So Wired decided to publish this pair of breasts on their cover. After seeing it, Texas State’s Cindy Royal declared that after decades of reading Wired magazines and not seeing much about women who impress men with their brains and not their bods, she was breaking up with Wired.

By the way, I hate seeing this image on my blog but just wanted you to see how bad it is and why she isn’t just being too sensitive. Anyway.

I checked Wired’s Quantcast data. You’d think that Wired would skew very heavily male, but it really doesn’t. Only 59 percent of their readers are male and 41 percent are actually female. That’s why it’s so vexing they would jeopardize their relationship with these 41 percent. I mean, who wants to get caught reading a magazine with this cover in the gym, male or female? It’s worse than GQ and Maxim covers.

Chris Anderson responded by asking people if they actually read the article. The innovations covered were indeed amazing…but, doesn’t that mean they wouldn’t have to sink as low as publishing cleavage on the cover to get people to read it? I mean, it’s about how advancement in breast augmentation is improving stem cell research, which will help cure cancer and a host of other ailments. I can’t speak for everyone, but you don’t have to pull the sex card on me to sell a cure for cancer. What I can say is that Anderson did a great job of potentially alienating over 50 percent of the population. The Wired cover sparked controversy on sites around the web including the Huffington Post and Mediaite, just to pick up the morons who would not choose to pick up Wired had they not seen a digitally enhanced wrack staring them in the face. Smooth.

Just because something sells, it doesn’t mean you should sell it. It’s called having integrity and self-respect. It’s the same reason why millions of women choose to work hard every day and keep their dealings with men at a professional level rather than just putting the twins out on display to get a promotion. We know it could work–we choose not to go there. It is an unsound long term strategy.

So here’s my plea:

Mr. Anderson, I fit the target demographic for Wired both on income level and educational level. Your advertisers want to reach people like me. I’m kindly asking you to avoid publishing pictures of cleavage and half naked women on your covers. It’s cheap and embarrassing, and represents Condè Nast very poorly. It’s also not asking for much, really. If your advertisers don’t appreciate that such low-brow tactics scare off people like me who just want to read Wired in the gym without looking like Larry Flint, then maybe you should go after a different demographic so you can hit your numbers. People shouldn’t feel relegated to read your content in the privacy of their bathrooms.

Cheers,
Michelle

I get a lot of companies and organizations asking me to write for them. Writing doesn’t have to be hard to do internally, but it does take practice and a willingness to mess up before you get it right. I remember some of the first blog posts I wrote ever, and a lot of them consisted of throwing stuff up on a wall and seeing what stuck. I’m hoping to spare you.

Here are some guidelines I’d stick with as a startup with a limited amount of time/resources for blogging:
1.) People like lists because they are easy reads. You are reading mine now, so apparently it works.
2.) Keep posts under 500 words or less. Think about it: if someone is at work, chances are their boss doesn’t give them time in a day to read blog posts. So keep it short, to the point, and useful.
3.) Use analogies and paradigms people can understand. Pick a theme that makes sense to your audience and write along with that theme. It’s easy to meander when writing a blog post. Using analogies or paradigms will help you stay on point.
4.) “Make their ears burn”. Blogging is a social activity that behaves in a way that is similar to academia and footnoting. There’s no use only referencing your own thoughts because there are plenty of good thoughts out there already. Being a responsible blogger means you are conscientious enough link to back if you use them.
5.) Copy people whose blogs you like. Yeah, I said it. You copy UI, you copy website design. Before even touching your company blog, it’s best to read a bunch of them and figure out what style works for you. I read Copyblogger, ClickZ, Problogger, SearchEngineLand and Marketing Pilgrim before even starting this blog. I read others like Kathy Sierra and Hugh MacLeod and it changed more. If you don’t even have time to do that, you don’t have time to blog. That is okay. Maybe you could sponsor a blog, buy Facebook ads, or hire an ace PR firm. It’s okay not to blog, especially if you have amazing documentation that helps your users with your product if they need it.

If you don’t have money to advertise or do PR, and you can’t do marketing in house, well, please be a realist and get more funding. I’m not saying this to say that your software is no good. I’m saying it because if your software is good, you’ll want to make sure it’s being represented fairly and the people who would love to use it at least know about it.