I have a few social networking platforms I use… although I am really only a fan of two.  Delicious and Stumbleupon.  Why?  Delicious because I like to bookmark stuff and stumbleupon because it’s so damned intuitive.  I have never in my life had so much fun and learned at the SAME TIME.  I have over 1,100 stumbles now so my guess is that it will continue to grow as I find more stuff I like.   Every now again I get a rush of traffic from stumble which is also nice. Enough pleasantries… this is my stumblepage…

You can add me as a friend if you like and I will respond in kind:

My stumble page.

I am not a prolific digger or a reddit… person but I do enjoy them on occasion.   So if you are in the area why not check it out.

Hi there and thanks for reading. I have been on holidays for a while so I thought I’d do a tidy up of the blog as I mentioned earlier in my changes afoot post. If you have been here for a while you can see the changes. One of the things I have learned from reading Yaro Starak’s blog is having pillar content. When I thought about it I realised I had tons of it… it was just buried deep with my category structures. You live and you learn but that’s life isn’t it?

So I updated my articles page to include what I think is my pillar content. I can recommend this as a practice because it focused me on thinking about the strategic vantages I have as a blogger. I noticed that some of pillar content is underdeveloped … I need to write more series and less off-the-cuff posts. Anyway the lesson for me was: make the most of your content. I had the pillar content without realising it because I was blogging without a plan. Don’t make this mistake.

I have removed the forum for now because I was really busy when I started it and was attacked by spammers. It will return when I finally get the time to focus on it. I believe forums offer a lot of value to a blog. But, keeping up with the spam kings just about killed me.

The fiction page is gone until I work out what I am going to do with it. I am probably going to launch a seperate domain but I don’t know. That’s been a long haul and quite frankly and I am not sure it’s worth it yet.

So, thanks for reading and I hope you continue enjoy your time on my blog.

My wife is also a blogger. She decided she wanted to branch out into the blogosphere last moth and she is doing quite well. After reading a Problogger post about his wifes keenness for new pillows, I realised that I had learned something from wife about blogging too over the past month.

Always write from the heart and be the real you

My wife has a great way of just saying what she thinks. She puts it out there. I realised after reading her blog for a while that I had been writing academically. After all this is what I am trained for isn’t it? I wasn’t used to the more open journalistic (there I go again) style of writing that pervades the blogosphere. I guess when I started I thought you know what this is going to be fun. After a while a few people came and I was like woah! As a blogger I think you should be you without telling us what you had for lunch… unless you are John Chow. Ok, so it works. Lesson learned … write from heart and be the real you.

Make each blog post about one thing

It’s late and I’m tired but I can’t remember the word that explains what I just wrote. Oh well… in short make each post about a single topic. One of my favourite books is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Not because of the excess drug taking or anything like that. It’s the fact the whole book is about a trip to and from Las Vegas and all the misadventures of the protagonist. It’s about a single person and what happened to them. Some of my posts what I would call TOE (theory-of-everything) slanted and I try to say too much at once. My wife has a fantastic way of saying something in a short concise paragraph length that I just can’t! Me… with all my bits of paper!

Write about stuff that people care about

I should have known this. But alas I did not. I used my Christmas money (yay) to buy Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. The eye opening thing for me is that he states continually (ok so I have read 170 pages so far and yes it’s been worth it for me… haven’t finished yet it might go downhill from page 170) throughout the book that you need to have content that people want to read and would be willing to talk about. He outlines how search engines are going this way too. Reading my wife’s blog I noticed how each post was a short readable length and was something people find funny. Hence, they would want to share it. Hmm tough lesson.

Right so now that I have learned something from reading my wife’s blog I have to end this post by saying I convinced her to do it. I feel like a man again!

Well here we are reaching the end of another year.   This year I was bullied, bashed and otherwise abused into making a blog by those around me.  At first I thought, what a vacuous concept… talking to oneself over the web.  As I have progressed into it, I have grown in confidence and had quite some success in the blogging world … well ok … I had a few good days.

