Manage To Change

Depressing or Re-assuring?

I haven’t posted in several weeks.

No posts. No links. Nothing new.

Yet my Feedburner subscriptions, page views, and unique visitors each decreased by less than 8%. Why?

The biggest reason: Google (or more accurately, search).

Roughly 85% of my traffic on a weekly basis is from search. For example, I wrote a post on passive aggressive behavior more than a year ago and it still gets hits every day.

The remaining traffic is from community. After years of meeting people, making friends, and meeting colleagues, some people come by to check in and sometimes to say hello.

Now I don’t write for the statistics. I like to share experiences, information, and observations and then hear what others have to say. I do this to learn.

For me it’s reassuring that my stats stayed pretty constant. It showed me that 2 years of effort (my blogging anniversary is February 6^th) has paid off with some success in the search engines and, much more important, a network of fine friends and colleagues.

But I wonder…

Do you know how people find you on the web? Do you know what they’re looking for?

Why are you in it? Is it paying off?

It’s nice to be back.

Forgive me if I’m a little rusty…

Food, Drink, and Friends

This week I’ll be posting a bit about our trip to London.

It was very interesting to see what Starbucks offers here in the way of sandwiches and pastries. Shortbread with chocolate chips is not something I’ve seen at home nor is Salmon on a bagel. Egg and mayonnaise sandwiches are also not a staple in the U.S.

We’re right near the Earl’s Court Tube Station which makes it convenient to get anywhere. That is unless you’re going to Soho Square with a native in which case you’ll tour Chinatown for quite a while before having to call for directions!

I was in three pubs tonight. I’m a lightweight, so that’s a personal record. I fear it might be broken before we head home.

It was great to meet Kevin Dixie, founder of Fuel My Blog.

We also got to meet up with Richard Charkin , CEO of Bloomsbury (publishers of Harry Potter!).

London Online starts tomorrow.

Off to London!

Tonight I’m heading to London Online to enjoy a great city and catch up with friends and colleagues.

Unlike Liz, I am taking my computer. I can’t imagine more than a day without it.

I’ll consider therapy when I get back.

If you’re in London this week, email me.

I’ll try to write and tell you of my adventures!

Photo credit

Print is Dead Blog

If you are in publishing or media and haven’t read Print is Dead, a blog by Jeff Gomez, I highly urge you to subscribe.

Jeff on literacy:

“The real battle is now being fought — and potentially lost — and it has nothing to do with pages or screens, bindings or devices. It has instead to do with eyes and words.”

This post about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) literacy study really struck a chord with me. I read more than ever now, but I just threw out 5 years of back issues of the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and several newsletters. I read online or stored PDF files. I do read books, but not as many as I used to read. I wonder what reading studies “count” as reading?

In another post: What your bookshelf says about you, Jeff writes:

“In fact, not only is print dead, but it also seems — since its true purpose is now to be admired in display rather than read or absorbed — to have been stuffed and mounted.”

You may agree with him. You may not. But I promise he’ll make you think!

Is There Anybody Out There?

Remember my experiment with Jott last week?

Well someone from Jott came by the blog to offer their support. Good for them!

It’s relatively easy for someone to find instances of their company, product, or brand on the web and see what people are saying about them – yet, few companies do.

Or if they do, few comment or participate in conversations.

Harvard Business Review did, very well I might add!

Dell did.

Volvo didn’t.

United Airlines didn’t.

HP didn’t - not even once.

Starbucks didn’t.

LinkedIn didn’t.

Twitter, Microsoft, Second Life, Apple, YouTube, American Airlines, and many others, all didn’t.

I’ve read many detailed accounts of others’ brand experiences, and also rarely see a comment from the brand owner.

Reports can be positive or negative and there are still no responses.

I’m not sure why this is.

The popular perception is that they either don’t know people are discussing them or they don’t care. No one actually knows because they aren’t saying anything!

Do you look for mentions of your product on the web?

What do you do when you find one?

Photo credit & an interesting blog.

