More blogging links to note

Scott Allen, How to Network with your blog,pt.2 and How to become an A -list blogger
tecosystems: Getting into Blogs 101

Moreblogging links to note

Scott Allen, How to Network with your blog,pt.2 and How to become an A -list blogger
tecosystems: Getting into Blogs 101

Blogging basics

Simply Life - Blogging Basics

Weblog: Simply Life

Source: Blogging Basics

Link: http://blog.jtam.org/2005/02/blogging-basics/

Where to list your blog-click on the link

• Yahoo
• DMOZ (Open Directory)
• Syndic8 directory
• Newsisfree
• Guardian (UK) weblog guide (handpicked)
• Technorati ping
• Daypop submit your site
• Add to Feedster
• Add to Blogdex
• Blogstreet index
• Rss2 directory
• Truth Laid Bear (good one)
• Add to PubSub
• Eatonweb directory form
• Add to Blogdigger
• Pingomatic (good one)

Lockergnome:

• How To Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated
  http://tinyurl.com/3cbuo
• How To Syndicate Web Site News Through RSS Feeds Technology
  http://tinyurl.com/4nzat
• Resources on Syndicating Your RSS Feed
  http://tinyurl.com/cd41
• RSS News Feed Creation & Syndication- Part 2
  http://tinyurl.com/cd49

Jeff Risley's to do list for starting a blog

Nice list...especially if you're into business or tech blogging. Some highlights:

• Read the Cluetrain Manifesto.
• Read Debbie Weil’s Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging.
• Subscribe to Bloglines
• Post a comment on at least one blog each week.
• Determine if you have the time to maintain a blog.
• Decide what you want the focus of your blog to be.

And so on...

Amy's list of good travel blogs

From Amy Langfield, NY Notebook, NewYorkology and a writer. Amy sez:
Hotel Chatter – newish kind of site about hotels all over the world. A fun read even if you never intend to go.
Fodor’s travel blog - of course I like this one; they’ve got me on their short-list of New York links. They’re all over the map, and update intermittently.
WandaLust – travel blog out of England covering a bit of everything.
Gadling – adventure travel blog, international, updated all the freakin’ time.
Jet Set Lara – woman who says she’s a high-class call girl, profiles her locations and expensive boy toys (car, yachts, etc.)
Online Travel Review – quickie daily updates on the airline industry with a business bent
NYC a Paris – My friend Jason Stone, who moved to Paris from New York last year, is keeping a great blog about his travels in Paris and through France. Not specifically a travel blog, but he does a lot of stuff on trying to learn the language and how to get around when not knowing your way around. Turns out he’s a pretty great writer.
Delicious travel tags – Not a blog, but rather a link to travel stories and sites flagged by people who use the del.icio.us social bookmarking software.
Jen Leo’s Written Road Blog - a travel writer and editor talks about the business of travel writing, but with some good links to travel writing.
Bangalore Torpedo – This is another friend of mine, Jonathan Oatis, whose company has sent him off to live in Bangalore for a year or so. He only just arrived, but he’s already got his first impressions posted, including about the cows in front of his condo and how to give directions to your auto-rickshaw driver when you don’t quite know where you’re going.

How to build a better blog

Brian Bailey's tips:

1. Use categories.
   
2. Use titles.
   
3. Publish during high traffic times.
   
4. Syndicate your entire post.
5. Click your own links.
   
6. Develop an authentic voice.
   
7. Tell us who you are and how to contact you.
   
8. Don't be afraid to promote.
   
9. Comment on other sites and your own.
   
10. The more you write, the more you'll have to write about.
    
11. Content brings Google.
    

(Via Desparoz, who has more comments)

MediaDrop: List of newspapers with RSS

This is not really a BlogCoach item, I know, BUT, it's a great list(160 sites) and I need to put it somewhere easy to find.
And if you are blogging and you don't know what RSS is, plan to remedy that--and soon.

Where to buy images

List of Stock Photography Agencies from The Design Weblog

(Via Travis Smith)

Tips: Listing your blog to get page views/visitors

Robin Good's got a list of 100 places to submit your site, ranked, I hope, from first to last.
Additional tips on coding optimization here.
Update: More on this from blogger Amy Campbell.

WebProNews: Googlejuice and blogging

If An RSS Feed Is The Yahoo Backdoor, Is A Blog Google’s?
"Let's look at the facts, and see how blogs align themselves more closely with one of Google's purposes as a search engine. Here's what you need to keep in mind:

1- if you get your site's link in the path of the search engine spider or robot of your choice, in this case Googlebot, if may follow it.

