One way or the other, the process of writing and publishing a novel is a marathon rather than a sprint, and it inevitably spans more than a year for most. The many slips that can occur between cup and lip in the course of writing a novel and being able to share it with readers include writer’s block (natch), rejection by agents and/or publishers, and a very slow time-to-market cycle: the book may be finished ahead of schedule, but if your publisher can’t afford to print and promote it in 2011, you’re looking at yet another delay of between six and 12 months.

Even if you, as an author, experience none of these delays and can juggle promotion of your 2010 novel as you’re plugging away at the one to be published in 2011, using a blog as the base of your social media pyramid has so many advantages I’m surprised there are writers without blogs. I wanted to highlight three very different authors’ blogs to give novelists some idea of the vastly different approaches they can take to blogging.

William Gibson’s Blog

Gibson’s blog was the first author blog I discovered. I used to see him on the streets of Vancouver’s Kitsilano, tall and slightly stooped. I always respected his privacy too much to accost him. What would I have said to him anyway? ‘I respect you so very much as a thinker and am delighted you to chose to leave the US for Canada so we can claim you as one of our own?’ (Would he understand that I admire his thinking more than his writing, in much the same way I prefer Iain Banks when he writes as Iain Banks rather than Iain M. Banks, i.e. that I struggle a bit with sci fi, although I’ve tried, I really have?) Although he blogs only intermittently when he’s in the throes of writing, his content is fascinating. Here’s a great post on quantum teleportation, artificial intelligence, the ‘after us, the deluge’ school of sci fi writing – with some gems about what he learned as an undergraduate. You can also find him on Twitter.

Amy King’s Blog

I’m not at all familiar with Amy (A.S.) King‘s work (she writes young adult fiction, and I believe I passed – or bypassed – that stage of life 40 or so years ago – in fact, I’m not sure the genre actually existed when I was 12-18), but found her on Twitter recently when this feisty post was retweeted by several folks I follow. What’s interesting about this post (and I hope to see more of this kind of post by Amy in future), is that she raises many issues relating to copyright and how it affects sales – issues about which writers, publishers, and readers need to think long and hard. Many of her posts announce contests, giveaways, and publicity dates for her forthcoming novel, Please Ignore Vera Dietz (October 12, 2010 US release date). All her posts give you insight into a writer’s life. If you’re a fan of her work, what better way to keep folks engaged while waiting for a new release?

Heather McCormack’s Blog

A newbie blogger with her first novel just barely under her belt, I was lucky enough to find Heather’s first post, again via Twitter. In case you’re not reading every one of my Twitter updates, I’ll repeat (paraphrased slightly) what I said about her inaugural post there: Authors, this is what I mean when I say ‘blog about your writing process and your inspiration.’ In Heather’s post she talks about inspiration, influences, the necessity to exorcise a demon or two through writing, what set her off on the novelist’s path. That’s what folks want to know. We all know that choosing to write fiction isn’t the most practical career choice. What readers want to know is how – and why – you choose to face down the odds.

Those odds may include not only trying to find an agent, get a novel finished, get published, make a decision about your book’s cover. They may also include other aspects of writing – how to make the transition from short story writer to novelist, journalist or essayist to book author (fiction or non-fiction), or from non-fiction writer to fiction writer. The audience for Margaret Atwood’s book on debt is not the same for her novels. Nor is her poetry audience identical to her literary criticism audience. Nor have all the loyal readers of her contemporary – or her historical fiction novels Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin – necessarily been fans of her more recent futuristic fiction (the same can inevitably be said of Doris Lessing on the contemporary novel/sci fi front). Roll on the Venn diagrams showing there is an overlap in a single author’s various fan bases – I don’t doubt for a moment there is. But by using the categories features on blogs, you can immediately direct readers to the posts that interest them most. You can also expand your potential readership base by being genuine about your own heroes, as Heather does when she talks about Greil Marcus.

Will all Greil Marcus fans become Heather McCormack readers/book purchasers? It’s doubtful. Some might – and by adding a Greil Marcus tag to a blog post Heather would/could (has? I confess I haven’t checked) make it that much easier for his fans to find – and connect with – her. I’ve never forgotten it was J.D. Salinger in Catcher in the Rye who sent me down the path of discovery to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native.

