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by on March 7, 2012 19 Comments

Quality Versus Quantity

When I started this blog back in 2009, I wanted to vent about media relations. At the time, PR people were taking a lot of heat for spamming bloggers. It seemed like every day there was some story about a PR person that had pissed off a blogger. Most of the attacks were probably justified, though the result of years of built up tension in most cases. As I started blogging, I didn’t think it would stick. When I launched my personal blog in 2007, I wrote two posts, then deleted them. I’d write them again, then I deleted them. I ultimately decided blogging wasn’t for me. I eventually came around.

With Journalistics, it was different. In 2009, social media was starting to take off. I had 12 years of PR experience under my belt – and I knew a thing or two about SEO. I never thought of myself as an expert, but as I started to share my suggestions, a lot of great feedback started coming in. I was actually helping people. Some people said my blog had become their favorite (but that’s what mom’s are supposed to say, right?).

If you had told me that hundreds of thousands of people would read my posts, I wouldn’t have believed you. But that’s what happened. Then the posts started being mentioned by people I respected in the industry. And then I’d have people come up to me at conferences and say, “I read your blog. I love it.” I always thought they had me confused for a similar-sounding blog. [Read more...]

Filed Under: announcements, blogging Tagged With: , ,
by on November 12, 2010 16 Comments

Now Rank This: Blog Posts That Drive Traffic

Why do so many bloggers write rankings or list posts? Everywhere you look you see top 10 this or 15 ways to do that, the best new this or top tips for that. Why are rankings and list posts such a popular format? For starters, readers gobble this type of post up.

Let’s be honest, most of us have short attention spans (half of you probably won’t make it beyond this sentence). We like to scan lists of stuff. We like rankings even better – we’re all competitive in one way or another. We rank everything, from football and songs, to restaurants and best products of the year.

If you want to write a blog post that will outperform your other blog posts, write rankings or list post. Don’t do it all the time (you’ll just annoy people), but rather use this type of post to mix things up once in a while. The hypothesis certainly holds true on Journalistics. Of the top 10 posts on Journalistics this year, five were ranking posts (and one was a list). [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: ,
by on November 8, 2010 10 Comments

The Death of Blogs?

In case you missed it last week, Gawker Media (home of Gawker, Deadspin, Jezebel, Lifehacker and Gizmodo) announced they are restructuring their sites effective January 1st, to make them look less like a blog and more like a news magazine.  The Wall Street Journal quoted Gawker founder Nick Denton as saying “I’m out of blogs…I don’t want to be the No. 1 blog network anymore.  That’s like being king of the playground.”

Some would argue that Gawker legitimized blogs as a form of journalism. So if their founder is arguing that he no longer wants to be in the blog business, does this signal the death of blogging as we know it? [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging, media trends
by on September 21, 2010 31 Comments

If You Post It, Will They Come?

What brought you here to read this blog post today? Did you find it through a search engine? Did you click on a link from your Twitter feed? Or are you one of the faithful few who subscribe to the blog?

I was recently talking with a friend who was giving me a hard time that I don’t read her blog on a regular basis. It’s not that I don’t like her blog posts, but there are 600+ unread posts in my Google Reader and only so many hours in a day. I know I’m not alone, I think we’re all time and attention-starved.

I think my friend was really suggesting that I should be reading and sharing her posts. As a new blogger, she wants to grow her audience. Getting me to read her posts (and hopefully share them) is a marketing strategy for her. I think a lot of new bloggers out there just expect people to read their posts. They figure, the more they post, the more traffic they’ll get. To a certain extent, that’s true, but it also takes an equal or greater amount of blog marketing.

If I take a look at my Web traffic over the past year, it’s across the board in terms of traffic source:

  • 30% of visitors found the blog through a search engine – they were searching for something and found the blog
  • 28.7% of visitors were direct – they knew our website address and typed it in their browser bar
  • 9.5% clicked on a link to one of our posts in a Twitter feed
  • 7.3% clicked on a link through the RSS feed and visited the blog
  • 5% were referred from PRDaily.com, a PR-focused website that regularly features our post
  • 3.5% visited the blog from StumbleUpon
  • 2.3% came through Facebook

To my friend’s point, 28% of people just come to the blog looking for the latest post. I’m sure some of those people were friends I bugged about not reading my blog – maybe not. Regardless, they knew the address of my blog. That comes through reach and frequency. There’s no secret formula for that – it’s called hard work.But that didn’t happen magically… [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: ,
by on April 6, 2010 60 Comments

Are Bloggers Journalists?

