Disqus - Latest Comments for Chris Brogan...

Re: http://learntoduck.com/business/who-owns-trust-the-first-click-or-the-second-click

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:08:36 -0000

I've been thinking more and more about this in the larger picture. I've started thinking that we're going to go backwards on this one a little bit, or rather, there's a hybrid play here for a while.

Meaning, once we know someone's an expert, we'll probably use his or her page before someone else's. When we have no frame of reference, search engines will probably be the first choice.

Mahalo and/or older renditions like About.com when it was starting out, made sense. And then, incentives crept in.

So who knows? But I think you're on to something lijit-imate. : )

Re: 10 Guilty Pleasures

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:31:46 -0000

Very fun stuff. : ) Glad you blogged it, and I feel like I've learned a bit more about you. Thanks!

Re: Can Someone Please Create The HBO Of Online Video?

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:57:06 -0000

Would Next New Networks be that? I think that Tim and Fred and the rest of the people I never name by name are out there making a real rockstar product. I think THEY are the HBO.

Re: My 10 Facebook Tips and Tricks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:08:01 -0000

Pretty neat. I follow at least a few of these. Thanks for sharing, as I think there are things to learn about how to conduct one's self inside of Facebook.

Re: Free eBook Manifesto - Trust Economies

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:56:23 -0000

@Roland - so it depends on the company. I can see that. If you're Sun or Dell or LinkedIN, people expect a blog. If you're Hellmans Mayonnaise, people might not. Like that?

Re: What it Felt Like to Have No Blog for 8 Days

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:56:06 -0000

@Jen - you've got a great opportunity. As someone with expert skills in editing who focuses on a very tight, useful niche, you have a chance to write all kinds of blog posts in the "how to" department of helping other medical writers be more effective with what they're doing. You can give them advice tips, pointers to useful resources you find online to help with your writing, and links to medical writing you've found online that you find valuable, or at least worth considering.

If you write from the perspective of "how can I be helpful to my audience," I bet you can think up 20 posts from what I mention above. What do you think?

Re: What it Felt Like to Have No Blog for 8 Days

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:57:51 -0000

FYI, I added back "subscribe to comments" functionality. Sorry about that.

Re: What it Felt Like to Have No Blog for 8 Days

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:14:04 -0000

@jen - specific to medical writing? Not sure, but I'd recommend checking Google Blogsearch and Technorati on those keywords.

If you mean freelance/consulting in general, there are some great blogs out there, like Web Worker Daily and Brazen Careerist and, um, um, Small Biz Survival and uh, hmm. Someone else jump in?

Re: What it Felt Like to Have No Blog for 8 Days

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:14:44 -0000

@Paul - thanks for the comments. I look forward to seeing what your team comes up with. And thanks. I'm happy with the site's look and feel.

Re: Who is Secretly Pitching You

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:54:09 -0000

See the funny side effect of all this? We probably WILL get to a point that any time we rave about something, we disclaim. Odd, eh?

Re: Who is Secretly Pitching You

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:42:18 -0000

@Daz - interesting side road. Some of what I talked about with reputation actually applies to the local-vs-big/national conversation, because at some point, when cost isn't exactly the deciding factor, we might start looking at the difference between Brand A's social and environmental impact vs. Brand B. If you could buy soap for approximately the same price but the first soap was made locally, all natural, blah blah blah, and the second soap was churned out by a factory, if price and convenience were equal, wouldn't it be the obvious choice to buy the local?

But then, what if the local soap was made by someone with a reputation for a shoddy product? We'd have to learn to trust the local person just as much as we trust the big brand to be reliable (do we? I think we do).

Interesting.

Re: The Sound of Content Ripping Free From Its Page

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:20:56 -0000

So if Cathy's right, we need a new "Jerry's List."

Re: We Still Need Better Filters

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:30:59 -0000

Technically, the network is the filter, but I find that we need some kind of tool that makes the filter more realistic. I can't just sift all the time. I need a way to go from "this is interesting" to "this is interesting to Chris Brogan and his pursuits."

It technically can be done. I have to think more on HOW, but it's out there. It's a two step somehow.

Does Google Reader already have an API?

Re: We Still Need Better Filters

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:49:30 -0000

What if you had tools to make your own filters? What if you had a way to let in the everything (per Marina's point), but a mechanism to further elevate the pieces that have even more value than others?

Re: We Still Need Better Filters

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:18:34 -0000

A little bit. Yahoo Pipes might be the thing that STARTS the process. I think a tightened up app at the end of the day might make it better, but you know... why NOT start with Pipes and see if we can figure it out.

Now, I'm a Pipes hack, but if YOU are smarter (and you are), can you take a swing on this?

Re: Who is Secretly Pitching You

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:51:27 -0000

Wow. Great policies and ideas from everyone. Thanks so much for your points of view.

Re: We Still Need Better Filters

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:30:32 -0000

Humans have to be part of the mix, but humans augmented with better tools is where the gravy is. Right? It's humans inside with tools to move the value up the chain, right?

Re: We Still Need Better Filters

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:15:30 -0000

Mark- you're spot on. I was describing this to a friend who's in the technology meets marketing space and she said, "Oh, like Digg," and I said "yes, but a nation of diggs." Hmm... know what?

REDDIT.

Where's Alexis?

Re: Twitter as an Advisory Board

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:37:47 -0000

What I like is that there are pretty much 11 great ways to solve the problem right in the post. The more folks who come and comment, I imagine someone will help answer.

I *tried* making something for people to follow the answers, but it mysteriously broke 4 months ago. : (

Re: We Still Need Better Filters

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:38:50 -0000

@Todd- I agree that either FriendFeed or Social Thing could make this work faster than I'll figure it out. I hope they can help with such magical things. : )

Re: The Power of Personal Leadership

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:32:23 -0000

Thanks so much for your thoughts, TRQ, Niels, Dave, and Andreas. I believe we all have the ability to build our own abilities in this area. I'm excited to hear what you believe in this space, as I think we can all learn from each other.

Re: How I Tamed My Inbox

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:05:48 -0000

Wow. Gush gush. Stever commented on my post??? (honestly, I'm a big fan, and you need to be, too.)

Re: How I Tamed My Inbox

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:57:45 -0000

@Sarah - You'll get there. Baby steps. Read Stever's idea and the other people in the comments. They have even easier methods. : )

Re: Social Media- Talk is Cheap for Businesses

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:29:23 -0000

@Tim- Not only is Seth probably right, we're not far from not exactly needing blogs any more. One day soon, someone is going to "live" completely and utterly in a lifestream. FriendFeed starts to give you that sense. Not me. I like my blog. But someone.

@Michael- Can you talk about what the role was like? You don't have to say who, but what did you do? How were you measured? Etc...

Re: Social Media- Talk is Cheap for Businesses

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:40:46 -0000

@Michael - last question, I swear. What did Yahoo! think they'd get from those metrics? Meaning, if you had more subscribers and comments, did that in any way track to larger adoption of the Messenger app?

Re: How I Tamed My Inbox

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:51:25 -0000

By the way, Casey McKinnon put a Flickr screencap of her empty inbox with a link to this post. That link got me 40 new reads of the post. That's just something to consider when you're posting to Flickr. Another source of traffic.

Re: Social Media- Talk is Cheap for Businesses

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:38:36 -0000

@Dayngr - Interesting. I like that placement in an org. Is Internet marketing held apart from print and other channels?

Re: Social Media- Talk is Cheap for Businesses

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:31:25 -0000

Jeff Cutler - thanks for leaving your writing site. VERY useful stuff. Thanks for your thoughts. I'm facing that same barrier to entry over and over right now. It's interesting, because lots of different organizations are facing this from similar-but-different angles. It's out there for sure.

Will - Lucky.

Sonia- Questions are useful. Ask plenty! : )

Re: Social Media- Talk is Cheap for Businesses

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:44:23 -0000

@Michael- I'd say it's the other way around. I think businesses are standing at the starting line, saying, "I'm ready to run. Now what?" And we're the one failing them. If we're not there with the whole "interface kit," it's us. I think they're ready.

Re: How I Tamed My Inbox

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:38:45 -0000

Hi Frank--

I don't use folders. I pile all the mail in an archive, because if there was data I really needed to complete a task or to know something, I move that into Things. The mail just stays in an archive.

The point is to make the mail app NOT be where you think about things. It's where you receive info, and then do something with the info. Save the mail for reference, just in case, but otherwise, you DO stuff elsewhere.

Make sense?

Re: The Community Ecosystem

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:42:44 -0000

@Connie- I think that's a really worthwhile project. A while back, I did occasional posts called "Yellow Highlighter," where I'd highlight someone's website that I thought was interesting. Maybe we should all do that from time to time.

Related, but not, the Rockstars page is for ANYONE who visits this site, so there are lots of hidden gems there. (And if you're not there, read the instructions, follow them, and then YOU will be there, too). : )

Re: How I Tamed My Inbox

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:40:22 -0000

@E.T. - I don't, exactly. I do some copy/paste if I need details, but otherwise, I just transfer it up and over. Portage style.

@Tashjian - good point about not sending to all. Phew.

Re: Books to Buy- Here Comes Everybody - Clay Shirky

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 08:46:59 -0000

@Jim - I really love it. It's focused differently than "Wisdom of Crowds" insofar as Surwiecki (sp?) was talking about this like a theory, whereas Clay is pointing out use cases and examples that are forward-thinking and replicable.

If I could only buy ONE of the two books, that'd be a tough choice, but I think because I like practical things, I'd go with Shirky.

Re: Seven Blog Improvements You Can Make Today

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:51:05 -0000

Hi Jeanne- That's baked into the theme so I'll look and see where it is to fix it. Thanks for that. : )

Re: Seven Blog Improvements You Can Make Today

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:13:31 -0000

@Kelly - European and other parts of the world use URI (Uniform Resource Indicators). It's one of those semantics issues that I don't fight over. Toe-mahhhh-toh.

Re: Raising a Quick 500 for Cancer

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:19:55 -0000

But that's not to say that it can't be done. I only have as many followers because I've built the network.

Yes, it'd take more time/effort for someone still growing their community, but the fact remains that the tools are there for simple transfer of value, and that the promotional opportunities are out there. If not in Twitter than in blogs, Facebook, and beyond.

Way different than when I'd have to go door to door asking for money for the "Walk for Hunger" campaign.

Re: Raising a Quick 500 for Cancer

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:13:48 -0000

The retweeting thing made a big difference. Thanks for highlighting that, Amanda. That's definitely what made the thing grow legs. Oh, and I asked a few "big names" to help, and that didn't hurt, either. : )

Re: Your Help Requested- Planning a Small Series

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:15:00 -0000

Wow! You guys have given me lots of great ideas to choose from. Holy cats. I have my writing and research cut out for me. : ) Thank you.

Re: The Web Version of You

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:28:05 -0000

@kathybeth - I think another solution would be Lijit. If you swing by [chrisbrogan.com] and look at my far right sidebar, beneath the black "MyBlogLog" thing, there's a part with a search bar and says "My Content." That's Lijit.

That's an easy widget for people to see all the places where you contribute.

FriendFeed is more that+ a conversation.

In fact, where's Micah. How do YOU explain how FriendFeed and Lijit are different?

Re: The Web Version of You

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:24:19 -0000

@Jez - really great points. There isn't much "claim dispute" here on the ole web. Hmmm, now that you mention it.

Re: Your Help Requested- Planning a Small Series

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:25:39 -0000

Wow! Tons of stuff. Clearly, I've got a lot of work cut out for me. : ) Thanks! Keep them coming, if you want.

Re: Being the Same You Always

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:06:26 -0000

@Brad - wait'll you meet him in person. It's like you go back and look at Gary's videos and say, "Man, you've been holding out on us."

Re: Your Help Requested- Planning a Small Series

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:07:33 -0000

Posted the first from your requests: Social Media Starter Moves for Freelancers. Thanks to Tim Kissane for requesting it.

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Freelancers

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:08:31 -0000

@Laura and @Jeremy - I added your advice to used LinkedIN in the community section of the post, with links to your sites. Thank you.

@Mike D - don't go right off. Go to some social events. For every event that costs your $2000 to attend, there's a free meetup near it. Guaranteed. Surf Upcoming and Eventful for that.

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Real Estate

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:09:52 -0000

Great point, Stanislav. It's not a real estate agent's core competency. And yet, if one were even reasonably good at it, would it sell a house? Maybe. What do I know? : )

Re: Two More Ways to Share This Blog

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:11:00 -0000

@KillerConsultant - I thought so, too, until a bunch of people told me they were printing them. I'd much prefer to send the occasional PDF.

Re: Social Networking Features are Toilets

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:39:47 -0000

@Eric- the funny thing is, I forgot to quote your anti post in this one. When I wake up tomorrow, I will do just that. (You think I'd put out a horrible ANALogy like this and not expect crap from you?)

Re: Social Networking Features are Toilets

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:56:41 -0000

Hi Alma-- I think you've got some great points in there. I think that there are ways that this technology gives voice to the "little guy" but you've also got a point that it can inundate us and swamp the boat, too.

Food for thought.

Re: Do You Know Who Your Customers Are

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:14:56 -0000

For the folks who didn't follow, let me say it another way:

If you're trying to make money from social media AS A MEDIA PLAY (like pro blogging, video, whatever), the money comes from the sponsors/exhibitors, not the audience. To that end, it's important to work with the sponsors to build what they need on one side, and to attract an audience that cares about what you're talking about on the other side.

But you're not trying to sell into that audience. You're only selling up to those sponsors. I don't want Mack Collier thinking he has to buy things for me to stay in business. I want Mack Collier to be intrigued by the sponsors I've brought to the experience, and potentially buy things from THEM, should the mood strike.

Make sense? Does that clarify?

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Real Estate

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:17:25 -0000

Glad to see some "real" real estate professionals show up and vet some of this.

Susan's right that nothing beats being there in person, but if I'm evaluating something like a cross-country move, if you make it easier for me to know what's out there visually, I'll be more likely to follow up. If you leave me in the dark, telling me I have to see it in person, I'm going to go with what's easiest to see first.

Re: Do You Know Who Your Customers Are

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:11:17 -0000

@Mack - thanks! Glad I at least had a chance of making sense in there.

Re: Do You Know Who Your Customers Are

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:01:23 -0000

@Sonciary - you say that like it's not my plan. : )

Re: Using Social Networking and Media Offline

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:17:55 -0000

@Steve - really good point. Especially in a place like Vermont (I'm from Maine), being "from away" takes a very long time to shake.

Re: Writing Effective Blog Posts

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:34:21 -0000

Really exciting to see what folks had to say. Will you share YOUR writing methods with us on your blog? Post a link.

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Entrepreneurs

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:48:44 -0000

So, I actually have some ideas on the stuff we need when we switch to the "lots of networks" model. If I don't fall asleep accidentally, I will write it up for tomorrow's post.

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Entrepreneurs

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:35:22 -0000

I think Jason's right. The novelty of "hey, all my friends are here," or "hey, I can make friends!" is wearing off. We get it. It *can* be done. But then what? What does a growing social network do ultimately to your blog? Anything? To your business? Unless you can USE that network in meaningful ways, mobilize it, etc, what does it do for you?

So, lots of interesting thoughts.

And yes, I like Ning a lot. Still haven't met and spoken with Marc and Gina, but I've talked with them, and met some of the rest of the team, so I'm happy there. : )

Re: What Does Facebook Actually DO for Me

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:39:55 -0000

So for those of you like Keith Casey who said it's a great contact book, I have the opposite experience. I can send in-garden messaging, but if I'm on my cell, I can't ring someone up. I can't forward a message. I can't group message easily. I can't make reusable group messaging unless I convince someone to join a FB group.

So far, the aggregate opinion is that FB is good for putting a bunch of features into one place, and that it's easier than the "real" web. Yes?

AOL...

Re: What Does Facebook Actually DO for Me

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:49:04 -0000

Wow. Spammy, Tammy?

Maybe you can explain how it compares here.

Re: Listening to Blogs- Really Listening

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:43:18 -0000

John- at any point does the name "PimpMyNews" make you wonder what opportunities you've perhaps cut off? Or do you have a black label version called something like "ImportantAudioProductForBigMedia.com" ?

: )

Re: Credit Cards for Reputation

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:43:58 -0000

Sure, leave it to the financial aid expert to set me straight. No WONDER I have problems with credit cards. (ow).

"Reputation degrades..." Interesting, true, and another whole something that has my head spinning.

Re: Making Business Sense of Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 07:31:08 -0000

@CoachDeb - I think there used to be a lot fewer ways to network, and most of them weren't exactly my favorite. About a decade ago, I was almost tempted to learn golf. I'm not knocking the sport, but it's not for me. An article I read last year talked about World of Warcraft being the new golf. Now, THAT I could support.

@Shawn - you're not wrong. It's hard for someone to roll yet another thing-to-do into their daily grind at a small business. I suppose I'll have to write starter moves for that to see what comes of it.

@Kris- agreed. That's how I see things going, more or less.

@Becky - so you're our model of a small business using social tools, except I'm curious how much of this is for your retail business vs how much is for your consulting work. If B, how has it helped so far?

@Deborah - interesting, so when the crowd complains in a channel that isn't the company's primary channel, they'll still be held responsible to come and comment.

@Alex - with over 5000 twitter friends and thousands of connections in other social networks, not to mention a combined total of around 8,000 daily visitors to this blog (via RSS *and* pageviews), I can tell you that it does change when volume and velocity is applied. That's an interesting question, and I might take a swing at it while we wait for Michael or Robert to write a book.

@Sue - Daniel Pink rocks.

@Hans - I quite agree with that. Finding your customers where they are is the most important advice.

Re: Who Am I Really

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:54:25 -0000

Thanks to everyone who contributed. I've been away from my computer for most of today, but I'm so very grateful that you all took time to write and share a bit about yourself, or your thoughts about what I do here. I'm grateful for your attention in any format.

You're all a great part of what I'm doing here. Without you, I'd be writing for myself, and frankly, I *know* what *I'm* going to say. If you weren't giving your thoughts and feedback, it'd be a pretty bland site. Truly.

So thank you for giving. It means more than you probably realize, and so many more people deserve great folks like you commenting on their work, too. But don't run away! You can visit them, and then come back to our community. Fair? : )

--Chris...

Re: Customer Service Needs New Channels- Or Does It

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:53:25 -0000

I'm sitting at an airport. There are LOTS of ways to be confused at airports. Lots of things need fixing. Why wouldn't customer service types be AT airports, roaming around with headphone cell phones and Asus EEE pcs with EVDO (or wifi) and just spot-fixing stuff that otherwise takes a call to a disinterested person in some other state/country/state of mind?

I think there are TONS of ways this can be viewed. Who's blogging good customer service stuff these days? Who are YOU reading?

Re: Who is Technorati Trying to Reach

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:40:04 -0000

@Ian - very cool that you came on the blog to comment, and thanks for that. At least you're listening.

For the rest of us, Ian left an email address. We should give some pointers as to the service we used to use, and how we wish the product would work for us.

Then again, the more I thought about it, my wonder was: how will they make money? It's an ad play, right? So, can the suggestions we make give them enough page views to get ads?

My answer: yes.

Re: Is Your Community For Sale

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:30:45 -0000

Albert gets it, I think.

What if Andrew were selling Rocketboom? Would you feel as outraged? And yet, if you're a regular subscriber of Rocketboom, aren't you part of that community?

So what's the difference? Is Twitter more intimate? Why? Because we make it that way?

NOW what are you thinking?

Re: Alert Thingy Helps Make FriendFeed Indispensible

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:36:45 -0000

@Louis - it might not be. My problem is that I need it to scroll faster. I want the info to rush by. Alert Thingy needs to let me throttle it up a bit, to watch it move as fast as an IM window.

This method seems to keep me paying attention better, though, the thingy vs the website.

Re: Global Languages and Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:56:05 -0000

And there's an interesting sidebar question: what would blogging look and feel like if we had a local blog that related only to our local life as a second side-blog to what we were already covering? Hmmm.

Re: Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:05:30 -0000

Hi Jay--

We're not looking to build numbers. In fact, we're hoping they drop to somewhere between 200-300, which would put it more in size and scope to Toronto's two fine events.

$50 just says, "I am REALLY coming when I say I'm coming," and helps us manage the "I support this idea, but had something come up."

Sorry we'll miss you in Boston.

Re: Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:25:22 -0000

The beauty is, ANYONE can run an event to teach people how to use podcasting tools. Anyone. You don't need my permission.

You need our permission to call it PodCamp, but it's just a name.

Boston Media Makers is a GREAT event. I highly recommend it. Don't like that either? Make your own. It's easy (not). : )

We're doing something unique at PodCamp, but the unique comes from how we encourage participation, what the crowd seems to want to cover for topics, and several other little touches. We're not the only game in town.

I hope you come.

Re: Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:03:52 -0000

Douglas - moneymaking? We have an open ledger. It's absolutely NOT money making. We're raising well over 2/3 of the money from sponsors within our community who want to talk to engaged people. $50 has nothing to do with the money. It has everything to do with making sure people have an excellent facility, with great opportunities to collaborate, in a setting that we think will work out nicely. The venue, as displayed in the open ledger (a requirement of PodCamps), is the lion's share of the cost.

COULD we do it somewhere free or really cheap? Yep. But again, people aren't footing that bill. Our sponsors and community are.

$50 is a commitment to attend.

Re: What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:31:41 -0000

I think Francine's comment is better than my post. : )

Thanks for the amazing thoughts. I'm forever humbled by the great people here.

Re: Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:00:37 -0000

All great points, everyone. I'm excited about the conversation.

Of course, it's also fun to be considered potentially evil and on a slippery slope BEFORE the event, and based on one factor. You could put it to a vote, I guess.

Then again, Penn might be voted evil instead of misunderstood. : )

Re: Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:35:36 -0000

@Douglas - the logic is wrong. Sorry. Charging money doesn't equal turning it into a business.

Ripped off from Dictionary.com:

1. an occupation, profession, or trade: His business is poultry farming.
2. the purchase and sale of goods in an attempt to make a profit.
3. a person, partnership, or corporation engaged in commerce, manufacturing, or a service; profit-seeking enterprise or concern.

Nope. This event isn't my occupation. It's not an attempt to make a profit. It's not a profit-seeking enterprise or concern.

You're welcome to disagree. You're even welcome to run PodCamps for free, provided you follow the six rules.

But I'm all done talking about whether or not it's a business. My business is not PodCamp.

Respectfully.

Re: College Student Twitters Arrest in Egypt

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:27:09 -0000

Hi twittered "arrested," but perhaps he was legally detained. Good point, though, Gregory and Http500. You've got his twitter name, his website, and his flickr site. Feel free to investigate further. : )

Re: Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:28:48 -0000

@purplecar - the membership makes sense if we're seeking the money to make money, but ultimately, the money is symbolic of a commitment to attend the event. Meaning, if you pay your $50 membership, but still don't show up, we still don't have a count of who will really (likely) be there. Make sense?

So, the scholarship for attendance idea is a good one, but the mechanism has to exist such that we ensure we know who's attending. Make sense?

Re: Customer Support on Twitter

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:41:54 -0000

Sometimes I use "brilliant" when maybe I should say "pretty neato?" I get called out for "brilliant" a lot. But you know? I have this feeling, this unshakable feeling that this is the start of something bigger, so I give points for early adopters.

That said, Don, you just made me laugh out loud with the realization of that person on the street corner (Manhattan in my mind). I think you've got a point there.

Re: Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:19:10 -0000

John- absolutely right. Large PodCamps aren't bad. You proved that last year for sure.

For our event in Boston, and not as a statement to all PodCamps the world around, we're looking towards something just a little smaller, but not because more is bad. We just have a preference.

And your other points were also valid, but I wanted to answer the one that directly impacts NYC2, which should be a hoot.

Re: Marketing to My Ego

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:03:03 -0000

Oh, I wasn't really saying Jennifer was explicitly marketing in the traditional and paid sense. But, it certainly raises the question of how it'd work.

@Dale- I hope to stay #2 forever (hahaha - like poop).

Would it work if everyone did it? No.

Re: I am NOT Digg

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 07:08:21 -0000

@Barbara - you missed my point. I'm not crapping on Digg. I'm saying that 40 people a day asking me to point to their stuff on Twitter isn't scalable.

Re: What I Did This Morning Instead of Blog

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:22:45 -0000

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts and ideas. I'm glad to hear your opinions.

Re: 10 Blogging Tips

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:15:58 -0000

@Daz - you know, that's a good point. These are my kind of general tips that relate to the space as I see it. A blog is a tool. You can do whatever you want with it. Don't listen to me. I'm only one perspective.

Re: Starting Points for Online Presence

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:28:02 -0000

So I put in the recommended adds because I agreed with your thinking, with appropriate links to your sites when you left them (Susan left an email address in the URL line, so I didn't put THAT up there).

Re: Starting Points for Online Presence

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:48:16 -0000

@Jack- I'd say my blog for me, but that might change from person to person. That's a neat question. Anyone else?

@Susan- good tool for multitasking, and I've never heard of it. Neato.

Re: On Managing A Community

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:25:25 -0000

Tim's got me thinking, too. Man... lots of you have me thinking.

There are lots of things that will have to go into a next version.

Re: On Managing A Community

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:41:22 -0000

Roxanne is absolutely right. It's definitely important to find the person who lives this in their bones. Look at Cortney. Tons of passion for this subject.

It's a very good point: maybe that's another post. How to hire one. My thought: find community people from amidst the pool of community people. But is that wrong, short-sighted?

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:40:50 -0000

A few comments about the toilet picture suggest that I tell you something. Steve Jurvetson, the photographer (you can click the graphic to see the original), is also Steve Jurvetson who loves rocketry ( See his TED talk here). Steve, by the way, is also part of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Can you believe it? A VC rocketeer who snaps cool pictures of toilets.

Maybe Tom can learn from him. : )

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:38:51 -0000

@Anna - I don't grade on grammar. That's Grammar Girl. : )

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:41:59 -0000

Know what else is funny? I don't even seem able to find a Facebook profile for Tom. The guy telling me that his company has a great new app for posting to Facebook. He's not even IN the community he's spamming me about?

Oh, I truly hope he does a decent job of social media listening and finds this post. It'll be interesting to hear his thoughts on it.

Re: On Managing A Community

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:05:13 -0000

Nancy has a two part post that really blows the covers off what this could all really mean once we get past the basics. I encourage you to check it out.

Click here.

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:27:06 -0000

@Anna - I met David in person when he spoke at PodCamp Boston2. He and I talked about the way it feels when something goes to print and then feels all static. It's tricky. That book was in its final form before Facebook hit big, so that made it feel a little off right away, and yet, if I write a book about social media, I hope it has half the value of David Meerman Scott's main points.

Starting to think we should post books like that one and Geoff Livingston's and Brian Solis's NOW IS GONE for free online as pointers to the mainstream. (Except that I want my friends to make money).

Oh well. We'll see what happens when dear Tom wakes up in a few hours to "reap the rewards" of his press release efforts.

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:46:06 -0000

@Albert - Very interesting. I don't disagree that communications professionals add a layer of strategy and tactics that could help those like Tom. But I wonder if a shift is coming. Does Tom have to pay YOU to DO the work, or just to teach him?

The tools are cheap and free. But the skills? Now that's what they should be paying you for, right?

PR types, what do you think of that?

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:44:12 -0000

Howard Greenstein's photo is a riot!

Check it out.

@Marshal - you are a great guy and may call me any time.

I quite agree, John.

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:32:46 -0000

Dear everybody, and this is a riot--

I'm not on the payroll of Utterz. I'm on the advisory board. If you know what that means, it means that I'm someone who gives them advice if they ask me for it.

Further, I don't know anything about CellSpin because I didn't read your press release beyond the first two paragraphs.

So, nice try, but not accurate. Your "research" points to an advisory board post for no money, nor do I have a specific horse in the game.

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:33:37 -0000

And Randi- if you're a regular reader, I've not once heard from you before, nor do you link back to your blog, nor do you show me any sign that you're not a splog comment backing up another opinion.

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:35:19 -0000

Tom - finally ,I didn't crap on your company, I crapped on YOU. So your version of telling my readership that I'm being disingenuous is that I have something against your company.

I crapped on you for lobbing a press release at me.

So thanks for obfuscating.

Re: On Managing A Community

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:53:16 -0000

@Cortney - Google Reader is a judgment call for me and for my employee. I love Google Reader. I can move through thousands of articles, finding exactly what I need, with a lot less time and effort than any other reader.

The sharing function gives me aggregation powers, and the starring, emailing, and further tagging features allow for rich metadata that permit me the ability to move through things fast.

It's how I use it. In list mode, with the keyboard commands. And so that's how I got it going.

Your mileage may vary. : )

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:32:23 -0000

@Shannon - storm trooper. I think you've hit it perfectly. And after all, aren't most of us stormtroppers? Even Fett was a clone.

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:48:21 -0000

Hi Randi--

Great points, and seems like there's a lot of future posts in here.

I got to wondering what I'd said about Utterz before or after being put on their board (for fewer shares, I think, and I'm not even sure if I ever sent back the paperwork to claim such - ask people who try to get me to do things for them: I'm bad with sending back paperwork).

Here's a search of my blog for utterz. I was made a member of their advisory board in February of 2008. I couldn't find a review (smashing or otherwise) for the product on my site. I found several uses of the tool, and several mentions of it as something people might consider for their toolbox. So, I've mentioned it a lot, but never reviewed it in any depth, and haven't said TONS about it beyond mentioning it a lot as a tool to use.

My About page tells you my relationship with them, and further, I disclose in posts (most all of them after February) that I'm on the advisory board.

So back to my point: I had no idea WHAT CellSpin did beyond the first paragraph, so I wasn't complaining about it based on it being a potential competitor for a tool I use and advise on. I was shitting on a PR tactic.

Are you truly still thinking this is somehow based on the software? Did you re-read the post? I have.

But, to your point, I'm doing some work in the world of relationships/trust and that kind of stuff, and writing on that for an upcoming book. Maybe this very post and your input will help catalyze my ideas on what goes into it.

And thanks for reading. Funny time to make your first (that I can recall) comment, but just the same, your points are valid, and I'm glad you're part of the conversation.

Guess I've got some good blog topics for later, too.

Thanks again, truly.

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:55:42 -0000

Hi Michael and thanks for coming by--

I should start by saying that I'm not as angry as I am disappointed. I'm rarely angry, as people who know me can attest.

There are plenty of bloggers and journalists doing things in crappy ways, and just as many people ready to call them out for that.

Is it weird/wrong to say "I have a lot of friends in PR"? Does that come off like Ross Perot? I was just at the New Comm Forum in California, put on by SNCR. Great bunch of folks, and I learned a lot. I'm a big fan of GOOD PR.

What I'm not a fan of, and thus the post, is the whole "lob the bomb" method.

But as this post (and most every post I write) has shown me, there's always a lot more to the story than my initial take, and the body of comments on this post is more meaningful and useful to me than the original post.

PR people aren't dogs.

Was it too much? Do I owe Tom an apology?

--Chris...

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:24:39 -0000

@Keith - Actually, I have to say that I got a *great* and polite email from Ian Fung, CEO of CellSpin, and he seemed like a decent guy. We talked a bit about it, and his last point was that THIS conversation was out of his hands. Meaning, I don't think he wants to weigh in on this part of the discussion.

If I were CEO, would I want to jump in? Not sure. Because again, I'm not attacking his company. I'm pooping on an impression one person left me. Seems like something that will blow over.

@Eleanor - I don't want Tom to lose his job, but do I want people like Tom to do something a little different next time? Sure. But then, I'm still considering what that is. That's a blog post after I finish with some day job stuff.

Thanks again.

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:32:13 -0000

@Ian - sorry about that. I didn't read closely, evidently. And as the architect, you're right. Hide away and make great code. I'm not being facetious. That's a lot to deal with, and I wouldn't want to deal with all this either. (I used to be a partial architect at my old wireless organization, and I never touched marketing/pr/etc).

@Eleanor - interesting. So what should I have done differently, from your perspective?

Re: What Tom Could Learn from Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:57:30 -0000

@Eleanor - I think you're right. I think calling him out by name was probably wrong, as is calling out the company in question.

Now, in some circles, it's bad form to edit a post (especially with 102 comments). But maybe I should do that. Take out the name, at least. I think I will.

Thanks for your advice.

Re: Some Differences Between Pitching Mainstream Press and Bloggers

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:08:28 -0000

@Ted - You're right that I should have stated that mainstream writers and media have passion, too. Silly of me. I'm sorry. Perhaps it would be better to state that bloggers are more often guided by our passion, where the mainstream have other criteria? I'm glad you're here and part of the conversation. I look forward to meeting at some time. Please remind me to tell you about the NECN camera guy. : )

@Brian - please feel free to share the link. : ) Your materials are top shelf.

Re: Some Differences Between Pitching Mainstream Press and Bloggers

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:20:24 -0000

Wow, I just called the bunch of us egotistical and that we need baby handling and you didn't flame me? Come on! : )

Thanks, everyone for your perspective.

What are the other tips we should be spreading?

Re: Saying No

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:49:24 -0000

I should clarify that my blog continues to be a priority and I'll keep writing on it as I can.

It's more the 290 emails out of 400 each day that are requests to do something or look at something or promote something or work on something for free, or for pay, etc. Those have to get prioritized and dealt with.

I'm still here. : )

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. You're clearly in a similar spot.

Wait til you see what I found on the plane ride down to Houston. Found a great resource to share with you all.

Re: Saying No

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:42:33 -0000

You guys are all so great. Thank you for your thoughts and sentiments. I'm grateful for friends like you, and excited about what I'll be able to do once I get just a little more clutter off my plate.

Re: Social Networks- Time to Specialize

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:04:33 -0000

@Paul - check out XMPP. It's kind of close to that flavor.

Re: Social Networks- Time to Specialize

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:18:18 -0000

Not sure how your site is very specialized in functionality, Marzar. Seems like the same old features to me.

Re: Making a Business From Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 11 May 2008 10:28:54 -0000

@Brian - oh, I plan to do exactly what you told me. Have no doubt. : ) But that's sales by way of social media, not social media as the end product, n'est pas?

Re: Kirtsy Back in Business

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:40:35 -0000

It's like Digg, though. Kinda/sorta. Right? I get your point, but I just figured it was a more-column digg.

Re: The Target is Not the Weapon

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:55:13 -0000

@Paul - see Steve's comment below yours. It's not any of the tools. It's where your end state takes you. Looks like you're pretty much there, but cast off the specific tools and state what your goals are. : )

@Steve - you get it. : )

Re: Get Faster

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:49:37 -0000

Here's my point, and you've given me tons to think about: talking about the same story a week later isn't as useful as getting to the heart of matters right away. I guess it's not speed for speed's sake, but rather, maybe I'm interested in making sure information finds air when it's necessary. For instance, Twitter beat the USGS to the China earthquake story, for instance.

Thoughts?

Re: Alexa Scordato Weighs In

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:10:37 -0000

Thanks for the thoughts, Alexa. This is as inspiring to me as anyone else. You've said a lot of things worth considering, and given me a different view on my own work. Thank you.

Re: Get Faster

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:27:37 -0000

@mia - that's funny! : )

@Cameron - great question to ponder. But maybe one doesn't replace the other. There are times when fast matters, and times when learned, slow, staid matters?

Re: A Day Without Twitter

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:42:33 -0000

Zoe wanted to know what I learned without Twitter to the good:

*I learned that our lives are a big pot, and that we keep that pot full no matter what we take out of it, which taught me the value of focusing on stuffing the pot with what matters most.

*I learned that I like the people I've come to know through Twitter, and that I am glad that I've met lots of them in person.

*I learned that it's not AS vital to have Twitter as, say, email or phone. Going without that would be rough, so I'm glad to say I value my other forms of connectivity a bit more.

There. That's about all I have. It'd take a week to know more.

Re: A Day Without Twitter

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:30:56 -0000

@david - guaranteed that theres life beyond the glass. : )

Re: Customer Service Hoops

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:34:32 -0000

@Christopher -- If I hung out with you for 2 hours a week, I would be so much smarter in just a few weeks. I used to program IVRs, but left before they got that smart, evidently.

@George - you and Marcel made a similar point, and I agree with it.

@Marcel - absolutely on track. A company needs marketing, but what's the spend? Is it 60/40? Is it 70/30? When thinking about it from a strategy standpoint, or even just allotments, if you don't acquire, you don't grow. If you don't preserve the base, you can't pull in revenue. Hmm.

CEO types, what's your take?

Re: Customer Service Hoops

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:12:00 -0000

@Andrew - I'm sure they manage standard issues fairly reasonably once you get to them, but I'm saying this: go to their site, find the toll free number for service. How many clicks did it take you? How much navigation on the audio platform does it take you? How many steps between prompts and a human?

Re: Customer Service Hoops

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:33:44 -0000

@Rachael - great point about expats. That's harder still.

Re: Bloggers Need Errors and Omissions Insurance

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 17 May 2008 06:55:28 -0000

When I posted this, I had no idea that it would stir up so many good points from all of you. Turns out there's more to this than even I imagined.

Re: Make Your Blog Design Work For You

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 17 May 2008 16:05:59 -0000

@Josh - thanks for finding the typo. : )

Re: Make Your Blog Design Work For You

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 18 May 2008 06:42:10 -0000

Are there other design tips you'd add based on your own site's design?

Re: Make Your Blog Design Work For You

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:38:40 -0000

@Ellis - great question. In my case, I *just* posted a link back to most of my "best of" stories, so people used the heck out of that. But are they clicking older stories? Hmm. Not sure.

By the way, @IMNico from Snowy Day Design was who made my site so pretty. Top shelf guy from Argentina, who designs for a lot of the podcaster and new media crowd. : )

Re: How I Do It

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:07:44 -0000

@Ken - it was a blast, and thank you.

I plan to write more about it, but just don't know what people would find useful. I will noodle on this more.

Re: How I Do It

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:19:21 -0000

@Noah - shhhh. Don't tell. It's like Fight Club. : )

Re: How I Do It

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:19:56 -0000

@Luis - thanks for the very kind words. I look forward to meeting you one day, as well.

Re: How I Do It

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:36:56 -0000

@Karen - thanks. I'm reasonably fond of them myself. The girl is such a star, and Harold? Well, we love Harold.

@Saran - I'm really happy that's working out for you. Which country is that, by the way?

@Jon - Oh, you may believe that. I'm often surprised at the mystery of it all. The spirit moves through all things, I've heard it said.

Re: How I Do It

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:04:21 -0000

@Andre - that is totally true. Working out in the morning gives you TONS of advantages of sedentary people. Great point to add.

@Larry - there was a change of plans with that, I'm sorry to report, but Steve Garfield has stepped in to shoulder the responsibilities, and he took my moderation questions, so maybe there'll be a little bit of me in there, still. : )

@Reconciler - well, it'll come. : )

@Christina - you're right, of course. It's like the Twitter of life, young children, because we have fewer minutes in the day.

Re: How I Do It

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:21:18 -0000

@Lou - that should be another post: how I end up seeming to be everywhere. : ) Glad I saw you, too.

And you're right that it's not just me getting it done. You're doing all kinds of stuff.

Re: How I Do It

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:30:55 -0000

@Saran - Malaysia - wow. You DO have a great opportunity there. Keep it up, sir. : )

Re: How I Do It

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:31:47 -0000

I should say that TV isn't evil. Our inability to selectively moderate our lives is truly at stake, but that's like telling a recovering alcoholic that it's okay to have a few beers in the fridge, just in case. I believe TV can be that addictive.

Oh, and let's not fool anyone. The web can be that addictive, too. If you're not on the web for business (or whatever your vocations are), where are you? Are you spending hours there, feeling smug about no TV? Same thing, in the end.

It's how we manage our schedules that I'm pointing out. But TV does seem to be top of the list of places where we lose a few hours.

Much love to you all for your sharing.

Re: Make Your Blog Design Work For You

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:21:50 -0000

@Rachael -

I've got a few opinions.

hosted sites:

Blogger - basic, but still useful. Easy to edit all the code.
Wordpress.com - more attractive than blogger, but you can't touch all the code.
Tumblr - decent if you add Disqus for commenting.
Typepad - I'm not a fan, but lots of people use it and love it. (I'm a fan of Anil Dash and Six Apart. But this is just a choice).
Wordpress.org - my choice. But then, my friends at Gimp.TV often tell me they love Movable Type much more, and if they do, there's a good reason to keep it in the running.
Movable Type - see above.

Other platforms, like LiveJournal and Vox - all great places to be, and have their benefits.

Of them all, I'm a WordPress guy.

Re: Example of a Great PR Pitch

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:24:23 -0000

I've got to say, as I am wont to say: I don't dislike PR people. I dislike bad PR practice.

We have a new directive here on Earth: get back to being human.

Weird, when you think about that, eh? If we focused a bit more about what it means to be human...

Re: Twitter Bashing- A Popular Sport Lately

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:25:53 -0000

Twitter will live. We won't all run away. Inertia is a beautiful thing. But we're bothered. Don't discount that.

Re: Example of a Great PR Pitch

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:33:37 -0000

@Troy - it's a great question. I think there are lots of pressures. My thought? There's a workflow here, one that permits for communications relationships. It's not super easy, but it's definitely something that can be built and structured.

Not to sound pitchy, but I'm developing a training module for this very purpose, because I know what *I* would do in your shows, and I think I can show you in steps HOW to do it. We'll see if this is useful.

@Lee - I really like your point of view on this. Quite interesting.

@Tom - I don't know if you got greedy. I'm not convinced. But I respect Seth's take as well.

@Seth - Thanks for coming by. Will we meet in 2008? I'll have to make a plan to get that to happen.

Re: Example of a Great PR Pitch

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:04:19 -0000

By the way, I never knew until Shannon Paul explained it to me today that most mainstream press organizations are grateful to be on mailing distributions for pitches (provided they're relevant to their space), and that the journalists just delete the ones they don't want without any fuss.

I'd never heard that, nor did I know much about it.

Interesting, that.

Re: Twitter Needs an Offline Mode and an Open Client

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:15:38 -0000

They don't have to quickly process the backlog. They can thread it in over time.

When we're mad about Twitter being down, it's usually because we want the point-in-time conversation. We're at a show, or we're watching the election, or we're looking for people at the Tweetup, or the conference.

The real premise here is that we have something that can handle the crash, keep us typing, and then move us forward until the next opening.

Re: Twitter Needs an Offline Mode and an Open Client

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:04:42 -0000

Okay, for those who wanted more detail, let me lay it out:

1.) Let's say that Twitter has three primary pieces to its architecture right now (not counting maintenance stuff).
-- a.) Front end interface (that which connects to the web, to SMS, to Jabber, etc)
-- b.) Message gateway - the actual spot where the data gets processed, marked, and stored.
-- c.) Database servers and storage.

2.) In the current situation, part c (servers/storage) goes down, and we're offline.

3.) In my proposal, we do a few things:

-- a.) Add a function to the message gateway to shut down writes to the main Twitter database in times of downtime, and throw a flag to alert that we're on the standby.
-- b.) Add a function to the message gateway to write to a separate database.
-- c.) Add a function to the message gateway *and* a new database to the primary servers to write/store an XML/RSS feed of our twitter stream.
-- d.) Add a function to Twhirl (or an open source Twitter Front End client) that allows Twhirl to detect when Twitter prime is down.
-- e.) Add a function to Twhirl (or similar) that allows Twhirl to write to the secondary database.
-- f.) Add a function to Twhirl to access the XML copy of our stream and the stream of our friends.
-- g.) Add a function to the message gateway that trickle-inserts our "out of service" tweets back into the primary copy of the database.

The outcomes are:

* Twitter functionality runs, even when offline.
* Data retention and integrity.
* Enhanced usability (the RSS feed).

The benefits to Twitter are:

* Continued operation.
* Less bitching and moaning by us.

The benefits to Twhirl are:

* A hands-down reason why we'd use this app as our #1 Twitter interface.

That's the plan, roughly.

Re: Twitter Needs an Offline Mode and an Open Client

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:06:34 -0000

@James - some really good points in your reply. You're right that I didn't think much about the block feature, for instance. Same with @replies.

And yet, I think the core of what I'm trying to do is get it to run when the back end is down. It's not that I want to re-architect to clear the flaws. I want the patch to fix the bad stuff.

Still, great points that I wasn't considering much.

Re: One of my Favorite Twitter Jokes

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:53:46 -0000

@Dale - read every word in the graphic except "block."

Re: Could Someone Explain Technorati

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:54:39 -0000

To answer one of the questions, I'm not sure the measure, but it's closer to Penn's answer. (My esteemed PodCamp colleague, Christopher S. Penn , that is).

In the end, the metrics you need to track are results. But will the web ever come up with a tool that gives us at least a *little* bit of comfort? Where's the FDIC for the web?

Re: How Mass Email Works

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:18:30 -0000

Here's the tricky part, and it was mentioned by a few people: perception of opt-out versus opt-in. My email was asking you to opt into receiving my newsletter.

The email METHOD itself carried an opt-out, so that you could choose not to receive anything like that from my email.

@vanderwal - I hear you and feel sorry for your frustration. I wish you the best with your efforts.

Everyone else, thanks for your thoughts. It's important for me.

Re: How Mass Email Works

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:53:16 -0000

Some really great comments. I had to be away from my desk for about 3 hours, so I apologize for not staying right on top of the commenting. Here are some thoughts.

RH - I used LinkedIn. I have six RH's. If you're from Toronto, I'm connected to you. If you're one of the other five, feel free to drop me a line, and I'll prove our connection. I did most certainly invite people I met while working with Jeff Pulver to join my LinkedIn. That's likely. But I hold no databases.

Another friend mentioned that I should have disclosed early in the message WHERE I was reaching out from, so that you'd know it was LinkedIn.

Jason Falls did a great job of saying it with humor, but he's not wrong in some regards. I was thinking something similar. If I invite you to a Birthday party (which is totally different context, I admit), you didn't ask for that invite, and yet, you might want it.

Mind you, I'm hoping my newsletter elicits neither thoughts of rubella or birthdays.

@vanderwal - and thanks for keeping up the conversation, you said something I found interesting. You mentioned email and emergency. To me, that line is phone. I get anxious if someone offers me things via phone. I figure email's sufficient. So maybe your line is even further down the stream.

As for mainstream versus not, I have a thought on this: newsletters have recently proven interesting to me. Why? Because it's another way to deliver information. My #1 goal? Provide information that you might find useful. This is another way to do that.

Why do newsletters in a world of blogs? Because if you opt into it, I can send you information that's useful and hopefully timely. I've designed the blog experience to be different than the newsletter experience.

And I'm a fan of permission marketing. I sent an email asking your permission, where YOU choose the next step. Delete my introduction. Opt out of future emails. Or say yes.

I've yet to figure out a way to offer something without getting your attention, but maybe we should talk about that, too.

Re: How Mass Email Works

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:54:40 -0000

Weird side effect: I've had 19 new LinkedIn friendship requests. Odd that, eh?

Re: How Mass Email Works

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:57:54 -0000

According to my friend, Jim, what I sent was spam: http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html . So, is that really it?

What's your take?

Re: How Mass Email Works

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:41:41 -0000

It poses a question, though. When your community grows beyond the direct personal touch (remember, I'm not a company in this regard. This is just my own personal "me" project), how do you expand in ways that make sense?

In a way, this is what hits PR people, too. Have I run into that? Not sure.

Tricky stuff.

Re: How Mass Email Works

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:46:53 -0000

I was just in my spam folder for my gmail account. 2400 unread. Here's one:

Bacheelor, MasteerMBA, and Doctoraate diplomas available in the field of your choice that's right, you can even become a Doctor and receive all the benefits that comes with it!

Our Diplomas/Certificates are recognised in most countries

No required examination, tests, classes, books, or interviews.

** No one is turned down
** Confidentiality assured

CALL US 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK

For US: 1-801-504-2132
Outside US: +1-801-504-2132

"Just leave your NAME & PHONE NO. (with CountryCode)" in the voicemail

our staff will get back to you in next few days

--

I wonder if it's a real offer. I wonder if this person is just someone marketing a newsletter. Are there comparisons?

I don't think so.

Re: We Do Different Things

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:41:23 -0000

Hi Brad- I read Jon Swanson's Levite blog. We met online through comments on a productivity site, but have since met three times in person in various parts of the world. We're personal friends now, though at first, it was about the mssage.

Re: Charity Auction- Fight Cancer and Buy Me Cheap

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:48:59 -0000

I want to go to PEI. : )

Re: Basic Business Blogging Suggestions

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:53:41 -0000

@Nalts- I just made my own hall of fame moment out of your kind words.

Re: Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online Part 1

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:11:48 -0000

Hi Shannon-

Very insightful commentary, and thanks for your perspective. You're right about the transparency of our limitations. In older business books, that was frowned upon (admitting one's limitations), but even when I'm counseled to the contrary, I believe that it's always better to be clear about one's own capabilities.

Branding has kind of always been around. It's just a lot easier to do with these online tools. Some might argue that it's a bit more realistic in ways, because in the old days, if someone was crowing as if they were the best chemist in the world, there was no easy way for that person's local crowd to dispute this. Now, with the Internet, people can refer to other chemists in other communities who are sharing their work online, and make the comparison.

I think you can still choose not to effect personal branding in your career. It's just that your counterparts might choose that tool as a way to establish their capabilities, and so you might at least understand how you *could* choose to play, should that become necessary.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Is personal branding inevitable? Interesting question. What do YOU think?

Re: Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online - Part 2

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:06:29 -0000

Rahaf has a great question, and I challenge you all to address it as you will.

MY thought on differentiation, especially in the social media space is this: there are do-ers, and there are talkers, and I'm starting to sift through the folks I know have successfully executed even a wee bit of a social strategy. I'm starting to pay attention to the people who have their hands dirty, and who are moving on to even bigger challenges.

Want an example? Jason Falls. If he says it works, it works. If he says, nothing came from it, I'd stop doing whatever he's talking about. Falls is real and has some real bosses.

But that's in social media. What if you're in marketing or PR? Right now, there are some differentiators. If you can go into a client and do more than talk about what's powerful and transformative out there, if you have examples of work you've done, then you're further along in the game.

Come to think of it, where isn't a do-er preferred?

Re: The Real Power of Personal Branding

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:04:38 -0000

@Edward-

One trick? No. But being consistent isn't saying to be one thing for the rest of your life. Apple is consistently focused on innovative design and seamless integration. No matter the platform or product, that's where they aim their firepower.

Jack Welch aimed his consistency along the lines of excellence and best-in-class. Lots of things were moving parts, but the goal was the same.

The trick is finding which part of your very core to stay pegged to, and let the rest revolve around that.

Re: The Real Power of Personal Branding

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:19:56 -0000

@Robin - that's so clever. I did a bit of LARP and enjoyed it much more than my attempts at acting (I can't remember lines to save myself). Clever premise. Improv would probably help the slightly-less-geeky do similar things.

Re: The Real Power of Personal Branding

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:31:32 -0000

@OwenMarcus - See that? You had the deck stacked a bit against you and still delivered. Excellent story, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Re: Growing Your Audience- Some Basics

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:16:10 -0000

Hey Lucretia- You've done great posts, so don't some day me, miss. : ) Thanks for stopping by, and I'm grateful for the kind words. In all seriousness, did the "get in debate" strategy work beyond a few days? Inquiring minds want to know.

Re: Chocolate Lovers Take Note

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:48:00 -0000

Oh, the insides were top shelf, Rex. I'm making my way to the bottom of the bag. Make sure you tell Pat from Carriage Town chocolates. She did a great job of selling your goods on your behalf, praising your chocolatiering skills all the while.

Re: Growing Your Audience- Some Basics

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:23:11 -0000

@Mitch - you've hit on a great one. I can't believe I didn't cover it, because I make a strong effort to ask questions with that action-taking in mind. Crud. Well, that's why they pay you the big pixels.

Side note: Julien took me to a cafe/bar right near your office on Saturday. Rumor was you were in the States, talking with the President or something, so I'm sorry that I missed you.

Re: Will Companies Value Your Personal Network

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:30:08 -0000

Polly- thanks for your comments, and for your recommendations. I'm glad this resonated, and that you've got some suggestions for how we can use this for the future.

Ann- That's a really great point about non-competes. What else, I wonder, will we have to change in future contract negotiations related to our social media proclivities.

Re: Growing Your Audience- Some Basics

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:57:33 -0000

@Tammy - thanks very much. I appreciate your thoughts on it, and I agree with your perspective.

Re: Growing Your Audience- Some Basics

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:43:19 -0000

Hi Luis--

Great questions. I don't exactly have a word count in mind, nor do I ever check my word count, unless I suspect a post has accidentally become epic. If that happens, I look for ways to chop that into a few parts, because I believe (and this is ONLY my opinion, because there are millions of ways to do it) that blogs should be a little more of a brief reading experience than a long experience.

How do I chop? I work in paragraph chunks. When I'm done writing, I go back and see if there's any slack. Sometimes, I can kill entire sentences that just re-tell the old sentence.

Best advice for a fiction guy like you? Read Shipping News once every six months whether or not you need it. : )

Re: Growing Your Audience- Some Basics

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:21:43 -0000

Adam - I had 50 readers for YEARS. I remember celebrating 100. And then 1000. Now, I celebrate every thousand.

Heck if I had a few hundred more subscribers (tell your friends?) , I'd top 5K. : )

Re: Growing Your Audience- Some Basics

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:05:11 -0000

David - excellent, and you know, I never discount the fact that I have a true Canadian rock god commenting on my site. Thanks for being you. I visited Montreal the other day and someone mentioned you on the radio (might have just missed hearing a tune). Cool that you're part of the contribution, and such a great contributor in your own right.

