Last Post on Blog-World Watch

Today will be my last post on Blog-World Watch. I have completed my testing on Blogspot and completed my white paper of the benefits of blogging.

I will now be consolidating my writing efforts to my main flagship blog Web-World Watch. Thanks for reading and make sure to subscribe to my main blog where you'll find the same great content and insightful commentary as you've found here.

New Blogging Trends for Clients

Click my post title to read what Darren at ProBlogger feels are the five emerging blog trends from his point of view. His blog is a good read and one that I routinely follow, but his is a focus for professional bloggers. So here is my list of blogging trends for clients to consider (not professional bloggers).

Trends in site and design that you should consider implementing as you set up your own business blog:

1. Slick magazine portal page style blogs are the rage right now versus the typical one or two column blog layout. Here's an example of that style to consider: http://www.problogger.net/ Notice the use of multiple columns and blocks of content and advertising.
2. Multiple writers on one blog. Routinely we have two writers on five day a week blogs, but now we're seeing blogs that we work on have more guest bloggers or staff writers post occasionally on the blog and all are listed on the mast head as writers. You can take this approach too. We'll help you get started.
3. Multi-content blogs. Now on this point, I disagree with Darren at ProBlogger. All we do is focused on search engines. You will fragment your message, your search engine authority when you start blogging on many different topics on one blog. This may be fine for some "magazine" style blogsites, but for the typical client to stay on topic is very important. You do not want a pest control blog to be blogging about shoes or how to find coupons to buy a PDA! You need to stay on pest control and service topics. To do otherwise is to chase away your readers.
4. Soft monetizing of sites. Yes, blogs are moving to include advertising, but for the typical client the only ads you should have on your blog are those pointing to your products and services. I do not know of many people who are really racking in the cash from monetizing their blog. Additionally ads can be distracting and can affect the "look" of the blog. What would work is small ads for your own products, white papers, and coupons for your services.
5. Integration with other media. Yes, this is a new trend and one you can certainly leverage for your own blog. Introduce a Twitter feed, headlines, and other widgets in the sidebar of your blog site. Connect in new ways with your readers and provide ability for them to interact with you. Get signed up for Google's Friend Connect as an easy way to implement these new widgets and features without programming skills.

The world of blogging IS changing but not all of ProBlogger's recommendations are effective for business blog owners. If you need professional writing services for your business blog, consider us first.

No More Posts Here!

We're consolidating our efforts and this week is our last week on this blog. Please click our post title to go to the blog that we will be updating for our readers. After May 24th all posts will only be done at our new blog The Web Authority.

We've migrated all of our posts and content, so you'll be sure to find what you want. In the meantime, please bookmark this page: http://www.mccordweb.com/weblogs/ and add our feed link http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWebAuthority.

We won't be deleting this blog, but we just won't be updating it.

We've just finished updating our new blog and hope you'll like the design and improvements we've added.

See you there!

Blogging For Hire - A Note to Professional Writers

If you are blogging for clients professionally be aware of several potential pitfalls that we have experienced - the unexpected use of your blog content.

You won't care if you are "working for hire", how a client uses your blog posts, but if you also sell your services to create press releases and web content, if you do not license your content or contractually state how your content is used, you may end up hurting yourself. What I specifically mean is that without restriction a client can build website content at the price of your $10 or $15 each blog post price, can get a press release written on the cheap, or even get content for their next how-to book at your expense.

Certainly this is not what you expected when you started blogging at $10 or $15 per post, but this is what has happened specifically to us, so learn from our experience! Although each client contract is different and we can be flexible, now, our standard contract states that our created blog content is licensed only for use on th client's one blog and to see us for prices on web content and press releases created from blog posts.

If you don't care that the going rate for press release writing is around $250 and you are potentially supplying a press release at your blog post price of $10 to $15, then go right ahead. If you don't care that the going rate for 450 words of content is around $250 and you are supplying it for $10 to $15, then go right ahead. Just be aware that there are some potential clients who WILL make an effort to build their site, book, or press release arsenal at your expense hoping that you simply won't be savvy enough to know any different.

We even had a client even gloat to us about the fact that they compiled our created blog posts into a book and published it as a "how to book". The nerve! If you don't spell it out in your contract, you are simply setting yourself out to be taken advantage of unfortunately.

