Last week, I asked the question whether it was ethical to edit spam comments to get rid of the URL that is being used to generate some SEO juice for the spammers, but leave the semi-spammy comment in place.
Now THAT'S a lot of Spam
I expected some vigorous debate and discussion with people on both sides of the argument. But with a couple of exceptions, everyone said, “No, this is not okay!”
(Before I go on, let me say, we got some wonderful feedback and comments, so I want to thank everyone who took the time to read the post and respond.)
I was actually surprised by the near unanimous stance everyone took. I figured it would be more of an even split on the issue, with a large number of people saying they thought it was okay to beat the spammers by using their own energies against them, sort of a blogging jiu jitsu. But, nearly everyone was of the opinion that we, as real bloggers, should be above this, and should not resort to the same practices as the spammers.
Erik, I think deleting them is the best option. Editing them just so you can keep a “semi-generic praise-ish” comment doesn’t seem right. Is it that important to receive praise, especially if it is not “legitimate” anyway. I think the ethical debate rests more in the decision to keep known spam comments – minus the links – just to make it look like people like your blog.
That was the majority opinion, and made the most sense. And it seemed to cover most types of blog comments, although Daniel Clark of GeekDadsWeekly.com made an interesting point:
It’s interesting that not a single person here, most notably the ones who say they will strip any and all links left in their blog’s comments, has opted out of including *their* link in *these* comments.
(Touché, Daniel.)
The Other Side of the Debate: Editing for Spelling & Punctuation
However, one person, an ethics blogger, said on his blog that he did not think it was inappropriate to edit typos and grammar errors in another person’s comment. But I disagree. That’s a line I won’t cross. It’s not up to me to fix someone’s spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors. They’re their errors, not mine, and they should not be fixed because I have to have everything perfect.
A post and its comments are a historical record, to show what people were thinking and saying at that time. If they make a mistake, it’s not my place to adjust the historical record because I have a weird fixation on spelling and grammar.
(And no, I don’t think spammers deserve to be a part of the historical record.)
That’s why most bloggers will fix an error in information by striking out the error and writing the correct information next to it. They will also put an Update: note at the bottom of the post, so people can see that the information has been updated and corrected. (Note: this doesn’t extend to typos and misspellings. I think we can fix those without telling everyone “I fixed a typo.”)
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
A couple weeks ago, Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot’s blog manager, talked to Google’s chief blogger, Karen Wickre about corporate blogging, and the important things companies need to do when taking the plunge into blogging.
Wickre says the most important thing a company new to blogging should do is to get a feel for what’s out there, and consider what they would want their blog to say. A blog could be personal, could be about thought leadership, or could focus on customer service. But find the blog’s voice, and stick with it, she says.
While that’s important, I don’t think it’s the most important thing. In some ways, that issue is going to resolve itself as time goes by.
I believe the most important thing about corporate blogging is that a blog will “establish ground for the company.” Wickre said a good company blog should do all these things:
Do most posts offer useful or unique information?
Do they reflect the company’s values and interests?
Do they demonstrate the people behind the company/products?
Wickre had other good points for corporate bloggers to consider, but for me, this was the biggest. We try to get our clients to see that their blog needs to be more than just a commercial, or a catalog. Yes, you can have those kinds of posts, but you also need to tell your customers about your company. You need to show what you stand for, how you work, why you work. You need to answer questions about your company, your products, and your values. You need to introduce your staff to your customers, and let them develop relationships. (Remember, people buy from people they like. If they like your staff, they’ll like your company, and they’ll buy from you.)
Your corporate blog is more than just a marketing mouthpiece. It’s not a cheap form of sales literature. It’s the window into your company and possibly one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. So find the voice, jump in, and you’ll answer all Wickre’s questions as time goes by.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Anyone can write a basic blog. It’s not that hard. And I’ve talked for hours, whether at seminars or at a one-on-one “brain picking” session about basic blog writing. But I rarely get the chance to talk about advanced blogging, the secrets that I use to improve my blog, and make it stand out from the hundreds of thousands of basic blogs.
This is a good book to use for advanced blogging. At least until I write my own.
Here are 10 advanced blog writing techniques we use for our clients and ourselves.
Use WordPress.org: I don’t have anything against platforms like Blogspot.com, WordPress.com, or Posterous.com (I have blogs on all three). But WordPress.org is what a lot of the pros use, because it’s extremely customizable and you can improve its functionality with a few plug-ins.
Use a search engine optimization plug-in: We use All in One SEO Pack and Zemanta. Both of these let us do some additional optimization on our articles, which is something the other blog platforms don’t do as well.
Choose 1 – 2 keywords or phrases per post: Stick with the mantra, “one idea, one keyword, one post, one day.” This post is about the keyword phrase “blog writing techniques,” and nothing else. Not about choosing topics, not about winning readers, not about whether video or photos help with readership, it’s just about how you actually write posts. By doing this, I not only boost my SEO efforts, but I don’t overload people with information.
