Ppp

Over at the Center for Citizen Media blog, I’ve joined an interesting conversation concerning the thorny issue of payola in online media. See: PayPerPost: A Cancer on the Blogosphere, or Merely Semi-Sleazy? by Dan Gillmor.

Background: The controversial online advertising service PayPerPost attracted considerable blog and media attention after it recently got $3 million in venture funding. In a nutshell, PayPerPost is an automated system where companies can advertise their sites, products, services, or brands through a network of approved bloggers who get paid $2 per qualifying post. That is, bloggers who sign on to PayPerPost agree to write about those advertisers.

PayPerPost reviews and approves those posts, which can be required to be positive. Although PayPerPost urges its bloggers to be "honest," it discourages them from disclosing their relationship with PayPerPost. So, ethically, everyone involved appears to be on thin ice — but when did ethics ever have much to do with the advertising business?

…Anyway, Dan Gillmor’s post on the PayPerPost flap nudged me to consider the issue of payola more closely. Here are a couple of comments I contributed to that discussion…

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE over at my other blog, The Right Conversation…
– If you wish to leave a comment on this post, you can do so there.

"I have had many clients ask me about the risks of blogging. How do you keep competitors and arch enemies from taking over the conversation and dissolving the ‘conversation’ into a shouting match?"

Her answers:

1. Moderate comments.
2. Have a written comment policy to manage expectations.
3. Be in it for the long haul.
4. Ban grossly abusive comments, but let most negative comments ride.
5. Turn comments off if necessary, preferably temporarily.

A few quibbles notwithstanding, I mostly agree with Kami’s advice.

That said, I also believe it’s important for everyone who chooses to participate in conversational media to learn how to handle the inevitable unpleasant bumps of conflict and even flames.That’s not something you can learn theoretically. Personally I think you need to live through it. Only then can you put Kami’s advice into balanced practice. Otherwise, you might be tempted to protect yourself into total vulnerability.

Of course, surviving public conversational conflicts is not fun — but it’s crucial. If there’s one thing you learn fast in conversational media, it’s that you can never really control the conversation. Most of it happens in venues that are beyond your control, anyway The best you can do is influence it.

I raised that issue in this comment to Kami’s post…

READ THE REST of this article over at my other blog, The Right Conversation…

Everyone messes up sometime. However, acknowledging your role in a problem, apologizing for it, and making amends is not a sign of weakness. In fact, it’s often the bravest, strongest, smartest, and most constructive thing an individual, publisher, or organization can do. Especially because conversational media has a way of amplifying any failure to apologize, thus making the consequences of your original screw-up much worse in the long run.

Here are all the hints on this theme that fate has handed me in the last 24 hours…

READ MORE at my other blog, The Right Conversation…

I realized through this conversation that I hadn’t expressed my thoughts clearly enough, so here’s a second go at it.

From my perspective, it’s perfectly fine to change your mind and revise, retract, or clarify your statements, whether on a blog or elsewhere. In fact, I’m writing this post for exactly that purpose.

I also think it’s a good idea to revisit postings to fix typos, tighten up sentences, etc. — and if those nit-fixes don’t substantially alter your meaning, no need to point them out.

That said, in my experience it is indeed almost always a bad move to delete statements or postings without acknowledgment or explanation. I’m not talking about minor edits — I’m talking about trying to make content “disappear” and then acting like it never existed.

That strategy is almost certain to backfire — causing a bigger fuss than a simple explanation would have done, and possibly damaging your reputation or credibility in the process.

In short, ethical conduct online means owning up to what you publish — even if you have to remove it. And there may well be good reasons to remove it (legal, factual, ethical, social, and so on).

Here’s a fairly recent example from my own experience…

On March 12, 2006, I published a posting originally titled “Alexa’s ‘reach’ stats: More like ‘stretch’.” Within hours of my posting, several people pointed out to me that my interpretation of a statistical graph was completely mistaken. They were right, I was wrong — and I was mortified. (I know, this happens to every blogger sometime.)

At that point I assumed there were already some inbound links to my article, gleefully noting my blatant error. And I knew the original version went out into feed readers and elsewhere. I never considered deleting the posting, but if I had it probably would have made me look much worse.

