Archives
Corporate RSS Directory - You've Got It Backwards
Nooked has announced their plans to create a directory of corporate RSS feeds (via Common Craft).
I saved this earlier today to blog about it, thinking "hey, this is a good idea, got to mention it". But thinking about it again, I don't know. Isn't it a very strange idea? They might fill a short-term need but nonetheless a directory is the wrong way. 180 degrees wrong. I can't see myself browsing a directory to find corporate feeds to subscribe to.
Believe me, I don't need more feeds just because it's fun.
I'll subscribe to feeds - corporate or others - when I've found a site that interests me. If I see news or other stuff I want to be updated on, I'll look for a feed. On the site. If I do research on a subject I start with MSN Search or Google. To find a site. The site is where the relation starts, the subscription to a feed is a subsequent contract between me and the publisher: I like you. Keep me updated.
Nooked won't hurt. In the short-term they might help us find feeds for companies that doesn't make their feeds visible enough for us to find them on their sites. But I would rather recommend a company to keep an eye on what design standards that evolves on the web. I believe it's Jakob Nielsen who's said that if 8 out of 10 sites make the same design choice, follow them. We will see this happening with how feeds are announced on corporate sites too.
Google Corporate Blog Criticized By Google Employee
I'm a few days behind on my feeds (why do we have to work to pay the rent?) but this is interesting enough to write about anyway. Chris Wetherell, an UI Engineer at Google, doesn't like his company's corporate blog -- especially not in comparison with their competitors' blogs. He writes:
The Google Blog hasn't caught up yet. It's a surprising mis-representation - the culture we work in is fast, decisive, and colloquial but the blog voice is stiff. It's your not-so-cool uncle unbuttoning his shirt, listening to The Postal Service (but only the single of Such Great Heights) and proclaiming that Yeah, I totally dig your stuff you kids, this hip-hop speaks to me too. Um. Dogg. *flashes hang ten sign*.Since it's been out there for more than a week, I guess we would have heard if he's been reprimanded in any way. Not that I think he should be. First of all, I think he's right. Second, this is what you might get with a corporate blog. Live with it. This honesty is what blogs, to me, are all about.
Internal Blogs And Wikis At The BBC
BBC is not only trying blogs and podcasting as tools in their core business - publishing - they're also way ahead of most companies when it comes to internal uses of social media.
Euan Semple from the BBC DigiLab tells The Broadband Blog about what they're doing - and why:
"The benefits are that we all get access to the accumulated experience and knowledge of 25,000 staff. Work related questions get sorted in minutes on the bulletin board and people are able to identify the right people to call on for help from the blogs and skills database. Getting 6000 or so questions answered in a month, even if they were minor ones, which many are not, adds up to a significant saving."The first thing they did was to put in a bulletin board. After that came "a social networking tool that lets users set up a page of info about themselves and can then be searched for particular skills or interests".
"We then put in a blog server and now have around 70 blogs being written by about 100 people. They are being used for a variety of tasks from group blogs for project teams to operational logs to pass on info between engineering shifts to personal blogs capturing individual learning and experiences.That last part is really interesting. It shows us that these tools are used not only by the young, tech-savvy journalists, but by administrative staff. The kind of people we find in every organization. Your colleagues.
Lastly we have implemented a wiki. We chose a tool that allows us to manage access a bit. I know the principle of wikis is to be totally open but that is not always possible or approriate in current corporate culture and we have to acknowledge this and work with it. The people most attracted to using wikis are those involved in writing formal documents, policy, manuals etc."
Found via Mymarkup.net
Tracking Links Important To Our Conversation
Blog Herald asks "Is tracking links dead?".
I hope not. I have wished for better tools to track conversation before, but we're still stuck with Technorati, Feedster or PubSub. And they're just not good enough. Either they don't track enough blogs or their services aren't reliable enough.
You could say that this is just the "nerdy" part of blogging. Desperat bloggers staring at their screens hoping that someone will pick up their ideas. You could say that the relevant contacts will be taken anyway (MSN Messenger, e-mail, Skype or whatever).
But I don't agree.
There are different levels of conversation. The basis of it all is link tracking. It's an important tool to find new blogs, to measure how an idea spreads, to find out what others are saying in areas that are important for us (that is, the things we write about). What we write in our own blog is usually a lot more interesting than what most of us write in blog comments.
I think there's a market for a really good link tracking service. Money to be made. Since I have a problem with companies that owns too much of a market, in this case services in relation to the web, I hope someone beats Google to it. But I'm getting to the point where I might accept even Google.
By the way, have I told you that Gigablast's site search is way better than Google's?
Issues Facing Corporate Blogs
A nice summary from Diva Marketing: Issues Facing Corporate Blogs. It's a few days old but I've been on vacation. After a full day of downhill skiing, reading blogs and writing posts wasn't my first thought...
Take a look at my 14 Steps To Your Business Blog too if you find Diva's post interesting.
Crisis Blogs - Plan Them Well
Don't think you can start a blog when the crisis hits you. Even though Oliver S. Schmidt, Managing Partner of C4CS, has "...yet to walk into a crisis situation that wouldn't have the client partner benefit from utilizing blogs", he also tells me in this interview that "...companies should become familiar with blogging during the pre crisis phase".
When I wrote about crisis blogs in January, I was wrong. Not necessarily in my conclusion that you should use them cautiously - I think Oliver agrees to that - but I assumed that there wasn't much experience from crisis blogs yet. Well, there is.
My post led to this interview. Read it if you're the least interested in crisis communications and blogs. C4CS is a consultancy specializing in strategic communication and crisis management. If you want to know more about Oliver's view on crisis communications in general, you find it at the Disaster Resource Guide.
Some highlights from what you find below:
- Effective internal crisis communication is an area that, unfortunately, is still neglected by a lot of companies.
- ...blogs have worked well with any mix of tools we decided to go with provided the necessary coordination occured.
- ...support employee blogs as long as there are formal blogging and blog disclaimer policies and sufficient blog monitoring and analysis in place.
- ...designate and train a primary blogger and at least one backup. In a crisis these individuals must be in close contact with senior management...
- Identifying the right person is crucial.
We have been advising client partners regarding Internet and intranet-based crisis blogs for about three years. Situations have included crisis response and recovery during and following natural disasters, clashes with anti corporate activists, financial and legal troubles, executive illness, industrial and transportation accidents, downsizing, and product recalls.
Ideally companies should become familiar with blogging during the pre crisis phase. However, when we are retained to assist with crisis preparedness planning, we don't advocate the immediate launch of a corporate blog. Instead we recommend studying the blogging phenomenon and determining how blogs can help accomplish clearly defined communication objectives.
C4CS guides the client partner through that process and provides assistance in establishing a network of friendly bloggers that turns into a valuable asset in a crisis. But before we formally include a blog in the crisis communication strategy, the client partner has to agree that this move is going to result in more effective communication. Depending on the crisis situation, we may decide to collaborate with and utilize Internet-based blogs including picture and video blogs, executive blogs and employee blogs, start a crisis blog from scratch, temporarily convert an established intranet-based blog into a crisis blog, or publish a 'stealth blog'.
Please describe a 'stealth blog'.
'Stealth blogs' are Internet and intranet-based blogs that we develop with the individual client partner during the pre crisis phase. The goal is to have the technical requirements and the necessary processes and responsibilities in place so that the blog can immediately go live upon the occurrence of a crisis. This concept grew out of our work with Internet and intranet stealth or 'dark sites', which began in the 1990s.
What do blogs deliver for the external crisis communication?
If done correctly, corporate blogging in a crisis can significantly enhance communication with external and internal stakeholders. But I always caution management that despite their dramatically increased popularity, blogs are just one of many traditional and online tools that should be considered. In the end the right mix of communication tools and using the blog wisely within that mix are vital to responding to a crisis successfully. If management doesn't heed that advice, blogging in times of crisis can easily backfire because blogs are all about the open exchange of subjective opinions, and corporate blogging therefore translates into relinquishing communication control.
On the plus side blogs are an excellent listening tool that allows companies to establish direct rapport with stakeholders who are eager to express how they perceive company positions and deeds. Our client partners regularly pick up critical information through automated Internet and intranet monitoring, which includes the systematic monitoring of a quickly growing number of relevant blogs.
