By Tonie Auer

• How can your publication succeed online?
• What points should a social media policy address?
• What challenges will face us as we convert our magazine from print to digital only?

Answers to these questions — and quite a few others — are in these 20 high-value posts from the ASBPE National Blog.

We combed through posts from the blog's three-plus years of existence to compile some of the best. In choosing these posts, we had specific criteria in mind. We wanted to highlight posts that provide actionable, “how-to” material in an easy-to-use format (blogs with bullet lists and checklists were favored). We also wanted the posts, as a group, to cover a variety of topics.

With those considerations in mind, here are 20 of the best ASBPE National Blog posts, roughly in reverse chronological order.

• Two posts by past ASBPE president Steven Roll address social media guidelines. One is “It's Never Too Early to Adopt a Social Media Policy”; the other is
  
  
• “Got a Social Media Policy?”
  
  
• “President’s Letter: It’s All About Brand at the Symposium,” by current ASBPE president Warren Hersch, reports on ASBPE’s November 2009 Digital Symposium.
  
  
• “5 Things To Consider When Converting To Digital Only” is a Q&A with Sara Zailskas of Housing Giants on her publication's experience of the process. The piece was contributed by Chicago chapter board member Erin Erickson.
  
  
• “McCracken: Experimentation Vital to Web-Launch Success” is another report from the Digital Symposium, this time on a session presented by Technologizer founder (and former PC World editor in chief) Harry McCracken.
  
  
• “6 Ideas To Boost Revenue, Readership, or Recognition” contains advice from ASBPE Washington, D.C., chapter president Katy Tomasulo.
  
  
• “SEO Best Practices” was contributed by former Website Magazine staffer Maureen Alley.
  
  
• “Twitter Tips for B2B Editors,” another post from ASBPE officer Katy Tomasulo, features advice specifically for those of us who work at business, trade, professional, and association publications.
  
  
• “Top 10 Strategies To Drive Traffic To Your Blog” was contributed by Michelle Rafter, a long-time freelancer on technology and other topics. Rafter writes the very popular blog Word Count, aimed at freelance writers and editors.
  
  
• “Seven Reasons Why You Should Start Your Own Blog” was contributed by Steve Roll, who did just that with the Latin America travel blog Travelojos.
  
  
• “No Matter How Painful, Editorial Productivity Should Be Analyzed” came from Howard Rauch, an editorial consultant and chair of ASBPE’s ethics committee.
  
  
• “No Solid Answer To ‘What’s Next For B2B?’” reported on a roundtable hosted by ASBPE’s Cleveland chapter.
  
  
• “Want To Learn HTML? Get Your Feet Wet” offers basic coding tips from ASBPE web editor Martha Spizziri.
  
  
• “We Are Already Marketers” is Christina Pellett’s argument for why editors shouldn’t balk at requests to help market their publications. Pellett is now editor of Agent Sales Journal.
  
  
• In “Building Your Wings on the Way Down,” Technologizer's Harry McCracken gives advice on starting a new publishing venture.
  

• Joe Pulizzi, founder of the custom publishing marketplace Junta42 Match, contributed three posts with advice for freelance writers. “Getting into the Custom Game” tells freelancers how to break into custom publishing (aka content marketing);
  
  
• “The Freelance Writing Retirement Plan: Create an Asset” gives advice for maximizing income; and
  
  
• “You Are What the Web Says You Are: Writers and Social Media” explains how many writers’ online presences are lacking.
  
  
• The advice in “Making Time for Print and Online” comes from Dan Blank, director of content strategy and development for Reed Business Information. (Dan also blogs at danblank.com.)
  
  
• “Sure, ’09 Will Be Tough. You Can Tell the Grownups, Though: They Think Rationally” comes from consultant Thomas H. Temin, It still holds up in 2010.
  

The ASBPE National Blog’s value never stops. We have ongoing discussions scheduled on plenty of hot topics. And take advantage of the opportunity to express your own view via a follow-up post. Email me at tonieauer@gmail.com.

