11 Ways to Boost Your Site’s Effectiveness using MyBlogLog

YPN BLOG - Editor’s Note: When I asked MyBlogLog Community Manager, Robyn Tippins, last week to pen a post on how publishers can use MyBlogLog to drive traffic and keep their users engaged, she was on her way to the BlogHer conference in Chicago. So frantic was her schedule that I had little hope that I would actually see copy anytime soon. I needn’t have worried. Somehow, in between sessions, schmoozing, cocktail parties and late night runs to the 7-11 for more beer, she managed to bang out 11 useful and erudite tips you can use. Without further ado, let’s go straight to ‘em…

1. Make your Profile page deep
Don’t just fill in the basic information. Take time to make your profile page something that really communicates your personality. People are more likely to want to click through to your blog if they feel a connection to you. MyBlogLog is full of bloggers and site owners who want to find great sites. They are interested in networking, learning from you and in really making a friend. Make sure your page lists basic things like your location and your bio, but don’t forget to add your names on all the other social sites. People who share common interests and common online hangouts with a site owner feel as if they already know them. Making friends with your readers starts with a full profile page.

2. Use the search function
Look for people who share your interests. Check out their blog and let them know that you too like to ride horses or restore classic cars. Look for blogs that are similar in topic and find a few that you love. Subscribe to their RSS feeds and comment on their blogs. You’ll quickly realize that those people will usually come and bring the conversation back to your own blog.

3. Use your own picture on your avatar
While there’s something to be said for the safety of anonymity, readers seem to really like to see pictures of the authors they are reading. It also makes the Recent Readers widget show off a real community of real people. There’s nothing more fun that seeing that widget reflect the real look of your readers. It feels more concrete, tangible, than pictures of celebs and photos with your site’s name on it.

4. Stop posting your blankity-blank url
There’s no need to leave your url in any message on MyBlogLog. Your picture links back to your profile and if people are interested in what you have to say they’ll click through. People who send a URL in a message are often seen as “smarmy.” If you are doing this now, it doesn’t mean you are really smarmy, but it does mean you need to stop shouting for attention. You get more notice from people if they think you don’t need their attention, but deserve it. (Editor’s Note: I feel so dirty ’cause I just did that last week. Ouch!)

5. Don’t spam or attempt to game the system
Sure, if you are a reasonably talented programmer, any system can be leveraged illegally. However, people will rat you out with tags like Schmoe, with spam reports and by telling others of your behavior. And, once banned, it is rare that we offer a second chance. Don’t risk having your url and your name banned for pity traffic. Remember, when people visit your site and leave because it’s not a topic they are interested in, you gain absolutely no value. Spam traffic results in a larger load on your servers and no one caring long enough to read your content, much less pay attention to any advertising on your site.

6. Make your avatar attractive, hot even, but not racy
Due to a large outcry from our members, we’ve really cracked down on sexy avatars. Not only do you risk being banned if your image is outside of our image guidelines, you also run the risk of people clicking the red x themselves and banning you from appearing on their widget and on their pages. When people put our widget on their page we deeply appreciate the valuable real estate that has been entrusted to us. We never want to put them in a position that our widget brings unwelcome content to their site, their home. Sexy is OK, but cleavage, bathing suits and images designed to make someone, er, “excited” are out of place on a family-friendly site. Don’t make yourself invisible (i.e., get banned) on business blogs and family blogs just because you want attention.

7. Take advantage of the tags
Tags have been searchable now for a few weeks and by making sure that your keywords are on your page, you increase your chances of ranking highly on MyBlogLog for your chosen search terms. Plus, by taking a gander at the tags that you interest you, and who else has been tagged the same term, you immediately make MyBlogLog smaller and more intimate for you. With one click you can find ‘business bloggers’ and ‘gamers’ and dive into people who’ll likely become instant friends (and readers).

8. Give back
Spend some time in the MyBlogLog Users Group. Share your knowledge and gain instant credibility as a MyBlogLog expert. You’ll gain friends, readers and people will appreciate your generosity.

