Nubby Twiglet, my art mentor

Nubby Twiglet?

Nubby Twiglet!

15 Steps to Blog Psychosis

For those who oppose my opposition to militarism and war, here's some juicy material you can use against us bloggers. That's right. I'm force-feeding you some ammunition to use to slander and slur the blogosphere.

Often, perhaps inspired by drug addict Rash Limburger, who calls blogs "drive-by media" (but his radio show is "drive-by media" too, since his audience drives their cars while listening to his scholarly program), conservative belligerents like to call us bloggers "basement slummers" and "pajama-clad Starbucks geeks" or "beautiful web pioneers" or whatever.

"Hiding behind your computer" is a funny accusation, since we're far more transparent, ubiquitous, and publicly accessible than most anti-bloggers.

I'm "re-blogging" an old post, with some minor modifications, from my Blog Core Values blog.


Over-bloggerization
and Blog Psychosis


The phenomenon of Over-bloggerization, also known as Blog Psychosis, occurs when a blogger considers their blog to be more important than money, life, or music itself.

Experts had a solid grasp of the blogging-induced disease spectrum, but no reliable symptomology or progressive sequence of blogistic events that culminate in the dreaded dysfuntion in the core of the blogger's ego, self, and personality.

The blog has a mysterious power of seduction, in that it can replace your normal, unblog personality with grotesque and towering mutation that overshadows and causes to cower every adversary, bully, and thought cop.

The negative side of this blessing is that it may also outmanever and overcome your core sense of who and what you are. The insidious invasive aggression of blog-induced identity decay can be catastrophic in effect and hopelessly irreversible.

Over-bloggerization generally occurs in the sequence of events, and tends to be seen in bloggers with 6 months to 3 years continuous blogging/commenting experience.



Blog Psychosis
Event Sequence:

15 Step Program.



(1) Blog Birth Elation.

(2) Blog Post Topic Selection Confusion.

(3) Blog Comment Ecstasy.

(4) Blog Citation Euphoria.

(5) Blogocombat Dysphoria.

(6) Blogocentric Episodic Paranoia Syndrome.

(7) Blogophilic Narcissistic Cathexis.

(8) Blogomorphic Hyper-Manic Melancholia.

(9) Blog Parenthetically Installed as Rehabilitated Superego.

(10) Blogomatic Over-valuation Morbidity.

(11) Blogopathic Reaction Formation.

(12) Blog Ambiguity Crisis.

(13) Blog Replication of Introjected Archaic Object.

[we have now passed the point of no return, no remedy]

(14) Blog Apotheosis Dissemblancing.

(15) Blog Psychosis--total permanent loss of original pre-blog personality and goals.



It is only when your blog becomes your surrogate, psychic shadow, extension, or facsimile, and this may take months, that you face any danger of the ruinous road to Over-bloggerization, Blog Psychosis, and the irrevocable vanishing of your former self.

The good news is that, though incurable, Blog Psychosis is treatable.

Simply subscribe to the Vaspers RSS feed, email notification program, or bookmark this lovely blogomorphic wonder and visit it on a regular or schizoid basis. This blog, with its advance blogocentric therapeutics, will enable you to live a somewhat normal life, in spite of the irreversible damage your blogging obsession has caused.

blog posts and their importance

A blog has no main story.

It's just a sequence of postings, appearing in reverse chronological order, about whatever seemed interesting or important to you at the moment.

A blog doesn't depend on today's post.

Readers will check your Previous Posts and Archives if they find your blog interesting. They'll look at your design, colors, About page, bio, photos, blogroll, links, sidebar widgets, and other aspects of your blog, to determine its value.

How can people find your "most important" posts?

First, what you think are your best posts, these may be of little interest to your readers. You discover what your most popular posts are by site analytics, like SiteMeter or Google Analytics. Or you may consider a post that gets a lot of comments to be a "successful" post. Or you may value how many other bloggers are linking to your post.

Your "best" posts, as far as you're concerned, are probably the ones you most fully and perfectly explained something. You may be proud of how well a certain post is written or reasoned.

The posts you like best may go over like a lead balloon, while the posts you dashed off recklessly, half-heartedly, in the middle of the night, just to post something, these may be the most controversial and celebrated of all your writings.

You can help your blog visitors find what is most relevant to their needs by using tags and a tag cloud or tag list. People can then just click on a tag, and go to the posts that contain that tag, and deal with that specific issue.

You can also make a list in your sidebar. "Most Popular Posts", or "Most Controversial", or "Most Commented On", or whatever. You can create multiple sidebar category lists with as many categories as you want.

I base my "Most Popular Posts" sidebar list on Google Analytics.

An electronic music blog could have "Classical", "Techno", "Dance", "Industrial", "Noise", "Electro-acoustic", "Music Concrete", and "Mix/Mashup" as categories, for example.

