Blogging – Writer Way

In Search of an Online Platform?

Social media on the internet is rapidly devolving from Speakers Corner to the Tower of Babel to individuals howling in the digital wilderness.

With X (Twitter) rotting from the top down, most people fond of communicating via pithy snippets have migrated to Meta’s Threads, Bluesky Social, and the aggregation of Mastodon servers. Or maybe CounterSocial. (Remember the hacktivist app CounterSocial? I don’t, but apparently I have an account there. Sigh.)

Is Microsoft-owned LinkedIn filling the online-conversation need for you?

Those of us who write at mid-length now have a choice of drowning in Facebook’s recent onslaught of repetitive ads (mine are for sweaters and Japanese snacks) while reading about our high school friends’ family vacations or reviving our moribund accounts on Tumblr, Medium, and Substack. We can take payments, or ask for tips via Ko-fi.

And, of course, there’s always Patreon where we can harness ourselves to a schedule of content production for a small-but-loyal paying audiencee—and end up spending half of our posts apologizing for not meeting that schedule. Talk about a self-induced guilt trip.

FROM THE Audience Viewpoint

If none of this sounds appealing to you as a content creator, I’ll point out that this fragmented array of platforms is even less appealing to readers. It used to be that if someone stopped following social media, they missed out on a shared experience, be it Twitter or Facebook. And the community missed them. Now…no one notices.

I’m sure that one or two of these platforms or communities make it easy to browse, find, read, and pay for interesting content. But platforms fall in and out of favor pretty quickly (often because they’ve changed their rules—see: Twitter). This does not motivate me, as a writer, to invest time and energy in one. And I certainly don’t have the time to check in on each of them every day to read what’s been posted by friends. I’m a follower, but usually a ghostly one.

It would be wonderful to have some kind of aggregator for all these sites, the way we used to have blogging aggregators (remember RSS feeds?). But if you look at the current aggregator software, it’s commercial stuff aimed at business clients who want to use it aggregate (often to rip off) other commercially produced content and offer it under their own banners. I haven’t found software that lets you aggregate content posted by individual creators who publishing via Automattic’s WordPress and Tumblr, Square’s Weebly, Google’s venerable Blogger.com, SquareSpace, Medium, and Substack. I doubt very much if such a thing would be commercially viable. (And if I type the word “commercial” one more time here, I’m going to gag.)

Bottom line: Reading social media content is not much fun these days. Particularly the bizarre posts generated by AIs, which seem to have a serious problem with gender-pronoun consistency.

Back to the Blog

As for writing, at this point I’m joining the personal blogging revival, going back to my own WordPress blogging here. You’ll notice that most of the affiliate-marketing bloggers have jumped over to visual platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and (to my surprise) Pinterest. That leaves blogging to the writers. So I guess we should get to it.

If any of the platforms mentioned above are providing a rich and comprehensive social media experience (for writers to connect with readers and readers to connect with writers), please leave a comment. What platform is meeting your needs, and why? And if you have a lot of neglected social media accounts out there, ‘fess up—and tell us why that happened. I’m here, and I’m listening.

How (and why) to write while furious

How can I write about marketing communications topics when I’m shaking with anger and shame about the political situation in this country? Joe Hage helps me figure things out.

I haven’t been blogging much. How can I write about marketing communications topics when I’m shaking with anger and shame about the political situation in this country?

But marketing communications guru Joe Hage has kept going. He’s been using a weekly email to communicate to his readership (medical device marketers). On Wednesday morning, Joe lowered the boom.

His blunt and courageous email begins:

“I’m angry. I hate him so much. You know who I’m talking about.”

Joe goes on to talk about the flood of information we face every day from highly curated news and marketing streams. We feel as though we’re in a deluge of information that’s deep and fast-running — but it turns out that it’s also deceptively narrow.

As Joe points out, many of us (unless we listen extensively to National Public Radio), have never read or heard about the civil war raging in Nicaragua. Joe didn’t know much about that war, either, until his video editor, who lives in a Nicaraguan city, witnessed a march of soldiers in the street outside her house. They left the dead body of a child in the street as a warning to anyone who might consider opposing them or aiding the opposition.

