Rubel's advice on revising blog cover

Trust The power of Rubel. He knows from whence he speaks. I am responding via his request on Twitter.

I'd be very interested in your 'outsider' perspective on what factors/reasons immediately capture your interest. Comparing that to the final product might be very educational* for budding evangelists trying to move beyond the fishbowl.

* Isn't this what journalists do best? Making the complex inner workings of events, organizations and cultures accessible to outsiders?

Sorry, I meant to tell you I was sent here by Steve Rubel via Twitter. LanceWeber on Twitter. Feel free to delete this comment.

Steve’s recommendations are on the money, but then you actually need to engage. Provide some content, promote, interact, agree, disagree, bump, call to action and otherwise cajole the network you create into caring enough to participate.

Your success, should you choose to accept this mission, Mr. Baker, could be your story.

Don Lafferty
via Twitter

Steve said via Twitter you were looking for some help. I'll re-read the story on a flight tomorrow and get back to you.

Hi...
Saw Rubel's note via Twitter...
You can actually have the Twitter log on the face of your blog. Also, your Twitter account could be your name, the name of the blog or even use Business Week - and have a RSS set up to get info. Some Twitterbuds follow news outlets this way.

Steve sent me from Twitter...

Check out Students 2.0...they are the future and they are amazing. Their blog, http://students2oh.org/ and on Twitter

Well, I hope my responses were among the interesting. And yes, I looked at this post because Steve asked me to on Twitter.

Here's a question for you: Would it be possible and/or fair to write your story without mentioning Robert Scoble?

Mr. Baker, 2008 blogging v. 2005 blogging comes down to the difference in accessibility, mobility and video blogging. When I can post something like a natural disaster in near real time to my blog from my mobile phone... WOW! (Or, a birthday party or a "shouldn't be doing this" shot from the floor of CES) or whatever...

It's forcing us to tear down a LOT of walls and preconceived ideas of what we will and won't allow. It's challenging the "way we've always done it"... including eating at the edges of the mainstream media's hold on "the scoop".

Stephen - of course for the twitter, Facebook, etc., to work for you, the network of watchers/followers need to be assembled.

And wouldn't you know it, since I follow Steve Rubel on twitter, that led me here!

On the business/enterprise side, incidentally, we just launched our Enterprise 2.0 survey yesterday. I won't pollute your blog with the direct URL, but we're very curious to see what the results will be.

Cheers,
Dan

First of all, thank Rubel for pointing this post out to me via Twitter. I subscribe to this blog, but I saw the link in Twitter first. That alone might say something interesting about that platform.

One idea I think is important: The line between "a blog" and "the rest of the Web site" is blurring. More importantly, I believe that line, that distinction, is entirely irrelevant.

What matters is that having part of a Web site that is powered by blog-publishing software (WordPress is my personal fav) gives businesses (or anyone, of course) a quick and easy way to publish on the Web in an environment that is:

--RSS-enabled, which will only increase in importance
--easily categorized and searchable
--interactive (commenting and more)
--friendly to search engines

Couple an active, meaningful blog with maybe some good Twitter activity or some nice Utterz-powered mobile multimedia publishing, and you have a whole new look for your marketing, PR, customer service, investor relations...

just wrote a book on the power of blogs, twitter, and other social technologies. Call if you want comments. Via steve's post -- submitted by iPhone.

Josh Bernoff. Jbernoff @ forrester.com

twitter sent me here

2008 is all about short and now!

Short snaps of text (twitter), audio (www.utterz.com), and video (www.seesmic.com).

I want video NOW (www.qik.com www.mogulus.com)

Even more instant gratification.

This entire discussion thread, as Don Lafferty infers, is a window into the soul of blogging.

I think of my blog now as 'homebase', and various communication tools, micro blogging platforms like Twitter, Social Networks like Facebook, etc as channels to tap and create discussion, and dissiminate information. But the goal is always to being it back to the blog, for all to see and interact with.

Rubel's advice on this blog, Twitter and Facebook, is spot on. Also, be aware of the 'mobile social revolution' taking place. Someone mentioned Scoble. He's the band leader of this. He's using Qik.com, where you can stream live video from certain cell phones, directly to the web. Video will be integrated more and more into blogs this year, live and recorded. I'm not on Rubel's Twitter stream, but I will be. MY Twitter name is JCrites, my blog is ConsumerPassion.com.

Hi Stephen,

I also found this conversation from Steve Rubel's twitter post.

Here's my take: In 2005, blogs were news because they were a new(ish) form of communication that flattened the traditional hierarchy. There was no longer the speakers and the listeners. Everyone could be a speaker. Blogs were on their way to a massive augmentation in one-way conversations, and you correctly pointed out that marketers needed to pay attention.

In 2008, the blog story is about community. (Your 2005 story only has one mention of the word "community.") What's important now isn't just that everybody's talking, but that everybody's also listening. Microblogging tools like Twitter have facilitated these true back and forth conversations.

