EXERCISES:

Special demonstration of the unique impact of mobile media, courtesy of Will Sullivan (@journerdism)

Then…   How mobile-friendly is your site?

• Check out your site on a mobile phone’s web browser (home page, and specific story). How much zooming, scrolling, etc. is required just to see what’s going on?
• Have your neighbor bring up your site on their phone.
• If you don’t have a web-enabled phone, check out your site on a mobile device or on the Opera Mini simulator. (Note: On a computer, sometimes the simulator doesn’t serve up the mobile site, so checking from a mobile device is more reliable.)
• For comparison, check out CNN.com, the Spokesman Review, MLB.com, West Seattle Blog, MyVeronaNJ.com, MyEverettNews.com on a mobile device. How are these mobile sites different from yours?

Hyperlocal and mobile: the big picture

Brand new report from Pew: Nearly half of American adults get some local news/info via mobile devices. So far they’re mostly getting weather, breaking news, restaurant/business info, traffic updates on their phones. So far they’re not visiting news sites or apps of any kind very much.

Why? My opinion: Most mobile news offerings are shovelware and not action-oriented. Also, they aren’t easy to use or navigate on a mobile browser. In a mobile context that makes them inherently second-rate.

The good news for hyperlocal: Independent community news/info sites may be especially well suited to do mobile news much better than major legacy news brands or centrally operated networks such as Patch or the Huffington Post. More nimble, little/no bureaucracy, not burdened by unwieldy systems they don’t control. Also, they’re closer to the community, where it’s easier to see the local nuances in the mobile market.

PROBLEM: Most people in the news business (any part of it, including hyperlocal) aren’t yet very comfortable/familiar with using the range of mobile media and channels. That limits their ability to see and exploit emerging opportunities. We tend to create the kind of media we’re used to using — going mobile requires expanding your personal media usage skills and tastes.

ACTION STEP 1: Start doing as much as you can with your phone. For everything, not just for news. Use every mobile channel you can. See what you like and don’t. Ask people in your community what they do with their mobile devices — all kinds of phones and other devices, including cheap non-smartphones.

Grab your friend’s phones and play with them. (OK, ask them first…) Walk into mobile stores and demo the hell out of the features on new phones — not just the expensive ones. If you own a smartphone, also buy a cheap feature phone (prepaid or month-to-month) to see how the other half lives.

Your goal: Get a sense of how mobile tech, media, and communication are augmenting people’s lives. Ultimately you want your news/info to be woven into the fabric of their lives, accessible wherever they are. Mobile helps your venue become more like the air your community breathes, not a special place they visit.

Look for revenue options! Sign up for text alerts, esp. fr local businesses. Look for other mobile ad/revenue strategies. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t suit your personal taste. How do these strategies function, and how do they pay off? Most news sites, are doing a terrible job of mobile ads — and most hyperlocal sites don’t seem to be doing anything w/ mobile ads/revenue streams.

What is mobile good for?

The main problem with most mobile news offerings is that they are shovelware. With the exception of e-reader apps, music players and YouTube, cell phones are not great publishing or media consumption platforms.

Use mobile for what it’s best at: People like to use their phones to DO stuff.

(CAVEAT: Tablets aren’t really “mobile,” since they’re mostly a lean-back experience. In contrast, cell phones are all about activity and entertainment on the go. They’re what you grab when you need something right away, or have a few spare moments.)

The best mobile offerings are services, not content. Don’t expect people to read long articles on their cell phones. So figure out what kinds of services your content can offer or support.

Consider what they could use on the go, what they’d enjoy, what would give them an edge, what they might want to note to check out later, what they might want to share. Then focus on delivering just that much via mobile. And make sure your mobile users know exactly where to turn to find the fuller version of anything that caught their attention.

Mobile is a way to foster ambient awareness and value in your community. Mobile makes it easy for people to encounter your content, benefit from it, and share it — although their cell phone probably won’t be where they settle in for a deep dive on a topic you’ve covered.

Let people use their phones to talk back to you or contribute. Texting, e-mail, sharing photos, and social media are consistently most popular non-voice cell phone activities on any kind of phone. Those are all two-way (at least) communication channels. Consider how your mobile offerings can support or encourage two-way interaction, in ways that are friendly and fun for mobile users.

