How to Launch a Group Blog Project
At PodCamp Pittsburgh 3, I launched an impromptu project to build a group blog to be the voice of the city. I enlisted the help of Andy Quayle, Norm Huelsman, Brandice and others. We’re still in the process of building it, but I’ll share the starting steps.
How to Launch a Group Blog Project
Step 1: Choose a Domain Name
This took more time than we thought, but we got it within 30 minutes. We went to Ajaxwhois.com and used that for brainstorming. It’s a domain name finding software that works quickly, and shows you quickly (very!) which domain names are taken.
We decided on OMGPittsburgh.com, which was halfway funny, a little irreverent, and besides, it was getting late.
Step 2: Buy the Domain
We used a GoDaddy.com account to register the domain. If you’re into blogging or podcasting, more than half of your friends have affiliate codes that will get you some kind of discount. Be kind and use theirs. By the way, Ajaxwhois has links straight to GoDaddy on the site, so you can do it that way, too. (I have no relationship with the site. I just think it’s useful.)
Step 3: Point the Domain to a Host
We used Tubu. (Note: I’m an affiliate for Tubu). The reasons were: it’s $10 a year to host a WordPress install. They have a “build a WordPress blog” setup that makes it SILLY easy to set up a blog. And Tubu was a sponsor of PodCamp Pittsburgh.
Outside of those reasons, Tubu is inexpensive, we know the owner, and it was easy. Reason enough?
Step 4: Decide on the Software
We picked WordPress as our blogging platform of choice. Most of us were already users of that software. You use what makes you comfy. We launched a WordPress install on our Tubu site, which as I mentioned earlier was silly/easy to do.
Step 5: Decide on the Plugins
WordPress allows you to extend your blog by adding specific plugins to the product. I won’t tell you the details of this here, as there are no doubt better blog posts. What I find about how people decide on the plugins is that you look at sites you love, figure out (or ask) what they use, and then use those.
We haven’t loaded all our plugins, but what we wanted to do was make sure our group blog had good spam protection, good sharing buttons like ShareThis or AddThis, etc, and a few other things. Which ones do you suggest?
Step 6: Decide on a Theme
For a personal blog, I’d pick Thesis, no doubt. It’s the best WordPress theme out there, and made by Chris Pearson, a true pro.
For our group blog, we wanted something more group-friendly. We checked out what Blog Harrisburg was using, and we found it was made by Woo Themes. We started over there, thought we’d pick one of their great themes, but because this was a free/cheap project, we ended up choosing K2, which is a functional, editable theme. Not my first choice, but I think it’s a good starting point.
Step 7: Build Passport Accounts
I talk briefly about establishing passports in this post. The basic premise is this: if you’re going to use the web, you need accounts at certain places. Here’s our working list of passports you’ll need:
- Yahoo (for flickr, delicious, upcoming, stumbleupon)
- Google (for gmail, googledocs, calendar)
- Twitter (technically, Twitter’s an outpost).
- Disqus (for commenting).
- FeedBurner (which isn’t a passport, but was an account we needed.
What else should we have?
Step 8: Build Outposts
I talk about using outposts here. Essentially, build places that will help get people to know where your site is, and find people where they are instead of hoping they show up. Some outposts:
- Facebook (in this case, we’re thinking of building a fan page)
- MySpace
- Flickr (for group photo projects)
Step 9: Start the REAL Planning
We started a wiki where we could build out the conversation about the platform. Planning for a group blog is probably a completely different post. I’ll write about the mindset in more details later. But here’s how we started:
- Group blog to be the voice of Pittsburgh, meaning a way that outsiders will learn about the city. For people inside the city, we agree that I Heart PGH is doing a great job. So are some other sites.
- Multi-authors. The site won’t work without dozens of authors to carry the load.
- Goal of people explaining why it’s so cool to come to Pittsburgh for business. We figure there are tons of ways to talk about travel. If people talk about the city in ANY way, that’s great. But if I were focusing the efforts, I’d point it towards business, because that would have the largest impact on what a blog might do for the city.