These are only three examples of (non-client) authors with highly individual approaches to blogging. I know there are many, many more. What are your favourite author blogs? Who are the authors whose blogs you love (almost) more than their work? And who’s doing a spectacularly bad job of author blogging? And who’s not blogging who should be?

Rearranging the information in percentage terms would actually give you a far more accurate visual representation of the progression of social media usage, I think. I know I had been blogging for a good two years before I ever set up a feed reader system for myself, and since I’m considered an alpha flickr user, I was creating content from the very beginning of my involvement with social media. I’d also argue that social media has been in existence for well over a decade now, and that Twitter has its roots in chat, but I’ve already talked about that elsewhere.

I’d be interested to know in the comments if you started blogging before you started seriously reading other blogs or not. I have been known to try to operate machinery without reading the instruction manual too.

Hat tip to United BIT for the diagram and its post on the subject.

The last thing Butterfield said before he wrapped up the keynote was that now, instead of gathering at the water cooler at work to talk about last night’s Lost, you put up the clip on YouTube. He didn’t take it any farther than that, but I caught myself thinking that to finish that thought, what’s been lost in the intimacy of idly wondering if your wife bought you that tie to ward off other women while discussing last night’s Lost, has been supplanted by a greatly expanded potential for free and easy global reach.

Death of Advertising began with the question, what killed advertising (answer, TiVo, DVR) and ended with a participant recommendation that we should read the Al and Laura Ries book, The Death of Advertising and the Rise of PR. Chris Heuer trotted out several of Will Rogers’ old chestnuts on advertising, quoted Saatchi, showed the ‘bring out your dead’ clip from – you know – one of those Monty Python movies, Life of Brian or MP & THG and announced that marketing’s become a dirty word. (Here I thought it was just marketers we didn’t much care for, with the exception as always of our strategic partner.)

‘We don’t want to be sold to, we just want to buy.’ Hasn’t that always been true, I wondered.

And then he said a couple of things that made me wonder if he knew what he was talking about. He said ‘if the purpose of advertising is to create a transaction, it’s failed singularly in this aim.’ Which, like the Al and Laura Ries book, is very old news by now. Then he said, ‘it’s not advertising if it appeals to us.’

BTD (beg to differ).

But I did like what he had to say about the BlendTech CEO who grinds up the iPod. Which was that this really is the CEO, this is his ‘game face,’ so when he goes on TV talk shows he has no difficulty replicating the stunt.

And then he said he doesn’t read, when asked what was the best recent book on his subject. I’ve obviously got issues with this one.

On to David Ng’s Biodiversity to Pokemon, which was introduced as being one of the Ways Darwin Could Jump the Shark , I think – I didn’t quite get that part of the whole thing. Perhaps it’s another shark Darwin should be jumping, I don’t know.

He wants to create a crowd-sourced card or board game to increase the cognition value of children’s ecosystems so they’re as familiar with the species with which they interact as they are with the Pokemon characters, after Andrew Bonfit’s Cambridge research study of several years ago showed that six year olds could identify all the Pokemon characters and their personality attributes but couldn’t identify a European Starling. (Neither could we, although David said it’s the sixth most popular bird in the Lower Mainland. I think he meant sixth most common. I’m not a big bird fan, personally, and that European Starling is never going to make it into my personal bird top six: dead, dead and stuffed, dead and vapourized, in someone else’s yard, outside, and over there. Sorry. Rant over now.)

There was some good feedback from conference goers on this one, and it was nice to see a Moosecamp in action. David got quick gaming, outreach, and marketing/PR brand positioning from audience experts. The project’s got some funding – I’ll be interested to see how it evolves.

Sorry, too tired for the linklove today. Back at it tomorrow.

I would have loved to attend, but Chicago’s a long way to go for an afternoon, and given the uncertainties of winter travel from YVR, I decided to live vicariously and hope the presentations were filmed for future consumption

I really like the goal-oriented approach outlined by Stan Joosten, Director of Holistic Consumer Communications for Proctor & Gamble. It’s a classic example of strategy-in-action, as opposed to a tactics-based approach to communications.  

His presentation focused on three key points: 

• know your brand
• empower your brand fans
• replace or augment market research.

