The irony of this post is,  I was on the Mashable site following some others that had followed me on the Mashable Social Network when I noticed that Mashable itself was advertising for Mashable readers to “Join the conversation by adding Mashable’s Pete Cashmore to your Circles on Google+ .”  The upper portion of the site has a drop down bar telling you to add Mr. Cashmore (see image below).

Google Plus is the new darling of social networks and it is the latest in shiny things that we social media people love to jump in and declare ourselves as early adopters.  We get to try it out and pick it apart piece by piece and provide feedback and add our 2 cents.  I’m somewhat behind that game as this is my first post about the new network.  I must admit that I have been on Google Plus now since I could get an invite when it first launched and tweeting every article I can pass along that I have read on the subject.

Getting back to the issue at hand, Google Plus originally opened up the invitations to its “field test” of their network to the user that had an invite.  This made the invites like the gold standard for a while and everyone in social media was calling all their friends to get in on the gold rush of invites.  Most of my colleagues were in and salivating on the new toy, and I heard tell of brands that were also jumping in and being a part of the fun, the point there is to be an early adopter and get a jump on the competition as we are all seeing how the past rolled out with Twitter and Facebook.  This ended for businesses however as Google pulled the plug on the ability for businesses or brands to sign up on Google Plus. Google went as far as to  suspend those brands they could hunt down and find on the network.

Now enter the folks at Mashable.  The thrive on the metric of eyeballs.  They are a media property that tries to gain as many eyeballs as possible for the businesses that pay them for distribution of their posts.  They are known for reaching millions of readers and have mastered every trick in the book for having those million readers share and re-distribute their content.  Enter the next distribution system in Google Plus and its already exponentially  more than 10 million users and you have yet more metrics and eyeballs to add to your existing pitch of being the most read media property in the world of social.  Last time I checked, Mashable was a business and therefore according to Google, unable to have a presence on its new network.

There are always those that are jail breaking iPhones and those that are gaming the system to get more followers and every other loophole that can be found to get the upper hand.  This apparently is not much different with Mashable and their having a presence on Google Plus.  The route they took?  We will take our leader, Pete Cashmore, and his Google account and use it as a distribution channel.  He is a person and not a business and therefore his account can be used for us here at Mashable.  Is this a gaming of the system?  Are other businesses and brands using their “ambassadors” (Thanks Chris Heuer for that Tweet) to get a jump on the competition and getting an early look as a business on the network?

I have an admission myself, I have not used my Google account for much other than Google Buzz or Wave or whatever else I have needed to use the account for and I suppose my company is getting a leg up on other companies that don’t yet have a Google Plus account, but I am actually at the helm of my account.  I am not sure Pete is the one that is sharing each of the Mashable…err Cashmore shared posts on Google Plus.  It did strike me as funny that they would use advertising space to increase the eyeballs of the Pete Cashmore account.  Are they gaming the system?  Probably.  Do I blame them?  Not really, but I do blame Google for not having a plan on how to better handle this and how they might unfold Google Plus for Business.

UPDATE:  Upon further view it appears that Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land already discussed this in his post and updates.  It appears that Mashable is now just blatantly advertising the fact to get more followers on the account for Pete Cashmore.

There are many social sharing sites and if you wanted to count them it may take you all day to finally include each site in your count. Some of them are well known like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and of course the latest darling of the dance is Google Plus. Social sharing has been evolving as a way to increase page views and cast a wider net to see if you couldn’t create a larger community and get more readers. We use social sharing at Bloggers For Hire as a way to create this very thing. Social sharing has become big business for many and a way to create some dividends in traffic and numbers. The question I have for you is whether your social sharing is properly branded? Let me explain to you, first what I mean about branding, and then I will give you an example.