- Administered by a few to start, until an obvious leader rises to the top (someone with passion for the direction of the site).
Beyond that, we didn’t get into the planning as much YET. I presume the wiki will be a way to start that ball rolling.
Step 10: Have Fun
From here, it’s all a learning process. Every group project is different. Dad-o-Matic launched powerfully, but what surprised me was that we had SO MANY AUTHORS right out of the gate. Dads love signing up to be part of the action. I didn’t expect that.
This step is probably worth 10 blog posts.
What Else?
That’s how we got started. How have you done it in the past? What steps seem to be missing? What else would you recommend for this project flow?
Quick Dad-o-Matic Update
After 20-ish days, I’m pretty happy with the state of Dad-o-Matic, the site I started for dads to write about parenting. We have 33 authors, 65 posts, and over 230 regular RSS readers. I don’t have the daily stats visit number yet because I guess I didn’t install the stats thing the right way. But hey, 230 regular RSS readers in under a month is pretty cool, eh?
What I’m most pleased about is how excited and passionate the dads posting on the site are about their thoughts. It’s decidedly different than I thought the project would go. For whatever reason, I thought I’d have to beg people to contribute. At this point, I’m just as surprised as anyone at the number of great posts I see there. I love what I’m reading, and I can say that, because it’s rarely something I’ve written.
So, what it’s teaching me is that great content ideas can launch well, that great authors are just waiting for a project that might spur their ideas, and that it’s not that difficult to launch a new project, if you have the support of a passionate community (that’s you).
Ed pointed out that the commenters on Dad-o-Matic are pretty kick-butt, and I can’t disagree. It’s really amazing how great people have been. Wonderful community forming there, and how can I not love that? Thanks for the reminder, Ed.
Note: I just made Paisano administrator. Why? Because he fricken rocks, and does a lot of great things. He’s writing on four blogs at this point. But if I were him, and if Pete and Ostrow plan for 2009, I’d dump me/Dad-o-Matic the moment Mashable offers him a full time gig.
Thanks for reading Dad-o-Matic. I’m loving it, and glad you’re into it, too.
Social Media Today- Stop By
I first met Robin Carey at a Marketing Profs event in Boston, but I’d known about Social Media Today for a while. They host a site that gathers some of the brightest authors out there on the topic, like Amber Naslund, Scott Monty, Beth Harte, and many more. It’s a place where you can dig in, read a mountain of great information, and understand what’s going on in the social media space with a quick glance.
They have some other neat projects like a white paper talking to IBM about employee-centric social media. They create other communities like The Customer Collective and My Venture Pad and more, which shows how community-centric content can build relationships for businesses.
If you haven’t already discovered Social Media Today for yourself, stop by. It’s worth your time.
Picnics
What should be free? Who pays for it? Where does it all go? Should blogging and money be kept far apart from each other? Should blogs have ads? Are all links really paid, as the story goes? How does money impact authenticity? Who should pay for the picnic? Let’s talk about money. Monetization. Loot.
These are questions that we all have opinions about. People and companies have been vilified for their choices. The righteous burn their effigies on the front lawn of any blog that mixes free content with advertising. The very notion that commerce and information exchange be permitted to mix seems incongruous. Never mind the fact that media works that way. Never mind the fact that CHURCH works that way. There has to be a strong distance between the exchanges, or else it seems evil. You’re charging your community, etc.
I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time. Partly because it’s my job to understand how to mix information and money-making. The other part of it is because I like to help people figure out how to do business in the Internet age. I experiment, share the results, and experiment some more.
I also run conferences, both professionally, and for passion. Between media making, conferences, and the other ways that I work in the information-for-money business, I’ve got some ideas, and I’m going to share my perspective. I predict this post will be one of the more polarizing of my last several months. You’ll either get it and agree, or you’ll tell me why the world must all function on what’s free. I can argue both sides of the coin.