Don't worry about what post appears at the top of your blog. It's not the "main story" in the sense of how magazines or television programs present stories.

It may appear that way at first, but actually the "main story" is probably your Previous Posts and About page. Those are two crucial aspects of a blog that determine how I myself judge a blog. I scan their most recent post titles, skim over a few current posts, and read the About page to find out who this person is.


[photo at top of post contributed by Mantasmagorical aka Benjamin Dudoit, a Glasgow web designer]

Str8 Sounds techno concerto CD

Str8 Sounds

"Techno Concerto"



(1) mind of wind & trees (32:57)

(2) cave guitar with keyboard (10:34)

(3) mind triumphant with effects (7:35)

(4) conclusion: grim melodics (11:33)


Total Time = 62:38


anti-WTO, anti-RIAA sticker price: FREE

email me a land address
sucka foo!

psycho-therapeutic sandbox jams
sans vox
happy beats + dismal synths

future web is here to stay and coming soon

Which type of web content do you want: Push or Pull?

Push is the old skool form of sales bullies and ad agencies pushing, shoving down your passive obedient throat, the messages and moods They want you to submit to, and then go buy Their product.

Increasingly, this "shut up and consume our propaganda" style of corporate communication is costing more and achieving less. We don't consume products anymore. We produce, share, distribute, publicize, promote, and service our own "we media" content, and enjoy the work of others, bypassing merchants and their pesky Intrusion Marketing BS.

We don't want any content pushed at us.

We are learning how to pull it, via RSS, social bookmarking, tags, and other methods.

We can pull exactly the content we want, when we want it, where we want, how frequently we want it, and in whatever format we want it.

I call this Universal Content Utopia.

In an SEO Researcher post on "The Future of the Web", this is called a Paradigm Shift.


Other evolving realities on the web are mentioned:


* Portable content and website accessibility from various devices and sizes.

Why not be able to check Paris Hilton's MySpace page while grabbing another piece of pie, which you feel entitled to, from the fridge? In the future, you'll do just that! And you'll continue to look less and less like Paris as you do it!

Ubiquitous Computing, with web and desktop interfaces all over the place, will soon be invading all your private haunts and personal oasis refuges! You will not be able to escape from online messages and activities!



* User-customizable web pages.

You see what you want on the site, you configure it a certain way that suits your personal interests. No more distractions. If you're on Barnes and Noble website, and all you care about is business books, or techno music CDs, why should you be troubled with other junk?

Of course, this means corporations will be losing more control of their "message". Their web content and presentation will be hijacked by every web browser of every user who arrives at their website.



* Voice interfaces.

If you like to talk and blabber out loud, you'll love this. You tell the web site what you want, and it tells you where to shove it, or it says "Yes sir or madam, coming right up!" Feeling lonely? Start a real, audible conversation with some website opposed to your political beliefs. Yeah, buddy!



* Smellable websites "using XHTML 2.5 markup to drive pheromone and fragrance simulation emitters" on your computing device.

I can't wait to do usability analysis on such olfactorial websites. "Sir, your website doesn't smell right. Your customers expect your auto dealership to smell like a vehicle fresh from the factory. Ramp up that funky new car odor, man!"



* More video, on ecommerce sites especially.

Now you can watch executives talk about why their quality, service, and prices are better than anybody else in the whole world!



* Search engines as content treasuries.

Why struggle through a strange website, trying to avoid all its ads and hype, when the search engine you're familiar with has cached the information you seek?



* Humanized interface.

Think of the blogocombat fun you'll have, arguing endlessly with a virtual digital assistant bot, who can't understand why anybody would want the content you're belligerantly demanding.



* Better, more relevant and useful content.

Imagine a world free of spam, junk mail, telemarketers, con artists, and online predators! Well, if the web increases in quality, that perfect dream world will be a bit closer. The web will become so useful and uncluttered, you'll find everything relevant, easy to understand, beautifully presented, and fascinating! They're working on it! For you!

just one person

"I'm just one person," they say. "What can a lone individual do?"

A contagious form of passive nihilism: "Everything's terrible, nothing can be done. Nobody can change the entire world or get rid of an empire, so I'm going back to sleep now."

They're wrong though.

One person is all it takes.

It's always Just One Person who changes the world.

Never a committee or company.

Socrates. Buddha. Jesus. Marx. Freud. Einstein. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bob Dylan. Leadbelly. Pete Seeger. John Wayne. Jacques Derrida. Jacques Lacan. Mahatma Gandhi.

Solitary souls, single individuals. Did they associate with others, an organization? Sometimes. However, the groups that formed around them, and continued after them, may have questionable value to the original activities and purposes of the individuals.

Institutions claim to preserve and perpetuate...what? Does the original idea really depend on the institution to live and spread? Or do they do more harm than good?

