Profile tactics – Look Who's Talking

As we mentioned in the first lecture, the Internet has grown from read-only mode into Web 2.0, a veritable mosh pit of participation. From wikis to Twitter and user-generated-content sites like TripAdvisor, the line between storyteller and audience has flown right out the window. Those old roles are litter on the side of the information superhighway.

So too, the best blogs are more than soap boxes, they are conversations ... and sometimes even Fight-Club-style debates.

Some of you may prefer to fight masked like luchadores, Mexican wrestlers. That can work wonderfully, as proved by blogs like Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, repeatedly voted best UK blog. (The author maintained her anonymity from 2003 to 2009, when she unveiled her identity, fearing exposure by a big-mouthed ex-boyfriend. Research Scientist Brooke Magnanti finally claimed the site and two memoirs, which inspired a popular British TV show.) From Mark Twain to George Orwell and Isak Dinesen, the nom de plume is a time-honored literary tradition.

Should you take that route, don't turn your back on an authorial persona. You can still construct a character via tone, topic and – most immediately – a prominent "About this blog" section with a profile link.

Readers are naturally curious about the people behind compelling posts. Give them a chance to understand you and find points of commonality, then they're more likely to become repeat customers. The "About" section and profile are also fine places to emphasize your qualifications for pontificating on a given topic – the basis for your authority.

Some authors, like the esteemed Tim Footman, rely on detailed "favorite" lists to flesh out their online persona. Others, like LC and Iain, provide only the barest outline, while the writer behind Crying All the Way to the Chip Shop shares little. The "about" area simply declares: "The sentimental musings of an ageing British expat in words, music, and pictures. Files are only up for a limited time so drink them while they're hot."

My profile is minimalist for several reasons: laziness being prime among them. But I also feel plenty exposed and explained on my website ... and I'd rather funnel traffic to that professional space anyway. Finally, my profile has to do double-duty, representing me as a writer and an instructor. In the latter capacity, my cinematic tastes don't factor in much. So I keep things sparse.

I've also edited the blogs visible from this page, hiding scratch pads and students' sites where I have admin privileges. To control this, go to Dashboard –> Edit Profile (second link, top left) –> Show my blogs (the fourth line down under Privacy). On this panel, you can also adjust other details.

Profiles have no right and wrong, of course, so decide what suits your goals – and comfort level. But remember that people really are curious. Since December 2005, for example, 3,100 readers have viewed my profile. Blogger displays this info at the bottom left of each profile page. Have a look at your own stats: chances are they might surprise you already.

Single author versus group submissions

You can share the risks, burdens and excitement by co-authoring. Many blogs, like the venerable BoingBoing, rely on a handful of posters, rather than a single voice. The advantages are obvious: more entries, more often and from more perspectives ... not to mention the camaraderie of a shared project. But that breadth can also dissolve the focus of a site, unless an "editor" figure runs herd over the bloggers. Posts can ramble off topic or vary wildly in tone, giving a ragged impression. As one blogger commented: "it can all go Lord of the Flies very quickly."

Make a strategic decision. Road Remedies, an author-promotion platform, is naturally a one-woman show. Mike co-chairs the class blog, so we can all plunder his tech mojo. Sites such as the Travelling Mammas have a select number of writers, each with a nuanced persona. Others like Gizmodo have a larger cast of characters, detailed in a hierarchy similar to a magazine or newspaper's masthead (black background sidebar on the left, listing the various editors, reporters, etc.). The Huffington Post has hundreds – including founder Arianna, singer Barbra Streisand and comedian Bill Maher – but hasn't yet found a way of paying them...

To add comrades in Blogger, go to Settings --> Permissions --> then Blog Authors (up to 100 potentially). Below this, you'll see the Blog Readers section. The radio dial buttons there control privacy.

More than the sound of one hand clapping

No device is more powerful in gaining – and maintaining – an audience than the comment fields: yours and others. People like to be heard and acknowledged. Engaging that spirit of conversation elsewhere brings readers home, via profile links and URLs. And it encourages those on your site

When a reader leaves a message on your site, respond to it promptly. A good tool here is the alert function: Blogger can issue an email for each new piece of feedback. Go to Settings --> Comments --> Comment notification email at the bottom. This page also controls who can sound off and how the comments appear (full page, pop up, embedded below post). Here too are the radio buttons for backlinks, which show other webpages linking to your post. This promotes "discussions" between blogs – a fine functionality. Bloggers with older or custom templates should look here for the install code.

