To quote Van Halen, ‘everybody wants some.’ And what you want is traffic. Why write a blog if no-one visits, right? I have 17 technical writers’ blogs in my Google Reader & RSS feeds. Most are fine but… if they used some of the following tactics, they’d get more traffic, comments, money and Nobel prizes. Well, three out of four, anyway.

How To Get More Traffic To Your Technical Writing Blog

Apply five of these tactics and your traffic will double. No kidding, it will!

How To Get More Traffic #1: Add Your Photos

Look at your favorite technical writing blogs. How many faces do you see? Why are they all hiding? I dunno. Stick your mugshot on the page so we can see what you look like! Go on! None of us are Brad Pitt or Paris Hilton, so add a picture. Don’t be shy. People like to read about people they know. If they can’t see you…

How To Get More Traffic #2: Video

I’m no spring chicken, so if I can do it, you can. All of these video were taken on a Canon powershot.

Videos let people hear you, see your expression, feel what you’re trying to say in ways that words cannot. Making videos is easier that you think. I use Camtasia 6 for all its sins. (read my frustrated Camtasia 6 review here.)

How To Get More Traffic #3: Social Media Outposts

Use Social Media for maximum impact. With web content publishing tools like Posterous you can get the message out to all these channels with almost no effort. Posterous lets you post once, publish everywhere. Try it.

• Ivan: http://www.ivanwalsh.com
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ivanwalsh
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ivanwalsh
• Business Week http://bx.businessweek.com/profile/ivan-walsh/iwalsh905/
• And also on Disqus, Flickr, LinkedIn, Delicious and Google Reader

How To Get More Traffic #4: Quizzes

We all get tired of checking for split infinitives and looking for typos, so lighten things up. Add quizzes to get people involved… and try to be a little different.

• Did you ever download software illegally?
• What’s your manager’s most annoying habit?
• Would you let your boss friend you on Facebook?
• Do you know any technical writing who can reverse park? (I was going to say Women but then turned on my brain! That was so close!)
• Do you know any men who ask for directions when lost? One for the girls, no doubt.

How To Get More Traffic #5: Comics

May not work for all sites but comics are a nice break from technical documents and other heavy reading. Why do you think they are so popular? Every serious newspaper has them, why not you?

How To Get More Traffic #6: Reviews

If they come to your site, it’s your opinion they are after. So, why don’t you give it?

#1 cardinal sin of most blogs is that they have no opinion!

Don’t be scared! I’m with you! Give your honest opinion (try not to rant or swear) and you’ll see people will respond very quickly.

#2 cardinal sin of most blogs… bland!

If your blog echoes the rest of the crowd, well, why should I come back? Stick your neck out, even a little. Some people were upset that I dissed Camtasia but y’know I’d be lying if I said it worked!

How To Get More Traffic #7: Trends

Pssst! Did you know that… everyone wants to be in the know. Keep your readers up to date. Use graphs, charts and diagrams. See Brain Solis and Information in Beautiful for inspiration.

How To Get More Traffic #8: Lists

It doesn’t have to stop at 10. Here are a few list of get started:

• 21 Left Handed Technical Writers
• 7 Reasons Why Adobe FrameMaker Sucks But You Still Need to Buy It
• 12 Honest Ways to Get a Pay Rise
• 5 Ways To Give An Honest Appraisal
• 28 Ways to Proofred a Technical Documant
• 1 Good Reason to Join the STC
• 18 Mistakes Technical Writers Make Before Breakfast
• 9 Ways to Evaluate a Help Authoring Tool

How To Get More Traffic #9: How-to guides

Ok, the technical stuff comes last. If you’re going to offer technical advice (and you should!) identify the problem, explain how to fix it, and then ask for questions or comments.

#3 cardinal sin of blogging is… blogger doesn’t interact with readers. Ask for comments. If you have a Facebook page, give them the link and connect there. Use Twitter? Create lists for technical writers and add them. Like these lists I created for technical writers and creativity.

• Adobe FrameMaker list http://twitter.com/ihearttechdocs/adobeframemaker
• Creativity list http://twitter.com/ihearttechdocs/creativity
• Technical writing software http://twitter.com/ihearttechdocs/technicalwritingsoftware

Share, share, share!

What ya think! Fire away below.

I upgraded to Camtasia 6 at the weekend (from v4) mostly to import and edit .MOV files. These are created by my faithful Canon Powershot when I shot videos. Sony makes AVIs. The other reason was to do more heavy lifting with Camtasia. I have tons on material on the hard-disk and want to get these into screencasts. So, what the verdict?

Review Camtasia 6

Price – $149 not cheap but not as expensive as Adobe Premiere.

Key features

• Import and edit MOV files
• Independent audio edits (saves me doing audio in Audacity)
• 3D tilt (can’t find where to do this, yet) and oodles of
• Special effects

The good – What I liked

The user interface is nice, no nutty changes a Ia Microsoft Office and ribbon bars

Presets for blog, YouTube etc means it will help you produce files that best suit these formats. For simple videos, this is fine. You can do your own monkeying around as well, e.g. change frame rates.

the bad – What I don’t like

Audio enhancements are hit and miss. Sometimes makes the voice lovely and rich (hey, why not!) other times I sound like I’m under-water.

