Posted by
Pasadena Phil on Sunday, November 11, 2007 12:38:55 PM
I almost
backed out of going to Blogworld at the last minute but the Hard Rock
Hotel demands a 72-hour notice to cancel so thank God for my inner Jack
Benny. It didn't help either that the Dow toppled almost 400 points on
my drive over, another 100+ points on Thursday and another 200 points
Friday. Add to that my room number being 911, a very auspicious start.
But skipping Blogworld would have been a very big mistake.
My primary reasons for going were professional. I
wanted to meet and talk with people who know how the blogosphere works
and can help me learn how build a new business platform. I was floored
by what I discovered.
Upon entering the auditorium, one
couldn't help but to be affected by the boundless enthusiasm
everywhere. It was like an arctic blast of fresh air in contrast to the
"doom and gloom" angst weighing heavily on the world outside. These
were not people bemoaning the passing of a mythical golden age and
fearing the future. Nope. No time for that. Too busy living the future
and building a world most of us know little about but will soon find
indispensable. If capitalism is what people do when you leave them
alone, this was capitalism at its best.
My first major observation was the stark contrast between how corporate America has responded to the challenges and opportunities presented by the new media as opposed to how the government responded.
Or as Newt Gingrich would put it, how "the world that works" responded
versus "the world that doesn't work". Today, I report on the world that
works and how I discovered the way it will work for me soon. The world
of darkness where nothing works can wait for tomorrow.
In
the world that works, corporations were quickly subjected to the
subversive nature of the web. Ten years ago, in her book "Release 2.0:
A Design for Living in the Digital Age", Esther Dyson predicted that
organizations would have to develop strategies to protect their brands
and reputations in the virtual world in ways that don't work in the
real world. She was right and they have. After initially suffering
significant fragmentation of their markets and advertising media
outlets, they turned the threat on its head. They surrendered to the
medium and turned it into a listening platform. By enthusiastically
plowing headlong into this new world, they are salvaging what they can
from their broken business models and developing new ones more
appropriate to the new world. While most bloggers are using the new
media to be heard, corporations have discovered the power of listening.
The government, on the other hand, cannot get beyond the threat blogs pose
to their power and have indulged in their usual instincts to try
undermining that which they cannot control. They simply refuse to
surrender in a battle they have already lost. They are NOT listening and that will be tomorrow's theme when I discuss the world that doesn't work. Now back to my tour.
I
didn't know it but I was about to have one of my most productive days
in a very long time, a day made up of one fascinating conversation
after another with many of the smartest people in the business. By the
end of the morning, even before attending my first workshop, my mind
was spinning with new ideas to digest for building a new business
model.
Thursday opened with a keynote session featuring Matt
Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress, who regaled us with the story of his
company while being interviewed by Fast Company's Ed Sussman. During
the introductions, Dave Taylor asked for a show of hands on how many
attendees were sent there by corporations as professional bloggers and
then how many, like me, were individual bloggers. The corporate
bloggers easily outnumbered us by at least two-to-one. I was surprised
but immediately grasped its significance. The blogosphere was not about
me but about corporations. Might as well kill myself. Maybe not, makes
a bad first impression.
The history of Wordpress was fascinating but I especially appreciated Matt's observation that most bloggers are too focused on telling
people what they think when they should be asking others what they
think. The blogosphere is populated mostly by people who want to be
heard. Apparently, we are all ruling over our own private echo
chambers. Blogs like this one might be doomed.
I
next sauntered Fred Thompson-like to the entrance of the exhibit area
where Townhall's exhibit dominated. I was greeted by the hard-working
but woefully underpaid Katie Favazza who inexplicably tasered me like a
bro while summoning security to drag out my twitching corpse. Alright,
alright I'm lying about the taser and security part but that's the way
it's going down in the movie version. Senseless violence sells. Case
closed. Anyway, Katie was very patient with my mindless chatter as I
studied the exhibit which was set up as an impromptu radio studio with
a few seats for a small audience. I probably deserved to be tased.
It
was still early. Few visitors had arrived so I was able to talk to
people while they were still fresh, available and chirpy. I spent the
next two hours or so questioning and listening to very smart and
accomplished people who enthusiastically offered solutions and advice
while doing their best to explain to me exactly what they do. For
example.
Several companies were there to promote various blog
traffic tracking services. Companies like SezWho that specialize in
evaluating and prioritizing commenters' credibility and Visible
Technologies that take a statistical approach by tracking visitors' as
they navigate site-to-site and performing factor analysis to reveal
important factors for further analysis. Same old-fashioned marketing
segmentation tool but new media requiring different data sampling. Very
interesting but not yet useful in its current early development stage
to my social-networking-oriented target marketing interests. I moved on.
After
talking to several people, I discovered that major corporations were
the primary customers for most of these companies. I was already humble
from having low traffic but I wasn't prepared to discover that I hardly
matter in their world. I had misread the importance of blogging and Blogworld itself. Blogworld
was mostly about helping corporations build new business models while
finding their way out of their fragmented and shattered markets. How
did I miss that?
Corporations have also discovered the value
of attracting customer complaints to their own sites. Customers are
going to complain anyway so it might as well be at the company blog. It
enhances the corporate brand when the world sees problems being
acknowledged and addressed in public in real time. Large corporations
have rediscovered the old shop owner's adage that it's the unsatisfied
customer who walks out without complaining and never returns who puts
you out of business. It pays to say thank you to people who do tell you
why they aren't happy with your product.
Corporations are also
interested in protecting their images by tracking what their
competitors are saying about them online. There were all kinds of
services that can analyze blog traffic for any references to a company,
its product or its services. Did you notice the listening thing again?
As Yogi once said, "You can hear a lot by just listening."
Several exhibitors offered various ways to direct traffic to blogs based on listing services like www.blogcatalog.com
where bloggers can connect with each other to form specialized
networks. The web is a very cluttered space full of countless specialty
markets that are hard to discover. And there are no maps and few
practical directories. The main idea is to make yourself easy to find
by creating branded networks and then, like Leo LaPorte says, becoming
the "hub of the tail". I'm not going to bore you with that. At least
not until I figure it out for myself. Then I'll bore you to no end with
it.
Others firms, Outerjoin for instance,
offered beginning-to-end consulting services to help business people
set up professional blogs. Very reasonable. They may be hearing from me
in the not-too-distant future.
But if there was one conversation
that stood out that morning, it was the one I had with Steven Van
Yoder, author of "Get Slightly Famous". I didn't know at the time that
I was speaking to the author himself nor that I had registered for his
session that afternoon. His suggestions were directly applicable to
what I was trying to do. I will be using them. My main interest was in
learning how to establish credibility within a very narrow target
market in a business dependent on a high degree of two-way personal
trust. His general strategy wasn't necessarily new to me but I didn't
know how to go about it. Now I do. And there is something subtly
helpful in thinking about it as "getting slightly famous".
Having
already accomplished most of what I had set out to accomplish, all that
remained was to find people who could address certain particular
components of the plan. One was to figure out how to use my blog to get
articles published. Another was how to write a book and get it
published. Steven Van Yoder was very helpful on the research
methodology and how to use the end result but not on the writing part.
I'm not a bad writer but writing an effective book specifically
designed to establish my credibility with important prospects requires
help from a writing coach.
Ann McIndoo who specializes in a
service she calls "author's boot camp" impressed me. Assuming you have
a passion, she promises to have a book manuscript ready in three days.
I realize it sounds like a hustle but if she is selective on projects
she takes on, it makes sense. As with most things in life, what you get
out of it is only as good what you put into it. But having a good coach
guiding you can be the difference between success and failure even with
the best idea. I have a feeling we will be talking again.
It
was now time for the workshop sessions and they were all excellent. I
attended Steven Van Yoder's "Building Your Online Reputation" and Larry
Schwartz' "Syndicating Your Blog for Profit". End of work day. I was
now free to have fun.
Bored with sauntering, I ambled instead to
Townhall where the Hugh Hewitt Show was already in progress and
introduced myself around. Met milblogger Eric Egland, Dean Barnett,
Duane Patterson, LaShawn Barber, and finally Hugh himself who greeted
me with an enthusiastic "Hey! Pasadena Phil! One of the good guys!" It went straight to my head!
Someone should have slapped me right on the spot. But what a relief!
Especially after that tasering incident with