Yes I’m already sure that your blog is more than meets the eye but what do you do when your blog actually transforms?

This is what I faced a couple of months ago when I realized that the business blog that I started that was supposed to be purely a discussion and showcase to help potential clients learn a little about me and how I work had become my private/personal blog.

In fact I posted about it the day I realized what had happened. My original goal was to promote myself after I had quit my day job, to hold a kind of online interview for a web designer who was rededicating himself to his craft.

A funny thing then happened on the way to the blogosphere, more and more of the posts I focused on my other passions, thoughts and opinions until the blog shifted completely shifted its focus to me as a person not as a consultant.

Ironically enough though that whilst the blog was changing form it was also transforming my aspirations and direction professionally. I went from being a jack of all trades web designer to a focused new media consultant/professional blogger. Something I’m very grateful it did! Despite it being in many regards a more difficult path.

So I allowed the site to change after I discovered the fact but I could have very easily gone back to it’s original purpose simply because I identified that it had happened. I would have done it gradually too over a month or so, less personal stories more web related ones. This site Blog About Your Blog has been a happy outlet for those posts though! As I mentioned I’m happy for the change, I like writing it and there are one or two people who seem to enjoy reading it from time to time!

The only other issue I might point out to you if you do decide to put your wayward blog back on the rails is that some of your established readers may not follow – you’ll probably replace them with new readers but don’t be offended!!!

Lee

Quit Your Day Job
Crypt Hunter
Pop Culture Heroines

On Saturday, I recieved my first ever google adsense cheque for the princely sum of £59.18 (curse the strong pound and the weak dollar!). I recently posted on my blog a very important question: what the bloody hell should I do with it? I feel I should do something something more constructive than spending it on blackjack and hookers. I feel I should invest it. So, with that in mind, I’m throwing the question open to you all, who are probably no better at financial advising than yours truly:

What should I do with £59.18 from Google Adsense?

Comment on it either here or there.

Finally, I’m also running a competition on my blog to create a website visualisation gallery. Basically, draw a picture either on a PC or freehand of a website, and email me with a copy of the image, and your site, the image, and the site will be included in the gallery. You have 24 hours! See the example above for Digg.com

Many applaud the blog platform for its casual nature and relaxed approach to getting your thoughts and opinions out into the world.

But casual or relaxed doesn’t have to mean unprofessional or sloppy and if you are going to use corporate blogging for your business you won’t want it to be either! Unless of course if that is impression you want people to have of your business!

The first question as a business that you need to ask yourself before you put the virtual pen to paper is what do I want to achieve with my blog? Do you want to promote your products only or do you want people to feel like they’re part of your business family? Maybe it’s something completely different! Perhaps you will discuss your entire industry as a whole, focus inwardly on your business or a combination of the two?

Now once you’ve worked out why you’re blogging it is a lot easier to set out what you are going to say with your first post. I believe in a corporate blog your first post carries a lot more weight than that of a personal one. There’s an expectation of professionalism immediately.

Every business is different of course and your business may be one that benefits from an informal discussion blog rather than an exercise in pure public relations. With the very first post this is your chance to establish that feel. Let the readers know what type of blog they’ve encountered. Don’t tell the reader though what they’ll be feeling let the writing itself shape that relationship.

As part of your planning stages you should establish the tone of your corporate blog. But because of the very nature of the blogosphere you need to be flexible enough to allow the blog to grow and adapt. Even the goals that we’ve already discussed may need to bend slightly when you discover that the readers are helping you shape new ones! Say for example your goal was to promote your products by releasing reviews of them, your readers may start posting their own reviews that prove more popular. Embrace this! Of course you are always going to be open to negative comments and that’s a topic for another day!

Lee

Quit Your Day Job
Crypt Hunter
Pop Culture Heroines

Next up: “Hey!? My blog is a transformer!“

We are still only at two reviews, and we are aiming for 10. As mentioned our authors have been promoting the contest and we aren’t getting the response I’ve hoped for.

Our two reviews can be found at:

Esplanade
King Nomar dot Com

We’ve had a few interested, just not many writing reviews. Remember we are offering 10$ for first, and 5$ a peice for second and third. This is great for blogs who don’t qualify for ‘sponsored posts’ or just want to write about us anyway. After the reviews have been voted on, I will pay out through my paypal. Please write the review at least 100 words long, and not grouped together with other reviews.

All reviews will receive a linkback!

We have received two reviews that didn’t qualify for our competition from

Free Reviews
and
World Blog Collection

Free Reviews really liked our blog and gave us a great review, and World Blog Collection mentioned us, but just tossed us into the review given about A Links Blog. I have become a contributor at Links Blog, and if you haven’t had your site listed go check it out. I hope to make more posts about our authors and blogs there.

On his money-making mission, Mike has made plenty of insightful posts, and no exception was his recent observation on just how global the internet is. Good one, mate, and then when you highlighted my ban in China, it really got me thinking.

For the 65% of non English-speaking surfers out there, plus a couple of Chinese thought control police, if they do arrive at the door of The Pisstakers, I thought it would be easier for them to make sense of the nonsense, if the blog were available in several of the main languages of the world.

To date, I have been offering Babel Fish for readers of our tech blogs, but their translations seemed more comical than useful, so I went looking for other ideas on integrating machine translations into a blog. Voila! I found some cutting edge options, and some pretty flags.

Check out this post from Digital Inspiration for the whys and wherefores and some code. And this is where I got the code for the multi translation tool from Google in the side bar of the Pisstakers homepage.

You can’t beat a human translator, but unless your international visitors have a sexto-lingual friend nearby, a bit of code will serve its purpose to take most of the mystery out of your blog. As time goes on, the machines should improve their translations from comical to passable and we will become one truly global happy family of blog readers.

Having said that, do you think multi-lingual blogs serve a purpose, or is the content too culture specific and for instance, BAYB makes little sense to readers outside of English- speaking countries?

Comment Friday gave us 17 comments! I have finished visiting each commentors blog and have chosen my winner.

I’ve chosen Jason Buckley’s blog as our comment winner this week. He left us a comment about procrasting at work. Here at BAYB we love to reward hard workers (lol).

Congrats Jason and thanks for the comment.

I’m happy to see a lot of the same commentors here every friday. Not only can you receive a link from us by winning, but we also have a top commentor list where you can also receive a free link from. As you can see it is pretty easy to get on that list, so take the time and leave us a few comments.

I just wanted to thank our readers and authors for the great response on Comment Friday, also the article about RSS Feeds . Make sure to give it a digg if you enjoyed it 🙂

We’ve received a few of our authors promoting our blog competition, make sure to join so we can give some money away. Thank you Chris, Ed, Mike and Stefanie for trying to get the word out about our competition. Remember it’s not too late to enter.

Cap’nSwag here, with my first of hopefully many installments tackling the good, bad and ugly in sports.

I watched a few NCAA Tournament games yesterday and it’s officially official: College basketball can’t even hold a candle to the pros. I’m no longer even entertaining the argument. I used to get into it all the times with older types who would continually repeat the same mantra, “they care more in college, it’s more of a team game, the pros are overpaid, we’re scared of black people rap culture, anum sheba, anum sheba, anum sheba, anum sheba!” and then a shaman would reach into their chest and pull out their heart. Just kidding… kind of. But it’s true, that’s the fall-back position, that they think the collegiate athletes have more heart because they aren’t paid, and that the lack of overpaid, overhyped stars leads to a more cohesive team game. All I can say to all that is this; bullshit. Don’t hand me a bunch of loose rhetoric based on what you saw in some games during the, admittedly, dark ages of late 90’s NBA play. The bottom line is the NBA is the cream of the paltry college crop. The talent pool isn’t diluted by forcing one or two good players to play on a team of rejects, and though it may not be as lily white as the college game, it’s high time we let go of that foolishness and embrace the new game.
So there are a lot of black dudes in the NBA. I don’t see why that should turn white audiences off from the game. It’s called racism. Trying to justify it with any other qualifyers is bull$h@t. The craziest part is that there are really only a tiny handful of these black athletes that actually “represent a hip hop lifestyle,” that terrifies white America. The only truly gangster dudes in the NBA are Stephen Jackson, Ron Artest and Jamaal Tinsley. And who put those dudes on the same team? The great white hope, Larry Bird.

As for team play being better in college, that’s just hogwash. The stars in college get the rock in their hands on every play, just like in the pros. The only difference is that in college the team’s lone stud gets triple teamed every time he touches it, forcing him to get his worthless teammates involved.

As for “heart,” frankly my dear, I don’t give a sh%t. I’ll take a heartless, cold blooded, rim rocking, three draining, crossover blinding, defensive stalwart like Kobe, who does get paid more than God, any day over some “full of heart” star like Kevin Pittsnogle, who was so good and “hearty” in college that he couldn’t even make a pro team. He’s currently languishing in the NBADL hoping 25 seven footers simultaneously die of heart attacks and he gets called up to the bigs.

As for being overpaid, they get paid what the market will bear. If we didn’t love the game so much, they wouldn’t get paid crap (see Major League Soccer, or the NHL for examples of what that looks like). They don’t get paid as much as Baseball players, who do demonstrably nothing for most of the game as they wait for someone to make contact.
I watched Indiana and Gonzaga run up and down the court as a formless mess last night, chucking threes and committing turnovers and it struck me: these guys are so inferior to the NBA, I wouldn’t even accurately describe it as the same sport.

For more of the Cap’n’s snarkiness, come visit me at my blog, SportSwag, or on First Bounce Fly to which I contribute articles.