In an email this morning, my Mom informed me she was saving today’s front page of the New York Times, adding it to her collection of only two other issues: the JFK assassination and 9/11.

Today is that kind of day.

Barack Obama is the President-elect of the United States of America. I’m not overwhelmed with excitement so much as relieved and exhausted. I had emotionally committed to this outcome as inevitable, as cosmic justice.

I won’t dog you with my ideology; this post is simply a marker. On October 15, 2008 — during the third and final presidential debate — I twittered:

I so rarely have the feeling of watching history as it actively unravels before me.

Thank you for obliging me.

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

Barack Obama elected President of the United States

Related posts:

1. 10 Rules For Driving Traffic Using Forums
2. Marketers: Stay Away From Digg

A new project called Democratus will let ordinary folks share their ideas and build coalitions around the policy issues they find most important, directly connecting with each other and local politicians to petition for change.

In other words, it opens up the conversation about government beyond politicians, lobbyists, and activists, so anybody can share his voice and leave a transparent digital trail. And I’m just skimming the surface.

I think this is the use of computer technology that would most impress our founding fathers, barring a kickass round of Halo 3. It’s time to bring back the user-generated part of government.

Democratus will be a website worth caring about, and it needs your help; they’re applying for a grant from the Knight Foundation and need votes. It’s free, and will take you less than 5 minutes. Here’s what to do:

1. Register with the Knight Foundation.
2. Read more about the project.
3. If you believe in the project, vote by clicking the stars (5 is a good choice!) and leave a comment.

I love the pun on the name Democritus, the ancient Greek philosopher who first suggested that all things originate from a vortex of tiny, indivisible particles.

I am not affiliated with Democratus (except spiritually).

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

Social Media in Government: Democratus

Related posts:

1. Debunking the Social Media Myth: A Framework For Social Media Strategies
2. Build a Media Channel with a Forum
3. Facebook is not a social network. No, really.

For those who aren’t familiar with Digg, here is a snippet from the about page:

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg.

That requires some translation. Here’s what it really means:

Digg is a place for 18-24 year old males to read about internet gossip. From the smallest local news rags to the wittiest satire websites, Digg surfaces the stuff most entertaining to our users as determined by our staff of editors.

I’m not trying to be a negative nancy — Digg can be entertaining and informative — but it has little to no value for directing attention to websites of substance, whether you’re a marketer or not.

I’m operating under a couple key assumptions. First, your website is not about liberal politics, internet piracy, or conspiracy theories. Second, you care about your website.

Here are 3 reasons to stay away from Digg:

1) Digg is not meant for websites of substance

Digg doesn’t try to deliver worthwhile content, just entertaining content. Think of it like the National Inquirer, not the New York Times. Don’t try to swim against the current just to get traffic from Digg, because chances are it will be unqualified.

More importantly, don’t dumb down your website; that’s a terrible strategy for anybody.

2) Digg users are in browse mode

Digg’s purpose is to be distracting. Digg users are in a state-of-mind that bounces them from page to page in search of a momentary sanctuary from whatever was previously occupying their attention. Unless your website’s purpose is “distract yourself here,” the value you provide will not be aligned with a Digg visitor’s expectations, and they will leave.

Again, visitors referred by Digg are highly unqualified because they’re not interesting in doing anything. It’d be like corralling a horde of anti-war protesters into an Army recruitment office; it doesn’t matter how many you can get, they’re not going to join.

3) Your time is better spent elsewhere

It’s not that you’re never going to get someone from Digg to take whatever action your website encourages, but the conversions are so low you should concentrate your efforts elsewhere. You’ll also save yourself the hassle of being outed as a marketing hack trying to pollute an extreme anti-commercialism social site.

Ah right, there is that.

Get real

Look, there are no shortcuts in promoting your website. Find the people who matter on forums and, you know, talk to them. Or take a step back and actually create a considered marketing strategy, including advertisements to the people actively searching for the product or service you provide.

And stay away from Digg.

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

Marketers: Stay Away From Digg

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1. Debunking the Social Media Myth: A Framework For Social Media Strategies
2. 10 Rules For Driving Traffic Using Forums
3. Build a Media Channel with a Forum
4. Facebook is not a social network. No, really.

These are the chew toys that have made me sad and tired and cynical.

I’m using (or butchering) the words of Merlin Mann, a writer whom I respect, who has been on a recent campaign to make blogs better [skip to 5:20 in].

It got me thinking. See, I read plenty of blogs about making and promoting websites. I bring the best stuff to my clients — and write about the subject — so it’s my job to be on top of what’s going on.

It can get depressing.

The atmosphere reminds me of the one leading up to the dot-com bust. The web seems like easy money, so entrepreneurial-minded people are trying to cash in their get-rich-quick cards.

For blogs in particular, everything is about driving traffic and readership, being perceived as a niche expert, and upselling leads on a product or service. Eyeball theory all over again. Bubble 2.0.

I’ve always been skeptical. My first post here was about how much harder it is to figure out “which to” than “how to” given the abundance of talking heads. I cautioned against The Bandwagon.

Too many people see newfangled tech as some kind of philosopher’s stone that turns everything it touches into gold. News flash: you’re not Midas, and making websites is not chrysopoeia. It would be an apt analogy to compare this misperception to a cause of the 2008 financial crisis:

There is an orgy of optimism surrounding sophisticated tools that allow for the wide distribution of shitty assets masquerading as something worthwhile.

In other words, it has become progressively harder to differentiate between what is worth caring about and what isn’t.

As my readership grew beyond friends and family — and I started checking my traffic stats daily — I started to slip into that irrational exuberance. The articles here didn’t always reflect my toeing of the dark side, but my marketing strategy did. I wanted more traffic, so I networked on Twitter, commented on widely read blogs, and built a readership in Stumbleupon.

None of it was satisfying and it sucked up a lot of time I could have spent on stuff that mattered. But the worst part is that it worked.

These tactics bring you traffic and money. But making a little bit of money has never been hard (just get a job).

Traffic is a drug. You start talking and someone listens, so you get louder and more people listen. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to write a blog about the Top 10 ways Ducks Quack just because someone will read it.

When Technorati came out with their 2008 State of the Blogosphere, there was some controversy surrounding their claim that blogs with over 100,000 unique visitors per month were pulling in $75K+ in revenue. Fred Wilson, another guy I respect, revealed his blog with 150,000 unique visitors per month was pulling in only $30K (for charity).

Few are willing to admit that not all traffic is created equal.

The beauty of a blog is that it changes over time. I had a strategy when I started writing here, but not a real mission. That led to an execution that measured success in the wrong way. But now I think I’ve got it.

I’m passionate about using the internet to redefine our world. That’s why I’m here.

This is a blog about creating websites worth caring about — websites that matter to people. Not coincidentally, these are the websites that make money.

This all translates to a few tangible changes that will take place here over the next few months. I’ll bring up the changes as they occur. The agenda is not entirely clear, which is the point. Let’s see where this goes. Thanks Merlin.

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

Websites Worth Caring About

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All they had to do was click on your about page, or that product sales page, or the hire me button, but they didn’t get that far. They didn’t do whatever it was you made this damn website for in the first place.

They abandoned you.

Don’t be mad, it’s not their fault. Somehow, you repulsed them.

Let’s fix that. Let’s cut your bounce rate. Let’s get them to do whatever it is they’re supposed to do on your website … because it sure isn’t to visit one page and leave forever.

What is Bounce Rate?

If a visitor bounces (just so you know, I get a huge kick out of saying bounce … like “yo, let’s bounce” only in a really nerdy way), it can mean only one of two things:

There was a major electrical outage, someone spilled milk on the laptop and fried it, they got dropped from their crappy Time Warner internet connection…

or, far more likely:

You didn’t provide your visitor with an obvious and desirable next click for achieving his intended action.

There is plenty to say about the “obvious and desirable” part, but that’s for another day. Let’s get laser-focused on the “intended action” part.

Your visitor wanted one thing, and instead you gave him something else.

You can only give your visitor what he wants if you know what he wants. Luckily, he tells you by the way he reaches your site.

