BusinessBloggingBootCamp

Blog to Book to Blog

And back again.

The intersection of print and online publishing is where we live (WME Books, WME Blogs). So we are very proud and excited to share this conversation from our blog-buddy Toby Bloomberg's blogtalkradio show entitled Creating and Promoting Books with Social Media/Web 2.0. Toby's guests (she calls them rock stars) are book publicist Nettie Hartsock and our own Sybil Stershic, who blogs at Quality Service Marketing and wrote Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care.

Just click the play button and get ready to learn.

Note: Because there is so much great information in the show covering both book- and blog-related topics, I'm going to cross-post this on A-ha! and WME Blogs, so please forgive. I think you'll want to listen to it more than once anyway ... and take notes!

Toby also blogged about the show and provided lists of tips from both Nettie and Sybil. Here's a taste:

Nettie: "Ask not what a blogger can do for you, ask how you, your book or your product can benefit the blogger and its readership ..."

Sybil: [on applying the "3 Rs" from her book to how authors should treat reviewers] "Reinforce their helping you with appropriate reciprocity (such as linking to their blog or website on your blog)."

There's more on Toby's blog and much more in the interview, so I'll get out of the way.

Note 2: In the interest of full disclosure (and maybe a little shameless self-promotion), Sybil is one our authors and her book is one of our best sellers since it's release last October. And she REALLY "gets" the whole blog to book to blog marketing concept.

We also have a connection to blogtalkradio, John Havens (VP of Business Development). John is co-authoring a book on business transparency with another of our clients, Shel Holtz, for Jossey-Bass and it's IABC book series. WME is acting as their agents.

WME as a "publishing conglomerate"

Pssssst ... It's all about the BLOGS!!!

Anita Campbell's post "Multi-Business Entrepreneurs - You Too Can Be a One-Person Conglomerate" yesterday at the Success Magazine Blog features our own Yvonne DiVita as the example for how one person can build a multi-business company, while staying focused on his/her "core compentencies."

So ... before you dive into blogging your business, you do need to have those core competencies ... but that's pretty much a given to think about any kind of business.

But Anita's description of the growth and development of Yvonne's Windsor Media Enterprises to include her Smart Marketing to Women Online consulting work, then WME Books, and now WME Blogs, leads me back to Hugh MacLeod's concept of small businesses being enabled to create "global microbrands" via the power of BLOGS!!! Here's a link to the Global Microbrand category at his gapingvoid blog and to his wiki page where you can list your own global microbrand.

As Yvonne transitions from her one-woman-enterprise to incorporate the complementary "core competencies" of others (Dianna, Greg, Karin, Steve, and me - yes, intros/links will be coming soon), it's easy to trace the growth through the blogs: Yvonne's Lip-Sticking, our Authors Helping Authors blog, A-ha!, and right here from the original Business Blogging Boot Camp identity to WME Blogs.

So if you want to act on Anita's excellent concluding Success Tip ...

Pssssst ... It's all about the BLOGS!!!

Blyopia (Part III): An Ounce of Prevention

What can you do to protect yourself and your company from Blyopia (see Part I and Part II)?

First, I recommend daily doses of folks like Andy Sernovitz (link goes to his "free stuff" page, but click his blog and then on to the entire WOMMA site), Seth Godin, and Charlene Li at Forrester Research.

Buy Andy's book. Read it. Absorb the practical lessons and step-by-step advice. And while you're at it, get Seth's latest book, too. Go back and review Charlene's informative video presentation on social media (it's over a year old now, but she provides still-relevant, real-world examples like GM Vice Chair Bob Lutz's "What I Meant to Say Was..." post in GM Fastlane Blog).

Of course, it won't be enough to nourish your mental muscles with healthy information.

You've got to exercise!

Adopt and apply the philosophy of engagement with your customers. Let go of the notion that you can "control the message." You and your product/service are what Google and your customers say you are.

Put the blogging and social media tools and techniques to work in your business. Engage in the conversations going on about you and your company (at the very least become aware of what's being said, written, and passed on).

Can blogs and other customer generated media produce sales? Sure. Think back to the Blair Witch Project movie, or the more recent The Purpose Driven Life book (over 25 million copies last I heard; info about the word of mouth campaign here). Recall the Mentos side of the examples in Part II.

