Lorelle on WordPress

Writing Better Blog Post Titles

Lorelle VanFossen — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:19:48 +0000

I’ve written a lot about writing and creating powerful, effective, and attention-getting headlines and post titles on your blog, but more needs to be said on the subject, especially for blogging teachers and students.

The following are not effective nor attention-getting post titles:

March
March 2006
March 17, 2006
Today’s News
Homework
Today’s Homework
In Class Today
I’m Okay
Today
What am I doing?
What am I doing today?
How are you?
Whatcha doing?
New Post

Post titles like “March” make sense if you are the one writing the post and know that it’s actually March 17, 2006, but it makes no sense to someone who stumbles upon your blog from a search or reading down the line of Most Recent Posts or Most Popular Posts. Did something special and memorable happen on that particular March?

Dates hold power when there is something powerful associated with the date, such as 9/11. The symbolism in the date and the national emergency phone number in the United States, dialed by thousands on that day, is powerful. But “March” doesn’t mean much without a serious association. It could also mean there is a peaceful rally followed by a march to the courthouse or something. We don’t have enough information from which to draw conclusions on what “March” means.

There are a lot of student and teacher bloggers out there using post titles like “Homework” also not helpful nor informative. Homework for what? “Homework for Science Class” is helpful, but what do you call it next week? “Homework II for Science Class” or “Another Homework for Science Class” - all not good choices.

“Today’s Homework” isn’t good unless with the next blog post you change the old post title to “Yesterday’s Homework” which is a lot of work and creates a lot of confusion. It also doesn’t change the post URL.

So what makes a good post title? One that lets the reader knows immediately what the blog post is about. Use simple, clear, and effective words.

Post Titles With Dates

If you have to have the date in the post title, make the date set in time and add information that helps us understand the blog post topic. “March 2006: Math and Time Zones” gives us a better idea of the date and the topic, and that throughout March of 2006, mathematics and their impact on time zones, GMT, UTC, daylight savings times, and how to calculate times around the world are being discussed. From just that short post title, we can draw a lot of conclusions.

For those covering educational material for their classroom via their blogs, a post title of “Homework: Biography of a Mathematician” clearly imply the intent of the homework, but by adding the date, “March 26, 2008, Homework: Biography of a Mathematician,” the post has lost its timelessness. Does the post content have value six months from now? Two years? Then get rid of the date completely so you can refer back to the post as homework for future projects, and no one will think, “Why do I have to do such OLD homework?”

When announcing an event, it is important to include the date, especially if it is the first announcement of the event, such as “Community Gathering on April 30, 2008″ rather than “Community Gathering on Wednesday” which leaves people wondering which Wednesday.

Is it important to include the year? It depends upon the event. If it is an annual event, it may help to know which year is under discussion. If it is an annual event, and it doesn’t matter as the information applies across time, then including the year might not be relevant. Focus on the information that will help the visitor get to the point fast.

Is it important to include the times of the even in the post title? Again, it depends. If the post title is really long, “Forest Grove Community Gathering of Artists on Wednesday, April 30, 2008, from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM,” is just too long and gives too much information. A shorter version with only the event and the date might convey the message faster. The post can contain the details.

Vague and Moody Titles

Post titles that really say nothing but or more reflective of emotions, polite manners, or just a lack of creativity when it comes to filling in the post title blank, are really useless and need to be stopped.

“It’s an okay day” greeted me one day in my feed reader. It wasn’t okay for me. I’m glad it was okay for the blogger, but honestly, I didn’t care. It’s just another day. Unless you can add something to the post title that makes me want to find out what kind of day it was, a lesson learned, an inspired thought you want to share…I’m not interested. I don’t have the time to waste on frivolous and vague blog posts.

I skip all blog posts titled I feel sick, having a bad hair day, wonder what he’s doing now, wish I was somewhere else, and not again. While they are things we say to our friends and family all the time, without the history behind it, I just don’t care.

A post title sitting in my feed reader must inspire me to click. That takes a lot of energy. My eyes scan down the list of new posts in my feed reader, jumping from title to title, seeking keywords that reach out and grab my eyes and pin them to the link. Without the grab, I just skim on by.

In Public Speaking 101, students are taught the rules of giving a good presentation:

Tell them what you are going to tell them.
Tell them.
Tell them what you told them.

A blog post can be written in a similar manner. The blog post title is step one: tell them what you are going to tell them. The content is step two, and the summary at the bottom of the post can be step three.

If you aren’t telling me what you are going to tell me in the post title, then I’m not interested.

The Gimmick Post Title

Avoid ridiculous or gimmicky post titles. I used one for years that my mother creatively came up with, “Making $$ Doing What Comes Nature-ly” about the business of nature photography. I’ve published this article for print magazines many times with this title, or a variation thereof, to great success. For several years, it was a solid source of income. So I was stunned when I published it on my blog and it was ignored. I had almost no traffic to the article. Demands for reprints from publications continued, but it was ignored on my blog.

After a couple years of watching it be ignored, I changed the post title to How to Succeed in the Business of Nature Photography and it took off in web traffic.

Cute titles and phrases just don’t work when you are trying to get the attention of web surfers. They need it now and they need it clear. Blog titles are not a time for word or guessing games.

The Post Title That Doesn’t Deliver

“Complete Guide to Web Design” is a great title, but if the post is four paragraphs long and holds no links to more information or resources, I’d not call that “complete” as a guide, would you?

“Sexy Web Designs” are often sexy because they have pictures of half-clothed people, not because there is something inherently “sexy” about their layout and design elements. Just put a little “sex” in your blog post title and people will often line up for a glance.

What happens when that glance doesn’t deliver? When the promise of sexy, complete, guide, tutorial, how tos, and such aren’t backed up by the content, what happens?

Readers jump on and jump off, often to never return. They don’t tell their friends. They don’t write about it on their blogs. They don’t even tweet about it, unless to poke fun. It’s useless content because the title was great but it didn’t live up to its promise. When you make claims and don’t back them up, you lose readers, but you also lose integrity.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

SOBCon 2008: FuelMyBlog Pre-Conference Meetup Friends

Lorelle VanFossen — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:14:53 +0000

Tonight was the first event of the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) in Chicago at the pre-conference meetup hosted by FuelMyBlog.

It was a great opportunity to socialize with many of the return participants to SOBCon, but also to meet new people. It is clear that SOBCon is going to be the event of the year for myself and many of the participants in Chicago this weekend. And you still have a chance to join the fun. There is still time to register for this powerful blogging event, The Biz School for Bloggers, which begins Friday night with a boat cruise and open mic night, and then Saturday and Sunday turns the tables on everything you thought about the business side of blogging, social networking, marketing, promotions, advertising, monetization, and more with the masters of the blogging world.

From the hugs everyone was handing out, it was clear that Wendy Piersall summed it up perfectly:

SOBCon is like entering a room filled with your best friends whom you’ve never met.

The energy was powerful and the expectations for the weekend’s conference were amazing. Bloggers are here from all over the country and the world to take their blogs to the next level, investing in their blog but also in their social capital. They will learn about how to maximize the return on their investment in social media, networking, blog community building, and increasing their brand identity and visibility within their niche - and beyond. They are eager to learn, but also eager to share the lessons they’ve learned as bloggers, whether they have been blogging for a few weeks, months, or years. It’s clear that everyone is here to learn from each other as well as to share.

Here are some of the pictures of the meetup - where no one was a stranger.

Photographs copyright Lorelle VanFossen

I’m so looking forward to this weekend’s conference. If you are in the Chicago area and want to jump start your blog business, get down here! If you are not, then check out the amazing discounts on Southwest Airlines for flights to Chicago, or my favorite flight search, Kayak for cheap last minute flights. Trust me, it will be worth every nickle it takes to come here.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Woopra Pre-Approved Invites Selling on Ebay

Lorelle VanFossen — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:06:36 +0000

Someone is selling Woopra invites on ebay.

