The book that inspired my career…

February 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been fascinated by surfing. Something about the elegance of seeing someone balancing on a board floating over the forces of nature manages to be both inspiring and relaxing to watch. But despite a period of trying to conquer skateboarding, I knew I’d never be a surfer. Partly it was down to geography – Kent in England is not necessarily a hotbed of surfing talent. More importantly, I combined a lack of balance with a dislike of swimming.

But around the age of 11 or so, I read the amazing Walking on Water by Andy Martin. Like me, he grew up in England, and didn’t become a professional surfer – but due to his fascination and obsession with it, he did spend time in the water, and the book covers his journey to Hawaii to speak to the leading stars of the early 90s and to cover the world championship at the time.

What really hooked me was one passage, in which he describes being stopped at airport customs and asked what the purpose of his journey was. Having been hired to do some freelance reporting on surfing for The Times, he pulled out a busines card stating ‘The Times, Surfing Correspondent’, and that allowed him to carry on his journey. (I’m writing from memory as I suspect a previous loan of the book led to it never returning to my possession).

It’s followed by amazing writing, characters and stories as he gets to meet all his heroes and surf Hawaii, but the key thing that stuck with me was this:

You can be an expert, earn a living, meet your heroes and be utterly absorbed by something as a writer, and sharing that can be as powerful as actually doing it for a living.

Suddenly I realised that I might never be paid to race cars or bikes, but I could earn a living by sharing my obsession and knowledge of motorsport and all things with an engine.

Having applied that approach to motorcycles, cars, technology, and writing itself, I’ve had the enormous good fortune to be published by leading publications in their field, visited foreign countries, had amazing experiences and spoken with a number of my childhood heroes. Less than 1% of racers will ever get to legitimately be in the MotoGP paddock, for example, but as a journalist I was able to experience it, which I’ll always treasure.

And there’s another key lesson.

You might think that ‘those that can, do, and those that can’t, write ‘ (to adapt a hackneyed quote about teaching). But many top sportsmen and women can’t explain what they do and how they do it. It’s not their job. They have to concentrate on whatever it takes to get to the top and stay there, and not consider anything else. It’s why quite often the most talented people are the worst instructors, because they have no idea what it was like to be an untalented beginner!

That’s why it’s our job. And why it’s my passion and obsession to share the things I love in a way which could inspire the same passion in others.

Filed Under: Blogging, Books, journalism, Writing

The content war is only just beginning

November 8, 2011 By 2 Comments

The war is just beginning for writers, and it may seem strange given that Demand Media is starting to bounce back from an October share slump, but it isn’t going to be fought between quality writers and content farms.

Despite the frantic changes Google has been making to the search algorithm following a perceived drop in quality as churned-up content fills search results, it isn’t about the damaging effect of outsourcing assignments for the lowest possible cost or the economic effects of global competition.

This time it’s man vs machine, and the machine is getting a lot better.

 

Content War: Man vs Machine:

You may be dismissing the idea of a machine creating content based on the previous experience of spambots, as they fill comment sections the world over with ‘Blog very good. Me Like’, to build links to a website. Mostly this are easily filtered by a combination of spam filtering software and especially a final layer of human approval. What might possible sneak past a computer tends to fairly obvious to a human, particularly if it involves a variation of the ‘cheapexactnameofaproductiamselling.com’ linked in various ways.

But to adapt a quote by Cory Doctorow on copying, machine-created content will never be worse, or more expensive to produce, than it is today. It will only get better, cheaper and more accessible to both legitimate publishers attempting to make their workflow more efficient, and to spammers and content farms who can finally do away completely with the human element.

War is hell (on earth).

Want proof? Check out the work of Automated Insights, as detailed in this recent post by founder Robbie Allen. With a team of 12, they’ve produced over 100,000 sports stories in 9 months, having launched 345 websites which are all automated, and cover every division 1 NCAA basketball team.

Still dismissing the potential? Try reading the following excerpt from the latest game report on one of the sites, CarolinaUpdate.com:

The Tar Heels got to the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team after falling to Duke, 75-58, in the ACC tournament. In making the Elite Eight, North Carolina defeated 15th-seeded Long Island, 102-87 in the second round, seventh-seeded Washington, 86-83 in the third round, and then 11th-seeded Marquette, 81-63 in the Sweet Sixteen.