Be particularly careful of clients who are very specific of what they want you to write in a post as they may be using it for a press release. Don't be afraid to ask why and what the use will be. Be careful of clients who give you a list of topics that look like chapters in a book, or steps to follow in a process. They may be writing a book from your content.

The bottom line is if you are contractually working for hire, you have no rights, but be aware that the price for a blog post is way, way, way below the average established market price for press release writing, book authoring, and web content creation. Don't sell yourself short or give away your intellectual property too cheaply. If you are not sure if your client is taking advantage of you, do a web search on a verbatim phrase from some of your work quoted like this "search phrase in quotes" on Google and see what pops up.

It's time to take a careful look at your contract or if you are writing without one, to get one in place.

Outsourcing Your Blog Content Creation Overseas

The old adage you get what you pay for is exactly right when it comes to outsourcing your blog writing overseas. Indian and Philippine writers simply do not have the grasp of the American language to communicate properly with blog readers. When you are serious about communicating your message, you simply do not want a United Kingdom spelling of a common word that Americans may consider a misspelling as well or the strange use of everyday term.

Your website and blog content is about communicating your business message and should not have the distractions that a non-native speaker may include in an important post or online message. It is not as if they do it on purpose, clearly non-native speakers want and try to write and speak like a native speaker, but they can miss commonly used syntax or introduce strange wording or meanings without knowing that they are doing so.

I've seen some bloggers charge $5 a post for blog writing, but on analysis the post was worded strangely or included misspellings. There is simply no replacement for a native speaker when it comes to crafting your message for your blog or website.

Adobe Drops GoLive for Dreamweaver

I've expected this for a while but Adobe made it public yesterday. Adobe has decided to drop GoLive. In an email yesterday Adobe stated that there would be no new development, sales of the product or support for Adobe GoLive.

In addition Adobe finally offered an upgrade price to move from GoLive to Dreamweaver. It is unfortunate, but I bought Dreamweaver at the end of March for $399 and now Adobe is offering it to me as a GoLive user for $199.

Since I have been using Dreamweaver, I like it. I am taking a class to learn the ins and outs of the program. I do like that it makes it very easy to add JavaScript and CSS and the code seems pretty clean. But I sure do wish that Adobe would have allowed me to buy it as a GoLive upgrade in March when I asked the supervisor why they would not allow GoLive users to upgrade at the upgrade price.

I have asked Adobe for a credit or at least a store credit (I bought it at Adobe.com) for training or a book, but realistically I doubt they will respond. So if you are a GoLive user, look for your $199 upgrade link in your email or call Adobe and get Dreamweaver while you can at this special low price.

Looking for Posts

Now that Blogger has a new future publish date, we are able to post ahead and wanted to point out to you where you can find our content as we will no longer be providing teasers for our daily posts cross linking our blogs.

Monday and Thursday find our posts here at Blog-World Watch

Tuesday and Friday find our posts at Web-World Watch

Wednesday and Friday find our posts at Design-World Watch

We'll be watching our stats and making changes as needed. Right now Blog-World Watch is our most popular blog with readers using RSS subscriptions. Web-World Watch is our most syndicated blog on the Web; featuring our headlines on a variety of website, and Design-World Watch is our newest blog and is still building traffic.

The Web is Atwitter Over Twitter

Twitter is in the news and if you have not tried it, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Twitter is a new social networking site. If you click my post title, you will go to my Twitter home page and there you can see what I am doing and who I am following.

I think Twitter is easy to use and fun. Once I have gotten over the novelty and deleted people who were posting every five minutes drivel on their daily lives, I have actually picked up a few interesting tips and applications that others in my industry are checking out or watching. I have found out about Fire Eagle, Twitter Map, Twitter Feeds, just to name a few.

Although I have now gotten tired of seeing what someone posted for lunch, I am watching Twitter to see what others are watching and looking for. I am also using it to point to interesting articles and also as a platform for my blog. So once you get past the initial thrill, you can put Twitter to work for you as a social media tool.

Don't Use Blogger Custom FTP

We used to implement Blogger custom FTP for clients, but now are no longer recommending its use. Blogger custom FTP is where your blogger account is set up to allow your blog posts to be archived back on your own domain server using FTP for search engine benefits.

The problem with Blogger custom FTP is that it is easily crashed, sometimes can take hours for the FTP part to send the posts to your server, and if you have a custom template can be fraught with problems.