Organizations that have been around as long as P&G have been on the branding treadmill for decades now. They’ve devoted incredible human and monetary resources to creating and promoting their brands. In fact, P&G became the US’s largest advertiser in 2005. Imagine having revenues of $4.61 billion, let alone that kind of money to spend on advertising – it’s rather mind-boggling.

Regardless of where you land on the PR versus advertising spectrum though, it’s important to recognize that traditional advertising accomplishes none of the goals Joosten has outlined. I will contend that all market research is skewed, in one way or another – and I don’t think you need to be a statistical expert to know that instinctively. I’ve done market research myself on a couple of occasions, on the phone and in person. After less than 10 hours you start to realize there’s a particular type of person who consents to participate – with or without inducements – in focus groups and surveys. (They tend to be the same sort of people who hold doors open and who still say ‘excuse me’ before pushing past people at the grocery store.) But all the folks who refuse to answer surveys and are unwilling to be part of focus groups still use soap, wash their clothes, clean their bathtubs – and make purchasing decisions each and every day.

So in order to know your brand, you have to listen not only to the branding experts who’ve created the brand and listed what they hope its attributes will be, you have to listen – and be willing to hear – what your brand really is.

That can sometimes be a painful experience when you’re in a highly competitive market. The former market leader in radios probably doesn’t want to hear the cellphones it’s poured millions into creating and marketing are considered clunky, ugly, expensive, and totally unhip – but when it ends up a distant third in the cellphone manufacturing market, not listening to the message would be a big mistake – as would failing to do some course correction so it can compete on at least one front.

But of the three goals Joosten outlined, perhaps the most revolutionary – and the most necessary –  is the middle one: empower your brand fans. People listen to other people. They listen especially hard to other people they trust. Whether those people are mainstream media (who can at least be trusted to be familiar with the competition), media 2.0 (the bloggers who rarely have anything to gain by waxing enthusiastic about the products they like), or Mrs. McGillicuddy down the block who has three boys all in soccer and has a deeply vested interest in getting grass stains out of clothing, doesn’t matter. And by empowering your brand champions, you can exponentially increase the audience you reach.

How do you empower them? Connect with them. Ask for feedback. Make it easy for them to get in touch with you. Use social media as well as more traditional forms of communication. Think of Twitter, Facebook, and your corporate blog as other versions of the toll-free phone line, and be every bit as human and as genuine in your interactions via social media as your customer service reps are trained to be. And then reap the corporate rewards (including the savings in market research and advertising spend!).

First, there’s the Canadian Women in Communications Social Media Event on Wednesday, February 11, 2009, from 5-8PM. Details and links here on the Outsmarts blog. I’m looking forward to the presentations by Telus on their bloggers and from CBC on how to create an affordable podcast. Here’s hoping they mean ‘affordable’ and ‘acceptable quality.’

Next is Northern Voice 09, Vancouver’s social media and blogging ‘unconference’ on February 19 and 20, 2009. The event is pretty much sold out, but if you’re struggling with either the concept or the benefits of implementing a social media strategy, you can still win a ticket to the conference by posting a comment here (with links to the conference itself). There are (at least) two great things about Northern Voice: the fact that it’s held on a Friday and Saturday so it means losing only one work day, and the fact that it has continued to provide content for the newbie as well as the social media evangelist.

Third (and this one too sells out quickly – I have yet to register myself but I’m going to get on it right away), is the Dare to Thrive! Women in Business conference put on by Valley Womens Network, Friday, March 27, 2009. Well worth the drive to Coquitlam. I managed to miss this last year and have regretted it ever since – I’ve heard nothing but good things about the calibre of speakers and the appropriateness of topics. Looking at the seminar lineup this year, I’m already biting my nails trying to figure out how I can attend Mhairi Petrovic‘s ‘How to Use Social Media Effectively for Business’ at the same time as Isabelle Mercier of LeapZone‘s ‘Branding from the Inside Out.’ Cloning’s not an option – the world can’t take two of me. Perhaps they’ll be in adjoining rooms and I can run back and forth from one to the other. Or perhaps I’ll take a video camera and record one for my first adventure in vlogging.

Looking forward to meeting some of you there, and to saying hello to others who are presenting, including Fiona Walsh.

