Last week, I asked the question whether it was ethical to edit spam comments to get rid of the URL that is being used to generate some SEO juice for the spammers, but leave the semi-spammy comment in place.
Now THAT'S a lot of Spam
I expected some vigorous debate and discussion with people on both sides of the argument. But with a couple of exceptions, everyone said, “No, this is not okay!”
(Before I go on, let me say, we got some wonderful feedback and comments, so I want to thank everyone who took the time to read the post and respond.)
I was actually surprised by the near unanimous stance everyone took. I figured it would be more of an even split on the issue, with a large number of people saying they thought it was okay to beat the spammers by using their own energies against them, sort of a blogging jiu jitsu. But, nearly everyone was of the opinion that we, as real bloggers, should be above this, and should not resort to the same practices as the spammers.
Erik, I think deleting them is the best option. Editing them just so you can keep a “semi-generic praise-ish” comment doesn’t seem right. Is it that important to receive praise, especially if it is not “legitimate” anyway. I think the ethical debate rests more in the decision to keep known spam comments – minus the links – just to make it look like people like your blog.
That was the majority opinion, and made the most sense. And it seemed to cover most types of blog comments, although Daniel Clark of GeekDadsWeekly.com made an interesting point:
It’s interesting that not a single person here, most notably the ones who say they will strip any and all links left in their blog’s comments, has opted out of including *their* link in *these* comments.
(Touché, Daniel.)
The Other Side of the Debate: Editing for Spelling & Punctuation
However, one person, an ethics blogger, said on his blog that he did not think it was inappropriate to edit typos and grammar errors in another person’s comment. But I disagree. That’s a line I won’t cross. It’s not up to me to fix someone’s spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors. They’re their errors, not mine, and they should not be fixed because I have to have everything perfect.
A post and its comments are a historical record, to show what people were thinking and saying at that time. If they make a mistake, it’s not my place to adjust the historical record because I have a weird fixation on spelling and grammar.
(And no, I don’t think spammers deserve to be a part of the historical record.)
That’s why most bloggers will fix an error in information by striking out the error and writing the correct information next to it. They will also put an Update: note at the bottom of the post, so people can see that the information has been updated and corrected. (Note: this doesn’t extend to typos and misspellings. I think we can fix those without telling everyone “I fixed a typo.”)
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a writer. What does it mean to be a good writer?
Can anyone do it, or is it something that should only be attempted by trained professionals?
I’ve been thinking about this after hearing a new term: outsider artist. An outsider artist is someone who did not get any formal academic training about being an artist. They’re totally self-taught, they picked things up by trial and error, or by asking other artists, but they didn’t pursue a four year art degree to learn all of the different schools and styles, techniques and tricks.
In some circles, outsider art — Art Brut, French for “raw art” — is a label given with some disdain. It’s said with a slight sneer, like the person who said it just got a whiff of something you stepped in. The outsider artist is not in that special circle. They’re excluded from polite society, and are looked down on, or talked about behind their backs. They are outside the circles of culture, acceptability, and the success that a $10,000+ a year tuition brings.
In other circles, being an outsider artist is a badge of honor. They’re the rebels, the artists from the wrong sides of the tracks. Many outsider artists are not discovered until after their death, if they’re ever discovered at all.
I’m an outsider writer. (A term I’m not fond of, mostly because the rhyming makes it sound silly.)
I was not formally trained as a writer, at least not four years’ worth. I took the required English comp class, a couple journalism classes, and wrote for my college newspaper. My writing skills are completely self-taught, sharpened over the last 23 years.
Does this make me less of a writer? Am I somehow outside the mainstream because I didn’t get the creative writing degree, or the Master of Fine Arts (MFA)?
I’ve met some of these MFAs and creative writers. Most of them are fine people who have skills I’m envious of. Some of these insider writers are not as good as they believe. Some of them just plain suck. And some of them are snobbish, arrogant, and. . .well, let’s just say I came up with a different meaning for “MFA.”
I’m often torn in my views on writing: on one hand, it’s an art form that should only be practiced professionally by people who have a mastery of the language, and can create compelling sentences and stories. Their work shouldn’t be clumsily manhandled by non-writers who claim to be “editing” it.
On the other hand, writing is egalitarian: anyone can be a writer. It’s something we were all taught to do throughout school and college. It’s something that even a person with a high school education can excel at.
Most days, I fall into the egalitarian camp. Anyone can be a writer. You just need the desire, determination, some basic skills, and a pen. From there, you can be any kind of writer you want. Who am I to say whether you’re “good enough,” or shouldn’t enjoy every apple of success you can grab? I’m the outsider, remember?
I’m an outsider writer, but I’ve claimed the awards and accolades the properly-trained writers should have gotten. You have to wonder just how good all their training is when a stone-cold noobie can make a bigger impact with one piece than the people who spent several years of their life preparing for.
I’m an outsider writer, and I wear that badge, that literary leather jacket, with pride. I’ve scratched and struggled for every success I’ve gotten, and I earned every one of my scars. I’ve spent the last 20+ years, studying, reading, practicing, and honing. I’ve been rejected by some of the best and the worst in the business. I like my outsider writer status. It suits me, and I wear it better than a lot of the insiders wear theirs.
Please note: I am not saying I can outwrite any MFA or creative writer. I’m not some Wyatt Earp wordsmith. Far from it. I have several friends who are trained writers, and frankly, they can kick my ass, and I gape open-mouthed at their ability to string words together. But I offer this idea of the successful Outsider Writer to anyone who has an urge to write, but thought that a lack of training or education should hold them back.
Are you an outsider or trained writer? Did you get an education in creative writing, or did you just figure it out as you went along? Are you better off or worse off for your choice? And do you wish you could do it any differently, if you had the chance?
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
I had a friend respond to one of my previous blog posts with an interesting reverse on my previous statement:
Is blogging really killing newspapers? Or is it that the decline in the quality of newspapers has lead to an increase in blogging?
This really has become a chicken-or-egg problem for me. Which cause is leading to what effect? Has it really been that blogging is killing newspapers, because people would rather get their news online? Or has the continual firing of local writers and publishing the national news wires meant that people are abandoning their newspapers for more local news?
