Newfangled Blogging 2.0
Weve featured blogs on our site since October, 2006. Since that time, weve improved many aspects of our own blog tool, including adding new ways to share the content, better tag management, improved RSS feeds, friendly links and more bloggers! However, we are now hoping to turn a corner in terms of our strategy behind the blogs.
Initially, we wanted the blogs to be a way to communicate with clients (and potential clients) in a new way, as well as a way to share our internal culture and personalities. Over time, those more inclined toward blogging have naturally stuck with it, while others have not. Readership has grown greatly, but participation (i.e. comments) has remained low.
So where do we go from here? We know we need to take it to the next level. In fact, our knowledge of what makes for good blogging puts to shame what we actually do. Thats why weve put our heads together and come up with some simple steps toward better blogging. As we are putting them to the test right now, were confident that they will only improve our content and make our efforts more worthwhile.
Step 1: Write a Mission Statement
Until recently, my de-facto mission statement has probably been something like: I will blog about whatever I feel like blogging about. Actually, it probably hasnt been that general, but moving forward, we feel that any of our blogs value will be relative to how refined its position is. Just like any other business, specialization increases value. As we discussed this as a team, we realized that we all have particular interests that, when matched with our roles, would make for a uniquely positioned blog. Writing a mission statement is a simple way to articulate that unique point of view and purpose for your blog. It doesnt have to be published anywhere, but just serve as the idea to which you hold yourself accountable as you write. As an example, here is the mission statement I have settled on for my blog:
Step 2: Plan a Schedule
One of the toughest aspects of blogging is doing it consistently, as you can easily see from scanning through the archives of any of the Newfangled blogs. Because blogging is not the primary job function of anyone here, writing often gets put aside so that we can do what we do best. However, we do want to be committed to maintaining our blogs. This means finding a way to post regularly without compromising our main thing- web development. We decided that setting up a loose editorial calendar for each blog would be a simple way to plan ahead and add some structure to the way we post to our blogs. Doing this doesnt mean you have to get as rigid as planning to write a blog post about blogging on Tuesday, July 8th. However it can mean identifying the formats of blog posts that youre most inclined to write and planning an overall schedule in which they recur. For example, you might find that you frequently post reviews of online tools specific to your industry. Scheduling a weekly web app review could be part of your calendar, or a monthly interview. Once you have this structure in place, you can fill in gaps with ideas for particular posts as they occur to you. Building your blog around a schedule will create consistency for you, as the author, and for your readers, who will learn to expect particular kinds of posts and content. An example of this is how Able has been creating monthly desktop calendars and placing them on his blog for download. Theyve become quite popular since they were picked up by I Love Typography, and readers likely expect them each month now. One recurring post format that Ill be exploring is a weekly (hopefully) interview, the first one of which I published on July 7.
Another aspect of scheduling is finding a consistent time to actually write. If you can, block out a regular time each day or week to do this. If you are feeling particularly prolific, write several posts in advance and publish them over time.
Step 3: Participate in Off-Site Conversations
The first two steps should ensure that you have a well-conceived blog with ample content. Assuming that you title your posts well, you should also gain more readers by virtue of search alone. However, getting your readers to go from lurking to participating will require some additional effort. The most comments I ever received (aside from my Farewell to Scott blog post, which was full of internal comments) was 8 comments and 11 Diggs for a post I wrote in February, 2008 called Get Yourself Out There- not very impressive. The article was all about how your participation off-site by commenting on other blogs and establishing social media profiles that point back to your blog would eventually increase readership to your blog, so the peak in comments is appropriately convenient. As I said in that post, I dont get a ton of comments, so this isnt going to be one of those I did it and so can you! posts, and neither is this one- comments are still low on my blog. However, the consistent readership of my blog has been primarily established by my participation in other blogs and forums. What I have to do now is just do it more!
Im looking forward to seeing positive results from taking these three steps accross all of our blogs, not just my own. Ill report back in a few months to see how were doing.
Interview: Mark Shipley, Smith & Jones
Mark Shipley
President and Chief Creative Officer,
Smith & Jones
A co-founder and President at Smith & Jones, one of Newfangleds Agency Partners, Marks chief thinking responsibilities include translating insight into strategic and creative direction, and ensuring that all brand communications reinforce their clients’ upmarket brand positions.
