If you’ve ever tried to name a website, business, book or band, you’ll identify with the problem of coming up with a name for something – until it’s established and familiar, most names just sound odd. Considering I was once guitarist with a band named ‘Inflatable Hostess’, this shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise!

But as the site has grown from friends and family to thousands of people every month, I’ve been increasingly asked about the name (Although not as much as my Twitter username ). So with a lovely new logo now in place, it seems like a good time to explain what on earth I was thinking…

What does ‘TheWayoftheWeb’ mean?

The name of the site was inspired by a number of things, but is mainly inspired by my interest in Japanese culture, particularly around martial arts. I’d read the ‘Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai‘ not long before launching the site, having seen it referenced in the film ‘Ghost Dog‘. It’s an interesting book of notes provided by the samurai Yamamoto Tsunemoto, around the time the samurai class switched from being mainly warriors to administrators.

But the main inspiration comes from the philosophy behind Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do. If you only ever considered Bruce Lee a film star, then the insight into his approach to martial arts and fighting styles might be a little bit of a surprise, but the key element that inspired me is that Jeet Kune Do isn’t a fixed style like Karate. It’s fluid and changing, hence why it’s often called a ‘style without a style’, and that a good martial artists should be like water, and moving fluidly without hesitation.

And that’s the personal hidden joke within the name.

There is no one set ‘Way’ of the Web – the important thing is to set out on the journey and find the way which works for you and your business.

So what does ‘TheWayoftheWeb’ do?

The succinct business philosophy is simple – it’s much easier to find what works for you with experienced help. The longer version is providing:

• Content creation - Content is a foundation of success in digital, whether you’re a publisher, retailer, manufacturer or service provider. Sometimes it’s hard to see how you can produce amazing writing from inside your business, which is why hiring someone with experience in journalism and writing online can really transform what you’re doing by asking the right questions.
• Marketing – You need people to see what you’re doing. But how do you achieve that with the ever-changing state of search engine optimisation, or the constant launches of new social networks? What you need is someone who can advise on where to start, and give you a solid foundation to work from.
• Training – Whether or not you want someone to provide content and marketing services for you indefinitely, at the very least you probably want to know exactly how to measure whether it’s successful or not, and the world of analytics and social media monitoring can be daunting with so much potential data to turn into insight. And if you do plan on transferring content and marketing to an internal resource, then you can shortcut a lot of time, money and experimentation.
• And lastly there’s this site – which aims to provide insight and guidance into journalism, writing, and marketing in a digital world, with the occasional more personal post to avoid becoming an endless stream of tutorials, and to provide an insight into the actual person you’re hiring – the most qualified person in the world won’t be effective for your business if you decide within 10 seconds that you hate them, so by taking a look around you hopefully get an idea whether there’s a fit with your business.

And that’s it in a fairly large nutshell. Of course, it also provides you with a way to Contact Me, and who I am.

Your turn: I’d love to know how you came up with the name of your own blog/site/business and how it came about… And what you think of mine!

Over time I’ve managed to attract a reasonably large audience every month with a range of articles mainly covering writing and content, marketing, social media, SEO, and technology. But until 18 months ago, it was very much still a passion for my spare time, along with the videogame sites I’ve launched.

But after starting a freelance business, and with the ambition of growing, it was time to get things more organised – and about 18 months later I finally made use of a talented and friendly designer who was foolish enough to agree to provide a logo (I won’t say who as I don’t know if he’s accepting any more business at the moment).

So here it is, the logo for TheWayoftheWeb – your friendly content marketing, SEO and Social Media company.

It’s pretty simple, but I think it’s effective. Trying to come up with something to illustrate Content + Social Media + SEO was a challenge, particularly as I picked such a vague name years ago, and didn’t just want a name and strapline until I’ve done a bit more work on the exact proposition, as you could also have it as Writing/Content Marketing/Social Media/SEO/Training and a bit of Community Management/Affiliate Management as needed.

The Facebook Page and G+ pages already look massively improved. There’s still a bit of design work to do here, but I’m working on it. One of the great things about a self-hosted blog is that it forces me to actually get involved in the HTML and CSS myself on occasion, and I still feel smug when I manage to get something right first time without breaking everything!

What’s going to be interesting is seeing if there’s any increase in traffic/business to back up the horror designer friends have shown when I’ve launched and run sites without having a logo or branding in place first…

The summary is the photo of an innocent 40-year-old man named Angel Ortiz was used in a front page story about a horrific crime comitted by a 20-year-old with the same, and apparently very common, Spanish name. As a result, the innocent party has lost work, been persecuted and is effectively reduced to hiding in his house in fear of what might happen in public.

