Why Corporates Should Write Like Bloggers

Seth Godin nails it in a recent post. Short answer: because good blog writing is more engaging and more persuasive than any press release or home page ridden with corporate-speak. I especially like these two tips: use headlines and don't say it all at once. Get the rest on his blog...

1. Use headlines. I use them all the time now. Not just boring ones that announce your purpose (like the one on this post) but interesting or puzzling or engaging headlines. Headlines are perfect for engaging busy readers.

2. Realize that people have choices. With 80 million other blogs to choose from, I know you could leave at any moment (see, there goes someone now). So that makes blog writing shorter and faster and more exciting.

3. Drip, drip, drip. Bloggers don't have to say everything at once. We can add a new idea every day, piling on a thesis over time...

- Seth Godin (April 7, 2008)

Continuing the meme: thanks to the journalism prof who truly inspired me

Paul Gillin just tagged me, following Kami Watson Huyse's Thanksgiving meme. This one struck a chord so I took a crack at it. I'm taggng Karen Christensen of Berkshire Publishing fame; she's currently in Shanghai;  Karen Wickre, the force behind Google's corporate blog and Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations. I bet they've got great stories.

The teacher who most inspired me

His name was Wilmott Ragsdale and he taught in the journalism program at the University of Wisconsin where I got a masters degree.

Rags, as we called him, was the real thing. He was a veteran reporter for TIME, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. He had a professorial mustache and always dressed in a tweed jacket. He was always smiling,  always funny.  

What I remember most was his gentle, wry touch whether he was lecturing to a class, talking to a student one-on-one or writing comments on a story you'd turned in. (Yes, we wrote on paper back then and the teacher marked up our copy and handed it back.)

He taught by asking questions and always had the perfect provocative one... asked gently, of course, that made you realize you could improve.

'It's not quality... it's quantity'

But his underlying message was strong: you can become a great reporter. And you can do better than you're doing now. Keep at it. Keep trying. I've been most inspired by his favorite aphorism about writing: "It's not quality... it's quantity."

In other words, keep writing and writing... and writing. Don't concentrate on a few well-written stories. Write more! (Sounds like good blogging advice... doesn't it?) And if you care enough about the craft you'll turn into a great reporter. Which, of course, he was.

I suppose I still think of myself at bottom as "a writer" and a journalist even though I'm in business and marketing. Seems to me that the authenticity he begged us to include in our stories is pretty much the same thing as what makes a good blog.

Before turning to teaching he'd been - among other things - a boxer, a merchant seaman, a poet and a war correspondent (we're talking World War II) for TIME, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal.

Another of his favorite sayings which I loved, for some reason: "Journalism is not a profession... boxing is a profession."

Unbelievably, I just found a link to a TIME Magazine story about Rags and what a great reporter he was, dated June 29, 1942. I've been watching Ken Burns' The War on DVD for nights now, so this really struck a chord. Army gliders are shown in the film. They're very fragile and, it turns out, not terribly effective:

From TIME - 1942

TIME'S Wilmott Ragsdale wasn't sure you could do a loop in an Army glider until he went up in one at the new glider school at Twentynine Palms, California —suddenly felt his safety belt tighten and saw the desert above him.

He wasn't sure how you get down, either —until his pilot banked the wings almost vertical, fell off into swooping circles and came out at 90 m.p.h., 400 feet above the ground.

Probably you didn't know any more about these things than he did—so I think you will be especially interested in TIME'S story on Page 48—and in knowing a bit more about Ragsdale and his part in making the story so clear and real.

Ragsdale works out of TIME'S Washington office, but because of his rough and tumble travel experiences he is apt to be ordered anywhere. Educated at the University of Washington and at the Sorbonne, he has been a professional fighter, a logger, an oil driller, an extra in the Ballet Russe, a stevedore in Alaska, a publicity man for a symphony orchestra —and he sailed in the fo'c'sle to South America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Orient.

He originally got into the news business to make enough money to marry a girl he met in Paris —worked for the Wall Street Journal before he came to TIME... Continued...

- TIME magazine (June 29,1942)

Personal Branding Global Telesummit marks 10th anniversary of Tom Peters' article: The Brand Called You

Join me at the round-the-clock Personal Branding Global Telesummit on Thursday Nov. 8, 2007 to mark the 10th anniversary of the publication of Tom Peters' now iconic article: The Brand Called You. This 12-hour teleconference is FREE and you can dial in from anywhere. Choose from dozens of sessions on topics related to personal branding. Mine is How to Write a Great Business Blog (session starts at 11 AM Eastern on Nov. 8th). 