Announced recently at WordCamp Dallas, this new web analytics program called Woopra was the talk of the conference. Word spread like wildfire as it was by major tech blogs and everyone wanted access. Unfortunately, since the program is still in development, while sign ups were overwhelming, approvals were slow as new servers were brought online and some sense of control is needed through the trail stages of the program’s development. The number of people eagerly awaiting approval is shrinking, but new people are signing up daily - but it’s first come, first serve, and Woopra could cut off the invitations at any time during the development stage due to technical issues.

A pre-approved invite by-passes all that and gets the user right in the door of this fascinating web statistics program. I’ve been using it since WordCamp Dallas and it is better than television! I love watching people come and go and explore my site live, but more importantly, I, the non-statistics watcher, am fascinated with the ability to look beyond the score card of the numbers and really get a clear picture of who is using my blog and why. I’d love to have this same feature on Lorelle on WordPress, but currently WordPress.com members are unable to add Javascript, thus can’t use Woopra. Maybe soon, if enough people ask.

I can talk for days about how amazing this new statistics program is, but I’ll let others share their enthusiasm:

And yes, this reminds me of the selling of invites to WordPress.com on ebay, which was exciting and did change the world, and honestly, I think Woopra will change how we blog, and how we communicate on the web…so this is every exciting and if I hadn’t gotten my pre-approved invite at WordCamp Dallas…that invite on ebay might look really good.

Would you buy a pre-approved Woopra invite?

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Blog Challenge: Symbols

Lorelle VanFossen — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:16:23 +0000

Symbols Dictionary is an online encyclopedia of “Western Signs and Ideograms” which makes the Da Vinci Code look like child’s play.

Your blog challenge this week is to find a symbol from among the thousands of symbols in the Symbol Dictionary and write a blog post that incorporates the meaning and history of that symbol. You can related it your blog’s focus, design, or make it personal, writing about a symbol that means something special to you.

A favorite of mine is the infinity symbol, which Symbols.com describes as the “snake biting its tail” and representative of the similarities of the circle, denoting double endlessness, eternity, infinity, or infinitely great. They also say the image was used in meteorology to represent heat haze or sun haze.

Personally, I love the idea of the never-ending, the continuity of the whole.

As George Carlin says:

I say life began about a billion years ago and it’s a continuous process! Continuous, just keeps rolling along! Rolling, rolling, rolling along!

And say, you know something? Listen, you can go back further than that! What about the carbon atoms, huh? Human life could not exist without carbon! So is it just possible that maybe we shouldn’t be burning all this coal?

What’s your favorite symbol? Do you know the history of it? We use symbols in the form of letters and numbers every day. How much do you know about how these shapes were created and developed over the years to become attached to our keyboards?

Blog about a symbol and its history and share your personal connection with it.

These blogging challenges are published weekly and are an attempt to kick your blogging ass. They serve to challenge your thinking and efforts in blogging and blog writing. To participate, start challenging yourself now. Today. Go for it.

Past Blog Challenges

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

I Love My WordPress Mug

Lorelle VanFossen — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:11:35 +0000

Have you seen the new WordPress mug?

For ages, while the WordPress Shop began their offerings of WordPress logo items with t-Shirts and hoodies, I kept telling the powers that be that I wanted a coffee mug. A big mug for my frequent cups of daily tea. A product that is useful and reusable, and it cleans up easily. Something I can display in a workplace environment that says “I love WordPress.”

I finally got my request! Now you can join me for a cup of tea…or coffee or whatever hydrates you…and proudly display the love you have for WordPress on your desk or in your home.

The mugs are dark blue with the small WordPress “W” circle and are designed for serious drinkers. The mug is great for soups. Even my picky husband loves the large handle and big size. We’re thinking about replacing all our tea mugs with WordPress mugs.

The WordPress Shop is produced by Indigo Clothing Ltd.

HOW TO BUY THE MUG

To buy the WordPress Mug, order it from the WordPress Shop online from the WordPress mug order page.

