Guerrilla Insight for Authors: A glimpse of Cuban blogging

A glimpse of Cuban blogging
Via the Vancouver Sun, a Reuters report: Cubans go to unusual lengths to post blogs. Excerpt: For Cuba's freelance bloggers, the difficulties in getting online can mean days, weeks and even months between one post and the next. "My access to Internet is very irregular," said the anonymous author of a blog called My island at midday. "Like all things in Cuba, one has to resolve the problem of scarcity...

Via the Vancouver Sun, a Reuters report: Cubans go to unusual lengths to post blogs. Excerpt:

For Cuba's freelance bloggers, the difficulties in getting online can mean days, weeks and even months between one post and the next.
"My access to Internet is very irregular," said the anonymous author of a blog called My island at midday.

"Like all things in Cuba, one has to resolve the problem of scarcity by hook or by crook, be it Internet or toilet paper," he told Reuters by e-mail.

The Cuban government blames the limited Internet access on the U.S. sanctions that bar Cuba from hooking up to underwater fiber-optic cables that run just 12 miles offshore, a highway of broadband communication.

Instead Cuba must use expensive satellite uplinks to connect to the Internet via countries such as Canada, Chile and Brazil.

Critics say that is just a pretext to maintain control over the Internet, a powerful tool that some believe could play the same role in spreading information in Cuba as the fax machine played in the dismantling of the Soviet Union.

The story has links to three or four blogs—all in Spanish. In general, they're pretty well designed. I understand Spanish fairly well, and these blogs' layouts make the text readable. Any comments on them?

Can You Make a Living Writing Web Content?
An email arrived recently: I want to make a living writing content for websites. I have spent the past few decades raising children and working as an elementary school teacher. Teaching just isn't working for me anymore and I intend to return to university in several years for a completely different kind of degree. In the meantime, however, I am a single mother with one ten-year-old still in the nest....

An email arrived recently:
I want to make a living writing content for websites. I have spent the past few decades raising children and working as an elementary school teacher. Teaching just isn't working for me anymore and I intend to return to university in several years for a completely different kind of degree. In the meantime, however, I am a single mother with one ten-year-old still in the nest. What do you think are the most important things for me to focus on and do in order to become a financially successful online writer?

I explained that I've been in a fortunate situation, making a living from teaching while exploring webwriting as a sideline. What I've learned has improved my teaching, but I haven't had to pay the groceries out of my webwriting income.

So I'll turn the question over to people who drop in here. What makes for a successful career as an online writer?

What Makes Good Webwriting?
A reader wrote the other day to ask my opinion: What did I consider good examples of writing on the web? Well, I confess I couldn't leap up with a dozen examples on the tip of my tongue. Examples of bad writing, however, are easy to come by. On my blog H5N1, I often excerpt text from news stories, government websites, and technical sources. All too often, I have to...

A reader wrote the other day to ask my opinion: What did I consider good examples of writing on the web?

Well, I confess I couldn't leap up with a dozen examples on the tip of my tongue. Examples of bad writing, however, are easy to come by. On my blog H5N1, I often excerpt text from news stories, government websites, and technical sources. All too often, I have to tinker with the text to make it readable.

For example, some scientific abstracts are solid blocks of text, 200 or 300 words long. I can't edit them, but I can re-paragraph them to make them easier to read.

News reports are often more reader-friendly, full of one-sentence paragraphs. The sentences, however, may run to 40 or more words—and it's often the first paragraph that tries to create an "abstract" of the whole story. (When I excerpt the text anyway, I usually apologize for the style.)

In other cases, the text may be concise and well-paragraphed, but appallingly displayed. Some poor souls are still stuck in 1996, proudly publishing white text sprawled across a black background clear across the screen.

Others have crisp black text on a white background. But the lines run to 15 or 20 words. Here's an example from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, which is OK but could be much better with shorter lines. He hasn't changed his format in years, and he should have.

Subheads Help
Subheads can break up the text still more and provide landmarks. Too many webwriters neglect this simple aid to readers.

