My friend Ben, no he did not pay me to be his friend, submitted a review of a Data Deposit Box.  Yes, I am somehow contributing to the demise of the Internet by linking a ReviewMe.com review.  What I wanted to bring to light was the disclosure of Ben’s choice.  Unlike Darren Barefoot, Ben decided not to go with the "no follow" tag, but was clearly up front about his review and the payment he is receiving from the company.

This is a sponsored post, through the ReviewMe service. I accepted the review opportunity to get a feel for what it’s like, understand their service, and be able to explain my experience to you. It’s the first review request I’ve received, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to get it. But make no mistake, Data Deposit Box paid me to write this (although they have absolutely no say in what I write.)

Since I know Ben and I appreciate his work, I wondered how the review he posted would tip the balance for me to click to see the product.  Actually, I got about half way through his review and it turns out the product is a little geeky for my taste and it lost my interest. No customer earned here.  The good news for the company Ben reviewed is it garnered my attention.  If only for a moment, I saw what Ben had written, and made a decision quickly and without further thought.  I would venture to say Ben has more than a few friends, and I would also gather that they are perhaps a little more geek leaning than am I, but if one or two click to see the product, a PPC or CPA campaign has just been launched. 

I continue to follow the PayPerPost.com model as well as its sister ReviewMe.com as they work their way into the mainstream marketing arena.  Thanks for the disclosure example Ben, and since you got paid for it, you buy coffee next time!

Tags: ReviewMe.com, Data Deposit Box, Darren Barefoot, PPC, CPA, PayPerPost.com, Blog Marketing, Blog Advertising

Powered by Qumana

Okay, since that is not actually the case, we can eliminate one possibility of the big shakeup in the Yahoo camp.  TechCrunch is reporting in real time and nearly from the boardroom itself.  I hope that if they are laying off all of their bloggers or employees with a blog, that they consider outsourcing to Bloggers For Hire.  I wonder if a guy could hire some talent out of that pool?

Speaking of hiring, it appears that Jason Calacanis has found a new day job. Calacanis will be joining Sequoia Capital as an “Entrepreneur in Residence”.  Jason has no comment about the above headline, but if you ask him to give you some money for your startup, give us a mention.

ClickZNews reports that there seems to be a heat up in what we here at Bloggers For Hire deem Collaborative Intelligence™.  It seems more and more companies are positioning themselves in this market.  Is your company hooked up in the intelligence community?  If you wanted to know about Jason’s job before your competitor, now is the time to find out about how we provide that Collaborative Intelligence™.

Tags: Yahoo, TechCrunch, Bloggers For Hire, ClickZ, Jason Calacanis, Sequoia Capital, Collaborative Intelligence

Powered by Qumana

As I indicated in a comment in a post  I read today over at Kian’s blog,  I had to make my own sound in the echosphere. Yeah, I called an "echosphere" for a reason because Kian is experiencing something I have also experienced and continue to deal with like the feeling of having my eyes pried open with toothpicks and forced to watch I Love Lucy 24/7. I can only read Scoble’s take on a topic, or Winer’s thoughts about this and that, and what Doc told me today, so many times before I start to think about jumping out my office window.  In this case only 3 feet off the ground but nonetheless, totally whacked.

**Please note that I am completely  hypocritical in that statement 1. because I am envious of their traffic readership, and 2. the reason they are so easy to link to is because all I have to do is Google there last names, or in Doc’s case the word "Doc" and I get a first page search response.  This is a result of the echo chamber I complain of and using blogs to my preached point about SEO.**

With that said, let me explain the blogging echo chamber dilemma.  Blogs are real time.  As fast as something can be typed and the publish button pushed, words can be transmitted to readers all over the world.  When you have people that are gurus as I have mentioned above, everyone is excited to report what exciting thing they read today over at this popular blog.  If they are excited to report it, and you are also excited, and both of you blog it and make me click to go read it, you can see where you get caught up in that echo chamber or the "blogging fissure" (my phrase).

