Global Neighbourhoods

Dana Reviews Me at AMA

Dana VanDen Heuvel posted a few on my presentation at a recent AMA blogging workshop in San Francisco.  It was a good event.  It was small but the presenting bloggers were all great, and the attendees really wanted to know how blogging could help their businesses.  On of my dirty little secrets is that I am petrified of speaking in front of groups, and this time, I just felt loose and that I had something valuable to say. I left feeling I helped a few new businesses to blog.

Firefox Hits 50 million

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/14616

About two months after hitting 25 million downloads in three months, they log in another 25 million, which means the adoption rate is accelerating along with market share.  My gues is that they are at about 15 percent of the worldwide browser market so far.  We'll do the final revisions on their numbers for the book at the last minute.  Who knows how many they'll have in August when we complete the book.

Interview: Mena Trott

I spent a few hours at Six Apart, an authoring tools publisher on nearly everyone’s short list of blogging companies most likely to succeed. Most of my time was in free ranging conversations with the articulate, passionate Mena Trott, who co-founded Six Apart with husband Ben in 2001.  Our book will not profile blog enabling companies, but Mena’s insights and anecdotes will be used in several chapters:

Do you have any anecdotes from Six Apart’s early days not previously published:

When we first released our software there was no blogging industry so expectations weren’t what they are today. We had to set our own. Ben and I decided that once we start, we’ll need to commit to go all the way. Other [software] companies had started then disappeared leaving users unsupported.  We knew that we would have possibly had our lives tethered to Movable Type and had to decide whether we were committed to do so.

We had no business plan, but we did have a vision to make a tool that everyone could use and it would give them power. 

Our code name for the product was “Serge,” but we wanted to find a name that implied “earth-changing.”  One day, I was laying on the couch and came up with Movable Type. For a long while, neither Ben nor I could remember the name. But we knew it would be good, once we could.

I started my first blog, www.dollarshort.org , during a pseudo mid-life crisis that hit me at age 23. I had graduated school, married, Ben and I had been laid off from our tech jobs and had moved back to our hometown of Petaluma,[CA]and were contemplating starting a family.  “One day, I realized, oh my God, I'm not going to be a celebrity.  Nobody will know who I am in the real world, so why don't I just try to get famous on the Web?  If I want to change my life, let me try something small, like online. My blog reached the so-called A-listers and when I talked about Movable Type being in development, they seemed interested.  I wanted to change my life and we ended changing a lot more.

What I’m proud of is we’ve given people a tool to communicate.  Typepad is a tool to let people write things and express themselves the way I needed to create and express myself. You don’t need to reach tens of thousand people like Robert Scoble does to have a weblog that matters. Ten people who are really interested in what you write is a lot. And,  for most people and having them appreciate you can be life-changing.

Typepad was released at a time when, there were these pundits, but also people writing about their everyday lives and they had been so dismissed for so long, and we gave them a tool to express themselves.

The small group space is the next part of the blogging revolution.  Most top-ranked bloggers focus on mass audiences, but most people are more private than the massively followed so-called A-Listers she observed.  There's a reason not everyone is a journalist.  Most people don't care. They use blogs for these small little projects.”

(In fact, the idea of niche media vs. mass media is a fast-emerging concept.  Radiant Marketing’s Paul Chaney commented on it in a post.

What will Six Apart be when it grow up?

I want Six Apart to be the communication company. We are the weblog company already, but its communications that’s important.

Toward that goal, you face some formidable competition in companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.  How do you plan to survive playing against gorillas?

You interviewed Blake Ross. He uses Mozilla and he knows what he wants in it.  We use our blogging tools and we know what we want in them. Blogging is our central culture.  We are part of the community. We know what people want in blogging tools because it’s what we want too. Blogging is not a central product for Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. We are a company made up of bloggers.”

Will Six Apart remain independent?

We want to remain a strong independent company with a focus on our products and our customers/users. Honestly, I can’t predict what lies in the future but we’re certainly not interested in a quick flip. Ben and I want to be able to start a family relatively soon and being in a start-up would be hard. Therefore, we want to grow this company into something sustainable that can have a place amongst the giants in the industry.

We’ll have a chapter on blogging in a crisis. You had one of those a while ago, when you surprised customers by starting to charge for Movable Type.  Can you to talk to me about the role your blog had in calming down a hostile audience?

When we changed licensing, we knew there would be pushback but we didn't know the extent.  Pricing wasn't really the issue, it was limiting the number of blogs you could have.

The biggest problem came from us not communicating in advance. We should have communicated our reasons and what we were doing beforehand. A major issue was that commercial users were using personal licenses and had 2000 people on a $150 license. We should have focused more on solving this abuse on the commercial side rather than applying limits across the board (for personal use as well). So, the big uproar came from personal users, not businesses. Businesses were pleased we finally had coherent licensing.

We really didn't see this coming.  We knew people were going to complain, but we didn't know there would be a 1000 people who personally wanted my head on a platter. Even with the backlash, we had to continue. We couldn't just say, ‘Oh, never mind’ and change back to the old model. We had to figure out what wasn't going to work, and we needed to start charging for MT. We had said from the beginning that we were going to charge. Also, we needed to start enforcing licensing limits.

Trackback was key.  That’s how we got responses. The responses were really hard for us to take. It was like the first dent in your new car. Until then, everyone seemed to think we were perfect, and now we weren't. Trackback helped us learn that people really wanted unlimited blogs more than free use. Reading these responses let us take our emotion out of it. People said: don't give me commentary, just tell me how it’s really working.

We took about a month to get our licensing straightened out and more time to get people to understand what we were doing. We had to take our time.  We had to get it right. The experience was like owning a megaphone company, holding a shareholders meeting and handing out a new model of the (previously free) megaphone we produced. Then, as the megaphones were all in their hands, we said it would now cost money. And then we locked the doors.

Our last chapter is the “big picture” chapter.  Where is this all going?  Where will Six Apart be five and 10 years hence?

Blogging needs to be as ubiquitous as email.  You don't differentiate email between business and personal—you just do email. The thing about blogging is that it needs to be just blogging.  It doesn't matter whether its business or personal or family or friends or private or public.  I want a day when I have one weblog and I can just post whatever I want to post in that one weblog and I don't have to think of how to categorize it. I want it to be filtered on the reader's end. I don't want 30 blogs I want one that is an extension of all parts of me. I want one weblog that publishes to all sorts of groups

Personal websites died because they were too hard to update. RSS is hugely important. Being able to know that we have updated was not possible with websites. To be able to comment, to affect a communications loop, this is how weblogs have gone beyond the old personal and even corporate websites. Weblogs are evolved personal web pages even when they are commercial or anonymous. You have to know there's a personal voice even when it’s a business blog.  Robots can't write this stuff.  It’s what made blogging what it is. 

Ubiquity is important—using blogs to spread communication, to be able to have a tool to allow people to communicate—having the ability to write and publish to certain particular groups is going to be very important. 

Can you tell me something about yourself that most people don’t already know?

I post a picture of myself on a private weblog every day with my camera phone. I'm able to look back and see how I've changed over the year. People say it's the most egotistical thing, but it isn't, if only a few people read it.  My mom loves it. She calls me up and tells me how she loved my hair on Wednesday and she knows I’m okay on days when I can’t call her. It’s valuable to me because I can look at every picture and tell you something about that day.  I remember what I'm wearing, reflect on where I was at.  It's the best way to capture individual days just by looking at the pictures. I can see the months fill up.  I think web logging is almost a way to slow life down. At the end of the year, I'll probably post it publicly.

People did this. People kept journals all through history and it's important. As soon as you stop, keeping track of what you do, things go by too quickly. This is one of the things we like doing. I should write a post about it. Life slows down by posting everyday.

French blog writes about corporate blogging

Benoit Sarazin: Blogs: a revolution in corporate marketing.

They certainly are an interesting way to have a conversation with your marketplace. This week has been quite wild for me.

I told off our CEO on Saturday. And today cleaned up a PR mess. All on my blog. The conversation that's been started is quite remarkable.

Interview:Horsefeathers' Ben Williams

Earlier today, I was interviewed by Ilana DeBare a Business Reporter and Columnist for the SF Chronicle.  She wanted to know about small businesses--not consultants who are using blogs. I gave her a list of companies that are often well-publcized and a couple who are not, including, Horsefeathers, a standalone restaurant in a New England ski area who uses blogs to maintain loyalty in the face of increased competition from franchises and chains.  Following is the text of our interview with Ben Williams, a partner in the enterprise and the company blogger.

1. What's your position with Horsefeathers? Can you tell me a bit about the restaurant's history, size and competitive environment? How seasonal is your business?   

Horrsefeathers is a mature independent restaurant, that my partner Brian Glynn and I opened back in 1976. We're a neighborhood type of place, in a four-season resort area marketed as the Mount Washington Valley. North Conway, NH  and the surrounding towns have a year-round population of 7,000 but the population swells to half a million on peak weekends with skiers in the winter, hikers, climbers in the summer and leaf peepers during our New England foliage season. In recent years, the area has also become a regional retail destination. We have  a large number of shopping outlets (off price retail, it's politely termed) in a state without a sales tax.
   

2.  When did you start blogging and why?

We switched from a standard web page about a year ago. The idea was marketing, but more specifically loyalty marketing. We were already  spending most of our promotional energy and money maintaining the customer base we had. We had a loyalty points for purchases program in place, as well as, a monthly HTML newsletter. All of this in hopes of maintaining the good customers more then trying to attract new ones. 

Our area is just starting to see the influx of chain restaurants. We felt we needed another tool to differentiate Horsefeathers and stay in touch with our regulars, before they wander off to the new place down the street.  We hoped the blog format would better match our strategy 

3. One of the miracles of a blog is global reach. But Horsefeathers is a standalone restaurant.  How do you localize  a business blog?   

We certainly don't sell sandwiches via Pay Pal. And, restaurant marketers will tell you that no one will travel more than 20 minutes for a hamburger.  But we do use the "global reach" of a blog effectively.

First a major portion of our customer base are second home owners. Our blog gives these folks a way to stay in touch with their vacation community. They see the kind of things we're talking about up here and feel comfortable and "up to speed" when they show up on Friday night.

Second, we are part of a destination resort area. We get good response from search engines when key terms about our area are entered. We keep this visitor in mind, and post timely information about local events and conditions (ski reports, river reports, etc). We feel this helps put us on the tourists "must see' list.  Every tourist wants to feel like a local. The blog helps our guests feel that way.

   
 
4.The  blog references Horsefeathers very little.  In many ways, it looks more  like an epicurean site than a restaurant blog.  Why is this?

Our blog is subtitled " Restaurant Conversations & Bar Top Debates". For the longest time food services had no idea how to use the internet, Al Gore so graciously gave us. Previously restaurant web sites (ours included) were all dull and static. Busy operators would put up a menu and a few pictures and that would be it. Customers would look at the site once and, seeing nothing new, never return. Once the site was up the operators seldom returned either. The web site was forgotten and the information became stale. The blog format has allowed Horsefeathers to have a web presence that stays current and relevant to the types of things our guests are interested in.

On the blog, we talk about about the same things we talk about at the table or behind the bar. Naturally, food is a big topic. So is sports, currents events and anything with local color. The "conversation" has to stay topical and fun. We assume our readers already know that we're a wonderful restaurant. No one wants to hear how wonderful we think we are.

5.How does your blog impact customer loyalty?

Our newsletter goes out to 2,000 members. Spam is killing our newsletter, making the blog the best way to talk with our guests.

Last week, the visitor counter on our blog rolled over 50,000. For us, this is a huge number. On an average day 150 to 200 people will electronically check-in at our home base. We realize these aren't Amazon numbers but we do have as many people visiting Horsefeathers.com every day, as we have seats in the dining room.
When we check our stats, the busiest day of the week is always Thursday and the heaviest traffic occurs right around lunch time. You have to think that these are our customers checking in to see what's up for the weekend.

6. How else do you market Horsefeathers?

Right now, we're doing less-and-less traditional placement advertising, We're concentrating on in-house, retention promotion. We're also trying to figure out how to better market the blog, which we feel is the vehicle that markets the Horsefeathers experience the best.  As you mentioned before,  our effort is more regional so SEO will only do so much.

7. How has blogging changed your business?

We're waiting to see the large scale adoption of blogs and RSS by our customers that we believe is still to come. However, because we've adopted the  blog format, we do have one of the hippest web sites of any restaurant out there. People constantly comment about the blog and we hope it's bringing in some additional business. Like all blog believers, we believe the best is yet to come.

8 How has it changed you?

Blogging is time-consuming, fun and rewarding, but very time consuming.

9. What advice do you have for other smaller businesses regarding blogging?  What warnings do you have?   

Use different posts to target different potential customers.  Using the category feature available on most blog software, you can set up an area for everyone. We've had particular success with a "Women & Horsefeathers" category. This way women can find their way through all the inevitable male ambiance and see that  Horsefeathers is a restaurant for them.

Okay, the returns are going against Just Blog It! Let me run the three runner ups past you, and see if the do any better:

The Human Corporation —How Blogs Improve Everything In Your Business

Let Your People Blog —Why Conversational Marketing is essential to Business

Blog It!--How Blogs Improve Everything in you Business

Let me know what you think.

New Book Title

Robert and I and our colleagues at Wiley have been brainstorming on a new book title, ever since Steve Streight took us on, noting that in some places in the world it's closer to "Blog AND Die."  We would never wish to seem callous.

So, if I could have a drumroll please, what do you folks out there think of:

"Just Blog It!

--How Blogging Improves All Aspects of Your Business"

Please tell us what you think, and Steve--please be kind.

Interview: Buzz Bruggeman

Every industry has them and you probably know a few in your sector. They are professional connectors, people who know everyone in their industry and seem to have their hand on the pulse of what’s happening. They help people find jobs, make deals, form book partnerships, and so on. They know about emerging products and services before anyone outside the development teams and certainly long before many in the press or industry analysts get wind. Those folks consider the connectors trusted sources.

In the Blogosphere, the Connection King is Buzz Bruggeman, and no one who has met him has ever wondered why he’s called ‘Buzz.’ He works rooms at tech conferences, keeps an ongoing email dialog with scores of people, each of them influential in their own way, totes a bag filled with an array of the latest beta devices and software for distribution to friends and industry insiders. In the case of this book, he connected Microsoft’s Andy Ruff who thought of it and its two authors. He's likely to have been that “informed source” in a recent tech-related article. In short, when you really want to know what’s going on, what’s hot and what’s not in the PC industry, Bruggeman is the go-to guy.