Speakers include William Arruda, Nina Burokas, Krishna De, Kirsten Dixson, John Jantsch, David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki, Andy Sernovitz and many others. All are donating their time, BTW, and 100,000 participants are expected. Each is being asked to make a donation to Kiva, a microfinance organization. Register here [look for little box on right-hand side] to get the dial-in number.

Special Offer - US $47 value

I'm offering a freebie in conjunction with the event. One of my favorite chapters in The Corporate Blogging Book is Chapter 7 ("Top Ten Tips to Write an Effective Business Blog"). Buy my book on Amazon (or UK edition; or Mandarin Chinese). Then email your Amazon receipt to me at debbie.weil(at)gmail.com. I'll send you gratis the downloadable audio recording of my one-hour teleconference on Writing a Great Corporate Blog (value US $47.00).      

Why you need a (multi-talented) blog editor

I talked about this today in my teleconference on How to Write an Effective Corporate Blog.

The challenge, as I see it, is to identify someone in your organization who is capable of doing a number of different things which draw on different skills. A blog editor needs to:

1. Manage the technical or backend of the blog

This isn't hard to do once a blog is set up in TypePad, for example. But it still requires time to master the interface. You need to be a teensy bit techie in order to be comfortable doing this. It helps a lot if you can do simple HTML coding.

2. Understand the content strategy of your blog

What's the goal? Who is your audience? What kinds of topics / editorial voice fit that goal? What articles in MSM (mainstream media) should your blog be linking to and talking about? What bloggers should you be linking to? Which of the Comments left on your blog do you need to respond to?

3. Monitor the blogosphere and MSM

This goes hand-in-hand with #2. In addition to setting up RSS keyword searches (this is free, if a bit hit or miss), a blog editor can ask that everyone send him/her newsy links they run across. If you have a larger budge, you can use a social media mining service like Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

4. Be a great editor

Oh I almost forgot this. Your blog editor needs to be a great editor so he/she can smoothe out syntactical gaffes, correct spelling and otherwise make the blog sound graceful and compelling. And also a great writer as he/she may be doing some of the writing.

Given the breadth of these skill sets / knowledge / talent, maybe the blog editor job needs to be split among several people in a large organization.

How GM's FastLane does it

Note that GM's FastLane blog is managed by a team that includes Christopher Barger, GM's Director of Global Communications Technology (love the title), along with Alicia Dorset, who is titled "blog editor." I know that GM also works closely with their PR/interactive agency, Haas MS & L on the blog.

What are your thoughts on who and how to manage a blog (or a number of blogs) for a company? I'd love to hear what you have to say.

The Nitty Gritty of How to Write an Effective Corporate Blog: May 24, 2007 Teleconference

I'm running a 60-minute teleconference on Thursday: The Nitty Gritty of How to Write an Effective Corporate Blog.

Hope you'll consider tuning in. I'll be addressing the following:

- How to choose your blog writer(s)
- What the role of a blog editor is
- Ghostblogging: drawing the line between editing and ghostwriting
- How to train your writers in the basic elements of blog writing style
- Advanced tips for effective blog writing (linking tricks)
- How to keep the momentum going (finding content, motivating your bloggers)

Here are the details:

DATE: Thursday May 24, 2007
TIME: 1:00 PM Eastern (10:00 AM Pacific; 11:00 AM Mountain; 12 noon Central)
DURATION: 60 minutes
FEE: US $97 per person
Register now

Included with your registration

An MP3 audio recording and enhanced PDF transcript are included with your registration fee.

The teleconference will be available in 24 hours for replay as an MP3 audio file. The edited PDF transcript includes all URLs referred to as well as pointers to other resources.

It always sounds better in French: Un bon blog repose sur une belle plume

Ah, the language of Proust and the madeleine. I told my son the story of the madeleine when he was a little boy (how a tiny taste of a madeleine cookie unleashed a surge of memories; in fact, Proust's very long book, À La Recherche du Temps Perdu).

He was fascinated and always insisted on ordering madeleines whenever he saw them - hoping to spark some memories, no doubt.

Congratulations Eliza and Minor!

Now my older daughter, Eliza, is getting married in two weeks. Congratulations Eliza and Minor! And she and her fiancé have madeleine biscuits on the dinner menu (paired with a tomato - lobster soup; it's delicious - I've tasted it).