Re: Growing Your Audience- Some Basics

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:39:54 -0000

Hi Cheryl- The only problem I see with making your homepage up front and center is that it doesn't change. People will view it once, assess whether they want to be your client, and then move on. A blog is a chance to invite repeat visitors.

What does anyone else say?

Re: Blog Topics for Business to Business Customers

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:08:19 -0000

Some great points, and @Yura, you're right. Rats! I've not yet mastered the perfet linkbait topic titles. I'd better take Jay's advice and admit that I'm wrong.

Re: Blog Topics for Business to Business Customers

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:54:40 -0000

What a great gang. You guy have some amazing ideas.

@Webconomist- I didn't include that, but you're right. We do have to remember that we're doing a lot of marketing that's side-edged from the true main person. Great point.

@Tracy - Love your point. Emotions drive humans, even when some choose not to admit it.

@Jay - great list of post questions. I like them.

@jpower - thanks for the info and the links. Very useful.

@T'OB - I'm glad I could be helpful. Glad you're here.

@JC - you're taking the approach literally at VendorCity. That's for sure.

@Stu - thanks. I'm glad that resonated for you. : )

Re: Blog Topics for Business to Business Customers

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:55:50 -0000

@Derek - thanks for the kind words.

@Linda - I'm glad you stopped by, and I like your point of view on this.

@Luke- I didn't thank you earlier, but should have. Thanks!

Re: Blog Topics for Business to Business Customers

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:57:46 -0000

@Neil - an entirely different vertical asked me the same question yesterday. Guess that'll be one of tomorrow's posts.

Re: Blog Topics for Business to Business Customers

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:13:12 -0000

And there it is, a formula from a guy known for turning the world back around on Dell. Top shelf, I say. Top shelf. Thanks, Lionel, for stopping by.

Re: If You Ever Think Youre Too Busy

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:45:55 -0000

@mn_social_media - I do have some. if you check on the sidebar on the tag cloud, click on "socialmedia100" and you'll appreciate it. : )

Re: Be Sexier in Person

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:26:31 -0000

Wanna know what I really need to know? How to peel out of conversations when I'm done and the other person is not. What do YOU do?

Re: Be Sexier in Person

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:34:57 -0000

This is one of the first posts I've written where people had some really great commenter to commenter information. I love that. Felt very community to me.

As for "be interested," know what bugs me? Crowd surfers. The ones who stop looking at you fairly quickly and start seeking their next target. I try my hardest to make sure you know you're the only person in the world at that moment. (What usually screws this up for me is if I'm waiting on something to come through on the phone).

Maybe we should also talk about pet peeves. : )

Re: Be Sexier in Person

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:52:40 -0000

I love the advice I'm getting from you here. Thank you. Believe me, we all need advice from time to time. I'm glad you're here to give me your counsel.

Re: Be Sexier in Person

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:30:06 -0000

@Derek - at least you hav a handsome back of head. : )

Re: Starting a Social Media Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:36:57 -0000

Some really great advice, folks. I like to hear that we're all on the same rough track. Thanks for giving me some ideas to hone it all with. I hadn't thought much about the advertising mindset, but should give that another look.

Thank you.

Re: Starting a Social Media Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:01:41 -0000

@Zane - thanks very much. I'm really grateful for your additional thoughts. Funny. I threw that "make money" one in at the last minute. It *used* to be the main goal for a lot of folks. Now? We see things differently.

Thanks to everyone. Great work all around.

Re: Starting a Social Media Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:15:10 -0000

Hi Lisa- I just got back from Enterprise 2.0, where that's pretty much the bread and butter of the conference. There are lots of people passionate about the enterprise social media space, including yours truly. Check out CommunityServer.com to see a neat SharePoint overlay created by Telligent.

Re: Are You Living Consciously Online

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:24:00 -0000

It's a great mission, Charlie, and I feel strongly about your contributions to it. You've built quite a band of Merry Men (and women) to the cause, and I feel it's possible (heck, NYC was on the verge in the 1970s, and look at it now).

As for shiny objects, I've given up being a hyper-adopter and have settled for early. Early is ahead of the mainstream, but behind the hypers, like Scoble and Corvida and the like.

One way I do it is that I ask the question: "can I help someone improve their business with this tool?" If no, I shelve it for further labwork later.

Re: LinkedIn Needs To Re-Think Its Plans

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:36:33 -0000

@Luke - I'm friends with Mario Sundar, who's their community developer, and who swings by occasionally to provide insight. He's a really great guy, and quite a brand unto himself.

Re: LinkedIn Needs To Re-Think Its Plans

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:37:57 -0000

@Louis - right there, you've nailed a perfect partnership. Imagine if LI could dig into my contacts and see trends as to who my potential partners, buyers, and sellers might be. Hell, Facebook tries all damned day to tell me who my friends might be (so does LI). Why not help me find business threads, too?

I write more about this in a different way a little later in the week.

Re: Whats Your Take on Word of Mouth

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:21:05 -0000

Thanks so much for everyone's opinions. I'm not really negative on this all. I'm just undecided. The fact you're weighing in makes a big difference.

Re: 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:48:20 -0000

@Andy - blog networks, feedheads, simply rss, to name a few. There are TONS, and maybe I'm not using the right ones.

@Tamal - it might just be that you need to make more folks aware of your content. Start there, and if you still don't see a pickup, consider your posts and whether they're helpful. Go through my 100 and see how you score.

@Mark - you have to get an account and log in, and then there's a whole section in Blogger Central that involves "manage my blogs." That's where you do that.

@Deafmom - but it's how you ROCK the $8 shirt that matters. : )

Re: LinkedIn Needs To Re-Think Its Plans

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:51:11 -0000

@Allen - I have over 2500 or so, but I work at it.

Re: 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:15:48 -0000

@Martin Buckland - could you tell me how one certifies for personal branding strategy? I'm not being an ass. Just curious.

Re: LinkedIn Needs To Re-Think Its Plans

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:19:06 -0000

@Adam - thanks for stopping by and indulging my silly misunderstandings.

Everyone else- that's how cool LinkedIn is. They swing by blogs and indulge my silly misunderstandings.

Adam - Brief me, baby. Share the strategy. I want to sing.

Re: Whats Your Take on Word of Mouth

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:53:31 -0000

Here's something that should tell you about the value of the project. Several BzzAgents came here and talked openly about their involvement. I think this speaks well of the organization.

Re: Threading the Social Needle

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:56:10 -0000

Mike asked:
How do you manage to have a “relationship” or “conversation” with so many people. You are following 8678 people on twitter. What percentage of those people are lurkers? How many contacts would you say you never interact with and what is the value of those contacts?

The answer is that not all those are relationships as much as they are information exchanges. I don't read all 8,000+ peoples output in a given day. Instead, it's a stream where I dip in, pay attention, have conversations, and communicate where I can.

FROM those almost 9000 contacts, I have meaningful conversations on other platforms, like phone, email, blog comments, etc.

When people question how I can follow that many people, it's because they presume I intend to read every tweet. I follow back the people who choose to follow me, because it's respectful, because it means that person can direct message me, because it's yet another way to catch an interesting conversation in my stream.

Am I best friends forever with all 9000? Nope. Will I ever be? No. But then, I never said that Twitter was a way to build lasting and deep relationships. It's a tool.

Re: Three Photo Editing Tools to Check Out

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:27:15 -0000

@MR X - not unless you're willing to give me money. : )

Paid post. That would be IZEA down the street.

I don't make a dime off my blog, unless you count the expansion into other opportunities.

Re: Social Media Strategy - Aligning Goals and Measurements

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:38:01 -0000

@Josh - you've got a great term there: "customer conversion engine." That's pretty much the missing piece.

Everyone - really great comments. Sorry I couldn't dig in much to comment back. I've been pretty busy today, but I read every thought and idea. Feel free to look at each other's ideas and comment. : )

Re: Making Money Isnt Evil

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:14:11 -0000

A few people have asked me if this is my "evil Kirk" moment in time, where I crap on community. Go back and re-watch it. Accept the cursing as part of the moment, but hear what a said. In fact, here are the notes I used to talk from:

WIIFM- what's in it for me is how people process information, so if you're wondering what's in this for you, plan to focus on-

3 goals from your media making efforts

Money. $125? Bullshit. - The $125 fee for PAB is too small for what we got. It's not wrong of Mark and Bob to charge more than that, because there was a buffet *and* a boat cruise built into this.

Quote from Mitch Joel:

I would do this for free
but I make you pay
so that you understand
the VAULE
of what you're getting
-- Mitch Joel - http://twistimage.com/blog

Five levels of media brand value (and also 5 levels of where the money is in this model)--

Awareness
Attention -- money
Influence -- lots of money
Reputation -- downstream money
Authority -- much more than money

Competition

You are competing with text. Ease of use.

Money. Monetization.

Making Money Isn't Bad
HOW you make money is what matters
WHAT you do with it is what matters

The Trick-

Know the context - dinner or restaurant
Communities aren't banks
Marketplaces are
Smart people maintain both, differently.

HOW to-

Be Honest, Open, Clear, Human, Real, Powerful, Humble

Center around passion, plan around strategy

Learn and Master Systems

DO more than Talk

Give Frequently But Intelligently

Shine Your Light Bright on others

Give Your Ideas Handles

Understand the Push and Pull of Community

Build Conversion Engines to Keep Your Community Pure

------------

Does that help?

Re: Social Media Strategy- The Planning Stage

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:19:27 -0000

To answer Dennis, it's definitely project management. Nothing new there. What's new is the guts. I'm writing out what the project parts are.

I fully agree that we should add in measurements, that we should discuss WHICH tools. Definitely a good point to add to the mix. I've added both to my outline.

@Josh - learning's a good point. I've added a perpetual learning.

Still mulling the rest of it. You're great for your help. : )

Re: Social Media Strategy- The Planning Stage

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:25:59 -0000

@John - to try and build a trial community might be tricky, but there are ways. Remember that trial in this case means mostly trying out the software, and how to manage a community.

You might try it out by helping a local organization (like a church) start a community, and train up their people to run it. That way, you can learn about the tools, the philosophies, what comes up in the course of running a community, the amount of time it might take, and at the end, you'll be giving another organization a tool to keep up with their own flock.

@DaveMurr - definitely. The small example you used shows that there are complexities abound in what tools you choose.

Re: A Flickr Project for Everybody

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:20:14 -0000

You can have a group if you want, but what's pleasant about how Flickr works is that I can find the photos, without having to search for any specific term. As I meet lots of different people, the only way I could label them wouldn't be very useful to others. Like, people. Right?

Re: How Does the Internet Impact Consumer Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:21:19 -0000

So I think it will come down to some level of trust. I'm not sure how this will be reflected digitally, but that's one of the major themes of the book I'm writing with Julien Smith.

Re: How Do I Add FriendFeed Comments to My Blog

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:26:18 -0000

Still stuck. I've got the plugin activated. I'm using my nickname. I've got the blog called out as "Blog," which is how the service is listed. on my singlepost.php, I've got it here(note: I used . so this will show up):

.!--include comments template--.
.?php wp_ffcomments(); ?.
.?php comments_template(); ?.

Is that right?

Re: How Do I Add FriendFeed Comments to My Blog

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:01:31 -0000

Thanks, guys. Yeah, so far, I've done what everyone's said. Now I just have to figure out why it's not working. I'll ping Glenn. : )

Re: How Do I Add FriendFeed Comments to My Blog

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:47:51 -0000

How cool is that? Glenn just drops by to help out! That's so damned cool. I wish ALL life was like this.

Thanks, Glenn. I'll go take a look-see.

Re: How Do I Add FriendFeed Comments to My Blog

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:52:09 -0000

It worked! It worked! Um.. Wait.. What if I want my blog's comments to show up first, and then FriendFeed? Where do I stick it for that?

Neato!

Re: The Real Power of Personal Branding

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:02:29 -0000

Hi Dr. Brown- I think you've come up with a great method there. It sure helps out, that's for sure. Matching against your vision of yourself is an excellent way to keep things in perspective. : ) -- Chris...

Re: Where I Learn Even More

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:46:35 -0000

Played for me. : )

Re: How Do Realtors Demonstrate Community

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:43:55 -0000

In case there was any question, I *love* what Chris Griffith has done here. I'm a big fan of this kind of media making to build community. My questions are around what ELSE one might use and do. : )

Re: YouTube is Losing Hundreds of Millions a Month

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:55:05 -0000

Well, there we go. : )

Re: YouTube is Losing Hundreds of Millions a Month

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:22:06 -0000

@Shannon - but YouTube is an entertainment channel, whereas everything else you've pointed out is a utility. Context. In my mind, YouTube is a place where you'd expect a service that complements the entertainment.

Re: YouTube is Losing Hundreds of Millions a Month

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:50:38 -0000

Shannon - great point. The potential for video spam is high. Ugh. I guess that means a Greasemonkey script would come up.

Re: What Do YOU Think People Want From Your Site

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:41:31 -0000

Lots of great comments here, guys. Thanks for that. I'm appreciating it a great deal.

I think you've given me more to think about. Now just wondering if it's a comment or a blog post of its own. : )

Re: YouTube is Losing Hundreds of Millions a Month

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:14:06 -0000

@Mike - great point. I can see this mucking with their adsense dollars. Hmmm.

Re: How Do Realtors Demonstrate Community

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:17:13 -0000

@Corby - The Twitter idea is compelling. What if you were looking for houses, and had a subscription to a local realtor's twitter feed. When she finds a potentially suitable home, she tweets it. If she hears that a seller is lowering a price, etc. Pretty neat concept, actually.

Re: BatchBook is Great for Contact Management

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:27:41 -0000

@Greg - can I message the list in one whack?

Re: BatchBook is Great for Contact Management

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:29:55 -0000

@Laura- there's search. I haven't used it deeply, but that's a great question for the Batch team to take on. : ) Maybe they're around?

Re: Identi.ca Is More About What Comes Next

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:58:03 -0000

I'm over on FriendFeed. Interesting where we go when we lose our drug.

Re: A Sample Blogging Workflow

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:30:50 -0000

Some really great advice back from you guys, so thanks.

I like Sheila's point about zeroing in on topics. Hmm. Maybe there's a part 2 to this about WHAT to put into the blog post.

Phil - stream of consciousness writing is definitely a way to get unstuck and rolling along. I love it. Definitely something I should put into my mindset for the follow-up post.

Thanks again, everyone.

Re: Threading Some Trends Together

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:33:46 -0000

Brian - so as you were typing in this comment, I was writing back to someone on Facebook that, although I might fantasize about living anywhere in the world, WHERE I live will still matter to me, if I want to connect to a community, if I want to meet up with interesting people, if I want the occasional conference in my own backyard.

I live an hour north of Boston, and even that is impetus to miss several events a month. With that in mind, I can't imagine just living somewhere willy nilly for the family and pleasure side of it, because it would impact the business/professional side of things. It has to be a blend for me.

Interesting that Florida was way out ahead of this, though. Meaning, we're kind of thinking about this now, but he's been writing that book for about 16 months.

Re: Threading Some Trends Together

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:24:29 -0000

Well, okay .That's true, but a whole book on it. : ) I loved Rise of the Creative Class. I tried connecting to him via his blog, but that went nowhere. Maybe at a speaking gig.

Re: Why Are You Investigating Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:36:49 -0000

So the first bunch of answers are primarily about personal connection. The business answer from Harsh is that its targeted marketing, and a cost reduction.

I woke up this morning wondering about it all from a business perspective. I believe deeply in the tools. I'm not sure where they will all go in the business perspective.

How will people apply these tools as a business, is what I'm wondering.

Re: Why Are You Investigating Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:47:50 -0000

So in a way, David and the gang at BzzAgent have it right when they talk about professional word of mouth marketing? This is a way to build the relationship around the product, service, event, and a way to have more open dialog about everything?

Are companies ready?

Re: Why Are You Investigating Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:34:49 -0000

Any business OWNERS or senior budget spenders here reading this? I'm curious what your take is. Why would you divert money and attention to this?

Re: Why Are You Investigating Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:07:54 -0000

These are great comments, everyone. I'm excited to hear people's perspectives on things.

@Ed - I think you've got some good points about community. And it goes along with my "social media is like a toilet" theory. : )

Re: Why Are You Investigating Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:41:13 -0000

@ED - stay tuned and I'll give a courtesy flush. : )

Re: You Need to Be Easy

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:39:21 -0000

I should also say that I like having my name be the biggest graphical element on the front of the card. Not for ego, but for eyeball/name recognition. In big fat business cards, the last thing I need to care about is your company. Because we, as humans, sort on name. Non?

Re: You Need to Be Easy

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:03:31 -0000

That's definitely something to talk about: headshots. Formal headshots that look like Glamour Shots photos are a total turnoff. I don't mean that in the dating sense. I mean that in the "human relations" sense. Don't you agree?

Re: You Need to Be Easy

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:37:16 -0000

@Danielle - we meet people face to face. You could argue that we could wave our phones at each other, but that suggests a level of interoperability that doesn't even exist between different models within the same carrier, or different models within the same handset company. Because of that, oddly, paper is still the most efficient way for this particular type of exchange.

Gimmicks are fun, but easy to lose. Tiny moo cards? I get about a hundred of these a year. I lose about 80. They slip out of holders, fall out of my pocket, blow away in the wind.

One guy handed out fortune cookies where his contact info was on the strip of paper. Brilliant! Truly a gorgeous idea.

Lost that "card" within seconds completely by accident.

Re: Social Media Does Not Replace Marketing Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:09:31 -0000

AideRSS just published an engagement metrics document (and disclaimer: they rate me highly in it) that goes after where Tinku Gallery mentions in her comment through Brian's blog.

It's on our minds. And can't be ignored and shouldn't be the dark horse.

Re: Is Your Blog For Rent

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:18:38 -0000

Jonathan - good point. Sometimes, when I'm sent books to review, I get really pushy people asking me where the blog post is. That's always when I forget to mention that I might *not* review the book, especially if I loathe it. I'm not big on negative posts.

One guy actually said, "Oh, we'd still love the blog post. Even bad press, you know."

So, up it went.

Re: Is Your Blog For Rent

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:48:15 -0000

The question of what I would do if I didn't like the product or service is a good one. My gut tells me that I'd probably not damn them as harshly, because they gave me the products in the first place, and yet, would that be doing a service to my community? If something I didn't say influenced you to buy the product and come away unhappy, wouldn't that be an issue?

I'm glad my blog isn't often about reviews and criticism. I usually just like to point out things I like and that would be useful. Even this post, technically, is about programs like this and what they mean for folks.

What an interesting bunch of answers from folks. I appreciate your thoughts, and the conversation is definitely fascinating to me.

Have you looked at what others are saying? What would you say to the other people on the comment thread?

Re: Is Your Blog For Rent

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:27:07 -0000

And yet, isn't it funny? If the company owned the blog, who'd care what someone said on it? Right?

Re: Is Your Blog For Rent

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:04:54 -0000

@Greg - the weirdest part, to me, is that there are plenty of people out there who love Coke, and plenty of Coke lovers who'd try a new product without any hullabaloo.

I guess it's just the disclosure stuff that confuses people? Not sure.

Re: Is Your Blog For Rent

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:09:20 -0000

@Nancy - Great commentary. The whole point about transparency and credibility is 100% the core of this issue, I say.

I think that you're right that my holding back is the whole courtesy thing. I can see where that would be hurtful to reviewing and to credibility, however. That's why I brought it up. I wanted to surface the idea and think about it, too.

Re: Is Your Blog For Rent

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:30:41 -0000

@Jason - great point. I like that. : )

Re: Is Your Blog For Rent

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:28:58 -0000

See, the thing is, once it becomes an ad and not something like word of mouth marketing, it almost immediately falls into the toilet. Right? Or rather..hmm.. okay, because ads aren't all bad. In fact, some ads get us started on a train of thought we didn't initially intend.

There's something there. There's some value to advertising (hell, there's a whole industry telling us there's value there, right?), and yet, it doesn't get us the WHOLE way there. It gets us to the "thinking about it" phase, and then we need someone or something to push us into the next step. Right?

Thinking.

Re: What Does Your Audience Need

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:10:22 -0000

@Lamar - Social media is a term often applied to software tools used to promote two way communication, especially if there are aspects of one-to-many to it. But your point of the word "social" pertaining to the physical world isn't wrong. I don't know that it stretches to a multimedia presentation on a TV, because only the presentation has the ability to communicate out. The people can't impact the presentation. Make sense?

@Leo - I love when I can be on the same wavelength with great minds like yours.

Re: What Does Your Audience Need

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:25:47 -0000

@Ann - Funny you should say that about forums. I've got something coming for you, and it will be exactly what you asked for, in terms of content and tenor.

Re: Managed Word of Mouth-Still Thinking

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:25:23 -0000

@Ari - to answer your question, I was approached by a marketing company working with NikonUSA, but hadn't asked them for the camera or any such. The only product I've begged for (and didn't receive from the company) was a Nokia N95.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts.

Re: Musicians Play for Tips- The Importance of Comments

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:21:49 -0000

@Svetlana - good point. Sometimes that's what stops lots of people. It doesn't feel valuable to pat someone's back and move on. I don't disagree.

Re: Musicians Play for Tips- The Importance of Comments

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:06:07 -0000

Denis - Fascinating. I like that idea a great deal. See where I've roamed and commented (or anyone) and learn from it.

I think that's what CoComments was trying to accomplish, but did they get it? Not sure.

Re: Musicians Play for Tips- The Importance of Comments

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:40:27 -0000

@Denis - it's not perfect. It's just what's out there now.

Re: Alltop Launches Frienderati to Help You Find FriendFeed Friends

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:28:30 -0000

I certainly am not a power user of FriendFeed, but I dip into it every day. I read a lot. I don't comment a lot.

But a great point, Shey. Maybe these folks all use it to differing degrees. : )

Re: 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:31:31 -0000

10? Heck. 10 is easy. I'll do that before I pass out. : )

Re: 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:36:44 -0000

Thanks to everyone for your great thoughts and comments. I'm glad that it's working for you.

Re: Quick Note- WordPress 26 - Beware

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:31:34 -0000

@Robert - it was all in the admin area. I couldn't get to wp-admin. EVERYTHING I did to fix that didn't work. : (

So, um, not 100% sure. I rolled back until I can figure it out.

Re: Am I Too Naked

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:31:14 -0000

I should defend a little bit. She had a valid point related to the business conversation.

My hand-wringing and further thoughts and worries are more from the perspective of whether the overall premise: do I give too much away, was accurate.

You all seem to say no. But then, you're my friends. : )

Re: Quick Note- WordPress 26 - Beware

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:54:58 -0000

I was backed up. Really.

And no, I don't have very many plugins at all. Only 8, and one's for comments, one's for SEO, one's for FriendFeed.. you know, all content-side.

Re: Small Is a Weapon

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:56:21 -0000

Know what's funny? I get reinforcement of this allllll the time. Just now, even. Speaking with a really big company in a little bit, and they want to talk with us because we're flexible and small.

Weapon.

Re: Should Hotels Have Social Networks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:08:12 -0000

@Paula - I'm not sure how those connect. I read the post, but I don't see how you're connecting it. (BTW, love your blog).

Re: Should Hotels Have Social Networks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:11:27 -0000

Jessica suggested Placely.com in a DM. It's not what I had in mind. That's kind of like Yelp for locations (which is neat on its own).

Think loose. You show up. You fill out a quick profile with opt-ins, get temporary "buffer" information to keep people from getting your real digits and email, and then the network aligns itself with your interests.

When you check out, it all goes away.

Re: Should Hotels Have Social Networks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:12:32 -0000

Amber Naslund (@AmberCadabra) suggested on Twitter that she'd worked with hotels on a project like this: http://hot.gettys.com/ . Quite interesting site.

Re: Should Hotels Have Social Networks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:16:02 -0000

@Tac - I think the potential-for-creepy factor is big. But then, there's another opportunity for someone to grab, eh?

Re: Should Hotels Have Social Networks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:20:37 -0000

Paula - really great visual the second time around. I like the pole vault metaphor.

But if the network is anything but loose, and anything but ridiculously simple, I don't think the activity will happen. Do you?

Re: Should Hotels Have Social Networks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:42:06 -0000

@hmaust on Twitter points to a Hyatt project: http://www.yattit.com/ . Still not what I'm saying, but interesting.

@Paula - very good points about uptake based on people trying to avoid such interactions.

Facilitating the existing transactions in another way is interesting.

What if a 3rd party built the networks? What if it were like Yelp? Or an ATM (those crappy charge-you-$5-to-withdraw type)?

Re: Should Hotels Have Social Networks

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:57:49 -0000

Remember, I'm not so much talking about which software is best for the job. I'm talking about the social structure around it. Does it make sense that way?

Re: Lijit Throws Ads Onto My Site

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:50:34 -0000

@Micah- thanks for the explanation. I hadn't done a search to land on my page, as I know where my page is. But that's what the mechanism is that does it, is what you're saying.

I just now tried that. Went to google, searched on me, and got that box. So now I get that.

NOW, the part that bugs me isn't the ad. Honestly, if you want to throw a little add into the wijit to make money for the service you offer, that's reasonable (never seen it until now, but let's shelf that).

What BUGS me is the fact the re-search box takes up another 300-plus pixels of real estate on my sidebar and pushes the things below it down. That's re-formatting my page and it doubles the real estate of the wijit. I don't want that at all. That's what would get me to pull it out, or shove it to the very bottom of the sidebar.

Is there another way to do that functionality? Why not do just the collapsed box part with a float-over to drop it down?

Re: Should Hotels Have Social Networks

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:53:25 -0000

Really interesting perspectives, guys. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk about it.

Re: Lijit Throws Ads Onto My Site

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:49:00 -0000

@Micah-- thanks for the info. I'll think on it a bit.

Shortly after this investigation, I removed my Eco-Safe widget for super long load times. I seem to be on a widget tear. : )

Re: Thinking About the Negatives

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:56:12 -0000

Hi Ian--

My point is that I'm not judging what Loren did. I'm saying there are even worse threats to consider. If you disagree with that, then you're welcome to continue fighting with Loren. I'm going to think deeper on what ELSE haters might use social networks to do, and how that will be handled by technology, law, and society.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the content of either piece. I'm citing them as easy targets while the hard targets keep doing what they're doing.

Re: Lijit Throws Ads Onto My Site

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:44:56 -0000

Hi Todd--

Thanks for the reply and it's great to see the CEO swing by. : ) I know Stan and Micah and Tara and Andy and lots o' folks there, so glad to make your acquaintance as well.

Question: my lijit wijit shows people my content. Your search box thingy just doubles that (and doubles space taken up on my sidebar). I mean, that's the result I got (see graphic in post). So, why would seeing the same thing twice up the ante? Why doesn't the wijit just do that naturally? Does that make sense what I'm asking?

And thanks for the full reply. I want you to be compensated for the work you've created, but want a much more creative way for you to try and capture value than to take up more of my sidebar.

