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Some Tools To Help Organize And Add Value To Your Blogging

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Get Rid of the Clutter

Get Rid of the Clutter

There was an interesting post made yesterday over at Weblogtools Collection about developing post ideas and how a new WordPress plugin might work to make note keeping and idea seeding easier and faster for bloggers.

And while the posting itself was a good read, as often happens the real gems (for me at least) appeared later in the comments of others.

So, I thought I’d share here some of the methods and tools I personally use for coming up with ideas and warehousing clips of data for later use or citing in posts, since I’m involved with so many blogs in several different genre I’ve had to create a fairly comprehensive, yet quick and easy system for this.

I’ve also just added a new tool to my toolbox, that I found thanks to Michael’s comment on the Weblogtools Collection post, and I’ll give my impressions on that too.

First, my #1 tool for post idea developing right now is Google Reader. I’m subscribed to over 350 blogs and news sites and without Google Reader I’d be in trouble trying to keep up with all of them.

But what really makes Google Reader shine (for me as a blogger) is the search capabilities. Even though I may have just skimmed over a piece in Reader several months ago about “widget glue”, if I’m creating a post on that topic today a quick search will bring that piece and any others related to my idea right up for me.

If you’re subscribing to lots of feeds in your field or area of interest–and as a blogger you should be–then it’s like having a massive and constantly growing library at your fingertips.

Of course, I also like to take notes from pieces I read in Google Reader whenever they strike me as something I might be interested in writing about later myself.

For note keeping, I used to use Yellow Legal Pads. That’s not some nifty software title, I mean actual pen and paper. The problem is I’ve been doing this stuff for years and have 5 whole shelves on my bookcase devoted to just the notes I’ve made during that time. Yellow Pad after Yellow Pad of unorganized notes scribbled on unnumbered pages.

So, I eventually began looking for a digital solution that would be neater and could be indexed for searching, and started using Evernote.

Evernote is great. It’s quick, clean, easy to use and makes everything you clip to it searchable. But, it’s limited, even for paid Premium users, so if you’re a big note taker (as I am) there’s a risk of running out of space and upload allowance each month.

However, I mentioned discovering a new tool from that post yesterday and it’s going to help me ensure that I don’t have those allowance worries with Evernote going forward.

The tool is called Zotero and it’s a Firefox add-on (also works in Flock), that does a very similar job to Evernote, just without a lot of the graphical bells and whistles.

Simply, it’s a research tool that lets you make notes from any web page (including your web based email clients) and store them, organize and analyze them, tag them, and basically save them in whatever way best suits your needs for later use.

I’m still new to Zotero myself, and it took a few minutes to get a feel for the interface and ways it works, but once I did I realized how powerful it really is, and that it alone could serve my needs (if I didn’t like the GUI of Evernote so much).

Now, what I’ve done is split the various projects that I do most of my note clipping/taking for into groups, and moved several of those groups from Evernote and to Zotero. This ensures that I won’t have to worry about hitting my limits with Evernote, and it actually better organizes my personal project workflows for me.

One other data warehousing tool I use is the Web Clipboard feature in the Flock browser for saving media that I might later want to link to or embed in a posting. I began using this before I started using Evernote, which can hold some media files, so I’ve continued using it out of habit.

All of the tools I’ve just mentioned are for data storage and mining. They allow you to make and keep notes or media as you browse the web, and that helps me to find ideas and sources for future post developing as a blogger.

But, I also wanted to share some tools I use for adding value to my blog postings as well, because just having an idea isn’t enough, you need to flush it out into something worth reading for your visitors, and it helps if you can present it with media and link to additional resources or related stories for readers who want to go beyond your posting on the topic.

For all of this I use 2 tools, and both are free services, one with a Firefox plugin (that also works in Flock) that allow me to pull media content that’s under the Creative Commons license (though sometimes the licenses aren’t completely clear) and links from sources on the web that are related to the posting you’re writing.

The first is Zemanta and it’s one of the coolest services I’ve ever used as a blogger. It offers images, related blog postings and news stories related to your post–that update as you write–that you can embed or link to. All of which adds value for your readers and visitors.

