Blogging

It’s no secret that I am a geek. Guilty as charged, I have been since I was about age 9 so it is a bit late to start denying it. Because of this aspect (flaw?) of my character I seldom notice when things are “techy”. I take for granted things that I know others find tricky. Setting the timer on a VCR for example. Knowing this I ought not be surprised but I was shocked today to hear someone tell me that blogging is “techy”. Is it really?

Now don’t get me wrong, I know there are some things that hold back a great deal of people from getting into blogging. There is a base level of “web skills” that need to be mastered first for a start. There are conceptual things like “logging in”, “posts”, “links”, “comments”. Of course this all has to be understood and to learn it you either need a VERY friendly and helpful blog system or a friendly blogger.

But is it harder than, say, signing up for and using a hotmail account? If it is, it shouldn’t be.

Back in the day, yes it was too hard for absolutely everyone but the most determined or techy to blog. You had to know HTML and FTP, needed to negotiate the minefield of web hosting, perhaps know a bit of scripting if you wanted to be really fancy. With Frontpage and Dreamweaver, and the first content management tools more people were able to join the club. It was only really Blogger and most recently WordPress.com though that really made it accessible to most.

I usually benchmark these things using my Mum and Dad. My Dad managed to blog for a while before he ran out of steam with it. My parents do pretty well with their computer, they email, use office, MSN chat, scan, make greetings cards, that kind of thing. Surely blogging is no more difficult than those things?

This is an important question for those of us who want to make money out of blogs. Judging the correct time when blogging has reached the tipping point could be a big difference in when to invest and how much we earn.

So tell me, is blogging still “techy” or is it something everybody can do now? Is blogging ready for the masses or is it still in the nerd-zone? Is blogging “techy”?

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Nick told me last night about a debate that is raging over a company displaying and critiquing customer support emails. I don’t want to stir things up any more than has already happened but suffice to say a lot of their customers feel they are being disrespected. I am 100% sure the company in question, darling of web2.0 that it is, will recover from this and be even stronger but it did get me thinking. My last “blogging sins” post, Sloth, the 7th Deadly Sin of Blogging wasn’t really meant to be a series but I think this leads me neatly into another blogging sin; pride.

When we begin to receive the first signs we are on the right track and a little of the rewards of success it can easy to start believing we have all the answers. After all, things are going so well we must have done the right things which means of course we are “good at this stuff”.

Problem is that might not be so near to the truth as we think. Yes we might have made some right moves but also there is a great deal of luck involved as much as preparation, skill and intelligence.

We are all learning about blogging, it doesn’t matter how long you have been at it we can all learn something new every day. In fact I have learned more about blogging from questions asked here on the forums and PM system than I knew before we started.

Is there a possibility the guys I mention above have bought into their own hype and believe they know better than their customers about what their customers need? Are they so confident of their own worth that they don’t need feedback?

It seems in my experience that the phrase “pride comes before a fall” usually is very true. The best bloggers seem to retain a level of humility. Companies and bloggers who get more arrogant the more successful they become are usually due a kicking and inevitably get knocked down off their pedistals.

OK, I might be mixing up my definitions here, let’s dig out the dictionary:

“A desire to be more important or attractive to others“

I think most bloggers can recognise that. One motivation for blogging is to have our voices heard. While it’s important to serve your audience it is a temptation to make it all about the popularity contest and less about putting out good content.

There is a difference between aiming to please and playing to the crowd but it is not always easy to see where that line is. How do you avoid this? I guess deciding your own opinions, sticking to your guns, knowing when to change your mind or apologise? Be true to yourself? And don’t chase the approval of the A-List.

“failing to give credit due others“

We have all seen this one play out over and over. You see another blogger quote your content with no attribution or wholesale copy your work. Another is where you just know someone got their story from your blog but you don’t get a link or when someone thanks someone else for your story. Not much you can do about it as the victim but we can all make sure we link accurately and generously. Another reason to not use no-follow too.

“Vanity and narcissism“

Not much to say about this that hasn’t already been discussed here, hah.

“love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbor“

Perhaps this is a cause of all the back biting and sniping going on. When some people see others doing well they want to pull them down to elevate their own standing? The best way we can counteract this is by applauding good work by others and helping others get more visible. We do this in a small way by promoting good posts to our homepage for example.  Another thing that we can do is to stand up to bullies when we spot them.

“a prideful person believes him/herself to be in complete control of things“

I think this is where the company mentioned in the intro are at. They look at their sales figures and feel vindicated in everything they do without realising there are such things as “reputation equity” and “lifetime value”. Sometimes the publicity from a negative story can give a short term lift but the long term damage to public opinion can ruin the company. There are many examples of companies who did well in their “honeymoon period” then suffered in the backlash.

Bloggers can often believe their “following” have inpenetrable loyalty but in fact human beings are fickle. Any one of us can find we have limits to our loyalty when we see someone do things we disagree with. The best bloggers listen to their feedback early and comprehensively so the damage is minimal and short term, the most prideful end up falling on their swords.

So what to do?

I know we at Performancing, while often giving out advice, never feel like we have all the answers as we are constantly being shown that we don’t. You guys do not let us get too full of ourselves, hah. That has got to be the answer, listen to those around you who keep you grounded and be careful if you seem to have a cheering squad. It’s nice to constantly receive congratulatory feedback but it’s also essential to have balance, to know where you are going wrong. If you are not hearing it perhaps ask for it? If you think you have all the answers perhaps you are asking the wrong questions?

