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May 31, 2005

Corporate BlogsSuperblogger Scoble defends PR value of his links

First consultant Stephan Spencer explained new PR in the blogosphere this way. He says first you start a blog, then you mention Scoble or other top bloggers, so that they’ll link to you:

  • With the new PR, you start your own blog (assuming of course you have something worthwhile to say) and you work to become one of the blogging elite. The goal is to get the more influential bloggers to notice you and blog about you. You wouldn’t just leave this to chance; you’d help the process along. If, for example, you want to catch Scoble’s eye, then you would say something interesting that somehow relates to Scoble and work in a mention of his name. Scoble, like many other bloggers, follows what’s being said about him in the blogosphere by subscribing to a PubSub search results feed for the word “scoble.” If Scoble likes your post, you could end up with a mention on Scoble’s link blog or, better still, on the Scobleizer blog.

Then Trevor Cook, a PR man from Sydney, called it nonsense:

  • This sort of thing is often written up as ‘revolutionary’ when really it is the worst sort of schmoozing and publicity-seeking dressed up as something else. It has nothing to do with public relations, as most practitioners would understand it.

(Perhaps those Australians have PR down to a cold science now, but in the U.S., I think we’re still pro-publicity and schmoozing.) Anyway, then Scoble showed up in Trevor Cook’s comments, and made a compelling case for the Scoble-first strategy:

  • Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, reports that when I linked to ActiveWords they got about 400 downloads. When a famous national newspaper gave them a five-star review they got 32.
    Also, if I link to someone generally they'll get a Google PageRank of four or five, which will put them above 95% of the rest of the Web. (Look at what happened to the law firm my brother works at once I linked to them, went from not found on first five pages to #1 result).
    My take is that while getting a Scoble link or mention is a very fine thing, and Blogworks.org would never look askance at one, I can’t endorse Spencer’s scheme as a long-term strategy. First, we don’t recommend that every client begin blogging immediately. If blogging does make sense for company, it’s because they have a story to tell, because they like the idea of starting a conversation with customers, and because they passionately think it’s the right thing to do.

OK, so if the company starts a blog, it’s not a bad idea to work Scoble into a few posts. But after that, they’re going to have to come up with interesting material on their own. That's what will really get Scoble and other influential bloggers interested for the long haul.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 12:34 PM
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May 26, 2005

Shameless Self-PromotionPR Finding a Niche in Blogs

PRWeek featured MS&L's 2005 Marketing Management Survey (PDF) in a recent issue.

Some nuggets:


  • The report notes that PR has made enormous strides "in dealing with audience fragmentation using such tools as influencers, the web, and in particular, blogs."

  • Marketers continue to look at alternatives to traditional advertising, and PR is taking a bigger role in helping companies find those alternatives -- quickly.

MS&L CEO Mark Hass says: "We've been better at seeing what's on the horizon and adapting that. You can be sensitive to changes – a blog is the ultimate expression of that. Day to day, you can measure where things are going."

Hass again: "It's a challenge for the marketing and PR industry to find out how to influence that discussion in a genuine way, as opposed to trying to get into that discussion by coming in with a beard on and hiding our real intention. Blogs can be a very authentic way for companies to get into that influencer discussion, if they do it the right way. If a company or product understands the rules, participates in the right way and opens itself up to feedback, it can have a positive impact."

Rollerblade is mentioned and quoted as a watcher/monitor of blogs, but the company or executives don't have their own blog. I hope they're considering one because they're missing out on a huge opportunity. If their fans are writing about them on blogs, wouldn't they love to hear directly from people at the company? Blogs are a two-way street – give your customers what they want!

Posted by at 04:10 PM
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May 25, 2005

Blogging 101NPR talks blogs

NPR's Talk of the Nation discusses blogging in the workplace. You can listen to an audio feed here.

Neal Conan talks to Mark Jen, John Palfrey and Michael Wiley.

