November 3rd, 2010
Ignore the News
The purpose of the news is to get your attention and sell your eyeballs.
Its secondary purpose is to inform.
Do you write a daily blog? Where do you get your ideas? I have a few methods I use to get daily ideas– sometimes from conversations, or offline stuff, and sometimes from online when those methods fail me.
When I write a post, the absolute last inspiration method I use is what’s topical. It’s at the very bottom of the list. Perhaps that has made my traffic suffer– but if everyone is writing about something, I want to avoid it, not add my two cents. That’s my way– but a lot of other blogs differ in how they work. Many are more successful than this.
The purpose of the news source is to get your attention and sell your eyeballs. If it succeeds at this it gains marketshare, and it leverages interesting, current subjects to do this. Choosing an unpopular subject makes it far more difficult to interest people. If you’re picky, it makes your life harder.
I challenge you to 7 posts that have nothing to do with anything going on in the news or the blogosphere. If you do this, here’s what will happen:
New methods. You’ll learn that there are more ways to be inspired than to read your RSS feed or Twitter. You’ll discover patterns around you that help you understand what goes on. You’ll see yourself getting more from the offline space.
Increased interest. Your existing audience will learn something new about you, or will sit up and pay attention to what you write, because you’ll be writing differently. You’ll find that you get more comments from the lurkers because they’ll see a change in your patterns.
Different audience. You’ll attract a new kind of reader. People in your space already know about you and what you’re about. Ann Handley not only does MarketingProfs but also writes the personal blog Annarchy, in which she reveals a whole other side of herself. These two attract different kinds of people.
What methods are you using right now to help you write? Can you live without them? Think about it.
Filed by Julien at 6:15 am under blogging, writing
6 Comments
August 27th, 2010
Have a good blog? You need a good archive.
Your archive page is probably the least considered of your blog’s design.
Look at any WordPress blog out there, and you’ll see basically the same thing– a sidebar with links, kind of confusing, not much else.
Stresslimit and I decided to solve this by releasing our first WordPress plugin.
Justin, Colin, and the rest of the team I work with worked crazy hard to create an archive page that looked as fresh and different as the rest of my site, and the result was what you see below.
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I’ve always thought it’s one of the coolest parts of my site, so it’s awesome that it’s now available for free. We decided to release it as a WordPress plugin, and basically solve everyone’s ugly archive problems forever.
What the plugin does
- Pulls thumbnails based on images inside the post, automagically.
- Customizable colour based on your blog design (inside the Settings menu)
- Browsable by month, year, or image
- Far more functional and gorgeous than what WordPress sticks you with.
You can try it out by checking it out on my site (or Robyn’s or Chris’, who just installed it), then download it here and follow the instructions.
Once you’ve installed it, I’d love to hear your opinion on how it works, what could be improved, or what you like– anything, really.
And now, back to our regular scheduled programming. :)
Filed by Julien at 5:40 am under blogging, plugin, writing 14 Comments
May 31st, 2010
Protip: Your inactive blog makes you irrelevant
If you aren’t current, you may as well not exist.
This is my conclusion after reading Sylvain Carle recent post (in French, sorry) that tells me who inspires him in Montreal, the city I call my home. The gist is the following:
Carle lists 21 people that inspire him, and I like him a lot, so I want to find out more about the people I don’t know on his list. I open a bunch of tabs, as you probably would, to look at what these guys are up to. Here’s what I find:
- A handful of active blogs (7 or so, good for you!)
- About 5 Twitter accounts (maybe no blog?)
- About 5 inactive blogs (no content in months)
- One hacked website (yes, really)
The rest were company pages or landing pages with no content or easy entry point.
If you read this and you were on Sylvain’s list, which are you?
What excuse do you have for only having a Twitter account? Why has your content not been updated, in some cases, since 2009 or earlier**? The only thing this tells me is that you’re inactive and not current and that I don’t need to pay attention to you.
Each one of these people had a chance to reach a few more people by being cited as “having influenced” Carle. A few lived up to the promise. Many did not.
Which kind are you?
** Your “sorry I haven’t posted in a while” update doesn’t count, sorry!
Filed by Julien at 11:49 am under blogging, tips, writing 15 Comments
February 16th, 2010
Why Blogs Can't Be Trusted
When was the last time you had a total mental breakthrough?
Do you remember the last time you got information so valuable to you that it changed your life? Was it from a book? Did a mentor teach it to you? Or did it come from a blog or a newspaper?
Call me presumptuous, but I’m going to guess it wasn’t a blog.
Blogs work better with an editorial calendar– ie, you publish New Year’s posts, Valentine’s Day posts, etc., because that’s when people want to hear them… and makes a blog more widely read. Likewise newspapers– they won’t write bad stuff about real estate during a boom– it doesn’t sell papers and doesn’t help subscriptions. Because going with the flow leads to subscribers and dollars, it’s the only feasible thing for a periodical (magazine, newspaper, or blog) to do if it wants to stay competitive.
