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?

Big News! We're being Trakkd! - Nothing Much Happened in München Today III

And that's quite the big deal. Just this last week the Wild Wild East Dailies was selected for inclusion by Trakkrz.com. Trakkrz boasts being “the world’s largest hand-picked blog site on the web.” and when they say "hand-picked" that means that somebody actually reads it and evaluates your writing before you are approved. And considering the eclectic nature of WWED, I was more than pleased to be included in the "Life" category on Trakkrz. That category alone features fewer than 100 blogs so that puts us in some pretty exclusive company. Other blogs included on Trakkrz are Seth Godin's and my friend Hugh MacLeod's Gapingvoid.com.

In order to be selected, your blog must meet the following criteria: consistent, regular stream of articles * written primarily about the topic for which you are chosen for * write original, relevant articles that provide a unique view – you are not a news aggregator, not an automated blog scraping website – rather a live blogger with excellent content * you are an individual or a small group writing together.

And so I'm happy. This thing is going somewhere. And not knowing exactly just where is all part of the fun.

Additionally this week Technorati revised their blog rating system and we recieved a more than pleasant surprise. The Wild Wild East Dailies has risen in Authority ranking from 4 to 103 and our blog relativity to the Technorati Top 100 has grown to 78.000 from a previous high of 350,000. Most of this is due to Technorati's cleaning of the system and a more accurate verification of real blogs vs. scam blogs. Thanks Technorati and Trakkrz I'll just keep writing.

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

Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
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>/a>
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

Are the Bloggerati Missing the market?

Somebody's gotta help me. I can't figure out why not a single blog in the technorati or social marketing arena is talking about the world's largest market. Why are the bloggerati preaching to the choir and not the church?

Has anyone noticed that Korea is the #1 broadband internet penetrated country on the planet – with over 80% of 48 million people connected? Has anyone noticed that OhMyNews from South Korea has been around since 2000 and pioneered the area of citizen reporting way beyond any of the recent offerings in the west? (Translate: Truemors) Yes, OhMyNews has an International edition (click below).

Excerpts From Wild Wild East:

"It is the first of its kind (OhMyNews) in the world to accept, edit and publish articles from its readers, in an open source style of news reporting. About 20% of the site's content is written by the 55-person staff while the majority of articles are written by other freelance contributors who are mostly ordinary citizens."

Whoa! Innovation and entrepreneurship from Asia? "Tsunami go wrong way Kimosabe!"

Okay, I'm boring you. Let's talk about the 78 million siliconmunists in Vietnam, who drew 20 billion US in foreign investment last year, the largest on the planet, or the insanely growing blogging universe here...or China. Anybody wanna talk China? Ok, that's 1.5 billion people and I need to check my Internet connected numbers and bandwidth and so-forth but why?

Oh wait...The world is round? You don't fall off it when you leave America? Oh dear. The marketing community calls this market the "BRIC" market.

Brazil. Russia. India. China. These are the fastest growing, largest consumer markets in the world – and if products aren't coherent with the world's next largest middle class they will simply die. Are we inventing anything these markets want to use? Imagine digging up a Yahoo logo in a thousand years and the archaeologist explaining to his students that the word meant "a cowboy's cry".

"Short of nominating Ron Paul, the dark-horse populist candidate for president in 2008, it’s doubtful that America’s taste in candidates will ever veer towards people of my background – you know, red-light visiting, expatriate, advertising sorts, (Did I mention I’ve also smoked marijuana more than once?), but should I ever venture a run, there’s one plank I would insist on in my platform:

That every American of Selective Service age be required to spend at least two years abroad in either a military, or humanitarian capacity – or, at the very least, certainly those accepted to university – our future leaders.

I know, I hear a few million asses being laughed off right now. “What the hell is he thinking?”, you’re thinking. And I am required, not by any law, but by sheer sense of national duty, to tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that America has spent far too much national capital on letting our military be our international face and not near enough letting our real faces be our face. It’s time to get out of the house and take a walk around the globe.

Right now America is a terribly misunderstood super-power with almost no national plan for growing good will in a world where the European Union has already surpassed the US in market size and Asia looms as the world’s next greatest and most profitable middle class. America's branding is in the dumper.

Too much politics for you? Well, that can wait. All I can tell you right now is that the world I was about to find in Korea was like a good cold slap in the face to this American and I couldn’t wait to get back to Chicago to tell the big boys about it."

Oh, I've got a big ole thread here, but then again, that's why I've written a Book. More on this later...


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

Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
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>/a>
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago