as I have a Sony Ericsson K750i for normal cellular voice calls.

Connectivity

I was really surprised that here in San Diego there is rarely free Wifi. Perhaps naively I thought in the USA it would be overflowing with public bandwidth! Luckily lots of people do not secure their networks (finding a network called “default” is usually a good bet!).

Pay Wifi can be expensive, $15 an hour in some places. At that price, even my expensive 3G/UMTS data plan is more reasonable providing I am only doing email or IM.

When travelling and intending to blog it is worthwhile in addition to a wifi card taking along a spare network cable and a sync cable for your mobile phone. It is not yet the situation where you can rely on getting connected with Wifi even when it is supposedly available.

Software

Dissapointingly neither Nick or I can use PFF on our PDAs. Even though Nicks gadget is running Linux it does not yet have Firefox (though one is in the works), and there is definitely no Firefox for Pocket PC.

Thankfully though both machines have decent web browsers. The Nokia runs a version of Opera and has a 800×480 screen. It would need a USB keyboard if Nick wanted to avoid using the touch screen keyboard or handwriting recognition. The Pocket PC has IE and a 640×480 screen but does have an included keyboard.

Both machines can run IM software, mine using the bundled MSN Messenger plus Skype and Nicks his beloved GAIM. While the Nokia has a bundled RSS reader I use a web based interface which while fiddly works quite well and at least syncs with my desktop.

Summary

It is very pleasing that this company is not tied to geography, it truly is a virtual organisation. While already we were spread over countries and timezones, this trip proves we are quite capable of working while mobile. Blogging is very well suited to this kind of approach to working. There is no reason why a travelling blogger should not be able to keep up with events and maintain a good posting schedule, with good time management and planning of course.

How lucky are we that we can do something we really enjoy, find so rewarding, almost anywhere.

Do you blog on the move? Please do tell us about it.

Managing Titles and Paths For Traffic

Do you know why some entry pages are so successful? How much time do you spend to find a good title for a blog article? Are your headlines and static archive filenames containing your blogs ‘keyword cloud’?

If I check the statistics for my entry pages I see that there are always pages which are more successful than others. Two important points beside the body keyword density and the tagging are the article title and the filename of the archived static page!

Many blog authors tend to be very focused on the body part of their content. But beside the main content it is very important to attract readers and search engines with a brilliant title. Just pushing the ‘Publish …’ button after writing that awesome article means to give away a good chance to optimize your blog article for reader attraction. The same is true for SEO … titles and file names are highly relevant to search engines!

Readers following many feeds are just skimming the headlines in their feed readers to find relevant articles. If you don’t have an attractive headline they are not going to click!
Article titles and archive pages containing your main ‘keyword cloud’ means a better listing in search results!

Continuously checking your search results and the adword possibilities with a following concentration or widening of your key density is a very successful and not very time-consuming way to optimize the success of your blog articles and titles.

Last but not least your title and your archive page name and path are showing up everywhere where somebody is linking to your article. This is the easiest way to gain keyword competence and relevant links.

Lovely trap number one: Don’t change the publishing date of your article because most blog systems will then change the path of your archive page.

Lovely trap number two: Blogger creates a new name for your edited archive page if you change the title of your article. (But they also keep the old version … hmmm) So better take the first chance to generate a good page name!

Both traps may result in broken external links! I have just tested it again on Blogger and now have to update the appropriate del.icio.us links manually. If you lose all incoming links and trackbacks to an article because of these little traps … well I would be angry … and nobody to blame except myself.

It’s just another version of “The fish has to like the taste of the worm … not the angler”. As a result you will get more inbound traffic and higher listings in search results.

Technorati Tags: blogging, article, content, title, writing, SEO

Breaking News

Of all blogging tactics the most difficult must be “news”. If you want to be on the frontline of blogging and really make a name for yourself then being at the forefront of what is hot has to be the way. If anyone is crazy enough to consider it though let me give you a word or two of warning.

There are a few services that will tell you what people are interested in right now. We have Technorati, Flickr and Google just to mention three big and popular examples. How useful is this information for bloggers?

The “Zeitgeist” as Google calls their service tells you the most popular searches for a period of time. Be that a week or a year. You can see what the popular searches were for the week of February 6th for example.

Technorati and Flickr on the other hand aim to be more current, they show what is “hot” right now. With Technorati you can see both popular searches and popular tags. This is important as what people are searching for is not always in sync with what people are writing about. As I write this lots of people have posted about Valentines day but the top searches are about Dick Cheney …

Flickr gives you the most popular tags in the last week or 24 hours. Again right now Valentines is very much the theme, for the last week NorthernVoice made a good showing (hardly surprising, Flickr is particularly popular with bloggers and Canadians so a Canadian blogging conference is going to be news).