Re: Thinking About the Negatives

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:59:36 -0000

Amazed and humbled by the depth of your comments. Thank you for your thoughts. This isn't an easy conversation, but you're all giving me things to consider, and, I hope, giving each other a great opportunity to talk and think about it.

Judy- you didn't mention where you are now. Is that relevant in other ways?

Re: Lijit Throws Ads Onto My Site

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:01:55 -0000

Heck, I just don't want to give up another 300 pixels of real estate, but I know that moving it way down the page will be ineffective. Putting it after a blog post means it's fighting with Zemanta and FriendFeed.

Still thinking it all over. And in fact, question for those of you still following the post: is there value in the "My other media" stuff any more? Not being rude. Asking.

Go Lijit! Do good things. : )

Re: Lijit Throws Ads Onto My Site

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:50:00 -0000

And just to be clear for MY needs, I don't have a big issue with the ads per se (I mean, the whole opt in thing, but), but the real estate is my gripe. Maybe there's a cleverer way to get people's love and adoration when they land on my page. A fluttering pixie?

Re: 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:56:35 -0000

@ken - happy to help

@mark - some really great ones there! Good job, and thank you.

@michael - if you make a dartboard - share the graphic?

@rsomers - That was really the guts of my intent. : ) A share of squiriming was the goal.

@tinku gallery - I'm glad you found ways to make it work for you. I like when people can transfer the ideas easily.

@steve - that's certainly a great one!

Re: 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:34:43 -0000

@marnix - all the photos I use are courtesy of Flickr and are available under the Creative Commons usage. There are tons of great snaps up there. I love Flickr tooooo much.

Re: 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:36:01 -0000

Best practices are a great idea, Melissa. I should've thought of it, especially because it maintains a market leadership perspective.

Brandon, thanks for your idea. Makes me think of the folks at Zappos.

Patrick - it's a real struggle, especially if a company's culture is dead set against this. I don't recommend blogging for every company. One pre-requisite is that the company is ready to have difficult discussions out in the open. If THAT is okay, then toe-dippers have been liberally sprinkled into those posts so that you can start on safe territory, and dip into scary a bit at a time.

Re: Who Cares

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:03:26 -0000

So it appears that time in the game matters to you. I'm happy to stand corrected.

Re: PodCamp Boston3 Rocked

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:08:28 -0000

Great to meet you, Hao. I hope you got lots out of it. : )

Re: PodCamp Boston3 Rocked

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:35:19 -0000

When I looked at ALL the PodCamp pictures in which I appear (or at least those on Flickr), I realized that I could die today and feel like I'd made a difference.

Re: Spectrums of Social Media for Marketing

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:45:55 -0000

@Michelle - really interesting point. Maybe it's too far afield. Except, is it? Wouldn't marketers consider those things in the same spectrum, at least in digital. I mean, when considering the overall marketing strategy that is.

Hmm. Good point.

I'm really happy to see people talking about these things.

Re: The Vital Importance of Your Network

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:33:26 -0000

@Tinku - I'm a big fan of feeling that it comes around, and that everyone has something to give. Social software proves that all the time. Think about when someone asks for a digg to try and help a story move forward. Things like that are useful no matter the size and depth. And YOU, if you're talking about you, have lots to give.

@Cheryl - that's the way to do it. Great job!

@Sue - very good point and an interesting thing to consider. I don't do as much of that, but I've seen people do that to me on LinkedIn often.

@Laura - your real world touches are perfect! I love them.

Re: The Vital Importance of Your Network

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:33:48 -0000

@cody - Thanks so very much. Glad I'm hitting the right note.

@Alanna - I send plenty of personal twitter messages, but at nearly 11,000 followers, I can't do that kind of personal touch all the time (it would drown out actual content). That said, I try to maintain personal touches with the people I know better than not.

@Nicolas - I use BlueSkyFactory to send out more than one email. There are mail merge apps but they don't work on Gmail in the cloud. If you bring gmail down into your desktop mail client you can use templates there.

Re: The Vital Importance of Your Network

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:09:18 -0000

Hi Bigtony-- you've never needed a day to catch up? They're not exclusive. I was being open and honest with my needs.

I'm here today. I've been here for over 10 years. Will be here in the future.

Big networks are great. Do you touch EVERYONE every day? No f-ing way.

Re: The Vital Importance of Your Network

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:12:55 -0000

Great advice, Tim. I like your point of view on seeing people add LinkedIn numbers in droves.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:01:32 -0000

Wow. What a great bunch of ideas here.

@Sol - super great point about making people feel like they're #1. That's vital.

@Pamela - how could I forget? This goes nowhere without internal support and champions.

@Tina - great point. It's definitely not a marketing job to be a community manager. It's someone with a strong understanding of the products and services, an understanding of customer service, *and* a marketing sense.

@Kara - are you blogging on what you're learning as a community manager? Curious what kinds of lessons learned you've come up with, etc.

@Richard - I say skilled communicators because there are lots of ways to say things wrong. There are plenty of ways to anger your customer base. Empathy and listening are great, but I think there has to be both sides to form the full equation.

@Jeroen - that's quite a write-up. Thanks for sharing that. I read through to your site and now might even pick up the book.

@Lois - well said. Making meaning is really one of the things I try to do the most with my own site. I can see that being valuable to a community trying to understand an environment.

@Tyson - Interesting. You're right, of course. It's different being someone representing Dell than it is to be representing FriendFeed, for instance. I think of Drew Olanoff as a great community guy for smaller companies. I can't see him running JetBlue or anything.

@Frank- wow! I bet there's tons of learning from running things at Monster. Thanks for sharing the link.

@Connie - by now, if community managers aren't reading you as a matter of habit, they're missing out. Thanks for all you've done in the space.

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:39:00 -0000

Neil- I stand corrected. I probably would try to turn him to the good side of the force, as you pointed out. : )

Re: Essential Skills of a Community Manager

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:32:39 -0000

Wow! This conversation is huge and all over the place. What I love the most is that you're engaging each other. Keep up the amazing work. You rule. : )

Re: Would Blockbuster Movies Benefit From Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:40:42 -0000

@Mike Volpe - great suggestions. Sony did a good job with the Facebook strategy, taking over the vampires game for 30 Days of Night, for instance.

Lots of good ideas here, gang. Thanks!

Re: Would Blockbuster Movies Benefit From Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:29:03 -0000

@janeth - most of those YouTube videos are posted by fans, not by the companies or agencies representing them.

Re: Review- Managing Online Forums

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:02:04 -0000

@Stupid Blogger - that's a great way to sum it up. And frankly, the tech parts will change quickly, so it's better that it covers the management, eh?

Re: David Peralty on Organizing Blog Posts

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:38:40 -0000

@Liz - There are lots of ways to skin the cat. This is just one. I like your last line the most. : ) You've got a winner there.

Re: Review- Managing Online Forums

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:41:54 -0000

@Liz - Great to hear. When I reviewed it, I just kept realizing that Patrick isn't just writing a book, he's capturing a lot of very specific expertise. I like what he came up with.

@Stupid Blogger (weird calling you that) -- I agree on your point about the take-aways. Disqus is such a strange creature, eh? Watching it add value to FriendFeed lately.

Re: FriendFeed- The Hidden Conversation

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:52:19 -0000

And of course, you can see below these comments that FriendFeed folks are talking about it too, right?

Re: Get the Newsletter Too

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:09:56 -0000

@Alan - I have a blog. You're here. Why would I offer my newsletter as a blog. The entire purpose of the newsletter is to NOT be the same as the blog. If you don't want it, don't get it. Perfectly okay. : )

Re: Is Google Putting a Horse Head in Cuils Bed

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:14:32 -0000

Oh. Were they? Rats. : )

Re: Is Google Putting a Horse Head in Cuils Bed

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:27:38 -0000

Cuil is the North Korea of search.

Re: Is Google Putting a Horse Head in Cuils Bed

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:01:06 -0000

@KaRi - why don't YOU host one? That's the point. : )

Re: BlogCatalog- A Social Network for Bloggers

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:26:58 -0000

Let me re-state that I think there's value here. I'd tweak it a bit, but there's value in what people are doing.

Re: How to Create Business From a Blog

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:43:16 -0000

@Sherry - It's a long ride from Boston to Austin, but sorry I missed you. : )

@Ed - you're a good guy. Thanks for the kind words. Great talking with you on the phone the other night.

@Dana - I don't know if you can trust that Brian Clark guy. he wants to help you to make money. : )

@Stu - if you click the link at the very top of the post, you'll see the very first request was from Eric. When I went back to FB and saw your question unanswered, I laughed because I feel like I partially answered you with this post.

@Cody - honest opinion? Keep that blog conversational. Launch something new if you want to make cash. That blog is very "chatty," which probably won't sustain you in the longer term.

@Matthew - you're unique from some of these folks because you're currently creating entertainment and looking for new models to support it besides standard ads. Tim Street and I were talking the other night and we both concur that sponsorships (over ads with PPC) is the way to rock video right now. But then again, I know what Tim asks for every video. : )

Re: How to Create Business From a Blog

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:17:03 -0000

@Cookster - so wait: how do you make the money in your model?

@Connie - Love it. Thanks for the sharing.

@Sachin - thanks.

Re: BlogCatalog- A Social Network for Bloggers

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:57:58 -0000

Hi Kevin- Blog Catalog isn't a bad place. It's a place. It's somewhere people can have discussions. If the people are good and motivated, the discussions are good. From what I saw, there were some great topics on the go.

I'm not crapping on it, nor do I consider myself elite (meet me and you'll get that sense for yourself).

Enjoy it. : )

Re: How to Create Business From a Blog

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:36:19 -0000

Money from a blog about writing? Sell books about writing as affiliate links. Sell writing services. There are ways for sure. Useful things tend to make money.

Re: Why Twitter Still Wins

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:46:05 -0000

What if we're not just talking about Jaiku? What if it's Identi.ca , as Matt pointed out?

David Binkowski above hit on a HUGE one. If Jaiku gives me my gmail inbox as a friend base, I'm in forever. Because I use gmail constantly, and that's my *real* social network.

Thoughts?

(And weird how much Twitter dislikes people named Dave).

Re: Do What Works for You

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:37:54 -0000

@Mack - I'm sure I love the people who use it. I don't love IT. Doesn't seem that it should matter, but a few of you have written back to say that it seems like a smack in the face.

I also don't use Yahoo mail, AOL, Netvibes Ginger, BlogTalkRadio, and 3,414,970 services. By choice. Not because I don't like the people there.

What's the solution?

Re: 50 Online Applications and Sites to Consider

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:01:56 -0000

Beth Bates blogged a link here and mentioned Eons as one of the ones I didn't add. Funny, I had Eons on the list, but realized I had 54 for my list of 50.

Re: When Google Owns You

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:58:00 -0000

@Matt - Thanks for commenting, and I'm glad it's all resolved. Let me state that as I type this, I have 5 tabs open in my browser that belong to your company. I'm not crapping on the big G. But wow, did that scare some sense into me on the potential for what happens if I ever lose my account. 30+ hours would be horrible for me. I mean, I've got other ways to do any of the stuff I use Google applications to cover, but operationally... yikes.

The big thing I took away was that I wish it were easier to get to a human (or even a better automated process) that would help resolve things faster.

Thanks for commenting and for your perspective, Matt. The big G is lucky to have at least one voice out there talking to us. Now, one last question: what SHOULD happen when one loses one's account?

Re: What I Want PR and Marketing Professionals To Know

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:31:14 -0000

@Liz - heck no. I love good PR and marketing folks. There are just many opportunities in my given day to run into the ones who aren't so good. I feel it's okay to communicate what I need from this group, seeing as I receive upwards of 9 pitches a day.

Re: What I Want PR and Marketing Professionals To Know

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:15:38 -0000

Carson - my drowning post was to say that I was feeling busy and overwhelmed. I can't see how that'd be high and mighty. That's saying, "hey... I'm busy, and I need a day to recover." Seems pretty much the OPPOSITE of high and mighty to me.

Condescending. I can see that. Sometimes, things I write come out that way, and that's never my intent.

Should I have to write a post like this? My inbox says yes. My last several conference speaking gigs say yes. The other dozens of comments say yes.

But I'll be wary. By the way, you let me know when you ever see me say I'm anything more than someone with an opinion. I don't even say expert. Just an opinion.

And with that, thanks for your opinion. Truly.

Re: Remember Blogging and Podcasting

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:39:01 -0000

Truth is, I read stuff all the time, love it, and then think to write about something related days later. Probably I owe Mitch a link to that post. In fact... *fix fix*

Re: The Future of Sports is Boobies

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:45:21 -0000

Well sure, the sports stuff is great. But I dunno. Do you just overlook the part that bugs you? Maybe. We do for MySpace, I guess.

Re: When Google Owns You

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:09:27 -0000

@Matt - it really is weird what FriendFeed has done to conversations. Sorry to make you work twice as hard. I have to read in twice as many places, fyi. : )

So, to the "just create a new account and keep going" mindset, great point. Absolutely. I'll throw the next wrench.

What if my Gmail account is my social media dashboard: "Matt Cutts just sent you a Direct Message." "Matt Cutts sent you a friend request on MonkeyFarmers." etc. I've just lost the dashboard. Yes, I can go back in, but ow.

You're right about the forms being better than not, except that I can't answer the questions, I don't think. I don't know when I first used anything. I can tell you some of the other questions, but do I have to get it ALL right? Aieee.

Finally, wait until you see the reason it was disabled. Will finish that post in an hour, once I record a webinar (not related).

Re: How Content Marketing Will Shake the Tree

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:33:02 -0000

I like Mike's approach, but that keeps it all about the landing site. To me, content is going the other way these days. Sure, there may be an eventual touchdown on your site, because that's where the sale takes place, but that's not the same as gearing up to put your media where the people are consuming it.

Fish where the fish are. Right?

Re: 20 Free eBooks About Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:56:29 -0000

@Tom - did you have any more like that? Quite a great bit of information in there.

Re: 20 Free eBooks About Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:41:21 -0000

@Kevin - thanks for that. Went back and fixed it. : )

Re: The Raw Power of StumbleUpon

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:19:34 -0000

But I've yet to find the referrer that leaves me great traffic. The other day was my best traffic day ever. BoingBoing drove that. I had 3 TIMES the traffic I've ever received. Only 100 new RSS subscribers. I'm not complaining overall and yes, some people don't have a hundred right now. But that made for less than a fraction of 1% of the traffic.

But, when talking with Christopher S. Penn yesterday at lunch, we both agree that my site's attempts at subscription conversion need improving.

Re: The Raw Power of StumbleUpon

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:14:42 -0000

@Colbie - well cool! Love it when something is useful to others. In fact, that's really the only reason I write here. : )

Re: The Raw Power of StumbleUpon

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:37:53 -0000

@Jay - maybe my expectations are too high?

Re: Does Size Matter

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:36:21 -0000

@Steve - things are never easy. For the record, I prefer text emails for newsletters. But I'm going to do an HTML version soon-ish, because I really like what Blue Sky Factory made for me. It looks like my blog. I'll try it once.

@Sue - I dunno the details. It was info from http://www.blueskyfactory.com , so when Greg ( @gregcangialosi ) catches all this in his egofeed, I'm sure he can educate us. : )

MarketingProfs sends very brief newsletters out.

Re: My Best Advice About Personal Branding

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:54:02 -0000

@Rahaf - someone's actually doing that for me now, it appears. I'll let you know. : )

Re: No- I Dont Sleep

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:30:07 -0000

@Steve - I have a wife and two children, 6 and 2. They help me with not sleeping, by the way. : )

Re: Etiquette in the Age of Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:26:22 -0000

@Sue - that's grounds for termination. : )

Re: Etiquette in the Age of Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:28:09 -0000

@Jason - I'd probably respond to the folks you know the best, and maybe put a general "thank you" up on the Wall. It gets tricky managing that, but these people also feel that they've done something very personal to you. Mind you, they just responded to Facebook's prompt.

Re: Etiquette in the Age of Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:43:35 -0000

@Ed - oh, I don't mind what one uses. Just not the default brown thing. It just seems less participatory.

Your avatar is just fine.

"Cogent." Points to you, sir.

Re: Sky News Interviews Me

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:15:00 -0000

Hi Ari--

1.) We used Skype to communicate, but I recorded my channel separately on a video. He then took that video and re-recorded his channel, eliminating Skype out of the final picture.

2.) He asked me for the interview. Not sure why, but I'm grateful for it.

3.) I didn't pre-write. I have no memory for words, so it would be useless. And yes, I localized the words I chose specifically because it was facing a UK audience. I'm rarely stumped on questions (not because I'm clever, but because I can talk my way into logical responses), and thanks.

Thanks about the analogy. It's a favorite.

Re: Google Launches AdSense for Feeds- Breaks My Subscriber Count

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 10:46:28 -0000

So FeedBurner is still busted (or I'm still down about 2500 subs, or they changed something).

Technorati is still busted (or I dropped 900 points).

AdAge 150 dropped me down to 63 (probably based on Technorati).

If this were a numbers game, and sometimes it is, this would bug me.

What it does instead is incent me to do things from other measures.

Re: On Twitter and Listening

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:35:01 -0000

@PR4Pirates - I mention it above: http://search.twitter.com , and then you can put the RSS feeds into your reader, or get them burned into email via some 3rd party service.

Re: On Twitter and Listening

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:27:44 -0000

@Mitch - I swear I'm not trying to rip you off. I'm too afraid of shaving my head. : ) Guess we're thinking down the same roads.

Re: How to Do More With Less Time

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:30:46 -0000

Cale - but they also give me gatekeepers so I can do all my work. Without them, I'm distracted PLUS people trying to reach me feel unheard.

Re: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:05:59 -0000

@Brooks - you raise an interesting question, and this isn't intended to cast any negative light on your no-doubt-capable intern: did you put your brand in the hands of an intern? In your mind, is Twitter an intern-level platform?

I'm curious to know what others think about that one?

And again, no offense meant, but rather, a question.

Re: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:59:51 -0000

@Bat Masterson - if you click the photo, it will go straight through to the original and the artist's page. If you go to the bottom of my post, you'll see a text link that says the photo credit as well. And yes, really great snap.

Re: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:15:04 -0000

@Brooks - oh, lots of self-love on Twitter, that's for sure. But that's also people trying out a new medium and starting where we all do. With ourselves. As it evolves, we figure out ways to add more value.

Re: Creating Honest Content Marketing

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:13:34 -0000

Hi Liz-- That Tweet thing says happy birthday to anyone who uses the word "birthday" in a tweet. I just sent happy Birthday to @shelisrael. Sorry. Mine's in April : )

@Keith- really a big fan of your work.

@Dan- You're spot on. There's a change coming. And if people don't get behind it, it'll be like the dinosaurs all wondering why the wooly mammoths are all dressed up.

Re: Solve Some Real World Problems

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:21:10 -0000

Adam raises a good point. I remember an NPR piece about a movement to get children workers out of factories in some part of China (this was a few years back). The children were upset and frantic, because this was their only chance to raise money to support their families, and here came these people from another country to shut them out of much needed income.

Just throwing money and passion around isn't very safe, either.

So how does one know which to support?

Re: Take the Tools and Run With Them

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:20:00 -0000

@Marina, imagine that. They hear 1/2 of what you say and run off? Maybe this ties to Chris Penn's comment.

@Stu, I owe you a Coke.

@Chris, that's a great point. If you learn a few things and run off, you're Luke Skywalkering. Is that always bad? I dunno. How much do you like both hands? : )

@Shannon, you said it, not me.

@ Eban, very very interesting perspective. I really appreciate your point of view. I've been mulling over thoughts like this since attending Gnomedex, and I was going at it a different way in this post. I was saying that once you get your skills, go bring them to YOUR passions and communities. But to your point, the me-too-ism could really do to run away.

Re: Take the Tools and Run With Them

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:15:52 -0000

@Liz - and these tools can do GREAT things for education. Watch this space. I have a post about that soon (tommorrow?)

Re: Inbox Taming for Busy People

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:40:18 -0000

@Sasha- great point. Scheduling specific times or patterns to manage email is a great point.

Re: Inbox Taming for Busy People

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:19:41 -0000

@Stu - Two are in one gmail app, and the business account is a standalone gmail app.

Re: The Old Advertising Merry Go Round

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:43:08 -0000

Oh, y'know. He's got that one big fat bling ad in the corner, that's what I mean. Not like... 2,484,970 ads like other sites.

@Jim - well thanks. I dunno. I don't think all blogs should be ad free. I think it's context. Chris Penn will show up any moment and call all my sidebar widgets and proclaimations ads. He's right. But then, they're the ads that don't pay me cash directly.

My stance on ads is softening, but will I play that out here, at [chrisbrogan.com] ? Not sure.

Re: How to Use Friendfeed as a Collaborative Business Tool

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:06:46 -0000

@Ami - my answer, with regards to the training, is that it doesn't discount my premise, but rather, that training and cultural indoctrination is something else entirely and needs attention. You're right. Not everyone does all the social good stuff. But should they? Well sure!

@Saravanan - my point is that you as a business leader instruct your company to make it part of where they gather news. If your company isn't helping people parse the web, they must not value the web.

@Chris B- you're right. Pipes does great stuff. I dare you to walk into a typical non-software business and get them to build their own pipes versus just poking a few buttons. You're thinking like a tech, not like a business process person. Pipes works great. Friendfeed works prettier. For businesses, do you think they want to learn even the Pipes syntax? I say no.

Your point about the data sharing is spot on *if* I was recommending that they share their internal data. I was mostly pointing to external sources.

I think @Chris Heuer makes a good point: maybe I should've been more clear to define the extranet, and not just a platform all amorphously.

Funny, two different comments about clouds. I've stopped thinking about that term as much directly. Instead, I'm trying to pluck benefits out of the soup.

Thanks, everyone for your thinking. I'm appreciating your perspectives.

Re: Cherp is a Twitter-Flavored Agency

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:46:26 -0000

I'm still skeptical, but not in the negative way. I'm just eager to be educated as to how this would work with all the other things an organization's marketing team would intend to do in social media. Mind you, there ARE blogging agencies and we don't poop on them as much. Is this the same thing, only smaller? Can you prove lead gen from it?

There's room to be educated here.

Re: Workflow- Social Media for Marketers

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:21:46 -0000

@seeking_balance - go anyway. I promise that you'll find value.

Re: Technorati Doesnt Count Microblogs

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:28:26 -0000

@Peter (with the great content lately) - Well, I can handle using PowerAge, but then, I hope someone clones the methodology for other verticals.

Re: Workflow- Social Media for Marketers

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:49:41 -0000

@Frank- I can tell you about me. But also, tell me about your line of business. That'll help me help you.

Re: Workflow- Social Media for Marketers

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:20:52 -0000

@Barb - I think there are ways to slice the role among your team. To your point, it's not easy if you're out there doing face to face work all the time, and I think that's very important work (humans trump machines).

I'm loving what people are saying. The ideas you come up with are far more interesting than the original post alone. Thank you!

Re: Workflow- Social Media School Teacher

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:35:26 -0000

Beth- you're not wrong. Interesting idea, and by the way, I'd fully support a class where my kids taught the teacher media. Because then, what would come next might be the context that would turn my child's skills into something useful instead of islands in a stream.

Vivian - when is it?

Luke- aieee.

Re: Workflow- Social Media School Teacher

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:42:10 -0000

Putting out an idea like mine does wonders for getting smart people like you to voice your concerns and give me some sensible ideas for what's next.

You've said that most teachers can't operate computers beyond Microsoft Word. You've said that most schools can't afford this technology. You reminded me that 3rd graders probably won't have smart phones just yet (I worked in wireless telephony before getting into social media, and they high growth rate of kids and phones in the US was 10, so I'm a bit later).

I think the basics can be taught alongside the neato. But should kids read through picture books and watch old VHS tapes about nature, or should they go out and curate their own material, by snapping pictures, and then using the web with their teachers to find more info.

Further, learning how to think, how to analyze, how to parse, how to discern, and several other structures are becoming more and more important to our children. Some level of rote memorization will still matter, but I'm wondering when the shift to search instead of storing information in our heads will be the norm.

It's not that I'm trying to be an unrealistic futurist. It's not that I think the physical world is bad. I love crayons. I love construction paper projects.

But if we don't think about it, and if we don't dream of how it will come about, it won't. And my child, I promise you, will be very well versed in how these new technologies build communication, community, and collaboration.

Thanks for your ideas. Keep them coming. Debate them. Blog your own variations on the them. That's the point. : )

Re: Workflow- Social Media School Teacher

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 10:59:54 -0000

@Pat - thanks for the fix. : )

Re: 10 Communications Objectives of Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:02:26 -0000

Wow. You sure had your opinions. : ) Glad you're all here. That's the proof to the pudding, eh?

Re: New Marketing Bootcamp is One Week Away

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:25:09 -0000

@Frank - actually, because we got lots of requests to do a road show version, the answer is yes for 2009. Not 100% sure about San Diego specifically, but I'll let you know once I know. : )

Re: 10 Communications Objectives of Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:26:29 -0000

@Dave - and yes, I think it's out of context a bit in my questioning, but that was somewhat intentional. I'm not slamming Doug in any sense. I think the list is interesting. Instead, I'm thinking about it in the deeply abstract sense. What is two way media about?

Re: Noise Reduction

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:15:37 -0000

@Charles- I hadn't seen your comment until now. Thanks for the kind words. I most certainly worked at delivering a value. I'm glad that it came off that way to you.

I have more to come. There's lots more projects underway over the next few weeks, and I've got a few other ideas that matter to me that I'll roll out before the end of the year.

Re: Is Your Blog a Media Property

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:02:17 -0000

@Diane - consistency. What a great one. When some of the bloggers started taking on other writers, I noticed that I could tell right away when it was a newbie writer versus some of the core talent. I guess it's fair to let them ramp up, but then I wonder whether traditional properties would do that. Maybe not. Maybe their editorial team blends up the posts until they sound just like the rest of the authors. And if that's how it's done, maybe I'll allow for some lumps in my oatmeal.

@Frank - you'll know when you get engagement, including comments and ideas and traffic.

@Jeremiah - your site does well to show your work as a portfolio. Makes sense to me.

@Josep - I'm happy it worked for you. I look forward to seeing how your blog evolves after you apply this thinking.

@Jon - storytelling is definitely a core element to good writing. You've got a great idea there. I'm glad you consider your audience when thinking about how to tell those stories.

@Ricardo - where I worry the most about being responsive is when it comes to scaling. With me, I'm a one man show. It's hard to reach out and touch every single person that wants to communicate with me. I don't have a staff or secret private helpers. It makes the effort pretty tricky. But I'm doing it, because I want that personal touch to matter.

@Heather- oh, I'm in your head, and I'm staying there until November! I look forward to talking with you at both events. : )

Re: Is Your Blog a Media Property

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:17:47 -0000

@Francine - I think that you're an auditor in your space and a social media type makes it such that, to me, you are THE auditor. I don't know any others. When others come along, I'll compare them to you. See how that works? Sometimes, I just can't figure why others in niche spots don't do the same. No value? ALL the value.

