Broadcasting Brain

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Maki does it again over at Dosh Dosh with his latest post: Rethinking Blog Comments. I highly recommend his blog if you are interested in social media, Internet marketing, or blogging in general.

In summary, Maki advises his readers to think long term when commenting on blogs. You can use blog comments as a way to interact with a blogger and build a connection between the two of you.

I know from my own experience that I love it when people comment on Broadcasting Brain posts. Blog comments have allowed me to connect with other bloggers.

The downside of blog comments, especially if you’re an established blogger, is that your comment section will mutate into a gigantic bulletin board where any greedy soul will post just to get their name noticed, plus the backlink that comes from a Do Follow blog comment section. Maki describes one scenario where an internet marketer mass-posted the same comment at multiple blogs as a means to promote himself.

I’ll be honest: I’ve posted comments on some of the A List blogs as a means to get some exposure. Caroline Middlebrook and Darren Rowse have both written useful posts about ways to use blog comments to make contact with other bloggers. I figured, “Hey, if they recommend it…”

However, on the other side of good taste, there is the obvious link spammer, not unlike the gentleman that Maki describes in his post.

I’m sure that it’s a bit discouraging to know that some people are commenting on your blog just to get some attention for themselves.

However, if they are contributing to the conversation in some way, then I think it’s perfectly fine to give your commenter a chance to be contacted by other like-minded individuals.  Most blogs were designed to allow the commenter to be contacted, after all. 

Yes, it’s an opening that some people will try to take advantage of, but when you’re a beginning blogger, every little bit helps.

Maki wrote a great post, as usual, so please check it out, won’t you?

(And why not leave a comment here while you’re at it?)

(For that matter, why not subscribe…  you never know what kinds of goodies I’ll be presenting here… 

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I’ve just posted my first poll here at Broadcasting Brain.

I’d really appreciate it if you take a moment to vote.

Thanks!

What do you do when you feel like you need to say something but you just can’t find the right words to communicate it?

Telepathy would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? Gone would be the guessing games, the frustration, the hurt feelings and time lost due to misunderstanding. The perfect words wouldn’t have to be so perfect anymore when direct mind-to-mind communication, free of filters and barriers, could transmit any thought, feeling, or concepts between two or more people.

Credit: Writers block 3 by Jonno Witts

Alas, telepathy is currently impossible. We must rely on our five senses (smell, taste, and touch don’t tend to be used very often: at least not intentionally) to tell the story.

Given these constraints, it’s easy to understand that we can struggle with the right way to communicate something. We use different languages with hundreds of thousands of characters, symbols, and groupings to move information between minds. Sometimes we get the message across, sometimes we don’t.

But what do you really want to say?

What’s worse, sometimes we can’t even figure out what we want to say, even if the thoughts feel maddeningly close to the surface, just like we could snatch them up and start using them. Sometimes these words and thoughts will dive deep, scamper away, or otherwise evade our grasp. Instead of transmitting a meaningful message, we broadcast gobbledygook that even we, the author, don’t understand.

How do we get the right words out?

Read the rest of this entry »

Maestro Chris Brogan has declared today (Monday, April 28) to be “read and comment” day across the blogosphere. Works for me!

However, in addition to searching and devouring, I’m going to point you towards some blogs that you might not have read before, with incredible blog ideas that you might find intriguing:

The Ominous Comma - brill British humour blog with equally good comments

DCR Blogs - awesome American blogger

The Love Blog - it might not be all we need, but we can always use more

Mimzie’s Musings - check out my previous Catch The Brainwaves Q&A with Mimzie in order to brace yourself get grounded

For that matter, why not check out my entire Blogroll?

Bon appetit!

A light hearted look at social media for your Sunday.

My social media friend Kim tagged me some time ago with a meme started by Shari Voigt where the writer must list seven unusual things about themself.

It’s a few weeks later, but I’m getting caught up now. 

OK, Kim had to remind me about it, but better late than never.

Here they are:

1. One of my front teeth is shaped like a molar- it has an extra piece in back that you can’t see.
2. I have an extra sinus; showed up in an X-Ray when I was being checked out for braces, I believe.  No idea if it makes any difference.
3. I used to have the nickname “Spidey” when I played hackeysack - I only played it one summer, however
4. I ran a 10k race when I was 19 - never did anything like that before or after
5. I once drove a car through the inside of a narrow covered bridge at the same time that a utility truck was coming through.  There was probably only a couple of inches of clearance on each side of my car.  I panicked - I didn’t know what else to do except keep going.  My friend, who was carpooling with me, kind of freaked out for a moment.  I don’t blame him.  Anyway, no harm done except to my friend’s nerves.
6. I once ate a jalapeno pepper without changing my expression, although it felt like I had bitten into a sunburn.  The people sitting near me say that I turned bright red.
7. I only pulled one all-nighter during my entire university career - it was near the end of my final year.  I guess they’re supposed to be more common than that. 

