Marketing Hipster

This might be me being dumb (huge possibility) but am I wrong that with the recent changes to Technorati that you cannot sort your search results by the authority numbers and only by the date? Please tell me if I am incorrect cause I cannot find where I can sort by the authority numbers. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Technorati Tags: Technorati

Hey folks – as you probably noticed I have changed the look and feel of the site.  I have been playing with it for a little while and I thought this look and feel would give me an opportunity to do a few things I have planned for the site in the coming weeks.  Any thoughts or feedback you might have, please do not hesitate to speak up.

I also finally updated my blogroll.  I have been meaning to do it for quite a while, but I didn’t get to it till now.  I have added a number of new links to some great blogs and authors that I have gotten to know through both them commenting here as well as the great writing they are doing on their own blogs.  I definitely recommend you checking out some of their great work.

If just by chance, I have not listed your blog and you believe that is a mistake, please feel free to add a comment below and I will absolutely take it into consideration.  Thanks.

I have gotten tagged a couple of times recently and I have been behind in responding to them, my apologies. I thought I would bang out all my tag responses all in one post. Ok, here it goes, in order of when I was tagged.

Antman tagged me on a Magazine Meme asking what magazines do you read on a daily basis. Here’s my list in no particular order:

1. Time
2. Newsweek
3. Wired
4. BusinessWeek
5. AdvertisingAge
6. OMMA
7. Red Herring (Now online)

That’s about it, most of the stuff like many others, I just read all online and don’t get the actual magazine. Thanks for the tag Antman and thank you for your kind words in your shout-out.

Marty tagged me for a 5 Goals Meme. My top 5 goals at the moment again in no particular order:

1. Get off the ground the couple of start-up ideas that I have been thinking and mapping out for WAY too long.
2. Move into the next phase with several of my clients so that we could really start doing some interesting things.
3. Spend more time in the personal life and spend less time thinking about work or other things when I actually am enjoying my personal time.
4. Be healthier! Start taking better care of myself. I am not a young pup anymore.
5. Start going to more conferences.

Thanks Marty for the tag!

And finally, Matt tagged me for the 5 Top Reasons I Blog. Here’s my list:

1. To be apart of an incredibly interesting and exciting community.
2. To continually learn and improve my skill sets in any number of different ways.
3. A reason to write, without this blog I would not be writing close to as much because I am lazy and that is not good.
4. I love the opportunity blogging provides me that on any given day I could meet someone new who will interest me and hopefully teach me something.
5. I like holding both people and companies accountable for their actions. Blogging allows me to share my opinions when things are done right and when they are not.

Thanks Matt for the tag.

UPDATE: I am sorry, I missed Meg’s tag. I think my link checker skipped over Australia. I am sorry Meg. Meg tagged me to choose 5 blogs that make me think. That is a tough one as so many do, but here is a list off of the top of my head.

1. Andy Beard – Great content, well written articles, but he makes me crazy with this PPP stuff.
2. Sean Howard – CrapHammer is always well written and makes me think even though he is in Canada.
3. Steven Phenix – 10,000 Marshmallows is a site I was recently introduced to and Steven provides some good insight and articles that make you ponder.
4. FranticIndustries – Another recent addition to my RSS Reader. Well written and knowledgeable posts that I have been enjoying recently.
5. Brains on Fire – A blog that I have read for a long time, but for some reason never really mention. I like how many of their authors provide great information, but do it with heart.

I am going to do this. Instead of tagging specific people, I am going to have an open invite to any and all who reads this to take a meme! If one sounds interesting to you, you’re tagged, run with it, make it yours. Thanks.

Technorati Tags: tagged, Meme, magazine, Goals, community

Ah wishes, I am a big fan of wishes. I wish all the time. I wish when I don’t even realize I am wishing. For example, yesterday I was driving and this old person who I think was actually dead, but just did not realize it yet, was driving in front of me. He was driving so slow, I think I could of gotten out of my car and walked by him on foot. As I am not a man who was given the gift of patience, I began to wish that I had some sort of laser or guided missle or maybe a grenade launcher that I could just press a button on my dash and BAM!!! No more old person in front of me. Ahhhh, if wishes could be true.

