(Powered by LaunchBit)

I love writing. Although I’ve struggled to write consistently of late, I always enjoy hitting “publish” and seeing the content go up live on the blog. I think the content is worthwhile for people, although commenting has slowly declined over the last few years. I think that has a lot to do with Twitter though, and not the quality of the content itself.

This blog has also shifted focus a few times. Of late, I’ve written a lot about startup accelerators since that’s what I’m focused on with Year One Labs. In the future, who knows … That shifting likely causes groups of people to be more or less interested over time, since the subject matter has changed quite drastically since I started back in 2006.

All bloggers crave feedback. Positive, negative or neutral – we all want to get a sense of what people like, don’t like, and how we’re influencing people and creating value.

With that in mind, I’d invite you all to join my “Instigator Blog Feedback Group.”

The feedback group is powered by qidiq – a startup inside of Year One Labs. You can sign-up via email or download the iPhone application and then register for the “instigatorblog” feed.

qidiq is an extremely easy-to-use tool for soliciting ongoing feedback from a select group of people. As a feed owner you send one question at a time to people, instead of sending a full survey (that gets low response rate and irritates people). Recipients receive email notifications and can answer quickly, or they get push notifications to their iPhones, and can answer with a quick tap. People can also comment on each question and see results. qidiq is just launching in beta now, and experimenting with different market segments that make sense – think: events/conferences, associations, user groups, publishers, blogs, etc. There are lots of use cases for soliciting quick, easy feedback and making it a fun experience for everyone.

For my blog, I’ll send out questions infrequently, usually after I write a blog post, to solicit private feedback on specific questions I have. So you won’t be inundated with questions, and you’ll be helping me create a better blog for you.

Once again, here’s where you can sign-up: Instigator Blog Feedback Group

(Powered by LaunchBit)

Every so often I feel compelled to redesign this blog. The first redesign was in 2007, followed by another in 2008. It’s been a couple years since the last redesign, and this one is a big departure from the last. It’s still a work-in-progress, but I’d love to get your feedback.

I really wanted to go simple and lightweight. Strip out unnecessary elements and focus more attention on the content. I eliminated a lot of the sidebar noise; which I think most people ignore anyway. It’s still perhaps a bit too noisy over there – but I added a list of categories and a tag cloud in an effort to draw attention to older, but still valuable and relevant content.

The home page now only shows one post, with links to a few other recent ones. This is to shine a spotlight on the most recent post.

I put a “related posts” plugin back in, again hoping that it gets people digging further into the content. My bounce rate is quite high, and time spent on the site is low — I’m looking for ways to improve both those metrics.

I put the “subscribe” options at the top but also part-way down the sidebar. My goal is to increase subscriptions (via email, RSS or Twitter), and people will notice the colorful icons as they’re reading a specific post.

The footer (for now) has almost nothing in it. I’m still not convinced there’s anything meaningful you can’t put in the footer of a blog that increases key metrics like generating traffic, engagement, etc. But I’m open to suggestions.

I think the design is more personal, even though it’s a bit starker. The tagline is personal, my picture is more prominently displayed (although I need a new picture too!) The “contact” link is also more prominent. In some ways (at least to me) it feels more welcoming. Less can truly be more.

This wasn’t a rigorous re-design process. I went looking for a premium WordPress theme, found Minimal and decided to give it a try. I’ve made some modifications (I always enjoy hacking around in WordPress), but they haven’t been drastic. I do believe it’s important to have great design for your blog. In 2008 after redesigning Instigator Blog I wrote a guest post on ProBlogger about the experience. Design matters. But there are so many good premium themes out there that you don’t necessarily have to start from scratch.

I’ll be tweaking here and there for the next little while. I’m not entirely satisfied with everything on the site, but I’m very pleased with the overall look. It speaks very well to how I feel right now and to my near-term goals. I’m trying to simplify, clean up, discover, free myself and focus. Instigator Blog has always been a reflection of me; and I welcome you to its new look & feel.