Write catchy, dramatic headlines: Your headline needs to be catchy, interesting, and compelling. Include phrases like “10 Secrets” or “5 Tips” to fire peoples’ interest. Also, be sure to use your exact keyword phrase in the title for better SEO.
Watch your keyword density: Density means the percentage ratio of keywords to copy. This particular article has about a 1% keyword density (1 keyword every 100 words). If the number is below 1%, search engines might not realize what your post is about. Anything over 2 %- 3% could be seen as keyword stuffing, and the search engines could drop you. Shoot for 1.5% – 1.99%. Divide the number of keywords by the total number of words to figure density.
Automate your cross-posting: Use services like Twitterfeed.com and Ping.fm to promote your posts to your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, and 40 other social networks. It will save you several minutes every time you publish a post.
Use analytics to determine how your effectiveness: This lets you see where your traffic is coming from, what brought them there, and how long they stayed. You may learn that a particular keyword is getting a lot of traffic, so you write about that topic again. Or that a particular website is sending a lot of traffic, so you work to get published on that site again. I like Google Analytics for solid analytics.
Publish your blog 2 – 3 times a week: Everyone who starts blogging has great intentions, but life intrudes and this resolution gets broken like it’s January 3rd. If you want to excel at blogging, you must write more than once a week. Schedule an hour a day to write, or schedule a three hour block, and write all your posts in advance.
Become a fast writer: Writing fast means being able to find the best words and assemble 400 of them in 20 minutes. If you can’t do this, focus on those things that are holding you back, and work to overcome them. Being able to write fast will also help you publish more frequently.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Whither goest the newspaperman, that bastion of bulletins, that purveyor of print?
He is, I’m afraid, about to be swallowed up by the electronic era.
When I was in college, I wanted to be a reporter. I wanted my stories to be delivered with a thwack! on the front porch. To be folded up and carried in a suit pocket. To be clipped and stuck to the fridge. I wanted to use words like “lede” and “slug line.” I wanted to rip my story out of a typewriter, and shout “COPY!” (I used to do this when I wrote for my college newspaper, to great laughs from my editor.)
Sadly, it was not to be. Instead, I work as a professional blogger, and am looked down on by “real” journalists at “real” newspapers. (Full disclosure: I am also a newspaper humor columnist, appearing in 10 weekly print newspapers around the state. So there.)
Last year, 53 weeks ago in fact, I wrote a humor column about Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, who wrote his own column sneering at bloggers with:
I DON’T have a blog. If I did blog, this is what it would be like. (To make it seem like a real blog, I’ll include typos and factual errors.)
I would link to Stu’s original column, but it, like most of his fellow newspaper reporters, are no longer available. They have been cast aside, presumably to make room for newer, more up-to-date pieces.
Bykofsky, who is perhaps best known for saying this country “need(s) another 9/11” needs to realize that blogging is not going to go away. Newspapers, on the other hand, are fast disappearing from our landscape. I think reporters would do well to rethink their attitude.
It’s funny when journalists mock (blogging). It’s also funny when people about to be eaten by a bear mock the bear.
Huppke’s quote was originally about Twitter, but mocking a bear is mocking a bear.
So what are the journalists’ complaints about blogging? That we didn’t go to journalism school? They’re teaching electronic media writing in J-school right now. That our pieces aren’t properly fact-checked and vetted by editors? Disgraced plagiarizerfabricatorNew York Times reporter Jayson Blair could tell you a thing or two about that. Or is it that our stories aren’t printed on dead trees? I found Bykofsky’s original column online.
Citizen journalists — the people who are picking up the slack that the mainstream media are missing — have taken to the web to cover the news and write about the issues that journalists have been missing. If they’re not former journalists who became bloggers, they’re learning how to do proper journalism. The really good citizen journalists are writing stories that are just as good, if not better, than a lot of the mainstream media stories.
These modern day pamphleteers share the news and their opinions via a blog instead of a printing press. And while they are still looked down on, these citizen journalists have uncovered a lot of stories that Byofsky and his ilk have ignored, overlooked, or scorned. We’re breaking the news before The News does.
Griping about bloggers is nothing but pure elitism. Snob journalism at its finest. When children start playing a game, it’s not uncommon for the child on the losing team to pout, whine, and make excuses for why he’s playing poorly. And Bykofsky’s blogging gripes make him sound like he’s taking his ball and going home.
The newspaper industry has been in decline ever since the advent of radio and TV news. It slipped further into decline when Craigslist became popular. And now, blogging is threatening to be the final stake through print journalism’s heart.
We’ve seen significant gutting at our local paper ( the Indianapolis Star will now be laid out in Louisville. Sounds about right for Gannett.), and journalists are being thrown overboard left and right.
A friend of mine worked for the Associated Press in Indianapolis, and was let go right before Christmas 2009, after 17 years of service. Why? The AP was losing money because fewer newspapers were licensing their content. So rather than stick with the professional who had the most experience and best judgment, they let him go in favor of someone with a lower salary and less experience. In another state.
So we have younger, less experienced journalists — remotely — running our country’s newsrooms, and it’s bloggers who are being dismissed out of hand as Not Real Journalists?
