October 2006

At the end of every business day, before I shut down my computer, I log into the back end of RegOnline to see who has registered for the Blog Business Summit that day. I eagerly peruse names and companies, and take note of which days people will be attending. When people e-mail me their bios and photos for our attendees page, I give a little squeal of delight.

Yes, we love your money. It keeps us in business. We’re not going to deny that. But our love for you guys is not completely motivated by dollars and cents. I LOVE blogging. I love everything about social media and how it enables better communication and more honest dialogue. It’s the future and I’m proud to be involved.

When I see that there are real, brilliant, hardworking people like you out there who want to make blogging work for your business, it reminds me that what I do for a living matters to people. I’m actually making an impact on the world. Now that’s professional satisfaction.

To show our appreciation, we want to take good care of you. That’s why we’re working with our sponsors to show you a good time while you’re in Seattle.

On the evening of Wednesday, October 25 between 5:00pm-7:00pm our sponsor Getty Images will be hosting a happy hour at Nectar Lounge. Nectar Lounge gives a true taste of the Emerald City, serving up the Pacific Northwest’s favorite microbrews in Fremont, Seattle’s funkiest enclave and local hot spot. Bring your Blog Business Summit badge (or a printout of the attendee e-mail you recieved) and meet on the mezzanine for a free drink on Getty Images.

The Nectar Lounge is located at 412 N. 36th St in Seattle and can be reached at (206)-632-2020.

On Thursday night after the conference, our attendees and speakers will all join together for delicious hosted drinks and hors d’oeuvres at the conference center.

We’ve also worked to convene a number of topic tables during the conference lunch break. This is to give you the opportunity to chat with our experts and speakers in a more intimate environment, and to ask follow-up questions. You can vote for your favorite topics here.

Finally, we’re committed to outstanding service. If you have any issues or problems that you’d like to address with me before the conference, you’re welcome to e-mail me at teresa [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com, or to call me at (425)-889-8509. Please keep in mind that this is my home number (I work from my house) so try to limit your calls to the hours of 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific Time.

Our law panel truly has a lot to say. Kevin O’Keefe, Buzz Bruggeman and Phil Mann recently sat down for a podcast interview with (Blog Business Summit sponsor) PR Web’s Terri Kay was a terrific showcase of the larger issues they’ll be covering in their panel at the end of day one of our upcoming conference.

And here’s some more interesting legal commentary from our speakers. Not to rehash old news with regard to the Apple/PodcastReady cease and desist letter, but I thought this was worth posting as it gives a good sense of the kind of legal expertise we’ll be featuring on the legal panel.

For those of you who didn’t hear about it, about a month ago Apple sent what Wired called a “nastygram” to PodcastReady asserting that they held a trademark on the term “pod”. The letter called on them to cease and desist use of the term immediately.

“This is a classic example of why business people ‘love’ their lawyers,” wrote our legal panelist Phil Mann. “The lawyers here may be legally right, but do their actions really make business sense?”

The enhanced communications platform of the blogosphere inhibits the old top-down control over a brand. People use the term “google” as a verb in the same way that they used to refer to tissues as “kleenex,” adhesive first aid strips as “band-aids” and copies as “xerox.”

“Let’s assume ‘pod’ and ‘podcast’ are legally protected and Apple can indeed prohibit their unauthorized use,” continued Mann. “Great. The rest of the world then stops referring to ‘pods’, ‘podcast’ and ‘podcast ready.’ And what happens next? Some competitor without the same name recognition steps up and says, ‘I’ll be happy to let you use MY name without any complaint from me,’ and a small, unknown player gets far better free advertising than it could ever hope to buy. This isn’t that far-fetched. Many companies have stupidly handed incredibly lucrative gifts to their competitors through short-sighted emphasis on ‘protecting’ their legal rights.”

The lesson here seems to be that companies have to be careful to tread the line between keeping traditional control over their brand and opening a door for their competitors to use the social media echo chamber to amplify their own brand.

This is the kind of practical information that our attendees will learn at the upcoming conference. Our remaining seats are going fast, so you should be sure to register now.

My far and away favorite radio station in Seattle is Movin’ 92.5. They play a lot of the feel-good music from when I was a kid and it definitely gets me going in the morning. I was poking around their website earlier today trying to find a phone number that I could call to tell them how awesome they are. That’s when I realized that they weren’t doing a whole lot with social media.

Sure, they have a MySpace Page, and they use the “blogging” platform associated with MySpace. That’s an awesome start, but there are a lot of other cool things radio stations can do to engage their listeners in a number of media.

