Sorry for three days of absence from this blog. I needed some time to recuperate after the Podacstercon which I attended last Saturday. It was a marvelous experience. For more information check out the Podcastercon blog, the wiki, a nice article in News and Observer, the blog reports via Technorati tags, Technorati search and Google blogsearch and pictures on Flickr.
Kudos to Brian Russell for organizing an unconference and taking the concept to the maximum. All sessions were designed by participants by editing the wiki ahead of time. Some of the open sessions were designed on the spot! With at least half of the participants constantly online via their laptops, and two big screens in each of the two big classrooms, it was possible to make changes on the go and still be confident that all participants would be cognizant of the changes.
At one point someone asked "What are we supposed to do now?" and the next person answered "This is our conference. We'll do whatever we want. So, let's do something" That's the spirit! I did not see anyone uncomfortable with the free-flowing format. Everything that needed to happen happened and everyone was always in the loop.
The attendants, of course, are all used to the concept of swarming and connectivity and the order emerging out of chaos, so this worked perfectly for this kind of crowd. Still, if the conference gets bigger in the future (there were about 300 participants this time around, more than a third coming from out of state) and spreads over two days, perhaps a little bit more structure may be neccessary, but not too much more....
In the morning I attended The 411 - How to Podcast session. A little bit too non-linear and occasionally over my head (and I am a blogger, familiar with a lot of online stuff!), but I still managed to learn a lot or at least become familiar with some of the aspects of the process of making a podcast. Perhaps I should have gone to the Podcasting For Everyone open session in the afternoon - I heard it was better geared towards beginners (No, I do not regret attending the Podcasting and Traditional Media: Competition and Cooperation session - I have learned a lot about the radio business there).
First I need to chase down the tech-support guy to fix my sound card so I can do this. Then, guided by Brian's excellent Indy article, the book I got after the conference - Podcasting Hacks - also Podcasting For Dummies I just ordered, and the online tutorial Podcasting 101, I can get myself started on podcasting.
On a number of occasions in the past I've been frustrated when I wanted to include a paragraph or so from a source that is not available online (e.g., a book) in my blog posts. Mostly, I ignored it, sometimes I transcribed/retyped it, but in the future I plan to just read it into a microphone and embed an audio file into the post. How about a weekly podcast from James Dobson's childrearing books followed by my written commentary?
I met some extremely interesting people at the conference, as well as several bloggers I knew from before. We had dinner at Rathskeller and a beer at Fuse. It was a very valuable experience.
But the main reason I went to the Podcastercon was to attend the Education Session. It was worth it! David Warlick led the discussion. You can see his own comments, the workpage that was updated in real time during the session, and an excellent review by Teach42. There is so much material in all those places, there is no way I can summarize all of the session here, so just go and investigate by yourself.
What I want to do is record my lectures and have them available for students. I am teaching in March/April next time and I will definitely do this. But what was most interesting to me was the way this technology adapts to the psychology and sociology of today's students. As David stated in the beginning, today's students are extremely connected to each other. When they come into the classroom and are asked to switch off all of the electronic equipment (cell-phones, iPods, computers, etc.), we are cutting off their 'tentacles'. Now if I were a squid and someone cut off my tentacles I'd be very uncomfortable to say the least.
What the new technology does (and what freaks some people out) is that each student's work becomes public (not neccessarily to the wide world, but at least to other people within the school if the website is password-protected). In the past - and present - the only reader of the student's work is the teacher. In the future, all the work will be read, heard or seen by their peers. How is that going to shake the social organization of the classroom? Is that going to break down the traditional division into cliques of jocks, nerds, etc.? Is a popular jock going to be deflated when exposed to be a half-illiterate dummy, and a shy Goth girl in the corner becomes popular due to immense writing, speaking, acting or video-editing talents? Is the motivation going to rise for students to perform always their very best? I have asked similar questions regarding blogging in the classroom before. Is it going to have an effect like this?
That is why, I think, Fred Stuzman's work on The Facebook is so important (although it is a work on progress - he has done no stats yet, and I seriously doubt there is going to be a significant difference between # of friends that liberal and conservative students have, or the subtle changes in proportions of liberals and conservatives over time - it is only freshmen and only one semester so far, and a more longitudinal study is needed as I have stated before). What do you think?
Tag: podcastercon2006
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Turn your blog into a book (and sell it)
So, you've been writing a blog for quite some time now. You are proud of some of your work. You are particularly proud of some of your old stuff, now burried deep in the archives never to be seen again. Who reads archives, after all? You don't want to repeat yourself over and over again, and have never felt at ease with constantly linking back to your old posts (I never had such qualms). So, what can you do to make your old stuff more accessible and available?
Well, now you can turn it into a book form - yup, the real, physical book - and sell it through your blog, as well as through all the regular online booksellers (e.g., Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's). And it is easy and fast these days to do so. Here, the guy who writes the Coyote Blog describes the entire process - it took him several hours of work and in two days he got his books in the mail.
Apparently, the best and cheapest place to go to publish a book is Lulu.com. Lulu makes it easy for you by providing a ready-made template and tips on formatting, so the whole process appears really easy.
To get the people excited about this, they have now opened a contest - the Lulu Blooker Prize - for books that originated as blog posts, or what they call 'blooks'. As the blooks come in they get listed on the sidebar of the Lulu blog, so you can go and check them out, as well as keep track of the contest on the blog.
There will be prizes for three books, one in each category - fiction, non-fiction and comic strip. The best of those three will get $2000, the other two will get $1000 each. Not shabby for a poor blogger. You can learn more about the contest and see the rules if you are interested.
The judges are not associated with Lulu, but are respected bloggers themselves: Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, Robin Miller who writes at a lot of places including Slashdot, and Paul Jones, the director of amazing Ibiblio. If you win, they'll write you blurbs for your book!
Well, they don't do pop-up books so I have no idea how can one deal with the links. After all, the link is the currency of the blogosphere (or ATP, if you are a biologist). Coyote Blog guy just copied and pasted, after very mild editing, all his posts from the first year of his blog and - voila - here's the book. But what can you do if your blogging style is profuse linking and building a network? I guess that is just not suitable for turning into book form.
I actually have a backup MSWord file of all my original/substantial posts from my blog (in chronological order, as opposed to blog-traditional reverse chronological order). I don't bother saving one-liners, copyrighted cartoons, linkfests and carnivals. Seeing this whole blook thing unveil, I looked at that file again. It is almost 800 pages long (OK, it's in New York Times 12pt, which can be and should be changed)!
All those posts, even the longest and most "mine", still contain bunches of links. Should I edit the links out, change the fonts (I just did - it is still about 600 pages in Palatino 9pt) and see if it looks like anything? I'd like to have a few hardcopies to send to people who are unable to read my blog (e.g, my mother), though I have no chance of winning a Blooker Prize when Washingtonienne and Belle du Jour have already submitted their stuff. There are so many much better writers than I am, and their blogs are so much more focused. My blog is just too ecclectic, as well as uneven over time, with ups and downs in quality - every reader would like some posts and hate, or be indifferent to, most of the others. Should I go ahead and do it? Would anyone be interested in it? After all, I am most proud of some of my oldest posts - the recent stuff is just so scattershot and scatterbrained.
