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…
Are you curious about RSS industry benchmark metrics and RSS marketing best practices? Would you like to compare your RSS marketing results with those of your peers? Then you will be interested in the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey being conducted by MarketingStudies.net.
From the survey sponsor:
“Participate in the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey, conducted by MarketingStudies.net and aiming to research the RSS marketing landscape, to receive a free copy of the full 2006 RSS Marketing Survey Report, bringing you top RSS marketing best practices and metrics to compare your RSS marketing practices with those of your peers, to improve your RSS marketing results.”
Respondents will get a copy of the overview report including metrics and best practices.
MarketingStudies.net is run by RSS Marketing guru, Rok Hrastnik, who is the author of “Unleashing the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS“. He also publishes a free report, “The Business Case for RSS“.
Rok and I did an interview in March 2005 on using integrated online PR, blogs and RSS for improved results in search engines. After re-listening to that interview, it’s amazing how much can change in a year. At the time, using Technorati tags and social bookmarks was pretty new. Now they are pretty standard fare from the smorgasboard of tactics for blog link building.
If you’re attending the ACCM conference next week in Chicago, you can see Rok Hrastnik in action duing a a session called, “RSS What marketers need to know“. At the same conference, I’ll be speaking on the “15 Sizzling Hot Search Ideas for Merchants” session.
For anyone involved with using RSS for marketing, then be sure to take the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey. There’s an opportunity to share your case study which may be included in Rok’s next book and your experience with RSS may help further this channel for marketing and communication.
The article Defending yourself against the blogs from Multichannel Merchant (May issue) offers some good advice to merchants on how to more effectively manage their brand in the blogosphere.
The article opens with a story of how Greenpeace successfully pressured Gorton’s parent company Nissui to pull out of the whaling business by inciting a blogstorm against Gorton’s. I feel so ‘out of it’ — reading the article was the first I’d heard of this and Gorton’s, & Gorton’s Fresh Seafood are clients of mine! (well, not mine personally, but of my web dev / SEO agency Netconcepts)
Also included in the article are some comments (from yours truly!) on how to enter the blogosphere effectively:
You may also want to check out on my own blog the unabridged version of my ecommerce blog tips that I had sent to the Multichannel Merchant journalist. It further expounds on the five tips.
After two weeks soaking up the Hawaiian sun on holiday (and yes, it was delightful), it was hard for me to remember the Internet, let alone worry about blogging, but once you start focusing on business communications, it’s impossible to completely let go.
As a result, when we started hearing so much about the international Merrie Monarch hula festival taking place on the Big Island while we were there, I started to learn quite a bit about hula, not as dance, but as a communications channel, as a method by which the Hawaiians transmit their own oral history and culture, as a way of telling stories.
Hmm… blogging’s all about inventing and creating communications channels too, isn’t it, and the best bloggers are storytellers who are focused on the culture of technology, business and society just as much as on the specifics of their story.
And so…
The Surprising Similarities Between Blogging and Hula Dancing
I hope you enjoy it!
Here’s a truism about corporate blogging: generally, nobody cares about your widgets. What people do care about is stuff related to your widgets – cool things you can do with them, related lifestyles, corresponding industry issues, etc. This is where it gets a bit trickier. Should you be deadly serious? Can you have a bit of fun??
The cleverest tack I’ve seen lately is one taken by the Ethics Crisis blog. It’s the marketing companion to a business called SRF Global Translations. (The blog appears to be the company’s Web site, as well.)
SRF is a family-run business established in 1976 that provides “mindful, nuanced, professional multilanguage translations” of unglamorous materials like corporate codes of ethics and compliance documents.
Not the kind of widgets that make you say “cool” but certainly a very useful service.
So what’s the blog about? Well, there are sections for serious discussions of global ethics. But the fun part is an Ethics Confession page where you can type in — anonymously — the most unethical thing you’ve ever done at work (“we’re not talking about taking home the office pencils,” the blog advises).
After you’ve submitted your 250-word anecdote, readers vote on how egregious your actions were… More
There’s a new kid on the block for searching blogs by the name of Sphere.
It sports a clean and simple interface, and from my brief experience, is lightening fast. (Yes, I said it: a fast blog search.)
