So first let me dispense with the obligatory acknowledgment that I’m sorry I haven’t blogged here in ages. I have wanted to often, but one thing and another…

On thing I’ve wanted to write about is Twitter. I’m hooked.  So far, I’ve seen precious few Tweets (as I gather its adherents call themselves) use it especially well for business communication. Mostly people complaining about being stuck in airports. Like the rest of us might find that interesting. One who does a good job keeping the posts interesting and on topic is Steve Rubel, not surprisingly.

Another shout out I’ve meant to give is the IAB’s new blog, the IABlog, under the stewardship of the IAB’s new, compelling leader, Randall Rothenberg, who also has his own blog. I’ve gotten to know Randall a bit in the past several months, and he’s a fun guy, a great intellect (excellent panel moderator), a strong leader for the IAB and really interested demonstrating the new directions of online media with initiatives like the IABlog.

When you click through to the blog, you’ll notice a photo of yours truly serenading the original IAB chairman Rich LeFurgy.  The uke is my new hobby for the past year-plus. Soon I’ll have to do a round-up of the many photos like this that already exist of me playing the uke at industry cocktail parties on blogs around the web.

The real point of this post, though, is that I’m currently at the IAB’s Annual Meeting, Ecosystem 2.0, in Phoenix, AZ. So far, it’s one of the most exciting conferences I’ve ever attended, really. Attendee list is who’s who of the industry. As I type this (blazing fast free wifi in the conference hall; see, they get it!), Randall is interviewing Susan Decker, president of Yahoo! and Jerry Yang, CEO/founder of Yahoo! You can see the other speakers yourself here, but they are consistent with these two.

Steve Rubel is here and we’re both giving running commentary on Twitter, plus the IABlog is providing updates, too. Keep your fingers crossed that they’ll post videos of the content. Wenda Millard’s speech last night, accepting the mantel as new chairperson of the IAB, was really great. I’ll post the link of the transcript or video if it’s made available.

Okay, I’m not actually blogging this from Beijing. I’m blogging it from Hong Kong, as I left Beijing a couple of days ago (my favorite city in Asia, BTW, of the four I’ve visited in recent years: BJ, HK, Shanghai and Tokyo).

I’m out here to attend Ad:tech in Beijing, which wrapped up last Wednesday, and I’m off next week to DoubleClick Japan’s client conference, Insight. Mostly, I’m in the region to present about trends in US online advertising as well as to learn about the same on this side of the globe (12 hour time difference from NY; jet lag is a bitch!). But while here, I attended a session on using social networks and blogs for marketing purposes, which included two of this very blog’s contributors, Des Walsh, who moderated, and Debbie Weil, along with Jason Ge, National Sales General Manager of Sina, China’s biggest portal.

As I wasn’t really focused on blogs on this trip, most of what I learned about the phenomenon as it’s taking place in China came from this panel, but it was honestly one of the better panels at the show. Debbie’s already been blogging up a storm about her trip, and I’m sure Des will catch up shortly, too. (Deb’s made various notes, but not about the panel; she also have various video clips of it I expect she’ll upload shortly.) Meanwhile, here are some of my notes from the panel:

• China apparently already has about as many people using the Internet as the United States does, and in probably a year or so it will have more than the US and Europe combines. Moreover, a staggering number of these are active with blogs, as writers and readers. This already includes many businesses.
• Sina is one of the most popular hosting services for blogs. To that end, it employs legions of editors (one thing China is not short on is people), who, among other things, chose blog posts to feature prominently on the site. While many topics of blog posts, including business, are welcome, politics is not; to that end, Sina employs software algorithms to do much of the censorship that is a political reality in the country.
• An interesting phenomenon of blogging in China is that blog readers are comment crazy. It’s not unusual from the sound of it for individual blog posts to generate thousands of comments. Sina’s Ge related an anecdote of a furniture business blogger who offered a free sofa to each reader to post a comment at intervals of 1,000 (i.e., the 1,000th comment, to 2,000th comment, etc.). He gave away 18 couches.
• An even better Sina anecdote, some popular TV news personality who has a blog complained about the fact that Starbucks had a store inside Beijing’s historic Forbidden City (nicknamed “Forbidden Starbucks”). Sina editors linked to the post from the site’s homepage, and commenters went on to generate half a million comments! As a result, Starbucks HQ got the message and closed the store.
• Presumably one reason posts generate so many comments is that having a voice in the world is more a novelty in China than most places. One thing came through loud and clear at Ad:tech altogether: the Chinese Internet may be lagging the US market in some respects, such as the nuances of online advertising I’m paid to care about, but in terms of social media in general, it’s on fire.
• To wit, YouTube just launched Chines-language versions of its site in Hong Kong and Taiwan this week.
• It would be naive, however, to think all this adds up to unbridled openness in the Chinese market. China remains a communist country, of course. In fact, Ad:tech Beijing coincided with the 17th conference of the Chinese Communist Party. That was probably the explanation for why a variety of Internet services, including YouTube, were blocked for part of the week last week.

