When I helped relaunch XPN‘s online presence over 10 years ago, our biggest concern was unifying the experience across multiple platforms. At the time, it still felt strange to shepherd your audience from your on-air stream to your online content. Moving somebody from an FM signal to a blog page felt wrong, and I know radio and television program directors still wrestle with this challenge. (“Why would I tell my audience to stop listening to the station, where we play expensive ads, and play a video on our website?”)

We couldn’t have predicted, back then, that individuals would start having the same dilemmas with personal online publishing. Lori and I finally caught up on our Netflix queue and watched The Social Network over the weekend. The first act made me strangely nostalgic, when the only way a drunken Mark Zuckerberg could express himself online was through his LiveJournal account. Today, he’s got a few different places to vent: like his Facebook wall and his Google+ stream.

Because freelance writers and ghost writers like me usually get paid by the word, I prefer Twitter. 140 characters offer the right kind of constraint, especially if I want to fly off the handle about something. Once I reach character #141, I’ll consider finding a client willing to pay me for my rant, or whether it’s better for the world if I just let it rest for 24 hours. I use Momento on my iPhone to capture those Things I Should Not Say to Anyone, and I guess my friends worry that I’m depriving them of some quality entertainment by doing so.

Lately, some of my colleagues expressed concern that I’ve been very “private,” which I find hilarious. But I see where they’re coming from. Instead of oversharing like I used to, I’ve been funneling my ideas and experiences into my book projects and my blogs at spinme.com, cardratings.com, and rittenhouser.com. Even when each of those sites ping my social streams, they’re maybe a little too formal and infrequent by comparison.

So, I’ve been hanging out on Facebook a lot more, connecting with my friends in highly non-promotional ways. And when some of my friends invited me over to Google+, I hopped on. Unlike Kevin Rose, I’m probably not going to abandon all of my other streams. Honestly, he’s like the Stern of bloggers. If you really love what he has to say, you’ll follow him to whatever service he’s on.

However, my recent experience taught me that I don’t have that luxury. My audiences live on the services where they’re comfortable. And it looks like we’re about to enter a period that can support at least three viable social networking services.

• Twitter: I post most often there, but I find that my audience here is more often the folks that have read my books or want to engage me in some way. It’s become my primary mode of personal communication, in many ways. Like I say on my contact page, I’m pretty much wired to respond really quickly to a Twitter mention or a DM.
• Facebook: This is where my mom lives. And that’s been good and bad. I’ve worried about being authentic here, because of complexity in my work and personal lives.
• Google+: I have a sense that the level of control Google+ gives me over where my posts go can help me be more authentic and unfiltered here. But my audience here is still very limited.

Most of us will probably pick the single service we love the most and “live” there. (I have certainly heard this about the Tumblr subculture, but I just don’t see myself living there without diluting my online presence even further.) In my case, I’ve got to respect that I use each social platform for a mix of personal and promotional reasons. Each audience is different, and I may even have to learn how to “steer” some folks from one platform to another when it’s appropriate, just like we did at the radio station.

When I really want to express myself in a way that requires some formality and permanence, I’ll craft a post right here to my personal blog. And I’ll “share” that post to every service I’m on. But don’t be surprised if I’m carrying on three different conversations about each post on all three of my preferred social networks. My audiences drive those discussions, and I’ve got to honor who shows up.

Turns out, it’s not as easy as you might think to totally cut the cord. Matt Burns knows. His write-up for TechCrunch perfectly sums up my experience.

I’m not against cable, in principle. When we lived in Eagleville, we had outstanding service from Verizon FiOS. All my friends warned me that I’d have problems getting set up with cable once I moved into Center City Philadelphia, where Comcast still runs a virtual monopoly. Verizon may have won the ability to start stringing fiber optic cable everywhere, but large buildings are exclusively wired for Comcast and no manager or landlord we spoke with during the apartment hunt had any inclination to let another provider run cable all over their building.