Current U.S. mobile landscape:

1. The web is quickly becoming mostly mobile by default. According to IDC, by 2015, most U.S. internet access will happen from mobile devices. (Gartner predictedthat globally this tipping point will happen in 2013)
2. About 77% of all Americans (all ages, from infants to centenarians) own cell phones. (comScore, US population clock)
3. About 35% of these phones are smartphones (comScore, July 2011 figures).
4. About 65% are “feature phones” — all of which can do text messaging (which requires no data plan), and many of which have e-mail and web access (albeit generally slow and clunky). The only thing feature phones cannot do is run sophisticated apps (but they can run simple apps). So the feature/smartphone line is blurry, and it’s getting blurrier.
5. By late 2012 most U.S. handsets in use will be smartphones (based on comScore data). But the cheaper/simpler end of the mobile market will probably always be the largest part of the market in most communities. So be ready to serve the phones that most people in your community have at any given time.

How Americans use their cell phones:

• Around 92% of smartphone owners (60% of feature phone owners) send/receive text messages (Pew. Nielsen and comScoreoffered different estimates.)
• Mobile users spend far more time doing e-mail than Facebook on their phones (Pew, Nielsen)
• Feature phone web browsers are improving. Opera Mini — which looks pretty nice — now comes preinstalled on (or can be downloaded to) almost any U.S, feature phone. It is currently the #2 mobile browser, behind the iPhone’s mobile Safari, and ahead of the Android stock browser. (NetMarketShare) In a year most feature phones will probably come with web browsers that look more like Opera Mini, so that’s a good target to design for.
• Right now, most web sites suck on most mobile devices. In fact, usability experts at Nielsen Norman Group recommend that sites don’t bother supporting feature phone access. That may may sense for e-commerce — but probably not for hyperlocal news/community sites.

Most hyperlocal and community sites are NOT friendly to mobile users. Seriously, I checked them out from the conference participant list. They’re not even mobile friendly for smartphone users — too much pinching, zooming, scrolling required for easy navigation. Basic reason: their web sites lack:

• A mobile-optimized theme
• Server-side mobile auto-detection, which figures out if a visitor is on a mobile device and routes them accordingly to an appropriate theme.

This can be relatively easy to fix — especially if your site runs on WordPress. (Examples of free, nice looking WordPress mobile themes)

Action step: Implement a mobile-friendly theme for your site (home page and story/other pages).

Yeah, I know I say your mobile presence is not all about your web site. But your mobile web site will be the core of your mobile strategy, because it’s something people can link to and access via search engines. Ultimately it may not be how mobile users encounter you most often, but it absolutely needs to be there to provide value to back up your engagement.

If your site is based on a popular content management system for which many people have created themes (like WordPress), then there are probably already many simple mobile themes to choose from. You can customize these.

Otherwise, it’s worth getting a web designer to develop a simple mobile theme for your site. Here’s some free basic mobile web design advice, and for $300 you can get all the gory details.

Or you can use reformatting services like Mobify.me, as long as they appear under your domain, and you can track the traffic, and you have options to deliver your own ads (or get a really good cut of what they serve up).

Once your site is mobile-friendly, you’ll be better positioned to leverage the power of recommendations to build your brand.

One of the most popular things that people do online is share links — by social media, e-mail, instant messaging, and SMS. New Gallup research shows that most people’s brand preferences are strongly influenced by personal recommendations, and digital media (including mobile) amplifies this effect.

When you get a link from someone you know, that’s a personal recommendation — but if that link doesn’t work on the device you have handy, that won’t help anyone.

Nearly 40% of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone (Nielsen). Many/most of those phones are feature phones — and you want to make sure that if people get a link to your site, they’ll be able to display that page on any mobile device.

EXTRA RESOURCES

These came up in my session, so here they are for your perusal

Mobile Marketing Association mobile advertising guidelines

Our online audience suggested some resources for mobile & Drupal

• Digett: Drupal Mobile: How to create a Drupal mobile site without using Mobile Tools
• Jquery mobile framework
  
• Drupal mobile tools

The Filter Bubble, by Eli Pariser

Further steps in your mobile strategy

OK, there’s no way can I cover all of this stuff in one session. But I’m ready to discuss any of these that interest Block by Block attendees (either in the session, or buy me a drink later):

Do some basic local mobile market research. Don’t guess about what phones people are using: ask.

