Desperate Measures

Remember that.

I'm finding way too much complacency in Vietnam today. Because of a protected economy and people just loving even the worst of jobs and situations entirely too much, just because they're afraid of wanting better - they don't work hard enough. It makes them lazy. It makes them boring. Even some of the expats who work here. I liked Korea after the Asian economic crisis of 97. They were hurt. They were hungry. They were fucked. But in the end, it made them better. It made them what they are today. Wealthy, confident and kicking ass and taking names. Like America used to be.

Art Therapist Needed in Vietnam For One Little Boy

Today I have a very serious request for all the readers of the Wild Wild East Dailies. I would like you to help a friend of mine, a certain Dr. Vinh in Vietnam. Dr. Vinh has a young boy who is a full man, a big man, and a man who knows all, but he can't speak all or behave as all, like other children. He has a disability. And Dr. Vinh's son needs your help. And so do Dr. Vinh and his wife. He has asked me to help him explore the science of art therapy and find an art and music therapist to help his son communicate with the world around him, and in Vietnam, that can be a very complicated world for sure. Should you know of an educational therapist who can help Dr. Vinh's son find his way in this world, please do contact him at camnangykhoa@gmail.com. I would like very much for us to help him work this out. This boy needs to rock. Let's make that happen. Thank you all.

A Good Start

"What's 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? - A good start." Yeah, we all know that one. But what's a good start for your business or your business initiative? The answer is going to be different for everyone. Two and a half years ago I started this blog with a Technorati ranking of 1,614,138. Today, we're ranked at 26,105 - so 1,614,138 was a good start for us. This week I heard a business associate worry that he had only invested $25,000 into his website when other people had put in millions - but $25,000 is a lot more than zero and I've seen the number "$0" in people with big ideas as well. $25,000 is a good start. Another associate complained that his company's YouTube video only got 5000 views when others got tens of thousands or more. So what's a good start?

A good start is something you begin. The trick is not to quit once you've started. Last week in 5 days I made 4 distinct business proposals to 4 different clients. Maybe one of those will play out, maybe more - but I got a good start. As I quoted my good friend Hugh MacLeod in a post the other day, "Money or time is not the issue. Making the decision is the issue." Have a good start.

A Smarter Conversation

A few years back, my friend, Hugh MacLeod, did a blog post about companies having a Smarter Conversation with their customers. A few months ago my friend George was curious about how to get people talking about his company's work. A few days ago I recommended to another company that they begin to use their blog as a communications tool that controlled all their other social network activity. All these instances have been about having smarter conversations, and the new word for many companies here, is 'conversations'. In an older day, companies didn't converse with suppliers and customers. They dictated and lectured - but social media has changed all of that. Now, if you don't talk with your customers, they talk about you to others, and maybe not always in the nicest of ways. Here are some key points from Hugh's Smarter Conversation post.

"Social Media allows you to cheaply and quickly begin a smarter conversation. And once you get it going, that conversation starts bleeding out into all other areas of your business- including advertising, PR and corporate communications."

"Start today. It’s never too late to begin a Smarter Conversation. Like I said, money or time is not the issue. Making the decision is the issue, and only you can do that."

I'm recommending to another potential client today that they start having a smarter conversation with their audience. Making that decision will be 90% of the battle won for them.

Eat Pray Sleep: Thoughts on the movie and my own memoir

Eat Pray Love, the absolutely non-epic journey of author Elizabeth Gilbert's, publisher advanced funded journey through the supposed ravages of a divorce from a marriage that didn't seem so bad at all, makes you wonder if the privileged class of writers in New York just maybe expects a little too much out of life. The book was recommended to me over two years ago by a very good friend who had read the beginnings of my memoir, Wild Wild East, in hopes that I would see something in this 'chic-lit' or 'priv-lit' that would help me see my own work a little better. It did. But unfortunately I had to sit through a Julia Roberts at 43 film that depicts Gilbert at 32 that never reaches the literary heights described by Jennifer Egan of The New York Times as, "fueled by a mix of intelligence, wit and colloquial exuberance that is close to irresistible" As Roberts' films go, there was a whole lot more of that attitude in Pretty Woman. Whatever wit there might have been in the book, it was clearly swept away by the incredibly inept screenwriting team, and thereby the acting to a truly flaccid script. In the film, Julia Roberts plays a scene in India where she has been sworn to silence in the ashram and it speaks more to her predicament than all the lines given to her by the script assistants on set. (Ms. Roberts, too-old-for-the-role performance reminded me of Jodie Foster falling over the hill in the dreadful, 'Anna and the King' (ie: The King and I)

An already successful writer divorces a not-so-bad-but-maybe-not-so-inspiring husband, takes up with a less-than-inspiring actor, then bolts her whole dreadful existence - and it is dreadful (travel writing assignments in Bali with unlimited mini-bar privileges - oooooooooooh!), to go around the world to truly commercial places that only rich white people go to and find herself? Give anyone an advance from Viking to a paid personal odyssey, a 157 week New York Times Bestseller book release and the cash from selling the screen rights to two more reasonably inept screen writers and I think they can find themselves. After this, maybe Gilbert will take a page from John Irving and take her own screenwriting into her own hands next time.