CB: What fascinates you about the web?
MS: In the olden days, when I wanted to know something new about anything, I would have to go find a reference source: the library, the phone book, the newspaper, magazines, look under a rock, etc. When I wanted access to some obscure piece of media, I usually couldnt find it - or if I could, not without significant effort. Now, I can look up just about anything with a simple search. I can cross-check multiple sources to assure validity. I can find people, places, contact info. I can watch film footage of Traffic performing Mr. Fantasy and Genesis performing Suppers Ready.
But what fascinates me most is how small the world really is: when I do searches, Im often bumping into colleagues, old friends and people I admire. In life, the connections are close but often invisible. On the web, the six degrees of separation is transparent.
A great, recent example: I am in the process of recruiting an executive assistant. After the initial telephone screenings, I had narrowed it down to one candidate. There was another candidate that top-graded, but I ruled her out because her interests and level of experience didnt seem perfect for my needs. The day after I telephone screened her, I went out to grab a bite to eat and ended up at a restaurant that I wrote about in my blog. As I was standing there deciding what to order, I saw a familiar name on all of the hand written menus: The Jane Doe Special. Turns out a friend of hers reads my blog and told her that I wrote about the restaurant in a post. They went to the owner and convinced him to put her name on all of the menus, to keep her top of mind in my selection process. I ended up calling her in for in-depth interviews and it looks like she will get the offer. That would have been so much harder for her to pull off before the web, and I would not likely have been able to appreciate her ingenuity because it would have been harder to figure out how she connected the dots. This is a beautiful thing.
CB: Do you have a blog? If so, what makes your blog unique?
MS: Currently, I have two blogs - one business and one personal. Brand Spanking News, my business blog, is a free form stream of thought discussion about the little things that impact a brands position, from the consumers point of view. In many posts, I share my personal experiences and random thoughts and discuss how they form brand associations for me as a consumer. When Im particularly busy and not experiencing, I share what I am reading and my take on it. Paddle Me Here, my personal blog, is a work in progress. Im an avid kayaker and I find it difficult to find good information on where to paddle. Im sure Im not alone, so I am in the process of documenting all of the places I have been and am going so that others can find them more easily.
CB: What technology has had the greatest impact on how you do your job?
MS: Im not quite sure: either FedEx or the fax machine. Before both of these, there was much more time to think and craft. Today, thinking is a luxury that few have time for, and crafting is something most people do in their spare time or after they retire. I still do both, but it is far more of a challenge to find the time.
CB: What makes you uniquely suited to your role at Smith and Jones?
MS: For someone with as big of an ego as mine, Im pretty humble (I know that statement contradicts itself, but its true). Im not afraid to learn, to admit my mistakes and to change. I look to the people that I work with for guidance and input, but Im not afraid to make the final decision. Im enthusiastic, but Im also realistic. Im creative, but I want to see the ROI. When a client trusts us with their brand, I take that trust very seriously. I may, on occasion, beat the proverbial dead horse, but then I move on. No one dies here and everyone is given a chance to make magic happen.
CB: What makes your company a cut above its competitors?
MS: Thats a secret only paying clients are allowed to know about.
CB: If you had one sentence to pitch a potential client, what would it be?
MS: What makes you so sure Smith & Jones is the right fit for your company?
CB: I believe that everyone has a specific and unique talent that comes in handy at just the right time. It might be something most people know about you or something very few know. What is your super-power?
MS: Im told by my clients and colleagues that I have an inherent ability to look at a sea of ideas and zero in on the one thing thats sure to work (idea, strategy, tactic, headline, layout, message, etc).
CB: If the worlds technological and economic systems were to collapse and revert society to locally-focused, agrarian communities, what role would you assume (i.e. I would become a mapmaker to help rebuild societys knowledge of geography)?
MS: I would still do what I do now - help spread the fertilizer and look forward to the upcoming harvest. Only I would be using a pitch fork instead of a keyboard.
> View Marks LinkedIn profile.
QA?
