Thanks. And it’s fine if you want to give me titles and accolades – I’m not above accepting them. I just can’t justify giving titles to myself.

Also, thanks for the second post to Rory and the link. I’ll definitely give it a read on Monday when I’m back to work.

Rory,

No worries on the newbie comment. I didn’t take anything personal.

I actually agree with your about making sidebar info more prominent. I know I’ve tried to do that on my site. What I’ve done is just create two distinct sidebars – one that’s specifically about my blog. The other that is more about my overall website and business. I think I’ve been effective, and I’m open to feedback.

Thanks for joining the conversation, by the way.

Carol,

Yes, exactly…conversation is what this is about. I’m having the same experience. Not only with potential clients, but with a great community of bloggers as well.

I feel most small business owners should really learn how to use blogs to engage in conversations with their target market. Doing so changes everything.

I appreciate blogs where I feel included, where I can contribute, where I can feel informed and inspired. Blogs that are purely promotional don’t do that for me; neither do stream-of-consciousness, online diaries. It’s great for bloggers to shake up the blog paradigms a bit. I love it when they do, and I love doing it.

And…according to mybloglog.com (I highly recommend joining this amazing community-building website + tracking tool), the blog does drive readers to my website.

As blogger and static website ‘owner’ I do think it’s always important to ‘engage’ with your visitors in any whihc way you can, be it larger font, be it ‘welcome mats’ be it any thing else that makes them feel ‘welcome’ and even might want to come back for more

(Found that the link in my prior post has lost one ” , so I try again:
“He does have an interesting post this week on educating businesses on websites and webmarketing
”
because it is a good post

Perhaps as the internet gets more popular, becomes a more mainstream medium of communication – it is obviously heading in that direction – visitors will become more familiar with the various styles of website they encounter.

In the interim, how about this as a suggestion: Make the information in the sidebar more prominent. We use a larger font and highlight important aspects – pillar articles, clear and concise categories – the elements we want our visitors to see.

It’s not easy to find examples of the kind of thing I mean, but try these for size: Pearsonified, and Deep Jive Interests

At the moment most blog sites we see are “busy” with tiny text, which non-bloggers, new visitors might find overwhelming. We get rid of superfluous material, like archives and links we enjoy (have a separate page for these). Then, when visitors come, they might be in a position to more readily absorb what they are presented with.

Hey, I might try implementing these suggestions on my own weblog website.

My goal isn’t to just blog about blogging either. My niche is solving web-based business problems for small business owners and professional service providers. That’s who I try to write for. [/quote]

Not only try, you succeed very well in it Dawud. (That’s why I keep coming back for more?)
A website is more than just a ‘presence’ on the WWW nowadays and it’s becoming a huge ‘hay-stack’. As business owner (and webmarketing manager, wow that’s a new word) I have to ‘grab’ the importance of the WWW presence we have be it a ’static’ website or a ‘interactive’ blog (and we have both). Having an ‘expert’ (sorry, will keep saying it though) around who ‘thinks-alike’ comes in very handy

Everbody is rambling now it seems

I had a great teacher on webmarketing, but he moved to South Africa recently – and is/was better at face-to-face sessions than ‘blog-sessions’.
He does have an interesting post this week on educating businesses on websites and webmarketing

Some great points. Thanks for joining the conversation. And don’t worry, I ramble from time to time myself.

My goal isn’t to just blog about blogging either. My niche is solving web-based business problems for small business owners and professional service providers. That’s who I try to write for. To me, the blog is just another way for my target audience to reach their target audience – so I do write about blogging. And so far, most of the readers I have are either bloggers providing a service or those blogging about blogging. So I’m getting there, I feel.

I recently watched a Bleeding Edge Video with Scoble, Pirillo, Broback and others. On the video, Steve Broback talks about having to overcome a blogging stigma with businesses. Basically what he’s had to do is make it clear to his clients that a blog is simply a website. It’s just a website where you can have more content control while being able to interact with your audience. He said that approach has really helped his clients open up to learning how blogs can help them.

I would great to have conversations like this with nonbloggers. But how do we get them here to join in the conversation in the first place? The ‘welcome mat’ idea is great. And as a designer, it seems important to make sure that it’s easily found while not taking away from the overall purpose of the site/blog.

As for the word ‘newbie,’ I actually agree but have chosen to use the word out of laziness and brevity. I’m not one looking to put people off – quite the contrary. Thanks for bringing it up.

See, I told you I can ramble on…

Wendy at eMom has quite a deep introductory header and it works quite well. Perhaps that’s the way to go.

Also, this discussion needs to be picked up by bloggers who are seeking a broader audience. When I write about parenting, I’m not doing it for the “parenting” niche. I want my site to be found by search engines so that any parent can come and read the content – but I know that they might be a little confused when they arrive. I may have to address that. Part of the reason we all comment and interact is to get our “brand name” out there, get noticed, get more incoming links and so rise up the search engine pages. That process gets drilled into us as bloggers.

Then we find what great people there are in the “blogosphere” and we are happy to become part of that world.

Bloggers are internet content creators. But a far higher percentage of people are internet users. They use it as a commodity, and that’s what it’s there for. They haven’t come to comment, just to read and glean information, and we are happy for them to do that.

And now, this comment is so long and rambling I’ve forgotten what I set out to say.

Oh, it might have been this – just as a tiny aside: “Newbie” seems to me to be a derogatory term. Personally, I hate it. We use it all over the blogging and tech world, and it is embarrassing and offputting. It certainly is not an inviting word. It is an unnecessary barrier for new visitors/bloggers to overcome. It could potentially make people feel self-conscious, and this is not what we want to do when we spread out a “welcome mat”.

This sounds like a great idea. I wonder what Darren thinks about it?

Darren,

I haven’t yet looked at how many of my commenters use ’subscribe to comments.’ Though my readership and commenters are nothing like what you face. What about a plugin that sends a comment digest once-per-day? I don’t know of one off hand, but I gotta think it’s possible.

As for replying to comments…I’ve been surprised with this on lots of blogs. I purposefully use coComment because I want to engage in conversations on other blogs. Most of the time, though, comment replies seem to go one-and-done.

Perhaps I need to add the ’subscribe to comments’ feature again (although with so many comments on posts some people hated it).

I think you had a great idea today to enlist the help of your most loyal readers. Perhaps you can email them personally and ask them to chip in on the comments section, and invite them to address reader questions themselves. Some incentive could be occasional links back to top comment contributors.

This would be an especially good time to test this out, since you’ll be in the states soon, with even less time to respond to comments.

No worries at all, really. I was just a bit shocked because I had such a great experience in the ‘communities’ of other blogs when I first launched out. I think what shocked me more was how other commenters ignored me. But I guess, as you say, some people just want to promote their own blog.

And I still read your feed everyday. So no worries. No need to explain. No hard feelings. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to talk some time.
Just keep up the great work. And I will comment on your post today about The Balancing Act of Where to Pitch Your Content when I get a bit of time later this evening.

Not to make excuses (because I know my blog has much to improve upon) but with an average of 100 comments a day it is difficult to give each one a personal and constructive response. I worked out one day that over an 8 hour working day to respond to each comment I’d need to write a response every 5 minutes (and that’s just on ProBlogger and doesn’t include any of my other blogs) – what a day that’d be!

It’s particularly difficult in an age where people see comments sections as just another way to promote their blog and leave comments that don’t really add anything to the conversation.

Difficult to know how to fix it – but something I continue to work on where I can.

Not wanting to make excuses – but hopefully shed a little more light on it

I’m with you. The Technorati piece is a great idea.

Wendy,

Ah Wendy, thanks. I’ll take a look at the post later tonight after the kids go to bed.

Before we take to sea we walk on land, before we create we must understand.

A simple and effective hint: find buddies having a technorati rank close to yours, start a conversation with them, you will be growing together, and mates are likely to be a goal itself, not just a mean.

It’s true that everyone takes their own time to get “used” to new things. I’m certainly not suggesting we “push” people.

I’m curious about helping those who are new to blogging and feel either lost, intimidated or overwhelmed by the blogosphere – really by social media. I think there’s a lot of people who are not participating because they simply don’t know how and are hesitant to find out.

The question is…how do we make it easier for people to engage in social media?

Mona,

Thanks for commenting. You’re right about Steve. But he’s a major A-List blogger with a huge following. Any thoughts about how you might integrate the needs of a business website with a blog and still have room to welcome the new folks?

John, Wendy, Liz, anyone…any ideas?