I gave a talk last week at the SocialDevCamp last Saturday on Social Media for business. I also had the opportunity to watch many presentations, both good and not-so-good. I’ve had some great training on presentations from Northwestern (particularly Surepayroll founder Troy Henikoff) and notice where people go right and where people go wrong with their presentations.

This is a quick list of seven things that will kill your presentation - avoid these problems as much as possible and you will see your presentations gain better reception - plus people will want to talk with you afterwards and get to know you.

1) Excessive text on Powerpoints

I’m sorry, but this is the #1 sin I see with presentations - long blocks of text that many presenters read from the screen. there are huge problems with this, including:

• It distracts the audience from you
• It distracts you from the audience
• It is hard to read
• It becomes the presentation rather than become a supplement to it.

I try not to place more than three bulletpoints on any powerpoint slide. Half the time, my powerpoints are simply images. Instead of listing my points, I’ll put up a related set of images and go through my points by memory. Which leads me to #2.

2) Excessive use of notes or note cards for presentations

People want to concentrate on you, not on your notes. You want to concentrate on engaging the audience, not engaging your notes. You don’t need to know every word of your presentation before you present it - just the main points. If you know your content, you will be surprised as to how easy the content comes up. If you need notecards, just list a few key terms to remind you of what you want to say, nothing more.

3) Small fonts on Powerpoints

Guy Kawasaki recommends the 10-20-30 rule for Venture Capital presentations - 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font. This is a good rule in general, but you’re going to need more slides for certain topics (and don’t be afraid to use multiple slides to make the presentation seem animated). However, try not to go below 28 px for your font - you have people in the back who need to see it and older people in most crowds. Think of them.

4) Not asking questions of the audience

People get bored when they are not interacted with. If you’re talking at them, they are distracted. If you’re talking with them, asking them to answer questions and to think, they will actually be listening.

5) Always standing behind the podium

Why put a wall between you and those you’re talking to? The podium acts like a barrier to your audience - it’s not that your different or special compared to them, bur that you’re across a river or across the street. Great presentations are also conversations - converse with your audience by moving around, going into the audience, and stepping out of the comfort of the podium

6) Not using examples

We love stories. It’s simple - we consume stories and more importantly, we remember them. If you want to convey your points, don’t just give them a bulletpoint - give a background story to prove your case. In my case, I used Comcast as an example of using social media for business. It helped fill in the picture.

7) Not displaying your passion

If you’re giving a presentation on something, you hopefully like what you’re talking about. But so many times people get nervous, dip into their cards, and go monotone.

If you’re truly passionate and know what you’re talking about, take a risk, drop the notecards, and speak from your experience. That’s what we wanted to hear in the first place.

- Ben

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I gave a talk last week at the SocialDevCamp last Saturday on Social Media for business. I also had the opportunity to watch many presentations, both good and not-so-good. I’ve had some great training on presentations from Northwestern (particularly Surepayroll founder Troy Henikoff) and notice where people go right and where people go wrong with their presentations.

This is a quick list of seven things that will kill your presentation - avoid these problems as much as possible and you will see your presentations gain better reception - plus people will want to talk with you afterwards and get to know you.

1) Excessive text on Powerpoints

I’m sorry, but this is the #1 sin I see with presentations - long blocks of text that many presenters read from the screen. there are huge problems with this, including:

• It distracts the audience from you
• It distracts you from the audience
• It is hard to read
• It becomes the presentation rather than become a supplement to it.

I try not to place more than three bulletpoints on any powerpoint slide. Half the time, my powerpoints are simply images. Instead of listing my points, I’ll put up a related set of images and go through my points by memory. Which leads me to #2.

2) Excessive use of notes or note cards for presentations

People want to concentrate on you, not on your notes. You want to concentrate on engaging the audience, not engaging your notes. You don’t need to know every word of your presentation before you present it - just the main points. If you know your content, you will be surprised as to how easy the content comes up. If you need notecards, just list a few key terms to remind you of what you want to say, nothing more.

3) Small fonts on Powerpoints

Guy Kawasaki recommends the 10-20-30 rule for Venture Capital presentations - 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font. This is a good rule in general, but you’re going to need more slides for certain topics (and don’t be afraid to use multiple slides to make the presentation seem animated). However, try not to go below 28 px for your font - you have people in the back who need to see it and older people in most crowds. Think of them.

4) Not asking questions of the audience

People get bored when they are not interacted with. If you’re talking at them, they are distracted. If you’re talking with them, asking them to answer questions and to think, they will actually be listening.

