Vice President of Newfangled.com, Writer for PRINT and F+W Media, blogger, infrequent designer, reader, science fiction enthusiast...

June 21st 2011

What Blogging *Feels* Like

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I just wrote up something about blogging that I don’t think gets talked about much: not just that it’s hard, or that it takes a lot of time, but that sometimes it feels terrible. I recently gathered our team together to discuss this and discovered the truth—that as much as blogging creates good, it also creates challenges that aren’t easily overcome. Here’s a clip:

…I imagine that if I am struggling with this, so are you. So let me confess a bit more. Tell me if this sounds right to you.

Creating content on the web and promoting engagement around it:

- enables me to share information I care about with other people
- inspires me to learn more
- causes me to engage with new and interesting people
- engages my vanity
- makes me feel competitive
- causes me to worry about being misunderstood
- creates frustration
- feels defeating

Some of these feelings I like, but most of them I don’t. I especially don’t like admitting them. I’d have a hard enough time being honest about them to a friend; writing them here feels like one of those dreams where you are somehow naked in public…

Read the whole piece here>

Posted at 11:19am and tagged with: blogging, content-strategy,.

April 1st 2010

1 note |#

Guiding Your Blog Out of the Wilderness

Have you started to get the feeling that you’re a lone voice, crying out from the wilderness? You’ve been blogging for a few years now, but nothing seems to be coming from it. You’ve tried all kinds of ways of promoting your content, but nothing seems to work. Readers just aren’t sticking around. The truth is that no promotion method is going to make your blog a success. Sure, the right luck with social media might get you a spike in traffic, but until your content truly captures the attention of readers, no single spike will turn in to lasting engagement.

Blogging has, at this point, become a central piece of the content strategy of most marketing websites. Almost two years ago, I wrote a newsletter simply asking, “Is it Time to Start a Blog?” Since then, many of our clients have answered that question in the affirmative, yet continue to struggle with blogging. Whether on the basis of incoming traffic or engagement around the content, they sense that their blog has just not lived up to their expectations.

This month, I’d like to look at the two primary reasons your blog is not living up to its potential—that you’re not writing enough, and the articles you do write are difficult to read—and recommend a few simple things you can do to correct that…

Read More >

Posted at 10:00am and tagged with: web-development, writing, blogging, editing,.

Guiding Your Blog Out of the Wilderness Have you started to get the feeling that you’re a lone voice, crying out from the wilderness? You’ve been blogging for a few years now, but nothing seems to be coming from it. You’ve tried all kinds of ways of promoting your content, but nothing seems to work. Readers just aren’t sticking around. The truth is that no promotion method is going to make your blog a success. Sure, the right luck with social media might get you a spike in traffic, but until your content truly captures the attention of readers, no single spike will turn in to lasting engagement. Blogging has, at this point, become a central piece of the content strategy of most marketing websites. Almost two years ago, I wrote a newsletter simply asking, “Is it Time to Start a Blog?” Since then, many of our clients have answered that question in the affirmative, yet continue to struggle with blogging. Whether on the basis of incoming traffic or engagement around the content, they sense that their blog has just not lived up to their expectations. This month, I’d like to look at the two primary reasons your blog is not living up to its potential—that you’re not writing enough, and the articles you do write are difficult to read—and recommend a few simple things you can do to correct that… Read More >

March 12th 2010

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The Unfinished Nature of the Blog Format

In my last post about mad scientist bloggers, I was exploring the idea of a way to approach blog writing that is true to form for some people, and also true to the format of a blog. This one continues the idea a bit…

In terms of being true to form, some people are going to be more inclined to the mad scientist approach—particularly those who naturally process their thinking by writing and who’s thinking influences their surrounding community (whether a corporate one or not). This kind of person is probably already inclined to keep a personal journal, a sketchbook, have a pen pal, tack up inspirational stuff in their workspace, and the like. These things, in and of themselves, are never finished, but represent a process of thinking; the most recent entry being a manifestation of their creator’s most current thinking.


