Comment on Why Do You Blog? [POLL RESULTS]
ProBlogger published the results from its mini-poll ‘why do you blog?’.
If you’re not blogging for money of fame, you’d better take a lot of the advice on blogging with a pinch of salt.
Archive for March, 2008
Some of the best from copyblogger
Bookmarking some of the best articles from copyblogger:
Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media – or why headlines matter even more.
How to Write a Social Media Press Release – about writing ready-to-publish articles rather than releases for the press, as a winnning strategy.
10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers – some of them easy, others easier said than done.
5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang – because after your title, your opening sentence is the prime content for any blog post.
The 10 Second Rule: How to Write for Diagonal Readers – understanding how readers read helps you to write for them.
The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging – the basic recipe of the blogpost.
Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well – 4+1 writing rules.
Email marketing metrics only going one way
B2B Lead Blog’s post on metrics reminds me of my first ezines I sent out early 2004. For my 2 first e-mail blasts, I observes open rates of over 65% and click rates of 40-50%. Since then, metrics have been on a monotonous curve, and today, good open rates are more like 25-30%.
Why are we still doing email marketing?
To blog or not to blog?
While agreeing that not every company should blog, there must be a middle ground between corporate sites updated once in a while, and daily blogging. If upfront about it, you can get away with weekly posting, or even erratic posting a couple of times per month. But if you’re going below a few times per month, you’re no longer in the blogosphere.
Blogging does not come free, but you should be doing a lot of it anyway (researching, monitoring). The marginal cost of blogging is well below its total cost.
Blogging is not for everybody. For companies, not only must you have something to say, but also there needs to be a need to reach out to the blogosphere (a big question for many niche companies) as well as a relative absence of risk from exposure.
Are you running a news or insight blog?
Comment on As Media Multiply, So Do ‘Conceptual Scoops’ : NPR
“A smart story often does contain new facts,” Bennett explains. “But just as often it takes facts that are lying in plain sight and synthesizes them, or arranges them in a way — sometimes in a narrative — that really exposes some new meaning on an important subject. And I think that’s a conceptual scoop.”
Phil Bennett , Washington Post
Referring to above quote, are you running a news or insight blog. Running a news service as a lone blogger can be quite uncomfortable. So don’t apologize to your readers for being late on a story. Your blog is about connecting the dots, not breaking stories.
The one and only resolution for 20XX
Bookmarking Loic Le Meur Blog: The idea does not count only execution matters: 10 rules to launch a startup today
A bookmark rather than a comment. A candidate for your #1 resolution for 2008 and beyond, and applicable to business startups, projects, products, websites, microsites, …
Simplifying your life into less than half a dozen lists
Comment on The Four Laws of Simplicity, and How to Apply Them to Life
Zen Habits has a great post on simplicity. We all know this, but need to be reminded occasionally. The common elements of advice on how to take control, increase productivity, or simplify your life seems to be:
- Limit your number of collection points, i.e. a task list, email inbox, notepad, reading folder, … Life becomes complicated once you move beyond half a dozen collection points, so choose carefully.
- Keep your collection points uncluttered, which requires a certain amount of ruthlessness.
Saving time online
Comment on 11 Internet Marketing Trends to Ignore for 2008
A great post from Ian, and it makes as much sense today as when I first read it a couple of months ago. As all list posts, to be taken with a pinch of salt, but overall, I’d agree ignoring or paying little attention to these 11 trends will save you tons of time, and you probably won’t miss much.
