The Elephant In The Blogosphere

So who really is getting the benefit from blogging? It seems that for all the talk about marketing paradigm shifts and new communication eras that the usual suspects are the people who have the time and interest in blogging.

Journalists are a case in point. Trained writers and people who are paid to write. The UK election trotted out the odd political blogger to show how 'hip and trendy' they were. The old wags made quips about the new turks using twitter.


Marketing communications and relationship marketing people are evangelists too. Paid to relate paid to communicate. The thing is all these people have TIME to blog, TIME to engage and participate. I've noticed a very interesting things with social networking. I work in academia. Academics do alot of reading and writing. Usually other peoples work. When it comes to blogging and engaging in sharepoint sites, ning communities they simply don't have the time to be avid and prolific. Composing a post occupies the mind as well the time. If your mind and time are occupied you don't blog. Simple as. So if a huge number of people are disenfranchised from the blogosphere not because of technological access or know how, not because of education, then how representative is the blogosphere of opinion?


Blogging and social media neophytes claim its the new frontier. They have the time to preach. For me its Cognitive Miser time. I can engage sparodically, my social influence is limited. The only gratification is expression of point of view. This has taken me 20 minutes and I could have been watching Springwatch.

A Bloggers Tale

The old blogger pointed to the vast unexplored horizon. The boys were gripped by his every word. "Out there are the people of the world. Out there are they are waiting to hear from you. Out there they are looking for you!" Excited, they urged the old blogger on. "What can we write?, why would anyone listen to us?" they asked. The old blogger stopped. Mindful of his experiences he knew he had raised their expectations. A blistered blog writer for many years he new the dangers and dissapointments that awaited them.  Thinking carefully about what he was going to say he knew there was every chance that what he knew could put the off writing a blog...for ever!


"Out there is danger!" His eyes looked deep into their searching for their fears. "You can put your heart and soul into a post and you might get nothing in return." The boys looked back in disbelief. "You mean we can write our very best and no one cares?" they asked. "It's possible" he said his voice dropping to a secretive hush. The boys continued to be held in the rheumy gaze of the old blogger. They could see his thoughts drifting back to posts of old. The popular ones, the ones with authority, posts that grabbed attention across the whole world.

"You have to do because you want to do it boys. Don't go expecting riches and fame. That's a fools errand". The old blogger knew. He was their age when he put finger to keyboard. I can influence the world he thought, the people of the world will laugh and cry over what I write, they'll be inspired and I will transform their lives. He saw the same beliefs in the boys that sat in front of him.

"We'll write and write and write and write" the boys implored. "The people of the world will hear our stories. They'll laugh and cry over what we'll write. We'll change the world!"

The old blogger got up. "Time to leave now boys. Over there is your destiny. Out there are people you touch and people that can't be touched, people you'll reach and people who can't be reached. Out there are people who will never be your friends"

As the old blogger walked away down the shore line the boys looked out. Their eyes began to see the stumps and rotting frames of old discarded blogs. Not one, not hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of fillling the sea before them. An ocean of sunken words lost for ever.

Social Media Overload Is Making Me A Stylite

So, I switch on my Yahoo and I'm hit with a headline about the Police getting cheesed off with time wasters. Hmm I wonder, this might be relevent to me and so I click on it to reveal a story about the New Zealand Police force. This sort of typifies the deluge of news stories that intrude into our headspace minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. New Zealand is on the other side of the planet to me and I'm getting worn down by being informed about the grief and hassles of all around the the world.

Human beings are not designed for taking on board loads of information. In fact we are designed to be the opposite. We have to act as a Cogitive Miser we have to shut out the noise otherwise we become paralysed and unable to operate in the world. Of course the stuff reported is bad, of course its bad for the people involved, but it ISN'T my problem!

My brain power and my emotional resources are there so that I can cope with the stuff life throws at me and my nearest and dearest not other people. That's not to say I won't sympathise or help out when I can, its just that being 'disaster bombed'in every news item means I have a growing sense of utter lack of of control of events in the world. Frankly its depressing. Its bad enough with the interjection of advertising messages. We really do have and 'advertised mind'

As Richard Petty said “imagine if you thought carefully about every t.v. or radio commercial you heard or advert you read…
if ever you made it out of the house …you’d probably be too mentally exhausted to do anything else”

So maybe I've reached a conclusion. I think I'm going to follow the example of The Sylites I'm going to make a conscious effort to stay apart from the news for a while. This blog is going to be 'my column' and I'll write about thoughts rather than events for a while. I wonder what will happen? Where will the inspiration of posts come from if there is not stimulus from the world? Is it really good for anyone to know about every event taking place in the world as it happens?

