Archive for August, 2005
August 13, 2005
Off to Nashville
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Headed to Nashville this morning for the ASAE annual meeting. I’ll be posting mostly this week from the official ASAE conference blog, but I expect to also post a little here as well.
August 12, 2005
Found Art 3
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Riding down a back road today, we passed a nondescript flat white building — no signage, grass unmowed, looked abandoned. In front of it was one of those moveable-letter signs on which was emblazoned:
ONLY YOU ALONE ARE
BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS
I’m not sure why, but I found it both baffling and touching.
August 11, 2005
Art of Controversy
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An interesting controversy erupted in the blogosphere last week that actually spilled over into the pages of the mainstream press. I’m not even going to attempt to link to all of the different posts involved in the following paragraph, because life is too short and besides, Debbie Weil has already done it.
To get to my point, I do need to provide the short version of events as an illustration: The CEO of iFulfill, an ecommerce shipping company, blogs away while, unbeknownst to his customers and employees (and for a while himself), his company is spiralling into the depths of bankruptcy. In fact, it wasn’t until his company went into its final throes that anyone noticed or read his blog, despite his having engaged the services of a well-known blogging consultant, B.L. Ochman. Business Week wrote a story about this interesting turn of events, only to draw Ochman’s (rightful) wrath for having been misquoted. The reporter, Steve Baker (of Blogspotting), agreed to issue a correction for having quoted Ochman as having encouraged iFulfill’s CEO to “create a scandal” when, in fact, she actually said, “do something controversial.”
Now. To Ochman’s credit, she says that when the ” do something controversial” topic came up, she was “jokingly” telling her client something a prominent blogger had told her was “the best way to build an audience quickly.” I trust her, and I don’t know any thing else about this story other than what’s available in BW and blog posts, so I don’t have any comment to make specifically about this situation.
However, it does give me a good excuse to talk about something that sometimes get short shrift in the emerging business blogosphere: organizational blogs and personal blogs are two different animals.
It’s long been accepted truth that a good way to build traffic to a personal blog is, in fact, to pick a fight with someone. Let’s not forget that politics created the blogosphere as we know it, not business. Controversy sells. Get a good back-and-forth between a few bloggers with spittle flying between posts, and eyeballs will follow the conversation.
But an organizational blog exists for a reason other than drawing traffic. It exists to support the organization, to sell a product, to engage a constituency, to meet a mission. Picking fights for the sake of drawing eyeballs for their own sake doesn’t do any of those things.
The BW article makes it sound as though iFulfill’s CEO was obsessed with drawing traffic to his blog, and I can’t help but wonder why. Why waste so much time worrying about getting the attention of people who read blogs when you really should be trying to get the attention of companies who want to ship stuff?
Because isn’t that the point of the whole exercise? It’s not about “blogs are cool,” “how many blogs are linking to me in Technorati” kind of stuff.
Who cares about all that? If you’re making widgets, then your goal is to sell widgets. Hey, guess what — if you add a blog to your toolbox, and write engagingly about things that interest people who buy widgets, you just might make a good connection and, you know, sell them your widgets.
This doesn’t mean you always have to talk about your company (and it sounds like, again just from reading the BW article, that this is what iFulfill did). Maybe you have some interesting opinions about the widget industry as a whole. Talk about those. Engage the “bigger picture” of your market. If you think someone else in your industry or specialty or whatever is wrong, say they’re wrong. Say it entertainingly. Get the confidence of your readership niche. And then sell them your widgets!
Yes, as I wrote in a post yesterday, the great thing about blogs — and what makes them work — is that you get to be “personal.” You get to inject personality. But if you forget that the purpose of your blog is to sell widgets then you’ll wind up buried next to iFulfill. (Edit: Your blog will end up buried, etc. I don’t think bad blogging killed iFulfill and it probably won’t kill your organization. Though it certainly won’t help.)
Same for associations. Association blogs should support the association’s goals — that’s the only reason to do them. They should be written in a human voice. They should engage the readership. But their purpose is to support the association’s goals, whatever those goals might be, not just be a corner of your cyberspace where you stuff the misfits and malcontents to give them something to do.
And as far as “controversy” and association blogs — I had an email conversation with a woman from another trade association a couple months ago after the Association Management article came out. She had some members who wanted her group to start a blog — wanted to write for it — and she said that one thing she was worried about was that they might talk about some internal things going on with their association’s restructuring.
I told her she was right, she should be worried about them posting about the association’s internal business. Not because it might be controversial, but because about 90% of her organization’s members probably don’t give a damn (and, I guarantee you, 100% of the non-members in her industry). Tell them to write about the industry, not the association.
But for goodness sake, don’t be afraid to write about controversial things within your industry/profession that members may disagree about. Encourage it. Get them to talk to each other and explain their positions. An association can do this without taking sides. In fact, this may be one of the things we’re best equipped for.
And then — we come full circle — the “controversy” will draw traffic — the right kind — to the association. But not as an end to itself.
August 10, 2005
This Headline Is Not Descriptive Enough
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When it comes to writing headlines (for blog posts, email newsletters, articles, just about anything), I have a problem. I have an addiction. It’s this: I can’t help trying to think of something pithy or punny or eye-catching. I don’t always succeed, but I always try.
Unfortunately, in the modern world, such practices are discouraged. Search engines and RSS feeds like descriptive headlines, because they’re more likely to get clicked on. (That’s just one of the points mentioned in this DMNews report from the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.)
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Is it true? Would this post really be better if it were titled “Title Tags Should Be Clear for RSS Feeds”? I suspect so. But this is really going to be a hard habit to break.
UPDATE: Interestingly enough, so far this post, with its tongue-in-cheek title, has garnered the most clickthroughs on my feed.
August 10, 2005
RSS As CMS
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‘Scuse me while I go all geeky for a second …
The impending release of the new version of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver (a web design software program) has me strangely excited because it’s already my favorite piece of software in the whole wide world.
The new version, due in September, purports to fully embrace RSS by allowing web designers to integrate feeds directly into their designs. In fact, the company says Dreamweaver 8 will allow you to link to a feed and then simply drag and drop the field elements you want, where you want them. And using its new-and-improved CSS editing and visualization tools, you’ll be able to make those field elements look however you want them to look.
I’m a little slow on the uptake, because I saw the press release and even posted about it on BBC yesterday — but it just hit me a few minutes ago what this really means.
If everything works the way they say it will, then they’ve just created a low-cost content management system for standard websites that anyone can use.
Think about it: you create the design in Dreamweaver. Use a program like FeedForAll to set up different feeds that you then link to from the appropriate content sections of the site. Make the design elements look how you want them to look. Then content creators can simply use FeedForAll or something similar to write articles and post them to the feed. Which are then dynamically integrated into the website.
Voila — instant CMS that non-web folks can use. Complete separation of design and content. Without spending a lot of time or money setting up a complex backend CMS. (Plus, those feeds are now available for syndication, thus making all your content RSS-ready.)
Easy. Cheap. Or am I oversimplifying? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
August 10, 2005
A New Kind of Language, Kind Of
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I frequently find myself referring to the conversational and personal “language” of blogs for associations and businesses as something “new” (I did it just this morning in a comment to this post on Business Blog Consulting). But is it really new?
As I think about it, I guess it is and it isn’t. There have always been at least two kinds of languages for businesses and organizations: the language we use “one on one,” and the language we use “en masse.” Any good salesman (and aren’t we all salespeople?) knows that, when talking one-on-one to a member/customer/client, the secret to success is identification — making some kind of personal connection, so that the member/customer/client identifies with the salesperson.
When communicating to a large group, though — such as the entire customer base or portion of it, through official statements or newsletters or letters or other communications — organizational language changes. The personal becomes impersonal; word choices retreat behind safety; negatives are glossed over; everything sounds newsy and official and fake.
There’s a good reason for this. When talking to someone one-on-one or in smaller groups, there are all sorts of cues (visual, verbal, and other) one can follow to make sure a “connection” is being made. Language can be altered in the course of a conversation. Choices can be made.
When writing for a group, these cues aren’t available. So the natural organizational instinct is to retreat behind a wall of inoffensiveness and legal review.
Organizational/business blogs (at least the best ones) take the personal touch of one-on-one conversation and throw it at the entire world. They weave personal revelations through their messages. They take risks in the use of their language and write closer to how they talk. So blogs represent a new kind of business language in that they don’t sound like corporate-speak and emphasize the personal over the impersonal.
Are there risks here? You betcha. You still aren’t getting the cues as you go along as to whether or not you’re making a connection or crossing a line. As more businesses and organizations begin blogs, many of them won’t be able to find the line until they cross it a couple times. Others will try to stay so far away from it that their blog won’t be effective at all.
While there are any number of consultants out there ready and willing to help organizations and businesses enter the blogosphere — and books being published every day — it’s a mistake to assume that all the kinks have been worked out, that there are safe “rules” you can follow as a business or association, and that any one expert has the answers.
Blogging well requires risk. If it didn’t, there wouldn’t be any possibility of return.