North Carolina was led by Tyler Zeller, who had 21 points on 75% shooting. The Tar Heels also got 18 points from Harrison Barnes, 11 from Dexter Strickland, and seven from Kendall Marshall.

Kentucky was on fire from beyond the arc, scoring 36 points in three-pointers to get an edge.

Now you see what I mean?

 

Will the future be written by machines?

When Allen ends his post by explaining how machines are a benefit to human journalists, there’s certainly some truth in it, although I suspect he’s also doing his job in placating the more nervous amongst the publishing professions. Whilst he’s keen to state that the current technology is suited to purely quantitative and data-driven work, and that journalists should be liberated to be able to focus on qualitative commentary, I suspect although he’s a very accomplished programmer, he might be limited in experiencing what happens for many publications around the globe.

As he himself says, ‘In the near term, the writers at O’Reilly and elsewhere have nothing to worry about. But I wouldn’t count out automation in the long term.’ The technology is at an early stage, and will only get better. After all, if 1000 monkeys could knock out a Shakespeare, we now have that processing power. And every year those processing primates will become cheaper and better, until instead of 1000 monkeys for one Shakespearian work, we could be seeing a sonnet per monkey.

 

What’s the future for human content?

So what happens next for humans who want to create written work beyond the status updates to which many of us might be relegated?

Well, in the short-term, we can choose to focus on quality. That’s certainly why I’m interested in projects like The Verge, and the new site and project from Milo Yiannopoulos whose views I may well have disagreed with on a regular basis, but whose aspiration to build a European quality technology site I can certainly identify closely with. Although we do have it a lot better with Techcrunch EU than the main ex-Arrington site who have recently managed to publish some unintelligible guest posts and at least a couple of stories which I knew to be factually inaccurate, but have never been corrected.

Writing!

Longer term? Whilst we can believe the noble ideal that machines will always be best with a human working alongside them, my educated guess is that spammers will be first to unleash better content algorithms into the wild on their own, particularly given the revenues they can currently get. The sheer amount of spam content means the tiniest percentage of respondents to Nigerian lotteries generates huge profits, and increasing that with better content in a no-brainer.

And anything suitable for automation – which is a lot – will be picked up by newsrooms the world over as managers and publishers will optimise over the heads of any reluctant Editors. That’s assuming enough Editors actually care about their digital product to raise a fuss when their favoured print is still in a slow death spiral.

And then that boundary will shift. And shift again, and slowly the room of writers becomes a room of servers with a couple of database admins, and one or two sub-editors just checking through a cursory selection of articles.

The solution has to be based around increasing the levels of humanity in everything we write, and everything we do online. Not only to build a bridge with anyone who reads our work, but also to ensure Google, Bing and future search engines are distinguishing what we do. Because as the level of automated content rises and becomes increasingly abused, the search engines will have to respond, and we could see search and creation algorithms cancelling each other out, leaving those authors and writers who have gone through the required steps to verify their organic-based life form will be advantaged.

What that urgently means is three things:

1. If you want to be a writer, you need to be using social media and tools like Google’s Author Markup today. Now. Because the sooner you can ensure you’re human, and the longer that exists, the better off you’ll be.

2. If you’re ever planning to launch your own website or brand, do it now. Don’t expect to learn the ropes in a staff job for a few years and then head out on your own – although that may have been a good plan, if this all comes to pass, you’ll need to be in an established position to be able to get your voice heard if you have a problem with Google’s Author markup, for example. And the way to get that help is to be reaching a million uniques per month by then, which means starting now.
If you wait a couple of years before deciding you’d like to create the ultimate blog/site on a subject, you’ll find that a few thousand readers per month could leave you at the end of one of the longest queues around if you ever need help.

3. Your personal writing style is going to be more important than ever. So a blog can be an invaluable daily tool for honing that, rather than spending your time re-writing press releases in a bland house style to churn out content as if it was 2008 all over again.

Filed Under: Blogging, Digital Publishing, journalism, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Deconstruct your content, SEO and social media regularly

September 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I don’t always agree with everything entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss writes, but I definitely agree with his approach to challenges. In The 4-Hour Body, he frequently refers to the ‘Minimum Effective Dose’ which is what allows you to achieve big changes in short periods of time by focussing on the minimum you need to achieve results.

