As I mentioned in my previous post, the thing which surprised me most about my experience at this year’s Blog World Expo in Las Vegas is the fact that all the attendees – including the famous and successful A-Bloggers – were super cool, friendly and willing share many blogging “secrets”.

As a long time fan and avid reader of the infamous blog Problogger, I am especially pleased that Darren was kind enough to give me a couple of minutes of his valuable time, accepted to be “dragged” to a quiet conference room and was willing share his wisdom about blogging in a one on one interview (ca. 5 minutes).

In this interview, I ask him…

1. Why you should start blogging today
2. What his most important advice about maintaining a blog is
3. What his personal biggest rewards of blogging were so far
4. If microblogging (the latest trend) will be becomr bigger than old fashioned blogging
5. What the future of online media is (mainstream media vs. blog networks)
6. If he will still be interested in blogging in 5 years.

For those who don’t know Darren: He is one of the world’s most popular and respected authorities for blogging, the voice behind the no. 1 blog for blogging tips, Problogger, and the Vice President of training and development at B5 Media, one of the largest blog networks on the planet (which he launched with three fellow bloggers in 2005).

Besides Problogger, he also blogs at Digital Photography School, a blog with tips and product reviews around digital photography. According to Wikipedia, these two blogs get around 15,000-20,000 page views a day and over $20,000 in total ad revenue a month. (Impressive numbers, I have to say!)

If you’re interested to get more of Darren’s useful blogging tips, I highly recommend that you read his (and co-author Chris Garrett’s) recently published book “Problogger: Secrets Blogging to A Six-Figure Income”. It’s contains a wealth of valuable information how to start a blog, increase your readershop and make money with it. (Darren himself became a Six-Figure Blogger in September 2005)

Another tip: Follow Darren on Twitter (@problogger) and to check out his online activities on Friendfeed. It’s worth it!

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Robert Scoble, Hugh McLeod and Stowe Boyd during the B5 Advisory Board Q&A

One day before the official Blog Word Expo started, B5 Media – one of the largest blog networks in the world – was running a training day for their bloggers, titled B5 Blogger Summit, that was opened up to any BWE registrants that wanted to attend.  Needless to say that I did not want to miss this great opportunity to get blogging tips from the pros and get to know the people behind this rapidly expanding blog network in person.

In the hindsight I have to say that it was totally worth to take this additional day off and travel to Las Vegas already on Thursday night in order to be fresh and ready for the first session on Friday at 9 AM. Here’s why:

Not only did l learn how big B5 Media has become (300+ blogs, 200 bloggers and 10 million unique visitors per month) during the workshop, but I also got great tips (sometimes new, sometimes familiar) about a wide range of blogging topics, such as Search Engine Optimization, interview techniques, increase readership, image and social media use.

One of my personal highlights of the day was the Q&A with three members of the advisory board of B5 Media, Robert Scoble, Hugh McLeod and Stowe Boyd (Doc Searls and Renee Blodgett were missing). Their chat about how the internet has changed and affected their lives, blogging, Twitter, Friendfeed and other internet trends was both very informative and highly entertaining.

Another personal highlight for me was to listen to Darren Rowse’s fantastic session titled “how to finder readers for your blog”, but also to personally meet him and do a little interview with him. I will publish the 5 minute video of my conversation with him in a separate post.

Stay tuned!

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With a live audience of 75,000 people and a TV audience of 38 million viewers, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered not only his best, but also the most watch Convention speech ever. It won rave reviews from the media as much for style as for substance. Pundits praised it as “one killer speech”, “more a symphony than a speech”, an “soaring oratory” with “the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop”, among others.

Barack and bloggers have one thing in common: They both have to rely on their phrasing skills in order to make their case in front of an audience.

Barack certainly delivered. Can you?

Here are 10 things you can learn from Obama’s acceptance speech:

1. Be prepared for your big moment.

Whether you give a speech hoping to become the next President of the United States or set up a website hoping to become one of the best and most popular blogger in the whole country: Do your homework. Know what you’re going to talk/write about. And set the stage appropriately (= blog design).

2. Be a master of your words.

Breathe. Don’t overthink. Choose your words wisely. Don’t use vocabulary you’re not accustomed with. And most of all: Try to avoid mistakes (typos). Always spell-check your sentences. You don’t want to become known worldwide for being “language-challenged” like President George W. Bush.

3. Share where you come from.

You’re potential blog readers are like voters who don’t know you (yet). Be personal. Talk about your (personal or professional) past. Share an anecdote from your life. Stories are the emotional glue of blogging. Show why you’re passionate about your blog and the topic you write about.