Branding to me is making sure that at every turn, your community is reminded of your existence, be it your name, a logo, or something that can identify you as the expert in your field, the product that all must have, or a service people should love. We all know when I say Nike, Pepsi, Ford, that all of these bring an image to mind or a thought or something that stirs our brains to think of the company. That is branding. In the sense of the online world, we must always look for ways to have that in place, be it a link, a banner ad, a mention, or in the case of this post, a social share. Making sure your social sharing is also branded where possible is one more way to make sure you are always putting your brand out front.

The example I have seen and been privy to over the last couple of days has been sharing on Twitter. I read a large number of posts daily. I am constantly consuming information and then sharing that information with my community. It helps the person that has produced the content for me to share and it also informs my clients and others with whom I provide the links. It is a win-win for everyone. I also note that when I share information, via the in post applications people use, they have not branded their default settings.

One such instance this morning was sharing a news item from Media Buyer Planner. No I am not picking on them but it was what spurred this post. The have the sharing buttons as everyone on their news item that can be shared via various networks. I hit the Twitter share button and up popped the Twitter window for me to share with my followers, and I saw the title of the post, and the link and then i saw “via @AddThis”. This is the name of the application and not the name of the Twitter handle of the company where I found the article. They have missed an opportunity to brand @MediaBuyer. Many companies don;t put anything in the spot they can for branding. Make sure you are taking every opportunity to brand your company.

I have been struggling to write this now for 3 months.  I have been cautioned, counseled about its content, prodded for its distribution, and have reached for publish and stopped a number of times.  The tough things in life are never easy, and admitting failure or that you have done something wrong or even just doing the right thing and standing for what is proper can be a rough task.  I try to be the example to those around me and so it is with that in mind that I have decided to make this statement to my friends, my followers, my family and the community that I belong to in hopes that I can move forward.  The community I refer to is inclusive of the men and Dads out there as well as my business contacts, my colleagues and those that I have been fortunate enough to know over the years and grow with over time.  I cannot continue forward with new things until I close out some of the old.

I am passionate and this brought me to being a Daddy blogger and business owner.  It was that passion and interest in the world of blogs and parenting that brought me to BlogHer a number of years ago.  I was sitting next to the pool in California with a few other dads, and we all said that it would be great if we had a conference for us guys to call our own.  We all chuckled then and rolled our eyes and asked who was buying the next round of beers?  Fast forward to early  2010. In February of 2010, I had an initial conversation with one of the organizers and founders of the Modern Media Man Summit.  At the time it did not have a name or a face a logo or anything more than a good idea of the person on the other end of the chat and they wanted to try a new company.  They wanted a conference for men and for dads.  This was after all, “The Year of the Daddy Blogger.”  I agreed to help be a part of what I thought would be a winning idea.

Having worked as the conference director and social media director for BlogWorld and New Media Expo the year before I thought I could provide some much needed expertise as well as some good business contacts and connections that I felt was needed to make the project a success.  It was agreed that we would go forward with the project.  Like in all of my endeavors, I threw my heart and soul into the success of the company and the project was underway.  I set aside most of my other business duties and began concentrating on what needed to be accomplished.    I reached out to some of my most trusted friends and the people I knew would give me some guidance.  They agreed to help and some of them became members to what would become the Advisory Board.  I reached out to another friend who I knew would be good to help with the coordination of speakers and content for the conference portion of the show.  I contacted all of my business contacts to let them know about the new project and that we wanted to give them the opportunity to partner with a great idea.  Some of them jumped at the chance and we signed a few sponsors and companies to being a part of the program early.  Things were progressing nicely and we were on track to making the conference a hit.  The 20 hour days of working by all the founders was paying off.