So I owned up to it, immediately. I replaced the posting title with: Egg on my face about Alexa stats. I wrote a disclaimer at the beginning acknowledging and apologizing for my error, and then left the original text in place so people could see to what I was referring. The historical record was left in place, but the correction was made in an un-missable way at the original location.

That strategy worked well for me in that instance, and the minor flap blew over almost immediately.

But what about times when you really do need to delete content or postings? Stuff happens.

Say you launched into a public personal attack you now regret, or you disclosed information forbidden by SEC or other rules or laws, or you libeled someone. Those statements need to come down, immediately. What do you do?

Here’s my advice:

• At the URL where the original posting or statement appeared, change the headline to indicate there’s been a correction. This will help with headline-only aggregation views.
• Then, delete the necessary text, and replace it with a simple acknowledgment. You could say something as simple as, “I originally posted some statements here I shouldn’t have, so I’ve deleted them. I apologize for my error and any confusion or damage that may have resulted.”

Yes, of course, some people will still squawk. If you make a mistake or go seriously overboard, you’ve got to expect some heat for it. But believe me, you’ll look much better in to long run if you own up to errors than if you try to cover them up. Removing published content without explanation always looks like a coverup — or that you’re a hothead or thin-skinned.

Some people don’t really care how it looks or what people say if they remove content. If you’re one of them, more power to you. Just be aware that it can be a significant tradeoff.

I hope that clarifies my thinking on this topic. I realize that not everyone agrees with me on this, so as always take this as one person’s perspective. I’d love to hear more reactions to this.

How do you handle missteps on your blog or site? And why do you handle them that way? Please comment below, and offer specific examples if possible.

I’ve seen this happen many times: Someone posts something in haste to a weblog. He later regrets it, recognizes an error or embarrassment, or is criticized for it — and then deletes the post in equal haste, hoping that erases the event and no one noticed.

While that may seem like a safe strategy (as long as you delete the post quickly, before it gets indexed by search engines), it’s actually a very bad idea. In my experience, it’s wisest to assume that anything you post online will live forever, regardless of whether you delete it from its original location. (Note: I fixed a typo in that sentence. Thanks for spotting it, Dave Taylor.)

Here’s why that’s so…

As soon as you post something to a weblog, an announcement of that item goes out on the blog’s feed. This means your feed subscribers will potentially read it — and also that the text of your posting is stored in their feed readers, whether they read it or not. Once they’ve downloaded the latest content from your feed, you can’t pull it back. It’s beyond your control.

Similarly, once your posting is on the web, anyone can use a web archiving tool like Furl to save a copy of your page as it appeared. They can do that in just a couple of seconds. So if your page is online for one minute and it intrigues a Furl user who passes by 15 seconds after you posted it, your posting is then stored beyond your control and you can’t take it back.

Or, another blogger can simply grab and repost your text, photos, etc. That’s what happened recently to Dave Winer when Ian Bettridge spotted Winer’s snarky retort to Bettridge’s criticism of some remarks Winer made about BlogHer. It looks like that criticism pushed Winer’s buttons and he replied in haste, then quickly deleted that reply — but not before Bettridge’s feed reader downloaded the posting. So Bettridge was able to post a copy of Winer’s retort, and point out that Winer had removed it without explanation.

Which then allowed Bettridge to escalate the conflict by beginning a new posting this way:

“I’m sure glad that Dave Winer invented RSS. After all, if he hadn’t, I might not have spotted the completely missing-the-point response that he posted to my questioning of his comments on BlogHer. Why might I not have spotted it? Because, as he commonly does when he gets things wrong, he removed the post without any explanation.”

Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. But that’s what can happen with weblogs. You can never really shove a published posting entirely down the memory hole.

The bottom line: Think twice — even thrice — before you post, especially if you’re ticked off at someone who’s likely trying to bait you into losing your temper.

And if you do make an unfortunate post (either by the tone of your remark, or by the inclusion of errors or embarrassing misunderstandings) don’t try to erase your misstep — because you probably can’t. A better approach is to acknowledge what you said, and clarify with a note that you’ve regretted your hasty response, learned your facts were wrong, etc. Then move on as gracefully as possible.

You’ll probably still take some heat for that posting, but that’s life. It’s better to take heat when owning up to a misjudgement than to be caught trying to pretend it never happened. Which is why it’s crucial to understand how easy it is to get caught. Weblogs are interconnected, and that connection starts the instant you hit “publish.”

