From the category archives:

Creativity

5 Tips for Conversational Content: Keep the Conversation Lively

by Nettie Hartsock on June 4, 2009

: Image via Wikipedia

In this rush of Web 2.0 and social media advice, one of the best things to keep in mind when you’re blogging, beyond the SEO, beyond the “love-linking”, beyond the right tags is empower your posts with what I term “conversational content.”

Conversational content is the base ingredient to any blog truly thriving and engaging a community long-term. It’s always good to make sure your content is grammatically at its best and spellchecked of course.

But keep in mind, we don’t grammatically correct ourselves mid-conversation and it would be odd if we did.

What we really do in conversation is strive for a connection, an “aha” moment, a shared encounter that leaves both participants (or the community) feeling heard and responded to.

Building conversational content is all about balancing the conversation and ensuring that you have a place at the table, and that your community feels they’re also breaking bread with you as well. We all enjoy a lively conversation so keep in mind that it’s ok to encourage debate. What follows are five tips to help empower your “conversational content.”

Five Tips for Empowering Conversational Content:

1. Ask questions in your blog posts. Identify what you’re thinking about and encourage others to chime in. Don’t control the conversation - engender the conversation.

2. Write your blog posts with links to other stories on major sites, and then share your own spin on those stories and encourage your community of readers to do the same. Just as you would share your opinion with friends and family, do the same on your blog.

3. Once a week commit to doing one blog post that highlights at least five other bloggers you read and why you like what they are doing. You’d be amazed at how this engenders not only “link love” but also a real spirit of repricocity.

4. If your original blog post engenders deep discussion around the topic, and you want to follow up with other posts, why not ask someone who has already commented to guest post on the topic on your blog. That keeps the conversation lively and diverse.

5. Don’t dominate the content with your own opinions. Use your blog as a platform to drive conversational content to a higher place of thought. Open the door, start the discussion and hope that it inspires your community to converse more deeply than you thought was imaginable.

Now to see how conversation can really work check out a clip from the Big Chill, one my favorite movies, and look for where William Hurt says, “I was just trying to keep the conversation lively.”

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Funny Sundays - Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire

by Nettie Hartsock on May 10, 2009

I’m featuring these Funny Sundays on my blog as part of my underlying mission to continue my own writing work and remind all of us that laughter is necessary to staving off the recession blues! Here’s the latest edition!

krod-mandoon-gallery_cast1 The season finale of “Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire” aired this week on Comedy Central. This live action series chronicles the adventures of Krod Mandoon (Sean Maguire) and his hopelessly futile band of warriors as they take on the evil Chancellor Dongalor (Matt Lucas).

This series marked CC’s first foray into fantasy comedy and the six episodes were stellar in presenting a theater-like experience filled with guffaws, slapstick and brainy British humor.

I had a chance to catch up with the one of the leading men of the show, Sean Maguire who spoke about his experience on the show and what scene made him laugh so hard he almost couldn’t finish the shot.

If you’ve not had an opportunity to check out the show – Comedy Central has all the episodes and some gleeful and nefarious extras online.

Here’s our interview, and I highly recommend seeing if you can catch it in reruns or buy the DVD.

Nettie: Hi Sean, thanks for taking time out to do the interview. I’m curious how you feel about the series, what you liked about it?

Sean: I loved the fact that it’s really different from anything on TV. I grew up watching comedies that were slightly unconventional. I loved the cast and crew and become very good friends with them.

The show was so fun to shoot and we assembled a great bunch of actors and the material was wonderful.

Nettie: The show seems to lend itself to almost a Trekkie experience with their followers? Are you guys starting to see Krod Mandoon followers?

Sean: Actually when we did ComicCon we saw some people dressed up as Aneka’s character and that was very cool. If the seasons keep going we think we may have a little bit of a followers that would start doing that and it would be really fun. We’re just in six episodes and we hope that we’ll really be able to make another ten episodes and really build that fan loyal base.

Nettie: What’s your favorite story about the show?

Sean: Lots of stuff – first all the great people to work with. The show seems really easy because we all had so much fun. Very physical and demanding job. I really felt we were making something we could be really proud of.

Nettie: Is there an instance where you guys had to stop because you were laughing so much?

Sean: A couple of days a week because of Matt Lucas – he is so talented and I’ve never thought I would have the opportunity to play the hero against his villain and everything he does just really inspires you to laughter.

Nettie: What happens after series finale?

Sean: I’m traveling to UK to launch the show there. It’s coming out on June 4th and then we’re all looking at things to go off and do and then hopefully at the end of the summer we can regroup and come back and shoot more of the show.

Nettie: What’s something that no one knows about the show – something that’s really a secret about the show?

Sean: That’s a good question. I don’t know if people know that every network passed on it. Every network said, “No, no, it can’t be done.” But Comedy Central said “That sounds great – if you think you can pull it off.”And we said, “We think we can,” and the BBC got involved and CC and the BBC decided to share it. So it is a co-production which actually as a Brit living in America is a dream come true.

Nettie: Do you have celeb friends that watch the show?

Sean: (Laughs.) Actually yes, because they have to, but also my buddy John Cho who is playing Sulu in the new Star Trek movie watches the show and is very positive about the show.

Nettie: The show seems like it’s almost a one-act play - a theater piece. Do you feel that way?

Sean: Absolutely, it’s so carefully put together and even in the slapstick and comedy there really is a wonderful story. In the English version it’s 8 minutes longer than the American version because over here you have to have commercials. So when it comes out on DVD it will almost be an hour of content that the Americans didn’t get to see.

Nettie: That’s really interesting. So while we have the commercials, for all the stuff we’re all too broke to buy, the Brits have more of the story and slapstick in their version?

Sean: (Laughs.) Yes, exactly. I think for people that really love the show they will have a lot more to look forward to with the DVD even before the second season.

Nettie: What about the season finale?

Sean: The toughest scene for me to stay straight was in the finale where Matt explains the history of how we are connected. Matt is the funniest guy in Britain – it’s very hard to keep a straight face when you’re working with him.

Nettie: We’ll have to watch for that scene! Thanks so much Sean and safe travels to England!

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