Anyway, this got me thinking of something that I have been noodling around with in my head for a while now and I thought who best to ask their thoughts and opinions on than the Hipster faithful.. So here is a challenge and question for you today and if you decide to accept this mission, I would appreciate your thoughts and feedback in the comments.

The Challenge:

Every blogger has a different reason why they blog. For some it is strictly a business for them. A place to hopefully supplement or become their income. For others, they enjoy the writing, the community and the feeling of being apart of something. Finally, I think others just enjoy being able to put their thoughts to paper as it were. While I think for many we share several of those traits, I think one thing that all of these types have in common is the desire to have their thoughts and opinions read and shared with others. If you are going to take the time needed to create a successful blog, you would like people to come and share that with you. Makes sense so far?

There are a great deal of opportunities to get your blog noticed. This could include social networks sites like a digg or reddit, to blogging communities like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog then there is social bookmarking like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. And let’s not forget the always great search engines and natural search results.

The Question(s):

With all these opportunities out there, what is presently missing? What would you change? What would your blogging community look like? If you wished to run MyBlogLog what would you want it to be? The sky is the limit folks, make a wish and let me know your thoughts.

The Prize:

Ooooh, there’s a prize? Yea why not, I just thought of it. The person who I feel has given the best ideas and made the best comments will have win the following:

For one solid week, the winner will receive top billing on Marketing Hipster. Right where the Bloggers Choice Awards icon is presently sitting, will be a short write up about your blog with a link to your blog. The winner will also be able to update that spot with news on a specific post the blogger wants to call attention to. That’s some good traffic being driven to your site!!

So get on your thinking caps and start thinking outside the box. Remember wishes have no boundaries.

I greatly appreciate your comments

Technorati Tags: wishes, blogger, community, digg, reddit, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, social bookmarking, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Marketing Hipster

Recently between meeting with some perspective clients and a presentation I am doing next week, I have been in PowerPoint Hell for the last couple of weeks. I have never been a fan of PP and it amazes me that with all the technological innovations we have been accomplishing recently and just how fast things are moving, there is not a comparable product to PowerPoint for the PC?

There have been rumors that Google will be coming out with a PP type product just as they have done for Word and Excel and I absolutely welcome that. I also hear that PP 2007 is suppose to be much better, but I am not holding my breath for that.

Question: For your presentations, do you use anything other than PowerPoint? And yes, for all you Mac people out there, I know you use Keynote and Keynote is so much better, blah, blah, blah. That does not help me as I use a PC and that will not be changing.

Technorati Tags: PowerPoint, PC, Google, Word, Excel, Keynote

Tim O’Reilly has created and posted a Blogger’s Code of Conduct. I am assuming this has been driven from the whole Kathy Sierra-Chris Locke Incident. I have added a link to go to Tim’s page, but here is the whole code of conduct.

We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.

We are committed to the “Civility Enforced” standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it.

We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
- is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
- is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
- infringes upon a copyright or trademark
- violates an obligation of confidentiality
- violates the privacy of others

We define and determine what is “unacceptable content” on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]

2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.

3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.

When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved–or find an intermediary who can do so–before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.

When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we’ll tell them so (privately, if possible–see above) and ask them to publicly make amends.
If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn’t withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.

5. We do not allow anonymous comments.

We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.

6. We ignore the trolls.

We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don’t veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them–”Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

He has created a badge that a blogger will be able to post on their site to show that this code of conduct will be enforced. It looks like this.

Wooh doggie, there’s a new sheriff in town.

He also added a second badge for an “anything goes” site. He writes:

This is an open, uncensored forum. We are not responsible for the comments of any poster, and when discussions get heated, crude language, insults and other “off color” comments may be encountered. Participate in this site at your own risk.

And this “anything goes” site has it’s own badge:

Like JJ use to say, “DYNOMITE!”

I am sorry, but I think this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life. We don’t need to put rules down somewhere on how people should act. If they do not know how to act by now, they sure are not going to learn it from a code of conduct. More importantly, the last thing we need in the real or web world’s is more rules telling us how we should act, say or do. Just like in the real world, people need and should be held accountable for their actions with or without a code of conduct.

This works both ways… As a blog owner, I am responsible for what I write and I am also responsible for what comments I allow on my blog. It has not happened yet, but if a commentor would write something that I consider slanderous, hurtful, racist, etc. I have every right to either delete the comment or most likely, I would contact the commentor and speak to them on how this might be put in a better way.