Why Dogs Don't Blog

Putting the obvious stuff to one side like 'my dog doesn't own a PC', paws aren't built for keyboards, dogs don't care about world affairs, technological developments, personal development, hobbies, making money, affiliate marketing etc etc. Dogs probably don't blog because they have better ways to socially network.

I started to ponder this as I sit here trying to think of something to post (dog has just brought toy to play with), and as I trawl the news sites and technorati, it seems that there is not alot of news even though there is alot of news. (Dog has just started to whine) Clearly I'm not living in the 'now' (Thanks Cesar) hmmm what if I became The Blog Whisperer? I could offer advice to bloggers about why their blogs are mischevious and badly behaved. What if you can only blog when your are 'calm-assertive'???

Now there's a thing. Could you take your blog for a walk? We could even have electronic 'poop bags' for the crap that is sometimes posted too! (Dog has just got on her bed) Great time to really go for it with this post..............damn another inspiration block.

Come on Muse throw me a bone. Give me a treat, tickle my chin....aha...something's coming...here we go!

Now what if the guys who invented Twitter had called it Bark instead. Would it have made a difference? what would the apps have been called? Woofsuite? Growl deck?...hmmm doesn't seem to have the same feel.

Fact is though the Dogosphere would be quite a straightforward place, not many topics of concern. Food, Sleep, Smells, Treats, Walks, Other Dogs...and selling merchandise on Zazzle.

Reasonable Robinson White Dog Shirt by reasonablerobinson
See more Dog Pet Clothing

Social Networking and Blogging with Squidoo

If you are not familiar with Squidoo and its unique style of social networking and blogging then you should seriously pop over and give it a try.

If you don't know much about Squidoo its a way that you can blog, photo blog, make money blogging and social network all at the same time.

I was recently awarded Giant Squid status. The minimum requirement for this is to create 50 so called 'lenses'. Lenses are a general template that you populate with pre-created modules (think of them as mini templates)You select from a wide range of types. The squidoo modules allow you to post your own written content, photos,videos,run polls, and integrate things such as Amazon, eBay and Zazzle. You can also link to Twitter, Flikr and bring in RSS feeds.

Lenses are themed on topic of interest. For example I've built ones on a wide range of themes like my genealogy and family history lens The Border Reivers, and I've created lenses on quirky themes such as How to open a champagne bottle using a sword another on Disguise Camouflage Deception and Mimicry business themes such as Marketing Ethics and Criticism, and other business themes such as Leadership, and ways to achieve Competitive Advantage.

A full list of my lenses can be found in what the Squidoo social networking community call a Lensography.

When I first started on Squidoo I only had a couple of lenses for many months. Then I was contacted by Michelle Willow to join a social networking group of Squidoo users who share tips and encouragement to go for Giant Squid status. I was drafted into a sub group led by Free Lance writer Carol Fisher, who was a great help in offering content and design advice.

As you learn more about Squidoo and the people and relationships in the Squidoo social networking community you discover that it is supported by a huge range of resources, it has its own forums and specialised squidoo lenses and there is a constant and vibrant technical development programme that adds and refines lens and module features.

Where did the idea originate from? Squidoo was the brainchild of Seth Godin, you can learn more the background to Squidoo here.What is Squidoo.

I really enjoy Squidoo. It is good way to do social networking, its a complementary form of blogging, it allows you to share knowledge and know how, and to photo blog as well. My next task is to create 100 lenses.

Has Social Media Ever Changed Business Strategy?

I'm presently in a Social Media - So What? zone We're told that everybody's doing it and that if you're not doing it you seriously ought to consider doing it.

If you need to know the best way to do it then Scott Monty shows how the 'social-media book' industry has swung into overdrive to bombard us with the wisdom of gurus.

Not only that there are gurus telling us which gurus are the most guru-like. I guess this could be called Gurullia Marketing.

Authors and social media I get, Journalism and social media I get, knowledge collaboration I get, but where is the evidence of the direct influence of social media on the way organisations produce products and serve their customers?

