dan-menard.com

These days, your identity on the web can be quite broad. You might have a blog, you almost certainly have a Facebook account, you’ve probably at least heard of Twitter and LinkedIn, and at the very least, you watch YouTube videos and read other people’s blogs. To make things seem even more spread out, many interactions in these spaces tend to be very short — and I don’t just mean Twitter, I bet your comments on Facebook and several other social tools are usually a few hundred characters or less.

With such a wide set of places to leave your mark, and these interactions tending to be shorter and shorter, it’s easy to make a lot of them and its easy to make them without thinking too hard. Lately I’ve been trying to put more thought into comments I leave on people’s blogs and tweets that I’ve whipped up on the spot, and the other day I realized something: Every tweet, every status update, every forum post, and every comment I leave online, anywhere, is an opportunity to make a good first impression.

Pause and consider that for a moment. Every time you submit any content online, someone else is meeting you for the first time. Sometimes it might really only be one person, but often it’s dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. Now imagine meeting this many new people in person rather than through a screen. Would you still just blurt out a quick statement without thinking? What kind of first impression would that leave?

Think of this from a branding point of view. Every time you write a quick, pointless statement online, you’re wasting a chance to properly introduce yourself to a handful of new people. Why not seize every opportunity to make a strong first impression — something people will remember?

Some tips for making those first impressions count:

When you post on a blog or forum, link your name to something. There are plenty of options: your blog, your twitter, your shared items in Google Reader, anything you have that says more about you. If I like what you have to say, I’m going to want to know where I can go to listen to more of you.

Please (please, please, please!) don’t just write “great post!” when you comment on someone’s blog. That doesn’t tell me anything about you. Mention why the post is great: what do you like about it? Do you have a similar experience to share? Does it remind you of something funny/stupid/unique? If you’re going to take the time to leave a comment, leave something worth reading — or better yet, something worth re-reading.

Along the same lines, when commenting on something in Facebook, don’t just say “lol” or “epic!”. That’s what the Like button is for. If you’re going to comment on someone’s status, add a bit of personality. You never know who might gain value from your reply, and something heartfelt and sincere could really make the original poster’s day.

Try to be helpful. This doesn’t just apply to question-answer sites like Stack Overflow; people are asking for help all the time, using every tool available to them. This includes the obvious ones like Twitter and most forums, but the same goes for blogs and Facebook/MySpace/Yammer. You probably know all kinds of things that others don’t — share that knowledge!

Be personal. Remember that you’re interacting with one or more human beings. Don’t spam us to death (I’m looking at you, LinkedIn “power users” and Twitter “experts”) and try to talk like you would talk to someone you’re meeting at a park or grocery store. Be humble and respectful, and don’t just talk about yourself.

Proofread before hitting submit. Those typos and basic grammatical mistakes that ruin otherwise great resumés can also sabotage thoughtful comments. Don’t let easily-correctable errors distract me from what you have to say.

Finally, practice makes perfect. This post isn’t meant to scare anyone away from online interactions. Make lots of them; just remember that each and every one is a chance for you to show the world how great you are.

The trick is to read posts that are doubly-useful.

Let’s look at a few examples:

I’m a big fan of JD Roth’s Get Rich Slowly, a finance-tips-for-the-layman sort of blog. While I do appreciate the best practices and money hacks (I feel they help me develop and maintain good financial habits), I could get those anywhere. A huge part of why I read GRS is because JD is a fan-freaking-tastic blogger. He writes diverse content on a near-daily basis, his posts always come off as sincere and never condescending, and the totally-committed community he has built up around GRS is nothing short of incredible. When I read posts at GRS, I’m not just learning about personal finance, I’m learning about how to write for and manage an extremely successful blog. Two things.

Another blogger I really like is Lisa Barone over at Outspoken Media. She writes mostly about search engine optimization and branding, which is often useful information for small-time bloggers like myself, but it’s not what she says that I’m paying the most attention to — it’s how she says it. Lisa has voice. Her writing is playful but clear, concise but with flair. I’m confident that if someone gave me ten posts about SEO and told me that one of them was written by Lisa, I could find it hands down. She’s identifiable and unique in an industry that is crowded and largely bland. Her content is useful, but it’s her style that I learn the most from. Again, two things.

