Archive for January, 2007

A Shot In The Dark

Published by Amitai Givertz on January 8, 2007 in Blogging and That's Life. 7 Comments

For me, one of the absurd things about blogging is that as easy as it is to post and comment, tag and tinkle, everything else – I mean like the mechanics of blogging – is mind-numbingly hard. For example, I found New Tools for Social Media Optimization on the Online Marketing Blog which makes a compelling case to follow the incredibly simple step-by-step instructions for creating social bookmarks and assorted iconic blog-bling on one’s blog. Okay, I’m sold, now what?

Four hours after completed the first step – a thirty second process I might add – I’m still staring down the barrel of my WordPress blog, dashboard loaded, the theme editor fully cocked. I simply can’t pull the trigger. Cut and paste that code to where? The source code? The template? Bugger it! One way or the other I’m going to end up shooting myself! Where’s the Video Professor now, now that I actually need him? [Note to self: Add John Scherer to the The NewPR Wiki: CEO Blog List, he's a blogger.]

Ahem.

So, my blog remains un-optimized and antisocial. Like the blogger himself, a baby boomer who cannot boom. Pathetic. Yes, I know everything’s documented online; everything has a freakin’ forum, busy-bodies and know-it-alls. But all I want to know is where do I paste the code and what happens after you press the button that follows the ominous message:

“Are you sure you want to do that, Boomer? Changes cannot be undone. Go ahead, Boomer, make my day.”

Looking on the bright side, this blog is currently ranked 1,582,199 on Technorati with just one blog linked here – oh, yes, it’s this one – which means the likelihood of anyone arriving here and wanting to bookmark anything is so remote that it hardly matters. So, now that’s two absurd things about blogging. What a blast.

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The Dialectics of CEO Blogging

Published by Amitai Givertz on January 6, 2007 in CEO Blogs and Research. 0 Comments

Conventional wisdom has it that change in business – the type of groundbreaking organizational change that enables a company to compete and win on many levels – comes from the top down. Without change being led from the “top” it is challenging within traditional models to effect meaningful transformations that yield positive, measurable and sustainable results. That’s conventional wisdom.

On the other hand, it seems to me that blogging – the recasting of conventional wisdom online if you will – is a very “bottom-up” type of activity. At least I think so.

So, if this thesis and antithesis hold true, CEO blogging is an interesting synthesis of sorts, a context within which to understand a variety of emerging concepts that similarly contrast with a top-down approach to business, communications and control; things like servant leadership, transparency, customer evangelism, yada, yada, yada. 

Okay, a long-winded introduction as to why I find myself looking this morning for a definitive list of CEO blogs. I’m not sure what I was hoping to surface by way of lists and comparative analyses but I find myself writing this thinking there is much more to be done if I want to get what I want, whatever that is. As I reflect on what a monumental task it would be to create my own list and analysis I realize that a wiki – a bottom-up approach if ever there was one – would be a far better way of solving this problem…

Ta-dah! The NewPR Wiki: CEO Blog List.

Unrelated but topical, I found Debbie Weil’s BlogWrite for CEOs, a companion to her book The Corporate Blogging Book. My friend Shannon Seery who writes about social media in the recruiting bubble on EXCELER8ion.com lent me the hardback before Christmas. I hope to have read it before Easter. Shannon also turned me on to another wiki project in one of her recent posts about the Fortune 500 Blog Project. That should be interesting to look at too.

So there we are, there we have it. Or, do we? Consider this hypothesis: if a wiki is to a blog what top-down is to bottom-up, how long will it be before we see the emergence of corporate wikis, CEOs wiki’ing? And, what will CEOs be doing with them I wonder. Hmmm… Perhaps someone should write a book.

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To Blog, Or Not to Blog: That Is the Question

Published by Amitai Givertz on January 4, 2007 in Research. 3 Comments

I’ve started to research material for this blog and I am compiling a list of resources. I guess in the spirit of the thing, this would be as good a place as any to organize my thoughts and research. And, consistent with my interests in process improvement, transparency and the recursive nature of blogging, we might even venture to document the process of documenting my efforts here. What fun!

Anyway…

Northestern University and Backbone Media have produced a Blogging Success Study:

“The Blogging Success Study was conducted by Dr. Walter Carl; the students in his Advanced Organizational Communications class (Spring 2006) at Northeastern University and John Cass and his colleagues at Backbone Media, Inc.  The objective of this research was to determine the reasons, conditions and factors that make a blog successful, and to create a list of criteria to help companies assess whether and how they should engage in blogging.”

Given that the study addresses three questions:

  • How does the set up of a blog contribute to a blog’s success?
  • What is it about how you blog that makes the blog a success?
  • What is it about the content on a blog that makes the blog a success? 

…this seems to me to be a good a place to start as any. Don’t you think?

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