A desperate blogger's plea for help

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Well, it seems that every few months, I get very busy at work and fail to post for a few days. And when I do, I find it hard to get started again. Just nothing to say.

Thank you HughSo, I’d like your help. If you’re still subscribed to my feed after the past week of silence, I’d really appreciate your suggestions about what is interesting in the PR blogosphere right now. Please point me to the best posts from other PR/marketing blogs during the last week.

I’ll get started by commenting on other people’s posts. Then, I hope I’ll again develop the itch to write about things on my own blog.

I need inspiration. Help me, please!

*Thank you to Hugh MacLeod for the “cartoon on the back of a business card.” I think it’s pretty appropriate to my current predicament.

CaseCamp: Now in Second Life

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CaseCamp Second Life

Word today that the next CaseCamp will be held in Second Life.

Throughout 2006, marketers in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver have come together at CaseCamps to share some of their best work and to exchange advice on how it could be made even better.

The concept is simple. A marketer has 15 minutes to present a case study with a maximum of eight slides. Then the audience spends fifteen minutes discussing the case, asking questions and offering comments.

Bryan Person talks about how the background to this initiatve in a dedicated episode of his New Comm Road podcast. Kate Trgovac, C.C. Champman, and Eli Singer, the founder of CaseCamp, are the other organizers of this event, which is being hosted at Crayonville.

If you’re interested in experiencing the Second Life CaseCamp, you can register at the CaseCamp Wiki.

Michael lets the cat out of the bag…

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Michael O'Connor ClarkeMichael O’Connor Clarke has posted on his blog that he will be joining Thornley Fallis tomorrow.

Whoopee!

We’ve been sitting on this news for several weeks as Michael worked his way through the process of obtaining his Canadian work permit. But now he’s official and it’s official.

Michael, we’re really looking forward to seeing you walk through the door tomorrow morning. And I’m sure that you’ll be greeted by a set of thousand watt smiles. Now, let’s have lots of fun with this social media thing!

Blog Business Summit – Friday sessions

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One day down and another full – really full – day to go.

This morning, I plan to take in:

That’s a lot. (Deep breath) And in the afternoon:

I’ll post after each session. Stay with me!

BBS: Betsy Aoki, Lawrence Liu and Josh Ledgard

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The final session of the day. (Fingers, don’t fail me now!) And the crowd is thinning out. Only about half as many people as there were in the room this morning.

Microsoft and Social Media: Lessons Learned from MSDN Community Blogs and Channel 9. OK. Like most of the rest of the world, I use Microsoft software every day. (I’ve even drafted this introduction using Microsoft Live Writer at 30,000 feet on the flight from Toronto to Seattle.) They are everywhere.

And I just couldn’t resist a session in which Microsoft’s social media types – Betsy Aoki, Lawrence Liu and Josh Ledgard – talked about how they started their blogging initiatives at Msft and the lessons they learned from their experience.

Josh Ledgard said that the doors have been opened to enable customers to file bugs on Visual Studio. This has led to a better relationship with the community and to product improvements as the bugs have been dealt with.

Lawrence Liu said that a community has been established for SharePoint, maintaing contact with customers after the marketing campaign has concluded. For example, the Microsoft team drew on input from the community to produce enhanced documentation with screen shots, something which Microsoft doesn’t normally include in their documentation.

Lawrence Liu reflected on the difference between buzz and engagement. It’s possible to generate a lot of buzz, but more difficult to translate that into genuine engagement.

Betsy Aoki pointed out that the amount of blogging around Microsoft products by people who find bugs and suggest fixes and work arounds enables the company to focus their attention to other issues not fixed by the community.

Lawrence Liu indicated that he is hoping to poll community input on topics that should be covered in screencasts for SharePoint.

The panelists offered much more information that I haven’t captured. Sorry, guys, it’s been a long day and my batteries just ran down. Not it’s back to the hotel to recharge and prepare for day two.

See you tomorrow!

BBS: Ben Edwards, Nicki Dugan and Betsy Aoki

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A session on Corporate Blogging Policy with Ben Edwards, Nicki Dugan and Betsy Aoki.

Given that the Thornley Fallis blogging policy is a stripped down, “Blog smart and Don’t cause harm to any person,” I figured I could pick up some useful advice about what I have been missing.

Nicki Dugan is responsible for Yahoo’s corporate blog. Similar to other companies, employees were blogging on their own for quite some time. They developed a set of guidelines to provide some indicators of acceptable behaviour for employees. Some of the main signposts:

  • If you mess up, it’s your neck
  • Remember your confidentiality agreement
  • Be respectful of your colleagues
  • Get your facts straight
  • Provide context to your arguement
  • Engage in private feedback
  • Remember that whatever you write will follow you everywhere

The publication of the guidelines provided a sense of security to the employee bloggers. They understood the parameters of acceptable blogging and they could blog without fear.

Ben Edwards of IBM runs the IBM blogging program through the department of new media communications.

The IBM guidelines encourage employees to blog. It’s in your interest to get involved and to understand what is going on in this area. And it’s in the corporation’s interest.

The guidelines were developed using a wiki with input from the company’s established bloggers. The guidelines are posted on IBM’s site.

IBM also publishes a list of its outward facing bloggers on its Web site. The bloggers listed here are writing about things related to the company’s business. Personal or hobby sites are not listed in the directory.

Ben believes that blogging is very much a minority activity within the company. A lot of people find it to be too time consuming. He views it as a very useful information sharing tool. And it provides an archive of information.

Betsy Aoki joined Microsoft in 2003. At that time, there were a number of employees already blogging. At the professiona developers conference of 2003, there were a large number of employees who wanted to blog and continued to blog after that.

Microsoft still does not have a formal blogging policy beyond “blog smart.” This was a huge leap forward in executive thinking. The company could not tell you ahead of time what the right answer was ahead of time. The company was empowering employees to think for themselves and determine what the right thing to do and say would be. This allowed the company to evolve and to be flexible. Robert Scoble was able to use this approach as a means to speak freely in his blog. This approach has had positive impact both on the company’s image and on employee morale.

Ben Edwards pointed out that “a set of guidelines won’t get you very far. It’s much more a cultural question. You are empowering employees. … The key is cultural. And that means involvement from the top.”

Betsy Aoki added that “the main reason you should be blogging is for your customers. If you want a completely scalable way to talk with your customers. …. If you can engage with your customers. Interact more with your customers. Increase the loyalty of your customers, then you should do it. … So, the real question is, do your customers want you to blog. If the answer is yes, then you should do it.”

Question: Have the internal blogs changed the relationship between senior management and the employees?  Ben Edward spoke of the large number of IBM pensioners who were upset about the handling of a pension issue. A senior IBM executive wrote a post about this which received a number of angry comments. This was healthy as it showed a willingness to open discussion.

BBS: Mary Hodder, Dave Taylor and Halley Suitt

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 RSS and Feeds: Monitoring the Blogosphere and the Buzz with Dave Taylor, Mary Hodder and Halley Suitt.

Dave Taylor led off. He posed the question, “How do you find bloggers who are writing about your space?” You have a choice of tools, including: google blogsearch and technorati.

Technorati ranks bloggers by authority – the greater number of inbound links from other blogs that they receive, the higher their authority.

With Technorati, it is possible to “subscribe” to a search. This will deliver new entries relating to the search term directly to your browser as they are posted.

An RSS aggregator such as newsgator online, bloglines or google reader is an absolutely essential tool to keep up with your RSS feeds.

Mary Hodder spoke about the difference between how Google searches and show results and the way that a blog-specific search enigne like technorati searches and displays results.

Google is best at measuring the “static web;” technorati is best for the “live web.”

Google is best for static web pages – pages that do not change regularly. Bloggers change their content frequently and a search engine is required that specializes in current information which may not show up immediately on the google search engine.

It is also possible to track images uploaded on flickr by tags.

