So here goes my first quasi-live blogging experience. I’m at the Essentials of Business Blogging seminar, and I have to admit that I thought this was going to be a much different event. I realized last night that this isn’t the Blog Business Summit that I heard such great things about from last year. Yes, I’m a bonehead.
But when I realized that I was going into a session for Business Blogging newbies, I was quite excited.
The event has been marginal. The focus has been solely on tools, which while an important part of the discussion, is only a minor part of the discussion. Talking about business blogging without talking about the ethics, and the right mindset for the concept is like giving a car to a 16 year old without any driving experience – it’s dangerous, someone’s going to get hurt, and it’s going to cost money you don’t want to send.
The current speaker (Janet Johnson from Marqui) has just talked about how their strategy a while for paying bloggers to blog about their product. The basic take away she’s pitching to a group of total newbies is that paying bloggers created controversy and increased brand awareness, therefore all is good.
I have to tell ya, I’m about to jump out of my skin. I asked Janet the question “Why pay bloggers? Could you not find any that would be willing to work with you?” She brought it back to how the controversy drove traffic. (This is a company that mentions helping you “Guarantee Brand Integrity” as part of their product positioning on their home page)
But what about a longer term relationship? What about longer term brand ambassadorship? What about making a real connection to current and potential users?
The Paris Hilton Approach may work up front in a limited way, but it’s certainly not a real solution.
UPDATE: The conference organizer just said something to effect of – if people in your company don’t like the idea of comments from people telling you they don’t like your company, just turn off comments.
Check please.
IF the lack of comments is part of the strategy for your blog, great. If your blog grows to a point where comments aren’t adding value or are overwhelming in quantity or hell, great. But if you simply want to avoid having to listen to consumers, that’s not a good enough reason. Why bother with a blog in the first place? Issue press releases and save yourself some late night typing.
Teresa Valdez Klein
March 23rd, 2006 4:39
Jake: Ahh yes, the infamous difference between our seminars and our conferences... The seminars are for newbies, though more experienced bloggers can and do get a lot out of them as well. The conferences include a seminar at the beginning to get the newbies up to speed, but they're really intended to get more experienced business bloggers together.
You have some interesting and very welcome criticisms of our seminar. I think it's possible that you really were at the wrong event. The entire point of this seminar was to teach the "how." While ethical blogging is obviously an important thing, we felt that it wasn't necessary to cover the topic in serious depth because this is business, not journalism, and we trust that our attendees are already running ethical businesses.
We've also found that businesses already get the "why" of blogging, or they wouldn't be coming to our seminars in the first place. What they come to learn is the "how," and that's what we give them.
Teresa Valdez Klein
March 23rd, 2006 11:39
Jake: Ahh yes, the infamous difference between our seminars and our conferences... The seminars are for newbies, though more experienced bloggers can and do get a lot out of them as well. The conferences include a seminar at the beginning to get the newbies up to speed, but they're really intended to get more experienced business bloggers together.
You have some interesting and very welcome criticisms of our seminar. I think it's possible that you really were at the wrong event. The entire point of this seminar was to teach the "how." While ethical blogging is obviously an important thing, we felt that it wasn't necessary to cover the topic in serious depth because this is business, not journalism, and we trust that our attendees are already running ethical businesses.
We've also found that businesses already get the "why" of blogging, or they wouldn't be coming to our seminars in the first place. What they come to learn is the "how," and that's what we give them.
Jake
March 23rd, 2006 11:01
Teresa,
First, welcome to the blog!! Thanks for your comments, this is why blogging is so much fun.
So to your point: "We've also found that businesses already get the "why" of blogging"
As someone dealing with clients too, I'd actually pretty strongly disagree with this. At least in a certain context (There's a good chance we're talking about this from two angles).
If you mean that they know the "why" as in, they know that all the marketing rags and their marketing colleagues/industry friends are talking about it, I absolutely agree.
But the reality, as I've seen it, is that much beyond the "I've heard about this in the news or from my friends and I want to add it into our marketing mix", not many people understand how it actually fits (or should fit) into the strategy overall. They know they need it, they may have a context on a very high level as to why. But much beyond that, I think there's VERY few people who actually "get it".
Thanks again for starting the discussion - I'm looking forward to hearing more from you.
Jake
March 23rd, 2006 18:01
Teresa,
First, welcome to the blog!! Thanks for your comments, this is why blogging is so much fun.
So to your point: "We've also found that businesses already get the "why" of blogging"
As someone dealing with clients too, I'd actually pretty strongly disagree with this. At least in a certain context (There's a good chance we're talking about this from two angles).
If you mean that they know the "why" as in, they know that all the marketing rags and their marketing colleagues/industry friends are talking about it, I absolutely agree.
But the reality, as I've seen it, is that much beyond the "I've heard about this in the news or from my friends and I want to add it into our marketing mix", not many people understand how it actually fits (or should fit) into the strategy overall. They know they need it, they may have a context on a very high level as to why. But much beyond that, I think there's VERY few people who actually "get it".
Thanks again for starting the discussion - I'm looking forward to hearing more from you.
