Blogger or WordPress? (Part 2)

There just isn't enough time some days, or weeks.

Early Monday I was revamping what I was going to share with you at noon due to something that happened a few hours before. Click here to go there if you missed it.

Then Monday Afternoon, I received news that Google was going to update Blogger to be Better Than WordPress.

Here's the video preview.

(And I have saved the couple of articles that I was planning on sharing with you Monday and today for a future date.)

Blogger or WordPress? (Part 1)

I was asked recently why I prefer using Blogger over WordPress for my blogs.

The first reason was I started out using Blogger, or Blogspot as it used to be called and am the most comfortable with it.

But on my most visited blog, Collective Wisdom, I have a couple of ads running. I was invited by Forbes magazine to offer ad space, set my price and they manage it including sending me an occasional check.

If I was using the free version of WordPress, I could not do this.

Jim's Marketing Blog has more:

WordPress.com for business: Think first!

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 10:00 AM PST

WordPress is, in my opinion, the finest blogging software in the world. Little wonder then, that the vast majority of the world’s top blogs run on Matt Mullenwegg‘s brain child. It’s the only blogging software I use and the only one I recommend.

WordPress.com offer a free version of WordPress, hosted on their own servers, which has proven extremely successful, and this free version is what today’s post is all about.

You see, although the free WordPress.com service is amazing, it has significant issues for some business users.

WordPress.com, advertising and you

The main issue is the idea of building your blog, knowing that you do not have the freedom to use it the way you want to. This is a particular problem for those of you, who would like to make money from advertising on your blog or earn affiliate income; 2 of the most popular ways to monetize a commercial blog.

Even this blog, with just 1 affiliate, would fall foul of the terms regarding a free WordPress.com blog and would be suspended! This can be a lot more severe than it may sound. Here’s a direct quote explaining what can happen to suspended WordPress.com blogs:

“If a blog has been suspended for violating our terms, its domain/URL and content will not be returned.” From the suspended blogs page on WordPress.com

You will also be suspended, if you decide to run adsense etc on your blog. Here’s what they say on the advertising page, in the WordPress.com support section.

Adsense, Yahoo, Chitika, TextLinkAds and other ads are not allowed on free WordPress.com blogs. If you would like to run ads on your blog, one of these options may work for you:

We have a feature called Ad Control that lets WordPress.com bloggers with a lot of traffic (generally 25,000 pageviews/month or more) and appropriate content turn on AdSense and Skimlinks for their blog and split the resulting revenues 50/50 with us.

So, you can actually advertise on WordPress.com, but only if you get your blog delivering 25,000 or more page views a month AND you pay WordPress 50% of the money you make!

If you’re OK about working for years to build that kind of readership, and then giving half your income away, it’s an option. Why any business savvy person would do that is beyond me. To have that much traffic and give half your earnings away, just for some free hosting, makes no commercial sense whatsoever.

Automattic is right to charge businesses for a business service

Automattic, the company that owns WordPress, is totally right to charge for what they do, when business users want to benefit from their services. That’s my point. If you want to monetize your site with ads then WordPress.com is a paid for service, not a free one. Equally, there’s no option I can see, to allow you to use your affiliate accounts on WordPress.com – free or paid versions. (If you know otherwise, please let me know including links and I will update the post.)

Vague areas

My understanding is that you are allowed to mention your business on a free WordPress blog and even mention special deals you have, but there seems to be a great deal that’s unclear about what WordPress consider appropriate and inappropriate.

For example, in a section on WordPress.com regarding the types of blog you are not allowed to have, they actually mention pyramid selling and MLM in the same sentence, and seem unaware that one is a legitimate business whilst the other is illegal in most countries. Putting these in the same category is also rather insulting to those working hard and ethically in Multi Level Marketing, and makes it hard to see how an MLM business owner could use the platform and stay within their rules.

In my experience, it makes a lot more sense for you to simply build a blog, like this one, using the excellent WordPress software, and place it on the best hosting you can afford. It starts from around $5 a month. This gives you freedom to build your legitimate online business, your way and retain all your income. You are also free to use whatever plugins you need, giving you and your readers a huge amount of added functionality.

