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Notes From #blogchat – Sidebar Special!

August 22, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

Tonight’s #blogchat was set on managing and maximizing sidebars!

Personal note; no one’s appreciated my fun ajax-based sidebar at all – I may end up removing it after all.

Link of the Week – The 5 Types of Blogs – Which One Suits You Best? (Ink Rebels)

Mack Collier made a good point about sidebars: if we accept them as global metadata carriers, they need to reflect the motivation of the blog itself. Monetized blogs are expected to have ads, archival blogs are expected to have massive navigation capabilities. Think of who you’re writing for – friends? Business? Money? Information?

Mack also made another point – widgets from external services increase load times drastically. Consider this when adding your seventh or eighth “Fan This” box.

The general, immediate consensus was that having some very key information above the fold in your sidebars is a big deal. @amydpp and @tsudo, my apparent twin, mentioned the following which NEED to be in the beginning of every sidebar:

An RSS button
A search box
Email subscription box
Social networking icons

I agree – this if nothing else will be forcing me to change my current theme.

I asked about 2/3 column testing and left or right handed layouts. @JDEbberly suggested it would make a good topic – I may write about some wireframing things later. @jfavreau suggested hir use of 3-column layouts reduced usability.

Well-designed sidebars act as access points to the archive of the blog – proper cataloguing considerations need to be taken.

@WaynesBNP uses WP Greet Box to make sure the subscribe button is always visible to new visitors.

This led to the great Breath of Inspiration for the night – sidebars really must be global metadata. What you put there is a very good indicator of how you see the reader moving around your space.

This means that post- or page-specific metadata needs its own place, and that has to be respected as well. Author names, categorization, tagging, etc – even related posts, are very important for archival quality Information architecture is a bigger deal than most people give credit for. @erinloechner mentioned, to this point, that related posts in a post’s meta space are a good idea, and can do a far better job than tag clouds.

On that note, tag clouds are so 2008. Give them their own page, with your blogroll, or get rid of both entirely.

What do you think? Are you paying enough attention to the Table of Connections that is your sidebar?

Transcript for the night from WTHashtag, courtesy of Mack Collier.

Also – make sure you join the #blogchat Group on LinkedIn!

this week’s #Blogchat Participants’ List courtesy of Ksenia Coffman.

Image by solo, with others.

Notes From #blogchat – Guest Host Chris Brogan

August 15, 2010 by Ian 4 Comments

Tonight’s #blogchat had Chris Brogan on as guest host – and Mack Collier thankfully prefixed the chat with a post explaining the flow. Thanks for that, Mack – as you said, #blogchat certainly can get batshit-crazy-fast, and no one expected tonight to be any different.

For the uninitiated – here is Mack’s exegesis of #blogchat.

Stanford from Pushing Social also shared a video on how he sets up for #blogchat that’s worth a watch.

Self-promotion: People! My copy of trust Agents is still up for grabs! Share a Skip1.org related story and win the book (with a little thank you note from me!)

The Planned Topic: How to Use Other Social Sites/Presences to Grow Your Blog.

This is a big one. We’ve identified that it’s far easier to grow your audience in one place by being active somewhere else – growing your subscriber base by using Twitter, finding new LinkedIn connections on Facebook, and so on. But just how do we go about that? Chris Brogan cohosted #blogchat tonight, to talk about exactly that thing.

First: How do you decide which sites you should be active on in order to help your blog?

– Targeting helps – Chris shared FlowTown, a targeting tool I’ll be playing with this week. The base of Chris’ advice during this portion was that finding sites to become active on requires two things: defining the goal of your blog, and finding out where your customers are. If your customers are mostly toastmasters – go be a toastmaster. It makes sense.

The flow is fairly simple, really; identify your goal, and find a niche that goal serves. Look at places like AllTop.com for conversations already in motion. Once you’ve found one, involve yourself. Be the elbow, the helpful newcomer – and really get into the conversation. And please, please (Chris asks) “never shove your updates around the web. Be selective, be specific, be unique. Make each network its own beast.”

Second: How to decide whether to make one of the sites you’re involved in, into an Outpost for your community.

Once we’ve targeted properly, and begun to engage, we need to formalize our outposts and differentiate them from the street corners where we hold conversations. So, we pick outposts by relevance; converse, engage, be in th enetwork. Occasional “conversion forks” (Chris’ term) are the way to go.

Give others the tools to succeed. No matter what tyour goal is – thought leadership, building a channel or media property, or sales – your job on the web (and in life, right?) is to help others succeed at what they do. Your products should back this up, and so should your every action on the social web. Chris’ golden ratio for this is 12 actions for others for every 1 action promoting yourself.

Remember to pick your communication style discretely for each network. MySpace has a different accent than Facebook does, and a different one than Twitter does as well. As much as we don’t want to be shoving our updates around everywhere, we don’t want to duplicate everything either. this can be a deciding factor in whether or not you want to really engage in an arena. Cross-pollination is one thing – heck, even I use automation for some of my sharing – but we should remember to make clear distinctions when we’re using these tools to reduce our workload, rather than trying to appear ubiquitous.

