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OK, so they've got Techcrunch, Kottke, Engadget, Boing Boing, Gaping Void and Chocolate and Zucchini but I can't see how some of the others rank in the listing of 50 Most Powerful Blogs. There is no Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Search Engine Land, Google Blog, Matt Cutts, Slashdot, Lifehacker or Guy Kawasaki. All of the latter are the really powerful blogs which have a much bigger influence on their own sphere of business.
As many people who visit this site know, this blog is created using the TypePad blogging software. I have long been a fan of TypePad and have built, and helped create, a number of sites using this platform. The company is truly at the forefront of social networking and always comes up with new and innovative additions to make the service even better. From tagging, to simple sidebar add-ons, CAPTCHA technology and easy-to-create html pages they are always pushing the boundaries.
Since the beginning (I think they started in 2004) their technology has allowed bloggers to 'moblog' but now, they've made it even better by creating a TypePad interface for the iPhone. With the advanced technology of the iPhone it looks (I have seen but not touched!) like blogging on a phone couldn't be easier. The screenshots from the TyepPad website look great and the YouTube video demonstration below makes this a must-have product for Christmas for blogging on the move!
There are some bloggers who really get it, and the guys over at Innocent Drinks really do. If you don't know much about Innocent Drinks, here's what they believe in:
it all sounds a bit Miss World, but we want to leave things a little bit better than we find them. Our strategy for doing so is simple - firstly, only ever make 100% natural products that are 100% good for people. Secondly, procure our ingredients ethically. Thirdly, use ecologically sound packaging materials. Fourthly, reduce and offset our carbon emissions across our entire business system. Fifthly, lead by example at Fruit Towers by doing good things. And finally, give 10% of our profits each year to charities in the countries where our fruit comes from. If you're interested, you can find out a bit more about each below.
I was looking at their site yesterday and came upon the story of how they had been supplied with a goodie bag from Yorkshire Tea purely because they (Yorkshire Tea) had read an article which mentioned that their kitchen was temporarily out of order. I sincerely believe, apart from the obvious marketing kickback for Yorkshire Tea, that people who read the Innocent Drinks' blog feel some sort of affinity to this company and enjoy reading about the staff, their experiences and their products. They are a truly transparent, online company. From the picure in the article it looks like the local bobbies also empathise with them.
According to John Battelle, Google Blog Search has now overtaken Technorati in terms of traffic. Much of it is attributed to a link from Google News to its blog search facility.
If you'd like to build a blog like this one, or simply want a couple of tips on how to make an effective blog, take a look at ten simple steps that you can follow to get the most out of your TypePad blog
I quite like the Draft a simple blogging policy, which offers some useful tips and links to Jeremy Zawodny's Yahoo's Employee Blog Guidelines.
I have been trying to think up some new ways that I can monetize both this blog and my other blog, Mad About Madrid, and came across a great idea from Oh My That's Awesome. On their website they have an Awesome Sponsor area (top left-hand side of their blog) where they introduce their sponsor for the month and below that feature an advert for the company. Here's this month's (September, 2006):
Awesome Sponsor
I also like the light-hearted way they answer questions on sponsorship of this section:
How much is it?
Well, it all depends on how big your ad is! We accept vertical badges 150 pixels wide and between 50-600 pixels in length. (At this size, ads stay above the fold of the site and are easily visible and clickable.) Based on those terms, the price is going to vary between very cheap and incredibly reasonable.
Do I have to sponsor a whole month?
Of course not! Unlike some other weblog sponsorship programs out there, at Awesome you choose the length of time, you help us set the price, you get all the credit. Done and done!
What kinds of retailers sponsor Awesome?
The smart kind, that's who. And typically, we market things to our readers that we know they'll enjoy and ultimately want to buy, so it's a win-win for everyone.
I'm doing some research for a client at present on the feasibility of adding certain tools on to a Typepad blog and thought that it would be a good idea to highlight some of these tools on this blog:
Trumba
Trumba offers Typepad users a neat way of displaying events online in a calendar format.
Vizu
If you're looking to add some interactivity on your blog or are looking to tap into what your adueince is interrestd, you should head over to Vizu.
Gabbly Chat
Gabbly is a neat widget that allows visitors to your site to cht to each other whilst reading your blog. I needn't have to tell you, however, the potential problems that this could create!
Feedblitz
Feedblitz is a great tool and allows users to sign up for notification of any new articles which have been posted on your blog. I use it on my Mad About Madrid site and it has proved to be very useful - you can add a chicklet which indicates the number of susbcribers to the feed, too.