Labels: Blogging/Blogging Strategy, Career/Employment, Custom Media, Digital, Economy, Freelancing, HTML, Management, Media Business, Productivity, Social Media, Technology, Tonie Auer

By Erin Erickson
ASBPE Web Content Committee Chairperson, Chicago Chapter Vice President

When I first joined ASBPE, my first reaction was to find my local chapter (Chicago) and see if I could find a way to work on the website somehow. I was hungry to learn digital media so that I could secure more work.

Labels: Digital, Erin Erickson, HTML

If you're in or around the Chicago area on June 5, it may be worth your time to attend the Chicago ASPBE chapter's first Do-It-Yourself Roundtable discussion.

Why do-it-yourself? Because we realize that more heads are better than one, and what better way to learn than from your fellow publishing professionals! You pick the topics, we provide the moderators.

The format is simple: We will have four roundtables, each with its own topic and moderator to get the discussion rolling. After 45 minutes, we will switch, and you can go to another table (and topic) or stay where you are. Each moderator also will be taking notes, which we will then distribute via e-mail and the Chicago chapter blog after the meeting.In addition, we will have again have the option to continue the networking at lunch after the workshop.

The details:

When: June 5, 2009

Time: 8:30 a.m. to noon (we would like to start the roundtables promptly at 9 a.m. to get the full 45 minutes in at each table).

Where: Reed Business, 2000 Clearwater Dr., Oak Brook, IL 60523

What topics will be covered:

Ethics in a Digital World
Social networking (How are you using it for your publication? What do you need to know about it to make you more marketable? What do you need to be careful of with using it to make sure you don't jeopardize your job?)

How to Create Your own Web site
How to Make Yourself More Invaluable--or Marketable (In today's business climate, the ones who keep their jobs or land new ones are the ones that demonstrate they're integral to the publication. What are you doing to demonstrate that value to your bosses or to potential bosses?)

Price: $15 for members/$20 for non-members

To register, visit the Chicago chapter blog at asbpechicago.blogspot.com to download the registration form.

Networking will continue over a buy-your-own lunch at Houlihan's. Please indicate on your registration whether you will be joining us there so we can get a head count.

Questions? Contact Nikki Golden at lucy_njr@yahoo.com or 630.204.7651.

Labels: ASBPE Chapters, Career/Employment, Digital, Ethics, HTML

By Martha Spizziri
ASBPE Web Editor

Chances are you’ve felt a bit frustrated from time to time by not knowing at least a little HTML code. Maybe you were posting a comment to a blog, but didn’t know how to make a web address clickable. Or perhaps you needed to make a simple change to some copy on a web page, such as making it bold, but couldn’t because you didn’t know HTML.

HTML can get a bit complicated, especially when you add Cascading Style Sheets (which are used for layouts and some of the more sophisticated type formatting). But to just learn enough so you can create links and do some basic text formatting isn’t difficult. Lest any web designers, editors or producers out there want to strangle me, though, I’ll emphasize that if you plan to start making small updates to web copy, you’d better get the okay from whoever creates your web pages.

That said, here are a few fundamentals to get you started.

Basic formatting

The first thing to remember is that most HTML tags come in pairs – an opening and a closing tag. The text to be formatted comes in between those two tags.

An opening tag takes the form of a tag between two angle brackets, like:

<b> for bold

To close the tag, use the same code, but with a forward slash after the opening angle bracket:

</b>

To get:

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

You'd type:

Now is the time for <b>all</b> good men to come to the aid of their party.

For italics, the tags are <i> and </i>:

To get:

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

Type:

Now is the time for <i>all</i> good men to come to the aid of their party.

