One Basic Tip For Your Blog That Will Increase Your Readership

Image Source: http://mrboks.info/

I've recently revived my sadly neglected relationship with Google Reader, and in doing so I've been surprised by how many websites or blogs are not using share buttons - or not making them easy to find if they are actually there.

If you are writing content for a website or blog, then generally it's so that others will read it - right? So if that's the case, make it easy for your content to be shared and your readership will increase. Put any hurdles in the way and it runs the risk of being abandoned in favour of something shinier - which we all know pops up every 2 seconds.

Maybe it's a similar situation as the plumber always having leaky taps at home, but if you are writing, commenting on or are known for avidly embracing technology then there really is no excuse not to make sure your own website scrubs up!

As a reader (and sharer) of online content these are the tips I would recommend:

1. Make your share buttons easy to find. Typically this is at the top of the post or at the end of the post (so readers can choose to share it after they have read it). Or even both - just don't make us hunt around to find it. Share icons that are in different colours from the common standard are also easy to overlook (so why do it?).
2. Use the share buttons from each social platform - here are the links to the instructions on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google (if you want to back the +1 horse). Please don't just open up Twitter in a new tab - you are making it too hard for me to copy your link, add in the title and find your Twitter handle. I'm just not going to do it (probably). LinkedIn has lifted its game with a share plugin now making it easier to share content but its surprising how low the adoption rate appears to be so far. A great opportunity to get in early and get your content swirling round LinkedIn.
3. Include your Twitter username in the prefill tweet copy so we don't have to leave the Tweet button to work out what it is in order to correctly attribute the content to you. This also means you will know who has shared your content via Twitter and non followers will be offered the opportunity to follow you after they have shared your content.

Twitter (and others) will walk you through the process to customise your share buttons, including prefill text, URLs to display, count options and button sizes/shapes. Its easy - honestly it is! - if I can do it then anyone can, even a monkey.

Twitter Share Button

Facebook Social Plugins

LinkedIn Share Button

Twitter also recently released its Follow button allowing readers to follow you on Twitter from your website or blog with just one click. Again its surprising how few websites haven't taken the couple of minutes needed to update this button. 

Anything that keeps your readers on your site and makes it easy and simple for them to follow you is a no brainer. Why do you spend hours writing and researching posts if you have neglected the basics on your blog? 

And the best bit is that it only takes a few minutes to do. If you already have these buttons on your blog, why don't you ask one of your readers for their opinion on how they are placed and whether they are easy to find and use? You might be surprised.

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Do You Ever Feel Like Breaking Up With Twitter? I Do.

I noticed the other day that it's nearly 2 years since I started my Twitter account. Back then, there were not so many of us on Twitter and it was a small(er) group of people to follow, trade quips, share insights and banter with.

It was a bit like when you arrive at a party to help set up - there's a small group, you are all busy but you chat to each other as you do your thing. Then a whole gigantic busload containing a couple of hundred million of people turn up and its starts feeling quite crowded. You start chatting to other people and before you know it the room is packed and you've got your circle of mates that you are hanging with for the evening. The ones you talked to when you first arrived might pass by, but they've got their own friends they are having a drink with. And just like a real life party, during the course of the evening you meet some new people, bump into a few weird characters and avoid that guy who you are currently not talking to.

So when I was reflecting on my 2 years on Twitter, I realised that a number of the people I used to chat to regularly have changed and moved on. Not completely disappeared (although some have) but we've moved onto different groups of friends for now.

However, because there are so many more people on Twitter, your stream gets quite noisy and crowded, meaning the actual chance of someone seeing your tweet before it scrolls off the screen becomes more and more remote. There is talk of Twitter removing Twitter lists which would mean that your Twitter stream would become a raging river over which you have virtually no control. It will be more like white water rafting without an oar.