PRWeek and PRNewswire recently teamed up on a study that found 52% of bloggers consider themselves journalists. The last time they did this study, roughly a third of bloggers felt this way. Why do more bloggers consider themselves journalists these days? Well for starters, it’s cool to be a journalist. That’s not the result of the study, that’s just my guess. [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging, journalism Tagged With: ,
by on March 11, 2010 24 Comments

Get Your Company Blogging

I don’t care if you have 5 employees or 500 employees, if your company isn’t blogging, you’re missing a HUGE opportunity to:

  • Build awareness for what you do and what you sell
  • Attract an audience that actually cares what you have to say
  • Increase traffic to your website

I’m still amazed by the number of companies that don’t have an active blog. In study after study, companies that blog generate more return on marketing investment than companies that don’t. For example, HubSpot conducted a study last summer comparing website performance of companies that blog to those that don’t. The study found that companies that blogged enjoyed:

  • 55% more website visitors
  • 97% more inbound links (a key factor in SEO)
  • 434% more indexed pages

I know, I know, you’ve heard this song and dance before. You know all about the benefits of blogging. Well, what are you waiting for? [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With:
by on November 30, 2009 19 Comments

The Future of Local News is You

I’m tired of seeing the small community newspapers go under. Times are tough and traditional business models no longer sustain small publishers in small markets. It appears that most small publishers, particularly in smaller markets, lack the resources and knowledge of new business models to evolve or transform. What disturbs me most about this is the lack of risk-taking among small market journalists. There are thousands of journalists out there that have the potential to solve the local news challenge on their own – they just don’t know it yet. Where are the entrepreneurs? [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging, citizen journalism, journalism business models Tagged With:
by on August 17, 2009 1 Comment

It’s Not Too Late for Your Company to Blog

I realize many of you reading this post are already up to speed with blogging. You may have a personal and company blog that you work on, and already know much of what I’m about to tell you. If you fall into this category, you may want to skip over this post. If on the other hand, you represent of the millions of organizations that have yet to write a single blog post, this post is for you.

First, a primer. Blogs are essentially online journals. While some companies choose to integrate blogs directly into their websites, other companies link to blogs they author on do it yourself free sites such as WordPress or Blogger. Either method works fine as long as the end result looks professional from a content and design perspective. If you already have access to Web design and development help, you may want to opt for a more advanced solution, such as installing WordPress on a server, which gives you much more flexibility in terms of the presentation and functionality of your blog.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: ,
by on June 26, 2009 10 Comments

Reporting the News: If You Ain’t First, You’re Last

Is it more important to be first or to be right when reporting the news? When reporting the news today, to steal a quote from fictional race car driver Ricky Bobby, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” Take for example the sad news of Michael Jackson’s death yesterday. AOL-owned TMZ was the first to report that Jackson had died. And sadly, they did get it right.

You have to wonder whether TMZ really talked to a source, or rather just gambled and got it right. Does it matter? Had TMZ been wrong, we would have forgotten in a couple of hours. Instead, they were mentioned as the source by every news organization (not to mention in thousands of tweets). I’m sure there are thousands of people who had never heard of TMZ before yesterday. [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging, journalism Tagged With: , ,
by on May 10, 2009 12 Comments

What Press Release Distribution Service Should You Use?

twtpollThere are a lot of press release distribution services out there. When I ran my agency, I used several different services based on the varied preferences of our clients. Not to avoid picking a favorite, but I generally liked all of them. The services I used most for clients included PRNewswire (the most popular), PRWeb (favored by the SEO-minded crowd), BusinessWire (most often larger clients), and Marketwire.

Over the course of the past five years, I’ve used PRWeb (owned by Vocus) the most. PRWeb is one of the most cost-effective services out there for tech startups – and it was really the first press release distribution service to embrace SEO, without charging a ton for these extra features. I also like the analytics provided by PRWeb, which are on par with the stats packages offered by others. [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging, journalistics, pr services, press releases Tagged With: ,