Business Blogging Ideas

Corporate Blogging: A Tiny Revolution for Managers

2010-01-04T10:06:00.000-08:00

Blogging is not fully a corporate practice yet. It is not clear why precisely. Some think it's simply a matter of use, the shift to writing by corporate workers has not taken place yet. In the technology world (programming, project management) there are a few spots of strong blog use. Like other communication tools, blogs have a certain look but it takes time and some experimentation to get an idea on how to use them. In a recent visit to a financial services company I was told:

"we are too conservative for blogging, the management is not going to approve running articles in the open. Even newsletters to customers have to be approved by the managing director and a legal committee."
A sales director in a diamond wholesaler said: "you have to show me a really slick - high quality blog, we are selling diamonds here. What can I do with a blog I sell really well on the phone. I have a really great package, how do I show it off... oh, can you tell me how to make the web site a little better..."

These questions or "excuses" may sound disturbing some people, how can companies and managers ignore the whole WEB2.0 revolution? Well, they are not ignoring anything from their perspective. If you are in a mode of doing paper brochures and going to trade shows (diamond industry practice) you may feel that keeping that form of communication going is crucial. It may seems like a blog will not serve the traditional customer. Traditional business opinions feels a little like "we are having a revolution and nobody came" (an old saying from the 1960s). There is more to it. Once you dig deeper it turns out to be a matter of priority, strategy, tactics and a bit of ignorance. Not much ignorance I would add. But blogging is truly a revolution to some who just can't see how it works.

From seeing people who don't "get it" over and over again, ask yourself: "am I missing the revolution?" If you are, find out if you want to join or stay behind for now. In some cases where the markets are soft and you think that starting a new way of communication may harm your business, try to see examples in your own business sector. The stock brokers in the 1990s didn't think that Schawb and eTrade were going to change their work that much. Today we see how that world has changed completely. Discount broker or full service brokers on the phone simply lost most of their market (95% and more). This is just one example (book retailing and Amazon, recruiting and Monster.) If you do not use new communication tools like blogging you may be missing the most effective and sexy way to communicate today. The same goes for social networks (My Space, Twitter, Face Book, Linked In).

NEXT: how to find your audience? What is involved in EXPERIMENTATION

Messages using linked social networking apps

2009-11-08T16:13:00.001-08:00

ubuntu 9.10 looks good, small design changes and a few things under the hood / networking D same need simpler DSL VPN setting ubuntu linux [from hootsuite > ping.fm]

Messages using linked and ping.fm to blogger

2009-10-29T09:52:00.001-07:00

Using Hoot Suite www.hootsuite.com as an agent. Online, columns for types of msgs, delayed posting, stats, nice layout, try it out >> amiv2

2009-10-27T10:31:00.001-07:00

http://ping.fm/Bde85 a simple way to feed short messages to networks + applications inside + mobile > these mgmt apps = mushrooms after rain :) :)

Israeli Venture Capital Start-Up Process Broken

2009-10-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

Tel Aviv stock exchange dipped 50% during 2008-2009 (1,200 to 600 to 1,000.) Start-up activity still down and slower to recover

It is not a secret that the Israeli technology sector is taking a nap. A big component of Israel's success in the technology sector was start-ups. Israel's entrepreneurs and engineers got into the business of starting up companies and selling them to American companies. This business has been going for over 10 years until about 2005. American venture funds bring investment capital from Wall Street and American retirement funds. Israelis start companies and usually sell them to American companies. The return in this sector is usually higher than the stock market. Everyone is happy. Until something changed!

In 2006, 2007 and 2008 there have been very few "exits". 2009 is not much better. These are sales of companies or initial public offerings in the stock market. Exit(s) is a buzz word in the Israeli start-up sector. It is what Israeli entrepreneurs seek more than anything else: cash for a 5 to 10 year hard work. Selling a company brings good returns to the investors and does not involve the process of taking a company public. But the shift in technology from software and networking to Internet and software services has slowed down the investment-development-exit train. Established venture capital funds were dealt a blow, many small ones are completely gone. Entrepreneurs in many tech sub-sectors needed to reformulate their ideas and start working on new prototypes. What Israel can teach the world is how quickly change happens. In US and other large markets change does not have to happen as quickly. The market's momentum can hold up companies and financial pipelines. But then they eventually crash. In Israel small scale reveals quickly what changed and where the new developments are going.

Economies or parts of them going dormant are everywhere now. It's a global epidemic. Starting out with the US Real Estate, financial, automotive and now other sectors. Then like a virus the slowdown hit European automotive and financial sectors. In the mean time, smaller countries like Mexico and Iceland have been devastated financially. Israel is also going through Real Estate and technology down cycle. The state tried to help by funding early technology start ups, but they were not as effective as the private venture capital industry. Then came a few individuals, called "angel investors". To date there are very few start-ups who could gain enough momentum to get to the venture funds. The angel investors hoped to get a working prototype and excite venture funds to continue with a company. The problem is simply the scale of investment. The system created a 3 to 10 million dollar model. Start-ups are used to raising money and hiring 20 people for 2 to 3 years to get the first version of a product going. They don't know how to do it with half or fifth the money in a third of the time. Everyone has to figure out how to do things quickly and more efficiently. It is possible to start a product quickly and even attract users. The Internet has changed the rules in many ways. For example, a project like FaceBook got going and got noticed and used without a big investment. The same happened with Skype which was a small project among many to use the Internet for free phone calls. In Israel there are dozens of projects trying to emulate FaceBook and Skype. We don't have a success story yet. Let's hope we all figure out what is needed to live without the venture capital start-up model. Stay tuned, programmers are coding in PHP and MySQL in converted (closed) porches everywhere*.

* porches in Israel are equivalent to basements in the US, more on Israeli culture here... come back for more
** The Eggs in the title is for putting all your eggs in one basket. Israeli engineers, investors, entrepreneurs... you name it, have done that for the last 15 ~ 20 years.

Blogging: Timing and Style for Starting Out

2009-10-06T05:59:00.000-07:00

Lorelle one of the first popular blogger wrote a tips book, order on her site or Amazon [Amazon Link ~ http://www.amazon.com/Blogging-Tips-Lorelle-VanFossen/dp/1424343615]

This post follows the one on blog services cost. Timing and style are extremely useful factors in starting and maintaining a blog. Timing article posts, promotion, social network ties, promotion and background work is crucial. Style is also crucial in your image, reader bounce rates and the overall blog's caliber.

Timing for better blogging results and motivation

Timing is one of your driving factors when starting out a blog. The speed in the blogosphere is driven by the blog's audience. There is no delay between your article's posting and the reaction from the outside world. Your writing and editing speed is essentially the most crucial factor to take into account. The other factors, building a blog, content writing and editing, promotion, advertising, tagging... all the "stuff" it takes to put up the posts and drive people to them are secondary (and completely up to you.) If you put time and resources or hire someone to produce the blog you can get going in days. If you have resources or money to promote and advertise you can get people to notice your blog in hours. The same goes to your ability to promote your blog in other blogs, social tagging and networking sites. Timing also means how your blog relates to your readers and the rest of the industry (competitors, traditional media.) Some bloggers have made a name for themselves by quickly posting breaking news. Some bloggers write opinion and analysis articles, specially in politics, finance and international affairs. Opinion and debate blogs are also knows to keep a fast pace. In business and retail there are also blogs centered around breaking news. In consumer electronics and gadgets such as portable devices and communication services also break news quickly. In down times like weekends it is time to maintain, try new designs and perform background research and writing. With Web20's injection of vitality into our Internet use there is plenty of things to do: twitter announcements, FaceBook excerpts of posts, Linked-In group announcements. Tagging on Stumble-Upon, Digg and Technorati can also be done on off times. There is plenty of things to do in communicating your message to the world.

Blogging Style: Design, Writing and Content

Blog style is both the look and the content. Page design has always been a crucial element for on the web. The design itself conveys a certain message. Bloggers may need to test a few designs in order to attract and retain the relevant reader base. Content, both subject matter and writing style is also an element tied to the overall message. Business writing is very different from consumer product blogging. Take a look at the Cadbury Fair Trade blog. It runs on Type Pad just like Malcolm Gladwell's blog. Compare to the Medical Education Blog from the University of Saskatchewan. Each has a clear message which is designed and written completely differently. Blog style has evolved from a simple format to today's complex layout. Some blogs emulate a magazine or a newspaper column. For the most part a linear series of articles is the main section of a blog. A side column or two are used as static information like links and overall description. Advertising is usually at the side column as well.

Focus also on writing and editing style. Graphics are the first impression, writing style is what readers really come to see. Style you can define even if you are not going to write articles yourself. Writing style is more difficult to design than graphics. Here you can use examples with your comments. If you read a blog or a newspaper site regularly you know exactly what style they use. In every field there is one basic style. You can adopt this style in the beginning or even design your own style (less formal, etc.) Blogs for some meant informal or personal style. Like a conversation between two people. There is also the style from newspapers which is more editorial and factual. Corporate blogs started out either as informal writing by engineers and business managers or as press releases. There are two very different styles. Some of the bigger blogs like O'Reilly's Radar have many writers and each has his own style. If someone is going to write for you, make their style fit your needs. Editorial style is the type of content, subjects, opinion and views. Editorial style is what leading magazines do well. Women's fashion magazines are based on editorial style. Blogs use this idea .

I encourage bloggers to start out with a simple design and write a few articles. The page layout need to conform to the posts, images and other components like link widgets and components for tagging and networking. A series of articles will also give you a good idea how a page looks and how to format the posts. Some bloggers like the first page to show only the first paragraph in the post, this is done with the ‹!--more--› tag. The "more" tag enables you to show just a part of the article on the first page. This is just one style idea that depends on your needs (you may even want to test this with readers.) As you learn more, all the components of a blog's page will start making sense. It can get complicated if you are not organized. Blogs are the "simple Simon" cousins to web sites, make sure you don't forget.

To get started quickly, have a designer or a blogger set up a free blog on Blogger.com, TypePad.com or WordPress.com. Then you can see exactly how the page lays out and how posts look. You can change templates from the available free ones. You can also install templates from the available free ones. The design can be a collaboration between you and a designer. You can look at templates get ideas and the designer can test them out for you. Once you try a few layouts the first one should pop out for you and you can add a few posts. Some say that "style is everything." To some, it's adopting an available design, like seeing a model kitchen. To some it is in their head, they can sketch it on paper: they just need someone to put it together. To some it evolves, moves with time, the first time out is just a start. Do what works for you and G O O D L U C K !

