Chris Brogan - at the top of his game

Chris has been in the business of creating digital relationships out of social media now for over 10 years. He speaks, writes and blogs about it all with such a passion that he is in demand to speak at marketing and social media events. As busy as he is already, he manges to find time to be on the advisory board for Utterz, The Conversation Group and for Hubspot. Chris also serves as VP Strategy & Technology at CrossTech Media and was the co-founder of the PodCamp new media conference series. Being so busy I was thrilled when Chris agreed to the 5Q interview and amazed at how quickly he responded.

Chris can be found here:

www.chrisbrogan.com

1. Who is Chris Brogan and what is www.chrisbrogan.com all about?

Chris Brogan is this guy who used to be a software engineering type, who blogged and made media as a hobby, but then one day in late 2005, it clicked just how important this type of communication was going to be to other people, and so he stepped up his game to try and bring what he was learning to other people. chrisbrogan.com is where that gets put out there for the world to see.

2. When and why did you start blogging?

I started blogging in 1998 back when it was called journaling, back when there weren’t comments or blog software, and we had to edit things by hand all the time. I did it initially as a place to share my fiction and also as a place to get my thoughts and feelings out into the larger web world. I just found that it was so cool to have a voice. I could say what I wanted to say and it was up there on the web, just like other online magazines.

3. Is your blog also your day job?

Yes and no. I don’t make money directly off my blog, but my blog is where people get the idea to hire me for speaking and education. It’s a way to show what I know, and what I’m capable of, and how people can figure out what’s on my mind before hiring me. Technically, I make my money the old fashioned way. I earn it.

4. What challenges did you face and overcome when you set up chrisbrogan.com?

It’s strange to think of any of it as challenges. Setting up my site was a learning experience. I spent a lot of time viewing the source code of other people’s pages to backwards engineer how they were doing this or that. When I started getting under the hood and editing little pieces of my site, I would break it all the time. But hey, we learn as we explore, right?

5. What is your one killer piece of advice for a new blogger?

Write the blog for other people. Yes, this runs counter to what people say about blogging, that it’s personal, that it’s all about finding your voice. I say this: your voice is much more powerful when it’s actually heard and absorbed by others. Why not learn from the start how to do it in a way that gives you a community?

Emma Jones based at Redbrick House, Shrewsbury

Working from home is one of the UK’s fastest growing business trends and this big trend is served by the UK’s biggest website for people starting a home business: www.enterprisenation.com. Emma has been kind enough to feature some of my posts on her site recently and I’ve become an avid reader of her site. I was thrilled when she accepted my offer of the 5Q Interview recently because it’s quite justified to name her as a ‘Pro-Blogger’, her talent is undeniable and her interview is full of valuable tips. Emma has recently authored a book called Spare Room Start Up – how to start a business from home that was Waterstones business book of the month on publication and is a best-seller on Amazon.

Enterprise Nation can be found here:

www.enterprisenation.com

1. Who is Emma Jones and what is www.enterprisenation.com all about?

Emma Jones is a former accountant who started her first home business at the age of 27 and sold it 15 months later. She then spotted a gap in the market to offer an online resource to anyone starting and growing a business from home.

2. When and why did you start blogging?

I launched enterprisenation.com in January 2006 and have written content for the site every day since (with the exception of one day when there was no internet connection to be found from a beach in Lisbon!)

3. Is your blog also your day job?

It’s my ‘first thing in a morning job’! Enterprise Nation is a company that offers services beyond the home business website. We advise Regional Development Agencies and provide consultancy services to corporates – all on the topic of starting and growing a business from home. Our business plan was always to launch the site and build our content and community before taking advertising. We followed that plan and are now at the point of increasing our online ad revenue. We’re running campaigns for companies such as Orange, Brother, Hiscox and Travel Counsellors.

4. What challenges did you face and overcome when you set up Enterprise Nation?

No challenges, just opportunities! The journey so far has been amazing. We’ve launched and developed what is now the UK’s most popular home business website. We’ve done this with an expert team of contributors and we’re working on bringing more opportunities to them – and our members – in 2009 through an event and new partnerships. The home business market is an exciting place to be right now.

5. What is your one killer piece of advice for a new blogger?

Post daily with content that informs and inspires your reader.

