According to Apple CEO, today was the “biggest launch of his career.” That’s quite a statement from the guy who launched the iMac, iPod, and original iPhone. Suffice it to say…today was important for Apple, if for no other reason than because Steve said so.

Now it’s pretty well known that Apple isn’t too interested in employees blogging or even an official corporate blog. There’s an unofficial Apple blog and even a Fake Steve Jobs blog (which appears to be going away now incidentally) but nothing official from the people who inside the apple. For the last several years Apple really hasn’t had to worry about their own blog. After all, they had/have millions of raving fans to say everything for them. Then today came. The biggest launch day in Jobs’ career and it hasn’t gone well for customers.

What Happened Today:

In a nutshell two things happened today from what I’ve read (and heard). One the one hand the hardest of hardcore iPhone enthusiasts stood in line for days and hours to get the new iPhone. According to reports, many people walked away disappointed today due to a lack of supply. The bigger issue today, however, was that for the (presumably) hundreds of thousands who did purchase today, the activation servers at Apple were down for hours. This rendered the new iPhones inoperable and the old iPhones for those making the switch inoperable as well. I saw many an Apple fan not happy with Apple today by just watching Twitter.

So, back to the blog…if Apple had a blog today they would have been able to tell customers what was going on and when they could expect it to be fixed. If Apple had a blog they would have been talking directly to their biggest supporters (because who else waits that long for something you can walk in the store for in a few days?) If Apple had a blog it wouldn’t have fixed the problems but it would have changed the conversation.

The good news for Apple is that it has a ton of relational equity to spend. Today it spent some by all accounts. Apple will probably be fine. They’ll even be fine without a blog, but they’re one of a very few number of companies where people would basically say, “it was a terrible experience but it was ‘worth the hell.’” Apple has this equity and brand loyalty. You don’t. You (and I) never will. If you don’t have a blog then how will you communicate during your own iPocalypse?

Over the weekend I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now, which was to organize my Google Reader feeds. The problem I had was that I was trying to follow over 50 blogs and other miscellaneous feeds but there was no organization to it. Some feeds were much more important to me than others but I hadn’t made it easy on myself to get to the preferred feeds quickly. I’ve known for some time that Google Reader allows you to create folders so it was time to give it a shot. I created the following for my use:

• Top 5 - The top five blogs I read to stay aware of what’s going on in new media marketing. These are Seth Godin’s blog, Mashable, TechCrunch, TechMeme, and Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels blog.
• Friends - Blogs that my friends write.
• My Stuff - Anything I do that has an RSS feed.
• Clients - Blogs and anything else I’m monitoring for clients including some Technorati feeds and Tweetscan feeds.
• Everything Else - Catchall for anything I want to check in with from time to time.

So far it’s been great. I find myself using Reader more now than before. A nice little surprise for me was that Google will aggregate all the feeds from a single folder so I can quickly see what’s new from my Friends blogs for instance. I should have done this a while back but I’m glad it’s set up now!

We have another batter up for social media batting practice. Dave Delaney has recommended five tips for a pediatrician. The full scenario and his ideas are below. While we’re on the social media batting practice topic…Mitch Joel included a comment from me on his most recent episode of Six Pixels of Separation. He had some great additional info to include. Here’s the scenario that was pitched to Dave and his ideas follow…

Scenario: A pediatrician wants to know how she would be able to use social media to promote her practice. She’s currently spending money on local advertising in multiple areas and wants to know how social media marketing would work for her. She’s not viewed as the best pediatrician in her community but is widely recognized as one of the top five.

Dave’s ideas:

1. I would recommend that the pediatrician create a Google Adwords campaign targeted to her local zipcode(s).
2. I’d advise that she be sure she is included on Goggle in their business search results by adding herself to Google maps.
3. Depending on her available time and interest, I would suggest developing a blog and posting to it regularly. The blog would also offer all appropriate social bookmarks and tags.
4. She should also considering posting on local parenting forums always being sure to link back to her website.
5. Finally, she should consider sponsoring a quality parenting Internet radio show (AKA “podcast”) like Two Boobs and a Baby.

Thanks for the ideas Dave. I’ll include a similar real-life scenario I discussed a long time ago about a blogging dentist I know here in town.

All bloggers want more traffic to their site. It doesn’t matter if it’s a professional blog or some random musings from your life, you want more traffic if you publish a public blog. Sure, you know about blogrolls and link exchanges, but do you ever link specifically to posts to bring some traffic to you blog? You can. Here’s how.

