Category: Social Media and the Web

Social media, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, web design, and all the stuff that isn’t here yet. Subcategories highlight some areas of particular expertise.

Blog à thème ou blog à moi? [fr]

[en] I write a weekly column for Les Quotidiennes, which I republish here on CTTS for safekeeping.

Chroniques du monde connecté: cet article a été initialement publié dans Les Quotidiennes (voir l’original).

Quand on fait un blog, vaut-il mieux s’en tenir à un thème donné (la cuisine, la technologie, les papillons, l’Islam) ou faut-il au contraire en faire le reflet de la multitude de sujets qui nous passionnent?

Ceux qui lisent régulièrement mon blog savent de quel côté je penche, mais je crois que ça dépend de ce qu’on recherche: une publication qui montre qui l’on est, ou une qui ait du “succès” (terme fragile et souvent maltraité, à définir délicatement)?

Je lis par périodes le blog de Seth Godin, que j’apprécie particulièrement (il faut d’ailleurs que je me mette à lire ses livres). Hier, au hasard de mes clics, je lis son article “The non-optimized life“. La voilà, cette fameuse clé qui me manquait pour expliquer ce que je fais! Je ne cherche pas vraiment à optimiser mon blog. Je préfère passer mon temps à écrire plus qu’à optimiser. (Aussi, probablement, parce que je suis plus douée pour l’écriture que pour l’optimisation.)

Clairement, un blog à thème va plus dans le sens de l’optimisation: homogénéité du contenu, du public cible. Possibilités de partenariats et de monétisation.

Mais si ce qu’on cherche c’est partager qui on est, ses passions dans différents domaines (admettons-le, les humains sont rarement unidimensionnels), il ne faut pas hésiter, à mon sens, à laisser émerger un peu d’hétéroclite dans ses écrits. Après tout, les catégories d’un blog, c’est fait pour ça, non?

Writing: Source of Income or Marketing Budget? [en]

[fr] Ecrire pour gagner de l'argent (en tous cas en tant qu'indépendant) ça ne rapporte pas des masses. Par contre, écrire est un formidable moyen de promouvoir ce qu'on fait (indirectement). Je propose donc de considérer l'écriture comme "budget marketing" plutôt que "source de revenu" (si on arrive à gagner de l'argent, tant mieux... mais ce n'est pas le but premier!)

A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend, who amongst various activities she juggles as a freelancer, is a journalist. Lately, she’s been less satisfied by her journalistic work, which ends up not paying much, and was wondering whether it really made sense to keep on writing. But actually, her work as a journalist is what gives her contacts and leads for her other activities: so it makes sense for her to keep on being a journalist — but not for the money, as a marketing investment.

Come to think of it, I’ve only very rarely earned money by doing actual writing. I did an article for a local paper once, but honestly, the amount I was paid for the work I put in just made no sense. So, yes, as a marketing strategy, it’s interesting, but not for actually putting food on the table.

Even the work I did for Fleur de Pains, though decently paid, was way more work than expected and ended up being not that much money for the energy it took. Consulting, speaking and training are clearly better sources of income, or managing “my type” of projects (blog editing, coworking space, or conference blogger accreditations for example).

Most of what I’ve read over the last six months about writing fiction also points in that direction: writing for a living is insanely hard work and will not make you rich. We’re blinded by the black swans out there named J. K. Rowling and other successful writers. Most people who write for a living don’t become insanely rich, and most of those who try to make a living out of writing fail.

So, where does that leave us/me? I love writing, and I’m not too bad at it. Honestly, writing is its own reward, as far as I’m concerned. That’s why I’ve kept this blog going for the last 10 years (by the way: take a moment now to let me know what your favourite articles from CTTS are — the blogversary is less than 48 hours away!). And honestly, I think I’ll never stop writing. But I don’t think it makes sense for me to try to actually earn a living doing it. Which doesn’t mean I’m closing the door to earning *some* money writing — but if I do, it’ll be a happy *extra*.

So, in times like now where I’m giving quite a bit of thought to all I do for free and which ends up bringing me business, and also (given right now business is going pretty well) cutting back a little (not too much though!) on what does not earn me money directly, I am realising that I need to make it my priority to have enough time to write.

You know these blogging crises I go through regularly? “OMG I’m not blogging much I need to write more?” Well, here we are. If paid work keeps me from blogging, so be it — it means I’m earning lots of money right then, and I can live with that for a while. But if unpaid “marketing budget” stuff keeps me from blogging, something is wrong.

