Tag: blogging

Turning Your Blog Into a Book

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WebProNews recently spoke with Ellen Gerstein, the Director of Marketing at John Wiley & Sons, the publishing firm behind the "For Dummies" books among many others. She discussed the impact blogs and social media have had on the publishing industry and gave some advice for bloggers looking to get books published.

"I think there’s a general impression that people aren’t buying books anymore, and while there may be good content out there, it’s really hard to find the readers who are going to pay money for a book," she says. "There are still books being written that have great content and are selling well, and are finding their readers…"

"I think there will always be a place for books…As long as we work to keep our books relevant, that we deliver them on the platforms that people are looking for…yes, the rise of the Kindle and the iPad and the iBookstore have really done wonders for publishing," she adds. "It’s giving us a new medium to reach people, and having that platform for our content has been a good thing."

While there may still be plenty of people buying books, whether that’s in the form of print or digital publications, there is no question that there is a lot of free content out there available to be consumed.

"I think Twitter and blogging is helping us find new authors, but in some senses, it is making us focus more on what the customer is really looking for," Gerstein tells WebProNews. "I think there’s less leeway, because there are so many avenues for putting you content out there, that we have to be more choosey about what goes into a book."

Many bloggers out there have no doubt considered turning some of their best posts into books. After all, you’ve done all of that writing about a particular subejct. Why not?

"It is a very different process between what works in kind of nuggets of content on the web and what works on the printed page, and it is more formal," says Gerstein. "One of our authors, C.C. Chapman, was on our panel [at BlogWorld], and he made the point of saying, ‘when I write a blog post, I can go back and change any of it. Once I put something into print, it’s done.’"

That’s the magic of the web, but when you’re talking about digital formats for books, the possibilities are opened up there as well.

Gerstein offered the following advice for bloggers looking to get published. "I would say, really concentrate on your platform. Figure out what your message is and what community you want to connect with."

"It’s the people who have the platforms, who are out there creating good content and bringing quality information to a community that we’re looking for, and I think if you work on serving that niche…then take it to talking to a publisher, talking to an agent, considering writing a book. Make sure you’re sure who you’re speaking to and why you’re speaking to them before you take that next step."

Of course there are self-publishing options on there. In fact I actually spoke with BookBrewer.com at BlogWorld. This is a service that will let you turn your blog into an eBook and get it on eReading devices like the Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, Android, Kobo, etc. and in online stores like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders. There are also other options, such as Lulu, InstantPublisher, etc.

November 1, 2010
Pro Blogger Darren Rowse on Taking Blogging From a Hobby to a Business

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Few people are more highly regarded in the blogging-for-business world than Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net. He has essentially set the blueprint for how to turn a blog into a business, and is one of the go-to sources for tips on how to do as much. He had a chat with WebProNews at BlogWorld last week, after speaking in one of the more popular keynotes at the event.

Rowse discussed with us how people can get started blogging, and eventually turn their blogs into moneymakers. "You need a blog to start with, then really my first priority would be getting some useful content on there – some content that’s actually going to solve some problems for people," he said. "So if you’re blog’s a how-to type blog, you want to start thinking ‘what’s a beginner in this topic need to know?’ and start writing that type of content that you can be referring back to later, so that when you start promoting it, you’ve got content there that they’ll find, that is engaging for them. So that is probably the first step, and then, it’s about putting yourself out there, and trying to find some readers."

Have you been able to turn your blog into a business? Let us know.

If the how-to path is the one you’re interested in traveling, I’d reccommend reading this article, discussing ways to create effective how-to articles, with tips provided by John Hewitt, who has written technical manuals for companies like IBM, Intuit, and Motorola.

Either way, "First you want to know who you want to attract, because it’s kind of easy to get noticed on the Internet, but if you do it in the wrong way, you could actually 1. take yourself further away from your goals, but 2. find the wrong readers," noted Rowse. "You could get..readers from a place like Digg or StumbleUpon…some of these social bookmarking sites, but they may not actually be the type of person that you want to journey with for the whole long term. So define who you want to reach, and ask the question, ‘where can I find them online?’"

"Answering that question, for me, on my photography site led me to Flickr. Flickr’s a place where people have cameras, and not everyone takes great photos, so it was a place for me to develop a presence. For other blogs, it may lead you to Twitter or Facebook or another blog or a forum that is related to your particular niche."

Forums can actually be great for your brand (in some cases, maybe even more so than Facebook or Twitter). Forums are a good source of relevant discussion to your niche, provided you engage in the right places. They can help you establish yourself as an expert (not unlike Q&A sites), and they can be particularly good for building a search presence. Forum threads do really well in Google for certain queries, particularly when someone is looking for help with something.

"I think a lot of bloggers treat their blog as a hobby, and I mean, that certainly is the way I started out," Rowse told us. "I didn’t realize you could make money from blogging when I started. But my wife kind of gave me an ultimatum after a while. I’d began to dream about my blog becoming a business, and certainly was moving in that direction…one day, she kind of said, ‘you need to do it’. Then she gave me six months to get it done."

"Once I had that ultimatum, and that deadline in mind, it just switched in my mind and started making me thinking of it as a business now, and really that was the turning point for me, because I began to think more strategically about who was reading my blog, what they needed, and products that I could launch to them," he continued. "But also, I got on the phone for the fist time and started ringing advertisers to create a direct relationship with them."

Rowse recently discussed using temporary blogs as stepping stones for your broader goals:

"A temporary blog is a blog that I suggest some new users would start," Rowse told WebProNews. "A lot of people say you have to choose a niche, and get a domain name and that, but a lot of bloggers find that so overwhelming that they don’t know what they want to write about yet, they don’t know what their voice is, they don’t know what to name their blog as…so perhaps for some people, it’s more appropriate just to start up any blog – just to start learning about blogging, and start getting into the rhythm of writing, and to find what they actually enjoy about blogging and what topics they enjoy. Get some reader feedback on that."