DL Byron
March 24th, 2006 10:19
There's not that much to get and the business that are confused are usually the marketing staff that thinks it's just another channel. There's Scoble's book for the why and lots of pundits. The take-away from the seminar was Anil's assertion that they're no rules, blog how best fits your business, despite what all the pundits say. Our book is focused soley on the how, for that same reason as are the seminars. My other comment got lost, but I disagreed with you on ethics. First, we expect that a business knows how to be ethical and it's not our place to tell them differently and we're not teaching journalism. I am glad you came and this is a good discussion. If we marketed it wrong and set the wrong expectations, we need to know that!
DL Byron
March 24th, 2006 17:19
There's not that much to get and the business that are confused are usually the marketing staff that thinks it's just another channel. There's Scoble's book for the why and lots of pundits. The take-away from the seminar was Anil's assertion that they're no rules, blog how best fits your business, despite what all the pundits say. Our book is focused soley on the how, for that same reason as are the seminars. My other comment got lost, but I disagreed with you on ethics. First, we expect that a business knows how to be ethical and it's not our place to tell them differently and we're not teaching journalism. I am glad you came and this is a good discussion. If we marketed it wrong and set the wrong expectations, we need to know that!
Jake
March 24th, 2006 12:55
Byron, I'll respectfully agree to disagree with your point. You said:
"There's not that much to get"
Nor is there with anything really. TV interviewing (for example) isn't that hard, right? It's just talking in front of a camera.
Not really... being a good company spokesperson is incredibly tough, as anyone who's been in front of cameras before can tell you. Presenting a trustworthy face to a company isn't easy when the hot lights of a studio are glaring down on you. Keeping yourself from saying something stupid is hard when the interviewer is purposely trying to hang you up to get a more juicy story.
Heck, by that line of thinking, you're entire seminar is basically a pointless activity (again, by your line of thinking, not by my assertion). After all, there's plenty of books about the blogging tools. Why would someone come to your seminar rather than pick up one of those books?
As I mentioned in the other thread, there is A LOT that people don't know when it comes to this stuff, not just the tools. You said:
"There's Scoble's book for the why and lots of pundits."
Sure, but are you seriously suggesting that that's the way that newbies should get trained on this stuff? This is the point I was making about handing the keys to a new car to a teen without drivers training - they CAN get themselves into trouble just as much as the CAN have no problems at all.
So to your point about how the marketing of this seminar was done - if you're not interested in talking about the "why", and just focusing on the tools, shouldn't that be "Essentials of Blogging"? What makes this "Essentials of Business Blogging"?
(This is an honest question, not trying to pick a fight - so hard to have internet conversations)
Jake
March 24th, 2006 19:55
Byron, I'll respectfully agree to disagree with your point. You said:
"There's not that much to get"
Nor is there with anything really. TV interviewing (for example) isn't that hard, right? It's just talking in front of a camera.
Not really... being a good company spokesperson is incredibly tough, as anyone who's been in front of cameras before can tell you. Presenting a trustworthy face to a company isn't easy when the hot lights of a studio are glaring down on you. Keeping yourself from saying something stupid is hard when the interviewer is purposely trying to hang you up to get a more juicy story.
Heck, by that line of thinking, you're entire seminar is basically a pointless activity (again, by your line of thinking, not by my assertion). After all, there's plenty of books about the blogging tools. Why would someone come to your seminar rather than pick up one of those books?
As I mentioned in the other thread, there is A LOT that people don't know when it comes to this stuff, not just the tools. You said:
"There's Scoble's book for the why and lots of pundits."
Sure, but are you seriously suggesting that that's the way that newbies should get trained on this stuff? This is the point I was making about handing the keys to a new car to a teen without drivers training - they CAN get themselves into trouble just as much as the CAN have no problems at all.
So to your point about how the marketing of this seminar was done - if you're not interested in talking about the "why", and just focusing on the tools, shouldn't that be "Essentials of Blogging"? What makes this "Essentials of Business Blogging"?
(This is an honest question, not trying to pick a fight - so hard to have internet conversations)
DL Byron
March 25th, 2006 2:21
Right. We're getting into a circular argument here. The 101 seminar covers all the why and we learned from the 101 that most attendees got all that and wanted the how, which is what we tried to do with the essentials. I think we agree more than disagree. You're points are right on and what I'm saying is yes, that's correct, but that wasn't the focus of this seminar. I don't think my sessions focused solely on the tools, we did get into tons of questions, which I felt was good considering the dazed looks I saw. Nor did Anil's When I say, "not much to get" what I mean is, "the why is easy." "how much harder" and that's what we're trying to teach and are hearing from our clients and customers.
DL Byron
March 25th, 2006 9:21
Right. We're getting into a circular argument here. The 101 seminar covers all the why and we learned from the 101 that most attendees got all that and wanted the how, which is what we tried to do with the essentials. I think we agree more than disagree. You're points are right on and what I'm saying is yes, that's correct, but that wasn't the focus of this seminar. I don't think my sessions focused solely on the tools, we did get into tons of questions, which I felt was good considering the dazed looks I saw. Nor did Anil's When I say, "not much to get" what I mean is, "the why is easy." "how much harder" and that's what we're trying to teach and are hearing from our clients and customers.