Hint: it ain’t through your homepage.

I think this is one of the most important concepts in web strategy.

See what I did just there? The way I wrote the above link made it clear you should click if you want to know what web strategy is.

I could have linked you to the homepage of my site, but it made more sense to link you to my article “What is Web Strategy and Why Should You Care?”

This page will have a lower bounce rate for the people clicking the link … which matters a lot if it costs me money for clicks.

This subtlety is what makes the web so awesome.

The web is flat! Forget homepages, think landing pages.

Excepting complex web applications, every page on the web has an exact address reachable from anywhere else. It takes one click to go from any page to any other page using the address bar or good ‘ol hyperlinking. The web is flat.

Or, to return to our familiar architecture metaphor: while websites might have a front door, visitors tend to pour in through the windows.

These are called landing pages. Here’s your friendly “no-doi” definition: A landing page is any page on your website where a visitor might arrive from outside your site.

Because of how complex the web has become, it’s easy to forget that websites aren’t the building blocks of the web … the basic unit is still a web page.

In some ways, this is a con: you have to be prepared to make a good first impression everywhere on your site.

But mostly this is a pro, because you can funnel visitors to different places based on their intentions, and make those places really, really, really relevant

Match Visitor Intent with Relevant Landing Pages

Whether you’re publishing a link, advertising in the search engines, or just inviting an individual to visit the site, try to tease out the visitor’s purpose and give him the most applicable landing page.

If you run an education consulting website, and a person Googles “how to create a math curriculum,” you want that person to reach the article you wrote on the subject, not the about page where you pitch your consulting service.

Only if you satisfy the visit’s purpose will a visitor do what you want.

So here is your actionable advice:

To lower your bounce rate, match the things leading people to your website to the most relevant page.

And here’s a huge secret that’s not-so-secret:

It works in reverse, too. Write landing pages to match the things people want.

Soon, we’ll talk about some different ways to put this into practice. Make sure you know when those articles come out by subscribing to the blog.

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

Lower your Bounce Rate with relevent Landing Pages

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I want to offer a word of caution, and 5 rules to do it right.

Social networks have existed since the origins of human communication. I speak with some people directly, and others through their connections, so I have a network of social ties.

In ancient times (the 1990’s), we maintained our social networks through silly things like emails, phone calls, and parties. Then websites started to pop up that allowed us to stay in touch with our friends… a lot more of them. We decided to call them social networks.

This misnomer has plagued us since.

Facebook is not a social network. It’s a platform for people to host a web version of their social network. Calling Facebook a social network suggests a singular, regimented set of individual connections, which is simply not the case.

In other words, Facebook plays host to millions of individuals’ personal networks.

This may seem like a useless semantic argument from a web insider, but this matters.

So-called “social networks” are not magical. The same strategies for success apply there as with any kind of word-of-mouth between customers and their close network of friends.

Which is to say, most people’s “social network strategy” is akin to relying on blind luck that people will love them enough to rave to friends.

Naturally, this is only half the story.

There are important measures to make sure you facilitate the word-of-mouth when it happens, but the key insight is that you’re more likely to go overboard than you are to take advantage of the low-hanging fruit.

And don’t forget cost. This ain’t free!

Don’t be lured by the illusion that free-of-charge means free-of-cost. Those who succeed spend tons of time working within the space, or spend plenty of money making their organization worthy of word-of-mouth.

Here are the 5 social networking rules to follow:

1) Get over the novelty

People talking to their friends through this new medium has vast sociological implications. For most businesses, that sociological change is completely irrelevant.

At a fundamental level, social networks are just another way people communicate directly with friends.

2) Social networks aren’t right for everyone

People talk about businesses worth talking about. Duh. Unless you’re worthy of word-of-mouth, flooding a new channel is a waste of time.

Not every successful business is a word-of-mouth business. Don’t feel obligated to overwhelm your existing strategy with a new direction.

That being said… we can all agree that word-of-mouth businesses are the best businesses out there (another duh). Maybe you should be one?

But don’t confuse your social networking strategy with your business strategy. Deciding to be a business worthy of word-of-mouth is a much larger decision, and requires a whole different mindset.

