As blogging goes I’m that guy. One of those enthusiastic folk who toils away enthusiastically then goes dark. The blog sits unattended for days, months, years. It becomes part of the vast blog wasteland.

This desert of misfit musings is big. Apparently up to 95 percent of blogs are dormant, most permanently abandoned.

I started blogging back in 2002, interested in the pending collision of social technologies, media and marketing.  In 2006, I went dark. Simple reason. I became consumed in the work.

Those deeply engaged in social media know the score. This stuff is hard. Has no road map. It requires total commitment to design smart social strategies and execute what you’ve suggested be done.

I  feel lucky to be fully committed, helping to influence and lead social media learning labs inside my firm and for a number of big brands. I’ve seen communication programs fail miserably. Others that unquestionably show impact to be made calibrating new opportunities with a company’s ability to take advantage of them.

These lessons learned from the front are invaluable for helping people address pressing issues now and anticipate what’s next.

While the frenzy around social media would leave you to believe the idea of “Going Social” is now past perspective the reality is we’re only scratching the surface. Barely, really.

Such heady issues warrant more than a constant stream of musings framed in 140 characters or less. And why blogs still matter.

A void exists in more comprehensive translation of what social means to business. Now is consumed with translating how social technologies impact media, marketing and communications. The future is about using social media to change business. Going beyond the interface to impact processes, policy, products, not to mention how people are organized in the firm.

That’s why in the sea of social media commentary there’s still a market for alternative perspective to be shared. And why pulling one more blog from the desert seems to be in order.

IBM made available a think-piece on open-source innovation and its impact on society. The report takes a look into many areas, including the unbundled enterprise of the future, the role of reputation capital in shaping a workforce as well the rise of very small, specialized businesses and brands. These subjects alone make it well worth the read. If that isn’t enough there are also deep dives into the future of transportation, energy and environment. It’s a great example of thought leadership and knowledge-sharing by IBM. Business Week covers the program in more detail here.

Technorati Tags: Innovation, Thought Leadership, PR

Used to be when you did a speech and bombed the fallout was largely contained with the audience in front of you. Thanks to blogs the reach of a failed effort can be extended and intensified before you can say get out of town. Ask the PR folks at Yahoo who look to be containing damage from a failed speaking effort at EG2006. Valleywag, Gawker’s new Silicon Valley gossip blog, weighed in yesterday, reveling in Lloyd Braun’s performance and presumed run-in with Richard Saul Wurman. What’s more telling comes from USA Today’s tech lead, Kevin Maney. On his blog he called Braun out as being “exhausted, unprepared and seemingly clueless about the audience’s sophistication level.” Not the kind of stuff you’re used to seeing in print.

While this looks to be an extreme case in being under-prepared, execs should be forewarned that the coverage game tied to major conferences has changed big time. Beyond back channel conversations shared between participants, proceedings are covered as a matter of course through mainstream media blogs reaching audiences far beyond the confines of the conference sites. For better or worse, these days when you hit the stage the world could literally be watching.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, EG2006, PR, crisis management, social media

A common criticism of the PR profession stems from ill-informed, ill-prepared pitches  lobbed into  journalists  who are busier than ever.  Taking a page from Gawker’s playbook, bloggers are jumping into the ring to out PR folks who don’t make the effort to listen and learn before pitching their goods. A new site called  The Bad Pitch blog  amounts to an ongoing post of misguided media relations efforts fed by journalists to the blog’s authors.  Not to be outdone, B.L. Ochman also has a testy take today on the fundamentals of media relations and how to pitch her blog.  Although both include pretty brutal and personal beatdowns, there’s actually a noble cause to consider. They amount to a self-policing mechanism developing online that insures a baseline level of professionalism required as part of our work. Companies fork over lots of money to build relationships with the media and share stories that lead to coverage. Journalists expect to work with pros who know their pubs, beats and issues of interest before working a pitch. Those who bypasss the basics without respect for the true task at hand should expect to get their 15 minutes of fame online as similar sites pop up – before their clients show them the door.

There is a growing consensus among marketing prognosticators that companies must to think more like media companies to effectively reach consumers and key constituents. While it hasn’t reach a critical mass, the rise of blogs, podcasts and other branded content, coupled with the ability to offer this content easily, inexpensively and directly to consumers, makes this movement inevitable. Steve Rubel has a couple posts on the topic to check out – one that debates how soon “created media” will trump “earned media” and another today which suggests iTunes will put broadcast media bureaus out of business. Two good write-ups on the need to think like a broadcaster come include Mike Manuel’s PR 2.0 post as well as Randall Rothenberg’s New Year’s resolution.

