As last year I looked back on what I did not write for The Hot Iron the previous year, I am doing so again this year.

Where in 2008 I had more ideas than the time to write them, this past year my overall blogging count was down. I could overanalyze this, but I chalk it up to its lower priority in my overall schedule. That being said, I am proud of what I wrote, and received many good comments on those posts. I met my goal of reading 12 books in 2009, even with Atlas Shrugged taking most of a year to do so. Despite this, I only blogged on half the number of books. Be on the lookout for those book takeaways in the next few weeks as I start my first books of 2010.

Then there was NaBloPoMo. I probably never should have signed up for this for the pure reason I never remembered how to spell it! I signed up to writing a post a day for every day last November. Well, I said I would do it, but in reality I was not really committed to the program. So I wear the “I blew it” badge pictured above, and next time will only commit to doing something that both interests me and is in line with my goals.

Here’s to a great year of blogging, and hearing from you in the comments.

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Blogging • Book Take-Aways • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

You set up your blog, you write frequently, you have a great subscriber base, so you’re done, right? Hardly. A blog is only as good as its most recent posts, and in order to keep people thinking you’re good they must be reading, and with every post you must compel them to do so, and it starts with the title.

What’s Old Is New Again

The title of your blog post is like the headline of a news story in the newspaper. It must be true to the topic, yet have an element of sales to get someone to read it. Especially today, where people do not go out of their way to buy a newspaper and rather have a lot to choose from online, the title of the blog post has to resonate with them and be the entre to your writing.

It’s Not Just You

As the choices of what to read are almost limitless, coupled with the lack of attention span and overall time of the reader, people need to understand in seconds what your post is about and make a decision to read it or not. And in many cases, it has nothing to do with you personally, but moreso with your competition. Many people read blog posts with a blog feed aggregator such as Google Reader. If they go a few days – or even hours – without reading, the number of unread posts can quickly accumulate, as shown with the accompanying screen shot from my own Google Reader account. When faced with this, people will just scan headlines to get beyond the sheer number of posts and back to a manageable number for a later time. Your wonderful, thoughtful writing can be a victim of someone’s lack of time if it doesn’t catch their attention.

Where many times the headline comes first then the text of the post itself, before you go live with it, review the headline to see if it matches what you just wrote. If not, take a few seconds to adjust it, and this time invested may mean all the difference for someone else to take a few seconds to read what you wrote.

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Blogging • Business • (0) Comments • Permalink

Though it may be obvious to most everybody, I must reiterate that it is all possible that anybody can see any public Web site or blog. When I say public, I am speaking of any Web page which is not password-protected or is in a “walled garden” like a company Intranet or Facebook. In other words, if it’s out there, it’s out there.

In the early days of the Web, most everybody who was putting information on the Web was putting too much information out there. Present company included! We all got wise as to how to structure and craft content to meet the needs of the Web visitor as well as ourselves and became more strategic about what was put out there for all to see. But with the proliferation of Web platforms where anyone could publish content, you would start to see more and more go out there than was required or necessary. It started with sites like Geocities and has continued to blogging platforms like WordPress, where anyone can publish a blog for free.

Believe it or not, much thought goes into what I write, namely as I write it in Word before I post it. But I continue to read people’s blogs and Web sites where they put too much information out there. What do I mean? Everything from family photos to vacation schedules to start qualify as too much information. I have talked to some people about this and they tell me nobody but close friends know the link to the blog or Web site. Where that may be the case, it is still a public link, and anybody has the potential to see it, and use it to your disadvantage.

Think strategically when you put information on the Web. If it is information for everybody to see, craft the message and create a Web design to make it easy to do so. But if it is private information, consider password-protection on the Web page, or just don’t post it at all. For if it is out there, it’s out there.

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Blogging • Business • (0) Comments • Permalink

Bloggers are all in a tizzy over updated guidelines on product endorsements and testimonials by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As The Hot Iron frequently talks about companies, products and services, my interest in these guidelines has been high. This led me to reading the complete text of the Q&A process over the guidelines as well as the revised guidelines themself. These are linked from one page on the FTC’s Web site on the guidelines which now includes videos.

These guidelines do not only pertain to bloggers, and also includes traditional media – TV, radio, print – with regards to any testimonials and celebrity endorsements. Part of this pertains to advertisements that make claims that are not typical for the average user, and now must state what the average user would experience. If you think pharmaceutical ads are annoying as hell, just wait to see how every other commercial out there will be complying with these guidelines.

As you may infer by tone, I am not in favor of this. I am not alone, as many trade industries and law firms submitted opinions against it, namely for bloggers. As traditional advertisements has been around for thousands of years – from the snake oil salesman to digital billboards – and blogging can probably be traced back about 10 years, many opinions felt these guidelines are premature. But the bureaucrats at the FTC disagree, and here we are.

After reviewing all of this material, I am presenting my conclusions on this, as well as a list of questions not addressed in the guidelines. This is all my opinion from my very own head. I am not an attorney, rather someone who understands the power of social media and the reality of the world.

Conclusions

The following are my conclusions from the FTC guidelines.

Disclose Either Way in Each and Every Blog Post – The guidelines state that if there is not a relationship between the blogger and a company, no disclosure needs to be made. But what if, after reading a post, the FTC thinks there is a relationship there? The last thing you want is federal bureaucrats subpoenaing you. It is better to state this in anything you write.

When in Doubt, Lie and State There is a Relationship – Let’s face it folks, the business world is complicated, and business deals are happening every minute of every day. One minute you may write something favorable about a company, the next minute the manager of a mutual fund you own may buy shares of that company. You wouldn’t know this, but the FTC’s investigators would. Plus, there does not appear to be a penalty for stating there is any type of relationship when there really isn’t one.

Get a Good Lawyer – In this litigious society, everybody should have a lawyer. Every small businessperson should have one already, and if not, there’s no time like the present.

Confusions

Where the language used in the FTC documents is relatively easy to read, as least for me it was, it left many unanswered questions for me. These are reflected in my conclusions above, but I feel they need to be addressed here, namely to identify the gaps I found in these guidelines.

How Will These Guidelines Be Enforced? – Is the FTC filling rooms with computers and people to search for product and service blog posts and dig through them for endorsements or testimonials without disclosure? Thinking about it more, that will probably be the case.

The FTC even skirts the issue if they will sue bloggers in this video which is on their Web site – it is embedded below, or click this link to watch the video.

Clearly not following these guidelines has penalties, and they should simply say it.

How is this Different from Movie Reviewers or Journalists – This is not an argument about bloggers being journalists, as some are and some are not. I do not consider myself a journalist. In conversations with real journalists, they have said they never typically disclose any freebies given to them. I have never heard Roger Ebert mention he goes to the movies for free, yet it is my guess he does. Yet these guidelines do not apply to journalists.

What if Someone is a Poor Writer? – Someone could have bought a product off the shelf and then wrote about it in their blog, using language like, “this is the bestest video game in the world... if Michael Jordan made video games he would have made this one… if you don’t buy this game you are a fool… everybody should own this game,” which could clearly be considered a testimonial and could even be inferred the writer has a tie to the video game.

Is There a Difference Between Free and Loaned Products for Reviews? – Say you get a product to keep vs. getting one to use for a few weeks, is there a difference there? It could be inferred you profited by having the product’s use during that time.

What about Negative Reviews? – The guidelines appear to address endorsements, but what about a negative review of a product, even if a company gave you that product? My guess is you still need to disclose this, even if the blog post discourages people from buying it.

Who Defines An Expert Blogger? – There’s mention in the guidelines about “expert” bloggers. Who makes this determination? Ask any blogger and I am sure they will say they are one. But if it means they are a close target of the FTC, I am sure they will shun the title.

Does a Disclaimer Have to be Within the Blog Post or Just Somewhere on the Blog? – Many people read blog posts from the Web pages of the blog, others by RSS feed and even others by email. Must the disclaimer be written within the post itself, or is it sufficient for it to be somewhere on the Web page?

What about Blog Comments? – An endorsement or testimonial could be added to a blog in the comments. Who then would be responsible, especially if the comments were posted anonymously or the blogger did not know the person and could not verify if they were a real person or not?

What about Microblogging? – Microblogging, or tweets on Twitter for many people, doesn’t give you much room to make an opinion as well as disclaim any relationship. Does this mean you will have to write text elsewhere stating the relationship and include a short URL in the tweet?

What about Forums? – At the end of one of the FTC documents it mentions forums. Maybe if you post to a forum you should put your disclaimer in the post signature area?

What about Old Blog Posts? – Will I and every other blogger out there have to edit all of our past blog posts to indicate any business relationships?

Are there Geographical Boundaries to This? – What if the writer of a product review is outside of the US, but his Web server is inside the US? What if the opposite? What if both are outside the US but the company being reviewed is inside the US?

What about My Trip to Nokia OpenLab? – As I mentioned in a previous post, Nokia flew me halfway around the world and wined and dined me when I participated in OpenLab. Must I always reference this each and every time I make a reference to a Nokia product in any capacity?

Final, Chilling Thought

When I read one of the documents, one word stuck out to me – chill. It is used as a term to describe the change in activity as a result of these guidelines, as in a freezing of blogging activity as a result. I wasn’t aware “chill” was a legal term. Nonetheless, I don’t think these guidelines will chill or stop any word-of-mouth or personal thoughts on companies, products and services. If anything, it will spark a new wave of ways for people to talk about products without fear of The Man coming down on them. This is the entrepreneurial resourcefulness here in the US, and it isn’t dead yet!

So what do you think? Any help in analyzing this is most appreciated. But make sure you identify who you are and any business relationship you may have with me, ok?

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Blogging • Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink

For many bloggers, creativity can ebb and flow when it comes time to put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard. I have experienced this myself, where I can sit down one day and write 3 or 4 posts at once, and the next day I can’t think of a topic for anything. This is where I found a feature of the blog engine coming in handy – write a post ahead of time and set its live date for sometime in the future.

Depending on your blog, some of your posts may be very timely and topical, where others may be reference or opinion. As a result, writing these ahead of time, or whenever creativity strikes you, makes perfect sense. Prior to pressing the publish button in your blog engine of choice, you should change the post date and time to a point in the future. This comes in handy when you’re on vacation or away for a long weekend, yet you find you have readership at those times, so why not keep them happy?

Benefits readers as well as publishers

At first thought, post-dating a post may seem solely selfish to the author, but that is hardly the case. Not all of your readers may be in the same time zone as you, let alone same continent. By adjusting the time a post appears in your blog and RSS feed can benefit all readers. Using Web analytics you can find when the preferential time of day to have posts appear. For The Hot Iron, I typically have my posts appear at 4am Central US Time, which has it appearing in someone’s feed reader in the US first thing in the morning and late morning for someone in Europe.

Do you post-date blog entries? How has it worked for you? If you try it, let me know how it works for you. Or if you are adamantly against it, please share that as well.

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Blogging • Business • (0) Comments • Permalink