As for my writing and reflection on this tale, coupled with recommendations that I refer to Susan Jane Gilman's 'Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven' and James Sullivan's 'Over the Moat' as examples of the expat cannon of adventures, I know now that my tome needs to be better written, have more genuine insights and end with a discovery that is much more than cursory in the exploits of white people who leave the US to find themselves in other places. Good luck to me. I'm working on that, because as my publishing coach, Robin has said, "There is hope";

State of the Blogoshere 2010: How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World VIII

If you've been reading along lately you'll know that I made a very serious business recommendation to a colleague here that he start using his blog to his business advantage. I've had no response from him but that's not surprising. The convergence of conventional media and so-called 'New Media' is causing a great collective denial in the pockets of communications producers and business people who have always made their money 'the old fashioned way'.

A few months ago I had recommended a blog to a management consultant as a way to communicate with his clients and potential clients, and here's the response I received from him:

"No, mate, real men don’t blog, and my clients certainly don’t."

And so with that I want to give you the Cliff's Notes, the Readers Digest version of where blogs are today. And while I do that, will someone please notice, according to Forbes magazine, that Newsweek has just been eaten by The Daily Beast - a blog aggregating news service. Get on the bus boys, we're leaving the station. Here's the 'State of the Blogosphere', according to Technorati.

Overall, bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group. Nearly half of all bloggers we surveyed have earned a graduate degree. As expected in the wake of a recession, we did see a slight drop in income; however, bloggers are still more affluent than the general population. As blogging is now firmly a part of the mainstream, we see that the average blogger has three or more blogs and has been blogging for two or more years. We are also noticing an ever-increasing overlap between blogging and mainstream media.

• Two-thirds of bloggers are male.
• 65% are age 18-44.
• Bloggers are more affluent and educated than the general population:
• 
  
  • 79% have college degrees / 43% have graduate degrees
  • 1/3 have a household income of $75K+
  • 1/4 have a household income of $100K+
  • 
    

"The 2010 edition of State of the Blogosphere finds blogs in transition—no longer an upstart community, now with influence on mainstream narratives firmly entrenched, with bloggers still searching for the next steps forward. Bloggers’ use of and engagement with various social media tools is expanding, and the lines between blogs, micro-blogs, and social networks are disappearing. As the blogosphere converges with social media, sharing of blog posts is increasingly done through social networks—even while blogs remain significantly more influential on blog content than social networks are."

Chew on that for a while. And get out your iPads.









"The significant growth of mobile blogging is a key trend this year. Though the smartphone and tablet markets are still relatively new and most analysts expect them to grow much larger, 25% of all bloggers are already engaged in mobile blogging. And 40% of bloggers who report blogging from their smartphone or tablet say that it has changed the way they blog, encouraging shorter and more spontaneous posts."

It's a 140 character world folks, and I'm flying in the face of shit by doing long posts like this. Whatever. This pioneer business doesn't have a manual - but smart brands and corporations have already realized the value of blogging, well before they get blogged about and maybe against by others.

"Corporates seem to be more engaged with media online than are other types of bloggers. Overall, respondents are least engaged with print media sources, spending an average of 3.5 hours each week reading newspapers or magazines they subscribe to."

And while a very small percentage of people actually make money off their blog itself, a more than 50% share use their blog to support their business.

"While the majority of bloggers classify themselves as hobbyists, those who make money at blogging tend to do so on their own, and not in association with another organization. Over half of Self-Employed bloggers (57%) own their own company, and have a blog related to that business, while 31% of Part-Timers classify their blog as their company, and themselves as the owner."

















And support their business blogs do. The highest percentages of corporate bloggers report overall visibility and thought leadership as benefits to their company's business. I personally have been on TV any number of times, as a voice for my industry, but I've never seen a spike in my business from that - because viewers can't click on my head and get my email or website. So rather than TV, I use Facebook and Twitter to get my message out, and responses back in.

"78% of bloggers surveyed are using Twitter, with even more Corporates (88%) using the microblogging service. Those who use Twitter say they do so to promote their blog, bring interesting links to light, keep up with news and events, and understand what people are buzzing about.








"Almost 9 out of 10 (87%) bloggers surveyed use Facebook, and the majority (66%) do not have a page for their blog separate from their personal account. By contrast, the majority of Corporate and Self-Employed bloggers, 62% and 52%, respectively, do report having a separate page for their blog, indicating that these blogger types are using social media to market their blogs in ways other bloggers are not. Among respondents who have only a personal Facebook page, 60% are not linking their page to their blog in any way."







