I just listened to today’s episode, Future Sci-Fi, which is about the intersection of science and science fiction — how they’ve influenced each other. I’ve heard most of these anecdotes before, but nice to have them pulled together into a well-crafted narrative.

Worth a listen.

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

1. More conversation and annotation, less exposition.

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

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

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

2. More text, less voice.

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

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

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

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

3. News: Listening up, reading down

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

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

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

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

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

4. Journaling: Sharp increase

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

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

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

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

5. Twitter as antidepressant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Set up an account on a blog hosting service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Map your domain name to your new site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Create your blog within your new site

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

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

5. Learn how to post to your blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now your new site is really ready for action.

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

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

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

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

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

Have fun with your better business site!

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

For instance…

Whenever you:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just finished reading a killer classic fiction mashup (literally), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It’s a parody of the Jane Austen novel (which I tried to read in college and found unbearably tedious).

I must admit, though: The addition of a Night of the Living Dead-style zombie plague made all the endless fretting and plotting over how to present  oneself as appropriately marriageable in polite society surprisingly entertaining and understandable.

Because the thing is: The strictures of British aristocratic society — particularly how women were held in chattel status, and the ceaseless power plays of verbal indirection — were indeed nightmarish, soul-destroying, and cannibalistic.

Therefore, I don’t think it’s a stretch to consider this book a seminal feminist treatise. (God knows we need more entertaining seminal works of feminism!)

If you read this book (and I recommend it) don’t miss the reader’s discussion guide at the end. It contains 10 questions. Here are a couple of my favorites…

2. “Is Mr. Collins merely too fat and stupid to notice his wife’s gradual transformation into a zombie, or could there be another explanation for his failure to acknowledge the problem? If so, what might that explanation be? How might his occupation (as a pastor) relate to his denial of the obvious, or his decision to hang himself?”

6. “Some critics have suggested that the zombies represent the authors’ views toward marriage — an endless curse that sucks the life out of you and just won’t die. Do you agree?”

So: Discuss….

(See? That was just 44 words.)

Why am I telling you this? At this weekend’s Thin Air Summit, a great new media event in Denver, I gave a session on writing called Blogging: Every Word Counts. (Video should be online soon.)

Apparently, keynoter Jeremiah Owyang was intrigued by one point I made, which he tweeted:

“@agahran suggests that you have to make your point on online content within the first 62 words. Are you that disciplined?”

Thanks, Jeremiah. Yes, it’s true, I did say that. I know it sounds draconian, but here’s my rationale…

1. Typical reading speed: 250 words per minute
2. Amount of time a reader will grant you to demonstrate value (that is, after your headline has proved interesting, and if you’re lucky): 15 seconds (0.25 min)
3. Number of words in which you need to make your most important point:
   250 x 0.25 = 62.5

…So call it 62 words.

You don’t have to stop there, of course. After you quickly convey your main “so what,” you can go on to elaborate and support your point. Just don’t go overboard. People may read further. But even if they don’t, they will have gotten some demonstrable value even from that brief encounter with you — maybe enough to recommend or link to your writing, or to keep checking you out, or to bookmark it and read it when they have more time.

miniskirt

Brevity -- and attitude -- can work for you. (Source: Tu Foto, via Flickr, CC license)

As Metzger Associates president Doyle Albee quipped at my session:

“Good writing should be like a skirt: Long enough to cover subject, but short enough to stay interesting.”

(Needless to say, Albee’s remark was immediately tweeted and launched a salacious conference meme, during which I may have promised I’d wear a miniskirt and fishnet stockings to the next Thin Air Summit. Be forewarned.)

As always, some smart folks disagree with me. My friend, mentor, and occasional verbal sparring partner Dave Taylor was at the session and appeared to disagree with my advice. He said that more educated, intelligent readers prefer longer, more thoughtful and eloquent content. He may be right. Reader preferences vary. If you think longer-form content might work better with your readers, experiment.

