Business Blogging Pros

Words Mean Things

David Meerman Scott on Web Ink Now wrote a great post yesterday about the definitions of some of these terms we bandy about like New Rules of Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Social Network Marketing.

I'm pretty much in agreement with David's definitions. One thing interesting to me are the parallels between David's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR and Gonzo Marketing, written by Chris Locke way back in 2001.

It is interesting to see these two very different guys present the same message in very different ways. On one hand, I think that Chris has never gotten the recognition he deserved for Gonzo. IMHO, some of what he wrote was truly groundbreaking at the time.

On the other hand. if you are trying to convince your CEO of your point of view, you would be FAR better off giving him New Rules than Gonzo. There is a lot of Chris' personality in Gonzo and you have to have suffered some kind of warpage to 'get' Chris. (I think I do 'get' Chris - I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing - and I am privileged to consider him one of my mentors.) Some of the stuff on Chris's blog would definitely not go over well in a Fortune 500 company boardroom.

David's New Rules, on the other hand, is written in a language your CEO will understand.

And don't get me wrong, that's not a slap to Chris either. Chris and I know each other well enough that I'm comfortable asking him for advice. I wish I new David that well too. I think getting advice from two such totally different perspectives would be really useful to me.

UStream

Thanks to Jody Gnant, I am now UStreamer. Ustream allows just about anyone to broadcast live video over the Internet and interact in near realtime with connected viewers using chat. In fact, I am LiveStreaming right now. Tomorrow when I am preparing dinner for a couple of guests, I will be LiveStreaming while I cook. I'm also going to record the video and imbed it into my food blog so that later anyone can learn to prepare Chicken Legs with Raspberry Sauce, Bistro style.

Think about it: Ustream lets anyone with a video camera and an internet connection become a live TV broadcast station. Not only that, the video can be recorded so that anyone can view it at a later date. Webinars anyone? (Granted, my video is not production quality, but I am using just the iSight camera built into my MacBook Pro. Soon I will hook up my Sony Handycam and see what it looks like.)

Back to Jody. I was at the Phoenix Social Media Club meeting Thursday night and Francine Hardaway invited Jody to talk about uStream.

Remember Kyle MacDonald who managed to turn one red paperclip into a house through a series of trades? Jody is a local singer-songwriter and traded with Kyle for a recording contract. Jody began LiveStreaming 24/7 during the creation and promotion of her new CD and has since decided to continue. As a result, she has developed a considerable following, with several thousand 'views' per month.

One phrase she said really struck me. Pointing to her webcam, she said, "Those are real people in there." Most of them are enthusiastic fans. Most of them have bought her music.

I don't want to pontificate, but with guys like Robert Scoble and Shel Israel exited about UStream, I think it is safe to say that it is a great idea. I've already got several ideas about using this with some of my clients.

Pat McMahon's TV Show

I was a guest on Pat McMahon's TV show on KAZ-TV today and Pat asked a great question:

Why do his colleages, people who host talk shows several hours each day, then go home and blog?

Good question. I suppose the best thing to do would be to ask them, but since the camera was on me I gave it my best shot. I think there are a couple of reasons:

Blogging provides an alternative outlet

Blogging lets them let their hair down and say things they either can't say or don't have the opportunity to say during their workday. A similar question could be asked of me: "Since you work with blogs all day long, why do you go home at night and blog about food?" The answer is that I love cooking and Fumbling Foodie gives me an outlet to talk about it.

Sense of Connection

I suspect that blogging gives them a chance to feel part of a community; part of something bigger than just themelves. Fumbling Foodie is part of a community that spans the globe. I have foodie friends all over the world and we stay connected to each other through our blogs. I suspect that sense of connection and community is something they don't get hosting a talk show.

This was, BTW, my first television appearance. I was nervous as all get-out. My son watched my 'performance' on his TV and said something I thought was interesting: "When I got this TV I never thought I would see my Dad on it."