All comments and feedback are welcome!

(Powered by LaunchBit)

Every blogger suffers writer’s block at some point. It’s inevitable. And extremely frustrating. For some it means months without creating any new content, while others can recover much more quickly.

Skribit (the project of Paul Stamatiou and others) is a service that’s designed to help you defeat writer’s block. It also has the potential of increasing user engagement with your blog or web site. It’s a simple application that lets you take writing / topic / blog post suggestions through a small sidebar widget. You can see it installed on the right of my blog. People leave suggestions, and there’s a simple web interface for managing those. Other people can also vote on suggestions that are made.

I like the idea behind Skribit – that’s why I’ve installed the widget on my blog – and I’m curious to see what kind of response it gets. I do think it has the potential of being more interesting as a user engagement tool, because people will want to see their suggestions come to fruition, they’ll appreciate that and probably invest more time in promoting that content as well.

So, what should I write about?

(Powered by LaunchBit)

I’ve known about the Thesis WordPress theme for some time, having followed its launch and use by a lot of friends and colleagues. I always knew it was a worthwhile theme, but never had a project to use it on until recently.

Recently my wife launched her own site – I Spy Montreal – for parents in Montreal, looking for regular activities, events, etc. When she was getting ready to build her site, I suggested that she use Thesis. I wanted to try it out, and this was a good way to give it a try.

I was extremely impressed with Thesis for WordPress. It’s easy to use and insanely configurable. Plus, it looks like it will reduce my reliance on WordPress plugins. Not that plugins are a bad thing – in some ways they’re the lifeblood of the WordPress community and one of the major reasons for the blogging platform’s huge success – but it’s still nice to streamline as much as possible, keep things clean and maximize the built-in capabilities of WordPress or the theme you’re using.

Equally as important is the fact that Chris Pearson is regularly upgrading Thesis with fixes, enhancements and new features. I’ve been using WordPress for many years, and it’s been rare to find a theme that the owner actually improves on over time. For Chris it makes complete sense because the theme costs money to buy; so there’s an incentive for him to continue improving it and bringing on new customers and fans.

The fact that you know Thesis is going to get better over time is huge. And when you buy Thesis you get a lifetime upgrade (for free). So there’s no additional cost beyond the original purchase. And you get access to the very active forums, for learning how to customize and maximize the value of Thesis for WordPress.

Finally, I know from speaking to others that Thesis is search engine optimized. I have yet to see the benefits of that because I only recently switched Instigator Blog to the new theme. But I’ll be curious to see if the theme does make a difference. Certainly I’ve heard positive stories from others on the SEO benefits of Thesis.

Suffice it to say: I’m a fan of Thesis.

As a result, I’m now selling the Thesis WordPress theme through this blog as an affiliate. I’ve rarely done any affiliate selling on Instigator Blog, but having used Thesis for my wife’s site and now having switched over this blog, I’m a bigger fan than ever, and a huge supporter.

If you’re thinking of upgrading your WordPress theme or starting a new WordPress blog, I would recommend Thesis. And if you have any Thesis-related questions, once you get started, feel free to contact me and I’ll do what I can to help!

(Powered by LaunchBit)

The simplest definition of linkbait is a blog post that attracts people’s attention enough to get them to link back to the post. Getting links to a blog post is crucial for SEO.

Generally speaking: more links = better SEO. And better SEO = more traffic.

I’m simplifying, but the basic premise is there. For a more detailed definition you can check out these great posts about linkbaiting.

The truth is: linkbait works best when the content is great. It’s about writing great headlines and valuable content. So I don’t consider linkbait cheesy or inappropriate (although I’ve seen some fairly lame efforts at it.) Most of the time I consider successful linkbait to be about, “writing great content in a very smart way.”

Tad Chef has a great resource post (in and of itself a nice piece of linkbait!) – 45 Link Baiting Resources: Ideas, Techniques, Case Studies & Drawbacks.

I agree with Tad that the terms “linkbait” and “linkbaiting” are not used as much anymore because the concept has become the norm. But what I am curious about is whether linkbait is really relevant anymore? And whether it works as well as it used to?

I’m seeing less and less links to this blog. I suspect others are seeing the same thing. And one of the big reasons is Twitter.

Twitter is where more and more people are sharing the precious resource that bloggers’ crave: links. It’s so much easier to tweet a link than to write a blog post. And bloggers have made it even easier, using things like Tweetmeme to encourage the behavior. But the result is that you get less links from blogs. Tweets with your linkbait link are still valuable – they can drive traffic, buzz, etc. – but they don’t have the same SEO value by any stretch of the imagination.

So if linkbait doesn’t generate as many links as it used to because of Twitter (and I believe Facebook will have more of an impact on this as well), and this is only going to get worse in the future, the question is this:

Is Linkbait Dead?

Maybe we should call it TweetBait? You tell me! And feel free to link over … oh, and tweet too. Much appreciated!

(Powered by LaunchBit)

I’ve moved hosting companies because my old one was falling apart. This is a quick test post to make sure the DNS is propagating properly.

You should not have to update your RSS feeds, but when you see this message in your RSS feed, please click through and take a look to make sure everything is working properly. I appreciate it.

There may be a few hiccups along the way as I get all the plugins re-installed and configured, so bear with me. And I do plan on blogging more in the near future, Standout Jobs has kept me swamped.

Incidentally, I’ve moved to Media Temple and purchased their Grid Service (gs) hosting. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Media Temple, although immediately after purchasing I heard some bad things (from someone I trust). So we’ll see how it goes.

(Powered by LaunchBit)

It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the latest widgets, gadgets, plugins and features available for bloggers. New stuff is coming out daily, which is understandable, there are millions and millions of bloggers, and many of them are very dedicated to blogging — that’s a nice market with interesting opportunities.

Few companies have really capitalized on bloggers (except those helping them generate revenue). I expect a lot of those that offer “nice add-ons” will fall off the radar eventually. But some will survive, do well, and ultimately get acquired.

Blogs are meant to be social things. (Just ask folks like Chris Brogan and Liz Strauss.) Blog success can be measured by many things (and it varies for each blog owner) but the social nature and social quality of a blog is certainly one measure. I would measure the social nature of a blog through a few things — including comments and content sharing.

With that in mind, I’ve added two features to improve Instigator Blog’s “socialness”:

1. Disqus: Disqus is a commenting system. As you can see below this post, Disqus powers my comments. Others in this space, who offer commenting and other related features, include SezWho, Intense Debate and JS-Kit. I chose Disqus because of the recent buzz around it (and the fact that I’m a fan of Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, who invested in Disqus).

   I like some of the things Disqus brings to the table — threaded comments, comment management, community, etc. I haven’t really explored the value of my Instigator Blog Disqus Community page, but I know that people who are Disqus members will enjoy the ability to track comments for themselves across multiple blogs more easily.

   Disqus isn’t perfect. It’s not easy enough to edit the CSS (it’d be easier if I could host the Disqus CSS file myself), and because they just launched a new WordPress plugin it’s going to be missing things and have some hiccups.

   I’ll be looking (anecdotally) at whether comments increase (especially repeat commentors), discussions are more interesting and the management of comments is more efficient and better.

2. AddThis: AddThis provides a small button at the bottom of each post that encourages people to share your blog content with others through email, social bookmarking services, etc. I picked it because TechCrunch uses it. I realize that’s not the best reason, but it’s not easy to discern significant differences between the competitors, which include: Add To Any and ShareThis. I know there are differences, I’m just not sure they really matter.

   I’ve always hesitated to use this kind of button, thinking that it would add clicks for someone that’s trying to share the content, and not be totally clear. You’ll notice at the bottom of this post I’ve added a snippet of text explaining the use of the button.

   A few things motivated me to give it a try, including the fact that these buttons are becoming more prevalent, and the ability for people to share via email. I read a blog post recently saying that most people still share content via email. And Dan Zarrella has his own report on content sharing, which shows that email is used quite frequently (especially by non-heavy social media users / readers). That makes sense.

   AddThis has the potential to make Instigator Blog more social if it increases the amount of content that people share. AddThis has some very nice statistics that track what’s being shared and through which service.

Blogs are social animals. They shouldn’t just be about spitting out content, driving mindless traffic and making $0.02 CPM on crappy ads. Granted, lots of people make serious money that way, but it’s not really the point. And while I’m generally overwhelmed by the widgets, features and doodads available (and some blogs overload themselves with “stuff”), I am willing to try new things out in an effort to enhance this blog’s value proposition as a community for people interested in startups, entrepreneurship and social media.

(Powered by LaunchBit)

At this point, you really can’t question the power of blogging. It works. There are examples of blogging working across different industries, for different reasons. It’s great for customer service. It’s great for building up a following (that you can then leverage into all kinds of different businesses.) Blogging might not be for everyone, but you can’t deny it’s value. Even when some people are supposedly quitting…

After all, look at what happened to yours truly recently — I was quoted in The New York Times (free registration required).

Truth be told, I didn’t even know the author, Paul B. Brown, was going to quote me. I’d never heard of him until a reader emailed me to congratulate me. My guess is that Mr. Brown used Google to search for relevant content related to his article and came across my blog. Unless he’s been a faithful reader for some time, but the article he quoted was from April 2007.

In Mr. Brown’s article, Being Serious About Your Own Money, he’s taking about how entrepreneurs often forget to manage their personal finances, because they’re so focused on their businesses. Often, entrepreneurs put their personal finances at huge risk to accommodate and support their business ventures.

The article he quoted that I had written way back when was on that very subject — Entrepreneurs Should Plan Their Finances And Invest Wisely. I re-read my post and it’s certainly true; it’s easy to forget your own finances, let things slip (even paying bills, or paying yourself!) and get overwhelmed in an avalanche of financial trouble…

It was cool to be quoted in The New York Times. It was great that one of my readers pointed me to the article. I really do owe Mr. Brown a thank you…

(Powered by LaunchBit)

Steve Spalding is a blogging force to be reckoned with. He writes a fantastic blog over at How To Split an Atom. I encourage you to check it out, if you haven’t already.

And now he’s launched a new initiative — History of Blogging — of which I’m playing a part. It was great to be invited…

History of Blogging is a new kind of blog network – each member picked by Steve, each member tackling technology and social media issues from a different perspective. We’re loosely connected through History of Blogging where we publish links of interest (from our own sites but primarily from others), to bring you an assortment of top-quality content (hopefully!) I’ve already discovered a number of blogs and people absolutely worth tracking.

With that in mind, here’s the list of people participating in Steve’s latest project:

• Charo Nuguid, head geekette at The Geekette Speaketh
• Mark Dykeman, social media analyst of Broadcasting Brain
• Dan Rua, venture capitalist of Florida Venture Blog
• Elmer Thomas, navigating Web 2.0 for tech entrepreneurs at Thinking Serious
• Joseph Ferrara, real estate guru at Sellsius Real Estate Blog

I look forward to participating with this group and seeing where History of Blogging takes us. And I hope you enjoy all of these bloggers and the content they share as well!

(Powered by LaunchBit)

Yesterday I launched a new design for Instigator Blog. The feedback has been great – some positive, some negative (to be expected), and all of it interesting and important.

In my post announcing the new design, I wrote, “And, I’m writing a much more detailed post explaining the process I went through in redesigning the blog, and that should be coming soon.”

And thanks to Darren Rowse that post is now available: How I Redesigned My Blog.

Darren agreed to publish the post as a guest piece on ProBlogger. I was glad to do it there and hopefully help shed some light on the grueling, time consuming and detailed-centric process of redesigning a blog.

Enjoy! And please post your comments there (and here!) to let me know what you think…