Rituals remind us why we live and love.

Rituals are also addictions. If noon rolls around and I haven’t hit my bookmarks, I start to get shaky and pale.

The core four in my morning digital dose are: the New York Times, Mediabistro, Daily Beast, Food52. (OK, I lied, People.com is a fifth. Hey, I work on a health magazine with celebrity covers. I really do need to know that Demi is having a breakdown right now.)

One day last fall, school-dropoff and work events conspired and I didn’t get online until late. New York Times, Mediabistro, Daily Beast, check. Food52? Hold on.

It had changed. It was … new. Redesigned, top to bottom. Nothing was where it used to be. The site’s simplicity had given way to lots of content boxes that went down, down, down and a Rembrandt-like color palette. Everywhere you looked, the site telegraphed who was reading what recipe—at that very second. It was exciting and it was still elegant, but it was a tiny bit scary. I missed the serenity.

Do you know Food52? It’s a crowdsourced food website—that gets 500K uniques per month—co-founded by a writer I’ve long followed, Amanda Hesser. (I’m using “followed” in the archaic sense of the word, pre-Twitter.) Hesser, the former food editor of the Sunday New York Times Magazine and the editor of The Essential New York Times Cookbook, puts words and food together in a way that the great writer I most love (after Didion), M. F. K. Fisher, would solidly approve.

The homepage of Food52. For now, anyway. (Click image to view site)

Launched in 2009, Food52 helped pioneer the creative possibilities of community online. The site posts one contest each week (“Your Best Holiday Roast Recipe,” “Your Best Citrus Recipe”). Home cooks race to submit entries, the Food52 team tests, users vote, and a winner is crowned. At the end of the year, Amanda and her cofounder, Merrill Stubbs, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained cook and food writer, publish all 52 recipes in a cookbook. .

So, imagine the disorientation when I logged on and couldn’t find any of the contest winners I’d been whipping up. I soon got used to it, of course. Even grew to love it. But many users didn’t and complained loudly. And often. Hesser responded to a good many of them, with kindness, patience, interest, and firmness. Then, a month or so ago, she started peppering her answers with references to an upcoming design tweak. Change, again! No surprise. When it comes to websites, launching is often relaunching. But I was curious, how far would Food52 take crowdsourcing when it came to the design of the site itself?

Here’s where journalism is the greatest job on earth. You get to call up interesting people who care deeply about the same things you do and just ask.

Hesser was kind enough to answer my questions over the phone from her Brooklyn home, fatefully, a week before Food52 launched its second homepage go-around.

Q: What was your goal in first overhauling Food52 last October?

A. We had been thinking about it for a really long time because the original site was a blog format, so content would fall off the homepage pretty quickly. So we reorganized it. It was actually not that different in terms of the actual content, it’s just the way it’s presented.

We wanted to create a doormat, meaning the homepage, that really had a lot more content and a lot more of the things that we do right there on the surface for you.  Because we were actually doing a lot different things, but in our old homepage, you wouldn’t necessarily know that. We wanted you to get to the site and have it be more of a warm embrace rather than well, you figure it out.

Q: And what did you take away from the flood of tsk-tsking comments you got from Food52ers—some of which were downright hostile?

A. People don’t like change, so we expected some resistance. And a number of people who complained about our redesign originally came around to some aspect of what we had done. But we believe deeply in collaboration and that we actually had redesigned the homepage based on comments that had been made for the past year.

But we also feel like we need to lead people to new ways of thinking. That is part of what we do. Our whole premise is that it is crowdsourcing but it’s also curation, and I think that curation is the leading part.

Ultimately, though, we weren’t happy with the homepage either. So that’s why we are changing it again.

Q: What surprised you most about the metrics following your redesign?

A. Beyond the redesign itself, we had technical issues when we relaunched that were really difficult and thorny, which we didn’t anticipate. And, yet, in spite of all of that, all of our engagement numbers—time on site and page views per visit—doubled.

People were spending more time on the site, they were going to more pages, they were exploring more and they continued to. Our goal was to increase engagement and to get people who were coming through a link not just to look at that recipe, but to discover a new place and really poke around. And that seems to be working. Also, people are sharing more. We improved the way our sharing tools were positioned.

Q: Fast forward to now. This past week, on Feb. 2, you rolled out your new homepage. What are its top changes and why?