9. Make sure your RSS feed is valid
At feedvalidator.org, you can check to see if your feed passes the test. If it doesn’t, you may find that it doesn’t update properly on MyBlogLog. Take the time to make sure it validates so the visitors to your profile will see what you are all about, rather than have them think you haven’t blogged in weeks.

10. Apply to be a hot member
I’m tight with the person that picks hot members (grin) and I can put in a good word for you. However, you stand a much better chance at getting picked if you send me an email along with your picture (must be at least 2”x 3”) and what you are doing that is cool. Try to stand out from the crowd. What are you doing that will knock my socks off? Here’s a rare time that a little bragging is a good thing.

11. Watch what’s Hot in Your Communities
This list includes all the sites that you either write or read. If you joined a community or own a community, that site is one of Your Communities. The Hot part refers to the hot stories in all those communities. To really see what is hot in your area of the blogosphere, keep an eye on that box. It’s a great place for story ideas and inspiration for future series, and it is a brilliant way to know what resonates out there.

Social Media Optimization tips

Make the Most out of your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Editor’s Note: In the first installment of this series, Louise Rijk offered an overview of social media marketing, or SMM. In the second, she went deep into SMM, giving advice on how to start your own social media campaign designed to get more users and links to your site. In this, the third installment, Louise shows you how to optimize your content for social media.

Publishing for profit is a numbers game. You can’t just put up a site and hope people will find it and click on your contextual ads or affiliate links, or—if you sell online—make purchases. You have to market yourself and your site(s) aggressively. As far as contextual advertising goes, publishers often need 1,000 page views or more by highly qualified visitors to generate just $1 in revenue (though this is not a hard-and-fast formula).

Taking advantage of social media is one inexpensive (if sometimes labor intensive) way to help you get more visits and, hopefully, more clicks and/or sales. That’s why so many articles you read online these days—whether published by major newspapers or on an individual blog—have an RSS button or one or more links to social media sites like Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, MyYahoo!, or de.lico.us (like the one above).

Social Media Optimization
But there’s more to it than just offering a way for visitors to bookmark and tag your content. To get the best results, your content itself should be optimized to perform better in social media.

Social media optimization (SMO) is much like organic search engine optimization (SEO). Whereas SEO is designed to help leverage your content in organic search, SMO is designed to help achieve greater visibility on social media sites. Your content might be very original and provide high value for your target audience, but if it’s disorganized and you have not provided an easy way for visitors to pass it along the social web, it probably won’t be effective in your social media marketing campaign.

To implement SMO, you have to make changes to existing content, site usability, navigation and information architecture to make it easier for visitors to interact with your content and to help virally spread it through the social web.

SMO Tips
There are many ways that content can be optimized for social media distribution. Here are a handful of tips that you can use to implement social media optimization:

Content Creation

• Continually create content that is relevant to your target audience and organized in a way that it can easily be found and passed on to others. Highly targeted, relevant content increases the probability that visitors will link to you and distribute your content via social media or email.
• Update your content frequently with new postings and promote these through email, RSS feeds and directories (e.g., podcast and blog directories). A side benefit of frequent updates is that search engines may crawl your site or blog more often for new content. Similarly, the more you post, the more you’re likely to get indexed by blog engines like Technorati.
• Adding an “About” page is a tremendous opportunity to cement a relationship with your site or blog visitors. It puts a human face on an otherwise technical, dry and impersonal page.

Copywriting

• Write your content specifically for the web. Writing for the web means using short, scannable and to-the-point (focused) copy. In general, on the Web, people scan first to sniff out the main points and then, if necessary, comb the page for more details.
• Write attention-grabbing headlines that pique the interest of your audience. This is really important when you optimize content for voting sites like Digg or Reddit, because visitors often decide to vote for your content based on the headlines.
• Put the information-carrying words in the beginning of the headings and sub-headings, and make the headings not wider than 60 characters. Copy Blogger offers free expert headline writing tips.
• Don’t write in an over-promotional or exaggerated fashion. Credibility is more important.
• Use the two-sentence test on web site copy. Ask yourself whether somebody reading the first two sentences on your page will take away the information you want to convey.