Seth Godin's Books: WEB2.0 by Trial & Error

2009-10-04T00:09:00.000-07:00

If you are not familiar with Seth Godin you are in for a treat. Godin is a Fast Company contributing editor turned blogger and book author. In this talk he tells the story of how he got blogs and books noticed by trial and error. His blog is a stream of ideas about the none technical aspects of WEB2.0. Actually, I do not think WEB2.0 is the best term here, maybe more the interaction of Internet use with everyday life. This is a refreshing change to many people that are not interested or do not understand the technology itself. To make a technology useful and relevant there are many aspects which need to be clear and simple. Social networking as an idea and in services like Linked-In, MySpace, Twitter and FaceBook are simple and useful. Godin is a writer in this vain. In this video clip he highlights both the good and the bad of the changes due to the Internet, it's use and the way people benefit in the end. Eventually business models are used to explain the financial part. Since Godin is not a technologist he brings a practical viewpoint: how do people communicate and how technology is useful for them. This discussion can go on and on. Here are just two points on what Godin has to say:

Seth Godin for Technologists:

Technologists usually are not good in simplifying ideas. Seth Godin's writing and blogging is useful in their simplicity. They are also useful in cutting through the detail explanations and getting to the core benefits. Godin is not shy about describing the shift from paper based publishing to the electronic format. He does not put down the old business model. But he also clearly points out how "unfair" the shift is for the older businesses. It is interesting that someone in the publishing world is more clear about the situation than the technologists themselves.

Seth Godin for Business and Marketing:

Business and marketing managers know that "life is unfair". This is what makes success, the benefit from unfairness of a situation. In the new technology world of publishing, Godin explain "permission marketing" - actually not a new term at all when you consider the business of magazines and books. Magazines earn 10 times what books do and obviously that is "NOT FAIR" but still we have both formats and most book publishers are not crying about the situation. I do not agree with Godin's assessment of a blog by publishers as non-relevant. He says that a blog for publisher's employees is useful but not for readers. Actually, publishers, manufacturers, technologists and for that matter domain experts like academic professors and management consultants are more relevant on blogs than ever before. The Tim O'Reilly blog is a case in point. Godin dismisses O'Reilly's blog as relevant because of his niche specialty, but this is not relevant at all. Most people before they blog find examples of relevance and irrelevance as explanation for and against blogging. But the reality is much more complex. Blogs are simply the current format of communicating deep information. They are also the "front" for expanding information in the form of book chapters, white papers, video clips and other specialty formats (tutorials, reports, spreadsheets, etc.) I am sure that blogs are not the only format that is useful. I am sure that newsletters and static CMS sites are still useful. So are knowledge bases, the Red Hat support base for Linux is still one of the most useful technical resource for Linux. Well, the rest will have to wait for the next post. As you can see, we can discuss this forever... Please comment or write to me if you need help in deciphering Seth Godin's message in your business application. And most of all, do not let one talk by a GURU deter you from blogging, social networking or any other form of electronic communication.

{editor: this video was found through Jimmy Schwarzkopf's post on FaceBook}

Pausch's Last Lecture as a Learning Example

2009-10-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

An opportunity like this only comes once in a long time, certainly once in a few years. An example of a really inspirational talk by a R E A L G E E K ! : NOT A MARKETER or a slick salesman. A real technologists and a college professor of virtual reality. If you are a technologists or an engineer turned marketer here is a great example of how to talk and get not just interest but respect and admiration. The topic is nothing too technical, actually for most technologists it may seem boring to hear a professor talk about his career half way through... but once you see the video and read the story, it will give you lots of ideas and inspiration about what you are doing and how to tell your story.

See on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Summary: Randy Pausch was a VR (virtual reality) professor at Carnegie Mellon. This puts him in the Uber-Geek category in my book. In 2007 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and as the tradition in academia goes he was asked to give "the last lecture". This is a tradition of retiring professors imparting their last bit of wisdom to their students. But this is the last bit of tradition and sentimentality in this story.

Learning from Pausch Beyond the Grave

What can we learn from Randy Pausch's last lecture? I didn't take notes but watched the lecture a few times on YouTube. In my opinion lectures like these pack so much information that only by watching them a few times do you get every little bit you missed the first time. A few things come to mind right away:

Do what you have passion for: Pausch had wanted to do VR a-la Disney from very young age and that passion never died.
Take chances with the "big guys": Pausch was not afraid to ask top professionals for help, jobs, support, whatever.
Don't live in self delusion, don't be afraid to start small: even in his own mind he wasn't that great of a technologist. This self assessment did not stop him from doing good work and teaching students his expertise on a small scale.
No small specialty or niche domain is useless: while VR (Virtual Reality) is not a well known field, it still counts and can play an important role some day.

Randy Pausch although an accomplished technologist talked more about his life rather than his work. The subtitle to his talk is "Achieving your childhood dreams". That may sound trivial until you hear about his experience and think about it seriously. Pausch tells the story bit of his career mostly from a personal view point. As a technologist who gives talks, I found this one of the best examples of how to "sneak in" personal and emotional material to a technical subject. Enough about the talk, see for yourself. Most technologists do no have good lecture skills. Focusing on technical work sometimes takes away energy and time from presentation and preparation experience. One way of learning is through observation. There are many lectures available on YouTube and corporate web sites, I advise technologists to watch and learn. Randy Pausch's life is essentially a survey lecture. When we survey technology history, a product history or even developments in the market by competitors we can use the same approach. He used very few of his own images, but they help explain his work. He highlighted only a few events in his life so the story is not lost by the details. Let me know what you think... please post comments of good lectures and speakers. Thanks!

How Much is that Bloggy in the Window?

2009-09-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the song "How Much is That Doggy in The Window?" Americans use the phrase to poke fun when they are embarrassed to ask the price of something. The Internet business seem to be embarrassed of prices. You may ask yourself Why? Fees and costs are embarrassing in most business negotiations when a product content or benefit are not well defined. In my opinion the Internet has many amazing capabilities to offer businesses and individuals. So prices and costs should not embarrass consumers or providers of Internet services (i.e. blog design, writing and editing.) Designing and building blogs and social networking accounts is hard work. To some companies a blog is their only Internet presence, they want to make sure the design and the content reflect a professional image. To some business managers defining blog articles require thinking about their strategy first, clearly understanding competitive messages in the market or even a complete organization of corporate communication (goals, ROI, internal cooperation.) On the technical side there are many details to define and implement. Blogs look simple enough from the "front" but a blog server like WordPress or Drupal can become a big site by itself with many discreet elements. Running a big blog is no different than a static web site using a CMS server (Content Management System: large programs to manage high volume content and reader traffic.) Once advertising, linking and social tagging is added, the blog becomes a business tool with management capability, monetizing issues, analytics (tracking and analysis of viewer traffic,) and ongoing comments and links maintenance (image and message maintenance) a blog is real work. It can get complicated if you let it. It can stay simple if you organize, plan and control the content flow, overall message changes and style demands. If you are selling anything on a blog that also means running an order system or linking to one. With merchandise sales other issues like security and order tracking need to be managed. Most companies do not design and deploy a complicated blog in one initial step. The good news: many blog design and operation elements can be added gradually. Also, you can buy services from different specialists and they can work independently of each other. So, how much is that blog? (with that great business advantage?)

Writing, Editing, Articles:

Writers and editors charge between $10 to $50 a page or an hour. The wide variation in price depends on the amount of work (from a single article to a series of 10 to 20 articles,) the specialization and experience of the writer (technical and professional writers can demand professional rates,) and the overall quality, number of review cycles and other factors. You can rate a writer by hour / article / page: each page takes a "working hour" which will make it to the blog as one article. Researched and well developed articles for large blogs can cost $100 each. The articles you see as "the ten best new video apps for the iPhone..." or "ten best boutique hotels in Mumbai" are usually written to order and would cost anywhere from $100 and up. Search for freelance writers on the net and look for portals with rating and past work. Also see if anyone in your business domain can recommend someone. Finally, get recommendations from designers and programmers who work together with writers. A few specialists usually form loose teams and work together well.

Blog Setup:

This is a one time cost and you may need to refresh your look or optimize the database once a year. There are many blog hosting and ready to use design templates. Hosting goes between a few dollars a month up to hundreds of dollars. The price range depends on the quality of service (the reliability of the site's availability on the net) and the amount of storage and network traffic. You can start small and grow as you need. Some companies sell simple blog packages which cost about $100 and have a monthly upkeep of $10 to $50. Freelance sites with registered specialists like oDesk.COM and LivePerson.COM can be a source of designers and programmers to set up a blog site.

If you hire a blogger or a designer to do the work it can cost from $500 to $5,000 and take from days to weeks. It depends on how much you want to customize a design, how much original writing and photo editing needs to be done. The business blog universe is huge and you can choose a blog design from traditional large Internet site design companies all the way to independent home based freelances. A business professor with a long running blog on Type Pad just hired a student in the computer science department to customize and update his site. The first week he complained like crazy, but I encouraged him to stick with the work and see what happens. Two months later he is so happy the student is getting referrals from every friend the professor has. Is the work so exceptional? NO! But a good design to fit your need and good design using standard programming methods can make a difference to writers. Search for freelance writers, designers or programmer on portals and blogs. These reference sites change frequently due to the available freelancers and the market need. (In the early days of blogging - 5 years ago - blogs about blogging were a good source of information, take a look at ProBlogger.COM,Lorelle on WordPress and other similar sites.)

Maintenance, Promotion, Additions:

Maintaining a blog interesting requires a series of ongoing articles. A blog needs at least one article per week. If you have a good writer that gives you material you like you can buy articles by the bulk. Here you will also pay as little as $10 a page (850 words) and up. Even if you buy 20 to 50 articles at one time cost may not go down more than 10% to 20%, remember your are paying for time. If you need images, photography, video or audio services (processing, recording, finding and licensing/acquiring/purchasing) you will also pay from $10 per hour and up. If you are just starting out you may need to try out a few individuals to see which ones fit your needs and style. Styles and experience vary widely, this is what you need to figure out in your selection process. Don't give up too quickly, producing a blog can be a big project to keep going, but in the long run it is worth the effort. Get the right people to do the work and it will work out fine. Blog and single article promotion such as social tagging on Technorati.COM or Digg.COM is a service of upcoming freelancers and companies. Blog promotion can also be in the form of writing guest articles in similar blogs and exchanging links. Finally, you can also purchase SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services where content is tagged and optimized for better ranking in search engine results (Google mainly.) All these are traditional Internet services that can be bought from freelancers and small companies. Here prices vary a great deal but with a small investment of $1,000 you can expect a few thousand additional visitors to your blog. Advertising on Google using AdWords campaigns can be done directly by you or you can hire a Google advertising specialist. Here prices vary due to your specific domain (the words you pick and who is competing with you.) The world of promotion and advertising is a whole universe by itself, so get started and you will be there sooner than you think!

