Monthly Archives: July 2009

Writing a good wordpress blog

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Writing a good wordpress blog isnt something that happens overnight.  It takes time, dedication and passion to succeed.  Heres a few points to consider when you begin your blogging journey.

Good WordPress blogs have a message and focus

A good blog has an aim, an opinion, a theme which it sticks to and addresses or a field it works within. Stick to the subject and make it rich and relevant to make it successful.  Blogs on football that talk about cuisine wont work.  Its that simple.  Your readers want to read about you and your subject specifically and not unrelated subject material.

Good WordPress blogs require dedication

Blogs require an investment. Good Blogs require a serious investment that can border on obsession.  You get out what you put in when you blog, it really is that simple and while it may take time for rewards to become apparent but the passion you invest will pay dividends, it all depends on what you want out of it that quantifies the reward.

Good WordPress Blogs inform

A blog is nothing if it does not inform.  Much like the newspapers of yesterday, blogs are a means of imparting opinion and valuable subject matter with the aim of informing others about that subject in question.  The way you write and the amount of personality you apply to your blog writing will and should come naturally and will help differenciate you from other similar subject blogs.

Good WordPress Blogs use constructed formatting

Write your wordpress blog with the reader in mind.  Long blocks of text and distracting colours and backgrounds make it harder for the reader to consume the information you write.  Dont make it hard for your readers.  Split the text into manageable chunks (paragraphs!) and use H1 and H2 tages to create specific sets of subject matter.  Semantic markeup helps both readers and search engines. Read Semantic HTML and Search Engine Optimisation for more info.

Good WordPress Blogs load quickly

The load time of your blog is of extreme importance.  No one wants to wait online so make a point of checking your blog load time regularly and making moves to optimise it and speed it up.  Faster loading blogs have lower bounce rates and offer greater satisfaction to visitors.  Check this post out for tips on WordPress Blog load speed.

Good WordPress Blogs are simple

Keep it mean and keep it clean. Dont take away from the content is a major key to creating a good blog.  There is no need whatsoever to divert visitors away from specific content but rather it should all flow and be consistant in form and structure.  The more “noise” you add the more digression from the important factor, the content. Just dont get boring.

Good WordPress Blogs inspire

A good wordpress blog inspires others to begin blogging.  While you have your passion others will want to share their passion also and your work can inspire them to begin the journey of writing and formulating opinion in their own blog.  Feel proud of that when it happens.

Good WordPress Blogs never stop growing

A Good wordpress blog will change…ALOT.  It should happen gradually though.  No one likes coming back to a blog that has the theme changed on a daily basis. Editing, adding and changing are part and parcel of the blogging world and with new plugins being developed and technology, markets and subjects in a constant state of flux there is no way that a blog should remain unchanged over a period of time. Grow your blog.

Good WordPress Blogs belong to you

Its your blog, make it your own.  No one can tell you what it should be and how it should be wrote or what opinion you should have.  Thats exactly what makes you different and of course interesting. Your blog belongs to you, so make it yours.

No Internet in Spain

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I have been without internet at my place of work now for about 7 days and it has been absolute hell. Its like being a Taxi driver with a car and no petrol.  Im currently infringing on a good friend to be able to continue working and saying up to date with my commitments but the situation is far from ideal.

Lesson learnt though.

I have ordered two telephone lines with two different providers now as a redundency solution in case this happens in the future but Im just waiting for the first line to be come active.  Im not sure how this works in other countries but it seems to be a long winded and complicated affair, unnecessicarily so in my opinion, here in Spain.

To cancel one contract you have to send faxes and letters with copies of offiicial identification and confirmation of cancellation, something that takes up to 15 days!  While this is going on you are waiting for a router from the new ISP to arrive which takes 10 days.  In the meantime your stuck with no option but to piggyback on someone elses line or shift all your work to a temporary location with a connection. An incredibly disruptive operation, especially if you work exclusively online and are internet relient.

I dont see any need for all this complicated process but it seems to be inherent in the system here in Spain.  I think sometimes that Spain is actually spelt with a small S and a capital P… sPain.

A little communication

I will be writing up an explanation of all the phone calls, frustrations and conversations had while being bounced about between companies and the feelings of anger and even depression as the situation progresses with no end in sight.  If there ever was the need for companies to take note and realise the value in communication, it is ironically, with the providers of that same service.

So much value could be added and satisfaction increased with a little time taken to call and say “We are working on it. Sorry for the delay”. But I will analyise wthis later on when I get my teeth into the full rant!

Right now im returning to looking at both my door and phone alternatively, hoping beyond hope that the postman will arrive with my router or someone will call to tell me its all been arranged and sorted out. Aye right…

Eat spam Twitter bot!

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As you may, or may not be aware, twitter updated the email notifications a while back to display more information about new followers you have received on your account.

Im hoping that they will expand upon this a little more to make the process of following people back a little simpler and also  to help weed out and spot twitter spam accounts and twitter bots, the true bane of using twitter effectively.