Copy Formatting

• Use well-established web formatting techniques, such as bulleted lists, numbered steps and short scannable paragraphs to improve readability. Short paragraphs should be under five sentences. Each paragraph should have one topic sentence and one idea.
• Use bulleted lists when items require no particular order and numbered lists for step-by-step instructions.
• Vertical lists are more effective than run-on lists at conveying a sequence of events or ideas. Use vertical lists when you have four or more items to emphasize. Shorter lists are generally overkill.

Navigation

• Don’t use non-standard links and navigation. As much as possible, follow standard link conventions. Make obvious what is clickable: For text links, use colored, underlined text (and don’t underline non-link text). Avoid using colored underlining text for anything that isn’t a hypertext link. Differentiate visited and unvisited links.

Interaction

• Implement tools and functionality that encourage interaction, e.g., blog commenting, a feedback form, polls and surveys. This allows your visitors to participate in and expand the content on your web site or blog.

Viral Content Optimization
Make your web site or blog content viral. For example, instead of the traditional “Send-to-a-friend” message, consider the following:

• “Tell your friends” is better than “tell a friend.” Suggest telling five or ten friends instead of one. Use multiple address fields, instead of just one, so that the message can be easily passed on to multiple people.
• Make your content available through RSS feeds. Make sure you put the RSS subscription button in a prominent place. Also provide an explanation on what RSS is, and instructions on what visitors need to do to subscribe to your RSS feed.
• Make tagging and bookmarking easy, by including language that encourages users to tag, bookmark and vote for your content.
• Broadcast new posts in a newsletter to your subscription list.

Message Optimization

• Make an offer sound exclusive (“Only three (what-evers) per customer”).
• Make content into a gift that participants can give to a friend by offering coupon codes for discounts, samples, freebies and so forth
  

Government in the Age of Web 2.0

New Report: The Blogging Revolution - Government in the Age of Web 2.0 Offers Tips & Best Practices for Public Sector Bloggers

Jun 19, 2007 20:18:32 GMT

In this new report, titled "The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0," commissioned by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, Dr. David C. Wyld, Maurin Professor of Management and Director of the Strategic e-Commerce/e-Government Initiative, Department of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University examines the phenomenon of blogging in the context of the public sector.

Wyld observes that blogging is growing as a tool for promoting not only online engagement of citizens and public servants, but also offline engagement. He describes blogging activities by members of Congress, governors, city mayors and police and fire departments in which they engage directly with the public. He also describes how blogging is used within agencies to improve internal communications and speed the flow of information.

Based on the experiences of the blogoneers, Wyld develops a set of lessons learned and a checklist of best practices for public managers interested in following in their footsteps. He also examines the broader social phenomenon of online social networks and how they affect not only government but also corporate interactions with citizens and customers.

The report examines the rise of blogging in the public sector, blogging options for public officials, the current state of blogging in government, case studies, a guide for public sector bloggers, tips for blogging by public sector executives, and some suggestions for possible metrics, as well as a look at the future of research on public sector blogging and many other topics.

A .pdf of the report can be downloaded here. Many thanks to Dr. Wyld for sharing this report with the Society.

Selling Web Advertising Space Like Pork Bellies

WSJ - The next big Internet race might turn the buying and selling of advertising space on Web sites into the online equivalent of the pork-bellies pit.

Over the past few years, a host of small companies has started electronic exchanges where advertisers and Web sites can buy and sell online advertising space. The companies, with names like Right Media Inc., AdECN Inc., Turn Inc. and ContextWeb Inc., have been an obscure sideshow to a broader battle over Internet advertising.

That's changing quickly. The biggest Internet companies, including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., are focusing attention and money on the emerging business, hoping to be first with the kind of large-scale, dynamic market for the ad industry that the Nasdaq market brought to stocks.

Over time there will be "a handful of winners that build very high-tech marketplaces," predicts Jim Barnett, chief executive of San Mateo, Calif.-based Turn. "That's what we're trying to do; that's what Google is trying to do."

Today, online publications and Internet companies have space for display ads built into their Web sites. Typically, that space gets filled with ads either the old-fashioned way -- through a salesperson -- or by a mix of computers and people called an ad network that automatically sells ads for the spot. But a significant portion of the available ad space -- called "inventory" -- remains unsold, or is sold for next to nothing. Enter the exchanges, which use automated systems to match buyers with sellers of unsold space.

With ad exchanges, member advertisers specify the price they're willing to pay for a certain type of ad spot, such as a banner ad that will be viewed by a female in Boston. When a woman in Boston pulls up a Web page of an exchange member with a banner slot available, software assesses the exchange's offer. If the price offered is better than the site's minimum rate for that page and higher than what it can get from other sources, such as ads sold by its sales staff, the site will usually accept the exchange-brokered offer. The exchange's computers can then deliver the winning ad to be displayed as the Web page loads on the consumer's PC. The exchange immediately notifies the site if it doesn't have a buyer for the ad space, and the site can then put in a nonpaying house ad or try other means to unload it on the fly.

Web sites rely on data such as IP addresses -- identifiers for PCs connected to the Web -- to know the general location, gender and other characteristics of the Web surfer pulling up an ad. Sites also use cookies, small files stored on users' computers, to track their Web activity, such as recent searches. Web publishers say the cookies generally don't allow them or advertisers to know the actual identity of specific users -- and any data are made anonymous. But for a car maker who might want ads to be shown only to consumers who had previously visited auto sites or had done car-related Web searches, for example, the targeting such technology makes possible can be attractive. By bringing together a lot of ad sellers, exchanges can potentially help advertisers buy a larger quantity of such specifically targeted ads across different Web sites.

AdECN says it can complete an auction for the ads on a Web page in 12 milliseconds after a consumer clicks to pull it up. AdECN runs an exchange where 28 advertising networks, which purchase ad slots from many different sites and sell them at higher rates to advertisers, buy and sell ads.

Exchanges usually collect payments for ads and pass them along to the sites, taking a commission. Ads are generally priced per thousand times they're viewed by consumers, a unit known in the industry as CPM.

Online ticket seller StubHub in recent months started using exchanges and ad networks to spread its reach to sports and music fans on the Web. (Historically, the company used ads tied to Internet search results on Google to reach customers.) The exchanges have allowed StubHub to place ads on a broader universe of sites large and small that it never had used before. Some of those, including ads on Gawker, a gossip blog, and Internet radio station Accuradio, led to ticket sales, StubHub executives say.

In a few months of use, ad networks and exchanges "have already become material to our marketing mix," says Michael Janes, chief marketing officer at StubHub. He estimates the company now spends about 15% of its budget (up from zero at the beginning of the year) for display ads over networks and exchanges. There's still some disagreement over the actual differences between networks and exchanges. But many industry executives agree that transparent pricing and an open neutral marketplace where anyone can buy or sell ads are distinguishing characteristics of exchanges.

Q Interactive of Chicago this month started selling some ads on its sites through the Right Media exchange. And it believes that buying ads on other sites through the exchange, which it has begun doing as well, will offer a 20% to 30% better return on investment than its previous practice of going around and buying ads from different sites individually. "Right now if you want to do a media buy you have to buy on a lot of different networks and with a lot of different publishers," says Q Interactive CEO Matt Wise. "Theoretically, with an exchange, one technology platform can cover an enormous swath of the Internet."

Or so the big players hope. Yahoo thrust exchanges into the spotlight in April when it agreed to pay $680 million for the remaining 80% of Right Media, following a 20% stake it bought last October. Yahoo said that it wanted to own Right Media as a way to take a leadership role in promoting the exchange model. The company has been selling some ad space on its site through Right Media, and says it has seen increases of over 50% in prices for ad spaces sold through Right Media compared with what it brought in for them on its own.

The Right Media acquisition followed Google's $3.1 billion deal to purchase DoubleClick Inc., which is building an ad exchange. DoubleClick last week began conducting transactions for actual ads on the exchange it has been building.

David Rosenblatt, chief executive of DoubleClick, estimates exchanges could eventually handle 50% of all display ad sales. He compares the exchanges to auctions that Internet search providers like Google used to ignite search-related advertising several years ago. "I think the exchange concept will have the same impact on the display market," he says.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has started developing a prototype of an exchange and has also considered buying one of the start-ups, say people familiar with the company. Microsoft General Manager Joe Doran declined to give details but said Microsoft has been studying the exchange model and "what it would take to build an exchange." But, he said, "it's still very early for the exchange concept to really catch on and drive to large scale."

Indeed, if the dream is to have the same kind of impact on advertising that spot markets had on commodities and stock markets on equities, one or more exchanges will need a critical mass of buyers and sellers. As with stock markets, "liquidity" is key for the ad exchanges: the more participants, the greater the chance of finding buyers and sellers.

But with a bevy of exchanges large and small, the industry risks not having a critical mass of buyers and sellers on any one exchange to make a viable market. "That's the thing that's uncertain," says analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence in Oakland, Calif.

It's also unclear what percentage of their ads Web sites will be willing to sell through exchanges. Many industry executives say the exchanges are suited only for "remnant," or leftover ads and ad space that the biggest brands aren't interested in. Big advertisers generally want to have more control over where the online ads appear and who sees them.

With exchanges, "the underlying assumption to that is you're buying a commoditized product that anyone can sell you," says Steven Kaufman, senior vice president at Publicis Group SA's Digitas interactive agency. Many of the high-end ads that Digitas handles require human negotiation and tailoring before appearing on a Web site. "That's not coming through an exchange," he says.

Others disagree. Such high-end ads represent at most 10% of the ad market, counters AdECN CEO Bill Urschel. "And everything else is up for an exchange."

Survey Forecasts Increased Use Of Ad Networks

MediaPost - A NEW SURVEY OF DIGITAL media buyers and planners finds that 66% of advertisers plan to increase their use of online ad networks this year. In addition, 88% of respondents plan to use one--up from 77% in 2006.

The survey of 100 digital media buyers and planners was conducted by Collective Media, an online ad network. The survey found that while the use of ad networks and ad spending is growing, respondents indicated frustration over the number of ad networks and complexity of the marketplace.

For example, some 62% of the media buyers polled said there are currently too many ad networks. That said, only 17% of respondents maintained that all ad networks are pretty much alike.

"The ad network space is a cluttered and competitive arena. We wanted to learn more about it and how the use of ad networks is changing," said Joe Apprendi, CEO, Collective Media. The firm also sought to find out how it might lure more brand marketing dollars to its ad network. Currently, direct marketing budgets are responsible for the majority of revenues to ad networks.

The survey found that 80% of brand marketers are using ad networks for direct marketing purposes, while only 6% are using them for branding purposes. However, 40% are using ad networks for both direct and brand marketing purposes.

"That's a positive," Apprendi noted, adding: "As a result, they're not just measuring the performance on a pure conversion rate, but the interaction rate is becoming more important."

In addition, 20% of survey respondents considered affiliate marketing an alternative to ad networks and 18% considered e-mail an alternative, both tactics typically deployed by direct marketers.

Beyond that, 79% considered portals like AOL, MSN and Yahoo as an alternative to ad networks and 69% considered publishers an alternative.

"We found that ad networks aren't just being pigeonholed on a direct marketing basis alone," Apprendi said.

The survey indicated that 59% of agencies/advertisers limit their use of ad networks due to a perceived lack of editorial control including concerns over the types of ads being used and position, among other factors. In addition, 38% of respondents cited audience duplication caused by publisher overlap among ad networks as a major impediment to using networks.

When trying to determine what criteria makes one ad network different from another, more than 57% of respondents said that how an ad network targets audiences was the No. 1 differentiating factor. The survey found that reach (at 52%) and efficiency (at 66%) remain key drivers for why agencies/advertisers include ad networks in digital media plans.

The survey marks the first of a series of surveys Collective Media has planed to better understand how publishers and advertisers are using ad networks.