You may have noticed that some Grok contributors have been less present on our blog lately. Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg have left FutureNow to capitalize on opportunities in professional speaking, blogging, writing, and online marketing advisory.  Bryan’s new website can be found at www.bryaneisenberg.com. Please join us in wishing them continued success in their new ventures.

The only small change that will effect readers is that the senior analysts that have been sharing their insights and expertise in the past, will now be contributing more on The Grok.  You’ll be reading more from the analysts that are working with clients every day, helping them achieve higher conversion rates and improve their online marketing efforts.  Grok contributors will increase their focus on sharing more case studies on what is and isn’t working in actual client optimization efforts.

And, here’s what’s not changing:

• The focus of GrokDotCom:  Grokking human reactions to marketing, sales, PR & evolving media.
• Our efforts to bring you interesting industry developments, cool new tools to make your lives easier, and actionable insights for optimizing your conversion rates.

For those interested in more details, here are some thoughts from FutureNow’s CEO, excerpted from a letter that went out to clients and partners:

Bryan, Jeffrey and the rest of the team have made this Company the leading authority in the conversion optimization space.  Combine that with an unmatched proprietary database that has website recommendations that work and a software tool that manages and measure those results, we continue leading the industry.  We owe Jeffrey and Bryan, our experienced team, our customers, and our affiliate service partners a lot of gratitude for getting us to this point.

We plan to build on this success and even find ways to improve it.  Our methodology will not change, and clients will still get the same analysis they have come to expect.  Our highly skilled business analyst team, account management personnel, and software development and support group will continue to look for ways to exceed our clients’ expectations.

Having been involved in some capacity since the Company’s inception, I am excited as ever for where our Company is and for our future plans.

I welcome any questions you may have and can be reached at 718-560-3325 or by email at bills@futurenowinc.com.

Sincerely,

William Schloth

Chief Executive Officer

How many people craft different blog posts tackling the same subject from different angles and designed to appeal to different Temperaments?

How many people publish their nonfiction/business book in mind with a firm understanding of what they want the book to accomplish for them, what a book reasonably can accomplish, and what it takes to make that happen?

The simple truth is that it’s incredibly unlikely for authors to make money on their non-fiction book, but fairly common for authors to make money because of their book – IF they intelligently market their book.

Seth Godin recently wrote about Blogs, books, and the irony of short, saying essentially that business book should contain more than could be conveyed in a few blog posts, while the market essentially demands that authors be able to summarize their book within the space of a blog post.  Seth then ends the post, saying:

“This is irony (we say we want long and deep and rich but we also insist that it be condensed to a sentence) so it’s not clear what you should do about it as a marketer, other than to accept that it’s going on.”

Well, if you’d like a detailed answer to what you should do to market your book and develop a content strategy to leverage your unique views, I can think of no better authority on the subject than my friend and book marketing genius, Michael Drew.  Michael’s currently running 50 for 50 in putting his client’s books onto the New York Times Best Seller list.  And his answers on how to plan the content, writing, and marketing of a book in this brave new-media world are available through his Book Publishing 2.0 class.  The next one will be held in New York City, May 8th-10th.

Mike has given me 5 free tickets to giveaway. If you can be or are going to be in New York City those days, just comment below and we’ll pick 5 people to attend this amazing course for free.

Once you’ve gained the reader’s interest through relevance, buyer confidence is everything – without it the sale is lost.  That’s why methods of substantiating claims and establishing credibility are frequent topics of mine.

And it’s also why Tom Wanek’s blog is a must read.

No where else will you find such a powerful, systematic framework and methodology for creating credibility within your marketing and copywriting.  Tom’s application of Signaling Theory to marketing is brilliant, easy to apply, and utterly unique.

If you haven’t heard of Wanek’s Six Currencies of Credibility, Roy Williams provides a great intro here.  But you’ll have to go to Tom’s blog to really dig into Signaling Theory.

Highly recommended.

25 Web Form Optimization Tips – Covers most of the basics, a good reminder.

Usability of Toilet Paper – who could resist this analysis, especially as my friend David Dalka reminded me – P&G said at a search conference, no one would ever blog about toilet paper. Should it be bottom up or top down?

If you are so inclined you can read the review on the new book “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.”

Does your blogging move people? My buddy Mitch Joel explores the BuzzLogic/JupiterResearch study finds blogs influence purchase behavior. I had the pleasure of meeting Sandra Ponce de León, Senior Director of Marketing of BuzzLogic, right before she presented this at the recent eMetrics Summit.

Google Notes – a new plugin to add business data to Google Analytics data. I did add it to The Ultimate Google Analytics Plugins, Hacks & Tricks Collection.

Happy Halloween! Feel free to share some very interesting posts below in the comments (but please be considerate of our readers).

• Dutiful George Washington for Sensing-Judging / Methodicals
• Philosophical Thomas Jefferson for iNtuitive-Thinking / Competitives
• Rambunctious Teddy Roosevelt for Sensing-Perceiving / Spontaneous
• Idealistic Abraham Lincoln for iNtuitive-Feeling / Humanistics

Unfortunately, the cover story (though excellent) treated temperament from a Nine Characteristics perspective rather than a Four Temperaments perspective in a way similar to this Slate article or some recent blog posts regarding presidential personality type.

Yet at least the Time cover/article got me looking for and reading those posts, because the authors guessed slightly different temperaments from each other, and I found the differences illuminating.

But before discussing the blog authors’ picks, my personal predictions were SP/Spontaneous for fiery, action-oriented McCain, NF/Humanistic for idealistic and emotionally intelligent Obama, and NT+Judging/Competitive for sharp-minded and power-hungry Hillary Clinton.

So here’s how the experts typing matched up with mine:

• Everyone agreed that McCain has a spontaneous temperament.
• Emily Yoffe felt that Hillary was an SJ, but it turns out that Hillary has actually taken an MBTI test and has tested as an NTJ, which matched up with most blog post guesses.
• Some experts believe that Obama was an NT, while others felt he was more likely an NF

And here’s what you can take away from the misperceptions and disagreements surrounding presidential candidate typing:

1. Myers-Briggs Preferences (and Temperaments) are just that: preferences.

People are adaptable and can develop or use weaker sides of their personalities – and may even prefer to use them in a given situation.  Introverts, for instance, all have an auxiliary personality that they use for social situations or work.  Johnny Carson was a legendary introvert, but hardly came off as one during The Late Show.

So too could an NT politician learn to speak empathically about deep emotional issues and learn to champion inclusive policies.  Or conversely, NF’s are more than capable of adopting an NT mindset when the need for tough-minded leadership decisions arises.  Hence the NT/NF disagreement over an emotionally savvy, but also emotionally flat “no drama” Obama.

And it’s also why Future Now analyzes buying behavior in terms of “buying modes,” rather than assuming that buying mode will line up with temperament preference.  No one buys accounting software spontaneously, and even the most hard-headed and practical of us have been known to make spontaneous purchases on vacation.

2.  Knowing how temperament preferences overlap – and where they differ – is important

Why would one person see an SJ/Methodical when another sees an NT/Competitive?  Well because both temperaments have a strong preference for logical decision-making.  And an NT with a strong Judging preference, like Hillary’s INTJ personality type, can come off as an organizer – reliable and sufficiently detail-oriented to fool you into thinking they have a methodical temperament*

So what does this mean for your Website/copy?