This inspiration board used to hang in the main room of our office in Carrboro. We called it the “paper internet.”

Format, on the other hand, is different consideration. The word “blog” itself is a mashup of “web” and “log”—a log being a sequentially written record of events. Theoretically, you could open a written log to the last page and see the most current event.


This “Diary for the South Seas” was kept in 1839.

Similarly, the blog format tends to place the most recent entry at the top, with previous entries cascading in reverse chronological order. This format places emphasis on the current and, by preserving the previous entries, enables a retrospective reader to trace threads of thought backward. Those that follow the blog can experience the forward-moving threads of thought in real-time, as they are posted by the author.




The idea of a blog tracing thought processes brought the scene from Donnie Darko in which he follows those 4th dimensional time paths that protrude from his chest to mind. I couldn’t find the specific clip, but it’s briefly shown in this trailer at 0:29.

I really think that the blog format itself benefits from the unfinished. Though some blogs may have set periods of activity for various reasons, the format naturally assumes that one post will follow another, or, in other words, that posts could be figuratively separated by commas, rather than periods. Of course, this is only one way of handling a blog, but it happens to be the way that most of the writers I pay closest attention to do it.

Posted at 11:03am and tagged with: blogging, design,.

The Unfinished Nature of the Blog Format In my last post about mad scientist bloggers, I was exploring the idea of a way to approach blog writing that is true to form for some people, and also true to the format of a blog. This one continues the idea a bit… In terms of being true to form, some people are going to be more inclined to the mad scientist approach—particularly those who naturally process their thinking by writing and who’s thinking influences their surrounding community (whether a corporate one or not). This kind of person is probably already inclined to keep a personal journal, a sketchbook, have a pen pal, tack up inspirational stuff in their workspace, and the like. These things, in and of themselves, are never finished, but represent a process of thinking; the most recent entry being a manifestation of their creator’s most current thinking. This inspiration board used to hang in the main room of our office in Carrboro. We called it the “paper internet.” Format, on the other hand, is different consideration. The word “blog” itself is a mashup of “web” and “log”—a log being a sequentially written record of events. Theoretically, you could open a written log to the last page and see the most current event. This “Diary for the South Seas” was kept in 1839. Similarly, the blog format tends to place the most recent entry at the top, with previous entries cascading in reverse chronological order. This format places emphasis on the current and, by preserving the previous entries, enables a retrospective reader to trace threads of thought backward. Those that follow the blog can experience the forward-moving threads of thought in real-time, as they are posted by the author. The idea of a blog tracing thought processes brought the scene from Donnie Darko in which he follows those 4th dimensional time paths that protrude from his chest to mind. I couldn’t find the specific clip, but it’s briefly shown in this trailer at 0:29. I really think that the blog format itself benefits from the unfinished. Though some blogs may have set periods of activity for various reasons, the format naturally assumes that one post will follow another, or, in other words, that posts could be figuratively separated by commas, rather than periods. Of course, this is only one way of handling a blog, but it happens to be the way that most of the writers I pay closest attention to do it.

March 10th 2010

1 note |#

The “Mad Scientist” Blogger

Many of our agency friends have been blogging for a few years now, but it’s been about as effective a strategy as attending a networking mixer; most companies know instinctively that they need to be there, but they just don’t know exactly why, what they will bring to the conversation, or what they’ll do with the experience. As a result, many agency blogs are pretty unfocused. Some are mostly “neat stuff” aggregators, while others are “innovationspeak” engines running on the Taco Bell model—you know, same words, different combinations. Few actually know what they’re about.

This month’s upcoming newsletter is going to be about how to improve your blog—make it accurately represent your firm, educate your prospects, and generate new interest in what you offer. In the meantime though, I’ve been thinking about a way that some agencies have used their blog that I call the “mad scientist” strategy. Let me explain…

The Iceberg Theory


This image comes from my presentation on writing for business called Professional Writing
for the Unprofessional Writer.