Experiment with SMS alerts/services/polls. Twilio is a versatile and affordable tool to start experimenting with on a small scale (services up to a thousand or so subscribers). If you want to grow beyond that, you may need access to a shortcode — which can be cheap (with risks), or rock solid (but costly)

Back-end technology. Some content management systems (especially Drupal) make experimenting with mobile more difficult, unless you’re a skilled developer. When you make CMS choices, favor tools that support mobile experimentation well.

WordPress is a good bet for less-technical site operators. Also consider third-party services — it doesn’t all have to be about your web site, you can have more than one digital presence. But you will need to learn more about several kinds of technology to go mobile, including telephony. Small-scale experiments are great learning tools.

Good skills/tools to learn for mobile: HTML5, CSS (including media queries), Javascript, Twilio,

Tablets and iPod Touch-like devices. Small markets for now, and probably not the best place to focus on, even though they look really cool. Wait a year or two before your seriously focus on them.

But there are some interesting developments to watch with these devices, especially if the new Kindle Fire has a decent web browser and really takes off with consumers.

There’s finally an Android answer to the iPod Touch: The Samsung Galaxy Player, coming out in October. Reasonably priced. Wifi only. Basically an Android phone without the phone. We’ll see more of these devices, especially if U.S. wireless carriers keep insisting on two-year contracts and steep early termination fees for decent smartphones.

Having a good mobile site will position you well for the tablet market — although this device would merit its own theme because it has unique size and interface considerations.

E-readers and e-books. Excellent secondary market for your content, with a proven revenue model. Robert Niles has written a lot about e-books in OJR. Also, check out the Bookbrewer platform for repackaging web or blog content as e-books and getting them into the major markets.

Start geotagging all your content with latitude/longitude info, and make sure this gets included as an element in your RSS feed. This will open opportunities to mashup/integrate your content with locative services, which will be getting more popular on mobile devices in coming years. At that point, if you have an archive of geotagged content, you’ll be ahead of the game.

Mobile web apps are an option to offer interactivity directly through the browser. Or look for mobile web apps to package as features within your site. Apps.USA.gov offers several examples that run on all phones.

Let people phone it in! Capture phoned-in audio for comments, etc. Evoca offers some affordable solutions.

Use print to complement/push mobile. This could involve publishing your own print supplement, distributing stickers/fliers/postcards with QR codes, etc.

Mobile-friendly e-mail newsletter/alerts. Opt-in only, no graphics, short versions of links.

Smartphone apps. Probably not worth the expense/effort for most hyperlocal sites at this point. A good mobile web site will get you farther.

The main problem with smartphone apps is that you have to do a separate software development project for each platform you want to serve, and maintain that platform, and make sure your content gets into the app correctly.

And on the user’s side, in order to get value from a smartphone app they must:

• Already know and like your brand enough to want to get your app
• Have the right kind of phone
• Download and install it your app
• Use it regularly. (The vast majority of apps get opened just a handful of times LINK)

That’s a lot of hurdles, compared to just opening a page on your site in their mobile web browser — especially when someone they know sends them a link to your site.

Case in point: Yesterday a clueless media relations professional whom I do not know sent me an e-mail with the subject line: “I sent a poem to a wannabee crotchety old bitch.” He was alluding to my recent birthday post, in which I reflected on aging.

The comment this person attempted to append to that post — which I did not approve — was the poem When I am an old woman I shall wear purple. That was in itself a mistake, though not a fatal one. If ever there was an overused, reflexive cliche response to any woman who mentions aging in a positive light, that poem would be it.

So this PR guy e-mailed me to let me know he’d tried to post that comment. Here’s the start of his message, and where he really screwed up…

He wrote:

“Hello Amy. I don’t think I’ll ever get to put the word ‘bitch’ in a corporate email subject line ever again but happy birthday. I hope you like the purple dresses poem that I commented with on your blog. It has stuck fondly in my memory since I was 13 and while I probably won’t wear purple dresses when I’m older, I aspire to that living.

“Anyway, here’s a pitch with some findings further below…”

And he did, indeed, follow that intro with a PR pitch. The real reason he was contacting me was that he wanted me to write up for CNN.com (where I blog about mobile technology) a study that his company recently released.

What can I say, but: Ick! No! Not in a million years!

I bear no personal animosity toward this media relations rep. But his note squicked me so much that I think it’s worth offering as an example for what people should generally not do when reaching out to strangers in order to try to get them to do something for you.

What was wrong with his approach?

