Can you even imagine a pun that is more high-brow than the one I just used in this post's title? (I certainly Kant.) But fear not, this post is not about deontological philosophy, it's just about categories. On this blog. And how important it was that I started using them effectively.

You see, I realized last week that my long-and-growing list of Categories and accompanying tag cloud (see left) was becoming unwieldy and largely unusable. Chris Pearson's recent post on the importance of keeping categories trimmed to avoid provoking analysis paralysis in your blog visitors really hit home and I decided to do just that.

And so from my old, never-ending list of 100+ labels, I pored through every post and pared them back to just three, which coincide with this blog's three main themes: productivity, persuasion and prose. (I also added a few others like "technology" to denote the tech-heavy productivity posts and wordplay-wednesdays and marketing-wednesdays to set apart my ongoing series.) But the main purpose here was to create categories that were actually usable.

Finally, my categories are specific and few enough to truly be used as navigational devices,  which Pearson advocates, rather than just a (pretty, but ultimately) useless cloud of stream-of-consciousness spouting.

Next, I went to work, looking for ways to leverage my newly trimmed categorical list in a way that would help my readers.

Enter the new navigational bar.

Yeah, My Blogger Blog Has a Nav Bar Now, What's It To You?

As you may or may not have noticed, Smithereens is sporting a spiffy new navigational bar across the bottom of the header (if you're on the site and missed it, scroll back up and admire, or if you're reading this in a reader, click on through and check it out.)

Now this may not seem like a very big deal, but the lack of easy nav bar implementation on Blogger blogs is a notorious shortcoming of the platform. It took some serious template tweaking to get it working. (Oh and if the header looks horrible to you, instead of slick and seamless, you're probably using IE version 6 or earlier. Why are you doing that? It's time to upgrade to Firefox. Or at least get IE7+ for the love of standards-compliant browsers! But if you're not on an antiquated browser and it still looks funky, please let me know in the comments as I'm trying to quash the last of the template bugs as quickly as possible.) 

But what's important about the new navigation bar (and relevant to this post) is the addition of the "Choose a category" buttons. Let me explain my rationale for adding these, and explain what it means for you.

The New Smithereens Blog Buffet (It's All-You-Can-Eat)

When I started this blog just 6 short weeks ago, I wasn't sure exactly where it would take me. I knew that my most passionate interests were (and still are) writing, marketing and general lifehackery, so I decided to set those three subjects (poetically paraphrased as productivity, persuasion and prose) as my basic slalom poles, to use a skiing metaphor. 

But one thing I have noticed recently is that having such an eclectic subject base can cause splintering among my readership. For example, the readers who were most enthralled with my Twitter Wit Writing Contest are not the same as those who drove my gadgety iPhone scoop post to 600 Diggs and beyond.

The problem came to a head when I started to feel as though posting about productivity and technology was putting off those who were more interested in writing or marketing, and vice versa. As the saying goes, you can't please everybody all of the time, only some of them, some of the time.

And so, I felt like I had to do one of three things to fix this issue: 

1) Split the blog into two - one on productivity/technology/gadgets and one on writing and persuasion, 

2) Narrow the focus of my blog down to just one or the other and stop writing about some of the things that interest me; or 

3) Provide mored ways for readers to dynamically choose what content they consume. 

After consulting with many of my trusted friends who've been blogging much longer than I, I decided that the third option was the best idea for now. (I don't have the time to properly maintain two personal blogs right now on top of client obligations, and I don't want to limit the scope of my writing just yet.)

And so, dear readers, now you can choose exactly which type of smithereen you want to take in on any given visit, and which you'd rather ignore. It's a buffet of useful ideas and now you can skip the salad bar and load up on dessert at your leisure. 

If you like gadgets and productivity but could care less about how to differentiate tricky homonyms, click the Productivity tab (which also encompasses technology articles) and go to town. If you entered the TwitWit contest 3 times (I'm looking at you, washwords), but all the iPhone chatter drives you batty, click the Prose tab, and maybe the Persuasion one, and enjoy reading only the content you want to read. 

Or if you're eclectic like me, and like all kinds of subjects, then...well... carry on. As you were.

