This article is modified and republished from the September 28, 2007 How Much Do People Talk About You?.

In today’s day and age of “dog eat dog” and marketing and getting ahead and SEO and linkbaiting… how much do people talk about you? Better yet, how often do you talk about other people. Picture the situation. You’re standing around in a crowded bar at a social event after a conference. There are 150 people standing around in various states - some drunk, some not. Everyone’s talking. Most likely, they are talking about some hot button issue in whatever industry you’re in. They might be talking about their newest product or pitching a potential partner. Business cards are exchanged as frequently as George Bush tells us to “Stay the Course”.

In one conversation, an industry expert is referred to and the four people participating in that conversation laugh and nod. In another conversation, another industry experts new startup is opined about and everyone questions the business model. The point is, people are talking about these other people and conversation is flowing. Those people are not present. Can’t give business cards. Can’t pitch their product. Can’t talk about their new experience or their new lines of thinking. Yet, their messages are getting out. For better or for worse, their personal brand is alive and well and well represented in this crowd.

There’s a misconception in blogging and similar industries that if you produce good content, people will come. While that is true to a certain extent, that theory will never amount to much in the broad scope of things. how many web developers are out there? How many people do wedding photography? how many people write 500-750 word posts once a week that are thoughtful and well written, but nobody knows about?

Let me answer that question: Alot.

And why?

It’s important to create great “stuff” (define “stuff” for yourself). It’s really important to stand out above the crowd. It’s more important to get other people talking about you. You are a brand. You are a subject matter expert. Well, you have the potential to be a subject matter expert. But you’re not yet. Not if no one is talking about you when you’re not around.

Here’s a thought. When you have a great idea, try to get that idea in front of other SMEs. Find ways to market yourself. Give away your knowledge. Speak at industry events. Host meetups related to your industry. Be social and network. Go drink a beer with others in your industry. When an opinion is asked for, be aggressive and share your opinion in a succinct, well-spoken manner.

In the end, you not only can produce, but you become the first person people look to for help or advice. You’re the first feed that someone reads when they open their feedreader. You do want to be the first person people come to - not just a referral. ;-)

I have never been an english major, nor do I claim to be an expert in the topic of good, solid writing form. However, I’ve had some observations on how posts are written. On one side, most people will say, “I don’t really care if my posts conform to a certain writing style.” That’s perfectly okay. I’d argue that writing styles, though, have more impact on an audience when the psychology or philosophy of the style is considered.

From my perspective, there is a western and an eastern-style writing system. I think most literature experts would agree with this and heck, they may even teach this in school. I don’t know. I’ve personally used both styles and will give some examples.

Western Style Writing

A Western style post typically has the thesis up front. What does the writer want to say. Grab the audience right from the start. The, “You had me at hello” sentiment.

In Western style writing, readers don’t want to sit around and wait for the punchline. We want to know right now what your point is. It is from this psychology that the art of the headline comes in. Brian Clark over at Copyblogger covers this kind of stuff in great depth and, sometimes, ad nauseum. In Journalism, the headline may be the most important part of an article and realistically, the search engines are setup with this assumption.

In my post the other day entitled Indeti.ca and the Art of the Launch, I conveyed a western lit style. My subject line was strong in relating the content of the post. My thesis is in the very first paragraph:

Ask any startup. The most difficult decision leading up to a public release is when and what? Some might argue that getting funding is the most difficult but a good startup avoids funding until later, if at all. Others might argue that the difficult part is getting the right mix of people and hitting milestones. That also is important, but not as important as the when and how.

See that? Startups and launch. The most important part is the when and how.

This statement clearly defines the scope of the rest of the article. As I progress through the article, I build on that thesis by providing supporting evidence (other companies who are just starting and had to deal with the same issues) and then solidly land a right hook on the company in question by bringing the point home. At the end of it all, I bring it all home in the larger context of the thesis.

Eastern Style Writing

The eastern style of writing is all about Zen. It’s very Buddhist in that sense. It understands that good things come to those who wait and that, in general, an article is an entire piece instead of a logical, and linear progression. An article written in an eastern style generally has the thesis statement in the middle of the piece. Everything, like the the planets in the solar system, revolves as a whole around it.

