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’ve been doing some personal musing for a while now over exactly at what point bloggers stopped using the dotorg domain extension and started using the dotcom one. Let me explain.
It seems to me at least some of the more longstanding blogs (or blog-related sites) used org. Case-in-point, Jeremy Wright’s Ensight blog, the Threadwatch blog, and Movable Type’s site. Now, I realize this might be a silly thing to think about, and that it might have been due to nothing more than the dotcom domain was already taken. If so, stop reading. But, I think there is a deeper question here and the BBC site is an appropriate one to discuss it.
It is this: At what point did the paradign shift take place from when blogs were viewed as a purist medium for self expression and become used for commercial purposes? It’s stating the obvious to suggest such a shift has taken place. Perhaps it was gradual, a Gladwellian tipping point sort of thing. But, was there a seismic shift and, if so, when did it occur? If there are any blog historians or anthropologists reading this, I’d enjoy your answer to the question.
With all the newbie bloggers there are out there, it seems to me there might be a need for a book (an essay at least) on the history of blogging. Though blogging has morphed, in that it is being used for a number of purposes now, the essence of it remains the same and we don’t, in my view, need to lose touch with the past just because we are embracing the future.
Just received Frank Barnako’s Internet Daily enewsletter. In it he mentioned Scoble has pared down his blogroll to about 800 feeds. I checked to see if I made the cut. I didn’t, but maybe you did, so you might want to take a look.
It’s easy to get started blogging…today’s blogging software is inexpensive, easy-to-learn, and does most of the heavy lifting for you.
However, it’s a lot more difficult to build a successful blog: one that attracts prospects and clients, establishes you as an expert or an industry leader, and helps you attain search engine "findability."
There’s some great advice out there for big companies and CEO’s who want to blog; just check out Debbie Weil’s BlogWrite for CEOs. However, when you’re a small business owner like me, not all the advice is directly transferable.
I wish the "today" me could go back and talk to the "then" me and give him (me?) some good advice on business blogging. It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration over the past year.
If you’re interested in learning from my mistakes, check out The 11 Biggest Mistakes Small Business Bloggers Make. (Email registration required.)
Plus, if you’ve got some of your own mistakes that you’d like to share, please take advantage of our comments and trackbacks below. After all, failure (or a mistake) is a much better teacher than success.
My good friend and fellow Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channeler Zane Safrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, has a wonderfully thoughtful personal blog post that follows an interview he conducted with a Communications major at Northeastern University on the subject of blogging.
The student was writing an essay on blogs and Zane is one of the most articulate and passionate bloggers I know – you should to get to know him.
This week the search marketing conference Pubcon X was held in Las Vegas with many great sessions, one of which, RSS Feeds and Podcasting was particularly well done. Presenters included: Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo, Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit, Daron Babin of New Gen Media and Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR.
Presentations ranged from the how-to’s of podcasting and tools, podcast optimization, using RSS to uncover and promote hidden publisher content, industry data on podcasting and of course, Jeremy focused on Yahoo’s tools involving RSS and Podcasts.
Detailed coverage of the session can be found at: "Pubcon X – RSS Feeds and Podcasting".
In his Fast Forward column in September’s issue of Media magazine, editor-in-chief Joe Mandese highlights a scene from Back to School where Rodney Dangerfield is shopping for textbooks when someone recommends that he buy used ones because the key passages are already highlighted from previous owners. In reply, Dangerfield responds, "But what if they were morons?".
I’m not about to call everyone who’s not bought into the metaphor of customer community, citizen contributed media and dialogue that blogging stands for a moron. That wouldn’t be nice. However, I would argue that the path we’ve traveled to marketing riches before has been written over by a new generation of marketer. Your customer.
A friend of mine, who’s trying very hard to shift the mentality of an old-world company through the power of blogging has this to say about her struggles, which typifies the argument that many are having inside the walls of corporations around the world.
This group is afraid of blogs. They don’t see anything but the danger in blogging. They are afraid of the conversations and afraid to "lose control" of our message.
You want fear? Understand this. In talking with some of the folks at I/PRO recently, they cite a well known fact that the major panel based web ratings firms like ComScore and Nielsen have a pretty good idea of what’s happening on the top 100 sites on the web. They know little about what’s really going on in the long tail, which is where I/PRO’s ‘sweet spot’ lies, based on their methodology of auditing sites well beyond the top 100. Media planners around the country are waking up to old media, and even the top 100 sites, becoming less relevant to the greater population than the millions of blogs that make up the long tail.
I think that the tagline for the citizen contributed media world should be "The Long Tail Wagging The Old Media Dog." Because that’s what old media, and an old media command and control mindset really is. Just an old dog. How ironic that ‘cynicism’ is the Greek word for ‘a dog’. (taken literally, the ‘piss on ideas’)
For those who fear the new media, blogging infiltrated world, the only real safe path is in partnership with your customer. A change of attitude is what’s required here. An attitude that the conversation, community, citizen participation and the Internet as one great big wonderful media lab is what’s required here.
The point here is that marketers need to always be asking the question "but, what if they were wrong?" (let’s not call anyone morons here). What if what I know about marketing, my customers, and what I think about blogging is wrong, or at best, misguided.
Yeah, what if…
More and more businesses are starting to discover and explore RSS (Real Simple Syndication) as an alternative to email marketing.
RSS allows you to syndicate your content very easily; it’s most commonly used in blogging and podcasting as an RSS feed is automatically created by most blogging and podcasting platforms. However, RSS can be created for your Web site as well, and is fast becoming an important communication channel for businesses.
In Your 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan, Rok Hrastnik holds your hand while you dip your toe in the RSS ocean.
Come on in! The water’s fine!
While just about everyone in the blogosphere is reacting with some level of hostility or scorn to the Forbes Magazine cover article by Daniel Lyons entitled “Attack of the Blogs”, it turns out that there are many valuable lessons that we bloggers could learn by reading through the piece, and some ironic proof that Lyons’ isn’t too far off in his “attack” metaphor when the reaction of the blogosphere is considered.
It’s certainly a very different take on the article than what you’ve read online before, I’m sure:
Forbes “Attack of the Blogs” is surprisingly accurate
You might not agree with my analysis and commentary, but take the time to read through what I’ve written anyway. The points I raise, whether you believe Lyons raises them too or not, are important discussions for the blogosphere to have nonetheless.
In an article entitled What Blogs Cost American Business, AdAge.com contends that in 2005 alone, employees will waste 551,000 years reading blogs at work.
Some interesting factoids:
What the the article doesn’t mention is if these lost hours are coming out of actual productivity, or the time we spent looking for good travel deals or checking last night’s sports scores, and will Expedia and ESPN suffer because of this.
It also doesn’t talk about the fact that most American workers work longer hours, work through lunch and take our laptops and Blackberries home with us. Don’t we deserve some time to blog off?
This story found via Blogcritics.org.
Steve Rubel discusses the analogy of blogging being like baseball. In a discussion about whether the linking in blogs or the mention in blogs is the more important gold standard. Rubel suggests:
Baseball is a good metaphor here. A blog link/mention combo is like a home run – a four bagger. You get attention, Google Juice, traffic and branding. Blog links without mentions and plain old mentions are like doubles because in either case you get two out of these four bases.
Ahh, but what about RSS? RSS is opt-in and it’s attention. What if you score a blog link/mention combo in a popular feed you know has a high degree of attention among your target audience? Then we’re talking about a Grand Slam, right?
I’m thinking that maybe Rubel is a down and out Yankee fan, but he does hit on a good point in his metaphor.
Every now and again some journalist writes something that really just gets my dander up. Such is the case with an article written by Sean Carton at Publish.com, Beware the Fads of the Future. You want to know what he’s calling a fad? (His term is "future fad.") Blogs for one. Add to that video, podcasting, RSS and social networking software.
I admit I’m an adherent of Web 2.0 (I’m guessing he’s not), and each one of the "future fads" he mentions are components of this internet iteration. I want to give Sean the benefit of the doubt. After all, he’s been around the net a lot longer than me. Even though he’s considered a notable futurist where it comes to web trends, I just feel he’s speaking from an outside looking in perspective. Even "futurists" can be wrong. (BTW, I write about this with greater derision on my own site. I’m just trying to be nice here.)
