Corporate Takeover - Web Style
News of Technorati receiving funding had me stirred up with mixed feelings. I blog every now and again how the app has gone far afield of how we all used to talk about it back in the day. Now that I’ve heard they’ve received some more money to go and try to figure out how to take on business services, I realize that I want them to do something with that money. I want them to buy Twingly
Twingly could be considered a remix of Technorati, back to what Technorati did well years ago. They have some neat features, like this widget that shows the recent blogs linking to your post. (And for the record, I like Twingly and what they’ve done.)
Further, they are building a search-meets-reputation kind of data set, very similar to what is in place at Technorati.
So, it works, is a refresh, but harkens back to what Technorati has done a different way.
I say, buy it, absorb it, sort things out, and then build us even more tools we can use. What’s necessary? Personal reputation data, attention data, affinity metadata (if you like this site, you’ll love that site), and more.
Could Technorati do that without buying Twingly? Sure. I think they could. But wouldn’t the infusion of fresh blood make for a potential better swing at the prize?
What do you think on this one?
I use Skitch to do screenshots. It’s cool.
Blog Tune Up-Search
You’d think search wouldn’t matter, but it does. The #1 thing I seek in a blog I’m returning to (versus a newly discovered blog) is a search bar. Why? Because often, I’m returning to a blog to find a story.
Put your search box WAY up high on your page, above the fold, if at all possible. It matters.
Free Tips for Your Blog
Yesterday was my birthday. Today, I’m giving you a little gift in the form of a free PDF to download: Building Community Around Your Blog. Feel free to send copies to anyone you like.
Some of you might be practicing this stuff already, but maybe there are one or two tips that will be useful.
I wrote this up originally for my new friend, Nina Simonds from Spices of Life, a video show my friend, Steve Garfield helps produce. We were talking about ways to further develop community and build audience.
What else? How are you building community around YOUR blog?
We Still Need Better Filters
With billions of blogs and hundreds of thousands of podcasts and with Flickr and with site after site after site worth of data to consume, we have the “get it to my desk or phone” part of the problem fairly well managed. With services like Google Reader and Friend Feed, and del.icio.us to a lesser extent, we’re starting to find ways to collect all this information in one place (or a few places).
But what’s missing are filters. Twitter has no filtering mechanism, nor even a “bubble up the good stuff” mechanism. Google Reader lets friends share what they think are good blog posts, but obviously this works out that what YOU think is a good post and what I think is a good post might not always match up. There needs to be another layer of filtering such that I can choose to read your promoted posts, but I should then get the opportunity to bubble my best (and by “best,” I mean most closely informationally aligned) sharing sources to the top of the heap.
It’s all still too linear. Too boolean.
Who’s making the right kinds of filters to promote the best stuff? Who’s helping us suppress the drivel?
How would YOU like to see filters work?
How Blogs Improve Customer Service AND Product Development
Looking for an example of how blogs can be more than just product releases and company news dump? Here’s an example of the wiki software company, Wetpaint talking about a recent product update, and addressing comments posted by users after the initial release.
Our “out with the old, in with the new” spirit motivated a decision to fold the home page Recent Site Activity module (formerly located in the right-hand column) into the brand-new What’s New site area. While the What’s New dashboard provides approximately 1,726 times the awesome, many among the Wetpaint faithful liked the “at a glance” nature of the Recent Site Activity module.
What did they do about it? They responded, of course, and gave their customers what they wanted. So, in their blog, they performed both a customer service act (responding to their user base) and product development (adjusting feature sets to match user expectations). Pretty slick, eh?
Full story is here.
And I bet YOU have examples of this all over the place, don’t you? Feel free to share.
Keeping the Blogging Fires Burning
Bryce from A Bite of Sanity asked me about how one might continue to care about blogging once the fires have dimmed a bit. I’m not sure of Bryce’s specific circumstances, but I will tell you about how I keep up such a prolific schedule of blogging and give you some tips on how to keep it moving.
Write for Your Audience
I write every post as if I’m telling you something that I hope will be useful. If I were writing just to please myself, that’s easier to stop doing. I write with you in mind, and that keeps me motivated to give you more quality and a certain level of quantity, too.
Writers are Readers
Read constantly. I blaze through over 1000 blog posts a day. I don’t read them all, but I process about 1000. How? Quickly. I skim through, find points that interest me, and then REALLY read the ones that matter to me. Along the way, I hit Shift-S in Google Reader and share them on my feed with you.
The point is, the more I read, the more I’m exposed to good ideas. Ditto with podcasts. I heard four blog posts in the most recent episode of This Week in Tech.
