How to write a great blog

I've read a lot of blogs, and I know exactly how to write a great one*.

1. Post regularly. Depending on your audience, between 5 and 50 times per week seems to be a good target.
2. Pick a topic and stick with it. Examples include:
• "Get control of your life / weight / money / desk / kids / work / dog / etc."
  
• "I have a man-crush on Steve Jobs"
  
• "Check out this messed-up sign / cake / pet / website / logo / product / etc."
  
• "Isn't my kid / cat / craft / home / etc. cute?"
3. Use witty, post-relevant pictures, ideally taken with your DSLR, whose model information should be easily accessible on your Flickr site.
4. Create your own lay-out. Only losers use the default Blogger templates. I mean, really, all you've got to do is layer up some palette masks in Photoshop and drop those into your CSS with a couple lines of Java. Sheesh, my 2-year-old can do that.
5. Publish a lot of bullet lists. Sometimes numbered lists are ok.
6. Don't be afraid to plagiarize. After all, are you really going to come up with 5 to 50 original things to say in a week? In a year?
7. Cross-post. Post a compilation of your tweets, tweet your posts. Don't forget Facebook, LinkedIn, and anywhere else you can tell people what you're telling them.
8. End your posts with questions. This invites people in on the conversation and gives your readers a warm fuzzy feeling unrelated to the nachos they are eating.
9. Always leave your audience wanting more.
10. 
    

I'm sure I've left some things out. What would you add to the list?

*Note that I said I know how to write a great blog, not that this is one.

Rebranding

It has been 29 months since my last post. In that time, I have moved, changed jobs, lost weight, learned Dutch, and more than doubled my family size. Time to start over.

This blog started as a place to review books. I may still do that. But not only that. This will be a place for me to process my thinking and practice my writing. If you find it interesting and thought provoking, excellent. Conversations are welcome.

So here is to starting over. Rebranding, if you will. And in the spirit of Seth's blog , I'll end with a challenge:

What has changed for you in the last 29 months? What do you need to dust off, restart, rebrand?

The Five X's of Y

Some books are just easier to read than others. Stories are nice. They move quickly, keep the reader's attention, and when well done, communicate something of value. Such is the case with two of Patrick Lencioni's books, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Five Temptations of a CEO. Both are written as "leadership fables" where a typical Bay Area team (CEO) is shown the error of its (his) ways through a simple story with short chapters and lots of white space.

There are thousands of books out there with a few easy steps to better whatever. Most make sense, usually because they are common sense. Business books don't sell because they have new ideas, they sell because they have good packaging. Much like businesses themselves sometimes. Now I'm not saying this is bad, just that there's not much new to be learned, but much to be implemented (see You are Being Lied To at ChangeThis).

Lencioni's books are the same. In fact, he even gets away with selling two books with the exact same material. The five dysfunctions of a team are simply the result of the team leader giving into the five temptations of a CEO. But the team book sells more because corporate leaders can give it (the book, seminars, classes, whatever) to their teams rather than work on their own stuff. But I digress. Here are the 5 temptations with their corresponding dysfunction.

1. Choosing status over results leads to Inattention to results
2. Choosing popularity over accountability leads to Avoidance of accountability
3. Choosing certainty over clarity leads to Lack of commitment
4. Choosing harmony over productive conflict leads to Fear of conflict
5. Choosing invulnerability over trust leads to Absence of trust

Written out together like that makes the parallels obvious. In fact, it doesn't even look like the "leads to" conjunction really applies, but rather the dysfunction is equal to the temptation. Which I guess is the point. Lencioni's ideas are not revolutionary. He's not even the first to put them in a list. But they are simple, they are effective, and they are hard to do. And his books take about 2 hours to read, packaged in a very nice little tale.

So the moral of the story is simple. Be honest, take responsibility, focus on results. And if you want me to read a lot of your books...write short ones.

Nine From the Ninth

Rarely does a son get the opportunity to see his father's war stories down in print. They're more often like the final story in Nine from the Ninth, where a young lad asks to hear the story, but quickly moves on to something else. I have, however, the unique opportunity to read my dad's stories, written 30 years after the fact, and I am not quickly distracted by other things.

Nine From the Ninth is a compilation of war stories written by three Vietnam veterans of the Ninth Infantry Division. Two served as Rangers, while the third rode with them as a Public Information Officer. Each man wrote three stories, tied together only by the time in history and their life-long friendship.

In my biased view, the three written by Bob Wallace were the most enjoyable to read, each one comprised of a series of short vignettes showcasing aspects of his experience in Vietnam during 1969. Growing up, my dad didn't talk about the war, and the opportunity to see life through his eyes at the age of 24 is fascinating and poignant.

I have never fought in a war. There is a part of me that romanticizes military life and makes me view soldier and warriors as heroes. And they are. The situations described in this book put 20 year old men (boys, by some estimations) in a place where lives hung on their decisions. Their own, their teammates, and their enemies. There is a primal nature to the combat that is described that cannot be captured on Hollywood films, and is completely foreign to modern American life.

Nine from the Ninth is worth reading. It is written by regular guys, guys that got drafted into a war far from home and just wanted to do a good job and get home. They were not supermen, but they acted the part when their country called on them. For this, I admire my dad, along with all the others who served, all the more.

PS - While you can order the book from Amazon, if you'd like a personalized or autographed copy, drop me a line. I can probably hook you up with something.