Pemaquid Communications

Here are three tips, based on my experience in broadcasting and public relations as well as my time as a Web Silnger:

1. Write about what you know. It’s pretty simple. You’ll have more to say, and you’ll add more value to the online conversation when you talk about things you understand well.
2. Have an “editorial calendar”. This is tough with a blog, which works best when topics related to current events and are “newsy”. But planning your topics in advance will at least help get you thinking about that post you’re going to write on Friday.
3. Just put your head down and write it, without embellishments. Don’t think about what links you should make and what keywords you should drop in. Circle back to that stuff after you’ve banged out the copy, based on your idea, an idea worth writing about.

A social component seems to be leaking into every Web site and online app these days. Bumped into BuddyPress the other day, which seeks to tie those features into the popular WordPress blogging app. Intriguing idea; will have to keep an eye on it.

I don’t know why it took me so long, but it finally hit me – Twitter is the new blogging.

I remember when blogging first came on the scene – it took me awhile to ‘get it’. Why, I thought, would someone take the time to post their musings about the everyday, and who would care? I couldn’t see the point of most of it initially, though now the Web is full of thoughtful, colorful and amazingly informative blogs on every topic, and you don’t have to look hard to find detailed information about something that’s of interest to you.

Now, we have Twitter and everyone, it seems, is tweeting. For the most part, these tweets are pretty mundane (“…heading out for a bikeride…”, ” Trying to finish up several key deliverables so I can get out on the boat today ” and even simply “Baseball”) are samples of the <140 character slices-of-life you'll find when you follow someone's twitterings.

You could call all this 'micro-blogging'.

I'm not sure how meaningful all of this is, where it's all going or even what any of it means, but I do know one thing - it's an exploding cultural phenomenon. Just like blogging was a few years back.

I've learned my lesson. This time, I'm going to pay attention to the cultural changes wrought by the Web and work harder to understand what it all means.

Follow me on Twitter

Wow, that didn’t take long! A few days after we posted a message about how only certain folks could post their thoughts – or job postings – on MaineBusiness.com, the MaineToday.com property has retooled and opened things up so that anyone can set up their blogging shop.

Do we already wield that much clout in this town?!?

Nah, the changes were planned. We talked to Carl Natale, MaineBusiness’ Chief Information Innovator (he says he’s not an “editor” or “content developer”) last week. Anyway, it’s nice to see that we can post our own job openings on the site if we like.

Yep, we set up a MaineBusiness blog. Right now I’m looking for a catchy name. Comment if you have any ideas.

The other day I surfed over to the blog on Internet marketing written by Rich Brooks, President of Flyte New Media, and bumped into this job posting.

Interesting read – if you’re a job-seeker, that is. The rest of the business community would find it hard to glean anything useful.

It didn’t take long to find another job posting. During the same week.

Huh? I thought this was supposed to be about Internet marketing.

Funny, I’ve never read Bill Nemitz’ column in the Press Herald and found that he was on the lookout for copywriters. A column like that would never make the light of day.

Things are different at MaineBusiness.com, a title run by MaineToday.com and Blethen Maine Newspapers, according to Carl Natale, the editorial staffer who manages the site’s bloggers. I’ve spoken to Carl and he said he found nothing inappropriate with the post.

I beg to disagree. Shameless self-promotion that doesn’t add value to a site’s core readership should be out of bounds.

I was Carl’s predecessor at MaineBusiness.com, and when I ran the show, I was careful to instruct our columnists (this was back before anyone was a “blogger”) not to use their space to directly promote their business.

MaineBusiness.com’s stock in trade is its credibility. Without it, it’s just another Blogger.com (and I’d hate to see that happen).

Speaking of Blogger.com, Carl says that by the end of the month MaineBusiness.com will be rolling out a new set of blogging tools that will allow anyone to hang a shingle and roll their own blog on the site. If anyone can set up a blog about anything, that’s one way to diffuse the issue. We’ll look forward to that.

The Folks at A List Apart have released the 2007 Web Design Survey. The report, authored by internationally-acclaimed designer Jeffrey Zeldman and CSS expert Eric Meyer, is the first to take a close look at the Web design profession. More than 32,000 Web designers and developers from around the world participated (yeah, this here gent took part).

Download the Survey findings (PDF – 1.7MB)

Some interesting findings:

• Everyone’s got a blog (well, 72.7%, anyway) – regardless of age group or salary range
• More respondents said they were from the Northeastern US than from any other region (This surprised me; maybe all the Silicon Valley geeks were too busy cooking up amazing wonders like this to be bothered with a silly survey?
• 40% reported being unsatisfied at their job – 40%! To me, that’s sad. Life’s too short!

Kudos to A List Apart – for people who make Web sites – for compiling this information about what can rightly be called a “profession”.

Are you one of the many folks out there who wonder what RSS is and why anyone would care? Take a look at this plain-spoken presentation on RSS at Common Craft.

Many of the most popular RSS feed readers available are mentioned; one he doesn’t mention is the one I use and which I recommend: NetVibes. You can get NetVibes here.

Having an RSS feed on your blog or news site is a great way to increase the traffic and visibility of your site, by making it easy for both search engines and human readers to keep up with new postings.

OK, so you’ve decided you want to add a blog to your Web site – a good move since. pound for pound, frequently-updated sites tend to grab higher search engine rankings than their peers who go without. So you download a copy of Wordpress, an open source blog platform that has all the features you’re looking for. Great.

Next, you want your blog to have the same look and feel – theme, if you will – as the rest of your Web site. Your designer cracks open the Wordpress blog in Dreamweaver and gasps at all the PHP code in the templating system. Skilled as she is with HTML, your designer can’t make heads or tails of the CSS or PHP.

Not to worry. Pemaquid has designed Wordpress blogs for a number of Clients. In fact, this blog you’re reading is a Wordpress blog (though an imperfect one – ever heard the one about the cobbler’s children who had no shoes?).

So if you’re looking to add a Wordpress blog (or Typepad blog, or any other flavor), contact us and we’ll get you set up. We’ll do it fast too (48 hour turnaround is doable), if necessary.