Hello Readers,

Good news: BusinessBlogConsulting.com is back!  Regular readers doubtless have noticed that this site has slackened in activity of late. I blame myself — life has gotten busy. That’s a lame excuse for a blogger, I know, but frankly I needed a break, and I guess the rest of our contributors followed suit.

But it’s time for a change. To that end, I’ve found a new steward for this site whom I’m sure will rise to the challenge to restore it to its earlier excellence and beyond: contributor Stephan Spencer and his partners at NetConcepts will hence force direct the content and business of this site.

Long-time readers will recognize Stephan’s name as one of our stand-out experts, whose many posts have been among the most popular with readers over the last few years. I have every confidence that he and his colleagues will take this site to a whole new level as a premier resource for marketers and bloggers looking to make the most of this unique medium for business promotion.

As for myself, I hereby pledge to resume my active contributions to this site. I’ve enjoyed my rest and am rejuvinated and inspired to return to the cause. Most of the rest of our regular experts have likewise agreed to rouse for our hiatus and rally to new deliver new insights on the topic of using blogs to maximize business performance.

Please join me in congratulating Stephen and NetConcepts on taking the reigns of the site and ushering in a new era for this blog.

Wow. I just heard about this on the radio. I don’t want to get sucked into a political debate here (and since I moderate comments, I will delete those that are simply political rants), but apparently the Israeli government has sponsored a piece of software that Israelis have been urged to download that keeps them up to date about the online debate regarding the war with Lebonan. The software directs them online to discussion forums and Internet polls where software users can use their large numbers (thousands have downloaded it) to swing opinion on the debate.

Normally, it’s pornographers that pioneer new marketing and media strategies that mainstream advertisers and media companies come to adopt not long after (think of the VHS video tape format or pop-up ads). But I am sure it’s only a matter of time before some companies start using this politically motivated tactic in a similar capacity to emplower “word of mouth” networks to send armies of dittoheads to badger bloggers and other grassroots forums. Just imagine if they could somehow penetrate research panels like Greenfield or comScore (or, shudder to think, Nielsen Media Research). If nothing else, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see more of this as part of election online marketing tactics.

Putting out money where our mouths are, we’re hoping to put money where our mouths are. That is, this site is all about using blogs for business. Yet, despite the name of the site, that would imply we are a consulting company, up until now, BBC (as we contributors hubristically call it) has been something of a labor of love. Granted, of the contributors are consultants themselves, who benefit from the exposure this blog affords their practices. (Myself, I took a day job two years ago.) But basically, this has been a not-for-profit exercise in information sharing.

Then I noticed something a few weeks ago: we get a decent amount of traffic. Enough that I figured, well, if blogs are supposed to be a good way to make money, let’s give it a try. So, you will notice as of today, this blog has ads on it.

Mostly we write here about how to use blogs as a marketing vehicle for companies with other, larger business models. But we also do comment from time to time about pure-play blog publishing businesses, a la Gawker, Weblogs Inc or Federated Media. One of the real secrets of blog publishing, however, is the B2B model. I have several friends who are making a full-time living off of business-oriented ad-supported blogs, such as Steve Hall at Adrants, Rafat Ali at PaidContent and Tig Tillinghast at MarketingVOX. So I figured we should give it a try, too. We’ll let you know how it goes. As the man falling from the 20-story building said as he passed the 10th-floor window, “So far, so good.”

