A common question I get from curious folks who find my blog is “What made you decide to start blogging?”. In an interview I did this week with my Alma Mater I did my best to answer that question
Here’s an excerpt from the interview about how I got into blogging about technology, community and design:
A bit about my blog…
In my second year at CCT I wrote a thesis titled Gaming In Cyberspace: How Interactive Entertainment Is Changing Communication & Identity On The Net . Back then (2004) social media wasn’t really mainstream yet (Facebook was founded in Feb 2004, and our class at Georgetown wasn’t on it until late that year. Twitter didn’t even exist until 2006). For my thesis I did a lot of research on how people interact and communicate in virtual communities – I read a lot on network theory, interaction design and human behavior in digital mediums. I was super interested in this stuff, but back then it didn’t have much practical application because these kinds of virtual communities were so new. Though, I knew huge numbers of people were changing their behavior and gravitating to these communities and that this stuff was going to be big. Quite a few people at CCT thought that I was just a wee bit crazy.
Fast forward to February 2007. I was at a tech conference here in San Diego (O’Reilly’s E-Tech) and was introduced to Twitter. After just a few weeks being on the service, I had bumped into half of the authors that had written books that were the foundation for a few of our core classes at CCT. People like Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs) and Steven B. Johnson (Interface Culture and Emergence). They all had blogs and were having daily conversations about the stuff I loved. So I started blogging publicly and joining in those conversations. Because I had studied a lot of this stuff at CCT for my thesis and in my courses, I was having great informed conversations with influential people in the tech world. I was having a ball.
I would never have had this access without the exposure to the authors and ideas I was exposed to at CCT. I’ve been having conversations about new media daily online (on blogs and on social media etc) ever since as a full time hobby and it’s opened a lot of doors. I have written for one of the top 10 blogs in the world, ReadWriteWeb, and I’ve been on WSRadio Internet radio here in San Diego several times (recently again last week as a guest host). This month I was nominated for InfluenceSD’s New Media Blogger of the year award (awards take place in April). I didnt plan any of this, it’s just sort of happened organically while I was writing about stuff that I like. Over the last year I’ve also turned the blogging and social media it into a part-time freelance business. I do social media marketing projects with companies and non profits in southern California, which keeps me busy and engaged on nights and weekends…
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Over the past few years I’ve learned a lot about blogging and blogging culture. Along with things I’ve learned about myself and my own style there are some universal rules to follow to be a successful blogger, no matter who you are or what you’re writing about. Today I thought I’d share a few lessons I’ve learned and start a discussion. If you’ve got any additional bits of advice you would have given yourself when you first started blogging, please share them in the comments. I’d love to hear them. I don’t pretend to be an expert. I’m always learning like the rest of you.
Here are my 23 Rules of Thumb for Effective Blogging…
Rule #1: No one cares about you.
Every time you sit down to write, remind yourself that there are a trillion other websites out there competing for attention. Then remind yourself how little time you have these days to spend reading the news, books, all your friends’ Tweets and Facebook status messages and blog posts. Got it? In that moment, ask yourself honestly whether you’d spend time reading a 10,000 word blog post about your cat.
People invest their time reading posts that educate and enlighten, or organize complex information, or bust myths or provide pointers to great resources. Internet users have evolved into ultra-savvy scanners when it comes to web content, and they’re insanely good at figuring out whether there’s something in it for them in under 10 seconds. If they don’t get the immediate impression that what you’ve written is useful or entertaining, they’ll leave and go somewhere else. Web time is “me time” for readers. So write stuff that other people will find useful, and save the stories about your cat for your mom.
This presentation given by Nick Finck and Raina Van Cleave at SXSW this year is great. Slides 5, 10 and 11 stand out. Special thanks to @Fraser for sharing the link on Twitter and pointing to the most valuable slides. Here’s a quick summary of the talk:
“User experiences are your everyday experiences—anything from operating a car, to making a pot of coffee, to ordering a pair of shoes online. User experience is the result of your interactions with a product or service, specifically how it’s delivered and its related artifacts according to the design.
In this presentation Nick Finck and Raina Van Cleave will explore the ten characteristics of a great user experience. They will cover all aspects of user experience design such as user research, information architecture, information design, technical writing, interaction design, visual design, brand identity design, accessibly, usability and web analytics. Nick and Raina will also explain how following the ten commandments can boost your web sites, web app, or mobile app’s ease of use, appeal, conversion rates, and more.”