Linking to posts (called trackbacks or pingbacks depending on what your blog tool calls them) is a way to show that you wrote a blog post specifically talking about a post on another blog. That referring link then shows up on the original blog either under the trackback area or in the comments. That referring link can then send people to your blog to see what you had to say on the topic.

For instance, if I wrote a post about how Seth Godin gives a good explanation on the types of people who use Firefox rather than Explorer, I would link to it as I’ve done here and grab the trackback link at the end of his post. That trackback link can then be inserted into a special trackback field within Wordpress (some blog tools can do this automatically…just check how your blog platform deals with these or try this). Then my post referring to Seth’s post would show up on his blog.

Wordpress is especially generous to pingbacks. If you were to link to this post for instance (the permanent link) it would show up in the comments. Wordpress works like this for all users unless the blog’s author has specifically turned the feature off.

The strategy here is that you add value to the conversation and get to bring people over to your blog to see what you’ve said. It’s better than a comment because it shows you took some time to really respond to the blog post. People who read the comments will be more likely to click over to see what you said because they also recognize that you took the time to write it.

One final thought here…don’t be a jerk. Don’t trackback unless you have something valuable to add. There is such a thing as spam trackbacks and spam pingbacks and you don’t want to be one of those. Just add something to the conversation and you’ll be fine.

You may not know it but you have some control over the way your blog’s RSS feed displays. You can allow your feed to show a summary (which usually consists of the first paragraph or introductory sentences in your post) or the full post. Most blogs default with the full post display but I was asked recently if I thought the summary option is a good idea based on the premise that if people can only read an introductory paragraph from the post then it will drive traffic to the blog.

My advice is to never just do the summary and here’s why…

• The summary option assumes people care enough to click out of their feed reader to go to you blog. Many feed readers are scanning headlines and if they see something that catches their interest, they want to read it then and there. That’s a primary reason for having a feed reader to begin with…the person chose to bring the content to them rather than go to every blog to read the posts. iGoogle wasn’t the most popular Google property in 2007 for nothing. Increasingly, people want their online information consolidated, convenient, and quick. Don’t make it hard on them because they will likely keep moving through their feeds and never click over to read your post.
• The summary option assumes that unique visitors to the blog are a more important statistic than the RSS readers. Personally, I believe the richest statistic you can measure for your blog is your RSS subscriber base. Those readers have elected to pull your content into their feed reader. They are your new opt-in list so treat them special and don’t make life harder on them. You need them more than they need you.
• The summary option isn’t a common practice with 99% of blogs. If for no other reason, don’t do this because you’ll be the one blogger who forces people to click over to your blog to read the posts and it’s just counter cultural (in blog culture that is.) If you do the summary, the best case scenario is that people will ignore it an move on. The worst case is they’ll think you’re controlling and egotistical…and they still won’t read it and will move on.

The bottom line is that anything you may gain in some new traffic to the blog will be a much bigger loss in people’s attention and your influence because you’re creating a hurdle they have to get over if they want to read your posts. It’s just not a good idea. You have more to lose than gain.

I’ve encountered a surge of friends, associates, and acquaintances who are new to blogging. What I’ve found is that in some cases the new bloggers have been blog readers for quite a while and have picked up on a few things about blogging culture, etiquette, technique, and strategy. In other cases, the new bloggers have jumped right in without having spent a lot of time reading blogs (and therefore missing some of the above mentioned things.) I applaud anyone who’s jumping into the blogging waters so this post is for the people who are relatively new to blogging but may have missed a few things along the way…

Here are seven things new bloggers should know:

