No one wants to have a blog that makes people uneasy about visiting & reading content. Over the past month, I conducted a survey across Canada/ US & reviewed several dozen blogs to find collective 'pet-peeves'.
Here are 7 things to avoid:
Note: There are other content suggestions & UX suggestions I have when it comes to optimizing your blog; these tips are intended to make your users feel comfortable reading & sharing your content.
Don't polish your information: Valuable content should be simple, and clear. If you have to encase your content in a widget, or have a bunch of sharing buttons surrounding your content, it might seem desperate & confusing. Some of my favorite blogs simply serve up the content without tricks to get users to share.
Remember banner blindness when using widgets: You remember banner blindness. It occurs when users ignore areas on a website that appear to be advertisements. I'm a big fan of having a right or left rail, with additional content; but for blogs that clutter up their rails with badges, and widgets - beware of banner blindness. I've actually seen some blogs that don't have enough room using one rail, so they use 2 to house all their badges and widgets. Note to those users: you're no longer in the cub-scouts - badges do not need to be displayed. Most people don't care & it distracts from your content.
Over-the-top personal branding gets creepy: I often read blogs during lunch at work and find it really creepy when a huge smiling face greets me. I'd really like the ability to browse through blogs without feeling like I'm auditing real estate broker ads. Focus on delivering your content in a professional way, and leave the big photo's of yourself on Facebook.
There are things you just shouldn't say: I'm not the only one who reads blogs at work. I hate having to quickly scroll past a bad word or cover it with another window. Keep it clean, or notate that it's not safe for work.
Comments should not be found, they should be posted: To everyone who pulls tweets or facebook shares into their comment stream: please stop. If you're trying to encourage conversations on your blog; cluttering up your comment stream with 'comments' from people not participating is a really bad idea.
Moderation is mostly good: 80% of the blogs I've surveyed properly moderate their blogs. Meaning they either understand that comments should be directly posted; or they should be posted quickly - ideally with a follow-up. However, there were a few that use some crazy captcha; or still haven't been posted yet.
Don't post useless information just because it's scheduled: Post useful, valuable content. Posting just because you have a schedule doesn't make sense. Make your blog a place to come for great content; not a place to come because people remember you're updating your content. Why else do we have RSS feeds, Alltop, and Twitter?
In the end, you don't have to follow my advice; but if you've gotten this far, you can't say you were unaware. Before you ask, I reviewed 43 blogs; and surveyed 280 people to get these common 'pet-peeves'. I'll be incorporating the advice into my own blogs too. Good luck blogging, and you can check out my blog anytime: http://www.thejordanrules.com (should be updated soon).
The ability to tell stories has always been one of the most powerful ways to connect with other people.
Social media has given us a unique way to to tell stories as a collective. Here's a roadmap for collective storytelling.
Stop #1 - Define Your Story
The process of discovering what you want to tell a story about is always different, but the most important step in storytelling. You need to be an expert on what your story is about.
Starting a story without knowing what it's about will likely cause confusion. If the collective is confused by a story, it's unlikely that they'll participate in telling it.
The collective will look to that person who started the story for reinforcement and reassurance that the story is still on track. Ensure you monitor your story and continue to participate in telling it, or risk the story ending.
Stop #2 - Spark a Conversation
In collective storytelling, stories are made up of wide-reaching conversations. Those conversations begin with a 'conversation spark'.
A conversation spark shouldn't be the entire story. It should provide enough information to be provocative, but leave the next chapter of the story open to be told by the collective.
Consider the Burger King "Subservient Chicken" campaign. The story begins: A human-sized chicken has decided to set-up a webcam. It's asking that you come to it's website and give it orders.
That's an example of a conversation spark.
Stop #3 - Participate in the Conversation
Conversations spread through social media like ripples across a pond. Consider the conversation spark as the pebble dropping into the water. The ripples dissipate as they move farther away from the center, just as the conversations have less impact the longer they continue without a new conversation spark.
Ok, consider this model:
The conversation spark could be the site created for the Burger King "Subservient Chicken". The longer the campaign runs, the greater the reach will be; however, the longer the campaign runs without a new conversation spark, the less impact the conversation will have. Eventually, the conversation will end.
Note: You can't control when the conversation ends. You can only control when, and how much you participate. Here's a great set of guidelines (PDF download) for responses to changes in your story.
This model shows the first two ripples as a conversation spark begins to propagate through a network:
Notice that each connection doesn't emanate directly from the conversation spark. Ideally, the originator of a conversation will encourage other storytellers to interact with each other. If you look at the "Subservient Chicken" example; Burger King actually provides customers with some tools to continue the conversation: a downloadable chicken mask, and a way to share the site with friends.
Of course they could have provided more tools. They could have allowed users to save a video of the chickens responses to a certain set of orders, and provide a link to send to friends. They could have created a gallery of user-generated video's of people responding to orders while wearing the downloadable chicken mask. These types of tools could help to extend the story.
Stop #4 - Extend the Story
A story could end after one conversation spark; but the best stories continue. As new conversation sparks are created and added to the story; the story grows, and reaches more people.
Innovative and provocative stories are often enough to inspire other storytellers to create their own conversation spark. Take the "Subservient Chicken" example again. It inspired this YouTube video, which reached over 2,000 people and got 7 comments. Not a huge conversation, but extending the story often includes conversations of many sizes.
Collective storytelling isn't necessarily about branding, or making money; it's about spreading a message and allowing that message to be malleable enough to be changed by its audience while maintaining its integrity. Link to original post