So, here’s how my plan fell apart, piece by piece:

• Clear wasn’t so clear, after all. A few weeks before the move, I stopped into the company-owned Clear store closest to our new place. The manager was awesome and honest: “I won’t sell you this.” Wuh-huh? “Seriously, it’s so popular in this neighborhood, I would feel bad selling this to you because we’re so oversubscribed. I can sell you an on-the-go unit, but not one you’ll want to use in your home. Come see me again in about six months and we’ll see where things stand.”
• The $%#& Food Network. I don’t get to watch very much television, but Lori and I do love to chill out to the Food Network. It figures that this is the one channel that doesn’t make their shows available anywhere online: no Hulu, no iTunes, no Netflix. If you want to watch Food Network online, you can watch carved-up little clips on their website or little chunklet podcasts.
• Center City HD signal is awful. I had played with some gear from Elgato and Equinux to ensure that we could get some good reception in the apartment. It worked just fine in Eagleville, but I discovered the hard way that living in the shadow of Liberty Place means that hulking skyscraper is standing between me and my OTA reception.
• Boardwalk Empire. No explanation necessary.

So, we ended up with the new Xfinity DVR in the apartment because our installer had no idea how to get our Moxi up and running on their network. Our installer also needed me to walk him through the cable modem setup, but that’s another story.

Would I love to go cable-free and save dozens of dollars every month? Sure. At least the Comcast rep I spoke with was eager to tell his supervisor that I was switching from FiOS. They hooked us up with about $100 a month in discounts. When those run out, I may have to revisit the idea.

1. Add more white space to my life.

I wrote about this on a stealth blog I’ve been developing, based on Leo Babauta’s ideas around clarity, balance, and importance. I want my work to be more impactful, and I want to enjoy some of the transcendent experiences I’ve spent much of my career creating for others. Our trip to London in 2009 was the catalyst for this idea, which led to our move to Center City. During the move, Lori and I both photographed some of our cherished possessions that we carted with us on five moves from Philly to Florida to Georgia to North Carolina and back. And then we donated them or dropped them into dumpsters. It’s been freeing to get rid of “stuff” and clutter, to downsize into a smaller space, and to live where we want to hang out. I built my writing practice on the back of “cognitive surplus.” Now, it’s our turn to enjoy the time we’ve freed up by eliminating our commutes and so many of our weekend errands.

2. Connect with more people, personally and professionally.

Much of my professional writing over the past year has focused on covering financial markets and product releases. I’ve had a blast, but I felt I let myself rely too much on press releases. I’m going to lean so much more on my network in 2011 to develop more primary research on the topics that fascinate me. That means stepping out of my comfort zone, exploring areas where I’m decidedly not an expert. When I decided to go back to a full-time day job, I had to learn how to split up my network. A few years in, I’ve learned better how to navigate the path without stepping on toes. So you’ll see me stepping way out into the field a lot more.

3. Pay myself first, creatively.

If it’s okay to be selfish, I’m going to make sure the first 300 words I write every morning wind up in one of my own projects. It’s taken me a while to shed the fear that clients that might be offended by that idea, just as it’s been tough to express myself on Twitter or Facebook without angering an individual who thinks that every single moment of my day should be filled with their projects. Homing in on my favorite clients and leveraging some of the benefits of my day job make this possible, as long as I’m willing to give myself the permission to do it.

4. Ship more often, without revealing the road map.

You’d think I’d have picked up on the success of this philosophy from my day job, but it’s been a challenge to force myself off the hamster wheel of making and breaking promises. I’ve been dangling revisions of my music business books in front of my readers for years, but I don’t think it’s fair to force myself onto an arbitrary deadline. I’ll ship them once I feel like they’ve transformed enough to earn the 2.0 designations. And yet, I have a slate of smaller projects I want to play with. Reconnecting with the Hobbypreneur meme has helped me carve out more time to experiment with ideas. The success I’m enjoying from my job and my writing gives me the safety net to play and fail, with the hope that some of what I produce will have at least some of the impact from the 2000-2001 experiments that led to Grow Your Band’s Audience.

