BusinessWeek reports on anonymous blogging gone bad in a recent article Busting a Rogue Blogger.

Yes, there’s controversy in the sexy world of patent litigation, as Troll Tracker–formerly anonymous, now outed as Rick Frenkel–a blogger who writes on patent trolling, was outed as a Cisco employee. Why is this relevant? Because Frenkel was blogging about the very issues that Cisco was in court over.

Apparently Cisco didn’t know that they employed the Troll Tracker, but Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler cited the blog as an “independent source of information” while lobbying for changes in patent laws that would be beneficial to Cisco.

Death threats, bounties on the Troll Tracker’s identity, and litigation followed.

Cisco has since established some blogging policies, but they probably won’t help them in court. Even if these policies had been in place before Frankel started blogging anonymously, they probably wouldn’t save them from litigation.

Perhaps it’s time to start to develop your own business blogging policies for employees? What policies do you currently have in place?

When talking to people about the benefits of business blogs I often mention “establishing your credibility.” This goes hand-in-hand with “getting killer PR.”

Let’s face it, journalists are having to do more with less, so they’re more and more likely to turn to Google and other search engines to track down “experts” in a given field.

As you continue to build your blog over time, creating great content in a specific niche, Google’s more likely to return your blog as a result when a journalist starts researching a column or article. I’ve never hired a PR firm, and I work out of the top right corner of the US us locals call “Maine”, but I’ve gotten quotes in Inc., BusinessWeek Small Biz, and other periodicals and the local evening news because of our Web marketing blog.

In the Independent Street blog over at WSJ.com, Kelly Spors writes on How to Get Killer PR and gives five important tips. Just add “Write a Business Blog” as number six and you’re well on your way.

As a certified Business Blog Consultant–I’m still awaiting the paperwork, but I’ve been assured it’s on it’s way–I work with a number of businesses on their blog and other Web marketing strategies. Being a blog consultant is tricky; much of our work is up front.

We often design a blog, set it up on either WordPress or TypePad, strategize with the client, identify influential bloggers in their industries, and show them how to work the software.

Often, that’s where our work ends. Some of our clients blog regularly and see the expected, positive results and return on their investment. Others, unfortunately, put up one or two posts and begin the shame spiral of neglect.

Although I’ll sometimes nag a client who’s blog is whithering on the vine, there’s not much I can do–short of ghost blogging–to get their blog back in shape.

Which is why I wrote Jumpstart Your Blog: A Business Blogging Workout Regimen. The article reviews some blogging basics along with the amount of time new bloggers should spent on each activity.

I’m not sure if this is a salvo against abandoned blogs, a wake-up call to companies that have neglected their blog, or a reality check to people who are thinking about a blog but don’t realize the time and passion that needs to be committed to a successful business blog…I guess I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

If you do have a new or lapsed blog, perhaps all you need is a workout strategy. What do you do when it’s been a while since your last blog post?

There are two groups of people who apparently make hay during  a recession: journalists and Web marketers.

I’m not sure if this recession is different than previous ones, or if I’m just more aware this time around, but it seems to me that every business magazine and marketer is talking up the recession.

Business magazines run cover stories like “You Can Beat the Bad Economy.” (BusinessWeek Small Biz). Marketers talk about how to sell, market or profit from a recession in ezines, blogs, teleclasses and seminars. (I should know, I’m talking to a fellow marketer about doing a teleseminar on this very subject.)

There is one truism to a recession: market more. Yes, while everyone runs for cover, this is the time for you to ramp up your sales and marketing efforts.  One of the most cost-effective ways businesses can do this is through a blog. And, as every one else scales back on marketing, it makes your life so much easier.

Even with falling advertising costs, your blog still costs less; basically a few dollars a month in hosting fees. And, with a falling economy, there’s plenty of topics to discuss. A quick search of Technorati includes such posts as:

• My Survival Story: 20 Recession-Proof Ideas
• Dollar Weakens, But Some Investors Are Betting on a Comeback
• GOOG Stock Tanks on comSCORE Reports of Paid Search Clicks

Hmm…maybe that last one hints that even bloggers aren’t immune to the recession…especially those who are reliant on Google Adsense to make a profit.

One thing which has been alluded to briefly here on BusinessBlogConsulting.com in a couple previous posts is blog carnivals — a relatively untapped opportunity for blog marketing and link building.