Posted by at 10:06 AM
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May 23, 2005

Blogging 101Blog news roundup

Wall Street Journal targets bloggers
MediaBistro's Fishbowl blog reports that the Wall Street Journal online is targeting bloggers in order to get more links to its free areas.
… the WSJ Online is making a greater push to get its free stuff out there, appointing former WSJ staffer (and current WSJ contributor) Carl Bialik as "free-content editor" to connect specifically-targeted articles with the bloggers who will give them the sweet link of life in the blogosphere.

Bloglines CEO says new search is coming
Via BusinessWeek:
The CEO of Bloglines (now a division of AskJeeves) says that his company will release a blog search engine this summer which will surpass the likes of Technorati, Feedster, and PubSub. "The challenge," he says, "is to create world-class blog search, which we don't think exists now."
More information in a Q&A.

Feedster adds a script for easier tagging
Via Media Guerilla:
Feedster’s taking a new approach to tagging with the introduction of a code script that basically bolts a tag submission form to your blog posts …
And directly from Feedster.

Posted by at 01:35 PM
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May 20, 2005

Corporate BlogsMonitoring what the boss says

By Christy Brewer

I’m really at a loss when it comes to all the hype over blogs. Really, why do we need a new vocabulary to talk about something that’s been around for so long? The conversations found on corporate blogs are exactly what I experienced the day the CEO of a $3 billion automotive supplier sat down next to me in the lunchroom.

Me, the lowly worker, sitting in the corporate cafeteria, with my peers. Along comes the CEO. He asked politely before plopping his tray down next to ours.

“Here we go, “ we all thought. “Here comes the corporate ‘rah-rah’ speech.”

We were wrong. He asked questions. About us, how our daily projects were going, and how we liked the food in the cafeteria. He asked about our families and our hobbies. He spent time getting to know us.

Then, we got up the guts to ask him the hard questions. What was happening with our stock? What’s this we hear of a merger? He answered the questions honestly, with the information he had. He answered them with what he was allowed to say.

So many who are watching the corporate blogosphere are afraid of people like Bob Lutz spilling his guts in a moment of impassioned reply to a post in his blog. Think about it. Bob knows what he can and cannot say. He’s not going to have dinner with his neighbor and spill the beans on the latest at the Design Center. He knows better than to say that, either on the blog or off.

Executives who are considering the risks of “spilling too much” on a blog need to put it in perspective. Even in a candid conversation, there are still things that you don’t say.

Let’s get to the more important point. Sometimes, people (customers/evangelists/clients/fellow bloggers) don't care what you say or don't say don’t care how you say or don’t say it. It’s more important to say something. Be out there, talking with your audience. Find out what they like and don’t like. Find out about their families and their hobbies. Look at the food they’re eating at the corporate lunch table.

Posted by staff at 12:11 PM
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May 19, 2005

Corporate BlogsPoliticians Should Heed Call of the Blogosphere

By Clayton Closson

Should a government official or politician blog?

To blog or not to blog. That is the question…. Or is it? How many city managers, municipal PR spinsters, or even political leaders at the top levels even consider blogging? By the looks of the blogosphere not many. According to the Loic Le Meur blog, here are the top ten reasons why a politician should blog:

1. To get closer to their audience, their supporters
2. To create a permanent open debate with them
3. To test their ideas easily and quickly, to enrich them and get new ones
4. To switch the way they talk to people usually from institutional to more personal
5. To better understand the criticism of the people against their ideas
6. To spread their ideas easily if they are supported by many people, in a decentralized way
7. To raise funds for their cause, party or campaign
8. To reach a younger audience and help young people get more interested in politics
9. To create around them network effects
10. To become famous if you are an unkown politician, or to start a political action, even locally

These all seem pretty obvious to me and I’m not sure why ALL politicians aren’t using this tool professionally to help them serve their constituents and keep their jobs. A few are, like Wisconsin State Assemblyman Frank Lasee and John Conyers Jr.

I can’t think of a more obvious example of a politician who needs a blog than the mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick. Mayor Kilpatrick has been slammed, spanked, spun and spiked by the local Detroit media as of late for his conduct -- and his reply has been to deny, dismiss, and disregard. Well, it ain’t working and a host of anti-Kwame websites, such as kwamekilpatrick.com, firejerryo.com have sprung up on the web like weeds in a vacant Detroit lot. But where is the mayor to rebut these remarks? Nowhere online as far as I can tell. And there isn’t even an e-mail for him on the City of Detroit site. Hmmm, someone needs to give him a holler before it’s too late (he is the only incumbent mayor in the last 30 years to be not leading in polls this soon before the upcoming elections). Mayor Kilpatrick needs to get his word out and a blog would be a good start.

Posted by staff at 09:43 AM
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May 17, 2005

Corporate BlogsThe porous membrane

Porous Membrane cartoon

Hugh MacLeod explains why corporate blogging works at his Gaping Void blog. And he’s got a cell-like cartoon to illustrate it.

In his cartoon, above, B is the marketplace / conversation (see Cluetrain) for your product. A is the conversation within your company about your product. X is the membrane separating the conversations. When X is porous, the more the conversations in A and B resemble each other. That’s good.

“The things that A is passionate about, B should also be passionate about. This we call alignment. A good example would be Apple. The people at Apple think the iPod is cool, and so do their customers. They are aligned.”

Blogs poke holes in the membranes, he says, like “Swiss cheese,” so that the internal conversation is communicated to the public, and the company hears the public conversation.

(One quibble: Does he need the letter Y? What does it represent, the outer limits of the conversation?) Hugh also sells limited edition T-shirts with his cartoons.

Feeding the blog

Also, as Hugh notes, management guru Tom Peters has discovered blogging is an all-consuming pastime and that after three months, he needs a break. Yes, the journey of a thousand posts has already taken its toll on countless bloggers. Even Scoble had to take a break a couple of months ago.

I have a couple of suggestions to reduce the blogger mortality rate: First, don’t venture into the blogosphere unless you’re committed to keeping the dialogue going for six months or more. And, how about if -- to reduce the number of blogs Technorati and the rest of us have to keep track of -- we declare a blog dead after three months of inactivity? Bring us fresh meat.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 02:37 PM
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May 16, 2005

Blogging 101Keeping track with tags

The blogosphere is abuzz with tagging, and I've been doing some homework on the subject. Just what are tags, how should we use them and how can they help us?

Tags are also referred to as folksonomies. BusinessWeek says "Blogger Thomas Vander Wal coined the word "folksonomy," a combination of the words folk and taxonomy, to describe this joint work."

Tags are ways to categorize blogs and other web sites in two ways: 1. so other users can find your tags when looking for a subject and 2. so you can keep track of subjects you're interested in.

If you have a blog and it pings Technorati when you add a new post, Technorati automatically takes your blog categories and converts them into tags.

You also can add tags to each post (for example, see "blogging" at the end of this entry).

Once you add that blogging tag, anyone looking at the Technorati tag "blogging" will see this entry.

The other way to use tags are to bookmark them to follow an area of interest. For example, Constantin Basturea has a tag called prdigest at del.icio.us. He tags blogs and other sites that have interesting news he thinks people interested in public relations would follow.

Here are some sites where you can create and track tags.

Other resources:

update: The Toronto Star has an article on tags.

Tags:



Posted by at 11:50 AM
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May 13, 2005

Corporate BlogsProofreading for blogs? Absolutely.

By Christy Brewer

You know this would cheese me. Adrants features an announcement from someone who thinks misspellings are charming. Okay, okay… it’s fine for your personal LiveJournal, but if you want to attract intelligent clientele (read: any corporate client), you absolutely must have every letter and punctuation mark in its respective place.

Unfortunately, yes, corporate bloggers, this means running your posts by a proofreader before posting. Train your proofreader to move with the conversational flow of the post copy, but make sure everything is technically correct. Otherwise, you could be in the hot seat.