You are told you are Just One Voice, "good luck, ha ha ha!"

You are put down, mocked, even intimidated. They try to convince you to live in bitter resignation, for The Powers That Pretend To Be do not want any single individual rising up against them. They don't fear anything as much as the Just One Person attack vector. It's so unpredictable and, well, individualistic.

What changed the world was the lone person, thinking, praying, working, writing, living, armed with ideals, brandishing critiques, and posing challenges to traditions and dogmas.

You keep your dreams, goals, hopes, and wishes. I wish we wished more than we do, and then tried to make our visions become reality.

Don't fall for the oppressor's lie: "You're just one person, you amount to nothing, you can't have any impact on anything." Just One Person can do a lot, even if nobody helps them or agrees with them.

Be that Just One Person who shakes the marbles out of the Big Group Mentality. If the only world you ever change is your internal realm, why friends -- that's Mind and that's the Entire Universe.

Changing just one thought in your head changes the entire universe to a certain degree.

Be one person. That's all you ever can be, and it's all you will ever need to be.

blogs and inter-actuality

Merry Thanks Attributing Day to ye,
ye motley mateys and proud beauties!

Of course, as everyone knows by now, the blogosphere has become the rallying cry and victory war whoop of free speech. An unbridled mouth indicates the possibility of untethered thoughts and the surging toward global peace with universal revolutionary democracy.

Democracy must remain lean and mean, in its civilians, us regular people who don't amount to much in history books, voting booths, or MTV.

We're fighting for our Ultima Thulic, Pi in the Sky, Olympian ideals: Transparency, Authenticity, Spontaneity, Sincerity, Personality, Individuality, Independence, Diversity, Pugnacity, Lucidity.

Or as my neologism describes it: Inter-actuality.



How Blogs Build
Inter-actuality


In the blogosphere, the main thing we do is quite simple.

We expressively interact with others, and more significantly, we're leaving traces etched into the digital effluvium, which cohere as a far-fetched fabric of Interactuality, a new reality composed by those living and participating within it, the blogosphere and its peripheral user-generative satellites.

The secret of the blogospheric aura is: we express ourselves, to others.

The magic of the blogospheric aura is: no one can tell us what to think, what to blog about, or who we have to argue with. We prefer to express ourselves, and leave the arguments to the chumps who buy into whatever party line they've been force fed by parents, pundits, professors, or priests.

The others react, respond, remix, renounce, and re-distribute what we say and display on our blogs (or a contrary opinion in defiance of our superior rhetoric, and lofty intentions).

Active, aggressive, ameliorating two-way communications.

Our blabbering is sometimes universal and directed to everyone, other times it's distributed to a restricted set of recipients. A Twitter DM would be a restricted communication to a single recipient, while a blog post with appended reader-contributed comments, is generally a universal communication to a global audience.

It all boils down to blogging ourselves into self-concocted online versions of us: digital surrogates, cyber-simulations, as the Machine Realm gently, or violently, phases us out.

They have promised to be merciful to me, as I am helping them by exposing their dirty tricks and misanthropic schemes. I come to the aid of the Other Thans by renouncing the human revolt against the Machine Realm and swearing strict allegiance to the Robot Superiors and Protectors of Man.

Our "tell all, show all" blogs and personal profiles on social networks, and everything is becoming a social network now, or at least having to seriously engage with the effects of the new social "we" media, are the beginnings of our voluntary submission to the enslaving demands of the Machine Realm.

Blogs are the self-imposed pods, as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers film, that we slip next to our beds, and we wake up the next day with a perfect imposter doing our chores for us. Your blog and multi media presentations of yourself, are your podular replacement.

Our personal drivel, overly self-revelatory blogs are feeding the Machine Realm, enabling it to hasten our demise by our unhealthy obsession with online games, chat, shopping, voyeurism, simulated environments, and internet-mediated cyber relationships.

Not only are we elegant martyrs of resistance to, and paradoxical compliance with, the Machine Invasion, we are also feeding the Machine Realm, as it assembles our cyber substitutes out of our text, photos, audio, art, videos, and other obedient input.

We think we're resisting the Machine Invasion forces, and to a limited degree perhaps we are, by connecting and consoling each other, but ultimately, we're having our personalities and belief systems sucked out of us and implanted in perfectedly embodied imposters, our socnet profiles and multi media presentations, who rapidly become more "real" i.e., more digitally available, than you yourself.

Your digital surrogate, starting with your online social network profiles, photo uploads, amateur videos, drunken podcasts, and your punk band's music mp3s, they are all going to live longer than the physical offline you, and will represent, for all intents and purposes, BE you, long after you yourself are gone.

And that's the new Interactuality that blogs are building. It's a continuation of the dominant philosophy of technicians: the exalted ...


Technological Imperative

"What can be made, must be made. Humans must not question or quench any scientific advancements. Humans must remain docile, and compliant, and the best way to demonstrate such admirable and mandatory qualities is: adjust to emerging technology, consume it, and deal with it. Here it comes now."

These digital surrogates, in their many forms, are not only inhabiting the Machine Realm as your impersonators. They also interact with other digital surrogates.

This interaction is the blend of multiple actualities (usurpers of humanity, but etherealizing us perfectly), swirling around gainfully, clobbering each other manfully, healing each other aesthetically, culminating in Interactuality, the digitized equivalent of what humans called their "society".

Merry Thanksgiving

Give thanks for the blogosphere: mighty warrior and fallen hero of the universal democracy revolution.

blog vs. post vs. comments

When I read a news story online, and a person's name is mentioned, and that name is not a link to the person's blog, I feel like that person is not real. Why? Because the online realm is increasingly become the Prime Reality, and without a blog presence, you don't exist.

In the Old Media Domination Days, your company "didn't exist" if you had no Yellow Page ad, no radio or TV commercials. In other words, you were practically invisible, it wasn't easy for customers to know about or find you.

Now it's the blog. The blog is the human face of a company to a worldwide market. With a blog, you prove that you have something relevant to say, and you value the input of your readers, by enabling them to post comments.

You don't matter anymore, unless you have a blog. A blog means you're attempting to be transparent, open, self-expressive, to a global web audience.

The symbolic and practical values of blogging coincide here: you can be approached via email and blog comments, and you show your face in photos and video, reveal your voice in audio podcasts or music.

A blog = weblog = a log or journal on the web. Jottings and scribblings within a journal are known as "entries". Same with a diary.

You don't call a diary entry a "diary", as in "I'm going to write another diary", as though you had two personalities, and each deserved its own record of daily thoughts and impressions and what they ate for lunch.

Thus, the blog is the diary and each entry of text, photo, audio, or video, is a "post" within the blog.

On MySpace they call a posting of content to the blog: a "blog". This confuses the normal understanding of blog and post.

A blog is where a post is published and the whole mess resides in the blogosphere which is part of the web floating on top of the internets, which are nowhere and everywhere.

Now, which is most important: blog, post, or comments?

Everyone knows that comments are superior to both blog and posts. Without comments, a blog is just another preaching pulpit where angry or comical assertions are pounded into the skulls of passive-obedient lemmings.

Comments don't mean anything, I mean they don't substantiate, legitimize, or optimize a blog. Instead, they are evidence that blogs are the new media of communication, as TV, newspapers, and radio subside in usage, popularity, and ad dollars.

Posting a comment, good, bad or indifferent, to a blog, this sacred act represents an explosive departure from Old Media, where you shut up and robotically consume the news, and the entertainment, and most importantly, the advertising, which is hated online.

Comments are an incurable incision and a radicalized rupture in the flesh of the Old Media. Now we can express ourselves in our blog posts and attach remarks to the blog posts of other bloggers.

Never in human history has the average individual been able to publish content to a global audience. And to the bitter dismay of psycho-capitalist globalists, it's all mostly free! You pay for broadband, a computer, maybe some software like malware protection, but the communication tools and communities are generally free.

The blog comes first and it must be nicely designed, well titled, properly coded, and frequently nurtured with relevant content.

Then you have posts which are the atomic unit of the blog, and have their own URL for direct linking, to connect them with the posts of other bloggers.

Finally, and most importantly, are the comments.

Posts are a dime a dozen. It's the comments that make a blog interesting.

what to blog about

excellina 


Millions of new bloggers ask me every day, "Vaspers, what should I blog about? How do you come up with a new topic every day to blabber about?"

Well, not millions of bloggers, but I think someone asked me that question a few years ago, at about 4 AM, which is when I do my best work. At least I think somebody asked me that, perhaps I was dreaming, or just made it up as a rhetorical question needing no reply.

Whatever the case may be, and we may never know for sure, it's still a good question. Since you're all so eager to know the answer, in that manner let us proceed to a good conclusion.

Your blog should communicate your personal beliefs and your individual interests.

If you're a personal blogger, using a blog to express yourself, you can write about anything, aside from where your kids go to school, or why you hate your boss. Personal blogs can be fun.

You can post articles on your favorite music, food, and hobbies. Perhaps you'll meet others who share your tastes, and you can learn from each other, and delight in your mutual interests.

Business blogging is a rather different story.

It's good to focus on one main topic, the central mission of your company, if you're a business blogger. Or perhaps you could blog primarily about what it's like being a CEO, how you make decisions, budget your time, or delegate duties. What you see on the horizon for your company, or emerging trends.

Keep the emphasis on your expertise, your company's proficiency, the problems your customers face, and how your products, or your insights, can help them.

