Technorati knows who I am, and this is my new tag cloud:

Scary. That’s really what I blog about? Well, it is fairly accurate in a scary sort of way.

Great service, and may introduce me to some more feed choices. Will have to dig around. It also shows me where I am perhaps tagging too much - or too little - and how I should change my keyword choices for things like AdGenta.

I’ve just taken the time to add more info to my profile - my bio and my pic - go to my profile to check it out. Also check out Ianiv’s profile.

All new to Technorati:

- charts

- better extracts

- related tag suggestions to narrow via tabs

- profile goodies (as above)

- new widgets

What I want from Technorati

Ok now Technorati - you know who I am and what I write about. Now, how are you going to flip that back around to me in more customized services - such as this one?

Via Niall

Tags: Technorati, tags, tag+cloud

When it comes to blogs like this one, the cartoon is completely accurate. For the rest of my blogging life, I feel truly lucky to share and learn each day as a part of the blogosphere. But, I do know too much about things I’m not interested in. ;)

From gapingvoid

Well, this is something I’ve been pondering. I was doing a lot of new blogs with the style of content - sidebar - sidebar. Always 3 columns with a content area and two sidebars. Anyway, these newer blogs were performing really well. Yeah, part of that is the topics I was choosing - they were performing well - but I was really getting used to the format.

So, when Ianiv & I were approved for BlogAds, and decided to do some eMiniMall testing, we had to shake things up a bit to fit the size requirements for both of these. Our two first blogs, Blogaholics and here at Blogging Help, are our largest traffic blogs still. So, it made sense to roll out some testing on one of them. We decided to start with Blogaholics. Shifted from sidebar - content - sidebar to the faithful content - sidebar - sidebar.

Sound confusing? ;)

Well, it was not an easy change. Blogaholics is graphics heavy. We like it, but from this experience some of it needs to be stripped down. Anyway, we managed to get it all in order. Mostly. Still need to align things up a bit better and make the columns flow together more seamlessly.

Well, we made the change. But what has the outcome been? Well, for a while our CTR was about the same. Now, it’s dropped. I would blame it on content, since I was not writing much, but I know that’s not true. Traffic is increasing and so are subscribers. So, the new design is not working well yet. It may be that our “design” does not fit the new alignment style. But it’s something to consider… how well does design play out with column placement. And how far can you change it without major alterations.

Well, we’re going to keep tweaking. If CTR does not go back to normal, and higher, for the monthly average, we have a saved version of the old design to revert to. That, or strip the design to basics and start over.

How have design transitions been for you? Have you experienced the same hiccups?

I was just writing up another post, and came across this paragraph that I just had to share about the nature of the blogosphere:

weblogs are part of an ecosystem (sometimes annoyingly referred to as the Blogosphere). This means that whatever good postings exist are promoted through links from other sites. More reader/writers see this good stuff, and the very best then get linked to even more. As a result, link frequency follows a Zipf distribution, with disproportionally more links to the best postings. - Jakob Nielsen

I think this is a really good way to explain the social nature of the blogosphere to a business person. I studied business for many years and I know from experience in classes and in reading case studies that explaining something statistically adds power, and sometimes understanding, to a statement.

What I see here is something with descriptive power. If you are trying to explain why trackbacks and permalinks have value, and how they relate to SEO and creating dialogues between bloggers, this is the most simplistic and powerful statement I’ve ever come across. To say that, simply, “good stuff” gets “promoted through links” and then follows a distribution where some things get relatively more interest than others… this has intuitive power.

Great observation Jakob!

I’ve uploaded the second part to the blog survey being conducted at Qumana.

This series looks at RSS - how many blogs people read and which aggregator they use. I was really floored by the data. It was seriously amazing how fragmented the RSS reader market is - apparently none of us do a good enough job of giving people their blogs in a way they want to see them.

Anyway, stop over, view the results, and let me know what you think.

I’ve started to release some of the data from the Qumana Survey we did a couple weeks back. I think there is a lot to learn from the data, and I am so excited to be sharing it. The survey covers a lot of things in the blogosphere, including blog experience (today’s post), advertising (I can’t wait to blog that!), RSS and more!

I’ve released three questions now, and have done a bit of digging to see how certain questions fit together - I think understanding these patterns is really important.

Anyway, have a peek over there and stay tuned to the Qumana blog for the rest of the survey - I hope to get a post out every couple of days. The digging does take a bit of time!

Some data to crunch on:

Most people taking our survey had 3 to 5 blogs

A fair number of bloggers spend more than 6 hours per week blogging

More…

Technorati Tags: qumana, survey, blogging, blogosphere, bloggers, blogging survey

This is something I have been thinking. I wanted to know how people interact on the web, how people interact with blogs, and what types of blogging types I could derive from that.

From what I can tell, there are people ‘blogging’ in the following ways:

1. Readers

This type of person likes to read blogs and follow what they are doing, but does not interact or have their own blog. This is more of a “newspaper” like reader, or a reader of Web 1.0.