The default results appear to be relevancy (as opposed to recency) but that can be quickly changed. All search results pages offer an RSS button to subscribe. As a nice feature, when you click on it you have the option of seven different chicklets, including Yahoo and Bloglines among others.
On the search results page you also choose from “Featured Blogs (beta)” or “Related Media.” The featured blogs link takes you to a page of related, featured blogs along with the option of suggesting a resource.
Related media takes you to a page with books, news, photos and podcasts related to your search.
Sphere also offers a few additional tools from their Tools page including a search widget for TypePad.
As blogs continue to mature as marketing tools, there are an increasing number of “blog optimization” articles and posts appearing. Stephan has written some excellent posts here at BBC on optimizing blogs that have made a world of difference for this blog. It is however, surprising how many of the other blog marketing and optimization resources neglect the importance of inbound links.
To think that researching and placing keywords in the “right places” alone with improve a blog’s traffic is only part of the story. Blogs are simply web sites with special features. Getting web sites to rank well and to engage more traffic involves a large number of variables. The same rules apply to blogs. The difference is that there are unique linking opportunities with blogs that are not common with web sites. These include:
There are also methods to gain links with blogs just as you would a web site:
Not all of these are applicable to blogs, job listings for example, but many are.
As an example, check out the #1 rankings on Google and Yahoo for Online Marketing Blog on the phrase, “marketing blog”.
Another example is Business Blog Consulting with a #1 position on Google and #4 on Yahoo for “business blogging”.
These rankings involve more than just good on-page optimization – they include attention to inbound links. So as you work on getting all of your keyword phrases in all the right places of your blog, understand that on-page optimization is only part of the job. Links can make a night and day difference for your search engine positioning as well as traffic.
For several useful blog marketing tools check out: RSS Buttons, Social Bookmark Tool, Blog Directory List, Article on Blog Optimization.
Over at ClickZ Kate Kaye presents the findings of a recent survey conducted by the Blogads Network that distinguishes blog audiences into four categories: political, gossip, mom and music.
CEO Henry Copeland points out that some political and entertainment advertisers grasp the idea of targeting specific types of blogs based on the unique audiences they reach, many advertisers “don’t get the degree to which these are self-contained universes…This is not a basket of eyeballs; these are very interwoven communities.”
The study also showed that hardly anyone from the four groups listens to podcasts:
“62 percent of music blog readers, 75 percent of political blog readers, 77 percent of mom blog readers and 80 percent of gossip blog readers said they never listen to podcasts.”
Along the lines of advertising, eMarketer reports a study by PQ Media that Blog, Podcast and RSS advertising rose by nearly 200% in 2005 and is expected to grow another 145% in 2006 to reach nearly $50 million.
“Blog, podcast and RSS advertising are being driven by some of the same factors boosting the growth of the overall alternative media sector: continued audience fragmentation, the perceived ineffectiveness of traditional advertising, and the elusive but coveted 18-to-34-year-old demographic,” said Patrick Quinn, president of PQ Media. “[They] have demonstrated an ability to reach younger demographics as well as influentials.”
And then there was this interesting quote about podcasting:
Looking ahead, PQ Media estimates that podcast advertising will be a larger market than blog advertising by 2010, when the blog segment will comprise only 39.7%, or $300.4 million, of overall expenditures. Podcasting, projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 154.4%, is predicted to reach a total of $327.0 million in 2010. These numbers are closely in line with eMarketer’s own projections, which recently put total spending on podcast advertising at a total of $300 million by 2010.
Perhaps Blogads CEO Henry Copeland and PQ Media President Patrick Quinn should get together and compare notes?
A couple days back I posted “Net Neutrality and Small Business on the Web” at flyte’s blog, alerting small business owners and entrepreneurs about some legislation that might affect their online business.
I stood up for net neutrality, the idea that all information should be treated equally on the net, and that ISP’s like Verizon and AT&T shouldn’t be able to give preferential treatment to their partners and other large corporations willing to pay a premium for such a benefit. In my mind, changing the current method (which Verizon and AT&T are lobbying hard for) hurts small business.
Within hours there were five comments at my blog (which is a lot for me): four against and one for. (And I wrote that one!)
Commentors questioned why the government should be interfering with yet another aspect of our lives (point well taken) and felt the market should sort it out. Some felt we should leave well enough alone. However, it seems to me that big ISP’s are lobbying for a change to the current system.
