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What Makes You Unique to the Blogosphere?

Unique

You will not get popular by being just another somebody in the blogosphere. Everyone should know that by now. But, unfortunately, some of us don’t even know if we have a quality that makes us unique to the world of blogging. However, we all have ways of being unique in the blogosphere, and it can come by simply illuminating your own self into an article.

Unique Bloggers

Being Superlative—Darren Rowse of ProBlogger

Being Interactive—Jeff Chandler of Jeffro2pt0

Being Intensive—Andrew G.R of Jack of All Blogs

Being Educative—Steve Spalding of How to Split an Atom

Being Extensive—Tina Su of Think Simple Now

Being Assertive—John C. Dvorak of Dvorak Uncensored

Finding Your Inner Uniqueness

With time, you will notice characteristics from your writings that will represent how you are in life. It is almost amazing how well I can visualize a person just by reading the content they publish. You are not just reading words. You are reading about the life of an author. This is why I find the blogosphere so exciting—each and every person has a unique voice and attitude. It is part of the reason why I enjoy getting to know authors of the content I read.

If you can’t discover what makes you unique to the blogosphere, you might consider asking some of your more devout readers what they think of you. Your peers will able to help you to identify yourself as a blogger and person. While many of you are fine with not knowing these things about yourself, personally, I find it extremely reassuring. It is almost like a confidence boost for me to know what I represent in myself and my writings.

About Me

Now, I figure that someone will get on my case if I don’t answer my own question, so for those of you that wonder what I think about myself, here you are:

I offer all readers my unbound truth and shrewdness with all of my published content. I also take pride with ensuring that my content meets the standards of those that invest the time to read it—after all, why should you have to read a low quality article? I will express myself without holding back, and will work to fix something that is wrong. Finally, I would never remain at a job that would place limitations on what I could write about.

To sum it up—I am deeply passionate (almost completely obsessed) about the truth, and that is a significant portion of my life.

But What About You?

I want to know what makes you unique. What makes you so compelling to have your content read by thousands or even millions of people? If you know these things, tell us about yourself in the comments section. Maybe others will find their way to getting to know the great blogger and person within you.

[Image Credit: Unique Group—Thiru Murugan | CC]

Free Story Theme For WordPress

Most of the time (when I’m not busy becoming a father, like in April) Performancing is committed to bringing you a free new WordPress theme each month.

This month’s theme is called The Story Theme. It’s a 3 column design where the content is situated to the far left, followed by two contrasting sidebars.

I’m especially fond of the look of the left-margin on this theme. It’s a nice touch that I’ve not seen in a theme before, but which adds a lot of class.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

You can preview the theme here.
You can download the Story Theme here.

Successful Blogging, Promoting WordPress – Performancing Stream of Consciousness

Chris Garrett is running a global blogger survey, and if you participate, you’re eligible to win one of 10 copies of the ProBlogger Book that he co-wrote with Darren Rowse of Problogger.

Darren wrote an inspiring article, 12 Traits of Successful Bloggers. It’s inspiring, at least to me, because I think I have many of the traits (either at present, or have had in the past and thus can recover). The short list:

Creative and playful.
Innovative.
Connectors.
Community Enablers.
Information Mavens.
Communicators.
Interest.
Entrepreneurs.
Originality.
Perserverance.
Focus.
Curiousity.

Now to work on my weak areas, the biggest of which is “Focus” What about you? Which traits do you have? Which do you think is the most important? (I vote for “Perserverance”, because if that’s all you have right now, it’ll carry you through while you build the other traits.)

Every successful blog is built on a capable platform. My favorite is WordPress, and even though I don’t like the latest version, 2.5x, because Custom Fields (an advanced feature) do not work properly anymore, I still evangelize about WP at every opportunity. If you like WordPress as much as I do, you can contribute directly or indirectly to its continued existence. For ideas how, read Jeff Chandler’s 24 Ways to Contribute to WordPress [via Xfep] – strangely unnumbered. Many of these ways are non-coding efforts. If you do decide on #20, Create a WordPress Centric Podcast, check out past Perf articles on podcasting/ vodcasting:

Can a Podcast Help Your Blog Succeed.
9 Podcasting Tips.
A Beginner’s Podcasting Guide.
How to Podcast Using SplashCast or YouTube.