Rather than pushing copy or messaging styles onto visitors, it’s best to cover all the temperaments persuasive needs according to the “fast up top and slow down bottom” layout method.  That way you can let visitors self-select the copy and links that most appeals to them without worrying about improperly typing them. You can get a sense of how these temperaments interact with a page by reading Howard’s analysis of Jakob Nielson’s eyetracking study.

Conclusion: Put Copy for Fast Decision Makers Up Top and Slow Decision Makers Down Bottom

So the default copy organization for most pages will include copy, links, and calls to action intended for competitive and spontaneous temperaments (your fast decision makers who are less likely to scroll and spend the time to examine the entire page) up top, and copy more suited for methodical and humanistic temperaments (slower decision makers who will examine the entire page) below that.

For instance, if you have an NT/competitive who follows a link intended for Methodicals, the page he lands on will still have some bottom-line or big picture copy at the top of the page and a call to action appropriate for his temperament.  And if that particular competitive keeps reading, well, he may just be in a more Methodical Buying Mode.  No big deal – as long as your pages are set up properly.

And that’s what I took away from the recent spate of articles and blog posts on Temperament and MBTI.

P.S. If this stuff interests you, I highly recommend that you check out this free audio book.

* For the record, what probably should have pushed Yoffe away from typing Hillary as an SJ, is that she is very much an ideologue.  Her political stances were sharply radical when she adopted them and required something of a philosophical bent to arrive at.  She didn’t enter politics by being an outstanding administrator; she entered politics because of a commitment to her political theories and ideas.  Plus, her career as a lawyer indicated an NT preference over SJ.

Wired’s (and Valleywag) Paul Boutin writes a eulogy for Blogs. Link-bait? Probably, but he certainly raised the ire of several in the online community, myself included. Heck, he even got me to crawl out from the rock I was hiding these past few months and pen a few words of commentary, in defense of blogging (yes, I recognize the irony . I think Mathew Ingram wrote the best counter to Paul’s argument, so I’ll let you hop off and read his discourse before returning to hear a few questions I’m pondering.

Here’s what I found myself wondering after reading Paul’s post:

1. Why does having a number of different authors make the blog any less “blog-like” – i.e. if there are still good blogs out there, albeit less personal and more representative of a group of persons who all share a similar view on a particular topic, why can’t that be considered a blog? Shouldn’t the litmus test be the value of the content they produce, regardless of the person(s) who created the content?
2. Why does the fact that blogging about mainstream topics like presidential candidates makes it difficult to rank highly in google equate to “kill yr blog”? Google is all about relevance, always has been, always (most likely) will be. If the most relevant answer to a searcher’s query could be found on a personal (or professional) blog, it would rank high. For “Barack Obama”, aren’t most searchers looking for that wikipedia page, or the Fox News article (ahem, wouldn’t MSNBC be more likely?!) What about the blogger who writes about a passion topic, something like the greatest college basketball team, and wants to be able to connect with those who share that passion. Is this form of community no longer valid?
3. Why does the “insult commenter” need to ruin the fun for the rest of us? Assigning so much power to those silly flame comments seems to ignore the power the rest of us have to ignore things that don’t add value. It’s like the reviews people post on Amazon, with a absurdly high (or low) score but no substantiation for their claims. People today seem to be far better equipped to deal with hype and BS, and tune out what doesn’t make sense in favor of what does. I strongly disagree that these silly one-off comments really degrade the experience the rest of us enjoy.

His close though seemed to help me understand where he was coming from:

As a writer, though, I’m onto the system’s [Twitter] real appeal: brevity. Bloggers today are expected to write clever, insightful, witty prose to compete with Huffington and The New York Times. Twitter’s character limit puts everyone back on equal footing. It lets amateurs quit agonizing over their writing and cut to the chase.

Ok, so as long as you and I agree not everyone writes about topics covered by the mainstream media on a daily basis, I think Paul will agree with us that the platform still adds value. I’d love to try and have a meaningful and interactive and ongoing marketing optimization discussion, 140 characters at a time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments- are you reading more or less blogs today than 4 years ago?

As well what are the topics you enjoy reading about *outside* of the mainstream media (and any blogs you like that cover those topics). For me, scanning my bloglines start page shows:

• Neuroscience – The Frontal Cortex; Cognitive Daily;
• Web Analytics – Marketing Productivity blog;
• Venture Capital – Feld Thoughts; Fred Wilson’s blog;
• Personal Productivity / Simplicity – 43 Folders;

… just to name a few! So if you’re out there blogging, please feel free to ignore the opening advice from Wired, and keep up the fine work- I’m sure your audience appreciates it.

Techcrunch sums it up:

Blogging is a volume game. The more you post, the more chances there are that someone else will link to one of your posts. (Technorati rank is based on the number of recent links to your blog). The majority of the Top 100 blogs tracked by Technorati post five or more times per day, and a full 43 percent post more than 10 times per day. Meanwhile, 64 percent of the 5,000 blogs ranked lower than 600 post two to four times a day, which is still a serious commitment.

The linking stats may be true, but what do readers think about it?

Do you prefer blogs that post 1 or 2 relevant posts a day, a few times a week or ones that publish more frequently? Which blogs are you most likely to remember?

My favorite quote comes from his recent mention in the CNNMoney.com article,  where he offers some tips on how to turn your site’s visitors into customers.

“Think of traffic like water pouring into a bucket,” says Bryan Eisenberg, executive vice president of Web marketing firm Future Now in New York City. “No matter how much water there is, it’s not going to stay if the bucket has holes. Pay attention to the balancing act of ranking well in search engines and getting sales out of those who make it there.”

He has been so busy answering questions for others we wanted to make sure he was answering yours. What questions do you have for Bryan? Please comment below or feel free to call us at 877-643-7244.

P.S. The Free Website Reviews – you probably noticed in a couple of those interviews Bryan mentioned a great resource for inexpensive usability tests of your website. Well Darrel and Dave the founders were kind to offer the first 100 GrokDotCom readers who go to http://www.usertesting.com/promo and enter futurenow in the Promo Code box will receive one free usability test (limit 1 per customer).

News.GrokDotCom.com shows your favorite marketing blogs in one spot. And as an added bonus, you can vote on posts that “add value” — or “skip it” if you’re not impressed — so we know which ones to feature as Best of the Day, Best of the Week, and Best of the Month.

At News.GrokDotCom, you can…

• vote for the most valuable posts of the day, week, and month.
• see related posts for all topic (or “meme”).
• comment on any post or topic.

For those who may be wondering if we’re trying to out-digg Digg, out-sphinn Sphinn, or out-meme Techmeme, the answer is no, absolutely not. We follow each of those portals well enough to know they don’t need any competition. We hope to provide something else.

Together with OneSpot, FutureNow has developed News.GrokDotCom to monitor thousands of blogs, bringing you the most linked-to and commented-on marketing posts of the day. It’s part algorithm, part RSS feed discovery engine, and part human intervention.

Here’s how it works: We put your favorite marketing blogs (and ours) into a trusted set of feeds. The trusted set then starts attracting posts from blogs that the OneSpot algorithm identifies as “related” in some way. The result is pretty amazing; a consistently high quality stream of insights on online and multi-channel marketing news, social media trends, search engine marketing hoopla, merger gossip, venture postulating, tech posturing, web analytics geekery, and pretty much anything else that might help you make more money and define — if not dominate — your niche.

Over the past several weeks of testing, we’ve noticed posts on the Around the Net feed go popular before they hit big on other social blog portals. What’s more impressive is that the Around the Net portal shows stories from small blogs as well. Blogs we’ve never even heard of seem to magically show up once they publish a story our readers might find valuable.

If a story’s a dud, or if it seems to be over-hyped elsewhere, we delete it. The rest is up to you.

So vote on a few stories, play around with it, and let us know what you think. News.GrokDotCom is still in beta, so we’re eager to hear your reactions and any comments you may have on how we might make it better.

- Editor, GrokDotCom

P.S. You might want to subscribe to Around the Net vis RSS.

Although I read Darren’s blog, I actually found out about it after receiving a link from his colleague, Chris Garrett, thanking me for commenting on his blog over the past year.

It’s no secret that Chris and Darren are smart guys. They knows how to get comments, trackbacks, RSS subscribers, ad revenue… all the stuff bloggers claim to want. In fact, they’ve even co-authored a new book, Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. I haven’t yet read their book, but after following their blogs for a combined three years, I can tell you that their biggest secrets are (*spoiler alert*) that they actually enjoy what they do and they know how to engage and give energy back to their readers.

They also know how to ask for things without being tacky. At one point last year, Chris had an author’s note at the bottom of each post that read, “If you found this post useful, buy me a coffee!” (with “buy me a coffee” linked to his PayPal account). Brilliant.

It must have been a good post. I payed real dollars to buy him a virtual double latte.

So, in the spirit of this imaginary international holiday, here’s GrokDotCom’s short list of bloggers who, for various reasons, we appreciate:

• Linda Bustos & Jason Billingsley
• Mary Schmidt
• Matt McGee
• Andy Beal
• Brian Clark
• Baratunde
• Matt Pace + crew
  
• B.L. Ochman
• Aaron Chronister
• Dave Young
• Rand Fishkin
• Alex Harris
• Joanna Wiebe
• Roger Dooley
• Marshall Sponder
• Linas Simonis
• Avinash Kaushik
• Fred Reichheld
• Andrew Goodman
• Paul Williams
• Gord Hotchkiss
• Joshua Porter
• Adele Revella
• Jim Novo
• Ayat
• Edward Tufte
• Amanda Watlington
• Mal Watlington
• Garr Reynolds
• Tom Limongello
• Olivier Favre
• Jennifer Laycock
• David Armano
• Richard, Marshall, Sarah, Josh & Alex
• Bob Walsh + comrades
• Julien Hervouet & Florent Gosselin
• Peter Kim
• Andy Sernovitz
• Stoney deGeyter
• Jimmy B.
• Tim Huijbers
• Chuck McKay
• Steve Clark
• Kim Krause Berg
• Josh Bernoff & Charlene Li
• John Jantsch
• John Moore
• MarsOcean
• Don Dodge
• Michele Miller
• Jason, Matt, Sarah + crew
• Mitch Joel
• Roberta Rosenberg
• David Meerman Scott
• Juan Guillermo Tornoe
• Olaf Molenaar
• Stéphane Hamel
• Dave McClure
• Christ Coolen
• Robbin Steif
• Wayne Hulbert
• Mike Drew
• David Berkowitz
• Augie Ray
• Bob Souer
• Tim Peter
• Steve Hall
• Angela Natividad
• James Paden
• Yvonne DiVita
• Bridget Z
• Chris Baggott
• Steve Woda
• Tom Fishburne
• Mattias Kindell
• Sam Decker
• Lars Johansson
• James C. Zolman
• Carolyn Gardner
• and Seth Godin (whose link is especially worth clicking if you’ve made it this far)

. .

Find this post valuable? Subscribe to GrokDotCom.

“Copywriting for a lifestyle blog is a mystery. How can a blogger create compelling copy that resonates in the short opportunities available, i.e. tagline, front page, about page, social media profiles so that readers subscribe?

“Long copy strategies just don’t work on my baby boomer marriage blog. There’s not enough room to describe the content, show personality and be keyword-rich without sounding crazy.

“What style of writing works best in a blog situation?”

As social media evolves, businesses of all sizes are struggling to maintain a balance in tone between website, blog, and anywhere else their content and brand are represented.

You may already know how to find your website’s voice, so let’s unpack Dina’s question a bit and see if it applies to your social media strategy as well…

Hi Dina!

First, subscribe to Brian Clark’s Copyblogger. He’s got concrete advice on web copy and content creation in general, and he’s the best of the best when it comes to copy that’s specifically tailored to blogging. In fact, one of his writers just did a post about “How to Create a Rock-Solid Tagline“.

Second — Before we, or anyone, can help you find the right tone for your blog, it’s essential to understand its goal.

How are you measuring success? You say you want to generate subscriptions, but to what end? Do you plan on monetizing the blog — and if so, how? Question your own assumptions. You’re suggesting that there are only a few “short opportunities available” to ask people to subscribe, but don’t forget that each post can present an opportunity to subscribe.

Your About Us page should be about more than just “keyword-rich” copy; it should tell your story. Take a look at Nike’s About Us page. Powerful, isn’t it? Sure, they hit all of the essential, dry corporate facts, but those few sentences that stick out let you know why people care about their brand. Your About Us page shouldn’t need to be as dramatic as Nike’s, but it should reflect your blog’s purpose. Remember, you’re asking people to subscribe to your blog, not search engines.

Let people know what you’ve done; where’ you’ve come from; what’s in it for you; what’s in it for them. Future Now’s About Us page isn’t perfect, but hopefully we’ve been both honest and persuasive — two things that are essential to our blog’s voice as well.

In your case (Dina runs a lifestyle blog about boomers getting married), here are a few questions that might help you find the right voice:

• What is the overall emotional stance that your blog has towards its subject?
  • How does your blog view marriage?
  • Write down some adjectives or perspectives to help.
• If your blog where an actual person, who would it be? Is your blog:
  • Another girlfriend to talk to about marriage?
  • A marriage counselor?
  • A sincere talk show host?
  • A close friend of the opposite sex who you feel comfortable asking sticky questions?
  • A favorite aunt who has been there, done that, and gotten the t-shirt?
• Is there a favorite quote you have on marriage that sums things up for you?
• Is there one particular moment in the life of your blog that would capture its essence in a nutshell?
• Do certain words or phrases keep popping up in your blog, and would they help show your style/voice?

It may seem silly, but this stuff works.

Third, once you’ve established your blog’s voice, make sure it resonates in the details. Comment directions, error messages, category titles and the like are all good places to indicate your personality. But most of all, headlines are key. Make sure the post titles reflect both your brand’s personality and voice.

Finally, to the degree possible, make sure the content on the blog matches its editorial voice as well. This may be harder to do with multi-author blogs, but having a central blog voice can help. Send the style and voice guidelines out and simply ask for your writers not to stray too far from it. When some of them (quite inevitably) do stray, you can simply make it your policy to brand the post slightly differently than normal, so the readers know that not everyone shares the guest blogger’s perspective.

When in doubt, you can always ask your readers what they think.

. .

Editor’s Note: These are all things we’ve tried to do while finding our own voice at GrokDotCom. It’s not easy, particularly when offering what one hopes is constructive criticism, to be percieved as actually having been constructive. Of course, subscribing to a blog feed or a newsletter does not mean you subscribe to everything its authors say or how they say it. And as Seth Godin points out, “Sometimes, the web is more of a cocktail party than a club meeting.” Very true — and doubly so for those of us who offer advice.

On that note, we’d like to hear your thoughts on how GrokDotCom’s voice has evolved over the days, months, or years you’ve been reading. Don’t worry about hurting our feelings, either. We’d only be hurt if you thought we weren’t listening.

Feel free to share your comments below or email Robert (that’s me) directly. Thanks!

From now on, you can now read about all things marketing-to-women-online at GrokDotCom.com/women.

And now for the really exciting news…

Michele Miller and I have a new book coming out March 10th: The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys.

To find out more about the book (and laugh at our bad dance moves), visit us at TheSoccerMomMyth.com.

As a thank you to the frequent commenters on my posts (you know who you are), we’re giving away 10 free copies. Just reintroduce yourself in the comment field and tell the world to “Stop stereotyping your customers!” and I’ll email you to get your address so we can send you a copy.

If you’re lucky, I may even autograph it for you.

Oh, and if you end up being commenter #11, no worries. You can always order the book from Amazon.

UPDATE 3/10: The winners have been notified. If we’ve been in touch, your copy of The Soccer Mom Myth is on its way. If you missed out on the contest, no worries, the book has officially been released today. Get yours today at Amazon.

Taking the top honors, Bryan’s post on “How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away” captured a whopping 46% of the vote. Holly’s “Why Testimonials Do (and Don’t) Work,” meanwhile, came in at 2nd place with 22%.

Our sincere thanks go out to Matt McGee, Stoney deGeyter, Jennifer Laycock, and the other judges of the SEMMY Awards for nominating us (twice!), and for recognizing the work of bloggers who create valuable and researched content.

Most of all, thanks to you; for voting for, subscribing to, and reading GrokDotCom. Please do keep your pretty face tuned here.

Congratulations, Bryan and Holly!

[Deep breath.]

Now that our Halle Berry moment’s out of the way… here are the winners in each SEMMY category:

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Ranking Factors Version 2 – Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

Pay-Per-Click

Optimizing Paid Search & Landing Pages for TV, Radio and Print Advertising – Greg Meyers, SEM Geek

Google

Why Google Can’t Just “Dump” PageRank – Dan Thies, SEO Fast Start

Viral Marketing

Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content – Tamar Weinberg, Techipedia

Link Building

Help! I’m New, I Need Links, What Can I Do? – Debra Mastaler, The Link Spiel

Local Search

Anatomy & Optimization Of A Local Business Profile – Chris Silver Smith, Search Engine Land

Blogs & Blogging

The Blogger’s Guide to SEO – Aaron & Giovanna Wall, SEO Book

Reputation Management

Buzz Monitoring: 26 Free Tools You Must Have – Andy Beal, Marketing Pilgrim

Small Business

Branding For Small Business And Bloggers – Steven Bradley, TheVanBlog

Social Media

The Social Media Manual: Read Before You Play – Muhammad Saleem, Search Engine Land

Web Analytics

Web Analytics Demystified – Avinash Kaushik, Occam’s Razor

Search Tech

Which Is Better For SEO: Shared or Dedicated IPs – Lisa Barone, Bruce Clay Blog

Online Marketing / General

How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away – Bryan Eisenberg, GrokDotCom

LOL Funny

9 Ways To Bore The Audience at SES New York – Lisa Barone, Bruce Clay Blog

Rants

Web 2.0 & SEO: Must We Piss In Every Public Fountain? – Dan Thies, SEO Fast Start

Launched by Matt McGee of Small Business SEM, these awards are a much-appreciated nod of peer recognition from some of the smartest folks in search and customer experience marketing.

And the nominees for best post in the “Online Marketing/General” category are…

• 17 New Rules for Successful E-Commerce Websites
  Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
• Why Testimonials Do (and Don’t) Work
  Holly Buchanan, GrokDotCom
• How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away
  Bryan Eisenberg, GrokDotCom
• Seeing With Web Designer Eyes – 9 Evident Errors
  Miriam Ellis, SEO Igloo
• 58 of the World’s Greatest Offers (4-part series)
  Dean Rieck, Copyblogger
• 5 Things People Want to See Before the Sale
  Mason Hipp, Small Fuel

Big thanks to the judge for nominating us, the other finalists for inspiring us, and our readers for, well, reading our stuff. Without you, GrokDotCom would be just another blog collecting pixel dust at the far reaches of the Googlesphere.

Bryan and Holly have some pretty stiff competition in this category, so don’t forget to vote for “Why Testimonials Do (and Don’t) Work” or “How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away” if you liked them the best. The polls close January 30th, so vote now!

We have an interesting discussion going about Apple, technology needs, and advertising to different types of computer users. Here’s another chance to look at how people use technology and how you can use that knowledge to create better advertsing for them.

As Seth tells it on his blog,

Here are three things that are true:

1.) Digital technology, especially computers and cell phones, can dramatically increase productivity.
2.) More and more users of digital technology are small firms or individuals.
3.) The vast majority of users of digital technology are totally lame in getting the most out of the investment of their time and money.

My guess is I’m not alone in how I use technology. I can set it up myself, and I do. I can figure out some stuff, and I do. But is there a better way to use this technology? You bet. If I had about 200 extra hours, I could go out and educate myself on every cool product, feature, new software, etc., and set it up to greatly increase my productivity. Here’s the only catch: I don’t have 200 hours.

I don’t have one hour.

One hour that takes me away from what really matters to me — researching marketing to women online, doing outstanding client work, being taken for my afternoon walk by my Lab — is one hour too many. Like many people, I would gladly trade time for money. I would gladly hire someone who has lost 200 hours of their life learning this stuff so they can set it up for me.

In his blog post, Seth is looking for the same person I am.

Here’s what I haven’t found: people who charge $100 an hour to hear what you do and how you do it and then show you how to do it better. People who organize data and put it in the right place. People who overhaul the way small groups use technology so they can use it dramatically better. People who use copilot to take over a PC and actually rearrange it so that it works better.

YES! Where is that person!? As luck would have it, the post links to a Squidoo page where people who provide just such a service let you know about themselves.

Last I checked, there were over 40 responses, but only one really got my attention. Here’s what it said:

“Your tools should fit YOUR life”

Now THAT’s great copywriting. (Sign me up!) Use words that your customers can relate to. In one sentence, they managed to explain exactly how I feel: Technology should work for me, not the other way around.

Here are some of my reactions to the other “digital coach” auditions:

“Web gurus help make sense of online technologies.” (I’m not interested in trying to make sense of technology. My love life, yes. Technology, no.)

“Simple easy to do lessons and tips.” (I don’t want lessons and tips. That’s why I’m hiring you!)

“Have you been seeking some hand-holding?” (Not since I was three.)

“Teaching digital literacy.” (Did you just call me illiterate?)

People who are not tech-savvy are not inherently stupid. It’s not that we don’t understand; it’s that we choose to spend our time doing other things that are more important to us. There’s an important distinction.

Don’t be condescending.

If you want to build solidarity with someone, look at their problem through their eyes. That’s why “your tools should fit YOUR life” is a very powerful message. You shouldn’t have to work your life around technology. Technology should work around you.

If you’re going after the do-it-yourselfers, some of those other lines would work. But if you’re going after the do-it-for-me crowd, try the “your tools should fit YOUR life” approach. (Trust me, it could win you a lot of business.)

Agree with them. THEY are not the problem.

[Editor's Note: If you're a fan of his work, take a moment to listen to our exclusive interview with Seth Godin, or download it by right-clicking here.]

I laughed when I first heard it, but my friend explained:

At last count, there were some 75 million+ blogs out there, but very few of those blogs have many readers besides the writer, his mom and the family pet; and if it’s a cat, they just casually glance at it. If you care to argue that people use it as a personal journal, I’d suggest they use a more elegant and simpler technology, a moleskine notebook and a pen.

In fact, besides a few really popular blogs, most blogs don’t have enough readers for a pickup game of basketball. Please don’t lecture me about the long tail — I understand niche, even micro-niche. I think as marketers, though, we have bigger issues to overcome if we ever expect to see the acceptance of social media as a viable media channel.

1. Splogs, Scrapers and Money Making Fakers

Way too many of the blogs out there have been created because someone heard the search engines love blogs. And eventually, some low life figured they could get more traffic is grabbing garbage content from others to post and post and post. The frightening part is that Google and Technorati can’t filter out these content thieves and their sites often show up in listings so that in aggregate they deliver traffic. Both blog publishers and readers feel this pain.

Also, according to Google, of the 2 billion or so pages containing the word “blog,” only about 200,000,000 of them don’t contain the word “money” somewhere on the page.

Based on these statistics, close to 90% of the blogs you’ll find on the internet are the products of get rich quick schemes.

2. New Year’s Resolution Makers and Promise Breakers

Do you have your list of things you plan to do in the new year? Ready for a fresh start? Do you plan to lose weight, start exercising, find a better job and quit smoking? Like many people, you might sign up for the gym the first week of January; you’ll feel the burn of that first session you have with the personal trainer. You’ll thrill from buzz and bustle of the crowds. Waiting for your next machine may whisk you back to memories of standing in airport TSA lines during the holiday travel season. You’ll return, but, unfortunately, by March the gym will be so empty that you’ll hear an echo every time you swallow. Sure you’ll keep going, because you’re different.

Blogging, like any of these resolutions takes a real commitment. Out of the 75 million plus blogs started, in April Technorati reported that 15.5 million of them were “active.” What exactly does that mean?

Technorati claims about 1.5 million new posts a day. Take a look at popular blogs like, Boing Boing, Engadget, TechCrunch, Lifehacker, Scoblelizer, Search Engine Watch, and Search Engine Land, and you’ll notice many of these are publishing 5 or more posts a day. Meanwhile others — top marketing blogs like Seth Godin, SEOmoz, Duct Tape Marketing, Search Engine Journal, Marketing Pilgrim and us at GrokDotCom — try to publish a couple of posts a day. To really feel the benefits of blogging, or any of those other resolutions, you have to do it regularly and you have to do it well. How many actual blogs do you think are doing it and not just polluting the interwebs?

3. Link Baiters and Content Masturbators

If you don’t have easy access to Reddit’s leaked algorithm or know the secret formula to be Dugg, let me tell you how most people get to the front page of these sites.

• Create a list. Title it any of the following: The top 10…, a definitive guide…, 101 resources for…
• Pick a hot topic. These include: Apple, Ubuntu, Linux, Wii, Halo, Ron Paul, or choose something trendy from Google.
• Link to a whole bunch of other people’s posts.
• Voila, you have viral post.

Need an example? Just this week I saw a post on analyzing traffic and improving conversions rise through the social media networks. Not to take anything away from the effort made to create the post, but its first link is to a parked GoDaddy domain page with no content. Even still, people saw the list, didn’t read, didn’t click, but just bookmarked it. Is that the promise and purpose of social media?

Bring the Social Back to Social Media in 2008

Promise to create useful, updated, and unique content every day. I toast each and every one of you who make valuable contributions to this blogosphere every day. It’s hard work and I, for one, respect and appreciate it. Will you?

P.S. Happy New Year to you all.

It’s not as simple as some may lead you to believe.

First, there’s the issue of relevance. A blog won’t magically give you a top ranking position on Google, Yahoo! or the like. The content your blog has, the frequency with which such content is being updated, and the amount of relevant incoming links to your site are some of the factors that will make-or-break the effectiveness of your weblog.

Don’t add a blog to your site if you’re not willing to consistently invest time and effort. An outdated blog will reflect the opposite image of whatever it is you want potential customers to know about your company.

Some bloggers are a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to “keeping it fresh.” No, you don’t need to add 10+ posts per day; what you need is consistency and relevance. You can update your blog daily, weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly, but you need to do it on a regular basis.

More importantly, write about your product/service/industry from as many angles as you can imagine. Link and opine on news and commentary related to your business. Doing so will benefit your customers as they try to wrap their heads around the issue (or problem) that your organization is able to solve.

If you are selling Piñatas, talk about piñatas; how they originated, the different materials/manufacturing techniques being utilized, market share, growth opportunities, or give examples of when and where it’s appropriate to have one. Show piñatas across the world, client testimonials, the most commonly used characters, licensing issues, what NOT to put inside them, the best sticks used to break them, how to liven any party, how to grab the kid’s attention during a birthday party . . . you get the picture.

Don’t go off on a weird tangent by addressing personal interests (outside of Piñata World) in your company blog. Have the need to do it? Start a personal blog and be as weird, nerdy, cool, public or anonymous as you wish to be. And, when it’s appropriate, link to your company’s blog.

Here’s a personal example of the true power or blogs: “Hi, my name’s Juan, and I’m an obsessive-compulsive blogger.” I have to blog on a daily basis about my passion, the Hispanic Community.

Every single post on my blog has something to do with Latinos; marketing and advertising, culture, religion, language, sports, business, buying power, politics, education, health. Bottom line: If it’s relevant information that will help you acquire a stronger grasp of Hispanics, you will find it on Hispanic Trending.

Through many years of non-stop blogging on the subject, I’ve been blessed to have established good relationships with many interesting people, from all walks of life, with the same interests as me.

One such individual is Dave Schechter, a news editor at CNN. In late September 2007, when interest regarding Hispanic Heritage Month was reaching its zenith, CNN and CNN.com launched a very insightful initiative, both on and off line, under the name, “Uncovering America,” with humongous coverage of everything Latino in a very professional and thorough manner. Early morning on September 28th, I received an email from Dave, requesting that “Uncovering America” be mentioned on Hispanic Trending. He even emphasized that coverage would be on both CNN and CNN.com.

