WWED Stories Now Available for Syndication

The Wild Wild East Dailies (WWED) is a collection of over 500 stories relating to Asia, Korea and Vietnam over the past 3 1/2 years, from an American expatriate POV. All stories are protected under a Creative Commons license that encourages reuse but only for non-commercial enterprises. Our stories have been linked or quoted by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post and New York Magazine but not reprinted in full.


If you are a commercial print publication, webzine or other site and have interest in reprinting WWED stories, please contact us. We offer very reasonable rates and can even write on demand for Asian related issues. Contact David.E.Carlson@gmail.com for more information.

The Wild Wild East Dailies Lives at The Morton Report - Your Man in Saigon

Today marks the first publication of the Wild Wild East Dailies for The Morton Report. This blog has now matriculated to a daily column in a publication known for arts, entertainment, and I love this, swanky living - as Andrew Morton describes it. Go figure, WWED is now a beacon for a more stylish life! Our first story "Your Man in Saigon" introduces the column and points to things to come. All stories will be new, but carry the WWED spirit into the future and a whole new audience. Andrew Morton is most known for his biographies of Princess Diana and William and Kate and has launched his daily culture updates on the heals of the royal wedding. I and The Wild Wild East Dailies are proud to be part of this new effort and hope to contribute a bit of Wild Wild fun from an Eastern perspective. Take a look. It's good.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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

Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Read my new blog: A Suspension of Disbeliefs.

Tis the season...

As the year draws to a close and the WWED narrows in on 500 stories in three years, we want to thank all our readers and wish them Happy Holidays. Should you feel WWED has added something to your journey this year, please don't hesitate to drop a little something in the stocking by clicking the 'donate' button in the sidebar :) We operate without the benefit of advertising and prefer to be reader supported - tis also the season where we like to eat a little more than usual. Thank you all very much.

How to find me on Facebook

It seems that hyphenated last names don't work so well on Facebook. I've had a good number of people tell me they can't find me there. So try this: http://www.facebook.com/WildWildEast. It works.

Celebrities and social networking: Now you're famous. We hate you!

I had a meeting with a person yesterday who can legitimately consider himself a celebrity. He has an eponymous business, has written a book and currently hosts an international television show. Our conversation centered around solidifying his online presence. There's a website, a Twitter account, Facebook, LinkedIn and any other number of other sites who may comment and contribute to his online personality - and not all always in a positive way. Once achieved, a level of celebrity can also bring a level of discontent in a certain number of online wankers. I did a post about meeting Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and immediately received a raft of comments from people laying claim to some sort of 'founding' with Wikipedia as well. People who don't like Jimmy Wales. True? Not my job to validate or invalidate those claims - but it's everyone's job, anyone with any online presence at all, to make sure you manage that presence in as positive a way as possible.

And you don't think you're a celebrity? I don't either, but in the last few weeks this blog has become the #1 Technorati rated blog in Vietnam and I have been called out and treated as someone who has done something in otherwise normal social situations. Just on the street last week a guy yelled out at me, "Yo! Wild Wild East!". At another basically normal business meeting on another day the MD brought in a staff member and said, "She's a fan of your blog". Geez, a blogging celebrity? But the thing is - it's entirely possible, and in my case, oddly true. Do you think a lot of people sit around in their house at night and think, "The next big business idea is the Wild Wild East Dailies?" But I did.

My friend, Hugh MacLeod, a certified blogging celebrity, notes in chapter 35 of his book, 'Ignore Everybody' - "Savor obscurity while it lasts". Because once you hit the Internet, that clock starts ticking on what Andy Warhol termed, "Your 15 minutes of fame".

The most interesting thing about my recent celebrity meeting, and all the previous meetings I've had with such folks, is that that they all need to define what part of the person goes into the "Brand" of Oprah, Elvis, Tony Bennett, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Jimmy Wales and even Hugh - (and yes, I have met them all in more than a handshake capacity) to figure out which part needs to practice the art, clean the toilet, mow the lawn, have a romance, a family and as normal a life as makes them feel comfortable. My Monday celebrity simply wants to be able to do the work that made him famous and not have to dick with Twitter too much. God knows it hasn't helped Brittney or Lindsey Lohan too much.

And once you sort that out, you're on your way to being a celebrity as well. Like me! But I still have to pay for beers in bars.

I was walking home late on the street tonight and a young guy yelled "Yo, Wild Wild East"!

I don't even know who he was. Guess we're getting around.

It's true. WWED hits the Technorati top 10,000

8379. That's the number out of all the blogs in the world that WWED ranks. And that makes us the #1 Technorati rated blog in Vietnam. Pretty good, considering that we started the week at 26,000, and were as high as 40,000 just a few months ago. I think it's time to keep going. In my recent post, 'A Good Start', I mentioned that this blog debuted at over 1,500,000 just two and a half years ago.








moved up 250 places

The Wild Wild East Dailies http://wildwildeastdailies.blogspot.com
The Wild Wild East Dailies is a cornucopia of news, marketing, global experience, political satire, personal reflection and future postivity. …

	Technorati Auth: 428

For a little reference, The Huffington Post is the #1 blog in the world at a Technorati Authority ranking of 922. Seth Godin's blog is #159 at an Authority of 721. Technorati is the world's premier blog ranking service and rankings and Authority levels are determined by frequency of posting, number of views and most importantly, the number of other blogs linking to us. Technorati does not rank blogs that are primarily selling vehicles - only blogs that truly engender discussions, which I have been told, WWED does. Thanks all.

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?

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

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

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?