“We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves…The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, ‘You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.’ The human spirit is indomitable.”
-Sir Roger Bannister, first runner to run a sub-4 minute mile
Here are 7 questions to ask yourself about how you are running your blog marathon and how well you are utilizing this long blog-race to get your message out.
Answer them to see if you really are blogging purposefully and at the best possible level of empowering a community with your insight.
1. Do I wait until the last possible moment to blog about something or do I treat my blog as if it really can change the world and make certain I blog the change I want to see in the world?
2. Do I blog with envy or do I blog with abundance? Do I understand it’s a marathon not a sprint and I’m not a viral marketer of ideas, I’m an idea-marathoner?
3. Do I celebrate other bloggers’ successes and insights by featuring links to them on my site and my blog?
4. Do I encourage my community to run the marathon with me by blogging questions openly and know that each commenter can contribute to a greater discussion?
5. Is my blog a “have to” or a “can’t but not” blog? Do I view it as a terrible task to get through or do I see it as an immense conduit for expression and empowerment of my community?
6. Do I have a mission statement for my blog? Do I know what I want to engender with my blog content?
7. Do I understand that I’m not blogging just to gain attention, but rather to educate, inform and elevate?
Just finished reading David Henderson’s “Making News in the Digital Era” and I wanted to post the five reasons to read his book!
Five Reasons to Read: Making News in the Digital Era
1. Chapter Seven: Twitter Dispatches in 140 Characters
2. Chapter Twenty-Five: Be Clever and Be Bold – love this chapter!
3. Chapter Twenty-Three: The Price of a Forgettable Slogan
4. Chapter Twenty-Two: Mission Statements Are Useless – this is a key chapter filled with ton of good insight.
5. Chapter Sixteen: A Good Story Has Great Legs – quote “A great story has legs that in today’s world can travel many miles per hour.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjMUfIKktWU[/youtube] My friend Mark Levy (Twitter – @levyinnovation), has provided me an endless tool for laughter when I’m having a particularly lousy day, because he mentioned to me that every time he sees the Geico pothole commercial he thinks it sounds just like me and it makes him laugh.
(I’ve included the commercial YouTube at the top of this blog post.)
On bad days, I watch it to make myself laugh. While I don’t think I sound all that Southern, the voice in the Geico commercial does tend to grow on you.
It also reminds me how powerful humor is and why it’s so important to use in our lives and in our social media presence. Laughter is the great equalizer for us all.
My great Aunt Florence used to say, “If you can’t say something funny, don’t bother to say anything at all.” At her funeral this was particularly hard on all of us because what’s funny about a funeral?
In a small cemetery, in Mobile, Alabama we all stood in the rain, led by a minister, who was all of 30, and he used humor to ease our grief.
The minister related how on the last Sunday of Aunt Florence’s life she had managed (at 90 years old) to go to church that morning, have him over for fried chicken and turnip greens at noon, and prior to that mowed the front lawn on her riding mower, in her favorite purple flowered floppy hat.
In fact, she was a little bit peeved at the minister because he came a bit earlier than noon and caught her, all dressed in white on the mower clipping the very last bit of the front lawn. She was a staunch advocate of good Southern manners and you never arrive early for supper in the South.
But caught her he did and despite her chiding, they had a great supper and later that night she went to sleep and passed away. When he finished the story, our tears turned to laughter because his story had so perfectly captured our Aunt Florence and her great love for supper, mowing the lawn and her church.
I suppose today I’m feeling particularly Southern and proud because the Texas Book Festival is this weekend and my client Bill Scheft is here among all the other amazing authors that always make me laugh.
So your “Minding Your Southern Social Media Manners” is really about remembering that laughter is good medicine online and offline.
1. Don’t waste time being snarky.
2. Don’t Twitter twerrible twthings.
3. Don’t Facebook-fatigue folks.
4. Don’t blog bad mojo
5. Don’t ever lose sight that life is best lived offline and online with humor and grace.
DM me on Twitter if you’re at the Fest, would love to see you. Twitter @nettiehartsock .
