Ian M Rountree

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Notes from #blogchat – Open Mic Night

June 27, 2010 by Ian 3 Comments

I asked a few questions on Open Mic night for #blogchat this week – so I hope you’ll forgive me if my Lessons from Blogchat today focuses on what I got back for those.

Question 1: @jeffjarvis blog post today made me wonder: How important is provenance to researched blog posts?

Crickets. No response whatsoever. Got a question from @prosperitygal about what I called researched blog posts. Ah, well.

Well that blew that. clearly, I’ve been asking the wrong kinds of questions. Here’s what really stood out:

@billboorman asked if bloggers consider micro-blogging to be a valid form of blogging. Unfoortunately little response – this is an interesting question.

@OrganicSpider – swiftly becoming one of my favourite participants – made a note about tools for blog measurement, specifically Google Analytics and WebCEO, which I agree with. I’ve got some more notes on blog measurement here: Taking Advantage of Easy Metrics, Hack Analytics: A Participants’ Guide.

@justinlevy made a comment about long-form posts being the bricks of a blog, filled in with snackable mortar posts. We’re in agreement here; pillar content has to be the stuff that holds up the remainder. We all have them, too – those four or five posts per quarter that really light up the numbers and keep you wanting to write more.

I asked Justin about editorial calendars – here again, we’re on pace. Justin keeps a calendar about a week our (which is my preference when I’m on the ball) and an idea file. Having seen this from a number of bloggers, I’d say it’s a good practice. Keeping a scheduled post buffer instead of an editorial calendar can help you address events that pop up as needed far more effectively, without breaking your pulse.

Question 2: How much weight do bloggers put toward trusting another blog based not only on the subject of the blog, but the author’s stated values?

Now thar be dragons. A lot of people seemed to agree that values not matching with the blog’s article content was a good reason for ceasing to read a blog. We shouldn’t be surprised about this one at all.

What got my goat was that people showed a distinct disconnect between values and blog subject matter. If a political blog doesn’t match your values, you simply don’t read in the first place. However – if you’re a liberal thinker reading a tech blog written by a totalitarian… No beef? Not a criticism; I’m actually kind of amused. I agree that subject matter has more to do with values displayed than declaration of values, but somehow, I was expecting a more vigorous response.

At this point I thoroughly lost track of the conversation. There were some posts about writing for yourself, blogging being essential to economic success in some industries. Lots of good stuff, I’m vaguely aware. Unfortunately, there seems to be a density problem in Blogchat after a while, and the Retweets take over the chat. Not that that’s inherently a bad thing – it just means keeping up becomes difficult as the echoes roll in.

Had an aside with @AmidPrivilege about pillar content as well. We agree, the term “pillar” content is a misnomer – a blog is not necessarily a temple. But then, all buzzwords exist entirely as intentional misnomers to direct shared understanding toward a complex subject.

Wow. That was a mouthful.

At 9:06pm ct, @MackCollier posted the transcript here: Transcript for #blogchat, June 27th 2010 – Open Mic Night

No sign of Kevin Lyons – if someone posts a list of participants, I’ll add it here. One of these days, I’ll figure out how to do that myself, I’m sure.

Looks like a participant lost! TweepML #blogchat participants 6/27

What do you think? Have I missed something? Please weigh in – keeping the dialogue open during the week is a challenge, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

… I had the pleasure of getting some advice about asking for comments from Mack and from @LisaPetrilli – who has a very provoking post about making the ask here: What I Learned about Networking when I Asked a Stranger for a Kidney.

I’m going to be digesting that one for a while.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: #blogchat, lessons from #blogchat

Lessons from #blogchat – Blog Design

June 13, 2010 by Ian 3 Comments

Tonight’s #blogchat was all about blog design. It seemed like an awesome subject, having just finished off the first iteration of my new theme, but honestly the pace was a little too quick for me to really pull much out of it. Not a lot of moderation either – a very real conversation. One of the reasons I dig #blogchat so much is the varied tone – tonight was no different.

Above the fold is Manhattan.

I missed who said that one, but I agree – so much of our design attention is spent on holistic approaches, UI design and the damnable details that often when designing any website – especially a blog – we can forget to consider the depth of peoples’ viewing environment. Of course, this leads in to; are you designing for phones, or the iPad?

No one brought up accessibility concerns like high-contrast CSS sheets, screen reader design or anything of the like. I’m not surprised, honestly a little disappointed. But that’s something for another day.

Blogrolls are a waste of time.

So what do we replace them with? Blogroll pages, with details and reasons for why to follow a blog? I like that, but I’d offer going one step further; we do roundups all the time of blog posts, topics and so on. Why not do monthly blog roundups as well? Share the new, boost the consistently relevant? It’s all in the details, right? Organic and real is better than dropping a link on a sidebar. That much I agree on.

TweetMeme button and Fb like buttons – pros and cons?

None listed, opinion only. Not much discussion on this, but honestly – I leave a Facebook like bar on my posts and it never gets clicked. I had a TweetMeme button on my posts for two months and had no significant change in traffic or visitor behaviour. Why include details that do nothing for my visitors? TweetMeme gone, Fb bar likely to go away too.

Stupid design hacks: Styling Disqus comments.

@OrganicSpider asked about Disqus comments and styling – and here’s the answer. The awkward thing about disqus is that the styles are rather bland, and may not play nice with all blog themes. However, thankfully, Disqus comments follow a css style, which you can get by viewing the source on your blog. Style the disqus-related IDs and Classes and you’re set.

@JoeManna asked whether this should be done in Disqus settings or on the site CSS – I think this kind of thing should be carried in a theme style, honestly, mostly because you can better align the style with the remainder of your theme. Sure, you may miss some of the snazzy new images and changes Disqus makes to their comments systems sometimes – but especially if you’re using a dark theme, or some wacky avocado-shade colouring, you want to make sure the details align for a number of reasons.

All of the code for Disqus styling can be attributed to “.disqus_thread” thankfully, so it’s fairly simple to work down in the page source and get everything styled out. If I hadn’t included this, it would have meant white text entry boxes, and white entered text. Bad for comment writers.

Dates for blog posts, SEO for blogs.

Design seemed to fall by the wayside here – as soon as SEO comes up in any bloggers gathering, it seems to trump anything else, including good writing practice. People, seriously; if you write good articles, useful to people, which encourage subscription, sharing and comments – that IS your SEO backbone. This combination is one of the reasons – aside from updated content – that Google likes blogs so much lately. Not just updates, but relevance and encouraged user behaviour. Seriously.

As always, it was a good hour. And I’ll be on next Sunday night as well – wouldn’t miss it.

Mack boogied out at 9pm sharp to prep for a flight early in the morning, left the usual transcript: #blogchat transcript, June 13 2010
Naturlich, @KevinLyons also posted a participants’ list: TweepML #blogchat Participants list.

http://wthashtag.com/transcript.php?page_id=939&start_date=2010-06-14&end_date=2010-06-14&export_type=HTML

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: #blogchat, blogrolls, disqus, follow up, lessons from #blogchat, seo

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