The Triangle
In the fall of 2006, I quit my day job and joined the circus. Jeff Pulver, legendary VoIP pioneer and long-time producer of the VON conference series hired me. In the waning months of 2007, I parted ways and joined Stephen Saber’s CrossTech Media. During this same time frame, I also worked with Christopher S. Penn and Whitney Hoffman on PodCamps.
In events, there’s a triangle. I learned this mostly from Jeff. If you can, the best of all worlds goes like this:
* Attract the brilliant people and make them the community.
* Charge the businesses who support this community for the event.
* Make it worth it for those businesses, so that they want to keep supporting the event.
So, if you want your “friends” to come to a conference, make the event such that it will help them do their job better. Then, don’t ask your friends for money. Ask their employers for money (ticket cost). Then, ask exhibitors and sponsors who want the friends as customers for money. Then, you have enough money to run a conference, and make a living trying to build information.
For the content, focus super hard on the people/friends. Don’t look to what the sponsors/exhibitors think the story is. They know more about the today than they do the tomorrow. Unless you make friends with tomorrow-focused companies (my favorite plan).
That’s kind of traditional conferences in a nutshell. It’s WAY not easy. But that’s the rough premise.
Unconferences, like PodCamp and BarCamp and the like, do it differently. The premise is like this: we can all get together for a minimal cost and run something that’s useful, without making it a business unto itself. We can subsist, and everyone will leave better educated.
With PodCamps, we’ve built and built on the experience, such that the ones we run in Boston cost more than a typical *.Camp, but the payload is (hopefully) much more focused. We’ve asked for more money from the community, but we’ve turned that back around into a quality event. We find sponsors who want access to our community, and then we try to matchmake that relationship a little, so that everyone understand’s each other’s potential value. BUT we do it without a lot of heavy-handedness at PodCamps. It’s more organic. That’s the whole unconference thing.
YOU can start an unconference. You don’t need anyone’s permission.
So there are two models.
Content on Websites
The web has crushed a lot of former money makers. Look at newspapers. Look at magazines. We are VERY used to getting our content for free. We love it free. And we are finding more and more ways to get top shelf, quality content for free. It’s a great and wonderful thing. How many of us would pay a few bucks for a blog? Not very many. (Well wait, aren’t Kindle users doing just that?)
So there are all kinds of people churning out quality content, and the basic premise is that they’ll get their money elsewhere. I sure do. Lots of people do. But let’s go deeper for a second.
You learn actionable things from ProBlogger, from CopyBlogger, from Seth Godin, from me, and from others. All that content is free. It’s out there for you to learn from, profit from, build business with, and hopefully succeed. Heck, if we’re not helping you succeed, then why are we doing this daily?
Often discounted in these conversations are blogs about making money online. Those fall into another whole category of the web. And yet, some of those folks, like Ted Murphy are out there just trying to come up with new ways to build better relationships between people who have something to sell and people who want to facilitate that sale. There’s a whole culture out there figuring this stuff out, and I’m getting to know more and more of them. As I do, my mindset on how blogs interact with advertising and marketing has changed a great deal.
My Current Thinking Boiled Down
- Making money isn’t evil. HOW you make money can be. Keeping the whole picture in place helps. (For instance, in my case, I sell certain services and information - like the New Marketing Summit, but then I give others away free/cheap - my blog and PodCamp).
- Disclosure is key. If you’re going to sell something on your site, disclose that you’ve got a relationship with that company/product. ( I show my disclosures on my About page).
- Maintain the triangle. I don’t want YOU to pay for my content. I want people who need my help professionally to pay for my distilled thinking.
- Keep context. My site is about educating you. If it becomes about products to market, that’s a context swap. If I decide to build a site about selling you things, I’ll make that another URL, and you can opt to visit or not.
- Someone has to pay for the picnic. There are some really great bloggers out there who are blogging a bit less lately. I won’t name them. They have jobs that require them to focus down hard on revenues right now. I try my hardest to have the things I’m paid for (like conferences) keep me out here on the blanket giving away delicious snacks. But someone always has to pay for the picnic.
