I’m not going to repost his link here, but this is what you’ll find:

• Eleven links to Designing & Coding blogs
• Three links to Productivity blogs
• Ten links to Writing & Freelancing blogs
• Eleven links to Social Media blogs
• Twelve links to Search Engine Optimization blogs
• Eight links to Marketing blogs
• Two links to Affiliate Marketing blogs
• Ten links to Entrepreneur blogs
• Five links to Domain Name blogs
• Eight links to WordPress blogs
• One link to Copyright blogs
• Nineteen links to Blogging blogs

Kevin compiled a great list and I’ve been delighted to explore the ones that I don’t already subscribe to.

What I found missing, however, were some of the great blogs of my fellow Mar-Commers and STCers. So, I’m asking you, dear Subscribers to help build a list of the top blogs by and for our group.

Yes, that’s right, I’m calling on you lurkers out there to step up and help us build a kick-a** list that will be a resource for both you and your colleagues. In your response please share the following:

• Blog title
• Blog url
• Blog Author
• STC member or non-member
• One sentence description of the blog’s focus

READY! SET! GO!!!!!

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The Pre-writing phase allows you to identify who you are writing for (your audience) and what you want to say to them; to identify the purpose of your writing, to determine the points you want to make and enumerate them; to begin drafting your ideas based on these points to get your thoughts on paper without restriction. This is where the bulk of your writing can take place.

The Reviewing phase enables you to clarify your draft: to embellish your words, to add more details, to tighten up your text, to clear up any ambiguities, to sequence thoughts better, to ensure your text speaks to your purpose, to delete anything that runs astray, to cut off tangents, to sharpen.

The Finishing phase is where you edit: to employ better words, to fix grammatical infractions, to correct mechanical errors, to change punctuation, to format for clarity and understanding.

Imagine my consternation, then—with a bit of a smile—when I received the following analysis of the process my son em- ploys for writing papers (including email and IM) at university.

In his own words…
This is how I really write papers: I wait until the last possible minute and the words just flow from my hands like simi-

Process Analysis, by Tyler Maggiani Let’s just start with the thesis and maybe I will come up with a clever opening line later. This analysis is about how I procrastinate, spell poorly, and desecrate punctuation; or five paragraph essays, three lines of garbage, and fast-as-I-can- type talking; or Word, Gmail, and iChat.

Let’s start with papers as the process is ongoing as I write this. The first planning stage is receiving the assignment which I promptly write down in an assignment book or on whatever is available, promising to myself that later in the quiet of my room I will transfer it onto a wall-sized planning calendar—which I don’t have. Then I usually try to come up with some sort of plan to get started on it early because, dammit, I’m not going to wait until the last minute again. Time check. It’s 2:30, time to hurry up.

This is how I really write papers: I wait until the last possible minute and the words just flow from my hands like simi-les flow from wherever they pool. I select a topic, usually having to do with something weird or vague so I have more leeway, and google for any sort of info on it. I write whatever it happens to be the night before the paper is due, on my computer, and with little to no attention paid to the specific format the professor dictated. I prefer a sans-serif font, mostly Helvetica, but for your sake I write with a more readable text. More from the prompting list: I don’t write for an audience, I don’t revise or do drafts, and if I have writer’s block, well, you can imagine how that works. The paper is ready to print when it is time for class or time to sleep.

Anyway, moving on, the exception to this really happens when I have a research paper, then the research starts very early. I have outlines, quotes ready, bibliographies waiting, but I still write the night before. My papers get no rough draft; they only get a few moments of fresh air after being printed before they are handed in. I don’t peer review, I don’t go to a writing help center, and I don’t ask the professor if I’m headed in the right direction. Awful system to most, works well for me. I think it allows my voice to come through and gives the work a more natural feel when I’m not trying to wring every last bit of amateurism from each sentence.

On to email… I don’t write professional email as that description would look a whole lot more important than this one. I send links, one word replies, and requests for money to my parents. That’s about it. The time it takes me to prepare for writing an email is the time it takes me to move my mouse to reply after reading one. Or the time it takes to hit compose.

There is no more preparing than that; I put less thought into email than I do into instant messages. I suppose there is the exception of when I email professors as those start with a greeting, well-formed sentences, and nice wording. Then a signature and it’s off. If this paragraph were an email, it would be far too long.

iChat is my program of choice for instant messages mostly because it is free and already installed. These are a little different for me than I suspect they are for most people. I try to write eloquently and capitalize while I make use of punctuation so it sound more like I am talking than typing. My IMs are perforated with e…llip… ses… and sem;colons and some very clever drawings using a plethora of punctuation, numbers, and weird cha®a©te®s. My IMs do tend to be short though.

There you are: a comprehensive guide on how to write if you are Tyler Maggiani. Now for a little restatement of the thesis: As you can see, I have covered how I prepare for and write papers, emails, and instant messages. All done!

Solari enables you to talk with your employees, customers, and advocates simply and clearly, because effective communication is vital to your success. We make the complicated simple. © 2009 Solari Communication. All Rights Reserved. www.solari.net Toll Free: 877-879-9330

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Have you ever wanted an effective way to determine what information to include in your courses? This Webinar will teach you how to identify tasks, steps, processes, objectives, and assessments for a specific job using a visual method that quickly derives results.

Highly Respected and Expert Presenter
Jane MacKenzie-Smith, is a Certified Performance Technologist from the International Society for Performance Improvement who has developed training for classroom, multimedia, and e-learning for most of her life.

As owner of JEM Communications, LLC, she provides course design and workshops on instructional design and e-Learning. She is the Past Manager of the Instructional Design & Learning (IDL) Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), a newly elected STC Fellow, and a popular presenter at STC events.

Your Investment
$20 IDL SIG member of the STC
$30 STC Member – Join the IDL SIG to break even on this Webinar, and save money on future Webinars.
$70 Non member – Consider joining the STC today. You can enjoy the valuable benefits of being an STC member, and receive great member pricing for this Webinar and others.

Sign Up Now! Register for the time of day that fits your schedule. Please be sure to sign up for the correct time (day or evening) because we cannot switch you to the other Webinar time.
Also, be sure to select “Show in My Time Zone” when registering.

• Day Webinar: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/227142842
  1:30 – 2:30 PM (Eastern Time); 12:30 – 1:30 PM (Central Time);
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• Evening Webinar: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/718996682
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  Session Materials and More
  Several days before the Webinar you will receive an e-mail with login details and instructions for viewing session materials. After the Webinar, you will receive information for viewing the recorded Webinar.

  System Requirements
  Audio can be through either your computer (VoIP with a fast Internet connection, microphone, and speakers), or a long-distance telephone connection. For more system requirements, see FAQs, Attending a Webinar at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/en_US/island/webinar/support.tmpl.

  Questions about This Webinar?
  
  Contact either:
  Jane MacKenzie-Smith
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The use of Twitter has simply exploded over the past year. As your list of followers grows, so do the amount of tweets, retweets, and direct messages you receive. Most of these tweets are well intended, but how useful are they?

An increasing percentage of the tweets you receive are spam. Twitter is especially vulnerable, given its inherent automation. Anyone can easily follow tens of thousands of people, and then gain a large percentage of followers in return. An easy, ready market for spam from lurid “marketers”.

What does Twitter spam look like? Twitter spam can take many different forms. Legitimate companies spam when they endlessly promote their products through dummy Twitter accounts. These accounts often bear no resemblance to the products they pitch. Con artists attempt to shift your money and to gain your identity through a series of shady financial transactions. You are probably wary of these: “Help me access my dead uncle’s $20 million from a backward third-world country and receive a 15% fee.” Still, a small percent click through.

Many times, spam tweets are sent by members with few followers yet following as many as possible. This should be your first tip off when someone starts to follow you. These people send tweets with blind tiny URLs linked to those click-here-if-you-are-18-years-or-older sites—except that requirement is frequently omitted. These can easily be identified by the busty, cleavage-popping, young lady’s photo on the account.

Then there are the “See how I got 3,000 followers in one afternoon” spammers. Another come-on: “I can show you how to make $1,000,000 by tomorrow afternoon by following this simple method. No, really I can!” Hair removal treatment for women garners a good share of spam tweets. You get the idea.

The quality of tweets. Pear Analytics, a products and services firm based in San Antonio Texas, conducted a study of tweets. Over a two week period last month, they sampled the Twitter stream every 30 minutes from 11 AM to 5 PM for 10 days. They then organized this sampling of 2,000 tweets into six categories:

“Pointless babble”, 40.55%. Described in the study as the “I am eating a sandwich” tweets. These are the kind of tweets that blindly follow Twitter’s original query, “What are you doing now?” Let’s be honest though: who cares?

“Conversational”, 37.55%. That immediate dialogue, questions, answers, replies, and back and forth better suited for instant messaging. Again, who cares other than the two conversing, and even then…?

“Pass along value”, 8.7%. Retweets passed along from other Twitter members that actually might have some value.

“Self promotion”, 5.85%. Tweets that market the member, generally about products, services, demos, or the companies themselves. Actually, not that large a percentage.

Spam, 3.75%. The unwanted tweets you hoped never to receive.

News, 3.60%. Generally, these are re-tweets from mainstream or alternative media sources. As one wag stated, it’s sad that news tweets are more rare than spam.

So, what’s to make of all this? Here’s one thought: the vast majority of tweets—81.85%, the total of “pointless babble”, “conversational”, and spam—are virtually worthless. Adding “self promotion” to that total gets 87.7%, although this category could also contain valuable information depending on your point of view. That means that a mere 12.3% of tweets, between “pass along value” and news, contain worthwhile information. Thus, for the sake of argument, one could conclude that approximately seven out of eight tweets are spam or spam-like. That represents a lot of time sifting through your personal twitter stream to garner some real usefulness and value.