Just a few moments ago I got an email from Andy Wibbels — a smart guy if ever there was one — asking for support of net neutrality. Andy asks us to “imagine if the eletric company made your refrigerator run slower if it wasn’t a Whirlpool brand.”
Alternatively, imagine if the passing lane on a highway could only be used by giant corporation’s trucks, and all other traffic needed to take side streets.
What if your competition was a Verizon partner and their blog came up faster in a browser at the expense of your own? GM’s FastLane Blog might benefit from this change, but probably not your blog.
Well, now you’ve heard those in favor of net neutrality. What do the rest of you think?
UPDATE: The answer appears to be yes! Several hours after I wrote the entry below, Jonathan posted When I First Met Scott… A nice story about meeting retiring CEO Scott McNealy for the first time in 1992 or ’93. Followed by a riff on Sun’s mantra, “The network is the computer.” Go Jonathan! Hope you can keep it up.
…
Darn, it doesn’t look like it so far. Following yesterday’s news that Sun’s founding CEO, Scott McNealy, is stepping down – to be replaced by COO Jonathan Schwartz – I skipped over to Jonathan’s blog at blogs.sun.com/jonathan.
As of this morning, the latest entry is a week old, dated April 18, 2006, and talks about meeting Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva – and how cool that is.
I fact, Jonathan links back to a blog post he made on June 16, 2005 where he notes that “it’s cool to sit with a head of state, or a head of a corporation, or a CIO with an IT department bigger than Sun’s entire employee base.”
I quote that entry in The Corporate Blogging Book. It struck me as guilelessly transparent and a reason we love to read senior exec blogs – to find out what they’re really thinking.
So Jonathan… are you going to give up blogging? Do tell!
UPDATE: I emailed Noel Hartzell, Jonathan’s chief communications guy, to ask what was up with Jonathan’s blog. He just emailed back, writing:
stay tuned… 😉
So maybe Jonathan’s will be the first blog by a Fortune 500 CEO?
This is the first I have ever heard of a blog being suspended. Last week, the editors at the L.A. Times suspended Michael Hiltzik’s Golden State Blog for essentially putting comments on his on blog under a false name, in this instance "Mikekoshi". Hiltzik was in essence adding to the blog conversations under a different identity seemingly backing up Hiltzik’s opinions and mocking other commenters. The story was broken by a blogger at Patterico’s Pontifications.
This does not surprise me in the least that someone would comment under a pseudonym, in fact, my own personal blog identity is named "Genuine", and I frequently comment on personal blogs with that name. In all my other blogs, I use my full name as I do here.Â
How does this practice effect blogging and business? Many of the corporate blogs we talk about here are written by CEO’s, company employees and C level officers within each of the companies. What would happen if these bloggers also added to the comment sections of their blogs, bolstering their own opinions and seemingly inflating the traffic and comments on their sites, or berating other commenters to their own benefit? I for one would think that if it was uncovered that a CEO entertained this practice that person would be tarred and feathered and would lose any credibility the blog might be producing. The conversations produced by blogs must remain an open forum, and they must have credibility in order to withstand the onslaught of criticism a company might endure. This practice could make it very difficult for a PR person to repair something that has been done behind closed doors in the company.
The L.A. Times in the case of Mr. Hiltzik must have thought the same. They have not reinstated his Golden State Blog, yet he has not been suspended himself.  The outcome of this case will help guide our future commenting practices in business blogs . Is this going on in today’s business blogging? I for one certainly hope not, but it could be argued that comments on business blogs that cheer on the company or back up its product or message could be just someone within the company. Good PR for the company right up and until it is uncovered. Then suddenly you have a PR nightmare.
Tags: L.A. Times, Golden State Blog, Michael Hiltzik, Patterico’s Pontifications
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At the University of Delaware, Alex Brown is challenging the next generation of business leaders to think new world/web 2.0 marketing. Prof Brown is teaching a class called Infotech Applications in Marketing. Not only does a blog support the course but students are expected to blog and comment.
Do the kids get it? I’ll say they do. Here’s a snip from a post by Mark Muller – Have We Wasted 4 Years Here?
The problem i have with this is not that fact that Mr. Cherkoff said it, it is the fact that i realized today that i have been learning “old” marketing techniques at this “old” school. The University obviously needs to do something about its curriculum and innovate.