@Jack - let me know what they say about Scoblebot...er, Robert. : )

@Blogging Millionaire - a picture's worth a million bucks?

Re: 10 Communications Objectives of Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:32:04 -0000

@Casey - I'm not sure. Might be a great question for Lionel Menchaca from Dell. He's on Twitter ( @lionelatDELL). I bet he'd have a great answer.

Re: Big Game Hunting

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:55:18 -0000

@Troy -ohhh, touche. I do seem to be countermanding my complaint about embargoes. Let me just say that this specific embargo means a LOT, financially and business timing wise, to the parties at hand. That makes sense to me.

Maybe all embargoes would make sense to me, but I just figured out the difference.

I *know* Austin, and I know his ask (what he wanted from me), and I opted in to know about it.

The embargoes I gripe about are the ones people send to me unbidden. Maybe that's it.

(It's 2AM and I'm a bit warped).

Re: Video- From Cowpaths to Mastadons

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:28:05 -0000

@Scott - you know, that's a really great point to make. Cow's don't feel like they've done anything wrong. They probably feel great with their perspective. And there are plenty of times when cow paths are just right. If there are cows.

I also liked the idea of herd dogs as early marketers. : )

Re: How Your Blog Helps You Do Business

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:27:34 -0000

@Marc - I've got some thoughts on the whole brand vs company brand thing. I'll blog it up for tomorrow, if I get time tonight.

I'm kind of the "same guy everywhere" type. Should there be more than one blog? Only if you want to try to build two properties. Technically, yes, but with some caveats.

Thanks for everyone's perspective.

Re: Social Ads- a First Take

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:13:46 -0000

@matt - not sure I get your point. I don't get paid, so no, they're not ads. They'd be promotions, insofar as I write that I love things.

Things where I might have a business relationship are disclosed on my about page.

Is that what we're talking about?

Re: Thinking About Trust Agents

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 06:38:51 -0000

Thanks so very much for your thoughts. I'm still listening and thinking about what you said. I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me to dig in and try to address much of what you've said, or if I should just keep hearing your reactions. I'm thinking "B" because I want your unfettered advice.

Your reactions interest me a great deal, and I'm very happy that you came by and offered your opinions. I'll write more specifically to you as I go along, but wanted to thank you for what you've provided thus far.

Re: Thinking About Trust Agents

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:26:44 -0000

@Ben - I'm not sure I understand your comments. I mentioned that the value of what Scoble provided was, at least in some circles, more valuable than marketing dollars.

The rest of it, I'm even less sure I get. Of course Ballmer has more overall power than Scoble, but I can also find you plenty of people who agree that Scoble was what turned our opinion around on some of what Microsoft was doing.

CrossTech doesn't write my blog. I write my blog.

There's nothing in here about disregarding fundamentals. But if you think the choice is fundamentals versus innovation, that's a false choice. There's always room for both.

To clarify a bit further, the book isn't directly about marketing, though some of what we'll cover certainly defines easiest as marketing.

By the way, you have a friend in Indianapolis. He and I talked about your app for a while Friday, and I see his point.

Re: Thinking About Trust Agents

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:18:07 -0000

Perfect answer, Mr. Yoskovitz.

Re: Growing New Crops

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:14 -0000

Rock on, Bob. How cool is it that Berwick has you on the prowl thinking it over. I think we'll get more into that methodology in coming years. Easier to cull the plants.

Re: Growing New Crops

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:20:31 -0000

@Rob - what if newspapers wake up and realize that they're not in the printing-of-news business? Have they, yet?

(And we can wait, if that's safer).

Re: Growing New Crops

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:49:02 -0000

@Glenn- but let me ask you this: do simple numbers help? If you break off X in R&D and then return X+10%, is that a win? If yes, then figure out X to try new things AWAY FROM THE MOTHER SHIP.

I think it's not the whole 2.0 thing. It's business risk aversion in a time where businesses must innovate or die.

Frankly, I'm okay with the die.

Re: Growing New Crops

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:43:10 -0000

It's a great opinion, Frank. Do humans ruin things? All the time. Look at the planet.

But should we try?

Re: Plan Your Audience Acquisition Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:10:18 -0000

@Gary - to answer your question, check out my Twitter stream on any given day @chrisbrogan asks a LOT of questions. The reason is, I think they engage conversations best. So, if you're using that as part of your audience/relationship building strategy, I'd ask a question, and then throw a link. Make sense?

Re: Plan Your Audience Acquisition Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:02:27 -0000

I always tell people that it took me several years to get 100 subscribers. After that, it picked up a bit.

Re: Twhirl Makes Yammer Irrelevant

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:30:14 -0000

@damon - they would if they're not so interested in having private conversations leave the firewall, n'est pas?

Re: Twhirl Makes Yammer Irrelevant

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:38:38 -0000

@Ari - SMS is kind of the killer add-in to these new microblogging clones. It SHOULD show up in all these platforms, and if nothing else, it should be a bolt-on.

But corporations can do without the SMS for a while. They like the little one-to-many knowledge base feeling. The SMS is a nice-to-have. That is, until they try it and love it.

Even a mobile web app add-on could make them forget about it for a while.

Re: Twhirl Makes Yammer Irrelevant

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 06:51:25 -0000

IM is not Twitter and never will be for a few reasons.

Group IM is one to many, but doesn't leave the archive live and visual. (At least in most instances).

Yammer's big feature is administration. Last thing I'd want is to be the poor schmoo who's tasked with being the Yammer administrator. I get that it's good to be able to nab "Well, you're a poopyhead!" posts off the archive, but oy.

Re: Personal Branding Audio File

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:05:12 -0000

@Susan - I'm fairly sure that's do-able.

Re: 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:06:42 -0000

@Jeroen - There can be exploits on any web page, hosted or not. You're right that there's a risk of you implementing a malicious widget for your site. We tend to put faith in the WordPress site that it will keep us free from risk. That's where I download my plugins. Am I 100% I'm safe? No.

Has it shown any impact to me yet? Not yet.

How long before you get back your link juice? I guess it matters on how well you can promote the new site with the new links. Because you don't own the other platform, you can't even institute 301 redirects (google it) to port your link equity over.

Re: 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:53:14 -0000

@connie - A post like this takes about 30 minutes. My more thoughtful posts take a little less time, because they're not as formatted.

@jak - My point is that I write sometimes because I know it will it Delicious Popular and I know other times it will provoke useful conversations. I try to do a bit of both. One extends the community. The other gives the community something to talk about.

@Linda - I try to do a 1/12 sharing scheme, where I share about 12 links to other people's stuff to any link of mine. That way, I'm trying to never fatigue my followers with self promotion. Heck, none of us like to hang out with the MeMeMeMeMe types. Do we?

@Vicki - as long as you're clear when you're selling, I think your audience will understand the difference.

THanks to everyone for your ideas and thoughts.

Re: Make it Easier for Your Audience

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:18:52 -0000

Crap. How long is my home page? Great point, Jared.

Re: 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:44:20 -0000

Wow! Lots of great comments and ideas here. Thanks to everyone who shared.

Sorry I wasn't more active here in the comments section yesterday. I had to work from home *and* play Mr. Mom to the kids yesterday, so as you were all coming in and being nice, I was doing a lot of playing with trains, getting cups of water, and trying to report back to the office in between.

@Lexy - there are exceptions to every rule. A great memoir author is one example. They can talk about themselves all the time. David Sedaris, for instance, or Ann Handley.

@Craig - Ari answered already, but my take would be that it's almost vital that a company take a view of their industry if they're going to blog. Mike Volpe at Hubspot does that well. So do Marcel LeBrun and David Alston from Radian6. Tim O'Reilly is VERY active in the space where he works, and outside of topics that relate directly to his company.

@Ari- thanks for the other sources of photos. I had forgotten about Wikimedia Commons, but you're right. Another great source.

Thanks everyon!

Re: You Can Do Your Job Without Twitter

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:50:29 -0000

I sat on my hands for this many comments (partially because I had to play Mr. Mom yesterday), but you've all come up with some really great thoughts and ideas on why you do what you do with social media.

My answers for myself are that the web has finally enabled tools that extend us in a way that mimics enough of a read of our character that we can do business without the boundaries of time or location, or at least that we can start and extend several of the processes of business this way.

Nothing beats face to face, but the web has brought me an endless supply (so far) of people to meet, interesting opportunities to consider, and ways to work with it all.

This is the web I've been waiting for, which means that the future web will hopefully carry on and continue extending the parts I think are useful.

Re: How Does The Web Define Authority

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:09:30 -0000

Whitney has a great point of view up there: follow-through is very important. I'm crap at follow through. Have been for almost two years. And yet, the web doesn't ding me for this. Whit knows I'm a flake and don't always get back in time. And yet, the web says I'm amazing.

THAT is the question I have.

Re: Gatekeepers vs Gatejumpers

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:46:03 -0000

@Michael- love your ideas. Very good stuff, and world-changing instead of just fishbowl stuff. : )

Re: Gatekeepers vs Gatejumpers

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:18:42 -0000

@Tyler - in my definition, I'd say it's a lot more clear than some of the examples given in the comments. Something old world versus something new.

Know what would be fun to do? The reverse? Where is the gatejumper the real world thing?

Re: Question for You- New Marketing

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:57:12 -0000

I love when a question or a post takes on a life of it's own. I haven't wanted to comment, because I hope we keep the discussion going.

I love Robbie's idea that the insides of an organization are more important than ever.

Thrilled to see the Drucker quote, though I think CEOs are glued to their balance sheets for the next two years. Whatshisname at Merrill Lynch could've seen this coming, they're saying. There's going to be a lot more focus on the finances than the marketing overall.

And yet, that's partially why the time is right for this stuff. The dollar cost is spread across more opportunities than what traditional often covers.

I think David Brim was the only person who mentioned SEO/SEM. Is that part of it? I think so, though it's not MY strong suit.

Mass customization. That's the goal. Mr. Penn says, and I agree.

Anyhow... I'm going to hope we keep this going. What's your idea?

Re: Find Chris

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:53:15 -0000

@GirlPie - ah crap. Oh well.. You caught me. I'll be somewhere at some point. : )

Re: Two Important Speaking Tips

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:05:50 -0000

@frank - great question. The answer often lies in knowing who's attending the speech. If you're speaking at the Blog World and New Media Expo, you can expect that the crowd is half experienced bloggers, 1/4 newbie bloggers, and 1/4 business types trying to figure out the space. How do I know? Ask around. Do a "show of hands" thing with the audience. Find out what people say.

@bad old weirdo Bob- naw, you've got your style, and it works for you. When I say do something, I don't mean run out and immediately start. Instead, I want there to be things to think about so when you go home, you think about those things in a way that might be actionable later. Not immediate.

@Arthur Germain - interesting that you have "stop repeating yourself." It turns out that, done tastefully and well, repeating one's self is a really great way to build a theme into someone's head, and thus make your speech more memorable. You might mean the nervous version of repeating. Non?

@Sean - I'll blog one up for you, sir.

Re: How Did Personal Video Eclipse Entertainment Video

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:03:56 -0000

By the way, Loic LeMeur, founder of Seesmic, answered me here: http://api.seesmic.com/#/video/5Uqnyt9ffZ/watch . How fast is that? He's in Paris. I'm in LA. Whoa.

Re: How Did Personal Video Eclipse Entertainment Video

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:24:04 -0000

And Matt Dickman says: http://seesmic.com/videos/1Dnd0sfvpm

Re: The Me Game

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:08:19 -0000

I think it'd be great to have a guest post by someone who deals with being very shy at events, including the coping skills you use to accomplish meeting folks and the like. I can't write it because I'm not exactly shy any more. Sometimes I am, but it's not the same. Would love a guest post on it.

And I guess I could've talked a bit more about how quantity isn't everything. I have a friend who networks as if she's trying to play tag. She touches every hand in the place, but I doubt she remembers more than a third of the people's names.

Me? I'll remember over 66% of your names, and I'll probably accidentally introduce myself one more time before fulling remembering where I met you. It comes with all the traveling. If I see you at a second conference, it will throw off where I think I met you, and thus throw off my head a bit.

Re: Get More From My Posts

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 01:16:18 -0000

Let me say it another way: some of you are from the blogging culture, but not ALL of you are. In fact, there are several people who come here who probably have never even heard of Creative Commons.

Don't forget that I write for more than the folks who know who Darren is. I write for educators, realtors, hoteliers, and lots of other people who don't know all the ways we do things.

Make sense?

Re: Namecalling

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 11:05:02 -0000

@Andy - Interesting question to ask. Let me answer it for myself. Over the last 9 days, I was in five different cities. For the last five of the nine, I wasn't in the same place for more than 24 hours. I went from having Inbox Zero to Inbox 491. I'm still trying to weed through.

So, for me personally, no, I can't reply to every email any longer. It's not sheep and other bacn. It's all actionable stuff that people want thoughtful responses to, and I can't answer them all. There's no staff here. Just a dude with a family, a day job, and several thousand passionate friends.

I try, and I get there eventually, but it just doesn't scale. Still working on how to scale it up.

Tim Ferriss from Four Hour Work Week got back to me a week or so after I emailed him, and that felt reasonable to me. He's a NY Times Bestseller list guy, so he's got even larger scale issues.

As time goes on, we'll figure it out. Great point to raise, Andy.

Re: Namecalling

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 11:38:39 -0000

@marti - you're right about the whining and begging part.

Re: Namecalling

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 12:02:07 -0000

That's how I roll, Michael. But then, you knew that. : )

Re: Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:39:12 -0000

@Lisa Young - that's actually pretty clever. See, I'm so social media dumb. Good to know.

Re: Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:15:30 -0000

@gsik - I'm not sure. I don't see why it would. You can add more than one RSS source. Don't forget FriendFeed if it's geeky stuff.

Re: Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:03:53 -0000

@gsik - ah yes. Now I see.

Re: New Marketing Summit Secret

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:21:49 -0000

@CSpenn- hahahahaha. : ) By the way, two ladies from MomCentral had some great things to say about your presentation at Inbound Marketing Summit. Same thing I always hear. : )

Re: Social Media Tools Are Like Phones

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:43:09 -0000

It's interesting: this is all based on behaviors, on interruptions, on trust, and several other things that have nothing to do with the tools, except that they have everything to do with how we apply the tools. Non?

Re: Social Media Tools Are Like Phones

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:57:53 -0000

@Frederick - what an interesting topic: Second Life vs. WoW. I hadn't thought about that. One reason that I think SL failed was that marketers jumped on it so damned fast and hard. I might be stupid, but did WoW *ever* get overrun by marketers? Should it? Could it? (I mean, besides Penn.)

Thanks for letting me start the conversation. Glad everyone answered.

Re: Three Tools Marketers Overlook

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:27:33 -0000

What a lot of swell folks you are. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's neat to see that you had a similar experience to me.

Re: The Beauty and Problems of New Presentations

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:56:49 -0000

@Darren - I wrote about using outposts a few days ago, actually, and their purpose is techically a place to guide people to your main content. So Facebook, Linkedin, and several other smaller social networks are my outposts.

PASSPORTS are just what I call the accounts we need to survive on the web: StumbleUpon, WordPress, Disqus, Digg, Gmail, Yahoo (for Upcoming and Flickr and Delicious) and more. Essentially, those accounts that let us weigh in everywhere. Make sense?

Re: The Beauty and Problems of New Presentations

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:58:10 -0000

@Mitch and @Marti - thanks. Of course I'm much more critical for knowing what I didn't do and where I stumbled. But thanks so very much.

Mitch, you're right about even a crazy agenda. That would've set my passengers' minds at ease.

Re: A Counterpoint to the Branding Craze

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:19:18 -0000

What does a brand do? It leaves an impression. What does targeting a behavior do? It attempts to move us from one type of action to another (the latter being an impulse to buy, in this case).

Given those two options, which would you want to tell the boss you were sitting around doing all day?

Re: A Counterpoint to the Branding Craze

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:48:52 -0000

See, one skew on this is that any of us who aren't tied to making a sales number are looking at this another way. Let's go micro for a second. Let's pretend we run a small shop in St. Louis that sells Gooey Butter Cakes. We have a website. We have great product that inspires groans of lust. And now, we turn to our marketer person, freshly hired, and say: okay, I'm selling 1,500 of these a day. I need to get up to 10,000, and then I'm going to franchise. YOU have to bring me that 10,000 bump.

Is brand part of that? I think so. But MORE of what will count is how you influence people and motivate people and change their behavior such that they willingly put what must surely be a 1,000 calorie "treat" into their belly in any kind of recurring volume.

Krispy Kreme on the east coast at least has all but FAILED because they thought it was all about the donut. Even Dunkin Donuts knew it was about the coffee. Have you swung by a McDonalds lately? They're putting in McCafe's and attacking Starbucks on the premium drink front.

Know why they MIGHT win a big chunk of market share? Behavior. They've stuck in the wifi. They've put in the premium coffee. NO, it's not the same as Howard Schultz's "third place," but we (and by we, I mean a bunch of parents every single day) still go there. They have wifi and coffee, my two entry points into doing business *and* I've been behaviorally trained to swing by there and buy my kids chicken nuggets every four or five days.

Behavior / brand? Which one if YOU are the marketer?

Re: A Tale of Two Book Pitches

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:18:16 -0000

Glad to hear your thoughts on this seem to echo mine. I dunno. Just seems like we're not going to win by going fast food in our approach to humans.

Re: The Beauty and Problems of New Presentations

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:36:15 -0000

@Nikola - I'm grateful for your thoughts. What's funny is how the audio didn't pick up all the other laughter. I had them giggling MOST of the presentation. But without that laugh track, it looks like I'm a weirdo. Well, I *am* a weirdo, but you know what I mean.

Re: The Big Risk for Corporate Trust Agents

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 08:48:17 -0000

@Jeremiah - but let me ask you: if Forrester said to you, "You must make the blog forrester.com/webstrategist" , would you? And if that's too close to home, feel free to generalize. Would you counsel another person in our space to keep their own real estate?

Re: The Big Risk for Corporate Trust Agents

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 10:25:39 -0000

@Josh - In my case, the way I dealt with it was to offer them my RSS feed for a specific tag. That way, I can ensure the blog keeps updating and they get enough of my content there to share with our constituency.

The real question is this, in regards to your question: what value is that blogging offering your company? WHY are you blogging? What will happen after someone reads a post you've written? Work back from the answers to that and you'll know whether you should post it on the corporate blog or not.

Re: The Big Risk for Corporate Trust Agents

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:07:05 -0000

@Gia - in this specific case, the "ownership" is more a matter of bits and addresses. If your best work is up on canvasses in the Louvre, you can't just walk in and unhang them. You might replicate them, but then the web discounts those as copies (Google would get all fussy that you duplicated content).

So in this case, it's a great analogy, because your original art should be "on loan" to the big museums, not installed in their permanent collections. Most times.

Re: The Distance of Your Ask

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:09:14 -0000

@Shannon - great question. I looked up "jump" in Flickr, to cover the DISTANCE of your ask. Sometimes, we jump too far ahead in our relationship. Grasshoppers jump.

And besides, I have a thing for them. : )

Re: Picnics

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:36:07 -0000

Remember, though I'm talking about me, I'm also talking about you. People are still trying to figure out how to make money in this space. Most of them won't. For those who want to do so, there are avenues, but they take effort, and they take disclosure, and they require a certain two-way relationship and understanding.

Re: Read it Where You Want

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:23:35 -0000

@Rebeca- Don't ever tell Jason or I who wins. : )

Re: The Ethics Imperative in Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:27:42 -0000

@Meredith - wow, that's kind of interesting (read=scary). So I can pay people to say nice things about me? Of course, as I type that out, I'm thinking that it's silly to say that. Press are taken to analyst meetings and on little junkets, and are given gifts, and bloggers all the more. We're just never even clever enough to KNOW when we're being handled (sometimes, and that's a gross overgeneralization).

Very interesting. And icky.

I'm glad that you felt well fed by our blathering. Let me know what else we should've covered. : )

Re: The Ethics Imperative in Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:49:30 -0000

@Mary - a PRSSA leader mentioned the same code of ethics. It also seemed that the code wasn't exactly enforced, so it fell upon the practitioners themselves to say whether they were following appropriately. If that's the case, how valuable is that code?

(Not intended as a sleight, but as a next part of the conversation.)

Re: Picnics

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:09:27 -0000

@Ted - you know how there's a group of peers, and then there's a group of customers? I think blogs are unique (and other online media properties like blogs) insofar as they are often mix-and-match with who's on them.

Thus, we have a little bit of separating to do. I have to extract my customer base from my peer base, so that my customers will find their way to the products and services I create, while my peers and friends feel they're still learning and sharing with me.

My customers are more than welcome to learn from my peers. I'm a big fan of sharing. That's what I do best.

But you're right insofar as there has to be some kind of dividing line on what one might buy or not.

Re: Blogging is Not a Numbers Game- Or Is It

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:21:35 -0000

Know what's funny about the empty cafe thing? I'm writing this in an empty cafe. Know why it's empty? Because the new owner is a goof and has NO idea about community.

Re: Blogging is Not a Numbers Game- Or Is It

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:56:25 -0000

@Keren- you have, of course, made a vital point. The implicit is the heart and soul of things. It's not cash in pocket: it's opportunities to get even closer to better situations. And then, there's cash over there. : )

Re: Blogging is Not a Numbers Game- Or Is It

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:32:17 -0000

@Alan - That matters more than I can put into words.

@jon - you have ways of making me think so much better than I do on my own. A gem.

Re: 25 Ways to Build Your Community

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:11:25 -0000

@David - it's hard to comment back to EVERY comment, but I sure try.

@Gary - Oh, I read about 700 blogs. I told YOU to read about 100. Didn't want to scare you. : )

@Rob - means negative and kind of complaining.

Re: 25 Ways to Build Your Community

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:42:13 -0000

@Corey - heck no. Send one to blog at chrisbrogan dot com. I'd love to reconnect.

Re: 25 Ways to Build Your Community

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:39:52 -0000

@Scot - sure I am. That's how I was able to write them all down. : )

Re: How Small Boxes Help You Succeed

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:48:21 -0000

@Kyle - I just like the people. : )

@Brent - You're right. One size doesn't fit all.

@Dr. Mani - Can't wait to see what you come up with. You're clearly doing lots.

Re: The Beauty of Pirate Ships

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:23:58 -0000

Thanks for the first volley of responses, gang. I'm thrilled that you didn't find it immediately out of spec.

Maybe I'll even figure out a few ways to help equip you with some tools or at least point you in some new directions along the way.

OR, you could blog about the ways to implement this, and we could have an even larger conversation across the web.

Re: How to Launch a Group Blog Project

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:09:48 -0000

@Dale - I like the community around WordPress. I think MT is okay, but there's TONS more apps for WP and lots more support. MT is technically better.

Re: How Often Do You Promote Others

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:57:09 -0000

@Ann - the FriendFeed comments thing is a peek into what the gang over on FriendFeed is saying about the post. This particular post got almost more comments there than here. Crazy, eh?

Re: Promoting Your Book Online

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:50:17 -0000

Regarding independent booksellers, I worked for several holidays at a local Massachusetts indy bookseller just for love of books. They even paid me in books. I won't miss the little guys.

Regarding libraries, I was raised in libraries, so I'll be sure to give them love. : )

Thanks, everyone, for the amazing comments so far. I have even more to think about. You're incredible for giving people so many resources here in the comments.

Re: Promoting Your Book Online

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:54:51 -0000

@Peter - welcome to the conversation, and thanks for your ideas. Glad you decloaked! : )

Re: How to Launch a Group Blog Project

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:57:24 -0000

Hi Freddy- Very cool to hear it. Thanks so much for dropping a line. Good luck with your projects. I'd say you might want to start with one, get it cooking ,and then move on to the next. Easier than juggling that many balls in the air at once. But very fun stuff.

Re: The Matter of Scale

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:04 -0000

Lucretia and Ed both had the answer right. Tribes now, to use Seth's words.

Re: The Matter of Scale

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:12:55 -0000

Is it less "genuine" to have a team behind your brand? I don't think so, but am curious to know what you think. Do you divulge it, or do you keep it quiet?

In my case, I'm taking my first intern on and that will change things.

Re: Web 2.0- Was It Ever Alive?

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:29:30 -0000

Wow, my first ever comment from Tim O'Reilly and it's because I gave Dennis the mic. Figures! : )

For the record, my interpretation of what I thought Dennis might be getting at was different, and I'm not speaking for him by any stretch. I wonder if he wasn't perhaps crapping on the companies who haven't yet really delivered. What I read was an attendee's perspective that the exhibitors and sponsors weren't exactly breaking ground on the vision set out by Tim years back.

If so, I understand the sentiment at least. I, too, want companies to dig in and enterprise-enable some of the same dreams.

Not surprisingly, I've got the old "Distributing the Future" podcast with Daniel Steinberg in my head, doing the Gibson quote as part of the intro every week.

There's still hope, and there are signs of people implementing. It's just, as always, slower than we want.

Re: Why Ive Bought Personality Not Included 3 Times So Far

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:40:46 -0000

But they're not snuck, mister. They are flat out OBVIOUS. And I disclose that on my http://www.chrisbrogan.com/about page.

Re: Reach Outside Your Fishbowl to Build Community

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:54:25 -0000

Super great point, Jon, and I guess it depends on the blog. Mine's mostly an idea center, so I'm here to give ideas. I count amongst my inner circle of friends a preacher, a small business expert / liquor store owner / cattle rancher, a former bouncer, a ninja, and a secret entrepreneur.

I guess I never thought people wouldn't find diversity useful.

Re: Reach Outside Your Fishbowl to Build Community

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:09:40 -0000

@Kimberly - I found your fishbowl: http://green.alltop.com/ . That's where your other community members are. Spend your time hanging out on some of those blogs, making friends with people in the comments section, and it will come around to help your site out all the more.

Re: Reach Outside Your Fishbowl to Build Community

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:56:09 -0000

@Ed - I didn't take it negatively. I took it as a way to learn. You had ideas that sparked my ideas and I posted. The reason I mentioned you in specific in my blog post (which clearly offended you) was that I'm grateful to have people like you who make me think.

I think this is a "lost in translation" moment between us, as I'm not upset with what you said to me, nor was this post in any way an attack.

Re: How Not to Be a Jerk in Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:29:02 -0000

@DavidMiller - hahaha about the swearing, but only in support and that "I feel bad for you, man" kind of way.

Re: How Not to Be a Jerk in Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:37:56 -0000

@Wendy - absolutely. There are business pages and fan pages and that's what those are for. People be people, and then power the fan/business page appropriately. Make sense?

Re: How Not to Be a Jerk in Facebook

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:59:52 -0000

@karim - but let me ask you this: if I had no prior business experience with that guy, do you think his cold pitch was a good one? Do you think he inspired me to attend just by dumping that in my inbox?

