The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently suck its neck out by suggesting bloggers who are paid, or otherwise incentivised to post should declare that interest as it is misleading to consumers not to do so (look here for an analysis).

This brings up a whole raft of questions about the status of bloggers and those who pay or give them products to write posts in the UK. One of the main issues goes to heart of what blogging actually is. Is it journalism or advertising? And if it’s neither it falls between industry regulation in the UK. Read more >>

Wordpress is fast becoming the best CMS in the world thanks to the range of fantastic plugins that are available to do anything you like. I don’t normally blog about plugins but the new Analytics360 plugin from MailChimp is fantastic.

As you can see in the screenshot below it brings Google Analytics data into your Wordpress dashboard and overlays your blog posts on top of the data. Clicking on the orange dot brings up details of the blog post and number of page views that day.

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The FTC is apparently planning to monitor blogs for paid reviews under new regulations (pdf) that could come into force (in one form or another) this summer. Read more >>

The Guardian today is asking whether comment links are a form of spam after a London based SEO agency was apparently caught leaving spam comments linking to a clients website on the Guardian journalist Michael Pollitts’ personal blog. Read more >>

Ryanair seems to have a misunderstanding of blogging and has made the mistake of issuing a statement calling bloggers “idiots”.

What Ryanair seems to think is that bloggers are somehow separate to the mainstream media which is clearly not the case as the story is covered in the Times and Telegraph today.

Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again.

Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel.

The row started when Jason Roe wrote a blog post and Ryanair started leaving strange comments.

It’s fine to have a policy of not engaging with bloggers but it seems unbelievable that the first time they break this policy it’s to call them idiots and lunatics.

Twitter is exploding right now and is the 83rd most visited website in the UK according to Hitwise. With the growth of Twitter has come a big shift in the way people are interacting with blogs.

Aaron Wall was first to spot the changed calling Twitter Corrosive to Online Marketing:

In the past when you did something quite cool and attention-worthy people would reference it on their blogs. But now in the age of Twitter, many people mention your stuff on Twitter.

This can be good if they have thousands of Twitter followers, but if most the people mentioning a topic are all in the same small tight knit space then you are only reaching a fraction of a fraction of the potential distribution you would have before the age of Twitter.

The way blogs become popular is by being mentioned lots of times on other popular blogs. It’s very hard to become popular using social networks alone. If blog readers are deciding to spread interesting links via Twitter instead of blogging about it on their own sites then new blogs will struggle to gain readership.

To try and gain more market share on Blogstorm I installed a button at the end of each post to allow people to easily share the story via Twitter. It works great to get people sharing the post but the displaying of Tweets part isn’t working at present.

What has been very apparent since the plugin was installed is that comments have dropped significantly. People would prefer to click a button that sends the same Tweet everybody else is sending than leave a comment in the normal way.

I guess there is a decision to be made – more people Tweeting my posts or more people leaving blog comments. As somebody who very rarely leaves comments on blogs I suggest Twitter is more important.

What do you think?

The Times has published a piece today about the benefits of blogging. The point of the article is vague and is lacking in links to the sites mentioned as well as actionable tips but I’m pleased that they are combating the normal gloom and doom of business reporting by showcasing a success story from Brewdog.

One thing I’m surprised about is that Brewdog has yet to send samples to the UK’s largest bloggers. If you want a sample from them why not leave a comment below with your blog URL and we will see if James Watt from Brewdog can oblige

Soon after starting up, Scottish beer business Brewdog was struggling to sell its product until its co-founders hit on the idea of using the internet to market their distinctive beers.

“It was a hard sell locally at first,” said co-founder James Watt. “People had grown up with lager, and a lot of the pubs in Scotland are tied. So we decided to see if we could interest overseas beer enthusiasts online. We could see an opportunity in places like Sweden and America where specialist beers are popular,” he said.

Watt found the most popular bloggers in each country and sent free samples to them. Having built a following, they convinced local importers to sell their beer and international orders took off. Today exports account for 80% of sales.

Yesterday I was invited to attend what is probably the first time a group of bloggers has been let loose in £1 million worth of supercars.

Organised by 6th Gear Driving Experiences the day involved myself, Al Carlton, Dave Naylor, Kieron Donoghue and Chris Garrett.

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I’m pleased to confirm the venue details for Harrogate SEO.

Meet from 6pm in the Edward Room at the Cairn Hotel Harrogate (map). There is a bar available and we can chat about SEO, blogging etc. Perhaps we will have a site clinic or something too.

If you can’t make it by 6 don’t worry, just turn up whenever you can.

At 8.30 we have a table for 25 people booked at Joe Rigatoni which is an Italian restaurant just down the road.

If you don’t have my mobile number please drop me an email patrick @ branded3.com.

Thanks to Harrogate Dentists for the sponsorship.