What you should do if you think your blog post has been reproduced without adequate credit or links

It was a Tweet that alerted me.

A post from this blog appeared to have been reproduced on another blog without adequate credit or links. Within 24 hours, I had resolved the issue but, in the process, reassessed some of my core values.

So what happened?

The post had been replicated on another blog (Blog A) – same headline, text and photo. A short sentence between the headline and the text indicated a link back to my original post.

Blog A offered neither comment functionality nor a contact email. 

My first response?

I went straight to bed pretty upset. I don’t make money from this blog but, after seven months, it’s my blog.

I Tweeted the news to my community just before turning off the lights.

By morning, it had to get worse before getting better

Another blog, Blog B, had picked up on Blog A, presumed it was the original, and linked to it, not me. But my Tweet had done its magic. I received advice from Peter Moore, who also writes a blog, that I visit Copyscape.

He was right.

What does Copyscape do?

You type in the URL of your blog and Copyscape supplies you with a list of sites carrying the same text as yours. Copyscape highlights those bits of the text that have been replicated. It even counts the words. Mine was 100%.

Next steps: read its rules 

Copyscape suggests six steps.

First,  find out who owns the site or hosts it – Copyscape provides this information after inputting the site’s URL. Next, write an email asking the blog to reduce the amount of text used and credit fully.

The most important point was about tone. Do not be aggressive. It might all be a misunderstanding.

Practical steps

I sent emails to both blogs. 

By mid-afternoon, I had received a very polite message from Blog A apologising. My post was now cut to a headline and the first paragraph with very obvious links back to my blog. Blog B also emailed, correcting its mistake by linking to my blog.

What lessons had I learnt?

I have met nothing but politeness and civility in the second generation web. It has taught me a different approach from my former days in “broadcast” journalism where I would have sent off an assertive email first and asked questions second.

Could it be that it had all been a genuine misunderstanding?

So it got me thinking. 

When I was a “broadcast” journalist, how many of my arguments were justified and how many led to problems generated by my attitude?

Photo credit: Boocal

The 10 questions I ask myself before I publish any blog post

I used to publish my blog posts immediately after writing them.

Now I write, save, reconsider, save, rewrite, save, sleep, wake…oh, and then publish. The more time I build in before publishing a post, the more visitors I get to this blog.

Ask yourself these questions.

1 Do you have the space and time to reflect deeply on your post?

Tip: Make notes of ideas during the week. If blogging is not your full time job, write only during the weekend.

2 Is your post easy to read or daunting to a first time reader?

Tip: Try organising your posts in different ways. I started this post with bullet points, then experimented with numbers and have ended up with questions/tips.

3 Are all those words or even sentences necessary?

Tip: Reread your post and ask whether you can cut out a word or whole sentences. Go back and cut out more. And more.

4 What combination of typography makes it easier to read?

Tip: Even with a basic blog platform like this I can use bold, normal or italic, bullet points or numbers, quotations and pictures. Experiment until it is easier to read.

5 What will the post actually look like when published?

Tip: Click on preview. Have a really close look at what your post looks like down to how the text fits round the picture.

6 Are you the only person in the world with perfect spelling?

Tip: Use the spell check. I have no doubt that someone can find spelling and grammar mistakes in this post. But, without spell check, you’re doomed.

7 Does this post need to be published right now?

Tip: If it is a breaking story, get on with it. But if there is no good answer to this question, literally sleep on it.

8 Have you thought of the implication of every word you have written?

Tip: You really need to be sensitive to every type of reader. You want opinionated commenters but not those who are outraged by a misunderstanding.

9 Do you know how to publish a post using your blog’s timer?

Tip: This post was published just as the traffic to this blog takes off. As important, I can leave the blog’s timer to take care of the post while I get to work.

10 Do you see your post as a one-off or part of that week’s schedule?

Tip: Even if it is a one-off in content, think of your post as part of a weekly programme. How does it fit in?