During the middle of March, 2010 there were differences between myself and another founder, and I decided then that we needed to have someone leading the charge that could be the head of the organization to keep it running in what I thought needed to be its direction.  We were about to sign our first big sponsor and we needed to focus and have a face and a personality of the business.  In my mind we needed a person to make the tough calls and a place where the buck stopped.  Being a man, and a father, I felt right in line with our target market and the best representative of the people we wanted to reach.  I volunteered to be the head of the organization, but indicated then that I needed to be able to run things the way I saw fit on issues of day to day decisions.  If it was going to be my neck on the line I wanted to control my own fate.  It was agreed that I would be the front of the organization for that purpose and business continued as usual representing to all that I was the man in charge.  On March 31, a little more than a month into the project I was told that the legal documents had been filed and that we could begin operating the business as a limited liability company in the State of Georgia.  I was a 1/3rd owner and was told that I was budgeted to receive a guaranteed sum of money for my work.  I began pushing to get contracts entered into and  started working hard to get to a finished product.  My vision of what an awesome conference for men and dads would look like was taking shape.  2 weeks later after what I felt was a grueling work schedule and having been criticized for nearly every decision, I made what would be my last decision on a matter that would be the best direction for the company and the conference.  It was met not with criticism this time but complete resistance.  I decided then that I could no longer lead the charge but that I would do everything in my power to contribute what I could.  Two days later I woke to check email only to find I had been blocked from the company email account locked out of the site and was told that I would not be contacted or spoken to unless I had signed a Nondisclosure Agreement that had contained a restrictive non-compete clause.  I inquired as to why, as an owner, I would be contracting not to disclose information with myself and not to compete with myself?  No response was forthcoming.  I made one final attempt to reconcile with the founders and again it was given complete resistance.  I reached out to a lawyer at that time to get some advice and was told not to sign any such agreements nondisclosure agreements and that any signing of agreements may supersede any previous agreements of the founders.  I then found out that no documents had ever been filed on behalf of the Modern Media Man Summit, LLC.  I was told next I was not to be a part of the organization.

I had brought all of their existing sponsors on board and was in line to speak with four others.  I had made promises, had discussions, made representations and risked much of my reputation, much of my social capital and invested nearly three months of a difficult work schedule.  I sit here 3 months later and look back wondering what has happened.  I see some of the work I have done and work that has not been done.  I continue to get calls from sponsors, from friends, from potential speakers and many that have no idea that I am not somehow still involved.  I only recently found out that the founders have not disclosed any of the above to some key sponsors and other parties.  For that I wanted to get this out in the open. I have not been involved with the organization on any level since May 17, 2010. Any decisions, representations or otherwise have not included me nor have I had any direction in how the company would proceed.  I have not received any  form of compensation for the time spent on this project.  I am not at liberty at this time to discuss my future with the organization, any liabilities I might have or the remedies I have before me, but I want to make it clear my involvement.  The costs have been great not only in the time and energy and effort spent, but in some friendships, some contacts, some reputation and many other intangibles.

I want to apologize to the people that have been harmed by this.  I have tried to reach out to some and offer a personal apology.  I may not know all that has occurred but I can assure you that I am truly and sincerely sorry if there has been a problem.  I can only hope to regain some of what I have lost.  I continue with my vision that we can have an event for Dads and for men.  It may yet prove to be the M3Summit.  It may be other projects and it may be someone that can lead that focus.  I will forge ahead and continue.  If anyone has any questions that I may be able to answer or if you want further information please feel free to contact me.

Form all of us here at One By One Media and to all of you that have given the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedoms, we give our thanks and we REMEMBER! I hope all of you have a happy and safe holiday.  When you see that flag today, give it a salute and remember those that have given so much and asked for so little in return.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you got those brand new pair of tennis shoes?  I remember when I got my first pair of Chuck Taylor Converse.  They were not too unlike the ones pictured here, but mine were white.  I remember so vividly the fact that I thought I could run much faster and jump much higher with those brand new shoes.  I know now it was probably psychological, except for the fact that they didn’t have duct tape holding the toe part of the shoe on my foot.  They were also quite a bit different than getting those hand-me-down shoes, but I digress.

Those of you that have been following along here over the last 5 years know that from time to time we tend to make some sweeping changes to our look and feel of the web site and blog (terms I believe are synonymous).  This is the latest look and feel that we have made and I believe I can now blog better, write better, speak better and everything else has been taken up a notch.  Like that kid that could run faster and jump higher, I feel invigorated.  We will continue to always be testing new widgets and plugins and every tool out there, but for now it is clean and tidy here and I love it that way.

I have Debbie Lawrence of Lagniappe Marketing to thank for the new look and feel.  She is amazing and allowed me to participate in what she calls the “Sausage Making” process of watching the new design come together.  We are using Brian Gardner’s template and I recommend all of his work as he has some great themes to work with and to make your own designs.  In fact, Debbie was the designer and coder and all-around sausage making queen for the site over at the Modern Media Man Summit which is another of my latest projects.  That site is also a Studio Press theme.  Thank you Debbie!

I expect things to pick up here a little since I have this new running faster and jumping higher ability.  Take a look around and tell us your thoughts.

You can also see that we have added to the home page our sites at Bloggers For Hire and at Social Mediasphere TV.  We will be picking up the pace there as well so feel free to grab those feeds too.

As I sat and watched Mike Arrington of TechCrunch interview Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, I heard them discuss the future of privacy.  It seems that Zuckerberg is evangelizing the death of the doctrine of privacy.  With Facebook being the largest social network out there, that is a pretty scary notion given the fact that we all are signing up and turning our social life over to the Internet.  I wonder what privacy will look like in the next few years?  In fact it seems to be changing at a rapid pace and evolving with every new application.

I recently helped present a series at my son’s school on “Cyber Safety”.  In addition, local law enforcement also presented on the dangers of the world of social networks and what our children are doing online and the predators that are out there and their methods.  It was very sobering to figure that there are that many people out there trying to harm our kids via the Internet and social networks.  An yet, we are all flocking to these networks as our new playgrounds and the place to be and all from the safety, or so it may seem, of our own homes.

I am particularly interested in geo-location or geo-tracking applications that are becoming more and more popular.  Twitter themselves have opened up location based Tweets so that people can determine your whereabouts as you click away at 140 characters.  These software applications are so new that they have yet to become mainstream uses for evil but it can only be a matter of time until we begin to hear of predators using them and suddenly you will hear of their evil deeds on the prime time news.

Is privacy going away?  Is our notion that we are protected by privacy laws and common sense enough?  Have you read the terms of service of each and every software application that you are using today?  Perhaps you have agreed to give up your rights to a private life by participating in that latest cool place to hang out on the Internet?  In 2009 I deemed it “The Year of Listening” as that was the new marketing mantra.  If that were the case, we should probably listen to what I am now calling “The Year of Privacy.”  It could turn out that our privacy will then turn into the “Year of Living Dangerously.”

photo via Alan Cleaver_2000

As we approach the Super Bowl this weekend, it is that time of year when we all gather around the television to watch our favorite event, not the game itself but the commercials that are aired during the game.  There have been parties centered solely around the advertisements, and they have sites dedicated to them, and those that have no idea what American football is that turn on their TV’s.

I was recently aware that Pepsi has decided to go in another direction for its advertising that normally takes place during the super bowl.  Many other companies are now getting online as well.  I think we are about to see this as a trend.  What is it that is capturing the hearts, minds, and most of all the attention of the public?  Facebook.

It used to be that the television was the pinnacle of the advertising world, and for the most part it still is, but that trend seems to be changing.  With Facebook now entering the hundreds of millions of users, brands are beginning to rethink their use of their advertising dollars.  In addition, the target is more precise and they are getting more conversions.  I have been try8ing to understand the metrics behind the idea of television advertising as well.  We used to hear of the millions of viewers that this show garnered, or the numbers of people watching each show, but there was never any real metrics to determine other than polls and ratings.  With Facebook and other applications, we can see the clicks, the landing pages, the exit pages etc.  It has a more precise feel to the campaign.

This is the way ot the future as it relates to advertising, and once the Facebook’s of the world can get millions of dollars to get your attention for 30 seconds, the next big thing will come along.

I have been writing this post in my head for a while after I was catching up on the drama that unfolded with Jason Calacanis and the people at Comscore.  If you have no idea what I might be talking about, you can read all about that flap on Jason’s Posterous blog, and certainly the echochamber that ensued following as compiled by Techmeme and listed out by Jason.

In the tech world online and in social media circles we have been trained that we can do a whole lot of things for very little, and in most cases, everything we want to do has a “Free” application associated with it.  Things like YouTube, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and a plethora of other things we “sell” to clients and companies that come in our toolkit we obtained for free or for very little investment.  Our investment at this point has been the time it takes to understand and implement the use of such tools.  This has been a very lucrative part of being a social media consultant and I suppose why you cannot swing a dead cat in a room and not hit one or two of the “experts” in our business.  Free is always easy to sell.

I have talked before about “The Problems of Free“, and I also talked about how companies are using free as a business model. I want to turn back to the discussion or debate related to Comscore.  We have begun to expect companies to provide services online for free or for very little cost, and as I see it that proposes a problem somewhere in the chain.  Comscore cannot compete with Free.  Someone has to pay for free.

If you are providing a service online, or if you have the latest cool application and you offer it to your users for free, how do you make money?  I often ask many of the startups that come to me what their revenue model is and how they plan to make money.  This is usually followed of course with “How are you going to pay me?”  I am not yet providing “Free” for my own services.  Many companies have long drawn out plans with “ad revenue”, affiliate marketing”, or worse yet I get a blank stare of “we have not yet come to that part of the business plan.”

In the end, you have to pay for the service you provide, be it your time, servers, salaries, and long lunches at In-N-Out.  Comscore is having the problem explaining that they have to pay their bills.  We have to give our stockholders a piece of the pie and we have to pay our salaries and everything associated with the costs of giving you what you want.  They are not able to barter it all and they certainly cannot ask their employees to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, so they have to charge.  I am not sure whether Jason or anyone else has really come up with an alternative to charging for Comscore’s services, other than perhaps the aforementioned ad revenue or the like.  Someone has to pay for the free in the chain of the exchange.  The problem that I see is that Comscore is asking the customer to pay when others are offering it for “free”, but even in that instance, someone is paying for the free.

Photo via Photos8.com

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.

I just came from a meeting where I was subject to a few “WOW” moments.  There are a few times in my business where I get to see some cool technologies that revolutionize the way we communicate, or listen, or perhaps the way we drink our coffee.  All of it is related to entrepreneurs that are taking their ideas and making them work.

The same should be for businesses that are already established.  We have been told the quote “innovate or die.”  We heard it as recent as the opening keynote at CES.  That is a mantra that all businesses should be paying attention to in the future.  Innovation is key to keeping your product or service fresh.  People will want to continue to buy if it changes and is better or changes their lives for the better.  I think Ford is doing that with its own innovations in vehicles.

I hope that in the coming weeks, we will be creating some “wow” moments for our clients and business partners.  We can use the “Wow” we are seeing as innovations and implement them into our daily routines to help clients and others change and make their own “wow” or awesome sauce or whatever buzz phrase you choose.

Stay tuned for some magical moments here at One By One Media, as we start on a mission of creating “Wow” and innovating our services.  I challenge all of you to have your own mission of creating “Wow!!”

photo via puliarf

I woke up Thursday morning and had Haiti on my mind.  As I fed the kids their breakfast and started getting ready for my day, I saw on the news picture of children suffering in the damage of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.  My heart shattered and I wanted to do something.  I felt helpless watching as families were destroyed, mothers and fathers were dead and children and others had no homes, no food and no water.  I had to do something.  I couldn’t stand by and watch more of the devastation without a way I felt I could lend a hand.

I had no way to provide monetary support.  I am not Bill Gates and my meager bank account was not enough.  I needed a better way to help.  What did I have that would be valuable enough to help those victims I was seeing?  I could think of only one thing, the help of many.  I know social media is powerful and I have seen how it works with other causes.  Not to discount the other causes and their value, but this is going to be seen as the single most devastating tragedy of our time.  I need to make it count and I needed to do it soon.

