Archive for December, 2008

Twitter Grader

December 31st, 2008

TwitterGrader is my new favorite app. Here is why:

According to the service my Twitter rank is:
30,001
OVERALL RANK, OUT OF 841,606
That means that I am in the top 3.5% of Twitter users. Nice. Not sure what it means, but the ego stroke doesn't hurt much. Find the site at twitter.grader.com.

Happy new years.

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How To Promote Your Blog

December 30th, 2008

Bloggers spend about an equal amount of time promoting and writing their blog, so it is no surprise that the first question any blogger comes out with is how to promote their new blog. As I have been doing this quite a bit in the past few weeks, I wanted to impart what I have learned. Here is my list:

Alex Wilhelm's Ten Blog Promotion Tips:
  1. Get A Good Domain. 
    1.  This is my personal blog. My name is Alex Wilhelm. Hence my url is AlexWilhelm.com. Simple. If you are planning a blog on cooking, put something simple and culinary in the url. Also, make sure you have your own .com or .net, at least for the top level. This is important for SEO.   
  2.   Join a Few Networks.
    1.  I am not sure exactly why this is important, but every list ever composed on this topic recommends this. I joined two (see the "chiclet" tab). I think they help your site rise in rankings as they provide links to your site, and possibly a little traffic. 
  3. Twitter.
    1.  Whenever your blog a post, link to it on your Twitter account. Blast it out to your followers. Also, include your blog URL in your information section. 
  4.   FriendFeed.
    1.  Be sure to link your blogs RSS feed to your FF account. This will put all your posts out there for people to see/interact/comment on/with. Also, repost it an hour later. This is a great way to add links/traffic to your blog, and build a conversation about it. 
  5. Advertising. 
    1.  Expensive: If you have money, head over to AdBrite and buy a few slots on tech sites. If you want to get an instant audience, this is a good way to go. 
    2. Cheap: The new Facebook Ad Platform is very good tool. CPM rates for ads are around $0.25. Really, you will never find advertising cheaper. My recommendation, for the first three months of your blog spend $2/day on CPM Facebook ads. It will bring you steady visitors, and will greatly boost the visibility of your blog (as people read the blog about 12 times as often as they click on the ad).
  6. Email Tips  .
    1.  Setup a signature for your emails that lists your blog URL. This wont bring you much traffic unless you are a prolific emailer, but it cannot detract, so it is probably worth it. 
  7.   Connect Twitter/Facebook. 
    1.  Once you are consistently posting links to your blog on Twitter, install the FB app that links your Twitter feed to your FB status. This will send that link over to your FB friends for their clicking pleasure. This is a free way to add a few views per post. 
  8. Links On All Your Profiles. 
    1.  No matter what it is, LinkedIn etc, list your blog URL where they give you the option. I get a surprising amount of traffic from my link to my blog on my FB profile. Your friends are probably your best audience, they already like you.
  9. Design. 
    1.  This is a little ambiguous, but still important. If your blog is dead ugly, I will not return. Simple or dull is fine, just not ugly. No flashing banner ads. 
  10. Platform/Reliability. 
    1.  My advice is to get a service to host your blog. You are probably not competent enough in the handling of servers and parsing CSS to really do this well. TypePad (what I use) and SquareSpace are the two best that I know of. 

But remember, no level of promotion will save bad writing. Say something interesting. Or don't, but never expect anyone to return for a second dose.  

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What Applications Do You Use For Work?

December 29th, 2008

I was working away this morning, with one eye on FriendFeed of course, and I realized that I use an endless number of apps to get my work done. Here are my favorites:

  1. GoogleDocs
  2. GChat 
  3. Gmail 
  4. Twitter 
  5. OmniGraffle 
  6. OpenOffice 
  7. Chrome/Firefox
  8. Twhirl 
  9. Clicky/Google Analytics
  10. Compete/Alexa 
  11. GoDaddy 
  12. Zune/iTunes
  13. iPhone 
  14. TypePad 
  15. Rss reader 
  16. Google web search/Live Image search 
  17. Cuil  

I could go on and on. Consolidation anyone? 

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Why Not To Trust Compete

December 29th, 2008

This chart really explains everything:

Woopra clicky
 
I had written in the past that Compete's numbers for Woopra were complete  bullshit. Now we have proof. Sorry Compete, but this is just an egg on your face.

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Uber Blog? Or How About a Blog Network?

December 29th, 2008

Is it actually better to combine distinct blogs into one feed? I do not think that anyone really knows why. This is happening (look at the recent demise of one of my favorites, ValleyWag). Duncan Riley, over at the Inquisitr (I hate that name, he's a good writer though, used to be at TechCrunch), presents us with the following explanation:

"The reasoning behind the move is remarkably simple: it

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DMFail – Why Email is Still Relevant

December 29th, 2008

There is still a need for private communication. Twitter will not replace email, at least any time soon. There is an innumerable number of Twitter services competing for the spill over of the Twitter phenom, and DMFail.com is probably one of the funniest. 

People endlessly send messages to other Twitter users, comically followed up with the classic "That last tweet was supposed to be a dm, but whatever." DMFail chronicles your failure.

Remember, Twitter is for talking in public to many people. Mission critical and private? Use email. Really, it's not cute anymore. 

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Facebook Ads: Day Two – Working As Promised

December 27th, 2008

Buying ads by the thousands of impressions is always risky. You fret about return, wondering if anyone will actually click on your ads; if it will do anything to push your brand. Facebook offers both CPC and CPM advertising, so I had to make the choice. In the end I selected CPM, figuring that as my ad has my name in it, even if it gets no clicks, people would see my name and picutre (actually, it's my Twitter/Blog avatar. Click on "About Me," it should be in there).