Go on. Google it, google anything to do with the impact of Social Media on business strategy and you'll find nothing. You'll find lots about how its the 'new marketing paradigm'(puke), lot's about how to craft the right social media strategy itself, lots about how fantastic it is to listen in conversation and narratives and even...now hold onto your multi-media phones folks...'speak to other human beings!'.

But So What What happens with the accolades and the complaints? what happens with the deep semantic analysis of positive and negative sentiment. Where does it all go? What impact does it have? what changes are made as result?

No one can tell you. Check out academic journals too, there's nothing there!. Not a jot.

Millions of people are blogging and interacting and telling each other 'what' they do with their social media budgets. The really smart people simply spend their time advising others 'what' they should do with their social media budgets. The tools might have changed but has the nature of getting the business job done changed in any substantive sense at all?

Reporting hits, twits, and bits of info is simply that...a description of what 'is'. Where is the sense-making, where are the implications? Are there any implications? What, if anything, are people doing with all of this conversational data?

No one it seems can explain 'how' social media is changing what businesses do in any strategic sense. Have they got smarter? Have they got faster? Have they got smaller? Have they got bigger? Have they become more effective in any way shape or form?

Perhaps Social Media is simply that great big coffee machine in 'the cloud'. A place to idly pass the time chatting with others in an unproductive way at some other guy's expense.

Read More:
Amber Naslund of Altitude Branding take a look at who controls who.

Archbishop Slams Social Networking

via news.bbc.co.uk

Archbishop Vincent Nichols seems to presume that people are gullible when it comes to the majority of us not grasping the adverse impact of social networking. He warns us all in a rather sweeping generalisation that social networking sites, texting and would you believe it e-mails are undermining community life!.

Now lets just run past that again. Modern society is falling apart because of e-mail?! OK...let me ponder on that for a moment. OK...done that and concluded that it sort of runs counter to the evidence given its contribution to long-distance family life and commerce. The same holds true for all other forms of digital communication.

Of course his conjecture will contains grains of truth, and he draws attention to the well worn fact most social media users have been blogging about for years, the well understood phenomenon of 'social networking friendship'

Now, notwithstanding the extreme cases in any large population, I'm pretty confident that most people who have friended and followed me across Twitter, Friend Feed, Blogcatalog, MyBlogLog and so on don't really consider me to their 'bosom buddy'. The label 'friend' in this context is merely an evolved use of the term for use in a social media sitaution. Sure I'm in touch on a regular basis with a handful of fellow bloggers who I've got to know, and I would consider them my 'friend' in the sense of 'pen-pal', and of course we haven't physically 'met'. Nevertheless I do regard them as a social networking Friend (capital 'F'- proper digital friend) not just a social networking friend (lower case 'f'- digital aquaintance)

Had the Archbishop been commenting in previous decades would he have claimed that having 'pen-pals' was socially dysfunctional.?

In his criticism of 'transient' relationships that cause grief and upset when they fall apart. He seems to be describing the common socio-psychological characteristics of any relationship and somehow blaming a technological medium for when they go wrong!! In social networking Trolls and Flamers are socially and psychologically dysfunctional they are not technologically dysfunctional. They would behave as they did in a family, on street, in a village, in a town because that is how they are!.

The Archbishop has missed his target if he has any cause for concern. The clue is in the title. SOCIAL networking. Its the PEOPLE stupid!. The network is merely the technological medium not the attitude and behaviour of its users.

What about all the people who have found enduring relationships through sites like Match.com and so on? People who have traced lost family and friends through Friends Re-United, People who have found work through LinkedIN?

Instead of patronising us by thinking that he can see issues and problems that people less perceptive than himself the Archbishop is foreclosing the opportunity of social networking to his own vocation. Come on 'Bish, you would like to socially influence people about your attitudes and beliefs wouldn't you?, you'd like bigger congregations hearing what you have to say wouldn't you?. Well...just a suggestion...why not consider delivering your message through the medium that a significant number of people choose to use in the 21st century instead of relying on a social networking technology of the the 1st millennium aka the physical Church building. After all isn't the true meaning of Church really about a congregation of people with similar beliefs NOT the physical place they meet!!

Now here's the question. Archbishop Vincent Nichols...will you be my friend?

Posted via web from Gullibimundi

Nothing To Say

Can you write a blog post about nothing? Is this the perfect solution to writers block? The paradox is that as soon as you name something it becomes something. So, am I writing about nothing or am I writing something about nothing?





