The other week, while I was at the WebWorks Roundup conference in Texas, where I was one of the featured industry speakers, I was sitting next to Anne Gentle during one of the panel sessions, and I asked her about branding. It seems like once you become branded through your blog, it’s hard to reinvent yourself.

The seventh and final sin in my ongoing Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging series is being inattentive. (Other sins include being fake, irrelevant boring, unreadable, irresponsible, and unfindable.) One appealing aspect of blogs over print media is the ability to comment and respond to comments. It’s the appeal of a conversation instead a lecture. Make Commenting Easy In the Blog Herald, Valorie Maltoni says, In … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 25 min. The sixth sin in my ongoing series on the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging is being unfindable. (The other sins include being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, and inattentive). Admittedly, lack of findability seems more a sin of omission than commission. Being unfindable seems like a sin bloggers commit against themselves. I’ve written … more »

Being irresponsible is the fifth sin in my ongoing series on the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging (other sins include being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, unfindable, and inattentive). Blogging responsibly includes awareness of proper disclosure, approvals, and representation, as well as avoiding sensationalism in the posts you write. Disclosure Recently the FTC updated the rules about proper disclosure when receiving compensation for promoting a product or … more »

Being boring is sin #3 in my list of the seven deadly sins (other sins include being fake, irrelevant, unreadable, irresponsible, unfindable, and inattentive). Perhaps a more tactful way of saying something is boring is to say the writer neglects to “keep the audience’s attention.” I’m always hearing about the short attention spans of online audiences, that readers only skim your content and spend a minute … more »

This is the second post in my 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging series. My version of the seven deadly sins of blogging are as follows: being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, unfindable, and inattentive. A few years ago, I was talking with a guy named Clyde about blogging. He wasn’t sure what topic he wanted to write about, and I encouraged him to pick a … more »

As you know, the sessions at the STC Summit in Atlanta last year were recorded. My blogging presentation, Introduction to Blogging: A New Technical Communicator Role, is the only recorded session you can listen to for free.  It’s labeled as the “Featured session – free of charge.” I didn’t even realize this until someone tweeted it this afternoon. I figure it means one of two … more »

If you’re a college student looking to become a technical writer after you graduate, you face a formidable challenge: you can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job. Especially in a competitive job market, getting a job as a technical writer directly after you graduate — without a foundation of previous jobs, experience with a handful of tools, and … more »

I’ve decided to write a series of posts about what I consider to be the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging (because sins always seem more interesting than virtues). Basically, I’m preparing for some presentations on blogging, and I’m hoping to get some scrutiny and feedback on these ideas. I plan to cover each one of the sins in depth with separate posts over the course … more »

I love it when leaders bare their thoughts in introspective ways on a blog. Hughes has really been grappling with the STC situation and how to handle it. I’m not so interested in possible solutions to the STC problem as I am intrigued by Hughes’ use of blogging as a heuristic for thinking. One result is that he gets us on his side, whereas leaders … more »

It seems like everyone is moving to WordPress lately. A few months ago, David Farbey moved his blog to WordPress. Scriptorium recently converted their site and blog to WordPress. One die-hard Movable Type interaction designer at my work is moving to WordPress. And now The Content Wrangler has moved to WordPress. I actually helped Scott transition his site from Expression Engine to WordPress. Converting the … more »

Although many people put blogs and wikis in the same social media category, blogs and wikis are actually quite different. Blogs are individually authored mini-magazines or journals where one author (or sometimes a small authoring group) crank out article after article (or entry after entry) usually with a common theme. After each article is published, the article is considered done and the author moves on … more »

Techcrunch says the New York Times’ ethics policy of distance and objectivity contradicts their acceptance of David Pogue as an Apple fan boy. Journalists must maintain more distance and objectivity. This criticism reminds me of the case of Chez Pazienza, a CNN blogger fired for expressing views on his blog that contrasted with CNN’s more conservative outlook. This is perhaps a subtle danger of blogging: … more »

In When is the Best Time and Day to Publish a Blog Post, Lorelle Van Fossen explores a question that has become increasingly more relevant to me: when to publish your posts. I definitely get more responses to posts that I publish Sunday evening through Thursday, similar to Lorelle’s experiences. Also, most of the traffic seems to come during work hours. This tells me that my … more »

When I read about guys like John Gruber, who make their living from their blog, it fills me with envy. I want to do that. Not sure if tech comm’s audience is large enough, but perhaps someday.