Blogging for World Domination

Do you remember the early James Bond movies?
There was always a bad guy mastermind in them.
The one with the white cat? Blofeld was his name.
Blofeld always aimed for global hegemony.
Do you want to become a popular blogger?
You must aim for world domination!
Imagine yourself to impersonate the typical villain 007 fights against.
What do you need to make a global audience aware of your evil plans?
Do Not Kill Your Target Audience
I strongly recommend not to use nuclear weapons!
Also refrain from using weapons of mass distraction the typical movie villain would use.
You still want to keep your audience and not to annihilate it do you?
Do not take the term “target audience” literally please.
You have to use techniques to capture the imagination of a global audience
that are less destructive while at the same time as spectacular.
Also remember that your message must spread globally.
In order to achieve this you have to take heed to several aspects of online publishing.
Most notably you have to break down barriers.
Here’s how to abolish borders and dominate the world using blogs!
Write in English
Language barriers suck. Write in English.
This might be obvious to you when you already write in English
Or rather if you can only write in English in the first place.
For non-native speakers like myself it isn’t.
As you might know I live and work from Germany even though I’m not German myself.
I started blogging in German back in 2003. I covered
- art
- design
- trends
Germany is a very tough place to blog.
Most people do not take blogs seriously and blogging is very limited due to laws similar to China.
For instance you are not allowed to blog anonymously anymore.
You are forced to give away your street address etc. so many bloggers have already been targeted by lawyers or some even by fascists.
A German court ruling even says that you are not allowed to publish comments on blogs.
You have to be manually checking comments for illegal activities like potential slander.
The German blogosphere is small and not really beautiful.
When you blog in German you are quite lucky to get more than 100 subscribers.
The local social media isn’t of much help either.
We have around 100 million potential readers who speak German.
Yet you only reach thousands when you’re lucky as a blogger.
People are very main stream here.
In German you won’t even reach the people a few miles away behind the border.
Why? Google heavily localizes searches from
- Austria
- Germany
- Italy
- Switzerland
Even though I live and work in Berlin geographically I’m just one hour away from Poland.
Nobody will read your blog in Poland when you write it in German despite that.
In case you want to write for a global audience you have to write in English first and foremost.
Other languages are nice to have additions.
Use Plain English
This might be evident too! Welcome Captain Obvious! He’s my favorite superhero.
Yet while most of you will imagine to write in plain English already most of you aren’t.
I did American Studies in college and started learning English back in fifth grade so my English is quite good by now,
Yet I still I do not understand everything people write. Plain means you should use
- short sentences,
- simple words like do, have, is
- no idioms, “dark horse” is one, everybody will wonder why you write about horses
- no colloquial language, like with idioms, colloquial language is even more of a problem, a while ago I had to look up what “crack me up” means
- no omissions, instead of writing “hybrid” you have to write “hybrid car” as outside of the US most people won’t even know what a hybrid is
Read a novel by Paul Auster to see how plain English is used to convey complex meaning.
Enable Translation
Encourage translation by writing in English!
Do so by blogging in plain English and expressing gratitude towards those who translate your postings.
Some of my posts have been translated in multiple languages and I am very proud of it.
The most popular post when it comes to translation was the SEO vs SEO 2 comparison.
It’s available in many languages, even very difficult or exotic ones:
- Chinese
- Russian
- Thai
to name just a few harder to learn languages.
Also use simple words to explain complex concepts so that translators do not nee a P.h.D
Use Striking Images
The use of striking images can effectively bridge any language barriers.
Adding images might be the most obvious thing but it also helps people who speak only basic English.
Having an attractive image in your post allows those who not really understand English to get intrigued.
They might wonder what it is about and translate it.
Be Open Minded
Yet Iran and Iranians get vilified like no other population.
The propaganda reaches an extent I remember from my history lessons about world war II.
I do not buy into this.
Iranians are people like us or rather they are even more friendly than we are it seems.