Your Take
It’s your turn to weigh in. Why should everything be free? Why are ads evil? Where do you think this money should be made? If you were running the business, [chrisbrogan.com], or Scobleizer.com , or Annhandley.com , or whoever, what would you do differently? How would YOU make your money?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Photo credit, Timothy Lloyd
Dad-o-Matic- Week One
Quick report on how things are going since launching Dad-o-Matic:
Dad-o-Matic
Authors: 16 registered authors.
Posts: 15 published posts.
Comments: 75 comments.
Web hits: (don’t know, stats didn’t pick any up. Gotta troubleshoot.)
RSS subscribers: 37
Google references: 53
Blogsearch : 57
Technorati: (don’t know, it fell down when I was searching)
Affiliate/Ad money made: $4 . It’s week one.
I’m really proud with what we have, especially with the 16 authors. I just added Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins of Mashable fame, Jeffrey Sass of lots of places face, and David Petherick from Digital Biographer to name a few. They’ve got more posts coming out shortly, as do the entire team.
And I hope to pry at least one more dad post out of Guy Kawasaki for next month. (Mind you, I don’t pay him as much as Amex.)
So far, it’s been fun. I’m going to think about how to get more out of it, for the parents in the community as well as how to make the business of running a content blog like Dad-o-Matic make sense.
What’s your take? What do you think about the project overall? What would you do differently, if you were starting Dad-o-Matic?
Selling Blog Content the Clean Way
I’m a fan of GigaOM and all the sites that Om Malik has put together (my favorite is Web Worker Daily). I like Om, himself, though we’ve only spoken twice briefly. But today, I finally noticed just how clever he’s getting.
At the end of this really great article about some of the future plans of Citrix, I noticed the links to purchase the full report via GigaOm Briefings.
How brilliant (and yet the old fashioned way) is that?
The blog post was great. I felt engaged. I read every word, and I got to the bottom feeling like I’d had a good read. Now, had I a business need to go further, I’d have definitely sprung to buy the full piece, because I got so much for free (and that’s the key point here= don’t give a dribbly sentence or three- give a whole tapas-sized meal), that I KNEW that the full article must be chock full of content.
How hard is it to make a post, and then make a LOT MORE for someone to buy and continue the experience?
I’m totally stealing this idea. You should consider it, too.
Creating Honest Content Marketing
Content marketing has an opportunity, should you decide to take it. Instead of going the route of old marketing, you who create content with the intent of building business relationships could try going the route of being honest, being genuine, being human. It’s no more difficult than the alternative: crafting something that’s dishonest but perhaps shinier. The thing is, if you start with honest and genuine, there’s a chance that people will give you extra points for it, in the longer run.
In a recent post, Seth Godin offers some storytelling suggestions, and the best of it is at the bottom of the post:
Start with the truth. Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach. Describe the truth through their worldview. That’s your story. When you overreach, you always fail. Not today, but sooner or later, the truth wins out. Negative or positive, the challenge isn’t just to tell the truth. It’s to tell truth that resonates.
In her post about a series of viral videos created by OfficeMax, B.L. Ochman quotes Vinny Waren about how words get shifted one notch higher in marketing speak: “..funny becomes HILARIOUS. and interesting becomes FASCINATING.”
That’s exactly where the troubles start.
Keith Burwell writes on Better Closer about GM’s employee discount pricing program, and the fact that we all know that just means they’re not selling enough cars.
See a thread here?
Make your creations honest and open. Why not? It strikes me that most things would work better that way. Am I wrong?
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.
The Importance of Seeds
When looking at content marketing projects like Digital Nomads, if you get there early, it’s going to look like a bunch of posts by people at Dell. But that’s okay. It’s Dell’s project, and they hope that it grows into something that others will find valuable and build around. They’re planting seeds.
All content projects grow that way. The people who create the project (or those who eventually own the project) must start somewhere with putting something there. Otherwise, it looks horribly empty and barren. If you visit a farm, you don’t want to see a big stretch of brown soil. You want to see lush patches of greenery, promising the harvest that will come next. The same is true of a platform built for content and conversations.
