Having different blogs for different subject areas means that I am a slave to them all. So if it’s quiet here on my central hub then it’s probably because I’m over on one of my other workday or spare-time blogs. As a quick roundup, here’s what I’ve been posting elsewhere of late:

31 Destinations in Time – because it’s not just about the place but the era in which you visit it. I’ve just posted number 11 in the series on Dumaguete City, capital of Negros Island, in the Philippines in 2007. The series also includes Bali, Iceland, Venice, Jordan, Slovenia, Paris, Gili Trawangan, Austin, Texas and San Francisco.

Subs’ Standards – lately in my sub-editing blog I’ve been picking up on a few funnies that have made it through to publication. I also published my first guest post – from multimedia journalist Andy Bull on the subs-friendly art of curation and live-blogging. I’m now thinking of asking other sub-editors to write about their experiences of digital subbing.

Debauched Teddies – rounding up bad teddy bears from around the world. There are LOTS.

Katchooo Mix – a scrapbook of stuff that is relevant to my interests.

Flickr news – fresh up are holiday pics from Llangollen canal and the Isle of Purbeck, plus shots from Mostly Jazz Festival weekender who kindly gave me a photo pass.

Grant Thornton Thinking blogs – I help write and edit four blog channels for Grant Thornton UK on/about: business leaders and entrepreneurs, the high net worth community, international markets and boardroom issues. Recently I’ve researched online business networks in China, live-curated the UK Budget and set up a Scoop.It for female finance directors. I’m lucky in that the firm’s online channels are open to exploring new ideas for business and financial content.

The Firehead blog – I’m also blog manager for this European content and comms recruitment company. They let me post LOLcats among the more serious business content. This makes me happy.

(Aka a comment on corporate social media strategy.)

I’ve been working my way through some Do Lectures – a sort of British version of TED talks but given on Welsh farm – and just enjoyed Euan Semple’s talk on Why social network mess can benefit your business. Here it is – it’s about a 25-minute talk.

As I blog and web edit for a large corporate more than half of each week, I was interested to hear Euan Semple’s take on the barriers to engagement and also how to help organisations approach social media.

Basically, he uses strategic storytelling (see Prof Jay Conger’s short video on this) to come up with a couple of great analogies about Dancing dads and Trojan mice.

To paraphrase rather than transcribe:

Corporations are having social media done to them, employees are being told to take up Twitter, lots of CEOs are being told they have to blog. But this is like watching your dad dance at a disco: you’re proud of them for having a go but really wish they wouldn’t do it. Time for a visual… (Apologies to whoever’s Dad this is.)

The alternative to that is employing the Trojan Mice principle – do little, inexpensive, unobtrusive things that you don’t need a lot of permission or budget for but once you set running they begin to find a life of their own. Keep it worthwhile and you achieve growth (engagement) by advocacy rather than diktat.

I’ve been sort of employing this tactic after a talk at SXSW Interactive in 2009 put it another way – be like a small SWAT team, do things under the radar then build on their successes as a way to deal with large organisations’ inevitable inertia. The result is that a couple of the ideas I’ve suggested on the corporate blog have got some traction and seen take-up from other areas of the business. Here I am on a Segway.

Sort of.

I guess 2011 is about finding more of that overlap to encourage the companies I work for to take up the social media / blogging call for themselves.

As for money and ROI, Euan talks about how IT departments are often Business Prevention Units that ‘have been fleecing corporations for years’, before finishing on the Scotman’s tip for ROI – keep the i small and no one will give a s^*t about the R.

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Original photo by 24 Oranges NL on Flickr

Right, that’s my strategy sorted then.

For the whole of December I’ve had a ton of tabs left open to read because they’re too interesting to bookmark. I keep doing this. Why?! Whatever the reason, a new year is demanding that I clear them:

On journalism
Fact-checking, Wikipedia and basic journalistic credibility
Adam Tinworth on why reporters should check their facts, not rely on Wikipedia and, I would add, not rely on sub-editors to do all their fact-checking for them.