The second, called Apture, isn’t really a browser add-on but rather a simple piece of Javascript that you paste into your blog template, and it then allows you to add content from a library of articles, videos, images, Wikipedia, maps and etc. just by highlighting words or phrases in your post and picking what they link to. And what’s really cool is the links don’t take visitors off of your blog, they appear as small pop-ups (that look like thought balloons) and just sit there adding value to your content for your readers.

These simple, easy and free tools all help me in finding, saving and using content from all over the web to develop blog posting ideas with, and they save me a ton of time. I hope they’re of use for you too.

Image Source: stock.xchang user Scyza

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Do You Trust Your Content?

Monday, July 20th, 2009

This morning I attended a neighborhood meeting and ran into a fellow blogger who was there. He focuses on blogging about our city, or what some call “hyper local blogging”, and in the past we’ve had some great discussions about our city and region both offline, and in his blog comments.

However, we haven’t interacted in quite a few months and he asked me why he hadn’t seen me in the comments of his blog lately. It was a bit awkward for me, but I decided to just be honest with him. So, I explained that while I always enjoyed his blog and our discussions, I had to remove his blog feed from my reader a few months back when he switched from publishing full stories to just summaries through RSS.

Like most people, I have a ton of constraints on my time, and with over 350 blogs that I try to keep up with between news, friends, politics and the various industries that I’m involved in–I just don’t have time to click-thru for every full story.

360 Google Reader Subscriptions as of July 20, 2009

360 Google Reader Subscriptions as of July 20, 2009

I also do a lot of my feed browsing/reading on mobile devices through the day, and having to click-thru to each blog that publishes just summary feeds is a pain in the backside on a hand-held.

So, I simply don’t subscribe (or keep subscriptions) to sites that only publish summary feeds.

He was put off by my position, and countered with “what about all the good stuff you’re going to miss out on?”

I’ve heard this all before, in-fact a very popular Tech blogger made the same argument to me last year at a Christmas party, but I’ve thought about this on my own and the conclusion I came to was this: if it’s that important I’ll hear about it on one of the other related blogs that I am following (because they publish full story feeds), and if it’s not that important than I’ll never miss what I didn’t know existed.

You see, my position is simple, as a blog reader I’m an information consumer and it’s not up to me to seek your product out. You, as the product producer, need to understand my needs and make your product fit them.

I understand that everybody wants page views, and revenue is traffic driven online, but here’s the deal. If I subscribe to your feed and you publish something that grabs my attention, I will click-thru from the full story to see if there are any comments posted at your blog, because the comments often hold better stuff than the actual stories do.

Or, if your posting prompts me to want to add something, I’ll click-thru just to post a comment of my own on your blog.

In other words, if you create a quality product, I will still come to your site and interact with you. All I ask is that you make your product available for me on my terms in the first place so that I can decide if it’s “quality” or not before hand. Don’t ask me to waste my time clicking-thru on every posting you publish in order to make that determination by offering a summary feed. If you do, you will lose me for not respecting the value of my time.

A quality blog will not suffer from publishing a full story feed, on the contrary I believe it will grow because of it.

The only questions is, do you trust your content to attract click-thrus and interaction or not? Well, do you punk? (Sorry, just watched Dirty Harry again over the weekend and couldn’t resist)

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Could The Recession Be Good For Blogging?

Monday, March 16th, 2009
Teamwork

Teamwork

I just spoke with 3 popular bloggers who have told me some exciting news about themselves. While each one is popular and successful in their own right, they’ve all seen a slow-down in advertising revenues recently on their individual blogs.

So, in the near future these 3 guys will be consolidating their separate industry related blogs into one joint-venture project. Their hope is that through consolidation and partnership they’ll be able to provide a much better overall product for all of their readers, and that this will translate into increased overall readership levels, and then higher advertising dollars.

I told them I wanted to post about this and they’ve asked me not to disclose their blogs/names since they’re still working out the final details for their project and haven’t made an official notice to their own readers yet, so I will respect their wishes on that as it’s the general idea of bloggers partnering which interests me more anyway.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I think I offer some good information for folks who are just starting out with their first online projects, but I’m not capable of covering everything that would interest my readers all by myself, and I can only offer my own perspective on the themes I do cover. If there were a few more people with experience contributing with me on the blog, wouldn’t that give readers more information and ideas to work with? Absolutely.

