Tag Archives: Bloggers

Focus Your Site Content

I have a tendency to wander around town from time to time, which often ends me up in some sort of new and strange conversation with another voice that results in a lot of time being used to talk about nothing.  While these experiences can be entertaining, they are not always the greatest use of my time.  (Not that I know what that is either.)  Sometimes, though, I have semi-useful conversations with folks I know better than others, and that is a good use of my time while still entertaining.  I recently ran into an editor friend from the Sacramento Business Journal and she gave me some feedback after viewing the site, essentially saying two things to me: 1) Write more, and; 2) Focus the content.  Sound advice, no doubt.

The first of the two is an easily reachable goal.  I have a habit of writing down whatever I can remember in whatever order it is remembered.  As time goes on, I’ll use more and more of that writing for the site and we’ll have plenty of entries.  This is the problem that makes difficult achieving number two.  (What?) As it stands now, the site has no real focus other than to humor me, possibly entertain you, and be not always nonsensical.  Not the clearest set of instructions, right?  It makes sense, but what does it mean.

I understand the need for focus.  People don’t like ambiguity.  They don’t want to be taken to wandering all over the place, essentially wasting a bunch of time to ultimately, probably, accomplish very little if nothing at all.  You’re going to want content with clarity that is concise.  That takes most of the fun out of it for me as the writer.  So the questions now are — Do I get focused?  How is it done? Possibly (I don’t want to rule it out completely,) and here’s how it’s done:

  • Clearly Defined Goal(s) Know what it is you want to accomplish with your content.  For example, “maximize revenue per unique visitor to the site through conversion”  Be specific.  Be clear.  Knowing exactly what you want to do will help you determine how you do it.
  • Know Your Topic It’s much easier to focus and be clear when you yourself are knowledgeable and interested in the topic you’re covering.
  • Get to the Point Quickly It’s a bad idea to fumble around in the first paragraph.  Say as much as possible as soon as possible about your topic.  Make sure the reader knows straight away what the rest of the post is going to be about and why he should continue reading.
  • Relevant Photos We tend to enjoy the visual, so include photos and be sure they have something to do with your topic, potentially aiding in the further explanation of what you’re trying to communicate.
  • Omit Needless Words Remember what William Strunk, Jr. taught in The Elements of Style, Rule 13 — Omit Needless Words.  It can’t be said enough.  Proofread your writing and remove fluff.  Don’t write about the writing.  Write about your topic.

That’s it.  There you have it.  A quick start guide to getting some focus.  It sounds easy enough.  Doesn’t mean it’s easy to do.

My editor friend suggested I write about Sacramento since I’m out and about so much.  It makes sense, and I have some Sacramento entries.  But I also want to write about “nerdy computer stuff” as she worded it.  I’ve been tinkering and hobbying around the computer world since the late 80s, and I studied Computer Science at Cal Poly.  I get a kick out of the latest developments to hardware and software, so I’m going to write about that stuff.  And let’s not forget that sometimes I just want to write and write and say nothing at all.  I’m sure you won’t mind.

Blog Cards by Street Cards

It’s time to start marketing the blog out in the real world, and I figure what better way to do that than with business cards.  Small, easy to pass out, people are familiar with it and its purpose, and you can put whatever you want on it.  I decided to go through Street Cards because they offer a line of cards with cartoon art from Gaping Void blog author, Hugh Macleod.  There are some 90+ different cartoons to choose from, but I finally settled on this one after some brief discussion with thompology and that other guy.

Business Card

The back of the card shows the web address for this blog.  We’ll see how things go.  Should be a decent way to get traffic I wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Oh My Goosh.org

This is probably only really neat and fun for anyone who has ever maintained a computer from the shell, and I don’t know too many folks that still work regularly at the command line.  I have three linux machines (Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu) myself, and only on one of them (Fedora) do I work in the shell environment, and not very often.  (That’s pretty good considering it doesn’t have the GUI installed.)

Goosh.org gives you a command line-like interface in your web browser.  I came across it while reading the blog of Emily Chang and I started tinkering with it immediately.  Loaded up my blog, and ran all the commands just to see what they did.  Typing help is probably what you’re going to want to enter first so you can get a list of commands.  If you want more information, check out Emily’s post.

Like I said, this is probably only fun for a few folks.  Ha!  I’m not sure why I’d ever use this app, but I like knowing that it’s out there. I’ll throw a bookmark on it, and keep it around.

Enjoy.

Commercials as Social Objects

It almost never fails that someone, at some point in a conversation with me, if we talk long enough, will ask, “Have you seen that one commercial?” No.  I haven’t. I don’t watch commercials. I don’t understand why anyone wants to talk about advertising if they don’t work in the world of marketing.  Boggles my mind, and I have to make a real effort not to chastise someone when a commercial is brought up in conversation.

Okay, wait, I get that commercials can be short and entertaining, sometimes showing with a bit of humor, but none of that creates a want in me to purposefully watch one, and I truly do not want to talk about them while out in public because, ultimately, all commercials are really just trying to get me to buy something I already know I don’t want and I don’t want to push that sale on someone else.  But that’s not what bothers me most about the situation when I find myself in it.  What bothers me most is that these people find commercials interesting enough to talk about with strangers.

Hugh MacLeod has this thing he calls the Social Object. “The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else.” It drives me crazy that I appear to others as someone who views the commercial as a Social Object, the thing I would want to talk about with you rather than someone else.  It’s a pretty safe bet that, if you’re talking about television commercials, I don’t want to talk with you at all.  A Social Object can be anything we know about that would be easy to understand and interesting to talk about that is not seen on TV, like a park down the street where I play Frisbee from time to time. Maybe it’s been seen it in a commercial somewhere.

I’m usually not too picky when it comes to strangers talking about whatever, and I’m almost always willing to listen except when the topic turns to commercials on TV.  Let’s, the next time we bump into each other, talk about the weather.