I’ve been thinking about this for a while honestly. The amount of comments I leave on other blogs have considerably dropped in the last couple of months, but it is not because of my lack of interest. In a certain way, I still comment: it’s just not formal and traditional comments. I retweet posts, I comment on them on twitter, friendfeed and Facebook and sometimes on  blogs directly. I still show my interest and give feedback, but just not in a traditional way.

In fact, I think the 2 lines comment is dead. You know, the classic “nice post, you rock!” comment. While it is extremely annoying on a blog, it is perfectly suited for twitter. On the opposite, the smart 10 lines comment won’t and will probably never die.

I think we’re about to see some important changes in the blogging world, but all for the best. Things have already changed a lot with all the different channels available to produce content, but in my opinion this is only the beginning.

How do you see this evolving?

I stumbled upon an article on Mashable that express my feeling about “list posts”: Twittermania: 140+ More Twitter Tools!

I understand the funny reference to twitter with the 140 tools, but what really is the added value of such posts? I highly respect Mashable, but they do post a lot of similar articles and they spread viraly and I’m sure you know a lot of other blogs doing so. It’s not an isolated case.

I mean, what is the benefit of listing 140 tools, do you really expect me to try all of them? Of course not. That’s why I want an analysis. It’s easy to break down this post into 10 other posts that could be called something like “10 twitter clients compared”. Now that’s a useful post. But more work.

I can’t take any action with 140 twitter tools listed in a post, but I can surely take action after reading a comparison of 10 twitter tools. I don’t want to know every tool that is available to me, I want to know the best tools and why.

That’s the same reason why companies are ready to pay a lot of money for experts’ advices: they don’t have time to evaluate every single solution, they simply pay someone to do the evaluation and give them the top 3 options in a nice report.

You know, there are reasons why lists are popular and you might like them, but I just prefer a good analysis.

Time is the best way to separate the serious people from the non-serious people and not just in social media, in real life too. Just ask an Olympic athlete how many hours he had to train to get to the Olympics, what sacrifices he had to make. Well, not everybody is ready to make those sacrifices and invest the necessary time and that’s totally fine: if it was easy to get to the Olympic, it would be one hell of a boring event. The event is great because only the best athletes compete and if they are great, it’s not only because they are talented people: they didn’t fear to put time and efforts.

Social media is no different. Of course it’s important to have a good strategy to make the most out of your time, but it takes time. Gaming the system just won’t work…long term.

I thought of stopping here

I thought of stopping here, but then that would have been a too short article. Is it a problem? Well, it would’ve been because you expect me to write a much longer article. Why? Because that’s what most people do.  But in fact there is no problems about writing short posts, Seth Godin’s blog made the Time’s top 25 blogs list this year with nothing but short posts. Ironically, that’s probably why he made it in the top 25 blogs. If Seth was just like everyone else and was simply writing the way most people say you should write to please the search engines or to get ReTweeted, he wouldn’t be on the list. Still, most bloggers will tell you you don’t know a crap about writing if you go with short posts. I know, Steth is Seth.

It’s hard

Most people are very unique when they start producing content online because they know nothing about blogging: they just have a very unique idea and approach. It all change very quickly though when they start reading articles about how they should write and how they should generate traffic. From that moment, they become like everyone else with the same formula and approach.

Traffic is usually the reason that will get you to change the way you produce your content. It is easy to change the way you write or act simply because you don’t have traffic. I think a better approach would be to build a very solid small fan base and work from there, rather than targeting 99% of the population. But that’s just me.

The bottom line is that sticking to your uniqueness is hard because of every single person/blog/website trying to make you just like everyone else.

Some examples

Because Frogstr is mostly about Internet Marketing, I received a lot of comments and emails on a lot of things blogs about Internet Marketing should do to attract more readers and traffic. Here are some of them:

• “Ben, you should run a contest and have people subscribe by email”. That’s not what I do.
• “Ben, you should have a RSS contest against another blogger”. That’s not what I do.
• “Ben, you should offer a free ebook on subscription”. That’s not what I do.
• “Ben, you should write everyday”. That’s not what I do, I write when I have something to say.

