Product Description

From the creator of the number one business blog comes a powerful exploration of how, and why, businesses had better be blogging: Naked Conversations.

According to experts Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, blogs offer businesses something that has long been lacking in their communication with customers -- meaningful dialogue. Devoid of corporate-speak and empty promises, business blogs can humanize communication, bringing companies and their constituencies together in a way that improves both image and bottom line.

The authors use more than 50 case histories to explain why blogging is an efficient and credible method of business communication. You'll find yourself excited about the possibilities blogs present after reading just a few pages. Discover how:

• Prominent business leaders, including Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks, Bob Lutz from General Motors, and Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems, are beginning to use blogs to connect with their customers in new ways.
• Blogging has changed the rules of communication and competition.
• You can launch an effective blogging strategy and the reasons why you should.

Featuring a foreword by Tom Peters, this is a resource you and your business can't do without.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18062 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Amazon.com

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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
About the Authors:

Robert Scoble helps run Microsoft’s Channel 9 Web site. He began his blog in 2000 and now has more than 3.5 million readers every year. Scoble’s blog has earned acclaim in Fortune magazine, Fast Company, and The Economist.

Shel Israel played a key strategic role in introducing some of technology’s most successful products, including PowerPoint, FileMaker, and Sun Microsystems workstations.He’s been an expert on innovation for more than twenty years.

An Excerpt from Naked Conversations:

Bloggings's Six Pillars: There are six key differences between blogging and any other communications channel. You can find any of them elsewhere. These are the Six Pillars of Blogging:

1.Publishable.Anyone can publish a blog.You can do it cheaply and post often. Each posting is instantly available worldwide.

2.Findable. Through search engines, people will find blogs by subject, by author, or both. The more you post, the more findable you become.

3.Social. The blogosphere is one big conversation. Interesting topical conversations move from site to site, linking to each other. Through blogs, people with shared interests build relationships unrestricted by geographic borders.

4.Viral. Information often spreads faster through blogs than via a newsservice. No form of viral marketing matches the speed and efficiency of a blog.

5.Syndicatable. By clicking on an icon, you can get free "home delivery" of RSS- enabled blogs into your e-mail software. RSS lets you know when a blog you subscribe to is updated, saving you search time. This process is considerably more efficient than the last- generation method of visiting one page of one web site at a time looking for changes.

6.Linkable. Because each blog can link to all others, every blogger has access to the tens of millions of people who visit the blogosphere every day.

You can find each of these elements elsewhere. None is, in itself, all that remarkable. But in final assembly, they are the benefits of the most powerful two-way Internet communications tool so far developed.

Other Blogging Books

Blogging For Dummies

Buzz Marketing with Blogs For Dummies

Publishing a Blog with Blogger

From Publishers Weekly
For the past five years, Microsoft employee Scoble has maintained one of the most popular blogs on the Internet. Mixing personal notes with passionate, often-controversial commentary on technology and business, his blog is "naked"—i.e., not filtered through his employer's marketing or public relations department—a key part of its appeal. In this breezy book, Scoble and coauthor Israel argue that every business can benefit from smart "naked" blogging, whether the company's a smalltown plumbing operation or a multinational fashion house. "If you ignore the blogosphere... you won't know what people are saying about you," they write. "You can't learn from them, and they won't come to see you as a sincere human who cares about your business and its reputation." To bolster their argument, Scoble and Israel have assembled an enormous amount of information about blogging: from history and theory to comparisons among countries and industries. They also lay out the dos and don'ts of the medium and include extensive statistics, dozens of case studies and several interviews with famous bloggers. They consider the darker aspects of blogging as well—including the possibility of getting fired by an unsympathetic employer. For companies that have already embraced blogging, this book is an essential guide to best practice. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
Scoble, a video blogger for Microsoft, and technology guru Israel have put together a bible for business bloggers. Drawn from their own experiences, as well as from numerous comments posted to their blog (http://redcouch.typepad.com/), they have produced a book with the conversational style of blogs. Starting with a brief history of -Word-of-Mouth- products such as the ICQ global instant messaging service and web browser Firefox, and placing blogging firmly in this context, they state that blogs are -Word-of-Mouth on Steroids.- Included are interviews with company bloggers from the technology industry, of course, but also from various other businesses. Scoble and Israel outline the right and the wrong ways to blog in a business context (e.g., don't say anything you wouldn't say directly to a client or the company VP) and provide basic advice on blogging generally and on related emerging technologies. The key points of the book are that blogs are better than traditional one-way marketing because they allow instant two-way communication with customers, developing a loyalty unmatched by other marketing endeavors. In fact, if a business doesn't blog, its customers will abandon that company in favor of one that does. This book should be in all public libraries and academic business collections.—Robert Harbison, Western Kentucky Univ. Lib., Bowling Green (Library Journal, January 15, 2006) 

For the past five years, Microsoft employee Scoble has maintained one of the most popular blogs on the Internet. Mixing personal notes with passionate, often-controversial commentary on technology and business, his blog is "naked"—i.e., not filtered through his employer's marketing or public relations department—a key part of its appeal. In this breezy book, Scoble and coauthor Israel argue that every business can benefit from smart "naked" blogging, whether the company's a smalltown plumbing operation or a multinational fashion house. "If you ignore the blogosphere... you won't know what people are saying about you," they write. "You can't learn from them, and they won't come to see you as a sincere human who cares about your business and its reputation." To bolster their argument, Scoble and Israel have assembled an enormous amount of information about blogging: from history and theory to comparisons among countries and industries. They also lay out the dos and don'ts of the medium and include extensive statistics, dozens of case studies and several interviews with famous bloggers. They consider the darker aspects of blogging as well—including the possibility of getting fired by an unsympathetic employer. For companies that have already embraced blogging, this book is an essential guide to best practice. (Feb.) (Publishers Weekly, December 5, 2005)

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Customer Reviews

Unabashed admiration of nakedness
A simply unputdownable book that I read over the weekend and finished during an extended lunch hour on a Monday. Filled with anecdotes and case studies that cover the half decade 'history' of blogging, this is a must read bible for all bloggers. A no-nonsense conversational writing seems as if one is reading the Scobblizer blog! Highly recommended for newbies and even review worthy for experts. Hope to incorporate some of the learnings on my blog at ebizocp.blogspot.com !!

Leading through transparent communication
Robert Scoble changed the face of Microsoft with his authentic and transparent blog. His blogging ideas should inspire other companies to engage in more conversations with their customers.

Author, "Trust is Everything: Become the leader others will follow"

Makes you think
Naked Conversations gives the great background information for anyone new to Blogs and their impact. The examples and links are powerful examples to anyone considering tipping their toe into the rising waters of blogs.

From a technicians point of view, I also enjoyed the book. I enjoy any book that makes me think. This book made me think of other ways blogs would be valuable to the business and IT "inherit friction." Because of this book, I'm testing my theory.

I LOVE BOOKS THAT SPARK IDEAS! Read this book and have your own spark initiated.