Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

New version of MovableType is big on social media

Aug 15, 2008 13 Comments »

It’s time for blogging to move on to the next level (I haven’t been doing much blogging so moving on to the next level seems like an over-statement). Blogging is evolving to be more than a personal publishing experience and exchanging views through the comments sections. It is more of a social media affair, if you go by the features being offered by the latest version of MovableType. Aside from the regular blogging and CMS features, the latest version also gives you social networking tools like creating online profiles, online forums and profile exchanges. Check out their blog.

To be frank these features are not for everybody. Why would you create a social networking website if you simply want to publish your thoughts to be shared by a regular audience? I think extra features do nothing but distract – if you want to blog, simply blog.

Feature-rich blogging platforms will be good for corporate blogs though because they can help them develop and sustain a community.

Yahoo has launched a Digg clone called Yahoo Buzz

Mar 04, 2008 No Comments »

Maybe it’s an old news but I just came across it. Yahoo too has jumped on the social bookmarking websites bandwagon and has launched Yahoo buzz, a website where feeds are ranked according to the votes they get. But the ranking of the feeds not just depends on the number of votes they get, it also depends on the number of times the feed is searched for or recommended by e-mail. According to the grapevine right now Yahoo buzz will feature feeds only from the members of the Yahoo publishing network but I’m not sure how much of this is correct. Anyway, we will keep on seeing such websites popping up with greater regularity whether they succeed or not.

New York Times has launched Baghdad Blog

Feb 28, 2008 No Comments »

The New York Times recently launched a new blog called Baghdad Blog to enable its reporters from the Baghdad bureau to directly interact with their readers. One of the introductory posts says:

The Baghdad bureau of The New York Times serves as both home and office for 7 to 10 Western reporters, photographers and videographers, who work with a large Iraqi staff of reporters based in Baghdad and other cities across Iraq.

We talk with our Iraqi colleagues morning and evening about the problems they face in their neighborhoods, their dreams and those of their families. At night, staff members gather for dinner and discuss the news of the day: How close was that explosion heard this morning? Which military unit is finally going home? What is life really like in certain parts of the city and in the countryside? This blog is an attempt to include readers in our conversations.

War or peace, or rescue, blogs are continuously bringing people closer to each other. Today’s irony though, is, we don’t talk to our neighbors but we regularly interact with people, through our blogs, with people from other continents.

Should You Purchase a Popular Blog Just Because It Is Popular?

Sep 28, 2007 2 Comments »

A popular blog — NorthxEast — is for sale and bidding is going on. I was just wondering if someone buys this blog finally, what benefits would it bring to the new owner. Currently its strengths are:

• An established brand
• Lots of RSS subscribers
• Some great posts by the likes of Leo Babauta.
• Steady traffic

A blog, especially of the NorthxEast kind, is an extension of the bloggers who write for the blog. For instance, it is not just a post, but a post by a blogger called Leo whom people adore, or at least have strong feelings for. Once with the new owner, will the content go through some change or will it have the same orientation? What about the writers; will the same writers still be writing the same kind of stuff.

And what about the monetary performance? I have no experience regarding this but with 75,000 unique visitors per month, $175 per month as revenue is a bit low I would say even by my own blogging standards. 75,000 visitors means on an average 2,450 visitors per day. Recently I started (due to a fluke of course) drawing around 1,000 visitors per day at Writing Cave and that started generating around $5-$10 everyday with just Google AdSense. Since I don’t write there regularly and promotion of any sort is non-existent the traffic has come back to 150-200 per day.

So given the high popularity and a bit low revenue generation of NorthxEast does it make sense to buy it just because it is very popular? It depends how you look at blogging.

If blogging is merely a business opportunity for you then you have a 50-50% chance of making NxE a success. You’ll need to keep the momentum and if your revenue sources remain the same then you’ll have to increase the traffic multiple times of its current number to make some decent money. You can also explore other revenue sources and you’ll need to sell your blog to the advertisers more aggressively. You can also change the nature of the content. Most of its content, although very well-written, I’m afraid, is not unique. For instance, Maki’s blog has very unique, useful content most of the time and people can implement his suggestions immediately and improve their blogging performance. By the time people — people who really click the ads — reach NxE they’ve already read the stuff and so go quickly through the post, comment if they want to, and move on.

If blogging is a passion for you and you want to leverage NxE’s popularity I think then too, if you have lots of disposable money ($5,000-$15,000 is lots of money for me) then you should go ahead and buy the blog. You’ll have a ready platform. Just be sure the quality doesn’t suffer. There will surely be a sudden drop in traffic but I don’t think the RSS subscribers will unsubscribe en masse just because the ownership has changed. Provide them good posts to read and they’ll keep on reading.

Apart from that, if you have money but no blogging passion, don’t buy it. You’ll just waste a nice blog, and the effort that has gone into it.

Technorati Tags: northxeast, blog selling, popular blogs

50 Most Influential Blogs

Sep 12, 2007 8 Comments »

What influences you is a highly personal choice but there are things, personalities and events that affect a multitude of people and that’s what encompasses the NxE’s list of 50 Most Influential Bloggers and I think all the bloggers in the list deserve to be there. My personal favorites are:

• Neil Patel — SEO
• Leo Babauta — Personal development
• Rand Fishkin — SEO
• Om Malik — Technology and gadgets
• Brian Clark — Copywriting
• Pete Cashmore — Technology, Internet, SM, etc.
• Darren Rowse — Earning money from blogging
• Gina Trapani — Personal development and life improvement

There are some other great blogs but I hardly read even these regularly. I don’t get to spend much time on blogging (I’m desperately trying to change that) and whatever time I get I prefer writing posts rather than reading other blogs and interacting on them (hence, lack of traffic).

Technorati Tags: influential bloggers, top bloggers, blogging