Forrester’s rationale for this, according to VP Josh Bernoff, is that “Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product.”

Which IMHO is the equivalent of saying “If you work for us, we reserve the right to own your brain and your social/professional network and reputation.”

Here’s why that’s a bad idea all the way around — not just for research, consulting, and IP companies, but for news organizations and journalists, too…

Recently, PR maven Shel Holz rightly called bullshit on Forrester’s IP argument:

The notion seems to suggest that analysts who write about their work on their own blogs are somehow sapping Forrester of its IP. Maybe I’m just dense, but I don’t see how, particularly if those blogs link back to Forrester, bringing the company to the attention of new prospects.

Other companies with bloggers don’t compare because, Bernoff argues, their products aren’t about IP. I would argue that Microsoft and IBM are entirely about IP. Both companies encourage their employees to blog wherever they like. The companies link to those blogs on a page that links to all of the company’s bloggers. (Here are links to Microsoft’s and IBM’s employee blog directories.)

…I’m not inside the heads of Forrester’s leaders, so I can’t say how much of a factor the fear of losing analysts who build strong personal brands played in the decision. I’d be disappointed if it was a major consideration, since it seems petty and mean-spirited.

…If a cost-benefit analysis had been done, I can’t believe it would have led Forrester to adopt this policy. So why, then? It’s either a provincial and wrong-minded understanding of IP or a knee-jerk reaction to the Altimeter Group situation. Either way, it’s a mistake.

Here’s the comment I left on Shel’s post:

This reminds me of struggles that many journalists currently face with the news organizations that employ them (albeit in fast-shrinking numbers). Many news orgs prohibit or limiting not only employees having their own blogs, but also whether and how they use social media on their own time and accounts.

In the journalism world they claim this is to “preserve objectivity” (as if objectivity ever existed, or as if transparency doesn’t promote credibility more effectively). But it’s pretty obvious when you talk to news managers that they often view their own employees as competition when it comes to online media. And they prefer to keep their employees in a one-down position when it comes to personal branding.

Which is not only sad and shortsighted, but dreadfully counterproductive. Especially since companies that adopt this unfortunate mindset certainly aren’t offering financial compensation (say, a couple of years’ salary, or a guarantee of employment for the next 3 years) in exchange for employees giving up crucial avenues for making their own professional opportunities.

It’s bad business all the way around — but it’s especially unfair to the employees.

…Back in 2008 I explained why building a personal online brand and presence that’s under your control (not your employer’s) is the key to having almost any kind of professional career these days — but especially careers that involve media or communications in any significant way. See: Media Career Insurance: Your Blog

Here’s a quick rundown of my own changes, and contributing reasons for them. I’d be curious to hear about other people’s personal media evolutions, too. Please share your own experiences in the comments below…

1. More conversation and annotation, less exposition.

I’m an avid user of two social media channels: Twitter and Delicious. Through these, I’ve gotten used to quickly stating what really needs to be shared or communicated. Most of the points I want or need to make don’t require exposition. Generally just a brief statement, or a link with context, will suffice. This is why the vast majority of my posts to this blog have been syndicated from links I’m saving and annotating in Delicious.

Personally, I think this is a gain, not a loss. For most things, I prefer more efficient communication. It allows me to cover more ground — and to learn more.

What’s lost? Not eloquence, since I was never very eloquent. However, continuity and context can suffer. Often it can be difficult for others (or for me) to follow my trail of breadcrumbs, to connect all the dots in order to see a larger picture. Yes, I still want a “me collector“.

2. More text, less voice.

I’ve never been much for talking on the telephone. I even squirm at face-to-face conversations that go on for more than about 20-30 minutes at a stretch.

Instant messaging suits me much better. It’s a key way that I keep in touch with the people who matter most in my life. Every day I text-chat with my current and former intimate partners, close friends, colleagues, and more casual friends. I’ve been able to connect with these people more substantially and meaningfully through instant messaging than by relying primarily on phone or voice.

I like the pace of IM conversations. They’re either very fast and functional (“Got a quick question for ya…”) or they ebb and flow over an hour or more. Depending on the conversation or person involved, I don’t like to feel the constant pressure to respond immediately that exists in phone or face-to-face conversations. In IM chats, pauses generally aren’t awkward, so conversation feels less forced. Even better, my attention is free to wander, as it is prone to do, without me seeming rude or uncaring.

What’s lost? I still see local friends face-to-face quite often, so I don’t feel I’m lacking conversation there. But I do make less effort than I probably should to reach out by phone to people who are important to me but who don’t use IM. So there is some relationship impact there. I do tend to prioritize people who are available via my preferred communication channels.

