Blog Comments

Last week I didn’t blog at all on two of my blogs. I had every intention to, I just found myself sick, looking after my daughter who was also sick, visiting family and nursing a brand new puppy who had decided to be more active at 3am than during the day. What I found interesting was on return the blogs had not suffered all that much.

There is a dip, obviously, but not as bad as I was expecting (probably just natural seasonal fall off) and the recovery, while not complete, is better than expected.

I have long held the opinion that you are better off NOT posting every day if you have to force it. You are only as good as your last post. Far better to wait and post good stuff than post lame stuff just because you have a schedule to keep.

What do you think? Did your traffic and subscribers fall off? Did you keep posting last week? Let us know in the comments.

This weekend I didn’t take my own advice and I’ve been doing damage control ever since. I’m not going to go into all the details, but suffice it to say, it doesn’t pay to respond to negative feedback or feed the trolls.

Let me explain.

Not everyone is going to like what you write. The majority of them will tastefully rebut and you can carry on an intelligent discussion among the members of your community. If you go ahead and respond to the people who are looking for a fight, it will only hurt your reputation and spill over into your community. Don’t do it.

Here’s how to handle the trolls:

1. Ignore them – Let them say what they want and then ignore them. Do not respond, no matter how many times they insult you. You can’t reason with them.
2. Delete their comments – When it comes to comments you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you let nasty comments stand, it makes your community uncomfortable. If you delete them you’re accused of stifling free speech. The bottom line: It’s your blog and your community, cater to them, not the trolls.
3. Moderate comments – If the trolls are bringing friends and they’re piling it on, moderate your comments. This doesn’t have to go on forever, just until the furor dies down.

Must.Not.Engage

Here’s the thing. The people who are really negative are doing so for a reason. They’re trying to provoke a response. The more you give into it, the more you respond, the more it will continue. No matter how much it kills you not to set matters straight, don’t give in. Even if you’re right, don’t give in.

Your community comes first

When your blog becomes a battle zone your regulars will leave for neutral territory. They’re not visiting your blog for the drama, (well, most of them aren’t). They’re visiting for the advice and the atmosphere. Do the right thing and think of them first.

Please accept our apologies for the pMetrics downtime this week. We had an unexpected but serious database corruption that took a long time to fix, much longer than anyone anticipated. We should have been more vocal about this, as we have in the past, and will try to do so next time. It kept seeming like it was almost fixed, and then something else would happen. Time flies and here we are two days later.

But things are finally back to normal again… well, except for the fact that you have several days of traffic missing. But don’t worry, we still have it, it just hasn’t been processed yet. Being that pMetrics is more focused on the present than the past, we are giving your new traffic priority. The traffic that’s missing should show up in your account within several days.

I was going to title this one “The Secret to Earning $10k/month from blogging in just 6 months”, but that might have been a bit too much 🙂

If you want to make $10,000 / month from blogging in 6 months, here is a quick formula for you:

1) Figure out how you can make this a reality (freelance work, build a site to sell it, affiliate marketing, using PPC to sell your own ebook, blogging for hire, create your own site, etc) and create a detailed, step-by-step plan for it.

2) Go for it, now. Don’t stop for anything, even for this article to end – just start executing that plan right now.

They say that “good things come to those who wait” – and while I value patience, it has its place and it is often a convenient rationalisation for people who are afraid to take risks. There are times when you have to grab the bull by the horns and attack an opportunity with full strength.

In simple terms…you can’t wait for opportunities to knock on your door. You have to put yourself out there, put your blog out there, and make sure that you’re first in line when any opportunity comes up. You’ll take risks. You’ll make mistakes. But you’ll be much better off at the end of it than when you started, which is where you would have stayed stuck if you hadn’t moved in the first place.

For your blog, this means positioning it to benefit from trends in your niche. For example, for my football blog, I tend to get plenty of search engine traffic for matches as well as for any key incident that happens (celebrity gossip, in-game violence, etc). There are two reasons for this – one, I’m covering these events (taking initiative) and two, my blog ranks high in search engines naturally so that helps individual pages rank highly as well.

If you think about it, all progress on your blog is a function of you taking initiative and going out seeking opportunities instead of sitting at home waiting for them.

That $10k isn’t going to come to you if you wait for it (unless your blog earns that much in a month, in which case add a couple of zeros at the end of the number and start over) – you have to get up, get out and work for it, and quite often that means being in the right place to take advantages of the opportunities that arise.

I toiuched on this briefly at About Weblogs the other day, but thought I’d expand a bit here since beginning bloggers are always looking for ideas.

Don’t neglect the comments

I think many newbies tend to neglect comments. They write articles rather than disucssion-stimulating and engaging blog posts. That isn’t to say you should be upset if you don’t have any comments at first, but you should write with the intention of stimulating discussion among the members of your community. This will serve several purposes:

1. It will keep them coming back for more – I have a very active community at Freelance Writing Jobs. Each post provokes some interesting discussions. Some of these posts are weeks old. Many of my readers subscribe to the comments, while others check back often to see if new comments have been posted.