I have always had a complaint about the Indianapolis Star, our local paper, which seems to be doing everything they can to get rid of their local writers. They’ve fired many of their local columnists and beat reporters, and they even got rid of their local blogger program. Last year, they worked with local bloggers to write about their local news — their suburbs, neighborhoods, and towns — and it was one of the most popular sections of the online newspaper. But they discontinued the practice, and readership declined once again.
Now, these dips on the chart are not the times they released their local bloggers. In fact, this is only a basic look at readership, and not even a totally accurate one. (Compete.com can tell us trends, not a completely accurate look, like you would get with an analytics package, like Yahoo Analytics or Google Analytics.)
But if I were the Indy Star, I would try anything to get rid of those dips. If local bloggers are able to attract readers, get them. If local writers covering local news brings in subscribers, hire them, and lay off the upper management who keep making these poor decisions.
I don’t think it’s the bloggers who are causing the drop. But rather, whatever is making people abandon their online local newspaper is what’s driving them to get their news from other sources.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
We’ve been debating around the office whether it’s better to write for search or to write for readers.
I think it’s actually a little of both.
On the one hand, there are people who will never optimize a single blog post for search engines. They just write awesome stuff and people flock to them through word of mouth.
On the other, there are people who believe that it’s okay to churn out crap, just so long as you win search engine results. Their thought is if you win more search, you get more traffic.
The problem with the latter is that while you may get more traffic, you also get more people who see your writing is crap, and so you get more people who ignore you. The problem with the former is that you can’t rely on word of mouth. That’s why it’s important that you do both.
I call it writing for posterity.
Writing for posterity means you want to win search, but you also want people to read it. It means you optimize for search while you write as well as you can. This shouldn’t be an either/or proposition.
I had a great example of writing for posterity on my Laughing Stalk humor blog last week. For no reason that I can determine, I got a big spike of readers — 600 over 3 days — showing up at a column I wrote nearly a year ago.
My blog post/humor column, “Honey, It’s Over. Burma Shave!“, started ranking high on my Google Analytics, nearly 10 months after I first wrote it.
The source? Google.se, or Google Sweden.
The reason? I don’t even know. I don’t know if I got featured on a front page somehow. I don’t know if a news story mentioned the incident. I don’t know if there was an auditorium filled with Swedes who were all visiting my site.
What I know is that I had nearly 606 Swedes visit my site over a 3 day period, and spend some time on my site. They came because they found me on Google (Google Sweden, which I guess just makes me Swedish famous), and they stayed for an average of 40 seconds. Not huge time, but all the RSS bots seem to be screwing with my Time On Page stats.
Had I tried to just focus on search for this post, my readability would have most likely suffered. But had I just focused on readership, I may never have been found.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Anyone can write a basic blog. It’s not that hard. And I’ve talked for hours, whether at seminars or at a one-on-one “brain picking” session about basic blog writing. But I rarely get the chance to talk about advanced blogging, the secrets that I use to improve my blog, and make it stand out from the hundreds of thousands of basic blogs.
This is a good book to use for advanced blogging. At least until I write my own.
Here are 10 advanced blog writing techniques we use for our clients and ourselves.
Use WordPress.org: I don’t have anything against platforms like Blogspot.com, WordPress.com, or Posterous.com (I have blogs on all three). But WordPress.org is what a lot of the pros use, because it’s extremely customizable and you can improve its functionality with a few plug-ins.
Use a search engine optimization plug-in: We use All in One SEO Pack and Zemanta. Both of these let us do some additional optimization on our articles, which is something the other blog platforms don’t do as well.
Choose 1 – 2 keywords or phrases per post: Stick with the mantra, “one idea, one keyword, one post, one day.” This post is about the keyword phrase “blog writing techniques,” and nothing else. Not about choosing topics, not about winning readers, not about whether video or photos help with readership, it’s just about how you actually write posts. By doing this, I not only boost my SEO efforts, but I don’t overload people with information.
Write catchy, dramatic headlines: Your headline needs to be catchy, interesting, and compelling. Include phrases like “10 Secrets” or “5 Tips” to fire peoples’ interest. Also, be sure to use your exact keyword phrase in the title for better SEO.
Watch your keyword density: Density means the percentage ratio of keywords to copy. This particular article has about a 1% keyword density (1 keyword every 100 words). If the number is below 1%, search engines might not realize what your post is about. Anything over 2 %- 3% could be seen as keyword stuffing, and the search engines could drop you. Shoot for 1.5% – 1.99%. Divide the number of keywords by the total number of words to figure density.
Automate your cross-posting: Use services like Twitterfeed.com and Ping.fm to promote your posts to your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, and 40 other social networks. It will save you several minutes every time you publish a post.
Use analytics to determine how your effectiveness: This lets you see where your traffic is coming from, what brought them there, and how long they stayed. You may learn that a particular keyword is getting a lot of traffic, so you write about that topic again. Or that a particular website is sending a lot of traffic, so you work to get published on that site again. I like Google Analytics for solid analytics.
Publish your blog 2 – 3 times a week: Everyone who starts blogging has great intentions, but life intrudes and this resolution gets broken like it’s January 3rd. If you want to excel at blogging, you must write more than once a week. Schedule an hour a day to write, or schedule a three hour block, and write all your posts in advance.
Become a fast writer: Writing fast means being able to find the best words and assemble 400 of them in 20 minutes. If you can’t do this, focus on those things that are holding you back, and work to overcome them. Being able to write fast will also help you publish more frequently.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Whither goest the newspaperman, that bastion of bulletins, that purveyor of print?
He is, I’m afraid, about to be swallowed up by the electronic era.
When I was in college, I wanted to be a reporter. I wanted my stories to be delivered with a thwack! on the front porch. To be folded up and carried in a suit pocket. To be clipped and stuck to the fridge. I wanted to use words like “lede” and “slug line.” I wanted to rip my story out of a typewriter, and shout “COPY!” (I used to do this when I wrote for my college newspaper, to great laughs from my editor.)
