Category Archives: Blogging

Big St. Louis architectural firm getting their blog on

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Clyde found this blogging success story in the St. Louis Business Journal. It’s about HOK a global architectural firm with headquarters in St. Louis (I assume). It’s a biggie, with $752 million in revenue in 2008.

A year ago they launched a blog (HOKLife.com) to put a more human face on the firm, which has 2,000+ employees, and to communicate with potential hires, clients and competitors.

It’s a group blog with three dozen contributors from their offices around the world, whose posts, by the way, are not edited. Senior writer John Gilmore:

“Young readers are very savvy, and they know when something’s not authentic. If hour’s not authentic, it’s the kiss of death for a corporate blog.”

True that. The Business Journal article included some findings of a 2009 survey (of companies with more than 1,000 employees). Among the findings, companies with blogs reported higher levels of customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, greenness, revenue and market share.

The companies with blogs reported revenue per employee of $336,792, compared to $263,333 for those without blogs.

Despite success stories like this one, there remains –even in our company– pockets of resistance to blogging as a communications tool. And I’m convinced it comes down to control. Like HOK’s Gilmore said above, it’s got to be authentic and that means unfiltered and unedited. And that’s really difficult for managers who are centralized, command-and-control guys in their DNA.

If you have a subscription to the StL Biz Journal, you can read the full article here.

Tag cloud

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We (yes, there IS a mouse in my pocket) migrated one of our websites over to WordPress this week. As near as we can determine, more than 46,000 stories were imported. My role in this has been modest but I did spend a good bit of time working with the categories, keywords, tags and other meta data used to organize all of those news and sports stories.

There are less than 5,000 posts to this blog but it would be impossible (okay, very difficult) to find anything without a good tagging scheme. One of the more common approaches to displaying those tags is the “tag cloud.” I have one on the right side of this page, near the bottom. And here’s the tag cloud for my flickr account.

tag-cloud-flickr

My friend Scott doesn’t like how tag clouds use different size text to indicate the most and least common topics. He thinks it looks “sloppy.” I find the visual cue very intuitive and easy to use. (I can see I have some clean-up to do)

Strangely, tagging is a bit like curling your tongue. Some people can do it and some just can’t. I’m getting better at it.

Blogs never went away

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Yes, I am easily seduced. I admit it. I’m like a pillow, I keep the impression of the last person who sat on me. Twitter, Posterous… I love new stuff and tend to get carried away. I’ve posted her less frequently since I began dallying with these new tools. But, as Dave Winer reminds us (in a post to Robert Scoble regarding sale of FriendFeed to MySpace Facebook), I can always come home to momma.

“Our blogs are still there, as is the web and the Internet. They never went away just because we foolishly flirted with something fast and easy and seductive. Our blogs never went away, they’re still ready to share our ideas and connect us with others. We’ll go back to basics now, take what we learned from this round of innovation, and build it for real this time.”

I never got the FriendFeed bug but I can’t believe MySpace Facebook owning it is good news for users. But hey, if MS bought Yahoo! they’d probably screw up flickr, so…

The point is, my blog is mine. Nobody can buy it or mess with it. It’s my place to “write things down.”

The siren call of Posterous

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http://ihnatko.posterous.com/damn-i-really-like-posterous-now-what
The siren call of Posterous
I continue to be enamored with Posterous, the bare-bones blog service to which you post via email. So much so, I’m moving one of my Typepad blogs over.
My friend Taisir doesn’t have time (on inclination) to post to a traditional blog. With Posterous and his iPhone, he can update the blog with minimal effort. And Posterous did a pretty good job importing the the 160+ posts I had on Typepad.
Like tech columnist Andy Ihnatko, I’m boiling down my online life to my WordPress blog, Twitter and –now– Posterous.

I continue to be enamored with of Posterous, the bare-bones blog service to which you post via email. So much so, I’m moving one of my Typepad blogs over.

My friend Taisir doesn’t have time (on inclination) to post to a traditional blog. With Posterous and his iPhone, he can update the blog with minimal effort. And Posterous did a pretty good job importing the the 160+ posts I had on Typepad.

Like tech columnist Andy Ihnatko, I’m boiling down my online life to my WordPress blog, Twitter and –now– Posterous.

Posterous is the mosterous

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A really good review of Posterous by Andy Ihnatko of Chicago Sun-Times. The more I use Posterous, the more I like it. Can’t see myself giving up the WordPress blog but if I were just starting today… If you haven’t seen my previous posts on this, Posterous is a blog you update via email. It’s really that easy but the resulting site is far nicer than you’d expect.

If this is reality, I’ll take virtual

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I feel like the mom that left her child in the car to run into the mall “for just two minutes” and comes back to find the cops standing around her car with stern looks on their faces. It’s scary how quickly a couple of days can slip by without a blog post. There’s no question in my mind that Twitter and posterous have resulted in fewer posts here.

And since this is not a real blog post, who the fuck are Jon and Kate? I keep seeing their names pop up and have determined they are/were the “stars” of a reality show but now have broken up or something?

I have this theory that the people who insist they have never heard of blogs or Twitter are exactly the same people who made Jon & Kate household names (to everyone but me).

How empty and vacuous must your life be that you would find J&K’s live worth watching?

From blog to book

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henry-book200My friend Henry has self-published a book (Picture of Health, Handbook for Healthcare Art). The term usually applied to self-published books is “vanity press,” but there’s nothing vain about my friend Henry and the story behind the book is interesting.

With a little help and encouragement from me (and others, I’m sure), Henry started blogging a couple of years ago. He wrote about health care art (his specialty). He was a natural but a little more serious than your typical blogger. His posts were more like essays than blog posts and took more time to write. He clearly saw the blog as a complement to his art business.

Somewhere along the way, I told Henry about services that convert blogs to books. He was immediately interested and began researching the idea. The result is Picture of Health.

The book is beautiful. Henry spared no expense. Heavy paper, embossed cover. It felt like it weighed five pounds. God (and Henry) knows what it cost to print.

Now here’s the part I like: The book is not for sale. At least not on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble (I see that you can purchase a copy from his blog). Henry published the book to give it away. Of the thousands of names in his client database, Henry selected just over 18-hundred to receive a copy of the book. (Do the math)

Henry is using the book to build on his relationship with important clients. By keeping the book (relatively) rare, he hopes to increase its value. It’s an expensive gamble and he has promised to share the results.

The part that I found most interesting about this blog-to-book story is that the book is the ONLY book about health care art. I couldn’t believe that when Henry told me but he insists it’s true. Not one book about a multi-million dollar business. Somebody else is writing one but Picture of Health is one of a kind for now. This blows me away. I mean, how many topics don’t have at least ONE book about them?

smays favicon

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favicon

It really doesn’t take much to make me happy. Since the first time I saw one in a browser address bar, I’ve wanted to add one of these little graphics (they’re called favicons) to my website(s). And it always requied getting someone else to do it for me. I hated my ignorance.

But it’s a snap on WordPress. No end of little plug-ins that make it a snap. You’ll probably have to put up with a bit of gee-whiz’ing for a while as I discover tiny new wonders about WordPress. Thank you, and good night.