Top and bottom 10 blog posts of 2011
As the clock ticks down, here are the top and bottom 10 blog posts of the year. I picked 10 of each because I think it’s interesting to see what caught on and what didn’t.
The Top 10
- #re2011:t10: How to value social media traffic: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/07/how-to-value-social-media-traffic/
- #re2011:t9: Google Analytics power tips for tracking behavior: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/08/4-google-analytics-power-tips-for-tracking-behavior/
- #re2011:t8: How to use rel=author tags for SEO: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/06/how-to-use-relauthor-tags-for-seo/
- #re2011:t7: How to get started with Google+ Pages for business: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/11/how-to-get-started-with-google-pages-for-business/
- #re2011:t6: Google+ and search signals, tinfoil hat edition: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/07/google-and-search-signals-tinfoil-hat-edition/
- #re2011:t5: When is the best time to tweet? http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/04/when-is-the-best-time-to-tweet/
- #re2011:t4: Social media strategy in one slide/one page: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/07/social-media-strategy-in-one-slide/
- #re2011:t3: How to set up Facebook insights for your website: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/05/how-to-set-up-facebook-insights-for-your-website/
- #re2011:t2: Social media now directly influences search rankings: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/06/social-media-now-directly-influences-search-rankings/
- #re2011:t1: How to measure Google+ with analytics: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/07/how-to-measure-google-plus-with-analytics/
The Bottom 10
- #re2011:b10: Frameworks: a place to hang your hat: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/10/frameworks-a-place-to-hang-your-hat/
- #re2011:b9: The flipside of diminishing returns: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/01/the-flipside-of-diminishing-returns/
- #re2011:b8: The foolproof way to win: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/12/the-foolproof-way-to-win/
- #re2011:b7: Beyond the toolbox: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/10/beyond-the-toolbox/
- #re2011:b6: What’s obvious to you: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/04/whats-obvious-to-you/
- #re2011:b5: Barriers to entry: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/01/barriers-to-entry/
- #re2011:b4: Happy Black Friday: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/11/happy-black-friday/
- #re2011:b3: Should you have a formula for creating marketing programs? http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/12/should-you-have-a-formula-for-creating-marketing-programs/
- #re2011:b2: How to tell if you need a mobile strategy right now in 3 steps: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/03/how-to-tell-if-you-need-a-mobile-strategy-right-now-in-3-steps/
- #re2011:b1: Evaluating opportunities and saying no smartly: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/04/evaluating-opportunities-and-saying-no-smartly/
I’ll close out 2011 by saying thank you for being a reader, a supporter, an advocate for my blog and what I publish here. Without you, this blog would have stopped a long time ago, so thank you for being here, and I look forward to sharing even more with you in 2012.
Happy New Year!
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Three Words for 2012
Every year since 2006, friends of Chris Brogan put together our three words for the coming year that define what we’re focusing on in the coming year. They’re not goals, but more like rails or guides that help keep us moving in the general correct direction. Here are mine for 2012.
Story
When I look at what I’ve created in the past few years, there’s value in the content. How-to lessons, detailed research, data and techniques, but something’s been missing. Something’s been lacking. On the way home from the dojo one night, I was listening to master teacher Stephen K. Hayes talking about how the deeper lessons of both Buddhism and ninjutsu are transmitted. He said, “We’re going to tell a few stories here, and hopefully this will evoke some stories in your mind of your own. That’s how this training works.” At that moment I realized exactly what has been missing from a lot of my work. In 2012, one of my three words and focus points will be on better learning this skill.
Restoration
One of the more interesting healing classes in World of Warcraft is the restoration druid. Rather than heal with holy powers and flashes of light, the druid uses the powers of nature to restore allies to health. Regrowth, nourish, rejuvenation, lifebloom, swiftmend, tranquility. Here’s what’s powerful about the idea of restoration druid spells on real life: so much of what we’ve done in the past few years has burned everything to the ground. We’ve exhausted our email lists. We’ve tapped out our social networks. We’ve cut staff down to the bone to scrape up a few extra pennies per share on earnings calls. In short, we’ve depleted all of our resources and wondered why our marketing is getting less and less effective. In 2012, one of my study points will be restoration. How do we continue to be effective as marketers while restoring our resources to health?
This extends to personal life as well. When you go all-out, inevitably, something has to suffer. My question to myself is, how can I bring restoration and regrowth to areas of my life other than business?
Compassion
Originally I had chosen something else for the third word, but as I was looking over the years, I thought it’d make 2012 more challenging and interesting to focus on something I’m not good at. Compassion I mean in the Buddhist sense – the ability to see through your own issues and feelings enough to understand what someone else is going through and provide some kind of legitimate help. One of the greatest dangers of social media, particularly as you start to develop any kind of following, is that you tend to attract like-minded people. As a result, you hear less and less about things you disagree with, things that challenge you, things that make you think. When all you hear is how awesome you are (whether you are or not) you face the great danger of your ego overwhelming any good work you’re providing. I have heard in the back of my mind from time to time the ugly, egotistical whisper that says, “this (person/place/thing/task) is below me”. It’s exactly at those moments when compassion can provide a much-needed bitch slap upside the head to bring reality back into the picture.
My task for 2012 is to be more rigorous and more disciplined in my own mind, guarding against that ever-growing danger.
So there you have it, my three words for 2012: story, restoration, compassion. Blog yours and leave a link in the comments!
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#re2011: Top and bottom 10 posts from my blog this year
Beginning tomorrow, I’m starting a Twitter series until the end of the year called #re2011. It’ll be a replay of the top and bottom 10 posts from my blog as determined by Google Analytics. Each post will be tagged, indicating whether it’s in the top or bottom 10. At the conclusion of the series, we’ll have a wrap-up blog post with everything in one place. If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you can find me at @cspenn to see the updates every day.
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If you’re going to start with the Christmas music already…
… may as well be the good stuff. One of my favorites, Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong:
Happy wintertime, everyone.
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Google Reader and the loss of serendipity
One of the most critical losses to the blog reading community with the rollout of the new Google Reader is the loss of its internal sharing, something that many of us came to rely on for serendipity. Why? Because in many cases, other people in our Google Reader network found new blogs, new items to share, new and interesting perspectives through what our friends shared. With Reader’s new changes pushing everything to G+, it’s mighty hard now to see what your friends thought was important in the blogs they read daily.
Let’s take a brief moment to talk about the power of serendipity. Serendipity is loosely defined as finding something that you did not expect to find, a happy accident, and a pleasant surprise. Serendipity is more than just an accident, however – it’s a related accident. Here’s a good example: when you’re at the library, browsing at the shelf, trying to find the book you were looking for, you notice that there’s a series of books on either side of it that are even better than what you’d come looking for. That’s serendipity. Another simple example: you go to a conference to hear a popular speaker and wind up standing at the lunch line right next to them. Serendipity is sort of an accidental upgrade of your circumstances.
That’s what made Google Reader such a powerful engine of serendipity. You weren’t just finding random blog posts on random things. You were finding things that other people who you followed for a reason were finding, and it was all related.
So what do you do if you still want your daily dose of serendipity? On the consuming side, you’ll want to check out the topical categories at sites like Topsy and Alltop. Both of these provide you with some level of discovery, some level of serendipity. I’ve started using the Alltop marketing feed in Flipboard as a way to randomly find related items, and it’s better than nothing.
On the publishing side, you’ve got a few options if you want to help encourage serendipity. On Twitter, I publish a feed every morning of the top 5 items that I thought were worth paying attention to called #the5. You can monitor this simply by searching for #the5 in Twitter search. I also publish a weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to which will round up and wrap up the week’s #the5 entries. You can also save and share items in Instapaper as well, and then permit Facebook, Twitter, or email followers to find your shared items that way.
Most of all? Share a blog you’re reading every week with your friends, by whatever your preferred sharing method is, but tell a friend about a blog you’re reading that you think they might not be (but should be). Your friends will get to know you, you’ll be fostering serendipity, and who knows? They might share something back that will change your morning reading list forever.
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On recycling blog posts
I’ll gently disagree with Chris Brogan’s idea about recycling blog posts yesterday. Go read it if you haven’t.
Welcome back.
Here’s why this is a bad idea. Senior master instructor Ken Savage of the Winchendon Martial Arts Center likes to compare life to a wheel on a wagon. Each year, the wheel turns around and you’re back to where you started. What we often fail to take notice of is the distance that the wheel has traveled in that year. Each year, we’re further down the path than the year before. Each birthday that rolls around is another year of travel, and a lot happens in that year. You learn a lot. You change. You grow. The wagon is in a different place, too. The terrain is different, the environment is different.
If I write a blog post in, say 2008, about something “evergreen” and then just repost it as is or link it up without changing it, I’m giving short shrift not only to my readers, but also to myself. By doing that, I’m failing to acknowledge that a lot has happened in 3 turns of the wheel and who I am today in 2011 should have even more insight, even more value to add.
If you want to recycle older stuff, especially stuff with no interactions or comments on it, take just a couple of minutes to polish it up, rewrite parts that have changed, and add in anything that you’ve gained from your experiences as the wheel has turned. Then take your old post, redirect it to preserve any inbound link juice, and let the world know about your newer, more updated perspective on things.
When you think about it in terms of real world recycling, the exact same thing happens. The old is crushed into raw materials, melted down, impurities extracted, and then reformed into something new. Don’t just hand someone a “used bottle” blog post – truly recycle it and give them something fresh.
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