Happy New Year

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/31 at 11:59 PM • Just a Few Words

My husband and I aren’t big fans of the New Year’s holiday—for all the talk of Christmas being a manufactured holiday, New Year’s feels more so to us. Add to that the number of unsafe drivers (i.e., drinkers) on New Year’s Eve and it almost always feels like a night to stay safely at home. So we celebrated a night early this year, with a fabulous meal at Hapa Izakaya (Japanese tapas) and gelato afterwards. You have to be happy with a climate that requires a coat, but permits you to eat gelato at the same time.

Tonight we are having black-eyed beans? peas? (whatever, it also seems to involve ham), the smell of which is quietly permeating everything we own as I write this.

Have a safe and happy New Year, everyone.

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

The 2005 Business Blogging Awards

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/31 at 05:34 PM • Blogging Events

The 2005 Business Blogging AwardsFrom InsideBlogging, we now get blog awards devoted to recognizing business blogs specifically, with categories like:

  • Best Overall Blog
  • Best Group Blog
  • Best New Blog (Established 2004)
  • Best Law Blog (Blawg)
  • Best VC/Entrepreneur Blog
  • Best HR/Recruiting Blog
  • Best Small Business Blog (any industry)
  • Best Technology Company
  • Blog Best Media Blog (magazines, media organizations, etc)
  • Best PR Blog Best
  • Best Financial Industry/Investment Blog
  • Best Real Estate Blog
  • Best Manufacturing Blog
  • Best Marketing Blog
  • Best Business Humor Blog
  • Best SEO Blog

There are many more categories. (Some you don’t want to win!) You can nominate blogs until January 24, and then vote on finalists between January 26 and February 9. Winners will be announced on February 10. There is still time to suggest new catgories and to sponsor prizes. Didn’t start a business blog in 2004? Then you’ve got a New Year’s resolution!

And you have to love the tagline: “We can’t let the online diarists have all the fun.”

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

All Quiet on the Blog Front

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/30 at 12:56 PM • Blogging Tips

There have been a number of posts lately on posting frequency and blog reading over the holiday period, and I thought I’d throw my two cents in. The truth is, even bloggers need to take vacations, no matter how much they enjoy blogging. A wise blogger, however, will choose to take that vacation during a period when general readership is down anyway. Breaks over Christmas and New Year’s are certainly likely to be forgiven by readers who are probably on vacation themselves.

Not all holidays are created equal, however. Sometimes holidays simply mean that your readers have more time to read your blog! I wonder if anyone has done a study of holidays during which Internet use actually increases? My candidate would be New Year’s Day, which I think is a pretty useless holiday if you don’t have a hangover to recover from.

At any rate, here are a few guidelines for taking a break gracefully:

  • Put up a post explaining that you won’t be posting over your holiday, and when you expect to start again.
  • If you get a great idea during your time off, pop in and post anyway. Or at least keep track of those ideas for when you’re back in the saddle!
  • Try to time your breaks with periods when the public may also be slacking a bit.
  • Hire a guest blogger to take on the job while you’re sitting on the beach, or recovering from the flu.
  • If you blog software supports it, write several posts ahead of time and set them to publish automatically while you’re gone.
  • Come back refreshed and ready to blog.
 
Comments (0) • Permalink

New Blog: Netflix’s Rocchi Report

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/27 at 10:23 AM • Blogs

Netflix film reviewer James Rocchi has started a blog for the company called The Rocchi Report. If you’ve missed the Netflix phenomenon (where have you been?!), it is a mail delivery DVD rental service. Build a queue of movies you want to watch, choose the number of movies you want out at any one time—which determines the monthly cost—and watch movies immediately or keep them for months.

Netflix users will be familiar with Rocchi’s reviews, which accompany quite a few of the DVD listings on offer. His bio claims, and I have no reason not to believe, that Rocchi’s reviews are used by 20-30 regional TV morning programs, and 15 radio programs across the country. He has also been creating a Netflix newsletter for some time.

It’s a little early to know exactly what Rocchi will do with the Netflix blog, but there are some great best/worst lists for 2004 films there now. It’s great to see a company like Netflix, which has really changed the nature of movie rentals, getting into the blogosphere. I hope it works for them!

