Jack of All Blogs » Tips

It Is Easy For Old Media To Play With New Media

Franky — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 17:34:52 +0000

This month has proven how easily bloggers become the victim of the tactics of old media.
While trying to be informative and critical it is very easy to grab all the nice pieces of bait the old media use. There have been several examples of journalists playing with the blogosphere.
Surely there were the more positive ones such as TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year, NY Times embracing social bookmarking and more recently the John Edwards Youtube case. But more traditional media have not hesitated to hit either. The WSJ attack on blogs was the most recently hyped anti-blog story.

And there was quite some truth in it.

You could not visit 3 blogs without reading the same story over and over. Every blogger was proud. Some bloggers went further and called all this linkbait. Linkbait, the term I have come to hate in the last weeks.

The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.

More success is met in purveying opinion and comment. Some critics reproach the blogs for the coarsening and increasing volatility of political life. Blogs, they say, tend to disinhibit. Maybe so. But politics weren’t much rarefied when Andrew Jackson was president, either. The larger problem with blogs, it seems to me, is quality. Most of them are pretty awful. Many, even some with large followings, are downright appalling.

Every time an interesting story lands we behave like vultures and all start writing compulsively feeding Technorati and Sphere, Techmeme and TailRank and many other tracker systems. We all want to break the story, have an informative role although we only are the 56th trackback at TechCrunch or GigaOM.

More success is met in purveying opinion and comment

Many bloggers think that one link in the trackback section will bring the traffic, especially when day after day they are featured as copycat.

Why are the majority of blogs downright appalling?
I have to defend my own case here : the reason is not because we are no schooled or born writers.
The reason is because most bloggers have nothing to say.

The popular bloggers are opinionated. And watched… even by old media journalists.
Restrain from writing what everyone already has written about, unless you come with an opinion or follow up.
We try to educate the MSM, maybe we should educate the main stream blogosphere.

You Just Took Over A Famous Blog, What Now?

Franky — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 22:03:20 +0000

Taking over a blog might be one of the hardest things to do there is. You might be a mad-content creator, but replacing a blogger or reviving the spirit and fame of a blog never is easy.

Baby has lost his father. What will stepdad do?

If you were that lucky to get the opportunity I did, become writer at JOAB, you know that from day one people are watching you. Respected bloggers.
No need to ask for the demographics of the readers, no. You know the most prominent ones. Actually you even read them daily.

How are you going to deal with this?
This might not only be the opportunity you have always wanted, but trust me it also is the perfect way to lose everything before you even started.
Here’s my advice.

Take It Easy Cowboy, Plan Your Posts

Most important is not to start blogging in the most obsessive way you can think of. Don’t post to post. Or to show everyone you are there. It is not about quantity.
Rather sit down in all calm and start writing down everything you want to write about. Do those post fit the niche of the blog you just have overtaken?

Use your Moleskine, Ecto software or the blog platform editor to prepare your entries. You will notice that now you are paid you will spend more time writing an entry than you did before.
Once you have thought of some interesting entries, set yourself a roadmap.

You Define The Expectations

In the first days stick to lighter entries. Don’t immediately release your killer posts, because they will make your audience hungry. They will expect more and more. Remember… you set the pace. You define the expectations your readers have of you. If your killer entries are not time related, spread them out over a longer period.

You can use the first days to let everyone know you have arrived, but be careful with this. Don’t start spamming everyone’s comment box with your new identity (OK, maybe you might do it a little more often as I did). Be moderate, they are already watching you and will surely speak about your entries among each other.
Try to promise a certain quality in those first days, to make sure they will continue watching you. An occasional trackback link did not hurt anyone either so far. Bloggers like trackbacks, especially quality trackbacks.

Give Your Boss A Break

Another thing to avoid is to bug your boss, the network owner with all technical questions and remarks, or questions such as “What should I write about?”
Feel free to drop the occasional constructive reflexion, but know that the time you request from that person the more critically you will be watched. Only disturb him/her with important questions. Beneficiary questions for the blog, blog platform.

Or dare and activate the full feed yourself if you can.
Maybe you should tell your boss he can easily feedvertize?

Condemning Buzzwords To Hell

Mosey — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:29:27 +0000

The Bloggy Network picked up an interesting blog last weekend at sitepoint. Quoting from the auction:

Buzzword Hell was a blog I started whose mission was to condemn all the buzzwords that floated around our industry. It’s a blog with a very unique system in that it “condemns” buzzwords to the circles of hell from Dante’s Inferno. Each buzzword is condemned based on the number of comments it has gotten.

It certainly is a very clever and original idea! And also some interesting backlinks; for instance from wikipedia’s page on buzzwords and an interview by Ben Bleikamp on his old College Start-Up blog.

