As magazines continue to fold, editors can continue to lament the downfall of print media as they hold onto their jobs for dear life or take charge of their careers and do what’s necessary to make them invaluable to their employers.

Hopefully magazines and newspapers will learn to monetize their content on the web or rebuild their business models so they aren’t solely based on ad dollars which are based on inflated base-rates.  I’ll gladly spend a little more to keep my favorite magazines from faltering and I’m saddened when I seen a subscription offer of “two years for $6″ as I know the writings on the wall for that magazine to shutter.

After spending a few years working for two of the largest print media companies in the world (Time Inc. and Hachette Filipacchi Media), I understand why they don’t get the online business. Each of these publishers has been putting ink to paper for at least 100 years. That’s why they’ve been successful because they’ve been doing this better than anyone for a tremendous amount of time. The same goes for long-time employees, many of who remain stubborn and arrogant about their roles editing a magazine. For many of them it’s been their only job since graduating from college.

I remember a team meeting between the digital department and a senior group of magazine editors from Metropolitan Home. One of the editors said “Why do we even have to have a website? I hate looking at photos on a website. I don’t get why we have to spend time talking about this, my team is very busy.” This meeting took place in 2008. The following year Metropolitan Home folded.

Regardless of how these media behemoths evolve, the digital revolution is here and print editors who want to keep their jobs or take on more responsibility in their next positions should acquire the following skills, yesterday!

1. Join the community – You say you hate Facebook and have no time for Twitter. Are you busier than Martha Stewart or Bob Vila. So they may have ghost writers but the important thing is they are visible on these two social media platforms and have thousands of followers. If you choose not to participate at least build a profile which will be indexed by Google.

2. Blog – Forget what you know or have heard about blogs. If you fancy yourself a great writer and a person of exceptional knowledge in an particular field, then you would make a great blogger. Being a great blogger will in turn build authority in your subject matter and broaden your audience and reach. Blogs are a central piece of any portfolio and a sharp looking and well-written blog will get you hired over clips and blurbs from random publications.

3. Adjust your style – The majority of successful blogs and websites are short-form and understand there is a limited amount of time to capture a readers attention before they move on to another website. You may write beautiful long form prose but save that for your book deal. Learn to write for the web and also consider keyword rich heds and deks that will translate to online stories. If you can summarize your article in 140 characters you are golden (if you know why this  is important then you’re on your way).

4. Learn the online business – If you can show an employer you understand why pageviews per visit are important and can explain SEO you’ll be ahead of the game. Knowing just a little bit about how a magazine website makes money and builds traffic shows you are savvy to the whole operation.

5. Volunteer for online assignments – Create your own opportunities by approaching the online editor or producer with a special online series that you’d like to write. You’ll most likely be greeted with an enthusiastic response and show the organization how important online is to you. If you can tie it to a print story with inline slugs to URL’s that’s even better.

Bottom line – The editors I saw successfully move from print to online or those that just wanted to stay relevant within their organizations, embraced the digital side of publishing and adjusted their skill sets to not only keep from being let go but made them the most valuable members of their organizations and many were quickly rewarded.

Mark Zuckerberg may only be 24 but in the publishing world the 50 year-old editor who knows how to build a keyword rich article in the CMS and post it to Facebook will get the corner office.

It’s time I finally recap my experience at Blogworld 2009 in Las Vegas.

In one word “Awesome”.

Since I’ve been working for myself consulting and building Charles & Hudson I spend a huge amount of time alone and behind the computer screen and not nearly enough time building face-to-face relationships and hearing from folks who have something to share about blogging and the business of blogging.

The conference started out with a keynote from Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati. I’ve been a Technorati user for years and often referred to it to see who linked to me and to measure the reach of my blog. In the past year or two I’ve become much less reliant on Technorati as Google started indexing blogs and I started pulling in real-time referral data from my RSS reader, Google Alerts and Sitemeter. Jalichandra is convinced that Technorati has changed with the market and will again be a leader in the blogosphere. Time will tell but if I no longer reference Technorati since my authority fell back to 1 and never updates.

