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What [INSERT ACTIVITY HERE] Taught Me About [INSERT SUCCESS METRIC HERE]

Erik Deckers — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:00:21 +0000

What [INSERT ACTIVITY HERE] Taught Me About [INSERT SUCCESS METRIC HERE]

We can get life lessons from anything — Ann. Ee. THING — we watch, read, hear, play with, eat, and do. Whether it’s what you learn about persistence from watching Gilligan’s Island, what you learn about love from listening to Jimi Hendrix, or what you learn about success from eating an artichoke, you can learn something from anything.

I’ve seen blog posts about how people have learned from the Brady Bunch, Jack Kerouac, the circus, Kurt Vonnegut (okay, I wrote that one), and even video games. I think there are lessons that can be gleaned from wherever we search for them.

So I’m writing this blog post to accomplish two goals: 1) to show you what I learned about some aspect of my life by applying some form of entertainment or recreation to it, and 2) to give other writers a fill-in-the-blank formula they can use to write their own blog posts about defining their own success metric.

(Note: I am NOT saying these kinds of blog posts are stupid. If you write them, keep writing them. I enjoy reading them. I’m just in a weird, goofy mood today.)

1) [SOMETHING ABOUT STARTING AT THE BEGINNING].

Anything you do has to start somewhere. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. You follow the Yellow Brick Road by starting at the beginning. Eat an elephant one bite at a time.

I learned from [MY FAVORITE MOVIE/FOOD/BOOK] that we’re not going to succeed if I just sit on my ass and dream about [SUCCESS METRIC]. I have to get off the [COUCH/DINING CHAIR/TOILET] if I want to achieve my dreams.

2) [SOMETHING ABOUT "IT'S GOING TO BE TOUGH."]

Success is never easy. You have to work for the things you really want. Blah blah blah inspiration, blah blah blah perspiration. You’re never going to truly win the things you want, without hours and hours of practice before hand. Get knocked on your ass [X NUMBER] times, get up [X NUMBER + 1] times.

No one ever said this would be easy. (Okay, I did once, but I think I was drunk.) But nothing we ever truly love or excel at is. The [MAIN CHARACTER] of [BOOK/MOVIE/GRAPHIC NOVEL/EPIC FLIPBOOK MINI-SERIES] showed that there will be hurdles along the way, and that just like in life, the path to success will be fraught with [DANGER/HURDLES/TROLLS UNDER BRIDGES].

But if you can persevere, you’ll find what you’re looking for.

3) [SOMETHING ABOUT STICKING WITH IT.]

[SOME NUMBER] percent of success comes from just showing up. If I want to be better than everyone else, I just need to [SPORTS METAPHOR ABOUT EXECUTING FUNDAMENTALS].

It sounds easy, but it’s not. There are days that you’ll be practicing in the rain and snow. Days that you’re tired, that you want to quit, that you’re [JETTISONING TYPE OF BODILY FLUIDS] from every pore in your body.

That’s the time to bear down and work harder. Everyone hits that wall. No one is exempt from it. But what separates champions from quitters is that the champions never quit. Just like [HERO FROM FAVORITE MOVIE/BOOK/TV SHOW/COMPETITIVE EATING EVENT], you need to work through the [PAIN/JETTISONED FLUIDS/HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS] before you can finally see the finish line.

4) [SOMETHING ABOUT FINALLY WINNING.]

What [MY FAVORITE SPORTS TEAM THAT CAN'T PLAY FOR SHIT BUT FINALLY WON] taught me is that I need to play for the love of the game, and stick with my dream, because one day success will come. It may not come in the form of [INSERT SPORTS TROPHY/MUSIC AWARD/ACTING AWARD/SPELLING BEE RIBBON], but it will at least come in the form of doing something I love and getting paid for it. And finally learning that [REAL SUCCESS COMES FROM JOY OF LOVED ONES, NOT MONEY, BIG HOUSE, AND BLAH BLAH BLAH] comes from within.

But being able to rub my [TROPHY/AWARD/RIBBON] in my competitors’ faces is nice too.

So there you have it. The four most important lessons I learned from [MOVIE/BOOK/WWE CAGE MATCH]. I hope you got something out of it too.

Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : What (INSERT ACTIVITY) Taught Me About (INSERT SUCCESS METRIC) • Keywords : blogging, blog writing, blog content, success, inspiration •

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Five Books Every Blogger Should Read or Own

Erik Deckers — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:00:24 +0000

Five Books Every Blogger Should Read or Own

Writers need to read if they want to improve. We learn, we borrow, we’re influenced, and in some cases, we steal.