A side note: We’re the special cases here, guys. You and me, the bloggers in the room, we know things other people don’t. We have arcana about conversational flow and reciprocation. All the talk in the world about outposts and goals, media properties and voice in communication style… It’s all arcana. We have two options: We can treat it as arcana and guard it like spies – or we can pull the veil and let everyone in on the wisdom. Which are you better at doing? Why?

The night’s transcript, from @MackCollier

The 250 top participants’ list from @KevinLyons

Drop any further questions for Chris Brogan on his blog – here, as per his request.

Join the #blogchat LinkedIn Group!

Conclusions? What else can we add to this?

UPDATE: @tsudo collected far more semantic details directly from Chris here: Insights into Social Media Marketing

Image borrowed from the awesome Guerilla Freelancing Blog.

Notes from #blogchat – Open Mic Night

July 25, 2010 by Ian 7 Comments

Tonight’s #blogchat was Open Mic! Anything goes! A reminder – here are the details about #blogchat, from the Mack himself.

First off, @salamicat asked – how do you build your blog’s audience? It turns out @prosperitygal has a radio show, which is awesome, but for the rest of us – a lot of cross-platform promotion is in order. Promoting blog on twitter and Facebook is much easier than promoting on your own space. If no one’s around, who can hear it? Organic growth through 360 degree engagement is the key.

(In an aside, Nic Wirtz and I joked about Social Media Daleks spouting ENGAGEMENT! ENGAGEMENT! – we’ll explain this week.)

Then @cherylfenton asked how big a deal comments were. Of course, there was a lot of discussion about how to go after comments, but at the end of the day, comments are only handy if you’re looking to foster a discussion. Otherwise, writing for comments – or even encouraging them – is useless for some “hard declarative” posts.

There was a question about exploring archives – I’m a huge proponent of this! For you WordPress people, there’s a plugin called Insights – gives you an in-blog search right on the post page to allow for easier archive searches. very handy, especially for drill-down referencing.

There was also a question about self-editing. I wrote something for this – but decided it needed to be redacted. (consensus; self-editing is good until you hit publish. Then, it’s “Typos Are Forever”)

15 minutes in and I’m lost! Tangent time! 3 Guest Post coupons into the water!

Oh yeah, organized posting times. I try to drop at 8am, 4pm or 10pm, and retweet the posts during the remaining available slots of those beofre my next posts. I spent the last week dropping posts at 4pm, and saw a significant increase in traffic. This week, it’ll be 7:30am as a control to see if the time actually meant anything. @danperezfilms tweets his posts hourly and sees good uptake – I may give this a shot too, but keep worrying it’ll annoy people. Would it annoy you?

And then this happened:

@MackCollier: If you got invited to speak at a major SM conf, what would your topic be? Make that your next blog post #blogchat

What a challenge! I may just take it up this week.

Open Mic night is always unpredictable. this week, people were going nuts – in the best possible way! Unfortunately, my head exploded halfway through, meaning I missed the storm of awesomeness.

So, yeah. I totally lost track of the chat. What kind of gold did I miss? What else can we add to what we learned?

TweepML Participants’ List for #blogchat, July 25th 2010

What the Hashtag transcript for #blogchat, July 25th 2010

Image by Tanki.

Notes from #blogchat – Anonymity vs Identity for Corporate Bloggers

July 5, 2010 by Ian

The major question of tonight’s #blogchat is one that keeps coming up all over the place – how should corporate bloggers identify themselves – by name, or should they remain anonymous?

It’s a difficult question to answer. The web both embraces and despises anonymity in equal measure; identity and obfuscation both have their uses, if you’re respectful of them.

Before my notes from #blogchat, I thought I’d share some articles – one from TED, and three of my own.

Prominent notes on anonymity: m00t speaks at TED about anonymity on the web.

My take on anonymity in general: Anonymity on the Web – Privacy, Courage and Anonymity – The Webspace/Realspace Divide in Courage

Now, the notes:

There was a little discussion with @prosperitygal about the differing advantages and challenges of multiple personas on the web versus simply maintaining multiple presences – it’s a challenge either way, but the voice here is the key.

The wide concensus early on was that multiple authors should be identified on company blogs. This sentiment split by the end of the night – some people like @SbuxMel advocated for personality and passion, citing a Starbucks customers blog‘s lack of both, despite its lip service to varied authors. I mentioned there’s a big difference between writing a blog that’s worth subscribing to, versus writing one that’s worth bookmarking. Tricky difference, but an important one.

Others (myself included, mostly) brought up the disadvantages of varied identity on company blogs. If the favored writer goes away, what happens to the blog? Similarly, a personality only helps if you have one; Identifying yourself to an audience only helps if the audience identifies with you, more than just identifying you alone.

What didn’t get much talk, was the actual differences between a company’s voice and a varied personal voice. Identifying authors is one thing; addressing their personalities as compared to the company’s planned marketing voice is quite another. The process is difficult, certainly, and doesn’t get a lot of the right kind of attention.

From Monsanto, @JPlovesCOTTON mentioned Monsanto sends interns to blog at big events, for ground-up experience – which I think is brilliant, both from a guerilla content point of view, and from an experiential point. How else to gain this kind of experience, having your work out there, than just to do it? Segregating official channels from the varied voice, here, is useful and appropriate. Here’s the blog JP mentioned: Beyond the Shows.

