Gimme some room to write comments

Posted by stuart as blog commenting, blogging

I’ve been having an interesting conversation over the last couple of days with Will the Internet Marketing Fool about the merits of PLR (Private Label Rights) articles.

The conversation is an interesting one, which has led to some quite lengthy replies. The problem I’m having trying to post my Tolkein-esque diatribes, is that the comment box on his blog (and virtually every other blog I read) is just too damned small to write a comment of any depth without having to scroll up and down continuously.

So here’s a thought, go delve into the innards of your Wordpress (or whatever platform you use) code, and make a bigger comment box.

I know I have!

So tell me who are you?

Posted by stuart as blogging, blog

**Don’t forget, I’m giving away free shit!** 

Mark wrote an interesting post the other day about bloggers who take themselves too seriously, which raised an interesting thought in my mind.

I don’t know who you are….

The thing is that I just don’t know anything about most of the bloggers I read. I have blogs I’ve been reading for over two years, haven’t missed a post in that time, and I know nothing about the blogger themselves.

Are they married? Do they have any kids? What’s their employment background? Do they have a day job, and if so, what is it?

So how about it folks? Is there a reason you don’t divulge the real you? Are you afraid people won’t like what they see?

Why not add a little of your personality, life experiences, and your real life world to your blog posts? I’m sure giving people a glance at the real you will improve your interaction with your readers.

Are your comments killing you?

Posted by stuart as blog commenting, blogging, blog

Not the comments on your blog, the comments you leave on other blogs.

There’s been a bit of talk in the Internet Marketing sphere of late about personal branding. Personally, I tend to subscribe to the SlightlyShady view that it’s all a bit of a wank, but we do need to be aware of the image we’re portraying to the wider world.

It’s a well known fact that I don’t spend a lot of time commenting on other blogs (sorry to my online friends, I do love you all, really!). I’m sure if I could find the time I could increase my readership/feedcount/alexa rank or whatever other metric you’d like to think of. One thing I do when I do comment on blogs (not always successfully)  is to portray a sense of intelligence and thoughtfulness.

Think about this for a minute. If you’re reading someone else’s blog, and you come across a comment like this:

LOL, good info here. loved reading this post.

Are you likely to follow the link to have a look at that blog?

I didn’t think so. However, if you read an insightful comment, maybe a bit witty, something that someone has actually put a bit of thought into, you’re much more likely to follow the link and take a look at the blog of the person who left the comment.

So spell check your comments, read them through one more time before hitting the “Post” button, and ask yourself what this comment says to someone who’s never heard of you or your blog before.

Why I’m not watching your videos

Posted by stuart as video blogging, blogging, blog

More and more people seem to be posting videos on their blogs lately, which I reckon is really cool, but just don’t expect me to watch them.

I understand from a bloggers perspective that videos might be quicker and easier to make than writing a blog post, and you might have a head that’s worthwile looking at (trust me when I say I have a head which is suited perfectly for text blogging…), but your reasons for video blogging just might not gel with your readers wants and needs.

So here’s a few reasons why I’m not watching your video blog posts.

1. It takes too long - I just did a little testing, and it appears that I can scan text at a rate of about 800 words a minute, but only talk at a rate of around 260 words a minute. That means that for a 1,000 word post/video, I can read it in around one minute 20 seconds, where I have to sit through you talking for around four minutes (and this doesn’t even take into account buffering time etc). I’m a busy man with little free time, so this is a real negative.
2. It’s a pain in the ass to quote you. Sure, I can type out what you said in the video, and link to the video saying something like “watch the video, and at 2min 36seconds in, they say……..”. I could do that, but I’m a lazy, lazy man, so I’m not going to.
3. I can’t search your posts. Quite often I remember something that I’ve read at a particular blog, so I go to that blog and search using terms I think you might have used in the post. I can’t do this with video.
4. I can’t watch your videos in my feedreader. I only visit the blogs I read if I want to leave a comment. Other than that, it’s feedreader all the way. I’m sure you posting video sends your page views through the roof, maybe that’s why you do them, to force feed readers to come to the site?
5. I have to be at my computer. I read my blogs on the run, either on my phone or PDA while I’m out and about. I’m not going to watch your videos while my phone network provder is limiting my bandwidth use. I’m happy to read your text content though.
6. I have to have the sound on. I do most of my blog reading late at night when the rest of my family is asleep. Hence I need to be quiet. Yes I could get some headphones and listen, but your content would want to be bloody amazing for me to go to this effort.
7. Text content is just easier to digest, and recall. When reading a blog post, quite often I go back and re-read parts of the post to make sure that I’m reading other parts of the post in the right context. I can’t do this with video.

So there are my seven reasons for not watching your video posts.

Do you video post? Am I wrong?

**Don’t forget: I’m giving away free shit!** 

Is your blog mobile ready?

Posted by stuart as wireless internet, iphone, blogging, wordpress plugins, blog, Cool tech, wordpress

Those of you who have been reading here for more than a year or so will know that in February 2007, I was the fortunate recipient of a Shiny New Kidney.

Whilst things are travelling along quite well, I still tend to spend a (un?)reasonable amount of time sitting around in the hospital waiting for doctor’s appointments, blood tests and the like.

I tend to use this time to catch up on reading some of my favourite blogs, well, at least the ones that allow me to access their content on my mobile phone.

It’s frustrating not being able to enjoy reading some of my favourite bloggers because I can’t access their posts in a format easily digested by mobile devices.

So to you, dear reader, I ask the question:

Is your blog mobile ready?

Are you using one of the Wordpress plugins available which grabs your visitors browser agent and automatically redirects them to a mobile ready version of your blog for those using handheld devices?

• Wordpress mobile edition by Alex King
• Mowser Plugin
• I’m sure there are more….

With these easy to install plugins, there’s really no excuse for Wordpress users to not be serving the right content to users of mobile devices.

Once again:

Is your blog mobile ready?