I’m sad to be watching all of this unravel. I think the decline of the big city American print newspaper is one of the great tragedies of our time. But I also see the future of the industry, and if it’s going to survive, it’s going to be online, not on dead trees.
Journalists need to stop deriding blogging, and embrace it instead. Learn how to do it now, rather than watching it pass by. You can either mock the bear or turn and face it. Otherwise, your next byline will be from the south end of a north-bound bear.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
One of the best things travel and tourism destinations can use for social media marketing is blogging. It’s a way to share content that:
is easy to update. Writing a blog post is as easy as writing an email.
helps with search engine ranking. Search engines love blog content.
will last for years. Your content can be found years later by interested visitors.
So here are the four things you can do with your blog to help market your tourism destination to your visitors.
1. Tell stories about the stuff your guests are doing.
Rather than just describe the activities that are available at your destination, talk about the things your guests have been doing. Write it more like one of the old weekly newspaper columns that used to tell us when the town’s citizens had visited each other.
The stories should talk about some of the stuff the guests are doing. Do a quick interview with them, find out the favorite part of their activity, and write a brief synopsis of what they did. Include some photos if possible (see #2).
We just heard from David and Sharon A. about the round of golf they played this morning. Sharon is a fair golfer and scored a 91, although David (89) is still recovering from a back injury. David said that while the course was a little challenging, he still couldn’t make it out of the water trap on the 13th hole.
Meanwhile, the Robins just returned from their horseback ride, on Morgan and Shadow. Morgan is always a gentle horse, which is good, because David Robins has never ridden before. They spent the morning out on the trail and stopped for a picnic lunch out on Oak Lookout.
It’s just a short post, and people may not really care about what the families are doing (more on that in a minute), but the people who have gotten caught in the 13th hole water trap, ridden Morgan, or had a picnic lunch on Oak Lookout are going to have their own memories of the place, and will remember the great times they had. (However, the families who are mentioned in your post may also tell their friends about your blog entry, and they’ll get to read about your place as well.
But your blog is also an easy place to share those photos and videos. Choose the embed code for your album or video, and paste it into a blog post. You can use this content to reinforce the text you’re writing about, and increase the impact of your posts. Plus, videos and photos embedded on your blog will help your search engine rankings
3. Talk about behind-the-scenes stuff.
Think about your good friends, the ones you really like. How much do you know about their lives, the stuff they don’t tell just everyone? Probably quite a bit. And it’s that non-public knowledge that probably makes you feel closer. You can do the same thing on your blog.
Inn-Bedded Resorter Martin Earley is spending two months at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel as their social media guy. He’s been enjoying all the amenities the guests get to use, but he’s also giving people a behind-the-scenes look at The Balsams. You can see a video of the kitchen during a dinner rush, but he has also spent time with the cleaning staff, and will also spend one night working security.
He’s showing regular and potential guests how things work around the place, so people will understand a little better how their favorite New England resort works, but also so they feel a little closer to it, and will want to return again and again.
4. Write it as a letter.
The biggest mistake beginning bloggers make is writing for posterity. They imagine thousands of readers, book editors, and critics, all poring over their blog. As a result, the posts sound stilted and forced, the language is wooden, and the whole thing sounds like it was written by a marketing committee.
Don’t write it for those people, write it for one person. Pick your favorite guest, your best friend from high school, or your mom. Write it in the same friendly tone as if this was only being read by that one person. In fact, start your post out with “Dear Sharon” or “Dear Mom.” Then, write the post to Sharon or your mom. When you’re finished, go back and delete the salutation. The tone of the post will come across as casual, friendly, and personal. The net result is more people will enjoy reading it, and they’ll want to come back every time you publish a new post.
Photo credit: Erik Deckers (Disclosure: I am a travel writer for the Indiana Tourism Department’s Blog, Indiana Insider.)
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
I speak to a lot of travel and tourism destinations about social media, and often answer the same question, “why do we even need social media?” There are several reasons, so before I ever start talking about how you can do social media, let’s focus on the why first.
Patoka Lake in southern Indiana
Generation Y loooooves social media. Last year, Gen Y outnumbered Boomers 81 million to 78 million in this country. And while Gen Y doesn’t buy as many vacations as Boomers, they ARE responsible for about $2 – $3 billion in spending each year. They influence things like the family’s car purchase, where the family goes to eat, and of course, where the family goes on vacation. Combine that with the fact that nearly 96% of Generation Y is on a social network of some kind, and you start to see who you need to reach.
Boomers are huge consumers of social media too. While Generation Y is the biggest demographic on Facebook (which will tip the scales at 500 million members in the next couple of weeks), the fastest growing demographic is women between the ages of 50 – 60. And they’re on the network telling their friends about their kids and grandkids, catching up with old friends, sharing glimpses of their lives, and of course, telling their friends where they went on vacation. And they’re sharing photos and videos of those memories.
Social Media is free. All of the major social networks are free to join, and free to use. You can join Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube right now, and get started. Of course, there’s a significant amount of time involved, but if you can find even 30 minutes a day to do your social media marketing, you’ll make a huge dent in your campaign, and be miles ahead of your competition. We’ll talk about how to do this in a future post.
Social media lets others do the work for you Facebook, YouTube (video sharing), and Flickr and Picasa (photo sharing) are all considered social networks. And they make it easy for people to share information about their vacation. They upload photos and videos to their sites, and share them on Facebook. As their friends see where they went, they think about going there too. So they’re doing your marketing for you via word-of-mouth. Cost to you? Nothing
Social media is about telling a story. People don’t want to see newspaper ads or read brochures. They want stories. They want proof. They want to know what other people are doing at your place. Don’t just tell people you offer water skiing or horseback riding, show them other guests who are riding horses or water skiing. Let your other guests tell stories about how much they enjoyed it. Tell people your stories, let your guests tell their own stories, and then share them through your social network. Again, cost to you? Nothing.
Social media is fast becoming the way people share information and news about themselves. We are becoming a society that values the opinions of our friends — and even online strangers — more than we value the marketers’ opinions. Social media lets you do all of that quickly and easily. We’ll show you how in the coming days and weeks.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
I hate vision statements, statements of purpose, guiding principles, mottoes, and business raison d’etres.
That’s because most of them suck. They’re bland, boring, and don’t tell me a single thing about what a company does. Seth Godin found a doozy back in 2005:
It was so bad the company removed it from its website.
Now here’s a good mission statement:
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. — Conan the Barbarian
There is no doubt what Conan’s mission in life is. He wants to do one thing, and do it well. Anything else is a distraction that must be dealt with (which, in Conan’s case, involves sword play and eventual dismemberment.)
So why do companies write bad mission statements? Partly because they lose focus. Partly because they don’t want to offend anyone. And partly because they let more than one person write it, usually not the person in charge.
According to a 2008 article in Fast Company, AOL had a mission statement on a plaque in their lobby: (T)o build a global medium as central to people’s lives as the telephone or television… and even more valuable.
Once they accomplished that, and had become one of the media powerhouses of the new century, they asked a committee (GAAH!) to write a new mission statement. They came up with: To serve the world’s most engaged community.”
Seriously? It took more than one person to create that? Something that generic, bland, uninspiring, and just plain emotionally limp took an entire team of people? I’d bet they even met more than once to create it.
It is, as Fast Company said, “a creed that could just as well suit a Hardee’s.” While I don’t think this is what contributed to AOL’s downfall, they certainly lost their way from becoming “central to people’s lives… and even more valuable.” Life imitates art, and mission statements imitate corporate attitude.
Mission statements should inspire and motivate. They’re a battle cry, calling the organization to great and noble things. They’re not some namby-pamby, floppy, pitiful excuse for a gathering of words. They should be the very foundation of what that organization stands for.
NASA made that one statement their goal, and were successful six months before the end of the decade. That’s because they had a definable goal, a single principle to stand behind. They could look at any activity, idea, or program and ask, “will it help us land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth?” If it would, it stayed. If it didn’t, it was rejected.
So what does your company believe in? Is it something generic and noncommittal? The business version of “we should do something sometime?” Or is it loud and proud, demanding crushing and lamenting?
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
South African blogger Arthur Charles Van Wyk thinks Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg is just a bit crazy when she says that email is going to die off, because only 11% of teens are using email these days. (You can watch the video below.)
Email is not obsolete. Not yet, anyway.
The premise is an interesting one: if you want to figure out what kind of consumer technology we’ll be using in several years, look at what the teens are using right now. And the teens aren’t using email, they’re using SMS on cell phones, or they’re using social networks like Facebook.
Does this mean that we will all write in text speak? Will sexting become an appropriate form of communication?
I don’t care what anyone says. Email is not, NOT NOT going to die off. Here are 5 reasons email is not going away:
Email is widely used in the business world. We’ve got so many companies using it, it’s never going to be dislodged, at least not in my lifetime. Until someone finds an easier way to transfer large documents and files only to specific individuals, it’s going to be the communication tool of choice. Can you see corporations — many of whom were reluctant to start letting people get email addresses and Internet access in the first place — dropping a tool that they fought against adopting? They’re still using fax machines, for God’s sake! So, sure teenagers aren’t using it now, but wait until they get assimilated into the corporate collective. They’ll be forced to use it whether they want to or not.
How do you get notified when you get a new friend, get tagged in a photo, have someone comment on your status update? Right now it’s by email. Do you really want your phone to buzz every time someone wants to be your Farmville friend on Facebook, or responds to someone else’s status update? While everyone likes their mobile phones, getting buzzed by an abundance of social network messages is going to get tiresome.
Our mobile phones can only hold so many texts. I have emails from 5 years ago that I still need to keep, but I can’t say the same for text messages. But if I did what happens if my cell phone gets too full? And then what if I lose it? Sure, those things can be saved in the cloud, but that’s where my email messages are anyway. Plus, my emails are easier to organize and search for.
Mobile phones and text messages are not ideal for important communications. While email may be less formal than, say, a certified letter, it’s more formal than a text message. What kind of damage are you doing to your personal brand if you tell a potential employer, “just text me,” especially if you’re someone who got a cell number that spells a naughty word? Or what if you got a job offer (or didn’t)? Do you want to get “Dude, u r not hired. Sry. Better luck nxt time” from an employer? Communicating with people who will be important to your life needs to be done in a way that’s more dignified than a cell phone.
Email is free, text messaging is not. I have to pay $10 every month to get unlimited texting, but my Gmail account is free. Admittedly neither cell phones nor computers are in every home in this country, but while text messages still cost money — even though they cost the cell carriers nothing to send (don’t get me started on that!) — it’s going to be a barrier for people to adopt it wholesale around the country
Email may not be the communication tool of choice, but it’s not going anywhere. And while SMS will become more prevalent in this country, I don’t believe it’s going to kill email, and I think people who say so are doing it for shock. We haven’t even killed postal mail, and yet the hip thing to do is to declare the death of free mail?
Kill off postal mail first, and then I’m more likely to believe you.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
I was having lunch with a friend last week, and he posed an interesting question: “how do you build your personal brand without evoking a ‘who cares’ attitude?”
Unfortunately, as people start growing their personal brand via social media, they’re just boring the bejeezus out of the rest of us. Here are five things you should be doing to avoid boring your network, and earning the reputation of “oh jeez, not this yawn-fest.”
Dude, you're boring!
Post things as they are happening. Give your content stream a sense of immediacy, to help people feel they are really there. Don’t tweet that you got stuck in traffic two hours after you got home; send a tweet that traffic is bad on a particular road (only if you’re completely stopped, please). Tweet about your experiences at a conference as they happen, not afterward.
Blend your personal and your work life. Rather than limiting yourself to being all work or all play, be both. No one truly expects you to only focus on work things, or expects you to only play and spend time with your family. Anyone who gets annoyed that you’re merging the other into your social media stream has unrealistic expectations, and is probably not worth staying connected to. It’s okay to tell your work friends when you have a personal victory you want to tell them about, and it’s okay to tell your social friends when something great happened at work. By blending the two parts of your life, you’re showing you’re a whole person.
Don’t focus strictly on one issue. If you decide not to do the work-life blend, at least make sure you’re not talking about the same thing over and over. We like that you’re sharing the joys of your new child, but we don’t want to see every single photo you take, to hear about everything the baby did, or how much you love your new bundle of joy. Similarly, don’t tell us about that one work or industry issue, every single meeting you have about it, or every journal and blog article you read about it. If you tell us about your personal life, tell us more than what your children are doing. If you tell us about work, tell us more than that one big issue you’ve been dealing with for six months.
Share, share, share. While it may seem easy to promote yourself and all the cool things you’re doing, if you spend all your time doing that, then you’re just as boring as that date you went on when the other person kept talking about themselves. Instead talk about other people, share what they’re doing, promote their ideas and their blog posts, and retweet the interesting articles they’re reading (retweet this article while you’re at it). Tell us what you think is cool, what you find interesting. The people you’re talking about will take notice and do the same for you.
Just accept the fact that you’re always going to bore somebody. I’d love to think that people hang on my every word, and eagerly await every tweet, blog post, and Facebook update, but they don’t. My personal friends don’t care about my work content, and my work friends don’t care what I do with my kids on the weekend.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
I just published a new ebook, Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators. I wrote it after giving a presentation to a public health conference, and realizing that many of them did not even have access to the different social media tools.
So I based it on several blog posts I’ve posted here, as well as some new information. The ebook is free, and there is both a PDF version and a Kindle version available.
About the Author: Erik Deckers Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
No, It’s NOT Okay To Edit Spam Comments
Last week, I asked the question whether it was ethical to edit spam comments to get rid of the URL that is being used to generate some SEO juice for the spammers, but leave the semi-spammy comment in place.
Now THAT'S a lot of Spam
I expected some vigorous debate and discussion with people on both sides of the argument. But with a couple of exceptions, everyone said, “No, this is not okay!”
(Before I go on, let me say, we got some wonderful feedback and comments, so I want to thank everyone who took the time to read the post and respond.)
I was actually surprised by the near unanimous stance everyone took. I figured it would be more of an even split on the issue, with a large number of people saying they thought it was okay to beat the spammers by using their own energies against them, sort of a blogging jiu jitsu. But, nearly everyone was of the opinion that we, as real bloggers, should be above this, and should not resort to the same practices as the spammers.
Fellow blogger Brian Shelton summed it up best.
That was the majority opinion, and made the most sense. And it seemed to cover most types of blog comments, although Daniel Clark of GeekDadsWeekly.com made an interesting point:
(Touché, Daniel.)
The Other Side of the Debate: Editing for Spelling & Punctuation
However, one person, an ethics blogger, said on his blog that he did not think it was inappropriate to edit typos and grammar errors in another person’s comment. But I disagree. That’s a line I won’t cross. It’s not up to me to fix someone’s spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors. They’re their errors, not mine, and they should not be fixed because I have to have everything perfect.
A post and its comments are a historical record, to show what people were thinking and saying at that time. If they make a mistake, it’s not my place to adjust the historical record because I have a weird fixation on spelling and grammar.
(And no, I don’t think spammers deserve to be a part of the historical record.)
That’s why most bloggers will fix an error in information by
striking outthe error and writing the correct information next to it. They will also put an Update: note at the bottom of the post, so people can see that the information has been updated and corrected. (Note: this doesn’t extend to typos and misspellings. I think we can fix those without telling everyone “I fixed a typo.”)Photo credit: Freezelight (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog writing, blogging, comments, ethics
Posted in Blog Writing, Blogging, Communication, Writing | View Comments
Corporate Blogging’s Chief Purpose from Google’s Chief Blogger
A couple weeks ago, Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot’s blog manager, talked to Google’s chief blogger, Karen Wickre about corporate blogging, and the important things companies need to do when taking the plunge into blogging.
Wickre says the most important thing a company new to blogging should do is to get a feel for what’s out there, and consider what they would want their blog to say. A blog could be personal, could be about thought leadership, or could focus on customer service. But find the blog’s voice, and stick with it, she says.
While that’s important, I don’t think it’s the most important thing. In some ways, that issue is going to resolve itself as time goes by.
I believe the most important thing about corporate blogging is that a blog will “establish ground for the company.” Wickre said a good company blog should do all these things:
Wickre had other good points for corporate bloggers to consider, but for me, this was the biggest. We try to get our clients to see that their blog needs to be more than just a commercial, or a catalog. Yes, you can have those kinds of posts, but you also need to tell your customers about your company. You need to show what you stand for, how you work, why you work. You need to answer questions about your company, your products, and your values. You need to introduce your staff to your customers, and let them develop relationships. (Remember, people buy from people they like. If they like your staff, they’ll like your company, and they’ll buy from you.)
Your corporate blog is more than just a marketing mouthpiece. It’s not a cheap form of sales literature. It’s the window into your company and possibly one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. So find the voice, jump in, and you’ll answer all Wickre’s questions as time goes by.
Photo credit: DannySullivan (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, business blogging, corporate blogging, Google
Posted in Blog ROI, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Marketing | View Comments
10 Advanced Blog Writing Techniques Used By Professional Bloggers
Anyone can write a basic blog. It’s not that hard. And I’ve talked for hours, whether at seminars or at a one-on-one “brain picking” session about basic blog writing. But I rarely get the chance to talk about advanced blogging, the secrets that I use to improve my blog, and make it stand out from the hundreds of thousands of basic blogs.
This is a good book to use for advanced blogging. At least until I write my own.
Here are 10 advanced blog writing techniques we use for our clients and ourselves.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: advanced blog writing, blog writing techniques, seo, Social Media Analytics, social media promotions, writing
Posted in Blog Writing, Blogging, Communication, Writing | View Comments
Wither Goest the Newspaperman? Why Blogging is Killing Print Media.
Whither goest the newspaperman, that bastion of bulletins, that purveyor of print?
He is, I’m afraid, about to be swallowed up by the electronic era.
When I was in college, I wanted to be a reporter. I wanted my stories to be delivered with a thwack! on the front porch. To be folded up and carried in a suit pocket. To be clipped and stuck to the fridge. I wanted to use words like “lede” and “slug line.” I wanted to rip my story out of a typewriter, and shout “COPY!” (I used to do this when I wrote for my college newspaper, to great laughs from my editor.)
Sadly, it was not to be. Instead, I work as a professional blogger, and am looked down on by “real” journalists at “real” newspapers. (Full disclosure: I am also a newspaper humor columnist, appearing in 10 weekly print newspapers around the state. So there.)
Last year, 53 weeks ago in fact, I wrote a humor column about Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, who wrote his own column sneering at bloggers with:
I would link to Stu’s original column, but it, like most of his fellow newspaper reporters, are no longer available. They have been cast aside, presumably to make room for newer, more up-to-date pieces.
Bykofsky, who is perhaps best known for saying this country “need(s) another 9/11” needs to realize that blogging is not going to go away. Newspapers, on the other hand, are fast disappearing from our landscape. I think reporters would do well to rethink their attitude.
To paraphrase Chicago humorist Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke):
Huppke’s quote was originally about Twitter, but mocking a bear is mocking a bear.
So what are the journalists’ complaints about blogging? That we didn’t go to journalism school? They’re teaching electronic media writing in J-school right now. That our pieces aren’t properly fact-checked and vetted by editors? Disgraced
plagiarizerfabricatorNew York Times reporter Jayson Blair could tell you a thing or two about that. Or is it that our stories aren’t printed on dead trees? I found Bykofsky’s original column online.Citizen journalists — the people who are picking up the slack that the mainstream media are missing — have taken to the web to cover the news and write about the issues that journalists have been missing. If they’re not former journalists who became bloggers, they’re learning how to do proper journalism. The really good citizen journalists are writing stories that are just as good, if not better, than a lot of the mainstream media stories.
These modern day pamphleteers share the news and their opinions via a blog instead of a printing press. And while they are still looked down on, these citizen journalists have uncovered a lot of stories that Byofsky and his ilk have ignored, overlooked, or scorned. We’re breaking the news before The News does.
Griping about bloggers is nothing but pure elitism. Snob journalism at its finest. When children start playing a game, it’s not uncommon for the child on the losing team to pout, whine, and make excuses for why he’s playing poorly. And Bykofsky’s blogging gripes make him sound like he’s taking his ball and going home.
The newspaper industry has been in decline ever since the advent of radio and TV news. It slipped further into decline when Craigslist became popular. And now, blogging is threatening to be the final stake through print journalism’s heart.
We’ve seen significant gutting at our local paper ( the Indianapolis Star will now be laid out in Louisville. Sounds about right for Gannett.), and journalists are being thrown overboard left and right.
A friend of mine worked for the Associated Press in Indianapolis, and was let go right before Christmas 2009, after 17 years of service. Why? The AP was losing money because fewer newspapers were licensing their content. So rather than stick with the professional who had the most experience and best judgment, they let him go in favor of someone with a lower salary and less experience. In another state.
So we have younger, less experienced journalists — remotely — running our country’s newsrooms, and it’s bloggers who are being dismissed out of hand as Not Real Journalists?
I’m sad to be watching all of this unravel. I think the decline of the big city American print newspaper is one of the great tragedies of our time. But I also see the future of the industry, and if it’s going to survive, it’s going to be online, not on dead trees.
Journalists need to stop deriding blogging, and embrace it instead. Learn how to do it now, rather than watching it pass by. You can either mock the bear or turn and face it. Otherwise, your next byline will be from the south end of a north-bound bear.
For related reading, check out:
Photo credit:
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, columns, mainstream media, media, newspapers, obsolescence
Posted in Blog Writing, Blogging, Communication, Traditional Media, Writing | View Comments
Four Blogging Tips for Travel and Tourism Destinations
One of the best things travel and tourism destinations can use for social media marketing is blogging. It’s a way to share content that:
So here are the four things you can do with your blog to help market your tourism destination to your visitors.
1. Tell stories about the stuff your guests are doing.
Rather than just describe the activities that are available at your destination, talk about the things your guests have been doing. Write it more like one of the old weekly newspaper columns that used to tell us when the town’s citizens had visited each other.
The stories should talk about some of the stuff the guests are doing. Do a quick interview with them, find out the favorite part of their activity, and write a brief synopsis of what they did. Include some photos if possible (see #2).
It’s just a short post, and people may not really care about what the families are doing (more on that in a minute), but the people who have gotten caught in the 13th hole water trap, ridden Morgan, or had a picnic lunch on Oak Lookout are going to have their own memories of the place, and will remember the great times they had. (However, the families who are mentioned in your post may also tell their friends about your blog entry, and they’ll get to read about your place as well.
2. Post your photos and videos.
We talked in a previous post about why travel and tourism destinations should use photo and video sharing sites. The only issue is that you can’t always get people to go to those photo and video sites, especially if you’re uploading hundreds and thousands of photos.
But your blog is also an easy place to share those photos and videos. Choose the embed code for your album or video, and paste it into a blog post. You can use this content to reinforce the text you’re writing about, and increase the impact of your posts. Plus, videos and photos embedded on your blog will help your search engine rankings
3. Talk about behind-the-scenes stuff.
Think about your good friends, the ones you really like. How much do you know about their lives, the stuff they don’t tell just everyone? Probably quite a bit. And it’s that non-public knowledge that probably makes you feel closer. You can do the same thing on your blog.
Inn-Bedded Resorter Martin Earley is spending two months at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel as their social media guy. He’s been enjoying all the amenities the guests get to use, but he’s also giving people a behind-the-scenes look at The Balsams. You can see a video of the kitchen during a dinner rush, but he has also spent time with the cleaning staff, and will also spend one night working security.
He’s showing regular and potential guests how things work around the place, so people will understand a little better how their favorite New England resort works, but also so they feel a little closer to it, and will want to return again and again.
4. Write it as a letter.
The biggest mistake beginning bloggers make is writing for posterity. They imagine thousands of readers, book editors, and critics, all poring over their blog. As a result, the posts sound stilted and forced, the language is wooden, and the whole thing sounds like it was written by a marketing committee.
Don’t write it for those people, write it for one person. Pick your favorite guest, your best friend from high school, or your mom. Write it in the same friendly tone as if this was only being read by that one person. In fact, start your post out with “Dear Sharon” or “Dear Mom.” Then, write the post to Sharon or your mom. When you’re finished, go back and delete the salutation. The tone of the post will come across as casual, friendly, and personal. The net result is more people will enjoy reading it, and they’ll want to come back every time you publish a new post.
