Whatever your political persuasion — right, left, or center — the blogosphere is a great place for bloggers to share their political views and make plenty of friends and enemies. We try to follow the conservative, liberal, and everything in between of politics and political blogs/blogging — but only when it intersects with business blogging.
Have a read below of our latest entries on politics and political blogging…
I finally bought a leather couch a couple weeks ago. Nothing says ‘acclaimed author’ like sliding off a leather loveseat as you type on a laptop – sliding because you’re still in sweats and it hasn’t been broken in.
Anyway.
Ron and I went couch shopping and on our way stopped by Sleep City mattress store in Chicago on Diversey Avenue because we wanted to see about getting him a box spring and a bedframe. We’d been to this store a year ago to get him a mattress and returned this past summer to get me a mattress, box spring and bed frame. The guy at Sleep City set me up with a supah-soft Englander mattress that is like sleeping on a freakin’ cloud. Money well spent.
Anyway.
I wrote a quick entry about this Chicago mattress store on my personal blog and how fantastic the service was, how affordable the prices were and how I generally just had a great experience there (compared to the over-price place just a block away).
Recently, I’m at the gym and a guy we know comes up to me and says ‘Oh, I stopped off at that mattress store you recommended and got a bed.’ Strange, I hadn’t mentioned to Sean about the store. ‘Oh yeah, he’s got that review from you posted at his store.’ Strange, I hadn’t mentioned to Sean about my blog.
So Ron and I go into Sleep City and we’re talking to the guy about the bed frame when Ron spots my blog post. Printed out on the guy’s desk. ‘Look honey, this is your post!’ The salesman then says, ‘You’re Andy! You wouldn’t believe how many people have come in because of that review – and how many people know you!’
Sidestory: I have a massage therapist that I highly recommend back from my structural integration (aka Rolfing) days. I blogged about him too and I get at least one email a month of someone inquiring for his contact info. He recently called to thank me for the referrals.
This is why local businesses should blog. Or give discounts to bloggers in exchange for reviews and posting. You don’t have to be in a ‘techie’ business. If you aren’t findable online you’re dead. Blogs are word-of-mouth made trackable, searchable and archived.
Bonus sidestory: I’m walking out of my apartment building when a car horn honks and I hear somebody yelling my name. I go up to the car and meet two guys I’ve never met before. ‘We though it was you. We love your podcast!’ Then there was the time I got recognized in a local diner for having a blog. You never know your reach…
This is why you should be blogging. To forge meaningful relationships globally and locally. Bloggers can help new customers find you, a blog can help you find new customers.
VistaPrint first gained fame as the company that would send you a few hundred business cards for free. And so a million small businesses ordered the free cards and would eagerly scatter them to prospects, clients and colleauges. The caveat was that the back of the business cards said Get your own free business cards at VistaPrint.com. These spankin’ new business cards told the recipients the business’s contact info but also that they were too cheap to drop a whole thirty dollars on custom made business cards that advertised their business, not VistaPrint’s.
And so anytime a business uses dirt cheap or half-assed solutions for their business, I call it The VistaPrint Syndrome. This is beyond starting business on a shoestring or bootstrapping… You’re starting it on a stale ricecake, an eye booger and a dream.
And so it is with Blogger. I roll my eyes every time a business announces their new business blog and the address is at blogspot.com. I’ve been accused of being a blog bigot for telling clients to not use Blogger under any circumstances. Using Blogger and the free Blog*Spot hosting is basically telling the rest of the world that you’re too cheap to spend a few dollars for a halfway decent blog for your business. You’re too cheap to pay for web hosting, too cheap to pay for a 1-click install of WordPress, too cheap to pay for a domain-mapped TypePad blog. Business bloggers who use Blogger/Blog*Spot are telling the rest of the world not to take them seriously.
Sure it is just a blog. Blogs are supposed to be fun. Cheap and free was the initial allure of blogs. That was great at the beginning. I expect this same trend to eventually apply to WordPress.com once newbies figure out that the .com is the free hosted product and the .org is the free installable software – hopefully by the .com will have domain mapping.
