The Blog Posts I haven’t Written
by Brian Reich | 8 May 2008, 2:00am
I have lots of ideas for blog posts. Every day an idea will pop into my head, sometimes it is many times during the day. But I rarely get a chance to sit and actually post. Something else gets in the way - work, life, something. What are some of the posts I wanted to write, but never did?
- Dear Marketer: Just ask me what I want, I will tell you
- What I learned while traveling through an airport in rural Kentucky.
- 3 things my 1-month old son taught me.
- 4 things my 3-month old son taught me.
- 11 things my 5-month old son taught me.
- What the hell happened to CNN?
- Dear Marketer: Be honest, do you think I am that stupid?
- I finished the New York Times Crossword Puzzle (on a Wednesday!)
- “All Hat and No Cattle” (or, Why I support Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the Democratic Primary)
- Why Cut and Paste functionality is so important to me.
- Media Rules! at the National Press Club.
- My experience at the Genius Bar
- Dear Marketer: Please help. I don’t understand.
- The Politics of Investing
- Opening Day at Nationals Park
- When you only hear part of the conversation…
Those are just the ideas I can remember, or find references to in my notes (I have a pocket full of notecards, ideas scribbled on a piece of paper or in the margins of a book). I am sure there are more, many more. I haven’t figured out a good system yet for keeping track, or converting those ideas into actual posts. But I want to. I am open to suggestions.
My new plan is to Twitter (twitter.com/brianreich) my ideas for blog posts, and then go back and use that listing as a reference. We’ll see how that goes. I also just need to find more time to sit and write, to spill my thoughts and organize my writing. I am open to suggestions on how to do that as well.
Age of Conversation
by Brian Reich | 16 Jul 2007, 2:00am
Today marks the official release date of “Age of Conversation.”
What is that? It is a collaborative effort of 103 bloggers and online types – a book that we all co-wrote and are now beginning the effort to co-market. It is also an experiment in distributed media, a test of whether a group is really more powerful than the individual. The goal was painfully simple:
- Pull 100 authors together on a single project
- The overriding topic was “The Conversation Age” — where you take it is up to you.
- The items are short - one 8.5? x 11? page — it can be words, diagrams, photos (again up to you). If it is words - about 400, give or take a couple.
- We write it quickly and get it out there. We publish electronically.
- We make it available online for a small fee and we donate 100% of the proceeds to Variety the Children’s Charity — which serves children across the entire globe
It all started with an off-handed remark on a blog post and grew from there. The credit for both launching and facilitating the project goes entirely to the editors, Gavin Heaton and Drew McClellan. I have never met either, but I was honored and flattered that they would let me participate.
All signs in this suggest that this crazy little experiment will be an overwhelming success… Age of Conversation is an interesting book and will get significant attention, hopefully driving good sales.
More information, and the option to puchase the book, is available at www.ageofconversation.com. Go buy a copy!
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: Age of Conversation Blogging Citizen Marketing Event Coverage Marketing Public Media Shameless Self Promotion
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CEOs Blogging, Sometimes Awkwardly
by Brian Reich | 22 Jan 2007, 2:00am
I want to give a little shout out to Jason Goldberg, the CEO of Jobster. (Full transparency, Jason is also a friend of mine - we used to work together).
Jason has become, with help from the mainstream media, the poster child for why CEOs should not blog. First the two local papers - the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Jobster is HQ’d in Seattle) dinged Goldberg, presumably for not scooping them before releasing his comments to the blogosphere. Today, the New York Times gets into the act, reporting on Jason’s blogging with the following lede:
Some executives, like Jonathan I. Schwartz of Sun Microsystems, pull it off with aplomb. Others, like Jason Goldberg of the online recruiting company Jobster, have had more difficulty.
The article isn’t that bad - mostly straight reporting - but the examples that the reporter, Damon Darling, chose seem to imply Jason is struggling. He doesn’t mention the countless posts where Jason talks about good hiring practices and shares his personal theories on business leadership. I don’t see a lot of CEOs offering that information up for free on a blog - or even offering it up at all in most cases.
Jason deserves a lot of credit for using his blog to help explain some major changes at Jobster over the past few months - including the downsizing of nearly half the staff. Most CEOs would hide behind a press release, a spokesperson, or not say anything at all. Most CEOs wouldn’t try to explain their actions, let alone submit to questioning from the general public.
At times Jason’s blogging has been awkward – at first denying there was any trouble, only to later change tune. He explained that his obfuscation was a necessary measure designed to give the employees of Jobster first knowledge of the impending changes. That seems plausible to me, and at least he came up with a reason — not your typical CEO move.
Don’t let them get you down, Jason. The press hasn’t figured out yet how to report on CEOs who blog, and more importantly, tell the truth about what is happening in their companies. Other CEOs should take a page from your book.