I’m sure that noone involved in publishing the story ever intended this to happen, but when a lawyer for the innocent Ortiz wrote to the paper demanding a front page retraction, the newspaper responded by removing the image from its website, and the ‘retraction ran on the bottom of page 2, with no photo‘.

Why apologies are business-critical:

I understand that sometimes the ‘right’ thing to do can run into roadblocks when lawyers advise on the ‘correct legal’ thing to do. But certainly retractions need to be an equal size and prominence to the original content, and reach the same audience.

Secondly, there’s been no personal apology, or any help and assistance in correcting the situation, which would have gone some way to rectifying the situation. I’m trying to think of any legal reasons why the paper couldn’t have run something asking for help in finding work for an innocent man, for example, besides their own guilt?

But here’s the thing – I don’t know the newspaper or any of the parties involved, and I’m located halfway around the world, but I’ll now associated the MetroWest Daily with this debacle. I’ve now also written about it to you, and shared it via Twitter etc. Besides my personal feelings about whether I’ll ever read or do business with the company, some quick google searches for relevant terms shows a number of sites picking up on the screwup, and nothing on the newspaper website offering any explanation or apology to make me think any better of them.

What they should be doing:

Anyone using a search engine for related terms will see coverage of this horrendous mistake. What the paper should have done is looked at how this error happened (and how to prevent it in the future), and then published a full apology in print and online which explains how they’ll avoid making such a disaster in the future. A human response would at least appear online and in search to provide some mitigation.

They should then have followed that up with a decent effort to try to rectify things (along with a personal apology), perhaps by running follow-ups to help Ortiz find work – again, this would show that despite the mistake, there are decent human people working at the newspaper, as well as that evidence appearing in search and social networks.

It’s how you handle mistakes that matters:

Errors have always happened, even if they seem more and more likely due to widespread editorial cuts around the world. But whereas the outcry even 15 years ago would have been barely noticeable in another country, the internet means that everything is catalogued and saved for all eternity.

If you understand that any mistake is extremely likely to be publicly indexed, then you understand that the response is key. And that response is going to be seen around the world, for as long as we have an internet, so responding ethically is more important than any other consideration.

And if you’re publishing or re-publishing any image online, double-check and triple-check the source, the content and the licensing restrictions.

I’m against these measures for 2 reasons, and it’s not about being able to pirate films, music or books. In all honesty, I can’t remember the last time I consciously attempted to download pirated content – I’m too busy to spend time worrying whether my laptop is secure enough to be safe and locating a decent copy when I can generally pay the ‘lazy man’s tax’ and download from a legal site. Generally many of the acts, artists and authors I enjoy tend to be aware of and use Creative Commons licences anyway.

The reasons I’m against the attempts by large media companies to shore up their moribund traditional business practice by funding politicians to bring in laws are simple:

• I believe that a free and open internet provides far more benefits to the whole of society than it damages, and that copyright is an incentive for creation which is meant to serve society as a whole, not restrict innovation and ideas in the service of extending profits for large corporations.
• I’ve enjoyed the benefits of a free and open internet which allows me relative freedoms of self-publishing and self-expression, which has enabled me to continue to build a business and career based on creating content, training journalists, and helping companies to connect more effectively with their customers. All of this will become more difficult due to the lack of understanding shown in all new bills and treaties proposed so far by people who have little empathy with the users of the world wide web.

And there’s an additional reason why I’m standing up against these proposals with more strength than ever before – my son. I don’t want him to grow up in a world where the greatest tool for access to knowledge, community and enabling basic human rights is castrared by large media companies because they haven’t evolved and want to keep doing business the old fashioned way.

After almost 4 years, I still occasionally feel surprised and amazed that I have responsibility for another human being – looking after a cat and a rabbit were stressful enough, let alone remembering to eat healthily and get enough sleep when I’m working hard. But as a parent I share what I presume are normal concerns – worrying my son might get ill, hurt, be unhappy, etc. As a geek parent I also have two concerns specific to technology:

• I want my son to benefit from education and access to the tools to be able to take things apart, modify them, and create with them to build his own inventions and ideas, whether that’s hardware, software, art or ideas. I don’t want him to be a passive consumer forcefed applications and content which is so protected that it can’t be examined, played with, and learnt from.
• I want my son to benefit from a free and open internet which allows him to potentially connect with a global network of people who may share his ideas, beliefs, and passions. He may turn out to be the most popular kid in his school, but he may also have interests which aren’t shared by everyone else – the internet is an amazing tool for establishing other people share the same problems or hobbies, and reducing the isolation which can be a symptom of being a teenager in particular.

