Catching up on some reading
Catching up on some readingGone away for a week and caught up on some reading. Scobel and Israel’s Naked Conversations certainly was an eye opener into ‘proper blogging’.
I’ve just been away to Greece for a week and wasn’t allowed to take my laptop and almost got skinned when I found I
was able to check my emails on my blackberry. Due to the high data charges (largely unknown cost to me) I didn’t bother twittering and really just enjoyed my time catching up with reading and enjoying cold beer in cold glasses and the odd cocktail hehe.
Now I took this time to catch up on some reading and apart from finishing the Bourne Sanction within 24 hours (not bad for a guy that doesn’t read much). I started to read and finished on the plane back – “Naked Conversations”. This book by Scobel and Israel is a definite eye opening in how to structure a blog and how to keep it going. In fact I sent a copy of this book (after reading only a chapter) to a friend of mine in the UK Corporate Communications market. I’m meeting him for lunch later this week and am keen to see just how much of this book and its principals apply to his industry.
If you’ve read Israel’s and Scobel’s book you’ll understand that having a blog is a lot more about the search engine optimisation benefits (SEO) of having a site that is updated daily/weekly and thus increasingly your chances of being spiderable. It is also a way of getting a reputation; are you a site which blogs about issues that matter to people? are you a site which argues a point rather than making a statement with no evidence?
There are also those blogs which are driven for marketing purposes only. For example Scobel/Israel give the example of a French comestics company who launched a microsite of a 30-something woman who was using anti-aging cream. She would blog daily and talk about the benefits that she was ‘personally’ feeling. The site wouldn’t let people leave comments (a typical sign that the site is for marketing and not for two-way communications). Once the public got wind that this wasn’t a real person but a PR team people started blogging on their own sites about it and linking back to the French comestic company’s blog. Once something like this is out in the blogosphere it is extremely hard to get it fixed.
Scobel and Israel give some great examples of how companies have managed to come back from the ‘brink’ of bad blogging and others who got it right from the start but, more importantly those who were working in house, blogging about things in their own times and demonstrated to management that this method of communication CAN work as a marketing tool – but only if done right.
I’ll write more about the blogosphere in a future post but, the book is a highly recommended read. However, as Israel/Scobel state, it can be as much a brand damager than a brand builder. Understand clearly what you want to talk about and be HONEST.
Related Links:
Robert Scoble’s Scobelizer Blog
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