"That’s kind of how I started," he added. "My first blog, I don’t actually write on anymore, but it helped me to build a bit of an audience, but also refine what I wanted to write about, and learn the tools as well. So, just jump on a WordPress.com blog or a Blogger blog. It doesn’t matter what the platform is if you’re not gonna be there for the long term, and just start blogging for a while, and then you’ll begin to find your ideas are refined."

On the biggest problems Rowse sees from others that are blogging, he said, "I find a lot of bloggers is, their biggest problem is they don’t start. They’re convinced that they should have a blog, but they don’t actually do it. And they can do that because they feel overwhelmed by the choices in setting it up, or they can feel nervous and not worthy to really write, but you can’t let that hold you back. You’ve got to actually start. And then another thing – a lot of bloggers just regurgitate what everyone else is writing, and they don’t actually have anything unique or useful to say to people."

"So really, it’s about identifying human need, and problems that people really have, and build something that matters to people," he concluded. "Even if it’s basic stuff that you think is too basic, a lot of people out there need to know that stuff. They’re asking those questions."

What are the biggest issues you face in your blogging efforts? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Watch our past interviews with Rowse here for even more helpful advice.

October 23, 2010
Social Media: Power to the People?

The keynote at BlogWorld this morning was an interesting one, looking at how new media has changed the landscape of politics. Mark Penn, former Chief Messaging Architect for President Clinton and Karen Hughes, former Chief Messaging Architect for President Bush discussed the power blogs and social media have had on shifting elections and public perception.

Penn discussed a surge in independence and how we are no longer living in a "red and blue" country. We’re seeing the parties themselves dividing and new movements emerging among both Democrats and Republicans. "There’s a wave of discontent," says Penn.

To say the least.

Blogging and social media have given the people a voice. As more and more people have turned to new media, more have been able to consume a wider range of content and opinions, respond to it (in a way that others can also see and possibly benefit from), and spread it. Because of these things, there is more power in the hands of the people than ever. Anyone can go online and say anything they want and be heard.

That’s a very powerful thing, but as Hughes points out, it’s not without its negatives – primarily, the incredibly quick spreading of false information. "Speed is essential," she says, adding that you have to jump in because things get reported and repeated.

On the flip side, however, new media has enabled instant response. It’s essentially reputation management. Brands face this all the time. When it comes to politics, there will always be plenty more people to stand up for the brand (or bash it). But again, that’s the voice of the people. News consumers have more viewpoints to look at to help them form their own.

Other concerns Hughes voices include anonymity and the dehumanization of people via the technology.

One interesting comment from the audience: social media is just enabling the spread of propaganda on both sides. What do you think?

Another interesting audience comment: "You’re not pundits anymore. We get our news from sources we trust."

October 17, 2010
Demand Media Adds Blog Syndication to its Content Arsenal

Here at BlogWorld, Demand Media launched the Demand Media Blog Network, to syndicate bloggers’ content across Demand’s own properties like eHow and Livestrong.com, as well as the company’s Content Channels partner sites.

“This new offering on our studios platform expands our mission of publishing high quality content at scale," says Stewart Marlborough, GM of Demand Media Studios. "We are already a leader in publishing original, actionable, evergreen content. With the addition of the Demand Media Blog Network, we broaden our content offerings to include timely, topical and opinion-based content from the best of the blogospshere. Now highly-qualified bloggers will have the opportunity to extend their individual brands to the millions of people that visit Demand Media’s websites and those of our partners.”

Demand Media pitches the Blog Distribution Network as a way to help boggers be more successful by giving them the tools and distribution they need to effectively expand their audience and build their brands. The flyer the company is handing out at their exhibit promises:

– Have your blog featured on highly trafficked, high PageRank sites

– Drive traffic and additional engagement on your blog

– Grow your fan base and interact with new audiences

– Interact with fellow bloggers through forums, meet ups and more

– Leverage our revenue share program to earn additional income

– Gain valuable insights through our Blogger Workdesk

I have to give Demand Media credit for picking a good time to launch this product. BlogWorld is full of bloggers looking for many of these elements. Considering the keynote discussion among ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse and CopyBlogger’s Brian Clark and Sonia Simone about all of the harsh realities of making money blogging, Demand’s offering is apt to gain a great deal of attention from much of the audience of this year’s event. It probably also helped that they hosted a party at the event.

Also at the event, we spoke with John Hewitt, who ran a session on how-to articles (the premise of Demand’s eHow.com), about how the average blogger can compete with companies like Demand Media and Yahoo’s Associated Content (which is also represented here at the show). He simply said to make your content better, because frankly, the stuff that you’ll find on Demand’s properties isn’t always of the highest quality (not that this is the case with all of the their content). Demand has discussed its plans to make this better numerous times throughout the year, and the company appears to be taking the subject very seriously.

It will be interesting to see the kind of content that gets picked up through the Blog Distribution Network. I spoke with a couple reps at Demand’s booth, who told me that they’ll have editors going through all the content submissions and overseeing the approval process. They will not accept any obscene content, as they’re looking to keep it family friendly. They also told me they’re only interested in blogs that are updated regularly.

Some of the folks trying to learn about writing good how-to articles may actually find applying for this program to be a better alternative to trying to compete with eHow.

Either way, its clear that Demand Media is building an army of content producers. If you thought they were already doing this, you can only imagine how much this blog syndication will take things up a notch.

October 16, 2010
Reasons Why Making Money Blogging Isn’t That Easy

Everyone wants to make money online, and a blog is one of the first things to which many turn to achieve this. There has been so much made of this concept over the years.

There are entire businesses based on helping others learn about making money blogging. It’s entirely possible to do, but it’s also easier said than done.

There are seven "harsh realities" of blogging for bucks, according to ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse and CopyBlogger’s Brian Clark and Sonia Simone, the panelists in the opening keynote of BlogWorld Day 3. These are:

1. "Free" is not a business model.

