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B-Blogs: A Business Prerequisite

Posted by Scott Lindsay

“How does business change when everyone is a potential publisher? A vast new stretch of the information world opens up.” – Stephen Baker and Heather Green

As a Business Blogger (b-blogger) you do not need to reinvent the wheel and you don’t even need to be an especially gifted writer. Simple software solutions are available to allow you to blog with confidence even if you feel technologically challenged.

Link and Click

One of the principal benefits of blogging is you can simply provide an opening sentence or paragraph on a subject that may be of interest to your clients. Once this is accomplished you can simply provide a direct link to the story you wish to cite. You can also include an associated photo. The client then has the ability to see first hand the information you found so valuable in relation to your business; it’s services, goods and future.

The information you can provide may be tied to the movement of stock in relations to a product you carry. New advancements in scientific research that has a bearing on a product you carry or new uses for an existing product.

Comprehensive Coverage

Many b-blogs have a list of outside links that may be interest to visitors. The purpose of a blog is not to withhold information or to provide that information on a time-released basis. For most b-bloggers there is a realization that the information they have to share is available elsewhere on the worldwide web, so being as timely as possible simply makes sense.

“There are some 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day.” – Stephen Baker and Heather Green

Point of Comparison

Companies that have made blogging a priority have seen as many as five million visits to their blog. When you have web traffic at that level you can see how a search engine will recognize your blog site as authoritative and reputable and provide your blog with a higher rank.

“Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite.” – Stephen Baker and Heather Green

Commitment

Operating a b-blog takes discipline and an understanding that this IS a marketing tool. It is possible that a b-blog might take some time to attract visitors and it may be tempting to simply give up on the prospect and drop this marketing element from your overall business plan.

The good news is you will save a few minutes a day by not developing your b-blog. The bad news is someone else will see the potential and work at building their reputation as an expert in the field – and they may likely be recognized as such.

About The Author:
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

B-Blogs And Customer Connectivity

Posted by Scott Lindsay

Do you have a business blog? Do you have a goal in mind for what you’d like to accomplish with your blog? Do you have topics you won’t discuss in your blog?

Sometimes referred to as b-blogs, a business weblog can be a vital link to existing customers and prospective clients.

Many of the best b-blogs provide visitors with a look at the…

1. Company represented.
2. Individual heading that company.
3. News that affects the company and its customers.
4. Links that may be beneficial to the customers
5. Personality behind the logo.

The genius behind blogging is that the posts are at the discretion of the business owner and are designed to be informal. This allows visitors to gain a sense for the type of person you are and the type of company you own.

Because the format is informal you need to make sure you have a laser-like focus for your blog. Deviating from a pre-set course for your blog could alienate visitors who have come to expect a singular focus. In some cases bloggers have found themselves in legal trouble because they made a libelous remark about someone on their blog.

By keeping your goal firmly fixed, you may find that more than your customers may look to your blog as a trusted resource. Many successful b-blogs are routinely visited by competitors, which should be viewed as a significant source of flattery. This scenario is a strong indication your success is being noticed.

One of the primary reasons b-blogs are a successful means of conveying information to your customers is they are non-invasive. There are no emails to download and no newsletters to process. In the end, those who visit the blog are there because they chose to be there. They come back because they enjoy the connection.

By becoming a trusted source for information in an informal atmosphere, a b-blog can help move a customer to action through a level of trust you have built through your blog.

Some b-bloggers find that when they post at least daily the growth of their visitors increases rapidly. Some will return for the information while others return because they find your personality a source of interest.

Blogs have been used successfully for personal and instructional use. The advent of a business blog is simply another step in the growth of this tool readily adaptable for customer connectivity.

About The Author:
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

3 Must-Read Books For Bloggers

Posted by Jim Estill

A lot of bloggers read blogs, but there are also some very valuable books out there on blogging. The three books that I recommend for bloggers are “Blog!” by David Kline and Dan Burstein, “The Corporate Blogging Book” by Debbie Weil, and “Naked Conversations” by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble.

1. “Blog!: How the newest revolution is changing politics, business and culture” by David Kline and Dan Burstein.

This book talks of the power and influence of blogs. It uses political examples. Through these examples we can learn what good blogging is (honest, open) and what it is not (poorly written, blatant marketing). It talks about freedom of the press and countries and companies that try to suppress blogs. It also warns and gives examples of blogs that share insider or confidential information and what happens.

To quote from it: “most people or at least most of the media’s coverage of business issues in blogging are missing the fact that the real excitement here is not how much money business can make from blogging, but how dramatically blogging will reshape the world of business from top to bottom and create new sources of competitive advantage for firms that learn how to use this new medium intelligently… Bloggers not only tend to be more passionate about their interests and hobbies than other people, they also have marketplace influence far beyond their numbers.”

This is a highly inspirational read for anyone who blogs. We live in revolutionary times and as bloggers (and blog readers) we see history being made. We are truly cutting edge. The world is changing before our eyes.

As A. J. Liebling, a great 20th century journalist, said: “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.” With blogs, anyone can.

2. “The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get it Right” by Debbie Weil.

