the social networkizing of mechandising (or the webkinizing of retail)

"Did you HEAR??" Jenna gets excited about 24 times each day, but this was one of those 'urgent news' type of yelps that made me ask, "About what?"

She proceeded to tell me that she needed a pound puppy, not a real one (this week), but one of the stuffed kind from the toy store. I told her I thought they had pound puppies back when her cousin Nick (now 25) was young. She told me they're new now--they come with a code you can enter to play with them online, just like Webkinz. Investigating, the only functionality I could see on the pound puppies site was an input form that lets you generate an adoption certificate. But I smell a social network in the winds. The landing page for pound puppies looks like the future entryway to pound puppyville, another virtual pet-owning experience coming soon to a parent's credit card near you.

We owe the resurreciton of the stuffed animal to social computing. If not for social networks, Webkinz would be another cute fad with a $12 price tag and a place on your child's bed. But nooo. Thanks to social spaces vying for our kids' attention, that same stuffed animal can live on ad infinitum, with complementary purchases like webkinz trading cards, waiting for your john hancock too.

Some tween-based social networks skip the merchandising part and go right to the trading cards. Case in point Bella Sara. Right now, it's a virtual world, using packs of trading cards as the merchandising element. I can only figure that Bella Sara is doing a "reverse webkinz," putting the trading cards (which have codes to purchase online clothing and tack for your online horse) out first with the stuffed rendition to follow. I'm sure a stuffed bella sara stallion is coming soon. I think I hear his hoofbeats. More ways to my wallet. Thank you internets!

Watching tweens on Webkinz and Bella Sara, I started wondering how smart companies will find that same sweet spot with adult consumers--a place where real-world point-of-sale drives the online experience.

What would the characteristics of that experience have to be:

1) something we are compelled to purchase.
2) something we enjoy playing with or using in the real world.
3) a replica of something real that can also be experienced virtually.

Perhaps the condoms of the future will come with a special code you can enter to frolic in an online adult world. In turn, the sites could offer special features and access to those with codes, driving future brand preference in condoms.

Same with clothing. Your jeans should come with your DenimWorld code emblazened on your back pocket. You use the code to dress your virtual self and hope that some hottie has been looking at your ass long enough to look you up in Denim City. In Denim City you participate in activities that generate points toward special features or future purchases. Maybe movie tickets for your real-world date from your virtual connection based on your realworld jeans.

I'm thinking out loud here.

Blame the steroids.

------

Euan Me

Euan Semple decided to send invites to stumble upon to me and 1,000 other close friends (check out the comments--some funny replies there from Euan's good natured "spammed friends"). Needless to say, ADD-like wanderlust ensued for various parts of the day. Musicovery and Refrigerator Poetry have been particularly fun. Firefox made the toolbar install easy. I wish their profile pages were more social. And a big plus would be to be able to "blog this" find or in some other way have linkage between your blog there and your other blogs and social sites.

More and more I think we will be writing in apps like Qumana and publishing to multiple sites--especially when these tools can cross social sites or use RSS to shape-shift our writing (also knowns as content), breaking it down into particles to send it across our social spheres and recomposing it in the style/form/look-and-feel appropriate for each venue. There's no reason I can't pull a twitter out of the same blog post I'm posting here and designate the last half of it in some Funky Font with emoticons to blast over to MySpace (once it's open--it will be), FaceBook, Friendster, Pownce, LinkedIn, Stumble Upon, Allied, Blog Sisters, all of em.

I have more to say on this stuff--just too little time and energy.

SO that's a round about way of saying, Thanks Euan!

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Famous future reply to the question, "How did you find our site?"

"Euan did it."

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Tags: myspace, euan semple, stumble upon, bad UIs, 1000 close friends, musicology, the solution is poetry, active reading, facebook, friendster, pownce, linked in, stumble upon, blogging, web 2.0, social software, tech, marketing

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this could BE something.

Was looking over the folks involved with the Freelancer's Union. I mean, what if we U.S. bloggers really decided that we were going to do this thing. We're going to join and get involved and help power this union. Am I crazy? One of us is writing their blog. They've set up a wiki. They're even trying to get gig info out there. I'm not saying that this makes them legit, but it shows someone is tending the garden.

We've got the dispersed, miscellaneous voice thing covered here on the net. But when it comes to counting in the wasteland of non-affordable healthcare in this country, we lack a centralized voice.

Affordable Health Care is now nothing more than a mantra. It's not going to happen. And if WE (you know who WE are) lose the next election, some of us are going to have to leave or die. It's that simple.

If you worry about healthcare once a week and are an indie worker, think about this union thing. What about disability? How often do you independents -- solo or with families -- fear having to take 8 weeks off to have surgery? (my hand's up!) Life insurance? At my last job I paid $2.50 per month for a policy that would have bequeathed my family $200K. Now I pay $150/month for something that would give them half of that.

Dental? not. Vision? not.

I don't know the answers for any of this stuff, but I wonder, could this union thing actually work? Would it hurt to put our shoulder to the wheel and see if we can make it work?

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Stormhoek and Corporate Social Responsibility

One of the groups mentioned in the recent discussions on the Blog-Marketed, South African wine Stormhoek -- a conversation ripe with questions about how much the company is doing to remedy the social ills in South Africa that stem from its industry and the legacy of the dop system -- is the Women on Farms Project. (Another is ActionAid, which is broader in focus).

I noticed these two groups in this article from 2006, "Worker Pleads with Tesco to Honor the Fruits of Her Labor, which South African blogger Mike Golby linked to in his post, "Tell The Truth, Nigga." From what I have read, my understanding is that Gertruida Baartman became a spokesperson for underpaid laborers in her fight to secure a wage more than the three dollars and change per day she was being paid to pick fruit for Tesco.