There is no grace period in the blogosphere.

The topic of my talk is: Invasion of the bloggin’ pods: The new media – ready or not, they’re here! (So whatta we do with ‘em?)

I already warned URMA: I don’t do lectures, so the people attending this session had better be ready to get involved.

Here are some links I plan to mention in my session…

(Read the full article at The Right Conversation…)

Good writing is good writing no matter where you find it. However, each medium has its own unique considerations. One of the key points to consider about the text on your web site is microcontent.

Microcontent is all the short bits of text that help guide the user or provide an “at-a-glance” overview of what a given page is about. The basic categories of microcontent are…

• page titles
• headlines and subheads
• “in-page” indexes
• navigation bar links
• other links
• bold text
• alt text
• captions

Microcontent is especially important in online writing for three reasons:

• Web users tend to scan pages, rather than read them.
• A user can arrive at virtually any page in your site from just about anywhere on the web.
• Web users tend to be impatient and fickle. If they can’t figure out a site or page in a few seconds, they’ll probably move on.

Therefore, every page in your site should provide near-instant orientation and context. You can accomplish some of this with design and branding, but ultimately text is your user’s most important guide.

There are a few general principles for writing any kind of microcontent:

• Make it explanatory. Each element of your microcontent should quickly communicate the substance or significance of the associated content, ideally from the perspective of your target audience. Avoid cute, clever, or generic wording. A good test is to imagine that the microcontent is the only thing visible on your page – could your users guess with reasonable accuracy what kind of information your page would contain?
• Make it work out of context. Online, some key pieces of your microcontent will get passed around, displayed, and linked to in all sorts of ways you can’t control, or even predict. Therefore, your should create page titles, headlines, and subheads that make a reasonable amount of sense if viewed totally on their own, beyond the context of your site. This principle also applies to your link text. Visually, links stand out from a page like roadsigns. If your page is full of links that say “click here” or other such vague terms, your users will feel stranded.
• Keep it short. There’s a reason they call it microcontent. It has to work fast, so it has to be short. The trick is to make it as short as possible without obscuring its meaning or making it awkward. Headlines and subheads should be no more than 40-50 characters. Other links ideally should be 1-3 words long.
• Don’t overdo it. Good microcontent clarifies and directs. Pages with too many microcontent elements are like a busy intersection with too many roadsigns. As much as possible, limit the number of links, subheads, etc. that you present on a single page. Organize your information so you can easily break it up easily. If you must present a long list of links or large piece of text content, break it up into sections with brief, intuitive subheads. However, avoid breaking sections into subsections – that works well in print, poorly on the web. In most cases, text content should be broken into sections of about 300-400 words each, with no more than about 5 or 6 sections per page, and no more than 2-3 emphasized items (links or highlighted keywords) per section.

In addition, each category of microcontent has unique considerations.

• Page titles: The text you put between the ‹title› ‹/title› tags on your pages is what users see in their “bookmark” or “favorite” lists. It’s also what displays in some search engine results. Your page titles should summarize “the point” of the page and identify your company or site, in no more than 40-50 characters. It’s best not to have every page title start with the same text, so put your site or company name at the end.
• Headlines and subheads: The headline is the main heading at the top of the page, and it should address the overall content of the page. It can be nearly the same as the page title. Subheads address specific sections within the page. Organize your content so that all the subheads on a given page are of roughly equal significance.
• “In-page” indexes: If you have more than two sections of content on a single page, it’s a good idea to present an index to those sections at the top of the page (a simple list of links). This functions as an executive summary for the page, with no scrolling required. Each index item should link directly to the relevant section. If your subheads are all 2-3 words long, then your index can repeat them verbatim. If a particular subhead is longer, you might want to edit the corresponding index item down to a 2- to 3-word synopsis of that section’s key concept.
• Navigation bar links: These point to the various sections of your site. Try to limit them to 1-2 words each. Organize and name your site sections so they make sense from the user’s perspective. Avoid clever, cryptic, or internally focused language.
• Other links: Crafting your link text can take a lot of work. It must not only direct, but also inform. One useful trick is to first figure out the most obvious and concise way to word the link you wish to create, and then structure your sentences and other content to support that wording. The best link text indicates:
  • Where users will be taken if they click that link, as well as what kind of content they’ll find there. (For instance, “this recent Industry Standard article,” rather than just “article.”)
  • Why you chose to direct your readers to that page. (For instance, “It helps to understand what happened in 13th-century Kosovo.”)
• Bold text (highlighted keywords): Often, online writers use bold text to emphasize an important word or phrase. Since this stands out visually about as much as a link, it can be effective – as long as you don’t overdo it, and as long as the bold text conveys meaning. Ideally, you should be able to get a rough idea of what a page covers just by scanning the links and bold text.
• Alt text: Images often are a key part of online content. However, if a user cannot or does not view your images, or mouses over an image in most browsers, the “alt” text will display. For every image on your site that has a content purpose, specify corresponding alt text – ideally, no more than 40 characters. This text should convey the meaning or significance of the image, not describe what it looks like. Conversely, make sure that you do not specify alt text for images that are strictly design or decorative elements.
• Captions: If an image is an important piece of your content, but simply looking at it may not convey its full meaning, write a caption. Web caption text usually is small or otherwise hard to read, so keep it very short – ideally 10 words or less. Answer the user’s natural questions: “What am I looking at?” and “Why are you showing me this?”

