At the end of 2013, the number ten post of all time, was the story about the nonprofit Dining for Women from Wednesday, July 13, 2011. Can a good dinner change the world?
Number two was on We Make the Media's attempt to save newspaper journalism, and the first thing on the agenda was to get the audience to turn off their phones. (Ever tried to tweet a seminar with your phone off?). Thus the title of this post from Saturday, November 21, 2009 was Building a new model may require listening.
And the number one post of all time is a prime example of a headline connecting with the general audience. Titles that start with "how to" are winners. From Wednesday, January 4, 2012 an explanation of a career change after almost three decades: How to write a resignation letter.
In looking back through the five years of writing for 360 Convos, a couple of things stuck out -- one, there's not a lot of blogging during the first month of the year.
This January post, though, I thought had a good suggestion:
February is a lot about social media, including this scary sounding Social Media Policy from February 2010.
March is usually a focus on business and business contacts, and one of my favorites was a conversation with an ex-newspaperman: Convo with former journalist Steve Woodward from March 2010.
Best May ever for 360 Convos was 2010. That was the year the Social Media Awards of the Pacific Northwest called to say "top finalist!" No trophy came home, but the night was huge and included the Big Boys and Girls in Social Media and Me.
Never fails, but sometime during the year aggravation accumulates with the churls who think that the only way to measure the success of anything is by the numbers, how high, how big, how many, how much. You can catch an August rant in: Is spending more the only way to measure America?
September reminds us, be fully present from a blog titled Mental Cruise Control.
October presented itself with a moment in which I was humbled by my daughter's kindness to a stranger. On her personal blog she wrote a poem about her experience taking a bottle of water and a granola bar to a street beggar that was recapped in a post she called Adventure Hour and 360 Convos called, How Deep is Your Social Community.
Back in the beginning of 360 Convos, November 2009 in fact, I posted my bio. On the first go round, I did it without sharing my name. I've since overcome my Internet shyness and added About Carol Doane to the navigation bar.
December? At the moment I'm organizing the storage area and uncovering a plethora of holiday decorating items I had long forgotten. Blowing off dust sent pieces of nostalgia through the stale air of the basement and made me wish we could have Christmas all over again.
We can't.
We can only go forward, and that is the best part of a new year -- the forward momentum it gives us, the challenges we give ourselves, the need to be better than we've been and do more than we ever thought possible.
360 Convos rocketed into the international scene with a featured
post on Renbor Sales Solutions' blog, a Toronto, Canada Corp.
When I embarked on my 30 Days of Consecutive Blog Posts I had no idea where I would end up. The disciplined effort to blog everyday led to local, national, and even international attention. One of the places I landed was Toronto, Canada as a featured contributor on The Pipeline, the blog of Renbor Sales Solutions, Inc.
Thank you Tibor Shanto.
People south of Canada tuned in, too. In the last two weeks alone, I received pageviews from 33 of the 50 United States: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, New York.
Do it. Figure out which ones are missing :-)
During that same time, 360 Convos also pulled in viewers from around the world including:
Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
Some of the posts took on a life of their own and appeared in other places . . .
Dining for Women, a national giving circle empowering women in the developing world, featured the blog post: Can a good dinner change the world?
The City of Gresham picked up a post on customer service for their intranet site, which gave me the opportunity to create the post: City shares good ideas (mine).
The Customer Collective, an “editorially independent, moderated blogging community for elite sales and marketing executives,” featured four posts:
Porter Anderson, a former CNN journalist, shared his laptop power with me at a Writers Conference, tweeted and emailed a link to 800 other attendees of Words Motivate.
BlogHer.com, which boasts a following of 23 million women, featured a post I wrote on a visit to the Clark County Fair, Families Disrupted by Technology.
Canadian Sales Trainer Tibor Shanto, a favorite Twitter friend @Renbor, featured one of my posts on his blog: When the customer can't be consoled...
Today, marks the 38th consecutive post. Don't ask me if I'll keep going. I'm still deciding.
In the meantime, I'd like to quote another Twitter friend, Jeremiah Owyang. He summed up a mutual experience on his blog when he wrote, “Even the smallest thing will lead to something bigger.”
Blogging creates its own form of energy and sends you places you hadn't imagined.
