Tag Archives: Blogosphere

Just over six months ago [in April 2009], I wrote my first blog post with the announced intention to aim for “A-List status.”

Four months later I wrote an article about the “day I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven” — it was actually a report of a panel discussion headlining Steve Rubel among other social media thought leaders discussing a Roadmap for the future.

How very exciting it had been to introduce myself to Steve, who’s been a role model.

I told Steve of the lofty goal I was working towards, and he said,

“You might want to reconsider, Shari. Blogs are losing their status, and you might aim, instead, to be an A-List Thought Leader,” he advised me.

During the panel discussion Steve elaborated on this view:

I do subscribe to Steve’s Posterous stream, but that’s in addition to more than a dozen other blogs I keep up with pretty regularly. [Check my blogroll on the right hand sidebar.]

So . . . every time I read a headline like Brian Solis’ “Rumors of the Death of the Blog are Greatly Exaggerated,” I am encouraged to keep on “keepin’ on,” i.e., BLOGGING towards the A List.

Commentary on the PR 2.0 summary of Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report

Technorati is a search engine for blogs, and it catalogs more than 112 million blogs. Every year the site comes out with a State of the Blogosphere Report and this year’s findings include information about these topics: professional blogging activities, brands in the blogosphere, monetization, twitter & micro-blogging and bloggers’ impact on US and World events.

The report also includes interviews with more than a dozen well-known, well-respected, and well-read bloggers including Steve Rubel.

Brian Solis’ blog PR 2.0 featured an indepth view of the report

This article will pick out and share pieces of the report that I found interesting and helpful to me as a fairly new blogger.

Brian’s post included color-coded charts recording responses from four categories of bloggers: (a) hobbiests; (b) part-timers; (c) corporate; and (d) self-employed.

1) About 70% of all bloggers felt that “Blogs are getting taken more seriously as sources of information” while 60% agreed that “More people will be getting their news and entertainment from blogs than from traditional media in the next three years.”

HOWEVER

2) Fewer than 40% agreed with the following two statements:

a) “Newspapers will not be able to survive in the next ten years.”

b) “Blogs are often better written than traditional media.”

Re: “Prolificness”

Brian wrote that “those bloggers who rank among the highest according to Technorati Authority post nearly 300 times more than the lower ranked bloggers.”

One Technorati survey question asked “How frequently do you update your blog?

20% post once or twice a day
27% post 2-3 times per week
33% post at least once a week
Interestingly, 3% of self-employed bloggers post 10 times a day or more! AND 7% post 5-9 times a day.

Why do bloggers blog?

“Self expression and sharing expertise are among the primary motivations for bloggers,” Brian wrote.

To measure the “success” of their blogs, survey respondents chose from the following ten factors, ranked from the most popularly selected to the least:

1) Personal satisfaction

2) Number of unique visitors

3) Number of posts or comments on the blog

4) Number of links to my blog from other blogs

5) Number of RSS subscribers

6) Accolades from other media

7) Number of people favoriting you

8) Blogger’s Technorati authority number

9) Number and quality of new business leads

10) and, finally, in last place for hobbiests/corporate bloggers was revenue; HOWEVER, 39% of part-timers admitted that revenue was an important measure of their success.

What activities do bloggers participate in to attract visitors?

The four most popular activities included (a) Listing the blog on Technorati; (b) Tagging blog posts; (c) Commenting on other blogs; (d) Listing the blog on Google.

Other activities were the following [from more popular to least popular]: (e) Getting listed on a blog directory; (f) Produce content for other blogs or websites; (g) Create a blog on a broader blog network; (h) Attend conferences for bloggers; (i) Pay for online advertising.

The future of Blogging

Here are the eleven blog ideas and tactics proposed for the coming year [from most popular to least]:

1) Blog more frequently

2) Expand some of the topics already blogged about

3) Publish a book

4) Begin using the blog to get speaking engagements

5) Add advertising

6) Begin guest blogging

7) Add video

8) Blog through mobile device

9) Start a new, independent blog

10) Start a new blog on a blog network

11) Blog less frequently.

According to Brian:

“Technorati believes that the next generation of blogs will be more action oriented, not just documenting real time happenings, but driving actual events.”

If you’re a blogger, how would you have answered any of the Technorati questions?

If you don’t blog yet, has any of this information convinced you to “dive in” and start expressing yourself?

FURTHER READING:

Blogging Basics

Sharisax Is Out There, Twitter

List-O-Rama: Not included on many Twitter Lists yet?

November 4, 2009 Shari Weiss 5 Comments

Feeling left out because everyone’s buzzing about Twitter Lists . . . and you’re not?

Reminds me of how one of my good friends has had two dinner parties at her home in the last few weeks, and I wasn’t invited to either. But she did ask me for this weekend, so maybe there’s hope for all of us.

Fresh from a 30-minute webinar on Twitter Lists by Hubspot, I have decided to weigh in with my own . . .

List on Twitter Lists:

1. First off, Twitter Lists is a brand new social media/Twitter feature, so by the time we learn all there is to know, many aspects will change. And that’s OK. Really. Getting your feet wet in the evolving new technology makes it so much easier to capitalize on the opportunities you will find along the way — this is ESPECIALLY TRUE for businesses who’ve feared jumping onto the social media bandwagon.

a. COROLLARY: That means that the rest of this “List” may — or may not — be useful tomorrow/next week/next month . . .

2. Twitter is like a fire hydrant, according to the webinar, so Twitter Lists are like hoses, according to me.

b. COROLLARY: You can focus your Twitter streams and increase your Reach.

3. Webinar’s HOW-TO: (a) Follow the Lists of people you respect; (b) Create some of your own by going to your Follower list; and (c) Promote your lists via widget, FB, FF, and Twitter itself.

c. COROLLARY: Check out more lists on Listorious and add yours to this directory

4. Instead of number of Twitter Followers to measure your popularity, the new gauge will be how many Lists you are on.

d. COROLLARY: Using either of these analytics is “interesting” — to use the term many English teachers write when we can’t think of something positive to say about a student’s paper/thesis.

5. You can not [now] SPAM the people on a Twitter List

e. COROLLARY: A critical component to Success with Social Media Marketing [SMM} is to personalize relationships and service. Automatic anything is so un-SMM.

6. Teachers can make Twitter Lists for individual courses for in-class or homework discussions

f. I won’t have to use TweetChat which was giving us some trouble when students replied directly to other students, e.g., these discussions sometimes did not appear in the stream.

Posts re: Twitter Lists from the blogosphere:

7. Four clever uses for lists: includes creating mini-communities where every listee follows the list and uses hashtags for discussions.

8. 10 ways you can use Twitter Lists: includes making lists to keep tabs on your industry and your employees.

9. Twitter lists and real-time journalism: Pete Cashmere says we can use our friends as filters:

“For those cast adrift in a sea of content, good news: A “curation” economy is beginning to take shape, tweet by tweet, list by list.”

10. Robert Scoble:

“Twitter Lists are for people crazy about tech news. Techmeme is for lazy people who want all their news in 10 minutes? Heheh. Very fun!” in response to a comment on his post “Techmeme vs Twitter Lists“

— BTW, Scoble is the ONLY “listee” on Steve Rubel’s “List/faves”

Time to “get off the couch” and start LISTING — or at least reading about them. It really is “All about the Buzz”

If you enjoyed this article, please consider leaving a comment or sharing it with your followers on Twitter! You can also subscribe by email for more cool interviews and articles from Sharisax is Out There.

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Blogging

To BLOG? . . . or Not To BLOG? . . . That’s a good First Question

October 22, 2009 Shari Weiss 25 Comments

Tomorrow I’ll be meeting with 10-12 friends to teach them HOW TO START A BLOG.

The first question I could ask — but won’t — is WHY do they want to start a blog.

I won’t ask because I suspect two things: (1) most of them know little about blogging at all and (2) the majority are most likely hungry for any social media knowledge they can get.

And I love that!

. . . more for me to teach.

So let’s consider that First Question:

SHOULD YOU START A BLOG?

Take a look at these nine questions before you decide:

1) Are you really really passionate about something?

2) Do you have either a personal desire to speak your mind OR a business need to put your brand presence online?

3) Can you commit to some degree of consistency — whether it is once a week, three times a week, or three times a day?

4) Do you like to do like Picasso, i.e., Always Do What You Do Not Know How To Do In Order To Learn How To Do It?

5) If you make a mistake, can you admit it, accept it, and move on?

6) Can you be patient about gaining a larger readership?

7) Will you take time to read and comment on other bloggers’ articles?

8- Can you participate in a conversation where you could get criticized?

9) Would you like to be an authentic, honest, interesting voice in the Blogosphere?

If you can give a sincere YES to each of those questions, then I say GO FOR IT!

And to help you get started, you can check out my post on HOW TO START A BLOG and another post by my favorite blogger Adam Singer 50 Blogging Lessons To Know If You’re Starting Today

Sharisax Is Out There