3. News: Listening up, reading down

It’s been many years since I read much news in print. But in the last couple of years I’ve found myself relying almost entirely on audio news podcasts for my daily fix of what’s happening. I prefer to listen to news while doing things: making breakfast, cleaning up, working out, running errands, strolling the neighborhood, etc. I don’t just sit there and listen to news, and I almost never watch video news podcasts. When I have to sit there for news, whether for reading or watching, I get antsy.

It’s not that I don’t read online news at all. Every day, I read a lot of online news — but rarely any more than headlines and the first few paragraphs of most online news stories. I’m one of those people who’s more likely to glance at the headlines and summaries on Google News (especially on my phone) a few times a day, and to maybe click through to a couple of stories.

There are exceptions: When an article is highly recommended by a friend or colleague, or when it’s extremely relevant to my specific circumstances or interests, I’m likely to read it through to the end. Quite often, for online news I really want to read, I’ll use Instapaper to transfer the content of that web page to my Kindle. I’m not crazy about reading long-format content in my web browser. I prefer an e-book reader. Both the Kindle device and the Kindle iPhone app offer me a great e-reader experience.

What’s especially interesting to me is that through audio news podcasts I feel a very strong loyalty to several mainstream and niche news brands (NPR, Slashdot Review, etc.). However, when reading online news via a web browser, I feel almost no brand loyalty. I have a strong preference for news aggregators over news sites. It’s very rare that I visit the home page of a news site.

What’s lost? For me, nothing. Do habits like mine hurt the news biz? I don’t think so — especially since it’s the only way I feel any loyalty for specific news brands these days.

4. Journaling: Sharp increase

2009 was an emotionally wrenching year for me. I sold my house, ended my marriage, transitioned to a very positive post-marriage relationship with my former spouse, moved from Boulder to Oakland, left my cats behind for now, downsized my possessions to fit into a single room, got knee surgery, dealt with knee surgery rehab, traveled a lot, had a very short and unhappy relationship with an unsuitable partner, began a much more rewarding and happy relationship with a very suitable partner, watched my cousin die from afar, and some other stuff…

Most of this I would never blog about. Some of it I wouldn’t tweet about, either. But I do write about it all, in my paper journal.

Yes, when it comes to working through difficult emotional stuff, journaling tends to work best for me. And this year I filled up three of them. That’s a lot for me. There have been times in my life when I didn’t journal much at all. For the past couple of years I’ve been journaling a lot, and it keeps me sane.

I like doing some writing that is only for me. And I like doing it by hand. I like the feel of a fine-point felt-tip pen on the creamy paper of a Moleskine journal. It feels deeply personal and intimate. I think better about how I feel when I journal. I understand myself and my life better. I forgive myself more, I allow myself more. I don’t worry about covering all bases or responding to critics. And right now, I need all of that.

5. Twitter as antidepressant

I’ve noticed that when I’m feeling low energy or in a down mood, spending a few minutes scanning Twitter tends to engage and energize me. I follow a lot of very interesting people and organizations on Twitter. Any time I dip my toes into that Twitter stream I always find something interesting, amusing, heartfelt, friendly, or useful.

…Yes, there’s some drivel and occasional nastiness. But I tend to unfollow people who get boring or mean there. So I’ve got a pretty high-quality Twitter stream.

I like that Twitter takes so little effort to read. (Similarly, I dislike Facebook because its interface is so chaotic.) I feel no pressure or desire to “catch up,” for me Twitter is all about right now. If I’m feeling lonely or bored or isolated, it’s an easy way to reach out to people I know. I respond often to other’s tweets, both publicly and by private direct message.

In a year of so much personal upheaval, having an instantly available ambient sense of my friends around me, and what they’re into, has helped keep me functional, balanced, and happier than I would have been otherwise.

The downside? Yes, sometimes Twitter can be too distracting. When I was having some especially hard times in my life earlier this year, I definitely used Twitter to procrastinate and distract myself. But that seems, for me, to be more a function of how I’m doing, rather than anything inherent to Twitter.

…Anyway, those are the changes I’ve notices in my own reading/writing patterns. What about you? Please comment below.

…Because the way the internet works today, a static brochure site is like a car up on blocks: You can sit in it, you can show it to people — but it ain’t going far.

After discussing some issues in the comments to that post with my friend maiki interi (a talented and thoughtful Web developer), I’ve decided to correct an important piece of advice.

Originally I advised: “You can create a blog using a free service like Wordpress.com and integrate that into any site.” Maiki correctly observed:

“Seems to me to be [that may be] massaging the truth, on a technical level. Of course it depends on what you mean by integration.”