Number of un-dos seems limited. I love to un-do.

the ugly – real Problems

Freezes with files over 4 MB. These are (for me) small files, so I need to reboot all the time. Big problem. (What memory do I have? 80 GB of hard disk and 2 GB of RAM – thought that would be ok.) This is a killer. Files more than 3MB cause Camtasia to freeze. What this means is that when I try to make an AVI, MP4 or MOV for YouTube, the thing locks, usually at 19-25%. Close all apps, re-boot and try again. No joy.

Smartfocus won’t start – Camtasia thinks I’m using an older version, e.g. v5, and so won’t start it. I’m on 6. Can’t get it to work. See the error message.

MOVs won’t import – this is a horror! According to the site ‘Large MOV files not importing into Camtasia. Camtasia will crash or give a no codec message upon importing. This is a known issue that will be fixed in a future release. As a workaround, try creating smaller MOV files from other programs when bringing them into Camtasia.’ I’ve done this and still no luck. Off to contact Tech Support.

MP4s won’t import – No Codec available error message. Contact Tech Support.

FWIW I download all the codes I can find on the site, re-boot and… no joy.

What to do next?

Not sure. Have downloaded all the codecs I can find, re-booted the pc, cleared the cache, closed all apps and sent some emails to Techsmith. Now, I’m waiting…

Can you help?

If you’ve had these type of issues, can you let me know what you did to fix this?

Jing Pro lets you make a high-definition video recording of what you see on your PC, which you can then email, Twitter, send to Facebook, Flickr, or YouTube. It’s brilliant. But, there’s a catch. There a free versions (which does most everything) and a premium version.

So, if the free version is so good, should you upgrade?

There are some limitation and restrictions on Jing Pro.

Jing  Pro Limitations

Here’s a few to start with.

Tip: Complete list of features is here.

1 It doesn’t let you edit proxy settings within the JING application. So, if you are behind a firewall or need to reconfigure on the road, it may get tricky.

2. You can’t use it as a standalone app without connecting to Screencast.com.

3. You need to be online as it’s web-based. Fine at work but not much good when you don’t have web access or if the web goes down.

4. When it does go down, you need to re-enter your username and password again. This became such a pain for me that I stopped using it and went back to SnagIt.

5. There is still a 5 minute limitation. So, if you’ve video is more than this, you’re out of luck.

Jing  Pro Advantages

The Pro version is fine if you don’t want to upgrade to Camtasia Studio but want an easy-to-use video-capturing software, for sharing videos on YouTube/Facebook.

Jing is very good at what it does and for $15 per year is not so expensive.

For light-weight users, the Free version should be fine. You can take nice screenshots, small videos and upload to Screencast.com which also offers 2 GB of storage space.

On the downside, the Free version support only SWF format while Jing Pro supports SWF ands MPEG-4 video, which is required for YouTube HD.

Should you buy the Pro version?

No.

Of all the limitations the 5 minute restriction is the biggest barrier. Actually, this is the main reason I have not signed up. If this was raised to 15 minutes, then yes, I’d signup. But 5 minutes is too short!

Simon makes this point on the blog: “In the above “94 Comments” 5 min is mentioned over 50 times … I think that you should listen to the user group and as I stated before: “drop the time limit on the Pro version and you will make conversions of people from free version to Pro version, and at the end of the day some $$$”

Matt adds “great job with the Jing project. The idea for allowing users to cut down videos to 5 minutes is a good alternative. The problem you may face is losing the beauty of simplicity that Jing offers and still leaves the 5 minute constraint.”

But the bottom line is that the 5 minute time limitation is a show-stopper.

Leonardos Bardelotto says that “5 min is bad, but they want to sell the Camtasia for bigger time and much more money.”

I agree.

This is the real limitation on this product. I‘ve flagged it on their site. Most others seem to agree and have encouraged them to make it free to get more market share.

There are so many free apps out there that charging for this – and the overheads that go with it – don’t seem to justify this decision.

But, it’s they’re product.

What do you think? Have you tried it yet?

PS: here is a quick list of the key features

• Screenshots directly to Snagit where you can edit the image.
• Publish it Screencast.com where you can store, file, organize and track the videos.
• Edit Jing created screencasts in Camtasia Studio. You can also combine multiple videos into a single video, or string several together with a table of contents.
• Create different Jing folders on Screencast.com, by topic/project/client.
• Adjust the video’s size to fit your blog or website.
• Centralize conversations and comments with the new commenting feature.
• Annotate captured images with arrows, callouts, text and highlights to add emphasis
• Narrate Jing-recorded screencast videos for even greater clarity before sharing
• Generate HTML code to so you can embed it on your blog or website
• Customize the sharing buttons so those they use most are only a click away.
• Screencasts are delivered in HD-quality video for the Web
• Jing logos and links are removed from the start and end of newly-recorded videos.
• Publish directly to YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler and MSN Video, Flickr
• Jing Pro produces MPEG-4 AVC video files for Flash delivery with H.264+AAC compression.