Archive for May, 2007

I’ve been checking out business and political blogs in the UK to see which business and political leaders blog. I’ll be bringing you various of these blogs on ZenGuide from time to time. My overall impression is that not many business people or political figures in the UK have blogs at this point and the ones that are around range from those that are informative, articulate and all about transparent communication to those that are, well, hardly blogs at all and more like static press releases with the word “blog” stuck on the title. I’ll be focusing on the great blogs rather than the not so great ones as I think it’s more rewarding to learn from good examples than have a laugh at bad ones.

So, here is one that I think is a sterling example of a great blog, which will hopefully inspire you. Joe Duckworth is the Chief Executive of the Isle of Wight Council and he has a blog on their website called “Joe Blogs”, a clever take on the name that we use in the UK when referring to your typical average everyman “Joe Bloggs”.

It looks like he started the blog in November 2006 as that seems to be the oldest entry on the page and there isn’t an “Archive” section you would normally find on a blog to indicate that there are older posts. He has blogged on average about twice a month since then.

His tone is informal and direct, as if he is having a chat with you or dropping you a line by email. It’s easy reading and it’s very easy to get to like the guy very quickly. For me, his informal tone does not undermine his authority as the Chief Executive but rather makes him an approachable leader. In particular - and this is the key to why I think he has a great blog - he does not shy away from the tough stuff. In his first post in November last year, he says (my emphasis) “We are only two star which is not very good. But did you know 40 percent of our services are in the best 25 per cent in the Country. The average for other councils like us is half of that. So, don’t shy away of things which are unacceptable, but more recognition about where we are flaming good.” He acknowledges the negative, which is something that many leaders can find difficult to do. When he balances it with a positive, the effect on the reader is “OK, fair enough. That is a good point he’s made about the Council” - ie. his credibility in stating the good thing is strengthened by the fact that he is prepared to acknowledge the bad point, it’s not just spin to tell us how great the Council is.

Later in January 2007, he blogs (my emphasis again) “For example this week I got my first glimpse of the staff survey results. They are still interim results as the consultants complete analysing the data. I have to admit that it made uncomfortable reading. Staff clearly are not happy with certain aspects of working for the council. As I have said before we are going to take these results very seriously and act on them. Furthermore we are going to publish the results - warts and all. The council I want to be chief exec of is open and honest and we are prepared to take the knocks because we know that we are going to deal with them and ensure that issues are dealt with properly.” Again, to make those admissions about unhappy staff and his personal response of discomfort about the results - that takes a strength of character. His openness to publish the results is consistent with this straight-talking. So when he says “the council I want to be chief exec of is open and honest “, you believe that he means it. Organisation and nations are a reflection of the people who lead them and we can see that Joe is open and honest from his blog and we can trust that he will lead the Council by example.

I was also particularly impressed when I emailed the Isle of Wight Council via their contact form to say that I couldn’t subscribe to his blog using Google Reader as there did not seem to be a feed. I got a reply back from Matthew Pattinson, the Council’s analyst and web developer within a couple of hours. He created an RSS feed there and then for me and has put it up onto the blog for other people to subscribe as well. To me, that immediate response and the tone of Joe’s blog together gave me a sense that the Isle of Wight Council is all about getting the job done and is focused on providing service to its constituents and stakeholders.

In contrast, I also found a couple of other UK councils that purported to have Chief Executive blogs but these were all statice brochure type pages that read like press releases. One of them labelled each post “Blog No. 1″ , “Blog No. 2″ etc - hmmm, a blog is the thing itself like a magazine is a thing and each article in it is a post. That simple mislabelling plus the press release style text gave the sense that this organisation didn’t have a clue about what a blog is meant to be. They also did not have feeds and I emailed them in the same way as I emailed the Isle of Wight Council via their contact form, asking about the feed. To date, over a month later, I am still waiting for their reply.

Going back to Joe’s Blog, I’d like to offer a couple of suggestions for making the most of the blog, if I may:

• Add an Archive and a also a Category section for easy searchability in the future as Joe fills the blog with a body of work

• Make it easier to find the blog from the Council’s main page - I had to really search for it to find it. I think it’s one of the strengths of the site and of the Council’s conversation with its stakeholders.

Joe also writes frankly about his family’s personal experience of crime in his post on 03 April. What a horrendous experience and my sympathies go out to them. He moves on to discuss local policing and tackling not just crime but fear of crime. This mix of personal and professional discussion in his blog is the sort of thing that will make the readers keep coming back and keep having trust in this straight-talking leader.