RSS ad specialist Pheedo together with SilverPop, iUpload and PRWeb, are hosting a dinner roundtable on the topic of RSS advertising. Details here. This follows on a similar event they hosted earlier this month in San Francisco.

Sadly, Google has no sense of humor. Thus, some advise in search engine optimization from an unlikely source: the NY Times. Of course, for the best advice on optimizing your blog for Google, check out the posts of our own Stephan Spencer.

I did PR for a year, so I mean it in the nicest possible way when I say that, yes, at a certain level it’s a profession of whores. (Really…the nicest possible way. I mean, I’m now in advertising for crying out loud, so I’m certainly not judging!)

To that end, you have to love the literalism of Rellatio: a PR firm founded by ex-porn stars. Naturally, they have a (brand new) blog.

UPDATE:
The more I think about it, the more I’m thinking this is probably a hoax, yet another faux blog. What made me think initially it wasn’t is that the first blog post is dated today, not April 1. But still, it just seems too good to be true. Please let me know if it turns out to be a send-up.

With our recent posts on RSS, I figured I’d weigh in with a quick opinion of my own. I know its heretical for a blogger to say so, but I think RSS is vastly over-hyped. To that end, I’m happy to point out Dave Taylor’s recent post where he points out an obvious truth: most RSS readers suck.

Here’s a brave admission: I don’t use any RSS reader. I haven’t for a couple of years. I tried various ones here and there, but ultimately I come back to the fact that I just don’t have time to keep up with all that information, and I’m an information junkie, blogger and researcher. I don’t know how the rest of you do it. I have simply don’t have an extra hour every day to scan the posts of the 200 blogs I love. I barely have time to read the industry sites that cover my sector (Internet advertising). Basically, I try to scan MarketingVOX daily, and then spend 2-3 hours with email and then, if I have any time left, I try to actually do some work. I’d love to read more blogs, but where do you fit it in? I’m sleeping only six hours a night as it is. I’m a drop-by blog reader; I cycle through my favorites here and there where I have time andbrowse their archives.
But it’s one thing for a blogger to admit this (and those who follow my blogging know that I’m also a catch-as-catch-can blogger, not a daily machine like some people). But what the hell does an ordinary person need with RSS? A blogger, a trend watcher, a journalist, or just info junkies, I can see the point of why they use RSS. But that accounts for the 5% of the population that already uses RSS. Why on earth would my mom need an RSS reader?

Here’s what baffles me most about RSS and the blogosphere: for all the excitement about about RSS as a reader subscription feature, it’s been virtually ignored by blog software tools as a true syndication mechanism. Why isn’t it a standard feature of every blog publishing tool that you can customize the resyndication of your other favorite blogs? E.g., I’d like flexible controls to put in the margin of my blogs up-to-the-minute headlines (or short posts, or long posts) from my favorite five (or 10, or 20) blogs. I tried to do this two years ago and all I found was some university hack. I suspect there are (but don’t actually know of) some more mature widgets out there that let you do this now, as I’ve seen it here and there on other blogs, but it’s certainly not widespread. It would be like blogrolling on crack. Seems like a no-brainer. Is there a WordPress plug-in for that?

(Of course, what blog publishing tools really need is the ability to aggregate posts and publishing them as an email newsletter, but, as Molly Shannon memorably said, don’t even get me started…)

For those watching the world of blog publishing ventures, the latest one to watch launched this week, DealBreaker.com. This is first in what promises to be a series of blog sites, a la Gawker Media. And speaking of Gawker, what’s most exciting about DealBreaker, an invective gossip blog about Wall St. and high finance, is that it heralds the return to the blogosphere (in a real way) of the first true It Girl of blogging, Elizabeth Spiers, Gawker.com’s original editor.

The new blog’s introductory post promises:

[H]ere’s what you will find: posts about the precise size of the guitar collection on Paul Allen’s yacht spaceship, posts about the disparity between what Aswath Damodaran thinks is the dark side of valuation and what we think is the dark side of valuation (hint: high-quality cocaine), banker body counts (thank you, John Mack), interviews with people about how much money they make and whether they sometimes buy things just so they can throw them away, sightings of Eliot Spitzer, pitchbook origami, fun with league tables, and so on. And occasionally we’ll break news or do something that’s otherwise useful. Which will be entirely an accident. We apologize in advance.