But focusing too much on the sales benefits of blogging is itself a mild form of Blyopia!

Expand your view. Let's reconsider Andy's email campaign example described in Part II and add some "RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES" flavor to it.

Suppose the email campaign was designed as part of a new product launch for a really cool new wireless device that delivered streaming media so fast users could download and listen to music and engage in real-time, online gaming simultaneously. Your R&D folks did some user-testing in controlled environments the way they thought users would use the device. They designed the battery pack and wrist strap based on those tests.

But suppose real-world users didn't see the device the same way as the engineers. Users quickly wrote scripts to monitor web content, subscribe to RSS feeds, and thus wanted to leave the device on most of the time. And when they were free of the testing environment, they used the device in their gaming more, shall we say, enthusiastically than the engineers had expected.

Under real-world user conditions, the battery packs caught fire and the wrist straps broke. Injuries to nearby objects and to some users themselves occurred, not to mention tarnishing the company's brand value. Product recalls and damage claims followed.

In this example, perversely, the more "successful" the email campaign was in generating sales of the defective product, the greater the harm to the company's overall health.

How might a blogging and social media strategy have helped the company? It's not much of a stretch to imagine potential customers reacting to leaks of the coming new product -- months before the launch -- on their blogs and MySpace pages and sharing their "wish lists" of features (go spend some time on the GM Fastlane Blog, if you doubt customers will do this). Maybe some speculate on ways they could use the product as a mobile monitoring/downloading device that might have allerted engineers to the "always on" power problem. Maybe one jokingly refers to the Nintendo Wii and suggests that your company design a wrist connector "like a biker's wallet chain" -- adding both indestructability and a cool-factor.

Monitoring what's being said out there is the barest minimum any business should be doing in the blogging/social media realm. Had our hypothetical company been monitoring the blogosphere, it might have understood its customers better and designed away the problems before they happened.

Engaging with the customers, however, could also provide an early warning system and enable the company to react quickly and positively when a defect is found. It's easy to imagine the hypothetical company's initial response to reports of broken straps and fires coming from the PR department and consisting of defensive statements about the product's careful design and testing and the need to investigate the reported incidents. The result would likely be further customer anger, blog and YouTube postings of user-generated videos showing the defects in action, and additional harm to the company's brand.

But if the company president got the reports in the comments on her own blog, the response would likely be more direct, personal, and ... well ... responsive. Chances are she will have had some serious discussions with legal, engineering, marketing, and so on. But if she's smart, those discussions will be short and the responses to her personal contacts in her market (her blog readers) will be prompt, meaningful, and provide effective solutions.

Perhaps part of the lesson is that blogging and social media as a business tool is a higher level function than can be entrusted solely to the marketing or PR folks? A recent Fast Company article criticizing heavy-handed attempts at viral marketing closes with, "if there's a way [for marketers] to miss the point, they'll find it."

We can't cover all the possible benefits from engaging with your customers via social media in one post. The books, blogs, and other resources I've cited and linked (as well as many of the posts right here at WME Blogs) will give you much more detailed information. Heck, new benefits along with new forms of these tools, remain to be discovered, like the measuring sticks we'd all like to have. (For some explanation of why the measuring criteria we have don't work and why it may be a while before we get new ones that do, see Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine post, Size doesn't matter: the distributed media economy.) So just brainstorm a bit about your own situation. And then get started. If you need a jump-start in business blogging, let us know.

And once more I want to extend my apologies to Bob Bly for having some fun with his name -- and thanks for being such a good sport about it. The point should not be lost that his book, too, is well worth reading. He does acknowledge some of the benefits of blogs and offers many cautionary observations that will help you avoid misusing them. His contentions will force you to think (usually a good thing) about how blogs can -- and can't -- help your company.

For some additional reviews of Bob's viewpoint and Blog Schmog check out Yvonne's Lip-Sticking Top 10 Business Books post and, for a mixture of serious criticism with a few rather unreasoned rants (which unfortunately tend to demonstrate one of Bob's legitimate complaints about a small minority of bloggers), read the post Bob Bly Is Wrong About Blogs, with comments, and related post links over at Simplenomics.

