I learned about Business Blogging from some of the best
My earliest conversations were with early adopter and author/speaker Rebecca Blood, it followed up with meeting Shel Israel who gave me a ‘proof’ (not yet published) book Naked Conversations long before it went public, I met Robert Scoble, he and Shel coached me and my CTO at Hitachi, we stayed in touch, and I know work with him at PodTech, I spoke on a panel with Debbie Weil, author of the Corporate Blogging Book. In summary, I’ve studied business blogging to build trust and community extensively in the last year.

It’s not about the tool, comments, or technology
Forget the tool for a minute, It’s not about comments, nor is it about defining what is a blog. It’s about the willingness to have a dialogue (by definition suggests two-way), dropping the PR schlack, avoid MarCom happy talk, to have an open, transparent conversation with your audience.

The overarching theme from all of these Business Blogging experts listed above is that it’s the act of transparent conversation to build trust with one’s community.

The Official Google Blog under fire
Several bloggers are challenging Google’s claim that their official blog is a great use of a popular business blog, thought leaders like Zoli and Michael Arrington are making some valuable points.

While the Official Google blog makes visible trackbacks, a great majority of the links out are more focused on the latest google features and releases. While that’s not a sinful strategy at all, it bangs in my point that the Google blog could benefit from more community focus.

Without having comments open, the Google blog to me is no more than a press release using half of blog technology, and only exposing part of the heart of the real humans behind it.

It’s about open dialogue to build trust with your community
We’re more likely to turn and trust Matt Cutts, a Google blogger that’s embraced the community by listening, linking out, enabling comments and putting on a human face during this past 2006.

BMW launches a tease flash campaign, a video that morphs and show some very vague products.  Details to be released mid January.  Stylish and engaging, this is attracting the attention.

There is a surge of speculation from the Digg community ranging from pure advertising hype, partnership with Apple’s iPhone, to an aftermarket GPS MP3 player.  Bimmerforums has a thread going, keep an eye out there, forums are a great place to find a passion community.  Either way the BMW advertisers and marketers are drooling over the hype

This is interesting, Andy is known as a Search Engine Marketing Guru, but is showing some incredible knowledge in the area of Social Media Marketing, in context of relationship rules.  In fact, I would rename his article from The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing to the Five Rules of Social Media Marketing.

“Get out there. Spend time with these sites. Sign up, Use them, meet your customers, talk to your customers, and LOVE THEM.”

His guidelines outline the many types of interactions that a business entity has with the market, both from self-declaration, the rules of engagement and even in-person relations. Ok Andy, we’re getting out there!

Liveleak is a citizen generated video site that allows users to redefine how news is created. Dependence on middle news media is no longer required, one can get video direct from the first hand witness.

There’s some pretty amazing, gruesome, and shocking videos here. The most popular one is witnessing the entire execution of Saddam from a camera phone. (search at your own risk)

This changes how the media landscape is being created as citizens can publish unfiltered, uncensored, content without review from a censorship. There are filters so you can select what’s appropriate to your taste level.

This is yet another example of citizen media.

Update: The Video has made it’s way to YouTube, Google Video, and Revver.  The publish dates on all four sites are Dec 30th, they are talking about removing the video, I suspect that LiveLeak will not.

Above: SAP’s Palo Alto Labs on 3410 Hillview, Palo Alto (see Google Maps Satellite zoom in)

I was fortunate to enjoy lunch with fellow Strategist (Business Strategy mind you not Web Strategy) yesterday. We discussed the long term impacts that web and social media has on business. Here’s a picture I took a while ago at the Social Media Club’s Oct 23rd event From Social Media to Corporate Media. Here’s some other pics of their incredible work cubicle environment, and some interesting art in their lobby. (I asked before taking these pics FYI)

“Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, SAP Labs U.S. is the first SAP Lab established outside of Germany. The mission of SAP Labs U.S. is to leverage the many valuable assets within Silicon Valley and the expansive U.S. market in order to drive innovation, strategic partnering, and field support/customer success. Over the past ten years, SAP Labs U.S. has grown dramatically from 25 to more than 1,500 people.” (More on SAP site)

SAP has been around for four decades, but I was most impressed with SAP’s hospitality in inviting the top minds in the area to discuss Social Media. Most know that SAP has deployed these tools, check out the SAP Network Blogs, and their collecting knowledge on this Wiki.

(Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives.)

