Speed links: When to write, how to comment

Hit a trifecta of strong posts in my morning reading.

1. Zoning out for writers
I run warm and cold on copyblogger.com, but here's a fine piece by Michael Steizner. "Five Tips for Finding Writing Time" promises, "Despite the challenges we face, there are proven tactics that can really help us sit down and write." Here's one of them:

Identify Your Productivity Zone
Figure out when you are most able to write. For me, it’s between 9am and 11am. You know you’re in the zone when you can crank out writing. When in the zone, I can easily write a few well-written pages of copy. When I’m out of the zone, I’m lucky to write a single paragraph all day. Find the zone and you’re on your way to more productive writing.

Michael goes on to say, "When in the Zone, ONLY write." I'm nodding like a bobblehead. When the copy is good and you're atop a gusher, cash in.

In a related post, Jurgen Wolff of TIme to Write surveys "The Creative Environment for Writers."

2. Earn your comment links
ProBlogger spends some quality time on the ups and downs of commenting for the sake of drawing traffic. Most savvy bloggers do it in the early going, at least, but there are plenty of ways to make yourself a pest even if you're not technically spamming. Here's Darren Rowse on "Excessive self linking," something he witnesses daily.

The practice of leaving links inside posts is not something that bothers me too much -- unless it gets excessive. A well placed link back to something you’ve written ... can really add to a conversation. ... What does risk annoying others is when you include lots of links to yourself in every comment you make and/or when the links are irrelevant to the topic and/or when you just leave a link without saying anything else. Keep links relevant and in moderation. ...

3. She's a rich girl ...
"Case Study of a Teenage Millionaire." Dosh Dosh looks over WhateverLife.com and has some advice for its creator, a 17-year-old dropout who earns as much as $70k a month being cute and wry.

Her first Adsense paycheck was $2,790 and she has already rejected a $1.5 million buyout offer. I’m referring to Ashley Qualls, the founder of Whateverlife.com, a free MySpace layouts website. ... Inspirational, no doubt. And a clear example of the massive potential that the web has when it comes to generating substantial and consistent income.

Fact errors, libel and blogs: How to cope

Like the man says at the end of "Some Like It Hot":

"Well, nobody's perfect."

That includes every blogger on the planet, of course. I've had to deal with a couple of unpleasant fact errors in the past six weeks. No fun. Never is.

One disadvantage bloggers have compared with mainstream media writers is the lack of backup. Some bloggers have editors, but 99% do not. Editing is one thing; fact checking is another. You can't truly edit your own copy. You can ensure the text is accurate in most cases. Bearing down on facts takes time but in the long run pays off. Usually. I used to work at a magazine where every statement of fact, no matter how minor, had to be signed off on by a checker. (Guess what: The magazine was sued anyway.)

Fact-checking on the Internet can lead to trouble. Wikipedia, the resource of choice, is full of inaccuracies -- unintentional and intentional. Once bogus material gets posted, it tends to spread virally, even if the author tries to chase down his offending material. So insisting on, say, two sources guarantees nothing. Yikes! Might be time to visit a library or make some phone calls. Just like a reporter. Then again, look at page 2 of the New York Times and check out the quarter-page of corrections it runs every day. Screwing up is part of writing for the public, alas.

Here are a few ideas on how to deal with your fact errors.

1. Don't defend the error
The first instinct, typically, is to fight for your content. If you're in a gray area, perhaps that's a way to go. Save yourself some embarrassment and make sure you know what's what before replying to comments or email. When you're wrong, dead wrong, don't try to sway anyone, including youself.

2. Don't go into mourning
Like football kickers, writers need to develop the ability to get over their failures. Learn the lesson, clean up the mess and move on.

3. Don't blame the messenger
Being identified as the source of bogus information is no fun. In print or online, the person pointing out the error often assumes you're an idiot and says so. The columnist William Safire calls these people his Gotcha! Squad. We wouldn't be dealing with them if we'd been accurate in the first place, right? In comments, try to read past the snark and be courteous when replying.

4. Correct the error
Pure blogging calls for eternal preservation of the original version of the content, as I understand it. Errors can be struck out but should remain. These days, strikeovers are used to make bad jokes as much as anything (the tag for strikovers contains del and /del). I believe that removing incorrect material is the way to go. Either fix the post or spike it. If the material is libelous, nuke it and run down any copies out there. In any case, do something immediately.

5. Apply transparency
Readers deserve to know when we've bonked the pooch. Nothing vandalizes trust more than pulling a Nixon. Correcting the error is part of the job; you usually need to point it out as well. This is how newspapers and most magazines do it. Add a headlined Update or Correction somewhere in the post. If you're running an informal blog, explain things in your natural writing voice. In a lot of cases you have to repeat the error in order to be clear, but don't post the bad stuff again unless there's a reason. The famed correction from hell goes like this: "Joe Blow does not beat his wife."