And ain't that a shame. But sometimes people are just lazy, or busy. Or don't know. But they have plenty of time to throw worthless blather up on Facebook and Twitter. Go figure. I am also a big fan of syndication - getting my blog broadcast to other, larger media services. But how do I do that? How can you do it? I've spent 2 1/2 years studying and replicating and trying and failing to learn this. Teaching others to do it is now something I regard as an income generator. Corporate bloggers haven't quite figured out how to do this - like my potential client mentioned at the beginning of this post.

"Use of particular blogging tools appears to be very widespread among bloggers. These tools include commenting systems (81%), archiving posts by date or category (79%), and built-in syndication (77%). Among bloggers who use built-in syndication, the majority (74%) support full content, although among Corporate bloggers significantly fewer do so (55%)."

And so, where do we go now? Technorati says this:

"Respondents believe that blogging has had the greatest impact so far on the subjects of politics, technology, and celebrity/gossip. Looking forward, they believe blogging will have the greatest impact on politics, technology, and business. Reflecting the fact that they own their own businesses, 27% of Self-Employed bloggers said that blogging has had the greatest impact on business."

"We’ve seen several main themes emerge across the blogosphere in 2010: Bloggers’ use of and engagement with various social media tools is expanding and becoming more sophisticated. Promoting their blogs remains their central purpose. And the blogs of others remain the primary influence on bloggers, far more than social networks or other media. We saw significant growth of mobile blogging, with 25% of all bloggers already engaged in mobile blogging and 40% reporting that mobile blogging has changed the way they blog. "

I will remain committed to blogging for business, and let my colleagues catch up later. Many people ask me whether I'm just giving away valuable consulting by posting it here, and my answer to that is, "No". Everything I post here is available on the Internet to anyone, but doing the work is another story. I do the work, and that's what too many businesses can't get their head around. Showing up, learning something new, believing when others doubt, and just plain doing the work. That's how I get paid. Oh, I'm smart enough, but I do the work. And they can hire me for that.


For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

It's Good to be Loved - How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World VI
Tell Me Your Secrets - How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World V
Is Your Blog Working Hard Enough For Your Business? - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World IV
How (NOT) to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World III
Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World II
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

It's good to be loved - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World VII

"The good news is, the person writing THIS blog IS interesting, savvy and entertaining. And he's sharing some very smart marketing sense anyone in the business can benefit from. I never skip a Wild Wild East Dailies' post because they spark my gray matter and almost always make me smile. - FR"

And my writing can never beat writing like this. Thank you FR.



For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

It's Good to be Loved - How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World VI
Tell Me Your Secrets - How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World V
Is Your Blog Working Hard Enough For Your Business? - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World IV
How (NOT) to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World III
Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World II
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

Tell Me Your Secrets -- How to write the best damn blog in the world VI

"Ordinary blogging for the masses, I'm afraid, will go the way of the CB radio - everybody blathering and nobody listening. What you fail to take into account is, most people aren't that interesting and/or don't have that much to say. You, on the other hand are always unpredictable, contrary and interesting. You could blog in outer space and aliens would gather. 99.9% of those currently making cosmic rubble on the internet aren't saying anything. Just my opinion. - MJ"

Everybody always asks me "What's the secret to having a successful blog?". I'd say above is a good part of the answer. Thanks MJ.

For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

Tell Me Your Secrets - How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World V
Is Your Blog Working Hard Enough For Your Business? - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World IV
How (NOT) to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World III
Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World II
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

Is your blog working hard enough for your business? - How to write the Best Damn Blog in the World V

Recently, I recommended to a business associate that they install a blog on their website. They responded as such:

"Actually we have a blog, and it was last updated last September ;). "

Following is a note I sent that associate. They had now become a potential client.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Bob;

And that's what most people say. But the problem is that the most popular blogs in the world, post at least once a day. On my own blog, I publish three times a week. And then I syndicate. Syndicate like crazy, which means broadcasting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a number of other news aggregation sites. In the last year, the Wild Wild East Dailies has been picked up by The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post as a trusted news source, with links going directly back to my little ole blog, right here in Vietnam. Read this from Technorati's State of The Blogosphere 2010:

"no longer an upstart community, now with influence on mainstream narratives firmly entrenched, with bloggers still searching for the next steps forward. Bloggers’ use of and engagement with various social media tools is expanding, and the lines between blogs, micro-blogs, and social networks are disappearing. As the blogosphere converges with social media, sharing of blog posts is increasingly done through social networks"

This illustrates my key point: If you're not using your blog as a broadcasting and lead generation device, you're missing a huge opportunity. Huge. 65% of my hits come from other sites, and only 17% from search. LinkedIn is my top feeder.