There’s this crazy ‘meme’ that’s going around that you are supposed to figure out what kind of Super Hero you are by asking some questions. In under 30 seconds this website does a complete super human psychological profile to determine what type of super hero you would be.

This was originally started by Steve Rubel, and it’s going nutty on Techmeme. Anyways I filled it out and here’s what I got below. Honestly, I feel a little bit cheated as Andy Beal is Superman, Calacanis is Green Lantern, Dave Winer is Iron Man, Colleague Tris is Spider Man, Eric Rice is also a Lantern, and Arrington too.

Your results:

You are Cheetah Pimp

Cheetah Pimp 20% Batman 20% Spider-Man 0% Wonder Woman 0% Supergirl 0% Hulk 0% The Flash 0% Green Lantern 0% Catwoman 0% Superman 0% Iron Man 0%

Hairy with bad taste in Clothes Your yellow big collar deflects spam bots Eyebrows that shield the sun from your laptop screen

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Ok, I’m just being silly, this is a parody, (as if there memes aren’t bad enough). More info on Cheetah who is apparently a real comic villain (and a pimp) who fought Captain America.

Jeremiah Trivia: I’ve the entire Jim Lee collection while he was at Marvel Comics, Punisher WJ, Xmen, and even Alpha Flight!

“China’s population of Internet users has risen by 30 percent over the past year to 132 million, a state news agency said Friday.” reports Associated Press.

” The figure was up from 123 million at the end of June, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing the government’s China Internet Network Information Center.

It said the number of Chinese customers with broadband access has grown to 52 million.

The rapid rise in Internet use has propelled growth in China’s online commerce, advertising and games industries, the Internet agency said.

China’s communist government encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to block access to material deemed subversive or pornographic. Dozens of people have been jailed on subversion or security charges for posting political essays online. “

You do know that there are more internet users in China than all of North America combined already. Some other global stats are here.

Claim: Social Media is Dead
Steve Rubel of Edelman (who’s firm has been the posterboy of how to botch up Social Media this year) proclaims that Social Media is no more. (many a juicy comment) He suggests that Social Media is moot, as nearly all online vehicles have two way mechanisms.

Community Response to Claim:

Brian Oberkirch suggests that Steve has jumped the shark on this one:

“…I use Rubel as an example all the time of someone who blogged his way into big things. Whatever you think about his views on PR & social media, he blogged and blogged and blogged and assumed a central position in the discussion. I think with his new role, maybe he’s just too busy to be as engaged, but the blog has suffered. This post is a marker of just how off the path it is.

Maybe it’s also a data point about why Edelman’s social media programs (Walmarting, the Vista outreach hullaballo, the shiny object Second Life and social media release stuff) feel so off the mark as well…”

Brian Solis shines some light on global usage and mainstream adoption.

“…Is it me, or am I the only one here that sees the blaring differences between blurred and dead? Yes, he’s correct that in 2006 most, not all, media went social. Many of the tools he described are globally deployed and utilized. But the last time I checked, only a small portion of the global population is was actually socializing using “social media tools” and, most importantly, these tools a merely creating the framework for a broader, more sophisticated social media platform for the future…”

“…So if anything, 2007 becomes the year where social media is a respected, official, and recognized media channel, but it is by no means mainstream, traditional, broadcast, etc. We still have a lot of work to do to get the rest of the world to join the conversation and what it will become is the real story here… “

David Armano provides a handful of reasons why traditional media has not fully accepted social media, so why should we?

“… I still hear journalists speaking skeptically of Social Media even though they now openly reference it in their stories. Plus, I’ve worked in Newsrooms in both print and broadcast years ago, many of the same people still remain in power at the top…”

“…Most of the people I work with are vaguely familiar with my blog (some not at all) and usually only perk up when they hear about the BusinessWeek/Boston Globe mentions…”

“…Many mainstream media outlets have their own versions of blogs, podcats etc. but this isn’t Social Media—it’s the MSM using technologies…”

“…Whether we like it or not, us content creators are still fighting for credibility. It’s getting better—but we don’t have the clout of a New York Times/WSJ piece etc. There’s a distinction there. Sorry…”

I can’t but help wonder if this is a diversionary Smokescreen in light of the Microsoft Laptop fiasco.

Jeremy Pepper elludes this is a classic PR smoke screen, if you’ve not heard Edelman is yet under fire for this latest Ferrari Laptop Microsoft fiasco where they’re been accused of bribing bloggers.  Has Steve responded yet to this mix up?