When starting Project Dogfood, I set up several conversation threads, and started the first questions in all of them. I wrote three different topics for each thread, with the hope that people would join up, get involved, and have a conversation. And it worked.
Right now, the project is still heavily tended and seeded by me as community manager. But over time, some of those seeds will take root, will grow, and will become whole, rich crops of delicious information for us to tend, harvest, and celebrate.
Building something from content requires seeds.
What are you doing to help?
Photo credit, starmist1
How Content Marketing Will Shake the Tree
Content marketing, in my definition, is the ability to produce useful and entertaining information that is worthwhile on its own, but that might also be useful towards a sale or subsequent action. For instance, a really good review of a product from a trusted source is content marketing. Every time Paisano writes about an amazing piece of software that he loves, it’s a kind of content marketing that I’d call reputation- or authority-based content marketing (meaning, maybe he’ll get consulting work based on someone feeling he’s a thought leader).
Before I go further, I should say that there are variations on the theme. I was speaking with Todd Defren of Shift the other day about content marketing, and this was his take on it. That’s another great way to look at it. I spoke a few weeks back to Francois Gossieaux about another variation that he’s done for years. It’s all in the same ballpark. This is essentially what Brian Clark has talked about for two years and counting.
Content Marketing Will Deliver
First, it’s simply a better way to go. Why spend time, money, and creative effort making fake, glossy, slick pieces of marketing material when something honest and informative (and ENTERTAINING!) would likely do a better job? Twizzlers are great, but not for breakfast. I think traditional marketing efforts, the slick and shiny kind, are like red licorice. I think of content marketing as a well-balanced meal. Crazy? Maybe.
Let’s say your goal is lead generation. A good chunk of marketing effort and attention seems to be shifting in this direction, especially for products and services with a complex sell. In a traditional approach, you might work very hard on explain just why your product is the best tool for a certain job. But what if, instead, you wrote up some really great suggestions for how one might do that certain job better, with or without your product, and then made a very simple link back to whatever your product offer might be? Which would offer more value to your prospective customer?
Slower? Yes. More effort? Yes. But I believe the results will speak for themselves. Instead of gorging on data culled from yet another Free iPhone offer, you will start to accumulate relationships with people who actually care about the space where your company is doing business, and might actually benefit from your product/service.
Examples of Great Content Marketing
One just sold for $125 Million. Daily Candy. If you want proof in the pudding, there’s a big fat content package that someone put to good work.
The Fast Forward Blog produced by Corante is a great lead generator for an enterprise search company. I’m subscribed.
Whole Foods has all kinds of great content. In their case, it’s a bit of customer retention, community support, and also lead generation. Look at how they use Twitter, too. Great content marketing, and filled with personality.
My two most overused but beloved stories of content marketing: Financial Aid Podcast and Wine Library TV. Both sell a product, but do it by giving you lots of interesting information.
What Comes Next
For you to consider doing this, I’d recommend the following steps:
- Decide on your content marketing strategy. Is this lead generation, customer retention, thought leadership, or related to product marketing?
- Determine if you have content creators on staff right now, and whether this is something they should be doing for your business. If no, start thinking of whether you want to hire or source this kind of work.
- Determine the type of content to create, the frequency of your new materials, the form it will take, and whether you have a platform in place to deliver this without much effort.
- Build appropriate measurement and listening tools around the platform so that you know who is doing what with the content you’re creating, and so that you can see the impact it has outside of your website as well.
- Wrap this all into a process with ties back to your standard lines of business, including marketing, sales, and possibly even R&D. Ensure that this isn’t an island, but rather a strong part of how you intend to deliver value for your organization.
This kind of project can be done in a pilot flavor, and/or can be done in lots of different iterations. I’ve been looking at it very closely for the last several months as part of my work with my colleagues at CrossTech Partners. As businesses are seeking to acquire more quality leads, to retain their existing customers, and to deliver relevant sales, this is where I think the most impact can be had.
