Blogging, podcasting and other social media are profoundly disrupting the mainstream media and marketing industries. Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers explores these forces by identifying the influencers, their goals and their motivations. The book also offers advice for marketers at both large and small organizations on how to influence the influencers.

The New Influencers explores:

• Why social media are now so important in consumer decisions;

• How to leverage the blogosphere to enhance your company’s message;

• Strategies for taking advantage of this new medium;

• The need for transparency and how to make it work for your benefit;

• Action items for both small and large businesses

• Whether and how your organization should use blogs, podcasts and other social media tools in your marketing strategy.

The New Influencers would be at the top of my reading list even if The Tinbasher wasn’t mentioned in it.

Although, I obviously don’t have enough influence to wangle a customary free copy.

UPDATE: Paul has just emailed me and a signed copy is in the post - top man!

Whilst I’ve hardly had more mentions in various publications than hot dinners (and to be fair, if they were literally hot dinners, not only would most be cold by now, I’d also be discernibly thinner), I have had a bit of a sampler.

I’m not actually mentioning the last piece in Real Business Magazine for the sake of mentioning it, but for the freelance chappie who wrote it, Jonathan Holt, putting the stuff that wasn’t used in the article on his blog. Not only that but he was decent enough to send me a pdf of the article to boot. It’s always nice to be thought worthy enough to pad out an article, but I also appreciate the contact afterwards. I particularly love the fact that he’s given the piece more of a dimension on his own blog.

Maybe it’s just my limited experience, but I tend to find freelancers far more interesting and approachable as journalists and individuals than those on staff. They also seem to be actually researching a topic as opposed to churning out some guff related to one.

If only the same could be said for yours truly.

Whilst I’m boring you on the subject of blogging, I’d just like to tell you about a few plugins I’ve installed to fight the good fight against splogs and spam, which impact some of you in terms of commenting and reading via RSS.

2. Dofollow Plugin

I’ve never liked the idea of rel=”nofollow”. The easiest way to stop comment spam is to turn on comment moderation. Stripping the benefits of a bit of pagerank from the odd link in a comment wasn’t the way to do it and has hardly stopped spammers in their tracks. Besides, who’s going to whine about comment moderation other than those who have too many comments to plough through in the first place? The lucky swines. The rest of us need as much help as we can muster.

[Dofollow plugin here] [13 Reasons Why Nofollow Sucks here]

2. Digital Fingerprint and AntiLeech

If, like me, you keep finding splogs with your content scraped into their posts and, like me, you’re not overly keen on seeing it, then you can use Digital Fingerprint or AntiLeech. The former puts a ‘fingerprint’ of your choosing into your posts which is only visible when reading it via RSS. (That’s why some of you might be seeing an additional little message at the bottom of posts in your RSS readers.) It then tracks the fingerprint and shows you when it’s been indexed in various search engines. AntiLeech confuses the scraping bot and garbles the content with a link back to your site and the plugin author’s. As I’m thinking on, I suppose one should negate the other, but Digital Fingerprint is worth it just to see how quickly various readers and engines pick up on your content.

[Digital Fingerprint plugin] [AntiLeech]

Oh, and the above are all Wordpress plugins.

UPDATE: Oh, the irony - there’s something broken and you can’t currently even leave your url. Now that’s a way to stop spammers. Fixed!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ultimate List of Dofollow plugins.

Having a blog makes you no more a blogger than having a guitar makes you a guitarist.

Whilst you can read as many how-to books as you want, take numerous lessons and underwhelm your relatives with robotic renditions of ‘Smoke on the Water’, you’ll never, ever cut it as a guitarist if you don’t have some form of mojo. Hell, you might be able to shimmy through your scales blindfold in a blizzard backwards and have suppler pinkies than Shane Warne, but you’ll only end up sounding like Eric Clapton if your mojo’s missing.

So, what exactly is your ‘mojo’ in relation to blogging?

Well, it’s your voice.

Erm….and what exactly is your ‘voice’?

It’s the personality of the blogger that radiates and extends through your posts thus enabling some kind of connection with the person reading it.

You might consider ‘Smoke on the Water’ quite an accomplishment the first time you manage to belt the bugger out, but we all know you aren’t the first to do it. It’s something a toddler with chippolatas for fingers could manage. The equivalent in terms of blogging is the rehashed news post. Anybody can do it - yes, even me. But my point is, which level of Dante’s Inferno would you think you were on if all you heard, day-in day-out, was the most ubiquitous of Deep Purple riffs?

Taking all that into consideration, why the devil have I just spent (and continue to spend) all this time tweaking, twiddling and twatting about with The Tinbasher if it’s all about the voice?

It’s only the same as anybody who regards themselves as a guitarist might mess about with alternative tunings, raising fretboards, lowering bridges, choosing the right wood for correct resonance or whatever. Anybody who’s ever played any kind of sport half seriously has also done the same in choosing their boots, bats, racquets or cues.

You choose and adapt your tool to allow freedom of expression for your mojo. (Pass me the bromide, Sigmund.)

And fortunately it’s much easier to find your blog mojo than become the next Robert Johnson - deals with the Devil notwithstanding.

If only I could find something to crank this blog up to eleven.

Oh I crack myself up, I really do.

With the aid of this awfully easy plugin to implement, you can now point your mobile/cell/psp/bacon butty browser to The Tinbasher and get a passable reworked version of it on your phone.

In other words, it doesn’t take an eon to load. Plus, when it does load it doesn’t look like it’s been in a car crash.

I don’t want you thinking I’ve done this to be part of an expanding mobile web or to make it easier for you to view this blog whilst travelling home from work.

Absolutely not.

It’s just that we’re in the middle of a cold snap over here and I’d rather not stick my head out from under the duvet.

Here’s to bone-idle blogging.

UPDATE: There’s a bit of trouble at the mill, so I think I might just wait until I upgrade to the latest version of WP to sort it all out. There’s no point breaking it twice is there?