Whether you’re a blogging veteran or wet-behind-the-ears rookie, there are certain books that will give you the knowledge, insight, and ability to be an effective blogger.

I am always reading books, sometimes in my industry, sometimes outside (my favorites are Christopher Moore humor novels and British murder mysteries), and trying to learn some of the techniques these writers use.

I have five books that I think every blogger should own, or at least read, if they want to improve their writing and become a better blogger.

These five books vary in industry and focus. They may tell you how to blog, how to write, or how to spell. But these are the five books that I have found to be the most valuable in my own professional blogging career.

Corporate Blogging for Dummies: My good friend, Douglas Karr (@douglaskarr), and Chantelle Flannery wrote this tome for corporate bloggers everywhere. And while the title suggests it’s for corporate bloggers, anyone who wants to be a blogger can learn from this one. It talks about why blogging is important, what tools are available, and even how to write blog posts.
The AP Stylebook: I’ve long maintained that blogging should follow AP Style when it comes to settling confusing questions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. After all, we’re becoming citizen journalists, so we should follow journalistic style. The AP Stylebook can answer odd and esoteric questions, like the “proper” abbreviation of state names (AP style does not use the two letter postal abbreviations), whether to capitalize job titles (you don’t, unless you’re referring to the President of the United States), and even whether to use an Oxford comma (they don’t, but I think they’re horribly wrong about this one.)
Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing: (affiliate link) I am a regular listener of Mignon Fogarty’s (@GrammarGirl) “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips” podcast, and recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their grammar and punctuation usage. Her book on Better Writing is also a must for anyone who wants to improve their writing mechanics, and avoid the little nagging errors that are so tiny but seem to throw everyone into a terrible tizzy. (I’m also a fan of the A Way With Words show on NPR/podcast, but they don’t have a book out. Plus, I made Grammar Girl’s “Wordsmiths” Twitter list, which I’m very proud of.)
Ernest Hemingway’s short stories: If you want to learn how to write with punch and power, read Hemingway. Especially his short stories. Especially anything with Nick Adams (Big Two-Hearted River). It has that punchy, short dramatic style that tells you how to craft short sentences that carry a lot of impact. Hemingway cut his teeth at the Kansas City Star in 1917, learning the style that made him the most recognized writer of his day. While some of his language and ideas are definitely from the early 1900s, his writing style is still something to study and learn from.

Roger Angell’s Once More Around the Park: Roger Angell is the baseball writer for The New Yorker, and the master of the long meandering sentence. If Hemingway is a boxer, writing short, punchy sentences, Roger Angell is the old dude doing tai chi in the park on a warm Sunday morning, moving slowly but fluidly, and never stopping until he has achieved inner peace and gotten a low-impact workout in at the same time. Angell’s descriptions of baseball games, baseball fans, and even the parks is something even the non-fan will enjoy. It’s a book I definitely recommend reading, whether you’re a baseball fan or not. While the fan will appreciate his explanation of the games and the names of the fan’s childhood, the writer will appreciate the images Angell is able to conjure up, and the ease at which he writes long, smart sentences that carry the sounds and smells of a faraway day.

What are some of your favorite books for writers and bloggers? Are there any that you recommend? Any that you would stay away from? Leave a comment and let’s hear from you.

Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : Five Books Every Blogger Should Read or Own • Keywords : blogging, blog writing, Ernest Hemingway, Douglas Karr, Grammar Girl, Roger Angell, Associated Press, AP Stylebook •

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How to Help Google Identify Authors of Content on Your Site

Mike Seidle — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:00:14 +0000

How to Help Google Identify Authors of Content on Your Site

Google is changing the web again. This time, they are asking webmasters to begin identifying authors in a way that allows:

Google to track who is the author of content
Google to track about the author pages (called profiles by Google).
Authors to authenticate their profiles (author pages) on multiple websites.

If you are an author, this is fantastic… and if you are a content publisher, it’s even better because Google is now starting to look at who writes, not just the cold math behind an article.

