| writing that puts story first
Ah, the presentation that many of you missed – be it for geography, prior engagements, or because your Prof wouldn’t let you out of class.
No matter, the internet triumphs again. Here’s my presentation complete with non sequitor question and answer session.
Niche Communities and Social Networks – A Presentation from Bradley Robb on Vimeo.
Things have been quiet around here lately, but not for lack of trying. Frankly, for someone who hasn’t earned an honest paycheck since June, I’ve been remarkably busy. First, I’ve been doing a good bit of freelancing work, so much so that I had to take a good joke and try and turn it into an honest business. If you remember The Pandemic Group – the fake new media marketing company I started when the Swine Flu first became big news – you might be shocked (shocked!*) to see that the fake website has since been replaced with a brochure landing page.
Yes, that does mean I am starting my own company. And I already have some really cool clients. Instead of operating a strict SEO company, I’m leveraging what I call “conversational marketing” – that is combining smart SEO practices with helping companies take advantage of social media to find current and new customers and turn them into friends.
And speaking of social media, I presented on that very topic – of honing in your passion and finding others who share it – at this month’s Social Media Club here in Richmond. I had a blast and will post the videos of said presentation when they become available. I use the plural because not only was my presentation recorded, but I was also interviewed by Jolie O’Dell who came up what I believe she called “Robb’s Theorem on Furries in Niche Marketing.”
The basic premise of that theory is that furries, people dressed up like animals pretending to be people, is perhaps as far removed from normal life as any particular niche or vertical can be. And yet, when you take that passion and expand it onto a global scale, furries measure in the millions. If such a finite passion can measure in that quantity, other niches can reasonably duplicate that kind of community.
The video interview wasn’t the only bit of press that night. Grid Magazine was in attendance and snagged not only the photo of my above, but also a fairly good recap of the night in general. I do believe that this article officially marks the first time I’ve been on the other side of a printed byline. Yes, I’ve been on the local NBC affiliate a few times, but there is a special place in my heart for printed journalism.
And finally, in fiction writing news, I am now a full chapter into the second act of Project Kingdom. In the traditional Three Act Structure, this one is always my favorite. Why? Because the first act is really a setup, establishing the characters, pushing the hero on their call to action, setting the characters on their chosen paths and providing small victories which seem huge at the time. The first act, in other words, is driving by the characters. In the second act, everything is taken away from them.
Mark my words, the second act of Project Kingdom is where things get real. Across the board, characters find their best laid plans going to waste, and even those pulling the strings find themselves losing control. People die. Things go wrong. Powers shift and roles are revered on a regular basis. And I’m exceptionally excited about writing it.
But I’m going to pound out a short story first. Why? Well, I watched the documentary “Postcards from the Future” on Friday night, and Chuck Palahniuk got me all inspired. I started thinking about technology, darkness, and the digital artifacts we leave behind. Throw in a castoff line from a Washington Social Scene Song…(“If any rock’s going to save my soul then what the fuck is it waiting for?”) and a story started to brew.
I banged out an outline in a few minutes, and I liked what I saw. I still don’t know the characters, but I’ve got 4,000 words left on my goal for WriteClubRVA, and I figure it’s about time I knock out something I can show.
I guess that means people are going to get a free story from me. If you’re wondering what my short stories typically look like, I’ve got a couple online in my portfolio.
*Bonus points if you got that movie reference. Hint – it’s my all time favorite film.
The "new" Mixx
If you’re a Mixx user, you might have noticed that the interface seems to have gotten a bit less crowded today. The social news site, in which users act as a mixture of editor and judge by submitting and voting content to the site’s front page, seems to have removed the ability to vote items down.
As someone with not one, but two curmudgeon awards – given to Mixx users for leading the day in down votes, I have to say I’m a bit sorry to see this feature go. Not because I’m an inherently negative person, but rather because I’m a spam buster. Every once in a while, I’ll go through the Book section of Mixx.com and vote down any content that isn’t book related. Doing so helps to keep the section free of spammy submissions without having to bother the powers-that-be.