For one thing, using the MySpace blogging platform isn’t a long-term solution. Eventually, you’ll want to move to a hosted blog (that is, hosting the blog at your own web address). This helps with search engine optimization.

Here are some other ideas:

• I can’t find a link to your MySpace page from your Website. You should place that link prominently.
• Have all your DJ’s start profiles on Facebook, MySpace, or Consumating so their fans can connect with them more easily.
• Make iMixes on the iTunes Store so that listeners can download their favorite songs from particular hour or a particular day. Post the link to your “all mixes by this user” page on your website.
• Start a podcast about life at the radio station and showcase all the wonderful people who work there and their favorite music.

You guys should come to the Blog Business Summit conference to learn from the experts about how to make all this stuff work.

About a week ago, while watching King of the Hill on FX with Andy, I saw a commercial for the Sonic strawberry cheesecake milkshake. A man and woman are in a car at the drive-thru, talking about the deliciousness of the shake.

The man turns to the woman and says that he wants to post about the milkshake on his blog. “My readers will really enjoy hearing about my experience of this milkshake,” he says.

The woman then teases him, saying that only his mother reads his blog.

“That’s not true,” he responds, “she said she’d tell her neighbor about it.”

Not having TiVo, I spent the next few days hunting about the Web looking for a capture of the commercial and having no luck. I even would up calling Barkley Evergreen and Associates & Partners, the advertising firm responsible for the spot. They said that unfortunately, they hadn’t paid the talent to distribute that particular commercial over the Web and couldn’t oblige my request.

So until some kind soul TiVos the commercial and uploads it to YouTube, the best I have to link to is this transcript courtesy of Randy who blogs at photos-ect.blogspot.com.

But Barkley Evergreen/Sonic isn’t content to make fun of small-time bloggers on television. No, they’ve issued a mock challenge to the YouTube crowd, which has been creating their own hilarious versions of the Sonic Ads and uploading their own versions to the Web.

The challenge features the two guys who star in most of the Sonic Ads, issuing a challenge to the YouTube crowd to “bring it.” I would love to embed it here, but I can’t because the people at Barkley Evergreen have restricted embedding of the video in blogs (see left).

All in all, I think this is a good approach, engaging bloggers and social media addicts in a number of simultaneous media. It’s an amusing conversation, and one that has already boosted awareness of Sonic.

The only problem I see with this approach is that there is still a command and control mentality when it comes to the original material. Any time you start a conversation with a blogger, no matter what the original format, you have to make that opening salvo available digitally. Otherwise, you’re missing out on a boatload of free, viral advertising. By refusing to allow embedding of their YouTube challenge, and failing to make the milkshake commercial available online at all, Barkley Evergreen has missed a key opportunity to take their deservedly award-winning campaign to the next level.

We’ll be covering how social media, absent a command and control mentality can drive your marketing efforts to the next level at next week’s conference.

There are two very notable bits of blogospheria surfacing from the aftermath of the Wal-Mart/Edelman “fake blog” scandal. Both can be found in the comments on Steve Rubel’s post about the snafu.

1. The call to make Steve Rubel Edelman’s blogosphere ombudsman… Rubel is taking quite a beating for his lack of immediate response to the controversy. Several of his readers have put forth the idea of making him Edelman’s blogosphere ombudsman. I think it’s a fantastic idea that would make him Edelman’s equivalent of Scoble.
2. When you want to apologize to the blogosphere, call Robert Scoble… I find it remarkable that when businesses want to get the blogosphere’s attention to manage a crisis, they call Robert. I think that really says something about the respect he commands in this space. Robert seems satisfied with the mea culpas of Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel. The rest of the blogosphere will likely follow.

And of course, I wouldn’t be any kind of a self-promoter if I didn’t at least mention that Robert will be speaking at our conference next week.

To great fanfare, Intel launched the newest in its roster of blogs last week, adding its IT blog to the illustrious roster of blogs from every corner of the company.

Intel’s software network has been blogging for months now, raising controversy on such issues as access to information about 64-bit chips and the use of open-source methodology in the development of malware.

We’re very pleased to have Danika Hercha, the Online Community Program Manager at Intel’s Software & Solutions Group joining us for this year’s Blog Business Summit. Her group began blogging externally in July and has expanded rapidly to 19 active blogs and over 27 active bloggers.

PS: The Intel IT blog was designed by our conference speaker DL Byron.

I’ve been late to the table on this Wal-Mart discussion, although my good friend Tris Hussey has been right on top of the coverage.

