Friday, June 15, 2007

Blogging Can Be A Collective Experience That Turns Faceless

I’ve been searching the Internet for blogging sites for a fair while now and recently I came across a whole blogging community, which has grabbed my interest greatly. It’s called Joe User and it’s a site that many bloggers all around the globe are partaking in. It is very well organized into categories such as Best Articles, Newest blog entries, Top blogging sites, New sites and Most hit-on bloggers. The blogs range from very personal life introspection to serious analysis of current affairs in the media.


The aspect that has appealed to me the most is the very personal type of blogging community. Many people are talking about their feelings and issues about life with people that technically they have never met face to face. However, the type of camaraderie I’ve ‘witnessed’ as a bystander has truly amazed me. These people talk to each other as though they are extremely close friends, and the strange thing is I think this is the reality.


When one person has something important happen to them in their life, up to 100 or more comments will arrive under their blog entry with advice and information as well as emotional support from their blogging friends. Of course there are some differences in opinion, but the general perspective seems to be one of a positive approach to humanity. People are really spilling out their souls to each other, and then accepting criticism as well as discussing possible solutions to problems. I just find this to be truly inspirational, a human community or ‘tribe’ that has formed simply because of the Internet’s existence.


These people must spend a lot of time communicating with each other. Some are writing new entries everyday, as well as articles and conversations. The conversations usually happen in the ‘comments’ section where one can see that these people often stay up into the late hours of the morning, blogging to each other back and forth. The amount of love shared by these arbitrary acquaintances is astounding. One could perceive the whole experience as a form of therapy but I think it is much more than that. I believe this is a sign of a revolution. The coming of the New Human Tribe has begun.


If random bloggers can evolve into a community of people who trust, respect, and are intimate and united with each other this says a lot for the human condition. People are tired of the segregated, separatist reality of countries, cultures, races and religions. These group blogging sites, or collective on-line journals as I now like to think of them, are symbolic of the future connectedness of all of humanity. It may take a hundred years, or a thousand, or maybe only fifty, but it definitely looks like there’s hope yet for the warring, greedy humans. One day we all may be ‘one’ again in our minds as well as our physical forms.


By Jesse S. Somer M6.Net http://www.m6.net


Jesse S. Somer is a human who is working to help the New Human Tribe come together by means of the Internet communicative process.


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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Blog It And They Will Come

If you're hoping for a "Blog it and they will come" field of dreams, you can forget that. Recent statistics from blog search engine Technorati show that a new blog hits the Internet every 7.8 seconds! Sheesh, talk about having to rise above the noise level to be heard, how in the world are you going to get eyeballs glued to your blog when there is so much competition out there?

Unlike e-zine subscriptions or auto responder mailings, it's not the quantity of visitors that counts, it's the quality of the visitors as well as how often they return to continue reading your blog.

Quality, in this case, refers to how often they click on revenue-generating links in your blog and how often they buy something that you're blogging about. Of course, if you're operating an altruistic blog that has no revenue-generating features, then you are only concerned about how often the readers return to bask in the illumination of your knowledge, expertise, biting sarcasm or humor.

Either way, those are the two measurements of a successful blog. Now don't get me wrong, the number of readers is important, of course, but it's better to have 1,000 faithful readers who return regularly than it is to have 5,000 readers who come once and you never see them again after that.

There is no free traffic!

I love when bloggers say "I won't pay for traffic. I can get it for free". Nothing is "free" my friend. You will either pay for traffic with money or you will pay for traffic with your time. Neither way is "free".

So what you have to do is decide which of these situations describe you best:

A) You have more money than time.

If you are so blessed, then you need to develop an advertising plan to help you spend your money wisely. An advertising plan requires you to research the different advertising programs that are available, study the demographics of the traffic that you'll be receiving, make a budget, set up test purchases and analyze the final results.

Well, you don't HAVE to develop an advertising plan. You can always just throw money at different potential solutions and hope for the best. If you do that enough times then you will automatically end up in the "B" category of  "more time than money" because all of your money will be gone and you still won't have any traffic.

B) You have more time than money.

You've got a great blog going, the few people who show up already absolutely love it, but you're in a financial crunch. Is there any hope for you?

Yep, there's plenty of hope. What you'll need though is a lot on ingenuity and the time to turn your smarts into traffic. Believe it or not, you should still develop an advertising plan because even though you're not spending cash, you are spending time. Time IS money and if you waste time then you're wasting opportunities to get traffic to your site.

No matter which way you end up paying for your traffic, time or money, you should first make an investment in buying some "knowledge" from people who have already been there, done that and got the T-shirt. That way you can spend less and get more bang for your buck or your time.


About the Author


John Taylor is a prolific writer, he is the author of several Internet Marketing related eBooks, for example... http://Test-and-Track.com
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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Blog Your Business

Does your business need a blog?

