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Great blogging advice from Stowe Boyd

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You don’t need to be following the Dave Winer-Rogers Cadenhead RSS scrap to get tremendous value from Stowe Boyd’s advice about Personality, Persona, and the Personal and Private in this post.

His advice is spot-on for new and A-Z list bloggers alike, especially the part about personal and private information. If it is personal and private, don’t blog it. Once you blog it, it is public information, and the public can use it any way they please. Even if you don’t like it.

In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t start a blog years ago. I messed around with Blogger a bit when it first came out, but I had absolutely no interest in blogging about my personal life, which is what most blogs seemed to be in the early days. We already had a Web site where we posted family pictures (pre Flickr and other photo sharing sites, folks). Going into detail about my life had ZERO interest for me.

It wasn’t until I started my consulting business in 2004, and was looking for an outlet for my thoughts on sales, marketing and PR, that I turned back to blogging and started the Roadmap. Now, I occasionally share personal nuggets here about my son, my dogs, my interests and my family, but these bits of info are just atmosphere. They perhaps give you a better sense of who I am, but the blog is still about marketing, PR and blogging. Not about me.

So think before you post: am I revealing something here that goes beyond my comfort zone? Will I regret it in the morning? This is particularly important (as reported in this week’s BusinessWeek  You Are What You Post) when you are writing something that doesn’t put you in the best possible light.  You, your friends, potential employers or clients, possible dates and mates, and your Mum and Dad will be seeing that post for years to come.

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Grab Bag: Business Blogging in Wisconsin, World Water Day and Dr. Who

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Last week was my trip to the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee to present my Business Blogging 101 Workshop (full day format) at  the UWM School of Business Center for Technology Innovation. The hospitality of the faculty hosts was superb, the room was terrific and the audience totally engaged. I enjoyed most of my trip. Especially dinner at Mader’s German restaurant the evening before the seminar. YUM.

The only bad part? And the reason why this blog has been silent all weekend, a time I normally post? Around two in the afternoon on Friday, I got really sick. Flu sick. The kind of sick where you want to curl up and die sick. I toughed it out and finished the seminar (a bit early) and dragged myself to the airport to wait for the flight home. But I was not a pretty sight, trust me. I didn’t get home until midnight, and it took most of the weekend to get my equilibrium back. So I went ‘net-less until I checked email late yesterday afternoon.

What did I do instead? Besides sleep you mean? I read an absolutely terrific book, Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. It’s the legend of the Grail, but told from a female perspective, with dual storylines, one modern, one medieval. I highly recommend it. Think about it — it was so good, I didn’t miss my blog reading….

It must be a Grail period for me — tomorrow we are going to see Spamalot. From the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous!

To a more serious matter: World Water Day, March 22, 2006. Brought to my attention by blog buddy Yvonne DiVita. Yvonne has always helped me get the word out about charities I have been involved with, and I am more than pleased to be able to return the favor, and for such a worthy cause to boot!

Some facts from  WaterPartners International, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping fight unsafe and inadequate water supplies.

  • In 1992, the UN General Assembly designated March 22 as “World Water Day” to draw international attention to the critical lack of clean, safe drinking water worldwide.
  • The Global water crisis is the leading cause of death and disease in the world, taking the lives of more than 14,000 people each day, 11,000 of whom are children under age 5.
  • The average distance that women in Africa and Asia walk to collect water is 6 kilometers. More than 200 million hours are spent every day by women and girls walking to collect water from distant, often polluted sources—time that could be better spent on more productive endeavors such as work and school.

Why hasn’t this problem been solved? Mostly because people just aren’t aware of the crisis. Those with the money to help aren’t touched by it.  In the developed world, the biggest water shortage we typically face is whether we can water our lawns in the summer. We buy water at the store, to which we drive in our cars….

And with my most cynical hat on, it’s about water, women and children, not oil and WMDs…. It just doesn’t get the play, in our politics or our policy, that the more macho issues do. 

So we need to make people aware. I urge you to check out the WaterPartners Web site. Their common-sense approach seems to be making a difference. Make a donation if you can. Blog about World Water Day. Help spread the word however you can. Even if you just tell one other person.

Because we can do without a lot of things in this world. Safe drinking water is NOT one of them.

