2009 State Of The Blogosphere

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch posted highlights from the Technorati annual State of the Blogosphere report:

• 72% of bloggers are hobbyists and blog for fun.
• Of professional bloggers, only 10% blog 40 or more hours per week.
• 2/3 of professional bloggers are male, and 60% are between 18 – 44 years old.
• 74% of bloggers use Twitter, v. 14% of the general population. Their primary use of Twitter is to promote their blogs.

Here’s the link: 2009 State Of The Blogosphere: The Full BlogWorld Presentation.

Blogging in Subdirectories, Subdomains or Separate Domains?

Blogging is a practical and effective way to boost your web presence via ongoing and regular content updates, while enjoying attendant search engine optimization benefits.  Furthermore, a blog is the central hub for a social media marketing strategy.  However, when setting up a blog for the first time (or even relocating one at a later time), there are options on where to place the blog in regards to the website’s content hierarchy.  I like what Mark Jackson posted about the various factors that may be contemplated in regards to positioning the blog within a subdomain, a subdirectory, or on a completely separate domain.

Subdirectories

“Many of my company’s clients need to add content to the root of their domain to build up the authority necessary to compete for keywords. So, more often than not, we recommend that our clients add their blog to a subdirectory.”

Subdomains

Technical reasons (primarily involving compatibility issues) and even internal security reasons may warrant the placement of a blog on a separate subdomain.

Separate Domains

“Obviously, if you’re clever, you can create a blog that is seen as just liking one Web site so much that it links to it pretty often (and manage to use just the right mix of keywords in the anchor text to those links), as to help select pages of this other “non-related commercial Web site” rank well for keywords of choice. This can be an effective strategy, but keep in mind this blog will need all of the love and attention that any SEO project would get.”

Read the entire article by clicking on Blogging for Search Engine Optimization.

Analysis of “Other” Micro Blogging Platforms

Micro blogging is somewhat expressed by its self description: very short blogging.  Micro blogging users send and publish brief updates such as text, photos or audio clips.  These updates can be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group, selected by the user.  Additionally, the media that carries these messages, or updates, can be controlled by the participants: Messages can be transmitted via text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio, or the web.

Twitter has become such a phenom in the tech world, and a darling in the media world, that it has eclipsed and dwarfed the other micro blogging platforms.

Michael Grey wrote a comparative analysis aptly titled, 5 Micro Blogging Sites That Aren’t Twitter (link below), that sheds light on some of the lesser known free services (compared to Twitter), and also includes notes about their search engine optimization usefulness.

Posterous: Micro Blogging platform that allows users to update Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Tumblr, Blogger, Picasa, Wordpress, Facebook and a handful of others social media sites.

FriendFeed: This micro blogging aggregator is somewhat of a reverse Posterous, in that users can receive yours, and other, social media information into one stream, including tweets from Twitter, links from StumbleUpon, pictures from Flickr, Facebook updates, Blogger posts, and so on.  Although not mentioned in the article, the big news this week is that FriendFeed has been acquired by Facebook, which will likely mean there will be more integration of FF technology directly into the mighty FB.

Tumblr: Like Posterous this micro blogging platform allows users to post text, pictures, video, audio, chat and links.

Dailybooth: Micro Blogging for pictures only.

12 Seconds: Micro Video Blogging (Make your videos 12 seconds or less).

Read the entire post for more information: 5 Microblogging Sites That Aren’t Twitter,

How To Get More Readers To Your Blog

If you’re writing a blog, you want readers. And of course, the more the merrier. So, how do you get them? The simple answer revolves around the question, “How many readers do you want?”

Literally “any” amount of traffic can be driven to your blog almost immediately – it just costs money. By using pay-per-click advertising, or online lead generation, or for that matter, any of the Ten Lead Generation Models, lots of traffic can be sent to your blog.

But a more important question is, “What’s it going to take to get those first-time readers back again?” Even with a large advertising budget, if you have to pay for each visitor to come only one time, then your costs may very well outpace your profits.

But what if you don’t have a large advertising budget?

Heck, for that matter, what if you only have a small budget?

Quality of Content

Regardless, even with “no” budget at all, an answer to what it takes to get visitors to become repeat readers can be summed up by analyzing your own interaction with all the blogs you come in contact with as compared to the ones you continue to keep reading. What drives “you” to return to some of those blogs and not others?

The details will vary from person to person, but the underlying answer is the same:  Quality of content.

Which begs the question, just how good is YOUR content?

If the content you are providing is “unique” and “valuable” enough, readers will return.  But before you assert that what you are writing is truly unique, you must really confront how valuable it is, from the perspective of your visitors.

Unless you are a celebrity, or known as an expert in a particular field, if you are simply writing about yourself and/or your views on a subject, that may not be “valuable” enough – especially if there are lots of others doing the same.

So, what if you are not a celebrity, or a well-known expert in an area, does that mean you shouldn’t blog?

In a word, “No.”

As noted in Content Creation and The Trust Factor:

“No one else has your viewpoint, your humor, and your personality, which includes the way you present things.”

Having said that, you still need something to present, that people want to know about.

So, if you can use your unique voice to convey things that potential readers want to know about, then you’re at least on the path to developing an expanding readership.