Total Blog Cost:

Adding up the costs you still have a wide range.

Setup cost: $500
Initial writing cost: $1,000 (10 long articles)
Monthly writing cost: $500 (3 long, 6 short)
Monthly promotional: $1,000
Total monthly: $1,500
3 Month total cost: $6,000

This is the low end total cost, if you want more design and other services (longer researched articles, launch promotion) you may want to budget two to three times this amount. Compare this to other business promotional methods (trade shows, fliers, direct mail pieces, e-Mail newsletters, sales visits or channel promotions.) From my experience, you may be getting an impression on a few hundred to a few thousand viewers within three months. That is a great deal more effective than any traditional business promotion method.

NEXT: Timing, Style, Money, Quality...

Get Social Media Started - New Lands, Pioneers, New Business Models

2009-09-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

FaceBook is a simple social network for everyone. Restaurants in New York City, Tel Aviv and Milan are more effective selling their menus on FaceBook than phone books (Yellow Pages) and travel guide books (Fromer's, Michelin) Good for restaurateurs bad for books: ARE YOU A TRAVEL GUIDE BOOK BUSINESS MANAGER?

Getting social media started at a company can be the best strategy to motivate managers and staff. Organizations sometimes have a difficult time getting started on a new idea quickly. Managers and workers get stuck doing something the old way, they need guidance on how to move to new lands. There are so many questions and concerns that learning logically is not a practical method. Sometimes as the Nike slogan goes, you need to "JUST DO IT". But what if you want to test the organization's ability to run a social network or write a blog, or even test how quickly you can write articles or work with another department? Even though writing is easy for some managers, the shift from highly polished, regularly scheduled communication to steady stream of quick off-the-cuff messages may not build momentum. Or worst, you may fail temporarily and turn off the people who just want to fall back into the old way of doing things. What do you do?

There are several ways to think of social media. This will help you understand and explain the shift to everyone in the organization. Understanding how the "new world" works, building new skills, guidance and strategy from management and examples from successful operations are simple techniques. Here are some points which explain how things work. I look at the main differences between social networking media and traditional media. Keep the differences on everyone's mind. People remember and act on a few key points. If you see five differences keep one or two as the important one for your company. Guide and motivate everyone to learn how social media works. There are many ways to learn how something works: examples, analysis, detail understanding, detail observation, etc. If your organization and the staff has not gone through a major shift in thinking in the past this is an opportunity to do so. Here are a few points that characterize the shift in social media to get you started:

A New Communication Channel: narrower, faster, connected, unedited...

Social media is a new communication channel. Paper based professional literature, domain specialty magazines, static web sites are formatted as a page, chapter, book, magazine... Social media is formatted as a message, stream, channel format. This is a crucial shift in format. The change in format affects how the messages are received and what needs to be said.

A New Format: short messages, serializing, commenting, interaction...

Messages, even complex ones, are broken into very short segments. The 140 character cell phone SMS format is now how twitter works and is used by many as a standard. On social network message boards like FaceBook people usually read just the headlines. Short messages stream before our eyes, so you need to segment what you want to say. Seth Godin's blog and Jakob Nielsen's AlertBox newsletter are great examples of how to segment ideas into small pieces.

A New Business Model: open source, collaboration, open communication...

There is a movement to open all information. The movement to give everything for free is crucial to understand. That does not mean giving services or product for free. Exactly the opposite. Think of a lawyer that helps you with a law suite. The law itself and the case law is "open" and free. You just have to go to the library and read it. But the advice and his experience is highly valuable. Tim O'Reilly's Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution is a great book on how software took the first step in decades toward open information and communication. Adapt your information and communication to an open format.

A New Frontier: many unsettled territories, abandoned sites, pioneers...

The movement to change business communication and interaction is still very new. This should not be the reason why you are not doing it yet. If your competitor or partner is not doing it yet, you are just lucky. If you do not see enough relevant examples in your town or state, look somewhere else. New frontiers with the Internet as a technology move very quickly. This is happening all the time, everywhere ~ get going quickly.

Do Not Fear New Skills: writing, editing, connecting, programming...

Every time communication takes us to the next phase there is a shift in skills. The amount and quality of writing is pushing us all to be better writers, photographers, audio readers, video directors, editors and gatherers of information... the list goes on and on. Until social networking sites were accepted, networking was considered somewhere between an art and a personal attribute, the gift of the gab. Today we have the tools so everyone can do it. Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and the Tipping Point are books about networking before FaceBook and Twitter.

Get help, seek advice, learn and try out, don't feel overwhelmed...

Just like any technology and business revolution, most people can not do it alone. In every technology shift freelancers, advisers, coaches and implementers offer help. If you can't do a blog by yourself, get someone to design and write. If you do not understand a social network, hire a young networker to do it for you. Learning and planning and thinking is not enough. You need to get going and do it fast.

How to Define New Marketing? Is It Really New?

2009-09-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

Amazon has changed the way we buy books a decade ago. Now they are trying to change the way we buy electronics. Is it time for you to market smarter?

Is the Internet, it's use and our behavior changing enough to change the way we market? Marketers look at the younger generation to see how they behave and how things change. Usually this predicts what will happen in the future. Marketers are also interested in the use of the Internet to become more effective. So is there enough change to call marketing with the Internet "NEW MARKETING"?

The idea of "New Marketing" just started to ferment in my head about two years ago. I tried to explain a product manager what he can do with a wiki. He was vaguely familiar with Wikipedia as a place to get information. But he didn't realize that all that content came from a large number of independent unpaid volunteer "experts". I tried to make an analogy to the software world. But the message was not getting across. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that understanding a technology is one thing. Benefiting from it, is a bigger step.

What is "new marketing"? My definition is using current tools to do old tasks better, OR doing new things that could not be done before. -- For example, with Blogs, one can post any kind of opinion, idea or information article without the need to pay for the channel (newspapers, fliers, newsletters and magazines.) For a long time, a marketer's job was to get things into the channel, in B2B the trade press. There was the whole world of advertising, PR and collateral creation and dissemination. Notice, how the Internet changed the way we perceive the "channel" in a short time, the trade press changed because of independent web sites and blogs (approximately 1995 to 2002). Now magazines write about blogs not the other way around. This switch can be attributed to the wide range of information and specialization of blogs and their ability to keep current. Besides providing much more information, the content is searchable, referenceable, and can be linked to related information easily. Again, technology changes many things and on a fundamental level, this is not a new phenomena.

It seems to me that very few managers and executives in marketing are using blogs. Marketing people always have things to say. They love to talk to customers that know their product. They love to talk to developers that create new products. They love to talk to researchers with new technologies. They love to talk to sales people about what is going on with the "market". They love to talk to market researchers about "statistics" - what is going on "big picture" ... OK, enough with "they love to talk ..." - you get the point.

This brings up the final point in this post. If you are ahead of the competition with the use of the "new" tools (I call them current tools) you can be ahead of the pack and set a direction in your own domain. New marketing is doing things that were done before better. It's also about beating the competition without more resources. It's about being smart and pushing the envelope of tool use to your benefit. For the first time in a long time you can benefit from new technology, new way of doing things and new market behavior: DON'T WAIT - MARKETS DO NOT WAIT FOR ANYONE

Do You Need to "GET" Blogging to Benefit?

2009-09-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

Military Officers Association of America is a useful and smart site with blog like functions. Take a look at their stories about Afghanistan: honest and insightful (www.MOAA.org)

Trying to sell blogging services is not easy. Specially in a down corporate economy. Seems like corporate managers want ROI, re-branding to beat Microsoft or simply do not understand blogging. The first year I sold blogging writing and design I tried to explain the whole phenomena of blogging. Then I tried to explain how businesses can use blogging to communicate better. Then I tried to explain the international implication of blogging (it really does not matter where you write, edit or manage a blog.) Looking back, most people even after politely listening did not "GET IT". Actually some well meaning (very smart) managers even said that they do not "get it". Some of them understand that "getting it" is not a crucial element in their decision making process. They either bough a blog and had one or did not. As managers concerned with both detail and generality they realize how some new trends are crucial to the future success of a company even while the management does not understand the details. These are the more successful managers that realize change does not wait for anyone. If you make the change you may have a chance to learn and profit. If you do not make the change you will be left behind. It's an old story, but one some people learn only after they go through it themselves.

What does it mean to "GET IT"? The answer lies in a few parts, so let's break it to the bigger elements:

Overall understanding of blogging as a shift in communication: simpler format, emphasis on content (not design, e-Commerce), group interaction.
Seeing specific examples of working blogging in your own domain (seeing is understanding.)
Trusting and testing a blog for a specific business goal (JUST DO IT).
Success or continuation of a blog for business purposes (knowledge base, news repository.)
Using a blog as a simple communication media format: news, press releases, articles, interviews, etc.
Integrating a blog into a business strategy and operation (strategic communication.)

Understanding the overall concept of blogging is probably the most useful single "element". But to some the connections between ideas, stories, facts, discussions, search and getting to the information, tagging and social networking ... it all becomes one big jumble. This reaction is natural with any new complex technology. By now, blogging is no longer a simple form of communication. There are many elements and once they are used, blogs become complex. Start with a goal or someone with experience. Get help in design and operation (databases can become slow after many edits and commenting). Editors and writers can make all the difference, after all a blog has the attributes of a newspaper column or a small magazine. But most of all, get going. There is no substitute to your own experience. Writing and editing a story from beginning to end, getting it on a blog and getting feedback is more valuable than any training course or a consultant's report. Learning skills before and during a blog launch is also extremely helpful. I have seen a few people learn how to write 40 years after leaving their last writing class in college. I have seen people with fear of technology run WordPress and Type Pad like it was an old version Microsoft Word on DOS. There are lessons to learn about SEO and advertising. There are business issues in terms of the time spent versus productivity yielded. But overall, at their core, blogs are a simple communication format. Once you understand how to get a message out, the rest is amplification and refinement. Don't fear the technology behind the blog, don't let people get you tangled up in the details. Focus on the writing, the message, the business goal of informing and helping customers. Good luck and let me know how your blog launch goes.

Tapuda on Twitter: Restaurant Just Twitting for Biz...

2009-09-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

Can a business run just on twitter? Apparently yes. Tapuda (spud or potato) is a small restaurant that by chance started using twitter. They started by advertising their daily specials. Then they updated their customers on a regular basis during the day. Lunch time takeout is one of their specialty. Twitter is an ideal communication channel for the casual restaurant. If you are in the office, getting update on the web is simple. You can also just go to their twitter page and see what is up with them. If you are updated by SMS than you can turn on and off updates. It is easier than SMS, more automatic than calling and getting an update. To the people who are twitter and SMS "hooked" it's a way to do business.