Are you using content creation to build your business? Have you tried any of this yet? Where have you seen this done well or otherwise? What’s your take?
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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.
Photo credit, Jon David Oakley
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How to Create Business From a Blog
This post was a request from Eric.
How to Create Business from a Blog
First, let’s agree that there are many ways to create business from a blog. I’ll cover a handful to start. You’re very welcome to share more advice and ideas in the comments section.
Straightforward Sales
Blogs are a wonderful piece of software to use as a home base for several kinds of website projects. For example, I believe Chris Pearson used a Wordpress blog to build his DIYThemes.com site. There, he’s selling a beautiful theme called Thesis for $87. That’s one way to create business from a blog: a simple sales platform.
Affiliate Marketing
Another way is through Affiliate Marketing. For example, go back and hover your mouse over the URL for the two links to Chris’s latest project. You should see this: http://diythemes.com?a_aid=t4ag3 . That part after the ? is an affiliate code. Some sites don’t really divulge that they’re doing affiliate marketing. Others make disclosure very vital. Now that you know to look for it, you might look at other blogs you read and see when they’re slipping you an affiliate tag here and there.
Want to learn more about Affiliate Marketing? I’ve been reading Revenews, and I also plan to attend (and speak at) the upcoming Affiliate Summit event in Boston in August 2008. One reason why I plan to attend is to understand this space more, because I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about the variations on the theme. Affiliate marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry, so there’s something there to consider.
Lead Generation
Blogs are a great way to establish thought leadership, and further, to encourage lead generation. For instance, a lot of what I do by writing this blog is share with the world at large what I know about social media and how it might apply to your business. My primary goal is to give you as much information as I can possibly share, so that you can likely run off and solve most things on your own.
My secondary goal is to encourage you to contact me, should you have business needs. I work with CrossTech Partners to help me fulfill larger projects (such as building Market Relationship Management platforms and the like). This blog often starts conversations with people who need next-step help. And that’s great. It’s another value, and another way to create business from a blog.
A great person who gives in abundance with her blog is Liz Strauss. She derives some amount of leads from her thoughtful and meaningful efforts, too.
Content Marketing
He could tell you this every day, but Brian Clark has been praising the value of content marketing since 2006. This is basically how the Financial Aid Podcast brought millions in revenue to Christopher S. Penn’s Student Loan Network. There’s nothing shady about it. Chris creates great podcasts and blog posts and uses the trust earned through information sharing and helping others as one way to drive sales of his primary product: student loans. He’s the only student loan guy I know who gets profiled by BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, and all kinds of other press.
See also Gary Vaynerchuk, the only wine seller I know who has a Hollywood agent. He’s that cool.
Content marketing is essentially doing great things with content but with a goal that this work leads back to a sale on top of being useful and interesting. To me, this is where it’s at right now. If I were looking to build even more business, and I might just do so, I’d blend content marketing with a mix of my own products, and perhaps some well-chosen affiliate opportunities, and start from there.
By the way, content marketing has the added benefit of helping you with organic search engine optimization, meaning it helps people searching for things find it easier.
Other Opportunities
There are lots of other ways to make money from a blog. I’m definitely not qualified to talk about search marketing, for instance, but this article by Paul J. Bruemmer looks like a useful starting point. There are also projects like Ted Murphy’s Izea, which covers pay-per-post and Social Spark. I’m not versed enough to talk about any of these, but maybe Ted will stop by and talk about his, or you can swing by the IZEA blog.
The web is an interesting place to make money these days, and there are many ways to take a swing at it. Be open about what you’re doing. Be helpful. Offer value. And maybe something will come of it for you.
**Update: I’m not sure how I forgot Darren’s and Chris’s book - ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income . (And yes, that’s an affiliate link). ;)
Your Ideas
If you have some other great ideas for creating business from a blog, let’s talk about them in the comments. Some will be promoted to the main post via updates, so please fill out your URL when you comment, so I can give you credit if I use it in the post.
What do you think?
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.
Photo credit, Rochelle, et al
