Are Blog Comments Dead?

July 30, 2010 By 29 Comments

clouds

As engagement and sharing on Twitter, Facebook and other social tools continues to increase, many bloggers are noticing a sharp decrease in comments on their blogs.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that interest is declining.  RSS and email subscriptions, site traffic and social sharing may all be continuing to increase.  These are tracked through a variety of tools and even popular commenting system Disqus scours social networks to find blog posts being shared and displays those as “interactions”.

Increasingly bloggers are concerned that even though they know that their posts are being shared through other channels, that their communities still aren’t commenting on their posts.  It’s a completely understandable feeling.  You work hard at putting together a thought or position, flesh it out, find an engaging photo or video to help enhance your point and then publish it to the world.  A comment makes us feel good and/or helps to extend the post itself.  Sometimes the comments are even better than the post.  So, when a blogger begins noticing a decrease of comments on their blog, it can be depressing.  It can cause bloggers to start rethinking their content strategy and possibly even considering whether or not they should continue blogging.

Every time I’ve been asked whether or not a blogger should be discouraged by a decrease in comments, I immediately ask them whether or not they’ve looked at the sharing of their post through other channels and what the feedback from those channels are.  Usually they tell me that their seeing their content being shared online but they still wish they were getting the comments on their blog.

I’ve been thinking about this often.  Admittedly, I comment a lot less than I used but I share tons more now.  Google Reader trends tell me that I share around 30 articles per day through there.  I also regularly share tons more through Twitter and Facebook throughout the day.  But, I probably comment on about 75% less blogs than a year or so ago.  I know, I need to improve on that.

However, as I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve been considering whether or not the decline in commenting is actually a bad thing.  If you stop by and comment on a blog, you may extend that conversation and/or let that blogger know that you appreciate their work.  Both are great.  Consider though that the conversation will only be seen by that community which is limited by the number of subscribers and the number of visitors to that blog.  But, if you share that blog post with your community on Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, then you’re promoting that content to your social graph thus extending the total overall reach of that post.  By sharing that post with your social graph, it will extend the number of eyes that may be seeing that blog for the very first time.  Or, if they’ve ignored other content from that blog, it may be that post that pulls them in and triggers them to subscribe or share it with their networks thus continuing to grow the overall subscriber base and reach of the blog.

You may think that I’m suggesting that comments are dead but I’m not.  I love comments as much as the next blogger.  I appreciate everyone that takes the time out to share their thoughts.  I also value everyone that shares my content with their social graphs because it helps to get my content out to more people.

It’s just something I’ve been debating in my own head lately so I figured I’d spill it out into a blog post and see what you had to say and where you may choose to say it.  So, what are your thoughts?  Do you prefer comments, social sharing or a combination of both as a measure of the engagement on your blog?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Photo Credit: premasagar

Filed Under: Blog, Community, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Difference Between Gifts and Choices

July 24, 2010 By 2 Comments

We’re all born with a set of gifts that set us apart from others. These gifts can be anything from being born a natural athlete, to having a photographic memory, or being very intelligent. These differentiate us and, if nurtured, we can be utilized as the building block for a successful life. Our gifts may help us do well in school, sports, or find a career where these gifts are given the air they need to shine through.

The one gift that we’re all born with is that of choice. Each of us decides, as an individual, what choices we will make. We have influencers and life experiences that may weigh in on those choices but we’re still given the power to make the final decision.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, discusses the difference between gifts and choices during a commencement speech at Princeton University.  During this speech he suggests, as highlighted by Princeton in the description on their YouTube channel, that “one’s character is reflected not in the gifts one is endowed with at birth but rather by the choices one makes over the course of a lifetime.”

You may be quick to jump and say that it is our experiences that make us who we are. I would agree with you. But, it isn’t just the experience that makes us who we are, it is the choices that we made as a result of those experiences that make us who we are and put us into our next situations.

Watch Jeff Bezos’ speech and see what your thoughts are about the difference between gifts and choices.

If you would like a full transcript of the speech, you can grab it from Princeton’s website.

What say you?  Do you think it is the gifts you were born with or the choices you’ve made that define who you are?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Filed Under: Personal, Videos Tagged With: , , ,

12 Cloud-Based Tools to Stay Productive

July 23, 2010 By 3 Comments

clouds

When I was at my old company I had a large outsourced team based in the Philippines.  Since I was only able to make it out there once every 10 weeks or so, we had to rely on tools that would allow us to transfer reports and communicate with one another from close to 18,000 miles away.  At the time this was primarily done via email, IM and FTP.  That feels so long ago because now, just a few years ago, we have seen a sharp increase in cloud-based tools for individuals and businesses.  At the heart of these tools is the goal to keep people connected by allowing for access to data and the ability to easily communicate through a variety of channels.

I utilize cloud-based apps all throughout my day and didn’t realize just how much I rely on them until I sat down and began thinking about how I store and retrieve personal data and how I communicate with a number of team members, clients, and partners on a daily basis.

Here are the top 12 cloud-based tools that I use to stay productive.  I use many other tools as well but these are the tools I wouldn’t know what to do without.

12 Cloud-Based Tools to Stay Productive

  1. Google Apps/Docs: I use Google Apps at both New Marketing Labs and my steakhouse. I also heavily use Gmail and Google Docs in my personal life.
  2. Google Bookmarks: Google Bookmarks ensures that I have access to my most frequently used bookmarks from any computer, anywhere I’m at.  I also use Delicious but I use that more for storage and curating together lists such as corporate social media policies or food recipes.
  3. Google Reader: Google Reader is the primary way I’m able to consume so much information on a daily basis.  There are a variety of tools available for the iPhone and iPad plus I can access from any computer with a browser.
  4. Mozy: Mozy allows me to sleep at night knowing that all of my data is being backed up.  I have other backup processes in place including external hard-drives and heavy use of Dropbox but Mozy remains at the center of all of these processes.
  5. Backupify: Just as Mozy allows me not to worry about the data that’s stored on my computer(s), Backupify ensures that my social media data is backed up and available for future reference.  Backupify can secure your data from a variety of services including: Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, Zoho, Google Apps/Docs, WordPress, Basecamp, Gmail, Facebook, Google Calendar, and many more.
  6. Dropbox: Dropbox keeps my most used files available to me wherever I am.  Not only does this serve as a backup of those files, it also allows me to access from my iPhone, iPad, or any other computer.  This comes in handy all the time and helps me to stay responsive to business requests for copies of files.
  7. Evernote: I have been a fan of Evernote since it was first launched. I have multiple notebooks that I use for all sorts of things including my task management, goal setting, lists of all kinds, and random notes.
  8. Hootsuite: While technically I could’ve listed all of the different social platforms, I would like to think that would be sort of obvious. However, Hootsuite is important because it allows me to stay connected on too many Twitter accounts and Facebook Pages to count.
  9. Yammer: We’re just deploying Yammer at New Marketing Labs but it is being used to keep our team connected so that we’re not constantly interrupting each other and so that we can stay in contact when we’re traveling.  We had used other internal networks such as Socialcast and they worked great but a few of our partners were already using Yammer so we decided to give it a try. So far, it’s pretty awesome!
  10. ScrewTurn: ScrewTurn is what we use for our corporate wiki where we keep information on just about everything we do including our policies, timelines, meeting notes, discussions and lots of other great uses we’re finding for it.
  11. Zoho: When we first launched New Marketing Labs we bounced around between a few CRMs and finally settled on Zoho.  I wanted a full-featured platform because I had spent 3 years as the administrator of NetSuite at my old company but we didn’t have the needs of, for example, a software company that has hundreds or thousands of leads coming in each day.
  12. GoToMeeting: Even though Citrix Online is a client of mine, I have been using GoToMeeting for years.  I already travel a lot.  If it wasn’t for GoToMeeting, I would have to rent a closet at an airport because I would never be home.

What are some of your favorite cloud-based tools to stay productive and keep connected?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Photo Credit: bestrated1

Filed Under: Communications, Productivity, technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Two Faces of Privacy on Facebook

July 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The following is an excerpt from my new book, Facebook Marketing.  If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, you can check out this excerpt, read a few reviews and then decide if you think it will be helpful to you.

facebook-book

With Facebook starting out as a personal network, it has been a hard transition for people to become used to it as also a professional network.  Most use LinkedIn as a professional network, Facebook as a personal network, and Twitter is a hybrid that people are still trying to figure out.  But with the growth rate of Facebook, many have started to turn to it as a personal branding tool and professional network.  Marketers have begun turning to Facebook with Facebook Pages, Groups, and advertising as a way to reach out to their prospects, customers, and fans.

This transition has created a dilemma for many folks because they are resistant to using Facebook as a professional network, yet their colleagues, competition, and companies are become active on the network.  Also, as we develop friends in our industries, we want to extend that friendship and therefore turn to Facebook.  This starts to blur that line even further between work and home.  However, as Dawn Foster of WebWorkerDaily points out, we don’t want to confuse “personal” for “private”:

You can actually be professional and personal at the same time in social media without too much effort.  When we talk about ‘being personal’ on social media websites, I think that many people confuse ‘personal’ with ‘private.’  The reality is that you get to decide what to share and what not share, so you can still keep most areas of your private life private.

