Successful Blog

Google Zeitgeist–Will Make ME Millions

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Think everyone’s in a foul mood?
Check Google Zeitgeist it could be true.

googleblog_blogspot.com Zeitgeist

The word Zeitgeist refers to the intellectual, cultural and moral climate of an era. It’s the taste, the outlook, the spirit of the times, so to speak. I think you can have a personal Zeitgeist as well. My own has been suffering from karma-skew all through 2005. I hope to master it in 2006, and I’m looking for every tool to do so. I think Google Zeitgeist might do the trick.

Every month Google interprets the latest search data it has collected for trends, bits of information, and patterns in user searches to make a statistical snapshot in the form of a report called Zeitgeist Watch. You can find it on the Google Blog. The information gathered by Google Zeitgeist isn’t particularly new, but where they take it is. The way they’ve thought-through Zeitgeist makes it a pleasure to behold and a joy to use. Despite my wariness of big conglomerates getting bigger, I just can’t turn up my nose at this one. It’s too much fun for a strategy fanatic like me.

Basically Google Zeitgeist lets you into the minds of Google searchers–our readers. Others attempt to do that, but Google performs it in a visually-friendly, intuitive fashion. They didn’t get to be Google, after all, by making things harder, now did they? Rather than just stopping with an alphabetical list of tags, they’ve analyzed the list into patterns of like-minded choices. This makes the bigger picture stand out.

As shown above, the Zeitgeist categories for October 2005 include

  1. Look It Up
  2. Popular Brick and Mortar Companies
  3. Popular Solo Singers
  4. What Else to Do On Line

The popular search term categories for October 2005 include

  1. Top Worries
  2. Popular Sports
  3. Popular Newsmakers
  4. Tabloid Fodder

The popular Image search categoriess for October 2005 include

  1. Popular Cars
  2. Popular Wizards and Superheroes
  3. Popular Bands
  4. Tabloid Concepts

Just by checking those three lists, we have a sense of what our readers might be thinking, and what topics might be hot. Look a little further, and find that Zeitgeist covers no less than 23 other countries beyond the US. As a person who is curious and fascinated by human behavior, this is like a major Christmas toy. It’s been out for a while now. So if you’ve not played with it yet, it’s time you give Zeitgeist a try. I can see posts in the lists for almost any blog.

But first I’m going to use Google Zeitgeist to invent a Television Game Show. It will have a 20-second song for the final round question like the one that Merv Griffin did for Jeopardy. That’s how I’m going to make millions.

Heck I bet after that the famousblog read by royalty, tycoons, and the rich and famous–Blogebrity–will move me from the C List up to the prestigious A List. Then it will be Veuvre Champagne for everyone in the Signature Room at the top of the John Hancock in Chicago. I’ll be buying and flying you all in. Which might be too nice and thereby force Blogebrity to push me back to the C List again. Oh well, I was only getting 15 minutes of fame to start with.

It’s the money I need desperately. I’ve got a kid in college you know. So the millions will come in handy. My son will use them to graduate from Georgetown. One day he will be a famous CEO of a mega corporation and maybe take of his mom in her doting old age and deterioration.

Thanks for these things will be due to Google and their Zeitgeist Watch lists–the little analysis program that made all of my dreams come true. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 6: Media Events

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Collaboration Link 6: Media Events
Two or more bloggers specialize on their coverage of an ongoing media event

In the time of a serious media event or tragedy, it seems that too many bloggers are blogging the same things from the same sources. Whatever the newsworthy cause how much more useful and interesting for readers if a group of blogs worked together to collaborate on posting. Each blog might report on a specific aspect of the event to avoid the pervasive problems of redundancy. Anyone who surfed for news during Katrina knows how redundant redundant can be.

Quality needs to be top-notch as always. So it becomes the main criteria for choosing collaborators. Still, if you choose with care, you might find that you develop a news team that has some expertise. What a service you would be performing actually offering some depth and planning to what people could be reading. It’s sure to get your team noticed and gain readers for the blogs in your collaborative group.

All collaborations are a great way of building community, but they can’t be your only form of linking–and you shouldn’t collaborate only with the same people continuously. Finding new people to collaborate with is a relationship-building activity. Besides everyone should have the experience of collaborating with me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 1: Image and Text
Collaboration Link 2: Topical
Collaboration Link 3: An Event
Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts
Collaboration Link 5: An Interview
Collaboration Link 5: Begs the Question

Collaboration Link 5 Begs the Questions

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Link 5 Begs the Questions

So I’ll ask them.

If you could meet anyone in the blogosphere world–living or dead–and ask one question . . .

Who’s the person?

and

What’s the question?

Oh and . . .

Do you suppose you’d get a complete and totally truthful answer?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 1: Image and Text
Collaboration Link 2: Topical
Collaboration Link 3: An Event
Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts
Collaboration Link 5: An Interview
Collaboration Link 6: Media Events

Collaboration Link 5: An Interview

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Collaboration Link 5: An Interview
A Question and Answer format posting

You have probably seen the typical Q&A collaboration done in various formats. We’ve done multi-day interview and single-day interviews at Successful Blog. Here are a few examples.

