Another week for the Friday Five in social media. My favorite this week comes courtesy of my sister-in-law in Australia who sent me an article on an Australian bank that seemed unhappy with its profitable quarter and chose to Tweet about it. The public responded (as only Aussies can). I believe it speaks directly to how social media tools have become part of the mainstream of how we communicate (even with banks and corporations).

Without further adieu, this week’s links:

* Westpac Bank writes ‘Oh So Very Over It’ on Twitter Account by Cameron Atfield, Brisbane Times.

* Google Buzz Monitoring by Rick Klau, Rick Klau’s Weblog.

* 20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter by Halle Tecco, Forbes.com

* The Sex and the City Guide to Blogging by (our very own) Julie Roads, Copyblogger.

* Seth Godin Should Read His Own Book by Mark Cuban, Blog Maverick Blog

Photo by pvsbond on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

So many blogs, so little time! How do you find the best ones?

I’m working on a project right now where I need to find the top blogs for a number of different topics. And it’s not as easy as you’d think. There isn’t one place that categorizes all blogs or top blogs or best blogs in terms of traffic, rank, subscribers and social media reach.

And, interestingly, Google isn’t really cutting it. I’ve found that blogs that end up on the first page of my Google search returns aren’t necessarily highly trafficked. When I tweeted my request for a way to find top blogs, many people said, ‘Use Google!’ But Google ranks based on how many people are linking to a particular post, not the site itself. So if you type in ‘NVidia blue screen error’, you will find a specific blog post on the subject at the top of the results. Doesn’t mean the blog that post lives on is a top ranked blog, but that post is. Google isn’t measuring popularity to the site, it’s measuring traffic to the page (among other things).

Below, you’ll find a list of other sites that can help with this task – but none of them are spectacular. And you can’t take what they say as gospel. You’ll need to install the Alexa toolbar, check each blog’s posts for comment numbers and ask around to get the full picture.

• Technorati
• Delightful Blogs
• alltop
• PopURLS
• Scribnia

So…if anyone’s looking for a great business idea. Please make the ultimate blog ranking and discovery site – ‘kay? Thanks…

Image credit: Dan is awesome

You may be wondering right about now, why I think bloggers should be cleaner than others, but I’m here to tell you, it’s because it’s where ideas are born. When you relax and open your mind, something wonderful happens. As that water rains down on your body, your mind clears and the ideas that have been locked away find their way free.

I’m a writer. It’s what I do, and I find ideas come at me out of nowhere all the time, but you don’t have to be a professional writer to experience this. You just have to be ready. The trick is to recognize the idea and respond, and never, ever ignore it. I’m still so pleasantly surprised when a seemingly spontaneous idea pops into my head almost fully formed. I’ve had it happen in the shower, emptying the dishwasher, out for a walk, in the car–any place my mind is open and the ideas are flowing.

But because I’m a writer I’ve trained myself to listen for these moments of clarity. You may be new to blogging or a regular blogger who struggles to find ideas. You just have to learn to look and listen and the ideas will come. They are out there all around you. You just have to be ready to detect them.

And when it happens, that magic moment, wherever you are, write it down, type a note or leave yourself a voice mail. Do something so you won’t forget. And pretty soon you’ll find that sometimes, when you get out of the shower, even before you dry off, you’ll find yourself sitting at your keyboard, writing that blog post. It’s why real bloggers shower regularly and write often.

This is a familiar client/Writing Roads scenario:

Me: If you want to be part of the world online, you must have a blog (for all of these reasons and more)

Client: Okay great…how often will I have to post? Like once a month?

Me: Uh, no. A little more than that.

Client: Twice a month? Just tell me how often should I publish to get the most ROI?

Me: Honestly, as much as possible. But at least 2-3 times per week.

And then they pass out.

The thing is, I’m not just talking out of my arse.

Take the Writing Roads blog, for instance:

• I used to blog Monday – Friday. As a result, after about 9 months of steadily rising stats, I had an Alexa rank of 123,000. (Which is really, really good – Google is #1)
• Last spring, I got insanely busy and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to drop down on my posting. So I went to Monday, Wednesday and Friday posts, 3x/week. My Alexa rank steadily fell to the 300,000 mark. (Not anywhere near as good)
• About 3 weeks ago, I started posting every day, Monday – Friday, again. No less busy – possibly more, but I just wanted to (because I love writing this blog), so I did. And I’ve watched my Alexa rank rise 100,000 spots and my spider (and visitor) stats increase. That’s 100K in about 13 posts. As of this writing, my rank is 199,000 (and rising)

The proof really is, as they say, in the pudding. If you want your blog to do better, (one of the methods that works is to) write, produce and publish more good content that tells the world all that you know about your chosen topic.

The good news, for both of us, is that if you don’t have the time or ability to do all of this blogging, you can hire someone to do it for you. I know, it’s a brilliant solution. You can do what you do best (cut hair, build houses, train chickens, whatever) and I, or some other writer, can do what we do best – produce engaging content. It’s a win/win sitch. No heavy lifting required.

Image credit: The Truth About…

Cross-posted on Writing Roads

Running a blog and managing your social networking sites is part of your job. That’s what I tell my clients. It’s a critical piece of the marketing and promotion and syndication pie. And if you can’t do it, you get help. You outsource.

But it’s a lot of work, they say. Yes. yes it is. And that work is really important. However, sometimes, life happens – and we simply have to take a step back. From our online participation, from our extracurricular activities, even from our work.