Actually, what I will do, but not yet, is put together the "Clock Tutorial" posts from Circadiana and publish them as a textbook. I need to work on those much more, though. That may take another year of writing.
Well, now you can turn it into a book form - yup, the real, physical book - and sell it through your blog, as well as through all the regular online booksellers (e.g., Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's). And it is easy and fast these days to do so. Here, the guy who writes the Coyote Blog describes the entire process - it took him several hours of work and in two days he got his books in the mail.
Apparently, the best and cheapest place to go to publish a book is Lulu.com. Lulu makes it easy for you by providing a ready-made template and tips on formatting, so the whole process appears really easy.
To get the people excited about this, they have now opened a contest - the Lulu Blooker Prize - for books that originated as blog posts, or what they call 'blooks'. As the blooks come in they get listed on the sidebar of the Lulu blog, so you can go and check them out, as well as keep track of the contest on the blog.
There will be prizes for three books, one in each category - fiction, non-fiction and comic strip. The best of those three will get $2000, the other two will get $1000 each. Not shabby for a poor blogger. You can learn more about the contest and see the rules if you are interested.
The judges are not associated with Lulu, but are respected bloggers themselves: Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, Robin Miller who writes at a lot of places including Slashdot, and Paul Jones, the director of amazing Ibiblio. If you win, they'll write you blurbs for your book!
Well, they don't do pop-up books so I have no idea how can one deal with the links. After all, the link is the currency of the blogosphere (or ATP, if you are a biologist). Coyote Blog guy just copied and pasted, after very mild editing, all his posts from the first year of his blog and - voila - here's the book. But what can you do if your blogging style is profuse linking and building a network? I guess that is just not suitable for turning into book form.
I actually have a backup MSWord file of all my original/substantial posts from my blog (in chronological order, as opposed to blog-traditional reverse chronological order). I don't bother saving one-liners, copyrighted cartoons, linkfests and carnivals. Seeing this whole blook thing unveil, I looked at that file again. It is almost 800 pages long (OK, it's in New York Times 12pt, which can be and should be changed)!
All those posts, even the longest and most "mine", still contain bunches of links. Should I edit the links out, change the fonts (I just did - it is still about 600 pages in Palatino 9pt) and see if it looks like anything? I'd like to have a few hardcopies to send to people who are unable to read my blog (e.g, my mother), though I have no chance of winning a Blooker Prize when Washingtonienne and Belle du Jour have already submitted their stuff. There are so many much better writers than I am, and their blogs are so much more focused. My blog is just too ecclectic, as well as uneven over time, with ups and downs in quality - every reader would like some posts and hate, or be indifferent to, most of the others. Should I go ahead and do it? Would anyone be interested in it? After all, I am most proud of some of my oldest posts - the recent stuff is just so scattershot and scatterbrained.
Actually, what I will do, but not yet, is put together the "Clock Tutorial" posts from Circadiana and publish them as a textbook. I need to work on those much more, though. That may take another year of writing.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Poets For Dinner
Here's yet another way to use blogging as a means of promotion for you or your business. This one is called Poets For Dinner but I'm sure it could work for lots of other ideas as well.
Monday, October 17, 2005
ConvergeSouth
Lats week, Greensboro, NC was a host to an excellent bloging/journalism conference, ConvergeSouth. Here is some of the coverage (mine) of the conference:
ConvergeSouth - First Impressions
ConvergeSouth - Some Pictures
ConvergeSouth - International Coverage
ConvergeSouth - Building Community
ConvergeSouth - Blog Carnivals
ConvergeSouth - Ethics
ConvergeSouth - Policing the Media
ConvergeSouth - Blogging from the outside
ConvergeSouth - Local Online Alt Media
ConvergeSouth - Creative Branding on Blogs
ConvergeSouth - Closing Thoughts
Related: Teaching Blogging
Check the Technorati Search for ConvergeSouth for more coverage by other bloggers.
ConvergeSouth - First Impressions
ConvergeSouth - Some Pictures
ConvergeSouth - International Coverage
ConvergeSouth - Building Community
ConvergeSouth - Blog Carnivals
ConvergeSouth - Ethics
ConvergeSouth - Policing the Media
ConvergeSouth - Blogging from the outside
ConvergeSouth - Local Online Alt Media
ConvergeSouth - Creative Branding on Blogs
ConvergeSouth - Closing Thoughts
Related: Teaching Blogging
Check the Technorati Search for ConvergeSouth for more coverage by other bloggers.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Preventing Further Katrinae
New Orleans may well be dead. Surely 10s of thousands of people are dead, and surely more hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and ice storms are going to recur again and again. But what can you do?
Well, one thing that can be done is to share ideas, and develop yet others. But too often, ideas get pegged as left or right, liberal or conservative, republican or democrat, and so on. Knee-jerk reactions boil up, and before long there is as much incentive to prevent an idea as there is to promote one.
To get beyond all this, I think it is important to reach out to all people, around the world, and from all walks of life...sharing at least one thing. Ideas. Visions.
But wait! That is two things!
OK. Two things.
Thinking thusly, I have invited idea people and visionaries from around the world to join us here, and maybe share what they have learned, or ideas they may be developing. We hope they do join, and that they feel at home here.
And if they have wisdom to impart concerning Katrina and concomitant problems...this would be a windfall. Perhaps I should find a different metaphor...
- Dave Beckwith
Fellow Idea Consultant, Jude Nagurney-Camwell is guest blogger on John Edwards' One America Committee blog
Jude Nagurney-Camwell
Jude (Iddybud) will be the guest blogger on OneAmericaCommittee blog for the entire week.
Go and give her a comment or a shoutout. Jude's work has been seen on CNN, and other national broadcasts and publications, and is reputed to have an IQ of 190. I personally think it is a conservative estimate.
Creative Minds Worldwide/CIWI
CIWI homepage
Also check out SICU Synergy: SICU - Synergy Integrated - Connects the Unconnected, which is hosted by new Idea Consultant, Tom of Finland, who is also the mind behind Synergialaitos, and who, like me, is a big fan of Sibelius. (Finlandia is a staple in my piano repertoire.)
We have also been joined by Jan Karel Kleijn of Amsterdam (See IdeaBroker) and Henk Buist, now in Bulgaria. From our own shore comes Connecticut's Aldon Hynes, whose work I have enjoyed for years. Welcome all!
Also check out SICU Synergy: SICU - Synergy Integrated - Connects the Unconnected, which is hosted by new Idea Consultant, Tom of Finland, who is also the mind behind Synergialaitos, and who, like me, is a big fan of Sibelius. (Finlandia is a staple in my piano repertoire.)
We have also been joined by Jan Karel Kleijn of Amsterdam (See IdeaBroker) and Henk Buist, now in Bulgaria. From our own shore comes Connecticut's Aldon Hynes, whose work I have enjoyed for years. Welcome all!