This week I was all ready to break up with Twitter. Things just weren't working out. I found myself getting very irritated by some of the people I was following and the Unfollow button was getting a pounding.  There are so many more people all talking - very loudly- that being able to talk to the people I wanted to was beginning to feel like shouting into the wind. I was starting to feel quite disillusioned with Twitter and thoughts of abandoning it entirely lingered in the back of my mind.

But my faith was restored one evening this week when I asked Twitter with some help with a presentation I was working on. To my surprise, within minutes I was connected to people across the world and within NZ who had expertise on the subject. I had floods of tweets, DMs and emails with all sorts of information that I would not have been able to locate otherwise that was useful, insightful and helpful.

So.... thanks Twitter. Things have changed and we've all moved on but its good to know you are still there when it counts.
   

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Will Live Streaming Conferences Diminish Attendees?

Today I watched parts of the Amplify conference being held in Sydney this week via UStream. There is an excellent line up of international speakers and the conference covers technology, innovation, mobile, social and everything in between - definitely worth a look for some of the more interesting sessions (like Jeremiah Owyang's 'Get Social or Die').

The conference is live streaming free over the web for the duration of the conference. Admittedly the quality is not HD and the camera is situated at the back of the room so you can't see the presentations, however you can clearly hear the audio and there is promise of high res video of the speakers to be posted up on the website the following day.

Which leads me to wonder - does offering free live streaming diminish the number of conference attendees? If you don't live in the same city as the conference venue, or don't want to travel, or even don't want to fork out the AUD $4,400 for a ticket to the 5 day event, then its win win if you watch it online at a time that suits you or even live.

By following the hashtag on Twitter you will get chance to interact with others who are either attending in person or watching from afar, and engage in some healthy debate!

You won't get access to the presentations and you will miss out on the networking opportunities or the chance to mingle with some excellent overseas speakers but you will probably save a lot of time and a lot of money.

It's a cluttered conference/event market so its hard to choose which you want to spend your hard earned training and development dollars on. So if there is an option to watch online at a time that suits you then will you pass up on that conference and instead choose to invest in another that doesn't offer that option?
Live streaming/broadcasting didn't seem to harm the live sporting events.

What would you do?

     

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Have You Tried About.me? A Cool Profile Splash Page

There are lots of online profile/business card thingys around, but I came across About.me recently and was enthused enough to give it a whirl. Here is mine that I whipped up very quickly.

Most of us have bits of our lives scattered across the web in various pockets and this is a great way to collate all of these together and personalise them in your own splash page. Get in quick and you may be able to claim your own vanity url as well (bonus!).

You can add in a bio of up to 2,500 characters, plus a heading and your name.


Customising the background is simple with your own high res photo, or use one of the templated ones.

Adding in links to your profles scattered across the web is easy, and About.me supports most of the popular ones (eg Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and the main blog sites), and you can add other websites or RSS feeds if they are not listed.

I liked that your profiles can be previewed from about.me without having to leave the site to go to LinkedIn etc. And viewers of your Twitter profile can follow you from About.me - easy.

One of the limitations was that you can't control the positioning of the background photo (centred or tiled) or the size and shape of the text box (although you can move it around the page). Fonts and colours can be selected to match your other web profiles. 

For those of you who are analytical like me, you'll love the statistics page showing you how many people have visited your splash page,  and which profiles they clicked and viewed. Here is a sample analytics page to give you a feel of what it looks like once you have collated a bit of data. Love it.

A quick scan of the feedback forum shows the top requested enhancements are: support for personal URLs or domain names, excluding own browsing from the stats page, allowing Google Analytics to be embedded and options to add icons for non supported services. Each user has 10 votes to use on the feedback forums allowing you to cast votes for your most wanted changes. About.me shows the status of each request (eg Started, Under Review, Planned) - great visibility and transparency of how the community can drive changes.

There are plenty of cool and inspirational splash pages using About.me in their directory - take a look or here are a few featured at present.

So in summary, this is a free, easy to use, customisable splash page which you can use for your professional or personal profile. Great for bloggers or people who have lots of profiles around the web. Give it a whirl!

                               

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