Category Archives: Weblogs

More Politicians Blog

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Doug Kenline just commented on a previous post to tell me about a little blog initiative he’s boilerplating here.  Has some links to lawmakers who are currently blogging, and a stated mission to get all legislators in all 50 states blogging.

One observation: if audio blogging (i.e. Podcasting) really takes off you won’t have any problem getting any of these guys or gals involved.  I think the only reason they aren’t all blogging already is that most of them either can’t type or have no idea now to use their computers beyond firing off memos using Word.

Open Invitation to All Winston-Salem, Forsyth County Elected Officials

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If you’re an elected official from Forsyth County or Winston-Salem and
are interested in having your own blog I’ll be happy to host it for you
and even train you to use it.  Just shoot me an email.

I’m making this offer for a few reasons:

  1. Blogs are a great way to communicate with your constituents.  If you want feedback, this is a great way to get it.
  2. Blogs are easy to use once you know how.
  3. We in Forsyth are being left in the dust by the folks in Guilford County.  Frankly it’s embarassing, especially considering it’s Guilford County.  (I’m kidding!)
  4. I just finished reading a book that reminded me, among other things, of the importance of civic duty.  This is one of the best ways I can think of to get involved in the community and "give back" as they say.

Now I have no idea if there’s some law or rule against an elected official taking me up on an offer of this kind, but if there is I’d appreciate it if someone would let me know.  Barring that I hope to hear from some of you soon!

Acronymania – Or How My ADD Works

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Many times in my life I’ve wondered if my short attention span is a positive or a negative.  The answer, of course, is that it depends.  Take this morning.

I was catching up on my blog reading when I came across this post on Steve Rubel’s excellent PR-related blog, Micropersuasion.  It’s about how Major League Baseball is partnering with Six Apart, the company that provides Typepad the service I use for this blog, to enable baseball fans to create their own blogs for a cool $50 a year (okay, $49.95).  The site is called MLBlogs.

Now the reason I was doing my blog reading in the first place is that it was taking one of my applications more than, oh, three seconds to load.  So I thought I’d multi-task and check out the old blog reader.  There I saw Steve’s post, read the words "baseball" and "blog" in the same sentence and decided I had to read about it. 

I’m halfway through the post when I realize that Steve’s description of what his PR firm is advising its clients to do with blogs (Find, Listen, Engage, Enable) has an ironic acronym, FLEE.  I mean, what PR firm wants the message to its clients to say FLEE, even subliminally?  So I write a quick comment pointing out the ironic acronym and not five minutes later Steve replies.

So thanks to my ADD I’ve written a comment on one of the world’s uber-blogs (Steve is quite influential in blog, PR and media circles) and got a reply comment from the uberblogger himself!  This has to be a good thing, right?

Then I look at my watch and once again I’m behind schedule.  There you have it.

Google Seems to Love Blogs

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I know I’ve said it before, but I’m continually amazed at how well blogs do on Google.  Here’s another piece of anecdotal evidence.

A while ago I wrote a post titled "Pope Bracket" that then referenced and a post on David Hoggard’s blog that referenced and linked to the originator of the Pope bracket, a spoof on the NCAA bracket that someone put together during the elect-a-Pope craziness.

Well at some point today I was #2 on Google for the search term "Pope Bracket" and the search results showed "85,500."  Amazing.  And the only one that ranked higher is uber-blogger DailyKos.  I’m dancin’ with the big boys!

Tarheel Tavern

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Check out Tarheel Tavern #6. I contributed my post about my family’s amazing dinner last Monday, and there are some excellent posts from other North Carolina blogger.

For those of you not familiar with the "tavern" concept with blogs, it’s basically the blog practice of bringing together posts from bloggers with a commonality (like geography) and then posting them all on one blog, with links back to the original blogs.

Of all the posts on the Tavern, my Bush-hating friends and family will enjoy the piece, Comparative Wingnuttery, that compares Bush to Milosevic and concludes Bush is much worse.