Someone asked about the possibility of doing a post on videoblogging. This is that post. All innuendoes and double entendres are completely unintended.

Videoblogging, or vlogging, is the practice of communicating to your readers through video as well as (and sometimes, instead of) text within the framework of a blog. While there are relatively few vloggers, the numbers have increased rapidly this past year and continue to rise. Given this and the growing interest in rich media by the corporate world, it behooves bloggers to become familiar with the knowledge and tools necessary to make a decent videoblog.

For brevity’s sake, I’m going to assume that you already know how to shoot video (if not, go here to find sites that will teach you) and that you are ready to upload your creation and put it onto your site.

Getting It Up

Freevlog.org is the best site to teach you the steps you need to go through in getting your content online. You will find out how to compress your videos for optimal online playback and ideas on places to host (Testing Grounds has a list of 30+ sites for free video hosting, with reviews of them as well).

To Flash or Not to Flash?

There has been much discussion surrounding video formats in the vlogosphere. Flash is getting popular and most hosting sites offer free Flash players for embedding videos onto your site. It’s a good option for ease of use and ensures that most of your readers will be able to access your material.

There is one problem with Flash, however, and it’s a big one. Most RSS feeds can’t read it so your content will not be displayable in aggregators and can’t be picked up by portable devices such as ipods. If you want to be viewed via RSS, Flash is out.

Many videobloggers choose to use quicktime formatting for this reason (Windows media and Realplayer are also used but are less popular as many people prefer not to download these players)I, personally, use quicktime.

Freebies

If you choose to go with a free hosting service, remember that not all hosting sites are created equal. Some services may want to put an advertisement on your videos. Others place their brand on the screen. There are several services available now, however, that have clean interfaces (I use blip.tv). I would highly recommend going with a clean interface.

Find out if they convert and play your content in Flash only or offer other alternatives. Some sites will transcode your content into Flash but keep your original files available as well. This way, your viewers will have viewing options.

Pay close attention to the terms of service (some services invoke mulitiple rights to use your content for any purpose in perpetuity, ie: they can sell it to other companies).

Another problem with hosting sites is that, should they go out of business (and most of these sites are very young), your vlog will be effected (This is not a worry with the Internet Archive but archive videos have been known to load very slowly).

Paying For It

If you have money to fund your project, Hipcast (Audioblog’s new name) offers generous hosting packages and is very easy to use. Brightcove has also been getting good press (I can’t vouch for it because I’ve never used it)

Do It Yourself

Self hosting your content is a great way to maintain control over it’s availability. The downside is finding the right players and/or plugins to present your videos effectively. You will have to decide whether you want the video embedded into the page, a small popup window, or to have the content open in a separate browser window.

Devlon Duthie has created a wordpress plugin for popups that can house your video and, with a little tweaking, you can even brand the window. The plugin works with any enclosure so it supports multiple formats. Another plus is that it’s free! (disclosure, he’s my boyfriend and business partner).

If plugins are not your cup of tea, I found a nice little Flash player that might fit the bill (if you don’t intend to utilize RSS) called Wimpy. Wimpy has several players, both audio and video, a playlist feature if you have more than one video to display at once, and the interface is smooth, sleek and brand free. Prices range from $20 to $90, depending on the package you get.

Bandwidth can be big issue in self hosting and is something that needs to be taken into consideration if your site is well visited (hosting sites take care of the bandwidth for you). Although prices have gone down, you will need to budget according to your projected viewership or you will have some nasty surprises when you get the bill.

That is a very brief look at videoblogging and I hope that it’s been helpful…or at least fun.

-Anne

Performancing.com has a tagline: Helping Bloggers Succeed…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps a recent example will help drive this point home:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A friend just started reading blogs after years of me talking about them. After drifting out of the tech theme into more general blogs he came back to me shocked at what he saw. “I thought you said this blogosphere of yours was a friendly place”, he said.

Like in real life, the bloggers argue, agree, fall out, kiss and make up. It seems a never ending circle of “he said she said”, gossip, backstabbing and shifting allegiances. I had never heard of the word “snarky” until the last year or so then it seemed to be everywhere. “Snarky” was all the rage (and caused a good deal of rage too).

Why is negativity and bitchiness so popular? I guess these types of posts and bloggers get noticed. If you are in this for the attention or the links, sniping is going to get you lots of both. While constant negativity isn’t going to be great for the reputation it will get you known at least.

Lately there seems to have begun a backlash against “snarkiness” and negativity. Scoble wrote about the mob out on the attack against Dave Winer. Bloggers who made their names by being snarky seem to be turning their back on the approach.

Ordinarily I would be all for this move, I tend towards pushing for people to be respectful and positive. I am worried though this backlash against negativity will turn popular bloggers against daring to be critical. Already we see themes of cheerleading where a topic or new web2.0 startup appears and everyone has to bandwagon the thing to death.

If you are worried about offending but feel you need to argue against someone it is quite simple. To critique without offending you just need to

• Don’t be personal – Comment on the creation not the creator
• Be factual – Opinion is fine providing you can back up why you think the way you do
• Have a point – Attack is fine providing you have a reason other than just to hurt someone else
• Empathise – Try thinking from the other point of view, does it have validity?

You don’t need to be vicious, hurtful or sarcastic, but I think we need to keep criticism alive. We have talked before here about how important feedback is. Blogs have an important role to play, we can say things the mainstream press can not get away with for fear of offending more straight laced audiences.

So I say keep making waves, the blogosphere needs the boat to be rocked occasionally.