Having a Blog*Spot blog and expecting someone to be impressed is like having a Yellow Pages listing and expecting them to go Oh. Wow. Shocker. You’re listed in the phone book.
Solutions?
If we want business blogs to be taken seriously we have to raise our expectations of our blogs and the newbies just starting out. Each time some company says Go to our blog at yadda-yadda dot blogspot dot com we should all feel as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Final word: I love VistaPrint. They are a great service and their express shipping option is a dream. I love Blogger. I started with them five years ago with my personal blog.
One of the hot topics of debate in the media this week has been whether Google should have launched its new Google China service, a search engine built atop servers located within mainland China that have content filters based on the laws and requirements of the Chinese government. While many people have criticized Google’s decision, along with other firms that also opt to meet legal requirements for doing business in the Chinese market, I actually believe that this decision marks a turning point in the growth and maturity of Google as a corporation. It’s the beginning of Google the pragmatic corporation, and it’s a trait that suggests that the company is recognizing the difference between idealism and success:
Google gets pragmatic and enters China
There are lots of interesting parallels that I draw in this article too, including companies that opted to do business in South Africa and helped destroy apartheid, and even eBay’s meeting the requirements of the German government in terms of Nazi memorabilia sales.
Here is another great Firefox extension that allows you to interact with the web pages you visit. It’s called Hyperwords. Hyperwords allows you to highlight the text on any web page and then choose from an automatic menu to search, look up reference sites, map, tag, check definitions, translate, email or blog about the page
For anyone interested in business possibilities in Indonesia, or perhaps in the international adventures of US corporations they may have business with or shares in, business journalist Yosef Ardi’s Indonesia Today blog is required reading.
His January 18 post US business heavyweights are in town, the long wish list, in which he provides an imagined text for what the visiting US corporations really want and are really concerned about, is an elegant and witty piece of economic and political commentary.
According to the bio on his site, Ardi spent a year in 2004-2005 as a visiting scholar at the UC School of Journalism, Berkeley CA.
He also has a blog in the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, Articles in Bisnis Indonesia, Bisnis Indonesia being the economic newspaper published in Jakarta, Indonesia, where Ardi was managing editor.
For the past couple of days I’ve been playing around with a trial version of Blogbeat, a real time blog traffic reporting system. So far I’ve been really impressed.
You can drill down to find out what your most popular posts are, how people found them (search engines, other sites, etc.), and track your search page rank.
Unlike Google Analytics (assuming you were one of the few who signed up for Google Analytics in the first five minutes before they shut the door), Blogbeat provides the information in real time. It took me about 5 minutes to install the script on my blog and minutes later I was seeing the traffic reports.
Once you’ve logged in Blogbeat also offers some common results in simple language: “which posts were most popular today?” and “who sent the most visitors my way?” are a couple. Finding out what search terms are attracting visitors is also a click away.
You can also even subscribe to the reports via RSS.
My only complaint is about the user interface. The information is easy to understand, but the font is a little big (too much scrolling required) and there are too many words in different shades of light grey. Also, it wasn’t always clear what report I was going to see when I drilled down a certain path.
If you’re looking for inexpensive traffic report solution ($6/mo for up to 500,000 monthly page views) and you want something with more cowbell–don’t ask–Blogbeat may be just what you’re looking for.
Since blogs are technically web sites with feeds, (ok, I’m simplifying just a bit), then there is no reason a blog cannot be effectively marketed like a web site. To this end, Stephan made a great post about optimizing this blog, pointing out some important tips that bloggers would do well to follow.
In my experience working with both search engine optimization and blog marketing, I’ve found that there are more ways to market a blog than a site without a feed. A few of the many resources to help you do this include:
RSS Button Maker – This nifty tool created by Thomas McMahon allows you to fill in your blog name, url and feed url and pick the buttons you want to create. Hit submit and it will output the code for about 20 or so RSS feed reader/aggregator RSS subscription buttons with your feed information embedded. Then all you need to do is copy and paste the code into your blog template.