But what about the many of you who follow my content by RSS or email? You're thinking: 'What do I care about all this? I never even go to your site.' (Thanks a lot.) Well don't worry, I thought of you too.

Brand Spanking New RSS Options, As Well

As of right now, not only can you get your Smithereens fix in subject-specific morsels on the site, you can also get separate post updates for free for any of the 3 categories. 

This endeavour took a bit of Blogger hackery as well, and I am writing up a brief tutorial to post later tonight in case others are wondering how to do this, but the point is, you RSS addicts now have options too, so it was worth it: 

For the Productivity feed, click here.

For the Persuasion feed, click here.

For the Prose feed, click here.

And of course, for the regular all-for-one-and-one-for-all feed, you can just click here. 

I hope you find these tweaks helpful, and a good alternative to splitting the blog up into different sites. But what do you think, will you use the new Categories for navigation, or not? Let me know in the comments, I really appreciate the feedback.

---

By the way, I know there was more silence than usual these past few days - I hope you'll understand. Along with the many changes I've been making to the Smithereens template, navigation and feed architecture, I've also added a couple neat plugins, like the informative contextual popups you can see in this post from Apture (an article on this service is forthcoming, too - very neat implementation.) 

As well, I've been knee-deep in preparation for the launch of my first client blog for NewHomeAssociation.ca, an innovative company in Ottawa that is aiming to be the MLS for new home listings. It should be live tomorrow and I will update this post with the address so you can check it out. 

With all the news lately about the impending launch of the iPhone here in Canada on the Rogers network, and the exceedingly positive reactions the company has received from both customers and launch partner Apple, I thought it would be an excellent idea to dig in and examine just what Rogers Wireless does to create such a loyal and enthusiastic base of customers. Perhaps we can all learn something from the master.

And so I present to you a simple 5 step guide to replicating Rogers' great success:

Step 1: When It Comes To Pricing, Bigger Is Better

If you truly want to be a customer service maven like Rogers Wireless, the first thing you must do is throw away any preexisting notions you have about pricing.

Sure, people may say that consumers "love a bargain", or that they expect a "fair deal", but this amounts to little more than propaganda. The truth is, if you want customers to really respect you, you have to gouge them mercilessly.

This is one thing that Rogers understands intimately. Do you really think they are incapable of offering rate plans that "make sense" and iPhone data packs that would allow "standard usage"?

Well of course they're not, but why would they want to be lumped in with those amateurs south of the border anyway? Customers who pay through the nose won't turn up their nose, plain and simple.

Save the dignity for your stockholders.

Step 2: Maximize Customer Happiness With Unmanageable Overage Charges

The only thing customers appreciate more than high basic pricing is a good, unexpected overage charge. They tend to view this sort of thing as a "gouging bonus" or a "respect premium."

Just think, if they looked up to you for charging them $60 for a feature-poor service, for example, just imagine how that fondness would grow in the face of a 100-200% markup in aditional fees!

Rogers takes this prinicple to the next level by making their overage charges as difficult to avoid as possible.

At first you might think that if you were charging customers by the minute or kb beyond a certain threshold, they might appreciate some comprehensive way to track those metrics in real-time to ensure they aren't exceeded accidentally.

But you'd be wrong. In reality, customers enjoy the Russian Roulette-type experience of never knowing whether a call will be included in their monthly package, or will cost them $30. I can feel the suspense just describing it, can't you?

Step 3: Demonstrate Your Commitment: Put It In Writing

As the old saying goes, "Nothing says commitment like a prenup."

And there is a valuable lesson for businesses in that remark: If you want your customers to get serious about you, you better be ready to commit for the long haul.

The best way to show your customers that this isn't just a one-night-stand to you is to invite them into a longterm, one-sided contract. For added effect, it's best to make the duration of the agreement about 30-60% higher than average. How could your customers not feel unique and special?

Naturally, you're going to want to put some strict stipulations in the contract, too, for their own good. Rogers sets out an expensive cancellation fee for anyone who wants out of its agreements. And one day, when they look back, Rogers customers will be happy they got that tough love to keep them from doing something they'd regret.

Like going to one of those pesky, interfering competitors, for example. And that brings me to step 4.