UPDATE: as of mid July 2009 Tapuda has gone "off the air" on twitter. Apparently due to the twitter marketing success they are upgrading and renovating the place. Let's keep an eye on them and see where this business goes.

Blogging for Business: Describe Your Service or Product

2009-09-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

Site advertising legal services for the Ike storm victims. Legal services advertised using the web, Internet Advertising Competition winner 2009

This is a continuation to my article on my blog writing and editing services. I also wonder why more service businesses are not using blogs directly to advertise? The business use of blogging, social networks, social tagging and indexes is new. But communication of business services and products is as old as business itself. Using new ways of communication takes a little experimentation but should not be that hard. Here is a story and commentary on using blogging for direct business information.

Last week I met with a business service provider. She is a consulting recruiter and develops recruiting strategies for companies and individuals. The core skills and knowledge she has packed down, the business side is an "on the job training" affair. She has sixteen years of experience and just started on her own business. The first few months in business she set up a blog, a page on FaceBook, updated her Linked-In profile and made a few sales directly to her old customers. She is at the starting blocks, got a few consultation hours and a few assignments. What's next? A "brochure site"? An additional page on the blog? An article about her offering on the blog? At our meeting, which did not cover her business promotion she asked if a brochure site needs lots of work and attention (SEO, social tagging, updating, google advertising). I was wondering why all this effort does not go to the blog. She said something like "it's just a blog, that's not what people expect from a business..."

Some people do not view a blog as ready for business. Some think that a brochure site is necessary for basic information, sample work (portfolio) and even PDF brochures which prospective customers can download and print. It seems like blogging and social networking is a transitional method to do business. This is probably the case in a few industries, but for the most part each blog article is essentially a page by itself. You can add a separate static page: "about" or "services" or "contact" on most blogging platforms. But in reality, why not add an article in the stream of the posts and make it part of your work. Actually, adding information periodically to the stream of articles has many advantages.

You do not need a separate web site, account, address, contact... pages
You can add a page or a link to the blog's sidebar and make it easy to find.
One article can be linked to any other "about" or "services" article any time.
Articles can also store PDF or image files of brochures.

But most of all, a blog can be your main destination. Newspapers do not have "about" or "services" page before the headline. Magazines proud themselves on a fresh attractive cover on every issue. If you write well and have fresh relevant ideas, a blog article is as good, no, BETTER than a landing page or a home page. If you find examples of "services" or "special offer" articles on professional service blogs please post the links in the comment section. I think that they are out there. If you can't find many it is just the nature of early use of blogs instead of brochure sites and full fledged static CMS sites. There is absolutely no reason why you can't explain your services, offer introductory deals or float an opinion on using your blog. This should sell your service, otherwise you are just going back to the old school of doing things. Think about it, it makes sense!

Page Design: How to Choose a Blog's First Look

2009-09-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

TypePad is a complete platform with page design templates. Simple and focused on the content. For a clean layout take a look at TypePad.COM

Ed: This is a short detour from the introduction to blogging series. PAGE DESIGN is crucial for some people. If a blog is the only web presence you have, a design could give you an advantage over the competition. It could also give you a "first impression" image which you may want to fold into the business' marketing. A simple design focuses the eye at the content: article titles, sidebar content, pictures and article length, etc. Hosted systems like Blogger.com, WordPress.com and TypePad.com give you initial starting points. But usually you will want to customize the look even at the setup stage. You will certainly need to customize the look later on. Researching on your own or hiring a page designer can be helpful. I would leave the custom design after a little experimentation. Even if you already know what you want, write a few articles (posts) and ask for feedback from people. Another method is to experiment on your own with the page design. In all the blogging systems you can add and remove widgets (boxes which are part of a page), change the style and look of the page itself (with images, background), change the post look, length and widgets of the post itself and change the "template" itself (this is like a template in Power Point or a style sheet in design programs.) All these changes you can do quickly and see the results in seconds.

Like I suggested in earlier posts about writing and editing, it helps to look at other blogs to get ideas for your design. To me a page layout is like a new house. Some people design everything and have it furnished before they move in. Some like to live in it for a while and move the furniture a few times before they feel comfortable ordering new furniture and redoing the kitchen. With a page there are a few things that will affect the content itself. The surrounding design: sidebars, widgets, post heading and footer will focus or distract from the writing. You can reverse engineer other people's blogs, try different widgets, track traffic and comments and see what fits your needs. If your blog does not get lots of traffic, let changes stay for a while and see what people think. Remember that most blogs do not invoke strong opinion on the design (or layout). Even if you have a design blog ask friends or customers on what they think. Let's get down to details.

Designing your blog page is easy. Blogs for the most part use templates. In blogger (this site is hosted on Blogger.COM) there are standard templates that come when you set up the blog and templates developed by designers you can use for free or buy. In WordPress there are hundreds of templates, from simple free ones to highly customizable "premium" templates (cost vary from $30 to hundreds.) You can also hire a template designer or customizer to make changes to a template or design you one to your own specs. Complex templates (also called themes) can have enough "elements" (or code) to become a complete web site and some actually use WordPress or Drupal as a basis for a magazine blog. These customizations enable publishers to support a large team of writers and editors. Some blog themes are used for Pod Casting or photo magazines. Note how the content (article text, images, MP3 files) can stay constant and the template change dramatically. There are some limitations and the theme designer will usually help with drastic changes. If you need to redesign the template completely be aware of changes to connection widgets which sometimes get "lost" (plug-ins in Java Script from twitter, digg, stumble-upon, etc.) In general, if you need help with a professional template, the designer or coder can take care of all the details and help you understand what needs to be redone and what potentially needs to change or be lost. Good luck with your page design and get going... if page design is a little intimidating - you simply need to get your feet wet - blogging for business is a great way to promote and market your image! ITS WORTH THE EFFORT!

Researching Technorati for Blog Samples, Google's Blog

2009-09-09T02:01:00.001-07:00

Google's blog is on Blogger.com, it has a simple layout with wide audience topics

With a blog strategy in hand (see last post) start looking at blogs as samples. Technorati is a blog rating and tagging portal. You can "claim" your own blogs, review, rate and tag other people's blogs or review blog articles one at a time. On your blog you can add a Technorati button that will take readers to a submit form automatically. Technorati also lists their top 100 blogs. On their list you can see the top blogs according to their user rating. There are not necessarily the "best" blogs in each category but they do rate by traffic and tagging popularity (read about their "authority" measure, a higher number is more popularity).

Tecnorati top 100 blogs is an excellent resource to get an idea of the wide range of blog design, content and audience. Take a look at The Official Google Blog (number 7 today when I looked at the list). It is a simple design, hosted on Blogger.com (a free service by google), and covers general topics both technical and business related to google products. Take a look at the top 100 blogs as a starting point. Find a blog with articles written to audience similar to your target audience. Although the blogs on Technorati are skewed toward technology, politics and personal opinion, there are also blogs on other general topics.

There are other tagging portals such as Stumbleupon.com. Stumbleupon is a general purpose article review and tagging portal. It is used by blog readers to rate blog articles. Bloggers that want to promote articles to the general public use Stumbleupon.com. To search blog articles, you can also use Google Blog Search. This is a specialized google search focused on blogs.

I advise you to look at 10 to 20 blogs for subject matter, design (page layout) and other features. Read 3 to 5 blogs carefully. Look at your strategy write-up and see if you can reverse engineer the editor and writers. Give them attributes (deep and narrow focus, highly specialized field, etc.) and see which ones fit your view. You can always go back to the strategy and add more details based on your research. Now you can pretty much describe in detail what you want the first cut of the blog to look like.

next: outline, platform, get SET!

Blog Subject: One Hour Strategy Session

2009-09-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

State your editorial strategy early in the blog's planning stage, read more below.

You can develop a blog strategy in one hour. I use this technique with people without a clear picture of a blog. Some people see and read blogs and want to do something of their own. This happens with many people who have something useful to say but need to work out the details. This happens with professionals and managers with some sort of specialty. Once you have a "one hour" strategy you can think better about your overall message. You can also integrate the blog strategy into your overall strategy. What can you do in one hour? Take the following attributes as a starting point. Add attributes of your own. Take a look at a few blogs or newsletters and see if you can "reverse engineer" the strategy behind their work.

Subject matter: Describe the posts in a few sentences or a paragraph. Computer professionals refer to subject of blogs as "meta" information (information about information, see M-W metadata). In my Tel Aviv blog I wrote: "Tel Aviv, Israel's second largest city, is one of the hidden gems among cities. Streets are noisy with cars and people. Cafes are open early and are full by 11. There is music and theater in styles from western to middle eastern..." Seth Godin's blog is about his books and ideas related to them. He uses various techniques to stimulate discussion. This is something most people can not do but works great.
Exposure: How are people going to find the blog? Who will be interested in spreading the word? Here you can also add details about the content and articles. What are you going to say that will make people want to share what they read? Exposure is probably the most variable factor in blogging today. Some blogs like Arianna Huffington's political site is virtually a digital newspaper. While some product blogs are so specific they will never have thousands of readers.
Frequency: How often are you going to write? What time sensitivity are important for publication (news items, company or product press releases). Some blog strategists advise on a post a day or every two days. Blogs are a flow of information, you are better off with short articles more frequently than long articles. Although Clayton Christensen blog a Harvard business school strategist on innovation and Tim O'Reilly blog on Internet and technology trends are clearly based on long articles with deep thinking. Both blogs are authored by a team of writers.
Writing Quality: Who writes articles? what is the ability and experience of the writer? What source material do they use? What can be gathered and reused from other sources? (company / product / newsletter). Writing quality is probably the one item that can make or break a blog. There is too much competition for "eye balls on the screen" to neglect this point. If you can not write well on your own get a good writer or an editor. The same goes for material acquired from outside sources, if it is not high quality it will detract from the blog's attractiveness.
Editing Quality: Think of a blog as a newspaper column. Or even a tiny magazine. Even with one writer, the editorial role is crucial. Who and how are you going to set subject matter? What is the important message you need to deliver? What series of topics are you planning? Who is the planner? If you don't think an editor can make a difference, read the book by Lauren Weisberger "The Devil Wears Prada" (there is also a movie).
Sample Blogs: This item takes more time and you should probably do it ahead of time. There are millions of blogs and probably thousands of really good ones. Take a look at the subject matter, does it fit a similar line as your ideas? Take a look at the design, the content, the writing style... all the attributes that matter for your work. You can take one sample and use it as a prototype, I get request from people who ask "can you make me one like that"? You can take one attribute from a few blogs. You should also have a list of what you don't like. Sometimes if a blog has something you don't like it is more important. I would not advise you to pre-design all the fine details at this point. Give yourself slack to experiment later in the design. You will also need to work with a design once you have articles, comments, and other components on the page. If you want to search for blogs take a look at Technorati. A portal for blog rating and tagging. The amount of information about blogs is staggering. Google blog search is also useful in finding articles in blogs, no rating here.
Resources (staff, budget, equipment) These are items crucial for the corporate blogger. While you can use free or almost free products as an individual, companies usually want to tie blogs to their overall Internet operation. If you need to schedule setup, installation, software purchase or licensing do it as soon as possible.
Policy: In some corporate or organizational (government, military, etc.) you will need to set policy, mission or target goals. You may need to comply with higher level policies in terms of disclosure, intellectual property licensing / attribution. For example, the State of Israel owns a great deal of writing and images. They do not have a licensing or attribution mechanism which is useful for blogs (i.e. small projects). You simply can not use any photograph from a government ministry without permission and it is difficult to obtain permission on many items. University material can have the same issue. Authors do not necessarily own their material or they own only a fraction of their work. You will need permission from the university to publish. On the positive side you can usually set your own publication policy. Take a look at the New York Times Company Policy on Ethics in Journalism. You will not need this much of a policy on the first 100 blog posts, but it's good to know that someone can be your beacon of light on policy.
Business drivers: What is the driving forces behind the blog? What are you going to achieve? What products or projects are you supporting? Are there secondary factors or outside interests in the blog? Who is responsible to the blog's results? In business there is always a dependency on external factors. Make sure these are clearly defined before the project takes it's own shape.
Corporate drivers: Following the business drivers point do the same with the organization itself. In non-corporate environments this could be a more crucial strategy element. In governments there is usually a clear and strict policy on publication. You may need approval on your subject matter or the writer's rank (low level workers in most governmental organizations do not have publication authority).