He's giving by nature. But there is strategy and thought in his generosity. He’s CEO of ActiveWords, a highly regarded software utility that lets users take all sorts of neat little navigational and productivity shortcuts. Sources close to the company estimate there have been about 100,000 downloads, although Buzz won't confirm it, but he does estimate that Activewords has spent less than $15,000 on marketing since it started. He also says that according to the customers they've talked with, blogging has played a role in about half the downloads and has contributed to the company’s abundant national press coverage, including the New York Times, and has significantly contributed to a couple of large OEM deals currently in serious talking stages.

This is all true, despite the fact that Bruggeman by his own estimate is no uber blogger. He posts to his two sites a few times a week rather than per hour as more famous blogosphere denizens like Doc Searls. Searls has described Bruggeman as a “C+ blogger and an A+ blog reader,” a description Bruggeman finds apt. The point is that you don’t need to spend your life posting and answering comments for blogging to help your company. Bruggeman knows how to get the Blogosphere to work for his company and this has proven to be wildly effective for Activewords.

Practicing as a career real estate and trial law, he followed his tech passion into a startup in 1997, when he became one of three ActiveWords founders, playing a key role in raising $1.6 million in venture capital in Winter Park, Fla. far from the mainstream paths for venture investment. In the spring of 2001, he realized that his team really didn’t know much about marketing software. “I decided we’d better figure that out fast, as it was my friends’ money that was funding the company.”   

The company wanted press coverage, particularly product reviews more than anything else, but it had no money for a PR agency or even to professionally finish its website. “We needed to start getting people inside the industry talking about our products,” he recalled. Bruggeman determined to figure out an entry point, but it was difficult to get the notice of traditional journalists and emailing download links to product editors just didn't work. In short, Buzz needed some buzz.

He started spending an increased amount of time attending tech conferences and hanging out where tech community influencers could be found.At about that time he started tuning into blogging. “What struck me early on was that technology coverage had been unleashed from the confines of traditional journalism. In the traditional media, I couldn’t easily get to the guy who wrote the article and talk with him about it. But, I was impressed that I could get to the most influential bloggers. When I reached out to Doc Searls and Dan Gillmor they responded.”   

Bruggeman’s instincts told him the most direct route to success for Activewords was through the blogosphere. “I’d always been aware that there’s an incredible desire on the part of people to create and be heard and have a voice. Blogging was water behind the mother of all dams, just waitng to break through. I set out to build relationships with the other bloggers. I tried to figure out what their passions were and I began to funnel stuff related to what I thought interested each of them.”

Searls told him, he needed to be writing and posting so he started Buzzmodo.   At PopTech 2001, he teamed up with author-blogger JD Lasica to blog about the conference.   They both had ulterior motives. JD was interested in interviewing speakers   and would then send notes over to Bruggeman who edited and posted them. JD wanted a justification to access these people would for his book—Darknet, Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation  and Bruggeman wanted to earn a free pass into the conference. “The results, for that period, were phenomenal. Every time we posted something, we’d get about 200 hits, two-thirds from people outside the conference.

This started a trend, of conference coverage that would greatly expand over the next few years, changing the nature of conference participation in which the audience not only became more participatory, but extended from their venues and around the world.

Bruggeman would play a more significant role in a later conference. As Dan Gillmor recalls in his book, “We the Media,” Joe Nacchio, CEO of Qwest a telephone company with a near-monopoly hold in several states was on the dais of the prestigious PC Forum complaining about difficulties in raising capital. Searls and Gillmor were reporting on it live and in near real time via their blogs. After observing in his blog that Nacchio had gotten “seriously” richer while his company’s value ebbed, he and Searls received email from Bruggeman in Florida:
“Ain’t America great” Bruggeman wrote sarcastically attaching a hyperlink to a Yahoo Finance webpage showing that Nacchio had cashed in more than $200 million in stock, while his company’s stock price was headed downhill. … I immediately dropped this juicy tidbit into my weblog with a cyber-tip of the hat to Bruggeman” and Searls did likewise,” wrote Gillmor. The event’s host, Esther Dyson would later write, that “around this point the audience turned hostile.” Apparently, the room was filled with people surfing online and following the two bloggers. Sitting 2000 miles away, Bruggeman, not only remotely contributed to the course of event, but to the future of a CEO he had never met. Nacchio was already in trouble with his job, but after PC Forum, he found an edgier and more hostile press and would be ousted not long after. Gillmor wrote that he considered the

event watershed to people understanding the power of blogging.
Bruggeman cites Mostly McGeeauthor Jim McGee with one of the ideas that explains blogging’s power: Bloggers, according to McGee are the intelligent agents that tech tried and failed to produce with software that was supposed to go and fetch useful information for users. Except bloggers are human and they run around the Internet finding all sorts of stuff and share it interactively with whoever chooses to look for it.

Bruggeman recently questioned in a post if Microsoft had ever intended its Outlook software would become a platform upon which 3rd party developers would build, hence leading to the instability of Outlook as an application.  Within days, more than 20 comments were posted by individuals, who by his description, represented “some of the industry’s smartest people, who piled on ideas of how the question I posed was right or wrong. Without a blog, I would never have had access to that kind of intelligent capital. It’s like every blogger can hold an interactive symposium.”

Bruggeman has learned a good deal about what’s effective on a business blog. For years, he had mixed in his industry and Activewords commentary with his impassioned, left-leaning political views. One day a reader posted a comment: “I love your product. I hate your politics, and I will pray for you.” Bruggeman spun a new blog out of Buzzmodo, called Buzznovation, which gave him a venue to air his sometimes controversial thoughts on anything not related to Activewords. He also takes care in Buzznovation blog to only mention ActiveWords directly in about one in four postings.”

“Direct promotions or company commercials, just don’t work in blogging, and people will be smart to avoid the temptation,” he advises. Blogging really is the glue that allows people to tie great ideas together."

Most observers would agree Bruggeman’s two blogs today deserve a better grade than the C+ rating Searls gave him. Few would dispute his A+ rating for reading and, above all, his connectivity.

Interview: Jonathan Schwartz

Blogging hasn’t just moved the needle for Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, president and COO told us, it’s moved the whole damned compass. The company as of April 2005 had well over 1000 blogging employees, out of 32000 employees worldwide. Sun, he points out, has always “been about leveraging networks to successfully compete with competitors like HP and IBM, which are 10 times its size.”

Sun’s blogging began with XML pioneer Tim Bray and Simon Phipps and company CTO Greg Papadopoulos among others who were already prominent tech sector bloggers when Schwartz became Sun president in April 2004 and began blogging two months later. The senior team saw the implications, made it a strategic initiative and encouraged others in the company to join the conversation. Says Noel Hartzell, executive communications director for the Office of the President and COO, “It took off like gangbusters from there.”

Schwartz, as far as we know, is the highest ranking blogger by title in the technology sector. It’s central to what he does and how he communicates. He told us, “ It’s a community of communities. I recently had breakfast with Dave Winer. What do we have in common? We both blog.”

Schwartz has steered Sun toward becoming a flagship for the growing open source movement. Third-party analysts say that its Solaris operating system software is the most secure available. He has predicted that in the near future all software will be free and that surviving companies will need to move the value away from traditional delivery of a piece of software.” This perception is part of his vision for a new Participation Age. We asked him what blogging’s role will be in this new Era.

“It’s kerosene on the fire. The Participation Age has been on the Net since email. Moving from there to blogging is like moving from carrier pigeon to phone. The emergence of blogs means we have passed beyond early crude tools and it results in fundamental changes on how everything relates. While a journalist is writing about my blog, I’m blogging about his journalism. This is change,” he told us.

While many executive bloggers discuss blogs as a way to bypass journalists and thus gain direct access to audiences, Schwartz extols their value. “They are there because they are independent thinkers, who provide fresh insights. Like the rest of us, they may get a fact or two wrong from time-to-time. But that’s not the point. Journalists can jump off the rail companies are on and take it to points that interest audiences more than corporate spokespeople. That adds value even if they get a few facts wrong.”

Blogging’s advantage, from his perspective, is in the transparency and authenticity that nothing else can provide. With more than 1000 company bloggers, people can see inside Sun in ways that are infinitely more valuable than Federal governance regulations. “Executives are missing a point. There is no perfect truth despite transparency.” He argued that SEC requirements for quarterly reporting is far from as revealing as 1000 Sun bloggers talking about “the guts of the company,” on a daily basis in a public forum.

Sun’s blogging explosion was embraced without ambivalence by the corporate communications people. “Most PR teams would cringe, but ours didn’t. We have a transparent culture and competitors like HP do not. Our PR team is thinking about how to use technology and culture as a corporate weapon and blogging does both. Hartzell added, “Sun is a company whose success is based on building communities. So a key function of the communications team is to be an information gatherer, analyzer and counselor on participating in these communities. A bad way to do PR is to blast press releases every Thursday. We help feed the right information into the right channels. What could be better for a PR organization than blogs?”

Shwartz sees blogging, not as a tactic but as a watershed bi-directional change. “I don’t read blogs—I read. Blogs are more searchable. Technorati and PubSub are more useful to me than Google. It’s easier for me to connect in a blog-based world. People in Morocco and Australia have input into how we grow. I graze Sun’s blogs and read the comments. If a developer has a perception on J2EE, that’s valuable I know about it fast. We get all kinds of helpful comments. I just read a comment from a developer in Portugal, who thinks we’re the bee’s knees and it’s terrific to see that kind of stuff.”

Schwartz’ postings generate a great deal of attention. A competitor we know, speaking in background told us, “We had counted Sun out, assuming that by now they would be dead or irrelevant. They’re back. I think it’s their [expletive] blogs.”

We asked Schwartz how he became so good at blogging. “I type fast and I talk a lot. Good bloggers are chatty and are into relationships.” The blogosphere lets him hang out where he can meet people good for Sun. “I care deeply about developers and they hang out on the Web. So do good analysts. When I started seeing who was reading me I was stunned. It was our customers and the analysts. Everywhere I go, more and more people tell me they are reading my blogs.”

I had an epiphany one day: blogging is a bad broadcast mechanism, but it’s a tremendous interactive medium. Besides, what are my other options to reach my developers? Take out an ad in LinuxWorld? My readership is bigger than theirs is.”

Schwartz postings usually relate to Sun, but they include whatever comes into his mind. One blog started by discussing his son’s haircut, meandered through a Zen reference, then explained that Sun had made a mistake by installing sidewalks before observing routes taken by employees, which often strayed from walkways. “Sun’s culture encourages people to cut their own paths,” he observed. This is an important point to communicate he feels. “We are in a global war for talent. We have to prove we are a more vibrant, interesting and open company. These blogs reflect the quality of the people and that’s the quality of the company.”
He often tweaks competitive noses, sometimes playfully, occasionally with vitriol. He recently made direct appeals and offered sympathy to the HP community after the company announced a barrage of bad news. He once posted an open letter to IBM’s Sam Palmisano, in which he chided the chairman and CEO for not supporting an upgrade to Sun’s Solaris operating system, charging that IBM was preventing  IBM customer access to the “most secure operating system available.” He knew full well that the letter would do little to endear him to Big Blue. But it was a clever ruse to bypass the company and appeal directly to IBM customers who rallied to Sun’s cause. “Now, IBM is much more accommodating,” he stated flatly.
Like other bloggers, he takes risks, occasionally stepping into a bucket. He once confessed to having sampled kangaroo meat on a trip to Australia , entreating readers not to tell his kids. A while back, a Sun executive sent him a link to a Japanese company that promised blogging would “enhance your physique.” Schwartz thought it was funny, human and culturally interesting. He did a quick post. Later, alarmed colleagues informed him that had he looked closer he would have seen some graphically explicit enhanced physiques on the site.

From Schwartz’ perspective, blogging is not an appendage to Sun’s marketing communications strategy, it is central to it. He believes that the 1000 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. I care more about the ink you get from developer community than any other coverage. Sun has experienced a sea change in their perception of us and that has come from blogs. Everyone blogging at Sun is verifying that we possess a culture of tenacity and authenticity. “

Interview: Bob Lutz

If you haven't read the newspapers or had access to news through any medium lately, Bob Lutz, General Motors vice chairman and popular blogger has been busy lately. We greatly appreciate the time he took to answer a few email questions we recently asked.

1. What made you decide to blog?

Some of the staff had launched a blog in Fall 2004 and had success with it. I was looking for a direct line of communication with the world and this seemed to be a bright idea. As I said in my blog, "In the age of the internet anyone can be a journalist." The feedback we've received from the public has been fabulous.

2. Was there a process involved at GM before you started blogging, or did you just start doing it?

No cumbersome process, no conventions, no big meetings, we just started it up.

3. What is your strategic goal in blogging?

Our only goal was to engage the public regarding our products and services. The blog has become an important unfiltered (emphasis onunfiltered) voice for the company, our customers and auto enthusiasts.

4.  Many people hold a stodgy image of GM. How do you feel your blog can offset this?

Anyone who calls us averse to criticism or thin-skinned obviously has not read the blog. This method of open, honest, transparent communication is an excellent representation of the kind of culture GM's leaders advocate.

5. Outsiders perceive you as a new hope for more exciting automotive products. Your blog displays determination and passion. But how will it help GM to produce better product?

The blog cannot produce great products. Only our design and product development community can. But the blog can motivate, inspire and focus us. It shows how much passion people have for cars and trucks. It also serves as a  reminder how many people are pulling for GM. It's terrific.

6.  What has been the employee response to your blog?

The FastLane blog has always had an outward orientation. A fair number of employees are active on the site but we do not promote it internally. An executive or two is experimenting with internal blogs and find them useful for communicating with their global staffs.

7.  How do you manage the tons of comments you receive? How have they changed or improved your understanding of customers and prospects?

We do not manage the posts per se. Staff members usually send me an email every few days so I can review the feedback. Lots of great stuff in there. Fascinating and inspiring.

8. In general, how would you describe blogging's impact on traditional GM corporate communications?

We're learning on the run, but now we have an unfiltered voice, a direct-line of communication. It has become indispensable.

9. Over time, how do you see blogging impacting other GM communications strategies, if at all?

I suspect you will see additional blogs from GM in the future, covering a variety of topics.

