GREAT ADAPTATIONS

First rate content is essential if your goal is to attract a loyal and active readership. I’m offering a series of content classes in the San Francisco Bay area. If you’d like to learn how to sharpen your focus and eliminate the problems which make your readers leave your website, this class is for you.

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Writing First Rate Content
#1 in the Creative Assets Series
March 2nd, 6:30 – 9:00
Class Fee $35.00
Classes held at BZHive Coworking space
80 Mark Drive
San Rafael, CA

What’s so important about first rate content?
Let’s look at Stacy’s problem to understand what happens when readers encounter poorly formatted and poorly proofed copy.

Stacy has a blog about restoring historic homes. Her niche is well-defined, which is a very good starting point for a successful blog. She grew up in a historic area of Boston, has restored three homes herself, and she’s enthusiastic and knowledgeable about architecture, restoration, and the challenges restorers face. She’s the perfect person to write this blog.

But we’ve got some problems. Like almost every blogger out there, Stacy is an average writer and, worse, she is an average proofreader. Besides those issues, Stacy does not know how to format her posts for web readability.

She writes carefully and lovingly, about interesting topics relevant to her audience. But she is producing second-rate content.

Her poor readers are subjected to spelling errors, grammar errors, and long lines of type with no white space. Even the most devoted reader is repelled by these readability issues. The question in the reader’s mind is “Why doesn’t she care enough to proofread?” Trust is eroded.

No matter how great your content is, if it is not brain-friendly, it will not produce the results you want. Your reader’s finger is on the click-trigger, just itching to go to the next place. Don’t give them a reason to leave your site.

Publish first-rate content – or lose your audience.

Class #1 in the Creative Assets Series includes tools and resources which help you develop first rate content for your blog or other project.

To pre-register, go to the registration page.

If you have any questions about the class or upcoming classes, feel free to email Suzanna:
suzannastinnett@gmail.com
Happy blogging!

People who work with Suzanna say:
“Suzanna explains everything in such a personal, easy to understand way. In the middle of her live workshop, I suddenly realized I was feeling excited rather than overwhelmed, and I left feeling empowered to begin my blog!” Abba Anderson, LAc, CCHT, MSOM

“I thought I had great content for my upcoming blog. I am so glad I turned it over to Suzanna before I went any further — she helped me see how to work with blog formats, which actually make my writing much more clear and give me a structure to work with. She’s a creative and focused professional, and her contribution to my process was priceless.” Barbara V.M., Santa Rosa

Suzanna Stinnett is a gifted proofreader with over 25 years of copy proofing under her belt. She has studied web readability for the past decade. Her other accomplishments include her book, “Little Shifts,” published by Sourcebooks, and over 400 articles currently on the web. She teaches workshops on collaborative marketing and web tools, consults privately, travels and speaks on the new culture of creatives, and is working on her next book, “Cloud Alchemy,” based on her manifesto for the conscious web citizen.

It’s January. Tuscany happens October 1st. Hmmm…. plenty of time to make a plan. I’ll start with ArtRoads.

Some call them power words. My sister says “touchstone.” I think it’s a great idea. In the newsletter from Chris Brogan, he said one of his was “ecosystem.” All his words got me thinking, and I have been working on my own set of words for a couple of weeks. So here we go.

Nature
The first word I settled on is “nature.” I talked about this in a previous blog. It means two important things to me. Being in nature, away from concrete and amplification of all sorts is mandatory for me to have balance and any shred of sanity. I have neglected this for a couple of years and it shows. I am also thinking of my own nature and what aspects of daily living spring from “my nature.” This leads me to think about my habits, my tendencies, my desires and many kinds of relationships.

Tools
Since I am deeply enmeshed in learning and teaching modern communication tools, I like using this as a focus word that simply adds validation to my daily activities. Seeing it up on my wall over my desk will remind me to continue to evaluate tools, write reviews, and create more pathways for my workshop participants to embrace them.

Play
Ahh. Now to the meat of it. My ongoing exploration of the workings of the human brain, especially in relation to helping people learn new things like how to create a viable blog, makes “play” a high priority focus word. Like “nature,” there’s a mandate woven into it. I’m enjoying Stuart Brown’s book, “Play,” and I’m grateful for the reminder that play is the answer to our questions about innovation, relationships, community, and healthy brains.

So about you, dear reader. Are you using playful tools to manifest your nature?

What are your focus words?

