Moving my blog part 2

You guys crack me up. I sometimes wonder if you listen to ANY of the podcasts on TPN.

Your rationale for not moving my blog seems to be that my opinions and TPN should stay separated at arm's length.

Don't you realize that ALL of the podcasts and blogs on TPN are 100% opinion? That's the whole idea. Citizen media - it ain't fact checked. It ain't objective. It's the people saying what they think. It's people having conversations. It's all about opinion.

So... if you've ever listened to ANY of my podcasts, all you'll hear is... half arsed bluster, as one of my critics recently called it. So explain to me how my blog is any different?

Here I am thinking it might be inconvenient to YOU GUYS if I moved it, and you're all suddenly giving me business advice. I love it.

I'll let you in on a secret. I'm thinking of moving it FOR business reasons, not DESPITE the business. I want to see the TPN hosts start to blog more on their TPN site and less on their personal (or other) blogs. And if I'm going to ask them to do that, it would be hypocritical for me to keep a separate, personal blog - right?

Comments

[Geoff Appleby]

My opinion? Don't do it.

Why? The podcast network hosts podcasts. It really annoys me when posts appear for a podcast that are only text and don't have an included podcast - podcast network for podcast, somewhere else for blogs.

Maybe that's just me though :)

[Cameron Reilly]

I take your point Geoff but it's about attention and traffic and ranking and all sorts of things.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Are you saying the "blog" would be on the same URL as the Podcast (for want of a better way of saying it)? You would have to be careful with this (as Thyme (???) of the Microsoft Show found out) that you don't reduce the Podcasts in your RSS Feed or on the Web page. With Wordpress it seems you can setup feeds on different Catergories which would mean that you could get around the problem by setting up the feeds on the Podcast Catergory but this would take Careful planning and maybe education.

Knowing now your thoughts, I would say its a 50-50 idea. In one sense you would get more links into TPN but you would have only one site to find (i.e. the TPN blog and not the TPN and your blog) so you might miss some hits.

Interested to see the next information given in part 3!
Molly

[Tyme]

Painful lesson I found there Phillip, the more posts I make the more my podcasts get lost. I did not realize the need before but for my site I really need two feed listings - text and podcast only...current users need to be redirected to the podcast only one. This way they can choose the feed they want and I can freely generate posts. That would fix my iTunes problem too.

I found out (the hard way) that there are things I talk about in my podcast that people have no idea exists - even though I have shownotes. Technology has not caught up yet.

[Nicole Simon]

You don't need to do two feeds, just increase the amount of entries in your feed (let' say to 30) it will not really crack up any reader despite for the first time, podfetchers will have always enought to fetch.

And Mr. Reilly: Asking a question and holding back 3/4 of the information is not very professional, especially if you want to put blame on us afterwords ...

But as you don't want to listen to things from us anyway, why try to get us spend times with our optionions and typing them down?

[Cameron Reilly]

Frau Simon, as I explained, I was asking because I was concerned about whether or not it would be creating a hassle for you guys if I change feeds. I'm always only thinking of your best interests... :-)

[Phillip Molly Malone]

NIcole, I think Cam subscribes to the theory that your website URL suggests.

Have nothing wrong with Cams execution as it is getting an interesting debate and isn't being rail roaded by Cams thoughts.

Molly

[Phillip Molly Malone]

I don't understand why you guys don't use Feedburner. It just opens up your options (especially to move your RSS feed) and the stats are good too.

JMTC
Molly

[Ewan Spence]

Molly,

Because they're *our* stats!

[Rob Irwin]

I haven't bought into this debate yet, but after reading Cam's, ahem, 'spirited' berating of the people who have commented thus far, I couldn't resist :-)

I think what's important here, Cam, is brand. Cameron Reilly has potential as a brand, just as TPN has potential as a brand.

So you have a choice for your own persona to be a sub brand of TPN if you move the blog, or it can be a brand in its own right - and people who find you at TPN can go and see the brand in action at the .com site... or peopl ewho know your brand from the .com site might cross over and get into podcasts.

I think you are limiting yourself by making yourself a sub brand of TPN.

[Mike Seyfang]

If you want to be a good leader and model great behaviour then try this:
- post more on your show blogs by all means
- keep posting here (same feed, same url, long history, your digital identity etc)
- from time to time do AUTHENTIC cross posts (ie link to posts in a show blog when you talk about related issues here and vice verca)
- use signatures chock a blok full O relevant keywords like
Cameron Reilly - GDay World - TPN

That will do good things as far as attention and rank go (without cheating) and will also allow the human beings who fall under the TPN spell to resume their lives (without a big blank pause) when they come to their senses!!

Fang - Mike Seyfang - LearnDog

[Paul Montgomery]

Cameron: you go girl.

[Cameron Reilly]

Rob, that's actually part of the problem. I don't think "Cameron" should be a brand. Once upon a time, before TPN, my goal was to get my brand out there. But today I have a business. I have stakeholders. I think I should fold my brand (as minor as it really is anyway) into building the strength of the TPN brand, so I can do everything possible to repay my stakeholders (eg the hosts and the audience and the advertisers and... possible in the near future... our investors).

It would be different if TPN was just my job but it isn't. TPN is my business. I want TPN to be successful - Cameron's success depends on TPN's success. And I want to make sure I take every asset I have and throw it into TPN, so there is no confusion.

I don't want my stakeholders to feel in any way that I'm not giving TPN 110% of my focus and energies... because I am. You can't build a start-up without complete focus.

And each of our hosts needs to start to think of their show as a start-up business. I believe that is going to be critical to the success of TPN. We need hosts who think of their show as a business that they are in partnership with TPN in building.

[Tony]

In the long run the decision is yours. TPN is already my homepage so I am not too fussed either way.

[Rob Irwin]

Ah! Then if you don't want to build the Cameron brand, mate, it's a no-brainer. Move the blog to TPN. Definitely.

Personally, I would build my own name in conjunction with the business, but that's me, personally.

If you can live without being the brand too, I say GO FOR IT :-)

[Bob M]

Cameron, now I understand your goal and thinking better - and I think you're on the right track.

Your readers will track down your blog wherever it is.