Blog and Website Redesign

If you read my blog via the RSS feed, you probably haven't noticed it's new look. We completed a redesign of both the blog and website about a week ago and so far the feedback has been universally positive.

Anyone who knows me also knows that when it comes to graphics, I am a stick-figure guy. 'You gotta know your limitations', as Clint Eastwood once said, and so I knew that for this redesign it was necessary to have it done by a professional. I retained my good friend Michelle Conlon for this project. Frankly, Michelle is the best graphic designer I have ever known.

We started with the logo back in July and I could not have beed happier. From there, she designed letterhead and new business cards. Before moving on to the web/blog work, I wanted to circulate the business cards for a while to see what the reaction would be to the new look and image. Given that the feedback was nothing short of 'WOW!', I decided it was time to finish the project and re-skin the blog and website.

I think Michelle did an outstading job and I could not be happier. I'm interested in your feedback so please let me know what you think.

Now if I can only get Michelle to blog more frequently.... ;-)

Admitting Guilt

David Meerman Scott's Web Ink Now is one of my favorite blogs on the subjects of marketing and PR. He recently wrote a great post about Olympic athlete Marion Jones' emotional admission of guilt.

No matter what your feelings about Ms Jones' and her offense, you can't help but feel differently after watching the video. You can't help but feel a little more empathy and perhaps a little less judgmental. I know I am generalizing but I think we Americans as a culture are quick to forgive when presented with a heartfelt mea culpa.

Good businesses that 'get' blogging use their blogs this way: to say, "We made a mistake", "We have learned from it", and "Here is how we are going to do better next time" .

Sadly, a lot of companies when faced with the question, "Should we put this on our blog?" will respond with "If we don't put it on our blog then fewer people will find out about it". Wrong answer, wrong answer, wrong answer.

Markets are conversations. Believe me, the world will find out about it. And they will talk about it. Given that the conversation will take place anyway, it is better for that conversation to be on your own blog than somewhere over which you have no control. And you have a better chance to get your side of the story told and get your message out on you own blog.

On the other hand, suppose that by reading about it on your blog, someone does learn of your faux pas who would otherwise have remained ignorant? They'll come away with a positive impression of your company's honesty and integrity.

There is another benefit but it is more insidious. Changing the culture in a company - to one in which airing the dirty laundry is not only OK but is actualy advantageous - can be very disruptive. Once accomplished however, the company is better for it. The company doesn't just appear to be more honest and open, it actually is more honest and open. And then the entire relationship with the customer undergoes a welcome change too.

What Your Business Blog Needs

Many web hosting companies are now offering a blolg as part of the package. In my opinion, most are - unfortunately - not really suitable platforms for a professional business blog. They provide the basic functions of an online diary or journal but a blog for your business needs to be more than that.

Here are some of the features and functions that a blog for your business must have:

• RSS Feed. The most desirable readers (the ones you want in your sphere of influence) don't read your blog by bringing it up in their browser. Instead they subscribe to your blog's RSS feed and read it in their Feed reader. If you don't have an RSS feed then your blog won't be read. I describe RSS feeds and their significance in a little more detail here.


• Your RSS Feed should be easy to subscribe to.The Mac Browser (Safari) and Internet Explorer 7 have their own buttons that are live when the browser detects that a blog has an RSS feed and allow me to subscribe to your feed wiith a single click. Other people are not so lucky. Google Reader is probably the most popular RSS feed reader today. You should strive to make it as easy as possible for users of Google Reader - and other online feed readers - to subscribe. That's why you see the chicklets in the sidebar of this blog under the heading Subscribe. A Google Reader user can simply click on the 'Google' chicklet to subscribe.


• Connection to Feedburner. Feedburner is the premier aggregator of RSS feeds. They also do a lot more. They provide great stats about your feed subscribers. They can integrate podcasts into your RSS feed and make it easy to publish on iTunes. Any blog that has an RSS feed can be connected to Feedburner, but some blogging platforms make it easier than others.