2- the way to get it to follow the link is to make sure it can "see" your link

3- if your content fills a need that the search engine's database of links has, it will include your link, and,

4- if your link fills a deficit better than any other site, in accordance with Google's secret formula or algorithm, it will rank your page well."
(complete article at WebProNews)

Does tnis work? Dunno yet.

Tips: Writing for the living web

Mark Bernstein has a good post(2002) on alistapart on writing for the living web--this is still an inspiring and useful read.
Summary version (read the whole post--it's waay better):

• Write for a reason: "Whether your daily updates concern your work life, your hobbies, or your innermost feelings, write passionately about things that matter."
• Write often: " You need not write constantly, and you need not write long, but you must write often."
• Write tight: "Omit unneccessary words."
• Make good friends: "..in your web writing take special care to acknowledge the good work and good ideas of other writers. "
• Find good enemies: "The best enemy, in fact, is often a friend, a writer you cite frequently and who often cites you, but with whom you disagree on a specific questions."
• Let the story unfold: "Understand the storyteller?s art and use the technique of narrative to shape the emerging structure of your living site."
• Stand up, speak out: "Try, if you can, to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain and humiliation on those who have the misfortune to be mistaken."
• Be sexy: "The more of yourself you put into your writing, the more human and engaging your work will be."
• Use your archives: "Always provide a permanent location (a ?permalink?) where each item can be found."
• Relax: "Don't worry about the size of your audience. If you write with energy and wit about things that matter, your audience will find you."

All still true now.

Scoble on Corporate blogging

Robert Scoble, Microsoft blogger extraordinaire, has some useful comments on corporate blogging: "...what's the challenge for Microsoft and Sun over the next year? Ship great products. Over and over and over. Hints on how to do that are here on the blogs. This is where blogs will really prove their worth. I'm already seeing it. Teams are now planning on how they'll take feedback on their blogs to improve their products quickly. I interviewed a team who'll announce a product later this week. They already have a plan so that users can talk back and tell them what needs to be improved. And they have a plan for how they'll take that feedback and put it into action. (snip) ...That's really where blogs will turn into a competitive weapon over the next 18 months. It's the companies (and groups) who can react to customers that'll really succeed (and be profitable.)" Scoble is dead right--one of the effective reasons for corporate blogs is to cut the distance between the company and your customers. Oh and a parting Scoble shot: "The way to learn how to blog is to read 50 blogs in your field for at least two weeks. If that doesn't incite you to blog, nothing will."

Blogging: Tips on getting more traffic

Getting noticed: How to increase your blog’s readership, via Wolves. (Via McKinnon)

Blogs for activist and nonprofit groups

Rebecca McKinnon's started a volunteer site to match bloggers and groups-she also has a very useful handout on why to blog--PDF here.
An excerpt:
ELEMENTS OF A GOOD BLOG:
--Message: You must know what message or messages you want to
communicate and why.
--A clear goal: Know what you want to accomplish with your blog. It may
evolve over time to accomplish things you hadn’t expected, but without
a clear focus at the beginning you won’t develop traffic because people
who visit the site will see it has no focus.
--An audience: This may just be your funders, your members, or the people
in your immediate community – or it may be a global community of
people who share concern for your issue. But you need to have some
idea who you are speaking to. (If your blog is public you’ll gain audience
from unexpected places, but you must at least start out knowing that you
have something to communicate to SOMEBODY who is interested in
hearing about it.)
--Commitment: You need at least one person in your organization who is
committed to updating the blog regularly with clear, interesting writing
and useful links. The material may be pre-existing, it may or may not be a
full-time job, but the blog will not succeed with out somebody’s
committed efforts.
More here.

How blogs help build a reputation

Steve Rubel cites Kevin O'Keefe on how blogs can enhance one's reputation as a trusted and reliable source of information in as little as 3 to 6 months. O'Keffe writes "Within a month I had lawyers from all over the country calling me on Internet marketing issues and asking how to publish a blog and if I could help them. That’s lightening speed for getting my name out."
Of course, the more bloggers there are, the greater the impact of any one voice may be diminished.

Fashion and style blogs

There are alot of them...some personal favorites--ie I read them regularly...
Styleborg
Cool Hunting
StyleMaven
Manolo Shoes (the funniest!)
Fashionwire Daily
Also, less regularly
SheFinds

Movie and TV blogs

TV Barn
Lost Remote
Cable Newser
Rotten Tomatoes
DVD Verdict
Film Fodder
Milk Plus
Rick McGinnis' movie blog

What would you add?