Update: Jason sent me this ‘Confessions of a CEO Blogger” video he put together. Good to see he’s not taking all the criticism too seriously.
Presidential Announcements v2.0
by Brian Reich | 21 Jan 2007, 2:00am
I had this really long, eloquent post written about how all the candidates are using the web to launch their political campaigns. I hit the wrong button and the whole thing was lost. I won’t try to reconstruct the entire thing, but let me try and summarize a couple of the key points.
John Edwards announced his campaign for the Presidency with a web video. Barack Obama used a web video a few weeks later to do the same. And now Hillary Clinton, who announced her intention to run for President on Saturday, has used a video on her Website to break the news. It seems you can’t be a candidate for President - at least not a Democratic candidate - without launching your campaign on the web. (Memo to Joe Biden and Bill Richardson, who announced their candidacy’s on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows — you might want to check to make sure your announcement registered at all, or consider posting the video of your appearance on YouTube to make sure people take it seriously).
Both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post used Senator Clinton’s announcement to analyze the role that the web will play in the upcoming campaign. The LA Times offers a brief history of the highs and lows of internet campaigns over the past decade, writing:
The Internet’s power both to make and break politicians has been vividly demonstrated in recent years.
In 2004, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean jumped from political obscurity to grab the front-runner’s position in the initial stages of the Democratic race largely on the strength of the interest and fundraising he generated online.
Last year, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) watched his reelection campaign — and his hopes of emerging as a prime contender for the GOP presidential nomination — go down in flames after a video clip of him addressing a young man of Indian descent as “macaca” made the rounds on the Web.
Barely a factor in campaigning 11 years ago when Clinton’s husband won reelection as president, the Internet has become an integral part of the political landscape, with every major candidate fielding a website and seeking to create a virtual community around his — or her — campaign.
But with the recent advent of YouTube and other video-sharing sites, analysts said the most intriguing aspect of the evolving use of the Web may be as part of an immense game of political “gotcha,” in which campaigns seek to catch opposing candidates off-guard and off-message, as happened to Allen.
By contrast, the Washington Post took more of an editorial stance on what makes for good web video in Politics, offering this comparison Clinton, Obama, and Edwards:here) and has posted his announcement video to YouTube and other places. He has a MySpace page, a Facebook profile, etc. He’s following the new media playbook pretty much to all the way. We will have to wait and see how that works for him.
Unlike other candidates (coughBarack Obamacough), whose videos might have been produced by a guy with a cellphone camera, Clinton’s announcement was a veritable showpiece of Hollywood-style set design, lighting and cinematography. While Clinton, looking radiant in a red jacket and flattering makeup, affected the demeanor of a kaffe-klatching neighbor while speaking about the Iraq war, energy, Social Security and health care, the camera swung with pen dular subtlety between a background tableaux of framed family pictures and a fabulous table lamp exuding a warm glow. In fact, the background is so eye-catching, so crowded with totemic details, so bursting with semiotic potential, that I missed whole passages of Clinton’s statement the first time around. (And yes, I do want that lamp.)
The effect was one of breathtaking political shrewdness and brilliant staging, like a mash-up between “The West Wing” and Diane Keaton’s latest holiday heartwarmer. And for all its studied spontaneity, its air of having been pre-tested, choreographed, and managed to within a microfiber of Clinton’s mascara, it worked, if only to provide a little eye candy within a grainy sea of canned speeches and awkward iChats. The aesthetic sophistication suited Clinton, who, as a former first lady and a U.S. senator, would look hopelessly out of place in most other contexts (rocking the mom jeans in the Ninth Ward? Uh-uh. Maybe an ornate Senate office, but where’s the zazz in yet another wall of law books?), and the look and the script warmed up a woman portrayed as either an amoral ice queen or control-freaky dragon lady by her political opponents.
Three quick points: First, the novelty of launching a campaign on the web should have worn off a long time ago. The web is not even close to being the most dynamic vehicle for delivering information anymore, politics has just been slow to embrace what virtually every major consumer brand and entertainment company in the world has been doing for the past five years. A really nice website, a blog, or even a web video announcement is not enough. Its time you ran a fully funded, fully supported effort online to promote your campaign - and to engage the audience that chooses to get its information there instead of through traditional news or campaign events (which are still important as well). Second, announcing your campaign online sets all of our expectations very high that you, as a candidate, will remain committed to using the web. John Edwards, you have already created behind-the-scenes web videos about yourself, recorded podcast conversations about issues, and similar. Are you going to keep doing that when you are visiting four states a day - so we can see what really happens to a person when they don’t sleep enough, eat healthy, or have complete control over their message? Hillary Clinton, you are taking your web efforts to the next level already, inviting the audience to create the first guest blog post to be published on your site and hosting a series of live video chats with the web audience over the coming week. Are you going to host live web-chats every week, about any topic? Are you going to take on the large and vocal segment of the online audience who questions your policies, challenges your positions, and even insults you personally — or will your web campaign, like your offline efforts, be so highly managed and controlled that it fails to really engage people? Finally, the media needs to find a better way to cover and express the value the web plays in this upcoming cycle than how they are currently doing it. We have all read, time and time again, what a big impact the web is playing and will continue to play in politics. Its time to assign a full time, daily reporter to cover each campaign’s online efforts. It is time to hold the campaigns accountable for what they say will be an online, grassroots fueled effort and put the same scrutiny on their web efforts as you do on their fundraising, their television ads, their speeches, and — even in some cases, their clothing. Just as you have pushed increasing resources into covering traditional news through the online medium, now its time to recognize that the online efforts of a presidential campaign are also news and cover them accordingly.