Awareness of Ms. Baartman shamed Tesco into action on Baartman's behalf. (ActionAid bought one share in Tesco in Baartman's name, giving her the right to speak up at the retailer's annual meeting. The share cost about the same as she earns for her nine-hour shifts.). But what has happened since then?

What are companies like Tesco and Stormhoek doing to make sure that paying wages in the currency of booze (still prevalent on 3 to 5 percent of South African vineyards according to one estimate) stops? What is being done to help displaced workers--when the CSR action of the day is to say: OKAY you sixth generation live-in laborer, you're free to go. (What? No mule? No 40 acres?) What are these companies doing to help reverse the alarming rate of alcoholism and fetal alcohol syndrome that are a direct legacy of the dop system?

Why am I interested in this story? Lots of reasons, because it has lots of hooks for me. As a blogger, I see a company using bloggers to market its product--a product no one really needs but some enjoy--and I wonder if they know how it got to them. Are they being exploited? Do they know? Do they care? As a PR blogger, I see an opportunity for vineyards and wine companies to actually come together as competitors to do something larger than their profit margin or next blog promotion, to help people who ARE being exploited. As a woman, as a mother, and as someone keenly aware of the legacy of slavery in this country and its toxic generational impact, I give a shit.

Stormhoek isn't going out of business because a few bloggers want to know about the practices in its associated vineyards, about its CSR programs, about the laborers who give Hugh a product to glue his cartoons on. But it would do well to address the questions

Mean Kids Disclaimer 230: I am not trying to poke holes in Hugh's project for poking's sake. I am really trying to find out what the current situation and practices are, and -- given the OPPORTUNITY TO DO SOMETHING POSITIVE (all bloggers like Positivity and Higher Purposes, right?), plus the wealth of EXPERTISE in and around the blogosphere ((which incidentally IS Stormhoek's marketing engine)) -- discuss what can and should be done.

For example, do Stormhoek vineyards have a Woman on Farms Committee on site, like Lanzerac, Kaapzicht, Fine Farms, Uitkyk, Blyhoek, Elsenburg, De Clapmuts, Spier, Groenland & Labonheur do? Do they have any representatives on the WOF's District Forum?

I'll stop now. But feel free to continue the conversation. Markets are, you know.


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I'm going Mac. Ain't no going back.

I'm saving up to make the switch. That's it.

So many PCs have croaked the last two weeks I don't know what's going on, but I don't see any harm in insinuating the proliferation of Vista and recent MS updates miiiight have something to do with it. Or some kind of harmonic convergence. Yeah.

I started out in business on a Mac in 1984. The first one I worked on was a 512K, singed on the inside, which we upgraded to a 512KE and thought we'd died and gone to heaven at our little startup publishing business. Added a 20 MB (that's MB not GB) hard drive in 1985 and had the power of the world in our hands.

I stayed with Mac at home and in business until 1991, going through a Mac Plus, a Mac SE, and others, including my first Apple laser printer which cost $1600 back in the day, until I joined the Big Co machinary of Eastman Kodak Company, when being able to work from home pushed me to a PC and then Windows.

Well guess what. I'm going back to my roots. What do I do? I write. What have I always done? Write and make books. What should I be doing that on? A Mac. Plain and simple.

I'm writing this on a borrowed computer--THANK YOU HONEY--who has been 'driving miss crazy' around for the last two weeks during my convalescence. One made a little more stressful without a link to the rest of you. I am thankful I have George's computer to work on. Believe me. But I need an axe. I can't be without my axe.

I want to go home. I want to buy a mac book. I'm going to.

It's over Microsoft. It's over Windows.

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Bad Blogger Pitch Week

As more and more PR firms large and small jump into the space they call social media, which only vaguely resembles the social media space we who participate online play around in, the number of bad PR pitches is escalating. There’s dough to be made. There are plenty of junior people at PR firms with MySpace pages. It’s a match made in billable-hours heaven.

I’m getting several of these pitches a day, where I used to only get a couple a week. They are getting stupider, even though the tools that slice and dice bloggers into media outlets should be getting smarter. The problem is that we were never targets; we were never outlets; we never said we were media; we still aren’t. Old PR models still don’t work here.

Word to your Account Exec.

This became oh so apparent yesterday when Toby Bloomberg let some of us in on a pitch she got from a 'teen-and-t'ween PR person who is at least somehow affiliated with Fleishman-Hillard (still pondering if this is an FH site or some off brand) trying to lure Toby into caring about the site with talk of Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore.

Allison of The Next Big Thing sent Toby the pitch that shows she’s never read Toby and doesn’t know what Diva Marketing is about. She doesn’t know the folks Toby cc’s on her reply back either—although she pledges to add us to her “RSS”. I have a Tween and I worked in BigPR long enough to know the extent to which PR cares about tween$ is reflected in that little s at the end.

Now, Toby’s gotten tired of these pitches, but is among the tireless who still take the time to respond to them in an attempt to educate the would-be media relations people or perhaps shut them up until they take the time to READ.

Because most of these pitches are veiled attempts to get you to HIRE THESE PEOPLE as YOUR NEXT "SOCIAL MEDIA PR ONLINE MARKETING WHAT HAVE YOU" CONSULTANT or to USE THEIR SERVICES OR THE SERVICES OF THEIR CLIENTS, not, as they would like you to believe, to add something useful to your day, allow me to provide my tips for choosing a social media consultant in the form of a little quiz you can use in your own business.

Make no mistake: I think that you should work with people who actually participate in social spaces – many of whom started out as bloggers and who are still bloggers – rather than XYZ PRPros or BigPR Central. So lets see how the next people who come looking for your money or attention do on my Social Media Partner Quiz:

• Do you blog? Please provide a link (with a link to your archives).
• What does the word “Blog” stands for?
• Who has been celebrated as the mother of blogging?
• Who is the father of podcasting? Who says they are the father of podcasting? Who's right? (Are you willing to say so at BloggerCon?)
• Which President invented the Internet?
  
