Most relevant news, techniques and tools for authors looking to promote their books inexpensively off and online. We refer to and utilize many of the Guerrilla Marketing techniques and have created some of our own geared specifically to book promotion and marketing. Our website is the ground where we put into practice our marketing efforts. Membership is FREE.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
A Strategy for Relationship Linking
A Strategy for Relationship Linking The following post has been contributed by Liz Strauss from Successful Blog. Blogging is more than writing and sharing information with the masses. Publishing a post only starts the heartbeat of growing blog. Yaro Starak says Don’t Be An Insular Blogger, never linking to or talking about other bloggers. Mike Sansone can be heard repeating [...]
What Bloggers Can Learn From Focused Blogs Today’s guest post is from Chris Garrett from chrisg.com. My last two posts at ProBlogger focused on two successful individual bloggers, Darren Rowse and Robert Scoble. While we can learn a great deal from observing individual people, for this post I am going to look at examples of a particular type of blog; the Focused Niche [...]
The Importance of Letting A Good Post Wait This article was written by Glen Stansberry of LifeDev (feed). Check out LifeDev if you want more ways to be creative and efficient with your writing. Growing a readership is something that takes hard work and a little luck. Sure, sites like Digg and Reddit can greatly expand your readership overnight, but it’s really [...]
Finding Advertisers for Your Blog Alistair asks - ‘Having a niche blog means that I will never have the same amount of visitors as some of the larger technology/media blogs. This means that advertisers such as blog ads will not allow me to use their ads as they see me as having lower visitor numbers. Traditionally manufacturers in my niche [...]
ProBlogger Meetup NYC - Recap Last night was the first ever ProBlogger Readers Meet Up here in New York City. V and I arrived just after 6.30pm and walked into a room which at first impression didn’t seem to be the right one - there were just way too many people there. I am not sure what I was expecting but [...]
Wall Street expectations destroying news organizations.
Audiences switching rapidly to new media for which there is insufficient revenue to support real journalism.
The line between amateurs and professional journalists is blurred and it is likely the public largely doesn't care.
News is entertainment and needs to compete on the basis of what the audience wants—not what is good journalism or what should be covered.
"Public relations professionals need to understand that these desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations," says Bacon. "They need to be able to respond fast, to be aggressive in attacking misinformation and bad reporting and most importantly, they need to grab onto the incredible opportunities they have to talk directly to the people whose opinion about the organization matters most to their future. Talk quick, talk with complete honestly and talk directly."
How does a web content strategy figure in all this?
"Today's Internet tools including virtual communication centers, blogs, and communicator-controlled websites all make that possible. The desperate media environment makes it essential," advises Bacon. And he is 100% correct..
How do you do it?
If you do not yet have a section of your website that can be controlled by the communication department this should be a priority. The tools available today make this a no-brainer.
RSS enable this section of the site, so that your content can be syndicated across the Net. Feeds also allow you to reach subcribers fast...
Use RSS feeds and other tools to monitor the blogs and conversations so you have your finger on the pulse and can pick up and respond to any comments or issues right away.
White Papers: 5 Reasons to Write Them by Michael A. Stelzner While I am on vacation this week, we are fortunate to have some excellent guest authors. The first guest, Michael Stelzner, is author of the bestselling book Writing White Papers and has written more than 100 white papers for recognized...
A new experiment in citizen journalism plans to some crowdsourcing and include readers and their sources in the network that journalists can tap into for stories.
Assignment Zero, a collaboration between Wired magazine and NewAssignment.Net, the experimental journalism site established by Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, intends to use not only the wisdom of the crowd, but their combined reporting efforts—an approach that has come to be called "crowdsourcing," reports The NY Times
Citizens with a variety of expertise—the "people formerly known as the audience," as Professor Rosen describes them—will produce work to be iterated and edited by experienced journalists.
This is an experiment to watch. It could turn out to be a place where your experts can contribute content. Some of the content might even make it into Wired, says Chris Anderson, the editor. .
Moms are increasingly turning to the Internet for answers to everything from problems with teething babies to financing college. Based on research into their online audience Disney is launching a new website aimed at providing these answers the AP reports.
Web-savvy and 32-million strong, U.S. mothers spend almost as much time online as women as a group, according to eMarketer's new report, "Moms Online: Parenting With Web 2.0."
And they're not just on children and parenting sites. The biggest opportunity for marketers targeting moms online is social networking sites, says the report.
Disney has plunged right in to this space with their new website Family.com
Family intends to be a one-stop site for parents, especially mothers, providing everything from Internet search to user-generated articles on key topics such as education and food, and, eventually, a 'ParentPedia,' a compilation of information on 1,000 topics that can be expanded by users.
Parents have become a larger part of Disney's online audience, accounting for nearly half of the 25 million unique visits per month to the Disney.com site, the company said. Most of those are moms.
Disney surveyed 30,000 mothers over the past year to find out what they are looking for online. The openness of the new site along with trusted content vouched for by Disney is what moms say they want..
The site will be in beta till the summer.
Writing for the Web: No More Gatekeepers Anne Marie Nichols is author of a freelance writing blog about The Write Stuff and contributes this post about the demise of gatekeepers, the web, and some famous self-publishers that will surprise you. Goodbye to the Gatekeepers?by Anne Marie Nichols,...
Social Media: Why You Should Pay Attention to This Here's our weekly heads up for the Blogging and Beyond Internet radio show over at VoiceAmerica. If the term Social Media and Web 2.0 has you scratching your head, then don't miss this show. Click here to listen to the...
On Saturday I gave a presentation at Northern Voice (a Vancouver-based blogging conference) about blogging software and how it can and should be used for building Web sites are more than just a blog, or perhaps look nothing like a blog.
The session was podcasted here, and I’ve pasted in my talk outline below. The site we built during the session is here: http://bloggingworkshop.com/. Enjoy!
Not Just for Blogs
I think blogging is revolutionary. I think this because it is capable of building community and relationships, of informing, of entertaining… but when it comes right down to it, the thing that I think is so mind-blowing about blogging is the software. That, and the price of that software.