Of course, sometimes a text is on a website only to be printed off and read on paper. In that case, it just has to be readable when printed.

You're welcome to visit H5N1 and my other blogs to see how I try to live by my own rules.

Judge the Top Blogs on Their Writing!
But here's another suggestion. Visit Technorati: Popular Blogs and see what you think of the writing on some of the top sites.

Does Engadget's shimmering prose enshrine it as #1 blog? Is Michelle Malkin (#11)a better webwriter than Guy Kawasaki(#15)?

Or are other factors at work in these high-traffic, high-impact sites? I'd love to hear your comments.

PR's get the theory of blogging, but need guidance on implementation
A survey done late last year reveals PR pereceptions about blogging

PR's as a general rule 'get' blogging, but a new survey shows some big gaps in knowledge of how to implement a blog successfully.

PR's do understand the benefits of blogging and are very aware that as a form of communication to stakeholders it can be very valuable:

94.4% agreed or strongly agreed that blogging can humanise a company.
93.8% disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement ‘corporate blogging is a failure if it does not improve sales or increase a company’s share price’

And they do get that there are 'rules of engagement' when blogging:

96.9% said that being open and honest about your company in a blog is vital if the blog is to be successful

However, although PR's clearly understand the theoretics of blogging, there is still some way to go in the implementation of this theory. A large number of PR's are still sceptical of the potential for blogging, they lack trust in their clients and are reluctant to relenquish control.

50% said that ghostwriters could be used to provide the content for corporate blogs
50% of PR's stated that employees should only be allowed to blog if there was a formal set of guidelines which they had to follow
50.8 % said that they would not trust their clients to blog without their direct input
Just 3.1% said that bloggers should have no restraints on their blogging practices.

Web 2.0 is a new medium. Some of the old rules do apply, but some definitely don't. Knowing which ones to use when means learning new skills.

Social media should be a part of your PR strategy in 2008. People do want to have a conversationj with you and they want to contribute ideas and opinions. Heck, your evangelists will even do your marketing for you, if you give them the right tools.

But before you rush in and make mistakes, get social media training and blog coaching and do it right.

Political Bloggers as Webwriters: I
I would post here more often if I weren't such a political-blog addict. But I'm going to try to exploit this vice by posting an occasional critique of political blogs as examples of webwriting. After all, some of these blogs attract enough visitors to generate ad revenue, so they must be doing something right. Or are they? So I'll start this series with Hugh Hewitt's blog. Hewitt is an American...

I would post here more often if I weren't such a political-blog addict. But I'm going to try to exploit this vice by posting an occasional critique of political blogs as examples of webwriting. After all, some of these blogs attract enough visitors to generate ad revenue, so they must be doing something right. Or are they?

So I'll start this series with Hugh Hewitt's blog. Hewitt is an American right-wing commentator, and he shares the blog with several other writers of similar persuasion. Their politics aren't very attractive to me as a Canadian centre-leftist (which puts me, in American terms, out there somewhere beyond the Nepalese Maoists). But that's not the point.

An Attractive Layout
In its general layout, Hewitt's site is very attractive: an off-white background for black sans serif text, with colour used for headlines. Hewitt and his associate Dean Barnett write in (mostly) short paragraphs with (mostly) short sentences, and they break up their text with blank spaces between paragraphs and short quotes that stand out clearly from the main text.

Another poster, going by the name of Generalissimo, is much less effective in basic post design. The first paragraph of the post I've linked to is 19 lines long. Most of the sentences within that great block of text are individually short, concise, and readable—but they're buried alive. Better to break the text up into three or even four paragraphs.

Generalissimo's difficulties are compounded by the basic column width of posts, which allows lines that average around 15 words long. This is tolerable (barely) in paragraphs of 6 or 7 lines, but the whole site would benefit from a narrower text column.

That's because most readers are more comfortable with a line of 10 to 12 words. It's easier to track back and down to the next line.