The Art(s) of Innovation

I'm going to keep posting on the Fortune Innovation Forum for a while, because I came away with 11+ pages packed with notes, plus the scraps jotted on business cards, the margins of the program, etc. In other words, lots to digest and share. It's likely that the topics will be in no partcular order and probably will overlap some.

Proving the point, the last session of the Forum "Lessons from the Innovator's Studio" gathered the creative talents from the four ongoing workshops exploring the innovation value of play, painting and sculpture, story-telling, and music. The session was capped by blues band perfomances from Face the Music (listen to samples here) and two groups of Forum attendees who had created original blues songs around the innovation experiences at their companies during the workshops.

Before the music ended the show, we heard a summary of the experiences in each workshop from Sophie Marsham, who ran the painting and sculpture workshop (you can see a couple of her paintings hanging behind the band on the main stage), Lea Thau, from the story-telling workshop provided by The Moth (listen to some stories here), Paul Kwiecinski, managing partner from Face the Music Blues (I describe him by his title simply to remind you that these folks are serious business people with much to teach about creativity and innovation as essential business processes), and Andy Stefanovich of Play, mentioned in my initial "live" post from the Forum.

Just a couple of quick takes from my notes:

Lea Thau talked about how framing a business presentation on some new project as a story can help, noting "when you're talking about the future, most people haven't been there [!], so it helps if you can find a way to take them there" -- which stories can do better than bullet lists and S-curve graphs.

Paul Kwiecinski noted that writing and singing "blues songs are not about whining and complaining (that's country!), but about expressing the truth of a situation." He asked, "How true do you want it?" I'm hoping Fortune can find a way to get at least the audio files from the songs performed at the forum posted on their Business Innovation Insider blog.

As I sat listening to their stimulating discussion a startling thought came: the four people sitting on the stage represented sports (play), drama/literature (story-telling), art, and music.

At last year's Forum, Yvonne heard a number of speakers sound the alarm for improving the education system in the U.S. to keep us innovative and competitive. But when most people thank and talk about improving education, they focus on math and science. Often in the same breath they're proposing cuts in spending for "extracurricular" activities.

The deeper lesson from the workshops at this year's Forum might well be that sports, drama/lit, art, and music art not "extracurricular" -- participation in them provides essential tools for business people who aim to lead innovative organizations of any kind.

Blyopia (Part I): Is it contagious?

[Update: just republishing to add live links at the end of this post to parts II and III.]

We may have a new pandemic to worry about: Blyopia.

Bly-opia: n. (comb. from Bly, as in Robert Bly, and myopia) 1. mental tunnel-vision thought to be caused by an idea virus that blocks the ability to see any value that cannot be both immediately measured and traced directly to one's own activity.

Okay, it's not really Bob's fault alone, but we've been reading his upcoming book, Blog Schmog: The Truth About What Blogs Can and Can't Do for Your Business, and his name fits together so well with my opinion of what's wrong with his thesis that I couldn't resist. So, apologies, Bob.

As you might guess from the main title and the icon on the cover, Bob has a lot of negative and precious little positive to say about blogs. The root of his problem is his inability to compare business blogging with anything other than his own field of writing copy for direct marketing campaigns. Hence Blyopia as the name for his disease.

And the disease appears to be spreading.

A Blyopia Pandemic?

It's been widely reported that John Stichweh, Director of Global Interactive Marketing at Coca-Cola, questioned the value of "engagement" with consumers at the recent NYC ad:tech conference in a session entitled, "Marketing Mashups: Navigating Consumer-Driven Marketing." Stichweh is quoted as expressing doubts about the value of Coke's adoption of the Eepybird video showing Diet Coke fountains from adding Mentos mints and inviting consumers to submit their own videos to Coke's Poetry in Motion Challenge:

"How many more cases
of Coke am I selling?
I don't know."

Quoted by Wendy Davis at Just an Online Minute (subscription required), Max Kalehoff at Engagement by Engagement, and Donna Bogatin at ZDNet's Digital Micro-Markets, among others.

So Blyopia apparently infects those attempting to employ other social media in their businesses, not just blogs. Bob's thesis in his book is, basically, that a direct marketing campaign is better than a blog, because he can measure the results of his campaign and tell John "how many more cases of Coke" he sold.