Basically, Rubel's answer to you was classic PR help: clearly your regular readers are insufficient, you need a larger pool of helpers, which the PR person will gladly provide. But he doesn't solve the IA problem of organizing all the comments.

Whatever happened to the suggestion of asking your regular readers?
You did that in December. Eight of us responded, and two of us agreed that an annotation format (which was conceived in the Web 1.2 days, pre-MicroPersuasion) would be a good idea.

Set up web annotation, and let readers annotate. In fact they could annotate any BW article.

Here from Twitter as well.

The Blog has been eschewed like long division. Nay, like long division when you have a calculator at hand. Comments are disappearing as it is more readily assumed that replies will come in the form of short posts directed @the_author. All of this done from a cell phone or mobile device.

And don't think this is the domain of the chic urbanite only. This post was made from a mobile device on a commercial construction jobsite with nothing but a cell tower and farm fields in eye-shot. Not even an electrical outlet on-site yet.

RE: Jon's point on asking regular readers.

I think it was a wise move to look outside the family. By using someone's Twitter list, he tapped into into a crowd that's plugged in and 'web active' throughout the day. It's smart for media veterans like Businessweeek to stretch their wings.

If you have great content, and Businessweek does, then it's all about meeting savvy consumers where they are, and where they'll soon be. Because they expect you to be there. 2008 is a make or break year for traditional media outfits. They have to figure out the New Web, or get run over by consumers streaming to sites that get it.

I too came here via Twitter tho I am a regular reader. Twitter has become my hub-to my blog, to my corporate blog, for quick answers and advice, a place to vent and get news... I also use Utterz mentioned above for mobile posting, and try most anything else. As for Rubel's other suggestion, Facebook groups- Facebook's closed system and the lack of separate RSS and email feeds severely cripples what could be a very powerful tool for collaboration nd info sharing. Last word on Twitter: you will hate it before you love it. Blogs are littered w/ posts by bewildered Twitter newbies lik me who ent on tobecome heavy users.

Jon, I followed your link on annotation and it only took me to the wikipedia entry. And in your comment in December you wrote:

Too bad there's still no good annotation format (unless you count MSFT Web Comments). There *should* be a way to preserve the original text of the article while providing "forward notes" to explain what happened afterwards.

So I'm still looking for the right way to annotate. But first things first: We have to figure out what has changed. I want to extend the query to the largest audience possible.

Interview people that are actually doing something for the community, not self-promoters that only blog.

It's as easy as that - I can point you to many, many, many people that are working for the good of communities, that are doing real work, that actually work with companies and are not just blogging for themselves.

Jeremy, point away!

Without my BLOG - yes my blog - I would not have been on the with Michael Dell for the Vostro launch last year; I would not have been on the CNBC Donny Deutsch Show; I would not have had coverage in the NYT, WSJ and more; I would not be putting together the Third Annual Small Business Summit 2008...I could go on. But blogs are powerful. Maybe not on their own - but with a nice attitude and a good pitch the sky's the limit.

Ramon Ray, Editor & Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com

re Jeff: "I think it was a wise move to look outside the family."

Well there were already a number of people who volunteered to contribute last month. And I see while a lot of people showed up for this thread, my sense is that not a lot will stick around.

Regarding Twitter-- I wonder how many people actually use it for mobile updates? It's handy as a short-message feed. You could achieve the same effect with a bookmark-sharing tool like delicious; the difference being that people like push (much to PR people's delight!)

re Steve: "So I'm still looking for the right way to annotate"

Ok, I gave you guys some ideas. I do this as a hobby. McGraw-Hill is a $6.3B information company. I suppose if one's audience is expected to be more directly helpful than one's co-workers, that deserves at least some mention...

I tried out Fleck. It is halfway-decent; the best part is that it allows outsiders to view an annotated page via a proxied url without having to load new software. So here's the annotated. Oddly it doesn't show the poster's name (me, for the 25 current ones), or even allow hyperlinks (!) so I can't source all of the posts as I'd like to.

Steve, I think an update to the story is a great idea. When I wrote my recent book, Do It Wrong Quickly, I spoke to many companies using blogs and other Web 2.0 techniques to listen to and engage with their customers. My company, IBM does so, and so do others I spoke to such as Sun Microsystems, GM, and other big names. In addition, companies without blogs, such as Netflix, have a specific strategy to engage with bloggers just as if they are press. I wrote a blog entry about that a while back (http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/archives/2007/03/blog_influence.html) and would be happy to talk with you more if you are interested.

Follow-up to my earlier comment (and FYI, folks here should read Mike Moran's book - great stuff - good to see you hear Mike), my research unit is running a survey for the next week on Enterprise 2.0.

Would love more feedback on what people feel is or is not real around Enterprise 2.0, the good, bad, ugly, who is using it, why.

Let's call the survey User Generated Content of a different type, eh? Jump on over to http://aiimMarketIntelligence.questionpro.com.

Cheers,
Dan