Time for short-takes: interesting posts from my travels around the blogosphere.

Branding yourself: No, I’m not talking cattle branding here. I’m talking about branding yourself as a journalist, as in getting your name out there. Journalists today need to market themselves. People need to be able to find your name, your blog, your Linked-In profile as they assess whether to talk to you, hire your, write about you. The goal, I think, is that when you Google your own name, you come up as the first listing. Try it. Type your own name into Google, and see what comes up. If it’s you, great; if it’s not, you need to focus more on branding. Mindy McAdams has a thorough list of why you need to self-brand, and she also pulls together what other bloggers have said on the topic. Alfred Hermida, writing at MediaShift, explains the why of the personal brand, including a suggestion that you buy your own name as a domain. Now. (You can check if your name is already taken here.) Both posts are really worth reading.

Start commenting already: One of the best ways to let people in your topic niche know about your blog is to comment on their blogs. Bloggers will often check out the blogs of people who comment on their blogs, and then, voila, they may keep coming back if they like what they see. This is particularly true of blogs that don’t get tons of traffic. (The A-listers get so many comments they likely don’t have time to check out every site, but that doesn’t mean other readers on their sites won’t check out your blog if you comment on an A-list blog.)

Blogging is virtual networking — you must connected to feel connected. Linkers Blog offers a simple step-by-step on how to get commenting. By the way, I know it’s hard to find the time to do this. I struggle with that as well. My best advice: Set up a time each week — even just 30 minutes — to comment on other blogs you read. Make comments relevant, and say something. (No, “Good post, dude.”)

Plus, as Yan Susanto points out at Thou Shall Blog, some blogs are set up so that when you comment, you get an automatic link back to your site. That helps increase the inbound links to your blog, which boosts your relevance in Google’s search algorithm. And that elevates your chances of coming up higher in a search.

The Frustrated Journalist: A few weeks ago, I came upon a new blog, The Frustrated Journalist. I just loved the name, as there is sure a lot to be frustrated about related to journalism these days. It appears the unidentified blogger was looking for a forum for a group vent on the state of this industry we love. While I’m usually opposed to anonymous journo blogs, I’d make an exception in this case, as I’d hate to see the frustrated journalist turn into the frustrated and unemployed journalist.

The debut post bemoans the lack of innovation going on in some corners of the journalism world today. The second was called open mic and solicited observations from others. Then, that was it. I fear frustrated journalist has become even more frustrated with the lack of response from the blogosphere, so check out the blog and give him or her some input. We can all use some group therapy once in a while. (And frustrated journalist, keep writing!)

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Let’s pause for a little bit of shameless self-promotion: OK, folks, you can mosey on over to Thou Shall Blog if you’d like. I have a guest blog there.

It’s a primer on how to edit yourself. Sure, the blogosphere is great — no editors to get in your way. But also no editors to correct your misspelled words, spot your run-on sentences or correct your flawed subject-verb agreement.

After 11 years as a newspaper editor, I’ve learned a think thing (edited Feb 1, thanks to comment by Mark. Thanks, Mark.) or two about fixing mistakes.  I share them on Thou Shall Blog, a blog by Yan Susanto that is targeted to beginning bloggers. Check it out. (Hopefully, you won’t find a typo.)

– Gina

So you’ve started your blog, you’ve named it. Now you need to start reading. Yes, I said reading, not writing.

Now I don’t mean just sit there and read all day, but if you’re going to blog well you need to read news sites,  other blogs in your niche and techie blogs. And you need to engage in those sites by commenting and joining the conversation, particularly on the other blogs in your niche.

First, I’ll explain why you need to read so much and then why you need to comment.

