I have been thinking about the previous year and the things that I did and accomplished and the clients I worked for and the partners I collaborated with in business.  Overall, it was an exciting year for me and a year that so some growth and a year for learning.  I had the opportunity to make many new friends and some of those friends came from Hawaii.  I spent a wonderful week in May and June in Hawaii on the So Much More Hawaii Tour, and then organized a conference called the Social Media Business Summit in conjunction with Blog World & New Media Expo where I spent most of the year as their Social Media Director and Conference Director.  One By One Media was a title sponsor of the Social Media Business Summit in Hawaii and we enjoyed the time there.  I am wanting to go back now, not working, and not blogging or being a part of something work related besides enjoying the beach, the beautiful blue water and the waves crashing on the sand.

I was great meeting new friends while in Hawaii, like, Chris, Christine, Bruce Fisher and his wife, Neenz and Noe and Melanie, Marijane, Mark, and Aric, and Leah and Sheila and well you get the idea, it was a year of gaining friends and experiencing life.  Most of all it was becoming a part of a new community.

jim turner on ‘[re]think:hawaii’ from aric s. queen on Vimeo.

I will be recapping much of 2009 and some of what we accomplished as a company and will cover some of the initiatives for clients and how we grew in the world of social media consulting and social media management.

We will be soon relaunching Social Mediasphere Radio, with some new friends, which will also be a part of SMTV.  We are also going to have a new site here soon and we will refocus our efforts to be a trailblazer in the world of social media.  I have some events I will be speaking at soon and I will do a list of those so we may perhaps be able to meet and I will get a chance to make friends in another community.

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I have been keeping ahead of the game of new and shiny objects by trying out the latest and greatest in tools that can be used for social media programs at companies. I have always come back to the main point of view as it relates to tools that work.  I was reading a recent blog post by David Armano related to this very idea.  David states better than I can about dusting off some of the old tools before trying out new and shiny ones:

Your Blog(s): Your company is blogging. Congratulations. Is anyone listening? Blogging was the bright and shiny object of 2006-2008 and many companies found out just how hard it is to do well. Good blogging provides value. It is interesting and generates a healthy amount of comments and conversation which in turn generates a good dose of Google juice. It’s also terribly difficult to sustain. It requires cultural shifts within an organization, and has to be prioritized (read: made part of someone’s job). Frankly, I rarely see outstanding examples of a good company blog. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing (if it makes sense strategically), but doing it well is another story.

Many companies have still not taken on blogging as a tool that will work for them.  They have gone straight to Twitter or Facebook fan pages or none of the above as yet.  I am of the camp that blogs are a place to start, and a place to start a social media foundation.  I am dusting off the blog here and trying myself to get back into the swing of blogging for business.  This is the message I mention in most conversations.  Is you blog dusty?  Perhaps a little cleaning is in order and some attention given. Then you can go off to find a new and shiny tool.

Tags: Corporate Blogging, Professional Blogging, Bloggers For Hire, Social Media, Social Media Tools

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I have been preaching about blogging for a long time.  I have been an evangelist and telling companies that they had to blog more they had to have a place for people to "join the conversation" and making it possible for them to connect with their customers.  Like some of the preachers of the past, I am my own worst sinner apparently.  I was reminded by people in my company that I am the worst person in the world to tell companies that they are not blogging enough or that they are not doing it right.

I am preaching from the pulpit so to speak and I am preaching to the choir perhaps, but I need to update more often here.  I am trying to get more and more content on here and those that are slinging arrows at me the most may be asked to also contribute now and then to what we are doing at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire.  I am also on Twitter quite a bit, and I am trying out Posterous, and I am about to start Social Mediasphere TV again.  Of course, you can always come and hear what we are doing at our new radio show at Blog World Expo Radio.

Now that BlogWorld & New Media Expo is over for 2009 I have a few minutes I can breathe, and I will be using that time to try to be more involved here rather than out on the road or on the phone trying to convert the latest in small medium or large business to jumping into the social media pool.  I guess I am like that life guard that actually never swims!

