A Personal Blog
Blogging
Bringing the SOCIAL Back to Social Media: BlogWorld
Oct 7th
Reposted from the BlogWorld blog:
Too often, Social Media is about the MEDIA: spreading the word, getting more followers, making money, growing your traffic, blah, blah, blah, #facepalm… Every once in awhile, though, it’s nice to do the SOCIAL side of the equation, which is what I’m proposing today!
This is the 4th BlogWorld I’ve been to. Each time there are lots of new faces, and everytime they’re just a bit timid, bit scared, bit confused or just a bit… special (sorry @tedmurphy). And while I try my best to show people where session rooms are, to recommend hotels and find cheaper airfare, to publish lists of parties and to hand out my phone number should people need help (416 726 3602 by the way), as Darkwing Duck said: I am the terror that flaps in the night, I am the batteries that are not included.
So, let’s scale this helping people thing. Lots of BWE veterans like to help, and even if you’re new you probably know more than you think you do, so let’s use and follow a hashtag on Twitter: #bwehelps. If you have a question, ask it of the hashtag and I will be checking it. Who else will be checking it? Well if you have more than just your mom following you on Twitter (to be fair, my mom stopped following me years ago!) then you should be. Follow it on your mobile and Twitter client. Give back. Be helpful. Smile!
Let’s be a community. Let’s help. Let’s have some fun. No blogger left behind!
Photo by nicht mehr hier @Flickr
11 Hawt WordPress Plugins I've Fallen In Love With
Aug 21st
As part of building out that whole agency thing, I’ve had to do some digging for clients on interesting WordPress plugins. In doing that I’ve found a bunch of interesting plugins that I had never used before, so here are 11 of the best (my girlfriend asked “why 11″, and I answered “cause it’s better than 10″… yeah, I iz wittay).
- Featured Content Gallery: If you’re not familiar with it, it’s what sites like b5′s Bizzia use to do the whole content rotator thing. It can be a touch cumbersome if you don’t already have a “Featured” category setup, but not overly so. Just read the setup instructions one.at.a.time.
- Preview Theme: If you’re ever wanting to edit one theme while having another viewable to the public, this is perfect. Not a huge innovation, as there are other ways to do this, but for idjuts like me it’s just dead simplestest!
- Quick Subscribe: There are probably more fully featured, better ways of doing this, but for an easy, “in WordPress” way to alert readers to new posts this one’s just dead easy. If you have a better one, let me know in the comments!
- Shockingly Simple Favicon: Favicons in WP can sometimes be a pain. This removes that pain.
- Thank Me Later: One of the best tools to increase readers coming back is to email them a thank you for leaving a comment. Problem being that you either have to make it automated (and look like an automated-tool-using-idiot when they get a “personal” email 1 second after commenting) or slog through them one at a time. Enter Thank Me Later, which has a random delay on it, and a bunch of other settings, to make the email (and its timing) more personal and less automated… while still letting you be an automated-tool-using-douchebag ;-)
- Tweetmeme: One of my favourite plugins of all time, Tweetmeme lets users RT posts from within your post, and then tracks those RTs. If only this integrated into the next plugin I’d be in heaven…
- Twitter Blog: I actually went looking for something like this, and this is the best I could find. If there’s something better out there, let me know. But basically what this does is tweets out when you post (duh), but then tracks replies to those tweets and then integrates them (if you’re lucky/good) into the comment stream for your blog. More comments, more interaction, more juicyness! Again, there’s probably something better out there (ideally that used bit.ly and others’ reverse-APIs to actually track ALL responses… and REALLY ideally integrated into tweetmeme… but yeah, this is hawt)
- Wordbook: Updates your Facebook wall/news feed/etc when you blog. Tends to result in, well, more traffic.
- wp-AuthorComment: Lets you style comments by the blog’s author differently. So you could change colours, indentation, background, whatever. Dead simple, but very cool.