Flickr - notice the spelling (no “e”) - is a social networking site for photographs. You can sign up for a free account and upload your photos. Once you have an account, you get a dedicated webpage address for your photos eg http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourchosenflickrpagename. You can give that link to anyone so they can go to view your photos there.

Public/ private

You can display all or some only of your photos as public (for anyone and everyone to see) or private (which only your friends and family can see). In order to for friends and family to see your private photos, they will need to sign up for their own Flickr account as well - that’s a bit more cumbersome than allowing the whole world to see your pics but then if privacy is important to you, then it’s worth those extra couple of steps for your friends and family.

People viewing your pictures can leave comments for each photo. You can turn comments off if your prefer.

Groups

You can set up a group with your family and friends so you can all pool your photographs.

There are also different public groups on Flickr that you can join. eg if you have photos all about cars, you could pool your car pics into a car group which will have photos by other car enthusiasts. If there isn’t already a group for cars or whatever theme you are passionate about, you can always start one of your own.

People are also using groups in creative ways. Here are some groups to explore:

I love this one - Stick Figures in Peril: photos of those warning signs showing stick figures in all kinds of terrible situations. It makes a nervous person like me feel that the whole world is a minefield of terror…

This one is brilliantly creative - Tell a Story in Five Frames: use five photos in sequence to tell a story. I featured some good short photo stories on my arts blog, Fusion View, in the post “Micro Photo Stories”

This one is starkly hypnotic - Urban Explorers: the invitation to post your photos here says. “photos and stories about abandoned paper mills, condmened hospitals, decaying barns, etc… please do not post typical cty pictures here.”

Creative Commons Licence

For bloggers, Flickr is a great resource for free photos to illustrate your posts. In the “Search” section, choose “Advanced Search” and click on the option to Search within Creative Commons-licensed photos and type in the keyword you want.

Creative Commons Licensed photos are those that their creators have offered to the world to use for free by clicking on the relevant Creative Commons Licence option within Flickr. The only condition is that you credit the creator and link back to the Flickr page where you got the photo. Note that you should check if there are any restrictions in the Creative Commons Licence restricting commercial use or changes to the original photo.

Many ways to upload your photos

There are a number of ways to upload your photos. You can go to the Flickr upload page and upload it 6 photos at a time from there. Or you can download the Flickr Uploader onto your desktop and upload loads and loads of photos all in one go. Or you can even upload photos by email from your email account or your mobile phone - Flickr gives you a dedicated email address to email the pics to.

Tags

Tags are handy labels you can give to your photos so you can easily find them again. You can also search other people’s public photos by tags to see, say, all pics tagged with “car” or “Malaysia” etc.

Free versus Pro Accounts

The free account allows you to upload up to 200 photos. There is also a monthly upload limit (based on megabytes per month). And you can only create 3 “sets” or folders.

The Flickr Pro Account costs US$47.99 for two years (or US$24.95 for one year). There is no limit to the number of photos you can upload nor any monthly limit. You can also create as many folders as you like.

Conclusion

I like Flickr and use it now for all my private photographs. The interface is a little bit complex and takes a bit of exploration and getting into the mindset of the people who designed the site. But overall, I find it a quick and easy way to sort and store my photos and also to share photos with my internationally-based family - there’s nothing like getting an update from my cousin in Australia and being able to see her photos on Flickr within minutes of her uploading them!

Having added auto-podcasting to my other blog Fusion View, I’ve added also added a new gadget here so you can download ZenGuide posts as audio files onto your iPod or MP3 and listen to them wherever you are.

So no more being glued to the computer screen - you can enjoy my posts on the move.

All you have to do is drag and drop the Talkr badge below into your podcast tuner.

The easiest way is to minimise this screen in front of your iTunes (or other podcast catcher/ tuner screen) and drap and drop the badge into iTunes (or other podcast tuner).

The posts are read by a clever automated text reader that sounds like an American woman. It’s actually pretty realistic and natural sounding, considering she’s a bunch of bytes and digital data. Try it out and let me know what you think.

You can try it out by listening to my post on Simple Online Marketing (click here) (05min 30sec) - or by clicking on the grey audio player below.

Photo: thanks to dtechnews.com

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (260)

According to a Microsoft survey, 75% of blogs hosted by Blogger.com are spam blogs. These are the free blogs that have “.blogspot.com” as part of their domain name that up till now have been used primarily by personal bloggers and those who don’t want to spend any money on their online presence. This disturbing new trend was reported on a legal blog, Real Lawyers Have Blogs, in April 2007, by Kevin O’Keefe a US lawyer.

