Bloggers

A Blog Mentor Is Hard to Find —

A crusty old journalism professor I once had used to preach the following:

“To get where you want to go, you should talk to someone who has been there.”

Ideally, that’s where a mentor comes in. A wise and trusted counselor who influences our work and supports us along the way. You know, the older guy who has earned our respect by example. Now all he has left to accomplish is helping shape today’s youth. I’ve yet to find my blogging Mr. Miyagi (See Karate Kid), and I have a few ideas why:

1) A numbers game. Perhaps there simply aren’t enough success stories. Sure there are a lot of bloggers, but how many of them have achieved success and notoriety? With very little room in the penthouse, the number of top bloggers is seriously limited.

2) There’s no time. Blogging is not most people’s full-time job, meaning that would-be blogging mentors don’t have time to commit to taking people under their wing. With the little time they have, they are constantly developing and growing their own blog(s).

3) The load is shot. If bloggers took the time to mentor, they’d have less to write about. Simply put, many bloggers use their blogs as a primary forum to offer advice. If they started to mentor people away from their blog, they’d potentially be stealing their own content.

There are some Websites where you can pay for a blogging mentor, but that’s not up my alley. Last time I checked, Mr. Miyagi never charged Daniel Larusso. A mentor does it for the passion of the sport, not a pay day.

Do you have a blogging mentor? Any ideas on where to find one?

Treasury Department Makes Robust Effort To Repair Image, Acknowledges Messaging Problems —

After a year of steadily poor headlines concerning its performance in the economic crisis, the Treasury Department has launched what appears to be a fairly robust effort to repair its image and that of its chief, Secretary Timothy Geithner.

On Monday, four senior department officials, including Geithner, hosted a two-and-a-half hour conversation with new media reporters and bloggers that covered the waterfront of political and economic issues. The session was conducted on the condition that the officials could only be paraphrased. And, even then, names were not to be attached to the paraphrased quote.

The stipulations caused griping among some attendees. But the message, delivered with candidness, was a telling one, echoed from the Secretary on down. Treasury's policies should be judged not only based on what progressives ideally wanted from the administration but also based on the alternative -- what those policies would have been under a Republican administration. The Obama administration may fall short of the former, Geithner and others acknowledged but the officials argued that what the Republicans want and what the industry is demanding would produce a far gloomier outcome.

Earlier that morning two lengthy profiles of the Treasury Secretary were published in the New Yorker and the Atlantic respectively. There too, Geithner was cast (or, perhaps, cast himself) in the role of the humble victim, doing the bidding of the country at the price of personal reputation.

"We saved the economy," he told the New Yorker, "but we kind of lost the public doing it."

After enduring months of criticism, the administration clearly has sensed that the time was ripe to re-launch the image of its economic staff. The department had not done a strong enough job communicating its agenda, one of the top ranking officials conceded on Monday. Too much ground had been ceded to the opposition and private industry. More clarity had to be drawn between what the financial sector wanted and what was good for the public. But the administration's policies -- for all the vilification they endured -- were working, officials stressed, even if the messaging was not.

The question remains whether the public can restore its faith in Treasury after months of disappointment from the progressive base and disparagement from conservative critics. Perhaps, more importantly is whether the department can sell version 2.0.

Speaking alongside the Secretary on Monday, Counselor Gene Sperling, Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Michael Barr and Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Alan Krueger insisted that on topics ranging from the stimulus to the bailout, from regulatory reform to the foreclosure crisis, the administration had legislated as effectively and as far it could.

The Senate could not have passed a larger economic recovery package than what was proposed, the group said. But the department was committed to further jobs-spurring legislation, even if incrementally. More 20-yard passes as opposed to 80-yard passes, one official explained.

On home ownership, Treasury didn't have the authority to buy up troubled loans on any scale that would make an important market difference. But the White House was now fully embracing a program that would allow homeowners to sell their homes for less than they owe.

