Engaging your audience is hard work

Back in the beginning stages of the "World Wide Web" those who had websites had merely pretty brochures for viewers. As will happen at all subsequent stages, those viewers desired to be more than merely viewers ... or worse they left never to return because viewing alone is boring.

This is the still the problem with most major media by the way, they think in terms of viewers or readers ... but miss the engagement opportunities. Another subject for another day.

Well those of us that followed the history, albeit a short one, began to see options added to these brochure type websites: email contact forms, phone numbers of course, options to download information. But the response rates were slow, tough to gauge, and worse in many cases the website owners had an option for communication but didn't respond when a viewer-turned-engager left a request.

Enter the blogs, or originally the weblogs, first for active online users who waned to leave a virtual diary of a trip or a day. In short form these weblogs picked up viewers who wanted to respond to the more casual nature of the posts. Commenting features on these blogs allowed just such engagement. Some blogs even early on featured a large number of followers who typed in or bookmarked that site to view every day and if interested enough comment on the daily or even hourly updates. I entered the world of blogs at about this time, early blogosphere circa, in 2002. My only goal at that time was to post my thoughts on news and issues in our region of NW Indiana, so that people I actually knew in the non-virtual world could comment or just read along. I guess my ego was at work and I thought people would want to see what I was reading.

Through the last 6 years these blogs have grown in both number and features. RSS Feeds added the ability to watch headlines from 1,000's of sites and only open the ones that really appealed to the reader. Commenting became know to be a way to spam, and to SEO, and even to pick up new friends, people not known in the non-virtual world. MySpace and the Facebook showed us ways to join others of similar interests worldwide in social interaction. But at this point we run aground of another paradigm shift.

No longer would the commenting and engagement on a post be all in one place. If I post here on this site, I will also make sure and announce this post on Twitter, on Friend Feed, on Facebook, on Digg, on Stumble, on Delicious, and numerous other social-aggregator type sites. I'm hoping to pick up the new reader and spreading my net as wide as possible. This type of activity also helps tremendously with SEO. But, many of these sites allow commenting and engagement of conversation that won't even reside on your original post.

What now? Engagement is the goal, but you no longer control the residence of these conversations. Worse, what if the conversation becomes very vibrant and you miss the whole thing?

I noted this request by accomplished blogger Chris Brogan today at How do I add friendfeed comments to my blog?

"Hey, smarter people: how do I add a FriendFeed comments module under my blog comments? I want to see all these great comments. Just found these several days later"

Chris' thought being that he needs a code to grab the responses on other sites and drag them back to his site. Possible, I'm sure it is. I'll read through the responses to his site and see if he's already figured it out.

John McCain Update

I picked up this post from another great Mccain blogger today. Then I thought as a way of teaching a few of my "quick blogging" tricks I'd use clipmarks to throw some highlights over here.

Clipmarks is easily added to Firefox as an addon and it's a ton better even than the one I used to use a lot on IE. Quick and easy way to grab some things from a great post and give a link back to the original post.

clipped from hoosiersformccain.blogspot.com Our nation's future security and prosperity depend on the next president making the hard choices that would break our nation's dependence on foreign sources of energy and ensure our economic prosperity by meeting tomorrow's demands for a clean energy portfolio. Click here to learn more details about this project. The second ad, entitled "Dr. No," spotlights Obama's opposition to providing the American people with short-term, near-term and long-term relief from higher energy prices. Click here to watch this ad.Also, be sure to watch our latest tv ad, "Purpose," about energy security and John McCain's comprehensive and bipartisan plan. It is airing in target states and on cable news, so be sure to watch it today! We are re-launching our popular "Ride the Bus" contest this week to give one lucky McCainiac and a friend the chance to spend a day on the Straight Talk Express with John McCain. If you make a contribution of any amount before midnight June 30th, you'll be entered to win.

Building Indiana - NW Indiana Business

The new BIN is out!

Another new edition this week too.

The May/June issue of Building Indiana News is now available! Click here to check it out online, and keep on eye on the mail–it should be arriving at your home any day now!

This issue has a lot of great stuff–articles on the Build Indiana Conference, the CAF and NWIBRT Awards, and some really interesting stuff on food production in Indiana and on foreign trade zones and how they affect you. Also great info on Hammond in Lifelong Learning, and the Commmunity Spotlight is on Dyer.

If you can, take a minute to check it out and let us know what you think!

–Maureen

Oh no, not another Tiger Woods win

Yes! Tiger did win again, his 14th major golf championship, now only 4 short of the Bear.

I posted Tiger Woods wins his 14th Major

Now, how does this relate to making money online right? I spent the last hour of the playoff round on Twitter watching the conversations develop, with literally thousands of post over that time about each shot. I love golf, and I love talking about golf. Over the last two holes I had more than 20 pins with guys on my blackberry, a dozen emails, 25 twitter updates of my thoughts, and now I've posted to 4 of my blogs! Why?