Sadly, it was not to be. Instead, I work as a professional blogger, and am looked down on by “real” journalists at “real” newspapers. (Full disclosure: I am also a newspaper humor columnist, appearing in 10 weekly print newspapers around the state. So there.)
Last year, 53 weeks ago in fact, I wrote a humor column about Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, who wrote his own column sneering at bloggers with:
I DON’T have a blog. If I did blog, this is what it would be like. (To make it seem like a real blog, I’ll include typos and factual errors.)
I would link to Stu’s original column, but it, like most of his fellow newspaper reporters, are no longer available. They have been cast aside, presumably to make room for newer, more up-to-date pieces.
Bykofsky, who is perhaps best known for saying this country “need(s) another 9/11” needs to realize that blogging is not going to go away. Newspapers, on the other hand, are fast disappearing from our landscape. I think reporters would do well to rethink their attitude.
It’s funny when journalists mock (blogging). It’s also funny when people about to be eaten by a bear mock the bear.
Huppke’s quote was originally about Twitter, but mocking a bear is mocking a bear.
So what are the journalists’ complaints about blogging? That we didn’t go to journalism school? They’re teaching electronic media writing in J-school right now. That our pieces aren’t properly fact-checked and vetted by editors? Disgraced plagiarizerfabricatorNew York Times reporter Jayson Blair could tell you a thing or two about that. Or is it that our stories aren’t printed on dead trees? I found Bykofsky’s original column online.
Citizen journalists — the people who are picking up the slack that the mainstream media are missing — have taken to the web to cover the news and write about the issues that journalists have been missing. If they’re not former journalists who became bloggers, they’re learning how to do proper journalism. The really good citizen journalists are writing stories that are just as good, if not better, than a lot of the mainstream media stories.
These modern day pamphleteers share the news and their opinions via a blog instead of a printing press. And while they are still looked down on, these citizen journalists have uncovered a lot of stories that Byofsky and his ilk have ignored, overlooked, or scorned. We’re breaking the news before The News does.
Griping about bloggers is nothing but pure elitism. Snob journalism at its finest. When children start playing a game, it’s not uncommon for the child on the losing team to pout, whine, and make excuses for why he’s playing poorly. And Bykofsky’s blogging gripes make him sound like he’s taking his ball and going home.
The newspaper industry has been in decline ever since the advent of radio and TV news. It slipped further into decline when Craigslist became popular. And now, blogging is threatening to be the final stake through print journalism’s heart.
We’ve seen significant gutting at our local paper ( the Indianapolis Star will now be laid out in Louisville. Sounds about right for Gannett.), and journalists are being thrown overboard left and right.
A friend of mine worked for the Associated Press in Indianapolis, and was let go right before Christmas 2009, after 17 years of service. Why? The AP was losing money because fewer newspapers were licensing their content. So rather than stick with the professional who had the most experience and best judgment, they let him go in favor of someone with a lower salary and less experience. In another state.
So we have younger, less experienced journalists — remotely — running our country’s newsrooms, and it’s bloggers who are being dismissed out of hand as Not Real Journalists?
I’m sad to be watching all of this unravel. I think the decline of the big city American print newspaper is one of the great tragedies of our time. But I also see the future of the industry, and if it’s going to survive, it’s going to be online, not on dead trees.
Journalists need to stop deriding blogging, and embrace it instead. Learn how to do it now, rather than watching it pass by. You can either mock the bear or turn and face it. Otherwise, your next byline will be from the south end of a north-bound bear.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
As a professional blogger, I see a lot of different blogs, both small business and corporate. Some are good, some are terrible. Some are informative and engaging, some are daily commercials, some are stilted and formal. I can spot the blogs written by people who are passionate about their work, knowledgeable about their field, or exploring new knowledge.
I can also spot the ones that are written by marketing professionals, committees, and the legal department.
Blogging tends to make corporate types a little nervous
It’s not that I have anything against marketers (I’ve been one for over 16 years). And I don’t have anything against lawyers. (Committees, on the other hand. . .)
The problem is blogging has a different writing style, a different flow. In blogging, you don’t worry about being technically accurate, covering every contingency, option, variation, divergence, modification, and refinement, you just have to be right.
But the blogs I see by marketers, lawyers, and committees don’t have that spark. Everything is written like a legal brief, or it uses all the proper product/service names, instead of what customers actually call it. Or it has that lowest common denominator feel of the committee, where every phrase is scrutinized, and meetings are filled with statements like “should we say ‘rediscover’ or ‘redefine?’” and then discussed heatedly for 30 minutes. (“Why can’t we say ‘rediscover or redefine?’” “But what about people who have not discovered or defined it in the first place?”)
Marketing Copywriting and Legal Writing Are Not Good Blog Writing
Blogging is informal. It’s written like people speak. It has punch, emotion, spark, verve. Sentences start with “and.” Or appear incomplete. While grammar is (and should be) used, people are a little more loose with some of the grammar rules. That’s not to say a blogger gets to write like an illiterate scribbler. But rather, they don’t need to march in lockstep with the grammar rules our 7th grade teacher drummed into us.
A good blog has to capture the attention of the person reading it. It has to be well-written and interesting. Too often, corporate blogs are stiff, formal, and uninteresting. They’re literary yawn-fests that seem to want to drive away readers, not bring them in.
I recently read a pro athlete’s blog that was hosted on his team’s website. And I could tell right away — see how I just started that sentence with ‘and?’ — that he didn’t write it. Or at least he didn’t have the final edit. That’s because the author or editor didn’t use team nicknames, and they made sure to include sponsor names.
“We’ve been working hard at the Sheinhardt Wig Company Indianapolis Beagles Practice Facility all week, and are looking forward to facing the Cincinnati Rough Riders on Sunday at 4:00 p.m.”
BLEAH! The only people who refer to anything by their sponsors’ names are marketers and race car drivers. The only people who refer to a team by their full name in an informal setting are marketers. Given that this particular athlete is not known for his eloquence, I could only assume this had been edited heavily, and not just for grammar.
While I’m not a big fan of misspelled words, poor grammar, and text speak, I do think writers should be given their own voice, and not edited to sound like some marketer’s idea of what they think it should be.