I happily encourage you to be a business worth caring about.

3) Be present, but get out of the way

The first step for success is just to be there. Be listening to what people are saying about you and make it easy for people to spread the message by giving them resources like stories and pictures.

But mostly, get the hell out of the way. If people want to talk about you, they will.

Talk to your passionate fans, give them what they want, and ask them to tell people. The rest is out of your control.

People build their social networks, it’s theirs, so get your grubby hands off it. Interrupting people who are busy ignoring you is a surefire way to lose them.

Please understand that 15-25 year old Facebook users are largely anti-establishment, anti-consumerism, anti-corporation, and anti-authority. Proceed with caution and extreme honesty.

4) If you must advertise, be highly relevant

There is not overwhelming evidence that inappropriately targeted Facebooks ads are any more effective than setting your money on fire and stomping on it like a rhinocerous. Admittedly, I haven’t yet seen any field research on that. If you’d like to fund some, contact me.

Strictly targeting by demographic is useless because Facebook users aren’t in the buying state, discovery state, or any other mental state where they would give a hoot about you.

Facebook users are in the socializing state.

If you have something relevant based on their socializing, they’ll be ready to hear what you have to say (and the demographic targeting will be absurdly effective).

5) Be a human being

Being human is a rule of business in general (people buy from people), but especially true in the faceless anonymity of the web.

If you’re a giant faceless company, you better pick someone to be your point person on social networks. I’ve heard titles like Community Manager and Outreach Strategist.

If you’re a small company CEO or individual, for goodness sake, don’t pretend you’re not!

More than ever, being small and personal is a distinct advantage in business. Overwhelmed with modern economic life, attention scarcity, and constant subjugation to big business consumerism … we’re refreshed by the human approach.

Sorry to go off on one of my sociology rants, but the 21st century will be about personal, local, and organic (in all of it’s meanings). Get started now.

Here’s the thing

I think there is nothing more important than being a business worth caring about. For all sorts of philosophical reasons, I think life is too short and precious to separate business success from your personal satisfaction and connection with society.

So-called social networking websites make it more PROFITABLE to be this kind of business because when people tell their friends, the message spreads farther and faster.

It is more economically feasible to transform your business into a word-of-mouth business now than ever before.

And that is the reason Facebook is still worth caring about.

So says every business professional worth listening to.

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

Facebook is not a social network. No, really.

Related posts:

1. Debunking the Social Media Myth: A Framework For Social Media Strategies
2. 10 Rules For Driving Traffic Using Forums
3. Build a Media Channel with a Forum
4. Websites Worth Caring About

Alas, I’ve begun with the end of the story. Let’s start at the beginning.

I sometimes struggle to explain my profession in less than 6-seconds at dinner parties. I dread boring conversations, so any answer I give must also answer the unspoken follow-up, “and why should you care?”.

But in less than 6-seconds.

My answer could easily be, “I make websites.” But that suggests I craft the pixels and code, for which I rely on my talented partners. My job mostly consists of the parts before and after the “making”.

People outside the web industry largely misunderstand the process of creating websites. (They hire a “freelance web designer” with a scope of work that doesn’t match her skill set, and are only willing to pay for features that would lead to a website better left unmade.)

Thankfully, I’ve figured out what to say.

By letting you in on my answer, I also want to clarify the purpose of my writing. Why should you read this blog?

My about page explains what I hope you and I each get out of it, but there is also the question of why the content itself matters.

There are a couple versions of the answer. The final one is going to be the 6-second soundbite. But first, the long answer exists because understanding web strategy requires understanding what a website really is.

No, I don’t think you’re stupid (you’re smart enough to read my blog!), but I think most people’s preconceived notion of a website is wrong.

Websites are not beautifully designed word documents that link to each other (what most people think). Websites are not even like desktop applications you use (what most web-savvy people think). Websites are like the physical spaces you inhabit (what I think!).

By way of explanation, an aside:

Public Spaces Define Human Interaction

Check out the following talk. Within, James Howard Kunstler laments the abandonment of architectural sophistication in American suburban sprawl. He’s a riveting speaker. It’s worth 20 minutes to watch.

For our purposes, the most important point Kunstler makes is that, “your ability to create places that are meaningful, and places of quality and character, depends entirely on your ability to define space.”

(If you’re reading via an RSS reader, you might have to click through to the page to view the video.)

I’ve butchered the quote. Kunstler actually concludes the thought, “with buildings,” but I need to make a point about websites, okay?

There is a sharp contrast between the abysmal despair of a street corner in suburbia bordered by Walmart, Target, and Chucky Cheese, and the expressive character of a lively town center lined with shops, restaurants, and bars.

Places that are not meaningful, or of quality and character, create miserably depressed inhabitants, which is both a sociological problem (if you read this blog for the warm fuzzy feeling) and a business problem (if you read this blog to learn web biz).

The difference is the “active permeable membrane”. Don’t worry, even Kunstler admits he sounds like a jerk.

“Active” means people are doing things there. “Permeable” means people and things go in and out of it. “Membrane” refers to it having boundaries (even if the boundaries are permeable).

The physical layout of the space determines how people use it and whether or not they want to be there. For the bottom line of the shops making business in the space, this is the stuff of life or death.

Translation: the architects and planners of a space determine the success or failure of the businesses that occupy it.

Hold that thought.

What is Web Strategy: the long version

Every website is a blank slate. It will (probably) occupy 1 unit of “space”, a particular domain name, but otherwise it is primordial ooze, an empty lot.

A web strategist’s job begins like a real estate agent trying to fill an empty lot. He must answer questions like:

- Who are the people who will use this building?
- What do those people want us to build here?
- What should we actually build here?
- How will our building be affected by our neighbors?
- What will our neighborhood look like in 10 years, and how do we plan for that future?

Then the web strategist’s role changes to that of architect:

- What sorts of things should be in this building?
- How should people behave here?
- What is the path people take from the entrance to their destination?
- How should the building be laid out?
- Where can we optimize a visitor’s experience?

And finally, the web strategist returns to the role of real estate agent:

- How will we let people know the building exists?
- Where are the people we want inside now?
- And if people don’t like the color of the wallpaper, let’s measure that and maybe just change it later.

Naturally, there is a whole team involved in this process, too:

The engineer helps determine what is viable, then directs the team who builds it (like a web developer).

The interior designer makes the space visually compelling (like a web designer).

The copywriter… um… okay there is also a person who writes copy for websites. The copywriter also needs to be a ninja-like SEO expert in disguise and a master salesman.

And then regular people come and occupy the space, and do all sorts of insane things you never predicted, so you have to continue to test and optimize on the fly.

After all, websites are public spaces. But buildings are hard to change where websites are not.

Why you should care about Web Strategy, and the soundbite definition

It’s hard to build a bad public space in the physical world. You still need an architect to plan it, an engineer to make sure it actually works, and everybody else. It costs millions. Yet for all this trouble, it can still looks like an 8 year-old made it out of chewed-up Legos.

Lots of websites are like this. Businesses drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on bad websites. Dozens of people (some smart) work their asses off, yet the final product turns out as a steaming pile. They tell lots of people about it with a launch campaign, but the people quickly stop coming.

It can also be easier to build a bad website because you can do it on the cheap. After all, your 15 year-old nephew is a computer wiz, right? Here’s the problem:

Even the crappiest of the crappy physical public spaces are seen, passed through, actively shunned. They may not be worth caring about, but at least people make that choice.

Bad websites are completely invisible.

There is no actual space occupied. There is no stray foot traffic, no passersby, no curious explorers and experimenters. If your website is a shitty public space, it will fail to occupy even an iota of another human’s attention budget.

Worse, even if you somehow trick people into coming (translation: advertise), they will leave as soon as they discover the ruse, and no one will return.

So what does a web strategist do? A web strategist figures out how to get people to visit your website, take some desirable action or actions, and build an ongoing relationship with you. He acts as both real estate agent and architect, both marketer and product developer. In many cases, there is an additional dash of entrepreneur to define the business model.