First, I need to apply the iceberg theory—the idea that good writing should only reveal about one eighth of a writer’s knowledge of the subject—to your blogging strategy. Peter Turchi, in his book, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, quotes Hemingway on the concept of the “literary” iceberg:

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows… If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of all those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them… [But] if a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.
- ERNEST HEMINGWAY

A corporate blog should reinforce this idea. I believe that the value of a blog is in the long-term relationship that is built between it’s author and readers. Blogs take a cumulative approach to tell an ongoing story with many short posts. They are relational. When someone subscribes to a blog, they are making a commitment to getting to know you—one they can break at any point (and are likely to) when a blog loses or never develops focus. The story that is told by a blog, though, is one that, when looked at in retrospect, leaves an impression of the writer’s interest and expertise on the reader. At any point in time, I can look at some of the blogs I read regularly and have a sense for who the authors are and what they’re about. The seven eighths of the “iceberg” are in that impression, while the one eighth is in each individual post. This is why a blog that is focused tightly by a firm’s positioning will be more effective that a “generalist” blog. It will slowly describe that positioning through posts that cover thoughts about practice, new ideas, application of expertise, and the like.

But What About…?

There is an exception to this; you may already be thinking of one. What about those bloggers that write so often that their blog is more of a written document of their thinking—as expansive of or peripheral to their core discipline as it may be—than a deliberately considered marketing tool? There are many, many bloggers like this; you might describe their blogs as “unfocused.” In fact, the blogs I look forward to reading most are blogs of this kind. But that’s because they arefocused, just not in an immediately discernible way. I call the authors of these blogs “mad scientists” because their creative license, freedom to experiment and ask “dumb” questions, latitude, and diversity of content reinforce my perception of them as profound thinkers, which in turn reinforces my trust in the quality of their firm’s work. They probably don’t talk about work they’ve done as much as work they want to do. They probably talk about tomorrow more than yesterday. They don’t use much marketing language. And they never try to sell “innovation.”

Design is one of those disciplines that must aggregate knowledge from a wide range of other disciplines in order to properly inform its execution. In turn, good designers are deep thinkers and lifelong students of other areas of knowledge. So it tends to be the case that every good firm has a “mad scientist” on staff, either in a particular person or personified by a stated and supported core value of practice. This person’s thinking influence the kind of client a firm attracts, the kind of work it does, and the kind of people that come there to work. A person who fits this description should probably be one of your active bloggers because the ongoing story they tell will be an extremely valuable one to the perception of your firm as a thoughtful, cutting edge practice with a vision to guide its clients into the future.

Examples

Here are a few people I read that fit in with the “mad scientist” description (in no particular order other than how they come up in my feed reader): David Sherwin, Jack Cheng, Paul Isakson,Russell Davies, Jonathan Harris, Michael Babwahsingh, Steven Frank, and Craig Mod.

Posted at 11:39am and tagged with: blogging, writing, design, web, web-content-strategy,.