10. What blogs do you read? Which are your favorites?other than your own?

I do a lot of my work on a Blackberry so I do not have time to read many blogs. My staff is always emailing me interesting posts though, particularly from blogs that are writing about us. I think blogging is fantastic because it is creating a self-regulating media. Recently, a negative article was published declaring one of our vehicles a flop. Within a few days a third-party blogger analyzed the article and discredited it with the facts.

11.  What advice do you have to executives at other companies who are considering a blog?

Be honest. Stay connected. Go into it with an open mind and expect criticism. And, most important, have good advisers who understand the Blogosphere.

12. GM recently decided to stop advertising in the Los Angeles Times, because it felt the paper was being unfair in editorial comment.  Do you feel blogging can in any way offset the LA Times, by giving you and other executives direct access to customers and prospects in Southern California?

No, but, blogs can be somewhat of an equalizing force when dealing with media criticism. There certainly are knowledgable journalists in the media, who - on balance - report fairly and only after having carefully checked their facts. Regrettably, there are many others who feel compelled to jump on the bandwagon all too easily, taking hearsay and superficial impressions for factual evidence and often coming to the wrong conclusions.That can be very damaging to the business.

Interview: Steve Rubel

I was talking with a veteran PR colleague on my views of traditional marketing, blogging, business and the media. He was uncharacteristically quiet for a while. Then he thumped his drink on the table and stood up. "You'll excuse me," he said straight-faced, " I'm going to go to the window now, open it up, and plunge to my death."

That was a bit extreme.  All he really had to do is listen to some of the new PR practitioners like Steve Rubel, who are just brimming with ideas on how to leverage the new social media to their advantage.

For 15 years Rubel had a successful, if undistinguished PRcareer. Now he's hot property.

In 2001 he joined CooperKatz, a Manhattan-based PR agency where his job—like so many other PR operatives--was to get press for traditional clients using traditional tactics. This began to change in 2003, when Rubel started noticing a shift in the way he was finding information and started playing with RSS and blogs. A while later, he started his own blog, naming it Micro Persuasion, picking up on a Scobleizer thought about how buying decisions are now being based on thousands of "micro points" of persuasion.

Now, Rubel's the most often-quoted member of his profession. The New York Times has interviewed him twice in a year.  He's been on CNBC. Numerous daily newspapers have covered him as a story, including the San Jose Mercury, San Francisco Chronicle. The media increasingly turns to him as a credible, direct reference on blogging trends. He's asked to speak publicly more than 50 times a year. Rubel's posts get indexed into Google News. Media Magazine named him one of 100 people most influential to the media—along with Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey.

After spending much of his life calling up editors, they now call him—hundreds of times a year. Micro Persuasion is read by a huge number of editors in search of fresh leads. Perhaps the sweetest irony is that people from other PR agencies now pitch him in the hope of getting coverage on his blog.

Rubel has helped two CooperKatz clients, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA)—made up of Fortune 500 companies like Proctor & Gamble, Sears, Disney, etc. and WeatherBug,a software utility company that has rapidly emerged from its recent startup status by using blogs to help directly interact with audiences.

With Rubel's coaching, but without him writing a single word, Bob Liodice, ANA CEO and president, started blogging. CooperKatz sent out a brief release announcing the fact, back when much traditional media dismissed the new communications channel as the purview of lonely teenage diarists. The New York Times picked up the Liodice story, wrote positively and gave it prominent play. Now,the press regularly goes to Liodice's blog, and reports on what he has to say. What has happened, is the PR agency facilitated a direct conversation between their client and the media. Then, instead of inserting itself as the gatekeeper--CooperKatz stepped back. This is contrary to the way agencies traditionally work. There are many billable hours to be logged in gate-keeping. . 

But stepping back makes the PR practice more efficient. CooperKatz is a mid-sized agency with 20 employees, yet it seems capable of serving global clients without having to insert 6-10 players onto the client service team.

WeatherBug is a Maryland-based company serving people passionate about the weather and there are lots of them. The company estimates it has nearly 20 million customers. It is considered so reliable and comprehensive that in the event of a national security emergency, the National Weather Service turns to them to augment its own meteorological survey data. Early in it's life, WeatherBug's parent company AWS Convergence Technologies partnered with another company and customers complained they were being subversively infected with spyware. The company has since been vetted as a clean application, according to Rubel.

But like Microsoft, it had a reputation problem. "WeatherBug used the blog as a central communications tool to have a dialog with their biggest critics," says Rubel, and now many of the best-known and most trusted bloggers extol their virtues.

WeatherBug began with event blogs, the first being Groundhog Day, which is now an annual blog where the company very straight-facedly reports on furry critter and shadow sightings. They also started information-sharing blogs for four hurricanes and the activity was again well-covered by the press and heavily visited on the site. But the credibility rebound comes from blog.weatherbug.com ,where WeatherBug's chief privacy officer answers customer support questions on any issue. Even the most addicted-weather junkies seem to find content satiation.

While Rubel remains the sole CooperKatz blogger, the entire agency has been touched by the communications medium. It is pervading the services offered. The firm produces new products to service existing clients and to offer to an increasing number of new prospects, according to Rubel. For example, they've developed a crisis management 'lockbox,' along the lines of, "In case of emergency, break this glass." The agency works with its clients to anticipate whatever crisis could possibly occur. They then plan and design a "failsafe" blog to be used if the emergency actually occurs. They know who will be the speakers, the issues that would be addressed and some of the toughest questions the client might face. If a client ever has to use the lockbox blog, they will be prepared to address their issue directly with the audiences who care most about it.

CooperKatz has also developed a 'blogwatch,' where junior agency team members monitor Blogosphere mentions of their clients, their products and their markets on a daily basis, determining if postings indicated that client risks were normal, high or elevated. It's inexpensive and useful for clients and its high-margin incremental revenue for the agency.

Rubel is amazed at his own fast-emergent prominence and insists that he would rather share what he's learned about blogging and PR with other practitioners, rather than horde it as a competitive weapon. He said all agencies can prosper and do their clients powerful services through blogging. For example, noting there are now 1500 bloggers at Microsoft putting out volumes of content daily, he suggested that Wagged, Microsoft's PR agency could start a blog and pluck the 100 most interesting entries every day, making it more easily accessible to the press and Redmond-watchers.

Why is he so eager to help other agencies? He says that his nature is to be a connector and nearly all great bloggers are great connectors. "This best PR people have always been connectors.  They've often had to be like Plasticman stretching between clients and press.  Blogging is the best connection tool ever invented," he said.

Interview with Ernie the Attorney

As much as Microsoft, the legal profession has an equal need to turn a more human face toward the public. Of the many eloquent, articulate and informative blogging lawyers, Ernest Svenson, a New Orleans-based corporate lawyer, who blogs as ‘Ernie the Attorney,’ is generally perceived as the most human. While others pontificate on lofty issues or warn of dangers lurking everywhere, Ernie often speaks of simpler things in a wry, self-effacing style that is often downright funny.  Ernie engages you and he notices details that add fine brush strokes to many of his posts.

This was all clear around Christmas, when he posted from a snow-closed airport with his kids in tow,  shortly after his marriage dissolved. They end up not flying to see family in Panama as planned but chowing down a holiday dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet.  But, as he shares all this, he’s far from morose.  He points to nice ironic touches.  He’s a Macintosh champion and he posts photos of airport monitors displaying the legendary Microsoft Fatal Error warning. “You feel for him and you smile with him. “I’ve always been disinclined to take myself too seriously,” he told us, “even in serious situations.”

While Svenson writes about anything that interests him, his general focus is on the impact of technology on society. “I don’t always love tech.  Sometimes it’s like spam trying to get into our lives. Because there are so many champions of technology, people who don’t use it end up feeling stressed. They’re worried that they’ll be left out.  He’s concerned with what “principles people should use when they adopt technology. How do you move through life with technology in the right place?” Recently, he announced a new blog, Tech Feng Shui, addressing this issue and saying it was a blog he would like to turn into a book. It seems to us, everybody’s getting into the act.

“Mostly I observe how technology affects people and it just adds a lot if stress to our lives even as  it promises to make people’s lives easier.  It isn’t doing that because many people don’t know how to use it. 

His father was a psychoanalyst, and as a child he was fixated on figuring out what exactly his father did.  Other kids’ parents had jobs that were easily understood, even by young children.   The grown-ups who surrounded him, discussed comfortable matters, like the weather.  But he sensed that his father’s profession dealt with things that no one wanted to discuss, certainly not in casual conversation. One day, at about the age of 11 Ernie snuck a peek at his father’s notes—case studies that were two-page summaries of a patient’s history, without the names of the patients identified and was stunned by the sorts of personal things people were willing to tell his father.  “I learned then that what most people talk about as being ‘personal’ in ordinary conversation is a far cry from the really serious personal stuff that we all like to keep concealed. “So what seems highly personal to some who read my blog is not really the kind of stuff that I am wary of revealing.”

Of the people we interviewed for this book, Svenson was the most reluctant to participate, particularly for a section called, ‘consultants who get it.’ “I don’t blog to market myself. It isn’t about self-promotion.  I write because I’m not sure what I’m thinking.  I discover insight about myself by writing and growing up with a shrink for a dad seems to have made me comfortable sharing a lot of personal stuff with others. I just hate the thought of being seen as Mr. Marketing Guy. I think that sort of stuff fails on blogs. People just want a story: What’s the deal?  Just tell me how it works.  That’s the best thing you can do if you want to market on a blog is don’t. Just talk.”

In fact, when Svenson started in May of 2002, he wrote about sports, life, angst over the untalented New Orleans sports teams—almost anything but the law. But, an increasing number of site visitors had that expectation, considering the Ernie the Attorney handle.  “Eventually, I started talking about the law, but I’m not motivated to talk about it, per se. I’m interested in how the law changes society. He exudes admiration for Federal Judge Richard Posner, who delivers opinions about law with objectivity and clarity. “He looks at the world with an open mind. He looks at why a law was created and thinks about whether its original intent is still valid today.” This plays into Svenson’s passion points, such as the current and future impact of technology on the law.  He never writes about his cases or talks of personal success. 

While blogging has indeed landed him a few referrals, he says, “there has been no tsunami of business coming in. It may be way too early to see that sort of thing in the legal field.  It may attract individuals who just want to find a lawyer they trust and hire him, but it’s certainly not true for Fortune 500 corporations, or other large companies, today, which is the central point of his practice.”  As blogging becomes routine, Svenson feels that will evolve as more people start using blogs to know someone before they actually meeting him or her.

Still, with all the anti-marketing talk, Svenson concedes that blogging has helped his standing in the legal community. He has more than 1000 visitors to his site daily. He practices in courtroom in front of judges who read his blog and know him better than they otherwise would. They’ve invited him to help determine the best WiFi solution to the local Federal courthouse. He recently joined four other well-known blogging attorneys on Corante, a high-traffic site to participate in Between Lawyers—an ambiguously named ongoing public discussion about the law and society. He speaks at blogging at conferences a few times annually.

It also gives him some strange moments. Because he writes of some very personal moments, he meets people who read his blog but don’t blog themselves. They feel they know a great amount about him, while he knows very little about them because they don’t blog. “It creates awkward moments in real-world encounters.” He also meets fellow bloggers.  Because the two read each other, they often feel like old friends even though they’ve just met.

His passion for blogging is not as a lawyer but as an individual and he feels blogging has helped evolve him.  His circle of friends has expanded to include global blog-based friendships. Above all it has taught Svenson to listen closer and more respectfully to people with opposing views.  When he first started blogging, he tried to argue with dissenting comments.  Now, he’s learned to listen to difficult people and find out where they’re coming. Yes, that helps him in his profession. More important, it helps him in life.

Ivan on Employer Intervention

Singapore Librarian Ivan Chew blogs under the handle of Rambling Librarian, and this post shows why it's a good name.  But, if you care about employer--employee blogging issues, it's worth the read.  If his superiors ordered him to stop blogging, he'd be sad, disappointed and angry.  But like all employees, at the end of the day, he'd have only two choices...

http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/04/thinking-aloud-blogging-allowed-when.html

Lenn Pryor Skypes Out of Microsoft

http://lennpryor.blogs.com/lenn/2005/04/goodbye_microso.html

Robert's boss, whom we interviewed extensively in our Microsoft chapter has decided to leave Microsoft after eight years to join Skype. The good news is that those of us who like him will be able to call him at his new home in the UK for cheap on Skype. The bad news, for me, is that he is the sort of guy who changed my views on Microsoft and I'm personally sorry to see him go.

Interview: Brian Bailey, Fellowship Church

Why are we including interviews with church representatives in a book about business blogging?  Because they use word-of-mouth marketing to reach ever-expanding circles of people and because like any other business, they need to grow and prosper and, like other businesses they are using new technology to effectively reach "customers" and prospects.  The Fellowship Church is among the five largest independent churches in America and is definitely evangelical. But Brian Bailey's Leave it Behind blog is not really evangelical in content. Bailey is Fellowship Church's Internet Manager. His blog reveals the heart and enthusiasm of a geek with a kindred spirit to Scoble who recently was his roomie for a night:

(1) What is your position with Fellowship Church? What did you do previously?

I serve as the Internet Manager. I am responsible for the direction and development of our four websites.

(2) How would you describe Fellowship Church in general terms?

Fellowship Church is known for its relentless efforts to serve seekers and build believers. The church is committed to presenting the life-changing message of Jesus Christ in a creative and compelling way. Our goal is to use every tool possible, including technology, to meet each person where they are. Fellowship is an intense, challenging, and infinitely creative organization that never loses sight of what is at stake.Fellowship Church began in 1990 and currently reaches nearly 20,000 people each weekend on its four campuses in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

(3) What is the meaning of the blog name—"Leave it Behind"?

The phrase comes from the U2 song, "Walk On," and symbolizes two things. First, the spirit of the song - letting go of everything in the here and now, all of our struggles and inadequacies and clinging to the eternal. Second, it describes so simply what I am doing on the site as I share my thoughts, perspectives, and experiences.

(4) What made you decide to start a blog? What was the decision-making process in the church?

I had been following weblogs primarily through Dave Winer since 2001 and had experimented with a number of different sites over the years. In early 2002, I presented an idea for implementing weblogs internally as a knowledge sharing tool, but the business justification (or return on ministry) wasn't yet clear. In August 2003, I was interviewed for a Dallas Morning News article on the role of blogs in churches. Off the record, the reporter was curious why a large church known for its creative use of technology did not utilize weblogs.

