Bloggers Need Errors and Omissions Insurance
A friend (wasn’t sure if I can name you?) sent me something fascinating. Here’s the story:
It appears that a whole new issue is coming up for bloggers and online content/freelance writers. A few contacts and I have been getting requests for freelance writing and writing for pay on company blogs, but we require errors/omissions insurance. I (as well as two others) have been turned down by the underwriters because they went back and read our blogs and say the content is “error prone and not subject to verification”. HUA??? It’s a BLOG. Anyhow, we are all really stuck right now because while we’ve got business insurance, we can’t obtain E/O underwriting. Maybe your readers can help out? How can we approach these antiquated firms and get insurance? Personally I don’t even think they should read our blogs and make a judgement. My husband has O/E insurance for software coding he does, and the insurance company has never once asked to look at his code. I’m finding that turning blogging/social media outreach into somewhat of a business, we can’t be taken seriously. One door opens, another closes.
Depends on the Blog, Obviously
My comments don’t reflect the person who asked this question. Take that off theif y table. I’m talking about the space in general.
If you’re looking to blog professionally, your reference blog should also be professional. For instance, if you’re bringing all the fun of BLARMCast, which is obviously a tongue-in-cheek (and oft-times fun) podcast/blog by a relative of mine, would you recommend that our resident @Wankergirl (her name on Twitter) use that site to show what would make her the best person to produce the CBC’s next great show?
Yes and no.
If you’re looking to recreate what you do on a professional site, then you want them to get the full breadth of what you do.
If you need to show a professional face, you have to model that in the reference product.
But Errors and Omissions Insurance?
Wow, if I had to be factually accurate all of the time, I’d quit blogging. It’s not that I’m not into research and factual accuracy. I just don’t know if that’s the space my blog plays in the world. My blog, at least, is about opinion, mostly. It’s about my advice and my ideas and a lot of “my.”
And finally, how can you advise my friend here, who has a real problem that needs solving? How does she get this insurance? What’s next?
Best Social Media Advice From This Site
I’m passionate about how certain strategies married to certain technologies allow individuals and companies to build things: reputation, trust, personal brand, community, relationships, and even marketplaces. My efforts to cover larger stories, tools, strategies, and more over the last several months have given you quite a bit to consider. But blogs are a tricky method for learning and reflecting. They’re like a running stream, and if you step out for a moment, a certain point in the stream will pass you by.
To that end, I’ve collected some links to the posts that I think might be helpful to you. Peruse these at your leisure. I’ve grouped them a bit for you. Feel free to pick and choose the topics that matter to you. I hope this proves helpful. If it does, please consider blogging a link to this post, and/or feel free to pass it on to any who might want more of this type of information.
There’s a lot here. Feel free to bookmark it for later. (And if you want even more to read, sign up for my free newsletter, which is even MORE original content.)
Thanks!