A. To make it easier for people to quickly see all of the latest content, and for people who are new to the site to find ways to get involved in the community. Our goals are simply for the user experience to be more seamless. We do a lot of different things on the site, and we want people to see this as a positive thing, not as a source of confusion.

Q: What did you lose on the homepage to make it more focused?

A. We’re not really losing anything, we’re just reorganizing it. We’re actually adding a few things, like comment counts where they don’t currently exist and more breadcrumbs for people to follow to get involved on the site.

Q:  Which other sites did you look to for design inspiration?

A. Svpply. Good. 101 Cookbooks. Kickstarter.

Q:  What is the biggest “wrong turn” you think you took along the way to the new homepage?

A. We used too much black in the first version—our spirit is more gray, and gray lets our photography do the talking, as it should.

Q: Crowdsourcing is at the heart of your site, but you’ve given it an edge by building in seniority and curation. The more recipes users post, the more pieces are filled in the pie icon that travels with their handle. That was new in the first redesign—and useful. Will you keep it as-is?

The 2012 People's Choice Award is one example of how Food52 puts community front and center

A. We wanted you to have a sense, especially if you were new to the site, of who can you trust? Who is well-regarded, who is very active? It’s not exactly the most scientific system, but we’re going to make it more granular over the next couple of months.

It’s one of those tricky things: how to come up with a formula. We wanted to reward people for pure activity—enthusiasm, really—and we had to find ways to delineate what is quality participation versus just activity. Also we didn’t want people to game the system. We wanted it to be a really helpful guide. That’s something we’re going to have to keep tweaking, but it seems to work so far.

Q: You released your holiday cookbook as an app, “Food 52: Holiday Recipe & Survival Guide,” for $9.99. Is this the future for your crowd-sourced recipe-winning compilations: apps, not print?

A. It may be—we’re not sure. We’ll definitely do more apps. We love books and may want to work on more books, but right now we’re busy with a bunch of projects, so we’ll have to see where we’re at in a few months.

Q: With your original technique videos, what approaches have you found get the most traffic and engagement?

A. Keep them short. Invite guests. Don’t edit out the mistakes or chit-chat—that stuff makes them more fun and real. The videos with the most traffic tend to focus on a technique or trick that’s new to people—like smashing garlic with a meat pounder. Nothing crazy but the kind of thing that most home cooks haven’t tried.

Q: What’s the next big thing for Food52?

A. We want to help home cooks everywhere with our Food52 Hotline—everyone has food and cooking questions, and our community is at the ready to help them out. Think Butterball Turkey Helpline for the 21st century.

So, hunting for a recipe? Don’t know how to truss a chicken? Plain-old hungry? Start your search on Food52’s fresh-out-of-the-oven homepage. It’s cleaner, gentler, and yes, while it’s mostly white, there is more gray, less black. In one of the 103 comments (as of this posting), Food52 member mrathmel expresses the crowdsourced sigh of relief: “Great re-design. I had actually avoided using your site more because I had so much trouble with it. The new design seems to be just right. Thank you!”

[Image: mil8]

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If the presidential election—coming to a polling place near you in November—is the nation’s foremost popularity contest (more than 65 million Americans voted for President Barack Obama in 2008) the ongoing battle for followers on Twitter, from a purely competitive standpoint, isn’t far behind.

It has been reported that Twitter has more than 175 million users. But Business Insider says the number of active Twitter accounts (users following 8 or more accounts) is closer to 56 million. Either way, it’s a big number.

If the election were decided on Twitter instead of at the ballot box, the Leader of the Free World would most likely be a Canadian-born pop singer named Justin Bieber. The Bieb’s nearly 17 million Twitter disciples are more than those of President Obama (12.3 million) and Republican hopeful Mitt Romney (300,000) combined. Throw in Newt Gingrich’s 1.4 million followers and the old guys in Washington still don’t have a prayer. Though with his 1.2 million followers, Tim Tebow surely does.

The numbers can be daunting, especially if you’re new to the social scene. Fortunately, you’re not running for president. In the gray matter that bridges content marketing and social media, wins can be achieved any number of ways. Size does matter—that is, the larger the following, the more likely it is that your content will reach more people. But don’t be intimidated by the numbers achieved in the celebosphere. Gauge the size and reach of your social community against the needs and social habits of your target audience.

If you can count on both hands the number of days that have passed since a gaggle of screaming tweens last chased you into a waiting limo, you’re not even in the same league as The Bieb—and that’s a good thing. Being small gives you a chance to focus on incremental progress. Start by setting modest goals and watch your following grow.

Rather than harp on the number of Twitter followers or Facebook likes you’ve acquired, take solace in smaller victories. Look at the ways in which people are interacting with your content. Are they sharing your stories with others? Are people leaving insightful comments or criticisms in the comments section? Are they linking to your content or using it as a bridge to stories or media on your web site?

Every possible action and reaction represents a measurable social media win for your organization.

Want to achieve a level of social media success that will make you unbeatable in the eyes of your readers? Consider these tips to help you build an audience (If I’m wrong, cast your vote for my opponent):

Become a Social Journalist.

Journalists like the word “writer” because it sounds sexier than, say, “content aggregator.” But any journalist who has spent time in the trenches will tell you that reporting is 70 percent research, 30 percent writing (and that’s being generous).

If you’re an editor or writer whose job is to create content for a living, you likely spend countless hours wading in the online ether in search of news relevant to your audience. Don’t go all old school and keep that information to yourself, create a Twitter account and share it with your readers.

Rather than view Twitter or Facebook as potential resource guzzlers that threaten to siphon time away from your reporting, use these tools to animate the editorial thought process for your audience—build communities, increase your readership, gauge reaction to controversial topics, interact with fans and critics alike, and make your content stronger!

Start a Conversation.

When I first started using Twitter, I assumed my tweets would be so irresistible that the members of Twitter Nation would hang on my every character (up to 140, of course). That was a mistake. Don’t dive into Twitter with a big head.

Plot your tweets carefully. If someone responds to something you’ve written, either by retweeting one of your posts or @mentioning you in one of their own messages, consider extending the favor by passing along one of their tweets to your followers or by sending them a private message thanking them for the recognition with a comment to keep the conversation going. The only way to win at social media is to be social. Do yourself a favor and make friends.

Big Fish. Small Fish.

As you grow your online community, it might seem like a good idea to target the users with the largest followings. Here’s a tip: The biggest whales aren’t always the easiest to catch. If you @mention a fellow Tweeter with 1 million other followers, there’s no guarantee he or she will respond to, or even see, your tweet.

There’s no harm in following these people—and you might actually get lucky a time or two—but the best and most interactive social media relationships usually happen on a smaller more intimate scale. Find someone who shares common interests—a user who, like you, is still building a following—and work the relationship. As they grow, so will you. And vice versa.

Be Real.

Twitter is not the AP news wire. Injecting a little personality into your tweets can go a long way in helping you establish an online identity—a persona that people will connect with. Try framing tweets in the form of a question or using a joke to get peoples’ attention. If you’re simply pumping out tweets like newspaper headlines, your followers are apt to treat you like a newspaper and leave you on the bus.

Still struggling to embrace the social you? Ask yourself one question: What would Justin Bieber do?

[Image: adactio]

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Change is coming, and it’s coming fast.

Resistance is futile, as the Borg on Star Trek famously said before assimilating another species into its cybernetic life form.

For those in your organization who are resisting the mobile trend or who deny the importance of the mobile web on your content marketing strategy, prepare to be assimilated. Well, not really. But at least prepare to change your focus.

As a BtoB Online article explains, the new media model, fueled by the Internet, social media and mobile, is here. In addition to paid (purchased media), marketers are focusing on owned (original content) and earned media (social media).

This means that more and more organizations are realizing that to be successful in content marketing, they have to think like publishers and they have to integrate their social media strategies. And develop strategies to engage readers across platforms and devices, including apps, smartphones, tablets, and netbooks.

A seamless content experience across devices will be key to your success – so people have positive experience when reading/viewing your content on their smartphone, iPad, or desktop, without missing a beat. Plus, integrated digital campaigns that engage users across platforms with a consistent message could mean huge ROI for marketers. Consider a Nielsen study that illustrated how brand recall jumped from 50% in the group exposed to a TV ad alone, to 74% in the group exposed to multi-screen advertising (TV + PC + Smart phone + Tablet).

Here are statistics to support your quest to have a mobilized content strategy.

