I’ve been a blog bore for a few years and helped 10 or 12 friends get started blogging. Some were/are very good at it but none have run with the ball like Chuck Zimmerman at AgWired.com. I used to work with Chuck and his wife Cindy until they left and started their own consulting business a while back. Anyone interested in agriculture marketing should (does?) make AgWired.com their first stop. He’s making Old Media publications like AgriMarketing look… old. If you want to see how to do this blog thing right, click over to AgWired.com. From this point on, Chuck gives me tips on blogging.
Category Archives: Blogging
Banned for life
Before finally moving smays.com to Typepad, I signed up for hosting with a compnay called AQ Host. Good, affordable service, but not right for me. I’d signed up for 90 days, I think. I emailed them and explained that I wouldn’t be using them after all and asked if I could get a credit for the unused portion of my first 90 days. I made it clear that if this wasn’t an option, I understood. They emailed back and said they would refund my money and –according to their terms of service– I can never use their service again. Ever. Wouldn’t this have been a better reply:
Thanks for taking a look at AQ Host. Sorry it doesn’t meet your current needs. Due to the costs associated with setting up your account, we are unable to refund your money but have cancelled your account with us. Should you need hosting services in the future, we hope you’ll consider AQ Host.
Blog make-over
Welcome to the new and improved smays.com. Okay, it’s new. I’m pooped and I didn’t do a damned thing. Many thanks to The Amazing Andy for getting all hot and sweaty under the blog hood. Which is where most of the “improved” stuff shows up.
We’re pretty sure everything (1,300+ posts) made the move but there’s sure to be a few busted links and such. When you find one, please let me know (steve mays at hotmail.com) and be sure to tell me where to find the link (url or date or something). Now some of you are saying to yourself, “Well, yeah!” And some of you are saying, “That’s a good idea.” I’m sure I’ll find and fix ’em all in time.
If you have ever linked to one of my posts, well, it’s probably toast. Sorry about that. Once I figure out how, I’ll add a Google search and you can probably find the post again if you really think it’s worth the effort.
The masthead image is something I first saw on Dave Winer’s blog and loved immediately. I’ll change it from time to time and use only shot’s I’ve taken and mean something to me.
The Office Cam will be dark for a while until I figure out how to post the images here. What else? Oh, Comments. I haven’t turned them on yet and I’m not sure I will. Let me think about it. For now, just email me if you have something to say. I might post it and I might not.
Blogging the rock and roll of this decade
Sterling Newberry believes “blogging is the rock and roll of this decade: the place of energy and expression.”
Doonesbury on bloggers
“Isn’t blogging basically for angry semi-employed losers who are too untalented or too lazy to get real jobs in journalism? I mean if the market REALLY valued what you have to say, wouldn’t someone pay you for it?”
— Doonesbury
Jonathan Schwartz on executive blogging
Jonathan Schwartz –president and COO of Sun Microsystems– on executive blogging:
“If you want to be a leader, I can’t see surviving without a blog. It’s as important as having an e-mail account and a mobile phone. It doesn’t count if you delegate the task of maintaining your blog to someone on your staff.”
Schwartz says that too often, communicating with employees and business partners is like a game of telephone. You speak to a group of people close to you, and they speak to their teams, and so on and so on. With a blog, “you hop through 12 layers of management to get directly to someone in New Zealand.” It also opens up a channel for receiving feedback and ideas from that employee in New Zealand.” [Fast Company]
I have been (gently) lobbying the COO of our company to consider blogging. He’s a smart and funny guy (neither necessary for blogging) and would be very good at it. But it is a bit like having a puppy. A lot of work and sometimes messy.
Jeff Jarvis on “citizen media”
“…new world of weblogs and citizens’ media is all about possibilities — many of them unrealized, I grant — while the world of the big, old media is increasingly about worry: fretting over declining revenue, resources, audience, quality, trust. That is one good reason for big media to embrace the small, rather than trying to recapture the old: It’s optimistic, energetic, new, open, growing, and fun; it’s the medium in the better mood and that’s catching. In short: Bloggers make better barmates.” — Full post here
Next week at Gnomedex, I will be surrounded by lots of bloggers and new media types. I’m looking forward to 3 days of optimism, energy, fun. The future is here and I’m loving it.
AgWired.com
Since I started blogging (February, 2002) I’ve probably helped a couple of dozen folks get started but none drank the blog Kool-Aid like long-time friend Chuck Zimmerman. He didn’t just take a sip, he’s started chugging and hasn’t stopped. And his blog, AgWired.com is rapidly becoming one of the best sources for news about agriculture in the midwest. His focus is agrimarketing but he’s branching out quickly.
Chuck is a blogging machine. He is single-handedly covering more news than a bus-load of NAFB reporters and tired old print publications. He recently rolled out a new look and his blog is easily the best looking ag site on the net. Chuck is a classic example of citizen journalism. From their home, Chuck and his wife Cindy are demonstrating how just two sharp people armed with a laptop and a digital camera can tell a story. Tell a lot of stories.
Prediction: long after a lot of tired old print publications go belly up and begin collecting dust in the basement, AgWired.com will be a major source for agriculture news for thousands of daily readers. You heard it here.
Another cartoon about bloggers
Arianna Huffington’s new blog
It has generated a lot buzz. It feels heavily “produced” to me. Not blog-like in the (can we say “traditional” already?) traditional senses. But, man, they have some pretty witty folks banging out the posts.
My houseboy just informed me that he has located a blog named Huffington is Full of Crap. I would like to inform the smelly blue-collar drone who named this site that while I am sure it was really funny when you mentioned it to your friends down at the labor pool, Arianna is not amused at all, and when she finds out who owns the land on which you park your trailer, she will marry him and make him evict you.
But so does The Onion. And that’s what Huffington’s Toast feels like to me. A well done humor magazine.