The funniest thing about the article is that, just to the right of the headline, is a banner that says "What is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 isn’t about technology, it’s a call to action. Take a look at the Web’s most exciting new developments." Exciting new developments or "future fads." Publish.com, which is it? We know where Sean stands on the subject.
You gotta love it. Seth Godin and the smart crew he’s assembled have
torn a page directly out of Seth’s books to soft-launch his new online
company, Squidoo. No traditional PR, no advertising,
just viral blogging via his new e-book, Everyone Is An Expert [31-page PDF]. The e-book explains (sort of) what the service does. I was lucky enough to get a copy from his Editor-in-Chief Megan Casey, when she emailed it out last week.
In the e-book Seth talks about creating “meaning” out of the mess of information you get when you search for something on the Web. Squidoo is all about finding what you’re really looking for. Because an expert has compiled information for you in a way that makes sense and is immediately useful.
And who are these experts? Well, as the e-book explains, anybody can be an expert. Squidoo’s Web 2.0 platform enables anyone to create a “lens” – a special kind of Web page that points to links and information about your expertise. (A Squidoo lens page also enables you to make money.) But it’s not just links. That doesn’t describe it properly. It’s RSS feeds and other stuff…
that automatically update your lens page for you.
(And it’s Web 2.0… as I understand it, because Seth & co. are building it from other apps or services or databases already out there.)
Here’s the clearest explanation thus far, from the Squidoo blog, of how a lens works:
It’s a guide (like about.com) and a reference (like wikipedia.com).
It’s a place for personal expression (like typepad.com) and an open
platform for real people (like del.ico.us).
Tantalizingly, the e-book closes with a list of URLs that link to sample lenses. But they don’t go live until Oct. 18th!
Here are two of them:
Got a book inside of you? You don’t need to start from stratch to write it. The content may already be there on your blog. If it is, you might want to enter Lulu’s Blooker Prize 2006 contest.
Lulu provides print on demand publishing services and many bloggers have taken advantage of their service. BTW, they call blog books, "blooks." (These are not necessarily books about blogging, but books written from blog content.) Lulu offers its services free, making its money on each sale.
They offer prizes in three categories: Fiction, non-fiction, and comics. Prizes will be awarded April of next year.
Arieanna’s section on the latest bit from our survey—Qumana Blog — The use of RSS – Blog Survey Results—got me to thinking about my own adventures with RSS. Like most folks I started slowly. Though being an info junkie I jumped pretty fast into the double and triple digits. But, like Arieanna, my feed list didn’t really explode until I became a pro blogger. Hmm. And now that I am, I find that I’m so busy with other things, I barely read a quarter of my feed list. Many days I don’t even make it though my “Must read list”. So this begs the question, since we’re already info-overloaded, when is enough, enough?
A little while ago we launched a survey of Qumana users to better understand both how they are using Q, but also more about them and their blogging. Arieanna’s first post on the results of the survey is really good—Qumana Blog — Blogging Survey – On Bloggers. As I’ve let the data rattle around in my head I am struck by the feeling that these data show that blogging is really becoming more mainstream. Look at the charts. Lots of them are nice bell curves. Bell curves are “normal distributions”. Look at the chart at the right. Nice breakouts here. There is, of course, a skew towards experienced bloggers, but I think the roughly 50% of “new” bloggers (a year or less) is a great sign that more people are finding blogging and enjoying it.Not soon after I posted It’s the End of the Blogosphere As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), I read this article at Wired called Can Bloggers Strike it Rich?
Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, claims his writers make $200 – $3,000 each month. "Think a scuba diver or video-game player making $500 to $1,500 a month writing about scuba diving or video games."
Hmmm…maybe he should read Dr. Del’s article on video game networks.
In any case, read both sides of the story and make up your own mind.
Dr. Del Dhanoa posted an interesting article called The Implosion of the Blogosphere.
In it, he’s not predicting the end of blogging, or really even the blogosphere, but rather the way some bloggers make a living.
He uses the history of the video game networks, i.e., Gamespy, as a way of extrapolating what may happen to blogging networks such as WeblogsInc.com, Gawker Media and the like.