To order anything from the WordPress Shop, go to the WordPress Shop to order online.

WordPress products and schwag will probably NOT be available at a store near you unless Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, succeeds in his dream of world domination…with WordPress, of course.

Order Problems: If you are having problems with the order of anything from the WordPress Shop, contact the WordPress Shop. Do not leave a comment here. They won’t see it and no action will be taken.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

WordPress Security Prevention, Reactions, and Scares

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:15:13 +0000

Matt Mullenweg spoke out recently on the recent bogus “SecurityFocus SQL Injection” fear spreading across the web. There is a huge perception today that WordPress is a security risk. This is not true.

As Matt discussed, fears of SQL server vulnerabilities and other security issues have gotten out of control, for WordPress as well as other open source and proprietary programs, which he likened to “running into a crowded theatre and yell ‘fire’ and the less basis there is in fact the more people link to them. It’s not uncommon to see crying-wolf reports like the above several times in a week…”

Jeff Jones, a software security expert, dug into the history of a recent SQL server issue and reported:

Last week a web-based news story comes to my attention which asserted that last year SQL Server had “…most vulnerabilities last year of any commercial database…” That prompted me to do some fact checking and I thought it worth documenting the real (really good) story of SQL vulnerabilities and what commercial database had the most vulnerabilities last year…

So. One thing is clear from the rudimentary investigation I’ve performed here - SQL Server was not even close to having the most vulnerabilities last year of any commercial database.

In fact, though SQL 2000 Server may have had a rough track record up through 2003, the SQL team has certainly turned a corner since then and SQL Server 2005 has had one of the best security track records of any commercial database ever.

In a report on his Security Blog, Internet Explorer and Firefox Vulnerability Analysis (pdf), Jones reported that FireFox has had more security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, even though it is a widely held belief that FireFox is the “better” browser.

When a security issue came up with WordPress.com, it was fixed within 10 minutes of being reported. Yet, the news spread around for days that WordPress.com was a security risk.

Perception is everything. In another report and analysis, Jeff Jones reports on the increasing number of disclosures influencing the perception of security issues and vulnerabilities as they catch the public eye.

The number of disclosures of new software vulnerabilities across the industry continues
to be in the thousands, with more than 3,400 new vulnerabilities disclosed in 1H07 [first half of 2007]. But this number actually represents a decrease from 2H06, the first period-to-period decline in total vulnerabilities since 2003.

There are a couple of other interesting results that I want to call out that you should examine with more detail in the full report:

* Social engineering plays a growing role in overall malware attack techniques. This is a key result since even with vulnerability-free software, these techniques could succeed against users of any platform.
* Windows Defender has proportionally detected 2.8 times less potentially unwanted software on computers running Windows Vista than on computers running Windows XP SP2, based on normalized data. This is a practical measure of benefit that is somewhat more valuable in my opinion than vulnerability comparisons.

As Matt said, the more sensational and invalid the security scare, the more likely it is to be spread in this age of social networking where anyone can have their say and link. Even sites with few security problems quickly get a bad reputation. We need to pay attention to the serious threats so these cries of fire do not become cries of wolf.

How Vulnerable is WordPress?

So how vulnerable is WordPress compared to other blog and CMS platforms? The US National Institute of Standards and Technology - National Vulnerabilities Database tracks reported WordPress Security Vulnerabilities from the earliest years. Let’s compare WordPress to Joomla and Drupal:

Platform	2005	2006	2007	2008
WordPress	11	18	49	34
Joomla	4	28	31	12
Drupal	6	17	16	8

Is the recent high numbers due to increased usage and popularity of WordPress? Is it because it is becoming a target of those who want to find ways of breaking WordPress? Is it because there is a dedicated WordPress Community to uncover and report such issues? Is it because there are so many who care that WordPress remains safe and secure?

With more and more people using WordPress, more and more hackers are digging into the core to find ways of breaking WordPress. Luckily, there are enough “white hat heroes” that report the vulnerabilities they find rather than exploiting them, helping the Automattic team improve WordPress constantly.