(I cannot and will not go into a rant on this post detailing how much I hate this and how adverse its effects are, that’s for another day, one which might just include a hangover).

The Original Twitter notification email

In the first instance (back in the day..I cant believe I’m saying that) you would have got a plain text email from twitter notifying you that someone is now following you, it looked like this:

Hi, justinparks.

Scott Stratten (unmarketing) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out unmarketing’s profile here:

http://twitter.com/unmarketing

You may follow unmarketing as well by clicking on the “follow” button.

Best,
Twitter

–
Turn off these emails at: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Now obviously, there’s no information in this email at all except the name and username, so to check that user out I have to click the links go to the profiles, read their bio, location and info, decide if they are a bot, spammer or even just plain interesting  in order that I can decide to follow them back or not.

The example above is NOT a twitter bot or twitter spammer in any way, its Scott Stratten and he’s someone I would highly recommend, he’s just unlucky enough to be used as an example and I just wanted to clarify that.

The Current Twitter notification email

So that email notification above is now obsolete.  Twitter created a new email notification format and I got the first one through on Friday the 8th May 2009 and here’s an example below and one that you are all no doubt familiar with.

ProBlogger (Darren Rowse) is now following your updates on Twitter.

A little information about ProBlogger:

Eat spam Twitter bot!69,854 followers
12,930 updates
following 40,501 people

The Twitter Team

Turn off these emails at: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Great! Everyone rejoiced at the new information included in the email.

At a glance now we can all see who this new follower is, what they look like (bald with specs in this case, sorry Darren, your an Ozzie though so I’m sure you can handle a bit of “making the mick” :)), the number of followers, how many they are following and the number of updates they have made.

But the same problems still exists as the in the original twitter notification email.  This information doesn’t help us decide if we want to follow this person back, and indeed we shouldn’t base that decision on this information alone, in fact its almost misleading!

Again, Problogger isn’t a spammer or bot, he’s cool.  Would also recommend you follow him if you’re into becoming a blogger.

What we really need in Twitter notification emails

In my opinion we need a little more help from twitter in the notification email department. First things first, I would love to see the other normal information included that’s already available on the users twitter page, this means, show me the location and their bio.

The only reason that I can think of that twitter would not want to include this is to encourage us to visit the profile pages physically, and that’s fair enough, I understand the reasoning behind that.

Show us how many times you have been blocked on twitter

One thing I would love to see to make those twitter bots eat spam though is how many times a user has been blocked by other twitter users.  This is not available anywhere (as far as I know, but please do correct me if I’m wrong).  This one small piece of information will immediately help me access the new follower at a single glance.

It would also help us to help each other, I believe, as we can begin to actively manage the twitter spammers and twitter bots as a community, helping each other to spot and remove these damn things asap.

I cant see any way to automate the process, its impossible, and there’s no way Twitter can manage it by themselves, that would just be insane and the reporting feature of tweeting @spam followed by the username seems to be totally ineffective. Basically lets effectively crowd source the ability to fight the twitter spammers and twitter bots.

Twitter Block numbers and the downside

The downside of this of course is that not everyone who’s getting blocked will be a twitter bot or twitter spammer.  I’m raining on my own parade here but I like to be realistic about these things. If you have a large following or are a celebrity or such, then it is inevitable that your account will be blocked more than the average user but this could balance against the amount of followers they already have and should be quite obvious.

Indeed, if you are being yourself, that doesn’t always mean you will be popular, and this could cause your account to be blocked more than normal, or if indeed you manage to offend some group or other then you may find your blocked a lot more than you’re being followed, for no other reason than you have an opinion, or disagreement over something and its made tempers flare or caused offence.

This could of course balance out I guess and it still acts as a representation of the user to a certain extent, but it is something to be wary of. Of course this is mentioning nothing of potential “Twitter Blocking Campaigns “ that could be initiated targeting other users but I think the case for is stronger than the case against, at least from my point of view. Maybe adding in a tweet to explain why you decided to block an account would, for the record, help us all in advance as well so we would end up with notification emails that look like this:

Twitter Spammer (Twitter Spam Bot) is now following your updates on Twitter.

A little information about Twitter Spammer:

Eat spam Twitter bot!6,825 followers
5 updates
following 8,501 people
Blocked: 1,240 Find out why…

The Twitter Team

Turn off these emails at: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Now wouldn’t that be helpful?

Other thoughts on twitter spam and twitter bots

If you want to read more info on how this spam and the bots are adversely affecting twitter, there are plenty out there but heres a few that came through while I was putting the finishing touches to this post.

From my friend @bungeespin Social twitter or just spam? and @problogger tweeted this today from Twitip.com
3 Ways to Recognize Bots and Spammers on Twitter . Of course if your interested in what the tweeple think there’s always the latest views on the #twitter-spam hashtag.

So what’s your point of view?

Do you think this would work, or have you another suggestion on how to deal with this problem created by twitter spammers and bots?  Its growing and for me I want to see it curtailed before it becomes detrimental to Twitter and before it becomes so out of hand that we all decide that its simply not worth being involved in Twitter any more.

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