I started making Web sites in 1994. At that point, and for a long, long time, the vast majority of Web sites were built by making HTML files, potentially hundreds and hundreds of HTML files.� My first job was with the L.A. Times Web site, and when we wanted to change the design in any way - from the wording of something in the navigation to the color of the links - you did it on a file by file basis. Every single page had to be opened, changed, saved, and then put onto the Web server again. Needless to say we didn’t do a lot of little changes.
As the Web evolved, so did the software solutions. If you were a big Web site company with a lot of money, you hired people to build you something better: a database-driven Web site. With a databased site you could build pages as they were needed. At the L.A. Times that meant that when someone clicked on a link for a news story, the database found that story, pulled it out, and plunked it into a template. The ground-breaking thing for the worker bees was that there weren’t individual files sitting around anymore: if you wanted to make a change to the site design you made it to the template and the next time someone looked at a story, boom, they got the new template. It made things easier for the developers and that in turn made things easier for the site’s visitors, because the developers could then spend time on other stuff, like content. It made other good stuff possible, too, like search, like archives, like content sorting by category.
That was what you did if you were a big company. If you were a little buy, or an individual, and you didn’t have the big bucks to spend, you still had masses of HTML files sitting around, and things like search were really out of your reach.
Then along comes blogging software.
What is blogging software? Well, at heart, it’s a database. You put the content in, it goes into a database. When it gets displayed, that content is dropped into a template. Sound familiar? This is why so many blog sites look the same from page to page - the home page looks just like a permalink page, except for the content of the actual blog posts. The templates are the same.
And most blogging software came with bells and whistles: search, archives, RSS feeds… it was all built in. You didn’t need any special expertise to set it up, and with a lot of blogging software you could get started in minutes. Best of all was the price. What the big companies spent hundreds of thousands on, you could get for free with Blogger. Even the blog software that did cost money was relatively inexpensive. For $200 or so, you had everything you needed.
As long as what you needed was a blog, you were set.
Well, my big message today is that if you invest some time and learning, you can make a blog software work for more than a blog. You can build any Web site using blog software, and if you do it right, no one will be the wiser.
Let’s look at some examples of what I mean. (A little caveat, I’m going to show you mostly business Web sites because those are the kinds of Web sites I’m hired to create, but the principles are the same whether you have a “brand” or not.)
Blog software can really revolutionize the maintenance issues for a web site, and make it easier to redesign (a reality we can’t ignore) as well, but that doesn’t mean every web site needs to run off of blog software. Small web sites with mostly unique page layout won’t be able to make easy use of blog software.
But any site that needs to be easy to update (perhaps by multiple people), has some standardization of presentation, and can work with a template approach.
Is it easy? Well, yes and no. Get the right blog software, and have the right know-how and it’s not a big deal. But if you aren’t willing to learn some code and invest some time… it’s hard. There are people you can hire to set up a site for you, that’s for sure.
Now, the components of blog software: usually you have:
publishing interface
admin and setup stuff
templates
I’m showing you pMachine’s Expression Engine, but many different kinds of blog software can be adapted for this kind of site. It’s important to choose blog software that gives you access to the templates! Wordpress.com isn’t going to do, and only the Typepad Pro level will work for you. If you can find software that can handle multiple blogs, so much the better. The reason I really love EE is that each “blog” can be customized, and because of all the extra components—mailing list, poll, photo gallery, forum module.
For this demo, I’ve chosen one of the templates that EE provides and I’m going to customize it. First, let’s deal with the Admin side and set up our publishing interface:
Edit the blog preferences
Set up custom fields
Put in a sample post
Set up categories
Next, let’s get rid of stuff in the template we don’t want.
And finally, let’s substitute a few things in the blog software code.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)
From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.
What does Web 2.0 mean to you?
White Papers: Here's Why They Are Powerful Persuasders The Persuasive Power of White Papersby Michael Stelzner, Writing White Papers blog, guest author Information overload. Filters. Time constraints. Limited patience. Marketing excess makes the task of influencing a chore! Getting an audience with someone important and presenting vital points...
Content is king in this game. More often than not, the quality of viral content takes a backseat to the marketing mandate.
Foote gives examples of how to get it right and how to get it very wrong. Dove's Evolution video was a winner, but their recent Super Bowl Commercial effort sank like a stone under a deluge of negative comments.
The bottom line is that the message has to be exceptional, says Foote. I'd also add the importance of originality, authenticity and relevance. Don't force a viral marketing idea because it sounds cool—make sure it jives with the demographic you're trying to reach
For some reason when we are faced with a new medium we tend to throw all the PR basics out with the bathwater. Social media is very much like live communication - it's not a one-way, top down 'push' medium. You have to understand your sudience and deliver content that works for them.
Yes, it was much less threatening to deiver content in the 'old' ways - no-one was talking back. Social media tools make it possible for your audience to give you instant feedback - they'll let you (and the rest of the world) know, in no uncertain terms, if you get it wrong.
Here are Foote's tips for successul viral video online:
Don't force viral marketing concepts if they don't fit the brand essence.
Do your homework on what flies and what dies. Live the video sharing space.
Content is everything. Bring on producers who can push the buttons of buzz.
Take risks. Beware of corporate filters that will dilute the quality of the content.
Test it. If eight out of 10 people aren't cracking up, memorized or amazed, head back to the drawing board.
Cast a wide net. YouTube is center stage, but don't forget the other sites: Revver, iFilm, Myspace, etc.
It's stll about content strategy and delivering the right message to the right audience, via the right channels.
I’m in San Francisco for the first ever Dummies Authors Conference. There are about 50 Dummies authors here, and the day is packed with discussions about marketing books, the uses of agents, and general Dummies best practices. It’s going to be an interesting day! You can check out the agenda here.
There’s been a bunch of press already, but the most exciting news of the day is that the conference is up for being featured on the Evening News with Katie Couric. In fact, you can actually vote to send Steve Hartman to the conference tomorrow by going to http://www.cbsnews.com and clicking on Assignment America. We’re up against some guy who can talk really fast and a California prison program to send female juvenile delinquents to finish school ("Can etiquette, fashion and dance really set a girl straight?"). Wouldn’t you rather get the inside scoop on the For Dummies books? Of course you would. Go vote.
And, if I haven’t convinced you already, check out the other press coverage today:
The “dummies” label could be the weirdest aspect of the whole franchise, as the authors are not really supposed to assume their readers are dumb, just uninformed. The publisher, in an official statement on the matter, calls it a “term of endearment.”