What Bob and John are missing in that comparison is that it tries to equate the blog with the marketing pieces Bob creates. It tries to draw a straight line from the blog or the piece to a sale. But social networks hyperlinked with social media (blogs, video sharing, etc.) are more than straight lines. They are intricate, extended linkages.

From a marketing perspective, a social media message may result few or no sales to the first recipients and efforts to "measure" the ROI immediately may be disappointing. But that same message remains in the network and over time can grow legs, accumulate supporting messages (generated by consumers, not the marketer), and yes, generate sales later that simply cannot be traced in a straight line from Bob or John's message to the case of Coke.

Ego-deflating for the marketer? Perhaps. Good for the business? What do you think?

Lots more to say, so:

Blyopia (Part II) will explore what makes marketers susceptible to its narrow fixation on measurement and more about the pervasive business benefits of social media and "engagement."

Blyopia (Part III) will consider ways to immunize yourself and your business from Blyopia (cures are reportedly rare).

More on the Website vs. Blog debate

[Update: May 5, 2006]

OOOOPS! - Tom goofed up. I feel terrible for having failed to identify the wonderful "group of women business owners" I spoke with the night before last and for even the possiblity that anyone might get the impression from my original post that the group as a whole voiced or shared in the "objection" I was responding to (see below). Just from the name of the group, Women Business Owners Connection, you get the feeling they understand networking.

When you spend a little time listening to them interact and get to meet their leadership team, that first impression gets confirmed. I told them so the other night. And it showed, I think, in the number of probing questions they asked that kept us on the topic of blogs as business networking tools for so much of the evening. Special thanks to WBOC President Julie Briggs of Syracuse Gift Basket for her warm welcome and follow-up support.

[End of update]

I spoke last night to a group of women business owners and although the topic was "Books as a Calling Card," since we advocate blogs for both the writing process and as a marketing platform for authors and their books, the subject of blogs and "blooking" ("blook" def.) was included.

This morning I found an email from one of the attendees objecting to my advice that "novice" (her term) business owners consider using a blog as their first (sometimes only) web presence. Her concerns revolved around the ability of a "novice" to establish credibility using a blog, because she has found "blogs to have a tiny bit of information relative to what I can get in a newsletter or a listserv in my field" and "a blog is more like an opinion piece that would be in a newspaper and does not contain as much good content as a well-thought and well-written content."

She pointed me to an example of what she apparently regards as the right way to present a book online, described as "the first medical textbook on the web by medical professional for medical professionals, it is very rich in content." She pointed out that the doctor's website has "a well-thought out organization of information (information architecture) ... is user-friendly (usability) ... is accessible to users with disabilities ... [and] incorporates all the current web standards and conventions that make up a good website."

And then she asserted that "a blog cannot do any of this."

I started to answer her by reply email, but decided the answer might be more useful to more people (including the emailer, who will remain unidentified unless she decides to engage in the conversation) if I posted my answer. So ...

The oversimplified answer to your general observations about website vs. blog is that a blog IS a website.

With all due respect, yes, a blog can be made to do any/all of the things you list – and it can add a level of interactivity that costs an enormous amount of money to reinvent/reproduce on a website. It seems to me there is a glaring disconnect between your expressed concern for novices and your advice that they engage in “information architecture.” The information architects I’ve met and read in my informatics courses don’t come cheap (and aren’t really interested in “small” websites/businesses anyway).

We generally advise new bloggers against turning their blog into a website in the sense you seem to mean it. The consequence would usually be turning a simple, usable web publishing tool (for the novice) into a “sophisticated” website with a permanent umbilical cord to a blogmaster. Our goal is to help novices up the learning curve quickly to the point where they can handle their web presence by themselves at a small fraction of the long-term cost of a website.

Regarding credibility and web design conventions, wow, don’t get me started on what we all should have learned over the past couple of years about the credibility of well-"packaged" information – from books, to mainstream news media, to websites/blogs. If you base your credibility decisions purely on how nicely the information is laid out, well, good luck with that. (Yes, we are fully aware that “neatness counts” and the packaging is important on many levels; it’s just not enough by itself to establish credibility.)