• U.S. tablet users will grow from 34 million in 2011 to 55 million in 2012 (EMarketer).
• 108+ million will own tablets by 2015. (Mashable)
• By 2016, mobile commerce is expected to increase to $31 billion in the U.S. – a tremendous jump from only $3 billion in 2010. (Mashable)
• In August 2011, more than 72.2 million people accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile devices, an increase of 37% from the previous year. (Comscore)
• 79% of business professionals who own an iPad “always” use it for web browsing; 76% “always” use it for reading; 73% “always” use it for news consumption (IDG Connect).
• 88% of U.S. marketers plan to increase their mobile marketing programs this year, according to a September 2011 online survey conducted by AT&T (AT&T).
• Mobile usage increased 30% in 2011 (EMarketer)
• Mobile accounts for 10.1% of time U.S. adults spend with media, compared to 6.8% for print (EMarketer).
• 64% of 25-34 year olds and 53% of 18-24 year olds now own smartphones (Nielsen’s State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report Q3 2011)
• The number of smartphone subscribers using the mobile Internet has grown 45 percent since 2010 (Nielsen).

Are you, or people at your organization, still resisting mobile media?

[Image: NASA Goddard Photo and Video]

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If you’ve ever been inside an elementary school library from the year 1966 onward, you’ve probably laid eyes on the phrase “Reading is FUNdamental” at one point in your life.

And it is. Especially if you want to create good content.

In order to do that—to engage, entertain, and inform—one has to know how it’s done, and it helps to see it done by people who are better at it than us, or at least, have notched a few hits.

If you want to pump out good content, you have to READ good content. And nothing is better than a good book. Literature is full of people who are better than the average Joe at content (arguable, but you’d have to be a pretty great debater).

Remember Hemingway? Borges, Twain, Tolstoy, and Oates? Shelley? To read them is to immerse yourself in their talent, and who doesn’t want or need a little more talent in their life?

And, no, the Internet is not enough. This blog post is not enough.

In this techno-driven world, we have a particular way of writing on the Web, one very different than what one sees in the comparatively Luddite world of literature. In order to keep Internet readers’ limited attention, writers have to speed things up—write for their lives—because in this age of quick-tabbing—switching from a news article to Facebook to email to actual work—every second matters.

That is why we write how we write on the Internet: in short, succinct bursts of information, littered with links, short asides, and bolded keywords. Often, the graceful beauty of a good sentence gets lost in making sure someone’s not going to go play Angry Birds before he finishes this paragraph.

Before you Web writers tar and feather me, I believe that beautiful writing can exist on the Internet. It’s just harder for our overactive brains to read.

In 2008, in an article in Slate, Michael Agger wrote about a key difference between reading for pleasure, ludic reading, as one reads literature, and reading on the Web. When we read for pleasure, “we read more slowly. When we’re really engaged in a text, it’s like being in an effortless trance,” something so different than the quick flick and click of the Internet. He writes, “We’ll do more and more reading on screens, but they won’t replace paper—never mind what your friend with a Kindle tells you. Rather, paper seems to be the new Prozac. A balm for the distracted mind…contained, offline, tactile.”

In 1991, a group of neuroscientists in Italy discovered something crazy about our brains. They learned that when a monkey watches a human reach for food, the areas of the monkey’s brain that normally engage when it reaches for food itself, still engage while the animal watches the food being grasped by someone else. Neurologically, this works as if the monkey was reaching for food itself— but it wasn’t. It was just watching. From this, something called mirror neurons were discovered—parts of your brain that let you feel the heebie jeebies when a spider lands on your friend’s arm.

The Society for Neuroscience explains it this way: “When you see someone smile, for example, your mirror neurons for smiling fire up, too, creating a sensation in your own mind of the feeling associated with smiling. You don’t have to think about what the other person intends by smiling. You experience the meaning immediately and effortlessly.”

I think one of the most important things about literature is that it serves as mirror neurons for life—and for the weary web writer— creating content. As the writer William Styron once wrote, “A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” Through literature, not only do we get to improve our grasp on life—expand our vocabulary; learn more about ourselves, the world, relationships, our environment—we also gain the benefit of absorbing great content, letting our mirror neurons fire, teaching us to create great content ourselves.

I certainly think I’d be less of a person if I hadn’t read the books I have read. My vocabulary would be busted; my understanding of people, relationships, family, honesty stunted; my writing stinted and uninspired; my exposure to sentences so well-crafted even my mother might tattoo them on her arm diminished significantly.

