Monthly Archives: December 2006

Recommended reading for December 29

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5 things you didn't know about Sarah Lewis

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If you read many blogs (and you should!), you’ve probably seen this meme going around. In a stunning example of “do as I say, not as I do”, I’m actually not that connected to other bloggers, so I was pretty surprised to get tagged this week by both Everton Blair of Connected Internet and Robert Tatum of The Information Junkie.

I’m not one to shun a fun web trend (okay, with the exception of the creepy elf-self fad happening at the moment), so read on to learn something new about your self-proclaimed blogging guru. (I know, I’m such a ham…)
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Recommended reading for December 22

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New site: Fun Family Videos isn't your typical blog

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I just wanted to take a moment and tell you about the newest site we’ve created: Fun Family Videos. The goal of the site is to present the best viral online videos (YouTube, Google Video, etc.) while filtering out the garbage.

From a blogging perspective, this site is interesting because it is built on WordPress in order to take advantage of the flexibility of blog software. For instance, each video is a post, which makes it easy to add new videos (and easy to keep the site fresh and current) and also allows people to subscribe via email or RSS and leave comments. The blog software also makes it easy to have multiple “community editors,” a feature that is central to how the site will make money.

As you see, there’s no reason a “normal site” can’t take advantage of the goodness of blogs to do new and different things. What other sites come to mind that are doing this?

Where was your blog this time last year?

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I’m going to be heading off for Christmas vacation here soon (the grown-up version, meaning that two-week holidays are a fond school memory, but because Christmas and New Year’s Day are Mondays, I’m taking a week). By the time I return, it will be a whole new year.

I know the New Year’s Resolution is currently a bit out of fashion, but I love the reminder the New Year gives us to reflect on the year past and contemplate the year to come. Darren at ProBlogger is doing a “Reviews and Predictions” Group Writing Project this week, and that fits in nicely with the mood of these last few weeks of December.

So, with that, a request: tell me about your blog this year. Last December, did you have a blog? (Do you have a blog now?) Did you blog on the same topic as you are now? Has your blogging changed your life in any way (small ways are okay!) over the last twelve months?
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Recommended reading for December 15

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New WordPress plugin: WordPress to TypePad or WordPress to Movable Type exporter

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It’s great that most of the blog software allows you to import from another blog; this makes it possible to switch software or test different platforms. However, it’s not always easy to get the right format for importing.

I’ve recently uploaded a tool for WordPress that lets you export your blog posts from WordPress in a format that can be read by Movable Type and TypePad. More details are available on the download page.

Engage your readers by focusing on one narrow topic in each blog post

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A great article from the latest PsychoTactics newsletter about sticking with a topic. Although it’s talking about making presentations, the point is equally applicable to blogging. As you read, think about your posts. Do they each focus as specifically as the article recommends? Here it is, reprinted with permission:

How To Make A ‘One-Wave’ Presentation

By Sean D’Souza

Your brain is like a surfer on the waves.
When the surfer sees a big wave coming, he rides that wave.
And then he zigs and zags to keep his balance, as the wave rushes madly to shore.

But right after the ‘surfer’s wave’ is another wave.

And another.

And dozens of others.

But the surfer can only ride one wave, right?

Right. And that’s why your presentation is so confusing.
That’s why you put your audience to sleep. That’s why your audience can’t sum up in one word or phrase what you just said.

You’re getting the audience to ride too many waves

You know what I’m talking about. Because you’ve experienced a pathetic presentation before.

You’ve sat in the audience, while some super-dope has about two hundred and fifty seven points on his PowerPoint slide.

Then that super-dope proceeds to explain all those points.
Forcing you to ride two hundred and fifty seven waves.

Two hundred and fifty seven waves make your brain very, very tired. As in, ‘you are feeling sleepy. You are falling asleep.’

But you don’t have to be a super-dope. Just being a dope will do.

Just five points in a presentation are like trying to get an audience to ride five waves back to back.
Just five points can make the brains in your audience go into shutdown mode.

So what’s the secret to keeping audiences awake?

One point.

One wave.

If you’re going to talk about a topic like marketing, you’re covering too many waves. If you’re going to talk about a topic like house-building, you’re covering too many waves. If you’re going to talk about the state of the economy, you’re covering pretty much the ocean.

Instead talk about a sub-section of marketing, house-building, and the economy.

Talk about a narrower topic such as: Attracting customers.
Then slash that topic down even further, to say: Attracting Customers by Creating Brochures.

And go slash, choppity-chop even further down, to say: Attracting Customers With Powerful Brochure Headlines.

Then ride that wave to the shore.
Attack that ‘wave’ from different angles, as a surfer would zig and zag.

Learn from your newspaper, magazine and TV News

If you switch on your TV to the 6pm news, you’ll notice the ‘One Wave’ concept. The anchor newsreader will announce the topic: e.g. The price of petrol. From that moment on, the story about the price of petrol is driven home from all possible angles in a space of about 3-5 minutes.

And notice how the wave stays on topic. Because when the price of petrol goes up, so does jet fuel. And diesel.

But no, the TV report will cover those topics in another segment; on another day; maybe next month. They don’t try to cover every industry that’s affected by petrol. They’ll only cover one angle like how the price of petrol is affecting families. Or taxi cab owners.