Now throw into that recipe a dash of RSS.  Many of these gurus and leaders in their respective industries, all like to get their message read and have many vehicles to publish within.  I’m going to single out specifically a site I have had this problem with, not necessarily to pick a fight but because they may actually read this and take it as feedback. WebProNews is the vehicle of which I speak.  I have nearly every single author or columnist they have in their stable in my feed reader.  Meaning I can read what Scoble (I’m not picking on you Robert it’s just your name’s easy to type and to remember) said in my feeds in the morning with coffee.  I really don’t need to read that same article in the afternoon published word for word on WPN.  I’m afraid it does not end there.  For whatever reason, Bloglines (my main feed reader) picks up this feed again and again, publishing the same feed again, with possibly a new feed thrown in once they have cut and pasted an article from another WPN author. This can go on throughout the day, causing a dozen "unread" feeds.  I’m sorry, it still does not end there.  Now throw in that bowl and fold, the fact that I have search feeds with search strings I follow related to the industry, and for clients, and for metrics.  Due to having these feeds, a search tag may be related to "Business Blogging", which means that every article that is tagged business blogging ends up sent to me as "new content".  In reality it was that same Scoble article I read in the morning.  We professional bloggers that like to stay on the lunatic fringe of blog consulting, blog marketing and blog advertising (oh man this is a keyword feast!) have now read 20 articles written by 50 different authors, sent to us 5 times, and thrown on our windshield again by our own need for information.  You can see how the echo chamber is suddenly a recipe of disaster.

Powered by Qumana

One thing I learned during Blog Business Summit is that for most people RSS is over their heads, like Goodyear blimp over their heads.  This isn’t their fault, it’s ours.  We, as the blogi masters, just haven’t done enough to help people get it (or "grok" it as I like to say).

Anita Campbell has an article in Inc Technology that brings it all down to this: "The simple reality is:  RSS still has far too much geek factor."

The question is, then, what can we do about it?  I think it comes down to two things, education and application.

First we have to educate people what it is, how it really works, how to look for it on sites, and how to subscribe.  Then we need, we absolutely need to show people why it is so important.  Why it can save them time and help them in their day-to-day jobs.

Anita has these suggestions for education:

• Use the new orange button.  If you are still using the old buttons with the acronyms XML or RSS, swap them out for the new button.  Today’s browsers, such as Firefox, auto-detect RSS feeds and will display the new orange button in the lower right hand corner of the browser when the user is on a site with RSS. You want users to see the same version of the button on your site and in the browser bar.  This will help reinforce how to use RSS feeds.
• Use descriptive text links. Add a text link next to the orange button. A simple “subscribe to news feeds” text link is preferable to the rather baffling “syndicate this site” label that you so often see.
• Consider adding a description page.  Give your readers an information page with a plain English description of feeds. The Yahoo study pointed out that some of the confusion users experience comes after they click on the orange buttons and either nothing happens or they’re taken to an ugly page of raw HTML. One easy alternative is to use the FeedBurner service. FeedBurner adds a user friendly page.
• Offer one-click subscribe buttons. “One click subscribe” buttons let users do just that: subscribe with one or a few clicks to automatically receive updates to your feed at one of the popular start pages or news aggregator sites such as Bloglines or Google reader.
• Use RSS auto-discovery.  Add an RSS auto-discovery command to your website’s HTML, if the site supports this feature (most blog software does).  RSS auto discovery lets applications such as the Firefox browser know there’s an RSS feed on your site. Then the application can alert the user that there is a feed to subscribe to.

All of these are great.  These are pretty easy things we, as site/blog owners can do.  Then we need to just show people that Bloglines and Google Reader can be their friends.  I suggest an online tool to start people off versus an application like Attensa or FeedDemon because the medium of a web-browser will make sense to them.

On the why part … this is where just showing Google News feeds, Technorati feeds, and others are so, so important.  Sure it’s cool to get headlines, but showing them how they can get that edge through sifting and consolidating information is powerful, it can be life changing.  And heck it’s pretty fun when you can get the scoop on breaking news or a hot tip.

It usually only takes 30 minutes to show someone the amazing world of RSS can help them.  Isn’t 30 minutes a small price for getting your information flow from a raging river to a controllable stream?

Thought so.

Tags: RSS, collaborative intelligence