So, at the beginning of 2004, I decided it was time to stop talking about weblogs and experimenting with weblogs and start writing a weblog. The only way to prove the value of a weblog and see what the true impact would be was to dive in. Leave It Behind went public on April 1, 2004 and there has been at least one post each day ever since. The site was mine personally. I did not initially discuss the church. I didn’t ask permission before launch. After I had proven that I enjoyed it and could be consistent, I began to share the site with friends, co-workers, and my manager, Terry Storch, who is on Fellowship's executive team. Terry liked the site, and encouraged me to write more about the ministry. Soon after, he started a site of his own. There are now nearly 15 staff members who have weblogs and the number is growing rapidly. We will soon be launching weblogs on two of our sites, in addition to numerous RSS feeds, and team blogs that will allow our staff to communicate in the open.

(5) You seem to discuss church and religion very little.  What is the purpose of the blog?

I started Leave It Behind because I love to write and wanted the challenge of producing something on a regular basis. I enjoy sharing new ideas and different views on things and getting feedback. I honestly don't see the site as an opportunity to preach, partly because that is not my calling and partly because I don't know how effective it would be. I would be very disappointed if all of my readers were Christ-followers. My goal is to gather together a diverse group of readers that enjoy being exposed to different thoughts and perspectives. A personal obsession of mine is to find commonality with people and I hope my site has brought that sense of commonality to my diverse audience.

There are a lot of different levels that we can connect with each other on, even if we don't see eye-to-eye on some. I have incredible respect and appreciation for each of my readers because each has given me the freedom to write on a wide variety of topics. One of the most common pieces of blog advice is to choose a single area of focus and stick with it.

(6) How has blogging changed you?

Having a weblog and writing consistently has had an unbelievable effect on me. The site has made me more open to others, more willing to take risks, and better informed. I've been exposed to diverse voices and perspectives. The site has raised my professional profile greatly, giving me the opportunity to meet a number of cool people and participate in two book projects.

Finally, the discipline of blogging every day has helped me develop ideas more fully and express myself more clearly.

(7) How has it changed the church?

The most dramatic effect has been within the staff. The blogs have had a significant impact on our own communication and has helped spread the vision of the church throughout the organization. As you read a blog, if it is honest and open, you can't help but feel a greater connection to the writer and her church or company.

Blogs have also encouraged us to be more open, allowing readers to see how decisions are made and why. We've shared behind-the-scenes photos and anecdotes from events, and with that, the energy and excitement the staff has for what we do.

(8) How has it changed perceptions of the church?

The increased openness that blogs have encouraged has helped people feel a greater sense of connection with the church, whether they are local members, curious seekers, or staff and leaders from other churches. We have sought advice from other churches and brought a sense of community to our shared mission.

Robert Scoble's visit to our campus and subsequent high-profile conversations have certainly helped solidify Fellowship's reputation as a church that embraces technology in innovative ways.

(9) Do you have any interesting blog-related anecdotes to share with us?

I had been following Robert Scoble's blog over the past two years and had enjoyed reading about his visits to various companies that used Microsoft technology. When I read that he was visiting Dallas for a wedding, I thought I would invite him to visit Fellowship Church as we use Microsoft in nearly every area of the church, including our church management system built in .NET.

I met [Scoble at] our bookstore … and we spent the next two hours touring the church and describing how Fellowship uses technology to reach our community, serve our members, empower our staff, and make a large church seem small. A few hours later, back in Seattle, Scoble posted Ten Evangelism and IT Lessons from One of America’s Biggest Churches and I received thousands of hits in the next week. That single post, following that single invitation, started many conversations and truly launched my site. Scoble and I stayed in touch and the next thing I know we're sharing a hotel room at the SXSW conference and having lunch with Craig Newmark.

(10) Do you have any advice for other organizations thinking about blogging?

From an organizational standpoint, I see weblogs as completely natural. A weblog is the written transcript of the thoughts, conversations, ideas, mistakes, and victories that take place every day in every organization. What isn't natural is sharing that with the rest of the world.

Blogging is all about taking chances and getting out of your comfort zone. An organization must be willing tolerate some mistakes and criticism, knowing that the risk is worth the innumerable benefits of open communication. Blogs are a great instrument for connecting your organization with your users, customers, or members. Blogs also encourage honest conversation within an organization, pushing both change and growth.

How do you begin? My advice is to find the naturally curious people and let them start. I don't think you can launch blogs as

a new corporate initiative in the same way you introduce a new health plan. You need to locate the people in your organization that enjoy writing and have a passion for your product or service and want to be evangelists.

When I was in college, I heard the story of an architect who had a unique approach to paving the sidewalks on a new campus. Rather than plan where the paths should be and pour the concrete, he decided to open the campus without sidewalks and see where the people naturally traveled. After a couple of weeks, it was obvious where the sidewalks should be. I think it's the same with blogging. Let it start as an experiment and see where it naturally goes. Then lay down the foundation for others to follow.

NY Times on Employer Intervention

Tom Zeller has a New York Times Page One article on employers intervening in what employees blog on their own time.  It's an issue we will be loking at later in the book--and one of the more complex issues it seems to me.

Rubel: Character Blogs Suck

Steve Rubel:

Character blogs are a waste of time because a character is not and never will be human - unless it's Pinocchio. Jason even noted that the Captain, who blogged about basketball, couldn't possibly play the sport. Ugh. A character blog is a giant missed opportunity to have real humans – whether they be employees, customers, or even distillers and bottlers - engaging in a real dialogue with consumers. I am all for using characters in TV commercials and even micro-sites, but having them blog is just a lame, lazy idea. In fact, it's an insult to blogging and bloggers everywhere.

Gates Says Most Businesses will Blog

Tony Perkins, hardcopy, AlwaysOn, the blogazine of innovation, has gone out and you can only see parts of it online , or subscribe for the full paper version. Once piece not available online is Perkins own "Tune In--Turn On" column in which he discusses Bill Gates comments on blogging during a private dinner at Gates home on Lake Washington.

" Blogging makes it very easy to communicate. It gets away from drawbacks of email and the drawbacks of a website. Eventually, most businesses will use blogs to communicate with customers, suppliers and employees, because it's two-way and more satisfying."

Perkins added, "Gates  knows that the referral power of the blogosphere is also exploding and marketing and PR executives must embrace this reality or risk losing control of their messages."

Two great quotes. Our thanks to Tony. We'll give full attribution, when we include them in our book.

More on "Moose blogging"

When it comes to character blogs, keep in mind I know a bit about this. Here, search Google for "Talking Moose." You'll find Talkingmoose.manilasites.com is #1.

Guess who did that site? Yes, that was my work. Back in 2001.

Doing it was fun, but it was unsatisfying. For one, no one really believed anything written there because it was a fake blog done by someone you didn't know or trust (we never revealed who was behind the blog until after I stopped).

It got far fewer inbound links than my other "real" blog, even though it was written in the same language about the same kind of content.

That's why, ultimately, I decided to stop doing it. It was a fun experiment but didn't help me build a relationship with anyone (which should be the whole point of doing a business blog anyway).

But, good luck to those of you who will try to make something happen with a character blog. We'll be watching!

Dave Winer posted second part of his "interview" with us

Dave Winer has posted the second part of his "interview" with us. This is sorta fun. We email him questions, he records audio and podcasts that. Thanks Dave!

In Defense of Character Blogs

Susan Getgood gives a good case in favor of character blogs.  Thanks Susan, for pointing us to our old pal Spencer F. Katt. He certainly has worked for more than 20 years in the newspaper column medium.  Maybe he would work as a blog, but it might prove to be an awkward transition, but then the hepkatt was always a gossip-monger and not a brand extension.

Wiley Joe is Well-Above Average

Perhaps the most dramatic event so far in the saga of this book, was when the Wiley team flew to Scottsdale where Robert and I were attending Demo. They got their for Valentine's Day and took us to pricey Mason's Steak House where we tried to talk business while surrounded by noisy well-lubricated couples. Wiley had flown there in an effort to close a deal with us and they did it with a generous offer.

But the deal could not be sealed.  Robert wanted a publisher who "got blogging" and no one at Wiley blogged. That's when Joe Wickert, our publisher said he would start a blog if Robert would coach him.

Joe started "The Average Joe," just a few days later. Robert did very little, except to post once that Joe had picked an indistinctive title because no one would know what the blog was about.

Joe's blog, less than two-months-old, ranks third at Google if you type in "The Average Joe." Five days ago it ranked 6th. Technorati gives it 25 inbound links, in less than two months, a lot better that this blog was doing at that point.

I recommend the Average Joe to anyone who wants to write abook or understand the top tier of the publishing business. It's getting lots of comments and building a following.  I'm told that more Wiley team members will soon be blogging.  We planted a seed.  Here comes a tree.

Robert, thanks for offering the advice, but they seem to be doing just fine on their own.

Toby, Character Blogs & Deleted Comments

I seem to have gotten into a ruckus with Toby Bloomberg recently and the thing has been escalating. Paul Chaney over at Radiant Marketing is indignant about a comment I left on her blog and has labeled me Diva’s Enemy #1 . He was irate over a comment I left on her site in which he said I had been over-the-top, which I have to admit is accurate. It was my bad play. I'm embarrassed by it, and I apologize. I was trying something that failed because people were clueless what it was all about and that part of it shows poor judgments on my part. If I am Toby’s #1 public enemy, than she is blessed with very few enemies.  I wish her no ill will, but I do have two serious issues with her and they are not small and in those issues, I remain adamant in my disagreement with her.

These two issues are:

(1) Character blogs. Toby, as a consultant, has helped a client create Gourmet Station . She thinks they are a legitimate marketing mechanism and she is championed by two colleagues who seem to be closely intertwined in its promotion. Others thing all character blogs are lame. My views are more are complicated, and I’ll get to them in a minute.

(2) Comment Deletion. Toby apparently thinks its okay to take down comments that her Gourmet Station doesn’t like. Here, I strong disagree with her and I’ll address that as well.

First, let me back up a bit.  A central theme to our book is that traditional one-directional marketing is in the process of dying. It will be replaced by conversational marketing and companies who adapt will be better off for it—so will their constituencies. Companies who ignore the blogging phenomenon will fall behind the curve and will have a great deal of trouble catching up. Marketers who try to game blogging, using typical marketing techniques, we believe will fail because the beauty and power of blogging comes down to credible conversations between real people who listen to each other.

On April Fool’s Day, Gaping Void’s Hugh McLeod posted a new Beyond Lame Award, which pointed me to Gourmet Station. When I went there, I felt the blog merited the award.  It was slick and deceptive in my opinion.  I had no idea that this site had anything to do with Toby. I looked for a real person whom I could email—but there is no email posted that I could find.  So I posted the first of my controversial comments.  I said that Hugh sent me and that I thought he was right. The site was lame and was very interested to see how the company would answer my comment.  How they responded would impact what I planned to write about it for our book.

The next day, I received the first of two emails from Toby.  The subject line was “Agree to Disagree,” which was a reference to a bump she and I recently had on a radio program, over a very similar issue. Until I read the email, I had no idea that Toby was in any way connected to Gourmet Station and I felt badly.  Had I known, I would have just gone to her and interviewed her on the record. Toby wrote (in part), “The icon as a "voice" makes sense for the strategy and branding direction. We fully disclosed and even told part of the back story of how we reached this decision. Tris Hussey and Paul Chaney eloquently posted the on the issue. It's ok to disagree. It's how we're going to learn and grow and take this exciting adventure to the next level. My hope is that our dialogues will be based on honorable intensions that help rather than hurt and include sound research when we debate issues with each other.”

I thought it was a classy note and I felt badly.  I sent a quick awkward personal apology, I  figured I’d spend the day thinking over several options for next steps and mulling several questions it raised: for example: How does a disclosure on Radiant Marketing, justify a deceiving visitors to Gourmet Station?
For another, Toby had used the pronoun, “We.”  Were Paul Chaney and Tris Hussey involved in this project as well or just stepping up for a friend? I was going to research and get the whole story—but tabled it for the day.

Then Toby sent a second email and I perceived this one to be a hand grenade. Toby informed me that my Gourmet Station comment had been deleted. To me this went to a larger fundamental— removing legitimate comments submitted by real people seems to me to destroy the conversation that makes blogging so special. Now I was mad, and I am aware that I have a temper that has done me wrong in the past.  I followed Robert’s sage advice and I avoided writing anything on the subject, while I was still mad.

But mad I remained. I wanted to know just what rules on comments Toby maintained.  I went to her site and placed an intentionally caustic comment,which of course backfired on me. There would have been wiser courses and I regret not taking them.

Chaney and Hussey were quick to jump to their friend’s defense. Chaney posted a strong comment on Toby’s blog taking me on, telling me I was over the top and concluding: “Who asked you anyway?” He emailed me to make certain I saw it. Then he posted his own indignant blog. Interestingly, in building a case against me, he quoted Shel Holtz . He quoted Shel as saying “...a blog is a lightweight content management system that allows people to comment.”  Let me repeat, “ALLOWS PEOPLE TO COMMENT.” My point precisely. This goes to Chaney's question of who asked me anyway. 

It seems to me that when your blog has a comments section, you are asking people for comments.  Perhaps, I'm being presumptuous. At The Red Couch, there are comments that have been posted that I absolutely hate.  Yet they remain posted, so long as they do not break rules of decency or obscenity. Allan Jenkins recently pointed out a few reasonable rules that make sense to me. Some A-listers like Dave Winer—to my personal disappointment—turns off his comments but at least lets you email him. 

Toby didn’t like what I said so she arbitrarily erased my words from Gourmet Station. This did not seem to me to be a constructive next step in her e-mailed suggestion that we have dialog, “based on honorable intensions that help rather than hurt." Interestingly, she did not remove my even more caustic comments from Diva Marketing. I think this is to her credit. Perhaps she feels her clients are worthy of greater protection.  Or perhaps the decision to censor me was actually made by her clients and she was forced to be the messenger. If that is the case, Toby, I hope you find better clients.