He makes the point that law firms who use the free Blogger platform to save money are therefore in a blogging network surrounded by spam blogs. I would add my voice to this concern - as a business owner, are these the kind of blogging neighbours you want associated with your corporate blog? If “.blogspot.com” is widely known as the blogging platform of choice for personal bloggers, people who don’t want to invest any money in their web presence and now spam bloggers , what does it say about your brand to have that as part of your domain name?

I reported awhile back on the recent US survey that indicated that 75% of the wealthy in America read blogs. This is a great opportunity for businesses who would like to reach this group via blogging. But the wealthy and powerful are most likely to be used to top-quality, high-value goods, services and experiences. Will your .blogspot.com domain and generic template give them a blog-visiting experience that is going to meet those expectations?

I came across a US-based life coach who was offering services that would help his client achieve “excellence” and “peak performance”. His copy was all superlatives of that nature. But his blog was a .blogspot.com blog - and he was using the first template you come across when signing up to a blog on Blogger. I have to say, I didn’t believe that he believed a thing that he was saying.

There is a reason why designer goods stores and top-notch service firms are fitted out luxuriously with top quality wood and shiny marble, gleaming glass and indoor exotic plants and water features. They all add up to say “We’re worth it” and “You, as our customer, deserve the best visiting experience.”

For a business to have a free .blogspot.com domain - especially if you don’t even make an effort to customise the generic template - seems to me increasingly like trying to setting yourself up as luxury goods outlet offering Gucci and Versace products and then selling them out of the back of your car on a lay-by.

The survey “Connecting Web Spammers and Advertisers” can be read as a pdf file. It has been said by other commentators that the survey was commissioned by Microsoft, who are rivals with Google, the company that owns Blogger.com and the outcome was bound to have something negative to say about Blogger. Personally, I like Blogger as a starting point for new bloggers - because it’s free and it’s easily customisable, it’s a great place to practice your blogging skills. It’s also ideal for personal bloggers and others who have little or no budget. But for business or corporate blogging, you really need to see blogging as part of your brand and marketing strategy and act accordingly.

I’ve also blogged earlier on the merits or otherwise of free blog platforms in my post “Are You Worth It?”.

Disclosure: we offer a bespoke website and/ or blog design service starting from £500 and a year’s hosting from £30. But you don’t have to use our design services - our consultancy is about helping you enhance your online presence not just selling web design services. So, if you want a bespoke blog, one place to start is to speak to the people who designed your main website and see what they can do for you - or if you’d like to find out more about how we can help with designing your integrated website and blog, by all means email or call me via the Contact Us link at the top of this page.

Photo: thanks to alaska.net

Blog platforms usually require you to go online, log on and write your post online. This is fine - until your broadband connection decides to let you down. On a number of occasions, I’ve written a long post online only to find that when I hit “save”, the connection cuts out or some other horror occurs - resulting in all my lovely prose vanishing into the ether. Aaargh!

To my joy, I discovered a free offline blogging tool called W.Bloggar that allows you to blog offline on your PC or laptop. Then, when you are ready to post it on your blog, all you have to do is click “Post” and it automatically connects to your blog online and shoots the post through the ether, magically posting it right into your blog.

The great thing is that you can also set your Categories offline and add image links just as you would normally do online - as well as setting the time and date of the post (eg if you only want it to be visible on the site at a future date)

To download the software, go to www.wbloggar.com and click through to the downloads page.

UPDATE: I’ve just come across a post from The Wrong Advices which lists a number of offline blogging tools in addition to Bloggar called, unsurprisingly, Offline Blog Editing Tools

Continuing my Twitter watch, I see that the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera has set up a Twitter account to bring its friends news updates direct to their mobile phones. You can sign up to Twitter and add them as a friend at http://twitter.com/AJEnglish.

The BBC also has a Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/bbcnews if you want to compare reporting styles and different cultural approaches.

For an American perspective, you can check out CNN tweets at http://twitter.com/cnnbrk

Related posts

What is …. Twitter?

Another presidential candidate on Twitter

With my background as a novelist, I’m curious to track the way the publishing industry is dealing with developments in internet and social media technology. The general trend seems to be slow. Book people seem to be still fondly attached to paper and hard copy texts.

A couple of years ago, a number of literary heavyweights loudly pooh-poohed blogs and sneered at how a teenager’s ramblings online could not possible be in the same league as great literature like Tolstoy’s works. (Unfortunately, I didn’t tag that article at the time I read it so I can’t link you to it here.)  Now, there are highly successful books derived from blogs eg The Julie/ Julia Project blog which became Julie and Julia, the book - and at least one publishing company, the Friday Project, that specifically seeks out blogs to turn into books. There is also the Blooker, an award - with a nod to the Booker - for books based on websites or blogs.