I was at the Search Engine Strategies Conference last week in London and one of the speakers was from Ask.com. It actually looks like a neat tool and seems to index blog feeds in no time at all. According to their press release:
Ask Blogs & Feeds is "the most robust index of content on the Web," covering somewhere between 4 and 6 million new blog posts daily, for a total index of about 1.5 billion articles. Technorati claims to index 1.2 million new blog posts each day.
Ask.com is backed up with data from Bloglines.
Given the amount of comment spam that is flying around on blogs, Typepad has just announced the addition of CAPTCHA technology to reduce it. Turning this on in your blog configuration will add one more deterrent to automated comment spam programmes. This is the same technology that Yahoo! uses to reduce spammers using Yahoo! accounts.
Even though Amazon posted record earnings for the last quarter, Business 2.0 reckons that the corporation has now set its sights on blogs, videos and ebooks.
Jeff Bezos has a plan, however. If you read between the lines of the Web site's seemingly unfocused forays into blogs, video, and e-books, you'll actually see that he's doubling down on selling books, CDs, and DVDs -- the mainstay of his media sales.
On Wednesday, Amazon.com announced a blog feature on its Web site for published authors to communicate directly to fans on the Amazon.com homepage and on the pages where Amazon lists their books. Nelson DeMille and James Patterson are among the participating writers.
Business 2.0 sees this as Amazon's way of connecting authors and readers, much like book signings and readings do in the offline world. This may well send shivers down the spines of magazines and newspapers, as people may turn to Amazon for their fix of book reviews instead of getting it from traditional media.
Over the past week Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's book Naked Conversations has hit the bookshelves and they have been busy at book signings and the like across the States. According to the publishers:
"If you ignore the blogosphere... you won't know what people are saying about you," they write. "You can't learn from them, and they won't come to see you as a sincere human who cares about your business and its reputation." To bolster their argument, Scoble and Israel have assembled an enormous amount of information about blogging: from history and theory to comparisons among countries and industries. They also lay out the dos and don'ts of the medium and include extensive statistics, dozens of case studies and several interviews with famous bloggers. They consider the darker aspects of blogging as well—including the possibility of getting fired by an unsympathetic employer.
What's different about this book is that much of it has been out in the public domain for quite some time, in draft format. Robert and Shel have allowed drafts of each chapter of the book to be posted on their weblog - Red Couch Naked Conversations - and then allowed people to add their own comments. They have invited people to submit their own case studies and observations:
Of all the things we need from bloggers are examples of how companies have been helped or hurt by blogs.
The weblog first came into life in December, 2004, when Shel Israel pronounced:
Welcome to our book blog. This is where Shel Israel and Robert Scoble will create a book. Really. An entire book will be done interactively right in front of you and WITH you. So, subscribe to the RSS feed here. Welcome.
The final chapter was posted on the 14th August, 2005 and it went into print a short time after the pair even aired their thoughts on the selection of the publisher online.
Though not an Open Source project in its purest sense, of allowing the public to completely write the book, it still has many elements of co-creation. And why shouldn't a book about blogging have some important input from bloggers through a blog. The truly wonderful thing about the blog is that it has developed a devoted following over the past year, many of whom are well regarded in their own fields - PR, search engine optimisation, advertisng, blogging - and who are acting as unpaid evangelists for the book. Throw in the thousands of 'ordinary folk' out there who will each influence their smaller circles and you have quite a powerful marketing campaign, run on a miniscule budget. Absolutely, brilliant.
The other interesting thing to note is that even though many thousands of people have read the book online, the same thousands of people will BUY the book online and offline.
I look forward to seeing how Shel Israel and Robert Scoble develop the blog once the book launches and parties have died down. I also look forward to seeing my book arrive from Amazon UK!
On the 16th March the Business Blog Summit guys will be holding a one-day Essentials of Business Blogging Seminar. Held at the Westin Los Angeles Aiprot, Anil Dash (of Six Apart) will be amongst the speakers on the day. Here's a brief overview of what you'll learn for your $295:
Here's a taste of the article:
The wild, wild west of the Internet will evolve to more consolidation of the biggest brands at the top and an infinite number of tiny fragments at the bottom. The public will have neither the time nor interest to consider all of the options available to them--so the role of editor, both human and electronic, will increase in importance as people look for experts to help sift, validate and organize the infinite sources of content. In any case, the need for information, entertainment and motivation will be as strong as ever.
John Griffin President of the National Geographic Society's magazine group
But the economics of the industry must change. Kleiner Perkins VC Vinod Khosla said at the Web 2.0 conference that the model of "top-down content is no longer relevant." It's a bottoms-up world where, he predicted, the winning media companies will be "the most adaptable, not the biggest or the one with the most content." The winners will be "aggregating audiences in interesting ways."
So take that as advice from the bottom up: Find ways to aggregate people and capture the wisdom of that crowd. When the public edits that "infinite number of tiny fragments at the bottom," as you put it, they do it well: The best photos at Flickr.com/explore rival even those in National Geographic. The people have intelligence and taste – or they wouldn’t be buying your magazines, would they?
Jeff Jarvis, Consltant and Blogger at Buzzmachine.com
Adrants has an interesting, entitled Coke Lies, Misleads with Fake 'Zero' Blog article about how Coca Cola created a fake blog promoting the Zero Movement:
"which a guy rants about why life is so full of stuff to do and how it would be so much nicer if there was, well, zero to do."
The blog, which they say is written in typical creative style, initially, had no mention of Coke at all and even had fake, supportive comments. What's more:
"While the blog's archives indicate the site's been up since June, 2005, Whois information tells a very different story. Not only does the information reveal the site is a product of Coke, it clearly states the domain for the site was registered November 21, 2005, a full five months after the site, according to its archives, launched.
Just to make sure, Adrants checked both Technorati and BlogPulse and found no record of earlier postings. It would appear that to counter neagitive reaction they have placed a Coke Zero bottle on the home page. Adrants states what many of us think about this form of cynical advertising:
"In creating The Zero Movement, Coke has lied, misled and misrepresented. Some would call this reprehensible and irresponsible. We'll just call it stupid."
Related Links
The Zero Coke Movement
Technorati have recently launched a new tool called Technorati Mini. It allows users to do a search for their favourite terms and, once you have launched the pop-up, will refresh information every 60 seconds. Great, if you're looking to be bang up-to-date on the latest news and events in the blogosphere.
Technorati Tags: technorati mini
Related Article
'State of the Blogosphere' from Technorati
It may still be 5 weeks to Christmas but Santa is already blogging about it and offering podcasts through his Santa's Journal site. It would appear that this is the very first time that he has broadcast from the North Pole and he will be:
"keeping everyone informed on the latest happenings at the North Pole. As well, he has a story that must be told, how Christmas was saved by two unlikely friends, not long ago. This nine part story will be released part by part with the final instalment on Christmas day."
Just checked my stats and found that Yahoo! news had pointed some people in to my website. It turns out that over the past few days Yahoo! has rolled out and is beta testing a new version of its Yahoo! News Search. This includes blogs, Flickr photos and My Web links. For bloggers this is certainly good news - fusing general news stories with 'grassroots' journalism. This is what Joff Redfern, director of
product at Yahoo! Search, had to say:
"The addition of grassroots news sources into Yahoo! News Search is another example of Yahoo! using world-class technology to deliver relevant content to our audiences. Yahoo! News has become the leading online news destination by continually providing the most comprehensive service to our users, and news search technology is a critical piece of our overall news offering."
Here's what Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! had to say:
"While it was widely anticipated that we'd be launching a dedicated blog search engine, we didn't. Instead, we've incorporated blog results in Yahoo! News Search.
Why?
... aside from all the stuff you might read, look at it from an insider's point of view. Tasked with figuring out how to expose the growing mass of blog content in our index, we figured there were two options.
Option one is to build Yet Another Blog Search Vertical (Technorati, Feedster, Google Blog Search, etc.) that most people would never see.
Option two is to integrate the results somewhere that millions of people could see them in context.
Which would you choose?
We decided that blogs had been captives of specialty search engines long enough."
I must say that I agree with a colleague of Danny Sullivan's over at Search Engine Watch, who says that though he can see the blog results, he believes that Yahoo! should offer users some more information on what a blog exactly is. Given the the general public's lack of knowledge about what a blog actually is, it would certainly be a welcome addition to add a link to a "what is a blog?" page.
to reach out to new blog users with a service like this?), it would make little to no sense
Why isn't their a link or pop-over in place to explain:
+ Whis is a blog?
+ What are blog posts?
+ What's the difference between a blog post and a news story?
+ Who writes blogs?
+ Are you interested in blogging?"
