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Archive for February, 2008

(Re)blogging and the Art of Added Value

In today’s world of rampant regurgiblogging what constitutes originality in a blog post? Should every post be completely original or is that goal essentially impossible? In virtually any niche you will need to go beyond what you simply think up on your own and have to link to others and (gasp!) possibly reblog in one form or another. So the question is: how do you do that and still add value for your readers? Here are three general approaches to blog writing that involve added value, but you will notice that two of these are not about purely “original” content!

1) Original Posts: Sure, there are blog posts you could call “original” articles. Usually, though, these means telling a personal narrative rather than discussing a current idea, topic or news item. Why? Because as soon as you are talking about news or anything outside of your personal life you will inevitably be repeating information. Still, this applies to a rather limited set of blogs and blogging styles or one-off articles.
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Then and Now: Finding Information Online and Off

Anyone who is active on social media sites should appreciate this little spoof that discusses Social Media in the 1990s. It is meant to be funny and it is, but it is also revealing: after all, what did we do a decade ago when none of this stuff was around? The correlations aren’t all 1-to-1 but they are certainly entertaining.

Researching online can be a real pain and too many people default to Wikipedia when they aren’t sure where to look. These 25 Online Resources for Reliable Researched Facts are a good place to start looking beyond your standard haunts. There are many other places of course but this well-written list is a good one to bookmark for future use.

I saw this a while back but never posted about it: a great article on How to Find Weird Stuff on the Web by ReadWriteWeb. Even if you’re not looking for weird stuff per say this is a good introduction to alternative methods of finding information online.

12 Awesome Articles that Blew Up on the Internet

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How does an article go from being just another post on a blog to a web-wide sensation overnight? I would argue that at their core most of these strike the right blend of fascinating, novel and mainstream: they are compelling enough to grab your attention, strange enough that they present new information and yet of general enough interest to have a broad appeal to many people who frequent the world wide interwebs. Here are 12 great examples that illustrate these principles in more ways than one and are incredibly entertaining to boot!

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LifeHackery’s 99 Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Objects another great ‘themed’ post built around items that everyone has in their home – what better way to draw readers immediately than to point out that boring old objects laying around might have strange secondary uses? Some of the particularly clever/innovative ones come complete with pictures which provide a great initial boost to the article.
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SU and the Art of Adding Stumble-Friends

Perhaps you some enjoy pages you find on StumbleUpon but a lot of the results aren’t relevant? Maybe many of your finds are relevant but you want more people to share them with? Or maybe you just love StumbleUpon, have some people you know using it, but want to find even more? If any of these rings true perhaps you could use some better methods of finding ‘friends’ on SU.

While many StumbleUpon users merrily Stumble away without interacting with others, a fair number of people join StumbleUpon in part because they want to network with others in the community. Whether you want to find people with similar interests or simply want to find more interesting things to StumbleUpon it is worthwhile for every Stumbler to make Stumble-friends.
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10 Essential Strategies for Writing Sweet Viral Content

Did you know that a headline or first sentence can break an otherwise awesome article? Everyone knows that websurfers have short attention spans, but the longer you write the more you will realize just how short they can be. By the third sentenceprobably half of them have stopped reading and are looking for the next big thing.

And can you blame them? There is a lot of good content on the web, so an introduction that is catchy (a question, little known fact or amazing statistic) is key. If you can, make your article into a list whether or not you envisioned or even initially wrote it in list format.
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3 Common Misconceptions About Digg dot Com

A lot of new people starting out on Digg.com have some of the same preconceived notions coming into the site – as those of us who have been on the site for a while did when we started. While there is an inevitable learning curve with any social media site while one learns the ropes, if you are new to Digg specifically here are common pitfalls frequently experienced by newer users.

1) Digg is a democracy: in point of fact there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes on with regards to upcoming stories making the front page of Digg. The algorithms of Digg are designed to enable newer users and new sites to frontpage more easily. However, the flipside is: new users on and sites submitted to Digg are watched more closely as possible spam. Further, there are even “secret editors” (Digg employees) that make final decisions on some content and who might choose to promote something (or not) for unknown reasons.
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Your Catch-Up Guide to the Scientology Scandal

The Attack Begins: A notorious group of internet users known as “Anonymous” have taken down a Scientology website after declaring war on the church. Anonymous, whose membership included hackers, has begun a “third wave” of attacks in the week-old operation dubbed “Project Chanologyâ€?.

Huffington Post: Anonymous has already beaten Scientology: “In other words, for all their supposed higher-brain functions, compliments of L. Ron Hubbard’s questionable teachings, they can’t win this one. A group of internet savvy kid vigilantes has, to some extent, already beaten them. ” February 10th, Join the protests at Churches of Scientology Worldwide

How I Escaped Scientology: A well-written, honest account of the experiences a former upper-level, inner-circle Scientologist who spent 20 years in what he describes as a “slavish” cult. He also gives the insider’s scoop on the formation of Scientology.

And for Good Measure: Secret Documents of Scientology

Anonymous’ Second Address to Scientology:

Honk if you Hate Scientology:

Follow-Up: Why Not Use Keyworded Domains?

A lot of people use longer keyword-saturated domains. Some of these are carry-overs from an earlier generation of web thought which suggested that search traffic was king. In todays world of branding, name recognition and new media, though, these keyword-rich domains simply don’t cut it anymore. Buy why?

For one thing, they are long, cumbersome, awkward and hard to remember at times. They also tell any web-savvy visitor that you are doing whatever you can to come up on searches – that your goal is traffic and that you’re ‘working the system’ to get it. To people like me at least that is a warning light, a red flag that you might have poor content you are simply trying to dress up with targetted Google-friendly keywords.
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The Top 5 Ultimate StumbleUpon Resource Lists

StumbleUpon is arguably the ultimate social media network. It is easy to use: jumping from page to interesting page takes just a click of a button. It is diverse: unlike Digg and Reddit, StumbleUpon isn’t dominated by a few niche interest groups or a limited demographic. It is incredibly friendly: there is very little trash-talk on SU as compared to other social media sites. However, StumbleUpon does have one major shortcoming: it is somewhat difficult to move from the status of ‘casual Stumbler’ to ‘StumbleUpon expert’ because SU has hidden complexity beyond the Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down and Stumble buttons we know and love.
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