The Social Path

Five ways to avoid writing a blog post you’ll regret.

Whether you’re a corporate blogger, a paid contributor or just a self-appointed scribe of modern culture, you’re destined to write a blog post or two that you’ll come to regret.

In rare cases, these are the posts you’ll be forced to take down or “clarify” multiple times. But most often, they’ll go unnoticed by everyone except you. They’re the posts that, in retrospect, just weren’t ready for prime time.

Today, I wanted to share five tips on avoiding posts that will come back to haunt you:

1. Don’t use popular Internet lingo.

“FAIL!” “Pwn3d!” “I can haz ROI?” Seeing words like these in a professional’s blog is like hearing your parents say them in public.

Co-opting Internet culture isn’t just irritating; it’s like giving your blog post an expiration date, one that likely passed months before you wrote it.

I’m a big fan of giving your blog — even a corporate blog — a conversational voice, but the key word is “conversational.” Would you actually say one of these phrases out loud in a professional environment? If not, leave the lingo on Xbox Live and write the way you talk.

2. Sleep on it.

Thanks to the immediacy of social media, it’s easy to feel pressured into a quick reply when you want to write about something topical. But this sort of hair-trigger blogging also makes you vulnerable to rumor, retraction and overreaction.

I’ve long warned people, “Don’t blog angry.” But in a professional environment, it’s rare that people are writing in an emotional frenzy. More often, they’re just writing about initial reactions to breaking news. The next morning, they awake to find there was more to the story and that their snap judgments weren’t quite dead-on.

So next time you’re about to weigh in on something hot and saucy, make the hard decision. Leave it in draft form and come back in the morning. If it still holds water in the harsh light of day, post it with confidence.

3. Check your facts as carefully as your spelling.

Maybe it’s because I began my career as a newspaper reporter, but I never feel comfortable with second-hand sources. I love original, verifiable documentation.

But it’s become common practice for bloggers to quote bloggers who quote bloggers, etc. You end up with an increasingly inaccurate chain of coverage that never looks back.

So next time you’re basing a post on someone else’s post, follow the (often byzantine) trail of “via” links until you find the original. You should still give credit to the blog where you found it, but I doubt they’ll take offense if you spend some time checking their sources.

4. Being critical of someone? Call them up.

This is the one bit of advice that makes my fellow bloggers look at me like I’m some kind of backwoods rube who just wandered in off the carrot farm. But I still stand by it, even if I violate it nine times out of 10.

If you’re going to critique someone’s work, you should give them a chance to defend themselves. And one of the strange ironies of the Internet is that the phone is now more effective than ever as a way of getting in touch with someone right away.

I need to be better about this, and so does every other blogger. For all the talk of how bloggers are supplanting mainstream media, journalists continue to be superior when it comes to giving people a fair shake.

Calling sources is a standard and inescapable part of news gathering. But it’s also time-consuming and awkward. Unfortunately, it has never become a norm for blogging the way it has for journalism, and I feel strongly that our culture has suffered for it.

5. Read it out loud.

This is as easy as it gets. But it can also give you a harsh dose of reality.

Before you write a blog post — any blog post — you should read the whole thing out loud. Does it sound strained? Repetitive? Vague? Overly long?

You can learn a lot from the sound of your own voice. But you’ll learn even more if there’s someone else in the room. If you really want to test your blogging mettle, read it out loud to a friend, coworker or spouse. I assure you, it won’t sound the way it did in your head, and when you read the final product, you’ll thank yourself for doing it.

What are your secrets to responsible blogging? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Today's photo credits: The Regime band photo by massdistraction on Flickr. Telephone by Splorp on Flickr

Is Google Buzz too much too soon — or too little too late?

Every month, Google quietly rolls out new features and tools that 99% of its users never hear about.

So why did Google Buzz, one of the most complex social network offerings in Google’s history, get pushed out to more than 150 million Gmail users in the first few days?

The answer seems clear: Google is gunning at Facebook, and this Clash of the Tech Titans just saw the release of its first Kraken.

But here’s the problem: Google Buzz isn’t a replacement for Facebook. If anything, this new tool for sharing links and photos from Gmail is a replacement for FriendFeed, a site that never really gained mainstream acceptance in the first place.

If you were one of the many who got Google Buzz added to your Gmail account today, I bet you had one of the following reactions:

1. Normal human response: “Oh my, what is this? Looks complicated. Please get it out of my way so I can go back to checking e-mail.”
2. Marketing professional response: “Oh great, another social took I have to try and master in the next few days or risk being left behind like a 35-year-old on MySpace.
3. Social media nerd response: “Oh wow, it's like FriendFeed and Google Wave had a cute little baby!"

I’ll be shocked if you logged in, saw Google Buzz for yourself and said, “Hallelujah! My dreams of a social information utopia have finally been made flesh!”

I’m not saying that Google Buzz is a bad idea. I was pleasantly surprised by how intuitive the service flows and updates, and it's already made for some great conversations.

