May 09, 2006
60 Million Chinese Bloggers Market
Doug Caverly - By the end of 2006, the world's most populous nation is expected to become home to over 60 million bloggers, or writers of Web logs.
China stands as the second-largest Internet market (after the United States). And these blogs are not stagnant, outdated scripts-73 percent of Chinese bloggers write at least once a week, according to a study by the Internet Society of China. Continued growth is expected, with the number of Chinese bloggers predicted to reach 100 million by 2007
Posted by Ahorre at 12:49 AM
December 19, 2005
Que es un Blog
Muchos amigos me preguntan ¿Que es un Blog? Bueno, encontre un sitio de Argentina www.weblogs.com.ar que me ayuda con esta pregunta. Yo no escribo bien el espanol, mi idioma principal es ingles. Este sito le da una explicacion de ¿Que es un Blog?
¿Blogs?
Mucho ruido... mucha comunidad... pero las definiciones de blog varían de persona a persona. Y esto es así porque un weblog es fácil de crear y de usar, aunque un poco más complicado de explicar..
Básicamente, un weblog (también llamado blog) es un espacio personal de escritura en Internet. Podés pensarlo como un diario online, un site que una persona usa para escribir periódicamente, en el que toda la escritura y el estilo se maneja vía web. Un weblog está diseñado para que, como en un diario, cada artículo (post) tenga fecha de publicación, de forma tal que el escritor (weblogger) y los lectores pueden seguir un camino de todo lo publicado y archivado.
Los Bloggers
En general, los bloggers forman verdaderas comunidades online con aquellos con quienes comparten intereses. Estas comunidades pueden tener diferentes formas. Existen grupos de trabajo colaborativo que utilizan un blog como herramienta para comentar, opinar y escribir (postear) noticias relativas a su tarea. O una comunidad como la que dio origen a Weblogs.com.ar: diez o quince personas que un día nos dimos cuenta de que nos leíamos e interactuábamos a través de los comentarios y mails. Incluso hay ejemplos de comunidades con miles de miembros, como el caso de Slashdot, orientada a la tecnología.
La explosión
El concepto de blog existe desde los principios de Internet. Tim Berners Lee (uno de los creadores de la web), tenía una página en la que incluía los nuevos sites que se iban creando y agregaba un comentario sobre cada uno de ellos.
Cómo hacerlo
Desde hace un par de años, las herramientas para evitar el tipeo de código y programación de las páginas empezaron a popularizarse y hoy tenemos muchas disponibles en el mercado. Entre otras, se destacan Blogger, Movable Type, GreyMatter, Pitas. Con cualquiera de estas herramientas, publicar un blog es tan sencillo como elegir un nombre de usuario, una clave, escribir, clickear y publicar en un browser. La complejidad de las páginas depende de vos.
Esta facilidad de uso hizo que hoy en día, sólo por citar un ejemplo, Blogger esté sumando más de 45.000 usuarios nuevos ¡por mes! La explosión también originó que los blogs sean tema de los medios tradicionales y a que generen debates sobre la utilidad/calidad de este tipo de sitios.
Afortunadamente, hay mucho más que eso en los blogs; cada uno es la expresión única e irrepetible de un blogger que forma parte de una comunidad. Una comunidad que da la sensación de un cuerpo vivo, creciendo a cada instante en conocimiento e información compartida, muchas veces de manera anárquica.
Sistemas de publicación
Para comenzar con tu blog, necesitás un Sistema de Publicación (CMS) que te permita crearlo y actualizarlo, generando las páginas que ven las personas que ingresan en tu site. Estos son los sistemas más populares:
Blogger
Es el más popular. Se caracteriza por su facilidad de uso y porque gracias a él, la comunidad mundial de webloggers creció rápidamente.
Una vez creada la cuenta, automáticamente tenés que elegir el template que va a controlar la apariencia de tu site de una lista predefinida de modelos, dependiendo del que mejor se adapte a tu preferencia.
Si tienés conocimientos de diseño podés personalizar vos mismo los templates. Esto hará que tu sitio se vea más original.
La forma en que el sistema funciona es la siguiente: los mensajes se escriben en una caja de texto, donde podemos elegir algunos atributos, como poner la tipografía en negrita, itálica y también insertar links.