The way I understand it, the blogosphere is up in arms because of a blog called Wal-Marting Across America. The blog told the story of a couple who were traveling around the country staying the night in various Wal-Mart parking lots and talking to people about Wal-Mart. The problem was that they didn’t properly disclose that their sponsor was Working Families for Wal-Mart, an organization that was started to counter the anti-Wal-Mart rhetoric of union-funded groups Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch.

In a post dated October 12, 2006, Wal-Marting blogger Laura wrote an explanation of how the story got started.

Our blog was about the people we met and the stories they told. As a storyteller, I should have done a better job beginning at the beginning with our tale.

Yes, Laura, you should have been more forthcoming about your association with Wal-Mart PR firm Edelman. You should have been more forthcoming about the fact that Working Families for Wal-Mart was paying for your trip. If you had done that, you might have just become the first even moderately unscripted voice to represent Wal-Mart in the blogosphere.

As it is, we can chalk this one up as a major screw-up for an otherwise blog-savvy public relations firm. Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel have both been forthcoming on this (although it took them long enough).

I think it was the great philosopher Big Bird who said that “everyone makes mistakes.” Admitting them publicly is a difficult thing, and I admire Edelman for being able to stick their necks out.

And in the interests of self-promotion, I should mention that these are the kinds of real-world lessons that we’ll analyze and discuss at our upcoming Blog Business Summit conference, which will have some representatives from Edelman in attendance.

When I talk to people about the conference, one thing I hear a lot is, “Seattle in October? Who wants to go there? It rains all the time.”

I have a secret to tell you: no, it doesn’t.

I mean, yes. It does rain a lot here. From about mid-November to April, we have no reprieve from the drizzle. But in October, the sun is shining, the air is crisp cold and clear and there are no tourists. It’s really the perfect time to visit Seattle.

Don’t believe me? Just watch this video I took from my window this morning:

For the record, my skin almost never looks that bad. It’s only when I don’t have time to go running or rock climbing because Steve makes me work a lot right before conferences.

In one of our late-night brainstorming sessions (coffee, yay!) we came up with the bright idea of putting up an attendees page with bios and photos in order to facilitate networking before and during the conference. It’s kinda like having everyone send in their photo before freshman orientation in college. Ahh, the good old days! But I digress…

Apart from the obvious networking upside, there’s another good reason to send in photos and bios. If you’ll notice, those attendees who have sent me their info get a bunch of inbound links to their sites. Those attendees who have only given us permission to post their name and organization do not. Since we have a Google PageRank of 7, having an inbound link from us is valuable for your website in terms of search engine optimization. (For more information, learn from Wikipedia.)

So keep those attendee bios and photos rolling into teresa [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com and I’ll keep putting them up.

I know I’m late to the game in posting about this, but once again I will blame all the millions of things that must be done behind the scenes to make our upcoming conference a success.

Anyway, on to the story.

A blogger writing under the nom de keyboard “Masked” has surfaced claiming to be an Apple employee working from the inside to effect change and enhance transparency.

Being an Apple fangirl, it’s kind of hard for me to be unbiased about anything involving that particular company. Their products make me want to jump up and down and squeak gleefully. Still, it stinks that Masked has to write anonymously to do what Apple’s PR department ought to be doing anyway: establishing a more open, trusting relationship with their customers. As Scoble writes, “what happens when only anonymous employees can blog? Hint: your PR will be controlled by anonymous people!”

Given Apple’s culture of opacity, Scoble says they deserve a “raft” of anonymous bloggers. I tend to agree, but not out of a desire to punish Apple for not jumping into the blogosphere. Having an anonymous blogger like Masked, who thus far appears to have both a code of ethics and a sense of goodwill toward his employer, can be a mixed blessing. It’s maddening from a PR standpoint because you’ve lost control of the message. On the other hand, you have a dedicated, capable employee who is taking the initiative to do what he thinks is best for the company: joining the conversation.

It’s possible that the appearance of Masked is the kick in the tuchus Apple needs in order to join the conversation. Still, I’ve always maintained that companies have different cultures for a reason. Apple should be able to approach blogging in its own way, and its own sweet time. In the meantime, Masked is most definitely in my RSS reader. The ball is in Apple’s court. They have to determine just how long they’re willing to let the anonymous blogging continue.

And by the way, Robert will be speaking at our conference coming up later this month (10/25-27). I have a feeling that this latest anonymous blogger will be discussed from the podium a fair amount.

One of the coolest parts of “Web 2.0” is the tagosphere. Tag clouds (we have one!) are mega-cool. And don’t even get me started on the crunchy lime-green goodness that is Technorati.