• Do you participate in conversations with key influencers in the Technorati Top 500? Name them.
• Have you ever argued online with Robert Scoble?
• Where doesn’t Robert work?
• Is your blog among the Technorati Top 5,000?
• Is an aggregator used 1) to waste time at work, 2) to make your car go, 3) to track blogs you want to read, 4) all of the above.
• How far back do your blog archives go?
• Does a MySpace login use numbers or letters?
• Have you ever twittered before a date? After? During?
• What’s CSS?
• Have you been published on topics germane to this industry in mainstream media?
• Send me links to your blog, podcasts, videos, myspace page, orkut page, youtube page, facebook page, flickr photos and Kaneva page. When I said Kaneva, did you say God bless you?
• Do you spend at least half of your on-the-phone time with other bloggers, Internet lovers, or people in your industry?
• Name some of your best friends online.
• Name some of your best enemies online. (note: immediate disqualification if none listed -- you haven’t been here long enough.)
• Did your read Cluetrain? Was it about 1) freedom 2) the rail and transportation industry or 3) best practices?

For a brief written evaluation of test results and recommendations, paypal $29.95 to ewriter@bellsouth.net.

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What Are You Doing April 20th?

It's a friday. You must be free. If not, get free.

Come by allied ALL DAY, where I'll be writing original poetry and prose, realtime, in memory of my father, who died of pancreatic cancer in his 30s.

Your job? HELP ME RAISE $500 for PANCAN!

Sponsor me in The First Annual BLOG POETRY FEST for PANCAN here on allied.

All funds go to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PANCAN), an advocacy group for patients and families dealing with pancreatic cancer. The event is set up through FirstGiving in conjunction with PanCan to raise awareness and funds for continued research, education, and advocacy.

More information will be coming soon, but in the mean time, inspire me and save the date.

...

no lists, just action - speaker diversity and the top-dog bypass

Chris Pirillo wonders why Gnomedex didn't make Kottke's list of conferences examined for their percentages of male vs female speakers.

I'd say it's a good thing Gnomedex didn't make the list, because, although it's an interesting idea to compare today's hot Internet conferences based on these percentages, it's sort of like addressing a zero balance in your bank account by changing the numbers in your checkbook register.

It doesn't really address the lllaaarrgggerrr ppprrrooobbllem.

I wish more tech conferences were like gnomedex, and that more of today's web-tech conference organizers were like chris and ponzi. Gnomedex was fostering discussion on the tech landscape LONG before today's webby conferences (and conference organizers), many of whom are doing what they do to capitalize on web 2.0 money, the Internet economy, and the social media 'who's who' scene.

THOSE are the conferences I inherently distrust and see as suspect, and they nearly always give me reason to distrust, because they almost always take the speaker bypass of looking at the technorati top 100 or Top Dogs or Founding FATHERS of blogging, and approach them for speaking slots. These individuals are STILL the easiest to come across when you skim the web looking for voices-as-commodity. They are also pretty good themselves at going after gigs. Easy, visible targets beget easy quick conferences beget money in pockets beget notoriety for speakers and conferences, which beget more speaking gigs and conferences.

Chris and Ponzi don't skim the web. They live here with us. They participate--participated before it was trendy and highly lucrative. That is why I trust them to put together a good, representative conference, and to listen to ideas for speakers and topics if people think they should do it differently.

Back to the Kottke list: There is no universal diversity percentage that makes things okay.

Wouldn't that be simple? It would allow for more bypasses, faster conference planning, and more predictable tracks. It would allow everything to be fair and just, and would mean that no one would have to think about their own beliefs and motives. Just fill in the 38% diversity quotient at work, and then you don't have to wonder if it's okay that you wish your new neighbors weren't black.

The "right" number of women speakers for a deeply-tech tech conference might differ from the "right" number for a social marketing conference. Because there is no right number.

Except for NOT ZERO.

AND PROBABLY. NOT ONE EITHER.

Use your fucking heads.

How to find good speakers? Ask the people you know who are in the populations you think are sparse or missing. Better yet, START READING PEOPLE who don't look like everyone else in your aggregator or blogroll. Then read who they read.

And if you really don't know any women or people of color, expand your world a little bit. Get off your computer, get out of your fucking house, city, state, and/or cultural comfort zone to-day.

THEN plan a conference.

Disaster Preparedness - No 40 Acres and No Mule

we're still under a tornado watch.

In November 1992, Melvin Bishop's farm in Georgia suffered severe damage from a tornado. After the storm, Bishop went to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to apply for disaster relief, an emergency loan, and an operating loan. For the next seven months, the local USDA office gave him the runaround. Finally, in May 1993, Bishop not only was denied the disaster relief he qualified for, he was also denied both loans. No reasons were given. Bishop, who is African-American, called his experience with the USDA "even more devastating than the tornado."

..........

In 1865, the US Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and, soon thereafter, passed the Freedmen's Bureau Act, which leased 40 acres of abandoned or confiscated Southern land to "every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman."

Unfortunately, these plans for the redistribution of Southern lands were never carried out. After the war, President Andrew Johnson returned the land to white aristocrats, ensuring the persistence of the South's semi-feudal economic order.

In 1920, nearly one million African-American farmers owned 14 percent of all US farms. By 1950, Black land ownership had declined to 12 million acres, and in 1969 it was down to 5.5 million acres -- a drop of 54 percent in just 20 years. Between 1982 and 1992, the number of black farmers in the US fell 43 percent -- from 33,250 to 18,816.

