ContentRobot

GrokDotCom reports that Google Optimizer has shed its beta status:

Google Website Optimizer can now be accessed by anyone with a basic Google account. Even if you only have so much as a Gmail account, you can start testing your website — for free — regardless of whether you’re running a paid search campaign. (No worries, AdWords users, Website Optimizer still works seamlessly with the rest of the Google product suite.)

Ready to test headlines, copy, images, and other conversion points? Don’t forget to check out:

• GrokDotCom’s free resources
• ContentRobot’s Google Website Optimizer Plugin

While we live in a continuous wired-in existence, doesn’t it strike you funny that out of the box blogging software doesn’t offer much in the way of allowing others to contact us? ContentRobot offers some ways you can enhance your blog, so that others can reach you:

Email links
It’s easy to add your contactme@myblog.com link on your blog; however, it opens you up for a bunch of spam. To combat that, you can create a link that doesn’t explicitly write out the address - consider these formats: contactme [at] myblog.com or contactme[SPAM]@myblog.com (don’t forget to tell people to remove the [SPAM] when writing you).
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Blogging has provided a bunch of opportunities for your brand to be written about (even if its not your blog). Do you know what people are saying about you?

Head over to these resources and plunk in your company or personal name:

• Check out search engines like Google or Yahoo!.
• For more of Web 2.0 approach, land on Techorati or Icerocket.
• What about multimedia? Jump to Flickr or Youtube.

What did you see? Now what do you do?

It’s a great time to respond to the findings on your blog. Didn’t find anything about yourself? Start publishing some great content. Don’t have a blog? It’s a great time to create one!

ContentRobot wanted to be a part of Darren Rowses’ ProBlogger Group Writing Project. While much of the ProBlogger readership seems to be blogging solo, ContentRobot writes and manage our blogs together. What effective habits does the ContentRobot team have? One of our strongest assets is the fact that we are a true team, passionate and excited about blogging and what we do. Here’s our approach:

1. Share blog duties. In our case, we need two people to manage all aspects of our blogs. To handle the various content, design, and technology, and monetizing requirements for all our blogs, we have identified a point person for each individual task. This allows us to not get overwhelmed, especially over the things that we feel we are not as good at doing.

2. Set and refine goals. For writing, we like to have a minimum of 2 posts per blog per week – and if we can do more, we do and if we can’t do more, we don’t sweat it. We take the time to discuss success factors at least once a week (mostly when we can be face-to-face). And we are flexible enough to change course when things just aren’t working.

3. Dedicate at least one day per week to write blog posts. With 4 blogs to manage and a business to run, sometimes it’s easy to let posting slip with all the other things we need to accomplish. By choosing a day (often Tuesday or Wednesday) we can attend to writing for each blog. We like to create a weekly routine where each day we can focus exclusively on a particular blogging or business aspect.

4. Share writing duties. We usually split the various elements of the posts between the two of us. Typically one of us will do the research, drafting, and writing, while the other acts as final editor and adds relevant image(s). This helps us to avoid embarrassing mistakes, whether its grammar or fact checking, and that second pair of eyes is always extremely helpful.

5. Use Backpack to post ideas and links. We use Backpack as a central repository for brainstorming, and we can post our thoughts as we think about them or if we come across anything interesting. Since we can sign in and grab them from any browser at any location, it is helpful because we are frequently mobile and not always in the same place.

6. Read RSS feeds religiously. Along with ProBlogger, we habitually read feeds from the blogging and technology arenas, which allow us to stay on top of the latest news and commentary. This leads us to get inspiration for new posts or add our two cents to what is currently being discussed. We like to use Instant Messenger to share stories and bounce ideas.

7. Keep learning. As blogging evolves, so shall we. We both consider ourselves students of the trade and work hard to learn all we can about it. We are not afraid to experiment and keep building with new tools and technologies. We push each other to follow our passions.

8. Never feel alone. We have such complementary skills (blogging brings together our greatest strengths – graphic design and writing) that we have a built-in support system that our partnership needs to thrive. We could never have created what we’ve done so far by ourselves, and we like it that way.

9. Keep each other inspired. Each of us has been known to be moody and get down for one reason or another, but we have made a pact to pick each other up when the black clouds come. We continue to be enthused and excited about what we are doing.

10. Have fun. We genuinely like each other, despite being pretty different (down to one of us is male and the other female). We think our partnership is nothing short of fun, and we hope to bring our enjoyment through with all that we do. We make it a point to not just be all about work – we attend conferences, hit a museum in NYC, and stuff like that to recharge ourselves.

