A meaningful positive review

When you write books, you often find reviews written by everyone from newspaper columnists to full-time book critics to bloggers. Blogger reviews are the most meaningful to me—along with reader reviews posted to Amazon and B&N. But it’s particularly gratifying to get a good review from someone you already respect, even if you don’t know them.

That was the case today as I was reviewing my RSS subscriptions. In my “technology” folder is mip’s scan, which I’ve been reading pretty religiously for quite a while now. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the blog’s author—Michael Ianna-Palarchio (Mip to his friends) had reviewed “Blogging for Business"—and liked it.

I particularily like how the book doesn’t get lost in the hype of blogging. There’s no “blog because it’s cool” aspect to this book. It sticks to an important first principle that I apply to all the IT work I do - let the business lead.

And to top it all off, Mip links to US and Canadian bookstores where the book is available. I knew I liked this guy!

"Add to My Feedreader" Buttons

Notice the buttons below, which I also just added to the left hand sidebar. They make it easy for people to subscribe to this blog via their favorite newsreader/feedreader/aggregator/whatever-term-you-prefer.

I've found that adding them to a blog tends to increase the number of readers, at least via RSS/Atom Feeds.

How many readers subscribe via RSS as compared to directly visiting your blog?

It depends widely depending on your blog readers. A LOT more people read Blogging For Business via RSS, probably due to the relative technical sophistication of people interested in blogging. In comparison, The Ted Rap, aimed at a more general audience, sees far fewer readers via RSS and more who directly visit the blog or use my FeedBlitz (email) interface.

Pretty easy to add these buttons - feel free to take my code and modify (replace my feed URL with yours) and it just may be lead to more readers.

Tom's of Maine Should Blog!

I wrote previously about Colgate buying Tom's of Maine, a small rapidly growing company in the "natural" category of personal care products.

Tom Chappell of Tom's of Maine should Blog!

Tom's is valuable -- and growing rapidly -- because of it's great image as well quality of their products and Tom Chappell, their brilliant leader.

In order for this buyout to succeed, Tom's image and brand need to stay distinct -– or sales, and value to Colgate, will plummet.

Tom Chappell is a core part of Tom's image and brand, and he should strongly consider blogging -- communicating directly with his rapidly growing base of customers and fans -- and let them know he is still there and in charge, and that Tom's of Maine is still, well, "Tom's of Maine."

Tom is a natural. His writing seems naturally blog-suitable, i.e. authentic and personal, as in his book Managing Upside Down. Blogging goes hand-in-hand with his Seven Intentions® of Values-Centered Leadership.

Blogging would also be a great way to keep employees in the loop, both another channel for (hopefully) reassurances from Tom and a conduit for regular information. Tom communicates directly as well, but the more communication with customers, fans, and employees during what by its nature is destined to be a difficult time, a time of transition, would help things go smoothly and should be seriously considered.

GIve me a call Tom, I'm glad to help out.

When a Blog Ends

Blogs sometimes end. Their "writers" -- "bloggers" -- whatever the right term is, stop.

Sometimes it's a natural death:

• A product launch blog is started, and eventually the product launch is over or maybe the product is even discontinued.
• A company goes out of business - and it's blogs are done and probably gone.
• A book goes out of print, and so does the associated book blog.

Sometimes it's different:

• Bloggers get bored and move on.
• Sometimes they realize they haven't posted in weeks and never get back to it.
• Sometimes they make an almost press release like announcement (in effect at least), like blogging pioneer and polarizing figure Dave Winer, that they're stopping.
   

Shel Israel, other of the other Shels, writes about When Should a Blog End? on the Naked Conversations blog. He even quotes my Uncle Aristotle (all Greeks are related!):

    "All things must have a beginning, a middle and an end."
        - Uncle Aristotle

How about this blog? It's at its beginning for sure.

Its timeline is not tied to the Blogging for Business book. Hey, I've even got a second book on Blogging (and Podcasting) in the works . . .

Successful Bloggers are Great Conversationalists

OK, what do Seth Godin and Robert Scoble have in common, other than being A-list bloggers? They're both great conversationalists.

Even though Seth doesn't allow comments, he allows trackbacks and does follow them and leave follow up comments – he even answers email quickly and promptly. Crazy man Scoble even has his cellphone number on his blog and he answers it! Hey, do either of you guys ever sleep :)

I recently interviewed Stephen Turcotte of Backbone Media and we had a great conversation about conversations.  Blogs are about conversations, and Stephen believes the best bloggers tend to be great conversationalists.

The best conversationalists are always those who listen well. The hardest part for most of us is listening, not talking. Translated to the blogosphere, it’s easier to post than to keep up with what the other bloggers in your topic area are saying.

Listening, according to Stephen, involves finding and reading a lot of blogs in your area of interest, in the area you blog about, and I agree. It's like a gigantic searchable cocktail party. Blog search engines can be an enormous help in finding like-minded blogs. So can blogrolls of blogs in your area you’ve already found.

The blogosphere is dynamic and you had better expect your must read blog list to grow and evolve. Keeping up is hard to do!

Let’s say you’re a donkey blogger – perhaps a professional donkey breeder blogging on issues of importance to donkeys – or at least donkey owners. You can find other interesting donkey blogs by using the blog search engines, as well as by following blogrolls, trackbacks and comments on those blogs. You’ll learn what others are saying in the donkeysphere, the part of the blogosphere focused on donkeys.

In your real world life, as a donkey dude, you’ll of course also get valuable information about donkeys  -– real world information shouldn’t be discounted at all, and tends to mirror online information eventually.

So, how do we become a popular donkey blogger? Spend a lot of time reading and interacting with other donkey blogs and bloggers. Look for opportunities to add value to  conversations. It'll take time, but presumably you're passionate about donkeys, so you probably don’t consider it all work!

The best bloggers do more than blog! They spend significant time reading other blogs and otherwise interacting in the blogosphere.

Stephen is also working on a service named Scout to help bloggers become better conversationalists by helping them listen more effectively, just as search engines help users manage Internet data better by sorting and cataloging it. Fascinating – might be JUST what we need to nudge some great conversationalists – and potential great bloggers – into the donkeysphere – errr, blogosphere.

Typepad Hacks

I use Typepad for this blog. Typepad is simple to use hosted software (means nothing to install) that does a pretty awesome job, and I recommend it to lots of clients. It's cheap, pretty reliable, and works well. It has all the main features I want, something I can't say about all blogging software. Online (email) support is quite good, although it could use a manual as opposed to a bunch of help files.

TypePad Hacks is a new blog started by John T. Unger who says "I freakin' love TypePad." He's tried a number of other blog platforms and settled on TypePad, and has a number of TypePad blogs.

John hopes to collect useful TypePad hints (i.e. hacks) and provide a forum for TypePad users. He also wants to figure out what additional functionality TypePad users want, and then raise money and pay TypePad to implement them!

Here's what I'll call the TypePad Hacks Manifesto - the why? of the blog

Count me in John!
(thanks to Problogger for the heads up!)

8ooceoread guest blogging today

I'm guest blogging on various business blogging topics at 8ooceoread today. They are the people who share my passion for business books -- an excellent place to read reviews and buy books.

I'm having fun. The first post second post (out of synch with myself today it seems :) starts:
"Driving to work naked and starting a Biz Blog with zero planning . . ."

Yes, planning is essential for a business blog! The worst kind of blog you can start is the "let's have a blog" blog. Click the above quote for more.

Where are all the Blogging Books

Mike Sansone writes on Converstations,

So where do you find these blogging books, anyway? They're not in the Computer section. Not in Current Affairs.

They're in the business section.

Why do many people initially think in the computer section? Well, technologists have been the early adopters of blogging, followed closely perhaps by political junkies and knitting aficiandos (seriously, the number of knitting blogs is staggering. Modern day sewing circles?).

In particular, Blogging for Business is in the marketing section in most bookstores. Amazes some of my friends and my wife :) What amazes me is that I actually finished my part, and wasn't scrambling at the end to finish. Yes, I was constantly scrambling to improve it, add more/better examples, and basically keep up with my superb co-author Shel, who had the advantage of being an accomplished author.

Wow, a lot of great blogging books out there. Of the current crop, I think Blogging for Business stands out as the only book focused on "How to." Expect reviews of the other books here soon!

Walmart and Bloggers - Shel's TV comments

Shel appeared on CNBC's "Squawkbox" and discussed the ethics of Walmart's recent blogger relations campaign.
Watch Shel here, and read his analysis here.

Way to go Shel!

They didn't mention the book, although it was sitting on Shel's lap.

Great Bloggers who Rarely Post?

Matt Cutts, who I'll call The "Uber-Google SEO blogger," comments on his favorite type of blogger in a somewhat unrelated post on being cranky.

His favorite type of blogger "doesn’t post that often, but when he does, the posts are insightful and original." I agree, adding that some bloggers have a lot of useful things to say.

A personal blog may be different, but for anything remotely professional and/or business oriented, concentrate on delivering value!

Yes, you can be silly and have fun sometimes, and still be professional. Bruce Schneier's relatively new "Friday Squid Blogging" for example. Bruce obviously loves writing about squid (a play on "Friday cat blogging" - but he delivers so much valuable content to his target audience - people interested in security - that it's OK. I'm sure if Bruce had nothing useful to say about security, except for the occasional squid post, he'd remain silent.

Do you have a favorite blogger who rarely posts, or maybe one you wish would post less often and stay on subject?