practice Archives | Ian M Rountree

4 Important Blogging Voices (And When to Use Them)

May 2, 2011 by Ian 1 Comment

One of the debates bloggers suffer under is the debate over Voice.

If you work for a company, do you act the company puppet, and portray yourself as all business, all the time? Do you go rogue and make yourself heard as a source on the inside lines?

What we forget is that each blog post is its own entity – less like chapters in a book, and more like articles in a magazine.

Whether we think of ourselves as journalists (and have/have not the training to back such claims up), we’re writing serialized, informative, timely content. Whether it’s journalism or not makes no difference; we’re serializing our information. Serialization means we have an opportunity for granularity that authors of books do not.

We can make our voice anything we want, every time we hit publish.

What’s important is not just the overall purpose of your blog – as a corporate tool, as a customer service or announcement vehicle, as an industry-improvement vector… All of these are important and valid purposes to have a blog, and all of them have best-practice voices to go along with them. However, that doesn’t mean every blog post must read the same as the last. We, unlike reporters and classical journalists, aren’t tied to the AP Guide (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

What’s more important is knowing the varieties of voice available to you, and choosing the ones that work for each post – and for each author’s writing style.

Not every blogger has the stunning clarity to write the Voice of Record the way a historian would. Creating a Voice of Record article takes fact-checking, research, attention to detail, and a declarative bent to your prose that we’re not all comfortable with. However, sometimes it’s necessary. If you’re announcing a change in pace for your blog, a new product or service, or otherwise managing expectations, the Voice of Record is an important skill to own. However, it’s also the most misused; bloggers attempt to be authoritative by writing in the declarative voice, often making statements unsuited to being taken as fact. While this isn’t a sin, per se, it’s a bit like using a hammer to put a screw in place; it’s a misuse of a powerful tool, and might cause damage if not finessed just the right way.

Similar to the Voice of Record is the Voice of Opinion – which is what most bloggers default to, if they’re conscious of their place as knowledge leaders in their fields. Even if they’re not on a leadership track, the use of Voice of Opinion is a good way to make it known where you stand on an issue. When used well, it allows you to connect with your reader, to encourage agreement and subdue dissent – and, over all, displays your informed bias towards a practice, product, or platform. Opinion is powerful, but when expressed too strongly, or without a disclaimer of bias, can be mistaken for the Voice of Record. The challenge is not to confuse the two, or to allow one to sound as if it’s masquerading as the other.

Making statements in an authoritative voice isn’t the only way a blogger can become an authority.

One of the less-used styles, the Voice of Instruction can take your readers on a journey to better knowledge, while declining to make statements over preference or declaring value. By acting in the teacher’s role, a blogger has an opportunity to foster innovation and interest in a subject, passing on enthusiasm as much as knowledge. One side-effect of this is unconscious acceptance of the blogger’s word as authoritative; while learning, a reader must accept the teacher’s statements, even temporarily, as writ in stone. The unfortunate counter to this is that if a reader is inherently critical, all instruction will be lost, and skepticism can turn public very quickly. Instructive Voice can be a great boon, but it can be hard to recognize. Look to tutorial blogs for this; the writers in spaces where instruction is necessary almost all become successful because of their passionate, yet non-biased portrayal of hard-won knowledge.

The last bastion of the blogger should be the Personal Voice. Not just because no one needs to hear what your dog had for supper, but because if you write in appropriate voice most of the time, your own personality will come through. People will get to know you based on the information you share, and the way in which you share it. If you’re an extroverted, dynamic person – write like your hair is on fire if you don’t get people excited. If you’re an introverted, introspective person – rely on fact and detail as your greatest road to achievement. Not everyone has to be excitable.

Personality is more than writing structure.

Changing things up is good. If you catch yourself in one-too-many catch phrases per week, or even per month, it’s probably time to change up your voice. We can’t all become a blogging Muad’Dib overnight, but with practice, you’ll get the hang of intentionally wrapping a voice around any subject you choose to write about.

Cinnamon Toast and Success/Fail Ratios

March 5, 2011 by Ian 2 Comments

Have you ever made cinnamon toast? No? Wow. Let me tell you – it’s not the most fun thing in the world to get wrong the first time.

See, most people start off the fearless way. They think “aw, yeah, cinnamon on hot bread!” and stop there. Some butter, some spice later, they’re left with a bitter, mouth-belabouring mess that is a general discouragement against further experimentation.

I’m betting the failure rate is about 95% for first-time toast-masterers.

Success rate for people who get beyond the first fail and try again? Probably 70%. This isn’t based on a fancy manufacturing management process or anything – it’s human logic. Got bitter toast, but want not-bitter toast? Simple answer; add sugar.

Sugar? Really? Yes. However much cinnamon you think you need, add the same amount in sugar – makes for much better toast. I think I was on my seventh or eighth set of toast before I got the ratio right – and it turned out to be really simple. But that’s just me.

Your success/fail ratio is different than your neighbour’s is.

What’s more interesting, your success/fail ratio isn’t the same as it was last time you tried. Success gets easier as you practice. The more often you do something, with more attention to the details that led to previous lack of success, the easier it is to move the process toward success.