And after you do a good thing, treat yourself to the new Dr. Who!!! Yes, the good doctor is back, in his 9th incarnation. The new series debuted last year on the BBC and now US viewers can see the episodes on Sci-Fi channel. Premiere was last Friday, with 2 episodes, Rose and The End of the World,  but it’s Sci-Fi — if you (or your TIVO) missed it, the shows will repeat two or three times before the next new episode this Friday.

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Navel Gazing in the Blogosphere

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Warning: slightly rantish post ahead. If you’re not in the mood, suggest you go here or maybe here.

On to the rant.

Over the past week or so, it seems like a new cycle of "deep blog introspection" has started. What’s that,  you say?  It’s when  bloggers start engaging in that time-honored activity,  "blog navel gazing." The principal symptoms? Posts about ME with the occasional dash of poor poor pitiful. Thoughtful pronouncements on the future of blogging.

Huh?

Here’s the thing. Blog if you enjoy it. If you stop enjoying it, stop. Don’t worry about your fans — they’ll survive. Another blog will step in and fill the void. Really.

How often you post? Whatever you want. It is YOUR blog. Even if only you and your Mum are reading it (and trust me, I’ve been there. Thanks, Mum!), it will never be too much. We should welcome new voices all the time. Big boys and girls, we are capable of filtering and choosing material based on what interests us today.  And picking different stuff tomorrow. Read this post by Stowe Boyd. He says it far better than me (thanks to Kent Newsome for the link).

Don’t have time to read all your email. Fine. Don’t. The world will keep on turning. Make sure you read the stuff for your job, but all that email from blog buddies and fans. Skip it if it is too much. Of course, don’t expect them to read YOURS either. Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.

The conversation will go on.

Now, before everyone jumps all over me, I am NOT picking on anyone specific. Deliberately. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and can blog about whatever they damn well please. Or not.

Just don’t ask your readers to care when you stop blogging about the interesting things they started reading your blog for. Your friends DO care if you are upset or hurt or pissed off or whatever. But most of the people reading your blog don’t. At most, they are online acquaintances. They may become friends, but it takes more than a conference meet up and a few blog comments to make a real friend. Really.

Your readers started reading your blog because there was something in it for THEM. When it becomes all about YOU, hhmm……

It’s all about choice. We choose when we enter the conversation, and we get to choose when we leave.

And that’s cool.  

Just like this post. If you didn’t feel like reading my rant, I gave you some fun alternatives. Worth checking out even if you did (thanks!) read to the end.

Rant off. Back to our regular program.

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The Week in Review: March 6-10

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A new (and very interesting) client has just come on board,  I had deadlines for some other projects, and I had to take a quick trip mid-week. Time has been tight, so blogging has been light.

So this post is going to be the week in review —  comments on the things I probably would have blogged in more depth had I more time.

Of course, the top PR blogging news of the week was the Edelman-Wal-Mart blogger relations story, starting with the New York Times article on March 7th, and continuing on with commentary from just about every PR/Marketing blogger on the planet. Except me of course. I was at a client 🙂 Check out the great round-ups of the commentary written by  Constantin Basturea and Tom Murphy. And don’t miss Richard Edelman’s post. For more coverage, here are the google and technorati searches on "Edelman Wal-Mart"

My .02 — this really does look like a simple effort at blogger relations, perhaps not the best execution, but not intentionally sinister.  In fact, I think Wal-Mart would be foolish to not engage in grassroots blogger relations, given how well organized its critics in the blogosphere are.

Here’s my take-away from this tempest in a teapot:

First, we have to be fair in our criticisms. Part (but not all) of the outrage about the Wal-Mart outreach was outrage about Wal-Mart in general. You have to put both your friends and your enemies to the same test. If something would be okay if your buddy did it, but it is bad if the evil empire does it,  you are not being fair. This is not dis-similar from what happened in the initial outrage more than a year ago about character blogs. GourmetStation and others were being lambasted for having characters as the blog authors. I pointed out a certain inconsistency using the example of Spencer F. Katt, the PC Week/eWeek mascot for 20-plus years who has both a column and yes, a blog. Somehow, a character everybody knew and liked was okay. It was only the new ones that were bad blogging practice 🙂  Wrong. Be consistent in BOTH your flames and your kudos.