This morning I was monitoring email, Twittering, participating in a great Marketing Profs webinar with David Meerman Scott, Lose Control of your Marketing: The NEW New Rule of Marketing & PR, and making breakfast when the Tweet came in: registration for Northern Voice ’09 is now open.

I’ve blogged about Northern Voice 07 and 08 here, and here, and – erm – again here. So naturally I’m going this year.

But it occurred to me while registering that the best way to persuade potential clients of the real value of social media would be to show them what it’s all about rather than just trying to tell them. So guess what – I bought two tickets, and you now have the opportunity to win the other one. While the monetary value is a mere $60, and the investment of your time a single Friday (February 20) and Saturday (February 21), the educational, networking, and inspirational value of attending a conference like this is – well – priceless, in my never humble opinion. To quote those credit card company ads [funny that I can never remember whether they're MasterCard or Visa ads, isn't it? I'm telling you, in any PR vs advertising contest, PR just keeps on ticking and ticking and ticking. ].

This is my contest, so I’m afraid I’ll be making the rules.

Here they are:

• You must be 35 or older to enter.
• You must be an entrepreneur. Solopreneur is fine.
• You must be truly bewildered by social media, but eager to learn.
• You must enter the contest by posting a comment on this blog post, with either a link to your own blog (if you have one) OR your email address. (There’s neoLuddite and then there’s Stone Age – if you don’t have an email address and don’t know how to access the Internet from even the public library, you’re not quite ready for social media). 
• Your comment should include some details on what you hope to learn about social media and why you think social media can help you with your business endeavours.
• Your contest-entry comment must be registered on this blog post by midnight, PST, January 31, 2009.
• You must be a Northern Voice/blogging/social media conference newbie. If you’ve attended a seminar on social media (blogging, podcasting, Twittering, LinkedIn, etc.) lasting less than a day, you’re still eligible.
• The winner will be required to answer a simple skill-testing question designed to showcase his/her ability to use Google. Or a dictionary.

That’s it, except for a few other logistical notes:

This offer does not include transportation (either from out of town or local although I’m willing to consider carpooling – we can discuss this), accommodation, or socialization at NV09 itself. I’ll be attending a full range of seminars and presentations and trying to schedule some 1:1s with folks both local and out of town. Happy to say hello, but no guarantees and no escort service, nor will I be providing the usual ‘comfort and care’ services of a PR professional to a client or providing advice on which seminars you should attend. 

Ticket transfer will be accomplished electronically. (In other words, I’ll add your name and email address to the list of attendees once you’ve been selected.)

Queries regarding conference content and location should be directed to the NV09 organizers, who have put together a great FAQ.

Winner will be announced by noon PST on Tuesday, February 3, 2009 on this blog post.

Can’t wait to read your entries!

Interesting to see, although I’ve used a different font with the same colours, the contrast between keywords used on my personal site and this one. First, the No Spin PR Wordle:

Second, the Wordle for my personal site:

1. Not blogging often enough
2. Burying your blog on your corporate web site
3. Not understanding what constitutes ‘value add’ and not providing it
4. Not blogging strategically
5. Not having a clear vision of your audience when blogging
6. Being intimidated by the whole process
7. Hiding your blog by not listing it on Technorati
8. Not blogging because you’re not inspired
9. Not engaging with the blogosphere
10. Not writing well and not knowing – or following – journalistic rules and standards

1. Not blogging often enough

If you’re going to add a blog to your corporate web site, you need to commit to blogging. If you’re only going to blog once a month, perhaps you’d be better off doing an email (or actual) newsletter and pushing the info out to your contacts. The chances that people will happen to discover your blog and its wonderful content by pulling that info through repeated visits to your otherwise static web site are slim. No matter how good your first two blog posts are, people won’t subscribe to your blog feed or continue to visit your blog if there’s nothing new there 9/10 times they revisit the site.

