Results tagged “blogging” from David Kamerer's Spoonful
Yes, I'm writing this article on Posterous using my traditional blogging tool, Movable Type. The irony is not lost on me. And no complaints about MT - it's easy to use, stable, and very well behaved.But Posterous is innovative in some important ways. If you have held off on blogging because it just seemed like too much work, or seemed too limiting, you may want to jump in with Posterous.
Here are some of the cool things you can do with Posterous:
You can blog via email. Just attach a photo, write an email and send it to Posterous. It magically appears on your blog. The subject line is your blog post title. The body content is the entry. The photo is sized automatically. Full links are clickable.
You can blog on your mobile device. Let's say you're at an event with your iPhone. You take a picture, write a cutline, and email it to Posterous. You're liveblogging, now, baby. Grab an iPod Touch and blog your way across Europe. As Ram Dass might say, "Blog Here Now."
It's rich media friendly. Email an MP3 to Posterous and the tool knows to wrap the file in an MP3 player. Record a voice memo on your iPhone and send it. Email a YouTube link and it embeds automatically.
Posterous lets you scrape the web. Drag the Posterous toolbar to your browser. Then, when you find content online that you want to blog, click and it opens a window. Choose from available images on the page, write a title, write your comments, and click - you've blogged it, and you're back to your web trawl.
Posterous ignites your networks. Your post is auto-magically distributed to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, or any other popular network you choose.
You can still blog the old-fashioned way from a control panel - useful if you want to clean up a mobile post, for example. Some other features: It's easy to point your Posterous blog to your web domain, if you wish. You can install Google Analytics with one line of code. And Posterous has a Tumblr-like network feature that keeps you in touch with other Posterous bloggers.
I do have some concerns: Posterous accelerates our "Remix" culture, and probably runs over some copyrights by making it ever-easier to repurpose protected content. From a design standpoint, Posterous is clean and effective, but there's just one theme. I have to believe the service will soon allow its customers to reskin their sites.
I first learned of Posterous when Steve Rubel moved his work (formerly Micropersuasion) to the tool. He's changed his blogging style since the switch; shorter posts, more web scrapings, more frequent updates. More interactive. As he says, it's lifestreaming, a bridge between Twitter and a blog.
Here's a nice guide on using Posterous, courtesy of Old Media, New Tricks.
From SteveRubel.com: Getting the Mosterous from Posterous
• Web browser FireFox is gaining ground with power users due to its powerful extensions. Here are 15 tools to streamline the workflow of blogging, from CNet.
• Transport your Flickr images and slideshows to your blog or website with simple embed code generated by PictoBrowser.
• Want to get into blogging and not sure where to start? Thinking about trying a new blog tool? Check out Alina Yeisley's My Yellow Umbrella blog, which has a roundup of the major content management systems and some advice on hosting.
Our culture is generating more messages than ever, as we email, blog, Tweet and text our way through each day. Everyone can communicate using multiple channels, and that's a good thing.
But there's a cost: all of these pipes are filling up with junk. Junk people writing junk messages, junking up the channels of communication. Junk, junk, junk. So good luck finding an original thought:
"What's another word for Thesaurus," by the way, is attributed to comedian Steven Wright. The Tweeters above seem unconcerned about stealing his words. All they care about is to look smart, to be in the game. This, of course, is why so many people hate Twitter, which The Ad Contrarian says is how the narcissistic keep in touch with the feckless.
Good manners - and that includes academic and journalistic training - suggest that when we use other peoples' words, we attribute them. Our copyright laws reinforce this. But as a culture, we are increasingly ignoring these norms.
So fight that urge to retweet someone else's wisdom without attributing it. Think of that other person for a minute. Think about the rules of discourse that you learned in school. Think about copyright, so important to the production of knowledge that it's part of our Constitution.
Are you really adding to the conversation? If in doubt, maybe you should stay out. Try thinking more and speaking less. More signal, less noise. So when you do speak, people might actually listen.
- Guy Kawasaki, from his blog, How to use Twitter as a twool
- Mossberg Solution, written by Katherine Boehret in Wall Street Journal, Birds of a feather Twitter together, good introduction to Twitter.
- Kathleen Parker, Rise of the Twitterati, from the Washington Post.
Follow me @DavidKamerer
Nicholas D. Kristof enjoys a prominent perch in American life; he's a columnist for the New York Times, where he can reach millions of people every week. But he's also on Facebook, where he has almost 20,000 fans. Why Facebook? The principle is simple: for maximum influence, go where the eyeballs are. According to Alexa.com, Facebook is the #5 most visited website in the U.S.; NYTimes.com is #21.
That's the biggest limitation for a lot of bloggers. You can manage the technical hurdles and you can create the content. But in the end, there may not be a lot of eyeballs at David Kamerer's Spoonful. Or at my public relations blog, PRNeededHere.com. I'm building traffic, but it's not like perezhilton.com over here. Perez is on a superhighway; I'm a two-lane blacktop.
But I'm learning to go where the eyeballs are. In the past week I've cloned my blogs twice. LinkedIn's new applications create new opportunities to host content on your LinkedIn page. I installed Six Apart's Blog Link, and my blog instantly flowed on to my LinkedIn page. Blog Link also found my contacts' blogs, which are also viewable from my page. Simple and brilliant.
I also participate in a public relations social media site, PR Open Mic. I cross-posted some blog entries there, and instantly got a lot of comments. The process is pretty simple; from my blog dashboard, copy the blog entry HTML, and then paste it into a window. Preview it, touch up the code, and publish.
Every time I clone my blogs, I reach a new audience. It's a few more breadcrumbs to make it easier for interested readers to find my work. I'm glad to have you as a reader, whether here or there.
