posted by jules.maas on Geekdom, Home

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Life online was pretty interesting for me last week. On the high note, Maas Publications received it’s first trackback EVER and I posted a comment to my favorite website that the author not only LIKED, but emailed me personally to say how much she appreciated my thoughts.

On the low note, I officially ‘launched’ Maas Publications by spamming family, friends, coworkers and just about anybody I had an address for. I spent days adding content, testing video, setting up notification features and creating early merchandise ideas.

Mostly, the whole thing was an exercise, a test to see what got a response, and to share a video I made of our Yellowstone trip that folks were asking to see. Perhaps I was a little too proud of the whole thing, maybe a bit too entertained by the web ‘toys’ I’d learned to create. And I was excited to be writing more often, to be employing new style ideas and finding my ‘voice’ again.

I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it, and I’m happy with what I’ve done so far. It’s a start. But I was also living in a state of “Isn’t this so FREAKING COOL?”, imagining that by inviting people I knew to ‘stop in’, I’d get emails upon emails of questions, comments or problems. Maybe even a few, “Wow’s”

Why did I think this? Simply because I put it up and thought it was awesome. Which really just equates to trying to slap something up on a wall and telling people they’ll like it “Because I said so”.

A tactic that never, ever works. So here are a few object lessons in marketing/communications/web design that I’ve learned as a result:

• Don’t mention pictures if all you’re posting is VIDEO. Especially when many of the folks you’re emailing happen to be rabid scrapbookers. They’ll spend five hours scouring your site and leave phone messages asking, “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR DAMN PICTURES?”
• Not everyone has the same media player or browser. Or even HAVE a media player. In fact, some people might actually own…a MAC. Embedding video directly into the browser does NOT solve problems caused by player versions, computer memory or god forbid, slower connection speeds.
• If your writing voice is totally different than your speaking voice, don’t be surprised to hear that your site seems “over the top”; My written persona, much like my eBay persona, is completely different than my family persona. I like the former much more than the latter. But she’s blunter and weirder and louder, so it’s asking lot to expect those who know the meeker me to jump on the bandwagon.
• Never spam your family, friends and anyone else you have an email address for in the hope of creating a reader base. Not only will you alienate all of these people, most of them are very nice people who would rather break their fingers than send you a single word of honest, negative feedback.

So I’m off to figure out a better way to post video, read that new book on copywriting fundamentals and dreaming up more effective ways to build my site. But I think the most helpful thing to keep in mind, is to write for myself. If I stay true to my ‘voice’ and the story, I’ll know when it’s working and when it’s not – when the readers start coming on their own.

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