WordPress.com and you

As I said at the beginning, I love the WordPress software, but believe that their limitations may make their free hosting service a poor choice for some business bloggers and entrepreneurs. It seems WordPress agrees, as one of the suggestions they offer to people who want to make money from their blog, is for them to do exactly as I suggested and get a self-hosted version of WordPress from WordPress.org. I also have concerns regarding the vague nature of what a WordPress.com moderator may regard as inappropriate, (thus suspending your account.) Just look at how they categorised MLM and pyramid selling together.

I would like to know your feedback, regarding WordPress.com as a business blogging platform. Maybe you believe that their free hosting is worth the price (millions of people do)? Whatever your feedback regarding this amazing platform, I would love to hear from you!

Image: WordPress

Hey, it's me again. One other feature that Blogger has that I've been thankful for is the spam filter on comments. I used to have to approve comments due to the amount of spam that was being added.

Just a couple days ago, I decided to open it up again so anyone can leave a comment. I get an email notification if someone leaves a comment and Blogger still lets me verify those that look like spam.

There is more news about Blogger coming Thursday at noon. See ya then!

Multiple Personalities in Social Media?

Last week I was asked about creating separate Twitter accounts based on the subject matter being discussed.

Here's the question:


@lifeasclouds: @ScLoHo should I use different twitter handles if I want to tweet about more than one topic (i.e. Personal stuff, Govt mngmnt and religion)?

I answered back in a couple of tweets, but want to explain my answer in more than 140 characters.

My opinion:

Social Media Identities should be Brands.

This applies to Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, and other Social Media platforms.

I am on Social Media as ScLoHo which is a personal brand. I do not speak on behalf of the radio stations I work for, however I will update my Facebook Wall, Tweet, and write on blogs about them on occasion.

In other words, I am me, not my employer when I write as ScLoHo.

I do have administrator privileges with a couple of Facebook accounts that represent other organizations. Anything that I post on those accounts are appropriate for that organization.

I pulled a couple others into the conversation I was having with Chris @LifeAsClouds.

Amber:


@arecker1704: @scloho @lifeasclouds- good question. I have 4 twitter accts- 1 for me, @fwderbygirls @fiveonfivemag @cancersvcsni. But those are all orgs.


and...


@arecker1704: @scloho @lifeasclouds if it's just various aspects of u, I'd say let them shine through as u :) But if you rep a company, set up a sep acct.


Heather:


@HSchoegler: @arecker1704 @ScLoHo @lifeasclouds Just be you & talk about all that's important to you. Add disclaimer on your bio that they're your words.


And then Andy asked:


@awelfle: @hschoegler @arecker1704 @ScLoHo @lifeasclouds Is a disclaimer rly necessary? It seems superfluous & jst clogs up ur profile. Y do u use it?


I believe I know the answer to that one. Heather is a public figure who is the communication director for a local non-profit, and she has been the president of a local leadership organization, plus her husband is a television sportscaster. She does it to cover her butt.

My Social Media activities are all branded ScLoHo. I started doing this after a couple of years and a couple of blogs. I added ScLoHo to the name of all my blogs along with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and nearly everything I do online that is mine.

I do have separate blogs because each has a different theme. That is to create consistency for the readers of each blogsite so they know what to expect when they visit.

But this is different from what Chris asked regarding Twitter.

Here are the links to many of the places that you will find me online:

My home page is ScLoHo.net. Click Here.

My personal blog is ScLoHo's Really? Click Here.

One of my Advertising, Marketing, Media & Sales blogs is ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom. Collective Wisdom because it features wisdom I've collected from others. Click Here.

The other Advertising, Marketing, Media & Sales blog only features stuff that I write. The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo. Click Here.

You are reading my newest blog, ScLoHo's Social Media Adventure. Click Here to go to the home page.

I mentioned LinkedIn. Click here.

My Facebook page. Click here.

And besides the blogs, I am most active on Twitter. Click here.

What are your thoughts on all of this?

Making Connections on #BlogChat

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my friend Kevin @KMullett would use the hashtag #blogchat on Sunday nights for about an hour on Twitter.

I asked him about it and it seems that one of the uses of Twitter is to create virtual Chat rooms.

A couple weeks ago I joined in on my first #blogchat and it was wild & crazy.

Imagine you are at a large gathering with a few hundred people and everyone is talking at once.

Every once in awhile someone asks a question and you can listen to the responses or add your own comment. Sometimes someone will ask you specifically a question about something you said and of course everyone who is in #blogchat can listen and respond too.

Last night I decided to join in the #blogchat which occurs every Sunday from 9 to 10pm Eastern time.

The topic of discussion last night was what can business bloggers learn from personal bloggers?

Since my blogs and social media brand is a hybrid of business and personal, I tossed a few comments out, and joined in the conversation.

Then this morning, I discovered that something I said caught the attention of Allison Boyer who wrote about it on the BlogWorld.com site:

Overheard on #Blogchat: Share People Stories (@ScLoHo)

By Alli on March 14, 2011

Do you participate in #blogchat? Every week, this weekly discussion on Twitter focuses on a specific topic and bloggers everywhere are invited to join in. Because I often have more to say than what will fit in 140 characters, every Sunday night (or Monday morning), I post about some of the most interesting #blogchat tweets. Join the conversation by commenting below.

(Still confused? Read more about #blogchat here.)

This Week’s Theme: What company blogs can learn from personal bloggers with @1680PR

This week, #blogchat was held LIVE at SXSW. Sad face that I couldn’t go, but happy face that there was still normal #blogchat at night for those of us stuck at home! Actually, I was so busy apartment-hunting that I didn’t get to the online version either, but moderator and host Mack Collier is nice enough to link to the transcript every week, so I was still able to pick out some awesome points to share with you all!

One that stood out to me just a few minutes into the chat:

@ScLoHo: Every business has people. Share people stories on your business blog

Business blogs are too often outlets for company press releases and nothing else. Think about your favorite brands in the world. I like Hershey’s chocolate. I like Gain laundry detergent. I like Dell computers (don’t judge me, that’s a debate for another day, haha). But really, I don’t like any of those companies enough to read announcements about their products every day – or worse, multiple times per day. It’s sometimes nice to know big changes that are coming, but I don’t need constant content that is little more than ads for your brand.

Corporate bloggers, write this down and post it by your computer: A blog is not a commercial.

Adding personality to your corporate blog is, in my opinion, the only way to go. But if you’re a major brand (like Hershey or Gain or Dell), doing that can be tricky, since you have a corporation to represent (not just yourself) and since you’re probably one of several people working on posts. Even as a small business owner, it can be tough to know how to go about adding personality to your blog.

That’s what I love so much about @ScLoHo’s tweet. Telling stories is something I do regularly on my own blog, After Graduation, and companies can definitely learn to do that as well.

• Share the story of how the company was founded and how the business owners helped it evolve into what it is today.
• Share awesome stories from people who work at your company. Feature everyone from board members to factory workers. Feel-good stories that fit your brand well are interesting and help promote your products.
• Share stories from your customers. Not only are you promoting your brand, but you’re starting to build a community by getting your readers involved.

I think that personal bloggers can take some value away from this idea as well. Don’t be afraid to share your story and the stories of readers if they are relevant to your topic. It’s one of the most basic ways we can connect as human beings. Between the press releases, some human interest stories go a long way for corporate blogs, and for personal bloggers, this is a way to spice up your content, doing something different and interesting for your readers.

Today, more and more people are discovering Alli's blog post as it is being shared with links on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN.

This is the power of participating in Social Media.

Thanks Allison! http://twitter.com/allison_boyer/

Be sure to visit the original post at Blogworld and add a comment or two. Click here.

Tuesday on ScLoHo's Social Media Adventure, I will share a recent conversation regarding personal vs. business accounts in social media.

The Serious Tweep (Part 9)

Okay, there really isn't a part 9 to this series.

I've enjoyed giving you a guide to Twitter the past couple of weeks and next week we're going back to some of the other forms of social media including more guest posts.

But it's time to give you links to all of the Twitter articles I've done so far.

It started on January 1oth with a weeks worth of Introduction to Twitter:

Twitter? Get Real! Part 1

Twitter? Get Real! Part 2

Twitter? Get Real! Part 3

Twitter? Get Real! Part 4

Twitter? Get Real! Part 5

In February, I answered a few Twitter questions:

Public or Protected Account

How Often Should I Update on Twitter?

