How best to approach the issue, though? I’ve found that some people can very easily get their back up when attempts are made to point out their spelling and grammar weaknesses. Maybe it feels too much like being reprimanded in school. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, as the famous flying nanny once said, and the same sentiment applies with grammar, too.

Start Early

If you establish a precedent early on of just accepting the work someone’s handing you, and then making corrections yourself before handing it off to someone else (assuming this isn’t part of your job description, of course), then it will be much, much harder to break this bad habit down the road.

If it isn’t too late, then start sending work back immediately. This can be hard to do when there are significant time constraints on a project, or when there’s pressure from the next link in the chain to get their hands on something, but if you can build in a revision loop early on in the cycle, higher-ups will ultimately be happier, and those before you in the process might actually improve with time, rather than repeating errors to a degree that’s absolutely maddening.

Be Direct

You won’t help anyone by being passive aggressive about spelling and grammar problems. Chances are that the offending party is fully aware that they need help, but they’ve never before encountered anyone willing to address the problem head on, and have managed to coast by accordingly.

After an initial period of discomfort, most people will actually respond positively to constructive criticism about their flaws in this area. Most likely, these problems have plagued them for a long time, and they haven’t ever been told how to go about fixing them, they’ve just been told they’re doing it wrong. Pairing criticism with helpful advice about how to improve is key.

There are also numerous Internet resources you can point people to, which can act as crib sheets. Perhaps most painless among these tools, since they’re also pretty funny, are The Oatmeal’s comics. Some of the comics deal specifically with common errors in spelling and punctuation, and as an added bonus the rest of the site is pretty hilarious, too, so even though you’ll be chastising someone by sending out a link, you’ll also sort of be rewarding them.

Explain

Being told that something is wrong will make you aware of your error in that instance, but it won’t necessarily do anything to curb future bad behavior and repeated mistakes. If people know why a mistake they are making is wrong, then it becomes much easier to avoid it in the future, since it will make sense not to do it.

I still have to expand the contraction “it’s” to ensure that I’m using it right. Pointing out that it’s only correct to use it when you can substitute “it is” without changing the meaning of the sentence will go a long way to helping people avoid that specific error. Likewise, explaining the logic behind other common grammar and spelling errors will also prove helpful.

Results Take Time

None of the above are quick fixes, and you’ll have to feel out how far you can take things with specific individuals. The important thing with correcting these kinds of common mistakes is staying consistent, and not letting things slide. Once you begin just accepting that cleaning up flaws will be your job, it will become your job, even if it’s not something you’re being paid to do.

How do you go about getting others to improve their spelling and grammar?

Photo by Flickr user alkruse24, licensed under CC BY 2.0

OK, you get the idea. I like a more pragmatic approach. No one response or solution is going to be right for every situation, every person or every organization, and any “expert” who uses this type of absolutist thinking is probably not be someone you should rely on for advice.

Yes, I provide quite a bit of advice on blogs and for clients, but I try to show how my approach has worked for me or for my clients while giving people the flexibility to come up with a solution that works best for their needs. Many of these tips work for some people, but not for others. For example, my recent inbox zero post prompted this tweet from fellow WebWorkerDaily author, Doriano: “Inbox zero is just like the Loch Ness monster, bigfoot and honest politicians… don’t fall for it folks.” Obviously, he’s not a fan of inbox zero, but he probably has a system for managing and processing email that works just as well for him.

I like to try out a variety of approaches and see what sticks over the long term. When I switched from a PC where I used Outlook for email and tasks to a Mac, I had to find a new task management system. I probably tried a dozen different applications before finally settling on Hiveminder, which is working well for me, but I still continue to make slight tweaks to my system to become even more efficient at managing my to-do list. Plenty of friends made suggestions, and I read many online reviews of various task systems, but ultimately, I had to pick the one that was right for me and for my situation.

This is true in social media, too. No one approach will work for everyone, and people or companies shouldn’t be pressured into joining too many social web sites, especially if they aren’t prepared to spend the time required to maintain their presence. Businesses and people don’t have infinite amounts of time or money, so we need to carefully choose how we allocate our resources. The exact mix will probably be different for your business than for mine.

Don’t let consultants, experts, bloggers or friends bully you into a particular solution. Think about what you want and pick an approach that works for you.

How do you decide what works best for you?

As we all know, distance can encourage misunderstanding. Many of us are far bolder in writing than we would be if we were to speak face-to-face with the person we’re making our complaint to — or about. Without a proper framework, our complaint email can wind up sounding unprofessional at best,  and positively rabid at worst. This kind of communication can severely undermine our positions with clients as well as colleagues.

Fortunately, I found this hilarious and entertaining complaint letter, which was written to Richard Branson by Oliver Beale, a traveler on a Virgin flight. Sure, it’s an extreme example, and it’s a customer complaint, not a complaint to a superior, colleague or client about a teamwork-related issue, but it reminded me of the essential ingredients of an effective complaint — and put me in a better frame of mind.

What’s an effective complaint? It’s a one that supports your reputation as a dedicated professional, makes the people who need to know (your team leaders, clients, superiors, etc.) aware of hurdles you’re trying to overcome, and, most importantly, gets you a productive outcome.

The following guidelines, exemplified in the Virgin letter, usually help me keep control of any complaint email I’m writing, and give my complaint email the chance to succeed. They work for ordinary consumer complaint communications, but these points are specifically focused on writing emails complaining about work progress, difficulty you’re facing, or other work-related challenges to colleagues and clients.

Identify What You Want

Before you start formulating your email, work out what it is that you want the message to achieve. If you’re angry with a particular individual, that’s fine, but taking them down via email is neither a noble nor professional objective. It may also be unreasonable and unachievable.

Beale’s Virgin email really has one goal: to bring to the CEO’s attention how bad his customer service is. He actually mentions other examples — “which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years.” — but he stays on-topic. Rather than decrying the brand, the service on the whole, or the staff, he sticks to practical points of particular issue. This gives his message far more weight than would an email that vociferously condemned the entire establishment.

Complaint emails work best if you focus the message on the project or task at hand. If Bernie in Sales hasn’t given you the data you need, your goal is to obtain that data. If your project manager is a ham-fisted hack, your goal is to obtain the project direction you seek. Once you’ve established that goal, you can more easily choose points and language that communicate your objective.

Don’t Write When You’re Emotional

The first thing I noticed about Beale’s email is that it’s not emotional. It conveys a sense of awe, of frustrations past, of amazement. But it’s not aggressive, plaintive, defensive or arrogant.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m emotional, I’m usually at my least professional. If you want to persuade someone — through a complaint or other expression of dissatisfaction — you need to show how reasonable and measured — how professional — you are.

Writing when you’re emotional allows all kinds of inappropriate language to creep into your message. Sarcasm, haughtiness, swear words, and outrage set precisely the wrong tone, and generally arise when you’re emotional; try not to write when you’re in that mindset.

If you want to vent, write your email but don’t send it. Get all that anger out of your system, then come back the next day, once you’ve slept on it, and review your email. You’ll probably find yourself rewording much of it, if not scrapping it altogether.

Respect the Recipient — and Express That

The opening and closing lines of Beale’s email express an honest respect for the recipient: “I love your brand, I really do”, “I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind”, and so on.

This technique establishes that the writer and the recipient are on the same team — that, although a complaint message might seem to put the two parties at odds, in fact, their objective is the same: to improve the business about which the author is complaining. The author is writing out of concern, not anger.

The worst emails I’ve ever written reflected concern for myself, my reputation, and what I could achieve. The best — the most persuasive — expressed that myself and the recipient were on the same team, and we both wanted the same thing.

You don’t need to state, as the author of the Virgin complaint letter did, that you love your client’s brand, or even that you love their project. If, for example, you’ve been waiting months for a crucial input for your project, you might simply express how keen you are to see the project completed, the strategy implemented, the client’s problem solved. And ensure that throughout your message, you use respectful language.

Adopt a Reasonable Tone to Build Empathy

It’s one thing to respect your recipient; it’s another to show that you understand their position. One thing that Beale’s complaint does so well is convey that the writer is reasonable, that he understands what he can reasonably expect from airline food, and that he would expect the same for the recipient of his message: “My only question is: How can you live like this?”

The author isn’t saying that he deserves better. Instead he conveys that any reasonable human being would deserve better. He does this by appealing directly to the recipient as a human being, rather than a person in a given role or position, and by speaking honestly from a position of respect.

His language, including the repeated appeals that the author makes directly to the recipient, makes this clear: “Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.”

The author shows that he knows that the recipient is human, and he respects the fact that we all have our limitations by explaining his thought process as he considered the inflight meal. His descriptions are amusing, but they also build empathy. Between the lines, he’s saying clearly that the service did not meet the reasonable expectations of an ordinary human being, and that if Richard Branson himself had been on the flight, he’d have thought the same things.

Don’t Get Personal

At the beginning of this exercise, we set an objective for your email. In supporting that objective, it’s important not to make either insinuations or specific comment about the personalities or actual people involved.

Yes, Bernie in Sales is holding up the process because he hasn’t given you the data. Your problem isn’t with Bernie (who, you may have noticed, exhibits a range of other unprofessional behaviour that’s irrelevant to your compliant, though you’re tempted to mention it). Your problem is the data.

In our example email, the writer doesn’t blame the chefs, aircraft technicians or staff. He does remark about the method by which the chef might have produced the mashed potatoes, but he doesn’t make personal comment about the chef. In this email, no one is inept, an idiot, underskilled or untalented. Those words shouldn’t be in your email, either.

Illustrate Your Points Clearly

Although Beale went so far as to take photos of the challenges he faced, I’m not necessarily advocating a graphical depiction of your complaint. But in making your point, you’ll need to explain very clearly, and without emotion, what the problems are.

Keep in mind the objective you set for your email — if the issue is getting that sales data, you might list the dates on which you made a request for that data, and how you made those requests (in a meeting, via email, in a phone call, etc.). If you made different requests to different people, or were told to seek that information elsewhere, you might also lists the contacts you’ve used to try to obtain the information, just to show that you’ve left no stone unturned in trying to obtain the data.

You might refer to the agreed project plan, you might include copies of relevant responses you’ve had from your contacts, you might attach meeting minutes — whatever you need to show exactly what the problem is.

Explain the Implications

The author of the example email makes the outcome of the issues he experienced very clear: he says he had a “splitting” headache, and was “the hungriest I’d been in my adult life”.

Explaining the implications isn’t a chance to make veiled threats or to apply histrionics to your situation. It’s time to appeal again to the reasonable side of your client or colleague, keeping in mind that you’re all playing on the same team, and you all want the best, most timely outcome possible.

Perhaps this is an opportunity to make suggestions about alternative ways in which you can obtain the information you need, or proceed without the data. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to invite suggestions and input from the recipient about how they believe you may most effectively proceed. Perhaps, as with the example email, it’s an opportunity to ask your recipient what they’d do, as the author of the example email did.

These points can make a good framework around which to write your own emails of complaint. If you can follow these guidelines, you might find over time that fighting for what you need from a location that’s remote from your team, colleagues or client becomes less daunting and more of a problem-solving experience. I hope you’ll also find that it’s more productive.

What advice can you give from your experience in writing emails of complaint — and getting results — from afar?

Photo credit: stock.xchng user januszek

Last week, I discussed how you can be both personal and professional in social media:

You can actually be professional and personal at the same time in social media without too much effort. When we talk about “being personal” on social media web sites, I think that many people confuse “personal” with “private.” The reality is that you get to decide what to share and what not to share, so you can still keep most areas of your private life private.