Photo credit: Erik Deckers (Disclosure: I am a travel writer for the Indiana Tourism Department’s Blog, Indiana Insider.)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, business blogging, Social Media, social media marketing, tourism blogging, travel and tourism, travel blogging
Posted in Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools | View Comments
5 Reasons Why Travel & Tourism Destinations Need Social Media
I speak to a lot of travel and tourism destinations about social media, and often answer the same question, “why do we even need social media?” There are several reasons, so before I ever start talking about how you can do social media, let’s focus on the why first.
Patoka Lake in southern Indiana
Social media is fast becoming the way people share information and news about themselves. We are becoming a society that values the opinions of our friends — and even online strangers — more than we value the marketers’ opinions. Social media lets you do all of that quickly and easily. We’ll show you how in the coming days and weeks.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: Social Media, tourism, travel, travel destinations
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Lead Generation, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Video | View Comments
Conan the Barbarian Thinks Your Mission Statement Sucks
I hate mission statements.
I hate vision statements, statements of purpose, guiding principles, mottoes, and business raison d’etres.
That’s because most of them suck. They’re bland, boring, and don’t tell me a single thing about what a company does. Seth Godin found a doozy back in 2005:
It was so bad the company removed it from its website.
Now here’s a good mission statement:
There is no doubt what Conan’s mission in life is. He wants to do one thing, and do it well. Anything else is a distraction that must be dealt with (which, in Conan’s case, involves sword play and eventual dismemberment.)
So why do companies write bad mission statements? Partly because they lose focus. Partly because they don’t want to offend anyone. And partly because they let more than one person write it, usually not the person in charge.
According to a 2008 article in Fast Company, AOL had a mission statement on a plaque in their lobby: (T)o build a global medium as central to people’s lives as the telephone or television… and even more valuable.
Once they accomplished that, and had become one of the media powerhouses of the new century, they asked a committee (GAAH!) to write a new mission statement. They came up with: To serve the world’s most engaged community.”
Seriously? It took more than one person to create that? Something that generic, bland, uninspiring, and just plain emotionally limp took an entire team of people? I’d bet they even met more than once to create it.
It is, as Fast Company said, “a creed that could just as well suit a Hardee’s.” While I don’t think this is what contributed to AOL’s downfall, they certainly lost their way from becoming “central to people’s lives… and even more valuable.” Life imitates art, and mission statements imitate corporate attitude.
Mission statements should inspire and motivate. They’re a battle cry, calling the organization to great and noble things. They’re not some namby-pamby, floppy, pitiful excuse for a gathering of words. They should be the very foundation of what that organization stands for.
President Kennedy established the space program in a speech in 1962 when he said “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”
NASA made that one statement their goal, and were successful six months before the end of the decade. That’s because they had a definable goal, a single principle to stand behind. They could look at any activity, idea, or program and ask, “will it help us land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth?” If it would, it stayed. If it didn’t, it was rejected.
So what does your company believe in? Is it something generic and noncommittal? The business version of “we should do something sometime?” Or is it loud and proud, demanding crushing and lamenting?
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: AOL, Conan the Barbarian, mission statements, NASA
Posted in Communication | View Comments
5 Reasons Email Is NOT Going Away. I Don’t Care What Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Says
Email is NOT going away.
South African blogger Arthur Charles Van Wyk thinks Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg is just a bit crazy when she says that email is going to die off, because only 11% of teens are using email these days. (You can watch the video below.)
Email is not obsolete. Not yet, anyway.
The premise is an interesting one: if you want to figure out what kind of consumer technology we’ll be using in several years, look at what the teens are using right now. And the teens aren’t using email, they’re using SMS on cell phones, or they’re using social networks like Facebook.
Does this mean that we will all write in text speak? Will sexting become an appropriate form of communication?
I don’t care what anyone says. Email is not, NOT NOT going to die off. Here are 5 reasons email is not going away:
Email may not be the communication tool of choice, but it’s not going anywhere. And while SMS will become more prevalent in this country, I don’t believe it’s going to kill email, and I think people who say so are doing it for shock. We haven’t even killed postal mail, and yet the hip thing to do is to declare the death of free mail?
Kill off postal mail first, and then I’m more likely to believe you.
Photo credit: Jparise (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: Communication, email, social networks
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | View Comments
5 Ways to Build Your Online Personal Brand Without Being Boring
I was having lunch with a friend last week, and he posed an interesting question: “how do you build your personal brand without evoking a ‘who cares’ attitude?”
Unfortunately, as people start growing their personal brand via social media, they’re just boring the bejeezus out of the rest of us. Here are five things you should be doing to avoid boring your network, and earning the reputation of “oh jeez, not this yawn-fest.”
Dude, you're boring!
Photo credit: Samael Trip (Flickr)
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: personal branding, Reputation Management, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Reputation Management, Social Media, Twitter | View Comments
New ebook Available: Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators
I just published a new ebook, Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators. I wrote it after giving a presentation to a public health conference, and realizing that many of them did not even have access to the different social media tools.
So I based it on several blog posts I’ve posted here, as well as some new information. The ebook is free, and there is both a PDF version and a Kindle version available.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: Crisis Communication, ebook, government agencies, Social Media
Posted in Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Tools, Twitter | View Comments
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