Blogging News

Always Nice to Be Noticed

Posted by Travis Smith on 10/02 at 05:14 AM • Blogging News

imageThis blog was recently ranked #10 in Canada on a list of top 30 Canadian marketing and advertising blogs.

Not bad, not bad.  Perhaps if we started posting again we’d go up even higher! wink

We kid, Scott, we kid.  Thanks for the kudos, and we’ll try to keep it fresh around here.

 
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Study Shows Blogs Increase Media Attention for Companies

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 08/31 at 12:46 PM • Blogging News -- Blogs and Business

A Cymfony/Porter Novelli study reports that “the majority of companies surveyed (76%) indicated that they have noticed an increase in media attention and/or website traffic as a result of their blog(s).”

Read more and download the report here.

 
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The Use of the Internet by America’s Newspapers

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 08/17 at 09:30 AM • Blogging News

According to a study of 100 newspapers done by the Bivings Group, “80 of the nation’s top 100 newspapers offered reporter blogs. On 63 of these blogs, readers could comment on posts written by reporters.”

Get the full report. (PDF)

Found this at the Online News Association’s CyberJournalist.net site.

 
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When Newspapers Blog

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 03/03 at 07:44 AM • Blogs -- Blogging News

Check out this article on BluePlateSpecial.net, ”The Best Blogging Newspapers in the U.S.”

Fifteen undergraduates in journalism, two grad students, and one professor set out to determine--by our lights-- the top blogging newspapers in the U.S. among major dailies. We found six standouts, two honorable mentions and some wacky blogs. Number One in our eyes: the Houston Chronicle. By a mile.

The Blue Plate Special editorial team is drawn from the students enrolled in Prof. Jay Rosen’s blogging 101 class, plus two graduate students working with him. Other contributors are drawn from around the Web.

 
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Movable Type on Yahoo! Small Business Web Hosting

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 01/19 at 11:28 AM • Blogging News -- Blogging Tools

Blogging company Six Apart announced today that the Movable Type blogging tool is now available pre-installed to Yahoo! Small Business Web shoting customers.

Costs start at a $8.01 a month (discounted from $11.95 for six months), and users are promised 24-hour toll-free support.

You can read all the details here.

 
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Typepad Service Returns

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/19 at 11:06 AM • Blogging News

Blogging software Typepad is back up and running, at least according to the Typepad news blog. The service reports that all posts, files, and photos are restored, and urges customers with outstanding issues to get in touch.

They promise more detailed information on what happened “in the coming day.”

 
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Typepad Outage Hits 13 Hours

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/16 at 11:50 AM • Blogs -- Blogging News -- Blogging Tools

The popular hosted blogging service Typepad has been largely unavailable for 13 hours now. There’s a fair amount of foaming at the mouth (see here, here and here) occuring within the blogosphere—bloggers don’t like to be without their personal diary or business communication tool for extended periods. Many say that this failure is one in a string of service issues with the service.

The latest Everything Typepad blog post about the situation indicates that a primary disk system failed during maintenance last night, and that they are restoring backup copies from two days ago. Even for blogs that are back up, comments are as yet unavailable. This means lost blog time, lost blog posts, and lost interaction with readers. I have a fair amount of sympathy for Typepad; working in the technical world means suffering through these kinds of unpredictable and unrecoverable hardware failures, but then again, I’m not running a Typepad blog I depend on being available on a daily basis.

In ”Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies,” I spend quite a bit of time walking through the pros and cons of using a hosted blogging service—one that runs on a blogging company’s Web servers—as opposed to installing a blog software package on your own server. Chalk this one into the con side for hosted blogs.

 
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Yahoo to Include Blogs in Search Results

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 10/11 at 11:23 AM • Blogs -- Blogging News

Big news today from Yahoo News:

Yahoo News, the world’s most popular Internet media destination, is set to begin testing on Tuesday an expanded news search system that includes not only news stories and blogs but also user-contributed photos and related Web links.

Read more:


 
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BlogAsia Live!

Posted by Travis Smith on 09/20 at 05:19 PM • Blogging Events -- Blogging News

Good morning!  I’m live blogging the BlogAsia conference, which will be starting in about 5 minutes.

BlogAsia EntranceIt’s being held in Singapore at the Furama hotel, and so far, it’s going very smoothly.  (As I said, it hasn’t started yet. wink )

Who am I?  Well, I’m Travis Smith, partner at Hop Studios, an internet consulting and design firm based in Vancouver, Canada.

I’m also the husband of the main speaker, Susannah Gardner, who, along with Paul Chaney, will be taking the attendees through two days of learning, discussion and education about blogs as they’re used in business and in general on the Web.