If you can’t afford a proofreader (because we can be an expensive lot!), at least do this:

1. Run a spellchecker. Better, compose your post in a word processing program. Then, cut/paste into your blog submission form.
2. Read the post backward. Read each word separately to ensure that each word is, in fact, a word you would expect to see in the post.
3. Have one other person read it. Another set of eyes never hurts.

No, it’s not cute. Trust me. You never know, I just might be your customer some day. Make me happy.

Posted by staff at 08:46 AM
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May 12, 2005

Shameless Self-PromotionAn Ear to the Ground, An Eye to the Blogs

By David Binkowski

A lot of articles are being written about corporate blogging and the opportunities being created by engaging in a little one to one communication. In particular, Clickz author Heidi Cohen mentions several ways to measure your company's blog marketing strategy.

While I understand that not every company should blog, I can't believe that almost EVERY company isn't monitoring what is being said about them online.

When I was in college I earned a few bucks working seasonal retail at the mall. One of the biggest frustrations store managers have is watching a customer walk into their store and leave without knowing WHY that customer left without buying. Was it a lack of customer service? Sizes? Colors? What?

Unlike the retail setting, blogs DO allow companies to know what their customers are thinking. Whether your company is blogging or monitoring blogs, it's to your advantage to get as much feedback as possible from your customers and potential customers. In advertising, companies pay big bucks to get feedback from focus groups - so doesn't it make complete sense to engage an audience that already cares about your products?

Think of it this way - your company's next big idea, success story, product improvement, etc. might be out there in the blogosphere and you don't even know it.

Let me ask you this - ever Google yourself? Thought so. And you don't even have investors, shareholders or employees to report to.

P.S. Did I mention that our MediaQuotient division monitors blogs for clients?

Posted by root at 01:46 PM
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May 11, 2005

Corporate BlogsHelp nominate CEO bloggers

USA Today notes the dearth of CEOs who have taken up blogging. It’s apparently too frightening. And so many CEOs are afraid to offend.

It’s only a matter of time, though. The risks may be high, but so are the rewards: a better relationship with customers, putting a human face on a corporate monolith, an opportunity to speak to customers without the filter of news media. On the Red Couch blog, Sun’s COO Jonathan Schwartz says the thousand blogs by Sun employees, including his, have bottom-line benefits:

He believes that the 1,000 Sun bloggers' contribution hasn’t just moved the needle for the company, "they’ve moved the whole damned compass. The perception of Sun as a faithful and authentic tech company is now very strong. What blogs have done has authenticated the Sun brand more than a billion-dollar ad campaign could have done."

So -– I’d like to nominate some CEOs who should blog. And let’s not limit it to current CEOs. Here are some past and present CEOs I’d like to see blog.


  • Genghis Khan: talk about passion and authority!

  • Roger Smith, former General Motors CEO: if he’d expressed some concern for the laid-off workers in Flint, maybe Michael Moore wouldn’t have tormented him so.

  • Ross Perot: former CEO of EDS and candidate for president: He could be a good blogger, as he dislikes bureaucracy and gives great quote. (“If you see a snake, just kill it - don't appoint a committee on snakes.”) But he’s not big on being criticized.

  • Bill Ford, CEO of Ford: he’s young, popular with employees, he talks green, and his name is on the building.

  • USA Today suggests Wal-Mart's H. Lee Scott. Certainly Wal-Mart needs to demonstrate its humanity and listen to criticism. And its blog would attract plenty.

  • Your CEO: wouldn’t you like to hear his vision, and better yet, know that he can hear you?

Your nominations are welcome.

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 01:58 PM
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May 09, 2005

Caught in the BlogosphereBlogs -- a direction, not the destination

I've been on a road show of sorts, talking blogs with quite a few colleagues, clients and prospective clients around the country. It's been great to educate people a bit and hear their thoughts about this emerging area and about why we decided to create BlogWorks.

Inevitably, the questions come up, Are blogs a fad? What happens when everyone gets tired of blogs? Will blogs go the way of the vortal? While those are fair questions, I think they miss the miss the main point of why business communicators should be learning about blogs now.

The conversation that is emerging between companies and their customers, between customers about companies and between news blogs and their readers about industries are what will endure, whether it's a blog or a wiki or something that hasn't been invented yet.

Caught a presentation from Salim Ismail of PubSub last week at BDI's blogging confab in NYC. His thoughts on prospective searches through the company's indexing of millions of RSS feeds are provocative, and show one compelling direction that things may move in the next few years. Audio of Salim's talk is here (he starts at the 1:35 mark or so).

"We think we're on the edge of a total paradigm shift on the internet, and blogging is just the tip of the iceberg of that," Ismail says, explaining that he sees the web evolving from gen 1's messaging mode (email), to gen 2's request for response (http, so still prevalent) to the coming gen 3 -- publish and subscribe.

If you've spent any time using the new breed of RSS-based search tools, it's hard to disagree. Services like pubsub, feedster and technorati will explode over the next few years, allowing web surfers to essentially search in advance and receive notice every time their company, topic or band name gets mentioned. Will those mentions occur on blogs? Hard to say.

(My answer to the fad question: Keep your old blogs around, they'll be worth a fortune on ebay someday.)

Posted by at 04:17 PM
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May 06, 2005

Caught in the BlogosphereHow would YOU blog on bad news?

Readers are hammering GM sales and marketing executive Mark LaNeve at the GM FastLane blog for talking about a bit of good news from JD Power during a week of very bad news.

Here’s how the week went: On Wednesday, either GM was under attack from corporate raider Kirk Kerkorian, or as he tells it, Kerkorian just decided GM stock was a great investment for the long term (did I mention that he’s 87?). On Thursday, Standard & Poor decided GM’s corporate bonds should not be rated as investment grade. The bonds went from a BBB- rating to a junk grade BB. This means GM has to pay more to borrow money from investors.

LaNeve wrote: "There’s no denying that we’re going through some tough times right now. It seems like every day I read or hear news stories that focus on the negative. I won’t say that it’s all undeserved. However, every once in a while there’s a good news story that I wish would get a little more attention." He pointed to a press release that noted that the Buick Lacrosse, Cadillac STS, Chevrolet Cobalt, Chevy Corvette and Pontiac G6 are all selling better than their predecessors.

Readers were not kind. Here’s a sample of their comments:


  • Tom Guarriello wrote at The TrueTalk Blog: "Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

  • "Suggest that all the GM folks who post here keep in mind that few of the readers are GM salespersons and none of us are looking for any Cheer Leading. Direct that to your employees."

Scoble’s second rule on his Corporate Web Log Manifesto is: “Post fast on good news or bad.” But show me a corporation who’s posted fast on really bad news. Boeing’s Randy Baseler obliquely mentioned the resignation of CEO Harry Stonecipher ("We’ve had an interesting couple of weeks, that’s for sure. But none of that has made a bit of difference down here on the ground.")

One big reason for being cautious, of course, is that under SEC rules, publicly traded corporations must be extremely careful about statements that can affect their stock prices. Their protocols involve phone calls to alert financial journalists, press releases to mainstream media and carefully planned press conferences with analysts. The corporate blog should be included in the protocol, and I think it will become eventually become part of every public relations arsenal. But even so, what can an executive say on the blog other than, "Ulp, we lost a billion dollars last quarter. But (pick one): we’ve turned the corner / wait till you see our new products / heads will roll."

Elsewhere in his manifesto, Scoble acknowledges the difficulty of writing when you’re depressed. Rule No. 13 is: "If your life is in turmoil and/or you're unhappy, don't write."

Believe me, "tumultuous" is an understatement for the atmosphere these days in Detroit.

So what do you think? When the news is very bad, what’s a blogging executive to do?

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 05:05 PM
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Good Blog, Bad BlogLearning with automotive blogs

Rick Haglund at Michigan Live has an automotive blog. However, he's missing some key elements –RSS feeds and comments. His posts are on target – bloglike and conversational – but it's a one-sided conversation. The site is owned by advance.net – of which prominent blogger Jeff Jarvis is president and creative director. Although I do see where a newspaper's web site would have to stretch its resources to moderate comments, I don't see this blog in particular generating nasty feedback.

One of my favorite blogs is Autoblog. They update the site constantly (is there such a thing as too much from a blog?) and the readers are right there with them, commenting on every item.

Posted by at 09:17 AM
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May 05, 2005

Caught in the BlogosphereNPR misses the issue

In an article, When Those Pesky Blogs Undermine NPR News, NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin wrote:

Over the past weekend, NPR placed the document on its Web site.

But some NPR listeners and cyber-savvy bloggers (people who run personal Web sites on the Internet) soon discovered if they downloaded the document from npr.org and translated it into another format, the edited portions could be restored.

Anyone downloading the document could have found the edited portions and put the full document on a Web site. What makes this situation unique to blogs is the way the message spread – RSS, trackbacks and links – which contributed to more people finding the information quickly.

Although the document may have been posted on various blogs, the problem itself is not blog-related. The real issue screaming for attention is that our Department of Defense doesn't know how to protect a document!

Posted by at 02:46 PM
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Corporate BlogsBenedict the blogger?

Pope Benedict XVI
Future blogger?

I’ve been thinking that if anyone needs a corporate blog, it’s Pope Benedict XVI. Here’s why: He’s got an image problem (what with his previous jobs as successor to the Grand Inquisitor and Hitler Youth), he succeeds a popular, populist CEO, he leads a global corporation that needs to show a human face, and he needs to engage in a dialogue with skeptical customers.

It turns out a Notre Dame student and alum have already started an unofficial pope blog. It’s respectful and respectable, perhaps overly so, but I’d like to see His Holiness try his own hand at blogging. He already has skillful PR counsel in Dr. Joaquín Navarro-Valls, and his first messages to the world struck the right chords. But what better way to show he’s moved beyond the Middle Ages than embracing this new and open technology?

Blog topics could include: Heresy, Sex & Why You Should Avoid It, My Favorite Cardinals, and Life at the Vatican.

Thanks to Miss-Information for the identities of the popeblog creators. And see Benedict XVI T-shirts here (“Putting the smackdown on heresy since 1981.”)

Posted by Laurie Mayers at 02:00 PM
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May 04, 2005

Shameless Self-PromotionGM's FastLane blog

GM’s FastLane blog was mentioned in a column by Brian Steinberg in The Wall Street Journal recently (subscription required).

The story said:

While at first blush General Motors' fastlane.gmblogs.com looks like a mouthpiece for GM Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz, critical voices are also posted. An important part of a corporate blog, says Michael Wiley, director of new media in the auto maker's communications department, is a strong stomach for consumer comment. 'A lot of what blogging is about is authenticity, getting beyond corporate speak and PR, and really creating a conversation,' Mr. Wiley says. 'Not being thin-skinned and accepting the negatives, that's key.'

Hass MS&L is the agency of record on GM’s FastLane blog.

Posted by root at 03:57 PM
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May 01, 2005

Blogging 101Blogging for beginners

The local Detroit Society of Professional Journalists chapter had a blog meeting a couple of weeks ago. And, like research has shown, most people have a faint idea of what blogging is. Questions came up that we've answered here in our FAQ: What's the difference between a blog and a message board? Why should I have a blog when I have a Web site?

Bill Mitchell, director of publishing and editor of Poynter Online, gave some great advice: search and read blogs at technorati.com and start your own blog. Try blogger -- it's easy and free.

Mitchell also had a great comment on what journalism was before blogs: "We'll decide what the news is, and (you) eat your peas," meaning that the mainstream media (MSM) tells you what to do, you listen and accept it as a fact. With blogging and citizen journalism, "people are tired of eating their peas," he said.

I was never any good at eating my vegetables. Seems like other citizen bloggers aren't inclined to be spoon-fed, either.

Posted by at 09:11 AM
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