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If you want to boost traffic to your site, become recognized as a leading authority in the blogosphere and make lots of money, then the list offered here is a must-read. If you’re not blogging about blogging, Twittering about FriendFeed, FriendFeeding about FriendFeed, or Plurking on and off and then Twittering about Plurking on and off, you will fail as a blogger.

Successful bloggers must stand out. Distinguish yourself. If you don’t stand out, you’ll be stood up. So what can you do to avoid being stood up?

There are several ways to avoid being stood up by your readers. But to help you best your focus and your passion for blogging about blogging, here are the 13 Blog Topics that will boost your readership 40,404%:

1. Write an interesting blog post about blogging
2. Write a post detailing 23 ways to use Twitter
3. Write a post about FriendFeed and Robert Scoble
4. Write a post about how FriendFeed is better than Twitter
5. Tweet your post about FriendFeed being better than Twitter.
6. Write an interesting blog post about how to write an interesting post about blogging
7. Make sure that FriendFeed is pulling in your Tweets and tell your readers which service updates first
8. Offer a “Best Of” post with an introduction about how to SEO the title of your “Best Of” post
9. Post about the pitfalls of a guest blogger
10. Have a guest blogger write a post on your blog
11. Survey your readers about why Twitter is still flapping its wings after of these crashes
12. Write a post about why FriendFeed and Twitter can’t be compared after all
13. Write a post about the how Twitter and FriendFeed are ruining metablogging, comments and your productivity

If you keep these 13 Blog Topics at your fingertips, you won’t be stood up. You’ll stand out. And so will your competition.

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Obviously, I’m goofing around here. And I’m not maliciously picking on any one or group of bloggers. Most of the meta bloggers are doing an invaluable and rermarkable service to the blogging community and this post should not be taken as a slight on those professionals by any means. Still, it’s fun to meta blog. Which is what this post is doing, ironically.

Happy blogging! Ciao!

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, metablogging, Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, traffic, money

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Tags: Blogging, Web 2.0 by Phil Baumann
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The answer is long, so I won’t really give it here.

Twitter’s the latest craze. It’s a strange thing too because so much is being blogged about it and so many people are stumped as to what Twitter is for. Google “Twitter” and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

As I said, I won’t give my answer yet. Instead I’ll let Andy Rooney mention something:

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.

If Twitter can save lives, then it might be necessary. I have an idea I’m nursing. If you follow me, maybe I’ll Tweet it.

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Tags: Blogging, Web 2.0, technology by Phil Baumann

After listening to the webinar presented by authors Chjarlene Li and Josh Bernoff of groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies, I have more faith that more of Corporate America will embrace the promises of the new marketing approaches possible with Web 2.0. Groundswell offers a good segue into social marketing for businesses that have yet to catch up.

I listed some of the key points the presenters made over at ReadWriteWeb. Essentially, they advocate an approach to marketing that emphasizes people first followed by clear objectives with an intelligent strategy using appropriate technology. Their acronym for this approach is POST. (I guess when you blog, your POSTs should keep these steps in mind–not a bad meme for blogging general by the way.)

They also discussed the analogues of the roles of traditional marketing with the objectives of groundswell:

• Research by listening to your customers on your blogs, forums, groups, etc.
• Market by talking with your customers on your chosen web platforms
• Sell your products or services by energizing your customers
• Support your efforts and customers with the right kinds of supporting technlogies
• Develop your business needs by embracing your customers through the new platforms

All of this is common sense really. But Forrester Research, the firm that Charlene and Josh’s represent, provides a remarkable service to business executives who need to get up to speed with the merciless curve of change coming down on all enterprises.

I’d love to see more of the kinds of services emerge because those businesses which “get the web” (e.g. those who “get” Seth Godin’s attitude on marketing) will thrive. Heck, I’d love to get into this business myself because I really want to see the fundamental projects of capitalism and democracy succeed.

An acquaintance of mine recently attended a presentation by the Charlene and Josh and came away very impressed with their personable, approachable style and felt that her company could greatly benefit from what they have to say. Ultimately, successful adopters will realize the enormous potential offered by the socialization of billions of people and the dangers of misplaced attempts.

Groundswell is an excellent start for newbies and pros. I plan to offer a succinct review of their book in a future post. In the meantime please visit their sleek blog and start your groundswelling campaign the right way.

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Tags: Blogging, Business, Web 2.0, technology by Phil Baumann

One of my purposes in blogging is to evangelize our need to promote remarkable capitalism in a time of unremarkable consumerism. As a registered nurse and a former accountant, I think I have a unique perspective on just how vital ethical customer service is to the well-being of us all. And it’s my belief that marketing is everything. To that end, I’d like to talk about something we are all (sadly) familiar with: terrible customer service. It’s a critical topic because it infiltrates everything we interact with: businesses, careers, healthcare, government, religion, even dating.

While posting a comment on James Lowery’s Performancing on how some blogs are now tyring to force readers to view advertising or pay a subscription for the privaledge of ad-free reading, a metaphor for 20th century marketing inspired by Stanley Kurbrick’s 60’s classic hit me.

