AMY GAHRAN: The Right Conversation

Organic Conversations (Pun Intended)

Jonny Hunter, via Flickr

On Friday, June 22, I'll be speaking right here in Boulder, CO at the Organic Summit Leadership Conference -- cosponsored by New Hope Natural Media and the Organic Farming Research Foundation. I'll be speaking on a panel: What makes the organic news?

Like any industry, people in the organic food & product business want to spread the word about their offerings and issues. As a longtime environmental journalist (among other things), I'm very used to talking to people in this field, so I'm looking forward to it. At the very least, the food will be excellent, of course!

My co-panelists are award-winning food and nutrition journalist Carolyn O'Neil and Kristine Kidd, food editor of Bon Appetit magazine.

Most of the people attending this panel will probably be in involved in PR and media relations for the organics industry. That's great, because it seems to me that these folks, in particular, can have a ton of productive fun with online and conversational media.

Here are some things I plan to discuss...

What to Do BEFORE You Start to Blog

Joe Shlabotnik, via Flickr

Want to try business blogging? Don't just dive in.

(NOTE: I've moved this article to my other weblog Contentious. If you wish to comment on this article, you can do so there. Also, this is an edited version of a column I wrote for the Boulder County Business Report. Here's the full article.)

You’ve probably heard that blogging is good for your business. If you haven’t already started blogging -- WAIT! Leaping into this medium cold is the most common and damaging error I’ve seen.

Before you do anything else, figure out which groups you wish to engage in a public conversation.

Next, figure out where they already spend time online...

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE ON CONTENTIOUS.

Blogs: Popularity Doesn't Equal Influence

Technorati's latest snapshot of blog influence (click to enlarge). Consider what this data really shows.

(NOTE: I originally posted this item on Poynter's E-Media Tidbits blog. I'm cross-posting it here because I think it's also relevant to the broader topic of conversational media.)

On Nov. 6, Technorati published its latest quarterly state of the blogosphere report. Currently, this search service tracks 57 million feeds, mostly from blogs -- with a strong focus on English-language blogs, especially from North America.

One of the most controversial sections of this report discusses a key concern for any media: influence or perceived authority. Personally, I think Technorati's interpretation is rather awry...

Running a Group Conference Blog: What I'm Learning

This Tuesday I'm flying to Burlington, VT for my annual brain food festival -- the conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). I've been working with this group since 1990, and I have a lot of friends there, so this event is always a blast.

This year, I set up an unofficial SEJ2006 group weblog. It's "unofficial" because it's a strictly volunteer, independent effort by people who are either SEJ members, attending the conference (speakers, exhibitors, others, etc.) or who are working on the conference (staff, etc.). I did this mainly because it was more efficient to just set it up by myself, on my own, than to have to deal with any organization to get it done.

To be quite honest, this blog has been consuming much of my time this week. More than I'd intended -- but this is an experimental project, and experiments always entail unforeseen resource demands as well as results. It's OK, I've been learning a ton of useful stuff from this effort.

So if you're considering setting up a blog in support of your conference, benefit from my experience. Here's what I've learned, so far...

10 Ideas: What To Post to a Conference Blog

I've been working hard lately to get the unofficial conference blog up and running for the 2006 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Now that it's up and the crew of volunteer bloggers is mostly trained in how to use our blogging tool, Typepad, they're starting to request more guidance on content. Most of these contributing bloggers come from print media. They know how to write, but they've never blogged before -- and most of them also have little or no experience in creating any content specifically for online media.

Consequently, they aren't familiar with conference blogs. That's fine -- many people aren't, although that's starting to change. I've worked on some conference blogging efforts, so I've pulled together a list of 10 kinds of posts that work well on conference blogs.

As with any conversational-media effort, it helps to know your audience, as well as your community of contributors (both bloggers and commenters). What skills and expertise do they bring to the table? What do they want? Ultimately, that should be your guide.

Here's my list...

Transparency vs. Payola: Weighing Risks

PayPerPost: Worth the risk?

Over at the Center for Citizen Media blog, I've joined an interesting conversation concerning the thorny issue of payola in online media. See: PayPerPost: A Cancer on the Blogosphere, or Merely Semi-Sleazy? by Dan Gillmor.

Background: The controversial online advertising service PayPerPost attracted considerable blog and media attention after it recently got $3 million in venture funding. In a nutshell, PayPerPost is an automated system where companies can advertise their sites, products, services, or brands through a network of approved bloggers who get paid $2 per qualifying post. That is, bloggers who sign on to PayPerPost agree to write about those advertisers.

PayPerPost reviews and approves those posts, which can be required to be positive. Although PayPerPost urges its bloggers to be "honest," it discourages them from disclosing their relationship with PayPerPost. So, ethically, everyone involved appears to be on thin ice -- but when did ethics ever have much to do with the advertising business?

...Anyway, Dan Gillmor's post on the PayPerPost flap nudged me to consider the issue of payola more closely. Here are a couple of comments I contributed to that discussion...

Capturing Conferences: Expanding on Beth Kanter's Thoughts

Beth Kanter, one of the many great minds I encountered at BlogHer 2006.

Ever since the BlogHer conference in late July, I've been thinking about live blogging and other ways to capture the energy and creativity that often arises at conferences and other gatherings.

Well, as often happens when I don't get around to writing something down, some smart blogger beats me to it. That's just what Beth Kanter did. See her Aug. 25 post, Collaborative Models for Capturing and Sharing Conference Notes at Nonprofit Gatherings.

As a matter of fact, go read her post first. What I'm about to say will make more sense after you read her excellent overview of tools and techniques.

(Really, go read it. I'll wait. It's cool.)

...OK, now that you've read Beth's overview of collaboration tools and strategies that can help capture the value of conferences (and hopefully followed her links to some examples), here's my bigger-picture thought for today:

Conference planners should consider how to capture and extend the value of the conference during the planning process. Because for many people and organizations, what gets captured from a conference is more valuable than the event itself.

READ MORE: Over at my client's blog, Capture the Conversation, I've published a quick checklist of what I think conference planners should start taking into account...

Shel Israel: Looking for Government Blogs

Yesterday on Naked Conversations, Shel Israel posted this notice:

"Political & Government Blog Cases wanted: I am looking for case studies of blogs or social media activities written by government officials and by citizens intending to influence government.  These cases can be from any country and at any level from zoning issues to attempts to overthrow governments."

If you know of such blogs, please visit Shel's post and leave a comment there.

Since part of my work involves covering energy and environment issues, I've noticed a conspicuous lack of blogs by public employees, as well. It's not that these folks don't have opinions, ideas, or concerns of their own. Rather, within the culture of most public agencies there's tremendous pressure to toe the official line to the letter -- actually, to the serif on the edge of that letter...

Time for Blogging Diplomacy?

(NOTE: I've cross-posted this article from the Poynter Institute's group weblog, E-Media Tidbits, which I edit. That blog is read mainly my news media pros -- hence the references to "your news organization.")

On Aug. 23, Chatham House (a leading U.K. think tank on international affairs) published an intriguing assessment of the current and future role of Iran in the Middle East. The report, "Iran, Its Neighbours, and the Regional Crises" (pdf download, release), faults the U.S. for misapplied power:

"On hostility with the US, the report argues that while the US may have the upper hand in 'hard' power projection, Iran has proved far more effective through its use of 'soft' power. ...The Bush administration has shown little ability to use politics and culture to pursue its strategic interests."

Report contributor Ali Ansari, interviewed this morning on NPR's Morning Edition, noted: "Western policy towards the Middle East shows a complete lack of imagination. There is a world of opportunities between neglect and military action which has yet to be fully explored."

I was particularly struck by this perspective because I've recently started reading a fascinating new book, We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs, by Nasrin Alavi. It's a compilation of poignant entries from Iranian blogs, mostly translated from Farsi. Reading them, I see a stunning thoughtfulness and diversity -- as well as deep insight into world affairs, and hope for the future.

Maybe it's time for a little blogging diplomacy...

Conversational Media Tools at Capture the Conversation

I've recently started blogging for one of my  clients, Room 214. They're an internet marketing firm that offers an intriguing service, Capture the Conversation. This service gets to the heart of why conversational media is so valuable and important. I think the Room 214 people and I can learn a lot from each other.

The Capture the Conversation blog is a good resource for marketing/PR pros and others who want to learn how to make the most of conversational media. My "beat" there will mainly be the tools of conversational media. So when I have tool-focused topics to discuss, I'll post over there. (I'll mention it here, though, with a link). I'll continue to post my think pieces and open questions to this blog. I believe that's a complementary content strategy -- we'll see how it works out.

Over at the Capture the Conversation blog, I just launched into what will be a multi-part discussion of the tools of comment tracking. Today's post is very introductory, but watch for followups. See: Tracking Blog Comments: The Challenge...

Blog Posts: OK to Edit/Delete?

Over at my other weblog, Contentious, I've gotten involved in some interesting cross-blog conversation concerning the pros and cons of deleting or substantially revising blog posts after publication.

Every blogger stumbles upon this issue at some point. We're all human. We all occasionally (due to haste, high emotion, or misjudgment) publish things we regret and wish to retract. The question is, what's the best way to handle this?...

BlogHer catchup: Notes on notes

I'm at the San Jose airport, and I have a couple of hours before my post-BlogHer flight back home to Denver. I've been lucky enough to commandeer a rare airport electrical outlet, so I'm going to try to catch up on my BlogHer blogging and updating the converence coverage wiki I created yesterday. (Feel free to add to that if you were at BlogHer in person or virtually and wrote some coverage, or have found coverage like that which isn't already on the wiki.)

I took copious notes and photos yesterday, but didn't post to this blog after the morning session because the wireless network was operating at a crawl when I could get on it at all. I did manage a brief posting to Contentious (my other weblog) with a link to support a comment I made in the Next Level Naked session.

Speaking of notes...

Tag, You're It! BlogHer Notes

So I'm at my final Blogher session today: Tagging, Tracking...and what's this structured blogging? The session leaders are Marnie Webb of TechSoup and Charlene Li from Forrester Research.

We're all debating the difference between keywords and tags. I must confess, I find this distinction very confusing.  Marc Canter expressed the difference this way: "Keywords are outdated. Tagging is what's happening today." Which I don't doubt is true, but that didn't clarify the issue for me.

Marnie Webb just clarified this for me. Keywords and tags are basically the same thing, but this difference is in how they're used: "The context of tagging is frequently social. The context of keywords tends to be in isolation (internal use)."

Marnie also mentioned a cool service that allows you to search the tags of many different social bookmarking/Web 2.0 services: TagFetch. Way cool! I've been wanting something like this forever. I'll have to play with it to see how well I like it.

And Marc Canter mentioned "All software can -- and should -- use tags." Amen, brother!

More highlights from this session...   

Building a Successful Blog Through Conversation

On Jan 1, Kent Newsome explained why he thinks "It's Impossible to Build a New Blog in 2006." His reasons are intriguing, so that article is worth a read.

I disagree with him, though. Personally, I believe that if you have a good grasp of the dynamics of conversational media, and if you "success" doesn't simply mean "a huge audience," then you can still succeed with a blog that's only just beginning now. And I think that will remain true for some time.

Here's why...