Comment moderation allows you to vet reader missives before they go live. This permits an author to filter out spam, trolls and sulky exes. But it slows down the dialogue considerably, so I keep this function turned off and rely on word verification – a type of CAPTCHA – to fight spambots (this requires readers to retype distorted text before posting a comment: only humans can manage this, not automated systems).

In several years of blogging, I've only deleted a dozen or so comments, so this system suits my needs. Then again, I don't court controversy. My buddy Candace Dempsey – another Writers.com instructor – landed a book deal: Murder in Italy: The Shocking Slaying of a British Student, the Accused American Girl, and an International Scandal. Her blog coverage of the tabloid-headliner case led to death threats and entire other blogs devoted to flaming Candace. After months struggling to moderate the tempest in a teapot – almost a full-time job – she often simply turned the comments off, so she could concentrate on writing. But, happy news: a Penguin imprint will publish the nonfiction book in late April, 2010!

Nightmares like that aside, comments generally build community in a more positive fashion. Remember to leave your calling card in return with observations on others' sites. Most allow you to post a URL, which can draw traffic to your blog. The best "bait" is generally a two-to-three line note offering some relevant insight, anecdote or even a question. While everyone appreciates fan mail, it's less likely to lure fresh eyes.

Week six we'll explore more traffic generating and multimedia tricks, including links (internal and external); page rankings; search engine optimization; keywords; stunts; Technorati and other portals; blog review sites; syndication (including RSS feeds); Twitter; social networking; developing a presence in the blogosphere.

Building community – or not...

The comment field makes a blog a two-way conversation, turning it from a collection of pages into a community. You present your point of view, and people comment on it. Often this garners feedback, new ideas and constructive criticism. Other times it turns into a spigot for spam. If your blog is private or not that popular, you can probably get away without restrictions on comments. But the evil spam robots will eventually find you (often before your real audience does) and start posting comments like "Great post! Love your blog! Buy Viagra here!"

Actually, you'll be lucky if the spelling and grammar are that good...

A few options exist:

1. Turn off comments. That may be a bit extreme, but if you don't have the time to react to comments on your blog, it won't be much of a two-way conversation anyhow.
2. Limit comments to registered users. This doesn't really stop the spammers as they have accounts on all the major blogging engines. As fast as those accounts get deleted, they make a new ones. Not recommended without one of the following options.
3. Require a CAPTCHA, a Completely Automated Public Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. This is the least intrusive, most spam-deterring method available and I highly recommend it for any public blog. A CAPTCHA presents a distorted picture of several letters to the user and requires them to be identified before the comment is accepted. More complicated versions, such as reCAPTCHA, use the human interaction to do cool things like converting ancient New York Times print articles into digital format.
4. Require comment moderation. This is the best option for very popular public blogs. While the Viagra spam-bots will be deterred by a CAPTCHA, some humans are nearly as hideous. These "trolls" live to stir the pot with inflammatory or derogatory comments. Perhaps that's the kind of conversation your blog was meant to have. If not, one or more administrators will be required to approve comments before they appear on the site.

All of these options can be set by following the "Dashboard" link, followed by "Settings," then "Comments". The CAPTCHA settings is called "Show word verification for comments" on that screen. Until your blog gets so popular that your Inbox is flooded every morning, it's a good idea to add your email address to the "Comment Notification Email" box so you know when the world talks to you.

Exposure – yours, interviewees' and readers'

Earlier, we touched upon the risks and rewards of publicly "owning" your site. As you develop a blog – and perhaps even a blogger persona – consider the cumulative effect of all those small details. "A good rule of thumb: if you wouldn't share the info on your blog with a strange guy on a dark street, don't post it for the public," advises the Internet Safety Expert Linda Criddle, author of Look Both Ways. "Think of each piece of information as a drop of water in a bucket. In the past, there was no bucket to store the information and though information was shared, it vanished from memory quickly. Online, however, it collects one drop at a time in a place where it can be recalled and you become more discoverable as the bucket fills." "Talk to your family and friends about the kinds of information you’re willing make public and what you’d rather keep private.

Everyone you interact with online needs to respect your safety boundaries, and you need to respect theirs. Posting information about others is not okay—in comments, photos, and so on—unless they agree to share that information. And not only should you ask permission, but you should also make it clear who can see your site. In the case of minors, you might need to get their parents’ permission as well."