To acknowledge an author, you use the HTML5 rel attribute in a link pointing to an “about the author” page on the same website like this:

Article written by Mike Seidle

Because most authors have profile (about the author pages) on multiple websites, Google has a way to link them together. The first step is to put a link to the author’s website on the profile with a rel=”me” attribute like this:

Read more about Mike

On the page mikeseidle.com/about, we have to insert a recriprocal link back to the above about the author page (profile) with the rel=”me” attribute:

How To Help Google Identify Authors of Content on Your Site

Before all you search engine optimization experts get your hair on fire about reciprocal links causing bad things to happen to your page rank, here’s the link on Google’s Webmaster Tools that shows that it is required by Google to do a reciprocal link.

As of the time this post was written, most blogging software does not support the new author tagging features yet, so you’ll either have to write a plug in or embed your own links. I would expect to see support for author and profile tagging to be included in future versions of WordPress soon.

Mike Seidle

Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

Author : Mike Seidle • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : How to Help Google Identify Authors of Content on Your Site • Keywords : blogging, blog writing, Google, author •

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Google Wants You to be a Better Blog Writer

Erik Deckers — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:00:59 +0000

Google Wants You to be a Better Blog Writer

The days of schlocky web copy and $1/post off-shore blog writing are over.

Thanks to Google’s new Panda update, your writing can no longer suck. You can’t just get by on 8th grade writing skills, or by hiring an off-shore blog writer for a buck a post anymore.

The new Google Panda update stresses usability and the user experience over whether you have the right keywords in your title and body copy, and over backlinks. Oh sure, they’re still counted, but Google is not putting as much emphasis on those as they once were, thanks to the recent JC Penney backlinking scandal.

As a result of this, and other Google gaming-techniques that were being abused, Google said, “You know what? That’s it. No more trying to trick us. Now we’re going to start looking at what your users are doing.” (Watch the Rand Fishkin video at the bottom of this post for a much better explanation than I just gave.)

Now, Google is starting to pay attention to the user experience: Do they visit more than one page, which means they like what they see? Are they on for a minute or more, or do they bounce out after 10 seconds, which means you didn’t captivate them? Did they even visit your page when you were at the top of the search engine (i.e. did your page even look interesting)?

The short of it is, if your site sucks, people won’t visit. If they visit, they won’t stick around. And they certainly won’t subject themselves to more than one page of it.

So how do you get them to stick around? You’d better have great content. Not just good enough, not barely readable. Not “meh.” It needs to be awesome. Because, like Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) said, “people share awesome.”

For writers, this means that your knowledge of SEO isn’t as important as it once was. You don’t have to know every single trick to get Google to pay attention to you. You now just have to write good stuff.

That means it needs to be readable, interesting, compelling, and persuasive. It means that if you suck at writing, you’re going to have troubles. It means if you don’t write compelling copy, people aren’t going to stick around. And if you don’t have a good looking, easy-to-navigate website, people aren’t going to want to spend time on your site.

For too long, writing has been a commodity at best, and completely ignored and dismissed at worst. I’ve written for people who didn’t care about the written word, and wouldn’t know good writing if it bit them on the ass. And yet, they were the first to complain when their crappy writing didn’t give them the results they believed they deserved.

These companies throw up cheap, schlocky copy with misspelled words and horrible grammar, knowing that if they gamed Google’s system, it was good enough to get a front page ranking. Well, no more.

While Panda isn’t the savior of all wordsmiths out there, it’s at least something that we can use to our advantage. It means that clients will — hopefully — start paying attention to the quality of their website or blog’s copy. And best of all, it means clients will — hopefully — start paying.

Panda doesn’t mean that this is the end of bad copy. Horrible writers are everywhere, foisting their drivel on an unsuspecting public. But it does mean that they will no longer be rewarded for their sub-par language skills.

Photo credit: peromhc (Flickr)

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Ernest Hemingway’s Five Secrets to Good Blogging

Erik Deckers — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:00:08 +0000

Ernest Hemingway’s Five Secrets to Good Blogging

Ernest Hemingway would have kicked ass as a blogger.

No, really. I’ve been on a major Hemingway kick for the last several weeks, reading his short stories, his books and ideas on writing, and even a collection of stories he wrote when he was a cub reporter with the Kansas City Star, and I’m convinced he would be an A-List blogger in a matter of weeks.

Hemingway’s writing habits are what would have made him an ideal blogger, and so here are what I think his five secrets to good blogging would be.

