Here [are the slides for our panel](/media/bbs_seminar_la_experts.pdf) with me, Anil, Janet, and Steve.
From the monthly archives:
March 2006
There were a fair number of images coming out from the Essentials of Business Blogging seminar yesterday.
As always, Mie was moblogging everything in sight from her adorable cell phone (which I now want).
Also, we had someone in the audience posting photos to Flickr. My favorite: “Steve Broback loses his [expletive deleted] on the Blog Experts panel.”
I wish I’d brought my camera - stupid forgetful me - so I could have joined the fun. I did however bring our .mp3 recorder and will put together a podcast from all the wonderful things people said at the event.
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The final session in our Essentials of Business Blogging seminar yesterday was Anil Dash’s talk about the future of the Web.
“The post is the atomic unit of blogs,” he told us at the outset, “it’s the piece from which everything can be built.” And when Anil says post, he’s doesn’t just mean the block of text you’re reading right now. He’s talking about podcasts, and the photos that Mie takes with her phone and puts up on the blog as well.
In a nutshell, Anil’s talk revolved around that atomic unit, and the many different ways that future technologies and innovations will allow it to be categorized, filtered, sorted and re-communicated across the Web.
So what does the future look like in Anil’s mind? Basically, you’ll have a number of streams of information (feeds) coming in: blogs that matter to you, e-mails, general news feed, etc. And they’re all automatically filtered for just what’s relevant for you. Then, you’ll be able to choose who you want to share each piece of information with, and what formats they can get them in.
Because blogging will become so simple and versatile, organizations will be able to easily make it work with their existing practices. It will help break down the stigma of introducing new ideas into the workplace.
But while technology and innovation are cool, I thought the most important thing Anil talked about was defeating the fear. There’s a real fear among businesses people that the bloggers will say something bad about you, that you can screw up and fail and really harm your company in the blogosphere. And that fear is perpetuated in great part because there are some pundits who attack businesses when they make mistakes or don’t “get it” as fast as they would like.
But the reality - Anil tells us - is that the blogosphere very inviting to businesses. They love that businesses are using the same communications tools that they use to relate to the world. What’s more, there is no religion or dogma of blogging, no right or wrong way. “Don’t be so afraid of the changes,” he said at last, “that you lose the opportunity to take advantage of something so powerful.”
Update 3/17/06 at 5:18 p.m. I think this new Skype/Movable Type functionality is exactly the kind of technological integration Anil was talking about. How cool!
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An example of the posting process. Here’s a post. Anil is talking about serendipity.
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I’ve been wandering around between sessions chatting people up. Our attendees run the gamut from technophobes to chief technology officers. Everyone has said that they’ve learning a great deal and having a lot of fun.
It sure feels great to be getting the California love.
At the moment, Byron, Steve & Anil are doing a panel with questions and answers about what it takes to succeed in the blogosphere. Up next is Anil’s talk about the future of the Web. We are all quivering in anticipation.
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As promised, here are the [slides from our presentation](/media/publish_and_prosper_sample.pdf) on blog tools. We got through about 1/2 of the slides and please go ahead and ask questions. I’m happy to answer them.
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Byron is onstage right now talking about the critical features and tools that business bloggers need to know about to make good blogging decisions. Right now, he’s covering the basics of what a podcast is, how they work, and how they add value both in terms of content and additional traffic and interest.
Outside in the hall, I’ve been chatting up participants about their blogs and their goals. We have a truly interesting bunch of attendees with us today. One gentleman, Mr. Harold Nevin of Translation Services showed me his blog. Looking through it, you can see that the content is already excellent. He’s clearly passionate about his subject matter. And posting well is half the battle.
I told him that after lunch, we’d be doing a session called Posting isn’t Enough that covers how to engage with the blogosphere to generate more traffic and inbound links.
Before he left to go into Byron’s session, we talked a little bit about how commenting works to create and maintain awareness and how on blogs you don’t just “trade links.” I explained that generating inbound links and traffic is a much more organic process that involves facilitating the conversation between yourself and other bloggers, and between your readers.
I love watching and talking to people as they’re learning about blogging. The excitement and interest in the room is palpable, and it’s a packed house. What a day!