Is My WordPress Blog Safe?

Matt also also offered some sensible tips and information for those worried about the “increasing security threats” to WordPress. His recommendations: Update WordPress. Use common sense. Use strong passwords. Be aware.

Always keep a backup copy of the latest version of WordPress, your WordPress Theme, a full backup of your WordPress database, WordPress Plugins, and copies of all the images and files on your host server. If something does happen, you may need these backups to restore your blog.

To keep your WordPress blog safe:

Update WordPress.
Update your WordPress Theme.
Update WordPress Plugins.
Monitor WordPress news sources for alerts about security vulnerabilities and upgrades, such as WordPress Wednesday news on the Blog Herald, WordPress Planet (official WordPress aggregator), the WordPress Development Blog, and Weblog Tools Collection.

To check your blog now for unwanted links and hacking attempts:

Install and run the WP Scanner WordPress Plugin from Blog Security.
In FireFox, go to Tools > Page Info > Links (not available in FireFox 3 Beta) and check each link to ensure you put it there and it goes to sources you trust. Manually view the page source code of your blog (View > Page Source) and check to ensure each link is trustworthy. Is each link a link you want on your blog?
Examine your WordPress Theme template files, especially the header.php and footer.php for unwanted content and links. If you didn’t put it there, who did? Do you want it there?
Check random posts on your blog for unwanted content and links. Edit these through the Administration Panels to remove the unwanted content from the database.
Search your template files, stylesheets, and database for display:none and/or height:0 as these are common styles used to hide unwanted content and links. Remove them from the posts or files accordingly. I recommend Silpstream’s WP-phpMyAdmin WordPress Plugin for searching the database directly from your WordPress blog.

If you are not using the latest version of WordPress, your blog may be at risk. Currently, WordPress 1x is no longer supported. The WordPress 2.0x branch has been upgraded to 2.1.3 and 2.0.11. See the WordPress Release Archive for past versions of WordPress.

Blog Security recently updated its popular WordPress Whitepaper which reports on security issues and problems with WordPress. It includes tips and step-by-step procedures to improve the security of your WordPress blog, beyond the scope of this article. Also, consider using the WPIDS - WordPress Intruder Detection System Plugin to help you monitor your blog for intruders and attacks.

The Challenges of Creating an Interactive Blog

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:06:09 +0000

By Rachelle Chase

Last week, I used my Sex Lounge Finding Derek Contest - an online contest where hunky guys competed to be the hero of my book - to show the importance of interactive web sites. I focused on the why and how to make your site interactive. This time, I’d like to get more personal and share the reasoning, implementation, challenges, and successes of the project.

The Idea for Interactivity

I wanted to do something different to market my book on the Internet. I wanted to expose it to potential readers in a way that did not shout, “Me, me, me - now buy my book.” Instead, I wanted visitors to stop by my site for a memorable experience. In order for it to be ‘memorable,’ it to had to be fun. In order for it to be fun and an ‘experience,’ people needed to participate.

The challenge was how to present my book in a unique, outside-the-box kind of way that was fun and participatory for visitors?

Like many of my ideas, the solution came to me in the shower, and the “Sex Lounge Finding Derek Contest” was born.

Visitors would get to see, hear, and read about sexy guys competing to be Derek - then leave comments, vote for their favorites, and win prizes.
Dereks would bask in the adoration of women, get exposure, and compete for prizes.
Celebrity judges would get exposure for their product or service.
And the my book would be experienced by visitors through the actions of the Dereks and judges.

I needed to set up the blog, add in the ability for readers to cast their vote, and make it as easy as possible for entrants to submit their photos and information. I wanted the site designed to accommodate as much interaction as possible.

I knew I could do this. I had some experience and familiarity with WordPress, so I knew it was a good foundation, as it was easy to work with and already had the tools to incorporate voting and submissions.