Tris Hussey also had some curious additions to this escapade.  I was not familiar with Tris until now.  The first time I noticed his name was when it appeared under comments at Gourmet Station. Then Toby referenced in him in the email to me. Next, I read Paul Chaney gave him radiating praise in his blog. Then, finally Tris chimed in with his own posting --which shows he is no master at teaching by example. He opened with a high-road call for civility among disagreing parties. In his next breath, he referred to an “asshole VC,” who held an opposing view. Then, as a further example of a lack of civility, he pointed to my recent post on Moosetopia. That was an interesting choice. In fact, I had enjoyed a most civil interaction with Moosetopia's author John Nardini and shared with him in advance that Robert, I and many of our readers took a dim view of character blogs. He asked for the chance to be heard anyway and we gave it to him.  John sent me an email thanking me for giving him a fair chance.I feel badly that some comments posted there have been, well uncivil.  Be that as it may, that doesn’t give me the right to take them down.

Tris, please tell me what was uncivil about that. 

Toby, I apologize once more. I was rude and I was playing my own games when I should have been more straightforward. We should all remember to be straightforward--don't you think?  I would like, if it’s possible, to have that dialog filled with“ honorable intensions that help rather than hurt and include sound research when we debate issues with each other.”  I welcome any comments you wish to post.

Corporate Blog Tip #7 (make yourself accessible)

This tip is easy: make it easy to get ahold of you. Especially if you ever want something nice to happen to you. I've been trying to get ahold of bloggers lately to do various things with them (and even hire some of them) and often it's hard to find a way to contact the blogger.

On my blog I put my cell phone number so people can get ahold of me. One Saturday afternoon I was at mini golf with my family and I get a call.

"Hello, is this Robert Scoble?"
"Yes."
"Hi, I'm the design producer for ABC's Extreme Home Makeover show."

See, you never know who wants to get ahold of you. How they'll change your business. How they'll change your career. But you'll never know if you don't have at least an email address on your blog. And, as ABC's producer shows, some people just don't have time to wait for email, so a phone number is helpful.

Amazingly in years of having my cell phone out in public I've only gotten a couple of crank calls and I've made a lot of friends and made great business relationships that continue to pay off.

Dave Winer answers our questions -- in a podcast

We sent Dave Winer a bunch of questions and he sent back a podcast with the answers. Interesting stuff, as usual from Dave.

English Cut: The Global Tailor

We had planned to interview Huge MacLeod, Thomas Mahon and David Parmet for different sections of our book.  MacLeod, of course, is the Hughtrain of Gaping Void, who we recently interviewed about lame sites.  Mahon is best known as the Savile Row author of English Cut and Parmet is one of the increasing number of PR guys who get that blogging is fundamentally changing the profession.  But the three have come together in a way that creates one of the Blogosphere’s most successful commercial stories yet.

It begins somewhere in a British Pub, where Mahon and MacLeod bending an occasional elbow together. “I had a drinking buddy who was a tailor,” says MacLeod. He wasn’t interested in blogs and I wasn’t terribly interested in expensive, conservative suits.” Occasionally, they’d talk about business. It could have been better for both of them —a lot better. MacLeod is an ad consultant, whose books and blog illustrations bitingly tweak the nose of the ad industry. Mahon is a master tailor with a shop on one of the world’s highest rent streets.

“The blog idea sort of started by accident,” recalls MacLeod. “We didn’t have a business plan or vision or anything like that. “ I asked Mahon what he was doing to market his suits and the answer was nothing much.  He had an appalling website—as do most Savile tailors. I started talking to him about blogs, but at first, he wasn’t interested.  There are probably about 10,000 people in the whole world who matter in his world,” about 1000 or so actually pony up as much as $4000 USD for these custom-tailored, fine wool suits.

MacLeod says he “started filling Mahon’s “head with Cluetrain and blogging stuff,” and slowly Mahon got interested.  “We started thinking that if Mahon could talk about tailoring on a blog about the same way that Seth Godin talks about marketing, then the people who care will see it.  Mahon wouldn’t try to sell suits on the blog. Instead, he would show his knowledge and love of the craft.  He would explain the labor, and materials involved and why the cost of each suit was justified.”  The idea was that the people who cared either about suits or how a master craftsmen creates them would find their way to the site.

MacLeod’s Gaping Void blog wouldn’t hurt either. Gaping Void has a high Google status and many of the world’s most popular bloggers regularly connect with him. If MacLeod enthused about a tailor’s blog, it would have the Field of Dreams effect: People will come. The drinking buddies clinked glasses and a partnership formed.  Mahon would make the suits.  MacLeod would use his marketing and creative skills to sell them. In January, Mahon entered his first post on his new blog, English Cut.  By April, hundreds of bloggers had written about EnglishCut. Dozens were linking to it.

While all of this was unfolding in the UK, Parmet, a regular visitor and comment poster at Gaping Void was getting himself fired from a New York PR firm. We are hesitant to report on domestic issues, without hearing both sides. But, in his viewpoint, the reasons came from the fact his superiors kept asking for new ideas and Parmet was relentlessly championing blogging. That made him MacLeod’s kind of guy. He posted a sympathetic blog, under the headline of, “Somebody hire Dave, Dammit,” and the two became email friends. Then, says MacLeod, “I just asked him out-of-the-blue if he would fancy trying his hand at generating PR for English Cut” but Parmet jumped hedged when he found out that the gig would result in a fine suit by no cash.”  But Roxy Music impresario Bryan Ferry inadvertently saved the deal. Says Parmet, "I had always had a thing for Savile Row suits, ever since I first saw Bryan Ferrie wearing them on the MTV videos years earlier." What clinched the English Cut dealwas when he learned that Mahon had made Ferry’s suits.

What followed was a brief trip to New York that was historic both for blogging and PR. If you think about it, the press is the real customer for a PR practitioner. Clients are more like manufacturers who supply the PR guy with something to his customer wants in the form of news. Many view the PR practitioner with a cynical eye, but credibility with media contacts is everything.

Parmet had to lay his credibility on the line this time. The tailor and his publicist had never met, never even talked until a week before the New York gig. “It was a true 'power of blogs' moment. Here I was putting himself in the hands of someone I didn't know. I was ushering him into some of the world’s most powerful media companies, with no idea if Mahon could even articulate what he had blogged.”  Parmet was unemployed, but far from desperate.  Why was he taking such a risk?  “Somehow, perhaps through our readings of our respective blogs, there was a level of trust and from the moment I arrived at Tom's hotel, it was like we had been working together for months,” he said.

There was another small but significant step being taken, not just for the Blogosphere, but perhaps for how some PR will be practiced in the future. This, as far as we can determine, was the first time that anyone got into the doors of major international print and broadcast media, solely on the power of blogs.  Second, the interviewee was not no CEO from a global company.  He was just an English tailor--a sole proprietor addressing a tiny niche market. Even Mahon's blog, not yet three-months-old, wasn’t established and even so--in April 2005, most blog denizens were not the sort in the market for a $4000 suit.

The press tour was a smash.  “The media just love this story,” Parmet told us. The result is an exclusive article in one of the world’s most prestigious publications and a television coverage on a major global TV network.  The three key players remain tight-lipped on when these will unfold because of publication agreements. But the blog’s value proved itself during this brief visit, even if not a single word was published by the media.  All by itself, English Cut has nearly tripled their business solely because of the blog and it is opening doors where Mahon had thought there were only walls.

Mahon has been coming to New York for years, to serve a smattering of American clientele. The economics are such that if he sells two suits each time, it pays for the trip. If he sells three, he eats and gets to pay rent again back on Savile Row. A five-suit trip for him has traditionally been a Bonanza. When Mahon was in New York, in December 2004, he sold only two suits. This time, he sold 20 suits and eight sport coats, better by far than he had done in any full year ever.

Where did the new business coming from? “One hundred percent of this increase has come from blogs. There’s absolutely no doubt about it,” says McLeod. “The blog represents as much as a 300 percent increase in new business in less than 10 weeks. 

The success has fundamentally changed the game for English Cut.  They have many more options.  Mahon is becoming globally recognized and can probably fly to most major cities and find customers he previously could not access. Better yet, they find him.  Well-known people came to him in New York and they are ones likely to generate word-of-mouth, which of course will get Mahon more customers. He has new freedom.  He can choose his customers and refer ones he no longer wants or needs to Savile tailor colleagues who may not have the same number of customers standing in line waving money at them, a situation still new and surprising to Mahon.

Mahon has been a one-person shop for many years and now he’s thinking globally.  He’s thinking of hiring other quality tailors to increase productivity while maintaining quality. He also thinks that blogging may untether him from the painful rent hikes on Savile Row, which has been a source of strain for the premier tailoring industry.  It seems to us to make sense.  If the top investment houses of the United States can move to Connecticut and New Jersey and still call themselves “Wall Street,” we think a tailor of quality can call himself Savile Row, even if he’s working out of an East London garage. His customers want quality, not geography.

So what does this mean for other tailors?  Can each of them, now hop into the Blogosphere and do what Mahon and McLeod have done, then hire an New York publicist to follow … suit? Not a chance. EnglishCut, when blog readers came across it, was remarkable. It displayed passion and authority.  It told us things that were interesting.  English Cut is one of Godin’s Purple Cows and any tailor who follows will just be plain old boring brown cows.

For the English Cut team, it seems to us they have made history because they went first.  And while other tailors cannot emulate this level of success, other people in a wide array of businesses worldwide can learn from what they have done and use blogging to greatly leverage their businesses.

Antlers in the Blogosphere

Two reports on dairy related products back-to-back.  I should be able to milk this for something. While our previous prior posting on Stonyfield Farms, emphasized organic wholesomeness, Denali Flavors, a Michigan-based company that supplies elite flavors to 80 ice cream-making dairies might come closer to decadence.

Of the scores of interviews we're conducting for this book, this one, with EVP John Nardini gives Robert and me the greatest ambivalence.  Why? Because one of their blogs--Moosetopia--portends to be written by a fictitious character, in this case a cartoon moose. We are traditionally dead-set against such marketing cuteness. We can hear our friend Hugh McLeod from Gaping Void already shouting "lame," and comparing it to the deceptive and truly lame Captain Morgan. We are closer to the fence on this one, in part because Nardini, is the ghost writer behind the moose, and he's not trying to deceive anyone. He's been great in our interaction with him and passionate about trying something different and having fun."I think the moose blog is unique, entertaining, and a new legitimate way to blog.  I think there will be more of this in the future," he told us, giving us a polite warning that by the time our book is on shelf, there will be numerous such blogs from marketers and therefore we should include the Moosetopia case in our book.

Nardini informed us that Denali will be doing at least two additional blogs and they will be authored by real, identifiable people and will include,in his words,"the good, the bad, and the ugly" of the company. He says, "this will help our brand and let people see inside," which is the kind of talk we like and persuades us to keep an open mind on the Denali menagerie.

"So there you have it – am I ahead-of-the-curve or am I Satan’s brother?  I’ll let you guys tell me."

And we will, but right now, we're just not yet certain what we will have to say about the antlered facade and we will let both the Blogosphere and Denali's market weigh in before deciding.

One more note.  John's zeal for his product required us to tone down his consistent vows that everyone who ever tried his product loves it.  This may or may not be true, but were more interested in understand just what the Moose Track folk are up to and how others feel about it.

Q1. Where is Moose Track Ice Cream sold and why should people buy it as opposed to Ben & Jerry’s?

SUMMARY of ANSWER: The company’s name is Denali flavors and its most popular item is Moose Tracks Ice Cream (www.moosetracks.com).  It doesn't actually make ice cream, but develops flavors which it licenses to about 80 independent dairies. Currently, we work with 80 dairies and are found in different brands all over the U.S. These brands produce about $50 million in annual sales, but as licensors, they see only a fraction of that.

Denali focuses on national marketing stuff like PR and the web and lets the dairies do local promotions. Nardini contended that it differentiates from national brands like Ben & Jerry's by offering distinctive flavors, value pricing and use of cute, quirky characters.

Q2. When did the blog start?  Whose idea was it? Why do you blog?

Officially, the blog hasn’t started – we’re technically in the development process.  There are still a few things I want to add/correct to make it look better as well as have more content before we start marketing it actively.

The idea was mine after I started researching blogging and saw that it was a powerful tool for a small business like ours. It was then that we developed a multi-blog strategy that includes Moosetopia.com as well as a small business/inside Denali blog and some others.

Each of our blogs has a different reason for blogging. With Moosetopia.com, we want to show our character’s broader personality as well as reinforce our products as fun. So what could be better than an entertainment blog written by the moose himself?

Q3. Who’s your target audience?

Anyone who wants to be entertained by jokes, whacky items found on the web, inspirational stories, puns, etc.  Most likely, the audience will be adult (25-55) and will likely be made up of our current customers at first. We hope non-customers will eventually read it, get to know our character and ultimately try our products.

We will not be overtly talking about our products.  This isn’t a typical business blog – we won’t be discussing flavors, asking for consumer comments on our products, soliciting new product ideas, responding to issues, etc. Moosetopia.com will be strictly entertainment to engage people and get them more familiar with the character.

Q4 How many visitors do you get?  How many links do you have?

Right now, Typepad has us at 414 page views in two weeks and Technorati show’s us having no links. Since we really haven’t marketed the blog, this is neither surprising nor upsetting.  I expect people to embrace the blog once we get the word out.  And the good news for a small business like ours is that we don’t need 50,000 visitors and 10,000 links to impact our business. 

With this said, we plan to start actively marketing in a few weeks.

Q5 What will you do to market it?

We'll cover all the "basic" blog marketing tactics such as posting regularly, posting content people want to see, pinging all the recommended sites after each post, networking with other bloggers, posting comments and trackbacks, and the like – things that generally any article on blog promotion will tell you to do.

Then we want to supplement these efforts with some unusual ideas such as:

• Offline media – We'll focus on our blog as part of these efforts.  In addition, the moose himself is willing to be interviewed so we'll see if there is anyone brave enough to talk to him. 
• Emails –  We've done some email testing and can testify that it is a great way to market.  We're fortunate to have a great list and while it's not big, our consumers are very active in promoting our products so we think we'll get a lot of pass-along and word-of-mouth from this. 
• Free stuff – There's nothing in the world of marketing like free stuff.  We've got all sorts of cute moose items that people would love to have – shirts, towels, stuffed animals, key chains, magnets, etc., and we'll use them in creative ways to get people to visit often.
• Viral marketing – We're going to try a few things – ecards (may be past their prime, but a moose card might work), flash mini-movies, games, and the like.
• Site of the week – We'll be awarding a "Moosetopia Site of the Week Award" to one website or blog every week.   
• The moose might write a book (or a syndicated column), he might make the news over his (alleged, not confirmed) on again-off again romance with a yet unnamed cartoon character, or he may start talking to up-and-coming X Games participants about wearing his logo wear.            

