June 2006 Archives

One of the most commonly asserted “truths” about corporate blogging, especially by senior executives like CEOs, is that you have to write all your posts all by yourself! We’re always on the lookout for blog dogma that we can help dispel, and the best tips can help make your blogging efforts easier.

So we looked with interest at the recent post by Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey. Mackey embodies the Whole Foods philosophy of open and timely communication by using his Movable Type-powered blog to help tell the company’s story from the inside out.

But take a closer look at his recent An Open Letter to Michael Pollan. The post itself is compelling, a stirring response to author Pollan’s recent blockbuster book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which has had the blogosphere buzzing for months with talk of food miles and corn syrup. More interesting from the perspective of business blogging best practices, though, is the sentences that precede the heart of the post:

I want to acknowledge that the following letter was not written by me alone but was a joint product of several people, including valuable contributions from Margaret Wittenberg, A.C. Gallo, Edmund Lamacchia, Jim Speirs, Kate Lowery and Anna Madrona. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Hey, what do you know? Busy CEOs don’t always have time to do all the homework and writing for a blog all by themselves. If you acknowledge the team that helps write a blog post, just like you’d acknowledge people who help do research for a presentation or a business meeting, it’s completely okay to have people contribute to a blog that’s “by” a CEO.

Here’s the key points, if you’ve decided to use a senior executive as the voice of one of your company’s blogs:

• It’s okay to update infrequently. Mackey only updates when he has something significant to say, and tools like email subscriptions or feeds make it easy for people to get the updates in a timely fashion.
• It’s okay to get help in writing a blog. Some executives aren’t natural writers/bloggers, and even the ones who are will have busy schedules that might preclude extensive research or copy editing. Just make it clear that there’s a team effort involved, and readers will be happy just to see you engaging in a dialogue.

Now, since our office is down the street from a Whole Foods Market, we’re hoping the next step is a blog for each of their locations. The question-and-answer board in the front of the stores are one of the best examples of community interaction of any retailer or food seller; They’re a natural next step for using blogs to connect with the Whole Foods community.

Okay, so we’ve been saying over and over that lots of companies are afraid of blogging, but they don’t need to be: It’s safe to get started!

But we should talk a little bit about why they’re afraid. The truth is, corporate communications are so controlled these days, even in the smallest companies, that making a mistake seems like the worst thing that can possibly happen.

Well, take it from us: A mistake ain’t the worst thing that can happen. We’ve made mistakes a bunch of times over the past few years that we’ve been talking to bloggers, but the only ones that have had a lasting impact were when we didn’t communicate enough. Blogging is all about iterating, and that doesn’t just go for your blog’s design or whether you accept comments — it goes for the content of your blog itself.

A Case Study

So, we’ll give you an example of how we recently screwed up while blogging. Egads! We posted something that wasn’t incorrect or misleading — it was worse. It was out of date. Bloggers love to get excited about flashy new stuff, and we posted old news, potentially looking silly in the process. And then, we undid the mistake by removing the post, without even being transparent about it. We even edit our posts. Shocking.

Here’s how it happened, in case you’d like to make a blogging mistake yourself. It turns out that the world doesn’t end if you do.

1. A simple request. We have a bunch of internal blogs that we use for project tracking and internal conversations, just like you’d expect. One of our talented and attractive engineers asked if anyone had a copy of Boing Boing’s five year archive of posts, wanting to use the data file for some tests.
2. A simple misunderstanding. Thinking one of our favorite blogs was celebrating a major milestone, I figured I’d give the Boing Boing team a shout-out on the Movable Type News blog and show them some love. We’re all about blogging, so the post was whipped together and live just a short while later. There was some internal back-and-forth about the tone of the post (“Is this too smart-ass?” “No, people already know we’re sarcastic.” “Are you being sarcastic?”) and then it was on our site.
3. A mistake is spotted. The same talented and attractive engineer pointed out that he was just making a request, and that the post in question was actually from early last year. D’oh! We simply forgot to look at the date of the linked post. So we all took a minute to slap our foreheads. In our haste to celebrate the Boing Boing crew, we’d let our enthusiasm outstrip our literacy skills.
4. We took down the post! Some people are going to complain about this, but the post just seemed silly being so out of date and inappropriate. It was a Friday afternoon, most bloggers aren’t paying super close attention at that point. So we just unpublished the post. No redaction, no big deal. It just went away. And nobody complained.. If you know bloggers, you know the high-profile ones love to complain. But sometimes they have better things to do on a Friday night than fuss about your blog post disappearing.

Now, we’re not advocating this course of action for everyone. Usually it’s more appropriate to update a post with additional information than to remove it. And you certainly always want to review your blog posts for factual accuracy before you publish them. But sometimes mistakes happen, and it’s not a giant problem, it’s just a silly slip-up.

The truth is, talking to an audience is hard. Just like public speaking in front of a crowd, the idea of making a mistake in front of the whole Internet can be intimidating. If you’re rushed for time, distracted, or stressed, you can easily end up with a post that’s confusing, or just clunky. But the stakes aren’t that high: You can always just post again and make your lame post scroll down the page.

Consider this not so much a mea culpa as a get-out-of-blog-jail-free card. You’re entitled to one free mistake every once in a while on your blog. We’ll try to keep ours to a minimum, but you can feel free to use us as an example if somebody tries to tell you bloggers are an unforgiving bunch.

Good news! The latest version of Movable Type is now available as a completely free beta for you to try out. There's two big things to keep in mind:

• It's a beta! In the old-fashioned sense. (That means don't run it on production data.)

• We're doing a structured beta test, with a schedule for releases. So we'll tell you when there's enough new stuff to install a new version.

The defined schedule for the beta test is kind of an experiment, so that you can update any time you want with regular new builds available for you to try out. But we'll also define checkpoints where you can know exactly what's been fixed and how close we are to a final release.

The goal, as always, is to have the highest quality release possible. Since Movable Type 3.2 came out in August of last year, we haven't had to do a version .01 bug fix release at all, because you've told us you hate the bother of getting a little point upgrade every couple weeks. So start hammering away on the new build, and start filing those bugs!

What's New? Should I check this out?

If you're a plugin developer, manage a number of blogs, work as a professional blog consultant, or are responsible for a business deployment of blogs, get the beta now. If you're just into blogging technology in general, the new version is worth a look and is solid enough to test out. If you just want to wait to try out all the tasty new stuff without worrying about rough edges, don't jump yet -- we'll have a version for you soon.

And as for features, we've started outlining some highlights on the Professional Network blog already. We've got better management of blogs through a unique new Activity Feed -- keep track of everything on your blog in one place. Tags! Cool new Transformer plugins make it easy to modify any part of Movable Type's interface, so you can remix MT to personalize it just the way you like. Better spam protection. Tons of features for free for plugin developers. It's easier than ever to create posts and edit them. Smarter Security. And all of this with fifty fewer settings to keep track of -- all the power, none of the hassle.

Go get it

Some of the best surprises in Movable Type 3.3 are yet to come, but if you're curious, try it out. We'll be talking more about the new version on the spanking-new Movable Type 3.3 Beta Blog, and we can't wait to hear what you think. Here are some important posts that you should check out:

• The Movable Type 3.3 beta begins...
• Important known issues with Beta-1
• Movable Type 3.3b1 release notes

We know the entire Movable Type community is hungry for more information from us, and we hear you loud and clear that you want to know about our commitment and investment to the platform. As we start this new beta, here's the bottom line: Movable Type 3.3 is the first step to showing you just how much we appreciate your contributions to making Movable Type the success that it is. And we'll be opening up even more about how we'll be building on that success over the weeks to come.

After our last Six Apart Business Blogging Seminar, we said all the feedback we collected was positive. We’re thrilled to report that last week’s event in New York City was an even bigger success. More attendees, more useful information and case studies covered, and equally positive feedback from those present is a great way to show that our entire community is really helping move business blogging forward.

Thanks again to Attensa for their participation and sponsorship of the event. And we were glad to have Professional Network members D.L. Byron of Textura Design and David Jacobs of Apperceptive, both of whom offered the great insights into the practical parts of deploying blogs in a corporation.

One of the most-requested resources which we didn’t have present in the information packets was a list of local Professional Network members who attended the event and were available to help the companies present make the most of blogs. So, we’re glad to share the 82kb PDF file listing profiles of Professional Network members who were there to help.

It’s not too late to attend one of our seminars — the Six Apart Business Blogging Seminar Registration form for our Los Angeles event is still open. Both our San Francisco and New York events filled to capacity, so register soon. You’ll be present for a good mix of topics: A broad overview of the ways your company can use blogs, insight into managing information overflow in an age of short attention spans, and then lots of real, practical experience from companies of all sizes that have deployed blogs.

Thanks again to everyone who joined us in New York, and we’ll see you in Los Angeles!