Telcos Fail to Capitalize on Mobile Web 2.0 Telecoms companies are failing to make the most of the growing popularity of the online information-sharing services of "Web 2.0", according to new research 'Web re-loaded: Driving convergence in the real world.' by global consultancy Arthur D. Little.
This new report places users and user generated content in the spotlight yet again. Yet it seems US Telcos have not yet got the Web 2.0 message.
"In order to harness and monetize Web 2.0 the Telcos will have to rapidly address the needs of this community" says Martyn Roetter, Director of Arthur D. Little's US TIME. "Younger Europeans are already showing their readiness to interact on the move, with 38% of them accessing email from mobile devices, while Google launched Gmail for mobile in November last year. Telecommunications businesses now need to offer access to the established web 2.0 services, for both communication and for the fulfillment of their wider social needs while on the move."
The dilemma Telcos face is whether they should build their own Web 2.0 platforms or engage with established sites such as flickr etc, says the report.
One good example of collaboraiton is the Pontiac Underground site that partnered with Yahoo! and now offers access to all the Yahoo social media sites in one branded place.
Whatever they do, they should do it soon. the race goes to the swift and The Cluetrain is not waiting for the laggers.
This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.
Seducing Prospects with White Papers Luring Prospects With White Papersby Michael Stelzner, Writing White Papers blog, guest author Looking to drum up new business? Need to generate some leads? Finding new business is hard work! If you want to persuade, white papers are the hot...
Will you take The Blog Squad's Survey? Can you spare a few minutes of your time for The Blog Squad? We'd like to know more about you, and what your challenges are so we can better serve you and provide more relevant information and tools for your...
White Paper Details & Insider Secrets In the next few days, I'm featuring guest author Michael Stelzner of Writing White Papers blog to teach us about writing these important business marketing tools. I recently asked Mike questions in an email: Hi, Mike. Some questions arose for...
Looking for a fun widget to add to your site? I like the new site called “Twitter.”
On Twitter, you quickly share just a little one liner about what you’re currently up to.� Then it notifies your close friends about what you’re up to.� It’s a nice way to feel connected to someone without feeling like you’re intruding.
Susie has added a Twitter badge to this blog, but your twitter status also gets sent via AIM or GTalk, or can be see on twitter itself.
It’s quick to sign up and fun.� Let me know if you join!
I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for Mobile Edge, left a comment on an earlier post of mine and then followed up with an email to me.
I picked the Mobile Edge Chocolate Suede Tote because I wanted a laptop bag that looked like it belonged to a woman, and that didn’t involve black canvas or vinyl. It was a tough search, especially since my laptop—at 17”—was too large for many of the more fashionable bags. When I found a Mobile Edge bag at Fry’s, though, I discovered that I could fit my laptop into the bag, as long as I didn’t put it into the actual slot created for it. Since the bag was quite padded anyway, I’ve been merrily using it and putting file folders in the laptop slot since.
Recently, though, Lewis told me, Mobile Edge had started making an insert just for laptops like mine (huge) and he wanted to send me one. Naturally, I accepted.
Now, one of the things I really liked about the Mobile Edge tote I chose was that the interior piece that holds the laptop is just an insert; it can actually be removed completely from the bag (and get this, when you remove it, you don’t loose any interior pockets or features!). This means you could buy a couple of inserts and say, use the same bag for more than one laptop.
When my new insert arrived, I pulled out the old 15” insert, popped in the 17” and the laptop fits perfectly. I have had a chance to use the bag since putting in the new insert, and things do fit a bit better when you can put the laptop into the right place, so it actually feels like I have more space, not less.
I’m still a huge fan of this bag, which is well-made and durable, and I can now recommend it unreservedly for carriers of 17” laptops as well.
My one remaining complaint is that bag + laptop + peripherals + book + ... well, it’s all a little heavy. That’s more of a physics problem, though. I’ll let you know if Mobile Edge cracks the code on breaking that whole two bodies of mass attracting each other thing.
A Cymfony/Porter Novelli study reports that “the majority of companies surveyed (76%) indicated that they have noticed an increase in media attention and/or website traffic as a result of their blog(s).”
Blogging is still hot, and I’m still hot on blogging, but I’m pretty much tapped out when it comes to blogging about blogging. From this point on, I may update this blog periodically, but—officially—I’m retiring it.
Don’t get me wrong! My book, Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, is still a great resource for blogging! I put a lot of time, energy and experience into that book, and I’m so pleased by how well it has remained current and useful. (I shouldn’t have done such a good job, since Wiley might have asked me to write a new edition if it hadn’t held up so well!) It’s not retiring! This is merely a reflection of my desire to make more blogs, and talk about them a little less.
Thanks for being such great readers. For now, hasta la vista, baby!
We had 70 attendees in Cape Town and 60 in Johannesburg at the Web PR + conference.
The Cape Town audience was more independents and bloggers and techie types, while the Joburg crowd was more agency and PR related. As one blogger who attended both sessions remarked the difference in the audience led to a very different conference - as it was a very interactive event.
Louise Marsland, editor of Biz Community, told me that it was one of the most emjoyable conferences she had attended -not just a platform to push services or products, but a genuine sharing of information and ideas.
The biggest drawback to adoption of Web 2.0 and Web PR in South Africa is the lack of connectivity and the cost of broadband. But when they finally get the second network operator and broadband becomes affordable, it will arrive in a rush.
Good to see both innovators like BMW and the staid old financial institutions attending.
How to Get Your Book Published: Windows Media Video Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.
A new experiment in citizen journalism plans to some crowdsourcing and include readers and their sources in the network that journalists can tap into for stories.
Assignment Zero, a collaboration between Wired magazine and NewAssignment.Net, the experimental journalism site established by Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, intends to use not only the wisdom of the crowd, but their combined reporting efforts—an approach that has come to be called "crowdsourcing," reports The NY Times
Citizens with a variety of expertise—the "people formerly known as the audience," as Professor Rosen describes them—will produce work to be iterated and edited by experienced journalists.
This is an experiment to watch. It could turn out to be a place where your experts can contribute content. Some of the content might even make it into Wired, says Chris Anderson, the editor. .
