what i’ve been doing instead of blogging

My Aunt knows that when I am not blogging, I must be very busy, and she thinks maybe she should call to check in on me…

Some of the things I’ve had my fingers in:

1. Coldheat recently launched a Heated Pet Bed. Too bad they don’t give us free samples… If I actually liked my housemate’s cat, then I would buy the small version.

2. I can’t talk about what we are doing for momAgenda because it is super secret. I can tell you that Nina is blogging more and just added a few new people to her blog.

3. Exciting things are happening for a number of clients behind the scenes… I will have a lot of things to blog about in April.

4. We are bringing on new people. Sara does copywriting. Michelle is our new Senior Account Manager.

5. And lastly Ian keeps reminding me why I work for him, like when he recently doubled sales for a client by reducing download speed… it is the small things that matter.

At some point I will get back to blogging more, and reading more blogs, and my Aunt can rest easier knowing her favorite nephew is doing just fine.

people blogging: 57 million + 1

Andres has now joined the blogosphere.

What he is going to talk about, not sure yet. But code, and web concepts like how to get good domains, and mySQL things I know nothing about.

But he has started to speak. And that is the beginning.

Look soon to see a recounting of his and my exploits as business partners when we put Waldo on the Million Dollar Homepage.

the new etiquette, or, how to meet people in the age of blogs

Used to be, back when I was a youngin’, you could call someone, meet them in person, email them, or fax them. Or ask someone you knew to do any of those.

There are some rules of etiquette for all that. As in, don’t call someone you don’t know and try to pitch your product. Yes, there is an industry built around doing just that, but as a person in business, I try to shy away. No spam.

I do occasionally cold-email someone, but I don’t just say “hire us” or “hire me” unless I think I have some connection with them and some value to offer them.

Enter blogs. Now, in order to put a friend in touch with a guy I know only through blogs, I made a post giving my friend’s email address and linking to Jeremiah.

Now I know Jeremiah would see that link and check out the post immediately.

I would probably not have emailed Jeremiah and said, talk to my friend. It clashes a bit with my sense of being polite, and seems a bit too much like spam.

But by linking to someone who I know looks at all incoming links, isn’t that the same thing as emailing him?

I am on uncertain ground here. Anyone care to provide some direction?

2 blog posts + one week = #1 in google

I posted about the WSU Honors College here and here. I tagged the posts ‘honors college blog.’ Now I am #1 in google for the search ‘honors college blog.’

I called up a professor buddy at the WSU Honors College to draw his attention to it, in case my rankings drop. 2 blog posts is not a firm foundation in any way, shape, or form. But it is a beginning.

How many people search for ‘honors college blog?’ I can tell you right now- almost none.

But those few who do, are a highly targeted audience. What highly targeted audiences exist in your industry that you would love to have the attention of?

Let’s try again. I am going to tag this post ‘tax return analysis.’ I am going to wait one week. Any bets?

Note: this only works if there are not any big players in your space. Tag your post ‘google’ and see if anyone cares. They won’t. But for your highly targeted audience, if no competitors are paying attention, that top space can be yours in one week.

news that lasts

How do you write news that keeps you on the first page of Google?

So far, I have written posts on 3 topics that have gotten dramatically more traffic than all the rest. For two of them, they still own good space on google. The third cannot be found on the first 5 pages.

First, I was the first to publish the results of the Puget Sound Business Journal’s list of the 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Washington State. You can find it in google under almost any permutation involving ‘100 fastest growing companies,’ and I provide a list of search terms in this previous post.

I still own the top 3 spots, above the Puget Sound Business Journal itself, and even the 6th spot.

The second topic I talked about that still gets traffic is transferring content from wordpress to blogger, where I own the 3rd and 4th spot.

The third topic is when I posted about the bomb exploding at Paypal. I saved the results page on another computer, so you will have to believe me that I was number 1 in the world for 2 days. Yes, that generates some traffic.

Now, for two of these three topics, I still hold decent search real estate. 3 things have to happen for the news you write to last. You have to a) say something important, b) say it first, and c) blog it appropriately.

Say Something Important
All three topics, fastest growing companies, wordpress vs. blogger, and the paypal bomb were important. But, I did not add a lot of value with my post on the paypal bomb.

On the fastest growing companies, I listed all 100 with their ranks, and then talked about them later. With wordpress vs. blogger, I talked about the issues. With the paypal bomb, I said, look at wikinews. That is not helpful longterm.

Say It First
I was the first (and only) person to post a list of the 100 fastest growing companies for this year. The PSBJ themselves did not publish their own list.

I am far from the first person to talk about wordpress vs. blogger, but I still own real estate because of c).

I was the first person to report the paypal bomb on wordpress and tag it appropriately.

Blog It Appropriately
WordPress gave you tags, now use them right. For the 100 fastest growing companies, look again at the search results above. The top 2 results are in fact a wordpress tag page, not a direct link to my blog. So learn how to tag pages.

For paypal, it was the same deal- I got all the links through tags, not a direct link from google to my blog.

