Photo credit: ilco

I love hanging around the online writing community. Where else can you meet a diverse crew in terms of expertise, location and writing styles? No matter how similar or different we are, I relish mingling with them all whether it’s here, their blogs, Twitter or other social networks.

We help each other become better writers. Believe it or not, you won’t find a dash of competition anywhere (unless it’s an actual competition like NaNoWriMo).

Writing can be a lonely job, but not when you have a community like ours.

Joanna Young more than does her part in keeping the writing community going strong. Her March group writing project’s topic is writing lessons from the community.

Gosh, I’ve learned much over the blogging years from the community. Whatever I pick up from the community becomes a regular part of my writer’s being. So the best I can do is share what I’ve learned recently.

• Tune in to positive feedback from Joanna: Make the most of the feedback you receive. G-d knows I am way too hard on myself. Thus, I value feedback from others. I urge people to provide feedback. How else can I improve my writing?
• How two people can read the same thing in a different way from Karen: Though this has happened to me, the post reminds me to talk things through when something doesn’t turn out as I expected.
• How to deal with rejection from Jamie: He shares a big time rejection story and does what a writer should… keep going and plan to do better next time by asking for professional critique.
• Why consultants make fabulous clients from Brad: Consultants sometimes get a bad rap. Shake off every negative thing you’ve heard and absorb what Brad shares.
• Take a damn vacation from James: I’m bad about vacations for a lot of reasons. For one thing, being a home office worker means I need to take care of things that break around here whether it’s sick kids, appointments and other work interruptions. Oh, my dear husband is an involved dad, but I have more flexibility than he does.
• How you can make money writing about shit from Cath: Seriously. This post shows how to take one specific topic and turn it into a money maker. Sometimes I forget I know stuff that others want to know. It’s a matter of figuring out what that crap could be.
• It’s OK to do word vomit from LorettaJo: You can’t catch bulimia doing this. Instead, you get ahead with your writing.
• Discover powerful short books from twitternation and the community: I’ve got a lot of reading to do thanks to the great feedback from everyone!

If you’re not mentioned, please don’t feel upset. That’s why I’m not crazy about these sorts of posts. It’d take days to make sure I include everyone. I’m sure I’ll get ya another time. OK?

We haven’t forgotten to announce the winner for the prize with Do You Own Your Web Site? entry. One commenter is on vacation and we’re waiting for him to let us know what computer he has.

This entry’s prize is a full copy of First Class Flurry PC game from Chanon Sajjamanochai of Viquagames. Meryl’s First Class Fury review. This only comes for Windows PCs, not Macs. You have until June 14 to contribute a valuable 30+ word comment.

I met Janet Lee Johnson in 2004 under unusual circumstances as she’ll explain here. Though the reason for our initial meeting is long past, we stay in touch. I enjoy having discussions with her and exchanging ideas. It’s not often you meet someone who puts fun in work and marketing. Most companies still do thing traditionally… read: boring. Not Janet.

Assorted Blogging History Lessons

… History is a fun subject, now that I no longer have to pass any tests. I couldn’t think of a better subject for my guest post for her blog’s 8th birthday celebration (congratulations meryl.net!) than to relate a little of the history that Meryl and I share from what some might call the ugly teenage years of blogging.

In fact, this post might be called “Sordid History Lessons,” had Meryl not been quite so sweet about our initial meeting.

I met Meryl in late 2004 while serving as VP Marketing for Marqui, a CMS startup out of Vancouver, BC, bent on moving into the US.

I was the lone marketing person there at the time (we were a bootstrapped startup with fewer than 25 employees) and we desperately needed to get into the awareness, minds and (we hoped) hearts of developers.

In August of 2004, a group of Marqui advisors, including Marc Canter, were brainstorming about breaking through the cluttered CMS space and into developer awareness when someone had the auspicious idea of paying developer-centric bloggers to blog about us.

Marc was tasked with coming up with the program and a short-list of bloggers who had the developer community’s ear. He did so, and Meryl was one of the first he identified to be a part of our “paybloggers program.”

My job was to manage the program, give the bloggers something to talk about every week, in case they needed it, and generally provide any support they needed. Oh, and run the rest of Marqui’s marketing at the same time.

Mine was a rough entry into the blogosphere when I started seeing emails pass amongst those chosen to blaze new ground and blog for us – these people were wicked writers! And back then the blogosphere was a lot more like the “wild, wild west” than it is today. These people had opinions, they weren’t afraid to leverage the pulpits they’d spent time nurturing, and I’d just better get used to it.

Our terms?

n exchange for $800/mo., we asked our bloggers to link to our site once a week, to state clearly that they were being paid to write about Marqui (we provided “blogger flags” to select from) and write whatever they wanted to about us.

We’d promised not to censor anything, and we didn’t. We promised to publish everything, and we did. We got trashed, we got praised, we became the poster child (no pun intended) of an ethical debate — should bloggers actually get paid to post?

The jury is still out on that question. In fact, we found that the best way to engage in the discussion was to do it ourselves, and I started blogging immediately as the debate began to rage — to give our perspective, straight from the horse’s mouth.

And while I nursed my initial wounds and bruises from our many detractors, and while my skin became thicker and hair grayer, and while I was finding my voice in my initial, tentative posts I found there were many wonderful, decent people “out there” too.

And Meryl was a pioneer for me in that role. She was not brash. She did not bully. She actually tried to write about the product. She selected the “sensible lady” as her blog flag… I’ve always pictured her that way. Smiling with a confident — yet gentle — look in her eyes.