All by way of saying that there's something magical (at least to me) about the French language. I went to school in France for a year when I was 14. And still speak fairly passable French. I've got a great accent but a schoolgirl's vocabulary.

Good blogging is good writing

I was tickled when I ran across the blog entry above in French, translating and enumerating seven blog writing tips from my little guide, "Top 7 Tips to Write an Effective Business Blog."

Chief among them: good blogging is good writing. Which translates, rather lyrically, to "A good blog derives from a beautiful pen - or writing."

Grab a free copy of my updated "Top 7 Tips to Write an Effective Business Blog"

I've just updated the guide and you can grab a copy free by clicking here.

Why humor is important in writing a (corporate) blog

Well, because it's fun and funny if it works. And because it predisposes the reader to feel positive (even warm and fuzzy) about the blogger. And that's a great way to start the conversation and strengthen the connection with your audience.

MSM (mainstream media) gets how to do this. The Wall Street Journal ran a story yesterday titled:

Experiments Suggest Birds May Be Capable of Planning Ahead
Birds aren't so bird-brained after all... - Wall Street Journal (April 13, 2007, page B1)

In other words, be tongue-in-cheek and say something that runs counter to what people normally think. It's an old journalistic technique but it works. Try it!

Oh and about the birds... turns out scrub jays cache food for the future and a crow was observed fashioning a wire into a hook to grab food.

April 12, 2007 teleconference: How to create a content strategy for your blog

You can pre-order the audio/print bundle from today's session on how to create a content strategy for a corporate or organizational blog. It includes:

- MP3 audio recording of the session
- Enhanced PDF transcript
- Content Strategy Workbook (19-page PDF; download immediately)

Pre-order now (US $97).

During this one-hour session I addressed many of the most nagging questions about content for a corporate blog.

Your key content questions

- Who should write our blog?
- Can we ghostblog for our CEO?
- Can it be multi-author?
- How do we choose topic(s)?
- Do we need a blog editor and what should his/her role be?
- How do we get our readers to leave Comments?
- How should we publicize our blog to other bloggers and to MSM (mainstream media)?
- How will we measure the ROI of our blog?

Come armed with additional questions (you'll have a chance to submit them beforehand). I'll dig into all the issues and provide practical tips & recommendations you can take back to the office. This will be a meaty, interactive audio conference. All you need is a phone.

Date: Thursday April 12, 2007

Time: 1:00 PM Eastern Event is over but you can order the audio recording and enhanced transcript. See below.

Duration: 60 minutes

Cost: US $97

Included:

• MP3 audio recording of one-hour event
• Enhanced PDF transcript
• 19-page Content Strategy Workbook (download immediately as a PDF)

Special thanks to my teleconference sponsor, Conference Calls Unlimited.

 

Why senior exec Russell Stalters blogs (and no, it's not to make money per se)

Had a great lunch yesterday with Russell Stalters, CTO of a system and software engineering firm and author of BetterECM (stands for enterprise content management).

He works nearby and a mutual friend suggested we get together. When I asked Russ what his blogging ROI is, he responded with a slight wince that "no" he couldn't pull a dollar figure out of the air and yes the blog does take time.

But he thinks the benefits are tangible. Namely:

1. Lead generation for his company, Applied Information Sciences.

2. Name recognition for him (he gets invited to speak at events like Gilbane's content conferences).

3. He meets interesting people (they leave comments on his blog or he discovers them on other blogs).

4. Writing the blog helps him gather and articulate his thoughts (he's been working on one blog entry for several months - it will be a definitive statement on where ECM is headed).

The lead gen piece is significant and a perfect example of what I try and explain to would-be corporate bloggers. A blog (with good content) is a heck of a lot more interesting / compelling / persuasive than a static site.

Send your prospects to your blog. They'll find their way naturally to your site. And they're much more apt to be in a positive state of mind about doing business with you when they get there.

Russ said his contacts at Microsoft (AIS is a Microsoft partner) send prospects to his blog first, as do his colleagues.

Shut up and write, says Andy Wibbels

My fellow Penguin Portfolio author Andy Wibbels (of BlogWild fame) has got something going tomorrow that sounds cool. He calls it, "Shut up and write." I love the idea. So shut up and...

P.S. Andy's is *not* the number 1 business blogging book (as he portrays it to be) but it's a fast, fun and useful read, particularly for the small business blogger. I include it in the Recommended Reading list at the back of The Corporate Blogging Book.