For one soldier’s perspective in Iraq, read this post from USSoldier.  By the way this blog is one example of how the new world of communications is changing how we live our lives.  Basically this blog is like letters home in the old days, except it is instantaneous and has worldwide distribution.  It makes spinning the war a whole lot harder on the Pentagon, don’t you think?

The host of the Tavern rotates among members of the group, although you don’t have to host it to be included. If you’re interested you can see all of the available issues of the Tarheel Tavern here.

Calling All Entrepreneurs

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Dana Blankenhorn wrote an interesting post about the dearth of entrepreneurs making hay out of all the new and developing online creations.  He points out that no one is really making money on blogging yet, but they are already moving on to podcasting, open source software, etc.

My favorite piece from his article is this:

The challenge is to find ways to bring in enough advertising,
sponsorship, event, and subscriber revenue to turn hobbies into
careers. Without fertilizer, plants die, and money is fertilizer.
Volunteers will burn out without it, some quickly, some more slowly,
but all surely. Or, as entrepreneur Max Bialystock says in The Producers, "Money is Honey."

Anyone who has ever tried to build a business based on bartering services, or paying their labor with beer knows that he’s right.  You truly get what you pay for.

BTW, what keeps me up at night is figuring out a way to build the next media empire with all this new stuff.  I’ll keep you posted.  And if you’re interested in building it along with me I’ve got a fridge full of beer in the basement…

2% of What?

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Just read this item in MarketingVox about a study done by MediaPost on the blogging phenomenon:

A Universal McCann study on consumer-generated media finds that very
few people – about two percent – are bloggers, according to MediaPost,
and that those who do commit their opinions to webpages regularly tend
to be quite young. Adults 18-24 are three times more likely to blog
than the average adult. The glass-half-full crowd may interpret that to
mean that blogging will increase as this generation displaces the older
adults. The half-empties may interpret that as meaning that blogging is
for less serious and more self-involved individuals.

I initially read this piece because I read most things I find that relate to blogging, but I couldn’t get past the first sentence.  Specifically, "very few people – about two percent – are bloggers" bothered me.  Two percent of what?  The world’s population, America’s population or the online population?

Even if it’s just the latter, two percent is a huge number.  Look at it this way: say there are 50 million people online (I’m sure it’s more than that, but I like round numbers).  Two percent is one million people. 

That’s a lot of content, and yes most of it’s crap, but when in the history of mankind have you had access to the opinions, comments and thoughts of one million people without leaving your home?

I guess I’ll have to read the MediaPost piece to get the details, but I wish MarketingVox had been a little tighter in their writing.

And for the record I fall into the glass half full crowd.  I don’t really care how old someone is, as long as they have something intelligent to say and say it well.

Blogs Don’t Do Diddly Squat

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MarketingSherpa just published this week’s issue of their B-to-C marketing newsletter, and here’s the teaser:

SUMMARY: Call us cynics. Blogs may be hip and trendy, but
they don’t do diddly-squat for most people’s businesses.

After four years of research, MarketingSherpa reporters
estimate only .03% of the 34.5 million existing blogs are
driving sales or prospective customers to their bloggers. 
(That’s less than 1,000 that we’ve been able to find.)

Want your blog to be the one that works? Discover seven
practical secrets from a real estate blog that gets
prospects to raise their hands and beg to be contacted:

Here’s the link to the full case study, which will be put behind their paid-subscribers only wall on March 18, 2005.

If you’re at all interested in making money with a blog you should read the case study.  It’s about a realtor in Tampa using his blog to generate qualified leads for his high-end real-estate venture.

Full disclosure: MarketingSherpa was a client of mine and I’m a huge fan of Anne Holland, the genius behind the whole MarketingSherpa online publishing machine. 

BTW, I think Anne & Company right some of the most compelling ad/marketing copy you’ll find.