The Network Solutions sponsored Solutions Stars Video Conference (Oct. 29 at 1, don’t miss it!) features nine content themes:

This is the sixth of nine posts in nine days, offering thoughts on each section. We are passing over “You Need Social Networks,” which will run on Monday.

To Blog or Not to Blog

Here were my thoughts after viewing this series of videos:

Almost universally (with the exception of Rohit) all of our interviewees felt some sort of blogging was a necessary activity for companies. My caveats are the time thing, which is the final segment, and a willingness to let control fall to the wayside. This may mean getting thwacked in the head by negative comments from disagreeing parties.

But, if you are a normal entrepreneur like me, you’ll do whatever it takes and bust your butt to do it. Plus in a down economy, free (as in no hard costs) is good.

There are still rewards to be made from blogging (in spite of Jason Calacanis’ recent statements against the content form). Some of the most cited from the many interviews:

# Direct conversations with customers
# Thought leadership
# SEO
# Staying relevant
# Leveling the playing field with larger competitors

Even better, as sever interviewees like Darren Rowse said, you can learn from best practices and the errors of the past to excel even faster. Really, there’s so much out there about the benefits of blogging, I’d just rather refer you to my favorite book on the topic. Read Naked Conversations if you want more evidence.

I do think it’s harder today to rise to the top, but if you’ve got something to say, and have social networking skills, all should be fine. Consider Beth Harte’s recent successes as a relatively new entrant to the marketing blogosphere.

Marketers who appear in To Blog or Not to Blog:

In addition to the main site, please visit the Solutions Stars Video Conference event pages on Facebook and Upcoming:

• www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33854706886
• upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1200021

The Network Solutions sponsored Solutions Stars Video Conference (Oct. 29 at 1, don’t miss it!) features nine content themes:

This is the fourth of nine posts in nine days, offering thoughts on each section.

Strategy Drives Outreach

Here were my thoughts after viewing this series of videos:

The most common errors in social media and marketing in general come from lack of strategy (beware the self-touted social media expert). Without a plan, without knowing what you need to achieve, or with whom you need to communicate, and what value have to offer them, marketing becomes a vain exercise in the futile. You need a plan.

Otherwise you are just another silly social media expert bragging about the number of friends and page impressions you made. Or even better, claiming that throwing the eff word down on a blog is a great way to be authentic and generate real relationships. Yeah, I’ve heard that one recently (I’ve been guilty of it, too).

Look, cursing and or adding personality in less controversial ways have brought people down from the corporate control tower. But that desire to be “authentic” can be a distraction. There’s too much focus on being the uncontrolled social media friendly personality — and not enough on understanding what drives corporate social media: The ability to have two-way conversations with the community and build real relationships vis a vis giving back through information, commentary insights, or geez, just being generous.

In a recession, acting with precision and building great value for your stakeholders — giving to your community — is what drives relationships. It’s all about them, not your corporate ability to demonstrate personal flair. Most small business owners and entrepreneurial types have plenty of personality. That will ring through, believe me.

Instead focus on what you can do to make people’s professional or personal lives better. That’s the heart of the strategy. In classic marketing terms, it’s called the value proposition.

Without an intrinsic understanding of your stakeholders drivers, you may make friends, but you won’t get results. Instead, build a strategy with a value proposition for your community clearly defined AND then participate and communicate conversationally. Common sense and well chosen tactics can deliver results.

Marketers who appear in Strategy Drives Outreach:

In addition to the main site, please visit the Solutions Stars Video Conference event pages on Facebook and Upcoming:

• www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33854706886
• upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1200021

Network Solutions is producing the Solutions Stars Video Conference on October 29 at 1 p.m. This free video conference aims to provide insights and online marketing tips to small businesses. It will be of great service to small businesses, particularly now that the economy has gotten tough, and it’s not as easy to attend a conference in person.

As author of Now Is Gone, it was an honor to work with Network Solutions Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda and the 32 top bloggers who participated and shot videos with us at BlogWorld Expo.  The conference features nine different documentary style video sessions:

• Building Web Presence
• The Social Opportunity
• Start with Listening
• Strategy Drives Outreach
• You Need Social Networks
• To Blog or Not to Blog
• Visibility Through Search
• Rising Above the Noise
• Time Demands

In addition to Now Is Gone Co-Author Brian Solis, Solutions Stars include:

I hope you can participate in this  conference and conversation. It will be well worth your while, with lots of great insights.

In addition to the main site, please visit the Solutions Stars Video Conference event pages on Facebook and Upcoming:

• www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33854706886
• upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1200021

Liveblogging is not a new phenomenon, but with the Presidential debates over the past few weeks, it’s come into the limelight. There are a few benefits to liveblogging, and a couple different methods of doing it.

(Photo Credit: MEGATONik)

Benefits of Liveblogging

Liveblogging is beneficial for a variety of reasons.

