The 2nd worst part of smoking

Quote of the day comes from XM Ben who stopped smoking three weeks ago:

“I was very glad I didn’t have to keep stepping out on the back porch to light up in the cold. That has to be the worst part of smoking…that, and the cancer.”

I read his post shortly after watching the first in a series of reports by ABC News that had some really scary stats: Twenty-four percent of American men and 19 percent of women continue to light up; three-quarters of long-term smokers will have serious health problems; smoking will kill half of them; less than five percent actually succeed in kicking the habit.

Hang in there Ben.

Steve Rubel on corporate blogging

“In an ideal situation –weekly or even daily– someone is pumping the weblog with fresh compelling content. But any old content won’t do. Corporations interested in blogging need to add value to people’s lives. That’s the biggest key to a successful corporate blog that keeps people coming back. So what do I mean by add value? I mean give us a reason to read your blog. Give us something we can’t find anywhere else. Provide information that your customers, partners and prospects care about, not necessarily what you care about. Be a resource and a connector.”

Merrill Brown on future of news

Editorial by Merrill Brown on, the founding editor in chief of MSNBC.com and is a former executive with RealNetworks:

The future course of news, the basic assumptions about how we consume news and information and make decisions in a democratic society, are being altered, perhaps irrevocably, by technologically savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways.

There’s an inescapable conclusion to be drawn from research I completed earlier this year for the Carnegie Corp. of New York about the news habits of 18- to 34-year-olds. In short, the future of the U.S. news industry is seriously threatened by the seemingly irrevocable move by young people away from traditional sources of news.

The thing that always chills my bones in pieces like this is the total absence of any mention of radio. Where are we?

Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web

Seth Godin’s latest ebook, Who’s There? Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web, is just a little 46 page PDF file but it’s packed with lots of small but profound insights. The kind of stuff you read and think, “You know, he’s right.” Some of my favorites:

We’ve become astonishingly picky. Picky about what we buy and picky about what we watch and picky about what we read. In a world where there’s a lot of clutter and where everything is good enough, most of the time we just pick the stuff that’s close or cheap or familiar. But when it’s something we care about, we go to enormous lengths to find the very best.

Radio is officially dead, especially when wireless internet access comes to your car.

The stuff you’re putting on your marketing site or in your blog or even in your brochures or in your business letters is too long. Too much inside baseball. Too many unasked questions getting answered too soon. The stuff you’re sending out in your email and your memos is too vague.

It used to matter a lot where an idea came from. When an idea came from a mainstream media company (MSM) or from a Fortune 500 company, it was a lot more likely to spread. That’s because media companies had free airwaves or paid for newsprint, while big corporations had the money to buy interruptions. Today, all printing presses are created equal. And everyone owns one. Which means that a good idea on a little blog has a very good chance of spreading. In fact, an idea from outside the mainstream might have an even better chance of spreading.

If you write something great, and do it over and over and over again, then you’ll be unstoppable. Whether or not someone helps you.

The problem is that the very things big companies, public companies, stable companies and established companies are good at are the things that make a blog boring.

Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.

If you care about your personal brand and career and impact, you need a blog. And you should start the cycle of getting better at blogging.