According to everyones favorite Project Management glossary, QA, or Quality Assurance, is A planned and systematic pattern of all actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that the item or product conforms to established technical requirements. In other words, QA in the Newfangled project world is a plan to make sure that everything works as it was intended to work and looks as it was intended to look.
We recently revamped our Project Anatomy document, which specifies all the steps and roles involved in a typical web development project. We use it to properly plan all of our projects at the outset, making sure weve allocated the appropriate time and resources in order to meet everyones expectations, as well as to track the progress of a project along the way. In fact, weve even set up an online version of the Project Anatomy that our Project Managers can use to verify that each necessary review, approval process, etc. has been completed before a project moves to a new phase. If youre looking at the document now, youll notice that there are three specific steps dedicated to QA. The first two occur during the programming phase of the project, and the third occurs immediately after a site goes live. These QA steps are guided by involvement with almost everyone on the team, requiring a thorough review of every aspect of the sites design and functionality and producing a detailed report that we use to make any necessary corrections. However, there are two other QA steps in our Anatomy that arent as immediately obvious, but are probably the most important.
Code Review
After the second round of QA is complete, our engineering team performs a rigorous code review with the developer on the project. Often some element of functionality could be programmed several different ways, and it is critical that the best way is chosen to ensure that the functionality scales well as the site grows and is used. If this doesnt happen, a site could experience all sorts of bugs or unpredictable behavior as time goes on. The purpose of the code review is to ensure that our programming meets the standards of the Engineering department and will not become a liability later. This is also a great way for our CTO and Lead Systems Engineer to continue to mentor our developers.
Integration is QA
Once the programming has been completed and reviewed, the site is ready for content entry. This step can be found under the heading of Integration. While there is no specific QA task listed under this phase, I believe that content entry is one of the most effective and important QA efforts for any project. Typically, this is the point in a project when a client is able to fully experience the reality of their site or application for the first time. While they have worked closely with our team on prototyping and designing the site, the process of using the content management system, creating, and entering content is when all the dots are connected and made real, and often the first point at which expectations are clarified. You see, no matter how thorough a prototype is, sometimes there are concepts or needs that cannot be communicated until you are immersed in an actual working and producing environment. This is similar to the blank-slate-shopper phenomenon: Have you ever seen a review of a book and thought that youd like to purchase it, only to find that the next time you are actually in a bookstore you have no idea what you want or where to start? This is because we tend towards reactive rather than proactive thinking. We hear about something and react to it with, Yes, Id like to read that, yet when we get to the store and are surrounded by thousands of books, we react to them all by loosing focus. While we find the prototyping phase, being a proactive step, to be extremely effective and critical to our process, we use QA steps to catch any ramifications of reactive thinking during a project and know that the process of content entry will do the same.
As Ive written before, QA does not ensure that a project will be 100% bug free. While some bugs are due to sloppiness or haste and can be prevented by thorough QA steps, others are the result of unforeseen functionality conflicts that may not become evident until a site is being used, despite the best intentions and forsight of the programmers. As with any development project, bugs like these should be expected and encountered with patience (this goes for us just as much as our clients). While we hope that our many stages of QA will mitigate the frequency of any bugs occurring, we are definitely not surprised when they show up.
Ultimately QA is a collaborative effort. Weve got plenty of measures to confidently assure quality, but we also depend upon our clients to respond to each step along the way and make sure their expectations are clearly communicated. We work towards having a great working relationship with our clients so that we can foster an environment where that communication is the foundation of real quality assurance.
Resourcing to the Rescue
After hearing for years how we should be resourcing, we finally bit the
bullet in November of 2007 and had the position in place by this past
January. For those of you that arent familiar with this practice, my
best definition of resourcing is the practice of measuring and
planning all billable resources in the company. This sounds obvious
enough, but we went from 6 people 18 people over the course of the past
few years and things that would have been unnecessary overkill in 2005
are essential to operating an effective business in 2008. For a more
detailed primer on resourcing, please check out Chris Butlers article on resourcing.