The new defunct downvote button button was frequently used in political discussions – creating a tug-of-war between Mixxers of opposing political views to remove or promote a story from reaching the front page.
The ultimate result of this buttons removal is yet to be seen. On one hand, the Mixx front page could see an increase in the variety of stories, with more controversial submissions no longer able to be buried. On the other, the front page can more easily be dominated by a single voting bloc which organizes its powers to promote a defined agenda. I guess, in the end, only time will tell.
Little red down vote button, you shall be missed.
Point of clarification
I don’t consider myself a web designer. Why? Because it’s hard. I’ve built a dozen or so websites in my time (including the template which is running this one), but I’ve never engaged in the amount of study or practice that it takes to really earn that title. I’ve considered it, but my real passion is with the written word.
The internet is one of the greatest advances in the written word that man has ever seen. They allow people to voice their opinions on a global scale. Each advance in social media has succeeded in lowering the entry bar to global stage. As the ease of entry lowers, the number of people committing social media faux pas has risen in inverted proportion.
A local design firm recently discovered this with a blog post making some rather strong claims – first that they were the best design firm in Richmond, and second by assuming critical peer relationships with some of the web’s best web designers. Despite this company being local, I haven’t met them. I didn’t recognize any of their clients, but I do have friends and associates who do. Beyond that, a significant number of web designers did see the post before it was removed and the resulting comments aren’t remotely kind.
Let me be clear, I’ve said far worse in my time. I’ve run my mouth in many embarrassing ways and said some rather embarrassing things. Thus, I’m not going to be the one to cast stones here. However, I think it bears noting that though the local company did delete the post, the damage was still done. Despite frequent comparisons between the internet and a bar, pub, or club – things said on line never really go away.
The questionable blog post from yesterday? Still currently cached on Google – where it will remain for at least another 179 days. Beyond that, I happened to have my browser open when the post was retracted and thus I have a cached copy and a version printed to PDF. [At the company's behest, and because they did make an obvious attempt to rectify this issue, I have removed the links. -PBR ]
In the end, such an experience serves to show that when you live by social media, you can also die by it. And in any small, highly connected community, such news travels quickly.
So, to keep this from skewing completely negative, and to bring this back to writing, how would you craft a similar post to avoid the heaps of comment hate? And how would you react if you suddenly found your inbox crowded with comments?
Yesterday I was profiled at a website called Tweeple Blog – a blog which runs profiles of Twitter users. From my time working as a journalist, I am more than familiar with writing profiles, much more so than being the one on the other end. Being profiled was certainly a first for me. The profile also came as a shock. Why? There wasn’t an interview.
For most journalists, the idea of writing a profile sans interview means wading through piles of marketing copy hand chosen by the subject or the subject’s handlers . And every scrap of that copy is going to be carefully screened to be on message.
The point of the interview is to get beyond that message, and to the meat of the subject. The interview isn’t a means of trapping a person. There’s no “gotcha” involved. Rather, an interview is a process of distilling empathy into understanding. The profile then conveys that understanding.
It’s a game that’s played. Journalists presented with PR, and asked to find the person.
That being said, Tweeple Blog is pulling from a less-than-traditional PR source – Twitter. Much has been said about the marketing ability of Twitter, and for a large part, it’s a good method to promote a message. However, the speed and ease of Twitter derails all but the most predetermined PR messages as easily as the chaos and unpredictability of the battlefield destroys all plans. On Twitter the message gives way to many messages; at its core, Twitter is a cacophony of conversations.
David, the force behind Tweeple Blog simply takes the message – bio, website, location – and pairs that with the various strands of conversations that the subject is having. If an interview looks towards the trees to find the forest, a Tweeple Blog looks at the forest first.
Whether this works for you, as a journalist or someone who is simply studying others, is left to be said. It is perhaps something that we all do on Twitter, or in any other social medium. The question that is left to be said, is are you on message, or are you on Twitter? Is there a golden ratio?
There are probably as many ways to be a jerk in social media as there are in meatspace, however I’ve noticed a recent trend that can only be replicated online.
Here's Your Twitter Icon
The tactic is simple – follow someone. Wait for them to follow you back. Immediately unfollow them.