Now, let’s talk about the private information. Sites like Facebook can change their policies at any time to make information that was once private become public. Ed Gubbins on GigaOM Pro (subscription required) points out that “to satisfy their privacy concerns, users will have to take a more sophisticated and hands-on approach to managing their accounts, and that means Facebooking is going to get more complicated.”

For those of us who work mainly online, this means that we need to be especially careful about what we share and how we share it. In general, I don’t share anything that would be devastating if a client, prospective employer or family member read it. In fact, my mom, my sister, other family members and clients all follow my Twitter feed and/or Facebook status, so they see much of what I say online. I’m not going to say anything that would damage those relationships even in areas that seem to be more “private.”

I consider everything that I share online, even in “private” areas,  to be public information. If I would be embarrassed to have a family member or client see it, I don’t post it. Keep those drunken ramblings, too much information (TMI) moments, and other sensitive data off of the social media sites if you need to also maintain your professionalism online.

How do you balance what information you keep private vs. what you post online?

Photo by Flickr user Ted Percival used under Creative Commons.

Compare this to the reaction to fame that professional athletes, actors, musicians and celebrity CEOs face. Some people completely change (new house, new cars, new friends, new spouse, etc.) while others continue to live in their old neighborhood with existing friends, and remain grounded despite their fame. While social media fame isn’t the same, I see similar reactions.

I was reading a Harvard Business Review blog post by John Baldoni where he was talking about egos in sports and applying the same ideas to business. He mentioned this quote: “It’s okay if other people think you’re God, but you’re in trouble if you start believing it.” This really resonated with what I’ve been seeing in the social media industry.

For some people, it may already be too late. Those enormous egos may have already taken over their bodies like in the episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” where alien entities take over the bodies of Troi, Data and O’Brien and control their every move. Are they too far gone, or can we still save them by exorcising that enormous ego and replacing it with a normal-sized one?

For those you you who can still be saved, here are a few tips for keeping that ego in check (these are Baldoni’s recommendations, modified to apply to social media):

• Remember that your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn friends or fans are not your real friends (take Danah Boyd’s experience on stage at Web 2.0 Expo as an example of when your “friends” can become a mob). Real friends are the people that stick with you during tough times.
• Don’t take yourself too seriously. When people butter you up with praise and tell you how awesome you are, politely thank them, but don’t believe it.
• Everyone has shortcomings — I certainly have my share. Whenever your ego starts to take over, think about something that you need to improve and remember that you are an ordinary human being who makes mistakes and has weaknesses.

What are your thoughts on how social media fame gives people inflated egos?

1. Get a professional email address. Most clients aren’t likely to take you seriously if you are using an address that contains “hotmama23,” “sexydude12,” “ilovemykittycat,” or anything similar. Your best option is something like yourname@yourdomain.com, or in a pinch, you can use some variation of your full name on Gmail (avoid Hotmail, AOL, and other consumer services that have ever targeted newbie internet users).
2. Have a professional web site. Your web site doesn’t need to be complex or extensive, but you need to have something for potential clients to see, and having a simple, professional site lends credibility to your services. At the minimum, it should have your contact information and an overview of your services presented in a professional manner. If you have a little more time to devote to your web site, a portfolio page with examples of your work and a blog where you can highlight your professional expertise are great additions. Some of the popular blogging platforms are a good choice to act as a content management system for your web site, and most of them can be used with no programming or design work required. I also recommend having your professional web site at the same domain as your email, which should ideally be something like businessname.com or yourfullname.com.
3. Always use clear, concise, professional communications. The most important thing that you can do to have better communications is to carefully proofread every client email. I have a hard time taking someone seriously if their email is littered with mistakes. Your initial communications should be extremely professional with no SMS abbreviations, no smiley faces, no profanity and no other unprofessional language. You can start to relax some of these rules as you get more familiar with your clients. You should also remember that people are busy, so concise and clear communications with clients are important. I always include a descriptive subject line and try to keep my emails as short as possible. Another tip is to put any really critical information in the first couple of lines, along with any requests that you are making of the client. The harsh reality is that if your email is long, most people will start skimming after they get the gist, and any critical information that is buried near the end is more likely to be missed.
4. Dress like a professional. When working from home, pajamas and sweatpants are perfectly acceptable, but when you are meeting with new clients, you need to look like a professional. The definition of professional varies depending on the location and industry; for example, a meeting at a Silicon Valley startup is going to be less formal than a meeting at a financial institution in New York or London. Oregon, where I am based, tends to be much more informal, so I can easily get away with khakis and a nice shirt in most situations. When in doubt, err on the side of being slightly over-dressed rather than appearing under-dressed. Will’s recent post has more tips for surviving client site visits.
5. Use social media wisely. Take a few minutes to look at what your client sees if they search for you on Twitter, forums or other social web sites. Is your client going to see a professional that they can respect? I’m not suggesting that every post be professional. I spend quite a bit of time talking about interesting goings-on in Portland, food and other non-work topics, and I encourage you to show your full range of personality. However, if you are bashing your clients, are often negative or complaining, or are engaging in questionable activities, this can reflect on your professionalism as a freelancer. This is one of those gray areas where you have to balance how you want to behave online with how you want people to see you in your professional career.

These are my top five tips for making a good first impression as a freelancer. What are your tips for making a professional impression, or what are your pet peeves for unprofessional first impressions?

Photo by Flickr user yngrich, used under Creative Commons.

While many of us love working in our home office or other alternative venue of choice there will often be times when your projects take you to a client site for an extended period of time. I’ve spent time on and off client sites for a majority of my career, and know it can be difficult for some workers who are used to working from home.

• Observe your client’s IT security standards at all times. While many of us take extra pains to secure our home office network and computers from viruses, hackers and malware, you aren’t in charge of IT security once you are on site. So make sure that you receive information from your client about IT security standards that are in place. Unfortunately, this may mean your personal laptop needs to stay in its bag while you rely on client issue equipment.
• Dress the part. My home office dress code in the warm months is a T-shirt and cargo shorts. Colder months my home office dress code changes to jeans and fleece. When you take up residence on a client site, don’t forget to dress the part. Ask about any dress code in place before day one.
• Take advantage of face time. While some people may say that face time with a client is overrated, I believe that it can only benefit you, your client, and the project by helping you both forge a more trusting relationship. Not every organization is ready to hire remote web workers, but the first steps toward an off-site engagement often take place during an on-site project where relationship and trust building can take place. This is also a time for you to show yourself off as a self-sufficient worker — just the kind of worker who can function off-site –and deliver on projects without a lot of supervision.
• Plan for other client communications. If you have multiple clients, being on a client site might make you feel isolated from the rest of your business. So be prudent and ensure that you have your communications with other clients prearranged before you step onto a client site for an extended engagement. For example, if you use your mobile phone as your business line, you are already one step ahead. However, I recommend you scope out some “rabbit holes,” where you can make and take calls privately while on site. Another rule of thumb is to never let communicating with your other clients interfere with your on-site work.
• Consider the benefits. While spending time in a cubicle might seem like a sentence worse than death for many of us web workers, it can offer all of us valuable insights into our client’s organization, including identifying the politics, power players, and dynamics which may not be apparent via email, IM session, web conference or conference call. So take advantage of your on-site time to learn as much as you can about these organizational dynamics.

What is Content Strategy?

Kristina Halvorson sums it up nicely in her superb article “The Discipline of Content Strategy” on A List Apart:

“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”

If you’re tweeting or updating on Facebook or elsewhere, you’ve got creation and publication of content down. But what about all the other keywords in that definition?

Developing a Content Strategy For Your Social Media Presence

Putting together a content strategy for your social media presence can be a real challenge, especially when you mix business with pleasure; my Facebook friends include relatives, old friends, new pals and purely professional contacts, some of whom I’ve never met personally. You can’t please all the people all the time when you have such a mixed audience, and the privacy settings are too global to adequately address this issue. (My only strategy for Facebook is not to publish things that are too personal. Content strategy is as much about what you shouldn’t publish as it is about what you should.)

But Twitter, for example, is a different story. It’s easy to have separate “personal” and “pro” Twitter accounts. And if you have a pro Twitter account, it’s also easy to apply a content strategy to it. The same is true of professional networks like LinkedIn.

Planning and Governance of Useful, Usable Content

Here are some ideas that might help you get started on a strategy:

• Planning: Define your mission (what you want to achieve with your content). Define your audience. Define what you want your content to do for your audience (inform, persuade, entertain). Define the nature of your content (what it should consist of and the tone of the content). Decide how often to produce it. Decide how you will interact with your audience.
• Governance: In this context, I interpret this to mean managing and monitoring your content and its impact, as well as your own role. Are you meeting your audience’s needs? What’s working and what’s not, and why? Is the quality of your content consistently high? Are you responsive and available?
• Useful and usable: Most of the blogs and Twitter accounts of small businesses I see need a content strategy. They tend to be too inwardly focused, all about their own updates and services (boring), or else they are too much about the owner/founder. These businesses generally need to figure out how to provide some real value to their audiences in order to keep them coming back and turn them into real fans, or even evangelists.

Here’s an example: I discovered a nice app the other day called Memory-Life. It’s a site where you can store media and other files in a virtual “box of memories.” (It’s still only available in French, but hopefully not for long. You can see a demo by clicking “Voir la démo.“)

It has a Twitter account, but it could be doing a lot more. Its audience is interested in preserving memories, so in addition to the occasional updates about upgrades and features, it could share links to articles about repairing old photos, or compressing large video files. It could provide creative suggestions, like “Upload pictures of all your grandmother’s jewelry to your box of memories” or “Create your own art gallery with Memory-Life.” It could suggest alternative uses for the app; designers could use it to create inspiration boards, for example.

If you want to connect with and engage an audience, your content has to provoke thought and action. You know you’re adding value if your content is being retweeted, liked and shared. It takes work, but it’s worth it.

You Too Could Be a Content Strategist!

Content strayegy is a relatively new career field. Large corporations are beginning to have in-house content strategists, but there is no reason why this job shouldn’t be done by consultants, which is where you come in. It could be an ideal occupation for a web worker.

If you’d like to learn ore about content strategy, in April, several chapters of the Society for Technical Communication are putting on “Content Strategy Forum 2010,” a two-day conference on content strategy in Paris. The conference is intended for:

“…anyone who develops, manages, or delivers content within their own organization or for their clients: user experience designers, information architects, business analysts, technical writers, web project managers, documentation managers, translators, web marketers, practicing content strategists, and those looking to break into the field.”

Learn more about the conference program and register here (tickets are very affordable).

Here’s some additional recommended reading on content strategy:

• “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data,” a great article by Rachel Lovinger
• There are several good articles on A List Apart about content strategy.

Have you implemented a content strategy for your social media presence?

Image by the_franz from sxc.hu

One of the people that I talked to at Beer and Blog was Jason Mauer, Senior Developer Evangelist for Microsoft and @jasonmauer on Twitter; he says:

“I follow Twitter for the conversation anyway, and have found it’s mostly duplicative to also follow the blog feeds of people I’m already following on Twitter. If they post something, I’ll usually hear about it in a tweet. Where Twitter really pays off is through the power of social networking — interesting content surfaces naturally from people’s recommendations. I might not know that blogger at all who just wrote a really great post, but I’ll hear about it via retweeting. People I follow deliver content piping hot right to my desk. And unlike RSS, Twitter is two-way — the discussion is right there. I get more bang for the buck spending the precious resource that is attention on Twitter than on an RSS reader, which feels like a chore in comparison.”

Mike McClure, strategy and governance consultant and @mcclure on Twitter, says:

“I use twitter in lieu of an RSS reader for productivity and efficiency reasons. All but one of my news sites make announcements on Twitter anyway, so I don’t need to check yet another news source. If the news is big enough, it’ll be circulated enough that I’ll find out soon enough anyway. I’m an analyst not a reporter, so being first to see the news is less important to me than seeing a broad set of thoughts and opinions about the same news. For real-time information there’s Twitter, for everything else there’s Google.”

McClure also mentioned that Twitter lists might make it even easier to use Twitter to keep up on news, since you can categorize groups of Twitter accounts to create news lists for even easier access to news feeds on Twitter.

These conversations got me thinking about how my use of RSS readers has changed. I am still an obsessive user of RSS, but the feeds that I check most often aren’t news related. I have feeds for Yahoo Pipes that track mentions of all my various projects, clients and other important information, and I regularly read feeds that have unique content that I wouldn’t otherwise find (web comics, niche blogs, online community content, etc.) However, I read my news feeds or mainstream blog feeds much less often than before. Most of the news that I would get from technology blogs has already been discussed and linked on Twitter by the time I get to it in my RSS reader, so I rarely need to read my news feeds.

The feedback on Twitter (as Twitter doesn’t store tweets indefinitely this link may not work in the future) shows that many people are replacing RSS readers with Twitter, but that doesn’t tell the entire story.

As you can see, quite a few people have reduced their use of RSS readers, but like most trends, it isn’t universal. There are plenty of people — like me — who still use RSS readers for some feeds, but there are other people who have actually increased their RSS reading as a result of Twitter. The increased usage seems to fall into two categories: People who read Twitter in their RSS reader, and people who run across new things that they then add to their RSS reader.

Has Twitter changed the way you use an RSS reader?

We’re often called on to be more than service providers. Sometimes we also have to educate our clients, and even be ambassadors of the worlds of technology and the Internet.

There Are More of Them Than There Are of Us

First example: I launched and manage a social network. On the signup form, one of the required fields is “Tags.” As it turns out, this field is so daunting to some people that they abandon registration at that point. And the question that comes in to customer support the most often — by far — is “What are tags?” (I’ll be making that field optional!)

Second example: I recently met an author who wanted to use a chunk of text from a blog post that someone had emailed him, without including the source. He tried to find the source online so he could cite it, but couldn’t. He didn’t know about putting quotes around text when using a search engine.

Final example, just to point out that it’s not necessarily a generational thing: There is a couple in my building, aspiring fashion photographers in their late 20s. I said something to one of them about Twitter, and he said “What’s Twitter?” These two could really use an online portfolio to show off their work, and they might contact you some day.

The moral of the story is that your clients may have close to zero understanding of things you and I take for granted. So we have to walk a fine line. Here are just a few things to keep in mind:

• Watch your language. You undoubtedly want to dazzle your client with your mastery of your field, but my advice is keep it simple. Avoid the temptation to toss around buzzwords and acronyms. I mean, who would have thought that the word “tag” could be so scary? A lot of people are still using the web for email and Amazon, and that’s about it. People like this, who could end up being your clients, will run screaming from the word “algorithm.”
• Avoid “yes or no” questions. If you ask “Do you know what a CMS is?” and your client has to say “No,” she’ll feel embarrassed. Formulate your questions in such a way that you will, at the same time, give the client some good info and confidence in your expertise, get some useful information from the client as well as a sense of her level of understanding, and avoid making her feel uninformed. For example: “I think a content management system would make sense for your project. It would make it easier for you to do A, B and C. Can you tell me how you’ve handled A, B and C in the past?”
• Tell them only what they need to know. I’m not suggesting that you keep your clients in the dark. Just that you should not bombard them with information at the start. Address the big picture in a general way, and provide more specific info only for the issues at hand over the course of the project.
• Be respectful. People who are technophobic, who live in fear that the Internet will steal their bank account info or their very soul, or who have lifestyles that just don’t include computers are people too! This is where it’s most important to put on your ambassador hat.

An Interesting Side Note

My husband attended an intercultural management seminar a few years ago in which the instructor talked about the differences in American and French approaches to explaining things. Americans tend to operate on the assumption that their listener has no knowledge of a subject, and begin at square one. The French, however, start off explaining things at a more complex level, and they do so out of respect; they don’t want their listener to think that they think he’s ignorant. The point is that if you’re working with clients of another culture, keep in mind that things could be different.

If you have tips for educating clients, please share them in the comments.

Interview by Email

Personally, I think this is the best form of interview, for the simple reason that you don’t have to ask someone if you can record the conversation, but also because it’s far harder to misquote someone when you have their answers in their own writing.

Email also lets you relax and lay out your interview strategy and the actual questions. In theory, you can do that when speaking live to someone, too, but depending on who you’re interviewing and how confident a person you are in social settings, talking live may muddy the process a bit and leave you flummoxed to the point where your interview quality is significantly affected.

Regardless of how you choose to conduct your interview, because some will no doubt maintain that live is a much better alternative, perhaps because you have a greater chance of catching your subject off guard (a valid point), the advice that follows still applies.

Keep It Simple, But Focused

Ask open-ended questions. This should be self-evident, but if you ask someone a question they can answer with a simple “yes” or “no,” many often will. Instead of crafting an impressive, incisive 25-word question that’ll net you a three-word answer, try to keep your end of things relatively light and allow for plenty of expansion on your interviewee’s part.

But open-endedness can also be a double-edged sword. If you ask too vague a question, you might get a wealth of information, but it might not be useful, pertinent or interesting information. The key is to keep it on point. So, for example, instead of asking “What motivates you?” to someone like Ashton Kutcher when your publication focuses on social media, ask, “What motivated you to become so involved with Twitter to begin with?”

Care to Elaborate?

If your initial interview questions don’t elicit what you were looking for, or one answer in particular takes you in a new and potentially more interesting direction, don’t shy away from contacting your source again for further information. Think of the initial interview as a collaborative first draft process.