So we have this information, all we have to do is blog about what people are looking for right?

Well here is the problem. What people are looking for now is not necessarily what they will be looking for tomorrow. What you write about now might not be found until tomorrow, particularly in Google which is notorious for not picking up fresh content. Technorati is a fair amount more quick on the uptake of course.

Bottom line, you are almost guaranteed to be behind the news.

The second issue is more difficult. If by some chance you do hit on the sweet spot of breaking news that lots of people are interested in right now, it might be a one shot thing. Anyone who has posted about “Dick Cheney Buckshot” is not likely to get long term traffic, just a spike and only then if you are lucky to actually appear anywhere for the term.

What you need is to know what will be popular, not what is popular right now. Unfortunately unless you have a backdoor into a search engine or a time machine you are out of luck.

So you can’t rely on online tools. You need sources and you need to create the news, and news people will be interested in at that. Rather than following a trend you have to be a leader, that means being the first, or at least among the first.

Two problems with this, one where do you get your sources and two how do you know if they are reliable. There is a certain catch-22 that you will not get sources until you have broken some news and you can’t break news until you have reliable sources. If you do get sources though then you are on to some real gold. The Drudge Report and Aintitcool were both basically built on exclusive news.

You know what? It sounds exciting but I think it is too much work. If you have access to reliable insider information, go for it. For me though I would much rather stick to evergreen topics even though you do not get the same fame or adrenaline rush!

Turning Negatives into Positives

Reading Andys post about “hate” got me thinking about criticism. I realised that in the past I have learned more from flames than I have from compliments. This could be turned to your advantage.

It seems like longer but Performancing has only been live for a few months. In that time we have received much feedback, mostly positive, some fairly agressive. I am sure if you do a vanity search for your blog you will find the same. While the bad stuff might upset you, criticism can be a valuable asset.

While it might be better for your ego if you do not always read and digest everything that is said in comments you must not be selective in which comments you read. Only listening to compliments can be really damaging to your blogs quality, and arguably for yourself as a person.

While it would be nice if all the comments were positive, complaints can be your best feedback. Many people who lash out actually feel aggrieved or hurt rather than feeling like causing bother. This is an opportunity to see how you have been misunderstood, misrepresented or what you have said could have been distorted. We post so quickly and often it is so easy for a throwaway comment to be taken the wrong way and you know what? Communication takes two parties, it is your job to get your message across as it is your blog. You can’t blame the other party for not understanding.

By showing that you welcome all feedback you will get more comments and openness is a great quality in a blogger.

I am not suggesting that you just take on board everything people say to you or about you and it is OK to be upset. Bad comments can be paralysing and can make you want to pack up and quit. I have been there many times. This is not about being a doormat. What you are doing is listening and analyzing to see if the feedback has validity. Think to yourself how the situation looks from the others point of view. Could they have misunderstood due to bad communication on your part or are they just being a grumpy git? There are people who just want to make trouble. Be on the look out for people causing trouble with other visitors on your comments also, it is up to you to police those.

When you receive a negative comment

Don’t be crushed, Don’t be defensive, listen and encourage explanation

Think “what can I learn from this”

Get a second opinion

Consider how you can get your point across more clearly

Remember how it feels for when you next criticise others

Like piloting an airoplane, when you are blogging you need to make course corrections. It is only by listening to feedback, good and bad, that you can learn what the real situation is. Your audience are the ones who you are writing for, your blog is for them not you.

It might not seem this way but often “bad” feedback is the most honest. In fact a bloggers most common feedback is silence. A lack of feedback means something is wrong but there is no way of pinpointing what it is, at least with negative criticism you have something to act on.

While it might take a little courage it is a good idea to solicit criticism – ask your audience what they worst things about your blog are. What single thing would they change. Tell them you will not be offended.

How valuable would it be if someone let you in on the one thing that is keeping people away? That one single factor that annoys the hell out of your audience that you never noticed.

Airblogging, Conferences, Meetups and Beer

Im on my way to San Diego again, yet another meeting with the dev team, but this time they have WIFI on the transatlantic flight from Denmark to Chicago, how cool is that?

Im supposed to be doing a little bit of work on some more serious stuff than telling you lot about how good the inflight internet is, but hell, i’ve not done this before and it IS cool heh… It wouldwould be fantastic for us to hook up with any members that are in the area though, so let me fill you in on the schedule for the next few weeks…

San Diego

So, im bound from Chicago to San Diego later today, and I have a whole week over there this time, with Chris joining me tomorrow sometime.

Do we have any Performancing members in the area that might like to hook up for a drink or something to eat? We’re dead pushed for time, but if anyone fancies it, i reckon a little time could be made for beers 🙂

SES with Andy Hagans

Im at Search Engine Strategies New York with Andy Hagans on the 1st of next month, where we’ll both be speaking at a session on tagging — the same one i had to miss in Chicago last year due to passport issues, so again if any one is going to be there, let us know.

New Communications Forum

After that, Im in Palo Alto for the New Communications Forum where i will be generally hanging out and catching up with a few folks. So again… if anyone is going from here, please let me know!

Im hoping to catch up with the folks from BlogHer, Tom Foremski and a whole heap of folks over the thursday and Friday, and will post about it seperately in the week as it really does deserve it’s own post!

As those that are paying attention to my occasional ramblings on travel will have guessed, we’re getting closer and closer to announcing our next tool for bloggers — when we’re ready, it’ll be on the homepage, so stay tuned…

Gettin’ Creative

I’m usually all numbers and Adsense and affiliate links yada yada yada, if you haven’t figured it out by now (and some people have) let me spell it out for you: I’m not very creative.

But Perfomancing member Cigar Jack is.

I’ve put together a flyer that says “You’ve Been Jacked” and sending it out with a few cigars to different people on cigar websites. The rules on the flyer ask that they replace two of the four cigars and either hand it off or mail it to another cigar smoker. It encourages them to log on to my site to find out where the package has been.

This is the kind of out of the box thinking that rarely ever comes to me. And when it does, I usually try to ‘crunch the numbers’ in my head, and probably over-conservatively, talk myself out of it. This is a major weakness.

In keeping with my uncreativity, I’d like to suggest there are three levels of execution in this game:

Creativity + little elbow grease — have some fun maybe, make a pittance
A lot of elbow grease + little creativity — make a decent living, but not getting [really] rich (I’m here!)
Creativity + a lot of elbow grease — at this level, several years in the game can net you seven figures

So what do yah’ll think of Cigar Jack’s idea? And what other creative marketing campaigns have you done? Discuss at Performancing forums: Word of Mouth Promotion

Taming the Feed Beast

We have mentioned a couple of times that we tend to have enormous feed subscriptions, despite our best efforts to keep the numbers manageable. Artem raised the question about how we manage these but no answers were forthcoming so I thought I would revive the topic here.

First my tool of choice

By now someone must have built the ultimate feed reading tool to beat all others?

I have been on a constant lookout for a great feed reader ever since I discovered RSS. Bloglines, sorry to the fans, just doesn’t do it for me. I use a web interface as a backup, not as my primary reading method.

Newsgator was ok but I found a better Outlook RSS plugin with Attensa. With Attensa I can sync with their web based service, this means my primary mode of RSS reading is available in addition to a roaming web interface, perfect. Well, almost. I had to spend a LOT of time with their very helpful staff to work out why it had nuked my Outlook install. All resolved now, happily.

How I manage my feeds

The one thing Attensa does not have that others I tried, such as Blogbridge and even Attensa’s own web based service, is the “river of news” view. If they added this to the Outlook tool I would be very happy in deed.

The way I work is to store my feeds in folders by “project” rather than topic. So feeds I read to find out the news that is relevant to Performancing go into a Performancing folder, good photography blogs go into my DSLRBlog folder, the best .NET blogs go into the folder for my techy blog etc.

I still have “second tier” folders for all the rest of the blogging news, but by shifting feeds into very paired down collections I am only looking at the good stuff, the ones I can really rely on. This saves me time as I am not wading through irrelevant stuff that might be fun but isn’t immediately useful.

An important folder contains all the non-blog feeds I keep up with, our BaseCamp projects, my Tadalists, etc. This is the main advantage of my feeds being in Outlook. I have outlook open all the time so if something new pops up I know right away.

Once I have got the important feeds out of the way and posted some (obviously brilliant and insightful) blog posts I can read the rest to keep abreast of news and catch up with what Dilbert is up to today and what is going to happen next on Battlestar Galactica.

If while looking through the other feeds I find a feed that looks like it will be useful I will move it. Looking through the feeds at this time also helps me find new blogs. I follow all the linked sources and have a look to see if I want to subscribe. Feeds I haven’t found useful for a couple of weeks get nuked. It’s like feed Darwinism, only the best survive.

You?

What software do you use and how do you manage your feeds? How many feeds do you subscribe to?

Performancing Firefox 1.1.1 Bug Fix Release

Jed has been working his fingers to the bone to put the finishing touches to Performancing for Firefox 1.1.1, here is what is new and changed in this release:

Post as Draft bug fixed
MSN Spaces Categories now work (you’ll need to re-add your msn spaces account)
Delicious now grabs the correct post, not just the most recent.
Editing content now retains changes when switching between Rich and Source editing.
Preview window now shows URL as normal underlined urls
Clicking on a link in Rich mode will no longer launch the url (only in preview).
Flock and MacOSX UI bug fixes
Categories now work with Drupal

As always you can download the new version from our Performancing for Firefox page

Skip links