Take my recent essay for the Fourth of July. It is very much an Eastern Lit piece.

The thesis of the essay does not arrive until halfway through the article:

Patriotism is a love of country. Patriotism is not an act demonstrating a love of country. Patriotism is respect and honor. Patriotism is not a shallow public display of affection. Patriotism is the ability to stand back and say, “Wow, I’m blessed to be an American”. Patriotism is not “America and no one else.” Patriotism is recognizing that, at the end of the day, despite disagreement we can all stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of the freedom to disagree.

Leading up to this thesis statement was a story and supporting details: Katherine Lee Bates, Pikes Peak, America the Beautiful. The end wraps up the whole idea. Patriotism as demonstrated by politicians, quotes from other bloggers, etc.

Even the headline wasn’t overly compelling: America the Beautiful. What does that headline convey about the article? Not a whole lot, if I’m honest. (For what it’s worth, you probably should use more descriptive headlines simply because search engines are designed with the assumption that the headline will be very important to the rest of the content.)

It’s okay to use neither of these writing style or both, as I do. In my mind, the key is understanding the demographics of your audience and recognizing that how they think should reflect how you write. If your audience is largely a North American audience, you probably will be better off with a Western writing style unless you want to challenge them outside of their norms. For me, I find it more natural to write in an eastern style. It’s a more satisfying thought and writing process as it forces me to think long before I actually sit down to write.

How do you write?

This is an open comments style post, so I want your comments.

The thing about my “beat”, as they’d call it in the newspaper business, is that I’m not really all that interested in “the news”. I’m not trying to cover all the stories, nor am I trying to cover most of them. I’m not trying to “break” anything or peddle products. I want to understand how social software affects my life. And yours.

Text comments will be deleted in this thread as I want video comments. ;) Click on the Sessmic Video comments link below. If you don’t already have one, grab a free account over at Seesmic.com.

This is what I want to know. How has social software benefited you? This is open ended and I want you to define what I mean by this. Some example questions might be:

1. How you got a job using LinkedIn
2. How you found an old crush on Facebook
3. How blogging helped you gain support for a good cause
4. How you used Flickr to communicate to your family on the other side of the world
5. How you used Brightkite to track your migration habits
6. How Twitter made the World Series special for you
7. How you had a brilliant entrepreneurial idea from a discussion on FriendFeed
8. How you used VC portfolio companies to attract the attention of a VC and get funded
9. How you made a career by offering advice on a blog

These are easy examples. I want you to offer your own insight on how, sometime, somewhere, social tools have enhanced your life. Tell us your story on video. If you don’t, I’ll look like a complete idiot for this format - but I’m okay with that. :)

I originally published this on Washington Hotlist. On this Fourth of July, I republish it here. Happy Birthday, America.

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountains majesty above the fruited plain. America, America God shed His grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.

In 1893, a young teacher by the name of Katharine Lee Bates, scribbled these words into a notebook after ascending Pike’s Peak and witnessing the vast expanse of America in front of her. She never knew that the words she wrote would eventually be sang in churches, public forums and eventually during the 7th inning of many baseball games in the United States.

She had no clue that the words, “America the Beautiful” would resonate with so many people. She knew that they resonated with herself.

According to the story (reprinted here with no known attribution to the original article), after tweaking and rewriting some sections, the song would be reprinted in the Boston Evening Transcript where it was mostly well received, yet she was criticized for using the word “Beautiful”.

Oh, beautiful.

There’s a lot of talk these days about patriotism. George Bush made the point famous by using rhetoric like, “You’re either with us, or you’re for our enemies” and calling patriotism into question. Congress went along with the war rhetoric under the guise of patriotism.

It became an unofficial requirement for members of the media to display American flag lapel pins. An exotic dance of expectations, intentions, and cooperations ensued where patriotism was challenged.

They don’t understand patriotism.

Patriotism is a love of country. Patriotism is not an act demonstrating a love of country. Patriotism is respect and honor. Patriotism is not a shallow public display of affection. Patriotism is the ability to stand back and say, “Wow, I’m blessed to be an American”. Patriotism is not “America and no one else.” Patriotism is recognizing that, at the end of the day, despite disagreement we can all stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of the freedom to disagree.