And doubly-useful content doesn’t always have to be about honing pairs of skills; it works just as well for entertainment. Take, for example, Penny Arcade. There are at least two things I find entertaining on this website. The obvious one is the content they produce; their comics, podcasts, and PATV episodes are inspired and wildly popular, but I’m also a huge fan of Tycho’s writing! There have been days when I’ve loaded up PA to see the latest comic, and after reading Tycho’s post, completely forgotten that they even do comics and moved on to something else. Tycho’s posts are so captivating on their own that I would visit the site even if they didn’t make hilarious content. You guessed it: two things.

This doesn’t just apply to blogging either. I’ve tried several times to find a few francophones to follow on Twitter, because in addition to enjoying their opinions (I like to cover a wide variety of demographics on Twitter) it will also help me practice my french. It’s surprising where phenomenons like this can crop up.

So next time you’re about to drop half an hour on FAIL Blog or that popular social-media site that you only follow because everyone else does, consider spending that time on something with more depth. Something you can gain two insights from instead of one. Something doubly-useful.

This is the fourth (!) post I’ve written for today. The reason you aren’t seeing the first three is because the past couple of days have taught me a few valuable lessons about when you shouldn’t follow through on a post idea (even if it’s a really good idea), and I thought I’d share that knowledge with all of you.

<tangent>This post was probably inspired in part by a recent similar post on Outspoken Media.</tangent>

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

My first idea for this week’s post was massively ambitious. A popular site I follow posted an article last week about something I know a lot about, and didn’t do a very good job of it — and it was one of those dreaded list-posts where you can tell some of the items were just filler to boost the count up to a nice, rounded number. I was sure I could write a better post about the topic, so I got started! I was picking apart all the things the other article did wrong, doling out advice for how it could have been improved, coming up with my own, significantly better advice and conclusions, it was epic!

And then I read over what I had so far.

It was atrocious. My bold calling-out of a not-so-great post with examples of how to do it right was reading like a vicious tirade about why I’m better than they are. It was awful! Then I looked up the post’s author; he’s been blogging since I was in high school, has guest posts on some of my favourite blogs, and has made a hugely positive impact in his niche. What was I doing? This guy was a role model. So he had an off-post. It wasn’t all that bad, and even if I could find a few things wrong with it, that doesn’t translate to a better post — especially if I’m being a jerk about it.

So I trashed it. It was probably the longest post I’ve written for this blog to date, and I wholly regret wasting so much time on it before pulling the plug. On the plus side, I’ll think twice about it next time, and hopefully one of you will too.

Posts about current events can backfire.

My back-up idea for this week was based on a gem of a rant I went on over Skype when I found out that YouTube pulled the original RickRoll’d video for a Terms of Service violation. This was a solid post with some legitimately good content that I was all set to write — until I found out that YouTube restored the video.

This is the problem with such ephemeral topics. How long would that post have been relevant for? A few days? Then what? I update it to say “rejoice! the video is restored!” and the rest of my post is moot? Ridiculous. Next time I’ll remember to wait until the news is more official before assuming I’m set for next week’s post.

Are you really a good candidate to write this post?

My third idea was to write a post based on some story I found via Slashdot; one of those trendy posts about an ongoing saga of human rights dilution in a far-away land. This was obviously a good idea, because it was something I cared about! Not so.

What kind of insight would I have on such an issue? Sure I’m passionate about it, but so are millions of other people. Do I know more than the majority of them do? Probably not. Am I going to have some wacky angle that no one else has covered yet? I doubt it. Is there anything significant I can contribute in this space? Not really. So, no post. It was my fault for choosing a topic I was under-qualified to write about.

Please learn from my mistakes.

It’s been a long couple of days. It wasn’t easy throwing out idea after idea, especially after I’d invested time and energy into each one. But in the end I’m glad I did it; I didn’t publish something stupid that I’d probably regret later (or worse: completely forget about), and the silver lining turned out to be a handful of valuable lessons, ready for their own post.