Spend a couple of weeks on blogs and you’ll discover they have their own design/usability/navigation conventions. You very quickly learn how to find your way around in the archives, categories, and comment streams. And they are text-based, which makes them fully searchable. Websites tend to be full of gif-swaps, flash, and other designer-beloved stuff that makes them less search engine friendly and means they darn well better spend a ton on usability testing, because the user will have no way of finding stuff on their own.

Bloggers establish credibility in a number of very human ways that go far beyond the inert “credibility guidelines” we all use in the absence of human contact. That’s not to say the guidelines aren’t important or useful; nor that the credibility that grows from blogging is infallible. But over the long haul, credibility built on multiple contacts, first-names, conversations, exposure of ideas to near-realtime, public scrutiny, and the mutual desire (among bloggers who “get it”) to develop personal relationships, seems more reliable to me. The relationships we’ve developed all over the world through blogging have been rewarding and durable.

Your interest in information architecture should lead you to Peter Morville and his latest book, Ambient Findability (O’Reilly 2005). Oh, and his blog, findability.org. The entire book is a fascinating look at how information gets found, but find your way to the discussion of social software, folksonomies, and some of the blog-based, user-driven tools like tags, technorati, del.icio.us, flickr, and others. It’s what he calls “intertwingling” of information to the max!

A well-built taxonomy is not the only way to "organize" information and there are emerging understandings about the value of less “structured” methods. Check out Morville's post on the meaning of "authority" and why some argue the wikipedia is more authoritative than Britannica.

And give this quote from Morville's book (p. 64) some thought:

Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged — people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable, and sequential when they can't. Everything is deeply intertwingled.
— Theodor Holm Nelson

Okay, I'm out of time to spend on this rant. Please contribute your thoughts.

Book blogs, fashion, and global reach

Over the past few months, we've held another Business Blogging Boot Camp and evolved our blog consulting to help individual business owners wherever they may be. Here in upstate New York, we've been working with authors who use their blogs as platforms for sharing the ideas and information in their books. They're also discovering the joys of interacting directly with their readers.

Book blogs

Stephanie Siegrist, M.D., author of Know Your Bones: Making Sense of Arthritis Medicine, launched her companion blog Know Your Bones, with the sub-title: Dr. Siegrist examines our fractured health system.

In the couple of months she's been blogging, she's developed relationships that have led to opportunities like becoming a guest blogger over at the ThirdAge blog.

Newer to blogging is George Kittredge, author of There's a Fine Line Between a Groove and a Rut. He calls his blog Above the Line: a blog about staying in the GROOVE. Building on his years of diverse experience and the practical advice in his book, George shares his passion for becoming and remaining a peak performer at the part of your business too many of us neglect, but all of us depend on: selling.

Looking the Part

Even more recently, our new blogger friends Erin and Steve, partners in life and in Amore' Fashions, an online high-end fashion business headquartered in southern California. Catering to busy women (and those who buy for them!), the Amore' team has assembled an impressive group of designers and a beautiful, easy-to-use e-commerce site.

Now Erin has added the Amore' blog as a way of sharing news, pictures, trends, and girl-talk about life, love, work, and - of course - fashion. Find out how she got the nickname "Love Butt."

Blogging Japan

Across the country and around the world, Boot Campers are everywhere! Now blogging from Kanazawa, Japan, Brendan Collins (yes, he's Tom's son). After graduating from Ithaca College with his degree in Politics last spring, Brendan recently traveled to Japan and began working as an instructor in English. We helped him set up his blog, Brendan-Abroad, before he left. But now he's posting about his experiences, uploading photos from his phone, and generally looking like he'll surpass his teachers very quickly.

We couldn't be prouder of those we've helped get started in blogging. Check them out and let them know what you think.

Opportunities Abound

Did anyone else find it ironic that the Wall Street Journal print edition on Tuesday (May 31, 2005, pg. B1, Col. 5) ran a column on blogging, but we can't link you to it because the WSJ online edition is a paid subscription service? The article itself was entitled Blogging Becomes a Corporate Job; Digital 'Handshake'? (question-mark theirs). It reported on a growing trend among businesses to hire full-time bloggers to create and maintain company blogs as a way of creating "a handshake with consumers, a bond of loyalty and mutual trust that's different that the typical selling relationship ..."