2. The push-button Internet cash machine is on the fritz.

3. You are not scalable.

4. No one actually wants that much authenticity.

5. Social media hates selling. (and yet, you have to sell)

6. A blog is not a business.

7. No one is reading your blog

To summarize an hour of dialogue, you should at some point have a product that your readers will want. You should give a lot of free content away, but even when it comes to content, you can charge for some amount, and if your content is good enough, people will pay for the premium stuff. "You can tell them about ninety percent, and they’ll pay money just to get the final ten percent," so they know they have the whole picture, Clark says.

Making money blogging will not happen overnight. Sometimes it may seem like this is possible, but in reality, it takes a lot of work. "Build something that is real and something that matters to people," Rowse advises. He shared a story about how he launched a product one day and literally watched the sales roll in. It was as if he had hit a button, and the cash just started flowing, but then he realized he had been working hard up to that point for over two years, promoting the blog, writing two posts a day, doing SEO, press releases, etc. It wasn’t overnight.

You’re not scalable, meaning that as your audience grows and more people want to connect with you, there will be a point where it just becomes too much. You have to set boundaries, otherwise you will have no time for yourself and your family.

Eventually, you’re going to have to "get real" about how many meaningful connections you can make in a day, Simone says, adding, "That’s part of growing up in social media.”

When they say "no one actually wants that much authenticity," they mean that nobody cares about what you did last night, who you were with, what you had for breakfast, etc. In other words, don’t show everybody everything about yourself, because you’re not writing for you. You’re writing for them. Be who you want to be for your audience.

Ultimately, you’re blogging and using social media to sell, but you can’t just go around selling to people, because they won’t have it. It just doesn’t work. You have to make them want to buy. "You’re selling yourself," says Clark. If you provide enough value to your audience, they will want to buy what you have to offer if it expands upon the value you’re already giving them. "The content is the marketing," he says.

Just having a blog is not a business. If you want it to be a business you have to treat it like one, Rowse says. This is basically an extension of number 2.

The most important of the seven points is that no one is reading your blog. As Simone says, there are hundreds of millions of blogs, and that includes blogs on your topic. You have to write it in a way that is fresh, and either entertaining or informative. The good news is that you don’t need "monster traffic". You just need a good, steady core audience for advertising to do well.

October 16, 2010
Writing Content That Will Drive Traffic for Years

Evergreen content is probably the most valuable kind you can create. It has a long shelf life, and can continue to drive traffic to your site for years. How-to articles are perhaps the most logical choice when creating content that you want to work for your site for this kind of time frame.

John Hewitt of PoeWar.com, has worked as a technical writer for companies like IBM, Intuit, and Motorola. Needless to say, he has some experience in providing people with instructions. At BlogWorld, he talked about what makes an effective how-to article and a little bit about how the average blogger can still compete in this space, despite the uprising of content machines like Demand Studios (which operates eHow.com), Associated Content, etc.

Competing in an Increasingly Crowded Industry

While making it clear that he likes the people behind Demand Studios (the content creation arm of Demand Media), which he has at one time counted among his sponsors, he tells me that the content they provide simply just isn’t always of the highest quality, and for that reason, there is still room for competition. Simply make your content better. Google recognizes things like when someone clicks on a piece of content and quickly clicks right back off, he notes.

Perhaps there is hope for the little guy in this space yet.

How To Do How-To’s

Now we’ll get into some of the tips Hewitt provided for excelling in this kind of writing. First of all, how-to articles should be designed to help readers accomplish a specific task. "People are always asking how to do something," he says.

The article should have a well defined goal, the necessary components to achieve that goal, and it should be updated periodically, if the process calls for it. Time can change the effectiveness of certain strategies, particularly when technology is involved. Your content is not going to be evergreen if it is outdated.

You’re going to want to identify your target audience, define your stated goal (which is generally done in the title), and consider the underlying goals for the article. For example, the article might be about modding a piece of hardware, but an underlying goal for the reader might be to impress their friends with the mod. This can play a role in the style and tone of the article.

If you keep track of your analytics, it can help you keep track of ideas for content – the kinds of content that are working, and how users (and what types of users) are arriving at that content.

Hewitt says how-to’s should be kept to under 800 words when you’re talking about blog posts. If it needs to be longer, break it up into different posts for different parts of the process. People generally don’t want to read incredibly long posts, particularly if they’re trying to get something done.

Write about something you know about. It’s a good idea to talk to experts and research what others have written (and attribute credit accordingly) to fill in the gaps in your own knowledge on the subject.

Define what Hewitt refers to as your "standards for success". Does your piece solve a problem? Make something function properly? Allow the person to achieve the goal without hurting themselves physically? It depends on the subject and the audience. You have to define your own standards for success.

When writing the piece, consider things like shortcuts, decisions and choices involved, situational changes, customizations, substitutions, and alternative methods. Make sure these are clear to the reader.

Test the article out. Can you walk through the steps and reach the goal? Can someone else you know do the same?

When it comes to style, be direct, concise, and unambiguous, Hewitt says. Use short, declarative sentences with only a single step in one sentence. Use consistency with you word choices. For example, if you are talking about a software program and call it "the program", continue calling it that throughout the article, as opposed to calling it "the application".

If you use graphics, only use them if they make the process easier to follow (which they often can). They should clarify the process, whether they are illustrations, photos, flowcharts, slide shows, or videos. Hewitt mentioned some pros and cons with screenshots in particular. They can accurately show results of steps, make things easier to comprehend, and make presentations look more authoritative, but they can also take up visual space, make instructions look cluttered, and can become obsolete without notice. They can also be hard to read on mobile devices and hard to print well.

Finally when it comes to order and grouping, Hewitt says to number steps when the order of the steps is important, when the steps are short, and when they require little discussion. Don’t use them when order is less important, each step does require discussion, and/or you’re writing in a casual voice (that last one’s probably debatable). Use unordered lists to group similar items (like tools/resources). Use bullet points and keep items brief when possible.

Include results immediately after a step or when the step creates a change. Hewitt talks about this all in more detail here.