1. Terminology 101 (part 1): Your blog is a blog so just call it that. It’s not a website or a blog site. It may operate as your web presence (which is what I do and recommend in many cases) but it’s still a blog. It would be incorrect to say, “Check out my blog site.” It would be correct to say, “Check out my blog.” It’s as simple as that.
2. Terminology 101 (part 2): Every entry you add to your blog is a post. Your entries are not blogs. The blog is the entire space but a post is a single entry. Some new bloggers will say, “I just wrote a blog today about…” which isn’t correct. They wrote a post. Not a blog. You can say “post” or “blog post” but not blog. A blog is your web presence (see number 1 above.)
3. Determine your posting frequency: When I was in second grade I signed up for a race with about thirty other second graders. When they shot the gun I took off like a flash. I was a blaze of red-sweat-pant-Member’s-Only- jacket-wearing-glory. The problem was the race was a mile. I was in first place for the first 100 yards. I ended up in dead last. I had no energy for most of the race. I used it all in the first 100 yards. New bloggers can start like that. You have new ideas and are fired up and ready to go…which is great, but if you don’t plan on keeping up that pace for the duration of your blog life, dial it back a little bit to something you can sustain. I recommend you determine your meal to snack ratio. Blogging is not a sprint.
4. Triple the amount of time you spend thinking about your post titles. Most likely you spend only a few seconds on your blog post title but it’s actually one of the most important things you can do. People tend to scan titles and your title may make or break whether someone actually reads the post. This is even more important as people continue to use feed readers in increasing numbers. Your posts are just one trickle in a stream of information and your title is what people will use to determine whether they will read your post or not.
5. Link to people when you mention them. This is one commonly overlooked but easy to fix issue. Good blogging etiquette is to link to a fellow blogger when you mention her/him. If you mention them by name just hyperlink to them. Every blog tool does that. If you see something on someone’s blog and it inspires you to write a post based on what you saw, give that person a “hat tip” if you don’t mention them specifically in the post. If you’ve ever seen something at the end of a blog that looks like this: [HT to Chris] then it’s a reference to a post I saw on Chris’ blog. It’s a hat tip to Chris. Bloggers love links and they love to receive credit when credit it due. They’ll also return the favor in many situations so this can be strategic as well. Link love is a wonderful thing for everyone.
6. Check your moderated comments often. If you moderate your comments try to check them at least daily because commenters want to know that their comments were worth the time they spent to post them. Comments exist to encourage discussion and dialogue but if it takes you forever to approve the comments, you’re not encouraging someone to comment in the future. More than likely they’ll think you rejected the comment and then what was supposed to be a positive experience for the person turns into a negative one because they’ll be sitting there wondering why you didn’t approve their comment. Just approve them often and only reject the stuff that’s spam.
7. The golden rule of blogging is to provide content. Unless your blog is intended to be something personal for yourself, friends, and family this rule applies to you. If you have any hopes of blogging with the intent that people will find it helpful, useful, etc. you need to provide content on a regular basis. Here’s the test: how many of your previous ten posts were about you verses about something that meets the Old McDonald test? Content is about your readers. A personal blog is about you and that’s fine…but if you’re not writing a personal blog, don’t make it about you all the time. The fact of the matter is most people don’t really care about you but they do like it when you give them something entertaining, inspiring, educational, informative, or even outrageous. They may be amused about little things going on in your life from time to time and that’s fine to talk about, but otherwise, give them substance that has value for them.

I thought of one additional thing to add to my post earlier today about the recent hire of a full-time blogger at eBay. The additional thought is this: eBay didn’t try to outsource the blogging responsibility.

I’ve had conversations with people who think blogging is something that can be outsourced to college students or copywriters or stay at home moms or new media consultants. It can’t. None of those people know the company as well as someone who is inside the company day in and day out. They can convey the culture. They won’t have the relationships. They won’t respond as timely because they will probably be running most of their content through someone before they post…particularly if there’s an issue that demands a rapid response.

Outsourcing your blogging is not only a bad idea, it may be misleading in too. A great organizational blog conveys that your reading a person who is a true representative of the organization. Someone who lives and breathes the organization…and an outsourced blogger just won’t do that. Don’t outsource your blogging. Don’t even think about it.

Last week I found an interview with eBay’s new in-house blogger, Richard Brewer-Hay. This is an good move on their part and one that I think will become increasingly common in the future. There are a few things that were especially interesting in the interview and worth noting for any organization that has official bloggers:

• Bringing in someone from the outside isn’t a bad thing. Brewer-Hay was hired to eBay for blogging. He wasn’t a guy who had been there for a while and moved into that position. An internal person who assumes a full time blogging role isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but someone new will have less bias and likely be a bit more candid than someone who’s been in the organization for many years.
  
  LifeWay Christian Resources, here in Nashville, hired Ed Stetzer a year ago and Ed is an unofficial blogger for LifeWay but had significant credibility before being hired by LifeWay and LifeWay has received the lift it. An outsider can do that for you. The hard question then is this: when does that outsider become and insider? That’s a topic for another day.

• They trust him to say what he’s going to say. This quote really jumped out:

Question: Your blog will be linked from eBay’s PR webpage. How much influence will eBay have on what you write?

Answer: My words go straight up onto the blog, unedited. It’s got to be transparent. There’s got to be an authenticity to it, an honesty to it, otherwise there’s no point in doing it in the first place. I’m going to open up my e-mail to questions from folks. People can comment, too, and comments are going to be open. You’re going to get the good, the bad, and the ugly.