However, I still firmly believe that even educated, intelligent people who enjoy longer-form content also are caught in the attention crash and tend to do a fair amount of media snacking — phenomena that Owyang discussed in his Thin Air Summit presentation, The Future of Media in the Social Era:

What do you think? Is 62 words too tight or just right to really make a point? Please comment below.

nutrition-facts

What if you could read the label on news stories, to gauge quality and relevance? (Source: Keetsa, via Flickr, CC license)

I’m not talking about marketing news brands. I’m talking about marketing the merits of each story, right in the story.

Erin Kissane offers sage advice for writing product pages that I suspect could, with a twist, also make it easier for people (and search engines, and the semantic web) to grasp the value of quality news:

“Most product pages need to answer these questions:

1. Who is the product for?
2. What is the product?
3. What does the product do for its target user?
4. Why is the product better than the available alternatives?

“Stupidly simple, right? But the lack of answers to these questions is what leads to thousands upon thousands of wasted hours (and more money than I want to think about) spent writing, serving, and reading meaningless dreck that doesn’t inform users, promote products, or help anyone.”

Now: What if news stories included similar context? At least through some sort of categorization or tagging on the back-end. That could enhance relevance in search results, semantic web applications, or site features like optional pop-up boxes or an iGoogle-like personalized news interface.

That revised list might look like this…

1. Who is this news for? Communities or demographics most likely to be interested or involved.
2. What kind of coverage is this? Breaking news, update, alert, feature, interview, event report, data, analysis, backgrounder, info graphic, timeline, fact box, photo, commentary, how-to, topic introduction, etc. Most news venues already address this to some extent by section heads, but that’s usually more about topic than type of content.
3. How might this news help its target audiences? I’m not exactly sure how to best handle this, but example benefits might include civic empowerment and government oversight, personal financial stability, understanding the local economy, personal and public safety, knowing your neighbors, etc. (Help me think this through, what are your ideas on this one?)
4. Why is this news better than available alternatives? Here’s where being transparent about journalistic processes and expertise can really shine as a selling point — crucial in an age where most people have easy access to multiple news sources for coverage of virtually anything. What about “Reporter has 15 years covering education issues, including three years in this city.” Or: “All facts verified and/or corroborated.” Or: “This reporter is not affiliated with this issue or any related organizations.” Or: “Highlights Native American community impacts and perspective.” Or: “Eighth report on this unfolding story.”

These kinds of things often get discussed in a newsroom when planning coverage and writing/editing a story — but communities also would find this context useful, I think. It strikes me that news stories often assume either that people are able and willing to read between the lines to figure out this stuff out, or that they don’t really care about it. But in fact, these criteria help define relevance. Spelling them out could save people time and uncertainty. And: In an era of information overload, obvious relevance (not content) rules.

Clarifying relevance and quality context for each story (at least on the back end, but possibly also directly presenting it to communities) might help demonstrate the value of quality coverage. That’s not something that news orgs, communities, or individuals can afford to keep taking for granted.

Right now, I’m unclear how exactly search engines might use this information. I’ll investigate that further. So I’m thinking in the near term it might actually make sense for news providers or aggregators to either provide direct access to this information, where available, from stories. Or they could create personalizable interfaces (highlight stories related to local schools), or integrate it into site search (so you could, say, easily find backgrounders on a particular topic).

But in the long run, I suspect that adding this kind of context, in the form of metadata, might be very useful indeed to semantic web applications that relate concepts and context. Once we get beyond facile keywords and categories, there are many layers to what makes news useful. The semantic web might be the key to everyone — including journalists — getting more value out of quality news.

The title of my talk is listed on the schedule as “Blogging: Making every word count” — which I’ve just decided to re-edit because I dislike unnecessary gerunds, especially twice in the same title

Grammar aside, that title is deliberately nebulous. Here’s why…

I’ve given plenty of writing workshops, and I’ve found that the best way to handle them is to address the specific needs of the people in the room. People who go to writing workshops ALWAYS have questions in mind. This means that I generally overprepare for these sessions and later regret it.

…In fact, that’s exactly what happened for the blog writing workshop I gave in July at BlogHer 08. I spent time preparing this list of tips and resources, but ended up delving almost immediately into people’s questions. This post wasn’t wasted effort — it ended up getting lots of traffic after the session. It still does, as a matter of fact.