2. Burying your blog on your corporate web site

Your business blog can be the most dynamic content portion of your corporate web site. Don’t make people work for it. Feature your blog on your web site and make it the first thing the reader’s eye rests on. Here’s how it works, apparently: for those of us who read from left to right, your eyes first focus on content on the left side of the page – and then very quickly skip to the right and rest there. So that’s where your blog link should be. Over there – to the right. —>

3. Not understanding what constitutes ‘value add’ and not providing it in your blog

You’re the expert on your business, field of endeavour, and your company – its values, philosophy, products, and services. One of the fundamental reasons to create a business blog is to establish your expertise. The way to do that is to share information with others who aren’t subject matter experts on the same subject as you. Think about the little recipe cards you can still find at the supermarket. That’s value add in action. So okay I’ve never made the breaded halibut. But I bet lots of people have. The folks involved in producing that recipe card (and there were a lot of them: the marketing/PR/advertising folks who thought up the idea for the client, probably a large food distributor or industry association or the supermarket chain itself, the chef, the photographer, the graphic designer, the printer) are doing what I call ‘giving in the hope of getting at some unspecified future moment.’ So tell your readers what’s happening not just within your company, but within the industry, the local market, the regional market, and talk about how local trends differ from the regional, national, and international ones. And while I may never make the breaded halibut recipe, whenever I come across it I’m reminded that I like halibut and it’s likely to prompt me to buy more fish, even if I’m not buying bread crumbs as well.

4. Not blogging strategically

Before you decide to add a blog to your corporate web site (and at the risk of flogging a horse that refuses to die), you actually need to do some strategic thinking about what purpose your blog is designed to serve, what you will blog about, and who will blog on behalf of your company. You also need to create a realistic blogging schedule. One way to ensure you stick to a schedule is to not make it too rigid. If you decide to blog once a week, you don’t also have to determine that it will be every Tuesday. Once a week is fine. Twice a week is better. More than once a day might be a tad compulsive unless you’re a pro blogger. Consider Twittering instead.

5. Not having a clear vision of your audience when blogging

It works for every form of public address: pick a person in the audience and address your remarks to them. This can be the unlucky individual who had to sit in the front row because all the other seats were taken, or it can be a composite portrait of who can best benefit from what you have to say. Trust me on this one: it makes the writing a whole lot easier if you can imagine who will benefit most from reading your pearls of wisdom, regardless of whether they read your post or not.

Related to this is what I can only call ‘not being sufficiently familiar with the medium and not allowing your own voice to emerge.’ Blogging is both a 1:1 medium and a 1:many medium. Remember that no matter how many diverse readers your blog may eventually acquire, it is being read one person at a time. By writing conversationally rather than formally, you avoid sounding both stiff and pretentious. List your credentials in the ‘about’ section of your blog, and let the voice of your expertise emerge untrammeled through the wealth of information you provide.

6. Being intimidated by the whole process

This is a tricky one. For many people contemplating adding a business blog to their web site, their first impulse is to start researching how to do it. Unfortunately, the information you tend to find first comes from mega bloggers: people who make a living blogging or whose blogs are a major component of their social media consulting practices. This is not you. Remember that your core business is not blogging. Instead of reading a book or spending a lot of time reading what professional bloggers have to say about blogging, search for blogs already in existence in your subject area, subscribe to their feeds by email or Google Reader, and develop your own list of the good, the bad and the ugly blogging practices.

Do this for a month (or even two, or three) before you start your own blog. Also look for some blogs that deal with topics of personal interest to you. It may be easier for you to develop best blogging practices for your corporate blog if you’ve followed blogs that deal with your outside-the-workplace passions: photography, quilting, miniature trains, golf….

7. Hiding your blog by not listing it on Technorati

Technorati tracks, lists and ranks blogs. It’s just another tool in your arsenal so people can find your blog. Use it. It’s really easy. All you need to set up an account is an email address and a password.

8. Not blogging because you’re not inspired [on Wednesday, November 19, 2008, at 10:23AM PST and because your office is a mess]

Who cares about the state of your office? We’re talking about blogging – your readers can’t see the stack of papers threatening the structural integrity of your credenza. Just don’t film the YouTube video till you’ve tidied up.

Seriously though, by creating an article bank – whether it’s just a list of things you’d like to blog about or five to 10 blog posts written but not posted – you can maintain the regular blogging schedule you’ve set up (see 4. Not blogging strategically). You’ll not only ensure dynamic web content for your site, you’ll maintain your readers’ interest by continuing to post. And if you don’t feel like blogging when you’ve set aside the time to do so, just make a list of future blog posts and blog when you’re ready to – or ask someone else in your company to write a first draft for you. It’s a lot easier to react than to act. The acts of reading and editing can be inspirational.