What is #FF?

And then after a few requests for my in depth information on how to use Twitter, I launched the Serious Tweep feature on March 1st:

The Serious Tweep (Part 1)

The Serious Tweep (Part 2)

The Serious Tweep (Part 3)

The Serious Tweep (Part 4)

The Serious Tweep (Part 5)

The Serious Tweep (Part 6)

The Serious Tweep (Part 7)

The Serious Tweep (Part 8)

And there will be more articles on Twitter too.

The Serious Tweep (Part 8)

As I wind down this series, I keep getting more ideas, in response to the reaction to some of the previous articles.

Can you measure the impact of your social media efforts on Twitter?

Well, yes you can, if you want to look at raw numbers with a few insights, I'm going to share with you some of the programs and sites today that you can check out, but first a disclaimer:

You are most likely not doing this is a vacuum. There are other things you are doing online, and offline that will have an impact on your growth. I tell my advertising clients to look at the long term and compare month to month, or year to year if they've been around awhile.

But, for Twitter, there are a few things to check. And I recommend that you check where you stand this week and use the numbers as a benchmark for the future.

There is Klout.

Last time I checked, Klout classified me as a Thought Leader. Other Thought Leaders include Andrew Hoffman of @BeTheLink, and Evan Williams @ev co-founder of Twitter.

I checked a few other profiles, like my daughter @greenglasshero, and she is a Specialist. Other Specialists include Kevin @KMullett and @JillKonrath

There is a Celebrity classification which includes @CharlieSheen and CBSNews

There are other classifications like Explorer and Conversationalist but be sure to read the Score Analysis section too.

Another site to visit is TwitterGrader.com There are plenty ways to analyze the data, including finding out who the top Tweeps are in your area.

A few others:

TweetStats

Twitaholic

TwitterCounter

There are problems though with some of these sites, and that is they do not always screen out spammers and the comparisons between you and others may not really matter. It all depends on what you are doing and want to do on Twitter.

The Serious Tweep (Part 7)

Time for a few more wise words from others on being a Serious Tweep.

Sunday I was cleaning out my email and came across this article from Advertising Age:

Digital Marketing Guide: How Do I Increase My Twitter Following?

By: Irina Slutsky

It's important to remember that chasing numbers can be futile, since even those with envied Twitter followings may not have as many followers as the numbers indicate they do. Even so, the first thing many people do when they hear of a name, a company or a brand is search for it on Google and Twitter, so there are benefits to a robust following, especially if they are organic and engaged.

1. Tweet about stuff you know and love. Your passion and expertise will show and people will recognize it.

2. Make sure your Twitter account name reflects who you are and what you do. For those whose name isn't a brand in its own right (like, um, @irinaslutsky), pick one that's short and to the point. When third generation NYC journalist Jonathan Mandell decided to tweet about theater, he picked @newyorktheater.

3. Related to No. 2, make sure you fill out the bio that shows up under your account name. In case your name is your account name, put your city and description.

4. Follow people. Yes, some of them will follow you back and many won't, but to participate in the Twitter economy, follow. This goes for individuals and companies.

5. Read other people's tweets and ask questions, clarifications and followups. If you're a company, take the complaints offline -- but take them for sure.

6. Unless you're @nytimes or @cnn, don't just hose us with links to your stuff. Throw in observations, funny things you see during the day. Go ahead and break the unofficial rule and tweet what you're having for lunch once in a while. Because someone's going to say they also had a $5 footlong. And that someone could be your next big client.

7. Don't link and run. Even when you post links to your work and intersperse them with links to things you find interesting, stick around for the discussion. Attend to everyone who messages you and especially those who @ you. People remember if they didn't get a response.

8. Tweet consistently. Nothing is more depressing than looking up an account with one tweet from 2010 and two from 2009. Total. (Hi, @redlobster.) Hire someone!

9. If you hire someone to tweet for you or your brand, make sure you trust them. Because if you trust them, they'll be able to have a personality.

10. Remember the Murphy's Law of Twitter is (thanks to @kevinmarks) that being retweeted gets you more followers, but tweeting loses them. So be sure to say things that get retweeted!

Bonus tip: Only tweet drunk if your name is @louisck.