Basically, if you want to be a successful blogger, you need to learn to write like a real person. Loosen up the tie, disband the committee, unclench, and start to write like a real person. When you have an urge to fix something to as required by the marketing copy user’s guide, kill it.
Learn to write how people talk, and you’ll start to figure out how people read. And then they’ll start reading what you have to say.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
How can you make your social media communication easier? Are there any tips or tricks to use to reduce some of the heavy lifting you have to do just to get your messages out to the public?
Since I do social media communication, for myself and for clients, I use several shortcuts to automate a lot of what I do. Rather than posting a blog, and then posting the headline and URL to Twitter, then over at Facebook, and again at LinkedIn, I try to do it in one step. Or rather than uploading photos and videos to Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube, and then uploading them to a blog post to share them, I’m able to do it all at once.
I wrote this for Martin Earley, who is the new Inn-Bedded Resorter at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. I was one of five finalists, and got to meet Martin during our stay there. I think he was a great choice, and I know he’ll have a good time. But he also has to report what he’s doing via social media, which can be difficult if you’re trying to post content to both your site and a work site, so I offered him some tips to make his work easier. As I started writing them out, I decided it would be just as easy to put it into a blog post.
Here are a few of the tricks and tools I use to make my life a whole lot easier:
Bit.ly: We’ll start with this ubiquitous URL shortener, because it will figure into nearly everything we do. Set up a bit.ly account, and then put your API key somewhere easy to find. (It can be a pain to go back to bit.ly to find it each time you need it.) Learn how to use it, and figure out their analytics section.
TwitterFeed.com: Twitterfeed will visit your blog once every 30 minutes – 24 hours to see if you have anything new. Once you have a new blog post up, Twitterfeed will scoop up your headline and the URL, shorten it with bit.ly (see? We’re using it already), and then send it out to your Twitter feed and Facebook status updates.
Ping.fm: You can expand TwitterFeed’s reach by sending your feed to Ping.fm, instead of Twitter. Not only can you send your new blog posts to Twitter and Facebook, but to MySpace, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, and even your Ning networks. Plus you can go to Ping.fm and directly post medium-length messages to Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad.
WARNING! Do NOT set up Ping.fm to post something TO your blog if you already set up a Twitterfeed-Ping combination FROM your blog. This will create an infinite loop, which will tear a hole in the space-time continuum. This could be bad.
Posterous.com: I’ve been playing with Posterous for a few months now, and really like it. It’s an email submission blog platform. Basically, you email your blog posts to your Posterous account, and it will post it for you. Your subject line is the headline, the email message is the body copy, and any photos you attach will be placed within the message. Then, you can notify your networks, just like Ping.fm, including populating your other blogs with your Posterous content, and even using bit.ly to shorten your URLs.
Now, I know Blogger and WordPress both do this, but Posterous does something that the others won’t do: if you upload photos, Posterous will also send them to your Flickr and/or Picasa accounts. Upload a video, and Posterous will send it to your YouTube account.
So, if you take some photos on your cell phone, attach them to an email, and send them to Posterous, you can send them to any special photo accounts, as well as populate your other blog feeds, which are then sent out to your Twitter, Facebook, etc.
ScribeFire: This is a great blog editor that you use directly inside Firefox. Instead of going to your blog and logging in, you can open it up in Firefox, write your post, and hit upload. Rather than using a web-based interface, you can use an interface right on your computer. Both ScribeFire and Posterous are great if you have a slow Internet connection. (MacJournal is another program I’ve tried. There are Windows-based programs that do this as well.)
TweetDeck: I use TweetDeck on my laptop for my Twitter communication. And when that’s all it did, it was awesome. But now TweetDeck is even awesomer, because whenever I send out a tweet, I can also send it as both a Facebook and LinkedIn update. I can also schedule tweets to take place at odd times — 1:53, 10:27 — instead of the every-5-minute intervals HootSuite limits you to. And best of all, it uses bit.ly as its default URL shortener. I can even pop a URL into TweetDeck, shorten it, and then cut it to use somewhere else. But the URL still gets pushed over to bit.y’s website where it gets included in the analytics.
While I don’t recommend automating everything you do in social media, like message creating, it’s at least a great way to lighten your load and make your life easier.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
A friend recently sent me a link to Tom Wright’s response to blogging and social media, wherein Wright called the two movements “cultural masturbation.” In it, he warned against the social isolationism of social media and blogging.
Blogging? Seriously? How is blogging any more socially isolating than just plain old writing? Writing a book, writing in your journal, writing a short story, writing a poem. Yes, these are all socially isolating in and of themselves, but what makes blogging soooo much different from every other form of writing?
(Hint: it doesn’t. It’s only believed to be a problem by people who don’t fully understand that blogging is just one more form of publishing.)
It’s easy to say something creates isolationism. Tom Wright says it about blogging and social media, that it will somehow keep people from interacting with other people. He worries that if we spend too much time in front of a computer screen, we will lose regular face-to-face contact with real people. We will substitute computer time for real time, and completely ruin society.
Double Bah!
This is nothing new. Experts have been wringing their hands about something making us lose touch with our humanity for years.
“Experts” said it about email and the Internet in the mid-90s.
“Experts” said it about television in the 40s and 50s.
“Experts” said it about movies in the 20s and 30s.
“Experts” said it about radio in the 20s.
“Experts” said it about the telephone at the turn of the century.
“Experts” said it about the automobile at the turn of the century.
I think the only thing who are isolated from society are the experts.
Tom Wright admits he doesn’t use social media, doesn’t know how to use it, and this somehow qualifies him to speak about the social and relational ramifications of social media? (He does admit to being an avid texter and emailer though; so is he socially isolated?)
For one thing, if he used social media to any degree, he would also know that many social media users — at least in the business setting — turn their online contacts into real-world contacts. I have personally drunk gallons of coffee with people I’ve met online. I’ve had conversations with them, done business with them, become friends with them. All people I never would have met if it hadn’t been for social media.
And I’m not the only one. My entire industry is rife with people who use social media to enhance and even create their careers.
Social Media is Not the Bad Guy, Human Behavior Is
Anything can be a detriment to human relationships: food, sex, exercise, fashion, sports, shopping, work, play, sleep, collecting, hobbies, cooking. You name it, and I can find someone obsessed with it, and then say that __________ is a detriment to human relationships, because someone took it too far.
There are always people who will take something too far. But to look at the outlier, that one in a million person, and extrapolate a calamitous end for anyone and everyone who uses it is just being a sensationalist.
Wright assumes that the people who spend all this time in front of a computer screen don’t work or go to school, and are already teetering on the brink of being a hermit, when they were tipped over the edge into complete solitude by the siren call of the online relationship.
If you’re doing social media right, you’re using it to create relationships that expand and extend into the real world. If you’re not doing it right, well, you probably spend too much time indoors with your eight cats already.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
We write a lot of product blogs for our clients. No matter what size, shape, color, or price of the product, we’ve written several hundred blog product posts.
But for all the hundreds of posts we’ve written, there’s only one reason we do it: to win search.
A product blog post is one of the easiest things to write. It’s just 200 – 300 words describing a particular product with a link back to the original catalog entry or product description. Each post equals a backlink back to your website, and the more backlinks you have to your website, the better you rank in a search.
Should I Keep My Blog Inside My Website, or Have a Separate Blog?
We’re fans of keeping a blog and a website together, but there’s no harm in keeping the two separate. After all, the search engines recognize it as a separate website that links back to your original one. However, you’re better off putting your blog on your static website and use internal backlinks to go from the blog to the static pages.
But if you want to boost your search engine rankings even further, create a second blog where you publish your blog posts, and keep it separate from your regular corporate blog where you’re publishing your authority posts, credibility posts, issues posts, and educational posts. This way you can improve search and find first time visitors with one blog, and gain returning readers with the other.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
No, It’s NOT Okay To Edit Spam Comments
Last week, I asked the question whether it was ethical to edit spam comments to get rid of the URL that is being used to generate some SEO juice for the spammers, but leave the semi-spammy comment in place.
Now THAT'S a lot of Spam
I expected some vigorous debate and discussion with people on both sides of the argument. But with a couple of exceptions, everyone said, “No, this is not okay!”
(Before I go on, let me say, we got some wonderful feedback and comments, so I want to thank everyone who took the time to read the post and respond.)
I was actually surprised by the near unanimous stance everyone took. I figured it would be more of an even split on the issue, with a large number of people saying they thought it was okay to beat the spammers by using their own energies against them, sort of a blogging jiu jitsu. But, nearly everyone was of the opinion that we, as real bloggers, should be above this, and should not resort to the same practices as the spammers.
Fellow blogger Brian Shelton summed it up best.
That was the majority opinion, and made the most sense. And it seemed to cover most types of blog comments, although Daniel Clark of GeekDadsWeekly.com made an interesting point:
(Touché, Daniel.)
The Other Side of the Debate: Editing for Spelling & Punctuation
However, one person, an ethics blogger, said on his blog that he did not think it was inappropriate to edit typos and grammar errors in another person’s comment. But I disagree. That’s a line I won’t cross. It’s not up to me to fix someone’s spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors. They’re their errors, not mine, and they should not be fixed because I have to have everything perfect.
A post and its comments are a historical record, to show what people were thinking and saying at that time. If they make a mistake, it’s not my place to adjust the historical record because I have a weird fixation on spelling and grammar.
(And no, I don’t think spammers deserve to be a part of the historical record.)
That’s why most bloggers will fix an error in information by
striking outthe error and writing the correct information next to it. They will also put an Update: note at the bottom of the post, so people can see that the information has been updated and corrected. (Note: this doesn’t extend to typos and misspellings. I think we can fix those without telling everyone “I fixed a typo.”)Photo credit: Freezelight (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog writing, blogging, comments, ethics
Posted in Blog Writing, Blogging, Communication, Writing | View Comments
Ruminations of an “Outsider Writer”
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a writer. What does it mean to be a good writer?
Can anyone do it, or is it something that should only be attempted by trained professionals?
I’ve been thinking about this after hearing a new term: outsider artist. An outsider artist is someone who did not get any formal academic training about being an artist. They’re totally self-taught, they picked things up by trial and error, or by asking other artists, but they didn’t pursue a four year art degree to learn all of the different schools and styles, techniques and tricks.
In some circles, outsider art — Art Brut, French for “raw art” — is a label given with some disdain. It’s said with a slight sneer, like the person who said it just got a whiff of something you stepped in. The outsider artist is not in that special circle. They’re excluded from polite society, and are looked down on, or talked about behind their backs. They are outside the circles of culture, acceptability, and the success that a $10,000+ a year tuition brings.
In other circles, being an outsider artist is a badge of honor. They’re the rebels, the artists from the wrong sides of the tracks. Many outsider artists are not discovered until after their death, if they’re ever discovered at all.
I’m an outsider writer. (A term I’m not fond of, mostly because the rhyming makes it sound silly.)
I was not formally trained as a writer, at least not four years’ worth. I took the required English comp class, a couple journalism classes, and wrote for my college newspaper. My writing skills are completely self-taught, sharpened over the last 23 years.
Does this make me less of a writer? Am I somehow outside the mainstream because I didn’t get the creative writing degree, or the Master of Fine Arts (MFA)?
I’ve met some of these MFAs and creative writers. Most of them are fine people who have skills I’m envious of. Some of these insider writers are not as good as they believe. Some of them just plain suck. And some of them are snobbish, arrogant, and. . .well, let’s just say I came up with a different meaning for “MFA.”
I’m often torn in my views on writing: on one hand, it’s an art form that should only be practiced professionally by people who have a mastery of the language, and can create compelling sentences and stories. Their work shouldn’t be clumsily manhandled by non-writers who claim to be “editing” it.
On the other hand, writing is egalitarian: anyone can be a writer. It’s something we were all taught to do throughout school and college. It’s something that even a person with a high school education can excel at.
Most days, I fall into the egalitarian camp. Anyone can be a writer. You just need the desire, determination, some basic skills, and a pen. From there, you can be any kind of writer you want. Who am I to say whether you’re “good enough,” or shouldn’t enjoy every apple of success you can grab? I’m the outsider, remember?
