The Cluetrain Manifesto

The Cluetrain Manifesto was written ten years ago by four great Webcelebs; Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. It’s targeted at businesses that want to understand their customers better, and turns your understanding of marketing and communications on its head.

From Chapter 1: Internet Apocalypso

The question is whether, as a company, you can afford to have more than an advertising-jingle persona. Can you put yourself out there: say what you think in your own voice, present who you really are, show what you really care about? Do you have any genuine passion to share? Can you deal with such honesty? Such exposure? Human beings are often magnificent in this regard, while companies, frankly, tend to suck. For most large corporations, even considering these questions - and they’re being forced to do so by both Internet and intranet - is about as exciting as the offer of an experimental brain transplant.

Blogged Directory

Launched in February 2008, Blogged is a clean, fresh looking, human edited blog directory.

Once you submit your blog (free), the editors check it out, and if it passes muster, they include it. When I submitted BlogWell, it was reviewed within 24 hours.

From their about page:

Our blogs are reviewed, rated, and categorized by our editors, so you won’t have to experience the frustration of filtering through blogs that are either spam, outdated, or irrelevant.

52 easy ways to optimize your blog while on your coffee break

Jennifer has put together a brilliant list that describes how to optimize your blog, and each tip takes no longer than 15 minutes (your coffee break) to implement.

Do yourself a favor and bookmark this post.

Add your blog to your email signature
Yes, many of us are lazy and don’t add a signature to our emails, whether it is because we send out emails that are totally not related to the blog, or just one of those things that has been on the to do list forever. Add a blog and a short tag line to intrigue people to visit. You never know, your daughter’s softball coach might actually be a fan of whatever you blog about and your signature just got you a new reader.

Do you know what people are saying about your company, your product, you, online?

With the power of today’s Internet, and the huge growth in user generated content, your brand can turn up in all nooks and crannies of the Web (forums, social networking sites, blogs, etc.).

When the comments are favorable, all is good. But, what about those irate customers, disenchanted employees, and competitors, who, with a few quick and nasty words, can cause serious problems for your online reputation?

While your first reaction to bad press might be to get angry and send off an e-mail, don’t do it until you’ve calmed down. Emotive letters sometimes end up on the Web too, and this will only fuel the fire.

The best defense is a good offence. Monitor your online reputation, incorporate a few SEO tweaks, and consider beginning a company blog if you don’t have one already.

Monitor your brand

Google Alerts makes it easy for you to stay up to date with what is being said about you online by sending you an e-mail every time your designated keywords appear in Google product.

Set alerts for your name, your company name, your product name; anything that you want to keep track of, then tell Google how often you want an e-mail. Simple.

Although Yahoo and Microsoft have alerts, the alerts are for what they think you should read (CNN, Fox Sports, Stocks, etc.) rather than what you want to read. The best way to see if you are turning up in their results is to type your keywords into the search engines themselves.

If you are tracking this way, the other useful place to check (assuming people are tagging your keywords) is Technorati; currently tracking 112.8 million blogs.

Is your site indexed by search engines?

I’ve talked about what the Googlebot sees when it visits your site in an earlier post, but before it can see your site, you first need to ensure that your site has been indexed. If it hasn’t been indexed, find out why and fix it. This is important because when people search for your brand, you need to be found easily. If you have created a reputable online presence, anyone writing negative remarks about your brand turns up below you in search results – rather than above you.

To find out if Google is indexing your site, go to Site Status

To find out if Yahoo is indexing your site go to Site Explorer

To find out if Live is indexing your site, go to Live type “site:your URL” (e.g. site:blog-well.com )and click search.

To find out if Ask has visited your site, check your server logs. Specifically, you should be looking for the following user-agent string: User-Agent: Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; Ask Jeeves/Teoma)

If you are not being indexed by the search engines, the best thing to do is create a sitemap and get links to your site.

How does your site fare in different search products?

Search engines offer users the ability to search through various products such as images, video, blogs, books, news, etc. While most companies are too busy to worry about including their brand in the various product categories, some are realizing the importance of turning up under their keywords/phrases, especially since Google’s Universal Search was launched.

Go ahead, try it out. Go to Google Images and type in your company name and see what happens. Then try search for it under blogs, video, news and books. If your brand is turning up, but is not associated with you, it’s time to put your thinking cap on and come up with ideas on how to get noticed under these products.

Additionally, if you are on the receiving end of negative publicity, you can use these search products to push down some of the bad results by adding and optimizing your own images, video, blogs etc, ensuring your content appears above the bad press.

How to optimize your images from Dosh Dosh

How to optimize your blog from ProBlogger

How to optimize your video information from Google

With news and books however, it’s a little different. For you to turn up under news, you need to be mentioned in the mainstream media; to turn up under books you need to have authored one. Both of these products should not negatively impact your brand; however, they are a great way to promote your brand online. So, if you’ve done something newsworthy, write a press release, if you’ve written a book, let Google Books know about it.