- WP Greet Box: Okay, I’ll straight up say this plugin is a bit overkill in how many services it lists, but anyways… Basically it looks at a user’s referrer, and then displays a custom message, with a pretty graphic, based on where they’re coming from. It’ll also do more advanced things for search engines like show related content. Someone comes from Twitter? Encourage them to subscribe to your Twitter feed. From Digg? To Friend you. From Fox News? To get a clue. Setup’s easy, but having to change the default message that encourages each site’s users to “subscribe to my feed” is a bit tiresome.
- Youtube Profile Field: Again, there are probably better plugins for this, but this allows you to integrate with your youtube account, have shortcodes for most recent videos or a video feed (for insertion in a page), etc. It’s a touch clunky around setup, but once it’s working you can just leave it be.
So there you have it. When my girlfriend saw the title of this post she took exception to me saying I fell in love with plugins. I had to reassure her that if she was a WordPress plugin I’d have a list of 12 plugins. Her response? “You’d only need 1 of them to make you happy”. Rowr.
If you have better suggestions for any of these features, or cool plugins “outside the norm” you think I should try with clients, let me know :) I’ll happily beta test hawt new features. I did the same for the “hawt even in beta” GravityForms!
Handing Over the Reins at b5media (Or: A Year of Transition)
Jul 27th
At the beginning of this year (literally, the 4th of January), I took nearly 2 weeks off work from b5media, the company I’ve been lucky enough to serve as CEO for the last 3 ish years (the original year or so was as a group of founders). I didn’t make it public, I told the management team ahead of time and I went totally offline for roughly 10 days.
I did it because I was tired, burnt out and recognized that my life wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I was working too much, unhappy at home, unhappy at work and just felt completely blah. Basically I did it because a friend asked me what I wanted my life to be… It was then that I realized not only was I unhappy, but that I had no idea what I wanted my life to be.
Over the course of my time off, I realized a bunch of things, but the relevant one for today was that I was no longer happy, passionate or energized in my work. This wasn’t b5′s fault, or anyone’s fault really. It was really just that I’m a builder and a fixer, and b5 had moved beyond the point of its life where it needed that. Sad? Yes. Tragic? No. In some ways I always knew the day would come where I’d have to step aside and hire my replacement, so while this was a bit of a shock, it wasn’t one of those “zomg I can’t believe this is happening” shocks, it was more of a “wow, huh, okay then…” type of shock ;-)
So… What’s Up?
Over the last 6 months I’ve made a bunch of life changes outside of work to find a bit more happiness, but today marks the culmination of the work-related changes for this current season of my life. As of today, I am stepping aside as CEO of b5media, and we are bringing on Elaine Kunda as the new CEO. I say “we” because I’m still a board member, still a shareholder, still a founder and still a huge, huge b5media fan. And I’ll remain available to b5, it’s employees, Elaine, our bloggers and our investors because I flat out love the company, team and bloggers. This ain’t me abandoning ship, it’s me handing over the reins to someone who can take things to the next level (which is actually pretty darn exciting!).
Over the last 3 years, I helped turn b5 from an idea into a reality; from a loose gaggle of folk into a real business; helped to raise millions and millions of dollars; helped establish blogging as a real industry and helped to hire the absolute best team possible to rawk this puppy for all its worth. The journey was incredible, scary, fun-filled, sad and totally, totally worth it.
I want to be clear that this is a personal decision. There are seasons of every entrepreneurs life where you work your 80-100 hour weeks and you thrive. Then there are seasons where you need to breathe for a change, damnit. And this, for me, is the latter season. I’ll still work my ass off, but I’ll do it in a more balanced way. I’ll exercise more, spend more time with my girlfriend, spend more time with my boys, maybe even take up (or renew) some hobbies. I’ll probably start to play drums again, spend more time meditating and praying and generally remember what it is that makes me “me”. I’ll probably play with some startup ideas, help some younger companies and CEOs out and I’ll take on some consulting work (more on that later) so that I can pour everything I know and can do into a project for 2-3 months and then take a break if necessary instead of going so hard and strong that I literally collapse in exhaustion for 3-4 days.