Debbie is one of the pioneers of corporate blogging. She is not only an advocate but she explains the pros and cons of corporate blogs.

A section from the book: “Blogs are a key enabler of this new way of talking with customers, employees, the media and other constituencies. Packaged, filtered, controlled conversation are out. Open, two-way, less-than-perfect communications with your customers and employees are in….Listen, learn, debate, be willing to change, admit mistakes, be equals, with your children, be fair to others with whom you have an adversarial relationship. Acting like a dictator will get you nowhere.”

She has top 20 questions about corporate blogging and in one of those she talks about the three most important things to know before starting blogging. The book also has good examples of blogging policies.One of her points is savvy bloggers read other blogs. My advice is the simplest way to do this is to subscribe to them.

One concept that she talks about is citizen journalist and citizen media. Blogs are a new media and it is run by the citizens. Blogger Halley Suitt explains, “The word PR will be gone; the word blog will be gone. Your employees will be your ad agency and your customers will be your back-up ad agency”

3. “Naked Coversations:How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers” by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble

This is an excellent book. I am passionate about business blogs. I truly believe they have value for a business. The book re-affirms this. “Naked Coversations” is easy to read, fast and well organized. It combines advice on blogging (and why blogs help companies) with stories of real bloggers.

Blogs have dangers but those dangers tend to be overrated. Not blogging is a greater danger. As I have said many times, blogs are a new media. Companies that ignore it do so at great peril. At the same time, blogs cannot be blatant self or company promotion - readers (and other bloggers see right through that and can decimate a company).

How do I know if a book is good? If I make a change as a result. I turned off word verification on my blog to make it easier to comment (I still review all comments and don’t let spam through but am trying to make it easier to have a conversation). I get twice as many emails as comments on my blog as a result of my blog. The book drives home that comments and conversations are good.

I also know a book is good if I buy multiple copies for people that I think should read it. And in this case I did.

All three of these books, “Blog!” by David Kline and Dan Burstein, “The Corporate Blogging Book” by Debbie Weil, and “Naked Conversations” by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble should be read by anyone who has a blog or anyone interested in blogging.

About The Author:
Jim Estill is the CEO of SYNNEX Canada. He is an active blogger at http://www.jimestill.com

How Blogs Can Break Or Make Your SEO Strategy

Posted by Jon Rognerud

Blogs are a great way to get started authoring content and sharing your knowledge and insights with other people. Plus, mix work and play - and you can get rich doing this.

You don’t have to be an MBA-accredited author by any means. However, there are some rules to play by, and I’ll break those out below. We will talk about the top blogs, practicalities around blogs and creative ways to get started, including how you could possibly ruin your good-standing ranking and having to change your Search Engine Optimization strategy.

Blogs - Structure and Layout

I work in the field of Search Engine Optimization. It has a wide range of options, from the technical to the more strategic. Tons of discussions are found on off-page and on-page factors, latent semantic analysis, content scope, quality, HTML/CSS development, site navigational structure, spamdexing, 301 redirects, plagiarism, link strategies, directories, blogs, search engine news, email marketing tips & online (internet) marketing. Most all of the top 10 SEO firms out there agree that blogs are a “must” for driving traffic and get established in the Internet community.

There is a right way, and a wrong way. We’ll discuss these below.

Be warned - too many folks out there are thinking about “how to outbeat the search engines” and use the latest-and-greatest (blogs) to elevate their rankings, essentially via content and blog spam. Blogs are a powerful way to get seen by the search bots. Blogger (Google’s own) is an important key to the puzzle, but there are many.

THE UN-OFFICIAL TOP 7
BLOGGING BEST PRACTICES FOR SEO

Start here, begin a quick review of the world’s top blogs:

http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs - updated daily
http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs - he makes #16,000/month
http://microsaw.stikipad.com/ - web 2.0 blogs

Get an account - it’s free. log in - and - don’t start! What? No, you must first continue by scanning the list above and get a sense for what people are writing about. This could be more generic at first, but start looking to yourself. What do you know? What do people come to you for? Anything that you specialize in? (Hint: don’t think “how can I sell this” - but “how can I share this?”) You’ll also learn how to use trackback functions to allow other people to be notified. Permalinks are great for SEO and should be used where appropriate. So, now you learned something big: be yourself!

Think about an interesting headline. You don’t need to be copywriter, but you should think about your headline and the topic at hand. More importantly, is it something that you are passionate about, or can contribute something to? It’s ok to spend some time here, writer’s block can come up. Think about other sites, can you re-write their UVP (unique value proposition)? How would you write yours (thinking theme here). What I’ve found to work is simply sit back and start talking as if you were discussing a (hot) topic with a friend, and then breaking it out into sub-groups from there.
Writing tips: casual, friendly and interesting (meaning you have something to write and you don’t copy others) works well in blogs. Make sure you stay on topic and that you are truthful. Would you lie to your mother? Of course not - then think about this when you are writing online (and she will not come after you). Yahoo’s blogging policy is a good one: “Be respectful of your colleagues, get your facts straight, provide context to your argument, and engage in private feedback.” Also, make sure to include images (flickr) and video (youtube, google video) where you can. Make the images rich and colorful, don’t worry about sizing too much.