And then once they’ve completed that wave, they move onto the next big story. And of course, this is where your presentation is slightly different. You see, the news needs to consist of various segments as it chugs along. You don’t need to do the same.

You can take one itty-bitty topic, and drive it home from various angles. And leave the rest of the related topics for another presentation; another day.

This single wave presentation isn’t solely beneficial for the audience

It’s good for you as well. If you try to cram too much into a topic, you’re often scattered; unfocused and frustrated. But when you’ve got to cover a narrow angle, you know exactly what to look for, and where to find it. You can go deep instead of wide.

And thereby save yourself a lot of time, effort and hassle.

Just like I did with this article…

Notice how the article started out with just one concept of how the brain assimilates (and rejects information). Notice how it used just one analogy—that of waves. Notice how the article brought in angles like super-dope, and narrowing down your topic, and how newspapers, magazines, and the 6pm news covers just one wave at a time.

The focus and clarity of the wave concept enabled me to put this article together in an extremely short time. If it were a presentation, I’d be able to explain the same points with little or no hassle. And of course, the audience (that’s you) would get the wave concept, as you have already done so.

So, if you want to get your audience to remember what you’ve said. If you really want to get your point across. If you don’t want the wonderful, memorable title of super-dope…

Ride one wave.

©2001-2005 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.

How can you apply this to your blog posts?

What you should know about SoloSEO, a new search engine optimization tool

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I recently read a post about tracking the factors that contribute to good search engine rankings. There are lots of factors to keep track of, but if you do a good job, your blog will get tons of new visitors from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.

The post was specifically about the tool WebCEO, but at the end, Guillaume opened up the discussion with this question:

Anyone have a better/faster system to accomplish most of those tasks / tedious reports?

Even though the post itself didn’t deeply interest me (I’ve played with WebCEO before and already have an opinion), that question did and I clicked through to see the comments. Sure enough, people were weighing in on a wide variety of products and services. One that caught my eye particularly was about a new site called SoloSEO. I’m a big fan of web-based software, so I signed up for their mailing list, and yesterday I received an email saying the system is up and running.

I promptly signed up for a free trial account, and they gave me extra incentive to try it out by bribing me to write a review about it. :) I’ve tinkered around a bit and generally like what I’m seeing. Here are some observations, both positive and negative.

What can it do for you?

Like all search engine optimization (SEO) tools, the idea here is to get more visitors to your blog by creating a blog that the search engines want to send people to. A good chunk of the strategy here is in choosing keywords that accurately describe your content and using them judiciously (like in your post titles).

To do a good job, it’s important to pick good keywords (ones people are actually looking for!) and then also track how well you’re doing with them—both how often you’re using them and whether you’re part of the results the search engines display for those words. SoloSEO offers a range of tools designed to help you pick good keywords and then track them.

How well does it work?

My impression at this point is that there are a few kinks to work out, but the tool generally works well.

One of the strongest parts of SoloSEO seems to be the tools to help you pick good keywords. They’ve taken some of the best-known tools in the SEO industry and put them together in an easy-to-use page. You can have their tool scan different pages of your site and recommend keywords based on what you’ve already written about (this is great for a blogger who’s written at least a few posts but is just learning about SEO).

All of these tools don’t work together quite as well as I was hoping, though. I decided to run a report to see where this site ranked for the various keywords SoloSEO recommended. However, the report tool asked me to type in a list of up to ten keywords I wanted to check on. I found that pretty odd, considering I’d saved a list of its recommendations; I expected to be able to choose from them rather than type things in.

Interestingly, a lot of the tools are built to use your site’s “Sitemap XML” feature. Most bloggers aren’t taking advantage of this feature yet, but this requirement is good motivation to do something that you should already be doing (if you have a sitemap set up, you’ll show up better in Google and other search engines). The upshot is that, just by getting your blog ready for the SoloSEO tools, you’re actually likely to have better results.

The tool seems to be targeted at people who have a rudimentary understanding of search engine optimization, but are not experts. They have provided some explanatory text, but mostly it seems like the site is designed for exploration—click here, click there, “I wonder what this does?”.

There is a “Learn” button, and I kind of expected that to take me to detailed information and instructions about the page I was viewing, but it actually leads to a list of good resources to learn more about SEO. Helpful, but perhaps a little unintuitive because of its location.

Overall, I think SoloSEO is a good tool for bloggers getting started with search engine optimization, but they have some things to work on. However, they’ve shown (by the fact that they have a blog, and also because they’re looking for honest reviews) that they’re interested in feedback, so I’m very hopeful that they will take advice and suggestions seriously. If they do, they could have a truly fantastic product.

Is it a good value?

Like most of the time that question is brought up, the answer is “it depends.” The introductory cost is currently $29/month. If you’re strictly a hobbyist, or are using a free Blogger or WordPress blog, this is probably not the tool for you (I’d recommend the excellent and free Sitening tools instead). If you’re a hardcore SEO user, you’ll probably find the tool a little too lightweight for your needs.

However, if you’re in SoloSEO’s target market—starting to be interested in search engine optimization, willing to invest a little money into your site/blog because you expect to make money from it—I’d absolutely recommend signing up for the free trial and taking it for a spin. Plan to spend a few hours just testing it out; if you haven’t looked seriously at this kind of thing before, just the trial will definitely be worth your time.

I’m interested to hear from those of you who do try it; what do you think?