“Think Twice Before You Use News as Inspiration” plus 2 more

Think Twice Before You Use News as Inspiration
WordPress Plugins that Make Your Blog Comments Social
Why Bloggers Should Consider Engaging on Google+

Think Twice Before You Use News as Inspiration

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 01:08 PM PDT

This guest post is by Greg McFarlane.

If there are already 100,000 posts out there that express a particular viewpoint, what's the point of adding a 100,001st?

Look for a different angle. If you can't find one, then resist the temptation to rehash conventional wisdom, and go unearth yourself some unrelated subject matter.

When you're desperate for ideas, the default method for finding something to blog about is, of course, to read the news. It's not the most organic way to inspire a post, but sometimes it's necessary—especially if you're on a deadline. The problem is that hundreds of other bloggers with writer's block are doing the same thing. Follow everyone else's lead, and by definition your blog will become correspondingly less fresh and readable. Or as legendary baseball player Yogi Berra put it, "No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

Here in the United States, our latest political scandal featured a narcissistic, libidinous, and ridiculously aptly named politician who thought that he could send erotic self-portraits to minors on Twitter and not have to deal with any ramifications.

A good number of bloggers felt obligated to discuss Representative Weiner's indiscretions. Understandably, most of those bloggers felt that the kind of person who tries to get with women half his age while embarrassing his semi-prominent wife on the national stage isn't fit for office. Others added that anyone who would initially claim that his Twitter account "was hacked into" should lose his job for showing so little respect for his constituents' intelligence.

On the other side, the minority (mercifully) opinion was that this was a distraction and we should all just move on and concern ourselves with bigger, more prominent things.* But regardless of how you felt about how suitable Weiner was for his job, the very act of expressing an opinion on his peccadilloes lumped you in with the unimaginative blogging masses.

That's the downside to blogging about an ephemeral news story, especially one that inspires such strong opinions. The story surfaces, then it quickly gets picked clean, leaving a meatless skeleton. There was little that was truly insightful to say about the scandal, and few arguments pro or con to make that weren't obvious.

Worse yet, bloggers who wrote exclusively on their non-political subjects of choice tried to shoehorn the scandal into their efforts in an attempt to seem relevant.

Like everyone else, I wondered what I could do to gain attention and capitalize on the moment. A story that was so absurd on so many levels doesn't come around every day, and you can't exactly predict when the next one will appear.

My blog is about personal finance, the second-most unsexy topic in all of human endeavor (quilting remains #1). Was there a way to tie the biggest national news story of the day into something Control Your Cash subscribers could get value out of, without forcing it?

Absolutely there was, and it was seamless. I studied Weiner's list of financial assets and liabilities—which America's federal elected officials are required to disclose some of the details of—and found dirt far more ignominious than anything in his sex life (at least to an audience of personal finance enthusiasts).

Weiner's credit card balance equaled about 10% of his annual salary, and was growing faster than he was paying it off. He'd spent years amassing and failing to pay parking tickets throughout Washington. He owned more cars than there were people in his household, and committed the minor fraud of putting the registration sticker for his cheapest car on his most expensive car to save himself a few dollars. On top of that, he was paying monthly processing fees on the credit card balance, which my blog's readers understand is something of a mortal fiscal sin.

In short, he was yet another in the endless series of bad examples that we could poke fun at on Control Your Cash. But unlike the welfare mother with nine kids from seven fathers, or the lottery winner who celebrated his fortune by spending it all and then some, Weiner held the distinction of being partially responsible for taxing my readers and spending their money. That gave the post a potency that the bloggers who wrote merely "Should Weiner resign?" couldn't hope for.

I blogged about the scandal only because the opportunity presented itself. Granted, I had to look for a way to fit it into my narrowly topical blog, but it didn't take much effort to find one. Had there been no angle, or only an awkward one, I wouldn't have. A far more famous politician found himself in far greater trouble a couple of weeks earlier, but Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't have any money problems that I could write about (forthcoming retroactive child support payments notwithstanding).

When everyone else is zigging, that doesn't necessarily mean you should zag. It might be your cue to find your own unique tangent—to para-zig, if you will. Even the road less traveled can get congested at times.

*Oh, grow up.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Think Twice Before You Use News as Inspiration

WordPress Plugins that Make Your Blog Comments Social

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 07:09 AM PDT

This guest post was written by Neil Matthews of WPDude.

Have you noticed a decrease in the number of blog comments you get and an increase in Facebook likes and Twitter tweets about your posts?

Are you worried that you are loosing social proof about the validity of your posts to the social media conversation, rather than as direct comment on your site?

There is a way to get the best of both worlds and aggregate comments and social media responses on your site.

The problem

People are building social media presences, and part of that is sharing great blog content and their opinions on those posts. It's more public and gives better results to share on Twitter or Facebook than it is leave a comment.

Curating is the new black at the moment. Adding links to your own social media conversation adds great value to your followers, while leaving a comment on a blog where no-one but the avid readers will see it does not add any value to your social media stream.

Fewer comments seems provide less social proof that people like your content, but this is not necessarily true. People stil love your stuff, it's just that they’re expressing their emotions in different places.