Telcos Fail to Capitalize on Mobile Web 2.0 Telecoms companies are failing to make the most of the growing popularity of the online information-sharing services of "Web 2.0", according to new research 'Web re-loaded: Driving convergence in the real world.' by global consultancy Arthur D. Little.
This new report places users and user generated content in the spotlight yet again. Yet it seems US Telcos have not yet got the Web 2.0 message.
"In order to harness and monetize Web 2.0 the Telcos will have to rapidly address the needs of this community" says Martyn Roetter, Director of Arthur D. Little's US TIME. "Younger Europeans are already showing their readiness to interact on the move, with 38% of them accessing email from mobile devices, while Google launched Gmail for mobile in November last year. Telecommunications businesses now need to offer access to the established web 2.0 services, for both communication and for the fulfillment of their wider social needs while on the move."
The dilemma Telcos face is whether they should build their own Web 2.0 platforms or engage with established sites such as flickr etc, says the report.
One good example of collaboraiton is the Pontiac Underground site that partnered with Yahoo! and now offers access to all the Yahoo social media sites in one branded place.
Whatever they do, they should do it soon. the race goes to the swift and The Cluetrain is not waiting for the laggers.
.
links for 2007-04-09 Creating My ToDo List Through Jott And Gmail (tags: GTD Mobile lifehacks voice Notetaking jott Gmail) BlogMailr - Publish from your email straight to your blog (tags: Blogs Email lifehacks) » Thoughts on the online/offiine apps controversy | Office Evolution...
Wall Street expectations destroying news organizations.
Audiences switching rapidly to new media for which there is insufficient revenue to support real journalism.
The line between amateurs and professional journalists is blurred and it is likely the public largely doesn't care.
News is entertainment and needs to compete on the basis of what the audience wants—not what is good journalism or what should be covered.
"Public relations professionals need to understand that these desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations," says Bacon. "They need to be able to respond fast, to be aggressive in attacking misinformation and bad reporting and most importantly, they need to grab onto the incredible opportunities they have to talk directly to the people whose opinion about the organization matters most to their future. Talk quick, talk with complete honestly and talk directly."
How does a web content strategy figure in all this?
"Today's Internet tools including virtual communication centers, blogs, and communicator-controlled websites all make that possible. The desperate media environment makes it essential," advises Bacon. And he is 100% correct..
How do you do it?
If you do not yet have a section of your website that can be controlled by the communication department this should be a priority. The tools available today make this a no-brainer.
RSS enable this section of the site, so that your content can be syndicated across the Net. Feeds also allow you to reach subcribers fast...
Use RSS feeds and other tools to monitor the blogs and conversations so you have your finger on the pulse and can pick up and respond to any comments or issues right away.
links for 2007-04-07 Google Voice Local Search Google Voice Local Search (1-800-GOOG-411) is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone. (tags: Google local locationbasedservices Mobile voice Search) It's the Conversation Economy, Stupid "As consumer markets fragment, marketers and designers...
links for 2007-04-08 NYTimes.com Most Popular Newspaper Site -- Here Is Top 30 List of the top newspaper sites with page views and, more importantly, time spent. (tags: Journalism newspapers Stats) Google Guide Quick Reference: Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet) (tags: Google Search...
Moms are increasingly turning to the Internet for answers to everything from problems with teething babies to financing college. Based on research into their online audience Disney is launching a new website aimed at providing these answers the AP reports.
Web-savvy and 32-million strong, U.S. mothers spend almost as much time online as women as a group, according to eMarketer's new report, "Moms Online: Parenting With Web 2.0."
And they're not just on children and parenting sites. The biggest opportunity for marketers targeting moms online is social networking sites, says the report.
Disney has plunged right in to this space with their new website Family.com
Family intends to be a one-stop site for parents, especially mothers, providing everything from Internet search to user-generated articles on key topics such as education and food, and, eventually, a 'ParentPedia,' a compilation of information on 1,000 topics that can be expanded by users.
Parents have become a larger part of Disney's online audience, accounting for nearly half of the 25 million unique visits per month to the Disney.com site, the company said. Most of those are moms.
Disney surveyed 30,000 mothers over the past year to find out what they are looking for online. The openness of the new site along with trusted content vouched for by Disney is what moms say they want..
The site will be in beta till the summer.
Two New Ways to Mine for Twitter Gold Two new tools have launched that make it easy to search and mine Twitter for conversation data. The first, called Twittermittent, pulls geo-tagged data and charts from the last few days. You can also compare terms. Here's a chart I...
Content is king in this game. More often than not, the quality of viral content takes a backseat to the marketing mandate.
Foote gives examples of how to get it right and how to get it very wrong. Dove's Evolution video was a winner, but their recent Super Bowl Commercial effort sank like a stone under a deluge of negative comments.
The bottom line is that the message has to be exceptional, says Foote. I'd also add the importance of originality, authenticity and relevance. Don't force a viral marketing idea because it sounds cool—make sure it jives with the demographic you're trying to reach
For some reason when we are faced with a new medium we tend to throw all the PR basics out with the bathwater. Social media is very much like live communication - it's not a one-way, top down 'push' medium. You have to understand your sudience and deliver content that works for them.
Yes, it was much less threatening to deiver content in the 'old' ways - no-one was talking back. Social media tools make it possible for your audience to give you instant feedback - they'll let you (and the rest of the world) know, in no uncertain terms, if you get it wrong.
Here are Foote's tips for successul viral video online:
Don't force viral marketing concepts if they don't fit the brand essence.
Do your homework on what flies and what dies. Live the video sharing space.
Content is everything. Bring on producers who can push the buttons of buzz.
Take risks. Beware of corporate filters that will dilute the quality of the content.
Test it. If eight out of 10 people aren't cracking up, memorized or amazed, head back to the drawing board.
Cast a wide net. YouTube is center stage, but don't forget the other sites: Revver, iFilm, Myspace, etc.
It's stll about content strategy and delivering the right message to the right audience, via the right channels.
How to Use Gmail as a Business Diary and More Tips A few weeks back I wrote two posts (Part I, Part II) on how to transform Gmail into your personal nerve center (PNC). These and other similar how-to posts are consistently among your favorites, so I plan to keep at...
