Journalists & Bloggers Toolbox Blog

The European Union has been in the news a lot lately. So has Greece. We’ve all heard about the economic crisis going on in the country. In fact, I was scheduled to visit Greece recently as part of a tour of the Mediterranean, but because of riots, we were sent to Crete instead. This caused a bit of an upset on the tour since most Americans don’t grasps that Crete’s ancient history is an important as that of Greece. I think the only people excited about the change were me and a retired history professor. Alas, I don’t think Greece’s gambling problem is going to be solved by rerouting to Crete. It’s been going on for a number of months and now the country is facing more complaints. So, what’s behind all this?

Well, the EU Commission was expected to open gambling throughout the EU countries in a sort of “fair trade” agreement. However various countries in the EU have turned around and drafted their own gambling laws, restricting and charging additional fees for companies who want to offer gambling inside their borders. Greece, a country that is truly desperate for revenue, is trying to force new gambling operations to be based in Greece itself and to operate out of Greek banks. Added to that, they’d like apply a back-tax to companies who already do business there.

All this strong-arming by Greece isn’t being taken lightly by European online gambling companies. In fact, the online gambling companies have filed a complaint with the European Union asking that body to force Greece to change its stance on gambling. The report is carried in this Bloomberg news article:  Online Betting Companies Complain to EU Over Greek Gambling Law.   Greece is holding firm because they could use the money.

As a journalist, I’m sometimes still surprised at how many overlooked stories affect our lives without us realizing it.  Stories are waiting to be told wherever we look.

I’ve been writing about blogging for a while now because it really is a big movement in journalism and writing and just communication in general. But it’s been some time since I’ve written a post about blogging basics.  Blogging is a slightly different form of written communication than writing articles for print. Sometimes I’m surprised at all the different terms that bloggers use when writing about how to blog.  So, I’ll make it simple.

Start by clearly stating what you’re writing about. Don’t rely on cute titles. And don’t follow the old rule of ending with the most important thought. Start with the most important thought and go from there.  Readers don’t always make it to the end.

Write short paragraphs. People usually scan through text on a web page quickly and shorter paragraphs keep them from skipping ahead to the next paragraph. The extra white space on the screen can actually help the reader stay focused on your words.

• Bullets and lists are also a good way to break details down into shorter segments.
• Bold for emphasis! But don’t go overboard.
• Italics are harder to read and should be restricted to short, needed text, such as book titles.
• Underlining often indicates a link and probably should only be sued for that.
• ALL CAPS is considered shouting. DON’T use it unless you mean to shout.
• Text size can be changed to indicate headings, but it’s not a good idea to change text size within a paragraph.

I prefer a consistent font and font color.  Yes, I’ve read advice that says “vary the font and font color to draw the reader’s attention.”  I’ve also worked since 1995 on corporate websites and seen all sorts of attention getting variations. I could write a blog post about them. (Maybe I will.)  But trust me, changing font size and color can be dangerous.

Do you have a background in journalism? Are you trying to tackle the world of blogging and social media?  I work with folks who come from that background and some of them find the personal approach that blogging, media, social networking and journalism a bit difficult to adjust to.  Now, I’m not going to try to tackle the entire state of journalism in the twenty-first century in a blog post, but I am going to focus on blogs and how they can be different from the journalism you learned in school. Or practiced when writing for that newspaper.

Blogs can be personal. They can be subjective. In fact, blogs often gain more readership when writers are personal and actually present their opinions on things. Now, it’s not just about opinions. It’s about creating that personal connection with the reader and that often means opening up the door, or at least a window, into your own personal space.  Readers don’t just want to know what you think about a topic. They want to know who you are and then what you think about the topic.  It really is about making a connection.

So, what do you do? Well, yes, the rule of journalism as far as researching your subject still hold. After all, you need to know about the subject you’re forming an opinion on. But when you right about the story, you’re actually allowed not just to present the facts, but what you think about the facts. And then you can go further and even talk about how the facts affect you and your family.  You can open up and be a real person in the blog. Because we like to connect with real people.

There’s a new study out that shows that browsing the internet while at work may actually help performance. This will probably come as news to employers who’ve spent a ton of money investing in methods to block the internet or inappropriate sites from their office staff.  All that money spent making their employees less efficient.

Here’s what’s going on. We always think of browsing the internet as a distraction, and we know the work day is filled with distractions already. So we want to eliminate distractions, right?  Well, probably yes to the distractions part. We’d all love to eliminate those annoying distractions that bug us during the day – random emails about the parking situation, phone calls trying to sell us something, requests for updates to that spreadsheet you’d be able to update if you didn’t have to stop updating it to respond the email about updating the spreadsheet …   Those are distractions and annoyances because they’re out of our control, and for the most part offices rather than eliminating them contribute to them.