2. Interaction Mavens

This type of person may or may not have a blog of their own, but spends significant amounts of time reading and commenting on other blog posts. They are the type of person who love to interact and create bonds.

3. Linkers

This type of blogger likes to interact, but does so on their own blog. Rather than leaving comments, this blogger will write a post, long or short, linking to the original piece and letting that be their “comment” field.

4. Individualists

This type of blogger likes to break news first, or write something in their own line. They write a majority of original content, and therefore do not send out many links to other bloggers.

5. All Round Bloggers

This type of blogger likes to read and write on what other people have talked about, sometimes putting out original stuff, and sometimes commenting instead of writing.

6. Social Circle Bloggers

These bloggers fall into a heavily social blogging category - they write to share with personal friends and family. These bloggers are heavy Live Journal and Blogger users, and tend to work within the inner blogosphere circle of friendship, rather than looking outside it. They tend to subscribe to blogs of friends and very few others.

7. Comment Attractor

This type of blogger writes in such a way that comments are encouraged, and interacted with openly. This is more of a writing style than a type of blogger, and may mix more or less with other blogger types.

—

So, I am sure people don’t neatly fit into these categories, but it’s been something I’ve been watching for some time. I think I fall into more of the Linker or All Round Blogger types. I don’t comment much and do tend to reblog info rather than use a comment box - with so many blogs, the stuff that interests me usually has some home to go to :)

One of the primary reasons I looked into this was because I was trying to figure out why I was not a social bookmarker or a huge user of social tagging. For me, I find no value in social bookmarking because I do tend to blog most of what interests me. I tag mostly to attract readers to my content, which is a more selfish use of social tagging. I do search tags, but usually to built up my stock of blogs in a niche topic. Anyway, it all boiled down to the same idea - I don’t social bookmark because I don’t comment, and I don’t comment because I blog at such a high volume.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: bloggers, blogging, what blogger type are you

Hill & Knowlton have a new blog policy set to embrace employee blogging in the right way.

The new employee blogs will be embraced under the name of “Collective Conversation: Hill & Knowlton’s professional blogging community,” with this preface.

Like many other companies, we believe that blogs have the potential to become powerful communications tools. We have created this community to give our consultants the opportunity to participate in the blogosphere, to listen to and learn from our audiences, and to contribute their own vast insight and experience on topics related to our industry.

Whilst the blogs within this community are written “professionally”, the views expressed by the authors remain their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the company.

All of the blogs are linked to centrally with a description. If you follow the links, you’ll see interesting tabular representations of the blogs, the number of posts, number of comments, team vs. individual, and the overall pride the company is taking in highlighting and supporting their bloggers.

Here is the aforementioned policy:

* I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly
* I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes
* I will never delete a post
* I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic
* I will disclose conflicts of interest (including client relationships) where I am able to do so
* I will not publish anything that breaches my existing employment contract
* I will distinguish between factual information/commentary and advertising
* I will never publish information I know to be inaccurate
* I will disagree with other opinions respectfully
* I will link to online references and original source materials directly
* I will strive for high quality with every post - including basic spellchecking
* I will write deliberately and with accuracy
* I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate, and do so promptly
* I will restrict my posting to professional topics
* I will write on a regular basis, at least once each week

Why is this good? It’s open. It’s brief. It’s clear. And it’s easy to follow.

Take this. Modify it. Make it your own.

Via Buzz Marketing with Blogs

Technorati Tags: hill & knowlton, blogging, business, professional blogging, blog policy, revolution

Google news has opened the door to syndicate results. Each news page and news category contains a link for feeds in RSS or Atom. Keyword results are also now syndicated.

I am especially happy about the keyword syndication and have been waiting for it. I subscribe to a whole ton of keywords/key phrases for the many blogs I write on. However, some topics are tricky, and searches of PubSub, Technorati and others often yields spam blogs (arg) or irrelevant content.

For example, a search for “coffee” on Technorati (search/tag) is something I’m very interested in for my coffee blog. On the search side, I get every comment made about having coffee in the morning or jumping off to a cafe. On the tag side, I get all the blogs I already subscribe to. So, nothing new. Nothing relevant. However, if we jump over to Google News now, the search yields some good stuff - some studies, news, press releases and market changes - all of which yield new fodder for my blog.

The downside: the feeds look like crap and there is no way to change it. Small summary only, including links to all “related” items. I agree the latter is great, so I don’t get the same story a million times, but I really do like my full text.

Here is what a single feed item looks like:

Via Steve Rubel and Blog Herald

Technorati Tags: Google, RSS, Atom, Feeds, Syndication, News

The AdSense interface has been modified. It is much cleaner and more straight-forward.

You will need to review the new agreement and change your bookmarks. The old bookmark no longer functions (if you had it bookmarked with a password save). - /reports-aggregate is now report/overview

The new interface makes it much easier to navigate your reports - which makes it much easier to spot patterns for optimization.

The basic interface has an overview of content vs. search and quick links to the most popular advanced reports. I am not sure if there are more substantive changes - I have not noticed them - but I think this could be a great step forward to understanding and maximizing Google AdSense potential.

The changes also mean that the AdSense Notifier plugin for Firefox is broken. Hopefully a new release will come up soon to fix it.

So, I just confirmed my trip down to Blogher. Quite excited to be going. Blogher has been buzzing around just as much as Gnomedex. I’m interested to see how the event goes off, what the vibe is, and all of that.

Will be event blogging the whole thing, of course. I think that has to be the most exciting aspect of blogging for me - being in the vibe, catching it. I think it’s a great opportunity to share not just the outline of what’s going on, but to really catch its value for others.

If you are going to Blogher and want to meet up, leave me a comment. I’m coming over on the 29th and arrive fairly decently at dinner time. Will be staying over till the afternoon of the 1st of August to mingle and enjoy the sunny weather.

Hope to see you there!

Thanks to Qumana for helping me go down. I’ll be promoting both Qumana and Lektora while I’m down there, and am looking forward to sharing some of the new features to come. Trust me, it’s exciting stuff.

Technorati Tags: blogher

Technorati Tags: http://www.technorati.com/tags/blogher

Paul Chaney has just made the announcement that Bloggeropoly is now being officially launched. If you’re a professional blogger, or want to be, listen up to this news.

What is Bloggeropoly? The first, if not the only, blogger recruiting agency.

Bloggeropoly is here to match up bloggers with companies who have full-time or contract blogging jobs. No guess work. No need to go looking for your perfect match. It’s your traditional recruiting agency, but with all the knowledge and specialization needed for matching bloggers with jobs. Plus, there is a 90-day guarantee.

Disclosure: I helped Bloggeropoly get off the ground. Ianiv build templates and I’ll be populating a lot of the blog content. I’ll be blogging there regularly on recruiting specific to bloggers: how to get hired, being a professional blogger, and overall job tips such as resume advice and that kind of thing. I might even cross post some like content here.

When we hear of job opportunities we will try to match them up with bloggers. We may also post them to our site, minus the company and contact info.

Add Bloggeropoly to your feed and see what we’re all about.

Ok, perhaps I got a little carried away today. I was making some little buttons for Qumana (coming soon!) using this little web generator, then I decided it was a good creative break and just kept going. First, I created one for Blogaholics. Just because. Really no reason.

Ok, so then I came across this interesting reference to “how to spot the ProBlogger” - so, I blogged about it. And, midway, I had the lovely idea to create a ProBlogger button. A button that you can use on your site or in your posts to clearly identify you as a ProBlogger - indeed, I even argued for the importance of doing so. So, here is that button. Feel free to download and use.

Technorati Tags: ProBlogger, blogging

I’ve just posted my first Podcast on the topic of Professional Blogging with Tris Hussey. Our first topic explores how we became professional bloggers. We’ll be delivering installments every few days, and are open to suggestions.

We’re really proud to be a part of all the Canadian podcast scene, especially with the announcement of a national podcast show on the CBC!

Our series will discuss being a professional blogger - how we got where we are, some hot blogging issues, and tips for others interested in professional blogging. In particular, we’ll try to highlight the vibrant blogging community here in Canada and what it’s like to base your blogging career here.

Hop over to Blogaholics for the official post and download the podcast!

Blog taglines are important. I have read this and learned this over and over. But I was reminded also by a post by Darren to maybe rethink my own. I know he recently upgraded his from “ProBlogger” to “Blog Tips - ProBlogger”

Now taglines are important for many reasons. They tell readers what to expect, and they are highly looked at and considered in the whole SEO process. I also realized, upon Darren’s change, that it could also mean how soon you are read by your readers.

Ok, imagine this. Most people don’t organize their feeds into folders. They just drop them all into their Bloglines or NewsGator. So, when reading, most people go top to bottom. It’s the way we read. So, when Darren went from being at the “P” section to the “B” section, he was more likely to be read first.

What could being read first mean? Well, it could mean that you get readers before they are tired. More likely to comment. To reblog. And simply more likely to read and not just clear away.

So, maybe the first letter in your blog name should be important as well. I guess “Blogging Help…” is not doing so bad there.

Anyway, I thought I’d open up to discussion our own blog tag:

“blogging help - blog consulting by professional bloggers Arieanna & Ianiv”

I recently put that new tagline up there. I wanted the keyphrase of ‘blog consulting’ to be in there, as well as our names. Our names were coming up in our search logs, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt. As well, I wanted to use the term ‘professional blogger’ - this is where I came to a stumble. We are a plural group here: bloggerS. So, I chose to be grammatically correct rather than just putting in the keyphrase. Was this a good idea? Opinions?

Technorati Tags: blogging help, blogs, blogging, SEO, taglines