Step 4: Buy Your Immediate Competitors, Ignore The Others

Nothing is worse than direct competition when you're trying to build up a customer base, and Rogers should know.

Just when your customers are starting to enjoy mortgaging their homes to pay for your service, you can always count on an annoying competitor to re-emerge on the scene touting "low prices" and "good customer service," stealing away the less informed among them.

So take a page from the Ted Rogers book and don't tolerate the annoyance. Just buy them. Studies have shown that your competitors' offerings become remarkably similar to your own after acquisition.

And what of the other competitors, you know, the ones who don't compete directly, but could still steal your customers away?

Well the best thing to do to deal with those is to ignore them altogether. After all, if their offering isn't as good as yours anyway, then they can't really be a threat to you, right? Let them talk all they want about "unlimited" services and "fair pricing." Your customers will still revere you for your stoicism.

Just look at how Rogers so expertly ignores competitive pressure from the likes of Telus and Bell. After all, Rogers knows it is the only GSM carrier in Canada, giving it exclusives on GSM-only devices like the iPhone, so why worry about those CDMA weaklings? It's not like things are going to change anytime soon.


Step 5: Finally, Ignore Public Outcry Whenever Possible

I hate to use another cliche, but it's simply too a propos in this case: If you want the baby to go to sleep, let her cry it out.

And so it is with your customers. Sure, from time to time, they'll throw a tantrum and think that they know best. Like kids, they may even threaten to run away. But in the end, if you just stay strong in your convictions, live out this guide to a T and generally ignore the fracas, your customers will truly appreciate it.

Don't believe me? Well just look at the Rogers case: There was some limited public naysaying about that iPhone launch, but the Wireless giant kept mum and just ignored the bad press instead of sinking to their level. And now people are already talking about declaring tomorrow a National Day just to call and say thank you. I rest my case.

Just for starters, I should point out that this article isn't about dealing with multiple personality disorder by using online tools. I'm sorry to disappoint.

But what it is about is figuring out how to manage multiple online brands and blogs without going crazy.

You see, for many bloggers, writers, and full-time web-workers, one of the hardest things we deal with on a daily basis is maintaining multiple personas online for marketing, conversation and promotional purposes.

Now if you only have one or two sites and they are owned and run by you, these can probably be promoted, bookmarked and discussed using a single coherent brand on the likes of Twitter, Friendfeed and Digg. That's what Darren from the Problogger network of blogs does, for example.

But what about when clients hire you to blog for them on their site, and expect you to promote and optimize that content too using social media as part of the deal?

Or what if you just want to use different, relevant usernames for each site to help optimize them for search engines? 

Then, before you know it, you're juggling multiple browsers and hundreds of tabs, trying to keep up with two or more different online identities, each one with its own group of friends and followers and its own conversation threads: Next stop, white padded room. 

That is, unless you could somehow pull all of these together in a way that allows you to view all the input and respond from one central location...

Two Problems, Two Solutions

This topic has been on my mind lately for a couple different reasons. First, I will be launching a new blog for one of my clients this coming week and so I had been thinking about how best to promote that new content without confusing my own personal brand.

Then, my friend Alexis Siemons from the My Tea Cups blog, mentioned that she was getting increasingly frustrated by the same problem. She had been trying to set up new social media accounts to promote her great new blog about etymology and words over on The Hatchet (an online magazine) called, naturally, The Word. (I think she's on a two week trial there, so head over and take a look and if you like it, leave a comment.)

Anyway, the point is that she was having issues, too, particularly with Twitter's one-account-per-email rule.

And as I see it, that is one of the two main issues we deal with when trying to maintain disparate social network accounts online: Doing so requires too many email addresses!

The second challenge is that the accounts themselves are too difficult to keep updated after you've set them up successfully.

Let's take a look now at how we can deal with each of these problems in turn.

I Don't Want Another Freaking Email Address

I'll use Alexis' problem as a point of reference here again: She already had two email addresses - one generic ISP and one Gmail - and didn't want to set up another one just to create a new Twitter account for the new blog.

Fair enough.

Of course, with Gmail being free and coming with automatic-forwarding baked right in, it wouldn't be that difficult to set up a new account, and then just redirect it to your main one. But why add another email address to your growing harem when you can just use Gmail's dot hack to trick Twitter into allowing multiple usernames for one email address? 