So what did you like from me this year.  I have dug into my Google Analytics file and found the stuff you thought was the most interesting… even if from a quantitative point of view.    So here we are the best of me for 2007:

10. What to do when it all goes to sh**

This post surprised me.  It was really an idea I had when I was thinking of my own life and how things have gone bad for me in the past.   It was my daughters birthday and my mother in law had ripped her bumper bar off her brand new car.  We acted fast and got out of the mess instead of the mess consuming us.

9. My other dog’s a doberman

This post is one by my wife.  So here’s to you hot mama.

8. The problems of life

This is really an anchor page for this whole site.  It describes what I am all about.  Heaps of people of have read this article and for this reason it’s available from my articles page.

7. Problem Solving by Changing your mind

I really like this post.  It was an attempt to take my ideas around perspective shifting and make them into common sense steps.  Did it work… probably not… but I am getting there.

6. Solving Life Problems: 5 Essential Skills you need to make it

When I was gearing up to write this post I realised that I had been telling a story.  In fact I had inadvertently been writing a book.  I am only half way there so I thought let’s see if people want to read more about what I write.  This proved to be a fairly safe bet at this early stage so I am going to keep writing in 2008 and see how it goes from there.  If you haven’t downloaded this book yet I would recommend that you do it now!  It will give you an overview of what life skills are all about.

5. 5 Reasons you need to give

I focused on giving and receiving in this article and it proved to be a very popular choice.  At the time I wrote it, I crashed my server!  Giving… a contentious issue but one that is relevant today.

4. Sowing good seeds for the future

A lot of people thought that sowing into the future on a daily basis was a good idea.  For this reason, this post became very popular in a short space of time.  About 3000 people read it in a short period of time which for this tiny blog was a total surprise.

3. 7 Signs of a failing relationship and what you can do about it

The seven signs were worked out in about 10 minutes from my own and my wife’s point of view.  I have had many many broken relationships and restored most of them.  Then again, was I prepared when my server crashed on this article and I was locked out of my bluehost account for a period of time? No I wasn’t.  I learned something very valuable about blogging from writing this article.  Make it so it’s understandable, readable and you will eventually find people will read what you write.  Thanks to the 4000 people who read this article in that hour or two!

2.  4 ways to come up with cool ideas

You know what… never judge your posts on what happens today.  I wrote this post way back in September and nobody except John from Business Opportunities and Ideas read it.  John was gracious enough to hat tip me on his blog and I noticed it began to grow and grow and grow.  Sometime last week it hit a peak and became my second most viewed post.  The cool thing is that I live by these principles and to see it grow as it has gives me a lot of satisfaction.

[Insert drumroll]

1. Having a William Shatner Attitude: Knowing what your worth

Okay so I stole Brian Clark’s technique… and it worked.  I was reading the news as I do everyday when I read a comment by Shatner saying that if they make a Star Trek movie without him in it it would tank.  I laughed so hard and then remembered how Brian had used Yogi to great effect in one of his posts.  I leveraged Shatner’s fame and attitude to make a point about how you should believe in yourself and know your own ability (without being a blowhard).  I love Shatner’s attitude. To me it says, ‘I am a winner and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it!’   This one crashed my bluehost servers for 10 minutes.  Thanks to the 5000+ people who love Shatner as much as I do.

Sadly the posts I most wanted to see make it didn’t.  I want reveal what these were but if you are a long term reader you will note changes.  I cannot make people like my boring content anymore than I can make them love Shatner. These posts you can easily find by looking under different categories and you will see why.  My novel experiment tanked and since has been cancelled.  In the same manner my creative projects bombed badly … so they too have died.  Yet, in this mix I have learned that I love blogging and interacting with people even if they think I suck.   Since August I have been pumping out gold and I will continue to do so throughout next year.  Thanks to all who read anything I wrote and I wish you a happy new year.

In my obsessive compulsion statistics viewing I was reading through the five most popular posts I have had since opening this blog back in late August. These numbers are quite paltry when comparing them to likes of Yaro or other ‘big time‘ bloggers. These include:

1. The problems of life article: (720 views) my overview of my upcoming e-book on life problems. Oh, did I say that out loud? Stay tuned.