A study performed by Ipsos-Insight sponsored by Yahoo (pdf) indicated that RSS feed subscription buttons or “chicklets” are the preferred way for users to subscribe to a blog’s RSS feed.
This tool also creates the code for several social bookmark services to make it easier for your readers to add your blog to del.icio.us, digg, slashdot or furl.net. Should your blog get bookmarked enough, it may make the “popular” list from one of these services and that can drive significant amounts of traffic.
RSS to Email Tools: FeedBlitz and R|mail – Sign up for these services and then place the code in the template of your blog. Visitors can opt to receive your posts via email. At first I wondered, why would anyone do that? RSS is so much more convenient. I can say from personal experience, 1/3 of the daily visitors to my own blog choose this option and we’ve had similar rates with blog marketing clients. Those are blog visitors you might not have otherwise had.
Monster Blog Directory Submission List – This list shows the “add a blog” or “add your feed” urls for over 80 different blog and RSS search engines and directories. The list gets edited monthly to add new sites or to edit urls. One of the advantages to having a blog as part of your company web site is that with a feed, you can get your site listed in these directories or search engines and a site sans feed cannot.
One thing I will note, is that blog marketing tools are only as effective as the quality of the content on the site they are being used to promote. There is no substitute for quality content and also the social networks between communities of like-minded blogs to draw traffic.
Separate articles, same theme. First Darren writes about the truism that most Internet users don’t realize that they are reading a blog and might be turned off but continual references to to “on this blog … ” kind of things.
In my work as a blog consultant I run into this often. Blogs aren’t really well understood by the majority of Internet users. How is it different from a website (it isn’t really)? Isn’t just an online journal (yes, and no)? None of my friends, colleagues, target audience read blogs (they probably do, they just don’t know it).
Darren concludes with this …
I think their observation is correct. While I’m not suggesting bloggers need to dumb down their blogging I think the mind-shift of moving from writing for other bloggers to writing for ‘normal people’ (I can see bloggers everywhere scrolling down to the comments section after that phrase) is one worth making for most bloggers.
This means getting out of our own little Pro Blogging Ghetto and learning to communicate with others in ways that are accessible and smart – otherwise we limit the potential for our succes
Darren’s overall suggestions are bang on, IMHO. Bloggers, especially professional bloggers and bloggers who are going for information, news, etc need to be aware that people are looking for good stuff to read, learn, and use and don’t give a rodent’s tushie that it’s a blog.
Now, published about the same time are 21 great writing/blogging tips from Make You Go Hmm:
I think (almost) all of these are super tips … maybe every pro blogger should print them out and stick near their computer (hard for me, because I usually work from the couch and friends visiting might comment on my “unique” taste in wall art). The professional design tip is a tough one, that can be expensive. I suggest finding a skookum template to use for your blog. I’ve been setting up a lot of WP 2 blogs lately, and I direct new clients and friends to Alex King’s site to pick a template. There are so many awesome ones there that people have trouble picking an absolute favourite (so I recommend picking 3-4, installing them on the blog and then choosing).
Of course, none of us are perfect. Heck, my blog is rather bland. Which is why, in true blogging style, the 21 tips closes like this:
Can you follow all these tips? Probably not. This blog doesn’t even follow all them, although I do try to keep this stuff in mind when I feel the quality is starting to slip (and it is an every day job working on blog quality, not something one can just go into autopilot on). But follow enough of these and it will greatly increase the likelihood that you’ll become one of the most read blogs out there someday. Let’s face it, the web can never have enough quality content. You can add or take away with each post you make. Want to be a shallow, one dimensional blogger? There’s tons of those. Want to really work at your writing and make it better? This post is for you.
Tags: blogging tips, professional blogging, blog design, blog writing
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OK, so I don’t have 101 uses for RSS YET…I’m working up to it, and I need your help.
Rich Ziade over at basement.org listed about a dozen uses for RSS, including:
There are, I’m sure, dozens of ways to use RSS, outside of the normal news gathering, competitive intelligence.
