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
 |
“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!
Posted on December 29th, 2006 in:
Mobile
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.