Anything that has a moneymaking/subscription agenda cannot be trusted. Because the lowest common denominator is popular and profitable, in a market with unlimited competitors, it’s a race to the bottom that will stupefy the audience in the long term.
Of course, some blogs can be trusted– but they aren’t those that will give you top 10 lists or have smashing headlines. Nor are they the ones that make Delicious Popular, so finding them is tough. I’d even argue that most people are duped into reading lots of terrible ones through the impact of things like social proof, etc., largely wasting their time, but considering them invaluable because they want to stay “up to date.”
Indispensable is a myth. You have to cull the herd.
Working against the grain is essential to breakthroughs, critical to profitability (financial or otherwise). You will not get this while reading what everyone else is. Secrets are profitable because nobody knows them, and once things are published, they’re no longer secrets and, as such, no longer valuable.
What are your favourite blogs? What can you absolutely not go without?
My list right now is very short… and secret. ;) Is yours?
Filed by Julien at 2:16 pm under blogging 15 Comments
February 8th, 2009
How do we solve the guest post problem?
Guest posts. We’ve all seen them. They may bother you, they may not. Too often, they are a plague on otherwise great blogs.
What’s wrong with them? Simple: They aren’t written by the blogger I subscribed to. When I’ve subscribed, I like the content and the style of the founder, and more often than not with guest posts, both change.
Guest posts disrupt the experience. When I see that a blogger has chosen to add guest posts, or even another writer, I don’t pay attention to that author. I begin checking who the authors are on the blog consistently, and begin reading only if the original author has written the article.
I don’t think I’m alone. I’m willing to wager that guest posts get less comments, less clickthroughs, less time-on-site than the founder’s own posts. They also dilute the author’s brand, a fact that’s not nearly as measurable but just as important.
So what do we do about them? They obviously serve a purpose: driving traffic, links, and attention towards the guest author. They also add content on days the founder may not want to write. But when there are too many of them, I start to barely pay attention. How can we keep the good (links, attention, and traffic, etc.) while preventing the gradual loss of interest?
Finally, do you feel the same? Am I overstating my case? Let me know what you think.
Filed by Julien at 4:34 pm under blogging 17 Comments
June 26th, 2007
Sick of Akismet? Try Defensio
w00t! For the past three weeks, I’ve been private beta-testing the spam-filtering WordPress plugin, Defensio, built by some peeps from Montreal. Today, their site goes live.
What’s great about this plugin is that it actually displays the percentage chance of any comment being spam, so the process of filtering is significantly more transparent and interesting to the user. Geeks will probably find it more interesting than Akismet, the current default.
So if you’re looking to try an alternative to Akismet, go to their site and poke around. Maybe you’ll find something you like; I did. :)
Filed by Julien at 10:38 am under blogging
May 22nd, 2007
Hacking the influencers list
Neat. Despite doing totally not a hell of a lot on my blog this month, I ended up #6 on the list of most influential blogs in Quebec (fr), which you can download here. Mitch, who actually does work on his, was at #4– far more deserved, I think. I suspect the rating is highly influenced by Technorati. If so, this stuff shouldn’t surprise anyone– English-language bloggers will always get more links than francophone ones.
If you want to get higher up on the next list, getting involved early in a niche, like podcasting, will really help. “General bloggers” aren’t doing spectacularly these days, I suspect. Likewise, showing up at events generally ensures people will link to you a fair amount… sorry to give up the secrets, guys. :)
Filed by Julien at 4:41 pm under blogging 4 Comments
May 1st, 2007
Stray feed
It appears that an old feed from this blog has been left orphaned– this one:
http://inoveryourhead.net/wp-rss2.php
Anyone know how to get it to update properly? Right now, it’s pointing at Feedburner, but Google Reader doesn’t seem to be able to update it.
Filed by Julien at 3:36 pm under blogging, technical 2 Comments
March 14th, 2007
Yulblog turns 7
Yulblog, the oldest regular gathering of bloggers on the planet, is turning 7 this Friday! The party is at 8pm, here, following the launch party of three Québec bloggers who recently got book deals.
I’m in Austin, of course, but my heart is still over there (well, mostly). :)
Filed by Julien at 3:52 pm under blogging
February 8th, 2007
The Montreal Gazette is planning a local tech blog
Sorry, I’ve got no links as of yet, but I met with Roberto Rocha, author of the recent piece The Invisible Industry, today. He says the Gazette have agreed to launch a blog focusing on the local technology industry, which he hopes will gain local entrepreneurs and early adopters some exposure.
Weirdly, it also turns out Roberto has been playing capoeira for a little longer than I have– small world, eh. Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing what they put together. The way I see it, this is probably the best thing the Gazette will have had available in a while.
Filed by Julien at 10:56 pm under blogging 3 Comments