Photo via LeMonde1

Tags: One By One Media, Bloggers For Hire, Twitter, Posterous, Social Mediasphere TV, Blog World Expo Radio, Blog World Expo, Business Blogging, Evangelism

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I have been talking about 2009 being the "Year of Listening".  This may be a little ahead of its time as we are still getting sign on for the idea that social media as a doctrine is even worth the space or tab for the business plan or model.  I think that social media gives an opportunity to do more listening and less shouting.  I even do this in the real world.  I tend to sit back and gather intelligence in a situation before I ever enter into the discussion or argument or whatever might be the mode of communication at the time.  I get more accomplished by first hearing what is being said and then contributing.  I tend to learn more about a subject and the people discussing that subject than I would if I jumped into the conversation early.  Many times I have done that I find myself with foot in mouth and backing out of the conversation sooner than later.  My first advice to many companies to to listen.

Now the other side of that coin that is usually the first reason many companies are not quick to sign on to the idea is listening does not convert.  I have heard many an executive tell me, "listening doesn’t sell."  After all that is the bottom line in a company selling your product or your service to the person that holds the money.  I recently spoke to a group and later the owner of the company met me in the hall and said "oh good someone that will explain how social media is going to help us SELL."  That four letter word is the only one I tend to hear from the likes of those looking at the bottom line.  I can assure you if sell is not the goal I will hear other four letter words that will describe certain feelings.  It really is only about the sell so how do you impart listening as a way to get the sale?  Listening does not convert.  Sure that statement might be true but when does your program have the ability to know when someone wants to buy or better yet what they want to buy?

I have been showing some companies that listening actually helps them sell.  I like to use the idea behind the tire swing.

Listening actually gets you to the final image, knowing what it is your customer actually wants.  The problem with that scenario is that the CEO or head of the department or whoever seems to be the decision maker has to be thinking about all the other panels in the cartoon above.  They have learned that making all the other departments happy and still coming in under a budget is what it is actually all about.  This is not listening.  If more of us actually listened for a while to find out what the customer actually wants, we could sell them that product every time.  Perhaps the problem is not that they don’t know what the customer actually wants, its what they can provide the customer from their company.  Maybe they sell jungle gyms and not tire swings.  This is a problem, and not something that social media will help them overcome. Listening converts but only if you actually listen.

Photo via sonyradio.com

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I have been trying to figure a way to work into the mix some of the businesses I visited and met while I was out in the islands and one of the things I thought of for the people at Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory was to allow them to talk about the processing of their delicious snack and how it is packaged and sent out to the various parts of the world.  I thought about how they could get a blog to their site to describe each of the seasons of growing, and harvesting, and also more importantly making their already open to the public tour a part of their everyday broadcast to the social media world.

They have a building where they do their packaging and processing and roasting.  As a group we were allowed to check out their assembly line type of roasting, processing and packaging.  I thought it would be a simple way to show the rest of the world this process using a simple web cam and their blog.  A page could be set up and the live stream run on the plant while they prepared and shipped their product. This could also be monitored for questions about the process, or a Q&A about what is being done and how. A few short hours a day could really turn into some sales for them overall.

They are a very retail oriented operation and I was thinking that they could generate a few more sales that would not only pay for their program, but also help with their brand.  The big Island was a wonderful place and this business is only one of them that is doing well on the island. Social media might just get them a little further as time goes on.  Now to see if I can find their Twitter page or if I can find them on Facebook.

Tags: Mauna Loa, Macadamia Nuts, Social Media, Hawaii, So Much More Hawaii Tour, Marketing, e-Commerce

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The one where I get you to decide what I will do in Hawaii and then hopefully you too can go along…virtually.

I am hoping to live stream the events on my site at Social Mediasphere TV! I will record as much as possible the events that unfold. You choose where and what I go do it and bring you the experience through the live blog account, the recordings and Twitter stream!

The first island is up. KAUA’I
Currently scheduled to arrive Thursday morning, May 28; depart Saturday morning, May 30.

Mountain Tubing Adventure
Kaua‘i Backcountry Zipline Adventure Tour
Kaua‘i Plantation Railway
Kipu Falls Zipline Trek
K?loa Heritage Trail
L?wa‘i International Center
Steelgrass Farm – Chocolate Farm Tour
Waimea Canyon

If you know of something fun to do on this island that you don’t see here, suggest it in the comments and I will make it a vote that counts! My only suggestion is make it lawful. My wife’s suggestion, make it safe enough I won’t get killed. (I wont tell if you don’t tell.)

Next Up we go to the island of MAUI
Currently scheduled to arrive Saturday morning, May 30; depart Monday morning, June 1.

