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Why Blog? Advice to Companies + Corporate Bloggers

In TCWriter’s response to Ahmed’s post about what role Performancing Exchange might play, the idea of corporate blogging comes up. Obviously, companies are in business to make a profit, and it’s the wise business person that knows that happy customers make repeat customers. Those of you involved in technical or scientific fields may not have realized an opportunity for you to make your customers happy: publish a blog. (The advice below applies to non-technical companies; you just have to extrapolate to your industry.)

Exactly what would your company’s blog be about? Well, besides being about the industry you’re in, and general ongoing news and events, how about specific tips on using yourproducts?

As a long-time technical writer (interwoven with my experience as a programmer/ consultant/ webmaster), I found that some of the juiciest, valuable tips on using a particular product are often buried deep in a manual somewhere. Why not blog about these tips? Not necessarily everyday, but at least once a week.

Consider your product documentation from a customer’s viewpoint. Often, there are far too many manuals and their bulk is intimidating. From a business perspective, this reluctance to read probably means handling more support calls early on, for each new customer. While you’re not necessarily trying to replace this service, having a tips blog might reduce support calls as well as endear you to end users who may prefer to find things for themselves.

A good example of such a “tip” blog is the Google’s official Adsense blog. A lot of that same info is published elsewhere on Google website properties, but for the most part, it’s kind of buried because you’d have to search for it with appropriate terms.

A blog like this one, which is updated regularly, makes info easily accessible. A blog also make that info fresh with new examples, something a printed manual will not do. (That’s because, even if it’s published online and upated regularly, most end users are not going to hunt for changes. An RSS/ Atom web feed with update notices may help, but a blog is more personal and fresh.)

I’ll be bold enough to state that if a company does nothing more on their blog than publish fresh tips, they’ll have a readership if they already have customers. (Don’t forget to publish your blog URL, in addition to the main URL, on business cards, company newsletters, brochures, manuals, etc.) If you’re also writing about your industry general, you may find that you also get readers who are not yet customers. And isn’t that what your whole purpose for being online is?

P.S. Jonathan Kranz writes about turning techno-babble into commanding copy at Marketing Profs. (Older articles tend to get archived and you have to be a subscriber. So if you are a company decision-maker or a technoblogger read this article before it disappears.)

Thoughts on the Upcoming Performancing Exchange

Here are a few points regarding Performancing Exchange that I’ve been thinking about since morning – hopefully this will foster some debate on what the Exchange can / should do and on the future of “blogging for hire” as well.

Expectations will have to change

Blogging does not pay as well as mainstream media traditionally does – and as a result both sides have to accept that a compromise has to be made.

Bloggers need to realise that we are still at a stage where blogging is new and definitely not considered as profitable or valuable as traditional journalism. That will change, but only with time. Till then we’re going to be paid less (most of the time) and will have to deal with it. That’s why it’s important to know how to leverage your blogging gig to help you land a better job and to negotiate for perks within your blogging that may not cost much to the employer but could help you in your career.

For employers and publishers – well, they need to get that personal connections bloggers can form between themselves and their readers are key to the future of marketing. The value may not be immediately tangible in revenue dollars, but the long-term impact of hiring bloggers will be invariably positive and more effective than traditional advertising.

Profile pages will become very important

Right now Exchange is at a very basic stage. We haven’t incorporated the ability for publishers to search for bloggers that are ‘for hire’. Once that happens, your profile page will suddenly be your first and possibly only chance to make a positive impression on potential employers. It makes sense to provide as much relevant information in your ‘professional details’ section as you can. Here’s a basic formula that I use:

  • tell them who you are.
  • tell them what you are good at (your key areas of expertise backed up with specific facts and results acheived).
  • tell them what you’ve done (what your experience is, link to work samples if relevant).

If you haven’t posted on your Performancing blog, consider making a few posts relevant to your blogging experiences to help people get a quick idea of your writing ability and style.

Everyone should hire a blogger

Perhaps I should qualify that statement as: “Everyone who wants to expand their online business should hire a blogger”.