What questions do you ask yourself before publishing a post?

If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!

Photo credit: Xurble

Seth Godin in London – live blogging

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO WAS READING LIVE – THE EVENT HAS NOW FINISHED.

Tweets in italics with Twitterers’ name. 

Seth gets ready to speak (plus a cup of tea!).

Attendees are networking. Seth has set up his presentation. I am going to Live Blog this. If it goes wonky, sorry!

13.29 Huge round of applause as he comes on stage.

13.31 “What do you do for a job?I am going to take it that this self-selected group wants to change everything”. How do we want to CHANGE EVERYTHING?

13.33 Outrage in the US when each year dog and cat catchers caught all strays and killed them. Nathan in San Francisco tried to stop this. Only unhealthy cats and dogs were killed. He went to several different states to repeat his success. So

@tojulius: regardless of the economy, regardless of the country you live in you can make a difference #sethldn

13.37 We need to understand the history of modern marketing. If you could come up with something clever, you could win. Easy to diffuse ideas if you had money. The key was television which could interrupt when it wanted. Led to the “TV industrial business”. You bought the stock then advertised.

Our modern marketing was generated by this.

13.41 But this type of marketing has led to average stock for average people.

@RMM_LND: #sethldn Buying attention works for selling average products to average people

13.46 “We’ve branded ourselves to death”. We have produced such variety. But even a cheap product costs a fortune to market.

13.47 But the good news from Godin starts 15 minutes in.!

He tells the story of Rita’s, a very interesting little shop. It is on the way to a summer camp and its reputation is spread by word of mouth. “Why,” he asks “does any gas station get investment but not a shop like this?”

13.52 He tells the story of two cars, one that was at first dismissed by its manufacturer for being too edgy, the second more mainstream. Of course it was the edgy that sold far more.

@tojulius: You win at the edges, no one wins in the middle #sethldn

“Designs that people want to pay for”.

And then Tiffany’s. All people talk about is the box. The box is the store. That is the story, that is what they are telling you through marketing.

13.54 So now the internet. “We are now in an industrial revolution new for all those over 60″.

[Interestingly there appears to be two #tags for this day (#sethldn and #sethlondon). Apparently spelling is better for the former.

@JoannaButler considerably more tweeting at #sethldn than #seslondon the former can spell better]

Seth starts lecturing in a space normally reserved for bishops

“When you look at what made Josiah Wedgwood the richest man in the world when he died, many would say that his ideas were marketing”.

“If you want to win in this new era, you need to make products that match the market. If you cannot direct market successfully, you will not succeed. But if you do not use the internet successfully, the internet does care. You do not own the internet.”

@tojulius: Fashion is about taking something that is perfectly good and make it something worth talking about #sethldn

14.03 “Why are you not dating your customers. If you don’t, you will end up talking to people who do not want you.”

@mikey3982: Does your business have a story? #sethldn

“My question: if you did not send out your email or DM, and your customers did not even mention the omission, I suggest you do not have permission to contact them.”

14.10 “When you give people unlimited choice, they will take it”. Here he shows an image of the long tail. When you give people choice, half the customers move into the long tail. Once the long tail kicks in, people want choice.

@tojulius: Long Tail means people want to make their own choice, the Internet allows to do that, does your brand do that? #sethldn

Google will NOT go away. Either your brand is Google-friendly or not. Google -friendly means organising yourself so your DNA is everywhere on the web.

14.17 The role of gatekeepers (and there is a picture of Rupert Murdoch here) has come to an end. People come because they want to. Not because they have to.

14.18 Scarcity/ubiquity – you can make your money either way. It is the area in between where it all falls apart. And most organisations are stuck in the middle.

Hi example is Gillette. Does the company have a right to thrive in the new networked, ungatekeepered, fast moving, long-tailed world Godin mentioned?

“No one wants to “Friend” Gillette on Facebook or follow the company on Twitter”.