I call it Clockwork Orange Marketing. It’s really interruption marketing but with a little more force added to it. You know what Clockwork Orange Marketing is. It’s when businesses decide that the only way to generate cash is to force customers to watch a video, join a mailing list, tolerate telemarketing calls at dinner, deny website/blog visitors entry if they use AdBlock Plus, or a mind-numbing array of suicidal marketing weapons businesses feel obligated to point at every prospect.

Businesses, I suppose, generally have a right to commit these blunders. But nobody climbs Mount Remarkable just by stepping over their own rights. No, the way to the top is difficult and the only way there is through doing the hard work of pacing the whole way up. It requires vision, discipline, creativity, pliant focus, awareness and gratitude to teachers and other climbers along the way. Clockwork Orange Marketing requires none of these virtues. Why do the remarkable when you can strap on black boots and kick your customers into submission? It worked for 20th Century Fascists…until American air power leveled them all. So much for force as a long-term strategy for running a state.

The whole point of business, its fundamental going concern, is all about one word: awareness. That’s what marketing is about. That’s what hard work is about. That’s what customer service is about. If you’re not aware, then what are you? Isn’t the whole business of life all about awareness? How can any of us have fun just by being replaceable cogs in mindless contraptions? How much better would business be, would our economy be, our educational system be, our religious institutions be, our lives be, if we ditched the fear-driven paradigms that run most of what we do?

Fear is not a strategy. It’s a fallacy. And yet most businesses run on fear: fear of losing customers if they don’t forcefully funnel them into their offerings; fear of taking risks on better ways of doing things; fear of losing a few points in the stock market at the expense of long-term wealth. Risk is for grownups. Safety is for kids.

And so what is a common response in businesses to this sense of fear: Clockwork Orange Marketing.

But the problem is this. In this century, when customers can find your competitors online, through social networking, through blogging, and down along the Long Tail, forcing your customers to do things without even establishing their trust in you kills all of your chances at outsourcing your marketing department to your customers. Isn’t that the kind of outsourcing every business leader should have as a primary goal? Just how much of our business leadership has deep-seated effects rooted in child-abuse? (You’d be surprised.)

If you’re reading this post, would you do our world a favor? Would you please blog about Clockwork Orange Marketing? Could we spread this meme around the web? I want this world to be more remarkable than it is so that my toddler will be able to bring forth remarkable things into this world instead of having to fight his way out of a Stanley Kubrick nightmare.

Please tell the world about the war we need to fight against Clockwork Orange Marketing. We and our youth deserve much better.

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Tags: Blogging, Business by Phil Baumann

I installed a widget from Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities and it confirmed my suspicions about the dollar value of my blog. According to the API my blog is worth precisely $0.00:

It raises a very good question about the whole purpose of blogging. How much is a blog worth? If it’s monetized, you certainly could generate a pleasing stream of cash flows through ecommerce or advertising.

But there are non-monetary values to blogging, all of which derive from the many purposes of blogging. I’ve been blogging for a very short time, but I have enjoyed the little writing I have done. What’s more, the whole process has forced me to come up to speed fairly quickly on the available tools for publishing and has opened me up to the the possibilities and challenges of web connectivity.

A friend of mine asked me the other day how many visitors I get to my blog. I hadn’t run Google Analytics recently enough to give him an answer but the latest analysis reveals less than 100 since this blog’s inception. His question, though, led me to Dane’s widget and when I ran it and it returned “Your blog is worth $0.00″ I loved it! Zero is a nice round figure. If I decide to seriously zap the blog with focused monetization strategies, I’ll be curious to know what the widget says later on as my blogging continues.

But the question “What is your blog worth” is a actually deeper than a simple matter of monetary value of a blog. There is the matter of personal branding. Most of us were taught to go to a good school, get a good job and maintain a good resume. And most of us followed directions very well and we got into good schools, got good jobs and maintain good resumes. And yet, wouldn’t the more valuable instruction to us have been: brand yourself? The question “How much is your personal blog worth” is getting at your success in branding who you are. If I had to do things differently in my career I would have ditched the resume and gone for branding. I grew up listening to people who didn’t have resumes: Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Steve Marriott, the members of Pink Floyd and The Who and Jefferson Airplane and the list goes on. These names were brands. Remarkable brands. How much were those brands worth? I’m guessing a lot more than what they would have been if those folks were resumes.

So today my blog is worth $0.00, which is to say that my brand needs some work. Perhaps that’s why I’m blogging: to forge my voice and establish my reputation. Isn’t that what a brand is, a mark of voice and reputation? Sure it is. Certainly a blog is worth more than its sales price. How long will it take for blogs to be just as important to employers and business as resumes? As long as it takes employers and businesses to figure out that a blog is a far more three-dimensional measure of a personal brand than a resume.

So the value of a blog matters I think. Whether that value can be expressed in dollars may or may not be the important thing. But for me, if the money follows, well that leaves more toys to play with. And if the well stays dry, then at least I’ll have the key ingredients of a personal brand: a voice and a reputation.

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Tags: Blogging by Phil Baumann