In addition, blogs can easily be updated during a crisis, they enable instant two-way communication with stakeholders around the globe, and they create a public record of opinions and related facts that helps minimize rumors and speculation. As the number of bloggers continues to increase, more and more stakeholders will come to appreciate and eventually expect corporate blogging in good times and in times of crisis.
And what do blogs deliver for the internal crisis communication?
Effective internal crisis communication is an area that, unfortunately, is still neglected by a lot of companies. I have written about the subject matter and made numerous presentations, which among other aspects covered available communication tools. One of the tools I discuss is of course blogging.
The benefits of using blogs in times of crisis are largely the same for internal as they are for external crisis communication. However, we were at first surprised when we saw how many employees utilized intranet-based blogs and embraced the concept even if intranet-based message boards had been available for some time. Our post crisis evaluation then revealed that employees appreciated being listened to by management. And by utilizing blogs management on the other hand had found a way to better identify and address issues raised by employees.
Several client partners we helped in a crisis situation actually decided to keep blogs that were started in response to a crisis online indefinitely. And most of those blogs have since become an important internal communication tool which the client partners routinely use to motivate employees and seek their input.
At the same time we encourage our client partners to support employee blogs as long as there are formal blogging and blog disclaimer policies and sufficient blog monitoring in place. The blogging policy defines unacceptable blog content and to what extend employees are permitted to tend to their blogs while at work. Unfortunately, a lot of companies have yet to recognize that a blogging policy is as important as their established policies regarding e-mail and Internet use. The mandatory blog disclaimer makes it clear that employee blog content doesn't mirror company positions. And the blog monitoring is done to ensure compliance with the policies and to systematically identify and analyse information that may help the company in a crisis situation and beyond.
In what way do you coordinate blogs with other communication tools? Is there any mix of tools with blogs involved that you find especially effective in a crisis situation?
The bottom line is, blogging alone is not going to be sufficient in a crisis. We educate our client partners concerning the benefits of blogs and always carefully consider other crisis communication tools which hopefully have been developed and repeatedly tested during the pre crisis phase. Based on our ongoing assessment of stakeholder communication needs, available resources and crisis communication tools that have been successfully employed by the client partner in the past, we then select the traditional and online communication tools that will be used to effectively respond to the current crisis.
As for the efficacy of certain combinations of crisis communication tools, let me just say that blogs have worked well with any mix of tools we decided to go with provided the necessary coordination occured. No internal crisis blog is for instance going to help if crucial information related to the crisis is repeatedly provided to and appearing in the news media before that information is communicated internally through the blog. And you surely also get counterproductive results if the messages communicated via blogs are untrue or inconsistent with messages delivered through other channels.
Is it necessary - or advantageous - to have an established blog before a crisis hits?
It is often advantageous and will likely be an even bigger plus once blogs have become more accepted as a communications tool. As a consultant, I consider the mere existence of a corporate blog good news because it shows that the company has included blogging in its communication strategy and that there is actual blogging experience. And the better the blog's quantitative and qualitative reach, the more stakeholders and opinion leaders will likely turn to it if the company is going through a crisis. Provided the blog is maintained in a professional manner that can make a big difference in whether on not the company emerges from the crisis intact.
What does it take to publish a crisis blog?
That's a good question because it points to the importance of effective crisis communication planning. As I mentioned when I explained what 'stealth blogs' are, it is necessary to take care of the technical end, and appropriate procedures and responsilibilities for instance regarding fact checking also need to be established long before a crisis happens. On top of that policies concerning executive and employee blogging, blog disclaimers, automated blog monitoring and systematic blog analysis and categorization should be in place. And last but not least especially the designated crisis bloggers should at least have a basic understanding of the blogosphere.
We also advise our client partners to designate and train a primary blogger and at least one backup. In a crisis these individuals must be in close contact with senior managment and able to perform their blog related tasks without interruption. There may be a large number of posts and a lot of speculation to deal with, but before content representing the company goes online, it must be approved by communications, legal, and other relevant functions.
And who's the blogger? Who can be trusted to blog in a difficult situation?
Identifying the right person is crucial. We advise our client partners to appoint people who have blogging experience, preferrably running a personal blog. However, someone who contributes to blogs or routinely reads posts may also be a good choice. Aside from blogging experience we recommend going with someone who is well connected within the organization, who has crisis management and communication experience and will, if necessary, be able to focus exclusively on the blogging during a crisis.
Are there any crisis situations in which you wouldn't recommend blogs at all?
In the U.S., where we had an estimated (pdf) 8 million blogs with a readership of 32 million Internet users at the end of 2004, I have yet to walk into a crisis situation that wouldn't have the client partner benefit from utilizing blogs. But for instance due to time constraints and limited client partner resources we have at times not recommended blogging as part of the crisis communication strategy although it would have helped. And if nobody in the company has blogging experience and 'stealth blogs' haven't been developed as part of the pre crisis planning, staying away from using blogs may at least in some cases be the better option.
Things are different with our client partners in Europe and Asia because blogging is not as well known in those markets, and consequently readership numbers are significantly below what I just cited for the U.S. But in a few cases we have successfully used crisis blogs, and I think a lot more will be launched on a global scale in the not too distant future.
Enough Said...
I like to read and write about blogging in relation to the changing business and communications models. But maybe many of us meta-bloggers tend to be too abstract sometimes?
Well, I guess there's a time and place for everyting - and this is a perfect time to quote what Peter George, corporate blogger at Net Resources, wrote to me.
Blog boosted traffic from 50 to 250 visitors a day within a few months and now guaruntees Net Resources top ten search engine slots on most posting subjects within about 24 hours. It works!It works. Enough said.
Weblog Tools Market: February 2005
Read a thorough analysis in On the Job: Weblog Tools Market - Update February 2005.
Tell Me More About The Netherlands
I'm curious. I get many reports about corporate blogs in the Netherlands. Considering that it's a relatively small country (16 million people or so) with two languages that aren't widely spoken in the rest of the world, one could imagine that the "market" for blogging (=readership) would be too small to make it worthwhile. I've heard that from both Sweden and Denmark, to mention two examples.
But something makes you blog for business!
Is this just a coincidence or something the rest of us could learn from? Would love to hear your thoughts. Comment here or e-mail me.
A Successful Blog Is Engaging
The Intuitive Life Business Blog: "I believe that successful blogs are those that engage their audience. It's not about the length or frequency of articles, it's not even about the amount of time the author spends writing each entry, it's not about grammar or punctuation, it's just about being interesting and engaging."
(Link via whatnextblog)
Business Risks With Blogging: A Conversation
How much can you say in your corporate blog? A reader contacted me to get my view on this question. It's not an easy one and I guess many bloggers think about it more or less daily. Here's our short discussion. What can you add?
Since the reader contacted me privately I wont reveal who he is or what company he works for, other than that it's a software company. And it probably doesn't matter. It's a general question.
Reader:
We've toyed with the idea of creating a corporate blog for some time but just can't pinpoint what sort of content belongs there. In an ideal world I would love to be as open as possible in a corporate blog - discussing development strategies as well as business processes - all couched in a "small business atmosphere", since that's what [our company] is.My answer:
But, as I visualize writing posts in my head, I always bump into the same concern (perhaps it's merely paranoia) -- revealing too much. I could see this working against us with competitors in particular (we all know we watch each other carefully), but also with prospective customers or even existing customers. How much do we want to reveal about how we do things (which I do believe people would find interesting and generally valuable information), knowing that the information could be used against us?
It is a hard question in many ways, I understand your concerns. But in theory it's simple. You know your business model, your products/services and your competition better than anyone else. You know, I believe, pretty well what your competition could use against you.Reader:
You don't have to say "We're going to solve problem X this way" and then work for a while to do it. You can say "The entire business know problem X - we're going to solve it. We have some ideas - what do you think?"
It would not only be safer, it would probably be more interesting for both prospects and existing clients. And you could actually get important feedback and solve the problem in an even better way.
