Who’s Reading What
Matt Yglesias notes that bloggers and others who write for the Web lack a luxury of those who write for print: "nobody has any idea who’s reading them." Whereas there are detailed metrics about pageviews on the Web, all print has to go on is circulation figures. So they can blithely assume that their long features and hard news and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 25, 2009 17:19
3 Ways to Avoid Drowing in Information
Steve Rubel offers "Three Tips for Managing the Stream Before it Manages You." Between email, blog feeds, Twitter, Facebook, and various other applications out there, we've all got too much information to contend with. Those of us in the information business are even more overwhelmed because we both need to follow more things and figure out ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 19, 2009 10:09
Blogging is Hard
Bernard Finel has been trying this blogging thing for a while and finds that it's harder than it looks. He notes that even very short posts require quite a bit of effort. Even short posts take me forever. Not writing the text, per se, but I think most posts are useful if you include a couple or three links to relevant ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 7, 2009 07:50
10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6
Just when I think we've gotten the kinks worked out from converting to WordPress 2.5, Aaron Brazell tells me version 2.6 is about to come out! He's written a handy dandy guide called 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6 complete with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. (Actually, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 30, 2008 20:00
Key Blogging Advice
I was contacted a bit ago by a "writer/author" seeking to have me contribute to "a book that will feature a selection of interviews with prominent bloggers." Dubious, I asked if her intention was to have the bloggers write the book for her. She assured me this was not the case, "any more than a reporter conducting an ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 7, 2008 14:34
Becoming a Successful Blogger
Dan Drezner has published the penultimate draft of "SO YOU WANT TO WRITE A BLOG," a commissioned book chapter for the American Political Science Association, on how to be a successful political science blogger. For an academic paper, it's short and quite jargon free. Much of it deals with the benefits and pitfalls of blogging for scholars but there ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 3, 2007 08:00
Getting Your Blog Noticed
Jimmie at The Sundries Shack laments the vagaries of the blogosphere: I occasionally wonder why it is that after more than two years I’m still bumbling along with a hundred or so hits a day when plenty of other folks get a gajillion hits a day despite having the writing and intellectual chops of a concussed, mitten-wearing gorilla. There's no doubt ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 22, 2006 06:23
Getting Linked by Big Bloggers
Doll laments her inability to get linked from big-name bloggers, who she believes only link one another. Harvey Olson believes the answer is to suck up to big-name bloggers with nice e-mails. They are both wrong. To begin with, it is simply untrue that the highest trafficked bloggers only link one another or are generally parsimonious with their links. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 5, 2006 13:30
Blogger Corporate Relations
Steve Bainbridge passes on word that Edelman* and Intelliseek have produced an interesting report, "Trust “MEdia” - How Real People Are Finally Being Heard - The 1.0 Guide to the Blogosphere for Marketers & Company Stakeholders" [PDF]. From the executive summary: Bloggers are speaking and being heard in real time, and only recently has the marketing community begun to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 22, 2006 15:44
How to Get Rich Blogging
Ken Kelly, aka Dennis the Peasant, provides a detailed handy dandy guide on how to get rich by creating a highly trafficked weblog with little or no actual writing talent. Along the way, he insults almost every successful blogger on both sides of the aisle and their readers, often humorously. In Part One: What Do I Blog About?, he advises, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 15, 2006 11:22
The Perils of Blogging on Free Sites
As if you needed another reason to leave Blogspot, here's one for you: They can delete your site without notice and won't even respond to your inquires. Like most bloggers, I started out on Blogspot with a site at outsidethebeltway.bloggspot.com on January 31, 2003. I quickly outgrew the limitations of the service and moved to the current domain on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 29, 2005 13:00
Blogger Tip: NYT Archives
I've noted before a trick I learned from Kevin Drum: That, while links to articles from the New York Times go stale after a few days, forcing those who want to read them to purchase them at outrageous rates, they offer bloggers the ability to link to an RSS version by searching for an alternative URL at the New ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 30, 2005 06:08
How to Blog Good
Iowahawk provides some pithy advice on How to Blog Good, specifically, to Style-ize For Maximal Impactfulness. Blog Dimension 1: Pith. In todayâs go-go-go world, readers need their opinions now. They need them fast and to the point. Remember rule number one: do everything within your power to increase the economical verbal tersity of your posts, because what is increasingly ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 20, 2005 16:26
Blogging and Power Laws
The proprietor of Simon World compliled a huge list of blogging tips from his own experiences and those of other bloggers entitled, "Everything you wanted to know about blogging but were afraid to ask." This caused Glittering Eye to take a look at the traffic, start dates, links, and professions of the TTLB Top 20. Blog Date started Links Traffic 1 Michelle Malkin June 2004 6,171 86,967 Journalist 2 Instapundit August 2001 6,119 127,741 Academic 3 Daily Kos May ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 26, 2005 07:23
25 Pieces Of Advice For Bloggers
John Hawkins offers "25 Pieces Of Advice For Bloggers." They're worth heeding if you're trying to launch your blog into the "big time." Whatever that is. See also my Blogging Tips category archives, which collect various similar commentaries from myself and around the blogosphere I've collected over the last couple years.Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 11, 2005 13:55