But what the study discovered is that browsing the web isn’t a distraction. It’s a break. When we surf the web, we visit sites that we enjoy visiting. Turns out this is actually pleasurable, which is probably why we do it. And that means it gives us a break from the daily turmoil and makes a more productive when we go back to our assigned tasks.  And web surfing has an advantage over other types of break. Since we don’t have to leave our desks, we can take a web break for 2 or 3 minutes to reset our minds and get back to the task. Now, going for a walk in the park might be better, but let’s be realistic, most of us don’t have time to go for a walk during the work day.  Someone still wants that spreadsheet updated.

Do you work in an office or at home? If you work in an office, is there a water cooler?  Actually, where I work there isn’t. Instead we have a kitchen, but it serves the same function as the proverbial “water cooler.”  What’s the water cooler function?  It’s not just to dispense water but it becomes a gather spot of conversations, for gossip, even for casual brainstorming sessions.  Where I work, we have a white board in the kitchen so people can even make notes of their brainstorming sessions.

So, what does this have to do with twitter?  Well, in this age of freelancing and work at home jobs, some of us work in somewhat isolated environments where we don’t have a water cooler to gather around.  I’m an author and I need to chat with other authors from around the world and exchange ideas and thoughts.  And sometimes just keep up to date on each other’s lives.  So we need a virtual water cooler. And that water cooler is twitter.

This is something that some supposed twitter experts miss when they give advice on how to use twitter and social media.  Everyone wants to advise me about branding and getting followers and promotion and SEO.  It all seems to be about going out there and beating people over the head with social media to sell something.

That’s not really how I use twitter. Am I wrong? I don’t know. Twitter is still fairly new and social media seems to reinvent itself every couple of years.  But I do know that I don’t just have followers on twitter, I also have friends. Real friends who share advice and stories and who love to chat with each other.  For me, this seems to be the best use of twitter. As that virtual water cooler where you never know what topic will come up next.

When you write an article or blog post, do you stay focused and on topic or do you wander off onto tangents and risk sidetracking the reader?  Now I’m thinking of this topic because I attended a writing group last night where one writer read three pages of a piece with some wonderful descriptions and great lines, but no focus.  I was there to offer critiques, but afterward, I wasn’t sure what to say about this one except to recommend editing for more focus. I couldn’t really speak to the subject because I wasn’t sure what it was.  Actually, I would probably have recommended some planning before tackling the subject, but we were already past that stage.

Now, readers are somewhat forgiving. They’ll let you get away with the occasional side remark or interesting story tidbit, but if you use them, you have to bring the topic back in focus.  And the two techniques I recommend for constructing a focused piece are those I wrote about up in that first paragraph — planning and editing.

Planning a piece in advance is essential because it helps you determine not only what you’re writing about but if you have enough material for the length that you want to cover for the piece or if you need to do more research. Bloggers often skip this stage believing that to sound more natural and chatty, blogging should flow unplanned from the keyboard to the website. But sometimes that sounds too natural as the topic wanders off on tangents and becomes lost. Planning can help even the natural writer.

And then there’s editing. I’m amazed at how many bloggers skip the editing step.  It’s as if they’re afraid to stop and breathe between creation and publication.  Or perhaps as if everything is written for a tight deadline and there is no time to even read through the piece before showing it off to the world. Give yourself a little breathing room and plan some editing time in your day.  Step away from the computer for a minute and then come back and read the piece over again. Ask yourself — what do I expect the reader to come away with. Then ask yourself if you’ve accomplished that.  Have you written a focused piece?

Are you on Twitter? Now, bloggers do really need to be on twitter because it’s a great place to start growing a readership, if you use it right. Which is where the problem comes in. I hear a lot of writers and bloggers fuss because they don’t see how twitter is useful, but then when I check out their twitter account, they’re doing everything wrong.  The important thing to remember about twitter is that it is social networking which means you need to be social.  So, let’s look at one thing people do wrong – the quotes.

When I get a new twitter follower, I have to decide a couple of things. One is, am I going to follow them back out of politeness.  Potential readers of my work get followed back.  But then there is the second decision — am I going to put them in one of my twitter lists with the folks who’s tweets I actually read and who I interact with on twitter.  Dividing people into lists helps me keep up with those folks I actually want to chat with on Twitter. This includes friends and fellow writers as well as a few people who just have really interesting things to say.