Other possible metrics include the number of comments (some bloggers may not have many inbound links, but may have many comments. ) If you only take inbound links without looking at comments, you may fail to see the real depth of the conversation at the site.

Frequency of blogging on a topic is another dimension to consider. A blogger who writes frequently on a particular topic may not have the same authority on another subject that they blog on only once or twice.

Mary sees a difference between influence and real authority. Authority happens on a person by person basis. Each of us assigns authority. However, technorati will rank people high in “authority” – which really means they are high in popularity.

Halley Suitt showed several examples of Web sites that display RSS feeds differently. Some display them with XML chiclets. Some use the new RSS standard icon. Others have text links to the RSS feeds. For RSS to become mainstream, RSS must be displayed in a more standardized and prominent way.

BBS: Tris Hussey and Andru Edwards

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Tris Hussey andAndru Edwards:tackled the topic: Audience Measurement: Quantifying and Qualifying. The program promised that I’d learn:

  • Buzz measurement tools
  • Do “hits” matter anymore?
  • Measuring inbound links
  • Using feedburner stats
  • Blogroll links, Pagerank, and combination measurement systems
  • Coming measurement services

Do numbers matter or is it how many people are reading your blog? Of course numbers matter. But they are not the whole measure of success.

A lot of people mistakenly look at the number of hits they get.

There is still not a perfect tool to know just how many people are actually subscribed to your blog. As recently as one month ago, WordPress.com changed their metrics as they realized they had been double counting some readers.

Why is it difficult to measure? For example, some metrics will measure several people visiting a site using bloglines as only one person – bloglines.

There is not one tool to rule them all.

Clearly, writing frequently will draw more traffic. And of course, better writing will draw more repeat visitors.

Do blogrolls matter anymore? Tris Hussey feels not. “It’s still a nice way to show your friends you love them. But they do not generate traffic any longer.” Andru feels that blogrolls can be helpful if you have multiple blog properties. It’s a great way to interconnect things.

Scoble pointed out that his Shared items in google reader feed is driving more traffic to blogs he links to than does his blogroll on scobleizer proper.

Tris suggests that, given the imprecision of existing stats, it is important to look at the trends, not just the specific one time numbers. Look at the rise and fall. What is the pattern?

Tris and Andrew recommend AWStats and Urchin.

Tris also recommends Performancing as a Java script tool tailored specifically for blogs. He also uses google analytics, which provides user friendly graphs and reports.

However, because no single tool is perfect, Tris and Andrew suggest that you use two or more simultaneously to get a good picture of what’s really going on.

How often do you get to see this?

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Jason Calacanis & Robert ScobleRobert Scoble and Jason Calacanis blogging side by side at the Blog Business Summit.

I wonder if they were writing about this?

JASON CALACANIS LAUNCHES NEW SHOW ON PODTECH NETWORK
PodTech and Calacanis pioneering media philanthropy with podcast channel sponsorships of over $100,000 donated to education

MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA (October 26, 2006) PodTech Network announced today that a new audio and video podcast show, CalacanisCast, will be launched on the PodTech Network with GoDaddy.com as the founding sponsor. The weekly show will be hosted and produced by Jason Calacanis, CEO of Weblogs, Inc. (an AOL Company) and General Manager of Netscape.com (an AOL Company), and will focus on Jason’s insights in new media and technology trends and those of his special guests. CalacanisCast launches with over $100,000 in first year sponsorships that will be donated to the Bay Ridge Preparatory School, a K-12 private school based in Brooklyn, New York.

Jason Calacanis said “I’m thrilled to have PodTech and GoDaddy.com as partners. We’re going to have a fun time with the show, and help some kids in need at the same time. It doesn’t get any better than that”.

The media philanthropy model that the CalacanisCast show represents is a first example of a sustainable, high-quality media property that generates not only awareness, but monetary support, for philanthropic causes. Sponsorship revenue for CalacanisCast will underwrite the tuition of disadvantaged youth to attend Bay Ridge Prep, and represents the formation of the Bay Ridge Prep Opportunity Scholarship Fund.