I was thinking over what it would really take to integrate a blog into a static site. It can be done, but yeah, it’s a lot of hoops to jump through. Plus, there are many ways this integration could be done badly. Also, it’s not reasonable to expect a non-technical business person to know what to request from a web developer on this front.

So here’s what I’m going to recommend instead: Integrate your brochure site into a blog, not the other way around.

This does NOT means starting over from scratch. You can still use most or all of what your web designer originally built for you. However, you’ll be strapping it to an engine that will play nice with the internet and actually get your business moving.

This also does not mean your site has to look like a conventional blog. It can still mainly look like a brochure, if that’s what you want.

So here’s what the nontechnical people can do to reconfigure their brochure sites…

1. Set up an account on a blog hosting service

If you’re willing to live with some limitations on design and layout, you can use a free blogging service. I recommend Wordpress.com. If you need more control over design than those services offer, try Typepad (which isn’t free, but it’s pretty inexpensive: $15/month for a pro-level account, which I recommend if you have custom design needs). Squarespace is another popular blogging service that can handle this job. (Pro level: $14/month)

Whichever blogging service (also called “blogging platform”) you choose, make sure it allows you to create a blog that includes pages, not just posts.

A blog page is like a page on a brochure-style site: It’s a good way to publish information that doesn’t change much, like your “Services” page. Blog posts are items that will be listed in reverse chronological order in the blog part of your site.

I don’t recommend using Blogger (another popular free blogging service) because it doesn’t allow you to create pages, only posts.

Make sure you set up the account yourself. It’s easy. But you want to own your account, make sure your e-mail is associated with it, and that you’re getting billed for it (if you choose a not-free service).

2. Ask a web designer to recreate your brochure site as blog pages.

This means taking all the design elements and assets (logos, colors, etc.), code (HTML), and content (text, photos, etc.) that comprise each page of your existing site and copying it into a corresponding page on your new blog-based site. You’ll end up with a set of pages that exactly replicates your original site.

Ask the web designer to make the new page addresses (URLs) and page titles (the Web designer will know what this is) EXACTLY match those from the pages on your original site.

Also, don’t change any content on your pages — yet. The shift to your new site will go much more smoothly if all you’re trying to do at this point is recreate your site exactly in its current form.

If you’re not technical, you must give your web designer access to your blogging account to do this work. So make sure it’s someone you trust, and tell them not to change the login. They cannot get access to your credit card information (if you’re using a paid service), but a nefarious or clumsy designer could end up locking you out of your account.

3. Map your domain name to your new site.

Once your site has been copied onto on your blogging service, you need to tell the internet it’s there. This involves something technical called domain mapping, and you’ll probably need help from your web designer or another tech-savvy person for this.

A domain name is the main address of your site on the web. Typing a domain name into a web browser takes you to that site’s home page. (For instance, the domain name for this site is Contentious.com.)

If you’ve already bought and are using a domain name for your existing site, you’ll want to get that domain applied to your new site. This is very important for making your business easily findable through search engines, and for people who already know your site.

After your new site (which so far is just a carbon copy of your old site) is up and running, ask your web designer to map your domain to your new site. Here are domain mapping instructions for Wordpress.com. This is an extra service that costs about $10/year. Typepad offers domain mapping as part of its base fee.

Domain mapping takes a little time. After the technical work is done to map your domain, it’ll take a few days for servers around the internet to notice and start routing the traffic to the new site. So be patient.

Once your domain is mapped to your site, when you type your domain name into your web browser, your new site will pop up. As long as the new pages have URLs that exactly match the URLs from your original site, the search engines won’t get confused and existing inbound links won’t be broken.

4. Create your blog within your new site

In my experience, small business owners and independent professionals typically don’t want to spend a lot of time posting content online. If you don’t think you’ll post fresh content (articles, observations, photos, specials, etc.) frequently, then don’t put your blog on your site’s home page, because it’ll just make your site look stale.

Instead, tell your designer to designate one of your new site’s pages (recreated from your original site) as the home page. Then, create your blog as a section of your site and list it in your site’s main navigation bar. I recommend calling it “News and Views” to give you flexibility in what you can post there.

5. Learn how to post to your blog

Once your new site is set up, log in to your blogging service and post an item to your blog. Follow the blogging service’s instructions

Make your post short and relevant — just 2-3 paragraphs is perfect. If you’re not immediately comfortable writing in the blogging service’s posting form, then draft your post on your computer and copy it into the form. However, use a text editor (like TextEdit or Notepad), not a fully-featured word processor like Microsoft Word

I recommend picking a story from current news headlines that’s very relevant to your business or field of expertise, link to it, and write up a few short observations about it. The point is to quickly demonstrate your value and relevance. Do you disagree with the local paper about the potential impact of proposed parking regulations near your business? Is a new technology potentially important to your clients? Did Time Magazine overlook an important point about international shipping?

Practice creating links. If you’re referring to a specific news story, look it up online, copy its web address (URL), and link to it from your post. Both Wordpress.com and Typepad make this very easy.

Work your links into the flow of your writing, don’t just say “click here” or “see article.” For instance, a link in your post can look like this:

“Philly.com reported today that SRS Energy is building a new solar roofing tile plant in Montgomery County. This project is funded partly by state programs promoting a green economy in Pennsylvania. I think more local companies should be aware of and could apply for these programs…”

…From there you could add a little more information, maybe list a couple of business sectors that you serve that could benefit from this information. And then maybe link to the program’s web site, or provide a contact phone number or e-mail for the program. And that’s enough for a post!

The point is to emphasize, not expound. You don’t have to be comprehensive in order to be useful, timely, and interesting. Make your first few blog posts quick hits. Make it easy on yourself and useful for the people you hope to reach.

Now your new site is really ready for action.

From here you can follow the rest of my advice: steps 1, 3, and 4 from my earlier post.

Try posting to your blog at least a couple of times a month, if not weekly or more often. After you’re comfortable with posting, learn more about categories and tags — tools that will make it easier for people and search engines to understand what your site covers.

This strategy should work much, much better for your business than a stale, limited, hard-to-update brochure site. It’ll be easier to stay connected to your current and prospective clients and allies.

Of course, if you’re creating a web site for your business for the first time, it’s best to use a blogging service right from the start. It’s always easier to do things the right way the first time.

…Honestly, it kinda burns me up that some designers are still selling small business people on static brochure sites that don’t allow blogging, and which often they can’t update on their own. I see no point to brochure sites for a business. For an individual product? Maybe. But for a business? No way.

Have fun with your better business site!

If you’re a semi-retired professional who wants to build a consulting business, and you’re not an internet whiz, what kind of web site will really help clients find you? And how can you easily build and maintain a useful professional network?

My dad, Jack Gahran, is a semi-retired management consultant who knows many other semi-retired professionals. Today he asked me to look over the brand-new web site of a colleague of his, to offer some advice as to how it might be improved in ways that will build this person’s business.

The site is a pretty standard brochure site — a few static pages of basic information. It had a nice but simple design, and the content seemed to use keywords appropriately — both of which help search engines like Google index the site well. However, Google generally isn’t very interested in small brochure sites that are infrequently updated and don’t attract many inbound links.

I offered my dad’s colleague four basic tips for improving his site in ways that will make it much more visible in search engines, and thus more likely to attract inbound links from other sites (another thing Google rewards).

I get asked for this kind of advice a lot, so I figured I’d make a blog post out of it, so everyone can benefit.

Here’s what I told him…
1. Ask Google to start indexing your site

Eventually Google will find your site, index it, and start listing it in search results. But Google has a lot of sites to index, so it may take a long time for them to get around to indexing your site.

It helps to tell Google you’re there and ask them to list you, rather than passively waiting for Google to find you. Submit your site to Google.

You should also submit your site to Yahoo.

2. Add fresh content to your site often, the easy way: Blog

So far, your site appears to be mainly an online brochure. That’s someone useful for people who already know to look you up online, but it won’t attract much attention from search engines — and therefore won’t get much traffic from people who don’t already know who you are and where to find your site.

Search engines mainly care about timeliness and relevance. There is an easy way to make sure your site provides that: Add a blog to your site.

I noticed that right now, your site’s “news and events” section has no real content. I’d suggest turning that part of your site into a weblog (or “blog”) so you can easily add fresh items to the site on your own, without having to rely on a web designer to upload the content for you.

…You don’t have to call it a blog if you don’t like that term, you could just call it news and views, which would give you more flexibility in what sort of information you can post there.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: After discussing the following tip in the comments below, I decided that it’s better to integrate your existing brochure space into a blog, rather than vice versa. Read full instructions on how to get this done.

Talk to your web designer about integrating a blog into your site. You should set up the account with the blogging service in your own name, so you maintain control of it. But after you have the account it’s fine to get help with setup.

Once the blog is in place you can easily (right through your web browser) add fresh items to your site, and their titles and introductions will appear on that page, with the most recent item listed first.

You could write not just about news and events, but also share your insight or tips about things that might interest the people you want to reach — including answering common questions they have related to your areas of expertise. These can be really short pieces: just 1-3 paragraphs is enough. No need to write long articles.

The point is to post a new item at least a couple of times a month (of course, more often is always better, but you can start slow). Make sure the title and the first sentence of each post include words that you think people who need your services would search for.