The consequences can be far-reaching, as Heather B. Armstrong can attest. Her site's name inspired a new word, "dooced," meaning to be sacked for indiscreet web chatter. And some bloggers don't even make it to the employment starting blocks, it emerges. A 2008 Career Builder survey reveals that one-in-five employers use blogs and social networking sites to do research on their job applicants. One-third of those hiring managers have found content that caused them to dismiss the candidates from consideration. The two top areas of concern: info about drinking or illegal drugs, and provocative or inappropriate photographs. Poor communication skills followed. So spellcheck, spellcheck, spellcheck! Here's a quickie solution to block Google from archiving your blog. Insert this code into the

<head>of your blog:
<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">

If you'd like to block other search engines from saving your pages try this one:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="PRAGMA" CONTENT="NO-CACHE">

To stop it from indexing your blog altogether, insert this code as well:

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow">

Who was that masked blogger?

As we discussed on the class forum, a blog can be private (invite-only) or public (indexed by Google and other search engines).

Even folks who blog for glory and riches often maintain a hidden test site. A scratch pad lets you tinker and perfect projects before launching 'em. In Blogger, go to Settings>Permissions>Blog Readers. Click the radio button "only people I choose". Then include your list of emails, separated by commas.

Many blogs, like Boing Boing, cram a lot of cooks into the kitchen (yet somehow serve great broth). Should you decide upon a group-authored site, head to that same Settings>Permissions page. Enter up to 100 collaborators' email addresses into the top Blog Authors panel. (See Mike's Tips & Tricks: Blogger Settings Explained for a wild romp through the entire dashboard panel. We'll discuss further options in depth as they arise.)

Bios: should you claim that blog?

Blogs are a more intimate, subjective media experience than traditional journalism. Readers are curious who's speaking – and often why. Even if you decide to conceal your real identity like Superman, give some context in the "About This Site" section. Possible elements to include:

• Name or nome de plume
• Location or at least region
• Expertise (if applicable)
• Motivation

Some folks link the visible text to their Blogger profiles – as Mike and I have done here – which can contain vast amounts of info, including favorite books, movies, astrological sign, age, etc. Ours are both pretty minimal, because we maintain personal websites. But fleshed-out ones can help readers connect.

I would recommend a picture of some sorts, as these icons (aka "avatars") appear on comments threads. Visually, they make the conversation easier to follow, even when someone's just represented by a snapshot of a poodle or a snowflake.

Many bloggers prefer a nome de plume, like Mimi Smartypants, another superstar who made the leap from pixels to print. Being anonymous can permit more frank chat, certainly … but are you prepared to be outed? Employers now tap into MySpace profiles, for example, and already applicants have lost job offers to that duct-tape fetish or underage drunken snapshot.

(Mimi, in fact, was quasi-exposed when she agreed to a New York Times interview under her real name. But she continues to write under her "handle" – a decision perhaps influenced by security for her young daughter Nora. As you can see from this photo, which ran on Road Remedies, I am conservative about kid pix, though not a parent. I'd lucked into a stunning shot of the gorilla girl sans mask and in panda ears. But I censored it for her safety and privacy. We'll talk more about these issues in week eight.)

Heather B. Armstrong is the poster-child of big-mouth bloggers. She explains: "I started this website in February 2001. A year later I was fired from my job for this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the Internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET If you are the boss, however, you should be aware that when you order Prada online and then talk about it out loud that you are making it very hard for those around you to take you seriously."

Her site's name even inspired a new word, "dooced," meaning to be sacked for indiscreet web chatter.

Many professional authors rely on blogs as a branding tool – bait for editors and readers: an argument for transparency. Beth Whitman, the Wanderlust and Lipstick diva, is a good example of this. Her lovely face beams out at readers from the masthead. In her travel genre – like many others – personality sells, from Arthur Frommer to Bill Bryson. And that's why many readers are blogsurfing in the first place: they crave a more intimate, opinionated perspective. So think about how to create an authentic blogging persona, whether or not you slap your "meatspace street name" on it...

I'll sign off with a screed by cyber-pioneer Cameron Barrett, master and commander of Camworld, one of the longest-running blogs to date. In 1999, he declared the genre needed: "Less senseless hype. Less gratuitous linking. Less focus on the sensationalistic journalism that's crowding our brains and turning them into mush. More focus on the truly exceptional content out there on the web that only a few of us manage to dig up. More personal essays. More professional essays. And yes, even the occasional rant.

"You see, CamWorld is about me. It's about who I am, what I know, and what I think. And it's about my place in the New Media society. CamWorld is a peek into the subconsciousness that makes me tick. It's not about finding the most links, the fastest, automated archiving, or searchable personal websites. It's about educating those who have come to know me … about the increasingly complex world we live in, both online and off."