Don’t Shoot Your Transparency All Over Me!

We talk alot about transparency in the blogging and social media world. In terms of being a business owner or a professional it is important to be transparent in everything you do in the online environment. Why? People want to know YOU not necessarily what you do.. that is secondary.

I haven’t really thought much about the concepts of transparency recently until reading a post by Louis Gray entitled Being Transparent is Fine but Please Use Smart Filtering. It talks about where you should/could draw the line when it comes to sharing personal information on the web. Louis talks about how he only shares personal information when it is relevant to the conversation or where it adds overall value to his online brand or persona.

“If you want to be transparent, and build a personal brand you are proud of, you must always be thinking about filtering what gets into your stream, and how it could benefit you and your audience.”

As I told some Purdue students a couple of weeks ago..

Everything is recorded online. Everything is searchable. Be careful what you post because it could come back to hurt your personal brand.

There is a fine line between being transparent and being ANNOYING. There is a reason why you have people following your blog or your profiles on multiple social networks. Don’t dissapoint and be proactive in what you share.

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Independent Blogging Compared to Corporate Blogging

I follow the writing of many of the staff at Compendium Blogware, a local company here in Indianapolis offering an extremely trackable and orangic seo based blog software. I was reading through a post by Megan Glover called Is Blogging In Your 2009 Marketing Budget?, and happened across a powerpoint presentation about measuring, tracking, and adjusting your corporate blog. You can view the ppt by clicking here: measure-track-and-adjust-webinar.

In the webinar they had a graphic from Google Analytics that show where the traffic to their blog was originating from  (image below). Of course being a search and keyword driven blogging platform you would

imagine that the majority of the sites traffic would be from search engines. I decided to check out my analytics to see if I was completely opposite, in the middle, or the same.

Below you will see my traffic sources from Google Analytics. Not surprisingly most of my traffic is driven through referring sites. It got me to thinking about the value of blogging and the underlying reason of why I am writing this blog. Without hesitation I can say that the main reason for blogging is my love for social media both here and in Indianapolis. I love the concept of building community on the web. I have met some wonderful people through my dealings   in Friendfeed, Twitter, and Smaller Indiana.

The other reasons can be contributed to my social media marketing and design company and becoming a trusted adviser in the city of Indianapolis. A blog is a great way to build credibility among your peers and collaborate with many individuals on a global scale.

Of course, another big reason for blogging is the organic search engine optimization I gain through posting and linking. I don’t know if I should be worried that my lowest referring center is search engines. I have been contemplating a way to switch that tables and even out my traffic sources. Any ideas on how to do that?

It is interesting to see the sources of traffic of certain blogs both on a personal and professional level. I would gather that the majority of corporate blogs have a higher search engine traffic rate than most independent blogs out there.

Do you find referring sites more valuable or search engine traffic?  Maybe you find direct traffic the most valuable of them all? I guess it is all based on  the goals and aspirations of the blog strategy itself. Any tips on blog strategy can more than likely be found at Chris Brogan, Chris Baggot,  Hutch Carpenter or Louis Gray’s blogs.

Don’t Whore Yourself When Linking. That’s Dirty.

I am an avid reader and fan of Alexander Van Elsa’s blog on new media. He wrote a post yesterday about the failing “linking economy” on the web. The post entitled: The Linking Economy Fails because Social Currency Became Financial Currency is a great look into the concept of internal linking. There have been quite a few blog posts pertaining to the over-the-top linking strategy of some major blogs. In his post Alexander makes reference to some major blogs by saying:

It is also a system that breaks down easily, especially if you in some way or another monetize your site. That is why all of the big blogs seldomly link to external sites. TechChrunch, CNET, they all love to link to themselves. The motive is pure financial, and has nothing to do with content, trust, or any other factor.

I will be completely honest when I say, it is hard for me to care that much about TechCrunch and CNet. They have already positioned themselves as quasi-industry content leaders. Does it really matter that they are internally linking?

I think this is a lesson for all the smaller blog contingencies out there. When you are posting content about a specific topic try to link to sources that you find valuable. It is extremely apparent to everyone when the only links in a blog post are internal links. Get over yourself.

I am not going to sit her and say I have NEVER internally linked to a post that a reader may find valuable. There is a fine line to draw when internally linking and outwardly linking. If you have five links in your blog post and they ALL travel back to you…you are an internal link addict.

Go to an ILAA (internally linking addict anonymous) because you are ruining your credibility on the the open market. And if the only thing you care about is a greater google page or search ranking….pack up your crap skippy.

Take the train home because I firmly believe genuine content will always win.