Hawai‘i Ocean Rafting
Hula Girl Pacific Rim Dinner Cruise
Kahoma Ranch Tours
Lahaina K?‘anapali Railroad – Sugar Cane Train
Maui Cave Adventures
Maui Horseback Tours
Nightly Hula Show at K?‘anapali Beach Hotel
Proflyght Paragliding
Tour of the Stars
Volcano Maui Air Tours

Next up we have HAWAI’I ISLAND
Currently scheduled to arrive Monday morning, June 1; depart Tuesday evening, June 2.

Dolphin Quest
Firenesia
Hawai‘i Pack and Paddle
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Hilo Pana‘ewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens
K?lauea
Kona Coffee Tour
Lava Tube Cave Adventure: K?lauea Caverns of Fire
Native Guide Hawai‘i
Stargazing:
*Arnotts Lodge
*Bigti
*Hawai‘i Forest & Trail
*Mauna Kea Summit Adventures

Windward Coast and Waterfalls Tour

Next up we have the Island of O’AHU
Currently scheduled to arrive Tuesday evening, June 2; depart Weds/Thurs evening, June 3/4.

Battleship Missouri Memorial 10th Anniversary Celebration
Bike Hawai‘i
The Contemporary Museum
Dunebuggy Adventures
Ghost Tours of Old Honolulu
Hans Hedemann Surf School
Hawai‘i’s Plantation Village
Honolulu Soaring
North Shore
North Shore Surf Girls Surf School
O‘ahu Ghost Tours
Paddle Core Fitness
Waimea Valley Park
Wildside Specialty Tours

That is the four islands that we are visiting. I will have another post up about what I’ll be doing and when and where and how. I want to have you experience with me this social media trip! ALOHA!

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I have recently launched Social Mediasphere TV and added it to my list of blogs including this one and including Bloggers For Hire in the long list of blogs I contribute to and provide.  Social Mediasphere TV is an extension of the radio I was doing on Blog Talk Radio.  You can still go over and take a look at my archives at that location and I may still continue my on location live radio using that service as it seems to be a very simple solution to the technical issues related to live radio.

I will be doing my show continuing here forward on Tuesdays at 5:00 p.m. PST and 8:00 p.m. EST.  We will be discussing all things Social Media and as always we will have special guests, commentary and even you as listener can call in and ask questions make your own comments or just be a guest yourself.  I am still working through all of the issues with using the applications of the trade, but I have been given some good advice and help from many friends that are cheering me on to make this new project a success.  See you all on Tuesdays!

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For some time since the iPhone first made it’s appearance, I have been thinking about how I can keep up with the Jones’ and get into the smart phone arena. Those who also know me are the first to tell you I am not the guy that should be preaching the idea of technology or gadgets. I am the one that only uses the tool, not knowing how, why, or the what of the details. The phone rings I answer it, the email comes I type out a response. I don’t know, or for that matter don’t really care, about memory, megapixels or what flux capaciter comes with the “back end of the unit”. I have been in the market for a new desktop recently as well as a mobile phone and they sometimes offer too much information on what comes with the computer. I can get easily overwhelmed. I don’t think that in this instance I am too different than most of the real life users out there and that is why I looked to them for help.

I first started my initial testing of the waters by asking my real life friends how they came about purchasing their phone. Many of them had the same response. “I was given the phone by my employer”, or “I walked into the store and that one looked cool”, to the ever popular, “Scoble told me to buy this one.” Strangely enough that latter response was actually more of the popular one. I am of course picking on Robert, but this latter one is where I also paid a little more attention. The experts out there are the ones that are going to be using the best of the best. I turned my research to that area. I read blogs of the experts.

I read Engadget, Gizmodo, MobileCrunch and every other gadget blog available that had information about smart phones. I searched out their reviews and other information they had on the models available. There is a plethora of blogs you can read with information on everything and anything mobile. These are people not associated with the company or product and they truly give an independent review in my mind. Some are more specific product leaning, but for the most part they have some unbiased opinion.

I have to vent my frustration a little here because of the lack of choice we are offered as consumers based on our current service provider and the phones that are available to each service provider. I have been with Verizon since before they were Verizon and they were Airtouch Cellular and before that USWest Cellular. You might say we have established a relationship. My choices were very limited in the smart phone area so I went with a few choices, and it came down to only two that were available in my world, The Blackberry Storm and the Samsung Omnia. Yeah, I know overwhelmed with info about the phone and underwhelmed by my choices. Here endeth the frustration rant.