Read, read, read

• Read the news: This seems to go without saying that journalists would be news junkies. But often I find many journalists who haven’t even read the morning paper that they work for. That’s a shame. You need to be reading the major news sites, such as CNN and The New York Times; blogging news sites such as HuffingtonPost;  Romenesko, affiliated with the Poynter Institute; and your own newspaper’s Web site, regularly.  You can’t blog well if you’re in a tunnel and don’t know what’s happening in the world or in your community.
• Read other blogs in your niche to see what the competition is doing. Fifteen years ago, when I covered City Hall in a small community, my newspaper had a feisty competing daily. (Actually, still does.) I would have been a fool not to read every day what the City Hall reporter from that newspaper was writing. Now if you’ve started in the newspaper business less than 10 years ago, it’s possible you’ve never worked in a two-newspaper town. But the premise is: You need to know what your competitor is doing to make sure you’re not missing something — either a whole story or key details. When you blog, your competition is other bloggers — both people who cover the same beat at other newspapers and blog about it and the quintessential nonjournalist blogger, typing away in his basement in his pajamas. Even though these blogs may originate outside your geographic area, the topics they cover may be relevant for your readers. (Plus if you know what other people are writing, you can link to their content, which will enrich your blog and help boost readership.) If you don’t know of blogs in your niche, type some keywords — education blogs — into Google; check out the Web sites of other newspapers; search on topical Web sites. ReadWriteWeb has 6 tips for finding the heavy-hitters in your niche.
• Read techie blogs to learn the mechanics of blogging and SEO: I’m not trained in SEO, unless you include an hourlong session I took at work. But I’ve learned so much from reading blogging bloggers and listening to people way smarter than me. Techie bloggers (my term, by the way. Sorry if it offends.) aren’t journalists; they are people who know who to blog and understand how the blogosphere works. They get the value of linking and commenting and understand more technical stuff like trackbacks, referral traffic, monetizing. These are the experts in the field, who may make money off their blogs.  My must-reads: Darren Rowse, a blogging hobbyist turned pro who offers clear advice at ProBlogger and TwiTip.  ReadWriteWeb keeps me up to date with trends in technology and predicts where the Web is headed. Yan Susanto at Thou Shall Blog writes for beginning bloggers, and I can attest he doesn’t make you feel stupid if you ask him a super-basic question. I’m also a fan of KidTechGuru by teenage Xavier Lur, who blogs about emerging applications and explains things such as what’s twirl and how to use it. (Twirl is a way to use Twitter.)

Coment, comment, comment

• Commenting helps you join the conversation: Blogging is a conversation, and you’ll get much more out of it if you engage. Imagine yourself at a party: How much fun would you have just sitting there listening and never saying a word or responding to a question. That’s why you need to connect. You share your ideas.  Other people read them and possibly respond to them. You may get ideas for your own blog through responses to your comments. And you’re part of the community, not just a voyeur.
• Commenting can help you drive traffic to your blog: Technorati’s 2008 state of the blogosphere found that 77 percent of bloggers regularly use comments to attract traffic to their blogs. So if everyone is doing it, it must work, right? Well, sort of. If you comment on a blog, the blogger may check out your blog or even send you a thank you e-mail. Most times when you comment, you have to fill out a form that gives your name, e-mail and Web site, so the blogger can reach you. Other commenters also may click to your blog, especially if they like what you say (or hate it.) If you comment on blogs in your niche, you’re reaching out to an audience that’s likely to be interested in your blog. But it’s one tool of many, not the only tool, as Remarkablogger points out. There’s no guarantee bloggers or other commenters will connect to your blog, especially on sites that get hundreds of comments. But there’s a chance, especially if you’re among the first commenters on a blog post.
• Comments will increase links to your blog, sort of: If you comment on a blog, it automatically links to your blog, giving you an incoming link in Google eyes (increasing your value.) Well, not always. As Thou Shall Blog explains better than I could: Your link will be indexed by Google only if the site supports DoFollow, but not if it’s a NoFollow site. The Blog Herald explains that if you have access to your blog stats, you can assess if you’re are getting referrals from comments. But some journalists who blog on their newspaper’s Web sites don’t have access to their stats. So what should you do? I’d say comment away and don’t worry too much about the NoFollow issue. Comments may help your ranking or not, but comments still have value in introducing people to your site and getting you to join the conversation. I wouldn’t spend my life commenting; I’d do it thoughfully and well. And whatever you do, don’t just spew out “great post” everywhere and say nothing more. Put thought into comments and say something.

