By now we should all know the importance of an authentic content strategy that moves beyond traditional marketing techniques, but it seems like it’s a lesson worth repeating.

Read my full post on FierceContentManagement.

Photo by Banalities on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Sorry for the layoff on the Friday Five folks, but it’s a very busy time for me since Thanksgiving. But it’s time to get back to the regular routine and that means the Friday 5 (at least for this week).

Enough talk, let’s just get to the links:

• An Open Letter to Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo Inc - Thomas Hawk Digital Connection Blog.
• Facebook Brings Facial Recognition to Photo Tagging – Mashable.
• Ping Introduces Social Playlists – TiPb
• 30 Inspiring Ideas To Develop Content for your Blog – Jeff Bullas Blog.
• Nobody Cares About Your Products – David Meerman Scott, Web Ink Now Blog.

Another week and our favorite social networking whipping boy, Facebook, stuck its foot in it again this week with news of an application privacy breach in applications like Farmville. Not that’s it that shocking that Farmville would be doing something with your data, but they’re not supposed to. Both Facebook and Zynga, Farmville’s developer have some ‘splaining to do.

Without further delay, this weeks five links in social media:

• Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information – WSJ.com.
• Apple and Facebook CEOs Meet For Dinner To Iron Out Ping | Cult of Mac.
• 5 Ways Businesses Blow it on Twitter – Blogging Tips.com.
• The Facebook News Feed: How it Works,10 Biggest Secrets - The Daily Beast.
• Corporate Blogging Goes Mainstream – eMarketer.

Photo by zieak on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Another week passed by and Facebook and Google manage to dominate the social media news. First we had Facebook announce its relationship with Bing and its integration in Skype. These are hard relationships to ignore, but Google, not to be outdone here made two big announcements of its own: First all it gave Marissa Mayer was promoted and put in charge of location and local services, this is the same area covered by the Facebook-Bing deal.

Secondly Google announced monster third quarter earnings, and CEO Eric Schmidt made it clear that Google was going to be getting much more social too.

Let’s not forget that Microsoft also launched Windows Phone 7 this week too.

Without further adieu, this week’s Friday 5:

• Schmidt On Social: “We Want People To Be More Logged Into Google.” – TechCrunch.
• Why blogging still matters – O’Reilly Radar Blog.
• FourSquare Co-Founder Sees Credit Card Links, More User Rewards in the Future – DailyFinance.
• The Fallacy of Twitter - Lubor on Tech Blog.
• When Social Sites Get Anti-social - Internet Evolution.

Photo courtesy of Moe on Flickr.

Image via Wikipedia

Reports began surfacing on Tuesday afternoon that Six Apart, the parent company of TypePad, had been sold to Video Egg. It makes me wonder what will happen to this blogging platform and if it will continue as we’ve known it.

I’ve been using TypePad since 2003. After a brief flirtation with Blogger, I moved to TypePad and I’ve been here ever since. I have no reason to believe that TypePad is going anywhere, but the change makes me uneasy.

This post from Andrian Bloem on the Real Story blog doesn’t make me feel much better about it. It seems as though TypePad might become an after thought in the new media company vision.

It has gotten me thinking about what I would need to do if I moved the blog to another platform. If I did, it would be to WordPress, no contest. But how easy would it be to move my design and my content to another platform? That, I’m not sure.

I know WordPress would be a cheaper option, but for now I’m taking the wait and see approach and I’m not going anywhere.

So long as the new owners continue to support the product, I see no reason to make the switch, but TypePad bloggers like me have to at least be thinking about worst case scenarios and what it mean if that didn’t happen.

Cross-posted on ‘by Ron Miller‘.

Another week for the Friday Five in social media. My favorite this week comes courtesy of my sister-in-law in Australia who sent me an article on an Australian bank that seemed unhappy with its profitable quarter and chose to Tweet about it. The public responded (as only Aussies can). I believe it speaks directly to how social media tools have become part of the mainstream of how we communicate (even with banks and corporations).

Without further adieu, this week’s links:

* Westpac Bank writes ‘Oh So Very Over It’ on Twitter Account by Cameron Atfield, Brisbane Times.

* Google Buzz Monitoring by Rick Klau, Rick Klau’s Weblog.

* 20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter by Halle Tecco, Forbes.com

* The Sex and the City Guide to Blogging by (our very own) Julie Roads, Copyblogger.

* Seth Godin Should Read His Own Book by Mark Cuban, Blog Maverick Blog

Photo by pvsbond on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

So many blogs, so little time! How do you find the best ones?

I’m working on a project right now where I need to find the top blogs for a number of different topics. And it’s not as easy as you’d think. There isn’t one place that categorizes all blogs or top blogs or best blogs in terms of traffic, rank, subscribers and social media reach.

And, interestingly, Google isn’t really cutting it. I’ve found that blogs that end up on the first page of my Google search returns aren’t necessarily highly trafficked. When I tweeted my request for a way to find top blogs, many people said, ‘Use Google!’ But Google ranks based on how many people are linking to a particular post, not the site itself. So if you type in ‘NVidia blue screen error’, you will find a specific blog post on the subject at the top of the results. Doesn’t mean the blog that post lives on is a top ranked blog, but that post is. Google isn’t measuring popularity to the site, it’s measuring traffic to the page (among other things).

