Success Blogging

Blogging and Peer Production

What does Google, eBay, Craigslist and this blog all have in common?

Peer production...   all of these were produced by the power of people...   and harnessing people power is becoming a big business.

Google uses the number of links people use to link to each other to determine how high a site should be ranked. 

eBay would be nothing without millions of people posting their items for sale...  same with Craigslist.

And this blog... well, as you can clearly see by my inconsistant posting as of late, it certainly doesn't write itself.

So, that creates a challenge for new entrents into the business world.  Whereas, in the past, companies would hire you to create a good message for them or create/improve a product, now the key skill is understanding how to turn the spotlight on the audience.  How do you use your own customers to help sell and develop a product by really integrating them into the marketing message, or even the product itself.

What this means is recognizing that there is great value in the messages of people who aren't in the business of actually creating messages, and that's what blogs are all about.  So, a lawyer might write a blog about real estate law that's even better than a book you could buy on the topic.  Why?  Because it helps present him as a thoughtful, intelligent person... its part of his marketing message.  Business, too, are recognizing that consumers have a lot of power now through blogging.  Don't believe me?  Just try a google search for Ward Dingmann, SVP of Logistics for Levitz Furniture.  What comes up first is my story of my dealings with Levitz and how Ward helped me solve a furniture problem.  That's part of a peer produced marketing message.  A company might not like it and it might not be part of their marketing strategy, but its there.  The key is how you can take advantage of it.

All this blogging and nothng to show for it

Link: Bubblegeneration - Evil Corporations Only.

Umair Haque runs a great blog...  one of the best ones covering the space that my firm is interested in.  Unfortunately, he's feeling like it isn't quite worth it:

I've been kind of frustrated. Until recently, I was a PhD student - and about as poor as you'd expect one to be. I never really thought too much of bubblegen - it was just a place to keep my notes and share stuff I thought was cool. Recently, I've shifted to looking for a full-time gig, and having been paying more attention to what happens with my thoughts and ideas.

Now, I think kind of the same thing that happened to Rafat is happening to me - for him, it was the WSJ grabbing his posts, and turning them into articles; for me it's my ideas gaining a lot of currency, but me not getting much in return.

So what's going on here and how does he fix it?  The problem is that he, along with a lot of other people, would like to offer their knowledge for hire, and blogging is offering knowledge for free.  What to do?  Here are two approaches to make your blogging results more lucrative if you're looking to do some kind of consulting or knowledge publishing type job. 

For consultants, its often difficult to figure out the difference between what is promotion versus what is product.  How do you show someone you're good without essentially giving away the service?  I suppose there are two ways of approaching this.  One is not to give away everything and hold some things back that people might want to pay for.  The trick here is to make it plainly obvious what people aren't getting, otherwise they won't even know what the product is.  So, if you're really insightful and then you start referencing a study that you did, and drop a few crumbs of results here and there, people are going to want that study.  If you just write less, but don't make it clear that you have other writings or what they are, its going to be difficult to get people to want to pay for them.

The other way would be to write a lot using the kind of thinking you'd like to apply, but only to apply it to a limited set of items.  For example, if you want to become an investment analyst, maybe you could just write about microcap companies.  Certainly that kind of analysis is useful for companies of different sizes as well, and if you prove yourself with your exhaustive analysis of Set A, there's no reason why someone wouldn't hire to you analyze Set B.  With either approach, there's no need to blog less.  There's certainly no shortage of topics and details to blog about.

Ten Simple Rules for Dating a Blogger

Pete Blackshaw tells businesses how to capture the attention of the blog they love...

Link: Ten Simple Rules for Dating a Blogger.

Comscore Blog Report

Comscore just did a comprehensive look at the stats behind blogs and who reads them.  Check it out here:

Link: comScoreBlogReport.pdf (application/pdf Object).

Heather's "Marketing and Finance at Microsoft" Blog : Experiment: do finance people care about blogs?

Link: Heather's "Marketing and Finance at Microsoft" Blog : Experiment: do finance people care about blogs?.

My answer:

No, no one cares about blogs yet...   of the 11 million or so, only 55% are active.  Now chop that down by the number of people who blog on more than one blog.

As much as its been spoken about, blogged about (which according to Heather, somehow involves a belly button), written in the mainstream media about, most people aren't blogging and most people aren't reading them.

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean they won't still be a huge opportunity.  I think about it in terms of my career.  If I'm reading the daily thoughts of just five thought leaders in my industry, that gives me a huge leg up on the next guy who is getting his news from the Wall Street Journal only.  Plus, if I have a body of content--my thoughts--that I can point to for easy due diligence on me, publicity, etc. that creates a following, that's better networking potential than all the cocktail pile-ons I could ever hope to attend.