Hypertext and Eye Candy
The Hewitt site uses links well. Links either have blurbs or are self-describing, and they don't distract from reading the text. Webwriting depends on orientation/information/action, and the site design is excellent on offering options for action: email the post, print it, take action, comment, or trackback.

On orientation, the site could improve. Navigation is a problem unless you're only there to read the latest posts. Some posts are long and take forever to scroll through, so it's hard to see what else is new on the site. Providing a click-through to a new page would permit putting more headlines on a single screen. Subheads, like the ones in this post, would also help to break up long posts and tell readers what to expect.

The text dominates a wide column on the left, with ads and other links in the narrow right-hand columns. The ads stand out fairly well (they'd better), but the links to archives and sympathetic blogs are hard to find and hard to read with blue text on a dark-grey background.

Graphics can certainly enliven a text-rich site, but a good computer-graphics person needs to have a quiet talk with the Hewitt posters. Site graphics tend to be too big (see the "stupidity meter"). A flyer for Mitt Romney's Iowa campaign is held up as "a nice piece of mail" when it's atrociously ugly.

Readability
I haven't run any of the Hewitt site text through Readability.info, but I'd expect it to come through very well. As mentioned, most sentences are short, punchy, and full of single-syllable words. Readability would improve still more with fewer monster paragraphs.

No doubt the site attracts thousands of readers a day, most of whom will patiently read much of what they find. The site is preaching to a particular choir, so readers will put up with design and writing flaws for the sake of the message.

Still, a site's fervent fans deserve the happiest experience the writers can provide. Even the idly curious (and the actively hostile) will recognize when a site shows respect for them by making the material attractive and accessible. This site is partway there, but could improve with a more navigable design and tight editorial consistency.

So as an example of webwriting, I'll give the Hewitt site a B.

Starting a new blog
I don't where I got this preoccupation with disaster. But when I'm not teaching business writing or blogging about H5N1, I try to follow the climate-change issue. After thinking about it for a while, I've started a new blog, Homage to Arrhenius to try to educate myself more systematically. Svante Arrhenius was the scientist who over a century ago identified the influence of greenhouse gases on the earth's climate. You're...

I don't where I got this preoccupation with disaster. But when I'm not teaching business writing or blogging about H5N1, I try to follow the climate-change issue.

After thinking about it for a while, I've started a new blog, Homage to Arrhenius to try to educate myself more systematically. Svante Arrhenius was the scientist who over a century ago identified the influence of greenhouse gases on the earth's climate.

You're welcome to pop over and take a look, and if you have any suggestions, I'd be grateful to have them.

When governments don't understand the web
Between school and a book and other blogging, I've been neglecting this site. But this afternoon I posted an item on my H5N1 blog that has a lot to do with webwriters' problems: When governments don't understand the web.

Between school and a book and other blogging, I've been neglecting this site. But this afternoon I posted an item on my H5N1 blog that has a lot to do with webwriters' problems: When governments don't understand the web.

Hazards of Online Writing
Via the New York Times: E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and to Misread). Much of the article applies, I suspect, to web text as well. Excerpt (but read the whole article and follow the links): The advantage of a phone call or a drop-by over e-mail is clearly greatest when there is trouble at hand. But there are ways in which e-mail may subtly encourage such trouble in the first...

Via the New York Times: E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and to Misread). Much of the article applies, I suspect, to web text as well. Excerpt (but read the whole article and follow the links):

The advantage of a phone call or a drop-by over e-mail is clearly greatest when there is trouble at hand. But there are ways in which e-mail may subtly encourage such trouble in the first place.
This is becoming more apparent with the emergence of social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.

Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.

In contrast to a phone call or talking in person, e-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.

Web text versus web copy
Sometimes it pays to ego surf. I just checked myself on Google Blogs (using the chronically misspelled version of my last name). The search came up with some intriguing notes on a blog called Information Squid: AEAChicago2007 - “Writing the User Interface” by Jeffrey Zeldman. The notes are just that, clearly jotted down as Zeldman was speaking, but they convey a lot. Just at the end I found this: how...