I’m an outsider writer, but I’ve claimed the awards and accolades the properly-trained writers should have gotten. You have to wonder just how good all their training is when a stone-cold noobie can make a bigger impact with one piece than the people who spent several years of their life preparing for.
I’m an outsider writer, and I wear that badge, that literary leather jacket, with pride. I’ve scratched and struggled for every success I’ve gotten, and I earned every one of my scars. I’ve spent the last 20+ years, studying, reading, practicing, and honing. I’ve been rejected by some of the best and the worst in the business. I like my outsider writer status. It suits me, and I wear it better than a lot of the insiders wear theirs.
Please note: I am not saying I can outwrite any MFA or creative writer. I’m not some Wyatt Earp wordsmith. Far from it. I have several friends who are trained writers, and frankly, they can kick my ass, and I gape open-mouthed at their ability to string words together. But I offer this idea of the successful Outsider Writer to anyone who has an urge to write, but thought that a lack of training or education should hold them back.
Are you an outsider or trained writer? Did you get an education in creative writing, or did you just figure it out as you went along? Are you better off or worse off for your choice? And do you wish you could do it any differently, if you had the chance?
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: writers, writing
Posted in Blog Writing, Writing | View Comments
Have Bad Newspapers Increased the Need for Blogging?
I had a friend respond to one of my previous blog posts with an interesting reverse on my previous statement:
Is blogging really killing newspapers? Or is it that the decline in the quality of newspapers has lead to an increase in blogging?
This really has become a chicken-or-egg problem for me. Which cause is leading to what effect? Has it really been that blogging is killing newspapers, because people would rather get their news online? Or has the continual firing of local writers and publishing the national news wires meant that people are abandoning their newspapers for more local news?
I have always had a complaint about the Indianapolis Star, our local paper, which seems to be doing everything they can to get rid of their local writers. They’ve fired many of their local columnists and beat reporters, and they even got rid of their local blogger program. Last year, they worked with local bloggers to write about their local news — their suburbs, neighborhoods, and towns — and it was one of the most popular sections of the online newspaper. But they discontinued the practice, and readership declined once again.
Now, these dips on the chart are not the times they released their local bloggers. In fact, this is only a basic look at readership, and not even a totally accurate one. (Compete.com can tell us trends, not a completely accurate look, like you would get with an analytics package, like Yahoo Analytics or Google Analytics.)
But if I were the Indy Star, I would try anything to get rid of those dips. If local bloggers are able to attract readers, get them. If local writers covering local news brings in subscribers, hire them, and lay off the upper management who keep making these poor decisions.
I don’t think it’s the bloggers who are causing the drop. But rather, whatever is making people abandon their online local newspaper is what’s driving them to get their news from other sources.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, citizen journalism, mainstream media, newspapers
Posted in Blog Writing, Traditional Media, Writing | View Comments
Blogging for Posterity, not Search or Readership
We’ve been debating around the office whether it’s better to write for search or to write for readers.
I think it’s actually a little of both.
On the one hand, there are people who will never optimize a single blog post for search engines. They just write awesome stuff and people flock to them through word of mouth.
On the other, there are people who believe that it’s okay to churn out crap, just so long as you win search engine results. Their thought is if you win more search, you get more traffic.
The problem with the latter is that while you may get more traffic, you also get more people who see your writing is crap, and so you get more people who ignore you. The problem with the former is that you can’t rely on word of mouth. That’s why it’s important that you do both.
I call it writing for posterity.
Writing for posterity means you want to win search, but you also want people to read it. It means you optimize for search while you write as well as you can. This shouldn’t be an either/or proposition.
I had a great example of writing for posterity on my Laughing Stalk humor blog last week. For no reason that I can determine, I got a big spike of readers — 600 over 3 days — showing up at a column I wrote nearly a year ago.
My blog post/humor column, “Honey, It’s Over. Burma Shave!“, started ranking high on my Google Analytics, nearly 10 months after I first wrote it.
The source? Google.se, or Google Sweden.
The reason? I don’t even know. I don’t know if I got featured on a front page somehow. I don’t know if a news story mentioned the incident. I don’t know if there was an auditorium filled with Swedes who were all visiting my site.
What I know is that I had nearly 606 Swedes visit my site over a 3 day period, and spend some time on my site. They came because they found me on Google (Google Sweden, which I guess just makes me Swedish famous), and they stayed for an average of 40 seconds. Not huge time, but all the RSS bots seem to be screwing with my Time On Page stats.
Had I tried to just focus on search for this post, my readability would have most likely suffered. But had I just focused on readership, I may never have been found.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog analytics, blog writing, blogging, readability, search engines, writing
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10 Advanced Blog Writing Techniques Used By Professional Bloggers
Anyone can write a basic blog. It’s not that hard. And I’ve talked for hours, whether at seminars or at a one-on-one “brain picking” session about basic blog writing. But I rarely get the chance to talk about advanced blogging, the secrets that I use to improve my blog, and make it stand out from the hundreds of thousands of basic blogs.
This is a good book to use for advanced blogging. At least until I write my own.
Here are 10 advanced blog writing techniques we use for our clients and ourselves.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: advanced blog writing, blog writing techniques, seo, Social Media Analytics, social media promotions, writing
Posted in Blog Writing, Blogging, Communication, Writing | View Comments
Wither Goest the Newspaperman? Why Blogging is Killing Print Media.
Whither goest the newspaperman, that bastion of bulletins, that purveyor of print?
He is, I’m afraid, about to be swallowed up by the electronic era.
When I was in college, I wanted to be a reporter. I wanted my stories to be delivered with a thwack! on the front porch. To be folded up and carried in a suit pocket. To be clipped and stuck to the fridge. I wanted to use words like “lede” and “slug line.” I wanted to rip my story out of a typewriter, and shout “COPY!” (I used to do this when I wrote for my college newspaper, to great laughs from my editor.)
Sadly, it was not to be. Instead, I work as a professional blogger, and am looked down on by “real” journalists at “real” newspapers. (Full disclosure: I am also a newspaper humor columnist, appearing in 10 weekly print newspapers around the state. So there.)