5) Always standing behind the podium

Why put a wall between you and those you’re talking to? The podium acts like a barrier to your audience - it’s not that your different or special compared to them, bur that you’re across a river or across the street. Great presentations are also conversations - converse with your audience by moving around, going into the audience, and stepping out of the comfort of the podium

6) Not using examples

We love stories. It’s simple - we consume stories and more importantly, we remember them. If you want to convey your points, don’t just give them a bulletpoint - give a background story to prove your case. In my case, I used Comcast as an example of using social media for business. It helped fill in the picture.

7) Not displaying your passion

If you’re giving a presentation on something, you hopefully like what you’re talking about. But so many times people get nervous, dip into their cards, and go monotone.

If you’re truly passionate and know what you’re talking about, take a risk, drop the notecards, and speak from your experience. That’s what we wanted to hear in the first place.

- Ben

Share This Post!

Before I get to this awesome post, I wanted to link you all to my very first article at Mashable.com (ranked as the #9 blog by Technorati).

Are Social Media Jobs Here to Stay?

Now with that out of the way, I wanted to post two images to show you just how fun Digg can be for your blog.

The following is the month of July stats. I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to how much of that was from July 23rd, the day my article on Digg hit the front page (and stayed there for the rest of the day).

Share This Post!

Before I get to this awesome post, I wanted to link you all to my very first article at Mashable.com (ranked as the #9 blog by Technorati).

Are Social Media Jobs Here to Stay?

Now with that out of the way, I wanted to post two images to show you just how fun Digg can be for your blog.

The following is the month of July stats. I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to how much of that was from July 23rd, the day my article on Digg hit the front page (and stayed there for the rest of the day).

Share This Post!

I will admit: I am a prolific multitasker. There’s usually no less than 25 tabs open in my Firefox, along with my IM, FTP, ScribeFire software, Word, iTunes, etc. open. This is in addition to taking phone calls, talking with people, eating, and half a dozen other activities I am sure I embark upon while “working.”

This type of multitasking is dangerous to your productivity and even to your safety, though.

A highly circulated New Atlantis article on multitasking warns of the harm that can come of it.

For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

My friends over at Technotheory also advocate the same advice - if you’re doing a task, focus on that one, finish it, and then move on. As a result of their advice, I check my email less and less, but do it all in one burst. The same goes with my blogging - once I start, I don’t stop until I finish. But I haven’t completely transitioned to this way of thinking and because of that, projects such as my novel have suffered. Perhaps I’m just hardwired to switching tasks.

But I want to delve a step beyond these articles and these observations - when should you multitask and when should you become laser focused? Certainly not the easiest question to answer, but I’ll try. I believe there are circumstances where your utilization of time should include multitasking. Therefore, I divide multitasking into two categories

Unfocused tasks are ones that perform very little strain on your mind while performing them. This includes things like driving, working out, long walks, eating, and resting. They’re mostly physical activities that don’t require you to think critically to complete.

Focused tasks require significant brain power to complete. This means things like writing, mathematics, personal conversations, and processing information.

You should always, at all times, be performing one, and only one, focused task. You’re wasting time and brain power if you’re not performing one active task and you’re wasting time if you’re performing more than one task. If I start surfing the Internet while writing this blog post, I’d be performing two focused tasks - Processing information and writing. You will work significantly slower and lose the momentum you’ve gained while writing or working doing this type of thing.

This is also why listening to music and driving/working/concentrating isn’t detrimental to your multitasking - generally music is “background” and, unless you’re trying to figure out the lyrics to a song, we’re trained to let the music pass us by just like most ambient noise. We’re not trying to actively process detailed information while listening to music, which is why I’m not troubled with writing this blog post while Queen plays through my headphones. Others are more distracted by the music, however, and that’s most likely why they study with silence.

What you should be doing in a multitask is gathering knowledge during your unfocused tasks. We almost always listen to music during two prominent unfocused tasks - working out and driving. Unlike cell phone use, which can be dangerous while driving because of the back-and-forth conversation, the fact that you’re not responding to the music makes it an unfocused task. But don’t do just music for these types of tasks - gain some knowledge in the process. Load your iPod or car with podcasts or audio books for these occasions. I have limited time to read, but I consistently get at least four hours in the gym a week to maintain my weight loss. To pass the time, I do either music, an audio book, or a podcast, especially when I’m on the treadmill or elliptical. You can get through a TwiT podcast in a single workout session or finish a book in one or two weeks (I just finished 1984 by George Orwell). You are actively processing information by your hearing while performing unfocused tasks with your touch and your sight.

This brings me to one additional point to multitasking: Only assign one task per sense, especially for hearing and vision. There’s a reason you shouldn’t read or text while driving - your eyes are focused on two different tasks at once, a dangerous combination. Drinking water from a water bottle is an unfocused task, which is why you can drink water, listen to a podcast, and walk at the same time without tripping. But try drinking water and listening to a podcast while writing a paper and you’ll either slow down your blogging or miss most of the important information in the podcast.

