Developing Online Platforms, Building Community
Creating content for a website isn't enough - making your ongoing content development work requires strategy. From editorial calendars to information architecture, strategic content creation increases the power of websites.
We’ve all heard the classic form of this problem – correlation does not necessarily imply causation. But, even knowing this, how often do we fall for it? The internet followed where ARPANET began. The internet became a craze in the late nineties. LiveJournal followed on the text-file blogging craze of the mid-nineties. Facebook followed on [...]
What if the only way to fix worldwide poverty is to abandon the idea of consumer credit? What if the only way to cure cancer is gene splicing humans with animals? What if we can’t escape, as a race, to other planets before our planet dies? We never ask many of these questions, not because [...]
I deleted fifteen drafts from my blog this morning. Some of them, I’ve been keeping around for nearly six months. Clearly, I would never write them. It’s liberating, every now and then, to ditch the expectational debt of having too many unfinished drafts and move on. I don’t think we give ourselves enough chances to [...]
“England and America are two countries divided by a common language.” George Bernard Shaw One of the biggest confusions people can have in communication is using the same words, but meaning different things. I don’t mean homonyms, stereotype, or any other typifying agent. I’m not talking about the pronunciation of tomato or potato either. I’m talking about [...]
Sometimes, the best way to get at a resource is by digging a pit and pulling it out. People have been doing this for some time – but is it appropriate for bloggers to be approaching their niches the way some mining companies approach environmental conservation; with scorn, disregard for wasted effort, and their eye [...]
Bloggers toss out a lot of content. We’re the serial monogamists of the writing world – forever working on a new article, loving it until we publish the next one, and moving on in an endless succession of text production. Our job, as Merlin Mann so eloquently puts it, is to “make the clacketty noise [...]
We love to complicate things – we use services like Flickr’s Creative Commons search to fill our sites with awesome pictures, like laughing mantises or rock platforms. Sometimes, it’s awesome to find the simple things; like Placekitten. Drop by and check them out – it’s handy to have tricks like this up your sleeve when [...]
I’ve been doing a bad job lately, with this whole blog thing. I’ve missed responding to a few comments. I’ve been inconsistent in my writing. I feel awful. How can I make it up to you? What can I do to bridge the gap and do something worth coming back for? If you subscribe to [...]
Some people know what’s going on. Everywhere. All the time. We call these people journalists. They’re the gatherers, the curators. Journalists present the facts, add value and perspective, conduct analysis. Some people are what’s going on. We see them everywhere. All the time. Most of the time, when considering these people, we call them celebrities. [...]
One of the most insidious problems fiction has to deal with is the issue of Genre Dodging. Simply put, Genre Dodging is what happens when authors ignore an element necessary for their stated genre to function. Like missing an opportunity for the first female victim in a horror movie to run in obviously the wrong [...]
