Dear reader (if I may call you that in an avuncular 18th century novelist manner) … This is one of those posts in which I use my blog as both a personal and public record of something I want to remember … using blogging as more of a personal database than a public communique.
Brian Clark at CopyBlogger recently posted The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines.
While I’m not sure he uses Twitter the way I do – a tool for communication and community, for seeing what’s buzzing and for connecting to like-minded people – it’s an interesting read. If you, like me, don’t post to Twitter solely for the purpose of catching people’s attention and calling them to action (and even if you don’t use Twitter at all) this is useful advice for writing headlines and content that makes a difference.
It’s the UUUS rule. Is your content/headline/post/tweat:
- Useful
- Urgent
- Unique
- Specific
That’s a tall order. Millions of blog posts would never be written if all bloggers followed it. And while many don’t – and shouldn’t, as they write specifically about themselves and their families for the benefit of a small group of relatives and friends – many should. It’s something I’ll consider each and every time as I think about posting to Sparkplug 9.
Of course, every rule is proved by its exception!
I hate gossip rags at the checkout counter, and my opinion is no different when the medium is a blog. But I love this post on 8 things bloggers can learn from Perez Hilton by Marko Saric.
The fact is, Perez Hilton is a fantastic success story. According to Saric, here’s how he got there:
- Find a topic there is an audience for
- Find a topic you have passion for
- Be consistent
- Be unique
- Do not censor yourself
- Be provocative
- Experiment with the blog monetization
- Expand your blog
More details and expansion of each of those points in the original post – if you’re a blogger, I recommend you read them.
A couple of provisos:
- Be careful about the no censorship rule
If your blog is not where you make your money, be careful. It can have a backlash with colleagues, your boss, organization, or family. My advice: don’t write anything you don’t want even one person you care about knowing. That includes your boss!
- Be careful about being provocative
If you’re writing a trashy celebrity blog, maybe that’s a good rule. It’s probably not quite as good an idea, however, if you’re writing a legal blog, a business blog, or diplomatic blog. Sure, you want to be interesting. But it’s never a good idea to go out of your way to insult, disparage, or denigrate others. And picking fights simply in an attempt to be interesting is juvenile and likely to backfire.
Being careful may not be the way to create exceptional art. But it does have some advantages in building relationships and getting things done.
It’s hard to imagine, but WordPress is now over 5 years old.
A French blogger, Ozh, posted images of WordPress’s admin interface on his blog in December. I just saw it now, but wanted to see the images in a single presentation deck so that you can flip through them and see the differences at a glance.
So I grabbed the images, combined them into one PDF, uploaded it to SlideShare, and voila:
5 years – hard to believe. I saw WordPress when it was at the very first version, in 2003, and first used it at the second version in, in 2004.
I had been blogging much earlier, actually, before the word “blog” was invented. As far back as 1999, although I prefer my 2001 version, which was built on a content management system that I cobbled together myself using PHP … using not a single graphic:
But I’m not really a developer, and WordPress has been the best tool for blogging.
Thanks, Matt!
Posting a link that does not go to where a reasonable web surfer thinks it will go is annoying, tacky, and perhaps even dishonest.
Here’s what I’m talking about – a recent story at ReadWriteWeb:
In fact, in the first paragraph, there are no less than 7 links – and no less than 7 of them are to ReadWriteWeb itself. This is a childish attempt at boosting traffic and gaming Google, and it’s below the stature of a site like ReadWriteWeb.
I left a comment … we’ll see if it stays live.
Please fix:
When you have a name linked, a visitor’s assumption is that the link is to the site associated with that name. Example: Reddit, in the first paragraph.
When you instead hijack that expectation and take users to your own website’s tag page for Reddit, you’re losing credibility and goodwill in order to eek out one more pageview from your readers.
Uncool, unprofessional, and in the long-run, unprofitable.
Five times in the past 3-4 weeks I’ve written and published a post on this blog only to come back a day later and see it not actually published and live. What’s going on?
The question in my mind is: am I actually publishing the post or just hitting Save? As you can see … the two buttons are side-by-side in the Wordpress screen where you write posts.
Although I can’t be sure, I don’t think so. I never click Save, because WP auto-saves posts every few minutes. And I’m pretty sure I can’t have made that mistake so many times.
So I’m wondering if there’s a bug in Wordpress … and if anyone else has noticed it. I think there is, and I think I might even know where/when it is. I say where/when, because my guess is that the problem might be occuring when two things happen at the same time: Wordpress auto-saves a post, and simultaneously, I click Publish.
I wonder if anyone else has seen this issue. To help me find out, I’m now going to very deliberately click PUBLISH.
Seth Godin has a short post about how to sound smart (or not) when talking about techy stuff. A reader named Jackson chimed in with this:
A blog is the whole, and a post is just one article (like the one you’re reading). So you don’t say, “I wrote a blog about that,” you say, “I just blogged about that,” or “did you read my post on how to talk about the Internet?”
Thank you! I’m seeing that in well-respected publications lately, and it’s annoying.
Just got this email:
HELLO,
COULD YU KINDLY LET ME KNOW THE UNIT PRICE OF THIS SPARK PLUG …..
Model: 5466
SKU: 578096…SPARK PLUG..
AWAITING FR YOUR RESPONSE ASAP,
BEST REGARD,
SUSAN LOPEZ
Hrm … I better get back to her on that right away.
My good blogging friend Leo Bottary asked this question on LinkedIn Answers:
Describe the mindset one needs to be successful at using social media tools?
