Technology Blog

My long-time virtual friend Miki Saxon has finally started blogging at MAPping Company Success. She labels herself quite a Luddite, and tends to be very resistant to new technology. Of course, I’ve always found that incredibly ironic, since she and I have only known each other virtually, and some of my first interaction with her was through her weekly hosted online chat sessions. She was also one of the first people to take my Virtual Handshake course a couple of years ago.

I’ve been encouraging her to write a blog for a long time, since she’s such a great writer, and I wasn’t disappointed. She writes on company culture, employee motivation, communications, hiring and retention. Here’s a selections of some of my favorite recent posts:

• Smart or stupid? Your choice! on the downside of multitasking
• Don’t hide bad news! on handling communicating bad news to your employees
• What people want… on what people really want from “corporate culture”
• 8 “drop dead” points to hiring - Miki’s “If you learn nothing else…” about hiring
• Grass roots innovation on how a wiki can encourage bottom-up innovation

Miki’s blog is especially targeted at executives, senior managers and board members, but there’s a little something there for everyone. It’s also a great example of how a blog can be used by consultants to showcase your expertise and increase your reach.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: New Management & Career Blog from Miki Saxon

Chris Pirillo reports that Robert Scoble, the world’s most famous corporate blogger, is leaving Microsoft and heading to PodTech.net. I haven’t seen a confirmation from Scoble himself yet, so for the moment we’ll put it in the realm of a rumor with a high likelihood of veracity.

Some of you will be interested in the news itself, but I was wondering more generally about what happens when a prominent corporate blogger leaves the company. I’m sure Scoble will still maintain somewhat of a following, as he is so well-known in the blogosphere. But I’m thinking he’s going to lose a big part of his audience. Sure, readers have developed some attachment to him personally, but let’s face it — most of the people reading his blog aren’t just reading it because he’s a great writer, but because they’re interested in knowing what’s going on at Microsoft and he offers more of an inside scoop than anyone else. But he’ll build a new audience. Podcasting is hot now (although I have to admit that I’m ambivalent about it myself). I’d be curious to see his traffic stats over the next few months (hint-hint, Robert!).

Now what about Microsoft? Who will become the new principal voice of Microsoft in the blogosphere? There are certainly plenty of popular Microsoft bloggers - Eileen Brown, KC Lemson, Raymond Chen, Michael Kaplan, Heather Leigh, Larry Osterman, et al. (my apologies to the other several thousand I didn’t list here). And no, while he may be more “famous”, Ray Ozzie’s once-a-month posting habits won’t cut it.

But Scoble definitely leaves a void there. Does Microsoft need to deliberately attempt to fill it? I think if they’re smart, they won’t. It will happen like most things do in the blogosphere - organically.

What do you think? Will you continue to follow Scoble’s blog or no? Who would you like to see as the next prominent “voice of Microsoft” in the blogosphere?

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Scoble Leaving Microsoft - News at 11

I love to read blogs, but increasingly, I find it harder and harder to keep up with all the blogs I’d like to read because there is just so much good stuff out of there. And, of course, it’s all mixed up with a lot more stuff ranging from merely mediocre to just plain pointless.

Recently, I’ve particularly become a fan of the “blog carnival” format, a weekly traveling roadshow of the best of the blogosphere on a particular topic. I got overwhelmed trying to keep up with the dozens and dozens of good blogs out there, and just setting up search feeds on keywords wasn’t giving me a good variety.

Blog carnivals, though, give you a very concise view of some of the best of the blogosphere on various topics. Here are some that you may find particularly relevant:

• Carnival of the Capitalists - 50+ weekly posts about economics, entrepreneurship, personal finance - basically anything having to do with money. I hosted this week’s edition.
• Carnival of Marketing - Seven editor-selected posts on all things marketing.
• Carnival of Entrepreneurship - Inspired by both of the above, I started this back in February and it’s going great guns. If you have a blog, I’m always looking for submissions and hosts.
• Carnival of Business - Newly launched this week.