Download a transcript of The Corporate Blogging Book Teleconference

Yesterday's teleconference for The Corporate Blogging Book was a lot of fun. There were nine participants, each of whom purchased five copies of my new book from 800-CEO-Read.

One caller, Cathy Chatfield-Taylor, was energetic enough to take really good notes. Inspired by her efforts, I added a few things (and corrected a few things). Then the 10 of us agreed to offer anyone who's interested the summary transcript as a PDF download.

Here are some of the questions we addressed. They were submitted by participants, an interesting mix of consultants, corporate marketers and non-profit advocacy professionals.

Questions (see PDF for answers)

- What blog platform to use?

- How do you transition a blog from being a content management system to a more engaging interactive communications format?

- What do you do if you've published an ill-conceived post? How do you take it back??

- How do you handle comments? Moderate? Not allow?

- How do you build readership?

- How do you help non-writers blog?

- How can a non-profit raise money with a blog?

- What should an executive think / do / feel after finishing the book?

- What’s not in the book?

Download a PDF transcript of The Corporate Blogging Book Teleconference.

Thanks to Conference Calls Unlimited for sponsoring the teleconference.

What should the CEO blog about... and why

Caution: this is a really long post. I prepared it originally for the iaoc blog where I'm hosting a discussion this week on CEO blogging. I may come back and add some stuff later. I know I haven't covered every wrinkle. But in the spirit of instant publishing... oh, and chapter 5 in my new book is titled "Should the CEO Blog?"

Talk about opening a can of worms with the first two questions I threw out (you'll see comments and the full discussion when you click through):

1. Is it OK to ghostwrite a CEO blog?

2. Should a ghostblogger for a CEO reveal him or herself?

Suffice it say that there does *not* appear to be agreement on these two questions. The writer/copywriter types over on the iaoc blog generally weigh in on the side of, "Of course it's OK to ghostblog; that's what executive speechwriters do." Those who are not writers, per se, but who work in a corporate environment (see comments here) disagree. If the CEO doesn't write it, they say, then it ain't a CEO blog.

I tend to agree with the later. But am willing to stake out a middle ground where the CEO gets editing help. How "heavy" that editing is gets stickier...

Question #3: What should the CEO blog about... or not?

Let's get the obvious out of the way. What can't CEOs and other senior execs blog about?

- proprietary company information (which could range from new products or strategies to competitive intelligence to unkind gossip about colleagues or employees)

- financial information (forward-looking statements, anything the SEC would frown on)

- anything he/she doesn't want to reveal

That said...

The topic/style of a CEO's blog seems to be driven by the CEO's personality, writing ability, size of the company and nature of the business. Some of the best CEO bloggers, so far, run privately-held companies. Their approach seems to be I'll write about whatever the hell I want to - it's my company and my brand dammit.

Private Company CEO Bloggers

GoDaddy founder/CEO and blogger Bob Parsons is deliberately provocative. He likes to circumvent the media by telling his side of things (about GoDaddy's rejected Superbowl ad, for example). Doesn't mind being politically incorrect (see my interview with Bob shortly after he blogged about the use of torture in U.S. interrogation techniques).

And is happy to tell us about the newest Go Daddy Girl ("sexy, hot and blazing fast"). Clever blog title as (well sex always sells, right?) it attracts readers and Danica Patrick is in fact an Indy car racer .

He also writes about business. A recent entry is a long and detailed explanation of why Go Daddy withdrew its IPO filing.

As to whether Bob actually writes all this stuff himself, I have no idea. He told me he did (that was over a year ago). But his blog postings seem to have slowed down a lot since then. Anyway, his blog is fun to read, well written and he often gets hundreds of comments in response.

So there's one side of the scale for a CEO blogger.

Also in this category is Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia and Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Both good writers, they post frequently and provocatively.

Zane Safrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, and one of my favorite CEO bloggers, probably also fits in this category. Zane isn't outrageous but his postings are always thoughtful. He writes about a bunch of stuff that interests him from current events and health care policy to the challenges of running a small young company and things that make him laugh.

His blog has a new tagline which is spot on: Thoughts from running a small company in a rapidly changing industry.

Public Company CEO Bloggers

At the other end of the spectrum are public company CEO blogs. There are fewer of them. The worst is probably Whole Foods' John Mackey. His last blog entry, as of this writing, is dated June 26, 2006.