One of the last things I noticed was a discussion of challenging your audience. I agree with this – but how to define challenge? Is it bringing direct calls to action? Inviting discussion? Challenging an assumption? How a company does this speaks volumes about its culture. However, there’s no silver bullet for challenge. What’s appropriate for a pharmaceutical company is not the same for a farmer.

The overwhelming argument I need to bring up is that identity of company bloggers isn’t the core issue; how a company approaches blogs is. It’s not what, it’s how. The assertions of so many participants were that all bloggers for companies should be identified. I agree, there are benefits to this, but also cautions.

Especially in smaller companies, where blogging isn’t a full time position, identifying a blogger is a mixed bag of snakes. If five web designers blog for a company, and identify their work, what happens when clients begin to request a favourite designer to work on their projects?

Bonus Round: “Blogs are a medium, not a genre!”

Apparently, people are touchy about what they blog. @GeoffLiving opined that blogging was mutually exclusive from writing – I disagree. Blogging is a medium, a method of writing or publishing, not a genre. The same way fantasy fiction is a genre independent of books, movies and so on, short-form opinion writing is not an exclusive product of blog publishing software.

When I mentioned I wasn’t expecting to spark such a kingdom-genus-phylum argument, @elizabethonline called me “the Linneaus of the Net” – I’m not sure whether to be amused, or expect it was a sardonic remark. Either way, funny.

What do you think? How strongly tied should blogging be to identifyable authorship, especially in corporate environments?

Participants List: TweepML #blogchat for July 5th 2010.

Transcript: What The Hashtag transcript for #blogchat, July 5th 2010.

Update 12/07/2010 – Comments have been closed to combat massive spam. If you’ve got something to add that’s really important – please, see the Contact page. Thanks!

6 Things Bloggers Can Learn From the FIFA World Cup

July 5, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

The more of the World Cup I watch, the more I’m seeing trends in how the best of the best work – especially when we see groups of them. It’s easy to think “that’s not so hard” or “they sure aren’t scoring much” – but do we realize what we’re comparing ourselves to? Those of us who self-class as mediocre, or even slightly-less-than-the-best, perhaps expect to see greatness out of the greatest, without realizing why world class is what it is.

So what can we take from world class events like the FIFA World Cup?

Congregations of the best are deceptively flat on skill visibility.

They don’t score much because they’re all so good at defence. trade-offs in play, volleying – these things are marks of strategy, real knowledge of game mechanics, and experience. In blogging, this is the reason so few of the top ranks deviate and push for the occasional “goal-worthy” post or series; they know where the benefits of strategic consistency. The appearance of calm waters between opposing teams is a blind for the real skills that inform that calm behaviour. Thrashing is an effect of putting tactics (ie, goals) before strategy (ie, winning in the long game).

Persistence pays off.

Once you have the skill to play the long game, why would you put all your effort into blowing the opposition out of the water in the first five minutes? On the web, like in long-term timed games such as 90 minute football matches, being prepared with a long game plan is of far more benefit than a handful of short term tactics. Tactics can help in single instances, but can’t be confused with strategy. Tactics are actions; strategy is behaviour. Know the difference. Persistence is a strategy, not an action.

Strategic substitutions are a good idea. (Don’t be afraid to deviate)

Right. I just told you not to deviate. I lied. The lesson? Deviate; but deviate only when it benefits you – and know why, how, when and where to do so. It really confuses your competitors, but if you do it right, your constituency will thank you.

Good coverage is often as important as good play.

Growing a blog just by blogging is difficult. For the same reason, the World Cup wouldn’t have anywhere near the hype it does, if all we had was the game itself. Especially with the Vuvuzela going off this time around. FIFA has some of the best commentators available, a minute-by-minute feed of action on a number of sites, and a host of third-party coverage as well.

What has your blog got as its coverage support structure? A Facebook page? Twitter feed? FeedBurner? Pubsubhubbub? There are a lot of tools available for use to boost your blog’s profile in simple ways. Are you commentating on your blog? Keeping a play-by-play in more than just your comments?

Follow-up (post game show) reveals things missed during the excitement of the game.

Once you’ve made a post on your blog, what happens? Do you respond to comments? Do you welcome feedback? Or does the game just end every time, with no wrap-up?

Post-game wrap-ups are some of the most common, and popular measures sportscasters take to ensure well-rounded coverage. Highlighting the best, and worst parts of a given game can be essential to ensuring there are no problems with the play, and issues get disputed (like bad calls by officials) in an efficient and fair manner. It doesn’t always work. But it’s sure fun to watch. Sometimes better than the seventy minutes you just waited between goals.

Scoring the early goal brings massive advantages.

I don’t just mean hitting it big with your first blog post – though that can happen if you do some other things right first. Use test blogs as training – video post and podcast for cross training in your off season. Preparing for scoring big happens as much before blogs launch as it can in scooping other blogs on single events.

What else can we learn from professional sports’ biggest worldwide celebration?

photo by spacepleb.