Crisis Management: Why You Need a Blog

Image: Kristina B

I got a phone call from a Norwegian journalist yesterday. Back in June I blogged a story that was raging in the Norwegian blogosphere about a freelance journalist who had relied rather heavily on the contents of an article in the British press.

The journalists name had been mentioned in the Norwegian blogosphere and in commenting on the matter I also mentioned it.

Five months later, she called me, “Hello, I wonder if...”, from the UK and asked me to remove my post. Apparently it was showing up in Google as the number one search result for her name in English. Not very nice if you’re trying to build a career as a freelance journalist.

Figuring that everyone deserves a second chance, I went in and removed her name from the original piece on Jontus Media.com so that Google stops damaging her reputation.

Although I was pretty okay about removing her name, not everyone in the blogosphere is going to be as helpful. This brings me back to why you need a blog.

You Need a Blog Because...

Blogs enable you to tell your side of the story.

A good url (i.e your name) or the title of a blog post wrapped in h1 of h2 tags will bring people to your site so that even when people write nasty things about you, you can offer an alternative take.

Even if you’re a small business, a sole trader, a freelance journalist, you need to make time to get your website up and running and working in your favour.

Journalism on the Road

I’ve been out doing interviews today as part of a series of profiles of top researchers and international students that I’m writing for Stockholm University’s English-language website.

Since I dropped my Mac PowerBook outside a client’s office over a year ago, I’ve had to borrow a (whisper it) Sony Vaio for working on the road. Not my favourite thing, but I manage.

If truth be told I don’t really enjoy working in a PC environment, particularly as I’ve grown used to using (Mac only) Tinderbox for my notes.  But it does have it’s flip side: I’ve rediscovered my note-taking skills, honed at university the better part of two decades ago, and the joys of a spiral notebook.

Pen and paper is fine for interviews but in between meetings I bashed out four rough drafts in Word.

Using the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s premium word-processing software slowed me down quite a lot because all the menus were different to what I was used to.

If anything, today taught me that I need to get to grips with Office once again. Well, either that or that I am lost without Schreiben for painless word-processing.

Away from the safety of my office (and my Mac) I was also free from the distractions of Twitter, a regularly updated NetNewsWire and email. This meant I was actually able to get quite a bit of writing done despite stationing myself in a rather noisy café.

Would a MacBook Pro (Air?) or iPhone make days like these easier? Possibly. But stranded in a foreign landscape of no internet connection, a PC and having to use a pen and paper I survived even if I didn’t thrive.

What do you need when you’re out working on the road?

What Kind of English is Right (For Your Swedish Business)?

Image: Wendy

I spoke with a TEFL teacher fairly recently about helping businesses improve their English in the Stockholm region. What bothered me about the conversation was how much emphasis she kept putting on British English.

I know from firsthand experience that businesses think globally. It’s not just about communicating in English with the British. Swedes communicate with the French, Germans, Danes, Spaniards and the rest of Europe and the world in English.

Now whilst I think it’s an excellent idea to be consistent in the language you use, I’m wary about encouraging Swedes to adopt solely British (or American, for that matter) cultural identities. Actually, I think you’re at a distinct disadvantage if you’re from Stockholm and come across as if you’re an out and out Brit.

Personally, I’m a big advocate of International English. I’d define this as a hybrid of American, British and World English that’s grammatically correct but knows when to put the nuances one way or the other.

For example, why train Swedish business people in how to converse at the pub, when they’re just as likely to use their English in bars and cafés across Europe?

When I translated Pål H. Christiansen’s novel The Scoundrel Days of Hobo Highbrow into English, the copy editor corrected “diapers” to “nappies”. However, as I pointed out this assumed the target audience was British speakers of English, whereas the novel has been marketed at an international audience.

Almost twenty years professional experience with words has taught me that most Europeans say “diaper” rather than “nappy”; hence, my decision to use an Americanism in what I would consider a very internationally-minded translation.

If your English teacher starts pushing you towards British or American English, gently remind them that English is evolving. There are now more non-native speakers of English than native speakers.

Isn’t it about time English teaching woke up to the fact that we’re now inhabiting an era of International English?

Promoting Internationella Engelska Gymnasiet Södermalm

I’m zonked. I’ve spent the day helping the folks at IEG Södermalm promote the school at Stockholm’s annual Gymnasiemässa –a recruitment fair for senior high school.

As well as helping them with the creative brief for this event, I supplied copy and promotional posters and flyers.

Thanks to Julia Ledenstam for the pictures. My camera died as soon as I got to the EXPO.

It’s Not Just Words - [Copywriting]

Being a wordsmith by trade, I tend to focus on words. Naturally.

But any digital copywriter worth their salt will tell you that you’ve got to have a great graphics team to back you up.

My favourite piece of copy this week has to be the Pedigree Adoption Drive plea to President-elect Obama. Who can resist a cute dog? The animal’s face draws you into the text, even if you don’t read all of it.

My only criticism of the ad is the way they use it to promote their dog food. The Pedigree logo is shown on bag of dog food. The full image is available after the jump. 

[Continue Reading]

Blog Crisis Management: Basset Hound Breeders Slam Inaccurate Article

I’ve written previously about how basset hound breeders in the UK have come under attack since the BBC aired a contentious documentary, Pedigree Dogs Exposed, over two months ago.

This month sees Dogs Today Magazine in the UK publish a very one-sided article about Alison Jeffers and Jeremy Ward and their Albany Hounds.

Ms Jeffers claims that their hounds are closer to the original bassets bred for hunting. Slamming today’s show bassets, the article claims show bassets are winning awards “for tasks that they could not possibly perform” (i.e. hunt).

Given that basset hounds regularly win tracking competitions here in Sweden, I don’t really take this article seriously. Still, some of the basset folks in England are very upset.

I’ve already seen a stack of emails from basset breeders complaining about the inaccuracies of the article. Again, I would like to reiterate: this is why you need a blog.

A weblog enables you to put your response in the public domain. By writing a headline like: “Basset Hound Breeders Slam Dogs Today Article” you have a good chance of being found. Particularly as anyone who has read or heard about the article will most probably Google “Dogs Today Basset Hound”.

To find out more about how a blog can help you with crisis management check out these earlier posts:

• Blog Crisis Management - Use a blog to tell your story
• Blogging in a Crisis: Google Will Find You
• A Weblog is Essential for Crisis Management

Reduce Email, Increase Productivity

Wedge is desperate to try the No Reply Necessary Tip that I mentioned the other day but fears:

it would damage relations with my colleagues, friends and random acquaintences [sic].

Yes, I agree that some people might take this the wrong way; however, in a corporate climate where unnecessary email clogs up too many in-boxes, I think we need to gently remind people about productivity.

Here’s a little graph I made for a training session I recently ran on how to use Email effectively.


The column on the left illustrates how much time is wasted per day on email; the column on the right shows what this means in terms of wasted minutes per year.

Effectively, if you’re wasting 15 minutes per day with unnecessary email, you’re wasting almost 4000 minutes per year.

This is one area in business where there is room to reassess how effectively we are using our time.

Use Email Templates

Personally, I recommend clients construct and use effective email templates.

Even if they are as simple as this one I use, they still save time. Over a year, the seconds add up to make minutes.

My personal favourite (Mac) tool for this is MailTemplate by the folks at Mactank.

How are you working to make email more effective?

Nurture Your Blog

As a Really Small Business you have every excuse NOT to tend to your blog. There’s people to talk to, jobs to do, invoices to send, bills to pay and that’s just for starters. But an ignored blog doesn’t just tell your site visitor you’re busy; it means you’re losing out on all that good stuff we mentioned before about customers, friends and job leads.

Strategy:

• Make time for one blog post every other day.
• Set aside an hour to ensure you write something worthwhile.
• Use descriptive headlines that target keywords like the services you provide or where you work.

Example post title:

5 Dog-walking Tips for Dundee Residents

Sure, you can include the rest of the world in the main body of your article, but by wrapping h1 tags around the headline will almost definitely help you reach anyone in Dundee looking for dog-walker. Amazingly enough, people tend to search for things they want: “Dog-walker Dundee”.

Other examples:

• Stockholm Copywriter’s 5 Top Tips
• Swedish-English Translation Guide

Follow this strategy for a couple of months and keep doing it. Keep an eye on which words people search for in Google and bring them to your site by using Google Analytics. Regularly tracking this data will teach you about how people find your website: it will also give you new ideas about what to focus on and how to use headlines to target readers.

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