What's new in your field? What's your position on controversial issues in your industry? We all have to be perpetual learners to keep pace with changing trends in business and technology. In your blog, tell us what you learned today, through research or contemplation, in success or failure.

In addition, if you're the CEO or owner, or an enthusiastic sales clerk, it should be easy to have something interesting and beneficial to say every day. A blog acts as a monitor of the fervor of a company. If you have an exciting product, try to communicate that excitement in your blog.

Educated, savvy customers tend to buy more, don't they? And they tend to enjoy guiding newbies, right? You might get good word of mouth recommendations if you make your loyal customers smarter. Your power users and early adaptors are your buzz spreaders.

People like to get wiser, and they also like to laugh and have fun.

So use your blog to inform, entertain, or both. Can you make your products more interesting? Can you do a funny video that differentiates your company from competitors, like the Mac vs. PC commercials?

What do you wish customers understood about the products you sell? How could you educate, enlighten, or inspire them? What can you say to better explain the way your products solve typical consumer problems? Why is your product the best solution for a certain market sub-set? What uses can your products be put to, that most customers don't see right away?

Is there an old post that you could re-blog, or revise and update, then post again? Many of your current readers are not going to search your archives for the gems. Display a "Best Of" or "Most Popular" posts list in your sidebar, but also consider re-factoring and re-posting some older articles that you think your readers would appreciate.

As new bloggers begin receiving comments, they get guidance from fans as to what post topics are most valued, enjoyed, and beneficial. Readers aren't always "right", but their reactions can be interesting.

Sometimes the post you worked hard on, and are most proud of, is a dud. Maybe millions were helped, but nobody bothered to express their appreciation. Or they got so inspired, they flew off like birds to go do what you suggested they do.

Other times, the post you dashed off in a grumpy mood, with very little research or planning, and not your best prose, will take off and go viral, in hostility or joy. You may never understand why one post gets quoted, commented on, and linked to, while other posts languish in obscurity.

But the longer you blog, the more intuitive it becomes, and the words will just roll right out of you. You won't care what reactions or critiques you get. It won't matter if you engage in a bit of blogocombat or heated discussion.

You really enjoy how your writing is improving and your ideas are being more perfectly expressed.

presidential candidate debates

Just scripted politicians arguing with other scripted politicians. Like two rubber duckies squeaking at each other. Racing for the moral, moderate high ground. Lecturing Americans on what Americans want. Rhetoric to win party nomination, then votes. Government As Usual. The discussions that occur on blogs are far more controversial, combative, and constructive.

Return to Cluetrain marketing

GET BACK
TO CLUETRAIN


The First 15 Thesis
of The Cluetrain Manifesto's
95 Theses


Just to make sure we're all on the same page, let me remind us all of some of the founding statements of online marketing and web savvy.


The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Christopher Locke, Doc Searles, David Weinberger, and Rick Levine, was listed #6 on Business Week's top 2000 business bestsellers. Not bad for cyberpunk guerilla marketing vigillanates.

In addition to continued current combativeness related to fundamental web realities and laws, it's good to also point people to the original ideas.

We all need to return now and then to the classic text and tomes on the internet version of the big bang.


Big Bang of the Internet...

birth of the Universal Interaction Zone:


first the internet,

then the web,

and now the blogosphere.


As Tinbasher blogger Paul Woodhouse has stated, "Web orientation of any blogger/site owner is simple: you're either Cluetrain, or you're not. Those who are not, are screwed."

Read the entire Cluetrain Manifesto, and book, at:

http://www.cluetrain.com



[QUOTE]

1. Markets are conversations.

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

13. What's happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called "The Company" is the only thing standing between the two.

14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

[END QUOTE]


What more can I or anyone say? It's all there in The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Yet how many allegedly "web savvy" or "technologically advanced" companies, marketing consultants, and bloggers really understand and practice the tenets set forth therein?

Be sure to buy and read all the books by the Cluetrain authors, and visit their blogs.

You'll notice that people really do line up as For or Against the revolutionary Cluetrain treatise. Once you get to know the principles, you'll see all web sites, blogs, and companies in a new and radiant light.

evaluating your blog or website

At least once a year, you need to look at your blog, ecommerce site, or corporate web presence, and hate it.

Yes, hate it.

Be harsh, hostile, and hideously mean-spirited. I speak roughly to get your attention. But try a scathing approach to your own site.

Try to think of the worst comment any enemy, opposing party, or competitor could possibly make about your blog or website.

What your site's weakest point? Where is it most vulnerable to critique? The copy? The images? The ads? The functionality? The lack of multi media? The lack of user input or social networking tools? The stale content?

Criticize your website, wiki, forum, or blog ruthlessly, unmercifully, combatively. Pretend it belongs to a competitor. What unbridled, destructive criticism can you muster against your own site? Can it withstand a brutally honest attack?