Write and speak with authority.Hemingway knew he was a great writer. He was not humble about it at all. While I’m not suggesting you act cocky and arrogant, you do need to write with authority.Don’t waffle around with qualifying statements, like “I think it may be possible” or “If I had to make a choice, but only if I really had to make one.” It makes you sound like a ninny. Hemingway once said of his criticism of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, “Jesus, it’s marvelous to tell other people how to write, live, die, etc.”
Without being an insufferable jerk about it, have the confidence to tell people how to do the thing you’re writing about.
Avoid adverbs.Adverbs are those things that tell how something was done. “He ran quickly.” “She laughed loudly.”Don’t use adverbs at all. You can’t run slowly, otherwise you’re jogging. You can’t laugh loudly, but you can belly laugh or guffaw or snort; a soft laugh is a chuckle. Don’t describe the verb, use a more descriptive one.
So, don’t tell us something is “really cool” or “fairly unique.” For one thing, cool is cool, and unique is unique. For another, “unique” means “one of a kind, there is nothing like it in all the world.” You can’t be “fairly one of a kind.”

While Hemingway was not a fan of adjectives either, he and many other writers, have spoken out against adverbs. It’s something you should quit using as well.
Don’t write for “The Reader.”In a letter to Arthur Mizener, Hemingway wrote, “I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try to make it absolutely perfect; or if not that, then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether she can read or write or not and whether she is alive or dead.”That means, don’t worry about what the critics and haters and jackasses are going to say. Don’t anticipate what comments you might get, and how you can head them off at the pass. Don’t avoid controversial topics just because you think someone might disagree with you.
Write for you, and make it awesome. Then, write it for just one person, and whether it will please him/her or not.
Have a set writing schedule.I’m trying to adopt this idea myself now. Block out a time each day where you can write uninterrupted. Don’t take meetings, don’t answer email, don’t do Twitter. Just write.Hemingway’s schedule was to get up early, get to the typewriter by 7:00, and write until lunchtime. Even when he was starting out and had to work odd jobs, he would only do them after lunch. He didn’t drink until he was done writing, and he would even get up when he was hung over. But no matter what, he was always writing at the same time every day.
Leave stuff out.Hemingway believed in the Iceberg Theory of writing. That is, while an iceberg may look massive, only 20% of it is sticking out of the water. There is sooooo much more that lies beneath the surface. It’s that below-the-surface structure that makes the visible part so impressive.Ernest would omit everything he could. He already hated adverbs (#2). In his dialogue, he never used any word other than “said,” not replied, shouted, retorted, or complained. He avoided entire scenes of action, leaving the reader to come up with his own idea of what happened.
His greatest example of Iceberg writing is his now-famous six word novel, “For sale: Baby shoes. Never used.” All kinds of questions hang over that story, most notably, “why?” The answers we create in our own heads are the hidden part of the iceberg that Hemingway wanted us to understand.

Similarly, as bloggers, we need to leave things out. Don’t use descriptions of what you were thinking when you came up with a certain blog topic. Don’t do exposition. Explain why something is important, and what it means to us. If you want exposition and background, create a separate post and link to it — “if you’re curious as to why I thought of this, click here” — and then count the clicks. If no one clicked it, you didn’t need it.

Blogging is the new newspaper. Posts need to be short, punchy, and interesting right from the very beginning — all characteristics that marked a Hemingway story. Follow these Hemingway techniques to make your posts more interesting and dramatic.

Sources for this post include:

Write Like Hemingway: Writing Lessons You Can Learn from the Master, by R. Andrew Wilson (affiliate link)
Ernest Hemingway on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips (affiliate link)
Brian Clark over at Copyblogger did a great piece on Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well, which inspired this post.

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Your Blog Openings Suck

Erik Deckers — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:00:55 +0000

Your Blog Openings Suck

I truly don’t care why you wrote your blog post.

It doesn’t matter that you were sitting in a coffee shop with your friend, Joe, when you were discussing some amazing idea. I don’t care that those of us who may know you may know that you’re committed to saving the manatees. I don’t care that you’ve been reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, “And The Horse You Rode In On.” (Not a real Gary Vaynerchuk book.)

I want you to impress the hell out of me and make me want to read your post. And frankly, telling me that you were discussing the importance of light bulb recycling over a non-fat lemon chai with ginger sprinkles — which is Doug Karr’s favorite drink — doesn’t impress me at all.

Want to write good leads? Study newspapers.

(I will admit that I am still guilty of these kinds of leads sometimes, but have committed to never do them again.)

An opening sentence in a blog, also called a lead — or lede if you’re a newspaper traditionalist — is supposed to grab your readers’ attention and fling them to the next paragraph (graf, if we’re still going old-school newspaper). The goal of that graf is to propel people to the one after that, and so on.

But you’re not even going to get out of the starting gate if your lead sucks.

When I took my Intro to Journalism class way back when newspapers were still thriving, our professor drummed the importance of writing good leads into us for weeks. “It’s the most important sentence in the entire article,” he would tell us. “Your lead tells people exactly what happened, but it does it with drama and flair.”

In short, your lead doesn’t blather about coffee shops and books. Your lead needs to grab people and intrigue them, or it needs to provide information, or both.

My lead — the fact that I don’t care about why you wrote your blog post — is a true one. I really don’t. Or if I do, I don’t want it to be the first thing you tell me. Drop it in later, if you want to give me the background. It can almost be an aside, but it shouldn’t be the thing you start with.

I think we get into storytelling mode when we write blog posts. We’re so used to “Once upon a time” that we think it’s important to our blog writing as well. Believe me, I love a good story. I love telling stories, hearing stories, reading stories. But when I go to a blog, I want to be educated and informed.

Chances are, your lead is buried under 3 – 4 paragraphs. You could get rid of the opening couple of paragraphs and be all set, although some writers will tell you — maybe a little cynically — that most people could get rid of the first half, and still be fine.

So when you write your blog post, start it any way you want. But then go back and start deleting paragraphs until you get down to the most important point in the whole piece. Lead off with that. If you need to add the old paragraphs back in for background information, do it. But do it later on in the piece.

As you get better, and your leads begin to surface sooner, you’ll reach the point where you’re writing that stellar opening lead right off the bat, getting your readers’ attention earlier, and propelling them all the way through the post. Time on site will go up, conversions will go up because people made it all the way to the end, and you’ll look like a genius.

And you can tell me all about it over a cup of coffee.

Photo credit: JudsonD (Flickr)

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3 Secret Blogging Ideas That Professional Writers Don’t Want You To Know

Erik Deckers — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:00:00 +0000

3 Secret Blogging Ideas That Professional Writers Don’t Want You To Know

I’ve written enough blog posts that I’ve figured out what it is that wins readers, and what bores the bejeezus out of them. If I’m stuck for a blog post idea, I’ve got a few general topics and idea kickstarters that will get my creative juices flowing, and get a decent post out of it. I use these same kickstarters to come up with topics for my own clients, especially when they think they’re stuck for ideas or have run out of things to write about.

These are the three best kickstarters I’ve found that work, regardless of the topic or industry.

List posts

I know, I know, you hate them. They’re boring, they’re trite, they’ve been done to death. But do you know who loves them? I mean, really looooooooooves them?

Your readers. They eat them up. They love that there is a small number of ideas that they can read and understand. It brings order to chaos. “Five Best Dishwashers” is way more interesting than “How to choose a dishwasher.”

Secretly, you still think they’re interesting too. Why else would you be here? Admit it, you saw the number 3, and thought, “Three, huh? I guess I have a couple minutes to check it out.”

Still don’t believe me? Do a little test. Next time you’re in the supermarket, pay attention to the magazines at the checkout lane, especially Cosmo. Look at the headlines on the cover. They all follow this format, and they sometimes use the next two ideas.

Every month, for years and years and year, we’ve been promised “Three Secrets Men Won’t Tell You About Sex,” and “Five Ways to a Sexier Love Life.” For YEARS, I tells ya!

And why? Because people love lists. If they didn’t, Cosmo would quit doing it. So I’ll keep writing list posts for as long as Cosmo does. Why? Because if you’re a fellow blogger, you’re not my customer. Corporations and small businesses are my customers. They’re the ones I need to appeal to. And if they want list posts, then I can think of Seven Reasons Why People Love List Posts.

Debunk long-standing myths and stick it to The Man

This is ingrained in our culture. We’re the little guy. We despise the big guy. David hates Goliath. Everyman and Everywoman hates bullies, corporations, and faceless bureaucrats. And if we can see evidence where the little guy sticks it to The Man, we go nuts! So who’s the Man? Big business, the government (state and local too), bullies, TV preachers, and teachers.

Not today’s teachers. Our teachers from when we grew up. We were little kids back then, and had all kinds of knowledge jammed into our brains that we didn’t want. We wanted to rebel, but were held down. Even people in their 60s still harbor a little of that Inner Rebel, and they still want to stick it to their old English teacher who’s been dead for 30 years. By writing a post about debunking an educational topic, I can reach that Inner Rebel and make him or her want to read.