9. Not engaging with the blogosphere

When you’re preparing to create your own corporate blog (see 6. Being intimidated by the whole process), you should be reading other blogs. You should also be subscribing to them via email or feed, and you should be commenting on the blogs you read. If you’re new to the online world, there are a few things you should keep top of mind when commenting. First and foremost is tone: text is a ‘flat’ medium. Sarcasm doesn’t translate well because tone is missing when we read rather than speak. Be careful.

Remember too, that in the words of the brilliant statesman Disraeli, ‘It is easier to be critical than correct.’ If you want to showcase your expertise, it should be on your own blog, not in the comment section of someone else’s. A tip for starting conversations rather than arguments: pose a question rather than emphatically state a ‘fact.’ Here’s an example: ‘Great post. Have you read what so-and-so has to say on this subject [link to web site, other blog post]?’ You know – as opposed to, ‘What a stupid thing to say. Everyone else who actually knows something about this subject disagrees with you. Where did you get your degree, out of a Cracker Jack box?’ While it’s fine to disagree with what someone else has posted, try to phrase things gently, make it clear that you’re expressing your opinion and that you’ve got some expertise/experience which may equal (in the case of expertise) or differ (your experience) from the blogger’s. Play nice.

Once you’ve started your own blog, add the blogs you’ve benefited from reading to your blog roll. And continue commenting on others’ blogs. If you want to start a series of conversations on your own blog (and that should be one of your primary goals), don’t turn it into a game of chicken. You’re the newbie – you be the one to go first.

10. Not writing well and not knowing – or following – journalistic rules and standards

The good news about writing is that it’s a skill you can continue to hone and polish your entire life. Unlike many other activities, you don’t necessarily plateau in terms of your writing skills and you don’t get slower at it as you age, although you may have to concede that you’re more alert and focused early in the morning than you are in mid- or late afternoon – I know I have.

Remember though that judging writing is highly subjective and that popularity doesn’t have a direct correlation to quality. I, for instance, have learned not to argue with Stephen King fans about what makes him such a very very bad writer, agree instead that he is highly imaginative, has sold a lot of books and they sure make good movies, don’t they? and – well – then I change the subject as quickly as possible. Oh look – there’s a baby T. Rex – dinosaurs aren’t really extinct – quick, does your cellphone take photos?

A few months ago I read somewhere (and I desperately wish I could remember where it was), that journalists create the first draft of history. Take as many tips as you can from the best and the brightest in this field. Try to be objective when you’re blogging and, if you’re blogging about a controversial issue, at least refer to those whose point of view is opposite to yours. Cite your sources – always. Do not plagiarize, either directly or indirectly.* This is immoral, illegal, and completely unethical. I’m hoping that’s not the kind of company you’re running. Links to your sources or to those you’re commenting on are the Web 2.0 version of the academic footnote. Test them after you’ve posted and fix them if they don’t work.

Disclose your own biases and affiliations. If you received a review copy, a free pass, or some other financial consideration that is motivating the blog post, make it clear you’ve done so. If you’re talking about a client directly, disclose that fact. If you’re not talking about one of your own clients but about someone else’s, make sure you disclose the fact that this is not one of your clients, this is merely your (hopefully highly informed) opinion and the advice you would give if the person or corporation was one of your clients.

Make it easy for your readers by providing links to other sources of information to which you’ve referred in your post or that will help them by providing more information. And do follow the generally accepted rules of journalistic convention. You know the way the ingredients on food packaging are listed in decreasing order by amount contained in the product (Cheerios: whole grain oat, modified corn starch, corn starch, sugar, salt…)? When referring to populations by ethnic or religious delineators, list them in order of most to least: Sudan’s population comprises Muslims, animists, and Christians. (Population breakdown of Sudan by religion: 55% Muslim, 45% animist, 5% Christian).

The Canadian Press Stylebook was long considered the ‘bible’ for Canadian journalists but I prefer the Globe and Mail Style Book. The CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices are among the most stringent in Canada. It’s also still one of the best newsgathering organizations in the world.