I notice you have a Facebook page for your company and it's good. But do you know what that doesn't give you? It doesn't give you data. Mark Zuckerberg gets all your content anf data for free but you don't get anything. And you can't insert code on Facebook pages. (code that feeds data back to you) You can maybe tracks links to your site, but that's about it. If you took every post you made to your Facebook page and did it on your blog instead, things would work better, but in reverse. A post to the blog automatically goes to your Facebook page and then, correspondingly, out to the world - if, you configure the blog properly. And you get a central base, from which to collect data that YOU control, not Facebook.

I read your Facebook page and if that's you writing, you're pretty up on how social media is working, but it's not working to your benefit as much as it could be. Your blog could be a page on your website and be feeding people directly back to your site - instead of to Facebook where they get all your good data.

My blog, The Wild Wild East Dailies is rated #26,105 in the world. Ha, a joke you say? We'll, not considering that there are over 100 million blogs in the world. I'm in the top fraction of 1%. And blogs are tracked differently than websites. They can be identified by Google and other Bots that don't pick up your website.

Here are some of the stats I like:

Time on site:

	154	Less than 5 secs
	7	From 5 secs to 30 secs
	27	From 30 secs to 5 mins
	5	From 5 mins to 20 mins
	6	From 20 mins to an hour
	35	Longer than an hour

If I hear another web genius tell me how many 'uniques' they get to their site, I'm going to spit. Who cares? On my best day I accumulated over 1000 hits but what were they worth? Not much. Almost none of them converted into regular readers. I put something controversial and funny on the site and got attention. Then it went away. So what? What you and I want to do is build a dedicated, intelligent audience. A well structured blog can help you do that, build a subscriber list and induce loyalty among readers. You become an authority on the business - one other media sources can rely on. Not just a Facebook page.

Where do they come from?

The first two countries are not surprising, but the ever fluctuating list of those below always entertains me. One week Azerbajan was #3. H(how)TF did that happen? I have no idea, but it's cool to know.

	232	46.40%	Vietnam
	125	25.00%	United States
	14	2.80%	United Kingdom
	13	2.60%	Singapore
	12	2.40%	France
	12	2.40%	Canada
	10	2.00%	Australia
	9	1.80%	Germany
	9	1.80%	Korea, Republic Of
	8	1.60%	Taiwan
	7	1.40%	India
	5	1.00%	Austria
	4	0.80%	Netherlands
	4	0.80%	Hong Kong

More specifically, I like the cities. Historically I have a very strong base in Silicon Valley and tech areas on the west coast of the US. New York is always a leader (as I am from there), but I'm always surprised by some. This week it's Nice, France. Why? Dunno.

	214	42.80%	Ho Chi Minh City	Ho Chi Minh	Vietnam
	20	4.00%	New York	New York	United States
	14	2.80%			Vietnam
	11	2.20%	Singapore		Singapore
	11	2.20%	Washington	District Of Columbia	United States
	9	1.80%	Nice	Provence-alpes-cote D'azur	France
	7	1.40%	Coimbatore	Tamil Nadu	India
	7	1.40%	Karhyondong	Kyonggi-do	Korea, Republic Of
	7	1.40%	Taipei	T'ai-pei	Taiwan
	6	1.20%	London	London	United Kingdom
	5	1.00%	Vienna	Wien	Austria
	5	1.00%	Brisbane	Queensland	Australia
	4	0.80%	Englewood	Ohio	United States
	4	0.80%	Central District		Hong Kong
	4	0.80%	Los Angeles	California	United States

I say all of this, because I think I can add something to your mix, and help you guys gain control of and grow your audience.











Here's a couple of weeks on my site. It's not my best. Over time, I average 100 hits a day with 75% unique visitors but the read time is over 5 minutes each, so I'm gaining traction with people who really care. And Facebook doesn't tell you that when people click on stuff you post. A blog - your blog, will.

So that's what I'd like to talk to you about. Configuring your blog and giving you a traffic boost and data you can use to grow business by growing your audience.

To configure the blog and get it connected properly will take me a month - and I'll give you all the instructions, connecting sites and features that I install. You and I will share common password and you can change it after I'm off the project. And my fee for this is extremely reasonable. Less than $.

After that, I would recommend that I maintain and grow the site for six months. If I don't grow the base and data, you don't pay. And that would be a monthly service fee for six months. Not much can be accomplished in any less time. We would need to talk about a posting schedule before I have a fee on that, but again, very manageable and a small fraction of any employee's time.

You've already stated that your staff is dedicated to client work and things like home maintenance get put on the back burner, sometimes for over a year. Outsource this one, and it gets done. And it gets done efficiently and produces results.

Let's discuss more.

David

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For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

Tell Me Your Secrets - How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World V
Is Your Blog Working Hard Enough For Your Business? - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World IV
How (NOT) to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World III
Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World II
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?