Just Thinking

The war is over. The people have defeated the corporation. Need proof, read this week's BusinessWeek cover story. They are the ones who are in charge now. They are using the Internet to tell companies what products to make, to tell the world what a word means and even developing new products of their own. Bob Metcalfe was right. The value of the network really does multiply as do its nodes.

So now that the public is calling the shots, what does it mean for public relations? Here are the 10 commandments for public relations professionals as I see them in the Golden Era of Participation… Steve Rubel

You are not anonymous, in todays world of easy investigation (via the Internet of course) it is normally a matter of an hours work to find out who a blogger is. It’s really easy if the person who is doing the investigation works for the same company you do. Sure, you might use a pseudonym and reduce your boss and fellow workers to nicknames, but it only takes one mention of some uncommon point to blow the whole thing open. For me, it was when I wrote about swallowing some HIV+ blood, the news spread around ‘in real life’, and it didn’t take a genius to work out who was writing my blog. In some places your company might be able to force your blog hosting company or ISP to reveal your details. So write as if you are writing under your own name, or be honest and don’t bother with a pseudonym.

How Really Simple Syndication delivers just the Web sites you want

If you're a news junkie, an online auction lover, or someone who wants to know when the latest songs, DVDs, and books are released, here's a technology that's perfect for you. Called Really Simple Syndication (RSS), it lets you pull together a list of Web sites you want to follow. So instead of surfing through The New York Times site for news, going to eBay (EBAY ) to track a particular auction, or checking with Apple's (AAPL ) iTunes to see when a new recording is available, you can get access to all the information through one Web page or download to your computer. The information you get, called a feed, comes to you through a piece of software called a newsreader.

President Bush's re-election gives the free world a second chance. I know that some may be surprised to read this, but I am convinced of the fact.

Hope has triumphed, and with it the confidence of the American people in the values and principles on which our shared civilization on both sides of the Atlantic is based. George W. Bush decided to respond to totalitarian terrorist attacks with a return to basic principles. He could have chosen appeasement. He could have opted for mere rhetoric. He decided not to do so. He decided to oppose brutality with steadfast conviction. Now a wide majority of his people has backed this policy. It has confirmed that there is hope in our way of life, a form of hope that derives its strength from its essential convictions, a hope that is manifested in the desire to defend freedom above all else.

Many took for granted that Mr. Bush would be defeated. They were wrong. The mistake committed by those who create caricatures is that they believe that normal people are going to substitute reality with caricature. The American people have decided that the best option is to offer a new mandate to Mr. Bush. If not, the achievement of these elections would be inexplicable: an extensive margin between the two candidates, in favor of President Bush, in favor of the popular vote; an increase in the number of his senators; a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives. Mr. Bush has managed to consolidate a movement that has been emerging for some years. He has managed to consolidate a natural conservative majority in his country.

Your website success will increase the better you write headings and summaries. People are very impatient, so the heading and summary really needs to be compelling. Here are some key tips for writing better headings and summaries.

It’s not a murder mystery you’re writing, so tell them who did it in the first few words of the heading and summary. What is the single most important thing that you have to communicate to your reader? Do they really care? Because if you can’t find one single, genuinely compelling thing to say, you shouldn’t be writing the content in the first place.

So, you’ve identified something really compelling, well then lead with that. But remember that what is compelling to you is often the very opposite to the reader. It’s the 50th anniversary of the founding of your organization, and you want to have this heading:

It’s our 50th anniversary

How many people do you think will wish you happy anniversary or send you cards? Not many. Because people are selfish, and that means they really don’t care about you. I know it’s a sad state of affairs but you’ve got to accept it; people are just selfish.

Now, how about you write the following heading:

50 percent off because it’s our 50th anniversary

You’ll now have lots of happy people wishing you a very happy 50th anniversary. They’ll just love you.

As the amount of content around us explodes, the difficulty of finding what we need greatly increases. The way we deal with this is to spend less and less time scanning pieces of content in order to decide which ones we should focus on.

“Most people just look at the first couple of words—and only read on if they are engaged by those words,” according to Eyetrack III, a study which analyzed how the eye moves around a news webpage. “For headlines—especially longer ones—it would appear that the first couple of words need to be real attention-grabbers if you want to capture eyes.

“The same goes for blurbs [summaries] -- perhaps even more so,” according to Eyetrack III. “Our findings about blurbs suggest that not only should they be kept short, but the first couple of words need to grab the viewer’s attention.”

Lead with the need. Keep your headings under eight words; four words or less would be even better. I used to think that 50 words was a reasonable limit for summaries, but recent experience indicates that they should be under 30 words. In fact, Eyetrack III found that, “Average blurb [summary] length varies from a low of about 10 words to a high of 25, with most sites coming in around 17.”

Whether you have an intranet or public website, whether you have a government, university or business website, you still need to get people to read what you have written. Otherwise, why did you write it?