Just out of beta, the site already appears to have legit ads from the likes of Universal Studios, CFO.com and others.

During her run as editor of Gawker, it would be fair to say that Spiers was overexposed as a media darling postergirl for blog hype. But it was all well deserved, as her genius for short-form snark remains virtually unmatched in the blogosphere before or since. (Full disclosure: she and I are good friends, and I’m secretly in love with her. Oops, too much disclosure…)

After Gawker, she went on to join the staff of New York Magazine, writing for the print magazine and its short-lived blog The Kicker. From there, she ran the editorial department of the journalism resources site MediaBisto for a year or so, including launching a suite of media-watching blogs there. Both jobs honed her journalism and management chops, I’m sure, but they didn’t showcase her preternatural blogging talents to their fullest. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that DealBreaker matches the brilliance of her original (and my favorite) blog, Capital Influx, which, like DealBreaker, obsessed a lot on Wall Street misdeeds (as well as Christopher Hitches, Jonathan Franzen and some other pet interests). Or at least I hope it gives Gawker a run for its money in the industry-niche gossip rags sector.

Investment partners with Spiers in the new ventures (which has a yet-to-be-announced publishing company name) are Justin Smith, president of The Week Magazine, and Carter Burden, CEO of web hosting company Logicworks. Spiers is also at work on a novel And They All Die in the End, a satire about the world of Wall Street, to be published by Riverhead (Penguin) in 2007.

I just realized this site recently passed its second anniversary (born sometime in March 2004). Hooray for us!

[Skip to NEW UPDATE]

You want me to write about your stupid company, Greg? Okay, here you go. (Let this be a lesson to the rest of you!)

From: gregs@[mystupidcompany].com
To: Rick Bruner
Date: 30 Mar 2006 15:02:28 -0500
Subject: [mystupidcompany].COM = Restaurant Finder

Well here is my question………I need to get my name out there…I read your Blog it is about websites which is what [mystupidcompany].COM is. I need people that are internet savy to look at my site.

Do your readers eat out? If the answer is yes then why not right a small blurb about [mystupidcompany].com

Let me know how to aproach guys like you in the future…….so that I can better prepare myself.

Thank you for the guidence, also let me know what to put in the title.

Have a great day

Greg

—–Original Message—–
From: Rick Bruner
Sent: Thu, 30 March 2006 19:12:01
To: gregs@[mystupidcompany].com
Subject: Re: *****PLEASE READ****

Not that I want to get into a big thing over this, but you don’t know me, your business has nothing to do with anything I write about, and your subject line is obnoxious. I realize you’re not harvesting addresses and sending out a million emails in a batch, but anyway it’s not what I would call best-practice PR.

On 30 Mar 2006 12:26:57 -0500, gregs@[mystupidcompany].com wrote:
>
> I was not spaming I was asking………….thank you for your time.
>
> Have a great day
>
> Greg S********
>
> By the way I thought it was cool how you give people your email
>
> Rickbruner at gmail dot com
>
> Genious if it is okay with you I will strat doing thesame thing.
>
> Again sory to bother you have a great day
>
> greg
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: Rick Bruner
> Sent: Thu, 30 March 2006 16:48:01
> To: gregs@[mystupidcompany].com
> Subject: Re: *****PLEASE READ****
>
> No, I won’t, as this has nothing to do with anything I write about,
> and you should have more creative ways of getting PR than spam.
>
> On 30 Mar 2006 11:43:35 -0500, gregs@[mystupidcompany].com wrote:
>
> > Hello Rick my name is Greg S******** was wondering if you would be able to write about [MYSTUPIDCOMPANY].COM
> >
> > http://www.[redacted-url].com/subscribe/
> > http://www.[another-redacted-url].com/article.php?id_articol=134
> >
> > We are going through first round of funding starting June 15.
> >
> > Thank you so much
> > Have a great day
> >
> > Greg S*****
> > 847 – ### – ####
> >
>

You have a great day, too! And do me a favor and lose my email address.

UPDATE:
I just couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to check my email trash folder (I had set up a filter on Greg’s email to auto delete any further emails, but something told me he was going to write again…)

See that the problem with guys like you………you spend time writing something what you wrote……….if you would of wrote something nice I would of given you 100,000 shares of my company.