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Houston Astrodome Concert and Job Incubator
Idea: Bring emergency clean-up experts into the Houston Astrodome to teach able-bodied men and women how to carefully and properly clean up after, say, hurricanes. Teach them also how to construct emergency shelters. Then bring them back to New Orleans and put them to work constructing their own (then others') shelter, from which they do what they were taught, radiating from their shelter.
For their efforts they will be compensated with work, money, food, water, and shelter. And as a bonus, will be given a free concert by A-list musicians.
Do it!
For their efforts they will be compensated with work, money, food, water, and shelter. And as a bonus, will be given a free concert by A-list musicians.
Do it!
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Ideabroker
Ideabroker features such visionaries as Peter Luiks, Jan Karel, Michael Pococky and others.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
More on Blog Carnivals
If you want to learn more about blog carnivals (in the context of the future of journalism) go here. It also contains a list of all extant and extinct carnivals - there's something for everybody.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Cooperative Advertising For Bloggers
Now for those of you who know what cooperative advertising is, then you know there’s nothing new about it. From the early 1900s until just a few years ago cooperative advertising ruled when it came to advertising for small businesses and while it does still exist, overt examples are getting harder to come by.
Now, for those of you who don’t know what cooperative advertising is, please let me explain: Cooperative advertising is when two businesses-- usually one very large business and one small business split the cost of advertising by advertising together. One of the most common examples were the soft drink signs on the front of curb markets and country stores that were once quite common all over the country. Often a small business couldn’t afford a sign of their own so a soft drink company like Pepsi or Doctor Pepper would sell them a sign at less than cost, that included not only the name of the store but the name of the soft drink as well. The small business got a sign for cheap and the soft drink company got themselves a building to advertise on. Occasionally, when competition was at it’s fiercest, the drink companies would give the signs to the store owners free of charge.
Stick with me now as I’m going somewhere with this.
Cooperative advertising is found in print, radio, and television as well on the walls of buildings and on billboards. AC-Delco (a division of General Motors) has entered into hundreds, perhaps thousands of cooperative radio spots with local auto parts dealers and back in the days when department stores were locally owned and operated it wasn’t uncommon to see newspaper ads pairing manufacturers of name brand products with the local department, appliance, and hardware stores.
The most common examples of cooperative advertising still in existence today are the heating and air-conditioning advertisements that pitch a manufacturer’s brand such as Trane or Carrier with the local dealers shown at the end of television commercials.
Like I said, I’m going somewhere with this.
What about double sided business cards for bloggers and small businesses? Take me for example: I pass out 200 business cards each week advertising my websites, BloggingPoet.com and LaureatesKids.com but the back side of my cards are blank. What if a business or nonprofit decided to furnish me with business cards with my websites on one side and their website on the other side? For starters I would probably pass out more than I do now as I can’t afford to print more than I do. Secondly, that business would get some of the cheapest advertisement any business can buy. And number three is the fact that business cards are often seen by far more people than just those people they were handed to. For me that means more readers come to my website and for the business that decided to pay for my our business cards-- more sales for less money.
If you’d like to know where to mail my business cards and what to put on my side, simply send an e-mail to idleblogs (at) yahoo.com
Oh, and another cheap advertising idea I’ve used for a couple of years at one of my other domains, VegetableStalker.com, was to have my bank add my domain name to my personal checks in the lower right corner just above where my signature goes. The bank added it to my checks for free and there’s no advertising cheaper than free, right?
Got an idea for the Idea Consultants? Feel free to contact any of the Idea Consultants to discuss it and don’t forget to return to IdeaConsultants.org for more great ideas.
Now, for those of you who don’t know what cooperative advertising is, please let me explain: Cooperative advertising is when two businesses-- usually one very large business and one small business split the cost of advertising by advertising together. One of the most common examples were the soft drink signs on the front of curb markets and country stores that were once quite common all over the country. Often a small business couldn’t afford a sign of their own so a soft drink company like Pepsi or Doctor Pepper would sell them a sign at less than cost, that included not only the name of the store but the name of the soft drink as well. The small business got a sign for cheap and the soft drink company got themselves a building to advertise on. Occasionally, when competition was at it’s fiercest, the drink companies would give the signs to the store owners free of charge.
Stick with me now as I’m going somewhere with this.
Cooperative advertising is found in print, radio, and television as well on the walls of buildings and on billboards. AC-Delco (a division of General Motors) has entered into hundreds, perhaps thousands of cooperative radio spots with local auto parts dealers and back in the days when department stores were locally owned and operated it wasn’t uncommon to see newspaper ads pairing manufacturers of name brand products with the local department, appliance, and hardware stores.
The most common examples of cooperative advertising still in existence today are the heating and air-conditioning advertisements that pitch a manufacturer’s brand such as Trane or Carrier with the local dealers shown at the end of television commercials.
Like I said, I’m going somewhere with this.
What about double sided business cards for bloggers and small businesses? Take me for example: I pass out 200 business cards each week advertising my websites, BloggingPoet.com and LaureatesKids.com but the back side of my cards are blank. What if a business or nonprofit decided to furnish me with business cards with my websites on one side and their website on the other side? For starters I would probably pass out more than I do now as I can’t afford to print more than I do. Secondly, that business would get some of the cheapest advertisement any business can buy. And number three is the fact that business cards are often seen by far more people than just those people they were handed to. For me that means more readers come to my website and for the business that decided to pay for my our business cards-- more sales for less money.
If you’d like to know where to mail my business cards and what to put on my side, simply send an e-mail to idleblogs (at) yahoo.com
Oh, and another cheap advertising idea I’ve used for a couple of years at one of my other domains, VegetableStalker.com, was to have my bank add my domain name to my personal checks in the lower right corner just above where my signature goes. The bank added it to my checks for free and there’s no advertising cheaper than free, right?
Got an idea for the Idea Consultants? Feel free to contact any of the Idea Consultants to discuss it and don’t forget to return to IdeaConsultants.org for more great ideas.
Friday, July 01, 2005
Monday, June 20, 2005
The Biggest Picture Ideas
One of the great "idea consultants" of our era, IMHO, is Jared Diamond. I have read his latest book "Collapse" and posted a review here.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
IN DASH I-POD
I've yet to run out and buy one, but have no doubt I know of the huge popularity of the Apple I-Pod-- the portable music player from Apple Computer.
Anyway, that got me to thinking: people love their I-Pods, they carry them everywhere, even wear them while they're driving, but did you know it's against the law in most states to drive while wearing headphones or earphones?
So what if someone manufactured an in-dash I-Pod holder that ran the sound through those big car audio speakers instead of those tiny earphones. You could even design it so that it charged your I-Pod's battery while you drive. Imagine listening to your favorite mixes or pod casts while you drive?
Got an idea you'd like to see someone do, an invention you'd like to be able to buy? Send it to any of the Idea Consultants here at IdeaConsultants.org and we'll tell the world about it.
Anyway, that got me to thinking: people love their I-Pods, they carry them everywhere, even wear them while they're driving, but did you know it's against the law in most states to drive while wearing headphones or earphones?