Successful Blog Fundamentals:

Here are a few additional fundamentals:

♦ Your blog needs to revolve around a defined subject that people want to know about.

♦ If you are also able to publish new and/or unique research about that subject, that’s one way to grab readers.

♦ Or, if you know your subject so well, so that you can provide an ongoing and updated industry perspective, that’s another way to keep interested readers.

♦ The preceding points are easier to identify and articulate.  But if you are able to exercise your knowledge, creativity, and experience to provide something else that is desired by those interested in the subject of your blog, that could be a powerful magnet for increased readers.  Although the following is by no means a complete list, such material could include:

• an online tool, or
• downloadable software, or
• a remarkable video, or
• compelling survey results, or
• ANYTHING at all that would be valuable to your readers and potential readers.

♦ For most successful blogs, there is also a quantitative factor, in addition to the qualitative ones. You will need enough content (read “lots”) to engage your readers on a repetitive basis, and to establish your blog as a resource for your readers. As a general rule of thumb, it could be stated that your blog hasn’t really gotten itself established until there have been 100 posts published. (NOTE: There are exceptions….) Additionally, the more content that your blog has, the more reasons search engines have to bring it traffic.

Here is some additional reading for increasing readership to your blog:

♠ 3 Real-World Blogging Tips for Success

♠ Generating Free Traffic with Blogs

♠ Writers as Publishers

♠ More About Keywords: How to Rank Fast!

Speaking of keywords, learning the basics of search engine optimization is a factor to help your content be readily understood by the search engines, which will result in more traffic and more readers.

3 Real-World Blogging Tips for Success

I emailed this to an associate and then thought I should post it here for others.  Hub Spot posted an interview with Brian Clark – founder of Copyblogger – which is a blog about using copywriting and social media for online marketing and has over 60,000 subscribers.  I’ve excerpted a few questions and answers from the interview for you. To see the whole interview, click the link at the bottom of this post.

What are the three most important things you’ve done to help you build your blog — to build subscriptions, inbound links, and recommendations from other bloggers?

a. Great content that is designed to spread.
b. An understanding of how social media works and changes.
c. Real relationships with those who can help get the word out.

How should bloggers balance the desire for a broad audience with the need to focus on a specific topic? Too specific, and your audience is limited; too broad, and you’ll have few original insights to offer.

It’s true that being too specific can hurt you, but only in the extreme. A strong focused niche audience will prove more valuable than a general unfocused audience of larger size. One shouldn’t water things down as far as subject matter or personality just to attract a larger audience.

Marketers are very concerned with the quality of the traffic on their site. What can you do as a business blogger to make sure you have quality traffic?

Stay on topic. Find a way to make your content sexy AND on point rather than going off track to attract traffic that is ultimately worthless.

Many bloggers deliberately post controversial opinions in order to gain attention. Is this a good strategy for a small business blogger?

I think positioning yourself so that some will love you and others will ignore you or even dislike you is smart. If you stand for something strongly, that will naturally happen. And if you do that, you don’t have to purposefully be controversial. Often bloggers attract the wrong kind of audience when they purposefully try to be controversial in an opportunistic way. Stand for what you believe in and don’t back down, and things will naturally happen without being ugly.

Business bloggers need to get value out of their blog. What’s the best way to get this value — and to measure it?

Sell something and count how much money you make. ;-)

(Click the following link to read the entire interview with Copyblogger Founder, Brian Clark)

Blogging Tips From Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Workweek, presented “How to Build a High Traffic Blog without Killing Yourself” at WordCamp San Francisco 2009 (WordPress conference). In 2008, Tim won Wired Magazine’s “Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time” prize and was named one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007.”  Tim has been using Wordpress for 3 years (since 2006).

Here are a few random notes from the 50-min video:

♦ Tim blogs not for income, but as a way to gain access to people and resources.

♦ Although he has a successful book (The 4 Hour Workweek), Tim says that the blog has helped his book, far more than the book has helped his blog.

♦ He found that by changing his “Categories” title to “Topics,” it increased traffic.

♦ Although he promotes his RSS with “7 Reasons to Subscribe,” he considers that promoting RSS pushes people away from the blog, which is particularly important for anyone who relies on advertisements on their blog.

♦ He controls the displays of dates on his blog by allowing them to appear on the home page (at the bottom) but not on the permalinks.

♦ He publishes “total read” time at the top of his posts. Although, for longer posts, he publishes “total bolded reading time,” which would be the time it takes to read the bolded portions of the post. (About 350 words a minute)

♦ Tim uses twitter for polling, quick research and feeding it back to his followers, but in general, minimizes the time he spends on Twitter.

♦ In terms of advertising, he considers Stumbleupon to be the least expensive source of good traffic.

♦ He posts “Comment Rules” and deletes all bad stuff from comments.

♦ Tim finds that about 10% of comments serve as the basis of future posts.

♦ Having a “voice,” and personality is more important than your writing skills.

♦ His general philosophy is to have fun, create a life you enjoy, and spend time with people you enjoy.

Wordpress Security Issues and Solutions

Gerald Weber presented an overview of How to Make WordPress More Secure from Hackers & Robots (including plugins) to keep your blog protected from bad hats.