• They’re giving him time to launch. Brewer-Hay has been at eBay since January but the blog isn’t going to launch until April. They’re giving him time to build the blog, familiarize himself with the company, and get his blogging plan in place. It’s also giving them time to get the word out about the upcoming blog…hence the interview.

eBay has realized they need a blogger for all the benefit it provides both in being proactive with news and ongoing relations with the people who are most interested in eBay as well as a quick and immediate outlet for dealing with bad news. In the future most organizations with have numerous bloggers who specialize in particular areas of content but not every organization is yet ready to bring a blogger in. In October I wrote about five types of organizations that shouldn’t blog. This is still applicable for some organizations today but the good news is that they can be overcome with the right people in place.

I had the chance to give three presentations about new media marketing last week so I felt like my brain was constantly on the mantra: content is the new marketing strategy. On Thursday I had just come out of a two hour presentation and went to lunch with a friend at Chappy’s on Church here in Nashville. The food was great and the atmosphere was too. I highly recommend a cup of the seafood gumbo while you’re waiting on your meal if you ever go to Chappy’s.

While sitting there at lunch it struck me that when you create content you’re kind of like a restaurant. Both content creators and restaurants serve something for people that you hope they’re going to like. If we think of creating content more like a restaurant owner thinks about serving really good food (and experiences) to their patrons, we may be helped in making sure we’re providing valuable content and not something that’s half baked or overdone.

If you’re in the restaurant business there are three reactions you hope all your customers are going to have. If you’re in the content business, you want these same three reactions too.

• Savor - When we savor a meal it means we’re enjoying it at that exact moment. We’re taking it in and slowing down to make sure we delight in the full flavorful experience. What if that same feeling could be said about your content? Wouldn’t you love it if people savored the content you provide? If they savor your content you know they found the immediate value of it, and regardless of which of the five content strategies you choose, that is the primary rule of good content.
• Share - Have you ever had a meal at a restaurant that was so good you had to give everyone else a bite so they knew what they were missing? Or maybe you were talking about that restaurant for the entire next week after having eaten there because it was so good. Have you ever found a video so funny that you had to send to a few friends because you knew what they were missing? Same thing isn’t it? When we find something we like we share. Digital content makes sharing a snap and when you create good content one of the best thing you can hope for after the person savors the content him/her self is that they’ll share it. Do you create content that is best positioned to be shared? If you have video on your website that doesn’t provide an embed code, you’re not making it easy for people to share. If you don’t have permanent links for blog posts or articles you’re not making it easy for people to share. If your content doesn’t meet a need that some people (even if only a small group) have, it’s probably not going to be shared…and shared content that’s shared over and over and over again is of course viral marketing.
• Save - Finally, the last reaction you want in the restaurant or content creation business is that the person will save it. If we’re talking about a meal, when they save it for later they’re saying it’s worth taking home to finish later. When they see the immediate value in your content and take the next step to save it, they are indicating that they not only appreciate the immediate value of your content but the potential value it will have for them to reference in the future. One bonus with the save reaction: when your content proves to be worth saving, you have probably earned their attention for another chance for them to savor, share, and save your content in the future.

I have recommended blogging specifically as a great marketing tool for quite a while now and I’m always excited to hear how it works for people. Back in December I spent some time with Jeff from Mossy Creek Custom, a local gunsmith here in Nashville. He was just launching the business in Nashville and was anxious to get the word out about what he does so I encouraged him to start blogging. We went over all the “content is promotion the new strategy” stuff and even had to back up with the six categories of web 2.0, but by the end of a few sessions together the light had clearly come on and we were just talking specific strategy and execution.

A few days ago he called to tell me that his traffic had tripled because his post on Friday was showing up on the first page of a Google search. It turns out there are a lot of people who are interested in modifying their Glocks. He’s been doing a great job of creating content for people who are interested in custom guns and has discovered that he’s one of only a very few people who are blogging about guns like this. Jeff is already emerging as one of the best and most helpful voices in the area of shooter information. I predict that by the end of the year he’ll be recognized widely by gun enthusiasts for his blog. He’s already made some great connections and his traffic is on a steady growth pattern. The recent post was just a big shot in the arm that’s still going strong now five days later. It’s giving him more exposure to more people with more opportunities for business.

This is a great story of someone blogging strategically with a marketing mindset. Many people would likely think that gunsmiths and blogs don’t mix but Jeff is taking the approach that content is the best (and most affordable) way to connect with people. He’s creating helpful, educational, and informative content to the readers. He’s building a base while finding his blogging voice at the same time. It’s stories like this that should encourage someone on the fence to give blogging a shot try.