Community Development
- Understanding Community Development Strategies
- Ways to Disrupt a Community
- Why Do Community Development
- Should Your Small Business Use Community Tools
- The Long Tail of Community
- If Communitites Are Just Marketing Pools
- The Magic of Including People
- Meeting People at Events
- The Community Play
- The Community Ecosystem
- How Blogs Improve Customer Service and Product Development
Social Networks
- Three Things LinkedIN Does Better than Facebook
- How I Use Facebook
- Things To Do on Facebook
- Facebook - Let Me See My Friends
- Fix Your Facebook Profile Now
- Facebook and the Social Graph - Who Benefits
- Five Things to Do on LInkedIN
- Considering Social Etiquette
- Social Networks are Your Local Pub
- Why Join Another Social Network
- Marketers in a Social Network World
- Real Live Human Social Networking
- Social in Real Space vs. Social Networking
- Making Social Networks Work
- Improve Your Social Network
- The Importance of a Human Social Network
- Three Untapped Values of Social Networks
- Five Things to Do at a Social Networking Meetup
Social Media
- Social Media Starter Pack
- A Basic Social Media Strategy
- My Social Media Toolkit
- A Sample Social Media Toolkit
- Participation- The Key to Social Media
- Social Media - Talk is Cheap for Businesses
- How Big Companies could Use Social Media
- Social Media Inside the Firewall
- Social Media Power Secret - Listening
- Small Businesses And Social Media
- Social Media is a Set Not a Part
- Social Media for Your Career
- Help Someone Understand Social Media
- Social Media as Personal Power
- Snake Oil in Social Media
- Using Social Media to Meet People
- Social Media Starter Moves for Entertainers
- Social Media Starter Moves for Real Estate
- Social Media Starter Moves for Freelancers
- How I Use Twitter
- Deeper Twitter - Tuning Twitter for Value
- Newbies Guide to Twitter
- Twitter as Directors Commentary
- Twitter as an Advisory Board
Personal Branding
- The Power of Personal Leadership
- Slicing Time in a Face to Face Environment
- Brand Stories
- Some Quick Branding Tips for Individuals
- The foundations of Your Power
- Personal Scalability
- Personal Branding and Social Media
- Passion Drives Personal Brand
- Elements of a Personal Brand
- Challenges of Social Media Types in the Workplace
- The Value of Networks
- Scaling Yourself
Making Media
- Why Create Personal Media
- Whats Your Social Media Strategy
- Media Makers Next Steps
- Blogging Advice for the Next Level
- Expand Your Audience
- The Future of Microcontent and Hperlocal Media
- Why Bother Blogging Podcasting and Using Social Networks
- Consider Your Media-as-Business Strategy
- Marketing Media Means Moments That Matter
- Using Social Sharing to Extend Your Message
- Performance and Your Audience - Blogging Tips
- Advice for Traditional and Local News Media
- Tagging and Metadata and Why Bother
- A Sunday Newspaper Strategy for Traditional Companies
- Promoting Your Media
- The Power of Links
- 20 Blogging Projects for You
- Succeeding in Independent Online Media
- Seven Blog Improvements You Can Make Today
- Keeping the Blogging Fires Burning
- 100 Blog topics I hope YOU Write
- 100 PodCamp Topics for You to Cover
I’m writing new stuff all the time at [chrisbrogan.com]. If you’re reading this for the first time, please consider subscribing for free. If you’re a subscriber, don’t forget to get the completely-different content published at least twice a month in my newsletter. And thanks for your attention and time.
Special thanks to Alexa Scordato for compiling this data on my behalf. It was a lot of work. Thanks!
10 Blogging Tips
Briefly, some tips:
- Write to be helpful.
- Be brief.
- Tell a story.
- Connect others, if appropriate.
- Share. Often.
- Don’t overthink it. (It’s a blog, not a dissertation.)
- But be thoughtful.
- Don’t be mean.
- Publish often enough to build a relationship.
- But be mindful of your audience’s time.
What else would you say? What if you were telling someone at Disney or Starbucks or the Woman’s Society for Advanced Cancer Research about blogging? Share your blogging tips?
What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know
There are lots of people throwing “social media expert” out there. Hell, I had it as part of my “about” on my blog, but I’ve chosen to just say that I advise people. It’s more accurate, because expertise is fairly darned fleeting out there right now. With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about things I want a so-called expert to know (and I want you to add to this list, or call me out if you disagree):
Strategic
- Which department you think your role should fall into.
- How your role ties to marketing, PR, advertising, R&D, finance, HR, sales.
- What tasks you’d expect a community manager to perform, and how would you measure them.
- How you expect a company to engage in “the conversation,” and what processes will go into place to make any of that matter.
- How to turn blog posts into business leads.
- How to listen and find where people are talking about you.
- Ways to report your weekly listening and community work to a very senior level person in a huge company that has about 2 minutes of time to hear your briefing.
- Know about 100 people in the space who are doing something. The more diverse the profession and location, the better.
- How to launch and operate a blogger outreach campaign.
- How to tie other media into social media as an integrated campaign.
Tactical
- How to install a blog (pick your software) on a hosted server.