If you add a tool like a blog that makes it easy for you to add fresh content to your site on your own whenever you want, over time you’ll grow the kind of site that Google likes, indexes often, and rewards with traffic.

Even better, when you regularly post fresh content to your site, that gives other people a good reason to link to your site. Inbound links are very important to Google. When people link to deeper content on your site (like specific blog posts, not just your home page), Google thinks your site is more useful and is more likely to position you better in search results.

Oh, and: If your web designers say they can’t easily add a blog to your site, they’re wrong. (CORRECTION: Actually, trying to add a blog to a static site is hard, which is why I now recommend moving your site into a blog.) You can create a blog using a free service like Wordpress.com and integrate that into any site. Once it’s set up, then you just keep posting to it.

3. Offer an e-mail newsletter, the easy way

It’s always easier for you to go to people than to expect them to always come to you. For this reason, many people still prefer e-mail to the web as a way to maintain business relationships.

Dad mentioned that he suggested you offer an e-mail newsletter for your past clients and other key contacts, and I agree, that’s a great way to maintain those relationships. However, you can get even more mileage out of this effort by using a blog to create your e-mail newsletter for you automatically.

If you decide to add a blog to your site (as I suggested above), you can use some features of a free service from Google called Feedburner to turn the items you post to your blog into items in an e-mail newsletter which interested people can easily subscribe to. That way, they can see your latest items even if they don’t remember to visit your site.

Set up a free account on Feedburner, and follow their instructions to connect your site’s blog (they call it “burning your feed”) to feedburner. Then, under their “publicize” section, select “e-mail subscriptions” and follow their instructions. You might want to get your Web developer to help you with this process, but I strongly suggest setting up the Feedburner account yourself, in your own name, so you maintain control of it.

4. Link to your LinkedIn public profile

Dad already suggested that you get active with LinkedIn, a popular online service for professional networking, and I agree it’s very helpful — especially for independent professionals.

One useful option that LinkedIn offers is the ability to create a public version of your LinkedIn profile that anyone can view, whether they’re on LinkedIn or not. (Here’s mine)

I’d recommend completing your LinkedIn profile as fully as possible, and then posting a link to it from your site’s contact page. Then, make sure you keep your profile updated.

…Those are my basic tips, intended for someone with little to no experience with online media. I tried to strike a balance between empowering him to make truly effective improvements in his online outreach, while recognizing that he probably won’t want to spends a whole lot of time online, or know how to use social media.

So even though I could have suggested many social media options for this person beyond LinkedIn, I don’t think that would be a good fit for his current skill levels and interests. Later on he could grow into that. But right now, I think it’s more important for him to create a more effective home base on the web.

I didn’t link to his site because I wanted to give him a chance to work on it first.

What do you think of these suggestions? Are they appropriate for the situation I outlined? Any disagreements, corrections, or suggestions to add? Please comment below.

The event is billed as a “strategic overview of how to evaluate key areas of your company — including customer service, marketing communications and human resources — and determine why and how they might benefit from social media participation.

Here’s the liveblog:

I’ll also be tweeting event coverage and observations at my own Twitter account (agahran), with cross-posting to the Metzger Associates Twitter account (MetzgerAssoc). You can also follow the hashtag #execsocmed. And I’ll be tagging some tweets with the popular hashtag #socmed (for “social media”), to encourage broader discussion and participation.

This event is NOT part of BlogWorld Expo, which is also in Vegas this week, and which I’m not attending (several folks have asked).

I’m doing this particular bit of coverage as test for a new professional service I’d like to start offering more systematically: Good event coverage for hire. More about that in my next post…

In my experience, blogging can be an easy way to get more mileage out of things you’re already doing. It’s a matter of shifting your process, not just adding new tasks. If something you think, encounter, or learn is interesting or entertaining and there’s nothing to lose by sharing it, then blog it.

For instance…

Whenever you:

• Jot a note that seems like an important, interesting, prescient, or intriguing point
• Think of an interesting question
• Snap an interesting photo, or one that’s useful for explaining something
• Have an interesting conversation (face-to-face, phone, e-mail)
• Read an article you’re interested in or skeptical about, etc…

Rather than keep those insights and information entirely to yourself, or share it only in private e-mail or conversation (where, face it, you’ll probably forget about it and its value will vanish into the ether), take a moment to jot it into a quick short post. Just a sentence or two, even. Make blogging your new capture process. Or even microblogging, like Twitter, Friendfeed, Tumblr, Soup.io, Delicious, Flickr, or Posterous — all of which can integrate with most blogging platforms, making it easy to keep your blog fresh.

There’s no need to flesh it out fully or get every fact or angle nailed down. You’re not writing an article. You can always follow up more later. And the best part is, when you make this a habit it actually becomes much easier to find all that cool stuff that passes through your head and your life!