BusinessWeek extended its blog beat to now cover automotive. Called The Auto Beat, the blog includes posts from leading BW auto writers including David Kiley and David Welch.  The idea of collaborative blogs written by mainstream media is an ongoing trend to address – especially when the content differs so significantly from traditional stories written by the same journalists.  We may get it, but we need to make sure executives understand how raw commentary may appear in reporter blog posts versus print or broadcast pieces.

Issues tied to transparency, authenticity and reputation management are becoming more significant for marketers, brought to life through recent commentary, marketing programs, blogs and attempts at measurement.

If you haven’t read, Gawker launched The Consumerist, a blog that promises to help shoppers bite back against “shoddy products, inhumane customer support, and half-assed service.” Given Gawker’s prominence in the blogging community as well as the biting commentary that drives its appeal it should be a scary place for products and brands that don’t deliver the goods.

Modern Marketing posted today on Mozilla’s call for consumer testimonials on Firefox 1.5 – referring to the effort as “Open Mike” branding.” The blog raises the question all corporate executives and marketers should now ask themselves – what would people really say if you gave them a video camera and asked them to say exactly what they thought, without any censorship or direction, about your product or service? Time will come soon when consumers force that question to be answered, especially as more Consumerist-like sites and Dell-Hell bloggers enter the fray.

Speaking of Dell-Hell, a group out of the UK developed a whitepaper showing how Jeff Jarvis’s relentless ranting on Buzzmachine was influential in shaping impressions of Dell’s customer support. While determining the impact of blogging on brands and reputations is an admirable call, Jarvis and others are questioning the validity of this group’s work, including The Consumerist in a post tonight.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Social Media, Open Source Marketing, Reputation Management, PR

Cyber Monday a myth? Random Culture and Fast Company’s blog comment on the myth and marketing of Cyber Monday, a creation of Shop.org to create some excitement beyond Black Friday.

Flash mobs makes a comeback on Black Friday. PFSK links to the blog documenting the “freaks” who turned Wal-Mart, and later Target, into a dance hall.

Million Dollar home page becoming just that. The creator, Alex Tew, sells advertising by the pixel. He divides a computer display screen in 10,000 squares selling advertising by the pixel at $1 per pixel (100 pixel minimum). Brand Autopsy highlights current results – $ $712,000+ in advertising and 600,000 to 700,000 hits per month.

Colleges promoting anti-social behavior. Dan Pink writes about a NY Times piece on the emergence, and significance, of video game majors at Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech.

Banned X-Box Ad Making the Rounds. Screenhead links to a recent Xbox 360 Ad, called entitled Stand Off, now circulating online.

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Technorati Tags: Blogs, Social Media, Public Relations, Contagious Media, Video Games, Flash Mobs, Marketing

Steve Rubel has a quicky on Nokia’s efforts to engage the blog community as part of its N90 launch in the US .  The site is intended to give bloggers core background and content needed to easily post on the product launch. The content available includes:

• A standard press release
• Links to positive posts
• Magazine reviews
• User experiences
• Podcasts
• Application reviews
• Media coverage for the site itself
• Direct questions to the blogger relations team

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Social Media, Public Relations

A number of stories and posts from the long weekend took a close look the media transformation in progress along with calls to action in the ad and PR community to get with the program or risk being left behind. A few places to check out include:

Jeff Jarvis comments on Bubble Generation’s overview of Media 2.0. If you can get past all the buzzwords in Bubble Generation’s post, you may better appreciate the implications of micro-media (blogs, podcasts) content services (mySpace, Flickr) and aggregation services (RSS) on information consumption (media, entertainment, advertising).

Business Week’s December 5^th profile of R/GA’s Bob Greenberg and his call for agencies to re-invent themselves from top to bottom. As he sees it, as bad as the current unraveling is for TV and newspapers, it’s potentially worse for ad agencies. He claims ad agencies have to be better conversant with information architecture, play in the world of personalized media, and create totally immersive brand experiences.

Steve Rubel’s post on his upcoming PR Week article calling for the PR industry to act in addressing new media trends. He says, and I very much agree, that we need to get in the game by mobilizing and training our people to work hands-on in this new world. No so much through more surveys or seminars, but showing our teams how to set up and read feeds, write posts and monitor blogs to better understand how to best counsel clients on traditional and non-traditional strategies.

Technorati Tags: Public Relations, advertising, media, blogs, social media, social marketing, media 2.0.