Effectively brand your blog comments with an avatar

In yesterday’s post on blog commenting, I referenced an article by web designer Dawud Miracle. In Do You Brand Yourself in Your Blog Comments? Dawud said,

“I wanted to ‘brand myself’ as Dawud Miracle so that as I was more visible around the blogosphere, the recognition of my name would carry more and more weight…I wanted to be known for who I am and who I am is Dawud Miracle.”

In addition to using your full name in the same form consistently, another way to send a consistent brand message is to have an avatar. An avatar is a representation of yourself in image form. It may be a photo, an icon, your logo or any kind of visual object that stands in for you. I use a cropped version of my professional headshot as my avatar. [Read more]

How and why to comment on a blog

I’m always grateful when a reader contacts me with their thoughts and ideas in response to one of my posts here at Mediator Tech. Not only does it help me get a sense of how well my content is meeting your needs, but it also gives me the interaction with fellow ADR folks that’s a good chunk of the fun of blogging.

Thank you to each and every one of you who has ever contacted me with a comment.

I’ve come to understand lately that some of you are emailing me to comment because you’re not aware that there’s a comment box on the article’s web page (if you get the article by email or RSS feed, you don’t see the comment box) or are uncomfortable leaving a public comment. So I’m writing this post to encourage you to comment on blogs and to offer up some tips if you’re new to it.

Why comment on a blog post?

[Read more]

Successful ADR blogging takes commitment

I’ve made no bones about blogging as a potentially powerful mediation marketing strategy, and I discuss it in my book, Making Mediation Your Day Job. Diane Levin and I did a teleseminar series a year ago to highlight blogging as a way to help build your ADR practice.

I’ve also encouraged mediation marketers to approach the blogging idea thoughtfully. Blogging’s not the best marketing tool for all mediators, and doing it because “everyone’s doing it” could be a waste of precious time better spent on other marketing strategies. [Read more]

Mediation blog comment policies: Do you need one?

One feature that makes a blog a blog is the option for readers to leave comments on the articles. If you scroll down an article’s page on most blogs (if you’re reading a blog post via email, you’ll need to click on the article title to go to the associated web page), you’ll find the feature ready and waiting for you.

A few bloggers turn off that feature because they’re such big names the sheer volume of comments would be impossible to manage. Some bloggers turn off the feature because they’re afraid of the conflict that a comment might create. But most bloggers not only leave the feature on, we welcome reader comments and do what we can to encourage them.

That said, there are some cautionary notes: [Read more]

Does your mediation marketing website engage?

Research suggests you have as little as 1/20th of a second to capture your website visitor’s attention before they click away.

When you consider just how tiny an amount of time that is, it becomes clearer that typical-template, handshake-photo mediation sites are less and less likely to cut it as marketing tools.

To stop that click away, mediation marketers have to:

Solve a problem. Make them laugh. Get their attention (in a good way, of course). Entertain them. Teach them something. Engage them in an activity.

I recently ran across an absolutely brilliant example of the latter two approaches, both in the same website. [Read more]

40 adr sites you shouldn’t miss

Geoff Sharp has put together a terrific list of 40 valuable, interesting, informative ADR sites for LEADR’s 9th International Dispute Resolution Conference.

Even if you don’t have the opportunity to benefit in person from Geoff’s paper, which he describes as “a romp through the ADR cyberspace stopping off at some of my favourite places,” your morning just got booked solid with good websites to visit!

Copyright © 2007 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Hiring an adr web designer? watch for these warning signs

Don’t let it happen to you: You pay a chunk of change for someone to design your website or blog. Then you find out you can’t even update it without going through them…and paying them more money for their time, of course. Maybe you even find out you don’t own your own domain name.

In Are You Being Held Hostage by Your Web Developer?, marketing pro Drew McLellan points out, [Read more]

Mine your adr site’s visitor stats for valuable information

Kristina Haymes has invited me to comment on the best tools for tracking who’s reading your blog, what’s getting the most attention, and other analytic want-to-knows.

She’s raised an important question, because if you’re not tracking your readers’ and visitors’ habits, you’re missing some terrific opportunities to build readership, increase your visibility, and leverage your ADR blog for greater mediation marketing success.

I know that terms like “metrics” and “analytics,” especially combined with words like “technology” have an effect on some mediators akin to a cold bucket of water thrown on your back while sunbathing. But it’s not all that complicated and [Read more]

Shift happens

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Fellow Mediators, Help Promote Respectful Communication Online

If you read ACResolution, ACR’s quarterly magazine, then you may already know about RespectPledge.org, a creation of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst.

The genesis of RespectPledge was a series of frightening, anonymous threats made to prominent blogger Kathy Sierra, which ultimately left her living in so much fear she stopped blogging and may never return. Kathy’s awful experience was the fodder for much debate and conversation in cyberspace, with an outcry of support for her and an equally loud outcry about the cowardice and human failings of her threatener.

Now, in his most recent ACResolution column, Colin Rule discusses a new resolution adopted unanimously at the 5th International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution [Read more]

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