These strategy items will get you started. Do not take more than an hour. Do as much as you can quickly. Than let someone review, critique or modify the strategy. If someone comes to me with a strategy it would be much easier and faster to get a plan together. It will also help in getting things nailed down once the work starts. Finally, if you work in an organization with many different interests this could be a way to unify strategy for the blog. Take this as a first cut (you only spent an hour). There is no need to finalize a strategy or policy. There is also no need to have too many specific details. Blogs started out as an informal communication sites. By their nature they are more personal and revealing than formal publications (official web sites). Use the history and scope of blogs as a guiding standard for your strategy work.

Blogger and Social Networker for Hire

2009-09-06T00:55:00.000-07:00

Should you hire a blogger to get you started? What can you communicate with a blog?

Can a professional social networker get you noticed? What are you missing without Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and MySpace?

Do you need a blog? Do you want to communicate using a social network? Do you need help in designing and running a blog? Hire a blogger or a social networker - get your message out there. Otherwise people will not know what you have to say.

Designing a blog is not hard but take time. Writing articles for blogs takes dedication over a long period of time. Blogs also need to stick to a clear subject connecting readers. Blog editors and writers may need to experiment with format and content until readers respond.

The use of blogs and social networks started out with great energy and enthusiasm. Early bloggers came from all sort of specialties. They wrote, edited, designed and promoted on their own, it was fun. Now that blog format is an established standard for communicating effectively corporate managers are taking notice. With all the millions of blogs, there are still many who are not able to design and run a blog. The ones without blogs are going to miss out to competition.

If you are a product manager, a marketer, a technologist - and you need to communicate to people efficiently get started. If you need help with developing a strategy for subjects, if you want to test some ideas, if you need to write and edit some articles, give me a call [tel: +972-54-314-2441] or send a message [ami . vider @ gmail . com]

Social Media, Blogging and Technical Content

2009-08-30T22:12:00.000-07:00

Phillip Greenspun's book on creating communities was not only pioneering but also a premonition of times to come: he proved out to be right

If you are a technical professional you see how social media, specially blogging is being used. In a recent interview, John Chambers, Cisco's CEO described internal company video blogging. He seemed surprised at the change in his attitude towards blogging. Apparently as recently as two years ago he would not have taken up blogging, it was for non-business techies and leisure time teens. Until his managers eased him into it and he noticed the results. Cisco has also adopted an external blogging effort which is a good example on how to start (see Cisco's blogs). Cisco is similar to other large technology companies and their need to communicate very deep technical messages to a small number of busy decision makers (Intel's blogs, Oracle blogs). In a recent article, Bob Scheier a technology writer, described this phenomena in an article with an interesting title: "Still Think Social Media is Only for Teenagers or Ditsy Trend Followers?" (see article). Blogging is not new to technologists, actually blogs and wikis have been used for Linux support in the early days of the Linux. I wrote a while ago about Phil Greenspun's social commenting features as far back as the 1980's in Photo.NET. Phil was awarded a Ph.D. from MIT for his effort and at the time he commented how the old guard professors, the ones teaching operating system and adaptive systems, were wondering what was happening to their MIT graduates now that they are not solving differential equations or comming up with theories in computing. Phil put up a photo commenting and uploading site and quickly realized that the "community" can get more photos and helpful information on photography that he can ever do by himself. That mix of curiosity and technical ability created Photo.NET and eventually Ars Digita a pioneering company using open source code to build communities for corporate customers (Ars Digita Community server is not open source and lives beyond the company) [Greenspun's book: Philip and Alex's guide to Web Publishing / Amazon / B&N / ~~Borders~~].

Blogs are now the preferred format for technical communication. They are focused channels for information, ideas and discussion. In some companies like Red Hat, blogs are not yet a corporate policy, they are not a business driven channel (which Oracle has done for a long time now) (Red Hat Apps blogs). But the Fedora blog is an interesting departure. The Fedora blog is an interesting and informative channel mixing personal life stories with useful technical information. Even if you are not a technologists and even if you do not work with Fedora, this is an excellent example of a blog for techies. I can immagine a Fedora system admin or developer reading this blog on a regular basis and getting a sense of community. This is something technology marketers aim for in their work and rarely achieve with any other method. In the past we went to conferences in snazzy hotels for a few days just to rub elbows and exchange ideas. Technology companies still hold seminars and send out printed newsletters, which serve as community information channels. Now we can do it in more depth and have our birthday pictures viewed by everyone to boot (post also on the Fefora Planet blog August 30, 2009).

Finally, I don't think that blogging is something that the entrenched managers "don't get". It is more of seeing and using than "getting it". It is like most technologies which are very different than what we do today. Until now discussion groups (message boards) were not friendly ways to get people to communicate so we only used them when we needed crucial information. Groups like Yahoo-Groups were focused but had difficult interfaced to deal with. Blogs are a forward step, progress is a nice thing in technology. If you are a curious and daring soul, try blogging. Put time, energy and creativity into it. Learn from the thousands of free resources, blogs about blogging were the big thing when blogs started a decade ago, the articles are still there. And send me your blog address or a good story. After all, this is what social media is all about.

Business Blogging Ideas (tm) Flier

2009-07-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

How do you start using our service? Why do you need a blog? Blogging can start out as a simple tool. Your blog can also become a popular channel of communication. Look at popular blogs and notice the way they are written (content), how they are formatted (design), how they are publicized in indexes and search engines (promoted). Start with simple options, this way you can tell us what you need. As an introduction to the work we do take a look at this flier.

Introduction flier to business blogging

Benefits of blogging: starting out is useful as a way of getting a message out in a blog format.

You can also download the full image .JPG on flicker

Blogging for a Real Business: Three Strategy Elements (getting started)

2009-07-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

A blog can be a high volume magazine (i.e. Huffington post) all the way to one page teaser for a book (Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters). It can also be marketing and promotion content in support of businesses. Technologists use blogs to inform and influence (google, Facebook, YouTube, Craig's list see also Bill Marriott).

Google main blog: simple and professional image - general interest topics

There was a trend of CEO blogs where company chiefs delivered a message as the image of the company. The trend ended because keeping up with a blog, making it interesting and relevant is harder than first imagined. It takes dedication and skill to write on a regular basis and produce a flow of interesting articles (specially in one specific topic). [yet US president Obama has an active blog] Once you can write a steady stream of articles you have a tool to deliver a message and shape an image. Image shaping blogs need a clear direction: what, how and when to deliver your message, so a coherent message is clear. Take the opportunity to develop a message strategy. Than develop blog message tactics. If you are new at this don't be affraid to experiment, make changes until you are satisfied. Technology companies produce a huge volume of information but little is in a coherent form, a blog can help here. A blog's linear format helps in keeping the message focused to one topic. The single thread format helps in keeping readers on track with the strategy without being obvious. Even a small loyal readership and casual visitors are a valuable return for most blogs. If you have a clearl message they will come back and stay around.

Print media strategies do not always work for a blog. In the past strategies needed to fit print media limitations (narrow channel / cast) and P/R firm expenses (usually very high). Blogs are much more available to readers but they also compete with a huge amount of other messages on the Internet. This may mean that your first strategy and tactics will change as you experiment. Remember to give your blog strategy a real value. This will help you get over the initial push, to most bloggers starting is the hardest part. If you need to compare a blog to a P/R firm or traditional media you need to be creative. Blogs deliver your messaged differently, they sustain the reader longer and are readily available to anyone. Press releases and regular print articles have much shorter life span, they are not available to anyone. Develop a strategy that will fit the blog format. Focus on the key component of a message: simple image, core message and continuous awareness. Let's look at these intangible aspect and see if a blog can clarify them:

Simple image promotion with a blog: Image is the first impression you make on someone. It is also the overall "feeling" someone has about your company and product. A clear statement of what your image should be is helpful in guiding the writing and editing in the long term. Google's official blog has simple design. It covers many topics and has a light but professional image. The articles discuss general topics which affect most users and developers. For more in-depth topics there are other places (technical or business) to find information.
Core message clarification and promotion with a blog: Blogs are excellent tools to clarify a message. Blog content can be short or long, it can cover any topic and readers come in all type from the serious to the curious. Messages are crucial for a business image. Without your own message people get other messages which are usually wrong. Shaping your message is how a company tells its point of view. Marketers and P/R professionals have been shaping images for a long time. Blogs simply make the process easier. Also, at least for now, blogs are more accepted authorities than other forms of media. (this will change)
Continuous awareness with a blog: Continuous awareness of readers is the best attribute of a blog format. The format gives the reader fresh information in a focused package all the time. Until now only the best run and biggest organizations have been able to deliver a continuous message in a clearly defined format. Now the game has changed, anyone can spend the resources and have his message read. Today we can do the same with one big difference, our information can be tied to many other pieces of information: people like to a big picture and they like when we help them with see how things are connected.

