We live in a world of shallow ideals, cheapened values . . . even amidst world wide recession, we remain narcissistic, superficial and foolish–reflected in our blogging, news, TV and daily habits. I’ve become almost livid over blogging and all the popular themes so prevalent right now.
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Posts Tagged blogging tips
As a Twitter voyeur and back room social network peeping Tom, I notice lots of little trends. One such trend is this idea of blogging brevity, concision, short to-the-point articles and so forth. Is this concise blogging or blogging laziness . . . I suspect a little of both.
Some bloggers are adamant about short, precise posts–getting rid of all extraneous adjectives and adverbs–distilling everything into a neat, quickly read package. But why? I agree, some types of articles should be short and succinct. Some bloggers come to a lengthy post and immediately leave saying, “What an idiot. I don’t have time to read more than 500 words. Hasn’t this writer heard of lean writing?”
Are you one of those if it takes me more than 30 seconds to read I’m off to the next blog bloggers? If you can’t read a lengthy article, you would never make it through an entire book. You’re might not a blogger. You might be a frogger hopping from site to site with the attention span of a reptile (with a full belly).
Are you so concerned about getting to your daily read numbers or EC credits that you would skip reading a great post due to length? If you aren’t willing to actually read and savor some of the great writing out there, perhaps you are just plain lazy. Maybe you’re in blogging for a different reason than I am. Some people have 20,000 sites in their RSS reader and scan them all (I don’t use RSS, I actually go to the actual site to read). And that’s the thing: they don’t read . . . they gloss over and scan.
When I read someone’s article, I take my time and really read it (sometimes 2-3 times if it’s really good). It prevents me from being able to read a million blogs, but I feel like they worked hard on it so it deserves some real attention–especially if they are my friend.
Another Rant
I know one blogger (who shall remain nameless because I will not add to his incoming links) who is known as a social network maven with over 25,000 Twitter followers. The other day, he published an article about commenting–not an even remotely informative, fresh, new, insightful or well written one–but a decent plagiarized article. I’d say below average, written on a high school level and devoid of all originality. Yes I am brutally honest and impeccably accurate.
The post got almost 200 comments from 200 different people in just a few hours–not just one commentator leaving most of them as on some sites. The author replied to only two comments. OK . . . a below average article (by any standard) about rehashed antiquated has-been information getting that much support? How is that possible?
The comments were like:
“This article changed my life. I am astonished. You are a genius.”
or
“You’ve done it again. This is why you are a networking god. You are the best and I only hope to be 1/32 as knowledgeable as you one day.”
Just endless ass kissing and ridiculous schmoozing. I was LMAO.
Many bloggers believe that by kissing the asses of the “big dogs”, somehow their popularity will rub off on them. Sheep make the money world go around.
I would be freaking embarrassed to tell someone how great they are just to score brownie points. This is why I generally never read marketing, SEO, and make money on line blogs (maybe a few). Their audiences make me wanna puke. If I had that kind of popularity and got that many brown-nosing comments I would reply to each one individually and say, “Get a life.”
Seriously.
Now there’s some blogging brevity for you.
Stuff that in your blog taco and eat it . . . I feel all better now.
Over the past few years, I’ve made many observations about how bloggers operate and I’ve come the the conclusion that in blogging as in life, the blogging snobs, elitists and ass kissers rise faster and climb higher – making some interesting psychology. What exactly do I mean in saying that? Are you a blogging snob? Are you a wannabe blogging elitist? Will you discard all friends like toilet paper as you climb higher and higher – like disgusting porno drama queen Paris Hilton? Do you kiss the asses of famous bloggers trying to ride their coattails and eat their crumbs?
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Currently, there are 6.72 billion people on earth. Imagine if every single one of them had a blog – that would be serious information overload! According to Technorati, there are over 112.8 million blogs (not including China’s 72.82 million blogs) and it’s growing at an incredible rate. I remember just a few years ago, there were only 70 million blogs and experts were saying the bubble was about to burst and that blogging would become less popular. They were wrong.
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I’ve tried out and am a member of so many social networking sites it has become preposterous. I really don’t like any of them that much, but Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon seem to be the only ones having any relevance. I’ve always thought that blogging and commenting are the best way to social network, and the others are simply supplements.
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I am not very fond of using social bookmarking to promote my blog. I think people often forget that blogging is social networking, but get overly caught up in different sites to build traffic, like Digg and many others. My favorite is Stumbleupon. What most people don’t realize is how much traffic a single stumble can bring. Because of how the Stumbleupon algorithm works, it is fairly common to receive massive quantities of traffic from only one person stumbling you at the right time. Every now and then you get that lottery stumble, which can generate thousands of visitors in just a few hours.
On May 19th, my great blogging buddy Marzie – the Genie Princess stumbled my homepage (thanks Marzie!). I had reached around 80 visitors that day, until that magical stumble! A few hours later, I noticed I was up to 674 readers and 969 page views in under an hour – that was quite an explosion of traffic. I ended up with almost a thousand visitors before I went to sleep. Many of those visitors left comments and viewed more than one article, which was fantastic. You don’t always get such an explosion of traffic, but every now and then, you do. It’s freaking great when it happens.
I wrote an article about how to use Stumble correctly: Stumble Upon: A Cool Ethical Approach with a few solid tips and a few great links you should check out. Here are a few more:
- Don’t stumble your own articles – a TOS violation
- Don’t trade stumbles with people – a TOS violation
- Don’t ask to be stumbled – a TOS violation
- Try to review what you stumble – many people don’t bother. I explain how in my link above.
- Use it often, and it will increase your chances of being stumbled
- Let people know you’ve stumbled them in a post comment
- Make sure you review every time you stumble
All these tips are basic, but if you violate Stumbleupon’s terms of service, they will drop your account. I know many people this has happened to. It’s a great way to support your fellow bloggers. Many people use social networks only to gain things for themselves, they rarely do things only for others. This is what is wrong with society as well as in blogging. I use Stumbleupon everyday because I know how powerful it is. I stumble people’s homepages, and also when I see a really good post. Just keep the Stumbleupon toolbar open, and use it liberally. If you use the stumble tool bar, take a look at who stumbled your site. You do that by clicking the little white balloon while looking at a particular page. The ethical and honest way to use it, is to stumble lots of people and hopefully you’ll get stumbled too – not because you’ve asked (hey I’ve asked before but I won’t anymore), but because someone chose to on their own.
Sometimes I wish I had a different approach to blogging, but I am happy with my methodology. I have written many Bobby’s Batch posts where I link to my fellow blogger’s fine posts. In my opinion, it is the best way to help people out. If blogging worked by such ethical and kind giving, the blogosphere would be a better place. My blog is rarely found in Google searches landing on my homepage. With Google searches, my individual blog posts are found, which is what I want. It is the content that matters, not the homepage. However, I am trying to change my views on many things in blogging, be much more positive and less critical of what other people do.
One thing I really like to do on each of my Bobby’s Batch posts, is that each have a unique title and an article included before the links are listed. I have a few blogging observations this week I’d like to share with you.
About Pagerank
I have many pet peeves about blogging and I believe them to be rooted in my personal sense of ethics. One area most bloggers do not understand is concerning Google pagerank. I’m often perplexed when I see a personal blogger (or any blogger) displaying their pagerank in their sidebar – it’s obvious they have no idea what pagerank is or why it exists. Pagerank determines your ability to be found through a google search while they are looking for answers of some type. If you write a personal blog, especially about your life, etc, then pagerank is absolutely meaningless to you.
No matter how high it is, you will not be found through a search unless they enter your blog title in the search bar – how many people will ever do that?. This is especially true if you have a non-niche blogspot blog. To me, any stat in your sidebar, is much like wearing a clothing item with price tags hanging off of it – it’s just a little tacky. It’s like wearing a t-shirt with your college diploma imprinted on it.
Much of my outlook stems from martial arts, Zen and musical instrument playing/building. One of my favorite comparisons is a martial arts teacher wearing a black belt with ten stripes on it and the word ‘Master’ written in big letters across his back. Any real martial artist knows this probably means he cannot fight nor has any conception of martial art combat. I think what I’m saying is it is what’s inside that matters, just like my perception of people. Maybe I’m a little too uptight or hardcore about this, but I’m trying to get over it.
I am a musician and have been playing stringed instruments for decades. When I hear modern pop musicians, the music itself has become irrelevant – much of it written on a PC program using patches and samples. The music is usually written around a star vocalist by someone else, not by the singer. There are very few musical artists that actually write the music for their own songs. Nowadays, a great guitarist or drummer has become irrelevant. I cannot name hardly any gifted musicians in today’s popular music scene. They are simply a rare breed. The ones who do make it are extremely lucky. Just look at rap music. I am not saying that all rappers don’t have talent, what I’m saying is that the music backing their rap is ridiculous and requires absolutely no talent to compose. An artist who doesn’t write their own music (actually compose it and write in down in musical notation) should not be allowed to win a Grammy award. If they had this rule, 95% of all Grammy winners wouldn’t even qualify for an award. It’s like McDonald’s hamburgers: just because they’ve served billions doesn’t mean they taste good. They are like fast food TV dinners. I cook my hamburgers at home…you know, the ones that really are good.