Last week, I wrote a blog post about Five Writing Rules You’re Allowed to Break, and people liked it. Another one — Five Grammar Myths Exploded — was extremely popular. Why? Because I attacked the sacred cow of 7th grade English and showed where it was wrong. The little guy stuck it to The Man by proving he was wrong.

Special professional secrets

Want to get someone’s attention? Share something special with them that no one else gets to find out about. Or “they don’t want you to know.” (And who’s “they?” The Man.) But if it’s something secret — that “they” don’t want you to know — it must be really hot stuff.

Posts like “Five Gas Saving Secrets the Oil Companies Don’t Want You to Know” or “Three Secrets Your Credit Card Company Won’t Tell You” are a whoooole lot more interesting than “Five Ways to Save Gas” or “Three Little-Known Tidbits About Your Credit Card.” People love this kind of stuff; they eat it up.

I used all three of these tactics with this post, and chances are you were very intrigued by the fact that I:

Used a number.
Promised secrets.
Stuck it to an elite group of people — professional writers.

It was actually the idea of sharing secrets that led to this blog post, and I added the other two tactics to the headline later. But even if you just use one of these three kickstarters in your own industry or niche, you can come up with some awesome ideas on your own. For example:

Three Ways to Lower Your AC Bill This Summer.
History Answers: Who REALLY Flew the First Airplane?
Five Secrets to Avoiding Fines Your Library Doesn’t Want You to Know.

So the next time you’re stuck for a post idea, ask yourself: Is there a number of small ideas I can list, a sacred cow I can slay, or “insider secrets*” I can reveal to entice my readers? Once you start thinking this way, there is no end to the number of posts you can write.

* Please note that I don’t mean real insider or corporate secrets. Do not reveal business secrets at all ever. EVER!

Photo credit: Marcmos (Flickr)

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Five Tools Every Crisis Communications Professional Needs

Erik Deckers — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:00:47 +0000

Five Tools Every Crisis Communications Professional Needs

Crisis communications professionals, especially those dealing with environmental and man-made disasters, will often find themselves in a position where they need to relay information to the public fast. The great thing about social media is that it lets us communicate a lot of information immediately. And for the crisis communications pro, speed is often of the essence.

When I was the Risk Communications Director for the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH), we needed to communicate a lot of our information as quickly as possible. But the technology — at least the technology we had access to — meant being tethered down to a desk or finding a coffee shop that had passable wifi. And in 2006 – 2007, those were harder to find than they are now.

But the technology has caught up with the citizen journalists, surpassed the traditional media, and lets many crisis communicators become the direct source of the news, rather than waiting for the mainstream news people to catch up.

Here are five tools, both online and offline, that crisis communications professionals need to communicate quickly:

1. A smartphone

If you said “duh!” you’ve obviously never worked in government. In 2006, I was handed a Blackberry with the thumbwheel and keyboard. That was five years ago, and most of the agency people I know are still using them. The ones who have upgraded have upgraded to another Blackberry. The problem is, the good communication apps are being developed for the iPhone and Android. The Droid will let you take photos, videos, send tweets, and tap directly into your blog with apps from Posterous or WordPress, and they often cost as much or even less than Blackberry. Yes, the Blackberry will do all of that too, but it has fallen behind in the mobile communication arena, and may soon go the way of the dodo.

Mobile phones are now mini-computers that can make a phone call, not a phone that takes pictures and sends text messages. Sticking your crisis communications pros with flip phones or less-than-current technology hampers your crisis communications efforts severely.

2. Twitter & Facebook accounts

The problem with mainstream media is that you’re bound to their schedule and their filters. Not only do you have to wait until the 5:00 and/or 11:00 news to get your message out, they only spent 60 seconds on your story, and they missed three important points. Meanwhile, people are on Facebook and Twitter talking about the big emergency, and are asking questions that are either going unanswered, or being answered with bad information.

On the other hand, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are updated constantly. People ask questions, and you answer them. You provide people links to the most up-to-date news and numbers, shoot down rumors and misinformation, and get news out to the public without waiting until the media airs it several hours later.

3. A Posterous blog

This may not be your “official” blog, but Posterous is a great distribution channel. You can email photos, videos, and critical information to your Posterous blog, and have it automatically create a new blog post from all the content. Plus everything gets distributed to Flickr or Picasa (photos), YouTube or Vimeo (video), and your official blog. It can automatically notify Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn when there’s a new post up (or you can shut that off, and let your regular blog do that for you).

