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Ok – I’ll get right to it – I’m an old-school forty something faking it badly in the world of digital technology.
Were I measured on a tech capability scale between a Bill Gates and my long-deceased grandfather, I am closer to Bert Madden’s grave than the big Bill.
Hey grand-dad! Is that you Bill, away yonder on that distant grassy knoll?
Who cares, you say? Fair point, I concede.
But have you looked at the number of grey beards lining up for the free computer skills workshops at your local Apple shop lately?
Clearly, many of my ageing cohort are feeling similarly adrift on an ocean of relentless techopportunity - and they are clinging, desperately, to stay afloat.
Like all who grapple with obtuse first world problems, the realization that this great digital age is not going away anytime soon has me determined to stay strong and keep learning. At least keep a step ahead of my five year old kid, who, like all five year olds without tech fear has a decidedly annoying and uncanny knack of being intuitively hard-wired to operate any device, anytime, unlocking passcodes, circumventing the net nanny with abandon and all the while giving off-handed and rapid-fire useful instructions to his struggling dad on how it’s all done. Hate that!
Don’t get me wrong, I love my son. I just wonder how he managed to get the tech gene? I also love the gadgets. In fact, I have done my level best to uphold the share price of several fashionable hard and soft-ware firms over recent times. Whether Japanese, Finnish, Californian or Canadian collections, I’ve worn them all proudly in a leather belt case or tucked jauntily into my jacket pocket.
These days I possess one each of the aforementioned silicon valley-based organisation’s smart phones, a tablet….. and a laptop computer. Each has a small case “i” before its name, a clear signifier to all that something very clever and quite miraculous might occur at any minute. That I may bust out into a frenzy of social expression, informing my ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ of my latest grand life moment, or allow them some unique insight to one of my many clever personal thoughts. Armed with this minor arsenal of hand and lap held technology, I at least look the part.
So that’s the confessional part of this blog – Lord bless me from the Cloud!
Next comes the practical lesson on how to write the idiot-proof blog.
First, some more personal background:
I went into journalism in the late 1980s with a naïve and somewhat ancient set of principles that guided me in a foolish belief that media was all about the story. Changing people’s lives. Exposing falsehoods. Generally righting wrongs and, along the way, letting the craft of story telling off the leash.
I began my brilliant career banging out copy on a typewriter. The Beast. It was state of the art because it plugged into a wall socket, and came complete with a correction/erase button. Yes, true. All this at my dancing fingertips, and it still took quote some effort to bang the keys. But, for its day, the Beast was the height of new technology. That, and the fax machine were a bold leap forward in 1987.
The Beast made a rather alarming ‘clang’ combined with a somewhat counterintuitive small bell ‘ting!’ when one reached the end of each line of text.
The legacy of these hairy chested days wrangling the Beast is that even now I can’t help but type with enormous gusto and digitally enhanced (meaning both my left and right hand pointer fingers) force. It was as though by not hitting each keystroke hard would clearly waste effort and precious little time. Every word a winner, every letter of every word a bloody triumph.
These hardships of being ‘blooded’ as a writer on a typewriter, before moving on to a new age of sophistication - the DOS-based PC and its revolutionary green screen - meant I learned much.
In fact, today my wisdom is in demand. Much like the retired software engineers of circa 1999 who suddenly became hot property as the year 2000 bug approached (remember Y2K anyone?) my old-school, old-world writing skills have entered their own Renaissance.
It seems content is the new black. And, guess who is good at that stuff? That’s right – old journos! Those tired hacks bashing out yarns in smoky backrooms late into the night, amusing themselves with war stories of past glories and keeping the flame of eternal truth lit by the phone as a vigil of high purpose and moral supremacy over all.
So, while ‘no’ is the dominant part of the word technology in my world, at least I may now pass on the ancient strictures of content creation. So, here goes.
Lesson one is to phrase. Yes, phrasing. It’s not what you say it’s how you say it. Huh? Like it? Yes, make use of the English language, it’s abundant and it's free. But wait, there’s more.
Lesson two: less is more. Frugality of words is the bedfellow of success. Nobody of any fame ever wrote that line but perhaps they ought. It sums up my point perfectly. Which is why I made it up. See – phraseology works
Lesson three: the hook. Know the power of the first paragraph. Write it not only to capture the heart and the mind of the reader, write it to sink hooks deep into their spleen and cast them, slapping, wet and utterly bug eyed compliant, on the deck of the back page where the job of leading one’s reader through the front to back page of the newspaper is all but done.
My digital tech friends (actually, my wife) with an interest in search engine optimisation suggests that I write into this blog certain key words mentioning somehow that BlueChip is Australia’s leading financial services communication firm. And if I get another chance to repeat the words, ideally incorporated into a clever, snappy headline that also grabs attention for my blog, then my chances of getting more eyeballs reading my stuff will improve.
Should I also add some video, or a link to TouTube footage in my post, the SEO magic really starts to kick in. By then tweeting 140 characters of quality insight to my Twitter followers (yes, shamefully, there are but a handful of you but I am working on it), then re-post a link to my almost 500 LinkedIn connections (98% of whom I actually know and like – the other 2% are social network spammers who I have allowed through my personal filter in a moment of weakness and curiosity).
Thanks for your attention to this post. And Happy 2013 – the year of the old journo!