• It provides quick and easy content for your blog, Twitter stream, etc.
• It gives people who are not at the event an opportunity to view the content and respond, in real time or after the fact.
• It provides an interactive platform and generates conversation for attendees of the event (and those following remotely) to discuss what was said, or a place to reflect after the fact.
• It gives a point of reference to go back to and make commentary on key points after the event is over.

Ways to Liveblog

There are a few methods to approaching liveblogging. Some methods can be combined to give a more comprehensive view.

• Provide short “play-by-plays” with time-stamped updates. Consider using an embedded system designed specifically for this, such as CoveritLive.
• Provide a general overview of the event. Summarize what was said and provide your own commentary and insight. Paraphrase what the speaker is saying.
• Provide content from the event with as much verbatim as possible. For example, if you are attending a conference panel session, include all Powerpoint slide content (if applicable), and try to write as much detail and exact phrases as possible from the speaker.
• Provide alternative methods of getting information, other than through your blog. Mix it up by using Twitter, uStream, Utterli (formerly Utterz), or like services. Many people also bring their flipcams to events and simply upload the entire video to their blog and social networks.

When choosing a method, think about factors such as your organization’s (or personal) goals for liveblogging, your blog audience, attendees of the event, and content of the speaker. Think about whether or not you are liveblogging to increase traffic to your site, or to provide valuable information to the public. Consider your audience and how they absorb information. Liveblogging using short updates (think Twitter) may make more sense for a Web 2.0 audience, while more general overviews of content with commentary may work well for an IT crowd.

(Picture Credit: Flickr)

It’s also important to consider the content you are sharing. Make sure it’s valuable to your audience.

A good example of how to do a “play-by-play” comes from Mashable:

This doesn’t mean “Speaker X walks up to the podium, clears throat and opens with quip about your mom,” but more like, “Speaker X says trust is the most important factor in determining marketing success. Jack from Company Y challenges this.”

Keep in mind that your content is openly available to the public, and can be reused in a variety of ways that you may not be aware of. Take Doug Haslam’s experience for example.

Boy was I surprised to hear my snarky Tweets about this week’s Vice-Presidential debate ended up on Current TV’s broadcast of the debate.

What other reasons can you think of to liveblog? Are there other ways to approach liveblogging?

At almost every event or discussion on social media, there’s a naysayer that only millenials, those under 30 consume social media. They dismiss this conversational form as something that their target market doesn’t use. Ironically, they are missing the boat as older generations are using social media.

Perhaps the best example of this is who is creating content. Technorati released the first part of its State of the Blogosphere report yesterday. It’s so funny to see their statistics, which prominently feature the millenial stats. Yet, when you delve into the numbers you can see some interesting breakdowns favoring Gen X and Baby Boomers.

Consider that 50% of bloggers are 35 and older, and 42% are between the ages of 35-54. Those are some pretty strong statistics demonstrating that millenial bloggers are getting outpaced by older generations.

In the U.S., 34% of bloggers are 25-34, and 37% are 35-49. So the older trend is even more pervasive in the United States.

The Technorati report is just the harbinger of a growing trend that usage statistics and surveys will continue confirming. Generation X and increasingly Baby Boomers are online. Communicators who dismiss these powerful media consumers as traditional media only do so at their own peril.

This weekend at BlogWorld Expo, on behalf of Network Solutions I got to interview many leading bloggers (Diva Marketing Blog Author Toby Bloomberg pictured above). One common characteristic that all of these voices had was passion. Passion to write about their subject matter. Heart and soul makes their fingers twitch with metaphorical fire on the keyboard every week and month over the years.

(Co-founder of Alltop and How to Change the World Blogger Guy Kawasaki)

We talk about social media being a game of conversational approach and tones, authenticity, frequency and personality. But even with those attributes, you cannot replace that fire that all of these great bloggers seem to possess.

(Myself, ace eCommerce Get Elastic blogger Linda Bustos, and original Livingston influencer Ad Rants Author Steve Hall)

That fire sits in their eyes as they talk about their subject matter. They care. And that passion powers them through slumps, writer’s block, business failure, life’s daily occurrences (large and small), and even hurricanes.

(Zappos CEO and Twitter Microblogger Tony Hsieh and Network Solutions Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda)

Perhaps that’s the real key to success, the raw resource that drives success, and creates a willingness to hone their craft to near-perfection. Because when all else fails that internal passion will carry the blogger back to the keyboard one more time. For the ace blogger, there is no other choice.

Problogger Darren Rowse flew in from Australia.

Though the acquisition is off, we’re still planning on some changes to the Buzz Bin.  Namely, the blog and the readers would be better served if we split the content into two blogs. We feel like we’ve got a lot of great content, some strategic and some tactical.

