So you need to communicate with clients.

That’s freaking awesome. Is it about boring system maintenance, the minutia of small changes/upgrades in service, or about the fact that you don’t update your newsletter often enough? Do you need to send it out in an email because it isn’t acceptable to just post it to a blog? Is it long and potentially boring or sleep inducing? Of course it is. It’s a newsletter; no one reads that crap.

Or do they…

Pasted below is the text of the monthly newsletter from DreamHost, the host on which this blog is, uhhh, hosted. It’s funny, and even though I don’t care about any of the issues (read “don’t understand”) I read it all, cause it’s pithy, funny and PERSONAL. What that means is: 1) no passive voice 2) amusing digressions, but information is BRIEF and TO THE POINT 3) Self aware i.e. 1st person, i.e. THERE’S A FREAKING NAME ON IT, and I actually believe a real person wrote it! What else? LMK…

Good Job Josh Jones of DreamHost!!

-M

DreamHost November Newslettery to me

0. Introduction.
1. Spacey Moved!
2. DreamHost PS Update!
3. Promo Code Change!
4. Help us Screen Suggestions!
5. Two Silly Features!
6. Charity Addition!
7. DHSOTM

########################################################################
0. Introduction.

It’s the November 2007 DreamHost Newsletter, and you know what I’m
getting sick of? Viruses.

Not COMPUTER viruses either, I mean real, honest-to-goodness, flesh-and-
blood, airborne, casual contact or sexually-transmitted, HUMAN viruses.
(more…)

this is a semi-ongoing series I’m doing now that I am a Social Media Marketing Expert. Tell me what you think. Hopefully I can come to some conclusions that will make me look smart.

Presenting and linking to photos

Photos are awesome. Even though “text attracts attention before graphics,” you have to have pictures in your web content or people will get scared and run away. And by run away I mean click over to youtube to watch skiBASE jumping Videos.

Social Media Marketing is about a lot of things, but also about multiple content vectors . (I made that up just now…) OR, it’s about having lots of ways into and out of your site, all while keeping the user looking at your content.

Example: Photos. What good does it do to have your own image folder on your server that’s not searchable, or viewable? Proprietary photo galleries are a little better, but still locked to your website. If you use a photo hosting service like Smugmug, Picasa or, my personal favorite, Flickr you can extend your content without much effort. These services are cheep, easy to use, and have MILLIONS of users viewing, commenting on and searching for pictures that interest them.

Use your website to give people what they want, to click around and look at pictures, read captions and make comments. And use the photo hosting service to funnel traffic to your content.

So here’s my statement: Always use a stand alone photo hosting service for your photos. Always link an image embedded in your content back to the image in your photo stream. And always have a way to get from your photo stream back to your content. This lets you maximize links and SEO, provide a better user experience, and foster community.

There. What do you think of that? (keep in mind that I AM an expert…)

Up next: Why long, rambling, authoritative, search-baiting, header-riddled, ZERO graphic blog posts with no examples or practical solutions are lame…

-M

You hear a lot about new media, social media and web 2.0–at least I do (you even hear a lot of people who should be in the “know” asking what they are!)–even if we have no idea what any of that means (personally, I think it’s a case of classifying without defining). (wow, that was a lot of digression in one sentence!)

Increasingly, marketers are coming to grips with the fact that people are no longer sitting in front of the television set scratching their butts and belching their beers. Adotas

Still, every time I turn on the TV, for the 45 seconds it takes me to load the DVD and turn that shit off, I see a lot of evidence that the idiot box is still useful. And to tell you the truth, since that’s what blogs are about, I still like TV from time to time, now that Tad Dunbar has been replaced with a blond younger than me–and chances are that I WILL be belching AND scratching my ass. Don’t judge!

But let’s say I see a video, idea, image or PRODUCT on TV or in Mountain Gazette and want to know more, if they don’t have a website, or they have a crappy website, then the chance that I’m going to dig deeper is slight. It’s all so easy now. Even dirtbag bike builders can use a free blog as the ONLY marketing tool and be busy for the next 11 months!

Further, my TV has no bookmarks. I can’t use del.icio.us from my remote control. So the chance that recency will take over and make me remember the tampon commercial instead of that super cool, uhh, WTFever that thing with the catchy-emo-song-and-dancing-hipster that caught my eye was is strong.

Since I never read, or watch TV w/o my laptop or phone, I’m always able to search, bookmark, or at least add a note to Gubb.net or something. And yes, I’m a book geek so I love paper, and I write in the margins. I understand, but Hemingway didn’t try to sell me anything this morning…

What’s my point? TV and print are still cool, but I consider it a lead generator for web content, where you get WAY more bang for your buck. (and I mean that from the user end mostly.) Not to mention the fact that with TV you get a tad bit of a break from the CONSTANT interactivitization!!! (one of the reasons I’ve resisted watching TV or movies fromt he web…)

-M

ps Dear cable TV, no I will never pay for you. Give it up!