Driving while talking on a cell phone is one of the few anomalies that falls outside of my definitions - one task is audio and one task is visual, but it’s still dangerous to do both at the same time, even with a headset. The issue here is that, in conversation, we generally use our hearing and our sight in tandem because that’s how we’re trained to perform conversations. Thus our vision gets distracted with the conversation as it does with in-person conversations.

Overall, remember that multitasking isn’t a bad thing, but multitasking on two focused/active tasks is not only unproductive, but dangerous. Do just one focused task at a time. Email for an hour, write for two hours, design a webpage for two hours, hang out with your friends for the night. Hit a stopping point and then switch. Just don’t switch midway through or you’ll lose that momenting. In additon, try not to perform multiple tasks with the same sense, especially hearing and vision. This is when you lose your productivity and tread into dangerous waters that can lead to a pink slip or your ass in a hospital bed.

Disagree with me? Give me your best shot in the comments.

Share This Post!

I will admit: I am a prolific multitasker. There’s usually no less than 25 tabs open in my Firefox, along with my IM, FTP, ScribeFire software, Word, iTunes, etc. open. This is in addition to taking phone calls, talking with people, eating, and half a dozen other activities I am sure I embark upon while “working.”

This type of multitasking is dangerous to your productivity and even to your safety, though.

A highly circulated New Atlantis article on multitasking warns of the harm that can come of it.

For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

My friends over at Technotheory also advocate the same advice - if you’re doing a task, focus on that one, finish it, and then move on. As a result of their advice, I check my email less and less, but do it all in one burst. The same goes with my blogging - once I start, I don’t stop until I finish. But I haven’t completely transitioned to this way of thinking and because of that, projects such as my novel have suffered. Perhaps I’m just hardwired to switching tasks.

But I want to delve a step beyond these articles and these observations - when should you multitask and when should you become laser focused? Certainly not the easiest question to answer, but I’ll try. I believe there are circumstances where your utilization of time should include multitasking. Therefore, I divide multitasking into two categories

Unfocused tasks are ones that perform very little strain on your mind while performing them. This includes things like driving, working out, long walks, eating, and resting. They’re mostly physical activities that don’t require you to think critically to complete.

Focused tasks require significant brain power to complete. This means things like writing, mathematics, personal conversations, and processing information.

You should always, at all times, be performing one, and only one, focused task. You’re wasting time and brain power if you’re not performing one active task and you’re wasting time if you’re performing more than one task. If I start surfing the Internet while writing this blog post, I’d be performing two focused tasks - Processing information and writing. You will work significantly slower and lose the momentum you’ve gained while writing or working doing this type of thing.

This is also why listening to music and driving/working/concentrating isn’t detrimental to your multitasking - generally music is “background” and, unless you’re trying to figure out the lyrics to a song, we’re trained to let the music pass us by just like most ambient noise. We’re not trying to actively process detailed information while listening to music, which is why I’m not troubled with writing this blog post while Queen plays through my headphones. Others are more distracted by the music, however, and that’s most likely why they study with silence.

What you should be doing in a multitask is gathering knowledge during your unfocused tasks. We almost always listen to music during two prominent unfocused tasks - working out and driving. Unlike cell phone use, which can be dangerous while driving because of the back-and-forth conversation, the fact that you’re not responding to the music makes it an unfocused task. But don’t do just music for these types of tasks - gain some knowledge in the process. Load your iPod or car with podcasts or audio books for these occasions. I have limited time to read, but I consistently get at least four hours in the gym a week to maintain my weight loss. To pass the time, I do either music, an audio book, or a podcast, especially when I’m on the treadmill or elliptical. You can get through a TwiT podcast in a single workout session or finish a book in one or two weeks (I just finished 1984 by George Orwell). You are actively processing information by your hearing while performing unfocused tasks with your touch and your sight.

This brings me to one additional point to multitasking: Only assign one task per sense, especially for hearing and vision. There’s a reason you shouldn’t read or text while driving - your eyes are focused on two different tasks at once, a dangerous combination. Drinking water from a water bottle is an unfocused task, which is why you can drink water, listen to a podcast, and walk at the same time without tripping. But try drinking water and listening to a podcast while writing a paper and you’ll either slow down your blogging or miss most of the important information in the podcast.

Driving while talking on a cell phone is one of the few anomalies that falls outside of my definitions - one task is audio and one task is visual, but it’s still dangerous to do both at the same time, even with a headset. The issue here is that, in conversation, we generally use our hearing and our sight in tandem because that’s how we’re trained to perform conversations. Thus our vision gets distracted with the conversation as it does with in-person conversations.