That all raises the issue of what tags we use when we talk about the Blog Business Summit. Here are a few of the ones I’ve seen/used:

• BlogBusinessSummit
• Blog_Business_Summit_2006
• BBS06
• BBS06_speakers
• BBS06_attendees

I’m guilty here of creating WAY too many tags about the same topic. I guess I’m too excited about the conference for my own good. In the interests of keeping the conversation all in one place, I think we should agree on one primary tag.

Since BlogBusinessSummit is the most popular thus far, I think that’s the best way to go.

That said, you can never diminish the value of your post by adding too many tags. If there’s another tag you think is appropriate, feel free to tag away.

And if there are any tags I’ve missed mentioning here, please leave me a comment.

Tag, you’re it!

Yes, I know I’m cheesy.

If you’re coming to the conference, we’d like to know what you’re interested in talking about during lunch. Please use the poll below to give us some feedback. If you do not see your topic of interest below, please leave us a title and a brief description in the comments section. We’ll integrate it into the poll.

Thanks!

We’ve got a lot of awesome sessions this year. Asking me to pick my favorite is kind of like asking me to pick my favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s impossible, there’s just too much geeky goodness to decide.

But there is one session that I’d like to focus on for the moment: Legal Issues for Bloggers and the Companies that Employ Them. This session, which takes place at 4:30 on our first day is a real value add for our corporate or publicly traded attendees in particular.

Too often, we’ll be talking with a company about getting into the blogosphere, only to have the legal department put the kibosh on the initiative. Lawyers have to be conservative because its their job to protect the company from costly legal entanglements. They really are just doing their job.

But for many companies, it’s becoming clear that staying out of the online conversation has a serious downside. Legal departments and small business owners will need to adapt accordingly. This session offers a look at what the law has to say about this emerging area of business communications.

Our speaker lineup for this session really has me excited. We’ve got Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords, Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog, and Phil Mann of Mann Law Group. Check out their bios and be astounded at their collective legal expertise!

I’ll have a post up later about some interviews I did with our legal experts about the recent spate of “cease and desist” letters and what they mean.

We’re very happy to announce that just in time for the National Business Aviation Association Conference, we’ve soft-launched our newest editorial property: Big Business Jet.

The blog covers issues of importance to those who own private jets or are thinking about buying them. Obviously, that’s a pretty long-tail market. But it’s interesting stuff nonetheless. We’ll discuss everything from the materials used in jet completion to how CEO’s can demonstrate the value add of the corporate jet to shareholders.

Big Business Jet’s sponsor is Greenpoint Technologies (GTI). They’re the aviation industry’s most fabulous private jet completion center (read: they do the interiors), and they’re the wonderful people providing the Lear Jet for “Grapes on a Plane,” our post-conference Walla Walla wine flight.

The blog was built with Wordpress and the template was modified from an existing one by yours truly! All those hours of toil learning CSS and PHP and all manner of other geekery have actually gone into creating something cool. Hooray!

Recently, I had the opportunity to turn a negative blogosphere commentary into a positive, or what John Battelle calls “Marketing Judo”.

Over at Liz Strauss’ blog, some criticism was leveled at our upcoming conference our upcoming conference was being discussed in a less than 100% glowing way.

“Every word I read about this conference seems geared toward folks who are already blogging. I wonder about that,” wrote Liz.

In the comments, the commentary got even more negative there was some more criticism. Commenter Sabine wrote:

I know what you mean — blogging is still an “early adopter” phenomenon, I think.
Well, I’m going, so I’ll let you know if it was worth it.

Still, I’m a little less excited about it now that I read that a few lucky “A-listers” will be getting a ride in a private jet at the conference. Jeez, let’s widen that gap even more, why don’t we?

Well, I’ll be there to represent the “Z-listers” who just want to get an answer to the question “What can blogging do for my business?”

I have to say that - even with my blogosphere-savvy - my first impulse was to get snarky with Sabine. “How dare she impugn the good name of our ‘Grapes on a Plane’ event?” I thought to myself.

Then I took a step back, which is what Scoble always advises his readers to do. After all, I didn’t want to be accused of having a “ready, fire, aim” mentality.

Also, and very fortunately, our excellent conference co-chair Maryam Scoble jumped into the conversation and smoothed things over. After reading her post, what I came to realize is that with an event like “Grapes on a Plane” does have a ring of exclusivity to it. And yes, a lot of the folks on the plane could be called “A-list.” Sabine had some pretty understandable misconceptions about the event Grapes on a Plane.