Who Cares About The Front Page?
Ditto on Adam’s frustration of journalism being defined as stuff what is done by national newspapers. No no no. My own background is magazine journalism and sub-editing since 1987, then later client publishing and now blogging. All potential career avenues for J-schoolers. Journalism is not dying but national newspaper print may well be. Speaking of magazines…

On magazines and applying their thinking
Magazine Thinking – by Chris Brogan
“If you actually look at a magazine, there’s a formula for each of them. There’s a cover feature, a few larger stories, and a whole lot of bits and tidbits. There are columns (that’s what I do for Entrepreneur Magazine), and of course there are ads and all that. What do you have to think about to make a magazine? Content. Community. Marketplace. The point is this: if you look at this kind of framework for your projects, it becomes clear what kind of magazine you’ve created or not created with your content. It becomes obvious that you do or don’t have a community. Without the first two being fairly solid, there’ll never be a chance at the marketplace. ”

Exploring Editorial Strategy
Your website is not a magazine – but it should be! Presentation plus video from Jeff McIntyre.

On editorial calendars
How to Put Together an Editorial Calendar for Content Marketing
A really good how-to for those in search of publishing production skills.

On KPIs
How should you measure the success of a digital team?
Agencies need to become more critical in reviewing what they offer. There’s a nice list of KPIs to borrow from.

The right metrics for the right business objective
Interesting survey of marketing objectives (led by brand awareness) and the fundamental flaws in their measurement.

On SEO and keywords
Top SEOmoz Posts of 2010
I must brush up on my SEO, link building, etc. If only because good content deserves not to be let down by bad headlines and metadata fails. Many onward links here.

7 highly effective keyword research tactics – Step One: Start Broad
I have to do one of these as a blog I work on gets a rethink.

On personas
CMI on personas
Also have to create some of these for the first time.

On case studies
5 Steps to Craft a Case Study’s Content Strategy
In a nutshell: Define Target Audience; Conduct Discovery Work; Choose Relevant Subject Matter; Identify Objectives; Research Priority Keywords. Useful for some blog content I’m trying to make more interesting to the reader and more relevant to the client.

On content strategy
9 Must-Have Elements for Company Blogs
Thankfully, I’ve just completed a content strategy doc that encompasses just about all of these good points. Reassure yourself that you are on the right track with company blogs with this article.

The Two Career Paths of the Corporate Social Strategist. Be Proactive or Become ‘Social Media Help Desk’
Jeremiah Owyang helps put my career back on track…

All the content strategy presentations from CS Forum 10
Are here.

Content strategy templates to download
From the Google Knol.

Why WebContent2010 gets my conference budget
A designer with an eye of cutting down client copy-and-paste atrocities. “I have enough difficulty getting clients to pay for copywriting, so convincing them to pay for content strategy is a whole ‘nother hurdle. But it must be done at the beginning. It is always the first question you ask a new client anyway: Why do you want a website? The answer to that question lays down the foundation of your content strategy.”

Content Strategy and the Dying Art of Execution
Junta Joe on why perfectly good content strategies die on the vine.

Interesting talks
The Do Lectures
Like TED talks, except with a British bent and based on a farm in Wales.

The Impact Of Strategic Storytelling
A 4min video by Professor Jay Conger.

And finally… to catch a thief!
Software that helps you recover your stolen Mac
Tech revenge is sweet for $49.

These links are relevant to my interest but have been sitting in tabs for the last two weeks. I will read them, I >will<. But after I’ve dumped them here. They make quite an interesting view of what has been taking up my time in the last little while. Links as diary entry?

I’m thinking of buying an Android phone…

• HTC Desire review by TechRadar – five stars, looks good, please tell me if this review is all to cock in the comments though as buying is imminent via Top Desire deals. Or should I iPhone it like the rest of the world?

Festivals

• CoCoMad is this weekend (July 3, 2010) in Cotteridge Park, South Brum. I have heard it is good. Here is the line-up.
• I missed it (on purpose) but I’m glad it’s being televised. Here’s a rant about TV coverage, though: After the flags, the mud-slinging.

