Category Archives: Blogging

Why don’t CEO’s blog?

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Randall Stross has a nice piece on CEO blogging in Sunday’s NYT. Features Sun Microsystems Pres/CEO, Johathan Schwartz:

“C.E.O. blogging should no longer be viewed as extreme sport. Mr. Schwartz’s example shows that blogging fits quite naturally into the chief executive’s work week. In an exhortatory piece, “If You Want to Lead, Blog,” published in The Harvard Business Review last year, Mr. Schwartz predicted that “having a blog is not going to be a matter of choice, any more than having e-mail is today. My No. 1 job is to be a communicator,” Mr. Schwartz told me last week. “I don’t understand how a C.E.O. would not blog if committed to open communication.”

The Times story starts with: “Chief executives are inclined to avoid activities generally deemed to be high-risk: Sky diving. Cliff jumping. Motorcycle racing. And blogging.”

Learfield Top Guy, Clyde Lear, was born minus the risk-aversion gene. He’ll try anything and encourage others to jump with him. So blogging doesn’t scare him even a little. He’s been travelling a lot this summer and it’s cut into his posting but I think we’ll see it pick up as the summer winds down.

Prediction: Don’t know when… don’t know what… but a day will come when our company will be glad we have the forum that GrowLearfield.com is becoming. You can say you read it here. [via Buzz Machine]

This is how all events will be covered

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AgWired’s Chuck Zimmerman shares a story that illustrates the power of the blog. Syngenta (a big biotech company) had Chuck come in and blog a “media day” event a couple of weeks ago:

“This event started around 8am and was finished around 3pm. I posted 20 times including over 20 pictures and 5 audio interviews and they were all on AgWired before the end of the day (same day). Many of the posts were done during the actual presentations.

At the end of the event I burned all the pictures and audio to a CD and left it with them. They can post them onto their own website and it’s my understanding that is exactly what they plan to do. Their investment in this is minimal and yet they have immediate multimedia content that’s online before the other media attending even get home to their offices.”

No studio. No camera crew. No editors. One guy with some consumer grade gear and a truck-load of hustle. Is this journalism? I have no idea. And the people at Syngenta don’t care (as long as what Chuck posted is accurate).

If I were in charge of media at Syngenta, I’d ask everyone that covered the event to send me a link to their coverage (or a copy of the magazine article or a video clip of the TV piece, whatever). Then I’d make up a little matrix showing the coverage; when it got “out there”; and what kind of Google ranking it produced.

Blogger motivation

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“The ease and appeal of blogging is inspiring a new group of writers and creators to share their voices with the world. A national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers and that only a small proportion focus their coverage on politics, media, government, or technology. Blogs, the survey finds, are as individual as the people who keep them. However, most bloggers are primarily interested in creative, personal expression – documenting individual experiences, sharing practical knowledge, or just keeping in touch with friends and family.”

— Pew Internet & American Life Project survey on what motivates bloggers [via Micro Persuasion]

Doc Searls: Blogging isn’t a business

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Doc Searls was one of several blogger biggies taking part in BloggerCon IV (“Celebrating the art and science of weblogs”), this weekend in San Francisco. Looks like all of the sessions are available as MP3 downloads and I’m looking forward to the one titled “Making Money.” Doc’s take on blogging and business makes a lot of sense to me:

First, blogging isn’t a business, any more than emailing or phoning are businesses. It is, however, becoming more important to many businesses. And to the nonbusiness lives of millions. This is an example of what I call The Because Effect. In the Making Money session yesterday, John Palfrey called this “making money Off blogging” (“as opposed to making money by blogging”).

Blogging the U.S.A

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My buddy Chuck is blogging and podcasting his way across the US, covering something called the AASHTO Interstate 50th Convey. It’s a paid gig for the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council.

This is just an amazing opportunity to to demonstrate the power of new media and Chuck is firing on all 8 ethanol-powered cylinders.

How would the client have promoted this in the previous century? Well, we’d send out some news releases, inviting the media to come to our kick-off (free snacks!). And, uh, we’d send out some more news releases about what is happening along the way. What else? Oh, we’d take some pictures and put them on our website. And if we were really clever, we’d hire a film crew to shoot a little documentary of the journey. In a few weeks (or months), after the thing is edited (down to say, 30 minutes)…we’d send copies to the media in hopes they’d watch it and be so enthralled they’d do an interview with us and put it on their (Network, TV station, radio station, magazine, newspaper). And if they did do an interview, we’d send out a news release telling everyone about that.

Or, you could invite everyone that might possibly give a shit (or should give a shit) to come along for the ride. And if it’s easy enough, and fun enough… a lot of them will.