If you run a blog where you post daily (or a few times a week), you need to realise that unless you free yourself up from the daily grind of blogging, you’ll never be able to properly focus on growing your business. To give a personal example, my football blog is now 5 months old, and to date I’ve brought in 4-5 contributing authors to help me write. I’m still doing the bulk of the writing, but in a couple of months I’m hoping to cut back and let other writers get a bigger share. It will give me more time to promote the site, as well as allow me to work on other projects.

Performancing Exchange is not just about bloggers – it’s about services in general (copywriting, web design, programming, graphic design, etc). However I sincerely hope that the Exchange can become a focal point for promoting blogging as well as helping bloggers (like myself) get paid work.

Blogging is not always about money

Some bloggers are not in it for the money – if the money is coming in from elsewhere (from other online properties, perhaps), blogging then becomes a way to connect with people in your field and to be heard. My reason for pursuing a blogging gig is primarily based on my desire to have my views on particular subjects heard – in other words, it’s more about having a platform from which you can talk to and converse with a much larger audience than you could on your own (not to mention that blogging for an organisation or media outlet automatically gives you more credibility than having an individual blog – for most people).

It’s different for each blogger, and that’s why it is important for publishers to have a central point of research where they can find bloggers who are suited to their needs. The best bloggers will invariably be highly paid, but you can find some very good bloggers who would write for next to nothing as long as they are writing about something they love.

And at the end, isn’t that what blogging is all about?

Social Bookmarking Sites: A Breakdown

I read a recent post on Performancing.com that a number of bloggers weren’t using the social bookmarking sites available and since I have been active on a few and a lurker on the rest I thought I would give a breakdown of the sites I have linked to from this blog.

First of all, in WordPress I use WP-Notables to make the system – its easy and takes little to no thought. Just activate the plug-in and add the 1 line of PHP into your comments.php for your theme (or anywhere else you want to drop the links).

1) del.icio.us – strangely enough this is the site I am the least familiar with. It is pretty straight forward but until recently was mainly focused on technology and technological issues– apparently they have expanded beyond that now. The system is fairly strict– don’t try setting up 10 account on the same IP and voting yourself to the top– they will be on it rather quickly. Also, the frontpage is controlled. (If by editors or by friend groups has never really been determined but the top posted contribute the majority of the posts on the front page.)

2) Digg.com — Digg also amazingly started as a tech geek site as it still primarily focused at that group. Digg’s user base seems to be about the same people that you will find on myspace– a young somewhat savvy audience– again something like 60% of the posts on the front page are from the top 10 users– so the system is rather difficult to break into.

3) Spurl.net – While it isn’t my intention to “rip on” any one site it seems to me that Spurl is completely over run with spam– the things that make it to the top “hot sites” seem to be garbage. I may be wrong about this but there doesn’t seem to be any sort of commenting system which makes other sites so appealing. .Commenting is a major part of social networking.

4) Wists.com is a social shopping bookmark site– it allows you to simply and easily create adds– so easy in fact that the entire page is flooded with ebay ads. I don’t know if real people even use this site.

5) Simpy.com — while the site is pretty basic looking it lacks a major feature that seems to have eluded this social bookmarking sits and their quest for stickiness: comments. Also, from judging traffic stats it seems to be a site over-run by spam.

6) Newsvine.com – This is probably my second favorite social bookmarking site. The layout is professional and clean- it is probably the future of social bookmarking as it reaches mainstream audiences. They are very much again the self-promotion of your site and will flag you site fairly quickly if you submit yourself to it. It has pictures (which is rare on these sites) it also looks like a professional news site. Fairly popular with a older (and rather political crowd) I can see FoxNews purchasing this site for some reason.

7) BlinkList.com — fairly nice looking site. Again, I don’t know how many actual people use it– it is essentially a digg rip off stealing pretty much the entire layout.

8) Furl.net — the site is okay, you have to be a member to see what others are bookmarking. As best I can tell it has a very small active user base.

9) Reddit.com — (the reason I am writing this) If I had to guess I’d say eventually reddit (if it stays about where it is now and doesn’t draw too much of a crowd) will probably be the next “slash-dot” (*note: I don’t mean this in a replace slash-dot kind of way but the same sort of people will be attracted here) Very web savvy. They don’t click ads. Which is actually a strong discouragement for spammers. If a mod/editor votes your story down to a zero it disappears. They are after a very specific kind of news (and other fun stuff)

10) Blogmarks.net — Blog bookmarks mainly for developers (web 2.0ish developers at that)

11) myweb.yahoo.com — seems to be pretty much garbage. I’m shocked. I have gotten asked to fill out the same survey on how they could improve their service 100 times

12) Ma.Gnolia — uses a tag cloud– isn’t the easiest site to navigate, has a few “featured” writers but overall it just doesn’t have the same appeal or stickiness as the others. The Usability is a big factor in this.