Last year, 53 weeks ago in fact, I wrote a humor column about Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, who wrote his own column sneering at bloggers with:
I would link to Stu’s original column, but it, like most of his fellow newspaper reporters, are no longer available. They have been cast aside, presumably to make room for newer, more up-to-date pieces.
Bykofsky, who is perhaps best known for saying this country “need(s) another 9/11” needs to realize that blogging is not going to go away. Newspapers, on the other hand, are fast disappearing from our landscape. I think reporters would do well to rethink their attitude.
To paraphrase Chicago humorist Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke):
Huppke’s quote was originally about Twitter, but mocking a bear is mocking a bear.
So what are the journalists’ complaints about blogging? That we didn’t go to journalism school? They’re teaching electronic media writing in J-school right now. That our pieces aren’t properly fact-checked and vetted by editors? Disgraced
plagiarizerfabricatorNew York Times reporter Jayson Blair could tell you a thing or two about that. Or is it that our stories aren’t printed on dead trees? I found Bykofsky’s original column online.Citizen journalists — the people who are picking up the slack that the mainstream media are missing — have taken to the web to cover the news and write about the issues that journalists have been missing. If they’re not former journalists who became bloggers, they’re learning how to do proper journalism. The really good citizen journalists are writing stories that are just as good, if not better, than a lot of the mainstream media stories.
These modern day pamphleteers share the news and their opinions via a blog instead of a printing press. And while they are still looked down on, these citizen journalists have uncovered a lot of stories that Byofsky and his ilk have ignored, overlooked, or scorned. We’re breaking the news before The News does.
Griping about bloggers is nothing but pure elitism. Snob journalism at its finest. When children start playing a game, it’s not uncommon for the child on the losing team to pout, whine, and make excuses for why he’s playing poorly. And Bykofsky’s blogging gripes make him sound like he’s taking his ball and going home.
The newspaper industry has been in decline ever since the advent of radio and TV news. It slipped further into decline when Craigslist became popular. And now, blogging is threatening to be the final stake through print journalism’s heart.
We’ve seen significant gutting at our local paper ( the Indianapolis Star will now be laid out in Louisville. Sounds about right for Gannett.), and journalists are being thrown overboard left and right.
A friend of mine worked for the Associated Press in Indianapolis, and was let go right before Christmas 2009, after 17 years of service. Why? The AP was losing money because fewer newspapers were licensing their content. So rather than stick with the professional who had the most experience and best judgment, they let him go in favor of someone with a lower salary and less experience. In another state.
So we have younger, less experienced journalists — remotely — running our country’s newsrooms, and it’s bloggers who are being dismissed out of hand as Not Real Journalists?
I’m sad to be watching all of this unravel. I think the decline of the big city American print newspaper is one of the great tragedies of our time. But I also see the future of the industry, and if it’s going to survive, it’s going to be online, not on dead trees.
Journalists need to stop deriding blogging, and embrace it instead. Learn how to do it now, rather than watching it pass by. You can either mock the bear or turn and face it. Otherwise, your next byline will be from the south end of a north-bound bear.
For related reading, check out:
Photo credit:
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, columns, mainstream media, media, newspapers, obsolescence
Posted in Blog Writing, Blogging, Communication, Traditional Media, Writing | View Comments
The Problem With Corporate Blog Writing
As a professional blogger, I see a lot of different blogs, both small business and corporate. Some are good, some are terrible. Some are informative and engaging, some are daily commercials, some are stilted and formal. I can spot the blogs written by people who are passionate about their work, knowledgeable about their field, or exploring new knowledge.
I can also spot the ones that are written by marketing professionals, committees, and the legal department.
Blogging tends to make corporate types a little nervous
It’s not that I have anything against marketers (I’ve been one for over 16 years). And I don’t have anything against lawyers. (Committees, on the other hand. . .)
The problem is blogging has a different writing style, a different flow. In blogging, you don’t worry about being technically accurate, covering every contingency, option, variation, divergence, modification, and refinement, you just have to be right.
But the blogs I see by marketers, lawyers, and committees don’t have that spark. Everything is written like a legal brief, or it uses all the proper product/service names, instead of what customers actually call it. Or it has that lowest common denominator feel of the committee, where every phrase is scrutinized, and meetings are filled with statements like “should we say ‘rediscover’ or ‘redefine?’” and then discussed heatedly for 30 minutes. (“Why can’t we say ‘rediscover or redefine?’” “But what about people who have not discovered or defined it in the first place?”)
Marketing Copywriting and Legal Writing Are Not Good Blog Writing
Blogging is informal. It’s written like people speak. It has punch, emotion, spark, verve. Sentences start with “and.” Or appear incomplete. While grammar is (and should be) used, people are a little more loose with some of the grammar rules. That’s not to say a blogger gets to write like an illiterate scribbler. But rather, they don’t need to march in lockstep with the grammar rules our 7th grade teacher drummed into us.
A good blog has to capture the attention of the person reading it. It has to be well-written and interesting. Too often, corporate blogs are stiff, formal, and uninteresting. They’re literary yawn-fests that seem to want to drive away readers, not bring them in.
I recently read a pro athlete’s blog that was hosted on his team’s website. And I could tell right away — see how I just started that sentence with ‘and?’ — that he didn’t write it. Or at least he didn’t have the final edit. That’s because the author or editor didn’t use team nicknames, and they made sure to include sponsor names.
“We’ve been working hard at the Sheinhardt Wig Company Indianapolis Beagles Practice Facility all week, and are looking forward to facing the Cincinnati Rough Riders on Sunday at 4:00 p.m.”
BLEAH! The only people who refer to anything by their sponsors’ names are marketers and race car drivers. The only people who refer to a team by their full name in an informal setting are marketers. Given that this particular athlete is not known for his eloquence, I could only assume this had been edited heavily, and not just for grammar.
While I’m not a big fan of misspelled words, poor grammar, and text speak, I do think writers should be given their own voice, and not edited to sound like some marketer’s idea of what they think it should be.
