Continuous Learning

Below are the web clippings of the day. Enjoy.

• Secret Confessions of a Link-A-Holic
  
  Coming from Darren Rowes on why one should not become obsessed about link buildings. It is all about putting the content first - blog well builds the foundation for which success can follow - linking is secondary.

• Google Related Links
  
  Google Related Links use the power of Google to automatically bring fresh, dynamic and interesting content links to any website.

• Who Do You Think You’re Talking To? | Copyblogger
  
  How can you ensure that your blog has a market? Treating blogging like running a business is key. Some research beforehand will save lots of grief later on.

• Technorati tags: an introduction - A Consuming Experience
  
  A tutorial on what is technorati tags and how to use them in blogs. The post is not technically focused and instead talks more from an user’s perspective.

This is the sixth post in the series. You can find the rest here.

In the last article I talk about RSS aggregation. While aggregation is great, it does not add additional value over going directly to the author’s site if all we do is republish their articles. To add value, there must be more:

• We republish articles that are focused on the topics (i.e. being selective)
• We relate articles with each other (again, reinforcing the focus)
• We provide additional commentary on the articles if applicable

Let’s see what we can do.

This is the fifth article in the series, to see what the previous posts are, just click on the TOC link.

In the last article we cover the concept of republishing, and try to make it work via the built-in RSS widget, but run into the following limitations:

• It does not create post, and
• It does not display excerpts and metadata

Both kill the approach as a potential solution. We need to look for something more.

RSS Aggregation

What we are looking for is a tool that will be able to create posts based on the source, preferably multiple sources. We did not talk about multiple sources last time because RSS widgets technically allows for multiple sources if you create multiple widgets, but it ultimately does not matter because it is not the right solution anyways. Now we are looking further than the widget, we need to include the ability to pull from multiple sources.

This is the fourth post in the series - you can read what experts say about this particular topic, my experiences so far, and my thoughts on alternative approach.

In the last post I describe a different way to think what compelling contents are:

• I do not have to write all of the compelling content
• Just about all of top blogs are journalistic (i.e. link to other’s contents)
• Google, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit are all alternative models to content generation
• Research & organizing relevant content has value to readers

Of course, no one qualifies Google, Del.icio.us, Digg, or Reddit as blogs, but they offer values to readers regardless.

My goal is to experiment with the above concept to generate content quickly and almost effortlessly

A Bit of Bookkeeping

From here on out I will talk about the journey to achieve the above objective. It will follow the Ready, Fire, Aim principle. We will try multiple solutions and see how well they work out, what the gaps are, and how to close the gap.

It means I will spend quite a bit of time researching and developing solutions, and the posts will reflect the journey. It also means that I might not be able to post as frequently as I’d like, so going forward my postings will be a bit sporadic, but hopefully I can still achieve my monthly posting quota (for this month the goal is a minimum of 12 posts).

Anyhow - let’s get started

First Idea - Republishing

The quickest way to generate content is not to generate the content at all, but rather republishing other’s content. In the blogosphere this can be achieved through republishing other’s feed.

For some, republishing other’s feed is a taboo. Keep reading →

This is the third post in the series - you can read what experts say about this particular topic, as well as my experiences so far.

In the last post I talk about that my current posting approach does not work with where I want the site to be:

1. I want the site to reflect learnings on the day
2. My current posting approach forces me to write more about what I know and less about what I don’t know
3. My current posting approach will just take too much time aside from my daily pursue, which is counter to my needs

The idea situation is as follows:

1. As I learn something, I write it down and share with others
2. Readers (you) gets to participate in the process of learning, and posting via the same process

Of course, to get there, I need to change my assumptions on what compelling content means:

In my mind, compelling content means something original and created from scratch.

Yes, I have been thinking in the content publishing model of Steve Pavlina and Paul Graham for too long. This is only natural, because they are very successful in their model, and their writings are very admirable.

The fact is, their model is not the only successful model. Although I do subconsciously buy into their approach, this method is only workable if you are posting about your current knowledge, and only sparingly (unless you are just such a prolific writer… I am not, yet).

