Blog Carnival Week 4: Drumroll Please

The Winner

And the winner of this week’s Social Media Blog Carnival is….

A blog about blogging.  Shocker!!!  Actually, The winner, Jason Baer wrote an interesting post on blog rankings, The Inefficiencies of the Reputation Economy.  He points out that blog rankings still have a long way to go before they’re up to par with other media rankings.

I like his blog post for many reasons.  Here are just a few.  His post is:

• Informative regarding current blog ranking tools, what they’re good and how they’re flawed
• Offers information about each measurement tool
• Brief enough that I didn’t feel like I was reading a book or a magazine article. (note to others)
• Totally relevant to me and almost every other blogger in the world, even if they’re not super interested in their own influence.  He actually tells you why you should care even if you’re not interested in ranking
• Easy to read

I have now started following Jason Baer’s blog, Convince & Convert via RSS.  I suggest you do the same.

Runners Up

In second place, my friend Rachel Happe writes about how Social Software can make businesses more efficient in her post, Social Software – The Value is Not Really About the Conversation.

I like her blog post because it is:

• Prescriptive, and provides relevant examples we all relate to
• Funny, ha ha funny not strange funny
• Relevant, though not as directly relevant as blogging about blogs, any business person can read this post and relate it to their own experience then see how they could use social software to become more efficient
• Easy to read (notice a trend?)

There were also several runners up that I’d like to mention:

• 5 Fascinating Video Lectures from Academic Earth UniversitiesandColleges.org talks about this very cool site where you can watch lectures on a variety of topics.  They offer a sample of these in the post.  I like that two different forms of communication are mashing together. It was very, very easy to read.
• SEO Checklist for Creating a New Website It is prescriptive and easy to follow.  Good even if you already have a site and are trying to optimize it. It was also easy to read.
• Word of Mouth Movements need Strong Identities It’s not a totally new concept but one businesses need to be thinking about as they move into the social space.

Thank You For Playing

I read several really interesting blog posts, some posts that really were not particularly new or interesting, and a couple really awful posts.  With that, I’d like to offer my tips to future submitters:

• Remember, it’s likely I’ve never been to your blog before.  I hate to break it to you but no, not every person in the world reads your blog.  Give me some context about your blog or write the post so it doesn’t matter.
• This is a SOCIAL MEDIA competition, so if it’s not about social media, or somehow directly impacts social media, I fell asleep reading your post and decided to disqualify it.  It also means that this is such a broad topic that I might not know what you’re talking about.  Context is key.
• Submitters, I’m the only one reading your post unless I publish it here.  Thanks for the spam (you 3) I’ll not be promoting your blog post.
• A tip in composing your blog.  Tell me what you’re going to tell me.  The element of surprise isn’t a good technique when you’re writing a blog post.
• Show me proof, show me #s.  I like numbers, shiny numbers that sparkle make me happy. Also, other forms of proof work, like examples.
• Keep it short.  If it is going to be a long post, create a series or break it up into more digestible parts.

Thanks for playing and congratulations to the winners!

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