So what if someone manufactured an in-dash I-Pod holder that ran the sound through those big car audio speakers instead of those tiny earphones. You could even design it so that it charged your I-Pod's battery while you drive. Imagine listening to your favorite mixes or pod casts while you drive?
Got an idea you'd like to see someone do, an invention you'd like to be able to buy? Send it to any of the Idea Consultants here at IdeaConsultants.org and we'll tell the world about it.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Blog Carnivals And The Future Of Journalism
What is a blog carnival?
A blog carnival is a blog-post that contains links to posts on other blogs. How does that differ from a linkfest, or for that matter from most of the stuff that early blogs (and many blogs today) routinely did? In the early days of blogs, there was no original content - blogs WERE collections of links. How are carnivals different?
Yesterday I assembled the fifth edition of the monthly Meta-Carnival, a round-up of all known blog carnivals. I have previously archived my posts about blogging in the Category Blogging and posts specifically about carnivals in the Category Blog Carnivals, though I need to, now that my computer is OK again, update these two categories. Some of the posts archived there are longish musings on the role and meaning of carnivals so I urge you to go and read them. I have added another link, a repository of Meta-Carnivals here. Some other people also collect carnivals, most notably Ferdy The Conservative Cat who has developed the Universal Carnival Submission Form. Bigwig of Silflay Hraka, the inventor of the very first carnival (as well as the term "carnival"), used to collect them but has recently decided to just link to my latest edition of the Meta-Carnival.
Rounding the carnivals up every month, in addition to frequent hosting, sending entries and linking to new editions, gave me, I think, some insights into what makes a carnival and especially what makes a succesful carnival. I'll now attempt to systematize what I think I learned. I will repeatedly use analogies to hard-copy journalism and to physical spaces.
What makes a carnival successful?
In order to succeed, a blog carnival needs to: a) have a clearly stated purpose, b) appear with predictable regularity, c) rotate editors, d) have a homepage and archives, and e) have more than one person doing heavy lifting. Let me go over these one at a time.
A) Purpose. Several carnivals, particularly the older ones (e.g., Carnival of Vanities), are all-purpose "Best of..." blog-newspapers and magazines. Nothing wrong with it, of course. NY Times is an all-purpose newspaper and Time is an all-purpose magazine. However, nobody collects NY Times as a prized collection: once read, the issue gets recycled or used for lining the bird cage. Similarly, having a post on - or even hosting - such a carnival may bring you an avalanche of hits for a few days but is highly unlikely to bring you new regular readers. If you prefer a physical analogy, it is like going downtown or to a park when the weather is nice and bumping into a lot of nice people, yet it is unlikely that you will exchange e-mail addresses with any of them, or ever see them again. This was a chance encounter.
Contrast that to more narrowly focused carnivals (e.g., Grand Rounds for medicine and Nursing Moment for nursing). They are blog equivalents of specialty magazines or even technical journals. In physical space, they are analogous to political rallies, MeetUps, seminars, or even scientific conferences. These are the places to go when you are looking for people who share a specific interest with you. You are likely to exchange a lot of e-mail addresses because you want to stay in touch with such people. Sending an entry to a specialized carnival exposes you to bloggers who are inherently interested in your writing. Hosting one makes you even more visible (like giving a plenary lecture at a meeting) and after the temporary avalanche of hits subsides, you will realize you have acquired a number of new regular readers, bloggers who put you on their blogrolls and on their RSS feeds, who keep coming back and linking to your posts. This is how a community is built.
B) Regularity. It really does not matter how often a carnival is posted as long as it is posted at regular intervals. Blog Of The Day and Funny Stuff are dailies. Most carnivals are weeklies. Some carnivals appear every two (e.g., Tangled Bank and Smarter Thank I) or every three weeks (e.g., History), or once a month (e.g., Balkans), or even quarterly (e.g., Carnivalesque and Carnival of Bad History). More narrowly focused a carnival, and more expertise it requires from the bloggers who submit their entries, less frequently the carnival can appear and still retain a decent size and a high level of quality of posts. Carnivals with unpredictable schedules tend to be neglected as unreliable. Can you imagine a newspaper that sometimes shows up on news-stands and sometimes does not? Ferdy, for instance, does not link to carnivals that have irregular schedules. Do it right, or don't do it.
C) Rotation. The first blogs in history were link-fests. Content appeared later. So, if you publish a blog-post that contains a bunch of links to other blogs, how is that a carnival? How is that different from just any other blog-post that is full of links? Even if you give it a name, and a theme and very regular schedule, it is only YOUR post. It better be a very creative and unique service to the blogging community (e.g., Friday Ark) or else nobody will come.
Most carnivals rotate hosts. Every issue is hosted by someone different. Some carnivals have definite "homes", yet the carnival makes regular trips to other blogs for guest-hosting (e.g., Carnival of Education, or Carnival of Sin). Best Of Me Symphony is always on the same blog, but the editor is always somebody else (a guest-editor), and that carnival is always done very well textually and visually and has earned a reputation over time.
Carnivals that are always hosted on the same blog, always by the same editor, and are sometimes irregular in scheduling tend to die off. Add to that linking primarily to posts chosen by the editor (e.g., Blog Tower and Carnival of Insanities) and I would not call it a carnival any more, but a vanity press. It is just a link-rich post by that person on that person's blog - something we all do at least occasionally.
D) Homepage and Archives. Whenever I assemble an issue of the Meta-Carnival, it takes me a few minutes to update carnivals with homepages and hours to update the carnivals without homepages. In a sense I am a "professional" while doing this search, but how about "amateurs"? They'll find it even harder. Imagine a new blogger who first discovers a carnival and reads an issue #23 or so, and wants to check out previous issues. If there is a homepage (or home-blog-post) that contains the archives of all previous issues, it is a breeze. If there is no such thing, the task is extremely difficult, in some cases impossible. Now imagine 50 years from now, when there is an issue #2523. Imagine the immensity of the archives and its value to historians. Start your archives now, while it is still relatively easy to have everything organized. If mainstream media hides its archives behind subscripton wall, while carnivals keep well-organized archives for free, guess who will be more relevant in the future?
E) Community Effort. On my own blog, I am the King. So are you on yours. Why should I come to your blog and submit to your iron-fist rule? One reason why carnivals hosted by a single blog/editor do not have wide readership and tend to whither away is because of a lack of a sense of ownership by a broader community. All the points above, e.g., a sense of purpose, rotation of hosts, regularity/predictability, and the existence of a central place and archives, tend to foster the sense of community. People find each other through the carnivals and keep coming back for more. They see how entering a carnival leads to an increase of regular readership, and hosting one even more so. The originator of the carnival wisely fades into the shadows and lets the carnival take a life of its own.
Carnivals as the Glue of the Blogging Community
There are two ways blogs in general and carnivals in particular can foster community. One is to introduce to each other people from all over the world who are interested in the same topic. I have written at length about this process, with a particular example of how blogging is going to change the future of science. In a sense, that is what one tends to think of first about the benefits of the Internet in general. If you have access to the Web, it does not matter who you are or where you are - you are an equal participant in the global endeavor, whatever that may be. If you like cats, you will meet other cat-lovers from all around the world at the Carnival of Cats.