2. The synergy institutes learn to think different challenge. (700 views) This post was stumbled leading to me receiving 500 people at once. Some of you are still reading I am sure. Thanks!

3. The wiki way of thinking: (620 views) What I learned from running tiki wiki in two university courses.

4. What I have learned about success: (548 views) I went from deadbeat to doctor (almost) as my wife says. I have learned a lot of things along my way I have.

5. How to recognise underlying emotions part 1 (478 views) I don’t like sequels either): How to know and accept your underlying emotions.

So what I am doing here grandstanding? Far from it. I have invented a phrase called ‘Keyword Conniption‘. Why? Below you will see a list of the organic search keywords I have coming to me on a regular basis. Hat tip to Footsteps in the mirror for inspiration. I used phrases because I think it more accurately proves my point. See below:

1. Luke Houghton

2. how to think strategically

3. think strategically

4. making the right decisions

5. life problems

6. thinks strategically

7. logic box problems

8. the golden rules of presentation

9. ways to see emotions

10. computers internet blog (?)

So makes sense right I am doing something. WRONG! This is the list as of now. Go back last week and my top result was dartboard! I was receiving 150 hits a day for the phrase ‘dartboard’. I was like, ‘what the… this blog is not about darts!’. I tried to work out was going on then it hit me. I wrote a post a while back called the dartboard approach to life problems. I put a picture of a dartboard in the post right next to the title. I tracked down the traffic as coming from Google images. If I had an affiliate program for dartboards I would have sold a few by now! The problem is: this blog is ‘life problems’ NOT dartboards. What did I do wrong? Well as I learned from reading search engine watch, I had put the keywords for my post in the wrong place. In essence creating a keyword conniption. Don’t do this! Simple SEO can make a difference. Now, people are looking for me and the subjects of the site. Not, dartboards. Has my traffic improved as a result. A little bit. Am I getting more targeted traffic? Absolutely. I have since learned that relevance is a lot more important than I previously gave it credit for.

How to avoid keyword conniption

The thinks you can do is make sure every post you write is something people want to read. Put your best idea in the first two or three words. For example, I should have put: Life problems solved through a dartboard approach. This puts the keywords I desire in the front of the article instead of towards the back. I have since learned about keyword tools like SEObook.com keyword tool, Wordtracker and Google trends. All of which helped me to find a bigger and better audience for my blog. My advice is to write down what you think you want to say and then combine these tools and common sense in how you want to say it. Otherwise you may fall victim to keyword conniption!

I subscribe to [tag]problogger[/tag], like I imagine most bloggers do, and I came across this article this morning about full time blogging being a process.  In the article it referenced (I am academic what can I say) the article from Get Rich Slowly about finding the guts to follow your dreams.  Now, I am reading the E-Myth Revisted by Michael Gerber at the moment and I think he would have something to say about becoming a ‘full time blogger’.  Gerber identifies three roles of the business person:  The Entrepreneur (visionary), The Manager and The technician.  The manager runs the business whilst the Entrepreneur focuses on it’s creative growth when the technician is performing the duties required to get the work done.   A friend of mine says it this way.  There is the pioneer who blazes the trail and then there’s other people who support that work by being ‘administrators’ and keeping the work going.

One of the great revelations for me in reading the E-Myth was the realisation that it’s okay to be an entrepreneur.   I am totally the person who see’s the vision and knows what needs to be done and so forth.  I am a very bad manager however and an even worse technician.  If you are like that, then you will find management work to be boring, heart wrenching and difficult to do.    Judging by experience so far and what I read in the blogosphere, full time blogging really is not an entrepreneurial pursuit.  It’s another job.   So what’s the difference?

Work versus Entrepreneurship

Work is routine ‘technican’ work.  Blogging, even though it’s a creative pursuit is largely work.  Why?  There is a creative marketing element for sure.  You have to write articles that attract visitors, put advertising in sidebars and in posts and so on.   Blogging is a ‘technical’ skill that you become good at like most forms of writing over time.  Say my dream is to be a fireman and my friends dream is to be a blogger.  As a blogger he is self-employed and most people would say ‘entrepreneur’.  I would say my blogger friend is just using his skill to make money the same way as a fireman does.  There is no difference.  Two technicians in different application fields.