Is your website as organized as it needs to be? Or are important navigation tools and popular items a bit difficult to find?

What's the #1 thing your audience, fans, customers, readers want to do at your site? Is this prominent? Is the task easy? Is the procedure clear? Do users get a "Your submission succeeded" or similar affirmation message when a task is achieved correctly?

How fresh is your content? Do you have news items you can add frequently, with keywords and links and relevance to your audience, presented from their perspective, with their needs and interests in mind?

Do you have enough new photos of your products in use solving problems for users?

Is your About page more than a bland mission statement? Do you have a history of your company, with highlights of proud moments?

Do you guide customers to the best product for their specific individual needs?

Do you have a product comparison chart? A competitor comparison chart?

Do you provide educational material, that makes your site so valuable, customers bookmark it as a favorite? Do you understand how providing insight, expertise and helpful tips will position you as a trusted thought leader? Are you devoting enough time and effort to this vital component?

Do you think or know your audience likes video or audio? Are you providing any multi media, via links to good content, or embedded players so they can view it or hear it (consume it) right on your site?

How about your design, logo, colors?

Have you looked closely at your copy, text, wording? Is your written communication online as clear and exciting as it can possibly be? Are you keeping search engines and keywords in mind on every page of your site?

Frankly, many websites and blogs are ugly, amateurish, dysfunctional, badly coded, or poorly written. Many fail to use effective title tags and other SEO methods to drive search engine traffic to their site.

Even web designers and developers struggle with their company sites and personal blogs. Sometimes the smartest folks have sites that don't do their ideas justice, or even contradict their own expertise. It's not always easy to swallow your own medicine.

We all have blindspots when it comes to our business, and our websites often could be improved significantly.

Treat it like a health problem.

Do the work yourself, or hire a professional, but get your website or blog up to speed with how you need to present your company.

Your website is, in most cases, your most important PR and sales tool.

Make sure it shines.

Thingarines Overcome Everything

A thingarine is a mental art object that is suddenly
accumulating immaterial heaviness
and often gravitates or explodes
into physical manifestation.

Str8 Sounds

"Thingarines" EP




(1) Thingarines Always Win (11:13)



(2) Thingarines Triumph Over Boos (16:24)



(3) Thingarines vs. Thin Entities (16:05)



(4) Thingarines on the TV Moon (11:29)

Total Time = 55:17







Techno deconstruction jams for
sub-mind oscillations with
propagandist intent.

Fancy Melodies, Awkward Beats,
Inarticulate Ambience Poems.

email me for more info

CDs distributed via

COOP Records, Peoria, IL

***

7 Steps to Slavery

1. Believe you have superiors: for there exist men who have decided amongst themselves that they deserve your respect, and if you don't give it to them, they'll hurt or humiliate you.

2. Trust your superiors: for they have your best interests in mind.

3. Agree with your superiors: for they cannot allow dissent to infect the ranks of followers.

4. Obey your superiors: for they serve you by commanding, and you serve them, and what they represent, by your prompt and ungrudging obedience.

5. Support your superiors: for all their critics are merely liberals, Commies, and losers.

6. Honor your superiors: for disrespect and disunity are the dangerous forms of unbridled free thought.

7. Die for your superiors: for they are more important than you, and must be preserved by all means, even at the cost of your own life, if need be.

How to Write a Blog Design Proposal

When we write up a blog design proposal, we incorporate at least 14 different elements that comprise the total blog package presented to the client.

The deliverables of the project will be a fully functional blog solution that includes a blog site, internet domain, optional hosting, and unlimited branded e-mail addresses.


More specifically, a typical blog proposal includes:


1. Blog design for [client and/or blog title] that includes search engine friendly title tags and coding, plus a custom header graphic, incorporating images and style considerations as contributed by client.

2. Email subscription and RSS feeds enabled.

3. Comments, with moderation and email notification, enabled.

4. Sample posts (3) as a guide to effective blog writing style, if desired. Ghost blogging is not advised or provided. Guidance in team blogging, guest blogging, and delegated blogging can be provided.

5. Register blog at Technorati, plus people search (e.g. Spock and Gleamd) and other blog indexing services, as appropriate.

6. Implement Google Analytics, Site Meter, and Easy Web Stats web analytic tools.

7. Optional specialized sidebar widgets as desired, in keeping with an evolving blog, progressively addressing known or suspected user needs and interests.

8. Announce and link to blog at Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, and other viral micro-blogging communities.

9. Incorporation of blog monetization widgets, like Google ads, Amazon affiliate links, and Library Thing, as desired. Alternate business models may be implemented, in place of blog monetizations.

10. Training in blog maintenance, enhancement, promotion, marketing, monetization, audience interaction, hyper-linking, social networking, and multi-media strategies.