I selected my preferred audience, college graduates that are interested in technology or entrepreneurship in the United States, and set my price at $0.25 per thousand impressions. Cheap, I thought, at twice the price. Facebook can run a few ads at a time, but still, they are probably not getting more than .60/thousand pageviews. Terrifying.

Anyway, it took a few hours to get my ad approved, and it was off to the races, garnering thousands of impressions. It even grabbed a few clicks, I was excited. I get around 50 hits a day here, so the bump wasn't too impressive, but it was still neat to see the ad working as it should. Here is a graph of the first day and and a half of impressions to the ad, and below is the number of clicks thus far.

Ads impressions

Clicks

I am actually in the process of tweaking my ad, changing the target market. So far, so good. Here is a more detailed list of the stats for the ad, and below is the ad itself. I hope this helps everyone get started with Facebook ads. More as it comes.


Name Status Max Bid ($) Type Imp. Clicks CTR (%) Avg. CPC ($) Avg. CPM ($) Spent ($)
Forget TechCrunch Running 0.25 CPM 14,647 10 0.07 0.33 0.22 3.25

The Ad: In Facebook the text is cleaner.

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Facebook Ad Platform – Day 1

December 26th, 2008

This is going to take a little while, but I wanted to try out the Facebook ad platform. Today, I setup my first campaign. I selected to purchase ad time via CPM impressions, as opposed to paying for clicks. Admittedly, I only am paying about two dollars per day for the next four days, but I am just testing the waters here.

I will update or repost as I have data coming in.
Facebook ads well see about that.

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Blogging – What Does it Accomplish?

December 26th, 2008

I am an avid user of social media (find me on Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, etc.). Blogging was at the beginning of that revolution, it is the grandaddy of Web 2.0 if you ask me. Recently I was asked why I bother to blog at all, as my blogs reach is nearly guaranteed to smaller than my Twitter/Facebook reach. I actually had to think about it for minute. This is what I came up with:

Alex Wilhelm's Reasons for Blogging:
  1. Ability to Actually Say Something: Unlike with other social applications, blogging gives you whatever space you need. 
  2. Control: Your content is yours, you can add/edit/delete as you will. 
  3. Reach: Unless you are quite popular (damn you Fred Wilson), you will not get huge amounts of blog traffic (you are after all just another damn blogger), but the people that do arrive will actually read what you have to say. 
  4. Longevity: What is blogged remains indexable for eternity. It seems more and more that the content that I produce on other web 2.0 services/apps is dead within the day. It becomes annoying to lose all what I produce. 
  5. Castle: A blog is like a fortress, where you are the king/queen/emperor. You fule the roost. Using someone else's service makes you their pawn. I hate that.  

I know that none of that is revolutionary, but it still is important to put it in the public space why I feel that blogging is still relevant. People can not just depend on Scoble over on FriendFeed to provide us with a platform to speak on. 

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Internet Content Distribution – The South Park Model

December 26th, 2008

Call it the YouTube affect. The ability to have endless audience, no revenue, and plenty of losses. And, no one to blame but the cost of bandwidth. Let's face it, every online video startup strove is striving for reach. But so what? If YouTube isn't making money, then you sure as hell aren't going to either. 

This brings to a head the entire discussion of pageviews/reach versus revenue. We all remember the moronic great statement that traffic is the new revenue. YouTube proved that one right, so long as there is a giant company willing to shell out a mountain of cash/stock to save their sorry asses. But with this economy/environment we can assume that that is no longer going to happen. Look at the acquisition and IPO market. If you can find it. I could hide it in my pocket. 

This leads us to what my good friend calls a "Oh-Shit" moment. The French aside, this is a real dilemma. The better you do, the bigger your userbase, the more money you lose? Crap. What can possibly remedy this situation? In all reality, we need a new way forward.

Hulu is moving in the right direction. TechCrunch talks about it every few days, discussing how its revenues (from interspersed ads) make it actually viable in the marketplace. Also, how its great selection of content makes it a competitor to YouTube in terms of content. I let if drift. I figured that they had the right model. But then I figured out that they have a grand total of 11 full Family Guy episodes. 

What?

That's bullshit. You can't think that I am going to keep on coming back to watch the little clips do you? Obviously Hulu was not as good as I had been led to think. A moderate selection of content with ads? Really, I don't care. SurfTheChannel.com is still around, so I have no need for you.

But still, I am willing to watch an ad or two to support the content. Really. It is so small a tax, that a few 15 second ads are fine by me, provided they are not those pissy ads that YouTube is using that popup over your video while its playing. With all of that, I am dubbing a new model, the South Park Model.

Head over to SouthParkStudios.com, poke around. All content. Extra features to make the site sticky. Ease of use. Simple controls. And well placed ads. Genius. You would think that this simple (read: elegant and functional) approach would have been fleshed out before now (its not virgin, take a look at TheDailyShow.com), but it still seems to be annoyingly nascent. 

This is the future. Publisher control, monetization, and the consumer not getting screwed. Don't tempt me like Hulu did with promises of content that turns out to be stupid clips. Don't make me scower YouTube in hopes of a video that will get pulled before I find it. And don't make me torrent every damn thing I want to watch. My HDD is not infinite. Just let me watch it on my time, with a few ads, in high quality.

Simple. Viva la Internet. 

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