These are basic concepts you can use for defining your blog strategy. Use this and other concepts to think and explain your approach. Also use these ideas to develop your own ideas for article topics, overall blog direction, the approach to get information, all will help in starting with a clear vision on how to proceed. If anyone out there has a blog design plan or want to develop one with me, let me know.

This article topic came from a question the umpteenth time: "why some bloggers are effective while others dribble on?" . Effectiveness in blogging is measured as a wide range of results. In general it means a continuous operation and improvement with time. People who write well and do it for a long period of time are not only good life observers and sharp thinkers, they also write so people want to read more. This means they thought and planned their writing. Sometimes they think about writing more than they actually write. If you approach a blog as serious work you need to develop strategies and tactics. So take time to think and plan. Be clear to others what your writing is saying. Write well and on topic. Change strategies if it makes sense.

Simplified Traditional Technical Marketing - a base to build on

2009-07-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

Apple's iPod used dancing silhouettes which is a big campaign. This is a product that needs marketing as much as any consumer product. ICS and enterprise software do not use consumer product marketing techniques.

Learning a bit of traditional marketing is useful for Web2.0 technologists. A technologist has an outsider's view of marketing and it's not always clear what marketing is all about. Marketing is usually defined as the 'three P's':

"definition and management of the Price, Place, and Promotion of a product".

In the technical world this also means defining the product (essentially specifying to engineering what the "package" will contain). It also means defining the three P's by understanding the market and the competition. This is true with more traditional consumer products but in the technology world it turns out a little different and crucial to understand.

This sounds simple enough but as a famous advertising executive once said: "learning marketing takes a year, practicing marketing takes a lifetime". This is because our work is highly competitive and the market conditions shift daily. The most important function of practicing technology marketing is bridging between the internal world of the technologist and the external world of the consumer (or market). This is more of a role and an attitude than just skills and experience. Marketers need to play the "devil's advocate" in front of the technologist when making a case for a more user friendly design. Reducing the complexity and price of a product. Enabling easier channel support. In front of a customer the marketer plays the "technologist" pushing them to try harder to make use of a technically complicated design. In convincing them to pay more for features they may never use. This puts the technical marketer in the middle ground and he/she needs to know both worlds well enough to influence them both. A big part of the work is translating from the "use model" to the "technical model". Use model is the final consumer's point of view. Technical model is the feature specification.

Technical marketing can be viewed as a "story telling" about a product. To tell a story about how a product works means building a model of some sort. It also means knowing who will hear the story (customers) and what other stories the customer hears at the same time (from competitors or other users). I use the "story telling" analogy to illustrate the more abstract concept of translating ideas of an abstract product quickly into usable concrete terms anyone can understand. The story is actually called a few different names (use model, features and benefits, package) and the name changes as the marketing "process" moves from before a product is designed all the way to final customer's hands.

The first phase in product marketing "story telling" is planning and definition. Here a marketer defines the product in enough detail for engineering to design and manufacture a product. Basic product definition starts out with the description from a user perspective then engineers add their story telling which explain how they will design and build the product (i.e. core technology, functions, features, components, elements). These would be algorithms, data structures, package, look & feel, physical components (such as hardware components, circuit elements, etc.) At this point of a product definition the exact customer and how he will use the product and competing products are still a little vague (that's OK for now). Once the basic product definition is done and engineers buy into the product a marketing team starts a customer and competitive work. A product idea needs to be seen by many people who will use this product.

The definition bridges the core technical specification with the main uses of the product. One of the best ways to define a product is by using "mock ups" or "demos" in front of perspective customers. Software products start out as screen shots (demo screens). It is very hard to demonstrate a software product's functionality, but sometimes it may be useful to do some engineering and get a "dummy mock up" which actually shows some functions and helps explain general uses. Hardware products like ICs (Integrated Circuits) are tested in front of customers mostly through preliminary specifications. A customer that sees a specification of the "next product version (the next big thing)" will usually give good feedback about how he/she could use the product. This also includes the drawbacks and missing functions which will make the product unusable as it comes out the first time. Without preliminary specifications or mock-up screen shots most potential uses will not have much to say about a product.

Blackberry personal communicator is marketed mostly through "channels", these are the carriers which provide the phone service.
Once the product is well designed and tested in front of customers the engineers can get to work. At this point the marketer needs to start preparing the "channels" and the "market" for the product's introduction. Channels are a sales term for the distributors, Representative firms and direct sales Representatives. I will talk more about the sales process in another article. So far, the launch preparation was a combination of the "promotion" and "price" aspect of the marketing mix. Most technology products are not promoted with advertising and public display the way consumer products are marketed. They use channels of distribution to promote products. New products usually need extensive support and training to get users started. This is the role of the channel. Sometimes technology marketers will have technical people who are called "application engineers". These technical marketers develop demos and training material to help early adopters start out.

The final part of this article is an introduction to a product launch. In the "marketing mix: price, place, and promotion" an introduction of the product to the market is a combination of all the pieces and has to be ready in time. The price is usually set by a competing product's price, the ability of the market to sustain a price over time, and the need to recoup the development cost. The place is usually the combination of the channels and the end market itself, where the customers sitting? Usually in companies which consume the technology, ICs are used by system companies building cell phones, computers and consumer products.

When the place is the "channels" it means using intermediate companies to deliver the product to the end customer. Sometimes in consumer marketing a place is the most crucial part of the marketing mix. If a product is on a shelf and people see it they will buy it. In technology companies that usually means who can get to the end targeted consumer. For example, Intuit the producer of Quicken (a personal accounting package) marketed their product heavily to stock brokers in the early stage of their promotion (1980's in the USA). The idea was to hook them and use them as a "reference" to get to the end consumer (average check book balancing user). Stock brokers were a relatively small market, but highly influential with their customers. Once the stock brokers started keeping their client's accounting on Quicken they could influence their customers to use the application as well.

Finally the promotion is how a new product will be introduced to the consumer. When you buy a new computer from HP or Dell you will get a bunch of "free trial" programs like virus protection, Quicken (personal accounting), and maybe a trial to Microsoft Office or a graphic processing program for your photos (Photoshop by Adobe). This is one form of promotion which is relatively low cost, is distributed to a wide market and even has the feel of a reference, it seems like HP and Dell are endorsing the software. The only cost to the marketer is the management of a relationship with Dell and HP. Microsoft does this with their higher end Office suites. When you buy a low end package they let you try more applications (like Access database and Visio charting).

This article used the traditional "marketing mix" model. For the most part, technology companies use this model initially to get started. Once I explore the other functions of the marketing "process" (I will also refer to this at the "marketing flow" ), we will go into more into specific areas of technical marketing which are unique to the field. But it's always good to know the very basic traditional techniques.

How, Why, and What about bringing old sk00l to blogging

2009-07-08T13:54:00.001-07:00

One of the questions that I hear all the time is how to "educate" or "convert" an old marketer into a Web2.0 model (as if people were cars or computers). It is similar to the question of "when is business going to get back to the good old days when technology ruled high and every company was growing? (i.e. making money)". To me it seems that these questions avoid the simple observation that things change. They change all the time and not always for the better (i.e. for everyone). Blogging platforms like blogger and WordPress were suppose to make writing content on the web easier and reading it much much easier. Well it did and it DID NOT! Which is what happens with every technology change. (I did not say "technology innovation" or "improvement" on purpose)

The idea behind blogging was: just find a blog platform you like and start publishing what you want. You got freedom from the traditional publishers, no cost of publishing and distribution, no censorship... hey this is great!!! As an isolated vague idea in space (before we actually had massive amount of blogs) this sounded too good to be true. (so did nuclear power - free energy for everyone) But this is not exactly what happened, not because people didn't know how to write, edit, research, promote... not because people didn't have something to say, opinion to voice, ideas to float... all the things that newspapers and trade magazines do very well. Whatever your profession, from technologist to business, from scientist to retailer, from car mechanic to pen collector, you may know how to do your work but you usually don't know how to explain it. Most professionals also do not have the experience to write well, write consistently and to do it week after week, year after year. Most professionals are not interested in writing that much or in that much detail. So for the most part, even though we have the "technology" for blogging, that is just one aspect of a blog that makes it useful. Blogging and wikis can be just about the writing. Essentially if you write well and have something important to say people will eventually read it. But all the functions which publishers of newspapers have invented, from soliciting good writing, editing, design, and eventual promotion and advertising; end up to be just as crucial for bloggers and wikis. So in the end a good writer with something to say still needs help editing, still need motivation to get out the articles in a steady flow, still has to have a decent design... all these things. Even promotion and advertising and "distribution" (RSS, index sites) is crucial.

The other technologies of what O'Reilly observed as Web2.0 are even more foreign and remote to people (just today, this will change and quickly). While Wikipedia has revolutionized organization and gathering of information on a large scale, wikis are very hard to run well and even harder to edit and attract content. This is what has made encyclopedias of the past so expensive and fairly rare in people's homes. Encyclopedia is something libraries pride themselves of having. If you look carefully at encyclopedias of the past notice that they actually are not too prolific. While they gather a great deal of information they are hard to publish, took a very long time, and in the end did not catch as a popular format. Let's not forget their cost, when the format did not "catch" they essentially became expensive. I think this will be true for the web as well. That does not mean that wikis are immediately limited in use. Actually, just like other forms of digital technology wikis will probably become more popular in other forms not necessarily encyclopedias.

New Internet technologies make certain things very easy "technically". This is essentially true with all technologies. This is what many business executives see immediately, the "new way to make money". But the next step in the use of a new technology is the real life application. Technologists know this very well. A base technology without applications and users which benefit from them is not going to be profitable. Business people do not always build in the cost of developing applications or managing outside companies to build them. These two factors: slow momentum of usage and ideas for new uses of a technology are both "good and bad". The good side is opportunities which blogging, wikis, and social networking has given us. The bad side is the people left behind. Essentially we can not change these qualities. The interesting observation which a few of us asking that question AGAIN and AGAIN and... "when are people going to upgrade themselves to Web2.0" and again avoids the change factor.

But what do some of us see that the others don't? After all, some "older folks" blog and some "young guns" still design brochures to be distributed by the old mail system? Besides the ability to "imagine the future" here are a few observations of what make some people understand Web2.0 and some don't:

Seeing the full picture of how an interactive site works, either over time or over a series of articles not in time.