October 15, 2010
Livestrong Aims to Beat #beatcancer Hashtag Record

LiveStrong CEO Doug Ulman spoke at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo today, where he announced an initiative to beat a record set last year for tweets with the #beatcancer hashtag. Last year’s record was 209,000 and change. This time PayPal and SWAGG will donate 5 cents for every hashtag. It starts at 9:00 AM on 10/15.

You can also go to beatcancereverywhere.com and pledge to have more money donated, which will also benefit other nonprofits like Bright Pink and Stand Up to Cancer. Ulman says one of the things we don’t see enough of in the nonprofit world is collaboration. announced

Ulman spent some time discussing how important social media has been to the LiveStrong cause. "What social media has done is it has democratized the movement," he said.

Ulman says he has not spent as much time blogging, as he maybe would like. He often gets halfway through a post and decides that people might not want to read it. He expressed a bit of guilt for not blogging more.

"Three years ago, I didn’t have a Facebook page and I didn’t know what Twitter was," he said, adding how humbled he felt being in the presence of so many social media enthusiasts at the event.

He does say that Lance Armstrong does his own tweets, and that he’s never had anyont tweet for him. Some of his colleagues said he should start trying Twitter in December 2008, before Lance Armstrong, then he got Lance into it, and now he’s up to 2.6 million followers. "Lance Armstrong is the most authentic, transparent person I know using social media," said Ulman. Just in the last week, Livestrong passed a million Facebook fans.

It is openness and transparency that he deems critical for the cause.

One other interesting tidbit – Ulman thought the yellow wristbands were a horrible idea at first. They were also originally going to say "Just do it." The first five thousand had a Nike Swoosh on it.

15% of LiveStrong’s budget goes to cancer research, and the rest goes to helping families.

Watch live.dev.webpronews.com for our exclusive interview with Ulman.

October 14, 2010
If Your Blog’s Mobile Experience Sucks, You’re Throwing Away Traffic

So, we’re sitting in the opening Keynote at BlogWorld in Vegas. Scott Stratten of Unmarketing is talking about "awesome content". You’ve heard the general spiel before, but he’s making plenty of valid points, including some that often go overlooked.

For example, "You’re killing your content" if you’re not offering a legitimate way to access it mobile. This doesn’t mean just letting users access it via the regular web site, making them zoom in and what have you. "Kiss my ass!" Stratten says. "I don’t want to zoom."

He also made the point that if your post takes too long to load, nobody wants to wait (and in some cases pay because of their data plans) to read it.

If you don’t have your content mobile-ready, you’re losing readers. You’re losing "passalong". If they don’t read it, they’re not going to share it, and a growing number of people aren’t going to read it if it’s not easy to read from their phones.

You may think most of your audience doesn’t read from mobile, but chances are, potential readers have already stopped visiting your blog because of the lack of a good mobile experience.

Something like 150 million of Facebook’s users are regularly using the social network from their mobile devices, according to Stratten. Consider that.

Make sure your mobile experience is good on Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, etc.

The mobile thing is only one of many points Scott discussed. If you want to see the keynote in its entirety, we’ll have video available shortly. Check live.dev.webpronews.com soon. Warning: he calls iPhone users douches. He does mention that he has an iPad though.

October 14, 2010
WordPress Launches WordPress.com Text Message Features

WordPress has announced the launch of WordPress.com Text Messaging. Users can text 77377 (PRESS) to manage their blogs using SMS messages.

There are free features as well as upgrade features available. For free, users can receive text notifications when users are added or removed, when the theme changes, and/or when the privacy settings change.

With the Text Messaging Upgrade, users can protect their blog by using a two-step login process, and a text message will be sent to their phone upon login with a passcode that must be entered in order to access the Dashboard.

With the upgrade, users can also get notified of new comments and moderate them with a text reply, as well as send a reply to comments they receive. Finally, users can send a text for a new post to be added to the blog instantly.

The new text features are only available in the U.S. at this point. Standard text message and data rates apply, of course.

The upgrade costs $20 a year. It can be accessed from the Dashboard.

I can’t imagine blogging through SMS being very fun, but it could come in handy if something comes up, and you don’t have access to a computer, but you need to blog about it. The other features should be quite useful.

October 12, 2010
Journalism Students Turn to Web First, Still Covet MSM Jobs

Journalism professor Roy Greenslade, who blogs at Guaridan.co.uk, shared some interesting findings from a lecture he gave to a class at City University about journalism students and news sources.

Greenslade asked students what their primary news source was. When he asked for a show of hands for newspapers, 20 hands went up, the same for radio, and a few more for TV, but when he asked about the Internet, he got what he describes as a "forest of hands".

Now, this isn’t any large scale study. It’s just a teacher asking his students, but one can only imagine similar proportions in classrooms and lecture halls all over the world. Interestingly, however, Greenslade has determined that "big media" remains "a lure", because almost all of the students still considered "big media" outlets as their ideal workplaces, as part of the lecture was about "entrepreneurial journalism".

"They may be digital natives, but their ambition is to work for others rather than themselves," Greenslade writes. "They know the risks. They have been told there will be few job openings. They know that they will be expected to work for weeks, maybe months, for nothing."

So why so much interest in mainstream media despite the numerous success stories of "entrepreneurial journalism"? This comes shortly after TechCrunch announced its acquisition by AOL. Other blogs and independent publications are thriving.

Working for yourself means freedom to pursue the kind of journalism you want, without having to adhere to the guidelines and constraints set by a corporation (note, that AOL made it clear it will let TechCrunch operate the way it always has).

That’s not to say it’s easy to become the next TechCrunch, Gawker, Huffington Post, etc. How much of the lure of mainstream media is the attraction of stability and an established audience? Either way, it says a lot about the state of the Web as a news source. One person commenting on Greenslade’s piece says, "To be honest – I think it’s encouraging. When I started studying, you’d be embarrassed to say you didn’t read newspapers. And that fostered an attitude of ‘print is best’ that was hard to shrug off."