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Lists and More Lists

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/22 at 03:54 PM • Blogging News

Looking for a roundup of blog facts and figures for 2004? Look no further than BlogPulse’s analysis of 2004 blog postings, a numerically generated set of lists including these:

  • Top Blogs Cited in 2004
  • Top Blogs Posts Cited in 2004
  • Top Web Sites Cited in 2004
  • Top Media Sources Cited in 2004
  • Top Media Stories Cited in 2004
  • Top People Cited in 2004

However, in case you do need to look further, don’t miss these roundup stories and posts:

Who’s got more for the list?

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Blog Webinar from Intelliseek

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/21 at 02:09 PM • Blogging Tools

I listened in on Pete Blackshow’s Blog Webinar today. Pete gave the group the scoop on the “underbelly of so-called consumer-generated media,” including blogs, and shared some fascinating statistical information about blogs in 2004. He promises to release some new info tomorrow, which I’ll be sure to clue you into.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for a great overview of how buzz, blogs and the Internet work together, with a focus on corporate blogging, check out blogwebinar.com. Blackshaw announces presentations as he goes, and the site is also a good collection of blog/buzz information. Expect to spend some time clicking links, and don’t miss BlogPulse, a very cool tool that lets you track people, bloggers and trends through the blogosphere. I especially like the Conversation Tracker.

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

2004’s Final Stories About Blogs

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/20 at 01:22 PM • Blogging News

As the last days of 2004 trickle in, journalists facing slower news days are putting blogs front and center.

Also, blogs have made some significant contributions to culture and society this year, so year-end wrap ups are cataloging their effects.

Specifically, Time magazine names Power Line their blog of the year (subscription required)—or you can read about it at Power Line for free.

Michael Kinsley, editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages, has been online savvy for a long time, but writes today about the unnerving sophistication of the blogosphere. He circulated his view on the privatization of social security with some traditional media pundits, and then:

As an afterthought, I sent copies to a couple of blogs (kausfiles.com and andrewsulllivan.com). What happened next was unnerving.

A few days later, most of the big shots hadn’t replied. But overnight I had dozens of responses from the blogosphere. They’re still pouring in. And that’s just direct e-mail to me. Within hours, there were discussions going on in a dozen blogs, all hyperlinking to one another like rabbits.

Ah yes, the power of blogs to magnify a discussion.

Meanwhile, the New York Observer says ”We’re All Gossips Now!” and discusses the migration of buzz to online sites because of the speed and simplicity of the medium:

Welcome to 2004, the year in which gossip got out of the hands of the powerful Hollywood publicists and Manhattan lawyers and was dumped in the lap of the average New Yorker. Power to the people!

Liz Smith responds:

IT’S MIND-BLOGGING
Oh, my! Bastone says quite correctly that he doubts I surf the blogs as I should if I want to keep up. Well, he’s right. I only have one life to live writing this column. If I start covering the blogs, that’s all I’ll ever do…

Liz mentions, rightly, that many blogs aren’t accurate, and that [non-corporate] bloggers are not apt to be sued [yet]. Let’s see what 2005 brings.

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Got Blog?

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/17 at 08:18 PM • Blogs

Rick Bruner of Business Blog Consulting has a nice interview with Christine Halvorson, blogger for Stoneyfield Farms. Stoneyfield has four blogs:

  • Strong Women Daily News
  • The Daily Scoop
  • Creating Healthy Kids
  • The Bovine Bugle

What I like best about Stoneyfield’s attitude is expressed in this quote from Halvorson: “With growth, we fear losing touch with what is a very loyal and committed customer base, and so our CEO, Gary Hirshberg, saw the blogs as a way to continue to personalize our relationship with our customers.  He wants to ‘be real’ and saw the blogs as a way to do that--inspired in part by the success of blogs within the Howard Dean presidential bid of early 2004.”

Source: Thanks, Rick.

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Speaking at Northern Voice

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/13 at 05:41 PM • Blogging Events

I’ll be speaking at the Northern Voice blog conference on Saturday, Feb. 19, in Vancouver. The organizers have placed me in the session titled “Personal Blogging - Types and Styles of Blogs and Blogging,” presumably because of my recently neglected personal book blog Unfavorable Pink. Are you attending? Let me know so I can look for you!

