New Aggregator at KnoxNews

This is cool, and needed. The News Sentinel continues to be way ahead of the curve as far as newspapers go when it comes to embracing its local blogging community. Not at all a bad business decision either, since they will be hosting blogs (and advertising) for others there. The site itself has a lot of features, but I doubt I’ll be using many of those. The aggregator is nice though.

I’m a big fan of aggregators for two reasons. First, they bring readers to your site that you may have a hard time reaching otherwise. Secondly, they are a great way to find new blogs and get a good sampling.

Luckily, I have the perfect spot for it in my theme. As soon as the bugs are worked out, I’ll be including it.

Blog Numbers and the General Public

The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik has another great column today, this time about the numbers of Americans who are blog-aware. According to a survey (conducted online),

…80% of Americans know what a blog is, nearly half have visited one and 8% maintain their own blog.

I think these numbers may be off by quite a bit. I would guess that far fewer than 80% of Americans know what a blog is (the study didn’t give parameters, just asked a yes or no question). Seriously, how many times have you answered “yes” when someone asked you if you knew what something was, just because you didn’t want to admit to them that you didn’t know.

Also, I’d bet that more than half of internet users have visited a blog, but they may not know that they were visiting a blog. I have a few other blogs that I run, and based on the search engine terms that lead people there and their click behavior after they arrive, most of them aren’t very web savvy. Of course, that is all demographic dependent. Most visitors to this blog are pretty savvy.

So what are the real numbers? My initial guess is that these numbers are reversed. I would guess that around 50% know what a blog is, and 80% (or more) have visited one. 8%of Americans maintaining thier own? That one I have a tough time believing. Holding a wet finger in the air, I’d say that could be off by as much as a factor of ten.

He Plays, err, Blogs the Right Way

All the recent talk locally about proper link attribution prompted me to finish a post I started a while back about blogging and baseball. “Everything I need to know about blogging I learned from watching baseball”? Eh, don’t really like that title too much. Plus it sounds like link bait, and I’d never do that. 😉

But I do like the notion of “playing the game the right way”. To me, that’s just about the highest honor you can give a baseball player. In a lot of ways, the same things relate to blogging:

Persistence pays off–show up every day

Cal RipkenIf you go by the numbers, Cal Ripken Jr may not look like a Hall of Famer. His batting average isn’t spectacular(.276), he didn’t hit an incredible amount of home runs (431) given the number of games he played (3001). Ripken instead sealed his legacy by being a great shortstop and showing up to play every day for a very long time (2131 consecutive games). Some days it was miserably cold, and he played. Some days it was miserably hot, and he played. Some days he was injured, and he played. A lot of days he was just plain old, and he played. While Cal’s numbers may not be all that impressive, the fact that he was so reliable is.

Be consistent and reliable for your readers. Show up every day (or week, or whatever your posting frequency is), and bring the best game you’ve got. You may only be able to outsmart, outwrite, and out search engine optimize half of the bloggers out there. The other half you will have to outwork!

Try to be the best at what you do, and the rest will take care of itself

The Wizard of OzzieFor position players, Hall of Fame credentials are usually decided by offensive numbers. Ozzie Smith is a rare exception. Why? Because his defense (13 Gold Gloves) was exceptional. With his unreal abilities at the shortstop position, there’s no telling how many runs Ozzie was able to save for his team on defense. The fact that he wasn’t always an exceptional producer on offense is overshadowed by the fact that he is the all time best on defense.

Very few bloggers are good at all aspects of the game. Concentrate on what you do best. If you are a great writer, write. If you are a great layout designer, design. If you are a great programmer, program. If you are even average at your deficiencies you can be successful. If you are excellent at your strengths, you’ll have no problem finding experts in other fields who recognize your greatness and want to be associated with you.

Cheating may get you there, but there’s a price to pay in the long run

Bonds CheaterHe-who’s-name-will-not-be-mentioned-here hit an awful lot of home runs. Very few people I know think his record is legitimate. Even fewer think very highly of him as a person. He’s basically ruined his own legacy by cheating to create it.