Other RSS uses lists:
RSS Specifications – Uses for RSS
public virtual blog – Cool Uses of RSS
What’s your innovative use for RSS?
At the end of the month, I’ll compile a list of all the great ways to use RSS here. Let’s shoot for 101!
Chris Hoyt, president, Hoyt & Company wrote a compelling article on the HUB magazine website about mining the blogosphere for comments and content on your company.
According to a November 2005 Reveries.com survey, over 60% of companies surveyed weren’t monitoring the blogosphere.
On the heels of the WOMMA WOMBAT conference, the emergence of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, and the venture funding flowing into the word-of-mouth marketing space, its never been more apparent that monitoring the consumer media (blogosphere) is an essential function in every marketing department.
So, what might you listen for on the blogosphere?
What would your company listen for?
My friend and colleague Paul Chaney is working on a blogging book with another author and recently asked for some advice on schedules and how to work on a multi-author book. I responded and thought it would be interesting to pull the response here into the public eye too…
Paul commented:
“The book is scheduled for release in the fall and they want a completed manuscript by the end of March. Not having had this experience I have no clue as to whether that’s a reasonable time frame, but we aim to please.”
First off, congratulations! There’s little as satisfying as publishing a book and bumping into people who have read it! 🙂
Having said that, I do believe that a perfect egalitarian coauthorship doesn’t work and that there needs to be a lead writer whose voice ends up permeating the entire manuscript. That’s what Shel did with Naked Conversations, for example.
You need to balance the rewrites and work, of course, so it’s still equitable, but books that are collections of essays, for example, are always spotty and plagued by bad writing, making it hard to find the gems.
Further, I would assume that each chapter is going to go back and forth between coauthors at least twice. You brainstorm points and cases, your coauthor adds to it, you write a first draft, they add their content, you polish and send it in. (Or vice versa).
Once you’ve sent in the manuscript, remember that you’re both part of a bigger team of editorial folk and that you’ll have AT LEAST two or three more people adding their 2-3 cents worth, including a tech editor [1], copyeditor, and development editor. Value all their comments (it’s easy to get mad at them) and respond to each query with the question of “they represent the reader. How can I improve this for the reader?” rather than the more common, but wrong-headed “stupid editor. What do they know about this subject?”
Finally, once it’s all done, remember that’s when your work STARTS, not ends. Successful books are a success because the author(s) push them, not beacuse the company gets behind them. Most publishing companies assume everything will be mediocre and only put marketing $$ behind those books that are starting to demonstrate the traits of a success.
One implication: be extremely generous with review copies. Any visibility in your market segment makes it easier to get more marketing attention and, of course, is good for your book sales overall [2]
Hope this is helpful stuff!
Notes:
[1] I do tech editing of books, particularly those with a business focus if anyone’s interested, and have tech edited at least 30 books in the last decade. It’s fun and a nice chance to help improve a product. [References]
[2] And this is why if any one of you would like a review copy of my nineteenth book, Growing Your Business with Google, and have a legitimate outlet for a review, even just on your well-read weblog, please contact me and I’ll forward your request along to the publicists at Penguin. I’ve sent out at least 50 copies of the book to reviewers at this point in time.
by this point in time…
One benefit–although not the only one–of blogging is increased “findability” of your business through search engines.
I’m a big fan of writing quality content on a regular basis to make your Web site or blog relevant for appropriate searches. I’m not a big fan of continually tweaking your pages or copy to take advantage of any new “hack” that some black-hatted SEO expert may have discovered. It’s a short-term gain for a long-term loss in my opinion.
Still, it’s important to understand what search engines find important, so you can get the most out of the content you have on your Web site or blog.
Jason OConnor has written a great article on the new Google update–code named Jagger–that explains some of the changes he’s observed over the past few months.