Writing a new blog post is a snap. Just open up Gmail or your smartphone’s email program, type in the subject line (that becomes the headline), attach the photos or videos, type in a few lines of text and you’ve got a blog post. Rather than waiting until you can get to your laptop and spending several minutes getting it up and running, you can do this on your smartphone in five minutes or less.

4. A WordPress blog on an external server

If you’re in a crisis communications position, you need a blog that is never, ever subjected to the whims, downtimes, and issues that a 3rd-party provider like WordPress.com or Blogger.com would face. It’s also important that your blog’s server exist outside your city, or even state. When I was at ISDH, one of the things we trained for was a nuclear attack aimed at the center of downtown Indianapolis, less than 50 yards from my office. If that happened, our subsequent replacements would need a way to continue to share information, since the melted slag of metal that was once our server was not an option. So our emergency backup was somewhere else far, far away.

I recommend a WordPress.org blog on your server because there are so many plugins and add-ons to increase the functionality of your blog — functionality that WordPress.com and Blogger.com just don’t have. Of course, you need someone who knows how to do all this, or at least an IT department who won’t insist that the blog needs to reside on the server in their building, just down the hall from your office (see Attack, Nuclear: Devastating Effects of). If they won’t help you, then go with WordPress.com or Blogger.com (or even your Posterous blog), until you get someone helpful in IT. Don’t let a bottleneck delay you; find a way to work around them until the bottleneck clears.

5. Mi-fi

Mi-fi is the portable wifi hotspot that fits in your pocket. It’s smaller than a deck of cards, and will support up to 5 users. It’s always on, and extremely secure. For crisis communications pros who rely on their laptops, but don’t always have access to a coffee shop or McDonald’s, this is a must. It’s also easy to recharge, and can plug into any wall or car’s cigarette lighter, which means you can communicate while you’re on the road.

A Mi-fi is also useful when combined with a digital camera and an Eye-Fi card, a wifi-equipped photo storage card. Set it up to automatically upload all photos to your agency’s Flickr or Picasa account, and you can keep people up to date with what’s happening via these two photo sharing sites.

There are a lot of other online and offline tools a crisis communications professional should have, but these are the five I wish I’d had when I was in state government. They would have made life so much easier, and we could have gotten information out a lot more quickly.

Now, if someone can only find a cure for bureaucracy, then life would be perfect, and I would even consider going back in to public service.

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How Can Google Determine QUALITY Blog Content?

Erik Deckers — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:00:01 +0000

How Can Google Determine QUALITY Blog Content?

Google’s latest changes, thanks to the JCPenney/Searchdex debacle, has a lot of search engine optimization people scratching their heads, worrying about what it will do to their search rankings. Google has also declared war on content farms, going after the black hat backlink builders that build crappy sites who try to game search engines by filling websites and blogs with lots and lots of useless, poorly written content.

Don’t ask me how they’re doing it. Google’s remaining mum on the situation, saying only:

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on [emphasis added — Erik].

It’s this last statement that has me intrigued about how Google is going to recognize some of this. How will they know whether sites have original content, do their own research, or provide thoughtful analysis?

I think the answer lies in the foundation of semantic search.

Semantic search, says Wikipedia, “…seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results.”

In other words, semantic search tries to figure out what you mean, not what you said.

For example, if you’re doing a search for “bark” and “dog,” a regular search engine may give you results not only about dogs, but about the bark of a dogwood tree. But semantic search will know that you’re inquiring about a dog, and return only those results that meet your requirements.

Right now, Google is looking at content farms as a group and dropping them — as a group — from their search index. And that’s fine. For the most part, it shouldn’t hurt anyone who is writing original, thoughtful content.

But what happens when Google decides to take a look at some previously ignored places where people are writing bad content trying to game the system? What happens when they look at WordPress.com and Blogger.com, two favorite targets of the search spammers, who dump crappy article after crappy article into throwaway blogs? Google isn’t going to dump their own blog platform (Blogger) from their index, and they won’t do it to WordPress.com without hundreds of thousands of people crying foul. So how will they do it?

My prediction is that Google will be able to figure out what’s good and what’s bad by using the semantic search technology. They’ll determine what’s well-written and what sucks, what’s original and what was barfed out of an article spinner.

