Steve Rubel reveals his 4-hour a day blogging playbook
How does he do it?
Haven’t you wondered… how does the prolific author of Micro Persuasion find time to eat or sleep, much less do his full-time day job as VP Client Services for PR firm Cooper Katz Senior VP, Edelman PR? Steve Rubel posts an average of five blog entries every day (yes, he blogs seven days a week) on topics related to blogging, technology, the media and PR.
He's a one-man news service and - for the rest of us laggards - a phenomenal resource.
I met Steve at a Starbucks on 3rd Avenue in New York City this morning for a rapid fire interview for my blogging book. He's as fast-talking in person as you might infer from his blog. (He's also warmer and friendlier.)
He apologized for having only 30 minutes. Then cut to the chase...
He dismissed my initial question (“Pretend it’s a year from now: does a company need an agency to start a blogging program”) with a simple no. “Blogging should be integrated with PR,” he said.
Then Steve described step-by-step how he publishes Micro Persuasion. It’s the first time he’s revealed his “blogging playbook” publicly, he said.
In a nutshell, he's got a system. He's fast, efficient, thorough... and dogged. And he uses every available useful blogging tool. (Sorry, he didn't reveal any shortcuts.)
[Addendum: Steve's Bloglines page if you want to see the 350 blogs he scans each day. And Part 2 of interview with Steve here.]
How Steve Rubel blogs
He starts at 4:30 or 5 AM every morning...
“I pick the best stuff and get it up on the blog early so it can reach European readers.” That's an important audience, he emphasized.
Scanning and posting are "one motion"
He doesn’t consider this kind of blogging as “writing.” The blog posts are quick
annotations of 100 to 150 words – or fewer. Only once or twice a week
does he take the time to write something longer (“It takes more time
and thought”).
This morning, for example, he quoted from a Bloomberg article:
“The Oxford English Dictionary added new words including `podcast' and 'phishing,' saying they are now part of the English language, as it published its second edition today.” (27 words)
He posts again in the middle of the day when he finds a quiet moment at
work. Then again in the evening. Most nights he’s on his computer (a
gleaming new 17-inch Mac laptop) from 8 to 11 PM.
That makes a total of "three to fours a day" that he spends blogging.
Scanning
and posting are “one motion,” he explained - which is key to his prolificness.
He monitors 350 blog feeds a day via RSS in Bloglines. Here is Steve's Bloglines page. (Scroll down the left-hand column to see the blogs he scans.)
In addition he uses RSS in Safari to scan the results of close to a dozen news searches on keywords related to blogging (see below).
For news searches he uses Google News, Technorati, PubSub, Topix.net, Icerocket and Blogdigger and CNET’s Newsburst.
His search keywords:
Blog
Blogs
Blogger
Bloggers
Weblog
Web log
Weblogs
Web logs
Bloggers
(Note: you can get news search results delivered via email or an RSS
feed. Steve is a huge proponent of RSS, calling it “the second coming
of the Web.”
)
Finally, he uses deli.cio.us to generate a once-a-day linkblog, which posts automatically to his TypePad blog. Here is Steve's deli.cio.us page. Good explanation of how to get your deli.cio.us links to publish daily to TypePad here.
Counting traffic to Micro Persuasion
He gets 2,500 unique visitors a day to Micropersuasion, he said. And he has an additional 3,500 RSS subscribers (computed through Feedburner.)
For blog traffic stats, he uses Blogpatrol, Statcounter and Sitemeter. (Scroll down to the bottom of the right-hand column of his blog and click on the icons.)
More later... but I've got to catch a train back to D.C.!
Debbie:
I have great respect for Steve, and read his blog everyday. I must say, however, that many of his posts are simply too brief, perhaps even meaningless, without following his source links. Yes, it is useful knowing what Steve considers important, but what I really value is his unique point of view, not just his shopping list. There are disadvantages to speed-driven posting. Thank you for your fine article.
Sincerely,
Rich
Posted by: Rich Ottum | August 10, 2005 at 04:08 PM