To deal with this dilemma, individuals typically have three options to choose from:

  1. Maintain a single Facebook profile that combines personal and professional.
  2. Maintain two different Facebook profiles: one personal and one professional.
  3. Keeping Facebook only personal and not mixing work into it.

Each of these has both upsides and downsides with not one clear answer or best practice, as of yet.  Thought it might not be clear yet, this will be important for you as a marketer.  Let’s explore each of these options.

Single Facebook Profile

If you don’t mind mixing personal and professional, you can maintain a single Facebook profile in which all engagement with the platform originates from that one profile.  This enables people to get to know the real you.  It’s just like the two faces that most wear on a daily basis: the way you are at your office and the way you are at home, with friends, or family.

Although so many of us are used to this split personality, why should we act like this?  Why can’t we be the same person at work as we are at home, maybe just dressed up a little nicer?  You have the same likes and dislikes, the same problems and victories, and your family, friends, enemies, colleagues and competitors don’t change when you’re at work versus when you’re at home.

Furthermore, realizing its growth, Facebook has continued to add features that allow you to tweak your privacy settings to allow you to use a single profile but limit access to data sets based on permissions, lists, and rules that you set up.  This means that you can create a list of your colleagues and then deny that list access to certain aspects of your profile.  By setting this up properly, you can achieve the privacy and separation that you want while not having to bother with two separate profiles or avoiding Facebook as a professional network.

Two Different Facebook Profiles

If you want to maintain split personas, between your personal and professional lives, you can create two different Facebook profiles.  One Facebook profile you can create as your personal account in which you upload personal photos, videos, and bio info.  This is the account where you interact with your friends, family, and others that you allow into your personal circle.  Just remember to use a personal email account and not one that anyone in your professional life knows.  If you use the same email, you open your personal profile to being found by colleagues.  Of course, you can always ignore the friend request, but it much easier and simpler to just use a separate email account.

The second account should be set up under a work email address that your colleagues would use to search for you.  Under this profile you can upload any professional content that you would like to share.  To reduce confusion between these two profiles, you should consider hiding one of the profiles from Facebook searches and indexing by search engines.  This can be done through the privacy settings for your profile(s).  Which one to hide is up to you, or you can hide both, if you want.

Not Mixing Personal and Work

Your last option is to simply not mix personal and work.  Some people decide that the easiest route is just not to promote their presence on Facebook.  They maintain Facebook as their personal social network and use LinkedIn as their professional network to connect with colleagues.  For those wanting to maintain that separation between personal and work, you might find this to be your cleanest option.

What’s your take? Do you maintain separate profiles or use a single profile for all engagement?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Photo Credit: laikolosse

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Facebook, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Are We Addicted to Interruptions?

July 18, 2010 By 6 Comments

An issue in many offices is that the real work gets done outside of the office, either early in the morning, at nights or on the weekends because team members are in meeting after meeting during regular work hours. Those meetings typically only add more to the to-do list and also soak up time that could otherwise be spent being productive working on projects.  When not in a meeting, the remainder of the day is filled with interruptions, emergencies that usually aren’t true emergencies, and just simply trying to get settled in to actually get into a flow.

Right about this point you’re probably nodding your head up and down admitting that you’re experiencing this same issue.  It’s not surprising because the modern workplace has become addicted to meetings and other forms of interruptions.

This is a consistent issue for me even though my team tries to run as lean as possible and reduce the number of meetings and miscellaneous interruptions we have. However, when I’m not traveling, a normal week will have 40-60 meetings appear on my calendar. One of the reasons for this is because we’re a fast-growing company with big ambitions and a lot of moving projects that require our attention while the other part is that we have weekly status calls with each of our clients and I lead the majority of these calls.

As more meetings and interruptions have continued to find their way into my work day, I’ve learned to block out time on my calendar that is marked “DO NOT SCHEDULE!”  This allows me to schedule blocks of time to get work done instead of only small windows of time.

With how often I travel, I’ve also learned how to be productive from anywhere and how to leverage any time available even if it is only 15 minutes.  This has lead me to become very good at getting work done with short pockets of time in between meetings and at home.  Even if I have a day without a lot of meetings, I have found that I am more productive on projects when I’m workshifting because I find that I can focus more because it’s just me, my laptop and some great music.

Just as I was thinking about this while sitting on my couch doing work on a Sunday afternoon, I came across an interview with Jason Fried,co-author of Rework (affiliate link) and Founder of 37Signals where he addresses exactly this issue. Jason describes some of the tactics that his team uses at the 37Signals office and offers some tactical advice that you could implement into your office.

Have you broken your company of their addiction to meetings and other interruptions? If so, what were the tactics you used?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Filed Under: Business, Communications, Productivity, Videos Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts