Commenting is Marketing
I was looking through the nominations for the SEMMY awards and came across this great post by Darren Rowse over at Problogger. He talks about 10 ways to hurt your blogs brand by commenting on other blogs. It’s all pretty informative stuff that seems like common sense to me. This read comes at a particularly pertinent time for me as I was recently asked to compile a list of blogs that we should respond to as a company.
I grabbed a few to check up on and added them to my Google Reader to subscribe. I’m very sensitive to spam and I don’t want to be “that guy” (or girl, as is the case). I learned after reading Darren’s post that I’m not doing anything wrong. I’ve been making relevant comments (of course) and throwing in the PsPrint URL when it adds to the conversation of the bloggers post.
I post Darren’s question to my few readers here:
- What practices would you add to the posted list?
- Which would you remove from it (or modify)?
- What advice would you give bloggers when it comes to commenting on others blogs?
- As a blogger – do you police any of these types of things? Do you have a comment policy of any kind?
Genius Level… Is it such a bad thing?
In catching up with my Google Reader subscriptions I see a post on Writing Forward about the reading level of one’s blog. This little widget allows for a nice bridge into writing for the broadest audience possible. In my infinite curiosity, I went and had this blog analyzed.
Is this really a bad thing? Blog author Melissa Donovan seems to think so:
Writers who use big words and fancy phrases will not reach the broadest audience possible, and in fact, will turn many potential readers away. Who wants to expend a whole lot of energy to decipher a short story or understand a blog post? When a writer tries to come off as brilliant by using complex language, the effort usually outshines the material.
Personally I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing to exhibit my intelligence. I wouldn’t say that I write in a manner that excludes people… I’m pretty sure that anyone I know could chime in and join the conversation. And I don’t know many geniuses. So what is it about a post that makes the reading a genius level read? I’m very curious what standards this particular website is using on making that assessment.
Thoughts? Do I need to dumb this down, so to speak?
Read MoreTop 10 Things That Improve Work Ethic
10. Have a ridiculously comfortable desk chair: The nicer your chair is, the longer you can stand to sit in it before your desk without having to get up because you’re antsy. And of course if you’re antsy and walking around the office with a general aimlessness, you’re not working.
9. Make a To-Do List: Lists are great because the simple act of making the list gives you something to do in those moments of lost energy when you don’t actually want to be working. By making a list you’ll find yourself doing something remotely work related, and you may simply motivate yourself by looking at the sheer length of a list of things you have to get accomplished! (The Tasks feature in Microsoft Outlook works great for this.)
8. Be Better Than Someone: You don’t have a lot of control over this, so pick your target wisely. Nothing makes people feel better about themselves than feeling like they’re better than someone else. Choose your target- it could be a parent, sibling, friend, or even a lackluster coworker. The smug sense of satisfaction you get from besting this person will be enough to keep you driven every day to never lose your edge.
7. Set up Google Reader or Technorati: You can tell yourself that you’re just taking time out of your busy day to keep up to date with the latest industry news, but what you’re really doing is reading a few industry blogs intertwined with Popsugar or Best Week Ever. If having your own personal interest blogs mixed in with the industry ones make it easier to remember to read blogs, do it. You may not be enriching your working knowledge as much as you’d like to think, but the industry stuff will stick and you’ll be able to bust out interesting relevant factoids in meetings and the latest celebrity gossip at the water cooler.
6. Piss off your Friends and Family: This is a surefire way to free up your time for more work at the office. If everyone you know outside of work is mad at you, that removes the temptation (or option?) to go out after work for drinks or spend your weekends poolside with the family. Who needs weekends anyway? Just lost opportunities for more work!
5. Supplies: Make sure you have the supplies you need to do your job. If you’re running out of staples, get some. If a certain program would increase your productivity 10%, ask for it and make your case. It’s much easier to do the job when you have everything necessary. Once you get into the niche where there’s not much else for you to ask for you’ll be able to apply all these tools to hone your skills and do a better job. You have to prove to the company that you’re worth investing in.