My goal was to create a marketing campaign that was as inclusive as possible for my fans, while broadening my audience, and marketing my book. This idea brought all of that together. A win-win for everyone. I couldn’t wait to get started.

The Implementation of Interactivity

Now, came the hard part - turning the concept into reality.

First, I had to flush out the contest mechanics, i.e., what it would look like, how it would work, and then finding the resources I needed to help. I quickly made a plan and then started chasing down all the physical details.

Then there were the business details. I needed an attorney to bless the contest rules and disclaimers, a PR pro to jazz up the website content, and a web developer to help build the site with WordPress.

All within a small budget.

To reduce costs, I did as much of the work I could myself, creating all the content and had a firm conceptual plan in place. I then had the professionals review it, thereby minimizing the amount of time I needed to pay them for. For example, I customized a contract template, created the content and structure of the website, then had the attorney, PR professional, and web developer review and modify what I’d created.

To supply complicated technology, I searched for third party service providers mentioned in last week’s article.

The foundation had been laid. Now, all I needed were the players.

The Challenges of Interactivity

Getting the necessary players proved to be more time-consuming than I expected for the Finding Derek competition. The players were:

Sponsors for prizes and awards.
Judges to vote for the final Derek.
The Dereks - the gorgeous men willing to enter the contest.
Enthusiastic readers to submit their Dereks.

Packets for judges and prize sponsors had to be created, submitted, and followed up on, encouraging them to participate in this novel marketing campaign. This project would be exploring new territory, and many were intimidated or unsure and had to be convinced that this was an exciting project, worthy of the investment of their time and energy - and their money. What could be more exciting than a website blatantly promoting gorgeous men in a climate of romance, intrigue, and women readers!

The hunt for potential Dereks was the hardest task. I needed to find them online, but I realized that this was limited. I needed to leave my computer and enter the real world to find gorgeous Derek possibilities.

This meant expanding my reach to new, unexplored markets. To find Dereks, I joined modeling and acting online communities - and even tried dating sites through passive promotion (i.e., I posted a page about the contest but only responded if men contacted me). To encourage potential readers to visit - and submit their Dereks - I covered my niche of romance reader related sites, then went to other women-oriented sites, like women’s magazines and social networks.

When it came time for heading out the door, away from my computer, I thought long and hard about where I would find young, healthy, gorgeous men unintimated by a woman with a digital camera and a blog, willing to show some cheesecake sexiness to be on the cover of a romance novel, and other fun prizes. Living in San Francisco, I knew the perfect places. I headed out to the clubs, bars, and networking events, handing out fliers and encouraging people to participate. I put myself in their faces and invited them to “show off” their sexy selves to the world on my blog contest.

Like many such projects, while it was a great idea, and I had a solid plan of action and the business sense to carry it off - plus the gumption to get out there and talk to these beautiful men and convince them to participate - not all of it went as streamlined and easy as I anticipated. I learned a lot, especially about the effort it took to pursue them.

The Lessons Learned

The biggest mistake I made was in estimating the time and effort required for this project.

As it grew, I kept cutting back from its original scope - which included a book tour and culminated with a live Derek competition, but it wasn’t enough. Everything took twice as long, without twice the time needed to complete them. Thus, each phase was shortened, with some items completely eliminated, as I didn’t have the time I needed to promote it to the media. This resulted in the contest not being as ‘big’ as it could have been if there had only been more time. Isn’t that the way of these things.

As with any such huge projects, there is the follow through. A tremendous amount of attention was created with the contest, expanding my reading audience and fan-base, but I realized I needed to work even harder to keep them coming back to my site after all the Derek contest noise died down. Looking at the project from the benefit of long-term thinking rather than the short term “I think I’ll have a contest,” helped me keep the momentum going months down the road, building upon what I created.

Despite this, there were a lot of things that did work. Including:

The use of offline activities to drive visitors to the site.
The experimentation with different online sites to reach different markets.
The fun factor of the contest encouraged participation.
The subtle introduction of my book to visitors encouraged sales.

