@awsamuel Could you pass the salt?
Couple on a sofa. One, looking at a computer, says to the other, ‘I can’t talk right now. I’m catching up on your tweets.’
How to remove the DiggBar
Digg, the site that lets users find and rate content from all over the web, recently introduced a new feature: the DiggBar. Contrary to what you might think, it isn’t a place where you can drink away your memories of the commenting culture on Digg; instead, it’s a combination URL shortener and frame from sites bookmarked in Digg.
Here, for example, is what SocialSignal.com looks like in the DiggBar:
The jury is still out on whether the DiggBar is a handy enhancement that will make your life worth living again or a blight on the planet on par with comment spam and leaf blowers.
But if you’ve decided the DiggBar isn’t your thing, you won’t find a place to switch it off permanently anywhere on the Digg toolbar. Instead, if you want to bury it for good, you’ll need to:
- Log in and head to to your Digg viewing preferences (http://digg.com/settings/viewing).
- Under “Show DiggBar”, choose “Never show DiggBar for external links”.
- Click “Save Changes”.
And you’re done.
Speakers: how to use Twitter to magnify your speech’s online impact
Not to sound like a telemarketer, but can I have half a minute of your time?
How about if it does wonders to increase your profile?
Here’s how I want you to spend those 30 seconds. Open up your presentation file and click on your title slide – the one with your contact info.
Add two words at the bottom – like this:
Twitter: robcottingham
(Make sure you add your Twitter user name instead of “robcottingham”. Otherwise you’ll find this tip works marvellously for me, not so well for you.)
Save the file, and you’re done. If this took less than 30 seconds, use your remaining time to ask, “Okay – so what did that accomplish?”
Here’s the answer. More and more events have a backchannel operating on Twitter: an online conversation among audience members about the presentation they’re attending. They ask questions, offer comments, quibble and praise.
And if they have your Twitter ID, chances are good they’ll mention it. Suddenly, your Twitter presence – and the buzz about your speech – will be shared with their networks, and a lot of those people will share your audience members’ interest in your topic.
Give it a try. And let me know how it works for you.
(And if you’ve had a little experience with Twitter backchannels, try the public speaking ninja maneuver of checking in with the backchannel while you’re speaking, and addressing a few tweets from the podium.)
10 ways to maximize your blog’s ROI: Part 7, turning readers into messengers
When you’re talking about yourself, your brand or your organization, you may have first-person credibility… but you also have a pretty obvious conflict of interest. Add that to the growing distrust of advertising and public relations – in fact, of institutional communications generally – and you have a challenge.
These days, your audience is putting much more trust in their personal networks: their friends, family, neighbours and colleagues. When they hear a personal message from someone they know, it punches through in a way that organizational communications can’t.
Blogging can help connect you to the power of those personal networks. It gives you a vehicle for bringing content to your audience in a way that makes it easy – sometimes even irresistible – to pass along to the people they know.
But here’s the thing: they often don’t just pass your message along. Your readers aren’t automatons; they’re active participants in a conversation, and they’ll transform your content – sometimes in ways you never anticipated.
And you don’t get to pick which messages get disseminated and which don’t; a blog’s audience chooses those for themselves. The content that gets sent around is the stuff they find compelling – the message they’re motivated to run with.
If you think that sounds like you’re giving up a lot of control, you aren’t wrong. But what you lose in control, you gain in power and reach. The unexpected twists that can drive a traditionally-minded brand manager wingy are exactly what lend the weight of personal authenticity – and engagement – to the results.
Here’s how to enable your readers to be effective, motivated messengers on your behalf:
- The readers who are most likely to bring your message (or, rather, their take on it) into the world are the ones who feel some level of personal investment in your organization or brand. It won’t be hard to recognize them; on your blog and on others, they’ll be the ones sticking up for and encouraging others to check you out. Build relationships with them.
- Your critics are also worth talking to, at least the reasonable ones, and not just to keep them from saying “That organization wouldn’t even reply to me.” Whether they have good-faith complaints about you, or their beef with you comes from a misunderstanding, talking with them can be the first step toward building a positive relationship.
- Don’t waste too much time trying to offer content that will “go viral” – that is, turn into one of those memes that flashes across the web like a wildfire across dry prairie. Instead, concentrate on offering great content: engaging stories, unique perspectives, entertainment or practical information.
- Make it easy for your readers to tell your story. Include logos, photos and video and audio clips… along with permission to not just reuse, but remix them as they please; the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution license is your friend. Even easier, adding a single snippet of code to your blog template will generate one-click links that let users share your posts with every major content-sharing site on the web. (Here’s an alternate service for the same kind of one-click sharing.)
- Offer full-text news feeds (aka RSS feeds) from your site, so your readers can get whole blog posts in their newsreaders. Many of them, especially power users, have set up workflows to let them quickly share posts in Google Reader or similar services with their friends.
- There may come a time when you wouldn’t just like your readers to pass your content along – you need it. Go right ahead and ask them; be transparent about what you’re hoping to achieve, and suggest ways they can most effectively deliver the goods. Just be sure your tone makes it clear that you’re asking for help and making suggestions, not giving orders.
- Be ready for unexpected, even hostile uses of your content (especially if you work in a contentious or competitive arena). Greet them graciously as part of the conversation without making a huge deal about them, and they likely won’t overshadow your message.
- Choose messages and content that people will want to convey. News releases, talking points and marketing-speak won’t work with any but your most dyed-in-the-wool supporters (and you should in fact have a separate strategy for working with them). You’ll get a lot more traction with engaging, compelling content that gives readers and their friends some kind of value.
- Include calls to action in your content – the kind you can track, like a landing page with an URL keyed to a particular blog post. The results will give you clear metrics… and if you’ve chosen a call to action with tangible value, a simple way to calculate ROI.
- Measure your reach by tracking searches on Google, Technorati, Twitter and other services. Get a baseline for the metrics that count for you, and then monitor what’s working and what isn’t. Experiment, watch and learn, and you’ll find your viral reach growing.
You’ll know you’re getting value when:
- You see your content reinforcing your brand and messages – not on your site, but in the blogs and social media streams of your readers.
- You see that content being reproduced by people you weren’t aware of before.
Just complaining about online comments isn’t enough
Visit most news sites, and you’ll find some of the web’s most pointless, thoughtless and mean-spirited conversations unfolding in the comment threads. Angry, bitter, hateful people seem drawn to the comment form at the bottom of news stories like flies to a landfill.
That’s been the case now for years, but the industry is finally waking up to it… in fits and starts. Exhibit A: Sunday’s column by Jack Knox of the Victoria Times-Colonist:
[A]t least the letters page insists on accountability, and doesn’t allow anonymous sniping by those who hide behind pseudonyms. At least the letters page, while encouraging a broad range of opinion, demands writers demonstrate at least a passing acquaintance with fact. At least the letters page demands that we add more to the debate than “Bummer.”
…Having swallowed an electronic laxative, the world has become afflicted with digital diarrhea.
Lovely.
The column goes on to level charges familiar to anyone with a copy of the Official Curmudgeon’s List of Complaints about the Internet, 2008 Edition (Now With Facebook and Twitter!): people post whatever comes to mind without thinking about it, blogs are inane, it’s just a stream of drivel… (And at that point the column pretty much vanishes into territory already richly mined by people who haven’t noticed – or would rather not acknowledge – there’s both quality and crap to be found in social media, just like in journalism.)
But Knox isn’t wrong about the low quality of online comments on news sites, even if he does seem to confuse them with social media more generally. They’re often godawful, and his example, drawn from a CBC news story’s comments, is near to my heart. From a post I wrote last year:
Drop by any CBC News story on, say, a crime, and by far the most common comments are people who have nothing to add except anger and demands for vengeance. Oh, and off-the-cuff diagnoses like “he’s clearly a sociopath.”
Where Knox goes wrong is thinking that thoughtlessness necessarily goes hand-in-hand with online comments… and in writing them off as a lost cause. Yes, the culture of user comments on news stories is often poisonous – but that doesn’t put them beyond hope.
Instead of throwing up their hands, several news outlets are rolling up their sleeves and grappling with the challenge.
The Tyee, for example, made a series of changes last year that improved the tone and quality of comments there. And The Globe and Mail‘s community editor, Matthew Ingram, has been very public in sharing his thoughts and ideas on upgrading the conversation on their site. Check out, for example, this blog post on the role of anonymity and accountability.
One big reason sites like The Globe and Mail and The Tyee are making progress? They actually devote resources – not just technological features, but people’s time – to making commenting work. And people, of course, are the crucial ingredient in a successful online community: setting the tone, drawing out positive contributions, redirecting negative behaviour and spurring productive conversation.
That’s not to say either the Globe’s or the Tyee’s community is without its challenges. But diving in and experimenting, innovating and animating is getting them further down the road to healthy conversations than all the complaining in the world.
Which is a point I would have made on the Times-Colonist article… if it allowed comments.
After that, we break for carbohydrates and a high-caffeine diuretic
Why, yes — I’d LOVE to speak at your event
Public speaking and speechwriting: the essential guides
Looking for advice on public speaking, speechwriting and leadership communications? Here are some of my most comprehensive posts, on topics that people ask me about most often.