Just don’t be boring, and focus on getting to the “so what” to immediately establish relevance.

Also, show some personality and a sense of humor. Conversation is this core of this medium, and people are more likely to engage with you when you act human and approachable.

There’s other easy stuff too that’s actually fun. But the first step is to experiment with changing your habits for how you capture and share info — to not make privacy your default, but an option to be applied only when necessary.

…Oh, and BTW: This blog post is a case in point. I was making this point in a post to an e-mail discussion list this morning. I realized that I’ve made exactly this same point in many, many similar conversations over the past few years. Then I thought: Have I blogged this yet? I don’t think so? Copy & paste from e-mail into Wordpress. Done.

Right now, a lot of my colleagues (especially journalists) want to start building an independent online brand for the first time. Thus, they want to launch their first serious blog or site.

My universal advice in this case is: Don’t start from scratch (i.e., build a static site in Dreamweaver, FrontPage, or GoDaddy’s Website Tonight or SmartSpace). Instead, build your project with a popular professional-level blogging platform, even if you don’t want to blog at first.

Good blogging tools allow you to create static pages (which can comprise your whole site, if you like) and implement nearly any design strategy — while also playing nice with search engines, making your content easily linkable, and leaving your options open for more interactive approaches without having to totally rebuild the site.

Also, get a good domain for your site and use it. Over time, this provides far more search visibility and brand recognition (which benefit your career) — as well as options for easily switching platforms without losing those benefits — than a site bearing, say, a blogspot.com or Wordpress.com domain.

Another reason to avoid free blogging platforms like Blogger for serious sites is that these tools are very limited. Once you get into blogging, you’ll quickly outgrow these tools — and moving a site is always a hassle.

After this, my colleagues typically want to know which tools to use to build their blog or site.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Wordpress, the free open-source content management system. (It only started as a blogging tool; it’s grown.) I’ve used it for Contentious.com for many years. It’s flexible and offers just about any design theme or plug-in option I could possibly want — which encourages me to learn and experiment.

But let’s face it: I’m rather geeky. I actually enjoy spending time playing with new online tools and seeing what I can make them do. That’s not true of everyone — especially many journalists.

So to someone who’s not inherently techno-geeky and who wants start a serious blog or site for the first time (and who may want to start multiple blogs or sites), I actually recommend a different tool: Typepad, the inexpensive hosted blogging service from SixApart.

Here’s why… My reasons for recommending Typepad to non-geeks:

1. Setup simplicity
2. Relative cost, in perspective
3. Design simplicity
4. Adding special features
5. Update and security simplicity
6. Multiple sites or users

There is one drawback for Typepad for non-geeks, compared to the way Wordpress sites are handled by some web hosts. If your web host is not a domain registrar (this includes Typepad) you’ll have to map a domain to your site, which is a slightly technical process.

And I have some final thoughts on the big-picture comparison between Wordpress and Typepad for new-but serious bloggers.

1. SETUP SIMPLICITY

If you decide to go with a self-hosted Wordpress installation, you first must sign up for an account with a web host that supports Wordpress. (I recommend Dreamhost, which offers a one-click Wordpress install. This is much easier than downloading the software from Wordpress.org and installing it yourself.) Then you actually install Wordpress on your server space, and then configuring the software.

Wordpress configuration can be a bit daunting to non-geeks. It’s not always easy to figure out which options and plugins you really need. This part of the process often takes far more time than non-geeks expect in order to build a site or blog that they understand and has the features they want.

In contrast, if you decide to use Typepad, you don’t have to install or configure any software. Just select the pricing level that gives you all the features you want, and start designing your site or blog.

2. RELATIVE COST, IN PERSPECTIVE

Dreamhost costs $6/month and includes one free domain registration with each account. (Registering a domain typically costs $8-12.) Typepad offers several pricing levels, starting at $5/month.

For people who want their site or blog to be a key part of their career, I recommend Typepad’s pro-level account ($15/month). This offers full access to their design customization features, as well as the ability to host as many blogs as you want — and to allow as many authors as you want on any of your blogs.

Typepad is not a domain registrar, so you’d have to register a domain elsewhere and then connect that domain to your Typepad site (discussed below).

If you only want a single and very simple blog, the $5/month Typepad account will do to start. You can always upgrade later. But if you want to start so simply and honestly don’t enjoy learning new techno-tools, Wordpress is almost certainly overkill for you anyway.

If you’re balking at $15/month for Typepad vs. $6/month for Wordpress hosted on Dreamhost, ask yourself how much an hour of your time is worth — especially if it’s an hour spent wrestling with techno-stuff, and if you really hate wrestling with techno-stuff. If your time is worth more than $9/hour, you’re ahead of the game with Typepad.

3. DESIGN SIMPLICITY

Typepad offers a lot of design templates for your site that control the page layout and design elements like color and graphics. If you have the pro-level account you can fully customize the design — modify the Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), and more. Or you can hire a designer to do this for you. All of the design is handled through the main Typepad interface — you don’t need to know where to put files on a server, how to use FTP, etc.

Wordpress offers thousands of themes created by developers and designers in the Wordpress community, as well as theme-builder tools like Atahualpa. The trick for non-geeks is installation. Each Wordpress theme is a set of files that you must upload into the correct directory on your web hosting account. And not all Wordpress themes are created equally, due to the diversity of authors. Some are buggy (may display weird on certain browsers).

4. ADDING SPECIAL FEATURES

Both Wordpress and Typepad allow you to extend the kind of content functionality your site or blog offers, or to interact with other services or sites. Wordpress definitely offers far more options on this front, but Typepad’s options are technically simpler to implement.

In Wordpress, functionality is extended via plugins. Like themes, plugins are file bundles that you must download from the web, upload separately to your web hosting account, and then activate and configure within Wordpress. Some plugins, like the comment/trackback spam catcher Akismet, are absolutely essential to running any Wordpress site. So if you create a Wordpress site you definitely will need to learn how to find, install, configure, activate, update, and deactivate plugins. (Not hard, but necessary.)

Typepad offers a gallery of third-party widgets that you can add to the sidebar of your Typepad site. These aren’t as flexible or far-reaching as many Wordpress plugins, but they’re often useful. They’re also very easy to install and configure, as long as you’re not using Typepad’s Advanced Templates feature.

5. UPDATE AND SECURITY SIMPLICITY

Almost any web site or blog can be hacked. (It’s even happened to me.) Therefore, it’s important to keep the software supporting your blog or site up to date, because security patches come out all the time.

With Typepad you don’t have to worry about doing software updates, since that’s part of the service you’re buying. You’ll always be running the latest and most secure version of Typepad.

But with a self-hosted Wordpress site, you do need to make sure you keep your Wordpress installation updated. The easiest way to do this is to install the Wordpress automatic upgrade plugin. Then just run the auto-update whenever it tells you to.

Also make sure that you keep all Wordpress plugins you use up-to-date, and deactivate or uninstall plugins you aren’t actually using.

6. MULTIPLE SITES OR AUTHORS

It’s possible that you may want to run a separate static web site (like an online brochure or resume) as well as a blog — or set up multiple sites or blogs for special purposes, like creating a hub for your coverage of an ongoing issue. Or you might want to allow other people to author posts on your blog. On these fronts, Typepad offers clear advantages over Wordpress.

The regular version of Wordpress requires a separate installation of the Wordpress software for each site. Most web hosts also require that you set up separate hosting accounts for additional Wordpress sites or blogs, which entails additional expense and setup time. (Bluehost allows up to three add-on domains under a single account, but you still have to do a Wordpress installation for each site. I’ve done that and managing these extra Wordpress installations there is very confusing.)

You can choose to install the multiuser version of Wordpress, which allows you to set up multiple blogs with multiple authors. However, I’ve never seen a web host offer this as a one-click install with full support, so it would probably overwhelm non-geeks easily.

TYPEPAD DRAWBACK FOR NON-GEEKS: DOMAIN MAPPING

I mentioned earlier that if you want your blog or site to be a serious part of your career, it’s essential to get your own domain for your site. This not only gives you greater visibility in search engines such as Google over time; it also makes it easier for people to remember your site.

Most importantly, having your site under your own domain makes it less risky to switch to a different blog platform or host down the line. It’s always possible that you will outgrow your initial platform, or that your host will go out of business, or that you will get dissatisfied with you host’s service and want to switch.

Many web hosts where you’d install Wordpress, such as Dreamhost, also are domain registrars. (In fact, Dreamhost includes a free domain registration when you set up your account.) If you register your domain through your web host, then it’s very easy to get your site or blog set up under that domain, so every page bears your domain in the URL. For this reason, I strongly recommend that non-geeks choose a web host that is also a domain registrar.

If you already own a domain and your new web host is a domain registrar, you can transfer your domain from its original registrar to your web host. (That’s not about who owns the domain, just where its reference records are managed.) Then, apply that domain to your Wordpress blog.

If your web host is NOT a domain registrar (this includes Typepad), then you’ll have to map your domain to your site. Domain mapping is a moderately geeky process where you modify some information through your domain registrar so that the domain applies to a site you’ve set up.

If you set up a Typepad account, your site’s default address would be a subdomain of Typepad.com — such as johndoe.typepad.com or northoakland.typepad.com. This is harder for people to remember, and it can be harder to get traffic from search engines under this arrangement than with your own easy-to-remember domain.

So once you set up a Typepad site or blog — but before you publicize it — follow Typepad’s domain mapping instructions. It may look daunting to a non-geek, but if you take it one step at a time it will work. I’ve mapped several domains I’ve registered through SimpleURL to Typepad blogs, such as RightConversation.com. After that, your blog’s home page and every page or post within that site will bear your domain.

Many free blogging platforms, like Blogger and Wordpress.com also allow you to map a domain to your blog. If you must use a free service, definitely do this.

Most domain registrars offer a domain forwarding option — where someone can type in a domain like amysite.com and it would forward to amy.typepad.com. This may seem tempting because it’s easier to set up than domain mapping, but domain mapping is really what serious bloggers want to do — for the search visibility and site portability benefits.

FINAL THOUGHTS

…All things considered, I think the technical skills required to put together a decent Wordpress site or blog are fairly minimal. If you really want to learn Wordpress, don’t be afraid to start there. Personally, even though I prefer Wordpress I maintain a Typepad account so I can quickly create special-purpose blogs as needed for myself and my clients without having to arrange additional hosting.

However, Wordpress definitely does require you to be willing to mess with and maintain server-side software. If you’re really uncomfortable with that, then definitely go with Typepad. You can switch your Typepad blog to Wordpress later if you want — not a trivial task, but many people have done it.

According to Nieman Lab, “Media Cloud is a massive data set of news — compiled from newspapers, other established news organizations, and blogs — and a set of tools for analyzing those data.

Here’s what Berkman’s Ethan Zuckerman had to say about Media Cloud:

Ethan Zuckerman on Media Cloud from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

Some of the kinds of questions Media Cloud could eventually help answer:

• How do specific stories evolve over time? What path do they take when they travel among blogs, newspapers, cable TV, or other sources?
• What specific story topics won’t you hear about in [News Source X], at least compared to its competitors?
• When [News Source Y] writes about Sarah Palin [or Pakistan, or school vouchers], what’s the context of their discussion? What are the words and phrases they surround that topic with?”

The obvious use of this project is to compare coverage by different types of media. But I think a deeper purpose may be served here: By tracking patterns of words used in news stories and blog posts, Media Cloud may illuminate how context and influence shape public understanding — in other words, how media and news affect people and communities.

This is important, because news and media do not exist for their own sake. It seems to me that the more we learn about how people are affected by — and affect — media, the better we’ll be able to craft effective media for the future.

(NOTE: I originally published this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

Here’s what one of these tools can create:

More about what Windy Citizen is doing on this front…

Blagojevitter: This page tracks, in real time, Twitter updates that include the terms blagojevich or fitzgerald. This page is a widget from Monittor, a free service that offers a fairly slick interface for custom Twitter tracking. Monittor widgets are slightly more complex to configure and install than ordinary widgets, but it’s not rocket science. (I actually hadn’t known about Monittor, so kudos to the WindyCitizen for putting it on my radar.)

Windy Citizen editor Brad Flora selects particularly important or interesting items from this widget to retweet via the WindyCitizen Twitter account. (Example from this morning.)

Blagojevich complaint word cloud: The graphic above was created with Wordle, a visualization tool that analyzes text and turns it into art. Here, the source text was the 78-page official complaint against the Illinois governor. In a word cloud, the biggest words appear most frequently in the source text. Even though word cloud images are static (not interactive, which is why I didn’t mention Wordle in my interactive visual tools session last week) this approach can provide insight into a document — even on a subconscious level. Plus, it’s attractive, intriguing, and fun.

…And, of course, Windy Citizen set up a Blagojevich blog.

Which other sites or services are using online media creatively to present news and commentary about this controversy? Please provide links and info in the comments below.

(NOTE: I originally published this on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits blog.)

Huessner interviewed me for this story because I’ve been blogging about it on Contentious.com and on E-Media Tidbits. She chose to include a few highly edited and interpreted quotes from me that I think grossly misrepresent my own views and the character of our conversation.

Yeah, being a journalist, I know that no one is ever completely happy with their quotes. I’ve been misquoted plenty in the past, and normally I just roll with it. But this particular case is an especially teachable moment for my journalist colleagues in mainstream media about understanding and covering the role of social media in today’s media landscape.

Today’s a pretty busy day for me, but I didn’t want to let this go unsaid any longer. So I made a little Seesmic video response to this story. Here I am speaking strictly for myself — not on behalf of any of my clients or colleagues. Yes, I am very emphatic here and somewhat critical. Please understand that my frustration is borne of seeing this particular problem over and over again.