So this is what my hierarchy of priorities could look like:

paid work > blogging > other writing (“for others”, or requested by others) > other marketing/networking/promotional activities

What about you? Where does writing fit in the “stuff you do”?

Cours du SAWI sur les médias sociaux: argumentaire [fr]

[en] A few talking points to convince your boss (or financial person) that it's worth sending you to follow the 1-year course on social media I'm co-directing for the SAWI.

Vous êtes convaincu que la formation de spécialiste en management de communautés et médias sociaux du SAWI (voir annonce, télécharger brochure) est ce qu’il vous faut et qu’elle bénéficiera à votre entreprise, mais vous vous sentez un peu à court d’arguments pour en convaincre également votre supérieur, ou la personne tenant les cordons de la bourse? Voici quelques pistes.

Formation nouvelle et à la pointe

Toutes les offres d’emploi ces temps nous montrent que des compétences solides en matière de médias sociaux sont maintenant recherchées dans le monde de l’entreprise. Pourtant, il n’existait à ce jour aucune formation permettant d’acquérir ces compétences! Le diplôme SAWI de spécialiste en management de communautés et médias sociaux vient combler cette lacune, et offrir, en première européenne, une formation digne de ce nom à ceux qui désirent faire plus que juste s’y retrouver dans les médias sociaux et les communautés en ligne.

Clairement, l’entreprise ou la personne qui investit dans ce cours prend une longueur d’avance sérieuse sur la concurrence, vu qu’il n’existe pas d’autre formation équivalente, et que c’est une première!

L’importance des médias sociaux

Les médias sociaux et communautés en ligne sont aujourd’hui incontournables. Pour y être présent, il ne suffit pas d’ouvrir une page Facebook ou de créer un blog: il faut comprendre la culture et la stratégie de communication qui va avec. Jusqu’ici, les seules possibilités de formation sérieuses étaient “sur le tas” (et ça prend un temps fou!). Ce cours formalise l’apprentissage de compétences tant techniques que stratégiques autour de ces espaces et modes de communication dont aucune entreprise et aucun professionnel ne peut faire l’économie aujourd’hui.

Se reposer sur des consultants externes n’est d’ailleurs pas une stratégie viable à long terme. On le voit déjà: les compétences en matière de médias sociaux sont en train de devenir rapidement aussi indispensables à l’employé que les compétences en informatique (traitement de texte, utilisation de l’e-mail et internet) le sont depuis plusieurs années. Il est indispensable d’acquérir ces compétences à l’interne.

Une formation pratique

Un des grands challenges des espaces numériques est la mise en pratique. Cette formation vous propose de le faire de deux manières:

– en menant à bien un projet d’étude concret sur un sujet de votre choix; cette application pratique de la matière du cours joue d’une part un rôle pédagogique dans la consolidation des acquis, et vous assure d’autre part que ce que vous apprenez ne se limite pas au monde des idées, mais est propice à un passage à l’action
– les modules de cours eux-mêmes (surtout les modules II et IV) vous inviteront à mettre les doigts sur le clavier et utiliser très concrètement les outils et soft skills dont il est question dans cette formation.

Un double “plus” pour l’entreprise

Proposer à ses collaborateurs de suivre cette formation offre un double avantage à l’entreprise:

– acquisition de compétences à l’interne (formation continue)
– développement d’un projet d’étude sur une problématique concrète de l’entreprise (imaginez combien cela coûterait de faire réaliser une telle étude à une agence spécialisée externe)

Proposer à une organisation de réaliser votre projet d’étude à son sujet

Si vous êtes indépendant ou en recherche d’emploi, nous vous encourageons vivement à établir un partenariat avec une entreprise ou organisation. Pourquoi ne pas proposer de leur offrir l’application pratique de cette formation (projet d’étude), ce qui financera (en partie ou en totalité) votre formation?

Avez-vous d’autres arguments massue pour convaincre votre hiérarchie de vous laisser suivre cette formation exceptionnelle? Faites-en part dans les commentaires, merci d’avance!

Orange Link nous demande nos mots de passe: pas au point! [fr]

[en] There is absolutely no excuse, in 2010, for asking people to enter their Gmail, Facebook or Twitter passwords on third-party sites. And that is precisely what the "social media to SMS" service Orange Link is doing for Gmail and Twitter, though they got Facebook right. Laziness or scary cluelessness?

Orange Link est un service d’Orange.ch qui nous permet de recevoir des alertes SMS de services comme Twitter, Facebook, et Gmail (et aussi, d’envoyer des SMS à ces services).