The second way blogs foster community is on a local level - meeting people locally. This is particularly relevant for political organizing, and to some extent for doing business locally, but meeting local bloggers with similar hobbies and interests (or even dating!) is just around the corner. Geographically delineated carnivals help people in finding each other. So far, carnivals of Indian, Asian, Iraqi and Afghan, British, Canadian (separated into Lefty and Righty) and Balkan bloggers have been doing well. While Blogger, Google and Techorati estimate that there are about 10 million blogs worldwide, with thousands being started every day, I have heard recently that there are additional 10 million bloggers in China! I am assuming they developed their own software and are thus invisible to our search engines. However, those are still large land areas to cover. More recently, two even more narrowly local carnivals appeared (I guess a certain critical mass of bloggers needed to be attained first): North Carolina bloggers and Montana bloggers. These carnivals serve as virtual MeetUps, and often lead to real-life meetups as well as community action.
Lefty and Righty Carnivals
Why does it appear that conservative bloggers are dominating carnivals? It could be due to chance, or perhaps there is a reason, or perhaps this is just an illusion. Is it the greater connectivity of conservatives? Is it the greater individualism of liberals?
Let's look at it historically. The very first carnival, Carnival Of Vanities, was started by a conservative blogger and attracted primarily other conservative bloggers. How many liberals regularly read Silflay Hraka after all? So, this was natural.
For about a year, this was the only existing carnival. During this time, many conservatives got aquanted with the idea of a carnival and soon started a few new ones (e.g., Bonfire Of Vanities, Carnival of Capitalists, Blog Mela, and SEVERAL! Christian carnivals), while most liberals have still never heard of the concept. Another year passed. Once new carnivals got started around topics that have nothing to do with one's political persuasion, e.g., medicine (Grand Rounds), science (Tangled Bank), history, or philosophy, the liberal bloggers got gradually introduced to the concept.
Last year saw an explosion of new carnivals. Every month I have to add a few new ones to the Meta-Carnival (while also reporting on the demise of some). Is there a Liberal Carnival as an equivalent to and balance to the Carnival of Vanities? No. An early attempt was Blog Tower, but it violated all of the rules (A through E above) of successful carnivals and I doubt it will recover. A few weeks ago, the idea was broached on Crooked Timber (and a cool name - Speaker's Corner - was suggested), but nothing came out of it due to, I suspect, a conflict between the wish of Timberites to make it a Crooked-Timber-kind-of-thing, and the wish of others to have it community-run. Recently, a new (and excellent!) Carnival of Un-Capitalists was founded with an explicit purpose to counter the Carnival of Capitalists, i.e., to put together best posts about economic issues from a Progressive perspective. Canadian Liberals have the Cavalcade Of The Canucks, as a counterbalance to the Canadian Right wing's The Red Ensign.
Some recent carnivals are dominated by liberals, even though politics is not important for the topic. For instance, Carnival of the Godless, Skeptic's Circle, Carnival of Bad History and Tangled Bank tend to attract the folks from the reality-based community who are largely liberal. Carnivals of the Balkan bloggers and Montana bloggers are liberal due to chance: their founders are liberal and the first entries were naturally from other liberal blogs. Some other carnivals are pretty evenly balanced, e.g., carnivals of history, philosophy, kids, education, and Tar Heel Tavern (NC bloggers) are consciously kept politically balanced. Thus, while MSM may be perceived as liberal by the Right, and perceived as spineless sellouts to the Bush regime's propaganda machine by the Left, the carnivals, all in all, are pretty balanced. There is a complete range of opinions voiced from one extreme, through the moderate middle, to the other extreme.
I think that the New York Times of the Lefty blogosphere is DailyKos! Every year Markos Moulitzas gets irate when people nominate DailyKos for Koufax Awards in the category of "group blogs". He loudly proclaims that it is HIS blog. But, it is not. Not any more. Ever since he enabled Diaries, Kos has lost control of his blog. I personally almost never read the posts by Markos. I rarely ever go to the front page. But I go there often and read the Diaries. DailyKos has grown into the biggest and best carnival online today. It is the Carnival Of Record in a sense that NYTimes is a Newspaper of Record. Likewise, in comparison to DailyKos, Carnival of Vanities is like Washington Times: the main Righty outlet, but far from the influence of NYTimes.
Carnivals as Journalism
Blogs themselves, no matter what is written on them, are often thought of as "new journalism", a bottom-up kind of journalism that will complement (and keep on their toes) the better-funded top-down journalism of the MSM. With 10 million Chinese blogs and another 10 million blogs around the rest of the world, and the numbers rising fast, the amount of material on blogs is overwhelming. Daily news aggregators (like del.icio.us) and other blog aggregators are worthy attempts at sifting through the mass and concentrating worthy information in one place. Blog-specific search-engines, like Technorati (and the invention of Tags), is another attempt to organize the enormous amount of blog-generated information.
I have a hunch that in the future it will be the blog carnivals that will emerge as the online equivalents of hard-copy media. Carnivals organized around strong concepts, published on rigorous schedules, well-archived, and community-run will outlive their mushy competitors and become the online equivalents of not just TIME magazine, but also GQ, Vogue, Parenting, National Geographic, People, and, why not, Science and Nature.
Carnivals are still new and young. Most people are trying to be nice to each other. Hosts/editors are usually quite happy to publish links to every entry they get. However, this is already starting to change. With an increased popularity of carnivals and number of entries, the editors are starting to, well, editorialize. Recently, a host of the Carnival of Vanities, Dr.Zen, quite rightfully and forcefully slammed some shallow ideological pieces submitted to the carnival, resulting in quite a discontent in the conservative blog circles. Even more recently, an editor of Skeptic's Circle published but strongly criticized one of the entries, leading to an excellent discussion in the comments. The Modulator, host of the Friday Ark has very strict rules about what is accepted: only posts that contain photographs of extant animals. However, he still publishes the links to posts that are not accepted (e.g., fossils, drawings, plants, bacteria, etc.) in a separate "chapter" of the carnival. I have hosted nine carnivals so far an once I decided to not include and entry that was a pure piece of political propaganda, chockfull of erroneous "facts" and much misleading language. I never mentioned that I did it. It was my editorial prerogative to chose what not to include in the carnival. I assume that other hosts have done the same over time.
What I was trying to do with the previous paragraph was to illustrate that many carnivals are now in the process of leaving the initial phase of sweet-tempered grab-bags of whatever people submit, and entering a phase where editors are starting to pay attention to quality. The "rules" of submission are being tightened. Entries are being denied. Editors are starting to editorialize. The comments are not just "good job on hosting the carnival, Bob!" but actual discussions of the pieces presented in the carnival. The carnivals are now well on the road to becoming real journals, but, importantly, they will ALWAYS remain bottom-up community-run journals, and that is what is going to revolutionize the world of journalism.
(cross-posted on Science And Politics)
A blog carnival is a blog-post that contains links to posts on other blogs. How does that differ from a linkfest, or for that matter from most of the stuff that early blogs (and many blogs today) routinely did? In the early days of blogs, there was no original content - blogs WERE collections of links. How are carnivals different?
Yesterday I assembled the fifth edition of the monthly Meta-Carnival, a round-up of all known blog carnivals. I have previously archived my posts about blogging in the Category Blogging and posts specifically about carnivals in the Category Blog Carnivals, though I need to, now that my computer is OK again, update these two categories. Some of the posts archived there are longish musings on the role and meaning of carnivals so I urge you to go and read them. I have added another link, a repository of Meta-Carnivals here. Some other people also collect carnivals, most notably Ferdy The Conservative Cat who has developed the Universal Carnival Submission Form. Bigwig of Silflay Hraka, the inventor of the very first carnival (as well as the term "carnival"), used to collect them but has recently decided to just link to my latest edition of the Meta-Carnival.
Rounding the carnivals up every month, in addition to frequent hosting, sending entries and linking to new editions, gave me, I think, some insights into what makes a carnival and especially what makes a succesful carnival. I'll now attempt to systematize what I think I learned. I will repeatedly use analogies to hard-copy journalism and to physical spaces.
What makes a carnival successful?
In order to succeed, a blog carnival needs to: a) have a clearly stated purpose, b) appear with predictable regularity, c) rotate editors, d) have a homepage and archives, and e) have more than one person doing heavy lifting. Let me go over these one at a time.
A) Purpose. Several carnivals, particularly the older ones (e.g., Carnival of Vanities), are all-purpose "Best of..." blog-newspapers and magazines. Nothing wrong with it, of course. NY Times is an all-purpose newspaper and Time is an all-purpose magazine. However, nobody collects NY Times as a prized collection: once read, the issue gets recycled or used for lining the bird cage. Similarly, having a post on - or even hosting - such a carnival may bring you an avalanche of hits for a few days but is highly unlikely to bring you new regular readers. If you prefer a physical analogy, it is like going downtown or to a park when the weather is nice and bumping into a lot of nice people, yet it is unlikely that you will exchange e-mail addresses with any of them, or ever see them again. This was a chance encounter.
Contrast that to more narrowly focused carnivals (e.g., Grand Rounds for medicine and Nursing Moment for nursing). They are blog equivalents of specialty magazines or even technical journals. In physical space, they are analogous to political rallies, MeetUps, seminars, or even scientific conferences. These are the places to go when you are looking for people who share a specific interest with you. You are likely to exchange a lot of e-mail addresses because you want to stay in touch with such people. Sending an entry to a specialized carnival exposes you to bloggers who are inherently interested in your writing. Hosting one makes you even more visible (like giving a plenary lecture at a meeting) and after the temporary avalanche of hits subsides, you will realize you have acquired a number of new regular readers, bloggers who put you on their blogrolls and on their RSS feeds, who keep coming back and linking to your posts. This is how a community is built.
B) Regularity. It really does not matter how often a carnival is posted as long as it is posted at regular intervals. Blog Of The Day and Funny Stuff are dailies. Most carnivals are weeklies. Some carnivals appear every two (e.g., Tangled Bank and Smarter Thank I) or every three weeks (e.g., History), or once a month (e.g., Balkans), or even quarterly (e.g., Carnivalesque and Carnival of Bad History). More narrowly focused a carnival, and more expertise it requires from the bloggers who submit their entries, less frequently the carnival can appear and still retain a decent size and a high level of quality of posts. Carnivals with unpredictable schedules tend to be neglected as unreliable. Can you imagine a newspaper that sometimes shows up on news-stands and sometimes does not? Ferdy, for instance, does not link to carnivals that have irregular schedules. Do it right, or don't do it.
C) Rotation. The first blogs in history were link-fests. Content appeared later. So, if you publish a blog-post that contains a bunch of links to other blogs, how is that a carnival? How is that different from just any other blog-post that is full of links? Even if you give it a name, and a theme and very regular schedule, it is only YOUR post. It better be a very creative and unique service to the blogging community (e.g., Friday Ark) or else nobody will come.
Most carnivals rotate hosts. Every issue is hosted by someone different. Some carnivals have definite "homes", yet the carnival makes regular trips to other blogs for guest-hosting (e.g., Carnival of Education, or Carnival of Sin). Best Of Me Symphony is always on the same blog, but the editor is always somebody else (a guest-editor), and that carnival is always done very well textually and visually and has earned a reputation over time.
Carnivals that are always hosted on the same blog, always by the same editor, and are sometimes irregular in scheduling tend to die off. Add to that linking primarily to posts chosen by the editor (e.g., Blog Tower and Carnival of Insanities) and I would not call it a carnival any more, but a vanity press. It is just a link-rich post by that person on that person's blog - something we all do at least occasionally.
D) Homepage and Archives. Whenever I assemble an issue of the Meta-Carnival, it takes me a few minutes to update carnivals with homepages and hours to update the carnivals without homepages. In a sense I am a "professional" while doing this search, but how about "amateurs"? They'll find it even harder. Imagine a new blogger who first discovers a carnival and reads an issue #23 or so, and wants to check out previous issues. If there is a homepage (or home-blog-post) that contains the archives of all previous issues, it is a breeze. If there is no such thing, the task is extremely difficult, in some cases impossible. Now imagine 50 years from now, when there is an issue #2523. Imagine the immensity of the archives and its value to historians. Start your archives now, while it is still relatively easy to have everything organized. If mainstream media hides its archives behind subscripton wall, while carnivals keep well-organized archives for free, guess who will be more relevant in the future?
E) Community Effort. On my own blog, I am the King. So are you on yours. Why should I come to your blog and submit to your iron-fist rule? One reason why carnivals hosted by a single blog/editor do not have wide readership and tend to whither away is because of a lack of a sense of ownership by a broader community. All the points above, e.g., a sense of purpose, rotation of hosts, regularity/predictability, and the existence of a central place and archives, tend to foster the sense of community. People find each other through the carnivals and keep coming back for more. They see how entering a carnival leads to an increase of regular readership, and hosting one even more so. The originator of the carnival wisely fades into the shadows and lets the carnival take a life of its own.
Carnivals as the Glue of the Blogging Community
There are two ways blogs in general and carnivals in particular can foster community. One is to introduce to each other people from all over the world who are interested in the same topic. I have written at length about this process, with a particular example of how blogging is going to change the future of science. In a sense, that is what one tends to think of first about the benefits of the Internet in general. If you have access to the Web, it does not matter who you are or where you are - you are an equal participant in the global endeavor, whatever that may be. If you like cats, you will meet other cat-lovers from all around the world at the Carnival of Cats.
The second way blogs foster community is on a local level - meeting people locally. This is particularly relevant for political organizing, and to some extent for doing business locally, but meeting local bloggers with similar hobbies and interests (or even dating!) is just around the corner. Geographically delineated carnivals help people in finding each other. So far, carnivals of Indian, Asian, Iraqi and Afghan, British, Canadian (separated into Lefty and Righty) and Balkan bloggers have been doing well. While Blogger, Google and Techorati estimate that there are about 10 million blogs worldwide, with thousands being started every day, I have heard recently that there are additional 10 million bloggers in China! I am assuming they developed their own software and are thus invisible to our search engines. However, those are still large land areas to cover. More recently, two even more narrowly local carnivals appeared (I guess a certain critical mass of bloggers needed to be attained first): North Carolina bloggers and Montana bloggers. These carnivals serve as virtual MeetUps, and often lead to real-life meetups as well as community action.