If you want the search engine benefits that a blog affords, I strongly recommend that you use WordPress back on your own server. Upload and posting time is very snappy and you won't end up at the mercy of Blogger when they do updates. We migrated several customers several months ago when Blogger had a reported bug for custom FTP clients as it took two days to publish blogs.

Another issue with Blogger custom FTP is label bloat. If you end of with many labels on your blog, get ready to spend hours deleting them as your publishing time will move to hours from seconds. The best option if you simply cannot use WordPress is to use Blogspot with a custom domain setting. We have found out that you really do not take a hit with the search engines when you are not using custom FTP blogging.

Podcasts and RSS News Feeds

This is an interesting tidbit of information for today. Did you know that only 7% of the Web market is actually reading news via RSS news feeds, but 9% of the market is listening to and downloading podcasts?

I found it interesting that RSS still has so little acceptance in the wider market. Personally I watch blogs that I am interested in with a My Live portal page and then if I am interested I click in to read the full post. I find it easy and practical to be able to scan large amounts of content at a glance and cherry pick the items for the day that warrant my attention. It is surprising to me that more simply have not embraced the true power of RSS and continue to manage large bookmark files and click in to every blog that they watch.

Why do I like My Live as my RSS news aggregate? Well I used to use My Yahoo, but now with My Live I have a cleaner interface without ads. I think that it looks less cluttered.

Auto Publishing Blog Posts

This is a test of the auto publish feature on Blogger. I am writing this post on Friday and have set it to publish on Saturday.

Let's see if this new feature really works!

Our May Newsletter is Out

Click to read our May newsletter. Topics are:

Getting Links the Easy Way with “Link Bait” Articles

Build Search Engine “Authority Links” with Press Releases

Become an Authority On the Web in Your Field by Blogging

Blogger Introduces Auto Future Publishing

Blogger has finally gotten the feature that we wanted most! Auto Publish.
Now you can enter your post in Blogger and set the date when you want to publish.

For some of us who write ahead and want to schedule posts this is a very welcome addition.
Thanks Blogger!

Building Blog Traffic - Best Practices

Our own blog is a case in point, maintaining and building readership is an important and tough job. In 2006 and early 2007 nearly 40% of all of our website visitors were reading our Web-World Watch blog (our only blog at the time). Then our business grew dramatically and we had some personnel related issues and our own blog got pushed to the bottom of our priority list. We lost major readership and blog traffic by the end of 2007 due to infrequent posting.

Since January 2008, we have been focused on building back what we lost and I have to tell you, it is a tough road to hoe. Here are some of the lessons that we have learned in the process that you may find helpful in regard to building your own blog traffic.

1. Don't get hung up on Feedburner subscriber stats. Stats here only reflect your blog readership using RSS news feeds which is still only a 7% reflection on the real marketplace. Yes, keep an eye on RSS subscribers, but know that the majority of your traffic will come from readers using browsers so make sure you have website analytics installed to track this larger portion of your readership.

2. Stick with it, to build traffic you really need to post 5 days a week. Yes, I know this is a real grind, but you've got to have content for people to read to want to follow and subscribe to your blog.

3. Don't get disappointed by the lack of comments. People are reading, I know this from experience, but rarely will they leave a comment unless you really hit a nerve, strike a chord, or have a controversial topic.

4. Make sure your content is good. This is crucial, you cannot build readers if you have drivel or derivative posts.

5. Leave comments on other blogs that you are following pointing to your blog. You may not get search engine benefits due to "no follow" tags, but you may point readers to your site. The other benefit is that you will connect with others in your field and keep tabs on what is happening in your industry and you may actually learn something new.

6. Embrace new things on your blog. Add widgets, test applications, use all these tools to not only keep your blog up-to-date, but give you fodder for new posts and new ways to engage readers.

7. Watch your stats and cater to your audience. If you don't watch your stats, you won't know what your readers consider important. I have learned that my readers like best practice blog posts and that out of my three blogs, this one Blog-World Watch is my most popular, and so this is the blog I invest the most time in, and use to publish my most interesting posts. Do you know what your blog readers want? Watch your stats to see what posts generated the most traffic and build on your success. What you find may totally surprise you, but use that information as a building block for building blog traffic.

If you have your own best practice approach for building blog traffic, leave a comment (really do it this time as I really want to know). Leave a link, and I'll make sure to visit your blog, possibly subscribe to follow it, and write about it one of my future posts. Good blogging everyone!