The garden

• The garden has been battered into submission to my will. This rose was planted by my Mum and is the prettiest thing in it: Woburn Abbey floribunda. I heartily recommend this little try-hard. Lots of colours and it flowers repeatedly. All for a tenner. Thinking of getting another one.

Content strategy

• I thought I liked this site. Boy, was I wrong – Kristina Halvorson cocks up and learns a lesson in user research.
• Content strategy for the real world – slides by Kristina Halvorson.
• Fusing content strategy with design – CS appears in UX Mag.
• Content isn’t king after all (but neither is content curation)
• You can stick your lorem ipsum right up your CMS – for the title alone, but I also like Jeremy Head’s writing (he’s a travel writer too) and rather amazed to find out he’s become a content strategist. Parallel worlds.
• Skills to transition to content strategy
• Content Mapping: A Different Way to Audit
• Organising content – by I’d Rather Be Writing
• Walk Like a Publisher – Don’t Evolve Like One
• The New Rules For Judging ‘Quality’ In Published Content
• CS Forum 2010 Paris – the video presentations

UX / IA

• UX myths – eg, people don’t scroll (agree), but Flash IS evil!
• Zombie personas and many more links that are relevant to my CS/UX interests.
• Personas as User Assistance and Navigation Aids
• The Future is Already Here: Three Trends in IA

Travel and photography

• Eric Fischer has mapped the difference of where tourists and locals take photos – lots of cities mapped. Fascinating. One to blog on the the travel blog.

Copyright and fair use

• The battle lines are being drawn over fair use: Two POVs on the Barclays v. TheFlyOnTheWall.com case

What do the super-rich want to read about?

• The invitation-only subscription magazine for the super-rich – fuel for my day blogging.

Memes

• Know your meme: Jejemon:  “In the Philippines, Jejemon is an internet slang used to describe someone who typEs LyK tHIs.”

Blogging (and hyperlocals)

• 4 Web analytics basics – includes how to lower bounce rates
• How I Publish 42 Blog Posts Per Week – Tips for Efficiency

(and from a convo with Talk About Local’s Will Perrin in the pub…)

• Gypsy Roma Traveller Month: Travellers Got Talent competition
• Kington Blackboard
• Saddleworth News
• Parwich

My blog mentor used to say keep your posts short. One point per post. Three paragraphs should do it.

Well, here it is. The perfect post. Albeit leading to 3,000 >more< words of juicy goodness about a trade that is being eroded, outsourced and killed off as mainstream media declines. Over on Subs’ Standards, I’ve just posted up the final chunk of a three-part epic looking back over my 21 years as a sub-editor.

And here is it: RIP Sub-editing 1987-2008. Enjoy! Meanwhile check out these taster pics: of my old-skool kit and the changing size and shape of technology…

Typewriter, typescale, proof marks, reproduction computer

Silver Reed vs MacBook

Despite having a lovely website since Feb 2005, it started to feel limited in the last year. So, it’s been on my mind to rebirth the site onto a WordPress platform to let me update more frequently and start to play with customisation and plug-ins. So, here’s the final post from the old site’s front page, for a bit of continuity and to find out, as Marvin says, what’s goin’ on.

January 2009 Latest news
New features up on allaboutyou.com on travel jabs, visas and 10 best wintersun destinations for 2009. Currently working on producing digital content for high street brands. I’m also sending myself to SXSWi in Austin, Texas, in March, filing stories for the Telegraph and writing an Austin destination piece for the Sunday Mercury.

Sept 2008 Turkey & Slovakia
From steamy 700-year-old hammam to snow room ‘sauna’ and -120degree cryotherapy chamber. Also feature up on solo women travellers at allaboutyou.

August 2008 Call me ‘Two Blogs’
In between copywriting and web-editing, I’ve squeezed in a couple of new blogs on both journalism and travel: Subs’ Standards, with tales from the subs’ desk, and What to Wear Where, featuring the start of ‘dress codes from around the world for your packing pleasure’.

July 2008 Trips, blogs & plans
Philippines 2007 trip – ‘world’s longest underground river‘ feature published in July (Metro). More recent trips include St Ives, the Scillies and Suffolk’s Drum Camp.