Blogging Blog

Market Yourself!

If you were like I was, the first time I published a post to my blog, I kept looking at it over and over again.  I beamed with pride at my first post, but later I started thinking that maybe I was the only one reading it - over and over again.  Wasn't the point of my blog to have others read what I had to say?  Since my blog was specialized, my goal was to reach people that were truly interested in the same thing I was or interested in what I had to say.  How do you find these people?  How do I find an audience? The best advice I can give is: promote - promote - promote!  Learn how to market yourself.  It means you will have to be pro-active, swallow some pride and take the initiative to reach out to people.  How else are you going to get the readership you want?  The blog fairy?

My blog is specialized so I searched the web to find who was the leading expert in this area of blogging.  I took the big step and reached out to that leading number one specialized blog in the world.  I boldly sent him an email and asked if he would consider adding my blog to his links.  He was either going to give me one of two answers or he would ignore me. Really - - what did I have to lose?    Guess what?  I am on his list of favorite blogs.  All you have to do is ask with a simple email and that is the beauty of the internet - no face to face. 

A while back a new blogger sent me an email letting me know that he has been reading my blog and it inspired him to start his own.  He asked me if I would give him a link.  His blog was still new, a few posts and needed some attention, but no way could I deny him that request.  I remembered what was done for me when I first started out and I needed to pay someone back. 

Promote-promote-promote!  If you blog about a specific individual or a business, it is important to let them know.  Send him/her an email and direct them to your blog.  It is one way to gain readership and sometimes that person will keep in touch with you about what's new in their life or business. One person in particular kept in touch with me and gave me new information about his business before the newspapers ever printed it.  I beat the press!

Spend some time doing homework.  Check out search engines to locate and review other blogs that may have  the same or similar content as yourself.  Find out if they belong to special associations, blog assistance sites, and who's their audience.  If you have a favorite blog, how does their blog look?  Do you like the look and is it something that you can achieve?  When trying to figure out what style, graphics, etc that I wanted for my blog, I looked at number one blogs to see what worked for them.  It's important to "get out" beyond your blog control panel and  keep ahead of what others like yourself are blogging about and what are people reading.  Send emails about a specific post that you think someone would enjoy.   Take some chances and comunicate with your fellow bloggers.  Blogs are growing in numbers and when it comes to readership  you can't just sit back and wait for them to come to you, so you need to be competitive for your own space in the blog world.  If you don't market yourself, nobody else is going to do it for you and besides, who else can do it better than you?  Market and promote yourself!

TypePad Widgets

I am an incorrigible Blog Bling addict, as my regular readers know. This addiction was partly responsible for instigating this very blog -- a place to put what won't fit on my regular blog. TypePad knows its users. Today they announced:

We’re excited to introduce TypePad Widgets, a new feature for TypePad that will bring dozens of features to your blog from the sites you're already using.  What’s a Widget, you ask? It could be a list of your most recent photos, or a topic-oriented search box, or a stats counter, or ads that help you make money, or a badge to help your users subscribe to your feed, or even a Flash game or a chat window. We call it "bling for your blog." We're launching with dozens of widgets from more than 30 partners, and more are on the way.

They are offering widgets in several categories, including Commerce, Content, Music, Photos and Video (but not from Flickr?!), Publishing Tools, and Search (but not from Google, or Yahoo.) Some of these look useful, or fun; some seem to require more bandwidth than they're worth -- but we each have our own way of measuring that, don't we?

You may anticipate that at least some of these will be making an appearance on this sidebar. And no doubt these toys will be available for other blogging platforms soon, if they aren't already.

Fear of Exposure – How Much Disclosure is Too Much?

A common fear among new bloggers is the fear of exposing personal information to the vast Internet audience.

It may seem that every other person on the Internet is exposing themselves, literally and figuratively, in ways that would make Jerry Springer blush. In some online circles, if you're not wearing a thong in your photo, something's wrong with you.

Yet, in this environment, there's also an understandable drive and need to protect our privacy as well as dignity.

We also want to save our jobs. We've all heard those few high profile cases where people got fired due to their blog content. (Remember the Delta Airlines flight attendant who was sacked for posting silly photos of herself in her uniform online?)

So getting started with a personal blog in an environment where disclosure can often mean baring everything and losing everything can be a tricky business.