Don’t cheat. Learn the ropes. Hell, even learn a few tricks. But don’t cheat. Any short term gains you get won’t be worth the price you’ll have to pay in the long run. As a blogger, you need to be trusted, even if “trusted” means that people know for certain they will find nothing at your blog but a hilarious curse word laced story. Don’t spam for links. Don’t promise something that you can’t deliver. And by all means don’t steal content.

When it’s not working out, you have options

Rick AnkielI can’t tell Rick Ankiel’s story better than John Hutcheson. Short story–Rick Ankiel was a big league pitcher. He lost his stuff. He tried to get it back. He failed. Repeatedly. He went back to the minors and learned to play the outfield. He returned to the big leagues in 2007 as a Cardinals outfielder.

When something isn’t working out for you as a blogger, don’t be afraid to try something new. You’ll have to work at it, and you’ll have to learn something new. But since when are those bad things? And you’ll still be in the game.

By the way, Ankiel hit a three run homer in his first game as an outfielder.

When the someone comes after you, be ready!

In 1980, Dave Winfield charged the mound on Nolan Ryan and gave him a beat down. No one tested Ryan’s skills at the sweet science again until 1993. There was no reason to–the guy throws 100 mph. If he wanted to hurt you, you’d already be hurt. But in Nolan Ryan’s final season, he hit Robin Ventura in the arm, and Ventura came after him. This time, Ryan was ready, and the insuing butt-kicking Ventura received let everyone know that Nolan Ryan is not a guy you want to mess with.

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If you establish any kind of success as a blogger, someone is bound to come after you. While you can’t get them in a headlock and pummel them six times until Pudge Rodriguez comes out to rescue them, if you pay for hosting for you own domain, you need to make sure that your site is secure and your data is backed up from day one. Also, monitor your incoming links to make sure they are on the up and up. Don’t let someone else make you look spammy.

By the way, Ventura was ejected and Nolan Ryan completed the game without giving up another hit.

Conditions will change, and fame can come from anywhere

In 1922, the St. Louis Cardinals traded Cliff Heathcote to the Chicago Cubs in between games of a double header with the Cubs! If not for this fact, who would ever remember Heathcote?

Things change very quickly online. Who knew anything about social networking three years ago and the way it would change things? If you’ve produced quality content before the change, the same content will be just as valuable after the change. Keep doing what you do and continue to learn about how that fits in with the current environment. You’ll be surprised to find that some of what you consider to be your most unremarkable stuff is what people end up knowing you for.

By the way, Heathcote went 2-4 in the second game.

Last but not least…

Give credit to your teammates

In post game interviews with pitchers who have just thrown a perfect games or no-hitters, they generally thank two people–“God and my teammates”. This isn’t just lip service. These guys know they would not have been able to reach this achievement without a lot of support from other people (and elsewhere). The best even call out their teammates by name. Even that guy-who’s-name-I-won’t-type was big enough to thank the teammates he’d had throughout the years, and this was the closest he’s come to speaking to some of them.

Make sure you site your resources. Most of the time they will be people just like you scraping to get their blog seen and read. Know that you can help them most by giving them relevant anchor text in the link.

Can you tell I am was a Cardinals fan?

Anchor Text Matters!

Sending out the 411 to the other bloggers who read this–yes, the anchor text you use when linking to other bloggers matters, technically.

Michael Silence says:

In my more than five years of following blogs and my three years of blogging, it’s always been clear linking to the source is proper attribution.

It’s also concise.

This item, from the No Silence Here blog of Michael Silence on knoxnews.com, raises… — 14 words.

Link — one word.

What do you think?

For search engines, especially Google, relevant anchor text in a link passes page rank stregth to the original site/article. If the anchor text is irrelevant to the originating site/story, the strength of the referring page’s rank is not passed or is lower. In Michael’s case, the anchor text “Link” doesn’t help the NYT article as much as “New York Times” does. “Link” could be spammmy, “New York Times” probably isn’t.

Here’s a pretty good article on anchor text and links (see how I did that) and how Google views them.

Having said all that, it’s pretty odd that the guy would actually complain about it. Me, I’ll take any link I can get and hope that the context of the link is relevant. Worst case scenario–I get more readers. Best case–I get more readers and a Google boost.

There is quite a bit of discussion going on right now about Google’s statement that they don’t want to pass page rank between sites if the links are paid for. The thing is, how do you know if a link is organic or bought if the anchor text that creates the link is relevant to both the original source and the referring site?

Want to get confused even further? Try to decipher how Google really works by reading Matt Cutt’s blog.

Finally, Someone Else Weighs In

I’ve convinced our resident Hurrinerd, JCowan, to do some guest blogging here during hurricane season. He is way more into hurricanes than I am, plus it will save him the time of coming here to correct my misinformation if I ever try to write about one.

Hopefully he will one day spin this off to his own blog. He can be the “Lavergne and Shirley” to my “Happy Days”.

Monday Morning Potpourri

Hurricane Dean…this is getting pretty scary for the folks in Mexico as it looks like it is picking up. I have a friend who really geeks out over hurricanes, and I’ve been encouraging him to start blogging on them. I know he reads this (sometimes), so I’m calling him out publicly now. START!

Overheard on the radio this morning…
“If Shakespeare, Socrates, and Galileo were alive today they’d all own adult bookstores.”

I also heard an oldie but a goodie…
“Is that possible–to time travel speed?”
–Britney Spears

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My jaw hurts, but that doesn’t make me ugly.

Fox News — Sensationalist?

I just went to our cafeteria here at work to get some coffee and saw this “headline” on Fox News…”Bloggers a Threat?”

To be fair, I (thankfully) couldn’t hear what they were saying, only see the alert they had scrolling across the bottom of the screen. But are these guys serious? I used to think that the whole blogosphere vs. mainstream media thing was sort of a ploy by bloggers to make themselves seem a little more important than they are. Now I’m not so sure.

Even locally and regionally, there have been incidents like this, that show the divide is very real, and the tension is building on both sides.

In general, I think local news outlets do a decent job at reporting. But there really isn’t much analysis of local news except in the blogosphere. True, there are editorials in the newspaper, but without competition from the blogosphere there would be no balance of opinions. In this sense, there is a real market (need?) for local blogging, and I think that may scare local media.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is national coverage, with several 24 hour stations and analysis of the news–infotainment. Large media outlets have a lot ($$$) on the line, and cannot afford to only report the news. They have to entertain their viewers to keep them glued and keep the ad dollars rolling in. It seems to me that they are afraid of the blogosphere because they are actually getting scooped on stories that matter and are losing journalistic credibility. Others **cough O’Reilly cough** just can’t seem to take the heat of competition.

But I could be wrong.

Blogger’s Union

As nuts as it may sound, some are trying to do it. Michael Silence has this to say:

In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

This is actually the first union I’ve ever heard of that I think is a good idea. Maybe by forming and joining this inevitable disaster, these left-leaning bloggers will realize what a ridiculous idea it is. It may be the only way they ever get it through their thick skulls.

Then again, that didn’t really work with liberal talk radio did it? Instead of realizing that their product didn’t appeal to the market, they instead tried to blame the market for not desiring their product.

**UPDATE**
I thought of other benefits…

Based on the tendency of unions to discourage actual work, the end result will be that they will blog less. Everybody wins!

Think about it, no blogging on weekends, holidays, or after hours. Not to mention the frequent and extended breaks they will take while actually “working”. This idea sounds better and better the more I think about it.

Barbie Fever is Sweeping Knoxville Blogs

So it’s not just me. Other bloggers in Knoxville are being bombarded with Barbie traffic as well.

Joe Powell :

An insatiable desire to find Hitleresque cat pics and porn doesn’t exactly boost my overall optimism in web-aware humans. It makes me wonder if there is some nefarious site of Hitler Porn which gathers billions of readers.)

I wouldn’t doubt it.  I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll end up saying it again…

Blogging is a lot like having a yard sale. The only thing more amazing that what people are completely uninterested in buying is what they are interested in buying.