The result? You are at best a douche, and at worst a stealth-spammer.
There are plenty of reasons to unfollow someone – you don’t like their content, they haven’t updated in ages, they are actually a spammer. Hell, even unfollowing someone because they didn’t follow you back is understandable – Twitter is a communications medium after all, and works best when communication goes both ways.
But, unfollowing someone simply to amass a significant number of followers speaks volumes about a fragile ego which needs a high follower to friend ratio to somehow feel validated.
Danger Room, a National Security-focused blog at Wired.com, is not normally the place one would go to find sound advice on being a modern writer. Further adding to the general sense of improbability is that the Danger Room story is actually focused on flowchart put out by the United States Air Force. So, you might be asking, what’s the connection?
Click for full image
The US Air Force has always been rather blog-averse, outright blocking access to many blogging sites across their entire network. However, the new social internet means that everyone most adopt a touch of public relations knowledge now that everyone can publish and a story can quickly grow legs. And it appears that the Air Force understands this. In order to aide Air Force staff in dealing with blogs, the service’s Public Affairs Agency has put out a rather thought out guide to how to handle with online mentions of the Air Force, be it good or bad.
As the modern writer is almost required to develop an online presence, the flow chart provides a good start with how to deal with your online “brand”. And the article also goes to show that tips and tricks can come from seemingly unlikely places.
Some of the helpful tips on the flowchart include:
and
They’re all good tips and show that the Air Force is getting a handle on managing it’s brand online.
Does anyone else have any tips or tricks for keeping everything straight?
The question “Are you on Twitter?” is quickly becoming one which should be answered with a “yes” by anyone on the connected side of the digital divide. Though the service is just over two years old, the depth and capabilities of the network are such that overlooking them should be seen as a detriment to one’s own ability to operate online. But why? What’s all the big fuss about?
Neither a Blog Nor a Social Network
While Twitter is billed as both a microblogging service and a social network, it really is neither of these. Though Twitter can be lumped into either role with some amount of luck, it’s actually closer to a new communications medium – like email it can deliver written messages individually or en masse, yet the messages are maintained online in a searchable, permanent manner – like a web page. Twitter fills in as an important role, one which is supplemented by it’s portability, plugs the gaps between a quick text message or phone call to a friend and a full blown blog post; Twitter means that the message is never really out of reach, be it personal or professional.
Addressing the Flaws
Lore Sjoberg, blogger at Wired.com pointed out what he saw as Twitter’s greatest flaws months ago. Back then the service had already snapped up enough of the tech elite and early adopters to be draw considerable attention. To paraphrase, Lore saw two primary problems with Twitter: 140 characters is not enough to say anything interesting, and the primary question posed begs boring answers.
The Character Limit
Myself being a rather verbose writer, it’s amazing that I would come to disagree with Lore on the importance of the character limit. Lore feels that 140 characters is simply “not enough for really interesting postings, while being way too much for boring postings.” The reality seems to be that users learn that brevity truly is the soul of wit. Words are chosen more carefully, unnecessary word are eschewed, with the correct word being chosen to fill the role. To put it bluntly, Twitter distills content to the bare essentials.
The Question
Comic from PC Weenies
Taken at face value, the question “What are you doing?” is a silly one, and one that will always be answered with the some version of the same answer, “I was doing something, but now I’m twittering.” Yet, this is the question which Twitter sprang from – taking the concept of Facebook’s Status Message, and removing the rest of Facebook. This is, of course, the concept that Twitter was launched to fill – a means for people to constantly update their status, perhaps under the belief that those who live the most interesting lives would in fact win.
The Reality
Of course, this isn’t to say that Twitter is a bastion of witty quips which would make Hemingway smile. Quite the contrary, there is a great deal of inane and insignificant postings of which I am as guilty of supplying as any other on the service. But that doesn’t take away from Twitter, rather it seems to cement the service as viable, as real. As a collective whole, Twitter has become a giant conversation, and like all lengthy conversations, not everything is a gem.