4. Have a core message. And be consistent with it.

“Change you can believe in”. Everybody knows that “change” is the core message of Obama’s campaign. Why? Because you’ve heard for the last 18 months. Because Obama mentioned the word “change” 16 times in his acceptance speech. And because you saw change everywhere else: on billboards, signs, T-Shirts, stickers. Sticky messages also good for bloggers. Communicate the purpose and the goal(s) of you blog clearly. So you can be distinctive – and increase your following.

5. Be different. Be unique. And: It’s not about you.

Don’t be a blogging copycat. Talk about something which represents a unique feature, skill or piece of knowledge of yours – or offer a new and surprising approach to a well-known topic. Focus on it and present it in a way that it shows clearly how it helps and benefits your readers. Like Obama said: “It’s not about me – it’s about you”.

6. Face your enemy.

Obama’s obstacle and “enemy” is his political opponent John McCain. The challenges you face might be writer’s block, laziness, distractions or blogger fatigue. Approach it like Barack: Don’t cave in, address it, be firm, have always your goal it mind – and discuss your obstacles with your readers (if that helps). The blogosphere shares at least one thing with politics: They both needs fighters with good hearts.

7. Show humor.

Did you see how Obama smiled and made jokes during his big night at the Democratic convention? It’s amazing to see him so humorous and uplifting after 18 long months on the campaign trail. Take-away for you: If you take blogging as serious as Obama his pursuit of the presidency, it takes a lot of effort and can be tiring. Nevertheless, keep your sense of humor. Be witty, crack jokes. Make people laugh with your posts. (These award-winning humor blogs might be an inspiration for you…) It makes you even more likeable. And entices web surfers to come back to your blog.

8. Celebrate every success. And say thank you.

You will experience many ups and downs on your journey to become a successful blogger. That’s why it’s important that you celebrate every success you experience with your blog, small or big. Your first blog post series, your 1 year blog anniversary, your first guest post for a blogger you admire – you know, what I mean. And if you make it to the front page of Digg, reach a new record number of blog feed subscriber or comments, don’t forget to say a big ‘thank you’ to your readers. They’ll appreciate it.

9. Surprise with a firework.

Do it like Obama did it: Offer a firework of words and visual effects in your blog. Add a unique and creative header to your blog, for example. Write a passionate love declaration to a fellow blogger. Or a fiery rant about a disappointing product or service. It doesn’t have to be big or expensive. But it has to get the attention of other bloggers and start a conversation, even if your idea for a “firework” is disputable. The point is: Make a lasting impression.

10. Dream big.

Hey, if Obama dares to dream to become the first Afro-American President in the history of the United States, why can’t you dream to earn enough money to become a full-time blogger, get a lucrative book deal or surpass the readership of popular blogs like Boing Boing, Lifehacker or ProBlogger? As Zadok Rabinwitz once said: “”A man’s dreams are an index to his greatness.”

What were the most inspiring things for you about Obama’s acceptance speech? What do you think bloggers can learn from it?

Darren Rowse had a great idea: he organized a Killer Titles contest on his popular blog Problogger as part of its latest group writing project.

The contest is only three day old, but the list with the submissions is already very long. Here are my 10 favorites so far:

• Soy! Oh Boy! by Liz Scherer
• A Slacker Wife Celebrates Do Nothing Day by Sandra Foyt
• How to Get Half a Million People to Visit Your Blog by Simon
• If I Unsubscribe from Your List Will You Ever Talk to Me Again? by Des Walsh
• Stop Being Broke Right Now: Kick Off Financial Success with 10 Minutes and $10 by Dave
• Banish Blogger Butt in 7 Beneficial Ways by Stephanie Quilao
• How to Despise a Country in 10 Minutes or Less by EC Stewart
• If your life was a book, would you read it? by Rich 
• Twitter and Plurk get Pinged by Jen
• Masturbation means never having to say your sorry by Millar Prescott

There are some great advices how to write killer titles out there. Here are just a few examples:

- How to craft post titles that draw readers into your blog, Problogger
- Blog Titles are ads, Performancing 
- How to title stuff, Seth Godin 
- Captivate your audience with a killer opening, Copyblogger
- Why do some headlines fail, great 12 page e-book by Sean D’Souza, founder of the blog Psychotactics

Do you have advice or useful links how to write great blog titles?

