Ian M Rountree

Copywriter, Project Manager, Digital Marketing

Trench Notes: Engagement

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If you’re looking for better observation on social media, look no further than Margie Clayman.

Margie’s a blogger, twitter fanatic, and marketer whom I first encountered in #blogchat more than a year ago. Since, she’s founded #tweetdiner, worked her way onto just about everyone’s radar, and produced some truly awesome stuff. Most recently, she’s been writing about engagement – one of the key issues in Social Media.

In the vein of Chris Brogan, who wrote 100 posts about using social media for business in 2007, Margie set out to write 100 posts about Engagement as a study of social media itself, among other things. As of this writing, she’s into the 30s, and still going strong.

Read through from the start, before the backlog gets overwhelming; there’s gold here.

The series starts with “The Engagement Series is Go for Launch“.

Find the archive at Margie Clayman – The Engagement Series.

The Future of Media – Dowager Shadow

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I’m writing a novel. But it won’t be Tor, Orion, or Bantam Press publishing my work; it’ll be me.

Chris Brogan just dropped a perfect opportunity for me to hold myself to account here. You see, I’ve missed my deadline for having the promotional site for the book up. It was supposed to be finished on February 2nd, with some content available to act as a teaser for the actual volume coming in summer. Nearly a month late, I still have 10 hours of work to do on the promo site, and no time budgeted to it.

Before you finish reading this, jump out and read/ watch Chris’ video post, The Future of Media.

Back? Good. Now I’ll explain.

The Dowager Shadow Promotional SiteThe Dowager Shadow, which I’ve spoken of before here, is a fantasy fiction parallax that has been where I’ve put most of my energy for the last four years. It started making its way from ongoing roleplay to novel with 2008’s National Novel Writing Month – my co-author Leila and I smashed the 50k word barrier easily, and immediately had what amounts to a full first volume of book.

Last year, I began publishing the novel as a serial – you can still read some of it on dowagershadow.com until I get the new site up, but I warn you, the manuscript has seen a lot of editing since then.

Here’s what you’ll see once the new site is actually up, and I’ve got the manuscript finished and produced:

  • The first volume will be available for purchase as an eBook, with built in interactivity like an appendix, maps, and other information.
  • In addition to each volume, there will be a few rounds of shorter stories available for free through Pay With a Tweet. This will take care of some of the promotion of the book.
  • Each subsequent volume will be released in two ways: stand-alone purchase, or bundled with the previous volumes, each of which will have been updated with information pertinent to the new volume.
  • There will be a print version, produced through a self-publisher, which can be ordered alongside the eBook. I’m aiming to have two production runs per year for the physical artifact.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s really no more work than this blog.

Building interactivity into a book is a very new media thing. It’s the kind of thing that’s going on all over the place. Usually, though, it’s products like Digging Into WordPress. However, given the success of products like DigWP, and the many thousands of well produced eBooks out there, I can’t help but see this kind of thing as the future of media.

We’re going far beyond the entrepreneurial journalism that blogging has been for the last decade, and moving into an era of entrepreneurial publishing of all flavours. That, I believe, is the future of media.

Notes From #blogchat – Guest Host Chris Brogan

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If Chris Brogan were a Body BuilderTonight’s #blogchat had Chris Brogan on as guest host – and Mack Collier thankfully prefixed the chat with a post explaining the flow. Thanks for that, Mack – as you said, #blogchat certainly can get batshit-crazy-fast, and no one expected tonight to be any different.

For the uninitiated – here is Mack’s exegesis of #blogchat.

Stanford from Pushing Social also shared a video on how he sets up for #blogchat that’s worth a watch.

Self-promotion: People! My copy of trust Agents is still up for grabs! Share a Skip1.org related story and win the book (with a little thank you note from me!)

The Planned Topic: How to Use Other Social Sites/Presences to Grow Your Blog.

This is a big one. We’ve identified that it’s far easier to grow your audience in one place by being active somewhere else – growing your subscriber base by using Twitter, finding new LinkedIn connections on Facebook, and so on. But just how do we go about that? Chris Brogan cohosted #blogchat tonight, to talk about exactly that thing.

First: How do you decide which sites you should be active on in order to help your blog?

– Targeting helps – Chris shared FlowTown, a targeting tool I’ll be playing with this week. The base of Chris’ advice during this portion was that finding sites to become active on requires two things: defining the goal of your blog, and finding out where your customers are. If your customers are mostly toastmasters – go be a toastmaster. It makes sense.

The flow is fairly simple, really; identify your goal, and find a niche that goal serves. Look at places like AllTop.com for conversations already in motion. Once you’ve found one, involve yourself. Be the elbow, the helpful newcomer – and really get into the conversation. And please, please (Chris asks) “never shove your updates around the web. Be selective, be specific, be unique. Make each network its own beast.”

Second: How to decide whether to make one of the sites you’re involved in, into an Outpost for your community.

Once we’ve targeted properly, and begun to engage, we need to formalize our outposts and differentiate them from the street corners where we hold conversations. So, we pick outposts by relevance; converse, engage, be in th enetwork. Occasional “conversion forks” (Chris’ term) are the way to go.

Give others the tools to succeed. No matter what tyour goal is – thought leadership, building a channel or media property, or sales – your job on the web (and in life, right?) is to help others succeed at what they do. Your products should back this up, and so should your every action on the social web. Chris’ golden ratio for this is 12 actions for others for every 1 action promoting yourself.