For regular readers and subscribers to this blog, you might notice that while we have a hefty backlog of posts and information, we haven’t been updating quite so much lately. Both Ron and I have run into some ‘life’ situations that put this blog that we love on the backburner. It pains us that we’ve had to do it, but in this online world – where we strive so hard to be genuine and authentic, to bring our very selves into the information that we share – we end up bringing the good with the bad.

It’s happened before, and the glory of having two of us driving this ship was that one of us could take over. But this time, we both got sidelined.

In essence, as my good friend, farmer and blogger, Susan Gibbs, just wrote – this is the ‘dark side’ of social media. (or one of them anyway – don’t get me started on SPAM). Essentially, this dark side illuminates the old adage, ‘women and children first’. But in our case, it’s ‘health, family and paying gigs’ first.

Still…we love this blog. We love the community we’ve created. So, we’re not going anywhere. We’re figuring out how to get back to our regular flow. (and we’re always happy to have guest posters, hint, hint, nudge, nudge). And we thought it was vastly important – in light of both our philosophies that being human is your most important job when engaging in social media – that we tell you what’s been going on.

Hey, while I’ve got your ear: are there topics, sites, terms, technologies that you’re wanting to hear about? Please let us know, and we’ll answer your queries!

We hope this finds you well…and thanks for being here,

Julie & Ron

Image credit: Scoobymoo

I hit an incredible milestone this month on my DaniWeb TechTreasures by Ron Miller blog. I passed 100,000 page views for a single month. In fact as of today, I blew through it, powered by my best post ever, which is a tad shy of 60,000 page views as of today. It wasn’t always this way. I’ve been writing this blog since April 2008. My first month I had about 15,000 views. A year later I had my first 50,000 view month.

It takes time and patience. DaniWeb is an IT community with over 600,000 members. As such, it has some reach that your site might not, so you shouldn’t compare numbers on a pure level. The lesson you should take away is that it takes time to build an audience, lots of time. As Julie wrote the other day in If you Build a Cafe in the Woods, you can’t just build your online presence and expect they will come. That’s just the first step.

As a blogger, you have to write regularly, produce quality content and constantly promote yourself in your network. If your content is good enough, the audience will get there. Keep in mind at the beginning, you are only going to get as much traffic as your most recent posts drives to you, but over time quality content lives on in search engines, and you will find that your daily traffic increases as you build up a back catalogue of older posts.

So be patient, keep writing and keep pushing. Your blog will build an audience. It might not be as fast as you like or as big as you wish for, but as long as your numbers trend upwards over time, you should be pleased.

Art work courtesy of DominusVobiscum on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

> To gate or not to gate. Data from an eBook offer. David Meerman Scott, WebInkNow Blog.

> Now You Can Dislike Stuff on Facebook with Firefox Plug-in. Jennifer Van Grove,  Mashable.

> Twitter Starts Curating Trending Topic Tweets. MG Siegler, TechCrunch.

> 10 Simple Video Blog Ideas. CT Moore, BloggingTips Blog.

>  Your Company May Own Your Tweets, Pokes and YouTube Videos. Jeremiah Owyang, Web Strategist Blog.

Photo by Daniel Spils on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

>  Quick Guide to Twitter Lists. Stuart Miles, Pocket-Lint Blog

>  Facebook Makover: The Good, The Bad and the Backlash. Tony Bradley, PC World

>  Custom Content Good for ROI. eMarketer Digital Intelligence Newsletter

>  What Are Useful Social Media Tools for Small Business. Ross Dawson, My Venture Pad

> Bing + Twitter: It’s a Start, But Awkward. Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb

Photo by Le Petit Poulailler on Flickr. Used unders the Creative Commons License.

I began working with a wonderful new client last week. And her first comment to me was, I know I want to start a blog, I understand how it will help my business, but I have to warn you – I have nothing to blog about.

For me this is the golden complaint – it’s like walking into a room full of open doors. To my clients, however, it feels like a cage. With steel bars. So, I don’t tell them that I’m going to be cruising their minds for content, just that we’re going to talk – and you can play this trick on yourself if need be. Then, I start asking questions, probing their minds:

• What is your favorite part of your industry?
• What would you change if you could?
• If someone was just finding out about your industry, product, service, location – what are all of the things you would want them to know?
• How did you end up where you are?
• Who or what has influenced you – in the past and in the present?
• How do you envision the future of your industry, product, service, location?
• Are there any ‘how-to’ lists that would help people use or benefit from your industry, product, service or location?
• And countless other questions that will stem from the answers you give to the questions above…

The beauty of the blog is that it is contemporary and organic. When you start answering these questions for yourself – and as you continue to question yourself in these areas as you grow in your business and professional life, you will find your content. Content that attains the two most important rules of blogging:

1. It’s full of value and information for your readers.

2. It’s unique, personalized and real because it come from you and your experience. No one else will interpret and share like you do. And this is where you build your relationship with your audience and potential clients.

And if you just can’t get real answers out of yourself (even if you make yourself a nice cup of tea first), call me, I’ll get the good stuff out of you…

Image credit: Oberazzi

> Tweeters in the Mist Video. Jonathan Kranz

> What Blogs are and How to Stop Mistaking them for Something Else. Jose Louis Orihuela on eCauaderno Blog

> Does the New FTC Rule Affect You. Kevin Muldoon, Blogging Tips Blog

> 10 Ways to Get Fired Fast Via Social Media Flubs. Christine Pilch, Grow My Company Blog

> How to Extract Your LinkedIn Contacts. David Strom, Facebook Note

Photo by AnyaLogic on Flickr