We’ve seen some examples of this technology already. Anyone who has ever run the grammar checker on Microsoft Word (which was apparently written by my 7th grade English teacher) has seen how this works. It checks the grammar and usage in your documents to see if there are any serious errors. It’s not great, and often delivers inaccurate or outdated grammar errors, but it can at least find some problems.

So why can’t Google do this? By using semantics, a good grammar checker, and a thesaurus, Google could determine what is original content and what is crap. By examining the language used, Google may be able to determine the intent of the content writer, and whether they’re truly creating original, thoughtful content, or just trying to game the system again. They could raise up some content while flagging or penalizing others.

The best part is this strategy would encourage people to create valuable content, rather than just trying to stand on the shoulders of others and steal theirs or spin it as a way to game the system. It means your stuff has to be well-written. You need a decent grasp of the English language, and the ability to string more than two sentences together.

(Of course, this could have a detrimental effect on people who just can’t write, don’t speak English as a first language, and teenagers who insist on writing in text speak, but that’s a post for another day.)

What do you think? Will a semantic indexing system help bloggers who are trying to do the right thing, or will it hurt the industry as a whole? Do you think people will mistakenly be caught up in a new semantic system? How would you avoid it, either from Google’s view or the writer’s?

Photo credit: arbyreed (Flickr)

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Five Reasons to Use Posterous as a Social Media Distribution Point

Erik Deckers — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:00:05 +0000

Five Reasons to Use Posterous as a Social Media Distribution Point

I’ve been enjoying playing with Posterous for about a year now, and while I don’t recommend it for everyone, it can be a great tool for some people. You should consider using Posterous if you are a:

Beginning blogger
Social media specialist
Mobile blogger
Crisis communicator

Posterous is an email submission blog. You send your post as an email to your own Posterous.com address, treat the subject line as the headline, and any attachments you send are incorporated into the post itself. It’s not pretty at times, but if you need something fast, this is it. Plus, you can go in and edit stuff to make it look better later.

My Posterous.com blog

I’ve often said, “Using a blog interface is a lot like sending an email.” Now, thanks to Posterous, it really is sending an email.

Here are five reasons to use Posterous as a blog platform and social media distribution point:

It’s ideal for mobile phone users. If you’re constantly on the go, and want to blog about the things you see, Posterous allows you to upload photos or videos to your site, along with any accompanying text. Posterous takes advantage of the overall computing power of today’s mobile phones. When I need to demonstrate Posterous during a talk, a few minutes before I go on, I’ll snap a picture of the gathering audience on my mobile phone, attach it to an email, and type in a couple of lines. Before my talk begins, I tell the audience, “I’m going to hit send on this email right now. You’ll see why it’s important in 10 minutes.” Then, when I get to that point in my talk, I show them my Posterous page, which has the picture of them. If you’re a crisis communicator or a mobile blogger, this is an ideal tool for communicating with the public on the fly.
Posterous will automatically send videos and photos to other sites. I have tied my Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube accounts to my Posterous account; it also sends videos to Vimeo. Whenever I take photos or videos, and send them to Posterous, they are automatically uploaded to the appropriate networks. I don’t have to upload them first, and then download the embed code. The downside for anyone who is concerned about search engine optimization is that your digital properties are on Posterous, not on YouTube or Flickr, so you lose any search engine juice that would normally come from a well-optimized video or photo that links to your site. There are workarounds for this, but they take some extra time after your post has been uploaded. If you’re a social media specialist, you’ll love this feature.
Posterous will automatically repopulate content to other blog platforms. You can tell Posterous to re-send your content on to your WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, TypePad, LiveJournal, Xanga, or Tumblr site. Publish a post on Posterous, republish it on your “official” blog. Yes, there are plugins and apps that let you email your posts in to these platforms, but they won’t necessarily upload your video and photos to YouTube and Flickr. Again, crisis communicators or mobile bloggers who need to get information out to several networks will love this feature.
Tell Posterous NOT to post to certain networks. The default setting for Posterous is to repost everything to every network you want it to (i.e. email my post to post@posterous.com. But what if you have a photo you don’t want to send to Flickr, or you don’t want a post to show up on your WordPress blog? By using a specific email address — for example facebook+youtube+blog+twitter@posterous.com — I can tell Posterous to post to my different properties, but leave out a specific network. In this example, I’m leaving out Flickr.
Posterous can automatically notify Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, etc. about new blog posts. Tie your Posterous blog into your different social networks, and notify your followers when a new post is up.

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