In 1990, African Americans made up roughly one percent of the nation's farmers and were disappearing at a rate almost five times greater than whites. In 1999, fewer than 18,000 out of 1.9 million US farmers were African Americans, and these farmers owned less than 1 million acres. A 1990 Congressional report warned that black farms were on the verge of extinction. It is now feared that, by the end of 2000, there may be no black-owned land in America.

.....

time for a checkup.

They Called the Wind Maria

We're under tornado watch.

"During the evening of April 5, 1936, Tupelo, Mississippi took a glancing blow from an F5 tornado. Although the storm missed the downtown area it still took more than 216 lives and left over 700 people injured. Property loss from the strike is estimated at 3 million dollars. Since African-Americans were not included in either dead or injured totals, the toll in human lives was probably significantly higher. Still, by itself, this tornado ranks as the fourth most destructive storm based on the number of dead."

You Should Have Unprotected Sex with My Blogroll Right Now!!!

It is THAT clean, and I mean clean.

I have validated, deleted, edited, moved and sanitized my blogroll to a degree that makes me deserving of some kind of medal. Bestow one on me, QUICKLY.

"The Gold Medal of Safely Screwable Blogrolls"

I am honored.

Go ahead, click through those links on my blogroll. If you find a broken link, or a link of someone whose blog has moved and I missed changing it, you get a $10 amazon gift certificate.

YOU HEARD ME RIGHT.

I mean, I had to change half of the blogs on my blogroll to new addresses. Now the OPMLey among you would say, "there is a better way," but I think everyone should have to scrub down their blogroll once a month. These aggregators are like factory farming -- hamburger without the bloodletting. Well, I like a good burger, but there is nothing wrong with tending a garden as well.

Now, if you are as full of metaphors as I am, I will excuse you and let you go have sex with my blogroll.

ENJOY -- oh, and leave me comments with links to more cool diverse voices to add to my newly screwable blogroll.

stepping out...

In case anyone's playing the 'where's jeneane?' homegame (which means you should probably play the lotto instead so you can win cash to take a trip somewhere interesting), I wanted to update you: I decided to leave the Media 2.0 Workgroup because I think stepping away from it is the right thing for me to do. I wish my fellow mediaites well, and will be following along as a reader.

back to our regular programming.

Millar's Law, Brand Strategy, And Fish.

A week or so ago I took a quick shot at explaining what online marketers are doing wrong in trying to cut through the noise in the crowded Internet space: They're making more noise. What they should be doing instead is shutting up and helping people do what it is they want to do.

This post over at Brand Tactitians does a wwwwaaahhyy better job at illustrating what web companies should be doing for the people they like to call users. Because most companies treat people like users; their aim is to sell them us drugs, new drugs, better drugs. We're not users. We're doers. Help us do stuff, okay?

Anyway, I digress. A story about fish awaits you. It is Millar's Law. It is important. Go Read It.

giving it a go, diversity, the red button, and anil.

So many women over so many years around these so many parts have endeavored so often and so passionately to describe the problem with diverse voices being excluded from tech events, tech conferences, and the tech economy--heck some would wish we'd shut up altogether--that there is hardly anything left unsaid.

And yet, the same types of people keep spewing the same types of stupid arguments the same way about the same topic (linking to the same one anothers in doing so) to try and shift the blame anywhere other than their own two shoulders -- it makes me want to push the red button on this whole damn social experiment. As if i had a button.

It's crazy making. it really is.

Today the men are talking about it again, and I am pointing it out so that others can go there and talk about it with Anil, whose post is right on in explaining why monoculture is not only NOT a good thing, but why diversity is a business must that will pay off. (In other words, hurry, there's money involved.)

I haven't always agreed with Anil. In fact he's pissed me off several times over these many years. He's also very smart. This is a good post and a good discussion. Thank you Anil for having it.

Why Executives Should Blog

I wrote this for Global PR Week back in 2005. Much of the advice still applies, and most of those exec bloggers I talked to are still blogging. I should go back and do another one of these. I think I'd title it, Has Blogging Jumped the Shark? 10 Ways for You Can Still Make a Splash with Blogging. Except now you have to pay me to tell you. ;-)


ADDING YOUR VOICE TO THE CONVERSATION: Why CEOs and Other Executives Should Blog.

September 19th, 2005

By Jeneane D. Sessum, Kat Herding Media, Allied
EDITORS' CHOICE | CEO Blogs

Just how taxing is it to be one of today’s chief executive officers? Most are on call, in one form or another, nearly 24 hours a day. According to an article in the Pocket Manager, it’s difficult to determine precisely how many hours the typical CEO works, but research shows that U.S.- and U.K.-based chief executive officers work the longest hours. While Oracle’s Larry Ellison has attempted to cut back on his 80-hour work week, most CEOs ether haven’t mastered the technique or don’t have that luxury.

So why in the world would CEOs take on the extra task of blogging—a communication medium with a tentative ROI that remains largely unproven?

Marketing pundit and best-selling author Seth Godin says they shouldn’t. According to Godin, blogs work when they are based on candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, and controversy. “Does this sound like a CEO to you?" Godin asks. “Short and sweet, folks: If you can’t be at least four of the five things listed above, please don’t bother . . . save the fluff for the annual report."

As blogging evolves, however, many of today’s CEOs-turned-bloggers in fact are making the time—and having a good time—using the very characteristics Godin lists as what makes blogging successful.

Time to Blog?

Bob Cramer, CEO of Marlborough, Mass.-based LiveVault, sees blogging not as an extra activity, but as something inherent to his business.

“The essence of our business is leveraging the Internet to transform how organizations run the process of data backup," he says. “Since our business model is based around the net, blogging is a natural fit for us." Cramer, who uses Six Apart’s Movable Type blog tool, manages the time demands of blogging by loosely scheduling time for writing.