Jethro Tull's lyrics are interesting

"Nothing To Say"

Everyday there's someone asking
what is there to do?
Should I love or should I fight
is it all the same to you?
No I say I have the answer
proven to be true,
But if I were to share it with you,
you would stand to gain
and I to lose.
Oh I couldn't bear it
so I've got nothing to say.
Nothing to say.

Every morning pressure forming
all around my eyes.
Ceilings crash, the walls collapse,
broken by the lies
that your misfortune brought upon us
and I won't disguise them.
So don't ask me will I explain
I won't even begin to tell you why.
No, just because I have a name
well I've got nothing to say.
Nothing to say.

Climb a tower of freedom,
paint your own deceiving sign.
It's not my power
to criticize or to ask you to be blind
To your own pressing problem
and the hate you must unwind.
So ask of me no answer
there is none that I could give
you wouldn't find.
I went your way ten years ago
and I've got nothing to say.
Nothing to say.


It seems that nothing has been something for thousands of years. Philosophers down the ages have pondered over Nothingness which begins by asking why there is something rather than nothing.

Is this the end to writers block?

Blog Posts Directly via E-Mail

The situation regarding the remaining 3 British hostages looks precarious. The hunt will soon be on for someone to blame http://www.bloggingtoblame.blogspot.com

I've used my e-mail account and  http://www.posterous.com to create this post to see what happens

Posted via email from Reasonable's posterous

Can Posterous Keep Communication Open In Iran?

via news.bbc.co.uk

I'm trying http://posterous.com/ to see how it makes a difference to my blogging. I picked up information about the site from Steve Rubel. You can read more via this link http://www.micropersuasion.com/2009/06/posterous-is-changing-how-i-think-about-blogging.html What I am expecting to happen is that this post using the Posterous book marklet updates my Twitter and Blogger blog automatically, posts and image and converts urls to links. So let's see!

With a Posterous account once it has been set up I can 'attach' my other social media accounts and then update via e-mail. Neat!

Posted via web from Reasonable's posterous

The Fallacy of Blogging Anonymity

It never ceases to amaze me how people overlook the fact that the basic reality of blogging is that it is a highly public endeavour. Many bloggers and social media users nevertheless behave gullibly and assume that because they blog behind the privacy of their PC screen it means they can't be seen by others. This Ostrich behaviour has just claimed its latest victim.

Detective Constable Richard Horton has just been disciplined by his force for blogging as Night Jack A blog that discussed the world of the police service...all in the public interest. What is interesting is that the RSS feed still seems able to read this blog or at least an echo of it because the Snapshot window shows at least four recent posts - including Return of the Lucky and Erm..Hello.

The key thing about this story is that UK courts seem unlikely to protect anonymous bloggers in future should they step on people's toes. Bloggers need to understand that they should communicate on-line like they would communicate face to face. Offence, false accusations, sharing confidential information are all publicly risky things to do.

The solution? - don't bury your head in the sand. You might not be able to see them, but they can see you.On other hand you could try Hide My Ass

Seeing Through The Hype of Social Media

Do you have the feeling that someone is watching you? Is Social Media the death knell of the private individual? How does the rhetoric stack up with the reality?

There is dominant meme that runs through the world of Web 2.0. The meme is...'Social Media Is Good For You'. No matter the specalism journalism, business, hobbies, education, politics, etc you're cutting edge if you 'do it' and a Luddite if you don't.

Social Media will transform your business, Social Media helps you develop and exploit social networks, Social Media means you're never out of touch...It also means you're never out of reach!

The irony is that through Social Media I've just become aware of Two Point Touch Now this blog is right up my street. (Hang on am I proving the Social Media point here? I'd never have known about this if it wasn't for a link via Twitter!)

I really like the posts (Did I really type that!) because they take a more informed view on the Social Media phenomenon. In particular I like the connection to Critical Theory and other critical positions. Check out Surrender Foucault and Twitter There are some other great links that take a provocative view on the 'Social' rather than just the 'Media' too. I would really recommend reading the links in the article, and visit Always Look on The Bright Side of the Downside because it casts a critical gaze at the Social Media Evangelist.