America, the Beautiful.

Much has been talked about Barack Obama’s speech on patriotism the other day. I confess, I haven’t seen it yet.The old view of patriotism likes to hammer him because he doesn’t wear a lapel pin. He’s not Muslim, but if he was that’s okay. He’s got a middle name that brings back some memories, yet… he is patriotic as far as I can tell.

He loves his country. He will defend the right to disagreement. His core is baked into a tremendous love for this country, his country, OUR country.

The fact that a black man, today, can run for President is a beautiful thing.

America the Beautiful.

I like what my friend, Erin, has to say about this.

I have never considered myself a patriot.

I have never served in the armed forces. I have never served as a lawmaker, or heck, even a volunteer.

I thought patriots died for America, they lost their homes or sacrificed their sons. I thought they did what was asked when the United States was in need and always stood by her side.

Those people are why I never once considered myself even close to a “patriot.” Sure I have a loyalty to my country, but I also question her. While it may be one of the things that makes this country great, it was always one of the things I thought disqualified me to really be patriotic.

Guess I was buying the spin too.

The most noble and patriotic thing that an American can do is to question authority. That is what makes America beautiful, and that is patriotism.

Photo Credit: Jcolman

Ask any startup. The most difficult decision leading up to a public release is when and what? Some might argue that getting funding is the most difficult but a good startup avoids funding until later, if at all. Others might argue that the difficult part is getting the right mix of people and hitting milestones. That also is important, but not as important as the when and how.

Usually, a good launch product is the result of a perceived need. Or maybe a need not yet realized - it’s hard to say for sure. There’s some black magic involved in all that.

FriendFeed launched not long ago because there was an empty hole in Twitter - that was aggregation and conversation. FriendFeed figured out that, to be successful, it was going to target that emptiness in the highly popular Twitter experience.

Disqus and Intense Debate figured that, in order to be successful, they needed to target the missing piece in blog comments - that was reputation and reputation management across blogs. The two fight it out, post-launch, over which is going to differentiate it over the other.

In these cases, the timing of the launches was critical to the uptake. Twitter started experiencing significant problems and influential early adopters began getting itchy to be somewhere that scratched their itch.

Putting aside timing, the most important part of a launch is what. It’s feature-sets. It’s determining the balance between a fully developed roadmap of features and what is needed to “hook” early adopters and get them to stay.

Take Identi.ca, the new Twitter clone that is completely open source and is timely in that Twitter faithful are really, really close to burying the hatchet and simply abandoning it altogether. The timing could not be more perfect. Folks have been talking about distributing Twitter and relieving the strain of a centralized service at one time. Open sourcing the product does this, to a degree.

However, Identi.ca gets a big “FAIL” for its launch for a few very important reasons.

1. There is no coherent way to deal with “replies”. Folks used to Twitter realize that when there is a river of content, and that’s what Twitter is, there must be a way to manage conversations. There must be a way to keep up with followers who are talking to you. In my working with Identi.ca, there is no way to do that and, while that might be coming, it wasn’t there at launch. Very conceivably, I’ve been lost forever and I generally have tons of followers as an early adopter. FAIL.
2. XMPP doesn’t work. The one reliable way to reply that folks on Identi.ca were talking about last night was with XMPP, the protocol used for various IM clients including Google Talk. I could deal with replies that way if it worked but at some point, XMPP stopped working. I could receive, but I could not send. A one way conversation is a monologue. FAIL.
3. OpenID integration must be seamless. I was pleased to see OpenID supported when I signed up. Unfortunately, today, I could not login with my OpenID account. If I can’t get in, I can’t use it. FAIL.

Some would say I’m being too hard on this startup. Screw that. Perform or get off the stage. There are very obvious and defined features that must be included in a microcontent site at launch. I’m not saying an entire roadmap needs to be worked out. No, get a working beta up and get testers in there. However, without replies, without reliable “offline” access (i.e. IM, SMS or client integration) I’m not going to stick around. Finally, direct messages would be a nice feature.

While I have high hopes for Identi.ca, I will remain there only to squat on the name “technosailor”. Bye, guys.