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Killer Titles - Day 2 Reader Submissions Posted: 27 Aug 2008 04:57 AM PDT Just a quick note to say that I’ve added Day 2 submissions for the Killer Titles Group Writing Project submissions page. Today there were another 92 Killer Titles Submitted. Check them out, surf them, bookmark them and enjoy seeing how other bloggers do their thing! Two days left to go - see how to participate here. Share This

Google Launch Ad Manager (an Ad Server) Posted: 26 Aug 2008 07:36 PM PDT Google AdSense announced the beta launch of their Ad Manager Ad Server product back in March. At that time I heard from a number of publishers in the beta program that they were finding it to be an effective way of managing their ads. Today on the AdSense blog they have announced that Ad Manager is now available to everyone. It’s still in beta but is obviously stable enough to be opened up to everyone. If you’re an AdSense publisher already all you need to do is sign in here (no need to apply to join). If you’re not an AdSense publisher - you will need to sign up first. What is Ad Manager? I’m yet to test it (and have little need to as b5media have their own ad management tools to manage the ads on my blogs) but from reports of others and digging around Ad Manager today it’s a quite powerful tool that will help publishers to manage a number of aspects of the selling and displaying of ads on your blog. Most larger websites will do this by having their own ad server - but what Google have done with Ad Manager is provide a product that they host and that is much more manageable for smaller to medium publishers. You can see a full list of Ad Manager features here and can access their Help Center here. What Does Ad Manager Cost? This is the beauty of Ad Manager - it’s free. Some publishers will no doubt worry about privacy as this is all hosted on Google’s servers but outside of that (and it doesn’t concern me) I’m not seeing too many negatives. Google don’t make any money from this unless you use AdSense to fill unsold inventory (something that it will easily do and that they are no doubt betting many publishers will do - note: it’s not compulsory to do this). You can also use other ad networks with it. Ad Manager is going to be most useful to bloggers who have a decent amount of traffic and who are wanting to start selling ad placements directly to advertisers. If you’re still at the stage of just running AdSense on your blog then this will probably something you’ll want to grow into. It is reasonably easy to use and set up however unless you’re wanting to sell your own ads there isn’t much point. Alternatives If you’d like to check out the competition to AdSense Ad Manager you’ll probably want to check out OpenX which is a similar system. Share This

Does Your Next Blog Post Matter? Posted: 26 Aug 2008 04:23 PM PDT If your next blog post doesn’t matter - don’t publish it until it does. In our series on How to Craft a Blog Post we’ve been talking about ‘points to pause’ while writing a blog post. So far we’ve looked at choosing a topic, titles and opening lines and today we’re going to get into the meat of your actual post. Here’s the question that I think we should all be asking before we hit ‘publish’ on now blog posts: “So What?” This simple, yet profound, question was one that I heard a lot of bloggers emerging from SOBCon with earlier in the year. My co-author Chris Garrett is one speaker from that conference who I know used it as a central theme in his presentation. Other similar questions might include: What’s the Point? What am I trying to communicate? What impact do I want to have on my reader? How will this benefit my reader? All of your hard work in choosing topics, titles and opening lines will go to waste if the actual meat of your post has no real point to it, if it doesn’t communicate anything, if it doesn’t have any impact upon your readers, if it doesn’t really matter. If you want a post to be more than just something that people flit past it needs to ‘matter’ to people on some level. Otherwise it will never get traction. Why Many Blog Posts Don’t Have Points The reality is that many blog posts that I read (and I’ll admit to writing a few) have no real points (or they are unclear). There could be a variety of reasons for this including: laziness - sometimes it is just easier not to really think through the direction of a post busyness and distractions - life gets cluttered and many of us as bloggers have too many things on the go at once - leaving us unable to focus our attention fully upon the task at hand. pressure of deadlines - feeling the need to have to post something every day can mean many posts get published that are not thought through Three times to ask ’so what’ as you’re crafting your next blog post: 1. Before You Start - I find that my blog posts are significantly better if I identify a goal that I want to achieve with the post before I start writing it. For me this usually happens during the topic selection process and leads me to write a simple sentence at the start of each draft (which I usually delete later, unless it becomes part of my introduction). This sentence is usually something like ‘this post will teach readers how to hold a digital camera‘ or ‘this post will answer the question of “What is a Blog?”‘. Important Note: I write blogs with a ‘how to’ type form so my goal sentences reflect this - however this same thing can apply to other types of blogs. The answer to the ’so what’ question can be to teach, inform, entertain, inspire, build community etc. It need not be to ‘teach’. 2. While You Write - with the post goal statement at the top of your draft it is important to keep it in the forefront of your mind as you develop your blog post. I attempt to include a statement of what the post will achieve within the post (so the reader sees it) but constantly attempt to remind myself what I’m trying to achieve with the post. This is not always easy (and sometimes my posts do evolve beyond my original goal - read on for more on this) but I find that unless I do it I can end up with posts that have a wishy washy point. 3. Before You Finish - if you’re anything like me, your blog posts ‘evolve’. I often start out with a goal statement and then proceed to go ahead and write a post that ignores the statement. Don’t beat yourself up about that - but DO ask yourself the question of ’so what’ again at the end of your post. Have you written something that will matter to your readers? Have you written something that meets a need that they might have? Have you fully explored the topic? OR…. Have you written something just for the sake of writing something? Does what you’ve written have a point? Don’t Try To Achieve Too Much in a Single Post A trap that I used to fall into regularly with my blogging was to try to do too much in every post that I wrote. I’d try to write posts that explored lots of themes, that tried to inform, entertain and inspire, that tried to get readers to have a sense of belonging…. etc The reality was that the posts ended up being ‘epics’ and didn’t really achieve anything. If you find yourself with lots of goals for a post - why not split them into multiple posts. This is what I did earlier in this series when writing about crafting blog titles. I originally has this post on Crafting Titles and this post inviting readers to improve titles as one single post but before hitting publish I asked myself what my goal was with the post and realized that I was trying to do too much and that could better achieve my goals of ‘teaching’ and ‘involving readers’ in two separate posts. What’s the Point of This? The take home message of this post is to take your time in identifying goals for each post. This exercise need not take a great deal of time or even be something that you formally set time aside to do for each post (for me it’s become a natural part of my blogging) but it is something that will help to lift the quality of your blogging significantly. The benefit of identifying a point to your posts will especially help you in the next two steps in this process of crafting a blog post - ‘calls to action’ and ‘adding depth’ (things we’ll explore in coming days). Share This

Killer Titles Group Writing Project Reader Submissions - Day 1 Posted: 26 Aug 2008 01:00 PM PDT This week I’m running a project here on ProBlogger called ‘Killer Titles‘ where readers are invited to write posts with great titles and showcase them here on Problogger. Day 1 has come to an end and I’ve just posted the first 71 submissions here. You still have a few days to submit your own posts tot he project (find out how here) - but in the mean time, why not head by the ones that have already been submitted and start surfing, commenting on, bookmarking and subscribing to those blogs on the list that you resonate most with. If you’ve made a submission and don’t see it here it will probably be in the list for Day 2. Share This

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