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Today, in between my sessions, I’ll blog about our [seminar](/seminars/). We’ve got a good crowd showing up with much to discuss, teach, and demonstrate. Tagging is always a challenge to show and I hope that goes well. It’s important, as so many tagging apps are being bought by Yahoo!, but also that it’s a very useful technology, just not one that’s immediately recognizable.
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My bags are packed, my to do list is (mostly) checked off and I’m just waiting for Steve to come pick me up to go to the airport. (We at the Blog Business Summit proudly carpool whenever possible.)
Essentials of Business Blogging is the first event I’ve been intimately involved with at the Blog Business Summit. Let me tell you, it’s a lot of work. We’ve bent over backwards to create a great and informative day for our attendees - and we’re all very excited to see the event go forward.
We hope to see you there.
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Wikipedia describes Dave Winer as a “polarizing figure.” But however you feel about him, you have to acknowledge that he has made huge contributions to the Web as we know it. His announcement that he will leave the blogosphere to, “matter less so I can retool and matter more in different ways,” has given us all a lot to think about.
Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble laments Winer’s departure, but says he completely understands where he’s coming from:
I totally understand why Dave would want to walk away. I’m staring at hundreds of emails and just don’t want to deal with my inbox right now. I’m gonna take the rest of the day off and hang out at SXSW. My sessions are over and now I just have to catch up with the email. I totally understand why Dave wants to take off from his blog. The pressure is just incredible to do more, more, more.
Who made me a gatekeeper? I don’t want that job.
Winer and Scoble are right, blogging is a lot of work - more so if you’re an A-lister. It’s one of the reasons that businesses worry about rolling out a blog - the time commitment.
That’s why a team approach - like the one we use here - is a good option to consider for those who would be business bloggers were it not for the amount of time it requires. If Steve and Byron are buried in their bunker working on our forthcoming book, I can pick up the slack. If I’m busy doing marketing work for the { 2 comments }
Finished up a [great panel at SXSW](http://blogbusinesssummit.com/2006/03/does_your_blog.htm) and here [are the slides](/media/sxsw06_blog.pdf). Later this week, on March 16th, I’ll talk more about business blogging during our [seminar](/seminars). Topics that came up today included executing on ideas, the patent process, and zombie blogs.
UPDATE 3/14 at 2:13pm from Teresa. Byron sent me the link to this very interesting transcript of his session at SXSW.
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- Big returns on blogging investment? Debbie Weil reports that
CharlineCharlene Li of Forrester claims a 5000% return on investment for blogging this past year. That’s a pretty big point in favor of blogging for business - which makes us at BBS very happy. But all the posts I’ve found that cover Ms. Li’s claim don’t seem to delve beneath the surface. It’s not that I think she isn’t being truthful, I’d just like to know how she arrived at that figure and what standard she uses to attribute revenue to her blogging efforts. Ms. Li, if you’re reading, would you mind shedding some light for us? Thanks! - Snap Snap, SixApart. Via Rubel, it appears that Six Apart has acquired SplashBlog, which allows users to photoblog from their cell phone cameras.
- Bloggers Exempt from Campaign Finance Laws? A bill currently before Congress would protect bloggers from having to answer to the Federal Elections Commission over campaign finance regulations, though some argue that the point is moot because bloggers are protected by the First Amendment and by exemptions already in place.
- Stock Market crash. Users of fantasy blog stock market Blogshares were met with an unexpected surprise over the weekend when they logged in to the site to find that the domain name had expired. Let this be a lesson to all: mark the date your domain expires on your real-life calendar or risk losing your Web real estate.
- Blogging for Dollars. Some Democrats are hoping that former Virginia Governor Mark Warner will be the “anti-Hillary,” an electable centrist and party outsider who can unseat the potentially “unelectable” heir apparent. But Clinton has a huge fundraising advantage, which is why Warner has turned to Jerome Armstrong - the architect of 2004 outsider candidate Howard Dean’s internet strategy - to design a website and a blog for the candidate.
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At [SXSW on Monday](http://2006.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/?action=show&id=IAP060036), I’ll moderate a panel with [Jeffrey Zeldman](http://zeldman.com), [Shaun Inman](http://haveamint.com), [Eric Rice](http://ericrice.com), and [Phoebe Espiritu](http://simplifierlab.com). The panel will discuss how to use your entrepreneurial, developer, and design skills to build your blog into a business. A common theme for the panelists is that we all wanted a better X and built it ourselves. We’ll discuss how we did that and much more. Right after SXSW, I come back for our [Essentials of Blogging Seminar](/seminars/), where this discussion will continue.
Peachpit, the publisher of our blog book, [Publish & Prosper: Blogging for Your Business](http://www.peachpit.com/title/0321395387) is offering SXSW attendees a 35% off sale plus free shipping on preorders. Just buy it now and use the code: MAC-TPS-EEU.
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Responding to a ProNet user who was exasperated by the complexity of Movable Type’s category filters and tags, I said
I also struggled with the category-tag mystery on our inFlightHQ blog and did the
old-school method of trying every possible combination of tags until it worked
and I honestly don’t really know how it works. I figured I just hadn’t yet
grabbed the pebble from the hand of the MT Tags masters. That or the
documentation is undecipherable.
As much as I dig MT, I often wonder if there are way better ways to do
things that I can’t figure out.
Turns out I was correct! There are better ways to build blogs with Movable Type and I just learned that from Tim Appnel. Tim helped us code the blog for our book, Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business. While I worked on the content and design with Mathew and Scott, Tim did his thing and let me know when he was done. I logged in, looked at what he coded for a while, and later exclaimed, “MTSetVarBlock Rules!”
What Tim did was create a module that is a global layout template with placeholders for various pieces of content to be plugged into (using his MTSetVar block plugin). That means instead of having 20+ templates repeating the same HTML, each much smaller template creates chunks of content (for entries, comments, archives, and more) and then call the layout template and assembles the page. That sounds more complicated than it is and Tim discusses the technique at length in his Hacks: Object-Oriented Weblog Publishing post.
The result is faster builds, cleaner code, and less template work. The blog is all chunked up.
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Finally, Businessweek publishes an article that is truthful, well-researched and dispels myths about the Mac and security. When I read the recent spate of virus alerts, I ignored them and figured most everyone would, but it hit the mainstream press with the type pf maddening reporting that led to citizen media in the early days of blogging. It seems that the PC-using press are all-to-happy to report on supposed Mac viruses. It’s like seeing the best and brightest kid fail a test, walk out of the the bathroom with toilet paper on his shoe, or have gum stuck in his hair. “Yeah see that Apple OS sucks as bad as the one we use! Well, sorry … the gifted, better-dressed kid is still one up on Windows XP when it comes to security.
I agree with Arik Hesseldahl suggestion that Apple appoint a Security czar with the sole purpose of dispelling the myths, misleading articles, and truthiness about OSX viruses. As Apple breaks through the 5% ceiling and gains even more traction, it’s going to become increasingly important to counter disinformation.
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- And the Oscar goes to… Well, it’s not exactly the Oscars, but it is the PR Week Awards. The big award for our particular corner of the communication universe was the Best Use of the Internet award, which went to Hass MS&L for the GM Fastlane Blog. Also nominated was the Blogging the Stratosphere 1.0 event with which we were closely associated.
- Google gets around. Just a couple of months
monthago, Google was hooking up with Motorola and now it’s gone out and married Writely. All the blogosphere is abuzz with tales of Google’s debauchery. - The flock flies south. The Blog Business Summit will be flying South to Los Angeles for our Essentials of Business Blogging event. We’ve got just a few seats left. Click here to register.
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Byron has been toiling tirelessly in the code mines for quite some time now to produce our Blog Book Blog about the forthcoming book, Publish and Prosper from Peachpit, which will be in stores this May.
Yes, we’re thumping our chests a bit when we talk about this book. But we’ve got a right to be proud. It’s been an all-consuming project that turned into a great book and Steve & Byron in particular deserve to be very proud of themselves.
There are a lot of blog books out there, but Publish and Prosper is the one you’ll reach for when you’re ready to jump out of the realm of blogging theory and into business reality.
I should mention that our publisher Peachpit is offering a presale on the book. Hooray!
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Google has agreed to a $90m settlement in the click fraud case brought by Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles on behalf of all Google advertisers for the past four years.
Click fraud - in a nutshell - is when someone repeatedly clicks on a business’ Google ad without intending to buy anything. Since Google ads are pay-per-click, this costs advertisers money.
But what does it mean for Google and its investors and advertisers? Probably not a whole lot.