First would be the Buzz Bin, which would continue with 2-3 Livingston posts a week, Qui Diaz on social media for social good, and interviews of leading voices. We anticipate adding a third strategy oriented voice to the blog in the next month or two. The leaner and meaner Buzz Bin would begin in its third major retooling on September 8.

Second, Livingston Communications would start a new blog, which would focus more on tactical execution. Larissa Fair would be the lead voice, and she will be accompanied by our weekly columns from Marinel Mones and Mike Nelson, Buzz Meter and Blogs of Fire, respectively.  The second blog would launch in mid-October.

As the Buzz Bin is as much yours as ours, we definitely want to know if these changes work for you, or if you prefer to keep the blog as is. Let us know.

When Chris Brogran stops the press to summon good deeds, people sit up and take notice. Beth Kanter (with prerequisite trust in spades) raised $3,000 in one hour at Gnomedex to send her sponsored Cambodian student back to college for another semester. The game changing Social Actions widget (below) makes it possible for any plugged in individual to highlight campaigns on a blog or profile. We Buzz Binners are committed to a better place.

The ChangeBlogging meme has arrived. On a meta level - not just the three question blog-a-long at the end of this post. Eyes are shifting from the internal “me” meme to a season of “we” and “us.” The winds of change are welcome - and overdue.

A year ago there were about 15 notable nonprofit and philanthropy bloggers. Today dozens of voices regularly discuss community and global change, often in relation to the role of the social Web. (Check out the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Give & Take blog roll for a solid starter list.)

The unofficial and growing network of Changebloggers is another testament to the trend toward good. Changebloggers, as defined by Britt Bravo, are “people who are using their blog, podcast or vlog to raise awareness, build community, and/or facilitate readers/listeners/viewers’ taking action to make the world a better place.” These actions occur across nonprofits, government, corporations and the general civic sector.

Here’s the great news: Social media platforms give anyone with a little reach and commitment the ability to influence, if not outright persuade. You needn’t be solely focused on societal impact to afford changeblogger tendencies. It’s a question of what are you influencing and to what end?

DC: Setting the Stage for ChangeBlogging Results

One of the iDistrict’s most remarkable qualities is its focus on community change. As one example, marketing, PR, Web and social media gurus gather each month at NetSquared’s Pimp My Nonprofit event. We listen first, then offer digitally-derived insight and ideas, one nonprofit at a time. A meeting of the minds plus a way to contribute locally.

This fall, DC will be one of 35 cities visited by NetSquared’s Alex Steed. He’s touring the U.S., meeting with millennial activists about “the future of organizing.” We won’t be letting him out of here that easily, however. Alexandra Rampy (a.k.a. SocialButterfly) is rallying local changebloggers to meet with Steed. Our goal is to unite interested parties around something good (TBD). From there, we can do just about anything.

That’s setting the bar pretty high for Valley and NY folk.

If you were here with me, I’d make a toast. Instead - to help formally launch a new wave of social activism - a new meme. Three questions (with my answers):

• What is one change - big or small, local or global - you want to see in your lifetime? I’ll kick off with a big one. Poverty has to end. There is plenty of plenty to go around. The U.N. Millennium Development Goals are here to motivate.
• Who is already working this issue that you think others should support? Microfinance groups, like Kiva but beyond. Opportunity International, Grameen Foundation, Global Giving’s microcredit programs, and small micro-enterprise initiatives happening here in the U.S. and abroad - to name a few. Social capitalism at its best.
• How are you going to use your Web/tech/marcom skills to further this cause? (Or, what are you already doing that works?)
  I have badges on my personal blog for several of the above groups, and support a few of them too. That’s  not enough! I hope to get more involved with NEST, a local group that provides microcredit loans to women artisans in developing countries, and brings their wares to market in the U.S. They’ve already dipped their toes into PR and social media but could use some additional support.

Tagged in this meme (we’re all changebloggers in some way!): Minjae Ormes, Ike Pigott, Alex Rampy, Holly Ross, Jake Brewer, Josh Chambers, Colin Delaney, Maddie Grant, Andre Blackman, Mark Drapeau, Sarah Marchetti, Ryan Moede, Christian DE NEEF and Kenneth Yeung.

Peace.

The controversial Sarah Lacy spoke at Gnomedex. Yours truly argued with Lacy and Robert Scoble about business blogging, in what became a very public discussion (see extensive CNET coverage, image from said article). The usual, beaten to death PR Sucks meme arose (snore), but our specific argument arose over the feasibility of Lacy’s claims that bloggers can really monetize their business.

I believe most content generators a) don’t create for business/marketing purposes and b) won’t ever be in a position to successfully become superstars to the extent that the content itself will create enough opportunities to be self supporting. The era of turning on a blog and it being “special” ended last year (per last week’s Content Creation post).

CNET got my point right on the nose:

Lacy, Charlene Li [who is absolutely brilliant], Scoble and others, were “people who already have influential positions… Why should the average Joe Metroblogger care,” Livingston asked.

