Community Guy – Jake McKee

Friday Non-Blog Design Series II

It’s Friday again – time for more blog designs that don’t look all "bloggy".

The Big Noob
A great design for a group blog. The design puts some great focus on both the entries and the blog authors. Most group blogs have a hard time highlighting their authors effectively.

Dangergraphics.com
It’s hard to even tell this is a blog with the mix of content and blog entries! Probably not the style for your business, but it’s a good reminder of how different blog designs can be.

Avalonstar
Despite appearances, this blog design is actually pretty standard. But the way the entries have been styled gives it a very unique, but familiar look.

No content? Add context!

If you’re business blogging and get stuck on what to post, don’t fall into the trap of repurposing your whitepapers or press releases. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t post those things, in fact quite the opposite.

Press releases showcase what you’re doing. Whitepapers showcase how you’re doing it. That’s good stuff!

But if you simply dump the press release into a blog entry, what’s the value? Why wouldn’t your users simply head to the press center area of your site. But if you wrap that press release with your own personal interpretation, additional background information, or funny behind-the-scenes stories you have something more valuable to your readers than just the press release itself.

Remember: If your users can get the same content on your blog from another source why would they bother with your blog?

Looking Stupid

Companies often look foolish to their consumers, that’s one of those business constants you can’t get away from. No matter how great your company is, they’re going to look foolish over some issue sooner or later. Most of the time, it seems like the biggest task is to try to stop looking foolish.

So why would you invite opportunity to look stupid, confused, and clueless?

I sent HBO an email a few days back after hearing rumors of their great series Deadwood being cancelled. This was the automated response I got back:

(I know it was auto-generated because another blogger posted the same message last week)

Considering that the show, despite fan efforts, was in fact cancelled last week, this line from the auto-response comes across as trying to hide the truth:

Beloved cast? Latitude to pursue other projects? Yikes. If they’d just been honest and dropped the PR-speak I might have been impressed and the openness. As it is, it just looks like they were trying to hide from my upset.

It’s easy to look stupid to your consumers – don’t make it easier.

Great Quote #456

A few more of these "great quote" posts and I’m going to have to setup a new category just for them!

Slightly altered from the version I heard from the always intellegent Andy Sernovitz:

Another bad idea

Yet another money making scheme… Blogsitter.net.

If your blog can’t survive you taking a few days off, then the concept your blog is based on isn’t very well thought out.

If for some odd reason  you think that your blog will run off the rails with a few days break, here’s an easy solution. Use a blog platform that allows you to post date entries. Before you head to the beach, do some extra blogging and set the dates to span your break.

See, no need to pay for a "blogsitter". Ugh, even typing that word makes my stomach turn.

Deleting Blog Comments

Recently I posted a comment on a blog that was politely taking the blogger to task. See, I had read his subject line incorrectly thinking he was overreacting to the topic at hand. This blog was his personal blog, but the content was related to his work. He clearly identified himself as being an employee of the company he works for.

Rather than respond in the blog comments, the blogger emailed me to ask why I had posted what I had posted. To be clear, my comment wasn’t aggressive or rude.

When I responded to the blogger with my clarification of the point I was making, he replied that he had taken the comment down since we had "resolved the issue".

To tell the truth, I felt a bit put out by that action. I felt like he didn’t value the discussion because it made him look less than perfect, or because it might somehow reduce his "expert status". For me personally, I would have thought him more the expert if he had simply addressed the issue in the comments. It would have showed me that he was so very confident in his abilities that he didn’t have to take it to email.

Yet another reason that I advise clients to delete comments only when there is a significant problem such as profanity, threats, being radically off-topic, and so on. After all, how you respond to your critics is often more telling than how you respond to your supporters.

World of Warcraft here I come…

Since nearly all of my friends are now playing World of Warcraft, I figured it was time to actually install my copy. I’m very interested to see how it goes, since I’ve heard such great things about the game play. But the social media/social design dork that I am, the thinking I’m most interested in is how gamers connect with each other.

Yes, I’m odd. I’m the first to admit it.

Perhaps the worst idea yet

This has to be the worst idea I’ve ever heard…

The Ads: We have a vast library of world-class ads. You choose the ad you want and then personalize it by adding your company name, or images of your products, or details about an upcoming promotion. We charge you for making those personalizations, and for getting your finished ad ready to be broadcast on television.

The TV schedule: Once you’ve chosen your ad, we help you create an effective schedule of TV networks and times to ensure that your ad is seen by the right people. Then we send off your personalized ad and make sure it runs where and when it’s supposed to. Our prices include all the time and effort it takes to do that.

In an era of decreasing TV ad effectiveness, launching a business that allows mom and pop to create clip art ads seems to be a brilliant solution for helping increase the speed of the death spiral of TV ads.

I’m honestly at a loss for words on how bad of an idea this is. Think of the handshake image in Powerpoint presentations. You know you’ve seen a few….hundred…of those in your time. Now that same annoyance can come to TV….

Friday Non-Blog Design Series

I’m finding lately that using a blog for some of all of a client’s web site has been a solid solution for their business need. In those discussions with clients they’re a bit worried that their blog would have to look dull and drab, with a standard three column layout and devoid of a tasty look and feel.

So I’ve started collecting a list of great blog designs and layouts that don’t look all that "bloggy". I’m going to post a few of those designs each Friday for the next few weeks…or until I run out of links. (If you have suggestions, please email me or drop me a note in the comments) I will also be posting the links each week to my delicious account under the tag "nonBlogDesign".

Some of the designs I’ll comment on, some of them will just be a link to a great design. Don’t think so much about the business context of the design, since it’s likely that the design isn’t directly "business" related. Just soak in the style and ask yourself how your company or client’s blog could benefit from a tasty design.

This week’s Non-Blog Design Series:

Brother Jones Art Works
This is actually three blogs in one – each of three brothers have their own blog. In addition to the nice look of the blog(s), I also like that there is only one entry shown on the home page, with older entries being wrapped under the "More Blog Entries" header. This allows the page to remain focused and not very overwhelming upon initial visit.

ASFusion
The first time I saw this site I literally had an emotional reaction. It’s a beautiful design, but what really sucked me in was how well the overall design theme was extended to every element on the page. User comments, form fields, main site navigation, page titles – every bit of it sucked you into the feel of the site.

Veerle’s Blog
This blog stands out to be because of the way it handles a vast amount of content in a eye-pleasing way. It’s a blog, but it’s a blog by someone with many different types of information to get across.