On executive compensation, the administration may have been a bit late to act. But they appointed a bulldog in Kenneth Feinberg as a pay czar. And now they were waiting on Congress to pass say-on-pay legislation.

Finally, on the topic of regulatory reform, the administration had learned the lessons from the health care debate, an official stressed. They had written detailed legislative outlines of what they wanted (including an independent consumer protection agency) and were not going to let private industry define the debate. But even then, hurdles stood in the way. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) needs 60 votes to get legislation passed and without Republicans he doesn't have 60 votes, said an official.

I think he is right, the official added, and it's hard to second-guess him on the political calculations.

The message, through it all, was remarkably concise. The ethos of the Secretary and his staff was to think boldly. The goal was to legislate swiftly. But even then, the administration was limited by the institutions with and in which it worked.

For a room full of largely progressive bloggers, the pitch was persuasive but not entirely convincing. As Geithner fielded questions for close to an hour, the conversation continued to revert back to a lack of complimentary aggression in his communication's strategy. The Secretary professed that economics, not politics, was his forte. But even his staff conceded, implicitly, that a lot of their hopes for regulatory reform were pinned on the American public placing pressure on their representatives to act.

We are hoping that anger is enough to push action, said one of the officials, who conceded that as the financial crisis receded further into memory, the tougher it would be to get strong legislation into law.

We are going to be persuasive, said another official. But, sometimes, you may find it is not enough to just passionately believe what you are doing is right.

Hugh D’Andrade Book Jacket Illustrations —

Hugh D’Andrade has been creating a wonderful series of book jacket illustrations.

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid, subscribe via RSS, Email, Twitter & Facebook.

Related posts:

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- EFF Bloggers’ Rights T-Shirt by Hugh D’Andrade

- Ignore Everybody, And 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod

- Where We Overlap: Hugh D’Andrade & Mati McDonough

Industry Insiders Ponder the Future of Windows: "Why Can’t My Xbox Be A Windows 7 PC And Vice Versa?" [Microsoft] —

How can Microsoft keep Windows relevant? Technologizer decided to approach journalists, bloggers, and industry insiders to discuss just what they think needs to happen in future versions of the operating system.

Hit up the link to see what Kara Swisher of All Things D, Microsoft Employee #77, tech columnist Ed Baig, and others had to say. [Technologizer]

iPhone App Purge: Are Template-Based Apps Next? — Apple's campaign to get tough on iPhone applications is reportedly continuing with a new target: template-based iPhone applications. You can find services that build these so-called cookie cutter applications all over the Web, and they have been used by a variety of prominent celebrities, bloggers, and brands including Ashton Kutcher, blogger Seth Godin, and the U.S. Army. Cupertino's main concern is that some of these applications -- but by no means all of them -- are nothing more than "RSS feeds or glorified business cards," according to TechCrunch. Unlike previous App Store purges, like those that affected Wi-Fi stumblers and [<a

iPhone App Purge: Are Template-Based Apps Next? (PC World) — PC World - Apple's campaign to get tough on iPhone applications is reportedly continuing with a new target: template-based iPhone applications. You can find services that build these so-called cookie cutter applications all over the Web, and they have been used by a variety of prominent celebrities, bloggers, and brands including Ashton Kutcher, blogger Seth Godin, and the U.S.

Are you ignoring one of the most important rules of blogging? —
The most agonizing and frustrating blog post I ever wrote, was my first one.

It took me FOUR days to write that post. Actually it only took about an hour to write, but it took me four days to have the courage to hit 'Publish Post'.

And it wasn't because I was insecure about the post itself, it was because according to what I had read on other blogs, it was a 'bad' post. In preparing for the start of my blog-writing, I read a LOT of blogs in an effort to discover the 'tips' for writing a great blog. And one of the 'rules' for blogging I read over and over again was 'Make sure the post is only a couple of paragraphs long, otherwise it will be too long and readers will lose interest.'