14.20 My question “Is your company structured to find customers for your products or to find products for your customers?”.

@RMM_LND: #sethldnYou can’t demand success in order to commit. You need to commit to guarantee sucess.

Step 1 Be remarkable

Step 2 Tell a story (and then get others to retell it for you)

14.24The model of business used to be up down. The new model is left to right, networked. People like to be in teams. The internet was supposed to homogenise everyone. Instead it did the opposite, connecting small groups of people with eachother.

@tojulius: Connecting like minded people to get them doing what they love, fire brigades wouldn’t be there without fire #sethldn

A “tribe” is when people want to do something with eachother.

14.27 You only need 1000 true people to start a crowd. And leaders. It is not who you are but how you interact with people. He compares Apple’s Jobs with Microsoft’s Gates and say nothing in common but great leaders because of how they led.

14.29 When you want to start a tribe, make it big or make it small. They then want to be led but they will not be led if you are mediocre. It is those who stand up and are heretics who are followed.

You need to find leaders who will break the rules. You are being asked to lead by those who want to be led.

14.33 Five minute break. Then questions and answers.

14.40 Back to questions and answers.

 “My problem is not ideas but how I can write them all up on my blog”

The audience (l to r) Desigan Chinniah (@cyberdees), Julius Solaris (@toJulius) and Tristan de Montebello (@Montebello).

14.42 Where do you get your ideas (by Rachel from Dragons’ Den)?

 What happens if people do not want to hear from you about change?

“No point getting people who aren’t interested to listen.”  He cites Harry Potter books which no one wanted because it was a different type of book.

14.45 Do you think the word “consumer” is old fashioned -asked from someone in “an evil advertising agency”?

@wadds: Ad agencies (&PR?) missing an op as signpost to new permission based world for brands #sethldn

There are lots of words that have horrible connotations. Living in a world where consuming is the highest goal, is not the world I want to live in.

What about tribes?

@RMM_LND: #sethldn: If they’re not going to suceed by joing that tribe, turn them away. The more you do this, the more others will follow you.

14.50 Where do you find the time to “lead a tribe”

“I work far less than you think!”. He does not watch TV, he does not do Twitter. Either one would take six hours away. He allocates his time, answering people who contact him. All he wants to do is spread ideas. He never said “buy this book”, only wanted to spread his ideas.

@wadds: Seth doesn’t Twitter cos he’d rather have one on one conversations by email #sethldn

14.54 How does Seth Godin market Seth Godin?

The brand was to sell the activities of the business. “I could have told a different story and told a different story”. But once you have built a product, stick withit and be authentic. He thinks, each time he makes a decision, this is what I should decide.

 14.57 Do politicians have something to learn from you?

@hughat3M: Obama campaign team read Seth’s books and that makes him feel good #sethldn

“If Barack Obama had not won, I would have left the country!”  People do not elect a platform, they elect a story. That’s what Obama did. It can take leaders to different places. As a leader, you need to decide where you are going to take it.

Organiser Mark Muggeridge (@MM_EGM) hands out the microphone for questions.

14.59 A woman speaks who matches dragons (people with money who want to invest) with people with ideas.

Godin is not clear what the question is. Do you want more dragons or ideas? The chicken or the egg? He suggests you need to increase the number of dragons because “the ideas will look after themselves”. So the story should be how to increase the number of dragons? The dragons do not want to hear that everyone is like them.

When he finishes, the woman says she now has a headache.

15.03 I am a beekeeper. I have six tribes. Have you tried to split tribes?

“Am glad you are asking about bee psychology!” The tribe is not just a bunch of people with eye patches but a bunch of people with a mission.

15.06 Are you in love with your idea or your tribe?

“You are going to change your ideas”. Being a leader allows you to open your mind to new ideas.

15.07A man who uses Twitter to interact with customers, does he have the right to make offers through DM?

Tiny amounts of testing (that’s five, then ten – don’t do thousands of tests) – this stuff allows it to be done at small scale. “Be clear about the deal”.