13) Netscape.com — the front page is controlled by editors. They want to pay top diggers to dig on their site. The site has a huge volume of hits everyday but I would like to see the bounce rate and I am just not sure social bookmarking will appeal to the average person using netscape.com as the default homepage for at least 2 more years.

**Please Note: Do Not Spam these sites– it will completely remove the value from these services**

This is a basic overview and is up for editing if anyone has other sites or information add it to the comments.

Microsoft Live Writer Review

microsoft writerIt’s pretty much well documented that I am a Microsoft fan. I owe a substantial portion of my career to their software. Got to say though I had mixed feelings about them developing a blogging tool. More and more of Microsoft is getting a clue about blogging but that doesn’t necessarily mean they get bloggers quite yet. Also for obvious reasons, we are known in part for our own (brilliant) blogging tool.

My expectations going in were that it would be

  • slick
  • easy to install
  • huge
  • filled with proprietary “stuff”, from markup to interpretation of feeds
  • possibly slow

Well it is easy to install, not particularly huge (5mb?) though on a slow connection you might not agree. Standards aren’t stretched so as I would notice, someone with more XHTML knowledge will have to correct me if I am way off mark here. Seemed fairly nippy on my machine, nothing too taxing. The experience overall is quite familiar to Office users which I am sure was the intent.

It’s not politically correct but I don’t care that they don’t support Macs. I really don’t get the whining about that. Microsoft isn’t a charity, they don’t have to support a platform if they don’t want to, especially one that takes away custom from their own products. They don’t support Linux, Beos, Amiga, Vic20 or my toaster either funnily enough.

PFF has established a basic feature list now that any blogging tool has to have, natively or through extension. Even with the ever-growing list of features our users keep coming back with some great ideas for new ones. It is not enough now to release a tool that only has wysiwyg blogging capability, it needs to do a fair amount more. This package meets those criteria without getting carried away. The only feature I have found so far that had me shaking my head was the ability to add maps – a niche feature I imagine!

Installation consists of downloading and running the install package, it sets up an icon in your programs list and you are ready for business. I already have more blogs than I know what to do with so I elected to setup the program with one of my test blogs. The good news is the detection process works smoothly, even my Drupal test blog, unfortunately not to the extent of being able to retrieve my categories or loading my old posts.

Image handling is particularly nicely done, allowing alignment, resizing, drag and drop insert and upload using the newMediaObject API. If your blog doesn’t support image uploads you can also add FTP accounts. Wierd thing is, although it did upload my picture it added a link rather than an img tag – strange! I’m not sure if that is down to my blog or the software.

The important consideration is would I swap PFF for this? Unsurprisingly the answer is no, but not out of bias; I find the ability to blog the current page too valuable, I like having my blog editing right in my browser. Until Microsoft integrates their new tool with IE (which I am sure they have thought about) I will keep using Firefox and Performancing for my posting needs.

Freelancers: Never Rely On A Single Income Source

So. You’re a serious blogger now because you secured your first blogging client. Seasoned freelancers know about the 80/20 rule: the bulk (80%) of your revenue will come from the least number (20%) of your clients. It’s sometimes called the 70/30 rule.

However, Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of the Long Tail book and website, says that the Internet turns the rule on its head for some types of digital media, in specific situations, thus giving certain content more sales life. Or at least, that’s my interpretation.

But the fact is, in any business, it’s generally easier to secure repeat clients than get new ones. But unless you (1) are a very disciplined saver, (2) have great faith in your biggest clients, or (3) have a partial stake in a venture, you probably do not want to rely on a single blogging client.

The Internet, and services like this new bloggers-for-hire/ Exchange community that Nick and the P-boys have set up, will give you a a better chance at finding more clients. But in practice, at least initially in your blogging career, you may not have a lot of choice about the number of clients. That’s mainly because blogging for pay is a relatively new phenomenon. So you have to consider alternate income sources.