Here’s a question for you: Wouldn’t entrepreneurial journalism be better if it had a higher volume of people with degrees in journalism penetrating the market?

The Future Buzz has an article on the subject from a couple years ago that still retains its relevance. In it, Adam Singer lists some things you get to do when you develop content for a publication that is all your own. These include:

1. Retain 100% of the rights to your work

2. Maintain editorial control and total freedom to write on whatever you please

3. Retain 100% of the advertising revenue brought in by your work

4. Build your own brand and web property

5. Create something that works for you and makes revenue while you sleep

6. Create a group of people loyal to you who will work to promote your content

7. Build your own network and carve out influence in your writing niche

The good news, no matter what direction a student goes in is that people will never stop loving content. Content will never die – especially good content. While you don’t need a journalism degree to write online, with training in the field, students will already have a leg up on others. In fact, you will find that many MSM publications will often feature "entrepreneurial journalist" columns. I’m sure you’ve seen Mashable’s Pete Cashmore on CNN, for example. If your content is good enough, you can get the best of both worlds.

Are journalism students pursuing the right paths? Tell us what you think.

October 12, 2010
Signs That Blogging is Not Only Alive, But More Critical Than Ever

Every so often, one of those "social media vs. blogs" discussions comes up. Questions like "is social media killing blogging?" gets asked. Time and time again, the answer is a resounding "no", but various pieces of news released this week seem to really drive that point home.

Blogs: Are they more or less important in the age of social networks? Share your thoughts.

For one, AOL bought the technology blog TechCrunch for an undisclosed sum (which has been estimated to be at least $25 million) – a blog. Now, AOL doesn’t exactly have the reputation it once had as an ISP, but the company is doing all it can to revitalize itself and rebrand itself as a content-driven media company. The TechCrunch acquisition is a clear example. A Bloomberg article says the move is a possible way to "restore lost relevance". You may recall that AOL got rid of its social network, Bebo.

Is social media dead? Just kidding.

Forrester Research released a report indicating that content creation on social networks has slowed, despite global social network usage increasing. "A lack of growth in social creation translates into a lack of fresh ideas, content, and perspectives," said Forrester Research Consumer Insights Analyst Jacqueline Anderson. "For example, one-third of online consumers in the US regularly watch user-generated videos on sites like YouTube. But, only 10 percent of US online consumers upload videos they’ve created to public sites. The traits required to create social content are unique, and at this moment, the consumer market interested in these behaviors has plateaued." (emphasis added)

Still, I have seen no shortage of people sharing content on Facebook or Twitter – content that more often than not comes from blogs. And I’m not just friends with a bunch of bloggers.

According to new research from Sysomos, about seven out of every ten tweets fail to earn replies or retweets. Covering the research, our own Doug Caverly writes, "Surprised? So were we. Twitter’s gained a reputation for being a place to hold conversations, not give speeches. Still, Sysomos examined 1.2 billion tweets that were posted in the last two months before reaching its conclusions, so it’s pretty much a fact that just 29 percent of tweets produce reactions."

"Otherwise, Sysomos determined that the majority (79 percent) of those reactions are replies," adds Caverly. " Only 21 percent of reactions come in the form of retweets."

That may say something about Twitter as a means of producing content, but I still believe that Twitter can be a very powerful tool to create content and news. That has been proven time and time again (the Hudson River plane crash comes to mind). However, there is still plenty of "noise" and just like in real life, most of what people say isn’t worth repeating. I will say, however, that most of the retweets I see contain links, and those links very often point to content from blogs.

I think I would go so far as to say that from a business perspective, blogging is probably more critical than it has ever been, and social media is largely responsible. This is not because people are engaging less with social networks. It’s because they’re engaging more, and social networks open the doors for blog content to find its way to relevant audiences like never before.

Look at Facebook’s social plugins (including the "like" button). 2 million sites have added Facebook’s social plugins since they launched five months ago. "Likes" are now more important to search, as Facebook has made updates so that "liked" news stories appear when people do searches within Facebook. Google is champing at the bit to get this information (and CEO Eric Schmidt thinks they will one way or another).

Whether or not Google ever does get access to Facebook’s data, it’s in there to be searched, and much of that comes directly from blogs. Of course Google has no trouble indexing the blog content on its own, it’s more about the popularity and relevance of the content at the personal level. Facebook’s methods for this are simply another reason to create good content, and there’s probably no better or easier means to do so than with a blog.

I mentioned business. One more nugget of research released this week comes from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which found that more than half of Americans do online research before making a purchase. How much of that research do you think comes from blogs – whether they find it through search or through social?

Do you think blogs are critical for business? Tell us what you think.

September 30, 2010
Popular Posts and Blog’s Stats Gadgets Now Available for Blogger Blogs

Blogger announced today that two gadgets have graduated from the experimental "Blogger in Draft" status to full-on gadgets. These are Popular Posts and Blog’s Stats. They can now be added to any blog from the Gadget Directory.

"Both of these gadgets take advantage of the traffic data that is being collected by Blogger Stats and provide an easy way for you to pass that info on to the readers of your blog," says Blogger’s Brett Wiltshire.

The Popular Posts gadget finds and displays a blog’s posts that have the most pageviews, allowing the blogger to choose whether to display image thumbnails or post snippets in addition to the post title. The blogger can also choose the time window to be used for calculating pageviews and the number of posts they want displayed.

The Blog’s Status gadget shows pageview data for the blog, and includes various configuration options, styles, and display options. You can choose from all time, the past 30 days or the past 7 days as the time window for pageviews.

Both gadgets were released in Blogger in Draft last month and have undergone tweaks based on feedback since. They can be added to a Blogger blog by clicking "add a gadget" from the Design | Page Elements tab.

September 29, 2010
Windows Live Spaces Turns to WordPress for Blogging

Microsoft and WordPress announced today that WordPress.com is becoming the default blogging platform for Windows Live Spaces. The two companies have worked together on a migration service for Spaces bloggers to easily bring all their posts, comments, and photos to WordPress.com.

