PureBlogging

Good morning! Anybody else see Hellboy II over the weekend? I was sorely disappointed — I was hoping for something vastly better than the first movie, but got something only marginally better. Oh well — I’m still looking forward to this weekend’s double-whammy of The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia.

And speaking of Batman…

Warren Ellis has called for an end to linkblogs. Maybe the whole Boing Boing vs Violet Blue thing soured him — I know it soured me. Meanwhile, Quark Soup makes some pretty reasonable complaints about blogs in general (h/t Gerry Canavan). Remember: There’s no niche too small. As blogs become more and more localized, will we stop caring about the generalists and focusing more on the experts?

The Writers’ Bag offers a cool tutorial on speed writing. As someone who keeps a moleskine handy at all times, I think I’m going to try this, since my brain often works much faster than my hands.

MetaFilter reminds us that Terry Rossio, half of the screenwriting team that brought you Captain Jack Sparrow, is blogging again. The blog itself seems to indicate that the table of contents was last updated in Fall of ‘07, but hey, a goldmine is a goldmine.

“Trust and credibility are worth more than a fast buck,” say the Men With Pens. It’s a lesson many of us could stand to keep learning. Not me, of course. I am a paragon of virtue.

The adorable manga girls at Dosh Dosh remind us to contextualize the information we share. Also at Dosh Dosh: You’re not just a writer, you’re the editor in chief.

Well, it’s still Monday morning on the West Coast. For a little while longer, anyway.

37 Signals offers some great motivation (and good ideas) for finding revenue streams.

Hacker News has a great discussion on the nature of SEO.

Copyblogger has tips on managing the length of your blog posts.

Men With Pens asks the Ultimate Question: Why do we blog?

Seth Godin makes a great observation about Wall-E and the bravery of creating great content.

Has anyone seen Wall-E, by the way? For my dollar it’s the best movie of the year. If I ever make it as an actor, I’ll be able to cry like a hungry baby, on command, just by thinking of the scene where EVE is trying frantically to find a new circuit board to replace Wall-E’s broken one. See, there I go right now. Big salty tears, right in the keyboard.

If you are serious about being a better blogger, you’re probably already highly familiar with the name Darren Rowse (or at least his Problogger blog). You might also know Chris Garrett who blogs about new media. These guys are leaders in the industry who have gained recognition for their success (including their financial success) in the business. Yesterday they both published announcements on their respective blogs about the fact that they have co-written a book about blogging together that will be released within the next few weeks.

The ProBlogger Book

You really only need to know the title of the book to understand what it’s all about; it’s called ProBlogger Book: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. If you want to know more, Chris’s announcement says that the book was quite difficult for the two of them to work on over the course of the last year due in no small part to the fact that they really wanted to live up to the book’s title. These are guys that have done well in the business of blogging and they want the readers of the book to benefit from their experience.

The bloggers behind the book

If for some strange reason, you don’t know about these bloggers, they are guys who have gotten attention for leading the areas in which they work. Here’s a little bit more information for you to chew on:

Darren Rowse, who is probably best known from his leading blog about blogging ProBlogger, is an Australian blogger who got attention in part because of his Six Figure Blogging telecourse. He was among the first to suggest the bloggers can not only survive off of their blogging income but can actually do quite well for themselves if they put in the time and effort to do so. In addition to the Problogger blog, Darren is the co-founder and VP of the b5 media blog network which includes numerous different blogs. He has contributed to numerous blogs and websites and has gained experience in blogging from the ground up.

Chris Garrett is a name that’s not as well known to many bloggers but is even more well-known than Darren to a few. That’s because his specialty is working in “new media” and he has worked as a consultant for numerous people who are making their living in the new media world. That includes blogging, of course, with which he is familiar for a number of different reasons. The main reason is that he is a founding member of Performancing, a site which is geared towards helping bloggers succeed in blogging.

Why bloggers would want to read this book

The main reason that you’d want to read this book as a blogger is because there is bound to be a lot of good advice for you about how to be financially successful at blogging. Additionally, you can probably avoid a lot of beginning blogger mistakes by reading a summary such as this one from two bloggers who have already been there before you. But there’s a more important reason that bloggers should consider reading this book. If you want to take blogging seriously then you need to know what’s going on in the world of blogging around you. You can’t just stay confined to the niche of your own blog. And right now, what’s going on is that two leading blog consultants have published a book about blogging that is sure to be read by a majority of your blogging competition. In order to be a leading blogger yourself, you have to know what others are referencing and this book is sure to make that list.

Blogging as we know it is changing. Evolving. Are you ready? Do you feel confident that you know how blogging is changing so that you can best position yourself to take advantage? I’d like to share with you my personal perspective on the changes I see happening.

Blogging is becoming more than text

This first one should be pretty obvious to most of us by now. The advent of multimedia for blogs is astounding. I know the first thing you will think of is video. Without question, video blogging has officially arrived. But video isn’t all their is. Anything that can be embedded into a blog post extends the blog beyond text. And if there’s one thing programmers and creative people out there are really gunning for, it’s getting you to put their widget in your blog posts. Consider the following:

• SlideShare
• Animoto
• PollDaddy

As more and more tools like these become available, blog posts will continue to be much more than text. If you’re not shooting video or enhancing your posts with multimedia, it’s time to consider it for your blog. Don’t do it without reason, but give people something more than just text to read when it helps to make more of an impression or provide further information. It’s one thing that will help your blog stand out and look fresher than other blogs in your niche.