I won't go into great detail about what the Gmail dot trick is, because it has been covered quite well elsewhere, but the Cole's Notes is this: when you sign up for a Gmail Account, you are actually reserving not only your username, but also every variation you can create by inserting periods.

So if your email address is johnsmith@gmail.com, email directed to john.smith@gmail.com, j.ohnsmith@gmail.com, j.ohn.s.mith@gmail.com all go to the same inbox. Nifty, eh?

(My apologies to John Smith for exposing your email in four different iterations to the spambots, but let's face it, I probably wasn't the first.)

Now how can we use this trick to fool Twitter into letting us have multiple usernames all tied to one email? 

Quite easily: Just sign up for one name with your regular account, and another by adding a dot (and another and another if need be, using as many email variations as possible.) 

I've tested this, and it works like a charm.

What I haven't done is a full scale analysis to see if the same tactic will work on other Social Media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and the like, so your mileage may vary. But maintaining brand association on services as content-critical as Twitter or other microblogging platforms is often the most important piece of the blog promotion puzzle anyway.

In any case, I will be doing further testing in the coming days as I prepare for the new blog launch, and will keep you posted on what I find.

Now For The Hard Part

Of course, while having all your Twitter (or other social network) updates directed to one Inbox does alleviate the management stress somewhat, we are still faced with the arduous task of following and contributing to all those dislocated conversations.

But not to worry: This is where FriendFeed can come in handy.

If you haven't heard about it, FF is an innovative service that acts as an aggregator for all your online activity, and that makes it a perfect tool to track and manage multiple accounts on Twitter or elsewhere.

Using the Twitter example, you can easily add your multiple accounts to a single FriendFeed stream with a couple clicks. Then you can easily track both threads in one window. (And in one browser too, since you would need to use two to be signed in to two different Twitter accounts at once.)

To make things even better - FriendFeed even allows you to reply to Tweets you receive in your stream, and will show those replies as coming from the Twitter account where they originated!
How cool is that? 

So that's it- wasn't so painful, was it? Now you can easily manage as many online personalities as you need to all in one central location.

Just make sure they don't start talking to each other and everything should be just fine.

---

What about you, how do you deal with managing your different identities online? Do you have any need to do so? Can you let us know if these tricks will work with other non-Twitter social media sites? The comment form awaits your insight!

DISCLAIMER: This tip can obviously be abused for dishonest and spammy purposes, but that is not the intent of this article at all. Don't use it for that. Come on. Nobody likes a spammer.

A post this week by Bob Younce over on The Writing Journey blog sparked an interesting discussion about addressing both sides of the story in your writing. 

In grad school, Younce recalls being trained to state a thesis and defend it to the death, leaving the job of criticizing any weaknesses of argument to other peers in the field. And indeed, I can relate, as some professors at my university expected the very same thing. 

While there was some discussion in the comments of that post about different Academic traditions and their respective expectations around this sort of thing, the main point of Bob's article was to discuss whether this academic phenomenon should apply to the production of partisan copy like sales letters and marketing materials as well.

In it, he wonders aloud if these persuasive pursuits should give both sides of the story, or stick to one side and tell it well.

Answering himself, for better or for worse, he compares copywriting to his own experience in grad school, concluding that you can't really "tell it like it is" when writing sales copy, any more than you can when writing a graduate thesis:

When you’re writing copy, you write about the positive points of a product or service- its features or benefits. You don’t write about potential problems with the product or about how another product might function in a similar way. You restrict the flow of information and leave it to the consumer to discover the counter-arguments or problems on their own. If you don’t, your copy doesn’t convert.

But is it true that your copy should always be single-sided and so narrowly focused as to ignore obvious drawbacks? 

I, for one, don't think so. And I'm in good company.

The Preemptive Strike

So, before you claw my eyes out and direct me to one of the millions of available articles on the power of positive focus in sales and marketing (wait, one of them was on my own blog?), please hear me out. 

I am in no way saying that the main focus of your copywriting efforts shouldn't be positive statements about the features and benefits of your product or service. They should be, and to disagree with that fundamental law of conversion would be foolish and asinine.  What I am saying, however, is that preemptive damage control can be a very effective tool to add to your marketing arsenal. 