Overall, remember that multitasking isn’t a bad thing, but multitasking on two focused/active tasks is not only unproductive, but dangerous. Do just one focused task at a time. Email for an hour, write for two hours, design a webpage for two hours, hang out with your friends for the night. Hit a stopping point and then switch. Just don’t switch midway through or you’ll lose that momenting. In additon, try not to perform multiple tasks with the same sense, especially hearing and vision. This is when you lose your productivity and tread into dangerous waters that can lead to a pink slip or your ass in a hospital bed.

Disagree with me? Give me your best shot in the comments.

Share This Post!

Yesterday, I took a break from computer screens, social media conversations, and blogging to visit Six Flags Great America with friends. Never forget to take a break from your work.

I don’t have photos of the trip for you (yet), but I do have some insight I gained while I waited in line for the Iron Wolf roller coaster. In order for this insight ot mean anything, I need to explain a little about my day yesterday.

When we first arrived at Six Flags, the first roller coaster we went to was Superman: Ultimate Flight (they flip you so there’s absolutely nothing underneath you). Little did we know that we’d be in line for over two hours. Why? Because the roller coaster broke down while we were in line. Twice. The first time took about 25 minutes for them to fix the roller coaster. The second time it took 15. Strangely, we didn’t leave the line. Why? Because we were already so deep into the line that leaving would have meant wasting all of that time standing in line. So we toughed it out and we got our coaster ride, but we left with a bad taste in our mouths (though the staff were very courteous about the situation and talked with people in the line to answer questions). Several others left though and, of course, a lot of people didn’t join the line for the roller coaster for the rest of the day. It also didn’t help that Superman only ran with one car for the rest of the day.

Picked up on the analogy yet? I am talking about the one and only Twitter. Twitter is the microblogging service that has been lambasted by the blogosphere for being down far too often. I’ve been highly critical of Twitter - No internet service should need to turn off features on a consistent basis to stay up.

A few observations based on my Superman: Ultimate Flight experience and turn them into advice for Twitter:

• If you go down, you lose people. When Superman: Ultimate Flight broke, nobody new entered the line because it would be a waste - they went elsewhere. People in the line at the time left and went to other rides. Most stayed, but became annoyed and complained. The same is true of Twitter. Facebook went down this morning, and for every minute it is down, it loses about 200 new users. Now how many potential users do you think Twitter has lost because of its downtime and bad press? Not only that, but it has lost people who would have been repeat customers. I know I would have gone onto Superman another time if it had not broke down.
• You can’t run on partial capacity and expect people to be happy. People weren’t happy that only one car was running on Superman for the rest of the day. People aren’t happy that Twitter has had to turn off multiple services the last few weeks. If you promise something or release a new service, you better deliver. Your customers expect it.
• People will stay if they’re committed. I’m not going to leave the line when I’m on the platform for a roller coaster, even if it did just break down. I will wait it out and hope they can fix it. People have thousands of followers and friends on Twitter - they’re not going to just abandon it. But they will not return as often or speak as highly of it to their friends.
• Good customer service can help minimize damage, but it doesn’t heal damage either. When the staff came to talk with us, we were distracted, we were less angry, we were even pleased that they’d come out. But it didn’t make us tell people how great Superman was as a roller coaster and it didn’t convince us to come back. Twitter’s downtime whale and openness to answering questions may be appreciated, but it doesn’t absolve them for their mistakes.

We tried out a variety of other roller coasters with smaller lines for the rest of the day and had incredible experiences on nearly all of them. So I want you to think of your product as a roller coaster - As the line gets bigger, you’ve got to do more to please your customers or you will lose them. Even if you have an incredible service. Breakdowns and delays are unacceptable and no amount of openness or customer service can forgive you for those two sins.

But unlike roller coasters, you can’t just start off with a fresh customer base that doesn’t know about the events that transpired the previous day. You can’t just wipe the slate clean. Unlike roller coasters, your mistakes are there to be scrutinized forever. I hope FriendFeed, the rapidly rising social media aggregate service, is learning from the downfall of Twitter, because they’re next in line for the same rapid rise and scrutiny Twitter has experienced.

Share This Post!

Yesterday, I took a break from computer screens, social media conversations, and blogging to visit Six Flags Great America with friends. Never forget to take a break from your work.

I don’t have photos of the trip for you (yet), but I do have some insight I gained while I waited in line for the Iron Wolf roller coaster. In order for this insight ot mean anything, I need to explain a little about my day yesterday.