5. See more of the world, even the one down the block.

Lori and I decided that London would be our last “big” vacation for a while, so we could use our free time to move in 2010. With her starting a new job, we won’t have a big block of free time together until 2012. Focusing my time more effectively can give us more spontaneous jaunts, even if they’re just to the museums or the gardens in our own city. Choosing Center City Philadelphia as our new home wasn’t just a convenient move: it’s a strategic location that puts us within a fast train ride to New York or Washington and within a fast plane ride to the Southeast. We’ll couch-surf as much as we can during the long weekends when our schedules line up.

Thanks for indulging me.

If you’re my friend, my client, or someone who’s ever bought one of my books, you’re making this adventure possible.

It’s going to be a busy summer, and I don’t much care for the idea of waiting all day for a cable guy to come. And I’m not convinced that we need to pay $150 per month to get the same level of home entertainment that we currently get from cable. Here’s my current plan:

• Grab a WiMax modem from Clear to replace our current broadband connection. Speed tests in our new neighborhood look great for streaming.
• Replace my current Moxi setup with a Mac mini running EyeTV for OTA broadcasts.
• Download Hulu Desktop to replace much of our current DVR/on-demand viewing.
• Grab our favorite cable series from iTunes. (Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny.)
• Add streaming Netflix for movies.

I don’t watch very much TV, usually just 3-4 hours per week. Lori, however, likes to cozy up while I’m writing, and asked me how we’d replace something like Turner Classic Movies. So I told her I’d look into it.

Let’s look at Sunday’s schedule: TCM posts all their listings well in advance.

• 10:15am: Strangers on a Train (Available by DVD Delivery)
• 12:00pm: The Keys of the Kingdom (Available by DVD Delivery)?
• 2:30pm: Lolita (Available by DVD Delivery)?
• 5:15pm: Funny Girl (Available to Watch Instantly)
• 8:00pm: Old Yeller (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 9:30pm: The Yearling (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 12:00am: The Sea Hawk (Available by DVD Delivery)??

Maybe that Sunday’s not a typical day. How about the following Saturday?

• 9am: Monkey Business (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 10:30am: Hold that Baby! (Not available.)
• 12pm: A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 2pm: Ivanhoe (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 4pm: The Wreck of the Mary Deare (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 6pm: The Last Voyage (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 8pm: San Francisco (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 10pm: Flower Drum Song (Available by DVD Delivery)??
• 12:30am: Bullitt (Available to Watch Instantly)?

With the exception of a lone Bowery Boys feature, we can use our Netflix queue to recreate an entire rainy day weekend of TCM. We really adore Robert Osborne, and have even been to his film festival, so we may just subscribe to Now Playing as thanks for curating the queue for us. But I don’t think we’ll need to keep paying $150 a month for cable, especially since TCM is only available here in standard-definition, anyway!

That’s the dilemma whenever I talk to a writer about whether they blog.

On a day when I’ve spent 3-4 hours cranking out 2,000 or more words for my clients, do I have any gas left in the tank for my personal blog? (And that’s the work I do before heading off to my “day job” at 9 or 10 in the morning.) It’s not always consistent, but it’s important. Most of the best client projects I’ve ever landed have started because a prospect found one of my pieces on a search engine, and traced it all the way back through to my contact page.

Every pitch meeting I’ve been in over the past five years has included a conversation about how I could support the gig by driving traffic, subscriptions, or clicks from my own audience into my clients’ world. Sometimes, the demand is so ludicrous that I have to just walk away from the deal. But, more often than not, I’ve been in such alignment with a project that it totally makes sense to steer some of my own audience toward a new project or collaboration.

Larry Brooks’ article on ProBlogger got me thinking about this again this morning. I recently spent some time overhauling my own website into more of a portal that collects my very best stuff, while still giving some column space to a personal blog and to some articles that don’t neatly fit into any of the projects I’m actively managing.

Blogging, to me, is about customer service. My prospects should be able to scan a portfolio of my clips to understand what they’re getting when they hire me. My readers should have a resource to let them know what I’m working on, even if I’m not working on exactly the thing that they wish I was. (Yes, I am still working on that GYBA ’11 manuscript!)

Of course, blogging holds even more challenges for a professional writer. We don’t forgive typos as easily. Despite blogging’s reputation for being freewheeling, a client’s not going to make a distinction between something you dashed out on your personal site and something destined for print. Blogging and Twitter both take on added dimensions when clients are watching.