I fidgeted in the chair and reached for the cup of coffee. I took a quick sip and listened to the question. I let it hang in the space between us. I took another sip and I mulled it over. A smile snuck across my face, I settled the cup down, looked directly at the gentleman who could potentially promote me and said:
"If there are two roads
leading to my destination,
Both roads will get me to my
destination at the same time,
One is stalled in traffic,
and the other moving slowly,
I will always choose the road that is moving."
If you're moving there's hope.
I went into my 30 days in a row blogging project with the same thought. Get moving. Do it now. Maybe it won't be perfect, but the practice of contributing each day will get you closer to where you want to be.
If you're moving you may get inventive, prove you own American ingenuity and figure out a better, faster, more efficient way to get to your destination.
Luck might happen.
In my previous posts, I shared snippets of what I learned. It's not about making money, it's about moving along the path of contributing, building your brand, finding your voice. Readers will come if you add something new on a consistent basis.
I discovered I seldom sat down knowing what to write about, but the fact that I managed an editorial calendar--a semblance of a plan--gave me a place to start, a way to move into traffic, even if I was moving slowly. A certain amount of glee arose when I mangled my own calendar by moving things off and giving some a swift kick to infinity when they didn't come together as I'd hoped.
But.
I didn't get any complaints.
I got viewers.
If you try and make a post perfect it will never happen. It's not like print, you're not sending out 50,000 copies with a blatant mistake that you'll regret and beat yourself up for. It's online. It's one page that you can edit over and over and over again. People will help you edit, they'll correct your grammar, they'll leave funny comments, you'll engage, you'll laugh and you'll be part of a virtual community.
Here's what the participating in the virtual community taught me...
Lessons Learned from Blogging:
1. Having a goal means you can measure your success
2. Having a plan, in this case a calendar, gives you direction
3. Mistakes are not forever, community will help you correct them
4. Everyday there is a new deadline
5. You have 24 hours to make the deadline
And there's plenty of do-overs. Not every post was a home run. But as a friend of mine said recently, “Great is the enemy of good.”
Sometimes when we're trying so hard to be great, to seek quality, we forget all that anyone wants from us is to be there, to be present, to be good in the moment, to be good enough. To create something today, so that we have a shot at tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe, while we're striving to be good something great will happen.
Did great things happen for me? Well, when the interview was over, I was not promoted. But the disciplined effort to blog everyday led to local, national, and even international attention.
More on that tomorrow.
If you'd like to read the other posts in the blogging series, try these:
Yesterday, I disclosed my genius idea to take down Google by offering free ads on my blog. The disclosure was made mid-stream on a post about choosing to be a consistent blogger.
Before I began my 'daily blogging' journey I was actually on a different path. I had planned to write a post to help other people blog. A few ideas had been percolating. The first one was to create a great check-off list from ideas I'd gleaned around the web.
Tips for Bloggers:
1. Start with clear objectives
2. Develop a strategy
3. Keep content focused on a topic
4. Have an editorial calendar
5. Measure based on objectives
6. Integrate social tools, allow logins from social networks
7. Encourage for word of mouth (WOM), integrate into all you do
8. Most effective blogs are conversational or controversial
9. Treat your site (and you) as it's own company or brand
10% for fun, stuff you ♥
I never posted my list.
I decided to live it.
My objective would be to test the theory that posting with consistency changes the world. I wasn't sure how it would change my world, but I knew that it would.
My strategy was to post for thirty days in a row. It was June 18 and that month I'd only posted sporadically. Exactly nine times. I began with earnest on July 19.
360 Convos had its incubation when I wanted to write about business topics, as opposed to blogging on fiction writing and life themes, the center point of my other website. When I was building the strategy for this daily blogging adventure for 360 Convos, I considered a wide array of topics. In staying with item three on the above list, I decided to keep the content focused on business.
I did not keep the content focused on business. (I'm practicing, not shooting for perfection). I did, however, learn a few lessons while blogging everyday:
Jot down blog ideas whenever they occur. Do not use paper for this.
The best place a blogger can jot down ideas is somewhere online. I chose a Google calendar. No, I haven't taken Google down, yet. I still find most of their products useful. In keeping with item four on the list noted above, I dubbed my Google amenityEditorial Calendar and made it public.
