PureBlogging

How often do you stop and think about the words you are linking in your blog posts and how they portray who you are actually linking to? I wrote about this subect at WebProNews yesterday.

Sometimes the connotation of the words we are linking aren’t so positive, and we might be linking to someone talking about a certain issue, and imply that they hold a certain position through our anchor text, that they might not actually hold (right Danny? ).

This could potentially have a negative impact on the reputation of the person you are linking to.

For Example…

I wrote an article a few weeks ago that mentioned people criticizing blogs as news sources. I linked to a post from a blogger who had written about another writer who was doing such criticizing, but the words I chose to link seemed to indicate that the blogger I was linking to was actually the one doing the criticizing. That blogger called me on it, thinking that I was actually was trying to indicate such, and seeing his point, I changed the wording of the link.

The point is, you may be trying to actually give credit to somebody or pay them a favor by linking to them, but if you link the wrong words, you may be doing the opposite.

It’s just something to think about as bloggers throw links around so frequently.

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7 Tips On Building Relationships Through Blogging – Relationship-building is probably the most important factor when trying to find success through blogging and/or social media. There’s some good advice in this post.

19 Strategies to Help Turn New Visitors Into Loyal Readers – Getting them to your blog is one thing, but getting them to come back can be even harder. This article has some good strategies.

4 Secrets to Getting Press for your Blog – This is a really useful post that points you in a few directions to help you gain some exposure from the media.

How to Find Your Unique Blogging Style -  A look at some strategies to use so that you stand out from the crowd. Being yourself is a big part of it (unless of course you’re too dull )

The Psychology of Blogging -  Darren Rowse shares some tips from Life Coach Tim Brownson.

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The National Press Club issued a press release yesterday talking about how Journalists are getting “burned out with new technology”. Like blogs.

For example, Elaine Sciolino, the Paris correspondent for the New York Times, said she now is expected to post to the Web by noon, produce video for the Web, write for the Times-owned International Herald-Tribune, and still write a flawless story for the next day’s Times. “You don’t have a choice,” she said. “If you want to be a journalist today, you just have to work harder and more efficiently. You aim for perfection until your deadline, and then you aim for doneness. You just gut it out.”

Sciolino even went so far as to suggest that this is a national security issue.The real danger for journalism, she says, is so many American news organizations are cutting back on foreign correspondents and international coverage. Few American correspondents are showing up, even for big stories. “The decline in American newspapers is a major national security threat,” she said.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of criticism regarding blogs as news sources, but I believe this is the first time I’ve seen national security raised as an issue (unless you count the Twitter Terrorism theory).

What do you think about Sciolino’s remarks.

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether or not blogs are dying or becoming obsolete. ExpertWordPress has issued a press release declaring that blogging is not dead.

It’s settled then.

Seriously though, while the release is touting it’s own services, there are some interesting tidbits to scrape from it:

Findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project report, released in December, 2007 seem to concur with Mr. Sysoef. According to the study, when people are looking for help with a variety of common problems, they are more likely to turn to the internet than consult experts or family members to provide needed information and resources. Of the people surveyed, 58% of those who had recently experienced one of 10 possible problems given as examples, said they used the internet (at home, work, a public library or some other place) to get help. Blogs are a big part of their solution.

Technorati (the foremost blog search engine in the world), is now tracking over 70 million weblogs, and report about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day. That’s about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day. There are approximately 1.5 million postings per day (or about 17 posts per second.)

ExpertWordPress co-creator Alex Sysoef had says, “Blogging is an activity that has matured. It’s not dead and it’s not dying. Blogging is still one of the most valuable ways for businesses to participate in the discussions their customers are already having about their products or services, to strengthen their brands and to ultimately increase sales as their customers come to see them as the expert, the trusted advisor, who can help them solve a problem or fill a need.”

The release does talk about blog abandonment though, and this actually is making the medium look bad, so those of you who are guilty, start posting more frequently! They cite a study that found that 66% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, “representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned”.

If you are relying on these specific blogs for your information on a regular basis, you might find some inconvenience, but with more blogs starting all the time, you’re generally going to be able to find similar info elsewhere, and possibly discover blogs you like better than the ones you were reading in the first place.

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WordPress was apparently hit with a denial-of-service attack this morning. Brian Heater at AppScout (re-posted at PC Magazine) says though service has been restored, the company is still working on resolving the issues. He also got a quote from a spokesperson for Automattic (owners of WordPress):

“I think maybe a few blogs were down for just a little while this morning, but most of them were just running a bit slower…We have three data centers. Our system is designed to lose a data center and keep running.”

I guess I was not using WordPress this morning when it went down, but from the sounds of it, it wasn’t down for too long.

Did anyone have trouble this morning?

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How a blog post becomes popular – A “step by step story” about how one blogger got his post to become popular and drive lots of traffic to his blog.

10 Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger – Businesses are always struggling with making their blogs effective. This provides some tips to do so.

10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work – A nice look at specific templates that you can use for effective headlines.

Be a Comment Rockstar: 10 Terrific Tips! – An informative post on how to write posts that will ispire large amounts of comments.

How to Launch a Group Blog Project – Group blogs are not discussed often enough, but here is an interesting post on getting one set up.

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