SEO 2 was twice on the front page of Iranian social news site Balatarin.
When you want to be read all over the world you can’t ignore the cultural differences.
Yet acknowledging that we are all part of the same human “race” also helps.
You have to be open minded enough to accept difference as something valuable.
Cover Global Topics
Choose topics that unite people all over the world.
Focus on things that matter all over the world.
- art
- images
- love
- space
- technology
and yes money are just a few of them.
I even sometimes “read” Iranian tech blogs.
Some global issues include hunger, ethics or Internet myths.
Use International Social Media
Do not limit yourself to English only social media.
On Anglo-Saxon social sites non-English sites tend to fail. They get buried under all the English-speaking noise.
We have very strong social media in Spanish or Polish and these will also feature English posts.
A front page appearance on Polish Wykop for instance can send thousands visitors your way.
Yet Poland has roughly a population of 40 million (I count poles abroad like myself too).
I didn’t even mention Polish Nasza Klasa social network yet!
Do not ignore the rest of the world while publishing online or blogging! It does not make sense.
The Internet is hailed as one of the positive driving forces of globalization.
Yet it’s becoming more and more nation or language oriented again
Gatekeepers like Google are promoting local results from each country.
You must be a citizen of the world to aim for world domination!
Conquer the world without nuclear weapons.
Fascinate the people with what matters most to them, universal human values.
Btw.: did you know that I will conquer the world and enslave the global population?
How? I will use my advanced SEO 2 hypnosis! Meeeooow!
Boy Tad ~ great minds think alike :) I just had a very similar post on December 3 entitled, “How Do You Achieve Worldwide Blogging Dominance – Blog Locally and Think Globally.”
You can read it here:
http://www.mytropicalescape.com/2007/12/03/achieve-worldwide-blogging-dominance-blog-locally-and-think-globally/
Apologies in advance if you do not allow links in the comment section. But, I believe your article and mine compiment eachother quite nicely.
Happy Holidays!
Mark
Writing in English may be hard for some as not everyone is as fluent in English as you are.
I too had problems expressing myself properly in English when I wan new on the net, and it took me real dedication to reach the level I am currently at.
And yet, I sometimes still struggle to find proper words for my expressions. :)
Good Post, Tad.
I take for granted everyday that the things I write that most people would understand. Thank you for reminding us that that is not always the case.
“…a while ago I had to look up what “crack me up” means”
I think I have written that to you once or twice. And, you do!! Simply…. you make me laugh. ;) But, I can see where something like this might be difficult to understand.
Shana
Indeed Mark! Hilarious. Great ideas are in the air and like minded people just pick them up, often several at the same time. Aaron Wall wrote a post about that tendency. Happy holidays!
Mohsin: Well, I never thought about you as a non-native speaker. So your English is almost perfect by now.
Shana: I’m glad you taught me some real life expressions! I just couldn’t find a better example ;-)
Btw. always glad to make women laugh, OK men too :-)
“I take for granted everyday that the things I write that most people would understand.”
Definitely – sometimes I try to write specialist pieces, only to find most people are still struggling with the basics.
I guess this is precisely why media in general often aims for the lowest common denominator.
2c.
Great insights Tad. Some good tips for non native bloggers, in English language. You definitely deserve a thumbs up for this post!
That’s pretty hectic about Germany! Can you not simply host your blog on an outside provider?
@Pony: This was only one decision by a single regional court. A blogging journalist has been ordered to moderate comments on posts, whose comments are probably offensive.
Most German top-bloggers aren’t afraid of this decision.
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Tad,
Reading your posts does not make me think that english is a foreign language to you.
I agree that writing in plain english with no extravagance ensures best exposure to different readers.
Thank you for helping remind us that the internet is global. This post was well-written and thought-provoking. hough my market is typically only in the USA, anything we can do in blogging to help understand each other better and unite as members of the same earth is valuable.
Great point of view. I like your straight articles. Thanks!