This is why, I believe, to be a true creator of content (good content) you have to engage people in a way that reading for pleasure engages people, or, really, engage YOURSELF the way literature engages. Let literature be your content Gatorade. Replenish your content electrolytes. Shake it up. Turn off that laptop, unplug that desktop, power down your Kindle, and read a book—with no distractions except a comfy couch and a steaming cup of tea. Soak up that paper Prozac and refresh your brain, sanity, and let yourself bask in the beauty of a 7-sentence paragraph without any links at all.

Hemingway will thank you.

[image: PhilliesFan8]

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Lucky me! Last week I was invited to host a Social Media Club of D.C. event and let my true nerd flag fly.

My task? Moderate a panel discussion that combined two of my favorite things: food and social media.

In the hot seats were three very tech-savvy people from D.C.’s restaurant scene: Jonathan Goldfuss (@ThinkFoodGroup) from Think Food Group, the management company for Jose Andres’ many restaurants; Polly Wiedmaier (@marcelsbeckdc), wife of (and marketing guru for) chef Robert Wiedmaier, of Brasserie Beck, Marcels, and others; and Chef Tony Marciante (@ChefTony) of his namesake restaurant in Bethesda, north of D.C.

We were there to chat about social media in the dining biz. Or rather, how the heck do you cook and tweet at the same time!? The panel had a wide range of social media influence and experience, and so the conversation was lively, and their tips and advice could be applied to nearly any industry—not just those who are chopping vegetables while snapping Twitpics.

Serving up Content

The first question I had focused on what kind of content they are sharing socially. Sometimes it’s hard for businesses to figure out where to even start with social media – eMarketer reports that 73% of marketers say finding the time to create content is their biggest challenge. Our panel overcame the obstacle in some interesting ways:

Jonathan said he urges his restaurant managers and chefs to be active on Twitter and Facebook, but they often ask him, what do I say? His response is simple: What have you done today? Everything you do on a day-to-day basis in business is a story, even a 140-character one. People want to see what’s behind the scenes at a restaurant or any business.

Chef Tony said he puts everything out there, from when he’s at the market shopping for his ingredients to Twit pics of the final dishes right before they’re about to be presented to diners. And Polly has the interesting task of being the online marketing mouthpiece for her social media-shy chef husband, Robert. So sometimes, a look into their busy lives is all it takes.

Not-So-Tasty Tweets

I wanted to know what the panel does when they have angry customers or diners tweeting at them, or blogging negative reviews. After all, they unanimously said social media is an extension to the conversation in the dining room.

Chef Tony said it’s the opportunity to turn a negative dining experience around—and even gave a great example in which he reached out to a blogger who bashed his business, and ended up making a loyal customer out of him.

Polly and Jonathan both agreed. They said they actively reach out to those customers, by DM’ing them on Twitter or sending them an email if they can, to help rectify the complaint. Jonathan’s restaurants even have a set policy for how to handle the situation. (Video: Social Media Guidelines Made Simple)

The trick is to be human, and not a corporate bot, and be understanding of customers’ complaints. Clearly Chef Tony is—he preached often about being real in social media. But what about brand names or businesses that don’t have a face that’s as famous as their business name? Jonathan says even though the restaurants’ names are the social media handles, he encourages his managers and chefs to lend their personality to the posts.

Setting the Table

And, finally, platform. The three said they stick to Twitter, Facebook, and occasionally post videos on YouTube, but haven’t really gotten into other platforms, such as Pinterest. And while it’s easy to synch platforms, or use tools to spread your messages across multiple mediums, you have to be careful your audiences don’t get confused—and that the message is tailored to the platform audience.

Chef Tony said social media the cheapest and best way to market your business, but Jonathan warned that it does cost something—time. And if you can’t do it well and correctly and frequently, then perhaps you should be careful to dip your toes into it.

If you’re in the D.C. area, make sure you get involved with the SMCDC. Their next event is a hot one, on the topic of social media and romance.

See all the tweets here.

[Image: Aimee.Knight]

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Moving pictures can be dangerous. Witness video of me, circa 1988, clad in acid-washed jeans with a shock of hair resembling a dump truck in full tilt.

Same thing applies to a new generation of video and the media machine it feeds every second of the day. When it comes to branded video content—or even content used to supplement a story online or on your slick new app—if you have the wrong mission or focus, things can go south faster than a bender in Tijuana.