Entrepreneurship is based on creativity and growth work isn’t

Now you will use your creative abilities in your job as a fireman, for example but this does not mean you are reinventing the practice of fire fighting.  The fire fighter who reinvents and continually improves firefighting is the entrepreneurial fire fighter.  The blogger who reinvents the job of blogging continually to find new streams of income is an entrepreneurial blogger.   Why?  Entrepreneurship is not simply going out on your own and making a new business.  There is a pioneering element to entrepreneurship where a vision for something is put together.   I meet people who I would consider to be entrepreneurial academics.  These are people reinventing things and using creativity and vision to bring forth pioneering change into their lives.  Clearly, blogging can be entrepreneurial but in most cases this isn’t so.

What makes me realise this is just how hard it appears to be to make a living as a blogger.   Some people I have read about find it very difficult and metaphors are drawn between blogging and hand to hand combat.   A case in point is the Problogger versus Shoemoney interview.  Have a look at the amount of time Darren Rowse puts into blogging!  That’s a full time job.  Two hours of writing versus how many hours of routine, technican like work?  I rest my case.   Work is hard, routine and after all BORING to the entrepreneur.  I therefore submit that whilst blogging can be entrepreneurial, it most cases it’s just another type of job.

In daily meanderings on the web I came across this article by John Cow the internet marketing guy (no not John Chow though they are very similar… funny that).  This publicity stunt had people believing the John Cow website was shutdown because it was hacked.  Some people thought the stunt was funny and clever whilst some thought it was evil or poor marketing.  This guy said it undermined his whole brand and I think that is an apt description.   Other people were asking questions about advertising and whether it was fair to the people who pay money that they missed out on 24 hours worth of advertising.  Isn’t that a breach of contract?

Using controversy to get attention is nothing new.   Richard Branson does it masterfully well and so have others.  I am reminded of Peter Spann’s use of the concept of leverage in his book.  He uses the concept to explain that you can have positive and negative leverage.  Negative leverage is like having a virus you can’t cure.  It keeps bringing you bad publicity.  Positive leverage gives you something that keeps flowing positivity in your direction.  I think John Cow’s stunt may actually be a ploy that could ultimately back fire.  Why?  Because it lacks integrity.

In an earlier post I pointed out how some people value money more than relationships and people and you can tell this by the it’s not personal it’s business line that they use.  There is nothing wrong with making money (I would be a hypocrite to say otherwise) but you can by still be entrepreneurial and have integrity.  That is, you can make money and do so in a way where people are not deceived.   Check out this latest problogger post on how to get noticed on popular blogs.  I noticed a comment from Missy that I thought was relevant.   She argues that a lot of the comments on blogs (generally speaking) are congratulatory rather than critical and I would have to agree.  Ryan also wrote in the comments:

    What about shamelessly saying I’ve got next to no readers at all, and everyone should visit my boring blog right now? It’s not even a joke… I really do have next to no     readers, and I’m quite sure if I was someone else, I’d find my blog boring as hell. So everyone… if you want to see some boring stuff, you know where to look eh?

Man do I know how he feels! So my question is this:  is there any [tag]integrity[/tag] left in the world of [tag]blogging[/tag]?  Ok, so I have framed the [tag]debate[/tag] somewhat by using a yes/no box … sorry about that.   Let me climb out.  Ahh, that’s better. The point I got out of Ryan’s comment relates in a different way to John Cow’s stunt.   Ryan, I think, is speaking out of sarcasm and making fun of people who write comments in blog posts that are designed to drive traffic.   Not promote debate or discussions.  Maybe I am idealist… but I think a blog should be a space to build communities and share ideas.   When we use words like ‘traffic’ we should also use words like ‘value adding to human lives’ for without one how can the other exist?  We have this silly attitude about being in business that says, ‘well I am in this to make money… not make friends.’   Yes but people engage with you because of the essence of what you are doing and the relationship you are building with them.