The glue holding everything together was interactivity. Encouraging people to participate in the site and have a memorable experience increased the odds of success. I’d like to think that this success contributed to Sex Lounge going into its second printing after six weeks of publication.

Will I do this again?

Oh, yes. I’m wiser now and will make smarter choices along the way. But most of all, I will make a stronger plan with a lot more lead time to prepare and move through each stage of the process. Expanding my fan-base is always good for business, but the contest brought in quality fans, not just quantity, people eager to participate and be a part of the process, not just a part of the audience. By making my blog more inclusive, I benefited by making my online community stronger and wider.

In fact, come join me with my new contests, A Picture’s Worth a Handful of Words and Chase the Dream.

Rachelle Chase is a Business Analyst and model by day and a romance author (and blogger) by night. She hosts Chatting with Chase, a live talk show featuring interviews with best-selling romance and erotica writers, and is co-host of the Chase the Dream Contest, hosted on WordPress.com. Rachelle has also appeared on Playboy Radio, the Hip-Hop Connection, the Jordan Rich Show, and other radio programs nationwide. For more information, visit RachelleChase.com and www.FindingDerek.com.

Alert: Possibly Related Posts Feature on WordPress.com Blogs

Lorelle VanFossen — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:04:49 +0000

WordPress.com has activated a feature without warning that has many up in arms of protest, making it one of the least welcoming additions to WordPress.com.

Since the beginning of WordPress.com, one of the most requested features has been the ability to showcase related posts from our own blogs. WordPress.com has activated this ability, but the links link to WordPress.com blogs, not our own.

This is bad for many reasons, which I’m sure you’ve already thought of. No control. Implied recommendation or endorsement. Inappropriate links. And a lot of confusion for our readers who believe we choose these links or that they will lead to links on our blog related to what we blog about. I’m sure I missed some other bad reasons for not liking this new feature.

It’s important that we link to other bloggers, especially others within the WordPress.com community to support and encourage them. It’s wrong to do so without some control.

You can read the announcement, Possibly Related Posts, on the WordPress.com blog.

My apologies to those who have been led astray by these links in my own blog posts. Thank you to everyone who brought this to my attention, worried something was wrong. I even had a couple people warn me that my blog had been hacked as the links were definitely inappropriate. Thank you for worrying and watching out for me and my blog.

Note: According to a comment Matt Mullenweg made on a forum post:

In the next few days we’ll have an update that allows you to block specific blogs from showing up, and eventually that setting will also apply to the tag surfer, blog surfer, and top blogs so when you block a blog you should never see it again.

With 3 million blogs - albeit less than a million active - I don’t have enough life to block all the blogs that show up as “possibles” in every list on every blog post. I cannot imagine the implementation of such a process. I’d rather choose who I link to than have to exclude them.

Among the links on my blog posts here that I tested before turning off the feature, the average was 2 in seven links per post having a vague relationship to my content. The majority of the links went to non-English blogs, blogs no longer updated (since 2006 in several cases), and totally unrelated content, such as an article about a WordPress Plugin for creating, among other things, related posts, linking to A Third of Patients On Transplant List Are Not Eligible from the Washington Post. I just learned that the Washington Post has blogs on WordPress.com, but what transplants have to do with WordPress…well, it’s anyone’s guess. Either way, 28 percent average “success” rate isn’t good enough for me. Nor is adding to my workload.

To Turn Off Related Posts on WordPress.com

To turn off the new related post feature on WordPress.com blogs:

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I share how I manually create my related posts at the bottom of my blog posts in Which WordPress Plugins Does Lorelle on WordPress Use?, Adding a Signature To Personalize Your Blog Post, and WordPress.com Blog Bling: Signatures and Writing Code.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

What Inspires Your Readers to Interact With Your Blog?

Rachelle Chase — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:24:13 +0000

By Rachelle Chase

Static content that talks to readers is not enough today, especially with the meteoric rise in popularity of online communities and social networking. Good content is still the key to attract and compel people to return to your site, however giving them more than static content and blog comments for interaction gives them even more reason to keep coming back.