“We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone … and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.” (Sandra Day O’Connor)
It’s really time to stop worrying about how you will “look” on the Web if it’s preventing you from wholly participating. It’s not about how you will look on the Web, it’s about being authentic, engaging and real while you’re on there. It’s about sharing your insight freely and championing those in your peer arena who are doing the same.
If I worried about how I “looked” on the Web, I would have been a failure, during the years from 1995 to 2002, because dare I say, I was a full-time mom, writing my technology news stories late at night for Ziff-Davis and Allbusiness.com , Internet Business Forum (now defunct), all for the sake of being able to stay at home with my kids when they were little. I was lucky and blessed, and left a job at a news station to do this.
I mistakenly thought if someone could have seen the real me (mom, pajamas, milk pump, cheerios strewn throughout my hair, typing feverishly at 4am), they would not be paying me to write as a technology journalist or think the stuff I’d written was worthwile.
But here’s the real secret, they can see you on the Web. They know your heart by your writing. They know who you choose to affiliate with by your blogroll. They know how much you care about your readers of your blog by how often you post really good edu-focused content to uplift your whole community.
The Web community can tell a bait and switch a mile away. This community can also tell when you’re not being honest, authentic and mindful of their time.
If you’re going to spend time on the Web building your platform the biggest thing you need to understand is there’s not a dress code, but there is a social 2.0 code.
Take time to learn it and you’ll thrive. You’ll really make lifelong connections. Hey, maybe you’ll even be like me, who got roses upon the birth of my son Gibson, from a client in New Zealand that I worked with for almost three years and never met.
The only way to truly participate in the Web is to give up control over what you dictate your community should find useful. Decide that you are going to focus your energy on empowering the collective and you’ll be surprised at the Web marketshare you’ll slowly gain.
Decide to invite your community to share their ideas, to guest blog at your site, to openly comment and disagree with your ideas. Elevate the discussion and you’ll elevate your community as well.
This is why I love Mashable – they capture everything including Women Overtaking the Web. Go Women! Go Mashable – the single best resource on social media on the Web.
![Silueta de hormiga [Ant's silhouette]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3002/2444709410_f6d136e0cd_m.jpg "Silueta de hormiga [Ant's silhouette]")
- Image by ETicas via Flickr
Too often corporations, non-profits, musicians, and authors are throwing up a blog and thinking of them as a tiny insignificant ant amongst the more firm terra cotta of an entire website.
In reality, that tiny ant is the key to your long-term visibility on the Web.
If your whole site is not built on a blog platform (like mine is), at the very least your blog link needs to be front and Web-page center on your website.
Web 2.0 is changing everything we thought we knew about websites and how they drive search and build community. All these methods and ideas are slowly being uprooted by this new, persistent, unyielding blog ant. (Think rubber tree plant and what the ant did to it.)
The Web is the rubber tree plant and the blog is the ant.
“Anyone knows an ant, can’t move a rubber tree plant.” Or can it?
IT CAN.
All the major news sites including NPR, CNN, Washington Post and countless others are incorporating blogs. Not only do blogs provide an immense amount of value in terms of driving search engine traffic, but they also provide an immediate conduit for conversation with your colony.
The conversation that starts with one blog post is then taken to hundreds of others via the Sharethis widget under each blog post. (This makes it easy for everyone to share messaging out on the Web.)
If you don’t have a way for folks to pass your content on easily after each post, please go to Sharethis and get the widget.
When your content is shared, it in turn grows and feeds your colony, boosts your “link love” and your Google Page Rank and empowers your message.
Having a blog can be incredibly valuable if you’re willing to work to link to other bloggers, blog 3 times weekly and post your blogs out to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. (Work hard, little ant.)
Your blog also opens up a beautiful way for you to interact with your readers. Through comment forms and your own comments, you constantly underscore the value of your colony and the more important value of their part in the “joint conversation.”
(Side note: On the power of Ants and the colony - (Excerpted from Wikipedia) - “The colonies are sometimes described as superorganisms because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony.
Ant societies have division of labor, communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems. These parallels with human societies have long been an inspiration and subject of study.”
Your blog builds your colony for you. Think inspiring, uplifting and engaging and your colony will grow.
The days of websites just serving as adpages or long marketing messaging are gone. The best sites and blogs incorporate real, authentic, story-driven content. We all want to feel a part of a bigger colony.