Daniel Scocco

When you become a blogger it’s easy to get paralysed by information overload, you realise you have a mountain of work to do and you just don’t know where to start. When I get like that and I feel the task before me is just too big, I attack my bookmarks for inspiration. One site that delivers inspiration more than most is DailyBlogTips.com Daniel Scocco very kindly took some moments out of his busy schedule to answer the blogging rocket 5Q Interview.

DailyBlogTips can be found here:

www.dailyblogtips.com

1. Who is Daniel Scocco and what is www.dailyblogtips.com all about?

Daniel Scocco is a guy trying to develop his online business. He created many blogs along the past years, and DailyBlogTips.com is the place where he shares what he learned.

2. When and why did you start blogging?

Late in 2005.

3. Is your blog also your day job?

Yes, my blogs generate around 50% of my income as of today. The rest comes from niche websites and consulting projects.

4. What challenges did you face and overcome when you set up DailyBlogTips?

The biggest challenge for any online publisher are the first 6 months of any website. You don’t have a loyal audience, so its harder to make your content, however good, noticed.

5. What is your one killer piece of advice for a new blogger?

Provide value to the readers.

Plugin Master

I first came across Pawan and his plugins when I needed to prevent my blog from becoming a victim of Ping spam, and his MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer plugin was just the job. I then went on to use many of his other WordPress plugins almost too numerous to mention. Pawan just keeps coming out with great plugin after great plugin, so he was a natural choice for my now (getting famous) 5 Q Interview.

MaxBlogPress and Pawan’s plugins can be found here:

MaxBlogPress.com

1. Who is MaxBlogPress and what is www.maxblogpress.com all about?

MaxBlogPress is a team which focus on creating software/plugins for bloggers for helping them better monetize their blog as well as attract lots of traffic to it. Currently, MaxBlogPress.com offers many free wordpress plugins for helping bloggers use wordpress in more effective way.

2. When and why did you start blogging?

I think I dived into blogging around the early 2005. That time blogging started getting quite popular and was the latest buzz. I tried wordpress for my test blog to have personal experience with it. That’s from where i hooked and started using it for most of my projects.

3. Is your blog also your day job?

Yes, I spend full time for MaxBlogPress.

4. What challenges did you face and overcome when you set up MaxBlogPress ?

The challenge which I’m facing from startup to even today is keeping up with so many feature requests/bug fixes for our plugins. WordPress constantly come up with new version and each new version might break our plugin. Also, we face unforeseen problem like conflict with other plugins, different configuration of wordpress and webhost etc…

We spend most of our time helping other bloggers run our plugin smoothly and adding new features for existing plugins.

To overcome this problem, I’ll be hiring more developers for making time for new innovations. But these challenges will still stay as the part of our daily work due to the nature of our work.

5. What is your one killer piece of advice for a new blogger?

The one advice I’ll give to all bloggers is same old “Write killer content” for your blog. This is the base of your blog and you must make it strong. If you don’t then whatever latest tricks you apply, ultimately you’ll fail.

Instead of writing lots of low quality content, focus on few good content. Ask yourself, would you read a blog with 90 posts of which 75 are simply useless? OR would you read a blog which have got only 15 blog posts but all of them are hard hitting valuable post?

Also, make sure to spend majority of your time in promoting your blog so that your content get good exposure and can have many regular readers for your blog. One mistake most bloggers do is they simply keep on writing new blog posts but never ever think of getting more exposure to their blog.

A real person in a virtual world

Adriaan Pienaar lives and works in Cape Town South Africa and is one of the developers over at WooThemes. I came across Woo while I was looking for a new theme for this blog, and their stuff blew me away. Since talking to Adriaan I have realised that Woo is just one part of his online life, there is a load more going on over at his personal blog Adii WordPress Rockstar. I caught up with Adriaan via email and asked him my usual Five questions – his answers are great and here for you all to read.

The Woo themes can be found here:

WooThemes Premium WordPress Themes

1. Who are Woo and what is www.woothemes.com all about?

WooThemes is a theme club & store for niche-based WordPress blogging & CMS templates. The business is currently co-owned by myself, Magnus Jepson (www.jepson.no) and Mark Forrester (www.markforrester.co.za), whilst we collaborate with various other well-known designers & developers on a regular basis.

