I read this today at Tom Peters blog.
The one thing you need to know about sustained individual success:
Discover what you don’t like doing and stop doing it.Marcus Buckingham, from the book The One Thing You Need to Know
I’m glad I read that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Pete Townshend started a blog last September. He is writing a novella. As far as I know, his only promotion was to mention it on his website. Granted his website is more promotion than most of us could wish for, but the entire content of the blog–even more–is at at the website.
Go ahead. Check them out. I’ll wait here.
From his days with The Who, it was clear Pete marched to a different drummer. When it comes to blog marketing and promotion, it seems the same way. As far as I can tell, Pete didn’t follow any of the recommended wisdom.
Well, he does have a picture, under the picture it says
What is well known is that I’m a rock star. You are not worthy etc. In fact you are worthy. And so am I. We deserve each other.
That’s how Pete writes.
I read four of his comments. One is a request to offer up prayers. One is a statement that visitors are reading the chapter wrong. One was a joke, I think. It was hard to understand. The last is an apology that the next chapter isn’t there.
Pete Townshend’s first post–Sept. 24,2005–has 347 comments. Pete’s current post has 1,107 comments. His commenters are the same 30 or so people who talk to each other about all kinds of things. His site meter is locked, so I can’t tell you how many visitors he has had.
Technorati says he has 1,995 links from 529 sites.
His Wholinkstome profile looks like this:
Pete Townshend doesn’t need to do promotion for his blog.
Pete Townshend is a rock star. He doesn’t need promotion. He is a brand. He’s a big idea of his own. He can start something new, and his customers find him. He can ignore all of the rules and ride the interest on the quality music and the top-notch promotion that’s already been done. It’s been compounding year after year in his “virtual marketing account.”
But he’s Pete Townshend–definitely an exception to how things work.
Me? I have to do all of kinds of promotion like everyone else does. I figure I always will. So I do some every day. My virtual marketing account is barely open. Still I’m counting on the lasting value of every little investment I make.
What have you done lately to add to your virtual marketing account?
Sorry, Pete. I wasn’t talking to you.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
And now for something completely different . . . and a lot more FUN!
Looking for an expert on anything?
Yahoo Search is powering a people search engine called “WhosWhoo?!” that’s currently under development by Daily Caffeine. It’s a cool concept. You can search by person or by category and get results in documents, news, talk, and images.
Be kind though, if you try it. It’s still in BETA testing. One search and you’ll start to realize how hard this must be to get right. It’s not quite there yet, but that could be part of it’s appeal. It’s fun to poke around in, just to see what comes up.
Daily Caffeine has a form asking for input, and you can suggest categories all day.
I did a search for Jeremy Wright.
Now I have to ask, “Will the real Jeremy please stand up?” For all of the email that Jeremy gets, he probably wishes there were that many of him–except for the guy who was in jail. . . .
Click the logo to play with WhosWhoo?! beta.
At this stage WhosWhoo?! beta is like mixing an ego search with a Quentin Tarantino Movie, possibly more fun than the real thing. Try it. You’ll probably be using it for real research one day.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Yesterday I wrote about David Sifry’s State of the Blogosphere–Part 2 Message. I ended that post with the question, What will you do? I wasn’t really talking to Niall Kennedy, but he did something anyway.
This via Duncan Riley at the Blog Herald: Niall Kennedy left his job at Technorati. Mr. Kennedy doesn’t discuss his reasons for departing. Click the logo to get to the Blog Herald Story. Then come back to find out what to do about it.
Duncan isn’t the only one concerned. Martin is wondering in the comments here why Technorati is introducing new features when their basic engine and tracking service is broken. So are lots of other people. I’m getting daily emails on the subject.
The way I see it. Janice Myint needs more than Janice to fix what’s wrong at Technorati. It’s time to get throw some real support behind her. So why not use the whistle David Sifry just handed us–AUTHORITY.
Let’s give Janice Myint Authority, by getting everyone to LINK TO JANICE.
We’ll need to do this with some saavy. We don’t want Janice to end up in the Google sandbox. I propose we work together on the honor system. Are you with me?
For SEO reasons, we need a variety of link types and a variety of link names. Keep these guidelines in mind.
- Not everyone should use the exact title of her blog.
- Not everyone should blogroll her blog. Some should be links to individual posts.
- Some should be comment links.
- Not everyone should link today, tomorrow, or the next day.
Choose one of the options below to pick your link day.
- 1. Choose the last letter in your last name. Count its place in the alphabet. Count out that many days from today and link to Janice’s blog on that day.
- 2. When you get your next link to your own blog. Link to Janice’s blog.
- 3. If a friend or family member has a birthday, anniversary or other occasions between now and April 1st, link to Janice’s blog on that day.