Whatchoo Talkin’ ‘Bout Willis?
For those who love to attempt to read between the lines let me save you the trouble: yes this is my choice, no I’m not being kicked out, yes b5 is doing incredibly well and yes the team is absolutely going to kick ass. While sometimes CEOs leaving reflects on the CEO or on the company, in this case it reflects on one thing and one thing only: I need a bit more balance in my life, and I need to find my flow again.
I want to publicly say how very proud and honoured I am to have worked with such an amazing group of employees, bloggers, advisors and VCs. Really, I (and b5) wouldn’t be where we are without you guys and your efforts, passion or energy. b5 has become more than I ever dreamed it would be, and while I’ve worked my ass off, so have all of you guys and you all deserve a huge round of applause and at least a dozen beers (Elaine’d probably prefer if this was done after work hours, heh). This goes doubly for our bloggers who have stood with me, the other founders and the company through a myriad of changes, most of which have been good but some of which I know have been really, really hard. So thank you, thank you, thank you!
Back to the Future, Episode 4: Return of the Errrrngh
For those who are wondering what’s next, the answer is pretty simple: I have no idea. For the short term, I’ll be working with clients via a quasi-agency I setup to do that: netmobs (site is a work in progress, so be thou gentle), I’ll also be taking a bit of time off, I’ll be thinking about what really makes me happy, what really makes me passionate and how I can take what I’ve learned over the last half dozen startups I’ve done and both have fun with it and do something really interesting.
If you have any questions or whatever, you can reach me in any of the standard ways (email is jeremy@netmobs.com, cell is 416 726 3602, skype is jeremy_wright, Twitter is @jeremywright). Oh, and feel free to comment/ReTweet, whatever. It’s great news for b5, great news for me and my happiness and even great news for the industry that we continue to evolve, survive and thrive.
I guess that’s it. Another chapter from my 20s closes. Next, I think I’ll learn to skydive. Always wanted to do that! ;-) Or maybe I’ll take up ballet. I think the pink’d really bring out my eyes! :-D
Mark,
As Satish mentioned, we tried to interpret what was effectively amy’s “art” into something that was truly a “logo”. As Satish said, some of this involved “un-arty” things like simplifying the look and so forth, but we still tried to maintain her core concept. In doing this, we realized that there were effectively 2 paths we could take, and your confusion to the logo would tend to support that assumption:
Path 1: Go the “art” route, where everything’s very free-form and flowy. We believe this will potentially look more arty, but won’t necessarily result in more purchases in the long term … and may actually end up distracting from Amy’s products.
Path 2: We believe a cleaner, perhaps more retro look (per amy’s examples she sent) will be professional, fun and, most importantly, will let the work speak for itself instead of potentially distracting a user, reader or potential purchaser.
While we do recommend path 2, we are good with either path :)
As Satish mentioned, we’ll be bringing some design samples on Saturday, which we think she’ll actually really enjoy. We think it captures the spirit of what she’s trying to do, keeps things neat and tidy, but also lets the work stand on its own. But if Amy prefers to go down the “art” route, we can definitely make that happens as well.
Hope this helps, and all the best :)
Aaron Brazell: Eat, Drink, Be Merry. Carefully
Mar 14th
This post is part 7 of a series, head over to the SxSW Interactive Tips page to read all of the posts in this series (in intended order).
From Aaron Brazell, AKA Technosailor
In 2007, Jeremy and I attended our first SXSW Interactive conference. At the time, we were both new b5media employees – as in, the company had just been funded, I had quit my “day job”, and we were both on an intense amount of business travel. For me, it was the first time in my life that I had done so much travel. Seriously, I flew maybe once a year if that. It certainly was a new world, attending conferences, meeting people. And certainly, it was before I achieved coveted rockstar status.
At SXSW, everyone is encouraged to drink. Serious, no one except rookies go for sessions. Pfffftt. No, it’s all about getting your drink on and meeting people. In fact, it can be sad at times. Socially awkward geeks trying to be sociable – not all of them, of course. Many don’t try to be sociable at all. :)
In 2007, Jeremy and I spent a significant amount of time with another blogger who was in town, and who we both knew. We had never spent any time with the guy – in fact, we only met him in person for the first time.