2. It will give you new material – I get about 75% of my blog ideas from the comments. Commenters like to go off on tangents or ask questions. A post with over 50 comments can spawn about 10 great ideas for future posts. Thanks to my commenters, I never run out of things to talk about.

3. It makes your blog look more attractive to others – Say you’re invited to two different parties. At the first one, no on shows up. The second one is absolutely rocking. Which one would you rather visit? That’s the way it is with blogs. Though readers are encouraged to visit as many blogs as they want, the truth is they don’t have that kind of time. Most will choose the one with a lively discussing ensuing over a blog with no comments at all.

Getting your readers to comment

So how do you get your readers to comment? Here are a few things that worked for me:

Ask a question in your title – Ask a question and someone is sure to answer.

Discuss a controversial topic – Controversy always provokes a response, though you should be prepared for some rude or insulting comments too.

Just ask – Ask for comments. Tell your readers you value their opinions and are interested in their thoughts.

Create a list post List posts are great comment-getters! Lots of people will respond to tell you how much they appreciate your list, and also add items they feel you left off.

Have a contest – Right now, on FWJ, I’m giving away a $50 gift certificate to my top commenter at the end of October. There are a few competitive commenters for sure, but even the people who don’t stand a chance are chiming in.

After revamping FWJ, I made community my top priority and nowhere is this more apparent than in the comments. In fact, I have many new readers as a result of those comments! All of the activity spawned a wonderful chain of events, I have new material, lots of blogs are linking to me and my traffic is souring. Don’t neglect your comments, you may be pleasantly surprised at what happens next.

My blog, Celebrity Cowboy seems to be a magnet for content thieves. Just today, I found the following:

http://celebrities.amazaweb.com/midnight-showing-of-harry-potter-%e2%80%9corder-of-the-phoenix%e2%80%9d-brings-in-12-million/
http://www.pratikg.com/2007/07/12/midnight-showing-of-harry-potter-%e2%80%9corder-of-the-phoenix%e2%80%9d-brings-in-12-million/

What can I do to prevent this?

Thanks,

Deb

The Carnival of Internet Pros (CoIP) Edition #1 is now accepting entries. The rules are simple. Please make sure you read these thoroughly, as several people are not bothering to read what is posted at Blog Carnival. The list below is subject to change, but if it does, I will post an “[Updated: __date__]” message at the top of this post.

1. One entry per edition only. If you enter more than for an edition, all your entries will be deleted. Other reasons for exclusion:
   1. Scraped entries.
   2. Completely irrelevant topic.
   3. Not in English (sorry).
   4. Entering in the comments instead of using the submission form.
   5. Not bothering to read the carnival rules.
2. The idea is both to share experience and get exposure. However, to go beyond a regular carnival, submitting an entry means that you agree to have your article picked apart, gently, wherever the carnival is being hosted. Two entries in each edition will be selected and the hope is that other readers will suggest – constructive criticism only, please – how the article could be improved, if at all. If you do not agree to this, then please do not enter.
3. Relevant entries. The general theme includes any article that helps make us better “Internet Pros”, earning a living online. This includes tips on blogging, techniques for writing, productivity, managing contract work, tools to help us, etc. Put yourself in the frame of mind that you are working solely online. Think of “Performancing” articles that help you become a better “Internet Pro”.
4. Please support whichever site is hosting a given edition of CoIP by linking back to the edition page from your blog, if you were included. If you were not included, that’s probably due to being late, and your entry will be considered for the next edition.
5. We’re not turning anything down unless it falls into one of the reasons in point #1 above. So do not enter multiple times. Wait until your article appears, or until you’re sure that your entry was deleted for one of the above reasons.
6. If you want to host a future edition, I’ll announce how in August. However, you must hold to the above rules yourself.

The first edition will be published on July 24th. The first deadline is Fri July 20th.

Here’s a link to submit your articles to the Carnival of Internet Pros

Part 3 of the Performancing Reboot.

It’s supposed to be: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

That’s good, commonsense advice. If something is running and is successful (like a good design – heck, like Perf’s current design), then don’t rock the boat.

The problem here is that the “don’t mess with it” mantra is a risk-averse strategy. It keeps you safe, but there are a lot of times that you DO have to take risks. Performancing wouldn’t be here if the founders didn’t take a risk.

When you take a risk, there’s a chance for success and failure – you can minimize the chance of failure to a certain degree but after that, it’s all about timing, luck and a lot of elbow grease.

What does this have to do with design?

The common proposition towards design is that if it’s working, you shouldn’t change it. Stability is good.

Stability is also positive-spin for being stagnant. Not all change is good, but that does not stop you from going out and seeking change, seeking improvement.

