Fred On Something'sComments

Defining what makes a blog different (a.k.a. my conversation with a real, live business owner)

After reading Peter’s posts today “The difference between a web site and a blog” and his subsequent correction, “I goofed,” I feel compelled to riff a bit and share a story about a face-to-face interview I had with a local attorney and business owner on the same subject: “What makes a blog different?”

For some time now I’ve felt that even those positioning themselves as blog consultants/experts are still feeling their way around figuring all this stuff out. How to define it, how to measure it, how to sell it.

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It is hard to define something personal. I mean, everybody know that a good alimentation(can I say that in English? I do not find the good term ) and exercise make you feel much more better. However, how would you explain it? It is really, really hard. The only way is to experiment it, change your alimentation habits and start doing sport every 3 days, then you will know what i mean.

It is the same for blogging. Blogging is personal, it’s a way to express you and get feedback from other peoples. You can’t fully know what it will bring to you until you start it and that you discover the way you will blog.

Psyching yourself out

Interesting article on ways to jumpstart your brain into action by changing something physical.
By mimicking the sympathetic reactions to a threatening environment (sitting up straight, standing, moving quickly, deeper breathing), it appears to be possible to activate the sympathetic system, which then takes over. We are ready to act, or in our case, be productive. We can also change our environment to one that causes the sympathetic system to activate, one that is more spartan, threatening, or simply uncomfortable. The result? We take action. We are more productive.
This doesnt surprise me a bit, and if its all true, it might confirm my hunch that sitting still and staring at a screen all day is a recipe for lethargy, lame thinking, and productivity inertia.
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However, I think that it is much more easy to say than to do; unfortunately. The problem in my case, tell me if I am the only one in this situation, is that you know that your time is precious and need to be productive. You also know that changing your environment would help you but you also know that it take times to change your environment, and you think that you do not have that time. So, this is hard to tell you: “He! you need to spend 30 ou 45 minutes of your previous time to go to that cofee shop, you will be much more productive this way!”. No… it is not easy

Longterm Traffic Building Tips For New Blogs

Many new bloggers, especially the professional or business kind, find it difficult, and ultimately a bit frustrating, getting people to come read their blog, especially via search engines like google.
Ive been asked many times if I know why a site doesnt show up in Google results after a reasonable about out time and what can be done to help move things along. Now, Im not 100% sure of all the details, I mean, Google is in large part a mystery even to someone like me who thinks he knows quite a bit about how it all works, but I do think it takes time to build worthwhile traffic and the best way to do it is to keep at it.

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I think that the whole process start by creating relationship with other bloggers. Then, when other bloggers will read your posts, they will leave comments and ultimately link back to your good posts. Only then you will build your reader auditorium(can I said that in English? ).
How? I think that the first step his by doing what Im doing right now: by commenting other posts. Not only by commenting with posts like: Good Work!…. It was a good reading… etc. No. Try to bring something new to the discussion, ask questions to the author, etc. You also can leave email messages to the author to thank him for his work, etc. Its always appreciated.

Being open or not, that is the question

I keep being surprised at how such a large fraction of people around me want to hoard knowledge as if it was food. It is wrong on many levels. Your knowledge is more valuable when you share it. We are not competing for knowledge because knowledge is not scarce. In global economy, if you don’t share your knowledge, someone else will, you will simply be put out of the loop. You have to think yourself as an information node. Information nodes where data comes in but not out are broken and of little value.

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Well said Daniel. What make profesionals (when I say profesionnal, I am talking about someone that work and learn about his domains for decades) worth his pay is not his “secret” knowledge of the domain, no, it’s the commun knowledge he have of it, and the intepretation he do of it.