What does war in Nicaragua mean for someone like me — or you — whose business is all about trying to communicate to readers, donors, or customers? Joe tells his medical device industry colleagues:

“If a civil war in Central America doesn’t even hit our radar, can you imagine how many messages the average citizen is getting per day?”

“Your messaging is not competing with other medical device videos, images, and words. You are competing with every possible stimulus out there.”

In a communications environment like this, Joe asks, “what hope do any of us have in breaking through?”

His answer is that by writing as a real person, he is breaking through. He is engaging. His thousands of readers did read him yesterday morning (even if some of them were hitting “unsubscribe” and grabbing for their blood pressure medication).

My take-away from Joe’s out-of-the-box email? There are a lot of ways to engage people and get them to pay attention.

One of them is to threaten them (dropping dead bodies in the street, for example). Another is to inundate them with the same message, over and over again, drowning out fact and complexity with emotion and oversimplification (our news and marketing feeds). And, yes, a third way is for communicators to be real in their communications. Genuine, heartfelt communication stands out because so few of us do it, or hear it, in our professional roles.

It’s sad that being real, and honest, and thoughtful is “just not done” in the field of business communication. We have tens of thousands of well-dressed, well-educated people marching each day into beautifully decorated, air-conditioned workplaces, attending meetings about product marketing, advertising, and communications strategy, sitting down at their expensive keyboards to devise “messaging” — while inside most of them are all thinking about what’s real: That we live in a country that snatches immigrants out of their homes, separates children from immigrant parents, and puts immigrant families in prisons. Indefinitely.

Now let’s take a look at that PowerPoint, shall we?

(For more information on who Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting, why, and how, see this document from the Immigrant Defense Project.)

Dancing with your audience — thoughts on social media

Social media in 2015 has moved beyond story telling to become an interactive public performance with a variety of audiences.

Last night I spoke about social media to the folks in the PR Certificate Program at the University of Washington. This is the 7th year I’ve done a presentation for them, and it never fails to astonish me how much the field of social media changes from year to year.

(This year’s presentation: Dancing with your Audience – UW – 2015)

The options for social media have become so complex, the tools for managing a social media program so sophisticated, and the demands on communicators so great, that it’s difficult to cover it all.

From talking with the students, many of whom are already working the field, I came away with the impression that organizations are overwhelmed. While companies realize that it’s now essential to have a social media plan and a social media program, they are vastly underestimating the resources required to execute even a basic social media program. (They are also overestimating what social media programs can accomplish, often regarding them as a magic solution to problems rooted in inadequate branding or poor customer service — but that’s another story.)

Organizations that are doing a good basic job of communication (branding, publications, website, etc.) are well positioned to undertake social media work. But if they don’t allocate the resources required to listen as well as talk, they’re headed for big trouble. Companies that fail to monitor and follow up not just on comments but on mentions are both losing opportunities and risking possible disaster. It used to be enough to moderate and answer comments on blogs. Today follow up involves tracking your company, your products, your field, your partners, and your competitors on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tumblr, Ello, Google+ and on and on and on.

It’s hard to imagine an effective social media program being administered by fewer than two full-time employees; large organizations that work directly with the public need correspondingly large teams.

I urged the students, some of whom are tasked with designing and managing social media programs, to ruthlessly focus their efforts on key audiences, suitable platforms, easy-to-use tools (including video), and significant messages.

And to think: seven years ago it was all about blogging and keywords.

Take it from whence it comes

I invite you to take a look at the blogs you follow, or at your Facebook timeline, and note who’s contributing genuine, new, first-hand information to the world and who’s just trying to get people to join an angry mob.

I’ve been mulling over writing a post that analyzes the rhetorical devices used by online trolls to transform civilized discussions into conflagrations but have decided it makes more sense to talk about a tool that will keep everyone’s blood pressure under control. And that’s evaluating information based on the source from whence it comes.

I noticed a few weeks ago, after reading an extremely well-researched indictment of some bad behavior in a professional community to which I belong, that the discussions of first-hand information tend to stay relatively civilized.