The best, hands down, is Sun Microsystem's Jonathan Schwartz (the first Fortune 500 CEO blogger). He's a terrific writer with a light touch and seems to have an uncanny knack for taking really techie stuff and turning it into something meaningful for us non-geeks. From a recent entry:

As I mentioned, Thumper (sorry, the x4500) is built atop a 2 socket Galaxy server, it leverages Solaris/ZFS (but doesn't require it - Thumper runs Microsoft SQL Server quite well, too), and has 24 terabytes of serial ATA disk inside. So it's part server, part application platform, and part storage product."

Huh?

But then he writes:

"Customers pay only one price, but in the pursuit of transparency, how should we categorize the revenue? - as server, storage or software product? It obviously contains all three. Going forward... The more we open up, the more you'll see we're built from common components and infrastructure - which complicates answering the question, "how much revenue do you generate from x, y, z."

More later but please dive in and add your two cents (or more) on what CEOs should blog about - or not - and why.

Is it OK to ghostwrite a CEO blog and, if so, should the ghostblogger reveal him or herself?

I'm moderating a discussion on these knotty questions over on the iaoc blog this week.

Day 1: Is it OK to ghostwrite a CEO blog?

The consensus seems to be yes at least amongst the small group of writers who're taking part in the discussion.

Feel free to add your two cents, either by adding a comment on the iaoc blog (you have to create a login which is kind of a pain but not hard to do). If it's easier, click Comments below to add your thoughts.

Day 2: Should a ghostblogger for a CEO reveal him or herself?

Again the consenus, thus far, is very un-bloglike. I.e. "no."

I'd really like to hear from readers who aren't writers per se and who work in a corporate environment. Am I hopelessly naive to think that a CEO can write his or her own blog?

Is Sun's Jonathan Schwartz the only Fortune 500 CEO with the writing chops to be a popular and highly-regarded blogger?

Waddya think?

Useful Link

Featured today on CNN's Technology page: CEO bloggers communicate to the masses.

The three biggest challenges for CEO bloggers are discipline, passion and writing ability

The three biggest challenges for CEO bloggers are discipline, passion (about your expertise) and writing ability.

You've got to have the discipline to blog and keep at it over a long period of time (months, years).

You've got to be passionate about whatever your expertise is.

And you gotta be able to write well, to express yourself clearly, convincingly, compellingly. You have to be compelling enough that you'll keep your readers coming back and interacting with your blog.

Writing well is hard

So why are there still so few really good CEO bloggers? Because that trifecta is hard to come by. And, er, writing well is hard. Really hard.

Interestingly, there's a bit of a Catch 22 in this: the more you write (or blog), the better your writing (blogging) becomes. So while there may be a minimum threshold for discipline + passion + writing ability, once you pass that you've got loads of potential to become an effective CEO blogger.

A handful who pass the test:

Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems

Note: Jonathan's blog is now in 11 languages including English. See the drop-down box in the upper right-hand corner! Update: as of this writing, the translated blog entries are not appearing yet.

Karen Christensen of Berkshire Publishing

Matt Blumberg of ReturnPath

Richard Edelman of Edelman PR

Zane Safrit of Conference Calls Unlimited

Good advice: blog to be found by real people who don't have a clue what RSS is

Jakob Nielsen nails it in his most recent AlertBox column: Use Old Words When Writing for Findability.

While it may be tempting for some of us to opine about Web 2.0 - i.e. the next generation Web, defined in part by user-created content such as YouTube videos, MySpace and Facebook - don't!

If your goal is to be found online by adults (call them customers and prospects if you want to sound really old-school) who don't live and breathe the latest techie terms, then for heaven's sake don't fill your blog entries with terms like RSS and tagging. Most folks don't have a clue.

 

Check out this illustration from eMarketer for an article titled Really Seldom Syndication. eMarketer notes that "merely 2% of US employees subscribe to RSS feeds and only 9% know what such feeds are."

5 Tips to Overcome Your Fear of Blogging

Here's a tips article the WOMMA folks posted to their blog:

How to Confront Your Fear of Corporate Blogging (5 tips from author and blogger Debbie Weil)

P.S. I didn't write the below. I.e. they're not my words exactly. But the tips are good. I've got a whole chapter on Fear of Blogging in my new book, The Corporate Blogging Book.

Tip #1. Think about blogging strategically
Ask yourself these questions: Why does it really make sense for you to add a blog to your marketing communications strategy? What is it that you really want to say? What are your customers really interested in?

