Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

inside — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:18:28 -0000

Bonjour jai 11 ans, et je voulais vous dire que jadore le doll maker, seulement, cest dommage que les images soit statiques. et aussi je voudrais savoir s'il est possible de rajouter des elements. ex: des queues de sirenes, des corps dans d'autres positions. merci d'avance!

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Michelle — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 13:16:38 -0000

Excellent advice--I would add not to assume you blog in a vacuum. The "if you post it they will come" attitude will kill faster than anything else. You need to be out there reading other blogs, commenting, making contacts, attending blogging conferences, networking, just as you would in any business.

Bloggers so often tend to be solitary figures, clicking away in the quiet glow of their screens, but blogging is a social phenonmenon that must be treated as such to succeed.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Mary — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:13:19 -0000

use a contest... bribe, bribe

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Sean Gephardt — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:20:56 -0000

9. I'm not to proud to beg, Robert.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Jonathan Allen — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 21:57:29 -0000

Probably teaching grandma to suck eggs but make sure what you write is correctly spelled, with good grammar, capital letters, punctuation and well laid out.

No one is going to take time to read a "stream of consciousness" blog where there is no quick way to scan the text for paragraphs and ideas.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Blog Bloke — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 19:03:49 -0000

(I want to be a jerkface too ;-)

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Peter — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:38:06 -0000

"Anyway, do you have any advice for Mike?"

Noticed this by chance. Yes I do. At How to build traffic to your blog

Peter
Dummies Guide to Google Blogger
I can also be found at
Testing Blogger Beta

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Peter — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:29:43 -0000

Read your last recommendation: "Get Shelley Powers to link to you. She has more traffic than a dog has fleas." Well, the previous dog of my son had lots of fleas, so I figured that yours must be a good recommendation and I was going to site to see how I could persuade her to link to me. But then I saw one of your commentator said: "Get Mike of Scobleizer to link to you", so here I am trying. My blog, from the comments and emails I received is very helpful for bloggers using Google blogger and is very easy to follow and understand. You will be doing me as well as your visitors a favour by linking to me as they will find useful tips for Blogger bloggers. I can be found at:
Blogger Tips and Tricks
as well as
Dummies Guide to Blogger

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

engtech — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 01:01:22 -0000

holy friggin trackback from hell!

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

V-+a%S(p#E*rsT=`hE..]gra_Te[ — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:32:07 -0000

If you can embed your URL in the comment signature:

Name
Mail
Website

...then DO NOT add your a tagged blog URL again, at the bottom of the post.

That will look spammy.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

V-+a%S(p#E*rsT=`hE..]gra_Te[ — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:30:42 -0000

Niche blogs and mass blogs are very different.

A niche blogger, focusing on a specific topic, may not care about getting 10,000 hits a day from Harry Potter worshiping Junior High dork males.

But for a mass blogger, who needs tons of traffic so as to increase the odds that some chumps will click on his dumpy text link ads and Amazon widgets, traffic numbers are important.

If you get 247 comments per post, are the comments adding relevant content or just knee-jerk agreements? Are you prepared to interact with all these comments, at least once per 20?

Most bloggers who whine about not getting traffic or comments usually sit around, too lazy to post comments on other blogs or email other bloggers with valuable insights, good questions, or vital critique.

There are many factors involved, and it depends on the type of blog, the intended audience, the blogger's goals for the blogs, and so on.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

davemc500hats — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:56:34 -0000

a lot of people think that asking prominent bloggers for links is the way to get started. actually, COMMENTING (or tracbacking) on prominent bloggers posts is a much *better* way to get started... at least you have a higher probability of getting it to happen, since it's under your control.

now, that doesn't mean to go spamming all over everyone's posts to just say "Kilroy wuz here!". however, if you have something interesting to say, then you are adding to the conversation & most folks won't rip you for trying to get attention... unless of course, you really are JUST trying to get attention.

in addition to commenting, if the blogger allows links, try including a link back to a relevant post on your own blog that's you've written about, like this:
http://500hats.typepad.com/...

(note: it may be unclear whether some bloggers allow links, whether they allow html, and/or whether URLs get turned into links automatically or not... play around and test it out. not everyone has preview either)

lastly, although most blog comments do accept your URL as part of the signin, i like to include my full name and URL at the bottom of posts just to make it clear. some may think this is overkill, but it also makes it easy for folks to click over to your blog at the end of your comment.

in short, commenting is likely the easiest way to get linked in the blogosphere... and most folks like to get comments, as long as they're not totally annoying or spammy.

(advanced users: apply this technique to TechMeme stories quickly, and watch the results)

- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

David Dalka — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 18:49:14 -0000

I was at Search Engine Strategies this week and I was shocked at how many people told me they read my blog regularly - even being able to recite posts they found thought provoking!

So I asked a few of them, "Why don't you ever comment?"

