Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

People still don’t get blogging

Jul 10, 2007 4 Comments »

Blogging is a conversation. Also it helps you establish yourself as an expert — if you want to, that is — but otherwise, blogging mostly helps you articulate your thoughts without the corporate balderdash. Blogging in no way makes you less of an expert as claimed by Jacob Nielson. He says this on his web page (I won’t call it a blog post) that blogs are just for cheap products:

Weblogs have their role in business, particularly as project blogs, as exemplified on several award-winning intranets. Blogs are also fine for websites that sell cheap products. On these sites, visitors can often be easily converted and the main challenge is to raise awareness. For example, a site that sells pistachio nuts should post as much content about pistachios as possible in the hope of attracting quick hits by people searching for that information. Some percentage of these visitors will buy the nuts while visiting the site.

I think he gets this impression because he hasn’t visited some quality blogs. Even Google has an official blog and Google is in no way a cheap product. Anyway, that’s not the point.

He says you should write in-depth articles instead of writing blog posts because articles are well-researched hence are more credible. This is a silly assumption. Just because it is a blog post doesn’t mean it is not serious stuff. Many people spend hours researching for their blog posts. The basic point is, blogs are highly interactive, and people who fear interaction, fear blogging. Conventional journalists snigger at blogging because it allows readers to ask questions. Through a blog you can question the authority of the “expert” and you can also offer an alternative point of view. The old-school writers don’t like being questioned because they are not confident about their own facts and theories. The lack of communication tools used to shield them against direction questioning. Blogging demolishes that shield. Only a very confident person uses blogging to express his or her expertise.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blog publishing, blog writing

MovableType 4 Beta released

Jun 07, 2007 No Comments »

Remember MovableType? OK, OK, I’m joking. I know there are hundreds, or may be thousands of blogs being run on MovableType. I used to manage a few of my blogs with MovableType when it was freely available. I switched to WordPress when MovableType started coming at a price. It’s not that I didn’t want to pay for it. It was just a coincident that I discovered WordPress exactly when I was about to purchase a licensed version of MovableType. There were two things I never liked about MovableType: it was CGI-based; it was very heavy.

WordPress, on the other hand, to my pleasant surprise, turned out to be a PHP-based program, a language I’m comfortable with, and it was not as heavy as MovableType. So why would I pay for a software I didn’t like, especially when a better, free alternative was easily available? Hence the switch.

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Google has bought Feedburner (and yes, I’m still around)

May 25, 2007 No Comments »

Google has bough Feedburner for $100 million. It seems more and more cool services are being bought by big companies. Two things happen when the big companies buy comparatively smaller products; the products are killed, the products expand and lose their niche markets, the popularity of these products gains newer heights and newer technologies and innovations are introduced into them. One example I can remember is Hotmail. Hotmail was bought by the Microsoft from Sabir Bhatia and then developed into a completely new email application.

What will happen to Feedburner? In a recent post on some blog (I’ve forgotten where) I read Google might just include the Adsense ads in the feeds and won’t allow 3rd-party ads. If that happens, it will be a set back, and it will also be an opportunity for some other feed distribution tool because publishers will be leaving Feedburner in hordes then. So I think Google won’t do it.

Technorati Tags: feedburner, google, google buys feedburner, rss feeds

Death Threats To A Blogger

Mar 28, 2007 3 Comments »

Just read this shocking post about Kathy getting death threats from seemingly known or unknown people. Although I’ve received mean comments at Writing Cave (which of course, I deleted) and even racist comments at this blog (more than a year ago), it was never this bad, as in Kathy’s case. Once I had said something “unacceptable” about a south Indian actor and someone said that death squads would be let lose upon me if I ever wrote like that. I removed the post not because of the threat but because I thought apart from upsetting people the post didn’t solve any purpose.

In Kathy’s case, I think it’s a no-holds-barred conspiracy to disturb her mental equilibrium and they have succeeded by making her cancel her engagements. She’s now at home, scared, locked, and the police is investigating into the matter. It can be taken as business rivalry but then such things should never be taken lightly. Psychopaths are known to first send the threatening signals and then strike — this is how they attain pleasure. I hope the police doesn’t just consider it a cyber crime, it could be much more than that. It’s best that she stays safe.

The comments she has received are in no way simply mischievous actions. They fully tantamount to crime and the culprits should be apprehended as soon as possible. My well wishes are with Kathy and her family.

Technorati Tags: Kathy Sierra

ROI of Corporate Blogging is Tangible

Jan 30, 2007 No Comments »

So says this article. Blogging is a bit tricky compared to other marketing efforts because you cannot predict the results in advance. It’s not like conventional advertising where you put ads on a website, or in a print publication where you’ve got the data of consumer behavior, say, for a few years.

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