Just like I have my responsibilities, readers and commentators have their own responsibilities and when it comes to this blog, each person is held accountable for what they write.

I am sorry Tim, but the last thing we need are more rules, guidelines or anything else. Your idea has good thoughts behind it, but this is something that I absolutely disagree with and will not participate in. Also, I think the badges are hokey to say the least and the sheriff’s badge could be offensive to people inside and outside of the US.

Technorati Tags: Tim O’Reilly, Blogger’s Code of Conduct, Civility Enforced, harass, stalk, threaten

Andy Beard posted an in-depth article on the Blogger’s Choice Awards. I went over to the site to check it out and saw that Andy’s blog was in the lead for the Best Marketing Blog award. I am a huge fan of Andy Beard’s. I believe Andy offers some of the most interesting, well written and most relevant marketing information out on the web today. I also believe that Andy does not get the attention he rightfully deserves in the blogosphere.

And if that was not enough, Andy is also a great guy so I recommend checking out Andy’s blog and then click here and vote for Andy as the top marketing blog!

Technorati Tags: Andy Beard, Blogger’s Choice Awards, Best Marketing Blog

On hump day, here are some links that I found helpful and just maybe you will too….

Alex Iskold from Read/Writeweb has a great a post on the Future of RSS. The article gives the history of RSS, how it actually works and what possible future RSS has. As Alex mentions in his article which I agree, RSS is simply a hack and even though it has been convenient for reading feeds, I believe it will be morphing many times in the future to truly deliver what we will be asking for.

Andy Beard has created a recap page of anything and everything that he has written about during the month of March. Including some WordPress hacks he has done, top WordPress plugins, articles focusing on making money with your blog and much much more. I am sure many of you are familiar with Andy, but if you are not a regular reader of his, I absolutely recommend you sign-up for his RSS feed today. He offers some of the most in-depth and valuable information out there in my opinion.

Robin Stanton from Adotas has an interesting article on Co-registration and how it might be coming back into favor. I found this interesting as I have been looking into this market and trying to learn the in’s and out’s.

And finally, Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress has written, in my opinion, the definitive guide to what makes or breaks a blog – The Writing. She has posted a great article on ProBlogger with 30 things to think about before you sit down and write. This is a must read for any blogger.

I hope you find this as helpful as I did. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: links, RSS, Andy Beard, WordPress, Co-registration, Lorelle VanFossen, Lorelle on WordPress, ProBlogger

A question I have been going back and forth in my mind about is whether blogs that do nothing other than aggregate other people’s content is a good thing? It seems that as the blogosphere grows larger every day, there are more and more content aggregator sites that offer no original content of their own and just pull content from other sites.

On the one hand, picking a specific niche and pulling in content on that niche sounds like a valuable tool for readers interested in a specific industry. I think a perfect example is a site like Techmeme. A very popular technology site that just pulls content from any and all tech related posts.

Though I know there are bloggers out there who feel that a site that offers absolutely no original content of their own and is just copying and pasting from another site is not offering anything of value.

So what do you think? Are these aggregator sites helpful because you can find all the information in one place or as a fellow blogger do you feel they are not offering anything of value except the hard work and skill someone else has put into their blog? Comment and let me know your thoughts.

Technorati Tags: content aggregator, Techmeme

This weekend I got caught up with my RSS reader and spent several hours reading articles that I just did not have the chance to read last week. One subject that was discussed in the blogosphere is this whole A, B, C list blogger thing. I don’t really know what to call it other than a thing. The discussions varied from certain “A-List Bloggers” either being defensive and defending themselves to bloggers trying to prove that they earned their “A-List Blogger” status.

For the record, I am far from an “A-List Blogger” which is maybe why while I was reading several of these posts, only one thought kept popping into my mind:

WHO GIVES A DAMN?!?!?!?!?!

I don’t really want to spend a whole lot of time on this subject, but I did want to raise one important point. Whether you have an RSS readership of thousands or just launched a blog yesterday, it does not matter. There is one constant that will never change in the blogosphere which is if you create something that people will want to read, watch and/or listen to, the traffic will come. If you offer something that strikes a chord with a user (no pun intended), your message will get out via other blogs and all of a sudden you will wake up one day and you just might be an A-List Blogger.

Technorati Tags: A-List Blogger