You see, it’s good to be an ant.
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Curious about how your blog is doing? Try out the BlogGrader by HubSpot and see what you can do to empower your blog’s visibility.
1. Bring enough drinks for everyone. Don’t be cheap. (Give away your books for free to bloggers, and online reviewers who are so kind to cover them.)
2. Don’t be chintzy on the decor for the party: Don’t try to get the cheapest website or blog design you can and then hope that people won’t notice they’ve arrived to a dump.
3. Serve fresh, snappy, enticing snacks: Make sure witticisms abound and you’re not grumpy with folks who come to your site or your blog.
4. Don’t stalk your partygoers: If a blogger or reviewer picked up your book at the party, don’t email them incessantly for months afterward asking them when they’re going to post about it.
5. Don’t be the smartest one in the room (even if indeed you are – the only person this rule would not apply to is Stephen Hawking – because he cannot but help be the smartest one in the room. ) If someone is talking about your book and they have a different take on it, unless it’s completely and utterly inaccurate let them have their own opinions. D’OH!
6. Don’t close the party just when it gets going: The only way to successfully work a virtual party is to be in it for the long haul. To that end, don’t just grab a blog, post for three months and then stop after you “feel you’ve done enough.”
7. Don’t be ridiculous: You and your publicist have never done enough, you can always do more. Pick up another tray of your books and start walking the blogosphere party again.
8. Search out the folks in the corners of the room (Web): Don’t just try to pitch to the biggest blogs or online sites, let others be included too. They will feel all the more valued by it. (Plus, the people who are prone to being more shy are always the more interesting ones! Or at least that’s what my husband said when we met and I was the one in the corner.)
9. If you can’t find something nice to say… ok, you know the rest. Just insert the word “post” for the word “say.”
10. Revel in other people, not in front of the mirror, by the door, whilst holding up your book and ignoring your partygoers. Unless there is a fatwa on your head, get over yourself and circulate.
Ron Burgundy: “I wanna say something. I’m gonna put it out there; if you like it, you can take it, if you don’t, send it right back. I want to be on you.”
Ten Ways to Blog the Same Way You Speak: (Note: If I’ve put these in bold, it probably means you should at the very least read them, and at the most you should try them out.) (Note: They’re all in bold!)
1. If you’re funny, then don’t leave humor out of your writing on the blog. If you think your blog needs to have a “certain voice” – I would challenge you to have that voice be your own.
2. Don’t rant if you disagree. Write with the Lincoln/Douglas debate in mind. People need to come to their own conclusions and the more thoughtful you make the content, the more likely they are to see your side. (Which as we all know, is the correct side, right?)
3. Don’t be dumb and dumber. What you say on your blog can be excerpted by a journalist and read by a myriad of other press folks – so don’t be snarky or stupid if you can be smart instead.
4. If you’re a great storyteller, then occasionally take time to tell a story on your blog and weave it into a bigger idea around your business or book etc.
5. Share your insight – operate in abundance by sharing what will truly help your readers. Don’t do blog “bait and switch” where you just give out miniscule pieces of insight in order to trap readers into your e-newsletters, webinars or new speaking event.
6. Don’t exaggerate. If you’ve not really had a beer with Clint Eastwood whilst fishing for salmon in the great Northwest, then don’t say you did.
7. If you do have a beer with Clint Eastwood while fishing for salmon in the great Northwest make sure you take your Flip camera though and post a vid blog about it.
8. Don’t get a ghost blogger to “punch up” your blog posts for you. Unless they’re going to be there when a journalist asks you to repeat or reference an idea you had on your blog as well.
9. Don’t spend an inordinate amount of time, drafting and re-drafting your blog posts. Just write them and then let them go.
10. Don’t blah, blah, blah about you, you, you. Make your blog an interesting mini-magazine of ideas, not ALL ABOUT YOU.
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As I promised, I’m going to be featuring some still timely content from past interviews I’ve done with folks in the last 12 years of being on Net.
Here is one of my favorite interviews featuring Thomas R. Clifford - Corporate Documentary Filmmaker & Story Katalyst - “Breaking patterns…Discovering heroes…Igniting conversations” – TwitterID is ThomasClifford .
Interview:
Nettie: Tell us about your background.
Tom: here’s the elevator pitch. I’m a documentary filmmaker and my passion is telling remarkable stories from remarkable organizations. I’ve been doing it for almost 25 years. I’ve done PBS, broadcast, commercials, and had some film pieces in the NFL hall of fame.
Nettie: What is important in making and producing a great story in terms of businesses?
Tom: There are many ways to tell a story, I tell stories literally through the lens of the camera. Most of the films are short- under 10 minutes. What I do are short corporate films and they could be for human resources, marketing, sales, diversity issues, recruiting/hiring, raising awareness, correcting misconceptions.
The secret ingredient or the sauce is my crew and how I shoot. I have a unique style of filming that is handheld, no tripods and energetic. I interview people very close and tight, it’s all moving – never a dead moment on the screen.
My mentor 25 years ago said, “If the camera’s not moving or your subject is not moving, you better be a still photographer.” The film is always moving.
Nettie: And your films focus truly on the employees of the companies right?
Tom: Yes, that’s number two for the secret ingredient. 95% of my films use entirely the employees of the organization. That is important because of authenticity. To have a top down message come out especially in a film, you can’t hide anything in a film, so you have to have authenticity.
I despise narration for these types of films, coming out of the documentary field, my bias is that when you pre-script something from a top down or marketing department as soon as I roll tape the audience will smell “inauthenticity.” My audience is usually people learning about an organization or they’re trying to retain employees and my films typically have a highly driven people focus in them.
To have slick voiceovers or a dispassionate voice in the background tell you the story it doesn’t resonate. And over 100s of films I’ve made, using the voice of the employee is so much more engaging and compelling.
Nettie: Is it because it presents the company’s true meaning?
Tom: When I film the person in that chair in front of me, the person who ultimately views it has to identify with what is going on in the screen. That’s key.
ON PROCESS:
Nettie: What is the process of making the films?
Tom: First you meet the client and you really understand the scope of the job. Meeting with them, you see the hidden agendas and real agendas. Stage 2 is you discover the employees (who I call heroes), I call them storytellers or heroes to tell the company story. They are sharing their truths in front of the camera and their perspective on the world, so before we get to that point, I make it my mission to discover the company’s heroes. That is the most exciting thing. Finding out what makes the company great, what the employees love about it and why they’re all there. Once you have those heroes, the rest is easy – you just have to capture the story.
Those heroes “employees” are the people that the viewer can easily identify with. The polished message crafted perfectly doesn’t resonate. I look for the journey and how the heroes got there. That is the heart and soul of every film I make.
FINDING THE STORY:
Nettie: How do companies get to the place to better tell their stories?
Tom: Here’s the trademark indicator. If the internal actions match the external actions – then they are in true alignment. They walk their talk. You can easily tell that. For me that’s the indicator. Frankly if an organization is trying to present something else, it’s not something that works or that I want to represent.
When I discover the story and the people, that is the true North of the compass. That all comes out when you cast these people and they believe in the dream, and they’re great at telling the story on camera.
Nettie: What are ways to identify a company’s story? How is it separated out from the marketing speak? Do you have surprises as you go through the discovery process?
Tom: Yes, that’s a great question. A few years ago I made a film for a Fortune 500 insurance company. A big huge company and I’ll never forget it, they wanted a film made about their huge department and how they supported the company. And they gave us a 40 page PDF file and all these links on their Web site as a starting point for who they were and I looked at the folks at the meeting and said, “We’re just going to throw these in the trash. I want to know from your heart who you guys are, I don’t care about the upper management, you have hundreds of people supporting thousands of people, what is great about your story? Give me examples of what you do.”
The story has to come from heart, past experience, positive moments. Appreciative inquiry is something I’ve really tapped into and that means to ask really affirming questions. If you keep asking questions about the problems, you will keep getting problem answers. If you ask, “What’s the problem here?”, you’ll get 10 problem areas.
But if instead, you ask, “What is one success story?” You get a success and then you just keep going further for more positives.
The other stuff that’s important in my filmmaking is quantum physics. Years ago people used to think “We’ll just watch and observe, but we won’t affect the outcome.” That’s impossible. Quantum physics has ripped that apart, as soon as the camera is in place, you have totally affected the outcome. So I’m still aware that by engaging the process of making the film, I change the outcome of making the film. So always be mindful of the truth of the story. The story and the message still has to be true at its core. That is the overarching principle and the company needs to know their true story.
Nettie: What still keeps you inspired?
Tom: I have an insatiable quest to understand the world and all the stories that are out there. I get a total charge out of “what’s the next story” and I’ve got amazing clients.
Nettie: Are you doing what you love?
Tom: I can’t imagine doing anything else. I was a rock and roller years ago and that’s all I wanted to do and my dad was a lawyer but he really supported me in my dream and following that passion even though he wanted me to go to college.
In the summer of 75, in New Haven, our band was going to open for Crosby, Stills and Nash and two weeks before the big concert it got cancelled. And so instead that summer, I went into college and majored in filmmaking and here I am.
Nettie: Everything happens for a reason.
Tom: Exactly.
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Ten Ways to Break Bloggers’ Block Forever:
1. “Use the force, Luke.”
* Writing blog posts are part science, part intuition and part just using “the force” (your keyboard and typing!)
2. Herman Blume: What’s the secret, Max?
Max Fischer: The secret?
Herman Blume: Yeah, you seem to have it pretty figured out.
Max Fischer: The secret, I don’t know… I guess you’ve just gotta find something you love to do and then… do it for the rest of your life. For me, it’s going to Rushmore.
* Blog about that which you love. Truly, madly, deeply. Share the love.
3. Ron Burgundy: I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
* Keep your ego, your mahogany and your leather-bound books in check. Your readers are the most important ones, not you!
4. Cal Naughton, Jr.: Shake and bake!
Ricky Bobby: What does that do? Does that blow your mind? That just happened!
Jean Girard: Is that a catchphrase or epilepsy?
* Find a good catchphrase to brand your blog and its contents.
5. Ethel: Well, I don’t think it’s very intelligent to keep an electrical gadget on the edge of the tub.
Margot: [in bath] I tie it to the radiator.
* Don’t blog from the bathtub – no matter what.
6. Charlotte: I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be.
Bob: You’ll figure that out. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.
* Don’t blog as someone you’re not.
7. Narrator - “This is a story about a man named Harold Crick and his wristwatch. Harold Crick was a man of infinite numbers, endless calculations, and remarkably few words.”
*Don’t be a blogger of few words. Don’t endlessly calculate the word count of your blog posts. Be a blogger of infinite content.
8. Dr. Jules Hilbert: What is your favorite word?
Harold Crick: Integer.
*Ask a question as a blog post and get tons of conversations started! Start with one question every Friday, share your answer and encourage others to chime in as well.
9. Veronica Corningstone: I told you that I wanted to be an anchor…
Ron Burgundy: I thought you were kidding. I thought it was a joke. I even wrote it down in my diary – Veronica had a very funny joke today. I laughed about it later that night.”
*Blog your dreams – raise your aspirations - blogger love thyself!
10. Ron Burgundy: …laughing and enjoying our friendship, and someday we’ll look back on this with much fondness.
*Don’t give up! Keep at it and you’ll be amazed at the community you will foster.
Some of my fav bloggers:
Erika Andersen, Mitch Ditkoff, Bill Scheft, Phil Gerbyshak, Richard Laermer and Kevin Dugan, Thomas Clifford, Steve Kayser, David Henderson, Britton Manasco, Lois Kelly, Franke James, David Meerman Scott, Arthur Rosenfeld, Alex Skolnick, Steve Roesler, Marty O’Neill , Diva Marketing Blog and most every blog on Alltop.com.
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At the LitAgents conference in Austin, I referenced Paulo Coehlo and his superb use of Twitter and his blog for communicating to his readers. Here’s a link to his blog and how he writes from the heart.
I also referenced Neil Gaiman whom I’m a giant fan of and wanted to put a link to his blog as well.
By the way, if you’ve never read, “Good Omens” by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, you absolutely should.
Here’s one of my favorite excerpts from the book, “It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there’s the weather for you. For every mad scientist who’s had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who’ve sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.”
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