The importance of blogs for business

Blogging is a low cost tool that can pay off in a big way if you do it right. You can use it to promote your company, foster loyalty, get feedback, develop a community, and directly promote your product/service. While most small companies are still hesitant to blog, others are realizing its massive potential.

The other nice thing about blogs is that search engines love them. Because the content is updated more often than on a standard Web site (and search engines love frequently updated content), each post has the potential to appear in search results. This means if someone is attacking your credibility online, you have the ability to quickly push the results down.

Although technology has now given even the most non techie person the opportunity to run their own site, don’t do it just for the sake of getting into search results. Your posts need to be thought out and useful to your customers, and you need to love the subject if you’re going to be writing about it regularly - which - if you want your blog to be successful, you’ll need to do.

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Commenting on a blog is easy. If you comment well, you could attract a new reader to your blog; if you make a mess of it, you could be labeled spam.

So it’s no surprise new bloggers avoid commenting. They don’t want to get it wrong or feel they have nothing to add, and when they search the Web for information on commenting, they find little. Here are some basic comment rules; now, go forth and comment!

Read more »

One year ago, when I first arrived in Silicon Valley from the Land Down Under, one of the most significant differences I noticed, when it comes to technology, is the size of the blogosphere.

Utilized by businesses and individuals in the States, blogging is still in its infancy in Australia.

Ironic really, given one of the pioneers of the phenomenon is fellow Australian Darren Rowse, founder of ProBlogger, one of the best reference sites on the Web for bloggers, and a blogger himself since 2002.

Six lessons learned from six months of play:

1. Find a blogging tool that you like, that gives you most of what you need. They all have their quirks, you just need to decide which you can live with, and those you can’t. Don’t listen to anyone else, you are unique; work it out yourself. This acquainting process took me six months, you may be quicker. Don’t be scared of starting five blogs while you learn, you can always delete them later on

2. While you are playing with the various blogging tools, read. Read voraciously. Find blogs you like and check them daily. See what inspires you, what annoys you, and what is out there. It helps you find your niche; what you will ultimately be writing about. Me, I love information, writing, and the Internet, and this leads us to:

3. Write about something you are passionate about. You absolutely have to love the subject and want to suck up as much information about it as you can. You have to know the subject inside out; if you don’t, your blog will bomb. In which case, what was the point of it in the first place?

4. Make the time. To understand the blogosphere, to outline the plan, to reacquaint yourself with basic grammar, and to write; then work out how many hours you can, or want, to dedicate to it daily. Then think Nike: Just do it.

5. Learn the terminology. The blogosphere is full of portmanteau words and you’ll do your head in if you can’t work them out. If you plan to make money blogging, you really need to know what options are available to you. Speaking of money:

6. Don’t think: “Cool, I’ll start a blog, and the cash will flow in.” Doesn’t work. Sure, there are ways you can make money blogging; join link exchange sites, plaster your blog with ads, or join groups/sites that offer a couple of bucks a post. You’ll fail; here’s why:

Search engines don’t like link farms. If search engines don’t like you they ban you. If they ban you, you won’t be found. If you can’t be found, what exactly is the point of blogging? I’m sure you are not the only form of entertainment for Aunt Gertrude.

Readers don’t trust sites full of ads, especially the in-your-face, flashing, noisy, epileptic fit inducing advertisements. They drive your readers away and get them thinking about malware, “Hmm - is this one of those drive-by sites that puts something awful on my computer?” If they are thinking that, they don’t come back, and they warn others to stay away. So, if you’ve lost your readers, who will click on those revenue building advertisements?

A buck or two a story - cool. How many stories do you think you can knock out an hour? Let’s call it miwacrapping; the collision of minimum wage and crappy writing. Even at five bucks an hour, with my time constraints, I could—at best—be miwacrapping to the tune of $75 a week. In this instance, the readers don’t get the chance to go away; you go away.

So how exactly do you make money online?

• Write about something you love; it will help you remain committed.
• Find your niche; narrow your subject matter down and write to a specific audience.
• Do your research; readers want information – supply it!
• Write compelling content; readers (and search engines) will love you and keep checking back.
• Write well; bad grammar is often associated with bad information. Don’t do it.
• Update frequently; give people a reason to keep coming back (and search engines).
• Don’t whine and opine: until you are seen as a leader in your field, keep it to a minimum.
• Build a community; respond to comments and comment on like minded blogs. Ignore idiots
• Link well; Link only to relevant blogs and dare I say it…advertisements.
• Market thyself; once you have the basics down, promote, promote, promote.

If you are intersted:

18 Lessons I’ve leant about Blogging:
Darren Rowse, ProBloger

The First 100 Days: Observations of a Nouveau Blogger
Guy Kawasaki, Marketing Evangelist