I think you get the idea. Yes, these techniques work and I could maybe have twice the amount of traffic and 10 times more subscribers at this time, but that’s not the way I do things. It might not be the best way or the right way, but that’s my way.

What’s your way?

That is my question. What is your way? Are you doing things differently because of what everyone tells you to do? Are you doing what you think is right for you? Tell me.

While it is extremely flattering to be on such lists or can be very tempting to invest time in analyzing the different metrics to rank higher or simply get on the list, here’s my question: “At the end of the day, does such a list pays the bills?” No it doesn’t, but if you pay the bills with your online business, you will get on those lists without even trying.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there are a lot of things out there to get you focused on the wrong things. Getting on lists or getting more twitter followers is nice, but these won’t help you achieve your goals at the end of the day: they are the result of a successful online business.

What do you think?

]]> http://bentremblay.com/en/so-you-want-to-get-on-that-list/feed 59 http://bentremblay.com/en/will-businesses-have-to-deal-with-personal-branding http://bentremblay.com/en/will-businesses-have-to-deal-with-personal-branding#comments Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:59:00 +0000 Ben Tremblay http://www.frogstr.com/?p=626 Personal branding is going to be huge in a couple of years as everyone is at least very good at one thing and also because it is going to be even easier than today to start a blog, run your own TV show and things like that. This post is going to be more a discussion and some thoughts about whether or not businesses and companies will have to deal with personal branding and if it will be an issue for them.

The impact of social media and personal branding

With social medias and personal branding, each and everyone of us is an “expert” in a field. If not an expert, you’re talking/blogging about something you feel comfortable with. Some are extremely lucky, have a day job they really enjoy and blog and tweet just for fun. On the opposite, some have a boring day job or a job they hate and this personal branding/blog stuff is what keeps them alive during the evening and at night. It is for some, just like a double life: working as a regular receptionist during the day and running a popular show on the web at night.

This is the kind of things that leads to disasters for employers because you are not able to keep your employees focused. They are tired during the day because they blog/Vlog/tweet all night and on top of that they do personal stuff from work.

Blogging and branding from work

How many of you take time while you are at work to blog, tweet, read rss feeds, comment on blogs and forums? I bet a lot and it is extremely normal because personal branding/blogging is EXTREMELY time consuming. The amount of emails, comments, tweets and blog posts you have to deal with everyday usually would require you to be working full time on it, but you can’t. So what do you do? You work on your “personal business” from work. That’s classic. How many hours everyday do you spend at work on your online business?

Less work done

I can see problems in the future as more and more persons will get into blogging and vlogging. Right now, the bloggosphere seems huge, but it’s still a minority of the population who blog seriously and brand themselves seriously. This is going to change and I think it will be a problem for companies and businesses. As more and more people start to blog, more and more people will start to work on their personal brand from work and as we all know, it’s extremely time consuming. I think companies will have to deal with this issue.

Employers will have to adapt

Is it your fault if your online business/personal branding stuff is a lot more attractive than your day job? Well, maybe it is. Maybe you decided to have a job you didn’t like just because it gives you enough time to run your business from work, maybe you don’t want to leave because you have good working conditions you don’t want to loose even if your job comes with a bottle of scotch and gun, etc. Whether you like your job or not, employers will have to adapt to this new reality, the social medias reality. Employers will have to understand that people not only have a personal life now, they also have an “online life”.

Accepting it, not fighting

Let’s start with an example: the music industry. This industry fought for so long and is still fighting against sharing music online, but then a company called Apple understood that fighting was completely useless. Apple’s vision was simply to get into the business instead of fighting against it: if you can’t beat them, join them. iTunes is today the biggest music provider online and the music industry couldn’t be happier. So, just like the music industry, businesses will have to understand social medias and will have to deal with it instead of fighting against it. Fighting these big social beasts will only make things worst.

Not only they will have to understand the importance of social medias today, but they will also need to make their jobs a lot more attractive. It cannot be all your fault if your online life is more attractive than your day job, employers will have to make their business a business 2.0. What is a business 2.0? I think it will be an environment where whatever your job is, you’ll be able to bring ideas, interact with others, think outside the box and all that of course with the help of technology and social medias. Social medias within the company.

You share

Share with us your vision. Is social medias/personal branding going to be a treat to companies and if so, what’s the best way to deal with this?

Creativity

I talk a lot about creativity and why it is essential in this business if you want to stand out. This is particularity true in completely saturated niches because competition is much more aggressive. What are saturated niches? Well, If you blog about finance, making money online, blogging tips, technology or web 2.0 you know what is a saturated niche. Why in the world would you think about starting a blog in one of these niches just to be like the rest of them? You have to offer a little something that will differentiate your website from the rest!

“If it works for him, it can work for me too”. I’m sorry, but no. The day a website become popular, you can be sure there will be thousand of clones a month after. I’m sorry but it’s too late if you are looking to establish your personal brand. I’m not saying you won’t be able to make a decent website somewhat popular and get some decent money out of it, but you are not going to get invited to events like BlogWorld to give a keynote for sure. You don’t give a damn about giving a keynote in your life and just want to make a decent living? That’s fine, I can understand that. Guess what? You’re not getting away with it, you’ll still have to be creative! One thing I noticed is that I could start a hundred of automated websites and make a couple hundred dollars a month without doing anything. But the thing is: do I want to or more importantly do YOU want to live your life building a hundred of crappy websites every year for a couple hundred dollars? I don’t want to. Maybe you don’t care actually and I guess I admire you for that.

Personal branding

Personal branding is the only thing you have in this world that really matters. You want to be an authority and a  top player in your niche so that people think of you when they think of that niche. Just like we think of ShoeMoney, John Chow or ProBlogger when we think about making money online or TechCrunch when thinking about technologies. That’s what personal branding is all about and I think it’s important to build it because even if your website dies tomorrow, you will still be alive and with a well established name out there. How to build that personal brand? Don’t be like everyone else, be creative, original and it’s important to have your very personal way of saying things.

It’s a blog

Too many people are afraid of being “unpopular” because they think out of the box and have a different way of seeing things. You know that fear that someone won’t like you because of what you say? You know that fear of not pleasing the majority? I say you are building a freakin’ blog and it is a personal thing! There are million of blogs out there, so what will set you apart? You and just you! You are the only person responsible for your blog’s success or failure. The reason why a person will come back to your blog instead of your competitor’s blog is just you, your content, your tips and your opinions. You know, it’s a blog.

Saturated niches are OK

I talked about how some niches are saturated and how every blog look the same in these niches. Well, it’s OK to have a blog in a highly competitive niche because if the subject is what you’re passionate about then that’s the best thing for you to do. Just check what every single blog out there is doing and please don’t do that. Your competitors are doing video shows? That’s OK, do a video show too if it’s popular, but do it in a totally different way!

Don’t fear the majority

You don’t have to please the majority. In fact, you can have some highly controversial articles with people simply not agreeing with you at all, but still driving a lot of traffic for that specific reason. You’re a jerk? Be a jerk. You’re a nice guy? Be a nice guy.

Simply be you.

Wake up!

By exposing how easy it was to fake the subscriber count, I guess I wanted to say a little something to every advertiser out there: “Wake up!”. If you think this doesn’t apply to you because you’re not an advertiser you are wrong because the minute you comment on other blogs, you advertise your website. Advertising doesn’t mean paying money for an ad spot: to me it means having your brand displayed elsewhere. What I am about to say does apply to paid advertisement, but I’ll explain why it does apply to you also.

