I feel it would be a service to the wider public and to people from outside of Thanet to document the general opinion of "us lot in Thanet" on a number of key subjects. For this reason I will be looking for blog posts from notable and/or articulate bloggers as well as additional sources. Hopefully I will be able to create an overview of the "pro" and "anti" feelings in the area.

I will then create an article on the subject pointing readers to the posts I have identified and attempting to score the balance of opinion to gage favour or disfavour. Almost 50% of you will disagree with my conclusion and that's good and natural and a great reason for you to put forth a good argument as to a different conclusion on your blog or in the comments section of the post.

(I will also look at videos especially those with a textual transcript.)

I hope to be looking at the following subjects:

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» Continue Reading: Local Reaction to...

Lot's of credit to Michael Child who has started a blog to tell other people how to get started blogging. While the advice of using blogger.com might not be the best advice for a business (on the whole) it is a great place to get started if you have never blogger before. Blogs, forums, wikis and social media are not going to go away and are likely to be a big part of our lives one way or another.

Therefore it is highly recommended that all businessmen start a personal blog if only to get to know what blogging is and how it works.

Blogging is a valuable tool when addressing The Five Specific Goals of a Business Website. Not only can reputation and brand be enhanced but customer to business and business to customer communication is possible in new and ore interesting ways. Finally do not forget that blogs are already being used to earn money (on their own) and a well written blog can increase the number of leads you business enjoys.

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Just use the coupon here to activate your subscription or give it as a gift to a loved one. The subscription offer is good for an unlimited number of deliveries at the new low price of nothing at all.

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This post is dedicated to the author of the Eastcliff Richard blog. ER has a a long list of quotes on his sidebar where people have said things about him and his blog. I figured he might like to flesh it out a bit so here are a random assortment of things being said about him made up just now and then said...

"As gregariouse as a sand storm in a desert!"

"The loudest voice of the Ramsgate Anonymi is clearly someone who is able to use the Internet."

"Significantly less mammiferous than a number of bloggers we could mention he still manages to milk things for all they are worth."

For more of "that sort of thing" keep reading...

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» Continue Reading: Eastcliff Richard

While this will not be of the greatest of use to a large slice of Thanet's bloggers it should be of use to those of us that have progressed beyond blogger in our needs and requirements. Having now stabilised the server against a massive denial of service attack of spam comments I have gathered enough notes to write quite an in depth post on the subject.

Rather than bother the bulk of Thanet's bloggers for whom the article will possibly be a little too technical I will post a link to it on a blog I maintain exactly for all that technical stuff: How to beat blog spammers and their spam - a guide is the article (it came to six pages in my word processor while I was spell checking it) and it covers the story of what I have done and an in depth listing of things you can do too to stop spam hitting your comments.

For those on fully hosted solutions (blogger) you will have to hope that your hosts have some answers.

Let us be honest - search engine results are a dirty topic with Thanet's home-brew media. However, it is a subject that, much like sex, is better off out in the open. We are much less likely to get funny ideas that way.

In the first of what I hope will be a series of posts on the topic I want to address to address the subject of crafting content to get readers. This is simply done by writing some of your blog posts or site pages specifically with a single search phrase in mind. By picking a relatively highly used phrase with a low quality of results you can be sure to score well and get the attention of the people doing the searching.

Thanet has, on the whole, got some amazingly under populated niches with high levels of traffic. Traffic that would produce reasonably well paying AdSense prices (for those that run such adverts). It would not take an SEO genius to dominate the search results for any of the searches I have identified.

Each one has a high level of daily search traffic (people looking for these phrases) and a low level of relevant Thanet based results. In some cases there are more adverts than search results. Consider: kent England genealogy, DJ Equipment Kent, DJ Equipment Thanet, Thanet Real Estate, Rent Prices Thanet and Thanet Homes To Rent they are all ripe for the taking.

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» Continue Reading: Topics that guarantee new readers to Thanet blogs

Thanet's home-brew media is and has become a deeply divided place to be. It is subject to a worrying trend of verbal violence, threats, veiled spite and outright rudeness. So much so that people like Simon Moores have felt compelled to bow out of local blogging. What causes otherwise rational and pleasant people to suddenly become animistic, crude and abusive? How did this trend start in Thanet and what can we do to change it? In short, what is going on and why?

The answer lies in understanding the joint effects of anonymity and emergent crowd behaviour. This is a posh way of saying "how and why gangs do things". I am going to try to explain exactly what is going on underneath the surface and the best practices that have emerged to deal with this behaviour.

The short truth is that we are all guilty. There are, sadly further truths that you may find shocking - they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions and in Thanet this has proven to be true. The key architects of the "attitude of hate" are the key voices of Thanet's home-brew media. Not because they have wished to create hate but nevertheless from the purest of intentions, albeit poorly informed ones, Thanet's home-brew heroes have allowed the fox into the chicken coup. The result is the only possible outcome when that happens - metaphorical bloodshed.

Read on to find out more about how Thanet is better off without a "blog war".

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» Continue Reading: Ending blog wars for all time