One of the things my many cinnamon toast experiments have taught me about success/fail ratios, is that there’s an expectation of “mediocrity” that eventually follows accepting success.

Once you know you’ve done something “well enough” – how hard can it be to find a better way unless you need it? Things like lacing your shoes, tying a tie, or preparing some toast. Success, in these cases, is often measured by way of “acceptable/not acceptable” rather than “optimum performance.” We even treat our health this way, believing that the absence of symptom equates to wellbeing.

Let’s jump tracks. Are you treating your online work the same way?

Are you writing the best possible blog posts? Are your tweets the best use of 140 characters? Do you have every subscriber you’ll ever need or want? Are you leveraging every opportunity to get better in an intelligent way?

Is your business “big enough” or just “big enough for today?” Are you being paid enough to say you never want a raise for the rest of your life? Is your house perfect? Your kids learning everything they need to at the pace that will set them up for a perfect life?

Or are you good enough for today, but not good enough for tomorrow?

Let yourself get better. Yes, it’ll take practice. Yes, you’re going to end up with some bitter toast. But if you’re always optimizing, always ahead of the details and minding the ratios, you’ll be better every single next-time.

Go ahead. Make some toast.

Embracing Practice and Theory in Social Marketing

January 10, 2011 by Ian 5 Comments

In a typical paroxysm of brilliant insight, Amber Naslund posted what she called “one of those pensive posts [that needs a lot of thought]” on Sunday evening. The crux of the post was how theory can play a role in such highly action-sequence oriented fields like marketing – especially social media and content marketing.

As Amber says in the post, current social media advice is largely prescriptive; How To and 3 Steps To, and so on. This is beneficial to a point, but is it all we can do to move the work forward?

From her post – Elements of Knowledge and Embracing Social Media:

And in many ways, when you’re starting something new, that’s exactly what you want. The what and the how. Some understanding of what the established and familiar rules are, some guideposts to meter your own activities and behavior, and some reassurance that you’re headed in the “right” direction, or at least one that makes sense to you.

But when it comes to comprehension, there’s more than just the instructive side of the equation. There’s also understanding.

This is an important point, and one that I think needs some more elaboration and consideration.

The Case for Theory Before Practice

If school has taught us anything, it’s that there’s a use for having domain knowledge before practice begins. Just like we teach our kids (or try to), if something’s too hot to touch, there’s an effect from touching it regardless of cautions. Learning anything early that we can apply before negative happenstance can be helpful.

There’s also the possibility for analysis-in-the-moment, for anything we have knowledge of before practice. When something beneficial comes from what we might otherwise perceive as a negative action (for example, breaking up a flame war by making an explosive remark yourself), a theoretical understanding of human motivation and debate habits can be really helpful; with a theoretical knowledge to guide us, we might understand why that explosive comment worked to diffuse the situation, and another one might have made things worse.

The ability to understand the effects our actions might have can be hugely beneficial. The question is not whether theory has a place, but whether or not it should come first.

The Case for Practice Before Theory

In the Karate Kid, when Ralph Macchio is being taught to wax cars and paint fences, he spends a lot of time being annoyed that he’s not really learning karate. His sensei, Mr Miagi, smiles and fails to explain until much later. After weeks of labour and practice, finally the lesson becomes clear; the Kid was building muscle memory for the activities relevant to his required expertise.

Of course once the purpose of the practice is explained, there’s a blossoming of understanding. Having the muscle memory for the work that needs to be done makes the actual doing of the work so much easier. All that needs to be done in each instance is decide which skill to apply in which circumstance. This makes activity of any kind highly strategic – counter follows block follows jab and so forth. Natural progression and rhythm of action becomes easily apparent, for reasons entirely different to the in-the-moment analysis that those who learn theory before practice take advantage of.

But Which Should Come First?

And should it always be that way? Matt Ridings (@techguerilla) almost immediately responded with a question about why linear thought about theory and practice were such a big deal. It’s a good question; not everyone needs the muscle memory that comes from preemptive practice, and not everyone else can apply theory to their initial exploration of a task or domain.

I think there’s a case to be made for both directions, but it’s a case that has to be made on a per-instance basis. Some of us are polymaths, able to learn a huge variety of things easily. Some of us are intuitive learners, others kinesthetic. There is a huge variety of learning style out there – and it’s on the teachers, the instructors… The sensei among us to look for the signs that a student (hello, fellow grasshopper) can benefit better from one style of teaching than they can from another.

Before we can decide which style of teaching to employ, however, we need to define our theory. That, I think, goes far beyond just deciding who learns what better in what form.

Me? I’m going to do some more study. I’ve spent the last year playing karate kid – and I know, from how the year turned out, that I need more of that. My muscle memory isn’t as strong as it should be in some areas. However, I know I can’t survive on practice alone. Part of my work this year, I think, will be building some core theories out of observations of my own habits, and tending to the things that have succeeded.

What do you think? Where are you on the scale of theory vs practice?

Image by Woodley Wonderworks.