Lefty and Righty Carnivals
Why does it appear that conservative bloggers are dominating carnivals? It could be due to chance, or perhaps there is a reason, or perhaps this is just an illusion. Is it the greater connectivity of conservatives? Is it the greater individualism of liberals?
Let's look at it historically. The very first carnival, Carnival Of Vanities, was started by a conservative blogger and attracted primarily other conservative bloggers. How many liberals regularly read Silflay Hraka after all? So, this was natural.
For about a year, this was the only existing carnival. During this time, many conservatives got aquanted with the idea of a carnival and soon started a few new ones (e.g., Bonfire Of Vanities, Carnival of Capitalists, Blog Mela, and SEVERAL! Christian carnivals), while most liberals have still never heard of the concept. Another year passed. Once new carnivals got started around topics that have nothing to do with one's political persuasion, e.g., medicine (Grand Rounds), science (Tangled Bank), history, or philosophy, the liberal bloggers got gradually introduced to the concept.
Last year saw an explosion of new carnivals. Every month I have to add a few new ones to the Meta-Carnival (while also reporting on the demise of some). Is there a Liberal Carnival as an equivalent to and balance to the Carnival of Vanities? No. An early attempt was Blog Tower, but it violated all of the rules (A through E above) of successful carnivals and I doubt it will recover. A few weeks ago, the idea was broached on Crooked Timber (and a cool name - Speaker's Corner - was suggested), but nothing came out of it due to, I suspect, a conflict between the wish of Timberites to make it a Crooked-Timber-kind-of-thing, and the wish of others to have it community-run. Recently, a new (and excellent!) Carnival of Un-Capitalists was founded with an explicit purpose to counter the Carnival of Capitalists, i.e., to put together best posts about economic issues from a Progressive perspective. Canadian Liberals have the Cavalcade Of The Canucks, as a counterbalance to the Canadian Right wing's The Red Ensign.
Some recent carnivals are dominated by liberals, even though politics is not important for the topic. For instance, Carnival of the Godless, Skeptic's Circle, Carnival of Bad History and Tangled Bank tend to attract the folks from the reality-based community who are largely liberal. Carnivals of the Balkan bloggers and Montana bloggers are liberal due to chance: their founders are liberal and the first entries were naturally from other liberal blogs. Some other carnivals are pretty evenly balanced, e.g., carnivals of history, philosophy, kids, education, and Tar Heel Tavern (NC bloggers) are consciously kept politically balanced. Thus, while MSM may be perceived as liberal by the Right, and perceived as spineless sellouts to the Bush regime's propaganda machine by the Left, the carnivals, all in all, are pretty balanced. There is a complete range of opinions voiced from one extreme, through the moderate middle, to the other extreme.
I think that the New York Times of the Lefty blogosphere is DailyKos! Every year Markos Moulitzas gets irate when people nominate DailyKos for Koufax Awards in the category of "group blogs". He loudly proclaims that it is HIS blog. But, it is not. Not any more. Ever since he enabled Diaries, Kos has lost control of his blog. I personally almost never read the posts by Markos. I rarely ever go to the front page. But I go there often and read the Diaries. DailyKos has grown into the biggest and best carnival online today. It is the Carnival Of Record in a sense that NYTimes is a Newspaper of Record. Likewise, in comparison to DailyKos, Carnival of Vanities is like Washington Times: the main Righty outlet, but far from the influence of NYTimes.
Carnivals as Journalism
Blogs themselves, no matter what is written on them, are often thought of as "new journalism", a bottom-up kind of journalism that will complement (and keep on their toes) the better-funded top-down journalism of the MSM. With 10 million Chinese blogs and another 10 million blogs around the rest of the world, and the numbers rising fast, the amount of material on blogs is overwhelming. Daily news aggregators (like del.icio.us) and other blog aggregators are worthy attempts at sifting through the mass and concentrating worthy information in one place. Blog-specific search-engines, like Technorati (and the invention of Tags), is another attempt to organize the enormous amount of blog-generated information.
I have a hunch that in the future it will be the blog carnivals that will emerge as the online equivalents of hard-copy media. Carnivals organized around strong concepts, published on rigorous schedules, well-archived, and community-run will outlive their mushy competitors and become the online equivalents of not just TIME magazine, but also GQ, Vogue, Parenting, National Geographic, People, and, why not, Science and Nature.
Carnivals are still new and young. Most people are trying to be nice to each other. Hosts/editors are usually quite happy to publish links to every entry they get. However, this is already starting to change. With an increased popularity of carnivals and number of entries, the editors are starting to, well, editorialize. Recently, a host of the Carnival of Vanities, Dr.Zen, quite rightfully and forcefully slammed some shallow ideological pieces submitted to the carnival, resulting in quite a discontent in the conservative blog circles. Even more recently, an editor of Skeptic's Circle published but strongly criticized one of the entries, leading to an excellent discussion in the comments. The Modulator, host of the Friday Ark has very strict rules about what is accepted: only posts that contain photographs of extant animals. However, he still publishes the links to posts that are not accepted (e.g., fossils, drawings, plants, bacteria, etc.) in a separate "chapter" of the carnival. I have hosted nine carnivals so far an once I decided to not include and entry that was a pure piece of political propaganda, chockfull of erroneous "facts" and much misleading language. I never mentioned that I did it. It was my editorial prerogative to chose what not to include in the carnival. I assume that other hosts have done the same over time.
What I was trying to do with the previous paragraph was to illustrate that many carnivals are now in the process of leaving the initial phase of sweet-tempered grab-bags of whatever people submit, and entering a phase where editors are starting to pay attention to quality. The "rules" of submission are being tightened. Entries are being denied. Editors are starting to editorialize. The comments are not just "good job on hosting the carnival, Bob!" but actual discussions of the pieces presented in the carnival. The carnivals are now well on the road to becoming real journals, but, importantly, they will ALWAYS remain bottom-up community-run journals, and that is what is going to revolutionize the world of journalism.
(cross-posted on Science And Politics)
Monday, May 30, 2005
Making Money On Your Blog
I just posted at my own site a story on making money on your blog. I didn't want the idea to be posted twice, so here's the link. I felt it needed to be shared and is a different angle on making money blogging.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Sticky Content= More Business
“What’s sticky content?” you ask.
Sticky content is something you publish for free that others are allowed to place on their websites in order to drive more traffic to their website as well as yours. Sticky content is sometimes used in print media as well.
Let’s say you own an automobile repair shop and need more business. You could advertise in your local newspaper but ads cost money and you’re broke so what do you do? Well it just so happens that many newspapers (especially the free weeklies) need content but don’t have enough cash to pay writers. Why not write an entertaining column each week about cars and car repair and offer your column to the local paper for free? Just make sure you get a byline that reads something like, “Monkey Wrench is the owner of Clunker Auto Repair on 4th and Main Streets in downtown Clunkersville.”