Just
came across Olgilvy Blogfeeds, via Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion. It would appear
that Olgilvy PR has set up a separate site to let visitors have a preview of the
feeds that they are reading across the blogosphere. Blogs are split up into sectors,
such as B2B, Advocacy, Marketing and Politics and each page displays a list of
feeds with the latest blog articles on display. Such a neat idea! and the site
looks smart as well.
Latest research from the UK shows that the majority of people are not aware what a blog is - 70 percent had never heard of blogging, whilst 90 percent had no idea what a podcast is - and most seemed to confuse the word with 'dogging'. The survey conducted by DDB, a unit of New York-based advertising group Omnicom, said the survey results indicate that:
"...agencies may be pushing their clients to use new technology -- that is, to advertise on the new media formats -- too quickly."
Sarah Carter, planning director at DBB London:
"Dogging is the phenomenon of watching couples have sex in semi-secluded places such as out-of-town car parks. News of such events are often spread on Web sites or by using mobile phone text messages.
Our research not only shows that there is no buzz about blogging and podcasting outside of our media industry bubble, but also that people have no understanding of what the words mean," Carter said. "It's a real wake-up call."
On the 2nd November there will be a one-day blogging coference in Austin, Texas. The Blogging Experience will:
"explore blogging, podcasting and video podcasting and their potential benefits and value in building brands, educating prospects, making sales and cultivating customer loyalty."
Speakers include Steve Rubel and Shel Israel and topics to be discussed include: RSS: The New Marketing Intelligence Radar, Blogging To #1: Positioning Your Company As The Thought Leader, PR & Blogs: Anticipating & Managing The Blogstorm, Top Blogs Dissected: What Separates The Winners From Losers and The Future: Enterprise-Casting. Entry is $170 and includes a free copy of Shel Israel and Robert Scoble's eagerly awaited book Naked Conversations.
Seth Godin has just released a new ebook on blogging. Having already cast his eye over web design - with Knock Knock - and shown how you can use online marketing tools to make your site work better, he has now turned his attention to blogging. Called Who's There?, the ebook is not
".. about how to write better or how to follow the traditional conventions about formatting and building a blog. It's not designed to sell you one service instead of another, either.
Instead, I divide the blog world into three groups and turn my attention to one. And in particular, I try to sell you hard on how building a blog asset can have a spectacular impact on you, your career, your organization and your ideas."
You can download the pdf from here: Seth Godin: Who's There?
Via: Micropersuasion
Technorati Tags: blogging
Matt Cutts, Google's highly respected software engineer and creator of Google's "safe search", has just set up his own blog. A lot of folk say that Cutts is "googleguy" over at Webmasterworld and if you want to get the lowdown on the workings of Google from this Google guy, you better head off to Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO. Though Google own Blogger, Cutts has decided to opt for Word Press to develop his own blog. So far the site has thrown up some interesting and thought-provoking articles.
For the past couple of months I have been involved in the development of a new blog, SpywareDaily.com, for anti-spyware company Pareto Logic who based in British Columbia, Canada. It has been an enjoyable project as I have had to work closely with the team at Pareto Logic and had to adapt the designs from their graphic design team into a blog. The company has taken the right option and engaged the full-time services of a 'resident blogger' - a really neat idea. The blog, in the words of Pareto Logic, is:
"part of its educational strategy and ongoing efforts to address current and emerging security threats to computer users, ParetoLogic Inc. unveiled today their educational blog: www.SpywareDaily.com
SpywareDaily.com is designed to educate users on best practices of protecting themselves from Spyware and security threats that interfere with normal use and enjoyment of personal computers."
Having written the first few articles myself, the guys have now found their voice and are starting to write some really good and varied articles on subjects such as:
Rant: IE7, Microsoft Woes, and PC Addiction
Spyware Down Under
Is Google Evil?
Stream of Spyware Consciousness
More Viruses and Worms Dropping Spyware
Updating Your Security Arsenal
In order to get the word out they used PR Newswire to good effect and have started to get into the habit of leaving high-value comments on related websites. Periodically, I'll keep posting on how the blog is doing.
For the second year running you can get the chance to meet, listen and network with the great and the good of blogging at the Blog Business Summit. This year the event will take place at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco from the 17th-19th August. It looks like they have some excellent sessions lined up, which will cover practically everything there is to know about corporate blogging. Here is a taster of some of the sessions on offer:
Keynote: Why Microsoft is Betting Big on Bloggers and RSS
Dean Hachamovitch
Lessons Learned and Best Practices: the GM and Intuit Experience
Debbie Weil, Paul Rosenfeld and Michael Wiley
Building Traffic: Posting isn’t Enough!