A Different Way of Blogging

Let’s look at some other successful blogs. According to Technorati, just about all the top 10 blogs (this list is of course, dynamic, so you should check the source to see the latest) posts multiple times per day with short articles: (Engadget, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Lifehacker, Daily Kos) - we can draw a positive correlation between frequency at the top blog level.

Many of these blogs are journalistic in nature. I.e. instead of the author(s) providing deep insights, they are focusing on current events and news (Not to diminish the experience and knowledge of these authors, but it is easier to provide opinions on current events versus trying to create equivalent of a textbook or coming up with new theories).

What these examples show to me is that there is a different way of blogging. Offering original content and concept is not the only way to create compelling content. That leads me to look for more models.

Google is probably a great example. Google provides content to others, but Google hardly produces any of these contents, but there is no question that Google provides tremendous value.

So are the social bookmarking sites. None of these sites generates their own original content, and yet they provide tremendous value to their readers.

Google, Digg, Reddit have stickiness even without producing any content themselves. Frequent users will keep coming back to the site to find more content. They will click on a link to go to the originator of the content, but they will come back to the site afterwards to find more content from the site.

To readers, the ability to find relevant content has value.

You probably can guess where I am going with this. My new approach is to convert this site into a place where one can find valuable information, rather than being the sole content producer.

Because, there are just way too many good contents out there, many are much much better than I can produce. But it is not easy to find them and to organize them. As part of my job, I have to get very good at finding relevant information on internet, and it is my goal to keep those information organized and easily disseminated.

Also, you can participate and help, and morph the content into something you need.

I will talk about how to accomplish this in the next article. Stay tuned.

This is the second post in the series - you can read what experts say about this particular topic in part one.

My experiences so far can be summed up in one sentence:

Creating compelling content is hard with my current way of posting.

My blogging journey so far can be divided into three stages so far - the first stage is from July 06 - November 06, and the second stage is from December 07 to January 07.

July 06 to November 06

In the first stage, I use Steve Pavlina and Paul Graham’s model, writing long, unique content. Each article is meticulously thought through, written, editted, editted, and editted. It takes about 15-25 hours per article. At that speed and part-time blogging (I still have to put food on the table ;P), I can at best average 1 or 2 articles per month.

The majority of articles also are pure content with no links, so few people know the existence of these articles. Needless to say the traffic is low.

December 06

I fair better in the second stage. In December I setup this site and discover blogging tips from likes of Darren Rowes and John Chow, and I discover the power of social bookmarking. My articles did not get a lot of diggs, but Digg help put my site on Google, and Reddit provides traffic to my site. I also start to diversify the posting topic.

January 07

In January I realize my topics are starting to get broad, and I feel like it is not as focused anymore. While I am able to achieve the posting frequency and gaining more traffic, I do not feel like I have a long term workable plan, and hence I decide to buckle down and redo the site to sacrifice short term traffic gain for long term growth.

These three stages taught me the following:

1. It is a lot easier to write unique articles about something you know very well
2. Conversely, it is difficult to write unique articles about something you do not know well, or just learning
3. There are many things I do not know well
4. Even when I am writing about a topic that I know well, it takes time to craft good articles
5. At the way I write, with the time I have, I just cannot produce many articles, even for my own expertise
6. At the current pace of posting (3 articles per week), the blog will appear to be unfocused (not enough content for each area of interest)

All above runs counter to my reason for creating this site, which is a place to chronicle and share learnings on internet.

1. I cannot write compelling articles about something I don’t know well
2. I create this site precisely to learn about something I don’t know, yet
3. Most of the sources for my learning come from others

What it comes down to is that in order to stay true to my site’s objective, I will need to change the way I write:

• I must write about things I learn from others, not just things I know
• I need an even higher posting frequency to make the blog appearing to stay on topic

The goal is to make this site into a chronicle for learning. Ideally the posting should just completely morph into part of my daily routine, rather than something I have to consciously set aside time for to think and write about. My goal isn’t to have blogging as a separate side effort, but an integrated effort into daily routines.