I’ve learned a lot during my first year as someone responsible for providing video content for a TV network. No, it’s not NBC or even cable. It’s an in-airport network seen by nearly 4 million passengers a month at Washington D.C.’s Dulles International and Reagan National airports. We have 50-inch, flat-screen monitors everywhere except the bathrooms. (Another goal for another day…)

Our screens roll 24/7, and our “program” is a 20-minute loop that changes weekly. Yes, a whole different set of viewing variables.

What have I learned?

First, I was wrong about almost everything. Thus the myths debunked.

1. No one really pays much attention to video except for the “S#%* People Say” meme on YouTube.

Don’t bet on it. Video content is everywhere and can fine-tune or absolutely define your message and brand.

We produce branded video content for airports, but video is, of course, most dominant online with no signs of slowing. In fact, digital tracking company comScore noted that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in December for an average of 23.2 hours per viewer.

That number will rise: A survey released this week by the Pew Internet and American Life Project showed that the number of Americans who own a tablet—the device of choice for watching new video content—has risen to 29 percent.

2. Tell a good story, and you’ll be fine—no matter what the length.

The writer in me wanted to believe this. But something interesting happened on my way to becoming Marty Scorcese: I learned that long narrative is best left to tablets, and even then only if you have something monumental to say that cannot be said in 60-90 seconds.

We began 2011 showcasing local artists, singers, chefs and even yours truly on the road in Portland doing a travelogue. The videography was strong. The stories were appealing. And the music soared in the right places.

The problem: The videos were too long, clocking in anywhere from three to six minutes. I visited the airports and watched the body language of viewers and witnessed initial interest fade to iPhone-checking and, sometimes, actual snoozing—which is usually a sign you’re not engaging your audience (nothing gets by me). We lost them.

3. Quick 1-minute, branded videos are infinitely more appealing and don’t even need a narrative.

There are no shortcuts. Videos, like good stories, need a beginning, middle and end, even if they’re 60 seconds long.

This is among the best one-minute videos I’ve seen in the past six months. It’s branded content for a student travel service in Australia. Scores of images flash across the screen in what looks impossibly gorgeous.

The middle? Yes, it’s the clap at the pigeons. The end? Looks like the Tetons, right? And then fade to white with the branded catchphrase. Brilliant. It’s so effective I’m more than a little jealous.

And, yes, an incredible story was told in less time it takes to send an email.

4. YouTube has democratized video production, so content doesn’t even have to look that good.

Sorry, but production values for branded content need to be just as strong as those for the written word in print or online. (Besides, YouTube even has plans to tame the Wild West as it redefines niche programming light years beyond cable.)

The good news is that HD cameras have made it easy for content creators, once wary of anything other than the almighty keyboard, to film interviews and tell stories in new and exciting ways.

And those content creators can take it a step further. The latest version of Final Cut, released last May (and lambasted in many video- and film-production circles for its “dumbed-down” feel) features a smooth user interface and infinite flexibility. It’s a winner.

Indeed, I’ve been producing my own stuff for the past several months.

I still don’t know the perfect path of video and its complementary role in the content we provide. But I do have a better sense of how to avoid paths that lead to dark ravines with scary things such as miniscule click-through or, even worse, a collective shrug from audiences.

Marty would be proud.

[Image: BrittneyBush]

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When it comes to digital media, competition can sometimes make writers turn into digital grinches. While it’s healthy to stoke friendly competition and take pride in your work, stonewalling and shoulder checking isn’t really necessary.

The web was built on the notion of sharing ideas and exchanging news. Links, the glue that holds the Internet content train together, are meant to be given freely and awarded to the best and most relevant content. The saying goes that no man is an island, and the same goes for most web sites and blogs, as networking and collaboration are key parts of the growth of pretty much any digital property.

But along the way, there’s been a rise in grinchery. These writers will purposely avoid linking out to sites and blogs that are clearly informing their writing. And rather than quoting their sources, they’ll rewrite their content and reduce the attribution to the vague “according to various reports.”

So why the stinginess? The answer can be summed up by a line in a Michael Jackson song: “Tell ‘em that it’s human nature.”