How to Launch Your Career as an Author, Get Your Book Published and Get Book Publicity: MP3 Audio Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors. Visit www.EverythingYouShouldKnow.com for more details
How to Get Your Book Published: Quicktime Video Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.
What Bloggers Can Learn From Focused Blogs Today’s guest post is from Chris Garrett from chrisg.com. My last two posts at ProBlogger focused on two successful individual bloggers, Darren Rowse and Robert Scoble. While we can learn a great deal from observing individual people, for this post I am going to look at examples of a particular type of blog; the Focused Niche [...]
Dealing with Affiliates Rhys asks - ‘I’ve been running a site with a few affiliates on it, I have enjoyed a healthy relationship with said affiliates, and likewise they’ve commented to me on a number of occasions that I have generated business for them from my site. Recently my site has experienced a huge upturn in visitors, and [...]
Social Bookmarking - Link Building And Search Engine Optimization
Social Bookmarking - Link Building And Search Engine Optimization Social Bookmarking could be the next big thing in web site marketing since the development of the personal blogs. Social Bookmarking web sites like http://Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumble Upon and Furl al... [Author: Steve Szasz - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]
How to Optimize your Blog for Search Engines Blogs are naturally search engine friendly and optimizing your blog for search engines is really no different than optimizing your website. Here are some suggestions to get you started. Back Links:... [Author: Rose DesRochers - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]
Ideagoras The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt: In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits. In...
The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt:
In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits.
In the process, Mr. Lafley and his managers like Mr. Huston transformed a lumbering consumer products company into a limber innovation machine. In fact, five years after the company's stock collapsed in 2000, P&G has doubled its share price and now boasts a portfolio of 22 billion-dollar brands.
Today P&G is a leader among thousands of companies that participate in what we call "ideagoras" where millions of ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds change hands in something akin to an eBay for innovation.
Companies that move now can leverage a global pool of talent, ideas, and innovations that vastly exceeds what they could ever hope to marshal internally.
P&G figures that for every top-notch scientist inside its labs, there's another 200 outside who are just as good. That's a total of 1.8 million people whose talents it could potentially tap into.
The article is interesting not just for its content (which may be good stuff or routine corporate hyperventilation) but for the Globe's own awkward use of the online medium.
The paragraphing of the online article was identical to that of the print version I read over breakfast. I broke up one over-long paragraph to make it more readable.
The resources mentioned like InnoCentive and NineSigma are given without links to their sites. (Don't get me going about companies still using StudlyCaps.)
The story does offer a link to the Wikinomics home page, and to an earlier article in the series. But like so much material that the print media dump online, this is really just shovelware. Its value online would be far greater if only it had been turned into real hypertext.
That said, I'm posting a link to Wikinomics in Webwriting Resources, and I'd welcome your comments about that site.
Beyond Wikipedia: Citizendium Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt: Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little...
Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt:
Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little brat of online encyclopedias.
Sanger is staging an electronic coup d'état with a new wiki called Citizendium, to be launched early in the new year. But there's a twist: the site will start out as a mirror image of the English version of Wikipedia through a process called "forking."
By making a replica of Wikipedia, Sanger hopes to attract a bevy of experts to the project, who will then refine the wobbly content pulled from Wikipedia's infinite pages to create a resource that is authoritative and reliable. ("We descend upon their content, red pens in hand and start our own new community," he recently wrote.)
"On the day of launch, we have over 1,000 people ready to get to work, and a large portion of them are professors, graduate students, research scientists, legal scholars, technical thinkers and assorted other intellectuals."
Question is, how far will his highfalutin model go in the unruly hurly-burly of cyberspace, where the wisdom of the crowds rules the day?
I've put a link to Citizendium in the Webwriting Resources list, and the article itself has a link as well.
A Freelance Job in Vancouver This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest: The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December...
This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest:
The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December 14, 2006 (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.); turn-around time for reports is three working days.
If you are available and interested, please contact Biljana Zelenovic at biljana@theconferencepublishers.com or 1-800-265-3973 x226.
How To Make Your Web Site And Affiliate Marketing Compatible People who look for income opportunities, do often come across the idea of affiliate marketing. At first sight, it looks like it's just to have a banner posted on their web site to generate income. ... [Author: Ove Nordkvist - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]
SEO: Gaining Top Placement In The Warm Markets Search engines become smarter by the minute. It is no longer the sheer placement of numerous keywords on a single page. There is the correct placement of anchored text, the specific Meta tags, the wa... [Author: Jeffrey Greer - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]
White Papers: Here's Why They Are Powerful Persuasders The Persuasive Power of White Papersby Michael Stelzner, Writing White Papers blog, guest author Information overload. Filters. Time constraints. Limited patience. Marketing excess makes the task of influencing a chore! Getting an audience with someone important and presenting vital points...
Writing for the Web: No More Gatekeepers Anne Marie Nichols is author of a freelance writing blog about The Write Stuff and contributes this post about the demise of gatekeepers, the web, and some famous self-publishers that will surprise you. Goodbye to the Gatekeepers?by Anne Marie Nichols,...
How Google Video Search Engine can Solve 2 Major Website Owner's Problems What is the solution to #1. Getting your site indexed in Google, and #2. Generating quality traffic to your website? Answer: Use the awesome power of video. When Google bought out YouTube for 1.67 ... [Author: Jeff Davis - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]
Social Media: Why You Should Pay Attention to This Here's our weekly heads up for the Blogging and Beyond Internet radio show over at VoiceAmerica. If the term Social Media and Web 2.0 has you scratching your head, then don't miss this show. Click here to listen to the...
Becoming a Book Blog After weeks of work, the third edition of Writing for the Web is nearly completed. It's a far more extensive revision than I'd expected, but I'm pretty happy with the result. Not only is much of the print content changed, expanded, and updated, but the book will contain a CD with scores of links—a kind of electronic index, with added links on relevant topics. In addition, this site will become...
After weeks of work, the third edition of Writing for the Web is nearly completed. It's a far more extensive revision than I'd expected, but I'm pretty happy with the result. Not only is much of the print content changed, expanded, and updated, but the book will contain a CD with scores of links—a kind of electronic index, with added links on relevant topics.
In addition, this site will become a kind of book blog, providing still more updates and links. So if you find something in the book that you don't understand or like, you can fire off an email or a comment, and I'll try to explain myself.