Web strategy is the process of planning a successful website.

Now, how to start an interesting dinner party conversation? What’s the 6-second soundbite?

I’m a web strategist. My job is to make websites worth caring about.

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

What is Web Strategy and Why Should You Care?

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This week, I’m pleased to bring you an interview with social media thought leader Patrick O’Keefe. As the recent author of Managing Online Forums, and founder of the iFroggy Network, Patrick has a decade of experience developing and managing community websites.

Preface: Online Communities as a Web Strategy

If your visitors can discover consistent and new information daily, they’re more likely to return. If visitors form relationships with each other conducted through your website, they’re more likely to return. If they can use your site as their own platform for success, they’re more likely to return.

Online communities of all stripes can achieve these goals, from mailing lists to social networks. But forums are at the center.

The golden egg of web success is getting your visitors engaged to the point that they become invested in your success.

A key benefit of running a forum is the creation of “user-generated content” that builds on top of your own content, agnostic of your bottom-line costs. Your visitors can expand your site for you

And consider the opportunity for reaching customers.

In your business model, there is probably a wide net at the top of your sales funnel for “leads” or “awareness”. You probably reach those people by advertising where they congregate: on other people’s media platforms.

Maybe it’s about time you built your own?

Patrick O’Keefe on Building and Managing Online Forums

Josh Klein: What’s the business case for running an online community? Is it only a tactic for ad-supported content networks?

Patrick O’Keefe: There are different ways to look at a community from a business perspective when revenue is one of the goals. The first is the one that you refer to, an ad-supported model. There are display ads, of course, in various shapes and sizes with numerous ad networks accepting communities these days.

But, advertising can take different forms. For example, a classified ad system that requires people to pay a certain amount of money per thread. An example of a system like this is the SitePoint Marketplace, which charges for each thread or listing posted. One thread may not add up to much, but when you consider the volume that they are doing, you can see that they are adding a solid amount to their bottom line

A majority of communities tend to be focused on a particular niche, very specific or fairly general. Sports, a specific sports team, the martial arts, programming, PHP, parenting, health and fitness, model airplanes, television, a particular TV show, and most anything else you can think of that people can discuss or receive help with.

There are companies out there that sell products to that niche and would like to reach your audience. Advertising on your site has value.

You can also sell premium memberships and merchandise. Premium memberships allow members to contribute a nominal amount per month or per year and receive various community related benefits, like enhanced profiles. Depending on what you do or how big your company is, you could offer other discounts, like coupons, advance sales and things of that nature.

But making money directly from the community isn’t the only way to generate revenue. There is value in the community itself, in creating a community around your brand or organization. If you sell products or services, having an established community of fans can help you to sell your products. If they are on your site, they are generally interested in what you do. They are interested in your products.

You have a captive audience, ready to look at your products and hear your announcements. SitePoint can be an example again here – I’m sure they sell many, many books to community members.

If you can create a community where not only you are interacting with your customers or fans, but they are interacting with one another, it can be highly beneficial to you, can create a sense of loyalty to your brand, and give people more of a reason to hang around your website.

Josh Klein: So you invest your time and resources to build a community, and you expect your customers and fans to interact with each other. But suddenly, your community members are talking about things you didn’t expect them to discuss. Maybe they’re discussing your competitors, or even saying bad things about you. What happens if your brand “loses control” of the conversation?

Patrick O’Keefe: It’s important to have good guidelines that are evenly and fairly enforced, to ensure that you don’t lose control. You’ll want to figure out things like the discussion of competitors or critical comments about your company, before you actually launch.

You can go in different ways, but generally speaking, when you launch a community for your company, you tend to be launching a community where people will discuss your industry. Blocking competitors from mention, on a wholesale basis just because they are competitors, isn’t usually a wise thing to do.

If you are going to run a community where people can discuss your product, you have to be ready for not all of that to be positive.

Josh Klein: The forums you run didn’t spring up as components of a larger brand; they are their own brands. What got you involved with forums in the first place? When did you decide, “I’m going to quit my day job and create a network of online communities?”