Even large companies are starting to realize this. Take Wells Fargo Bank’s Hands on Banking, for example. The site has games to help kids and adults master money skills, such as budgeting and home-buying. G2 Direct and Digital is another example, where interactivity through the use of text, sound, animation, and video adds value to their site with added services for their clients, such as Liberty Mutual’s Be Fire Smart community service.

How do you get people to interact with your blog? How do you add interactivity to your blog if you don’t have the big bucks of a large company? I’ll tell you how I did it as a romance author and blogger.

Give People a Compelling Reason to Interact with Your Site

What motivates your audience to participate on your blog? Is it ‘fame,’ i.e., being acknowledged or interviewed? Seeing their comment published? Talking with you, as the famous person? Is it winning prizes? If you don’t know, experiment to discover what works best. What inspires your readers to participate on your blog?

I write romance books, and romance readers love a great hero. When my first book came out, I came up with the idea for an online contest where sexy guys competed to be the hero of my book. I created the Finding Derek Contest, encouraging my readers to help me find the perfect hero for my next book. They submitted essay answers, audio clips, and video. I contacted online models, stopped cute guys in the streets, and asked any good looking guy I found to be videoed for my contest. Readers volunteered husbands, boyfriends, and good friends as the perfect male hero. Visitors voted for the finalists and a panel of celebrity judges chose the winner. It created a great deal of publicity and excitement.

This was effective because:

It kept people coming back for different reasons throughout the life of the contest. First, to see the week’s candidate. Then, to vote for the winner. And lastly, to see who won. All the while, they loved posting comments on the proceedings.
Details on the sexy guys were presented via text, photos, audio, and video, thereby allowing visitors to experience the material in whatever format they liked best.
It generated buzz and traffic. Those who entered solicited friends and family to vote for them. Fans of the entrants asked their friends and family to vote. Some of the judges told their audience that they were judging. Readers who came back weekly to check out the new hunks and told their friends to stop by for a look, too.

How can you present your information - the reason people come to visit you site - in a way that encourages them to stay and interact? By giving them a variety of ways to interact with the content and giving them something to tell their friends.

Adding Interactivity without Spending Big Bucks

I’m a firm believer in third party service providers. Here are a few that I’ve found helpful in increasing the interaction with readers on my blog:

BYOAudio.com is a great provider of streaming audio. You can upload audio (or video). You can create call-in lines, where people can call in and leave a comment or testimonial, which you can then post individually on your site. You can create podcasts, which can be published to iTunes. ($19.95/month)
BlogTalkRadio.com allows you to host live talk shows - where listeners can listen live over the Internet, call in, or communicate via Instant Messenger, as well as listen to archived shows. They also offer promotion tools for hosts. (Free)
SurveyMonkey.com allows customized surveys with branching logic and ease for tracking results. (Free for a limited number of surveys and responses)
ConstantContact.com provides email list management, newsletter/email submission, and click-through tracking. (Free 60-day trial; cost based on volume thereafter)
YouTube.com provides video hosting and a social community. While YouTube is the most popular, there are a myriad of other free video hosting and community sites out there. Just Google “free video hosting” for ideas, or check out Robin Good’s list of popular video hosting sites. He’s also got a list of sites that you can use to post your video on multiple sites at one time, spreading your video coverage.

How do you add interactivity to your blog? Have you considered it or have you already jumped into multimedia interactivity? What can you do to make your blog more interactive?

Rachelle Chase is a Business Analyst and model by day and a romance author by night. Examples of some of the ideas mentioned here can be found at RachelleChase.com, “A Picture’s Worth a Handful of Words” contest, “Chatting with Chase,” “Chase the Dream Contest,” and “The Sex Lounge Finding Derek Contest”.

Lorelle on WordPress

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To Turn Off Related Posts on WordPress.com

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What Inspires Your Readers to Interact With Your Blog?

Give People a Compelling Reason to Interact with Your Site

Adding Interactivity without Spending Big Bucks