To learn more about blog carnivals, including what they are, submitting articles, and a list of all known blog carnivals (here’s another), visit BlogCarnival.com. This site is a one-stop resource where you can subscribe to RSS feeds for individual carnivals, submit posts to multiple carnivals, and have some great tools for managing a carnival if you already run one or want to start one.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Blog Carnivals - Keeping Up with the Best of the Blogosphere

One of the questions David and I are frequently asked, and that comes up as a recurring topic of debate, is, “Which tool is best for me to build my network?” In our latest Fast Company column, Of Hammers, Wrenches, and Screwdrivers, we take a side-by-side look at online networking communities, blogging and LinkedIn, and compare and contrast them based upon the Seven Keys framework we introduced in The Virtual Handshake.

While the boundaries between the application of these tools is somewhat fuzzy and they tend to cross over each other, this is a handy, concise overview of the predominant models and how they relate to each other and to your relationship-building activities.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Choosing the Right Tool for Virtual Relationships

It seems that an evil spammer (who shall remain nameless pending further investigation) has developed a personal vendetta against me and is maliciously trying to smear my reputation by posting bogus blog comment spam in my name (and my wife’s - that bastard!), linking to this site, my About.com site (entrepreneurs.about.com), and another domain I use just for e-mail.

This is a blog variation on a tactic employed by email spammers called a Joe job, “an incident of spamming designed to tarnish the reputation of an innocent third party.” (Wikipedia) While this tactic has been around for at least ten years, its application in blog comment spamming is new and presents a whole new set of issues in identifying the perpetrator and fighting it.

If you don’t want to read the whole story…
Click here if you have received one of these spam messages
Click here if you’d like to help me keep my name clear and stop this perpetrator

The posts are that genre of innocuous spam that doesn’t actually say enough to trip off the spam filters. Here are a couple of examples:

Posted on kcyap.com/wordpress-16-theme-design-competition:

Comment by Scott Allen

Hi. I’ve got some really good stuff for download at my site at http://snipurl.com/tvhamazon.
Not to be boasting or anything, but I am the coauthor of this little gem. Come on by and have a look.
BTW, your blog is just okay.

Posted on www.simonwaldman.net/2005/12/30/these-are-a-few:

Scott 512-215-9720 Says:

Hi. I’ve got some really good stuff for download at my site at
http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/ Come on by and have a look.
BTW, your blog is great.

To anyone even remotely familiar with my work, it’s obvious that this is totally antithetical to everything I teach, everything I believe in, and couldn’t possibly be from me. But I’m not a household name to the vast majority of bloggers out there, so to someone who’s never heard of me, this is incredibly damaging to my reputation, to the book, and to my co-author David Teten by implication. In fact, I first learned this was occurring from a blogger who sent me a message saying:

Hi. I’ve got some really good spam on my blog from you - I really appreciated it. Thanks for visiting, I’m sorry your last name is “512-215-9720″
…
Does your book really sell that badly that you must spam blogs for more attention?

Never having visited their blog, I was shocked to see the least. I can’t say that I blame them. Comment spam pisses me off too.

So how did this all start? I wrote to a comment spammer asking them to stop and telling them I was going to expose their site publicly as engaging in spam marketing if they continued.

So how do I know they’re the ones behind this?

1. The fake posts started within minutes after sending that message.
2. The site that was doing the spamming has comments right next to the fake comments in my name on all the same sites. Talk about a smoking gun!
3. Other evidence I can’t disclose at this time.

What I’m Doing About This

I’m not an expert on spamming, or internet security, etc. But fortunately, a lot of really smart people in my network are. I’m not a lawyer, but a lot of smart people in my network are. I’m a bit of a PR expert, but I haven’t really ever had to deal with a smear campaign like this. Fortunately, some really smart people in my network have.

I turned to that network of really smart people that I’ve built up over the past few years and asked for advice. While there were certainly some differences of opinion, there were a few things that stood out as consistent advice, all of which I’m following.

1. I’ve reported this to the FBI as a case of identity theft and fraud.
2. I’ve reported it to About.com’s legal department, since they are now implicated by the impersonator linking to my site at About.
3. I’m going on a counter-PR campaign to make sure my name stays clear and that this person is caught and prosecuted. This is what the vast majority of the people who gave me advice said to do. The legal process will be long and arduous. Counter-publicity is the only way that I can immediately combat the damage this person is doing to me right now.

I would never have wished for this. It’s going to be a pain in the rear to monitor this, collect the evidence, and take appropriate action. It creates a lot of work for me, and will damage my reputation with those people who never hear about this and just assume that I’m a spammer.