One of the nice things about Twitter is that other developers have taken the API and built useful extensions that leverage Twitter's power. You can take control of your Tweetosphere with these handy tools, posted by Brian Solis at PR 2.0, one of my favorite public relations blogs.
The tool I'm most excited about is GroupTweet. You can use GroupTweet to create a workgroup and then share private tweets amongst the team members. The tweets remain outside of your public Tweetstream. Handy for workgroups of any size, or perhaps as a discussion forum for an online class (or physical class, for that matter).
Here's another batch of Twitter tools you'll want to explore. Also, be sure to spend some time with Twitter Search if you're at all interested in reputation management.
iPhone user? Consider Twitterific, a free product available from the Icon Factory.
Follow me on Twitter @DavidKamerer
Last week, my colleague Bobby Rozzell observed that blog design might matter for attracting new readers or occasional readers, but not so much for regular, ongoing readers.
He's right. Most readers first see your blog through an RSS reader. If they do click through, they're likely to see a familiar template from a popular blogging platform like WordPress, Blogspot or Movable Type. Templates are the great democratizers of online design. They make enough design available to all. If you're not a designer, that's a good thing.
And the other reason blog design isn't that important: it's the content, stupid. But you already knew that.
What do you think? Does blog design matter to you?
Here's a useful report on blogging as it exists in 2008, courtesy of Technorati. And while you're at it, would you please "Favorite" my blog?
I've done some search marketing, so the concept of writing for computers instead of humans isn't alien to me. But I initially failed to fully realize how much public relations writing is also writing for computers.
Traditionally, the press release is written and distributed to - well, the press. But when the press release is distributed online, it goes straight to web sites, blogs, and - you guessed it - search engines. It's classic disintermediation. Suddenly, it's not as crucial that the New York Times picks up your story. You can get to your target audience through multiple channels. Don't get me wrong - major media play is important. But not like it used to be.
PR-Squared, the blog from Shift Communications, pioneered and popularized the social media press release, which includes lots of hooks for an interested reporter or blogger to follow. It's like an onion. Some readers just want to peel back one layer. Others may want to peel back several. By using the tools in the social media press release, the reader can get as much or as little information as he or she needs, in the formats that are most meaningful. And all the while, you control the frame.
Here are some bonus articles from PR-Squared to help you transition to PR Practitioner 2.0.
Welcome to my blog! Here's some contextual information about me and my work.I earned the Ph.D. in Telecommunications from Indiana University, and am accredited in public relations (APR) by the Universal Accreditation Board. I have worked in newspapers, television, radio, marketing and public relations, and have served on the faculties of Trinity University, Wichita State University, Kansas State University and Washburn University.
I serve as assistant professor in the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago, where I teach courses in social media, public relations and interactive communication. I have about ten years of professional experience in marketing, public relations and corporate communication, including six years as director of communications for Envision, a not-for-profit agency in Wichita, Kansas. Envision provides choices and resources for people who are blind or low vision, through employment, public education and low vision rehabilitation. I also directed the marketing for the Envision Conference, a national training conference for people who work in the low vision rehabilitation field.
I provide consulting services on communication, research and social media issues, and am available for speaking engagements and short courses.
I write this blog to share my discoveries at the place where public relations, marketing, technology and social media intersect. I also use it to learn about blogging and the Movable Type publishing platform.
I also blog on public relations practice at PRNeededHere.com.
My interests include playing guitar (I'm rhythm guitarist in Nouveau Quintette, a gypsy jazz band in the tradition of Django Reinhardt), jazz, songwriting, cooking, photography and bicycling.
My email address is david (at) davidkamerer.com.
The other day the Wichita State student public relations society hosted a networking event at the Greteman Group. I spent most of my time there meeting students and critiquing resumes. I met some impressive young adults and they brought with them very good printed resumes. However, only one student had purchased and set up a web domain to show off their work.The advantages of an online presence are pretty compelling: there's 24/7 access to your portfolio, evidence that you have some online competence, and the ability to provide as much - or as little - information as a potential employer might want.
I know there are a lot of click-and-build options for personal websites, and a blogging platform might also work well. But here's something that's worth a look: Visual CV. It's a new (still in beta) site for creating interactive resumes. You can embed video or other pieces of your work, and generally you have lots of control over presentation. While you can make it as interactive as you like, there's a button on the bottom that generates a PDF. Nice! Check out Guy Kawasaki's Visual CV. I have not signed up for this service (it's free) but it's definitely worth a look.
I'm interested in blogging and social media primarily as tools for my work, which is in public relations. These tools are
potentially great ways to develop targeted relationships to help achieve strategic goals. As a public relations professional, I
belong to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). This organization works to separate what I call "ethical PR" from
all the two-bit hustlers out there who will do anything to get their messages to their destinations. I am also accredited in public relations (APR), which distinguishes public relations practitioners much as the CPA distinguishes some accountants. It's a good start, but will only help when there's a critical mass of professionals to create a norm of good practice in the field.
PRSA has a code of ethics which all bloggers should at least consider. In fact, most of the sins of the blogging world would go away if bloggers would follow this code.
Here's what happens when people who are not trained in PR teach students to use social media tools. In short, this class project used deception and failed to disclose its relationship with its client, Coach, maker of designer purses and other leather goods. These people - the teachers AND the students - should have known better.
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Southwest Region held an excellent meeting in Little Rock last month. One of the speakers was alpha blogger Chris Brogan, who here offers links for beginning bloggers. Like me.
Here's a great introduction to blogging in an article in the New York Times. In the spirit of the article, I'll just post it already!