When we first arrived at Six Flags, the first roller coaster we went to was Superman: Ultimate Flight (they flip you so there’s absolutely nothing underneath you). Little did we know that we’d be in line for over two hours. Why? Because the roller coaster broke down while we were in line. Twice. The first time took about 25 minutes for them to fix the roller coaster. The second time it took 15. Strangely, we didn’t leave the line. Why? Because we were already so deep into the line that leaving would have meant wasting all of that time standing in line. So we toughed it out and we got our coaster ride, but we left with a bad taste in our mouths (though the staff were very courteous about the situation and talked with people in the line to answer questions). Several others left though and, of course, a lot of people didn’t join the line for the roller coaster for the rest of the day. It also didn’t help that Superman only ran with one car for the rest of the day.

Picked up on the analogy yet? I am talking about the one and only Twitter. Twitter is the microblogging service that has been lambasted by the blogosphere for being down far too often. I’ve been highly critical of Twitter - No internet service should need to turn off features on a consistent basis to stay up.

A few observations based on my Superman: Ultimate Flight experience and turn them into advice for Twitter:

• If you go down, you lose people. When Superman: Ultimate Flight broke, nobody new entered the line because it would be a waste - they went elsewhere. People in the line at the time left and went to other rides. Most stayed, but became annoyed and complained. The same is true of Twitter. Facebook went down this morning, and for every minute it is down, it loses about 200 new users. Now how many potential users do you think Twitter has lost because of its downtime and bad press? Not only that, but it has lost people who would have been repeat customers. I know I would have gone onto Superman another time if it had not broke down.
• You can’t run on partial capacity and expect people to be happy. People weren’t happy that only one car was running on Superman for the rest of the day. People aren’t happy that Twitter has had to turn off multiple services the last few weeks. If you promise something or release a new service, you better deliver. Your customers expect it.
• People will stay if they’re committed. I’m not going to leave the line when I’m on the platform for a roller coaster, even if it did just break down. I will wait it out and hope they can fix it. People have thousands of followers and friends on Twitter - they’re not going to just abandon it. But they will not return as often or speak as highly of it to their friends.
• Good customer service can help minimize damage, but it doesn’t heal damage either. When the staff came to talk with us, we were distracted, we were less angry, we were even pleased that they’d come out. But it didn’t make us tell people how great Superman was as a roller coaster and it didn’t convince us to come back. Twitter’s downtime whale and openness to answering questions may be appreciated, but it doesn’t absolve them for their mistakes.

We tried out a variety of other roller coasters with smaller lines for the rest of the day and had incredible experiences on nearly all of them. So I want you to think of your product as a roller coaster - As the line gets bigger, you’ve got to do more to please your customers or you will lose them. Even if you have an incredible service. Breakdowns and delays are unacceptable and no amount of openness or customer service can forgive you for those two sins.

But unlike roller coasters, you can’t just start off with a fresh customer base that doesn’t know about the events that transpired the previous day. You can’t just wipe the slate clean. Unlike roller coasters, your mistakes are there to be scrutinized forever. I hope FriendFeed, the rapidly rising social media aggregate service, is learning from the downfall of Twitter, because they’re next in line for the same rapid rise and scrutiny Twitter has experienced.

Share This Post!

Hold onto your obvious judgment for a moment while I explain what I’m talking about.

So as many of you know, I’m not only a blogger, but also an author. I’m nearing the end of my first novel, The Eternal Sphere, which I hope to be the first of five or six books depicting a society and characters in search of redemption. I’ve been writing the novel for years, far longer than I have been blogging.

When I first started reading blogs, I immediately noticed the difference in writing styles: pithier, more images, a focus on emphasizing key point via bullets or bolding, and far less emphasis on details. This is how I write my blog articles as well. I try to highlight the key points and hit them early. You’ll find bolding and bullet points a great deal in my articles. But in my novel writing, it’s a completely different style of writing. I “see” the images, the fights, the suffering of my characters, the landscapes and I try to convey as much of that as I can to the reader. I am conveying this through dialogue and very descriptive writing.

So far, my novel writing hasn’t been drastically affected by my blog writing, but it’s tough for me to know objectively. While I do want my novel to be a bit pithier, I do not want it to be like a blog. So I started to wonder if the general blog writing and reading style, pithy and quickly scanned, is good for my overall writing.

So here’s some pros and cons of blogging towards your overall writing I came up with:

Pros

• Able to write every day - Constant writing improves your technique
• Must read others’ material to properly blog - It’s simple, the more reading you do, the better you become as a writer. More ideas, more techniques, more exposure via blogging
• Research - You’re doing constant research on the internet to write many of your posts, to find links, etc. Great also for non-fiction writing.
• Exposure to far more thoughts and opinions - What you may lose in the length and quality of some authors you gain in the quantity. Yes, seeing so many different styles helps your own.
• Exploring Topics you Love - You better be blogging because you’re passionate about a topic
• Commenting - You can get the thoughts of your readers almost instantly, something you don’t really get with other types of writing.

