Working Smart

My Blog Has Moved

I no longer post new content on this blog. My current blog is From Where I Sit. You can find me actively posting there.

Technorati Tags: blogs

Google’s New Blog Search Engine

Google has just launched a very cool new blog search engine. It is called—appropriately—Google Blog Search. It being unveiled as a “beta” version.

I did a few test searches and was very impressed. As we have come to expect from Google, it is fast and thorough. Give it a try! (via The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Technorati Tags: blogs, google, search

New Blog Search Feature

I have had several people request that I add a search feature to my blog. I have finally done this, using “Google Search.” You can find the search feature on the right sidebar.

Please note that the search engine searches both of my blogs (From Where I Sit and Working Smart) at the same time. This is a technical limitation with Google Search (it can’t search subdomains), but I think it’s actually a nice feature.

Enjoy.

Sometimes Life Is Like Skiing

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Life has been a blur. In the last month, my father-in-law died, my family moved into a new house, and we finished our company’s fiscal year-end. This last week was particularly busy. I had a Thomas Nelson Board of Directors’ meeting, a Quarterly Leadership Meeting, and a trip to Taylor University in Upland, Indiana where my former business partner was awarded an honorary doctorate degree. Fortunately, I am taking Monday off to get a little rest before my next round of meetings.

I’ve especially missed blogging during the last thirty days. I find that blogging makes me slow down just enough to process what is happening around me and in me. It helps me clarify my thoughts and keeps me focused. But, unfortunately, this kind of processing time is not always a given—at least not for me.

Sometimes I find that life is like skiing. You get off the lift, only to find you are on a black trail rather than a green one. (For you non-skiiers, green trails are for beginners; black trails are for experts.) The only way down the mountain is to lean into it, trust your instincts, and do the best you can. That pretty much describes the last month for me.

How to Read Blogs

Many people have e-mailed me to ask, “How can I read blogs more easily?” Perhaps more importantly, “Why should I read blogs at all?” I started to write on this topic myself and stumbled on an excellent article by Stephen O’Grady over at tecosystems. He says,

The purpose of this post is to give the many people who still haven’t gotten into blogs—i.e. not my regular readers—a simple, step-by-step example of how to dip a toe in the blogging waters.

The article is entitled How to Get into Blogs 101. It is definitely worth a read if you are interested. One of the most helpful parts of his post is how to set up a blog reader.

How to Start a Blog

After reading my new blog, a number of Nelson employees have told me they intend to start their own blog. Several have written to me, asking how to get started. So, rather than continuing to repeat myself, I will outline the process here. It’s actually easier than you may think.

1. Determine a theme. Most bloggers take one of three approaches. Some write on whatever happens to interest them at the moment. In this sense, their blog is truly a “web journal.” Others, select a single theme and stick to it. Frankly, this takes a lot of discipline. Still others, like me, focus on a primary theme but occasionally deviate from it. If you want to develop a following of loyal readers, I think the latter two approaches are best. People who have similar interests will keep coming back for more.


2. Select a service. I use TypePad.com. My daughters use Xanga.com. These are only a few of scores of services available. Some of these are free, such as Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, and MSN Spaces (also Xanga.com). Others charge a nominal fee. Examples include SquareSpace.com, BlogIdentity.com, and Bubbler.com (also TypePad.com). However, even the fee-based services usually offer a 30- to 60-day free trial. Why do I use TypePad.com? Because I think it offers the best balance of power, customizability, and ease-of-use. Your mileage may vary.

3. Set up your blog. Most of the blogging services I have looked at make this a very simple process. Don’t be put off because it sounds technical. It usually isn’t. You won’t need to become a geek. However, you will have to make some decisions about how you want your blog to look. You’ll have to decide on a “theme,” meaning the colors, number of columns, and the overall look and feel of your blog. You may want to include your picture. If so, you’ll need a digital copy. Regardless, this is something you can tweak as you go.


4. Write your first post. Okay, now you’re ready to create your first post. If you haven’t done a lot of writing, this may prove to be the most difficult part. If you don’t have a lot of experience, keep your posts short. Develop momentum. Get the hang of it. Stick to what you know. You probably take for granted the fact that you have a great deal of specialized information that others will find helpful—possibly even fascinating. If you don’t know where else to start, begin with a “Welcome to My Blog” post. Tell your prospective readers why you have started your blog and what kinds of things you intend to write about.


5. Consider using an offline blogging client. This isn’t a necessity but it will make blogging much easier. An offline blogging client is like a word processor for blogging. It enables you to write when you’re not online and then upload your post when you connect to the Internet. The two most popular are BlogJet and ecto (yes, the lowercase “e” is part of the branding). BlogJet is my favorite, but it’s not available for the Mac. ecto is available on both Windows and Mac platforms. You can try both programs before you buy.


6. Add the bells and whistles. Most blogs allow you to post the books you are reading, albums you enjoy, and various other lists. TypePad is especially adept at this. You can also incorporate third-party services like Bloglet. This enables your readers to subscribe to your site and receive an e-mail whenever you post a new entry. The best way to get an idea of what is available is to read other people’s blogs and take note of what you like.


7. Publicize your blog. You’ll want to make sure you’re “pinging” the major weblog tracking sites. Most of the blogging services handle this automatically, as do the offline blogging clients. Don’t worry if you don’t understand this process. You don’t need to understand it to use it. (Here's a simple explanation.) Basically, your service or software will send a notification to the tracking sites to alert them that you have posted a new entry. If your software doesn’t allow this, you might want to make use of pingomatic. This is a super-easy service that will ping fourteen different services. All you have to do is enter your blog address whenever you post a new entry. If you want to manually enter a comprehensive list of ping services, here’s a list to get you started.


8. Write regularly. This is the best advice I could give you for building readership. If people like what you write, they will come back. However, if there’s nothing new to read, they will eventually lose interest. So, the more regularly you post something, the more your readership will grow. I suggest you schedule time to write. It won’t happen on it’s own. At some point, it comes down to making a commitment and sticking to it.

Finally, I would suggest that you be patient with yourself. Writing is like anything else. The more you do it, the better you get. If you have a little talent, and stick with it, you’ll eventually get into the rhythm and joy of it.

My New Thomas Nelson Blog

I have just launched a new blog, primarily intended for Thomas Nelson employees. It is called From Where I Sit. I have subtitled it, “Musings on the world of publishing.” While it is primarily intended for my fellow-employees, I think it will also be of interest to anyone interested in what goes on inside a real live publishing company. I also have included a list of other Thomas Nelson employee bloggers in the left-hand sidebar of the blog. Enjoy!

Corporate Blogging Guidelines, Draft #2

About a week ago, I posted an initial draft of what we were then calling our Corporate Blogging Rules. I asked for public comment and received some terrific input. Many readers were put off by the formality and legalese of the document. They felt it should be more conversational and less intimidating—after all, we are trying to promote blogging within our company not stifle it.

Other readers pointed out where the document was inconsistent or unclear. Some even noted items that we had neglected to address, like who owns the content.

So, I met on Thursday with Gabe Wicks, Vice President of our Design and Multimedia Group and the unofficial chairman of our Blogging Oversight Committee, and Frank Wentworth, our General Counsel. We talked through all the comments and then discussed how we wanted to revise the initial draft.

What follows below is the fruit of our labor. Once again it is offered as a public discussion draft. We may have now erred on the site of being too liberal and too informal, but I am hopeful that this will serve the goal of encouraging blogging within our company and also provide some direction to those who do.

Thomas Nelson Blogging Guidelines
At Thomas Nelson, we want to encourage you to blog about our company, our products, and your work. Our goal is three-fold:

• To raise the visibility of our company,



• To make a contribution to our industry, and



• To give the public a look at what goes on within a real live publishing company.

Therefore, we have established a “blog aggregator page” that is linked to the ThomasNelson.com Web site. “House Work,” the name of this page, contains links to employee blogs, along with the first few sentences from the most recent entry. The page is automatically updated whenever a blogger creates a new post. This way readers can quickly scan new entries, click on those that interest them, and then read the entry on the blogger’s site. This makes it convenient for people who are interested in reading employee blogs. It also helps publicize individual blogs and generates traffic for everyone.

In order to give some direction to employees who wish to blog, we have established a “Blog Oversight Committee” or “BOC.” This is a group of fellow-employee bloggers who are committed to promoting blogging within our company and making sure that the Company’s interests are served.

If you would like to have us link to your blog, you must submit it to the BOC. Before doing so, you should design your blog and write at least one entry. Once you have done this, send an e-mail to Gave Wicks with a link to your blog. The BOC will then review your blog and notify you whether or not it meets the criteria.

In order to participate in this program, you must abide by the following guidelines. (Please keep in mind that review by the BOC and participation in this program does not absolve you of responsibility for everything you post.)

1. Start with a blogging service. We do not host employee blogs. We think it adds more credibility if the Company does not officially sponsor them. Therefore, please use one of the many third-party blog hosting sites on the Internet. Some of these are free, such as Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, Xanga.com, and MSN Spaces. Others charge a nominal fee. Examples include TypePad.com, SquareSpace.com, BlogIdentity.com, and Bubbler.com. If you use one of the latter, any expense is your responsibility.



2. Write as yourself. In other words, please use your real name. We don’t want people writing anonymously or under a pseudonym. Your name should be prominently displayed on your blog’s title or subtitle. This will add credibility with your readers and promote accountability within our company.



3. Own your content. Employee blog sites are not Company communications. Therefore, your blog entries legally belong to you. They represent your thoughts and opinions. We think it is important that you remind your readers of this fact by including the following disclaimer on your site: “The posts on this blog are provided ‘as is’ with no warranties and confer no rights. The opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.” You assume full responsibility and liability for all actions arising from your posts. We also encourage you to put a copyright notice on your site in your name (e.g., “© 2005, John Smith”).



4. Write relevant. Write often. Whether you know it or not, you are an expert. You have a unique perspective on our company based on your talents, skills, and current responsibilities. People what to hear about that perspective. Also, in order to develop a consistent readership, you should try to write on a regular basis. For some, this will be daily; for others, it may be weekly. The important thing is consistent posting. New content is what keeps readers coming back. You may also write on company time, provided it doesn’t become excessive and doesn’t interfere with your job assignments and responsibilities.



5. Advertise—if you wish. While there is no requirement to run ads on your blog, you are free to do this if you wish. Some of the free blog services run ads as a way to offset their costs. If you use such a service, you won’t have a choice. On the other hand, if you pay for your service, you can avoid advertising altogether or participate in a service like Google’s AdSense or Amazon’s Associate Program. These types of programs will pay you based on “page views,” “click-throughs,” or purchases made on participating Web sites. You might want to ask the BOC or fellow bloggers for suggestions. The only thing we ask is that, to the extent you have control, you run ads or recommend products that are congruent with our core values as a Company.



6. Be nice. Avoid attacking other individuals or companies. This includes fellow employees, authors, customers, vendors, competitors, or shareholders. You are welcome to disagree with the Company’s leaders, provided your tone is respectful. If in doubt, we suggest that you “sleep on it” and then submit your entry to the BOC before posting it on your blog.



7. Keep secrets. Do not disclose sensitive, proprietary, confidential, or financial informa-tion about the Company, other than what is publicly available in our SEC filings and corporate press releases. This includes revenues, profits, forecasts, and other financial information related to specific authors, brands, products, product lines, customers, operating units, etc. Again, if in doubt, check with the BOC before posting this type of information.



8. Respect copyrights. For your protection, do not post any material that is copyrighted unless (a) you are the copyright owner, (b) you have written permission of the copyright owner to post the copyrighted material on your blog, or (c) you are sure that the use of any copyrighted material is permitted by the legal doctrine of “fair use.” (Please note: this is your responsibility. The Company cannot provide you with legal advice regarding this.)



9. Obey the law. This goes without saying, but by way of reminder, do not post any material that is obscene, defamatory, profane, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, embarrassing to another person or entity, or violates the privacy rights of another. Also, do not post material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, or any other computer code that is intended to damage, interfere with, or surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or information.



10. Remember the Handbook. As a condition of your employment, you agreed to abide by the rules of the Thomas Nelson Company Handbook. This also applies to your blogging activities. We suggest you take time to review the section entitled, “Employee Responsibilities” (pp. 36–39).

If you do not abide by the above guidelines, we reserve the right to stop linking to your blog.

Corporate Blogging Rules

My company, Thomas Nelson Publishers, is about to launch a corporate blog aggregator site. Internally, we have tried to encourage a small band of employees to begin blogging.  The aggregator site will simply link to the individual sites. It will be similar to OfficeZealot.com, but it will be accessible through our main corporate Web site.

This program  has three primary objectives:

1. To raise the visibility of our company and our products.
2. To make a contribution to the publishing community.
3. To give people a look at what goes on inside a real publishing company.

Like many companies, we have struggled with what guidance to give to our bloggers. I personally checked with several companies. None had formalized a set of blogging rules or written guidance. One Microsoft blogger told me that the only rule his company provided was, “Be smart.” I thought we probably needed a little more guidance than that, so several of us cooked up a list of “Blogging Terms and Conditions.” Our corporate counsel has also had a crack at it.

I am posting this draft publicly so that you can comment on it. If we have missed anything, I would like to know. Also, I am hoping that this might be helpful to other companies who are struggling with this same issue. I know that it would have been much easier for us if we could have started with someone else’s work first.

To give you some context, our corporate logo is the house where the company was first started in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1798. Hence, the blog aggregator site is called “House Work.” In order to participate in our corporate blog aggregator site, an employee has to agree to the following terms:

Thomas Nelson Blog Terms and Conditions
“House Work” is a blog aggregator site. Its purpose is to link to external blogs written by Thomas Nelson employees who (1) write about some aspect of the company and (2) agree to abide by the rules listed below. It is not a blog site per se. Employees who wish to blog about the company must use a service such as TypePad.com, Blogger.com, or MySpaces.com.

In order to have your blog considered for inclusion in “House Work,” you must submit it to the Blog Oversight Committee (BOC) for consideration. Before doing so, you should design your blog and write at least two entries. Once you have done this, send an e-mail to Gabe Wicks with a link to your blog. The BOC will then review your site and notify you whether or not it meets the criteria.

In order to participate in this program, you must agree to the following terms and conditions:

1. You agree to write under your own name.
2. You agree to write about the company, your job, or some aspect of our business on a regular basis.
3. You agree to include the following disclaimer on your site: “The opinions expressed on this site are the opinions of the participating user. Thomas Nelson acts only as a passive conduit for the online distribution and publication of user-submitted material, content and/or links and expressly DOES NOT endorse any user-submitted material, content and/or links or assume any liability for any actions of the participating user.”
4. You agree not to attack personally fellow employees, authors, customers, vendors, or shareholders. You may disagree with the company and its officers, provided your tone is respectful and you do not resort to personal attacks.
5. You agree not to disclose any sensitive, proprietary, confidential, or financial information about the company, other than what is publicly available in our SEC filings and corporate press releases. This includes revenues, profits, forecasts, and other financial information related to specific authors, brands, products, product lines, customers, operating units, etc.
6. You may comment on the company’s competitors, but you agree to do so respectfully without ridiculing, defaming, or libeling them in any way.
7. You agree not to post any material that is obscene, defamatory, profane, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful or embarrassing to another person or any other person or entity.
8. You agree not to post advertisements, solicitations and/or market and/or promote any business or commercial interest, chain letters or pyramid schemes.
9. You agree not to post any material that is copyrighted unless (a) you are the copyright owner, (b) have the express, written permission of the copyright owner to post the copyrighted material on your blog, or (c) are reasonably sure that the use of any copyrighted material conforms to the doctrine of “fair use.”
10. You agree not to post any material that violates the privacy or publicity rights of another.
11. You agree to conform to the rules of the Thomas Nelson Company Handbook, especially as it relates to rules regarding conduct outside of your employment and the Insider Trading Policy on file with Human Resources.
12. You agree not to post material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or any other computer programming routines or engines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or information.
13. You agree not to post or conduct any activity that fails to conform with any and all applicable local, state and/or federal laws, including, without limitation, 15 U.S.C. 6501 et seq. (the “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998”).
14. You acknowledge that any reliance on material, content and/or links posted by other parties will be at your own risk. You assume full legal responsibility and liability for all actions arising from your posts.

Notes:
The BOC administration of “House Work” does not constitute control of free speech.  You are free to post content on any site you wish; however, the company is not obligated to link to any site that BOC does not believe is in the best interest of the company.

Nelson neither represents nor guarantees the truthfulness, accuracy or reliability of any content, including links to other content, posted by you or commentors on your blog.  Nelson does not endorse any opinions expressed by or affiliated with any commentors on your blog site.

Nelson acts as a passive conduit for the online distribution and publication of user-submitted material, content and/or links and has no obligation to screen communications or information in advance. Nelson is not responsible for screening or monitoring material, content and/or links posted by readers. If Nelson, however, is notified or becomes aware of material, content and/or links on your blog site that allegedly do not conform to these terms and conditions, Nelson may investigate such allegation and endeavor to determine in good faith and in its sole discretion whether to request the removal of such content.

Nelson has no liability or responsibility for performance or nonperformance of such monitoring and/or screening activities. Nelson, however, reserves the right to stop linking to your site and take appropriate action for any violation of the terms and conditions set forth herein or any violation of any applicable local, state or federal law.

If you have any questions about the above terms and conditions, we strongly urge you to check with the BOC before making your post public. If you violate the terms and conditions, you will be notified by BOC. You will be expected to edit or change the content.

Finally, by your signature below, you agree to abide by the terms and conditions set forth in this document.

Update: I have posted a set of revised guidelines here.

BlogJet 1.2 Beta Is Significant Improvement

I downloaded the BlogJet 1.2 Beta this afternoon. I used it to write my last post—and this one. It looks like Dmitry has addressed the few complaints I had when I first reviewed the program this summer (see My BlogJet Wish List and Blogging: A Tale of Two Tools). Specifically, it has the ability to:

• Make extended posts
• Use Image thumbnails
• Publish entries at specific dates and times
• Ping a list of URLs
• Enter typographic characters (e.g., real quote marks, em dashes, etc.)

In addition to addressing my original issues, it sports a new code editor with syntax highlighting and “code completion.” In my opinion, the improvements now give BlogJet the edge over ecto.

I’m only missing two items from ecto. First, ecto’s Preview Entry feature is really cool. It uses my blog’s style sheet to show me what the entry will look like before posting it. The BlogJet WYSIWYG editor is close enough, so I think I can live without the ecto feature. Also, it appears that I have to enter my ping list into BlogJet every time I make an entry. Bummer. Hopefully, this is something that can be fixed, since this is only a beta.

If you’ve been searching for a really simple, intuitive offline blogging client, BlogJet may be just the ticket.