Blogging problems

"The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology."

“For a portion of Web users, blogs rival search as a navigation tool, which has really interesting implications for advertisers,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO of BuzzLogic, in a statement. “Blogs are becoming trusted guides, steering users who are seeking very specific information to places of interest online.”

Writing programs that the computer can understand is challenging, to be sure. That's why so few people, in the big scheme of things, become competent programmers. But writing paragraphs and sentences that your fellow humans can understand -- well, that's even more difficult. The longer you write programs and the older you get, eventually you come to realize that in order to truly succeed, you have to write programs that can be understood by both the computer and your fellow programmers.

Of all the cruel tricks in software engineering, this has to be the cruelest. Most of us entered this field because the machines are so much more logical than people. And yet, even when you're writing code explicitly intended for the machine, you're still writing. For other people. Fallible, flawed, distracted human beings just like you. And that's the truly difficult part.

I concur with Atwood and Devlin that there is a strong link between coding and writing.

I did my undergraduate study at Rose-Hulman which specializes in science and engineering, and although it does not offer degrees in the humanities, the leadership at the school strongly encouraged a respect for language, literature, and the arts. Indeed the president of the school at the time, Sam Hulbert, exhorted the student body to be "Renaissance Men" (it was an all-male school at the time :-) ). I took this advice to heart, working hard to hone my skills as a writer.

I had two additional influences during my years as a student. As a junior and senior in college, I took classes taught by Prof. Stuart Leipziger, who whose eloquence as a lecturer was profound. I don't think my understanding of heat transfer and thermodynamics would have been as enriched without his ability to illustrate and enlighten.

In graduate school, I had the good fortune to take a class by the late Prof. J.J. Carberry, who was not only a distinguished scholar in the field of reaction engineering, but also a very gifted writer. His textbook, Chemical and Catalytic Reaction Engineering, uses a writing style seen rarely in the field, rich in its choice of adjectives and elegant in its flow.

These experiences shaped my outlook towards communication, helping me to realize how much of a difference could be made by channeling energy in that direction. By thinking through the process of expression, the weak points of a position could be identified, thereby giving guidance on how to refine the ideas that comprised them.

Back in the mid-90s, when I was trying to make a transition from FORTRAN to C programming, I picked up a cheap book titled C Programming Proverbs and Quick Reference. The author, Ron Wodaski, put lots of emphasis on being a conscientious programmer, someone who was not only coding to solve the problem of the moment, but also solutions that could be reused and maintained by others.

Early on in the book, Wodaski borrows the notion of a "Reader Over Your Shoulder" from the book by that name, written by Robert Graves and Alan Hodges, to instill a sense of self awareness about one's own code.

Calling this awareness the "Programmer Over Your Shoulder" (or POYS, for short), Wodaski pictured him or her as being an intelligent, friendly, yet uncompromising software developer who sits with you as you write code. He even goes so far as to give the metaphorical awareness a name. He called his POYS "Clarence".

One of the goals of having the POYS was to catch yourself when you were about to cut corners on coding. While it is hard to see your own mistakes as you write code, it isn't hard to feel it in your gut when you're about to do something half baked. Maybe it's deciding not to write some comments about some code that's less than obvious, lying to yourself that you'll get back to it later, or perhaps it's deciding that throwing in sanity checks to protect against an error condition would be just too much trouble, given the deadlines that must be met.

The POYS fusses about the things you'd rather ignore, but you know deep down that you shouldn't. It can take some self discipline and brutal honesty to develop a helpful POYS. I believe that Wodaski's writings, published in 1992, presaged the onset of pair programming, which attempts to do code review in real-time. Instead of trusting yourself, you get a real-life POYS to help keep you honest.

At the heart of Atwood's paradox is the central truth that meaningful computation seldom occurs in a vacuum. Time, talent, and treasure are devoted to programming because it is believed that computer applications can satisfy a human goal, be that to inform, to engage in commerce, to facilitate logistics, to forecast future conditions, or even to provide amusement.

These applications operate within the context of an imperfect world. Network hardware fails, people overdraw their bank accounts, bad weather strikes, models get created with faulty assumptions, and people try to circumvent security infrastructure. Useful code has to take into account these and many other edge cases. The firm logic of a programming language must be molded around this imperfect surface of reality.

Careful communication helps mitigate the turbulence of confusion. Agreeing on precise use of terminology helps avoid misunderstanding between product owner and development team. Regular status meetings with meaningful commitments and accountability help keep things on pace. Well documented specifications help developers blaze the trail, and accurate comments help the maintenance programmer follow along. Relevant documentation helps the end user assault the learning curve.

The gift of expressiveness both in code and prose makes a software engineer more valuable because he or she must bridge the worlds of the flawed but forgiving human and the logically rigid, unforgiving, yet incredibly stupid machine.

• Why should companies blog.
• How to create relevant blog content.
• How to measure blogging ROI.

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name

-- Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo,
"Where Everybody Knows Your Name" (a.k.a. Theme from Cheers)

It seems much of my time programming is spent trying to come up with meaningful names for things. I recently observed a problem that arose when two things were given the same name in a library, but that were in fact different. I was trying to document the library's functionality, and it turns out that virtually everyone on the development team was confused as to what it really was. Breaking apart the concept into two names, instantly cleared everything up.

As a closing thought, the following are some of the different naming sins that I frequently see in big libraries in no particular order:

• overloading of names - sharing a name between two different items
• incomprehensible names - "quux"
• vague names - "Object", "Do", "Run"
• missing names (e.g. using ints instead of enum, using literals instead of constants)
• using comments instead of names

A week or so ago, I had a chance to meet up with some personal bloggers, and one of the questions that arose from that gathering was whether blogging as we know it would be around in five years. The basis for the question was the rise of simplified rich media creation and the development of semantic technology that makes locating the media more feasible.

I thought about this for a while. I've been reading blogs for around eight years. I've contributed content both as an author and as a commenter for about six of them. I've read a lot of blogs... personal, professional, and corporate. Rich media has a seductive lure, but I don't think it's for everyone.

Creation of video and audio content is certainly easier and cheaper to do than it was four or five years ago. Free or inexpensive video editing software, Adobe Flash's support for streaming video, and the ease of uploading content on sites like YouTube have created a boom in this area. Indeed, just about anyone with enough desire to be seen has put a clip or two on that site.

The downside to rich media is that if you want to stand out, the quality bar gets raised several notches higher. In the business world, minimally edited output from a camcorder or a webcam won't do it. You're going to have to look good, or at least have good presentation graphics, for people to not only push the Play button, but also stick with the clip all the way through. You're probably going to have to have an expert at the helm.

Contrast this with how corporate blogging works with Compendium's hosted service. Employees across your organization contribute, so you can harness the creative energies of many, not just a few. You get to retain content control through an approval process. And you can always add rich media, when it makes sense, by embedding an object in the post's HTML.

Blogs are also search engine friendly. Even with semantic aids that are becoming increasingly available for rich media, the added overhead of tagging and annotating media imposes an added burden that may not always be met consistently by your organization. Compendium's blog pages use a structure that is rich in semantic detail, aiding search engines in focusing upon the most relevant parts of your content.

Finally, blogs are reader friendly. Information overload is an undisputed problem we all have to deal with. To deal with it effectively, people have to train themselves to filter through the deluge for relevant bits and pieces. You can do this easily with a blog post. It is less possible with podcasts and video. When someone is in a hurry to find something, which do you think will help the prospective customer not only find you, but also learn whether you are going to meet their needs?

Compendium is helping to shape the future of corporate blogging, both on the consumption side, with people and search engine friendly content presentation, and on the creation side, with tools that make the blogging experience more enjoyable to the author and accountable toward ROI.

When you take all of this into account, corporate blogging is definitely in it for the long haul.  We'll be glad to help you along the way.

1. People search.
2. Search engines provide the relevant answer.
3. People read the answer.
4. Some people engage further.

• Show the relevant content that people were looking for.
• Provide a compelling call to action for the person to engage your business future.

John's page has no less than 50 calls to action (text and image ads) on it.  Why?  John's page is not a corporate blog, it's a blog to make money off of corporate sponsorships and advertising revenue.  Other than to buy ad space, the purpose of the site is to make money from folks hitting ads. 

The way to ensure this happens is to place ads everywhere you can find real estate.  It's a great blog and it works at driving advertising revenue to John.  John also does NOT rely on search engine traffic for acquisition.  In fact, I believe Google dropped him from the index a while ago.

Here's an example from Compendium Blogware's Business Blog:

Our focus is not that of a content management system nor of the off the shelf blogging software.  We designed our system + our standard template + our call to action strategy to drive business results from search back to your company.  It’s a proven force already in the industry.  Extraneous features are a diversion and will significantly reduce the conversion rates of those people who land on your blog.

We absolutely want to cross-promote your site – where you can have all of the gadgets and widgets you'd like (and hopefully information in a neatly organized, easy to find, and attractive interface).  However, on your blog, it’s going to hurt your investment. 

A minimalist approach is the best approach – with distinctive call to action(s) that leave nothing to the imagination for organic searchers who land there.  I would add that we’ve proven this methodology by drinking our own Kool Aid!

Additional Resources on Optimized Landing Pages and Maximizing Conversions:

• SEOmoz - Simple Strategies for better conversion rates
• BtoB - Landing Page Optimization
• Jonathan Mendez - How Simplicity, Recognition&The "Perception of Ease" Impact Landing Page Optimization
• Search Marketing Standard - Five Factors for Landing Page Optimization
• Conversation Marketing - 14 Landing Page Upgrades
• Marketing Experiments Journal - Landing Page Optimization Tested

Books on the Topic:

• Landing Page Optimization
• Don't Make Me Think
• Call To Action