The “Mad Scientist” Blogger Many of our agency friends have been blogging for a few years now, but it’s been about as effective a strategy as attending a networking mixer; most companies know instinctively that they need to be there, but they just don’t know exactly why, what they will bring to the conversation, or what they’ll do with the experience. As a result, many agency blogs are pretty unfocused. Some are mostly “neat stuff” aggregators, while others are “innovationspeak” engines running on the Taco Bell model—you know, same words, different combinations. Few actually know what they’re about. This month’s upcoming newsletter is going to be about how to improve your blog—make it accurately represent your firm, educate your prospects, and generate new interest in what you offer. In the meantime though, I’ve been thinking about a way that some agencies have used their blog that I call the “mad scientist” strategy. Let me explain… The Iceberg Theory This image comes from my presentation on writing for business called Professional Writingfor the Unprofessional Writer. First, I need to apply the iceberg theory—the idea that good writing should only reveal about one eighth of a writer’s knowledge of the subject—to your blogging strategy. Peter Turchi, in his book, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, quotes Hemingway on the concept of the “literary” iceberg: I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows… If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of all those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them… [But] if a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.- ERNEST HEMINGWAY A corporate blog should reinforce this idea. I believe that the value of a blog is in the long-term relationship that is built between it’s author and readers. Blogs take a cumulative approach to tell an ongoing story with many short posts. They are relational. When someone subscribes to a blog, they are making a commitment to getting to know you—one they can break at any point (and are likely to) when a blog loses or never develops focus. The story that is told by a blog, though, is one that, when looked at in retrospect, leaves an impression of the writer’s interest and expertise on the reader. At any point in time, I can look at some of the blogs I read regularly and have a sense for who the authors are and what they’re about. The seven eighths of the “iceberg” are in that impression, while the one eighth is in each individual post. This is why a blog that is focused tightly by a firm’s positioning will be more effective that a “generalist” blog. It will slowly describe that positioning through posts that cover thoughts about practice, new ideas, application of expertise, and the like. But What About…? There is an exception to this; you may already be thinking of one. What about those bloggers that write so often that their blog is more of a written document of their thinking—as expansive of or peripheral to their core discipline as it may be—than a deliberately considered marketing tool? There are many, many bloggers like this; you might describe their blogs as “unfocused.” In fact, the blogs I look forward to reading most are blogs of this kind. But that’s because they arefocused, just not in an immediately discernible way. I call the authors of these blogs “mad scientists” because their creative license, freedom to experiment and ask “dumb” questions, latitude, and diversity of content reinforce my perception of them as profound thinkers, which in turn reinforces my trust in the quality of their firm’s work. They probably don’t talk about work they’ve done as much as work they want to do. They probably talk about tomorrow more than yesterday. They don’t use much marketing language. And they never try to sell “innovation.” Design is one of those disciplines that must aggregate knowledge from a wide range of other disciplines in order to properly inform its execution. In turn, good designers are deep thinkers and lifelong students of other areas of knowledge. So it tends to be the case that every good firm has a “mad scientist” on staff, either in a particular person or personified by a stated and supported core value of practice. This person’s thinking influence the kind of client a firm attracts, the kind of work it does, and the kind of people that come there to work. A person who fits this description should probably be one of your active bloggers because the ongoing story they tell will be an extremely valuable one to the perception of your firm as a thoughtful, cutting edge practice with a vision to guide its clients into the future. Examples Here are a few people I read that fit in with the “mad scientist” description (in no particular order other than how they come up in my feed reader): David Sherwin, Jack Cheng, Paul Isakson,Russell Davies, Jonathan Harris, Michael Babwahsingh, Steven Frank, and Craig Mod.

November 18th 2009

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Visualizing Blogging Activity

I have a hypothesis that our company is much like an ecosystem—comprised of many areas ofunseen activity in addition to the very visible activity. With that in mind, I’ve been collecting data for the past few weeks that is a bit different from what I might normally look at (i.e. website and financial data). I want to see what unknown connections there might be between what we do intentionally and what we do unintentionally.

The graph above, containing one set of data from my “peripheral data collection” of late, shows the number of blog posts we’ve published since starting the Newfangled blog back in October, 2006. Throughout these three years, we’ve never had any established quota for publishing frequency, so I wondered what conclusions I might be able to make from looking at post frequency from the beginning until now. One immediate conclusion I can make is that this is not a large enough sample of data to support identifying significant cycles. There are only two full years represented, and the truth of the matter is that our blogging was fairly inconsistent during those three years for pretty discernable reasons. The first is due to population. From 2007 through 2009, we added 9 new employees to our team, all of whom have contributed to the blog. We also lost a few who blogged from time to time. The second is due to a sense of purpose. When we first started, many of our post were culturally oriented, “look-what-I-found” kinds of posts. It wasn’t really until July of 2008, when I published a post called Newfangled Blogging 2.0 that we really began to focus our efforts. In fact, July of 2008 was a time when we were focusing on defining a web content strategy in earnest, blogging being just one piece. After that, we started to plan our writing- identifying topics we wanted to see covered in the blog, making the frequency more consistent and encouraging more people to write. We’ve been moderately successful in that; our production schedule does make it a challenge to do all that we want to do. But, we’re getting the hang of it.

Note, for example, the May-June-July pattern that shows up in 2008 and repeats in 2009. That’s an interesting trend. It used to be that summers were a slower time at Newfangled. But since 2007, summers have been the opposite. They’ve been very, very busy, so I’m not surprised to see the decrease in blogging at the outset of that season. I also wonder if we’ll uncover a similar pattern in October-November-December. Time will tell.

Posted at 9:00am and tagged with: infographic, information-synthesis, blogging, graph,.

Visualizing Blogging Activity I have a hypothesis that our company is much like an ecosystem—comprised of many areas ofunseen activity in addition to the very visible activity. With that in mind, I’ve been collecting data for the past few weeks that is a bit different from what I might normally look at (i.e. website and financial data). I want to see what unknown connections there might be between what we do intentionally and what we do unintentionally. The graph above, containing one set of data from my “peripheral data collection” of late, shows the number of blog posts we’ve published since starting the Newfangled blog back in October, 2006. Throughout these three years, we’ve never had any established quota for publishing frequency, so I wondered what conclusions I might be able to make from looking at post frequency from the beginning until now. One immediate conclusion I can make is that this is not a large enough sample of data to support identifying significant cycles. There are only two full years represented, and the truth of the matter is that our blogging was fairly inconsistent during those three years for pretty discernable reasons. The first is due to population. From 2007 through 2009, we added 9 new employees to our team, all of whom have contributed to the blog. We also lost a few who blogged from time to time. The second is due to a sense of purpose. When we first started, many of our post were culturally oriented, “look-what-I-found” kinds of posts. It wasn’t really until July of 2008, when I published a post called Newfangled Blogging 2.0 that we really began to focus our efforts. In fact, July of 2008 was a time when we were focusing on defining a web content strategy in earnest, blogging being just one piece. After that, we started to plan our writing- identifying topics we wanted to see covered in the blog, making the frequency more consistent and encouraging more people to write. We’ve been moderately successful in that; our production schedule does make it a challenge to do all that we want to do. But, we’re getting the hang of it. Note, for example, the May-June-July pattern that shows up in 2008 and repeats in 2009. That’s an interesting trend. It used to be that summers were a slower time at Newfangled. But since 2007, summers have been the opposite. They’ve been very, very busy, so I’m not surprised to see the decrease in blogging at the outset of that season. I also wonder if we’ll uncover a similar pattern in October-November-December. Time will tell.

November 6th 2009

The ThreatenedVoices project is currently tracking 185 cases of threatened or arrested bloggers in countries across the globe.

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A project of GlobalVoices Advocacy:

A collaborative mapping project to build a database of bloggers who have been threatened, arrested or killed for speaking out online and to draw attention to the campaigns to free them.

Posted at 2:07pm and tagged with: blogging,.

October 28th 2009

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Chris Gray

Posted at 2:49pm and tagged with: quote, blogging,.

“
I probably spend an unhealthy amount of time on blogs, to the point where I waste hours looking at the same thing on about 200 different pages. Which did me get me to thinking about what I did before there was countless websites all doing the same thing yet are all equally popular. From working in a big studio environment and seeing the studio grind to a halt when the net dies to working for myself trying to be disciplined enough to not click safari every time I get a spare minute. There seems to be a total reliance on being able to surf the web as part of being a designer. Surely it can’t be a good thing that most of us are all getting the same inspiration from the same places. No wonder everyones work is starting to look the same. Every week I get e-mails from students that are carbon copies of a recent post and I wish I could reach through my monitor and give them a right old slap. Not to mention that every second advert on TV seems to be cack handed rip-off from something good found on a blog. I’m sure I’m not the only one who hasn’t forgotten the Berocca advert. So that’s me done. I’ve managed to convince myself that it would do me no harm from being offline. Well. At least until tomorrow.
”