This month I have been horrible about blogging. Between client projects, trying to enjoy the summer, some time off and building the new DDM website blogging has not risen to the top of the list. This is not a good thing. Finding time to write even a short blog is important, because we can to keep readers coming back, Google coming back and just to be interesting.
One of the ways DDM will work to add more content is by bringing in posts from social networks. The new DDM blog will aggregate(collect) posts from Twitter and Delicious and possibly other networks as well.
Denver DataMan has lots of exciting things going on and we hope to share them with you soon, on the new DDM blog and website top be launched next week and some of our client projects. A very special thanks to Chris Reed for his efforts as the Denver DataMan, summer Intern (computer super hero in training) for working to migrate content from one site to another. None of this would happen without him!
I often get the question where should I blog or if I blog on my website should I do it with a different domain name?
The best place to blog is on your website. If you don’t have a website that let’s you easily add content without knowing code or needing a computer science degree. If this is not the case for you then Blogger (where this blog is held) is a great free and easy tool.
Building a blog on your own website should be done by a professional. When blogs are made well they are great search engine optimization (SEO) tools. You are adding lots of new content about the topics; you want people to find you with text so Google and other search engines can pick it up.
The question of whether or not you should use a different domain name (website address) requires a little more SEO knowledge. Search engines try and make sure they are sharing the most relevant content. Mind you, we are asking a computer to define what relevant content is. One of the things that search engines use to determine the relevancy of content is its uniqueness and another is how often you update the content.
Because we want our content to be unique we want to write an article or blog post and put it in one place. We then want to link to it from many places, we just don’t want to copy and paste the same article in multiple places. For example this post is on my blog, I do not want to turn around and put this same exact post on Teach Street for example. I will however, link to it from Facebook, Twitter and other sites.
The frequency factor in determining relevancy is also very important. Blogs give you an easy tool to add keyword rich content to your site on a regular basis. Denver DataMan recommends adding content at least once per-week to any site you want to be found using search engines.
In general our goal is to get people to come to our main site. Provide value added information and by doing it in a venue where a sale can be closed is all the better. If you use an alternative URL for your blog you are gathering traffic for an address that is not your primary website. If you have your primary website address for your blog and another address for your blog you can be hit with the duplicate content problem if you don’t do it right.
In general I think that not having a separate address for a blog is a good thing. Tell people denverdataman.com/blog not someothersite.com. I think it gives you a clearer marketing platform as well as a good SEO strategy.
Now, you might ask why am I reading this article here and not at denverdataman.com/blog? Well, you see, when I built this blog I thought demonstrating a free tool was a good idea. Since then I have not been able to capitalize on the SEO value of the content I create. This is why the re-designed DenverDataMan.com will have the blog on the site.
It has been way to long since I last posted on my blog. I am breaking my own rule that companies should blog at least once per-week. Blogging is good for establishing yourself as an expert in the community as well as for providing food (information) for Google to eat up (index).
Now if I was to just right that first paragraph - that would be a cop out and not a valuable post. So, I will tell a story about a photographer I am helping build their potential blogging strategy.
The photographer who will remain nameless is hesitant to blog because he does not know what to share. This is often a common problem with bloggers. You will find that if you make an effort to think about opportunities there are more than enough and you don’t have to be boring or give away trade secrets.
Remember if the data makes you look like an expert, tells a story and is interesting then it will be read and help you define yourself as an expert.
Recently, I have been pondering and discussing how social media is guiding us to redefine our definition of an expert. True experts will always be those people with the information and skill level to get a job done at the highest possible potential. The key here is sources.
There are three types of sources that we generally accept in our understanding of an expert, and these are not changing. We allow people to show expertise by sharing experiences and observations, by doing qualitative research, and by citing others in research and experiences (case studies). We know that there are times and places for each of these methods; this applies on and off-line. We also know there are different sets of standards; we have different expectations for our doctor than we do for our mechanic.
Wikipedia, the encyclopedia which any Internet user can contribute an addition to the article, receives a lot of flack about its open structure. What does the average person know about writing an encyclopedia entry? Co-founder Jimmy Wales considers himself an anticredentialistwho is letting people break down the walls around knowledge to let anyone share content. Wikipedia has a strong community who edit posts and determines if users cite valid sources and stay away from commentary. For example, in this article about Anshe Chung, editors have flagged the content. Here is what the content looked like on March 8th. You can go to the article and see what it looks like now.
In an excellent and extensive article How accurate is Wikipedia's content? out of the Wharton School of Business, a case looks at Wikipedia as a middle ground between academic journals and free-form content. Kendall Whitehouse, senior director of information technology at Wharton, explains the most interesting question is “whether the wisdom of the crowd [in authoring ‘citizen-authored content’] is ultimately a better approach compared to scholarly review and edited content,” pointing out that Wikipedia’s strength is that it has thousands of eyes looking at it. The editorial eyes are there but as the content grows Whitehouse and other critics are still concerned about the process as well as the ability and the willingness to edit all the content.
When I use Wikipedia, I take everything with a grain of salt, and I expect that I need to evaluate the validity of the content. I like Wikipedia for quick lookups and for leading me to other sources. Writing the encyclopedia is hardly ever the main source use to prove a point – it is the resource used to help guide research and lead to primary sources. Peer-reviewed articles have a different place than an encyclopedia.
The eyes on Wikipedia and other content are a valuable tool for defining an expert online. Comments will surface when content might be viewed as inconsistent. If your blog get lots of traffic or well respected, perceived inconsistency may be broadcasted on the evening news as a reason not to trust the blogosphere, but it’s also a triumph of the medium to get instant feedback from a community of interested co-creators.
When I write about social networking, many consider me to be an expert. I get my expertise by citing other research and writing. I also cite case studies both of my own experience and of others. Citing a case study of how a company handled a given situation is a valid a source as more numbers centric research in many cases.
Take a look at LinkedIn Answers, where users establish their own credentials to post about topics ranging from economics to management to technology, but answers are reviewed by all the others users with access to the question. This form of peer-review provides for a higher level of questions and answers. The fact that question askers can award a top answer also helps to give other credentials and creates a system for knowing who an expert is.
Forums online that bring together experts have a slightly different issue; experts like to cite their own opinions. For example a forum exists for carpet cleaners to ask questions of the community on technical issues, business practices, and many other random topics. When you bring together many diverse views and abilities you can tease out great answers and many success stories.
I hope (notice this is an opinion) that people don’t fight the change in definition of how we define an expert, but rather force their peers to reach higher standards of citation by supporting those users that do so. If no-one reads a blog, the author won’t post. If the bloggers’ readers write on my blog – please cite a source, authors will hopefully get the idea.
Please let me step on to my soap box. This also means that schools need to teach students to know how to properly evaluate a text. A student should see “I hope,” and know that this is an opinion. Students must learn to cite and care about sources or this shift will result in a population with fewer experts.
Go out, become an expert in your field. Read, write, cite, research, read more, write more, cite more, comment more, become an expert and prove it to others.
In the past two posts I have written about getting people to pay attention I have written about social networking where sort blasts of information are the way you get people’s attention. We will go back to that next week with Twitter but for this week I am writing about Blogs where we share several paragraphs of content and sometimes more with our readers. Blog stand for Web Log and it is good to think of it as a place to log activity and share thoughts.
In the article we are going to address using blogs for small business. There are blogs for politics, cooking, medicine, news, sports, and almost anything else you can imagine. If someone does it they have probably blogged about it. To get an idea of what is out there Technorati and Ice Rocket are great places to search. Social Bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us can help you see what content is popular.
Rather than try and dance around the issue of what should be in a blog for your small business and what should not I will give you the tool I use. Will my readers care? If I cannot answer in the affirmative than there is no reason for me to post. Just because you can post about what you ate for dinner does not make it relevant to my readers, now if you are a personal chef and you just made the best Salmon and mustard sauce that you want your readers to know you can make for them then this is a perfectly relevant post.
There are many tools to help you blog and some of them pug directly in your website like Ballet Nouveau Colorado, in Broomfield or you can have your blog be on a separate site like the Denver DataMan blog you are reading. There are lots of blog sites that bring together many well known or talented bloggers like Examiner.com that has many topics Eric Elkins an accomplished blogger and owner of WideFoc.us a social media strategies company. Eric writes as the Internet Business Examiner. When considering the placement of your blog consider who will read it, why they will read it, when they will read it, if only one person will write on it or if many users will share in the writing.
If you are going to start a blog make sure you have the time to commit to keeping it up to date. I am not perfect about this are there are times I go two weeks without posting and then post three times in a week, but the better you can be about regular posting the more you will get people coming to look for your posts or RSSing your posts for future reading.
If you are not ready to blog a good way to get started is to read others blogs and make comments. Blogs are designed to be replied to. Good blog authors do not sensor appropriate material even if it argues with their point. Our goal is to Join a Conversation and encourage others to interact, share our blog with others and keep your message flowing. With social networking and social bookmarking your blog can become a hit very quickly. Tools like Nielsen’s Blog Pulse help you track where your blog is linked to or forwarded.
The two most important things you can take away from this is that when you blog you need to do so consistently and always ask yourself will my users care.
Next we I will write about Micro Blogging using twitter and how all of these social media technologies can come together to help you make your small business thrive. Also consider attending the Denver DataMan March Social Networking Seminar series.
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