Here’s the answer I gave:
There’s a few qualities that come to mind:
- some familiarity and comfort with technology
- some commitment of time to engaging with social media
- a relaxed attitude about controlling every aspect of a message
- an ability to communicate effectively
- above all, a desire and willingness to learn
People who are new to social media should get their feet wet by finding some blogs and podcasts in their niches and just reading and enjoying them for a month or so. Get familiar with the conventions and styles that are out there. Read a few books, like Robert Scoble’s Naked Conversations.
Then start simple, with a blog. Add a Flickr account if you’re into pictures, and link the two. Ensure that you’re on Facebook, LinkedIn, and any other social networks that might be verticals in your area.
Say interesting, informative things about your industry. Link generously, and be generous with data.
Most importantly, don’t lose it when people disagree. That’s natural, and it’s going to happen. Use these situations as learning experiences. Respond calmly and politely, apologize when you were wrong, and move on. You’ll be respected for how you deal with disagreement.
There are a lot of good answers to that question – follow the link above to see them all.
Leo Bottary is back blogging again, at CSI season two.
(That’s Customer Service Insights, of which he has more than a few.)
As Leo mentions, he’s finished his masters degree (lucky dog, I’m still in the middle of a long tough slog) moved to New England, and switched his corporate allegiance from Hill & Knowlton to Mullen. That’s a lot of change!
Welcome back, Leo.
Wordpress automatic upgrade absolutely rocks.
Upgrading Wordpress every time there’s a minor security update is a major pain the you-know-what … but Wordpress automatic upgrade takes all the pain out.
Here’s where to get it; here’s the site of the people that made it.
If I ever want to kill any readership of Sparkplug 9, I know exactly how to do it. I’ve received written instructions in the mail.
Email, actually. I recently received one from Kim Tompkins, a “junior media buyer” at Red McCombs Media. It’s a proposal any self-respecting blogger would swiftly upchuck at:
Hi there,
I am a Media Buyer with Red McCombs Media. I am contacting you today because we are looking to place some 800×600 small business related pop-unders. I can give these pop-unders to you at a $2.50cpm, targeted to US visitors.
These pop-unders only contain content relating to small business and will not rotate in anything inappropriate, pornographic, etc. Please let me know if you are interested at your earliest convenience! We would love to get you set up as a publisher immediately! If you could just get back to me with how many impressions per day we can expect from your site we can move forward from there. Please let me know if you have any questions!
If you would like to learn more about our company please feel free to visit our website http://www.redmccombsmedia.com. Look forward to hearing back from you and hope we are able to get something started!
Thanks!
Nothing good starts with “hi there.” And no, I have no intention of putting pop-unders on my site. $2.50 per thousand is a very small amount for my integrity.
I’ll stick with Text Links Ads.
Maybe I’m just old-fashioned. Or else maybe I don’t suck up well.
Either way, I hate the kind of blogroll that is stuffed with A-lister links. Yeah, I love Seth, and Scoble, and a bunch of other blogs. And when I really like something, I’ll probably save it to my delicious or even write a post on it.
But my blogroll is for people I know. People I like. People that I’m friends or acquaintances with. That’s probably different than for most bloggers, and that’s OK.
Seth and Scoble and Guy and Engadget and Gizmodo etc. etc. have enough links already. I’ll give mine to people I actually know.
Last night my wife Teresa stumbled on a photography blog by the daughter-in-law of one of my co-workers, Rachel Ludwig.
That lead her to I Lay Me Down To Sleep, an amazing organization that works with photographers to donate their time and expertise to give families who lose children a few precious memories of their babies.
And that lead her to a personal blog of a family in a church we used attend who just lost an 8-week old baby.
Sometimes, the world wide web is exactly that.
Well, I went minimalist for a while but, since I am perennially unable to keep a Wordpress theme for longer than a month or so, I’ve up and switched.
This is Silhouette by Brian Gardner, and it’s actually still fairly minimalist … but a lot easier on the eyes.
The only problem I see so far is that this theme does not seem to display my tags … I’ll have to monkey around with the code a little to see what I need to do to make that happen.
I have to say, I really like this theme. Might even stick to it for a couple of months this time!
[ update ]
Categories deleted; tags inserted.
I’ve finally, finally, finally invested some time and energy in this, my new blog … and it feels good.
The idea is that Sparkplug 9 is the focus of my digital life. It’s the hub connecting all the spokes of my online interactions.
- Sites
So the latest sites I’ve found useful and interesting are in Links, courtesy of delicious.
- Photos
Photos that I’ve considered good enough to upload to Flickr are in Photos.
- Books
The recent inhabitants of my bookshelf, nicely organized and maintained thanks to Shelfari, are in Books.
- News updates
Nonsense that reflects my momentary state of mind is in Ephemera, thanks to Twitter.
- Videos
Videos and little screenshot movies I’ve uploaded to YouTube stream into Videos.
And they all – plus anything that doesn’t quite fit into any of the above categories – make up my online footprint.
Overall I’m pretty happy with how it all fits. It’s all very web 2.0 to be able to link bits and pieces from many different sites. Ideally, YouTube would have a better way to stream your videos onto your site … I’m not sure that having them all appear in one video player is the best option. But overall: not bad.
The beauty of it all is that it’s so easy with Wordpress, the blogging software I use. Most major web 2.0 companies supply Wordpress plugins to add their functionality to your site. And if they don’t some enterprising and generous plugin writer has, and is sharing the fruits of his labor.
Online identity is a complex thing … we worry about who owns it, we look for different ways to analyze it, we want to control it, and we worry about who will find it.
As for me, I’m just going to worry about creating it. Or, more accurately, living it. I’ll let the chips fall where they may … since the only worse than having a negative online identity is having no digital footprint at all.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