But you waste your time………doing what you did………………

Have a great day

Greg

—–Original Message—–
From: Rick Bruner
Sent: Thu, 30 March 2006 20:11:21
To: gregs@[mystupidcompany].com
Subject: Re: [MYSTUPIDCOMPANY].COM = Restaurant Finder

http://www.businessblogconsulting.com/2006/03/pr-case-study-how-not-to-email-a-blogger.html

I’ll be blocking your email address now, so please just move on with your life.

All the best,

Rick

I swear I’m not making this shit up!

PS: If anyone wants to take Greg up on his offer for 100,000 shares of his stupid company for a blog post, paypal me $1 at rickbruner at gmail dot com and I’ll send you the name of his firm.

PPS: I think I accidentally saved this post to draft form last night (still getting the hang of WordPress), so sorry it disappeared for 10 hours.

If there’s one vital rule for business blogging, it’s don’t do something so dumb — so alien to the true spirit of blogging — that it’s just going to get you pilloried in the blogosphere. Of course, making fun of bad corporate blogging is so much like shooting fish in a barrel I rarely bother anymore, but I can’t resist with the new GuinessBlog.

Allow me to digress for a moment. At my workplace, a group of us have started a photo club. We meet once a week and discuss techniques and critique each others’ work. A few club members are real experts, including one guy I’ll call Vince (since that’s his name). Vince is a great photographer and a font of knowledge on the subject. He also is not inclined to sugar coat his feedback. He’s become famous for offering the following advice when someone asks how they could have made a picture better: “Don’t take that picture.” What he means is, the photographer took the landscape shot at midday, when the light was invariably going to be unflattering (much better to take all outdoor shots in early morning or late afternoon light, I’ve learned), or the photographer’s lens just wasn’t appropriate for the effect they were going for, or there was no good way to get an angle that wouldn’t include the light pole blocking the cathedral or whatever. The point is, sometimes when you are striving for quality, you just have to recognize that you can’t achieve what you want due to circumstances beyond your control.

So, back to Guiness’s crappy blog. Actually, Hugh, where I first learned of the blog, assures us it’s a good blog. Maybe so, but I’ll never know. That’s because Hugh lives in London and I live in NYC, and due to some legal mumbojumbo, Guiness has decided to put a screener page that blocks users from geographies outside of Great Britain. WTF?? Sure, I could go back to the form and fill it out again and lie about where I’m located (though I suspect it would remember me from my cookies, as I checked yes to “remember me”; and of course I’m clever enough to know how to delete that cookie selectively), but I really can’t be bothered. Like I care that much about Guiness’s blog. (A large number of commenters on Hugh’s post agree with me.)

Oh, I’m sure it has something valid to do with liquor export regulations that has their lawyers’ panties all in a twist, and possibly for some good reason. But in that case, I’d counsel, “don’t take that picture.” If you can’t do a blog right, better not to blog at all. Otherwise you risk a bunch of nasty blog posts calling you a clueless git, like this one.

I did PR for a while, and I was a journalist for quite a while, and one formula I’ve always been a fan of is “free stuff.” I especially endorse the idea for bloggers, particularly when you’re transparent that there are no explict expectations. As far as marketing dollars go, it’s a pretty cheap strategy. Hit or miss, but so is most of marketing. In that spirit, here’s a plug for an honest pitch (and note, I’m aware that they’re getting exposure from my even posting this without my even trying to get the free stuff, but that just proves my point that this is a good PR strategy):

Rick,

It’s probably Hugh MacLeod’s fault for giving away free wine to bloggers and now free dinners (not to mention John Scott’s latest attempt to grow traffic with talk of a $10,000 prize to a reader of his blog), but today Hillstead Publishing announced they’re giving 250 copies free to bloggers, of a book called “Living the Artist’s life”.

Unlike other book giveaways, there are no requirements to review, blog, or link. Time will tell if the ‘coversation’ gets bigger.

source: http://pauldorrell.com/blog/2006/02/free-books-for-bloggers.html

Disclosure: I am the webmaster of the book’s website

Thanks,

Liam Daly
www.TalkingSquares.com

Besides, I’m all for blaming things on Hugh.