I then turned to another form of social media for my research. I asked my friends. Not those that I go to church with, or have dinner with, but the ones online. I reached out to my Twitter followers. When I asked more than 5000 people what they thought, I was given plenty of opinions. I loved it. Some had no opinion but a friend of a friend had good experience with this phone or that phone, or they had a bad experience but fixed it with this or that carrier. This was great “man on the street” information. I was well armed to make a decision at this point. The problem, as always, I was afraid to make a purchase of this magnitude. I couldn’t pull the trigger. I was afraid I would spend too much money and then later be angry for making the wrong choice. In spite of being completely advised, I still needed a shove. The shove came at an opportune time.

I was reading through my RSS feeds that I had subscribed to as a result of my research and found that one of the blogs had a breaking story. Verizon was offering the Blackberry Storm at a very good savings, and sure enough a check of there site showed not only a savings on that phone but on my other choice the Samsung Omnia. This was great news to me. I was armed with the information I need to make an informed decision, had seen real life experiences, saw unbiased reviews, and knew as much about the phone as anyone. I headed to the Verizon store.

A few more follow up questions later, having actually informed the sales person of some of the information I learned, and questions specific to the usage and data charges etc., and I decided on my choice of phones. I went with the Blackberry Storm. i went with the Storm because of the fact that Blackberry is well respected in the mobile community and Samsung is still lacking somewhat in my opinion. Samsung was a little too hooked into Microsoft’s software for my taste and that was another deciding factor.

I had reached out to my community to help me make a purchase. I spoke to the people I knew that had the phones. I researched blogs and the things l that the experts were touting, and I saw what my peers were also recommending. I then reached out to my community and asked for help which was more than ample to help me make a choice. Then as luck would have it because I had signed up and subscribed to some feeds I was tipped off to a sale that benefitted me in my purchase. I had used the tools available to help me. I hope that if you are reading this and you are a company you can take a look at how people are using the social media tools available to them to make informed decisions about your products and services. By looking at how I use the Internet to go from point A to point B you too might know how to get your information to the people that are searching for your products.

My next postings will be on the after purchase and use. How did the information I gathered help? How am I using social media to help me use my phone? Yes, I am now becoming addicted to my Crackberry and I can’t wait to help the next person with their decision to purchase a phone. I have become a social media evangelist of the company and they had to do nothing other than get into the social media world. Now about that choice of desktop. Is it going to be the iMac or the HP model. All these decisions are going to be helped by my use of the social media world.

UPDATE 2/10/09: Apparently, I am a real early adopter for the Storm deal that is all over the internet. Should I be worried now about what is in store for the Storm? Is another Blackerry Storm brewing?

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There are many people out there getting into shape this week. Those 2009 New Year’s resolutions are getting into full swing. This is a time for the local gym to be jam packed with new people. That new guy that has a large gut (yes I am raising my hand), and an unused sweat suit will be showing up full of vigor and ready to be the next calendar boy or Men’s Health magazine cover. He’ll go a few days and then the pain will set in and the monotony will start and suddenly the honeymoon is over. They have small result on the scale and they think “wow this is easy” or they think “boy, I have this exercise thing licked.” Then reality hits and they suddenly wonder why they are having to actually work at it. The scale quit moving, or they get busy doing other “more important” things.

This is very similar to the idea of social media and starting that as a business. Many business people have all said to themselves, “I need to start a social media program here.” They perhaps even make it a resolution for the new year.  

They do a little research and get all jazzed about how it is going to change the way they market, advertise and interact in their community of customers. It is going to save them in this dark and scary economy. The propaganda they have read, and yes I consider it nearly as bad as propaganda, tells them that their troubles are over. Start a blog and you can sit back and watch the needle move to the black, get on Twitter and Facebook and watch you bank account soar. Sure they get a little bit of a result in the beginning as anything that is new. They watched as their weight on the scale drops a bit, like the guy that cuts Christmas fudge out of his diet and gets on the treadmill (raises his hand again). Then as with the guy that started his exercise routine, it starts to get hard, and the results are not easily seen, and the monotony starts to get the better of them and they finally abandon the program going back to the old ways. Gone is the difficulty, and that lactic acid burn they means it might be hard again tomorrow.

