I really do. The only thing keeping me from them now is the final round of the PGA Championship being played at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin (Haven, WI to be exact). The last golf major was held in WI back in 1933. So, it is kind of a big deal.
Back to the Olympics, I love that NBC is utilizing seven networks to bring you a bazillion hours of coverage. You can find the current schedule on nbcolympics.com. You really need an interactive schedule to keep up with it all.
You have to go check out BlogJam.
I think it is great.
Lots of folks blogging about everything that is business-y.
It is a controlled form of controlled chaos.
It started yesterday and ends today.
BTW, my contribution was a comparison post between the books Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin and Free Gift Inside by Stephen Brown. I may put up one more today.
Greedy Girl had some good stuff yesterday.
GG points to Keiko, blogger/clothing designer. I have to agree with GG – “This young woman has more innate marketing savior faire than many of the oh-so-dull business bloggers I struggle to read each day.” Keiko is creating a lifestyle on her blog, she is creating something you want to become a part of.
GG also points to the new State Business Tax Climate Report from the Tax Foundation. I am happy and a little surprise to see Wisconsin right in the middle of the pack.
| State | Indexed Score | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Wyoming | 8.30 | 1 (Best) |
| New Hampshire | 8.05 | 2 |
| Wisconsin | 5.69 | 28 |
| California | 4.36 | 49 |
| Mississippi | 3.97 | 50 (Worst) |
I got sidetracked this week on a couple of projects. I am going to keep running the Finetuning questions into next week. I hope you’ll keep adding your thoughts.
Today I want to talk about the length of an entry. I can very quickly say there is no minimum. I have used only a couple words and a link make an entry. It doesn’t add a lot to the discussion, but sometimes that is OK.
The more interesting discussion is about the maximum. A year ago, I would have said that you don’t want an entry to run longer than four or five paragraphs. I think that has changed. Readers are more tolerant of longer posts with interesting ideas. When I say longer, I am thinking of 10 paragraphs.
I think there is still a maximum. I wouldn’t recommend writing 30 paragraphs in a single entry. I think the reader will leave you and click on to something else.
So…
Today’s question is: How long is too long for a blog entry? Use paragraphs as your unit of measure.
Rick Bruner at Business Blog Consulting is looking for some folks to review blog software.
Delia was nice enough to leave a comment saying that Barenaked Ladies is doing the same thing with their concerts. You can download any concert they have performed in the last year or so.
I am a huge BNL fan. I have seen them live in Milwaukee three or four times. I missed their concert a few weeks ago, because of my trip to San Fran.
I just got done downloading the 138MB .mp3 file of the concert I missed. I am listening to Brian Wilson right now. It is so worth the $11.99 to hear what I missed.
I like John Mayer’s music. Many will say he is too mainstream now and will remember seeing him live before No Such Thing came was even on the charts. I don’t care. Like I said, I like his music.
I also think he is clever. He understands how the music business is changing and what he needs to do as an artist. Mayer is releasing 5 albums worth of material on iTunes this month. The series is called As/Is. These are his words (from iTunes):
What you hear is what you get. The wrong notes are as wrong as the right ones are right. In the end, the way the songs make you feel is the only thing that matters/
Each ‘album’ is consists of 10 songs from each performance, and each week in August, another performance will be released. The first performance is Mountain View, CA from July 16th.
I think this is a great idea. With the distribution costs at zero, there is nothing stopping artists from releasing all their live material. Why not offer every live performance you have ever performed? I have argued that you should be able to leave a concert with a CD of the performance you just heard. I would be happy to wait until I get home and download it. This could be a huge revenue stream for the artists.
Steve Rubel writes about the launch of the QuickBooks Online Blog.
I think the blog is a great start. I agree with Steve that it is a little stiff right now. The other observation I have is that it is like watching TV and flipping through a different channel with each entry. I wonder if there shouldn’t be some separate blogs/channels for different content.
I just started using QuickBooks, so it will be interesting to see how the blog helps me through this learning curve.
Update: This blog is for the online edition of QuickBooks. I think that might confuse some others too.
We all know linking is an essential part of blogging. It creates conversation. It creates connections.
I want to talk about the words that bloggers hyperlink to in their entries. I think for the most part the decision process is unconscious, I think it is important to look at.
As I look through my own blog, my strategy varies. I find if I am talking about someone else I will highlight the verb in the sentence (i.e. Zach Braff of Scrubs fame is writing a blog to promote his new movie…).
I often hyperlink to the objects I want to highlight, like companies and blogs.
I also know that I will construct sentences differently if I need to put two links in the sentence. I always make sure that links aren’t next to each other and that there are words between them. I want to eliminate any confusion about where a reader will be going.
This almost reminds me of the exercises you would go through as a kid where you practiced emphasizing different words in a sentence. It showed how the sentence’s meaning can differ with a slight change. I think linking is like that.
The other consideration is search engines. Scoble told me he doesn’t really think about what words he links to, but sometimes thinks about how a search engine will view the links. I find it is sometimes hard to figure out a link when I am looking at an excerpt in Technorati.
So, here are the two questions to answer:
1. How do you decide what words to create links on?
2. Are there larger issues to consider when creating links in your blog?
Frequency
There is no question that maintaining a blog requires new material which is delivered on a regular basis. Anyone who writes an advice column on blogging will always mention this. It is also the top reason given for why people stop blogging – the burnout.
I think RSS has changed the need for posts every day. With the time saving component of RSS readers, people don’t care as much about frequency.
So two questions –
1. What is the acceptable minimum for blogging frequency? This answer should contain a number (i.e. once per day, once per week, etc).
2. What are the factors that control what the acceptable minimum is? My first thought is the age of a blog. Older blogs with established readership can post less often. When you are first starting out, providing lots of new material is very important. The topic of your blog can also dictate frequency.
So, comments and trackbacks are on. What do you think?
I like this story about Distant Replays of Atlanta.
[via I can’t remember]
This week I am going to run a couple of questions each day about blogging. I want to get past some of the generalities and truisms that have grown up in the area.
I got into some of conversations at BlogOn that made me decide to do this. As we threw around ideas, no one had real good answers and I realized these might be good ideas to talk about.
I needed a name for this event. I decided on FineTuning. I was thinking of a microscope, the kind that has two knobs. I think everyone has a used the coarse adjustment and has a good view of what blogging is. I want to use the second knob to get a clearer view of what works.
When it is done, I plan to pull it all together and publish an ebook.
Hope you’ll link to and join in on the conversation!
I has been a little light here lately. I have been busy with some things at 800-CEO-READ (hope you have seen the excerpt blog). I have also been working on things with my own company, Astronaut Projects. I am going through a “what do I want to be when I grow up” phase. I should say I have a good idea of what I want to be, but I need to come up compelling story to tell others.
Speaking of stories, the other reason posts have been done is there aren’t alot of interesting stories being told. I think there is a lot of vacationing going on and the business world is slow. I would expect that to pick up in after Labor Day.
The WSJ reports that three bank robberies took place in Davenport while both presidential candidates were campaigning in the city.
The Onion talks about Bush’s new blog.
[via Blog Herald]