Category Archives: Communication

The Psychology Behind Corporate Blogging

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Something I’ve noticed changing over the last two years is how companies perceive blogs. Early on in blogging, despite the success of many great blog networks at the time, companies seemed to think that blogs were really only a tool for average people to write about their lives, and the various minutia that occurred in them.

Blogs at this time were creating a whole community of both Internet celebrities and Internet brands that were parlayed into huge amounts of cash through advertising systems, and sales. Corporations started, very slowly realizing how important blogs could be to their businesses, but we are still on the cusp of this realization going global.

The reason corporations look down on blogs is for a variety of reasons stemming from the massive numbers of personal blogs, to the low barrier of entry.

Personal Blogs

For every successful blog making money, or helping get out a strong branding message, there are probably one thousand blogs dedicated to people around the world talking about their lives. From the perspective of the average company doing research on blogs, they’ll likely come across many blogs talking about their pets, family, friends, and children. This doesn’t convey to them the level of professionalism available in blogging, and thus gives them a reason to think of blogs with a negative connotation.

Spam

We have all seen them, spam blogs are the bane of my existence. They steal content, and they push out crud through the Internet. Companies doing research on any topic will come across at least one spam blog in their searches, and this type of republishing outside of the normal control of the original publisher might scare companies who want to remain in control of their message. Imagine posting an article on your blog and a spam blog picks it up before you realize you’ve made a mistake. You correct your mistake, but the spam blog continues to have the “old” article which makes your company look bad. Small, and simple for sure, but this has to be a concern for businesses going forward.

Power of the Message Versus Money Invested

How powerful is the message going to be compared to the time and effort put into the blog? Companies are used to press releases and the results that can be achieved from them, but what can they expect from their blog? How will it grow, change and evolve over time? Will anyone even care? Companies are always looking at return on investment, and there hasn’t been many case studies released to companies regarding the return on investment of a good corporate blog.

Low Barrier to Entry

If it is too easy, it probably doesn’t have value. I have heard both people and companies claiming that due to the low barrier of entry in blogging, there is little to no value in blogging. It takes almost no time to set up a blog, make it look nice, and start feeding it content. But what companies aren’t seeing is how long it took to get to this point with regard to the barrier for entry. There were companies creating blog software in hopes of lowering the barrier for entry for over a decade. The barrier started high, but these companies weren’t interested in the idea behind it back in those days.

Knowledge and Fear

Most companies just don’t understand enough about the blogosphere, and what it means to be a company participating in it. Because of their lack of knowledge, they are afraid of jumping in and making mistakes, not completely understanding that transparency is one of the key benefits of blogging that will help companies connect to potential customers on a new level of relationship.

Conclusion

Companies can get into blogging, and do amazing things with their blog, but they have to be brave enough to take the first steps, find people that can help them reach their goals in an efficient and inexpensive manner, and be ready to be transparent. Blogging can be an amazing line of communication and community building for any company.

This is one topic where I wish I had taken a psychology degree so that I could articulate better the factors that really go into each point, as I believe someone could make a whole career around the psychology of companies involvement or lack of involvement in the blogosphere.

Originally posted on October 15, 2010 @ 1:28 pm

PDF to ePub Converter

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An EPUB is an electronic publication device. It allows people to purchase any desired readings they like online and they can read it on this gadget. The great thing about this device is that you can make the most out of the readingā€™s text. In other words if you have a hard time reading books because of their small font, all you have to do with the EPUB is zoom in or turn the text into re-flowable style(word wrap).

Now you have the chance to not only read online books but you can access any PDF file you download. The PDF to EPUB converter saves you a lot of time and effort by converting PDF files available to be formatted into your own electronic books reader. The great thing about this program is that the PDF still retains its original features, so you donā€™t have to worry about using a different program to read the file. In addition, the interface of the program is very intuitive. The design is so simple you can start converting PDF to EPUB right away.

The program features are very unique and allows you to save up on your EPUBā€™s memory space. Letā€™s say you only need to read the first couple of pages of the PDF file, you can set the number of pages that need to be converted into the EPUB just by selecting the specified pages. Also, if you are a multilingual reader, no need to worry about translating errors because the PDF to EPUB converter suits different languages, such as English, French, German, even Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Originally posted on August 26, 2010 @ 9:31 pm

WordCamp Toronto’s Hash Tag Hilarity

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Great story about WordCamp Toronto 2008. My cousin and I were sitting in our hotel room, and we couldn’t find any mention of what the WordCamp Toronto hash tag for the event was going to be, and so my cousin, Mark Wood, decided that it should be something like #wcto08. He put out a message on Twitter at 08:13 AM on October 4th, saying “WordCamp Toronto in an hour and a half. Hope to meet some cool people while I am there. #WCTO08”. I then, only a minute later, put out a quick Twitter saying, “WordCamp Toronto hash tag #WCTO08 šŸ˜› Deal with it. :)”.

After our messages, people started using the same tag for their Twitters, and other things, until we got to the event, and the organizers let us know that the hash tag should be #wct08. Despite this set back, I continued to push out as many tweets as possible under the one my cousin had created, and when Joseph Thornley took the stage, it only got more complicated as he announced that the hash tag for the event should be #wpto08. We then had three event tags on Twitter, for a single event. It was safe to say that many people were confused, and slightly annoyed.

Questions started circulating if people should just add two or all three tags to their Twitters so that they are easy to find. No one wanted their tweets to be ignored for the event, especially as it was a great bulletin board of communication.

Over time, thanks to my constant messaging on Twitter, and my work at converting others, the #wcto08 hash tag showed up on the trending list, as an event tag that was being used fairly often. The other tags not getting a mention at all, and so over the course of Saturday, messages went out with the #wcto08 tag at a rate of ten to every one message that included the “official” #wct08 tag.

The second day began with the same confusion, as it was stated at the start of the day that we should be using the #wct08 hash tag on Twitter, and ideally on all sites we post WordCamp Toronto content on. It then became apparent that, while we still had many supporters, the #wct08 hash tag might win the day. It quickly appeared on Twitter’s Trending list, and over the course of the day the two fought out for their spot.

Interestingly enough though, my cousin, a few others, and myself continued to use the tag that Mark had come up with, and we were the heavier Twitter users, so by the end of the second, and final day, I think we had created enough messages that the #wcto08 tag was pushed out at around a rate of three or four messages to every one that was tagged as #wct08.

I know this all seems silly, but the issue could have been fixed quite easily. Since the #wcto08 tag was trending higher, and faster, the organizers, instead of sticking to their guns, could have adapted and promoted the more popular tag, so that people didn’t feel the need to tag their messages with both hash tags for the event.

Next time though, I think the tag for the event will be chosen much earlier to avoid such confusion, but for histories sake, I want to say again that my cousin, Mark Wood, selected the Twitter hash tag that became more popular than the official one, at WordCamp Toronto 2008.

Originally posted on October 6, 2008 @ 5:04 pm

Fear of Public Speaking

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I will be speaking on two panels at Blog World Expo in a few days, and I am absolutely wrought with fear. I did plays in front of hundreds as a child, was always the main speaker for group presentations in class, sung in grade school at a provincial competition and earned silver, organized a session at Moosecamp in Vancouver, and have done many videos and podcasts both live and recorded, so you wouldn’t think that speaking in front of a group of my peers about the things I have learned over the last three years would scare me, but it does.

I guess the biggest thing for me versus the things I have done over the last three years that are public is that I couldn’t immediately see the reactions of those taking in what I had to say, and so if they didn’t like it, I didn’t find out until afterwards, thus allowing me to remain confident.

Thankfully, I am on a panel, and so I will have others that I can rely on for the hard questions, but I feel that I don’t have anything amazing to bring to the table. I don’t make ridiculous amounts of money while talking about the food I ate for dinner, I haven’t published a book, nor have I built up the attention of a million subscribers.

As I write this, I am sure most of you are thinking that I will do fine, and I am pretty sure I will too, as the worst thing that can happen is someone decides to point at me and go “boo”, but I wanted to remind all of you reading, thinking that you can’t do what I do because I have something “special” that I am not special, but instead passionate, and fortunate.

If you want to make working online, in whatever capacity, your full time career, there are so many ways to get there. If you want to build your personal brand up to the level where you are asked to speak at events, there are so many opportunities to do that, so don’t be shy, instead, be passionate as passion is infectious and no fear of anything should stop you form sharing what you most enjoy.

Originally posted on September 14, 2008 @ 7:15 am

Godaddy Called Me

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Recently, I was called by Godaddy. They wanted to see how I was doing, if I had any questions or concerns, and ask what I was using my domains for.

The Happy Feeling

My initial reaction was a positive one. Being contacted by a big company to see how I am doing is nice. Asking me what I am up to and if there was anything I needed was also very nice.

Of course the conversation didn’t end there.

The Upsell

After asking how I was doing, the gentleman from Godaddy let me know about all sorts of value added services that I could take advantage of for one nominal fee or another.

Naturally, I wasn’t very interested at this point, and it sort of tainted the phone call, changing it from a friendly connection into a sales call.

The Conclusion

I would have loved to have been given some free product or an ultra discount.

I didn’t find the sales call to be very high pressure which was very nice for someone like me, as I really hate the strong sales tactics that some businesses do.

Overall, I was left with a positive feeling. Godaddy didn’t have to reach out and contact me. I do business with at least four other domain registrars and none of them have contacted me for any purpose.

Also, being able to give feedback on a service to a human is something that is becoming an increasing rarity in our world today, and so I valued the opportunity.

Customer support is more and more important as we see and truly interact with less and less people every day and that is why, despite the sales angle of the second half of the conversation, I am still awarding a +1 to Godaddy today.

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Originally posted on August 26, 2008 @ 1:14 pm