Stabenow talks to Americablog.com.

by: quaker21

Tue Jan 23, 2007 at 22:42:17 PM EST

Worth a look, y'all!  Watch over at Americablog.com.

Building the Michigan Blogosphere, Part 4

by: lpackard

Thu Dec 07, 2006 at 19:35:15 PM EST

My first posts in this series talk about the why and the how of blogging and building an audience. Wanted to talk some today about paying the bills through political blogging.

First of all, a reality check.. you won't make much. Larry of the Political Graveyard gets millions of hits per month, yet he makes less than $1000/month in ads. And he has a national audience. Michlib does much less than that. Best you can expect is to cover your hosting fees and maybe the mileage for the various events you cover. But here are some options to help pay for your blogging habit.

1. Set up a donate button prominently on your site. This is probably the easiest, you'll get closest to 100% of the donation money, and it won't cost anything out of pocket if you use PayPal. Larry notes that you may want to include a PO Box for people to mail checks to you if they prefer, and there's the Amazon honor system of payments too. Here's how to get started with PayPal.

2. Set up Google adwords on your site. You need to apply to their program, but I think they'll accept most bloggers. Larry adds: Make sure that when Google's ad people look at it, your site is focused on politics and issues, not on your own daily life.  The reviewers are supposed to reject "personal" sites, so downplay mundane happenings until you get approved.  Once you're approved, don't worry about it: chances are no Google human will ever see it again. Once you're in, you can keep an eye on the ads that show up on your site - if any of them are objectionable (such as Republican ads), you can make them disappear by adding the url to the "competitive ad filter", under AdSense setup. Here's how to get started with Google.

3. Set up BlogAds on your site. In order to do this, you need a sponsor & invitation. Once you're on BlogAds we can add you to the Michigan Ad Network, which may bring in some more advertisers for you. However if you want a lot of ads, you'll probably need to go after potential advertisers directly. More about BlogAds.

4. There are other programs such as Amazon referrals etc, but we (Michlib) didn't have too much success with them. Your mileage may vary. You could also set up a store at CafePress (which is free) and sell merchandise - but unless you have really unique and catchy stuff, this probably also won't do that much for you.

With all of these options, if you increase your site traffic you will probably increase your earnings. As far as taxes go, talk to an accountant - but if you earn less than $600 a year from your blog (which is pretty likely), you probably won't need to jump through any hoops at tax-time.

Building the Michigan Blogosphere, Part 3

by: lpackard

Sun Dec 03, 2006 at 14:04:00 PM EST

My first posts in this series talk about the why and the how of blogging and building an audience. Wanted to talk some as well about reaching out to other online communities to bring people back to your blog.

Democratic Underground DU is a community bulletin board, not quite a blog but pretty similar. It's not as big as DailyKos, but it's bigger than just about any other national blog out there. You may want to start by checking the Michigan forum regularly, and then maybe cross-post when appropriate.

Facebook/Myspace: Note: you used to have to be in college to get a Facebook account, but it's now open to everyone. Myspace has always been open to all. Nirmal will hopefully speak to this more, he's increased traffic to his blog by cross-posting to his Facebook profile (using Notes). He would post summaries to Facebook, directing people to his blog for the full story. I know the Disembodied Head was disappointed in Myspace, that it didn't really do much for sending people to his blog. Which leads me to believe you need a wide circle of friends on either site in order to make this work. That and/or posting to large groups instead of just to your personal profile. Both sites do offer the ability to import your email address book to search for friends. As for Facebook, when they get their '08 election section going, you may want to use wall posts on the various candidate pages to direct people to your specific blog posts about them. Also please feel free to join the Facebook group of Michigan liberal bloggers, and the Myspace group of Michigan liberal bloggers too.

Flickr: Can't speak to this much, but I know some campaigns (like Ned Lamont) used tagging to build communities there. Something to investigate. If you're working with a candidate or cause, make sure to standardize tags at the beginning, so you'll be able to easily find photos other people submit. Probably also want to watermark your images with your URL or something.

YouTube: YouTube seems to function as its own community - not sure how effective it is for bringing new people to your blog. But be sure to include your URL in the description of your vids, as well as embedded in the video clips themselves. Here's my secrets on how to get your videos to show up higher in the searches on their site:

1. Most important: use keywords in the title, and put the most important keywords first. For example, if your vid is of Jennifer Granholm and Barack Obama speaking together at the Detroit rally, call it something like "Granholm Obama Detroit rally" in that order.
2. I can't prove this, but I think having more subscribers to your channel helps. The more you have, the higher ranked your videos will appear (my theory). So get your friends to subscribe to you.
3. I think the order of keywords is important too. Put the most important keywords first. For example, could use candidate name, Michigan, office they're running for, politics.
4. Repeating the same keywords in the video description is important too.
5. Views help too, but not as much as you'd think. Try a search on a keyword and see - the top viewed videos are not necessarily at the top of the search heap.