Patrick O’Keefe: It’s probably important to note that I started managing online communities when I was 15, so I didn’t really have a day job to quit. I don’t know if it was any particular moment or thought. My first site with a domain name was iFroggy.com, which was a web portal. It was a lot of static content and I felt that an online community was a natural extension of that. As I got into it, I discovered that I liked it, and that led to me refining my efforts, creating more communities and gaining more experience.

Josh Klein: Compared to the way most established businesses build their web presence and online brands, your approach was cavalier. Yet your network is as strong as ever. Do you think there is too much “planning paralysis” for people considering building an online community? Do you recommend to “just do it” (then iterate and refine)?

Patrick O’Keefe: Yes and no. If you have seen the episode of The Show with Ze Frank on brain crack, that’s what I mean by yes.

But before you launch a community, you do want to give it proper thought. You want to ensure that you have specific goals of who you want to be and want to attract, as all of your decisions should fall in line with that. You also need to make sure that you are able to support the community financially. Proper planning is important, followed by execution and action.

Josh Klein: Say you’ve planned your perfect community, you’ve executed on your plan, and your community is thriving. Actually, it’s growing like kudzu or a really bad rash. You weren’t ready for such wild success. How do you scale the community and extract yourself from the minutia so you can continue to build the business?

Patrick O’Keefe: It’s important that you develop a solid community staff, so that things can be pretty much taken care of when you aren’t around. You do this through picking good people and training them. You want to be able to leave your community is good hands, so that you can go away on vacation (for example) and not have to worry (too much) about the community.

Josh Klein: Where do you find a staff? Are they volunteers brought up from the community, or outside hires?

Patrick O’Keefe: Generally speaking, staff members come from the community and they are volunteers. You want your most exemplary members to join your staff. Not the most popular members, necessarily, but the members who are following your guidelines, kindly helping people and setting an example that all members would do well to follow.

Staff members represent you and your site, so it is important that they be good. Don’t promote people thinking you can fix them and don’t promote people that aren’t already setting that example.

When you are just starting the community and don’t have a member base to choose from, you may want to bring on good people that you know who have an interest in the subject that your site is based around.

Josh Klein: It seems like there is a real chicken and egg problem with any organization relying on so much user-generated content: if the only attraction were the thriving community, there would be no reason for the first members to join. You need to get an online community past that difficult stage before reaching critical mass, or it will die before it has a chance to live.

How would you advise someone with no previous community to leverage get those first ten, fifty, then hundred active members?

Patrick O’Keefe: I think it’s all about appreciating any and all growth you have and working to keep it, if those numbers are that important to you. Start with a few people – even if it’s just you, a family member or coworker, and a friend or two who have an interest in the subject.

Just keep talking, keep fostering discussion, and keep promoting the site. And, with work and some luck, it’ll attract more people… and more people… and it’ll grow that way.

You have to start somewhere. You start with one, then you add one, and then you add one and… it goes a little like that. Don’t expect it all in one day, but don’t be discouraged by supposedly slow growth.

Josh Klein: Thanks Patrick.

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

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In the movie, Anchorman, there’s a moment when the character played by funnyman Steve Carell becomes so overwhelmed by the volume of the conversation - and the lack of attention being paid to him - that in a desperate plea to have his voice heard above the din, he shouts, “LOUD NOISES!”

Steve knows about bad advertising. We all do.

And yet so much advertising is just companies shouting loud noises. We’re all susceptible, as business marketers or just people who want to be heard, to be a part of this system.

When everyone else is talking loudly in the cafeteria, you’re tempted to raise your voice so people can hear you. You get a little louder, then someone else does, and soon the whole room is louder. So you get a little louder, so someone else does, and so on.

It’s not that you wanted to be loud, but you couldn’t help it. It’s a “collective action problem”, a tragedy of the commons.  We’d all prefer everyone being quiet to everyone being loud (less noise in our lives and less spend on ad dollars), but as long as everyone else is quiet, we cheat a little and raise our volume. And so does everyone else.

It’s a vicious cycle. As it continues, your message has less impact (people ignore it) but you still get louder (costs more money).