David Baker, the prophet of resourcing, estimates that it
takes 18 months from the time a firm makes resourcing a top priority to
show its true benefits. The most easily quantifiable measurement for
this is utilization, that is, the difference between the amount of work
a firm can do and the amount of money that comes in the door each
month. David estimates that for a mid-sized marketing services firm
(which is the category we loosely fall into, with a few exceptions),
the utilization goal should be 60%. Put another way, this means that
60% of our total people-hours should be paid for by our monthly
billings.
When we took our first pulse on this in October, we found that we were
a far cry from that number. Since adopting resourcing, we have come a
long way in figuring out why and weve taken many steps, across the
breadth of the entire company, to try and correct this. I look at this
process similar to gauging and correcting a cars mileage. You might
know that your Honda Accord should be capable of getting 30MPG, but the
painful truth is that youre only averaging about 23MPG.
After identifying the problem, and deciding to fix it, you need to
examine all aspects of the vehicle in
order to fully correct the mileage deficiency. So, to pull this analogy
along, weve popped the hood, tuned the engine up, inflated the tires to
the proper pressure, started changing the oil more regularly and
replaced the exhaust system in an effort to get things on track.
The most important part of this, though, is the way we drive it. How
much and what kind of work do we let into Newfangled each month? What
sort of expectations are we setting with our clients in regard to
deadlines? Are we meeting our goals in a very calculated and determined
way? Are we analyzing sources when things go wrong? Fortunately, the
answers to these questions are usually positive, and when they arent,
we make it
our business to figure out why - because this is our business. If we
dont do this well, our ultimate goal of truly serving great clients
well is simply unattainable.
For
a snapshot of the beauty of resourcing, I can offer a fresh experience.
I have semi-annual reviews with everyone at Newfangled, and yesterday
happened to be a review day. When asked how things are going, one of
our programmers had to say that, to him, the biggest change over the
past six months has been resourcing. Because of resourcing, his
workload has become exceptionally even and predictable, which, as he
observed, has allowed him to focus much more on quality as opposed to
draining himself trying to meet sudden and entirely unrealistic
deadlines.
This was hard proof that this
concept of resourcing, which could easily seem like management fluff
and posturing, has instead shown an immediate impact on the lives of
the people in our company we most want to help, those actually doing
the deliverable work. There is nothing we can do that has more
immediate benefit to our clients than making sure that the people doing
the work for them are in a stable environment that fosters ideal
productivity. Once perfected, this system will ensure accurate
timelines and exceptionally high quality work for our clients and
profitability for us. Sounds great, right?
An idea whos time has come.
Safari now supports CSS Variables. Well... the latest nightly build of WebKit does. Too bad itll be years before all the other browsers support it, and years from then before everyone is using a version of those browsers that support it. Still, this is progress towards something that would be incredibly useful.
Example of CSS variables in use:
Tags to the World
My first encounter with tagging was on Flickr. I discovered Flickr a few years ago when a colleague and I were chatting about emerging "Web 2.0" websites. He thought Flickr's photo sharing interface was a classic example. On Flickr people add descriptive "tags" to their photos. Two people walking on a beach might be tagged: beach, ocean, john, jane, sand, water, vacation, happy, and blue. At first I was bewildered. Tags seemed so disorganized, unstructured, and random. I didn't understand why people bothered adding tags. How did they hope to use them?
Today I'm a tagging junkie. I primarily tag blog posts and web pages. What may seem like a primitive, even pointless personal filing system is becoming the "connective tissue" of the entire web.
Tags help manage information, but that's just the beginning. They also enable collaboration, create opportunities for discovery, extend value through sharing, and I believe will impact the future of search.
If you've taken my advice to begin subscribing to blogs via RSS, adding tagging to your web 2.0 tool box is critical next step.
Domain names of the future
Tomorrow is a big day for the Internet. The nets regulators will vote to decide if the strict rules on top level domain names (.com, .org, .net, .us, .uk, etc.) could be relaxed. This could be the biggest transformation in decades if the plan to open the address system are passed.
If approved, the new plan could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while giving individuals the opportunity to also cut out their own piece of the Internet pie. That means, any two or three letter combination can become a new domain name extension (such as .abc or .xy).
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is in charge of the process. They oversee the structure of the net, acts as a regulator and controls domain name systems. Icann has been working towards opening up online addresses for the past three years.