If anyone wants to work on a long-term weekly podcast/ screencast about WordPress for Performancing with me, drop a comment here or PM me. I don’t want to compete with what’s already out there, merely supplement it. My preference is to do a screencast that gives all kinds of tips about WP – including advanced features – shows new themes or plugins, and gives general news.

Even if you just co-produce with me (planning, scripting, editing, feedback) and don’t want to/ can’t screencast, I’m game. You’ll get credit and a link to your blog from here, in each edition. My preference would be for someone who is willing to occasionally co-host in audio, via Skype – but it’s not a necessity. I’m opening two spots for partnering. (This is a non-paying opportunity that could lead to future opportunities and would build your profile.)

If you are going to do voice work, record a snippet of you talking about WordPress and post it somewhere so that I can listen to it. (Read article #4 above.) Accents are fine, but your voice must be clear and understandable.

Oh by the way, you do not have to be a WordPress guru. In all honesty, I’m open to anyone that can help me come up with ideas about what to cover in each episode, and sometimes a non-guru is better for that.

User Rank Plugin for WordPress from Performancing Plugins

Have you ever wanted to rank the users of your blog based on comments and/or post contributions?

Creating a leader board for the users of your blog can provide incentive to contribute more often, and can also be used to offer performance based prizes.

Performancing is pleased to release UserRank as a free WordPress plugin that assigns scores to your WordPress blog users and outputs the user rankings with a simple function. Whether you are creating a personal journal or a corporate blog, the UserRank plugin will help you build an engaged community and ensure that the most valuable contributors are retained and rewarded.

The plugin was originally designed for a cash-reward contest that Glamorati will be having in the near future.

Click here for more information, and to download the plugin.

Performancing Stream of Consciousness – All the World’s a-Twitter?

Do you love Twitter enough to write mini-stories with it? If you can produce a story (not poetry) in EXACTLY 140 characters, Twitter it, then post the link to it at Copyblogger’s Twitter Writing Contest page. You’ll be eligible to win a 4Gb iPod Nano. If you want to donate prizes to this contest, you can post info there too.

Twitter is becoming so popular that it’s gaining converts in droves, creating buzz in the blogosphere, and spawning popular Twitter apps/clients such as Twhirl (and serving up 500 errors at times – presumably when it can’t handle the load). One of my Hive colleagues, Brian from Candy Addict, is being interviewed by Donny Deutsch for The Big Idea TV talk show this morning. So he set up Twitter on his mobile phone so that he could Twitter the experience before and after the interview. You can go one step further and livecast. And then there’s Twitpitching to propose an idea to someone.

Or if you’re into infosumption via Twitter, you could use microblogging to build presence – especially if you’re an entertainer – hunt for jobs, or track who is promoting your articles or otherwise linking to you, track poltical events, of get the news before big media gets it. If you’re addicted to data, you might simply want to visualize the Twitter universe.

If you’re not sure who to follow, visit Favrd, Who Should I Follow, Twitterholic for starters. Twitterholic lists the top 100 Twitterers (based on number of followers). Who Should I Follow makes suggestions after you supply your Twitter name. It also has a location slider, so that you can supposedly filter the member list down to people near to you (based on your IP address and where that maps to geographically). Favrd lists “interesting things” based on Twitter members/ threads that have been favorited.

So how are you using Twitter to be more productive or build your presence online? If you aren’t using it yet, choose a Twitter client and give it a go.

Why Using Excerpts Is A Good Idea

When a person visits your blog, they can be overwhelmed by the amount of content that is on display. It becomes even worse when you consider the fact that some blogs manage to push out several 500+ word posts on a daily basis. For all that content to end up on your homepage, it can just be far too much. The use of excerpts can be a simple and effective way to control information overload.

Truth be told, a simple reverse chronological order of the entire contents of a blog are just unappealing to me—who reads past the first page? I don’t have time for that. It is just more unnecessary effort required by the users.