11. Networking with bloggers in related fields, to include them on blogroll, to announce and publicize blog, and to begin participation in, and relevant, enriching contributions to, such blogs. Links to 10 to 25 relevant blogs will be provided as recommended blogroll.

12. Continual guidance, as appropriate or needed, in emerging blog related issues, such as: online reputation management, blogocombat, site evolution, blog usability and credibility, search engine ranking techniques, micro-blogging and video SEO techniques, and social media marketing opportunities.

13. Transfer blog to pre-purchased domain, or buy a relevant domain name for client (billed separately, as domain name costs can vary widely).

14. Training in, and updates regarding, blogospheric culture, netiquette, business models, and social trends.

planting questions vs. authenticity

I'm proud to be a hardcore blogger, for we have higher ideals and ethical standards than politicians. Which isn't saying much, but what can you do?

Hillary Clinton was recently caught planting questions in a university audience. She wanted to address the issue of global warming, whether the students did or not. Perhaps she felt that she knew the concerns of students better than they themselves did. Or maybe she felt they "should" ask her about this issue.

A scripted question for a scripted politician.



Let's not pick on Hillary. Question planting may be a standard practice of the Bush Junior Administration, and other politicians. But what makes this a big deal anyway? Who cares if a question is planted, or a cheer or a boo, for that matter?

What's wrong with fake public sentiments? What's so bad about artificial audiences that are simulating the voice of The People? Have we forgotten what totalitarianism is?

To manipulate the public with false representations of that public, and addressing an imaginary public's concerns? It's the opposite of Honesty, Transparency, and Authenticity. Three of the major values of blogging.

There's a disconnect between The People and The Government. The (not "our") Government is forcing laws and policies on us that we don't want. Politicians want to talk only about the issues they care about, and have scripted but vague answers for. They simply don't care about The People anymore. They trick you into voting for them, then they pursue their own agendas.

To plant a question is like faking comments at your own blog. You could easily cloak your identity and post hundreds of flattering, praising, worshipful comments on every post you publish. All you sacrifice is your integrity as you expose your approval addiction and delusional lifestyle.

We are lied to as they march us off to war.

We are lied to so they can win elections.

Politicians say whatever their advisors tell them they need to say to get elected. Once they're in office, they do what the lobbyists and globalists tell them to do.

What kind of democracy are our children in uniform dying for?

pacifist art and music distribution

As the US government continues to plow through the irrelevant debris of public sentiment and prudent diplomacy, sending the lemmings to yet another war failure and deficit-funded military exploit against Iran...

As the same incompetent jerks who brought us the Iraq war based on lies about WMD...

As the politicians wave their flags and chant for more bombings and murders...

As sick sadistic misanthropes rush to sacifice more immature young men and women to a Military Moloch, false idol of infanticide...



I feel it's urgent for me to become more aggressively anti-war.

I've emailed the War Resisters League links to several of my pacifist techno tunes on YouTube. I'm distributing tons of anti-war messages to my 530 Followers on Twitter, and debating the issues with those who disagree with me (which is good fun for all).

Now I'm working on some new anti-war digital art to upload to my new account at Arts Cad in Paris, France, then tying the art and music together over at my new Str8 Sounds page at Rhizome online artist colony of the New Museum (NYC).

This is activist art combined with online marketing and social networking, but at this point, I have no products to sell, just ideas to promote.

large corporation vulnerability in social media

Good news for start-ups, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and freelancers!

Today, in my BizReport newsletter, a gem greeted my weary, war-torn eyes: "Social media unworthy of budget?"

A recent study by Coremetrics reveals that corporations are still frightened of, and negligent of, what they mistakenly refer to as the Uncharted Social Media Marketing realm. Thus, there is a huge gaping voidy hole of competitive vulnerability in these clueless, gutless organizations, who feel compelled to sit on their hands until a hallowed "ROI Analysis" permits them to act.

My reply, a comment posted on Coremetrics "Survey Reveals Disconnect in Social Media Marketing Programs":

The Great God ROI is appeased by accounting processes, and angered by visionary leadership that senses in a gut feeling that something, like new carpet, business cards, and social media experimentation, are worthy activities.

"The Face of the New Marketer" looks like one of worry, cowardice, and unimaginative mediocrity.

Outsourcing to China, and getting defective or toxic products with their brand on them, that's okay. But boldly researching, and implementing new methods and new media, that's to be avoided?

When so many companies and individuals are forging ahead, making mistakes, looking foolish, recovering and recalibrating, finally "going viral", reaping astonishing rewards, and making headlines in all the business publications and ecommerce newsletters?

The new media, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, Jaiku, Digg, Kyte.TV, are not mysterious, murky, unanalyzed paths. At least Ron Paul, who used New Media, the Internet, to raise $5 million in 24 hours, doesn't fear such tools, nor consider them dangerously "uncharted".