“So, you create a Maileresque statement that such and such is dead (think, oh, the press release is dead or maybe social media is dead).”

What do I think?
My focus is on Corporate deployment of Web Strategies. I promise you, Senior Management at many Fortune 1000 companies still lack awareness, strong belief in Social Media or resources a large percent of budget.

Social Media is more than adding trackbacks and comments to a press release, it’s about accepting that bottom up knowledge from the masses can be greater than top down control.

I myself am wanting Social Media to be accepted in many forms across the enterprise and up and down the ladder, but to this date, Social Media is not dead.

I was treated to lunch by former Colleague at Hitachi Data Systems Rasha today. She was involved in the strategy group at HDS, and is now involved in the strategy department at SAP a few blocks away from PodTech.

We had some interesting conversations on how Social Media is impacting many different businesses from Enterprise Storage to even the ERP/CRM space. She’s been aware for some time that Social Media impacting nearly every line of business, politics, and information. I’m sure we’ll be talking again.

She showed me some killer pics of her most recent trip to her birthplace in Egypt, hopefully she’ll post the pics online and leave a link in the comments here. Rasha was known for being involved in the New Orleans relief process, pretty cool gal. See you around Palo Alto!

A new friend caught me drooling over his next gen smart phone comes embedded with Wi-Fi, letting it connect to other Mobile hotspots reports cnet. I guess this is a win for Starbucks. I hear after rebates the price for this T-Mobile Dash is a equivalent to buying 50 Grande Soy Mocha Frappa Macchiatos (a total value of $200).

Below: Don’t get too excited about this picture, it’s just an example of the size difference between a Treo 650 (bottom) and the T-Mobile Dash (top).

Have you seen my mobile phone pics from Japan? Some have some fascinating stylish designs, while others have real time video conferencing.

Frank Gruber, who I had the pleasure of hanging with at the Supernova conference outlines UK’s VideoJug, a video website that shows us

• How to suck an egg into a bottle
  
• How to Eat Sushi
• How to Kiss Someone Passionately
• How to Juggle 3 balls
• How to avoid buying a stolen car

Have you seen instructables?  Similar how to concept that is user generated and network voted.

Here’s some outstanding things I’ve read recently, passing them on to you, comments welcome:

-Parents find children open up using text messages than real life, enter the Thumb Generation

-Brian Solis is the definitive guide to the whole Microsoft Laptop Edelman Ferrari AMD fiasco 

-10 Minute Podcast: Scoble calls into Paul at PodTech HQ reporting live from the Edwards Campaign

-Joel analyzes Gillmore: Our favorite Software Guru tries to explain Gillmor’s re-entrance to the blogosphere

-Gartner thinks Blogging will peak next year in 2007

-Terry Chay’s tips on Buying a Digital Camera

-Tris Hussey (and our CEO) gives their opinion on Net Neutrality

-Podcast: I’m doing my best to try to understand the Social Media Press Release, Brian interviews some thought leaders

-Video: Julio comments on Ze Frank’s on How to hire a Web Developer

-Image: The Future of Games, or at least what they thought in the 70s perhaps?

-Greg Narain comments on Content Packaging Sweet Spots

-Tara Hunt gets in front of Parades, serves a higher purpose

Excellent work Thomas.

I don’t know how Thomas found the time to track and analyze all of these, as he lists out all the 2006 predictions, who predicted what.  Amazing how far we’ve come in one year.

Jason Calacanis got the most right.  For someone that self admits being wrong 20% of the time, he’s appears to be more right than those that think they’re 100% right.

Tris Hussey of the Podtech team has provided us with a few extra tips to know about before going to CES. If you’ve never been (like me) you should really pay attention to his list. Jeremy has the original 10.

Loren created his own high quality video inviting folks the PodTech Bloghaus. For those watching in a helicopter he included spinning text that will help synchronize the experience. Who was that guy after Irina? If you watch carefully you can see me for a second (taken at the IE7 Beta Release party)…but no more than that.

Loren probably didn’t include my name in the spinning text because it’s pretty hard to spell. For those that don’t know me and want to pronounce it, I’m NOT Irish, so it’s the other way.

In order: Porsche, Mercedes, Sebring, Volvo, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes, BMW.

While I only worked a few weeks at the Sand Hill office at Podtech before we moved over here to Page Mill, I noticed a definite change in the cars. Here’s a picture of some cars in one of the parking lots near our work, while it’s not an indicator of all cars in a lot, you can certainly notice there’s quite a few newer luxury vehicles in the area.