A blog is a Web log, an online journal. Blogs started out as online diaries, in which diarists shared their everyday lives with the world. From their beginnings as a weird Web fad in 1998, blogs have moved on, and are well on the way to becoming a standard business tool.

Why? Because in February 2003 Google.com bought Pyra Labs, the company which owns the Blogger weblogging tool. Blogger.com, one of the main sites providing blog software and hosting, boasted a million hosted web logs in early 2003.

Google.com's interest in blogs indicates that blogs are mainstream. A blog help your business in many ways, depending on whether you create a private or a public blog. Blogs are so useful that you'll want to create both.

=> Your business's private, internal blog

These days, no one works alone. Even if you're a solo business operator, you have colleagues --- partners, contractors, and suppliers with whom you communicate daily. A private blog makes working with a group easier, because you can streamline your interactions, saving time and energy.

A private blog can contain notes to yourself, or to colleagues. It's a place to store information and tips that might not warrant a special email message. You can post information like meeting notes, project tasks and summaries, and updated price lists. You can also post links to large files --- no need to email, fax, or mail them to and fro.

Your blog is more useful than email, because blog postings are dated, and easily searchable. You can post a message you want everyone to read, and the message stays on the blog. With email, you read and delete, or read and forget.

If you've worked on a project with someone in another state or on the other side of the world, you've blessed email, because it makes sharing information so easy. Using a blog to share information is even easier than using email.

=> Your business's public blog

A business blog is a marketing tool. A blog can add value to your Web site, or it can take the place of a Web site. Look on it as a combination "What's New" Web site page, and an online journal. Because of a blog's freewheeling nature, it's friendly and relaxed.

If you don't have a site, your blog's a place to put your online CV, portfolio and client list. You can, and should, use your blog to express your personality and expertise.

If you have a Web site, your blog page builds loyalty, because if you provide interesting content, your visitors will return to your site. And because it's a Web page, your blog will appear on search engines, attracting new clients.

Google has been treating blogs differently from other Web pages for a couple of years. Whereas it takes a standard Web page/ site a month to be indexed by Google, blogs are indexed daily. This means that your blog is mega-cheap advertising. You can post something on your blog and have it indexed by Google within a day.

Will creating a blog help your business? As I suggested in the article: "Get Googled And Build Credibility", because Google.com is so popular and indexes so comprehensively, if you focus some of your marketing and promotion time on getting your name out on the Web, you're building your credibility, both online and offline.

(You can read the complete article in the newsletter archives at: http://www.digital-e.biz/newsletter.html
--click the Archive button on the Newsletter page.)

So go ahead, blog your business!

=> Blog resources <=

Blogger -create your own free blog(s) www.blogger.com Blogger provides a template for your blog, and makes adding to your blog as easy as writing an email message. The "Post" and "Publish" buttons on the interface update your blog.

Weblog.com --- recently updated blogs: http://www.weblogs.com/

w.bloggar --- http://wbloggar.com/A clever and useful little freebie to write and format your blog posts offline, then automatically post them when you go online.

Angela Booth's Digital-e Blog: http://www.digital-e.biz/blogger.html

***Resource box: if using, please include***

Veteran multi-published author and copywriter Angela Booth crafts words for your business --- words to sell, educate or persuade.
E-books and e-courses on Web site. FREE ezines for writers and small biz: http://www.digital-e.biz/
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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Blog Construction

Blogs like all forms of writing are an art form that takes knowledge and practice to do well.

Writing… Blogs… Blogs are on-line journals where people express themselves through writing. Writing… Writing is the process where one puts down words of a language on a format that others can read. This process has not been around very long, to use one of my writing teacher’s favorite sayings, “Writing has only existed for one day in the one year that humanity has existed.” Speaking and thinking come much easier than writing. These processes just flow out naturally like a river of consciousness; sometimes we hardly have to think about doing them. Anyone and everyone can write words down on paper but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘good writing’, myself included. Like most things in life, our society already takes writing for granted which is proving to expose more of our ignorance. Writing is a new form of expression, and if we want to do it in a way that the masses can connect with our ideas, we have to think much more simply and clearly about this art.

Now that was quite a big paragraph, you’ve got to wonder if I really needed to say as much as I just did to introduce this article on the best way to write your blogs on the Web. I didn’t even mention this main idea, and that’s what an introduction paragraph is meant to be for. This is a common mistake in many blogs out there. We try to get too many ideas across in one paragraph, sometimes even in one sentence! The key, as in all things in life-is to keep it simple. Simplicity means that readers won’t get confused about what your journal entry is actually about. Introduce your main general topic at the start, and use the subsequent paragraphs to discuss separate ideas that relate to this topic. Try to tie everything up in the concluding paragraph, your main argument and the reason why you’ve written in the first place.