But ironically, in the process of trying to create negative publicity, this whole fiasco will probably end up generating far more positive publicity for me. As a result of my posting on one list, I ended up doing a full-hour interview on The David Lawrence Show last night. You can listen to the whole thing for just a quarter, or to the 10-minute podcast for free. Thanks, David!

How You Can Help

If you have received one of these bogus comments in my or my wife’s name (Jayne), please do the following:

1. Leave it up until I can capture a screen shot as evidence.
2. Make a note of the raw IP address.
3. If you can, please make a note of any other comment spam from the same IP address. This is particularly important.
4. Contact me with the information.
5. Once I’ve confirmed back to you that I’ve got the screenshot, delete the comment.

If you would like to support me in helping keep my name clear and catch this perpetrator:

1. Please post about it in your blog and link back to this post.
2. If you see fake comments in my name like the ones above, please contact me with the URL so I can gather evidence and contact the blog owner.

Thanks for your understanding and support. I don’t know what I’d do without the support of the network I’ve built in the past few years — yet again another lesson in the importance of building a diverse and powerful network.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: I Have Been Joe Jobbed - Need Your Help

I love blog carnivals - they’re probably the very best way to keep up with the best of the blogs with a minimum of effort. Amazingly, there is not yet a blog carnival about entrepreneurship - marketing, capitalism, and many related topics, but not entrepreneurship. Inspired by helping launch the Carnival of Marketing, I’ve decided to create the Carnival of Entrepreneurship, a traveling weekly roadshow of the best blog posts about starting and running your own business.

The first edition went up today on my About.com site, and the hosting calendar is filling up fast. Submitting and hosting are both great opportunities to increase exposure for your blog. If you write about entrepreneurship and small business, whether as an expert or just sharing your personal experience, see the submission and hosting guidelines for information on participating in future editions.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: New Blog Carnival - Carnival of Entrepreneurship

One of the keys to a successful blog is to find your niche. Original content is what makes a blog unique and worthwhile. It is what makes a blog a ‘must read’. It is what makes someone subscribe to your RSS feed.

Bloggers who get to ‘break stories’ or have the ‘first scoop’ on the latest news have incredibly large audiences. The same holds true for bloggers with name recognition who provide original opinion or analysis pieces. Both types of bloggers are the movers-and-shakers of the blogosphere, often shaping what others blog about (as I mentioned on Friday).

Fortunately, businesses, organizations, and a good number of individuals can avoid this blogosphere struggle because many of them already have found their niche - they already have captivated audiences in the real world.

For example, a health and wellness business with a relatively established customer base could use a blog to speak about the benefits of new products or tips for healthy living.  A pastor of a church could connect with his congregation throughout the week and not solely on Sunday mornings. Authors could also make the ideas behind their books much more ‘alive’.

This struggle really boils down to how you add value to your readers. There is no better way to find that out than to ask them. Their feedback should help you fine tune your content strategy and ensure that your blog maintains relevance in an ever growing blogosphere.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: The Struggle to Find your Niche

Following an exposé in BusinessWeek, mystery blogger Mini-Microsoft, who is openly critical (far more than Scoble and other Microsoft bloggers) of what’s going on inside Microsoft, leapt into the spotlight, adding fuel to corporate concerns about blogging.

I certainly understand why any public company would be concerned about an anonymous employee writing a post that starts, Hey Shareholders!. On the other hand, as a shareholder, I’d want to hear this. Where’s the line? I don’t know, but I suspect this blog may be a major part of determining where it’s drawn.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Blogging Isn’t Always Blissful at Microsoft

Jonathan Carson of BuzzMetrics and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association reports on new findings from Nielson regarding blog readership, confirming something we conjectured in The Virtual Handshake.

According to the Nielsen study, only 6% of the general population report that they read blogs occasionally or every day, and 60% say they’ve never even heard of a blog. The shocker, though (not to me), is that when they looked at the sites survey respondents were visiting, 13% of the people who visit blogs regularly reported that they “had never heard of blogs”. Fully 50% of blog visitors reported that they knew what a blog is, or have heard of them, but don’t read them. That means that almost 2/3 of blog readers have no idea that they’re reading this thing called a blog.

That, my friends, is why the market for blogs and the ecosystem around them is still wide open.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: “Blog” Is Still Jargon

Forbes’ Attack of the Blogs article is definitely the hot topic in the blogosphere this week. A Google search on “Attack of the Blogs” will provide you with ample reading material, mostly well-deserved vitriolic rants against the article.