It should be an exciting couple of years for those of us who live, work, and love the online medium. I will definitely be watching to see what happens. I hope the political world realizes the potential that it has to reach and engage the audience before and lives up to its end of the bargain.
Update: I wasn’t totally fair to Bill Richardson. He has a very nice website (
TAGS
: Barack Obama Blogging Campaign Web Review Clips and Tips Commentary Free Advice Hillary Clinton John Edwards Journalism Los Angeles Times politics Technology Washington Post
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Mindshare Blog Event
by Brian Reich | 30 Jun 2006, 2:00am
Mindshare hosted, and I moderated, a discussion about blogging on Tuesday night in DC. Our focus was on how corporations, trade associations, nonprofits, and others can take advantage of this medium — looking beyond the fad of blogging and into the real opportunities for communicating.
Our panel included Lori Harrison from the American Bus Association (disclosure - the American Bus Association is a client and we helped to create their blog, Overdrive), Pat Cleary from the National Association of Manufacturers (who blogs at ShopFloor.org as well as several other places), and Lindsay Czarniak, a sports reporter for the NBC affiliate in Washington, DC (who blogged the Winter Olympics in Torino and the Final Four in Indianapolis)
I thought it was a really interesting discussion — and I am not just saying that because I moderated the panel. The audience (who braved thunderstorms, flooding, and complete city-wide gridlock to join us) asked good questions and the panelists provided good answers. Pat and Lori, who both represent trade associations, shared very different blogging experiences — Pat, who has been blogging for more than a year, has a growing audience around the world, while Lori has just started blogging recently and is focused almost entirely on building an audience of her organization’s members. Lindsay isn’t blogging actively right now, but her brief foray into the blogosphere continues to garner attention on and offline (the full-force promotion her TV station provided probably doesn’t hurt either), and brought a very personal perspective to what it is like to blog and the impact it can have on people.
I won’t bore you with all my perspectives on blogging now. You can download the White Paper we wrote on the topic to get some sense of my thinking. If you were able to join us for the event, thank you. If not, we missed you.
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: Blogging Event Coverage Shameless Self Promotion
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Online Integrity
by Brian Reich | 2 May 2006, 2:00am
A bi-partisan group of bloggers and other online thinkers have come together to craft an “Online Integrity Statement of Principles.” It is online at http://onlineintegrity.org/.
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: Blogging Commentary Free Advice politics
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We Media Global Forum
by Brian Reich | 2 May 2006, 2:00am
I am in London this week for the We Media Global Forum, a two-day conference (May 3 - May 4) exploring the impact of technology and the internet on media and society. The event is co-sponsored by the BBC and Reuters and hosted by The Media Center.
I will be moderating the online conversation at the Forum – helping to make sure the opinions and insights of the media, organizations, bloggers, and others who are watching and participating from near and far are heard as a part of the conference. I will also be helping to lead a wiki-storm, the outcome of which will be a call-to-action for conference participants, and others who are interested, to support bottom-up media. More on that later.
More information about the conference - and a link to the online chat - are available online at http://www.mediacenterblog.org/events/06/wemedialondon/home/.
TAGS
: Blogging Citizen Journalism Conferences/Events From the Trenches Journalism Shameless Self Promotion Technology
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The Rise of the Video Blog
by Brian Reich | 25 Apr 2006, 2:00am
Rolling Stone says onilne video bloggers are redefining the world of news and entertainment. Here’s a quote:
And with technology getting cheaper, and the mainstream media jumping in, the proliferation of vlogs could transform the Net into a kind of limitless cable system. “The Web is this great democratizing force, so that everyone can be a publisher and a television producer,” says [Jonathan Landman, the New York Times editor who oversaw the revamping of the paper's Web site with a slate of vlogs]. ”Name it, and you can be it. That’s the world we live in.”