Which brings me to the twitter trend of tweeting quotes from famous people. Guess where those people go on my twitter?  Actually, if the twitter list is mostly quotes I don’t even bother to follow back. If it’s heavily geared toward quotes but shows some signs of life, I may follow the twitter but I won’t list them.  See, tweeting quotes tends to be a technique used by those who want to show an active twitter account but don’t really want to bother to think up anything original to say.  When I first joined twitter, I was impressed by people who wanted to share quotes with me every day. But as the list of people I followed grew, I started noticing that a number of people did little but tweet quotes all day long in hopes of looking like active members of the twitter community. So, I stopped following them.

Today I want to talk about the comments section of your blog and how you might not be using it to its best advantage.  Now I’m part of a group that does a blog hop every weekend.  A blog hop is a great way to get readers and attract some attention to your blog. And to help each other out, most of us try to leave comments on each other’s blogs.  But that means we often have to help the new members over a bit of a learning curve when it comes to making it easy for people to leave comments on your blog. Now the operative lesson here is that you want to make it easy for people to leave comments on your blog. Yes, we all want to avoid spam and there are tools to help with that without limiting the ability of real readers to contribute.

First, make it as easy as possible to find the comments section.  Usually I look at the bottom of the post, but I’ve seen some blogs where the comments are indicated by a tiny thought bubble mixed in with 5 different social media icons. This isn’t a method I’d recommend. Next, make sure that the reader doesn’t have to register with a service in order to comment. This means that they need to be able to leave a comment with nothing more than a name and URL or email.  You don’t have to go as far as anonymous but depending on how controversial your blog is, that could get you more comments.  But I strongly recommend avoiding services such as Live Journal which can actually force a reader to watch a commercial before they can leave a comment.  The moment that commercial starts, I close the page and I don’t go back.

You can use CAPTCHA codes or limit the number of links a post can contain. These can help keep out spammers and with link limits keep people from cross-promoting in your blog, if you object to that.  But test your prevention method first. Would you be able to leave a comment on your own blog?

Folks, please don’t do this!  I take part regularly in a multi-author blogging event. Sometimes it takes a while to teach the new people proper etiquette.  Lately we’ve been going through the struggle with people using the comment section of other author’s blogs to leave promo links to their own books.  This is a big “no” when it comes to blog etiquette and will usually resort in the quick removal of the link and potentially a ban from posting on the blog.

Now when you post a comment on a fellow blogger’s blog, the blogging software usually includes a link to your blog with the name you use to post under. This link, which is usually requested by the blogging software is fine. And if you leave an interesting enough comment, then a reader might very well click on that link to read more about you.  But to comment on other blogger’s posts so that you can hijack their space and use it to advertise your own work is just plain rude.  And don’t think they don’t know what you’re doing.  It quickly gets you labeled as a spammer.

So, remember, while it’s a great idea to read other bloggers posts and a fantastic idea to leave them a comment showing your appreciation, it’s not okay to then try to steal their readers.  Take me, I pay for server space and hosting for my blog. I didn’t pay for it to provide free advertising space to another writer.  So, keep the link out of the comment section.

The Google Directory is no more. So, what does this mean? What was the Google Directory?  You’d recognize right away if you saw it. The directory was the list of categories under the Google Search spot on the Google page. Take a look and you’ll see a cleaner look to that Google page. Basically, all you have now is the search option.

I want to take a quick look at directories and search.  Years ago I worked on an intranet project for major corporation and we faced a challenge with how best to tackle the problem of getting the right information to the right person. There are two ways people look for information on the web. One is using a search engine, like Google search. The other is by using a list of topics and narrowing their selection down as the go through the topics. So, if you start with Recreation, you’d then find topics such as fishing, hiking or sports.  From there, you’d find more options to narrow your topic choices as well as some of the top sites for that topic. In the early days, most of the web was navigated through directories, but as search engines became more powerful, people began to prefer the search method. But the directories were still there as an underlying structure.

But now Google has completely done away with the Google directory as a way to find information. If you visit the Google directory, you’ll find a message telling you that Search is the fastest way to find the information you need, but they also have a link directing you to the Open Directory Project (ODP) at dmoz.org.  So, for those who really want to use a Directory to find information on the web or who want to have their pages listed on a directory, there’s still a directory available.  And now people are wondering what this means.

One train of thought is that the Google team no longer sees value in the directory.  I suspect that may be part of the answer. When I worked on the corporate “search vs. directory” project, the search proponents struggled to understand why they needed to put an effort of keeping up with directory listings. To them search was the way to go.  And with Google promoting Google Chrome where the web browser itself functions as a search engine, they probably see even less value in maintaining that directory that they did two or three years ago. Certainly the quiet discontinuation of the directory indicates that Google feels that the usage is low enough that there won’t be much protest.

But does that mean that they really are dropping the value of the directory or have they decided to refer to the DMOZ open directory project as the best source for directory information?