The What Blogs Are Lecture

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 07/22 at 06:18 PM • Blogs

At dinner on Thursday, the subject came around—as it so often does—to blogs. Yet another friend launched into the conversational gambit I (until now) secretly called the What Blogs Are Lecture. I get the “What Blogs Are Lecture” quite often. I get it from friends, from colleagues, from people with blogs, and people without. I get it after I give talks (ironically, most of these talks include some segment where I get to talk about what blogs are myself), or before, and sometimes even during.

These folks who give me the lecture have a bunch of things in common. Pretty much everyone who gives me the lecture is aware that I have written about book about blogs, most are probably even aware that I discuss what blogs are in that book. It’s perhaps paranoid of me, but I don’t believe many of these folks have necessarily read the book, though many tell me that they have plans to do so at any minute.  Many, perhaps even most of them have blogs, but a larger number than you might expect don’t have blogs, don’t have plans to start one, and some don’t even read blogs. They all, however, are fascinated by blogs. Often that fascination takes the form of revulsion, or wonderment, but they’re all curious, interested—engaged—by the blog phenomenon.

I don’t mind the What Blogs Are Lecture, although I’ll admit to a few moments of incredulity during the first handful of lectures. (“Does this person really think I don’t know what a blog is?!”) I got over my ego in a hurry because of what all my lecturers don’t have in common: nearly all of them have a different idea of a blog is, or who it is that writes a blog. It’s amazing! There are as many definitions of blogs and bloggers, as there are blogs. I love hearing all these ideas people propose; it reminds me of the all the fascinating blogs out there that I could never even conceive of, much less put together myself.

I’m looking forward to my next What Blogs Are Lecture. Dinner, anyone?

 
Permalink

Truths of Blog Marketing: Reaching Customers, Building Your Brand

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 07/18 at 03:57 PM • Blogging Events

MarketingProfs.com is offering a virtual serminar:

Are you an active blogger trying to convince your company to blog?  Or are you someone in the bleachers wondering what Kool-Aid everyone else is drinking?  Either way, you undoubtedly have questions and concerns about blogging - and we’re bringing you the answers.

Join us at noon Eastern on Thursday, July 27th for:

Truths of Blog Marketing: Reaching Customers, Building Your Brand

Presenter Jeremy Wright takes you beyond Blogging 101 and into the practical side of marketing with blogs. In this 90-minute virtual seminar, he’ll share some fresh case studies that illustrate what today’s marketers need to understand.

Read more and register here.

 
Permalink

ePodunk: A nice example of a small corporate blog

Posted by Travis Smith on 07/05 at 09:18 AM •

ePodunk is a site that lists community data, including ancestry data, for all sorts of small towns.  It’s a good, if niche, Web resource that was founded by some ex-journalists (I wonder if they feel ex-...)

In their Blogger blog (it’s right here), they poke polite fun at odd customer service emails, announce new features, and reveal little interesting tidbits of data about their product’s usage.

It’s an interesting read, and does what a blog’s supposed to do with a minimum of fuss. Kudos.

 
Permalink