"They have a host of impressive capabilities – from a scalable platform and leading spam protection, to great personalization and customization," writes Dharmesh Mehta, Director, Windows Live Product Management. "WordPress powers over 8.5% of the web, is used on over 26 million sites, and WordPress.com is seen by over 250 million people every month. Not only that, Automattic is a company filled with great people focused on improving blogging experiences. So rather than having Windows Live invest in a competing blogging service, we decided the best thing we could do for our customers was to give them a great blogging solution through WordPress.com."

He says there are three bing things they want to deliver with this move:

– Giving existing Windows Live Spaces customers an easy upgrade of their blogging experience to WordPress.com

– Letting anyone connect their WordPress.com blog to Messenger so their Messenger friends are updated when they publish a new post on WordPress.com

– Allowing Windows Live customers to easily create new blogs on WordPress.com

The transition will take place over a six-month period beginning today. Windows Live Spaces users will have the option to move their blogs to WordPress.com. There is a new importer for Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com. New Windows Live users will also be offered a WordPress.com blog when they choose to create a new blog.

More details about the announcement can be found here and here.

September 27, 2010
WordPress Reveals IE9 Pinning Features

Internet Explorer 9 (beta) was launched to the public this week, and it’s gotten a lot of buzz and high marks. It’s also gotten a lot of web properties doing things to utilize its features. Microsoft’s own Bing features are certainly interesting.

WordPress is utilizing the browser’s functionality for both bloggers and blog readers, so its new features should have pretty far reaching impact, within the space of IE9 users.

WordPress is taking advantage of the pinning feature of the browser, specifically, with different feature sets for readers and bloggers. Joy Victory explains on the WordPress Blog:

When you sign in to your blog, you can pin your own site and get extra tasks that make blogging easier and faster. A logged-in user can quickly access links to their dashboard to write a new post, moderate comments, upload a new file, or view blog statistics. (Each task only appears if the user has that task’s capability, such as site administrator’s.) A custom list also displays up to 5 latest posts for the current blog context.

You can pin someone else’s blog, too. When you do, an icon appears that lets you subscribe to the blog feed, signup for a free blog, read Freshly Pressed, and access WordPress.com Support and forums.

To take advantage of the WordPress pinning capabilities, users simply need to drag the tab onto the taskbar. It will either display as a large WordPress logo or if you’re a blogger, your "Blavatar" if you’ve uploaded one.

September 17, 2010
NewsBasis Aims to Be Basis for News-Maker, News-Breaker Relationships

In a nutshell, NewsBasis is a site where journalists and bloggers can find sources, while experts and companies can find journalists and bloggers to write about them in their articles.

WebProNews had a conversation with NewsBasis Founder and CEO Darryl Siry (who also happens to be a contributor to Wired, and was formerly CMO of Tesla Motors) about how the site has performed since launching at the beginning of the month.

"Initial participation was well beyond what I had been planning for, which is a good thing, but keep in mind I am not fully satisfied until we are used by all folks in the media industry on both sides of the table," Siry tells us.

We asked about participation from both journalists and experts. "The participation on the company rep side is a good mix of companies, PR agencies, independent professionals, academic institutions and non-profits," he says. "On the journalist side you also see a broad range of participation, from bloggers to regional newspapers to major news organizations."

Perusing article topic requests on NewsBasis, one can find various familiar names and publications. That’s got to be encouraging for the company.

"Of course, there are more experts/companies using the service than journalists, but that’s what I would expect as that reflects the industry," he continues. "There are many more people seeking attention of reporters than there are reporters, and it is important to have deep inventory of experts and sources."

I don’t think he’ll get many arguments from reporters there.

Siry certainly knows how the game is played, as he has written not only for Wired, but for other publications like VentureBeat and Business Insider. Combine that with marketing gigs he has held in the past. He’s clearly played on both sides of the ball.

As user experience plays greatly into the success of any product, we also asked for plans about upcoming features.

"We are balancing customer acquisition activities with our pace of product development," Siry tells us. "There are lots of great features and tweaks that we have been working through and as the product gets better I expect that we will see more users come on to the system. We have features already built in to the system that we haven’t really promoted because you can only say so much in a marketing message, so part of my challenge is to educate existing customers about how full featured we are."

"For example, we have built in real time news alerts that work quite well and we also have a robust annotation and sharing system that can be used by journalists for online research," he explains.

Of course, users can always keep abreast of the latest NewsBasis happenings on the company blog, which has provided numerous updates since the early August launch of NewsBasis.

Journalists, bloggers, and brands all potentially have a lot to gain from a system like NewsBasis. At this point, it’s just a matter of attracting the users, and getting them to stick with it. This appears to be the main area of focus for the company at the moment. In fact, Siry emailed me personally to let me know that I hadn’t activated my account after initially signing up, weeks ago. It worked. I logged in that day.

August 27, 2010
Is Google to Blame for Its Own News Pollution?

Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan points out how poorly Google handles those gaming Google News, using Google Trends as a starting point.

Do you find Google News to be too heavily polluted? Share your thoughts.

He found a blatant example when the term "chocomize" became listed as "volcanic" on Google Trends. When clicking for the results, he found several sites serving Google ads that presumably only created posts about the term because it was trending (as a way to get some easy traffic, and potentially ad clicks). In fact, some examples came from sites that were clearly aimed at entirely different niches, such as a horror movies site and a TV/Anime site. The biggest problem from the user’s perspective is that there was nothing immediately indicating why the term was trending.

The real reason the term was trending was apparently because CNN ran a story earlier in the day about a company called Chocomize that makes custom candy bars (a pretty cool concept, I have to say), but when looking at the Google News results, Sullivan had to really dig to find that story.

"The pollution within Google News is ridiculous," Sullivan says. "This is Google, where we’re supposed to have the gold standard of search quality. Instead, we get ‘news’ sites that have been admitted — after meeting specific editorial criteria — just jumping on the Google Trends bandwagon, outranking the actual article causing the term ‘chocomize’ to be popular, polluting the news results and along the way, earning Google some cash."

Earning Google some cash indeed. There is no doubt that this goes on all the time, specifically with AdSense sites. Interestingly, in a story grouped with Sullivan’s on TechMeme, the Wall Street Journal has some words from Eric Schmidt talking about Google’s famous "one trick pony". Schmidt is quoted as saying, "But if you’ve got a one-trick pony, you want the one we have. We’re in the ad business, and it’s growing rapidly. We picked the right trick." The piece goes on to talk about how that trick is going to pay off greatly in the mobile space as well, as more and more people gravitate to the Android operating system.

Schmidt has said in the past, as Sullivan reminds us, that the Internet is a cesspool (referring to an excess of useless content). So, to be fair, Schmidt doesn’t come across as being very enthusiastic about the sites that take advantage of Google Trends to game Google News. Still, there is money to be made, and if sites meet the criteria of what it takes to get into Google News, there’s a fine line Google has to walk, regardless.

Can it all be so simple?

Sullivan says, “It shouldn’t be that hard for Google to police what shows up in response to what it publishes on Google Trends. Spam sites ought to be nabbed. AdSense sites ought to be shut down. News publishers abusing the very lucky position they have of being in Google News, by routinely tapping into Google Trends topics that aren’t relevant to their publications, should get the boot.”

While I greatly respect Sullivan, and value his analysis and opinions, I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. We’ve all seen how the mainstream media sites turn to blogs to get their stories (sometimes without giving credit or links), just as the sites in question appear to have done with CNN. We spoke with Sullivan about this not too long ago after he became a victim of such a scenario.

It’s hard to say that just because you use Google ads, you should be penalized. That’s not to say there isn’t an issue, but while there may be plenty of “garbage sites” there are some pretty highly respected publications that serve ads by Google. The horror movie blog pointed to, does appear to generally offer horror movie related news (while crediting sources), based on a quick glance of its most recent content. But if the Chocomize story on that blog doesn’t credit its source, that is a problem. Maybe this is a “garbage” site, maybe it’s not. From Google’s standpoint, determining that can’t be easy in all cases.

Looking beyond the credit issue for a moment, when it comes to topic-spam, who’s to say what a publication would find of interest to its audience? I’m not sure that I agree that a blog mainly focused on horror movies, for example, should not be able to blog about chocolate or another off-topic subject every now and then. That’s up to the publication and whether they want to risk alienating their own audience, if you ask me. Again, I’m not saying Sullivan is wrong about this particular site’s practices. I’m just looking at the bigger picture.

Maybe Google could do more to look at story sources, but that’s got to be a difficult task across all publications, and there would no doubt be plenty of room for debate between publications about who broke a story first.

I’m not saying this is what happened either, but hypothetically, what if the horror movies blog actually talked to the Chocomize people first and had the story first, and CNN just happened to find it and find it newsworthy themselves, and do their own piece. Now, that’s an unlikely scenario in this particular example, but it’s not outside of the realm of possibility in other examples, such as the one Sullivan experienced recently himself.

Regardless of that even, it’s hard to say "you can’t have content about this topic because we posted it as a trending topic."

There is clearly a problem with Google Trends. Sullivan is right in that the result doesn’t help explain why the topic was trending. He’s also right in that the original source (CNN) should be more visible. However, cleaning up the "pollution" might not be such an easy problem to conquer. It’s hard to say if Google is allowing such pollution to go on so it can make more money or if the problem is just too difficult for the search giant. It could be a combination of the two.

What do you think? Comment here.

July 30, 2010
Google’s Blogger and Zemanta Team Up on Gadget for Blogger

Google’s Blogger has teamed up with Zemanta to create a Zemanta Gadget for Blogger.

Zemanta CEO Boštjan ‘Bos’ Špeti? has posted about the gadget on the Blogger Buzz Blog, saying, "Previously, Blogger users could install a Zemanta browser plugin to recommend content while you blog, enabling you to read news to learn more about the topic, link articles to improve the value of your post, [and] use pictures to make you post richer."

The gadget, he says, will make it easier to use Zemanta on Blogger. This video explains Zemanta:

Zemanta demo from zemanta on Vimeo.

"Simply write a couple of sentences and the recommendations will show up automatically," says Kim. "You can preview them and then simply click on an item to add it to the post."

There are tutorials on how to use Zemanta available here.

July 2, 2010
WordPress Introduces Post By Voice

WordPress has just introduced a new feature that lets you update your blog by calling a phone number speaking. WordPress users can go to the My Blogs tab, enable "Post by Voice" and get a special phone number to call for their blogs.

Calling the number and recording a message will post an audio file to the blog, which can then be published to Facebook, Twitter, etc. with the Publicize feature.

"It’s happened to all of us," writes WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg, introducing the feature. "The night starts off innocently enough with a little gin and tonic, maybe a mojito, then next thing you know you’re doing tequila shots with the bartender and the girl from Brazil and you find yourself thinking it would be a treMENdous idea to call up your ex and see how they’re doing and perhaps impress them with your newfound wit."

"We’ve got the cure," he continues. "Now, instead of drunk dialing random friends, lovers, and acquaintances one at a time, what if you could dial your blog and talk to the whole world at once? It’d be like something out of Star Trek."

All joking aside, the feature has huge potential for quick and lazy blog posting. Got something to say, but don’t feel like writing it? Just make a phone call and broadcast. Then share.

It gives you an hour of talk time for a post (though WordPress says this may decrease after testing). More details here.

July 1, 2010
Bloggers Should See Increase in Sharing of Content

Google’s Blogger has released new share buttons for users, which can be placed under posts to encourage the sharing of content. The buttons let users share via email and popular social networks.

"Blogger also has a Share link in the navbar, but for improved convenience you can now have share buttons below the post (we also gave them nice rollover icons)," says Blogger software engineeer Jiho Han. "For Twitter, we’ve also integrated the goo.gl URL shortener to give you the maximum space in the Tweet to add your own remarks."