Do you know where your feeds are? Do you know who is reading them?

Feedburner gives bloggers a simple way of finding out exactly how many people were reading your feed, how many of those people were clicking on items and which items they were following up on.

It’s an extremely useful service. You can choose between their free basic service, yet it’s well worth the mere $4.99 a month for the professional account that includes expanded metrics tracking.

Scraping and Splogging
Now, Feedburner has taken RSS and feed tracking to a new level by detecting and pointing out people that may be illegally reusing your feed. It will track the use of your feed and alert you when they think there is something fishy going on.

It now can “name names” to help blog publishers to find out who is scraping and splogging (”spam blogging”) their feeds. Categorized as “uncommon uses,” Feedburner can sniff out the thiefs and point you right to them.

No longer do bloggers have to rely on search engines or dumb luck to find out if their content is being reused. Instead, they get a neat report of all suspicious activity, complete with links to follow up on.

What Happened to Us
This is exactly what happened at our tunevroom.com blog that we publish. We found that a site, which was wrapped in advertising, was “scraping” our feed so it looked like the stories they presented were their own. Luckily for us, a simple cease and desist email took care of that and the feed was dropped.

Thankfully, the vast majority of RSS users are legitimate. But knowing is a lot better than not knowing and Feedburner’s new stats make it easier than ever to find out what your feed is being used for. That alone is great news for people concerned about online content theft.

This post was inspired by our experience as well as the great post at Plagiarism Today.

When you are blogging, do you realize that your readers are your customers? As such, you should treat them right so they’ll keep coming back. We’ve outlined some dos and don’ts to help you along the way.

DO … Make your design as pleasing as you can and your navigation as intutive as can be.

DON’T … Make big changes overnight. People don’t like sudden surprises. Drop hints, openly discuss your plans or add the updates over a lengthy period of time while telling them. Any radical changes can cause a dramatic downturn in readership.

DO … Be polite and nice to them always (no matter what they do to you).

DON’T … Insult them. Avoid flame wars and resorting to swearing. If you must, smile sweetly and block their IP address if they become a nuisance.

DO … Say hello to your readers. Never ignore them or pretend that they are not there. Don’t forget to answer your email and comments promptly.

DON’T … Take them for granted. Just because they click on an ad or comment one day does not mean that they will next week.

DO … Help your readers with any queries or problems that they have. Put negative feedback to good use and implement changes when possible to correct any minor issues.

DON’T … Get angry at your readers even if they for whatever reason don’t seem to ‘get it.’ Good and happy readers are worth their weight in gold, so never forget that.

DO … Keep it simple. Avoid using overly complicated terms, or if you do, take the time to explain them within your posts. If you need to, point them to another web resource, such as the Wikipedia, to help you help them.

DON’T … Think that your readers are stupid. Don’t show off and never talk down to them.

DO … Use your own common sense. Think about how you would want to be treated. Yeah, the old golden rule also applies when blogging.

DON’T … Confuse, be pushy, or be annoying. No one likes a snob, afterall.

Thanks to performancing for this article’s inspiration.

There are alot of ways blogs can be evaluted for success, depending on your goals and objectives. Choose one or more and you’ll be on your way.

1. Traffic

Traffic, often tracked in a site statistics program, can include these measures:

• Unique Visitors - This is individual IP addresses that visit.
• Page Views - Total number of pages viewed (the higher the number of pages viewed per visitor, the stickier your site is).
• Length of Stay - How long are those visitors staying? The more they stay, the more they’ll see.
• Referrals - Shows you where your readers come from, including which search engines or other linked sites.

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Jeremiah Owyang is compiling a list of business blogging best practices (70 to date). We’d like to highlight 25 of our favorites.

2. Understand and be able to articulate that “consumers trust other consumer opinions over all others.”

3. Understand that a conversation about your market will occur regardless if you participate or not.

8. Figure out in advance your blog purpose, audience and strategy. Have a plan.

9. Pick a topic and stick to that topic strategy. Some blogs are good for product evanglism, customer feedback, corporate image, fire control, developer code, etc.

11. A blog is not a press release, it’s an informal converastion.

14. An ideal blogger is someone who is already online all the time, consumes mass info, and exports mass info.

20. Read other blogs in your conversation and marketplace, link to them to your feedreader such as myYahoo or google personalized, or google feedreader.

23. Leave comments on your advocates, align yourselves with them. Reward your advocates (doesn’t need to be monatarily). Strengthen your relationship so you both prosper.

