Bloggasm

Have you been thinking of contacting a journalist to write an article about you? Maybe give you or your business/organization some free publicity? Here’s some simple steps you might want to follow to maximize your chances of being covered:

1. Don’t inform me that I’m going to interview you and write an article about you. You can inform me of the news tip and ask nicely if I’m interested in writing an article, but don’t call and start off your conversation with trying to set up an interview before I’ve even expressed interest in writing an article.

2. Once I’ve decided to write the article, don’t dictate to me what’s going in the article itself. Don’t say things like “make sure you put this in the article.” It’s sometimes ok to tell me not to put something in an article, just simply say that you’re going “off the record,” but other than that, I’ll put any fucking thing I please in the article.

3. Once I’ve been kind enough to write and publish an article, don’t consider that an invitation to start calling me every day to tell me every time you so much as pick your nose. Wait a good while before you call in again wanting an article written about you, and make sure it’s something significant. Otherwise, I’ll start avoiding you and your calls and will be unlikely to return your messages.

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Related posts: And then there were none, Why is Technorati so unreliable?

Grr…I need to use Technorati to do some research for the new bloggasm case study that’s suppose to launch tomorrow, and of course it’s deciding to act up right now by not displaying the results in the way it’s supposed to (or more specifically, it isn’t displaying a blog’s rank right now). And yet I keep coming back to it, mostly because the other blog search engines don’t provide nearly as many functions.

So what would other blog search engines need to do so that bloggers can have a viable alternative if they don’t want to stick with Technorati?

1. Create a ranking system. I’d say that a lot of Technorati’s searchers are mostly bloggers who are ego searchers. Almost every time I put a link up to a blogger, within 24 hours he or she visits my blog through a Technorati ego search. Obviously, a lot of bloggers, myself included, like to check in on their ranking every day to see if they’ve improved at all.

2. Have a profile-creating system. This allows all your blogs to show under your name within Technorati, and makes it easy for you to find other blogs that have the same writers, since a lot of bloggers have multiple blogs.

3. Create a tag way of searching. A lot of people search by tag rather than just by word-choice.

4. Have blog highlights and display top blog posts. Allows one to see what’s hot in the blogosphere.

5. List “most-searched” items. A lot of people are curious as to what other people are searching for, there’s been lots of times where I’ve seen an odd word on the most-searched list, clicked into it, and was immediately glad I did.

I think if other blog search engines put in these things, especially the blog ranking system, then people would feel more comfortable switching over from Technorati. But for now, most of the blog search engines just allow simple search, and without a good way yet of categorizing the blog posts like Google’s Page Rank system, simple searches mostly give way only to splogs.

UPDATE: looks like it’s working again.

Related posts: How much money is your blog really worth? A Bloggasm case study, Woman sues Google after being banned from Adsense

I’m sorry if this makes me sound like a grammar snob, but I’m overwhelmed with how many bloggers who make a full-time living off of blogging don’t understand simple grammatical rules. I know that I have my share of typos and grammar errors, but I’m talking about the kind of things that are repeated so much that I’m not quite sure that the blogger even knows the grammatical rule in question.

As recent surveys show, most blog readers are well-educated, and every time you do something like this, it catches on a person’s eyes, causing him or her to stop reading for a brief moment and interrupting the reading flow. I think it’s reasonable to ask a blogger who makes a full-time living off his blog to take a day to read William Strunk’s Elements of Style. I’m not asking for that blogger to catch every typo, every misplaced modifier. I’m not asking that you don’t end on a preposition (these are minor offenses), but for god’s sake, whenever you want to use ownership with the word “it,” it’s “its,” not “it’s.” (as you’ll notice, I placed all punctuation within the quotes, another thing that bloggers neglect to do) In this post, Darren makes the same mistake twice in one paragraph:

Every niche has it’s jargon and buzzwords but I’m constantly reminded (by emails from readers asking me to explain what I mean when I use them) that quite often the people who read blogs and the people who write them live in different worlds. Lots of people accuse the Web 2.0 niche of this but I’d argue that every niche has it’s buzzwords that you should think twice about using.

Both times, the mistake caused a bump in my reading. C’mon, I’m not asking you guys to hire full-time copyeditors, but at least take the time to learn the basic rules. I’m talking to you too.

Related posts: Blog Highlights: Sadly, No!