July 2005

I spoke this week about blog design at Web Design World and one of the attendees sent me Liftport’s Blog. I knew about the company, but hadn’t seen their blog. It’s a great example of what a small business can blog about. There’s also a space parallel with Clip-n-Seal’s being used by NASA. Liftport is building an elevator into space and you can read all about their progress.

During the Stratoblog, the press wasn’t sure what Clip-n-Seal had to do with blogging. Blogs are typically associated with personalities, technology, or politics, but as Brian Chin noted in his post, Blogs sell low tech, too.

Jeremy Wright revives the BizBlog Show with a Steve Broback interview about the Blog Business Summit, conference related things, business blogging and more.

Quick round up of the postings, tags, and photos from Blogging the Stratosphere — full report to follow. Read more about the event in the Stratoblog.

Posts

• PRWeb Press Release
• A Real Wireless Connection, Chris Pirillo
• Boeing Blogging, Scoble
• Stratosphere Puffery, Skype Journal
• Sky Blogging, Molly.com
• The mountain on your left, Stratoblog
• Connexion rocks, Buzzmodo
• MAKE out in the skies today, Makezine
• Videoblogging, Eric Rice

Tags

• Posts tagged with Connexion
• Posts tagged with Stratoblog
• Posts tagged with Blogging the Stratosphere
• Post tagged with Stratosphere
• Posts tagged with Stratoblog

Photos

• Flickr Photos tagged with Connexion
• Flickr Photos tagged with Stratosphere

It’s no secret that the folks at Microsoft have been quick to understand that RSS is rapidly becoming a critical technology for timely business communication, and recently announced their plan to support RSS at the OS level in Longhorn. This is great news for those in the blogging community.

With bloggers being the principal creators of RSS distributed content today, Microsoft has recognized that business bloggers are an essence Longhorn content “developers”. So they’re being remarkably generous in their support for our emerging yet influential community. One indication of this support is their offer to co-host the Blog Business Summit as the only Diamond Level Sponsor.

Longhorn’s inherent RSS capabilities will help propagate blogged content to a much larger audience than exists today. Several of the Longhorn team members be present at the conference, and information about this support will be presented. Suffice it so say that when Longhorn and IE7 ships, bloggers should see an immediate (and significant) surge in interest and readership.

As a part of their sponsorship, the folks from Redmond have generously offered to host a “Business Bloggers Reception” on August 18. Attendees will get a chance to meet and mingle with other corporate and entrepreneurial marketers while enjoying drinks and appetizers.

Thanks Microsoft!

Blog Business Summit speaker and A-list business blogger Debbie Weil has an interesting article on her site today wherein she states that Blogging your Book is a Must. After thinking about her thesis, here’s my response….

Debbie, I don’t agree. First off, an important distinction: there’s overt book blogging and there are blogs that are, shall we say, harmonious in topic with upcoming books. While I am certainly quite interested in the evolution of book writing and production, I’m also of the belief that having everything available online and digital can have an adverse impact on the eventual sales of the book.

In particular, if I’ve already read just about all of your book in the last six months on your weblog, why would I be incentivized to spend $20-$40 to get the same thing perfect-bound just so I can place it on my shelf?
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The Stratoblog is flying tomorrow with live blogging from the stratosphere. Blog Business Summit conference speakers and other well known bloggers will post from 30,000 feet, as they fly to a conference planning retreat tomorrow. Boeing’s Connexion One Aircraft, a 737-400 used for testing, sales & marketing of the Connexion by Boeing in-flight Internet service is being provided to Summit speakers and VIPs as they travel from Seattle to Walla Walla WA.

Learn more about the event and follow it live on the Stratoblog.

Here’s the description for an essential session we’ll be hosting in San Francisco.

Buzz Marketing: Using Blogs, Forums, Conversations and Community to Build Brands and Traffic

John Cass, Buzz Bruggeman

A recent U.S. study found that two-thirds of all consumer goods sales are now directly influenced by word-of-mouth, and the Web is becoming more and more central to these discussions. As many organizations have learned the hard way, a good product and happy customers isn’t enough—you’ve got to fuel the fire. This session will feature real-word campaign success stories where tapping into online communities and enhancing discussion yielded impressive results.
Targeting the right influencers * How much can you really “manage” word-of-mouth? * Shortcuts for mining discussion groups and customer blogs * Can you manufacture “coolness”? * How do secrecy and exclusivity fit in?

For years, John Cass has been leveraging online buzz for companies like Macromedia and is is President of the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association. Buzz Bruggeman is a founder and EVP of ActiveWords Inc, a company that has placed blogs and online discussion at the center of its marketing drive.

When I got back to the hotel after my lecture on Blogging your Portfolio, there was a Financial Times waiting for me with Bob Lutz and, “into the blogosphere on the cover.” The article covers most of what has been covered before, but this is the Financial Times, a paper dedicated to suits on planes, in board rooms, and at hotels.

“For all the hype, the corporate blogosphere remains uncharted territory as executives, public relations staff and legal experts are just beginning to work out how they might harness the potential of web logs without putting themselves or their companies at risk.”

It’s not as uncharted as business may think. The why is obvious, the how is what business are figuring out and what we’ll talk about at Blog Business Summit. As I say in my presentation, “If you’re not blogging now, you should be,” and that applies to a portfolio, business, niche market, or product. Considering the discussions afterwards, business owners, students, geeks, and more are anxious to figure it out and start blogging.

More from FT.com

• Lutz on Lutz
• The rise of the corporate blogger

When: August 17th, 1:00pm -5:00pm
Where: Twin Peaks room, Palace Hotel San Francisco
Presenter: Dave Taylor

Topics and Timimg:
1:00pm: Definitions and Explanations
What’s a blog? * How does a blog differ from a Web site? * What’s findability and search engine optimization? * Why is your home page obsolete? * What’s RSS and how does it work?* What’s a “ping” and a “trackback”?

1:30pm: Tracking the Blogosphere
Competitive Intelligence * Customer Intelligence * Market Intelligence * Playing well with others

2:00pm: Marketing and Public Relations
Creating demand * Being a nimble competitor * Improving customer loyalty * Turning your customers into your extended sales force * Reach: Casting a wider net in your marketplace * Improving the bang for your marketing buck * Blogs as “Digital Focus Groups” * Damage control through blogs * Reallocating marketing and sales time for blogging

2:30pm: The Business Case for Blogging
Creating a sustainable differentiator * Establishing a voice in the marketplace * Establishing credibility and expertise with your market segment * Saving money on marketing * Improving the effectiveness of your salesforce * Cost of building a blog vs. building a Web site * The need for a corporate blogging policy

3:00pm: Blogging Without Delay: Blogger.com
How to sign up for a blogger account * How to write a simple blog entry

3:30pm: Sophisticated Hosted Blogs with TypePad
Signing up for a Typepad account * Configuring a Typepad account for optimal findability * Writing a simple blog entry * Adding some rudimentary HTML * Linking to other Web sites

4:00pm: Smart Blogging Techniques
Coping with the world of bloggers * Avoiding blogging pitfalls * Approaches to commenting * Writing with an authentic voice * Establishing credibility in the marketplace * The future of findability

I’m presenting and representin’ at WebVisions 2005 today. I’m on a panel about Digital Convergence and will talk about Blogging your Portfolio. If you here, please say hello. I’ve got Clip-n-Seal samples, Blog Business Summit brochures (and a pugcast). My slides are online at the Sample Blog.

Sue Romero reports on business blogging and interviews Steve Broback for KOMO 1000 News radio. The minute-long report (MP3) is running hourly on the radio and is also available on their podcast.

I have several instant message (IM) conversations, just like Business Logs shows in their flickr post, a day. The best ones are when someone responds to your message hours later and you forgot what you had pinged them about or when you’re chatting with the wrong person and they just roll with it. Sometimes the chat participant goes offline and you just continue chatting a whole conversation and then wonder why they’re ignoring you. Best ever is when you get an instant message in a meeting, or on stage, like Pete Blackshaw did at the last Blog Business Summit. One time when I was working at a downtown design firm, my IM popped up with a goofy avatar head like the photo above during a client presentation, unbeknownst to me, and it said something thing, “dawg! wazzzzzuppp!” Then there was the time, I referred to a porn star while my wife was in an important meeting.

I hope Business Logs podcasts their next meeting, that could be hilarious, as good as a pugcast. Steve is terrible at IM, he hates it, and whenever we IM, he’s all, “hey, this is what this IM thing is all about . . . well it sucks.” As Scoble notes, IM messages totally distract him. It’s a wonder that bloggers get anything done.

I’m afraid that my (as I said in my post) non-scientific Google polling hints at conclusions that don’t hold up all that well under scrutiny. Here’s an example of what I mean. If you search wordpress.org for the word “blog” you get a measley 19 entries. Considering WordPress is a leading blog hosting tool, and has many thousands of happy, influential bloggers hosting pages with their system, the mention count is totally out of proportion to their relevance.

I’d say a similar case exists where several PR firms with few to no sensed mentions are actually on the leading edge of corporate blogging. I’ll be posting about some these firms here, and have invited a few to present at the conference.

If there are other firms that are listed with zero to few mentions, I’d love to hear about what you are doing on the blog front and post about it. Please contact us here.

When the Space Shuttle returns to flight, Clip-n-Seals should be on board. I posted on the Textura Design and Clip-n-Seal blogs about how we’re all anxiously waiting. As I update the Clip-n-Seal blog success story in my lectures, books, and blogs with Shuttle bullet points, I also realize how much work and emotion is going into that flight from NASA and the crew. A rod-and-clamp bag closure device seems rather trivial compared to flying rockets into space, but we’re proud of it just the same. I’ll talk about how that happened and successful blogging at the next Blog Business Summit. And, of course, we’ll have Clip-n-Seal samples for all the attendees.

Public Relations firms are featuring prominently as both conference attendees and as organizations making speaker submissions to the Blog Business Summit. That’s natural, as so much of the editorial focus of the Summit is targeted toward marketing communications pros.

As a non-scientific research project, I asked our research geek Jason Preston to identify the top PR firms websites and using Google’s “search within” ability, log how many times Google detects the word “blog” within the site of each firm. The results are below.

Not sure what conclusions to reach here, as I have spoken to some very blog-savvy people at firms with zero mentions. One possible data point is that the market as a whole seems to be still gearing up. Eager to hear what readers think…

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As not all the specific session detail has been posted (but is imminent!) I have extended the early bird discount for one week to July 18. Appreciate the patience of our readers and attendees. Register here.

Marqui posted their Gross Anatomy of a Blog White Paper a few weeks ago and a series of Q&As. What’s interesting about Marqui, as Steve noted in his post about their sponsorship, is that they launched a blog buzz marketing program last year and continue to engage the blogosphere, sharing what they learned (a lot), and continuing the discussion. As Janet wrote, “How often do you get to present to a bunch of smart marketers and then have the opportunity to engage in conversations with them?” Not often. Blog marketing strategies will be discussed in several sessions at the next Blog Business Summit, including, “Staying on Top of the Buzz.”

Looks like this will be a topic for discussion at the upcoming conference. According to Jeff Jarvis, Dwight Silverman called Dell and specifically asked about blogs and their policy regarding them. In a nutshell, Dell spokesperson Jennifer J. Davis says:

* There are no plans for sanctioned Dell blogs. Company blogs are unecessary at this time.
* A policy for employee blogs is being formulated.
* Dell monitors blogs and forums but don’t respond.

Davis says “With our direct model, we feel like we already have a good, two-way communications channel with our customers.”

Isn’t the heart of the “direct model” that you give them money and they give you computers? Isn’t that the core “communication” they really focus their systems on? When you study the Dell model, it’s clear that disintermediation, just-in-time inventory, and “velocity” (fast production) are at the core. Customer service is a cost center, and cost reduction is at the center of their strategy.

Well, we know this policy can’t last. It’s just bad business when you don’t spend $100.00 on blogger response to retain $1,000.00 in potentially lost business. “Listen but don’t respond” is no policy that can endure.

Dell Cluewatch now stands at 105 days.