Grammar and sentence construction are not easy systems to master, especially if you come from a school system that spent more time telling you about historical battles and quadratic equations than on how to read and write. This is a real problem. When we speak we can get messages across to others easily, but if we put these words down on paper, the writing just isn’t interesting and doesn’t connect with people’s curiosities and fascination. When you write you are not talking to a close friend. You can’t use slang and colloquialisms that only your local community can understand. The aim is to connect with all the people in the world, so let’s make it crystal clear and enjoyable to read.

Your computer has spelling and grammar checks, as well as access to a thesaurus. Use them, but remember that the machine can’t decipher all the intricacies of language. Language is a world in itself, and much of its territories are undiscovered by the masses. So, again keep it simple. Short, precise sentences with single ideas are great. Many words in the English language have the same meanings (synonyms). Use the thesaurus so you don’t repeat the same word over and over throughout the text. It keeps the story fresh and doesn’t turn the reader off. There’s nothing more boring than repetition. Using different words can be a lot of fun and a learning experience, just make sure you use a dictionary (also on the computer/Internet) to make absolute sure of the word’s definition.

Readability… Simplicity… Make your blog accessible by all people. You can even take into consideration that many readers will have learned English as a second language. As I’ve said in previous articles, keep to the point-don’t go on tangents. Stick with the article’s topic, and definitely stay within the realms of your blog’s main area. If your blog is entitled “Jazz music”, people who go there don’t want to hear about how your football team won on the weekend! Please be consistent. How irritating is it to visit a blog that hasn’t been written on in months or years?

I hope these little tips will help you on your quest to producing ‘good’ writing that brings new friends and acquaintances of similar outlooks into your world. If you want people to read, the aim is to produce an emotional reaction in your reader. Pretend you are writing to another form of yourself, if it were not readable, interesting and fun… would you stick around?

By Jesse S. Somer M6.Net
Jesse S. Somer is a ‘grasshopper’ writer attempting to inform other beginner writers on how they might one day become masters or ‘sensei’s’.


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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Blogging - what its all about

A blog usually is a web page that contains brief, discrete hunks of information called posts. These posts are arranged in reverse-chronological order (the most recent come first) and each is uniquely identified by an anchor tag which is marked with a permanent link that can be referred to by others who wish to link to it.


A blog is a means of communication and there are many different types of messages carried by blogs. Some are nothing but pointers to other web sites, while others run long essays, some are personal diaries, others feature technology, and some are edited by one person, others by teams.


There are hundreds of thousands of blogs on the Internet, and new blogs are created every day. Can anybody and more importantly can you blog? Yes, there are bloggers of all types, equipped with all levels of technical skills. Bloggers approach their sites with as much variety and passion as the general Net public approaches the Web itself.


The most commonly used blogging tool is Blogger. It requires the least amount of commitment in time or resources, allowing you to go from wanting a blog to having one in about five minutes and at no cost. The Blogger software is the property of Pyra Labs (www.pyra.com). Blogger is often credited as the reason for the explosion of blogging that’s occurred in the last couple of years. It is a web-based tool, requiring no installation of software on your personal computer or on your server if you happen to have a web site. You access the tool through the Blogger web site (http://blogger.com) and the blog pages are posted to your web site or to Pyra’s BlogSpot (http://blogspot.com) community blog server. For more detailed information on this see O’Reilly’s Essential Blogging.


Re-read anything before you publish. Electronic text can expose unintended meaning easily and it will also make what you say a lot more focused. If nothing else, it should help you catch spelling mistakes! Blogging is a way to share your opinions and thoughts to the rest of the world. If you post interesting things, share links with other bloggers and post comments on other blogs. Linking is the way of the Web that is the key of successful blogging.


In order to keep your blogs really fresh, invite a group of your friends / colleagues and give them blogging access. That way you will have several reporters blogging information and you won’t end up killing yourself, trying to keep your blog populated with good information. If you use Blogger, upgrade to Blogger Pro. You can have your team post to the blog from email, create and syndicate your blog as an RSS feed, and a whole lot more! Adding the ability to post comments on your blog extends interactivity and usefulness to the blog itself. Blogs are about community and information, and commenting is a real way to gauge your viewer’s blogging efforts. Blogging is one of the quickest ways to update your site. Syndicating others’ blogs into your own site is another. There is a wealth of information out there – just tap into it!


About The Author


This article was written by Inka-Maria Kunz, CEO of a flourishing multilingual translations agency with offices in Germany and New Zealand. This article may be printed or used in its entirety with full author contacts and details. For more information, translations or purchases of a new website/e-business, contact the author thru the official website www.linguatransl.co.nz or the blog www.linguatransl.blogspot.com.
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