Tip #2. Consider starting an event-specific blog
If taking on a project with no end to it feels overwhelming, begin a blog surrounding a certain event. You may find that there's a long-term tie-in, and you can continue the blog. Or, you may find that you've had enough, but now you have some experience under your belt and may not feel as apprehensive.

Tip #3. Get familiar with the convention of blogging
Give it a try. If you don't tell anyone, the blog will stay private and you can practice for as long as you like until you feel comfortable. Show colleagues and ask for their input before making it public.

Tip #4. Don't worry about running out of things to say
It doesn't matter what your widgets are, because you're not going to blog about your widgets. You're going to blog about things related to your widgets.

For example, a blog from an all-natural yogurt company wouldn't be very interesting if it focused solely on yogurt. A blog about organic farming would have a much wider appeal.

Tip #5. Just do it
You've got some experience. The blog is up and running (if only for your own purposes). You've figured out what you're willing to say, and what your customers are interested in that is related to your products and services.

Now, simply keep it up.

Useful Links

WOMMA's How-To's Archive

Good write-up of the session I moderated on Great Corporate Blogs at WOMBAT-2

Group or multiple author blogs will become more common

I've been saying this for awhile (and it's in my new book, The Corporate Blogging Book, on, er, pages 76 and 77). Namely, multiple-author corporate blogs will become more and more common as folks weary of the constant pressure to update and maintain a blog.

Now along comes Ana Marie Cox (aka Wonkette) to say the same thing in an interesting interview with The New York Times' David Pogue.

Wonkette's Ingredients for a Successful Blog (July 27, 2006 in Circuits):

Excerpt:

"DP: So what are the ingredients then for a successful  blog, apart from being entertaining or snarky?

AMC: I think it’s changing. Six months, a year ago, I would have talked about what I think made Wonkette successful and makes Gawker successful, to a certain extent, and other blogs: A strong, defined personality with a sense of humor about themselves. An ability to filter news quickly and to recognize, you know, what is interesting to other people as well as interesting to themselves, and finding the balance between those things.

What I think is changing is that people have now become addicted to the rapid update. You know, the not just 12 times a day; 18 times a day, 24 times a day. And it’s almost physically impossible for one person to do that.

And so I think that we’re probably going to see that the individual, strong-personality blog is not going to be at the forefront, because group blogs are going to be able to do what people expect of blogs better."

How to blog about something other than your "widgets"

Here's a truism about corporate blogging: generally, nobody cares about your widgets. What people do care about is stuff related to your widgets - cool things you can do with them, related lifestyles, industry issues, etc. This is where it gets a bit trickier. Should you be deadly serious? Can you have a bit of fun??

The cleverest tack I've seen lately is one taken by the Ethics Crisis blog. It's the marketing companion to a business called SRF Global Translations. (The blog appears to be the company's Web site, as well.) 

SRF is a family-run business established in 1976 that provides "mindful, nuanced, professional multilanguage translations" of unglamorous materials like corporate codes of ethics and compliance documents.

Not the kind of widgets that make you say "cool" but certainly a very useful service.

So what's the blog about? Well, there are sections for serious discussions of global ethics. But the fun part is an Ethics Confession page where you can type in -- anonymously -- the most unethical thing you've ever done at work ("we're not talking about taking home the office pencils," the blog advises).

After you've submitted your 250-word anecdote, readers vote on how egregious your actions were...

Read Halley Suitt to taste, feel and smell good writing

Halley Suitt's remembrance of her dad who died exactly four years ago takes my breath away.

Why you should play nice in the blogosphere

SixApart co-founder and president Mena Trott made some interesting comments about blogging and civility at LesBlogs this week in Paris (Dec. 5-6, 2005). Then, while she was still on stage, she and an audience member exchanged some contentious words. Stick to your guns, Mena. You're a good thinker and a good writer and I happen to agree with your perspective on civility.

Read the text of Mena's LesBlogs speech here on her blog.

Follow the blogging trail about the LesBlogs incident here on Technorati. Or watch the video of the incident. Unnerving if only as a reminder that nothing, absolutely nothing, is immune from being captured online.

But back to Mena's thoughts on blogging and civility. Her point, really, was that what you say on a blog is permanent and that you're accountable for creating that record.  Why stir up a controversy or create a negative record (which will show up in Google search results) when perhaps... it would be better not to. In other words, just because you can (publish anything instantly and effortlessly via a blog) doesn't mean you should.

As she puts it in her follow-up post:

I think accountability and responsibility is about holding off seemingly anonymous attacks, giving people the benefit of the doubt and understanding that what you say online not only affects others but is part of a permanent record -- a record that, right now, is scary to some watching from afar.