 
Comments (1) • Permalink

Finding the Magic People

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/05 at 05:02 PM • Marketing

In a Dec. 5 story, ”The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders,” the New York Times has published a lengthy look at the success of word-of-mouth marketing practices centered around groups of volunteer (yes, volunteer!) evangelists.  BzzAgent, a New York-based agency, gets plenty of press space, and walks us through the history of buzz marketing and the psychology of product adoption. It’s fascinating reading, although I winced when one of the self-appointed BzzAgents talks about useing her grandfather’s funeral as an opportunity to do a little buzz marketing. Here’s a tidbit from the story:

Maybe it’s altruism, maybe it’s a power trip, but influencing other people feels good. As an example of how powerful the desire to have the upper hand can be, consider that some participants in a campaign for a new scent called Ralph Cool simply could not wait for their free sample to arrive and rushed out to buy the $40 product so they could start buzzing. Word-of-mouth marketing leverages not simply the power of the trendsetter but also, as Balter puts it, ‘’the power of wanting to be a trendsetter.’’

Blogs aren’t mentioned directly, but the issues explored here directly apply to the kinds of conversations going on in the blogworld.

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Making Money With a Blog

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/05 at 04:35 PM • Blogs and Business

Blogs continue to show up in business articles, and these days, many of those articles indicate an expectation that blogs have finally become hot real estate for advertisers. In a Dec. 13 story titled ”The Business of Blogging,” BusinessWeek acknowledges that blogs can no longer be viewed solely as the realm of self-involved losers, since so many have proven to be valid sources of information and news.

The story notes ways in which today’s bloggers are making money from their blogs:

  • BlogAds
  • Joining a blog network like Weblogs, Inc., Gawker or Law.com
  • Google AdSense
  • Sponsorships
  • Pay for posts

Debate continues in the blogosphere about whether some of these practices are ethically sound. So far, every blogger makes his own moral decision and then lives with the results.

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Clocks, MP3s, Weather and more from blogbox

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/03 at 06:20 PM • Blogging Tools

Use blogbox to embed photos, links, and MP3 player, a clock or ZIP code weather boxes in your blog. The weather box is really quite cool, and shows current weather information, a 3-day forecast, and radar and satellite maps. Anyone not based in the U.S. is out of luck, though.

Source: Thanks to Seth Godin for the information.

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Lattes Are Only the Beginning

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/03 at 04:41 PM • Not About Blogs

“Krispy Kreme is over here,” he says, penciling a little ring outside the orbit, “because they’re not really in the coffee business. They’re 98% donuts, and 82% glazed, so they’re a one trick pony.”

From Fast Company’s online-only story about Dunkin’ Donuts head-to-head with Starbuck: It’s Not About the Doughnuts.

There’s some other great stuff here:

  • … Luther and his team, a troop of fellow-travelers from his days at Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits, determined that the future was not in the cruller, but in the coffee.

  • “Dunkin’ is a hit-and-run place.”

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Past Lives Resurface

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/03 at 04:01 PM • Blogging Tips

I came across an interesting article in Wired today about how easy it is to find out about people online. It reminded me that everything you do online has the potential to become part of a record you don’t control. If you used your name when posting to alt.sex in the early days of the Internet, the likelihood is that those late-night ... messages ... are still around. The scary thing is that though you created the content, you don’t control access to it in any way. Bosses and lovers have the same opportunity to type your name into Google and scroll through the results.

Digital content gets forwarded, archived and stored all over the place, so information you put out into the online world has a long life (ironically there’s no good comprehensive archiving system for the Internet in place).

Blogs, of course, are subject to the same process, so be aware that what you write today may come back to you later, and in some interesting contexts! Does that mean you shouldn’t blog? Well, no, I don’t think so. But I do think before I hit the publish button.

Read the Wired story How Long Is Your Digital Trail? 

 
Comments (0) • Permalink

Blog: Most Looked Up Word of 2004

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 12/01 at 11:37 AM • Blogging News

Merriam-Webster puts the word “blog” at the top of its list of the 10 most looked-up words of 2004. The count is determined by tracking all online searches of the dictionary and then excluding perennial look-ups. Here’s the 2004 list:

  1. blog
  2. incumbent
  3. electoral
  4. insurgent
  5. hurricane
  6. cicada
  7. peloton
  8. partisan
  9. sovereignty
  10. defenestration

Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines blog: noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer

Read about the list in CNN’ story “Publisher: ‘Blog’ No. 1 word of the year”. Visit Merriam-Webster for definitions of each of the top 10.

Source: Thanks to Robert Scoble for the info.

 
Comments (0) • Permalink