Blogging/ writing monetizing options include running affiliate programs on your own sites or writing your own articles on the topics you are writing for clients. (With contextual or CPA/ CPM ads.)

Finally, take it from me. If you’ve never been a freelancer before, and are planning on relying entirely on your blogging skills to earn a living, learn how to budget. Save your extra money in an interest-bearing bank account – say an online savings account. If you have a banner year, and have the wherewithal to invest in stocks or mutual funds, you might consider that as well. Because pools do dry up sometimes, here are some important freelancing tips. [via MediaBistro]

P.S. MediaBistro, a great resource site for freelance writers, has a short article about negotiating your way to greater pay. The rates apply to print articles, but the advice applies to blog writers as well. Just keep in mind that at this stage, blogs and websites, on average, do not generate enough ad revenue to pay the same kind of rates. There is an immense difference, unless you’re copyblogging, which will require crack writing skills.

Revenge of the Bloggers

What would you do if someone wronged you in a blatant way? You would probably have words and if that didn’t produce an apology would more than likely as a next step blog about it, right? And probably invite your blogger friends to also blog about it? Of course a lot of them will anyway, particularly if what the dude did was dumb, damaging or both. And of course their readers might well pick up the story. Then what if the guy, instead of getting the point threatens you with lawyers and all kinds of legal threats?

While posed as a hypothetical question, this has actually a basis in a real story that is playing out. Kris Krug first blogged about his problem in February. He had been contacted that some of his photographs (quite noticeable because of his style is quite distinctive) turning up on another guys portfolio. Kris blogged about it, the pictures disappeared, everyone wondered at the cheek of the guy (often on their blogs) then got on with their lives.

End of story right?

Turns out the alleged photo thief didn’t like the fact that his name was now turning up for a unsavoury Google result; Kris’ blog. So what did he do? Called his lawyer …

Now, this being the blogosphere what didn’t happen is Kris roll over and take the content down and say “please mr don’t sue me”. Actually, he posted the legal letter up on Flickr. And, this being the blogosphere, lots of people thought “no way!” and posted to their own blogs, of course using the lawyer-using-alleged-photo-thief’s name (as you do).

Rather than a small problem that might have been resolved amicably he now has a much bigger problem that might never be cleared up. If you wanted to get professional photography gigs you probably wouldn’t want potential clients seeing these sorts of search results.

So, interesting story, justice prevails, etc. End of. Right?

Well in this case it seems from where I am sitting things played out much as you would expect and the guy got something amounting to what he deserved. (Perhaps a bit more than really necessary but it does look like he acted like a twit then escalated the whole thing way more than he needed to).

What concerns me is the scale and ease that this man’s professional reputation has been shredded. Even if he deserved it, how much chance has he of ever showing his face as a professional photographer? People forget, Google less so. Take out the scenario and personalities involved in this particular case and just look at the cause and effect, that is a pretty big scary stick bloggers wield isn’t it?

How about next time someone is set up? Or falsely accused. What happens then? Searches for some innocent persons name show all sorts of sensational lies. You could say there are laws to protect the innocent in those cases, but that is assuming you have the time and  money, but also that the sites and authors are in geographies where you can even go after them.

My worry is with bloggers as judge, jury and executioner, rule of the lynch mob will become the norm with very little anyone can do about it.

Back That Thing Up: Have A Secondary Internet Access

Your blogging clients may or may not have a mission-critical posting schedule, but if they do, consider what you have to do to not let them down. As I learned the hard way recently, having a second or third way to access the Internet is often a necessity.

My blogging activities are back into the 12-16 hours/day territory again because of new projects. But while writing an article may take me only 15-30 minutes, it’s all the research and the hyperlinking that increases total overall time spent per blog post. So I surf the net a lot, scanning and mentally filtering over 800 web feeds (some weeks) and countless articles, as part of my regular weekly research.

Recently, my regular Internet access was down for a few days. My alumni account at the local university had run out, as well. Fortunately, my father offered me use of his broadband access for a couple of days, or I would definitely have been letting down a big client.

So when posting articles daily is mission-critical to a client, make sure that you have back-up online access.