Robert and I were at this event, and we were looking at the suits at a Web 2.0 event. He told this story of Geeks vs Suits, and how he wasn’t allowed in a Sand Hill Country Club because he was wearing jeans. A lot of people were pissed off with this post he wrote about it.

There’s a synergy between startups and the VC community, sometimes loathed, sometimes loved. I blocked out the licence plates to be considerate of the owners…not sure why we do that on the internet, but we do.

(Silicon Valley Sightings is a PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives.)

Yes Alfred, Maryam’s right, this is going to make a difference.

There’s a few reasons why the presidential candidates must use the web to engage. My real focus is on how corporations, executives, and employees use the web to reach out to customers, it’s not that much different from politicians reaching the public.

I do notice a few differences, but the reasons why to join the conversations are all the same:

1) The Internet is top used medium in North American Workplace: Most adults have internet access at work, and can communicate there

2) TV is still the top medium at home in North America (for adults), but the internet is closing in fast.

3) Generation X and Y (The ‘unreachable’ generation) is online and not reachable from email or TV or newspaper. They use social sites, IM, blogs, and text messaging to communicate.

4) People are going to argue, debate, listen and make decisions using online tools. Many will make decisions based upon what their peers are saying.

5) From a Global Point of View: The conversation is global, the voice from other countries will be heard, they will influence American voters. I don’t think any presidential candidate has given this a great deal of thought. I’ve seen quite a bit of planet earth, in the last year I’ve been to 8-10 countries other than the United States. I want the most powerful man in the world to represent not only our nation but the rest of the world.

6) Using the Internet, everyone has a voice and it can easily be found and heard

7) From the Politicians point of view: Using the web can be a cost effective way to get into the conversation.

From the Politicians point of view: Dealing directly with the masses and bypassing the press using Social Media may be a risk reduced way to make sure your message is un-altered and represented correctly.

9) Authenticity is going to be so so important. Those that blow this may have their credibility wiped away. Credibility may be even more important that the actual message.

10) The most important reason: I plan to make my decisions for the next presidential elect using the web as a tool to research and understand. I will then defend my stance to my friends and family and others.

It’s interesting and refreshing for me to turn my Corporate Web Strategy lens onto the Political Web Strategy scene, I’ll probably do this from time to time, as I seek analyze the Presidential Web Strategy campaign.

Oh, and who will be the Republican Candidate? Anyone know? I want to start seeing what they’ve done online.

Related Update, One Hour Later:
Heh, this is pretty funny, the web team at the Edwards camp accidentally turned on the new homepage announcing his run for president a day early. This concludes it was an accident for any who think the timing was in bad taste.

Maryam, myself and the rest of the PodTech crew are super excited for Robert who’s now on a plane to join John Edwards on his entourage starting in New Orleans. Valleywag and even SFgate have the story.

I knew about this trip a few days ago, and Robert and I had an interesting conversation that technology folks tend to be affluent, educated, and often Republican? This could be an important segment of the vote for Edwards.

So far, I’m impressed with the Social Media Deployment that the Edwards family has done. Maryam stopped by earlier and told her that could tell in her interview discussions with Elizabeth Edwards actually took the time to read her blog and got to know her.

John Edwards has this website, a group blog, his personal blog (does he write it himself?), podcasts, videos, and even a myspace page. Holy Geez, that’s more social media than I have!

Good luck Robert, we expect you to ask the hard questions…and next time listen to Maryam and don’t forget your phone!

This is my first post on politics, it may be interesting to compare and contrast how Corporations vs Political groups use Social Media to join conversations.

Update: Robert has just disclosed all the details

Steve Mermelstein’s thoughts that Google Reader could become a Digg clone. If this indeed is the intent of the Google Reader team, it won’t work because:

1) Certain humans have a habit of messing up bottom-up voting systems.
2) Google Reader is limited to feeds that you’ve subscribed to.

If you’re not familiar with Google Reader, you can ‘tag’ articles that you read to ’share’ and it will publish to a link blog. Colleague Robert Scoble publishes his on his linkblog which is an example of a non-verbal gesture.

Bottom-up systems have benefits as well as challenges
There are several bottom-up or users created news systems that are being deployed, they each have advantages and disadvantages

Although not perfect, the Digg Network deploys a form of a Democracy in the Digg authors community will help purify the results, nasty users are kicked out. Digg has even been under attack for having just a few representative votes controlling the majority of results, and Calacanis is trying to figure out which users are being paid to post and vote.The Digg network has it’s benefits as the stories can not only be voted up (digg), but also voted down (undugg).

TechMeme, which aggregates blog conversations from the a few seed bloggers works because it’s a true form of a representative democracy. Those on the techmeme page are considered of having some form of intelligence and can usually add to the conversations (although not all the time)

I’ve been criticized because I say the problem with wikis is people. Certain humans tend to intentionally cause trouble when they can hide behind anonymity, and Marketers tend to muck up most systems.

Limited Scope
Currently, Google Reader only shows the feeds that one is subscribed to, which for most is only a small number of ideas that one can consume and share in a day. Since one can only read so many feeds, in it’s current system, the scope of content that can be voted or shared from a reader is limited to the amount of feeds contained.

Potential Solutions
A Google Reader voting system will only work if we can first validate the identify, and trust of those that are sharing items. Secondly, the Google Reader is only limited to those items to be shared that are subscribed in one’s feedreader.

Perhaps if we were able to create an identity of some sort, and validate one’s network worth and have ability to share items outside of one’s Google reader this could work.

Observant colleague Joanna Pomykala informed me that Feedburner is preparing to roll out some tools that will help with Social Media Measurement based upon it’s acquisition of Blogbeat earlier this summer. Here are some of the features they plan to deliver:

• Page Views and estimated unique visitors
• Detailed ‘by visitor’ statistics
• Incoming links including search query referrals and site link referrals
• Outbound links and counts
• City Cloud map of visitors (but alas, no Cloud City)

To me, this is the baseline measurement of activity but it doesn’t tell the full story of engagement, qualitative feedback and any other actions that occur off one’s blog. I’m also checking out mybloglog, interesting.

I’m quite the fan of feedburner, it makes it easier to subscribe to my blog, track stats, and subscribers. If you’re creating podcasts, it makes sense to track your feed in feedburner in addition to just relying on podcast indexes to monitor.

I’ve quite a few other posts on Social Media Measurement, if you’re interested in this field.

I really like this piece from Jupiter’s Michael Gartenberg who gives some practical Lessons for Analyst Relations. For many corporate marketers, having excellent reviews and research done by Analyst firms helps the decision making process, especially with complex products and solutions that span multiple groups.

In the last few years, a new role has emerged in the decision making process, bloggers (often normal customers or prospects that have an opinion about your product) can influence the decision and buying process.

At Hitachi Data Systems as the Online Community Manager, I had an informal role to be responsible for Blogger Relations, I’ve reached out, built relationships, and even met them in real life. Microsoft IE team treats me like a blogger/analyst and has invited me to cover their beta and final release of their product. Now, at PodTech, I consult our Fortune 1000 clients on how to deploy Social Media. Here’s a crash course on Blogger Relations.

Here’s a few tips to help you as you reach out to bloggers in your industry.

1) Blogger Relations is often the role of many people in the company, a previous term we all know could be called customer relations. Same customer love, just some new tools a few rules.

2) Bloggers may have first hand experience with your product, and may be more trusted than Analysts, Press, and your Marketers. Bloggers that talk about your products may be a customer or someone that has experience using your product. Sometime this could be different from Analysts who are not using your product. In the level of trust, it’s possible that prospects may trust someone who has first had experience very high. An Analyst may have authority in a particular subject. In many industries, this role is merging as bloggers become so knowable they become authorities. This is the case of Blogger/Podcast Martin McKeay in the security industry.

3) Know your bloggers and know them well. I’m echoing Michael here, as you should really spend time reading a blogger in your industry before making contact, and especially before pitching to one. How do you pitch to a blogger? You don’t. It’s a very different approach. I get pitched several times a week, it’s easy to spot who reads me and who doesn’t, guess who gets the welcome.

4) Provide multiple points of contact. As a Community Advocate/Manager (here’s some resources on becoming a Community Manager), your job is to listen to the market and line up the conversations with the right people in your company. You’re more of a traffic cop rather than a person can answer all the questions. Besides, it’s likely that you’re not an expert at every technical aspect of your product, find those that know and teach them to interact with bloggers in your industry using the same tools, or some of these responses that Nathan recommends.

If you’ve anything to add, or any questions, please leave a comment or contact me, I’m here to help.