What you can do. First, Twitter has been especially proactive in identifying spam accounts. In late July, Twitter simply deleted accounts that automatically follow people. They called it “Correcting follower and following counts.” As a result, counts dropped on many accounts, some precipitously.

You can also reduce the number of accounts you follow. First, don’t automatically click to follow everyone who follows you. Take the time to check out followers before following them. Block them if you want. If you think they are spammers, don’t send them a direct message or retweet them. Instead, follow the official Twitter spam account: type ‘spam’ into Find People (the account from Twitter HQ uses a Spam can as its photo); click the account’s Follow button. Report suspected spammers to this @spam account. Go to the account’s home page for more tips on thwarting spammers.

As a final resort, consider ticking the ‘Protect my tweets’ check box under Settings/Account. You must then approve anyone who attempts to follow you.

Remember the point of Twitter: rapid, immediate communication that enhances your social media experience and hopefully educates, entertains, and informs. Anything less than that is unacceptable.

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Wordpress posted How to Keep Wordpress Secure at the beginning of the weekend to explain this worm’s threat.

If you haven’t already, be sure to upgrade to version 2.8.4 as soon as possible and pass the news along to your clients and communities.  You can download the upgrade or install it automatically through your admin panel.

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This simple question represents a significant change in marketing practices (discussed in more detail in an earlier post). Companies can no longer hide behind artfully crafted marketing pieces and not be willing to engage in a conversation with their customers. Your company’s not providing a forum won’t stop the conversation.  Ask Dell.

For those of you who don’t know the story…. Dell had a few unhappy customers and didn’t provide the customer support they expected, and even worse, refused to acknowledge the unhappy folks. One of the unhappy ones decided to launch a forum at www.ihatedell.com where other unhappy folks came to bash Dell and help each other quickly solve their issues. It didn’t take Dell long to realize that their clinging to business as usual didn’t exactly work so well for the bottom line.

Dell’s solution? They began engaging in a conversation with their customers. They set up their own support forums and blogs and invited their users to ask questions. They in turn answered the questions, posted alerts, and engaged in a conversation with their users. While there are still some unhappy Dell users out there, Dell has made incredible strides in their customer support.

While this story has a happy ending, we can all learn a lesson from it. If  Dell had engaged in the conversation from the get-go, the sites bashing their company and customer service likely would not have gained as much popularity.

I encourage my clients not to approach their marketing efforts with armadillo syndrome (For you non-Texans out there, if an armadillo can’t see you it thinks you don’t exist. Predators sneak up from the sides and behind.). I tell my clients that whether or not they want to listen, people are going to want their voices heard in one venue or another. That conversation is going to happen with or without you.  At least when you have them engaging in your blogs and forums, you have the home turf advantage.

If you’d like to avoid the armadillo approach, you can use Google Reader to monitor what others are saying about any topic. Here’s how you do it:

1. Sign up for a free Gmail account at www.google.com if you haven’t already.
2. Go to www.google.com/reader.
3. Do a search for your name, company, product, competitors, whatever you want (be sure to put multiple words in quotes!).
4. Subscribe to the feed.
   1. Right-click on the RSS feed button and select Copy-Link
   2. Go back to Google Reader, click the add button and then paste in the url.

or

1. Click the RSS feed button
2. Click the Add to Google Reader button as shown in the following graphic.

You’ll want to go to other areas in which you’ll be found to look for mentions of you, your company, or your terms. Some such places could include

• http://blogsearch.google.com
• http://search.twitter.com
• YouTube
• Slideshare

I learned a long time ago that there are often many ways to reach a desired goal. How do you monitor what others are saying about you and your company?

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You’ve found the blog of Shel Holtz, ABC, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. Mr. Holtz has worked in corporate communications since the mid-1970s, online since the mid 1980s and on the Net since 1990. He wrote “Public Relations on the Net,” among other books, manuals and articles. He is available for consulting, speaking, and training engagements.

His information was provided to this STC-Marcom blog by a member of the STC leadership team.

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You can, however, be proactive in your approach. Through a well planned
social media strategy, you can influence your community of followers to be
your advocates and to build your brand. How? By engaging your social media
audiences in a compelling way.

Discover more by reading our latest position paper and blog entry entitled
“Influence Your Community by Engaging Them”. Read the posting in Solari’s
“Toward Humanity” blog and leave a comment. Or download a PDF .

Tell us what you think.
Copyright Solari Communications

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Some issues they are discussing are strategic planning,
change management, and editorial reviews. We should hear from them sometime in August with more
details. In the meantime, please do encourage your SIG members to
visit the wiki and provide their comments.

Lots of content is needed still, so volunteers will be most welcome.

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