I learned this through teaching evaluations.  In one semester I was complete Nazi to my students and I scored low.  When I freed up I realised that I scored a whole point higher!  I can’t say this enough times… what people believe is a perspective or a point of view.  Now, what did I change to provoke that result.  Lots of things.  In particular I changed how I related to students.  Most importantly, I did would I could do to change how they perceived me. I began to talk with them and treat them like human beings and not cattle (or traffic).   If you are conning people or deceiving them after a while you will have this as your reputation and people will really believe you are like this. Don’t believe me?  What about people like Bill Clinton?  What do you remember him for?

Take a look at the top five blogs at technorati.  Heres a list I got this morning:

1. Boing Boing

2. Problogger

3. TechCrunch

4. LifeHacker

5. Engadget

What do they have in common?  Let me see:

1. They provide valuable information to a community 

Each one of these popular provide information that groups of people (i.e. communities of practice) find interesting.  Did they just get lucky… I think so.  Most of them appeal to cultures, groups and ideas.  Blogging, at least to me, appeals to communities.  It’s a way to engage with similar minded people for very little cost and it represents a way to add value (see my later point).

2. They provide most of their advice free

This goes without saying but I need to add something here which I think is important.  The internet is a part of free culture.  People want stuff for free.  I know, why should I work my butt off writing stuff that I may never make money out of?  Think about that while I work out a reasonable answer.

3. They add value firstly and secondly focus on how that value can be used to make money 

Value is added to people’s life by these sites.   They make money because of this perceived value adding.  They don’t make money through controversy, smart or dumb tactics or anything else.  People see the value and spread it for them.  Read this if you want to see what I mean here.

4. They grew a reputation through people

People make things popular because they see the [tag]value[/tag] and share it with others.  As a [tag]blog[/tag] grows in popularity it’s because of the ‘integrity’ of that blog in the eyes of the readers.  Integrity means the value and personal character of the blog itself.   It also means the authority that blog has in the eyes of the community.  Authority is the toughest thing to build because it requires a validation process.  I wonder, how do we validate things?  How do we determine authority?

So is there any [tag]integrity[/tag] left?  Of course there is but this is a business model we are talking about.  Whenever money comes into the picture there are bound to be stunts like John Cow’s that provoke people to write stuff like this.  My question is: is this really the right thing to do?  There are several answers we need to consider here:  First, will it help the blogger in the long term?  There are those that think this kind of stunt will have a negative effect on John Cow.  I think it will further polarise his audience and weed out those that aren’t of the same value set as he is.

Secondly, the use of [tag]controversy[/tag] is a sure-fire tactic to get attention for a limited amount of time.  However, it will pass on and I think in a month or two we won’t be talking about it anymore.  It’s simply a stunt.   Thirdly, the thing about blogging is that there is an implied trust in the readership that I think is exploited by a great many of us.  We do not realise that people believe first then analyse later.  There is tremendous power in this concept and it’s worth writing down!  Because of this I think more care needs to be taken about the authority and quality of information provided.  These communities are self-regulating which is both a problem and a curse.  Those that hunger after the dollar will group together.   That information is based on a set of values that override others and so on.   Lastly, if there is any integrity in our blogging it should be evident in what we post.  What’s our motivation?  Money or people?  If it’s money the readers should be able to see that and then make a value judgement for themselves.  If they can’t then I think a subtle form of manipulation is going on.   That, is not good for bloggers and it’s not good for our readers.

In closing I would like to say that the John Cow stunt is something which I thought was clever but I wouldn’t do something like that myself.   Why not?  Personally, I don’t think it was very clear to the readers of his blog that he was joking.  This got me thinking that perhaps we need more integrity in our blogging.  I think this is the case because even though this was just a marketing ploy… people really believed he was hacked!  It did however get me talking about it (which isn’t saying that much!) and thinking why do we fall for things like this?  On the one hand I admire the clever ploy yet on the other I am thinking well isn’t that deceptive? Either way, I still think we need to have more integrity in our blogs and be more upfront about what we are setting out to achieve.