• Email Subscriptions. Your readers should be able to subscribe to your blog via email. I predict that newsletters will someday go the way of the Dodo bird thanks to this function. (Bringing you this capability is one of the great things Feedburner does for you).


• Technorati Tags. The combination of frequent postings and Technorati Tags is what enables your block to quickly climb to the top of the Google rankings for any given search term. Your blog should have a field on its 'Compose Post' page that allows you to easily enter Technorati Tags.


• Categories.You should be able to group your posts into categories - and you should publish the list of categories in your blog's sidebar. Readers can click on a category name in your sidebar and see everything you have written on that topic. In time, your blog will become a reference site. I often send people to the Blogging 101 category of my blog to give them a place to start learning about blogs.


• A Link to Your Website. Not only do you want interested readers to be able to easily find your website, consider this: Every time you create a new blog post it looks like a new web page to Google. If every one of those pages has a link to your website...


• Recent Posts. If your sidebar contains a list of recent posts, a new visitor can quickly get a feel for what your blog is about. (Yes, I know. I have no 'Recent Posts' section in my sidebar. That and other things going to change soon.)


• Trackbacks. The most important factor in the success of your blog is for you to engage in conversation with the blogosphere. Find other bloggers speaking to the same audience as you. Read their blogs regularly. Leave insightful comments. Write articles on your blog about what you've read and include trackbacks and hyperlinks in those posts. If you go to your own blog and write about this post here on my blog, and you trackback to this post, I receive notification that you have written about it. That notification includes the URL of your blog. When I approve the trackback, an excerpt of your post appears in the 'comments and trackbacks' section of my blog's post. You must be able to do trackbacks.


• Accept Comments. Don't just accept feedback, welcome it. (That's why you won't see CAPTCHA or other forms of authentication on blogs I configure.) Not only that, the comment form should have fields for the commenters name, email address, and website/blog URL.


• Comment and Trackback Moderation. You do however, want to make sure that inappropriate comments never see the light of day. You should be able to configure your blog so it holds all comments for your review and approval prior to publication. The same is true for trackbacks.


• Google Pinging. The other day at one of our Real Estate Blogging Seminars, Jay Thompson was live-blogging during the event. Before the seminar was over his blog post was on Google. You don't want to wait the 4-6 weeks for Google's spider to get around to reading your blog. You want your blog to automatically and immediately notify (we call it a ping) Google each time you publish a new blog post. The same is true for Technorati, Feedburner, blo.gs, and weblogs.com .


• Social Bookmarking. The social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us can be powerful tools for spreading your message virally. For that to happen, you must have three things: (1) You must write good content that other people want to read. (2) Create engaging titles for your content, and (3) Make it as easy as possible for people to bookmark you. -- The first two are up to you. Your blog should take care of the third one for you.

You are going to be spending a lot of time and energy on your business blog. In return, it needs to do the best possible job for you. In order to do that I believe these features and functions must be present.

Return of the Neighborhood

David Meerman Scott had a great post today in his blog Web Ink Now. He talks about how the 'new' ways of marketing and PR are really just a return to the way we did things prior to the advent of television.

I like that analogy. We used to have neighborhoods. We all knew the corner grocer by first name and he knew everyone. He not only knew their names, he knew the names of their kids and what grade they were in school. He knew where we worked and where our spouses worked. And we all knew the same about him. As well as just about everyone else in the neighborhood. When someone was sick our down-and-out, the corner grocer knew it, helped out, and spread the word.

Television, big box stores, and a bunch of other phenomenon came along and changed all that. Our traditional 'neighborhoods' were gone.

Blogs have brought them back. Only now my neighborhood is global (with apologies to Shel Israel).

Conversation is the Revolution

I am catching up on backlog of blog-reading and discovered that a couple weeks ago Shel Israel said something pretty profound. It was in the larger context of a discussion about whether or not blogging is becoming passe.