Cons

• Not working with plots - You’re mostly writing about news or opinion. With novels, you’re writing in arcs, plots, and longer term thinking.
• Not reading as many books - You may read more blogs, but that inevitably takes away from time you could be reading novels or other great literary works. I try to make up for this by audio books while I work out, but that isn’t a perfect substitute.
• Heavier on Images rather than imagery - When’s the last time you read a book that had pictures on every page? Even non-fiction books have fewer images than blog posts.
• Pithier writing leaves out details and nuances - You need to convey a lot more to readers in a book or a paper. In blog posts, you can simply link. Sometimes it makes for lazy writing.

I could go on with a list, but the question I posed in the title is a bit misleading. Sure blogging helps your writing, but it’s a different style of writing. The question should be: Are you able to adjust your writing style to the need, topic, and audience you’re writing to? If you can, then constant writing will get your creative and writing juices flowing. If not, then you need to concentrate on one type of writing or be more conscious about altering your style of writing for your intended audience.

As a bonus: 34 Writing Tips to help make you a better writer.

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Hold onto your obvious judgment for a moment while I explain what I’m talking about.

So as many of you know, I’m not only a blogger, but also an author. I’m nearing the end of my first novel, The Eternal Sphere, which I hope to be the first of five or six books depicting a society and characters in search of redemption. I’ve been writing the novel for years, far longer than I have been blogging.

When I first started reading blogs, I immediately noticed the difference in writing styles: pithier, more images, a focus on emphasizing key point via bullets or bolding, and far less emphasis on details. This is how I write my blog articles as well. I try to highlight the key points and hit them early. You’ll find bolding and bullet points a great deal in my articles. But in my novel writing, it’s a completely different style of writing. I “see” the images, the fights, the suffering of my characters, the landscapes and I try to convey as much of that as I can to the reader. I am conveying this through dialogue and very descriptive writing.

So far, my novel writing hasn’t been drastically affected by my blog writing, but it’s tough for me to know objectively. While I do want my novel to be a bit pithier, I do not want it to be like a blog. So I started to wonder if the general blog writing and reading style, pithy and quickly scanned, is good for my overall writing.

So here’s some pros and cons of blogging towards your overall writing I came up with:

Pros

• Able to write every day - Constant writing improves your technique
• Must read others’ material to properly blog - It’s simple, the more reading you do, the better you become as a writer. More ideas, more techniques, more exposure via blogging
• Research - You’re doing constant research on the internet to write many of your posts, to find links, etc. Great also for non-fiction writing.
• Exposure to far more thoughts and opinions - What you may lose in the length and quality of some authors you gain in the quantity. Yes, seeing so many different styles helps your own.
• Exploring Topics you Love - You better be blogging because you’re passionate about a topic
• Commenting - You can get the thoughts of your readers almost instantly, something you don’t really get with other types of writing.

Cons

• Not working with plots - You’re mostly writing about news or opinion. With novels, you’re writing in arcs, plots, and longer term thinking.
• Not reading as many books - You may read more blogs, but that inevitably takes away from time you could be reading novels or other great literary works. I try to make up for this by audio books while I work out, but that isn’t a perfect substitute.
• Heavier on Images rather than imagery - When’s the last time you read a book that had pictures on every page? Even non-fiction books have fewer images than blog posts.
• Pithier writing leaves out details and nuances - You need to convey a lot more to readers in a book or a paper. In blog posts, you can simply link. Sometimes it makes for lazy writing.

I could go on with a list, but the question I posed in the title is a bit misleading. Sure blogging helps your writing, but it’s a different style of writing. The question should be: Are you able to adjust your writing style to the need, topic, and audience you’re writing to? If you can, then constant writing will get your creative and writing juices flowing. If not, then you need to concentrate on one type of writing or be more conscious about altering your style of writing for your intended audience.

As a bonus: 34 Writing Tips to help make you a better writer.

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Update: Amazing response. Subscribe if you want more and watch for my new blog, TechThrill.

Not even a few months ago, Digg was on the verge of being bought out by Google or Microsoft. While those rumors have largely disappeared, the possibility (and even likelihood) of one of the two giants snatching up Digg is still prominent.

I had a debate with a friend of mine over the usefulness and future of Digg. It got me thinking about which direction Digg is headed. So I am performing a thought experiment to explore the possibilities (I love these).

What should each of these companies do with Digg if it bought the social media and user-chosen content powerhouse? Where would the integration points be and what would be the long-term strategy and direction for Digg under new overlords? And how would an acquisition affect the Internet landscape?

I’m going to start with Google (Microsoft will be next week). After that, there will be one more article about the impact of Digg on the internet.

So without further ado, here’s 7 things Google should do if it buys Digg:

1) Integrate Digg with Google News and the news algorithm

Google is a company of synergies. Utilizing its unparalleled efficiency in search in all of its products gives it a distinct advantage. Integrating your email with Google calendar keeps you on the Google servers (and makes life quite easy, too!). You get the idea.

The same would hold true for Digg if they buy it. There are many ways to incorporate Digg as the preferred social content destination of the Google empire. I’ll start off with Google News.

Google News aggregates the major news into one simple and efficient interface. But its relevancy and popularity rankings for stories of similar topics can always be improved and Digg would help in that endeavor.

Yes, the male-skewed demographic of Digg may not be the best source of demographic information for Google News, but it is a good indicator of the popularity of major news stories, of the most popular article within a certain topic, and can help find more obscure stories that should be on more peoples’ radars. Also, over time, the Digg demographic would become more representative of the general internet population. See #5 below.

Google could do a few tweaks to the Google News algorithm, nothing big, to improve the rankings of news articles within categories and to bring out some of the more obscure but very interesting news of the day. Also, Digg icons next to Google news stories. News stories are what reach the Digg front page the most often, so this integration feels natural.

2) Place Digg icons in search results (but do it methodically)

Let’s get a little more controversial. Digg is the largest player in the social media space, but Digg is still small compared to the vastness of the Internet. Google isn’t though, and it can leverage that size and reach to really combine the social with the computational. Social search engines like Mahalo and Wikia Search are already beginning to fill their niches. Although it’s unlikely, it’s possible that one of these engines innovates enough to knock Google on its ass, or at least give it major headaches. Hell, just look at Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Internet Explorer.

The other thing is that people power can actually improve search results, weed through irrelevant data, and bring up the best information. To that end, if Google bought Digg, it must be committed to integrating social data into its overall data empire, and it starts with Google Search. The first step in this process would be integrating Digg into Google Search results.

Next to the “Cached - Similar pages - Note this” and other link items that appear with all Google search results, there would be a link with either “# Digg(s)” or “Digg this.” Perhaps limit it to certain topics, to sites with a previously popular story on Digg, or don’t have the Digg link appear until there’s a predetermined # of Diggs (by algorithm), but integrate Digg if you buy it, Google. Hell, Google has something similar to the Digg/Bury system in its Google Experimental Search program.

Yes, this suggestion is a bit more radical, but there’s no other way if Google buys Digg. It must expand the site, its demographic, and its influence on the web. The Digg community would be a lot larger if Google took it over.

3) Heavily tweak the Digg algorithm based on Google’s massive stores of data

Read the rest of this entry »

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Update: Amazing response. Subscribe if you want more and watch for my new blog, TechThrill.

Not even a few months ago, Digg was on the verge of being bought out by Google or Microsoft. While those rumors have largely disappeared, the possibility (and even likelihood) of one of the two giants snatching up Digg is still prominent.

I had a debate with a friend of mine over the usefulness and future of Digg. It got me thinking about which direction Digg is headed. So I am performing a thought experiment to explore the possibilities (I love these).

What should each of these companies do with Digg if it bought the social media and user-chosen content powerhouse? Where would the integration points be and what would be the long-term strategy and direction for Digg under new overlords? And how would an acquisition affect the Internet landscape?

I’m going to start with Google (Microsoft will be next week). After that, there will be one more article about the impact of Digg on the internet.

So without further ado, here’s 7 things Google should do if it buys Digg:

1) Integrate Digg with Google News and the news algorithm

Google is a company of synergies. Utilizing its unparalleled efficiency in search in all of its products gives it a distinct advantage. Integrating your email with Google calendar keeps you on the Google servers (and makes life quite easy, too!). You get the idea.

The same would hold true for Digg if they buy it. There are many ways to incorporate Digg as the preferred social content destination of the Google empire. I’ll start off with Google News.

Google News aggregates the major news into one simple and efficient interface. But its relevancy and popularity rankings for stories of similar topics can always be improved and Digg would help in that endeavor.

Yes, the male-skewed demographic of Digg may not be the best source of demographic information for Google News, but it is a good indicator of the popularity of major news stories, of the most popular article within a certain topic, and can help find more obscure stories that should be on more peoples’ radars. Also, over time, the Digg demographic would become more representative of the general internet population. See #5 below.

Google could do a few tweaks to the Google News algorithm, nothing big, to improve the rankings of news articles within categories and to bring out some of the more obscure but very interesting news of the day. Also, Digg icons next to Google news stories. News stories are what reach the Digg front page the most often, so this integration feels natural.

2) Place Digg icons in search results (but do it methodically)

Let’s get a little more controversial. Digg is the largest player in the social media space, but Digg is still small compared to the vastness of the Internet. Google isn’t though, and it can leverage that size and reach to really combine the social with the computational. Social search engines like Mahalo and Wikia Search are already beginning to fill their niches. Although it’s unlikely, it’s possible that one of these engines innovates enough to knock Google on its ass, or at least give it major headaches. Hell, just look at Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Internet Explorer.

