Getting The Voice Right

Getting onto the Live Web is easy. You just start a blog [see Glossary] and you’re there. If your IT people turn a shade of puce at the idea, you can just go to www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com and, three clicks later, you’re part of the global conversation. Once you’re bitten by the Live Web bug, you can start adding audio to the mix and create podcasts or even start using Wikis to start brainstorming ideas or working creatively together. Yes, getting involved is easy. The difficult bit is relearning the art of conversation.

We’re used to talking to each other with a genuine voice, a passion and a personality. When we meet people in the real world we engage eye-to-eye; talk with real authority and voice, listen and understand. But sit us down in front of a keyboard and suddenly we become a robot, a PR machine or a lawyer. We feel we should be writing in a particular sort of way. We no longer see people reading our words, we see ‘market niches’ or demographics ‘consuming our message’. We write at audiences not for people. We deliver content; we don’t tell stories.

I went surfing not to find the best charity blog but to find just one that spoke to me, the essence of voice.

I found 'Our man in Hanoi' [http://ourman.typepad.com/]. Oh dear the design, the graphics, the layout the... tut tut, oh to be a usability consultant but who cares. You only have to stop by for a minute and this has got 'voice'. This is a man doing something in the world (for a charity). He talks as though he's a human. He talks as though he cares. Heh, he talks as though he's having fun. Listen:

     "I spent the next hour hugging sobbing kids with my t-shirt slowly getting wetter.  Miss Ly from class eight broke my heart. I'm not a very group hug kind of bloke but I must have had my arms around seven or eight kids at a time.

     It's not easy for me to write this.  Even now, as I type the tears are flowing again. I don't know why it makes me like this. I'm ready to go and have chosen to go.  I guess it's just an over flowing of emotions.  So much is coming together.  Twenty seven months of living with these amazing people and us sharing so much.  And me being so inspired and humbled by them."

Not a mention of the 'charity' or its brand or its strategy. Not a buzzword or a message to be seen. Just a guy talking to me.

His photos? Well I'm a photographer and he really needs to get a grip on his composition and exposure and... No he doesn't his pictures are powerful and personal and passionate. He just uploads them to Flickr and they take on a life of their own.

Why is this a 'good Blog'. Well I clicked through from his stories to find out more about the project... and the charity. But more importantly, I've now got a relationship with this guy and the issue and that's a real start.

The Live Web is about conversations. It is about people networking via blogs et al. It is about relating and talking with a real voice. That is what we have to rediscover when we write or take photos.

Here’s a few tips for rediscovering the lost art of conversation.

1. Find the I. Organisations cannot and should not blog. People blog. Don’t be frightened of sentences that start “I”. Let your personality and passion and vision shine through.
2. Tell stories. We like stories. Tell me about the woman you met, the family you work with, the farcical conversation with the printers. Let the humour and the real world in.
3. Vary the pace. Short sentences punch and ideas. Longer ones can bring people round and get them involved in the characters. Use them both. Carry your reader along with different accents and speeds of storytelling.
4. Keep it simple. Don’t try and write a PhD or a White Paper each time you Blog. One idea’ll do. One story. One thought. There is space for longer analytical or rhetorical pieces but there is also space for simple stories and ideas and glimmers of passion and commitment. We want to read small asides as well as big features.
5. Show don’t tell. Don’t tell me about those kids on the estate. Show me them. Let me see them at the shopping mall or the youth club. Show me how they stand, how they talk. Paint pictures with words…. Better still let them show me.
    
   Rediscover passion. You’re in this job because you believe it’s important. Show me. Let me hear you get excited. Let me see the light come on in your eyes.
6. Listen and respond. You’re starting a conversation so listen for the responses and then pick them up and use them. If you’re responding to someone else’s story, answer their point or build on it. No one likes someone who doesn’t listen in a conversation and just waits for their turn to say what they want.
7. Link. The Live Web is not a series of soapboxes. Read what others are saying and engage them in conversation. Respond, answer, point your reader towards others.
8. Be honest. If you don’t know, say so. If you’re feeling dispirited, say so. If you’re stuck, say so. If you’re bouncing with ideas, say so. This is a relationship… talk to me.
9. See people. Put a picture of a human being over your keyboard. (S)he is your reader. She is not an ABC1, 20-30 year-old, Mondeo driver. He is not a number, he is a free man. Talk to him like one.

Paul Caplan blogs at www.theinternationale.org

Glossary:

Blog: a regularly updated website with entries usually in chronological order. You can host on your own site or use free services like blogger.com and wordpress.com.

Podcast: an audio blog.

Wiki: a website where anyone can edit any content or add new pages without having to know anything about programming or the technologies. You can host a Wiki on your own site or services like wikihost.org will do it for you.

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