The main reason I think people are faking their RSS Subscriber count is to sell advertisements or reviews for more money. You know, some people will ask 25 or 30$ a month for an ad on their website simply because the feedburner chicklet shows 600 subscribers: it’s a common thing. Of course, you can check out some Alexa stats to make sure that number is real, but ShoeMoney has an Alexa Rank of 101,291 which makes me think Alexa is mostly crap. I also have another blog getting about 50 times more traffic than this blog with a crappy Alexa Rank as well. If we can’t really rely on Alexa Rank  – and I’ve talked about it in the past – it all comes down to the Feedburner subscriber count, right? Well it pisses me off because a lot of bloggers fake it and there is NO, absolutely NO return on investment when advertising on their blogs. It’s important for every advertiser out there to know what the real numbers are and I’m about to show you how (mostly).

I hope advertisers will read this because it will help them maximize their return on investment (ROI). The same applies to you, the average blogger with not so much money to invest in advertisement. I want everybody to make the wisest choice when it comes to advertisement and trusting the Feedburner chicklet is probably the worst decision of all.

I don’t pay for advertising, how does this apply to me?

You comment on blogs, you advertise. Whether or not you pay for it, every single time your link appear on a blog, it’s called advertising. Now, why does it matter? When you comment on blogs showing 600 subscribers, you’re actually making that blog a little more powerful because you’re advertisers more reasons to think the blog is active with real readers.

Can’t we use comments as a metric?

Unfortunately no, a lot of popular blogs out there don’t receive a lot of comments even if they have an impressive REAL number of subscribers. Take John Cow for example, he doesn’t receive 50 comments on every post, but he has a pretty good subscriber count and pretty good traffic. It’s a good indication, but we can’t use it as a very good metric.

Google Reader is the key

Not many people know that with Google Reader, you can get the number of subscribers subscribed via Google Reader for a particular feed! It doesn’t show you the real numbers because it only displays the number of subscribers subscribed using Google Reader, but this can give us a pretty good estimate. Where is that feature? It’s hidden a little bit, but when you select a particular feed in your Google reader, you will see a little “Show details” link and this link is the key! As an example, here’s are feed details for The Net Fool:

How can this help me get the real numbers?

Let’s do some maths here and compare the Google Reader count with the Feedburner chicklet on some blogs I have in my Google Reader:

I tried to include some well known sub 1000 blogs as well as some bigger blogs like Dosh Dosh, ShoeMoney and John Cow. There’s only 7 blogs in the list as I only took some blogs from my Google Reader and didn’t do an extensive search for feeds. While some might say it’s not that much and we can’t really get any statistics out of that, just check your Google Reader and you’ll notice it’s around 25% for a lot of blogs.  So you guys can basically do your own investigation, but you get the big picture and you know where I’m going with this.

What’s a “normal” ratio?

You’re the judge on that one, I don’t want to go out and say “Anybody under 10% is a cheater!”, I just want to raise a flag. I strongly encourage you to go through your list of feeds in Google Reader and check who looks suspicious. I unsubscribed to A LOT of feeds, especially in the MMO niche because of that and trust me, I know who’s faking it out there. I won’t point the finger at anyone as you’re all able to figure it out on your own.

I also want to point out that anybody with 300 Feedburner Subscribers and 15 Google Reader Subscribers is extremely suspicious. But as I said, you’re the judge.

Contests brings the ratio down

BS. While I agree contests are extremely popular and one of the requirements to get entries is to subscribe by email, I don’t think it would impact the count that much. I think most people will unsubscribe after the contest and subscribe to the feed via a reader if they like the blog. Even if people don’t unsubscribe, I’m not sure it can cause the ratio to go THAT down. The Net Fool ran a lot of contests and still has a pretty decent ratio. John Cow ran a lot of contests and has a pretty low ratio, but with 10,000 subscribers it really is a different game. We all know John Cow is getting traffic so there’s no question there.