Ok, so maybe the preemptive strike idea didn't work out very well for Mr. Bush, but we're not talking about breaching sovereign nations here, we're just talking about anticipating reasonable objections and handling them before they are even raised.  


After all, in a sales presentation, everyone would be quick to agree that objection-handling is a major step towards closing the deal: A potential client with unanswered questions or unaddressed concerns is not likely to become a paying customer anytime soon.


But when you are writing copy for your web site, or a sales letter, or some other persuasive piece of content, you don't always have the opportunity to respond to those objections individually. 


Instead, if your potential client thinks of an objection that offends them thoroughly enough while reading your information, and they don't find an answer forthcoming, they'll probably just leave.  


But not if you anticipated that issue and dealt with it right from the start.  


The Advantages of Shooting Straight 


Putting aside any obvious ethical benefits of being honest with your audience (like being able to sleep at night, etc.), there are also many tangible reasons why marketers and sales professionals should want to shoot straight with their prospective customers.  


And most of these reasons can be summed up in one statement: Your customers are not stupid, and they don't appreciate when you make them feel that way.  


When you completely ignore obvious, relevant likely objections to your pitch, it comes off as naive at best and patronizing at worst. 


Did you really think your customer wouldn't do the math and figure out that you're twice as expensive as your closest competitor, just because you never mentioned that in your copy? 


Did you really think your client wouldn't consider the gas mileage on that car you're peddling, just because you ignored that discussion on your web site? 


The reality is that consumers are more informed than ever and are more likely than ever to do extensive research on your product or service before making a purchase commitment.  If you ignore their tough questions, they'll find the answers somewhere else. So why not at least try to control that conversation? 


The Best Policy 


Let's consider an example from my own experience.

One of my own clients offers a service: asphalt repair. This is a very competitive industry, with many companies offering a wide variety of solutions for the cracks and sinking that afflict many driveways here in Ottawa, thanks to our vicious freeze-thaw cycle.

The main drawback to my client's service, however, is that his pricing is quite a bit higher than many of his competitors. And when homeowners are being inundated with 3-4 flyers a week from different companies, they know the range of available pricing: It's not something you can hide.

So instead of omitting the fact that our pricing is higher in our marketing literature and sales pitches, I just tell it like it is.

"Look," I might say. "We are not the cheapest guy on the block, but when it comes to asphalt, you really do get what you pay for." Then I'll proceed to give a description of the shortcuts many competitors will take to lower their prices, and the thorough job we promise to do. In written materials, the same conversational technique works wonders, too.

All of a sudden, that high-price drawback has become a high-value mark of quality and the low prices of those competitors have become red flags for possible shoddy workmanship.

By coupling my frank admission with an explanation that resonates with consumers, I've increased the likelihood of a sale. 

Granted, some negative aspects are more difficult to rationalize than others. It may not be as easy to explain the side effects of your drug in a positive light, for example. 

But I think that if you put your mind to it, you can present drawbacks alongside and after your features and benefits, in such a way that they are at least clearly outweighed by the benefits you are purporting to offer (ie: rational humans won't even blink at a possible skin rash if what you're selling cures cancer.)    

The way I see it, if you can't create a convincing sales piece without omitting every last bad thing about your product or service, maybe you need to go back to the drawing board and improve your offering first!

I'm not trying to re-write the sales handbook here, as counter-intuitive as much of this may sound. But I am trying to be realistic about the way people read and respond to persuasive copy, and in my experience, honesty is always the best policy and acting proactively is always better than having to respond to a suspicious client or losing a client altogether.

After all, at their core, sales and marketing are all about rapport. If someone likes you and trusts you, they will buy from you, plain and simple.

And in my books, there is no better rapport-builder than a compelling, true story. When your potential client feels like you're speaking on the level about your drawbacks, they will be more likely to believe the positive things you say too, and that trust will translate into more conversions, guaranteed.  

---

What do you think? Is there a place in sales and marketing pieces for honest admissions and explanations, or do you subscribe to the school of thought that "what they don't know can't hurt them"? Let's continue this discussion in the comments.