I’ve certainly seen some e-mail over the years that say things like: “WTF are you doing on Twitter when you should be working on the article I hired you to do?” (I tend to filter out those kinds of clients.) Writing like crazy means you’re going to write what’s in your head that moment. I’m lucky enough to have a stable of clients and projects that can keep me engaged with something at any given time. It’s a great way to avoid writers’ block, even if it means that I miss the occasional deadline.

Right now, my biggest challenge is to reconcile the “tight niche” of vertical blogs with my public and personal personae. When I write my ass off, there’s no telling whether I might be writing about the music industry, the mortgage industry, the credit card industry, or something else that strikes me as important that week. Making the crossover work can get a little hairy. Some days, it’s like arguing that Lady Gaga should totally make a country record.

But if all of this transition and conflict is recorded on my own blog, it makes so much more sense to the editors and entrepreneurs trying to figure out why I don’t fit so neatly into a silo. Businesses demand transparency. Readers demand engagement. And while I agree with Larry that you need to split your site into “portfolio” and “blog,” I find it’s so important to connect with clients and audiences in whatever way works for them.

Blogging often feels like a curious cross of journaling and journalism. When I start working with a new editor or a new client on a project, I like to make sure that we’re setting ground rules about telling the truth and being transparent. Ben Crane spent a semester drilling the importance of triangulation into my head: if you can’t find the information from two unconnected sources, you don’t run it. It doesn’t matter how juicy it is.

I haven’t talked to Professor Crane in years, but I can’t imagine he’s terribly happy about what blogging’s doing to journalism. A wave of readers and writers who have never known an adult world without the internet take Facebook status updates as absolute fact. A wave of new writers worry that disclosing promotional consideration is going to completely ruin their business model.

The good news: audiences aren’t dumb. They have long memories, and they’ll remember who got the story right. Even in today’s ever-collapsing news cycles, we still have plenty of opportunities to recollect our thoughts and deliver context to readers. Audiences may not always demand transparency, but they reward transparency. Readers who found it difficult to take TechCrunch seriously just about had their heads explode when one of their writers got caught accepting kickbacks for coverage. ZDNet just realized that one of its writers has been using his alter ego as a source.

So, if audiences expect transparency, honesty, and ethics, how can a ghost blogger reconcile those concepts with work that is inherently masked by a pseudonym?

For me, it comes down to using Michael Port’s “red velvet rope policy” when it comes to selecting the companies with whom I do business. When my ghost blogger projects involve writing under a specific byline, I make sure that my client’s values are aligned perfectly with mine. I refuse projects that promote a product or service that I wouldn’t recommend under my own name.

My ideal clients often have the vision to develop great products or ideas, without the writing skills to make those ideas leap off the page. My ideal clients challenge me to refine and amplify their professional voices. My ideal clients even allow me the luxury of writing about things that wouldn’t make sense for me to explore within my personal brand. Often, the only thing I don’t like about ghost blogging is that I write great pieces that I don’t get to take credit for. (Fortunately, my best clients offer me some great referrals.)

Too many companies are content to hop on Elance to find offshore bloggers willing to write 300 words about ottomans for $1.50. I crack up when a prospective client approaches me about writing copy for a ten page website and complains that they have only $50 or maybe $100 for the project. And that they’re doing me a favor by bringing it to me. Sorry, no. After twenty years of writing for money, I’m lucky enough to get to turn down requests that don’t let me get both personal satisfaction and fair compensation.

Some writers aren’t in the position to refuse bad offers. There are days when writing a toothpaste review for $10 isn’t a perk — it’s dinner. I remember those days. And I learned quickly that selling yourself short results in a professional life surrounded by people you can’t wait to escape from.

I agree with Andy Wibbels that ghost blogging is fraud when you’re simply replacing the authentic voice of a company with bland corporate-speak. Ghost blogging is fraud when companies hire writers to “engage in conversations” that they have no intent of fully pursuing. And ghost blogging is most certainly fraud when the writer puts words into a client’s voice that they would never, ever say.