Knowing that the entire coverage would be extremely relevant to the blog’s readers, I complied with my friend’s request and added a simple (and truly short) post that evening, with a link to “Uncovering America’s” landing page on CNN.com. Programming began on September 29th and everything was business as usual at Hispanic Trending. Being addicted beyond hope to my site’s analytics, on October 1st, I noticed abnormally high traffic numbers (trending towards 4 times the “normal” number of visitors for a single day). My analytics showed that the traffic spike was being generated through Google, specifically for the search term: “cnn.com/uncoveringamerica.”

I was fascinated by the phenomenon and kept digging deeper into it. I went to Google Trends (also captivating) and finally grasped the magnitude what was going on. For reasons beyond my control (I’m guessing the mention of the website on CNN’s TV coverage), “CNN.com/UncoveringAmerica” had reached, according to Google Trends, “On Fire” search term status that day; ranked #2, right between “veratril” and “aliens in america.”

Google Trends not only shows the most popular search terms of the day, it provides links to the news articles, blog posts and websites people are visiting after performing that specific search. There were no results under the news articles section, and my guess is that there wasn’t one article from any tracked media outlet that included the specific term being searched.

Under blog posts, I was pleasantly surprised to see my blog ranked number one. Then, looking closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The actual CNN.com site had the #2 and #3 positions behind, you guessed it, my blog. People were searching for the term “cnn.com/uncovering america” and clicking on my blog. Once there, they found a prominent and clear link to the information they were looking for and off they went. Since that day, the blog’s readership — although not at the record level it reached — was permanently increased to a new level that otherwise would have taken much longer to achieve.

The power of a relevant and consistently updated blog is not to be taken lightly, nor is it for the faint of heart. Years and years of posting relevant information about the subject made Google consider the blog so relevant that, when this specific term was searched, they listed it “Numero Uno.”

Advertising investment: $0.00

Hispanic Trending didn’t reach this milestone because of a catchy name, a nice design, or by who I know; it was a combination of perseverance and focus over time.

Sure, a blog can do wonders to increase traffic to your site, but do you must consider it a long-term investment.

Has blogging helped your organization? Got any lesser-known examples of how blogging has or hasn’t helped business?

[Editor's Note: This is Juan Tornoe's first guest post for GrokDotCom. He'll be joining us at least once a month to share his insights about blogging and online Hispanic marketing trends.]

Oh, how quickly things change. Blogs have taken over, creating a feedback loop between journalists and readers, businesses and customers, you name it — conversation has officially changed the game.

While this may not represent all of the year’s best marketing bloggery, it’s a start. Are there posts by other bloggers you’d like to see on here? Let us know with a brief comment and (so long as it fits) we’ll add your suggestion to the list. Enjoy!

December

“Best of 2007: Top 7 Tech News Stories” — Mashable (The top tech posts from the Mashable.com team.)

“2007 Brand Autopsy Marketing Book Awards” by John Moore, Brand Autopsy (Find out which books John thought were made to stick, so to say, in ‘07.)

“The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration” by Brian Clark, Copyblogger (Shows how to spin brilliantly trashy headlines into useful attention-grabbers, e.g., “Headline Help: Crucial Tips That Brian Clark Forgot to Mention” [Hint: It's not just for bloggers.])

November

“The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization” by Aaron & Giovanna Wall, SEO Book (It’s quickly becoming the go-to resource for blog SEO.)

“Close Encounter with Facebook Beacon“ by Charlene Li, Groundswell (See what happens when you back peddle into a revenue stream by snooping on your users.)

“Who Owns Your Data on Google, Facebook, Netflix?” by Don Dodge, The Next Big Thing (One of the year’s top debates, nicely distilled in a simple response to Jason Calacanis, Doc Searls, and Dave Winer.)

“Amazon Sets eBook World Alight with Kindle” by Richard MacManus, Read/Write Web (Review of a clunky internet-connected e-book reader. Will it catch fire or burn up?)

“Google’s Android Arrives . . . An Open Source Mobile Phone Platform” by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s not a Google Phone, but a mobile operating system.)

October

“Sorry PR people: you’re blocked” by Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (If you’re in PR or have ever considered emailing Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief, or any other blogger/author/journalist, don’t do a thing until you read this appropriately scathing post.)

“Online Copywriting 101: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet” — GrokDotCom (Resources for anyone who wants to communicate on the Web.)

“Radiohead’s In Rainbows: A Look at Anti-Marketing in the Music Industry” by Maki, DoshDosh (One band schools an entire industry on “the ROI of free,” but stumbles a bit in the process. Read our follow-up case study for more.)

September

“Dear Steve Jobs” by Robert Scoble, Scobleizer (Apple announces iPhone. Zealots and Geeks wait in lines for days. Sales are a bit slow for Jobs, so he drops the price. The blogosphere speaks up. Jobs listens.)

“Forget About Page Rank and Build a Better Blog” by Darren Rowse, ProBlogger (A terrific video post on why it’s important to put content first, then let search engines do their job. Optimization matters, but what you’re optimizing matters more.)

August

“Damn, I am so busted, yo” by Fake Steve, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (One of our favorite satirist bloggers, Daniel “if-that-is-his-name” Lyons, gets outed by a New York Times writer whose name happens to be BRAD STONE.)

“Moving Day” by Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics (In a freak move, NYTimes.com picks up Dubner & Levitt’s popular blog, breathing new life into old media.)

“See Who’s Editing Wikipedia” by John Borland, Wired (A Cal Tech graduate student makes a program that allows us to see who’s editing wiki entries. You might be surprised. Read our follow-up post for more.)

“Answer These 10 Questions Before You Charge for SEO Services” by Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz (A must-read for all SEO firms and the people who hire them.)

July

“Will The Last Corporation Leaving Second Life Please Turn Off The Light” by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch (The L.A. Times talks about the pink elephant: Are businesses making money or even wooing fans in Second Life?)

“Sphinn: Our Social Site For Search & Internet Marketing Professionals” by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Danny and crew launch a cool, 2.0-ish social news service for SEO’s.)

“FreeBurner for Everyone” by Traci, Burning Questions (Google acquires yet another important company. David Dalka gives six reasons why the deal was a mistake.)

June

“Why I disagree with Privacy International” by Matt Cutts, Gadgets, Google, and SEO (Google gets poor grades on their privacy practices. Matt speaks out.)

“Ask Launches Ask3D” by Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch (The “first” major launch of universal search.)

“Building 43” by Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog (You can’t out-SEO the team behind Google’s algorithm.)

“If Clicks Were Votes” by Andrew Meagher, Compete blog (A fun double-header analysis that tries to infer what could happen to Democrats and Republicans in the ‘08 U.S. presidential election if Web traffic on its own actually mattered.)

May

“Google Maps is spying on my cat…” by Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing (Google Street Views takes some very revealing photos, backlash ensues.)

“New Version of Google Analytics!” by Jeff Gills, The Official Google Analytics Blog (Sparks go off as Google unveils its updated analytics solution. Impressive, but is it an enterprise solution?)

“Thank You for Helping Me Write The New Rules of Marketing & PR!” by David Meerman Scott, Web Ink Now (With one of the year’s best executed and most earnest linkbait posts, David proves why everyone should read his book. Thank YOU, sir!)

“The Movie is Finally Here,” by Geert, Bring Back the Love (Have advertisers lost that lovin’ feelin’? This short film shows why it’s time to bring it on back, now.)

April

“Google beats Microsoft in DoubleClick bidding battle” by David Hunter, Microsoft News Tracker, (GoogleClick? They win another acquisition battle.)

“Google Website Optimizer Launches” by Robert Gorell, GrokDotCom (Now everyone can do A/B and Multivariate testing at zero cost. Want some free resources with that?)

“Video: RSS in Plain English” by Lee Lefever, Common Craft (Finally, someone shows how RSS really is simple.)

March

“Viacom Sues YouTube for $1 Billion…The End of the Tube?” by Pete Cashmore, Mashable (If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em? The great debate rages on.)

“Why Online Advertising Economics Are So Messed Up” by Scott Karp, Publishing 2.0 (Now that “page views” are dead, it’s time to take a look at the real problem. Just beware of those zombie metrics.)

“Taking the Week Off” by Robert Scoble, Scobleizer (After receiving horrible anonymous threats, Kathy Sierra, one of the world’s top bloggers, quits blogging. A regrettable chapter, indeed — but there was a silver lining. Ultimately, greater minds prevailed and the incident fueled a much-needed conversation about balancing professionalism with free speech in blogland.)

“10 Reasons Commenting is Good for Bloggers” by Chris Garrett, ChrisG.com (’Tis better to give than to receive. Here’s why.)

February

“Why People Hate SEO…” by Jason Calicanis, Calicanis.com (SEO is Bull? Although there are likely reasons why Jason would say such a thing, at least he got savvy search marketers to link to him and even challenge him back. Mahalo!)

“National Pork Board Goes After Breastfeeding Search Marketer” by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (The Pork Board shouldn’t whine about spilt milk, especially when it’s not their own.)

“7 Big Questions for Online Marketers” by Jeffrey Eisenberg, GrokDotCom (Everyone loves answers, but are you asking the right questions?)

January

“Steve’s Devices” by Nicholas Carr, Rough Type (The post that put the year of the iPhone in perspective, explaining its limitations and predicting, without saying as much, that 2008 will be the year of the open mobile platform. Oh, and Nick does this six months before the iPhone even launched.)

Did we miss something?

Probably. There were so many eye-opening blog posts this year that we need your help updating this list so that it is definitive — or close to it.

What were your favorite posts this year? Leave a comment and/or link to let us know.

P.S. The t-shirt reads, “More People Have Read This Shirt Than Your Blog.”

P.S. #2 During one of the sessions at SES, Kevin asked “Should I make a video of me hitting myself with a ball ping hammer?” What do you think?

Jason Calacanis

Really? Could it be that Michael Gray (also pictured) convinced Jason that not all — or 90%, as he claimed — of SEO’s are “snakeoil salesmen”?

Everyone knows that 90% of statistics are bull$#*t, so there’s no sense bickering over that. But regardless of what you think of the SEO debate, it’s telling that Calacanis was able to put this event together in just two days by — you guessed it — creating a Facebook group. In the end, over 50 people showed up, and everyone, myself included, had a blast.

It’s funny. Bryan and I were at the same table, and he mentioned to me that when he was at a dinner last year to celebrate the release of Chris Anderson’s bestseller, The Long Tail, it took two weeks to pull a similar crowd — two weeks! Score one for Facebook, but extra points to Jason for giving it another shot, and for not being afraid to praise the social networking platform in public, as he did during a post. He even blogged it.

Jason Calacanis may be the P.T. Barnum of tech, but if he didn’t exist, we’d all do a far worse job inventing him. I didn’t get to speak with Jason much beyond our introduction (he’s quite popular), but I must say I’m impressed. Here’s a guy who spends his days with VC’s and other Silicon Valley elites, and still isn’t afraid to be wrong — or reevaluate, as the case may be — his bold opinions. Isn’t that what technology, marketing, and the nexus therein is about? Maybe if he didn’t have such a sharp tongue and keyboard, people wouldn’t have such strong opinions about the guy — and wouldn’t that be boring.

So, Mahalo to you, Jason, and to B.L. Ochman, David Armano and the other fine bloggers and entrepreneurs who met at Dim Sum 2.0. (If you’re on Facebook, you can see Bryan’s snapshots from the dinner here.)

[*For those hoping to lambaste Jason, please note that Danny Sullivan, Lisa Barone, Neil Patel, and others have already the job quite tastefully. For even more nuance on the "SEO is bull" debate, check out Scott Karp's assessment -- and don't forget to read the comments.]

While reading the news on Yahoo! this morning, I stumbled upon this ad for Delta. I’m a frequent Delta flyer and I’ve seen some small, directional changes — but they have a long way to go. They’re going through the motions of realligning and rebranding, but new tactics can’t change one’s corporate DNA.

When you click through on the ad, it takes you to Delta’s Under the Wing blog. (Blogging is an amazing tactic for engaging in conversation with your customers. I even hear from my good friend Joe that Delta is twittering.) So, what happens on the blog? One might expect to learn more about the airline’s changes. Instead, I was presented with a rather drab (like the old Delta), but clean, design and a post called “How Does Delta Gather Customer Input?”

Words can tell a lot about a company’s focus. I ran the text of this post through the customer focus (”We-we”) calculator and here are the results:

Your Customer Focus Rate: 17.39%
You have 4 instances of customer-focused words.

Your Self Focus Rate: 82.61%
You have 15 instances of self-focused words.
You have 4 instances of the Company Name.

You speak about yourself approximately 0,005 times as often as you speak about your customers.
Might that have an impact on your effectiveness?

Frank Wrenn, General Manager, Customer Insights & Analytics for Delta, wrote the post. Frank, I’d like to offer you and Delta my two cents:

1. The key to great customer insight and analysis is empathy. Don’t live by the surveys or the data; live with your customers. How often do you go through the process of booking and flying, just like the majority of your customer’s do? Want to improve the experience? Experience it like most people do. You’ll hate it. Really!

2. Show us you really care about listening to OUR voices. I believe you have honorable intentions, but your words are all about Delta. If you’d like to see how you could have changed your post from being all about how you gather data to why you want to hear from us, so you can improve the experience, I’d be happy to speak with you. I’d gladly share my experiences from the last 75,000 miles I’ve flown with Delta. Feel free to call me: (877) 643-7244 ext.801.

Is Delta serious about change? It will take more than a blog, some advertising, new uniforms, a new logo, some paint, and otherwise going through the motions.

The Greeks use the symbol delta to represent change because “Διαφορά” means “difference” in Greek. Will you really make a difference in customers’ lives, or will you be content putting lipstick on a pig?

Rank is something we bloggers take very seriously. The problem is, nobody seems to be that good at measuring it — not yet, anyway.

For the past couple years, bloggers have loosely relied on Technorati to do the job, with blogs ranked according to their number of incoming links from unique blogs. For some bloggers, though, that may change now that Techmeme has announced a new feature, Techmeme Leaderboard, that ranks blogs according to how often they appear on, well, Techmeme.

Over at TechCrunch (no relation), Michael Arrington has the scoop:

To be exact, top blogs will be ranked on presence – “the percentage of headline space a source occupies over the 30-day period.” Discussion links are not taken into consideration – only full headlines are counted.