• Transparently slimy.I have no problem that he read a post on my personal blog that contained personal information. I wouldn’t have published that post if I hadn’t intended it to be public. However, using my personal disclosures as a basis to try to ingratiate himself, and then launch straight into a PR pitch, lacked finesse and forethought.
• Presumptuous.If he wanted to comment on my personal post — even with that cliche — fine. Other people who I don’t know commented on that birthday post, and I welcomed (and published) those responses. But it was presumptuous for him to assume that leaving a comment on my personal blog post actually created some kind of personal connection between us that might encourage me, more than otherwise, to use his pitch for a CNN.com story.Granted, I have sometimes struck up meaningful personal connections and friendships via blog comments, and sometimes these cross over with professional matters. This is a process that happens organically over time. Trying to engineer that in a single e-mail is a really bad idea.
• Inappropriate/rude. When I saw the word “bitch” in the subject line of an e-mail from a person with a male name whom I don’t know, I nearly deleted it as spam immediately. That’s not the kind of thing a man should ever say to a woman who doesn’t already know him and consider him a friend. Even if she recently used that word in a blog post. And especially if you’re trying to contact her for professional reasons. No matter what you do, that language just won’t look friendly or funny. Gender power dynamics suck, but they do exist. So it’s dumb to act like they don’t, especially when you’re trying to build bridges.

What could he have done instead? If he felt so moved, he could have left his blog comment. Really, that would have been fine. Cliche included.

Then if he wanted to pitch me, he should have sent me a separate e-mail that did not refer to his blog comment, and that did not use language which could easily be mistaken for a gender-based insult. From there, if I recognized his name, I might have noted or asked him about his blog comment. But it was inappropriate for him to draw this connection, since it implied that I should give his pitch special treatment in a professional decision.

There’s a huge fuzzy gray area between the personal and the professional realms, especially online. So I can understand why these missteps happen. Personally I think it’s futile (and fundamentally not credible) to try to separate the personal and professional spheres entirely. It’s better to blend them thoughtfully in a way that suits you. That’s what I’ve been trying to do since I got online way back in the early 90s.

Being ignorant of, or choosing to ignore, the emotionally and socially crucial distinction between personal and professional information (and how they might imply relationships and influence) leads to overstepping that can look invasive or offensive.

In light of this reality, it’s more important than ever for everyone (especially media pros of all kinds) to be aware that there is still a difference between personal and professional, and to use those different kinds of information mindfully in pursuit of your goals.

In my opinion, journalists should be equally mindful of this pitfall when scouring personal posts on blogs or social media in order to find sources to contact, especially regarding breaking news with deeply personal angles like a murder or arrest. If you want to use digital communication tools to build those kind of community connections, do that up front as much as possible.

If a journalist must approach someone they don’t know about a sensitive personal matter in order to cover a story, be very very sensitive to the personal/professional distinction. Don’t use their available personal info to ingratiate yourself by pretending to be their friend, or that you care for personal reasons, and then try to get them to give you the information for your story. That tactic can work, but it’s unethical and slimy. And from a practical standpoint, it can easily backfire in a way that not only thwarts your goals but undermines your personal and professional reputation in a very public, findable way.

I chose not to publish this PR guy’s name or employer because I really don’t want to smear him personally. He made a mistake, and this is a “teachable moment.” We can all move forward from that.

INDEX: Your blog / Rules of engagement / Twitter / Facebook / Other social media / Scribd and Slideshare

(Note: This toolkit is a work in progress. I invite comments and suggestions. I’m trying to keep it simple — just a few key tools and tips to get people started with basic online engagement.)

1. Home base: Your blog

Links make the web go round, so first things first: You’ll need an easily findable home base on the web that people can link to. This is the most important way to gain search visibility and improve your search ranking.

Your home base should be entirely under your control, easy for search engines to index and understand what’s new, and easy for you to update.

This means you need a blog. If you don’t already have one, I recommend you sign up for a free blog at WordPress.com, and then pay the extra $17/year to register a domain name and “map” (apply) it to your blog.

Getting your own domain name right from the start helps substantially. In the long run you’ll get better search engine visibility, faster, compared to using a subdomain from a service like myblog.blogspot.com. Also, if you end up not liking your blog host (WordPress.com, in this case), you can move your blog elsewhere without breaking inbound links. (That’s not necessarily easy or trouble free, but it’s important to have that option)

You can also use a custom domain with a blog on Tumblr, another popular free blogging platform — but the process is a just little bit more technical.

You don’t need to post often to your blog. But anytime you have something to say that’s more than a tweet or two in length, consider posting it to your blog and then linking to that from social media. This encourages people not just to engage with you, but to share links to your blog — which helps improve your search visibility.

If you already have your own blog, and it’s not under your own domain, don’t panic. If you’ve had that blog for more than a couple of years, and it’s been at least occasionally active, just keep it and use it more frequently. That usually helps more than starting over with a new blog from scratch.

Allow moderated comments. If you publish a blog, it’s a good idea to allow people to comment on your posts. This demonstrates you’re open to discourse. However, do use a comment spam filter like Akismet (which comes with WordPress.com blogs). And if you’re writing about a controversial or sensitive topic, use the WordPress comment moderation feature. To encourage conversation, set up e-mail notifications so you’ll know when you get a comment, and then review and approve/deny them quickly.

You don’t have to take abuse or approve off-topic ramblings, but being willing to engage politely with people who disagree with you is one of the best ways to boost your credibility and visibility.

Make it easy to post to your blog. Install and configure the WordPress Press this bookmarklet in your web browser toolbar. (Other blogging platforms usually have similar posting bookmarklets.) This allows you to blog something you see on the web, and add some commentary, just by pushing one button. Whenever you make something fast and easy, you’re likely to do it more often.

2. General rules of engagement

Whenever you’re interacting with people online — whether in public discussion or private/semiprivate conversation, use these guidelines:

1. Create a useful profile for every service you join. People will want to know who you are before they engage with you. Clarify who you are, what you do or what roles you play, and where you work or other important organizational affiliations. Post at least one picture. It’s helpful to try to use the same, or a similar, username or handle across as many services as possible. But if you use a handle, I recommend also giving your real name to aid credibility.
2. Listen first — a lot! It’s always easier, and more effective. to join a conversation than start one. Also, listening forces you to question your assumptions about what other people think or want.
3. When you do post, respond to or amplify others more than you speak up, self promote, or advocate. Prove that you’re listening, and that you care what others say, and they’ll return the favor. This is basically socially appropriate ingratiation. To see it in action, Aaron Williams just did it here! And hey, so did I, just now
4. Always be helpful, useful, interesting, and supportive — or at the very least, be civil and not creepy. Adding context, clarifying, or clearing up misconceptions (politely, without scolding) with links to supporting material (on your blog or elsewhere) is a great approach to public engagement.
5. Use your blog first. If you have something important to say, or an important question to ask or issue/concern to raise, say it on your blog first and then link to it via social media. This gets you maximum visibility and gets around some of the limitations of services like Twitter or Facebook.
6. Be careful with humor. People are touchy and it’s easy to seem sarcastic online. If you offend someone by accident, apologize, even if you think they’re being thin-skinned.
7. Disagreement and criticism are good — as long as it’s civil. They are opportunities to learn, explore, and extend your reach beyond your existing circle. Engage with your critics, and be humble (but not self-denigrating). You don’t have to agree with them to treat them with respect.
8. Don’t be a jerk. Resist the temptation to defend yourself, argue with people, or demean/ridicule/bait others. That behavior not only discourages positive engagement; it attracts trolls.
9. Do not feed the trolls. There will always be trolls. Just ignore them. If they’re overly aggressive or persistent, then block/unfriend them. But do not respond to them or engage them.

3. Use Twitter

Once you grasp the rules of online engagement, it’s time to put them to use. Twitter is a good place to start.

If you haven’t done so already, sign up for Twitter. I recommend just using one account so you present a coherent and nuanced identity, which is inherently more credible and engaging. If you try to be all professional all the time on Twitter, that tends to discourage engagement. And maintaining multiple Twitter accounts can get really confusing.

Who to follow? Follow the people you want to engage on Twitter, see what they’re talking about and who they’re engaging with on topics that interest you. Don’t just automatically follow everyone you know, or anyone who follows you. That quickly makes Twitter seem too chaotic and less useful.

Another way to find good people to follow is to search Twitter for relevant keywords or hashtags (keywords that start with “#”, a Twitter convention that makes it easier to follow topics or events rather than people).

If you’re highly focused on discussion of certain topics or events, I recommend using a column-based Twitter application such as Tweetdeckor Hootsuite so that you can more easily filter the firehose of incoming tweets into more understandable streams.

What to tweet. I recommend that 2/3 of your tweets should be either responses to other people’s tweets, or retweets of tweets you find especially useful or engaging. The people you’re responding to or retweeting will see that (Twitter makes that obvious). If you’re being helpful, useful, supportive, complimentary — or at least polite, fun, or interesting — they’ll probably think well of you and may follow you.

If you’re tweeting regularly about a topic, look for relevant current hashtags that people are using and include them in your tweets. This will expand your community, making you visible to people who aren’t yet directly following you.

Monitor your replies and direct messages. When someone tries to address you directly, respond as quickly as possible.

4. Use Facebook

While Twitter is useful for reaching almost any group of people about any topic, Facebook is sometimes useful and sometimes not. It depends on who you’re trying to reach, whether those people tend to hang out on Facebook, and what they tend to use Facebook for. But Facebook is so popular that it’s important to learn how to use it, in case you need it.

In my experience, Facebook is generally not the best venue for high-level conversations among specialists, such as utility engineers discussing power grid management strategies. But it might be a very good place to engage a consumer-level audience in a discussion about energy efficiency, or renewable power, or the smart grid.

I recommend that you search Facebook for groups and pages that would seem to attract the kind of people you wish to engage. Join the discussions there — but only stay with the groups that seem most relevant or useful.

Use your Facebook wall to post things that you think might interest the people you’re trying to engage — and occasionally tag items with the names of specific Facebook friends if you’re pretty sure they’d be interested.

Separate accounts? If, after you learn how to use Facebook, you decide you should seriously use it to engage people for professional or issue-related purposes, it’s a good idea to set up a separate Facebook account for that. (The people you friend on Facebook to interest in protecting your watershed probably would get annoyed by your photos of your kitchen renovation — although your actual friends might really like those photos.). This gets a little complicated, because Facebook accounts are about people, not organizations.

However, if you aren’t using Facebook much for professional/issue-related outreach or advocacy, you can probably get by well enough with using your personal Facebook account. If you’re not sure, just use your personal account to learn and experiment.

Facebook apps, pages, groups, and events. Facebook offers lots of ways to connect with people. In general, it’s a good idea to use your personal account to experiment with using things like pages and groups that other people have already set up, before you try it yourself. And in general, don’t try to create something new when an existing effort is already going strong. Just try to be a constructive, visible part of what people are already doing.

4. E-mail lists, forums, and other social media

People talk in all kinds of ways online besides Twitter and Facebook. In general, figure out where the people you need to engage already are, and go there. E-mail lists and forums are still very popular, especially on niche topics. Sometimes you might need to get permission from the group leader to join.

Depending on your goals, strengths, and who you need to reach, other kinds of social media such as Flickr (photos), YouTube (videos), SoundCloud (audio), etc. can also be useful.

Social bookmarking services such as Delicious and Diigo can help you engage for some communities, on some topics. They generally aren’t a venue for direct discussion, for the most part, but they’re valuable for sharing links to information and resources. If you’re already using one of these tools as a “backup brain,” why not get some more mileage out of that effort? Generally you can set up groups, lists, and other modes of sharing on these services.

Sometimes communities form around tags or other features of social bookmarking services. For example, lots of smart, influential technologists follow the nonprofit technology (NPtech) tag on Delicious.

5. Scribd and Slideshare

Scribd and Slideshare are especially useful services for publishing or sharing documents or presentations.

Both allow you to post the full document and create a YouTube-style embeddable player, which you (or others) can then add to blog posts, event invitations, or other online media. These players also include a “download” button.

Make sure you’re only publishing content that you own the rights to, is not subject to copyright, or that you have permission from the copyright holder to post.

The advantage of using these services to host documents is that they allow you to easily bundle substantial content into a blog post, so people don’t have to follow a link somewhere to get it. Also, if you annotate or highlight a document, you can post a version of the document with those additions.

So for instance, if you’re a chemist and you have the right to publish your latest journal article about mercury pollution in rivers, you could annotate the pdf of that article to highlight points that would be important to non-experts, and explain what they mean in plain language.

But also, these services get very good search visibility in their own right. So when you post documents to these sites, make sure each document includes a link back to the relevant post on your blog (or at least to your blog’s home page) so people who discover you there can connect to you via your online home base.

…These are just a few very basic tools to start your online engagement strategy. There are plenty more, but based on my extensive experience these are the best places to start. Learn how to use these tools — and how to use them together — to cultivate the kind of online engagement you seek.

IF YOU’RE REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT ACTIVISM or advocacy of any kind, I highly recommend Deanna Zandt’s recent book Share This: How you will change the world with social networking. I bow to her greatness

In general, this has been a pretty mixed experience…

Most news orgs are doing a great job of publishing the right amount of alerts (no more than 1-2 daily, unless there’s a major breaking local story), with the right kind and amount of information (not just headline shovelware

BUT: The links included in these text alerts are where these services fall short.

Yesterday, on the Knight Digital Media Center site, I wrote a list of tips about how to make links that work for all mobile users, especially keeping feature phone users in mind.

See: Engage your mobile audience with links that work for them

This is a followup to my Jan. 21 post: How missing links hurt online news

Yes, the Collaboratory has a Ning community site. However, it’s always easier to engage people when you go where they are, rather than demanding they come to your site just to talk and share. Hence the fan page — so we can bring the activity of the Collaboratory to our members who spend more time on Facebook than on the Collaboratory site.

I still hate Facebook, but since it’s so damn popular I have no choice but to use it, especially to connect with various communities. One of the many things that annoy me about Facebook is how difficult they make it to import content from several different feeds onto a fan page’s comment wall.

I’m by no means a Facebook expert, but I just hacked a solution to that particular problem, and thought I’d share it…

WHAT I WANTED TO INTEGRATE:

Besides Facebook, the RJI Collaboratory has several online presences:

• Ning community
• Twitter feed
• Delicious network

I wanted items from all of these to be published to the wall of our Facebook fan page, so that our “fans” and others would see them in their Facebook news feed.

You can import a feed so that its items appear as “notes” on your fan page, which in turn get published to your fan page’s comment wall (Jean O’Brien explains how). However, Facebook only lets you import ONE feed — not several. And each of the Collaboratory’s online presences has its own feed.

MY SOLUTION:

I used the free service Xfruits to combine our Ning, Delicious, and Twitter feeds into a single feed: RJIcollab Aggregator.

Then I imported that aggregated feed into our fan page, using O’Brien’s process.

It seems to be working. Items from Ning, Delicious, and Twitter are all getting posted to our comment wall. Check it out.

…One side benefit of this is that Facebook makes it much easier than Ning to have conversations about specific content items. For instance, on the home page of the Collaboratory on Ning, we have a box that displays the latest links from our Delicious network. However, Ning offers no way for members to post comments about that content.

In Ning communities, you can only have public discussions through comments to blog posts (and Ning doesn’t let you import feeds as blog posts), or in forum threads (which just gets to be a mess and isn’t very findable).

Our hope is that our Facebook fan page will be a useful (and perhaps easier-to-use) complement to our Ning community, as well as a venue for broader distribution and discussion of the Collaboratory.

…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.

1. Back up your entire machine onto TWO EXTERNAL DRIVES. It’s a good idea to run Time Machine backup as often as possible. But when you’re running the risk of having to hand over your mac AND your backup drive to a technician (which is always the case when attempting a significant operating system update), it’s a good idea to have a separate copy of your backup in your own possession.

2. Verify the condition of your hard drive. Apple is marketing Snow Leopard chiefly as a way to enhance performance. However, if your hard drive is developing problems (as mine apparently was), that will impair performance. Installing Snow Leopard won’t fix HD problems, and it may even cause your drive to fail during installation (as mine did)

So Verify your disk using your Mac’s Disk Utility before you upgrade. That can indicate HD problems. It’s not a perfect predictor of problems, but it’s at least some help. Had I thought to do this, I might not have lost 3 workdays and be freezing my ass off in an over-air conditioned Apple Store right now.

If your disk verification process indicates problems, and if you’re experiencing decreasing performance, it’s probably a safer bet to get your HD replaced and data restored correctly BEFORE attempting to upgrade your operating system. If you have to go to the Apple Store to do this, make sure they put in the work order that you do NOT want the OS upgraded yet.

3. Check your warranty coverage. I purchased Apple Care when I bought my mac a couple of years ago, and it’s still in effect. So Apple replaced my HD for free. I’m not sure whether the warranty covers drives that are having problems (rather than have already failed), but it’s worth asking about.

4. Line up a backup computer. If, like me, you work or life could get seriously screwed if you lose your computer for a few days or more, make sure you have handy access to a functional backup machine BEFORE doing a significant system update. Load it up with all the software & data you’ll need to do what you need to do, and test it.

Personally, I’m getting a Linux netbook ASAP.