It was fellow Business Blog Consulting contributor Toby Bloomberg who first turned me on to blog carnivals. For those who aren’t aware of what a blog carnival is, it is a traveling column on a particular subject matter that is passed on from blog to blog, each blogger selecting a topic in that subject matter and including relevant resources accompanied by their own commentary about those resources. For example, there might be a blog carnival on nonprofit marketing and indeed there is. The members of the blog carnival rotate in and out, kind of like a column rotates. Here is an example post from a nonprofit marketing blog carnival.

Why should you care about blog carnivals? In short, because it’s a great way to grow your link popularity and thus your search rankings, and because it’ll also gain you visibility in the blogosphere amongst bloggers. This can be accomplished in two ways:

1. First, by hosting a blog carnival, you garner links you wouldn’t otherwise have garnered from the other blog carnival hosts as well as other bloggers who follow that blog carnival (assuming of course your posts are of some value!).
2. Second, even if you don’t join a blog carnival, you can submit your own posts to the current host for consideration in the next carnival post. For instance, in the example carnival post above on nonprofit marketing (which focused on “Creating and developing online communities through Web 2.0”), imagine if you had written a post on “How Nonprofits Can Use MySpace” and then gotten that post included in that week’s edition of the carnival — and all it would have taken is reaching out to the host via email to get on their radar.

Check out BlogCarnival.com, a directory of blog carnivals, to see if a blog carnival already exists for your industry or topic of interest.

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.

Do you really need a process for starting a blog? Well, not if you’re a small, one-person business and you’re the only person to answer to. However, if yours is a multi-million (or billion) dollar enterprise that needs multiple layers of approval, then the following first in a three-part series on the process of setting up a corporate blog will benefit you.

This comes from a post at MarketingProfs, so here are the highlights. For the full post and original material, read on over here.

There are three phases to the corporate blog process. 1) Investigate, 2) Create, 3) Activate. This post deals only with the investgate phase, which follows these steps:
1. Determine Goals for Your Corporate Blog
You need to to determine why you’re doing this, get baseline measurements in place and create a vision for success. See the mindmap below for more detail.

2. Assess Your Market for Blog Viability
Not every company should blog. You need to understand what kind of conversation is taking place in your market and if you can easily enter the conversation with your blog strategy. You also need to look internally to make sure that this fits with your corporate culture.

3. Map to Overall Marketing/Communications Strategy
This is critical. The blog should not be an appendage or bolt-on to your marketing. If you’re going to do it right, it needs to be integrated into the rest of your messaging and conversation.

4. Risk Profile Assessment
Ask yourself a few questions to determine how ready you are to engage in the market conversation. You’ll have sooner or later, but here are a few things to look out for before you leap.
– Have you ever personally used social media and what’s your comfort level?
– What is your company’s tolerance for risk (e.g., initiating new or untested marketing tactics, launching bold corporate initiatives, etc.)?
– How does your company normally react to negative commentary from the media?

For more, read the MarketingProfs post: What’s the Process for Starting a Corporate Blog? How Long Does It Take? [Part 1 of 3].

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.

Okay, so technically, this isn’t a blogging related article, but since I received the original press release because I’m a blogger, I’ll stretch a point and hope that Rick won’t get too upset with me for posting it here on BBC. 🙂

One of the great challenges I see that bloggers face, particularly business bloggers, is how to respond to negative feedback. Whether it’s private email, a comment left on your blog, or even another blogger publishing a criticism of your posting on their own blog, if you’re going to blog, you need to have a relatively thick skin. More than that, though, you also need to learn how to make the proverbial lemonade out of lemons, how to turn negative feedback into something positive.

A recent example of how to do this showed up in my mailbox when I, along with many other bloggers, received a press release from BlinnPR, agency of record for KeepYouSafe.com, with the ghoulish title

The subtitle explains it a bit better: “Online Safe Deposit Boxes Help Families Avoid Ugly Legal Hassles”. Nonetheless, the entire Anna Nicole Smith story is a sad and depressing tale of greed, the perils of media, and lost souls, certainly not one upon which to hang a PR campaign in my opinion.

Bloggers generally reacted with strongly negative feedback (see Gizmodo, Paul McNamara at NetworkWorld and Ryan Block, for example), but rather than blog about it, I just sent a quick note to Steve Blinn, principal at BlinnPR:

Oh ugh. What a terrible headline and tie-in concept. Sorry, Steven, but this is not good PR in my book.