I’m like that trainer in the gym that everyone seeks out in January only to cuss out in March as it gets more painful to continue. I’m everyone’s go to guy when they want to get started then suddenly I’m the enemy and that evil guy that keeps pushing them to keep posting on their blog or to make those comments in Twitter. Many of them don’t have the discipline for it. Like the person that sets out to be the latest cover of a magazine they end up abandoning the program. Those that start and quit are not uncommon. The one that sees it through are the ones that will be the cover of a magazine soon. Which are you going to be this year. Can we push through the hard part?

[photo via DryRot]

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Reading Marketing Profs Paul Dunay’s post regarding the company budget for social media I found it interesting specifically about the idea behind content creation. Paul states:

Ok but the real cost (again unlike the traditional media stuff) is in Content Creation to fill up those social media / new media channels – here is where the cost can get large. I happen to think I am very fortunate since I work at a consulting firm where many people are thought leaders – so we have no shortage of opinions

He does not get into the costs specifically as he does with pricing the actual tools of social media. The tools he itemizes are:

A Blog;

A Podcast;

A Video;

A Wiki; and

A Community.

I refer to these things as tools as I also believe that applications can be used in a social media planned budget as well. The applications are mostly free to very inexpensive. I did notice he did not budget for the activities surrounding the likes of Twitter or other which enhance the above tools. Basically, they are free. He is correct however when he states:

So unlike traditional media – Print, TV and Radio – which can cost big money. Social media’s upfront costs very little…

You have to read through his original post regarding the overall budgets to get an idea of the numbers, but I wanted to wrap my mind around the budget ideas first and foremost. The low cost of social media is right now making it a hot and much sought after way of accomplishing a company’s advertising, marketing and public relations strategy.

The real cost is the people that can manage this strategy, someone that can understand the uses of each tool and application and how to make it work for its intended use. This is where the budget has to be difficult to nail down. The person that is responsible for this doesn’t even have a job title or description these days. Is it the marketing person, the advertising person or the public relations person that handles this? What department do we charge for the implementation of this new way of handling our media? These are some difficult questions to answer. I am personally seeing many more job openings on job boards, and seeing recruiters provide the answers to the question of who to place in the position. The real question I have for Paul is the budget for the wage for this person. How much does your company expert in the leadership of social media get paid? Do you have a budget line item for a social media manager?

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Abby Johnson of WebProNews got a chance to catch up with me while we finished up our presentation about hiring professional bloggers while out at the Blog World and New Media Expo in the Executive and Entrepreneur Track. I moderated the panel of Darren Rowse of Problogger fame, Will Chen and Greg Go. It was a fun session and even I was able to learn a few things. Here is the video that Abby did following that session.

Jim Turner Video

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A friend recently sent me an invite to join a new social network.  These days it is difficult not to receive an invite to join this network or be a user of this or that new application.  Everyone has a some “social” sprinkled in their recipe for success.  What stood out in my mind about this particular invite was the fact that is was an invite to join a magazine’s idea of a social network.  Yes, a magazine. 

Fast Company seems to get the idea that a community built around the content and their brand is a good idea.  This is a bold move for a property that began on the old school way of generated content and the revenue model of advertising.  They see the new generation of how people consume information, and the new movement of the social graph.

Ed Sussman’s article asks the question:

Starting today, we become the first major media website to tackle the following problem: Can a business publication blend journalism and online community to create something better than either by itself?

That is truly the new age of thinking among magazines.  I talked before about the New York Times and how it needs to change its way of thinking and how it does business.  Perhaps Fast Company is showing the way of the new media and how old media needs to embrace the idea that their readers and consumers are in control of their own ways of consuming information.

I am going to follow closely with how this new way of sending the magazine’s content and how they include their readers.  Frankly, I am a little burnout on building another network of friends, followers, and the like, but it may be a great idea that is going to be adopted by others.  I guess we need to get used to the idea that we must find new ways to connect easily.  I’ll meet them half way on this one.

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On the same vein as my lost post regarding a blogging hiccup or what I see as a new era of business blogging, we are now at a crossroad of corporate advertising, marketing and PR online.  There are many forward thinking companies that are early adopters, and especially in the technical world where technology is seen as a tool to harness if you want to succeed.  So where are we in the adoption of social media as it relates to the rest of the companies and corporations?  We are at a new beginning, the stage of educating the rest of the world. Those companies that didn’t get it, the ones that want to see what the early adopters did and what worked and what didn’t.