I agree wholeheartedly with Shel that it's not becoming passe, but it is becoming the norm. His last sentence however, was pretty powerful. So much so that I'm going to start using it in my presentations:

The blogs are not the revolution. Conversation is the revolution, and the tools for online conversation keep getting better and more diverse and that is how it should be.

The Future of the Web

A couple of Days ago, Steve Groves posted a good article about the Internet coming of age and some of Marc Andreessen's thoughts.

I've spent a few days thinking about this, and my personal opinion is that the Internet has not yet come of age, and there are some pieces missing that need to be in place in order for that to happen. I think that an internet that has 'come of age' will have three elements:

1. Topic Centric Communities
Yes, I know we have these. In fact we had them long before the World Wide Web existed. They were called Usenet Groups. In fact, back in the early days o accessing the internet (does anyone else remember Shell Accounts?) I switched ISPs so I could gain access to alt.security.pgp. My definition of a community is a number of individuals who have come together around a specific topic, and that number of individuals must be small enough for trust relationships to be maintains between most members of the community.

A person can probably maintain a few dozen trust relationships, but certainly not a few thousand. That is why I think there will be dozens/hundreds/thousands of nearly identical communities all cenetered around the same topic.

It is interesting that Marc Andreessen's new venture Ning allows anyone to set up an online community. I believe there is a hazard to that: The whole world could easily devolve into each of us having our own 'community' of which the owner is the only member. I saw a lot of that happen in Ham radio in the seventies and eighties: It became so easy to put up a 2-meter repeater that we ended up with repeaters on the air handling almost zero traffic simply due to the fact that anyone with an ego and a checkbook could say he had his own repeater. Will we devolve to the point where anyone with an ego can say he/she runs an online community? I don't know. I do know that the only thing that saved VHF Ham radio was the limited availability of RF spectrum. There is no such equivalent limitation on the Internet today.

2. Topic 'Latest News' feeds
Even though I may be a member of an online community focused on widgets, it would be nice to know what is going on in the world that is related to widgets. Right now this is a difficult, time-consuming problem. It takes a lot of effort and energy to stay abreast of all the happenings on any topic. I think some sort of new social media search and filtering entity is needed. Technorati does a good job, but it's far rfom perfect. Maybe the anser is something like Yahoo! Pipes or some sort of Squidoo 'meta lens'.

3. Generalized Search
Yea, we have Google. But IMHO search in general, and Google specifically, is broken. It is WAY too difficult to find relevant content and Google changes their algorithm too much to make the results of a search repeatable. (How many times have you searched Google, found something of interest, and then run that same search a few days later only to have the item of interest be nowhere to be found?) Again, I think Technorati does a decent job here, but what I want is something that will aggregate and collate all the results, eliminate the crap, and just give me the relevant information. (I'm finding that I use Wikipedia a lot more than Google these days when I'm trying to get up to speed on a new subject. Perhaps there is a message there.)

A long time ago, (when dinosaurs roamed the earth, in fact) I envisioned a briefcase-sized device with a keyboard and screen that contained or was connected to a giant database holding every bit of knowledge in the known world. The Library at Alexandria with a handle, so to speak. You could type in a plain-lannguage question and it would return the answer in plain language.

I think we are there from a data perspective but we are a long way from being there for the plain-language part.

My Low Technorati Rankings

The other day in a offline conversation, Steve Groves was harassing me about my low Technorati rankings. Pure and simple, it is a case of 'the cobbler's kids have no shoes'. I firmly believe that in order to have a successful blog, you must:

1. Find other blogs speaking to the same audience as yours.
2. Read those blogs on a regular basis, preferable once a week.
3. Leave comments on those blogs.
Write on your own blog about topics found on other blogs and link/trackback to those posts.
4. In addition, systematically scan the blogosphere for mentions of you, your company, your URLs, trademarks, etc.

