I realised recently that the London Bloggers Meetup community has become really quite large. In fact at the last count there are 574 of us! That’s an awful lot of bloggers and it’s great that we are all coming together either online of offline with one thing in common, blogging.
However, it got me to thinking how few of your blogs I’ve actually read. I don’t know whether this is a time issue, or whether I just keep reading the same blogs all the time, or if it’s because there are just so many of us in the community that I haven’t got around to it yet. In reality it’s probably a mixture of all of the above.
In any case, one thing’s for sure, I want to get to know everyone’s blogs a little better and to become a little better connected both on and off line. So what better way than to do that than with a game of blog tag. Thanks by the way to Farhan for this fantastic idea!
How does it work.
1. I’m going to choose three blogs from the members list, which I’ll read and write a short intro blog post about – see below.
2. I will include a link / trackback to each blog and tag my post with each blog / blogger’s name
3. I will also tag my post with ‘LBM BlogTag’
4. When you spot you have been tagged, you have to write about three other LBM member blogs (click for members list) that have not already been written about and so on…
5. You will also need to include a trackback to this post to help me monitor when everyone’s blog has been tagged
If everyone participates, we should cover all 574 members blogs (well, those who have included a blog in their profile in any case) within a few weeks..
So here goes, the three blogs to be tagged are:
Farham Rehamn
Thanks Farhan for this great idea. When I found your blog I realised two things very quickly:
1. I hadn’t been there before
2. You write about social communities so I shouldn’t be at all surprised you had a great idea like this
I hope this little project will help to rebalance your social currency, giving you a little back, filling up that depleted account and building your reservoir of Twollars. I like some of your predictions for the year ahead, which some might say are already becoming true. Is Facebook still struggling to show value to its advertisers, is Twitter taking over, a yes on both counts I believe. Will FriendFeed and other platforms designed to aggregate and organise your social media kick-off, I strongly hope so. Will 2009 be the year of the “Social Browser” let’s wait and see.
I will definitely be reading Farhan’s blog again, not only because he writes about everything in such well thought out detail, but I am sure there are a lot of ideas I can glean from Farhan’s writing to help me with the various community building projects I am involved in. Thanks Farhan.
Consider yourself tagged!
Epicurienne
Epicurienne probably needs very little introduction to regular LBM’ers. She often pops down to our monthly socials and more importantly she frequently wins a prize. It started with a trip to Amsterdam for the Blog08 event, but then she went on to win a trip in the Stella Artois airship and more recently a T-Shirt from the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer folks. I have to say, the second I pulled Epicurienne’s name out of the hat for the T-Shirt I just couldn’t believe my eyes, how could she win again! The suggestion from her brother that there might be something going on probably expresses the shock in more clarity – just to clarify, there isn’t anything going on.. : – ). Well, there probably couldn’t be a nicer winner, so it seems fair play to me.
Epicirienne’s blog is actually a pretty entertaining read. It’s generally about life, travel , food, fashion and all sorts to be honest. But really, cold spaghetti, that truly is a “Snack of Shame”!
Chris Applegate
Now on to my third blog and I’ve plumped for the interesting world of “marketing wonk” Chris Applegate. Chris has been around LBM for a while and much to my delight brought his client Berocca along last year with a few free samples and a host of free beers. I’ve got to say I’m not sure I’ll be enjoying a Guinness with Berocca again, but a cocktail perhaps worth investigating Mr Diageo – think of the health benefits of a Guinness packed full of life giving vitamins.
In any case, Chris’ blog qwghlm is another interesting read, particularly if you like controversial and highly opinionated political comment – see latest post about a petition for Gordon Brown to resign, which, if you’ve signed makes you a “fucking idiot”, at leats in Chris’ eyes. Chris was behind the even more controversial video of Hitler’s membership of BNP when the BNP lost its membership database last year. If you haven’t see it, it is very funny.
So Chris, consider yourself tagged too. Who will you choose to tag next..?
Happy BlogTagging folks!
Pete Cashmore, the famed creator of Mashable, the social networking news site, was the first speaker at Blog08, telling us how to build a blog empire. He should know, because, as the Blog08 site tells us, Mashable has 5 million monthly pageviews and Cashmore was recently named the 22nd most important Web Celeb by Forbes.com
The twenty three year-old English-born, Scottish-raised internet entrepreneur was at ease on stage as he imparted his wisdom to the crowd. He confided that he’d been unwell as a youngster so hadn’t been able to attend college or university, concentrating on the money-making opportunities that the internet could provide him. At first, Cashmore had wanted to build his own social network, but while he was working out how to do this, he started blogging about the social networks that already existed or were then in development. That’s how Mashable came about and now his site is THE authority on social networking.
In a nutshell, Cashmore says that in order to build a blog empire, you have to eat, live and breathe the business, which is exactly what he’d done himself. In Mashable’s early days, Cashmore existed on four hours’ sleep per night, but the effort paid off, didn’t it?
Here are his main tips for blog success:
1. Build something you love. No one fell in love with a market opportunity.
2. The passion for what you do will help you work hard with little sleep if necessary.
3. Don’t waste too much time making your blog look good. Content is king. If you blog about what you’re passionate about, well enough and for long enough, eventually someone will take notice.
4. Just do it.
5. Read, write, comment, improve – and repeat. Blog, eat and sleep – for years, if necessary. Seek out interesting blogs related to what you do and subscribe to them. Use Google reader. Do not worry about funding yet.
6. Use Wordpress as your platform. In Cashmore’s opinion, Wordpress is the most extensible platform for a blog.
7. ANALYSE Look at your stats and steer into the areas where you’re successful. Find out what’s working on your blog. Extend it. Serialise it. Give readers what they want.
Use analysis sites like Woopra, getclicky.com and Google analytics, which Cashmore thinks is the best.
Check out your referrers and stats twice every day.
If people are checking out your site via Digg, then target Digg.
8. MONETISE
Mashable uses Google Adsense but Cashmore doesn’t think it’s that effective.
He says that CPMs are not that great either.
Look into niche advertising and find a network selling ads across your niche.
Think about direct selling. (Mashable sells ads on its sidebar).
Consider creating a marketplace or job boards.
9. Cashmore’s favourite networks are:
• TWITTER: This engages your audience, reaches friends, creates ripples so you don’t need a big hit. It’s a good tool for tracking conversations and syndicating headlines and for finding negative feedback about your site quickly so you can act on it before it becomes farther-reaching.
• FLICKR: Isn’t great for traffic-building but is good for creating community.
• FACEBOOK is most effective if you work with groups but loses effectiveness at scale. How many REAL friends do you have on Facebook?
• DIGG: Here you can vote for the best stories. It’s useful for learning how to write a rocking headline. A blogger asks “Is it okay to DIGG yourself?” Cashmore replies: “Yes, but the system is starting to make this harder.”
• STUMBLE UPON: this is a useful tool for watching what’s popular but here it is not so good to vote for your own site.
Cashmore then takes us to the next stage: you’ve built a successful blog and it’s been recognised, monetised etc. YOU’VE GOT COMPANY! His tips about staffing your blog company are simple:
• HIRE carefully, frugally and remotely. Personality isn’t that important if you’re working with someone on an internet platform, so if you like what you see of their internet presence and it’s what you need at the time, then that should be sufficient proof that they can help you.
• FIRE quickly, decisively and mathematically. Remember that people are assets so they need to make you more money than they’re costing you.
Then, before leaving the stage Cashmore took some audience Q&A, providing us with the following nuggets of information:
• Cashmore IS Pete Cashmore’s real name. Someone thought it might not be, probably because this internet guru has more cash than he can shake a stick at!
• Cashmore as a name has it’s origins in meaning ‘castle man’, which is what castle caretakers were once called.
• He receives about 400 e-mails per day.
• His view is that a blog takes a long time to set up properly, but once that’s been done, it’s stable.
Sadly, by the end of Blog08, Pete Cashmore still hadn’t invited me to a Mashable party, insisting I wear party-on clogs. I suppose there’s still time. As some consolation, however, I did get to sit next to him at dinner and his chocolate lasagne pudding looked amazing. But that’s another story…
Useful links:
Mashable: http://mashable.com/
Get clicky: http://getclicky.com/
Woopra: http://www.woopra.com/
Google analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/en-GB/
Cashmore reviewed by Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/18/web-celeb-fame-tech-cx_de_07webceleb_1218top_slide_23.html?thisSpeed=20000
Post courtesy of London Bloggers Meetup competition winner Epicurienne.
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