Robert Scoble, Dave Taylor
Staying On Top of the Buzz: Blog Monitoring Tools and Techniques
Pete Blackshaw, Evelyn Rodriguez, and Bob Wyman
Good Blog Design: Speed, Accessibility, Transparency, and Clarity
DL Byron
Blog Writing Style: Strategy and Tactics for Successful Posting
Molly Holzschlag, Darren Barefoot
Incorporating HTML and RSS Ads Into Your Content
Dave Taylor
Building a Blog Network
Stowe Boyd, Paul Scrivens
Here's an interesting story from ZDNET regarding blogs and advertising. Quoting a Forrester survey they state that :
Marketing Sherpa has just posted the results of the Marketing Sherpa 10 Best Blogs for 2005. I am not sure what's more interesting - the results of the survey or the fact that of the 173,000 who were invited to cast their votes, only 2,065 people actually did vote - that's just 1.2%. Anyway, here are the categories that people were invited to vote on:
Best individual's blog on the general topic of marketing and advertising - actually won by Seth Godin
Best group weblog on the general topic of marketing and advertising
Best PR-topic blog - Interestingly, Paul Rubel of Micropersuasion didn't even get a mention!
Best B-to-B marketing-topic blog
Best blog on small business marketing
Best blog on online marketing
Blogs on Search Marketing
Best Blog on Niche Marketing
Best non-English-Language Blog
Top readers' choice write-in vote
All the winners and 'honorable mentions' can be found on the Marketing Sherpa site.
Here's an interesting blog for you - The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster. It is written by Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming who asumes the role of none other than Darth Vader. There aren't many articles on there to date but the quality of the postings and the knowledge of the author (not being a Star Wars buff I make this assumption) is amazing.
This is one article that really made me laugh:
Blasted Contractors!
Due to the haste with which we are proceding through the latter phases of this battle-station's construction we have been forced to employ scores of civilian contractors from across the galaxy in addition to our own Imperial Corps of Engineers. This had led to a certain clash of working cultures.For instance, this morning I critiqued a tragically sub-par piece of workmanship on a tractor-beam repulsolift inversion assembly by snapping the neck of the site supervisor and throwing his limp corpse down a disused elevator shaft.
Imperial engineers would have snapped to crisp attention, of course, but all these civilian contractors did was give me [was] grief. "Oy, you do that again and I'll have the union on you!" barked one red-faced buffoon.
"It is vital that you enhance the inter-departmental syngergies of your operation," I said. And then I killed him.
Priceless! A website hasn't made me laugh this much for a long time.
What this blog proves is that a good writing style, an in-depth knowledge and passion about your subject and timeliness can work well to create successful, engaging blogs.
On May 3rd, the Business Development Institute in New York will be holding probably one of the biggest business blogging events ever held in New York - Blogging Goes Mainstream: Is Your Company Ready? The event is aimed at bringing together Fortune 500 executives and "forward thinking" sales, marketing and PR professionals. Here's how their sales promotion puts it:
This special executive event will examine the business implications of blogging and the impact this burgeoning communication medium is having on the business landscape. We will examine how leading organizations across a wide range of industries are tapping into the power of blogs to expand their reach into new or existing markets, drive real-time market intelligence, extend their brand and create transformational dialogues with customers, partners and employees.
[We will gather professionals] to explore the nuts and bolts of a building a corporate blogging strategy and how businesses of all types can leverage this new medium to drive new revenues, increase market share and gain critical brand exposure while influencing public opinion on their products and services.
The keynote speaker is Robert Scoble (Scobleizer), the most prolific blogger on the web and Technical Evangelist for Microsoft. The advisory board includes some of the key players in the blogging arena like Charlene Li of Forrester Research, Stowe Boyd of Corante, Steve Rubel of Cooperkatz and Steve Hall of Adrants.
Clickz have just published an interesting article on Seth Godin and blogging - Questions for Seth Godin - which coincides with the launch of his latest book, All Marketers are Liars. Here is one of the questions that they asked in their 'interview' with him
Q.What sorts of lie do you think interactive media is great at telling? Which lies does the Web fail at?