The Value is Where You Find It
What has set Twitter apart, and what has made the service near-necessary is that it is a giant conversation. The number and variety of users means that someone, somewhere on Twitter is talking about or interested in something of personal value to you. Truly a first, Sean Bonner used the service to propose to his wife with the oh so romantic “So…um, wanna get hitched?” She said yes, by the way. Perhaps marriage isn’t your style. James Buck’s one word tweet certainly got the attention of his friends and followers, not to mention the international media. Sent from an anti-government protest he was attending in Egypt, James was only able to get out one word, Arrested, before being escorted from the protest by Egyptian authorities. His plea for help enabled his friends to alert the authorities, and allowed him to get back out of jail. And then there’s the out of this world, like when the Mars Phoenix program twittered the discovery of ice on the red planet. Or the on the ground reporting from Mumbai. Or from President-Elect Obama’s Acceptance speech. For a service so young, it’s been used in a lot of interesting places.
The Fastest Name In News
NPR's Andy Carvin
These are, of course, extremes. Twitter cemented itself as valuable for me during the Presidential Primary season. During perhaps the most important Presidential race of my lifetime, I was working evenings at UPS, and was thus cut off from the flow of political news. The folks at NPR, spearheaded by Andy Carvin, were actively tweeting results in real time. Because Twitter is built to leverage SMS technology, I was able to get real time updates to the results sent directly to my phone. No need to surf, no need to search, Andy and the crew at NPR simply sent out short dispatches showing the play by plays.
NPR isn’t alone in using Twitter as a news medium, either. The character limit, lauded as being too short for real content, is almost tailored for headlines – able to portray the essence of a story with a link to the greater contents. Focusing Twitter in this medium allows the service to be the most heavily staffed news source in the world, with everyone from casual bloggers to major news organizations funneling their content in. Due to the viral nature of twitter, with quality postings being repeated from user to user, a story can quickly grow legs, exponential legs.
A Two Lane Road
Unlike the traditional publishing paradigm, where news moves in a largely one way flow, Twitter facilitates communication equally in both directions. As Twitter largely decentralizes it’s publishing methods, this provides a rather odd sense of actual communication, breaking the Us/Them or Mainstream/New Media scenarios associated with content platforms like blogs or websites.
Franks's In Your Twitter, Reading Your Tweets
The result of this switch, when paired with how easy it is to creative a searchable live stream of content on Twitter, can be shocking, as many users have discovered when twittering about Comcast in frustration. I know I was caught of guard when one day, after a rather lengthy commute, I discovered that my cable was out and fired off a bitter tweet about Comcast into what I assumed was the void of the internet. Within moments I had a reply from a user called ComcastCares asking if they could help.
I’m not going to lie, at first I was bit disturbed that Comcast was addressing me directly, openly on Twitter. But after sitting back for a few seconds, I realized that this is actually what I wanted. I complained, and my situation was immediately addressed. The result, however, was so much more. I was able to put a face and name on Comcast, and suddenly found myself “not hating the Comcast as much.”
Frank Eliason, the Director of Digital Care for Comcast and the force behind the ComcastCares account, might not have been the first to use Twitter for this time of public relations work, but he is certainly one of the pioneers. Other companies are learning to make use of Twitter to actually engage their customers. And politicians are using Twitter to address their constituents. Once you get over the novelty of the idea – of issues actually being addressed in the open like on Twitter, the medium actually sells itself.
The Beauty is in the Simplicity
Twitter itself is not perfect. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for communication in the ultra-connected world. But it is a powerful platform that allows for myriad types of information. Between the casual bits of banter, ideas flow, not just down, but up. People are able to connect with others, easily, and in real time. The entire thing is so oddly democratic.
The first Social Media Networks looked like this
I’ve had a bit of an on-again / off-again relationship with what has recently been termed social media. As I might have mentioned previously, I started my online life when I was a teenager by dialing into a local bulletin board system called TopGun. As the board was local, so were the majority of its users. By local I mean the majority of us hung out at the same Denny’s, thus the line between online and off was in constant flux based on where someone was at the time. My understanding of the online world was that it was always an extension of one’s social circle, a meta-layer that sought to augment the real world, to complete instead of compete.