What's the solution?

Th solution is to bring the comments made on social media into your comment stream so you can maintain all of that social proof in one place.

There are a number of plugins that will aggregate social media and traditional blog comments into one stream on your site. This post will focus on these plugins—specifically I will be focusing on WordPress plugins (sorry Joomla, Drupal and Tumblr people! Some of these pugins will work with your platform but I'm focusing on WordPress today).

Disqus

This is a cloud-hosted comment system, wich means that your comments are hosted on the Disqus platform, and by adding a plugin to WordPress you can show those comments alongside your posts.

Disqus is a complete commenting system that offers a number of social media functions including authentication using your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and the ability for people to add a comment to your post and their social media profile of choice. But more importantly it has a Reactions feature, which will search for and aggregate into your comment stream off-site comments from social media conversations about your post.

Intensedebate

Intensedebate is another hosted comment platform brought to you by the people behind WordPress Automattic.

Intensedebate has something it calls Social Commenting features. Using these, users can log in with their Twitter or Facebook IDs, and post comments that are synced to their social media profiles.

LiveFyre

LiveFyre is another fully featured and hosted commenting system. Please note that this is a premium solution with a free option for less than 20,000 page impressions per month.

This plugin has the ability to post the comment onto your site and the social media platform of your site user’s choice. It also has a neat function that lets them tag their social media friends in your comments.

Check out the social media options for more information.

A note on hosted comment systems

When you host your comments on a third-party site, you’ll need to export your comments into that service’s car. If you breach the service’s terms and conditions, there’s a chance you could be kicked off the platform and loose your comments.

I've not heard of this happening but it is a possibility, so think long and hard before you chose to have someone host part of your site. I wrote about the same concept in my last post here at Problogger when I talked about loosing your email addresses in Are You Protecting Your Blog’s Most Valuable Asset?.

Facebook Comments for WordPress

If you want a solution that replaces your traditional blog commenting system with Facebook-only comments, then this plugin is for you.

It is a self-hosted solution that replaces traditional blog comments with something akin to a Facebook wall. People log in to Facebook, leave their comments on Facebook, and they’re replicated back on your site.

Twitter Mentions as Comments

This final plugin is again a self-hosted extension of WordPress. What is does is scan Twitter for any mentions of your posts, and pulls those tweets into your existing comment stream as if they were additional comments on your posts.

Other options

These are just some of the options available to you—there are many others. Check out the plugins under the Social Media tag on the WordPress plugin repository to see how vast your options are.

Make your comments social

Don't worry that you’re losing blog comments to social media. Using these handy plugins, you can bring the conversation back from the social platforms, and retain social proof on your blog.

How is your blog faring with comments and social media? Could these plugins be helpful to you?

Neil Is a WordPress coach and consultant, see his work at WPDude. He has also created a WordPress group coaching program called the WP Owners Club.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

WordPress Plugins that Make Your Blog Comments Social

Why Bloggers Should Consider Engaging on Google+

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 06:30 AM PDT

Google-Plus-+.png Over the last week, a couple of pretty amazing things have happened:

We had a baby!
Google announced its new baby, Google+ (G+, Google+). If you have a Google account, you can now sign into it here.

Okay, so #1 took the cake in terms of exciting news in our place, but there’s been a lot of buzz about Google+ this week in social media circles.

Luckily, because if point #1 above, I’ve had a bit of time to “play” with Google+ this week (mainly in the wee hours of the morning during settling times.

I’m not going to get into definitions or even explain Google+ features in this post. Rather, I’d like to share a few first impression thoughts on how I see it as being useful for bloggers.

Firstly, though, you can see how I’ve been using Google+ here (I’d love to connect with you so do please add me if that appeals).

It’s not going to replace my blogs

Let me start by saying that as good as Google+ is, its never going to replace my blogs. I say this because I’ve already seen a number of people say that they’re considering giving up their blogs to concentrate their efforts on Google+.

The same thing happened back a few years ago when Twitter hit. I can think of at least a couple of people who gave up blogging to go more heavily into Twitter.

While Google+ is in some ways more like a blog than Twitter (comments, longer form content, etc.) I would still advise caution here for a number of reasons that I’ve previously written about in my post Homebases and Outposts – my approach to Social Media. Ultimately a lot of it comes down to:

Google controlling my destiny: Investing all your efforts into G+ is risky because they ultimately control your account. Go against their terms of service, and you can be switched off, so putting all your eggs in the G+ basket could mean everything you invest into it can be taken away.
Branding: G+ is great for building your brand (I’ll touch on this later) but an essential part of my own brand is having my own home base. A home base is a place where I have control but also where I build my brand.

I don’t see Google+ as “replacing” my blogs, but I sure do see the potential for them to add to and enhance my blogging in some of the following ways.

Update: check out Marshall’s thoughts on why he’ll never give up his blog to go to Google+.

Community plus

The most exciting part to me about Google+ is that it opens all kinds of opportunities for reader engagement—both with me and one another. In many ways this is why I’ve been putting an increasing effort into Facebook over the last year.