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I’m excited and honored to have been included in InfluenceSD’s nominees for “Blogger Of The Year” for 2009. InfluenceSD is a San Diego-based awards event created to unite champions in new media. The event celebrates success in social media and the people behind the campaigns and content. The fact that I’ve been recognized in this category by my peers and readers is truly humbling. A heart-felt thank you goes out to everyone out there who reads my stuff and leaves comments on this little blog. You guys make writing a joy for me.
The award winners are decided by your votes, so if you read this blog regularly, I’d really appreciate it if you could help me stay in the running. Voting closes on March 24th. You can register and vote here. :)
Again, thanks to all of you out there who make the conversations we have on this blog what they are. You’re the reason I write.
Restaurant owners are quickly discovering how to use social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Yelp to their advantage and drive customers to their tables, but there’s a guy in Wisconsin doing it better than almost anyone else.
Joe Sorge, who runs a burger joint in Milwaukee called AJ Bombers, shot me a tweet yesterday to tell me about a Foursquare party they had this week that brought a flash mob of 161 Foursquare users to his restaurant. My eyebrows shot up when I read that number. 161 check ins in one day?! How could that be? There are only about three or four hundred Foursquare users total in Milwaukee?! Over 150 of them were in the same place, on the same afternoon?
When I called him up, Joe explained. They came to earn the highly coveted and elusive Foursquare “Swarm Badge” – something you can only get when 50 or more Foursquare users check in at the same place at the same time. I hadn’t heard of it, but apparently the promise of this coveted Foursquare badge can really draw a crowd. Read More
If you sell online, pay attention to the data trail your customers leave. There are golden nuggets of information about what your customers are like and what they want everywhere; Some really good stuff can be found in customer reviews, automated “customers also bought” or “you might also like” recommendations (just to name a few). Paying attention to these details can lead to great insights about what your customers actually want, how they use your product and what their other interests are. If you’re an author, what other books are they buying when they purchase yours? If you’re selling electronics, what are customers bundling their purchases with? You’ve got to ask yourself these questions. It could tell you a lot about services you should be offering, where your product might be lacking or even what partnerships and opportunities you might seek for win-win promotions.
This (above) is just one example. I’ve talked about how tons of people are hacking their Flip cameras because the company isn’t listening and offering a wide-angle lens adapter. There are a ton of blog posts and YouTube videos about how to glue-on wide angle lens adapters to make the Flip more useful…and these lenses only cost 30 bucks. If the company was listening, they’d be partnering with a lens maker (or making their own) and offering a premium version of the Flip with an adapter included. The trail of breadcrumbs around the Flip already shows that people are willing to pay for the parts and go through the extra hassle to get the improved performance, so this is a no-brainer.
What’s the trail of breadcrumbs around your product telling you about your customers?
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Recently, I’ve had a few of my clients ask me whether they should be video blogging more. My answer usually starts with the question “how comfortable are you on camera?”. Video blogging isn’t for everyone, and it can make or break you, in my opinion. While it’s true that your audience wants to interact with you in an authentic way, it’s also true that when people read text-only blog posts, they tend to bring their own filters and voice to what they read, which can work in your favor if you’re a talented writer who happens to be blessed with a squeaky voice or a shy demeanor.
By contrast, when they watch you on video, there’s no where for you to hide and your strengths as well as your flaws get amplified and become a focal point of the audience’s experience. People are picking up all kinds of non-verbal cues that they’re using to decide whether they like you and what you’ve got to say. There are people out there who are so comfortable and enthusiastic when they’ve got a camera in their face that they were born to do it. Others…not so much. Whether you were born to be on camera or stick to writing is not necessarily a reflection on your character or intelligence either – you’ve just got to know your DNA. Stephen Hawking wasn’t born to be a TV rockstar. Enough said.
The good news is that if you’re thinking about trying out video blogging, you can dip your toe in without committing too heavily on equipment and time, and use TubeMogul to measure and test how people are reacting to you and your video content in real time. If you’re a video amateur the instant feedback you can get from seeing how long people watch your content, where they’re watching it and when they drop out minute-by minute (called drop out rate), can give you a pretty good indication of how you’re being received, and whether people like what you’re doing or not. You can use that data to tweak your message and style and see how your audience responds. Pretty neat stuff. This way you can borrow a camera from a friend (or rent one) and see if this is something you want to invest in long term. Here’s the demo video from TubeMogul on how their drop-out analytics work:
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