The greatest bit of serendipity from the show started from the keynote when I happened to be seated behind Rebecca Orlov. Rebecca and I had emailed briefly through her Blog Out Loud organization in Los Angeles and at the keynote she was furiously tweeting the event. I couldn’t help but notice her laptop screen was opened to her Blog Out Loud Twitter account so I made an introduction. As nice as she was online she was even sweeter in person and we’ve since struck up a great friendship which was enough to make Blogworld a success for me. Fortunately there were many more people to meet and things to learn.

After the keynote I took some time to walk through the Expo. It was a small selection of vendors and in less than an hour I was able to narrow down who I felt revisiting later in the show.

My intention for attending Blogworld was to reinvigorate and refocus my blogging efforts. Monetizing my blog and building an audience were the workshops I was most keen on attending. One of the most amazing panels consisted of Brian Clark of Copyblogger, Darren Rowse of Problogger, John Chow and Zac Johnson. Brian and Darren by far provided the most insight for me and what I’m trying to achieve. I’ve been reading Problogger for about a year now and both he and Brian keep things simple and not too sensationalized.

I came up through the blogging ranks in NYC and the blogs/websites I admired were successful through hard work, great style and obsessive focus. Gawker, Curbed, Gothamist and Apartment Therapy were all daily reads for me and to this day none of them place a 300×250 Google Adsense ad in the left middle of their content. Obviously they are big enough to survive via other means but their editorial focus hasn’t “sold out” and that’s a line I’m trying to walk with Charles & Hudson.

Another great monetizing workshop was most interesting to me because the moderator Dave Taylor kept things on target. I had the pleasure to chat with Dave briefly at the expo and like most folks I ran into at Blogworld he was open, knowledgeable and showed interest in my work. Dave made it clear that when monetizing blogs you need to keep moving and adjusting on a weekly, daily or hourly basis. If a program or product isn’t performing to your standards try something else. You can always go back to something that worked but you’ll never learn and possibly earn more if you don’t give other networks or ads a shot.

The main theme I took away from Blogworld was “Influence”. I sat in on Micah Baldwin as he and his panel chatted about building authority and creating relationships. This is something I’ve always strongly believed in and through Micah’s candid approach and by sharing his own experiences building brands it was easy to see how important this is. Chris Brogan the author of Trust Agents is another must follow for social media advice. He’s got a long running disagreement with Guy Kawasaki as to how Twitter should be used and although I’ve been a longtime fan of Guy I’ve got to side with Chris on this one. Twitter is about relationships and real people not automated tweets and bombarding followers with multiple tweets of the same content. I can’t follow Guy anymore because of this. Just because a tool can do something doesn’t mean you do it.

To summarize. The attendees and speakers I met were all interested in learning and teaching and everyone seemed open to sharing. The Tweet screens that were up at every keynote and speaker panel was a fun interactive way to follow the discussion as well as ask questions and take part in the conversation from your seat. There was so much more I didn’t have time to check out such as the video and podcast sessions. There was also a large contingent that swears by affiliate marketing but I have yet to really give that a shot.

I’d definitely recommend this conference to anyone interested in starting a blog, building their blog, growing their audience or monetizing their site.

See you in 2010!

Currently 15% of the referral traffic to Charles & Hudson is originating from Google image searches and is only second in referrals to Google organic search. It jumps to 18% when I add in Bing and Yahoo! image search. That’s a significant amount of traffic that many blogs and corporate websites are leaving on the table.

Often ignored by enterprise level content management systems, image naming on corporate websites leave much to be desired. Vogue.com launched last week and the website looks great (except for the pop-up that won’t go away). But the main image slug on the homepage is named “http://www.style.com/images/vogue/homepage/hp_primary.jpg”. It’s a photo rich with imagery including a handbag, shoes, skirt, and a model. Is it the fault of the CMS that CondeNast employs which makes it difficult to name images with keyword rich names? In this situation I’d say no since someone did name this image “hp-primary.jpg” and it’s not just a random image name generator such as “in38sfeafe.jpg” which often times is the case.

So why did they name it “hp-primary.jpg”? I guarantee you that image will never appear in a relevant search request. Even when an attempt at naming an image is made the format leaves much to be desired. For example this image of an up and coming model “http://www.style.com/blogs/voguedaily/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/antonella.jpg” contains only a first name. Another opportunity missed as her full name could possibly be a hot keyword. Of course other factors come into play in search relevancy including on page text and titles but why leave that to chance. Name the image the models full name using a dash or underscore between the names.