Sometimes it pays to ego surf. I just checked myself on Google Blogs (using the chronically misspelled version of my last name). The search came up with some intriguing notes on a blog called Information Squid: AEAChicago2007 - “Writing the User Interface” by Jeffrey Zeldman.

The notes are just that, clearly jotted down as Zeldman was speaking, but they convey a lot. Just at the end I found this:

how do you reconcile people-read-less with SEO[search engine optimization]?
cutting the fat and natural language help both

so does using markup so important words are in headlines

can sometimes get funding for editing content by saying will help SEO

what are some questions to determine what’s brand-appropriate?

discovery process. what materials have you already produced
about yourselves?

what do you know about your stakeholders? compare with real users.

there are no good books about copy

there are good ones about writing for the web, but they don’t address
these issues - i.e. Crawford Killian, Writing for the Web
Zeldman is thinking of writing this

pronouns in copy? used to be more we, now with blogging more I

Of course I'm delighted about the compliment from Zeldman. He's one of the best thinkers about the web and on the web. I would love to see (and buy) his book on web copy. But the field isn't entirely empty. Nick Usborne has done some real pioneering in this field.

Web copy is text designed to sell; text designed to inform and persuade is also copy. So the two genres overlap to a considerable extent.

That last note about pronouns reflects an important point. Good copy in any medium needs the "you attitude," in which the writers pay more attention to the reader than to themselves or their organization. (The We We Monitor, also listed in Webwriting Resources, provides a useful reality check on corporate egomania.)

So to the extent that web writers in general, and web copywriters in particular, talk about themselves, they put themselves at a disadvantage.

But the "I" of a corporate blogger may evade this hazard. We turn to such an individual when we want a relationship with an informed person who clearly wants a relationship with us. So he or she can rant on about "I think this" or "I wonder about that" and still maintain our interest and respect.

I've seen this happen on a couple of my own blogs. Ask the English Teacher is almost entirely user-driven: The posts are based on visitor questions about English usage, and my answers reflect my own (sometimes cranky) views on good usage. (Some commenters beg to differ with those views, I'm glad to say.)

On H5N1, which is essentially a clipping service about avian flu, some visitors credit me with far more authority than I have. A few even email me to ask when the pandemic will start. This is actually a little scary. So when I do venture an opinion, it's usually with the reminder that I'm an elderly Canadian teacher of business writing, not an epidemiologist.

The key seems to be to convey, both verbally and nonverbally, that the corporate blogger really has the customer/visitor's best interests at heart. Verbally, the text should be clear, simple, suitable in tone, and you-oriented. Nonverbally, the site itself and the text layout should be inviting, navigable, and full of "good news surprises" like links and other resources that the visitor finds useful.

If anything, the nonverbal aspects of the site are likely to be more persuasive than anything we actually put in our copy...because when people sense a clash between the verbal message and the nonverbal message, they believe the nonverbal message every time.

Legal Hazards of Writing Online
Via today's Globe and Mail, a report on libel chill: Media stardom is pricey. Excerpt: Many bloggers dream of getting mainstream recognition for their work, but unfortunately for some, the attention they're getting comes in the form of a lawsuit instead of media-star status. Earlier this week, Steelback Brewery president Frank D'Angelo filed a $2-million libel suit against Ottawa-based blogger Neate Sager for making what he says are disparaging comments...

Via today's Globe and Mail, a report on libel chill: Media stardom is pricey. Excerpt:

Many bloggers dream of getting mainstream recognition for their work, but unfortunately for some, the attention they're getting comes in the form of a lawsuit instead of media-star status.
Earlier this week, Steelback Brewery president Frank D'Angelo filed a $2-million libel suit against Ottawa-based blogger Neate Sager for making what he says are disparaging comments about him.

In another recent case, Montreal art-gallery owner Chris (Zeke) Hand has found himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit as a result of something he wrote on the blog he maintains for Zeke's Gallery.

