The Cosmopolitan Blog

I nearly lost my blog last night (DB backup issues), but didn’t, thanks to the diligence of my web host. Still, during the 3 hours of sheer panic, many thoughts went through my mind. Would anyone miss it, other than me? Would i start all over again, or just give up?

Very quickly, i wondered if it was all worth it. I mean, how many people was i really affecting? Afterall, i’m not the most famous blogger in the world, so the answer is “less than the famous bloggers of this world”… but even for those famous bloggers… don’t they sometimes think that they’re just talking to thin air?

So then i thought… here we are, in this little bubble of technology… blogs, twitter, social media, etc… but who really cares other than those who know about it? For every 10 twitterers, there are a million that have never even heard the word, let alone understanding it’s power. Does that make them less of a customer or an audience? Should we ignore them?

Too often, when i request feedback on a particular trend or idea, i find that all i get is the feedback of the last person we spoke to. I hear “the trend is to start using this technology”, but actually, it’s not… it’s just that we spoke to 5 people in our own bubble and they all said the same. But what about the rest of the world out there? We seem to forget what “gathering market feedback” really means.

So imagine my relief when i found out that one of those famous bloggers was talking about exactly that, hours later. Read “Get out of your own way” from Mitch Joel. Then come back and tell me, do you agree? Are we just that conceipted that we think that everyone does it the way we do it?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about blog strategy, so here it is. I just found this amazing site: http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/, it has countless blog posts about ways to improve the success of your blog. But instead of being generalities and theory like most other expert blogs, these are a series of concise blog posts about specifics: how to increase comment traffic, useful plugins to increase traffic, best way to use StumbleUpon…

The only catch is that the focus is on Wordpress blogs, since it discusses plugins available for it. But at the same time, ask anyone, i think that Wordpress is fast becoming the only sensible blogging software, whether it’s externally-hosted wordpress.com or your own wordpress.org.

There’s something for everyone. The one tip i found the most useful and went ahead and implemented right away was the no6 on his “10 ways to increase the number of blog comments“:

Does it say “No Comments” underneath your blog article? Does that sound inviting to your ears? It certainly does not, even though it is the text on the standard WordPress installation and most probably on your blog as well. Open your comments.php and edit the “No Comments” to something more inviting and encouraging like “No comments yet, but your thoughts are welcomed”.

Go check the site out. And come back and tell me which you thought was the most useful post, or come and share with us here some useful tip for strategy.

There are some people you trust implicitely. And there are some people that make so much sense, it’s not even about trust, it just makes so much sense that you take their advice.

Seth Godin is one of those people. Maybe it’s because i’ve read all his books. Maybe it’s because i saw him speak, live, and couple weeks ago. Either way, when he gives advice, i listen.

His point, in his latest post, is that sometimes, just sometimes, when you want to stand out from the crowd, keep the human touch about it, and don’t make it too polished. He gave the example of the UPS safety truck, or the specials on a menu that stand out because their handwritten on a 3×5 card attached to the otherwise completely laminated, polished, error-less (sometimes), printed menu.

It’s a quick post to read, read it, it’s fun. I’ll take his advice and relate it to my blog post. I will try and keep them short and to the point, and instead of reading them over and over again, and adding stuff to them, i’ll just stop. Like right now. The end

I’m giving a speech tomorrow on setting up your own blog and the key to success. I was doing some more researching today and found these two valuable posts / resources:

• Mitch Joel (yes, i know, again, what can i say, he’s good!) claims that blogging is getting a second wind and that micro-niches (i like the term) and fresh new ideas are the way to go.
• Tactical Execution: nothing new in their post other than reinforcing the idea that linking to other experts in your field is a good idea, i like the “outbound links = currency” part, they have a point.

Since it’s pretty much guaranteed that there’s a least ONE other person out there discussion the same thing(s) you are, then you might as well use each other. Post on their blogs, and link back to yours. And ALWAYS open up conversation, don’t close it. Ask questions. Even create a bit of a debate. People who will visit the “competitor” blogs will then visit your blog, because you have something interesting to say.

It’s funny, everyone (even me) out there is pretending they have valuable info to share about blog promotion.

I’m looking for those fresh new ideas, so tell me, what resources do you use? Let me know, comment below! I want to hear from you (i do, really, i’m not just saying that so that i can promote my blog effectively), hehehe.

One element of a successful blog is branding. Either branding of the blog itself, or of the author. The marketing circle in Montreal is a small one, so you’d have to be living under a rock to not have heard of Mitch Joel, a branding guru and president of TwistImage. Mitch Joel also has the perfect example of personal branding and web presence, since this is what he advocates. For example, his avatar/picture is always the same one, regardless of which site, chat, social network, blog or application you find him on.

So one of the ways i am planning on making this blog more successful is to ensure a presence for CosmoChick. One of the ways i do that, for example, is, every site i sign up for, I use the same user name and update my profile with the same information and links to this blog. On the right column of this blog, you’ll notice i started a “web presence” widget, where, as much as possible, i will try to add the different places where i hold the CosmoChick identity. I look forward to hearing from you on suggestions of where else i should sign up.

Today, my goal is to look into online playlist sites, and see if my online identity can be extended to the music I’m currently listening to. There’s YouTube, of course, but i’m about to go explore Deezer and Seeqpod too. If I’m successful, I’ll be able to find a widget of some sort that will allow me to share my tunes with you (legally, of course!).

That’s it, i’m done, this could possibly be one of my shortest blog posts EVAH!