15.09 When do tribes become self-governing?

@tojulius: Biggest mistake that video companies do is that they make an idea that spreads but don’t enable to follow up next greatest idea #sethldn

15.13 Newspapers

Scarcity made your business (print etc). But journalists are not scarce because everyone is now a journalist. If you can build a tribe around one issue then you have a local community. And we pay you with coupons for your contributions. Now you have something to go with to the advertisers. Some of the silos will not take off but they do not cost you anything.

@tojulius: Seth just explained a new business model for newspapers in 2 minutes, awesome #sethldn

 15.27 Are we still early adopters?

 The “Bell Curve” has four states

1. The early adopters – who liek to watch TV on Tivo
2. The next group want good TV but pay cheap.
3. The others want a DVD player
4. And the fourth want CDs!

Only the first group will buy new products.

PLEASE FOLLOW TWITTER SEARCH #SETHLDN FOR FURTHER COVERAGE

After the group photo

Guest post: how quickly can someone from a traditional media background exploit Twitter?

I asked once whether early adopters in social media were ready for the arrival of a new wave of competitors. I predicted that, if they had traditional media experience, they would be quick learners and, if they worked within defined communities, that their followers would grow rapidly.

 Today’s guest post is by Edward Welsh  Programme Director, Media and Campaigns, at the UK’s Local Government Association. He has years of traditional media experience – having worked on national papers in the UK (disclosure: my brother). His current job places him in the midst of a defined community – communication experts working for government.

He set up a Twitter in December 2008. Two months later, his hashtag for a conference trended number three on Twitter Search. Not a bad learning curve.

This is his story.

My main audience is the 60 million people who live in the UK. I am responsible for enhancing and defending the reputation in the mass media of a sector with a budget of more than £100 billion a year, 20,000 councillors and which employs 1.6 million people. The LGA targets national newspapers, television and radio, proactively generating stories and rebutting negative coverage to influence the news agenda on behalf of more than 400 councils in England and Wales.

Why do I use Twitter? 

1. To respond to a challenge from John Welsh (my brother and the man behind this blog) to familiarise myself with social media.

2. To see if and how news stories can be generated through Twitter.

3. To find out how councillors and councils are using Twitter.

4. To improve communications with our member councils.

5. To find out how private sector PR people are using Twitter.

What have I found out so far?

1 My brother was right. I needed to get up to speed. The following explains why.

2. I have not yet cracked how to generate news stories on Twitter but

• The terrorist attacks on Mumbai, the aeroplane crash in the Hudson and Stephen Fry  stuck in the lift  have shown that Twitter can help shape or drive breaking news stories, 
• A lot of our work is proactive rather than reactive. 
• Perhaps hashtags are a way forward. I’ve created #lgapac for a survey of supermarket food packaging we are to publish on Tuesday. 
• Or maybe news is better managed by using an institutional Twitter, such as UK Parliament’s Twitter or Hillingdon’s Twitter, rather than through a personal Twitter. 

3. Twitter is suddenly taking off in local government, admittedly from a very low base. The number of councillors Twittering has doubled in the past fortnight to 100 and growing. Perhaps 40 or 50 councils are using it, most recently to keep residents informed about how the heavy snowfalls have affected services.

4. Twitter could be a very useful way of complementing how we communicate with our member councils and, even more importantly, garner their views to feed back into what we do.

5. I have yet to work out exactly how private sector PR people are using Twitter. Clearly, they see it as a marketing tool but I need to explore further how their use could shape mine. 

I’ll update you when I know more.

Photo credit: jurvetson

A list of 10 social media habits that I am stopping immediately

1. I am no longer looking to subscribe to individual blogs via RSS.

If I admire a blogger, such as Mike Fruchter, I look whether he has a Google Shared Items page to which he bookmarks his top posts by other bloggers. I then subscribe to his Google Shared Items RSS feed, relying on his editing to have done the work of screening for me. 