Same thing works for other businesses as well.
You see, each column you write for free ends with a short advertisement (byline) for your garage. In a matter of weeks or months you’ll have customers lined-up to get their cars repaired just like those Click and Clack Brothers on NPR.
If you own a website or write a blog there’s already lots of sticky content available, everything from joke of the day features, cartoons, this day in history, and lots more. Most require that you add a bit of .html or java code but once added they update themselves automatically. For some sticky content you’ll have to pay, but most of it is free as the code you install on your site includes a link back to the site where it originates. Some providers of sticky content will even link back to those persons who use their sticky content.
I have several pages of sticky content at BloggingPoet.com and if I find something I really like I wouldn’t object to adding more. (Any ideas?) Not only does it keep my readers coming back each day, but it’s great for driving search engine traffic to your website or blog. You see, search engines love sites with lots of constantly updated pages of content that changes from day to day. The more often you update your website the more often the robots spider your site and the more often they spider your site the higher your ranking gets. Google now spiders my blog on a daily basis.
If you’re able to create sticky content for others to use then I’d suggest you do that as well. If I understood coding I’d be doing it already. An example of sticky content found right here at IdeaConsultants.org is the Scripting News RSS reader on the right. Scripting News provides us with sticky content via RSS and we gain readership due to increased search engine placement and Scripting News gains readers via the links back to their blog.
By the way: Group blogging and guest blogging are a sort of sticky content as well.
Sticky content is something you publish for free that others are allowed to place on their websites in order to drive more traffic to their website as well as yours. Sticky content is sometimes used in print media as well.
Let’s say you own an automobile repair shop and need more business. You could advertise in your local newspaper but ads cost money and you’re broke so what do you do? Well it just so happens that many newspapers (especially the free weeklies) need content but don’t have enough cash to pay writers. Why not write an entertaining column each week about cars and car repair and offer your column to the local paper for free? Just make sure you get a byline that reads something like, “Monkey Wrench is the owner of Clunker Auto Repair on 4th and Main Streets in downtown Clunkersville.”
Same thing works for other businesses as well.
You see, each column you write for free ends with a short advertisement (byline) for your garage. In a matter of weeks or months you’ll have customers lined-up to get their cars repaired just like those Click and Clack Brothers on NPR.
If you own a website or write a blog there’s already lots of sticky content available, everything from joke of the day features, cartoons, this day in history, and lots more. Most require that you add a bit of .html or java code but once added they update themselves automatically. For some sticky content you’ll have to pay, but most of it is free as the code you install on your site includes a link back to the site where it originates. Some providers of sticky content will even link back to those persons who use their sticky content.
I have several pages of sticky content at BloggingPoet.com and if I find something I really like I wouldn’t object to adding more. (Any ideas?) Not only does it keep my readers coming back each day, but it’s great for driving search engine traffic to your website or blog. You see, search engines love sites with lots of constantly updated pages of content that changes from day to day. The more often you update your website the more often the robots spider your site and the more often they spider your site the higher your ranking gets. Google now spiders my blog on a daily basis.
If you’re able to create sticky content for others to use then I’d suggest you do that as well. If I understood coding I’d be doing it already. An example of sticky content found right here at IdeaConsultants.org is the Scripting News RSS reader on the right. Scripting News provides us with sticky content via RSS and we gain readership due to increased search engine placement and Scripting News gains readers via the links back to their blog.
By the way: Group blogging and guest blogging are a sort of sticky content as well.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
The Evolutionary Origins of the Weblog
The weblog -- far from being a mere fad -- is a technological expression of our evolutionary heritage.
“Blogs haven't displaced media, US study finds”, reads the latest Reuters headline about blogs. This headline is part of a sudden blog-bashing trend which I predicted would occur two weeks ago[1]. The article’s headline reeks of typical MSM anti-blog bias. Even the word, “displaced”, means literally: “to remove from the usual or proper place.” As expected, the actual truth is buried in the middle of the article:
“The study dispels the notion that blogs are replacing traditional media as the public's primary source of information, said Michael Cornfield, a senior research consultant at Pew.”
The refuted notion, of course, was not held by any credible observer of the media&blogosphere. Nevertheless, Reuters set the record straight: Anyone who claims, "blogs have replaced radio, TV, and print as the public’s primary source of information" is a liar. Personally, I don't really call that newsworthy -- that is unless you're a reporter for The Villiage of Idiots Dispatch.
Now, what is newsworthy is the recent decision of a few news organizations([cough]…the NYTimes) to voluntarily fade into irrelevence. Through out history, its always been like this: some adopt the new, others bury themselves with the old. Whether the established media likes it, or not, it’s a forgone conclusion that blogs are a highly disruptive development. However, lately some members of the press have showed a newfound love of writing them off both foolishly, and with ironic confidence. For example, the notion that blogs are a “fad”, the new “pet rock” as one dinosaur put it. I refuse to give their arguments (if that's what you call them) much attention. If they bothered to think, they might realize that the forces fueling the rise of the weblog are anything but fashion trends.
The nourishing roots of the blogosphere are older than the very cave paintings which signified the birth of media. Our expanding web of conversations, and connections is providing a large and constantly growing percentage of our population with something that humans have always sought: knowledge of our world and environment; to be heard; to converse… To say that the blog is a fad is to say that conversations and the formation of communities is a fad.
The blogosphere’s size and influence is expanding rapidly. The ever so self-centered MSM attributes the success of weblogs to Dean, Rathergate, and mob that lynched Eason Jordon. The shortsightedness of their explanation is consistent with their world view. MSM’s motivation is primarily economic and profit driven. It is difficult for them to move past questions such as, “how do bloggers make money”, or delusions such as “we still have most of the audience(read ad revenue), so blogs are dead; we survived”. This narrow view misses the true force that is driving the rise of the blogosphere.
The MSM is sustained through legal safeguards, readers and watchers who have no where else to turn, and revenue from ads. In contrast, the blogosphere’s growth is sustained by our natural desire for social belonging; to find meaning through cooperation towards common goals. Look at those two models again. Which is more likely to outlive the other?
Human beings emerged 150,000 years ago as a physically weak, and fragile species; just one of many bi-pedal monkeys with big heads. Yet we survived, and flourished by evolving a unique set of common social algorithms based on cooperation, community, and communication. As humanity begins the 21st century, it faces unprecedented peril. Overpopulation, global warming, disappearing resources, plagues, nuclear weapons, and natural disasters all threaten the foundations of our fragile, so-called “global civilization.” Our governments, religious institutions, and traditional sources of information are incapable of averting the impending nightmares of the late 21st century.
But there is hope for us, and perhaps it is hidden in this beautiful thought: The blog -- far from a technological fad -- is in fact a technological expression of our evolutionary heritage.
If that is too outlandish of a thought for your seasoned mind, than be my guest and accept MSM’s version: Blogs get you fired, they are not credible, and MSM is still in charge. Go back to bed little blogger, rest well baby audience member, we’ve got everything taken care of. The couch is your friend.
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