“I aim for one blog entry a week at a minimum, and while I don’t formally schedule my posts, I do put blogging on my to-do list," he says. “When I get the RSS feeds from blogs I read and I see a topic that interests me, I’ll take some notes and make the time to write about it."

Phil Libin, president of CoreStreet, in Cambridge, Mass., takes a more free-form approach to balancing his blog time with his executive responsibilities.

“In every other facet of the company, I have a schedule," he says. “There are deadlines; there are reports; there are meetings, and so on. If I tried to extend that schedule to my blog, I wouldn’t bother blogging. If I had to say to myself, ‘Here are ten topics, now sit down and write about them,’ the whole experience would become bland and boring. So instead I post when something intrigues me, when something seems like it will interest my readers. I’d rather have readers remember me for having written something memorable than for when I last posted."

Gil Friend, CEO of Berkeley, Calif.-based Natural Logic, doesn’t have a regular posting pattern, but does have posting consistency over time, having blogged actively on his Radio blog since June 2002.

“I’ll go through a week or two of not posting, and then I’ll have days when I write five posts, then a single post—it varies," he says. “I don’t know if that’s a problem for readers. When I started blogging I wasn’t thinking about all of that. It was as much because I like to try new things as anything. But I continue blogging because writing is one of the ways I figure out what I’m thinking. And, what I think and what I write about are often key reasons people engage my company."

Matt Blumberg, CEO of New York, NY-based Return Path, also uses blogging to help crystallize his thinking.

“One of the best things publishing a blog has done has been to force me to spend a few minutes here and there thinking about issues I encounter in a more structured way and crystallizing my point of view on them," Blumberg wrote in 2004. “[That’s] invaluable, but mostly for me."

Unleashing Your Inner Blogger

Getting started in blogging doesn’t always take an edict from on high or a firm resolution to blog. Sometimes it starts by accident. That’s how GM vice chairman Bob Lutz came to blogging, according to marketing consultant Debbie Weil, who learned from Gary Grates, GM’s vice president of communications for North America, that Bob Lutz started writing flying back from Europe when he wrote up a response to some posts he’d been reading about GM.

When Lutz asked what he should do with his notes, Grates had his blog-savvy communications team put his writeup on the Saturn into a blog template. The rest, as they say, is history—at least recent history. Grates says that there is no science to how or when Lutz blogs, but rather that he simply “juxtaposes his response to reader comments with what he wants to write about next."

Lutz himself gives advice to other CEOs on the whys and wherefores of blogging in his article from the July 11, 2005 issue of Information Week, “Nothing to Fear from Executive Blogging". “It’s important that we run the bad with the good," he writes. “We’d take a credibility hit if we posted only rosy compliments, and credibility is the most important attribute a corporate blog can have. Once it’s gone, your blog is meaningless. If you filter the negatives out, you don’t have a true dialogue, so how can you hope to change anybody’s mind about your products or your business?"

Not every high-level executive, however, has a power blogger within, just waiting for the opportunity to engage the market in debate and express himself or herself online. It takes a combination of personality and proficiency, of wit and wisdom, and the ability to write well, to make a blogger—CEO or otherwise—worth reading.

CoreStreet’s Libin was inspired and encouraged into blogging by Chuck Tanowitz of Schwartz Communications, who urged his client to join the blogosphere in 2003.

“What’s right about Phil for blogging is that he’s thoughtful, articulate, well spoken, and a great writer, which translates well to the medium of blogging," Tanowitz says. “His blog is not just a recap of company press releases and press materials—far from it. What he writes about in his posts are the things that Phil thinks about every day. His passion for the industry, his business smarts, and his personality are really what attracted our firm to the company when we started working with CoreStreet."

According to Tanowitz, Libin’s enthusiasm for what he does—which comes across in his blog and in person—is something Tanowitz has leveraged for more traditional PR tactics as well.

“As public relations people, when we hear that passion from someone, that’s what we need to capture and take back to the marketplace," Tanowitz says. “Blogging is the digital pencil. As Phil’s PR counsel, we get a lot of ideas from reading Phil’s blog at times when we’re not in front of him. We get the thoughts he has while he’s traveling in a far-off nation. His blog is a direct line into his head, and what Phil writes on his blog often extends to traditional PR and marketing channels—allowing us to repackage his thoughts on a given topic and bring his ideas to the media in other forms. Often, something Phil’s read or written sparks talks with analysts and journalists."

For his part, Libin likes the way his blog breaks the ice when meeting prospects, partners, colleagues, candidates, and members of the media for the first time.

“I didn’t think of this when I started blogging, but people usually Google me before a meeting, and by the time I meet with them at least one-quarter of them will have found my blog and read something there that they want to talk about," he says. “It’s like a shared joke, something more personal that removes the pressure during for those first initial conversations. The basics about who you are have been taken care of on your blog."

Blogging Is “Complementary To"—Not a “Replacement For"

Natural Logic’s Gil Friend sees blogging as one of many communication pathways for his organization and its constituents. Friend, who has been online since the late 1970s, when he participated in EIES (the Electronic Information Exchange System), one of the early computer communications projects outside DARPA, puts blogging into perspective as a powerful tool for participating in the larger conversation.

“As a CEO, I write, speak and meet, and I see blogging as short-form writing that has its place in how I communicate," he says. “I do a longer monthly piece called “The New Bottom Line,�? regular pieces at WorldChanging (http://www.worldchanging.com) and GreenBiz, as well as articles for traditional media like The Wall Street Journal. Blogging is more informal, and makes it easy to link other relevant items and bring people into the conversation. People can engage at their own pace and at their own convenience. And with RSS and blogrolls, reading blogs becomes even easier."

The conversation is the point, according to Friend. And the more dimensions to it, the better.