What Steve didn't realize is that I do that regularly, but I'm doing that very thing for some of my clients. Some people just don't have time to scan the blogosphere like they should. For example, I have a client with multiple blogs on disparate subjects and a dozen or so URLs. Even with an RSS reader, it takes about five hours a week to keep up with all of that and he just doesn't have the five hours. I act as a driftnet, monitoring about 180 blogs and google searches, and send him an email once or twice a week containing one or two dozen blog posts. From those, he picks a smaller number that he finds compelling and leaves comments. It saves him a ton of legwork. To him, it is worth it to have me do the legwork for him.

I, some cases, I also do this for other smaller clients as part of the ongoing blog coaching I offer even though it involves only about an hour a week. The reason is simple. I find that it takes most business owners 3-6 months to to really get into the groove of blogging. Regular presonal coaching during this period of time helps jump start them and get the good habits engrained. So part of my coaching is hand-holding: directing their attention to good opportunities to leave comments, help them stay engaged in the blogospher's conversations, etc.

Yea, I really need to start carving out some time for myself, but helping my clients be successful bloggers is important too.

Way to Go, Connie!

A couple of days ago, my client and good friend Connie Kadansky related this story to me:

As a result of reading one of Connie's blog posts, someone from a large corporation called her and asked her to write an article on the same topic for their publication.

How's that for the power of blogging?

Email RSS Feed vs Newsletter

My good friend Michael Goodman and I have been having a discussion about email newsletters vs email RSS feeds.

If you've been to my website, You notice that I have a newsletter. And if you look at the sidebar of this blog, you'll notice that you can sign up to receive the RSS feed of this blog via email. In other words, I have implemented both.

You would think that the email RSS feed would make the newsletter superfluous, and I predict that in the not-to-distant future the classic email newsletter will be dead. For now, however, more people sign up for the newsletter than the email'ed RSS feed.

My Wish: Hook Google Blog Search and Google Reader Together

If the Google folks are listening, I have a feature request:

I track about a hundred blogs via RSS. Many times, I want to refer back to something that I read a few days or a few weeks ago. I know I read it in one of those blogs, but which one? It would be nice if I could tell Google's Blog Search to limit its search to only the blogs in my Google Reader.

Blogging Success Study

Northestern University and Backbone Media have recently published a study of the factors that make a business blog successful. They interviewed twenty highly successful corporate bloggers and asked each one a series of stndardized questions.

While there were no surprises for anyone who has read Naked Conversations, I did find a few recurring themes:

• Engaging other bloggers in online conversation is crucial to your blog's success. Locate and read other blogs in your industry and leave thoughtful comments on them oftem. Even before you write the first post on your blog, you should be searching the online world for places where conversation and discussion about your industry occurs.
• Create interesting, compelling content. Write about your industry, your marketplace, and the concerns of your customers related to your industry. Write about ideas and events that encourage reader feedback, and then leverage that feedback.
• Be open, transparent, and real. Don't be afraid to reveal the human side of the inner workings of your business. Be open and forthcoming about how or why decisions are made that affect your customers.

"What should I write about?" is a question I am often asked. The following paragraph in the study is one that I will quote often:

The Stonyfield Farm blog was the most successful blog run by Stonyfield Farm. Jonathan the farmer, Stonyfield’s organic farming blogger, writes about whatever is happening in his life, the calving season or maple sugar season. The success of the Stonyfield Farm organic farming blog is because it is all about a farmer’s unique experiences in farming an organic farm. What must seem mundane to the farmer is refreshing, compelling and entertaining content to most readers.

I can't emphasize enough how important I think this is. This is the kind of content that creates a bond between you and your customers or potential customers.

Local Businesses - Blog or Not?

Mike Manual at Media Guerrilla wrote an interesting and provocative post today in which he advocates Yahoo! Local and Google Local over blogging for small businesses. This is surprising coming from a blogger.