Both Lacy and Li came out of positions where their professional day jobs — BusinessWeek and Forrester — afforded them a much quicker ride to success. In the case of Scoble, he had to scrap his way to the top, but still had some special sauce as one of the first major corporate bloggers vis a vis Microsoft.

To really make it without these advantages, you need an unusual combination of skills to rise to prominence. You must be a natural. Scrapping your way to success through content creation today requires these four elements:

Not as simple as the wave of a hand from a former BusinessWeek reporter who had a easier path to prominence. By the way, Lacy’s journalistic past was something she needed to remind Gnomedexers of more than a dozen times. Most Gnomedexers seemed to feel Lacy’s laurels had worn thin, as demonstrated by the worst speaker rating of the event.

Breaking It Down

(Robert Redford starred as the Natural in 1984)

This discussion, while interesting to Lacy et al, is not a new discussion, but relevant in that so many individuals and businesses are trying to create blogs for business purposes. Technically “blogging” is not the right term; it should be content creation. A blog is a publishing mechanism for a variety of content from the printed word and podcasts to photos and video. Anyway…

Can an individual — and to some extent a new business effort — successfully leverage content for leading edge value? Yes, in our own business consider Valeria Maltoni’s rise to prominence last year, and this year’s Jason Falls success story. A rise to the top for business purposes can be done. Business value usually comes in the form of intangibles like more web site transactions through integrated marketing calls to action, personal or corporate branding, speaking opps, networking contacts, etc.

But let’s examine content creators by type:

1) The Naturals - Folks who would blog if they were stuck in Alaska, alone with no hopes for any commerce.
2) Business people and entrepreneurs - From consultant to corporation, these folks are seeking to achieve financial reward.

The two are not exclusive. But most bloggers fall under the category of one, naturally creative. Doubt me? Check out DC Blogs, a list of thousands upon thousands of local bloggers who create for the sake fulfilling their inner Picasso. Most have no aspiration for monetization.

Also, consider how many people create content versus those that simply listen or comment. The actual blogger is a rare person, one in 20 to 25, depending on your source.

In the case, of business types who do blog, unless they are also naturally creative, they rarely post with the necessary frequency, long-term tenacity and substance to succeed. If an entrepreneur’s natural creativity cannot be brought to bear in this sense, it’s going to be very hard for them. A corporation can better weather this deficiency by deploying several voices guided by an editorial mission and calendar.

In addition to creative fire to achieve success, you must have something to say. You have to have subject matter expertise. Creativity and subject matter expertise do not mutually co-exist. Further, is there enough of both, to deliver targeted content excellence over a sustained Stakeholders must find the content relevant consistently or they will stop following a creator.

Last, but not least comes, community networking skills. This represents more than half of the battle. Content is not king of much>Unless you already have notoriety, generating a community network becomes an organic process. Developing enough Groundswell to successfully compel communities to generate word of mouth and propel content, requires strong networking skills - a skill set completely different from content creation.

Networking requires a sustained participatory commitment from the individual on top of content creation. Much of Now Is Gone focuses on participation within communities, and that’s because it is the community that drives adoption, not publishing or even subject matter expertise. Those are pre-requisites. Instead, the community adapts, and they only do so when they believe you are credible, and there is clear value for them.

Applied to the Gnomedex Conversation

The Lacys, Lis, and Scobles of the world have an unfair advantage compared to the average blogger. Their credibility with the community — in the form of BusinessWeek, Forrester and Microsoft — was already established. Their communities were much more willing to embrace them than the average unknown.

To their credit, Li and Scoble are clearly positioned for long term success. In addition to their notoriety, they network, create content, and deliver substance over time. I am far from ready to don Lacy a champion due to perceived weaknesses in her thought leadership and community skills. That being said, she is undoubtably a Natural. Journalists and authors have to be content creators in their heart. But how much longer will the BusinessWeek cache carry her?

Those of us who have had to earn or are trying to develop business success through content creation know the road is not easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it. Much like publishing a book (according to Li there are only 50,000 published authors in the United States), for “the unfamous” the dream requires an incredible amount of perseverance and dedication. Trust me, I know. Because I’ve walked this talk from ground zero.

Some of you may have been following the PR Week Blog Competition. In a nasty twist of fate, the Buzz Bin got pitted against friend and PR Prodigy Todd Defren and his PR Squared blog.

Well, I can tell you we are not too thrilled at this pairing! Upon reflection, we decided to pull a classic Washingtonian PR move and endorse Todd to win the PR Week Blog Competition. Here’s why:

And by the way, you can do more than just vote. You can support Todd with your own “In Todd We Trust” apparel! Visit the Todd store here!

Original Todd Image by David Alston. If someone actually buys something, we’ll give him all of the profits.