This article is written for camp administrators in need of a way to train teenage counselors, but its lessons can be applied to any business. Teaching your employees to apply "the mother test" can save you heartache and unnecessary turnover.

http://www.northstarpubs.com/articles/cb/create-a-camp-internet-policy

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Create A Camp Internet Policy | Northstar Publishing
They may not realize, however, the Internet is not a protected playground, where they may do whatever they please. In reality, it is just like the real world, where a careless word or action can have …

]]> http://www.563media.com/2012/05/08/does-your-company-have-a-social-media-policy-in-place-for-your-employees/feed/ 0 http://www.563media.com/2012/04/30/should-you-be-using-tumblr/ http://www.563media.com/2012/04/30/should-you-be-using-tumblr/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:39:45 +0000 Kristen http://www.563media.com/?p=27253 Occasionally, clients will ask us if they should be on Tumblr. They hear from articles like this that Tumblr, a micro-blogging platform, is one of the fastest-growing social communities online. Naturally, they wonder if they should be involved. What we usually tell them: “It depends.”

As with any social network, whether or not the activity is worth your time depends on some key elements:

• Is there an active and interested community that would be likely to share (“re-blog”) your posts?
• Are you willing to keep your updates brief? Tumblr is a space known for brevity; “long reads” are not as popular.
• How visual are you? Most Tumblr blogs (commonly known as “Tumblrs”) are image-based.
• Do you have a curatorial instinct? Most Tumblrs stick to a theme, then collect and share images and ephemera related to that theme.
• Are you willing to promote others? This last one is important. Tumblr is about sharing and commenting on items of interest from around the web. If you do nothing but talk about yourself or your product, you probably won’t gain traction as quickly. You need to be willing to follow other people and share their posts at least part of the time.

For most of our clients, Tumblr is not a natural first choice. In order to make an impact, you need to update regularly, but more importantly, you have to have that curatorial instinct.

Whereas long-form blogging is often journalistic or diaristic in tone–the presentation of ideas by a single site owner–Tumblr is about finding and exchanging content in a niche; not just your own content, but also the content of others. To keep a Tumblr lively and engaging, you need to be a regular consumer of web content, and you should also be generous about sharing that content with others.

For example, I (Kristen) for a time maintained a Tumblr about urban community gardening. In addition to sharing images from and progress updates about my own growing garden, I re-blogged (shared) images from other gardeners on Tumblr: photos of gardens, inspirational images, upcoming events, and so on.

So, should you Tumblr? If your answers to the following are “yes,” you may want to try.

• Are there people currently publishing Tumblr content in your niche? (Using the same keywords on their posts that you would?)
• Is your niche easy to define or explain in one short sentence? (E.g., “Urban community gardening and sustainability.”)
• Do you have images of your own that you want to share (and is it OK with you if they get shared widely on others’ websites?)
• Are you willing to share other peoples’ images and writing?
• Can you be brief?
• Do you have about one hour per week free to find, follow, and read through other peoples’ Tumblr updates in search of something to re-blog?

Give some thought to these questions. Consider, also, the upsides to using Tumblr:

• Tumblr is easy to update, even from an app on your phone.
• If you’re publishing regularly in a niche that has a built-in audience, you will get followers and re-blogs, almost without trying.
• You can send your Tumblr updates to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
• The new pay-per-update system will allow you to promote important posts, such as product and book launches or local events, for just $1.
• The commenting system is weak, which means there won’t be much, if anything, for you to moderate or respond to.

While the lack of a strong commenting system may be a negative for those looking to monetize their blogs or brag about their numbers, it can be a real bonus to people who are too busy to read and respond to feedback. If you’re already active on Facebook or Twitter and you send your Tumblr updates there, your comments and conversations will probably happen where you’re already spending time. This integration can be a huge plus.

We’re big proponents of our clients investing the bulk of their online time in a single activity. If you’re already very active on another social network or site, Tumblr can be a nice adjunct: easy to learn, easy to use, and easily integrated with other social media. Just remember that you get out of it what you put into it, which is true of all social sites. The more you use it, the better your results will be.

Those shared bits can then be published to members' various social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

We haven't tried this one out yet over at 563, but we're going to give it a go. I'll check back and share my account info and a review of the product soon.