As more importance has been placed on increasing pageviews and time spent on site, some writers have put themselves before their readers and as a result, become hoardish with their links and compliments. Instead of embracing the diversity of information on the web, they act like they’re the only shop in town and try to ensure that readers never leave the tangled web they’re weaving.

Recently, Sarah Lacy, formerly of TechCrunch, took a firm stand against this trend. When she launched her own tech blog, PandoDaily, Lacy outlined her manifesto in one of the site’s introductory posts to her readership. She made it clear that she sought to correct a wrong she’d seen becoming more prevalent in the blogosphere:

We are insanely competitive. We want to break every story. But we also want to bring more civility into the blogosophere. We’ll link to people who beat us on a story and be good sports about it, as much as it pisses us off. We’ll welcome competitors to cover our events, and we’ll cover theirs.

It all boils down to one thing: Sportsmanship. Just like we were taught to put on a polite face and shake hands with the other team as we picked up our broken spirits and tended to our scraped knees after a particularly brutal game of kickball in elementary school, it’s important to give credit where credit is due and pay compliments when the work warrants it.

As content creators, we all know the good feeling of having someone send you a note remarking about how they appreciate your work. Whether it’s an admired peer congratulating you at a conference, a thankful email from a reader landing in your inbox or a heart-warming tweet from a stranger praising your story telling, everyone likes to be acknowledged.

That’s why when it comes to content creation, I’m generous with my links and when it comes to social media, I’m quick to pay compliments to fellow writers. I recently made it a point to drop a quick note to a technology blogger who I stumbled upon, letting him know that I liked his work and would be keeping up with his posts in the future. He responded in kind and was appreciative of the note.

And before anyone goes getting any funny ideas who should compliment who, paying compliments knows no rank or class. Want an example? How about the president of the United States of America sangin’ a little tune for the Reverend Al Green at a recent fundraiser at the Apollo theater?

There President Obama was, doing his best attempt at Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” in tribute to the great soul king himself. Fortunately, Obama proved to be capable of carrying a decent tune, though he’s obviously not snatching the American Idol crown any time soon.

As Obama wrapped up his little ditty with a nervous laugh, he explained his humble display simply:

“Don’t worry, Rev, I cannot sing like you. But I just wanted to show my appreciation.”

Content creators, go forth and link freely. Comment on content that moves you and tweet out a compliment or two. It’ll do you and the Internet some good, I promise.

[image via SimpleMom]

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In the past year, social media was the vehicle that drove several high-profile careers off a cliff.

Pro athlete Larry Johnson tweeted a homophobic slur that resulted in a fan petition calling for his removal from the Kansas City Chiefs. He was later suspended.

Gilbert Gottfried lost his gig as the voice of the Aflac duck for making a joke about the aftermath of a devastating tsunami in Japan.

Journalist Octavia Nasr was fired for a controversial Tweet that violated CNN’s social media policy.

But high-profile celebrities weren’t the only “victims” in our era of real-time transparency.

Agencies lost clients.

Businesses turned off customers.

And organizations were embarrassed.

The common thread in all of these social media meltdowns is that the “person” took the wheel and the “professional” took the back seat.

In other words, caught in the heat of the moment, (or in a fit of passion) these people acted very … well, human (in many cases, however, still inappropriately so).

Can we blame them? The beauty of social media is that people are allowed to finally be themselves. Transparency, authenticity and all that, right?

Gone is the carefully planned company line and here to stay is the spontaneous and often unchecked ad-libbed line.

But if this “be yourself” mantra is the driving force behind social media’s mass adoption, then why do we come down with such a heavy hand on those that embrace it?

Because deep down we still have expectations for people who are representing a brand. And as much as we want to say social media is the pinnacle of freedom of expression, if you are tied to an organization, your social media outbursts could bring them down with you. It is, in one word: irresponsible.

Which is why we need to look at this sobering piece of reality: when you use social media, you forfeit the right to truly be yourself with no holds barred. Holds are definitely barred.

Whether you’re managing official accounts or feeding your own, directly or indirectly, you are linked to the company that helps you pay your bills (if you don’t like it, find a new line of work).

If you represent an organization, (and anyone who receives a paycheck from an organization does) you’re going to need to start acting like a profersonal (if you haven’t done the math, that’s professional blended with personal).

The lines are irreversibly blurred between our personal and professional lives. There is no more “privacy” or protected content online. Only content waiting to be found like ticking time bombs we never needed to create.

