Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

I have been a little tied up this week to respond to a number of things and I have always tried to respond as quickly as possible. Please forgive me.

Thinking Blogger Award

A couple of days ago Lorelle gave me the honour of nominating me for the Thinking Blogger Award , that RT Cunningham had previously nominated me for.
I am shocked and humbled, and can only strive to make people think even more.

You can also read about who I nominated for bloggers that make me think , and why… I chose 5 totally different people for different reasons.

Bloggers Choice Award – Huge Marketing Mistakes

I actually made some serious marketing mistakes when I mentioned I had been nominated for the bloggers choice awards.

• I didn’t put a badge at the top of my blog
• I gave people 2 choices – Blogging and Marketing

This blog is somewhere in between a blog about blogging, and a blog about marketing. The competition is tough in both categories, with Darren Rouse and Lorelle obvious picks for the top blog about blogging, and Brian from Copyblogger nominated and thus could easily race into the lead for marketing. Maybe we should leave the giants asleep ;)

The Marketing Lesson?

Bite the bullet, set yourself achievable goals and focus

So what is happening?

I am being slaughtered on the best blog about blogging, Darren is screaming into the lead, with Lorelle an honourable second, and likely to retain that position.

Best Marketing Blog is still up for grabs, although Cord is currently leading by a fair bit more than a head and deserves some of the limelight.

Testing The Water

Lets look on it that it wasn’t a major mistake, and I was performing a split test. My readers have decided that I am more a marketing blog than a blog about blogging, even though the button in the original blog post for marketing was positioned on the right.

Focus

I know which topic I still have a chance of retaining a reasonable result from – there is a reason to pursue this award, because the awards site is gaining lots of links, and I am sure will continue to gain traffic. I have seen a fair amount of traffic from the site, and gained new subscribers.

Plan

• I am offering just one button (for marketing)
• I am presenting it to my audience a second time (in case they forgot) – follow-up is very important, just look at how many posts I have written about DoFollow
• The link badge will be placed in my header for a constant reminder

Making Another Marketing Mistake?

Well it could be….

There are a lot of links on this page to other bloggers but I have always linked out generously.
But there is always the benefit of using other people’s traffic. I don’t necessarily have to win, because if Brian decided to take part, he might send 10,000 people to vote for him, and some of those will no doubt be curious about who the other bloggers are who have been nominated and have a fair number of votes. That in turn would bring me traffic and possibly subscribers.

Another factor is that I would never write a post purely to beg for votes, there would have to be some marketing or blogging advice in anything I publish.

Ah well, lets take this to extremes, for instance did you know that Andy Beal has also been nominated for Best Marketing Blog ?
The funny thing is that for some reason it is listed as containing adult content? Maybe Jordan has made some posts I wasn’t aware of, and started a “Nude” meme in honour of Vanessa Fox Nude .
Anyway Andy is languishing at the back of the field with only 3 votes currently. Then again SEOmoz is also slacking with only 3 votes so far. Note I have actually voted for both. You can vote for as many blogs as you like.

Time for a another “Buy it now” button

Maybe all this linking is suicidal, but it could also be “Standing on the shoulders of giants”