Most textbooks now include websites created by the publisher to supply extra materials. Those sites, however, tend to be permanent and unchanging. As the blog for Writing for the Web 3.0, this site will change almost daily.
White Paper Details & Insider Secrets In the next few days, I'm featuring guest author Michael Stelzner of Writing White Papers blog to teach us about writing these important business marketing tools. I recently asked Mike questions in an email: Hi, Mike. Some questions arose for...
Seducing Prospects with White Papers Luring Prospects With White Papersby Michael Stelzner, Writing White Papers blog, guest author Looking to drum up new business? Need to generate some leads? Finding new business is hard work! If you want to persuade, white papers are the hot...
Do You Know the Fastest Way to Get a High Page Ranking? There are millions upon millions of websites on the internet. The majority of these site's have poor page rankings. Is your site one of them? Would you like to increase your page ranking? Silly quest... [Author: Terry Morris - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]
How to Launch Your Career as an Author, Get Your Book Published and Get Book Publicity: MP3 Audio
How to Launch Your Career as an Author, Get Your Book Published and Get Book Publicity: MP3 Audio Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors. Visit www.EverythingYouShouldKnow.com for more details
How to Get Your Book Published: Quicktime Video Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.
Three Reasons Why Twitter Will Be Sold Soon Who will buy Twitter? That should be on every user's mind because it's going to happen fast. Let's look at the facts first. Fact #1: According to Technology Review, Twitter had 100,000 users at the end of March. More important,...
How to Use Gmail as a Business Diary and More Tips A few weeks back I wrote two posts (Part I, Part II) on how to transform Gmail into your personal nerve center (PNC). These and other similar how-to posts are consistently among your favorites, so I plan to keep at...
As Daily Postings Slide, Blogging Peaks Technorati is out with their latest report, which they are re-branding the State of the Live Web. However, at least in my view, that is not what it is. The reality is that no one can scale to capture the...
Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.
HD Video Podcasts Arrive Webware reports that the Washington Post is now offering a video podcast in high definiton for consumption on TVs. The video podcast was shot in 720p resolution. Webware found the experience less than ideal. Still, as bandwidth and storage increase...
Google Turns Maps Into a Community O'Reilly Radar has the rundown on big changes at Google Maps. It's becoming a full-fledged community where people can annotate places with photos and videos and share them with the world. Very smart idea and further evidence that builds on...
links for 2007-04-08 NYTimes.com Most Popular Newspaper Site -- Here Is Top 30 List of the top newspaper sites with page views and, more importantly, time spent. (tags: Journalism newspapers Stats) Google Guide Quick Reference: Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet) (tags: Google Search...
links for 2007-04-05 Writing Apps for Bloggers - lifehack.org There is a plethora of options in the blog editing/word processing field (tags: Blogs lifehacks Writing Microsoft OSX) Afrigator Aggregator of content about Africa. (tags: africa aggregation Blogs Web2.0) Best Buy offers help in...
links for 2007-04-07 Google Voice Local Search Google Voice Local Search (1-800-GOOG-411) is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone. (tags: Google local locationbasedservices Mobile voice Search) It's the Conversation Economy, Stupid "As consumer markets fragment, marketers and designers...
Discounted Tickets for WOMMA Conference The Word of Mouth Marketing Association is hosting their Basic Training conference in New Orleans April 17-18. If you'd like to go, use the code guestofedelman and you will get a $75 discount. David Weinberger is keynoting and there are...
links for 2007-04-06 AMATOMU :: Pulse of the SA blogosphere An overview of blogging in South Africa. (tags: Blogs Africa Web2.0 Stats SouthAfrica) SL Brand Map Map of brands in Second Life (tags: Marketing virtualworlds SecondLife avatarmarketing) 'Getting Things Done' In 60 Seconds...
The Battle Between All-You-Can-Eat and A-La-Carte TV Cory Bergman from Lost Remote is a brave man. He ditched cable and went with an Apple TV a-la-carte solution for a week. The result: he was quite fine, thank you. He found most of what he was looking for,...
Blogging is Publishing I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.
links for 2007-04-09 Creating My ToDo List Through Jott And Gmail (tags: GTD Mobile lifehacks voice Notetaking jott Gmail) BlogMailr - Publish from your email straight to your blog (tags: Blogs Email lifehacks) » Thoughts on the online/offiine apps controversy | Office Evolution...
The Corporate Blogging Book Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.
links for 2007-04-04 Your Guide to Online TV Guides: 10 Services Compared (tags: TV) Live Search Maps Adds New Features And Firefox 3D Support (tags: Microsoft Maps Search windowslive Firefox)...
Town Hall Meetings 2.0 JD Lasica asked US presidential candidate Joe Biden a question via a YouTube video. That's not news, but what is news is that Biden responded with his own vid. The use of technology by the campaigns - almost all of...
American Zeitgeist The Tyee has published my review of American Zeitgeist, a documentary about the origins of the Afghan and Iraqi wars....
The Tyee has published my review of American Zeitgeist, a documentary about the origins of the Afghan and Iraqi wars.
A Little Light Housekeeping Writing for the Web 3.0 will be published in a few days, so I've spent some time updating and reorganizing this site. Many of the links had rotted, and the site was overdue for some new resources. So if you explore a little, you'll find several new links in Webwriting Resources and Web Writers and Editors. If you know of good sites, let me know and I'll be glad to...
Writing for the Web 3.0 will be published in a few days, so I've spent some time updating and reorganizing this site. Many of the links had rotted, and the site was overdue for some new resources.
So if you explore a little, you'll find several new links in Webwriting Resources and Web Writers and Editors. If you know of good sites, let me know and I'll be glad to add them.
Once the third edition is available online from Self-Counsel Press, I'll create a link to the publisher's site. I'll also add a number of new resources available on the book's CD—but the CD works only with PCs. So Mac users will have to download those items here.
Where to Put the Links? Milton Rhodes has sent me some questions about webwriting issues, and while I've dealt with some of them in the book, they deserve continuing discussion and debate. Here's his first question: Should you strip your copy of all links? One school of thought says yes, because links in the middle of the text ive the page that cluttered Wikipedia look and are off-putting. Much better to place all the relevant...
Milton Rhodes has sent me some questions about webwriting issues, and while I've dealt with some of them in the book, they deserve continuing discussion and debate. Here's his first question:
Should you strip your copy of all links? One school of thought says yes, because links in the middle of the text ive the page that cluttered Wikipedia look and are off-putting. Much better to place all the relevant links at the foot of the page or in the right-hand margin.
Another school of thought says no. You need to make it easy for readers to find the link as they read the main copy. If you place it anywhere else, many will miss it.
And here's my answer:
The blessing and curse of hypertext is that it can take you so many places.
In regular print-based text, we follow the writer's line of thought. That "line of thought" is a metaphor for a great deal of pre-writing: consulting sources, reflecting on them and on one's own preferences and principles, reacting to the actual ideas as they appear in the words the writer has drafted. The final version is like a good meal, with each course carefully prepared and served in the proper sequence.
In hypertext, we have scarcely sat down and opened our napkins before we're invited to jump up and visit the kitchen to confirm that oregano was indeed used in making the soup. Before we can enjoy the first bite of beefsteak, we're back in the slaughterhouse and from there to the feedlot.
This can be both informative and entertaining. We may learn a lot about what went into our meal, but we risk missing dessert, coffee, and liqueur...not to mention some good dinner-table conversation.
How Scholars Use Hypertext It's helpful to see what scholars do with such links. You could say they invented the first hypertext in their annotations to earlier documents and the footnotes by which they cite their sources. These break the narrative also, but scholars manage to ignore the disruptions. They absorb the information and then check the footnotes.
In the online medium, the "footnotes" are links—not to the original sources, but to citations at the bottom of the document, which in turn lead to the sources. A typical example is a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Go visit it and come back for my comments.
Welcome back. You've probably noticed that the NEJM article is not designed to be read online. The text sprawls across the whole screen. We have to scroll forever to follow the narrative. (We do have the option of clicking through to see the report's tables.) A sensible strategy would be to print it out, read it in our favourite armchair, and then return to the computer to check the links to the sources. We can click on a footnote number and "rappel" down the screen to the footnote, and then go on to the online source.
Serving Readers and Users This is a pretty good format for "readers"—those who use the Web as a convenient archive for print documents. For "users"—those looking for information to apply to their own documents, or just for entertainment—it can be a bit awkward. It's especially awkward for bloggers, as I've learned in running my own blogs.
Most bloggers are writing for users, "hit and run" visitors who arrive, grab a fact or comment, and surf on to somewhere else. Blog posts (and many other website texts) should therefore be fairly brief. If they do run long, like this one, it helps to put most of the post "below the fold" on its own page. The user can see two or three posts on one screen, and then decide which to follow onto the next page.
So on my own blogs, like H5N1, I'm quite happy to include the links to my sources within the text of the post, usually with an excerpt. Only the most dedicated visitors need to visit the original source, so the link to that source won't instantly distract them. They can read the gist of the post at a glance (or with a little scrolling). And then they can visit the source for the full story.
Other Options? Links on the side are another option. A good service of any website is to supply links to related sites, and blogs usually provide them. This is a convenience, but it may be necessary to supply blurbs with those links as well—many surfers are hesitant to click through to a different site unless encouraged to do so. But these links tend to be "stand-alone," unrelated to the main posts: They stay put in a side column, while the main posts gradually move down the page and disappear.
No doubt you might design a page so that links stayed to one side of the main text, but it doesn't seem worth it. Readers will still print out the text and then return to the computer to check the sources. Users will still want to grasp the main points of the post and then (perhaps) click through to the links, whether they're in the text itself or off to one side.
So designing the links of a post depends on knowing the kinds of readers you're writing for, and then providing what those readers are most comfortable with.
This post itself is a compromise. I expect people to read it online, not as a printout, so I've included a number of subheads to break up the text and help navigation. And of course I've included my links in the text, not at the bottom.
Of course I'd love to hear other opinions, whether you agree or disagree. This is an interactive medium, after all.
Sir Tim Warns Us About Online Fraud Via the Guardian Unlimited: Creator of web warns of fraudsters and cheats. Excerpt: The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian last night that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness. His creation...
The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian last night that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness.
His creation has transformed the way millions of people work, do business, and entertain themselves.
But he warns that "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way".
He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.
Sir Tim believes devotees of blogging sites take too much information on trust: "The blogging world works by people reading blogs and linking to them. You're taking suggestions of what you read from people you trust. That, if you like, is a very simple system, but in fact the technology must help us express much more complicated feelings about who we'll trust with what."
The next generation of the internet needs to be able to reassure users that they can establish the original source of the information they digest.
Links to the New Edition Writing for the Web 3.0 is now officially available. I've placed links to Self-Counsel Press in the right-hand column. If you're in the US, you can buy the book through the lower link; if you're in Canada or elsewhere in the world, the upper link is the one you want. If you're in the UK, you can also order the book through the Roundhouse Group. In the next few days...
Writing for the Web 3.0 is now officially available. I've placed links to Self-Counsel Press in the right-hand column. If you're in the US, you can buy the book through the lower link; if you're in Canada or elsewhere in the world, the upper link is the one you want. If you're in the UK, you can also order the book through the Roundhouse Group.
In the next few days I'll add some resources here that are available as a CD in the book...but only for PC users. So Mac users can download those resources here.
This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.
A Freelance Job in Vancouver This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest: The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December...
This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest:
The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December 14, 2006 (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.); turn-around time for reports is three working days.
If you are available and interested, please contact Biljana Zelenovic at biljana@theconferencepublishers.com or 1-800-265-3973 x226.
The Future of Text Online At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?. The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover....
At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?.
The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover.
Arielle Ford, Publicist biography Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.
Blogging is still hot, and I’m still hot on blogging, but I’m pretty much tapped out when it comes to blogging about blogging. From this point on, I may update this blog periodically, but—officially—I’m retiring it.
Don’t get me wrong! My book, Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, is still a great resource for blogging! I put a lot of time, energy and experience into that book, and I’m so pleased by how well it has remained current and useful. (I shouldn’t have done such a good job, since Wiley might have asked me to write a new edition if it hadn’t held up so well!) It’s not retiring! This is merely a reflection of my desire to make more blogs, and talk about them a little less.
Thanks for being such great readers. For now, hasta la vista, baby!