Here are the new rules we must live by:

Act as if anyone will be able to read what you write, track you down, connect you to your organization, and have chaos ensue. When we look at the example of Detroit Motor city Tweet and also the Red Cross Tweet we see that this excuse was used: “I thought I was sending it from my personal account.” If the Twitter users behind those accounts employed this logic, the mistake never would have happened.

Don’t swear, get political, get preachy or do anything else you wouldn’t do at an all-hands meeting. It may seem disconnected from your work life while you’re ranting from your dark basement, but when the lights come on, everyone can see the proverbial logo you wear.

Have fun, but make sure it’s good, clean fun. The kind you might have with Shrek, not Charlie Sheen. The kind the Bronx Zoo Cobra had back in the day.

Continue to treat social media like a cocktail party. But make sure it doesn’t turn into an 8 day bender where you end up in a Las Vegas suite with a tiger.

I’ll probably be called conservative, scared, and several unprintable names for putting together this shiny, corporate-friendly post. But it’s the truth, and embracing it will be liberating and finally rid us of the false anxiety of thinking that some of our social media content is personal and some of it is professional.

If you have a job, all of your social media activity is both personal and professional. It’s profersonal. It’s the era we live in.

[Image: Krystal OBrien]

This post was originally published on The Future Buzz.

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The biggest roadblock for writers trying to perfect their voice isn’t using the correct grammar, proper spelling, or consistent syntax.

It’s fear.

One of my college professors once called me out for being too tentative in a story. I was writing a review of the movie “High Noon” and after a decent lead, I just lost my voice. He asked me point blank, “What are you afraid of?”

It was a pretty heavy question for a 20-year-old who thought he was invincible and couldn’t imagine any other career than being a writer. However, the more I thought about it, and the more I worked on developing my craft, the less potent the fear of losing my voice in print was.

I reached out to that professor, along with one of my literary Twitter followers, and came up with three tips writers can use to master their writing anxiety.

Don’t Compare Notes

Comparing your work to other writers can cripple your ability to overcome the fear your own words.

You aren’t going to accomplish much if you’re concentrating on what others have done and what you haven’t. You’re only going to lose your voice even more, and be that much more scared of never finding it again.

“Your own voice isn’t supposed to sound like anyone else’s,” says Morgan Pehme, my former college professor and current executive director of New York Civic, a nonprofit, nonpartisan good government group that aims to advance political reform in the city and state of New York. “If you are discomfited by your voice sounding different than others, and thus unprofessional or inferior, take heart in the fact that your voice is supposed to be different.”

“No two authors will ever write the same story, even if they begin with the same concept,” says Julie Anne Lindsey, a young adult fiction writer and blogger. “Your voice should be embraced because its what makes you you.”

Take a Step Back

This is the easiest and hardest thing to do for a writer. But there are times you just need to get the hell away from your work. Your writing voice, just like anything else on your person, gets fatigued. The more tired it is, the more you start to fear it.

When one word or phrase looks out of place, you start moving pieces around, and the next thing you know everything looks scrambled. Not to mention, you’ve now taken cover under a blanket with a baseball bat.

“A respite allows us to view our work with greater objectivity,” says Pehme. “It’s an experience that either clarifies its flaws, but, more often that not, impresses us that the piece was much better than we initially thought.”

Whenever you decide to return to the page—it could be two hours or two months—your voice should be refreshed and ready. And instead of wearing a Halloween mask, it’ll be wearing the smile of an old, trusted friend.

Confidence is Key

Confidence in your writing is everything. Errors can be corrected, tone can be honed, but there is no easy fix for sustained fear.

“Know that all writers lack confidence in their work,” says Pehme. He notes that a tour of the Rare Book collection of the British Museum will show how even classic writers like Shakespeare, Joyce, and Austen constantly crossed out and revised their work. “Just because you are insecure doesn’t mean your insecurity is founded. Writing requires a leap of faith. Don’t be afraid to jump!” he says.

“Fearing your voice as a writer is like an artist fearing their medium, a painter avoiding his paint, a pianist afraid to play,” says Lindsey. “Don’t fear your gift. Treasure it. Your voice gives your story its passion, edge, and bite.”

The process of finding your voice can be a messy and frightening one, but if you are patient and hungry, you’ll be able to wield your words ferociously, rather than live in fear of them.

[image: jjpacres]

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