This is why I believe that many of today’s blogs are going to—slowly but eventually—transition to magazine-/newspaper-like designs in the future. And why not? They look just as good and allow more links to content on your blog. It gives the blog an opportunity to display their best content while organizing it for the reader. The problem with the typical blog these days is that it is just content from all types of categories mashed into one linear listing, and if your blog covers a wide variety of subjects, you could imagine how much more complicated things can get for the reader.

Excerpts

Excerpts can be just as effective as full content listings, and if you can take the opportunity to display more content in the same amount of space (or even less) than you should do so. Your subscribers don’t really care (they end up directly on your content’s page anyways), and those that end up coming to your site via search engines are probably an impatient bunch too. Those that want to find the good stuff on your site in a glance can’t do so because they have to scroll down an endless amount of text and images to find something they like, and that is just a waste of time.

If you visit a site like Wired.com, you are presented with 20 stories in the same space it takes for one blog entry to be completely displayed on the typical blog. It is just too much to bother with reading. Who could argue with displaying more content? Granted, Wired has a pretty amazing site design, but it’s blogging component is the same as that of a magazine article; it can be done with WordPress as newer themes are developed for it.

A Worthy Change?

Now I don’t expect any of you to go out and transform your blog drastically, but I do believe that bloggers benefit from posting excerpts instead of full content on their website. It is a teaser, and it is a paragraph or two that convinces those users that they must read this article.

I also would love to point out the fact that by using excerpts you should be able to generate a significant amount of more views by people that visit your site directly, and that means more advertising opportunities. This is even more true with smaller blogs that are in dire need of views to make a few bucks.

Future Designs

I am certain that future designs will make further use of excerpted content—it is less overwhelming to a user who finds their way to your blog’s homepage. The more active your blog is, the easier it is for your other (and maybe even better) content to be lost in an endless glob of text.

Agree? Disagree? Do you use excerpts? Let everyone know! Keep the conversation going in the comments section.

Performancing Stream of Consciousness – Banishing Your Introverted Self

If you’re not going out this weekend to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, maybe you’ll want some reading material. (Or you could go see a recent release like Iron Man – but skip Speed Racer, in case you’re expecting it to be as good as the Wachowski Brothers’ earlier effort, The Matrix.)

It’s still arguable whether or not bloggers are generally opinionated, but some are definitely introverts. Chris Garrett gives some advice on breaking out of your solitude – something that’s necessary for online success.

One way to ease into being less introverted is to speak in front of people. (I was incredibly shy before becoming a teaching assistant in college.) If you don’t want to do that, try talking to a video camera set up on a tripod. (Or just start with podcasting. Both are less intimidating than public speaking.) Start with product or movie reviews, or a simple vodcast about something you know. (Write a rough script, to keep yourself focused.) Review the recordings and if something’s good, pop it up on YouTube. (Then use Google’s new YouTube Insight tool, to study the breakdown of viewers.)

You could also combine web cam video of yourself with screencasting, to educate your readers about blogging, how you produce content, how they can comment constructively, or even request information from you. Or do an excercise where you answer 20 questions about whether to stop blogging. As before, set up a video camera on a tripod, then review the recording sessions. Other things to talk about: whether the recession has hit the Internet [via Xfep], whether you should self-brand yourself as a freelancer, getting naked as a blogger, or how great Twitter is as a broadcasting tool.

Another outlet for being outgoing is to drop video comments on the sites that allow it. Thanks to Disqus and Seesmic, there’s a WordPress plugin that allows WP blogs to enable video commenting (or use Magnify to create a video community). Personally, I’m not big on the idea of video comments, but if you are, don’t forget to brush your teeth first – in case you have some chive stuck in your gums.

Story Theme

screenshot Performancing is pleased to release another great, free WordPress design called the Story Theme.

It’s a three column design with the content on the far left, followed by two sidebars. The color scheme uses a subtle mix of tans, oranges and browns to provide great texture and depth for your blog.

Rounded corners and a unique left margin give the impression that you have just turned the page in a compelling story.

Whether you are writing your blog to tell a story, or engage readers with a product, the Story Theme just may be the perfect choice.