Paul Twomey, chief executive of Icann, said, Its a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the Internet. It will allow groups, communities and businesses to express their identities online.
Part of the project would allow for the new domain names to be
internationalized. This means they could be written in scripts for
Asian and Arabic languages. Hundreds of new domain names could be created by the end of 2008. This will increase even more in the future.
UPDATE (June 26): The votes are in (and it was a unanimous YES). Read the article here.
eBooks of the Future
As old fashioned as a book might seem in todays world, the printed novel is still alive and well. There is something about holding a good book in your hands, turning the pages and reading the text at your own pace while painting a picture of the story in your mind that cant be replicated. Besides, we can all agree that the book is always better than the movie. So in what way can we possibly improve on the book?
How about bringing the book into an online format. Can a novel really be adapted for the Internet successfully? More and more reading is being done online, and that doesnt just include the younger generation. However, most web reading is skimming because of all the distractions in our media rich world. That in mind, how do you create an online book format that can capture the attention of web users?
Nicola Furlong, a Canadian author, thinks she found the answer with her new web publishing format called Quillr. This concept brings together text, video, audio and photos to create a new type of ebook that Furlong believes will resonate with the way we read today.
Furlongs latest novel, Here Ends the Beginning, is the first to be released using Quillr. Here is what she had to say about her new book and technique: Here Ends the Beginning is much more than a conventional ebook. The text is punctuated throughout with video clips and photographs of actors recreating the characters and scenes. Music and sound effects further enhance this novel experience.
The first five chapters of the 43-chapter book are available for free. To get the full story and experience (haha), it will cost you $12.95 CDN.
Im not so sure about this concept. Isnt the purpose of reading a book to let your imagination run wild? If you want someone else to tell the story for you as you read, watch a movie with subtitles.
I dont think books will ever die. If they do move into the virtual world, I dont think they will outsell traditional hard copies.
The First Concept of the World Wide Web
This fascinating article from the New York Times describes how in 1934, [Paul] Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or electric telescopes, as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files.
The article includes the following clip from the documentary (see embedded below), The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World, which describes Otlets vision for his réseau, which might be translated as network — or arguably, web.
Heres a great passage that shows just how fine-tuned Otlets prescience was, though he may not have realized how unwieldy his human approach would have been if utilized to the extent that the contemporary internet is today- thank goodness for the soft-AI of Google, huh? (Interestingly, the article goes on to describe how Otlet envisioned links between articles carrying more data than just the link; including participatory response data and indications of agreement or disagreement between the two linked articles. This idea was a hint of what was to come with the current movement towards a semantic web, though some critics see it as requiring too much labor to create and sustain, similar to the human-analysis-driven web of Otlets vision...)
As the Mundaneum evolved, it began to choke on the sheer volume of paper. Otlet started sketching ideas for new technologies to manage the information overload. At one point he posited a kind of paper-based computer, rigged with wheels and spokes that would move documents around on the surface of a desk. Eventually, however, Otlet realized the ultimate answer involved scrapping paper altogether.
Since there was no such thing as electronic data storage in the 1920s, Otlet had to invent it. He started writing at length about the possibility of electronic media storage, culminating in a 1934 book, “Monde,” where he laid out his vision of a “mechanical, collective brain” that would house all the world’s information, made readily accessible over a global telecommunications network.
Tragically, just as Otlet’s vision began to crystallize, the Mundaneum fell on hard times. In 1934, the Belgian government lost interest in the project after losing its bid for the League of Nations headquarters. Otlet moved it to a smaller space, and after financial struggles had to close it to the public.
A handful of staff members kept working on the project, but the dream ended when the Nazis marched through Belgium in 1939. The Germans cleared out the original Mundaneum site to make way for an exhibit of Third Reich art, destroying thousands of boxes filled with index cards. Otlet died in 1944, a broken and soon-to-be-forgotten man.
Here is a full-length documentary about Paul Otlet, provided by the internet archive:
Lastly, here is an article about Paul Otlet from Boxes and Arrows, titled Forgotten Forefather (by the same author as the Times article).
Show Me The Money
The stock photo companies are desperate for my money. How do I know this? The evidence is all the promotional stuff they send me.