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I have to admit. I am not the biggest fan of optimizing Flash websites. There are tons of blog posts which have written extensively how to SEO Flash. We all know the reasons: The search engines don’t know how to crawl these kind of sites, they eat up too much bandwidth, they have a slow load time, they’re CPU heavy etc.

From today there will be less headaches for SEOs and more love for Flash – supposedly. Google and Yahoo announced that they will be able to crawl Flash websites – thanks to Adobe. Apparently the software company has created a special Flash player which will aid the search engine in crawling the web content.

The Google webmaster blog has a great Q&A regarding the improvements. A quick summary:

• Better indexing of textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.
• All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. The words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.
• Images (and text in images) will not be recognized and indexed.
• Flash content on website will be automatically indexed. If webmaster prefer Google to ignore their less informative content, such as a “copyright” or “loading” message, they should consider replacing the text within an image, which will make it effectively invisible to the search engines.
• Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript.
• Google currently does not attach content from external resources that are loaded by Flash files of a website.
• Currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages.

Mmmm. Interesting. How was the reaction of the blogosphere? Huge. According to Trendpedia there were around 7000 posts published about this topic within the last 24 hours. The chart looks quite impressive:

There have been quite a lot of doubts and critical voices out there about this news.

Mathew Ingram writes in his great blog post titled “News Flash: Flash Websites Still Suck”:

I also have to wonder whether the ability to search through Flash files is going to be that great for websites, since the main thing that gets you higher in Google search results is the number (and quality) of links that you have to your content. (…) But the biggest fly in the ointment for me is the simple fact that most Flash websites are — not to put too fine a point on it — crap.

Techcrunch weighs in:

Becoming visible is one thing, actually ranking highly is another. Google currently can find about 73 million Flash files on the Web. But until Adobe makes it easy for the average Webmaster or blogger to link deeply into those Flash files, they are not likely to appear at the top of many search results.

Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim adds:

Google just destroyed the web. (…) Until (the search engine) can demonstrate that its Flash crawling capabilities are equal to its HTML crawling, you risk building a site that, while indexable, is not as “optimized” as its simple HTML cousin.

And Lisa Barone from the Bruce Clay Blog doesn’t spare with criticism:

Flash Web sites are evil. (…) They’re a lame attempt to make your boring site look interesting by distracting users with pretty pictures and moving frames. (…) My SEO advice: Stick with creating HTML-based Web sites that users will want to interact with.

What does this mean for Search Engine Optimization Professsionals?

Search Engine Land has a great summary:

Can SEOs now remove the “review Flash implementation” line from their checklists? Probably not. However, it should be easier for SEOs to work with Flash-based sites going forward. SEOs should keep in mind that these new algorithms don’t take into account any meta data or formatting markup in the Flash file and, for now, Google’s cache won’t show a representation of the extracted text so site owners can’t verify what is actually being crawled by viewing the cached copy.

Plus:

If you really HAVE to use Flash – read Jonathan Hochman’s useful article ‘How to SEO Flash’ and SEO Book’s great post ‘How to Flash sites rank well‘, among others. And get the 117 design guidelines for Flash usability by usability guru Jakob Nielson. It costs $60 – but it’s worth it.

I have to admit. I am not the biggest fan of optimizing Flash websites. There are tons of blog posts which have written extensively how to SEO Flash. We all know the reasons: The search engines don’t know how to crawl these kind of sites, they eat up too much bandwidth, they have a slow load time, they’re CPU heavy etc.

From today there will be less headaches for SEOs and more love for Flash – supposedly. Google and Yahoo announced that they will be able to crawl Flash websites – thanks to Adobe. Apparently the software company has created a special Flash player which will aid the search engine in crawling the web content.

The Google webmaster blog has a great Q&A regarding the improvements. A quick summary:

• Better indexing of textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.
• All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. The words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.
• Images (and text in images) will not be recognized and indexed.
• Flash content on website will be automatically indexed. If webmaster prefer Google to ignore their less informative content, such as a “copyright” or “loading” message, they should consider replacing the text within an image, which will make it effectively invisible to the search engines.
• Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript.
• Google currently does not attach content from external resources that are loaded by Flash files of a website.
• Currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages.

Mmmm. Interesting. How was the reaction of the blogosphere? Huge. According to Trendpedia there were around 7000 posts published about this topic within the last 24 hours. The chart looks quite impressive:

There have been quite a lot of doubts and critical voices out there in the blogosphere about this news.