That means I need to look at a radically different approach to generate compelling content. I will talk about the approach in Part III.

If there are certainties in the blogging world, they are as follows:

• Bloggers (and website in general) need traffic to flourish.
• Compelling content is the surest way to grow traffic.

Bloggers of course also need to market their content via techniques such as social bookmarking, link baiting, etc. However, if there are no compelling contents, then these techniques will only have short term traffic effect.

So the question is, how to generate compelling content?

Let’s hear from some experts:

Darren Rowes: quantity is as important as quality:

Do you want to generate good traffic on your blog and therefore give yourself a chance at earning an income from it? Quality Content is a good first step - but it is not enough - you need to work on Quantity also.

Steve Pavlina: Content, content, content.

1) create valuable content
2) create original content
3) create timeless content
…

Joe Carter: Consistency, Quality, Work ethic, and Ambition.

Many bloggers want to be “successful.” For most the term has a very vague meaning, similar to wanting to win the lottery or have a book published. They view it as a end state to be achieved rather than as an ongoing process.

Morrissey thinks differently. He understands that to be successful you have to do what will make you successful.

Every. Single. Day.

John Chow: Frequency more important than length.

Nothing turns off a blog reader more than seeing a blog updated once per day for a week, then suddenly no updates at all. If you’re going to update your blog once per day (or whatever frequency you choose), then stick to it. Don’t be an on again, off again blogger. Your blog will never grow if you do that.

All of them point to the needs to:

1. create original content
2. frequent posting with quantity
3. consistency

These are of course, all very good advices. I have had a chance to practice their advices for the past month, and I will share the experience in the next post…

The following are the stats for January 2007:

• Posts: 17 posts for 23 weekdays - 3.5 posts/week
• Visits: 4,382
• Page Views: 6,261
• Average: 1.43 pages/visit

There are only 10 days worth of data in December 2006, from 12/22-12/31:

• Visits: 924
• Page Views: 1,619
• Average: 1.75 pages/visit

If I normalize January to compare against December data, then I have:

• Increase of visits: 158%
• Increase of page views: 128%
• Decreasing of average pages/visit: -0.32 pages/visit

Based on my blog objective for the year, I have achieved #1, #3, and parts of #2 for this month (I was shooting for power(100,1/12)= 147% growth per month).

This means there are still more work to grow traffic:

1. While I have more posts, the posts are not as focused and/or coherent
2. I also did not have as much time to focus on each individual posts as before
3. I have spent the last 8 days working on improving the blog theme, which also take away time from posting

All above means I need to look at a different way of creating compelling content for you. I will discuss my approach in the next article.

After hacking on CSS/PHP non-stop for 8 days, I finally have reached a new look and feel… it is still a bit rough though.

This design is derived from Chris Pearson’s Cutline. It draws heavy inspiration from Copyblogger, WordPress, Anaconda, Silver Lexus, and WordPress II Silver. These designs are all great, and hopefully my mix and match looks okay, too

This experience demonstrates to me how difficult web design can be; if you do not have a knack for web design, this is indeed very challenging. I am grateful for being able to leverage these experts’ work as starting points.

I know there were instants where others did not give proper credit to the designers where they were due. I did not know those exact circumstances (everyone acted appropriately and courageously and the details were removed), but hopefully I AM providing proper credit and not repeating their experiences…

If you are one of the designers and feel that I have not provide the necessary credit, please let me know:

• Cutline - Chris Pearson
• Copyblogger - Chris Pearson/Brian Clark
• Anaconda - Taragona and Simple Thoughts
• Silver Lexus - Highlands by Design
• WordPress II Silver - Patrick Chia

I am busy hacking away on a new theme (based on Chris Pearson’s Cutline), and that is why I have not added much content right now.

Below are some of the tips I found out when trying to hack CSS:

• Use multiple lines with each style: when there are multiple declarations on a single line, it is hard to tell how to modify it, especially when viewing through a SSH terminal. While it might look nice on a 24 inch monitor (I would assume most designers would have the