5. Check your ProCare staus. ProCare is Apple’s preferred service program. It costs about $100/yr, and it’s worth it if you depend in your Mac. If you need a speedy repair, make sure you have current ProCare coverage. You van buy it on the spot at the Apple Store if you need it.

6. Don’t leave the Apple Store without your computer the way you need it. If your OS X update goes dreadfully wrong (as mine did), required them to wipe your drive, have the Apple Store staff restore your operating system and data from your Time Machine backup. Don’t do all of that yourself.

My experience shows that this installation/restore process is trickier than Apple claims. It’s surprisingly easy for the Time Machine restoration to not work right with a freshly installed OS. Make them do everything you need do your machine is up and running. Bring this blog post with you if they balk, and stick to your guns.

This means bringing your external HD with your current Time Machine backup to the Apple Store with you, of course. And before you leave, sync your iPhone and make sure it works. My iPhone sync is not yet working, so I’m staying put in this store for now.

7. Check the “Lemon Law” in your state. The details if this federal consumer protection law are defined by each state. In many states, including CA, lemon laws cover not just vehicles but also consumer products. This may give you recourse if you get screwed by Apple on mac-related issues, like a disastrous OS update you paid for.

Also have the phone number of the local Better Business Bureau handy, and be willing to file a complaint if necessary.

8. Don’t attempt a major system update a couple of weeks after having knee surgery. I’m just saying, it makes everything that much more difficult, aggravating, and risky.

pi

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently went online-only.

Recently in Online Journalism Review, Dave Chase (owner and publisher of Sun Valley Online) offered a considerable amount of specific advice on running the revenue (advertising) side of an online-only news operation — with an eye toward what might help the Seattle Post-Intelligencer succeed in this field.

Even if your feet are firmly planted on the editorial side of the traditional newsroom/advertising firewall, this is context that everyone in the news business should know. Updated journalistic skills and newsroom tools (especially your content management system) might better support online ad sales…

Chase wrote:

“The painful truth is that 99% of the local Internet plays have proven how NOT to develop a sustainable model. Some newspapers have claimed their online properties are profitable but this is a suspect claim since they weren’t burdened with the costs borne by the print product. In other words, most local online plays are subsidized by an offline counterpart which the P-I no longer has.”

He went on to list the top 10 business mistakes that newspapers must avoid as they go online-only. Among these tips are:

• Don’t neglect research. “Many local sites assume that since they’ve been in the business for a long time that they don’t need to conduct any research with their customers and non-customers. When we did research, we learned things that changed how we positioned our site to our advertisers as well as it informed our editorial direction.”
• Don’t try to be all things to all advertisers. “While most of us in the local publishing business think our site is available to everyone, the P-I should avoid the one-size-fits-all mentality. It’s a mistake to have your sales team start calling on as many advertisers as possible without regard to vertical market, psychographic attributes, etc.”
• Expensive shoes not required. “There’s a myth that since advertising is a ‘relationship’ business it’s necessary to hire expensive shoe-leather salespeople as that’s the way it’s always been done. …Unfortunately, they forget the fact that they are trying to extend beyond the normal 10 percent penetration of local businesses that newspapers have and that this means less revenue per account. That demands a lower cost model. Just because you are hiring an experienced media sales person with lots of field experience doesn’t mean that they’ll know how to create a low cost customer acquisition team/model. This is a radically different skill set.”

Defining the value of an online news outlet, using that to attract a strong community, clarifying the value of the various facets of that community, and relating it all back to advertisers in their own terms, are core business considerations that affect editorial operations. In particular, breaking the one-size-fits-all news approach is probably key.

I’d add to Chase’s points that this is where having a sophisticated, flexible, adaptable content management system becomes key.

Having a CMS that can easily treat stories not as solid blocks of narrative, but rather as configurable structures of information modules (where each story building block is described not just in terms of its content but in terms of its relevance to various audience segments) can support smarter ad placement and eventually allow for customized news presentation. The data from such a system also arms ad sales staff with a more persuasive pitch.

A modular approach to building stories would require a somewhat different set of reporting and editorial processes — especially tagging the information as it is filed and edited. Most journalists are not used to creating structured information, and most journalism schools teach little or nothing about this topic beyond the inverted pyramid concept. Yet if journalism is moving online and hopes to continue to attract advertisers effectively, journalists and editors probably should learn how to structure the content they create in a way that supports the way the online advertising business works today.

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

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.