If you follow these guidelines, the chances are good that your users will be able to follow you – and your site – pretty easily.

That said, I love a good pun. And sometimes, depending on the author, topic, and target audience, a good pun is just what’s needed. This morning, my friend and fellow blogger Koan Bremner pulled off a magnificently punnish headline: “Ctrl-Alt-Delete.”

Now that might not sound like much of a pun – you need to read the article to see why it works so well. Normally I would consider that a problem, too.

However, here’s why I think it’s a great headline, even though it’s geeky and superficially cryptic – and what other bloggers can learn from this example…

First of all, Koan’s blog is mostly personal, which means that it’s entirely fitting for her writing to strongly reflect her personality – including her wry, lighthearted sense of humor. It also means her blog is strongly about building a relationship with her target audience. That audience mainly includes people who are interested in her, or in the issues she discusses (gender, technology, music, society, UK life, and more.)

Given that closeness with her audience, occasional in-joke headlines work well – definitely better than in a blog or other venue that actively courts a broader audience and less personal connection.

This week, Koan has gone through a major transformation – the culmination of years of effort, preparation, and planning. Read her posting to get the full story. Be prepared: It’s very frank, as it deals with surgical and post-surgical matters related to gender reassignment. But she tells it well.

The final element that makes this otherwise mysterious headline a success is that Koan doesn’t leave her readers guessing long. The lead of her posting delivers the “punchline”:

“Those of you running Windows (any flavour) will recognise the title of this post as the keystroke for a reboot – those of you running OS X… won’t – because, of course, you don’t need to keep rebooting a Mac in the way you do a crashed PC…

“Anyway… my personal reboot is now completed – and my operating system is now running on its shiny, upgraded hardware, and all the diagnostic tests are showing record-breaking performance.”

If you do on rare occasions decide to go with a cryptic or cute headline that requires explanation, make sure to offer that explanation immediately. Most web users will only give you a second or two to grab their attention. If you manage to intrigue them in the first second with your headline, you’d better clue them in before they click away in the next sentence.

The way Koan uses humor in this piece is more than fun. She’s recounting a very personal and serious story – which could have seemed heavy or daunting had she not deftly gotten people laughing right from the start. This is a positive, optimistic time for her, and she communicates that energy to her audience with humor.

She’s definitely better at using humor than I am. I could learn from her on that.

Well done, Koan, in every sense!

…A link blog is a way to use a weblog to share interesting links. There are lots of different ways to do it. I use the free social bookmarking service del.icio.us to create link-related content for all of my main weblogs. In this weblog, that’s what generates my “Latest Recommended Links” content in the right-hand sidebar.

For my other weblog, The Right Conversation, I save links (with relevant excerpts or comments) in del.icio.us and then use an automated system to compile and post a daily roundup of links. (For instance, here’s yesterday’s link posting from The Right Conversation.)

Dave points out that while having a linkblog fulfills some needs (for him and, presumably, his audience), it’s not exactly conversational – especially in his case, since the tool he’s chosen does not allow comments.

I shared my thoughts on linkblogs with Dave, and asked him to explain his linkblog rationale further….

(Read the rest of this article on The Right Conversation…)