Entries from May 2007 ↓

OK, I’ve got good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad news first shall we? Here’s what didn’t work.

1) The site reviews didn’t seem to affect traffic.

The more bloggers wrote, the less likely they would send traffic.

This was a surprise to me, but it makes sense. Continue reading →

We defined success in a simple way: I wanted to prove that blogs can organize themselves to send measurable and significant traffic numbers. 

But going in, I didn’t know if the High Calling Blog Tour would generate any traffic at all. Remember, our goal was traffic, not sales. And I measured the most conservative estimate of traffic possible: unique users.

So did it work? Did a simple blog tour increase traffic noticeably?

You bet.

Continue reading →

Interesting site I just learned about from Josh Cody and ChurchMarketingSucks.com, a site run partially by my friend, Kevin Hendricks. (Kevin is a new writers for TheHighCalling.org, but his first article is still in the cue.)

The site is called TagCrowd, and it generates tag clouds automatically based on the text you are tagging.

For example, here is the auto-generated tag cloud for the entire text of my series on the blog tour (still in progress).

authority bloggers blogs comments data measure pagerank people post power site technorati thehighcalling tour traffic work

created at TagCrowd.com

So what do you think? Is this helpful? Interesting? Technology spinning its wheels?

Yesterday, I started presenting the statistics from our High Calling Blog Tour… I made the audacious claim that I have found a formula for predicting the traffic that a blog can drive through its links. Today, I’m going to build on that foundation a little bit more.

I’ve already posted most of our strategy on the High Calling Blog Tour page. Essentially, I recruited bloggers I knew online to be part of the tour. Start with your friends, right?

Continue reading →

There’s a lot of talk out there about the currency of the blogosphere. I’ve heard people say it’s comments. I’ve heard people say it’s linking. I’ve heard people say it’s literal sales and ad revenue. I suppose those are all true to some degree, but they miss the point.

A blog is about the audience.

The larger the audience, the more loyal the audience, the more powerful the blog.

One approach to blogging seeks to garner all that power for the blogger. Under this scenario, I would be writing GoodWordEditing.com as nothing less than an earnest attempt to take over the world. (Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?)

Needless to say, I’m not really into world domination. Or market domination. Or any kind of domination. But I am really interested in the collective power of blogs. Is it possible to organize them?

Do you know how many bees it takes to make a jar of honey?

Continue reading →

1. “My focus is on the person, not the technology. And I don’t watch any TV.”
—Phil Gerbyshak

2. “The most important thing is consistency between what you say and who you are. A great blog is just an extension of the person behind it.”
—Steve Farber

3. “A blog is a free sample of your brand.”
—Mike Wagner

4. “When I tell people I have published 160 articles about leadership on the web, they say, ‘Ooooh!’ When I tell them I’m a blogger, they say I’m weird.”
—Kent Blumberg

5. “Do what you love in service to the people who love what you do.”
—Liz Strauss

6. “Having a great experience is not buzz marketing. It’s not citizen word of mouth marketing. It’s not marketing. It’s life. It’s people sharing what they love with other people.”
—David Armano

7. “People talk about what they love. Teenagers in love talk about it. But a jilted teenager will turn on you. Jilted lovers produce ten times the negativity. Never burn relationships.”
—Andy Sernovitz

8. “Are we in competition with each other? It’s not about the links (but we like links). Write it, and share it. Share. There’s nothing new under the sun. Blogging is nothing new at its roots. It’s about relationships.”
—Phil Gerbyshak

9. “You don’t have to answer every comment. Back off. Let people talk to each other.”
—Liz Strauss

10. “Being vulnerable on my site is what makes community.”
—Wendy Piersall

11. “What make makes a good comment? Challenge the thinking and leave the door open for the next comment.”
—Lorelle VanFossen

12. “Stop calling yourself a blogger because that brand has baggage. Blogging is a commodity. Anyone can do it, but not every blogger is successful. If you have a successful blog, then you aren’t just a blogger. You are a successful epublisher. You have a webpage. That’s it.”
—David Armano

13. “To build a brand, do a good job consistently for a long time. That’s it.”
—Andy Sernovitz

14. “It usually takes 18 months to get a blog up and thriving. Don’t be discouraged by two new visitors a day. Two new clicks per day is 700 people per year. You could be developing relationships with each of them, and that’s a helluva a lot of potential.”
—Vernon Lun

15. “It’s easy to know how many seeds are in an apple, but you can never know how many apples are in a seed.”
—Wendy Piersall

Continue reading →

Ode to a Mother on Mother’s Day

This morning, my wife, their mother,
scratched backs, kissed kids awake
who stretched and groaned and went to church
with hair brushed smooth by mother
cheeks wiped clean by mother.

Mother’s Day brunches don’t last
so little hands held you in prayer,
half me, half you, the sum adds up
to eyes burning bright for mother
hearts in love with mother.

You can read other odes to mothers by clicking on this tag from TheGoodBlogs: best_mom

Note to regular readers. This post is typical. I’m late as usual.

Yesterday morning I woke up in Chicago for the last day of SOBcon07. It was totally awesome, but I’ll post more on that soon. For now, TheGoodBlogs inspired me to post that mom’s day poem.

MEME TWO: The Ultimate Guide to Productivity

My secret is not martial arts, though I wish it was. Karin tagged me with this meme from Ben over at Instigator Blog.

Continue reading →

This week, I’m doing my meme homework.

Continue reading →

Over the next few days, I’m going to catch up on my meme homework by answering three memes. All three of them are something more than link farms. Like Dawud Miracle said, the best memes…

create engaging conversation that leads to dynamic and lasting relationships. 

In fact, the best ones are creative games that get the juices flowing by answering composition questions for the writer.

1.They provide an occassion.
(I’ve been tagged.)

2. They provide an audience.
(Every meme is read by the tagger at least.)

3. They provide a simple purpose for a post.
(Answer the question.)

And they provide all kinds of questions. What makes you think? Why are you productive? Why do you blog?

The only thing a blogger has to do is come up with an answer. That’s the subject of your meme post. The trick is to make the subject fit with the content of your blog. I’ll do my best over the next few days.

If you’re like me, you have conflicting emotions about memes. When someone tags me, I think: “Cool! Someone thought of me. I’m not alone in this deep dark cyberworld after all!” then “Darn it! I have to participate in another stupid meme.”

What do you think of memes? When someone tags you, what is your honest first response?