A strategy for These Digital Times

First some apologies.

An apology to that colleague who recently said he had signed up to my blog. I did not have the heart to say that it had ground to a halt.

Another apology to those reading Jeremy Porter‘s list of “91 Journalism Blogs and Websites You Will Love” who have clicked through to These Digital Times, as recommended, only to find the blog so out of date.

And an apology to me for being tough on myself, first, for the months of work I put into this blog and, second, for the months of angst I gave myself when I didn’t.

Let me give you some background to see if it can help you. And if not you, help me to restart my efforts.

Early Days

The original masthead for These Digital Times - from launch July 2008 to April 2009

It was a casual conversation with another colleague at his leaving party that gave this blog a voice. He was going to have some time on his hands. I suggested he use the opportunity to get up to speed with social media. My email to him, listing some ideas, became “Six steps to get started in social media”. And a blog that rambled on about anything and everything for the seven months up to that point suddenly acquired a voice. These Digital Times, and the experience I gained through it, was a way to help my colleagues (pictured either side of me in the masthead) to acquire the knowledge and perhaps the skills necessary for new media. And the more I helped my colleagues in traditional media to understand new media, so These Digital Times became useful to all those grappling with similar issues.

As soon as I had established these two goals (OK, I know you are supposed to do that BEFORE you start a blog), I then worked out very quickly my strategies to deliver that goal – a highly optimised headline, an often abstract illustration from Flickr’s Creative Commons and a list. I then backed it up with my recently activated social media activity on Twitter and Linkedin. The more I learned in public, revealing all faults and blemishes, the more the traffic came. The more counterintuitive I could be, the more people came back regularly.

I reached a peak of what WordPress calls over 700 “views” in one day in February with such classics as “Six types of Tweets if you Tweet every day” (1970 views since posting in January),  “A list of 10 social media habits I am stopping immediately” (808 views in February 2009 with 343 of them in one day alone) or “A list of eight answers to the most commonly used excuses for not using the web” (18 views yesterday SIX months after it first appeared). Posts bookmarked on StumbleUpon had the longest shelf life  -  75% of my traffic or thereabouts, comes from StumbleUpon these days. Indeed the power of the bookmarker is so long-lasting that it makes Tweeting out a link to a blog post seem a short-term gain.

For the truth is that a traditional journalist like me still finds it astonishing that the web has no concept of breaking news or shelf-life. If people are interested in a subject, and they appear to do so on my blog, then they will find this stuff whenever they wish –  days, weeks or months after its appearance. (Only last week, someone kindly Tweeted out a link to one of my blog posts nine months after I had posted it and only this morning someone else Tweeted out a link to a 14 month old blog post.) And if the content helps people to acquire new skills, then there will always be those who know less than you, even if you once knew less than them. I call this phenomena the Knowledge-Time Continuum.

What came next?

The next masthead - from April 2009 to December 2009

So what happened next? Well first was my ability to extend my network, discovering and, in the process, learning from social media and new media experts. The overlay of practical experience  (actually writing the blog, commenting on others, putting in links) with the knowledge and wisdom generated by so many people made me a fast learner. It changed not only how I thought, literally rewiring my brain, but also what I looked like. The transformation was such it brought about the first change in masthead for this blog – see “On being John Welsh – why you need to change your social media identity to remain authentic”. Indeed I now look at the masthead for These Digital Times from that period (above)  and I see something that I had never seen in myself before. The photo (taken by Hollis Thomases in San Francisco) and the art work (by Claudia Moeller) suggests someone pretty much at ease in the world of social media.

From a personal perspective, the masthead was spot on – I had acquired skills and moved on from those early days in social media. But from a professional perspective, the masthead had already become out of date. My job is much wider than just social media. Once I had acquired some of the skills of social media, it was time to assimilate those learnings, assessing social media merely as one of several types of strategies available to achieve digital goals. Social media was certainly not a goal in itself. My learning in public came to an end and silence ensued.

And now?

The new masthead for These Digital Times

If lists about social media activity can be of use to so many people, it also hammers home the interest in the subject by so many companies concerned to catch up. How much more useful I might be if I can find a way to discuss other digital activities within a company like United Business Media. I felt relaxed to learn about social media in public without divulging anything sensitive about the business. Can I feel as comfortable discussing data, SEO and monitoring?