Seeing good examples of content, design, subject matter, or organization (editing, arrangement) - essentially anything that is complete and already been used by people.

Seeing examples that are understood and clearly relevant. If you are a business professional only new business blogs will help you understand how this could help YOU.

Direct involvement in a blog site, writing, editing, use, definition, review, specification for a project.

Pressure, explanation, challenge, need or anything that will make you think and imagine a blog (this usually comes from peer pressure, a friend or respected personality, competitive examples).

Think carefully on what made you use the first computer, the first real professional tool, the first time you ordered a book or a gift on the Internet. These seem small but changes in people specially when it comes to something that will change beliefs and understanding comes small steps. So I do not ask any more "how are people going to be upgraded to Web2.0" and I usually don't answer it... now I will just send them to this article... uuuffff... one step forward... :-)

Technorati claim: a5xjth7kcu [temp]

Tech blogs not just talk? a technology marketers' worry

2009-07-06T00:21:00.000-07:00

Abbot Laboratory's Omnilink Biliari Stent, does it belong in a blog?

A technology marketer in a medical device start-up just gave me his opinion about blogs: "they are just talk, and if you are going to talk, you need someone really good to do it." He gets about an offer every two weeks to get a blog started. But his company does not see potential for professionally written articles from a 23 year old blogger that cut his teeth on commenting in political or Internet gambling blogs. His web design and SEO provider has made a pitch for blogging, the result was disappointing at best. The image of the blogger simply does not fit the serious business of selling medical devices to doctors. In his words "doctors over the age of 50 do not read blogs". I wanted to say: "executives in fortune 500 do read Clayton Christensen's and Jakob Nielsen's blogs" and they take them seriously. Imitating Bill Clinton's famous political election slogan: "it's the economy stupid" was on my lips. But I didn't say it. I wanted to go back to my office and gather examples to "prove him wrong".

Once I started gathering lists of "serious blogs" I realized that it's not going to be useful, not to me or to him. Not only to this potential client, but also to anyone in his company. There are two ways of looking at communication. These are more basic than marketing communication as a whole. The failure in the image of blogs falls into these two categories:

The media itself: contextual association in what the medium itself represents. This is what Marshal McLuhan defined as: "the medium is the massage". TV is for entertainment, you didn't put medical ads on TV in the US in the 1950's, you didn't do it even in the 1970's. You don't put serious professional communication on blogs, it's a waste of time.
The content: what Bill Clinton's campaign adviser James Carville coined "it's the economy stupid". You focus on what you want to say not where the message runs. On TV for Americans presidents never talked about serious subjects, but Carville made Clinton do it!

Who is "right"? If you are a start-up medical company you worry about your effectiveness. If you don't get it "right" the company will suffer, maybe even get hit so hard that you will not be able to recover. But why focus on small medical start-ups? This issue is global. Big medical companies, technology companies, consumer companies, they all have to worry about their communication effort. What about independent consultants, with even more at stake, much smaller budget?

Marshal McLuhan still echo after all the years, history of medium repeats?

If you are going to communicate and market effectively you need BOTH! YES BOTH! The medium has to be right to be effective at all, this is what everyone who starts out thinks. The medium is definitely stereotyped, which is what Marshal McLuhan observed in the 1960's. Does this put blogs in the world of "just talk"? Just political commenting and deep technical conversations? This seems to be the case in the mind of traditional corporate marketers*. But if it's just talk, why do serious thinkers use such trivial medium? Well, here comes Carville's observation in the serious political arena of presidential elections: the message itself is MORE important. Why is this the case? Because you need to get your message out PERIOD! Even on TV news that has the image of entertainment more than information you need to use it as if it was "serious medium". Carville and more and more media experts understand that there is no substitute to getting the listener's ear and eye. Even if you don't fit into the medium's stereotyped mold.

This leads us to the message itself. If you want to communicate a message, if you want to make sure someone clearly understands you, how do you go about doing it? In the days of Marshal McLuhan you had to do it on TV and pages of magazines. Today it's the Internet. Obviously there is attention paid to messages on the Internet, specially the big company's messages about technology and business. I am not going to convince anyone that Ariana Huffington will get serious about the economy or unemployment, or that bloggers will stop writing about spiders, socks and Lego construction. But that does not matter, if you ignore the medium's stereotyped image (blogs are for just talk). That's what I call 'falling into the stereotype trap'.

The stereotype trap is what Carville clearly saw in the early Clinton presidential campaign. The TV reporter asks you a question about anything, and you answer it. You have to, you are on TV! That's what TV viewers want, that reporter knows what will get ON TV! -- When I write it here it sounds a little sarcastic and maybe silly. But this is exactly what small medical equipment marketers are doing with blogs. But they are in good company, take a look at Microsoft's blogs.

Microsoft has a "community Blogs" page with introduction: " Blogs are Web pages which are updated frequently, written from the point of view of an individual, written in an informal tone, and usually expose an RSS feed for syndication. Use the directory below to find blogs about Microsoft technologies written by Microsoft employees. These blogs will provide you insights and opinions about using Microsoft technologies and software. " Sure enough reading through the blogs they are very technical "insider" articles by individuals. They probably replaced newsletters and articles with blogs. But you will not find "serious business" information here.

Microsoft BI (Business Intelligence) department has a blog. The landing page needs a formatting fix but once you go to an article the blog takes a traditional look with Tag cloud, archives, blog roll on the right sidebar. So here you will find a bit of serious talk about Microsoft's business. Maybe Microsoft is not a good example of blogs for business.

Let's look at what the software industry calls a more "progressive" company. Red Hat is the company which popularized open source software. They essentially "packages" open source and made it useful to the common technology geek. Get a Red Hat Linux "distribution" and Linux works just like windows. Here there are few sections of their web site which are essentially blogs. Red Hat Magazine is a blog. Red Hat press section is a blog and they call it "News Blog" at the home page.

Taking a look at Adobe's blogs, they seem to be much like Microsoft's. Lots of technical blogs for each product and a many personal blogs. Some blogs I would say are more "strategic" or high level. Take a look at the security blog, here is technical information but not just for the pure technologist. But than again Adobe can be considered an old stogy institution in comparison to real Web2.0 companies.

So, let's look at Google! Sure enough google has a blog section with directory for lots of blogs. Just an an example take a look at an article Helping Healthcare Providers Become More Efficient. Maybe this is not useful for the big 50+ medical professional but it is certainly useful to the people who look for solutions. Maybe in the medical profession the solutions come from the bottom not the top. But how are you going to get to the top? I think that google's official blog answers this question. Google's main blog is a mix of news and business articles. I am not sure that this will sway a serious business user but probably 1/3 of the articles could fit into a serious business blog for google.

I should probably do a series of blog surveys to see who is "in" and who is "out". Or more accurately who is "serious about business" and who is "just a tech talker". Sorry for the sarcasm but I do not have a way to categorize this better. If you do, just drop me a line.

The moral of the story? Blogs are not just for "marketing light" - Blogging falls into the category of what content will deliver your message. If you look at the Internet as the medium of today's business, blogs are just one channel (or format).

* There is another view of traditional corporate marketers which comes from their traditional suppliers. A big web design, SEO, or even hosting company is not going to offer blogging if they do not have strong writers, strategist, and researchers to support this service.

Culture Shock of Web2.0: How to Adopt and Adapt

2009-03-13T01:18:00.000-07:00

Culture Shock - Do we need Web2.0 book?

Is the idea of culture shock applied to Web2.0 seem too theoretical? This idea seems to fit well with what we see in technology use. While some companies and individuals thrive others seem to sink. Or as the anthropological theory describes: in shock! Technology use in applications is such a phenomena; it either motivates or alienates people. Technology use also has the quality of resonating with certain groups or in certain locations. Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg first described this phenomena in terms of adopting to a different culture by native Americans (Indians, Eskimos) in Canada. His ideas apply to Web2.0 because the Internet has made communication more intimate and immediate. The Internet use changes the way people communicate, inform and interact just as much are a foreigner enters a new community. It is also just as available to anyone. Recent events in places like Iran and China where the young generations are using the Internet to organize and protest social oppression are good examples of how Web2.0 can change the way people interact. In Iran there are more bloggers per capita than anywhere else in the region (even Israel). Internet connectivity and blogging software technology have turned a society with limited legal expression opportunity to a highly connected society. This phenomena was seen in Russia during the communist era where copiers were used to duplicate censured literature. The Palestinian intifada used portable FAX machines and public phones to communicate and organize avoiding Israeli military intelligence.

Beyond the theory there are crucial business aspects which new technology managers need to take into account when social behavior is involved. All of the developments in social networking, personal communication (cell phone, VoIP) and use of open source software is highly dependent on motivation of social groups to use certain technologies in their life. Transitions to new ways of communicating and organizing needs to make life easier, simpler, more effective or even add a new dimension to life. Blogs are not more intimate than newspaper columns but they give a format and accessibility not available until now.

The Web2.0 idea has been with us for a long time, Tim O'Reilly wrote his article explaining the idea of Web2.0 on September 30 2005. This article is not a definition of what to do with the web as much as an observation of a trend (what is happening on the web). Actually, the Internet as a place for two way communication is what made Web2.0 idea popular. This popularity is growing into a major trend with many different applications: communication, information, protest, political ideology, financial services, the applications are becoming a new flood of networking. This is what happened in the 1990's when web site technology made shopping and information sharing easy (Amazon, e-Bay, Yahoo, google). The idea of creating a common place for groups to communicate, share ideas, write articles, distribute songs and video is not new. The site Photo.NET started by Phil Greenspun in 1993 (16 years now). It was a basis for a book Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing [amazon] [b&n] published in 1999. So the ideas of Web2.0 are not that new and by the time O'Reilly coined the term Amazon, e-Bay and many other sites had many people using helpful "Web2.0 functions". So why some people take to all these ideas quickly and some are slow? Why do some companies are 'totally out of the game?' It's a personal and group communication culture shock. Until now it was hard to get your ideas to many people. It also took time to write, sing or photograph and present it to people. It was also hard to get to people who are interested in what you have to say. Even magazines and local cable TV shows did not have the immediacy and the focused audience.

Companies and individuals adopting Web2.0 for communication, marketing, customer relations are diving into a new world of not doing business as usual. There are just as many risks as rewards, you can get it right and produce a service like Amazon or Photo.NET which changes the way people buy and interact with each other. This takes vision and leadership. The difference between Oberg's observation and technology change is in the group behavior. There is a group of creators, the initial core developers and marketers which takes an idea and makes it into a usable popular tool. Technologists call this the "killer app". Marketers have called this a paradigm shift, the innovator's dilemma or crossing the chasm (also leading edge or bleeding edge technology has been used). There is another anthropological group which adopts and disseminates the technology. These are the "early adopters" they either need the functions a technology brings or simply want to do something new (cool, innovative, different). Early adopters take a raw idea and make it into a useful process - anthropologists call this behavior (more than just a tool). New creative uses of technology come from small groups that make a big impact on the followers. Social networking used in the Internet has been adopted so quickly and enabled communication at unprecedented speed and coverage. The Iranian election protests organized and communicated via twitter, YouTube and FaceBook. These applications virtually replaced all traditional communication and reporting channels. This one event has shown how quickly a technology can be adopted and become useful.

I will end this article here. This idea is just starting to take shape in my mind. Eventually it will help me to explain what people are doing and help people who are interested in understanding this behavior. I do not see too much talk about this, lots of technology and marketing writing. Lots of "how to..." - twitter, FaceBook, YouTube... but not how to get someone to understand what is happening and how to actually think in your own way, this seem to take time, books usually describe this. Malcom Gladwell's Blink [amazon] [b-n] and the Tipping Point [amazon] [b-n] books were about the phenomena of communicating in networks, connecting groups and the behavior which we seem to have without planning and conscious activities. This is a factor in the electronic networks we build as well.

Back to the Guerrilla Marketing: Blogs are Small Business...

2009-02-04T01:03:00.000-08:00

Guerrilla Marketing, 4th ed. - guidebook to focused marketing, excellent blog advice

Over the last 26 years (since 1983) Jay Conrad Levinson came up with the idea of "Guerrilla Marketing". Levinson's books are one of the most popular way to learn "small marketing". He has developed direct marketing techniques for the business owner directly to his consumer. When Levinson first introduced his techniques they seem like he was addressing small business owners, the proverbial corner bakery and neighborhood plumber. As the marketing landscape changed with Internet techniques his idea has been adopted in the business blogger community. Blogs are essentially a "small business marketing" on the Internet. With very few exceptions, blogs are the format to communicate a very narrow message to a specific audience. Professional blogs are not tied to publications or organizations and serve as the unofficial / informal channel. In strict terms they are not real frontal marketing tool. The sit between the "roumor e-Mail message" and the "one-on-one office meeting". They also come with all the conviniences of Internet content: always available, searchable, indexed...

What Levinson has done over the years is develop a large set of ideas and techniques. He is taken the marketing techniques used in large corporations and reduced them to a smaller scale. Starting out with the core idea "marketing is not only crucial but also a serious component in running a small business". The idea is amplified with techniques and examples of how to think and act like a guerrilla marketer. When Levinson started out marketing was limited by tools which amounted to the office typewriter, a printed brochure and the xerox machine. I wonder what percentage of small business owners had PCs and good printers in 1983. Putting technology nostalgia aside, Levinson has been updating his ideas constantly. Besides adopting a blog of his own, he has been publishing newsletters and expanded his books to so many areas it is hard to imagine a blogger who will not find something useful in guerrilla marketing.

If you are a guerrilla marketer blogging is one of the best methods in use now. Essentially blog articles are your voice, a blog is your distribution channel and the Internet is your market audience. Guerrilla marketing is not just for plumbers and bakeries. Product managers in big and small companies blog with product features and announcements. Companies as big as Google, eBay and New York Times blog to vent out informal information. Some bloggers have made their business a true media outlet rivaling traditional newspapers (in print and on the web).

The most useful attribute of the blog is the acceptable format. Articles are layed our chronologiclly and take up most of the space. The standard format is simple, readable and acceptable. Content is what counts, if you can cover a topic with interesting information you can gather an audience. If you can write well, people will come and bring their friends and will keep you in mind. If you can keep tabs on an industry, interpret and explain news events, teach or train in a certain field - this is the way to do it. If you have something to promote which is useful: a professional service, a unique product or anything useful to someone - take a look around and see if anyone already covered it. If not, it's yours.

So how do we use blogs for guerrilla marketing? How do we guerrilla market a blog? Take a look at Jay Levinson's books [Amazon], site and blog and have a wack at it! also books on: [B&N] [Borders]

Reading blogs: learning from others in your domain

2009-02-01T02:28:00.000-08:00

Many domain experts write articles or publish blogs under their name. Some use blogs to promote their books and professional work. Some are an extension of their position, in the style of a CEO blog (university professors, company executives). I consider these bloggers the early adopters of the format into the traditional business and academic domains. These are excellent resources to read and study as references and inspiration. Well researched blog strategy books are yet to come. This situation of early adopter examples (primary resources) and yet-to-come published guides is not unique to blogging. Most new web and technology products are in this state at their early life. If you are interested in blogging I suggest: start reading, taking notes, keeping tabs, analyze and formulate some rules you can follow. This work will help you understand the use and ability of writing a blog. The technical books will help you get a feel of the technology.

Selecting what to read is the first step in understanding blogs. The biggest problem here is what to read, there are just too many blogs which are not useful. Just like selecting books, pick the writing which is right for you. Some use author selection, academic writers in business speak to business people. Some use reviews, the Internet offers a few resources for authoritative and popular writers. If you want to learn from specific domain experts, be careful of the top blog listings of general or simply popular reviewers. The web is full of "top 50" and "top 100" blogs lists. But these may not be what you want to read. Top blogs are usually rated by the number of readers or a rating system like Technorati, Business Week editors, or Time Magazine's top 25 blogs. But this is probably not what you need to write a business blog and promote your message. Try domain experts in you area. Search in the blog indexes for key words which represent your own domain. Blogs are the big shift from broadcasting and populism to narrow casting and specialization. I will go more into this as the ideas of business blogging develop into a coherent description here.

My blogging favorites which are not at all related to the business of blogging come from business and media. These are known domain experts (some call them thought leaders). Here is a short list:

Clayton Christensen [blog]: authored "The Innovator's Dilemma" one of the most insightful little books on how technology and ideas either get stuck or move forward. More of Spencer Johnson for thinking executive (Johnson wrote "Who Moved My Cheese").

Steve McConnell [blog]: is an early Microsoft developer and manager. Authoring some of the most useful books in programming he developed a set of ideas for the software industry. McConnell's "Code Complete (2nd ed.)" is one of the most comprehensive volumes on programming and managing software. Take a look at all his books and his blog if you want to learn about software, the engine fueling our technology world.

Jakob Nielsen [blog]: is the "pre"-blogging blogger. His "alert box" newsletter articles are a testament for what steady serious writing can do for an idustry and a career (for over 13 years). Focusing on his usability message his articles are samples of ongoing work first published in "Designing Web Usability".

Don Norman [blog]: Nielsen's partner and the proselytizer of complexity (as opposed to Nielsen's simplicity). His book "Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things". Besides being the "complex" counterpoint to Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman's writing is a fascinating exploration into the world of real-practical-imaginative product design. While the Internet has been the world of virtual design product design and all the implications of use seem to have takes a back seat. Than we are suddenly hit with the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPod and realize that there is still simple and creative innovation in the product design.

Upcoming Bloggers in Business

Jim Collins: Christopher Meyer: Set Godin:

Is business blogging for everyone? How leaders push...

2009-01-28T10:36:00.000-08:00

It has been two years since my first blog writing project. It started with a small IT security company. Initially it was unclear what the management wanted. On their side they did not know what I can do and what a blog can be used for. Blogging applications like Blogger, WordPress and Movable Type are mature in web applications terms, but their use has not been adopted widely. The use of blogging in corporate communication is new and unproven. Even with a few good examples, companies need to figure out what they can do with a blog. Still, I quickly realized that this IT security start-up was not completely ready to define a blog.

I was partially right but not in the way I imagined. Writing a blog on a regular basis is a new routine. Most people write or read all day long, few write articles for publication and even fewer do it on a regular basis. Even fewer are good at it and attract loyal readers. Most technical and business people have been writing e-Mail messages and sometime write articles but they do not have a routine. But more than that, they do not have a vision and a mission. A blog does not need a mission as a company needs one. It does not have to change the world. Informing and maybe influencing customers would suffice.

As corporate communicators and executives grasp the capability we need to all figure out how to make a business out of blogging. In my case the client's real issue is what to do with a blog. The CEO wanted to drill deep into the message of good security habits. That meant not only tools and processes but policy adopted by management for the general corporate population. He wanted to cover all the issues a corporation faces in security and comment on it. This is not an easy task. The CEO or the senior staff did not realize how much effort it would take just to keep up with all the issues the company wanted to address. The marketing and sales organization did not want to change the overall basic message which they were presenting in front of customers on daily basis. They were uncertain of how this will play with customers that needed a real technical information to solve issues in their every day work. This they believed will help sell and support real business.

Innovation Diffusion model, now we see it in Web2.0 and corporate blogging

After writing a few articles we all realized that what was missing was a strategy. I hate to use the word strategy because they tell me it is overused. There is so much strategy in IT that it somehow lost it's meaning. But in practical terms a strategy is a plan of action based on a mission. It needs to be based on reality, what can the blog owner define, what can be written, edited and promoted to the audience. Than the connection to the company's strategy, not just writing and editing, the top level message and how to sustain the idea over a long period of time. Plan (strategy) will detail also research, promotion and all available resources (marketing, technical, management time and resources). Some CEOS and marketing VPS understand this effort clearly. They struggle with a decision whether to start a blog which demands extra work form their managers (ruffles a few feathers) or wait until the organization can create a blog organically, by itself.

I think that once you come to this fork in the road you are in good shape. At least the upper management realizes the choice to be made. The next step is to assess if management it going to make a decision based on "managerial motives" or not (strategic or tactical). If a CEO realized the value of a blog for the company he will start thinking about strategy (message, positioning, markets, competition). Eventually he will realize how indirectly a blog will reflect on his ability to lead the company into this new era of Web2.0. This sounds simple enough here, but it is not in real life. I think that blogging is really a great example of Web2.0. I am also realizing how difficult the switch from the traditional communication model with static web sites to dynamic flow of articles is going to be. Some will not make the switch.

To some Web2.0 is just a new buzz word. To some it is just a few new applications, they still run "in the browser". The leap from sites which provide information, the equivalency of a printed brochure and white papers to a real community is huge. The leap in terms of intimacy, one-to-one connection, specific issue discussion, detail information ... all that "STUFF that Web2.0 does" - is huge.

So what do we tell the ones who "don't get it?" (or simply don't want it?). I don't think we can tell them much. One of the best way to learn is by doing. But writing and managing a blog is hard and takes a great deal of commitment. Even a personal blog is hard to keep up if you don't have your own mission (opinion). As Yogi Berra use to say:

"If the fans don't come out to the ball park, you can't stop them."