McDonald’s has thus far made some missteps in the blogosphere. First for it’s "fake blog", and now for it’s tentative "corporate" take on blogging.

Shel Israel has taken a firm stance against what McDonald’s is now doing, seeing it as a way to exploit this new "blogging thing", rather than as a way to build relationships or trust.

I do agree. Many companies come to blogging to see what they can get out of it, now what they can give to it. They want to suck out the most money from their blogging efforts as possible. Get that maximum ROI. It’s not focused on the people, the dialogue, the long term relationships or loyalty.

Shel has taken a step further an has offered McDonald’s some tips to blog more effectively:

1. Start a conversation with your customers. [and be honest]
2. Talk about a typical day in the life of a franchise owner
3. Ask your customers what they want of you. [and listen]
4. Drop the language of corpspeak.
5. Read other people’s blogs. Join their conversations.

The blogosphere can forgive and embrace. But it will remain suspicious of motives when it comes to large corporations and previous missteps. We’ll have to wait and see if McDonald’s will reap the benefits of dialogue - benefits that could revolutionize their business concepts and ideas - or if they are publicly denounced for their "PR" approach to blogging.

Tags: business blogging, mcdonalds, pr

This post is titled "things I want to like about Technorati" because it is about my love-hate relationship with Technorati. All the cool features I just really want to be a part of but which don’t work for me.

Technorati, I want to like you for…

• picking up my tags, even when you don’t for weeks on end
• updating my ping, when you seem to forget who I am
• claiming my blog in your oh-so-simple new process involving nothing more than my username and password, even when you stall and cannot be made to work manually
• recognizing the URLs of blogs I try to claim
• answering my support emails in under a month’s time
• updating my picture in my profile after the 6th try

For some reason, I hit odd problems with Technorati. Like my inability to change my profile picture or to claim certain blogs. No reason I can see to run into errors, but there it stands.

What do you ‘want’ to like Technorati for?

Here’s one thing I do actually like Technorati for… their new charts. And they work!

Posts that contain Arieanna per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Tags: technorati

It’s hard to grow as a blogger without falling under some criticism. Luckily in the year I’ve been blogging, most of it professionally, the criticism and angry commentary has been rare. But it’s been there.

Bloggers get some flack. And sometimes it’s some major stuff. Sometimes it’s for what you stand for. Somtimes for who you cite or your research bias. Sometimes it’s for your opinion. And sometimes, unfortunately, it’s personal. People just hate you, and they are ok saying so.

An example. I’ve been openly criticized for my opinion on a cafe on my Vancouver Coffee blog. It was a hard one for me. The criticism was major - public - and rude. We thankfully migrated the ‘fight’ offline, so to speak, and moderated even, but it got me down. Once I moved past it I realized that the online fight looked far worse for the instigator than for me, and left it there as a reminder - and as a bit of a permanent payback as well, perhaps. ;)

Nonetheless, as a blogger you’re likely to hit these down moments when you just want to stop sharing and turn off your comments. Darren over at ProBlogger talks about some ways to deal with criticism:

1. Thicken your skin
2. Establish boundaries
3. Remember the Humanness of the Other (vital)
4. Step away from the computer
5. Listen
6. Accept responsibility
7. Don’t get personal
8. Take it private
9. Keep perspective
10. Look for Opportunities (this is something we do a lot when we meet negative Qumana reviews. And it works)
11. Anger = Threat
12. Dialogue
13. Consider a Mediator
14. Control the Rhythm and Tone of your Blog
15. Move on

Read the details of each point from Darren. [italics are my own comments]. Some very valuable insight on how to deal with the flack - and how to avoid it in the future.

Tags: blogging, criticism, fights

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I’m facing a dilemma in my blogging. More particularly, in my reading.

As I take on more blogs (I think I have enough now), my reading list grows. Logical, yes? Well, while a niche list develops with 20-30 feeds (blogs/tracking), so does the time involved to read those feeds.

Multiply this by all the blogs I cover (16) and you get to the quandary I’m at now.

I am covering so many different niche topics, and some that post at such high frequencies, that stuff I enjoy reading is being shunted to the sidelines. As the volume of posts increases out of some of the celebrity blogs I follow (yes, I blame that section), it becomes more difficult to stay on top of my other niches, let alone my interests.

I want to prune back my feeds to a manageable level (which I do regularly). From experience, my best feed level is 350 feeds.

I’m about 45 feeds over, but have been for days trying to figure out what to prune, with no luck. I keep my feeds pruned regularly - dropping stagnant feeds, picking up new ones. The past 2 months, however, my growth has exceeded my pruning efforts.

At this juncture, I have a tradeoff. Either I prune back niche feeds, and risk missing news, or I stop following my interests (personal and professional). I’m not happy doing either. One will slow my growth and the other will make me quite dissatisfied.

So this is my pro blogger dilemma: the balance of focus and personal satisfaction.

Right now, I don’t have a solution. I plan to keep the feeds as they are for now, but will manually refresh some folders on a consistent basis - too many ‘new’ items in bold stresses me out. I won’t necessarily have time to scan the posts, but the feed is there for my perusal at any time.

What is your solution? Have you reached a point where you don’t know how to scale back?

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Well, proof positive that being a whiny blogger works.

No more massive theft. Obviously, despite not reading their own blog (and our rants about content theft in the posts they were stealing), they did notice my post about it. So, they took down our feeds and made this statement:

"I have now removed http://www.lohangroupie.com/feed/ from my sites syndication links after reading this article. All blog entries linked directly to http://lohangroupie.com using the blog entry title. The Blogroll did include a link to lohangroupie.com which used Lindsay Lohan News as link text."

Yeah, sure. 99% of people would have assumed it to be their content, so I consider that content theft. That, and we do not publish CC. So, phew it’s down but boy people need to learn manners.

Oh, and the comment was left anonymously, of course. So, I have no email to rant back on. Darn.

Tags: theft, copyright, complaining, nag

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Do you notice any resemblance here:

My site - Lohan Groupie

Fraudulent site - http://lindsay-lohan.emmv.com/

Yep, it’s the same content. Right down to the categories, archives, tags and even Qumana footer. Simple copy paste of every bit of code I’ve ever produced. And I’m not their only target. The Desperate Housewives b5 blog is in their net too.

So, we’ve contacted their DNS with a legal notice. And I’ve emailed Technorati to stop following their tags (since they’ve stopped picking mine up and are showing theirs). And contacted Google to stop payment on ads profiting from my content.

This, indeed, is content theft at it’s worst. The person responsible has put time, thought and effort into the practice. It’s a nice looking site. Optimized for ads, in many programs. Contains photo galleries, blogroll (not including my site, of course), and a nice header. Not like most spam sites that are obvious as to their nature. This one "looks" valid and honest. Even has the audacity to put a copyright notice on the bottom of the site.

So, we’ll see how this progresses. Mean time, everything I write will instantly go there. Frustrating.

Tags: theft, blogging, content theft, copyright, spam

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The Boston Globe says that bloggers will ‘eventually’ be able to make money. Funny, I thought I was already making money from blogging?

The site, Gather.com, positions itself as a kind of eBay for online writers and their readers — a gathering spot for musings and discussions on everything from wine and computers to fitness and spirituality. And, with a business model that could shake up the writing profession, executives from Gather Inc. are recruiting bloggers by offering them a share of the company’s advertising revenue.

Eventually, popular writers will be able to earn a living by posting their work and attracting eyeballs to advertisements, said Gather’s founder, 35-year-old technology entrepreneur Tom Gerace. That won’t happen right away, though. - Boston Globe

Gather.com sounds very much like a blog network, except it focuses on the writing and not the writers. So, it’s kind of like Digg meets an old fashioned chat room, more than an actual blog network. Why I find this problematic - in many ways, blogging is about creating relationships with audience. And this doesn’t feel at all like blogging. Social networking, yes, but the ‘blogging’ component is post-writing, not the entire process. Key here - to me, blogging is a process of dialogue.

What are your impressions?

Via Jason Calacanis ; Tags: blogging, boston globe, money, ads

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There are a lot of illicit blogging practices out there. One of them in particular annoys me because of the lack of solutions. Content theft.

What do you do when someone, like this, steals your content? Sure, they link back to you, but is it obvious that it’s not their content? In some cases, links are not even included.

Content theft is usually when the content is ripped off without link or attribution, in part or whole. Content theft, IMO, is not someone using your content with a blockquote and link. I am good with that. But I am not good with unclear situations.

So, when you have no way to contact that person - via email or comment - the only extreme choice is to try to get their blog removed from the host. I won’t go that far for one post. If it were every post, you betcha.

Have you experienced content theft? If so, what did you do?