“The conversation happens through blogging and around the water cooler," he says. “It happens in performance reviews, in the lunchroom, in the boardroom. Extended across the organization’s lifecycle is the defining conversation the company has with itself and its value chain. And every organization has the opportunity to have this conversation, to make it broadly participatory, to make it rich, and to have it in all the forums where it can occur."

CEO Blogging: Mischief or Management?

Because blogging is a continuously evolving medium, it is unpredictable. The risks of blogging—of being harassed in comments, embarrassed by errors and miscommunication, even being fired—have been well demonstrated in real-life scenarios for a few years now. Blogging’s blemishes are worth examining, but not worth losing sleep over, according to executive bloggers with a passion for posting. With unpredictability comes risk, but it also brings edginess and excitement that connects with readers.

“Our executive team had meetings to decide if we should do it, how we should do it, and who should do it," says LiveVault’s Bob Cramer. “We weighed the potential problems against the possible opportunities. In the end, we decided that the worst-case scenario was that we would learn from it. So we jumped in."

According to Cramer, the biggest risk for new executive bloggers is that they may expect too much from it.

“Blogging is about expressing yourself and how you feel—whether it’s your market, industry trends, current events, or some other topic," he says. “It’s not about selling product or writing a sales pitch. While I would urge every CEO to blog, I would also urge them to write about things they know about, to be personal, to understand that this is not your ‘company’ speaking—it’s you speaking."

What about encouraging employees to follow in his footsteps? Cramer says the more the merrier, as long as the work gets done.

“I think it would be great if our employees decided to blog, if they want to spend extra time conveying how they think and feel to the community."

Karen Christensen, CEO of Great Barrington, Mass.-based Berkshire Publishing Group, has identified the risks associated with blog publishing—and has some advice for overcoming them.

“Blogging requires consistency, which is why it’s a good idea to test the waters without making an announcement or commitment before you find out if it’s for you," she says. “It’s not a blog if the last entry is a month old, so before you draw a lot of attention to your blog, make sure you can really do it."

Christensen also advises CEO bloggers to get personal while understanding that a certain level of decorum is necessary.

“We should be as relaxed and uncensored as we can, but also be aware that there are risks in publishing on the fly," she notes. “For example, I try not to share my wilder dreams and visions on the blog. And if you are one of those people who can’t spell or see typos in your writing, get a proofreader or editor."

CoreStreet’s Libin, who views his blog as a personal site, separate from his company, does not use corporate resources of any kind to design, host, maintain, or post to his blog. He also makes sure his blog has a separate graphical identity, saying that “this separation of church and state" gives him freedom to keep things humorous and fresh—and keep him engaged in writing there. Of course, that freedom of expression also brings some—you guessed it—risks.

“From an HR perspective, it’s a personal blog, but I have to be appropriate," he says. “That’s a little tricky, because it’s easy to have what you write be misunderstood. Also, I find myself writing some humorous posts and I think, ‘Do I want my investors to think that I’m funny? Does that make me frivolous? Is there a difference?’ The truth is, yes there’s a difference—and being funny and interesting is not a bad thing."

A little fear, in fact, may be a good thing, according to Natural Logic’s Gil Friend, who notes that there’s nothing wrong with fear.

“Fear is part of awareness," he explains. “Blind courage gets large numbers of people killed. So, be afraid and go ahead with the risks in mind."

Friend sees the opportunities for executive bloggers to develop a voice that customers, employees, and other stakeholders can relate to as an important benefit of blogging.

“Giving a voice to what can be a monolith is important because people do business out of relationships as much as they do it out of price, performance, and benefit," he says. “Blogging facilitates a dialogue about what matters to companies and communities—a discussion that often leads to a working relationship."

Because a key job for CEOs is to provide the core of the organization’s identity and to ensure sustainability, a vital component of corporate identity is cohesiveness.

“One way that that the corporate voice can emerge is through blogging," he says. “The most interesting and powerful companies in the world are the ones who have dismantled that dichotomy between inside and outside, companies who speak with the same voice—internally, externally, and to themselves."

The Cost Is Low, The ROI Is Coming

What is the return on investment for developing an identifiable, sustainable corporate voice? Even the most enthusiastic CEO bloggers will admit that they have yet to figure that out.

“In terms of ROI, I don’t know what dollar value you can place on having people know me, know CoreStreet, and understand our values before we ever walk into a meeting," Phil Libin says. “But considering the number of meetings I attend, it could be pretty huge."

Libin advises, however, that blogging isn’t for every executive.

“I would recommend blogging, but it depends on whether or not you have anything to say," he explains. “Blogging is not the only way to move the conversation forward. If you’re good at golf, you have the golf course, but unfortunately I’m not. Blogging is my golf game."

Berkshire Group’s Karen Christensen says all the ROI she needs to see is a positive response about her blog from her customers.

“Our customers are librarians and book distributors, and they have told me that they appreciate getting to know what goes on inside a publishing company," she explains. “Publishers typically have something of a castle drawbridge mentality. They send out information in polished, finished form, then pull the bridge up. The whole open-access movement is putting them under pressure to be more collaborative, and blogging is our chance to show our approach."

Blogs Power Convergence

If a fundamental job of a CEO is to be thinking ahead, can blogs help make that job easier? Is there a role in blogging for helping companies determine what the business wants to be not only in five years, but in 25 years?

“There are companies in Japan that have 500-year plans," Gil Friend says. “Because our business is about the intersection of economic and environmental sustainability, we ask our clients to tell the truth about what they aspire to. We ask them, ‘What’s your organization’s purpose? What are your long-term commitment to your shareholders and employees and community? What’s in your own heart? What are you really here to do?’ And we ask this of CEOs, of senior executives, of everyone within the corporation. Typically, they say: ‘Do you mean in my job? In my life? In my family? In my community?’ And eventually they realize: ‘Oh, you mean all of that?’—and then they get very quiet, and drop into authenticity. What follows is deep and genuine, and it is an extremely powerful conversation."