- 4. When you get the third, or fourth, or fifth, “Sorry Technorati is . . .” message, link to Janice’s blog.
Janice’s URL is http://janicetechnorati.blogspot.com/
This will get real attention, if enough of us do it. We have the power to make a difference.
I’d trade the bells and whistles for a smooth-working engine that tracks my links accurately.
Wouldn’t you? Link to Janice.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related articles:
Dear Niall Kennedy and David Sifry at Technorati
Janice Myint at Technorati Is in Customer Support
Explore the Magic Middle with Authority
Want Technorati Fixed? Link to Janice. Give Janice AUTHORITY.
David Sifry posted The State of the Blogosphere–Part 2 at the Technorati Weblog today. Part 2 focuses on how information is handled both in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere.
Once again Sifry provides information and analysis that will serve you in your online business and in your personal life. Everyone who wants an understanding of the state of the national media should read this. Businesses should be keeping an eye on the data Mr. Sifry has to offer, particularly businesses that spend advertising dollars. Bloggers should pay attention because opportunities are replete. But bloggers be prepared. It will require creative bloggers that can recraft this information into persuasive messages to help businesses understand that the world is becoming an economy of knowledge and that the base of that knowledge is moving as we speak.
David Sifry discusses the Mainstream Media stalwarts in relation to the Long Tail Blogs telling the story with his usual graphic detail. He also speaks to the Top 100, and the network effect that seems to hold the same blogs in those 100 positions. He points out, that despite the network effect, new blogs have moved in and out.
Sifry also spends time defining a group he calls the Magic Middle–bloggers who are in niche publishing with 20-100 other sites linking to them–as sometimes radically changing the economics of trade publishing with their interesting, topical, and influential blogs. These are the blogs that people like you and I read and write. We might well know them better than Mr. Sifry does.
The first new feature David Sifry describes is Technorati Explore. I have to say, I’m not clear on how it works. I’ll let him explain it.
The idea is to use the bloggers that know the most about an area or topic to help spot the interesting trends that may never hit the “A-list”. We call this new section Explore, and we’ve seeded it with some of the most interesting topics that we could find. But one of the nice things about Explore is that there are no gatekeepers, and that anyone who writes interesting topical blog posts can get included simply by tagging his blog and tagging his posts.
Sounds great doesn’t it? The post says much more about it. I tried it out tonight . . . I’m still not sure how it works.
The second new feature Sifry introduced is Authority Filtering. A new green slide allows you to tune your searches to adjust your results to only those with a lot of authority. Authority is calculated on number of links.
I hardly told you half of what’s in it. Here’s just a few notes–a taste–from the summary.
- Blogging and Mainstream Media continue to share attention in blogger’s and reader’s minds, but bloggers are climbing higher on the “big head” of the attention curve, with some bloggers getting more attention than sites including Forbes, PBS, MTV, and the CBC.
- Bloggers are changing the economics of the trade magazine space, with strong entries covering WiFi, Gadgets, Internet, Photography, Music, and other nice topic areas, making it easier to thrive, even on less aggregate traffic.
- The Magic Middle is the 155,000 or so weblogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. It is a realm of topical authority and significant posting and conversation within the blogosphere.
I sit in the Magic Middle. Tagged with Authority–if the sliding scale works the way it’s supposed to. The MSMedia is losing ground and hardly has a clue. The blogosphere is growing faster than most folks can contemplate how to make something of it. The information is here. The future is around the corner.
What will you do?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related articles:
David Sifry Writes about the Futureââ¬âJanice Myint Please Donââ¬â¢t Read It
Explore the Magic Middle with Authority
Want Technorati Fixed? Link to Janice. Give Janice AUTHORITY.
SIDE NOTES: INFORMATION IS USEFUL
Anyone who’s beeng half awake this past month has noticed some strange gyrations going on at Google. Some of them don’t seem to be the dance of the sweet, and friendly search engine we all love to have on our desktop.
January 27, 2006–Google finally talks about China.
That was two days after CNN announced that Google agreed to meet China’s requirement for free speech censorship in order to be allowed into that rapidly growing, massive market.
In fairness, here is Google’s response after attending the Human Rights Caucus.
Google finally talks about China
CNN announced that Google agreed
Google’s response after attending the Human Rights Caucus
Whew! That’s settled. Now life can go on. Right? Unfortunately NO.
This morning I don’t know what clicked me over to Boing Boing, but there I was and here’s what I saw. Click the image through to the article. This is interesting stuff.
First China. Now our videos?
Happy Valentine’s Day, Google.
Do you have something to tell me? Are we breaking up?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related articles:
Check Google Backlinks Through Yahoo
Google Site Maps — Looking for Lancelot or Guinevere
Google Blogger — 403 Forbidden — How Could You Let that Happen!
Google Zeitgeist — Will Make ME Millions