Below, you’ll find a list of other sites that can help with this task – but none of them are spectacular. And you can’t take what they say as gospel. You’ll need to install the Alexa toolbar, check each blog’s posts for comment numbers and ask around to get the full picture.

• Technorati
• Delightful Blogs
• alltop
• PopURLS
• Scribnia

So…if anyone’s looking for a great business idea. Please make the ultimate blog ranking and discovery site – ‘kay? Thanks…

Image credit: Dan is awesome

You may be wondering right about now, why I think bloggers should be cleaner than others, but I’m here to tell you, it’s because it’s where ideas are born. When you relax and open your mind, something wonderful happens. As that water rains down on your body, your mind clears and the ideas that have been locked away find their way free.

I’m a writer. It’s what I do, and I find ideas come at me out of nowhere all the time, but you don’t have to be a professional writer to experience this. You just have to be ready. The trick is to recognize the idea and respond, and never, ever ignore it. I’m still so pleasantly surprised when a seemingly spontaneous idea pops into my head almost fully formed. I’ve had it happen in the shower, emptying the dishwasher, out for a walk, in the car–any place my mind is open and the ideas are flowing.

But because I’m a writer I’ve trained myself to listen for these moments of clarity. You may be new to blogging or a regular blogger who struggles to find ideas. You just have to learn to look and listen and the ideas will come. They are out there all around you. You just have to be ready to detect them.

And when it happens, that magic moment, wherever you are, write it down, type a note or leave yourself a voice mail. Do something so you won’t forget. And pretty soon you’ll find that sometimes, when you get out of the shower, even before you dry off, you’ll find yourself sitting at your keyboard, writing that blog post. It’s why real bloggers shower regularly and write often.

This is a familiar client/Writing Roads scenario:

Me: If you want to be part of the world online, you must have a blog (for all of these reasons and more)

Client: Okay great…how often will I have to post? Like once a month?

Me: Uh, no. A little more than that.

Client: Twice a month? Just tell me how often should I publish to get the most ROI?

Me: Honestly, as much as possible. But at least 2-3 times per week.

And then they pass out.

The thing is, I’m not just talking out of my arse.

Take the Writing Roads blog, for instance:

• I used to blog Monday – Friday. As a result, after about 9 months of steadily rising stats, I had an Alexa rank of 123,000. (Which is really, really good – Google is #1)
• Last spring, I got insanely busy and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to drop down on my posting. So I went to Monday, Wednesday and Friday posts, 3x/week. My Alexa rank steadily fell to the 300,000 mark. (Not anywhere near as good)
• About 3 weeks ago, I started posting every day, Monday – Friday, again. No less busy – possibly more, but I just wanted to (because I love writing this blog), so I did. And I’ve watched my Alexa rank rise 100,000 spots and my spider (and visitor) stats increase. That’s 100K in about 13 posts. As of this writing, my rank is 199,000 (and rising)

The proof really is, as they say, in the pudding. If you want your blog to do better, (one of the methods that works is to) write, produce and publish more good content that tells the world all that you know about your chosen topic.

The good news, for both of us, is that if you don’t have the time or ability to do all of this blogging, you can hire someone to do it for you. I know, it’s a brilliant solution. You can do what you do best (cut hair, build houses, train chickens, whatever) and I, or some other writer, can do what we do best – produce engaging content. It’s a win/win sitch. No heavy lifting required.

Image credit: The Truth About…

Cross-posted on Writing Roads

Running a blog and managing your social networking sites is part of your job. That’s what I tell my clients. It’s a critical piece of the marketing and promotion and syndication pie. And if you can’t do it, you get help. You outsource.

But it’s a lot of work, they say. Yes. yes it is. And that work is really important. However, sometimes, life happens – and we simply have to take a step back. From our online participation, from our extracurricular activities, even from our work.

For regular readers and subscribers to this blog, you might notice that while we have a hefty backlog of posts and information, we haven’t been updating quite so much lately. Both Ron and I have run into some ‘life’ situations that put this blog that we love on the backburner. It pains us that we’ve had to do it, but in this online world – where we strive so hard to be genuine and authentic, to bring our very selves into the information that we share – we end up bringing the good with the bad.

It’s happened before, and the glory of having two of us driving this ship was that one of us could take over. But this time, we both got sidelined.

In essence, as my good friend, farmer and blogger, Susan Gibbs, just wrote – this is the ‘dark side’ of social media. (or one of them anyway – don’t get me started on SPAM). Essentially, this dark side illuminates the old adage, ‘women and children first’. But in our case, it’s ‘health, family and paying gigs’ first.

Still…we love this blog. We love the community we’ve created. So, we’re not going anywhere. We’re figuring out how to get back to our regular flow. (and we’re always happy to have guest posters, hint, hint, nudge, nudge). And we thought it was vastly important – in light of both our philosophies that being human is your most important job when engaging in social media – that we tell you what’s been going on.

Hey, while I’ve got your ear: are there topics, sites, terms, technologies that you’re wanting to hear about? Please let us know, and we’ll answer your queries!

We hope this finds you well…and thanks for being here,

Julie & Ron

Image credit: Scoobymoo