Today, b5 media officially announced a deal that we hope will lead the way in co-branded blogs.

Basically, we have a deal with VIP Fan Clubs, official fan club and merchandise vendor for FOX Broadcasting, to start co-branded blogs dedicated to FOX shows: Bones, 24, Family Guy, Prison Break.

It’s a two-way beneficial deal. We get unique content, special merchandise promotions, and traffic, and they in turn get unique fan-based content to to up the value of their own efforts. As Jeremy notes:

Blog content on blog media properties is often inwardly focussed. Launch a blog, find great authors, and write your heart out. While that’s a great model, there is so much that it simply can’t cover. In addition, this inward-focusedness often means that blogs aren’t quite as mainstream-friendly as they could be.

Which is why we are excited by some of the new partnership opportunities coming up with mainstream media companies. These companies are acutely aware of the power of blogs, fan sites and communities, but are often unable to tap into them directly for a variety of reasons.

There are many other networks which have tried blogs. They have some written by the actors. Some by some PR professional. Most suck. In some cases, you’ll get some unique content which can add to the show, but in most cases they don’t know what to write about and have too many lines they cannot cross. As fans, we have less boundaries. We can post the pictures. Blockquote as we see fit. Talk about the plot from many angles without being worried about ‘giving anything away’, and can freely express our opinions.

This deal with VIP Fan Clubs is the first stage in the process. VIP is a paid fan site with about 3 million subscribers, and we’ll benefit from direct traffic and from newsletter-based links. Over time we hope to solidify this 3-way relationship into something more ‘official’ and to let it be a case study for other media ventures of the sort.

I am a co-author on the Bones site, the newest addition to my long list of blogs. Writing it has given me a new appreciation for writing in general - no better way to beat writers block than to tackle something new.

Tags: cobranding, branding, marketing, media, big media, fox, fox broadcasting, vip fan clubs, b5media, blogs, blogging

The panicked blogging has officially begun. As part of my honeymoon preparations, I am organizing all my blogs for my absence. For the month, the following strategies will be played out on various blogs:

• No posts - mostly my personal blogs
• Posts from abroad - Blogaholics will have some travel diary features, when we have time
• Guest bloggers - all 4 of my entertainment blogs will be taken over by a guest blogger since they require daily attention to the news
• Pre-posting - I am preposting from today until June 1 for 3 blogs - those on which I have a considerable reputation I’d like to keep to myself, or for which I have a contract that should be continued

Today I started and finished preposting for my favorite blog, Cooking Gadgets. It’s a fairly easy blog to write, since I am passionate about gadgety goodness, but sourcing that many days’ worth of material did take time. That said, I actually posted 46 posts today on that single blog. Took about 5 hours.

Tomorrow, I move to start and finish She Knows Best - there will not be as many posts on that one, but they require considerably more time per post to research and write.

Ok, I was really excited to be a part of AdZaar - up front payment for links, who wouldn’t be?

However, they are pulling out of sites. I still have AdZaar on one site, but that’s it. At month end, they seem to be a little upset.

Is this evidence of a bad revenue model? That it could perhaps be a bad thing to base blog value on PageRank? Without traffic or other measures?

What do you think?

So, I’ve been in the middle of more blog launches. Still in the middle, actually. But, the blogs are not mine :)

A couple of months ago I decided to try out a few different topics on the side, to see how they would perform. More or less things I thought would do well, even without my “interest” in the topics. ;)

Well, you all know that I hit something with my entertainment blogs. Knowing what I know of them, and their behavior as a set, and of networks in general, I decided I wanted more. But wasn’t really up to writing a dozen more myself, nor was I organized to start up a whole new network. Besides, what’s the point?

So, I approached the b5 guys, and in no time my blogs were merged over and I became Channel Editor of all Entertainment blogs. Of course, I immediately put out a call for bloggers and started the task of refining everything down. Over the next two weeks, the channel will grow to 20 blogs, which is a great start.

This is my first go at “hiring” bloggers, and I absolutely love it. It’s so much fun to work in this way - spinning out ideas, and getting things rolling. Been a great experience. I’ve got quite enough on my hands for a couple of weeks, but once I get settled with all the launches, who knows where it will lead.

Northern Voice 2006 has just been announced. This was a big thing for Vancouver, and blogging, last year, and promises to do the same this year.

Ianiv & I made our official “entry” into the blogosphere there - we had just launched a new design, and our blog was getting picked up from our live event blogging. We met a whole bunch of bloggers, locally and from abroad, and really started to get immersed in the whole blogosphere.