I should also mention that I’m cross-posting this on three sites: Buzz Marketing with Blogs, Radiant Marketing Group, and BlogAsia.  If you’d like to comment, please come to BlogAsia to do so.

 
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Blogging for Dummies

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 09/03 at 10:25 AM • Blogs -- Blogging News

Blogging for Dummies coverThe publisher of my book, “Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies” is embarked on another blogging book: Blogging for Dummies. This will be written by Brad Hill, author of “Building Your Business with Google for Dummies” (among many other books) and is due out in January. Brad says his table of contents is chock-a-block with specific explanations for several blogging platforms like Blogger, Typepad, Movable Type, Greymatter, and Radio Userland. I’m looking to reading it. Those of you with personal blogs, or with friends you think should have them—this is the book for you!

It’s actually a not-so-subtle vote of confidence for blogging that this book is being written now. There were a handful of books written on blogging written in 2002, but sales figures weren’t stellar (no blame to the authors, who were perhaps only guilty of being ahead of their time). Both Brad Hill and I, and others as well, approached Wiley about a Blogging for Dummies book, but it wasn’t until now that they felt a book like this had a broad enough audience that they could move forward with it. Go blogs! 

 
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Spencer F. Katt is bloggging…why isn’t anyone yelling?

Posted by Tris Hussey on 04/15 at 09:38 AM • Blogs -- Blogging News -- Fake Blogs
Susan Getgood posted  more on the whole character blog issue--Marketing Roadmaps- Personas and fictional blogs--and mentioned Spencer F. Katt and what if he were blogging.  Spencer is clearly a character, a persona.  Well Spencer is blogging.  So why hasn’t everybody jumped on his tail?  Is it because we’ve been reading him since we were still typing DOS commands?  Since a 400K 3.5 inch "floppy" was a big deal?  Think about it.
 
Tris Hussey is the Chief Blogging Officer for Qumana Software and Managing Director of Qumana Services.  He can be reached at tris AT qumana DOT com.
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Character blogs continued…

Posted by Tris Hussey on 04/14 at 11:11 AM • Blogs -- Blogging News -- Blogs and Business
Well the character blog saga continues.  This time it isn’t a gourmand but a ungulate, a moose.  Moosetopia is a blog “written” by the moose mascot of Moose track ice cream.  So controversy rages again.  Since Susie is away (hee, hee) I get to put forth my opinion on this in not just one, but two places!
 
I wrote a blog-tome on this on my site--View from the Isle - More on Character blogs--and I won’t repeat it here because well, that would be really boring--thanks BobbyM!--but I will say that character blogs aren’t the end of the word and I think we should just let the bloggers behind the blogs find their voice.  Then if they still suck, well stop reading them.
 
Paul chimed in on this first, so tip of the hat (or tip of the trackback) to him--Radiant Marketing Group- Even a Moose Can Blog.
 
As a reminder, this is what Susie posted about the last character blog that kicked up a little controversy-- Deliciously fake
 
Tris Hussey is the Chief Blogging Officer for Qumana Software and Managing Director of Qumana Services.  He can be reached at tris AT qumana DOT com.
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Paul wants you to be a new recruit…blogger jobs

Posted by Tris Hussey on 04/12 at 08:44 AM • Blogs -- Blogging News -- Blogs and Business
As Paul puts it--Radiant Marketing Group- BLOGGEROPportunities Available--I’m looking for a few good bloggers. Do you have what it takes?!
 
Paul has three blogger jobs in the queue...they sound interesting and #3 sounds downright cool.  Here are the three check out Paul’s post for more details...
 

Job #1
Topic: Investment Strategies
This is a soon to be produced blog focused on the advantages of using gold as a long-term investment strategy. Content would be provided by the sponsoring company, and the blogger would be responsible for editing that content as well as aggregating other industry news and opinion on the subject.
 
Ideally, we’re looking for someone who has experience or background in gold investing or collecting. It doesn’t matter if you’re currently a blogger, though that would be a plus. This is a Paid Position.
 
Job #2
Topic: Small business finance/factoring
This is for a newly launched blog focused on small business factoring.
 
Factoring is the purchase of your accounts receivable (invoices) in order to provide you with the cash flow you need when you need it. Factoring is a widely accepted business practice used by large, mid-sized, and small companies.
 
The blogger would be responsible for supplementing posts done by the company CEO. Topics would include not only factoring, but other news and items of interest relative to small business finance.
 
We’re looking for someone who has experience in the financial industry, particularly if that includes factoring. We’d also consider someone who has been or is now a small business owner and understands small business finance. This is a Paid Position.
 