Now, I know I'm making it a bit too easy for myself in this answer. There are certainly things you'd like to say that would reveal things about your plans, level of expertise, client satisfaction etc.
And this is exactly the point where you need to believe in transparency and authenticity. Or not.
From my experience, it's much less dangerous to be open than most of us thinks. Is it the end of the world if an unhappy client comments on your blog? Well, it depends on how you deal with that point of view. Handled seriously you strengthen your credibility. I don't think that the fear of a software buyer is that there might be problems. Rather, we count on it. Our fear is that no one will help us when they occur.
A client of mine in the transportation business wrote in his blog a few months ago that they were going to install alcohol detectors in their trucks. This is something that could be interpreted as if they had problems (which they hadn't). But it wasn't interpreted that way. On the contrary, it generated a lot of medial exposure correctly portraying them as a responsible company, and a leader in the process to improve road safety.
Openness often has that kind of effect.
Thank you for the comments. Transparency and openness are worthwhile efforts, but I think many in the corporate world will hesitate quite a bit at this point. I've read a ton about business blogs but I think it's going to take a long time before they catch on.I wish you good luck!
Having said that I am pushing forward with an internal, "client-only" blog.
I'm designing it in such a way as to generate (hopefully) more two-way dialogue with existing customers. So, it's less of a marketing tool (although I do hope it will turn more clients into evangelists), and more of a communication tool at this stage. I'll be posting information about my product and company, [...]. In general I can see the "customer blog" being more readily accepted by businesses, more easy to prepare and launch and maintain.
In many respects this is a test run - we'll see if my customer blog/portal works and then perhaps expand it to a blog for the rest of the world.
Blog ROI Made Easy
A VC: Buying and Selling at the Same Time:
"Blogging is transparency. And its a good thing. Because transparency equals trust and trust turns into opportunity. And opportunity turns into money."And some thoughts on blogs' potential for individuals.
"We found his blog to be the single best diligence item in our process of hiring him. We called his colleagues and supervisors at GM. We called the people he'd worked with and for over the past five years. We met with him a bunch of times. We had a couple of our investors meet him. We invited him to our holiday party and had our wives meet him there. But we got more insight into him from his blog than anything else."(Link via Henrik Torstensson)
Should We Focus On Relationships To Form Them?
Ok, let's be slightly theoretical for a while. In a discussion about personalization, socialization, information and relations Bud and Ross disagrees. Where Ross says...
"Replace the word information with relationship, and you get how people want to use the net, with other people."...Bud says...
"It's not entirely clear to me that people want to use the net for relationships. They want to use it as a medium for communication and information search. Relationships are an overlay on top of that. If you give people the means to easily communicate and find information, they will form relationships."Maybe it's just me, but I think these kind of discussions are extremely relevant. Those who don't probably thinks this is just a quibble over semantics.
To me this is a question about (among other things) what to focus on when we create communications solutions. Say our aim is to help build relationships inside an organization or between a company and its customers. Should we focus on relations or on information, communication? Our focus will result in different approaches -- our methods to "sell" the solution will not be the same, even if a successful result is relations in both cases.
Or in other words: Should we strive for relationships, or have faith in that they will be formed?
I don't think Ross, Bud, me or anyone else can say for sure yet what the best approach is. But I'm inclined to agree with Bud. In a business environment I rarely meet people that want to use the net with other people. That's not a goal in itself. Still, when things go that way all involved see the potential in and benefits from it.
Now We're Waiting for Your Blog, Volvo
Volvo's marketing is impressive. They were one of the very first to make internet their primary channel in a campaign for a new car. Their movie "The Mystery of Dalaro" generated all the buzz a company can ask for. More recent Boldlygo.com has been appreciated -- and now they sponsor Autoblog's Podcast.
There's a lot of interesting ingredients here. A lot of Word of Mouth Marketing, for example.
But isn't it too technical, in a sense? Too cool, too much hype? Where's the authenticity and transparency? I want a blog from you, Volvo.
PR Becomes More Valuable With Blogging
Does Robert Scoble, a celebrity blogger on Microsoft's payroll, herald the death of traditional public relations? Economist.com asks.