Now, in case you are wondering, there are two main aspects of 'critcial thinking'. One concerns critcism of a phenomenon from the 'outside' The sort of 'wooooh Social Media is evil' perspective and there is what is known as 'immanent' critcism, which comes from particpants in a phenomenon such as Social Media who attempt to protect themselves against hype and un-thinking acceptance of everything that is put before them. I'd like to think I was in the latter camp. The cyber evangelists are just as bad as the luddites. I love Social Media, otherwise I wouldn't be blogging and social networking. I also believe that it has the potential for creating good and releasing talent in every aspect of society. That said, it does have its issues. Its a 'Time Vampire. Walk the dog? or Write the blog? The digital space is full of exactly the same characters as the face to face space too, we'd be gullible if we thought it was any different. There are charlatans and snake oil salesmen, Technological Determinists and Techno-Geeks. They all want a piece of you if you are willing and careless enough to give it.

So, eyes wide open folks! Participate in Social Media and remember there are consequences. Join a Nudist Colony and you can expect people can see your private parts.

Proper Blogging

Can you put your finger on the spirit of blogging? Is that spirit being lost in a blogging world of pro-blogger wannabes, the blog-bites of Twitter, and the discovery of social media by business and media professionals?

With a blog title of Gullibles Travels I just had to check it out obviously, and I recommend that you do too. The thing that struck me as I read was that 'I felt I was reading what I can only decribe as a 'proper blog' here'.The authors personality really came through in the posts. Slightly off beat, a real web- log of personal takes that shed light (well if your latest post was about DST it would wouldn't it!)on a life in Alaska.

Of course there are millions of blogs so what made this particular one 'stand out'? For me it was the engaging style of the writing, warm and chatty, as if you had met the author in a cafe and were shooting the breeze. There are no hidden agendas, no causes to press, no diatribes, no geekery, no I'm OK you're not OK, no get rich quick, just plain story telling.

That's it! Pure narrative. It's as if you are listening rather than reading, invited rather than forced to see the world through the author's eyes, and along the way you learn something.

What have I learned? Well something about life in Alaska, of course, something about the author, and most importantly something about blogging. Blogging done well is something special that fuses two social phenomena, Narrative and Discourse. Without the interplay of these things blogging is souless and inert. Posts become 'shouts' and 'advertorial' rather than conversations and its through conversations that we generate social influence. Thanks to Mville for making the link!

What is Proper Blogging to you?

Read More:
3 Good Reasons To Start A Blog

Social Media and Marketing Mystics

image credit utoldeo.edu

So, what is the truth about social media marketing thought and practice? Does engagement with social media require a new 'paradigm'? does it deliver on its promise?

Cam Beck of Chaos Scenario has posted a thought provoking piece asking if Social Media experts have actually delivered anything for their clients. Are social media marketing people at risk of becoming classed as mystics and soothsayers rather than being regarded as credible business practitioners?

Let me start by explaining my position. I got into the on-line social media world two years ago. My interest was driven by two key factors. I was curious about digital social media as a social phenomenon and I wanted to understand how it applied to the daily practice of marketing (whatever we mean by that).One was a broadly academic interest and the other a management interest. Fusing the two together means that I try and look at digital social media affairs from a 'critical marketing' perspective, not as an outsider (marketing is a wicked and evil profession that promotes consumerism and materialism), but as an insider who has 'done the job' and now researches and educates in the field with an avid interest in new and best practice.

Many of you will be familiar with 'dual process' modes of information processing. In order to think critically about marketing it means that I spend a lot of time in the 'systematic' mode trying to unpack the underlying assumptions people make when they are making their claims for the efficacy of a particular marketing management approach. Warning! doing this a lot can make you really pedantic and you can end up as 'Billy No Mates'. That said, critical marketing is not just about using a marketing method or technique and then assessing what worked, what didn't, and proposing an improved way of doing it. It's being wised up to the the taken for granted assumptions that lie behind what marketing people believe is 'the correct marketing way'

Non-Marketing Managers and management writers often criticise marketing for not being accountable, good at spending money and not too good at demonstrating R.O.I. This is because they are driven by the 'managerialist paradigm'. 'Good' management by this view is objective, rational, planned, logical and evidence based. This view also criticises marketing because it is prone to 'faddism', the sort of conversation that claims 'Twitter is the new Facebook' or 'Collaboration is the new Competition' etc etc. Marketeers who indulge in this line of thinking tend to be information 'splitters', seeking out the differences rather than the sameness and claiming the discovery of something fresh and new that everyone else has missed. They also prey on less critical or informed business minds only too keen get 'that competitive edge'.