Q6. How does blogging fit into your overall marketing campaign?

It’s going to be a large part of what we’ll be doing because of the issues addressed in question #1. It’s a cost-effective way to communicate with a national audience and perfect for a small business like ours.

Q7. What’s the blog’s objective?

Our key objective is brand awareness for our. There is only a very small portion of people who have tried Moose Tracks and don’t like it – most love it.  But many, many more haven’t heard of it.  So a key objective of all our marketing (including this blog) is to get people to be aware of the brand and ultimately try it.

Q 8. How does blogging fit into your overall marketing campaign?

It’s going to be a large part of what we’ll be doing in the future because of the issues addressed in question #1. It’s a cost-effective way to communicate with a national audience and perfect for a small business like ours.

Q9. What’s the blog’s objective?

Brand awareness. A key objective is to get people to be aware of the brand and ultimately try it.  If we can get them to taste it, the product will do the rest of our job for us.

Q10. Do you have any advice for other companies considering blogging?

1. Read and study a lot of blogs.  See what people are saying, how they say it, how they link, what their sites look like, etc.  Absorb yourself in blogging.  And look at different types of blogs – different “genres” of blogs will show you different things.  I currently subscribe to about 75 blogs on News Gator and 50 or so at Bloglines.

2. Start blogging right away – even as you read and learn.  While doing #1 will help you out a lot, you’ll miss much of what people are saying unless you are dealing with it.  There are so many free blogging tools out there (and even free trial periods for the for-fee services like TypePad), that there’s no risk for you to start now. Write about your family, your cat, your rose growing hobby, whatever.  Just get started.  And try several different services. 

3. Be a free thinker.  Even within the (supposedly) open-minded world of blogging, there are certain attitudes of “this is the way it should be done”.  My opinion is that the blogosphere isn’t even close to being standardized yet, and over the next few months and years we’ll see tons of new and better ways to use blogging than how “conventional wisdom” says we should use it today.  I don’t mean things like not to plagiarize others’ work – that will always be something that should be followed – but I’m talking about things like “blogs should always do this” or “always do that”.  If you think something new should be tried and have solid reasons for it, go for it.

Q11.  Additional Comments

One reason I think blogging works so well for small businesses is that there’s a lot less bureaucracy to work through at a small company.  As such, small businesses can be up and blogging well before larger competitors.

I agree that there’s a place for a non-anonymous blog (and would even concede that this is and should be the norm – at least for the present time).  By writing as a real person, you establish a trust and a connection with people that you can’t get in any other way.  You also get comments and feedback that can be useful for your business.  That’s why our company will be launching a blog written by our executives that will detail the issues small businesses deal with as well as discuss the behind-the-scenes action at Denali.  We’ll also solicit consumer feedback, ideas, and the like on this blog.  We expect it to be very popular with our core consumer base.

In my opinion there’s also a place for a blog like Moosetopia.com

We are not so sure.  We will be very interested to see the response to this interview.

Stonyfield Farms Interview

Our working title for Chapter 5 is "Small Business--Long Reach." If we use Stonyfield Farms in that chapter as we currently plan, then we'll probably have to change the title. Although it began in 1983 as an organic farm school in New Hampshire with seven cows as its chief asset, its current run rate is about $200 million annually and and it claims to be the leader in organic yogurt, selling 18 million cups of the stuff a month. 

We interviewed Christine Halvorson, Stonyfield's chief blogger. Here are her comments with just a few cuts for brevity sake.  We have been vigilant not to change the context:

1. Stonyfield now has five blogs.  What’s the thinking on having so many?

We have some discern able, easily identifiable niche markets in our audience, so it seemed appropriate. The five topics of the five blogs are meant to appeal to those niches:

(1) Women

(2) People concerned about junk food in schools and healthy kids

(3) Organic farmers and those who want to read about organic food production

(4) Parents of very young children and,

(5) Our incredibly loyal customer base.

2. Are you the only blogger? Why do you blog? What made you start?

I am the primary writer for three out of the five blogs. The other two:  Baby Babble is made up heavily of entries from a roster of six Stonyfield employees who are parents of very young children and babies. I recruited them because we wanted to talk parenting, yet I am not a parent.  Second, The Bovine Bugle is written entirely by one of the farmers. He writes about his daily life. I review it for editing/style only and then post. We bought him a digital camera and he contributes great photos.

We started blogging on April 1, 2004—it was entirely the idea of our CEO Gary Hirshberg, (He prefers being called CE'YO)who saw the value in the relationship-building aspects of blogging.  [He was concerned that having grown so rapidly over 20 years] we would lose touch with what has always been a very committed and loyal customer base.  I give him credit for having such foresight to see that communication could become a problem and for seeing blogging as one means to address that. Guerrilla marketing is how we built our company, and blogging certainly was and remains on the cutting edge of corporate “branding” tools.

3. What impact has it had for Stonyfield? How has it changed Stonyfield’s business?

We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from professionals in the marketing community about what we’re doing. The public relations community is watching us with a wary eye (“What? Uncontrolled corporate messages? Unheard of!”)  We know the readers who come to read our blogs and occasionally comment are enjoying them. The Bovine Bugle inspires a lot of nostalgia about farming, while providing insight into the methods of organics. The Baby Babble inspires a lot of parents—or at least gives them a place to rant and find like-minded parents. We hope we are entertaining, that folks are finding us from other blogs, or accidental stumbling upon us while visiting our website.  Like many public relations endeavors, it’s hard to quantify, but we assume we’ve garnered some positive impressions among our readers and that’s what counts most, not necessarily our ROI.

4. What else does Stonyfield do to market itself?  How does it fit in with blogging?

We do traditional print and television advertising, but far less than other food companies. It was only up until recently that we did paid advertising at all. As noted above, guerrilla marketing is our thing.  We do a lot of sampling and community events.  We sponsor “Strong Women Summits”—women-focused events to appeal to our prime consumers.  We put branded healthy snack vending machines in the public schools.  We have a PR team which also gets our name out there in traditional ways. [CEO]Gary would tell you that we see our yogurt cup as an educational tool—we use its lid to spread whatever messages we think are important—and those are often related to environmental initiatives.  Blogging fits with all of that because we’ve always been a company with a particular point of view, with opinions, with a mission beyond making money (though making money is good too) and with the guts to take risks. 

6. Can you give us some examples of your guerrilla marketing programs?

One very recent example was a "Salute Your Commute" effort. We had people standing at subway exits in Boston and New York last summer handing out our products free to say thank you to folks using public transportation. We'll be doing this again on Earth Day in Boston, then some other cities. There's also an unverified story about our CEO taking the first few batches of yogurt around to local grocers and literally spooning it into their mouths to get them to stock it.

7. What advice do you have for other small businesses who are considering blogging?

(1) Don’t bog down the blog with excessive policies and procedures. That’s the only reason Stonyfield’s have worked so well. We go with the flow and the rest of the company flows along.

(2) Develop a thick skin. Bloggers aren’t necessarily nice.

(3) Post often and be interesting. Readers are fickle.

(4) Be authentic. Do not use it as yet another public relations or advertising outlet. Write like a real person talks.

8. Do you have any cautions about blogging?

Control spam at all costs. You will lose your life if you don’t stop it before it gets in the door.

9. Any additional comments that you think would be useful or interesting?

If you get into blogging, do it for a couple of weeks before you announce it to the world. You want to work out the kinks and figure out your work flow before you make a big deal out of it.

Grace BONNEY--not Bonnie

I suffer from a name recognition deficiency.  I don't know why, but most of my life I've had the ability to remember little details, the lyrics to songs, passages of literature but I constantly screw up people's names.  I know not why.

When I first contacted Grace Bonney, I called her Amy.  She politely corrected me.  Then I posted an interview with her and spelled her last name wrong.  Sometimes, I just feel bone-headed.

In any case, it's Bonney--not Bonnie, and I'm sorry for screwing it up.  I will be correcting the previous post as well.

Hugh MacLeod on Lame Sites

Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void illustrations crack me up. He has an irreverent focus that hits somewhere between the bizarre and the outrageous. He's hard on the ad industry because he spent a sizable chunk of his life being part of it. 

We are planning a chapter on "Doing it Wrong," and, while we have begun to compile a list of our own, and urge all readers to submit any and all examples of companies doing it wrong, we thought we'd turn to the master has pointed us to so many of the lamest we have seen.

There is a serious side to what Hugh is doing and one which will be a point of our chapter. Lame blogs are not usually done by stupid people.  They are done by smart people who think we are stupid.

And now, heeeere's Hugh:

What made you decide to start spotlighting lame sites?

Probably my 15 years off and on in advertising... I knew their

tricks, I knew what they were hoping would happen. I knew all the

lame-ass reason they were doing it (fear, vanity and greed,

mostly), and decided to call them on it.

Are you afraid you'll run out of lame sites?

No. If I see none I won't write about them. I don't go around

surfing for lame sites. Just one will occasionally land on my

radar, and my first intinct is to write about it.

What criteria do you use to determine lameness?  What do you do in case of a tie?

In case of a tie, I make a completely arbitrary decision which one

to roast. Life is unfair.

What do you look for in searching for lame blogs?

The funny thing is, lame sites aren't made by stupid people.

They're made by extremely smart people trying to manipulate the

consumer into behaving a certain way, for the selfish benefit of

the former. The more selfish the blog, the more its lameness is

amplified.

What kinds of responses—if any—have you received from lame sites you've singled out?

Well the good news is, the less likely the person responsible for

it will contact me. The funniest one was when I wrote about the

new Chanel commercial last Christmas, I had some flacks writing

fake comments, telling me how wonderful they thought the

commerical was. Of course it never occurred to them I'd be able to

trace their IP numbers.

Is there a serious purpose to identifying the lamest sites?  Are

you trying to point out what doesn't work?  Or are you just trying

to have a good laugh at the expense of the lame?

They do serve a useful "Don't do this if you want to succeed"

role. On a more Darwinian level, I think people who try to make a

good living in advertising by being lame should be fired for being

the waste of space that they are.

Can you give us a list of the 12 lamest sites and why you think

they are deserving of the designation?

They're all equally lame. I  might have to think about it some

more.

What, in your opinion, is the all-time lamest site?

Captain Morgan. Captain Morgan advertising is always lame, pre or

post Cluetrain, nothing they say to their target market is every

anything less than uttrly dreadful.

Do you have any interesting anecdotes on this subject?

Not really. I think non-lame is a much more fertile and rich

ground for thoughts and anecdotes.

What advice do you have for companies wishing to build a lame site?

Pretend it's still 1990. Pretend your extinction is just a rumor.

Coverage in Internet News

In a recent InternetNews.com article, Jupiter Media's Susan Kuchinskas allowed us to present an opposing view to the EFF's recent comments that if you want to keep your job, the safe thing to do us to blog anonymously. I'm sure she meant to say that Robert is co-author and not coordinator.  The remainder is completely accurate in every way.

Grace Bonney Interview

We know three people in the design industry, all of whom don't know each other. But each of them tell me they are fans of DesignSponge, Grace Bonney's elegant, passionate blog. We interviewed her for an upcoming chapter on Small Companies with Big Reach. Grace is not a business, but a freelance publicist and consultant.  We think her blog shows prospects the authority and passion she brings to the table.

We are posting everything Grace told us, as she stated it:

Why do you blog? What made you start?

I started my blog in August of 2004 because I was in a place with my career where I didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought I might want to break into design journalism so I thought it'd be a great way to warm myself back up with writing and market hunting. turned out to take a life of it's own and I love it more than anything. It's a way for me to share my passion for design with a great community that feels the same way I do about design.

How has it changed you?

Well, for starters, it's made me endlessly happy. I look forward to blogging every day and every night. It's brought me new friends and contacts and a nice stream of side work, from PR to freelance journalism.

How has it impacted your business practice?

I don’t have a business through my blog (although I'm thinking of it), but in general, it's given me the inside track on my industry, my market and the audience. I feel extremely in tune with all three.

You have been called an “invisible influencer” on the New York design industry. Do you think this is true?  Why do you think you've become so influential?

I don’t know how much of that is true, but I do feel like I’ve had some influence on people's design choices, some designer's careers and the print media. I see things I’ve  posted in print media, and on other influential blogs, so I think people take notice of what I post, and I’ve  also been lucky enough to launch a few independent designer's careers. That makes me the happiest. I think people listen to bloggers' opinions because we can provide a much deeper resource for our field because we research so much and provide a truly dynamic resource.

Have you any interesting anecdotes about blogging?

Well, you certainly learn what it's like to be in the public eye. I’ve learned that some people feel free to speak their minds in not the nicest way because you've put yourself our there, so to speak. I’ve  gotten an interesting strain of mean emails from either conservatives who think my website is "gay" and hate gay people or people who think that I should be covering x, y and z. Either way, blogging puts you in touch with such a wide, diverse audience that you have to be prepared for the responses you don't expect.

What advice do you have for other consultants who are considering blogging?

I love blogging. I suggest it at all costs. I mean, it's FREE. How much easier can it be? Just follow your heart, find your voice and then try to link up with as many similar blogs as you can- networking is the key.

What blogs do you read?

I love Dooce  http://www.dooce.com and Treehugger http://www.treehugger.com http://www.apartmenttherapy.com , and I read apartment therapy on a regular basis.

Do you have any cautions about blogging?

Just to be ready for people who will either steal from you or try to put you down with mean comments or emails.  There are a lot of people on the Internet and sometimes they are just out to get ya.

Any additional comments that you think would be useful or interesting?

Blogging is truly wonderful. It's the embodiment of free speech and I couldn't live without it. It's such a fantastic way to share your point of view, engage in your community and meet wonderful new people all over the world who love the same things you do. I suggest it with my whole heart. It's brought so much joy to my life.

Another Case Plea

Thanks, we are getting a great many cases, which we think will make this book useful and interesting. But there are areas where we'd like to hear still more.  These include:

• Private blogs.  We don't want to spill the beans.  We just want to talk about how they are being used.
• Mid-size companies. The cases we have are falling into big-and-small categories.  We'd like more stories of mid-size companies, particularly in traditional areas.
• Awful Blogs.  We are doing a chapter on doing it wrong.  Please send us the very worst you can find.
• International--Non English speaking Business blogs.  Technorati tells us there are blogs in just about every country with broadband connection. But neither Robert or I are linguists.  So if you can point us to interesting other-language sites and tell us what's going on, it would be very valuable.

Keep those cards and letters coming in.  You're helping us write a better book.

Draft Chapter 3

Here's Chapter Three. Please help us make it better as you have done so well on the first two chapters.

Chapter 3

Word-of-Mouth on Steroids

“Now, the Web is enabling the market to converse again, as people

tell one another the truth about products and companies and their

own desires.”
—The Cluetrain Manifesto

Our friends are more influential than any advertising or marketing

campaign—always have been and always will be. They influence what

we watch, read and wear; where we live and travel. Ask a good

sales pro and she will probably tell you she’s in the

relationships business. Relationships require direct interactive

word of mouth conversations. Ask a marketing officer and he’ll

probably agree, but point out one serious flaw: conversations have

limited range. In this era of superstores, chains and global

corporations, business need to reach mass audiences, oftentimes

global in scope.

So for about 50 years, marketing departments, have put

conversational marketing in the back seat and have let broadcast

marketing drive. But the car is beginning to backfire. Broadcast,

or mass marketing campaigns may get you the customers, but they

shoot wide to hit just a few. If a TV ad or direct mail campaign

generates a mere two percent response, it’s economically to the

advertiser’s advantage. It doesn’t matter if 98 percent of the

viewers don’t like the ads, nor does it matter that so many other

companies are shooting at the same targets. It only matters if you

are part of that 98 percent.

In the middle 90s, for a brief, unfortunate time, co-author Shel

Israel consulted MCI, who at the time were running a massive

television—telemarketing campaign called “Friends and Family,” in

which millions of people were called at home during dinner hours.

After a few months, Israel advised and executive against the

program. “People really hate the intrusion,” Israel counseled. “We

don’t care,” the executive retorted. “We are getting a response of

at least two percent in all places, and as high as five percent in

some pockets. We don’t care if the other people don’t like the

calls.”

Author-speaker Seth Godin (http://www.sethgodin.com) author (Free

Prize Inside, The Purple Cow, Permission Marketing et al) calls

such tactics, “Interruption Marketing, the unanticipated,

impersonal and irrelevant ads” constantly hurled at involuntary

audiences.

The result is that people have not just become annoyed with these

tactics we’ve become resistant. We’ve installed mental and

technology filters to avoid exposure to marketing noise. Our

senses have become deaf and blind to marketing intrusions. We use

spamguard and TiVo to block messages to further block them out.

The result is that traditional marketing has become less effective

at about the same rate it has become more expensive. And that

trend seems to have accelerated since the Internet came in. With

the Web, ironically new tools—Instant Messaging (IM), SMS, Online

forums, e-newsletters and chat rooms and more recently blogs have

extended the conversation’s range.

As Terry Catchpole, CEO of Catchpole Corp. (www.catchpole.com), a

former journalist and PR strategist, observed, “Communications has

gone full circle. It started with conversations, evolved into ads

and PR. Now it’s conversations again.”

25 million customers virtually for free (sbhd)

In December 1996, Arik Vardi, sat with three close friends,

telling his father Yossi, a long-time angel investor, about the

“buddy system,” he and his friends developed to chat with friends

online. Two months earlier, they told 40 friends. Now, 65,000

additional people had downloaded it, all hearing about it by word

of mouth. They called it, “ICQ” (for ‘I Seek You’). With a small

investment from Yossi, they thought the project had some

potential. Yossi gave them encouragement and $10,000.

“I didn’t tell them, but I was totally blown away. I told my wife

this is the biggest thing I’d ever seen. I told her it’s going to

change the world and these kids don’t even know it yet.” He was

right. Two years later, AOL purchased Mirabilis, the company

formed with Vardi’s $10,000—f or $287 million. By the end of 1998,

and now called AOL Instant Messenger, the service had experienced

25 million downloads, less than 26 months since it had all begun.

The total marketing expenditure, amortized over time: near zero.

ICQ had printed a brochure, but never used it. They sponsored a

tech conference speaker but only because Yossi liked the guy.

ICQ’s founders never hired or contracted a marketing employee,

never launched a PR program, never even sent out a press release.

Instead, they used a series of creative, low-cost tactics to

ignite enthusiastic conversations. For example, whenever a new IM

software version was ready, they’d contact 1000 randomly selected

users, giving them each the same “secret password,” and urging

each to reveal it only to their two best friends. As the company

suspected, users ignored the two-friend limit and spread the word

far and wide. By giving users a sense they were insiders, the

company sparked frenetic evangelical zeal.

Another successful touch was inserting slightly sexual “Uh-AH”

sound, whenever a user received an instant message. A teenager

would be talking on the phone, and as a new message came in, the

grunt-sigh sound would be heard. It sparked conversations and the

conversation generated more downloads.

ICQ also pioneered the tactic of using other websites as a

distribution channel. They offered ICQ “communications panels” to

webmasters. Visitors downloaded ICQ so that they could chat with

web hosts, as well as other ICQ users. This resulted in a quick

new 100,000 downloads.

Observers estimated in April 2005, the instant messenger service

had over 400 million customers with tens of thousands of daily

downloads. Still spending next to nothing on marketing, the IM

service is supported now by contextual advertising, which produces

high-margin returns.

While AOL declines to discuss margins, downloads or any other

numbers, we would assume 50,000-a-day is a conservative guess.

What would that cost with a traditional marketing campaign, say

direct mail (DM)? DM pros claim efficiency when the spend 80 cents

per mail piece and their still happy with a two-percent response.

On that math, they need to send out four million pieces a day. The

company would have to spend about $3 million daily. Free vs. $3

million a day? You choose.

Until blogging came along, Instant Messenger was considered the

last great killer application. Although its current owner,

TimeWarner is enjoying huge margins by inserting inoffensive

contextual advertising, the adoption rate was of course helped by

the fact its publishers were offering the product for free. But

there was something else going on, something that Vardi marveled

at. End users sent love letters to the service — not the people,

but the service. Vardi called this phenomenon, “tool lust.” In

his view, people develop emotional attachments to things that

empower new, faster, easier, better or cheaper activity. He sees

blogging’s magic as the next incarnation of tool lust. “What ICQ

did for one-to-one conversations, blogging does for one-to-many.

“Blogging’s a tool that let’s you stay in touch with the whole

world,” he observed. “That invokes passion.”

Talk is Cheap [sbhd]

Back in 1996, ICQ had the capability to let people talk to each

other over the Internet by voice, but because users were still on

dialup, connection was slow, costly and rare. That was probably a

good thing for Skype (www.skype.com) (rhymes with ‘Ripe’), today’s

most popular Internet telephone service. Downloads reached 25

million just 19 months after starting up, breaking ICQ’s benchmark

record. But then, Skype used instant messaging and blogs to

market, which didn’t exist for ICQ in 1996.

Like ICQ, Skype primarily used word-of mouth to invigorate

adoption, although they made a few minor investments into

traditional marketing programs such as conference sponsorships.

Skype, like other companies emulated ICQ tactics, to convert its

user base to a global unpaid sales force. Skype uses tell-a-friend

programs and distinctive sounds as well. The low-cost marketing

strategy has been lethal against other Internet telephone players,

such as Vonage who advertises on TV.

But Skype has bigger plans. It hopes to unseat formidable

traditional phone carrier incumbents. The challenger is adding

low-price, paid services—such as inbound and outbound calling to

and from conventional phones. In that light, the upstart start-up

faces a steep climb against entrenched bigger companies with far

greater money, customers and brand recognition, not to mention

friends in regulatory agencies.

Skype believes it has two competitive advantages. First, most

customers love the service. Few people seem to express love for

Verizon, SBC or WorldCom. Second, tool lust . It has unleashed

word-of-mouth efficiencies that give Skype a huge

price-performance advantage in acquiring new customers. With a

gaunt marketing budget Skype is acquiring each new customer for

fractions of a penny. Analysts estimate a new customer costs a

wireless carrier about $125.

This may all change. Skype recently announced it will begin brand

recognition advertising and promotional campaigns. How big an

investment this will become, and whether it is a wise strategy

remains to be seen.

Skype estimates about one in five free users will use the paid

additional services. Their costs are so low, they maintain, that

this will enable them to build a next-generation dynasty.

Blazing Foxes

Skype’s record of 25 million customers in 19 months was

short-lived. Firefox an Internet browser, considered simpler and

more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) reached 25

million downloads less than four months after launching

exclusively from a blog.

The Firefox story is worthy of a book in itself. Its development

team was never paid to work fulltime on the project as it bounced

around through four parent organizations. It emerged as a

lightening rod for anti-Microsoft sentiment, and Open Source

technology—software built to allow tinkering by end users and

third-parties for whatever reasons. The combination created a

worldwide grassroots army of supporters-in-waiting.

Blake Ross, now 19, dropped out of high school to join the Firefox

development team. He started to blog as an outlet for his

frustrations with the turnstile ownership tenures of Netscape, AOL

and TimeWarner. Eventually named, “SpreadFirefox,”

(www.spreadfirefox.com), the blog became a hub for a series of

no-cost marketing activities and would become one of 2005’s 10

most popular blogsites. Each week on the site, Ross would

announce a new “community marketing campaign.” For example, one

week they’d announce an effort to attract college students. All

they had to do was announce the campaign, then readers would do

the rest, resulting in thousands, and eventually millions, of new

downloads. “Most campaigns were wildly successful,” Ross, who is

now attending Stanford University, recalled, “SpreadFirefox

ignited a groundswell of support,” that erupted organically.”

Firefox reached the 25 million mark six times faster than ICQ,

using similar tactics enhanced by new tools, broadband and access

to many millions more people who had come online in the decade

between the two. For example, early on, they offered download

buttons to other blog and websites. Within a few months, more

websites were linking to the Firefox page via these buttons—than

were linking to the IE site. Today, if you go to Google and type

in “Internet Browser,” Firefox comes up before IE.

Firefox users were so evangelical that they took a collection to

post the first ad — a full-pager in The Sunday New York Times.

According to Hewitt, the ad produced “a nice little blip,” but was

insignificant to the solid, steadily rising rates SpreadFirefox

was generating. By April 2005, the blog was the fountainhead for a

word of mouth system generating 200,000 daily downloads. With each

Firefox download, you also get a free blog. “Our members use these

blogs to invent, discuss, coordinate and execute enormous

marketing campaigns,” said Ross.

Press coverage has been astounding. If you laid all the clips and

cover stories end-to-end, they might extend from Firefox’s Silicon

Valley home, to the doorstep of Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters.

The team is convinced word of mouth did more to accomplish this

than did the solitary press release they’ve put out.

Firefox exemplifies what the blogging denizens call, “the passion

chamber.” It’s a recurring theme in conversational marketing.

People, motivated more by sharing something with friends than the

promise of revenue, start something new. Friends try it, like it

and pass it on. Ross told us, “Firefox was born because it had to

be born, because this product took residence in our minds and

gnawed at us during work, at dinner and on the weekends.” Added

Hewitt, there was no thought of unseating incumbents or the

resulting blazing fame. “We just wanted to build a good browser

that we could use ourselves and share with our friends.”

Word of mouth is at its most viral when the words credibly relay

such passion. The danger of the Passion Chamber, however, may be

the Echo Chamber, as was evidenced in the abrupt rise and fall

of the Howard Dean presidential campaign, ignited by word of

mouth, followed by passionate ubiquitous blogging that raised

millions of dollars and generated media speculation of a victory

that never even came close. In fact, Dean’s passionate supporters

never managed to cross the traditional chasm between early

enthusiasts and mainstream voters who generally had not yet turned

to blogs for information and conversation.

While Firefox has taken the tech community by storm — grabbing 8.5

percent of the total browser market in less than its first six

months, IE still held 87.28 percent, according to OneStat,

(www.onestat.com) a web-analytics company. Webside

Story(www.websidestory.com), another analytics firm, observed

shortly after that the rate may be starting to taper off. By

contrast, InfoWorld, a trade publication reported that BoingBoing,

( http://www.boingboing.net/stats/#browsers) one of the most

popular blogs, estimated that 38 percent of its site visitors were

already using Firefox, a five point margin over Explorer, and a

revealing a sharp contrast to the general market.

When the Passion Chamber gets too passionate, it can turn into an

Echo Chamber where the same people are talking to each other at an

accelerated rate, while thinking the owrd is continuing to go out.

Continuing to spread the message is key to the Firefox strategy to

have technologists seed the mainstream. “I don’t get excited when

I hear a developer is using Firefox,” says Hewitt. “I get excited

when I hear he went home and installed it in mom’s computer.”

Firefox is counting on third-party developers to help them down

the technologist’s creek into the mainstream. Twenty percent of

the world’s web developers adopted Firefox in its first 100 days.

The Firefox team is hoping they’ll produce all sorts of add-on

products making it irresistible to more and more non-technical end

users.

The tactics, initiated by ICQ, adapted and refined by Firefox, are

starting to be emulated by other start-ups hoping to be replicated

by an increasingly large pack of hopefuls including: including

SpreadOpera.com, SpreadNetscape.com, SpreadIE.com,

SpreadSeamonkey.com, SpreadMozilla.com, SpreadOpenSource.com,

SpreadOpenOffice.org, SpreadLinux.com, SpreadFreeBSD.com,

SpreadMambo.com and SpreadUbuntu.com. While these hopefuls may

experience some success, observers express doubts that any will be

catapulted from oblivion to the top tier, as did ICQ, Skype and

Firefox.

So that means you may not get 25 million customers in under 120

days like Firefox, but there other lessons to learn here. You need

to offer something so unique, valuable or compelling that people

will just have to tell others about it. While “tell-a-friend

campaigns” may gain some traction with rewards and incentives,

they aren’t the primary motivator. What turbo charges

word-of-mouth is loyalty to friends—not companies. People come

across something and they just have to tell colleagues about it.

They like to be first and have influence. But none of this matters

unless the product or service is really remarkable.

Remarkable or Invincible [sb hd]

“The new reality of the marketplace is that consumers have a

choice,” author Godin, told us. “They can ignore you. They can

ignore your ads, your letters, your web banners and your

salespeople. As a result, you and every other marketer face a

choice: you can make something worth talking about or you can

become invisible.