My point is that Facebook isn't a direct marketing mass mailing campaign.

Re: Pepsi Reaches out to Digital People in Analog

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:35:09 -0000

@Rebecca - A but not an A-plus. I just amended my post once I realized I'd missed a pretty damned important part: the FriendFeed room. That's pretty cool of them.

But hey, we can't give them top marks right out of the gate. Bonin has to earn that +. : )

Re: Pepsi Reaches out to Digital People in Analog

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:45:07 -0000

Wow! If I were Pepsi, I'd be all over these comments giving some thanks to you for your opinions. I know that people will always have mixed opinions, but hearing from the smart people I get to talk with every day (you!) is a free benefit to them.

Thanks for your thoughts. I hope to hear more.

Re: Interview with Heroes Star Brea Grant

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:27:20 -0000

@Jason - the beauty of my plans with my assistant is that she's going to handle the more mechanized-but-still-takes-humans-and-time elements, and I'm going to focus on the "human and hand-crafted" stuff.

It's the ultimate best use of time. I can still answer people and be human, but not miss all the little balls falling off my plate daily.

Re: How Corporates Should View Comment Policies

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:04:33 -0000

I can't begin to thank everyone enough for your perspectives. As always, the comments are far better than the work I did. Dan York's ideas, and Wesley mashed with Mike are just great! I've got tons of thoughts off your ideas.

@Kathy - that's interesting. I like adjusting the kid's age to match the demographics of the business. What a great add-on to the metaphor.

Now it's like a meta-seven. : )

Re: Drop Everything- Run to LinkedIn NOW

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:48:08 -0000

I tell you what: if these 9 are the sign of things to come, I'm in. Every one of those apps tells you about a business person's perspective, gives you more opportunity to show off your personality and potential, and could have an impact on who considers hiring us for what.

Bring it on, in other words.

Re: You Cant Just Have Peanut Butter

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:19:54 -0000

Okay, so a few things:

@Craig - I didn't say measure=quantity. There are great qualitative and sentiment tools. Those are a great measure. Christopher S. Penn measures on dollars, and that's a nice measure. Easy, at least. I don't think the masses are my target. Nope. I just want the right 1000. (Was that Kevin Kelly's line?)

@Laura- I don't entirely agree. I think a site is part of it, but I have a post about outposts in your media strategy that conflicts with that thinking a bit. In my mind, media has atomized, and it's all over the place. Yes, there should be a home base, but the outposts are now just as important because that's where the fish are. (such as it were).

And for all of you "stuck" on the food analogy: I can eat peanut butter plain, and have many times, so there. Have you tried bananas?

Re: Dear Bank of America

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:42:43 -0000

@Steve (not really Steve) - I'm an idiot because I'd prefer to be treated better by a business? Clearly.

Do I resent the fingerprint? Absolutely. Other places that aren't banks also don't have my signature on file, and yet they accept my signature. Further, does the bank have my fingerprint on file? No. So, then how will that help unless there's perhaps a court case? (Maybe that's the deal, but then that presumes the worst up front, n'est pas?)

So, to quote Toys R Us, I don't want to grow up, if your version of growing up means accepting service that I deem inappropriate. I'm crying all the way to the (other) bank.

Re: Review- Gourmet Food Online For Reasonable Prices

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:48:07 -0000

@antje - according to the site:

* Always trans-fat free
* Heart Healthy with nutritional info for each menu item
* Whole grain goodness so you know it's full of fiber and low-glycemic index carbs for sustained energy
* All natural meats and seafood are hand trimmed
* Fresh never frozen means full flavor and freshness with each delicious bite
* No preservatives or additives ever!
* Restaurant and Spa quality meals without the hassle or expense of dining out
* Unbelievable taste and variety
* Ready in minutes

As for the price, what are you paying for a chicken and broccoli pasta dish in a restaurant. If it's less than $12 a head, tip included, and still tastes as good as gourmet, you win.

Re: Dear Bank of America

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:20:43 -0000

@Steve - okay, that's true. It is the policy not the actual carrying out of the policy that I disagree with.

And yet, as evidenced by the hubbub in this tiny little blog, you'll note that I'm not alone in my feelings on the perception it's left me with. Should a bank change because someone perceived a policy made them feel unwanted?

I guess we'll see.

I understand that the preferred process is to deposit the check in my bank, have both banks bounce the funds back and forth or whatever they do for a handful of days, and then give it to me when they're good and ready. Given that this was a situation where I was leaving the country nearly immediately, I couldn't quite wait.

Was that worth the perception based on the policy?

I dunno. Still say no.

Re: More About the New Pepsi Logo

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:40:06 -0000

What if they did it stealth? What if they did it completely the OTHER way? Just put the cans on the shelf, whistled, and walked away. What do you think would happen then?

Re: Review- Gourmet Food Online For Reasonable Prices

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:02:16 -0000

@Sue - thanks! I was banging my head against the wall looking for the email (still can't find it), so I'm glad you identified.

Was this for Dadomatic? Oh! I'll have to run over there once I eat another meal and talk about it there, too. : )

Re: Review- Gourmet Food Online For Reasonable Prices

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:48:21 -0000

For the record, the Jambalaya's pretty darned delicious, too:

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3171/2997670948_8b5f4862aa_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Jambalaya" />

Re: Dear Bank of America

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:14:14 -0000

@Steve - I've got a customer service background. I quite understand what it's like. We get many opportunities to see the more interesting humans in the world. No worries. Your contributions actually got me to think a bit more about it. I didn't change my mind, but it certainly helped me hone my thoughts in a better sense.

Thanks!

But wow..90-something comments, most of them angry about the state of policies and customer service perception (definitely the perception).

Amazing, eh?

Re: Review- Gourmet Food Online For Reasonable Prices

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:01:18 -0000

Weird. Mine came to $12.75 or something, but it was the half order. I can't imagine that the full order costs double that again. Maybe it does? Weird.

Re: The Vital Importance of Links

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:42:21 -0000

@Lee - somehow, I knew you'd come in and say a sentence or two that would mean nothing to me. I love it. I truly admire you and appreciate what you do. Now, I'm off to go through back issues of your blog and find what you're talking about. :)

Re: Secrets of the Annotated World

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:57:04 -0000

@Adele - I don't use them the same way. I don't need noise in all of those spheres to equal my participation, so instead, I use them differently. I use BrightKite to annotate the world. I use Facebook as an outpost to share what I do here. I use Twitter a thousand ways. I don't want them to be in parity. Just doesn't seem as valuable.

Re: Communications in a Post Media World

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:46:14 -0000

How did Obama get made president? By a single voice standing alone? No.

That's my point. Only, that's just one implementation of the point. I could find you several smaller versions of the same.

Re: If I Owned BrightKite

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:42:04 -0000

@Martin - I knew you'd visit. I'm glad you're listening.

@Freddy - I have no time to pursue every idea and dream that I want. I'm in the army raising business now. My job is to set as many hands to work as I can, while working on the larger story. Thus, by conveying my wishes here, perhaps Martin and team will run off and make the world bigger.

Make sense?

Re: A Hotel Built For Media Makers

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:44:07 -0000

The Canary Hotel, I presume, has a bird watching theme. But, for the record, I looked outside my window and didn't find anything worth binocularing. : )

Re: How I Use Twitter at Volume

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:38:32 -0000

@Tris - you know, you're right. It was you who got me looking at it again. I didn't remember that!

@Toddy - I'm a little unique. My job involves social media. When I'm on Twitter, I'm doing work lots of times. Not directly, but through building relationships that turn into sales.

@Jason - BlackBerry isn't *too* bad as a mobile client, but it doesn't do as much. I used one for 2 years.

@Webconomist/Giles(Casper!) - I am a broadcaster. I understand that. Some days, it'd be nice to be a little lower profile, but what can I do?

@Jim - it's always in the red. I'm a user. : /

@Wesley - it's the "be responsive" part. If people don't know how to use @chrisbrogan, I still want to talk back.

@TJ - that's interesting. I'll give that a look. : )

Re: How I Use Twitter at Volume

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:15:14 -0000

@Nicky - depends on the business. I just worked with a client today who is dying to get onto Twitter because it's a tool for more presence and more customer touch.

My post wasn't "how businesses can use Twitter." That's this post.

Yes, it can be a distraction. It can also be a customer service product, a lead generation product, etc.

For me? It's a way to build relationships that turn into something bigger.

Re: If I Owned BrightKite

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:29:51 -0000

@Redg - perhaps you misunderstood. I love the product. I think it's great. If I had loot, I'd buy it.

How to fund BrightKite or get it acquired? If I'm google, I don't buy it because I can clone it poorly within a few months of buckled down work, and then I'd have it married to their already huge maps platform. So no.

Acquired by another company is much more likely, and if I were a media company, like Gannett or Hearst, I might give it a look as part of a larger content strategy.

Why did I write about the ways in which it can be used in a less-business-focused way? Because that's how I'm using it right now. I'm not sure that there was anywhere on my blog that I intimated that I wanted to recommend how businesses get purchased. I'm in the human business, most especially the humans-talking-via-technology-business-in-meaningful-ways-business.

If it didn't come through that I love what Martin and team have created, I've failed only in being clearer. I love the app with the iPhone UI on the front end. The web side? Not so much. The PREMISE of what this can do?

Kendall was right. I'm not talking about this as some other "find your friends" platform. This, to me, is a tool to annotate and bring a platform of floating data to location-aware browsers.

Regarding my pundit status, my goal is to turn our thoughts on their side and figure out new ways to approach things. I won't be stopping that any time soon, company-agnostic.

Re: If I Owned BrightKite

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:30:34 -0000

I only just now downloaded the zhiing app because I'm evidently down the street from the company.

Will there be a glut of startups trying to crack the location/annotation code? Yes. Definitely.

Re: AwayFind Launches Big

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:57:33 -0000

@ricardo - I'm a fan of SpinVox for that.

Re: When Not to Sell Me Something

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:36:18 -0000

@Dave - I bet it was huge! Like...50 pixels tall, even.

That's me. Always selling.

Re: When Not to Sell Me Something

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:02:28 -0000

@Wesley - same as Dave- if you can't endure the Google reader Adsense ad that goes with my blog post, unsubscribe. I put out free shit all the time, every day, and if you're offended by the ad, the easiest way to stop seeing it is to opt out.

If you somehow equate that with the post, that's brilliant. You've completely and utterly uncovered the meaning of my blog post.

Re: The Right Numbers

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:32:35 -0000

@Rachel - with regards to any numbers translating to business activity, that's exactly the point. You've hit it exactly.

Half of this thinking came from our conversation at Stamats08, so it's prescient that you came and weighed in.

Re: Don't Count Out Big Media- Yet

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:42:51 -0000

Aw crap I knew I forgot to mention something. Ripple6. I think that acquisition is brilliant. Sorry I forgot to mention you directly, Rich. I mentioned you every fourth sentence.

Re: Elements of a Good LinkedIn Recommendation

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:45:02 -0000

@Chad - Ah, interesting point. Hmm. If I ever get less lazy and rewrite this, I'll say that I did a blend.

Don't actually READ my posts. That's a horrible idea. : )

Re: Don't Count Out Big Media- Yet

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:16:28 -0000

@Kristofer- Thanks so much for swinging in. : )

Re: Own the Crowd With Better Speaking

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:55:36 -0000

@Steve - not true. I just do it at a different level. Gary Vanyerchuk just spoke directly after me at this event today and he OWNED me. He was way better. And now I've got my goals for 2009 in my speaking, based on what I learned. Kickass.

Re: If I Started Today

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:52:46 -0000

@maria- my very non-legally-binding advice is this: ask someone on Twitter or in another of your networks for their standard NDA form as a template for yours. Done.

Why hire pros? Hire folks on Craigslist or rentacoder or several of the other sites, or ask friends on twitter, and see if you can find a lower rate for them to work to get the prototype built. Shop the prototype to VCs for the bigger app.

At this point, I'd also mention picking up Guy Kawasaki's Reality Check. Guy started Truemors for well under $10K and sold it for much more. He did the same with Alltop, and will likely sell that for a nice profit, too.

That's what I think, at least.

Re: If I Started Today

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:55:44 -0000

@larzini - I feel that people as names in this case is still the better route. So if I'm talking with @larzini, or reading your twitter stream, I would react to you talking to me about your stories.

But that won't be the #1 way a magazine will develop community. The #1 way? Reflect the existing community. Meaning, write about the people reading. Directly. (Depending on the type of mag). That's the #1 trick of it all.

Re: 25 Ways Social Media Prepares You for the Downturn

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:55:23 -0000

That's for a write-in answer. : )

Re: If I Started Today

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:41:57 -0000

@danlatorre - there are plenty o' nonprofit types who read. Maybe one will give their take on it in their blog, and then share the info?

Re: Do You Have To Touch Every Conversation

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:37:18 -0000

@Levi - oh, I don't use Twitter for play. I've doubled my business earnings from Twitter. Twitter is the new telephone. 100 years later.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:54:05 -0000

I think a blend of Jonathan and Katrina's idea are really the crux of what I was thinking. The big guys might not do as well here. The little or quirky guys? They will excel. So have we uncovered the right tool for the right audience? And if so, when will the big guys stop looking at the tools?

Re: Cafe-Shaped Conversations

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:41:23 -0000

@Rachel - yes, and of course you're right. It's PART of the marketing mix but it's not the same as the other larger scale efforts. It's a condiment or a side dish alongside the larger tools -- that is, for larger companies.

Thankfully, Steven Hodson helped me form my thoughts into an even tighter ball.

Re: All Tomorrows Armies

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:12:12 -0000

What if I told you the tech wasn't the thing? The approach was the thing. What if I told you the maps are all wrong? What if I asked you to lower your sensors and use the force, Luke?

To me, it's as powerful as that. And then again, not.

This is small arms warfare after decades of building up massive nuclear arsenals. This is door-to-door combat that renders our tanks useless.

Or, this is communications.

Re: 2008 Holiday Buying Guide

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:54:30 -0000

@Nicholas - I don't get to read daily, but I do get to fly about 3 or more times a month. So I get a few books done per trip. I read about 2 hours a day online, but not as much paper these days (except when I travel).

Re: All Tomorrows Armies

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:57:38 -0000

@Amber - what's interesting is you've just explained both rapid prototyping (a software construct) as well as modern entrepreneur methods (at least in the tech space). Try, fail, try something new. There you have it. Iterative.

So, innovation died on lots of fronts. Is this its recovery option?

Re: 2008 Holiday Buying Guide

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:13:21 -0000

@David - Tribes is a totally different animal. I'll be honest and say that I didn't really like Meatball Sundae as a book. It was probably an article at best to me.

Tribes? Powerful. Could've been another 100 pages longer.

But see? Seth can't win. (I'll try to remember this when people crap on my book in May.)

Re: Here's a Hint- Don't Whisper

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:12:14 -0000

@Peter - absolutely right. If I'd paid my bill on time, I wouldn't have had crappy customer service.

Now, stop and think.

Do you EVER use customer service when things are going as planned? No. Thus, no post if there isn't something outside of plan.

Re: Why Faceless Untargeted Ads Will Exist For a Long Time

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:50:29 -0000

If I didn't have Angel, I would know close to nothing about affiliate marketing.

Re: Sponsored Post- Online Shopping?- Pay Cash and Feel Secure with eBillMe

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:02:20 -0000

@Joduba - point taken. I admit that I'm very sensitive to how this is taken. Maybe after no stones thrown after a few, I'll feel good.

Re: Why Faceless Untargeted Ads Will Exist For a Long Time

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:03:15 -0000

@Dan Thornton- well, good point, but I can't exactly *tune* AdSense, right? That's my point there.

Re: Sponsored Post- Online Shopping?- Pay Cash and Feel Secure with eBillMe

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:36:45 -0000

@Rick - this is EXACTLY what I need you to think on. I mean, Samer's needs aside, and I *do* support the product, I want you to think with me on how advertising SHOULD work.

Think of the difference. I could stuff a banner up on the sidebar and no one would really see it. After a while, you'll shrug and say there are ads on Brogan's site. Whatever.

In-content, it gets scarier. Because this is that merge of "editorial" with "advertorial." Mind you, MAGAZINES do this all the time. You turn a page and you're looking at an ad that looks like an article. Right? Pick up ANY magazine and you'll see that these days. Know why? It's the only way you'll MAYBE see an ad these days.

So, in mags, they just write "advertisement" lightly at the top and bottom of the pages.

In my case, Joduba says I've fallen on my sword too much.

What works?

Because remember, I've done something that community managers must do: found a way to make money while not asking my community to pay. Free content all around, and I have found someone who values YOU so much that they'll pay me to get in front of you.

If I'm respectful, does this relationship work? I think so, but that's up to you to tell me.

I'm grateful for every opinion, including dissent.

Re: Sponsored Post- Online Shopping?- Pay Cash and Feel Secure with eBillMe

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:08:16 -0000

@Ted - sorry, I guess I didn't state it cleanly. I don't think communities should NEVER pay, but I do like it when external forces can pay for part of a community's experience. Stadiums are built by corporate contributions so that I can pay $80 and go see a sports team. I still paid, but there's also external money from people who want an association with the people in the stadium.

Money isn't evil, but then, that's why I joined your advisory board, to say that loudly.

Re: Sponsored Post- Online Shopping?- Pay Cash and Feel Secure with eBillMe

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:39:29 -0000

Two Ted Murphy's? That's illegal. : )

Re: Sponsored Post- Online Shopping?- Pay Cash and Feel Secure with eBillMe

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:35:27 -0000

@Paul - right. Not as much about eBillMe, but plenty about the conversation around the conversation. Eh? : )

Re: Get Your Google Profile Tidied Up

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:14:26 -0000

Here's what I think: data is micro. content is micro. we are all micronizing our info. Essentially, Google just gave us another way to open a switch, start a new conversation. Take every opportunity.

Re: Get Your Google Profile Tidied Up

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:39:10 -0000

Remember - it's not the profile. It's what you do with it NEXT. : )

Re: My Site Dressed in Thesis

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:58:40 -0000

@Tumblemoose - you know, that's a really great question. Does changing the theme really mix up the UI? Sometimes. Definitely. One really great but VERY custom theme is Mitch Joel's theme at Six Pixels of Separation. When you go to comment, it's a little different than you originally perceive.

I have to think about how one might transition. My first answer is just a simple blog post.

Re: Twitter Needs Two Channels

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:44:47 -0000

@Meryl333 - here's a rundown.

Example 1:

@Meryl333 - happy to help. (goes to commons.)

Example 2:

C Missing my cat while I'm away on vacation. (goes to commons).

Example 3:

P Please Retweet: Mumbai bombing. Share information by using #mumbaibombings as a hash tag. (goes to Platform)

------------

On the USING/VIEWING side, you can opt in to see everything, opt in to see only Commons, or opt in to see only Platform.

Make any more sense?

Basically, some people don't want to see every little tweet about eggs and butter and whatever.

Re: Twitter Needs Two Channels

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:56:39 -0000

Sean:

A. It's the other way around. I want to make my tweets more valuable to those who don't give a crap that I like Newman's Own Organic coffee from McDonalds. (I just keep laughing because I tweeted that the other day, and started a 200-reply thread).

B. Maybe, but that'd be messier and more characters.

C. Go to bed, handsome.

Re: Twitter Needs Two Channels

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:28:56 -0000

@Gab -

Commons - what I ate for dinner.
Platform - things of importance or value (insofar as a top 10 list rates, it'd be here).

Platform like a stage. Commons like the place where the masses gather.

Re: Twitter Needs Two Channels

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:52:32 -0000

@Leslie - it wouldn't take more work on the consumption side. You choose one option or the other and call it good. It wouldn't take more work on the creation side. You either choose to use the syntax or you don't.

Like all things beautiful in Twitter, it's opt-in.

Re: Twitter Needs Two Channels

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:53:10 -0000

@Dave - it's not so I can filter you. It's so I can filter me and keep you happy with what I do.

Re: Twitter Needs Two Channels

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:18:21 -0000

@ari - Interesting, but already a problem. There's no threading on Twitter now. My solution doesn't make that worse or better. It just adds to the confusion.

That said, you're not wrong.

Re: Twitter Needs Two Channels

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:33:03 -0000

@chas - no.

Re: Open Invitation For All of You

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 09:31:33 -0000

@Tsand - are you kidding, Todd? Parody videos RULE! I can't wait!

Re: How to Start Speaking at Events

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:13:52 -0000

@Ricardo - here's how I approach speaking proposals: I write them so compelling that the person HAS to contact me, even if they don't want to use me for the show. I'll write audacious claims, or I'll write something with such a sense of humor, that they have to call up and ask if I'm for real. Gimmicky? Hell yeah. But I always have the "real" proposal at the ready. : )

There's no magic formula. Write something YOU'D want to attend, and that helps.

Re: Open Invitation For All of You

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:50:45 -0000

@Tom Martin - that was really really cool. Thanks for the shout out. I'm visiting your blog now.

Re: How the Seasonal Blues Work

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:54:06 -0000

@Matthew Grant - I really think you're one of the most interesting guys I have met. 2008 wouldn't have been the same without you, minister.

Re: Advertising and Trust

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:36:13 -0000

@Warren - if you think Loren and I covered it the same way, I'm flummoxed. The "go spend money and write what you want about it" was the same. Everything else? Crap, I hope I had a different take.

Re: Advertising and Trust

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:41:34 -0000

@Ben - I'm not going to rehash everything, but I'm going to correct the one bullshit line in your comment: I wasn't paid to write a glowing post and I didn't write a glowing post. I wrote what I saw after I experienced it. If you look at my writing style over the last several years, you'll see that I don't really crap on many things in general. But glowing? No. Just my thoughts and impressions. They didn't buy my words; they bought me doing the project in the first place. Only. You're fair to point out your disagreements, but your word choice in your blog post and your tweets is ridiculously slanted, and I take offense to that. Meaning, I appreciate your criticisms, but not your dogma.

@Dirk - correction: this has nothing to do with PayPerPost. Izea has two or three big projects within the company: PayPerPost is the old project from a few years ago, and it still gives some bloggers a way to make money. It's a whole different system.

Social Spark is their new project, which doesn't connect to PayPerPost. Different technology, different approach, and a whole different user base (as far as I know. I'm just an advisor, not an employee).

What *I* did was something not related to either directly. It's some kind of 'premium' opportunity, where companies seek out bloggers with a platform large enough to justify spending a bit more.

EVERYBODY ELSE - I don't especially feel attacked. I feel misunderstood. So, I wrote a post to explain myself. I'm always open to learning, and forever willing to admit my mistakes, should I feel I've made some. In this case, I don't think there's anything I'd do differently. I don't regret the work. I'm happy that I know a little bit more about the mechanics of the net.

For the most negative of my critics, I ask you this: what are you doing on the balance of positive? If your contribution to this space is merely policing bloggers when you perceive a disturbance in the force, good luck with that. I'm over here doing what I'm doing, and you can throw stones whenever you'd like.

I'm willing to learn.

Re: Advertising and Trust

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:12:00 -0000

@Barbara - yeah, that part of the campaign was a bit rough. It was killing MY tweetdeck. Ping ping ping every time a retweet. Someone said it was like the crushing crowds of Black Friday for the Internet. I feel for everyone on that part.

Re: Advertising and Trust

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:12:10 -0000

@David - um, that's because you're in the "earned" media side of business. Of course you don't advocate that. That's why you're not a marketer.

I'm both. I'm special. : )

I'm a communicator. Fuck the word "marketing," the word "PR" (or the abbreviation), the word "reporter." I'm a communicator. I'm building connections and transmitting data. When the data is unduly influenced, I call it out.

Re: Advertising and Trust

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:07:03 -0000

Related to cursing, it's something everyone has an opinion about. I'm sure not everyone loves it. My mom sure doesn't.

Re: Advertising and Trust

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:00:03 -0000

@Mark has a great point. The past was 2 years ago. Are you still being held to your experience level 2 years ago? Because as far as I know, that cuts down the number of people in this conversation who were even IN the social media space back then. Great point, Mark.

Re: Your Donations Really Made a Difference

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:46:47 -0000

@Kathryn - what's your Twitter account? I'll make sure I follow you back.

Re: What the First $607 Bought You

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:18:22 -0000

@Elizabeth - I took $200 to a local indy bookstore and bought books for the older kids.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Business

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:29:35 -0000

@Mary - Imagine if people could "visit" you online in some way and share their appreciation of you from afar. Imagine if you invite them to send photos of where they normally get lunch, etc. Imagine the kinds of relationships that you can grow over the web in the space between their visits and when they come back. Nothing TOO heavy, but even just some kind of mutual space? A blog or a Ning site, maybe.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Business

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:53:21 -0000

Humanizing business is the point. I think we lost that along the way. We don't ALWAYS need it, but are there many opportunities to make it better? Yes.

Re: Cafe-Shaped Business

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:38:05 -0000

@Jeffrey Levy - drop me a line. I'd love to talk more about that challenge. - blog at chrisbrogan dot com.

Re: What's In a Name?

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:16:44 -0000

@Pascal - how did I ever get lucky enough to have you around? You're a treasure.

Re: Keep Acting Like YouTube is About SkateBoarding Dogs

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:57:35 -0000

To me, YouTube is a toolset. There can and will continue to be dancing monkeys and stuff. But that's not how YOU have to use it.

Re: 8 Marketing Bloggers to Watch in 2009

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:21:57 -0000

@judyrey - well thanks! I think it'd be a bit cheeky to put myself on a list that I wrote though, eh? Despite some people's opinion of me, I'm not exactly in the self-promoting business. I continue to be in the mindset that if I show you all the cool kids, I'll be the person at the elbow of that discovery. Be at enough elbows, and you're suddenly the go-to person. (That's my super secret trick to getting where I am).

Re: 8 Marketing Bloggers to Watch in 2009

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:40:29 -0000

@Danny - funny you mentioned Dave Fleet. Dave came to mind and always does when I think about you. There's something in common with you two, and I can't put my finger on it.

Re: Dear Facebook- Please Attempt to be Tasteful

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:11:51 -0000

Someone asked me the context. I was in my inbox talking to Mike Lowe from Footjoy about customized shoes. I'm not sure how shoes would make one think about cheating wives. Sure sign of cheating is that I'd buy shoes?

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:12:36 -0000

@Ankesh - most folks with a large twitter following got it by being helpful or reasonably interesting, not by worrying about it. I guess that's my point, not that the number is good or bad.

@Wendy - it's nice to hear thank you, but does it diminish the feeling if it's a robot? Maybe not. Your mileage may vary. : )

@Anybodyusingarobot- it's not that I'm right and you're wrong. It's just a perspective. Opinions are like assholes, as they say. : )

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:13:52 -0000

@Kathryn - my point with "new blog post" is that those are usually robot, and mine are always personalized and often as a question. : ) Twitter's great for blog traffic. Just try to use it like a human communicating.