A.The key word is "interactive." The Web is particularly bad at the vernacular of solidity and trust. You can't do with pixels what you can easily do with marble and pillars and arches. On the other hand, when the Web connects one human to another, it's quite powerful. Send an e-mail to a powerful blogger or author or executive or politician and get a note back in ten minutes... that has an impact that will last forever.
It looks like Yahoo! is set to launch a new blogging tool within the next month. Yahoo! 360° will initialy be made available to a restricted number of users from March 29th, having extensively tested the product in-house since last year. The new service will bring together Yahoo!'s existing services like IM Messaging, photo albums, local search and groups. The service is being touted as a 'Web log and social networking' service. Julie Herendeen, vice president for network services at Yahoo!, had this to say about the service:
"It's really about keeping connected to people you know," she said. "Yahoo 360 allows consumers to conveniently connect with the people they care about by creating and sharing blogs, photos and other content across Yahoo."
Herendeen said Yahoo had no immediate plans to add advertising to the service. Given the number of people who have Yahoo! accounts - 165 million - the company could bring blogging to a far wider audience. At present, though, it is unclear whether they will be pitching the product at the 'teen' market or at older users. Here is Michael Liedtke's take on it in the E-commerce Times:
Expanding into social networking and blogging marks another significant step in Yahoo's push to make its Web site even more essential to the personal and professional pursuits of its users.
The service is also meant to encourage Yahoo's most frequent visitors to create and share more content, a process the company hopes will attract even more people to its site. If it can increase its audience's size and give visitors more reasons to stick around longer, Yahoo would become an even more attractive marketing vehicle for advertisers.
If you'd like to take part in the public beta test, fill in the Yahoo 360°beta test form.
Related Web Articles
Yahoo Tests Blend of Blogging, Networking (E-Commerce News)
Yahoo 360 takes spin through blogosphere (CNET)
Yahoo Gets Social (Red Herring)
Yahoo Finaly Hits Blog Scene (Internet News)
Technorati boss David Sifry is writing an interesting series
of reports called ‘The State of the Blogosphere’, on his Sifry’s Alerts blog - he posted on this subject in October at the Web 2.0 conference and, due to the dynamic nature of the industry, felt it was time for an update. Here
are some facts gleaned from Technorati:
The article spends a fair bit of time discussing the impact that spam blogs have had on the industry and how Technorati is tackling the issue - the comments to this article also raise some interesting issues. The second instalment from David Sifry focuses on posting - here is a flavour:
It is interesting to note that posting volume suffered a decline during the months of November and December, 2004. A large part of this decline is the reduction in postings about US politics after the election in early November.
I must say I had a very positive user experience from Technorati last year. Unlike Search Engines Technorati, and other blog search engines, offer visitors real-time results. Post now and your article will be listed within a quarter of an hour. Within a short time period of having written an article about Technorati for this blog, I received an email from David Sifry thanking me for writing about his company and advising me that my site didn't work in Firefox (it does now!). Bloggers can be such nice people!
One of the great things about blogging is that it allows you to share your knowledge and easily develop a network of contacts, often relating to the subject you most blog about. Tools such as comments, which let people know what you think about what they've written; trackback, that let other bloggers know that you have written about them and blogroll, which is simply a list of links to your favourite blogs, make blogging a great social and business tool. Jennifer Rice on her blog, What's Your Brand Mantra?, says that people on her Blogroll had one of 3 charactersitics:
[Number 1] "They participated on my blog through comments and trackbacks. They already established themselves as part of my community, and I thought they had some smart things to say. I've met many of them in person, and have probably had email exchanges with almost all of them. (or even hired them, as was the case with Johnnie)."
Unfortunately, blogs have also become havens for those looking to improve their search engine rankings the unethical way. Following the principle that Google likes links from websites with high PR's (5 or 6 and above), they are now leaving comments across the blogosphere. Initially, I had all manner of comment spam from porn, poker and peddlars of Japanese cars. It was obvious to spot them as their comments usually consisted of strings of keywords or incoherent nonsense.
Recently though, I have been receiving comments which actually comment on the article in question. Here are two examples:
Marketing Tom Article: How People Read Google Search Results
Author - Online Degree
Comment: Finally some real scientific results! While many of us who have multiple websites at various positions on Google's pages 1 and 2 felt some of this to be true, seeing it confirms the theory. Great Stuff!Marketing Tom Article: Developing Links - part 2
Author - Dolphin Gifts
Comment: We should also mention that there are tools that facilitate this process of determining who is linking to your competitors. I won't mention any by name but they can be very useful.
Aside from the URL, the clear indicator that it was spam came from the fact that both the above had the same IP address and both were posted within a few minutes of each other. The worrying part of this is that these people are now taking their time to read articles and leave messages which seem to be legitimate. Which begs the question of whether their comments should be deleted. I took the view that they should.
Whilst searching for hotels in New York, I was pleasantly surprised to see one hotel group, Morgans Hotels, making good use of RSS feeds to keep guests up-to-date on latest offers. Their 'Special Offers' page invites visitors to sign up to their RSS Feed.
Not sure what a RSS Feed is? Well, here's how the Morgans Hotel group clearly put it:
"A news feed (also known as an RSS feed) is a listing of a website's content in a news-headline format. It is updated whenever new content is published to the site. News readers "subscribe" to news feeds (websites that provide the service), which means they download lists of stories at an interval that you specify (every 30 minutes, for example), and present them to you in your news reader."
And the objective of this RSS Feed?
"Morgans Hotel Group uses this method to make our users aware of the latest special offers, often exclusive to our site, as soon as they are released. There is no cost to receive the news feeds from Morgans Hotel Group."
Great stuff! Judging by a recent article on Robert Scoble's blog, he would be well pleased
There has been a huge amount of press recently about the rise of the blog. The Wall Street Journal is probably the most respected financial newspaper in the world and a couple of days back it featured an article titled: "Blogs Keep Internet Customers Coming Back". The story takes a look at blogs from a business perspective, describing them [rightly] as a new marketing channel and showing how they can be used to "engage in direct dialogue with customers".
The article has a few good examples of effective blogs and they all seem to have one thing in common: their ability to humanise a company and give it personality. It would also seem that they have ALL contributed to increasing their company's bottom line.
Original Source
The blog as business tool has arrived (Larry Bodine)
If you want to know what is going on in the world of blogs, you should make your way over to Technorati. Technorati is a "real-time" blog search engine, which measures the pulse of the blog world every few minutes. Unlike Google, where the spider will index your site every 24 hours (at best), Technorati's search engine will update your blog listing within minutes of posting.
Here is the Top 10 from Technorati's Top 100 List of "most authoritative blogs, ranked by the number of sources that link to each blog."
18,705 links from 11,822 sources 14,336 links from 9,351 sources 9,802 links from 7,595 sources 97,049 links from 7,485 sources 10,406 links from 7,438 sources 7,547 links from 7,390 sources 8,052 links from 7,160 sources 7,873 links from 6,844 sources 9,869 links from 6,825 sources 9,290 links from 6,347 sourcesHell, in the time it has taken me to write this article, Technorati has already updated this list!!
I was looking through the on-line site of Spanish newspaper
El Mundo today, when my 
eye fell upon the word “blogs”. On clicking one of
the links, El Descodificador, I was taken to strange looking blog format. It would appear that El Mundo’s take on blogs is a
list of (undated) articles that comprise four lines of introductory text,
followed by a link to “read more”.
However, the really strange thing is that though each of these articles allows you to leave a comment, the comments are actually linked to phpBB bulletin board – yes, a bulletin board to leave your thoughts! I can’t understand why El Mundo, which has one of the best (and free) on-line newspapers on the Web, would have taken such a step. Please, let me know your thoughts.
I came across an interesting article today about a blogger, Jason Kottke, who has decided to quit his full-time job to become a full-time blogger. In order to fund his 'new venture' Jason is inviting viewers to his site to contribute $30 a year, or $2.50 a month. As Jason puts it,
"For you, $2.50 is a coffee in the morning, a magazine at the newsstand, or a beer at the pub but in the aggregate, it will help me immensely."
His idea is to:
"make about 1/3 to 1/2 of my former yearly salary to support my efforts here for a year. I have no idea whether this goal is even remotely achievable"
Judging by his "micropatrons" list (those who contribute), things aren't going too badly. He has already got 200-odd people to contribute towards his fund - though it's not clear how much they have given. I should point out that in order to read the blog, you won't have to make a contribution. Jason says that the content of the blog won't change - he pretty much writes about everything - though he will now have more time to get involved in creative projects and get out to interesting events.
Quite a lot of what he writes will resonate with bloggers, namely the time that blogging can take up and how it can effect your family and social life:
"The site was getting out of hand and wasn't fun anymore. It was taking me away from my professional responsibilities, my social life, and my relationship with my girlfriend. There was no room in my life for it anymore."
Well, I wish him all the best and must start looking at my own "Contribution" scheme!
