Interview: Shel Israel, co-author of the upcoming book "Naked Conversations," wants to transform hokey corporate blogs into mean, lean conversation machines.Blogs have long been popular for allowing millions of independent pundits to gain popularity by criticizing mainstream media and corporate PR.
And usually, when corporations use blogging to promote a product or themselves, the blogosphere responds harshly.
Despite this backlash (or perhaps because of it), Shel Israel and Robert Scoble will try to school corporate professionals in the blogging revolution with their book, "Naked Conversations," which will be published in January.
Israel is a popular business blogger and edits Conferenza Premium Reports, a 7-year-old subscription newsletter that guides investors and corporate leaders through new technology developments.
A BlogOn panel sees the pros and cons to corporate blogging. Click here to read more.
His partner in scribe, Scoble, runs the popular Microsoft blog Scobleizer.
Publish.com caught up with Israel in an e-mail interview, exploring blog publishing trends and the controversy swirling around public relations on the Web.
You and Scoble aren't the first to the "books about blogs" scene. What makes yours different?
I'm aware of about a half-dozen books on blogging already out there, a few of which are quite good. I would say that ours is the first to focus on the how and why of why business people should blog, and I'm pretty certain we have done the most comprehensive job of interviewing business people who have increased their business success through blogging.
We do have the ace up our sleeves in that by most rankings, Robert Scoble is the world's most popular corporate blogger and his reputation opened doors for me as the reporter to gain access to nearly 200 other business bloggers.
Yahoo puts news and blogs side by side. Click here to read more.
So in the book, you wrote a whole chapter about companies that used blogs badly. How did these companies respond to the excerpts you published on the Internet? In general, did pressure from companies influence content in your book?
For the most part, the companies we cited for bad blogs predictably ignored what we had to say. I say predictably because we cited companies who tended to ignore the blogosphere conversation; who linked only to themselves such as Google did; who used hokey character blogs.
The shining exception was Donna Tocci of Kryptonite—the bike lock you could pick with a BIC pen—who contacted us to tell her side of the story. She did a good job, and she changed a good number of people's minds about what they thought of her company. We welcomed her participation in our blogging conversation, included what she had to say, and lessened some harsh language that we had originally used, because she convinced us we were being too harsh.
You used to work for Ketchum PR, and Scoble works for Microsoft. How can two authors with this corporate background accurately analyze the independent world of the blogosphere?
First, as I wrote, I worked for Ketchum for a "brief unfortunate time." I don't know which of us were happier when I left. My life for the last 25 years has been in counseling technology startups.
I just love a bunch of passionate kids who plan to disrupt a smug incumbent. I just love how the user benefits from it. As for Robert, he writes on his own time and on his own dime. Anyone who reads him will understand how he built credibility by at times criticizing his employer and praising a competitor.
The praise should go to Microsoft for having the wisdom to see how someone like Scoble can help repair Redmond's tainted image. He once took on Steve Ballmer stating that Ballmer's actions on controversial legislation made Scoble want to work at Microsoft less.
The result: Ballmer reversed his position. Robert and I are very different folk—but we share a passion, not just for the blogosphere, but for independent thinking, for healthy debate of issues and ideas. The blogosphere's impact is that it allows the humanization of perceived monoliths. And by the way, my conflicts with Ketchum came from their being clueless about technology, which seems to still be the case.
Next Page: Blog or die.
You hoped to "eliminate the hype and hubris of traditional PR practices," but many bloggers feel that PR companies and marketing analysts are wrecking the blogosphere. How did you answer these critics? How can companies and independent bloggers co-exist?
I think the reverse is true. PR practitioners are in a change or die situation. Many of them—like Neville Hobson, Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel—are poster children for a new PR where the practice is to facilitate rather than keep secure the gate. Many others remain clueless, and I see a future for them in the restaurant service industry.
How can publishers specifically benefit from the blogging revolution? What are the major mistakes that publishers make when thinking about blogs?
Digital publishers as well as the traditional kind need to understand the fundamental shift from a broadcast model of "I talk, you listen" to a conversational model of "I talk first, then listen to you."
Salon.com redesigns and offers video blogs. Click here to read more.
This is a huge change that benefits everyone because we all usually prefer a conversation to a lecture. Most major mistakes will be made by publishers who either try to game the blogging system with gimmicks, posting false comments and by not carefully listening to what people have to say to them even when the comments are critical.
Does a book about blogging necessarily have to be opened up to comments online during the writing process? Why put out a physical book in today's publishing climate? Won't it be outdated the very day it comes out?
Dan Gillmor, JD Lasica and David Weinberger all posted chapters before Robert and I tried it with "Naked Conversations." We took it a small step further in that the people who followed our blog became more engaged. We asked them direct questions.
We allowed the blogosphere about potential titles five times before they finally told us we had nailed it. We used bloggers to give us leads on subject matters, to nominate their own companies or others for both favorable or unfavorable comments.
Click here to read "Blogs, Webzines and the Money Question."
We also have generated an awareness and word of mouth enthusiasm for a book that won't be available until January. That word of mouth has given us decent pre-order numbers at Amazon, where you can already order it.
So we think, even hope, that we have found a new way for authors to: (1) get more information from more resources to help them write better, more complete books and (2) create a blog-centric word of mouth engine to help them boost sales.
That being said, we also learned that people would prefer to read a book in the hardcopy form. We watched our numbers closely, and the actual chapters, some of which were over 10,000 words long—simply were not read by as many people as read our other postings.
In fact, some of our closest friends—even my wife Paula—admitted that they would rather read the final book, and I for one am happy about that. It could be a function of age, but I just love curling up with a book in my hand. It is an entirely different experience than sitting in front of an LCD.
Your book ends with emerging blogging technology. Where should digital publishers be looking at next? What comes after blogs?
Our book actually ends by saying that blogs are just a tool, the most significant one today in this new Conversational Era that we argue we have entered into. We speculate that years from today people will look back at the tools we are using and consider them quaint and clumsy.
I think digital publishers are on the dawn of an enormously transformational new era in which they can create true interactive, multimedia publishing experience where the reader, listener or viewer can provide the content.
I know of some people working on publishing entirely new forms of content publishing that combines aspects of Wikis, blogs, video blogs and podcasts. My advice to publishers is to not just think outside the box, but assume the box is gone forever.
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