Blog Idea Factory » Blogging

Blogging Becomes Mainstream

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:18:12 +0000

In a Technorati-sponsored survey of bloggers (by Decipher) conducted between July and August 2008, results revealed a 2-to-1 male/female ratio among bloggers worldwide. Technorati openly admits that the gender skew could be at least partially attributed to “the type of people that come to Technorati and register.”

It also looks like the lines between blogging and the mainstream media have disappeared. That’s another key-finding of this survey. “Blogs are now mainstream media,” said Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, “We’ve certainly seen that with the number of professional, semiprofessional and passion/enthusiast bloggers who are creating real media experiences. At the same time, you’re also seeing mainstream media come the other direction to add blog content.” Source: eMarketer.

50 Online Applications and Sites to Consider

Henk — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:14:41 +0000

Great post on Chris Brogan’s blog. Chris is the cofounder of the PodCamp new media conference series and a social media veteran. In this post “50 Online Applications and Sites to Consider” he created a list of 50 websites and online applications that people itching to experiment or move deeper into social media need to know about.

The list includes everything from the obvious to the obscure and encompasses a diversity of categories, from blogging and microblogging sites to a variety of social networking, bookmarking, and news sites.

Robert Scoble is spending less time blogging

Henk — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:47:33 +0000

As people spend more time on a variety of social networking platforms, they are spending less time blogging, and it’s having an effect on the blogosphere. Social networks, according to Robert Scoble, are replacing a lot of the functions that blogs used to perform — and are doing them faster, better, and in a way that’s more targeted.

Scoble “Visit my FriendFeed and you’ll see why I’m blogging less (it shows you what I’ve been generating on other services). When I started this blog in 2000 there wasn’t Twitter. Wasn’t Upcoming.org. Wasn’t Google Reader. Wasn’t Flickr. Wasn’t YouTube. Wasn’t Seesmic“.

Robert did his keynote about this subject at the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam.

Picture by Markies

10 Enterprise Blogging Trends for 2008

admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:16:02 +0000

ROI based on Search Engine Optimization (SEO): With organic search becoming a critical channel for customer acquisition, blogs are the perfect way to achieve high rankings on a broad range of targeted keywords. They play up factors that search engines take into consideration when determining how to rank a webpage.
Widespread employee blogging: Search engines look for good, targeted content. For an SEO strategy to work, the organization needs to have a variety of search terms, topics, and voices. The easiest way to create an abundance of this kind of content is by empowering employees to write it.
Control is OK: Despite what most “traditional” bloggers say, it is mandatory for organizations to have control over their content. As an organization, you have an obligation to control the content generated under your brand. Corporate blogging is not a free-for-all, and there are blogging platforms that help organizations find a balance between complete freedom and control.
Conversion goals. Most organizations have conversion goals for web traffic, and need to have the same standards for their blogs. Blog templates must have specific call-to-actions, like any other site. Oftentimes organizations will see higher conversions with blogs than with the company Web site. Fresh content, a conversational tone and clean navigation all play a role.
Social conversion. Social conversion is a theory based on an old Zig Ziglar axiom, “People buy from people.” Customers trust other human beings more than they trust brands. The challenge is to find a way to expose your humanity. The web and blogging gives you that ability.
Marketing democracy. Blogging is the great democratizer. No one can buy their way up to the top of the organic search pages. Blogging technology is cheap, easy to use and doesn’t require IT assistance or equipment. You only pay for consumption.
Localization: Corporate blogging introduces the idea of geo-specificity, which benefits both local businesses and large enterprises that want to “act locally.” Localization leads higher content relevancy and better search engine results.
Spaghetti: A discredited strategy for any kind of marketing has been, “Let’s throw the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.” With blogging, here’s your chance. Corporate blogging is largely based on content and volume. By throwing a lot of content at the wall, you get to see what makes the biggest impact. You can also experiment with targeting a wide variety of search terms.
Video: Nothing tells a story like video. As quality goes up and the cost and challenges of production fall, video will be an assumed component of every corporate blog.
Data driven blogging: In the journalism and corporate worlds, blogging consists of disparate content based on individual authors. Collectively, authors within an organization probably have a lot of overlap on all kinds of topics and categories. For readers who care about topics versus individuals, they will read the topical blog regardless of the author. (Source: compendiumblogware.com)

Lifecycle van een blogposting

admin — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:40:16 +0000

Je schrijft een artikel op je weblog, je drukt op ‘publiceer’ en in no-time duikt je verhaal op welhaast magische wijze op tal van plekken op het net op. Op Wired een mooie flash animatie over de wisselwerking tussen mens en machine: The Life Cycle of a blog post, from servers, to spiders to suits to you

Problogger: 13 Questions to Ask Before Publishing a Post on Your Blog

admin — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:49:43 +0000

Problogger has an interesting post on how to write a good blog post. If you keep these 13 questions in mind while writing a post on your blog you can be sure that your post contributes to “the blogosphere”. This might be a good starting point for the bloggers here at our brand new Blog Idea Factory blog

Via: The Next Web