Basically, if you want to be a successful blogger, you need to learn to write like a real person. Loosen up the tie, disband the committee, unclench, and start to write like a real person. When you have an urge to fix something to as required by the marketing copy user’s guide, kill it.
Learn to write how people talk, and you’ll start to figure out how people read. And then they’ll start reading what you have to say.
Photo: St. Stev (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog writing, blogging, Business Blogging Content, corporate blog writing, corporate blogging
Posted in Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Marketing, Writing | View Comments
Six Secrets to Automating Your Social Media Communication
How can you make your social media communication easier? Are there any tips or tricks to use to reduce some of the heavy lifting you have to do just to get your messages out to the public?
Since I do social media communication, for myself and for clients, I use several shortcuts to automate a lot of what I do. Rather than posting a blog, and then posting the headline and URL to Twitter, then over at Facebook, and again at LinkedIn, I try to do it in one step. Or rather than uploading photos and videos to Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube, and then uploading them to a blog post to share them, I’m able to do it all at once.
I wrote this for Martin Earley, who is the new Inn-Bedded Resorter at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. I was one of five finalists, and got to meet Martin during our stay there. I think he was a great choice, and I know he’ll have a good time. But he also has to report what he’s doing via social media, which can be difficult if you’re trying to post content to both your site and a work site, so I offered him some tips to make his work easier. As I started writing them out, I decided it would be just as easy to put it into a blog post.
Here are a few of the tricks and tools I use to make my life a whole lot easier:
WARNING! Do NOT set up Ping.fm to post something TO your blog if you already set up a Twitterfeed-Ping combination FROM your blog. This will create an infinite loop, which will tear a hole in the space-time continuum. This could be bad.
Now, I know Blogger and WordPress both do this, but Posterous does something that the others won’t do: if you upload photos, Posterous will also send them to your Flickr and/or Picasa accounts. Upload a video, and Posterous will send it to your YouTube account.
So, if you take some photos on your cell phone, attach them to an email, and send them to Posterous, you can send them to any special photo accounts, as well as populate your other blog feeds, which are then sent out to your Twitter, Facebook, etc.
While I don’t recommend automating everything you do in social media, like message creating, it’s at least a great way to lighten your load and make your life easier.
Photo credit: genewolf (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: Blogger, blogging, Flickr, Picasa, Posterous, Social Media, WordPress, youtube
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Social Media Is NOT Socially Isolating
A friend recently sent me a link to Tom Wright’s response to blogging and social media, wherein Wright called the two movements “cultural masturbation.” In it, he warned against the social isolationism of social media and blogging.
Blogging? Seriously? How is blogging any more socially isolating than just plain old writing? Writing a book, writing in your journal, writing a short story, writing a poem. Yes, these are all socially isolating in and of themselves, but what makes blogging soooo much different from every other form of writing?
(Hint: it doesn’t. It’s only believed to be a problem by people who don’t fully understand that blogging is just one more form of publishing.)
NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.
Bah!
It’s easy to say something creates isolationism. Tom Wright says it about blogging and social media, that it will somehow keep people from interacting with other people. He worries that if we spend too much time in front of a computer screen, we will lose regular face-to-face contact with real people. We will substitute computer time for real time, and completely ruin society.
Double Bah!
This is nothing new. Experts have been wringing their hands about something making us lose touch with our humanity for years.
I think the only thing who are isolated from society are the experts.
Tom Wright admits he doesn’t use social media, doesn’t know how to use it, and this somehow qualifies him to speak about the social and relational ramifications of social media? (He does admit to being an avid texter and emailer though; so is he socially isolated?)
For one thing, if he used social media to any degree, he would also know that many social media users — at least in the business setting — turn their online contacts into real-world contacts. I have personally drunk gallons of coffee with people I’ve met online. I’ve had conversations with them, done business with them, become friends with them. All people I never would have met if it hadn’t been for social media.
And I’m not the only one. My entire industry is rife with people who use social media to enhance and even create their careers.
Social Media is Not the Bad Guy, Human Behavior Is
Anything can be a detriment to human relationships: food, sex, exercise, fashion, sports, shopping, work, play, sleep, collecting, hobbies, cooking. You name it, and I can find someone obsessed with it, and then say that __________ is a detriment to human relationships, because someone took it too far.
There are always people who will take something too far. But to look at the outlier, that one in a million person, and extrapolate a calamitous end for anyone and everyone who uses it is just being a sensationalist.
Wright assumes that the people who spend all this time in front of a computer screen don’t work or go to school, and are already teetering on the brink of being a hermit, when they were tipped over the edge into complete solitude by the siren call of the online relationship.
If you’re doing social media right, you’re using it to create relationships that expand and extend into the real world. If you’re not doing it right, well, you probably spend too much time indoors with your eight cats already.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, NT Wright, social isolationism, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Social Media, Twitter, Video, Writing | View Comments
The Number One Reason Companies Need to Blog About Their Products
We write a lot of product blogs for our clients. No matter what size, shape, color, or price of the product, we’ve written several hundred blog product posts.
But for all the hundreds of posts we’ve written, there’s only one reason we do it: to win search.
Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware has long beat the “blogging wins search” drum. (And while I don’t agree about his “myth of the reader” — I believe you should try to get and keep regular, returning readers — he makes a great point about winning search.)
A product blog post is one of the easiest things to write. It’s just 200 – 300 words describing a particular product with a link back to the original catalog entry or product description. Each post equals a backlink back to your website, and the more backlinks you have to your website, the better you rank in a search.
Should I Keep My Blog Inside My Website, or Have a Separate Blog?
We’re fans of keeping a blog and a website together, but there’s no harm in keeping the two separate. After all, the search engines recognize it as a separate website that links back to your original one. However, you’re better off putting your blog on your static website and use internal backlinks to go from the blog to the static pages.
But if you want to boost your search engine rankings even further, create a second blog where you publish your blog posts, and keep it separate from your regular corporate blog where you’re publishing your authority posts, credibility posts, issues posts, and educational posts. This way you can improve search and find first time visitors with one blog, and gain returning readers with the other.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: Chris Baggott, compendium blogware, corporate blogging, product blogging
Posted in Blog ROI, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, Marketing, ProBlogService, Writing | View Comments
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