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Here’s the latest well-designed author website I’ve discovered: ChristineSchwab.com (a former consulting client). What’s good about this site:

1. Everything’s easy to find.  All the information a publicist, agent, or radio/TV booker needs is clear, easy to locate on the margins of the site, and requires no clicks. The author’s bio, publicist and agent contact information, present and former books, book reviews, buy buttons, social media, and media room are all right there on the home page. If I were in a position to hire her as a guest on a show or as a keynote speaker, almost everything I need to pitch her to my colleagues or contact her for an inquiry is there for me to grab in under 30 seconds. This site is perfect because it’s accomplishing the client’s clear objectives: selling books and getting herself booked.

2. The call to action is visible. Christine is asking you to do two things: Follow her on Twitter and Like her on Facebook.

3. She’s blogging actively. Because she’s blogging, I immediately understand her current platform (rheumatoid arthritis) and know that she’s actively talking about the issue. She’s also boosting her search engine optimization for that topic by writing regularly about it.

Takeaways

If you’re inclined to blog, I recommend a design format like this. Your wisdom and experience is front and center (literally) and all your major credentials are easy to see. Blogs are also unparalleled for SEO and give you a hub from which you can network with other bloggers and create relationships that can pay off for you over the long term. (Tactics for which I discuss in my eBook.)

If you’re interested in viewing more well-designed book, author, and expert/speaker sites, follow me on Google+, subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed (or go to the sidebar to get this blog by email), or follow me on Pinterest, where I maintain a board of sites I find that set a good example. If you need to build a new blog or website or give yours a facelift, get in touch with us–we work with talented designers who can help you.

When I hear someone refer to a single post or entry as a “blog,” I assume they don’t know much about social media. Don’t look foolish in front of your friends and business associates! Read on to learn what you should be saying. (To bring this post up-to-date, where you see “MySpace” below, insert the social network or community of your choice (e.g., Huffington Post, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.).

* * *

Blogs are websites that refresh their content on a regular basis.

Posts are the things that comprise blogs, the way chapters comprise books.

If you say to someone, “I read your blogs all the time,” that means, “You have more than one website that refreshes its content on a regular basis, and I read all of them.” 

If you say to someone, ”I read your posts every day,” that means, “You post to your blog every day and I am right there with you, baby.”

If you say to someone, ”I read your blog [singular] every day,” that means “You have one website that refreshes its content on a regular basis, and I read it every day because you are just that awesome, and also, my boss never enters my cubicle.”

If you say to someone, “I just wrote a blog about my bad day,” that means “I just wrote an entire website, comprised of many posts, all of which are about my bad day.”

If you say to someone, “Did you read my blogs on MySpace?” that means “I have several blogs on MySpace, which also means I have several identities on MySpace, which means that I killed my boss and am hiding his body somewhere you’ll never find it,” or, “I am unemployed.”

(To any potential future employers who may stumble upon this: I am a freelancer.)

So.

Myspace has made a gross semantic error on the site. There is no such thing as “Post a new blog.” You can create a new blog, but you write a new post.

Five Questions with Our Technical Writer, Keisuke Hoashi

1. What exactly is technical writing? 

Tech writing is translating highly technical jargon into words a “normal” person can understand. The most common examples are user manuals, such as those you get with software or a kitchen appliance. Ideally, tech writers also have graphic design skills, since a well-designed diagram is often the most effective way to explain a complex device.

2. What are the three most common communications mistakes you’ve seen companies make? 

1 – Too many words.

Most users will only look at a manual to find the answer to one specific question (“Where is the ON switch?”). There’s no need to include a treatise on the evolution of the research done on how the location of the switch was decided by the design committee.

2 – Too much or too little graphic design.

Overdesigned materials are guilty of using too many colors, too many graphics, and too much white space. Underdesigned ones tend to look like the old printed Penguin Classics of British Literature, with tiny typefaces, no pictures, odd page sizes, and no paragraph breaks. A tech writer will work with the graphic designer to balance the two, always remembering that the user is there to find that one bit of information they need at that particular moment.

3 – Not hiring an editor.

Especially in large companies, documentation tends to bloat over even short periods of time. A single editor with an overview of the entire bookset would solve most problems of size, duplication, and organization. Unfortunately, having a dedicated editor manage their documentation is also the most skill-demanding and most expensive way to go, meaning companies often use a revolving pinwheel of contractors, each one working on a small piece, with the end result devolving into a massive pile of unedited words.

3. What do you like best about what you do?

A good bout of tech writing makes me feel smarter afterward. I like the feeling of the light bulb popping into being above my head. The “Eureka” or “Aha” or “Oohhhhhhh, nowwwww I seeeeee” moment, caused by wading into a totally incomprehensible tangle of words and discovering the single master thread that organizes it into sudden understanding.