The Political Internet
by Brian Reich | 25 Apr 2006, 2:00am
Jeff Jarvis, media consultant and blogger, wrote a column for this London Guardian this week about the political nature of the Internet.
Here is an excerpt:
The internet is only doing to politics what it has done to other industries: it disaggregates elements and then enables these free atoms to reaggregate into new molecules; it fragments the old and unifies the new. So in the end, the internet gives us the opportunity to make more nuanced expressions of our political worldview, which makes obsolete old orthodoxies and old definitions of left and right.
and another:
The surest sign of this new world order will come if a blogger without party favours wins an election with the support of his online tribe (one blogger has just launched a campaign against a controversial US congresswoman). If that happens, it will show that the internet lowers the barrier to entry not only in media and commerce but also in politics. So the internet doesn’t favour right, left or libertarian. The internet is revolutionary.
You can read the whole column here.
Jeff is right, the Internet isn’t partisan and does lower the barrier for entry to the political process. However, easy access is not an invitation to lower the standards of the debate. If you are going to run for office you should have something to say. You should be able to present a coherent argument for why you should be elected. You should have ideas, or solutions, or in some way be able to contribute to the effort to address critical issues. I welcome dissent - its a key ingredient in our Democracy. But dissent alone is not enough to sustain a candidacy and it is not a qualification for election. You can’t just be against something; You have to be for something as well.
Politics is not governing. A vocal blogger with support from his/her ‘tribe’ is absolutely qualified and welcome to enter the political arena. But voters - online or offline - should be smarter than to elect that person because they like how they write, or rant, or whatever. I won’t claim that all of the people elected to office today, or seeking office this November, have the qualifications to govern either. In fact, I would argue that it is the lack of a clear position on issues, a failure to make a substantive contribution to the policy making process, that is keeping the Democrats from seizing power (or at least momentum) right now (John Halpin and Ruy Texera take that very subject up this week in The American Prospect).
Jeff is right - a blogger getting elected to office solely on the merits of what they write online will signal a major shift in the way our society is managed. I’m just not sure that is the direction we should want to shift.
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: Blogging Commentary Free Advice politics
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Hanging Out In TheLobby.com
by Brian Reich | 18 Apr 2006, 2:00am
Starwood Hotels & Resorts has launched a blog — The Lobby.
The Wall Street Journal says that the company’s ”initial approach to the genre has as much in common with advertising as it does with the wide-open world of blogging.”
The effort is a professionally written and frequently updated Web log open to the public but aimed specifically at members of the “Starwood Preferred Guest” loyalty program. Many of the blog’s posts advertise happenings at specific hotels in the company’s portfolio of brands that include Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis and W. It also promotes ways that travelers can earn loyalty points through special promotions, for example.
Mixed in are posts meant to be informative for the frequent traveler. Recent items include links to blogs like Gizmodo.com and articles in mainstream publications. TheLobby.com currently links to items about self-weighing luggage; boxer shorts that have tiny pockets for iPods; and an item on National Public Radio about the use of Segway devices at the golf course of a Westin resort in Arizona.
I say it all the time, blogging is both a tool (a piece of technology that allows people with little/no technological skills to post information to the internet) and a world view (in my mind, if you blog, you make a commitment to talking openly and honestly about a subject - transparency is key). Beyond that, there are many different forms of blogging that are appropriate. What does that mean in practice?
Comments: You don’t need to have open, unmoderated comments to qualify as a blog. I think you should welcome comments and that its important to have a feedback loop, but its not a deal breaker. But you moderate your comments, require people to submit verifiable contact information before posting a comment, or even just use the blog to promote your view. Whatever you choose though, post your rules in advance so that its clear what your policy is.
On a side note, the WSJ claims that TheLobby.com blog doesn’t allow feedback from users. They do. There is a comments option in every post (complete with a lengthy disclaimer outlining Starwood’s policies and procedures).
Personality: Authentic voices can come from all over. I don’t see a problem with hiring a professional writer - or in the case of TheLobby, a PR firm - to post and promote content on your blog as long as you are transparent about it. The Starwood blog identifies their editors and writers (Philip, thomas, and Nick L.) but does little to introduce them. I’d like to see a bit more detail, even if they have to admit that the three are PR flaks.
Subject Matter: Let me get this straight. The Lobby blog is linking to information that helps people interested in traveling to Starwoods brand hotels to get information that improves their travel? No political commentary? No objective commentary about the hotel industry as a whole? Call the blogging police! Don’t be silly - blogs have long been used to promote certain products or personalities (isn’t that what every blog really is deep down, a mini PR machine for something or something?). I think Starwood has set the expectation that you aren’t likely to find negative information about their hotels on this blog, and that’s fine. Readers, adjust your filters accordingly.
Welcome to the blogosphere Starwood. I’ll be reading.
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: Blogging Commentary Free Advice Marketing
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