Orange Link

Très cool. J’espère en passant qu’ils sont aussi en train de bosser sur un partenariat avec Twitter comme l’ont fait d’autres opérateurs.

Ce qui est beaucoup moins cool c’est qu’ils nous demandent nos mots de passe Twitter et Gmail!

Orange Link - BAD BAD password anti-pattern

Regardez ce que je disais en avril 2008, il y a plus de deux ans:

I have an interest in social network portability (also called “make holes in my buckets”) — I gave a talk on SPSNs from a user point of view at WebCamp SNP in Cork recently — and I am also concerned that in many cases, implementations in that direction make generous use of the password anti-pattern (ie, asking people for the password to their e-mail). It’s high time for design to encourage responsible behaviour instead. As the discussion at WebCamp shows, we all agree that solutions need to be found.

Les gens ont tendance à être d’une naïveté affligeante avec leurs mots de passe, tant dans le choix de ceux-ci que l’insouciance avec laquelle il les prêtent à autrui ou les entrent sur n’importe quel site qui le leur demande.

Il est irresponsable de la part d’une entreprise comme Orange.ch d’encourager les gens à entrer leur mot de passe sur un site qui n’est pas celui du service en question. On est en 2010, loin de la situation en 2008 référencée plus haut, et OAuth et autres services du genre sont une réalité. Texprezzo et Textendo, qui fournissent la technologie derrière Orange Link, ne nous demandent d’ailleurs pas notre mot de passe Facebook, mais utilisent Facebook Connect pour accéder à notre compte.

Orange Link -- Good

Facebook | Request for Permission

Il n’y a donc aucune excuse pour ne pas procéder avec les technologies similaires à disposition pour Twitter et Gmail. Début 2009, Twitter était sur le point d’implémenter OAuth, ce qui a été fait depuis lors — lire la FAQ de Twitter sur OAuth. Quant à Google (pour Gmail), eh bien, depuis mars 2010 (enfin!) ils parlent aussi OAuth.

Je ne sais pas s’il faut en conclure qu’ils s’en fichent ou qu’ils sont mal informés/inconscients — mais à ce point, j’avoue que ça ne m’inspirerait guère confiance.

Flash Informatique: appel aux articles sur le thème "Société 2.0" [fr]

[en] Call for papers: Flash Informatique is looking for papers on the theme "society 2.0". The deadline is short but I encourage you to seize the occasion (I wrote an article for them a few years back). The publication is in French but it could contain a few articles in English. Go for it!

Avis aux amateurs, le magazine Flash Informatique de l’EPFL lance un appel aux contributions pour son numéro spécial d’été sur le thème “Société 2.0”.

Les délais sont courts (8 juillet pour une première version, éventuellement 12 si vraiment il faut) mais je vous encourage à saisir cette occasion. J’avais écrit pour eux un article sur les blogs il y a plusieurs années, et j’avais été ravie de pouvoir le faire!

Je suis certaine que les lecteurs de Climb to the Stars ont des tas de choses intéressantes à dire sur le sujet, donc n’hésitez pas.

WordPress.com Still Messes Up Tags and Categories [en]

It pains me to say it, but much as I love them, they still don’t quite get the difference between tags and categories. Yes, WordPress.com now makes a difference between tags and categories (and have been doing so for quite some time), but they are still missing part of the equation.

  • Categories are big pre-defined drawers to sort your posts in. They’re local.
  • Tags are labels you stick on posts after you have written them. There are tons of them and they’re messy and they’re global.

Logically, links on tags should point to the general WordPress.com tagspace (they do) — and links on categories should point to the local category pages of that particular blog. Only they don’t always.

The “Categories” widget works the way it should. But the rest is a mess. Examples.

  • Look at the Coworking Léman site, which uses the Mistylook theme that I personally love. This article‘s category links to the general WordPress.com tagspace (wrong), whereas this one‘s category links to the local category page (right).
  • The La Muse site, which uses Ocean Mist, makes article categories link to the general tagspace (wrong) but at the bottom of the page, lists categories with the correct links to category pages.

I could find more.

In general, the problem seems to be that article category links are made to link to the tagspace just as tags do. I mean, what’s the point of having a difference between tags and categories (an important one, if you ask me) if you make them behave the same way in the templates? This is a major problem for me. I hope Automattic are listening and will do something about it. (I contacted support but was told, basically, that it was a feature.)

So, please, Automattic: make the links on category names link to local category pages, and the links on tag names take us to the global tagspace.

Thanks!

Falling in Love With MailChimp [en]

A long time ago (at least it seems so) I got a newsletter from my friend Euan Semple. A couple of years back I had decided it was time for me to have my own newsletter (old skool can be good) but I have to say I’ve been less than regular at keeping my subscribers updated on whatever I was doing. Maybe partly because Google Groups is a pain in the neck, and also because I decided to make the newsletter bilingual-translated (a lot of work).

I still think newsletters are a good idea, when done well. When Euan sent me his, I asked him what he was using: MailChimp. I’ve been wanting to try it ever since and have recommended it to clients, but only yesterday did I decide to dive in and really get things going.

I love the UI and the tons of tutorials available. I managed to import my subscribers from my Google Group without too much trouble. One thing I like is that MailChimp allows you to make groups of subscribers inside a list: in my case, I made one for French and one for English. People can chose their preferred language (or even sign up for both). You can also add in custom fields, which I did to allow people to sign up for local (Suisse romande) news.

One thing I’m not quite happy with is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to batch-edit subscriber settings. For example, when I imported the list I set everybody to plain text e-mail, and now I want to switch them over to HTML. I’m also not sure to what extent people can edit their subscription settings once they’re subscribed, if at all.

MailChimp has all the tracking and segmenting features you can wish for. Under 500 subscribers and 3000 e-mails a month, it’s free.

It also has RSS to e-mail, which in my opinion is really precious. I’ve started to see how many people sign up to receive blog posts in their mailbox since WordPress.com implemented the feature. It would be a shame to miss out on that!

Now, the question that’s left for me is the following: do I create just one list, and let people choose options like “subscribe to blog”, “newsletter only”, “receive delicious links” — or do I create separate lists? I’m leaning towards just one.

Update 18.06.2010: Eeeps! I forgot to give you the link so you could sign up to my newsletter. Silly me!

Comment Ownership, Reloaded [en]

Nearly four years ago, I wrote a post about comment ownership and coComment (it was initially published on their blog, and I moved it over here at some point). I don’t use coComment anymore, but a few of the points I made then are still valid.

Comment ownership is a complex problem. The commenter writes the comment, but the blog owner hosts it. So of course, the blog owner has the right to decide what he agrees to host or not. But the person who wrote the comment might also want to claim some right to his writing once it’s published.

And also the following:

There are times when one could say the “blog owner rights” and “comment writer’s rights” come into conflict. How do you manage such situations?

Here’s an example. Somebody e-mails me, out of the blue, to ask me to remove a comment of his on a post published ages ago (ironically, it’s the post published just before the one I’m quoting above!)

I went to look at the comment in question, and frankly, it’s completely innocuous. So I googled that person’s name and realised that my post appears somewhere in the middle of the first page of results. This gives me a guess as to why the person is contacting me to remove the comment.

And really, it seems pretty petty to me. And removing that comment bugs me, because I responded to it, and the person responded back, so what the person is in fact asking me to do is to remove (or dismember) a conversation in the comments of my blog, which has been sitting there for nearly four years. All that because they’re not happy that CTTS makes their comment appear somewhere on the first page of results for a Google search on their name.

Which brings me back to comment ownership. Saying the comment belongs to the commentator is simplistic. C’mon, if everybody who left a comment on CTTS these last 10 years started e-mailing me to remove them because they “taint” their ego-googling, I simply wouldn’t have time to deal with all the requests.

But saying the comment belongs to the blog owner is simplistic too.

I think we’re in a situation which mirrors (in complexity) that of photography ownership between model and photographer. With the added perk that in the case of blog comments, as soon as it is published, the comment becomes part of a conversation that the community is taking part in. Allowing people to remove published comments on a whim breaks that. (Just like bloggers don’t usually delete posts unless there is a very strong reason to do so — when published, it becomes part of something bigger than itself, that we do not own.)

So, for this situation, I guess the obvious response is to change the full name to initials or a nickname, and leave the comment.

But I see this with discussion lists, too. The other day, a pretty annoyed woman was complaining that somebody had called her out of the blue about coworking, when she was not at all interested in sharing an office space. Well, she had written a message or two on a local coworking discussion list, with all her contact details in signature.

What do you expect? And what happened to taking a deep breath and deciding “OK, I’ll do things differently in the future” when you realise you behaved a little cluelessly in the past?

I think all this concern about e-reputation is going to start becoming a real pain in the neck. Get over it, people. Open a blog and make sure you own your online identity, and you can stop worrying about the comments you made four years ago.