Committment, persistence and disciplin. Sound like an extract from Jim Rohn or Anthony Robbins? Well, they probably are - but it applies to most of the things you do in life. So be it with blogging. Carve out 1/2-1 hour every day to nurture to your blog business. Think of it as your morning ritual - right after you have attended to your family and other duties. Plus, often you are not going to be in writing mode - but rather, maintenance mode - reviewing and responding to other blogger’s input.

Search engines start picking up your blog, and traffic increases. Be prepared and if it gets out of hand, be able to manage that too. I’m not simply talking about traffic, but as others join and comment, you may need to defend your stance, including admitting mistakes if / when you make them. Folks appreciate other folks who are big enough to admit mistakes if it gets there. For example, you may have folks who don’t like you - even if you’re Bill Gates. This guy created a Corporate Weblog Manifesto that I found interesting.

Run and host your own blog service. More expensive, but this could have a large impact on your ability to control not only the content, but custom HTML layouts, code and information architecture that are important to search engines. You can offer this as a service to others in your niche market. http://businesslogs.com/ is a great resource to use for starting this process, and more hands-on development companies like http://www.leveltendesign.com/ can be an option for you. Keep in mind that the market has developed niche-companies, from real-estate to healthcare, and you should research those specifically.

Content is important for Search Engine Optimization - be on top of it, keep a schedule.

Voila - that’s it, there you have it. Watch how the search engines will start picking up your content. You can run tools to see how you are ranking, how often you are showing up in the search engines. We like http://www.UrlTrends.com as a simple beginner starting point. However, it’s not 100% accurate, other SEO tools can provide more detail.

Keep your content fresh, updates daily is preferred - and definitely once a week and your search engine marketing (which includes search engine optimization) will become more visible than it was just last week. Then, use http://pingomatic.com/ to alert search engines that you have made updates. It’s a free service, and will help your visibility.

About The Author:
Jon Rognerud is a recognized authority on the subject of SEO, and has spent over 10 years developing websites and marketing solutions at companies like Overture and Yahoo. His website, http://www.microsaw.com/, provides a wealth of informative articles, free email courses and more

What You Need To Know About WordPress Podcasts

Posted by Danny Wirken

WordPress is a blogging platform that has podcasting support. A podcast is a pre-recorded audio program, very much like a radio program that is listened to on the computer. Podcasting is distributing audio or video content via RSS 2.0 or atom as WordPress creates all the necessary links for the site.

Using WordPress for Podcasting

WordPress works for podcasting. It starts with the creation of a video or audio that is intended to be shared. The file is uploaded to a server and the line to the file is posted in the weblog. WordPress automatically includes a link to the file in the RSS/Atom feed. Listeners will then subscribe to the feed where new files are downloaded automatically.

Podcasting is supported by WordPress 1.5. Linking to an audio file in one of the posts will result to WordPress automatically adding the enclosure tag to the RSS2 feed to make it usable as a podcast. It is important to use a complete and absolute URL when linking to an audio file or WordPress will not be able to make an enclosure for it.

The RSS2 feed should be made available by putting a linking somewhere on the page. As of WordPress 1.5, the RSS 2.0/Atom links are located at the bottom of the page by default. This only works for posts and not for static pages. When a linked file is inaccessible upon publishing of the post, WordPress will not be able to collect the information it needs from the linked files.

A change in the linked file would require refurbishing of the posts so that WordPress can update its file size information about the file. In order for WordPress to recognize m4a and m4b files as podcast, the web server has to be configured to serve the right content type. An XML at the end of the RSS/Atom URL may occasionally be needed for it to work properly.

Dedicated podcast feeds can be made by creating a category in the Admin>Manage>Categories panel for the audio files, and a post containing an audio link must be assigned to every category. If audio file are being hosted on http://archive.org, a custom field called “enclosure” should be added and the full URL is posted for the MP3 file in the value field.

Podcasting allows anyone to create his/her own audio programming and deliver it via the web. The usual way of distributing podcasts are through RSS enclosures as it allows the reference of binary data from within the RSS feed. Podcast readers subscribe to the RSS feed and download the audio files contained in the enclosures. The downloaded audio files are then moved to a portable audio player for later consumption.

Of WordPress Plugins

There are resources that will help in getting to know the WordPress blog platform better. The WordPress podcast features easy and understandable commentaries about WordPress plus a couple of plugins. It is a great learning resource for any skill or experience level. The Diagnosis plugin presents the detailed information about the server, operating system and the database. It is presented in a way that could be understood by the least technically-inclined person using it. Most will be able to appreciate its rich tech content.

The PodPress plugin is designed to make podcasting with WordPress as easy as possible. It has several features that will make its use fruitful to the user. It has full featured and automatic feed generation as well as auto generation of enclosure tag. It provides a preview of what the podcast would look like on iTunes. The podcast is able to download stats and there is support provided for premium content for pay accounts. This plugin makes adding a podcast to a post very simple and makes possible the viewing of MP3 files’ ID3 tag information. The contents of the ID3 tags can even be copied into the post.

It likewise provides control where the player will display within the posts. Support for various formats including video podcasting is given while it facilitates support for unlimited number of media files. It has automatic media player for MP3, MP4, MOV, FLV, ASF, WMV, AVI and others. It also includes in-line and Pop-up Windows support and provides preview image for videos.

The Mechanics of Podcasting

Podcasting’s publish/subscribe model makes use of the push technology wherein the information provider chooses which files to offer in a feed and the subscriber chooses among available feed channels. As a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program which is made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player, podcasting makes use of an automatic mechanism that transfers multi-media computer files from a server to a client. Podcasts are generally analogous to a recorded television or radio server.

The content provider starts by making a file available on the Internet usually by posting the file on a publicly-available web server. However, it is not technically necessary that the file be publicly accessible but it is required that it be accessible through some known URL or a general-purpose Internet address. He then acknowledges the existence of the file by referencing it in another file known as the feed.

The feed is a machine-readable list of the URLs by which episodes of the show may be accessed. One episode refers to the originally made file while the list provides other information such as publish dates, titles and accompanying text description of the series, and each of its episodes. This list can either be published in RSS format and less frequently in atom format.

Feeds may contain entries for all episodes in the series but are usually limited to a short list of the most recent episodes. A feed from one author is commonly used for standard podcasts but the practice of having multiple authors contribute episodes to a single podcast feed is fast becoming popular. The location known as the feed URI or feed URL at which the feed is posted by the content provider is expected to be permanent. This is to be made known to the intended audience.

The user enters the feed URI into a software called a podcatcher or aggregator which retrieves and processes data from the said feed. A podcatcher is a program which starts when the computer is started and runs in the background. A set of feed URIs is managed by it which is added by the user and downloaded at a specified interval. Any substantive change in the feed data from the time it was previously checked will trigger automatic downloading of the location of the most recent item to the user’s computer. Some podcatchers make the newly downloaded episodes available to a user’s portable media player. Downloaded episodes can be played, replayed, or archived like any other computer file.

About The Author:
http://www.theinternetone.net

Yahoo! Beta Testing Blog Search Application Sites

Posted by Danny Wirken

In the recent past, a news story came out that Yahoo! has begun testing a blog search application in its Korean blog site. Yahoo!, a leading global Internet company offers a range of features making it a one-stop shop for all the popular activities of the Internet. These features include Yahoo! Mail (a web-based e-mail service), Yahoo! Messenger (instant messaging client), online gaming, chat, news and information portals, online shopping and online auction facilities. Add to this array of features, the Blog Search. Yahoo! seems to be ready to challenge industry leader blog search site, Technorati.

The blog search technology is designed to let bloggers sign up to publish their weblogs. The technology boasts of various search tools that will enable blog visitors to retrieve content and images within weblogs, latest blog postings or pages marked as favorites.

Blogs are currently the rage in the Internet. Anybody with an Internet connection can publish a blog for the worldwide audience to see. At the beginning of 1999, there were only an estimated two or three dozen blogs in existence. As of July 2006, Technorati counted more than 50 million and still growing. In fact, 75 000 new blogs are created everyday.

A blog, short for weblog, is an interactive, personalized web journal for posting articles or anything one wants to share with the general public or a select few. Articles or posts are arranged in reverse chronological order, that is, recent addition is at the top of the page. A blog is updated regularly and contains links to other articles (posts), blogs or websites. Posting comments is another feature. Many blogs focus on a specific topic such as politics, sports, technology, health, news, etc. Others are more like personal diaries detailing the author’s (blogger) rants, raves and musings.

Because of the rapid growth of blogs, keeping on top of them is quite challenging. Industry players like Yahoo! is well aware of the increasing power of blogs and their ability to provide a wealth of information online. Yet, there are only a few blog-specific search tools to go through all the information in real time.

Two months after Yahoo! began testing the blog search feature on its Korean blog site; it has finally unveiled its blog search tool. The launch came at a time when the United States was still reeling from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. During that time, millions of people logged in to Yahoo! News for in-depth and accurate information. Simultaneously, bloggers were posting first-hand accounts, pictures, opinions, personal experiences. But due to lack of mainstream exposure, much relevant information was not disseminated. This further highlights the role that a blog search tool can play – a channel to bring information to the public in the shortest time possible.

Instead of launching a stand alone feature, Yahoo! has integrated blogs in Yahoo! News Search. When a user conducts a search in Yahoo! News, blog results as well as news from trusted news sites will be displayed simultaneously. Yahoo! acknowledges that the opinions, stories and experiences published on blogs make a great complement to mainstream news people read everyday. Blogs have proven to be an effective medium for anyone who wants to be heard in the public forum. A lot of times bloggers have even beaten mainstream media to newsworthy stories.

Traditional media recognize that they do not have the time and resources to cover all the events and happenings in the world. By incorporating the blog search into Yahoo! News, Yahoo! desires to offer an alternative perspective on news aside from what mainstream media can offer. Yahoo! wishes to bring professional journalism and amateur or citizen journalism together to provide the users with a wider array of information. Yahoo assures the users and the general public as well that there will be enough distinction where the information is coming from.