The article gives a variety of examples, companies selling everything from yogurt to mobile phone content to gourmet popcorn to software. Microsoft reportedly has about 1,500 employee blogs online and the article notes that "companies of all stripes" are moving to create blogs.

So why does the WSJ put a question-mark in its headline? Well, maybe they just don't get the notion of creating online relationships by sharing ideas and content freely.

Others in the stodgy, hidebound world of publishing are beginning to embrace blogging, with impressive - sometimes spectacular - results. Yesterday at BEA in NYC, we heard again about the ways individual authors have used blogs to write and promote books. And recently, publishers have been getting into the act with blog-driven campaigns for Freakonomics and Call to Action. The latter example prompted the article Weblogs Propel Marketing Book to Bestseller Lists.

So, if individual authors and major publishers ... and yogurt companies ... and popcorn makers ... and Microsoft are finding ways to connect with their customers using blogs, what's holding you back?

Blogging Workshops Afar

While we wish everyone could attend our Boot Camps, we know that timing and geography often get in the way, so we're glad to report on some high quality alternatives for those who are far away from Rochester, NY.

Coming up quickly on December 19, the American Marketing Association is hosting //Blogs//: Marketing Beyond the Website in Seattle. Future sessions are scheduled for Chicago and NYC next year.

Among the featured speakers are Yvonne's good friends and interviewees Toby Bloomberg (of Diva Marketing) and Dana VanDen Heuvel (of Dana's Blog). The Seattle session also boasts Microsoft's best-known blogger, Robert Scoble (Scobleizer).

If you're going to be in the southwest around February 9, you may want to attend the Blogging Workshop offered by Dave Young (of Branding Blog) at Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas. Dave is another of Yvonne's blogging friends through Michelle Miller (Wonder Branding).

Take a look at Dave's video clip and you'll get an idea why we agree with him that the hands-on approach to learning about blogging is so important and such a big part of our own Boot Camp workshop model. So of course, if you can't make it to ours, we recommend Dave's workshop enthusiastically.

Dave has also produced an excellent audio book/CD, Why We Blog. While we think Dave would agree it's no substitute for a full-day, hands-on workshop (Dave's or ours, hint, hint), his audio book is a great introduction to business blogging and a handy refresher, as well.

So, join us at an upcoming Boot Camp. Or, join our friends at one of their workshops. But join us in the blogosphere, one way or another!

The Business of Selling (Books)

Our friend Wayne Hurlbert over at Blog Business World has lots of useful information about blogs as a business tool, but his recent post on the power of blogs to sell books hits a topic close to our hearts - as many of our readers and recruits know. Check out Blogs sell books: Writers take note.

Wondering what else can you sell using the same networking techniques?

That's what we spend a good chunk of the morning talking about in our Boot Camps. And the discussion is different every time, because we talk about the business needs of those present. We discover new ideas and new applications for blogging each session, right along with our "Campers." One of the strengths of our format that we hear about in our feedback is this flexible approach to learning what is, after all, a very new medium.

For an example, take a look at Paula Chapman's endorsement (red box, at left) and her brand new blog, XpressMarketing. Paula will be sharing information on topics like "Just-in-Time" printing of business literature. Her husband/business partner Steve calls it "Jit-Lit" and it gives small businesses the equivalent of a large, in-house printing department for producing just the right quantity of printed material and the flexibility to produce updated versions the next time it's needed. We've used (and, we confess, abused) Xpress' ability to handle last minute jobs and they've always come through in the crunch.

Paula's enthusiasm, combined with the valuable information she can share to help small businesses deal with their communication needs, will make her blog a must-read. By connecting her market with useful information, Paula has another powerful tool for establishing XpressMarketing (both the blog and the company) as the place to go for those services.

And that shows another way that "blogs sell ...(fill in the blank)..."

Blogging is just a couple of years old in its application to business. But as Wayne's post and Paula's example demonstrate, it can be a powerful and effective tool, especially for small businesses. Wayne's prime example describes how a self-published book has been promoted and sold through blogs to become #10 (and in an update, #6) on the publisher's all-time best seller list. Check out the full story at Wayne's post.

And then come on back to help us brainstorm even more ways - direct and indirect - that "blogs sell ..."