Current “buzzwords condemned to hell” include-:

* Ajax
* Bandwidth
* Beta
* Blogosphere
* Folksonomy
* GYM Free
* Information Superhighway
* Live Search
* Meme
* Pagerank
* Paradigm Shift
* Progressive Enhancement
* Realign
* SEO
* Social Networking
* Spear Phishing
* Synergy
* Thought Leader
* Web 2.0

BuzzwordHell.com is the creation of Bryan Veloso, known by his followers in blogosphere as “rock star”. Bryan is a member of the 9 rules network through his personal website: AvalonStar.com. He has worked for Facebook and Automattic, while achieving genuine “celebrity blogger” status through such landmark posts as his “Saying Hello to Aries” and the launch of his own WordPress theme: “Chaotic Soul“.

Bryan has some good tips in his 9 rules interview for any wannabe “celebrity bloggers” out there. Amongst them, some modest advice-:

I’m proud to say that I feel I have one of the most dedicated reader bases out there. For what reason? Why do they keep coming back? I really couldn’t tell you. I could assume, but then I could be making an ass of myself. Hmm… I try to talk to people like they’re right next to me, I try to be conversational. I don’t think there is any other way blogging should be. Blogging is a conversation between multiple parties. I’m a huge believer in transparency, which means that I never hide anything from my readers.

[tags]bryan veloso,buzzwords,star bloggers, rock star,live search, web 2.0,9 rules,facebook,sitepoint,wikipedia[/tags]

Why You Don’t Need Tony Robbins

DreadPirateYarr — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:23:47 +0000

The king of personal success, the guru of getting rich, Tony Robbins, would love to sell you seminar tickets, books, and self-help tapes so you can Fix Your Life.

You don’t need it. You only need a few things.

Develop a personal code of honor. Even pirates have a code. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs or lack of them, a code of honor will give you a higher purpose to live up to. Having a genuine sense of purpose will get you up in the morning.
Don’t ever be afraid of faking it. Most people don’t have what it takes at first; even if they do have what it takes, they think they don’t. Now, I once taught some classes (er, community service, of course – pirates never do good deeds) in which I taught my students, a somewhat disadvantaged bunch, to Fake It Til You Make It. Then I made them tell me what they did, every class session, until I knew they had gotten it. You can do the same. Do you want to be a writer, an artist, a chef, a business genius? Dress and act the part. Learn everything you can. Hang around with successful people. You’ll get the feel, and you’ll start believing in yourself.
Your personal attitude is what will determine your success. If you don’t think you can make it, you won’t. When is the last time you heard a celebrity, millionaire, or other successful person say they didn’t think they’d make it? Never, is my guess. That’s why they made it.
Story – a captain was once piloting a ship, and trying to avoid a sandbar up the coast. He knew where it was, knew there was plenty of room, but didn’t think he could make it around. In the end, he sailed right into it. The lesson: look through the things that are obstacles in your path. You’ll be surprised at how easily you circumvent them.
Love other people. (Of course, you should love their treasure more, but that’s beside the point.) If you bear a genuine love for your fellow man, they’ll pick up on it. That will make you friends who will help you along your road to success.
Learn to recognize opportunities. Opportunities knock all the time. They probably dent your door. But most people don’t hear them. Start looking at every drawback as a potential opportunity. You’ll quickly start finding out how many of them really are.

September 19 – Talk Like A Pirate Day

DreadPirateYarr — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 03:15:34 +0000

Arrr, me hearties! ‘Tis me favorite of all days, Talk Like A Pirate Day! Yarr!

You want to talk like a pirate? Don’t just change your words – change your attitude. John Baur and Mark Summers started this wonderful day about four years ago, and it’s exploded across the world since. One of their pirate wenches, Mad Sally, was in Wife Swap on Sept. 18th, if you can imagine trading your wife in for a swearing, hard-headed pirate wench, you get the idea!

But seriously, Talk Like A Pirate Day isn’t about running around with a peg leg and a parrot. It’s about a certain attitude, a freedom of thought and speech that some find refreshing and others find intimidating or threatening. (And there you have the gamut of reactions to me!) The Pirate Guys call it “pirattitude“. The rules behind it, as far as I can tell, are as follow:

1. Choose yer battles well, mate. If ye shoots a broadside at a galleon, ye’d best have more than a dinghy to back it up.

2. Never be afraid of saying what you mean, and not saying what you don’t. Tell me this: what kind of a world is it we live in, where we have to fear our own words? Though it’s not the government calling for it, is that not the realm of Big Brotherism? Where in all our treaties and all our contracts does it say we have to apologize for offending people? Sure, it’s nice. But only if you mean it. Which brings us back to the beginning.

3. Live your life on your own terms. Know that you are master of your own ship. You never have “no choice” in your life, even if you’re in prison and shackled hand and foot. Even if you’re about to die, you can choose to die well. Most of us aren’t at that point. Step back and look at your life. What choices do you really have? Now, instead of drifting into them as the wind whims, tack sail into the wind and shear forth where you will.

4. Read number 3 again. Really listen to it this time, because you didn’t the first time. Come back to it periodically.

5. Love your mates, and avoid your enemies. It’s the best way to live long and happy.

6. Laugh as often as you can — really laugh, not that weird you-live-longer-if-you-laugh semi-Buddhist thing that caught on a few months ago. Start here.

Yarr, me hearties! Adopt some pirattitude today, and confuse the neighbors when you tell them to heave to for boarding! (also fun at drive-thru windows)