Alternatively, you might see <strong></strong> tags used in place of <bold></bold> or <em></em> as the tag pair for italics. (The “em” stands for “emphasis.”) These tags allow for a bit more flexibility on the user’s part – users can choose to set their browsers so that text between <strong></strong> tags comes out in blue, say, instead of bold, or emphasized text is bold instead of italic.

Combining tags

You can use more than one tag on the same bit of text. If you want some text to appear in bold italics, for instance, you’d use the <b></b> tags together with <i></i> tags. The only rule is the tags should be “nested” in the correct order. That means that the first opening tag used should be the last one closed.

Good HTML:

<i><b>This text will appear in bold italics.</b></i>

Bad HTML:

<i><b>This text may not render as bold italic in all browsers.</i></b>

Paragraph styling

Another useful tag is the paragraph tag -- <p></p> -- which puts a line of space below a block of text

To get:

This text is enclosed between paragraph tags.

And so is this text.

And so is this text.

Type:

<p>This text is enclosed between paragraph tags.</p>
<p>And so is this text.</p>
<p>And so is this text.</p>

Note that your code doesn’t need a linespace after each paragraph – the <p></p> tags put the space in automatically. (Be aware, though, that certain tools, such as Blogger, may be set up so that you can make space between paragraphs just by hitting the “Enter” key twice, as you would in Word. In that case, the <p></p> tags will just create extra linespaces, so you can dispense with them.)

Another handy bit of code to know is <blockquote></blockquote>, to create a paragraph that’s indented.

To get:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris aliquam odio. Nam odio. Ut sollicitudin nunc non velit. Ut imperdiet, justo sit amet pellentesque egestas, erat nunc euismod lectus, id interdum sapien diam eu neque.

Type:

<blockquote> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris aliquam odio. Nam odio. Ut sollicitudin nunc non velit. Ut imperdiet, justo sit amet pellentesque egestas, erat nunc euismod lectus, id interdum sapien diam eu neque.</blockquote>

If your block quote is more than one paragraph long, simply combine the <blockquote></blockquote> and <p></p> tags, using the <blockquote></blockquote> tags around the entire quote and the <p></p> tags around each paragraph. (Make sure the <blockquote></blockquote> tags are the first and last tags.)

To get:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris aliquam odio. Nam odio. Ut sollicitudin nunc non velit. Ut imperdiet, justo sit amet pellentesque egestas, erat nunc euismod lectus, id interdum sapien diam eu neque.

Donec id elit. Proin tempor scelerisque nulla. Fusce diam. Suspendisse aliquam. In vitae lorem sed nisl sodales fringilla. Vestibulum sed nunc. Nunc quis arcu. Fusce tempor nisi id purus. Fusce sit amet velit.

Type:

<blockquote>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris aliquam odio. Nam odio. Ut sollicitudin nunc non velit. Ut imperdiet, justo sit amet pellentesque egestas, erat nunc euismod lectus, id interdum sapien diam eu neque. </p>

<p> Donec id elit. Proin tempor scelerisque nulla. Fusce diam. Suspendisse aliquam. In vitae lorem sed nisl sodales fringilla. Vestibulum sed nunc. Nunc quis arcu. Fusce tempor nisi id purus. Fusce sit amet velit.</p>
</blockquote>

Creating Links

One of the most useful tags, of course, is the tag that lets you link to other web pages. That’s also pretty simple. The tag pair is <a></a> -- the “a” stands for “anchor” -- but in this case you must add an extra bit of code to the opening tag to specify that it’s a link and where the link should point to. (That extra piece of code is called an “attribute.”)

To get:

Visit the ASBPE web site.

Type:

Visit <a href=”http://www.asbpe.org”>the ASBPE web site</a>.

The “href” is short for “hypertext reference.” Note that the URL in the tag should be enclosed in quotes to ensure that it works properly in all browsers.

That should help you get started and take a little of the mystery out of HTML code.

Want to learn more? See our Electronic Media links.

Have your own resources to share? Let us know in the comments.

Labels: Digital, HTML, Martha Spizziri