6. Learn something about libel law
The basics of how libel laws work in the United States are not that complicated. Basically, we're dealing with one set of rules for "public figures" and another for regular Joes. (Libel is written defamation; slander is spoken.) What you need to know is easily digested in the AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law or The Copyright Permission and Libel Handbook.

Let's be careful out there.

This post is part of ProBlogger's 31 Days to Building a Better Blog" project.

A tale of two how-to SEO books

Just polished off some homework reading, the book "Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day."

One thing the 300-page paperback has going for itself is timeliness: it's about a year old. Quite a few SEO-related books date back five years or so, for some reason. Perhaps that's when the SEO guys starting coming up from the underground.

The authors are Gradiva Couzin and Jennifer Grappone (pictured), who come with a combined 16 years or so of SEO experience. Their products include the book's handy companion site, Your SEO Plan. Check out that site's simple and elegant optimization if you visit.

The book seems to target people doing SEO part-time for their company web sites. The authors take the "one hour a day" concept seriously, telling readers what to do, when to do it and how to chart their progress. Anyone smart enough to handle SEO doesn't need that kind of hand-holding.

The do-this-do-that routine soon got old -- and cluttered up the book. Finding the pockets of good information was almost too much work. Ultimately, I had to force myself to finish it. Too bad, because the authors have a lot to offer.

I'm a student of SEO. Neither novice nor expert. I've had a fair amount of success (and failures) bringing traffic to a dozen or so web sites and blogs over the past decade. (I offer SEO-friendly editorial services to web site owners.)

So when I read Peter Kent's "Search Engine Optimization For Dummies" earlier this year, it was a bit of a sheepish undertaking. But as with some of the better books in this yellow-and-black franchise, woven in with the basics was plenty of information for more-advanced readers. (That kind of parathetical knowledge stacking is what makes the Wall Street Journal so useful to investors of all levels.)

Kent's breezy book was a pleasure to read. It was a good refresher and I learned a lot as well. If I'm a dummy, at least I'm a well-informed one. (Be sure to get the second edition.)

Completists should check out "An Hour a Day." From a library if possible.

The recommendation for beginning and intermediate SEO students is to go with the "Dummies."

Warning: Do not 'steal the lead'

In the newspaper business, young headline writers always are warned not to "steal the lead." Like most forms of theft, this marks the offender as lazy and morally adrift.

Here's an example straight from the crime lab: A reporter writes a lead (an article's opening paragraph or two) that says, "Big Business increasingly finds itself under fire for poor treatment of elderly workers." Our shifty/lazy copyeditor comes along and tops the story with the following headline: "Big Business Under Fire for Treatment of Elderly."

Every word of the headline comes directly from the reporter's lead. So any impact that might result from the author's carefully chosen words has been deflected by the headline. The reader has an immediate deja vu, having read the same sentence twice. Repetition of just the verb can have the same effect. Take another look at this blog post's headline and lead. Yeech. Give me rewrite!

Online, where stories often are accessed via blurbs (short summaries), the repetition can be compounded. So you see the headline twice, and the lead twice. One click away. Ugly. Boring.

In print or online, I never let my editors steal leads. In many cases, they did not realize they were doing anything wrong -- it just seemed the clearest and most accurate way to summarize the story. (Headlines usually must index the story, true.) Or the headline just wrote itself. (Always be suspicious of easy writing, the ancients said.)

But working solo on a blog, you can steal from yourself all you like, right? Not if you're smart.

A headline gives you one shot at grabbing a reader. The lead gives you another. They should work in conjunction, a whip-smart one-two sales pitch. When a blurb, subhead or photo caption comes into play, there's another opportunity to enchant the reader.

Major newspapers and magazines are good at this -- take a look at how their editors finesse these elements. Learn from the big-leaguers -- and join them.

Blogging at home: Don't feed the morlocks

I've been meaning to blog about what it's like to blog as an occupation. I do other things -- consulting, writing for other media, managing web sites, L.A. lunch-taking, running my NCAA 08 team -- but most of my time is spent butt in chair, in my home office. Blogging. Or futzing with my blogs.

So I'm busier than when I worked for Corporate World Inc. Fortunately, another blogger has a head start on this topic. The post is called "Cons of Being a Problogger." Here is some selected wisdom of David Peralty at the blog xfep.com (Extra for Every Person):

Most people wouldn’t expect working from home to be an item on the cons list, but it is. There are a lot more distractions at home from telemarketers, family and friends, and objects you own. I have found days wasted in front of the television, or on the phone, when I should have been getting work done instead. ...