Yahoo! aims to learn from users and publishers. The expanded news search gives users more chances to find relevant information that matters to them from leading news stories, commentaries, citizen first-hand reports, pictures and images that mainstream media may not have covered. It will be to the utmost benefit of the millions of people who wants to be informed of what is going on around the world if Yahoo! News can bring mainstream and personal or grassroots media together. The people are then assured of greater variety of sources and viewpoints from all corners of the world.

When a user conducts a search on Yahoo! News, results from mainstream media partners of Yahoo! will be displayed on the left side of the page. On the right side, in a side-bar type area will be relevant blog search results. When the user clicks on “all blog results”, the user will receive Flickr (Yahoo!’s photo sharing service) photo thumbnails related to his search on the right hand side of the search results page. By integrating global grassroots media into the News Search results, users can enjoy analysis or opinions thru blogs but also related photos from the Flickr community that will provide a visual context to content as reported by the citizens. In addition, My Web links will also be displayed on the right hand side of the search results page together with Flickr. My Web is Yahoo!’s social search engine that utilizes the combined knowledge of the My Web community. My Web provides important links to information related to the user’s search topic.

As to which search results to display in its blog column, Yahoo! does not give specifics but suffice it to say that blog search results are based in part on the popularity of the blogs within My Yahoo!, as measured by a computer algorithm. At first, only blogs registered with the My Yahoo! RSS directory will be included in the search but will eventually scan the millions of blogs outside the My Yahoo! sphere.

Yahoo!’s Blog Search will complement Yahoo! 360, its social networking and blog publishing service and Yahoo!’s recently launched advertising service for small publishers.

Whether you are looking for political commentary on the Israeli air strikes in Lebanon, Superman movie reviews, iMac G5 specs, sumptuous Vietnamese recipes, Louis Vuitton’s latest bag collection, or anything else, Yahoo! Blog Search will help you find out what people are saying on these subjects of your choice.

About The Author:
http://www.theinternetone.net

Blog And SEO Fusion

Posted by George Christdodolou

Blogs have been around on the net since the internet began. This thing that was used to log peoples thoughts, ideas, and daily actions, was transformed into a tool for advertising. Blogs are one of the most powerful tools for generating traffic for a website. Many companies have used blogs to add quick, easy, and search engine friendly content to there client and there clients-to-be.

Search engines love blogs because of there fast load speed and the fact that they can be pinged allows for one extra advantage. Pinging is the process in which you go to a site that provides this service and it “broadcasts” your blog to many other sites. This allows search engines to list all the pages of your blog easily.

Another advantage of a blog is that the home page of the blog changes all the time. This is a positive aspect because all of the pages of the blog will gain tank and link backs.

One general rule of thumb that goes along with SEO is that search engines index pages, not websites. This is significant because you have to know this to get good search engine ranking. You have to get links to all the pages of the site not just the index or home page as it is usually referred to.

Having a blog on your website is good because it will gather traffic and that traffic will be directed to the rest of the site. This traffic is loyal and targeted. If these people are coming to your blog every day, this will eventually go and search your site.

Making a blog effective is the difficult part of the process. adding a blog is easy, optimizing it for key words is the hard part. You have to know what key words to optimize for. Another rule for SEO is that you have to optimize web pages for key words and not phrase like many people will do. If you want to optimize for a phrase then just place it in your posts together.

There are many factors to be considered when choosing your key words. You have to understand that there are billions of sites out there and that they all cant be at the top so you have to provide content that is outstanding and relevant to the topic.

This is a daunting task and it has to be done on a daily schedule because search engines spider sites at regular intervals.

There is a lot to search engine optimization. There is not enough time in the day to write entire books about the topic, even though it is possible. Be careful what you do with your site. Make sure that you optimize, yet keep it human friendly. The people are the people you have to convince to buy or click on ads so make sure you keep them coming back. It is hard to advertise and build site content, thus there is “outsourcing”. Leaving the work of your site to a separate company for a small to large fee, depending on the company, not necessarily quality. There are people ho will write articles, blogs, and even both.

About The Author:
If You Are Having Trouble With SEO Or you Do Not Have The Time, Please Conceder Our http://internetbusiness-tips.com, And Our Blogging Service Which Are Both Part of One Service That Uses Tactics That Will Astound You.

Some Of The Best Ever Blog Specific Tools

Posted by Danny Wirken

Blogging is one of the most popular activities people do on the Internet today. According to Technorati, there currently are seventy-five thousand (75,000) new blogs everyday and about 1.2 million new blog updates everyday. As the activity of blogging gets more popular, there will be more and more tools that will be created to specifically address the needs of the blogging population of the Internet users. This article will attempt to catalog some of the best ever blogging tools created for users. To help users find the tools that they need, these blog tools are classified here into four main categories – blog publishing, blog reading, blog searching and the blog toolbox – a collection of tools important to the serious blogger.

Blog publishing

Blog publishing tools can be further categorized into three sub-categories: Online blogging services, do-it-yourself blog publishing platforms, and accessory blog-publishing tools. Blogging services provide the blog engine that you need to get yourself started in blogging as well as the hosting. Though most of the services offer this for free, some of them require that you become paying members in order to fully enjoy all the benefits.