 

2. I am no longer ignoring people after accepting them as “friends” on Facebook.

As soon as I accept a “friend request”, I write a comment on their wall.  Why did I imagine that accepting a “friend request”, and not saying hello, was anything but rude? 

 

3. I am no longer forgetting to tag my pictures on Flickr.

Flickr’s Creative Commons allows you to search a word and provides several tagged pictures for reproduction in your blog. The web is all about reciprocity – the more you tag, the more choices you will get back in the future.

 

4. I am no longer using del.icio.us for bookmarking. 

My own Google Shared Items has replaced del.icio.us. Some bloggers are beginning to use Google Shared Items for their reading and del.icio.us as a bookmark for coverage of themselves.

 

5. I am no longer failing to monitor my name on Twitter Search.

How can you tell whether you are are really involved in the conversation unless you monitor your Tweets. Use Twitter Search to assess your interactivity – see @paulbradshaw‘s feed for example. 

 

6. I am no longer sending pictures from my phone using Twitpic unless absolutely necessary.

It is difficult to gauge 140 characters when you send a picture on Twitpic. If you can wait, return to your computer, upload>post only>share this photo>Twitter update bar. You can write your Twitter in relative comfort. 

 

7. I am no longer making recommendations on LinkedIn.

One person for whom I wrote a recommendation did not use it. I had got in to the habit of responding to any “LinkedIn request” with a recommendation. Bad etiquette. I am still so embarrassed. New rule, only recommend when asked.

 

8. I am no longer writing this blog all by myself.

Ask other people to guest post. I’ve had Julius Solaris, Endaf Kerfoot and Ruth Galpine - different voices. And remember reciprocity. You will only be invited to guest post or feature on another blog if you do the same, as George Hopkin has done with me.

 

9.  I am no longer running my FriendFeed as my status through my Facebook profile.

My community on Facebook are family and friends who are certainly not interested in my Tweets or pictures about social media (doh!). Remember different content for different communities.

 

10. I am no longer going to ignore my FriendFeed.

But I am going to give up on any further pretence that I have a life offline. 

 

Do you have any social media habits that you are giving up? 

 

If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!

  

Picture credit: walknboston

Guest post: what you should do if your Twitter profile is going nowhere quickly

Ruth Galpine, a marketer on one of our exhibitions TFM&A, had set up a Twitter account but it was evidently not thriving (disclosure: my colleague). So we asked ourselves six questions of her Twitter activity. Within days, leading people in her community were reTweeting her Tweets. 

This is her story. 

We decided to start using Twitter as an additional “channel to market” for our forthcoming exhibition. With little previous experience of social media marketing or of Twitter, it started as a learn-as-you-go immersion. And, as we discovered, full of the classic social media ‘marketing’ blunders!

At first we naively saw Twitter as an additional marketing channel through which to push our event messages. Our initial Tweets were dry snippets of information about the show. All was good, we thought, as our initial followers were people already on our show database. But we didn’t seem to be getting any viral growth.

“Why not?” we thought.

“How can we get more reach into Twitter; how can we build a community and how can we encourage them to push TFM&A to their communities?” So we went through the following process. Why don’t you try it?

1 Have you asked yourself “what is your community”?

Our initial assumption on our community was that it was “anyone who is interested in TFM&A”.

Hmm, that’s not really a community, is it? TFM&A has a diverse range of audience groups within its attendees and any one of them is a community. We chose to focus on the marketers who would be interested in the show, and within them, those with an interest in social media. After all, they were more than likely to be on Twitter already!

2 Have you done research so that you do not overlook the social network the community is already in?

We hadn’t had time to do much research into this. So we went with our intuition and reckoned that social media marketers were more likely to be already on or interested in Twitter than your average person.

So that was that! A quick look at our followers on Twitter Sheep just 2 weeks later reassured us our assumption was a good one!