Remember to pick your communication style discretely for each network. MySpace has a different accent than Facebook does, and a different one than Twitter does as well. As much as we don’t want to be shoving our updates around everywhere, we don’t want to duplicate everything either. this can be a deciding factor in whether or not you want to really engage in an arena. Cross-pollination is one thing – heck, even I use automation for some of my sharing – but we should remember to make clear distinctions when we’re using these tools to reduce our workload, rather than trying to appear ubiquitous.

A side note: We’re the special cases here, guys. You and me, the bloggers in the room, we know things other people don’t. We have arcana about conversational flow and reciprocation. All the talk in the world about outposts and goals, media properties and voice in communication style… It’s all arcana. We have two options: We can treat it as arcana and guard it like spies – or we can pull the veil and let everyone in on the wisdom. Which are you better at doing? Why?

The night’s transcript, from @MackCollier

The 250 top participants’ list from @KevinLyons

Drop any further questions for Chris Brogan on his blog – here, as per his request.

Join the #blogchat LinkedIn Group!

Conclusions? What else can we add to this?

UPDATE: @tsudo collected far more semantic details directly from Chris here: Insights into Social Media Marketing

Image borrowed from the awesome Guerilla Freelancing Blog.

Book Review For a Cause – Trust Agents

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If you were around for the original Book Review for a Cause (I reviewed and auctioned off Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation) then you know the deal. If not, stick around, check out the video, and read on!

Today we’re talking about the wonderful Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

So here’s the review:

And here’s the deal.

Go to Skip1.org and get involved. Like their Facebook page if you want to share beyond just here. Skip something – heck, skip the book (reserve cost for this is $20 USD, which is what I paid for the book). Share your stories, and we’ll find a balance between the best story, and the biggest donation, and someone will get the very copy of Trust Agents that I read, along with a short letter from me.

Also, for bonus points, check out Invisible People.tv and get involved. If someone can share a really special story on their behalf, I just may buy you a brand new copy of Trust Agents – or skip the book on your behalf – and send you a letter saying so.

What kind of difference will you make?

Should your blog be wearing a tie?

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People treat you different when you wear a tie.

For five years I wore khakis and a button-down shirt, open at the collar, with no tie. I got along with everyone, which was my job, and was mistaken for management wherever I went because I learned early on to walk with intention and assess everything I came up against with attention to detail.

Then I got a job in marketing and communications, and put on a tie.

My last week at the old job, I wore the tie along with the same uniform shirt I had for the previous five years. Starbucks barristas began treating me with retaliative scorn, and my customers divorced themselves from me fairly swiftly. I had, by adopting a symbol of formality, become something they could not properly associate with a retailer, much less one with tattoos and a bright smile.

Now, however, I wear a shirt and tie (I’m at my desk too much of the day to bother with a sport coat) and it helps me to fit in and raise the bar at the office. It makes sense, it’s the proper arena for attention to professional details.

In the mall, shirts and ties belong to customers, not salespeople.

Brian Levy, who was president of InterTan (RadioShack Canada’s parent company years back) famously said “The guy with the shiniest shoes sells the most.” It feels like a true statement, and might apply quite well to actual sales, but retailing is the wrong arena for that level of professional decorum. Or, at least it is now, because it’s no longer expected. And when you’re in customer service, managing expectation is a big deal.

What does this have to do with blogging?

Like any print communication, the frame has as much merit as the gallery. I’ve been experimenting with themes over the last few weeks as I develop a new one for this site, and doing some research on the visual and user experience aspects of well known blogs, and unfortunately it feels like many sites, themes and presentations fall into a number of predictable categories.

The Golf Shirt – You’ve got to love this one. Just like a gas station attendant or lowly clerk, the golf shirt class is the lowest common denominator of the blogging world. Whether it’s the default wordpress theme or a Thesis basic install, the Golf Shirt stands out for one reason; it’s the minimum possible effort made to fit into the most categories available. It’s always out of the box. And it’s disappointing.

The Elegant Pink Buttondown (with optional patterned scarf) – I used to have one of these. Dark, artsy, the kind of site design you just know is backed by a struggling writer spending his evenings in a coffee shop nursing a latte, reading Kafka over a pair of teeny tiny sunglasses – when it’s dark out. Unfortunately, unless that’s the feel you’re going for and the material you’re writing backs it up, this is going overboard, and is totally unnecessary. Besides, dark backgrounds with insufficient contrast create usability issues, which can alienate readers.

The Three-Piece Suit – This is where the tie comes in, and it’s where the most consideration goes. Professionals with custom-build Thesis deployments, high power pundits and marketers who know exactly what it takes to get information into anyone’s hands in a language they understand. This is the kind of blog worth blogging about.

But how do you choose?

I know, it looks like I’m being a downer and oversimplifying. Chris Brogan’s blog is a three-piece, but he never wears them. It still fits. Justin Kownacki wears sweater-vests, but his blog has a golf shirt on. Mine used to be the pink buttondown, but eventually will be a suit-lacking-a-jacket, because that’s where I am and it fits. Seth Godin’s blog – hell, shirt and jeans. And sneakers.

Which one of these guys has the shiniest shoes?

If you answered at all, you answered wrong. The point is, your look – whether it’s a golf shirt or a tuxedo – has to suit the work you’re doing and the environment you’re doing it in. Blogs wearing ties make sense for marketers, but if you write about comic books, the pink buttondown is probably your best friend. Or even a graphic tee-shirt and jeans.

At the end of the day, your audience has to be able to identify you before you get the chance to speak. Otherwise you just end up looking like a slump, or a suit.

Photo by JCardinal18.