I’m not saying ShoeMoney is cheating

Some might say, Shoe is at 5%, is he cheating? I don’t think so because if you check ShoeMoney, TechCrunch and big blogs like that the ratio is very low, mostly because the subscriptions come from so many different sources. For sub 1000 subscribers, it seems that the stats are pretty accurate. I also made some research online and it seems to be a well accepted fact that the Google Reader market Share is around 20-25% (That’s what it is on frogstr…)

Feedcompare.com

Another method Chris at chrisguthrie.net mentioned me is to actually have a look at feedcompare.com. It really is a nice website that let you have a look at how Feedburner feeds evolve into time. With it, you can actually see if there’s anything unusual on a feed if the feed in question has the “Awareness API” enabled. Mine isn’t enabled as I don’t like other websites and outside sources to have access to my feed without me knowing, but here is an example of a suspicious feed:

I’m not saying this guy is faking it, but going from 395 to 690 in two days is very suspicious…

You’re the judge

As I said, you’re the judge on this. I’m just saying you should be careful with the Feedburner count and don’t necessarily take it as a very good metric until you confirm the numbers by yourself. Google Reader is a good way to estimate the numbers and I honestly think 10-25% market share is a pretty accurate number. So, be careful when you buy advertisement, the Feedburner subscriber count shouldn’t always justify a higher price.

Prove me wrong

If you’re an honest blogger with 300 subscriptions and something like 15 Google Reader subscriptions It would be great if you could share some detailed stats. I would be more than happy to blog about it and say I was wrong!

Share this

I hope you guys will share this. Not because I want some link love, but because I want the community to know. I personally think the Google Reader subscriber count is a much better metric simply because Google Reader is the most popular reader out there and it’s a lot more harder to fake.

Review until it flows

It is important to reach a certain level of quality for all your posts if you want to attract subscribers and eventually be an authority in your niche. Nobody writes a perfect post without a review, nobody. How many times do you read your posts and notice there could be some improvements but don’t bother? If you feel like there could be some improvements, then imagine what your readers think. For that reason, read your posts before publishing them and read them as if you were the reader, not the author. Always keep in mind what would make you stop reading and what would make you continue reading a post. Is your post catchy enough? Is the post too boring? Could there be some humor in it to keep the reader hooked? Are some sentences too long? Could there be some crap you could cut?

I think you get the big picture and you understand where I’m going. You know your readers and you know what they like, so offer that.

Stop until it’s too late

Sometimes I write an article and halfway through I realize how the post sucks. I’m sure this happened to you also and I hope you didn’t publish that crap. It’s probably the worst thing to do because if you’re not convinced about what’s you’re writing, your readers will feel it and if you think your post sucks, there are good chances your readers too! In a situation like that, save the post for later, and it might turn into a gem eventually, who knows.

Not every post is worth a Nobel Prize

We’re all writing bad, OK and awesome articles. The key is really just to minimize the bad posts and maximize the good posts as you probably already know. It’s something we have to accept as bloggers: we’re not always going to write the best post out there. Now, imagine if we can cut the “bad posts” part simply by reviewing every single article we write to make sure it’s at least an average post. You know, sometimes it’s not the content, it’s really the way we say things that just makes a post boring. With a little review time, most bad posts can become OK posts and that’s really what we want because nobody wants to write crappy content.

Preview on your blog

It’s important to preview your articles on your blog directly, not in the admin editor. Why? Because you will truly feel like a reader and trust me it works. Sometimes I make a first review in the editor and then read it on the blog to find out there are a lot of improvements to be made. It just feels different when it’s out there on your blog, so use the preview tool!

I don’t have time to review

If you know you just wrote a gem and it doesn’t need a review, fine. Otherwise, wait until you have some time.

Do you review?

I will end this post by asking you the obvious question: Do you review your posts before pressing the publish button?