I wrote down measurements to evaluate my success (item 5). I integrated social media and made sure the icons were large and easy to find (item 6):
I talked about my blog (WOM). I left a screen up on my computer at work and reeled in a co-worker. I played around with style – conversationaland tested controversial by using the word 'hell' in a headline. I sought a parental tone, I toyed with a touch of PR. I made a confession and made a personal disclosure that had left me dry-mouthed with guilt. I paraded a cute kitten. I preached to myself. I preached to no one else. I outed myself as a distracted parent (more than once).
I treated my blogging journey as a job. I treated my blog as its own company. I integrated my online presence and it became part of my personal branding strategy.
I love to write. I had fun.
I learned that when I was clueless about what to write about, I could refer to my editorial calendar and pick up exactly where my brain had left off. I learned I was in charge of the calendar and could change it when another topic felt more important. I learned I could take on a writing assignment – I could write not just for me, but for someone else as well.
Library Director abruptly retires
after correcting 360 Convos post.
After I pulled the trigger on my starting post, Literacy is the key to the internet, I received an email. A community member chose to send me a kind note, instead of lambasting me in the comments section on my disarray of facts. (I didn't know the difference between a bond and a levy). He coached me through several re-postings, so I could be accurate, mostly.
(Thank you Bruce Ziegman).
The effort to exchange those eleven emails and set me straight, apparently taxed Ziegman beyond his literary capabilities. Two and a half weeks later, he announced his retirement. Today, August 22, is my 35th consecutive post. I have no idea who will give up and retire today because of it.
Today, is my 35th consecutive post. I have no idea who will give up and retire because of it.
What I do know is that the disciplined effort to blog everyday taught me life lessons.
More on that tomorrow.
If you'd like to read the other posts in the blogging series, try these:
For a couple of years the navigation bar of 360 Convos touted, "Top Ten Posts." Blogger allowed an easier recap when they added a widget that calculates this automatically, and 360 Convos grabbed their widget and threw it in the sidebar. The addition occurred without concern that conflicting information now existed on the site--the original top ten and the ongoing top ten.
At the beginning of summer, concerted effort produced a list slated for the nav bar as an update, an update of the current year top ten, but other editorial decisions underway allowed the project to languish.
Conflicting information continued.
Let's have all three. On the navigation bar you'll find, "Original Top 10." On the sidebar you'll find "Top Posts for All Time." To take advantage of the information held in the queue, 360 Convos is now releasing the, until now, top 'secret' information from mid-year.
It occurs to me that the post on Googlewave is obsolete and the post that references Google+ has far surpassed it in pageviews. Time marches on whether we keep pace or not.
Sitting at an old metal desk, you shift uncomfortably in the tired orange chair with frayed threads. You glance sporadically at the clock anxious for the sweep of the hands to signal break time. Finally, the slim points of metal click into place. Ir's time. With joyful glee you push away, land your feet firmly on the floor, and ready to dash to the door to meet friends and fill your lungs with fresh air.
The phone rings.
You squeeze your eyes shut and hang in the limbo between should I or should I not. You sigh, grab the hefty receiver and give your best 'happy to talk to you, but make it snappy' greeting.
It's not someone you know. It's not someone you ever want to know. It's a customer who's been transferred three times too many and they are p.o'ed.
The customer is also stuck in repeat mode. As soon as they dump their load of gripe, they back it up and take another run at it, three or four times.
The coffee break with your buddies is a distant dream. If you can get off the phone in 20 minutes you'll be lucky. If you are able to replace the phone in it's cradle without slamming it will be a sign of extreme self-control.
But you have to be nice.
It's your job.
How do you handle the situation? 360 Convos wrote about how one employee handled a difficult phone call in the post, When the customer can't be consoled, console the employee. The City of Gresham picked up the post and shared it on their intranet site. The paragraph below is what they posted.
If you've been in public service long enough you've probably spoken to a resident or two. If you've spoken to a resident or two you've probably been on the receiving end of a difficult phone call or two. You know, the call where no matter what you say nothing seems to help the situation or satisfy the resident. Check out this great blog post from 360 Convos about how to handle a challenging customer phone call.
It's pretty cool when a business scouts for good ideas. It's even motivating to know a government entity looks for ways to give better service.