What Next for the Michigan Blogosphere

by: lpackard

Wed Nov 29, 2006 at 10:17:07 AM EST

Building the Michigan Blogosphere, Part 2

by: lpackard

Fri Jun 16, 2006 at 21:04:58 PM EDT

Here's some tips to get the word out about your site. Trying not to go too technical, but if any of this gets confusing please feel free to comment and ask questions. Also, other good references are Chris's MyDD post from 2005 and Colin's e.politics post. And please, pass the word on to other bloggers about this post. Working together helps us all.

• Write regularly. Write well. Write original content. To get people in the habit of coming to your website, you'll need to deliver good frequent content. Things they can't find anywhere else.


• Link to other Michigan bloggers in your posts. The more we link to each other, the higher we'll all show up in Google and Technorati searches. Include the LeftyBlogs Michigan blogwire on your site. Here's how. It's an easy way to get new content constantly, and link to your fellow lefty bloggers. Start a blogroll of blogs you like to read. Or if you have a blogroll already, be sure to clean out dead links and add fresh ones every so often. If you'd like to be added to the Michlib blogroll, email us.


• Make sure you are contactable. Set up an email address link or something on your site, otherwise people won't be able to send you scoops.


• If you have a good story, get the word out. Drop an email to a friendly reporter bringing it to their attention. Cross-post to appropriate larger blogs, link back to your blog prominently at the top. For example, if you have something of national interest, you could post it at DailyKos. Elections-related analysis at MyDD. And so on. And you're welcome to cross-post here as well, but don't cross-post everything or why would anybody visit your blog.


• Make connections outside the blogosphere too. If you're writing about a local area, flier friendly group meetings in that area. The MDP Convention is good for statewide bloggers, maybe not so much for more specialized blogs. Make comments on the newspaper online forums in your area too. Write letters to the editor and include your URL.


• Make sure that Google and Yahoo know about your blog. Their submit forms are here: Google & Yahoo. Also take a look at Google's advice for webmasters and Yahoo's advice page too. Google will probably end up being your #1 source of referrals. It's far and away the top for Michlib. Read their guide - it'll tell you about things like robots.txt files and sitemaps, which will help control how your blog shows up in searches and what content is searchable.
• If you do a fair amount of state/local political coverage, add your site to the LeftyBlogs Michigan blogroll. Here's how. It's a good way to get the word out about your blog, especially as more and more sites put up the blogwire.
• Make sure that Technorati (the blog search engine) knows about your blog. Here's how. In your profile, you can tell them what topics you generally cover (by using keywords), which will help control where you show up in searches. Hint: "michigan politics" is a good keyword choice. Set up your website so that Technorati knows where to find the feed. Here's how.
• Let Technorati & Google Blog Search know when you post new content. Here's how for Technorati. Here's how for Google Blog Search. Google and Yahoo check your website automatically every so often, but Technorati & Google Blog Search do not. So you'll need to check your blogging system to see if you can set it up to "ping" them both for you whenever you post something new.
• Set up an RSS feed. Many readers these days use RSS readers to keep track of multiple blogs. If you don't have a feed, or if your feed is hidden, these folks won't know about your new posts. You can create a feedburner account, which will also allow you to ping Technorati and Google blogsearch automatically as well, including other blog search sites too.

(more tips below the fold)

Building the Michigan Blogosphere

by: lpackard

Tue Feb 07, 2006 at 20:34:10 PM EST

The Republicans aren't standing still. MI GOP Chair Saul Anuzis has his own blog now on the MI GOP website, and there are several grassroots conservative bloggers active in Michigan too. The Republicans nationally have learned the power of blogging, see this article on the Daschle takedown. There will probably be more of that in the future too. In addition to the extremely slanted coverage that already exists on blogs like the Detroit News' already. (Sign up to be a potential Detnews blogger here.)

The political blogosphere is still in its infancy, and here in Michigan we're still trying to find each other and develop more of a cohesive lefty network. There's power in numbers.

If you don't already have a blog, please consider starting one. Michigan needs more progressive voices out there blogging. It doesn't have to be all wonky and full of research (although that's good too). I personally love to read information I can't get anywhere else - personal stories, in-depth local stories, local breaking news and so on. The stuff that won't show up on TV or in the Freep. The stuff that needs to be talked about, and isn't. Find your passion and blog it: whether it be a region, a race, an issue. Become the expert that others will turn to when they want to find out what's going on.

It's free and easy to start a blog too, with Blogger, to name one choice. So join in on the conversation!

Reference Links:

Blogging 101
Introduction to Blogging