Una vez que "posteamos" los mensajes, éstos quedan guardados en la base de datos de Blogger. Para que desplieguen en el sitio, hay que clickear en "publish" o bien "post & publish", luego de editar los mensajes.
La publicación del blog puedés hacerla gratuitamente sobre Blogspot, pero incluyendo un banner publicitario en la parte superior. Con este sistema, tu sitio puede verse en la dirección correspondiente a tu nombre de usuario. Por ejemplo: usuario.blogspot.com. La alternativa es publicarlo en tu propio hosting, subiéndo el material vía FTP.
Recientemente se conoció la versión Blogger Pro, que cuenta con algunas mejoras pero que es una versión paga.
Lo mejor: su facilidad de uso, los foros y su flexibilidad.
Lo peor: poca confiabilidad y falta de "features" avanzadas
Link: www.blogger.com
Creá tu blog en Blogger.com con nuestro tutorial
Movable Type
Sin dudas, el sistema más completo que existe a la fecha. Requiere de altos conocimientos técnicos para su instalación y puesta en marcha, pero luego brinda una comodidad que ninguno de los otros sistemas ofrece.
Es importante revisar sus requerimientos, ya que no todos los servicios de hosting soportan esas características (Perl, CGI, etc.).
Contiene un sistema integrado de comentarios, para que los lectores puedan dejar sus opiniones.
Su principal diferencia es la capacidad de personalización de todos los elementos del weblog, como templates, categorías, manejo de archivos, etc.
Lo mejor: su calidad, funcionalidad y flexibilidad.
Lo peor: la dificultad de instalación y configuración para un usuario promedio.
Link: www.movabletype.org
Instalá Movable Type usando nuestro tutorial
Pitas
Este sistema puede definirse como el más sencillo de todos. Para registrarse sólo hay que elegir un nombre de usuario, que luego será el definitivo en el sitio. Por ej: usuario.pitas.com
La facilidad de este sistema es superior a todos los demás. El archivo de mensajes se controla automáticamente por lo que sólo debemos preocuparnos por escribir los "posts" y nada más.
El punto flojo son los templates que tiene para elegir, pero por suerte existe la opción "make custom changes" que permite que si tenemos conocimientos de HTML podamos definir nosotros cada detalle del aspecto visual.
Lo mejor: te registrás y a escribir!
Lo peor: tiene demasiadas limitaciones, desde el manejo de templates y estilos, hasta los archivos y las fechas
Link: www.pitas.com
En esta tabla encontrarás todos los sistemas comparados
Posted by Ahorre at 05:59 PM
November 04, 2005
Bitacoras Que es un Weblog Blog
Un weblog, también conocido como blog o bitácora, es un sitio web periódicamente actualizado que recopila cronológicamente textos y/o artículos de uno o varios autores donde el más reciente aparece primero, con un uso o temática en particular, siempre conservando el autor la libertad de dejar publicado lo que crea pertinente. Los weblogs usualmente están escritos con un estilo personal e informal.
Posted by Ahorre at 04:11 AM
October 21, 2005
Turning Bloggers into Buyers
Blog Buyers - If it’s done right, blogging can be an effective alternative to traditional marketing initiatives such as e-mail and search engine marketing, a panel of retailers told attendees during a session entitled “What happens when Etailers dive into Blogs, Podcasting and RSS” Tuesday at the Shop.org 2005 Annual Summit in Las Vegas.
Faced with the rising cost of paid word search and the fact that e-mail marketing is hampered by ongoing concerns over privacy and spamming, more retailers are looking for marketing alternatives that can still generate traffic and convert sales.
One such alternative is blogging. If the alternative marketing program is done correctly, creating and maintaining a blog will help create both new cross selling opportunities and attract shoppers. For instance, eHobbies.com introduced a blog on its e-commerce site in May that discusses various pop culture issues, updates readers and shoppers on new lines of merchandise and lets hobby enthusiasts sound off on hobby-related issues.
“Among other things you can see photos of our staff members racing radio-controlled cars,” says eHobbies CEO Seth Greenberg.
But eHobbies also sees its new blog, which is featured on the home page with its own distinctive tab, as a good way to build brand recognition and create sales leads. For instance, eHobbies often includes a redeemable online coupon on its blogging pages. When customers use the coupon, the sales conversion rate on certain items is nearly twice as much as eHobbies’ average daily conversion rate, Greeberg says.