While Twitter is great for getting thoughts out there, and getting responses from individuals, its weakness for me as a publisher has always been that it is limited in how it lets those who follow you interact with one another.

Facebook and now Google+ solve this by letting those who follow you not only see what you think, but also what those who reply to you think. Having the stream of replies all in one place is gold for me.

For example, last night (1.07am … yep, it was a rough night) I asked those following me on Google+ for their thoughts about ebooks. 100+ people commented and it was shared by some with their own circles of friends. The comments where not only people responding to me, but also to each other, which expanded the conversation even further.

As an added bonus, the way Google+ works, comments pop up in real time. It’s almost like a chat room at times, and that can make it even more interactive.

Research plus

One of the things that has attracted me to most social networks has been the ability to gain insight from readers about what they’re thinking and what their needs and problems are, and that informs the content (blog posts, ebooks, courses) that I produce.

Research and testing ideas to see if they have potential is something I love with both Twitter and Facebook—and Google+ is no different. In fact, it’s even better than the other networks because I can now test and research my ideas with targeted groups of people—all from one account.

As a blogger who blogs in multiple niches, I’ve always had to have multiple social media accounts to interact in a relevant way with different groups. As a result, I have a ProBlogger Twitter account and a Digital Photography one. Google+ gives users the ability to set up “circles” to segment different groups of people. This allows you to not only delve into specific topics to see what others are updating about, but also to share with those circles.

As a result, if I want to test some ideas with my photography friends, I can simply put out an update asking a question specifically to my photography circle. I can see all kinds of applications for this. Being able to set up even more specific circles to test ideas in a more targeted way will be great.

Hangouts = potential

I’m yet to do much with the Hangouts feature of Google+, but I see some potential here to also build community and also be used in reasearch.

At the moment, you’re limited to having ten people in a hangout, so it’s very much a small group activity, but I’ll watch with interest to see how Google evolves the feature. Could we be seeing the beginning of a tool that could be one day used for Webinar type interactions?

Driving traffic plus

As bloggers, we all want traffic to our blogs and, as with other social networks, there is opportunity to drive traffic here. I’ve resisted sharing too many of my own links so far on Google+, but it could be a powerful source of traffic if the user numbers of Google+ continue to climb beyond social media enthusiast circles.

The reason for this is that Google+ has built in the sharing of links right from day one. Sharing links as status updates are easy, and more importantly, those in your network can pass on the link if they enjoy it with a single click on the Share button. The potential for viral sharing is massive here.

Brand plus

Social media is as much for me about branding as anything else. It’s an opportunity for you to “bump into” potential readers in the places that they hang out and where you have the opportunity to create an impression and deepen engagement (and even build a relationship).

I’ve seen the power of this with other social networks a,nd see even more potential with Google+ because Google seem so committed to integrating this into everything else that they do (Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, etc.). Google’s potential reach is on the scale of Facebook, so there’s big potential here in terms of user numbers—too big to ignore in my mind.

Build your network before you need it

One last thought before I open this up for some discussion: build your network before you need it. I’m not sure anyone really knows what Google+ will end up achieving yet. It’s already evolving as people use it and as the Google+ team respond to that.

The key in my mind is to start experimenting and engaging, and watch to see what happens. Many people jump on social networking when they need it to achieve something for them, however those who seem to benefit from it most are those who invest time and energy into building a network and genuinely engaging in it before they actually need something from it.

What other bloggers are saying about Google+

Let’s finish this post off with some thoughts of those who I’ve connected with on Google+. As I was writing this post, I asked others how they saw it improving their blogging. You can read everyone’s responses here (and add your own) but I thought I’d highlight a few:

Pet Mugi wrote: “Google+ helped me in two ways: (1) finding blogging ideas; and (2) bringing visitors to my blog. Just observe what people are talking about, I got plenty of topics to write about in my tech blog. And the appearance in Google+ helps me to get more subscribers.”
Justin Brooke wrote: “I think the hangouts make a great mastermind tool for bloggers that form a small group dedicated to helping each other succeed. I also think recording interviews over Google+ hangouts can be great info products or blog posts.”
Shane Raynard wrote: “I’ve had more readers and interaction on G+ this past week than I’ve had on my blog the past year.“
Amber Naslund wrote: “I think the substantive discussions I’m having here so far (between the animated GIFs) are making me think harder and consider more nuanced and complex topics, which is GREAT writing fodder. My Evernote folder for post ideas is full to bursting.“
Chris Garrett wrote: “For me Google+ is the best way to have sticky discussions with my network. Facebook is becoming a friends and family only thing, Twitter is like an ephemeral chat and news tool, Google+ is more like Usenet discussions of old.”
Allison Boyer wrote: “So far, for me, G+ seems more conversational. People aren’t talking about their stats like on Facebook or shouting out every single link like on Twitter. They’re sharing ideas and really interested in what others have to say. It feels more like a live conference, where you move from group to group, talking to people about things you’re working on or ideas you’ve seen and getting feedback. As a blogger, it’s been great to help me hash out ideas and get inspired. It’s still promotional, but in a much more organic way.”

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why Bloggers Should Consider Engaging on Google+

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