So, now that Ianiv & I are both working in blogging full-time, and have both joined Qumana, we’ll be going back less as newbies and more as leaders in the industry. It’s a really crazy chain of events, but it’s been great.

What is Northern Voice?

Northern Voice is a community-based blogging and personal publishing conference that started in February, 2005. This year’s conference will take place on Friday, February 10 and Saturday, February 11, 2006 at UBC’s downtown campus.Twice the Fun

The Saturday will be the traditional panels and speakers, but the Friday will take a more casual spin with Moose Camp. I love that the schmoozing day comes before the conference day - it sets a different stage for the conference and should make for a more interactive conference altogether.

It’s probably the cheapest conference around. $30 per day or $50 for both days. Plus, you get to come to Vancouver, which is even better ;)

They are still seeking speakers (hopefully you’ll see me there) and panelists, as well as other sponsors (Qumana is stepping up for that).

So, go to Northern Voice. And we’ll meet you there :)

Technorati Tags: nv2006, norther nvoice, vancouver, conferences

Seth Godin has a new eBook out now called “Who’s There?” - I’ve just downloaded it an plan on reading it, along with some of his other books I received from Gnomedex. I’ve read Godin before and always love his stuff - easy to read, sensible, and really makes you realize how simple solutions really are.

Who’s There is not an ebook about how to write better or how to follow the traditional conventions about formatting and building a blog. It’s not designed to sell you one service instead of another, either.

Instead, I divide the blog world into three groups and turn my attention to one. And in particular, I try to sell you hard on how building a blog asset can have a spectacular impact on you, your career, your organization and your ideas.

I promise this ebook is incomplete. I hope, though, that it encourages you to pay attention to some of the underlying forces at work online and off. And it’s small enough to email to your colleagues or to post on your own site. Hey, it’s free and it comes with its own carrying case.

Technorati Tags: seth godin, whos there, ebook, marketing, blogs, blogging

Ok, you won’t be surprised if I put the “Dilbert Mission Statement Generator” on the “do not do this” list. However, you might be surprised that it actually does an ok job at it. I don’t suggest it, but here’s a taste.

Statement:

Our goal is to continually promote low-risk high-yield deliverables so that we may interactively negotiate principle-centered infrastructures in order to solve business problems

From:

quickly, proactively, efficiently, assertively, interactively, professionally, authoritatively, conveniently, completely, continually, dramatically, enthusiastically, collaboratively, synergistically, seamlessly, competently, globally

Not bad, hey?

Technorati Tags: dilbert, business, mission statements

There is a lot of strategy behind choosing your URL. It needs to make sense for your website or blog. It needs to be short. It needs to be available. It is best to be a “.com” to be remembered. It should avoid the use of too many dashes “-”. It needs to be memorable.

So, with all of this, how does SEO play out? It’s a tough battle. You have to balance your consumers with the search engines… oh, and also play the game of trying to find that perfect URL. I’ve spent hours at it before. It can drive you nuts. But, despite this, do not forget SEO.

When I came across blogginghelp.com, I snapped it up. Why? Because I knew that “blogging help” was going to be a strong search phrase. And an easy site name to remember. So, here it is. I lucked out. But I also played the game well.

Over at seroundtable.com, they talk about another element. Length of URL. I try to stick below two words when choosing my actual domain name, but for SEO purposes it’s also important to remember that the URL on your blog will have a ton more attached to it in permalink format. Here’s an easy rule of thumb to help you out. The most important element is the name of the article, not it’s location in your directory.

So, make sure your permalink includes the /name-of-article and consider the /year/month/day portion optional.

This will hopefully ensure that the URL is picked up for the right reasons by the engines, and easily, but it also makes the crawling path easier for the bots. The difference it will make is minute, if anything, but it also makes for a nicer looking permalink, so it’s a good little tip.

Technorati Tags: blogging, url, seo, blogs, websites, domains

A domain name search tool that could have saved me a ton of headache recently.

It is suggestion based - will give you available domains based on a set of topic keywords or a sentence. Simple interface. Very Google-esque

Try it - DomainsBot

Via Darren Rowse

Darren talked a while back about various SEO techniques you can employ. I thought I’d share a few I’ve found useful.

Inbound Links are the most important factor to consider. But, you cannot control it. And asking for it is a no-no (most of the time).

How do you get people to vote for you (link to you)? My tack - write good stuff. Then communicate. Let IM be your friend. Most bloggers share a heck of a lot of personal information. If you like what someone writes, comment. That is a basic step. Email is the next. Get that rapport going. Once these relationships are in place, you have someone interested in what you write and in you - and that’s a powerful thing.

Other tips from Darren:

I would recommend that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines.

Directories - Another way to generating inbound links is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the benefits of such a strategy - the first thing that they do when starting a new site is to do the rounds of directories - submitting links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there - many of which offer a free submission…

Inter-link your Blogs - Increasingly bloggers are starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and writers working together…

Great tips for websites and blogs alike. Be you. Write what drives you. Have fun. Talk. Blogging is as much about social networking as it is about the stuff that gets written.

So, I’m giving Google Sitemaps a shot. I have some new blogs which may or may not be sandboxed, or just may not be fully indexed. So, I decided to try a Google product to get that indexing rolling along.

Google Sitemaps is Google’s way of jumpstarting the indexing process. Instead of just coming across your website or blog through some other link, this gives them direct information of when to go. For Google, this means more content. For publishers - perhaps faster indexing, shorter sandbox. Who knows.

Search engines such as Google discover information about your site by employing software known as “spiders” to crawl the web. Once the spiders find a site, they follow links within the site to gather information about all the pages. The spiders periodically revisit sites to find new or changed content.

Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling. By using Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the web and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to our index.

Adding blogs to Google Sitemap is the easiest method of all, since blogs can be easily discovered by following links and have dynamic content. So, all you need to do (basically) is sign into Sitemaps with your Google ID, add all the blog files (xml, rtf, feed) to the list, then wait for Google to visit. It took a day or so for them to visit all 10 of my blogs, but now they are all in there.

According to the Sitemaps page that was created for me (kind of like an account management page), I’ve been indexed by Google on all blogs (old and new) for about 4 hours. For the older blogs, this is not really important. Google crawls the site a lot since I update a lot. For the newer sites, it’s good. I’ve been crawled, but the frequency is low. Now, I can manually force a crawl from the Sitemap page. Not bad.

Will it create any difference in the frequency of crawl? In full indexing? In being sandboxed? It’s too early to tell. But, when I know, I’ll let you know.

One thing to note - there was an error in Google having a look at my Drupal-based site. It’s the one site where we don’t produce the code (Drupal does) so it’s going to be a pain to find out where the stumbling block was. Stumbling blocks are not good because they can result in only partial indexing.

So, give it a shot. Let me know. Anyone have any more tangible results than these?

Technorati Tags: google sitemaps, google, sitemaps, SEO, sandbox, indexing, crawling

There is nothing worse than bad PR and bad email marketing. I’ll admit that effective email marketing requires a lot of data capture, interaction and real 2 way value. Not an easy task, to say the least. However, it really irks me when it’s obvious no effort has been put into building that relationship with me. Why send me email if relationships are not what you want?

Well, here is my part of the dialogue. To Insider Pages: your email marketing sucks.

• You sent me spam. I did not ask for it.
• You capitalized on the buzz around Martha Stewart in a lame attempt to get my interest.
• You spent more time designing your newsletter than writing it.
• You don’t know I blog. You’ve never read my blog.
• You could have asked me to help you market your product. You assumed I would, but I won’t.
• You thank me for using your product. I never have.
• You send me email about Yoga. Never tried it.
• You don’t ask me to engage. The email is push only - you don’t want to hear back from me for anything.
• You don’t have a blog.
• You don’t use RSS to disseminate local reviews.
• You’ll likely never read this.

Don’t send a blogger an email you don’t want published. It’s going to be something I do from now on out. If you want me to try your product, ask me. Engage with me. I likely will. Don’t spam me.

Rules of the blogosphere:

1. Listen.

2. Engage.

3. Respond.

Let’s see if this gets their attention.

How not to do email marketing:

Martha’s Misfortune:

Not Using Insider Pages

Dear Arieanna,

“If everyone in the U.S. were to walk briskly 30 minutes a day, the incidence of many chronic diseases would be cut 30% to 40%.”

- TIME Magazine

Nice statistic, but what are you going to do about it? With Atkins filing for bankruptcy, it’s obvious that grapefruit and low carb diets are fads that fade. Our members know that it’s fitness, not just dieting that matters. Want a gym where you’re not just another body? Michelle B. of San Francisco compares her gym to Cheers:



“ This is a neighborhood friendly fitness center, where people really do know everybody’s name. A very clean facility and the atmosphere is very personable. ”



Celebrities will do anything to get their fitness fix. Case in point: Martha Stewart. Despite house arrest, Martha snuck to her yoga class, assuring three more weeks of home confinement. Perhaps Martha should have had the Yoga class come to her? Kim R. of Seattle has the perfect solution for Martha’s unique situation.