For wordpress, notice in the results above that it is a direct link to my page, but that that requires a very specific search query to get there.

So, to write news that lasts, say something important, say it first, and use tags. If you want to get your name in front of your clients, then write news for them that matters and helps them in their businesses. For example, if your clients would be helped by blogging, then write a post on how to blog better.

how the wsu honors college can increase their visibility: if they can do it, so can you

Promoting an Honors College and selling salt are intimately linked, in that google is prime search real estate. Also, people may search in very specific ways.

I posted yesterday about recruiting for Portent Interactive, where I work. In that post I mentioned the WSU honors college, and I tagged the post with ‘wsu honors,’ ‘wsu honors college,’ and ‘honors college blog.’

Today, one day later, I am result #19 for the search ‘honors college blog.’ And note that this result is straight to my blog, not to a wordpress tag page, as with my high results for ‘100 fastest growing companies Puget Sound Business Journal‘ or similar searches.

Within a day or two I expect my post to appear higher up, and under the wordpress tag page.

Here is the point- 1 day and 1 blog post put the Washington State University Honors College on the second page of google for the ‘honors college blog’ search. As you would expect, I will be tagging this post appropriately. Now what if Kim and Jessica decided to start a regular WSU Honors College blog? They could easily be high in the rankings.

Just by blogging.

Now, that is for ‘honors college blog,’ a fairly specific term. How about this term: ‘honors chemistry.’ Search it. Not a blog on the first page. So if you are an honors college, and you have an honors chemistry class, you could talk about it on a blog and get on the second page at the least, within a few days.

So: salt. Search for ’sea salt.’ Our client Saltworks is number one. Now seach ’salish smoked sea salt.’ That is one heck of a specific search term. And Saltworks owns it, and their ad is on top, and the have a product search.

Combine Honors chemistry, honors college blog, and salish smoked sea salt, and what you get is a clear reason to a) start blogging now and b) go after those specific, rare terms in your blog.

Not sure what terms matter for what you do? Use google’s keyword tool to help you find what people are looking for. I had no idea ‘honors chemistry’ was important till I used their tool.

leo bottary gets it

Leo Bottary, who writes the Client Service Insights blog, wrote a post thanking everyone who had commented on his blog in October. With as many names being links to the commenters as he could.

Brilliant.

First, I noticed that post just because of his link to me. I read him often (and you should too), but not religiously.

Second, I can now check out the other people who comment on his blog. Sure, I could go through every post to see the comments, but this way I can see them all at once. Maybe I will find another great client services blog to read.

My hat is off to you, Leo.

somebody thinks i am special, or, how to get mentioned on blogs

Mike thinks I am worth talking about. Because I noticed and commented a bit on why his blog Digital Agency had the top spot in Google for ‘youtube beat superbowl’ when all he really said was, hey, check out this AdAge story.

I took a look at the URL and title tags for his blog post vs. the AdAge article. I made a small point, that having your topic concisely titled in the URL and title tags is a good idea.

And this was enough for Mike to link to me.

And now me and him own the top 5 spots on google for ‘youtube beats superbowl.’

Lesson #1: Interesting content is not king. As Andy said in the comments on Mike’s blog, “Yeah, but who bothers to link to AdAge these days? We’re all interested in meta-commentary.” Content is nice. Conversations are better.

Lesson #2: Comment on other people’s blogs. A lot. Savvy bloggers notice.

Lesson #3: When you comment, say something useful. If you want to say “I love you, you are great,” that is fine, but don’t expect that to do anything other than warm the blogger’s heart. Which is good. But if you want to build traffic, comment on something that will be of interest to the blogger and to their readers.

Mike and Alice at Digital Agency say they are “Advising, commentating, consulting and creating in the new marketing world of Web 2.0.” So say something worth their time to listen to.

“world domination via collaboration”

I knew the BlogHer folks would get dangerous someday, and now Jory tells us they are actively trying to take over the world… in the nicest way possible, of course.

She and her co-founder Lisa are on a panel (Jory says she is just moderating- we’ll see how well she can keep her mouth shut!) (Just kidding Jory, relax, geeze, I am sure you’ll do fine) at the Web 2.0 Conference. We can only hope she will be posting copious notes on what they all have to say.

using news to boost your search engine rankings

Here is how to use news to boost your search engine rankings. First, scoop everyone. Actually, you don’t even have to do that- just scoop everyone on wordpress, or blogger. And then google will put you near the top, sometimes.

I just did this with my post on a bomb exploding at paypal headquarters. The only news I gave was that it had happened, and a link to wikinews.

Is this more important than the CBS article I am ranked higher? Probably not. But I am as of this moment the only blog on wordpress to use the tag “paypal bomb” and google in general likes blogs.

Now, search for “wordpress tags bill clinton” and you will see that this bias in favor of blogs is not unreasonable. For that tag, there is a lot of information, some of it useful.

So if you want your blog to get high in google et al, then talk about news, when it happens, and add value. Notice that my post is higher than the wikinews article. That is a bit silly, but then again, my post will lead more people to the wikinews article than otherwise would have seen it, so maybe it all works out.