Typical of marketing management writers who urge caution when dealing with marketing mystics are Robert Shaw and David Merrick, who recommend maintaining a sceptical gaze when looking at people who claim to possess special insight into the workings of the customer mind and who treat Branding as messing with Barbarella's ogasmatron! Similarly managerialist writers such as Emperor Kotler take great pains to ensure that marketing has scientific credibility, and tend to airbrush out of the picture emotions and perceptions as a crucial aspect of the marketing job. (See how face to face selling and marketing communications are relegated to aspects of the marketing mix in this type of writing)

One of the ironies of being a marketing professional is, like us or loathe us the vast majority of people see us being particularly skilled in social influence. The public face of marketing IS face to face selling and marketing communications! By definition this means we have to be involved in all aspects of rhetoric, the pathos (emotion, perception, experience) the ethos (authenticity and responsibility) not just the logos (method and measurement).

For me digital social media is a crucial dimension of modern marketing that should resist having the soul beaten out of it by the logisticians. Throughout history whatever the organisation, commercial or public service, whoever the trader one man band or big corporate people with something to sell (idea, product, service)have been in the business of connecting with human beings and conducting conversations. Does this mean that it is unaccountable? No! of course not.

Social media marketeers don't necessarily have to deliver a direct 'cause and effect' sales result. They can be measured in terms of influence and engagement. Creating conversational arenas, the tone of the dialogue, the shaping of thought are fundamental aspects of marketing effectiveness too. A social media strategy is about creating a space in which the organisation and its representatives become respected for their thought and opinion leadership. Once social trust has been created then people will trust your products and services. This is not new! How often have you heard people say 'this is a people business you know'

So, in response to the question 'what have you done for me lately social media expert' you will do well if you are an honest broker. You are critical of faddism and mysticism, you ensure there is ethical robustness between conversational claims and product and service feature and benefits and you skillfully construct appealing and dynamic social spaces in the minds of the people you seek to influence.

What do you think?

Read More:
Green Comunications Blogs About 'The Emperors New Clothes

And straight from the hip is...
Wolf-Howl a great post about social media 'b.s.' and false gods and idols. ^5.

Personal Reputation And Privacy In The Digital Space

There seems to be a bit of a buzz at the moment about how we manage our reputations and privacy in the digital space. Cam Beck has just written a great post about How to Avoid the Perils of Blended Networks I agree with Cam and everyone who says it's an important topic. Where I differ slightly is on the matter of whether we are dealing with a strange and new phenomenon. In my comment on Cam's article I suggest forgetting about the technology, and delighting in the novelty and navigation complexity of the digital space and just get back to simple social common sense.

Just reading through these 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources to Protect Your Online Reputation its clear that digital technology provides us with a host of challenges and tools to help us. Check out Mihaela's post about how SearchWiki Fuels Defamation too.

At the end of the day though, I think that we're really gullible if we believe that we aren't being followed, searched for, and tracked. That's what the whole digital space is about isn't it?

As a mind-game I'm tempted to ask 'where is the difference' between what we do today with our Facebooks, Plaxos, Friend Feeds, Twitters, Second Brains, Mixx's, Reddits, Stumbleupons. etc etc that is any different from life in the early twentieth century, the sixteen hundreds, Roman times? We are social animals and the fundamentals of our communication interactions has not changed for thousands of years. Reputation, Privacy, and Indiscretion have always been with us and always will be.

We talk of the global village. Perhaps we should behave like we actually live in a village then! A place where people know all about our comings and goings and the ways we think and behave.

Swish those digital net curtains folks. Thinking that we are special by giving the digital experience a new special name like 'Blended Media' simply distracts us from the point. Maybe we should aspire to getting the people we connect with to remeber that people will always ask... "Who was is that Masked Man?"

Read more:
Pamil-Visions

My Digg Duggout

Its happened to me again:( I thought I had spotted a juicy headline to Digg about Romans being gassed by Persians off the BBC

I bookmarked it using Onlywire...although it doesn't seem to connect :(

Anyhow when checking Digg I saw that again, someone had Dugg the story a full five hours after me and got a massive number (well 300 ish) Diggs.

Help!! where am I going wrong

Confessions Of A Digg Virgin

I've been spending a bit of time developing my Digg skills. Well at least I thought so. I spotted a news article about a find of Iron Age coins worth a bob or two in Suffolk and thought 'ideal' I'll be the first to Digg this, what a star!