- How to edit the sidebar to include a widget, or an embed, or anything.
- How to create, edit, and post at least one other type of media besides text.
- At least five social network accounts active, including but not limited to: LinkedIn, Yahoo! Groups, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
- How to find and subscribe to a podcast WITHOUT using iTunes.
- Five stats worth knowing for any blog/website.
- How to structure a blog post so that humans and Google like it.
I’m thinking there are probably another 40 things I could add to either list, but instead, I’m going to let YOU. (Ones that I agree with will go up into the main post until we have a pretty decent list.)
And remember, call me out if you disagree. What’s your take on what you expect a social media expert to know?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com].
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, Joe Shlabotnik
WetPaint Gives Their Painters a Clean Canvas
I had a great email conversation with WetPaint’s Michael Bolognino about how they empower their users to be part of the design process. Here’s what I learned.
Chris Brogan: You clearly treat your users like part of the design process. Where did the idea of Super Painters come from, and how did it come to be?
Michael Bolognino: For the last year and a half we’ve been fortunate to have a direct link to our users on Wetpaint Central—our FAQ/Help/News wiki. After reading the endless amounts of their feedback and suggestions, we quickly realized that our users know our product just as well if not potentially better than we do. Reaching out and integrating key users into our design process has proven to be a huge asset—the more help we can get to make better decisions means that we’re hopefully making the best possible product. It was also important that we foster advocacy for our platform by reaching out to our core users and giving them a voice—and keeping them engaged with access to exclusive information and Wetpaint swag.
Is this just for tech software sites? Can you envision a consumer or b2b product having this kind of relationship?
There are already a number of consumer & b2b partners who are using wikis to connect with our users. For example, T-Mobile’s Sidekick Wiki has a wish list where users share ideas for the next generation of the device—or Fox’s Sarah Connor Chronicles Wiki, where in the wake of rumors of its cancellation, super fans have compiled over 200 passionate pleas to the network to keep the show alive for (at least) another season.
People are contributing to the design of a product they obviously enjoy using. How did you encourage this interaction, or did you?
We used a variety of approaches for finding the right mix Super Painters—first we looked in Wetpaint Central to identify the users who had risen up to take an active role providing support—simply because they want to help others, pro bono. Then internally we nominated stand out users that we’ve encountered and collaborated with, and we also took a look at contribution data to seek out our most active painters across the network. The group is made up of an eclectic cross section of 14 users—a super fan of the As the World Turns soap opera, a physiology professor, a teenage developer/fish keeper, a Linguistics PhD student, the list goes on.
If another company were on the fence about inviting their community into the design process, what would you tell them about the experiences you encountered, and how would you counsel them?
I would most definitely encourage them to go for it—the rewards of showing your best users/customers that you are invested in them and actually act on their opinions far outweigh the risk/discomfort of sharing half baked or secret concepts with the outside world. There are three ways that we mitigate this risk—first, we created a private, invite only wiki. Second, we crafted a simple NDA like agreement. Third, we believe that the bond that we make with these users is strengthened by empowering them with exclusive opportunities and information and inviting them inside of the virtual walls of our company.
The results have really knocked our socks off. In just over a month there have been hundreds of contributions (ideas, feedback, comments, suggestions) and we’ve already been able to show them that we mean business making a major revision to our latest release, thanks to their immediate hand raising. (see your original post about Wetpaint)
As I mentioned in my original email, the Super Painters have blown us away with their dedication to bringing feedback to our attention—for example, the day after I launched an idea bank page (it was a clean slate), they had assembled over 70 ideas and suggestions for us. The next day, one of them rearranged the ideas into like categories—and a few days later, they built a new page and system for voting on and prioritizing the list so that we could easily see what was most important to them. Thanks to the Super Painters, we now have a living, breathing, prioritized set of potential enhancements. Pretty unbelievable (and helpful)!
Michael Bolognino works for WetPaint, and spoke to me via email.
