One blog, two perspectives

Technology Bloggers has two types of community members, those who read and those who write – some people do both.

For a long time now, those who contribute articles to the blog, and those who read those contributions, have seen the blog in the same way.

Not anymore.

Thanks to a clever bit of coding and a plugin or two, logged in users, now see a different blog to those who are logged out.

One of the major differences is advertisements. As you know we sometimes host advertisements on the sidebar or in the footer of the blog, in order to help fund the maintenance of the blog – someone has to pay the bills!

Logged in users still see sponsored editorials and writers personal AdSense units, however they no longer see sidebar/footer promotions. Also, logged in users get ‘behind the scenes’ information an updates that normal users don’t need to see.

For an example, see the image below.

Logged in vs standard users footer view

What Technology Bloggers homepage footer currently looks like for normal readers and logged in users.

For search engine optimisation reasons, I have been trying to remove links from the blog’s design (specifically sidebar and footer) as too many links can look spammy, and throw PageRank in all directions. Fewer links means those pages that are linked to (both internal and external) carry greater authority.

So, if you are a writer, check out your sidebar and footer, as it is different to when you are not logged in. Even if you don’t have an account, take a look at the sidebar and footer, as there is some really interesting stuff which you might find useful there!

On a slightly different note, our prodigy (well he did win the 2012 ‘Rising Star’ community award) Jonny Hankins is currently learning more about our commenting systems, via Technology Bloggers Progression Academy – a new initiative I am developing – with the aim to have him modifying comments, and therefore being promoted to the status of Editor (Level 1), in the very near future.

Hopefully we can get more writers moderating their own comments too soon. Technology Bloggers Progression Academy material is currently being tested on our guinea pig – also Mr Hankins!

Blog Action Day 2012

Today is Blog Action Day! In 2010 I blogged about water. In 2011 I blogged about food. This year I am going to blog about the Power of We.

So what is Blog Action Day? For a quick recap, here is an extract of my article from last year:

Every year (for the past four years) on the 15th of October, there is a global Blog Action Day, where bloggers around the world write about one common problem in the world today, in order to try to raise awareness of a pressing issue.

Today is the 6th Blog Action Day in internet history, and tens of thousands of bloggers around the world will today be blogging about the Power of We.

The Power of We came about as a topic after bloggers were asked to vote on what topic they thought Blog Action Day 2012 should cover. Topics such as community, equality, anti-corruption and freedom (as suggested by yours truly) were all very popular, so the Blog Action Day team decided to make the theme the Power of We, a topic that encompassed community, equality, anti-corruption and freedom.

What To Blog About

Blog Action Day - The Power of WeThis year I am really at a loss as to what to blog about. Not because I have no ideas, but because the topic is so broad that I could write 10 posts on all different areas encompassed by the Power of We.

Here are just some of the ideas I had

  • Focusing more on the freedom side of things, I could have discussed the power of people when we all act together and the influence we can have. The Arab Spring is a fantastic example of this, when people act together they can crush oppression. Libya is probably the best example of how this happened, people worked together and eventually managed to bring down the Gaddafi dictatorship. Yes lives were lost and change was not without suffering, and that is wrong, however now Libyan people are in the process of forming a democratic state. The country now has an elected General National Congress, and is moving forward.
  • If I had gone down the equality route I could have talked about how equal rights are becoming recognised as important across the globe. A great example I could have talked about would be the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The London 2012 Games were the first ever to see every competing nation have both men and women competing, a massive step forwards in terms of gender equality. Also the global recognition the Paralympic Games received was a fantastic achievement. For the first time, the Paralympic Games had big sponsorship, like the Olympic Games has, suggesting that discrimination against disabled people has decreased, and people are now more open an accepting. Someone is no less a person just because they have a disability, and it would appear that more people are starting to understand this.
  • I could have discussed how every single person on this planet has the ability to make a difference to the world we live in. Maybe not everyone is capable of revolutionising the world, however we all have the ability to influence and affect others, and it is what we choose to do with that influence and how we decide to interact with other people that makes us who we are. Everyone has the chance to be kind to someone else at some point, some people more than others. If we were all to seize every opportunity imagine what a better place the world would be.

There are so many different ideas and topics that I considered writing about, however in the end I decided to focus on an area much close to my heart.

The Power of We means community, what we can achieve if we work together. Co-operation for the greater good.

The Power of We is everything Blog Action Day stands for, relatively small and powerless bloggers from across the globe, uniting on one day, all posting about the same topic, to try and change something by raising awareness. In the past the day has been used to raise awareness about the environment, hunger, poverty and other critical issues. Blog Action Day has led people to donate to charity and has created a better understanding among many of pressing global issues.

I have no doubt that Blog Action Day has improved the lives of people around the world. The project has managed to get some fantastic associates such as Oxfam and ActionAid, because of the great work it does.

Blog Action Day's logoSo, what about my post?

I am going to talk about the community we have here, the one you are a part of. The Technology Bloggers community. Okay we aren’t changing the world on a global scale, however we play our part.