"You can start having the new share buttons show up under your posts by editing the Blog Posts widget and enabling Show Share Buttons in Design | Page Elements," adds Han.

Buttons like these are nothing new, but having them readily available on Blogger could go a long way in helping bloggers using the service to boost their traffic. People are more likely to share content when it’s as easy as clicking a button. That’s why Facebook’s social plugins are so popular.

June 25, 2010
Can You Get More Links if You Turn Off Comments?

Every so often, an argument and ensuing discussion erupts in the Blogosphere over whether or not it is ethical to block comments on a blog post and what value they actually add to content.

Would you rather have blog comments or Facebook "likes" and retweets? Let us know.

The latest one started when John Gruber at DaringFireball wrote a post in response to a John Battelle post about Apple blocking Google from iOS app Ads. Gruber has become somewhat famous around the tech Blogosphere for not allowing comments, and is ususally referenced in these conversations.

Joe Wilcox at OddlyTogether wanted to respond to Gruber’s post, but obviously couldn’t do that via a blog comment, so he wrote his own blog post instead, questioning Gruber’s manhood. "If John Gruber allowed comments on his blog, I wouldn’t need to write this post, and it has been long-time coming," wrote Wilcox. "I considered writing it every time I read something outrageous at Daring Fireball but couldn’t directly respond because John doesn’t allow comments. Finally, this morning, I had enough."

"A man pushes out only as much as he can receive back," he added later in the post. "By comparison, I see John attacking from a fortified position. He can attack but not easily be assaulted, and, yes, many of his posts are attacks on others. Sarcasm and witticism are the ammunition. Maybe John has different values of what is a man. My values are clear. A man—hell, a good writer—doesn’t hide behind his assertions. He stands by them. Discussion and response test his assertions and expose him to more points of view."

Benefits to Eliminating Comments?

One thing seems clear to me. If you turn off comments, it forces the conversation outward. As Gruber has proven, people who want to respond to one of his posts have no choice but to blog about it themselves, tweet about it, or choose some other venue to discuss it. Most likely, those who wish to discuss it are going to link to DaringFireball to give their own content context. It seems entirely possible that by not allowing comments, Gruber is encouraging more links to his content. This may not be his intent, but it would appear to be the case nevertheless.

That’s not to say that this strategy will work for everyone. Don’t expect to turn off comments and automatically get more traffic. Obviously, you’re going to have to create great content that people want to discuss in the first place. The question you have to ask yourself is whether you want the conversation to happen where it started or to be broken up all over the web.

That said, the conversation (if enough people find it worth having) is going to be broken up all over the web anyway. Regardless of whether or not you allow comments on your blog, people are going to respond to it in what ever manner they prefer. These days for many people, that means simply retweeting it or liking it on Facebook (now people can even "like" the comments on Facebook too).

Maybe the real question is this: how much do blog comments matter anyway? There is no containing the conversation. It’s really been this way as long as blogs have been popular. People have always responded to others’ posts with their own blog posts. The fact that services like Facebook and Twitter have become so popular in the mainstream is what has changed. It’s so much easier to add your comment in a quick status update or tweet than it is to write a new blog post.

Likewise, many will find it easier to simply hit a "like" button or a "recommend button" for Facebook or a retweet button to express their approval of a blog post. With a tweet, they can add their own commentary too, and it really provides more benefit to them, because they are bringing the people they know into the conversation, as opposed to just participating in a conversation with a bunch of strangers that also read that blog.

Naturally, this also benefits the blog post by opening it up to increased exposure, and obviously more traffic, as well as potentially more links, which can even benefit you in search.

Comments Still Have Value

Comments can add value to a blog post by presenting different perspectives around the subject at hand. Even Gruber has acknowledged this. But increasingly, more of those perspectives are being expressed externally. The entire conversation rarely (if ever) takes place on the blog post itself.

When readers see that a post has a lot of comments, they may be more inclined to read it. This is another valuable trait comments have, but if you display a count of retweets or Facebook Likes or Google Buzzes or Diggs, or whatever, it can achieve a similar effect. However, only the people that actually go to your site in the first place will see these counts. A more important factor to consider is probably that as more content is shared throughout networks like Twitter or Facebook, users will be more likely to read a post based on things like the title, who shared it with them, and what that person said about it.

Interestingly, Gruber was able to convince Wilcox to turn off his own blog comments. Would you ever consider taking that leap? For more background and viewpoints on the conversation (of which there are many), I suggest reading through the various posts at DaringFireball and OddlyTogether.

How important are comments to content? Tell us what you think.

June 18, 2010
Google’s Blogger Users Can Now Customize Their Designs

Update: Google has announced tah the Blogger Template Designer is now available to all (not just Blogger in Draft).

Original Article: Google has launched the Blogger Template Designer, a way to customize the look and feel of your Blogger blog.

"Over the past few years we’ve worked to scale Blogger and ensure that it is capable of handling hundreds of millions of pageviews per day," Google says. "But we also believe that blogging is about self expression and that an important part of expression is creating a custom design that expresses your unique voice. So last year we started working on a tool that would allow everyone to easily customize their blog’s look and feel, and today we’re proud to introduce the Blogger Template Designer."

Features of the template designer include:

– 15 new templates (with more on the way)
– Custom blog layouts with one, two and three columns
– Hundreds of background images courtesy of iStockphoto
– Customizable colors, fonts, and more.

"While alternative offerings force users to choose among a limited set of rigid template designs, Blogger provides an intuitive yet powerful interface so anyone to customize their blog’s design & layout – putting the user in complete control," the company says.

It’s interesting that this kind of customization has not been available from Blogger until 2010, as Blogger itself is over a decade old, and has been Google-owned since 2003.

The Blogger Template Designer is available through Blogger in Draft, Blogger’s testing ground/sandbox site.

June 11, 2010