We started our ad hoc pub crawl down 6th street, stopping in several bars that had live music, downing rum and cokes and Shiner Bocks all the way. It was clear, within a few hours of drinking (moderately, by my standards, but excessively by others), that our blogger friend was having a hard time holding his alcohol. Before too long, he was stumbling down the sidewalk and we had to shoulder him to make sure he didn’t faceplant on the sidewalk.
Good times.
We managed to get the guy into a rickshaw cab (common in those parts of Austin) and paid the cabbie $100 to get him back to his hotel. Of course, the hotel was only two blocks away so the cabbie made some nice coin.
The moral of the story is: Pace yourself when drinking. You really don’t have to be drunk to have a good time and you could end up getting sick, hurting yourself or feeling like an idiot the next morning.
Other than that, enjoy yourself at SXSW!
Aaron is the founder and lead editor of Technosailor.com. He is a business and social media consultant and loves to see people reach their potential through the use of social media. There is an overlap between useful social media and personal and corporate outreach and brand. His writing seeks to highlight those areas where the two overlap and eliminate the noise that is present in covering the news and buzz surrounding web startups and social media.
Aaron has been involved in the web since early 2000 and has most recently served as the Director of Technology for b5media, a blog network. His background is in technology – web development, scalability and WordPress development.
Eric Berto: SxSW Tips from a Geezer (Part 6)
Mar 13th
This post is part 6 of a series, head over to the SxSW Interactive Tips page to read all of the posts in this series (in intended order).
From Eric Berto AKA GeekGiant
Right now, a bunch of geeks are packing cords, cables and some extra socks before heading down to Austin for Geek Spring Break, also known as South by Southwest.
But one thing you can’t pack is a way to handle the overload of networking, parties, panels and new people you will encounter once you land. Sure, you can read about how to Hack SXSW or even an article to teach you how to network at SXSW, but you need to find out what will work best for you.
My advice is to treat it like summer camp. When we were kids, we went to summer camp to make new friends and learn stuff. But we didn’t have Twitter, iPhones or “tweetups.” Meet people new every day and cement those relationships while you’re out at night having a great time.
Smile and Say HiTreat every day at SXSW as a different adventure. Strive to meet new people each day. Spend the day learning about neat concepts and ideas. Spend the day walking the hallways of the convention center and smiling at people and saying hello. I have a natural advantage when it comes to meeting people since I’m of slightly above average height (OK, I’m 6’8″). So, when I walk down the hallway, people notice. For the rest of the world, a simple smile and hello go a long ways.
Take it OfflineUs über nerds are conditioned to shake hands, introduce ourselves and then ask what the other person’s Twitter handle is. Conversely, we have many relationships with avatars that become real at events such as SXSW. So, spend some time over morning coffee to have a chat with those contacts. Catch up and connect on a different level than a 140-character reply. Mornings are a great time for true, genuine networking. No loud music, smaller groups and fewer distractions. Capitalize on that focus to actually accomplish something.
Rinse, Lather RepeatLast year’s SXSW was my first. I found out I was going about three weeks before and had no clue what I was getting into. I essentially closed my eyes and started talking to people. But something I learned was that it was OK to start the cycle over each day. Make new friends every day. Attend a party with a different group of people each night. Buy somebody different a coffee every day. Real-world networking is a lot like the online social networks. You only get out of it what you put in.
So, what are you going to put into SXSW this year? What are you going to take away from it? What merit badges will you earn?
For the past few years, Eric has been guiding corporate communications and public relations for a publicly traded company. Eric has guided successful product launches, secured numerous speaking opportunities and created a blogging strategy that was named as one of Inside CRM’s top 25 corporate blogs.
Eric utilizes his background in journalism and sociology to bring a people-powered approach to community engagement. As an award-winning former journalist, he brings an honest and in-depth approach to Public Relations and marketing.
