Tuesday, August 22, 2006
More Blog Struggles (with advice)
OK, I admit it. My business-writing blog is not turning out the way I'd like it to, and that's probably because, for starters, I'm not sure what my goal is. With the parenting blog, I have a lot of content that some people read, and with this business blog, I have almost no content that presumably a few people read... something has to change.
At any rate, I did some research on business blogs and found some great advice from the University of Massachussetts Dartmouth. Their Center for Marketing Research put out a paper, "Behind the Scenes in the Blogosphere." In case anyone wants to check it out, the link is here (let's see if I do this right):
But if you don't want to check it out, here are some tips (paraphrased in my own words, except for quotes) that I picked up from the study. My thinking is, is that if I follow these guidelines, it should be quite easy to make my blog more popular and relevant.
So according to the study, if you want to have more people visit your blog, you could:
Add additional authors to your blog. That's not a bad idea. Instead of maintaining one blog, you could have several maintaining it. That's what Entrepreneur magazine does, and many companies, and then you don't have one person solely responsible for it, and if numerous people are blogging on your blog, presumably more content is going up, and managing a blog is a little less overwhelming. Still, that doesn't hit the problem of attracting readers, but try this next idea.
Offer your own comments on other people's blogs--and this is key--who are covering the same subject matter. I watched that happen with my wife's blog; she's often commenting on fellow birdwatcher's blogs, and as it happens, she has quite a popular birding blog. As one reader said in the study, "Grow your blog by being cited by other more popular blogs." This makes sense. I could do this.
The study also recommended publicizing yourself, using a link in your email to direct others to your blog. I usually do that, and sometimes don't, knowing people will find a lot of old, not-so relevant information in this blog. But, still, it's a good idea. I could do that even more. Say, this is going to be easier than I thought.
Quality counts. And the study concluded that the growth of a blog depends on not just the number of postings, but that they have to be well-written and interesting.
Quality? Sigh, I knew there'd be a catch.
At any rate, I did some research on business blogs and found some great advice from the University of Massachussetts Dartmouth. Their Center for Marketing Research put out a paper, "Behind the Scenes in the Blogosphere." In case anyone wants to check it out, the link is here (let's see if I do this right):
But if you don't want to check it out, here are some tips (paraphrased in my own words, except for quotes) that I picked up from the study. My thinking is, is that if I follow these guidelines, it should be quite easy to make my blog more popular and relevant.
So according to the study, if you want to have more people visit your blog, you could:
Add additional authors to your blog. That's not a bad idea. Instead of maintaining one blog, you could have several maintaining it. That's what Entrepreneur magazine does, and many companies, and then you don't have one person solely responsible for it, and if numerous people are blogging on your blog, presumably more content is going up, and managing a blog is a little less overwhelming. Still, that doesn't hit the problem of attracting readers, but try this next idea.
Offer your own comments on other people's blogs--and this is key--who are covering the same subject matter. I watched that happen with my wife's blog; she's often commenting on fellow birdwatcher's blogs, and as it happens, she has quite a popular birding blog. As one reader said in the study, "Grow your blog by being cited by other more popular blogs." This makes sense. I could do this.
The study also recommended publicizing yourself, using a link in your email to direct others to your blog. I usually do that, and sometimes don't, knowing people will find a lot of old, not-so relevant information in this blog. But, still, it's a good idea. I could do that even more. Say, this is going to be easier than I thought.
Quality counts. And the study concluded that the growth of a blog depends on not just the number of postings, but that they have to be well-written and interesting.
Quality? Sigh, I knew there'd be a catch.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Food For Thought
So I'm sitting in McDonald's, watching my kids run around in their indoor playground, thinking about what I might blog on my admittedly more-robust parenting blog, when I start looking at the artwork on the side of a Happy Meal. The caption--and I don't have total recall--says something like, "Where would YOU go if you had a hummer?" And there's a map of the mountainous countryside, with arrows showing the hummer driving from one spot to another with captions like--and I'm paraphrasing--that if you come to a creek that's two feet deep, don't worry, you can drive through it! It suggests that you might want to camp underneath the stars, and if you come to a swimming hole, it suggests that you personally get out of the car and swim because it's good for your heart. I figure they had to throw that in there, so they couldn't be accused of not having an important message on this Happy Meal box.
Well, anyway, my girls are running around the indoor playground--I'm not out to totally trash the Golden Arches--the playgrounds are great, and the Apple Dippers are fantastic. I get those for the girls, and I share my fries, so we at least manage to get some sort of nutrition among our caloric-laden feast. And in case it matters, I should put it out there that I wrote a feature story about McDonald's Hamburger University a year ago or so. Again, this isn't an indictment of the restaurant--just the stupid idea of promoting a gas-guzzling, environmental disaster of a car to young children.
But then it hit me.
They're not after the kids. They're after the parents.
We all know that by the time preschoolers and tweens are driving, the Hummer is probably going to no longer exist, unless they've made some Hummers that are fueled on vegetable oil or some other alternative fuel. No, they're not trying to market the Hummer to kids. Not really. They know that parents buy the food, and parents are going to be looking at these.
For a moment, I almost admired General Motors' savvy in getting themselves to team up with McDonald's. (The boys all receive toy Hummers with their Happy Meals; and stereotypically, the girls get some sort of tiny action-figure doll, which Isabelle and Lorelei loved, I must say. But every Happy Meal has the Hummer "ad.")
But just as I started to admire the craftiness of GM, I decided that it wasn't admirable enough. After all, kids who can read are reading it, and the whole idea of promoting a Hummer as a great vehicle to take off a road through the countryside, throttling animals in its path and tearing apart grass and creeks and such--well, not so good. I'm not a tree hugger (though my wife is), but I am concerned about the environment as most people are these days... and so even if it helps to sell Hummers, I'm not sure what it does for the image of GM and McDonald's. It seems like a bad decision made by two good companies that should know better.
Well, anyway, my girls are running around the indoor playground--I'm not out to totally trash the Golden Arches--the playgrounds are great, and the Apple Dippers are fantastic. I get those for the girls, and I share my fries, so we at least manage to get some sort of nutrition among our caloric-laden feast. And in case it matters, I should put it out there that I wrote a feature story about McDonald's Hamburger University a year ago or so. Again, this isn't an indictment of the restaurant--just the stupid idea of promoting a gas-guzzling, environmental disaster of a car to young children.
But then it hit me.
They're not after the kids. They're after the parents.
We all know that by the time preschoolers and tweens are driving, the Hummer is probably going to no longer exist, unless they've made some Hummers that are fueled on vegetable oil or some other alternative fuel. No, they're not trying to market the Hummer to kids. Not really. They know that parents buy the food, and parents are going to be looking at these.
For a moment, I almost admired General Motors' savvy in getting themselves to team up with McDonald's. (The boys all receive toy Hummers with their Happy Meals; and stereotypically, the girls get some sort of tiny action-figure doll, which Isabelle and Lorelei loved, I must say. But every Happy Meal has the Hummer "ad.")
But just as I started to admire the craftiness of GM, I decided that it wasn't admirable enough. After all, kids who can read are reading it, and the whole idea of promoting a Hummer as a great vehicle to take off a road through the countryside, throttling animals in its path and tearing apart grass and creeks and such--well, not so good. I'm not a tree hugger (though my wife is), but I am concerned about the environment as most people are these days... and so even if it helps to sell Hummers, I'm not sure what it does for the image of GM and McDonald's. It seems like a bad decision made by two good companies that should know better.