[Note: James Cherkoff was a guest speaker.]
Business is changing. Maketing is changing. Hope there are a few college deans who are listening in and taking Mark’s advice to heart to innovate their curriculum.
How will marketing studies be structured in the future? Will there be classes on buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, blogging, building communities? Will blogs projects be on a class blog or wiki? Will Marketing 101 include how to integrate podcasts, vlogs and “clouds” into campaigns?
And .. true to the blogosphere, you never know who might be listening in. Gary Spangler, global ebusiness manager for DuPoint, commented on Mark’s post about blog ethics. Perhaps Mark can include it in his CV when he applies for a job. CMP Media, The Thompson Corporation and Mansueto Ventures (Fast Company) all have positions that require blogging experience.
It is easier to build a relationship with your reader and engage with them if your blog is sticky. A sticky web site compels visitors to come back again and again, and to stay longer too. My blog is reasonably sticky because the author is so good and has such insightful things to say. 😉
But in all seriousness though, there are things you can do to engage your readers more effectively. For instance, you can form a community where they all talk to each other. Most blogs, unfortunately, are abysmal at that. Even my blog really doesn’t do a very good job of bringing readers together and involving them in a group discussion. It’s entirely too easy to be up on one’s soapbox, to start a conversation and also finish it.
Here are some practical suggestions for making your blog sticky, courtesy of Performancing:
The first mistake I mention in “The 11 Biggest Mistakes Small Business Bloggers Make” is not getting your own domain name for your blog, and using something.typepad.com or something similar.
However, you need to be careful if you use the registrars to research a blog domain name. (Or any domain name, for that matter.) Wired’s Monkey Bites blog reports here and here on a situation where someone put a desired domain name into a shopping cart at GoDaddy but didn’t check out right then. (Happens all the time.)
When they returned the next day to purchase the domain name it was gone, purchased by someone else and for sale for an inflated price.
The same thing happened to someone I know when she put her titular domain name in a shopping cart at GoDaddy but didn’t check out. The next day — poof! — it was gone.
Slimy? Yes. Illegal? Probably not.
In short: if you researching a domain name at the registrars, be ready to buy it right then!
This week in Boston the Pubcon conference kicked off with the Boston Marathon and a keynote from Malcolm Gladwell. The conference covered a lot of ground including a session on blogs, podcasting and RSS.
On Tuesday, the “Blogging, Pod Casting and RSS Feeds” session included Dr. Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit, Daron Babin of New Gen Media, Brian Prince of BOTW as well as Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo and Matt Cutts of Google for the Q and A.
The mechanics of blogging and marketing blogs included alternative uses for RSS, blog and feed optimization, plugins, promotion and blog metrics. Babin discussed the pros and cons of podcasting with practical insight based his experience with the explosive growth of WebmasterRadio.FM.
The Q and A brought up the blurring line between what is a blog and what is a web site with the search engine reps defending their performance at indexing blogs. There was also a good question about whether to convert a whole site to a blog platform or to just add a blog to the existing site. Jeremey Zawodny’s response was to pick the right tool for the job based on your needs whether it’s forum software or blog or a content management system.
Here’s more detailed coverage of the Blogs, RSS and Podcasts session.
The “hot news” on the Blogosphere this morning is the interview between Alan Meckler and Jason Calacanis in the Wall Street Journal. The discussion is geared more towards the individual blogger with the experience Jason has as the CEO of a major blog network.
The discussion (according to tech.memeorandum) is pretty diverse. A lot of people are focusing in on the “if you hit this traffic level you make good money …” aspect of the article, however I think this is only part of the story. Jason touches on it with this short comment:
The fact is that the “long tail” of sites is largely unmonetized. Over the next five to 10 years, Google AdSense, Weblogs Inc., Yahoo Publisher Network, AOL’s white-labeled version of AdSense, and Microsoft’s “AdSense killer” will enable the monetization of a lot of those smaller sites.
For businesses blogging, there might not be much, if any, interest in putting ads on their blogs. However, if you are a small business or a solo pro … earning a little extra cash is a nice bonus.
Looking at the larger picture, though, most of the major ad networks recognize that there are a lot of untapped (un-added?) blogs out there. Leveraging that potential real estate is going to be the challenge of 2006.