More on whether GM's Fastlane blog should talk about the company's massive lay-offs, declining market share and other not-so-cheery news

More on this intriguing topic: should GM's Fastlane blog, osensibly focused on products (i.e. cars), be talking about or making direct reference to the recent news that the #3 company on the Fortune 500 is planning another round of massive layoffs, etc.

From Shel Holtz: GM isn't censoring Fastlane

From Stephen Davies: Should the GM blog address layoffs?

From Dave Taylor: Further discussion about the GM Fastlane blog

Call me a corporate stoodge... but I still agree with my earlier position that the Fastlane bloggers don't need to say much about GM's financial woes, at least not directly.

However, as I said in March 2005 about Corporate tell-it-not blogs, the GM bloggers do need to acknowledge the elephant in the room. (A number of executives contribute to the blog in addition to Bob Lutz.)

And I do wish Fastlane would tone down the cheeriness a tad... it does strike a truly discordant note with what's in the news these days about GM (declining market share, declining stock price, you name it).

It will be interesting to see how they handle the bad news on the blog going forward.

From the how-to-say-it without saying it department

Michael Wiley, GM's Director of New Media and a member of the Fastlane blog team, left this comment on Dave Taylor's Intuitive Life blog [scroll down to the third comment]:

"You're right that blogging at GM is a balancing act of many different stories, stakeholders and approaches that constantly demands focus. We decided early on that the blog's primary focus is on product, product development, vehicle design and quality. A vehicle company's reason for existence is to sell cars, so the selling piece gets some attention, too. Corporate issues such as staffing levels [my edit: layoffs] and facility usage [er, factory shut-downs] are not the blog's focus."

Michael, I know you well. It's OK to use the word layoffs, really.

On the other hand... I just thought of this.

Michael is savvy enough to know that someone doing a fine-tooth combed search for "GM" and "lay-offs" on Google just might unearth the comment he left on Dave Taylor's blog. And I suspect he'd rather his words not come up in that search result. No dumb bunny, he.

Weird and woolly...

Steve Rubel's Ten Blogging Hacks

What can I say? Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion fame is just too clever. No time to wax eloquent. Buried in the book.

Here are Steve Rubel's 10 Blogging Hacks. Learn about Writely (document writing and sharing via the Web), automatic posting of your daily del.icio.us links, Bookmarklets, blogging from your cell phone, Iconizing your blog, using Plazes to tell everyone where you are geographically, auto-inserting Technorati tags, using Cafepress to make money selling blog schwag and more... Does this guy ever ever sleep?!

Useful Links

More hacks (i.e. clever ways to use tech tools) from Steve Rubel:

Ten RSS Hacks

Ten Technorati Hacks

Ten Wikipedia Hacks

New! Five Blog Reading Hacks

Synthetic transparency: a new term for corporate blogging?

Provocative.

A group of students in "Advanced Organizational Communication" at Northeastern University are penning a blog along with their professor and they've come up with a new way of describing a corporate blog:

"Synthetic transparency involves using blogs to give the impression of openness, honesty, and transparency but without really doing so.

This notion is based on Norman Fairclough's* idea of "synthetic personalization"** which he defines as:

... a compensatory tendency to give the impression of treating each of the people 'handled' en masse as an individual. Examples would be air travel (have a nice day!), restaurants (Welcome to Wimpy!) and the simulated conversation (for example, chat shows) and bonhomie which litter the media..."

Waddya think?

[via Fredrik Wackå]

GM's Bob Lutz, blogger and vice chairman, is writing the Foreword to The Corporate Blogging Book

This is cool. I'm thrilled to announce that Bob Lutz, GM's vice chairman of global product development, is writing the Foreword to my book.

Bob is GM's most high-profile blogger, as you probably know. I guess you could call him one of the first A-list bloggers for the Fortune 500.

I asked him... and he said Yes. He just emailed me a draft of the foreword. More than a draft really. It's terrific. He's an awfully good writer and yes, I think he wrote it himself. Thanks Bob, for a wonderful contribution to the book.

How blogging is different from journalism

International Herald Tribune reporter Thomas Crampton guest blogs for A-list* blogger Joi Ito and, after 30 days of blog duty, provides these thoughts on how blogging differs from journalism. Blogging means:

• Involvement (different from the "lecturing" stance most journalists take)
• Informal tone
• Strong opinions (again discouraged in journalism unless it's an op-ed piece)
• Length (doesn't have to be long)
• Reporting (minimal, he says; other than quick Web searches)
• Time (not as much as he feared...)