The switch to AOL nearly doomed TopGun. The difference was night and day. TopGun, for all the love bestowed upon it by us the users, was four colors, and could only support two dozen or so simultaneous users. AOL, on the other hand, had email which could reach anyone on the web, IMs to facilitate instant communication, chatrooms that could blow those of TopGun out of the water, and then there was access to the rest of the internet, outside of the walled gardens. I stuck with AOL until I went to West Point, where the firewall would not allow us to connect to AOL’s servers. While at West Point, and through my time in Iraq, the internet became a far less social experience.
After the war, and after getting the internet hooked up in my barracks room, the sense of social began to return. On April 10, 2004, I started my first blog. At first it was merely a place to post my writings online. After all, I had a writing partner and a lit agent in the real world, and plenty of brother’s in arms. What did I need extra relationships online for? Of course, I started plugging more into the Wild West that was the blogosphere of 2004. I started making friends with other bloggers, launched an online magazine, and pushed forward into other, more closed, social networks.
Its So True - Image from XKCD
I tried MySpace. It seemed silly, juvenile, and filled with spammers. My account languished from lack of attention. I tried Orkut back when it was in beta (rimshot, please), but where MySpace focused too much on the look at me individual and the collecting of friends, Orkut suffered from focusing too much on the look at me individuals and the collecting of groups. Both where inherently pretentious in their grasps of the ego. I tried Facebook, and failed to see the appeal aside from a couple of Facebook related hookups. All of these accounts were deleted at one time or another.
Then the social internet managed to get shorter while somehow still growing. While temping at Kellogg’s (yes, the cereal company) I signed up for a Twitter account. At the time I was manually saving all of my zany text messages from the day and posting them to a blogspot blog. Why? Because they were interesting and funny. When taken out of context, that usually increased. Why not skip the middleman and publish directly to the web? I languished on Twitter until the political season kicked into full swing, discovering that I could get news in appropriate lengths and with blazing speed via the service. I was then hooked.
That pretty much brings us up to the current state. If you look over at my networks box, you can see I participate in three – Twitter (a microblogging service), Rejaw (often incorrectly labeled as a Twitter clone, in reality it’s an asynchronous message board), and Facebook (because I was told that I had to, and I plan on using it to market products out).
Oh, and then there was last night’s King of the Hill. This is not a show which I normally watch. However, I had let the DVR queue up the Simpsons to avoid commercials and when that ended the girlfriend and I were unceremoniously dumped into an episode of King of the Hill, and an argument about blogging. The internet, in particular the social internet, is a point of contention in my relationship. I place an emphasis on what my social cohorts, particularly on Twitter and Rejaw, say. When something happens, I will frequently dash out a quick twitter about it on my BlackBerry, much to KnownGirlfriend’s chagrin.
The episode, embedded below, placed Hank Hill in camp with KnownGirlfriend, and my opinion seemingly to match that of the female accounted who creates a MySpace page for Strickland. As one would expect, there was a juxtaposition of resistance by those who didn’t understand the new technology and those who approached that lack of understanding with zeal usually reserved for religion. Yes, neither the girlfriend nor myself go to quite these extremes, but we have both known to view the other in that way.
This, of course, got me to thinking about what exactly social media is. How it’s not new at all. And each form of social media has its uses, its pitfalls, and its stereotypes. For instance, King of the Hill chose to lump together to disparate terms – blogging and MySpace – in an attempt to simplify the social web into a 22 minute cartoon. Those of us who’ve been around know that MySpace has the worst blogging platform in the history of the net. MySpace stopped being relevant years ago largely due to pages like this.
So, before I launch into my own taken on various social media platforms. What say you? Favorites? Strong dislikes? Notoriously or gloriously overlooked?
Bradley Robb likes TV and books, and has an intense dislike for cinnamon. Once, Bradley stopped a Soviet T-60 with his middle finger. Bradley writes speculative fiction and edits Fiction Matters, and never really got the hang of talking about himself in the third person.
Copyright © 2009 Bradley Robb – Writing That Puts Story First