Since that earlier post ended up being a good general resource (and good linkbait), I’ll use it as the launching point for my talk on Sunday. And I’ll also refer to Effective writing for the real world, which I published in 2004 but still holds true.

All of this indicates one important point of making every word count in your blog — the more mileage you can get out of each post, the better!

I hope to see some Contentious readers at the Thin Air Summit. Say hi!

AMY’S E-MAIL: amy@gahran.com

Twitter: agahran

Questions that came in from my Twitter posse:

• Heather Larson: Does original content still matter, or is link reporting/echo chambering the news the way of things to come?
• Chris Kauza: “Editorial calendar” for your blog? Make publishing more “predictable” less “accidental.”
• Greg Harman: is there a place for all lowercase morons like me? but, really, do ALL grammar rules still apply? will whimsy destroy writing? lol
• Uberbabyboomer: “How can we make sure that all schools teach students to use social media as part of their writing programs instead not allowing it. When social media use by students become discipline referrals that important kind of writing for kids is not recognized as important.

I asked these students whether they read blogs. As is common, the vast majority said no. But, as with Web users of all types, it’s likely that in fact they do read blogs far more often than they think. That’s because nearly all Web users frequently encounter blogs through search engine results. But they may not realize that, since many weblogs don’t call themselves (or resemble) blogs. In fact, they often look just like any other Web site — except that they happen to be supported by a blogging platform on the back end.

Why should young journalists care about this? Because in a professional environment where staying findable equals sustained opportunity and flexibility, search engines are a key arbiter of your career. The more findable and linkable you are, the more search engines will reward you.

…And search engines really, really love blogs…

Journalists at any career stage who hope to keep working and stay relevant (regardless of the fortunes of any or all news organizations) should aspire to be as findable as possible. The easiest way to achieve this is to use your very own blog to build a strong, persistent personal brand.

The key to building your personal brand is to publish easily findable content on your own site — not just via your employer’s site, nor just within a community site or group weblog. Your very own site.

Having your own blog is media career insurance. It will serve as your “home base” where you establish your personal reputation, track record, abilities, interests, and aspirations. It’s a rewarding, useful, persistent way to be professionally and personally generous. It can attract help, insight, serendipity, and opportunity. And it lets you achieve all this consistently, despite inevitable changes in your job, bosses, beat, location, or goals.

Even better, blogging tools make online publishing easy so you’ll probably publish more often.

It’s never too late to start your own blog. Still, the earlier you start, the better. Search engines (especially Google) tend to accord higher rank to sites that stick around. Thus you can end up well-positioned in search rankings simply by starting a blog and sticking with it.

You don’t even have to blog every day. Over time, even blogging as little as a few times per month can yield fairly strong search positioning.

Here are my tips for starting and running your own blog:

1. GET A GOOD DOMAIN NAME

Pick something that’s easy to spell and remember, and that preferably ends in .com, .org, or .net. Don’t make it too cute or too restrictive — but you can still have fun. For example, even though I own the domain for my last name (gahran.com), since 1998 my main blog has been Contentious.com. This was originally intended as a pun on the then-nascent term “content,” but its unintentional open-endedness has given me considerable and valuable room to explore a wide range of topics beyond media and journalism.

However, choosing your name (like HowardOwens.com) or nickname (like DigiDave.org) as your blog’s domain also can work well.

The ultimate point of your blog is to promote your personal brand, so your domain should be more about you than a particular topic or place. This gives you room to change, grow and publish what you want. Also, owning your own domain gives you the option of switching blog platforms or hosts without losing the benefit of traffic and search rank you’ve worked to build.

2. MAP YOUR DOMAIN TO YOUR SITE

This will cause every page on your site to bear your domain in its URL — which helps search visibility and page rank for your site.

Domain mapping is important if, for technical simplicity, you choose a hosted blogging platform like TypePad. There, the default is to assign your site a subdomain like myblog.typepad.com — which is less impressive to search engines. Avoid hosted blogging services that don’t allow you to map your domain to your blog.

If you have your own Web hosting account (such as with GoDaddy or DreamHost), and register your domain there, your domain will probably automatically map to your site.

Note: Domain mapping is much easier to do when you first start to blog, rather than apply retroactively to an existing blog. But retroactive mapping is better than none, if you want search visibility. Just be sure to employ 301 redirects from your old site URLs, so Google will know you really just moved your site, it’s not a new or different site.

3. STICK WITH YOUR DOMAIN

Time and continuity work in your favor with search engines. The longer you blog at the same domain, the higher you will probably rank. If you have an established domain that gets search visibility, it’s probably best to stick with it even if your focus changes over time. Resist the temptation to rebrand yourself with a new domain, or to spin off special-purpose blogs under separate domains. This dilutes your “Google Juice.” (See now why it’s best to choose a domain name that gives you room to evolve?)

4. DON’T WORK FOR ANYONE WHO WON’T LET YOU KEEP YOUR OWN BLOG

Ever. It’s just not worth it. Consider maintaining your own blog a basic right of being in the media business. The danger with agreeing not to blog is that you sacrifice the findability that you’ve worked to build — and that you will need more than ever if or when your current job ends.

It’s kind of like this: What if you have your own personal IRA for retirement. You’ve been paying into it for years, it’s building up. You get offered a shiny new job and they tell you, “If you want to work for us, you have to cash in your IRA. No, we won’t reimburse you for penalty fees. Don’t worry, we have a great 401-K plan. The catch in, if your job here ever ends, you don’t get to keep any of the money from that 401 K.”

Bad deal.

That said, it is fine to negotiate with your employer about reasonable concessions regarding your blog, such as no blogging on your site about workplace issues. But outright blogging prohibitions should be a flat dealbreaker.

Most media employers do back down on flat blogging prohibitions and negotiate compromises if challenged. So I strongly recommend that you push back and negotiate. No employer should be able to dictate your online identity. They don’t own who you are.

5. JOIN THE CONVERSATION, AND LINK BACK TO YOURSELF

For many reasons, online conversation ultimately makes you more findable. And if all the conversation channels you use point back to your blog, Google will love your blog more. That’s because inbound links from other sites (even in comments you make) are a key ingredient of Google Juice.

So when you comment on other blogs (and you should), always link back to your blog’s home page. Put your blog’s URL in your e-mail signature line. Include it in your social media service profiles, plus anywhere else you can think of. Don’t worry, this isn’t pushy; it’s normal. It’s even expected as a matter of courtesy and transparency.

6. KEEP YOUR OWN BLOG GOING, EVEN IF YOU ALSO BLOG ELSEWHERE

For instance, I have always blogged on Contentious.com even though I edit Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits blog and probably post there more frequently. That’s because Contentious.com is the core of my personal brand. I have collected a valuable community there.

Furthermore, Contentious.com currently boasts a Google page rank of seven (out of a possible 10). By comparison, the main Tidbits page currently ranks at six, while the Poynter Online home page ranks at seven.

…How are you using your blog to build your personal brand? Has it helped you through career transitions (such as from journalism to academia, or from reporter to editor, or from employed to self-employed)? What tips would you offer? And if you still don’t have your own blog, why not? Please comment below.

(NOTE: I originally published this on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits on Sept. 16, 2008. See the comments there.)

But the big bummer here is that I don’t see any way to create links in a blog post here. Just text. Hmph.

(UPDATE: I might be wrong about that. Editing here to add a link to my Twitter page. We’ll see if that works…)

(UPDATE 2: AHA! It does work! I can handcode HTML with this app. But it’s ultra-tedious.)

Of course, there’s still the glaring usability problem that there is NO GODDAMN COPY AND PASTE on the iphone! :-/

What am I supposed to do, memorize URLs 4 characters at a time & keep switching between the wordpress app and mobile Safari until I get the whole thing? Probably I’ll just scribble them down in my paper notebook and then type them in. How’s THAT for cross-platform technology integration?

Well, at least the WordPress iphone app works. That’s a good start.

UPDATE 3: TECH BREAKING NEWS!!!

New iPhone copy & paste tool: