Yearly Archives ⇒ 2009

Gossip and ownward spirals

November 3, 2009
· Martin Kelley

“Ethno­graph­ic Study Looks at Gos­sip in the Work­place” in the NYTimes:

The ear­li­er stud­ies found that once some­one made a negative
com­ment about a per­son who wasn’t there, the con­ver­sa­tion would get
mean­er unless some­one imme­di­ate­ly defend­ed the tar­get. Oth­er­wise, among
both adults and teenagers, the insults would keep com­ing because there
was so much social pres­sure to agree with the others.

Some inter­est­ing here. They say gos­sip usu­al­ly spi­rals down until
some­one inter­venes to defend or deflect. In one school, gos­sip set up
rival camps; teach­ers even­tu­al­ly left and stu­dent test scores fell. 

Friends
(and Chris­tians more gen­er­al­ly) are offi­cial­ly against gos­sip, though
of course we’re not immune and I’ve seen it act as almost a kind of
cur­ren­cy in some set­tings. But what are the clas­sic Quak­er tools for
deflect­ing this nat­ur­al human ten­den­cy and keep­ing our com­mu­ni­ties from
the down­ward spi­rals of camp building? 

The Limits of the Real Time Web

October 19, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Beth Kan­tor’s non­prof­it blog has an good arti­cle ask­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ties for real-time web inter­ac­tion and asks whether it’s pos­si­ble for the web to let some­one be in two places at the same time:

What inter­ests me is if this is the next evo­lu­tion of the social web -
what is the cul­ture shift that needs to hap­pen with­in a non­prof­it to
embrace it?  Of course, I want to also know what the val­ue or benefit
is to nonprofits?

For
me, the eye-opening moment of real-time col­lab­o­ra­tion came last win­ter when I was plan­ning a con­fer­ence with two friends. The three of us knew each oth­er pret­ty well and we had all
met each oth­er one-on-one but we had nev­er been in the same room togeth­er (this would­n’t hap­pen until the first evening of the con­fer­ence we were co-leading!). A month to go we sched­uled a con­fer­ence call to hash out details.

I got on Skype from my New Jer­sey home and called Robin on her Bay Area land­line and Wess on his cell­phone in Los Ange­les. The mixed tele­pho­ny was fun enough, but the
amaz­ing part came when we brought our com­put­ers into the con­ver­sa­tion. With­in min­utes we had opened up a shared Google Doc file and started
cut­ting and past­ing agen­da items. Some­one made a
ref­er­ence to a video, found it on Youtube and sent it to the oth­er two
by Twit­ter. Wess had a sec­ondary wiki going, we were book­mark­ing resources on Deli­cious and send­ing links by instant messenger.

This is qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent from the two-places-at-once scenario
that Beth Kan­tor was imag­in­ing because we were using real-time web tools to be more present with one
anoth­er. Our atten­tion was more focused on the work at hand.

I’m more skep­ti­cal about non­prof­its engag­ing in the live tweet­ing phe­nom­e­non – fast-pace, real-time updates on Twit­ter and oth­er “micro-blogging” ser­vices. These tend to be so
much use­less noise. How use­ful can we be if our atten­tion is so divided?

Last week a non­prof­it I fol­low used Twit­ter to cov­er a press
con­fer­ence. I’m sor­ry to say that the flood of tweets amount­ed to a lot of use­less triv­ia. So what that the
politi­cian you invit­ed actu­al­ly showed up in the room? That he actually
walked to the podi­um? That he actu­al­ly start­ed talk­ing? That he ticked
through your talk­ing points? These are all things we knew would happen
when the press con­fer­ence was announced. There was no NEWs in this and no take-away that could get me more involved.

What would have been useful
were links to back­ground issues, a five-things-you-do list, and a five
minute wrap-up video released with­in an hour of the even­t’s end. They
could have been coor­di­nat­ed in such a way to ramp up the real time buzz: if they had post­ed an Twit­ter update every half
hour or so w/one select­ed high­light and a link to a live Ustream​.tv link I
prob­a­bly would have checked it out. The dif­fer­ence is that I would have
cho­sen to have my work­day inter­rupt­ed by all of this extra activ­i­ty. In the online
econ­o­my, atten­tion is the cur­ren­cy and any unusu­al activ­i­ty is
a kind of mugging.

When I talk to clients, I invari­ably tell that “social media” is inher­ent­ly social, which is to say that it’s about peo­ple com­mu­ni­cat­ing. The excite­ment we bring to our every­day com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the judg­ment we show in shap­ing the mes­sage is much more impor­tant than the Web 2.0 tool de jour.

Flashbacks: Aging Youth, Vanity Googling, War Fatigue

September 18, 2009
· Martin Kelley

I occa­sion­al­ly go back to my blog­ging archives to pick out inter­est­ing arti­cles from one, five and ten years ago.

ONE YEAR AGO: The Not-Quite-So Young Quakers

It was five years ago this week that I sat down and wrote about a cool
new move­ment I had been read­ing about. It would have been Jor­dan Coop­er’s blog that turned me onto Robert E Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals, a look at gen­er­a­tional shifts among Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals. In ret­ro­spect, it’s fair to say that the Quak­erQuak­er com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered around this essay (here’s Robin M’s account of first read­ing it) and it’s follow-up We’re All Ranters Now (Wess talk­ing about it).

And yet? All of this is still a small demo­graph­ic scat­tered all around. If I want­ed to have a good two-hour caffeine-fueled bull ses­sion about the future of Friends at some local cof­feeshop this after­noon, I can’t think of any­one even vague­ly local who I could call up. I’m real­ly sad to say we’re still large­ly on our own. Accord­ing to actu­ar­i­al tables, I’ve recent­ly crossed my life’s halfway point and here I am still ref­er­enc­ing gen­er­a­tional change. How I wish I could hon­est­ly say that I could get involved with any com­mit­tee in my year­ly meet­ing and get to work on the issues raised in “Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and Younger Quak­ers”. Some­one recent­ly sent me an email thread between mem­bers of an out­reach com­mit­tee for anoth­er large East Coast year­ly meet­ing and they were debat­ing whether the inter­net was an appro­pri­ate place to do out­reach work – in 2008?!?

Pub­lished 9/14/2008.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Van­i­ty Googling of Causes

A poster to an obscure dis­cus­sion board recent­ly described typ­ing a par­tic­u­lar search phrase into Google and find­ing noth­ing but bad infor­ma­tion. Repro­duc­ing the search I deter­mined two things: 1) that my site topped the list and 2) that the results were actu­al­ly quite accu­rate. I’ve been hear­ing an increas­ing num­ber of sto­ries like this. “Cause Googling,” a vari­a­tion on “van­i­ty googling,” is sud­den­ly becom­ing quite pop­u­lar. But the inter­est­ing thing is that these new searchers don’t actu­al­ly seem curi­ous about the results. Has Google become our new proof text?

Pub­lished 10/2/2004 in The Quak­er Ranter.

TEN’ISH YEARS AGO: War Time Again
This piece is about the NATO bomb­ing cam­paign in Ser­bia (Wikipedia). It’s strange to see I was feel­ing war fatigue even before 9/11 and the “real” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

There’s a great dan­ger in all this. A dan­ger to the soul of Amer­i­ca. This is the fourth coun­try the U.S. has gone to war against in the last six months. War is becom­ing rou­tine. It is sand­wiched between the soap operas and the sit­coms, between the traf­fic and weath­er reports. Intense cruise mis­sile bom­bard­ments are car­ried out but have no effect on the psy­che or even imag­i­na­tion of the U.S. citizens.

It’s as if war itself has become anoth­er con­sumer good. Anoth­er event to be pack­aged for com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion. Giv­en a theme song. We’re at war with a coun­try we don’t know over a region we don’t real­ly care about. I’m not be face­tious, I’m sim­ply stat­ing a fact. The Unit­ed States can and should play an active peace­mak­ing role in the region, but only after we’ve done our home­work and have basic knowl­edge of the play­ers and sit­u­a­tion. Iso­la­tion­ism is dan­ger­ous, yes, but not near­ly as dan­ger­ous as the emerg­ing cul­ture of these dilet­tante made-for-TV wars.

Pub­lished March 25, 1999, Non​vi​o​lence​.org

FWCC Google Maps Mashup

September 12, 2009
· Martin Kelley

FWCC Google Maps MashupThe Friends World Com­mit­tee for Con­sul­ta­tion unites Quak­ers of all stripes togeth­er in joint projects and dia­log. It’s Amer­i­c­as office has the most com­plete list­ing of U.S. and Cana­di­an Friends Meet­ings and Church­es and now has a map to prove it!
This is a mash-up of the FWCC data­base with Google Maps.

Because of lim­i­ta­tions of how many data points Google can show the coun­tries have been divid­ed into regions. The main access page is a screen shot of a Google Map with a old fash­ioned imagemap over­lay that allows you to select the region you want to look at. Javascript good­ness shad­ows the cur­rent­ly select­ed region.

See it live: www​.fwc​camer​i​c​as​.org/​f​r​i​e​nds

Five Tips for Building a Self-Marketing Website

September 7, 2009
· Martin Kelley

A poten­tial client recent­ly came to me with an exist­ing site. It cer­tain­ly was slick: the home­page fea­tured a Flash ani­ma­tion of telegenic young pro­fes­sion­als culled from a stock pho­to ser­vice, psuedo-jazz tech­no music, and words sweep­ing in from all sides sell­ing you the com­pa­ny’s ser­vice. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the page had no use­ful con­tent, no call-to-action and no Google PageR­ank. It was an expen­sive design, but I did­n’t need to look at the track­ing stats to know no one came this page.

So you’re ready to ditch a non-performing site for one more dynam­ic, some­thing that will attract cus­tomers and inter­act with them. Here’s five tips for build­ing a self-marketing website!

One: Use­ful Con­tent for your Tar­get Audience
Give vis­i­tors a rea­son to come to the site. Text-rich, chang­ing con­tent is essen­tial. In prac­ti­cal­i­ty, this means installing a blog and writ­ing posts every few weeks. You’ll see mea­sures like “key­word rel­e­van­cy” increase instant­ly as excerpt­ed text shows up on the home­page. Add videos and pho­tos if your com­pa­ny or team has that exper­tise, but remem­ber: when it comes to search, text is king.

Two: Give away some­thing valu­able or useful
Many smart mar­ket­ing sites fea­ture some free give­away right on the home­page: a use­ful quiz, pro­fes­sion­al analy­sis, a PDF how-to guide­book. A builder I worked with went to the trou­ble of post­ing dozens of floor plans & pic­tures to their web­site and com­pil­ing them into a PDF book, which they gave away for free. The catch in all this? You have to give your con­tact infor­ma­tion to get it. Once the free mate­r­i­al has been com­piled, the site runs itself as a sales lead generator!

Three: Ask your­self the Three User Questions!
It’s amaz­ing how focused the mind gets when you actu­al­ly sit down to define goals. Just about every web­site can ben­e­fit from this three-step exercise:

  1. Who is the tar­get audience?
  2. What would draw them to the site? 
  3. What do we want to get from them?

Get a group togeth­er to through your web­site page by page these ques­tions. Brain­storm a list of changes you could make. You’ll want to end up with Defined Goals: what quan­tifi­able actions do you want vis­i­tors to take? It might well just be the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of a con­tact form.

Four: Test Test and Test Again
Many small busi­ness­es now get a lot of their cus­tomers from their web­sites. Your web­site is an essen­tial piece of your mar­ket­ing and pub­lic­i­ty and you need to be smart about it. Com­pile togeth­er your favorite site-improvement ideas and make up  alter­nate designs incor­po­rat­ing the changes. Then use a tool such as Google Web­site Opti­miz­er to put the alter­na­tives through their paces. Which one “con­verts” bet­ter, i.e., which design gets you high­er per­cent­ages in the Defined Goals you’ve set? Once you’ve fin­ished a test, move on to the next brain­storm­ing idea and imple­ment it. Always be testing!

An exten­sive series of tests of one site I worked on dou­bled it’s con­ver­sion rate: imag­ine your com­pa­ny dou­bling its inter­net sales? It is com­plete­ly worth spend­ing the time and effort to go through this process.

Five: Don’t Be Afraid to Get Pro­fes­sion­al Help
If you need to hire a pro­fes­sion­al to help you through this process you’ll almost cer­tain­ly get your mon­ey’s worth! A recent projects cost the cus­tomer $6000 but I was able to doc­u­ment sav­ings of $100,000 per year in his pub­lic­i­ty costs! See my piece “What to Look For in SEO Con­sul­tants” for my insider-advice to how to pick a hon­est and com­pe­tent pro­fes­sion­al web pub­lic­i­ty consultant.

Elisabeth Olver, Artist & Painter

September 4, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Elisabeth Olver ArtistElis­a­beth is a painter and artist who spe­cial­izes in orig­i­nal acrylic paint­ings and giclee prints of nature and South Jer­sey beach scenes. Her exist­ing site was attrac­tive, but it did­n’t have online order­ing and she was­n’t able to update it herself.

We put togeth­er a fea­tures list and then went through a round of con­cept screen­shots which I built in Adobe Fire­works and Pho­to­shop (you can see our work here!). Design in hand, I built a cus­tomized Mov­able Type site. A spe­cial­ized tem­plate allows her to enter infor­ma­tion about the each piece: medi­um, theme, price and the URL to it’s image (most of which are host­ed on Flickr). Mov­able Type pulls these togeth­er into var­i­ous cat­e­go­ry and indi­vid­ual art pages, with automatically-generated Pay­pal “Buy” but­tons for avail­able pieces. We stressed search-engine vis­i­bil­i­ty so there are many cat­e­gories and they all cross-link with each painting.

Vis­it: Elis­a­beth Olver

Hanging with the high schoolers

August 26, 2009
· Martin Kelley

At the PYM High School Friends retreat, Fall 2009Had a good time with Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing high school Friends yes­ter­day, two mini-session on the tes­ti­monies in the mid­dle of their end-of-summer gath­er­ing. The sec­ond ses­sion was an attempt at a write-your-own tes­ti­monies exer­cise, fueled by my testimonies-as-wiki idea and ground­ed by pas­sages from an 1843 Book of Dis­ci­pline and Thomas Clark­son’s “Por­trai­ture”. My hope was that by reverse-engineering the old tes­ti­monies we might get an appre­ci­a­tion for their spir­i­tu­al focus. The exer­cise needs a bit of tweak­ing but I’ll try to fix it up and write it out in case oth­ers want to try it with local Friends.

The invite came when the pro­gram coor­di­na­tor googled “quak­er tes­ti­monies” and found the video below (loose tran­script is here):

Cleaning Services Guide, E‑Book

August 22, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Office Managers Guide to Best Cleaning ServiceA local client from Taber­na­cle in Burling­ton Coun­ty came to me with an inter­est­ing project. He’s owned a com­mer­cial clean­ing com­pa­ny for a num­ber of years and has heard his share of hor­ror sto­ries about the clean­ing ser­vices clients hired before find­ing him! This expe­ri­ence led him to write a PDF e‑book about how to hire the right clean­ing ser­vice. What a great idea and a what a use­ful book this is for small busi­ness own­ers.

The site’s on a bit of a bud­get so it’s a sim­ple design, with col­ors and gen­er­al look-and-feel bor­rowed from a site the client likes. Sim­ple edit­ing comes via Cushy­CMS. When cus­tomers click to buy, they are sent to Pay­pal for the actu­al trans­ac­tion and then for­ward­ed to E‑Junkie, which pro­vides the auto­mat­ed and inte­grat­ed PDF down­load.

Vis­it the site: Office Man­ager’s Guide to Hir­ing the Best Clean­ing Service