Blogger – Google’s Blogger is one of the earliest blogging services and it helped popularize blogging. It is one of the easiest ways to get started blogging because of the focus on usability and easy blog creation. The Blog this feature, which is integrated in many Google tools, makes posting to Blogger possible in many different situations. It is also integrated with Google’s Adsense advertising program that makes monetization of your blog quick and easy.

TypePad – Typepad is the largest paid-blogging service around. As mentioned, a paid subscription is required to create a blog using the service. It uses the Movable Type blogging technology but it caters more to the non-technical users.

Wordpress.com – one of the newcomers in the online blogging services, Wordpress gets its credibility from the success and popularity of the blogging engine that it uses –Wordpress.

Xanga – Xanga is one of the largest blog-networks, boasting a user base of 27 million users worldwide. It edges over its competitors by offering excellent community features such as blog rings, metros, and a social networking profile system.

MSN Spaces – Although it is relatively a newcomer in the blogging services space, MSN Spaces boasts of a huge user base, because of the ease at which existing MSN services users were able to start blogging. The integration with the rest of MSN’s services (hotmail, messenger) makes Spaces a very good blogging option for the existing users.

Do-it-yourself blogging platforms on the other hand, only provide the blogging engine. Although you have to find your own hosting service, DIY blogging platforms give you more control in configuring your blog. Below are some of the best DIY Blogging platforms.

Movable Type – Movable Type powers TypePad and it adds the usual advantages of a server-side blogging platform: flexibility, more advanced configuration, and total control over your blog.

Wordpress – Wordpress is an increasingly popular open-source blogging platform that is written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database.

Radio Userland – Radio Userland, one of the earliest content management systems used by the pioneering bloggers, is still a good blogging platform choice. It has solid RSS features that include a built-in aggregator. Configuration is done in a desktop web server then it is upstreamed or sync to the web server. This gives the blogger a cached copy of the whole blog.

Blog posting tools are third-party applications that are used to compose and publish blog posts. These tools usually support multiple blogging services and are ideal for those without a persistent Internet connection.

W. Bloggar and BlogJet – these are two of the best blog-posting tools in the market, and both are available for free. They support almost all of the blogging platforms. They do what most web-based posting apps does, including rich text editing, with the added feature of being able to save your drafts offline.

Performancing for Firefox – a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows you to immediately compose a blog post while using the Firefox browser. It is Ideal for active bloggers who use Firefox as their web browser. It automatically saves your unpublished posts.

Blog Reading

RSS/Atom aggregators and other RSS tools belong to this category.

My Yahoo – My Yahoo tried to bring the concept of RSS subscription to the Internet masses. Though it lacks the more advanced features, it serves well as a good aggregator.

Google Reader – Google’s web-based RSS aggregator that features an AJAX-driven user interface. It has a good support for tags or labels, and features a very nice reading interface. One of its best features is its labels-sharing feature that allows you to put aggregated content to your blog.

Bloglines – Bloglines is one of the most widely-used web-based RSS Reader. It uses the traditional two-frame reading interface, and subscriptions are grouped into folders. It has a good blog-suggest feature, that uses linking analysis to suggest which blogs might be of interest to you based on your existing subscription set. You can also share your subscriptions using Bloglines.

Blog Search

Tools used to search information and blogs, and to watch the blogosphere for topics or issues being actively discussed.

Technorati - Technorati is one of the best blog search engine, feature wise, and is indexing over 49.4 million web blogs. It serves as a one-stop shop for those who want to know the current happenings in the blogosphere, including features such as blog ranking based on linking, personal aggregator (for those who login) and many other nifty tools.

Sphere – one of the newcomers in blog search that came even after many other engines have folded down already. It promised to deliver more relevant blog search results, and it rightfully did so, as attested by its early beta testers. It features a “sphere it” feature that allows you automatically query http://sphere.com to see topics that might be related to what you’re currently reading.

Blogger’s Toolbox

A collection of other tools essential to the serious blogger

Mint / Measure Map /Google Analytics – these are three different tools used to analyze your blog statistics. Mint specializes in giving you a big-picture snapshot of your traffic, somewhat lacking in the providing specific details, something that Google Analytics is good at. Analytics can provide detailed information on what’s happening on your blog, which contents are popular, what keywords used in searches that bring you readers, and many others. It features a calendar to specify the time range of the analysis that you want to see. Measure Map, like Analytics is a fresh acquisition of Google, but still in early stages. It somewhat sits in the middle of Mint and Google Map in terms of what information is provided.

Akismet – Akismet is a highly-acclaimed anti-comment spam plugin for Wordpress blogs. It is free for personal use.

Feedburner – Feedburner is a tool that “burns” your RSS feeds in order to add tracking and analysis features. This way you can see statistics regarding your RSS subscribers.

The tools listed above are just a few of the many others that can help users; from those who are just starting to blog to those who want to become even better bloggers. It also includes some tools for searching and aggregating blogs, because a good blogger must learn to watch the blogosphere closely if it wants to be able to make more effective blog contents.

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Sphere About The New Blog Search Engine

Posted by Danny Wirken

Searchers would never say no to something that would make their work a lot easier. With the coming of Sphere – the latest blog search engine, it promises to help users discover high-quality, relevant and timely blog posts with the use of its advanced search algorithm. It aims to deliver results far better than other existing blog search services.

The People behind Sphere

Sphere was founded by Tony Conrad, Martin Remy, Steve Nieker and Toni Schneider to assist readers in their discovery of relevant blog content as well as encourage more people to read blogs or be bloggers themselves. Investors who helped Sphere get started include Doug Mackenzie, David Mahoney, Kevin Compton, Mike Winston, Phil Black, Vince Vanelli and Will Hearst. Its partners and capitalists, on the other hand include Darcy Bentley of Hearst Publishing and Venetia Kontogouris of Trident Capital.

This blog search engine had a very successful first private beta release in late 2005. Its success can be attributed to Martin Remy and Steve Nieker who have worked on blog and content matching technology for a long time. It also has for its advisors the likes of Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automatic/WordPress and a blog content tool leader; Mary Hodder, founder/CEO of Dabble and a blog user experience expert; and Scott Kurnit, founder and former CEO of http://About.com who was instrumental in creating a work community there.

The feedback gained from the well received private beta was used to add some advanced and intuitive features. Sphere is based in San Francisco but members of the team work virtually from other places like Seattle, Denver, Vancouver, New York, Phoenix and the Bay Area. It highly recommends its own Sphere Blog for information regarding ongoing updates.

Tony Conrad was a general partner at VSP prior to founding Sphere. This was where he led consumer-tech and marketing software and services investments. He has also served as a director for Oddpost, Iconoculture, MusicNow and Centive. He has likewise been very active in managing investments in Post Communications and Stonyfield Farms. At present, he serves on the Board of Directors for Automatic/WordPress.

Martin Remy and Steve Nieker have worked together for a long time and are both considered technologists extraordinaire. They were together when they founded Think Tank 23 during the so called dot-com boom. It was able to survive largely because they were able to build a lot of great technology and sold a few software projects to big publishing companies in spite of being funded by venture capitalists. They have extensive roots in information retrieval that goes back to the end of the last century. Their NAV 4 which is a document-analysis genome that drove precise information retrieval across broad networks without onerous manual overhead is baked into Sphere. This has provided many benefits including the base technology driving the related news stories links.

Toni Schneider worked at Yahoo! and at Oddpost which was subsequently acquired by Yahoo! He created the Yahoo! Developer Network. He comes from Switzerland and only came to California to study Computer Science for a year. At present, he is happily based in San Francisco while serving as the CEO of Automatic and a venture partner at True Ventures. He remains an adviser to Sphere.

The Relevant Blog Search

Sphere is being touted as a search engine that has made blog search much better. Its interface is designed by Adaptive Path and comes out quite clean and understandable. One of its more notable features is the profile link that produces a small DHTML overlay with some vital stats for each blog such as average posting frequency, posts per week and blogs recently linked to among others. Its technology is believed to be more resistant to spam blogs than other search engines. It doesn’t actually filter out such spam blogs but is able to rank them so low that readers rarely encounter them.

The right combination of factors that produces a more robust ranking technology of blogs and posts is the reason why Sphere seems to work better than other blog search. It pays attention to the ecology of relationships between blogs and credits a higher weighted value to links that have more authority. This will ensure that the work of an author who goes off-topic and engages in rant will rank considerably lower compared to that written by a reputable blogger who regularly writes about the topic.

The metadata about a blog is also considered by Sphere. It would look into the frequency of postings, the length of the posts and the average links a post gets. Sphere will not rank blogs well if they are not part of a larger ecosystem of linking.

The system has made it possible to have spams fall at the bottom of the ranking. It also gives ways to filter results either by date, relevance or by language. A new version of the services has some neat interface hacks along the lines of a time axis.

Blogs are definitely big, with millions of existing blogs multiplying by the second, relevant information can be very hard to find. Sphere helps readers to find relevant and intelligent blog posts on a specific topic based on authority. It should be noted that the authority being mentioned here is not an arbitrary decision of a human community but rather a collective effort.

Searching the Sphere is very easy. The user needs to enter some keywords and the system shows related posts, blogs, profiles, related news, photos, books and podcasts. It sorts the results by relevance or time and refines the date range with dropdowns right on the results page. It also supports quotes for phrase searching, Boolean operators and minus for exclusions.

The entry of multiple words or phrases in a query finds posts that match all these words and phrases. A query comprised of two words will find posts that contain both words. Posts that contain the words together usually turn up first while posts that contain the words separately and in different places will show up much later. If the search is to be limited to an exact phrase, only results that mention the words together are obtained. For finding posts that match either of the words, the OR operator can be used.

Excluding posts can be done by putting a minus before a term or phrase. Parenthesis is used to group terms and expressions together. A search can also be confined to the blog’s domain.

Sphere has taken a new approach to blog search as it uses variables to understand both individual blog posts and the nature of the blog they appear on. It attempts to understand link structures. In the process of analyzing these structures, it attempts to understand who is starting or linking discussions instead of bloggers who simply comment on conversations.