When working as a problogger, you will spend an inordinate amount of time on a computer. So much so that you will have to become an expert at using one. ... (Your) computer(s) will stop working at the worst time, so you best get good at repairing them or know someone that can. ...

There is something about problogging that requires a strange personality. One that can deal with being alone for long periods of time, and yet that same person also has to be able to network, and be interesting to be around. This type of personality is rare, and also a bit odd. ...

Between the high amount of focus and concentration, and the near zero amount physical activity, blogging can really wear you down.

Not sure these are all negatives, but they are true in my experience.

I was surprised to experience what David talks about in the last item, about blogging taking a physical toll. When you go to a bricks-and-mortar workplace, you expend energy all day long just moving from one place to another, getting gas, picking up dry cleaning, walking down hallways, dodging the boss, wandering off to lunch. Even if you sit on your rear all day at work, you're burning calories with supplemental activities. So you're going from sedentary to, um, blob.

If you're home all day, and "going to work" means moving from one room to another, nothing is burned off. Even if your exercise routine and diet stay the same, you're soon in a hole and the extra pounds start adding up. (My official excuse: My trainer moved to London. Bad timing, mate!)

So if blogging full-time is in your future, budget another hour or so a day for hiking, swimming, whatever.

Any form of "getting out of the house" takes extra time out of the workday.

Some other quick thoughts: Your presence at home means more mess, more shopping, more domestic projects. ... Email, IM are just as bad as phone calls in the distraction dept. ... Blogging advice is everywhere and it's tempting to read it all, seeking that one terrific tip that'll turn it all around for your projects. You can chase links and read all day long. ... It is easy to lose control of your schedule. When I get on a roll with writing, I sometimes go until dawn. Argh. Being a morlock sucks. Resist the siren call of the night shift.

(Hat tip to copyblogger)

Send in the clones & desperate bloggers

If you've spent any time seeking advice about blogging you know that a lot of the content out there is either recycled or a variation on well-known themes. Some of the posts you'll read here do that.

This to me is analogous to what happens in, say, fitness magazines and personal-finance publications. There are a couple of dozen topics on which most beginners need or want information. Those stories are presented with new graphics, new headlines and come from new writers. Maybe they contain updated information, but they're part of the playbook. Same with evergreen content for more advanced readers. Most readers don't mind the repetition unless they're outgrown the publication.

This partly explains why the Wall Street Journal always carries a piece on something odd like ferret-legging contests on page 1.

I have learned a great deal from some of the blog pros' blogs, such as Dosh Dosh, ShoeMoney and ProBlogger. These guys do a great job; they are rewarded with swarms of traffic and comments. But they, too, tend to repeat themselves.

The blog pros are in the same boat as, say, Money or Men's Health. If people come to you seeking tentpole knowledge but you're off working in the fringes, that's not good sense or good business. In writing, this dynamic would be be called elegant substitution -- variety for the sake of variety. Fortunately, on the Internet, there's almost always something new to talk about. I do, however, see a lot of the same material over and over in all of these blog blogs. The trick is to find new ways of doing older things.

This brings me to a post on BloggingMix.com: "Guilty or Not? Are You a Desperate Blogger?" I love this topic and the direct way it's presented. Its issues are frequently debated, but to me the headline and post felt fresh and original. I went right for it, passing by a pack of links to familiar stories.

Anyway, let's get to the content.: Here are some of the nine signs of desperation from blogger RJ Tayaban along with a sentence or two taken from his comments:

1. Fake your own comment(s) and use positive feedback: If you haven't received comments from your readers, perhaps it's about time that you reflect on your writing skills, styles or even the topic you blog about.


2. Create numerous accounts with digg, reddit and delicious then submit and vote your own post: ... I don't create multiple accounts and use it to vote for my own submissions. This is kind of 'losserish.' ... I personally believe that it's ethical for bloggers to submit and book mark their post with digg, reddit, delicious, netscape, sphinn etc. This is an effective way to reach more readers.


3. Steal concepts and ideas from other bloggers: ... The most despiteful manifestation of desperation. If you don't have anything to blog, then don't blog.

My take:

1. Faking comments may be effective since no one wants to be first at a party. I don't do it, but I do ask my friends to comment once in a while on specific topics that suit them.

2. I agree with RJ: Waiting around for people to share your content on the social net sites won't get you anywhere when your blog is new. My standard is, The post should be on-topic for the site, it should bring clear value, and the blurb and headline should be truly reflective of the original post's content. Also, be sure to participate in that community, vote on other posts and bring in other people's content.

3. Ditto.

Most of us are scrambling for attention (traffic) and success (money or however you define it). The temptations are many and the ethical guidelines are, well, being written. This is a medium for existentialists.

Update 8/20: Dosh Dosh just posted a related piece about "meta blogging" and all the repetition.