Celebrity-focused blogs to check out

Blogs about celebs (as opposed to by celebs)
Gawker, of course
Stereogum
The Superficial
Jossip
Lowculture

What favorites can you add?

What is a newsreader and how do I get one?

First question to come in: How do I read our feeds? AKA What is a newsreader (a tool for reading feeds) and how do I get one?
I'll post some answers to this later today...if you have related questions, email me. Might as well wrap it all up.

Tips: Writing a business blog

A (new to me) consulting company has posted a free guide to writing a business weblog. As Steve Rubel writes, "The guide covers choosing your voice and being consistent with it, understanding your audience before you begin and as you go, the type of posts will best suit your company, making things easy to read, the importance of humor and the necessity of honesty."

Businessweek: Blogs and RSS aggregators

This Businessweek story lays out why RSS matters to media companies: "While Web sites have long sent promotions and news alerts to their visitors, RSS takes things to a whole new level by giving consumers much more control over what they see and how often they see it. "We believe the world is moving from mass media to 'my media,"' says Daniel L. Rosensweig, chief operating officer at Yahoo Inc., which last month began testing feeds to the 20 million subscribers of its My Yahoo service."

How to find things in the blogosphere

feedster.com: search engine that searches blogs and RSS feeds via XML.
Great to use to search for key words and phrases.
Example: CosmoGirl+ Xanga (Xanga is a popular teen blogging site)--see results here
See blog links mentioning cosmogirl alone here.

technorati: search engine that searches blogs and rss feeds. Good to use to see which blogs are linking to a specific blog, story, post or article.
Example: http://susanmernit.blogspot.com See results of link cosmos here
See shopetc.com links here.

pubsub: another search tool to check out.

Monitoring blogs makes for great market intelligence--and you can arrange to get updates via email.

What makes a blog good? Jason Calcanis sez

Former trade magazine publisher Jason Calcanis is now deep in the blog publishing business. Recently, he shared some great points about what made commercial-grade blogs successful.
According to Jason the selling points of a blog are speed, scoops, stance and sustainability/stability.
Jason also says experience and contacts matter--"Wisdom and experience mean you can blog more frequently and with more speed, stance and scoops then a younger blogger. The irony, of course, is that the older you are the less tech-inclined you might be. The upshot is that people like Peter Rojas, Jen Chung, Elizabeth Spiers and Choire Sicha will have sick talent when they hit 40 — bloggers get better with age."

Blogs: How often should you update?

The right answer is often--daily, if possible, and consistently, so your readers always get a pay off.

LA blogger Sean Bonner talks about the importance of updates on his blog: "If a blog isn't being updated, people loose interest. So while quality of the posts is important, quantity is more so. But that leads us to asking how often should a good blog be updated? Nothing less than daily for sure, and 3 posts at once in a day is not as good a one post in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one at night. I think the trick is that people want something new when they go to the site. "

What makes a good blog? Glenn Reynolds sez

Glenn Reynolds, A-list blogger, on what makes a good blog:
"...There are some things that - in my opinion - make good blogs good. And the most important of those things are (1) a personal voice; and (2) rapid response times. By this token, some blogs aren't really full-fledged blogs: my MSNBC "weblog," GlennReynolds.com, has a personal voice, but since MSNBC's antiquated publishing platform means that I have to email my entries in and then wait hours until they appear on the site, it doesn't offer the kind of rapid response - and on-the-fly editing and revision - that more typical weblogs, powered by things like Movable Type, Blogger, or Radio, offer. On my InstaPundit weblog, which is powered by Movable Type, I can post something, think better of it moments later, and change it, or add an update in response to a reader email that comes in sixty seconds after it's posted. I can't do that at GlennReynolds.com. So although MSNBC calls it a weblog, and it sort of is one, I think that's a real lack.
(snip_
..The key to good blogging is simple: have something interesting to say, and say it well. Kind of like, well, every other sort of writing - just faster, and with links. There's nothing new about that, but it's still a kind of magic, as good writing always is.

Classifying blog types

A post from Susan Mernit's blog, October, 2003:
One of the things I have been thinking about after spending 75 hours in Boston at BloggerCon with 250 or so fellow bloggers, are that we need to recognize that there are distinct categories of bloggers emerging who behave differently and want different things.
Based on input and observation at Bloggercon and a read of the Perseus data, here is my first pass at a classification at types of blog authors (as opposed to readers) for discussion by anyone who cares to respond--
Some blogger segments emerging--
1) The professional journalist. Dan Gillmor and Daniel Weintraub are great examples. So is Nicholas Kristoff. These bloggers are affiliated with a journalist/media entity and their blog is part of a larger initiative from the company.
2) The nontraditional journalist. Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Josh Marshall, and many of the Top 50 most read individual bloggers are acting as de facto journalists. Some of these folks are journalists, some want nothing more than to be accepted as journalists, some don't care either way.
3) Bloggers focused on a specific theme, movement, event, topic or interest---This blog is about my candidate, my weight loss program, my sexual adventures, the books I read, my technology toys, etc. As Mary Hodder points out, topic blogs fit here. Politics and cooking are both HUGE segments.
4) The Education community--K-12 and University both see huge potential for blogging, though the adaptation numbers are small. This is a fast-growing and highly motivated segment.
5) The self-expression/journaling crowd: Blogs offer anyone who wants to--and teens and college students often want to the most--an opportunity to share their experiences and feelings with the universe at large, not to mention their friends. This category can also encompass daily bloggers, even an Ev Williams, as per his description.
6) The business/marketing/promotion community: Another emerging category are the businesses, particular analysts, consultants, and marketers, using blogging to advertise their wares and brand their products, Marketingwonk, JupiterResearch come to mind immediately.
7) Business blogs behind the firewall: It's more talk than action right now, but companies like Traction Software are busy selling blogtools to clients to use as part of a knowledge management program. We don't see those blogs, but this is where much of the revenue is at this early stage.
8) The experimenters & innovators--There's a small but critical segment for whom blogging is about pushing the envelope. Mobblogging, audioblogging, photoblogging, blog search are examples of new ideas powered by technologies that have been developed and enhanced by a small group of innovators and experiments who love to push the limits of the possible.

November 2004: Wow, have things changed!
These classifications still hold, but I'd add:
9) Blog as trade publishing platform--See PaidContent or the new MediaBistro for examples.
10) Blog as mainstream consumer media publication: Gawker, Engadget, Cool Hunting fit that bill.
11) Trasherati--Blogs as gossip columns: This is a subset of 10, but a really juicy one--see Stereogum, Jossip, and lowculture for examples of the genre done well.
12) Blogs as buying guides. Expect more of this--early adopters are Cool Hunting, StyleMaven,
Cool Tools.
13) Blogs as journals and emotional outlets. Who knew online journaling would get so big? Examples include XXX and XX and XXX.

Blogging is...

Blogging is...
#1 A form of unedited, authentic self-expression
#2 An instant publishing tool
#3 An online journal with freshly updated content
#4 Amateur journalism
#5 Something that will revolutionize the Web (think RSS feeds)
#6 A way to create community with your voters, er... readers (think 2,200 comments posted to the Dean for America blog in one day)
#7 An alternative to mainstream media (think InstaPundit by Glenn Reynolds and TalkingPointsMemo by Joshua Micah Marshall
#8 A tool to teach students how to write (think Kaye Trammel at the University of Florida)
#9 A new way to communicate with customers (think Ray Ozzie, CEO of Groove Networks)
#10 A new form of knowledge management inside big companies
#11 A way for a bunch of navel-gazers to communicate with one another
#12 Something to keep you occupied when you're unemployed (more people than care to admit fit into this category; have you noticed?)
#13 A way to think and write in short paragraphs instead of a long essay (which no one has time to read anyway)
#14 Your email to everyone, as A-list blogger Doc Searls puts it (i.e. a way to stay in touch with family and friends)
#15 A silly word that's fun to say ("Gotta go blog now... ")
#16 A way of writing with a distinct voice and personality (think Halley Suitt)
#17 Something to talk about at cocktail parties ("I blogged Seth Godin and he blogged me back...")
#18 A URL to add to your resume (as in TokyoTim, my 23-year-old son who's living and working in Japan for a year)
#19 Something else to do with your mobile phone...think audio blogging and moblogging
#20 Something you don't want your mother to read (what my mother says about blogging)
--Debbie Weil, WordBiz

Blog: A four letter word that gets people excited

Yeah, blogging is booming. Even Microsoft has advice for bloggers.
This site is a place where I am going to discuss how to create an effective blog, post links to good blogs, and reference blogging-related posts of note.
If you're just getting into blogging--or have to manage a blogging site--this blog is for you.
Right now I am the only contributor, but if you would like to post here--questions, comments, ideas, advice--let me know and we can add you to the list.