It all depends on what they mean with "traditional". If they - as surprisingly many journalists do - believe that traditional PR equals bad PR (command-control etc) they could be right. That PR will disappear, I think. I doubt we can thank blogs for that though. Bad PR was bound to commit suicide because it's ineffective in the long run.
I think I'll just stand by my conclusion from the discussion where it was argued that "PR is dead and blogging killed it": Blogging hasn't killed PR. Blogging is what PR has been waiting for.
Podcasting Continues to Gather Momentum
FeedBurner today manages 1,750 podcasts via SmartCast. That is a significant increase from 750 at the end of 2004. But is anybody listening, they ask? Well, someone is. In the feeds they manage there are examples of podcasts with over 3,000 subscribers/listeners. At the "beginning of February" the podcasts that FeedBurner manages had about 24,000 listeners.
Read more: Burning Questions: RSS Metrics - Podcasting
Is this impressive then? Not yet, and I remain a bit sceptical to the use of podcasting for business purposes. It will find it's place, no doubt, but the fact is that audio has been an option for years and it's never been a success on a larger scale. Why should another form of distribution radically change that?
I'd love to be wrong though - I started my journalistic career as a radio reporter and podcasting could become good business for me... :-)
Using Blogs for Project Management
Project blogs integrated into an intranet will, I believe, prove to be one of the most valuable types of corporate blogging. Cutting Through talks about project blogs as a means of "communicating with the ultimate end-customers of the project".
They give two examples of project blogs.
"In one situation, the project was in the requirements analysis stage, and workshops were taking place to map out the business processes. The outcomes were posted on a daily basis as and when they happened - so not only did people know what was going on, but there was also the facility for rapid feedback."
"In another, the blog was used by the 'project champion' in each affected area of the business as a way of introducing themselves to the organisation, and talking about what the impact of the project would actually mean. Over the course of several months they were able to explain what was going on in a way that would have been impossible by simply 'broadcasting' through email and glossy brochures."
White Paper On Word Of Mouth Marketing
Highly recommended reading: The new womma whitepaper Word of Mouth 101 -- An Introduction to Word of Mouth Marketing (pdf).
The paper states that "Word of mouth can't be faked or invented. Attempting to fake word of mouth is unethical and creates a backlash, damages the brand, and tarnishes the corporate reputation. Legitimate word of mouth marketing acknowledges consumers' intelligence -- it never attempts to fool them." Like music to my ears.
Among the different types of Word of Mouth Marketing we of course find blogs. Brand blogging, they say, means "Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about."
Listed as an example of unethical Word of Mouth strategies we find for example comment spam. But let's not focus on the bad sides. The positive strategies are:
- Encouraging communications
- Giving people something to talk about
- Creating communities and connecting people
- Working with influential communities
- Creating evangelist or advocate programs
- Researching and listening to customer feedback
- Engaging in transparent conversation
- Co-creation and information sharing
Thanks DurnikBlog for the link.
#1 On Google
This is cool. Do a Google search for corporate blogging and this site is result #1. Out of 1,910,000.
Amazing - and interesting. Not that I protest, but it's a fast move from #25 a couple of weeks ago. I see two possible explanations. The second one might be interesting if you want to generate more traffic to your own blog.
1. It's all a mistake.
It wouldn't be the first time a Google Dance led to very short-lived changes of the ranking. Soon - maybe even when you read this - this site may have dropped substantially.
2. A few links made all the difference
According to Technorati this blog has 234 links from 165 sources. That's great. But I've been lucky enough to get approximately that number of inbound links for a while (thank you all). What happened a few weeks ago, though, was this:
They sent a lot of traffic this way and probably a good deal of "search engine juice". See the pattern? They're not blogs...
It would be interesting to find out if you have similar experiences. If this truly is a pattern, there are several questions to think about for those bloggers that chase traffic increases. For example: Is the power of blog links for SEO purposes generally overestimated? Is Google starting to give blog links lower priority in relation to traditional sites?
Bloggers Are Overconfident Entrepreneurs?
There are risks in blogging. The risk of being fired is evident from several examples. There's also been talk about the possibility of legal actions against bloggers that say too much publicly (in relation to for example disclosure rules). So this means that corporate bloggers must be risk seekers? Not necessarily. We might just be overconfident in our own abilities.
In Ego Makes Entrepreneurs? BusinessWeek interviews researcher Brian Wu about the behavioral patterns of entrepreneurs. His research focuses on the narrow definition of "entrepreneur", that is the business side of entrepreneurship. But an entrepreneur doesn't need to start a company. We find entrepreneurs all around us. They come up with new ideas at the office, they coach their kids' fotball teams, they are constantly trying to brake barriers and find new ways of doing things.
If you agree with this broader definition of "entrepreneur" you'll probably find Wu's conclusions relevant to understand business blogging. What's a blogger if not an entrepreneur seeking new ways of communicating?
"While conventional wisdom assumes entrepreneurs have great risk tolerance compared to the rest of us, in controlled experiments that tracked attitudes to risk, we consistently found that they aren't really that different."
"Entrepreneurs, like everybody else, hate uncontrollable risks, but on the other hand, they're overconfident in their own abilities -- they think they can control their abilities in a random drawing of people."
"...if there's a high degree of ability uncertainty, we will see a sufficient amount of entrants because their overconfidence compensates for the uncontrollable risks."
Blog Overkill - And More
I'm buried in work at the moment, and can't find time to blog about all the things I want to. But maybe that's a good thing - I might be a part of the Blog Overkill Jack Shafer is talking about. He thinks there's a "... danger of hyping a good thing into the ground."
(Via PR Machine)
Much is said these days about folksonomies and folksonomy-based URL tracking. It's very interesting and it would be even more interesting if someone discussed it with a critical perspective. I mean, how do you practically use Technorati's 210,551 tags? Well, it's probably me being stupid. Take a look at the Community Engine for one idea of how to get value from folksonomy. Asterisk has a very, very simple overview too (via Column Two).
Chris Locke: "...the people who've developed this new skill of comparing notes -- across once-rigid company departments and divisions, across legends-in-their-own- mind corporate monoliths, across across still-ossified industry lines of demarcation -- are not going to pay much heed to some johnny come lately 'corporate blogger' telling them some useless information about how white their shirts can be. To paraphrase Mick and and lads: that don't give no satisfaction." He's a brilliant writer. I want him to be right. But I don't like this almost arrogant idea that the true bloggers are the old bloggers and new (corporate) bloggers will - by definition - be a gang of PR people. As I've said before - the really early adopters are road signs. They help people find the way. But they have very little to do with what happens at the destination.
For the record: I started my first blog 4 years ago. I guess that puts me somewhere in the middle of this time line.
Finally Modern Marketing has a good post: What is Open Source Marketing?
"The love affair between big brands and mass media is over. But where do marketeers go next? Open Source Marketing has the answers."
(See related interview from this blog too).
"The Numbers Game In Marketing Is Middle Management Work"
Every PR practitioner struggles with questions about ROI(?). When we're talking about blogging that same question is present - and I think it should be. Even if the calculations as such often are quite absurd, that way of thinking is necessary.
But what if we could find ways of making our "soft" communications goals (branding, relationship building etc.) "hard"?
Richard Bailey discusses this in PR Studies. Bailey quotes Douglas Holt, the newly-appointed L'Oreal professor of marketing at Oxford University's Said Business School, and concludes that Holt's view is relevant for PR as well as marketing:
....the quantifiable things are not the most important. The numbers game in marketing is middle management work.If you ask me, I'd say that this is a sign of the times. Something fundamentally is happening in the way we communicate professionally. Blogs are one small detail, social tools in general another -- and we can add Open Source Marketing and many other things to the mix.
There's a real need to understand the role of culture and the media in the way products are marketed. MBA students should learn about the symbolism of big brands. Why should we leave it to the sociologists and anthropologists to critique these things?
...I want to make the so-called soft side of marketing 'hard' and intellectually demanding in a humanistic way - to bring an historical perspective to the study of how companies market their products.
But it's really hard to capture exactly what's happening. We can't see the forest for the trees. Or maybe it isn't hard. Maybe Cluetrain is the forest? I don't know.