Bloggers and customers also like getting the coupon. During the final two weeks in August, blogging-related sales, specifically customers who read the blog and downloaded the coupon, averaged about 5% of daily orders.
Today about 5% of all visitors to eHobbies.com take the time to read or participate in the blog, up from about 2.5% in May, Greenberg says.
“The blog helps get our message across for things like new product announcements,” Greenberg says. “It’s effective for our audience.”
Another online retailer using a blog to drive sales is online jeweler Ice.com. Since introducing its blog about six months ago, the blog has generated 346 sales, including about 70 transactions in the last 30 days, says Pinny Gniwisch, founder and executive vice president of marketing.
The Ice.com blog features “Just ask Leslie,” an ongoing column on jewelry tips and care, articles and photos on topics such as what celebrities are wearing as the latest jewelry styles and various promotions such as Ice.com’s current specials on discounted items. “For Ice.com, this blog is customer action on a new level,” Gniwisch says.
Posted by Ahorre at 03:59 PM
August 17, 2005
Blog Readers Don't Know About RSS Feeds
MarketingVox - Nielsen/NetRatings reported Monday that 11 percent of blog readers - visitors who claim to read blogs regularly or occasionally - use RSS to sort through the increasing number of blogs available. Specifically, nearly five percent of blog readers use feed aggregation software, and more than six percent use a feed aggregating website to monitor RSS feeds from blogs, according to Nielsen/NetRatings' "Understanding the Blogosphere" survey.
The number of unique visitors to the top 50 blogging and blog-related sites increased 31 percent, reaching 29.3 million, in July - compared with the beginning of the year. In other words, as of July nearly 20 percent of active online users had visited blogs.
In year-to-date unique visitor growth, MSN Spaces was first - with a 947 percent increase and nearly 3.3 million visitors in July, compared with 311,000 in January. Fark.com and Blogger ranked second and third, with 63 percent and 45 percent unique audience growth, respectively; fark had a unique audience of nearly 800,000 in July, whereas Blogger had 12.6 million.
Fourth through tenth in growth were Xanga, Daily Kos, Smoking Gun, Gawker, TypePad, engadget, and Boing Boing.
Posted by Ahorre at 02:12 PM
August 10, 2005
Blogs Makes Perfect Sense For Marketing
Via Corporate Blogging - The New York Times: "From a marketing perspective, blogs make perfect sense. They are cheap to produce, immersive and interactive. It's easy to measure their readership and response rates. For small companies, blogs are a quick and dirty promotional tool that cuts out the middleman; for big companies, blogs are a tool of humanization -- an informal, chatty, down-to-earth voice amid the din of bland corporate-speak.
Posted by Ahorre at 04:36 AM
Corporate Blogging Strategic Business Communication Tool
By Fredrik Wacka and appeared in CorporateBlogging.info
To me blogs are a strategic business communication tool. I usually consider the fact that blogs rank high in search engines to be a positive side effect. But I also recognize that for some people search engine optimization, SEO, is a major reason for blogging - and I have found it to be a good reason for others to start thinking about blogging at all. Here's a list of explanations to why your blog probably will rank high in search engines. And it's more to it than just the links.
The links are important, though. Especially to Google. Yahoo and the MSN Beta seems to give content related factors more weight in my experience. But even with Google the key to your success doesn't lie in links alone. If you want traffic through search engines you must get the basics right too.
So, here's my take on why blogs rank high in search engines.
Keywords, key phrases
Straight to the point
Each post's page structure
Coding
One subject per post
The blog site's information structure
Links then...?
Keywords, key phrases
If I wanted to pick one single reason I would actually choose this one: In a blog you talk.
You engage in conversations. You think out loud, in a way. The things you say are (hopefully) everything but the standard corporate bullxxxx.
This means you are filling the engines' databases with relevant keywords - relevant because most of us search for the words or phrases we use daily. The same words you use in the blog because you talk instead of sending messages to the target audience.
Straight to the point
How many blog posts have you seen with this kind of headline: "Our software system solution for world-wide data quality"? How many corporate sites have you seen...?