Conquering Fear of Blogging
Three different friends over the last two days have told me about their fear of creating, a fear of blogging. They each had their own demons to wrestle: perfectionism, failure, self-consciousness. These are difficult to overcome, and I’m not going to pretend that you just have to follow a few steps and you’ll overcome your fear, but I can tell you a few things I know about it all, and see if it’s helpful. Here are a few ideas to help you look past some of your fears.
Keep a Scratch Blog
Whether you’re just starting out, or even just sometimes not sure if something you’re thinking about is right for your blog, consider writing it to some place else. Consider using a Tumblr blog as a “scratch” blog, a place to write stuff that’s not fully formed, or that you’re concerned might be taken wrong. You might not even brand the site, maybe not even make it publicly visible.
Say it Out Loud
One way that you can get a little more confident in your writing is by reading it out loud to yourself. Go over what you’ve typed and read it as if talking to a friend. Does it make sense? Are there parts you want to change? Try a few times.
Read and Read and Read
Not just blogs, but read lots of things. Read magazines. Read books. Read things that make you think, and then understand more than what you read. Understand how they CONVEYED what you read.
Lots of times, we talk about how we’re unsure how to do something, but we don’t do the two parts of the puzzle: figure it out, and then practice.
Start by Commenting Elsewhere
There’s nothing wrong with developing your voice for blogging by commenting on other people’s blogs for a while. Go into blogs that you find interesting, and expand on what someone said in the comments, or disagree, or add your own spin.
But Start Eventually
There’s a lot of ways you can procrastinate and throat clear. One is to use Twitter instead of your blog. Another is to comment and think, and support others instead of doing your own thing. Another still is to read blogs and consume podcasts and tell people what they’re doing right and wrong, but not add something new to the pot. You might worry that you’re going to say something wrong, or offend, or whatever.
Set a real date. Set some time in the next few weeks (or a month at most?) to post something loud and proud and made by you to your blog, and then do it. See what happens. First off, with millions and millions of blogs out there competing for eyeballs, it’ll be a lot less climactic than you think.
And Then, Do More
Once you get rolling, get into the habit, and just start producing, it doesn’t stop. If I were writing full time for a living, I could keep going for quite some time before I hit a wall, but that wasn’t always the case. I used to get blocks all the time. What changed? I practiced more, and more, and more, and more. I wrote ALL the time. I got into the habit of writing no matter what.
Made all the difference in the world.
Your Thoughts?
What do you think? How have you approached your worries or hurdles to blogging or making media? I’d love your thoughts if you’re someone feeling blocked or a bit afraid. You can even comment anonymously, if that helps.
Photo credit Tom@HK
Blog Tune Up-Search
You’d think search wouldn’t matter, but it does. The #1 thing I seek in a blog I’m returning to (versus a newly discovered blog) is a search bar. Why? Because often, I’m returning to a blog to find a story.
Put your search box WAY up high on your page, above the fold, if at all possible. It matters.
Free Tips for Your Blog
Yesterday was my birthday. Today, I’m giving you a little gift in the form of a free PDF to download: Building Community Around Your Blog. Feel free to send copies to anyone you like.
Some of you might be practicing this stuff already, but maybe there are one or two tips that will be useful.
I wrote this up originally for my new friend, Nina Simonds from Spices of Life, a video show my friend, Steve Garfield helps produce. We were talking about ways to further develop community and build audience.
What else? How are you building community around YOUR blog?
Making Business Sense of Social Media
Talking to people isn’t much of a business, except it is. Customer service has some talking in it. Sales has talking. Hmm, okay, so maybe there’s lots of talking in business.
Blogging, podcasting, video, microblogging, presence platforms all help facilitate communication.
Following the happenings around you in your industry won’t help you get ahead, except that it probably will. Knowing where people are, what they’re interested in, what they like and dislike, as well as understanding shifts and trends and news seems like a good way to stay up on what might impact your business.
Twitter and Facebook and all those social networking sites facilitate sharing of information.