Along those same lines, blogging under your own name is fraud when you’re simply struggling to find a way to cram one more affiliate link into a post. Blogging is fraud when you’re spending more time trying to trick a prospect into buying a product than trying to create great stuff. Blogging is fraud the moment you decide you’re going to try to sneak something past someone, even if you think it’s for the greater good.

While I can’t say I’m 100% proud of every ghost blogging gig I’ve ever completed, I can tell you that there’s nobody in my current roster I wouldn’t hug on stage in front of a thousand of my peers. Every one of those gigs that went wrong (either through my fault or the client’s) helped me learn how to get to today.

The creek next to our house has been repurposed as a snow reservoir. It’s also good to know the electrician on our block has made it back to the neighborhood.

Posted via email from Joe Taylor Jr.’s Blog

Nothing proves how deeply entwined you are in someone’s life until you try to plan a surprise party for your spouse. You can’t rely on Facebook or Twitter if your wife checks your feeds, and it’s very hard to make phone calls when you and your wife share a home office!

Thanks so much to all of our friends who kept this a secret for the past few months. Even though the blizzard forced us to move everything a day forward, we were still able to pull off a great surprise!

Posted via email from Joe Taylor Jr.’s Blog

I was pretty excited to land a nonstop flight from PHL to SFO for a business trip this weekend. Things looked pretty good upon check-in: minimal security line, plenty if space to stretch out on the plane.

The only thing stopping us right now is our plane’s lack of a functional navigation system.

Posted via email from Joe Taylor Jr.’s Blog

Posted via email from Joe Taylor Jr.’s Blog

I got to share this photo a little earlier than expected, since I was sharing a fun iPhone app with a client. Still, she confirmed what anyone who has spent time in Philadelphia knows by heart: Wawa is more than just a convenience store, it's the nexus for peculiar Philly culture.

Philly natives know the drill at Wawa. It's full of contradictory cultural norms.

• The Wawa Door Hold. You must hold the door open for the person behind you, especially if it means you must wait a few seconds for someone from the parking lot to catch up with you.
• Touch Screen Camaraderie. Wawa installed touch screen menus to speed up the line at the deli/hoagie bar, since we always like to chat with the person taking our order. This just means you exchange pleasantries with the counter clerk as you pick up your $2.99 Gobbler instead.
• Checkout Scramble. Lest you think that Wawa is an island of civility, the Modern Matriarch documents the events that occur when a new checkout line opens in the store. It's every man for himself, and the Wawa Way is to not get upset if someone behind you makes a mad break for that surprised fourth clerk.
• Gas Pump Grace Period. Ever since the emergence of Wawa locations with gas pumps, a variation of the Door Hold rule stipulates that it's fair game to make a quick visit to the indoor market shortly before or after filling your tank. This has been grandfathered in from the time when you used to have to leave a twenty with the cashier before pumping gas, then return to the cashier for your change. 

And that's the Wawa rule that got me thinking about a story idea yesterday, when I was pumping my own gas and watching an exchange between a fellow citizen and someone who was clearly not a regular Wawa visitor.

I'm gonna say that he had a Gobbler under one arm, since it's only here for a limited time and all, when a ruddy face popped out from the minivan parked behind an idle car across the pump from mine. "HEY YOU!" the driver shouted. "You can't just leave your car here and go into the store! I'm in a hurry and I need that pump!"

The driver can't possibly be from around here, since the last thing you want to do to a native Philadelphian is encourage some passive-aggressive behavior. "Chill out, man! I just got my hoagie when I paid for the gas. It's how this works here," says Gobbler Guy.

Ruddy minivan guy starts bellowing obscenities, so Gobbler Guy leans against his car and unwraps his sandwich, savoring each bite. The minivan lurches around to my side of the gas pump. Uh oh. I'm only on gallon three. Once the angry guy was on my side of the pump, Gobbler Guy peels out, proving another Philadelphia law. Getting upset and acting out over something you can't control only causes you to wait longer.

Posted via email from Joe Taylor Jr.’s Blog

Posted via email from Joe Taylor Jr.’s Blog