3 Have you been listening to the conversation in your community? 

Again, we hadn’t been doing enough of this but now we have, we know how invaluable it is!

A few quick look-ups on Twitter Search showed us a wealth of “chatter” about our show – from exhibitors discussing what they were doing at the show; potential visitors asking if each other would be there; plus people asking us questions on what was at the show. Great – now that we knew who was talking about us, we could join in the conversations!

4 Have you been sending out only Tweets pushing the brand?

Yes, we had… guilty again!

We read John’s post on his blog – Six types of Tweets if you Twitter every day. We also realised that the TFM&A website already boasts a social media news feed of real value to our community. We realised we could send out Tweets linking to that. And, it worked! Three reTweets from just the first few Tweets.

We had finally gone viral!

5 Have you set up a hash tag identifier?

A what? A hash tag identifier is a short word or acronym that you attach to every Tweet you make – you encourage those tweeting about you and re-tweeting you to use it, helping you to track ‘chatter’ on Twitter Search.

We went with #tfma but people were using TFM&A as well – that is what the show is commonly named. Having both enables us to cover our bases.

6 Have you thought how you will assess your effectiveness?

A quick five-minute check each morning on Twitter Search and typing in our show keywords – TFM&A, tfma_event and #tfma – and we can see the increasing growth of the TFMA Twitter in our community. 

See how well TFMA is doing in real time.

Do you have a story about how you have changed your use of Twitter?

Photo credit: Dappers

A list of UK bloggers and Twitterers who are beginning to rival their US peers for my attention

Six months ago, my daily fix of blogs and Twitters originated in the US or Canada Whether it was Jeremiah Owyang, Jay Rosen or Mark Potts, their posts and Tweets provided me with a swift and fascinating education in both new and social media. 

But I have noticed how my RSS subscriptions have begun to change. My list, once dominated by US and Canadian bloggers and Twitterers, is increasingly peppered with UK and Irish ones. 

There have always been good UK and Irish bloggers on new or social media. But some of those attracting my attention have appeared only during 2008 or, even more recently, 2009. Some are former journalists and media executives turning their hand to blogging for the first time, the new wave I predicted late last year.

Here is a list of US/Canadian bloggers and Twitterers I admire and their UK/Irish equivalents. 

Comparisons of online media

• Mark S Luckie’s 10000 words is at its best when it publishes one of its comparative lists such as 8 Interactive online projects that educate and captivate. 

Why not try out Martin Belam’s Currybet with its equally ambitious and detailed comparisons. Just last week the UK’s Bellam kicked off a four part series contrasting the navigation on UK national papers.

The future of newspapers

• Jay Rosen, New York University’s maverick professor of journalism, cannot be bettered for Tweets which question the role of journalism in this digital age. Follow and learn. 

Back in the UK (although from the US himself) is uberactive Ben LaMothe who fills the Twittersphere with breaking news about the US and UK news industry.   

Analysis of B2B magazines

• Paul Conleyhas led the tiny B2B community of bloggers for years with his detailed analysis of the US sector’s failings and finality.

In the UK Rory Brown, previously of Incisive, launched his blog late last year and  Neil Thackray, formerly Quantum and Nexus, kicked his off only a fortnight ago. Both write with the confidence of years at the top empowering them to raise issues that were once swept under the carpet.  

Short, sharp lessons in writing posts

• The US writer Seth Godinisn’t inspirational just for his opinions. His writing also motivates you to improve your own style and his counterintuitive opinions challenge your own views.

Gloucestershire-born Richard Millington (although now temporarily locate in the Baltic States) only started Feverbeelast year. But his posts show a rare focus and his writing style evokes the minimalism of Godin (the UK blogger did an internship with the US guru). Is this the UK’s future Godin? 

What about local papers?

• The Media Managerby Kirk LaPointe, also editor of the Vancouver Sun, is essential reading for any journalist in north America who wants to keep up to speed with rapid changes in the industry. His output is phenomenal with around 25 posts a week.

We now have our own LaPointe in Jon Slattery, the former deputy editor of Press Gazette. Jon’s blog covers so much of the J-news in the UK that one blogger has already questioned whether he needs to read both Jon and the Press Gazette.

How technology impacts on life

• I’ve always loved Sarah Lacy’s blogfor her opinions and her “go shove-it” attitude towards start-ups and technology. She now joins TechCrunch while editor Michael Arrington takes a break from the stalkers.

Jemima Kiss is an equally tough technology thinker but pours her views and opinions into MediaGuardian and her Twitter. 

The entrepreneurs/ start-ups 

• The US has Kevin Rose, owner of Digg, a celebrity on Twitter, a very visual blog and a liver of life.

 We have Paul Walsh, founder of Segala – and yet to be launched Wubud. Walsh also boasts a popular blog, a vast number of Twitter followers and a great line in meet-ups. 

Are there any other bloggers or Twitterers that you would add to the list?

If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!

Photo credit: Anthony Mayfield

 

Is an MA in Social Media strictly necessary?

Would you be impressed by a candidate boasting the University of Salford’s proposed MA in Social Media (hat tip Chi-chi Ekweozor)?

Recruitment is becoming a key issue for any traditional company building its digital business. Does it continue to appoint people in the image of its existing employees, and then spend months training them, or should a company only consider candidates with a minimum social media footprint?

The Guardian has just recruited Lauren Luke, a 27-year-old single mother and YouTube make-up star, as a columnist. As Online Journalism Blog’s Paul Bradshaw says

I’ve written previously that if you want to get into journalism you should have a blog. I’d add to that: if you want your own column, you should build up a following on YouTube too. News organisations will increasingly not just be looking for people who know what they’re talking about, but how to distribute it effectively online.

Note that Ms Luke is a make-up artiste first and a YouTuber second. Similarly no company, whatever its legacy, is suddenly going to drop its requirement for core skills and be seduced by social media. 

Calculators, emails and now Twitter

Social media is just the next technological development to impact on the workplace. When the excitement has died down, what would be the point of knowing about the kit rather than the core skills themselves? Did we appoint people in the 1970s who knew how to use calculators or shortlist candidates in the 1990s who were good at sending emails?  Why appoint someone skilled in Twitter if they cannot write, market or sell?

No. All we need are people good at the core skills who happen to have set up a blog, a Twitter account and/or used LinkedIn.

It does not seem much to ask. But it ain’t an MA.

Photo credit: David the Pimp Daddy

A list of counterintuitive behaviour that will improve your use of the web

Traditional media people – journalists, marketers, editors - are just like other professionals. They do the same things in print and via emails year after year because of intuition.

Success came about by

• hoarding the content
• broadcasting to the users
• expecting a response
• trying to please everyone
• assuming everything was read
• not engaging with the competitors

The more you get to use the web, the more you realise it works the opposite way.

• the more you focus on a niche than a whole community, the quicker your traffic will rise
• the more you comment on other people’s sites, the more comments your site will receive back (even if they are not from the same people)
• the more annoyed you are that you still have no comments, the harder still you need to try
• the more information you contribute to your community, the more you will be able to develop those relationships
• the more frustrated you become with the lack of response from your community, the less response you will receive
• the more open you are in your networks (even if there are traditional competitors), the more information you will get back 
• the more you link to other sites, the more sites will link to you (even if they are not the same sites)
• the more questions you answer on Twitter, the more others will answer yours
• the more specific, even lengthy, your keyword phrase can be, the more qualified will be those who find your content
• the more you can make your navigation like your online competitors, the more easily people will find what they want on your own site
• the more quickly your subscribers increase, the more quickly they will decline
• the more you block the wrong people from following you on Twitter, the faster your followers will grow
• the more rude a comment is on your blog, the more you should presume that the commentator did not mean it

Can you think of  other web behaviour that is counterintuitive?

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Photo credit: Payton Chung