When I agreed to write a "Tip of the Day" series on my blog, I didn’t quite realize what I was getting myself into. I had learned a lot from the weekly series I had written in the Visual Studio 2005 days, so I was somewhat prepared. Rob Caron, a marketing manager for Visual Studio, and I put together a formula for the daily series, something I didn’t have for the weekly series. But still, nothing can prepare you for what life has in store when you agree to a daily blog post. Fortunately for me, "Tip of the Day" doesn’t work on weekends.
Nothing can quite prepare you for the realization that when you do a "Tip of the Day" blog, you really have to write a new tip every single day. This includes the days when you get really busy at work, the days when you go on vacation, and especially the days when you get sick or injured. You have to be prepared for the unexpected.
I’m obviously a big fan of community, and I love sharing what I’ve learned during my seven years at Microsoft. Therefore, I would be remiss not to share tips on how to do a "Tip of the Day" series, in case you decide to do something similar. And let me know if you go for it, so I can cheer you on, just like my blog readers did with their "Go Sara Go" comments at http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2008/03/18/did-you-know-sara-turns-30-today-so-i-need-another-go-sara-go-and-how-to-use-safemode-174.aspx.
In May 2007, Rob Caron and I brainstormed about what this formula would look like. He introduced me to the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath (Random House, 2007). We applied some of the principles from the book to make the tips more memorable.
The idea is to keep the tips as simple as possible. Instead of focusing on end-to-end functionality, the tips focus on how to do one specific thing. For example, the settings located in Tools Options fall perfectly into this category. I consider each tip to be an explanation of how each option works. My reasoning is to provide readers with information on how the individual pieces work, so they are able to mix and match these pieces to best suit their needs.
It is amazing how a picture brings a blog entry to life. Now imagine what it does for a tip. It was a requirement (yes, I require myself to do things) that each tip have a picture, regardless of what the tip was about. Sometimes I needed several pictures to illustrate the tip, and sometimes it was a real challenge to come up with a single image. Even a tip about a keyboard shortcut required an image. Even if I had to draw a tree, which amused me greatly, every tip has an image.
Many times I had to ask the feature developer, "Hey, what does this do, again?" or "Um, I think I broke it, but I’m not sure." Whenever I had to ask for help, I always mentioned it in the blog entry. I think sharing common struggles goes a long way in building a community of readers.
Many times, I felt compelled to share a story about the tip. Initially, I had wanted to include one story per tip, but I quickly realized that I shouldn’t try to force stories if a tip just didn’t have one.
Then, at one point in the latter half of the "Tip of the Day" series, the idea came to me that I could ask blog readers for their opinions about the tips, how they used the tip, or how they didn’t use the tip. I realized that the tips were not only providing the "how to" information but also starting a "Let’s discuss this feature today" thread. After this light-bulb moment, my concerns about providing stories definitely decreased, but I still have to write a tip every day.
This should be a given, based on what I said earlier about vacations, illness, workload, and all the other things that happen in life when you make plans. The further out you can queue your tips, the happier you will be in your "Tip of the Day" life. Also, I highly recommend using a wall calendar so that you can keep track of where you are in your queue and plan for the expected interruptions, such as holidays, vacations, and birthdays.
Another thing that caught me off guard was time zones. I live in Washington State, and I didn’t consider that a tip that goes live at 9 a.m. Pacific standard time (PST) won’t arrive in people’s RSS readers until after noon on the East Coast. It’s not really a tip of the day for them, but more like a tip in the afternoon.
I realized this issue the hard way about the second week into the series, when Rob Caron shot me an e-mail saying, "What happened to today’s tip?" I was just starting to queue tips in advance and accidentally had one ready to go live in the afternoon, instead of morning. The East Coast people probably thought the series was already over in just a week’s time.
Nonetheless, I corrected the error and decided tips should go out at 3 a.m. PST. Publishing at this time addressed two concerns:
The East Coast people would get a tip in their RSS reader first thing in the morning.
If I ever made this mistake again, I could correct it first thing in the morning PST time, still giving everyone in the United States their "Tip of the Day."
At the time of this writing, all tips have gone out at 3 a.m. on the first try.
Shameless Microsoft plug? No! I tell it like it is, and I bow to this great and wonderful tool. Seriously, I can’t image doing "Tip of the Day" without it. I can queue my tips into the future. The calendar control helps me to not tip on weekends. And I can save drafts if I’m waiting for clarification on a tip. I can even see how my blog entry will appear according to my blog’s CSS while not connected to the Internet.
By far, the best thing about Live Writer is how well it works in offline mode. I have written many tips while on airplanes and other places where I didn’t have Internet connectivity. And when I return home, I can simply publish the tips and celebrate much happiness in "Tip of the Day" land, knowing the series lives on.
But check out Live Writer and see for yourself at http://get.live.com/writer/overview.