The answers when coming from people that work at search engines is surprising. They confided in me that they feared doing so. It shows what a long way we have to go to in terms of reshaping opinions! Charge on.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Rob — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 12:22:23 -0000

Finding that perfect niche is difficult simply because it's so hard to be that niche writer when you can find a blog on the mating habits of african lions without much trouble. My niche are things that make me say "wtf", and I write (very poorly) about those things. Having such a broad niche won't drive me to the top of google, but at least I enjoy the topics.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Jenny — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 12:07:24 -0000

Um...you forgot the most important rule of all:

Agreeing to post pictures of yourself as a naughty nurse or a wayward bridesmaid.

By the way, where exactly are your naughty nurse photos?

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

electrica — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:56:11 -0000

Hi Robert, "electrica" is the WordPress handle for Vaspers the Grate (oh no, not him!)

What I dislike most are the post titles that convey absolutely no sense of what the post content is about. While it's fun to do weird post titles now and then, to add variety and humor, we must remember search engines and RSS/Atom feed readers.

Skimming a list of post titles, users tend to not waste time looking at a post with a stupid, hyperbolic, or nonsensical title, unless it's so bizarre it pulls you in, like my "Blog Psychosis" or "Blogs and Murder", but they still have relevance and meaning, a user can quickly assess the possible value of the post.

If bloggers use titles like "In the midst of mourning" or other typical journalistic BS, they can't complain about low traffic numbers and no comments.

But book chapter titles and newspaper article titles are generally well written and we can learn from them.

My biggest complaint with online newspapers is lack of hyperlinks in the editorial content, and relegating comments to a stupid discussion forum, that generally gets very low traffic, rather than the more effective comment function at bottom of post/article.

Interact with your comment posters, reply swiftly to their remarks, within the thread itself.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Robert Scoble — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:28:50 -0000

Electrica: all rules are meant to be broken. I don't always write good headlines. I just have noticed that a straightforward headline is more likely to get hits (particularly search engine hits) than one that's a bit more obtuse.

Techbee: "lolita" is a porn term. I bet a lot of those visitors are wondering if you are showing some porn. I had the same problem over on Naked Conversations (which is one of the top terms for "naked"). I doubt those searchers are expecting a book on corporate blogging. It also made it impossible to run Google ads on our site because all we'd get are porn ads.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

electrica — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 09:45:32 -0000

Chris Locke said some of his most popular posts had weird, funny, or even bizarre titles. Be careful with that, though. Mysterious titles are generally counter-productive.

Do not imitate those ad guys who use "teaser" or clever titles that have no obvious meaning or relevance. The post title should advertise the content and make it immediately clear what the post is about.

Web users and blog readers are In A Hurry. They don't usually have time or patience to play guessing games.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

electrica — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 09:42:55 -0000

Post title writing is a real art and carries a lot of weight in driving traffic and getting comments.

Asking your readers for their opinion (use the word "opinion") is also a good policy, not in every post, but now and then.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

J. Kevin Tumlinson — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 09:42:32 -0000

Ok, this is all good advice... What's unfortunate is that I think most bloggers want to be columnists. What's the point of writing a bunch of useless drivel and quoting from other blogs all the time? Everyone does that. Heck, even *I* do it!

So the sad truth of this is that if you want your blog to work you can't have any aspiration to be more than a blogger because, according to what I've read here, no one will read it. Sheesh.

So MY advice would be this...

Use all of the above to drive traffic to your blog. Write the frilly, no-substantial-content stuff at the TOP of the blog and put something with some substance at the bottom (I break mine up into "bligps," usually three per blog). Then, once or twice a week, write an entry that's sans the frilly stuff.

By the way, I'm a big fan of the "fun headline," so it smarts to think that may be costing me some hits. I always thought of it as, "Make 'em laugh and they'll want to read on." Surely there's some merit to that?

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

techbee — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 08:57:42 -0000

One perfectly serious post title with the words "Gothic Lolitas" in it brought me a few thousands visitors. I still don't understand why (must be a fashion fad with gamers or a rockband's name) But their constant clicking propeled my link high up on a few search engines and increased visibility. If this gentleman is desperate, he is welcome to test.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

kevinclosson — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 23:45:57 -0000

I wonder if a journalist for the Merc would write about Oracle these days? Probably not very exciting? Oh, well, I'm trying to keep the faith

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Kathy Sierra — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 23:43:02 -0000

I see lots of comments about things we--the bloggers--should do, but not much talk about the readers. Since they're the only ones that decide if we have traffic or not, I think respecting their intelligence and time and attention is the most important thing. They have millions of places to put their focus, and it is always a great gift when they give a little to us. I spend a lot of time trying to think of ways I can help my readers kick ass, and as little time as possible trying to think of ways that *I* can kick ass (or worse, trying to convince my READERS that I kick ass).

If people visit my blog, I owe them something in return, and I try not to forget that. That focus keeps me from talking too much about myself and MY life--pretty much the two least interesting things I could discuss. : )

And I will add that Robert was one of the main motivations behind my wanting to start a blog in the first place. So I listen to him!

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Gary Potter — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 23:05:51 -0000

#9 - link love; come on, stick with a cause that matters.

Re: Help a San Jose Mercury News columnist blog

Douglas Karr — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 19:27:41 -0000

I don't know that I agree with everything you've wrote... but he should start by reading Naked Conversations!