Yeah, that’s it, then.

Catch the Brainwaves is our ongoing series of interviews with a variety of folks participating in blogging and social media. I ask them ten questions and they respond with their brilliant answers and insights! Today we are featuring the amazingly helpful Jaan Kanellis of KBK Marketing aka The Incredible Help!

1. Can you give us your definition of “organic search marketing”?

Optimizing a website for the purpose of ranking in the “still free” places on Google, Yahoo and MSN. The three main pillars to success for organic search marketing are:

1. Relevant authoritative back links. Link baiting and social media.
2. Accessibility in themed structure. Making your website easy to crawl and index. Information architecture is key.
3. Basic on-site SEO factors. Fresh original content.

2. Why does your blog title emphasize that you are located in Cincinnati, OH?

Just for local SEO help. I work with clients all over the world, but I want to let them know where I am located directly. I don’t like it when customers can’t get a feel for where you are located in the states. There are far too many shysters in this business that don’t claim any actually place to work from.

3. In your opinion, does Digg traffic provide any long term advantage to a website?

As with any social network you can have a second order effect that will help your website rank. If I offer a collection of social network buttons on all my pages (Digg include) the visitor may get there and be more apt to bookmark the website since the buttons are there. After the page has been syndicated, friends of the original syndicator will pick on the Digg and syndicate it further. This will create a flow of eye balls to your website which will:

• Create new leads
• Create more bookmarking of the page
• Create new RSS feed subscribers
• Create more buyers for product or service
• Create more back links to your when others blog about website

The chain reaction of just one Digg or Stumble is very effective. So my answer would yes you should actively promote yourself in the social networks, including Digg, but I personally find other social network are more effective than Digg.

4. I like the nod to Marvel Comics in your avatar. Are you a Marvel Comics fan?

Sure as any young boy in the 80s I was a fan of most comic books. My name IncredibleHelp came before the avatar. I have been very active in forums over the years and everyone keep saying what an “incredible help” my posts were I kind of assumed that as handle going forward. With a name like that I decided to take a angry picture of myself and turn it a shade green. The avatar definitely stands out from others when browsing blogs that use MyBlogLog.  (ED:  I can attest to the power of green… and purple.)  I am a fan of the Incredible Hulk, but a bigger fan of Spider-Man.

5. Do you think that large organizations are starting to understand the potential value of social media? Or does social media really have an impact on a large corporation?

I think larger corporations are just now being more sold on blogging itself.  As companies grow internally with their corporate blog(s), social media becomes much more acceptable.

6. What is your opinion of the long term viability of “human powered search” i.e. Mahalo?

I have not been a big fan of Mahalo. I don’t like seeing them appear in Google. It is a bad experience for everyone, but that is another issue for another time.

Conceptually it makes sense to have a search engine that has human interaction, approval and editing, but Mahalo won’t work because it is simply not scalable. There are far to many search queries that currently happen, let alone the new ones happening every day to think you can do this type of thing effectively. I remember Udi Manber from Google saying that 25% of all queries on Google are new or have never been tried before, from the previous day. How is Mahalo supposed to keep up with that?

7. What resources do you use to stay on top of your field of expertise?

Read, learn, post. SEM is ever changing and very hard to stay on top of everything. You must build your own social circle where you have contacts and colleagues in the industry. Follow them and others in your RSS reader every day. Start posting on your own blog. It helps keep you sharp and involved in the industry.

8. What is the one achievement on the Web which gives you the most pleasure and/or satisfaction?

I would say it is two-fold. I really enjoy helping people on forums and blogs. Answering questions for some of those that are new to this type of thing and seeing it help them is really rewarding. Of course meeting my clients overall goals is just as rewarding.

9. Pretend the Internet is destroyed overnight. What do you do the next morning?

Start building the infrastructure all over again. The internet is a necessary means of communication and we should work to keep it free and safe for ever.

10. What one piece of knowledge, advice, or wisdom do you have to share with our readers?

If you want to rank better on Google, Yahoo and MSN the one thing you should do is start a blog on your website. I don’t care what products or services you offer a blog can be worked into your business plan and will be a success for your online marketing plans long term.

Thanks again to Jaan Kanellis!

Looks like he’s stumbling over something…

First of all, I love StumbleUpon. I think it’s an awesome website and tool. It’s a wonderful way to get people to visit your blog.  I get a lot of traffic through SU and I’ve come into contact with some pretty cool people there. Overall, it’s a good way to share info about websites and it’s more fun than your standard social bookmarking function.

However… there are some things that I’ve found over time which I don’t like or which have caused me some problems. Many of these issues have been covered elsewhere, so they may not be new to most of you. Nonetheless, these are the things that have “tripped me up” a bit, so to speak.

1. Keep your post slugs simple - no special characters. StumbleUpon especially hates commas; it makes them very hard to submit your posts to StumbleUpon without doing some trickery. Wordpress in particular tries to take your post title and use it as your post slug, which becomes part of the URL for your post. If you insist on using these additional characters, take care to type in a post slug using just numbers and letters separated by hyphens.
2. Use the correct URL. Some sites, like the Triond family of websites, will run articles over multiple webpages. It would make sense to Stumble the very first page. Otherwise, you may accidentally submit multiple pages, which could dilute the value of your Stumble.
3. Tags can be overwritten. If you are the kind of blogger who is very particular about how you want your submission tagged, it’s possible that a subsequent Stumbler may change them. Keep your eye on this.
4. Tags can also be incorrectly chosen by the submitter. I’ve seen some weird choices, including adult-oriented tags, where they probably weren’t intended to be used. It could be the result of using a plug-in to automate the submission process.  Similar to problem 3.
5. Remember to “thumb up” the post before clicking on the Comment button. Otherwise, the post might not be correctly registered as a “thumbs up”.
6. Unfortunately, people will occasionally downvote your submissions. Resist the temptation to reciprocate unless the downvoter is being abusive. Even then, use caution
7. The 200 mutual friend limit. After awhile you just can’t add any more friends, which sucks.
8. The Send To function is very annoying, especially if you have more than 35 mutual friends, because you have to scroll for several seconds until you find the friend you are looking for. Yes, you can argue that the Send To function can be abused by spammers. However, if I want to send a link to someone whose user ID begins with the letter Z, then I have to scroll all the way to the bottom. It gets really, really tedious with 200 mutual friends. Maybe there’s an add-on or other application out there that circumvents this problem?

None of these problems seriously damage StumbleUpon, they are merely annoyances. However, they do represent some ways that the service could be improved. Are you reading, StumbleUpon?

Here’s another contribution to the blogosphere. I’ve come up with ten unusual (dare I say uncanny) blog post ideas for you to consider. Some of them are very challenging. I’d love to see you try them out. If you do, would you please link back to this post?

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy trying these.

1. Pretend the Internet is destroyed overnight. What do you do when you find out?

2. Review an unsung hero: someone in social media who consistently creates excellent work but seems to get very little recognition. Look at it as an opportunity to discover a hidden gem or a star-in-waiting.

3. Should blogging platforms be easier to set-up, use and maintain? What are the pros and cons of making them easier to use?

4. Describe a situation when a blog post or article that you wrote was COMPLETELY misinterpreted by almost everyone that read it. What would you do differently now if you had to rewrite it?

5. Do memes have any value beyond entertainment? List at least five benefits to the meme creator, the meme participants, and the meme readers.

6. Write a post on any topic, but don’t use any adverbs. Bonus points if you can also write the post without adjectives.

7. Write a blog post about honesty from the point of view of a fictional character. You can be for or against honesty.

8. Find at least three of your best comments that you left on other blogs. Use them to write your own blog post. Find a way to tie the three comments together.

9. Write a blog post backwards, in the style of the movie Memento. The scenes in Memento are shown in reverse chronological sequence, so, literally, the beginning of the movie was the last thing that happened.

10. Imagine that a brain-to-computer interface has been created. Instead of typing, clicking, or talking, you could just think and then your computer would do whatever you wanted to do. How would that feel? Would you want to work that way?

Good luck!

Blog subscribers are one of those key measurements that many people use to evaluate the value of a blog.  But what’s the real value of a blog subscriber?  I think there’s really one key value of a subscriber that you might not think about as often as you should.

Skellie wrote an interesting article (Are Subscribers Over-rated?) in which she talked about the value of a blog subscriber.  She wrote a thoughtful analysis of the topic and came to some interesting conclusions about subscriber stats.  I’m going to take a much simpler approach, although I recommend that you read her article.

Simply put, a subscriber is a vote of confidence for your blog.

It doesn’t mean that they’re going to read your blog every day.  It doesn’t mean that you’re going to get a correlating number of page views, inbound links, or the like.

A subscriber is someone who was willing to make a show of support for your blog.  And if they subscribed by E-Mail and two different blog readers, don’t think of it as inflating your subscription numbers.  Think of it as three votes of support.

If your numbers increase over time, it’s like a greater measure of support for your blog.  If they decrease… well, it’s a sign that you’re losing support.

If you don’t care about these shows of support, then don’t worry about your subscriber count.  If you do, and most of us will, then this might keep things in perspective.

How many people make one new friend a day?  Garner support from another person?

Blogging isn’t necessarily a popularity contest, but a little ego boost always helps.

Come to think of it:  maybe you should subscribe if you haven’t already?