Views on Entrecard
Lately, I’ve found my blogging, or how I visit other bloggers being taken over with things like Entrecard. Blogging is not about how many points you get on Entrecard. The idea of writing meaningful content has been replaced with this click happy attitude of point collecting, showing off stats and so forth. It wasn’t like that a few years ago – this is an all new type of fever, and it’s getting worse. The truth about Entrecard, is while it may increase your traffic, the traffic you get is 90% one second visits, which is really bad for for any blog. This is why I only use it sparingly. Also, if you use Adsense or many other PPC programs and you have the ads on the front of your homepage, you will become smartpriced and render your profits worthless. It’s so much better to only have ads on individual posts, and not on your homepage. Entrecard will increase your bounce rate (the quickness by which people instantly leave to click onto the next Entrecard site..haha), which is what you don’t want. Before I installed Entrecard, the average visitor looked through 7 articles on my site and spent 10 minutes looking through them. Now, it’s down to one pageview and a two minute visit average. I am seriously thinking of removing it from my site, but with so many friends depending on it, I have fallen in to a pit of dependence and am afraid I may lose many readers if I remove it. It’s like nasal spray – once you start using it, you can’t stop because your nose will stay stuffy for a few agony filled weeks upon quitting. It’s a definite catch-22. I probably use Entrecard for 5 minutes per day and click one if I see it. I only pay a max of 128 credits for an ad and I have never turned down an ad. I see some people rejecting 35% of all attempts to purchase – what is that all about? If I see someone rejecting a larger percentage of ads, I will not even attempt to get one as I don’t want to ruin my 0.00% rejection stat…hahaha!
Ok, that’s enough negative critiquing of Entrecard. It really depends on how you as an individual use it. It really does offer more positive benefits than it does negative and I have made several new friends through it. I think like anything, it can be detrimental if you overuse it and depend on it too much. People forget you could just as easily go through the main directory of Blog Catalog visiting everyone there, leave comments, make friends and gain new readers the old fashioned way.
There’s really no way to judge whether content is good or not, at least from an algorithmic standpoint. That is really up to the masses. I also realize that I don’t control anyone but myself and the content I write, so I will not take the outside world personally. On another aspect, I have many blogging friends, all writing different content. Some write only about their family, some are just having fun, some write with stunning brilliance and some are trying to get rich – most fall somewhere in the middle. No matter what they write, I still read because they are friends!
What it boils down to, is that we are all in this thing together and amazingly, we are all getting along quite well. I am just trying to come to terms with my perception of the blogosphere. I don’t like show offs, but I may still like the person doing the showing off. I think it’s a crazy thing to call yourself a liberal or conservative, because none of us are truly one or the other. I am an independent in my political, religious and every other belief I have – chances are, so are each and everyone of you on a deeper level. Now for this weeks links:
How To Upgrade To The Latest Version of WordPress – from Garry Conn. There are lots of sites that can show you how to upgrade your self-hosted Wordpress blog, but this one is actually easy to understand. It shows you how to do it step by step via FTP, which is really the correct way to do it.
Euromillions Rollover Contest – comment here – from FiddyP. My buddy Andy Bailey’s new contest. All you have to do is leave a comment to win a great prize. As you may know, I won his last contest and quickly received my brand spanking new set of headphones. While you’re there, check out his many fantastic articles.
Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less – from Rolando. Go to this post for information on how you can help convince congress to drill for oil here in America. Like Rolando and many of you, I can barely afford to drive with these skyrocketing gas prices. The way you change things is by simply getting involved.
Perfectly Imperfect – By Catatonic Kid. She is truly a brilliant writer and is definitely worth reading. This post is but one of many great ones. Be sure to visit her, you see some truly introspective passion.
Incomplete Figure – By Francis Scudellari of Caught In The Stream. This is a strange and undulating poem. It’s actually one of my favorites of all the poems I’ve read on line. I love the unusual perspective. I am new to his blog, but really enjoy his writing style and his unique drawings.
The Blood River Flesh Hunter – A bizarre short story I wrote a few months back (one of my personal faves of my own work). Please read the above poem and then read my story, you will feel very unusual when you’re done…I promise!
You Know You’re a Flirt When – Written by The Sandman, one of my favorite writers on line, offers this fantastic and hilarious post. Highly recommended! This is a late addition to this batch – I’m so glad I saw it.
You My Niche
Oct 24
Why Most Niche Blogs Are Worthless
So you’ve started your blog and you’ve read the advice of the pros. Do you believe that by following the advice of big money making blogs, you will be rich? Most people who follow the advice of professionals will be right where they want you to be, beneath them. Niche is pronounced “nitch” in case you didn’t know. I used to think it rhymed with quiche…LOL!