Blogging is growing bigger

When you look at blogs like TechCrunch, Boing Boing, Engadget, and The Huffington Post, you can see how blogging is now the big time. Can your blog grow that big? Yes, it can. I can remember when TechCrunch didn’t exist and in the early days it started out with very few readers just like any blog. Of course, that didn’t last long, but that’s what great content and good connections to an industry will get you. I remember when the TreeHugger blog really was just a little WordPress blog trying to make a difference. Well, now they’ve made a difference and a bundle of cash, having been sold to the Discovery Times Newsgroup for $10 million. It was the right niche at the right time, with the right mix of content.

Blogging is growing smaller

At the same time, blogging is also growing smaller. So small, at first glance they hardly seem to be blogs at all. I’m talking about micro-blogging platforms, such as Twitter and Pownce, and I’m also talking about “tumblelogs,” which are often single-column stream-of-consciousness style blogs. Twitter in particular has exploded in popularity, and has aspects of a social media site, although it is described as a micro-blogging platform, due to its 140-character limit on post length.

The first tumblelog was created by Christian Neukirchen, and it’s called Anarchaia. Tumblelogging for everyone is made possible through the free, hosted service Tumblr or through single-column blog templates.

Blogging is becoming easier

Blogging is becoming easier in many ways:

• Free, hosted platforms like WordPress and Tumblr, plus social media blogging like Facebook and Twitter make blogging easier than ever for non-techies to just get going.
• More web hosting companies have one-click installs for WordPress self-hosted, giving you more freedom in some ways, but still requiring way more technical know-how than your average newbie possesses.
• The ability to share content with embed codes is getting to be more well-known and easier.
• Creating video and pictures and editing them online is getting easier.

Blogging is becoming more difficult

In some ways, blogging is becoming more difficult. The bar has been raised. The stakes are higher. The markers we look for that tell us a blog is professional and that give a blog the greatest chance for success are not easy to implement without technical knowledge. It takes more to start a professional blog now than it once did. Just getting started can be overwhelming to people, leaving room for people to make a living as blogging consultants to help people navigate blogging.

Creating original content that stands out from the sea of millions of other blogs is also becoming more difficult as the number of blogs continues to grow. Can it be done? Yes. Even the most over-saturated of niches can be dominated by a newcomer. Who ever heard of Dosh Dosh or Skelliewag a few years ago? Nobody. And yet now they are two of the most popular blogs in the make money online and meta-blogging niches.

Blogging is becoming one part of what is called social media

Finally, the big one. This is one that bothers some people who are hanging on to ideas about how blogging is writing in the older tradition of writing. Not only is blogging beyond text, as I’ve already mentioned, it’s also beyond content, period. This idea of content on a the web as static words–the pixel version on ink on paper–is evolving into something else. The intersection and synergy of blogging and social media really highlights this for me.

A big part of why some bloggers are wildly successful has less to do with the content they create on their blog than their networking activities. Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn (more for business), and others facilitate this. Twitter is probably the most pronounced example of this stage in blogging’s evolution. Honestly, I don’t know whether to think of Twitter as a micro-blogging platform or a social media platform. It’s both, really. And you can expect further changes in this direction from other blogging and social media platforms, including WordPress.

Now that we’ve looked at some of the ways in which blogging is changing, I hope that this leaves you with a better perspective on this, and will help you make decisions about where you’re taking your blogging. I’d love to hear from you about how you see blogging changing. Please leave a comment below and let’s discuss!

Bloggers who are successful at their jobs are people who are good at networking. The pure and simple fact is that blogging requires being able to market your writing to a growing readership. In many cases, your readers are going to be other bloggers. Because of this, it’s a good idea to start putting yourself in the places where other bloggers are located.

Sure, you’re going to do a lot of your networking online through blog comments and social networking sites. But you should also work on meeting bloggers in the real world. Bloggers who attend conventions and expos give themselves the opportunity to meet a number of other active bloggers while simultaneously learning new blogging skills that can improve their own work.

Here are some of the top conventions and events that bloggers may consider booking a ticket to attend this year:

• SOBCon08. Chicago, May 2-4, 2008. This blog convention is hosted by awesome blogger Liz Strauss. In addition to Liz, speakers will include representatives of Technorati and MyBlogLog.
• Blog World and New Media Expo. Las Vegas, September 20-21, 2008. This blog convention is one of the most well-known. It’s not just good for bloggers but also for vloggers, podcasters and social networking divas.
• Web 2.0 Expo. Multiple dates and locations. This one is not specifically for bloggers but more for people who are interested in design and development on the web. Bloggers can certainly benefit.
• SMX Social Media, Long Beach, April 22-23, 2008. Bloggers who are interested in learning internet marketing skills may find that this is a good place to get started.
• Social Networking Conference. Multiple dates and locations. This is an interesting one because it’s got a big emphasis on online dating. However, there are some social networking skills to be learned here and there are certainly people in the industry to meet. It never hurts to know more folks with good social networking skills!

Of course, you might not have an interest in traveling to one of the cities that hosts a blog expo. An interesting alternative would be to host a blog event of your own. A small one-day event isn’t difficult to set up and gives you a chance to market yourself as an expert in blogging. It requires that you put some effort into organizing other local bloggers but that effort will pay off in an automatic network of local connections.

Question of the Day: What blog events have you attended and how have they impacted your blog?

A couple of days ago I posted a very quick review of the new MyBlogLog widget. MyBlogLog has a widget that lets users see who is visiting a specific weblog. Ive noticed that PureBlogging doesnt have this widget on the site and I have always wondered why!

The service is quite simple and does what it says on the can. However, with the new version of the widget there are still a lot of customisation issues that need to be resolved, but it is still an essential part of any weblog. I have always wondered why PureBlogging has been floating around the 700 rss subscribers number and has never really improved. We have a great list of professional bloggers, but still no results. Im sure the site makes enough money and is in the black, but the MyBlogLog widget has to be the fastest way to mingle with other bloggers and hopefully build a stronger community around your site. Make sure you head over and give it a try!