And you find out what that is either by reading his books, or by doing the work of deconstruction yourself. Here’s a TED talk from 2008 where he covers his approach to swimming, learning languages and ballroom dancing.

Why deconstruct your content and marketing?

It’s easy to spend a lot of time and money on the seemingly endless churn of creating content, improving your SEO or connecting to new people on Social Media. And if you can cope with that workload, you’ll certainly learn to create content quickly, and benefit from the sum of your connections (with reference to Stowe Boyd).

But what is actually working? What’s the Minimum Effective Dose for publishing content? How long should you spend on optimising your headline or link building to improve your search rankings, and how much of your social media promotion is actually worthwhile?

It all comes back to how you generate revenue, and learning how to track everything back to that end goal with your analytics software.

I don’t propose that every tweet needs to show a positive ROI, or that you shouldn’t try new things. But you’ll be better placed to enjoy the experimentation and fun of connecting and chatting if you know you’ve already covered the foundations of your digital business by doing the effective dose for the day/week/month, and any additional work is a bonus on top of that.

If you can combine the Minimum Effective Content and Marketing Dose with the three layers of asking ‘So What?’ when you’re measuring/tracking something (with credit to Avinash Kaushik), then you’re well on the way to making yourself and your business more efficient in the basics, and giving yourself more time to either devote to fun projects or relaxing in front of the TV.

ipod deconstruction - 5

A useful skill for everyday life and business:

The ability to look at models and mechanisms and deconstruct them isn’t just handy for digital marketing. It’s a lifehacking skill which applies to most areas of your profession – how long does it really take to fill out your tax form? How about your bookeeping? And what it you apply it not only to the gym, but to housework, or or areas of life? How much time could you free up for other things?

And I don’t believe you have to be naturally analytical to achieve it. I spent the years between school and working explicitly in SEO doing a number of very creative roles, mainly as a journalist and writer. In that time I’d forgotten basic math, let alone what I’d learnt in statistics classes, and viewed Excel as an instrument of torture. But since I began working for myself, it’s been utterly essential to figure out what needs to be done on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, and how to achieve it as efficiently and effectively as possible, or the workload would be completely overwhelming, and I’d never be able to spend any time working on my own websites (Another one of which, Rescogs, has just launched by the way).

I’m still at an early stage in learning the art of deconstruction, but both the 4-Hour Work Week and the 4-Hour Body provide some valuable insight into how it can be achieved, even if you don’t intend to work out even for that long each month.

And if you need any help, there are people you can turn to. Find your nearest talented software developer/programmer or master criminal, and watch them deal with their professional problems with analysis and deconstruction, even if their personal lives might still be a shambles. In fact, combine the two professions and you’ve pretty much found a typical hacker from my experience, who will happily deconstruct a lock, a software program, or Western society over a beer or two.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Digital Culture, Entrenpreneurship, Freelancing, journalism, marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

All the news that’s fit to Tweet

July 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

Yesterday I wrote about how great journalism should be impartial rather than neutral, and today it’s the related subject of distribution mediums – in this case, what should and shouldn’t be reported on via Twitter.

It was sparked by an article by Matthew Ingram over at GigaOm, who is definitely someone worth reading if you’re interested in journalism and the media. I originally tried to leave a comment on his article ‘Are there some things that shouldn’t be tweeted about‘ but when it vanished into the ether upon submission, I figured it made more sense to blog a full response here.

Matthew’s article was sparked by recent outcry in the media community in Boston, due to a sports reporter tweeting from the funeral of the wife of New England Patrios’ owner Bob Kraft, and also references other notable incidents when people have tweeted about personal experiences, such as sexual assault or the death of their child to try and ask whether Twitter is a suitable medium for these topics.

Twitter and suitable content:

I think that perhaps there are a few different issues being rolled into the one question here, and seperating them out might be helpful:

  • Is it fine to be tweeting on your smartphone during a funeral, for example?
  • Does Twitter differ to reporting on the same event for print or TV?
  • Should it be the media community judging as gatekeepers on what is the right medium?

 

So, the first issue is fairly easy to discuss, as it’s really a question of how an individual reporter is handling themselves at an event – I don’t think many people would necessarily have a complaint about a reporter making notes on paper during the funeral of a prominent public figure, and the comment on Matthew’s article which equates using a smartphone to using a Nintendo DS or playing Angry Birds is pretty disingenuous, as it presumes that the method of reporting is less serious if it’s using technology, rather than a reporter doodling in their notepad. Whether reporting is being done with paper, smartphone, laptop or TV camera, it’s about using the right level of respect and decorum to be able to avoid detracting from event itself – for instance, if proceedings have to stop due to the incessant click-clack of keys being pressed, that would be worthy of critiscism, or if there’s a bank of reporters in the front pew all waving phones around in front of mourners.

Is reporting on Twitter different?

So the mechanics of Twitter are different to those of an article published elsewhere, due to the fact that it’s possible to update in real-time, and the 140 character limit.

The real-time nature of Twitter can be used as an excuse for sloppy spelling and punctuation when you hurry to get a tweet out, but that’s a reflection on the skills and accuracy of the reporter, not the social network itself. If you’re reporting on an event, why would you take less time to craft a tweet than to craft an article headline or your first sentence?

The second critcism is the perception that reporting via Twitter lacks the gravitas of other formats, as if reading ‘Singer Amy Winehouse dead at age 27′ has less impact if it’s not accompanied via a full opinion piece, photos and a byline. That’s quite blatantly a load of old rubbish, as underlined by coverage of the recent tragedy in Oslo, or the Mumbai terrorist attacks on Twitter, for example. If we believe that a well-crafted impactful headline covering an event can stop people in their tracks and perhaps lead them to buying a newspaper when they’ve scanned it on the newstand, why would we believe that a well-crafted impactful tweet would not have the same effect, unless digitising words makes them meaningless?

The last gasps of the media community as gatekeepers?

The process of print publishing with limited space and limitations on who can afford to print or broadcast mass media led to journalists, subs and editors as gatekeepers who made judgements on the right way to present the news in those formats. And that’s completely changed with the availability of formats for news consumption.

As a reader, I can choose print, TV, radio, websites, social networks, podcasts, photo sites, audio microblogs. And that is right which I’m far more empowered to exercise now that I can select from such a range of formats and outlets. Much of my general news information comes from social networks, and without going into the debate over echo chambers and filter failure now, I have yet to see any concrete evidence that has damaged by general news awareness or any serendipity in finding out about events.

However the media community thinks their debate and decision about formats may make any difference to me, I’m not really sure? As digital tools and technology democratise news production and coverage, the odds are that someone somewhere will be covering events and publishing on the format I choose to enjoy, and the decision of my preferred format comes down to my choice, not that of the journalist elite.

So what could be improved in Twitter journalism?

Having said all of that, there is one glaring error which can occur in digital journalism, and which is pronounced in certain cases – consistency. If I follow a reporter for sports updates on scores and transfers, and suddenly it switches to funeral coverage, that can be jarring, as it is when someone switches from general daily updates to discussing the loss of their child or a physical attack.

In the later cases of personal events, that jarring shock and the resulting upset is something that we as readers need to realise is our personal response, and those tweeting shouldn’t feel obliged to hide their thoughts or responses from the network which they may rely on for emotional support (In one of those cases, the local police did have legal reasons for curbing their output, which is understandable).

In the former case of professional journalism, then it’s probably advisable to seperate those reports which are out of context of the general daily output of your account – to allow those who wish to follow to choose without necessarily offending those who would rather not.

But in all cases, readers carry the ultimate decision of what they may or may not find acceptable, and have the choice on social networks to follow or unfollow accounts as they wish – and although stretching the boundaries may carry risks at the moment, the changing opinions of society and readers measured by what they actually do (following, clicking links, rubbernecking at accidents when they drive past), is a good way of seeing what people actually find acceptable, rather than presuming that as the media, we might know readers better than they know themselves. And as much as you may believe society and readers have become more salacious over time, the response to the Huffington Post’s ill-advised Amy Winehouse and small business lessons article is just one example of how readers are more than willing to let you know directly if you’ve overstepped the mark.

Filed Under: journalism, newspapers, Privacy, traditional media, twitter, Writing Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts