Interview: Neville Hobson

Neville Hobson is a British Communications professional practicing in Amsterdam. In addition to his popular blog covering communications and business, he co-produces and co-hosts a podcast with Shel Holtz, whom we will report on shortly.

As always, we go long on these interviews, then will trim them down when included in a future chapter, in this case, it's one on "Consultants who get it," and Neville is an excellent example.

Q. You’ve been in the communications business for a long time.  What are the most significant changes you have experienced?

The single most significant change I’ve seen over the past 25 years is in how people communicate with each other. Technology is the great enabler, facilitating ease of access to information and the sharing of it, which is now global, immediate, pervasive and persistent. The tools we have at our disposal today – from wireless laptops and Pocket PCs you can take anywhere, to the latest camera phones that work everywhere – mean anyone can communicate and share information with anyone else, literally from and to anywhere on the planet.

This is true whether we’re talking about individual, personal, communication or whether we’re talking about an employee in Beijing communicating with a colleague in Buenos Aires, Birmingham or Budapest.

Q.  What made you decide to start blogging?

I first started blogging late in 2002 when I started a personal blog on BlogSpot. That effort was prompted by curiosity. I wanted to try out something that I kept hearing about – this thing called ‘blogs’ that let you write an online personal diary then publish it for anyone to see and comment on.

I completely jumped into the blogosphere in July 2004 after I learned I’d soon be looking for a new career opportunity because my employer had been acquired. I decided I’d convert my blog into a vehicle to help me figure out my next move. I started writing almost every day on topics the areas that interested me – the intersection of business, communication and technology as a way to get my thoughts and opinions down on paper. I wanted to do my thinking in a public way that might enable me to connect with others who had similar mindsets. I began visiting other blogs and connecting with those bloggers.

I moved  to TypePad because nearly every other blogger I’d connected with was using it. My blog played an instrumental role in my deciding to go my own way rather than finding another traditional job. I believed blogging could be a powerful evolutionary tool for stimulating organizational changes—breaking down barriers and helping organizations embrace openness and transparency.

I started my own communication consulting practice focused on helping organizations work out the value of tools such as blogs as strategic communication channels.

Q. How has it changed your communications consulting practice?

Totally. My blog is my persona. It is my marketing and brand vehicle. I have no brochures, flyers, traditional website—just the blog. It’s where my new business relationships begin. Others get to know me before we meet. Blogging has produced new professional relationships which has led to new clients.

Q.  How has blogging changed who you are and what you do?

It has helped change my outlook and perspective on the world in general. For example, no longer do I simply read online news. Instead, I do that in tandem with finding out what other bloggers say. I connect with those opinions either through joining in conversations on other blogs or writing comment and opinion in my own blog where others may comment. It makes for amazing connections. Professionally, it has convinced me there’s a new way of working where a blog is central and that by doing it that way relationships have a new form of trust as their foundation.

In the old way, you make connections with people and cement those connections often through personal meeting before making a commitment. In the new way, you find out a little about somebody through a blog and the connections to and from that blog. In my experience, that’s plenty to make a commitment and begin a business relationship even before you  meet your new colleague or client.

It can be a risky leap of faith and may not be for everyone, but for me, it’s perfect.

Q.  Is business blogging developing along different lines in Europe than it is in the US?  How so?

I believe it is, mainly in the differences between cultures and languages in how readily or not people embrace such open means of communicating and sharing.

Americans tend to be far more open, sharing and spontaneous about connecting with other people than do many Europeans, especially in a business context.

But, I believe that blogs themselves are a highly effective catalyst for producing radical change in the traditional European reserve for openness, sharing and spontaneity. As tools like blogs become more pervasive in European organizations – driven in large part by their take-up by multi-national organizations, especially those headquartered in the US – we will see a steady catch-up.

Q. How are you using blogging and social media in your consulting practice?

I co-founded Blogging Planet, a communication consultancy in March 2005 with three French communication professionals. One of our primary knowledge-sharing resources is a wiki which we use to share thinking and planning. It’s practical and effective, especially for  professionals located in different countries.

I use my own blog to further relationships with other like-minded professionals through the topics I write about. I make a point of visiting many other blogs and creating connections with those blog authors through  comments and trackbacks.

And I also rely on good old-fashioned email if I want to bring a good blog post to someone’s attention, especially a client who isn’t a blogger.

Q. Can you tell us some ways you’ve helped clients use blogging?

As a concise example, I am working with one client (a global company in the telecommunications industry) in developing a blogging platform that will be a primary channel for the marketing function to develop closer relationships with and between their marketing communication and public relations staff and external agencies in Europe. When we roll it out as a pilot in a few  weeks, it will be a benchmark for other potential uses of blogs as communication and relationship-development tools.

Q. Robert and I are both fans of the Hobson & Holtz Report.  How do you think it and podcasting will change the world?

I’m not sure that the Hobson & Holtz Report will change the world, but I believe it will change how communicators think about different ways in which they can employ new communication media like podcasting in their organizations or for their clients.

