Readers of the Ipso Facto blog may not be aware that my writing appears in many other blog locations. In addition to two active personal blogs (one of which has been running since 2004), my old Harvard Extension blog (2005-2008), various employer and school-related blogs from 2005-2012 (Computerworld, The Industry Standard, MIT, and my first startup), and a 2007 guest-blogging gig on a site dedicated to virtual worlds, I have been very active on my current company’s blog. But there is a lot more blogging activity on the individual product sites for books like Twitter In 30 Minutes and the recently released book about the iPhone 6 and 6S. It’s hard, but I have developed a strategy for frequent posting on the blogs. It helps give the books a higher online profile, and in the case of several of the books, the posts prompt feedback from readers which I can use for follow-up editions of the books.
Here is a sample of recent posts:
- How to turn off Twitter notifications on the Web, email, and mobile
- Hootsuite review for new Twitter users
- What is 3D Touch? A quick explanation, from Peek to Pop
- How to turn off email sounds on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, or iPhone 6S Plus
- What do all the extra icons on the iPhone’s Phone app do?
- Switching from Android to the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S
- How to sort in Excel: The five-minute tutorial
- How to convert .xlsx files to Google Sheets
- Dropbox: How to recover deleted files and folders using “Events”
- Dropbox and the DMCA: What it means for your Dropbox mp3 collection
- How to permanently delete a Dropbox file (it’s not as easy as you think)
- C. diff in hospitals: How it spreads
- A C. diff case study: Al’s story
- Inspired by the lean software movement
- Lean media example: The Simpsons
How is it possible for me to write so many blog posts? There are several answers. First, I am an extremely prolific writer. In 10 years I have written well over 1,000 blog posts across all blogs. More than 450 posts appear on my old Harvard blog alone, and a few others are above 200 posts. I am just one of those people who likes to write, and when I get the urge I have to sit down in front of my keyboard and get it out there, as I did yesterday morning on Ipso Facto with my blog post about the Fessenden School and St. George’s.
Second, for the book blogs, I have started to excerpt sections from the manuscripts. It’s a great way to showcase the quality of the books while getting some additional online attention. I am also using draft chapters from my forthcoming Lean Media book to get feedback which I can use to improve the manuscript.
I have also begun to leverage other types of content — chiefly videos — upon which to base blog posts. This is especially true of the books about browser-based software, which are easy to screencast. I have created scores of short YouTube videos on topics such as how to do something in Twitter or Excel or LinkedIn. It’s not hard to take the embed code from one of the videos, put it on the blog, write up a summary or additional instructions, and then post it.