I've been blogging on and off for a few years, and also reading various blogs as well. In choosing how much to divulge, consider:

1. Will this hurt your family and friends?

2. Will this put your job in jeopardy?

3. Most importantly: Is such a disclosure really interesting anyway?

I believe number three should be the first and foremost consideration when sharing personal information. Personal information done well can be the most engaging, intimate, and powerful form of writing. Personal information done in an indulgent, self-serving way is simply dull and pointless, and it's that sort of writing that is damn embarrassing.

One of my favorite blogs is Moments of Adequacy, which is relatively unknown and written by a guy who is a technology consultant, not a professional writer. I don't even remember how I found this little gem, but this guy is one of the funniest writers I have ever read. Some of his posts are absolute classics.

Recently, he separated from his wife. He shared this on his blog. I've never met the guy, but because he shares stories about his family, I feel a sense of intimacy with him as writer. I appreciate that he has shared his personal life changes with his readers. I don't find it self-indulgent or dull in anyway.

Many of the stories he shares about his family are rather humorous, and even when he's making fun of his kids, it's a gentle ribbing that somehow manages to show their human foibles (and his) without making anyone look bad.

On the other side of it, I've seen blogs (and even professional newsletters) where people post crowing pats on the back about their new baby or all the great things going on their lives. I'm not interested in seeing a zillion photos of some new baby for a family I've never met – only their closest friends care (and even then, I'm sure many would prefer to not be bombarded with all the “good news”).

I'm not saying families can't use blogs to keep in touch with friends and family, but make sure you make that distinction before getting started. A blog targeted to the public needs to have something more than just the news that you got a job promotion. Frankly, we don't give a damn. How does your job promotion relate to our world? That's what we want to know.

I think the key to posting personal information to blogs – and making it work – lies in making it entertaining, interesting, or poignant to the many strangers who will be reading it.

If you can accomplish that, then no amount of disclosure will be embarrassing. It will be appreciated and cherished.

If that task sounds too daunting, then stick to subjects you care about – the news, your hobbies, things about the general culture that irk you, fashion trends. Things that people with similar interests would be curious to read.

Regardless, the best advice I have heard on this subject is to just get started. Write, and keep writing. You and your blog will evolve over time. But if you're looking to just start a diary, maybe the old fashion version, that sits in your drawer at home, is a better option.

Renewal

I know, it's been months. This was intended to be a resource for bloggers, especially new bloggers; with links to lots of tools and toys. It still has those links, but being rarely updated, is rarely visited. But that's about to change.

Blogging Blog is going to be a group blog. Three other bloggers have agreed to contribute, and more may join in the future. Look forward to some fresh ideas and energy here. I'll be adding folks to the sidebar, and they'll be introducing themselves soon.

In the meantime, a bit of blogging-related news: Stewart and Caterina, of Flickr fame, are on the front page of Newsweek! They are so cute, and folks who have met them assure me they are just this cute in person. This article, about Web 2.0, or The Living Web, is really quite well done; it explains things well and seems to grasp the essentials:

"It's clear that the Web is structurally congenial to the wisdom of crowds," says James Surowiecki, author of a book ("The Wisdom of Crowds," naturally) that argues that your average bunch of people can guess the weight of a cow or predict an Oscar winner better than an expert can. . .

MySpace, Flickr and all the other newcomers aren't places to go, but things to do, ways to express yourself, means to connect with others and extend your own horizons. Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is where we live. . .

My favorite is a quote from Caterina, about the culture of generosity:

. . . the most remarkable thing about Flickr is that the willingness to post pictures publicly—so ingrained in Flickr culture that you have to opt out to avoid it—creates a panoramic effect. Fake calls it "the culture of generosity," but knows that for some people, shedding privacy like that is a stretch . . .

Caterina and Stewart's generosity has been apparent at Flickr from the beginning; it's that open-heartedness that has won my loyalty there. That, and their sense of humor (Flickr has the hiccups.) This openness -- to blogging, to sharing, to mashups -- is an ongoing issue at Flickr, especially with new members -- and an issue bloggers must struggle with as well: how much to share; how much to keep to oneself; how to [realistically] relinquish control of what one sets loose in the world.

More -- much more -- later.

[Crossposted to Watermark]