We have seen it in our own business model here at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire.  We really didn’t have to sell real hard to get companies that were contacting us about business blogging and hiring bloggers.  They wanted to adopt the technology and they wanted to make it a part of their online presence.  They were already sold on the idea.  All I or any other social media consultant had to do was implement the tools necessary for the company to join in the social media world.  We had the good life then, and our sales were self fulfilling prophecies.  Now we are in the education stage of the rest of the world.  These companies and corporations are not yet sold on the idea of social media.  In fact, I think it was stated best in a post and thread at the newly canceled Blog Business Summit.

Steve Broback wrote:

Like the Lambada, I don?t believe my original, 1990?s era event model is nearly as viable as it used to be, and certainly not so for the BBS. The BBS really never attracted the huge numbers of marketing and PR types that clearly *needed* to learn this stuff. I tried very hard with the Chicago event to attract that demographic and our efforts washed up on shore like a dead fish.

In addition, we emailed, snail mailed, and telephoned 250 CTOs and CIOs and invited them to come and learn how Wikis and blogs can enable internal knowledge sharing. They were terrified, and only 3 signed up. A couple even said they were ?too busy? with their current efforts to reign in email overload to take the time to attend(!) (emphasis added)

This was a very astute thought and a comment by Kevin Hillstrom about the event:

In the posts of the past two days, one can see that you feel hurt by spending so much time and effort to evangelize something you believe in, only to have to make tough choices that may, on the surface, appear contrary to what you?ve evangelized over a period of several years.

It will probably be hard, but try to not blame people who ?don?t get it?. It is just as likely that people failed to do a good job of educating folks as it is that people ?don?t get it?. You?ll never know which of those two issues is the right one.

Teresa mentioned that companies that don?t get this are ?sunk?. They aren?t. They are simply missing an opportunity to improve the performance of their business.

When the conversation turns to picking on the ones who you are trying to evangelize, you make it that much harder to be successful in the long term.

Don?t feel bad about having to cancel something you so strongly believed in. Spend your efforts moving forward, showing folks that they can benefit by doing what you?re suggesting, and that what you?re suggesting is evolving and changing every day.

I sent two folks to your conference last year. One of those folks made a difference in her organization, armed with the knowledge she gained. Know that your efforts do help others who have an interest in your subject matter.

Kevin’s comment is spot on in my opinion.  We will need to show the examples of the past early adopters.  We need to take those examples and show the rest of the corporate world how the companies used the tool and how it benefited them and provide hard numbers for those companies to see for a return on their investment. As mentioned, Teresa stating that companies not adopting this social media tool are not sunk, but if companies want to differentiate themselves from their competitors, they can, if not, they are missing the opportunity.  I think we agree on the fact that if a company misses out on enough opportunities, sooner than later they will eventually sink  and die.  It will be up to them if they sink or swim, but it is up to us as social media consultants to throw them a life raft if needed.

So where do we go from here?  Now is truly the call for social media consultants to become evangelists. It’s time to stop preaching to the choir and truly find followers that want to succeed in business using social media tools.  Now is when we have the tough sell.  The easy sell is a thing of the past.  Pull in your numbers, get those examples ready, and show what you have done, and what you can do in the future.  It’s not going to be the easy contract that you get now, but one that you truly earn.

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My friend and mentor Paul Chaney recently asked a question on Facebook about the writing on the wall of the possibility of blogs exiting stage right.  His question:

Two things happened this month that are of significance where business blogging is concerned. Rick Bruner offered up the BBC domain for sale and BBS Chicago was canceled. What do you think that says about the state of business blogging as a trend?

Paul has been around long enough to see the rise of blogging, and the now plateau we seem to be seeing in the area of business blogging.  I responded with a short answer:

I think the shine has left the tool, and we are seeing a bit of a paradigm shift in the tech industry to newer applications. As far as businesses are concerned we have seen the early adopters, now we are beginning to see others see what it’s all about.

My idea is that in the tech industry and the early adopters, blogging is old news.  Who was attending blogging conferences and reading about business blogging?  The tech industry and those early adopters.  Now it’s time to start selling the idea to those that have not already had a taste of the Kool-Aide, or are savvy to what blogs can accomplish.  This is the hard sell era. 

Paul assured me in a conversation he and I had about his question:

I think blogging has matured as a marketing and business communications practice and found it’s place in the overall spectrum. It will still continue to grow, though at a more measured pace than before.

Paul is working on his own plans for his new role at Bizzuka, Inc., as its new Internet Marketing Director.  I hope the company knows what an asset they have hired in Paul to run their Internet marketing.  As soon as Paul gets that company’s blog up and running I can assure you it will be on top of my subscribed feeds and must reads.

A timely post about the blogging slide, is a post by Richard called Is Blogging in “The Dip”? Are we Throwing The Blogging Baby and Bathwater out?  I dont want to steal his entire post but he makes a very good point I would like to direct you to:

From where I sit, business blogging is just starting, so the future has not arrived. It is just emerging. As for those valuable ?Naked Conversations? between businesses and people, I sense they are also just in their infancy. And those conversations are found in blogs ? every day, hundreds of them, good, bad, fun and serious. Real people conversing among themselves, and sometimes with businesses. I am not seeing these real conversations at YouTube or using video. Nor do I see those connections at MySpace or FaceBook. Certainly not to the same and open extent I see them in blogs. Are we leaving the promise of blogging behind to pursue the next big thing, without ever realizing its potential?

I?m even wondering if blogging is in Seth Godin?s ?The Dip? and is going to need that focus and attention to get it through the dip, to realize all it could be. From my travels around the web, blogging is still producing the most genuine conversations between a business and people who want to talk about that business. But maybe I just don?t get it all yet either?

As Shel Israel recently noted (and reminded me personally, for which I say “Thanks Shel!”) ?Naked Conversations was essentially about conversations replacing messages because of the internet. We called that part a revolution and we still do. We talked almost exclusively about blogs because they were the only power tool of the conversational revolution at the time. What has changed is that there are now a great many tools and anyone can use any combination of them.? In this vein, Hugh ,over at Gaping Void, made it clear that ?Bogging isn?t for everybody, Web 2.0 is for everybody

I just think we need to be careful. Facebook has great features for sure. There are lots of sexy Web 2.0 applications, but let?s not throw baby blogging out with the bathwater. That is where I still see real conversations emerging.

I agree with Richard’s thoughts here.  Business blogging is not yet made it to mainstream.  It has been looked at played with, used, abused, and tested and tried by those that do that sort of thing and been given its stamp of approval.  Now it has moved on.  It is seen now by that early group as approved, adopted, and sold as a tool that has passed muster.  It now is entering the next phase which is implementation by all.  It used to be that if you didn’t have a website, you were dead.  Now since you are living with your website, if you don’t already have a blog, “your’e dead”.

Sphere It

It’s not often we get to toot our horn around here, but when we can, I like to play it loud and play it often.  I was reading through the comments section of the blog and noticed that Alex has given us a link to a Wall Street Journal article by Sarah Needleman entitled Blog It and They May Come. The article discusses small businesses and their blogging campaigns.  It was a nicely written article and it does point our some of the problems we see from small businesses, this blogging thing is work.

To my pleasant surprise, about half way through the article I saw a familiar name.  I was looking at a past client that used our services and is now being interviewed and quoted in the Wall Street Journal!

Making the Link

Ty’s Toy Box Inc., an online retailer based in Erlanger, Ky., has lured people to its blog about trends in the toy-licensing industry by having other blogs and Web sites link to it. The company arranged a link-exchange agreement in April with TheToyGuy.com, a Web site from toy-industry expert Chris Byrne that features news and product reviews.

“We coordinated it so that occasionally our blog and Chris’s blog are about the same issue, but from different perspectives,” says George Stolpe, vice president of business development and media relations for Ty’s Toy Box. The two blogs link to each other in each post, he says.

Ms. Melberg says the links help boost a company’s search-engines ranking because blogs recommended by external sources rank higher than ones without link referrals.

According to Mr. Stolpe, Ty’s Toy Box pays a free-lance writer to maintain its blog and says the total cost for it is “a very minimal amount.” He says while he can’t quantify the blog’s role in the near-triple-digit average growth in sales every year since its start, he has no doubt it has played an important part.

After seeing that I was proud of Ty Simpson and George Stolpe for sticking it out and seeing the power of blogging.  They paid one of our bloggers for a while and decided on a different path but finally stuck to it in the long run and now they are a feature in the Wall Street Journal.  I’m not saying all of our client’s will be this much of a success, but if I have anything to do with it you can bet I’ll try!

Sphere It