My career as a tech writer has helped me deal with the deliberately overwritten world of legal documents. I am able to translate a mortgage into real English as easily as I can an engineering document or a government bill memo.

4. What are your three favorite words? 

Garbanzo, yeeha, and ombomstiggywogglesWHEEEEEEE.

5. What question have you always wanted someone to ask you (and what’s the answer)?

“Would you do us the honor of being our commencement speaker?”

“Yeeha!”

Keisuke is the resident technical writer for 563 Media. His latest project: writing and consulting on the development of brochures, charts, graphics, and website copy for the relaunch of The Walker Group, a computer services company.

"So authors, if you know of a strong comparable title to your book and you are able to market your book to those readers—and they respond by adding your book to their Goodreads account—our recommendation engine will notice this correlation and be even more likely to suggest your book to the right readers."

"Our best advice is to work hard to establish your core fan base. The more momentum on Goodreads you get, the more it will build. Encourage your readers to rate and review your book on Goodreads. This will not only help generate word-of-mouth buzz, which is essential for a sustained promotion, but also help get your books onto the appropriate book lists and onto the Goodreads Recommendation engine. Our Listopia lists are a great source of discovery for our members, including lots of mid-list titles. They tend to be specific, such as World War II Fiction or Pacific Northwest Books, so having your book on the right list can make a huge difference."

http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/343-how-do-books-get-discovered-a-guide-for-publishers-and-authors-who-want?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=blog_post

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Blog Post: How do books get discovered? A guide for publishers and authors who want their books to find an audience
We've all fallen under the spell of a truly great book. But where did we originally hear about it? How did we come to choose that particular book from among…

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Pinterest is a social network for the very visual: a cross-breed between a Tumblr/scrapbooking site and the social bookmarking site StumbleUpon. People use it to collect images of or links to items that inspire them. They organize these images and links in boards, and they then share these boards with others. At its most basic, Pinterest is a way of making lists without having to do much writing; it's the digital version of pinning pictures and postcards to a "vision board" in your office or workshop.

If your business or book is visually-oriented, you can use Pinterest in the traditional way, as a content collector or curator. If you're a photographer or a style blogger, Pinterest is an ideal match–you're already in the business of collecting images. If you're writing a book about management, you may find you have to be more clever in interpreting what you do and translating it for the visual design crowd. (Or maybe you'll decide Pinterest just isn't the place for you.)

My hunch is the best ways to use it may be the creative, "out of the box" applications that call for engagement and the mutual exchange of ideas. For example, a friend of mine is using Pinterest to crowd source an urban design project she's working on. She's asked her friends to help her collect images of pocket parks from major cities. These images will serve as inspiration to help her and the urban designers she's working with to develop a plan for an urban pocket park in Los Angeles.

In her case, she's using Pinterest as a polling tool. How could you use it to make meaningful, useful contact with your audience?

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Reshared post from +Brad Thompson

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56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest | Copyblogger
Don't let all the hearts and flowers floating around on Pinterest fool you. Behind all that beauty, Pinterest is fast becoming a heavy hitting marketing tool.

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http://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/59403/internet-publicity-expert-kristen-havens

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INTERNET PUBLICITY EXPERT KRISTEN HAVENS | VoiceAmerica™

]]> http://www.563media.com/2012/02/12/stars-of-pr-february-9-radio-show/feed/ 0 http://www.563media.com/2012/02/09/how-to-pitch-by-email-without-landing-in-the-trash-bin/ http://www.563media.com/2012/02/09/how-to-pitch-by-email-without-landing-in-the-trash-bin/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:51:47 +0000 Kristen http://www.563media.com/2012/02/09/how-to-pitch-by-email-without-landing-in-the-trash-bin/ My eBook, A Brief Introduction to to Internet Publicity, is now available for purchase on my website. It's a simple, 20-page primer that outlines a nearly fool-proof technique for getting inbound links (link love) and coverage for your product or service.

It also includes two sample pitch letters so you can learn to pitch bloggers more effectively–a skill set still very much in demand among authors, both mainstream and indie/self-published.

If you buy by the end of February, I'll send you a free surprise digital gift.

Please spread the word. Thanks! http://www.563media.com/products-page/ebooks/a-brief-introduction-to-internet-publicity/

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A Brief Introduction to Internet Publicity | | 563 Media
You'll learn how to: find and approach influential people online get your book or product reviewed by bloggers secure guest blogging opportunities and interviews write an effective email pitch letter …

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