Because tonite when people who didn't get to watch the final round because it's a business day get home, they will be searching for news and updates. Many active online users will go to blogs to leave comments and send notes of their own. In golf, maybe even more than other sports because it's such a classy sport, we all love to talk about the sport.

I hope to gain some traffic, some comments and even some new subscribers to my sites ... merely because people who love golf will want to connect. That's the basic power of blogs, especially as we've moved to live blogging and micro-blogging like Twitter. If you want to increase your traffic, take part in the craziness of live blogging.

Blogging Tips for Indiana Bloggers - Series

At the urging of Chris Hedges and others, I will devote this site to Blogging Tips for Indiana, especially Northwest Indiana, bloggers. Perhaps a list of Ten, Twenty .. who knows?

First tip, not really the first in the series, but one that matters to me is subscribe to this blogs feed, for free and with no strings attached, so you don't miss any of the posts.

Free Daily Subscription Internet Explorer has a nice feeds feature, or you can use google reader for free too to watch these daily posts without having to actually come all the way here to read each post. Try it out!

Using Squidoo to gain more traffic and searches

The A9 Process of bringing more traffic to your website – Step 8

from Internet Marketing with Matt Bacak by noreply@blogger.com (mbacak)

I don’t know if you have heard of a site called Squidoo yet, but let me explain to you what it is. Squidoo.com is a place where people can go and create miniature websites that are highly ranked in the search engines. Squidoo has created this system to make these sites. These lenses rank extremely high in search engines and therefore, helps you get more traffic to your website.

I created one for Northwest Indiana Blogs, with a ranking system so people could vote on the blogs and rank the best ones highest. See the original lens Feel free to join yourself, add blogs to the list, vote them up or down. Join the community and gain some search strength from having your own squidoo page, or pages.

NWI Blogs with some Blogging Advice

Want keyword intelligence?

from NWI Blogs

"Do you want to know what keywords are bringing traffic to a site?

I know that you do — or are at least a little curious about what brings visitors to various blogs and websites on the net ..."

Chris has retooled the site NWI Blogs and is writing some strong advice materials for other bloggers here in NW Indiana. Well worth subscribing (free) to his site.

Chris was very successful in creating traffic on his site Christopher Hedges Region Life during the TV show American Idol this year. He grabs powerful search terms and issues and writes about them in such a way that readers are engaged and want to leave comments and return often. Thanks for the advice and examples Chris.

Who controls online content?

A terrific article well worth reading the whole thing, a blogger is quoted without link attribution, and gets a call to congratulate him ... of course the magazine that quoted him didn't tell him, didn't ask for any additional information, and didn't publish the article online yet.

I think you'll like the story:

"...It started this past Saturday when a friend (also a former Atlantic employee) emailed me asking me why I hadn’t mentioned my quote in the Atlantic’s latest cover story by Nick Carr. I responded saying I had no idea I had been quoted ..."

What Magazines Still Don’t Understand About The Web

Finally a reason to Youtube channel

YouTube: You Created the Content, Now Sell the Ads — Google, Looking to Monetize Video Site, Is Letting Content Producers Sell Advertising on Their Branded Channels — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Google has struggled to find the best way to monetize YouTube. The latest idea: Let content creators sell ads.

I have been postponing using Youtube to channel videos for Northwest Indiana, our target niche, but now that I can sell ads in my niche, it may just be time.

Great site - small traffic? Some ideas

5 Common Reasons for Slow Blogging Growth

from PureBlogging by Steven Snell

"...Have you ever come across a small, unheard of blog that you really enjoyed? I’m sure you have at some point. There are some terrific blogs out there that just haven’t gotten the exposure they need to take things to the next level. Your content can be the best, but if no one is seeing it, your blog won’t be growing.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about extending the reach of your blog. That posts covers a few possibilities for gaining some much-needed exposure. Personally, I think guest blogging is one of the best things a blogger can do for exposure. There are plenty of blogs that are willing to accept guest post submissions, and this gives you an excellent opportunity to reach a targeted audience with a link back to your blog. This is the method that I used to grow my blog, and I’m still seeing the benefits in terms of the relationships and connections that I made with other bloggers.

Social media is another excellent source of exposure. Many bloggers seem to always be going after the front page of Digg, but others like StumbleUpon and Delicious can also give you the exposure that you’re looking for. Depending on the industry that you are in, there may be some strong niche social media sites where you can get some highly-targeted traffic. To look for these types of sites, see this categorized list of social media sites ..."

Have you suffered slow traffic and readership? Then it's probably time to do some guest posting.