On the sixapart pronet mailing list, Tim Appnel pointed to this post by Brad Feld about getting his movable type installation to produce proper permalinks. Some remarkable points from the post itself:
- Brad is a noted venture capitalist. He doesn't make his living as a Movable Type consultant, yet he spent a considerable amount of his time on what some might consider a technical, down in the weeds detail.
- Brad is running three blogs, and he has a presence on numerous social networks for sharing things like links and contacts.
- In blogging, one of the main things Brad is concerned about is his search visibility.
- Brad has over 1500 blog posts in three years. That's over one post per day with no breaks for weekends or vacations. Assuming that each post takes around 15 minutes, that's on the order of 400 hours in posting over three years, or 6% of his time. Assuming that posts take closer to an hour, Brad is spending 24% of his time blogging.
- Looking at his entires set of operations, Brad's crew likely consists of somewhere between 7 and 20 people, in other words a small shop.
- He has an extensive technology background, having founded tech companies and serving in the role of CTO.
With this set of facts, it's clear to me that one of Brad's main business generating strategies is to leverage his online presence. Looking at a search for "venture capital", a highly competed for term, Brad's blogging group comes in number 11, a respectable showing. Looking at his series on "term sheets", a stock of the VC trade, Brad ranks number one and two.
Bottom line, Brad Feld has created an important entry way into his business via his blog. That entry way is all through search and links. He has built a reputation as the source of information for some of his key topic areas. His attention to details like permalinks indicates the value he places on that asset.
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