Conde Nast is far from the only mainstream media giant that has chosen to ignore the small details but they are a great example of a company with the resources and desire to compete in search for hot topics but will continue to fall short unless they apply some basic SEO techniques across their website. This has to start with SEO training for not only tech types but more importantly editors and producers.

Not to be forgotten is also providing meta-data to each image using the alt-image tag. This tag provides users who have their images turned off or browse by sound with image information but for you it offers another opportunity to properly describe the image that in turn will have a positive effect on your search results.

Have you ever come across a great blog and you’d like to give the blogger positive feedback or ask them a question but nowhere is their contact email available? This is the first of “5 Blog Annoyances” that I often run across. Their are many great blogs on the blogger network but the only reason I post that screenshot is that for some reason a high proportion of the blog annoyances listed below are in the blogger network. This is probably attributed to newbie bloggers who are looking for a free and easy way to start making a fortune or sharing their life with the world.

1. No Contact Email Address – It’s perfectly fine if you wish to blog anonymously and don’t expect any feedback or contact from those who find your blog. But when it’s obvious you want readers to comment or send you tips or advertise and you leave no contact information, then your blog is going nowhere fast.

2. Required Registration and no URL signature – Building a community and contact list is important for many big and small-time blogs and one of the most common ways of adding to your list is by requiring readers to register before commenting on a blog post. If it’s fast and easy than great! I’m all for it, but many times it is a slow, confusing and cumbersome process and you leave the blog before posting your comment. The other drawback is that these registration systems often times don’t allow you to enter the URL of your own blog or website which typically would highlight your name and link to your site which is great for building your own audience and simply letting other commenters know more about you.

I’ve been using a third-party commenting system on Charles & Hudson called Disqus for a couple years now and have found it much more user-friendly than the default Movable Type system. Since I’ve had success with it I’ve implemented it Wordpress which you can see on Dahlight. Disqus continues to roll-out new features and stays abreast of the always moving social media landscape and I highly recommend them for your blog.

3. No RSS or Twitter Feed – To be honest since I’ve been using Twitter I don’t check into my RSS reader as often as I should but I always want the option when visiting a blog to add their feed to my reader and any blogger should want to build their RSS subscriber base as much as they can. Use a service such as Feedburner to track your subscribers and allow them to subscribe using any time of reader. I now get a lot of my news from my various Twitter feeds which I’ve segmented using Seesmic and I love seeing blogs with Twitter accounts as I feel I can get a greater sense of what they are about beyond their regular or irregular posts.

4. No Content – In the early days C&H was guilty of basically being a link aggregator with no original content. We’d link to an interesting story inside a sentence or paragraph about it and leave it at that. Sometimes this works but in the long-run these posts had little SEO juice and didn’t create the depth I feel a blog should have to really connect with readers. Content is king so they say and original content stating your own opinions and viewpoints will always resonate with readers much more than a brief critique of others.

5. Too Many Ads – We all (almost all) want to make money blogging but throwing ads on your site when you’ve only got 1, 2 or 3 posts is an immediate turn off. Give your blog some time to gain traction and readership and make sure your first set of ads are not obtrusive or take away from your content.

These 5 blog annoyances are easily overcome and if remedied will make a world of difference to your readers.

Unless you are blogging for the pure joy of writing and sharing your thoughts and feelings with the world, you most likely are reading this because you intend to make money blogging, either directly or indirectly.

Blogs make money directly through advertising based on CPM, CPC, or CPA. CPM (Cost per-thousand) is a carry-over from the previous way of buying media and still remains the most popular way to launch an online advertising campaign and almost every blog ad network is measured by CPM. The other two CPC (Cost per-Click) and CPA (Cost per-Action) are more relevant to the interactive nature of online advertising and measure direct referrals, sign-ups, or sales.

The other direct ways of creating income with a blog are through retail sales of a product or service, affiliate programs (pay you per referral or signup and grow from there), or revenue sharing deals with larger websites such as Amazon where you are an “Associate” and you gain a percentage of a sale Amazon process from their ad tags running on your blog.

The indirect ways a blog can make you money are as follows. A blog can raise your profile while you sell a book or pitch a product. A blog can increase traffic to your website and therefore bring in more visitors to your brick and mortar.