Friend and his company have seen first hand the tangible benefits that occur when the CEO and the company’s mission, vision, business model, and value proposition are aligned. And, according to Friend, blogging can play a role in facilitating this authentic convergence.

“Providing multifaceted forums for participation and conversation enables more people within global organizations and communities to emerge and participate in ways that work for them. Blogging is just one way to facilitate this important goal—but it can be a powerful way."

Perhaps it’s GM’s Bob Lutz’ words of encouragement for executives considering whether or not to blog that will convince the more hesitant business leaders to get to their keyboard especially since the blog world, the press, and most of GM’s constituents are tuned into Lutz’s blog—which, he says, gets more than 5,000 visits and 13,000 page views a day.

“To any senior executive on the fence about starting a corporate blog, I have a word of advice,�? Lutz says. “Jump."

so you think it's funny i'm selling shaklee, huh? -- ADVERTORIAL --

yeah, hahaha. well, maybe not.

I decided to try shaklee vitamins last month because i was sick of having to drive to the health food store every 15 days to get a bottle of quality supplements, and because I'm sick of being on antibiotics (as a result of failing to do number 1 above, in part), and I'm sick of feeling like homemade crap, and because george used to sell shaklee in the early 80s. I've tried their stuff before and have always liked it.

And THAT'S why you see the puppy in the sidebar. Right over there --->

And what the heck, if i'm not my own best advertiser, what kind of a model am I setting for others who would pay to have me hawk their brands!??!

So here's to good health. Yours and mine. And if you're looking for supplements, eco-friendly (not boutique, mind you) cleaning supplies, personal care items, etc., check out my shaklee store and order online.

this advertisement sponsored by the people for the ethical treatment of bloggers, ltd.

community guy on community stuff

community guy's got a ton of info on:

Safer User Generated Content Campaigns

If you are of the safe-sex school, that means you should comdomize yourself before writing a politician.

badumpbump, crash!

Okay, even if i don't like the UGC lingo, the tips in the post are worth a read for those establishing or running moderated communities--or any kind for that matter. Jake points to a whitepaper that goes into detail: Six Techniques for Safer User Generated Content (UGC) Campaigns, focusing on six key, and often under appreciated techniques. I like the tip to enlist users of a community in moderating it.

4. Enlist your users – most site users want a positive experience. Given the opportunity, many of them will help to protect the safety and quality of a project. Enlisting users can not only help moderators, but can engage users in the site itself. Make sure to develop tools and processes that make it easy and rewarding for "good" behaviors to help protect against the "bad" behaviors.

As the community lives a hopefully long and healthy life, the natural evolution is for the participants to define levels of moderation, and to ignore or oust the assholes, to create and enforce what's acceptable and what gets you shot behind the barn.

(if only!) ;-)

Blurb: Book Sluper's "Bummer" Is Not Cute.

Rule 1 for web 2.1 software: cut it with the cute.

"Bummer" is not an okay way to tell me your software doesn't work. Bummer is not an error message intro. Bummer is what a surfer might say when the waves aren't extreme enough for a good ride. Bummer is what a middle schooler might mutter when a field trip to the Braves game gets canceled due to budgetary cuts.

Do not, not ever, mistake me for a surfer or a middle schooler.

The more time we invest as an unpaid QA department in more and more companies' non-working products, the more 'social software' enthusiasts become anti-social.

Obviously I jumped enthusiastically into Blurb's Book Slurper. (Hey, I didn't get the "Like the Linux people without Linux" moniker for nothin'.)

Initial grade: D -.

Here's how it went:

1. what will your book be? (expensive, really expensive, or outfuckingrageous?)



2. Choose your basic page layout -- blog to book. (Wow that looks cool! -- that's why I didn't give it an F.)



3. This is me logging into Blogger with my NEW BLOGGER GMAIL login, as is required.



4. This is me going, "Bummer?" Did you just crap out on me and call it a "bummer"? You can't what? I USED my new blogger account login. Nice try. Why not say, "No one with more than 3 posts can play."



5. This is me saying "Hiccup. Hiccup"? And this is me blinking: "The 'fabled' CTRL+ALT+DELETE key?" Who told them they could talk like this. This is not conversation. This is bullshit. P.S.: Like CTRL+ALT+DEL is some minor deal?


6. This is me saying, "No I will not help you."

Dissapointing.

I'll wait another five years I guess.

.

Five Years After I Asked for It, It's Here!

To my own not-so-easily-perked-these-days amazement, I read on Lisa's blog about this blog slurper book thing. In short, Blurb apparently lets you "slurp your blog into Blurb’s BookSmart™ software to create a bookstore-quality book, and end up with a permanent and portable archive to share with others."

Been looking for something like this?

Shhheah!

Five years ago I asked a way to export content in this meaningful way. Hey, I'm patient. And I'm willing to give it a try. Book Slurper says it does some pretty cool stuff:

• Imports and maps blog text, images, comments, and links into a professionally designed template, producing a draft book in real time
• Allows you to customize and edit your book as little or as much as you like
• Creates bookstore-quality books up to 440 pages, with professional printing and binding

Not sure about their business model or pricing -- sounds like a downer to me. They need to find a way to REWARD self-publishers for longevity and heavy-content (because they will tend to bring more buyers), not tax them for books over 40 pages.

You pay only when you publish your book. Books up to 40 pages start at $12.95 – see pricing table for details.

Not sure about the backend publishing part either--real creativity needs to happen there to help bloggers make it worth their while rather than just cutting and pasting into a PDF and using lulu. Why should I pay $12.95 to publish 40 slurpped pages of my blog? I can go copy out 40 pages worth--it's the 5,000 posts over six years that I need to slurp.