Hers was a welcome, guiding hand and wisdom from the blogosphere that I will always appreciate, and I will never, ever forget.

About the author
Janet Johnson calls herself a bridge: turns out after 24 years in the business, she is a technologist for marketers, and a marketer for technologists. She is in her bliss when collaborating on projects that bring social media into organizations. She lives in Portland, Oregon, blogs here, and follows Meryl on Twitter from here. Her Facebook page is largely neglected, as she lives in the moment when not tackling strategic issues.

I survived my first Writing Blog March Madness match up. However, it was no easy win so advancing rounds will be nail-biters. As if the first one wasn’t.

Community: The weakest spot in this blog is the lack of community. John‘s right about that and it has puzzled me. For a while, I tried posing open-ended questions to invite comments. That didn’t work. I stopped because the blog entries looked pitiful having a question with no comments.

Gaming: I was relieved that John realized the gaming section was separated out. I worried he’d think I had something irrelevant mashed in with writing and business. I broke out gaming as much as I could from a technical standpoint (if you go through posts by clicking “next” and “previous,” you’ll see the games entries.). I was going to set up a different site for gaming, but as Mark of TheDiamondGames pointed out … meryl.net is established. Why start from scratch (in terms of SEO and ranks)? I thought he had a good point and took the route that I did.

Design: When I worked with Blue Flavor on this site’s design, we tried to make the site feel professional yet personal. With this design, I could stand to look at my own site… for the first time ever.

Usability & Navigation: The reason I provide a summary is based on my experience. I became frustrated with scrolling through some bloggers’ long entries and thought scanning ‘n clicking would be better than scrolling. But I could be wrong. What say you? I’m willing to change this and consider any other annoyances.

Purpose: I’ve always admitted that my blog has never been niche-based. It’s evolved over the years. I don’t think I can do better here unless I pick a niche.

Personality: I don’t want this blog to be about me, me, me. In promoting the business side of things, I try to show what’s in it for the prospect. In writing blog entries, I try to provide information you can use and not make it about my opinions. Personality matters as it gives the blog life, so I try to do that without crossing the line or getting too personal. Some things shouldn’t be out there for the world to see.

Content: Whew. John captured it, “She has a nice habit of giving tips and then illuminating them with examples from her own experience.” I’ve learned well from others’ examples plus examples help show instead of tell.

What can I do better so you leave this blog glad that you spent a little time reading it? How about enticing you to leave comments. What compels you to leave comments on a blog? That’s the missing link here.

The biggest reason I’m afraid to give presentations is fear of not being able to interact with the audience. My lipreading skills are imperfect and I don’t want to frustrate the audience by repeatedly asking, “What?” when they ask questions. A blog doesn’t have that problem and I respond to almost all comments — some are in private. But the interaction isn’t happening.

You’d think after eight years of blogging that I’d know the answer?

I admire John for taking the time for doing in-depth reviews of 32 blogs and including mine. Thank you, John.

Lest you think this is a brownnosing post — it will most likely not even be covered in the next round as I should have at least five posts by then. I want to understand how to improve on the weak areas. Who better to ask than you?

The Internet and business magazines contain plenty of anecdeotes on business that have succeeded with implementing community-based tools. Such tools connect businesses to people, clients, suspects, and prospects. These start conversations and build relationships.

Businesses, especially executives, love numbers that prove the success rate of a product, service or tool. So,I wanted to find statistics on businesses using community tools. Talk about impossible task! Well, not impossible, but too time consuming to get results without whiling away my day.

Sure, there’s a wiki listing Fortune 500 that have blogs, but its last update was October 2006 and it only focuses on the biggies. Plenty of sites show proof that businesses have accepted and incorporated blogging:

• Problogger list of business blogs
• PR Wiki corporate blog list
• Business podcast directory
• Wiki cuts one person’s time spent on projects by 25%

I’ve looked in blogging books and podcasting books. Nada. I’d love to create a poll that would help us all — but I fear that’s too ambitious for my schedule. Anyone know of any resources with numbers pertaining to businesses?

Updated: 11 June 2010

Occasionally, I receive an e-mail from someone who wants advice on becoming a professional writer. There’s too much information out there, so the best thing to do is learn a little at a time. The following is what I tell those interested in a writing career.

Join a writing community: The best thing you can do is join a writer’s community as not many writers like to give advice because they worked hard to get where they are with little or no help. Many great communities exist out there. Your best bet is to search for the ones covering your industry or genre because those communities will have answers to many of your questions. So search the community for answers before asking.

Book recommendations: Writer’s Market [current year] and those listed in the top 25 books for writers and writing-related topics.

Resources: Read Writer’s Digest (it has a community, too). Check out my Friday links and Twitter (I have a list of writing pros that can also help you) as I often include links to great writing-related articles. Social media is a great place to meet and connect with writers and others in the industry. A few Twitter chats cover writing-related topics. Here’s how to join a Twitter chat.

This list is short to avoid to avoid overwhelming you. When someone gives me too much info — I feel overwhelmed that I don’t know where to begin. If you’re ready for more resources, here’s a growing list of Free Tools and Sites for Writers.

Abstract version of my story: I didn’t quit my day job and dive into freelance writing. Instead, I wrote on the side while working a day job. I continuously received assignments and it took five years before leaving my day job for full-time freelancing.

What advice do you share with new writers?