The Economist has a great article on Robert Scoble - Chief Humanising Officer - the highest profile blogger on the web and Microsoft employee, to boot.
In a nutshell:
Robert Scoble started out as a blogger for NEC. He is now an employee of Microsoft. His blogging profile landed him the job of Microsoft’s “Technical Evangelist”. What does the job consist of? Mainly blogging!
Now, isn’t that cool!
His weblog, Scobleizer, is one of the most widely read blogs on the Internet. He discusses Microsoft, competitor products, his family and many other things that come into his mind. It's all to do with putting things into context - if you know about the man, you'll know where he's coming from.
However, Robert Scoble has managed to succeed where PR types have failed before. As the Economist states,
“he has made Microsoft, with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally but noticeably less evil to the outside world, and especially to the independent software developers that are his core audience.”
Scoble previously worked for NEC where his technical support skills, delivered through his blog, became a must-read. Microsoft heard of this and thought that they could do with Robert Scoble’s evangelical skills. The Economist discusses for the most part the impact that blogging is having on traditional PR and how the threat of litigation could put a halt to the some of the key tenets of blogging: namely, its honesty and immediacy.
Original Source
If it's in the Economist it must be true (Marketing Playbook)
Nick Denton heads up Gawker Media, publishers of some of the highest profile blogs on the Internet: Gawker, Gizmodo and now Lifehacker (sponsored by Sony), which was discussed in a previous article. In a video interview, which can be seen on iMediaConnection, he discusses how he got into blogs, the role of PR and Marketing in relation to blogs and the future of blogging. Interesting stuff!
Look for the iMedia Video link and select Nick Denton from the dropdown list.
Robert Scoble is one of the most famous, and most linked to, bloggers on the Web. Last year he wrote a manifesto for the website ChangeThis, with the title The Corporate
Weblog Manifesto (free to download), where he gives his thoughts on what makes a good corporate weblog. The manifesto offers 20 practical tips for developing a Corporate Weblog, here are 3 of them:
1. Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth.
If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.
2. Post fast on good news or bad.
Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it — before the second or third site does — and answer its claims as best you can. .....
12. Never change the URL of your weblog.
I've done it once and I lost much of my readership and it took several months to build up the same reader patterns and trust.
10 Rules for Corporate Blogs and Wikis
2005: Year Of The Corporate Blog
CoporateBlogging.Info
Here's an interesting story that I picked up, via B.L. Ochman's website, about Sony's sponsorship of a new web log called Lifehacker.com. The article, entitled Sony Pays $25,000 a Month for Gawker Blog, says that the electronics firm is going to pay $75,000 over 3 months for the privilege. In order to view the article you will need to sign up (for free registration).
Steve Hayden is the vice-chairman of New York-based Ogilvy and Mather and is the man responsible for creating the famous 1984 ad for Apple, which introduced Apple Macintosh, and which has been hailed by some sources as being the greatest-ever advert. In an article from Fortune magazine - Want Truth in Advertising? Try a Blog - Hayden shares his thoughts on how blogs are changing the relationships between corporations, clients and advertisers. Coming from a top advertising executive this article makes for very interesting reading and, as with many article relating to corporate blogging, flags up the importance of blogging to business in general.
Original Source: Business Blog Consulting
From the 24-25th January the Blog Busines Summit will take place in Seattle. One of the most prolific bloggers Robert Scoble will be giving the keynote address, with the subject The Blog Advantage. There are a number of interesting sessions going on with subjects including: Blog Business Models: What Strategies Make Money; Building Traffic: Posting isn’t Enough!; Picking a Platform: Blogging Engines Compared and Marketing Strategies and Tactics: PR and Beyond.
The actual blog on the site actually does an interesting test to see how Robert Scoble compares to the major PR firms on search engines and Alexa - How Robert Scoble Compares to the Top PR Firms. The results, though not surprising, are very interesting and should make PR companies take notice.
If you are celebrity spotting, Tom Peters has mentioned that he would be making an appearance at the summit.
Over the past few months I have received on this site, and on another blog of mine Mad About Madrid, a huge amount of comment and trackback spam. Comment spam is a technique used by certain webmasters and owners of websites to develop links from blogs (often with a high PR) to their own site. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Adding links that point to the spammer's web site increases the page rankings for the site in the search engine Google. An increased page rank means the spammer's commercial site would be listed ahead of other sites for certain Google searches, increasing the number of potential visitor