But the bottom line is that this is an event with two primary goals:

1. To provide our client Greenpoint Technologies with exposure to influential bloggers who are interested in what they’re doing.
2. To thank the people (speakers, sponsors and attendees) who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to make our conference a success.

We think we’ve walked that line pretty well with this event, and we’re proud of that. We’re also proud that just about anyone can get a seat on this jet if they work hard and are innovative. If you’re a speaker, a sponsor or an attendee and you’re interested in getting on the jet, e-mail me at teresa [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com. We’ll hook you up.

Update: Broback’s hypothesizes that Google has created a self-reinforcing system of influence that perpetuates an “A-list.” That’s a problem and it needs to be fixed.

Update 10/11/06 10:10 a.m.: I’ve had a conversation with both Sabine and Liz via e-mail. Apologies for making the original interaction bigger than it needed to be. I wanted to provide it as as case study, but sometimes we all forget we’re dealing with real people. Sometimes it’s better to have these kinds of conversations more privately. Live and learn.

Recently, Terri Kay of the PR Web PodTeam sat down with our speaker John Battelle for an interview about how blogging and search are affecting marketing and media.

If you’re looking for a taste of what John’s keynote will look like, the resulting podcast will give you a pretty good idea. Here’s a rough breakdown of what he covered in just eight short minutes:

• The message to businesses about blogging (:51)
• How search is behind the shift in business communications (2:05)
• How “Marketing Judo” can help you turn a negative into a positive (3:00)
• What happens if you don’t respond when people comment: “It’s kinda rude” (4:00)
• Symantec “Macs don’t get a lot of viruses” (4:29)
• GM blogging about environmental issues with the Chevy Tahoe (5:29)
• Businesses are used to hiding behind a brand, letting your audience judge you in real time is scary (6:30)

I think the big message here is that businesses are used to a level of control that is no longer possible, and that’s scary. The sooner you get over that paralyzing fear, the better. But don’t take my word for it. Come to the conference and hear John.

Image via Thomas Hawk on Flickr.

The super gigantic mega-buzz this past week has been about the possible purchase of user-generated content site YouTube by search giant Google.

Jason Calacanis, who will be keynoting at the upcoming Blog Business Summit conference, says that the rumored sale “makes total sense” to him. Google’s advertising network means that it is the only potential buyer who has a hope of making back the $1.6 billion investment. Nobody else is going to spend that kind of money.

I agree with Calacanis, particularly when he points out that Google has been a trailblazer in the area of Intellectual Property rights on the Web. If the sale goes through, YouTube’s users won’t have to worry about a media company like (*shudder*) NBC/NBBC coming in and taking a command and control approach to the content. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, bring yourself up to speed here.)

Many businesses have already made successful forays into the user-generated content realm. Of particular note is Cingular’s YouTube Underground competition, where unsigned bands submit material on YouTube, users vote, and four bands get new gear and national exposure courtesy of Cingular.

It’s likely that with Google’s takeover of the site, this kind of community participation by companies will be further encouraged and enabled. The staggering price of the sale alone will lend considerable credibility to the YouTube phenomenon, which may attract even more companies to the table.

The YouTube revolution and its broader implications for business will be one of the main topics of discussion at the upcoming conference. IBM New Media Director Ben Edwards will keynote on branding in the age of YouTube while attendees at our newbie day will learn about podcasting and video blogging from PodTech gurus Robert Scoble and John Furrier.

I’ve had a backlog of speaker and attendee bios for a couple of days now, and I’m sorry that I didn’t get them up sooner. I was out yesterday fasting and davening and doing all those other good things we Jewish types do on Yom Kippur.

But I’m caught up now, so you’ll see that we’ve added to our already amazing list of powerhouse speakers. Newcomers to the list include former Microsoft “blog queen” Betsy Aoki and Yahoo! blogger Nicki Dugan.

Equally incredible is our ever-growing attendee lineup which includes Christopher Johnson from Phrasetrain and Drew Meyers from Zillow.

We decided to publish our attendee lineup because we recognize the importance of conferences as an opportunity to network with other professionals. We encourage attendees to take a look at the lineup and make a list of people you want to meet during the conference. That way you’ll know names and faces even before things get started.

The more attendees that send in their bios and photos, the better the experience will be for everyone, so keep ‘em coming. If you haven’t registered yet, you can do that here. If you’ve already registered and would like to see yourself up on that page, you can e-mail a 200 word bio and photo to teresa [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com. Now that the High Holy Days are over with, I might actually get it up in a timely fashion.