Keep a Text File of Topics
I’m stumped from time to time on what to write next, and then, at other times, I can churn out 100 blog topics for a single post (most comments and trackbacks to date on that post, by the way). But having a text file I can open and peruse gives me plenty of material to choose from. Mix this with my first point about writing for the people who matter to me, and I’m fairly well-managed.
See What Mainstream Magazines Do
Disclosure: I’m stealing this tip from Brian Clark at Copyblogger. He does these posts where he dissects an issue of a popular mainstream mag and then shares how you might translate those article titles into blogging topics.
If It’s Because You’re Feeling Unheard
That’s another matter altogether. One way to get heard is to be relevant. I say this to people all the time when they complain that no one reads their blog. Relevant to whom is an important point, by the way. What matters to me isn’t what matters to others. But if you find the people who you think will love your stuff, keep writing ( podcasting, whatevering) to THAT group, because they’re like minded.
And other ways to be heard are to encourage the conversation in other places, including reposting your RSS feed to your various social networks (the old “use networks like Facebook as outposts” trick), and inviting people in to comment and/or guest post.
Keeping it Burning For Me
For me, I’m fueled by comments. Not just “hey, great post,” but comments (or even better are blog posts that reference something I wrote and expand on it) are what drive me. My wife calls me up sometimes at work and says, “Wow! 23!” And I never know what she means, but then, she’s talking about some blog post. Ask Liz Strauss about comments. She knows her number.
And besides, I have to blog. I have too many ideas to just let them stay in my head. And after I complete the Social Media 100, you’ll see where I go next with all this stuff. I think you’ll like it. I hope you will. Because it’s going to be another evolution of what keeps my own blogging fires burning.
Photo credit, Lainey’s Repertoire
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
20 Blogging Projects for You
Sometimes, we get stuck for topics. I know how that can be. That’s why I wrote 100 Blog Topics I Hope You Write. Here are 20 more blog ideas you can take and use for springboards into your own projects. If you use one, please consider linking back to [chrisbrogan.com], so the community (and I) can find your great posts. Here are the 20 blogging ideas for you:
- My Town - Take us on a photo tour showing us 5-7 things that would make a new visitor to your town happy to see.
- Make Something - Show us how you make your lasagna in a video. Show us how you organize your files on your computer. Take us through in a way that WE can do the same when you’re done.
- Share Five Friends- Show us five friends’ blogs and give us a blurb on why you like them.
- Talk Slowly - Teach us a difficult tech concept, piece by piece, with analogies, and drawings made off napkins or Flickr pics.
- Five Tools I Use - Show us your web toolbox. (Add or subtract as needed).
- My Mother, My Daughter - Doesn’t have to be exactly this, but the idea is to interview your parent and your child, and ask them five questions to compare their perspectives.
- My Media Making Process - Show us your podcasting or videoblogging or photoblogging (or whatever) setup, and talk us through the procedure.
- A Cause to Connect - Share your social cause of choice, and give us a background, the challenge they face, and ways to connect and be helpful.
- Renovation Project - How would you take a mainstream publication or media product (like a TV show) and gear it up for the new media world?
- Business Blogging - What’s your take on business blogging? What advice will you give tomorrow’s company bloggers?
- Without Words - Can you post a story told completely in pictures? How about sounds?
- Conversations With Past Masters - Seek out a journalist or a radio veteran or a former TV personality and interview them on how producing media was in their day, and what they see coming out of this social media space.
- Tomorrow’s Classroom - How would you use social media tools to enrich or change the learning experience ?
- Next Record Label - BMG called. They want YOU to launch a new kind of record label. What do you do?
- A Media Package - Coke called (boy, you’re lucky!), and they want something to go along with their print and TV campaign. What would YOU make for them, or how will you tell people about new Chocolate Coke?
- Secret Experts - You know lots about how to be a digital citizen. You just don’t realize that other’s DON’T know it. Share some tips for people coming online and engaging in social networking.
- Fan Next - Fans have new tools to aid in their appreciation of their passion, be that sports or sci fi, or whatever. How do the tools of social media change the way people express their appreciation? How do YOU participate?
- My Big Whoops - Early on, you might have made a few mistakes in social media. Maybe you pronounced Friendster the best social network of all time. Perhaps you thought Jaiku would replace Twitter (look back at April 07 to where I mention something of that nature). What can you teach others from your experience?
- How You Can Win Against Big Media - You’re out there proclaiming newspapers dead. Great. Teach us how to put the matter to bed, once and for all.
- How Big Media Can Participate - Big media’s not dead. Are you kidding? They’ve got the skills and the experience. They just need a tool refresh. Show them the way.
So there you have it. 20 new things to consider doing. Which ones appeal to you?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
