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I’m quite thoroughly ashamed to post this.
I have to be honest and say that I was actually trying to pull back on some of the questions.
We all know how to get 100% in these things do we not?
Somebody please beat me – either with a higher score or a big stick.
[via]
For those of you who aren’t too sure as to who the gentleman above is, it’s Paul Gillin. Now don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard the name; Paul just so happens to be the former editor-in-chief and executive editor of Computerworld and the founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget.
He’s also the author of the book that’s taking the online marketing world by a bit of a storm: The New Influencers.
Blogging, podcasting and other social media are profoundly disrupting the mainstream media and marketing industries. Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers explores these forces by identifying the influencers, their goals and their motivations. The book also offers advice for marketers at both large and small organizations on how to influence the influencers.
The New Influencers explores:
• Why social media are now so important in consumer decisions;
• How to leverage the blogosphere to enhance your company’s message;
• Strategies for taking advantage of this new medium;
• The need for transparency and how to make it work for your benefit;
• Action items for both small and large businesses
• Whether and how your organization should use blogs, podcasts and other social media tools in your marketing strategy.
I first started exchanging emails with Paul when he kindly asked if I’d answer a few questions about The Tinbasher’s success for the book (I think it’s mentioned around page 200). I had no idea at the time who the dickens he was or how well the book was going to be received (a book review in the Wall Street Journal and an interview with the BBC are rarely to be sniffed at).
I certainly didn’t have any idea as to what a thoroughly decent chap Paul is, and even less of an idea that he cites The Tinbasher regularly when he speaks. If we’re being honest, how many specialists in their respective fields start their book talking about how wrong they were to write off the field they’re now specializing in? Genius!
Anyway, Paul is more than an accomplished speaker and has also organized the odd conference in his time, so I thought I’d ask him what could make or break a conference. He very kindly responded with this:
Conferences are vast and complex things, with many moving parts and many possibilities of failure. One bad speaker can shut down an audience for the rest of the day. Two bad speakers can kill a conference before it gets off the ground.
The key to success is to know the audience, know the thought leaders and match the two perfectly. It’s also critical to vet the speakers for their speaking ability, making sure they know how to hold an audience’s attention, engage their imagination and leave them deep in thought. The difficulty of ascertaining this important information in phone calls and e-mail can’t be underestimated.
I have the highest respect for successful conference organizers, because the job demands such high levels of organizational skill, interpersonal engagement, domain knowledge and raw creativity. Those who are successful at it are a rare breed.
If that isn’t enough to reduce your average conference organizer and speaker into a quivering, self-doubting wreck then I don’t know what will.
But, if listening to and schmoozing with the good and the great we’ve managed to assemble isn’t cranking your excitometer up past 11, you’ve also got the added bonus of rubbing shoulders with a new influencer – namely, erm, me.
I found this quote of the day over at Media Influencer in relation to Google’s Sicko to-do:
Blogs let you communicate directly with your audience. Of course, we’re too busy building product to communicate with our audience so let’s hire a marketer to do it for us. And when inexperienced marketers get a blog, they all blog the same way. Their voice is as authentic as a Twinkie is organic…. [Their] ire should have been directed at whoever gave the keys to the blog to someone whose authentic voice reads like a Newsweek health supplement advertorial.
So, to recap, the recipe for a disaster is easy: hire marketers with no authentic voice, ask them to pimp offal, and when they’re busted for it make them force out an apology in which they blame it on their authentic voice. You too can make the front page of TechMeme for two days running with three easy steps, though you might get wet sleeves fishing your career prospects out of the toilet when you’re done. You’re welcome!
Now this isn’t just a killer quote but a serial killer quote from an article that is truly worthy of your attention if you’re in the game of setting up blogs for clients or even setting up a blog for your own business.
Think on.
This is one of the very first pieces I wrote in relation to my thoughts on business blogging over two and a half years ago. There’s a bit more room for debate as it’s evolved, but I firmly believe the basic premise of the post holds as true, if not truer, now as it did then.
Is the concept of building company foundations slightly antediluvian? Since the birth of the internet it seems as though companies don’t so much lay foundations as allow them to float in cyberspace. Bricks and mortar is so last century, it’s now all about your web presence.
Yeah, right. Your web presence lies. Everybody does it. You aren’t the only one who’s built an all singing, all dancing website with more bells and whistles than a school-full of referees whilst your actual workspace resembles a bombed-out Anderson shelter.
Initially, the ability to be able to present your business as you’ve always dreamed of is intoxicating. But it’ll come back to haunt you in the long run – mark my words. You need to present your business as it is now otherwise you’ll find yourself deluged with inquiries for work you can’t do, or worse still, no inquiries at all.
Let a blog make you honest.
Blogging is the logical solution. By all means have your static website which lays claim to your products, services, testimonials and all the other usual stuff. A business blog allows you to expand on all of these aspects of your site and build a more complete picture. It dots all the i’s and crosses the t’s. Not only that, but your customers can get a feel for you as a person/company which, in turn, builds trust and relationships.
Many moons ago, before I reincarnated The Tinbasher, the whole web presence (main site and blog) had been bookmarked twice (and that could very well have been by me). The week of its relaunch saw it bookmarked fourteen times (these days both sites combined have something around a 30% bookmarking rate every month). We also received as many hits in this week (10/20/04) as the whole of August and September combined. I appreciate arguments can be made about of all this, but that’s not my point. More people are visiting the site since the reincarnation of this blog and more people want to return to the site too.
I read a lot about metrics and ROI (return on investment) and I agree you can’t measure it scientifically. But let’s be perfectly frank, you don’t need to. I see hits going up, stickiness going up and, most importantly, inquiries going up. It’s out of your hands once your salesperson or sales department gets hold. But at least they’ve got something to get hold of! And don’t claim you can’t write or don’t have the time. You can look at your blog in the same way as you’d look at a business meeting with a potential client. A blog can even help you focus your thought processes that whirl about your head on a daily basis.
Business blogging is the new bricks and mortar for your web presence. You have the opportunity to re-identify yourself on the web and to make that vital connection with your customers in the same way as if they’d popped into your office for a brew.
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