Collaboration Link–1. 5 Indie’s Advice–the fifth of a six part interview with the owner of The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy.

Collaboration Link–2.3 The Audience is Royalty–The third of a six part interview with the owner of The Reign of Ellen.

I’ve also seen the Five-Question Interview and the Ten-Question Interview. But you know me, I like to change things up a bit.

I’m working with Koray of Koray.ws to show us around his new design in a walking-tour interview fashion. So look for that in the next few weeks.

In a more creative collaboration, a fiction-based interview can a be fresh and entertaining way to pass on solid information. Okay so, this might not work on the most business of business blogs. But don’t give it up without thinking about it. You’d be surprised who might enjoy hearing you have a conversation with a paperclip. Look around. My point is not every interview has to be boring. I only make them that way to torture you. Here’s what we did.

In a collaboration with Teh Blogfather, Eric Mutta, we agreed that the interviewer should be The 65th Crayon, a character on my blog who has among his credits an interview with such the legendary toy, Mr. Potato Head. We thought it might be fun to have The 65th interview Eric’s character, the Blog Father. The resulting interview allowed for questions that were a little less ordinary and still led to answers about the man behind the blog. You’ll find that interview here.

Collaboration Link–Scribbles: Interview with Teh Blog Father

Who knows? Maybe I’ll send my colorful friend to interview Mark Wade next–now that his new design proves that he’s over his fear of crayons I’ve been wondering what his favorite color is. He should have one or two. After all, his company is called R Web Designs. I’m betting it’s red.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 1: Image and Text
Collaboration Link 2: Topical
Collaboration Link 3: An Event
Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts
Collaboration Link 5: Begs the Question
Collaboration Link 6: Media Events

Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts

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Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts
Three or more blogs agree to write on the same topic in series each posting one after the next

You might think of a moveable post collaboration as similar to a moveable feast. You have the appetizer at one house, the salad at another, the main course at a third, and dessert at still another. This kind of collaboration requires a certain kind of topic and at least three bloggers to make sense. I’ve not done a moveable collaboration, but can’t see why it wouldn’t work well. Here’s the way a Moveable Collaboration might work.

Topic : 10 Ways to a Better Blog

  • Day 1, Blog 1: 10 Ways to Attract Readers
  • Day 2, Blog 2: 10 Ways to Promote Your Blog
  • Day 3, Blog 3: 10 Ways to Write Compelling Posts
  • Day 4, Blog 4: 10 Ways to Get Links
  • Day 5, Blog 5: 10 Ways to Improve Your Rankings

The series would include a schedule, and links that tie all posts to each other for readers, giving each blogger four relevant links. The caution here is that in order to strengthen the community and your blog, you need to be sure that you work with quality bloggers who provide quality, fresh content. The beauty is that you can limit the number of bloggers to the number of quality bloggers you know. No one said you can’t send readers around to every blog again.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 1: Image and Text
Collaboration Link 2: Topical
Collaboration Link 3: An Event
Collaboration Link 5: An Interview
Collaboration Link 5: Begs the Question
Collaboration Link 6: Media Events

Collaboration Link 3: An Event

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Collaboration Link 4: An Event
One blog sponsors an event in which many blogs contribute

This kind of collaboration occurs in many forms around the Internet. Here are two of my favorites–one that occurs often and a second that is ongoing. This may seem similar to Darren’s Bloggy Crush Collaboration Idea, but the topics here are usually more centered within a certain niche and often chosen to establish participation within a young community or to suss out a large chunk of information on a business topic. Two exapmles jump to mind immediately.

1. A Carnival Carnivals are popular because each blogger can showcase hie or her own interests and strengths to the benefit of the group. Martin, a Successful and Outstanding Blogger, is part of a Marketing Carnival at the moment that has participant writing posts. One host collects seven and compiles them together into a link list as a group publication, pointing to the articles on each individual blog.

2. Let the Comments Be the Posts David at Glittering Muse thought a friend of his had a great idea when the friend pulled a well–written comment out into the light of day. So David started an ongoing readership appreciation event called Glittering Commentari. He has advertised and invited blogs all over the Internet to look through their comments to find particularly moving, insightful, or funny comments that can stand on their own and deserve credit for the great comments they are. You can find information on how to participate at Glittering Commentari.

These collaborations are just two more ways that bloggers have found to link their efforts, ideas, and quality content to make their blogs more relevant and their communities stronger. Learning from each other and sharing what we know . . . where have I heard that before?

Didn’t think I’d find another way to get comments into a post this week, did you? he he.

Wait until you see what’s next . . . 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Collaboration Link 1: Image and Text
Collaboration Link 2: Topical
Collaboration Link 4: Movable Posts
Collaboration Link 5: An Interview
Collaboration Link 5: Begs the Question
Collaboration Link 6: Media Events