The key word is community. We are all here working together in order to build a better blog, from which we can all prosper. Fantastic writers from all across the world contribute to our blog, giving readers a diverse range of material to read.

Why do we read? To enrich our lives, to learn new things and become knowledgeable on a topic. Reading makes us smarter, it opens up our mind to new ideas and concepts.

In return for their work, our writers get exposure to our hundreds of loyal subscribers and our thousands of monthly of readers.

Ultimately there only needs to be two people for the system to work. The writer writes the content, the reader reads and comments. The reader learns something and/or is able to take a new perspective on something, whilst the writer receives valuable feedback on their work. Just two people, and yet so powerful when working together.

Man kind wouldn’t be where we are today without co-operative work. When we work together as a team we can achieve more. It says it in the name: Together Everyone Achieves More.

Co-operation has built society as we know it. Every day, billions of people across the world go to work and co-operate with each other, to enhance and improve our world.

Ultimately I think this year I may have gone a little too broad in my choice of topic. I had so many ideas, and wanted to write about everything, and I think I have sort of tried to. I am not sure how well it has worked, this certainly isn’t your conventional post.

What are your thoughts, and will you be blogging about the Power of We?

Are you doing your bit for the blog?

Yesterday Jonny, one of our authors, emailed me to let me know about the post he had written on the site he writes for (the Bassetti Foundation) where he wrote about the community awards he picked up, praised the blog and talked about and linked to the posts he has written for us.

Jonny asked that I promoted the idea of the community a little bit more through an article, which is exactly what I am going to do!

It is time for the poster again 😉

Technology Bloggers needs your help!The idea of a community blog is that everyone benefits. It’s in our slogan:

“Read | Contribute | Benefit
A whole community of technology bloggers”

The three keywords there are contribute, benefit and community. We are a community blog, designed in such a way that everyone is able to benefit.

If everyone is helping to improve the blog, the better the blog is, therefore the more we all benefit. Basically the more we all put in the more we all get out.

I really do try hard with this blog, I give it my all, and I feel that if we all did a tiny bit more (like Jonny has) we could make this blog so much better – and it is already really good! A better blog means more benefit for all!

Let me explain.

PageRank

If all of our readers, writers and commenters (I know some of you are all three!) were to write a post like Jonny’s, more PageRank/link juice would be flowing into the blog. This would increase the blogs PageRank overall – not that a high PageRank is anything to really fantasise about.

If the blog is of a higher PageRank, more flows back to all those commenters and writers who have links on the blog, therefore they get an increase in PageRank too – a benefit directly derived from Technology Bloggers.

Traffic

PageRank is maybe not the best of examples, so let me give you another example, using traffic. If you write about the blog, include it in your bio, tweet about it, post about it on Facebook and generally share it via all your social internet channels, then the blog’s traffic will increase.

More people (traffic) means more people reading the content, more people commenting, a bigger, better and stronger community, more opportunities, more articles etc. it also means that for those writers who are adding AdSense to their posts (like Alan) the chance of making more money increases.

More people means more articles getting read, so writers are getting better exposure/greater publicity. Commenters links are more likely to be followed etc.

Brand

Having a bigger, better blog and community, make Technology Bloggers a stronger brand. This means that your association with the blog is a greater benefit for you. Saying you are a writer for TechCrunch brings you a lot of credibility, due to your association with the strong brand, we can make Technology Bloggers like that too!

The bigger we get, the more everyone involved gets out of the blog!

You

So what can you do to help your blog? The answer? Help us by promoting the blog further. We have a great community here, loads of fantastic writers, writing brilliant content daily, so what we really want to do now is expand, and to do that, we need to help more people find out about us.

Why not tweet if you read an interesting article here, also, if you can +1 it, share it via Facebook etc. please do!

Why not tweet or post a comment like:
I am part of the great dofollow community over at Technology Bloggers (www.technologybloggers.org) why don’t you come and join me?
or how about
Why not check out the great dofollow community over at Technology Bloggers – www.technologybloggers.org?

Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, share our articles!

If you are a blogger why not add us to your blogroll, or page of favourite sites? Why not add a link to us into your bio? You could even write a post like Jonny has done.

Here are some images you could add to your blog, or post via social media to help promote us:
Technology Bloggers - A Dofollow Community Blog a smaller version – more are available, just contact me 🙂Technology Bloggers - A Dofollow Community Blogshow off that you are part of the community!
I Am Part Of The Technology Bloggers Dofollow Community! www.TechnologyBloggers.orgIf I was a normal blogger, that might have seemed like a very needy plea for help to improve our traffic (which is already very respectable) however I am not, I am a member of a community blog. That is the difference, I am doing this on your behalf. You reading this are going to benefit (hopefully!) from this article, through the communities (that includes you!) response.

What are you going to do to help the blog? Let us all know below! If we get enough people writing about what they have done, I might write a post promoting those people!

Technology Bloggers – a community blog from which we can all benefit!