I figured it out.

I got Jott to work on Twitter.

You can either elect to post immediately without transcription and a link is posted to an audio file or you can skip that and Jott will transcribe the audio and post text.

I tried it once on the blog and deleted it. This is my second try.

Maybe I'll find a way to make this useful. Maybe I won't, but experimenting is definitely fun and it's certainly part of change now isn't it? So stay tuned. listen

Powered by Jott

Update: I couldn't resist the urge to change the font and add some space.  Perhaps there's no hope for me and audio blogging!

Remember Jott?

Jott.com is a free service that allows you to call in a message and have it transcribed and sent to your email account.

I started using Jott in April and have, to date, only sent Jotts to myself.

Well today that all changes!

I’ve set up my Twitter account and my blog as Jott recipients. I’m going to start Twittering today and see how that works.

If it’s not completely horrible, I might work in a blog post here and there.

I’m skeptical about the blog posting. If it doesn’t look right I’ll abandon that plan!

My hypothesis is that it will work well for Twitter and perhaps Facebook status (if it were offered), but not so well for blogging.

We’ll see. Let me know what you think.

I’m annmichael on Twitter if you want to introduce yourself.

Structure: A Micro Example

While I’m not a large corporation, I’ve learned that creating content requires structure – structure I didn’t realize I needed when I started writing.

Over time, I’ve created a process (supported by tools) for harvesting and developing ideas into posts.

When I follow it, I have a steady stream of ideas and my only challenge is finding the time to fully develop and publish them.

When I don’t follow my process I still get some great ideas but I often lose track of them, write about them even though they aren’t “right” for this venue, or publish them before they’re ready.

Those ideas tend to “flop”, inspiring no comments, no emails, and no links to other conversations, much more often than ideas that go through the process.

My process is extremely flexible. Some ideas push through in an hour and some take weeks or months depending upon how I choose to develop them.

The process itself has changed over time as I’ve learned, altered my perspective, or experienced significant time constraints.

But the biggest benefit of this publishing process is that it’s gotten me through the times when I’ve had no new ideas. I was able to reach into my files and get inspired.

The point: Process and structure when applied appropriately can help you get things done – even creative things.

Content Does Matter

Some days I read more than I write.

Some days I write more than I read.

Some days I’m so busy, I do neither.

Are people blogging less? Is that good or bad?

The way I look at it we should write when we have something to say.

I don’t always have something to say.

Sometimes less really is more.

Content, Publishing, Marketing, and Some Fun

We can’t be serious all the time – right?

Seriously, though, the links embedded in this story (story template courtesy of Successful Blog) are all great sources of information about publishing, media, marketing, and entrepreneurs. I read every one of them!

This was just the fun and creative exercise I needed this (US) holiday weekend.

Social Media Marketing and Publishing 2.0

Publishing 2.0 was enjoying great Success from the Nest, when out of the blue PersonaNonData appeared. You might think this is strange, but when planning an Escape from Cubicle Nation such things happen all the time.

Our brave and quirky hero knew exactly what to do — Micro Persuasion, but our brave and quirky hero had no PaidContent with which to do it! 

Seeking help to resolve this dilemma, our hero headed down the road to The Viral Garden.

The road passed three creatures — each of them was more interesting than the next.

The first was an Entrepreneurial MD who generated valuable content all the time. The second was a Content Blogger who often told others how content was changing and what they could do with it. The third was a VC, with money and vision.

Our brave and quirky hero ran the rest of the way, and when she got there, she got another surprise!

“Print is Dead!” our hero exclaimed.

“Perhaps, but Content Matters,” Barry answered.

“I was enjoying great Success from the Nest, when out of the blue PersonaNonData appeared.” our brave and quirky hero said, knees shaking.

“Could you spare some Logic + Emotion?”

And so it passed that The Krafty Librarian gave our brave and quirky hero The Bivings Report AND a publishing talk and all was well.

You might think this is strange, but when planning an Escape from Cubicle Nation such things happen all the time.