He's pretty much dead on. Although several of those who've left comments on the entry say it does take time. I agree. Read the full post plus comments from (A-lister) David Weinberger and others here.

* So what's an A-list blogger, you ask? Good question and one I'm addressing in The Corporate Blogging Book. Among the A-listers are the original bloggers (starting in 2000 or so) who set the standards for the kind of smart writing, unswerving instinct for what's worth writing about and sheer doggedness that we associate with good blogging. A few A-listers: Doc Searls, Denise Howell, Halley Suitt and lots lots more.

CEO blogger Zane Safrit asks: Once you start blogging, can you ever stop? [Podcast]

"Once you start blogging, can you ever stop?" asks prolific blogger Zane Safrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited. To be precise, he didn't say those exact words during our podcast [click to download the MP3 or listen]. But it's a great question. Zane, my advice to you is: "Don't stop."  You're good and getting better all the time.

He blogs about current events, the economy, outsourcing, health insurance and other stuff. Oh, and he just blogged about our podcast here.

Zane is in fact kind of zany, defined as "amusingly unconventional and idiosyncratic." (Surely I'm not the first to point that out :-) He's been blogging regularly since December 2004 as a way to create a "voice" (pardon the pun) for his teleconferencing company.

So what's his differentiator in a very crowded marketplace? A customer-centric approach. An informed, energetic, real-live-person answers every time you call CCU. Everyone, including "the IT guy," answers the phones, Zane said. And they're charged with "doing whatever it takes to make the customer happy."

If you're a customer, you soon learn their names (Cindy and Chaz and others).

Our impromptu podcast started out as a phone interview, with me asking Zane a bunch of questions for The Corporate Blogging Book I'm writing. I'm on a cell phone so my end of the conversation sounds a bit muffled. Zane comes in loud and clear. We decided half way through the call to turn it into a podcast. Nothing fancy; no cool intro music.

Oh, and one of the key takeaways: Zane says he writes "for an hour or two" every day. Ninety percent of the time he's online and blogging directly into TypePad's interface. He "Publishes" almost immediately. Then goes back later to do a quick edit, if needed.

He starts out with a goal of "four lines." But often finds he writes 1000 words. "With a cup of coffee the sky's the limit," he says. He doesn't consider himself "a word craftsman" but finds that his writing has become "more concise, clearer, a little crisper" over time. (I agree, having been reading his blog for months.)

One thing Zane says he gets out of regular blogging:

Clarity.

"It helps me articulate and refine ideas in a linear fashion, ideas that I'm thinking about for our company. So it improves my ability to communicate within the company."

Another benefit of blogging:

He's made "high-profile contacts" through his blog. Trackbacks and emails have connected him with "sneezers" (Seth Godin's term for influencers), Zane said.

It was Seth who inspired him to start blogging for real. "I had had a blog account with TypePad for eight months but I didn't get it. I didn't really know what blogging was."

Download or listen to the MP3. Podcast subscribe link TK.

Useful Links

Zane's version of our podcast (good reading)

Why CEOs Should Blog by Jeneane D. Sessum

ReturnPath CEO Matt Blumberg makes the same point in Jeneane's article:  “One of the best things publishing a blog has done has been to force me to spend a few minutes here and there thinking about issues I encounter in a more structured way and crystallizing my point of view on them,”  Blumberg wrote in 2004. “[That’s] invaluable, but mostly for me.”

Technorati tags: CEO, CEO blogs,   business blogging,   corporate blogging

 

Note to self: cut the corporate-speak when I'm writing

I can feel it seeping in, insidiously... a tendency to write in longer, more formal, more tortuous sentences like, well, like this one. Maybe it has to do with focusing on the topic of corporate blogging. Is 'corporate blogging" the ultimate oxymoron? Not necessarily. But it does pose the particular challenge of finding the right voice. Just because your topic is serious or complex or filled with jargon and acronyms doesn't mean you have to write about it in a ponderous way.

So Debbie, listen up... cut the corporate-speak on your blog and just... say it.

A couple of useful resources for writing a blog:

- Slide presentation by Molly Holzschlag and Darren Barefoot from their Blog Writing Style session at last week's Blog Business Summit in San Francisco

- Top 7 Tips to Write an Effective Business Blog (PDF). By yours truly. Yes, you can download it and freely pass it around.