Let’s see.

The Knowledge-time Continuum

When I kicked off this blog almost a year ago, I found it really easy to think of topics about which to write. I was new to social media and what I discovered, I wrote about, as I learnt, I explained how to. There was a sort of innocence in the approach and subject matter as if it was the first time anyone had noticed this stuff. That’s probably why it was so popular. Those even newer to the subject than me did not feel intimidated!

Don’t get me wrong. I went in to blogging the right way round, listening to the conversation before tapping out my posts. If that were not enough, my links alone showed that I was aware of what had been written before. But you could not keep me down. The sheer thrill of those early months made me so excited I just had to add my pennyworth to the blogosphere. The strange thing is that, however unoriginal my subject matter might have been, people found my blog and read it in increasing numbers.  

One year on

But that period has come to an end. Today I am in the midst of “blogger’s block”, a period when the ideas for new posts has deserted me. It is more unsettling than I imagined though very much more rationale. For the simple fact is that having learnt so much, I have stopped coming across facets of social media that are new to me. My source of posts, therefore, has dried up. New subject material is going to have to come from a much more original source within me. Or will it?

I spent over 20 years in traditional print journalism and a year in the blogosphere. You’ve heard it said many times that old media had a monopoly on content – if you did not like the local paper you read or B2B magazine, you did not really have much choice to go elsewhere. But what old media also had was a monopoly on the timeliness and longevity of that content – a story did not exist until the editor published it and the same story remained active only as long as the editor chose to do so. 

The blogosphere has changed all that.

Content no longer belongs to one medium. And the timeliness and longevity of content has now stretched to be as long as anyone person is interested in it. And people are interested in subjects at very different times from each other depending on their experience and exposure. So if you had only stumbled upon the blogosphere within the last year, you would find many of the posts in this blog essential reading. But if you had been blogging for anything more, you would probably find many of the posts in this blog somewhat familiar. ”A list of Google Reader Shared Items,” you might say. “Are people only just discovering them?”Or ”Six types of Tweets if you Twitter everyday. Mmmm, does Twitter really need such analysis?”

The Law of the Blogativity

Just like Space-time Continuum, the Law of Physics that describes time being relative to an object’s speed, so Knowledge-time Continuum is the Law of the Blogosphere which describes this phenomenon. In essence, it states that:

however many people are in front of you in knowledge or understanding of social media, there will be some, if not more, people behind you relative to your knowledge.  

And:

since the number of people within social media is only every going to grow, there will always be more people needing to read what you write.  

So for some, what you write will always be tiresomely unoriginal. But for others, those who are only starting to make a step into the future, you will always be dashingly and seductively interesting.

Indeed Knowledge-time Continuum is not just a law relating to blogs but one also for social media. Take this example. You start following really useful people on Twitter who introduce you to new ideas and teach you what to do. The faster you learn, the more followers you attract who are a week, a month a year behind you. And if the people you once followed on Twitter are not learning as fast as you and continue to Tweet out links to the ABC, then you find yourself looking for fresh Twitterers. 

How do I prove all this? Follow the analytics on your blog. My most popular posts (Five people to follow on Twitter in 2009, Six types of Tweets if you Twitter everyday and A list of 10 social media habits that I am stopping immediately) become not just more visited but visited by more people more frequently as time goes by. It is not that the posts get any better or my arguments any more intelligent (far from it, I wince a little on rereading them!). But rather the longer life they have, the more Google shoves them up the search engines and more people find them. Indeed the more people discover just how much they don’t know about social media (and remember a lot more people than that don’t even know what they don’t know), the more people will end up on my blog.

Which type are you?

Indeed I would go so far as to posit three types of people within the blogosphere.

• The latecomers (0-12 months). They’ve just discovered how much they don’t know. 
• The late early adopters (1-3 yrs). They’re already hardened by a few knocks but they’ve stayed the game.
• The early adopters (4-10 yrs). Way out front with great analysis of what’s happening to us all.

All three overlap- the linked in, connected blogosphere could do nothing else – but I would go further. All three are like cogs, one pushing the other on, and sometimes pulling it back. But none operating without the other.

Of course none of this helps my blogger’s block! But I have come up with a list of ideas for my next posts. They are not going to be about the actual kit of social media, as I have done in the past, but rather how you can measure and assess its success.

Photo credit: As you said