Some people say that podcasting is a revolution that will change people’s listening habits. Others say it’s a fad that’s of limited appeal and use beyond geeks and enthusiasts. In either case, you’d have to admit that something that, in just eight months, has rocketed out of nowhere and today got companies large and small interested is a clear signal that this is a medium that will soon become mainstream.

Three factors drive it:

1. It’s easy. All you need is a PC, a microphone, a network connection, some free recording software, a place to deliver it  and a bit of imagination.

2. It’s inexpensive. Podcasting enables you to create and publish audio material that previously would have required a professional recording studio.

3. It's portable. Podcasting dovetails the explosive adoption of digital music players, notably the iPod.

I believe podcasting will soon become a standard communication tool alongside the press release, website and brochure for almost any type of organization – just as blogs will.

Q. How have you changed because of blogging?

On a purely personal level, it has opened up the world and changed entirely how I used to think about many things and how I communicate what I think about those things. It has fanned the flames of my own natural curiosity. Now, if I read something that I find interesting, I’ll likely blog about it to see what others think about it or to simply express my opinion. Or I might see something that I’ll photograph – and upload those photos to a place like Flickr so that others can see what I saw and comment on it if they want.

Blogging has also been a fantastic vehicle for many of the new business and related relationships I have developed in with people in different countries – relationships that likely would not have happened if I had not had a blog nor actively participated in the blogosphere.

Finally, blogging has taught me that evangelism means perseverance.

Comments

[David Tebbutt]

Interesting interview. I'd like to make a couple of comments.
"In the old way, you make connections with people and cement those connections often through personal meeting before making a commitment. In the new way, you find out a little about somebody through a blog and the connections to and from that blog. In my experience, that’s plenty to make a commitment and begin a business relationship even before you meet your new colleague or client.

It can be a risky leap of faith and may not be for everyone, but for me, it’s perfect."

I think there's more to it than this. You generally find out more than 'a little' about someone by visiting their blog. In most cases, you absorb their orientation and their values. It would take a lot of face to face meetings to achieve the same level of intimacy.

On podcasting, little is said about the convenience of the user. It's all about how easy it is to manufacture this stuff. I am not prepared to listen to a podcast in its present form (and, believe me, I've tried). It is a serial delivery mechanism which requires too much of the listener. If it could be broken into tracks, then I'd go for it. The 'all in one lump' would only work for me if I had regular boring commutes.

As a journalist, I really only want the punchline. If I like that, then I'll listen to the rest of the story.

[Neville Hobson]

Good clarifying points, David. You're right, of course - a blog does enable you to learn a great deal about someone before you meet them.

The 'risky leap of faith' I mentioned is a lot to do with the level of knowledge you acquire before you meet someone or start a relationship with them. In my experience, it's significantly less than what you would acquire through the traditional approach to building a relationship, before you start building it.

What you find out about someone from a blog has no real comparison with what you find out when meeting someone face to face. That 'look you in the eye' connection. But it's enough if you make that leap of faith.

Shel, one small clarification. In the Q "How are you using blogging and social media in your consulting practice?", the bit about French communication professionals would be best to say as 'communication professionals in France" as one's an American. To be even clearer, those professionals are: Elizabeth Albrycht (the American!), Gullaume du Gardier and Christophe Ducamp.

[David Topping]

I was interested by two of the points Neville raised in his interview:

First: That blogging was a way of finding out about people before you met them face to face.

I find it interesting that a number of the blogs I read are clear about their authors intentions, interests and so on, others carry very little information and have to be read carefully to try and develop some idea of what the character is like behind the blog, especially where the blog has a specific or even proselytising purpose. Given the popularity of networking websites such as LinkedIn which attempt to identify people and Network them one wonders whether or not we should or will see a merge between the these sites and Blogs, one will identify, the other will give context to the identity.

Regardless I do think that any combination will have more utility than IBM’s putative gadget of a few years ago which was a wireless device on which you recorded your interests and which beeped or changed colour when it came into close proximity to another device with the same recorded interests. Personally I would rather read that someone had an interest in murdering people at rather than find out I’d ticked the wrong box on the device in a terminal way.

Second: That Americans tend to be far more open, sharing and spontaneous about connecting with other people than do many Europeans, especially in a business context.

While I would agree that in my experience Americans can be less reserved about introductions on a personal and business level I will be interested to see if this genuinely affects Blogging. In general I suspect that there are more US Bloggers because Americans tend to write more software and are more comfortable with adopting software from their own nation. There’s also the physical side of business which drives US software companies to address their home market before going for a foreign one. The question I wanted to ask though was that once adoption rates are equal will we simply notice that European sites are more content rich because they want to use Blogs to communicate ideas?

I for one (and yes I know I’ve got limited experience!) am unable to detect any real difference in the purpose of Blog sites such as IBM or SAP. They both exist to promote their company’s views in the forms of mini white papers, the IBM site seems less formal, the SAP more reserved but the content is that same.

[shel]

First, thanks to everyone for a series of thoughful constructive quality comments. David Topping, you hit one of my hot buttons. I just hate when blogs have either no bios, or ones that are intended to be cool, but not informative. They don't need to be long-winded, mbut I want to know where someone is coming from when I read their postings. One of the many things bloggers can learn from traditional journalists is to consider the source.