This blogging and social media stuff is just for marketing and PR types, except it’s not. Building networks of interaction, delivering new tools for collaboration, empowering knowledge compilation are all opportunities for the use of these tools that don’t fall into the hands of only the communications team.
Status and presence and wikis and collaboration tools are useful to business teams, and not just marketing and PR.
It’s not immediately obvious why some of these tools apply to some businesses, and it’s DEFINITELY true that not all these tools will be useful to all businesses. But to not even consider how your organization can improve their productivity, their customer service experience, their product design, their hiring processes, and more, well, that just seems like a ticket back to 1996.
What do you think? Is there a business application to all this? Why are big companies delving in? What will convince businesses to dig in and experiement a bit more?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Social Media Starter Moves for Entrepreneurs
This could be considered a “backwards” post. I tend to talk from the perspective of a user of technology, but I am writing this one for the point of view of people who might be seeking to build new tools, to join the social software scene. I love entrepreneurs, and I enjoy the notion of building new, amazing things. But I do want you to think about this space, too.
If you’re NOT building a social network or platform, stick around. I want YOU to tell folks your thoughts, too.
The Platforms We’re Using
I’m definitely not going to list out every social network and social media tool, but I do want you to understand a bit about HOW we’re using these tools, so I’ll mention a few.
- MySpace or Facebook - Not just for kids any more. The grown-ups I know use both of these services for roughly the same thing: connecting with people they already know and making some new connections.
- LinkedIn - Business social networking, and the top of the heap. It’s getting a little more interesting, because of their status stream, and the redesign.
- Twitter - Not everyone’s on there, but we’re more on there than Pownce and Jaiku. Why? It’s not because it’s better. It’s just because we’re all still there, because it’s simple, because it solves a lot of needs.
- Flickr - We’re sharing photos on Flickr and SmugMug.
- YouTube - We’re sharing video on YouTube and Blip.tv and a few dozen smaller places.
- Digg - We’re getting news from Digg and Reddit and SlashDot, and there are lots of new upstarts for specific niches. We seem to like these sites because they let the crowd vote on what’s newsworthy to US as a niche.
So that’s some of what we’re interested in. You’ll certainly want to add places and tools into the comments section, so that we can get those called out, too.
The Marketplace Overall
I’d say the barrier to getting me to join a new social network is getting higher and higher. If you’re doing a business network, I’m already using LinkedIn. If you’re building a place for friends to connect, Facebook in all its annoyance still handles that enough-ish, and Twitter handles it great.
What comes next for networks? Velvet rope. Lots of it. I think the next step (and this was once prophesied by Eric Rice somewhere) is something closer to an anti-social network, or more accurately, a professional social network. Want to see a top shelf example? Check out Sermo, a social network for physicians. I met with Daniel Palenstrant, the founder, recently and he’s a smart cookie. He’s got a great product and he knows it.
What about tools?
Social Media Tools
There are lots of overlap experiences going on at the moment. For instance, there’s an entire social information aggregation space, all with different spins. There’s Lijit for search, FriendFeed for aggregation, and then maybe a dozen variations on the theme thereafter. Check out Louis Gray’s site for TONS of these types of apps. (Good guy, Louis).
There’s Blog Talk Radio and Talkshoe offering phone-to-podcast experiences with different twists (and I’m friendly with both companies, and they’re both full of great people).
We have Twitter/Pownce/Jaiku. We have Utterz for the multimedia-meets-phone. We have Qik and Seesmic and a flavor in between.
In blogging software and content platforms, we have WordPress, Drupal, Tumblr, Blogger, Joomla, TypePad, LiveJournal, and another million opportunities.
There are MANY tools. So then, what is the barrier to entry with either another tool or network?
High. Challenging. Difficult.
So What Do We Want?
This is your turn to answer. What do you think is necessary out there? What do you want built to suit YOUR world? How can an entrepreneur turn your head and get your attention? What would lure you off your platforms right now, or what aren’t your existing tools covering for you?
The comments section of this post will far outweigh the value of the post itself, so remember to click through to [chrisbrogan.com].
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
