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Kevin: From O'Reilly Radar: "According to Eric A. Meyer, an author and HTML/CSS expert, the answer is a definitive yes. In the following Q&A, Meyer explains why HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are the "classic three" for developers and designers. He also pushes past the HTML5 vs. Flash bombast to offer a rational and much-needed comparison of the toolsets."
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Kevin: I'm not sure I agree with the dissenting opinion of the Judge Frances Rothschild who said the appellate court ruling “alters the legal landscape to the severe detriment of First Amendment rights.” The exemption of 'fighting words' from First Amendment protection was established in the 1942 Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire case. This case may very well be another that refines the 'fighting words' doctrine. However, one of the students threatened to kill the plaintiff with an ice pick and then tried to pass that off as 'jocular' online hyperbole.
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Kevin: A chart of 2009 media industry ad revenue in the US by Kantar Media. "The only major growth area: Online ad spending. Internet ads — display only — increased 7% in 2009, according to the report. … Magazines dropped 17%, newspapers and radio each dropped 20%, and outdoor fell 13%."
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Kevin: Viv Mag shows off an example of a new video heavy, motion magazine cover for the iPad. It's an interesting look into some of the design thinking behind new content concepts for the media slates like the iPad.
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Kevin: Stephen Brook (my colleague at the Guardian) highlights a memo from News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks to staff about an upcoming paywall for subscribers to the Times and Sunday Times. She writes: "Of course, we expect to see the numbers of unique users of our sites come down dramatically. But the people who register to our new digital products will be customers who have made a positive decision to pay a fair price for journalism that they value, and they will be those who are more committed to and engaged with our titles." It will be interesting to see how this works.
For years I’ve been talking about the Blogger Lifecycle – the way in which business bloggers react to the act of business blogging. Last week this topic featured in a workshop I was running so I finally drew the graph that has been in my head for the last several years.
Based loosely on the Gartner Hype Cycle, it tracks the emotional response of business bloggers and social media evangelists as they develop their online presence. In reality, people’s response to the act of blogging (or other social media activity) varies depending on a number of factors, including:
- The evangelist’s personality
- Amount and quality of reader feedback they get, e.g. comments
- Quality of feedback from peers/managers
- Time pressure
- Success of venture as they perceive it
In my experience, evangelists tend to start at either:
1. Scepticism/Uncertainty: They are unsure of themselves and/or of the value of social media.
or
2. Enthusiasm: They are keen to engage with social media.
As the social media project progresses, the novelty wears off and the evangelist is faced with the reality that:
- Social media takes time and effort
- It can be hard to get comments and feedback
- It can be hard to become a part of the wider community
- Enthusiasm doesn’t always result in action
That last point is a broad one: It’s not just the enthusiasm of the blogger we’re talking about, but of their readers, colleagues and managers too. Although the blogger might be getting enthusiastic responses from readers, if those responses don’t result in an action, e.g. discussion in the comments or even sales calls, it can still be demoralising. And if enthusiasm by colleagues and managers isn’t matched by relevant actions on their part, e.g. helping promote the blog, that can also damage the blogger’s sense of how things are going.
Lack of comments/feedback can make the evangelist feel isolated and unappreciated, undermining their enthusiasm. Even as an experienced blogger, I still suffer from this. Starting a new blog these days is really very hard and if you get no feedback or, worse, negative comments it’s easy to feel disillusioned. And at the bottom of the Trough of Disillusionment is when a blogger or social media evangelist is most likely to quit.
This is the point at which the good social media manager steps in and supports the blogger/evangelist, encouraging them to carry on, helping them refine their blogging style and giving them tips on how to promote it. Evangelists whose work is appreciated internally, who are supported by peers and management, and who feel that they are producing something of value are more likely to persist with their social media work during these difficult periods.
Evangelists are subject to the same time pressures as anyone else and if they are are not completely committed to their social media work they will find it too easy to sideline it. Successful evangelists find ways to embed their social media activities into their work day and create new habits that support those activities.
If I were running an evangelist programme, I’d create internal communities of practice and encourage evangelists to support one another, share best practice, and sense-check each other’s reactions to difficult situations. This kind of peer support has proved very helpful in some of the projects I’ve worked on, and often it’s so useful that it springs up all by itself as the evangelists naturally start to help each other. Giving them a place to talk right from the beginning jumpstarts that process.
Now, you might wonder why all this matters. So what if someone starts a blog or a LinkedIn Group and doesn’t carry it on? Blogs die all the time… Well, frankly, I think that abandoned blogs, Twitter streams, LinkedIn or Facebook Groups do not reflect well on the company. If I turn up at a Twittter page or a blog and see that it’s hasn’t been updated in months, it tells me that the company just doesn’t care about communicating with its customers, which I interpret to mean that it’s not going to care about me either.
Even in a professional context, using social media is an experience that involves human emotions. It’s easy to lapse into the ‘we’re all professionals here, emotions are irrelevant’ attitude, but that’s clearly nonsense. Business is made of people and people are emotional. Pretending we aren’t doesn’t get us anywhere useful. Acknowledging that we all have ups and downs, that social media is a long term investment requiring long term emotional investment, and supporting that investment are essential to the ultimate success of any social media project. Company ignore the emotional at their peril.