”There are now millions of blogs, and each one is edited by a real

person. If you create something remarkable, something worth

remarking about, then they may choose to remark about it. And if

they do, the word spreads.”
The new phenomenon of the remarkable, which author and blogger

Seth Godin calls a Purple Cow, is based on two fundamental truths:

1. Ideas that spread and win. Because it's so difficult for a

marketer to directly contact the people who can actually purchase

something from them, he or she must now rely on people telling

people. The single best way to accomplish this is not with a

clever website or tell-a-friend software or cash rewards. No, the

best way to do this is by making something worth talking about.

Marketing is now about product development, not product hype.

2. Remarkability is in the eye of the consumer. If the marketplace

doesn't think your product is remarkable, then it's not. It

doesn't matter how hard you worked on it or how important it is to

you.

”Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the

people who read blogs,” said Godin, “This is the most curious

segment of the population, the people who are seeking out the new

and the useful. This is the audience that doesn't need to be

interrupted because they are already listening. They are alert, on

the lookout for the next big thing. No need to yell. If you've

invested the time and the energy and the guts to make something

remarkable, this audience can't wait to hear about it.

From Free to Billions [sbhd]

There is one other factor about our three examples that

traditional marketers will be quick to note: freeware. Each is at

a different point in the process to monetization but they all

began with services that were free to the end users who

evangelized it. So did Google. eBay and Amazon.com did not, but

they used the internet to give users amazing efficiencies.

Not every company can offer free products at the outset in the

hopes of monetization later. Many companies successfully try

limited time or quantity free trial offers, but starting free then

asking for money later has been a short route to the cemetery for

many companies.

Companies like Google, eBay and Amazon.com. learned early the

incredible power of word-of-mouth marketing and still use them now

that they are publicly traded multi-billion dollar entities.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently declared his company will eschew TV

advertising because Amazon considers it ineffectual compared with

word-of-mouth campaigns. Amazon also has found an inoffensive way

to financially reward bloggers for sending business their way.

Bloggers can join the affiliate program, and split profits on any

book sales their site generates.

Google, the last dotcom company began at the apex of buzz

marketing in 1998. When startups were spending tens of millions

on marketing and advertising, they spent very little. At a time

when home sites were starting to use gimmicks that popped up, made

noises and wiggled, they introduced a uniquely sparse home page

containing less than 30 words. People gave it a try. When they

did, they discovered remarkable search capabilities when compared

with incumbent offerings of the time. More recently, they

introduced Gmail, Internet email with gargantuan storage

capabilities. But they used ICQ tactics to jumpstart. They allowed

selected applicants a few beta copies and created a

pseudo-scarcity by asking each to invite just a few friends. These

select invitations somehow became sufficiently abundant to be

auctioned off on eBay.

Apple Computer most certainly incorporates traditional advertising

and observers would say it is one of the few computer companies to

ever produce remarkable ads. But its iPod, a portable music

listening device, was sufficiently exciting and different to get

the blogosphere to sing its praise in choir-level harmony. They

also had the vision to create details that provoked conversations.

For example, white headphones. The color added no real user

benefit except that it provoked conversation. On a recent jet

flight, two strangers sat side-by-side listening to music on their

own devices. One asked the other about the white headphones. It

got a conversation going. Other people in the row joined in.

People asked to try and listen on them to see if they sounded any

better. In fact, portable audio devices are rapidly becoming a

commodity category. But touches like these keep people talking and

builds the perception of “remarkability.” Apple also, spends in

non-traditional ways that generate word-of-mouth. If all you knew

about computers was what you saw in movies and television—you’d be

convinced that Apple Macintosh held about 97 percent market share

instead of less than three percent. This is because of its

aggressive product placement program with the entertainment

industry.

The ‘Awesome-Sucks’ factor

If anyone knows how to spend big bucks for promotion, it’s

Hollywood. They’ve been known to invest up to $500 million in

support of big budget movie premiers. Now small clusters of

teenagers, armed with cellphones, are disrupting—and even

destroying—these expensive efforts. Small groups get in to the

first daytime showings of a new movies in neighborhood theaters.

After the first few minutes, they start transmitting SMS messages

to a few friends outside the theaters. These messages are brief

and to the point, such as “awesome,” or “sucks.” Friends receive

the message on their phones and start blogging about the movie.

Before credits roll, these bands of youthful influencers, loyal to

their peers, and out of Hollywood’s control enormously impact the

movie’s fate before the first Saturday night showing.

Why do people go through such efforts to help others who are

mostly people they’ve never met? Why do people loan headphones to

strangers on planes, or tell their life stories to cab drivers?

Vardi told us the world’s second favorite entertainment is story

telling, but the top is conversations. Even if we don’t have TiVo,

we let a phone call interrupt our program watching or we lay down

our books. It seems it is human nature to collaborate and at least

one research experiment would indicate it’s because collaboration

turns us on.

Dr. Gregory S. Berns, an Emory University professor of psychiatry

and behavioral sciences uses functional MRI and other

computer-based technologies to study how the human brain responds

to various stimuli. In short, his team wires the brain to see how

the brain is wired. A few years back, they studied the interaction

of biology and altruism. Berns used a functional MRI to scan the

brains of 36 women playing the behaviorist’s game of “Prisoner’s

Dilemma,” in which participants are rewarded according to the

choices they make. Berns found these women displayed cooperative

behavior even when they knew they’d receive greater rewards for

not cooperating. The technology revealed that the striatum, a

primitive brain sector, grew active during collaboration. In fact,

it secreted five times the normal level of dopamine, the chemical

that activates during such stimulating activities as sex and

gambling. In short, humans are wired to collaborate. Altruism

turns people on even more than making money.

That makes blogging the sex god of the Information Age. While

word of mouth has always been the most effective way to expand

awareness and adoption, blogging fits into all this as the most

powerful word of mouth delivery mechanism to date. As Vardi, and

others say, “Blogging is word of mouth on steroids.

To give us historic perspective, he observed the three strongest

brands to come out of his native country, Israel are The Bible,

Christianity and ICQ, according to a Google search. Each depended

upon passionate people spreading the word about them. To reach

their current levels of recognition and strength, the Bible

(including the Old Testament) took 2700 years; Christianity did it

in 2000 and ICQ reached global acceptance in less than 10. He

pointed out that ICQ claimed no greater relevance. It just came

into being at a time when the tools had further evolved.

The point: blogging is faster and more effective than walking from

village to village and knocking on doors.

Blogging’s Key Advantages [sbhd]

Blogging is one huge word of mouth engine. Instead of being

relegated to the back seat it now is efficient, powerful and fast

enough to drive the whole car. Actually, two cars would probably

be more accurate, because it drives in two directions—outbound and

inbound.

It lets you listen to what people are saying about your product,

company, or category and respond. At little cost, you can “feed”

conversations. The end result is that your business becomes

connected to a new kind of smarter, more efficient word-of-mouth

network. It lets you:

1. Find and Join the Conversation. Nearly in realtime, blogging

lets you extract comments relevant to your business through search

engines like Technorati, Feedster and PubSub, each of whom track

millions of blogsites in a similar way that Google tracks billions

of websites. Except these search engines are faster and usually

deliver results in hours or even minutes. These search resources

let you see what people are saying pro or con, about your market,

product and company. The fact is tat people are talking about

these things already and you will be wise to join the

conversation. As Microsoft’s Mike Torres told us, people are much

more respectful when they know you’re listening.

Picture the impact of joining the conversation. Imagine you are a

car enthusiast and you see a cool new Corvette at the Detroit Auto

Show. You post a blog about it, maybe even put a photo or two up

about it. Within an hour or two, Bob Lutz, GM vice chairman and a

blogger, sees your post, passes it around to the Corvette team and

then posts a link on their blogs and perhaps a comment on yours.

Imagine the kind of brand loyalty it creates when a big company

notices your blog and links to it. Then there are the catch-all

blog that watch an entire industry categories—in this case

Autoblog (http://www.autoblog.com). They see it, post and link to

yours. Thousands of car enthusiasts are now driving directly to

your site.

You started with a single post. You’ve spent nothing and if you

had, it would have made little or no difference. But you started

an interesting or valuable conversation. You got recognized and

now you have much greater influence.

2. Feed the Network. This term once referred to provocative

advertisements such as Apple’s 1984 SuperBowl screen-smashing

commercial. They still work, although there seems to be a real

paucity of ads worth talking about these days. On the other hand,

blogs let you feed the network, at far lower cost and as a more

credible source. Let’s look at GM’s Lutz. His first blog was about

GM’s Saturn which scores highly in customer service rankings. He

posted it just before a big auto show where a spiffy new Saturn

was being introduced. The blogosphere exploded with conversation

on the fact that Lutz was blogging, on the fact that he responded

to comments on whether the attractive new car was real or

prototype—and so on. At last count, there were more than 200

comments under his posting, and almost an equal number of links to

it— mostly from average people who enjoyed joining and extending a

conversation with a prominent Fortune 50 executive. The automotive

media also picked up on it. How did this posting, which probably

required less than an hour of the executive time, feed the word of

mouth food chain compared with a Saturn ad? If Lutz were quoted in

an official press release, we doubt it would have been noted, but

his blog was news. By the way, there is a new Saturn TV ad

campaign. Do you recall seeing it? Neither do we. What fed the

network better—the blog or the expensive ad campaign.

Vardi was right. Blogging is indeed word of mouth on steroids.

Unlike Major League Sports, this is a good thing for businesses of

all sizes and people everywhere.

Small Business Cases Wanted

We're finishing up Draft #1 of Chapter 3 which covers word-of-mouth engines and will be posted soon--today or tomorrow. We are interviewing CEO-level people for Chapter 4 on Why executives blog and have several interviews in the works. Chapter 5 will be about small business and home office bloggers. We have quite a few cases, but we want more--particularly ones that show that the impact of blogging reaches the bottom line.

This is a great time to send us small cases you think we should cover. Even if you have sent them to us before, please send them again. I tend to suffer from a combination of middle-age memory crossed with the organizational talents of a distracted teenager.

Mark Cuban Interview

We are honored that Mark Cuban, one of our favorite bloggers, took time to answer a few questions for an upcoming chapter. His answers are both terse and candid. In respect to one of his key points, we are printing it in full with just a couple of clean ups to typos and punctuation:

1. What made you decide to blog?

It was in response to the media primarily. I was tired of 4-hour interviews being turned into 500-word reports that mischaracterized the interviews. I sat down with Fortune Magazine for what I thought was a serious interview, and it turned into something completely different. Those types of situations were the catalyst.

2. What is your strategic objective?

To say whatever is on my mind about a subject I think is important.

3. You take on sports media coverage with passion. Do you think fans are hearing your view? Do you think you’ve had impact on the way the Mavericks—or sports in general—are being covered?

I think that any reporter or columnist will be a little more careful when doing interviews with me. Specifically, because I do 99 pct of my interviews now via email. SO, I have a paper trail that is ready and available to be revealed on my blog.

4. What impact has Blog Maverick had on the team’s fan base? Are the Mavericks still a Dallas team, or are they becoming more widely followed?

Minimal if any. I haven’t used it for that purpose.

5. How does the Maverick organization respond to your blogs?

They read them for insight on what's important to me, but that’s it. Its not a management tool of any sort

6. What about referees? Do you think you’ve moved the needle in the way they officiate?

No question about it. The league handles officiating in a far more professional manner than prior to my arrival. They approach it like a real business unit now. They didn’t in the past.

7. Why should or shouldn’t executives in general blog? What advice do you have for executives considering blogs?

Executives should blog if they have a vision they are trying to communicate, or if they are very visible in the media.

8. Most bloggers associated with a company or brand just stick to one subject. You cover whatever you please, from short-trading, to the RIAA to the death of CDs as a medium. Is this just because you have the freedom to do it? Or is their a strategy behind it?

Just because I have freedom to do it.

9. What advice do you have for other executives who are considering a blog?

Make sure you are the boss. I don't think I would encourage executives that work for me to blog. There can be only 1 public vision for an organization. There can be multiple presentations of technology. In-depth technical information can be the most valuable use of a blog, but the boss and subordinates don’t always see eye-to-eye, and having more than one message going out via a blog, can be very counterproductive

10. Do you have any anecdotes that will help my co-author and me win a Pulitzer Prize with this book?
Nope

Why let your ad agency write your blog?

Hugh McLeod has an excellent point (that blogs that aren't authentic will be skewered), but he should go further. Quick warning, if you haven't been to Hugh's site before he uses the "f-bomb" often in his cartoons.

Here's a quote from Hugh:

"The fact is, ad agencies hate blogs. They utterly despise them, even if they tell you otherwise. They hate them because if done well, they're cheap and they're easy. Frankly, they're in the business of selling you stuff that is neither."

My two cents? A good blog is written by an authority who is passionate about his/her topic.

How many ad agencies are passionate about your business? Not to mention an authority on it? (After all, if your ad agency were an authority on your business we'd just deal with your ad agency, not you). I'm an optimist, though, so I hold out hope that there might be a few, but they are few and far in between.

Now, you might argue that I'm not an authority on everything I write on. You'd be right. But, when I talk about something that I don't know much about I usually am doing so after consulting the world's experts (it's why I'm behind the camera on Channel 9, not in front of it).

So, yes, an ad agency could -- in theory -- do a good blog but it'd need to be done very carefully and probably from within the corporation being written about. For instance, if I were an ad agency being asked to do a CEO's blog, I'd make sure that the person picked to write the blog actually spent a few hours a week with the person that he/she were writing for (and have that person on IM). The thing is, why can't the CEO just write the blog him or herself instead of by an ad agency?

Get the answer to that question and you'll probably find a whole bunch of bones in someone's closet. Hint: do you really want that person representing you in public?

Even deeper question: why can't that company let an employee seven levels away from the CEO write the blog?

Hint: you're reading a blog by someone seven levels away from Bill Gates. By letting your entire organization blog you'll get closer to the customer which will bring a whole raft of benefits.

Yes, it still is a rarity in large-company corporate life to let someone so far away talk openly on a Saturday night without having any PR or legal people around to check out our words first.

Hint: weblogs aren't ads. They are conversation tools. They are tools to build relationships with other people (and organizations) in a scalable way. Why would we turn these over to advertising agencies?