I disagree with Mike and suspect that he does not really understand what a blog can do for a small business, or perhaps the profile of his typical client is quite different from mine.

Mike advocates encouraging your customers to share their experiences with your business in local search engines like Yahoo! Local or Google Local. There is no doubt that a bunch of positive reviews about your business on a local search engine will help. Nothing is as powerful as word-of-mouth advertising. Does the number of reviews at local.google.com affect your Google rankings? I don't know. Getting clients to actually spend the time and energy to write and post a review is a problem.

And you're going to have to take the bad with the good. You don't have control over what gets published about you on Yahoo! Local or Google Local, but you do have control of the testimonials you publish on your website and your blog, and you can respond.

Influential People Read the Blogosphere

The mainstream media folks read and monitor the blogosphere. A single thoughtful blog post on a controversial subject can result in a whole lot of exposure in the mainstream media. I don't think you can say that about local search engine listings.

Free Exposure

While the local search engine reviews do give you some exposure, a blog is your best option for having your own words heard.

If you are a consultant who has amassed years of experience in your field, no one can showcase that better that you. A local search engine listing is no match for a blog in this regard. A blog allows your potential clients to gain an appreciation for the bredth and depth of your experience and knowledge. The idea situation is to educate your potential customers to the point where they realize that they need help and you are very qualified to give it.

What can you do about those negative reviews on the local search engine? Not much. A negative review (in the form of a comment) on your blog gives you a chance to respond. I recently told one client that he should pray for a negative comment because it would present him with a golden opportunity to show the world how he responds.

Humanize and Build Trust

Your business is built upon relationships. Your clients don't do business with your company, they do business with you. A blog is a wonderful tool for allowing people to see you as a three-dimensional person instead of just a cold business. Granted, a good testimonial on Yahoo! Local can do that too but the blog wins hands-down in this department too.

Conversation

Surfing Google Local is probably not a great way to hear what other experts in your field are talking about. A blog however allows you to engage them in conversation and learn from each other. And remember, Markets are Conversations and we can learn from them.

I think Mike is seeing a blog as a big time sink. It can be, but DL Byron to Click-N-Seal from zero sales to 100,000 unit/yr with nothing more than a daily blog post. (Actually, I think he recently said that his posts are about twice weekly.) I think this is far less effort than it would take to coax a couple of decent reviews per week out of your customer base.

RSS Readers

I've been looking at RSS readers lately. Evryone with a blog needs a constant source of new ideas to write about. And you need to stay abreast of what the blogosphere is talking about in your niche. There is no better way to accomplish this than RSS and an RSS reader. I plan to do a blogging 101 post soon surveying the best RSS readers and as a result have been looking at several.

If you have a Mac then you already have the best RSS reader: Safari. The ability to click on the little RSS icon in the address bar and then add the feed to the folder of your choice is really convienient. I understand that IE7 will have a built-in RSS reader. Personally, I think the best place for the RSS reader is right in the browser.

I also use NetNewsWire (from the NewsGator people) and I like it a lot.

I've been playing with Google's new reader and I have to say that I am impressed. Having your feed reader on the web is not quite as seamless as having it integrated into your browser, but it's getting there. Particularly since many blogs (like this one) display a little icon allowing you to add their RSS feed to your Google reader with a single click. (If you have a blog, you need to get a free Feedburner subscription so you can do this too.)

Get Local

John at has a great post up about local search. One of the things I am trying to to is to put together a list of resources for doing local search.

I also think that a blog is just as important (maybe more-so) for acquiring and keeping local customers as it is for spreading the word globally. I often ask people to think about how they themselves pick companies to do business with. Usually it starts with a Google search and then further online research to try to get to know the companies a little better. People search for a local business no differently. Not only will your blog boost your Google rankings, it will allow your potential customers to get to know you and personally connect with you before they walk in the door for the first time.

Welcome

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