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20 Million Bloggers And Counting – The Stats Of The Blogosphere

Posted by Danny Wirken

It is confirmed. The Blogosphere continues to grow at a pace no one has anticipated. In fact, it would be very difficult to quote a number as the total tends to change by the second of every day.

The Blogosphere Report

According to the State of the Blogosphere report as of February 2006, Technorati is tracking 27.2 million weblogs and is expected to double about every 5.5 months. The Blogosphere as it is at present is estimated to be over 60 times bigger than it was three years ago. New blog creation is placed at over 75,000 new weblogs everyday which translate to an average of one weblog created every second. It has also been noted that 13.7 million bloggers are still posting three months after its blog creation. This sends a clear message that blogging is becoming a habitual activity.

The report on the Blogosphere growth made in October 2005, showed Technorati tracking 19.6 million weblogs which was expected to double every five months. During this time, there were about 70,000 new weblogs created everyday and that the blogosphere was estimated to be over 30 times as big as three years prior to the report. A comparison between these two recent reports would show that the blogosphere growth is showing no signs of letting-up at the present. Reports prior to that of October 2005 will support this thinking.

While growth brings its benefits as well as its downside, the increasing popularity of blogs brought with it the proliferation of “spings” or spam pings. These are fake or bogus notifications that a blog has been updated. It is believed that it accounts for as much as 60% of the total pings received by Technorati. This prompted the development of a sophisticated system that mitigates the spings and helps keep spam blogs out of their indexes. Technorati’s efforts on working against this problem are continuous and in cooperation with other players such as Google, Yahoo! and others. Another aspect of the problem is the considerable percentage of new blogs that are either spam, machine-generated or attempts to create link farms or click fraud.

There are about 1.2 million posts made each day and a number of spikes in posting volume are generally seen during major news events. It has become impossible to read all the relevant posts to an issue or subject due to the sheer number of choices. Again, a challenge has been presented as to how to find the most interesting and most authoritative information in a monstrous sea of conversation.

This problem is being sought to be countered through the use of tagging. This is essentially a simple way for bloggers to categorize their posts to assist the searchers in their quest for the right information. There are thousands of categories that have been created to attract influential bloggers to write while more are created everyday to provide the most comprehensive coverage for the reader’s varied needs and requirements.

Most blogs are personal but many of which feature the new influences of consumer decisions. These are the consumers that provide feedback about large brands ranging from positive raves of product excellence to rants about the latest product recall. These have prompted more businesses to consider the relevance of maintaining a blog as part of their regular activities. With so much freedom and availability of on-line information or misinformation, any business would benefit from having their own conversation forum for their brands, products and services to protect their reputation. Blogs provide the chance to give the other side of the story especially for businesses that are on siege with negative feedback.

The Blogosphere Statistics

In the year 2004, which was considered the Year of the Blog, some interesting facts came to the fore with regards to blog readership. A very sharp increase was noted during the most part of the year despite the fact that most American Internet users have no clear idea about blogs. The increase in interest was evident on both the creation and demand sides.

The surge in blog creation and readership was partly credited to the fact that 2004 was an election year in the U.S. with a highly divided electorate. The concentration was on political blogs which spilled over into other areas. Spikes on blog activities were readily seen during Iowa’s caucuses, the beheading of Nicholas Berg and the Southeast Asian Tsunami catastrophe, among others. Blog traffic tends to spike sharply when certain web-communicable events occur.

In a survey conducted during the same year, it was found out that 57% of bloggers are male, 48% are under 30 years of age, 82% have on-line experience for six years or more, 42% live in households earning over $50,000 income annually, 70% have broadband connection at home and 39% have college or graduate degrees. It was also the year that the conversational dynamics of blogs caught on. A considerable percentage of American Internet users have posted comments or other materials on blogs and are regular blog readers. The more active bloggers update their blogs regularly resulting to more than 275,000 posts daily or approximately 11,000 updates an hour.

In the same breath, there seems to be some initial data that says less than 10% of women are political bloggers and approximately 20% only of blog readers are women. There also seems to be a belief that the blogosphere is elite because of the qualifications of most of its bloggers as well as its readers. Its present composition however, may not exactly agree with the said data as gender and educational background have long ceased to be exclusive factors to be considered. Generally, as long as someone has something to say or contribute, the blogosphere will always welcome him/her with open arms.

Several other studies indicate that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation and that only a few are updated regularly. The average lifespan of a blog is very short. Most blogs do not even reach 100 days while some gets abandoned after a year or more. A typical blog would be one that is written by a teenager updating friends of daily happenings in his/her life. The tone would be very informal with no particular concern for form and spelling.

With the phenomenal popularity of blogs, some are quick to point out that it is about to reach its peak and suffer the same fate as an outdated fashion. Blogs’ attraction can be largely attributed to the novelty attached to it, but it can be tiring when overdone. Bloggers should look for that balance where frequency and relevance come together.

Blogging may be replaced sometime in the future by some technical innovations. That is just the way it is in modern technology. The good thing about it is that some things like the need to converse with another would remain. So even if blogging goes, a better alternative would surely come that would serve the same purpose, but definitely in an improved way.