You need to be part of your community — and by community I mean the larger world of your niche —  to write well about it. A favorite editor of mine used to have a sign in his office that read, “It’s the content, stupid.” That’s applies so well to blogging. Read good content, comment with good content,  write good content and use tools to reach readers.

My next post: What the heck is Technorati, and why should a journalist care?

– Gina

Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York associate professor who blogs about the media at Buzz Machine, raised a good point about my list of 10 Tips for Journalists Who Blog. I didn’t mention linking. I didn’t because I felt it was such a key topic that it warranted its own post, but I think linking is so important it should have made my list. Thanks for the observation, Jeff.

So here’s my primer on linking for journalist bloggers:

First, what is linking? It’s simply connecting from your blog through hypertext to another blog, online news story or Web site. Getting incoming links is when another blog or Web site links to your blog.

So why is linking important?

• Linking creates a conversation: Blogging is a conversation, not a monologue or a lecture. To blog well you need to connect with other bloggers in your niche, share ideas, respond to their posts, get your posts noticed by them. Jeff puts it well: “Links are an act of enlightened self-interest, for it is when you link to others that they discover you and what you have to add. That will get you linked back.” If another blogger links to your blog, you get a shot at that blogger and his or her readers checking out your site. The blogger also may link to your blog in his or her blog roll, so that gives you a continuous potential for new readers from that blogger’s site. (Readers often check out the blogs on the blogroll).  If you’re linking to sites relevant to your niche, in time you’ll get links back and create a community that increases your blog traffic. This can happen through conversation or tweets, as I explained in my Wow! The Power of Blogging Post.
• Linking increases your “Googlebility”: What’s Googlebility? It’s related to search-engine optimization — increasing the chance that your blog will show up at the top of a Google search. Google likes blogs that link to other blogs; it considers these blogs more relevant. And Google really likes blogs that get linked to because it sees a blog with lots of links from quality sites as providing better content. So a blog with lots of links will get a higher ranking than a blog without links. By the way, Google also likes if you link to your own content, previous posts, your about me page, etc.
• Linking serves your readers: It just gives so much more relevance to your posts if you link to the original article you’re blogging about, the background of what you’re writing about or a blog that makes a similar point to the one your making. It’s a bit like the “showing your work” requirement when you were in grade school and did a word problem. You’re showing where you got the ideas you’re writing about. And you’re augmenting your own ideas with valid thoughts from others. That just makes it good journalism

So now that you know why you should link out. How do you do it. It’s not complicated but there are ways to make it more effective. Blogger and consultant Yan Susanto at Thou Shall Blog offers seven tips for highly effective one-way link-building that are really worth reading. His tips include some topics I’ll deal with in detail in later posts such as guest blogging and commenting on other people’s blogs, both of which will help you get links. He also notes that contextual links —  links that connect to a particular post within a blog rather than the main blog url – are best.

Vandelay Design notes that linking to other blogs, helps those blogs’ Technorati authority (which is a measure of ranking that I’ll get into more in a separate post.) And Vandelay Design gives a practical tip: Don’t just link out to the A-list bloggers in your niche. It’s fine to link to the VIPs, but be sure to link to relevant, quality less-trafficked blogs, also. Bloggers who get less traffic will be more likely to notice your link and return the favor than bloggers who gets hundreds of comments and many blogs linking to their sites. (Of course, if the A-lister links to you, you’re really golden.)

And don’t be afraid to link out to a site that you see as a “competitor” for your traffic, reassures Jeff Chandler on the Performancing blog. (He also offers nine valid reasons you should link out). That’s often the knee-jerk reaction: Why would I want to lead people to another site? The truth is readers will find you blog valuable if you’re the spot where they can find out what they want to know even if some of that knowledge comes from someone else.

Stay tuned for my next post: Why bloggers should comment on other blogs in their niche.

– Gina

Edited on Jan. 5: I forgot to mention one vital thing. Also link to your colleagues’ blogs from your blog. So if you blog for a newspaper, link to other bloggers at the newspaper when it’s relevant for your readers, of course. It gives your colleagues a boost in links, and it makes it easier for readers to navigate related issues on your newspaper Web site.