Now, I don’t rely on this blog for any income, but if I did then I would probably be considering the idea of partnering with additional bloggers to build it into a bigger and better product.

Global Partnerships

Global Partnerships

It got me to wondering if more bloggers were considering similar partnerships, especially since the online economy is losing ground just like the real world economy recently? I don’t mean joining some blog network where you basically become a paid (often underpaid) blogger, but rather joining with other bloggers who cover the same general themes and rolling 2 or 3 or more individual blogs into one.

My first concern with considering a move would be how the finances are divided. I asked my 3 blogger friends how they’re planing to address this and thankfully they were kind enough to elaborate for me.

Basically, they’re planning to use the OpenX adserving platform to equally distribute advertising on the new blog. Each of the 3 bloggers will have their own advertiser’s account in the OpenX software, plus there will be a 4th “Default” advertiser running limited AdSense ads from which the earnings will be used to cover the site expenses like hosting.

This way, each blogger can have an even share of the advertising displays across the site, and use them to display whatever type of advertising they want. From AdSense to direct paid ads from individuals or companies, each blogger will fill their advertising display spots on their own. That means blogger #1 can sell advertising opportunities on the site to whomever he wishes, and blogger #2 can sell them to whoever he wants… or they can each just display ads from their own accounts with networks such as Google or Commission Junction.

To be honest I’d worry about placing AdSense in an OpenX display because there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer on if it violates the AdSense TOS or not, though I know lots of folks are doing so and haven’t heard of anyone losing their AdSense account because of it. But still, if you rely heavily on AdSense for your income then doing anything that might be ‘close to the edge’ with your AdSense code is risky.

I do like the idea of using a software like OpenX and giving each contributing blogger an equal share of ad impressions. It keeps the revenue divided to avoid any dangers of 1 person becoming greedy, however the flip side is if the partners don’t view each other as equals it could lead to resentments like “Hey, my posts attract more readers than yours, so I should get a larger percentage of advertising impressions to sell”. That’s the thing about partnerships, they can be advantageous but they aren’t always easy to maintain harmony through.

Another concern for me might be that with a partnership you give up some level of control over the final product. As a very simple example, you couldn’t just go and change the blog theme on a whim like you might with your own blog on a partnership site. The same would apply to installing plugins or other tweaking that might affect the whole blog and visitors.

Again, this is really something that boils down to the partners being able to work in harmony. If everyone gets along super well, or if you can establish a democratic process for decision making that everyone agrees to, then you may be able to avoid major frictions and focus on building a great site and following.

Every situation would be unique, but personally I really like the idea of multi-contributor blogs. Some of my current favorite blogs already have multiple authors, and some began as multi author projects.

And at a time when it could be financially beneficial for more individual bloggers to come together on projects I see a lot of opportunity here for a blogger who is having trouble growing their current blog, or even retaining readership and revenue levels in the current markets.

With more people turning to the web for ways to supplement their income, or replace their lost paychecks after corporate cutbacks, collaborative blogging is an avenue that I think is worth considering. It doesn’t require partners who are already established with their own blogs, a few people who are blogging for the first time could find an easier path to entry and a faster growth of readership and revenues by partnering in some manner.

What do you think about it?

Image Credits “Teamwork” by Playingwithbrushes and “Global Partnerships” by Pablo H of Flickr – licensed under the CC

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Don’t Give Up Now

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

At the request of a friend I met today with a small group of young, aspiring webpreneurs. These are exactly the kind of people I hope to be connecting with here on the Leap blog, so I was excited about getting a more personal interaction and some instant feedback.

The meeting was very productive, the people were great and I learned a little about how the things I was talking about (the same things I write about here) were being received. Not all of it as I expected or intended, so that will help me do better here going forward.

Here are 2 things I took from it that I wanted to share right away here.

Where’s The Beef?

The big question all of them had for me was did I think now was a bad time to start a web business of any kind?

That’s a fair question and I had anticipated it might come up. Attempting a very poor Senator Ted Stevens impression, I coldly yelled “NO!” to the room. They laughed, but I’m not sure they really knew why.

Here is my reasoning as I explained it to them. Right now lots of small operations are going down. Heck, lots of big companies are dropping to. It’s a terrible time to be an established business with operational costs that were budgeted long before this current down turn hit.

It’s a fact of business that the bigger and more established you become, the more intricate and detailed everything gets, the more you have to operate on a projected budget and the harder it becomes to react to real time conditions.

So when things get tight they have to trim costs in areas other than where they really want to. So people lose jobs, service and support levels decrease, the company image takes hits… it just snowballs. And ultimately, some go completely under.

And while all of that is sad, remember that we’re talking about real people losing their jobs, but the flip side to that is these companies which go under leave a void in their marketplaces, and for the nimble startup who isn’t working on projections from numbers of last year yet that’s an opportunity to launch from.

This applies to companies and startups of all sizes, even the lone-ranger home based startup.

Right now, I assure you, there are a lot of people who have been struggling to make a go at Internet Marketing–maybe you’re one of them–and they are debating with themselves over giving up or plowing forward.

Some will quit. It’s sad to see someone give up their dreams but completely understandable. There are bills to pay, hungry mouths to feed. A steady paycheck from anywhere becomes very attractive when everything seems to be going against you.

But some will stay with it. Those who do will find new elbow room in their niches as others leave. Suddenly they go from being Guppies to Sharks in the same tank.

My point is that if you can afford to do it, then I believe this is a opportunistic time to start up.

It isn’t an easy time. Just because someone else left a void in the marketplace doesn’t mean customers who weren’t spending money with them will buy your products, they may still not spend money for a while and you’ll have to be ready for that.

But, with less crowded waters it is an opportunity for the noobie to really learn how to swim them. To become intimate with your market and get to know your customer’s needs and expectations, so you’ll be fully prepared for the inevitable economic upswing when it comes and they start spending again.

AdSense is great for site publishers! Except for most of the time when it’s the wrong choice…

I talked with the group today a little bit about adsense. And after a few minutes I realized that I was giving them the wrong impression (in my opinion) that adsense is always a reliable and safe revenue stream.

In-fact, I think it is when used on the right kind of web site. But I also think it’s a waste and counter-productive for a majority of web sites.

Here’s what I really think about it in-case I’ve given the wrong impression here on the blog in the past.

If you run a web site where visitors might be looking for a service oriented solution to some problem, then adsense is a fantastic way to monetize your pages.

Put yourself into the mind of the common visitor to your site. What problems are they going to be facing and seeking solutions for? Are the solutions to those problems typically process or product based?

If the answer is process based then you have a good site for running adsense on. Especially if the process is usually performed by some type of professional.

However, if the solution is typically product based, meaning any sort of tool or even a learning aid that would help your visitor eventually perform the process for themselves with no professional help required, then you would be foolish to put adsense on your pages and earn pennies for clicks where you could have earned dollars by putting an affiliate ad for the product in that same place.

I know adsense is easy to setup and start seeing fast money with, but it’s small potatoes compared to what you could earn with the same page real estate through an affiliate product.

So, when appropriate I love adsense, but most of the time I just don’t think it’s appropriate.


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Clarity on What to Blog About

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

In yesterday’s post, What to Blog About?, and in the later comments I used an example of content researching for someone starting a blog about acne just to illustrate that even topics which you might not normally think would have a lot of online active communities likely do if you just search for them.

My intention was not to say anyone should go and use the personal sufferings of people afflicted with any medical condition to simply build profitable niche sites about. One reader’s email contact questioned me on this, so I wanted to be sure I was clear on that.

Honestly, my posting yesterday had nothing to do with “what to build sites about” for anybody, it was just a sharing of existing resources for anyone who might be starting a site on any topic at all.

It doesn’t matter if your site is about remote control toys or breast cancer, that just wasn’t the question I was addressing. The point was to show that whatever you may be starting a site (or blog) about, you can find good communities online already where the existing conversations can help to spark content ideas for you.

(more…)


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