I dropped my tire off at the shop in a place called Tonopah and walked to the bar where the kid told me to meet him. Along the way I noticed that almost all of the cars in town were from another state. The plates came from California, and Utah and Oregon, and those plates that were from Nevada were old pickups like the one I’d ridden in on. I walked down the street like I was one of them, though I wore Polarflece and street shoes not Wranglers and cowboy boots. Since I spent the morning at a ranch house with a rancher’s mother, or grandmother, compared to those out-of-staters heading to McDonalds and on to Reno or Vegas, if only in the near-term,, I belonged, in a slightly less transitory way.

I killed some time in a café in one of the casinos. Strange little place. It was the biggest building in town, it looked like, but inside it was tight and foggy like they’d meant it to feel vaguely uncomfortable unless you were moving around. When you’re standing you think things will thin out if you sit down. Least that’s what I thought. It didn’t. Only got closer and tighter like a dream where you can never get out.

I took a seat at a stool in the café. It was the only place that didn’t smell like smoke or puke-choked alcohol. The woman took my order, just coffee. Brought me back something in a starbux cup, but it still tasted blank and chalky like diner coffee should. Must not have given me the good stuff. I reached behind the counter and grabbed a mug from a stack and poured the coffee into it when the waitress left. Hid the starbux cup on the floor so it wouldn’t spoil the scene.

Very red, it was. A little yellow, but if you squint when your there, in real life, you can see what the memory will look like later, when the past is a far preferable place. Real life is always in the present. Things are toughest when they’re neither to be anticipated, nor recollected yet.

I sipped the coffee and looked at the wall and the sink behind the counter and the door with five large double hinges as the ashy busman pulled the cart back there. The trays of clean cups and the sink full of ice. A stack, pyramid, of syrup carafes, some menus, ketchup bottles. The particulate matter of the diner world spread about in a consistent layer like sand nicks in a windshield. Things you have to work to notice.

Either way, time is wasted, dead or alive. I strolled out of the café after a refill or two, barely an hour later, and walked down to the bar to meet the kid. What do you think about in a place like that. If you stop thinking about the immediate future, you end up caught in the distant past. If it’s the 90’s or the 60’s it hardly matters, the now is less important even than the time just ahead. And the truth behind useless observations is rarely seen until it’s too late, if at all.

The kid was there behind the bar. I nodded to him and took a seat in a booth. He followed and sat down across from me. I said I’d buy him dinner, “I owe you bro,” I said. And he took off his hat for the second time since I’d known him, which doesn’t mean much since it hadn’t been 12 hours yet, but that still sounds like a cool thing to say. He pinched the point and put his hands on the brim and then set it down.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Not at all.”

The waitress took our order. Burgers, rare. As if there was another option. Two girls came in and Horace got nervous. They watched us and played pool while we ate. The kid stole glances at them and didn’t ask me any questions. I didn’t ask him any either, just noticed the way he ate and kept track of those girls. Focusing on a task he knew well and one he barely understood. They laughed, and I wished I was somewhere else. And the place I usually wish for is a place I had left heading for somewhere else. Funny how shit works that way.

No, I’m not going to say any more about that.

Been reading a book I’d not read since that protracted series of surreal clusterfucks often referred to as high school. While I’ve no need or desire to relive the glory days, either real or imagined, original or borrowed, I have to say that some things are better after a little time has passed. I now have less spare time to read a chapter a day than I did in 10th grade, however, the quality of that hunched over half hour in the breakroom with a chicken breast on a fork and a book in my hand are quite a bit more comprehensive. With distractions right in front of me, rather than way out on the horizon I’m much more motivated and appreciative of a concise contrite bit of art.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher.

-M

Like that one dude who came back to life a while ago, I’m going to breathe what passes for life into this(what passes for a) blog:

What I’ve been up to:
TMCC
The Practical Pedal
The Bacon Strip
Poedunk
Nevada Wilderness Project
Reno Bike Project
What I find interesting:

Online Nevada
Personal Branding
One more would have been a bakers dozen…
Zen of Todd
D. LaP
Mr. Jerz
The Cleanest Line
Reno Discontent

What I’m going to do:
Blogging power
Ely Enduro
Downiville Classic
Tour de Nez

Where I want to go:
DRGM
Creative

-M

ps I make no apologies for the content, past or present of this blog. Get over it.