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5 Things Bloggers Shouldn’t Do
There are a lot of articles and blog posts on the web that will present a list of things you should do in order to run a successful blog, this is not one of those articles. I want to discuss some of the things you shouldn’t do, opinions may differ but most of these you will likely agree with.
1. Don’t call yourself, “An Authority” or, “Expert” on your blog’s subject.
If you run a great blog and seem to have a great answer for everything, then yes, you are likely an expert or authority; but the minute that you announce to your readers that you are, you become a jerk instead. Think about it, the people who we admire the most are those that are modest and in denial about their own talents, whether they fake the denial or not, it is the cool thing to do. Same thing goes for heroes right? When was the last time some guy pulled a kid from a burning building, and when the reporter calls him a hero he says, “Yup, absolutely, I am incredible, aren’t I?” Never, that’s when. Anyone in that position knows that they have to say, “Hero? Nah, I was just doing what anyone else would do, I ain’t no hero.” Otherwise, he would be a jerk.
2. Don’t argue with your readers.
It doesn’t matter if he is the biggest idiot in the world, and you are right as rain; you are the only one with something to lose: your readers. If you think that your content is so good that you can say whatever you want to whoever you want, then people will go out of their way to ignore your blog and tell all of their friends to do so also. Treat everyone with the same respect that you would want, even if they are wrong, it will make you look like the better of the two.
3. Don’t fail to remember your theme.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but there are so many blogs that ramble on and never recover. Please do not get the wrong idea here. If you write a blog about playing baseball, then each and every one of your posts do not have to be about baseball, but if the last twelve posts are about your mother-in-law’s divorce struggle, then you seem to have lost direction. Yes, people want to understand that you are a real person, with real problems, but unless your blog is specifically about those problems, then stick to the subject.
4. Don’t alienate the “majority.”
Now this is a big one I see continually. Please don’t think that just because two or four people want your blog to go a particular route, that ALL of your readers want it to go that way. Keep in mind, a successful blog is about pleasing the majority of your readers. Just because you have a few people who LOVE a particular type of content, it doesn’t mean that all of them do. Remember, you likely have many readers whom you will never hear from on your comments, but are extremely in to your blog. So how are you supposed to know which direction they want you to follow? Well, try using the poll feature in Blogger or Wordpress, and ask your readership what they like best; you may be surprised. Also, keep a mailing list that is up to date, and ask your members for their view; most people jump at the chance to offer their voice in a matter that concerns them. Plus, it will make you look great that you are asking for their input.
5. Please do not be a rolling billboard.
Look, everybody understands that advertising is what pays the bills for a full-time blogger, but when you jam ad copy down their throat at every single turn, it gets annoying. Take care of the most vital thing, the content, and the rest will take care of itself. Yes, ads are significant, and you should optimize your ads and put a ton of work into it; just don’t be overbearing with them. They are there, people see them, and if they are interested, they will click.
By James Junior
WWGD: Why Google TV Won’t Match Google Search
I just started reading Jeff Jarvis’s book “What Would Google Do?” — and I love it. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since he told me about his idea for the book almost a year ago. As many of you know, Jeff is a former journalist and media executive and now very high profile blogger at Buzzmachine.com.
In Jeff’s book, he writes about the very successful — and fundamentally different — approach that Google takes in running its business relative to virtually every other company in the world. He details its obsessions in serving users, its “publicness,” its ability to create and exploit network effects. Then he hypothetically applies these principles to a number of other industries, from banking to retail, always asking the question, “What would Google do?” His stories and ideas are fascinating and the book is a fast read. I highly recommend it.
However, my purpose in writing today about Jeff’s book was not just to review it, but also to follow his advice and turn the question back on Google. Why? Because as I read the book, it occurred to me that Google has done some things that are not “what Google would do.”
Google has built an extraordinary business in search by focusing on the user and giving searchers more and better information faster than any other company. Its effort to organize the Web’s information certainly created “the world’s greatest Yellow Pages.” Then, the company combined this search directory with an enormously powerful and profitable advertising business, AdWords, which delivers commercial messages that are very relevant to the search results. Finally, its strategists extended the scale of the AdWords business with the creation of AdSense, where tailored commercial messages are distributed across millions of other Web sites. The combination of Google Search, AdWords and AdSense has given the company a media franchise of a size, growth trajectory and profitability such that the world has never seen before.
I think that the order in which Google created these businesses is important. AdWords worked because of the power of Google Search. AdSense worked because of the existing power of AdWords. These products would not have worked nearly as successfully, if at all, if they had been launched in reverse order.
Why then, when Google launched Google TV and Google Print, did it focus first on the advertising sides of those businesses? Essentially, these products aggregated commercial inventory from traditional media companies and offered them for sale through the same kinds of self-service interfaces used for AdWords and AdSense. Both Google Print and Google TV seem to have been the company’s attempts to horizontally extend its online ad franchise into traditional media, but neither product had the advantage of leveraging a massive user base viewing a “Googlized” directory of print or television content. Neither of them really focused on the user, nor did they follow users.
To me, Google Print and Google TV seem like the kinds of new business extensions that more traditional corporations would implement — on the counsel of expensive, brand-name management consultants, of course — rather than follow the model that Google did in building its core franchise. Maybe this is why Google Print wasn’t successful and was recently shut down. I don’t know how Google TV is faring, but my bet is that it will never be anything like the franchise the company has in search.
Why? Because they didn’t do it like Google would. What do you think?
By Dave Morgan in Google
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