I'll be digging in to check this thing out and either signing on or waiting for the open source version. Stay tuned.

feeling all information superhighwayish

I've been perseverating about Stowe's traffic and flow post for a couple of days. Not every waking moment. But pretty persistently.

I'm in a frame of mind where I'm taking a look at how 'social' all of this new social technology really is, especially as technology seems to be backfiring all over me this week:

1.) what with my wireless router working well for everything but wireless all of a sudden, and

2.) what with this annoying feed-reading dyslexia I've developed where I keep thinking I'm reading SOMEONE except that halfway through I start getting that weird "doc's excited about new underwear?" or "j. brotherlove went to the circus?" feeling only to figure out I've once again clicked on a different name in bloglines than I thought, jolting me out of my happy reading experience with someone I thought I knew. It's like going home to the wrong house, or walking in on your parents having sex. I'm just saying.

So Stowe's report of Emily Chang's new data stream left me feeling jittery. I don't want to feel jittery about a data stream. But no matter how much I admire these ideas and their generators, and no matter how much I admire the professional stamina and gitundoulous amounts of information and knowledge these folks juggle, the focus on data and streams and all of the recent nattering around "how DO we keep up?" leaves me feeling a little jittery and a little pissy.

Part pissy, part jittery.

Maybe the jittery part is about me not being able to explain why I'm so pissy about it.

Certainly Emily's goal and journey in figuring out how to keep up with her online social activity is an important personal activity. People who live inside of this stuff and make a living there really ARE drowning in data and dying for information (oh wait! that was 1996 and data warehousing...). Drowning in websites and dying for gigs (no wait, that was 2002). Drowning in feeds and dying for .....what?

What?

What exactly is it that's being died for?

To know me? To see me? To read me? To understand me? To get me? To get as many mes as you can?

Or to FOLLOW. To follow the traffic, the noise, the action?

The collision of RSSing and aggregating and twittering--it's people following. It's people following information. Not following not you or I, but following themselves.

Emily writes:

Recently had to revisit the plan to aggregate all my activity into one data stream. As the calendar rolled to 2007, I kept wishing I could look at all my social activity from 2006 in context: time, date, type of activity, location, memory, information interest, and so on. What was I bookmarking, blogging about, listening to, going to, and thinking about? I still had the urge to have an information and online activity mash-up that would allow me to discover my own patterns and to share my activity across the web in one chronological stream of data (to start with anyway).

On the 'cool solution!" front I'm all, 'how cool is that?' On the 'what does this mean to the web?' front, I'm all about being creeped out.

What I'm trying to say -- I think, at least, as I limp along -- is that I don't get how we're trending toward social here. What I see is more and more niche experts going more and more micro, inner and inner and inner, and calling it social.

How does this help us act as intermediaries for new voices? How does any of this help connect the man or woman who isn't "followable" in terms of scale with readers and friends who don't know they exist?

At our SoCon session last week, I made a call to bring back the blogroll. Because in all of the devices that have come along since the day when we only had blogrolls to show who we were reading -- RSS and aggregators and technorati and conference agendas and on and on -- nothing has done THAT job effectively.

There is no tool to raise us up. Only to follow those who have been raised.

And I think THAT job -- the job of connecting and circulating voices, especially new ones -- is the most important part of what we're doing here. Reading and writing one another whole.

I'm not here to FOLLOW you. I'm here to meet you. To like you, to love you, to read you, to hear you, to know you, to call you family or kick you in the ass and tell you to get lost.

Stowe is one of the smartest guys I know in this space. I'm sure that when he says there are tools in the works to make meaning out of things like traffic and flow, he's telling us straight. But I'm not getting how this technology is -- at its core -- social-making:

A pal of yours is having a party? He will create the event using some social application site, and the event will be cast into his traffic. Your flow-aware calendar app might snag the event from the traffic, and ask you if you'd like to confirm. You agree, and the agreement is thrown into your traffic, for your buddy and others to make sense of, downstream.

This world of traffic will change things like blogging: instead of commenting at someone's post -- a static, page-centric system -- I might simply create a commentary with a link to the original (which I may have discovered in my inbound traffic, not necessarily by browsing his/her blog), and I drop a comment into my traffic, where it flows out to all those who want to see my natterings. Yes, sure, I might archive that comment (as well as the inbound post), or maybe push the comment into a conventional blog post: but the basic perception of what is going on shifts away from pages and static URLs toward flow and the elements that make up my traffic.

While I got the initial buzz off twitter -- the unending chatter of followees about this dinner and that, about this meeting and that, about this profound thought and that -- twitter's after taste is what was so important to me. Twitter made me realize how unworthy we are as human beings of being followed.

Period.

We are not, each and every one of us, a walking techmeme or fashionmeme or dinnermeme or godmeme, streaming continuous brainfood for the masses. Thank you Jesus.

Those who could change you in some fundamental way if you followed them -- you won't see them sticking a stream out of their butt and asking you to jump on.

I don't know. Am I making sense?

I was feeling pretty alone thinking through all of the the last couple of days when I happened on Doc's post, We Are All Authors of Each Other.

And Doc brought me home.

Let Doc bring you home too:

I don't think of my what I do here as production of "information" that others "consume". Nor do I think of it as "one-to-many" or "many-to-many". I think of it as writing that will hopefully inform readers.

Informing is not the same as delivering information. Inform is derived from the verb to form. When you inform me, you form me. You enlarge that which makes me most human: what I know. I am, to some degree, authored by you.

What we call "authority" is the right we give others to author us, to enlarge us.

The human need to increase what we know, and to help each other do the same, is what the Net at its best is all about. Yeah, it's about other things. But it needs to be respected as an accessory to our humanity. And terms like "social media", forgive me, don't do that. (At least not for me.)

What he said.