Warren Kinsella, a prominent blogger and newspaper columnist, sued another blogger for libel last year, but settled the case after the blogger apologized for his remarks and paid Kinsella's legal costs.

Zeke, also known as Chris Hand, is being sued for libel for comments he posted on his blog in Montreal. ‘Once you start dragging things into court, I do tend to dig my heels in,’ he says.

And p2pnet, a British Columbia-based news site that writes about file-sharing, is still fighting a libel lawsuit launched by Kazaa tycoon Nikki Hemming based on comments that were posted on an article about the company.

Read the whole item.

Not quite getting it
Via The New York Review of Books, an attempt to explain Blogs. It's a long article, mentioning ten books about blogging, but this is the author's key misunderstanding: Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop. They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave...

Via The New York Review of Books, an attempt to explain Blogs. It's a long article, mentioning ten books about blogging, but this is the author's key misunderstanding:

Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop.
They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave you in the dust. They're not responsible for your education.

Bloggers, as Mark Liberman, one of the founders of the blog called Language Log, once noted, are like Plato. :-) The unspoken message is: Hey, I'm here talking with my buddies. Keep up with me or don't. It's up to you.

Much of the article is a calm, patient explanation of what blogs are, intending for people who sincerely don't know. Both the quote above and that calm, patient explanation seem to me serious misunderstanding about writing for the web.

The review, Sarah Boxer, assumes that her readers need this background about blogging because they don't know anything about it. She assumes that bloggers don't provide this background because they've all already got it.

For some teenage blogger writing for an audience of six or seven, the background may indeed be there. But for anyone trying to gather and disseminate serious information through a blog, the background is always doubtful.

On my blog Writing Fiction, I see that a striking number of my visitors arrive on the site after googling "How many pages in a novel?" Whether or not they've written a novel, that question means they're novice novelists. They lack the exformation of more experienced writers.

Similarly, people visit my bird flu blog, H5N1, with wildly different levels of knowledge about the subject. Some are officials with the World Health Organization, others are epidemiologists, and most know nothing at all except that bird flu is supposed to be bad.

Apart from assuming a basic level of English reading ability, I don't expect anything from my readers. For both blogs I have to find some way to bring the newcomers up to speed without boring the experienced visitors. I really do feel responsible for my readers' education, and I don't want to turn anyone away.

So on H5N1 I provide an introductory page, showing the new visitor what's on the site. Currently, I'm also providing definitions of Indian words like lakh, crore, and panchayat, because they keep turning up in Indian newspapers' reports on bird flu.

On Writing Fiction, I keep responding to comments to the "How Many Pages" post, which I originally made three long years ago. I also provide a link to Write a Novel, a self-guided online course containing the basic materials now lost in the archives of Writing Fiction. (Look for it in the Writers' Resources list.)

Some blogs, like some graduate courses, can assume a cozy familiarity with little-known material. Shared exformation creates an intimate atmosphere, a feeling of belonging that newcomers may not share. If anything, they'll feel deliberately excluded.

But most webwriters, whether serious amateurs or professionals, can't afford to think about the happy few who share our private jokes and roomed with us in college. We have to reach as many people as possible, and to provide something useful for each of them.

So we have to write in simple, clear language. We have to format our material for easy navigation and response. We have to think about our visitors' needs, not our own egos. That, it seems to me, is the exformation that Sarah Boxer doesn't yet have.

SEO and Marketing Basics Are Top of Mind for 2008
Two thirds focus on basics and almost half plan to do SEO

A survey of 1700 MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) members conducted by Anderson Analytics, shows key areas for 2008 are:

Marketing basics (60% "Very Important") which include specific concepts such as customer satisfaction, customer retention, segmentation, brand loyalty and ROI were of greatest interest.
Search Engine Optimization (42%) had relatively wide appeal, and cut across marketers in all fields.
"Green Marketing" (32%) was another important emerging concept and it was identified as the trendiest marketing buzzword.

Guerrilla Insight for Authors

Sunday, February 10, 2008

A glimpse of Cuban blogging

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