Tags: blog advertising, long tail
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Preparing a workshop on blogging for people in the meetings and events industry, I went googling for hotel blogs. I found plenty of blog posts about hotel experiences, but not hotel corporate blogs, with one exception, the new blog launched by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, TheLobby.com, which is claimed to be the first blog launched by a major hotel company.
Graphically attractive in a fairly understated way, the blog is apparently aimed at ‘Starwood Preferred Guests’ (SPGs), although there is no sign of any section reserved exclusively for that group (not that that would need to be evident to a casual visitor).
Several posts are not much more than chatty plugs for one or other hotel in the Starwood group, which I’m sure could be helpful if, for instance, you were planning a trip to Tirana, the capital of Albania and needed to know which of the two international hotels to stay at if you want wireless internet (it’s the Sheraton) – see post of April 18, and see below why this is not hyperlinked.
The blog is evidently written by a group of travel writers – Marc S., Mark (Editor), Thomas C., Nick L. and Philip S. It seems odd, and frankly I found it irritating, that we are provided with no more identification than first names and some last name initials, especially the lastname initial bit – is there a ‘guess the travel writer’ test here for the designated SPG readership?
Although the April 13 item from which I picked up this story in iMedia Connection (acknowledging the Wall Street Journal) says there is no provision for commenting, there is in fact a comments function and some posts already have comments. A scan of the disclaimer/warning that sits above the commenting screen suggests that the lawyers have been busy. It’s the most daunting piece of work I’ve seen on a blog comments page to date.
I could not find a permalink function. In what presents as a more traditional website fashion, you can search for archived posts on categories of brand, category (type of hotel), city, or country.
There is a pretty unobtrusive feedback link in the dark gray background area on the right side of the screen. When clicked, this produces a pop-up with a detailed questionnaire that I suspect only dedicated survey-takers will want to stay and complete.
From where I’m viewing it, TheLobby.com is basically a pr blog or even an adverblog, designed to cater to the already converted guests of this group of hotels – and it’s not suggested the publishers are offering anything else, although if the writers were given some more latitude it could no doubt turn into a travel blog with a potentially wider appeal. Calling it a ‘corporate blog’ as iMedia Connection has done, in spite of the fact that the blog doesn’t really speak for the Starwood group as a corporation, raises the question of just what constitutes, or should be recognized as, a corporate blog.
This question will be looked at by the California Court Appeals this week, after bloggers leaked a story about an Apple Computer product called "Asteroid", reports Wendy Davis at MediaPost.Â
Companies are constantly asking what blogs mean legally to their company, and as Court cases begin to address this new media we in the blogging business are looking closely at these cases and the rulings following arguments for an against the use of blogs. The Electronic Frontier Foundation a nonprofit company follows cases involving blogging and other online issues. It is a good source for you to review for issues related to blogging and the current legal cases. If you are doing research into what cases are being argued and how it might affect your business blogging I suggest this site is a good place to start.
Tags: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Law and Blogs, Apple Computer, O’Grady v. Superior Court, Apple v. Does
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This just in… we’ve learned about a free teleconference tomorrow, hosted by WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association). Here are the details:
Wednesday April 19, 2006 at noon ET
Dial into a free teleconference on WOM Ethics (“A Practical Guide to Doing it Right”). Call 512-225-3050 and enter passcode 772541#.
WOMMA’s teleconferences are usually paid events so this sounds kinda interesting. It coincides with WOMMA’s announcement that DuPont has adopted WOMMA’s code of ethics for word-of-mouth marketing.
And the significance is that there’s been a good bit of discussion on the ethics of word-of-mouth marketing campaigns where the sneezers (to use Seth Godin’s expression) are offered some kind of incentive for spreading the word. It’s an interesting debate — there’s often a gray area — and I’ll be interested to hear how the WOMMA folks frame it up.
Recently SixApart began offering Widgets (add-on modules) to increase the functionality of TypePad blogs.
TypePad bloggers can view the gallery of widgets and choose from such categories as:
Some of these widgets are painfully beta, while others will appeal to a very small audience segment. However, if you’ve been looking to add search to your TypePad blog or promote your eBay auctions, be sure to check out the new TypePad Widgets.
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.
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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
