The WordCamp Report

Tim Ferriss

Timothy Ferriss, nominated as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007,” is an angel investor and author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been sold into 35 languages.

He has been featured by more than 100 media outlets, including The New York Times, The Economist, TIME, Forbes, Fortune, CNN, and CBS. He speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a popular guest lecturer at Princeton University since 2003, where he presents entrepreneurship as a tool for ideal lifestyle design and world change.

Tim is an active education activist and has architected experimental social media campaigns such as LitLiberation to out-fundraise traditional media figures like Stephen Colbert 3-to-1 at zero cost, building schools overseas and financing more than 15,000 US students in the process.

[WordCamp Bio]

Tim Ferriss started quickly by showing an example of a post helped him overcome an issue. Blogging is helpful in making one grow personally.

How often you blog isn’t so much blogging 6 times before lunch. But more writing that will attract attention. He uses Crazy Egg and Google Analytics to find what attracts his audience and when is the best time of day for that audience. If you get lots of looking on Saturday morning, he would post Friday night so it would have the best chance to spread. He uses a current hits page to direct people into reading other popular posts and also a listing of posts to be found as favorites. He doesn’t find RSS very effective as other means are growing. He doesn’t predominantly display dates on individual posts and that increased eye time. He also spends time setting up “Reading Time” so the readers can judge time.

One interesting this is that he uses Twitter an polling to work out articles to write. It’s not important how you write its more important what you write. Write what you are passionate about. If stuck you can write about what angers you, but don’t attack people. The issues not people. Important posts, edit by hand and ignore SEO until the end. Use the Google keyword tool to help use synonyms to attract people also.

Short is good when it comes to video. Also good to have a text post that goes along with it. It bring people to your blog and it’s searchable.

Don’t do topical post, they can become tiresome.

Always read your comments. And feel free to be the moderator. Work towards having comments that almost are post worthy in there own self.

Have playgrounds and labs to do the odd ball and ridiculous.

Long form, Short form, and Micro-blogging all have their place.

Take fun seriously.

Q&A
RSS can be too costly in time. Too much stress worrying about conversions.

Blogging can take time but make sure it’s important but not overly important.

Plugins he thinks important:
Redirection
Popularity Contest

Twitter
Doesn’t use an app and tries to minimize his time. He uses it for very specific purposes.

To save time
He loves a firefox plugin for auto-pagination.

If you are having fun then you aren’t wasting time.

Multiple topics on same blog?
Occasionally is ok but you need to make it clear.

How to Tim Ferriss your love life.
A series of stories related his dating and articles written before his book release.

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