I’d stop reading blog posts full of tips except there are always those few that stand out from the crowd and offer some information that significantly changes the way I approach a project, a client, or my career.
Sometimes I think the blogosphere is tipping over.
I find myself swamped with emails and blog posts that are chock full of tips for this and tips for that. I’d stop reading the stuff except there are always those few tips that stand out from the crowd and offer some information that significantly changes the way I approach a project, a client, or my career.
Is it that they are targeted at exactly my level of experience in a particular area? Or is it that they are written in a particularly engaging way?
Those factors certainly help, but I think the key factor is that they needle me to be outrageous, to take risks, to go the extra mile, or to look at something in a contrarian light. They dare me.
Sometimes I find myself initially offended by the tips, but there’ll come a point during the day when I think back on them…and a little light goes on. And gets brighter.
A damning analysis of how contemporary print journalism works, from The Fake Steve Jobs.
Monday’s reading starts off with this damning analysis of how contemporary print journalism works, from The Fake Steve Jobs. He writes:
“They have to pretend to be “objective,” but what that really means is you put a vague headline on the story and you write the top in some boring way but then you just stack up a pile of negative quotes from people who don’t like the Borg — bam, bam, bam — but you spread them out, and you put some boring stuff in between them, like so many pillows between so many grenades…”
How do responsibly run, major non-profits raise money in today’s climate without crying “emergency?” Or do they have to?
In the past few months, I’ve been involved professionally and as a volunteer in a number of fundraising events and campaigns.
The good news is that people are still giving, quite generously, to organizations and individuals in need.
But the landscape of individual giving looks dramatically different, thanks to the economic downturn of 2008-9.
Most of us know someone who has lost what he or she thought was a secure job. We know someone struggling, or are struggling ourselves, with health insurance payments as high as 25 percent of take-home pay. We know people who couldn’t afford insurance or were refused it and who are now being crushed by bills for treatment of cancer or heart attack. Many of us know small community organizations, or tiny local businesses, that can’t pay their rent. Many of us who have traveled to third world countries are haunted by the difference in resources and opportunities, especially for women and ethnic minorities.
My observation is that in this economic climate, those who have good jobs and extra money are using their resources to help individuals and small organizations to address specific, immediate, and time-critical problems. (Note focus of Jolkona, a fundraising foundation website focused on attracting a new generation of “passionate” donors who want “connection” and “involvement” with recipients.)
This is not good news for many established non-profit organizations. Quite a few of them have evolved to provide deep, complex, well though-out structures for communities — from arts education and social services to historic preservation and environmental policy. But they don’t deal in heart-rending emergencies, or enable donors to finance quick, visible solutions.
How can these major non-profits compete for the donor dollar in today’s climate — without crying “emergency?” Or should they?
I know quite a few bloggers who are thinking of switching over to WordPress. My advice is: Do it.
After listening to Andru Edwards of GearLive Media making gentle fun of people whose blogs are hosted on their blogging software sites (“Blogname.typepad.com”) I took the plunge and got a WordPress blog. (This one.)
I like it.
But I soon discovered that a lot of the cool things you can do with WordPress, such as running ads, are for blogs that are self hosted. My blog is hosted on WordPress.org, and they don’t allow ads (except for on special VIP accounts for blogs “on par with the Wall Street Journal.”)
If you have a web hosting service you trust (and I do) getting your blog moved over or set up on that outside host is easy. But once you’ve moved it, you are now responsible for updating your version of WordPress yourself. (If you’re hosted at WordPress.com, they do it automatically.) And, if you want to install a new WordPress theme, or simply change a template image, you’ll be on your own. That means dealing with FTP uploads or using some host’s arcane, proprietary file manager software to rummage around in a server hierarchy. (WordPress.com provides an easy interface for these.)
Maintaining your own software is not a big deal? Don’t be so sure. Just about every small company I’ve assisted with blogging has a message on their WordPress admin panel saying that their WordPress software needs to be updated. And they never seem to know how to get it updated. (In one instance, the software was so woefully out of date that I attempted to figure out how to get it updated for them. And ended up utterly baffled.)
I’ve just assisted a client in setting up a self-hosted WordPress blog, and in this case was asked to select and install a theme. (“Just make it happen!”)
Writer Way uses a particularly user-friendly theme (PressRow, by Chris Pearson) and I’d found it a breeze to customize. Turns out that not all WordPress themes are so simple to handle. The theme I selected for my client was Atahualpa (by Bytes for All). It’s named after the last Incan emperor of Peru. My experience was, shall we say, an exotic adventure.
Atahualpa turns out to be supremely configurable, with so many complex options that my head began to swim. The code might as well have been written in Quecha, for all I could understand it.
The client was in a hurry, and I was in over my head. But, somehow, I got a customized header image installed (thank you, iStock) and disabled the default floral images (so not my client’s style!).
The final product? Gorgeous.
I know quite a few bloggers who are thinking of switching over to WordPress. My advice is: Do it.
But host the site on a server where you can get a fair amount of hand-holding in terms of setup and updates — this is definitely the time to go with a small, local web hosting service instead of gowhacky.com. And spend some time evaluating WordPress templates before you select one: you’ll be getting to know it very, very well.
Gotta go. I think they just released a new version of Atahualpa.
The vast majority of bloggers have no involvement in payola schemes, but often find themselves in situations where they could be accused of it.
The Internet Patrol has a detailed explanation of the new Federal Trade Commission rules affecting bloggers who write product reviews or endorsements. The bottom line:
“If you talk about a product or service, and if you put it out on or via the Internet, and if you stand to gain on it, you’d better disclose that relationship.”
I’m not a fan of the rules, but I certainly don’t intend to run afoul of them. They are designed to clamp down on bloggers whose positive comments about a company’s product or service result from undisclosed payments from that company.
But I continue to be puzzled by why the government, which has allowed mortgage con artists to rip off consumers to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, is so excited about protecting web users from inflated reviews of electronic gadgets and resort hotels. My objections:
1. It’s fairly easy to go online and find product reviews from reputable online sources or from sites like Amazon or TripAdvisor that allow unbiased customer comments. Having the FTC jump in to protect people who ignore those resources and instead make their purchasing decisions by reading Joe-the-Blogger is pure nannying.
2. Bloggers who give bad products or services good ratings will rapidly lose credibility, thereby scuttling their own reputations, popularity, and search rankings.
3. The vast majority of bloggers have no involvement in payola schemes, but often find themselves in situations where they could be accused of it. Try this scenario: I write a positive review of my hair stylist. A few months later, he sends a friend to me to have her website content written. That develops into a lucrative contract. If I don’t remember to go back to my blog post and update it with an explanation that he has sent business to me, I could be accused of getting a kick-back for my positive review of him. (FTC fine: up to $11,000.)
I think the online system polices itself. If the government wants to get into the consumer protection business, I’d suggest they do something about the company that sent me an official-looking letter yesterday telling me that my mortgage terms had changed and I needed to call them immediately.