I do, though, think that Dave Taylor’s take on it is worth reading - a contrarian view from most of the rest of the bloggers who have commented on this. I also recommend the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Free Speech vs. Bad Advice and Attack of the Printing Press to help put it in a broader context.

My take on it is best summed up by Pat, one of the commenters on Dvorak Uncensored:

The Forbes article does take a slanted view and commits the same wrong that it accuses bloggers of. The facts might be accurate in themselves, but between the lines there was a lot of missing information. That missing information does slant the article into an anti-blog statement. The opinions garnered from this article will then be re-told as heinous facts, citing only the negative.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Forbes Blasts Blogs

The general consensus from the conference seems to be that character blogs (fake blogs created by marketing departments that are supposedly written by the company’s mascot or other character) are, at least usually, lame. They are missing a key attribute of blogs: authenticity.

Some not-so-shining examples cited by today’s keynoters Steve Rubel and Shel Israel include:

• Captain Morgan - Oh, come on. A blog from a 19th-century pirate? The biggest problem here, though, is not the basic concept, but the fact that the character just isn’t strong enough. With no hard liquor ads on TV and radio, they just haven’t been able to breathe enough life into the Captain to make him believable. Frankly, I think the whole ad campaign sucks.
• Moosetopia, a blog about a moose traveling around the world, which supposedly relates somehow to Denali Flavors, a wholesaler of gourmet ice cream flavors. You know, their corporate blog is really good - exactly what a small business blog should be. But I just don’t get the moose thing either. Apparently some people do.
• Delicious Destinations - Fictitious “T. Alexander” and occasional real-life guests share ideas about food, gift giving, entertaining and culture. Does it suck? No, certainly not nearly as badly as the above two do. But the fictitious character just doesn’t add anything.
• The Lincoln Fry Blog - McDonald’s created an ill-fated ad campaign about two people discovering a french fry that looks like Abraham Lincoln. Actually, I found this one pretty amusing as satire. But effective marketing for McDonald’s? I don’t think so. If anything, it’s just a little too real, right up to the trackback spam from porn sites.

So are character blogs just completely lame? Steve Rubel thinks so, but Shel Israel is on the fence. He likes, for example, the Darth Vader blog, although it is (best guess) written by a fan, not a corporate marketing department.

My take on it, though, is that it’s not that there’s an inherent problem with character blogs, so much as that the examples above just aren’t based on a strong enough character to begin with.

What characters would I like to see blog?

• Jack - maybe even a group blog from the antenna balls - “Jack in the Blog”? (Choice quote from Shel: “How do people at that company ever think outside the box?”)
• Jiminy Glick could podcast behind-the-scenes stuff and outtakes.
• Ali G - Frankly, it would be far more entertaining than one from Sacha Baron Cohen.
• Dame Edna - Do you want to read a blog from Barry Humphries?
• Harvey Birdman - Can you imagine his blawg?
• Mickey Mouse - for kids - I wouldn’t read it (I’m not too sure about this one, but it’s a possibility)

Those would be purely for entertainment value, and I recognize that they (obviously) wouldn’t be “authentic”, but I think they could be done in a way that wouldn’t suck if there were a strong enough character as a foundation.

Apparently I’m not alone:

• AdJab and Vodkafish like Nigel’s Blog from Nigel Townsent, the medical examiner on NBC’s Crossing Jordan
• Stephen Spencer likes American Girl’s Felicity Blog
• Dave Taylor sees some potential in Panasonic’s Def Perception blog, although faults its execution.

I’m of very like mind to Dave, who says in his article on fake blogs:

[T]he real reason that story blogs aren’t better and therefore more popular is because it’s just darn hard to produce material week after week as a fictitious character.

And in his critique of the Panasonic blog:

That’s the fundamental problem with the “Tosh Bilowski” weblog effort from Panasonic and its PR agency in my eyes, not that it’s “fake” or that they’ve pretty clearly created a fictional ‘video geek’ to write about their product line, but that it’s just boring and unengaging.

What’s your take?
- What about the examples above? Do they work for you or no?
- Are character blogs inherently lame, or is there any possibility of a good one?
- If so, what character(s) would you like to see blog?