So I did, that was I day five hours ago and today I was checking Digg out and I saw someone else had Dugg the article just over an hour ago.

The difference? I have got 1 Digg, no comments and Imbanksy gets 333 Diggs and 33 comments. So what's the game? Where did I go wrong? Changing the article title, forgetting to 'shout' my friends?

It seems like its Influence rather than Initiative that scores goals on Digg :)

Building A Squidoo Lens Portfolio

I've been spending more time recently developing my Squidoo lens portfolio. If you don't know, Squidoo is a site that lets you build information blogs on topics of your choosing. The Squidoo site then monetizes your lens by placing relevant adverts around your content, and each lens is supported by a suit of analytics to help you track your effectiveness.

Think of it as electronic scrap booking. Each lens is made up of modules which are provided for you to add a host of different types of content ranging from your own text, amazon book recommendations, wikipedia content, blog feeds and a whole host of others.

I joined Squidoo some 18 months ago and built two lenses, which sort of lay fallow until the other month. I averaged about 20 visitors a month. I now have over 30 lenses and I'm averaging 170 visitors a week and growing.

There is also a vibrant Squidoo community and ways to cross link to Facebook, Stumble, Digg and so on.

I've really seen significant changes in the visitors to my portfolio after thinking for some time that I'd been a bit gullible in joining. My current top lenses are:

How To Become An Air Guitar Expert

The Border Reivers an ancestry resource about the unique clans that lived on the English and Scottish borders

How To Open A Bottle of Champagne With A Sword

For a quick preview of my lenses you can see them here too My Squidoo Lens

How Do I Become A Success?

Is there a formula for personal success and if there is where do you find it? Once the penny of gullibility drops and you realise that there never was a direct correlation between hard work and success, or talent and success, then the hunt for something else starts.

Many of the Life Hacks that you bump into on the net are ken to persuade us that they have the magic approach, the correct mental attitude, the insight that has been secretly hidden from view until they came along to help.

I've just been reading some more grounded stuff from Kevin Hogan and Steven Reiss which looks at our fundamental human drives.

A key drive involves where you sit in relation to being Competitive or Co-operative. Their information about these two drives is very interesting, and crucial to answering the question 'how do I become a success'. This is because your success is as much about what people think of you as it about about what they think about themselves.

Many people lean towards helping others as the route to get on in life. The 'helpful gene' is buried deep in our DNA and has evolved to maximise immediate benefit by co-operating with potential adversaries. There is a problem with this though.

Competitive people who see themselves as 'Go getters', 'Top dogs', Winners, Hard Nosed, see co-operative people as failures, losers, lacking assertiveness. This means that if you try and ingratiate yourself with a competitive type they will simply regard you as weak. You will not benefit in any way from their success.

Being successful means standing up for yourself and what you believe. This should not be confused with selfishness. You can also use this information to influence and persuade people to buy into your ideas, buy your products or buy your services by checking what 'mode' they are in. If they come across as having a competitive attitude position yourself as competitive too, and show what you 'know, 'have' 'can do' will help them continue to win.

People succeed by looking after their interests first. This enables them to look after other people (should they choose) from a position of strength and abundance.

Influencing, Duping and Misleading Blog Readers

image credit A Beautiful Revolution

















I've just been messing about with a few blogging tools. The first is Google Battle which I used to see which keywords come up most. I was interested to see that Dupe beats Gullible and that Influencing beats Persuading, so including them in the title is a bit of an experiment.

The second tool was Google Trends I've never used this before, so as a bit of fun I thought I'd compose a blog inspired by the top ten trend terms to see what happens:

Well it seems that end of the year can find your soullow this can happen when the temprature drops soullow that your find that your zune frozen. If this happens you don't want to go the way of Todd Doxey and the simplist way to avoid this is to make sure you have reset zune. Once you have done this you can turn your attention to the more important things in life such as wondering if the words Dane Cook Married is really a sentence, however reaching a conclusion on this is about as likely as winning the Idaho Lottery. If that is the case then you might consider watching Bachelor Party 2 instead, which might be one of the super solutions for a prosperous New Year, especially if your Idaho Raffle ticket comes in which would make you almost as rich as Barbara Streisand

Well I hope this has been a positive influence on your day and that you don't think you have been duped and mislead! Happy New Year Blogsters!