This point is related to the first one but it adds one extra dimension. Not only do we in blogs speak like real, living people in the words we use - we say it directly. Straight to the point.
There are certainly exceptions to this, I admit that. But generally speaking I have found it to be true in many business blogs. To say what you want to say as fast as possible is important, which leads me to my next reason.
Each post's page structure
It's more or less standard in blog design to use the post's title/headline as the page's title (together with the blog name). With my two previous reasons in mind you now see how the html title is filled with tasty keywords. And that's the most important place to have them. That's where search engines expect to find the best clue to what your page is about, and they rank the words there high in comparison to other positions in the code. Speaking about code...
Coding
If you use blog templates they will probably be an example of good coding. Most I've seen has been at least. It's often a table-less design, an extensive use of style sheets, correct coding where headlines not only are larger and bold but actual H1's, H2's and so on. It's a clean code - good for browser compability, good for visitors with disabilities. Good for search engine spiders.
Here you have a potential risk. If you just use the old CMS templates for your regular site, you may loose this advantage. The solution is of course to redesign all of it in line with this "modern" web design.
Finally, some reasons relating to information structure.
One subject per post
This is all about keyword density, which is the ratio of the word someone searches for against the total numbers of words on the web page. Most blog posts are rather short, and they're often about one subject. That means a good chance of a high keyword density - especially if you compare it to a standard corporate web site where you try to tell about all your products on one page, or very few pages.
The blog site's information structure
Blogs are "flat" sites. They have a first page (level 1), current posts (level 2), about page (level 2), archive pages (level 2) and archived posts (level 3). That's it.
It's not clear exactly how important this is. Some claim spiders don't regularly index very deep sites and that low-level pages are given lower ranking, others say this is not a factor to care about.
Links then? Well, they will do you good too. A high Google PageRank is obviously better than a low. But if you don't get the above things right, the PageRank won't mean as much to you as it otherwise would have.
_________________
Chris Richardson
Writer, WebProNews.com
www.webpronews.com
Posted by Ahorre at 04:26 AM
Blogging is blooming in China
HONG KONG Blogging is blooming in China as the country's vast pool of Web users try to make their mark online and ambitious local start-ups battle foreign heavyweights for a piece of the market. China now has a 14.2 million-site "blogosphere," with a new blog, or Web log, created every second, according to Technorati, a Web site that tracks blogs.
The growing stable of online scribes, still small by global standards, has attracted homegrown companies and foreign giants like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo offering blogging Web pages to outspoken Chinese Internet users.
The medium has already produced at least one celebrity of sorts, a woman who goes by the blog name Furong Jiejie, whose steamy online entries include passages like: "I have a physique that gives men nosebleeds."
"Users don't care too much if the blog company is foreign or local, but I think local companies have more understanding of the community," said Kevin Wen, a spokesman for a Beijing-based start-up, Bokee.com, whose name is the Chinese word for blog.
Bokee, formerly called BlogChina, has attracted 5 million yuan, or $616,500, in seed money as well as $10 million in venture capital funding from six U.S. and Chinese firms.
It aims to become the first Chinese blogging company to list on the Nasdaq, said its chief executive, Fang Xingdong, adding that the company expected its revenue to grow to five times its August level by the end of this year and its user base to reach 10 million.
Two rivals, Blogbus.com and BlogCN.com, have also said that they are in discussions with venture capital firms.
Initial public stock offerings from Chinese technology companies have proved popular so far, with the Web
in venture capital funding from six U.S. and Chinese firms.
It aims to become the first Chinese blogging company to list on the Nasdaq, said its chief executive, Fang Xingdong, adding that the company expected its revenue to grow to five times its August level by the end of this year and its user base to reach 10 million.
Two rivals, Blogbus.com and BlogCN.com, have also said that they are in discussions with venture capital firms.
Initial public stock offerings from Chinese technology companies have proved popular so far, with the Web search company Baidu.com the latest to strike gold. Its shares more than quadrupled in value in their U.S. market debut last week.
China is the second-largest Internet market in the world after the United States, with 120 million users forecast by the end of the year. But the number of bloggers is still relatively small, about six million, according to various sources.
