I’ve gotten a few suggestions as a result of my call for good blogs. Keep ’em coming.

One of them was a link to Tyner Blain, a consulting firm that focuses on requirements management and other IT matters.

They have a post about the Juicy Studio Readability Test, which I tried the other day, leading to a bunch of big words in this post. I needed to get my Flesch Reading Ease score out of the Dick and Jane level and into the suggested 60 to 70 range.

I like the Tyner Blain blog the way I like Doc Searls‘ blog- I don’t understand a lot of it, but there’s good writing by smart people there. So I read and learn.

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new blogs

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes (the PC Doctor) wrote a story over at Problogger about how he doubled his blog traffic in 30 days.

Here’s how he did it with my commentary, then I’ll talk a little about my experiences:

1) He tagged his posts with Technorati tags.

I do that as well, and have for some time. Technorati is a great way to find both articles you want to read as well as people to read your articles. Around 8% of the traffic to Newsome.Org comes from Technorati. More almost certainly comes indirectly via links from other blogs who found Newsome.Org via Technorati.

Still I wonder how many non-bloggers use Technorati to find content? I hope a lot, but I bet a lot of Technorati users have blogs of their own. I hope over time non-bloggers will use it more and more as a springboard for blog content.

2) He leveraged his existing website by linking to his blog.

I do this a little, but my biggest website, ACCBoards.Com, is a sports site, and I don’t post much about sports here (because this is a tech/music, etc. site AND because my network agreement with Scout.Com says I can’t). So even though I have access to a ton of readers via ACCBoards.Com, it’s a little harder to leverage off of that site because of the content differences. One thing I am considering doing in 2006 is adding a reference to my blog in my speakers bio, so people will hear about it when I’m introduced at conventions, speeches, etc. But again, the content is not a perfect match and the crossover will be limited by that fact.

3) He used trackbacks.

I use trackbacks some, but honestly not that much. Most people I link to find out anyway via Technorati or otherwise and some link back to me. I may reconsider trackbacks in 2006 and start using them more. I would love to hear thoughts, pro and con, about trackbacks via comments (see below for the comments link).

My experience building (and continuing to build) this blog has been both rewarding and a little frustrating. While my traffic and subscriber count have grown slowly but steadily, it’s hard to keep up the momentum (boy is it hard). Too often blog growth feels like farming rocky ground. You plant the content and wait for the traffic to grow. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it seems like an uphill battle. Like farming, increasing blog traffic depends on a lot of variables you can’t control.

And the most important variable? Inbound links from other blogs and websites. I am certain about this.

To grow a blog you simply have to find a way to attract inbound links. You need a “content web” that leads readers from one site to another as they follow a conversation. Ideally, you want these readers to join in the conversation via comments and trackbacks. But it all starts with links.

Attracting inbound links is hard, though.

I still don’t feel comfortable asking someone for a link. For better or worse this is a fact, even though I enjoy it when I get an email fishing for one (and most of the time give one). I asked for links in my Christmas List (and got some- thanks all), but even writing that list felt a little uncomfortable. A lot of the experts say it’s OK to ask for a link as long as you do it the right way, but it just feels odd to me.

I’d rather just write good posts and wait for the links to grow naturally. But that takes time and it’s easy to get discouraged. Maybe I’m selling myself and all the effort I expend here short by taking this approach. Who knows?

I guess what I’m saying is that if you want to build your traffic organically, you have to work hard and be very, very patient. I’m trying, but it’s hard.

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blogging

Duncan Riley over at the Blog Herald has listed his Top 10 Most Interesting People in the Blogosphere for 2005.

It’s a good list and it’s hard to come up with the Top 10 in anything. In no particular order, here are some of the people I found the most interesting in 2005. The ones in italics are on his list as well.

Robert Gale: I find A Welsh View to be a compelling, every day read.

 Jason Calacanis: I like the way he speaks his mind with little reservation. It will be interesting to see if he will continue to do this now that he’s with AOL.

Robert Scoble: A lot of what I have learned about blogs and RSS came either from his page or from links on his page. The place to start to learn the who, what, why and how of blogs.

David Sifry: I say it over and over- Technorati is the backbone of the blogosphere. Someone is going to pay a lot of coupon for Technorati in 2006. Imagine the blogosphere without Technorati and you imagine a colder, darker, disconnected place.

Gabe Rivera: Memeorandum is generally the first place I read every morning. The New York Times of the blogosphere.

Improbulus: A Consuming Experience has the best blogging tutorials I have ever seen. Much of what I have implemented here was learned there.

Duncan Riley: He can’t put himself on his list, but he’s an easy inclusion on mine. The Blog Herald has been a daily read of mine for a long time. Along with A Welsh View, it’s one of the few blogs that can always be counted on for new and interesting topics.

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2005, top 10

Thanks to the wonder of the blogosphere and the kindness of my fellow bloggers, I have already received 4 of the 10 things on my blog-related Christmas list (thanks Fred, JK, Flickr commenters and Memeorandum). Thomas Hawk is a sure bet to take more great photos, so we’ll count me at 50%.