With my limited knowledge of politics and finance, I have little hope that the current administrations and electoral processes will change enough to stop the constant challenges to our digital evolution. So it’s my duty, and yours, to stand up for the things we want to preserve, for ourselves, and for our children, family, friends and everyone else.

If you’re in Europe, contact the relevant MEPs now – the questions being raised over ACTA have led to positive signs in both Poland and Germany, and there’s no reason why we can’t make a change in other coutnries if we all act. I have no doubt that eventually an open system will prevail no matter what laws are passed, but lets not allow the current generations of teenagers and children to have their potential wasted while that happens.

So if you’re interested in attending, send a tweet to @DPiPboro or add the event on Facebook to give us an idea of numbers, please.

Oh, and DPiP is also on Google+ if you’d prefer to keep up with events and news there instead.

By contrast, I was on the edge of my seat during the Ireland – Wales match in the Six Nations Rugby today. And [spoiler alert] being a passionate Ireland supporter (The two manifestations of my Irish ancestry are in rugby and whiskey), the end result was a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Chatting with a friend, I was struck by the difference between the ‘fan of a game’, as I am with the NFL, and he is with rugby, and the ‘true fan’ of a team. Watching a match as a fan of a sport can be quite relaxing, as you can enjoy an entertaining game without investing your own emotion. Watching as a fan of a team is a stressful rollercoaster of emotions which often ends in disappointment.

In fact, even when your team wins, it can be so stressful than you have little memory of the event, which was certainly true when I watched Chelsea win the 1997 FA Cup Final against Middlesborough, which was the first major victory for the team in 27 years, and the first in my lifetime. As I walked home from the pub after watching the game and people asked about it, I could remember the score, but not even who had scored. And that’s including a goal after just 42 seconds which remained a record for 12 years!

What brands need to know about their true fans

Here’s the important point for brands, and it isn’t about pricing season tickets, or how to sell hats and scarves. It’s the fact that the majority of fans will continue to follow their team with passion and enthusiasm despite the fact that they won’t win. Statistically, 99% of the teams in any competition will end up losing at some point, and will have lost the previous year, and the year before that, and potentially for many years before.

Brands always want to portray their best side, hiding flaws and imperfections in the belief that this breeds success, rather than some kind of marketing uncanny valley.

The belief has always been that brands need to portray themselves as perfectly better than their competitors to attract customers, and because any flaw leads to complaints.

But that’s not the case – it’s how you react to any problems. The main complaints about brands via the internet are not that they screwed up – it’s that they don’t respond, react, or solve their screw-ups.

If you’re brave enough to talk about your problems, failures and mistakes with honesty and how you’ve solved them, it works. Talk to all the community managers who meet with their communities and find that explaining the reason behind common issues results in those communities becoming staunch defenders of them.

There are fans in the world who have spent decades following teams in lower leagues and divisions with extremely little chance of success, and will make great sacrifices to support them day-in and day-out. Wouldn’t you like customers like that?

But around the age of 11 or so, I read the amazing Walking on Water by Andy Martin. Like me, he grew up in England, and didn’t become a professional surfer – but due to his fascination and obsession with it, he did spend time in the water, and the book covers his journey to Hawaii to speak to the leading stars of the early 90s and to cover the world championship at the time.

What really hooked me was one passage, in which he describes being stopped at airport customs and asked what the purpose of his journey was. Having been hired to do some freelance reporting on surfing for The Times, he pulled out a busines card stating ‘The Times, Surfing Correspondent’, and that allowed him to carry on his journey. (I’m writing from memory as I suspect a previous loan of the book led to it never returning to my possession).

It’s followed by amazing writing, characters and stories as he gets to meet all his heroes and surf Hawaii, but the key thing that stuck with me was this:

You can be an expert, earn a living, meet your heroes and be utterly absorbed by something as a writer, and sharing that can be as powerful as actually doing it for a living.

Suddenly I realised that I might never be paid to race cars or bikes, but I could earn a living by sharing my obsession and knowledge of motorsport and all things with an engine.

Having applied that approach to motorcycles, cars, technology, and writing itself, I’ve had the enormous good fortune to be published by leading publications in their field, visited foreign countries, had amazing experiences and spoken with a number of my childhood heroes. Less than 1% of racers will ever get to legitimately be in the MotoGP paddock, for example, but as a journalist I was able to experience it, which I’ll always treasure.

And there’s another key lesson.

You might think that ‘those that can, do, and those that can’t, write ‘ (to adapt a hackneyed quote about teaching). But many top sportsmen and women can’t explain what they do and how they do it. It’s not their job. They have to concentrate on whatever it takes to get to the top and stay there, and not consider anything else. It’s why quite often the most talented people are the worst instructors, because they have no idea what it was like to be an untalented beginner!

That’s why it’s our job. And why it’s my passion and obsession to share the things I love in a way which could inspire the same passion in others.

It’s so often the case, particular with larger companies and the relentless need to show immediate ROI that even when someone understands the concept of earning what they want, that they succumb to the temptation of just diving straight in with the request, because someone has insisted they need to show results in the next day or week.

(Incidentally, Gary has released two books, Crush It! and The Thank You Economy. Both are well worth reading).

It’s why I’m been sharing this article by Michael Ellsberg on the Forbes website – a recommendation from one notable blogger did more for the success of his book than national broadcast television or newspapers. But the flipside is that he’d built that relationship up over a period of years, rather than days, weeks or months.

That’s also potentially a great reason to use freelance resources, which is something I intend to expand on. If you’re a new company or you’ve never tried earning coverage and referrals before, then it can take a long time to build those relationships. Whereas I’ve tried to work on them every day for the past decade, which is why I’m able to survive via word-of-mouth referrals and work via previous clients, colleagues and friends.

Assuming 0.25% of all content being uploaded is great content, that’s 3.6 hours of amazing videos every day. That’s 25.2 hours of great content per week, with the average TV viewing in a UK household somewhere between 20 and 30 hours per week.

Pretty amazing, and also why the follow-up attempts to enact laws such as SOPA and PIPA will occur with regularity in the U.S, and the influence of the U.S will be increasingly felt on every country around the world which might be encouraged or persuaded to enact such laws.

It isn’t about piracy. It’s about copying, creating and the disruptive effects we have all had

But what happens when the stars aren’t human, but characters in a story which has become immensely popular and adopted by millions around the world with their own passionate interpretations and fandom? OK, so we should probably be used to this by now, judging by the way this particular story has been used, exploited and hollowed-out for every possible revenue stream, but still…

So the character whose entrance into a rebel ship inspired fear and nightmares in generations of people is now a middle-management consultant to a chain of average computer retailers.

And then this happens…

If you remember all those strange people around the world who declare themselves as a Jedi whenever a census appears, a reasonable percentage of them aren’t doing it entirely as a joke – there’s enough evidence online of the Jedi mindset being compared to a more recognised religion. Without debating the merits of each religion, this is essentially like seeing the head of whichever version you follow decide to start pimping themselves out for commercials.

I’m done with Star Wars…

I don’t remember the first time I watched Star Wars, but I do remember a friend actually having a film projector at an early  birthday party to screen The Empire Strikes Back. And whilst my collection of toys was sold by my father without my knowledge when I was a teenager, thus destroying a potential retirement fund, I’ve since discovered that my Star Wars lunchbox still survives in a dusty corner of the garage. And I do have the original trilogy on VHS just so I could show my son that Han fired first, just as it should be.

But that’s balanced with the fact I don’t expect every piece of entertainment to be an artistic statement, the history of merchandising and utilising the Star Wars world to extract every last penny from it, and the fact various adverts have appeared in the past with some of the characters – I’ve discovered Yoda apparently also picked up a cheque for a Japanese advert a while ago, like so many other stars.

I’m in my 30s, I’ve worked in the publishing and entertainment industries for 10+ years, and I know how all this works – and yet I feel a sense of loss with the resignation. One of the guiding stories of my childhood, which I wanted to share with my son as he grows older, has now lost any magic it had. It’s no more meaningful than whichever animated feature will be on the side of Happy Meals next month.

Marketing with listening and meaning:

If you’re one of the growing number of companies embracing the approach of standing clearly for a defined purpose, then you might believe you’re above this risk.

And if you’re just in the business of churning out a product, perhaps an unexciting one, then you might believe it doesn’t matter.

But the important thing is that I don’t think George Lucas and everyone else involved had set out to make a serious artistic statement which could spring into a belief and support which has last 30+ years. He made some films, and realised that there was more money to be made around them than directly from them – particularly pre-VHS, DVD and Streaming.

The meaning and experiences came from the people who watched,shared, discussed, and believed – would you know if the same thing was growing around your brand? Are you not only monitoring but paying attention, analysing, listening and shaping your future in that context?