Month: September 2007

All a-Twitter

Well, I’ve gone and created a twitter account for myself. There was a lot of talk about Twitter at the social media conference, so I decided to take it for a spin.

Any other Twitterers out here? Holla. Er, I mean, Twitter.

Update: I’ve decided I don’t like the concept of “following” other Twitterers. It sounds too much like stalking, or that the followee has achieved cult-leader status. Already I’ve signed up to follow 20 Twitter users. I’m trying to refrain from adding many more until I figure out what I’m doing.

Friday Five (a day late): a cure for the listless

i’ve been stumbling across a lot of lists lately in blogworld. maybe that’s because it’s so easy to post lists. it’s even easier to post a list of other bloggers’ lists. in keeping with my new minimalism, why should i come up with a list of my own when so many others have already done the heavy listing? so here’s my metalist of some good lists i’ve read about lately. and since i’m late for the friday five, i’m tossing in a couple extra. you’re welcome.

    Seth Godin’s 7 tips to build for meaning. No. 1 on his list: Use numbers and bullets. Check.
    5 tips to be better prepared for a campus emergency, by Karine Joly.
    80 free two-column website templates, from Mashable.
    5 tools to capture your thoughts, via LifeHacker.
    the 10 rules of twitter and how robert scoble breaks them all. hat tip to science librarian.
    Speaking of twitter, here are 60 twitter tools. (mashable again.)
    1 reason your boss is so twitchy. It’s because of the the “crapflood of incoming data” he or she is dealing with all the time. That’s the 43 Folders paraphrase of what biz-book writer Stanley Bing, pitching his latest work, Crazy Bosses, to American Public Radio’s Marketplace, has to say about it. In Bing’s words: “Well, what that does is that feeds control freaks with a constant, steady stream of stuff that needs to be controlled. That’s what’s making people more crazy.”

Higher Ed Marketing’s minimalist makeover

Updated 9-30-07 — with capital letters. Thanks, Robert, for tweaking the CSS code.

So I thought I would change the look of this blog.

PRblogs gives users about 150 or so different templates, but many of them are over-designed. You can’t say that about this design. It’s called “Zen Minimalist,” and it’s by Joni Mueller of Pixelita Designs. Since this blog consists mostly of words and links, with the occasional graphic, I thought a cleaner, more basic design would improve readability. And Zen Minimalist seemed to fit the bill.

There are some other things I like about this design, too, such as the tabs at the top.

newblog-tabs1.jpg

One thing I don’t like, though, is the template’s strident anti-capitalization. It’s just a little too humbling, IMHO. Thus, post titles now look like this (sorry, Shel).

newblog-headline1.jpg

That’s the price we pay when we go for trendy web 2.0 minimalism, isn’t it? at least e.e. cummings would be pleased.

But what about you? What do you think? Love it? Hate it? Discuss.

Download Shel Holtz’s ‘Blogs Gone Wild’

The PDF version of slides from Shel Holtz‘s “Blogs Gone Wild” presentation from today’s Social Media Revolution conference is now available. The session provided a good overview of how quickly a damaging story can spread via social media, and how easily someone with a beef can cause havoc for a corporate (or university) PR staff.

Notes from Ragan’s Social Media conference

So I said it would be light, sporadic posting here while I sponged up info at the Ragan Communications Social Media Revolution Conference here in Chicago. But I’m picking up plenty of morsels to share, and I just can’t keep it all to myself. Here are some of the more salient or interesting links from today’s various sessions:

Twitter and tweeting on the campaign trail. Presidential candidates John Edwards (a Democrat) and Fred Thompson (a Republican) are both using Twitter to let folks know what’s going on in their harried, public lives. (Thompson’s tweets are in an odd third-person voice, which is how Norm MacDonald imitating Bob Dole might approach it.) What a great way for politicians to share information with the public. I wonder if any busy college presidents would follow their their example. Shel Holtz mentioned the candidate/Twitterers (candidate/Tweeters?) in this morning’s keynote session, “A Communicator’s Place in the Social Media Mix.” (That place, in Holtz’s view [and that of many others], is out in front as a conductor of a symphony of communicators — no longer mere producers of content or slick publications and websites but also teachers and counselors.)

A late addition: John Bell‘s take on Thursday’s opening session.

Is your organization ready to do social media? Find out at YourSocialMediaScore.com, a site discussed by Paul Vogelzang in his session, “Social Media for the Rest of Us.”

Monitoring blog activity. You’re probably aware of Technorati, blogpulse and Google Blogs and use them to keep track of what the online world is saying about your organization. But not all blog monitoring services are created equal. In an afternoon session, Shel Holtz directed us to Jeremiah Owyang’s list of the various services on his Web Strategy blog. What Shel didn’t tell us was that Jeremiah had compiled a list of services that measure online video, too.

Sorry, Mac users. The Why Macs suck video is old news, but it’s just too good to leave unlinked.