When people report on what they’ve witnessed, first hand, or what they’ve discovered through systematic research, the comments tend to be similarly first hand. Even if the comment is “I completely disagree with you” or “Well, that wasn’t what happened when I lit a cigarette and leaned over a sparking engine.” Whether the tone is supportive or dismissive, it still comes across as genuine and informative.

It’s when people post long rants on blogs, on Facebook, or in community discussions about what they think about someone they’ve never met who did something at an event they didn’t attend to someone who is a friend of a friend — that’s when the comments tend to heat up. And I think that’s in large part because when we read that sort of post or comment we are seized by a subliminal sense that this person has no idea what they are talking about. It’s like sensing wide open spaces where pictures, sounds, and reality ought to be. And then, of course, there’s your own urge, which I’m sure is a deep-rooted instinct, to leap in and fill that wide open space with your own comments. Which may, sadly, be just as vaporous as the original post.

I’ve decided to start a one-person campaign to comment, positively and supportively, on posts that are based on first-hand experience. I plan to do this even in instances where I don’t think that the generalizations the person is making based on their one or two data points are justified. My rationale for giving support? They’re bringing themselves to the discussion, and that’s a good thing.

And, for my own sanity, I’m going to ignore posts that say “I heard that he said that she said that the-person-she’s-not-going-to-name did blah, blah, rant, rant, and rantforth.” In fact, if I see a series of these from one person, I’m going to quietly mute that person. That’s because, whatever their intentions, they aren’t adding much to the conversation. They’re just amplifying it and adding some unpleasant noise while they’re about it.

Note that the two exceptions my the plan are people (such as journalists) who have done actual reporting on the situation (“I called the business owner, and she told me X, Y, Z”) and people who did research on it (“I counted the number of reports of a particular occurrence during the past three years, and here are the numbers I came up with.”) They may have interviewed the wrong person, to your view, or they may have counted the wrong things, but they are adding actual information to the discussion. Information that any commenter can cite in their reply. “You should have calculated the mean rather than the median” is so much more helpful than “You and your cowardly cabal are obviously the scum of the earth.”

Storytelling for Social Media

Perhaps the biggest challenge for PR professionals today is sharing the stage with all the other people trying to tell a version of the corporate story — from Marketing and Customer Service to employees, customers, and indie pundits.

social media geek — Social media seven years ago. How things have changed.

For the past seven years, I’ve been a guest speaker for the Certificate in Public Relations & Strategic Communications program at the University of Washington Professional and Continuing Education division. I do a presentation on social media — which seven years ago consisted of talking about blogging on LiveJournal and Blogger and setting up a profile on MySpace.

How times have changed.

Tonight I talked about the institutionalization of social media. I suggested that social media has matured and become increasingly complex. Strategic analyses of audiences, organizational resources, and the current proliferation of social media platforms, are essential. So is investment in the technology and training necessary to take advantage of sophisticated social media tools.

I’ve posted a PDF of my Keynote slide deck “Storytelling for Social Media” for the students in Lee Schoentrup’s class. Everyone else is welcome to take a look at the deck, though I’m not sure how much sense it will make without the accompanying song-and-dance.

For social media, Facebook has the numbers

Pew Internet reports that Facebook is far and away the most popular social media site for adults.

It’s cold and lonely on the cutting edge. But some people like to be there. Like my hip friend who sniffed that “nobody cool uses Facebook any more.” (Shades of Yogi Berra’s “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”)

Cool be damned.

The latest report from Pew Internet shows that as of September 2013, 71 percent of online adults use Facebook. Compare that to adult use of other social networking platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram), which Pew says hovers between 17 and 22 percent.

So we would like to focus our social media marketing efforts…where?

Actually, you can easily cover all the bases — Facebook and many more— by blogging your message. Then use your blogging software’s Publicize feature to send a linked excerpt of the blog post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. Metrics software such as StatCounter, Google Analytics, or a built-in statistics program like the one in WordPress will tell you which social media platform brings the most click-throughs to your original content.

Just curious — did you come to this post from one of those platforms?

MacVoices: Chuck Joiner and I talk about blogging

Chuck Joiner of MacVoices and I recorded a MacVoices show about blogging — the history, the growth, the high points, and the Dark Ages.

Chuck Joiner of MacVoices TV and I have been talking about blogging — the history, the growth, the high points and the Dark Ages. Last week, we got together and recorded a show on that topic.

We started back in the old days — with LiveJournal and the Golden Age of blogging when people found their voices and harnessed the publishing power of the World Wide Web. We talked about the rise and fall of newsreaders, and the effects that newer and nimbler social media platforms have had on the once-mighty blogosphere.

You can listen to (or download) the show online. You’ll also find today’s show on the MacVoices TV page in iTunes.

We’re planning to take a second shot at the topic in a few weeks, this time with some friends who will help us explore the uneasy relationship between journalism and blogging and — a hot topic for Chuck — the impact that SEO has had on blogging. Plus, I’m hoping to get in a segment on people whose blogs have been stepping stones on the way to book publishing.

Your questions and comments can help shape those next conversations. Please leave a message for us on the show’s page at MacVoices.

Social Media Survival presentation

A social media program that makes perfect sense today is likely to be significantly out of alignment in 18 months.

Last night I spoke about social media at Lee Schoentrup’s class on public relations writing at the University of Washington. This is the sixth year I’ve done the presentation. I think when I started, with blogger Peggy Sturdivant, all we talked about was…blogging.

Six years later, the list of social media tools I cover goes on, and on, and on. While in the past I’ve focused on social media strategies for particular tools, this year I revamped the presentation to focus on the need for a social media strategy that can roll with continuous change. I pointed to trends affecting social media, including:

Crowds (crowdsourcing, etc.)
Increasing use of mobile devices to create and access social media content
The return of organic content after the recent obsession with SEO

It’s clear to me that a social media program that makes perfect sense today is likely to be significantly out of alignment in 18 months. Who knew two years ago that companies would be getting mileage out of Facebook and Pinterest? How many companies are providing a good experience for the growing number of people who visit their blogs (or Facebook and LinkedIn pages) using a smartphone? How many are even aware of the social media consequences (good and bad) of sprinkling “Like” and “Share” buttons around their web pages?

I changed the topic of the presentation from “Social Media Success” to “Social Media Survival.” It’s a jungle out there.

Members of the UW class who would like to download a PDF of the Keynote presentation will find it here: SME – UW – 2013.

The return of Amazing Stories

Steve Davidson and a team of 50 bloggers have relaunched Amazing Stories magazine as a community site for science fiction fans.

April 1926 — Hugo Gernsback, publisher of Electrical Experimenter science magazine, launched the first magazine devoted to science fiction — or what Gernsback liked to call “scientifiction.” Amazing Stories was published for almost 80 years, passing through the hands of a wide range of publishers (including, in the late 1990s, Wizards of the Coast). It debuted writers including Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin, but the magazine suffered from uneven leadership, uneven quality, and controversial editorial policies. It ceased publication in 2005.

January 21, 2013 — Steve Davidson of Experimenter Publishing (note the company name) has re-launched Amazing Stories as a web community, with the goal of establishing a market that will enable him to revive the professional fiction magazine. Davidson, curator of the Classic Science Fiction Channel website and author of several books on paintball, spent three years obtaining the rights to the Amazing Stories name. He published two online issues of the magazine last year, as a proof of concept.

“Every genre fan now has a chance to help support the creation of a new market for the stories, artwork, and articles they all love so much,” Davidson said in a news release this morning.

At the core of the new site’s content are posts by a team of bloggers covering a wide range of science fiction-related topics. The site will offer product reviews, convention news and listings, and will take advertising.

I have more than just a science fiction reader’s interest in the revival of Amazing Stories. I’m going to be one of the bloggers for the site, writing primarily (but not exclusively) about my explorations of science fiction-related communities including gaming, girl geekdom, the Maker community, Steampunk, Browncoats, Discworld, and SF/mystery crossovers. Please come join us at Amazing Stories.

Category: Blogging

The return of Amazing Stories

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