BlogLab

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BlogLab – Improve The Quality Of Your Blogs Today!

Let’s get acquainted

How many people here blog?

How often do you blog?

What do blog about?

How much of your week involves blogging?

What is the best thing that ever happened because of your posting?

What would you like to accomplish today?

What is the best thing you learned in Let’s get acquainted?

Purpose

Blogs can be used for self-expression, or to create a point of view, a following, taste,

loyalty, action, behavior, and sales. Blogs can become the embodiment of an

organization, focusing and clarifying the work of the organization. What else?

Blogs are typically not good for marketingspeak, because most marketingspeak isn’t

interesting, enlightening, or useful. Nothing wrong with the blog, and it’s purely amazing

to me how badly people explain what they do. Blogs are actually an antidote, a protest

against ham-handed marketing, and can sometimes rescue a lack of cluefulness by

creating interest.

What is the purpose of your blog?

What are two other goals?

Best thing you learned in Purpose?

Posting

Where do you get your ideas for posts?

Reading other sources. Which are the good ones?

What is your blog aggregator? How many blogs? Favorite?

Live meetings? Capture tools?

How do you define a productive meeting?

How long does it take to complete a post?

What tools do you use to build your post?

What is your process? (What are the steps?)

Does anyone help you? What do they contribute?

Most interesting idea you learned in Posting?


Page 2

Key elements of a post

My model is ten sentences, five paragraphs.

Link to anything I can, especially to previous posts.

A graphic invites more readers.

I invite people to comment.

I try to include an event link, something to click to..

What are your guiding criteria?

What was the key takeaway from Key elements of a post

Commenting

How many comments do you get on a typical post?

What is the value of the comments you get?

What was the best result from a comment?

How can you get more comments?

I comment other blogs.

Answer comments publicly whenever possible.

Invite comments.

What can you start today to get more Comments?

Syndication

How many people read your blog? How many read your posts?

Jim Sterne asked, “Do you want to control the platform or the conversation?”

Publishers want to control the platform, journalists want to control the conversation.

Suw Charman wrote that she figures for every commenter there are at least 1,000 lurkers

reading her posts. She also thinks that to the lurkers, the blogger and the commenters are

all players on the stage together.

Twenty years ago I learned that less than five percent of the people on the internet are

authors. Most are consumers.

If you wanted 200,000 readers, who wants to post your copy?

I have eight groups where I have been president, a speaker, or head of membership.

That’s because I’m shy. Jack gets read by 750,000 people, because he got to sites he likes

to read.

I’ve been booted off several sites. I’ve been asked back. An ignorant site manager can

turn a good site into a garden of spam in 60 days. Readers seek out the good stuff.

A head of Apple Federal told me, “It’s not ‘content,’ it’s ‘blessed asset.’”


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LinkedIn Widget (Facebook wall)

Google Buzz

Google+

Teasers with links - Quality of the teaser will improve response. Think of an alternative

headline or value of the post. Don’t pick cute or confusing or angry.

What are your thoughts for improving your Syndication?

Platforms

What is your current blogging platform? Strengths/ weaknesses?

Tony Byrne of CMS Watch, “Don’t pick software that is more sophisticated than your

organization can handle.”

Dick – Don’t customize a stock template, it then breaks regularly.

What are the easiest platforms to use? Advantages and disadvantages of each?

OP News sites

LinkedIn Groups,

Ning sites (Marketing 2.0, GovLoop, The Federal Contractor Network)

Industry sites

Organization Site

Tumblr

Squidoo

Knol

Blogger

Wordpress

Drupal

Wikipedia

What was the best thing you learned in Platforms?

Analytics

Which analytics packages do you use?

Don’t forget featured post, top blogger awards, and your Wall of Ego ranking.

What are analytics good for?

What is the benefit?

How have you changed your behavior based on analytical feedback?


Page 4

What is the most important metric that you get from your analytics package?

Onion Syndrome - The problem with analysis.

How can you control analytic bloat?

What is your commitment to action for your Analytics

Archive and Reuse

How many posts have you written?

How do you get extended value from past posts?

How do you catalog your past posts?

Kevin Kelly The Technium, Every post (Importance of great titles)

Meta Tags

Every month

Google (importance of great tags)

Landing pages (Greatest hits, specific subjects)

Static pages on websites and blogs

What is one new action you can implement to improve your Archive and Reuse?

Invading the Meatspace

How important are face-to-face meeting with your loyal subjects? (I create 20 meetings a

month, both group and individual. I haven’t noticed any difference in quality of sales

generated.)

How do you maximize each meatspace opportunity? What are your offers? What can you

do for others?

(Greatest Blogs handout, invitations, offers to introduce into technical social networks,

personal recommendation. I am a rolling retail rack)

At Google, I had a fellow pilgrim ask when I was starting the presentation. I followed his

eyes down my shirt and realized I was the only person in the room wearing a tie. Are you

planning your costume? If Julie can wear a tiara, are you doing enough?

What is your first step for Invading the Meatspace

Last question - What was the best thing you learned today?

Please post a comment about the best thing that you learned at BlogLab on http://bit.ly/BlogLab.

Thank you,

[email protected]

Desk (202) 331-4386, Cell (202) 255-0102

http://bit.ly/DicksProfile

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BlogLab