Second, as PR practitioners start reaching out to blogs… as they should, and as most of us have preached, dare I say ad nauseaum, we have to expect mistakes. Given the ongoing commentary on PR blogs about the general quality of much PR practice, we shouldn’t be surprised if some PR agency efforts at blogger relations are better than others. I have no particular opinion about Edelman’s blogger outreach program. Time will tell whether it was good, bad or something in between. I am certain however, that no blogger outreach program will be (or should be) successful without complete transparency. You MUST be completely honest about your role and your vested interests. And not surprised if your entire campaign is published on a blog somewhere.

Again, a comparison. When I started to get a great deal of media exposure as spokesperson for Cyber Patrol in the late 90s, I was very careful to make sure that my public statements passed the ultimate test: would I be embarassed if this were on the front page of the NY Times? Different times, same general principal. Ain’t no such thing as "off the record."

Moving on, conferences. Without a doubt, the model of conferences where the panel is presumed to be the "experts" and the audience the "students" is outmoded. In tech and in marketing, the two arenas where I have spent most of my professional career, the audience often knows as much, or more, than the panelists. I’ve written about this here a bit, and it was one of the inspirations for the Room of Your Own proposal for Business Blogging currently under consideration for BlogHer 06. Our idea is that the panelists are there to kick off the discussion, but in fact the entire audience is the panel, and an active part in building our takeaway "best practices" for business bloggers.

This week,  some smart bloggers asked some great questions about the "conference issue:"

And if you haven’t figured it out yet, Elisa Camahort brings it home: BlogHer is the conference that takes a truly different approach. See you there in July.

In the category of smart business advice:

  • PR Squared has a series of three posts of "bad advice" about customer references which of course are excellent advice for PR and MarCom pros. Here they are:  one, two, three
  • Converstations gives some great advice on how to best write your posts in A Blog Posting Mantra.
  • And Jill Konrath has some great advice on thinking like your customer.

In the news:

And finally, if you stuck this post out this long, you deserve some fun. Don’t miss this clip on trendspotting from the Daily Show. Thanks to Small Business Trends for the link.

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It’s all in the name…GetGood…Goodlink

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POST UPDATED APRIL 6, 2006

It’s all in the name.

About six-eight months ago, I started getting support calls for something called  GoodLink. Apparently a mobile phone software product of some sort.

We were stymied. We had no idea why people all over the country were calling GetGood Strategic Marketing for support for some product called GoodLink.  It wasn’t tons of calls, maybe one a month, but it was a mystery.

I even asked one caller how he got my number. "From your website," he replied. I was confused but I just couldn’t put it together.

Until last week when I received an email from a college professor, which said:

"I have no idea how a program “GetGood” with an automatic link to your site got installed on my Treo and I cannot find a way to delete it since it doesn’t seem to show up in the applications list.  Can you help me?"

All of a sudden, things started to make some sense. I’m still not sure, but what I think has happened is:

A company called Good Technology has a product called GoodLink that runs on mobile phones, specifically the Treo.

I’m betting that the file (either the program or an .exe) is called GetGood. Don’t know for sure because I don’t have a Treo, but that’s my guess.  Because I can’t believe that the file actually LINKS to my site…

Some people must see the filename, wonder what it is and do a ‘net search’ on "getgood".

Hhmm. I wonder if there is any documentation..

Anyway, the top results on that search deliver my Web site or my blog. They get to my site, find a phone number, or in this last case, my email, and they look no further.

And it wouldn’t matter because the search on "getgood" does show the sites of other Getgoods lower down, but last I looked, it doesn’t deliver GoodLink or Good Technology.

I’ve sent an email to Good Technology asking that they consider changing the filename from someone’s surname, but I don’t hold out much hope for a response. Or any change.

So I am writing this post, hoping that this post will rise high enough in the search engine results so that future searchers will find it, and get the answers they need.

So here’s the scoop. If you are looking for strategic marketing consulting, you’ve found the right place. Send me an email at sgetgood@getgood.com or call me at 978-562-5979. I’d love to chat with you.

If you have a Treo mobile phone and are looking for information about your GetGood file or GoodLink, you probably want Good Technology.

Their address and phone:

4250 Burton Drive
Santa Clara, CA 95054
United States

Phone: +1.408.327.6000
Fax: +1. 408.327.6001

A rose by any other name….

UPDATE 4/6/06: Mystery solved by yet another customer call (never heard from the company): the Web site for "over-the-air provisioning of Good Technology’s software" is at http://get.good.com (no "www") but people are so trained to type the www that they end up at my Web site http://www.getgood.com.

Tags: getgood, goodlink, treo

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