Archive for the ‘General’ Category
by Andrew G. Rosen on May 20th, 2011
BlogWorld and New Media Expo 2011 is finally coming to New York next week (May 24 – 26) and for the first time in many years, I’ve been able to clear my schedule to attend. There are many things I want to accomplish during the 3-day expo, but priority #1 is meeting YOU!
Just look for the guy with a QR code tattooed on his forehead.
If you are planning to attend BlogWorld NY and would like to meet face-to-face, I’d welcome the opportunity. Whether you want to learn about guest blogging for dozens of high-profile blogs or talk through ways we can support each other in this rapidly-shifting new media world, let’s chat!
There will be more than 100 speakers at the event. But the person I want to hear talk is YOU. Send me a message via Twitter @Jobacle
Categories: General
by Jonathan Bailey on May 18th, 2011
Imagine, for a moment, that you were invited over to a friends house to watch a movie or catch up on their news. However, instead of giving you what you went for, they bombarded you with advertisements you didn’t want, practically shoving them in your voice and begging you to read them.
Then, when you get past the ads, they start annoying you with irritating sounds and distracting movement, anything to get your attention away from whatever it is you visited for. Then, when you finally turn to leave, your friend does everything they can to prevent you from going. This includes locking doors, rearranging the furniture and everything short of handcuffing you to a wall.
This person, almost certainly, would not be your friend much longer and it is even more unlikely you’d ever go back to their house. At the very least you’d consider this a bad experience and, at worst, it would feel like a form of kidnapping.
However, as extreme as this example sounds, it’s exactly how many websites treat their visitors. Sadly, many webmasters don’t see their visitors as guests in their virtual home, but rather, like sheep meant to be shorn and exploited as much as possible.
But while we can all recount the terrible experiences that we’ve had with sites that have tried to trap and bombard us, there are other, more subtle ways a webmaster can impose on a visitor and they can be just as deadly to earning trust.
Unfortunately, many webmasters fail to realize that they are doing it and some are left wondering as to why so few of their visitors ever come back. Read More
Categories: General
Tags: Advertising, blogging, design, javascript, loading time, speed
by James Dunaway on May 13th, 2011
I’ve been a Squarespace fan since 2007. Â And before you jump on me and start singing the praises of that other Web-based blog platform, all I’m asking for is a chance. Â I want to show you how I built a successful blog with Squarespace, and that sometimes, paying a few dollars is worth the convenience.
What got me started was the no-risk trial that allowed me to set up a blog without shelling out a single penny – not even a credit card number. Â It’s a great business strategy, because after tweaking your blog to look the way you’d like, why bother going elsewhere? Well done, Squarespace! But all kidding aside, any company that allows you take a product for a full test drive without any commitment, clearly believes in its goods.
What sets Squarespace apart is that it’s so simple, that even your grandmother can start that crocheting website she’s always talking about! Â And if you feel so inclined, you can dive into the CSS and customize as many elements as you like. Â That’s the beauty of Squarespace, it’s the perfect solution for people at all tech levels. Read More
Categories: General
Tags: blog platform, Squarespace
by Jonathan Bailey on April 20th, 2011
If you don’t run a sex blog, don’t feature nudity on your site or generally don’t have anything that might be seen as offensive or risque, you might think the issue of adult content or content blocking doesn’t apply to you. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Simply put, the Web is a big place and the content that’s on it doesn’t get passed through any centralized ratings board like the MPAA or the ESRB (both of which have problems of their own). However, countless companies, groups, countries and even individuals have made attempts at trying to make sure that content is appropriate for whoever is visiting it and, unfortunately, they often make mistakes or, in worst case scenarios, abuse the process to silence speech they don’t like.
The issues of adult content, content rating, site filtering and so forth are ones that every blogger needs to be aware of and at least mindful of simply because the rules are so subjective and it is far too easy for innocent sites to get caught in the crossfire of a war against certain types of content.
Read More
Categories: General
Tags: adult content, banned, content raitin, filtering, firewall, pornography
by Jonathan Bailey on March 30th, 2011
It can be easy to forget that the Web is a truly international phenomenon and that people visit and view our sites from every continent and from all over the world.
While this is a truly amazing thing as it means that our message and our information can, quite literally, spread all across the globe in the blink of an eye, not everyone comes to your site with the same mindset and background. In fact, every person who approaches your site brings with them their cultural, personal, political and even religious background.
This means that, even if we completely ignore or overcome the language barriers that exist on the Web, no two people read the same piece of content the same way. Everything we read is colored by our background and the same holds true for each of the other 6 billion people on the planet.
This can create a very serious problem. What might be simply hilarious to you and your friends could be brazingly offensive to someone in another country. While this might be fine if you’re trying to be somewhat offensive with your humor, it can be disastrous if you’re trying to get information across or win people over to your viewpoint.
This alone makes cultural differences and important problem to be aware of and a pitfall that is critical to avoid.
Read More
Categories: General
Tags: blogging, culture, international, multiculturalism, offensive, respect, sensitivity, writing
by Jonathan Bailey on March 16th, 2011
Over the course of this column, I’ve talked a great deal about the various pitfalls bloggers may encounter over the course of running their sites. This has included everything from hosting disasters to libel lawsuits and more. Blogging can be a scary place and I’ve done more than almost anyone to point out the reasons to be afraid and worried.
However, Franklin D. Roosevelt perhaps said it best when, during his first inaugural address in 1932, he told a suffering nation, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. He was right.
Fear is a paralyzing force. It causes us to freeze or seek safety, it pushes us to avoid risks, shirk the spotlight and to take the much safer path. For a blogger, this can be a death blow. Blogging can be a risky activity but fear of those risks can often be greater than the risk itself. Fear prevents you from blogging, it prevents you from creating your best content and, most importantly, it prevents you from truly growing your site.
Learning to address and deal with fear, whether fear of success, fear of failure or something else entirely, is crucial for every blogger. Unfortunately though, this is one of those pitfalls that isn’t easily avoided, especially if you have a very fear-prone personality.
Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips, General
Tags: blogging, fear, legal, pitfalls, risks, Safety, terror
by James Dunaway on February 4th, 2011
Are any of your blog posts receiving any comments yet? If you are now writing your 57th 
blog post and you have yet to receive comments from your readers, you may have a big problem. Consider the following tips to help your blog posts gain or attract comments from readers.
Know and find your audience
Before knowing who actually leaves comments on your blog, find your niche, target audience, or target market first. This is the first door you should open when expecting comments. When you connect with blogs and people with the same passion as yours, the possibility of getting comments is higher.
Write with conviction and commitment
There’s a big difference between the posts of a passionate and a dull writer. There is no point in reading and commenting on a boring blog post. Put your heart into your writing and readers will be attracted to your posts. Read More
Categories: General
by Jonathan Bailey on February 2nd, 2011
As a blogger, for the vast majority of your readers, you are just a virtual presence, someone that they know solely through their words, videos and other media. It’s the nature of the Web that, unless you do a lot of touring and conferences, for most you’ll just be a name/face on the computer screen.
But while that’s just a part of being on the Web, it is something of a limitation we all face as well. People, for the most part, don’t form emotional bonds with people that they don’t talk to and don’t see in person. This is part of why many seem to care so little what happens to others they meet over the Web but, on the flip side, it means that people are very slow to trust others online.
But, as a blogger, trust is essential. If people don’t trust you, your site and your information, they aren’t going to become recurring visitors, they aren’t going to participate in your site and they won’t link to you or otherwise spread the word about what you are doing.
Without trust, your blog is almost nothing. But while earning trust online requires tons of hard work, dedication and consistency in producing high-quality content, losing it is simply a matter of making one fatal mistake.
One of the easiest ways to lose earned trust is to fail to properly disclose any freebies, gifts or relationships that may have influenced your opinion. Once people believe your views to have been tainted, it is almost impossible for you to regain that trust.
However, this is a pitfall that goes beyond the trust of your readers and, thanks to recent guidelines, also becomes a legal issue. Failing to disclose conflicts, especially repeatedly, could land you in hot water in the U.S. and do far more than ruin the hard work you’ve put into your blog.
Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips, General
Tags: Advertising, disclosure, ftc, marketing, paid reviews, Reviews
by Jonathan Bailey on January 26th, 2011
If you take a look at your traffic stats, you’ll likely find that a very large percentage, if not a vast majority, of your new traffic comes from Google.
While this can be a great thing as search traffic is some of the best that you can get in terms of targeting, it is also highly risky. The reason is that it makes all of us subject to the whims of Google, a company that our sites have no direct relationship with and is prone to being fickle with both its algorithms and its index.
Imagine, for a moment, if half of that traffic went away suddenly or, even worse, if it disappeared altogether. This is the reality many sites have faced, and it has proved disastrous for many sites, including established ones that suddenly find the lion’s share of their daily traffic to be gone.
Perhaps worst of all though is that it is a pitfall that can not be completely avoided. Considering that Google makes “over 400″ changes per year, it’s almost impossible to be sure your site won’t get eaten in one of them.
Still, there is plenty that you can and should do and most of them are actually quite simple. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips, General
Tags: blogging, crawler, google, index, pagerank, seo, webmasters
by Cassie Emelia on January 25th, 2011
Why You should Err on the Side of Being Too Formal when Making Contact
Dear Jodee,
When I’m responding to freelance writing job ads, I don’t always have a contact name for the client. How do I handle the salutation?
E-mail is a little different from sending a letter by regular mail. People tend to be a little less formal when communicating in this manner. While that may be acceptable when you are sending a note to a friend or a family member, you will want to be more formal when you are communicating with a potential client. Read More
Categories: General
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