His response is a superb example of the very best of PR writing, and demonstrates exactly how you can take a negative — a thought leader in your market sending you a blunt criticism — and turn it into an apology and explanation of the benefits of the product and why it’s not as bad as it seems:

Dave,

Perhaps I did go a bit far in our “Anna Nicole” press release. It was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek and intended to be a take-off on all the tabloid coverage this story has (and continues) to receive.

In many ways, the disarray of Smith and Brown’s estates is indicative of an American culture that avoids contemplating death and its impact on family and friends.

Sadly, many of your readers (even though they’re not celebrities) are similar to Smith and Brown – they haven’t updated their will and they haven’t prepared a burial or interment plan. And, more importantly, whatever documents they do have are not readily accessible upon their death.

Given that issue, the service that KeepYouSafe.com offers, a safe and secure Online Safe Deposit Box, is a possible solution to this issue.

If I erred by writing a provocative headline and lead, I’m guilty as charged. But, the fact remains, many of your readers, just as Brown and Smith, have not updated their wills, have not written down their precise burial and interment wishes, and don’t have those document readily available to their heirs or executors.

Steven

My question to you, BBC reader, is how well do you respond effectively, thoughtfully and professionally to criticism when you find it online in any form? I think that Steven’s response is a fine model of the best approach possible and while I still don’t like the headline, he has written a sufficiently smart response that I’m willing to reconsider the possible value of KeepYouSafe.com, to give ’em a second chance as it were.

I stumbled upon this post about 5 Steps to Jumpstart Your Website [or blog] over at College Startup.

It leans heavily on Web 2.0 sites like Reddit and Digg and some upstart called Netscape. However, if you’re looking to reach a new audience this post has the links you’ll need to try out.

I took the author’s advice and posted Top-Level Domain Survey (or what to do when your .com is taken) to his number one recommendation and got about 30 hits in 30 minutes from the source. Not bad for 2 minutes of work. (Not including the hour or so I put into creating the survey and blogging about it.)

YMMV depending on your audience, post and title.

Blidget is a new tool/service/offering from Widgetbox that allows you to create a widget out of your blog. (What is it about Web 2.0 that requires every new tool to have a celebrity couple name?)

By turning your blog into a widget you can make it easier for people to syndicate your content while still maintaining some of your branding. Creating a Blidget only takes a few minutes, and depending on your blog software, installing it may be a one-click affair.

If you’d like to add BBC’s widget to your own blog, click below:

In case we don’t have enough to worry about as bloggers, it appears that the European Union is passing a new directive that makes it illegal for businesses to falsely masquerade as a consumer. Not just with fake blogs (also known as “sock puppet blogs”) but with comments on blogs too, reviews on Amazon.com and other review sites, and more.

It all sounds good in theory, but in reality I fear that this will prove to be a nightmare for bloggers if we are going to be held liable for verifying the identity of everyone who adds comments to our weblogs. I mean, let’s be straight here: identity is impossible to verify anyway, and even if you could, the nuances of identity are such that the system is trivially defeated anyway. For example, if my sister works at a company and I write a blog comment on someone else’s weblog that defends her firm, do I need to disclose that relationship?

It’s a curious law and I surmise that the EU won’t be able to enforce this new directive. But that’s just me. What’s your opinion of the new law that’s just starting to surface in the online world?

Tip: More details on this article can be found on my own blog, in a considerably longer article entitled: EU makes fake blogs and comments illegal: are all bloggers liable?

Daniel over at Daily Blog Tips–a blog that focuses on providing daily tips to bloggers to keep those creative juices flowing–has listed 30 results from his reader survey on tips to increase traffic to one’s blog.

They vary from the obvious–create valuable content and comment on related blogs–to ideas on social networking and building community on sites like del.icio.us, Digg and Squidoo.

Chances are you’ll find at least one gem in this list of proven traffic-building techniques.

I almost have to wonder if the National Pork Board is practicing brilliant, subversive marketing.

If you haven’t heard, the NPB is suing a blogger. (Seems like the best stories always start out that way.) Jennifer Laycock, the blogger behind The Lactivist Breastfeeding Blog, has been threatened with a lawsuit for her t-shirt promoting breastfeeding that reads “The Other White Milk.”

The t-shirt was one of many available at her lactating store at CaféPress including others that read:

• nip/suck
• milk jugs, and my personal favorite,
• that’s my baby’s lunch you’re staring at.

[Snicker.]

I mean, when you go after a blogger, you’re begging for attention. According to her blog, Laycock has only made $8 off the shirt. I can’t imagine that this is a thread to the NPB or their tired advertising campaign.