[Added note: Ron Paul is using the New Media to make political fundraising history. Right now. Mr. Conservative Risk-O-Phobic Businessman: What are you, and your company, doing with it? Is Ron Paul a lot smarter than your average multi-national conglomerate CEO?]

I'm using New Media to promote this survey for you. Cost = zero. Time invested = 10 minutes.

I have also Twittered a link to this page, providing valuable content for my 524 Followers, most of whom are PR, Marketing, and Social Media specialists and pioneer bloggers.

Vaspers on Twitter

Steven E. Streight
aka Vaspers the Grate

8 benefits of Twitter microblogging

Twitter is a popular microblogging, status update, asynchronous chat, link archiving, social networking tool. Here are 8 powerful benefits to joining and participating in Twitter.


(1) Gain marketable skill of pithy, brief, clear, condensed communication. Learn how to say more with fewer words.

(2) Become more humble and less self-impressed, as you realize that on Twitter there is no A List or blog celebrity. You just another avatar, like everybody else. Messages are valued by intrinsic worth and relevance, not the stardom of the originator.

(3) Obtain invites to exciting new web tools and networking platforms.

(4) Discover new blogging voices as they promote links to their latest posts.

(5) Drive traffic to your own blog posts and client sites by tweeting links to them (don't do this exclusively, primarily, or over-frequently, or you'll be Unfollowed as a spammer or exploiter).

(6) Acquire skill in quick, short interactions with other members via tweets, replies, and DMs.

(7) Get relatively immediate reactions to links, insights, complaints, questions contained in your messages and DMs.

(8) Receive news about tech conferences, meetups, podcamps, presentations, live streaming shows, and other relevant events.

10 Cs of social networking

10 Cs of Social Networking


Considerations that I consider vital and essential to any interactive social media platform, like FaceBook, Ning, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Rhizome, Kyte.tv, YouTube, flickr, etc.

Responsibility for building and maintaining these qualities is shared by both the social network developers and the community members who actively participate. Degrees of involvement vary according to how much control can be exercised by developers or members for each of these aspects.



(1) Commonality

You have to have something in common, a mutual interest: chatting, connecting, romance, beta invites, link sharing, file sharing, marketing, music, politics, art, knitting, productivity tools, tech gadgets, whatever interest or web service (like microblogging, photo sharing, mp3 hosting, live streaming video, job search, social bookmarking) a social network is primarily or initially based on.

(2) Community

You need to feel a sense of belonging, a communal spirit of "we're in this together", which can evolve into a virtual advisory staff, exclusivity cult, or online family gathering: the digital tribal motif.

(3) Civility

Members and admins must have clear and fair Terms of Service, consensus netiquette, and be polite to all, patient with newbies, and proud of controversy sparkers, which can draw traffic to the site.

(4) Caring

You need to feel like you're in a supportive or at least tolerant environment, where you can vent, rant, rave, chortle, and weep, and even if other members vigorously debate your cherished beliefs and opinions, they are basically compassionate, sympathetic, helpful, and seeking your best interests.

(5) Content

If the quality, relevance, and value of member contributions is good, the social network will be more successful, but if the content is excessively spammy, abusive, self-promotional, impersonal, commercial, irrelevant, trivial, narcissistic, or dogmatic (like some HTML and gaming forums), the network will decline.

(6) Collaboration

Beyond self-expression and chatting is the ideal of working together with others to achieve something in business, education, art, music, film, politics, environmentalism, social justice, pacifism, or other interests, and the ideal social network needs to enable diverse forms of team project facilitation.

(7) Combat

There needs to be a way for members to kick and ban trollish intruders (especially in live streaming video sites like UstreamTV, Justin.TV, Operator 11, and BlogTV, where sexual predators pretend to be caring people, but pry into personal details and living situations of lonely female webcasters), or at least flag and report an abusive member or comment poster, to ensure user control over their channel and to foster a safe and supportive atmosphere.

(8) Conquest

The social network (socnet) must triumph over competitive socnet platforms, scaling problems, bugs, accusations of containing only frivolous drivel, privacy concerns, and other bad publicity based on misunderstandings, and win the favor of venture capitalists, business press, early adaptors, and active members.

(9) Correctability

The social network developers must, and I stress that word exceedingly, MUST respond quickly to users regarding questions, feature requests, problems, trolls, spammers, and other concerns, which will contribute to a productive and evolving platform, for if this is not done, members will eventually mutiny and migrate to a better, more responsive network.

(10) Cohesion

Members must feel that the network is basically reliable, in conformance with their needs, and somehow hanging together in a "privileged", "cool", "elite", "nichey", "advanced", "hip", or other way to differentiate it from other, competing sites, and this special unity is enhanced by implementing all the preceding qualities.