How to Launch Your Career as an Author, Get Your Book Published and Get Book Publicity: MP3 Audio Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors. Visit www.EverythingYouShouldKnow.com for more details
100 million sites CNN.com reports that the Web now has 100 million sites. The report is based on a story in Netcraft, a site I will include in the Webwriting Resources list. I suspect we will hit 250 million sites before we realize what a profound revolution Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched upon an unsuspecting world back in 1989....
CNN.com reports that the Web now has 100 million sites. The report is based on a story in Netcraft, a site I will include in the Webwriting Resources list.
I suspect we will hit 250 million sites before we realize what a profound revolution Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched upon an unsuspecting world back in 1989.
Online Writing Resources Matthew Ingram at the Globe and Mail has an interesting column: Google's spot is growing. And it's not just about Google's new online writing and spreadsheet tools. Ingram looks at several other services. I tend not to be an early adopter, and while I've heard of online wiki-style writing resources, I haven't done anything with them. If you have some experiences to share (and resources to recommend), I'd love to...
Matthew Ingram at the Globe and Mail has an interesting column: Google's spot is growing. And it's not just about Google's new online writing and spreadsheet tools. Ingram looks at several other services.
I tend not to be an early adopter, and while I've heard of online wiki-style writing resources, I haven't done anything with them. If you have some experiences to share (and resources to recommend), I'd love to hear about them.
Wikipedia's Watchdog The Tyee, an online magazine here in Vancouver, has an excellent article: Wikipedia's Watchdog. Excerpt: Andrew is a tall, skinny, 18-year-old college freshman who lives with his mom and dad on Burrard Inlet's North Shore. Early in the afternoon on July 31, he settled into the swivel chair in his parents' study, turned on his computer, and began combing through the bowels of Wikipedia, the world's most popular online encyclopedia....
The Tyee, an online magazine here in Vancouver, has an excellent article: Wikipedia's Watchdog. Excerpt:
Andrew is a tall, skinny, 18-year-old college freshman who lives with his mom and dad on Burrard Inlet's North Shore. Early in the afternoon on July 31, he settled into the swivel chair in his parents' study, turned on his computer, and began combing through the bowels of Wikipedia, the world's most popular online encyclopedia.
Andrew (when he isn't busy playing favourite games like Battlefield 2) performs an essential role in the ongoing struggle to defend Wikipedia from vandals of truth. Andrew is so committed to his mission, in fact, that he has invented digital 'robots' to help him patrol for enemy attacks. As one of more than a thousand Wikipedia administrators, he volunteers up to 20 hours a week. He and his trusty 'bots' find and zap inserted falsehoods that plague the pages of the huge, interactive site.
It's never easy preserving Wikipedia's credibility. But on that July afternoon, Andrew faced a truly formidable opponent, the godfather of "truthiness" himself, Stephen Colbert.
A new French-language resource I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.) This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at...
I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.)
This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at least in part), please get in touch. It's time to do a serious overhaul of the links and resources available here. Non-English sites especially welcome!
Was I Ahead of Myself? When my publisher asked for a third edition of my book, I suggested calling it "3.0" as if it were a piece of software. (Well, it's better than "Geeks' Edition," which was the second edition.) Now I seem to have anticipated the Next Big Thing, according to this story in the New York Times: Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense. Excerpt: From the billions of documents that form...
When my publisher asked for a third edition of my book, I suggested calling it "3.0" as if it were a piece of software. (Well, it's better than "Geeks' Edition," which was the second edition.)
From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence.
Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century.
Referred to as Web 3.0, the effort is in its infancy, and the very idea has given rise to skeptics who have called it an unobtainable vision. But the underlying technologies are rapidly gaining adherents, at big companies like I.B.M. and Google as well as small ones. Their projects often center on simple, practical uses, from producing vacation recommendations to predicting the next hit song.
But in the future, more powerful systems could act as personal advisers in areas as diverse as financial planning, with an intelligent system mapping out a retirement plan for a couple, for instance, or educational consulting, with the Web helping a high school student identify the right college.
The projects aimed at creating Web 3.0 all take advantage of increasingly powerful computers that can quickly and completely scour the Web.
“I call it the World Wide Database,” said Nova Spivack, the founder of a start-up firm whose technology detects relationships between nuggets of information by mining the World Wide Web. “We are going from a Web of connected documents to a Web of connected data.”
Well, connecting data is what writing itself is all about. But I don't know if my book is going to help people navigate the World Wide Database. Still, I totally agree with this pioneer of Web 3.0:
“The system will know that spotless is better than clean,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial-intelligence researcher at the University of Washington who is a leader of the project. “There is the growing realization that text on the Web is a tremendous resource.”
Poynter Online's EyeTrack07 Attacks the Myth of Short Attention Spans I haven't had time to read it yet. But here's the story from Poynter Online - EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans. Excerpt: You can't get much more basic than the lead finding of Poynter's EyeTrack07 study, presented this morning to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly. And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is...
You can't get much more basic than the lead finding of Poynter's EyeTrack07 study, presented this morning to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C.
Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly.
And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is even stronger online than in print.
At a time when readers are assumed to have short attention spans, especially those who read online, this qualifies as news.
That was the predominant behavior of roughly 600 test subjects -- 70 percent of whom said they read the news in print or online four times a week. Their eye movements were tracked in 15-minute reading sessions of broadsheet, tabloid and online publications. Evidence from these sessions revealed how long readers spend with the stories they pick, as well as a host of other details about reading patterns.
This should be a very interesting report.
An Intellectual Property Issue Judy Pokras (vegwriter@aol.com) has posted a letter to the Online Writing list, and she's given me permission to pass it along: I've been selling an e-book (of raw vegan Thanksgiving recipes) that clearly says on it that buyers don't have the right to distribute the information in the book. One of the buyers (a woman in New York, whose name and address I have) posted many of the book's recipes...
Judy Pokras (vegwriter@aol.com) has posted a letter to the
A new experiment in citizen journalism plans to some crowdsourcing and include readers and their sources in the network that journalists can tap into for stories.
Moms are increasingly turning to the Internet for answers to everything from problems with teething babies to financing college. Based on research into their online audience Disney is launching a new website aimed at providing these answers the AP reports. 
I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for