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 01:33:01 -0000

@Lizz - I linked it in the post - here's the URL - http://www.chrisbrogan.com/when-not-to-sell-me-...

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 02:03:59 -0000

@Ankesh - if the only people I listened to were those who agreed with me, I'd be a sad, shriveled head. Your perspective was great, and I don't disagree with it. Glad you're here. : )

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:16:15 -0000

@quantumgood - if it's working for you, why change it? Makes sense to me. At least you're clever about it. Of the ~70 I got today, 0 were in the "clever" category.

Your mileage may very, people.

For me? No bots. Don't see them starting a conversation with me thus far.

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:19:10 -0000

@Kelly - the post and the majority of the comments give you a sense of the answer. If it's automatic, I don't care if it's a free ticket to Scarlett Johanson's dressing room (and it pains me to say that). I just don't want an automated direct message to be the payload of my first contact with you.

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:36:32 -0000

@Marc Eastman - I didn't need a robot to find followers. I remember every day where I came from. Know why I'm where I am? Because I take the time to respond as a human. I don't think it's about the robots. I think they came later as a tactic.

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:39:04 -0000

@EA - you're quite right, and anyone telling you how to do something is suspect. You know what blogs are? Opinions. Yep. They're lots of things, but technically, the defining piece of most blogs (and even this is an opinion) are opinions.

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:04:57 -0000

@shane - if a Roombah DMs me a link to their free ebook, I'm unfollowing. :)

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:44:56 -0000

@Ron - but a feed is a feed and you understand what you've signed on for. On twitter, the closest equivalent I can think of is an answering machine, only one of those messages that pretends it's really you. I'm not saying that automation in and of itself is bad, unless you found that missing paragraph. I'm saying that if you're joining a social network, then using robots to do your personal lifting might not really be advisable.

@Shama - you, I know, are probably being very human about it. Is everyone? Are MOST people? Of the 70 robots I got yesterday, one passed my own little Turing test. So maybe you're the exception to my rule? But in general, nothing for me, thanks.

To all - one recurring theme of people who like bots- I want to thank xyz for following me, because it seems rude to leave silence. So, that's like adding a number to your phone book, calling it, and then saying, "Thanks. The number works." It *kind of* makes sense, if you leave it there. But carry the analogy further? Does THAT make sense?

Re: 12 Things to Stop Doing in 2009

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:53:04 -0000

@Will - I got a half dozen graphic novels and several comics for the holidays, as well as some comic-themed movies. I'm all set to match you on that "to do" for 2009. : )

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:54:05 -0000

@Barb -- I quite agree about Twitter as business and personal. TOTALLY and utterly agree.

What I disagree with is the presumption that robots make that I'm your prospect. Make sense?

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:21:14 -0000

@ben - Perfect! You're absolutely right. You're using it for experimental comedy (or so it appears). Thanks. You're right, of course.

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:19:49 -0000

@Chef Patrick and anyone pictured in the graphic - I'm not trying to single you out. I just wanted to show that it wasn't an isolated thing. I'm getting around 35% robots to not at present. No offense meant towards you.

Regarding the 600+ , I feel you. Question might be: how much do you need to answer? How attentive does twitter (the entity) demand that you be?

At 28k, I'm surely missing the lion's share of flow, but if you browse my stream, you'll note that I talk back often.

Again, no foul towards anyone in the pictures, and the people aren't evil- the tool isn't pleasant. Big difference.

Re: Social Media is No Place for Robot Behavior

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:32:59 -0000

@scottmonty - that's hard. As your friend, I'm biased to say no. But when I think of that usage, it's not exactly bad or icky. It's helpful.

Might not bug folks, I'd suspect. Anyone?

Re: 27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:58:34 -0000

Google Friend Connect is the devil. They get the data. You get nothing.

Re: No Comment

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:46:47 -0000

I am overwhelmed by the thoughtful remarks you've all made. I'd love to comment on each, but I spent most of the day being a dad because I'm going on the road again in 4 days for a full week, so I knew it's be best to be a dad.

Thanks so very much for your thoughts, and also, thanks to those of you who went and visited the blogs of other commenters by clicking those people's names and following the links.

This is how community is done.

Re: Three Books to Spend Your Holiday Gift Cards On

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:06:38 -0000

@JCdeR - make sure you shoot me if you see me call myself any of those titles.

I think the interviews are good. You can make from them what you want. I think there were some great perspectives mixed in with some mercenary ones. Just the same, a good read.

And before you go throwing stones at everything, why not share your perspective and what you've contributed. I find the people who bitch the most are those who've done the least in the space.

Re: Three Books to Spend Your Holiday Gift Cards On

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:08:29 -0000

@Dan - Thomas Friedman's book changed my understanding of how business is executed and has repeatedly proven parts of itself out in front of me. I love it. The WHy We Buy is a classic. Maybe also check out Buyology, a newer book that circles some of the same turf.

Thanks for the ideas.

Re: Understanding Your Guests

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:20:30 -0000

@Erich - boy, I know that feeling from time to time. : )

@Julia - I think "blogger" is a strange term anyhow. It's a medium, not a career. We've just overlaid (or lazied) the "job" of blogger over the tech. I think bloggers are writers of a different kind.

@Monthiel - I've visited from time to time. Great to see your progression. :)

@Mark - Rohit who? Just kidding. He's a really great guy. I've bought his book three times.

@Diana - sometimes, we're just having fun and enjoying the moment, and don't get into the stats part. But then sometimes, we think more on that, and it's helpful too. I like to dabble in each.

@George - I might have to think about that a bit more. I should do that.

Re: Understanding Your Guests

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 12:04:56 -0000

You all give me every bit as much back as I give to you. There are at least 4 blog post ideas in the comments now. I'll get started on them tonight. Thanks.

Re: What Facebook Fan Pages Taught Me About Relationships

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:48:55 -0000

It's a really strange thing, because I've got "real" friends, and I've got friends that I've met on the web that I don't really know in person yet. I've got friends that I have met, but that I can't call and ask to move the couch. And I do have thousands of connections. It's not bragging. It's not complaining. It just is. That's the number. Thousands.

So this is like Dunbar's number. He said networks above 150 people are too difficult to manage. 150 was the upper limit. So, do I cull to 150? Do I cycle (which is kind of what I do now), or what?

I'm just musing out loud because I think this is a potential bellweather for more of us. I'm not unique. I'm just early.

Re: Cultivating a Writing Habit

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:41:58 -0000

@Jamie - quite true. You've just hit on my kryptonite. I don't proofread. And I'm a cruddy editor. Thank the sweet zombie that Julien and I will have a professional editor for the book. I couldn't edit if I tried. Well, not my own writing.

Re: Cultivating a Writing Habit

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:12:16 -0000

You guys are so much smarter than me. I'm glad you swing by and leave your thoughts. I get something from every single one of these interactions.

Re: Log Into Twitter And Change Your Password

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:40:12 -0000

Remember, it's not whether you clicked the link. It's whether you used a 3rd party app.

Re: Cultivating a Writing Habit

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:12:52 -0000

@Meg Roberts - thank you so very much for leaving a comment. I love when you share your thoughts.

@Everyone Else - I'm really grateful for your time and attention. It was a long post, but I'm glad that you got something out of it. It was a good post for me to write, personally. I'm grateful.

Re: My 50 Most Linked To Posts

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:27:15 -0000

@Mary - finger's better now. Thank you.

Re: You are the President of Your Career

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:05:27 -0000

@Jeff - it's a great question. I think you're right in your perspectives, and it's definitely a spot where I could add more about passion. Thanks for stopping by.

Re: You are the President of Your Career

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:24:50 -0000

@Anh - I know a few Vietnamese American twitter types. What's your twitter name? May I make an introduction?

Re: The Kinds of Products I Want to Touch in 2009

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:40:58 -0000

@Viral Marketer - I actually have a document that I provide that shows things people seem to care about with all the juicy numbers and stuff. You're right. People don't just hand out things willy nilly. Then again, I know lots of VERY influential people who have far less in numbers than me but far more in depth of influence. So, it's not always as easy as "how many eyeballs."

@Jennifer - nope. I'm happy with what I laid out. I don't think blogs are churches.

Re: The Optional World

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:53:22 -0000

If anyone ever thinks my posts are only about marketing, aieeee. : )

Some day, I'll share the Men's Health story.

Re: Differentiating Between Blogger Relations and Sponsored Content

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:57:04 -0000

Hi Perry-- it's a good point. Those types of experiences would likely dry up fast if I became known for crapping on the folks who provided me with products or services. That said, I wrote in my wrapping up Panasonic post that I didn't think the camcorder I used was all that great for videobloggers (a title I can occasionally claim for myself). I said it was a good, but not great rig. Not exactly a harsh raking, but definitely not what Panasonic wants to read about their product.

I agree with your point that a standalone blogger without a strong core policy in place for reviews and impartiality isn't as trusted as Consumer Reports or other organizations. It can't be. And for my part, I'm not a great reviewer because if I were, I'd have put it the products I tried out against other products.

Ah, but there's the thing: was I doing a review as much as I was reporting on the experience of using a product? And does the difference matter? I think so.

So, thanks for the conversation. I think you've led me to another point for a future blog post, and I value your opinions.

Re: Differentiating Between Blogger Relations and Sponsored Content

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:26:35 -0000

@Mister Rogue sir - ahhh, but are blogs one thing or another? Yes, there is a blogging "movement" that aligns very tightly with certain social expectations, but isn't a blog just publishing technology? If so, then paper is paper and a blog is a blog, and what one writes isn't dictated exactly by the medium as much as it is by one's goals and intentions.

I think the answer to the question of adapted principles is that it would become fairly clear fairly quickly that one's audience was not as important as the money, and that audience would summarily dwindle. My own audience has added 3000 daily readers via RSS since the sponsored posts of record, so in my case, it seems that people have accepted that I'll value their trust over any questionable material.

For instance, you'll note that there's no sponsor for January. That's because the opportunities presented to me weren't up to snuff with what we do here. I moved past.

My point isn't far off from your first sentence of the last paragraph where you say, "Whilst I fully understand the marketing potential for engagement with blogs, the success thereof depends entirely on how open the blog’s author is with their community." -- I wholeheartedly agree.

Re: Differentiating Between Blogger Relations and Sponsored Content

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:28:09 -0000

@Michael - great test. I try to pass that one. : )

Re: Wrapping up Panasonic

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:30:15 -0000

@CK - agreed. I don't want a retweet campaign.

Re: When Pirates Board a New Ship

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:34:49 -0000

The pirate photo relates to The Beauty of Pirate Ships and Privateers - Backing Your Pirate Ships. It relates to a business strategy I've been pitching since last fall that I've used to build my company.

There are more pictures in the set all taken by Brian Solis.

How is this in any way groundbreaking? Hmm, I didn't say that it was. Is it different than how most businesses act on a given day? Test it out for yourself. Ask a business to go out of its way to do something where there's no obvious value back to them for doing it. See what you get for a response.

I think that social web-friendly companies are doing things that more traditional companies are not, and that these have ripple effects in their culture.

Re: When Pirates Board a New Ship

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:35:31 -0000

@Deanna - I was traveling yesterday and slept today. Sorry I wasn't more prompt in my reply.

Re: Differentiating Between Blogger Relations and Sponsored Content

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:45:41 -0000

@Jackster - thanks for the enlightenment. I'm not a traditional anything. (Funny to write, but true.) I appreciate your perspective on that.

@Bill - that's exactly the reason I keep trying to figure it out. On one side, I have big companies asking me how to be relevant on the web, and on the other, I have bloggers wondering why Adsense isn't cutting it.

@Danny - true that. I'm not a gear blogger, nor is Scoble. That's the Engadget/Gizmodo crowd. But I am a consumer of media making products. You'll note the 3 that I reviewed are tools for blogging, photoblogging, and videoblogging. Me and a 108 inch TV? That wouldn't go well with my "we don't really watch TV at my house" stance. So a good point.

Thanks, all.

Re: Differentiating Between Blogger Relations and Sponsored Content

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:37:07 -0000

@Jeff Korhan - can you explain that a little better? I don't disagree, but I'm not sure to what I'm agreeing.

@Jennifer Jarratt - you said that the last time I wrote about this topic. What's your take on it all? You've indicated that when I talk about advertising-type content, you're nervous. How do YOU consume advertisements? I'd love your perspective.

@Shelli Johnson- and as I'm a noob at Yellowstone, that kind of content would be really useful, so maybe it's a matter of HOW or the circumstances of such advertorials.

@Chris Marsden - that's a really great question, the "Would I Pay for It?" I'm going to do something with that in follow-on posts. It's really powerful.

@Tony Farley - while I'd never want you to stay subscribed if you don't find the value, I'm hoping you'll understand that I use my blog and all the work I do as a lab for figuring out what comes next. I signal ahead of every post and I try to call back to the first post when something is part of a lab experience. You'll see links back to the first Panasonic post with that. Does that make sense?

@Ellen - thanks for that.

@BarbaraKB - that really makes sense, what you and Jason mention above with regards to the tweet stream. 140 characters isn't enough to disclose. I will take that perspective forward.

@John Eich - great point and thanks for filling in the other thoughts. I'm appreciating your thoughts and perspectives. Gives me yet another blog post to write, too.

Re: Differentiating Between Blogger Relations and Sponsored Content

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:30:24 -0000

@Brandon Carlos - so here's my take on what you said. I'm not being sent this stuff to critique it. I'm being sent this stuff to experience it and write about the experience. The difference is HUGE. I'm not a tech reviewer. I'm someone who uses tech. The differences are monumental, and that's what these companies are experimenting with.

Believe me, there are tons of people more qualified to judge which foods are quality and gourmet. I work with Justin Levy every day and he's better qualified than me.

But what these people want when they send something my way is that they want MY thoughts and how I experienced it. One reason is that I write rather well. Another reason is that I have an audience, and within that audience are people who might be interested in the products.

Why is Personal Chef to Go of interest to me? Because I'm busy. I fly all the time. My family is on the run. By having my food prepared and sent in a "just heat it up" method, I'm getting back some time that I can use different ways. Make sense? It's not because I'm a gourmet, but because I'm a user. Ditto the Panasonic.

Make sense?

Re: Differentiating Between Blogger Relations and Sponsored Content

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:41:15 -0000

@Jeff - thanks for the thoughts. I appreciate your circling back around to help. : )

Re: Life in the Labs

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:33:58 -0000

@PPureIndulgence - Only for you. I'll get working on that right away.

Re: Small Town Superheroes

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:12:33 -0000

@Sven - don't make me love you. Laughed at the "shiny comics days." Man, variant covers. You were brilliant! : )

Re: Take Charge of Your Career

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 09:17:57 -0000

@Sommer - super happy to hear from you, and thanks for coming to the comments. I'm glad that you're here, and happy to have you in the conversation.

Not sure if this book changes the world, but I loved that it leaned towards action.

Re: Things In My House No One Pays Me to Love

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 10:14:55 -0000

@Steve - I saw the presentation. I can't recall whether he had a Mac at the demo, but I saw the presentation before the device. And it was sweet.

@Dave - I'm not proud of how little I sleep, but I get about 5-6 hours a night at best. I can't really help it. My head just keeps moving and I often have to stay awake and do something. Some days, I figure my way there faster than others, and around conferences, I usually crash at the last or next-to-last day.

But rising early helps people do more stuff. Just seems like fewer folks get up early than stay up late so the time is actually better spent.

Re: Things In My House No One Pays Me to Love

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:43:51 -0000

@Derek - I'm thinking about a bag like that. Mine lets me pull a velcro strap and slide the laptop out lickity easy, but definitely am considering alternatives. Because hey, new bag!

Re: Be Realistic About Time

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:00:16 -0000

It's funny how people think this is about me. @Frank and @Usegraymatter - I'm the example above, yes, but I'm also just saying that this is a trend I'm noticing. Seems like we have a lot of people expressing the same feeling. If it was just me, that'd be another matter. I'm citing that we're asking the world to rev up.

Should we be? I don't know. But if we don't talk about it...

Re: If You Haven't Moved to WordPress 2.7 Yet

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:40:49 -0000

@Atlanta Wedding Photographer - yep. I have loved Pearson's designs all along, but with this theme, it's more than that. It's a lot of function and custom heavy lifting that go far beyond pretty. I became an affiliate for Thesis because I can't recommend the theme enough. I've talked to Pearson about what's coming next, and when that rolls out, I'll be CRAZY about it. But that'll have to wait.

@Susan - I quite agree. Saves my butt often.

Re: If You Haven't Moved to WordPress 2.7 Yet

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:55:37 -0000

@arthurficial - in my case, I support the creator. Technically, you can probably find every premium theme out there on a pirate site. But with everything being mostly free, and with the cost not being *very* high, why bother? Why not support the creator? Sure, a big faceless company is easier to consider that with, but not when it's one guy.

Re: Sony Talks Social Media

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:08:11 -0000

@tech mogo - even though the church eventually took in the Gutenberg press, the people already owned it. One doesn't crush the other. It can, but in this case, the genie is already out.

Re: A Crash Course in Comments

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:46:01 -0000

@Sudha - the only reason I didn't implement disqus is that I have several years of comments here. I don't want to risk losing the database. (If someone smarter than me can SWEAR that won't happen, I'll try. I've heard horror stories.)

@Bill - sorry about that. I do try to make these types of posts a bit "checklisty," so you can at least run through, give yourself a diagnostic checkup, and then run from there. Hey, you can always eschew every piece of advice above and be a lamer like PerezHilton.com . (Lamer like wayyyyyyyyy more traffic than me). : )

@Steve Hopkins - can you explain that a bit more. Might be because it's almost 3AM, but I missed it.

@Lots of you - editors are truly what a lot of us need. Even me. Especially me.

Thanks!

Re: A Crash Course in Comments

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:16:49 -0000

@Lori - I once had a blogger who's audience was gay Catholics ask me why people only emailed him comments. Some folks prefer the intimacy of email. It's a hard one to shake. I wonder if someone else has ideas for Lori on this one?

@javajive - I get 3-4x more readers in RSS than directly (which is flipped from most sites, I'm told), and yet I get a decent amount of comments. My advice from above is how I get them. Not sure if there's *more* that I'd recommend doing to try and pull people out of the RSS feed. I sure don't like partial feeds.

@Steve Nimmons - agreed, though only usually in the nerd crowd. Meaning, if you blog about fashion or yarn or whatever, prolly not. Agree?

Re: A Crash Course in Comments

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:17:11 -0000

@Bobby - aieeee... I'd better reply to you. Interesting perspective. So, you could apply all of that to here, I might imagine.

@Mary - that's a great feature, and I'm sure your community looks forward to it every week.

Re: My Advertising Alternative for Feb 1

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:45:47 -0000

Hey, I'm just musing. :)

@BarbaraKB - I think it's one way to find people who are writing about your space. Which would you recommend?

Re: Facial Recognition

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:54:06 -0000

Related:

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3435/3219641497_31a1ddd113_m.jpg" alt="two candidates">

What's this tell us related to Samir's post?

Photo credit Andrea Mann

Re: Video- Book Reviews for Friday

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 03:25:41 -0000

@Thomas - between you and Seth, maybe I'll take another read. To me, it just felt like a PART of a larger work, and not the entire thing. I don't disagree with your take on it being very good in the "can reproduce" department.

Please, by all means, always disagree. I'm not always right. : )

Shoot a video review. I'll post it.

Re: Video- Find Your Voice in Business

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:04:49 -0000

Susan isn't wrong. I mean, there are lots of ways one can offend one's crowd. You know, beards are bad, too.

But you're not wrong.

And yet.

Re: Video- Find Your Voice in Business

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:54:48 -0000

@Jon Glassett - that's a really swell analogy. I love it. Brilliant, actually!

Re: Video Review - The Power of Less

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:18:00 -0000

@Blair - orrrrrrrrrrrr, I'm hoping you make a video. : )

Re: Video Review - The Power of Less

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:49:34 -0000

@Trish - it's hard to please everyone, so if you're saying you're looking to remove me, have a blast. I follow 33,000 people and try to respond when they ask questions, and to what they're interested in. It's used differently by different folks. I can recommend another 30 people who you might prefer to me.

Re: You're Doing It Wrong

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:31:21 -0000

Oh, and your Twitter Avatar changes too much.

Re: You're Doing It Wrong

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:28:15 -0000

I should be really clear: I love critics. I love when people tell me that I'm wrong. I learn from every single interaction, positive or negative. None of the above is strictly about me. None of the above is strictly about you. Some of the above is satire. The thrust of the piece entirely revolves around how people think their way is the only way.

Make sense?

Re: BuzzGain Launches to Help You Understand Influence

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:30:40 -0000

@clevercelt - sure. Tell marketers and PR that. Tell them they don't need another way to learn where their customers are being talked about. I'll be over here working on listening solutions.

Re: If We Agree Advertising is Broken

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:07:55 -0000

@Lisa - I'd think of that as advertising to match the content. The other way might be to write content that matches an advertiser's needs. For instance, if American Express wants to show off their leadership and business intellect, they work with Federated Media to build OPEN.

Re: 57 Internet Possibilities to Investigate

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:43:53 -0000

@Robin - yeah, I was dumb. @tomatfancast and @fancast on Twitter already fixed me, so I edited that part. (D'oh).

Re: If We Agree Advertising is Broken

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:19:00 -0000

The point of writing this post was to spark a conversation that I wasn't seeing. It turns out I got exactly what I wanted, because you've come and supplied some really great answers and thoughts to the conversation.

I will never claim to be the authority on advertising. I'm not really the authority on much except typing. I can type pretty fast. But that said, I'm a ceaseless tinkerer.

Some look at discourse on blogs as an opportunity to tear down flaws in a scholarly work. That's not this blog. I'm never suggesting that I have the answers, but rather, that I've got thoughts and ideas that could use some new holes in them.

This is a great discussion and I'm grateful for your thoughts.

@Rufus - sloppy writing matters. A habit of it wouldn't do. Would you say the body of my work is sloppy?

Re: If We Agree Advertising is Broken

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:45:17 -0000

@Rufus - if you volunteer, you can edit allllll you want. : )

Re: 57 Internet Possibilities to Investigate

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:09:30 -0000

The thing about a list like this is I just picked some out of the air based on my own reasons for liking them or using them. YOU get to make the difference by talking about your stuff. Look at Ben from Overlay.tv . He's got a great product, and it's worth your time. By the way, I could write "57 Video Services to Check out." I could write "57 tools for bloggers." I could write "590 blogs not to miss." (if I scraped my Rockstars page.

But that's why there are comments, and why you could start your own blog post with the "41 Things Brogan Missed" with a link so we know it's there. : )

Re: 57 Internet Possibilities to Investigate

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:19:00 -0000

@David Miller - not me. Anyone else?

Re: Define a Social Media System for Yourself

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:37:48 -0000

@John - exactly so. That really opened my head up differently.

Re: Define a Social Media System for Yourself

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:41:54 -0000

@Napoleon - great question. 4 columns in Tweetdeck : stream, @, search, and DM.

14 or so tabs in Firefox, but down to 5 when I clean up my reading.

@Business Podcast Co Host with No Name But Hey - What's most important to growing business is connecting with people. So, I have to try and balance that.

Re: How You Might View Bloggers

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:09:41 -0000

@Susan - I found it in spam, so now we have two. But to the good, I also fixed the URL now that you've corrected me. Google told me otherwise. : )

Re: Very Sneaky-Clever Warner

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:50:21 -0000

For the record, I think it's super clever. It's what we all want, isn't it? We want people to advertise to us the things we might actually want. That mail was rife with links that I wanted to click. I went to the Apple store and I did look around. It was exactly what it should be.

@Tim Street - hmmm. I guess you're right. Inside the code, by the way, on the side you can't see, there's also the "Big Ass Save Button." Mebbe I'll shift that language a bit, once I find it.

Re: A Crash Course in Comments

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:53:45 -0000

@Chuck - super great point of view, and I see where you're coming from. Those kinds of comments kind of look like clutter in a rich comment stream that often has some gems. That makes sense.

On the other hand, it's like a little piece of digital graffiti (albeit with links) that shows others who's come by. You see your own name, the names of your colleagues, and it sparks a kind of "we all hang out here" kind of thing.

I think this is important. What do you think?

Re: The Goal is the Interaction

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:57:18 -0000

One trick, to me, is figuring out how to keep conversations spreading. I feel like we do a great job talking here on the blog. How do we migrate these off to other places? How do we encourage linking and interactions between blogs? How do we shift medium from text to video and back again? Things like that.

That's my next challenge.

Re: Serving Suggestions

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:33:02 -0000

@Deidre - you know, I'd forgotten that he said that. How interesting. I'm thinking we're on to something here.

Re: Fix the Paper Hole

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:07:58 -0000

Well then, if nothing else, you all might have solved several other people's annoyance with my delays. : )

Re: Google Latitude is a Marker to Consider

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:21:31 -0000

@Alexander - 5 things you could do with this right now:

* Sales team uses this to show positions at a larger event like CES in Las Vegas.
* Nonprofit builds a map of elderly people who opt in for friendly companion visits.
* Library uses it to annotate historical markers out in the public space.
* Runners use it to mark favorite paths or trailheads.
* Fundraisers or politicians use it to map out a campaign trail.

I could keep listing these, but it's 2:23AM and it's your turn to stretch your head.

Re: Google Latitude is a Marker to Consider

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:22:28 -0000

One more thing: not everyone's a futurist, and that's okay. I make my money by figuring out the jump move instead of the obvious here and now.

Re: The Rise of Microfame

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:15:54 -0000

There's no way I can comment back on all the great and thoughtful things you've all said individually, but you've taught me a few things.

1.) Some people are really edgy discussing fame or popularity or celebrity or whatever these things mean. There were a few folks who thought I was attempting to simply namedrop or toot my own horn. If you've yet to meet me, I can see why you might have thought that. Once you meet me, you'll see that I'm a bit different than that.

2.) Lots of you said this is "big fish, small pond" with a new name. Yes and no. The small pond now has amplifiers, and it's now a cloud community (a name I stole from Ripple6).

3.) For those of you who asked whether I valued microfame for myself, I thought that my end piece in the article would point to the thought that fame isn't my goal. My goal is more interactions and more value exchange. There's nothing about Brad Pitt's lifestyle (why do we always say Brad Pitt? Isn't that weird?) that I want. (Well, you know, besides the obvious.)

4.) I liked Owen Marcus's comment: Fame takes work to maintain. Trust builds on itself.

What do you think?

Re: My Advice to Publishers at the OReilly Conference

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:00:59 -0000

@Ken - oh, hard to say. We do PodCamps in quite different visual configurations, but when I ran my New Marketing Summit, it was all lined up neatly.

Re: Cafe Shaped Business - The Roger Smith Hotel

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:04:18 -0000

@Joe - it was a Flip Mino. I love mine. It's my second Flip camera. Will use them always.