Suzanna Stinnett

The public gazes through a window of possibility

Are you a media-based leader, a media-aware leader, or both?

Media-aware leadership means that the leader understands what is available to her public, and understands how her core demographic is engaging new media. This awareness helps the leader listen. Even if a leader does not personally spread messages through modern media, she must be able to use the tools to listen to her public.

It’s possible to be a media-based leader, that is, able to engage the tools of new media, yet still function at a low level of media-awareness. Again, it is a matter of listening. It’s not enough to “get on Twitter and Facebook.” Leaders have to care enough to keep building their listening skills and grow that brain area to the level they can participate in thought leadership.

If you care, it shows

This profoundly positive shift in marketing is worth embracing as a daily practice. Modern leaders including corporate executives must realize that listening to their public is the cost-effective way to set their compass points. The level of listening now available gives business a whole new playground of connection to their customers. It streamlines everything – once a leader or company acquires the skills (or hires a modern media professional).

MODERN MEDIA IS MESSAGE-GENERATIVE. Topics, outcomes, urgencies, fears, advice, discoveries, and desires are a few of the messages which proliferate, generate and infiltrate the public conversation.

Sort through the noise and listen

When leaders begin to enter modern media, all that proliferation is quite a din. It’s noisy, busy, distracting and confusing. That’s normal. Think of any experience of learning a new language. You can learn hello, goodbye, thank you, and where’s the bathroom, but after that you enter a brain-confused state for a phase of deepening into the language.

If you’re groping your way into modern media right now, I recommend starting with search tools. Play with searches on Twitter, for example, to see how people talk to each other in that universe. Raise your tolerance for seeing incomprehensible characters in your search results. Look for meaning. Relax, drink water, and let your brain grow into it with playful curiosity.

Suzanna Stinnett

Thank you to Valeria Maltoni of ConversationAgent.com (@conversationage), for juicing up my mind on these ideas.

The posts of 2010 often relate to my focus words and/or my manifesto, Cloud Alchemy. This post relates to my focus word “nature,” as the organic nature of leadership deepens in meaning. It relates to Points #5 and #8 in Cloud Alchemy.

Focus Words Post: In progress

Cloud Alchemy: See on Scribd.com

I’m researching sites for a client this morning. One reason I’m paid to do this is that I can move quickly through digital debris, find posts and sites that are current, and assemble a relevant bullet list from our criteria.

Today, though, as the shiny new year beckons, I’m struck by the long trails of digital debris on many websites.

I’m talking about sites that offer many resources, blog rolls, links and freebies to their readers. While it’s a plan with a heart, all those beautiful topics and all their lively links to help each other through the obstacle of the moment, we’d do well to remember that it takes MAINTENANCE.

The high cost of generosity

One site I’m still wading through has the ambitious goal of offering its readership 1,000 free downloads. They have put them in categories. I’m evaluating this site for a place for my client to increase her own exposure, which is also part of this offering on the site. They encourage the contributors to use an opt-in page so the reader will become part of their list. That’s fine.

What’s not fine is that more than 50% of the links I’ve clicked are bringing up error pages. Others are going to the website of the contributor but to a dead page. And one even went to a smarmy miles-long sales page. Very disappointing.

We all could do some tracking and mopping up

The issue is two-fold. At least. On the one hand is the website owner with all the offerings to be organized and maintained. Maintain ‘em. Please. On the other hand, the contributor needs to be tracking where all their offerings are showing up and making sure the links are good.

Just start where you are

Sound like a lot of work? It is. That’s why, today, I am streamlining my own plan for 2010. Engaging the exponential can be done in a manageable way. I’m starting a spreadsheet for every place my current work can be seen (all the things I’ve initiated, that’s all I can do, of course). If it starts to get out of control, I will go back and eliminate the ones that are low performers.

ACTION PLAN:
*For starters, let website owners know when they have a lot of broken links. This is the only way we will clean up past linkage we didn’t track.
*While it might be too late to find older links from years past, begin now to track your posted links. Create a plan for the future. Decide how much you can manage and act accordingly.

The web is a chaotic mess, as it should be. But individuals can and must maintain workable threads through their own offerings.

Otherwise, our precious readers have no option but to click away, click away, like a bunch of reindeer on the loose!

Blessings,
Suzanna Stinnett

Jump ahead of the “conversation”

In the morass that is analysis of social media, branding, and consumer sentiment revealed, I see one choice a corporate entity can make. Jump ahead of the “conversation” by producing a focused media piece which helps the public see that you know how to offer value through new media. By innovating your own media piece, you control its appearance – and may be able to quantify public sentiment directed at the piece.

For example, a large company might decide to create a specific social presence through new media, as a particular type of educator. This presence is, at first, an addendum to who they already are. (It’s not enough to have an F.A.Q. on the website, though it is a good start.)

Plan your own media piece

What the company can do is plan their new media presence around an educational product. Let’s say a solar company produces a short video suitable for school-age children, explaining how solar works. By including this in their branding, they may become more memorable and more approachable to parents and grandparents. This can be extended as far as the company wants to go. Note: Avoid any scent of company propaganda. Answer tough questions head-on. Think legacy.

Analysis isn’t very analytical right now

Rather than flail around looking for a lighted path on a huge and changeable ocean, companies can develop a special presence which inherently shows who they are and where they’re going. Trying to quantify how the public views your product or your company by looking at the conversation on Twitter, for example, is not yet proven to be worthwhile. Give your public a place to gather which is a real gift, not a sales channel.

A people piece helps people relate

Proactive innovation, making use of crowdsourced ideas and rewarding the crowd with recognition, could take a company closer to their goal. The goal should be to be “favored” in new media. Creating your own funnel of appropriate information allows you to measure views, participation, and sentiment. Monitoring becomes more focused and more meaningful.

Okay, over to your brain: Comments now being accepted!

Suzanna

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I was so exhilarated by this term in the title of Stewart Brand’s new book that I decided to launch a conversation about new words in our conversation-culture vernacular. I’ve already put these definitions in my Glossary, but I’d love to have some voices weighing in here. Check what I’ve carved out and if you have any ideas or comments, go right ahead and post them here. Go on, I’m waiting!

Recent additions to the Great Adaptations Glossary

Ecopragmatist: Without reading his new book or checking with Stewart Brand, who probably coined this term, I’ll define it this way -

“An ecopragmatist is a person who cares enough about a cause to set emotion aside and continually integrate, articulate, discuss and act upon new data. An ecopragmatist must surely be a big-picture thinker – or surround herself with others who bring a larger view to the table. Read his book, “Whole Earth Discipline: An ecopragmatist manifesto” if you want the authoritative definition.”

Social Proof: 1) Wikipedia admits that a better term is “informational social influence” as it defines social proof as basically herd behavior. I disagree.

2) The Stinnett definition rides on the strength of the word “proof” and reads:

“I’d say social proof consists of the viewable accumulation of testimony. Including outright testimonials (with some evidence they are real people), and some combination of: A following on Twitter with posts and replies, blog posts which show engagement in the conversation, other published items like white papers or ebooks, perhaps a Facebook group or page with some activity, and speaking engagements on the author’s topic. Proof means proof, not suggestion.”

Digital immigrant: n. Those of us who were not born into the digital world, but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology. Digital immigrants (like all immigrants) retain, to some degree, their “accent,” that is, their foot in the past. Examples of the accent can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first. A digital native would call a digital camera “my new camera,” while a digital immigrant would refer to it as “my new digital camera.”(Definition derived from Marc Prensky.)

Digital Native: n. Person born in the mid 1990s or later, with immediate exposure to multi-media.  Neural pathways may be physically changed. “… wired different, paved to an on-ramp to the Information Super Highway,” according to a handful of neuroscientists. Coined by futurist Marc Prensky.

Internet Hero: n. Regular person using technology to engage an ever-expanding community with ever-more-focused material.

That’s about enough for today. What do you think?

———————-I’m all ears!————————–

The news: Reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling escorted out of North Korea via the intervention of Al Gore and Bill Clinton – and don’t forget —  Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

Also the news: The attention directed at Euna Lee and Laura Ling, by their testimony today, was felt and drawn upon to sustain them.

Could we have a huge round of applause for the love that Lee and Ling claim sustained them in their darkest hour?

Yes. This is the global brain functioning as a thinking heart. This is another beautiful example of what new media (or social media) is designed to do.

Euna Lee and Laura Ling must not yet know the extent of the love, concern, promotion of interest, the outright screaming committed on their behalf through blogs and new media. But it will dawn quickly. Now they return to a life changed irrevocably by their ordeal and by the sheer inner strength they drew upon during their challenging days.

See, we know this love every day

Those of us who participate fully in the creation of the global brain – that is, the millions of willing minds dismissing the mental limits of location and sharing the job of thinking globally – can also participate fully in a celebration of the love we helped to further.

We’d like you to participate too

Those who are still watching from the sidelines, confused by difficult entry points and clinging to past views of online communication (which are now total misconceptions), cannot understand what we are truly celebrating.

A powerful triumph of an athlete, say, winning the gold at the Olympics, indelibly stamps the brain with the value of everything it took to get there. Just as an individual’s brain is galvanized by victory, the global brain now has an even stronger, more motivated “brain area” to draw from. The brain area has these qualities:  Send love. Use the tools. Rally to help others. Participate in the thought power we have in our hands – on our desks – in our smart phones.

The global brain is only as great as the individuals who feed it. Today, that greatness is worth cheering.

Welcome home, Euna and Laura.

Suzanna Stinnett

I call this Cloud Alchemy. Read the manifesto and build a global brain area.

Between teaching newer users of technology (also known as Boomers, digital immigrants, and “older people”), and making constant choices of priorities for my own blogs, I’ve sure felt the collective resistance to this inevitable transition we are making.

That transition you may have heard about. The one where the bulk of traditional marketing gets left behind, keeping only the absolute human-based basics, and we cross the bridge into a vast, noisy conversation that is here to stay. I kid you not.

Yes. That transition.

This article on Junta42 by Joe Pulizzi makes every point about the resistance on the part of big companies and their marketing departments as clear as a freshly changed fish bowl. There’s no escaping what’s happening, so stop looking for the EXIT sign. Pulizzi points out the reasons why your marketing department, or your ability to further your solo business, is flailing. It isn’t pretty and it doesn’t feel so great.

If you’re like me, having seen this happening for a few years and engaged it as a kind of cultural voyeur, it’s not a bit surprising.

People are tired of being sold. Does it get any clearer than that? And you folks doing the online marketing, listen up. You’re no more evolved than Corp Gigantus, if you think you can hammer your way into people’s pocketbooks.

What people want now is to be part of something. That, and some simple engagement that helps them see that you’re trustworthy. And human. Don’t forget human.

You might as well join us hearty fishes, jumping the rapids as we climb up, up, up. As Sean D’Souza explains in another timely piece about how “boring marketing” actually works, these times are addressing what we have always known. Stick with your audience or your customers. Get to know them. Let them know you.

Build a relationship. It makes the swimming a lot easier.

Suzanna Stinnett

It could be a masterpiece.

I taught my Dynamic Blogging class earlier this week to a group of people, each one of them with a great deal to offer their readers. Since blogging is basically simple self-publishing, it’s easy to miss what else they can be. And it’s important (at least to me) to recognize the impact they can have. Your blog can change lives.

So here’s the deal. Whether you are one of my blogging class attendees, someone who enjoys learning about the brain and technology, or a new reader wondering what my website is about, you are likely to be a good candidate for a great blog. I want you to recognize that and take a few steps toward realizing your potential.

Step: Ask yourself what your inspiration is for your blog. If you’ve had your blog for a while, do you still feel the same way about your material? Do you still want to write the same stuff? Come up with one thing that is new or different about your motivation now. Consider acting, creatively, on that difference.

Step: Before you go to sleep tonight, run a little suggestion through your head: Ask your imagination to come up with three new ways your blog can be more helpful to your readers. Then leave the thought alone. Your imagination knows what to do while you’re sleeping. You’ll know more tomorrow.

Step: If you’re still thinking about a blog but haven’t started one quite yet, get out a piece of paper. Write on it “I haven’t started my blog because _____” and fill in the blank. Write ten reasons why you don’t have a blog right now. I already know what three of them are. Keep going. Then leave it alone. Your imagination is going to work on that too.

This post is coming out of my own recent inspiration about a new direction I’m starting to travel. I recognize a dramatic difference in my energy for the thousand tasks of blogging and my daily sense of renewal now that I have opened up some new avenues. I’ll tell you more about my new stuff soon. Today I want to trigger some of this renewal in you.

Have you noticed a quiet questioning going on in the back of your mind and heart? Something inside, wondering how things might be different – if…? That’s what I hope you will pay attention to today. Your work – your blog – your creation, might be more important than you’ve yet dreamed.

Tell me something that has inspired you today – put it in the comments below. I’d like to know.

Blessings,

Suzanna Stinnett