It is our aim to create a niche community for users of our themes, where we can add value; not only through the design & functionality of our themes, but also through quality support, modification help, superior customer service and other user resources (such as tutorials & free themes). With our themes, we try push the boundaries of what is possible with WordPress and in the process target niche solutions for WordPress themes. We also try create themes that work out of the box and are basically ready to go once purchased.

2. When and why did you start blogging?

I started blogging at the beginning of 2007 and there was really two reasons for that… The first being that I had started to follow other blogs and thought that “Hey! This is cool and I can / want to do it as well!”; so I got a blog, because I had something to say. The second reason was business-related, as I knew that I needed a cheap, cost-effective way of marketing myself and my freelance services.

3. Is your blog also your day job?

Yes and no. I’ve started up a formal company now – {radiiate} designs – which has basically taken over my freelance design & development work. So as the company grows, my own blog will become less of a business tool and more of a personal, online property. That said however, we still get 90% of our business leads through my blog; so maintaining my blog is definitely still considered to be a business task.

4. What challenges did you face and overcome when you set up WooThemes?

I think there was 2 main challenges. Firstly, the whole idea of running a business based on designing & developing digital products was new to all 3 of us (partners) and it took us a while to get to grips with all the requirements that the business model poses (in terms of support, customer service, development maintenance etc.). The second challenge was on a whole different level and it challenged us to create a reputation for ourselves and essentially establishing ourselves as a credible source of great WordPress themes.

5. What is your one killer piece of advice for a new blogger?

Persistence! Unless you are family of Robert Scoble or Micheal Arrington (TechCrunch), then your new blog will probably take a while before it gathers some traction. So in the initial stages, when no one is reading your ramblings, don’t get demotivated and stop blogging… Instead stick to what you set out to do – the traffic will come!

Antonie loves coding almost as much as he loves food!

Antonie Potgieter is a plugin developer living in South Africa with his finger on the world WordPress pulse. He already has over nine plugins under his belt each one being refined and tweaked with each new version. I managed to catch him today and was able to fire 5 questions his way about who he is and what he does, following is a transcript of the interview.

His software company is called:

Tribulant Software

1. Who is Antonie Porgieter and what is your website URL?

I am a rather young and enthusiastic software engineer focussed on web development specifically. I work as a full-time developer and marketer as the founder of Tribulant Software, a small yet rapidly growing web software provider. The URL of my company website is : http://tribulant.com

2. When and why did you start working with blogs?

My first encounter with blogging software was about a year ago when WordPress gained popularity because of its incredibly powerful plugin application interface. WordPress was still in its earlier stages, probably around version 1.5. The main reason why I started using WordPress was simply due to the opportunity of exploiting the tools of the framework to build useful extensions for other bloggers to use. In addition to that, I used it personally for jotting down ideas and writing journal entries.

3. What are your blogging specialties?

With all honesty, I’m not much of a blogger. At least not in comparison to most of you out there. My specialties lie in the development side of things, specifically focussed on WordPress blogging software. When I do blog, my entries are mostly either news or guidance articles. So the content I write tends to be very rich and useful, though it remains factual and most likely not very creative. So I guess my specialty is in coding and developing plugins, I have recently updated my Mailing list plugin and have just completed a plugin commissioned by a client. Previously I have written a shopping cart plugin, a banner rotator and an FAQ plugin amongst many others, all my work is viewable on my WordPress plugins page.

4. What challenges have you faced and how did you overcome them?

Challenges directly related to blogging in my opinion would be obstacles preventing you (as a blogger) from getting your content out there the way you intend to. These days, with the vast number of powerful and flexible plugins/extensions for blogging software, it is relatively easy to achieve anything you could possibly imagine. A search on your favorite search engine will most likely provide you with a list of plugins to help you do the job you want, the way you want.

5. What is your one killer piece of advice for working with blogs?

Every blogger wants as much traffic as they can possibly get. Whether it is from search engines or referring sites, traffic is as good as gold. Always write rich, useful and clear content. Put yourself in the readers’ position and write informative posts that will make as much sense as possible to anyone whom might read it. After all, the more informative and appealing your readers find your content, the more reason they have to either link back to you or tell their friends about it. Additionally, you’ll need to promote your content which you’ve written by focussing on search engine optimization. Do some reading on SEO in order to get a better grasp of what it takes for search engines to recognize you and remember to submit XML sitemaps to search engines.