John’s posterous

Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared

Lately I’ve been seeing more speakers hop up on stage at a conference and say “I didn’t prepare anything so I’m just gonna wing it.” Or they’ll let you know that they’re “Sorry about the quality of the slides – I put them together quickly on the flight over here this morning.”

I’m all for winging it, but when you say “I’m not really prepared” in front of an audience you’re showing them the ultimate disrespect.

People take days off of work, spend hundreds on a conference ticket, travel for thousands of miles, and pay hefty rates for flights and hotels to come hear you speak, and you tell them you didn’t have time to prepare a talk? What’s cool about that? The audience is busy too, but they found time to come to the conference. You can’t find time to properly prepare a presentation for them?

Now… Some of these unprepared talks have been wonderful. The spontaneity is great, and if a speaker knows their topic they don’t really have to prepare in the traditional sense. So it’s not the quality of the talks, it’s the qualifier. If you aren’t prepared, or if you hastily put together your presentation, just don’t tell the audience. Just perform at your best and keep the pity and embarrassment to yourself.

The Rise of the Casual Christian Tribe

Religious researcher George Barna has named a new Tribe on the religious spectrum, the Casual Christian. Barna writes,  

“Casual Christianity is faith in moderation. It allows them to feel religious without having to prioritize their faith. Christianity is a low-risk, predictable proposition for this tribe, providing a faith perspective that is not demanding. A Casual Christian can be all the things that they esteem: a nice human being, a family person, religious, an exemplary citizen, a reliable employee – and never have to publicly defend or represent difficult moral or social positions or even lose much sleep over their private choices as long as they mean well and generally do their best. From their perspective, their brand of faith practice is genuine, realistic and practical. To them, Casual Christianity is the best of all worlds; it encourages them to be a better person than if they had been irreligious, yet it is not a faith into which they feel compelled to heavily invest themselves.”

Read Full article here

Higher Threshold for Chaos

When we’re entering into a new season, I always challenge our leaders to have a higher threshold for chaos.

Systems tend to produce predictable outcomes. When we are innovating and growing, we never know what the outcome will be.

Many “great” ideas bomb. Then God seems to bless some average ideas in a big way.

While we are willing to allow things to get a little messy, we also work hard to make sure we are students.

• What is God showing us?
• What did we learn from the last failure?
• What success is hidden in the last failure?

Our church is currently moving into a season of discovery. Once we discern what God wants us to know, we’ll recruit the right people. Then we’ll build systems and enjoy the ride—until God leads us into a learning and chaotic period again.

Personally, these are my favorite times!

Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences

April 9th, 2007 | Posted in Blogging 384 Comments »

2. Encourage comments.

Allow comments, and respond to comments. Blogs are dialogues, not monologues. If you turn commenting off, you lose out on the Web 2.0 aspects of your blog. Comments enrich your thoughts and take you to a higher level of analysis. You benefit from the additions, corrections, tips, and other feedback from readers. To encourage comments, don’t require sign in. Activate Akismet and this math plugin to avoid spam. Add the Subscribe to Commentsplugin so users can be aware of follow-up comments. When people comment, respond to their comments, and keep the dialogue going because this is what Web 2.0 is all about: connecting users to each other and sharing information.

3. Make it easy to subscribe.

Make it easy to subscribe to your feed by placing an orange RSS button in a highly visible location. Route your feed through Feedburner so you can keep track of your subscribers. You can also offer an e-mail subscription using FeedBurner. In the example below, subscription information is prominently displayed in the upper-right corner.

4. Include an About page.

Include an about page to let people know more about you. Are you a technical writer based in Seoul, a developer working at Microsoft, a Russian open-source business mogul? Your blog reveals your personal views, so introduce yourself to your readers. Don’t blog anonymously. You can include a photo in your About page — some think it makes you more real to your readers. Include some basic facts, such as where you live, your job title, your interests, and other biographical information. You may want to omit the company you work for, if content on your blog inappropriately reveals company information.

5. Present your ideas visually.

In this culture of scanning and clicking, long blocks of text aren’t read. Break up your text with visuals—graphs, charts, photos, blockquotes, and videos. Annotate the images to reinforce your meaning. Creating Passionate Users always reinforces its message with visuals. If you get photos from other blogs or from Flickr, include a link back to the source. Most popular blogs are visually rich.

6. Keep posts short and to the point.

Keep the text in bite-sized chunks that readers can quickly consume — brevity forces you to get the point quickly. A good post can be 1-2 paragraphs long. Even if your posts are lengthy (like this one), remove all filler and communicate your message concisely. You can also chunk up long posts into several small posts, or use subheadings.

7. Use subheadings for long posts.

If you do post long, use subheadings to break up the text. Copyblogger is a great example to follow. Also use the “Read more” tag so users can scan down the front page without having to scroll eternally. In the example below, Copyblogger breaks up his lists with subheadings and keeps his paragraphs short.

8. Link abundantly.

Links increase readership and let others know you’re writing about them. Others can see incoming links in their blogs. Links also enable trackbacks and pingbacks, allowing your content to appear in the comments section of other posts. Blogs are collaborative, linked conversations. The example below shows a trackback. I linked to another blog in my post, and that link appears as an excerpt in the comments section of the original post. The Kramer pluginis helpful for automating trackbacks, and you can use it to show inbound links in the sidebar of your blog. Links also boost your Google rankings, converting your blog into a powerful search engine optimization tool.

9. Make headlines descriptive.

Avoid vagueness and ambiguity in headlines. Readers scan down a list of titles in a feed, so the article title is telling of whether they’ll read the post. With millions of blogs and new content daily, readers have to skim, scan, and jump around just to keep up. Make it easy by clearly describing your post’s content in the headlines. Copyblogger has some excellent advice for crafting headlines. You can also entice readers with some copywriting techniques, such as asking interesting questions, making lists, stating paradoxes or contradictions, or just being exuberant.

10. Archive by topic.

Archive your posts by topic rather than date. (Date archives may be appropriate for blogs that are personal journals only, rather than topic-driven blogs. For topic-driven blogs, date archives mean little to readers.) About a dozen categories is a good number. You may not know all your categories until you’ve been blogging a while. Along with the archives, include a search feature.

11. Include a list of related posts beneath each post.

Many users find your site by searching for specific information. When readers find your post, why not point them to other posts on your site with similar information? Doing so can increase the page views per reader. In WordPress, you can automatically create a Related Posts section based on matching keywords with the Related Entries plugin. If you want more control (with more effort), use Darren’s Related Posts plugin. You type keywords in the Custom Fields section of a post, and posts that match the keywords are connected as related.

12. Allow users to contact you offline.

Readers may want to contact you offline with a question or comment — perhaps to propose a book deal or to extend an invitation to speak at a conference. You will be perceived as an expert on your topic (the go-to-guy for that topic), and the user’s question may not be related to the comments section of your latest posts. If you make your contact info readily apparent, users can reach you. You can use a contact form plugin (Contact III) or simply make your email address available. In the image below, an editor from Wiley posts — with embarrassment — an invitation for a book deal within the comments.

13. Present your real viewpoint.

“Be yourself and speak your mind,” John Chow says. Readers enjoy the personal aspects of a blog. If you never voice your opinion, your blog loses appeal. You don’t have to reveal your personal life, but a glimpse here and there is appropriate and provides human appeal. In the following screen, the writer expresses her frustration with health insurance limitations. You can rant and still keep it professional (as she does).

14. Write for your future employer.

A blog can be a dangerous tool, and you should know that your future employer, and possibly your current employer, will read it. Avoid posting anything confidential, gossipy, overly-emotional, rude, company-related, or otherwise self-damaging and unprofessional. A blog can be both an asset and liability depending on the information you post. There are at least a dozen stories of employees fired for blogging. Respect your company’s information restrictions, and don’t jeopardize future employment opportunities.

15. Include a Top Posts section.

You can use the WP-PostViews plugin plugin to automate a Most Viewed posts section, or you can create your own list of classic posts. Once your classic posts leave the home page, they’re often buried in your site. Like displaying trophies on a mantle, showcasing your classic posts allows more readers to find and enjoy them.

16. Provide an index.

Much of your site’s traffic comes from search engines. And many readers are first-timers on your site. Providing an index readers can quickly scan (such as with this site map index plugin) is an excellent way to let users skim your entire post collection. An index may increase the page views per visitor. It also shows you just what you’ve written. It’s like a Table of Contents for your site.

17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog’s title.

If your blog title doesn’t match the URL, it will be harder for users to remember the location of your site. It pays to use your own URL. Even if you just purchase a domain and point your hosted Wordpress.com blog to it, it looks more professional. Readers don’t always use RSS to read your blog’s content.

18. Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar.

A recent posts section in your sidebar provides an at-a-glance index for your latest posts. Especially if you write long posts, the recent posts section allows readers to see what you’ve been up to without scrolling down a lengthy page.

19. Reward commenters for commenting.

If you add the Show Top Commenters plugin, you can show the people who most frequently comment on your blog. This is a simple way to create your own community of readers with similar interests. You should read their blogs and comment on them as well. In this way your blog turns into more than just a one-person show: it becomes a virtual community.

20. Post often.

Posting regularly to your blog, such as daily, every few days, or every week, will change your experience of blogging. It will help you stay engaged with your topic. It will build a greater community of readers, who will post more comments. More comments will make blogging more rewarding and fun, not to mention more content rich for your site — leading to more page views from search engines.

However, if you have nothing to say, don’t blog fluff. That annoys readers even more than not posting and you will lose readers. But if you stay engaged with your topic — reading articles, books, other blogs; listening to podcasts and other recordings; attending events and seminars; and reflecting on the work you’re engaged in — you will have plenty to say each day. Whether you can carve out the time is another matter. The Technorati graph below shows that the most popular bloggers post about twice a day; the least popular post a dozen times a month.

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