4. Money: Of course, that’s what we’re all in this game for, right? Get the jobs that get you the khakis that get you the chicks. I believe it’s probably a fact that your work ethic and dedication to the company goes up exponentially as your salary goes up. Don’t be afraid to ask for a raise every year if you’ve seriously been rockin’ at work. Be sure to do something that makes the bigwigs take note and want to give you more money and you’ll find it’s much easier to get out of bed in the morning!
3. Befriend your Coworkers: If you have a vested interest in the people around you, inherently that comes with a vested interest in how work goes for them. A job well done on your friendly coworkers’ part will often help make your job easier, and vice versa. As long as you have a mutual respect for what your coworkers are trying to accomplish and how that fits in with your goal, you will be more willing to go the extra mile on your end. Eventually your coworkers will reciprocate by making something easier for you and it will become a productive cycle.
2. OCD: OCD, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, really helps in those tedious projects that just need doing. Spend hours late into the night working at something as boring as updating a database for formatting for the simple reason that everything HAS to be right. Not only with this give you a false motivation to get a project done, but your supervisors will gladly take advantage of this affliction of yours and praise the results!
1. Care: It’s as simple, really, as caring about doing a good job. Have some pride in what it is you produce or how it is you help the company overall to succeed. If you genuinely care about doing your job well, that’s really all you’ll need to motivate yourself and have a great work ethic.
Read MoreFussing Update
I fussed around more with del.icio.us, Digg, and Technorati. So far my thoughts…
del.icio.us: really easy to use. I exported my bookmarks from Firefox and imported them into my bookmarks in a matter of minutes. I’ve spent probably the last half an hour cleaning up my tags since they’re so scattered and I’m a neat freak like that. But it’s a really simple interface that’s a breeze to use. I’ve head a lot about this site, so I get the feeling I’ll be using it a lot whenever I come across something particularly cool.
Digg: pretty easy to use, but there’s a lot there. The home page of News & Videos is cracking me up reading some of the titles. Not sure how this can be leveraged though without digging my own stories. I did try a plea on Twitter for digs, but got none. And it’s taken me hours, but I’ve figured out how to add the Digg This button you see to the right. I found out though that I have a friend already on Digg, so I can foresee messing around more with this and building more friends on this network.
Technorati: Okay what the hell? The main function of the site, as far as I can tell, is to keep a list of your favorites. Do me a favor and look HERE. Do you see any favorites? If you don’t I’m really annoyed because I followed their instructions to export my blogs from Google Reader, saved the file correctly, imported them to Technorati, they showed up for a couple minutes and now they don’t show. So my frustration is building with this site to the point where I’m already ready to give up… which for an experienced web user like me, isn’t good at all. So I’ve decided to walk away from it for awhile, focus my efforts on the other two, and mess around with this once they’ve got this bug fixed. I already ventured into their help forums on the first day… not really a good sign, folks.
Turning Gray at 26?
While brushing my hair this morning I found not one but three gray hairs. It’s hard to tell the color of a single hair, it almost looked blond… but considering that my hair is naturally a dark brown, I sorta doubt they were blond.
Has the stress gotten to me already? My coworkers have joked that I’m no longer allowed to take Vacations because the rely on my being here so much (although this is something they joke about every time I take some time off for any reason…) And since returning from Sin City, the work load on my desk has been seemingly endless. I’ve been here two and a half extra hours each night trying to catch up before Labor Day, and with it also being the end of the month I have EOM reporting coming up to worry about as well.
What happened to the days when I just came in, did my job, and went home? I guess in the days of mailing services, marketing, advertising, sales, social media, the affiliate program, and email marketing there’s no sleep for the weary. It took me half a day just to catch up on Twitter posts and all the blogs I subscribe to through Google Reader. I’ve perhaps spent more time here at PsPrint than home in the last few days.
In case you’re wondering, I did enjoy my vacation. Some of the highlights included a helicopter tour over the strip at night, seeing Penn & Teller live and getting photos with them and their autographs, seeing lots of animals, going very high up at the top of the Stratosphere tower and the Paris Las Vegas Eiffel Tower, and traipsing all over Las Vegas Blvd. My travel friend and I basically saw everything we went to Vegas wanting to see, except we missed out on the Tournament of Kings dinner show at Excalibur. I think when I go back to Vegas in November to attend the National Association of Realtors’ conference, I might take an evening to head over there. I wasn’t quite ready to re-join reality!