How many of you own a Tivo? The great thing about Tivo is it lets us skip commercials. The point of watching television is to enjoy the show. In my case: Dexter or Mad Men (serial killers and advertisers, oh my).

The commercials interrupt us, and that pisses us off.

Commercials are usually noise, so we ignore them or skip them. Some TV commercials are really loud, like during the Superbowl, so we watch those, but only out of a morbid curiosity about their inappropriateness.

We live in a world where thousands of marketing messages hit us at every turn. We’ve gotten really good at ignoring it, just like when we stand in that crowded cafeteria where everyone else is having a conversation. We just tune it out.

Americans watch 100 million hours of TV commercials a weekend, says Clay Shirky. How many do we bother paying attention to?

But there are some commercials we rewind the Tivo to watch, like the Sony Bravia spot (filmed on the street of my old office) or the early Halo 3 teaser.

Not because they’re loud, but because they’re not noise.

You don’t have to play the noise game. Drop the whole paradigm, it’s dead. You want to be in the signal game.

The signal cuts through the noise no matter how loud the noise gets, because the signal is what we’re waiting for. TV shows are the signal. In-depth product reviews are the signal. A call to the customer from the CEO asking how to improve service is the signal.

Amazon has some really good signal advertising. You know that whole recommendation engine? Surprise, surprise - that’s an advertising platform.

“Customers who bought this item also bought…” advertisement. “71% of customers who viewed this item eventually bought…” advertisement. “Tags customers associated with this product…” advertisement.

But wait, aren’t those features? Isn’t that useful? Isn’t that what people want to know about?

Yes. Why aren’t your ads?

I don’t pretend it’s easy to make signal advertising. It requires thinking less about yourself and more about your customer. The mindset has to be “what does my customer want?” instead of “how can I make my customer want what I have?”

And you can go too far. Ads made purely to entertain with no connection to the brand don’t do you much good. It has to be a careful balance.

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

Steve Carell on Bad Advertising

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But I consider “nobody cares about you” to be the most important point of the whole presentation. It’s what marks the difference between the way things used to be and the way things are now.

See, traditional media is built from the bottom up to support business objectives. TV exists to sell ads. For a long time, the only way for Americans to spend their intellectual surplus (as Clay Shirky would say) was to watch sitcoms:

For 50-years Americans were on a sitcom bender, an unparalleled period of post-war prosperity and no idea what the hell to do.

And in our zombie-like state, we sat as the captive audience for companies who wanted to increase “awareness” of their brands. Why increase awareness? So we would be subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) influenced to buy the next time we were at the store.

It didn’t matter if you cared about those companies or not. If you wanted to watch your sitcoms, you better be ready for some hardcore product-on-product action.

Not so with the internet. The internet wasn’t built for businesses, it was built to share information, first for the military and later for academics. Business has grown out of this original purpose, but it wasn’t the intention.

I think of the origins of the web as somewhat of a quasi-socialistic, intellectual, hippy experiment. I know the internet’s origins are in the American military, and the web’s origins are European, but I equate so much of what the modern digital world is to the things that came out of UC Berkeley; from the Free Software Movement to Apple Computers (not to mention everything from BSD to BIND).

The web is not a passive medium. It’s built for engagement.

Why do companies insist on putting up brochureware websites, then wonder why nobody is visiting? Who gave them the right to take up valuable cognitive space without providing anything of value? This brings us back to the line that got axed from my presentation.

“Nobody cares about you.”

They didn’t let me get to the next line. I think it’s too frightening for people to consider that nobody cares about them, so they’re not ready for the good news around the bend.

Everybody cares about “me”

Not “everybody cares about Josh Klein.” I’m a narcissist, but even I don’t believe that.

Rather, everyone cares about themselves. That’s good news because it makes people dreadfully predictable in their desires, and business is all about selling people the things they want.

To be a successful brand in the “new digital age” (I hate saying that as much as you hate hearing it), you need to give people what they want.

You can’t build a website about yourself and expect people to care. Instead, you need to build a website about your customer.

Who is your website about?

This is a post from the Josh Klein Web Strategy blog.

“Nobody Cares About You”

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