My post was at least two pages long. So I stared intently at the screen trying to figure out a way to shorten the post to 2 paragraphs, and still tell the story I wanted to tell. After 4 days I realized that it couldn't be done, and hit 'Publish Post'.

Just like that, my blogging 'career' began by breaking the blogging rules. And I have to admit, it felt damn good!

I've been thinking about this recently because I'm really struggling to find 'new' blogs that get and maintain my interest. And I wonder if part of the reason why is because so many new bloggers are following the 'rules' of blogging. In 2005 and 2006, we didn't have Copy Blogger and ProBlogger to tell us the what the 'best' way to blog was. We all had to make our own rules, to a great extent.

But now, there's a zillion blogs giving you 'Ten Steps to Creating the Perfect Blog". Hell I've written those posts myself. And on the one hand these do definitely improve your blogging, but at the same time if everyone is following the same format, then it becomes MUCH harder for a blog to stand out.

Another example of purposely not following the blogging rules was the Z-List. This was the thing that first got me on a lot of people's radars. The premise was absurd to some; Take a list of blogs you think are under-appreciated, then invite everyone else to add their own favorite blogs and share the list. With one BIG caveat; You can't add your OWN blog to the list. Even though my blog wasn't on the original Z-List, I ended up gaining a few hundred links from the Z-list, and a few other blogs got several hundred.

So while you are following the 'rules' for better blogging, don't forget that you can always make and ADD your own rules. That might be the most important blogging rule of all.

Pic via Flickr user atibens

Poll: Best Royalty Free Stock Photo Sites for Bloggers —

As with many bloggers, we’ve been using royalty free images for many years.  Many bloggers make use of images from Flickr and we have too but you can’t always find the right image there. I’ve even made a point to take more photos of people, places and things while traveling for later use in blog posts like the one to the right.

The stock photo site we’ve been using for several years recently decided to essentially double their prices (no matter how they spin it, that’s what they did) and it prompted me to ask the excellent people I’m connected with on Twitter for their suggestions on royalty free photography and image web sites. Here is a collection of 9 such sites that were suggested via Twitter or researched by TopRank.  Which leads us to our poll for the most “blogger friendly” royalty free stock photo site:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

For a list of over 100 free stock photo sites, visit this link.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Poll: Best Royalty Free Stock Photo Sites for Bloggers | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Steve Jobs spotted at the Oscars? — The Apple CEO had traded his black turtleneck for a tuxedo at the 82nd Academy Awards on Sunday, where he kept a low profile but some bloggers managed to spot him entering the theater.

Steve Jobs spotted at the Oscars? — The Apple CEO had traded his black turtleneck for a tuxedo at the 82nd Academy Awards on Sunday, where he kept a low profile but some bloggers managed to spot him entering the theater.

Steve Jobs spotted at the Oscars? — The Apple CEO had traded his black turtleneck for a tuxedo at the 82nd Academy Awards on Sunday, where he kept a low profile but some bloggers managed to spot him entering the theater.

Originally posted at The Social

Recruiting For Success: The Right Questions & Job Req —

A handful of recruiting-related blog posts were published over the weekend; and whether you are hiring or interviewing, these are important reads.

First, in “Recruiting High Impact Employees“, Peter Flint of Polaris Ventures gives a list of questions to ask when hiring. Before joining Polaris, Peter spent several years at Ramsey Beirne Associates and is an expert in building senior management teams for early stage venture backed companies. Peter provides a detailed check list of important questions (attention job seekers: prepare for these!). Here are a few:

- Strengths and Weaknesses analysis: Delve deep and follow up any generalized comments by asking for examples. Also get specific examples of failures and successes. Everyone wants to give you just the strengths.
- If the candidate is being considered for a more senior role than he has played before, what challenges will he/she face?
- Ability to hire well: Get examples.
full list here

From a job seekers’ and perspective, both Jason Antman and provide advice on crafting job reqs to specifically attract engineers. The two most interesting takeaways:

1. Engineers should write the technical specs… and be very specific about critical skills and nice-to-haves.
2. Pay as much attention to the non-technical specs as the technical. Describe the job, the team and work environment, etc.

According to both bloggers, the majority of engineering ads fail these two bullets.

UGC Taken to a New Level in NJ —

Cup of Joe: 9 Steps To Go From Newbie To Guru —

So you want to be a famous SEO?

You want to be a Social Media guru?

Want to rock the socks off of affiliate marketers?

Awesome! Want a little tip on how to start?? Don’t start blogging! So you might be thinking What? Don’t blog? Are you crazy? (I am not sure) But, here’s the truth. Almost every “famous” or well respected person in their industry got to where they are by doing good work, not talking about it.

Nathan Hangen tells us that all you have to do is squelch your fear and step into your role. Sorry, Nathan but honestly there are a lot confident people that give bad information and lack real substance. As a result their confident facade looks fake and untrustworthy. You have to produce a good product and be confident in its delivery.

Blogging is good for many reasons. It can help build your personal brand. It can facilitate communication with your community. It can help you develop your ideas and become more well rounded. It can build relationships and partnerships that can have lasting impact.

But none of the above will happen if you don’t know what you are talking about. If you start blogging today about SEO and you have never ranked a web site in search engines, then the industry elite will be able to tell by reading your blog. If you start blogging today about affiliate marketing and you have never made a dime, skilled affiliate marketers will read that in your words and not give you a second thought. You can’t get recognition from inexperience.

Inexperience stands out like a sore thumb. Inexperienced bloggers are unoriginal. They oftentimes spread inaccurate information. Their writing doesn’t fill a void in their niche. It becomes obvious that they are just talking for the sake of talking.

Experienced people write original content based on what they have done. Experienced people have developed intuition from having a firm grasp on a subject. Such intuition can help them predict trends and see the “big picture.” Experienced people are the ones that other industry gurus recommend (and link to).

Joe’s Power Plan For Becoming A Guru

1. Setup a blog and leave it blank.
2. Read blogs from industry gurus.
3. Get out in the field and start applying what you have learned.
4. Keep moving forward.
5. Keep an offline journal and jot down everything that you are learning while in the field. Make notes of what works and what doesn’t.
6. Research the ideas in your notes to see if others are experiencing the same thing.
7. Compare other’s experiences with your own.
8. Write your first post about your experiences. In the post compare other peoples experiences and highlight whats different about yours.
9. Repeat steps 2 through 8 for your next post.

OK, so I know that there are a lot of steps above and all you want to do is get yourself out there and make a name for yourself. However, it’s a lot easier to make a name for yourself when you are providing top quality content and steps above will insure you do that. Bonus tip: Don’t rush into all of this. The longer you take to work in the field, gain experience, and develop an understanding of your subject, the better your content and exposure will be when you finally begin to blog!

Until next time, get to work and start becoming a guru today!

Murdoch's NY Post Continues To Source Articles From Bloggers With No Credit — Rupert Murdoch and his minions at News Corp. have been going around banging the drum that Google and others are "stealing" from News Corp. newspapers by linking to their stories and sending them traffic. But at the same time, they seem to have no problem totally taking credit for stories that they source from elsewhere. Late last year, the Times (of London), which is a News Corp. paper was caught publishing someone's blog post without their permission at all. And then there's the News Corp.-owned NY Post, which last year had a reporter admit that it was the paper's "policy" not to credit bloggers as the sources for stories. After that story came out, the NY Post insisted that wasn't true, but it appears the paper has been caught doing it again.

Andrew Fine alerted us to the news that suggests the NY Post used one of his posts as inspiration for a story. Fine had written about the rather disconcerting sign in a Chuck E. Cheese in Harlem. That blog post got some attention on various other blogs... and then just a couple of days later, the NY Post had an article about the very same sign (apparently, it took two reporters to write that article), with nary a mention of Fine's original blog post (or even any of the other blog posts that promoted Fine's original story.

Now, to be clear, while I do think it's good manners to cite where you sourced a story, it's certainly not required (legally or otherwise) by any means. But where it gets hypocritical is for this to come from an organization that claims that other sites merely linking to its articles are somehow "stealing." But when the NY Post comes in and blatantly borrows an idea from someone else, and does so without credit, that's perfectly fine? It seems like Murdoch and News Corp. have quite the double standard going.

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What Will Yahoo Buy Itself For Its Birthday? —

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) celebrated its 15th birthday this week with cupcakes for reporters, a Collective Soul concert for its staff, and several high-profile media and tech conference appearances for its CEO. But the company also hinted about some things it might buy for itself. At least twice this week, CEO Carol Bartz referred two two specific categories of companies Yahoo might be interested in purchasing: analytics firms and women-centered sites.

During an interview with AdAge, Bartz referred to “acquiring an audience—a group of female bloggers,” as well as to “better analytics tools that help us guide campaigns with our partners.” To the crowd at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, she said Yahoo was looking at “smallish acquisitions around analytics and mom sites.”

So what would fit with Yahoo? “Analytics” seems a bit too vague to speculate. But Yahoo has had success with Shine, the women’s site it launched two years ago—and it would seem logical that the company would want to bulk up in that category. Women’s network Glam Media—which has the highest reach among women on the web—would be one logical target—although it might be too rich for Yahoo (It just raised a $50 million mezzanine round at a $750 million valuation). Included in its ad network is Women’s Forum, which sells itself as the “place for moms.” Another fit could be BlogHer, which claims to be the largest community of women who blog. But BlogHer is already tied to NBC Universal’s iVillage. Others?

Related

• As Yahoo Starts Buying Again, Some Lessons From Past Deals

A Twitter chat is a scheduled “group chat” on a specific topic, where Twitter users interact and engage with one another at a certain time by adding a trackable hashtag to the end of all their tweets. Twitter chats are a great way to meet other marketers interested in the same area as you, learn about a topic of interest, as well as build your following. Here is a list of 8 upcoming marketing Twitter chats to check out.

1. Social Media Collaboration

Discuss the evolution of social media and how social media technology is transforming collaboration. Every Wednesday from 1-3, #smchat

2. Discussing Blogs & Best Practices

The business of blogging: get advice and chat about best practices. Every Sunday from 9-10 PM, #blogchat

3. Integrated Marketing Communications

Co-moderated by Beth Harte of MarketingProfs and Anna Barcelo, chat about integrated marketing communications and how to get all the forms of marcom to “work together” effectively. Every Wednesday from 8-9 PM ET, #imcchat

4. Personal Branding

You are your own brand! Chat about building your own brand (and actually build it at the same time). Every Wednesday from 11-12 PM ET, #brandchat

5. Using the Kaizen Method in Social Media

Chat about using the Kaizen Method to improve social media marketing. Not familiar with Kaizen for social? Neither am I, so I’ll be there next Friday. Every Friday from 12-1 PM ET, #kaizenblog

6. Conversion Rate Optimization

Full disclosure: this is my company’s chat. But it’s worth listing. The first conversion chat of its kind, CROchat will discuss the best ways to improve online conversions. Every Thursday from 1-2 PM ET, #crochat

7. Journalists, Bloggers, and PR Pros

Rub elbows with newbie and veteran journalists, bloggers, and PR pros. Every Monday from 8-11 PM ET, #journchat

8. Healthcare Marketing

Chat with other marketers in the healthcare industry. Every Friday from 1 PM-2 PM ET, #hcmktg

Am I missing a marketing chat? Leave a message below & I’ll add it to the list!