If there are any global conglomerates out there looking for a little publicity in-and-out of the blogosphere please contact me. I’d be happy to riff on your advertising for a little mutual profiteering.

Sean Kelly, who writes the Franchise Pick blog for b5media (where I am also and author and channel editor), has a pretty disturbing, if true, post about the coffee franchise Cuppy’s (formerly Java Jo’z).

The gist is that few months ago Scoble wrote about his brother Ben’s problems with the franchise.  A tempest ensued over allegations of bad business practices from Cuppy’s.  Fair enough, standard fare for the Blogosphere.  The odd thing is that suddenly Scoble’s post disappeared.  So did posts on both of his brothers’ blogs.  Then other negative posts started disappearing and blogs critical to Cuppy’s started to have problems.  To make it more interesting, comments on the LJ and Xanaga sites for Cuppy’s turned effusively glowing.  There are now questions regarding the company threatening or even (maybe) bribing bloggers to delete posts or change their tune.

Sean has heard from Ben Scoble and he can’t talk about the issue, which means that some legal maneuvering has been taking place.  So the question remains, what’s going on here?  Is a company trying to silence critics?  While there might not be any thing wrong going on here, it certainly doesn’t look good.

Tags: Cuppy’s, Java Jo’z, franchises

One of the big questions us business blogging consultants have to answer is “So, what’s the ROI here?”.  Sure, we all have good answers.  As a group we’ve all bantered this around, especially when we get together and we’re bantering over a round … of drinks, and we’re pretty much all on the same page here.  One thing that has been lacking is that all-important uber-consultant seal of approval.  I know it’s silly, but hey it’s the truth.  Big companies like to see Gartner or Forrester reports that back what you’re saying.

Today Forrester released their blogging ROI whitepaper and real-world application of the model to GM  (hat tips to Steve and Charlene).  Finally!  Now if I could just get my hands on a copy of that report …

If you’d like to read a little more in-depth analysis of the report, check out my post on the OBO blog.

Tags: Forrester, blog ROI, Charlene Li

Just wanted to point your attention to another in a great series of posts from Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

This one’s called Permission Marketing 2.0, a riff on Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing and the fact that anything being revisited today needs to have a 2.0 on it to be taken seriously. Kind of like dot com in the late nineties.

One of my favorite lines…

Somewhere along the way, people became overly obsessed with search and forgot everything else. Many businesses today would disappear if their rankings tanked. And that’s no way to run a business.

Too true.

So what is PM2.0? It’s all about RSS my friends. Read on….

ABC/Disney is on the warpath against Spocko, a media critic who took umbrage to some of the content aired on KSFO-AM.According to Media Post the conflict stems from Spocko’s criticism of a right-wing talk show that had some comments that were particularly venomous.

Disney has spooked Spocko’s Internet service provider into taking down the blog–but Spocko isn’t giving up the fight just yet. He’s contacted the Electronic Friont Foundation and intends to continue the fight – legally if necessary.  And what might have been a storm in a teacup has become a very public fight – and we’re all blogging about it.

A good lesson in how not to deal with negative comments online.

 

The Daily ‘Dog, the daily newsletter from Bulldog Reporter that goes to over 40 000 PR professionals in the US has a Pulse of PR survey on the site right now that shows more than half of the respondents regard blogs and new media as the trend that will most impact PR in 2007.

Yes, it’s an informal survey, and we don’t know how many people have responded so far.  But it is an indicator.  The  number two item is ‘online media will continue to splinter into micro-granular niche outlets’.  So I htink it’s safe to say PR has got the heads up.  Online PR, new media, blogs and RSS feeds will be on their radar in the coming year.

About time, too. Marketers have seen the light – and it is a train coming the other way – the Cluetrain. Search results are affecting brand perception and conversations are in full cry online. Corporate communicators need to learn how to join the online conversation.

 

During the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago recently, the managing editor of WebProNews Mike McDonald did a video interview with BBC bloggers Stephan Spencer and myself about the “participatory web”.

Public relations agencies are scrambling and sometimes floundering at their efforts to use social media to further client branding and marketing goals. Mike asks some great questions ranging from “how do you make money with the participatory web?”, “What things should you do and what do you need to watch out for?” and thoughts on things like pay per post.

Stephan does a much better job at pronouncing “participatory” than I do, 🙂 He also provides some great examples on how to be transparent as well as the consequences for not doing so.

Being good BBC bloggers, both Stephan and I mention Business Blog Consulting, in unison no less! Be sure to give it a view.