27. Respond to comments on your site, keep the conversation going.

28. Your blogging strategy doesn’t mean that you need to have the whole world linking and reading your blog, it’s about connecting with your small audience.

34. Discuss topics that are relevant to your audience, real business or user needs. Pumping your company on every post is not what blogging is about.

37. Allow user comments, seriously. One of the biggest benefits of a blog is to have a conversation with your audience. You can figure out a process or a way to filter or review comments before they hit your blog. I feel strongly that comments are native to the tool and communication medium, strongly consider keeping it on.

44. If you have multiple strategies, consider having multiple bloggers that focus in on each of those areas.

45. Alert the analysts in your industry that you’re blogging, either give them a call or link to their blog (if they have one)

49. Don’t hire any firms to help you with a blog strategy that are not blogging themselves.

51. Use language that your audience uses, avoid using terms that your marketing and corporate communications teams have created.

52. Have a kickoff ‘best practices’ and ’strategy’ meeting with your corporate bloggers. Have updated meetings and training later.

54. Inform other business units of the plan and involve them. This is very important for Corp Comm, Communications, Execs, Legal and Marketing groups.

56. In addition to your regular guru, find industry blog leaders, read their work, talk to them, hire them.

58. Ask outsiders to provide honest and open feedback about your blog. Let them know that negative feedback as well as positive feedback will be helpful.

59. Obtain high level approval and sponsorship.

66. Don’t disappear for weeks on end between posts. Otherwise, your readers will disappear. Try to post on a regular-enough basis such that it gets readers into the groove of constantly wondering whether there’s a new post to check out. (Submitted by Ken)

67. Develop “thick skin” as people will slam your company, your products, your ideas, and maybe even you. This is called playing in the blogosphere, and for some, it’s tough lesson to swallow. Don’t worry, many of us are doing it, and there is some netiquette. More importantly, since your customers are already thinking these things and telling others, isn’t it better to get it out in the open and resolve it for all to see? (Idea from Scott Anderson of HP during his address at the syndicaiton conference)

68. Blog about timely events. Yup, releveny is important, this is a conversation so old news isnt’ relevent. (Idea from Scott Anderson of HP during his address at the syndicaiton conference)

70. Be very cautious when starting a blogging program at your company. It makes sense to obtain strategy and advice from someone who is succesful blogger, not someone who’s willing to dive in without proper experience.

To see all the tips, read the entire article.

If your getting read to jump into blogging, let ContentRobot help you with your strategy, planning design, writing, and measuring your success. Contact us today.

Your blog team, not unlike your web team, needs to have these common skills to build a successful site. Is your team missing any?

Design

• Photoshop: basic graphic design skills are paramount for image creation and photo editing
• Knowledge of how to create an overall effective blog design layout (knowing where the navigation goes, where to place advertising, etc.)
• CSS: being able to enhance your blogs with stylesheets (including colors, font and table properties) will enhance blogs’ look-and-feel as well as help you brand them. Go beyond basic blogging templates.
• Creating a design that is inherently usable, not just “cool”

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So you want to create a blog, but don’t know how to do it? Check out this basic roadmap to make it happen.

1. Strategize
Plan what you are going to do. This includes what topics will you cover, how you will position it (remember to stay on budget), and give it a good name. And don’t forget to install a good stats package so you can track your success.

2. Design
Put together the best blog design you can - if you can’t do it yourself, leave this area to the pros (like ContentRobot). The key is to make sure your blog is usable, the layout works, and the navigation is intuitive from the front page down to the detail pages.

3. Content
To easiest way to build success is to create lots of killer blog posts and perhaps have lots of great ideas in the wings. Do not blow all your best ideas all at once, but create a your posting schedule with care toward timing.

4. Links
By linking out generously, you will gain attention and your posts and blog will be more valuable for it. It position your blog as more relevant to your topic in the eyes of search engines. Also, remember to link to your own content. Don’t rehash information you have already covered, just link to it. It saves cluttering posts, increases page views and also increases those posts visibility in search.

5. Promotion
Once you have something worthy of promotion you need to start putting the word out. This includes putting your blog in your email and forum signatures, commenting on others’ blogs, forums and discussion lists. Be part of the conversation!

6. Publish
Get your writing out in the world and link back to your blog by guest posting on other blogs and writing for online and print magazines. By “giving” your articles away, more people will read your stuff and click through to find more.

7. Keep At It
It’s hard to know at what point you’ll feel successful, but be patient. Work through blogger’s block and stay passionate! When all else fails, read through this list again and keep going - the blogosphere will thank you.