My numbering is hopeless (I actually had to go back and ADD a number 4 because I skipped it (again)).

Kevin, J.P. and Dwight are still out shopping.

So tonight I want to focus on number 10- more good blogs to read. If you write or know of a good, regularly updated blog that would fit in on my blogroll, drop me an email. I’ll take a look and if I add it to my blogroll I’ll post a note about it here.

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blogs

Qumana is hosting a Best of Blogs Award. The idea behind these awards is to recognize some lesser known blogs that don’t get the sort of publicity the most popular blogs receive.

I think this is a great idea and I plan to nominate a blog or two.

While I’d never solicit a nomination (well, I always say never say never), the entry form for the best overall blog is here and the one for the best daddy blog is here. Just in case anyone has any blogs they’d like to nominate 🙂

Whether you deem my blog worthy or not, consider nominating someone in one or more of the categories (there are a lot of categories to choose from). There are a lot of people writing away who would love the approbation and exposure.

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blogs

The last couple of days have been watershed days for Newsome.Org. We got a link from Scoble yesterday and then tonight we made our first appearance on Memeorandum. While that may be business as usual for veteran and highly read bloggers, it’s a happy event indeed for a relatively new blog like mine.

More importantly, it demonstrates that in the blogosphere if you keep on doing your thing, you can and will get noticed. You don’t even have to do anything outrageous or stupid. Just have something to say, read and consider some of the blogging suggestions that blog experts write, try to be as interesting and helpful as possible and, most importantly, be patient.

Having made a preliminary pass through Scoble’s feeds as part of my Scoblefeeds A-Z project, one of my initial impressions is that there is still a lot of room at the blogging table- much more room that I thought when I started blogging here. The road is open and traffic is moving. If you like to write, it’s a good time to start a blog.

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blogging

I posted the other day about a couple of sites that seemed to be ripping off other sites. I also talked about some of the experiences I had when developing ACCBoards.Com and the other commercial web sites I created. Here’s the so-called final update on those stories and some of my thoughts about winning the blog wars.

In the prior post I said that I was looking forward to the war of words between Jason Calacanis and the guy Jason says ripped off the look and feel of Weblogs, Inc. There were some words exchanged but not the shootout at the not-OK Corral that I was expecting. Today, Jason posted a “final update” on his blog. He has nothing good to say about the other guys, so I suspect this story isn’t over.

The other story I mentioned, involving JKOnTheRun and a site he was formerly associated with, seems to have been resolved satisfactorily. JK emailed me that the other site changed their slogan shortly after he posted the story. There was some heated discussion in the comments to JK’s original post, but as best I can tell, the only argumentative comments were from someone who seems to be going out of her way to take shots at JK. One thing I learned from developing message board sites is that there is always (and I mean always) someone who sees it the other way. That makes for a lot of carping, but it also creates the back and forth that message board sites and blogs need to thrive.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the “borrowing” of ideas and design from blogs is going to be a continuing problem as the blogosphere expands and matures. I don’t know what the answer is, but I suspect we will be better off policing ourselves that letting the lawmakers and lawyers do it for us. Here’s why.

The blog situation will probably follow the same pattern as the message boards did 5-6 years ago. After I founded and developed ACCBoards.Com into the most popular ACC sports site on the net, lots of people tried to copy the idea. At least one group rippped off the entire look and feel. It pissed me off greatly at the time. But because I had the traffic and, at that time, a partnership with JP Sports (who televised most of the ACC football games) and Raycom Sports (who did the basketball games), those copycat sites didn’t appreciably impact our business. But imagine if I had been a little slower to line up the deals- imagine if I was still in the early growing stages of ACCBoards.Com when someone ripped off the concept and design. Then I might have been royally screwed.

And here’s the problem. There’s just not that much to be done about it. There is a very low barrier to entry for web sites, message boards and blogs. It is cheap (sometime as cheap as free) and relatively easy to create a web site or blog. It’s even easier when you begin with the idea of replicating a concept. If your name is relatively unique, you can often stop someone from using your name (assuming you have perfected the intellectual property rights to that name via prior use and/or appropriate trademark and other similar filings, which most people have not done). You can probably keep someone from completely recreating your site (though they can come pretty close if they are careful- think generic soda, etc). But after spending thousands (at least) in legal fees, all you’ve accomplished is to force them make minor revisions to their web site which remains, in all substantive ways, a copy of yours.

So what do you do?

1) Get there first. Once the need has been filled, it takes an evolutionary advance to get people to move. Flickr is one example of such an advance (at the expense of Shutterfly, etc.), but those are few and far between. It’s much easier just to be first.

2) Market and market well so (like JK and the phrase, OnTheRun) people associate a phrase with your site and you. I didn’t realize this at the time, but the fact that people associate me with ACCBoards.Com and, accordingly, with sports web sites was very helpful to me in protecting ACCBoards.Com and launching other sites.

3) Make the deals with other vertical sites that embed you as the leader in the area (my JP Sports and Raycom deals created a barrier to traffic growth that otherwise would not have existed).

It’s hard and expensive to win by lawyer. It’s cheaper and better to win by planning and execution.

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blogging