Re: Cafe Shaped Business - The Roger Smith Hotel

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:12:09 -0000

Hi David--

C.C. Chapman booked the very next day, so they got a sale they weren't going to get. Further, judging by the comments and those in Twitter, they'll get more sales the next time someone comes through.

Cutting a rate is typical in hotels for bloggers or otherwise. Not sure you're following the dynamics, but the hotel business is choking right now. Not enough people are traveling, and they're not staying as long when they do.

The benefit that Roger Smith gains from targeting bloggers and media makers specifically was played out right here on my blog by what I did next: I talked about it. Further, I showed you a video so you could make your own decisions.

The point, David, is that should someone who read this post be booking something in New York City in the coming months, they'll at least consider the Roger Smith. Do you think with hundreds of options that it's a small feat? Not me.

So, we might beg to differ, but I see this as a great marketing move.

Re: The Tricky Path of Brand Relationships

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:03:52 -0000

I'm thinking that we don't get the word out and sales don't happen if we don't advertise. If people don't know about your product, they don't know to buy it.

Re: The Tricky Path of Brand Relationships

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:54:52 -0000

@Joe - I haven't, but it sounds lovely.

Re: It's All About You

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:20:28 -0000

@Adam - I think Randy's Last Lecture is required viewing, isn't it?

@Trevor - that's the magic trick. If you spend a half hour listening to someone else talk about themselves, and you really move them to talk more, they walk away thinking you're really smart and interesting. : )

@Nik_Nik - don't make me bring up just why I know you have character. : ) You've got a point about proving one's self. I have to think about that. I still think there are ways without making it a mememememe thing.

@Ted - I think you've got a point. It's hard to figure out that right balance.

As always, you've all given me much to think about, and I'm glad you spend time with me. : )

Re: It's All About You

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:43:36 -0000

@geo - I'm all for putting pics of my kids on the web. I have yet to have a stalker issue, so maybe my take would change, but so far, I don't feel too weird about it.

Tonsils are intact. They stopped that surgery around the 1980s, except for emergencies.

@Kathy - thanks for swinging by and for the kind words. As I said briefly in Twitter, about 80% of the time, I'm just channeling YOU.

Re: It's All About You

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:45:46 -0000

@Energy Hoarder - I have to. That's my title. I could say "chief typist," but it would get confusing.

Re: It's All About You

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:49:21 -0000

So what I'm seeing, complete with a few echoes, is that some folks are shy and that's why they default to "I" type conversations. Can another shy person or two validate that?

Re: Boarding Party

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:34:43 -0000

@Carol and Deb -

There will be plenty more female speakers. They just haven't confirmed yet. Five more are in the queue as we speak, but have to consult their travel.

My record for females is trending between 40-60%. Will hit it for sure.

Re: Give Each Blog Post a Pretty Face With Flickr

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:07:30 -0000

Thanks, gang. I'm glad it worked for you. : )

Re: Give Each Blog Post a Pretty Face With Flickr

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:14:12 -0000

@Joe - I don't know what to tell you. There's still a market for pro photographers, and I think that quality deserves payment. For my blog posts? I am just as happy using the stuff people put up for free just to share. To me, they're two different things.

@LadyExpat - those are good things to wish for, but then that's something with the way Creative Commons lays it out, too. There's not really an "ask first" license at current (that I'm aware of). There's a non-commercial setting in Creative Commons, so that one can be met. But the other is trickier.

Re: 10 Things You Could Do Better Today

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 10:06:50 -0000

The adds people have made are all great. It'd be fun to see people do their own 10 lists. : )

Re: Content Marketing Upshifts- Behind the JPG Purchase

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:22:18 -0000

@Marc - but Threadless isn't a media company. That's not at all what the article points to. Instead, I'm saying that Gap would buy a blog or videoblog featuring content of interest to the fashion folks.

@Mike - That's interesting. I think that's a risk, too. Having it be all about one product might not work if there's a single product. But Adorama is a retailer of multiple products. Would that make it different?

Re: How Facebook Connect Points the Way Towards Velvet Rope Networks

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:29:49 -0000

@BarbaraKB - no, in this case, it's all about data collection. Google and Facebook don't want to love you. They want to sell you. They're both ad farms.

WE create community. They mine it for details. Parasitic symbiotes.

Re: Content Marketing Upshifts- Behind the JPG Purchase

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:32:07 -0000

@Sarah - I know about custom, but I'm thinking this is different. To me, the custom publishing didn't really have much soul. It was there to serve marketers, but it wasn't really there for the audience. (That's my really jaded POV.)

I think this is bigger. I think it starts with the audience and finds the sponsor, as opposed to the other model. Mileage may vary.

Re: Content Marketing Upshifts- Behind the JPG Purchase

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:26:35 -0000

@Megan - I love your site. What's missing is more information about who "we" are in the About section. It's not transparent enough.

I love your point about tutorials.

Re: One Way to Move Content Around

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:03:03 -0000

@Maya - I agree totally. There's a HUGE difference between hired guns and passionate niche players. I think the results would diverge drastically.

I'm certainly interested in knowing how folks fare with something like Triond. For me? When I'm ready to launch my projects, I'm going to search via Twitter. What else? : )

Re: The Righteous Web

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:31:38 -0000

Just to be clear, Marshall reported his article in a reasonably fair way, and MARSHALL is one of the purest minds I know.

That said, having the question raised by RWW is a bit different, as it has sponsored posts *and* heaps of advertising.

What Marshall says is right: he's approaching it as a journalist who relies on the advertising to get paid and I'm a marketer who blogs.

Re: The Righteous Web

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:13:42 -0000

@Jeremiah - beers, yes. Tapas, no. ; )

Re: The Righteous Web

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:40:36 -0000

I have the most thoughtful, intelligent, motivated group of people here in the comments than any blog in the world. I'm grateful for your attention and your ideas. These conversations shape my thoughts and opinions, and hearing your perspective helps me grow.

Thank you.

Re: One Way to Move Content Around

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:58:06 -0000

It's a great question, Rusty. I think it's a worthwhile question, but not one I'm equipped to answer. That's more a @stevegarfield or a @danielaschorr, etc. Important as all hell.

Re: How Facebook Connect Points the Way Towards Velvet Rope Networks

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:59:53 -0000

@Barbara - not necessarily all of us, but for the people who provide the tools? Definitely. Most definitely. For me as a marketer, it depends on the setting. Sometimes I need all the data. Other times, I don't and just want the conversation. But for Google and Facebook? It's ALL about the data. Feeling otherwise is rosy glasses all around.

Re: Moving Needles

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:38:27 -0000

@Bob - how do voices track back to sales? If we accept that the primary goal of business is creating more quality customers (or getting your existing ones to spend more), how would that track?

Not smacking on your answer, but framing the question better.

Re: Social Media Decision Tree

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:33:29 -0000

@Rick has it just right - tools are tools. It's all about putting them in the right order, with the right meaning-making, with the right goals, and the right way to reach those goals. Yep.

Re: Social Media as a Softening Agent

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:38:57 -0000

I think it works great for B2B brands, too. I'd much rather buy an EMC box to run my company's database, if I know the folks can be reached easily via social channels.

Re: Sending the Wrong Message

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:11:41 -0000

@UJ - nope, maybe I'm just saying that their ad is mis-aimed, because you've just stated all the benefits as they'd line up with people who buy gas station coffee versus what they printed on the sign.

You just made my point.

Re: Sending the Wrong Message

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:22:45 -0000

@Andy - exactly !

Re: Sending the Wrong Message

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:10:48 -0000

It's funny. In my small town, we have two coffee shops plus a Dunkin Donuts. The two shops require lots of extra waiting. One of them has probably the worst service I've ever experienced. That's the one that people line up out the door to attend. The people there are inefficient; they don't remember you, even if you've been there every day for 4 months; they don't do anything to differentiate you from anyone else. And yet, they have the huge line.

My Dunkin's? They do okay, but never mobbed.

Re: 27 Things To Do Before a Conference

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:00:53 -0000

@Heather - in the web-related conference space, go to http://www.somewhatfrank.com

Re: The Beauty in Simple Stories

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:58:10 -0000

@Garry - I'm so glad you came by. I think your storytelling was what drew me to the piece in the first place. The picture alone was nice, but the story mattered.

I'm glad you came by. I had no doubt that you weren't gay. I'm often distracted in such ways.

Re: Review - PlaneQuiet Headphones

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:52:25 -0000

Funny that none of the marketing / advertising says it easily. None of the materials in any ad says, "These reduce not cancel" or whatever. Because, if they did, would we stop and wonder if it was worth it?

I think they are. But it's something to think about.

Re: The Power of Apology

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:58:03 -0000

@Skip - as the post above has no mention of the event or the links specifically, I'd say it's more A than B.

Re: What Should Corporations Do With Their Blogs

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:04:56 -0000

@Kipp - you're a great guy for sitting through it all and managing to have the best possible video out there of it.

Yet another way that you're completely awesome.

Re: Watching Clarence Own It

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:06:58 -0000

@niraj - wow, you caught me. Clarence pays me $25000 a week to promote him (or not).

Maybe you and I have a different taste in entertainment. I really like his storytelling. It feels real and comes from a really interesting voice. But then, I hang out with him from time to time, so maybe it's just the novelty of seeing his stories told on stage instead of in person.

If he has pictures of me in weird positions, I expect we'll all see them shortly.

Re: While Others Paint the Trim

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:39:45 -0000

@Steve - I think you read my post wrong. I think it's tools period. HOW we use it is up to us. Marketing works great in social media. If I felt otherwise, I'd be putting myself out of a job.

Re: Pirate Moves- From Awareness to Extended Action

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:45:46 -0000

Some really great comments back, and I want to address them, but have a lot on my plate this morning. Let me take a quick swipe at a few.

This post mostly laid out an execution channel. Yes, content is really important. I can and probably should write another Pirate Moves post about content and the value of content, and why it matters, and how to delete about 80% of the crap on your site.

Yes, this gets more complex when you stretch this across multiple brands, but not exactly. You can look at one to make the other make sense, if you follow my meaning. Extrapolation isn't "just double it;" it's "take the parts that need scale and set them in motion. I'm doing this with Citrix's GoTo_____ brands, for instance. I intend to do it with a number of Pepsico brands.

@William - trial is definitely a good piece of the sale. I'd say that's tucked into execution in my model. You can break it out, but I didn't see the social components, except to say, "Make sure you talk to them during their trial."

@Thomas - fish where the fish are. That's what I say. And no, don't go all over the place. Try to build a home base, some outposts that point to the homebase, and some passports that reference the home base. (Search my blog for outposts).

Re: What I Learned at Oakley

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:56:16 -0000

@Jason - I felt the same way. I've only owned $10 sunglasses my whole life. Watching the shatter testing in their labs changed my mind forever.

Re: Pirate Moves- Equip Your Ship

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:09:33 -0000

@Matts - okay, the next post will be about listening, then. You already read Grow Bigger Ears, right?

Re: Product Placement in Marvel Comics

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:04:08 -0000

@Khan - you sound like me when I talk back to people about D&D and Heavy Metal, back in the day.

Re: Product Placement in Marvel Comics

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:12:05 -0000

Oh, believe me, I'm not upset with placement, provided it stays within editorial boundaries. I think it's swell. Make zero ads, and all in-content placement, and I'd be thrilled. In fact, make a page near the very back with a list of URLs calling out the products served in each panel. That'd be lots of value, wouldn't you say?

Re: Dust of 100 Dogs and More - Video Review

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:06:38 -0000

That's a castle. The dollhouse is off over the other shoulder.

Re: Dust of 100 Dogs and More - Video Review

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:14:04 -0000

@Freddy - I read a lot on planes. As I travel almost weekly at this point, sometimes twice in the same week, I get LOTS of time to finish books. This past week, I didn't fly anywhere, and I am accordingly lagged in my reading.

I write all the time, but reading fuels that writing.

Re: Look for the Signs- They are Everywhere

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:14:57 -0000

@Alisa - touche, and yet not. I think the compensation for content puzzle has yet to be adequately solved. I know that the old model doesn't work. Period. You can't support a stable of reporters on ad revenues any longer. What I *think* comes next is content marketing to go along with the journalism. Daily Candy, things like that.

But I still stand that AH has moved the needle in journalism than most organizations interested in its continuation. Maybe just not on a "figuring out how to pay YOU" way. Yet.

It's funny: if you talk innovation with the bulk of reporters, you hear all the negatives. Give a bunch of entrepreneurs the challenge, and they see opportunities. There's obviously a disconnect. I'm thinking about Guy Kawasaki's speech about ice. (Won't explain here.)

Re: GM Gets Out of Neutral and Gets Confident

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:07:05 -0000

@Greg - There are tons of things I don't like about GM. I think they have too many products. But then again, I think this next 60 days is all about divesting of the products and lines that don't make as much sense any more. Things changed, and whether or not GM didn't get off the line fast enough is behind us. What happens now is that the auto industry has to adjust to the new reality and fast. In my piece tomorrow morning, I'll tell you my first take on CEO Fritz Henderson.

@Adam- doing spoil fun with facts. : )

@Joe - I currently have the 2006 Saturn VUE.

@Sean - thanks for your thoughts. I've gotta tell you. Steve Harris, VP of Global Communications, is a really smart guy. Fritz Henderson is a really determined and smart guy. Christopher Barger? Well, he's a great guy, so what can I say?

Re: GM Gets Out of Neutral and Gets Confident

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:14:56 -0000

@Greg - I bought a Geo Tracker the first year they came out. I *loved* that car. It was also my first major car accident. I crossed in front of a lawyer in a Volvo. His car EXPLODED pretty much. Every piece splayed out like an engineering drawing. Mine was crushed, but my friend and I both came out just fine (albeit shaken). I loved that little guy. : )

Re: GM Gets Out of Neutral and Gets Confident

Chris Brogan... — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:48:09 -0000

@David - I think lots of the lame cars go. They'll keep the best-of, and figure out ways to migrate some of them into a tighter package. Bankruptcy? Possible.

And so far, the lion's share of GM's social media seems to be on the PR/Comms side. If I had my way, there'd be a big wall crumble in there, so that marketing and comms would reunite. That might take a while.

Re: GM Brings Confidence Forward

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:26:51 -0000

@Kristiana - I think that's a VERY astute catch. I'm not sure. But let me say that probably what happens most in advertising (and this is kind of out of my butt, so discount it accordingly) is that we tend to own our weaknesses by naming our success, even if it happens ahead of the actual transformation. Does that make sense?

Re: Gear Head Brogan and GM Cars

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:41:44 -0000

@Mom - no green cars on this trip, but then, I didn't ask. I'm all for saving the planet, but I went there to move!

Re: How Not to Learn

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:01:53 -0000

@Luigi - you proved my point doubly with your comment. Good luck with that.

Re: Make Media Work for You- Elements of Good Online Content

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:36:18 -0000

Great to read everyone's perspectives. I'm sorry I've been slow to respond. I'm in a completely different time zone. It's 6AM here, and you guys have already had hours to digest the post and think about it.

I'm still reading all the comments, just hours after the fact. Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Re: Make Media Work for You- Elements of Good Online Content

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:31:23 -0000

@Deidre - I love collaborative efforts. I agree. Great point.

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Tourism

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:29:08 -0000

@Anne - I might recommend the folks at WeFixWP.com. They're really helpful.

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Tourism

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:45:51 -0000

It's interesting to consider how many ways tourism groups could use new media tools to augment the experience. Imagine using Flip video tours, or giving out the list of best local bands to consider, or grouping tour information around verticals like "A Skateboarder's Guide to Paris." : )

Audio podcasts of info would always be useful, too, eh?

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Tourism

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:21:20 -0000

@Laura - Took me a while to know what a CVB site meant. : ) Beware of jargon. : )

Re: If You Intend To Blog Seriously

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:37:59 -0000

Are you thinking of BackType.com ? That's a great service.

Re: The Real Meat of the Question

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:54:01 -0000

@Mel Webster - you and I agree on the Skittles perspective. I don't rate that effort a success. This, however, I'm not so sure. I'm not sure it will motivate me to buy a car if I'm not looking for a car, but if I am looking, will it motivate me to choose Ford over some other brand? That's the question, I think.

Further, would social media be any more or less effective than traditional car sales efforts? What makes this better or worse than a 30 second spot on TV?

Re: Pay Close Attention- Oracle to Buy Sun

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:45:52 -0000

@Nicholas - I don't disagree that this is about the platform. It's the unintended consequences of the deal that scare me.

Re: I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:59:23 -0000

I love making money. : )

@Jeff /Zemote - don't forget that Calacanis had a competing product in the ring at that time.

@Tyler - I get that, and actually, I've experienced it. Recently, I wrote a three-post collection about GM, the company that I've paid to supply me with cars my entire life. People asked immediately if it was a paid post, and that I'd best disclose it, etc. Thing was, I didn't get paid to write it, and that's when I had my first really big taste of "God, do I have to disclose that there's nothing to disclose?" And the answer feels like yes.

PR Professionals have to do this. I've seen @Tdefren say, "They're not my client, but I really like _____." I just didn't realize I'd have to start doing that, given that my About page discloses all my business relationships.

Oh well. I'm okay with that.

Re: I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:25:42 -0000

@Jenifer - Ted's got this long standing photo thing with the tongue. Though I've matched Ted before on the tongue thing, I can't throw stones, as I've been known to make the occasional face.

Re: I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:48:08 -0000

@ryancmiller - yes, in a subsequent post. Not exactly germane to this (though it certainly relates).

Re: I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:22:53 -0000

@Joe - it's a great question, eh? Did Amex Open pay for that site? They sure did. Does that mean they sponsored it? I'd say yes.

It just sounds different when we say the word "sponsored," doesn't it?

Re: I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:16:10 -0000

@Marty - and rest assured that if ever there's an ad on my site or if money changes hands, or if something might queer the deal in some way, it will be very clearly spelled out on my About page. : )

Re: I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:17:45 -0000

@Alex - great question. Seems that my brand hasn't suffered all that much. I'm still growing my community, still being asked to speak at events, still being asked for my opinion, and still being received politely.

Let me ask you outright: do you trust me? If not, why still read my stuff? Why not go on and find one of several dozen other people writing similar material?

How am I perceived by my community? I'm guessing from my anecdotal evidence that I'm doing okay. Does that answer your question ?

Re: The Real Meat of the Question

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:19:01 -0000

Ford and the other car companies still need to advertise. Downturn or not, the businesses still have to function normally.

Re: The Undiscovered Country of Presence Management

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:19:44 -0000

So is Twitter a place to announce press releases and promos? I'd say that's not exactly how it's being used, nor would I want to read someone's stream that's just a bunch of press releases.

Re: I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:37:03 -0000

@Ben - I love talking with you about this as it hones my thinking like none other. You're clearly passionate and have lots to say on the topic.

1.) Great point. Disclosure isn't enough. There should be the sense that something is perceived to be fair, just, useful, of value to my blogging community. I believe that content marketing is acceptable in principle. Thus, I'm not necessarily disclosing a hooker, but definitely telling the wife I'm going out with the guys for a few beers.

2.) I disagree. MOST blogs are written as opinion. A blog is software, and perhaps loosely, a movement around the notions put forth by the Cluetrain Manifesto. But I think a blog like Digital Nomads isn't a site about opinions. I don't think TechCrunch considers itself an opinion site 100%. I know the Huffington Post would have you believe they're a news outlet.

3.) Hmm. As I disagreed with 2, I don't know what to say here. Let's look at an example of a paid post. Nikon sent me a D60 camera to try out. I wasn't obligated to write about it. I didn't have to do anything, except either give it back or pay for it when the time came that the trial was up. If I were to write up my thoughts on the camera, I'd have started by disclosing the relationship. In fact, it's mentioned on my about page. I wasn't paid to have an opinion. I was given the opportunity to share my experiences about something.

The follow-on criticism is that if something is given to me that I'll likely be positive about it. I understand this criticism.

4.) Again, I see your criticism here. But you're pointing to one kind of post type: reviews. What if it's just an experience? What if it's something different, like Amex paying for posts about small business that have absolutely nothing to do with their card? Is it REVIEWS that bug you, or just the idea of money changing hands with regards to typing? Because B seems fishy. A, I can buy.

5.) In certain industries, this is strictly adhered to, but in others, not so much. Just a point. Oh, the appearance of impropriety. I imagine that my free experiences with GM are improper? Is it bad that they let me play with their cars, given I ended up writing about (and shooting video about) them? In that case, everything was free. It was just plain fun. But is it improper? (Seriously, asking. This isn't a challenge.)

6.) We agree there. I just continue to disagree that writing for pay makes me less credible, provided it's clear when I'm writing for pay. I seem to know lots of paid writers, and the only ones who get this little curly hair stuck in their mouth are journalists. I am not am not am not am not a journalist. Will never be. Will never pretend to be. Oh, unless the press pass gets me in somewhere cool.

I love these conversations, Ben.

@Tim - In NO part of my post do I liken sponsored content to advertorials. I think advertorials are usually pretty lame. They're marketing material. I'm not a staff journalist. I'm not a journalist at all. I write. I continue to think sponsored posts aren't cut from the same cloth as advertorials, which are required to be written from the marketing perspective.

Though Ben's right that sponsored posts boost the chance that someone will write nicely about them, I still see the value of a non-advertorial piece. See, for instance, my take on eBillMe. It was a sponsored post and I still came out and said they needed to improve the service.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Re: I Support the Future of Sponsored Posts

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:17:42 -0000

@Brandon - and that's a great point you make. I think that if a blogger - let's use me as an example - started writing about any old thing that came along because it paid, I think the audience would vanish. If you see me reviewing MLM schemes, I expect you to all stampede to the door.

So credibility plus relevance, yes?

For instance, I was invited to be part of the Fiesta movement. Thing is, I'm not the right target. I'm a dad with two kids. The car might be the most amazing thing since sliced bread, but it wouldn't fit my kids. So, I passed. I pass on opportunities every day because they don't fit my community.

Make sense?

Re: Casting Your Net and the Beauty of Fish

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:27:53 -0000

@Mary - you raise a good point. It's not a white-collar only thing, but the adoption is certainly on a curve. That's just trends and observation. Local restaurants, say, use the web products like Yelp and blogs to improve their online presence.

But if the buyers aren't exactly there yet, I wouldn't make it a big part of the mix.

Re: Productivity Tips from Merlin Mann

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 22:55:55 -0000

Here are several:

I was talking to Andrew Baron and he did a full on email reboot fairly recently. He sent out a mass email saying to people: if you and I had open business, I'm considering it closed as of this email. Please re-submit if you want to continue working on whatever it was with me. That seemed like a nice re-set option.

Then, for going forward, shift from email to a blog. Start a blog that's a communication blog, not a reporting blog like this one. Make it private, if you have to, and throw the top 50 people you want to have knowledge of you and your goings on onto the blog.

It becomes easier to manage, and there are just comments to manage, etc. It's a faster turnaround time.

Start asking people to phrase their emails to you in the "yes or no" response method. So... they might say, "I'm thinking of buying a Zune. Good idea?" You say, "yes."

Use whatever the PC equivalent is to iClip, and start using a few standard responses for certain repeat emails. The start of these replies can read: "you're really important, and I really do want to know more about this, but at my current email levels, I can't get too deep into it. Why not send me a podcast instead?"

Teach people (subtly) how to email you. If you like brief, reply brief. If you ask for something, ask for it in the format you like it.

An intern or a personal assistant is a useful thing. Virtual personal assistants are cheap. Check out someone like Sarah Deutsch (www.pinkleberry.com).

Good luck, from a Lifehack.org writer.

--Chris Brogan...
coFounder of PodCamp.

Re: Things on my mind…

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 09:42:03 -0000

Robert- much support to this premise. A blog is a tool. The conversation is what matters. I know you know this more than most, and that you understand that the Internet isn't the only platform. Not that you're leaving, but that you see it as one simple small box on the path to everything else you're doing.

Have fun storming the castle!

Re: Yelp events compared to Upcoming; Incoming “bacn”

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:39:20 -0000

Yessir, bacn started at PodCamp Pittsburgh2 with Andy Quayle, Jesse Hambley and Tommy Vallier, Val Head, and Jason Head. It just kinda makes sense.

I use Upcoming. I just like that I've got the widget on my website and in my Facebook, and I watch YOURS to figure out where to go (or where I might want to go). San Fran makes it a mess, because you guys have 3,414,997 things to attend every week. But I still see some neat stuff that way.

Re: Google getting into Facebook territory?

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 08:43:31 -0000

Besides, I thought Orkut had been co-opted by Brazil. I mean, if that's not accurate, that's the way it's told in the hallways, and so that's the perception most folks have.

Until this post, I doubt I've heard ANYONE say Orkut and not say Brazil. It's practically a case study.

But hey, as these features bleed out into other places, as all the other apps briefly go clean white with a little blue highlight here and there, I can see a lot more Facebook comparisons.

Meanwhile, I hope the 'Book builds on their momentum, opens up RSS to lots more spots, and moves to a modular sharing scheme.

Re: Thanks so much for all the kind words…

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 07:39:11 -0000

Congratulations to you all, and enjoy the lack of sleep (oy). Have wonderful times, and lots of healing and organic stuff. Glad for you all.

Re: Utterz: like Twitter but with audio/video

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:24:01 -0000

I'm already dialed in. I'm going to do some audio moblogging from TC40 to check it out.

Re: Do I read all Twitters?

Chris Brogan... — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:17:07 -0000

I guess I dont have to write this blog post. You've got it covered. Great to read it the way I see it. And besides, you reminded me to check out the Track feature. I forgot about it.

Re: NewTeeVee Conference lacking substance?

Chris Brogan... — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:05:28 -0000

Wow. I promise my next video event will take all this into consideration. Next one, really. Hey look! A Kyte.tv!

Re: The secret to Twitter

Chris Brogan... — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:04:47 -0000

Can you believe it's been a year since we recorded that video about "what is Twitter" in San Jose? Crazy how it's still evolving and our experience with it is changing.

What will a year bring?

Re: Era of blogger’s control is over

Chris Brogan... — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:12:27 -0000

I'm not a fan of "scrape and make money off my stuff," but if the larger question is, "take my stuff all over the place and talk about it, instead of just on my blog," that's okay. Except that I won't always see you in my searches, and I won't always know that you've commented.

For instance, I haven't logged into FriendFeed in 7 days. That means, all the conversations there aren't being commented on by me.

But then, that's a matter of people choosing to have their conversations about stuff where they want.

Boy, I'm glad I can say I knew Louis when. : )

Re: I’ve redesigned

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:19:42 -0000

Looks really good, Robert. Congratulations on a new, smooth design.

Re: Twitter blames its users

Chris Brogan... — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:51:08 -0000

It's a weird feeling, Robert. According to Dave Winer's tool, I'm #2 in spewage. In my case, it's volume more than users, but the equation puts me up there. Since seeing that, I slowed down for a bit, then got back into it, as that's what it's there for. And you're right. Do I want to feel like Twitter's upset that I'm using it? Probably not.

I agree with your point of view on this.