In short, he’s concerned that like video game networks, blogging
networks will accelerate the boom/bust cycle, paying bloggers more and
more money to jump ship, driving up ad rates, until the bottom drops
out. Basically, he’s warning against speculation.
It’s an interesting idea, and the article is well written. I’m currently reading "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister,"
which is told from the perspective of Cinderella’s sister, and takes
place during the tulip bust that destroyed many fortunes in Holland and
beyond. I think it’s safe to say that whatever the market is,
speculation is a risky business that ends in a zero sum game, or worse.
For me, personally, and for most of the business bloggers out there,
we’re blogging for our business, not for a network. Whether blogging
networks succeed or fail in the long run, the blogosphere and blogging
should continue as long as businesses are interested in connecting with
their prospects and clients.
Quick: if you’re part of a mailing list and there’s a splendid discussion, a really informative back and forth dialog that transpires, can you copy and paste both sides of the discussion on your weblog without requesting permission?
This very topic arose on the LinkedIn Bloggers mailing list — a list that has some minimal member requirements and closed list archive — and generated what I thought was a surprisingly wide range of answers.
I spent some time on list trying to clarify my own thoughts on this matter, detailing where I believe it’s acceptable to quote others without permission and when I believe it’s imperative that you seek and receive permission before quoting even a single sentence. I’d like to include my thoughts here on my weblog too, for more general reference purposes and to hopefully spawn some dialog on this topic too.
The discussion started out with the following question…
“I presume everyone agrees that you have a right to post a conversation to a blog entry [where you were one of the participants]. How do you handle the other person’s part of the conversation? Do you ask permission? Do you attribute? Do you notify them?”
Here’s my response…
I’ve been trying to figure out all the mysterious jargon of the blogosphere, and one that’s got me stumped is blogroll. Dave, what’s a blogroll?
I’m with you, it’s amazing how many different bits of jargon have now invaded the world of the Web with the increased popularity of weblogs. Fortunately, blogrolls are pretty easily defined:
A blogroll is a list of other weblogs that a given blogger either subscribes to or recommends.
Pop over to my colleague Debbie Weil’s terrific Blogwrite for CEOs, for example, and down the right column Debbie has a list of “CEO Blogs”, her first blogroll, and then below it (and below her advert) is “Corporate Blogs”, a second blogroll. Then there’s “Other Blog Resources” and “Other Smart Blogs”, for a total of four blogrolls on the same Weblog.
Other bloggers approach blogrolls differently. Pop over to Paul Chaney’s Radiant Marketing Group site and you’ll find his blogroll is called “Recommended Sites”, and it’s, again, on the far right side of the page. Halley Suitt’s Halley’s Comment weblog has two blogrolls, this time on the left side, called “New Blogs” and “Blogs”. VC and blogger Brad Feld’s Feld Thoughts has “Blogs I Read” on the lower left of the page.
There are some tools that are popular for managing blogrolls, notably Blogrolling, but many weblog authors just manage their own as a simple list of hypertext references.
When asked why have a blogroll, most bloggers I know, whether business bloggers or casual, hobbyist bloggers, answer that…
After all the discussion about the lawsuit and legal liability that bloggers apparently have with the comments on weblogs (see my earlier piece on Blogger sued for comments on his weblog), I’ve decided to add a small disclaimer to this blog to help protect myself in case anything untoward might occur in the future.  Should you add one on your site? Maybe, maybe not.
To get the full scoop, and to help write a disclaimer that will actually protect me against potential lawsuits, I’ve asked attorney Daniel Perry to help with this particular entry. My prose is in black, Daniel’s is presented in blue.
Here’s my first stab at a disclaimer:
Daniel responds: First, a disclaimer: there is no such thing as a perfect blog comment disclaimer. Each blog may require its own individualized disclaimer. Moreover, a comment disclaimer should be a living part of your blog which might change as we learn how these disclaimers are treated by courts.Â
Fortunately, there is a wide body of caselaw and law review articles concerning website disclaimers. It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel. Caution is appropriate when applying those case precedents, however. Blogging is…
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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