As someone whose “home base” is Gmail, I have to say I like having ongoing conversations without having to pull up Facebook or FriendFeed. In this way, it’s an improvement over Google Reader, which often sparks great conversations about shared blog posts despite being a terribly inconvenient forum for it.

As always, time will tell whether this is a game-changer or just another Jaiku, the Twitter competitor that Google bought but never found a way to leverage.

So what do you need to know about Google Buzz today?

Google now has a service that lets you share links and photos with your network from the comfort of your Gmail account.

Put it that way, and it’s clear to see why this is a useful addition to Gmail. But in practice, I fear it will simply be too much for people who’ve probably long since invested that social energy in Facebook and just want to check their e-mail.

Why teens aren't blogging.

This week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of its fall 2009 survey focusing on the internet habits of teenagers (defined as 12 to 17) and Millennials (18 to 29).

While it's not necessarily news that teens haven't jumped on the Twitter train yet, what is interesting is the drop in teen activity on blogs. The study found that 14% of online teens were blogging, compared to 28% just in 2006. Additionally the number of teens commenting on blogs has dropped from 76% to 52% since 2006.

But this report isn't about changes in teen attitudes over the past few years. What it's highlighting is the result of drastic changes in the social media landscape.

In 2006, college-oriented Facebook was just two years old when it changed the social media game by opening up to high school students. Soon after, the city and regional networks would open it up to the entire world (and their cats).

Until then, blogging had been the best option for teens who wanted to express themselves and share with their friends. The problem is that blogging is a largely open form of communication and teens are a notoriously private bunch. Teenagers blogged because it was one of the only social channels available to them, not because it was necessarily the best fit.

Outside of LiveJournal, few blogging sites provided the level of privacy and security that teenagers want.  So it’s not surprising that, as soon as they had the option, teenagers retreated from the blogosphere and embraced Facebook, with its privacy settings, networks, friend requests, pictures, status updates, and so many groups, pages, and apps your head could explode with opportunities for self-expression.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Photo Credit: CakeFace Originals on Flickr

Four attributes that will land you a job in social media. | Guest post by Sonny Gill

Today, The Social Path is pleased to welcome guest blogger Sonny Gill, who was recently named social media manager for DeVry University. We asked Sonny to help share some of the lessons from his hard-fought journey as a social media job seeker.

What can we say about the monster that is the job market? It’s overwhelming, jam-packed with job seekers, and, for most, has gone on long enough. I personally don’t remember a time where I’ve had so many friends on the hunt. It’s unfortunate, but it also provides others and myself an avenue to help those going through these trying times.

There have been a slew of posts talking about how to leverage social media in your job search, but I’m sharing something even deeper than the actual tools — attributes. Attributes are things that come from within, and though they can be related to job seekers of all industries, I’m sharing four that are super important in the digital job-seeking world:

Hustle

We’ve all heard it from Gary Vaynerchuk — who is inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs with his book, Crush It! — but it’s something that we need constant reminding of.

Hustle used to have a negative connotation, but today the word has taken on new meaning within the hyper-connected digital world. Your competition is out networking, creating content and staying plugged-in more than ever. The job search was always time-consuming, but now it is a full-time job.

Guts

Are you sending your résumés off and then following-up a week later with an e-mail? Stop. Right now.

OK, well don’t stop with the résumés, but take your “next steps” to a whole new level. The openness of the social Web and how companies are embracing it is evolving every day. Leverage that to venture outside of the box and reach out to prospective companies in new ways.

Find their HR managers on LinkedIn and connect with them there. Make a page on your blog dedicated not only to your résumé but also to the prospective company and create content that shows them you have what it takes to make a difference for their organization. Have some guts, go against the grain, and get noticed.

Vision

With any goal (personal or professional) there’s a vision in our mind that gives us a peek at what success looks like. There are questions we must ask ourselves” Where do I want to take my career? Who do I want to do great work for?

But it’s easy to find yourself wondering, “What do I do with this vision?” Map out a plan that helps you identify the necessary steps to get you to that goal.

Is your goal to be a Social Media Manager for an NBA team? Your plan of action better include producing quality content/media on an NBA-focused blog, attending games (as many as you’re able to go to), networking with fellow SM basketball fanatics, plus, a number of other steps that builds your authority in the space and gets you seen as someone who would make a great addition to a team’s social media effort.

Patience

I close out this list with patience for a reason. Above all, through the ups and downs of the job search (there will be both), you have to be patient. I understand everybody’s situation is different and we each have our own responsibilities to handle. But the key to patience is having faith, continuing to bust tail, truly believing that the right opportunity is out there, and persevering through the obstacles that present themselves during this time.

The combination of these attributes and the capabilities of social truly allow us to build a solid framework not only for the job hunt but also a for community, which in turn offers us continued support and affirmation on the work we do today and the opportunities in our future.

These are my four main attributes, but what others would you add that any job seeker could benefit from? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Sonny Gill is Social Media Manager at DeVry University. You can read his thoughts on social media at SonnyGill.com or on follow @SonnyGill on Twitter.

Photo credit: Banjaxx on Flickr.