Tags: content theft, copyright, stealing

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Today, our first blog, Blogaholics, turns one. In the year span of time we have grown to 16 blogs - our own, network blogs, and paid blogs.

It’s been a year of growth, and will be a year of additional ‘Blogiversaries’, soon even for this blog.

We started more blogs very quickly after our first, which I think goes against the usual growth pattern. We made the decision to invest in long term growth and potential early on - and have continued to do so.

Usually when we start a blog, we start many at once. And this early and mass growth has defined our investment in the blogosphere, one we are clearly starting to reap benefits from on all fronts - not just monetary, but also career wise and in our personal relationships.

So, many surveys find that bloggers don’t stick with just one blog, especially if they focus on topic-specific blogs. So, has this held true for you?

How long have you had your blog, and how quickly have you grown from one to more?

Tags: blog growth, blogiversary, multiblog, professional blogging

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Jeremy Wright is selling a big blog (estimated to be worth over $40k), and I have a contest going over on Blogaholics to guess which blog it could be.

Jeremy has kindly offered up a prize of cash or ads plus his book. It’s a good deal, so hop on over and check out the hints, then toss in your vote.

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Today Ponzi sent a message to the Gnomedex mailing list announcing that the official dates for 6.0 are June 29 to July 1, 2006.

Arieanna and I had a great time at Gnomedex last year and we are really looking forward to the next one. For a while we were worried that we would not be able to attend because it could have possibly been at the time of our wedding. Now we just need to plan our honeymoon around it :)

Tags: gnomedex, pirillo, ponzi

The Bloggies are open for their 6th year of awards for the Best Blogs, and you determine who the winners will be by nominating your favorite blogs.

Nominations fall into the following categories, and, yes, you can nominate a blog for more than one category!

• Best Web Application for Weblogs
• Best Australian or New Zealand Weblog
• Best Asian Weblog
• Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog
• Best European Weblog
• Best British or Irish Weblog
• Best Latin American Weblog
• Best Canadian Weblog
• Best American Weblog
• Best Tagline of a Weblog
• Best Podcast of a Weblog
• Best Photography of a Weblog
• Best Craft Weblog
• Best Food Weblog
• Best Entertainment Weblog
• Best Weblog About Politics
• Best Web Development Weblog
• Best Computers or Technology Weblog
• Best Topical Weblog
• Best GLBT Weblog
• Best Teen Weblog
• Most Humorous Weblog
• Best Writing of a Weblog
• Best Group Weblog
• Best Community Weblog
• Best-Designed Weblog
• Best-Kept-Secret Weblog
• Best New Weblog
• Weblog of the Year

To be consideed for the final vote, a blog must be one of the top 10 nominated blogs. So, get nominating. I would be very honored if you nominated us! Thanks!

Tags: bloggies, weblog awards

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So I’m going to make up a term here and call it a "forum post" - it’s the closest thing I can think of to describe what happens to certain posts.

What I mean by "forum post" is a post where readers treat the post as if it were a forum, engaging fully in comments with each other. In so doing, the readers begin to focus their energies in replying to comments, not to the post content.

Why is this significant? From my perspective, it does two things: it continually updates my post as they enter a new comment. I like that, it’s good for Google. It increases the content on that page without action on my part, and thereby puts it higher in the search engine for both content and update frequency.

Secondly, it keeps my readers coming back. If they are engaged, they want to come back to see the responses and again continue the dialogue.

I see this particularly with my celebrity blogs. Random posts just explode into forum posts with 60+ comments infighting about something completely irrelevant to the post. I let it happen. Encourage it. Let slip some more angry comments to entice people to respond back. It’s a game I play.

But, over time, with the high volume of content I push out onto these blogs, those posts lose their position in search and the comment frequency declines, or shifts to other posts.

So, here’s my experiment:

I am going to take one blog, Hilary Duff, and I am going to see what I can do to revive those posts and make my site more of a forum. When I use certain phrases I know to be popular search terms, for example "Hilary & Joel", I will link back to a "forum post" of some sort. Thereby forcing Google to recrawl that post, up its position, and get readers to pop over.

Will it work? We’ll see. I hope so. Creating a "forum" environment on this specific topic is profitable. The audience is the right audience. They stay, they click, and sometimes they even buy. They help my blog significantly, and even talk about it on forums. They like my blog because it’s easier to use than a forum (duh), so I think it could work.

Will keep you posted :)

Tags: blog, forum, forum post, blogging, blog promotion, post popularity, teens, money, profitable, clicking

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