The other thing is that people power can actually improve search results, weed through irrelevant data, and bring up the best information. To that end, if Google bought Digg, it must be committed to integrating social data into its overall data empire, and it starts with Google Search. The first step in this process would be integrating Digg into Google Search results.

Next to the “Cached - Similar pages - Note this” and other link items that appear with all Google search results, there would be a link with either “# Digg(s)” or “Digg this.” Perhaps limit it to certain topics, to sites with a previously popular story on Digg, or don’t have the Digg link appear until there’s a predetermined # of Diggs (by algorithm), but integrate Digg if you buy it, Google. Hell, Google has something similar to the Digg/Bury system in its Google Experimental Search program.

Yes, this suggestion is a bit more radical, but there’s no other way if Google buys Digg. It must expand the site, its demographic, and its influence on the web. The Digg community would be a lot larger if Google took it over.

3) Heavily tweak the Digg algorithm based on Google’s massive stores of data

Read the rest of this entry »

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Yesterday, I was an attendee at the 2008 Chicago TECHCocktail Conference. It was an amazing conference with some amazing speakers (one of which, Gary Vaynerchuk, will be making a guest post soon). But I’m not here to talk about that.

I’m here to talk about business cards.

Most business cards are dull and lack any reason to notice. Most are discarded without thought. You’re at a conference to network. Hell, everywhere is a chance to network. How do you make sure someone remembers you or takes even an extra second to look at your business card?

There are three ways:

• 1) Make beautiful and memorable designs
• 2) Make your card interactive
• 2) Make your card personalized

For #1, I suggest visiting Creative Bits, which has an image library of some amazing card designs. I attached one of my favorites to the right: a lawn company that actually gives away seeds in their cards. I’d always remember a card like that, or at least give it a second glance.

For #2 and #3, I’m going to use my current cards as an example. I decided to individualize my cards. I did this by placing a fortune on every card.

The front tells you to do something. That’s the interactive part. I wrote a different fortune on the back of every single card. That’s the personalized part.

Take a look:

I’m sure I’ll be updating these cards soon with better designs, but the interactivity and personalization will remain. I got great reactions from the cards.

One last thing, I never said “here’s my card.” I always said, “Here’s a Fortune Cookie” Always caught them off guard and piqued interest.

Little things add up.

- Ben

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Yesterday, I was an attendee at the 2008 Chicago TECHCocktail Conference. It was an amazing conference with some amazing speakers (one of which, Gary Vaynerchuk, will be making a guest post soon). But I’m not here to talk about that.

I’m here to talk about business cards.

Most business cards are dull and lack any reason to notice. Most are discarded without thought. You’re at a conference to network. Hell, everywhere is a chance to network. How do you make sure someone remembers you or takes even an extra second to look at your business card?

There are three ways:

• 1) Make beautiful and memorable designs
• 2) Make your card interactive
• 2) Make your card personalized

For #1, I suggest visiting Creative Bits, which has an image library of some amazing card designs. I attached one of my favorites to the right: a lawn company that actually gives away seeds in their cards. I’d always remember a card like that, or at least give it a second glance.

For #2 and #3, I’m going to use my current cards as an example. I decided to individualize my cards. I did this by placing a fortune on every card.

The front tells you to do something. That’s the interactive part. I wrote a different fortune on the back of every single card. That’s the personalized part.

Take a look:

I’m sure I’ll be updating these cards soon with better designs, but the interactivity and personalization will remain. I got great reactions from the cards.

One last thing, I never said “here’s my card.” I always said, “Here’s a Fortune Cookie” Always caught them off guard and piqued interest.

Little things add up.

- Ben

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According to Wikipedia, a bliki is a combination of the features of a wiki and a blog (duh. Oh, more names for it from Wikipedia: wikiLog, wog, wikiWeblog, wikiblog, bloki). It posts like a blog, but all of the articles are editable.

So why do I care about this? Because I’m looking for something to help me combine wiki functionality into this website. But not in the way I just described to you above.

I’m interested in creating a system where the top portion of a page or post is like a normal blog article, but right under it is a “wiki” section which anybody can edit. So the top portion is what I or guest writers post, and then the section just below that is editable by anyone and uses Wikipedia/Mediawiki syntax. This section would be above the comments.

My rationale? Well, I’m not about to give all of that away, but let’s say that I think having a section where the collaborative knowledge of the readers and users of different blogs to create succinct additions to article could be very useful in a variety of ways.

Anyone know of anything similar to this, preferably in Wordpress plugin form? Or is anyone interested in working with me to build it if it doesn’t exist?

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