So, no one cares, but that's what makes it so great for the people who do.  Ignore at your peril.

Anil Dash: Seeing the Light

How about that?

Link: Anil Dash: Seeing the Light.

"...the author starts out trying to create blogs on a number of American Idol contestants to see how highly he can rank, and discovers that he has the best results with the site that has... the best actual content."

Jolie in NYC: Jolie Unmasked

Yet another "fired blogger". 

Read the story here and then check out her own post.  I commented on her site, which I was surprised to find was really one of the only negative comments on it.  Bottom line is, if I did a secret Union Square Ventures tell all (which would be stupid, because there are only four of us that work for the company), not only would that be unethical, but I'd fully expect to get fired.

I'd also fully expect to get a few job offers from Star Magazine or whatever the sleazy equivilent in the VC world would be.

Link: Jolie in NYC: Jolie Unmasked.

Here's my comment:

"What you did was wrong... it shouldn't be glorified. You took a big risk, and to be honest, it will probably pay off for you in the long wrong. I'm sure you'll get another job offer that you wouldn't have otherwise, and to do that, you betrayed the trust of your company and your coworkers. I'm going to add your feed to my FeedDemon, because I'd like to check on this a year from now to hear whether or not you thought it was worth it."

Hungry for Blogging? Try a food blog, but be prepared to answer to the chef...

Mena links to a great story about how a publishing (in addition to paying) customer got the attention of a popular restauranteur in NYC with his blog.

Link: About Six Apart - Mena's Corner.

Blogs give businessowners a means to connect to their most passionate of customers--those people who feel enough about a product or service to feature it on their blog.

Hacking NetFlix dropped from Google

Link: Hacking NetFlix.

This is ridiculous.

Its funny, because I was just explaining to someone how "Hacking Netflix" is like 2nd in Google or something.. and then I did a search and *poof* it wasn't there.

Is Google a tech company or a content company?  I think they're becoming the latter.  I don't appreciate the fact that someone at Google is screening my search results without me knowing.

On the other hand, del.icio.us users are explicitly screening the web and that's very clear and upfront... and they know exactly what you want to see when you search Netflix.  Just check out the most popular tagged sites around the netflix tag. 

Humans 1   Machines+sketchy lurking censorbots 0

Write or Die: Producing Content to Improve and Market Your Knowledge

On Monday, I had lunch with someone who was thinking about a career change.  One of the suggestions I made to her was that she might try consulting, particularly because of her unique experience at her previous job.  She asked how one would start that and I found that my answer, to start writing what she knows, was echoed in the latest Church of the Customer podcast.  (Sidenote, now that iTunes is podcast enabled, I've become a podhead.)

Ben and Jackie, in the 2nd half of their show, talked about how their book got started.  Basically, it all started with some articles they wrote on customer evangelism when they were starting their consulting business.  They wrote something on a Fast Company listserv and it got noticed by an acquisitions editor for a publishing company.  He thought it would make a great book and that's how they became authors.

The key is that we're in a knowledge based economy.  More so than every before, when you seek employment, what you're offering is your knowledge.  Given that, when is the last time you bought a product without having ever seen it?  The trouble with knowledge is that, in an interview format, its hard to assess who really has it and who doesn't.

That's why I believe that if you are in any kind of job short of riveting, you should be writing what you know, because that's the best way that people are going to get to know what you bring to the table.  It doesn't even have to be a blog, but blogs give you great distribution and feedback from your audience.  I've seen writing as an outgrowth of services used in a lot of ways recently.  Several private equity and investment firms, as well as venture backed companies, are creating "white papers"--research around what their firm is doing.  This research isn't just a piece of marketing material--because that would be too transparent and not believable--its real, in depth research.  In fact, a lot of times, people do this research before they offer a product or service as a way to sharpen their offering and make sure its viable.  I know firsthand from going through the process of writing a book (even though it never got published) that trying to write a cohesive document really forces you to strengthen your arguments and organize your thesis.  Its really an excellent exercise for anyone trying to offer a service, even if it never gets published. 

So, if you're a manager, consultant, investor, or student... whoever...    Just start writing.  Organize your thoughts, theories, and commentary.  Sharpen your message.  Publish it on your blog, on a listerv, for a professional society, wherever you can.  Frankly, if you don't, there's so much content out there written by people who are quickly making names for themselves both online and offline, that if you don't get your two cents in the conversation, you're as good as dead.