Tags: BloggingEnterprise, CorporateBlogging, CharacterBlogs

P.S. - It’s almost 3:00am here and I have a client on Thursday, my About.com weekly deadline Thursday night, and a meeting Friday morning, so it will be late Friday before I get the three or four other post-conference posts done that I’m planning.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: The Blogging Enterprise - Character Blogs

I see and hear blogging success stories all the time from small businesses and solo practitioners, and there are well-known success stories from tech industry giants like Microsoft’s Channel 9 and Macromedia’s blogs. Todays’s panelists Todd Watson and Tom Parish also talked about IBM developerWorks blogs and Steve Rubel and Shel Israel told of several who have:

• GM FastLane from GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz
• BlogMaverick from Dallas Mavericks owner and serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban
• Association of National Advertisers, whose blog posts frequently get picked up directly by Advertising Age and other media
• Stonyfield Farm, who provides an inside look at the company, plus three topical blogs on the issues their customers are interested in
• Vespa is supporting Vespa-related blogs with early looks at Vespa products and services, free accessory merchandise and media exposure
• Boeing, with their sponsorship of inFlightHQ and their ground-breaking 777 Flight Test Journal (though Shel also blasted their Marketing VP Randy Baseler’s blog for being a smarmy whitewash job)
• Richard Edelman, head of the world’s largest PR firm (Shel: “He gives me access to conversations which I could otherwise never be a part of.”)
• Vichy, a French cosmetics firm that, after a major faux pas with a fake blog, redeemed itself with a blog led by one of France’s top women bloggers recounting the stories of several real women as they go through the process of peel microabrasion

Rubel says that companies need to connect directly with their customers in the online world by:
1. Find
2. Listen
3. Engage
4. Empower

Shel Israel says that the winning attributes for a blog are:
- Authenticity
- Passion
- Authority
- Human fallibility
- Frequency
- Integrity

John Moore said (one of my favorite sound bites from the conference), “With blogs, small can look big and big can get small.”

What’s your take?
- What other large corporations outside of the tech industry are using blogs effectively?
- What are effective strategies for corporate blogs?
- How can corporations “join the conversation”?

Tags: BloggingEnterprise, CorporateBlogging

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: The Blogging Enterprise - Who’s Winning with Blogs?

Steve Rubel kicked off the day with a moment of silence for “old media”. OK, that may be a bit over the top, but as Austin American-Statesman Managing Editor Fred Zipp and Washington Post Opinion and Blogs Editor Hal Straus readily admitted, traditional newspaper readership is down (Washington Post was down 3% last year). According to panel moderator Lorraine Branham, a recent study reported that 44% of college students get news daily from internet portals vs. just 19% from newspapers.

That may signal a major shift in media, but the general consensus is that although citizen journalism may be a major new force to be reckoned with, blogging and journalism are not one and the same. As Jon Lebkowsky put it, many journalists are bloggers, and some bloggers may be journalists, but they each have their own set of rules.

Fortunately, everyone seemed to agree that there’s a place for both, and a potential symbiotic relationship between them. There’s simply too much going on in politics, corporations and other organizations for mainstream media to play the role of watchdog for everyone. Bloggers, who may focus on a very specific niche, help in that coverage. In the case of the Slidell Hurricane Blog, blogger Brian Oberkirchs quickly developed a working relationship with CNN and other major media, sharing information as soon as it was available, often before it ran. Bloggers can also help keep a story alive, providing continuing coverage that a mainstream journalist may not be able to do due to time and space constraints, but then come back to for a follow-up.

Straus said that for many years, the Washington Post ignored blogs. They saw blogs that weren’t “relevant, accurate and balanced” and avoided the topic. But the 2004 presidential campaign, particularly Howard Dean’s use of blogs, Meetup and other tools was a major turning point. By December 2004 they had decided to implement blogs and launched within six months. They have since noticed measurable increases in traffic and search engine rankings. They are also now looking at ways to embrace community journalism by opening up their platform to high schools and other community organizations.

The Austin American-Statesman have been some of the early adopters of blogging among traditional newspapers, first experimenting with blogs two years ago as a way to expand the types of information they could display to the public. The most successful have been the entertainment beat writers and the UT football blog, Bevo Beat. In September 2005, they became one of the first major-market newspapers to launch reader blogs. The motivation? While I was kind of hoping for some lofty vision of embracing consumer journalism, Zipp’s answer was much more practical: recouping some of that readership and traffic that was being sucked away by all this new media. Hey — it’s a business.