The big discussion right now in the blog space is whether the recent comments from Yahoo’s Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker mean that Yahoo has “given up” on the search space and “conceded” it to Google. The problem is, I think everyone’s misinterpreting what Decker said because they’re all succumbing to the “win or die” philosophy that’s so prevalent in the industry. But if you can put that aside, there’s nothing particularly concerning, alarming or even distressing about what Decker is exploring. It’s the Ferrari Solution:
  What do Yahoo, Apple and Ferrari have in common?
It’s far too early to write Yahoo off or somehow conclude that the company is irrelevant to the world of search. Search is the future of the Internet and there’s still lots of space for innovation.
David Kline of BlogRevolt has an article today about “What is holding back corporate blogging?”
David brings up a critical point and one that is heard often in the corporate world. We on the front lines get to hear many of the corporate types run on about the problems with blogging–Time, money, legalities and many other reasons are given why a blog is just not in the PR budget. As in all things, this too shall change, but for now, David has put together a thoughtful piece, with quotes from our very own Debbie Weil and Jeremy Wright.
As I sat perusing my web feeds in my aggregator, I was reading blog posts that referenced “Blog Marketing”. One thing led to another, and I found myself staring at a most upsetting site. A splog generator. This is a company I really did not want to link to, but nonetheless, I want to hunt out and make these companies known. This would be a classic example of the wrong way to use blogs for a business. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. I think it’s time to report this site to the Splog Terminator
This idea has been some time in the making and is finally here. When I first met Jim Turner he mentioned the idea of “Hey wouldn’t it be a great idea to have a business blogging Caribbean cruise?” I thought … Yeah! Awesome, let’s do it! Well months later we’ve taken the wraps off the cruise website and blog …Blogonomics (website) and the Blogonomics Blog.
So, what’s the deal? Basically it’s a five-day cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Cozumel and back (of course back!) that we’re considering a blogging boot camp on the high seas (with fruity drinks!). The goal is that attendees can come learn about blogging from leading experts (with topics like design, metrics, SEO, using RSS, and writing) and leave ready to blog better or get their business blog off the ground. We’ll have on-board WiFi and hands-on workshops in the evenings like adding pictures to your blog.
All the pricing and info is on our website. We have early-bird pricing available for the first 100 bookings, so with the amount of interest we’ve been getting on the back-channel … you might think about getting in early.
We are, of course, looking for sponsors for this first-of-its-kind event. Scott has pulled together a super sponsor-info pack and other information on the website as well.
This has been a true team effort. None of this could have been done without this awesome team. Scott Goldblatt has been leading the charge for Jim and I. Shylah, true to form, always comes in just when we’re getting behind. And then there’s Jeremy Wright … the cool, cool template is his doing. Not to mention that many of the contributors here (Jim, me, Jeremy) are confirmed speakers and there are more to come!
So … let’s get cruising!
Tags: Blogonomics, blogger cruise
It’s a question I hear with some frequency; how can you add an RSS feed to the pages of your own web site, home page or weblog? Many of the solutions are pretty complex, but it turns out that Newsgator Online – a free RSS aggregator and tools service – makes it incredibly easy for you to accomplish just this, even letting you customize the format of the content and intermingle multiple feeds rather than being constrained to just one RSS source.
Even better, the example i show also explains how to set it up and customize it, with detailed steps, meaning that even if you aren’t handy with a computer, you’ll be able to get everything up and running in no time:
Add an RSS feed display to your Web site
It’s a very cool feature of a very nice application!
Lots of buzz. Lots of folks.
Word-of-mouth-marketing (WOMM), Florida warmth & sun and a bunch of online experts… including our very own Toby Bloomberg, Josh Hallett and Dana VanDen Heuvel who are live blogging the Word of Mouth Marketing Association‘s conference in Orlando. (Dana is one of the lead bloggers.) What more could you ask for?
Check out the WOMBAT (Word of Mouth Basic Training) conference blog. Day 1 here. Day 2 here. They’ve got a full crowd of international attendees and speakers. 400 people according to conference organizer and WOMMA ceo Andy Sernovitz. Wish I were there…
Note: there are lots of posts on the WOMBAT blog. You’ll have to poke around. A sampling: Women and WOMM; B2B and WOMM; WOMM and ethics; WOM and blogging.
