5 Lessons In Getting Your Blog Quoted, Linked & Discussed

Rohit Bhargava (of Influential Interactive Marketing Blog) shares the following 5 lessons in getting your blog quoted, linked & discussed:

1. "Target new audiences. When I wrote about the idea of Library 2.0, I was engaging an audience who may not usually read this blog. Doing so in a positive way helped to drive new discussion about my post and open the audience of my blog up to a whole new group of readers. To date, the post has been my top traffic driver to the site, indicating that there are a whole lot of forward thinking librarians loving the chance to finally feel appreciated.

2. Give them something to share. Soundbites work well for people to cut and paste into their own blogs or stories ... but making it shareable means letting people forward emails with your posts from one to another, take elements of content, forward a URL and have an easy way to summarize your point. If someone else can't paraphrase it in a sentence, it won't get discussed.

3. Offer a linkable and useful resource. The Simpsons Movie marketing blog post is one that took hours of effort to compile and several updates to keep current, yet it is a great resource for anyone interested in the range of marketing that is behind the film. The post has many links and images and as a result is linked to often for its thorough list and as an example of how pervasive the marketing for the film has been.

4. Join a buzzworthy effort. You don't always have to create something original in order to add value. My post about how a Facebook group is trying to save Business2.0 magazine was in support of a group that had already been created. The whole campaign is extremely buzzworthy as it represents a great story of people fighting back online for an offline publication they love (a brilliantly ironic story). Being part of something like this creates a "halo effect" where the conversation about the topic drives interest and awareness and your voice goes along with it.
5. Make it easy to contact you. In my day job, I often find blogs that could be worth including in a marketing program or ones that would be interested in a particular idea or product ... yet many of them are hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Protecting yourself from spambots is one thing, but you cannot make it too difficult for people to contact you or else you will end up missing every opportunity."

Google's "Blackle" & Oh Don't Forget

Read more about how you can help conserve energy by using blackle. http://www.blackle.com/

Oh Don't Forget sends text message reminders to your cell phone http://www.ohdontforget.com/.

PC World Shares Strangest Sights in Google Earth

PC World writes, "With its detailed satellite photos, Google's interactive map lets everyone be a virtual globetrotter. And some of the things we've found in our travels are downright bizarre."

To view their 16 "strangest sights," visit http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134186-page,1-c,mapping/article.html.

25 Types of Blogs

Here is that list of the 25 Types of Blogs. Look at each one, and when you start your blog, decide when and how you want to use each of these voices.

Thank you Phil the Cable Guy

The SCIMA meeting last night was another success! Phil the Cable guy shared tips on blogging and even walked us through creating a blog. A copy of his presentation will be posted in a few hours. Thanks again to SC State Museum for use of their wonderful venue.

We hope you enjoyed the meeting and welcome your feedback. We're excited about the SCIMA blog and hope you'll make yourself at home here.

As we mentioned, if you'd like to be an "official" contributer to this blog, just send us an email at contact@myscima.com. The more SC interactive marketers contributing, the better. Of course regular blog comments and interactions are also encouraged.

The blog site Phil used in his demo was www.blogger.com (which also powers this blog). Here's a quick rundown of getting started on blogger:

Step One: Before you can create a free blog on Blog*Spot, Blogger's hosting service, you need to have already created an account on blogger.com. Once you've logged into blogger.com, click the Create a Blog link beneath your list of blogs.

On Step Two, enter a Title and Address (URL). Remember you'll want to include your brand name in your URL if possible. For example, our URL is http://myscima.blogspot.com. You'll also need to type in the verification word displayed on this page, to confirm that you are a real person and not a computer. When you're done, click continue.

On Step Three,you can choose a template for your blog; this is how it will appear when you publish it. Next, Blogger will create your new blog and reserve your spot on BlogSpot. As soon as you make your first post, your page will appear at the address you chose. You're all ready to blog!

For more information, visit the blogger help page for helpful how-to information.

About Add This! Social Bookmarking & Feed Site

We all know the importance of making our websites & blogs friendly for SMO and Web 2.0. Add This! is a site that will generate the bookmarking and feed code for you.

Al l you have to do is create an account (it's free) and enter the URL you'd like to get the widgets for. You'll then get html to copy and paste into your code that produces colorful, recognizable widgets your web saavy customers are looking for.

http://www.addthis.com

Flickr Letters

A guy named Erik Kastner has created a fun application with PHP and javascript that allows you to enter the letters of your name (it can be your name or any word you happen to like) and get a fun graphic made of flickr letters. Once you have submitted your name you are actually given an embed code, which you can put on your website or profile. Try it out here. Source: GeekSugar

Over 8 Billion Streamed Videos Watched in May

According to GeekSugar, ComScore, which does internet research measuring, just released the results from the Video Metrix report for May 2007. The data reveals that the average American watched more than 2.5 hours of online streaming video during that month. Have people kissed their TV watching good-bye? Here are some more interesting stats related to these findings: Nearly three out of four (74.3 percent) U.S. Internet users streamed video online.
More than one out of three (35 percent) U.S. Internet users streamed video on YouTube.
The average video stream duration was 2.5 minutes.
The average online video viewer consumed 63 video streams, or more than two per day.

Ready, Set, Blog! July 24 at SC State Museum

Our next meeting will be held Tuesday, July 24
at the South Carolina State Museum (Vista Room) map it!
from 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. (presentation will begin at 4:30)

Please note the time is slightly different from our last meeting

Topic: Ready, Set, Blog!
Speaker: Philip Looney (of Phil the Cable Guy blog)

Won't you join us? Please RSVP.