“ YogaTeam has a few options for your company and can teach an excellent yoga class anywhere from a cafeteria to a hallway to someone’s private office…They’re also available for company retreats and private tea parties at your office or home.”



Had Martha used Insider Pages , she may have been able to avoid more hard time in the slammer..er her luxurious Bedford, NY estate. Guess that anklet has been weighing her down. Take advantage of your freedom and get walking!

Thanks for making Insider Pages the best way to find local businesses!

Jen B.,

Your Neighborhood Insider

Technorati Tags: spam, email marketing, bad pr, pr, email, worst practices

DMNews has the scoop that the Google AdSense program is testing topic targeting in order to make the ads more effective for advertisers and publishers.

AdSense is testing a program with a few publishers, letting them send more “signals” about their Web site, to better tailor ads. Though AdSense already uses signals based on the content of Web sites, such as headlines and font sizes, to generate ads, this would let advertisers tailor ads based on their users’ demographics and other signals, which are yet to be determined.

This is, partly, topic specific information. I would tell them I had a coffee blog for Vancouver Coffee - easy enough. For this or for Blogaholics, I might want to relay more pertinent information such as demographics. Ads for this site revolve around starting up blogs, but most of you already have blogs, so that’s not very effective. But if I could relay information I know about my readers and about those who find me through search engines, I could get better results.

The program is in beta right now, but it sounds good. It will need high level fraud protection to function properly, but it has legs.

There is also a test going on that allows advertisers to more than double the text included in the ad. Interesting to see how that would work. Would they pay more per click since it chews up more room? Who knows. Would it improve CTR? No idea. It would be rather cluttered, though.

Via ProBlogger

Feedster has answered the Calacanis Challenge and come up with the Feedster Top 500 for August, 2005. The announced:

Today, Feedster launched the FEEDSTER Top 500, a ranking of the most interesting and important blogs in the US. The ranking is achieved by taking into account factors such as the number of inbound links over time; if the blog has been recently updated; and the elimination of obvious non-blogs that have appeared on other top-blog lists. [bolding mine]

Ok, first, why in the US? Why the restrictor? Especially since it was not effective, and blogs from all over are included. Why were blogs eliminated for appearing on other lists? That biases the list. And obvious top-bloggers are included, so how was it determined who would go and who would stay? Using inbound links and recent updates in no way eliminates the bias determined from the older bloggers - it’s the same metrics.

“We left out professional news sites, aggregation systems, and some fairly static web sites that happened to have feeds but don’t ‘feel bloggy,’” says Mr. Johnson. “This sort of filtering is a different screen than what we use to categorize news versus blogs in Feedster search and is much more subjective. Our first iteration of this list solves the staleness problems and not-a-blog problems that others have faced.”

Well, not completely. The determination of what is a blog and what is news, is, as stated, arbitrary. Would I count Boing Boing as a news site or a blog? I’d be borderline on that one, but would definitely think it more news than blog based on the volume. And DeviantART doesn’t seem anything like a blog to me.

The list is indeed longer and perhaps more diverse due to this, but the metrics of the list are still the same. From this, I don’t think the list lives up to my expectations or those of others. Perhaps if a step had been added to add the description of the blog or the topic categories, it would prove useful. If diversity was a goal, as stated, then it must be described. Looking at names of blogs does not tell unfamiliar readers that the blogs are diverse in topics - the names are often arbitrary.

Read more of my comments and suggestions on Blogaholics.

Via Read/Write Web

Update: Scott Rafer notes that the inclusion of “US” in the press release was his mistake and is not actually a part of the list. The wiki URL has been corrected from Scott’s post.

Technorati Tags: feedster, top 500, calacanis, feedster top5 00, lists, a lists, top blogs

Why Blog? by Paul Chaney has linked to a great resource for bloggers. It’s a PDF of business blogging. Kind of an intro or how-to, really.

The PDF was developed by Rich Ottum of eStrategyOne. It includes some good pointers, including a top 10 list of things to do before you start your blog with a lot of good descriptions.

The publishing strategy includes:

• become a blog reader
• learn the terminology
• formulate an objective
• find your voice
• select a publishing platform

There’s also a great section on how to market your blog.

The file is here: PDF

Technorati Tags: blogging, business, corporate, PR, blogs