And traditional publishers are trying to catch up to new media, tentatively exploring e-books and other digital means to capture new audiences. A recent article on OhMyNews.com examines in-depth the issues facing publishers in the new media age and what some are doing to embrace the technology.

Interestingly, OhMyNews.com is a news site that draws its articles and news updates from citizen journalists - anyone who wants to submit an article can do so by signing up to be a citizen reporter. It was founded by Korean Oh Yeon-ho in 2000 as a Korean language site and has now expanded into an international English language site as well. The concept of citizen journalists is very empowering, in particular those who live in nations where the press is tightly controlled and also for anyone who would like to write and read “news” outside of the traditional avenues. Again, the evolution of new forms of news publishing online like this site must only challenge the traditional models and expectations of what publishing is all about. The site has a good FAQ section if you are interested in finding out how to become a citizen reporter.

In related news, New Media Age reports that major publishing company Random House and supermarket giant Asda are teaming up for an multi-media launch for celebrity Chantell Houghston’s autobiography, using mobile phones as the main platform for the interactive element.

Photo: thanks to James Cridland on flickr.com

A few weeks ago, I asked my readers to email me any aspects of blogging that you’d like me to explore on ZenGuide.

One of my readers, who is new to blogging this year, emailed to ask “How do I protect content - or what is the least I can do?”

The bad news

It is very difficult to protect your content once it’s posted up on the web, whether in a blog, on a website or on a social media site like flickr.com for photographs.

Anyone can come along and cut-and-paste your text or save your image to their computer or download your music or podcast as an mp3. If you make a pdf document available for download, someone can come along and download it to create into a book that they then sell as their own, as happened to marketing guru, Seth Godin - I blogged about this on my writing and arts blog, Fusion View.

Some bloggers take your feed and run it on their site to use your content as bait for visitors - whom they hope will then click on their Google or other ads and thereby earn them some revenue.

So if you put stuff up on your blog or any social networking site, you are at risk of having it nicked.

The good news

A lot of web and social media developers give tons of their expertise and skill away for free. Wordpress, which is the platform that this blog and many others are built on, offers you a free blog on their Wordpress.com site. You can download their Wordpress files for free and re-design them and upload them again onto your own server - this is what my blog designers did for me. Many people develop Wordpress “plugins” to add functionality to their blogs and then offer them for free to anyone to download and use.

In the offline world, businesses and professionals often give free seminars and workshops, send out free newsletters and expert journals, do some initial work for free. They are giving away their expertise gratis as a way to showcase their talent and raise their profile. Other businesses give away their products for free or at huge discounts - again it’s a form of marketing and raising awareness of what they have to offer.

In that light, making your content - whether it’s written or a photograph or a video or music or whatever - available on the web allows it to be seen potentially by anyone who has a computer and is connected to the internet - ie millions of people. And if many of them think your content is fab enough to take and share and pass on to their friends - well, that’s free word-of-mouth marketing for you!

As for those people who then nick your stuff and make money out of it, you can try and get them to stop it (very difficult, especially across international borders) or take it in your stride as one of those risks. And perhaps if it’s annoying you, you can work out how you can make money out of your own content in the future before someone else does.

Practical things you can do

I have a policy here as follows (and a similar one on my other blog Fusion View):

All the content of my posts is copyrighted - copyright belongs to ZenGuide unless otherwise stated.

You may use portions of a post or copy and paste portions of a post into another site or document provided you put that portion inside quotation marks and you acknowledge clearly on that site/ document that it is taken from ZenGuide and also that you credit ZenGuide clearly with it. A portion for these purposes would be up to one third of the text from the relevant post. This broadly reflects the UK law on copyright.

So far as I am aware, most people who have quoted my posts have done so honourably as per this policy.

I’d recommend having a similar policy clearly stated on your blog or social media site.

The Creative Commons Licencee also provides a standardised framework for licensing your work.

If people don’t comply, a policy on your blog and/ or the Creative Commons Licence gives you some leverage when trying to rectify that breach - but be aware, it is likely to be difficult to enforce (again, especially across international borders).

For photographs and videos, you can watermark them with your name or website but you may feel that that could interfere with the enjoyment of viewing them.

Take home message

There are practical things you can do to try to protect your content but at the end of the day, when uploading your content onto the web, it’s best to choose things that you are prepared to give away for free

Photo: thanks to RBerteig from flickr.com

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Links Masterclass 1

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