I think this is a much better way of ranking the very top blogs than the Technorati approach. Technorati has deep flaws, for reasons stated above. Techmeme, by contrast, has zero spam and tends to mirror what the tech blogosphere is writing about perfectly.

That may be true, but keep in mind that a Techmeme rank will have limited value outside of the tech world. And how about a few other pros and cons for the two sites…

Technorati

Pros: All blogs treated equally, regardless of focus; rank determined by incoming links; current go-to source for comparing blog popularity (i.e., let’s you know where you stand vis-a-vis other blogs).

Cons: All blogs treated equally, regardless of focus; links from spam blogs and pay-to-link services can distort a blog’s true rank; buggy, and often slow to update.

Techmeme

Pros: Niche focus; real-time indicator of tech/business news stories; threads popular stories, linking to blogs that discuss the primary news source.

Cons: Bias toward tech news; encourages copycat/echo chamber-style blogging (e.g., right now I’m blogging about something a lot of other bloggers have covered); tends to reward popularity over analysis.

Back in August, when a glitch caused Technorati to bestow upon us the coveted #1 spot, I suggested to fellow bloggers that, if rank meant everything…

. . . every blogger who’s had even one link documented by Technorati could rejoice more than they already are after being accidentally ranked #1 today — thanks to a glitch.

If rank meant everything, you wouldn’t have to create fresh, original content.

If rank meant everything, blogs wouldn’t be worth reading.

Everyone would be baiting links (like I am).

Like money, when rank means everything, it means nothing.

Do blog readers really care about rank?

Would content by any other number smell as sweet?

Why does a blog’s rank actually matter? Well, there are a few answers. Rank matters to anyone selling ad space on their blog. It’s also directionally interesting since it helps bloggers get a sense of growth. Oh, and there’s that whole “human nature” thing: We’ve been grunting over who’s the biggest and baddest since our days as lesser, knuckle-dragging hominids — which, as geological time goes, wasn’t too long ago.

Any bloggers, tech or otherwise, like to share their thoughts?

Any Techmeme fans ever use Today.GrokDotCom to scoop stories? We do.

[UPDATE: Technorati names Richard Jalichandra as new CEO; Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera explains his new Leaderboard.]

I wonder who at Technorati even cares what people think about them now that founder David Sifry and several others have left. Check out the banner ad I found on my rankings page this morning:

How would you feel if this banner (click thumbnail) for porn popped up next to your blog? I doubt David Sifry would publicly comment. I also wonder what these fine bloggers would have to say if it happened to them:

Seth Godin
Joseph Jaffe
Darren Rowse
Mitch Joel
Robert Scoble
Elaine Vigneault
B.L. Ochman
David Dalka
Andy Beal
Valeria Maltoni
Mack Collier
Todd Andrlik

I didn’t think it was possible until I read “Order on Tax Evasion Site Blocked” in the NY Times:

On Friday, Judge Peter W. Hall temporarily blocked the portion of the order requiring Mr. Schulz to turn over to the government the names and identifying details of people who had obtained information at the Web site on how to stop federal tax from being withheld from their paychecks.

My position is clear, I’m a card carrying member of the ACLU. Do you think the IRS should be able to get that list?

Avinash had already applied a new method, using a regression formula that paired Technorati score with Feedburner subscriber data. Certainly both of these methods have their issues, but I thought it was an improvement from the standard Technorati measure he used previously to measure who was the top ranked web analytics blog.

At the top of the list was Occam’s Razor, Google Analytics Blog, Web Metrics Guru, Web Analytics World, and WebAnalytics.be Blog. Of course, I was devastated to find out GrokDotCom didn’t even make the list. (Just kidding.) In fact, while we certainly do write quite a bit about web analytics, we wouldn’t want to be limited by being called a web analytics blog

So, if some of these blogs that Avinash highlighted in his top 10 list over the past year, among others, weren’t thrilled with how the rankings were computed, I wonder what might we use as an alternative.

Google! I did the search for “web analytics blog” and those results surprised me a bit. (Yahoo! results are fairly similar.)

#1 Matt Belkin’s Omniture Blog — This blog hasn’t been updated in over 6 months. I’m not surprised that it’s at the top of the results, considering how Omniture’s been climbing for the term “web analytics” over the past year.

#2 Coffee, Sun & Technology — I respect Xavier as a friend and analytics innovator, but he doesn’t blog often about analytics anymore since starting his new venture, Wambo, and hasn’t updated the blog since April.

3. WebAnalytics.be Blog — By the always wonderful René and Aurélie from OX2, here’s the first blog we see from Avinash’s list.

4. VisualRevenue — By my buddy Dennis Mortensen, this is another fine web analytics blog.

5. TKG Web Analytics Blog — A blog by the Karcher group.

6. and, finally, Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik.

I wonder if any of the people involved in the debate here, here and here would rather work off this data set. Would you?

Inspired by my wonderful friend Avinash, the web analytics community needs to highlight as many of its voices as possible. I don’t think, in a young market, where it’s hard to name even 50 blogs off the top of my head, that we should limit it to a top 10 list. Besides, if any group knows its rankings and metrics, it’s this one.

I believe anyone who wants to share their passion, curiosity and knowledge about the value of web analytics deserves recognition — which, by the way, was one of the reasons I co-founded the Web Analytics Association.

Therefore, I propose we create a definitive list of web analytics blogs. I’ll get it started with a bunch that I’m aware of and I invite you to list others in the comments. Once I verify that in fact it is a blog that occasionally covers web analytics, I’ll add it to the list.

Web Analytics Blogs:

Future Now’s GrokDotCom
Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
Web Analytics Demystified by Eric Peterson
Emetrics Blog by Jim Sterne (Jim, we’re still waiting for you to get started.)
Marketing Productivity Blog by Jim Novo
Instant Cognition by WAA board member Clint Ivy
Web Metrics Guru by Marshall Sponder
Judah Phillips blog
Analytics Notes by Jacques Warren
Turn Up The Silence by iPerceptions
Share the Genie’s Power :: ClickInsight Blog by June Li
Web Analytics, E-business and Marketing Optimization Blog by Lars Johansson
Commerce 360 blog by Craig Danuloff
Analytics Talk by Justin Cutroni
Webanalyticsbook by Sebastian
Master of 500 Hats by Dave McClure
Google Analytics Blog by Jeff Gills
Information Overload by Bob Page
Web Analytics World by Manoj Jasra
Unofficial Google Analytics Blog by Shawn Purtell
Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang
Lies, Damned Lies… by Ian Thomas
immeria – An immersion in Web Analytics by Stephane Hamel
Passionate Analyst by Dylan Lewis
The MineThatData Blog by Kevin Hillstrom
Lunametrics by Robbin Stiff
Coffee, Sun & Technology hasn’t been updated in a while.
TKG Web Analytics Blog
Hitwise Intelligence – Analyst Weblogs
Compete Blog
David Dalka’s Blog
Conversion Rater by Pat McCarthy
Braden’s web analytics, usability & online marketing blog
Jonathan Mendez’s Blog
Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising by Anil Batra
Web Analytics Pulse

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