When it comes to blog design (or blogging, or anything you do in life), I think you should be pushing for constant refinement and improvement. Don’t rest on your heels and accept the status quo – when you are successful, look at how you can improve and then do so.

It will give you an added advantage over the competition.

In that backdrop, today’s reboot will take care of two things: discuss the need (if there is one) for a complete Performancing redesign and discuss the minor tweaks that could help make the current design better.

Let’s do the tweaks first.

Improving the Perf Design

Why would you tweak a blog design that you might change in the future? One, a new design for a professional-grade blog like Performancing takes time – and I wouldn’t want to sit on my ass waiting for it while I could do something to improve my current theme. Two, the design may not be an immediate priority in the big scheme of things – which makes the tweaks even more necessary.

Here’s a list of tweaks that I think Performancing should have with reasons for all of them – please feel free to critique and disagree.

Site Architecture

What can we do about setting up proper categories (a limited set at that) instead of (numerous) tags? This is something that bothers me a bit, especially when you want to find old posts on a specific topic. Part of my work here is cataloging the Perf archives by topic (the good posts only – and I’m a bit behind on that particular project), but intuitively speaking it just feels wrong that I can’t click on a particular category and look at it’s recent posts. Mind you, the taxonomy system works well. But we should ideally have a limited set of tags / categories.

It’s probably something that we need a Drupal developer for – if there’s anyone in the Perf community willing to help out (in exchange for fame, credit and lots of love), feel free to PM me or Ryan 🙂 .

We’ve already fixed the URLs, so no problems there.

Other than that I’m not too pushed about anything else – oh yes, there’s no sitemap (or at least no visible link off the main page). Something to look at for us.

General Advice

Overall the rest of the design is well done – although I’m sure some of you might have suggestions for improving things. It’s simple and I like it that way, plus there is space for advertising as well if we choose to go that route (I’m discussing this in more detail in part 4).

There’s a list of things that I’d like to see fixed though:

1. Increase the height of the search box and search button:

   Right now it’s too thin – making it bigger would make the search area more prominent and make it ‘appear’ more accessible.

2. Increase font-size of header menu options:

   Those tend to get buried because of the logo on the left and the ads below them. Raise their profile by increase their size.

3. Increase size of feed icon:

   Same as above.

4. Push the ‘Top 20 premium pMetrics blogs’ panel to the bottom or move it to the pMetrics area:

   In terms of ‘usefulness’, I’d either move this to the bottom of the sidebar (thus pushing the recent posts and recent threads panels a bit higher) or remove it from the sidebar completely.

   I admit that I check it often to see where Soccerlens is compared to the other 4 blogs in the top 5, but unless we’re giving a full ranking of all the blogs, the list has no place on the main site.

5. No italics for ‘read the rest of this entry’ link on the main page:

   A personal aesthetics choice – you’re already using ‘bold’ to draw attention to it, why do the italics?

6. Promte the Perf tracker:

   This is one of the most important pages on Performancing in terms of telling people what the latest conversations and posts are. We should be promoting it in the Perf Resources page.

7. Update the ‘about’ page:

   Non-design issue, but we should update the About page.

8. Better ad placement:

   I think there are several ways we can improve our current ad display / placement and give them more exposure throughout Performancing. This has more to do with monetization so I’ll discuss this bit in more detail in part 4 (tomorrow).

Like I said at the start, these are very minor tweaks – and individually you may not even notice the impact of changing things – but these tweaks eventually add up and make a positive, significant change.

Does Performancing Need A Redesign?

Yes.

Does Perf need a redesign right now?

No.

Priority-wise, our main goals are to a) rebuild the content base as well as push out new tools and services and b) revive the old members and bring them back. Under the current circumstances, design takes a backseat, at least for the next 2-3 months.

However, if I was redesigning Performancing, I’d keep the following things in mind:

• Stick to a 2-column theme
• Build it with a full-length horizontal menu bar at the top – the current arrangement limits us a bit
• Cater for siderbar ad space – along the same lines as SEJ’s right sidebar and Marketing Pilgrim
• Cater for in-post advertising – whether it’s affiliate promotions or AdSense in archives or even if we’re just pushing house ads
• Get visual – it’s not as much a problem with the current theme as with the people blogging (us) – more visuals required at Perf
• Change the logo – like it, but it needs more edge to it
• Come to think of it, the whole design needs more edge to it
• The current setup of social bookmarking plugins is fine but when you design a theme with those things in mind, you can format things better and make them look more natural

In the coming weeks I have a couple of articles planned on the topic of blog themes, which will go some way towards plans for a new Performancing design.

What’s Next

There are 2 parts of the reboot left – monetization and promotion. We’ll look at them thursday and friday, and then I’ll try to do that recap on Friday as well.

And now it’s your turn:

how would you improve the current Performancing design?

Note: Interestingly enough, after I wrote this article (the headline was decided a day before) I Googled the headline and found that a book is selling by the same title on Amazon. I don’t remember coming across this book before, honest 🙂