Mathew Ingram writes in his great blog post titled “News Flash: Flash Websites Still Suck”:

I also have to wonder whether the ability to search through Flash files is going to be that great for websites, since the main thing that gets you higher in Google search results is the number (and quality) of links that you have to your content. (…) But the biggest fly in the ointment for me is the simple fact that most Flash websites are — not to put too fine a point on it — crap.

Techcrunch weighs in:

Becoming visible is one thing, actually ranking highly is another. Google currently can find about 73 million Flash files on the Web. But until Adobe makes it easy for the average Webmaster or blogger to link deeply into those Flash files, they are not likely to appear at the top of many search results.

Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim adds:

Google just destroyed the web. (…) Until (the search engine) can demonstrate that its Flash crawling capabilities are equal to its HTML crawling, you risk building a site that, while indexable, is not as “optimized” as its simple HTML cousin.

And Lisa Barone from the Bruce Clay Blog doesn’t spare with criticism:

Flash Web sites are evil. (…) They’re a lame attempt to make your boring site look interesting by distracting users with pretty pictures and moving frames. (…) My SEO advice: Stick with creating HTML-based Web sites that users will want to interact with.

What does this mean for Search Engine Optimization Professsionals?

Search Engine Land has a great summary:

Can SEOs now remove the “review Flash implementation” line from their checklists? Probably not. However, it should be easier for SEOs to work with Flash-based sites going forward. SEOs should keep in mind that these new algorithms don’t take into account any meta data or formatting markup in the Flash file and, for now, Google’s cache won’t show a representation of the extracted text so site owners can’t verify what is actually being crawled by viewing the cached copy.

Plus:

If you really HAVE to use Flash – read Jonathan Hochman’s useful article ‘How to SEO Flash’ and SEO Book’s great post ‘How to Flash sites rank well‘, among others. And get the 117 design guidelines for Flash usability by usability guru Jakob Nielson. It costs $60 – but it’s worth it.

The presidential candidate of the Democratic party, Barack Obama, is a online media phenomena. No other politician seeking the highest office in the U.S. has used to web so skillfully like him. He has a great multi-media website for raising donations and coordinating his 50 states campaign.

He also uses YouTube to get his message out and has a profile on all major social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn to raise his online visibility and reach out to communicate with his fan base and reach out to web-savvy people who would like to know him and his political ideas better. Between January and April 08 alone Barack spent $3 million for online advertising. Needless to say – the lion share went to Google.

The Obama campaign also knows how to use the world wide web for reputation management and damage control. It recently launched a website called FightTheSmears which debunks false rumors (i.e that he’s a secret Muslim, or he won’t say the Pledge of Allegiance – a especially smart move in in the age of the 24/7 news cycle.

As the following charts show, Barack is hard to be when it comes to online media & online social media strategies. He has by far the most followers of all presidential candidates – especially than rival John McCain:

Facebook: Obama has 7 times more supporters than McCain.

MySpace: Obama has almost 8 times more ‘friends’ that McCain.

YouTube: Obama’s videos have 50 million more views that McCain’s.

Technorati: Obama gets 800 more blog mentions that McCain.

By the way: All this charts come from the fantastic website TechPresident, powered by the Personal Democracy Forum. (PDF)

Who are the wizards behind Barack Obama’s well-coordinated and successful internet strategy? Business Week tried to find the answer to this question in a fascinating article. But the reporter only found out the “Obama’s secret digital weapon” (the title of the story) is a small firm called Blue State Digital which was founded by four former members of Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign in 2004 . (Given that Dean’s campaign ‘discovered’ the internet as a essential fundraising and marketing tool for a presidential candidate, that is not a surprise).
Business Week writes:

The (Obama) campaign declined to discuss Blue State, but the firm says its handiwork and technology can be seen in the more than $200 million Obama has raised online, the 2 million phone calls made on the candidate’s behalf, and in barackobama.com’s social network of 850,000 users, who have organized 50,000 campaign events.

Well, I am very interested to see how Obama’s huge internet advantage comes in play when the race between the senator from Illinois and the self-declared war hero is heating up after the two men are officially nominated by their parties in September.

P.S. I guess the fact that John McCain “is aware of the internet” – as described by an unnamed McCain staffer during one of the panels at the PDF in New York – is just not sufficient enough as a campaign strategy in the digital age.

P.S.2. Experts estimate as much as $3 billion could be spent by political campaigns leading up to the November election. The share of expenditures for internet advertising is currently a one digit percentage number. But I bet this number is going to change quickly if internet-savvy candidate Obama wins the presidency.

What do you think about how Barack Obama’s internet marketing strategy?

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