I wanted to thank everyone for the SF hotel suggestions.
I ended up going with the Serrano Hotel. Ben and Jackie wrote about it back in September and gave it a big thumbs up. I can only hope for the upgrade they got.
I am certain there will be stories to tell. I plan to blog about the conference and share my impressions. This is my first tech conference, so it will be interesting…
21% of blog readers are bloggers.
{via Scoble’s Linkblog]
I am heading to BlogOn in Berkeley. I am staying over the weekend and I need a suggestion for a good downtown SF hotel. It will only be for Saturday night.
I guess I gave some bad advice pointing everyone to the 12 step program for Macs. Braised Lambchop has a detailed rebuttal.
Update: I seemed to have mixed up my meat types. Della’s site is Braised Lambchop.
I watched The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan tonight. I thought it would run an hour, but it went three hours and I watched the whole thing. It was outstanding. It was done in a Blair Witch style documentary format.
As the story goes…some folks are hired by Sci-Fi to do a documentary for his film The Village. It goes wrong from the start when they start asking questions not on the approved list. When they are shut out, they start searching for answers in other places. That is when it gets interesting.
Rather than doing a 30 minute puff special, Shyamalan creates this wonderful myth around himself. It uses material from past movies. It uses his website where documenters go to find information. They capture some amazing footage of regular people as they ask them if they believe in the supernatural. It even has Johnny Depp as the actor who passed on the lead role in Signs. You don’t what it real and what isn’t. And that it was M. Night wants.
It is brilliant at building his brand. It gives his fans exactly what they want. It asks more questions than it answers. If you get a chance, watch it!
Here is a bunch of posts I ran across this weekend that I thought were interesting:
Here are my answers’ to John Cass’ Corporate Blogging Survey.
I have been doing A Penny For… for about a year and I like blogging. I pitched a project to Jack (Covert) at 800CEOREAD about starting a blog about business books. He liked the idea, so we went and did it.
Our first goal was to generate traffic for 800CEOREAD. We wanted to have 1000 a day reading the site. In three months, we are pretty close to meeting that goal. Our second goal was to become the best single source for information about business books. We do that through a combination of aggregated content and original material. Again, I think we are close to reaching that goal. Our third goal was to provide a PR medium for authors. We write reviews, invite authors to host the blog, run excerpts, etc. We do alot of that now and have more planned for the future. Our fourth goal is to sell more books.
That is a long-term goal.
We think it builds both sides of our business. On one side, we build our brand as business book experts with readers. Readers of our blog are spending 2 to 7 minutes with our brand every day. That is pretty compelling. On the other side, we build relationships with authors.
We publish on working days and put up between 2 and 10 posts a day. Our content is based on what we see in business media, what we see people reading (from their blogs), and what new books come across our desks.
I am the primary writer. Jack probably contributes the second most material. After that, we have volunteer reviewers like John, Diego, Rich, Cathy, and Evelyn. We have authors like Tom and Susan.
Not yet. I think we are 30% to 50% of the way there.
I feel a little more pressure on the 800CEOREAD blog versus on A Penny For… I think it is really important to maintain a steady stream of new content on the corporate blog. Keeping it fresh and interesting can be a challenge. I don’t think personal blogs have the same pressure. It is much more “write when you want to”.
It is still early, but we think so. We know we have added new customers because of it.
I don’t think they do. Blogging allows you to see more of the goings-on, but blogging doesn’t in itself change the strategy of the company. Maybe others can provide proof the other way.
Just wanted to make sure you have been over to The Entrepreneurial Mind to see what Jeff and Tom have to say today.
I posted my quick thought on Corporate Blogging yesterday. It was nothing earth shattering, but a quick summary of what I we are doing at 800CEOREAD.
Today I read this post from Elizabeth Albrycht. It is titled Lessons Learned: Day 2. She decides to chide participants for everything from writing about their businesses (was this called PR Week?) to spelling and grammer mistakes. She is also concerned about people talking negative about PR people (hello? transparency).
When the idea came together for PR Week, I thought it was a great idea. I am all for pulling groups of bloggers together and having great conversations (BBBT, Brand Week). Then, the emails started. I was getting 10-20 emails a day talking about what is the official name going to be and what graphic are we going to use and what software would be best and…it goes on. Luckily, the discussion was moved to a Yahoo! Group and I got a summary everyday. I realize that when you pull together a big project like this that you need to have communication. There was so much communication that I stopped listening. I just wanted to participate.
I was lucky enough to get an email from the organizers with the info I need to participate or else I probably would have skipped it.
My problem is with the process, not the content. Please go check out the discussion going on. Evelyn has some great stuff (especially here). Check out the Corporate Blogging Survey by John Cass. And how can you resist a “PR is Dead” post during PR Week…sorry Global PR Blog Week 1.0 (I don’t want to violate another rule).
Today is the start of the 4th Business Blog Book Tour. We are excited to have Tom Ehrenfeld and his book Startup Garden.
Here is the schedule:
Here is the schedule:
Enjoy!
Global PR Week is going strong. There is tons of great conversation going on. Today’s topic is Corporate Blogging.
Here is my contribution.
Go check it out.
The way it looks it will be impossible to avoid hearing about I, Robot this week. They are having a mega-advertisement on Fox tonight. MTV was doing an I, Robot themed 10 Spot last night. I was even flipping through the channels and saw the boys at Orange County Choppers talking to Will Smith about making a I, Robot chopper.
The marketing people for the movie have gotten very creative for the release of the film, but I don’t think the novelty of the approach is going to any more people to see it. I think it was going to be a big movie anyway.
I am a big fan of Oddpost. They have a great product. I think they are a great example of how you can create a personality for your company. I was disappointed when I moved to the Mac world and couldn’t bring them with me (I didn’t want to use IE).
Well, Yahoo took notice and bought them. I guess I didn’t realize their popularity. I didn’t hear alot of people talking about them in the blogosphere.
Congratulations Iain and Ethan!