The price of Google’s stock fell $12.68 yesterday, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t all that much, considering that the stock is trading at about $350/share. It’s much less of a problem when you consider that the $90m payout is less than 1% of Google’s total revenue for the past four years. Yeah, it’s a blow - but no more so than a mosquito bite is to King Kong.
What remains to be seen is what Google will do about the problem. There really isn’t any way to determine the intent of a click on the Web. The only thing it can do is set out parameters for what constitutes evidence of click fraud, rely on advertisers to bring such things to their attention, and then re-credit accounts when click fraud is established.
But if the Web giant truly wants to decrease the amount of click fraud they see, then they’ll need to go about punishing those that do the defrauding. If they can identify an individual based on his or her IP address and motive, then perhaps a lawsuit, or even criminal charges could be brought. That ought to put the fear of God into those click-fraudsters.
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In the last couple installments of the Blog Business Summit Report, I’ve given guests a hypothetical magic wand and asked them to point it at any company and give them a blog.
After reading today’s article in the Times, I decided to take up the wand and benevolently wield it in the general direction of Trader Joe’s. The article made it plain that TJ’s employees and customers (of which I am one) alike are truly passionate about the product. I became convinced that they’re the kind of company that would take to the blogosphere like a fish takes to water.
But then I did a little research and found out that there’s already a blog out there called Tracking Trader Joe’s. The blog is a brain child of Mike Kaltschnee, who is also responsible for a blog covering the Web-based DVD rental service Netflix. Despite Jeff Jarvis’ declaration that Tracking Trader Joe’s is keeping a “watchful eye” on TJ’s, the blog is clearly a love letter even as it purports to have no affiliation. In fact, in a quick search of the blog for any criticism of Trader Joe’s, the only thing I could come up with was this complaint about the discontinuation of their Hot Bell Pepper Relish.
Beyond the content, the look of Tracking TJ’s raised my eyebrows. Kaltschnee blatantly co-opts the TJ’s brand, using their font and the clever little woodcut characters that grace their newsletters. For a chain that is - as Byron puts it - “a case study in brand” to allow an unaffiliated blog to do that seems unlikely. It got me wondering whether TJ’s has a relationship with Kaltschnee - even if it isn’t an explicit one.
My suspicions were further supported when I found out about Kaltschnee’s relationship with the PR folks at Netflix. If that’s any indication of the way Kaltschnee does business, then it’s pretty clear that TJ’s has some tacit hand in this blog, even if it’s not on a day-to-day or monetary basis.
I know some pundits would get up on a high horse about a company being tacitly affiliated with a blog that purports to have no affiliation. As Scoble said recently in response to a Times article about Wal-Mart “using” bloggers, “Always attribute where you got something from. Even if it doesn’t make you look good.” But I’m not going to chastise TJ’s. If they are indeed involved with the Tracking TJ’s blog, then it’s likely they know the risk they’re taking in being called out. It’s not as though they’re doing evil on any serious order of magnitude - if they do in fact have a relationship with Kaltschnee. But nevertheless, it is truly inadvisable to be less than 100% transparent when you’re dealing with the blogosphere.
But what I really don’t understand is why TJ’s doesn’t just start an official blog. They clearly have the passionate people, the exiting products and the loyal following that would make a company blogging initiative a huge success. Why choose to go this route - if that is indeed what they’re doing?
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Happy News reports this morning that Microsoft has launched a new version of its Windows Live search engine.
One of the most interesting quotes from the Happy News article came from Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research. “There’s something very alien about the whole keyword approach as a means of finding stuff,” he said. “So if Microsoft can move away from that and actually let people ask questions, use more natural language … that could really boost the usability of search. That’s the kind of thing that could put pressure on Google.”
A quick glance at Scobleizer confirms that the software giant is indeed updating its search engine - but that the code may be wonky for several hours as developers continue to put the new puzzle pieces into place.
And what might those pieces be? From what I’ve read, the search engine’s features include:
- The ability to display as much or as little information as desired in search results.
- The ability to view images at any desired size within a search result.
- A “smart scroll” function that displays all results on one page.
Trouble is, I can’t see any of these features being truly revolutionary. Yes it’s interesting that they give you a variety of ways to display your search results - and a way to save your preferences. But Google is getting into that game too. And while a good GUI is an integral part of any tool, I wonder whether the guts of the engine are as good as Google’s.
Unfortunately, I can’t really test the tool out at the moment because the code is still wonky.
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