Also see Technorati.
Bottom line: WOMM has come into its own as a separate and defined marketing niche. The notion that this form of marketing can be codified and measured is fascinating. Stay tuned…
David Kline, co-author of one of the handful of books published thus far on blogging (Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business and Culture) emailed me this week to ask for a quote for the article he’s working on about what’s holding the F500 back from blogging and what it will take for blogging to go mainstream. He referenced the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki’s stat that only 3% of F500s are blogging. I responded with the following mini rant:
Fear & blogging on the blogosphere Long Tail
(with apologies to Hunter S. Thompson)
Fear is the single most important thing holding corporate America back from embracing blogging. Fear of being open, fear of a two-way conversation, fear of not being able to control the message, fear of the time commitment. Just makes sense. If you put blogging in the basket of corporate communications it runs absolutely antithetical to so-called current best practices.
So what will make this change? Again, fear. Fear of not embracing the new media technologies which so many consumers are now adopting, whether it’s a video iPod or a blog. Fear of not being where your customers are. Which, increasingly, is online.
Well, that’s my thought for the day. Now back to cleaning up the mess on my desk… Oh, and don’t misunderstand. I’m not being critical of the F500s efforts thus far to launch blogs. Just realistic.
This just in: BuzzMetrics, a division of VNU (which owns lots of stuff, including a lot of research firms, such as Nielsen Media Research (the TV ratings folks) and Nielsen//NetRatings, one of the leading Internet audience measurement firms), has merged with (read: acquired) IntelliSeek.
IntelliSeek and BuzzMetrics have been battling it out for supremacy in the field of monitoring online consumer generated content for business intelligence. Both companies monitor, through a combination of technology and human analysts, discussions about products and trends taking place in email discussion communities, online forums, bulletin boards and the like, but since blogs came on the scene, that has really been their raison d’ê·tre.
The new company will be called Nielsen BuzzMetrics. Jonathan Carson, formerly CEO of BuzzMetrics, will take over as CEO of the new venture, while Mike Nazzaro, CEO of IntelliSeek, will be president and COO. My buddy Pete Blackshaw, CMO of IntelliSeek, get’s the dotcomish title of Chief Marketing and Customer Satisfaction Officer, while another buddy, BuzzMetric’s Max Kalehoff, will be marketing VP.
Max, formerly of Jupiter Reseach, will also be joined by his ex and future colleague Gary Stein, who started at BuzzMetrics just this week in a client service role after years as one of the most prominent analysts covering the online marketing sector at Jupiter.
Strange when the company that’s supposed to track the buzz is making the buzz. Just goes to show, in a round about way, how hot blogs are for market intelligence, as Toby was just saying.
Next Page »
Business Blog Consulting is a site devoted to demonstrating how effective weblogs can be for communicating with customers and marketing to new customer prospects. You will find here lots of examples of business and corporate blogs, as well as resources to help you learn more about the topic.
Looking for a company that offers consulting on corporate and business blogging, including design, development and strategy? Consider Netconcepts.
Other stuff? Email us.
Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing
Andy Bourland of Bourland.com
Rich Brooks of Flyte
Paul Chaney of Blogging Systems Group
Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus
Josh Hallett of Hyku
Tris Hussey of Larix Consulting
Lee Odden of TopRank
Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts
Dave Taylor of Intuitive Life for Business
Jim Turner of One by One Media
Dana VanDen Heuvel of BlogSavant
Des Walsh of Thinking Home Business
Debbie Weil of WordBiz and BlogWrite
Jeremy Wright of Ensight
Rick E. Bruner is co-author and principal analyst on this report
Our own contributor Jeremy Wright is the author of this book
"The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right" with a foreword by GM's Bob Lutz..and the rest by Debbie Weil.
Produced by contributor to this site Debbie Weil. Rick E. Bruner is one of the featured experts in this report
This report is written by contributor to this site BL Ochman
I guess this was inevitable