If you’re correcting information on your blog, only the tiniest of changes (correcting spelling and punctuation errors) should be done wordlessly. If you’re making substantive changes based on new information, either use strikeover mode so people can see what you initially wrote and how you’ve changed it, or add a segment either at the end of your post or in the appropriate place on the post that’s clearly marked ‘Edit: Since first posting, I’ve learned that the sky is not always blue, but can also appear to be pink, yellow, gray, black, or white.’

Don’t forget to specifically date/time your posts in your text references – this is the single most common writing mistake I see amongst bloggers. Yes, by looking at the date posted we can figure out that when you said ‘last year’ you meant 2007 because the blog entry is dated sometime in 2008. Don’t make your readers work that hard – it’s distracting when you have to interrupt your reading to do basic arithmetic.

If you don’t write well, either find someone else within your company you can engage by enlisting them as your corporate blogger, hire someone to write your blog posts for you, or hire a consultant who can work with you to massage, tweak, edit, and polish the information you provide. [Disclosure: I am available for consultation.]

* By plagiarizing indirectly, I don’t mean refraining from posting just because others have posted on the same topic. But in writing this post, for instance, the only ‘new’ research I did was to search for the links to the stylebooks, the CBC standards, and the Disraeli entry. I didn’t do a Google search on ‘top 10 mistakes beginning business bloggers make’ and then compile my own list. I just started writing, based on all the research and reading and blogging and public relations and corporate communications experience I’ve acquired over the years.

Finally, take a look at this blog, which is one of the best I’ve ever seen and which I’ve been reading avidly for the past month. [Disclosure: I would love to work with clients in the nanotechnology sector.] All joking aside, Andrew Maynard’s blog is a rich source of information about nanotechnology, he writes beautifully, manages to avoid all the mistakes I’ve listed in this post, and his charm, wit, and humour clearly emerge in posts like this one. But perhaps he’s not a beginning blogger – I’m not sure.

Within minutes of our arrival at the Waazubee Cafe it was also apparent that our mutual passion for strategic marketing communications and our love for the kind of technology that makes your life easier can only lead to good things.

I tried to order the butternut squash tortellini and was dismayed to hear that it hadn’t actually been on the menu for six years. That seemed odd to me, since I’d only checked the web site Saturday and it was on the downloadable food and drink menu then. I’m not actually a picky eater, but the online reviews I’d found were confusing – at one point I saw a reference to the cafe as a Japanese eatery and then saw another comment that asked why the cafe was listed as a Japanese restaurant, since it’s not. (Disclosure: I don’t eat uncooked fish, meat, or poultry and I have a few food allergies.)

When I mentioned the web site and the reviews to our server, she rolled her eyes and said, oh yes, that’s because we can’t access our own web site or find our web designer to change anything on it. Mhairi and I immediately began to think of solutions to this problem: switch your hosting provider, said Mhairi. Educate and inform clients that when they contract with a web designer, all files created are their property, not the web designer’s, I said. And don’t pay the final web design bill till you’ve received the files via email!

It was a nice example of how well we work together and of the kind of rich and deep knowledge and skills we can offer clients. Marketing communications, one of the many areas of public relations specialization, cannot possibly succeed or benefit clients who don’t actually have both a business strategy and a marketing strategy in place. Since marketing in general and internet marketing in particular are Mhairi’s specialities, No Spin PR clients who don’t have marketing plans can benefit from her knowledge, expertise, and results-oriented approach to create cost-effective strategic marketing plans. And Out-Smarts clients will be able to broaden their reach and ensure they’re not failing to reach all their target markets. There isn’t a company in existence that can’t benefit from public relations, whether it’s a traditional media relations campaign that results in print, radio and television coverage, a comprehensive, integrated social media strategy, or managing internal communications to help attract and retain employees or position you as a thought leader in your industry.

Public relations supports both business and marketing strategies. Make sure you’ve got yours in place. Get in touch and we’ll start to make it happen for your company: mhairi[at]out-smarts.com; ruth[at]nospinpr.com.

P.S. The Out-Smarts blog is rich source of info and tips on social media, and internet marketing. Sign up for the feed. I’ve learned a lot from reading it, and chances are you will too.