http://www.radiantcore.com/ All of the Radiant Core posts tagged with blogging. en-ca Copyright 2006, Radiant Core Inc. All rights reserved. webmaster@radiantcore.com webmaster@radiantcore.com Michael Glenn <info@radiantcore.com> http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/27/03/2007/fillingthewell http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/27/03/2007/fillingthewell http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/27/03/2007/fillingthewell#comments
My business partner Jay has been rather successful at posting frequently and has reminded those of us at Radiant Core who post less often that we're batting below .500 and the world is missing out on all our fantastic ideas. Unfortunately, creative writing doesn't come easy to all of us and the urge to write strikes us even less. But when the creative juices start flowing it's a good time to turn on the hose and fill up the well.

Make sure you keep a running list of ideas handy. If you don't have a Blackberry or other such device for taking down notes may I suggest a compact form of note taking, the Hipster PDA popularized by Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. When a idea strikes you that you're passionate about and would share with the world or even share with a few people, write it down with a small summary to blog about when you have time.

Now, just having an idea doesn't make the post write itself. I have lots of ideas but usually by the time I get home I have little energy to write. When the mood does strike you though, head for the list and start in on the topics that interest you. Keep writing for as long as you have the motivation to do so and perhaps a little more. Sometimes the act of writing is enough to make you want to write more.

But don't post them. At least not all of them at once. Save your blog posts unless they're time sensitive to publish over a period of time. Depending on the frequency of your literary motivation you may have enough to post once a week or a few times a week but try to space them out so you can have a predictable posting frequency. I find that the bloggers I read most often are those that can be relied upon to post at least once a week. Those that post daily I keep in higher viewing rotation. I have no scientific data to back me up on this but a flurry of blog posts followed by weeks of silence isn't going to help in increasing readership.

Regular trips back to the well will help to keep your audience thirsting for more.]]> Marketing, Taking Care of Business Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:15:00 GMT Jay Goldman <info@radiantcore.com> http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/12/06/2006/boxedgrads http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/12/06/2006/boxedgrads http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/12/06/2006/boxedgrads#comments Payam Rajabi is an incredibly talented and extraordinarily young Toronto-area photoblogger whose work I've been a fan of since I caught him at the Toronto Photobloggers 2 event at the Yorkdale Apple Store in February. I was even more impressed when I learned that the bulk of his early work was shot on a point and shoot and he's only recently switched to an SLR - browse his archives for some really beautiful work.

Payam presented a quick overview of a project he did as the editor of his high school's yearbook - a really unique and original way to do the "Class of 2006" photo without standing on the school's roof and taking the hackneyed shot. He wanted to wait for the yearbooks to be published before sharing more details and now that they're out, he's published the very impressive results.

Creativity is so important in everything we do and is really one of the few cognitive tasks that we as humans do better than computers. The phrase "thinking outside the box" is far more clichéd than the off-roof-photo, but I think it applies in this case (and, of course, in this case too). We try to apply it in everything that we do and sometimes we have fantastic a-ha! moments and make amazing breakthroughs (sometimes we take photos off roofs too - you can't win 'em all). Getting inspired is most of the journey and Payam gives us a great example of how a successful execution completes the trip. He (and his team) obviously planned very carefully for various contingencies and it comes through in how smoothly the various boxes complete the full page. Congrats on some beautiful work!
]]> Design Mon, 12 Jun 2006 02:51:00 GMT Michael Glenn <info@radiantcore.com> http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/05/06/2006/forgetthekitchensink http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/05/06/2006/forgetthekitchensink http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/05/06/2006/forgetthekitchensink#comments
Now the time had come to write about something and I found that I had writers block. Mind you, I have a personal blog that gets updated at least a few times a month so one would think that it wouldn’t be that hard to come up with something to write about. Alas, I found myself groping for a topic that was both provocative and informative and not actually writing anything. This is a pervasive problem in a lot of projects that admittedly we have tackled in the past. We are our own worst enemy by failing to put pen to paper before the entire idea is flushed out.

Rather than planning something until it’s perfect just grab a bit small enough to tackle and move on after that. The momentum of creating one small item will eventually lead to the whole picture but you don’t need to throw in the kitchen sink from the beginning. The web is a live experimental medium that allows us to throw something out to see what sticks.

With more and more engagements we’re encouraging clients to take a phased approach. It’s far too time consuming to implement all your ideas before launching the site and quite frankly after you launch you’ll realize that you should have gone in a slightly different direction based on your customer feedback.

Prioritize your site features and phase them in over time. The feedback you receive will help to focus your next build phase and get your ideas out to your customers faster.


]]> Taking Care of Business Mon, 05 Jun 2006 01:00:00 GMT