Megan Leap is Marketing Manager at ion interactive, a leading provider of advanced landing page software. As Marketing Manager, Megan manages search, email, webinar, and social media campaigns. She has extensive experience in conversion rate optimization and social media marketing, and when not championing high-ROI online marketing strategies, can be found running marathons across the U.S. She is also a frequent contributor to the Post-Click Marketing Blog. Follow Megan on Twitter: @MeganLeap.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

8 Marketing Twitter Chats to Check Out

Posted by randfish

This week, despite still being seriously under the weather (see this week's sad WB Friday), I flew down to SMX West to speak on the Link Building Strategies panel. Although I'd wanted to put more work in and deliver a better presentation, I received some very kind words afterward and requests from folks to share the deck via the blog. Before I embed the actual deck, though, I need to provide some context (as this isn't a wholly self-explanatory presentation).

Link building has, classically, been a tactic slapped on to a marketing campaign or website post-launch. I believe that those companies/sites that treat link acquisition as an afterthought, rather than building it into the product, will always lose out to those who treat link building strategically. In the deck below, I walk through a number of examples of sites, primarily startups, that have done this. These include:

• Twitter - every user of Twitter has an incentive to link to their profile so more people will follow them. This is also true of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, DeviantArt, Etsy & others
• Vimeo - nearly eevryone who uses Vimeo appreciates the beautiful aesthetic they've created. The embeddable versions of Vimeo videos look and feel more professional and high quality than nearly any other player, hence they get embedded (a lot). This embed action automatically drives links back to the video on Vimeo's site, Vimeo's homepage and the user's profile, all with targeted anchor text.
• Urbanspoon - not only do they give badges to restaurants like Yelp and have started an online reservations system like OpenTable, Urbanspoon also features reviews from bloggers and foodies, who are then incented to promote their inclusion on the site.
• Last.fm - the widgets users embed on their site to share their favorite music automatically creates links back to the service.
• SurveyMonkey - a truly viral product (anyone who's surveyed is automatically exposed to the site), SurveyMonkey is inherently link acquisitive through the product. In order to use the service, you need to link to SurveyMonkey's site, where your form is hosted.
• Scribd - just look at the embed and the link below; 'nuff said.
• Miibeian.gov.cn - possibly the greatest link building strategy eevr devised. The Chinese government requires that all websites in the country link to this site in order to operate legally; not too shabby, eh?

Here's the deck:

Strategic Link Building

As you can see, I've put in a shameless plug for Open Site Explorer at the end. If you haven't seen the new features launched yesterday, you're missing out. Tons of the data is completely free, and top pages is just about the easiest way to find traffic and link opportunities ever built (not that I'm biased or anything). :-)

Look forward to your comments about the presentation and the concept of productizing link acquisition into a site.

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The past three days was three days filled with great SEO and SEM related content from the SMX West show. I am happy to say we had two outstanding and giving volunteer bloggers to help bring a piece of the...

Ethical Superstore Hosts Carnival of the Green — This week marks Carnival of the Green #216, and it's being hosted by Ethical Superstore, a site based in the UK that's committed to helping the ethical consumer "buy what you believe in." Through the Ethical Superstore website, you can purchase the finest quality fair trade, organic, and eco friendly products. So head on over to this week's Carnival which includes a round up of green news and events from the past week and your best green tweets, submitted by other bloggers and green sites. Read the full story on TreeHugger

U.S. CIO Kundra on his iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows PC and Mac — Anyone seeking clues about which companies might land the next big government tech contracts won't find them by looking at which gadgets Vivek Kundra uses. Sitting down with a group of reporters and bloggers at a University District coffee shop yesterday afternoon, the U.S. chief information officer put an iPhone and a BlackBerry on the table -- one personal, the other business, he explained.

Suspected Pentagon Gunman Outlined Theories Online — Investigators and bloggers are trying to make sense of a series of statements posted on the Web that appear to have been the work of a gunman wo attacked the Pentagon on Thursday evening.