I reached out to a few friends I knew would help me and people I knew could.  I talked first to Chris Noble of Cause Media Group and his latest project at WhatGives.com.  After I gave him my 3 minute pitch, he said, “I’m in Jim.”  I know I can count on him to give his all and it was no surprise at his reaction but nonetheless appreciated.

I next reached my new friend Chris Murch of WS Radio. I met Chris at BlogWorld & New media Expo and we launched Blog World Expo Radio in Vegas at that event.   I was not sure whether Chris would be comfortable with my idea, but he quickly laid that issue to rest when he said “We can make that happen.”

The result? Haitian Assistance Relief Telethon

I wanted to make an impact that meant more than my $5 donation or even a $500 amount.  I wanted to go big and prove what I already know, you get a community together behind something and good will come of it.

You can watch along with Ustream as well as listening to it live.  We are using the hashtag of #HART in all of our Tweets and you can follow along there as well.

I would love to ask you for your support as we try to make an impact of the lives of those suffering in Haiti. If I can only help one child it will be enough, but showing a impoverished nation of children that we care about their pain and hurt and we want to comfort them might make a difference.

Trust. The word is bantered around in many relationships and it has a home in business as well as that puppy love crush you had in the 4th grade. Business can thrive when people trust each other. Not only in the relationships between businesses and their customers, but in the relationships you also have with the people you work with behind the scenes. I make it a point not to do anything that will make me mistrusted by the people that deal with me.  Generally speaking, what you see is what you get.  I try to be Genuine as the moniker on my twitter account reveals.

Customers trust that their needs will be met and that what they have paid for in your product or services is what you are providing. There have been a number of times that I have reduced my fees based on poor performance. Something that was unforeseen or a part of what was promised occurred differently and we work with the client accordingly.  They trust us to get the work done.

You also have to trust the people that are in the trenches with you on a day-to-day basis. They are working hard to make you a success and in turn you have to earn their trust by making sure they have all they need to perform their jobs and they can trust you will hold your end of the relationship as well by paying them and keeping that part of the program stress free.  Trust is an issue that we all need to keep in mind when doing business.  When you say trust me, can we?

I was going through my feeds last night and funneling all of my reads as I tend to do in the evenings and sharing some of what I found to be interesting to my community through Twitter.  This is becoming more and more of a habit with me as I tend to pour through a lot of data.  What I think might be of interest to my followers I share.  I am generous that way.  Actually it is part of my overall plan to let the blogosphere and other platforms know that I exist—I network therefore I am.  I see a t-shirt in the makings here.

As I approached the 11:00 pm hour I noticed that my Tweetdeck was acting up.  I am the type that wants everything just to work.  I don’t care about the Internet service and other stuff I want it to work when I hit the power button.  The same thing goes for Twitter.  When I hit send and let everyone what is happening, I want it to work.  When it doesn’t I just chalk it up to another fail whale.  That is until today when I found out that Twitter was hacked.  Not  hacked by a 13 year old kid in his parents basement but by the “Iranian Cyber Army”.  Excuse me?  I was just watching a Leo Laporte show about Cyber Warefare and making fun of it actually on Twitter, but now I read that headline on TechCrunch.  You can see the rest of the coverage on Techmeme.

Twitter is starting to lose my trust.  Is this what we are going to expect out of Twitter’s future?  There has been numerous Phishing problems with Twitter and there are many other incidents just this year of them getting hacked and Google documents being obtained.  I am losing trust for Twitter quickly.  I hope they will learn from the recent attack and work on making adjustments.  Do you trust Twitter?  I’m not sure I would give them my user and password for…. Ooops!  [Runs to change password again]  I am clearly not trusting the Twitter world at present.

I think I have seen it all or in this case heard it all and then they come out with a Twitter song! This is awesome!

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