An exchange of two or three sets of questions and answers isn’t unusual. I always find it better to do this sort of thing over email, since you don’t have to worry about setting up times for face-to-face meetings or phone conversations for follow-up questions, and you can view the entire threaded conversation in your inbox when you later go to write the article. You could also use IM, but as with phone conversations, always make sure to get your interviewee’s permission before logging the conversation.

Post-interview

There are many ways to conduct a post-interview. The simplest is just to send a thank-you note, along with a publication date for the content that will result, and a promise to follow up with a link when it goes live. Depending on the purposes of the interview you’re conducting, more or less may be required.

If you’re just starting out with a source that you’d like to retain in the future, and who might be sensitive to how they are portrayed, you may want to forward an advance copy of the finished piece so that they can give you input before publication. Generally speaking, this isn’t advisable, though, since it puts too much control in the hands of the person being interviewed. If that person is your company’s CEO, and your piece if for the corporate newsletter, then by all means, forward it for his or her approval first.

Interviewing for the web resembles interviewing for print, but it doesn’t necessarily mirror it. It’s hard to give broad advice when the type of content you’re producing makes such big differences in how you go about the task, but hopefully the advice above gets you off to a good start.

If you have any good interviewing tips, share them below.

Why Don’t You Respond to Me on Twitter?

The other day I received a message from someone I like (but hardly know) asking me why I’m not responding to their messages to me on Twitter. In a momentary panic, I clicked around to look at all of my recent @ messages and my DMs (direct messages) and couldn’t find any addressed to me from this person.

When I asked them about their message to me that I failed to address, I was pointed to a retweet of one of my tweets they had put out to their followers. It appeared that this person retweeted me with an expectation that I would respond to that retweet as if it were a personal message to me warranting a response. Maybe they were expecting me to thank them for the retweet, and because I didn’t do it within 24 hours I’ve broken some new unwritten rule. Why didn’t I get the memo?

My theory on conversing on Twitter is that you:

1. Do the best you can.
2. Try to use the Golden Rule (as with all social media).
3. Respond and thank people when you can, but you shouldn’t be held accountable for thanking every person every single time they mention you.
4. Regularly tweet a general “thanks to everyone who retweeted me this week” or “thank you to everyone who mentioned me for #followfriday today” rather than naming each person by Twittername (and that should be okay).
5. Try to retweet or give kudos to others when you can, and as appropriate, just because it is a nice thing to do.

Yes, I believe in being courteous, but I’m getting a sinking feeling that many people are now doing “nice and generous” things on Twitter for the kudos, public thanks and @ mentions they expect to get. Some people’s thinking now seems to be “that person has 5000 followers, so if I retweet them, they will thank me — their followers will see my Twittername and maybe even link over to my Twitter page.” They are co-opting nice gestures and turning them into strategic ploys. My skin is crawling at the thought. No wonder that, increasingly, the kudos I get from popular Twitterers is by DM instead of publicly.

Why Don’t You Follow Me Back on Twitter?

When it comes to expectations on Twitter, I think an unrealistic one is expecting people to follow you back if you follow them. Sure, it would be nice, but my advice is to follow people because you are truly interested in what they have to say, or are truly interested in connecting with them in some way and cultivating a relationship, or both. What could you possibly gain by following random people purely in the hope that they will follow you back? Here’s what you gain: Noise! The dilution of your Twitterstream with worthless noise. Why use Twitter that way?

If you really want to know why somebody might not follow you back, I’ve come up with a little guide to different types of Twitterers who probably won’t follow you and the reasons why. Hopefully, this list will save you some disappointment and heartache.

1. The Celeb — If they’re famous and actually using Twitter, chances are they just won’t follow you back. Unless they are @britneyspears.
2. The Frugal Follower – If they are really good at time management and controlling their impulses, chances are they are only following people they know or who they truly admire, and you’re just not one of them.
3. The Snob – They might not know who you are and therefore you are not worthy of a follow back. Or maybe they don’t like you.
4. The Chooser — They only follow their friends.
5. The Novice — They may not know how to follow you back.
6. The Overwhelmed — They haven’t noticed that you’ve followed them, and just haven’t gotten around to seeing who is following them to determine who they want to follow back.

If someone doesn’t follow you back, that’s okay. Yes, there may be moments where your emotions get the best of you. I’ve personally seen people who I do know — who I’ve known for years — who have not followed me back. I admit that for a moment now and then I do think “Oh no, they don’t like me.” But then I let it go, because I realize that I’m probably guilty of doing the exact same thing to others. And I don’t mean any offense; I’m just #6.

So the next time you’re interacting on Twitter with some expectations, realize that not everyone is on Twitter for the same reasons as you, and not everyone uses Twitter in the same way you do. There are actually no written rules on Twitter, and that’s okay. There won’t be anarchy on the streets because of that. There may be some hurt feelings along the way, but as long as we each do the best we can, what else can anyone ask for?

What are your expectations when using Twitter?

In communities, people help each other without asking anything in return. By helping other people solve problems or helping them get ahead, you also increase your social capital, and it becomes more likely that people will help you out at some future point. The catch is that you have to be willing to help people first without any specific expectation that they will return the favor. This is the basic idea behind whuffie, a concept first introduced in fiction by Cory Doctorow in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,” but applied to today’s communities in Tara Hunt’s “The Whuffie Factor.” If you haven’t read these books, I recommend both of them. I’m currently reading the latter, so whuffie has been on my mind lately.

While the concept of whuffie applies to everyone, it is particularly important for freelancers and other web workers. Those of us working alone need to support and help each other, since we don’t have the same resources as people working on-site at large corporations.

Portland is a town with a large population of freelancers, consultants and telecommuters, and many of these people offer services similar to my own. The natural instinct from some people would be to retreat from these potential competitors in case you might be up for the same job at some point in the future. I encourage you to take an alternate view: focus on cooperation, instead of competition. By helping each other, we make the entire community stronger and more vibrant, thus raising opportunities for the community as a whole.

Here are a few of the things that I do to support my community:

• Be available. I attend a lot of local events, and I am always happy to help people. I give people Yahoo Pipes demos, answer their questions about corporate blogging or other social media, provide advice about finding community manager jobs, and more. Just catch me at a local event, like Beer and Blog, and I’ll always do my best to answer questions or point you to someone else who can.
• Give back. Find ways to give back to your community. A few years ago, I noticed that while Portland had an amazing user group community, we didn’t have enough events that brought people together across technologies. Rather than complain or wait for someone else to organize some new events, I stepped up to help organize events like BarCamp and Ignite Portland. If you attend local events, offer to help out in some way or start a meetup of your own to bring like-minded folks together.
• Share the link love. I read so many amazing blog posts and articles that shape the way that I think about things in more ways than I can possibly count. As a result, I like to share them with other people even when these links go to my direct competitors. I have a couple of ways that I share links with people. I start by bookmarking them in Delicious, and in a weekly blog post, I pick five to ten of those links to share with my readers. I also do a monthly newsletter, and I always include a section for interesting articles written by other people.
• Help promote your community. I try to help other people promote projects that are interesting to me. This often takes the form of a retweet to share some interesting new event, link, or project with the people who follow me on Twitter. Sometimes it turns into a blog post if it’s something that requires a little more explanation.

These are just a few of the more visible ways that I support my community, and they don’t include the one-offs that come in via email or that happen face-to-face. I help people because it’s the right thing to do; the increase in whuffie is a nice side effect for me.

How is your whuffie? What do you do to support your community?

Photo by Aaron Hockley of Hockley Photography, used with permission from the photographer.

Web workers, too, have to deal with these kinds of requests, but I personally find that people are even less abashed about asking for advice and help related to blogs, social media, networking and other web work because they don’t regard it as a specialized service the way they do with medical and legal expertise.

I’m not saying giving away freebies is always a definite no-no, but I do think that as web workers we need to start reinforcing the value of our work by drawing a line between friendly advice and working for free. Here’s how I’m trying to create that demarcation.

Parry When Possible

I’m mostly of the opinion that the easiest way to deal with most conflict is to avoid it, and free advice is no exception. Most of the time, when people ask me to do something like set up their blog, write their cover letter/resumé introduction, or otherwise give away what I normally require a fee for, I either respond noncommittally or agree to talk to them more about it later on. It avoids unpleasant scenes with close friends and relatives, and nine times out of ten, you’ll never hear about it again.

Role Reversal

It’s hard to keep this tactic from sounding too snarky or sarcastic, but as with most things, asking someone to see things from your perspective can help curb friendly requests. Avoid the “Do I ask you to help me remodel my kitchen for free??” knee-jerk response. Instead, exercise some tact and take the time to fully explain real parallels between what exactly you do for a living, and how it is you do it. Often, people don’t think anything of asking for web working advice because they don’t see the work behind it, since the process can be fairly opaque to outsiders.

This One’s On the House

Refusing to give away advice or help isn’t always the best course of action. If, for instance, your mother wants you to help her set up a travel blog (sign up for Blogger and pick a theme), looking to make some money off the deal would probably be pretty callous of you.

Even in less clear-cut situations, the advantages of giving something away might outweigh the downsides. Always examine whether or not you might be able to work out some kind of barter arrangement in exchange for other service, or for future consideration, if you know the person you’re dealing with to be dependable and have a solid sense of fair play.

Convert the Lead

If you’re an optimist, then you won’t see requests for pro bono help as an annoyance. You’ll see them as viable sales leads, and therefore a valuable source of potential income. This is another tricky bit of business, since many people will immediately become disinterested in your services when they find out you won’t be performing them free of charge. But that actually makes it a doubly-beneficial solution, since you’ll land a sale if the person you’re dealing with has a genuine need and you’re a good salesperson, or you’ll dissuade them from coming calling on you in the future when they’re looking for free advice.

Being asked about your job is great, especially if you love it as much as I do mine. I love the opportunity to talk about what I do with people who are genuinely interested. What I don’t love is being asked to do something by someone who couldn’t care less about the how and why of web work, just so that they don’t have to do it themselves. People will only respect what you do for a living if you respect it first, and part of that means not cheapening it by doing for free what you would normally do for a fee. Plus, shouldn’t your buddy from college learn to write their own cover letter at some point?

Do you find that people often ask you for free advice/work? How do you deal with these requests?

For the sake of all those involved, and to avoid scaring people in my area away from specific groups or events, the identities of all those involved will be kept a secret. The specific names of people doesn’t matter so much as the setting and organization of the event, anyway.

Tweetup the First — Small + Casual = Quality

Like a debutante at her first ball, I was nervous but excited about attending my very first tweetup. Two things drew me out of my shell: The organizer was someone with whom I’d had very positive dialogues on Twitter leading up to the event, and the guest list was small and handpicked by said organizer, whose judgment I trusted. It didn’t hurt the the venue was mere blocks from my house, in a neighborhood I was familiar with.

The format was very informal, without a guest speaker, and with socializing at the top of the agenda. Drinks (primarily sangria) and conversation flowed freely, and not once did I encounter a sales pitch or aggressive self-promotion, though I did walk away with a few business cards and a strong impression of who people were and what they did. That was key for me, since the hard sell inevitably sends me screaming for the hills.

End result: I had some laughs, made some worthwhile connections, and generally had a good time. I can be shy meeting people for the first time, but the small group size (10 to 12 people) made it impossible to stay in my shell for long.

Tweetup the Second — Large + Cliquey = Nothing Worth Tweeting Home About

I was so impressed with my first tweetup experience that when another hashtagged event came up a month or so later, involving some of the people from the first and a whole lot more, I was all for attending. This one was different in a few key ways: It was an ongoing monthly event with a larger, devoted following, and the setting was bigger and flashier, lending it a definite party vibe. At first, that was what appealed to me about the event, but I think it ultimately bears most of the responsibility for my eventual disappointment.

Maybe I should’ve looked more closely at the attendees list, but what I found out too late was that most of the people attending this particular event were already deeply entrenched in their own cliques, so that they basically pared off into tightly knit clusters of four or five at the beginning of the evening and talked (as groups of friends often do) about insider things that I wasn’t privy to. A few new attendees who were in the same boat as myself managed to group together and chat amongst ourselves, but it felt a little too much like being relegated to the kids’ table at a family reunion for my tastes.

Take-aways

This by no means covers all the bases when it comes to tweetups. I’ve yet to attend the kind that takes place in a convention hall and features a guest speaker(s), for instance. But it did teach me some valuable lessons about what to expect when your Twitter usage intersects with the real world. My advice to other novices: Try out more intimate events first, even if your natural inclination is to go to bigger happenings in order to blend in more easily with the crowd. For event organizers, I’d advise you to try to avoid clique formation as best as possible. I’d rather not spend my night feeling like I’m back in high school, whether or not I bring a built-in group of friends along for the ride.

Do you attend tweetups? If so, what do you/don’t you like about them? If not, what are your reasons for staying away, and what might convince you to go?

Twitter is still a scary, untamed frontier for many businesses. They know that they should be engaging with the Twitter community, but aren’t sure how to do it.

I’ve collected up some of the most common questions asked by Twitter-for-business newbies and answered them below.

Is it bad to have a lopsided following/followers ratio?

Balance is better. Following 150 people with only 75 following is OK. If you have more lopsided figures of, say, 300 following to 75 followers, that might give tweeters pause before they consider following you. Focus on quality over quantity.

How do I stop people from following me?

Block them. Go to the person’s Twitter page and click “Block” in the sidebar under “Actions.” Once you block someone, they won’t show up in your followers list.

I’m concerned that a follower of my company is a porn site. What if my clients see such a follower prior to my blocking them? First off, most folks don’t have time to analyze your list of followers. Secondly, most people know that spammers go after everyone and we don’t always catch them all. So it’s not a concern, unless you have lots of them.

If you block someone, is there a way to see those you blocked, in case you want to reverse your decision?

You can reverse your decision by going to the person’s Twitter page and clicking “Unblock” under “Actions.” You can view a list of people you’ve blocked, but it’s an XML file and not very readable: http://twitter.com/blocks/blocking.xml.

Should I protect my Twitter page, so I can avoid spammers and such?

This is a bad idea, particularly if you’re using Twitter for business. Some Twitter users don’t follow people who protect their updates.

I’m trying to implement Twitter at my company, but can’t get executive buy-in. What can I do?

Many businesses are using Twitter to connect and exchange ideas with customers. It might help to do a search to find case studies and examples of businesses using Twitter and show how they’ve benefited.

Do you recommend having separate Twitter accounts for business personal use?

That depends. Many people have a single account that they use for all because it adds personality. But if you like to share strong opinions and talk about sensitive topics like religion or politics, then a separate personal account would be wise. It also depends on what you represent. Are you working for a large company and tweeting in its name or are you a one-person business? What are the liabilities associated with a business using Twitter?

It’s up to the business. The company might want to consider drafting a policy on the company’s rules for how employees use Twitter and other social networking sites. Suggestions for things to address include usage, company disclosure and consequences for violating policy.

Who should manage a company’s Twitter account? Marketing? Product Management? Sales?

It’s important to note that Twitter users easily detect fakery. Who does the tweeting depends on the purpose of the Twitter account(s). Be honest about who is doing the tweeting. Avoid having personnel far removed from the executives to do the CEO’s tweeting, for example.

What are those words starting with # like “#b2b”?

They’re hashtags. They make it easier to tag references to a topic, event or other common factor. For example, if someone tweets about a job opportunity, he could tag it with “#jobs” so those looking for jobs can easily find it.

Should you use a account name that is recognized to be associated with your company, or not?

For business-related Twitter accounts, you should either use your real name or your company’s name. If you use the company’s name, you should put your real name in your profile. If multiple people tweet from the same company account, then say so in the profile. List their names, if you can.

If the people you are following are listed on your Twitter page, how do you prevent people from clicking on your competition? Can you follow someone without it being listed?

It’s better to not hide the people you follow, even your competition. Having open dialogue with your industry — including your competitors — will help you earn trust and credibility. If you really want to follow someone without them knowing, then subscribe to their Twitter RSS feed.

How often should a business tweet?

Avoid posting many tweets in a short space of time and overwhelming followers’ streams. Think quality over quantity. A good rule of thumb is to post few tweets spread out over the course of the day.

How do you respond to people who say something good or bad about your business?

Being able to rapidly respond to any news about your business is valuable. If it’s good, either tweet the person directly or in a direct message (DM). You don’t want to bug people with a short “Thank you for that.” If it’s something bad, try to solve the problem or ask questions to find out the problem. If you find out the problem and you’re researching the answer, don’t wait until you find the answer to respond. You can respond quickly with a “We’re researching this and will get back to you.”

Should I block followers who have nothing to do with my business? No — unless they’re spammers or have inappropriate content.

How can we quickly build up our list of people to follow? Use search.twitter.com or an application like twellow.com, which can search profiles for keywords. However, don’t be in a hurry to build a big list. Remember lopsided followers/following is not good.

Is there a way to integrate CRM with Twitter?

Some CRM applications include Twitter and other social media sites as part of the app. Some have add-ons. If yours doesn’t, create a custom field.

How do I get leads on Twitter?

Focus on providing value with your tweets. Spread out links to your own content, because doing it too often turns off many users. Help others, ask questions and share thoughts about your industry or business in general. These are just a few of many ways you can build relationships on Twitter.

What ways have you found Twitter useful in your business?

Image created at twitlogo