Job #3
Topic: Whitepaper/webinar review
We’re looking for a dozen different bloggers to write reviews of white papers and webinars for a soon to be launched group blog. Topics covered on the blog include:
 
* Information Technology
* Computers
* Internet
* Network Communications
* Multimedia
* Sales & Marketing
 
Ideally, we’d like to find individuals with expertise in one or more of those given fields. Each blogger would be responsible for contributing a minimum of two reviews per month.
 
While this is not currently a paid position, it is an excellent opportunity for building name recognition, and achieving reputational equity as an expert in your field. There will be opportunity for revenue share in the near future.

 
Tris Hussey is the Chief Blogging Officer for Qumana Software and Managing Director of Qumana Services.  He can be reached at tris AT qumana DOT com.
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Fasten your seatbelts…guest blogger here

Posted by Tris Hussey on 04/11 at 08:48 AM • Blogs -- Blogging News -- Just a Few Words
Hi I’m Tris and I’ll be your guest blogger this week while somebody gets a well deserved vacation.  So like most things in life, there’s a good story behind this guest blogging stint so here it goes...
 
It’s all Paul’s fault.
 
It started like this.  Paul asked me to be a part of the nascent Professional Bloggers Association late last year.  Cool.  He was also working with Susie on some little book she wrote so he invited her as well.  At the same time there was a Business Blogging conference in Seattle.  I had pretty much decided not to go, but for lots of reasons, personal and professional--including Susie IMing me “Paul says you should go to Seattle...” I decided almost at the last minute to go.
 
I rode down to Seattle with Susie, her husband Travis, Jon Husband, and Fred Fabro in Fred’s car.  It was, undoubtedly, a great conference.  One of the offshoots was Susie and I both started getting more attention on our blogs.  We both were making Scoble’s link blog pretty regularly and were wondering how to keep the traffic up.  Well the answer was obvious and easy--keep writing and write often.  So this lead to a little contest where Susie and I had to post to our blogs with two posts a day during the week and one over the weekend.  First one to miss had to blog on the other’s blog for a week, two posts a day.  You can see where this is leading can’t you?  Yeah, I blinked first.  But I’m not bitter.  It was a great exercise in writing.  Sure a tad stressful at times (oh jeez it’s 11:30 and I have to write one more post!), but overall great.  And like many things in life there are unintended, but very positive things that come out of seemingly insignificant events.  This is one of them.  All bloggers know that if they don’t keep publishing on a regular basis their audience starts to dwindle.  But, um, we’re real people.  We get sick, we get busy, and yes, take vacations (I don’t remember when I last took one, but that’s besides the point).  So when Susie and Travis were going on vacation, Susie called in the bet.  So here I am.  And this is great.  Susie knows that while she’s away she’s going to get at least two posts a day (when I get on a blogging tear...), I get to write for another audience, and help a friend at the same time!
 
It’s all good.  We both win.
 
So that’s the story.  Sure there’s a lot more to it, like Susie is really cool.  She’s an American ex-pat living in Canada too.  She married a Canadian, as I did.  But, those are stories for another day.
 
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Blogs and Newspapers

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 04/07 at 10:03 AM • Blogging News

From the Cumbria News & Star newspaper today:

We’re looking for people who want to keep a blog or online diary for the News & Star website.

The News & Star website is viewed by thousands of people every day and a blog could be a great way to tell the world about your life or work.

Blogs are online diaries or opinion columns which are updated online and have attracted loyal audiences as their popularity on the web has grown.

Blogs on the News & Star site could be opinionated columns or a chance to offer people an insight into your life.

News & Star deputy editor Nick Turner said: “We would like to have a diverse range of voices on our website and offering to host blogs in this way will give people the chance to have their own corner of our website where they can let off steam or record their lives.”

The News & Star will not censure the content of any blogs unless content is libellous or offensive.

If you are interested in writing a blog please email

Where’s Cumbria, you ask? It’s in northwest England, and the News & Star has a circulation of about 27,000 in places like Carlisle, Annan, Appleby, Aspatria, Brampton, Brough, Cockermouth, Egremont, Keswick, Kirkbride, Maryport, Penrith, Silloth, Whitehaven, Wigton and Workington.

And, from HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk:

The News Shopper has become the ’News Blogger‘ with the launch of a new section of its website dedicated to readers’ web logs.

Readers can now contribute to the newspaper’s website with anything from diaries of their lives to their own commentaries on local and national issues.

Digital news producer Simon Bull said: “I’ve noticed that blogging is becoming bigger and bigger and I’m always looking for new ideas and ways to expand the web only content of the paper.

The News Shopper is a series of eight West London papers “delivered weekly to around 350,000 homes in the boroughs of Dartford, Gravesham, Bexley, Lewisham, Greenwich and Bromley.”

 
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