The above are generalizations and even though you can set up a Typepad or Wordpress blog in minutes doesn’t mean you will start making money or selling novels. Here are more reasons why you should blog and I’ll break down the steps of setting up a pro blog in future posts.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

English-speaking Americans can no longer afford to ignore Spanish-speaking internet uses within our own country but specifically beyond our borders in Mexico, Spain and the rest of Latin America. Fortunately there are a few internet professionals who have the experience and knowledge to assist US-based websites with confronting and successfully overcoming this issue.

Joe Kutchera of dotGlobal is at the leading edge of this movement and after time spent in Spain and Mexico he fully understands the unique challenges that American websites have in attracting a Spanish-speaking online audience. A core tenet of Dahlism is seeking to expand an audience beyond our own borders whether that be physical, idealogical, or cultural.

Joe will be hosting a panel at SXSW 2010 that explores these topics in detail and is a must-attend for any website seeking the largest growing segment of internet users (Latin America).

Some of the questions that will be answered include:
1. How do consumers cross geo-political boundaries to find, read about and buy what they want?
2. How can marketers understand those trends and then formally create products for international markets?
3. Why did The Home Depot shut down its Spanish-language site for U.S. Hispanics only 4 months after launching it?
4. In contrast, why did Best Buy embrace their visitors from Mexico and Latin America on their Spanish-language e-commerce site for U.S. Hispanics?
5. When will Mandarin, Spanish, and Portuguese bypass English as the top languages online?

Give a thumbs up to this panel and make sure you attend.

I’m headed to Honolulu, HI at the end of the month to launch the website and online marketing campaign for the Joe Aloha Food Truck of Joe Aloha Catering. Mobile lunch wagons have been around for a long time but only recently have they become “hip” by offering more than the standard taco, hot dog and greasy food fare.

Much has been written on the success of KogiBBQ and their reliance on Twitter to share their location and food status with an always hungry group of 42k+ followers. But it’s also their unique melding of Korean/Mexican cuisine that helps build on the buzz. David Chang of Momofuku (superb pork dumplings) in NYC was one of the first to venture into this style by opening Momofuku Ssäm Bar which at one point specialized in Asian burritos.

Joe Aloha will not be serving Mexican or Korean as they stake their reputation on true Hawaiian food that would have been popular 30 years ago and not the typical BBQ and mac salad that has come to represent current day Hawaiian casual food. They will offer an assortment of smoked meats, fresh vegetables and grilled fish on a daily basis at locations throughout Honolulu and the island of Oahu.

The owner of Joe Aloha, James “Kimo” Akaka, has been schooled in fine kitchens such as Luttece but has returned to his roots as the premier caterer of Hawaiian food in Honolulu. His lunch wagon will provide islanders with his fine food 5 days a week so you’ll no longer have to search out events catered by him to enjoy his grindz.

More updates to follow from paradise…

The answer is simple. To connect with customers.

In most instances we visit corporate/business websites to view new products, get details on location or hours, and find contact information to complain (most likely) or give kudos (unlikely). As a business why not take this opportunity to show your website isn’t just an online brochure but rather a place where your brand can show some humor, intelligence, and humility. There is no better way to achieve this than with a blog.

I’ve seen firsthand the numerous pitfalls to starting a corporate blog. Numero uno being blog neglect. Just because you can sign up for a Typepad blog in 5 minutes and publish links to your latest product line, doesn’t mean you then not publish another entry for 6 months when the next product launches. Your blog is a conversation starter and if you aren’t talking, no one else will.

The other major downfall to corporate blogs is deviating from a clearly defined message that your organization is trying to convey across everything you do. A blog is an incredible opportunity to share your corporate culture with customers who may already be fans or are leaning towards aligning themselves with you. A blog gives that customer a chance to comment and share their own experiences which in turn is best practice to interact with your commenters (not all the time) and let them know you’re listening.

Don’t hand the keys to your blog to an intern or employee who has been in your organization less than a year, they will drive it into the ground. It’s also risky to outsource blogging to social media experts or ghost writers as you also lose some control over your message. Identify an insider who is intimately familiar with multiple facets of your company and preferably is a skilled writer who can convey their personality and the corporate culture as one in the same.

We’ll post a follow-up suggesting strategies for corporate blogging and who is doing it right and who has no clue.