Microsoft says more than a million users in China have joined its MSN Spaces service, which is operated out of China and was started in the country just three months ago. That number is growing by an average of 30 percent per month, said Sally Ip, MSN Asia's regional trade marketing manager.
Bokee, which was set up in 2002, claims the biggest share of the Chinese blogging market, with about two million registered users, and it said it was adding 6,000 to 10,000 daily.
Since blogging services are usually free, companies make most of their revenue from advertising.
Wen, of Bokee, said he might begin to charge for blogging services at the end of this year, but still saw most of the company's revenue coming from advertising and wireless charges.
Bokee's site carries ads from
Posted by Ahorre at 04:22 AM
August 01, 2005
Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website
Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website / Sept. 30th Atlanta, GA: GA Tech
Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website is an important one-day workshop designed to help marketers. Industry leaders will share their experiences with you on what makes a successful blog. You'll leave with a wealth of information and specific techniques that will help you cross the chasm in incorporating this innovative internet-based strategy into your organization's marketing plan.
Who Should Attend?
Senior-level marketers with responsibilities for developing strategic direction of their organizations and/or brands who want to understand the impact of blogs on customer communications, media relations and ROI
Marketing professionals who are responsible for developing and/or executing marketing plans and strategies and have an interest in incorporating blogs in communication programs
For more information or to register, call 800.AMA.1150 or visit
www.MarketingPower.com/blogatlanta
Posted by Ahorre at 01:14 PM
July 25, 2005
Your Blog Could Get You Hired
Lo Nuevo de Los Blogs y el Potencial "There have been plenty of news articles about people getting fired because of their blog — but people have also been hired because of their blog. The Virtual Handshake has a post about several people who have been hired because of their blogs."
Posted by Ahorre at 10:37 AM
July 08, 2005
Blog Acceptance and Blogs Publication Acceptance
By Shankar Gupta Bloggers have long depended on mainstream media, linking to and critiquing established publications' online articles. Now, mainstream media is...
Salon.com and America Online are among the companies that have recently started providing online readers with links to blogs that discuss specific stories via Technorati, a search engine that crawls the millions of sites that make up the blogosphere.
Newsweek magazine is also in discussions with Technorati for this feature, according to a Newsweek spokeswoman. Salon.com added the Technorati links in mid-May, and the links appeared on AOL's official Live 8 page last weekend.
Technorati founder and CEO David Sifry said the development marks a major step in the media world's acceptance of Weblogs. "In the 20th century it was about letters to the editor; in the 21st century we're seeing people adding their commentary by blogging about the stories and articles," said Sifry. "There's definitely a symbiosis between bloggers and the mainstream media."
The links direct readers to a Technorati search using the URL of the story they were reading. The Technorati search engine returns a list of every blog containing a link to that URL, allowing the user to see what the blogosphere has to say about a given article. Technorati's searches, much like many search engines', are monetized via sponsored links tied to the search terms used.
Posted by Ahorre at 02:24 PM
May 21, 2005
Feedster Redefines Internet Search, Targeted Media, and Advertising Delivery
Feedster is a rapidly growing Internet search engine and advertising network that provides timely and meaningful information to consumers and large Internet sites in need of targeted media. Feedster provides a fresh index across over 6 million feeds several times per hour, adding millions of new documents daily. Feedster benefits from the ways that blogging is changing the Internet’s basic building blocks – from unstructured web pages to structured documents.
Posted by Ahorre at 11:31 PM
May 17, 2005
Bloggers versus Journalism
85 percent of news professionals believe bloggers should have constitutional protections of free speech, the poll said 75 percent think bloggers are not real journalists because they don't adhere to "commonly held ethical standards." Bloggers versus Journalism
Posted by Ahorre at 04:59 AM
March 17, 2005
Consumer Advertising Response
What most marketers haven't come to grips with is just how much consumers are now calling the shots. They have the ability to change the way ad messages are being received -- and even come out with their own counter-messages. Bloggers are Influencers and some are very Liberal about their views.
Posted by Ahorre at 10:07 AM
February 22, 2005
Blogs enhance Personal Branding
The purpose behind this entry is to address a common question many internally ask themselves as to "Why should I have a blog? or what type of blog should I start? The 2nd question can be answered via entry (Types of Blogs) Blogs enhance Personal Branding
Posted by Ahorre at 03:16 PM