This topic is particularly hot right now, particularly in light of the recent debate over the controversial Forbes article and the current debate over whether bloggers should have the same rights as journalists regarding protected sources.

So what’s your take?
- Is old media dead? Or just going through a metamorphosis?
- Are bloggers journalists? And does it matter?
- Should bloggers be afforded the same right to protect sources that journalists are?
- How can mainstream media and bloggers best work together symbiotically rather than adversarially?

Tags: BloggingEnterprise, CitizenJournalism

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: The Blogging Enterprise - The Death of Old Media?

In spite of the comparatively low reach compared to traditional media, blog advertising delivers great bang for the buck because of the higher click-through rates, according to panelists at the Online Media, Marketing and Advertising (OMMA) Conference last week, as reported by MediaPost.

Brian Clark of GMD Studios reported that in a campaign that his agency ran for Audi, just one-half of one percent of the media buy budget was spent on BlogAds, but they contributed 29 percent of the traffic to the campaign’s landing page. According to McKinney-Silver, the creative agency behind the campaign:

The media cost for the entire blog ad buy was less than the cost of one banner ad on a mainstream site such as Yahoo. The blog ad appeared on sites such as Metafilter, Lockergnome and Daily Kos.

The panelists also said, though, that many advertisers are hesitant about advertising on blogs and other social media because of the possibility of negative comments. They just don’t get it. Clark had this to say:

If you’re afraid of what users are going to say, there are two strategies: You get involved in the discussion, or you stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it doesn’t exist. People are talking about you whether you’re listening or not.

via AdRants via BlogAds via MediaPost

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Blog Ads Offer Bang for the Buck

Ever wondered how you could get to paid to blog, but you weren’t quite ready to set up your own blog from scratch?

Or maybe you have your own blog, but you’re having a hard time getting enough traffic to it to make any money at it?

Or maybe you have a blog that’s about one particular topic, and you’d occasionally like to write about other topics, but don’t think it’s a good fit for your existing blog?

If any of these describes you, then you’ll definitely want to check out Creative Reporter. The deal is simple — sign up, post to any of Creative Weblogging’s blogs and you get paid $10 per 1,000 page views (FYI, that’s a very good pay rate). They do have some basic guidelines - they’re looking for original posts, not just links and summaries (those won’t usually attract as much traffic anyway).

In case you’re not familiar with it, Creative Weblogging is a blog network similar to Weblogs Inc., Corante or AllBusiness.com’s Business Blogs. The big difference is that all of these only have one blogger per topic, with occasional guest bloggers by invitation only. With Creative Reporter, anybody can contribute to any of Creative Weblogging’s 40+ blogs, including topics ranging from aviation to VOIP.

I think this is a really smart move on Creative Weblogging’s part from a business standpoint. Not only will it increase the amount of content on their site, it should also increase their readership because of the network effect from new contributors, who will have a vested interested in helping promote the site to their friends and acquaintances. Since they apparently have enough advertisers paying per impression to cover this, it’s a no-lose proposition for them. And it couldn’t be easier for bloggers, since there’s nothing to set up. Just register and start posting.

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: Get Paid to Blog

I recently wrote about how the online conversation is real. The basics of that post is that blogging fosters interaction. No surprise, to be a successful blogger, reading, writing, and responding to others within the larger community is an absolute must.

There are a growing number of ways that users can keep track of online conversations. David Teten spoke to one of them in the previous post- PubSub. PubSub is a prospective (forward looking) matching service that provides new information to users as it becomes available. So, for example, if you want news or information on social software, you would create a PubSub subscription with keywords “social software”. You can view a subscription like social software on PubSub or simply by copying the feed they provide into your favorite news aggregator.

Other ways to monitor the conversation include keeping track of “tags” that interest you. Tagging is a growing trend in the social software world and is closely related to “social bookmarking”. I’ll first speak to social bookmarking because it is similar to a word most people are familiar with - bookmarks.

Social bookmarking builds upon collaborative efforts, in that an individual’s bookmarks (or “favorites”) are no longer just their own. Rather, they are shared with the larger community. Unlike storing a bookmark under a particular folder in your browser, social bookmarks are saved online and are not categorized by folders, but are instead “tagged” by keywords. Users (and not computers) select appropriate tags for articles or sites of interest, as they come across them through their surfing of the web.

This post, for example, might be tagged with the word “socialsoftware” on any number of social bookmark sites. The most popular social bookmarking tool to this point is del.icio.us. Take a look at the socialsoftware tag or at my social bookmarks. Each tag also has an RSS feed, so that you can keep track of them in your favorite news aggregator (I’ll provide some more info on how to actually do that in my next post).

Tags can help you stay informed and introduce to information you might not have found otherwise. For a more advanced use of tags, take a look at what I am doing with my first blogoposium.

update: a good reference on social bookmarking basics (via Jyri Engeström) by Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund, and Joanna Scott; and a very academic piece by Clay Shirky entitled Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (via David Teten’s suggestion)

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: Monitoring the Conversation

I recently wrote about how the online conversation is real. The basics of that post is that blogging fosters interaction. No surprise, to be a successful blogger, reading, writing, and responding to others within the larger community is an absolute must.

There are a growing number of ways that users can keep track of online conversations. David Teten spoke to one of them in the previous post- PubSub. PubSub is a prospective (forward looking) matching service that provides new information to users as it becomes available. So, for example, if you want news or information on social software, you would create a PubSub subscription with keywords “social software”. You can view a subscription like social software on PubSub or simply by copying the feed they provide into your favorite news aggregator.

Other ways to monitor the conversation include keeping track of “tags” that interest you. Tagging is a growing trend in the social software world and is closely related to “social bookmarking”. I’ll first speak to social bookmarking because it is similar to a word most people are familiar with - bookmarks.

Social bookmarking builds upon collaborative efforts, in that an individual’s bookmarks (or “favorites”) are no longer just their own. Rather, they are shared with the larger community. Unlike storing a bookmark under a particular folder in your browser, social bookmarks are saved online and are not categorized by folders, but are instead “tagged” by keywords. Users (and not computers) select appropriate tags for articles or sites of interest, as they come across them through their surfing of the web.

This post, for example, might be tagged with the word “socialsoftware” on any number of social bookmark sites. The most popular social bookmarking tool to this point is del.icio.us. Take a look at the socialsoftware tag or at my social bookmarks. Each tag also has an RSS feed, so that you can keep track of them in your favorite news aggregator (I’ll provide some more info on how to actually do that in my next post).

Tags can help you stay informed and introduce to information you might not have found otherwise. For a more advanced use of tags, take a look at what I am doing with my first blogoposium.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: Monitoring the Conversation

Historically, the content and design of a website have been inseparable. In more technical terms, that means that the data (’content’) and the presentation (’design’) elements have typically been mixed together in one document, that document usually being a web page (such as “index.html” or “about.html”). In order to create and format the content of a page (i.e., use different positioning, font styles, colors, etc.), it was necessary to know HTML mark-up, thus limiting the ability to create a web site to a select few. The role of the webmaster was born.

Software expanded the ability to manage and design websites to a larger number of users yet still demanded a level of technical expertise. Creating and managing content on the web boiled down to two major problems - the ‘architecture’ of a web page and technical aptitude.

The ‘architecture’ of not separating content and design elements was both costly and inefficient. For example, let’s say a company wanted to re-brand itself or received some funds to update its web presence. The traditional approach to this process would require someone to manually take all of the content - the information on every page of a site - and copy, edit, and massage it into each and every new page of the newly designed site.

Similar inefficiencies existed with having one or more webmasters who essentially were the gatekeepers of the web. Content creators had to email updated web content to their webmasters. Webmasters spent hours hand-coding new pages, making changes, or archiving outdated information. The process for publishing and editing content on the web was slow. Good for webmasters, bad for Website owners.

These problems are what spurred the creation of “CMS” or content management systems. The end game with CMS is that web publishing is literally a click away. CMS, or rather the technology behind them, are tools that allow a non-technical user to quickly and easily post information to the web.

This goal is accomplished by addressing the architecture issue of a web page. With CMS, the content of a site is stored outside of design elements - the content is actually stored in a database. The first benefit with this model is that implementing a new design becomes just about as simple as copying new template files - graphics, formatting, font styles, etc. - to a server. The second is that the content of the site - the data in the database - can be easily backed up and stored for safe keeping.

To better understand this model, imagine that the content (’data’) of your site is like a window in your home. To spruce up a window, you can put up some blinds or use a variety of different curtains. These decorative elements are similar to the design (’presentation’) of your site. Curtains can be easily switched at any point, to change the appearance of the window but the window is still a window. The same holds true for the design of content managed sites; new design templates can change the entire appearance or specific styles and formatting of your site but the content remains constant.

From a technical perspective, CMS are a winning solution but that is not what makes them so powerful. It is the “push button publishing” (as Google’s Blogger calls it) that has led to the tremendous success of these technologies (and yes, blogs and wikis are two types of CMS).

CMS in many ways give the final credence to the “Information Age”. Now the power to create new information on the web no longer rests solely within the hands of the technical community. To read more on CMS, check out some additional information at Wikipedia, including a list of different content management systems.

As Jason Coward previously discussed, TheVirtualHandshake.com is built on the ModX CMS.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: What is ‘CMS’ (a Content Management System)?

Think there’s no “real money” in blogging? When it’s a marketing tool for big-ticket products and services it sure can be.

J. Craig Williams is quoted in the latest U.S. News and World Report:

“Attorney Craig Williams says his blog (mayitpleasethecourt.com) and podcast have generated close to $1 million worth of client referrals since they started three years ago. He thinks of his site as ‘my handshake to the world.’ ” (nice choice of metaphor)

Now that’s what I call ROI!

You should know that Williams puts a ton of time and money into his site, and it shows. I presume he doesn’t do the web design himself, but he personally writes 1-2 posts a day and podcasts each and every one.

via Stephanie West Allen via Lisa Stone

This post was written by Scott Allen, source: The Million-Dollar Blog

As I recently wrote in an earlier first technology brief, one of the key benefits to blogging is to “join the conversation”. Blogs are providing a new forum for people to communicate that consists of a much larger base of opinions and ideas. Popular bloggers are engaging and learning from their readers. They are participating in the larger conversation that is the blogosphere and weighing in on the subjects that the public and their readers want to know about.

A conversation is a two way street - at least a good conversation is. In blogging terms, that means that a successful blogger will need to do more than just write, they also need to read. Blogs that consist of someone yelling from a mountain top about how good a product or service is or about how smart they are, remove the quintessential element to blogging - interaction.

The conversation is real. It is not just a selling point to get you blogging. I’ll provide two really neat examples I recently came across in my daily scouring of the web:

1. TechCrunch is becoming the source for Web 2.0 product updates. They are “dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business, product and service.”

   Just over a month ago, they profiled a new social bookmarking tool called BlinkList. BlinkList joins a number of other similar services including del.icio.us (the leading social bookmarking tool to this point), Furl, and Simpy, amongst others.

   After reading through the profile, I noticed that there were a total of three comments. One was from a Simpy representative, the next was Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, and the final was by Ozzy of Blinklist. The conversation is real.

2. As TechCrunch is the Web 2.0 product source, Richard MacManus of Read / Write Web is the de-facto Web 2.0 knowledge source. Richard is in many ways the pioneer in setting up a framework to describe and understand Web 2.0.

   In his latest Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, Richard examines Web 2.0 in “the real world”, a new feature to his informative weekly summary. There he details a Web Ministry that is focusing on using the web to make “an eternal impact on the lives of individuals.”

   Of course, not long after that post went up, Rob, the author of that same Web Miinistry, commented on the Read / Write Web blog.

   David Teten commented to me: “Technologies like Pubsub make it easy for you to monitor in the blogosphere who’s talking about the subjects that most interest you (particularly your name!). One of the great advantages of online conversation is that you can have a conversation that transcends time and space limitations, while at the same time creating an instant community of people who share similiar interests, e.g., Blinklist and like technologies. That’s one of the advantages of blogs, as opposed to traditional walled vertical communities. Out of the enormous number of blogs, I can converse specifically with those people with whom I share interests, and I do not need to predefine with which people I share interests. If I only participate in a mailing list for graduates of my college, instead of using a blog, I’m much more restricted in the number of people I can build relationships with.”

These are just a couple of quick examples of showing that “the conversation is real”. There are many, many more. Feel free to share some of the examples you have seen by commenting below.

This post was written by Ken Yarmosh, source: The Conversation is Real